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Yeah, that makes sense.

Plus by that time we might not have a cure or vaccine, but more drugs might have been found which reduce the severity and increase the recovery rate. Plus there will be more general awareness/training and experience within the medical staff. So they will better know the warning signs to watch out for in those suffering as well as know what treatments to best apply for a given situation.

Marxist artist wrote:
I see all these countries I.e the UK predicting a total of 20000 deaths , is there a world prediction?

Nope. I'd even say it's impossible to make as it depends on development of the disease in poorer south half of the planet, though Bolsonaro and co do everything they can the problem even exists and to make it explode.

What is really scary is that Brazilian indigenous tribes outright begged for closure of their regions (due to them having little immunity to foreign diseases) and so far had been denied. I wouldn't be surprised if Bolsonaro's government (who put a man who thinks tribes should be forcibly christianized, diseases be damned in charge) used the Covid to get rid of them. After all, land is valuable, and who will hear of village with little outside contact being gone?

Marxist artist wrote:
Very true, lran, N Korea and China are likely to fudge numbers.

Yup, because rest of the world has no interest in doing so, eh?

Take Italy, who have such high count mostly due to testing everyone and counting as accurately as possible - then you have say France and Germany, who don't bother testing most of ambiguous cases and let them fall through the cracks (you died in geriatric unit? must be old age, no Covid here, move along), USA, where outside of NY little testing is being done and as much as 3/4 of Covid deaths are wrongly attributed, or Poland/Hungary where governments outright deny most of Covid deaths have happened and try to attribute it to anything (up to 'sudden heart attacks') to massage stats.

Hell, Poland is especially depressing because government is trying to force elections to happen 10th May (as their electorate is less scared of Covid than the opposition, not to mention being more rural, so they calculate it will give them a boost) and actively trying to bury any bad news that might prevent it...

Voss wrote:
Personally, since delivery services are becoming more essential for large segments of the population, I find leveraging the pandemic for a pay raise by threatening to leave people without access to essential food and medicine deliveries to be fairly disgusting. Sorry, Granny Jill, we need more cash money before you get your meds this week. Hopefully you won't die, but honestly, we don't care as long as we get ours, right?

Times are tough all over. Prioritizing selfishness over helping others strikes me as the wrong road.

So, you think protests should only happen in lulls, when no one will be inconvenienced, and the protesters can be quietly disposed of without anyone ever hearing of the strike?

Hello, last time I checked, owner of Amazon, Bezos, has 130 billion dollars, built on ruthless exploitation of his workers with impossible work targets and minimal pay. If the dude lost 99% of his fortune, he would still have a billion, amount that makes most of the richest people in history look like a peasants. You're seriously defending that?

Hell, he spent 170 mln $ this year on grand, extravagant residence, which is coincidentally 10 mln more than Amazon pays in tax in a year thanks to tax dodging (if not outright cheating) and blatant brib-- lobbying to have taxes reduced to nothing on all levels. Gee, how dare protesters show their unbribled greed, he clearly has no penny to spare!

 Ouze wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
I have a different take, and one I predicted from the start of this thread.

The pandemic will unlock societal change. The US is too corporate and right wing, low tier workers have too few rights compared to just about any modern democratic state.

I am sure Covid-19 will change the way the US approaches workers rights just the way Sandy Hook changed the way that we approached gun violence, and the Afghanistan War changed the way we approach the military-industrial context.

As the kids today say..... oof.

Sadly, I think Ouze is right.

Bezos and his ethics are right out of the 19th century. Makes me sick to my stomach.

I’m no commie, but what he and his fellow travellers do is indefensible. In fact, his greed actually wrecks the whole system.

Ouze wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Interesting article on how some of these models that show social distancing can greatly reduce infections are actually burying the lede, at least somewhat.

For the lazy, a model showing this:

Spoiler:

Looks great, but artificially ends in October. The model is javascript and runs in a browser, so you can actually edit to to run past October - which gives you this:

The argument is that until there is a actual vaccine, all social distancing is doing is kicking the can down the road.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but this reads like a 'They're lying to you! They're just putting off the problem!'

That's exactly the point. No institution advocating social distancing says that's going to seriously reduce (and certainly not stop) the infections, it's entirely about reducing the infections at any given time.

But no one is seriously suggesting (yet) that the country-wide lockdowns continue until a vaccine is developed - which is probably a year out, right? Unless that is the plan, and I don't think it's been said it is, then what difference does it make whether we overwhelm hospitals and spike fatalities now, or in October?

I mean, the chances I am missing something are pretty good. Maybe the idea is to dramatically ramp up healthcare availability in parallel? Even with no vaccine, that would make sense.

The UK government have been open (after initial hubris) about pretty substantial levels of social distancing continuing for more than a year. The ICL publication that shifted policy here suggested 18 months. Government briefing two nights ago said up to six months for this phase of it, after which we'll probably see gradual reintroduction of normality, then back to distancing, then back and forth in tandem with peaks and troughs in infection. I'm not so up to date with what other nations are saying.

Voss wrote:

Sure, you could take it that way.

Personally, since delivery services are becoming more essential for large segments of the population, I find leveraging the pandemic for a pay raise by threatening to leave people without access to essential food and medicine deliveries to be fairly disgusting. Sorry, Granny Jill, we need more cash money before you get your meds this week. Hopefully you won't die, but honestly, we don't care as long as we get ours, right?

Times are tough all over. Prioritizing selfishness over helping others strikes me as the wrong road.

You understand the protest isn't about pay raises, but for proper precautions against COVID infection in the workplace, right? So far, Amazon has refused to clean their warehouses after confirmed COVID infections, until staff walkouts happened.

 Ouze wrote:
But no one is seriously suggesting (yet) that the country-wide lockdowns continue until a vaccine is developed - which is probably a year out, right?

A recent industry newsletter I read (I work in pharma) suggested 18-24 months is a safer bet for a vaccine. You really have to make sure a vax won't MAKE people sick. Clinical development is a grind, not a sprint. Can't cut corners, even in the face of a pandemic.

On the treatment front, there are a couple antivirals that might be available late 2020...IF they pan out in the trials. IF. And regarding chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, here's what the same source said:

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, possibly in combination with azithromycin have been touted as “game changers”; however, the data supporting these claims are either negative, derive from trials with questionable trial design and data interpretation, or are anecdotal in nature.

Been trying to have this conversation with people. Even as people finally seem to be accepting the seriousness of the virus, there's still this idea that things will be getting back to 'normal' in 3-6 months. Without a vax, there's probably no 'normal'. And treatments may be very limited or non-existent for quite some time. The actions being taken now are about preventing a catastrophe and giving countries a chance to ramp up and fight this thing for a good while.

 Ouze wrote:
Interesting article on how some of these models that show social distancing can greatly reduce infections are actually burying the lede, at least somewhat.

For the lazy, a model showing this:

Spoiler:

Looks great, but artificially ends in October. The model is javascript and runs in a browser, so you can actually edit to to run past October - which gives you this:

The argument is that until there is a actual vaccine, all social distancing is doing is kicking the can down the road.

It would be interesting to run that model for deaths instead of infections with different assumptions through 2 years (vaccine timeline?) and figure out how to minimize the overall area under the curve (which is what matters). Of course given the number of uncontrollable variables it would mainly be good for general trends rather than perfect actions. I bet though that flattening too much early is not the way to minimize the deaths.

In some ways it seems that government mitigation strategy will hopefully lead to fewer deaths even if it leads to more infections since until you have a vaxxine your biggest gains are going to be in treatment.

PS how could anyone look at that second chart that ends in Oct and not immediately go WTF, infection is obviously increasing at the end.

Not to mention the other advantage of limiting infection vectors helps mitigate the risk of it mutating into yet another iteration.

Fighting one is bad enough, but a second strain would only compound matters.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not to mention the other advantage of limiting infection vectors helps mitigate the risk of it mutating into yet another iteration.

Fighting one is bad enough, but a second strain would only compound matters.

There were at least two strains in China, haven't seen where anyone has looked outside of China.

 RiTides wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The Mask/No Nask hypothesis is disproved by the fact that Korea's infection curve was as sharp as any of the No Mask nation's, and it's a famously mask-wearing nation like Japan.

I don't think that's a fair generalization of Korea, at least. They got caught by surprise early by that large church meeting in close quarters, without masks, and infecting hundreds of people to seed the nation before they were ready. The fact that they then completely demolished the curve after those cases were dealt with would only add to the mask argument, not detract from it.

At the Very least, we know it can make a person 5x less likely to get sick if in the vicinity of someone who is positive. Of course washing hands, not touching your face, also obviously help. But to say it's been disproved or doesn't help just isn't factual. There are lots of reasons why it can't be implemented in a large country like the US, of course (lack of masks, different culture, etc). But that's very different from saying it wasn't a factor in the strategy of those very successful countries.

An N95 mask will give you x5 protection. Most people wear the standard kind of surgical mask. This doesn't give protection. It does help stop the spray of droplets when you cough or sneeze, but the virus is often being spread by people who are asymptomatic, and only breathing out small particles which aren't trapped by a standard surgical mask. Plus, because the surgical mask doesn't stop small particles, once you've coughed into it, subsequent coughs start to push tiny droplets through.

On the whole the possible benefits of masks need to be balanced against the dangers, such as giving people confidence to go out. We already know that when people feel safer, they behave more dangerously.

When looking at Korea and masks, we should also consider that they rapidly instituted a lockdown, mass testing, mass public sanitatisation, and fast tracking and isolation of victims. They even have an app which tells you where victims have been, so you can tell if you've been in the same area, so you know to get tested.

Tokyo, which is a mad keen mask wearing city, is currently experiencing a resurgence of the virus since stopping their isolation.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
When looking at Korea and masks, we should also consider that they rapidly instituted a lockdown, mass testing, mass public sanitatisation, and fast tracking and isolation of victims. They even have an app which tells you where victims have been, so you can tell if you've been in the same area, so you know to get tested.

Right! They built for this, and that's why they wrangled it so quickly after the initial outbreak with the church. We're talking about years of planning, organizing, stockpiling, etc.

So to chalk it all up to masks...lol ok. That's exactly the kind of Simple Solution! thinking based on faulty reasoning that we don't need right now.

 RiTides wrote:
On masks, here's Dr. Fauci's take from yesterday. They're considering it, and I'm sure it would help, but logistically just not sure it could be pulled off in the US:

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/03/31/fauci-mask-recommendation-coronavirus-157476

fwiw, The Czech Republic accepted DIY masks (eg. old t-shirts) and a study claims a slowdown in infection. Would like more info if CR is doing more than mandating masks, and studies, such as if people are going out more because of any false security.
https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/usage-of-masks-flattened-growth-of-coronavirus-cases-in-czech-republic20200329043711/

Just had my CDC "face coverings" update deleted from NextDoor.com. Well, it's not like I know most of my neighbors, anyway. YOYO.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/memos-from-cdc-to-white-house-lay-out-rationale-for-possible-widespread-use-of-face-coverings/ar-BB11YZFz

*****

"Doctors and other health workers who spoke to Bloomberg described surprising numbers of younger patients who needed life-saving care. ... “It’s young folks, previously healthy,” said Eric Wei, an emergency room doctor and chief quality officer at NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system. “They look like they have the flu. Within hours, they need oxygen. Within a few more hours they need a ventilator.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/many-new-york-coronavirus-patients-are-young-surprising-doctors-1.1415881

 gorgon wrote:
there's still this idea that things will be getting back to 'normal' in 3-6 months.

It may well do if herd immunity has kicked in by that point. Estimates of infection in London are already at 5% or more of the population. If that keeps up, enough people will be probably be immune towards October time that the risk will be substantially reduced and the country beginning to function again. If half the population has had it and recovered, then that's half the population which can go back to work without fear of infection or being super-spreaders, or anything of the like. Sure, they can still spread it on their hands, but they won't be coughing or anything.

No, I suspect in six months time the primary concern will be on keeping the elderly and vulnerable safe and quarantined off, rather than on restraining the movements of the population more generally. It's much easier to place restrictions on care homes and arrange supply drops for anyone over 70/with respiratory issues than it is to keep the economic blood of the country permanently suppressed.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:


You've seen too many films.

The only carrier related films I can remember seeing are Tora Tora Tora and Midway.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

My opinion would be to keep them all on there, except any that may need critical care, for obvious reasons. Have clean medical crew in protective gear go in and perform testing, and take in supplies. once you've had the antibody test and passed, you can leave.

Apparently they cant. I was expecting there to be some sort of filtration and isolation system that could keep the infection in one place. Don't they have chem filters on airchannels? don't they have sealed doors? Do carriers have NBC protection?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
I have a different take, and one I predicted from the start of this thread.

The pandemic will unlock societal change. The US is too corporate and right wing, low tier workers have too few rights compared to just about any modern democratic state.

I am sure Covid-19 will change the way the US approaches workers rights just the way Sandy Hook changed the way that we approached gun violence, and the Afghanistan War changed the way we approach the military-industrial context.

As the kids today say..... oof.

Sadly, I think Ouze is right.

Sandy Hook didnt shut down the borders, and the Afghanistan War didn't turn urban centres into ghost towns.
This is BIG CHANGE. There is a lot of leverage to be garnered by a popular movement.

I'm not a sailor so I couldn't say, but I wouldn't bet on it. And if they did, they would be for chemical warfare agents rather than viruses. And how likely is a chemical attack at sea? Not going to be very effective... That's why they need to hot box that ship, until everyone has had it and passes the antibody test.

 Overread wrote:
Plus by that time we might not have a cure or vaccine, but more drugs might have been found which reduce the severity and increase the recovery rate. Plus there will be more general awareness/training and experience within the medical staff. So they will better know the warning signs to watch out for in those suffering as well as know what treatments to best apply for a given situation.

90% of hospital staff will have likely had it by then , so there will be fewer shortages and perhaps slightly easier work conditions.

 Ouze wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
I have a different take, and one I predicted from the start of this thread.

The pandemic will unlock societal change. The US is too corporate and right wing, low tier workers have too few rights compared to just about any modern democratic state.

I am sure Covid-19 will change the way the US approaches workers rights just the way Sandy Hook changed the way that we approached gun violence, and the Afghanistan War changed the way we approach the military-industrial context.

Which is sad, but almost certainly true. The death of thousands, or even millions, is nothing compared to the power of partisan political identity.

 Ketara wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
there's still this idea that things will be getting back to 'normal' in 3-6 months.

It may well do if herd immunity has kicked in by that point. Estimates of infection in London are already at 5% or more of the population. If that keeps up, enough people will be probably be immune towards October time that the risk will be substantially reduced and the country beginning to function again. If half the population has had it and recovered, then that's half the population which can go back to work without fear of infection or being super-spreaders, or anything of the like. Sure, they can still spread it on their hands, but they won't be coughing or anything.

No, I suspect in six months time the primary concern will be on keeping the elderly and vulnerable safe and quarantined off, rather than on restraining the movements of the population more generally. It's much easier to place restrictions on care homes and arrange supply drops for anyone over 70/with respiratory issues than it is to keep the economic blood of the country permanently suppressed.

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

You do realize the numbers you need for real herd immunity, right?

 Ouze wrote:
Interesting article on how some of these models that show social distancing can greatly reduce infections are actually burying the lede, at least somewhat.

For the lazy, a model showing this:

Spoiler:

Looks great, but artificially ends in October. The model is javascript and runs in a browser, so you can actually edit to to run past October - which gives you this:

The argument is that until there is a actual vaccine, all social distancing is doing is kicking the can down the road.

Ah... kicking the can down the road until there is a vaccine is pretty much the whole plan. Anything else results in that big spike overwhelming health care systems leading to mass numbers of dead. Not just - -or even primarily - people killed by the virus, but from all other causes that will be unable to get any care because hospitals are either a) full of corona victims, b) unstaffed because all the practicioners are sick with the Corona virus, or c) empty except for the dead and dying because the staff ran for their lives when the protective gear runs out.

And if you think the economy is struggling NOW, wait until you see what the economy does THEN with millions of dead consumers no longer consuming.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
I have a different take, and one I predicted from the start of this thread.

The pandemic will unlock societal change. The US is too corporate and right wing, low tier workers have too few rights compared to just about any modern democratic state.

I am sure Covid-19 will change the way the US approaches workers rights just the way Sandy Hook changed the way that we approached gun violence, and the Afghanistan War changed the way we approach the military-industrial context.

Which is sad, but almost certainly true. The death of thousands, or even millions, is nothing compared to the power of partisan political identity.

Fear is stronger, need stronger yet.
Lockdown will tip millions over the edge. They have a voice and the vote. If it gets bad enough there will not be enough lobbyists money in the world to stop it.
Examples from history were given, pandemics shake nations, corporate feudalism is not as strong as actual feudalism, which was dealt a death blow by the plague. Now the Black Death was a different scale of crisis, but that doesn't matter, its not the number of deaths but the death of the economy which matters. COVID-19 has every chance to collapse the economy, already countries are spending unprecedented sums on combating the disease, and the bailouts can only go on so long, if the virus outlasts them you get economic collapse, when you get economic collapse you get the middle class on the breadline. The political status quo wont matter then. Society is only one week away from breakdown, we might actually get that week.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
I have a different take, and one I predicted from the start of this thread.

The pandemic will unlock societal change. The US is too corporate and right wing, low tier workers have too few rights compared to just about any modern democratic state.

I am sure Covid-19 will change the way the US approaches workers rights just the way Sandy Hook changed the way that we approached gun violence, and the Afghanistan War changed the way we approach the military-industrial context.

Which is sad, but almost certainly true. The death of thousands, or even millions, is nothing compared to the power of partisan political identity.

Fear is stronger, need stronger yet.
Lockdown will tip millions over the edge. They have a voice and the vote. If it gets bad enough there will not be enough lobbyists money in the world to stop it.
Examples from history were given, pandemics shake nations, corporate feudalism is not as strong as actual feudalism, which was dealt a death blow by the plague. Now the Black Death was a different scale of crisis, but that doesn't matter, its not the number of deaths but the death of the economy which matters. COVID-19 has every chance to collapse the economy, already countries are spending unprecedented sums on combating the disease, and the bailouts can only go on so long, if the virus outlasts them you get economic collapse, when you get economic collapse you get the middle class on the breadline. The political status quo wont matter then. Society is only one week away from breakdown, we might actually get that week.

I don't think you quite get it.

Here in America, roughly 80% of the voters identifies itself first and foremost by PARTY. And even the 'left' party is, at best, centerist to center RIGHT and just as dependent on political donations by big business to risk alienating them as the conservative right. This is a stark contrast to other nations that have a genuine left party to balance the right and generally don't allow their political process to be dominated by corporate money.

That's why things that other western nations accept as simple common sense get labeled DA EBIL SOCIALIZM! in America.

And because of the divide over partisan identity, it's quite possible that there will never BE a full-bore government lockdown in America. One side is pushing for an increasing level of isolation and would certainly support it in time. The other side will then certainly reject all such measures solely and entirely BECAUSE their political opposition is supporting it.

I mean, we have people in this country who say 'I'm a Republican, I hate Democrats, Democrats hate pollution, so I LOVE POLLUTION! ROLLING COAL FOR THE WIN!' after all. And people just as stupid the other way around, although they lack such a publicly visible demonstration of their stupidity.

 Orlanth wrote:
Fear is stronger, need stronger yet.
Lockdown will tip millions over the edge. They have a voice and the vote. If it gets bad enough there will not be enough lobbyists money in the world to stop it.

I think you will turn out to be wrong but hope you turn out to be right.

Without getting into the specific thread-locking political weeds, I think it's pretty self evident to literally everyone at this point that some of the things we do in the US are simply unsustainable and well past their sell-by date.

Florida is on a 30 day stay at home order as of Thursday at midnight. We're at 7,000 confirmed cases and 87 deaths. Let our battle of avoidance begin!

Dude, out of any state that needs to hardcore quarantine lockdown, it's gotta be Florida.

 Vulcan wrote:

I don't think you quite get it.

What I get is that America has not known want since the 1930's, and that produced a radical political leadership.

 Vulcan wrote:

Here in America, roughly 80% of the voters identifies itself first and foremost by PARTY. And even the 'left' party is, at best, centerist to center RIGHT and just as dependent on political donations by big business to risk alienating them as the conservative right. This is a stark contrast to other nations that have a genuine left party to balance the right and generally don't allow their political process to be dominated by corporate money.

 Vulcan wrote:

And because of the divide over partisan identity, it's quite possible that there will never BE a full-bore government lockdown in America. One side is pushing for an increasing level of isolation and would certainly support it in time. The other side will then certainly reject all such measures solely and entirely BECAUSE their political opposition is supporting it.

That's the 'beauty' in what an elemental force provides, it cares not about your affiliations.
Middle class Americans suffered in the Great Depression, the result was New Deal and the clock was frozen for a while on the advance of the plutocracy and some gains were made in rights for the poorest.
Never underestimate the power of the base needs of the proletariat.

Oh I totally agree. Not only are we a tourist hub on Spring Break, we're also overflowing with vulnerable population, with major urban centers. The overwhelming consensus is that this was long overdue.

It also is eerily similar to the early stages of a Jaws or Piranha style horror movie when they refused to close down. I really hope our outcome is better! Fortunately, our mayors took matters into their own hands in many cases- our county has been in 'safer-athome' for 2 weeks already.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Florida is on a 30 day stay at home order as of Thursday at midnight. We're at 7,000 confirmed cases and 87 deaths. Let our battle of avoidance begin!

Spoiler:

We've been doing that already for a month or more. Had to check to see what the feed store situation is but I guess the sent out an email last month explaining they were essential.
Which is good because I really don't want to risk a whole month animal feed to moisture damage in my shed.

On the plus side I did just order a bunch of minis to start an Imperial Guard army. So I have a lot to focus on.
Sadly two of the boxes I order are coming from Italy so not telling if or when they will arrive.
There's been no tracking so I don't know if they've been able to ship or not. As long as they get here at some point I guess.

I have been definitely getting my painting backlog processed. There is literally nowhere to go. In fact, I am so concerned with the progress I am making into the Pile Of Shame that I ordered some SoB kits, so I can have another unfinished army.

The cool thing about mostly working from home is not having to drive to work. The downside is I don't feel like I am ever off work. I only have my short break, and my long break.

I know it is a poor thing to complain about when so many people who cannot work remote have simply been laid off unpaid instead.