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 Galas wrote:
Thats one of the problems with all of this, no?

If the world takes harsh measures and then only 50-70k people died the negationest will come out of the wild and say "Do you see? You destroyed the ECONOMY FOR NEARLY NO DEATHS!"

When the obvious answer is... those deaths were so "little" because we took those measures, even if the virus is much less lethal than what the numbers may say, logic dictates than without quarentine, etc... the deaths would be much higher.

My prediction wasn't 50k deaths. That was the threshold for where we should call the WHO a terrorist organization for the damage they are inflicting on the world. That 50k deaths was based on the seasonal flu - the idea that we are destroying the world for something that isn't even as bad as the flu. The flu kills 350k people worldwide, but only 50k in the US (typically). Thus, if the coronavirus only kills as many people worldwide as the flu kills in the US in one year, it's greatly exaggerated.

The argument that a draconian shutdown of multiple countries is why it would only be 50k and not... I don't know what you think the end count will be? 500k? 1m? 5m?... it doesn't really matter. Even at 5m deaths worldwide, that's still pretty small compared to amount of deaths this shutdown will incur over the next decade or longer. Predictions are currently that we are looking at 30% unemployment - higher than the Great Depression, 1 in every 3 adults will not have a job. You think that all those businesses that closed are going to reopen? And with nobody paying into social security, you can bet that's going to affect the sole income of seniors too. And in the US, if you don't have a job, you don't have healthcare insurance. Violent crime is directly proportionate to unemployment - record high unemployment will result in record high violent crime. Unemployment leads to "inadequate parenting practices", which increases the amount of juvenile crime too, not to mention lowers nutrition, lowers graduation rates, and increase childhood mortality. You think we're going to do anything about climate change when a third of the population is out of work? That's a first world problem, and we won't be first world much longer.

The third leading cause of death in the US is medical error - more than the flu and pneumonia. Don't know why I felt the need to point that out...

Well, clearly you're changing the course of global public health policy and saving the world by your postings on a miniatures wargaming forum.

I don't see any politics in pointing out the karma involved with Boris Johnson diagnosis.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I don't see any politics in pointing out the karma involved with Boris Johnson diagnosis.

There’s plenty of politics involved in it.

EDIT:

I also see that they choose to delete my post rather than deal with the issue at hand. Probably because one of their own is the one doing it. I’m not surprised.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/16/upshot/coronavirus-best-worst-death-toll-scenario.html

It would appear CDC experts have estimated that the death toll in the United States without any response, has been put between 200,000 and 1.7 million Americans dead over a one year course of the illness. There's a sliding scale where you can adjust the infection rate and mortality to predict casualties.

Of course, that's from almost two weeks ago- I wonder how it's matching up with the progression of the pandemic, and our responses to it.

Wait......50k deaths is considered insignificant?

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Thats one of the problems with all of this, no?

If the world takes harsh measures and then only 50-70k people died the negationest will come out of the wild and say "Do you see? You destroyed the ECONOMY FOR NEARLY NO DEATHS!"

When the obvious answer is... those deaths were so "little" because we took those measures, even if the virus is much less lethal than what the numbers may say, logic dictates than without quarentine, etc... the deaths would be much higher.

My prediction wasn't 50k deaths. That was the threshold for where we should call the WHO a terrorist organization for the damage they are inflicting on the world. That 50k deaths was based on the seasonal flu - the idea that we are destroying the world for something that isn't even as bad as the flu. The flu kills 350k people worldwide, but only 50k in the US (typically). Thus, if the coronavirus only kills as many people worldwide as the flu kills in the US in one year, it's greatly exaggerated.

The argument that a draconian shutdown of multiple countries is why it would only be 50k and not... I don't know what you think the end count will be? 500k? 1m? 5m?... it doesn't really matter. Even at 5m deaths worldwide, that's still pretty small compared to amount of deaths this shutdown will incur over the next decade or longer. Predictions are currently that we are looking at 30% unemployment - higher than the Great Depression, 1 in every 3 adults will not have a job. You think that all those businesses that closed are going to reopen? And with nobody paying into social security, you can bet that's going to affect the sole income of seniors too. And in the US, if you don't have a job, you don't have healthcare insurance. Violent crime is directly proportionate to unemployment - record high unemployment will result in record high violent crime. Unemployment leads to "inadequate parenting practices", which increases the amount of juvenile crime too, not to mention lowers nutrition, lowers graduation rates, and increase childhood mortality. You think we're going to do anything about climate change when a third of the population is out of work? That's a first world problem, and we won't be first world much longer.

The third leading cause of death in the US is medical error - more than the flu and pneumonia. Don't know why I felt the need to point that out...

Why are medical stimates irrelevant and full of errors but economic ones aren't?

Except when it's not

UK Chief Medical Officer also infected. So that's three of the top figures.

EDIT: my mistake. It's now being reported that he's showing symptoms but hasn't been tested.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Wait......50k deaths is considered insignificant?

Well yes, humans are just the grease of Economy, so any amount is worth sacrificing. Seems like our economy-first faction is going a bit 40k Imperium as this thing develops, just for Mammon instead of Emperor.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Wait......50k deaths is considered insignificant?

Significant/Insignificant is a subjective opinion.

50k people dieing every year in the US due to the flu is a simple fact

 Future War Cultist wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I don't see any politics in pointing out the karma involved with Boris Johnson diagnosis.

There’s plenty of politics involved in it.

Not really. Its Karmic because he initially downplayed the risks and the threat of the virus and now hes being victimized by it, it has nothing to do with him being a politician - it would still be Karmavirus if he was an actor, a football player, a fisherman, a banker, or the sloppy drunk at the local watering hole.That you *think* this is a political statement (or for that matter think that I'm "one of their own" - whatever that means), says a lot more about you than it does about me or my statement.

50k people dieing every year in the US due to the flu is a simple fact

Over the course of a full year, not over the course of ~8 weeks. If COVID kept killing at its current rate - it probably wont and *should* slow down - we will exceed 50,000 deaths in the US in about 21 days based on the current death rate doubling time of ~3.5 days. That puts us at....April 17th, leaving us with the better part of 8 months for the bodycount to continue to rise.

Your line of thinking (well maybe less so yours and moreso Sporqar or whoevers) suffers from a serious case of lack of perspective. Its easy to say "oh this isn't as bad as the flu, look how many people the flu killed over the course of the entirety of last year compared to the number of people that have died to coronavirus since january", but that doesn't really tell the whole picture. If you're comparing it to a year of the flu, then you need to look at coronavirus over the course of a 1 year timeframe. The number is still growing, *right now*, and there is a lot of time for it to continue to grow. Contrary to the seemingly common default perception that growth rates are linear (not just for you or for this, but for basically everyone and everything), the growth rate here is exponential. 1000 dead after 2-3 months doesn't mean there will only be another 1000 dead in another 2-3 months, if unchecked that number would be exponentially higher - much higher than the flu.

24k people have died to this in 3 months, and it's still spreading like wildfire despite efforts to stop it. Though it doesn't seem to have hit Africa much yet for some reason, if and when it does....

It's hitting it. I can't link it, because it's not in English, but there's been I think 2,4 thousand cases in all of Africa? DR of Kongo is, for a poor country, well prepared (they called off all football matches after just 1 case in the country) thanks to dealing with Ebola, but they run into problem of hand-to-mouth economy. How do you quarantine a population where many people don't have fridges or money to stockpile food for more than a few days?
If Africa seems unaffected, it's more likely due to scarcity of testing, not some act of providence.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
'coronavirus is super serious, unless a politician I don't like gets it...'

In other news, they spoke on the radio today about folks trying to grass people up for the heinous crime of 'going out more than once a day' and other such BS. You know, because the police need more stuff to deal with.

Apparently the crime rate has dropped significantly.

It is still super serious, and no, I don't like Johnson or anything he represents or stands for, however I hope he recovers quickly because if he dies he'll have wriggled out of sorting out Brexit and re-uniting the country.
Which would be just bloody typical of the man. ;-)

It might also be that Africa's population isn't as mobile as many more developed nations. Both in terms of mobility within and without the country. So it could be that the slower impact to Africa could be because there's simply less general movement of people (esp to and from infected areas) so its taking time to get established..

There's no doubt that if it gets into high population centres in African its going to be a major epidemic. Meanwhile rural regions might have less potential to get infected, but if they do then medical cover is even more reduced to non-existent.


And yes testing is a major thing in terms of judging how and where its impacting in terms of statistics.

Well, it appears that France isn't counting old people dead in geriatrics (One of the biggest centers of victims in spain), because they don't have the resources to do it. Germany is on a similar situation.

I have found this spanish news site speaking about it. It cites german and french news as sources:

https://www.eldiario.es/internacional/datos-coronavirus-fallan-veces-Alemania_0_1009649486.html

 Overread wrote:
It might also be that Africa's population isn't as mobile as many more developed nations. Both in terms of mobility within and without the country. So it could be that the slower impact to Africa could be because there's simply less general movement of people (esp to and from infected areas) so its taking time to get established..

There's no doubt that if it gets into high population centres in African its going to be a major epidemic. Meanwhile rural regions might have less potential to get infected, but if they do then medical cover is even more reduced to non-existent.


And yes testing is a major thing in terms of judging how and where its impacting in terms of statistics.

Coronavirus seems to be easily transmissible, so it really only takes one person to infect a village, though of course the climate in large parts of Africa may be conducive to slowing said transmission. I think there will probably be entire regions that aren't affected at all, and perhaps even some regions where the effect is devastating but we won't learn of it until years later or perhaps which won't actually encounter the coronavirus until years after the rest of the world has moved on (i'm talking like, super remote tribal populations that have minimal contact with the broader world). I would assume, however, that given the social, economic, and political complexities of that continent that we will never really have an accurate picture of the status of Coronavirus in the region, and we will continue to see a lack of comparable numbers of cases and deaths as a result.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
More fuel for the fire, "Mystery In Wuhan: Recovered Coronavirus Patients Test Negative ... Then Positive"

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/27/822407626/mystery-in-wuhan-recovered-coronavirus-patients-test-negative-then-positive

 r_squared wrote:
Apparently the crime rate has dropped significantly.

I've read several articles that, in the USA, crime has dropped as well, but domestic violence, not too surprisingly, may rise.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coronavirus-isolation-raises-concerns-domestic-violence-survivors-experts-say-n1165316

*****

Article about the USA stimulus package. Take a read if you're concerned about household disbursements, unemployment benefits, IRA withdraws, business loans, etc. The economic summary is that they believe, "This echoes the point we raised in our recent commentary: The stimulus’s major impact is likely to arrive after most COVID-19 interruptions fade. In that way, it is capital that could, to an extent, supercharge a recovery. But it cannot offset the full impact of business interruptions, as long as they exist."
https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-us/marketminder/what-is-in-that-big-stimulus-the-senate-just-passed
https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-us/marketminder/here-comes-the-stimulus

Medicare Is Updating Coverage to Help in the Coronavirus Crisis : https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/healthcare/medicare-is-updating-coverage-to-help-in-the-coronavirus-crisis/ar-BB11ENKI

We’re going to ask BBC radio ulster and U105 to ask everyone to just stay in their houses until we’re done. And if that fails, we’re wondering if the cops can help us out. Everywhere we go we’re getting swamped by, well...people, and they seem to have forgotten about the 2m exclusion zone that’s strongly advised. I’ve been finding myself getting blunt with people.

 ced1106 wrote:


I've read several articles that, in the USA, crime has dropped as well, but domestic violence, not too surprisingly, may rise.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coronavirus-isolation-raises-concerns-domestic-violence-survivors-experts-say-n1165316

Unfortunately this just happened to us. Last week the father of one of my son's classmates shot his wife in front of the kids (this was the 2nd week of lockdown)

I live in a small town and everyone is in shock.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Overread wrote:
It might also be that Africa's population isn't as mobile as many more developed nations. Both in terms of mobility within and without the country. So it could be that the slower impact to Africa could be because there's simply less general movement of people (esp to and from infected areas) so its taking time to get established..

There's no doubt that if it gets into high population centres in African its going to be a major epidemic. Meanwhile rural regions might have less potential to get infected, but if they do then medical cover is even more reduced to non-existent.


And yes testing is a major thing in terms of judging how and where its impacting in terms of statistics.

Coronavirus seems to be easily transmissible, so it really only takes one person to infect a village, though of course the climate in large parts of Africa may be conducive to slowing said transmission. I think there will probably be entire regions that aren't affected at all, and perhaps even some regions where the effect is devastating but we won't learn of it until years later or perhaps which won't actually encounter the coronavirus until years after the rest of the world has moved on (i'm talking like, super remote tribal populations that have minimal contact with the broader world). I would assume, however, that given the social, economic, and political complexities of that continent that we will never really have an accurate picture of the status of Coronavirus in the region, and we will continue to see a lack of comparable numbers of cases and deaths as a result.

There is another factor, COVID-19m doesnt do well in the tropics. Optimal temperature is 10°C.



Apparently COVID-19 just hates Chileans for some reason.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Wait......50k deaths is considered insignificant?

Worldwide? Yes, it is. About 153,000 people die every day worldwide. 50k deaths spread out over 5 months is

In 2016, there were 15.2 million deaths from heart disease worldwide. 50k is about 4% of heart disease, and I don't see anybody trying to regulate or outlaw sugar (it doubles your rate of heart disease! We could save millions of lives!), much less shutting down all of society and putting literally millions out of work:

Nearly 3.3 million people filed a claim for jobless aid in the week ending March 21, a nearly fivefold increase over the previous weekly record back in 1982. By way of comparison, in the worst single week after the financial crash of 2008, jobless claims stood at 665,000.

"This represents the single worst one-day piece of labor market news in America's history," Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said in an email.

And as staggering as the figures are, they are likely to rise in the coming weeks, Ashworth noted. The deluge in claims has overwhelmed many state websites, preventing many recently laid-off workers from applying for financial assistance.

These aren't the rich people who are losing their jobs. It's the folks you play your Warhammer with. It's your local FLGS. It's the people you know and interact with every day. I know multiple people who have been laid off, and a couple more who's future is in flux right now. They are people who just bought a house or had a child because they thought their job had the kind of security they could plan a future on. They're the ones overloading the unemployment websites, desperate for financial aid - not to buy stocks, but to buy food for their families. They might be able to eek by... for now. If the economy doesn't bounce back - if those jobs don't come back - what are they going to do? No, seriously. If you were a bartender that was just fired - along with 3.3 million others - what does your future look like?

You guys can continue to try to paint my position as selfish, but I assure you, I'm not thinking about money. Poverty is a slow death. There's no vaccine for it.

Edited by RiTides - Removed deceptive link

and I don't see anybody trying to regulate or outlaw sugar (it doubles your rate of heart disease! We could save millions of lives!), much less shutting down all of society and putting literally millions out of work:

Erm?......

Erm yeah they've been trying to reduce and regulate sugars for years - there's even UK talk of a "sugar tax".

chaos0xomega wrote:
More fuel for the fire, "Mystery In Wuhan: Recovered Coronavirus Patients Test Negative ... Then Positive"

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/27/822407626/mystery-in-wuhan-recovered-coronavirus-patients-test-negative-then-positive

This article says it is 5%-10% of the recovered patients and that the majority of them are asymptomatic. Given that we know the test isn't that accurate (this article even says 30%-50% of the time), the most likely explanation is that this is just the margin of error of the test rather than reinfection.

 Overread wrote:
Erm yeah they've been trying to reduce and regulate sugars for years - there's even UK talk of a "sugar tax".

Talk?

It’s already in place.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Wait......50k deaths is considered insignificant?

Worldwide? Yes, it is. About 153,000 people die every day worldwide. 50k deaths spread out over 5 months is

In 2016, there were 15.2 million deaths from heart disease worldwide. 50k is about 4% of heart disease, and I don't see anybody trying to regulate or outlaw sugar (it doubles your rate of heart disease! We could save millions of lives!), much less shutting down all of society and putting literally millions out of work:

Dude, you don't need to maintain stereotype status you know that ?

 Overread wrote:
Erm yeah they've been trying to reduce and regulate sugars for years - there's even UK talk of a "sugar tax".

And in New York City, they tax soda. That's not really regulation that is going to save lives though, just like taxing cigarettes sales hasn't really stopped smoking. We need to do a little more than switch to Splenda.

To be fair though, half the reason that sugar became so ubiquitous over the years is directly due to sugar industry fraud. If we aren't given good information, we can't make good decisions.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Wait......50k deaths is considered insignificant?

Well it is for those who see humans just as tools to get rich by exploiting them.

If you care of human lives only for what they gain you personally 50k, 100k, 500k deaths...it's all the same.