Coronavirus COVID-19

[HI54UNI]

Meanwhile in Great Britain

[Gil Dobie]

Informed by the best science available. Also, Credit Union CEO’s.

We'd have never shut down if it were up to me. # of increased deaths from suicide, increased substance abuse, increased spousal & child abuse, depression-level job loss, business failures, stress, etc. (all of which will never be measured) will FAR outweigh any lives saved by destroying our economy. Just different lives.

Kind of the similar but different to virus fear mongering, economy fear mongering. The mitigation is working and saving lives. I can see a shutdown until the end of May. The virus started mass spreading mid-March, 100th death on March 16, same day Trump announced Stay the fuck home" guidelines.

[HI54UNI]

I can't decide if this is Nigeria's version of the babylon bee or not.

[AZGrizFan]

We'd have never shut down if it were up to me. # of increased deaths from suicide, increased substance abuse, increased spousal & child abuse, depression-level job loss, business failures, stress, etc. (all of which will never be measured) will FAR outweigh any lives saved by destroying our economy. Just different lives.

Kind of the similar but different to virus fear mongering, economy fear mongering. The mitigation is working and saving lives. I can see a shutdown until the end of May. The virus started mass spreading mid-March, 100th death on March 16, same day Trump announced Stay the fuck home" guidelines.

Only we can see the economy crashing in real time. The bodies piling up? Not so much....

[CAA Flagship]

I'm still waiting for Big Pharma to step up to the plate and hit a home run with a vaccine here. For all the money we pour into that industry, they've really come up small so far in the early innings here. It's not like corona viruses didn't exist before so this isn't ground breaking areas here. I'm leaning more and more to price controls on pharmaceuticals every day the pharma industry keeps telling us 12-18 months for a vaccine - maybe.

Oh FFS, Ganny. You sound like a whiny girl.
1. It's not that easy. There is NO VACCINE for SARS and MERS. This one is even more difficult. This IS a groundbreaking area.
2. Price controls on pharma would mean less companies trying to figure this out on the therapeutic and prophylactic sides.
3. Go to your room.

[Baldy]

1). Ability to contain within the hospital system - quickly getting there.

2). Ability for 100% testing with same day results.

3). Improved track and trace measures. I realize the big brother/genie out of the bottle implications and they’re legit, but it’s already happening.

CDC and FDA are holding that up from what I have read.

When you're running between 15% and 20% false positives/negatives, it's time to pump the breaks for a bit. Abbott talked a big game and wasn't able to back it up.

[kalm]

All of these above ^^^ posts make great points. That’s indeed the pickle we’re in.

It's a self-imposed pickle. Because of blind belief in fear porn by people like you.

Yeah...it’s my fault.

I want it all to go back to normal too. I’m just not gonna dangerously cling to it. There are all sorts of potential silver linings to this if we’re smart. EG: Massive infrastructure investment to broadband wireless tech in anticipation of increased work and education from home. Software development so that even a Luddite like me can figure out zoom inside of two hours. Less pollution due to commuting. More gardens. Medicine as a strategic industry. Repatriation of essential manufacturing. Pristine turf grass. Unmolested fish that have grown. The list is endless.

Slow your fatalistic roll just a little and be patient. You’ll have plenty of later opportunities to spike the ball because I was all wrong.

[CAA Flagship]

2). Ability for 100% testing with same day results.

That will never happen. And even if there were enough tests kits to test everyone, the tests are not 100% accurate and will likely never be.

[Silenoz]

500,000 people tested a day... that would only take several years to get to everyone. And you'd have to retest every 2 weeks.

Once they flatten the curve and roll out better/smarter (any?) testing, they can start figuring out solutions for individual states/communities, and how to contain potential outbreaks. NYC is gonna be a shitshow for a long ass time.

[Silenoz]

...on a bright side though:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/health/c ... index.html

They're only gonna get better at not letting people die. I mean, assuming the patient isn't sitting out in the hallway waiting for their turn.

[GannonFan]

We'd have never shut down if it were up to me. # of increased deaths from suicide, increased substance abuse, increased spousal & child abuse, depression-level job loss, business failures, stress, etc. (all of which will never be measured) will FAR outweigh any lives saved by destroying our economy. Just different lives.

Kind of the similar but different to virus fear mongering, economy fear mongering. The mitigation is working and saving lives. I can see a shutdown until the end of May. The virus started mass spreading mid-March, 100th death on March 16, same day Trump announced Stay the fuck home" guidelines.

Just for frame of reference, end of May is 7 more weeks. Seven. Estimates right now are maybe as high as 30M unemployed in the US - that's like a 1/10 of the population, not the workforce, the population. At least double that percentage for actual unemployment.

What's so difficult about how to open things back up? We're keeping social distancing at my work - one-way hallways between cubicles, lunchroom tables are spread out, one to a table, and staggered lunches. No meetings of more than 10 people and even then it's still 6 feet for everyone. Soon to have temperature checks of any one (employees or contractors) just to get on site. Mandatory disinfections at the end of every shift. Why can't these things be done everywhere now? Restaurants go to half capacity and install plastic shields where needed. Every store could open and operate just as grocery stores do now (my grocery store has the plastic shields and one-way aisles and many stores have max customer numbers - make people wait before going in). Hairdressers and barbers and doctors can have everyone wear masks and they can juggle their appointments (i.e. reduce) so there's less overlap of people in the salon or office/hospital.

Why should we shut down for 7 (again, that's 7 more weeks? We've been shutdown in PA for about 3-4 weeks now, so you want to go a further 2/3 of the time shutdown) when we already know what needs to be done to be up and running and still effectively socially distancing and protecting people from widespread transmission. And we could do that while most people are still employed, most are still pulling a paycheck that doesn't come from the government (i.e. debt), and most are able to get the non-medical care they really do need. Put the enforcement on closing down business and places that can't do what they're supposed to do, but give everyone the chance to show that they can step up and effectively implement the common-sense things that need to be done to operate in the time of Covid.

[GannonFan]

I'm still waiting for Big Pharma to step up to the plate and hit a home run with a vaccine here. For all the money we pour into that industry, they've really come up small so far in the early innings here. It's not like corona viruses didn't exist before so this isn't ground breaking areas here. I'm leaning more and more to price controls on pharmaceuticals every day the pharma industry keeps telling us 12-18 months for a vaccine - maybe.

Oh FFS, Ganny. You sound like a whiny girl.
1. It's not that easy. There is NO VACCINE for SARS and MERS. This one is even more difficult. This IS a groundbreaking area.
2. Price controls on pharma would mean less companies trying to figure this out on the therapeutic and prophylactic sides.
3. Go to your room.

SARS has been out for what, close to 20 years? What are our best and brightest doing that they can't figure this out? And if they can't, or if these aren't really our best and brightest, then why pay top dollar for it? I was already coming around to the idea of a national health system (NHS) here in America, and I'm not seeing anything to dissuade me at this point. If we can't have groundbreaking research and development then we might as well have a decent enough safety net for the medical care of everyone.

[GannonFan]

2). Ability for 100% testing with same day results.

That will never happen. And even if there were enough tests kits to test everyone, the tests are not 100% accurate and will likely never be.

Yup, that's the pie in the sky one. In the US alone that's 330M tests per day everyday, for apparently at least the next year if not longer. Heck, it's just close to 10 billion (yes, that's a "b" there) tests every month, or 119 trillion (with a "t") per year. How is that realistic? Beyond not being able to functionally do all that testing, what's the cost of each of these tests and let's hope they are far less than $1 per test.

[SDHornet]

Incorrect, Grasshopper. That's not the way those models work. The "range of uncertainty" is adjusted each time there's a new model put out. Those aren't the "old" ranges. Those are NEW ranges of uncertainty given THAT DAY'S information. With all the NEW information incorporated. Including all the social distancing. It's already incorporated into the model and their predictions have been wildly inaccurate. Like two weeks ago predicting Alabama and Tennessee piling up hundreds of bodies a DAY because of their stupid lack of social distancing and shutdown rules, which has just absolutely not happened. Their predictions are almost ALWAYS on the high side, promoting fear, panic, etc., for no good reason.

Agreed - the model could've been off at the start. No reason why it should still be off today other than just being a bad model. If this was a controls class in engineering we would've thrown out this gauge as it's way too unresponsive.

This has been my point exactly. For whatever reason kalm can't seem to grasp it. There is no reason these models should be this far off this far into the pandemic. No reason whatsoever.

[CAA Flagship]

Oh FFS, Ganny. You sound like a whiny girl.
1. It's not that easy. There is NO VACCINE for SARS and MERS. This one is even more difficult. This IS a groundbreaking area.
2. Price controls on pharma would mean less companies trying to figure this out on the therapeutic and prophylactic sides.
3. Go to your room.

SARS has been out for what, close to 20 years? What are our best and brightest doing that they can't figure this out? And if they can't, or if these aren't really our best and brightest, then why pay top dollar for it? I was already coming around to the idea of a national health system (NHS) here in America, and I'm not seeing anything to dissuade me at this point. If we can't have groundbreaking research and development then we might as well have a decent enough safety net for the medical care of everyone.

Think about it. SARS and MERS had short flashes. The length of time it takes to prove a vaccine is longer then those flashes. To prove it works you have to gather many many people to participate. But if the virus is not very prevalent, it would be difficult to prove if anything worked. Now is the time to test for COVID-19. It's all over. At least one vaccine candidate has begun. But first you have to determine if it is safe. That alone takes time. Then you work on the amount to administer (dosage). And once you think you got it right, you begin the final phase. And since you can't just introduce the virus to everyone in the trial, you have to let them circulate on their own and hope that they all get an even distribution of exposure. Vaccines are an incredibly hard thing to prove.

Therapeutics are much easier. You administer a drug to an infected patient and determine if they improve. You can determine the results in a month. (Not really that simple but much easier than a vaccine).

[kalm]

That will never happen. And even if there were enough tests kits to test everyone, the tests are not 100% accurate and will likely never be.

Yup, that's the pie in the sky one. In the US alone that's 330M tests per day everyday, for apparently at least the next year if not longer. Heck, it's just close to 10 billion (yes, that's a "b" there) tests every month, or 119 trillion (with a "t") per year. How is that realistic? Beyond not being able to functionally do all that testing, what's the cost of each of these tests and let's hope they are far less than $1 per test.

I wasn’t implying testing 330 million per day. Testing available all the time as needed, silly.

Up until now we have rationed testing which can take up to 2 weeks to come back.

[SDHornet]

We also have to be mindlful that the further we let the economy crumble, we'll have less capability to do some of these things. We are already hearing and seeing hospital layoffs now, especially in many areas (i.e. not NYC) where the virus has not been particularly prominent. With most non-Covid medical activities on hold (i.e. no elective surgeries, no wellness doctor visits, etc) we are cutting the medical industry off at the knees and we are exposing ourselves to a tidal wave of non-Covid health emergencies coming down the road. We may be saving grandmom and grandpop from dying from Covid, only to have them die because they weren't able to see their doctors and stay on top of their hypertension or high cholesterol or their type 2 diabetes. In addition, now the non-service industries (not restuarants, hair dressers, etc) are talking about layoffs. Heck, my company makes membrane that's used in everything from fuel cells to ostomy bags to other medical equipment - and we're talking about significant layoffs. You're also starting to hear that municipalities and cities may have to start laying off people because tax receipts are going way down - it's the cascade effect of turning off portions of the economy - you can't run half of the economy while the other half is shuttered - eventually everything starts to slow down and stop. Just wait until we have to furlough the folks working on the testing, or the trackers, or the vaccine because we can't support them either. And at no point in your 3 step startup did you even mention isolating or containing groups that are at most risk - I think that has to be part of it.

It's almost a shame that people hate Trump as much as they do because even when he says something that has some merit (and eventually the economic damage from a lockdown will exceed the damage from the virus) people can't stomach doing the right thing because it may mean agreeing with him, in some part. That's where this divisiveness really hurts us, we won't do the right thing because we don't want to agree with someone we hate. We're our own worst enemies sometimes.

Ganny just ripped the tits off of this thing. Factor in the "# of increased deaths from suicide, increased substance abuse, increased spousal & child abuse, depression-level job loss, business failures, stress, etc." that AZ and I have mentioned and it's a question of when and as AZ thinks have we already passed the point where we should open the economy back up?

[kalm]

Agreed - the model could've been off at the start. No reason why it should still be off today other than just being a bad model. If this was a controls class in engineering we would've thrown out this gauge as it's way too unresponsive.

This has been my point exactly. For whatever reason kalm can't seem to grasp it. There is no reason these models should be this far off this far into the pandemic. No reason whatsoever.

I’m patiently waiting for the brightest data analytics and infectious disease experts at CS.com to build their own.

[AZGrizFan]

It's a self-imposed pickle. Because of blind belief in fear porn by people like you.

Yeah...it’s my fault.

I want it all to go back to normal too. I’m just not gonna dangerously cling to it. There are all sorts of potential silver linings to this if we’re smart. EG: Massive infrastructure investment to broadband wireless tech in anticipation of increased work and education from home. Software development so that even a Luddite like me can figure out zoom inside of two hours. Less pollution due to commuting. More gardens. Medicine as a strategic industry. Repatriation of essential manufacturing. Pristine turf grass. Unmolested fish that have grown. The list is endless.

Slow your fatalistic roll just a little and be patient. You’ll have plenty of later opportunities to spike the ball because I was all wrong.

I'm sure all those tens of thousands of small business owners who are going to be on food stamps for the foreseeable future really will appreciate all that infrastructure improvement and less pollution.

[AZGrizFan]

Agreed - the model could've been off at the start. No reason why it should still be off today other than just being a bad model. If this was a controls class in engineering we would've thrown out this gauge as it's way too unresponsive.

This has been my point exactly. For whatever reason kalm can't seem to grasp it. There is no reason these models should be this far off this far into the pandemic. No reason whatsoever.

Yes there is. They suck. And I've come to the conclusion that klammy is just trolling. NOBODY is that stupid.

Well, except apparently Aho Old Guy.

[SDHornet]

So much for the "Trump didn't listen to the experts recommendations" narrative.

[Gil Dobie]

Kind of the similar but different to virus fear mongering, economy fear mongering. The mitigation is working and saving lives. I can see a shutdown until the end of May. The virus started mass spreading mid-March, 100th death on March 16, same day Trump announced Stay the fuck home" guidelines.

Just for frame of reference, end of May is 7 more weeks. Seven. Estimates right now are maybe as high as 30M unemployed in the US - that's like a 1/10 of the population, not the workforce, the population. At least double that percentage for actual unemployment.

What's so difficult about how to open things back up? We're keeping social distancing at my work - one-way hallways between cubicles, lunchroom tables are spread out, one to a table, and staggered lunches. No meetings of more than 10 people and even then it's still 6 feet for everyone. Soon to have temperature checks of any one (employees or contractors) just to get on site. Mandatory disinfections at the end of every shift. Why can't these things be done everywhere now? Restaurants go to half capacity and install plastic shields where needed. Every store could open and operate just as grocery stores do now (my grocery store has the plastic shields and one-way aisles and many stores have max customer numbers - make people wait before going in). Hairdressers and barbers and doctors can have everyone wear masks and they can juggle their appointments (i.e. reduce) so there's less overlap of people in the salon or office/hospital.

Why should we shut down for 7 (again, that's 7 more weeks? We've been shutdown in PA for about 3-4 weeks now, so you want to go a further 2/3 of the time shutdown) when we already know what needs to be done to be up and running and still effectively socially distancing and protecting people from widespread transmission. And we could do that while most people are still employed, most are still pulling a paycheck that doesn't come from the government (i.e. debt), and most are able to get the non-medical care they really do need. Put the enforcement on closing down business and places that can't do what they're supposed to do, but give everyone the chance to show that they can step up and effectively implement the common-sense things that need to be done to operate in the time of Covid.

I want this to be over now, but I can see end of March, almost 7 weeks from now. The Economy will be here after this is over. How many people won't? I would rather be on the conservative side and save lives. You have a lot of good idea's, but I don't people in general. Half will be concerned about the virus and take is seriously, the other half will act the idiots you saw on the beaches.

[SDHornet]

This has been my point exactly. For whatever reason kalm can't seem to grasp it. There is no reason these models should be this far off this far into the pandemic. No reason whatsoever.

I’m patiently waiting for the brightest data analytics and infectious disease experts at CS.com to build their own.

Pass. Not my area of expertise. But yeah, I'll remember these "experts" the next time the shit out a model for global warming, sea level increase, global emission standards, etc. Huge integrity hit to the scientific community imo.

[BDKJMU]

Looking at the graphs, the US might be on just over the peak, if number continue to be consistent. If they can orchestrate a good testing and tracing program after the numbers get down to a certain point, they could open things up.

4/6 - 1259 deaths
4/7 - 1973
4/8 - 1943
4/9 - 1901
4/10 - 2035
4/11 - 1830
4/12 - 1528
4/13 - 1535

WorldoMeter Link

For some reason, Worldometer #s don't jive with the death numbers from official state health officials. Worldometers has 140 more deaths over the last 8 days (comparison to Worldometers).
4/6 1,212 (-47)
4/7 1,928 (-45)
4/8 1,936 (-7)
4/9 1,856 (-45)
4/10 2,078 (+43)
4/11 1,910 (+80)
4/12 1,482 (-46)
4/13 1,462 (-73)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... Statistics

Just curious as to why the discrepancy..

[SDHornet]

Just for frame of reference, end of May is 7 more weeks. Seven. Estimates right now are maybe as high as 30M unemployed in the US - that's like a 1/10 of the population, not the workforce, the population. At least double that percentage for actual unemployment.

What's so difficult about how to open things back up? We're keeping social distancing at my work - one-way hallways between cubicles, lunchroom tables are spread out, one to a table, and staggered lunches. No meetings of more than 10 people and even then it's still 6 feet for everyone. Soon to have temperature checks of any one (employees or contractors) just to get on site. Mandatory disinfections at the end of every shift. Why can't these things be done everywhere now? Restaurants go to half capacity and install plastic shields where needed. Every store could open and operate just as grocery stores do now (my grocery store has the plastic shields and one-way aisles and many stores have max customer numbers - make people wait before going in). Hairdressers and barbers and doctors can have everyone wear masks and they can juggle their appointments (i.e. reduce) so there's less overlap of people in the salon or office/hospital.

Why should we shut down for 7 (again, that's 7 more weeks? We've been shutdown in PA for about 3-4 weeks now, so you want to go a further 2/3 of the time shutdown) when we already know what needs to be done to be up and running and still effectively socially distancing and protecting people from widespread transmission. And we could do that while most people are still employed, most are still pulling a paycheck that doesn't come from the government (i.e. debt), and most are able to get the non-medical care they really do need. Put the enforcement on closing down business and places that can't do what they're supposed to do, but give everyone the chance to show that they can step up and effectively implement the common-sense things that need to be done to operate in the time of Covid.

I want this to be over now, but I can see end of March, almost 7 weeks from now. The Economy will be here after this is over. How many people won't? I would rather be on the conservative side and save lives. You have a lot of good idea's, but I don't people in general. Half will be concerned about the virus and take is seriously, the other half will act the idiots you saw on the beaches.

No it won't, at least not for everyone. You think everyone will have the money to just pick up right where they left off? People won't be hesitant to sit down with the fam at the local restaurant for a dinner? People hopping back into planes to fly wherever and for whatever reason? Hell, how many people will be financially wiped out when this is "over"?

This economy will come back, but not over night, and those looking to get back into it (small and local businesses) will be facing a lot of uncertainty with consumers. The longer we hold off on going back to "normal", the worse it will be for everyone.