Raggedyman
Res ipsa loquitur
absolutely krect -
what we're seeing is the CURTAIN used to hide their scam and keep them blameless that's what this is.
ECON End The Shutdown!
- Thread starter Blacknarwhal
- Start date
absolutely krect -
what we're seeing is the CURTAIN used to hide their scam and keep them blameless that's what this is.
Raggedyman
Res ipsa loquitur
totally agreed - infact the entire month of APRIL will be horrific from this stuff - but based on what's transpired so far no where even remotely close to initial projections or the flu . . .
Groucho
Has No Life - Lives on TB
No, the other one is different.
ShadowMan
Designated Grumpy Old Fart
I actually think people spouting this kind of Constitutional excuse is total CRAP and they need to pull their friggen heads out of their ASS!! Yes I said it!!
I spent the better part of my adult life dealing with kind of diseases and the threats of disease all around the planet that people in the US haven't seen in generations. People....THIS SHIT IS REAL!! If you want to live in a third world shit hole just keep being stupid and watch the entire country swirl down the drain. Take some time and really learn about the BLACK DEATH, the Spanish Flu, Small Pox and any number of other actual pandemics that humanity has survived. Keep being stupid and ignorant and you too can join the list of people that DIED because of their own fault and ignorance.
I'm a very strong Constitutionalist, but extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary efforts and sacrifice if we want to survive. This is a once in a century event...unless we use the brains GOD gave us and quit being stupid this virus has the very real probability of matching the Black Death of the middle ages.
I spent the better part of my adult life dealing with kind of diseases and the threats of disease all around the planet that people in the US haven't seen in generations. People....THIS SHIT IS REAL!! If you want to live in a third world shit hole just keep being stupid and watch the entire country swirl down the drain. Take some time and really learn about the BLACK DEATH, the Spanish Flu, Small Pox and any number of other actual pandemics that humanity has survived. Keep being stupid and ignorant and you too can join the list of people that DIED because of their own fault and ignorance.
I'm a very strong Constitutionalist, but extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary efforts and sacrifice if we want to survive. This is a once in a century event...unless we use the brains GOD gave us and quit being stupid this virus has the very real probability of matching the Black Death of the middle ages.
et2
Has No Life - Lives on TB
But ... if nobody is working ... there’s no free stuff. Can’t run this country off the backs of the very few still working. But, I wouldn’t expect the young and stupid to understand that. It would be false lies
TheSearcher
Are you sure about that?
We have about 5000 deaths due to Covid-19, over a three month period, Jan through March.
We have about 24000 deaths due to Flu, over a five-month period, October through March.
Covid monthly death rate, averaged over 3 months: 1667
Flu monthly death rate, averaged over 5 months: 4800
If you look at news reports from January 2020, there were about 3000 flu deaths, or 1000 deaths/month average.
We'll see what the rise turns out to be, but Covid-19 has a ways to go to get past this year's flu season in terms of monthly death rate, though Covid-19 is a couple of months behind the flu. We are back to watching how much we can flatten the curve and how well the treatments turn out to perform.
ETA: January numbers were for the flu, and added that.
Last edited:
Daimos
Contributing Member
My doctor just called me today, he wants some tests run, but because I am a high risk patient he is worried...So he has asked me to schedule an appointment with a special lab to get my tests done in... They deal in only patients with pre-existing conditions. 1 every half hour, and they use that time to clean every surface in the building before the next person arrives apparently. It sounds serious to me. I am Diabetic, Have some kidney problems and had 7 strokes last year, so I have been pretty much been hiding from this virus in our house with Kritter with our preps from the start.
Blacknarwhal
Let's Go Brandon!
It's already worse. The worst week of 2008, we lost like 830,000 jobs. The worst week so far is 3.2 million.
If they turn the criminals loose, do they fire the Warden, the Guards, The Sheriff, the Judge and all the police and then tell them to go home and shelter in place because they are no longer essential? I bet they also declared the liquor and pot stores essential and the gun shops non essential.
On a happy note, they can fire all the lawyers and all the social workers and psychologists too
On a happy note, they can fire all the lawyers and all the social workers and psychologists too
Mary Contrary
Inactive
I don't know what to think. I believe it is very contagious, but i see what "they" are doing. They are making people afraid of other people. They are separating us. We are losing our humanity. No more hugging, no more touching, no kissing. Everyone is afraid of everyone else. I don't think it's going to end. I think it's gonna get worse and keep coming back, and then we will never ever again be "normal." We are afraid to visit people now. My own cousin won't see me anymore. He is locked up in his house and won't let anyone in. He doesn't realize that he can touch something at the store and get it. Now i have no where to go, no one to visit. Now i am even more lonely than i was before. At least i had a few friends i could visit. Now i can't visit anyone. This is a living hell and a horrific sci fi movie. It's gonna get worse.
Mary Contrary
Inactive
I think my friend is gonna get the prostate operation on April 6th. Doc said he needed it cuz of the cancer. He just told me today that he has to go soon and get a Corona test done, the up the nose test to make sure he doesn't have it before he goes to the hospital. I told him they stick the Q tip WAY up the nose. He had no idea. So i guess they don't want anyone inside the hospital if they are infected. Sounds serious to me.
Profit of Doom
Dismember
In that vein, does it resemble the daze of fear they are trying to shove down our throats in the name of Climate Change?
Just a thought.
Profit of Doom
Dismember
The OOO-AAAA bird.
I'm not saying that the world will get back to what it was necessarily, but that's not a particularly BAD thing. Some of us will choose to see the good through the bad.
Yes, OOO-AAAAA Bird! I do enjoy wild birds.
So many of us here are so far ahead of the sheep, us preppers. I thank the good Lord for that.
Yes, OOO-AAAAA Bird! I do enjoy wild birds.
So many of us here are so far ahead of the sheep, us preppers. I thank the good Lord for that.
bobfall2005
Veteran Member
This all started from a few cases on the US. For the shutdown to work, you have to clear every case. Known and unknown. Leave 10 sick in America, after the shutdown, in 3 months you here again.
Summer going to save the day? That's a hope.
Not a guarantee. If it works, come fall of 2020, we start all over again.
Vaccine coming? Maybe. Nobody you know will get one before 2021.
Drug protocol? Maybe it works. But, 2 to 3 hundred million are going to need it. World wide. There is enough for about 1% of them. The ramp up will take till 2021.
And the shutdown kills vaccine and drug protocol mass production.
Wait till unemployment numbers come out today.
If the shutdown ends Monday, we are facing a depression.
If it ends by May 1st, we are looking a great depression with 30% unemployment. Worse than the 1930s.
If the shutdown goes till June or July, Weimar republic. After it collapsed.
Do you think Germany was making a lot of pharmicutical stuff after the economy collapsed?
A vaccine may come.
The drug therapy might work.
You MUST have a functional economy to mass produce either.
That functional economy has been turned off.
And.
The longer it stays off, the harder it is to turn on.
Every day it stays off, the chance of destroying it increases.
And.
The chance of a vaccine or cure decreases.
Summer going to save the day? That's a hope.
Not a guarantee. If it works, come fall of 2020, we start all over again.
Vaccine coming? Maybe. Nobody you know will get one before 2021.
Drug protocol? Maybe it works. But, 2 to 3 hundred million are going to need it. World wide. There is enough for about 1% of them. The ramp up will take till 2021.
And the shutdown kills vaccine and drug protocol mass production.
Wait till unemployment numbers come out today.
If the shutdown ends Monday, we are facing a depression.
If it ends by May 1st, we are looking a great depression with 30% unemployment. Worse than the 1930s.
If the shutdown goes till June or July, Weimar republic. After it collapsed.
Do you think Germany was making a lot of pharmicutical stuff after the economy collapsed?
A vaccine may come.
The drug therapy might work.
You MUST have a functional economy to mass produce either.
That functional economy has been turned off.
And.
The longer it stays off, the harder it is to turn on.
Every day it stays off, the chance of destroying it increases.
And.
The chance of a vaccine or cure decreases.
bw
Fringe Ranger
I'm not convinced the shut-down is the best thing for the country, and the pro's and con's have been covered here. We're sure that isolation is the best route for my wife and me, so that's the course we're taking. The rest of my family is in varying degrees of isolation, unconcern and denial. As I told them all in one of my heads-up letters, when this is all over we'll have an idea which choices were best.
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
Turns out that the "lockdown" here in NW Florida is going to be MUCH less draconian than I first expected. First, it's explicitly okay for people to go out walking, hiking, other exercising, and fishing as long as you're not in groups of ten or more; the .gov is deeming that an "essential" activity.
Second, they are openly considering reopening the beaches here.
Third, the definition of "essential" for businesses is going to be VERY flexible; I was told by a cashier at Sports Authority that they thought THEY were going to probably be considered one. Certainly, banks, gas stations, post offices, etc., are going to be so deemed, not just grocery stores.
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
Sounds to me as if it'd be a hell of a lot easier to just take blood from patients out in the parking lot. Would be able to handle way more patients per day, too.
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
Related:
accordingtohoyt.com
DESTROYED LIVES
Posted on April 1, 2020by accordingtohoyt
"*Note I’m not doing an April Fool’s Post this year, because I think as a society we’ve had it up to HERE with pranks, right about now.
Note also that I woke up sans sense of smell or taste (when you have a 21 year old incontinent cat, you can tell when you lost your smell, and Russian Caravan, the tea you drink with a forkTM tastes of nothing. Even with sweetener and lemon it tastes only like vaguely sweet water.
This is universally reported as the first symptom of Wu-flu. (I have a runny nose and a sore throat.) No, I don’t expect to die — not out of the question, with asthma, compromised lung function, etc — but I’m pissed at the prospect that I’m coming down with it, because I already lost two months this year to “mysterious, flu like illness.”
Even if I get very very ill, though, my opinion is the same. Short of actual black death numbers, what we’re doing to the economy is more dangerous than the disease. And will ultimately cost more in lives blighted and ended- SAH*
I think it’s very important to talk of the lives that will be destroyed or lost to this insanity of locking ourselves in our houses for fear of a virus. (Let me explain again, in quarantine, you lock up the sick. When you lock up the healthy it’s called house arrest. Yes, I am aware that there have been quarantines in the past. This is NOT — repeat not — a quarantine. Economic suicide. Collective insanity. Unprecedented violation of civil rights in peace time. It is all of that and more. It is not a quarantine.)
We’ll point out the obvious: there are people losing businesses they spent their lives building. There are people — I know some — who had just got a job which is now revoked. There are students who have just finished/are about to finish training, and who will be unemployed and crushed under student debt, no matter how sensible their training.
There is a risk of some number of these people committing suicide. That will be “visible deaths” coming from this particular insanity.
But there will be also any number of hidden deaths. Like the squid farms on Mars, which we hypothetically don’t have because we chose to fund the “Great Society” instead, these losses are invisible because they were never actually actualized. They were merely things that might be, and were in fact likely until governments (mostly state and local) decided it was a great idea to take the wheels off the economy, possibly because they were suffering from a terrible case of Orange Man Bad and knew they couldn’t elect their spokeszombie in the face of a thriving economy. You know, things like people getting jobs, with good training, in a thriving economy. People making enough money to marry, afford a house and kids. People getting that first job, that eventually leads to other, better jobs.
But Sarah, you say, if this never happens, how can it cost us anything, much less lives?
It can cost a lot of things and yeah, lives. Perhaps not in the sense that people die, but in the sense that lives are not what they should be or even are wasted.
As the mother of an unmarried young man about to finish his training with two engineering degrees and minors in another form of engineering, plus math and physics, yes, I am concerned that he’ll stay in the basement and never marry. While I come from a culture in which the younger child is often expected to stay home and look after the parents, that is not what I want or expect of my sons.
But it could be less dire than that and still bad: he is a jack leg programmer, and he might be able to make a living coding on a gig basis, and make do, more or less. But he’ll never do what he loves and spent 7 years training for. Whatever contributions he might eventually have made to aerospace engineering will be lost.
And I hear you say that all of us took paths we didn’t expect and many of us — or the most interesting ones of us — are doing things we didn’t train for and which would shock our younger selves. And I’m going to say “granted.” And in most cases, those youthful dreams were misguided or not realistic. (Do you see me ruling the world and leaving it strictly alone?)
And I’ll grant you that too. But most of us are at least doing something adjacent to what we thought we would be doing (Journalist/novelist. Though I trained for translator and — rolls on floor laughing — diplomatic service.)
When this type of destruction hits an economy at the level we’ve inflicted in March 2020, what you see is a lot of diminished lives. Which in turn causes a lot of loss of interest/hope/etc.
Alvin Toffler might or might not be right about future shock. He was, however, absolutely right about cultural trauma caused by sudden and unexpected/unforeseen change, particularly when that change was negative.
Note there is credible reason to say Europe is dying from WWI.
On top of that, we were already dealing with extreme technological change, at a pace that was causing psychological problems. Weirdly — this isn’t unusual when the wheels come off, so it shouldn’t be “weirdly” but most people think of a society being ruined as stepping back to an earlier level of technology. Unless the ruin continues to be enforced by government — Venezuelization or Cubanization — in fact ruin tends to accelerate technological driven societal change — this will only make the changes we were experiencing faster, because a lot of the digital revolution makes things cheaper/more streamlined. Which means we’re more likely to go in that direction in hard economic times.
And a lot of us are over fifty. Not as many as in Europe, but still a lot of us. Which means these changes will be hitting at just the right time to give a lot of people Unemployed Middle Aged Man Syndrome. (Note “man” because most women have other sources of “self” than job. But not all. And my generation of women is more like men on that.) What this means is that some number of people will simply be unable to cope with changed work/life circumstances brought on by this insanity.
Yes, some will perhaps kill themselves, and those are visible. The invisible ones are the ones who go pottering into the sunset, alive but no longer able to contribute anything to society.
In that group, stress will also cause new and interesting forms of disease, including cancer, which a broke society might or might not be able to treat.
When people say we should stay “quarantined” (It’s not) till July, or for a year, or till the cows come home, “if it saves even one life.” this is what they and we must weight it against.
It’s all very well to say you won’t die FOR Wall Street. But will you die of the economy?
Because Wall Street is retirement plans. It is investment and innovation funds. It is rainy day funds. All of these for middle America. More than that, the economy and its ability to allow people to work for pay or find the food they need, or whatever IS lives.
Money is lives. All of us trade away some portion of our lives to produce goods and services which in turn get paid for and allow us to continue living. It has always been so. Since we’ve had money, money is simply a symbol, a way to keep track.
Money, and food and goods and services, and “simple” things like stores being open and stocked are LIVES. They’re hours and investments of people’s time and creativity.
How much of that do we burn to save lives. Where is the balance?
I don’t know. I know it’s possible to lose 1/3 of the population, particularly when that population is very old and forge on. Sure, we’ll lose institutional memory, but we’ve already lost that, having decided to indoctrinate the last three generations in an utter vacuum of history or hard facts. (Sorry, but you know it’s true.)
Look, I don’t want to die more than the next person, and the next person is playing with the peaches of immortality. It’s not that I want to live forever, or live for its own sake. But I want to live long enough to write 100 novels, cuddle four grandchildren, and … well, I want to live while I have things to do.
On the other hand, I know I’m 57 and not in perfect health. And I’ve survived expectations at birth for 57 years. So far so good. (Said the man as he fell past the 20th floor.)
I think a lot of our response to this is our fear of disease and death writ in sky high letters.
None of us is going to live forever. We’ve been dying since the day we’ve been born.
Sure, we have things to do and places to go. BUT it does no good to pay for our diminished future with the future of the entire society.
This fake quarantine isn’t free. Life isn’t free. Nothing is free.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, in anything. And the smart person asks the price before dipping a hand in the supposed freebies.
Caveat Emptor."
Destroyed Lives
*Note I’m not doing an April Fool’s Post this year, because I think as a society we’ve had it up to HERE with pranks, right about now. Note also that I woke up sans sense of smell…
accordingtohoyt.com
DESTROYED LIVES
Posted on April 1, 2020by accordingtohoyt
"*Note I’m not doing an April Fool’s Post this year, because I think as a society we’ve had it up to HERE with pranks, right about now.
Note also that I woke up sans sense of smell or taste (when you have a 21 year old incontinent cat, you can tell when you lost your smell, and Russian Caravan, the tea you drink with a forkTM tastes of nothing. Even with sweetener and lemon it tastes only like vaguely sweet water.
This is universally reported as the first symptom of Wu-flu. (I have a runny nose and a sore throat.) No, I don’t expect to die — not out of the question, with asthma, compromised lung function, etc — but I’m pissed at the prospect that I’m coming down with it, because I already lost two months this year to “mysterious, flu like illness.”
Even if I get very very ill, though, my opinion is the same. Short of actual black death numbers, what we’re doing to the economy is more dangerous than the disease. And will ultimately cost more in lives blighted and ended- SAH*
I think it’s very important to talk of the lives that will be destroyed or lost to this insanity of locking ourselves in our houses for fear of a virus. (Let me explain again, in quarantine, you lock up the sick. When you lock up the healthy it’s called house arrest. Yes, I am aware that there have been quarantines in the past. This is NOT — repeat not — a quarantine. Economic suicide. Collective insanity. Unprecedented violation of civil rights in peace time. It is all of that and more. It is not a quarantine.)
We’ll point out the obvious: there are people losing businesses they spent their lives building. There are people — I know some — who had just got a job which is now revoked. There are students who have just finished/are about to finish training, and who will be unemployed and crushed under student debt, no matter how sensible their training.
There is a risk of some number of these people committing suicide. That will be “visible deaths” coming from this particular insanity.
But there will be also any number of hidden deaths. Like the squid farms on Mars, which we hypothetically don’t have because we chose to fund the “Great Society” instead, these losses are invisible because they were never actually actualized. They were merely things that might be, and were in fact likely until governments (mostly state and local) decided it was a great idea to take the wheels off the economy, possibly because they were suffering from a terrible case of Orange Man Bad and knew they couldn’t elect their spokeszombie in the face of a thriving economy. You know, things like people getting jobs, with good training, in a thriving economy. People making enough money to marry, afford a house and kids. People getting that first job, that eventually leads to other, better jobs.
But Sarah, you say, if this never happens, how can it cost us anything, much less lives?
It can cost a lot of things and yeah, lives. Perhaps not in the sense that people die, but in the sense that lives are not what they should be or even are wasted.
As the mother of an unmarried young man about to finish his training with two engineering degrees and minors in another form of engineering, plus math and physics, yes, I am concerned that he’ll stay in the basement and never marry. While I come from a culture in which the younger child is often expected to stay home and look after the parents, that is not what I want or expect of my sons.
But it could be less dire than that and still bad: he is a jack leg programmer, and he might be able to make a living coding on a gig basis, and make do, more or less. But he’ll never do what he loves and spent 7 years training for. Whatever contributions he might eventually have made to aerospace engineering will be lost.
And I hear you say that all of us took paths we didn’t expect and many of us — or the most interesting ones of us — are doing things we didn’t train for and which would shock our younger selves. And I’m going to say “granted.” And in most cases, those youthful dreams were misguided or not realistic. (Do you see me ruling the world and leaving it strictly alone?)
And I’ll grant you that too. But most of us are at least doing something adjacent to what we thought we would be doing (Journalist/novelist. Though I trained for translator and — rolls on floor laughing — diplomatic service.)
When this type of destruction hits an economy at the level we’ve inflicted in March 2020, what you see is a lot of diminished lives. Which in turn causes a lot of loss of interest/hope/etc.
Alvin Toffler might or might not be right about future shock. He was, however, absolutely right about cultural trauma caused by sudden and unexpected/unforeseen change, particularly when that change was negative.
Note there is credible reason to say Europe is dying from WWI.
On top of that, we were already dealing with extreme technological change, at a pace that was causing psychological problems. Weirdly — this isn’t unusual when the wheels come off, so it shouldn’t be “weirdly” but most people think of a society being ruined as stepping back to an earlier level of technology. Unless the ruin continues to be enforced by government — Venezuelization or Cubanization — in fact ruin tends to accelerate technological driven societal change — this will only make the changes we were experiencing faster, because a lot of the digital revolution makes things cheaper/more streamlined. Which means we’re more likely to go in that direction in hard economic times.
And a lot of us are over fifty. Not as many as in Europe, but still a lot of us. Which means these changes will be hitting at just the right time to give a lot of people Unemployed Middle Aged Man Syndrome. (Note “man” because most women have other sources of “self” than job. But not all. And my generation of women is more like men on that.) What this means is that some number of people will simply be unable to cope with changed work/life circumstances brought on by this insanity.
Yes, some will perhaps kill themselves, and those are visible. The invisible ones are the ones who go pottering into the sunset, alive but no longer able to contribute anything to society.
In that group, stress will also cause new and interesting forms of disease, including cancer, which a broke society might or might not be able to treat.
When people say we should stay “quarantined” (It’s not) till July, or for a year, or till the cows come home, “if it saves even one life.” this is what they and we must weight it against.
It’s all very well to say you won’t die FOR Wall Street. But will you die of the economy?
Because Wall Street is retirement plans. It is investment and innovation funds. It is rainy day funds. All of these for middle America. More than that, the economy and its ability to allow people to work for pay or find the food they need, or whatever IS lives.
Money is lives. All of us trade away some portion of our lives to produce goods and services which in turn get paid for and allow us to continue living. It has always been so. Since we’ve had money, money is simply a symbol, a way to keep track.
Money, and food and goods and services, and “simple” things like stores being open and stocked are LIVES. They’re hours and investments of people’s time and creativity.
How much of that do we burn to save lives. Where is the balance?
I don’t know. I know it’s possible to lose 1/3 of the population, particularly when that population is very old and forge on. Sure, we’ll lose institutional memory, but we’ve already lost that, having decided to indoctrinate the last three generations in an utter vacuum of history or hard facts. (Sorry, but you know it’s true.)
Look, I don’t want to die more than the next person, and the next person is playing with the peaches of immortality. It’s not that I want to live forever, or live for its own sake. But I want to live long enough to write 100 novels, cuddle four grandchildren, and … well, I want to live while I have things to do.
On the other hand, I know I’m 57 and not in perfect health. And I’ve survived expectations at birth for 57 years. So far so good. (Said the man as he fell past the 20th floor.)
I think a lot of our response to this is our fear of disease and death writ in sky high letters.
None of us is going to live forever. We’ve been dying since the day we’ve been born.
Sure, we have things to do and places to go. BUT it does no good to pay for our diminished future with the future of the entire society.
This fake quarantine isn’t free. Life isn’t free. Nothing is free.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, in anything. And the smart person asks the price before dipping a hand in the supposed freebies.
Caveat Emptor."
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
Are People Catching On?
The poll data I have seen indicate that Americans are very much behind their governments' efforts to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 virus. But today's Rasmussen Reports also finds widespread concern that the cure--massive shutdown of our economy--could turn out to be worse than the disease...
www.powerlineblog.com
APRIL 1, 2020 BY JOHN HINDERAKER
ARE PEOPLE CATCHING ON?
"The poll data I have seen indicate that Americans are very much behind their governments’ efforts to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 virus. But today’s Rasmussen Reports also finds widespread concern that the cure–massive shutdown of our economy–could turn out to be worse than the disease:
Rasmussen Reports
✔@Rasmussen_Poll
https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1245440799287980042
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all voters are concerned that the government’s #cure for the #coronavirus threat may be worse than the problem, with 32% who are Very Concerned... https://bit.ly/39Belea
https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1245440799287980042
Regular readers will not be surprised to know that I am one of the 32% who are Very Concerned.
Rasmussen also finds this:
“[L]argely shut down for an indefinite period” was the language used in the survey. I am unsure how anyone could think that we can afford a shutdown for an indefinite period, but maybe a lot of respondents construed “indefinite” to mean a matter of weeks. I hope that is the case, anyway."
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
What stay-at-home orders can and can't accomplish
Florida governor Ron DeSantis today issued a 30-day stay-at-home order for the state. Florida's approximately 21 million residents are instructed to remain at home unless they are pursuing “essential services or activities.” It's not clear what DeSantis accomplished by delaying this effort to...
www.powerlineblog.com
APRIL 1, 2020 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN CORONAVIRUS
WHAT STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS CAN AND CAN’T ACCOMPLISH
"Florida governor Ron DeSantis today issued a 30-day stay-at-home order for the state. Florida’s approximately 21 million residents are instructed to remain at home unless they are pursuing “essential services or activities.”
It’s not clear what DeSantis accomplished by delaying this effort to mitigate the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Florida’s economy will now be hammered. The state might experience the worst of all worlds.
The bigger question, which John raised last night in a thoughtful and informative post, is the degree to which stay-at-home orders will save lives. John wrote: “Sheltering in place won’t prevent the COVID-19 virus from working its way through the population, it will just do so more slowly.” That view is widely shared by epidemiologists.
This doesn’t mean that sheltering in place won’t save lives. It will. For one thing, as John noted, lives will be saved by “flattening” the infection curve because if the same number of infections is spread out over time, hospitals will be better able to prevent the infected from dying. Why? Because there won’t be the kinds of acute shortages of equipment, such as ventilators, that we experience during extreme peaks of infection.
That’s not necessarily all. While the spread is delayed, we may find medicines that treat the infection effectively. Delaying the spread might also mean reducing the spread if it turns out that the virus doesn’t do well in warm weather. It’s even possible that, over time, the virus mutates or simply goes away.
So sheltering in place will save lives. But how many?
We don’t know. But I think it was reasonable for John to conclude that it won’t save nearly as many lives as some modelers and politicians would have us believe.
It seems implausible that in Britain, the ways in which staying at home reduces fatalities (as described above) can swing the number of deaths from around 500,000 to fewer than 20,000, as Dr. Neil Ferguson’s models indicate. And it seems absurd to suppose that staying at home in Minnesota will reduce the death total there from more than 70,000 (as the governor’s model apparently forecasts) to a little more than 1,000 (as a University of Washington model, IHME) predicts.
In absolute numbers, staying at home might well produce a substantial reduction in deaths without decreasing the total number of infections. But I doubt it will produce such a reduction in large multiples.
This raises the question of whether such orders are desirable, given their economic impact. More acutely, it raises the question of how long such orders should remain in place.
Yesterday, I learned from one of my daughters that Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia (Mr. Black Face himself), has directed that citizens of the Commonwealth stay at home until June 10. Virginians would surely balk at an order of this duration if informed that complying won’t reduce the odds of them becoming infected, but will only delay the date of infection. This is particularly true given that a very high percentage of those infected won’t die from the virus even if hospitals are flooded.
But is it really the case that staying at home has no effect on the number of infections (absent a “hot weather” effect of which we are unsure)? Would all of the 77 people said to have become infected at a Biotech conference in Boston have been infected eventually, even absent the conference and even if they stayed at home for two and a half months? Would all of the hundreds of people in South Korea said to have been infected by “Patient 31” after she attended two church services have been infected eventually anyway?
I’m not sure about Boston, but I believe most of the people in South Korea who were infected thanks to Patient 31 would have avoided infection had she stayed at home.
Why? Because South Korea was still in containment mode. In other words, it was (or is said to have been) effectively testing, tracking, and isolating. As I understand it, when a country or area is in that mode, infections on a large scale can be avoided, as apparently happened in South Korea.
The infected are identified through tracking and testing. Isolated, they either die or get better and (we think) are no longer capable of transmitting the virus. The rest of the population mostly avoids infection (though the tracking/testing/isolation cycle must be continued).
The problem in the U.S. is that, at least until recently, we didn’t have nearly enough tests to do tracking/testing/isolation. (For a good explanation of why that was, go here.) Now, it’s too late, at least in much of the country. Thus, we’re in “mitigation” mode, which means flattening the infection curve but not reducing total infections.
However, it may be possible that, by staying at home, we can get back to containment mode. While we self isolate, the infected die or get better and can (we think) no longer transmit the virus. Thus, the infection rate is sharply reduced, as is the number of now-current infections.
To be sure, not all infections will be extinguished even after months of sheltering in place, and once the stay-at-home order is lifted, the infected will be able to start spreading the virus rapidly. However, the number of now-current infections might be low enough that we can restore our missed opportunity to contain the virus through testing, tracking, and isolating the reduced number of carriers. (This assumes, of course, that we have enough tests. We should, by then.)
In this way, the sheltering in place will enable us not just to flatten the infection curve, but also to reduce the number of infections.
The purpose of this post is not to defend or attack stay-at-home orders in general or any such order in particular (okay, I am attacking the Virginia governor’s order). The purpose is to try to advance my understanding, and perhaps that of others, of the virtues and limits of such orders from a public health perspective. As always, the economic effects of such orders must also be considered."
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
Hm. Perhaps true, but seems a suboptimal strategy for Chlamydia, genital Herpes, Hepatitis, and HIV, among others.
coalcracker
Veteran Member
What we are wrestling with here is a moral question.
Much like the Jewish leaders back in the time of Christ, some are reasoning, "Isn't it better for one (or in our case, some) to die than to lose the whole nation?" There is a practical sense to approaching the question this way.
Or consider Mr. Spock's famous line as he was dying at the end of The Wrath of Khan:
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Again, practical sense. It's Spock, man, how could it not be practical?
But here is where the moral question arises. Life is filled with variations of this: Do I choose what is best in a practical sense, or do I chose what is best in a moral (right vs. wrong) sense?
Right now, the moral choice is to protect the lives of vulnerable people from this virus, come what may. Yes, the economy will probably be destroyed (It was probably destroyed anyway back when China closed shop), but we can choose to do the right thing, morally.
What I've seen happen in life is that once I've made the correct moral choice, God (or the Universe) will smile upon me and change the dynamics of the situation to provide an unforeseen outcome. Call it magic. Call it a miracle. Call it what you will.
The flip side, though, is when we start rationalizing the practicalities. "If I do _________, then _________ will happen." We then decide the choices that are necessary to produce the desired outcome. Alas! Let us not do so! Let us note the serpent as he whispers, "Has God said...?"
The outcomes are not ours to produce. In the words of Jean Pierre de Cassaude, let us do the right thing and "abandon ourselves to Divine Providence."
Much like the Jewish leaders back in the time of Christ, some are reasoning, "Isn't it better for one (or in our case, some) to die than to lose the whole nation?" There is a practical sense to approaching the question this way.
Or consider Mr. Spock's famous line as he was dying at the end of The Wrath of Khan:
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Again, practical sense. It's Spock, man, how could it not be practical?
But here is where the moral question arises. Life is filled with variations of this: Do I choose what is best in a practical sense, or do I chose what is best in a moral (right vs. wrong) sense?
Right now, the moral choice is to protect the lives of vulnerable people from this virus, come what may. Yes, the economy will probably be destroyed (It was probably destroyed anyway back when China closed shop), but we can choose to do the right thing, morally.
What I've seen happen in life is that once I've made the correct moral choice, God (or the Universe) will smile upon me and change the dynamics of the situation to provide an unforeseen outcome. Call it magic. Call it a miracle. Call it what you will.
The flip side, though, is when we start rationalizing the practicalities. "If I do _________, then _________ will happen." We then decide the choices that are necessary to produce the desired outcome. Alas! Let us not do so! Let us note the serpent as he whispers, "Has God said...?"
The outcomes are not ours to produce. In the words of Jean Pierre de Cassaude, let us do the right thing and "abandon ourselves to Divine Providence."
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
Australia starts putting time limits on 'draconian' virus measures
HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/AUSTRALIA (UPDATE 1, PIX):UPDATE 1-Australia starts putting time limits on 'draconian' virus measures
news.trust.org
Australia starts putting time limits on 'draconian' virus measures
by Reuters
Thursday, 2 April 2020
By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY, April 2 (Reuters) - "Australian authorities on Thursday began putting time limits on the use of police to enforce restrictions on personal movement intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, as standoffs continued with cruise ships denied entry to ports.
Australian states have instructed police to issue fines of up to A$11,000 ($6,672) to people who violate federal orders that ban non-essential travel and limit groups of people gathering outside to two.
In New South Wales, the most populous state with nearly a third of the country's 25 million population, police have also threatened prison terms of up to six months for people who violate the rules.
"When is the turn-off period for these orders? It is 90 days," state police commissioner Mick Fuller told a televised news conference in Sydney.
"People will have gotten the message by then, hopefully. And we won't be talking about the powers, we'll be talking about what does it look like coming out of this?"
Police in NSW and other states have already started issuing tickets to people suspected of breaching orders which authorities themselves have called "draconian".
Officials in the second most populous state of Victoria said policing of social distancing rules may last until June, without giving specific dates.
Like countries around the world, Australia has ordered the shutdown of restaurants, cafes, bars, movie theatres and instructed people to stay inside unless they are shopping for food or taking their daily exercise as it tries to contain the flu-like illness. So far, more than 5,200 people have been infected in Australia, and 23 have died.
The restrictions have crippled the local economy, putting hundreds of thousands out of work and hammering investors.
The Australian share market was down about 3% on Thursday, following declines on Wall Street where U.S. health officals gave projections of hundreds of thousands of deaths, quashing hopes of a quick return to business as usual.
Australian health authorities have said infection rates appear to have slowed in recent days but it is too early to say definitively.
The country has meanwhile banned cruise ships from docking after being found to be the biggest single source of coronavirus infections, with 20% of cases linked to passengers and crew from the ships.
Cruise ship arrivals became a source of public anger after hundreds of passengers from Carnival Corp's Ruby Princess were allowed to disembark in Sydney last month and hundreds later tested positive for COVID-19.
A military-style operation was planned to airlift doctors onto eight cruise ships floating off the NSW coast which were refusing orders to leave Australian waters, so that the doctors could conduct health checks on nearly 9,000 crew members, local media reported.
In Western Australia, a standoff continued between immigration officials and foreign-owned cruise ships which were also refusing to leave. [Tugboats towing them, with armed sailors on board, could fix THAT easily enough.]
The Maritime Union of Australia said there were 11 foreign-owned cruise ships in limbo in Australian waters, with 11,000 crew members in total, and their situation was "an emerging humanitarian crisis". ($1 = 1.6488 Australian dollars)"
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Raggedyman
Res ipsa loquitur
and a MOST EXCELLENT thot at that POD . . .
Blacknarwhal
Let's Go Brandon!
Just saw this morning's figures. We're now up to about 10 million lost jobs.
ANYONE STILL THINK THE SHUTDOWN IS A GOOD PLAN??
Blacknarwhal
Let's Go Brandon!
Are you actually suggesting that the "moral" thing to do is to allow rampant joblessness? You realize that's more likely to cause death than COVID-19 is, right?
BassMan
Veteran Member
It depends on what mathematical model(s) you use. In the US, the optimistic projections indicate 100-240K dead: if everything goes perfectly (basically shutdowns and social distancing). Based on Dr. Birx‘s non-verbals, it did not seem like she expected everything to go perfectly. In the imperfect scenario, millions could die. Probably less than the 10M (and growing) unemployed, but it is hard to compare dead with unemployed.
How do you compare the count of unemployed with projected dead? Same? Different by factor of 3, 5 or 10?
I am not optimistic. I anticipate millions dead, collapsed economy, war...
...this is the scenario I am planning for...
...but again, I am not optimistic. I just wish people would adapt faster. Those folks getting on cruise ships in March were not “wise”.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best?
that is 10 million people not paying health insurance premiums. when you couple that with the losses in the stock market, and that hospitals are shut down for everything except corona, there will not be any health insurance companies by June.
coalcracker
Veteran Member
Yes and Yes.
Another example:
We find ourselves on one of the lifeboats that left the Titanic before it sank. People are now struggling in the freezing water screaming for help. We can go back and pull some people into our boat and save some lives, but if we do, we risk the boat getting swamped under by too many and maybe all lives on the boat will be lost.
What do we do?
The moral choice is to go back.
The practical choice is let them drown and protect the lives on the boat.
You, and others on this thread, are taking the practical, Mr. Spock-like perspective. It is rational. You are trying to establish a positive outcome.
I, and others, are operating from a different perspective. We see a clear right and wrong choice. We know the risks, yet we are willing to leave the future in the hands of Providence as we try to save lives.
Blacknarwhal
Let's Go Brandon!
Matthew 4:5-7
Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
You're planning to cast down the entire economy, trusting in the hands of Providence to bear us up.
Do not tempt the Lord thy God.
