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Ketara wrote: God damn. America, what the hell are you playing at? I've largely paid attention to what's been going on at home; with half an eye on Italy and South Africa. Then I turn around a week or so later, and New York alone is only 500 odd deaths behind the entire UK!!! And 250,000 cases?!
Is this the price of not having centralised healthcare? Or is it the orange chimp? Serious question, I've no idea why things are looking so bad over there as compared to elsewhere. From where I'm sitting, it looks like your society has just more or less decided that the poor and vulnerable might as well shuffle off and die (unless they've got money). What the hell is the American Government thinking:?
Have some perspective. Namely that the U.K is a tiny country compared to the US. New York in particular is an extremely dense population center. 8 million out of the 19.5 million people in the entire state live in that single city. That would be comparable to 30 million of the UKs residents living in one location. The pop density of NYC is double that of London. Diseases spread in dense population areas like crazy, and how you pay for your healthcare doesn't affect that.
Healthcare type is not a factor. Given that Italy Spain and China are socialized healthcare and being ravaged doesn’t give any bonus points to their system. Italy is leaving bodies in people’s homes and not even collecting them. Nobody with Covid in the US is dying at home and being left to rot.
Across the board, this disease poses a lot of unique challenges that NO healthcare system is equipped to handle. Socialized or private or otherwise.
This.
And although I have no love for our chief executive, the rhetoric affected me too. I didn’t realize what was really coming until the 12th, when a family member who works at a hospital filled me in on the Covid freight train. That night I texted and called people, and told coworkers the next day. We all should have been better informed and known weeks earlier to prepare ourselves. Lives would have been saved.
I’ll also say that although the WH has bumbled it way through this and Kushner leading the charge makes me shudder, at least they were capable of doing some simple math about the cost of herd immunity and never thought they should “just let everyone get it”. Jesus.
gorgon wrote: And although I have no love for our chief executive, the rhetoric affected me too. I didn’t realize what was really coming until the 12th, when a family member who works at a hospital filled me in on the Covid freight train. That night I texted and called people, and told coworkers the next day. We all should have been better informed and known weeks earlier to prepare ourselves. Lives would have been saved.
I’ll also say that although the WH has bumbled it way through this and Kushner leading the charge makes me shudder, at least they were capable of doing some simple math about the cost of herd immunity and never thought they should “just let everyone get it”. Jesus.
Don't believe everything you read. Whilst people like to blame politicians for everything; the Cabinet during February were working off of models produced by (to quote this week's Private Eye) 'two scientific pandemic influenza groups made up of academics' and the advice of various sundry other health officials. There was no general consensus by the scientific lot at the time on the best way to proceed, and so the politicians basically chose to pick the option that did the least economic damage at the time rather than the worst case one. Perhaps not the smartest thing to do, but hardly a case of 'feth the poor/vulnerable' that some people espouse.
The minute that Imperial produced new modelling showing that the death rate would be much higher than original models predicted, we had a screeching halt and U-turn the next day where everything went into lockdown. I almost got whiplash from how fast policy changed! We went from 'wash your hands and keep calm' to ((Schwarzenegger voice) 'GET ORFFF THE STREETS NAOH IF YOU WHANT TO LIRVE'. Sunak discovered he was a socialist overnight!*
*Yes, I know he probably isn't one, but I was more referring to the effects of his emergency financial strategy.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/04/03 23:35:47
Turns out that threatening to walk gets results. They paired me back up with my old crew, so now we’re back on track. No idea why they didn’t just do that to begin with but they have a habit of being difficult just to assert their authority, which always backfires on them. As for the money, just an oversight because they’re short staffed. I’ll give them until Tuesday to sort it out.
Glad it's worked out somewhat and you're not out of a job over it. Hopefully the oversight gets fixed!
More virus related; my dad’s friend’s dad isn’t doing so good. Last I heard he’s down to one lung and he’s on kidney dialysis too. But he’s still alive so, we can only hope.
Oh no. Is he going on/been put on the transplant list or is there a possibility of his kidney function improving after the virus is dealt with? You ever need to talk about this stuff (or even your friend) then shoot me a PM, I've dealt with kidney issues all the way through to transplantation so I'd be happy to help with answering any questions as best I can (though I managed to avoid dialysis, so only have more general knowledge on that).
Yup, let's blame them dirty foreigners, never mind Germany has actually more cases than all Slavic countries combined, and in any case, a worker on rural farm is not going to infect anyone, and you can even make an argument he/she will be bigger threat to their own country upon returning than to Germany on arrival.
Man look at my flag. Slavs are not other to me My point was that lockdowns are arbitrarily waived when they endanger profit.
Except food is an essential. It needs picking. The pickers have to come from somewhere and if there isn't any medical reason to go with Germans over other groups then why do that?
He’s been given 12 hours.
I'm so sorry. This must be so hard for you and your friend to go through. I hope everything is being done to make him as comfortable as possible.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/03 23:38:11
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Ketara wrote: ... Sunak discovered he was a socialist overnight!*...
As Geoff Norcott mentioned earlier in the Mash report, it's not exactly an endorsement of your worldview when it's only brought out to counter a global emergency. Probably the first Tory statement that I actually lol'd at, whilst kind of agreeing with. Poor old Jezza.
"All their ferocity was turned outwards, against enemies of the State, foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals" - Orwell, 1984
Ketara wrote: God damn. America, what the hell are you playing at? I've largely paid attention to what's been going on at home; with half an eye on Italy and South Africa. Then I turn around a week or so later, and New York alone is only 500 odd deaths behind the entire UK!!! And 250,000 cases?!
Is this the price of not having centralised healthcare? Or is it the orange chimp? Serious question, I've no idea why things are looking so bad over there as compared to elsewhere. From where I'm sitting, it looks like your society has just more or less decided that the poor and vulnerable might as well shuffle off and die (unless they've got money). What the hell is the American Government thinking:?
Any response to this winds up being political. Sorry.
Ketara wrote: God damn. America, what the hell are you playing at? I've largely paid attention to what's been going on at home; with half an eye on Italy and South Africa. Then I turn around a week or so later, and New York alone is only 500 odd deaths behind the entire UK!!! And 250,000 cases?!
Is this the price of not having centralised healthcare? Or is it the orange chimp? Serious question, I've no idea why things are looking so bad over there as compared to elsewhere. From where I'm sitting, it looks like your society has just more or less decided that the poor and vulnerable might as well shuffle off and die (unless they've got money). What the hell is the American Government thinking:?
Have some perspective. Namely that the U.K is a tiny country compared to the US. New York in particular is an extremely dense population center. 8 million out of the 19.5 million people in the entire state live in that single city. That would be comparable to 30 million of the UKs residents living in one location. The pop density of NYC is double that of London.
Errr......this would be more convincing if 'perspective' didn't make it look five times worse. Hence my original astonishment.
London has about the same population grouped in one city (about half a million more actually, but who's counting), and a far, far less serious outbreak. London's got 9,291 cases. New York has...102,863 cases. Timescales for the first infections are roughly comparable. Deaths right now are standing at right now at 3605 for the entire United Kingdom as opposed to 2,935 for New York alone. From what I'm reading as well, NYC hospitals are absolutely overflowing and underequipped compared to what we've got over here. NYC is down to less than a weeks worth of ICU supplies at the current trend of increasing cases (it's likely to grow higher still), whilst London (coming somewhat under strain to this point) is actually finally bringing more capacity online and infection rates have flattened out over the last four/five days.
The population density difference only accounts for so much guv. You've got vastly more cases, less room to increase capacity and supply, a completely out of control infection rate which is going to jack it higher still...I mean, Jesus. Things are troubling here, but the more I read into NYC, the more I realise how well we're doing in comparison!
I mean, I'm reading stuff about different states bidding for medical supplies! Where's the command economy? The central planning?
No. London does not have the same population parameters. London has a population of 8.9 million and a density of 5,666/square km. New York City has a population of 8.3 million, but a density of 10,715/square km. Almost twice the density. Density makes a huge difference to how fast diseases spread, particularly those that spread via coughing and other respiratory factors.
Also keep in mind that those does not include the rest of Long Island, just the city limits of New York itself.
The access to Healthcare quality is not a factor in catching COVID. Going to the doctor regularly doesn't mean you are less likely to catch COVID. The chance of catching COVID is entirely dependent on coming into contact with other infected people, IE: density is what matters.
Its not surprising at all that New York would have a worse time than London. Less than half the density means far slower transmission which means fewer people catching it all at the same time. One person sick with it in New York would reinfect far more people than a person in London, exponentially more. Socialized medicine would do jack squat in preventing that. Socialized medicine is not "better equipped" to handle a crisis of this magnitude. Italy and Spain are overrun and they have Socialized medicine. China is not to be trusted to give an accurate image of what is going on with them. Which if they had been honest from the get-go, it might have allowed the rest of the world some earlier warning.
gorgon wrote: And although I have no love for our chief executive, the rhetoric affected me too. I didn’t realize what was really coming until the 12th, when a family member who works at a hospital filled me in on the Covid freight train. That night I texted and called people, and told coworkers the next day. We all should have been better informed and known weeks earlier to prepare ourselves. Lives would have been saved.
Yes, but if some of your intelligence agents are saying this might be bad, but at the same time the WHO is saying its not that bad, and you also have other world leaders saying its not that bad, what are you going to do? I mean, the WHO is supposed to be the experts. This isn't the first time a sensationalist disease has popped up in recent years, and all the others were underwhelming. Taking a wait and see approach could hardly be something you could blame anybody for doing. And this thing hit so fast that nobody could react to it with the speed that was necessary.
Which is really how all pandemics happen. Outside of some stroke of clairvoyant genius nobody can every really say a pandemic is coming until its too late. The people that were screaming about this disease before it was a thing are the same people who were screaming about Ebola, and SARS, etc... The Boy who cried Wolf is definitely a factor here.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/04 00:04:11
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
On the other hand, certain influential groups in two countries that, even when italy was unfolding, spent time claiming "it'll be just fine" are responsible for sending the wrong message to their citizens. Herd immunity nonsense, something no other country in the world even considered to my knowledge, was borderline treason. So was "this is just like flu".
Grey Templar wrote: Yes, but if some of your intelligence agents are saying this might be bad, but at the same time the WHO is saying its not that bad, and you also have other world leaders saying its not that bad, what are you going to do? I mean, the WHO is supposed to be the experts.
Grey Templar wrote: Which is really how all pandemics happen. Outside of some stroke of clairvoyant genius nobody can every really say a pandemic is coming until its too late. The people that were screaming about this disease before it was a thing are the same people who were screaming about Ebola, and SARS, etc... The Boy who cried Wolf is definitely a factor here.
I'd argue that having Nationalised health care, Im not going to debase the ideal by using the American perogative term "socialised" with its intrinsic negative connotations, actually helps situations exactly as we are seeing by the fact that population is willing to seek treatment earlier because they know that it is unlikely to cause them financial destitution.
Obviously every system has an upper limit before it is overwhelmed in times like these. No system can withstand such an onslaught without help, but I'll be damned if I'll concede that privatised health care is in any way the superior system to deal with a global pandemic.
"All their ferocity was turned outwards, against enemies of the State, foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals" - Orwell, 1984
As far as I can tell herd immunity is basically the pattern all the countries are currently going for. It's just that instead of allowing it to run rampant, they are trying to curtail its spread and smooth the curve of the rate of infections.
Ergo all pretence at full containment to the point where we eliminate all infection sources isn't on the cards. Instead there's a move toward stalling infection rates with the assumption that a majority of the worlds population will, at some point, become infected. With countries trying to curtail infection so that their health systems can cope with the infection rate.
The UK government might not so much have done things widely different, but reported them differently/more openly to the population.
A safe tested general population vaccine is still several years away and it doesn't seem that there's any means to curtail infection to 0 in that time. Nor can the world just shut down for 3 years or so. Even if specific countries can lock down, test, track, trace and isolate infection there's still carriers who won't show signs who can carry it around and spread it; plus other nations that will fail in lockdowns.
I still don't see, at this stage where its rampant over most of the world, that we can lock it down and isolate it. That might have worked if it was contained just to China or a region in China. But with it spread over most of the world a herd-immunity end result seems to be about the only possible solution in the next few years.
That is unless science can turn around a safe vaccine in record time (which doesn't have a great track record and the last thing we want is a fast fix that results in even worse medical disasters further on)
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r_squared wrote: I'd argue that having Nationalised health care, Im not going to debase the ideal by using the American perogative term "socialised" with its intrinsic negative connotations, actually helps situations exactly as we are seeing by the fact that population is willing to seek treatment earlier because they know that it is unlikely to cause them financial destitution.
I've friends in the USA who often say they can't even dream of going to the doctors for things because its not on their insurance or they don't want to risk their costs rising etc... Even for conditions and medication like insulin that we take for granted in the UK, becomes a serious long term cost for those I've spoken to in the USA. With an "attitude" toward medication like that I can well see that there might well be large segments of the population in the USA for whom the hospitals are just not an option they think of using. So there could be a cultural aspect there.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/04 00:31:28
The access to Healthcare quality is not a factor in catching COVID. Going to the doctor regularly doesn't mean you are less likely to catch COVID. The chance of catching COVID is entirely dependent on coming into contact with other infected people, IE: density is what matters.
No, I'm sorry. This is not accurate.
Yes, population density counts. Is it the be all and end all? No. How fast a contagion spreads is contingent upon many many factors, such as how fast controls on movement are whacked in, to how closely they're followed, to general sanitation levels prevalent(there's more bodily fluids than saliva), to cultural behaviours (how many people to a house, how sociable the household is, how prepared they are to seek medical aid), and more. Handwaving and going, 'Ah, a higher population density means more infection' is mind-bogglingly simplistic.
To hammer home the point, look at Japan. They have 156 square miles of land in Tokyo housing a population of over 13 million people! That's half the space of New York and almost double the people. And Japan got their first case of coronavirus a fortnight before the States, meaning they had a whole extra two weeks to spread the stuff! So utilising your logic, if population density is the be all and end all, Japan should have hundreds of thousands of cases, right? More time, incredibly high population density, etcetc.
In reality, Japan as a whole has....2,617 cases. Now whilst low levels of testing mean it's probably double or even quadruple that? That just takes it to a small gap away from the UK. That is (to put this point to bed) with a population density roughly comparable to New York as New York is to London. So...yeah. You're wrong. And I suspect the reason you don't want to acknowledge that is buried in this little gem here:-
Socialized medicine is not "better equipped" to handle a crisis of this magnitude. Italy and Spain are overrun and they have Socialized medicine. China is not to be trusted to give an accurate image of what is going on with them. Which if they had been honest from the get-go, it might have allowed the rest of the world some earlier warning.
How could a centralised system not be inherently more efficient at dealing with crises? Do you think governments lock down procedure and freedoms during full scale wars for fun? A centralised command structure allows you to plan and deploy resources for optimum efficiency. My query on healthcare systems has nothing to do with 'catching' coronavirus, as you seem to be so fixated on, but treating it. 'Socialised medicine' (which as a Brit I have to say, is the weirdest way I've ever heard it put - you guys are really obsessed with reds over there) is to do with treating it more effectively! When the Governor of NYC is going on the air and saying that he's having to bid against other states for basic medical supplies, something is clearly broken in the system.
Ours here is literally just starting to get into stride. They opened the Nightingale hospital today, they've two more in the works, and they announced another two today established in other cities. The system is under strain right now, but from everything I'm reading, they're bringing more resources online ever so slightly faster than consumption is rising. Meaning things should, theoretically, start to ease gradually over the next month.
No no, it's all very well and good for a government to decide to turn on the money tap, it's even better when the industry base exists to manufacture. But it's all bloody useless if it can't be distributed effectively and efficiently to where you need it! Logistics is the underpinning of everything, and from what I'm reading, the fragmented nature of the American medical system is really biting the US response in the arse.
This message was edited 9 times. Last update was at 2020/04/04 00:47:32
Grey Templar wrote: Yes, but if some of your intelligence agents are saying this might be bad, but at the same time the WHO is saying its not that bad, and you also have other world leaders saying its not that bad, what are you going to do? I mean, the WHO is supposed to be the experts.
Grey Templar wrote: Which is really how all pandemics happen. Outside of some stroke of clairvoyant genius nobody can every really say a pandemic is coming until its too late. The people that were screaming about this disease before it was a thing are the same people who were screaming about Ebola, and SARS, etc... The Boy who cried Wolf is definitely a factor here.
There are no excuses for government. There were people here on Dakka that called it and we were far from alone. They had the info, they had the expertise, they did not have the political will to act.
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. Not only should they have known better, there's pretty clear evidence that they DID know better for quite a while and it mostly fell on deaf or incompetent ears. I wish we could have waited until the crisis passed before the partisan-fueled historical revisionism began.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/04 00:43:25
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
The access to Healthcare quality is not a factor in catching COVID. Going to the doctor regularly doesn't mean you are less likely to catch COVID. The chance of catching COVID is entirely dependent on coming into contact with other infected people, IE: density is what matters.
This is factual, but like so many facts it fails to explain the entire story.
Going to the doctor regularly doesn't mean you are less likely to catch COVID, yes. But it DOES mean you're likely to be healthier overall, with a stronger immune system and fewer of those preexisting conditions COVID homes in on and makes worse. So someone who doesn't go to the doctor regularly is more likely to get a SEVERE case of COVID due to their general ill-health.
Additionally, someone who can't afford to go to the doctor regularly will look at the cost of an extended hospital stay with horror, and not go until their situation is very, very bad. This means they pretty much walk in the door and go straight onto a ventilator, where if they had arrived earlier their condition might have been stabilized short of that.
So access to health hare DOES matter, not in CATCHING COVID, but in how severe a case you get when you DO catch it, and how extreme the measures that will have to be taken when you do seek medical care for it.
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Ouze wrote: I wish we could have waited until the crisis passed before the partisan-fueled historical revisionism began.
What part of modern American history made you think that was even possible, much less likely?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/04 01:01:31
Ouze wrote: Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. Not only should they have known better, there's pretty clear evidence that they DID know better for quite a while and it mostly fell on deaf or incompetent ears. I wish we could have waited until the crisis passed before the partisan-fueled historical revisionism began.
I am so glad that right now I am in a quite rural county in Michigan. Right now, there have been 5 confirmed cased in our county (with none of those being within 20 miles of my home), despite a couple of surrounding counties having a hundred or more. Probably 75% of the cases in our state are in a 4-county area around Detroit, a 4 hour drive away. We figure the chances of getting sick from the couple of stores in the 4-mile radius we now travel is pretty close to zero (at the moment, things might always change).
For all of you in large metropolitan areas, I feel for you. Everything about this situation has to absolutely suck.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/04/04 01:54:12
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
New York is so messed up because as late as march the mayor was still telling people go out on town have fun and don't worry about the virus. Once he realized maybe that he should take some actions after a national emergency was declared he was prevented from issuing a shelter in place by the governor of New York so that didnt happen until a couple weeks ago.
AegisGrimm wrote: I am so glad that right now I am in a quite rural county in Michigan. Right now, there have been 5 confirmed cased in our county (with none of those being within 20 miles of my home), despite a couple of surrounding counties having a hundred or more. Probably 75% of the cases in our state are in a 4-county area around Detroit, a 4 hour drive away. We figure the chances of getting sick from the couple of stores in the 4-mile radius we now travel is pretty close to zero (at the moment, things might always change).
.
It likely will. I'm in a rural county as well, and we had none for quite a while (mid march). Then 2, then 6, then 8, and 12. Meanwhile the county immediately east was doubling every day before they finally got a firmer shut down order.
The problem is a lot of rural areas (I've got family in another rural county in New York state), people are acting like its a holiday, going out in groups, taking their kids everywhere, etc. With the exodus from NYC, those people are pretty much inevitably going to run into cases and take them home. Despite everything, 'it can't happen here' is still the top thought in people's heads.
You can see the progress spreading from Philly (and spillover from New York in the eastern counties) and the Pitt, with an extra little bonus in Center County from Penn State University, which acts as a wonderful hub for transmission due to 100,000 students with nowhere to go once they came back from spring break). And its slowly creeping out everywhere else.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/04 02:10:05
Everything I said at the state level is public info.
At the federal level
I could point out that the generic nature of most intel reports and how half the time they aren't actionable and how there were probably half a dozen other problem areas in the same report.
I could point out for every exercise/wargame that says this might be a problem there's dozens more with other problems that need to be addressed that haven't bitten us yet and may or may not in the future and its disingenous to say oh this one was obviosly the magic one to pay attention to.
But as someone whose sitting at home isolated from his grandkids because his wife is a higher risk category and his sons work in hospitals I just want everyone to knock the partisan BS off for a couple months while we get through this, then lets figure out how to do better next time because their will be a next time. South Korea's preparedness after going through similar before is where I want to be when this happens again.
PS Despite me poking at Cuomo earlier I have to give him (and Newsome) credit for putting partisanship aside for the most part. There's still State/Federal disagreements but those are them looking out for their state first, I can respect that even if I disagree with their desires in the bigger picture.
Anyone else notice that the Homeless are not being mentioned or canvased in the US.
Also the H1 visa's (crop pickers) stopped being issued (I heard something to that effect). Wonder how many unemployed Americans going to pick up those jobs. Hell if I was in charge. All Illegals who pick crops will have their fee's waived for Citizenship.
Whats irking me is the retaliation against Asian Americans who has nothing to do with China and the virus.
Also want to add not being able to assemble a Rhino but actually have tracks not install with globs of adhesive on its side. Painted Ultra blue.....give two .22LR round as trade.
Also picking up ammo at BiMart and the weapon prices are the same. Rounds though are getting expensive. I did watch one guy who got pissed he had to wait ten days for a background check to get his pistol and offered to pay more to speed up the process.
WA a open carry state so in three months if it really goes nuts I be walking around in body armor and armed to the teeth. Even sharpen my old tactical tomahawk I used in Afghanistan. I've to ensure me recently hired strippers working the farm field for free room, board and food are protected. They also be packing heat for self defense.
Real note though. I wonder how much illegal poaching going to happen this year. Also WA last week banned recreational fishing. I deem that good. Gives a chance for salmon population to make a comeback
Also MRE's are hitting the food banks....
State of WA Gov Inslee made it illegal to evict anyone. Issue is after the crisis is over do they have to back pay? (Riptide not being Political here) Or not be able to payback and still get evicted. That really needs to get address with unemployment hitting 6.6mil
As for the Economy and getting hired. I bet my entire Tau force the resumes are going to finely combed through to get the best hire.
Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
No longer defending the US Military or US Gov't. Just going to ""**feed into your fears**"" with Duffel Blog Did not fight my way up on top the food chain to become a Vegan...
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DE 6700
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RIP Muhammad Ali.
Jihadin, Scorched Earth 791. Leader of the Pork Eating Crusader. Alpha
AegisGrimm wrote: I am so glad that right now I am in a quite rural county in Michigan. Right now, there have been 5 confirmed cased in our county (with none of those being within 20 miles of my home), despite a couple of surrounding counties having a hundred or more. Probably 75% of the cases in our state are in a 4-county area around Detroit, a 4 hour drive away. We figure the chances of getting sick from the couple of stores in the 4-mile radius we now travel is pretty close to zero (at the moment, things might always change).
.
It likely will. I'm in a rural county as well, and we had none for quite a while (mid march). Then 2, then 6, then 8, and 12. Meanwhile the county immediately east was doubling every day before they finally got a firmer shut down order.
The problem is a lot of rural areas (I've got family in another rural county in New York state), people are acting like its a holiday, going out in groups, taking their kids everywhere, etc. With the exodus from NYC, those people are pretty much inevitably going to run into cases and take them home. Despite everything, 'it can't happen here' is still the top thought in people's heads.
You can see the progress spreading from Philly (and spillover from New York in the eastern counties) and the Pitt, with an extra little bonus in Center County from Penn State University, which acts as a wonderful hub for transmission due to 100,000 students with nowhere to go once they came back from spring break). And its slowly creeping out everywhere else.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. Despite being in the top 5 of the country for cases, a vast majority of Michigan counties, even in the lower peninsula, have less than 5-8 confirmed cases, lots with just 1 or 2. Right now I live on the road that is the literal border of two counties, one with 5 (confirmed, anyway) cases, the other with just 2. Either noone is travelling at the moment, or numbers are way, way off. Probably helps that my county is mostly small little towns and villages. The closest town, which my wife teaches high school in, has less than 400 residents, with graduating classes of 35-ish kids.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/04/04 03:31:48
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
The access to Healthcare quality is not a factor in catching COVID. Going to the doctor regularly doesn't mean you are less likely to catch COVID. The chance of catching COVID is entirely dependent on coming into contact with other infected people, IE: density is what matters.
No, I'm sorry. This is not accurate.
Yes, population density counts. Is it the be all and end all? No. How fast a contagion spreads is contingent upon many many factors, such as how fast controls on movement are whacked in, to how closely they're followed, to general sanitation levels prevalent(there's more bodily fluids than saliva), to cultural behaviours (how many people to a house, how sociable the household is, how prepared they are to seek medical aid), and more. Handwaving and going, 'Ah, a higher population density means more infection' is mind-bogglingly simplistic.
To hammer home the point, look at Japan. They have 156 square miles of land in Tokyo housing a population of over 13 million people! That's half the space of New York and almost double the people. And Japan got their first case of coronavirus a fortnight before the States, meaning they had a whole extra two weeks to spread the stuff! So utilising your logic, if population density is the be all and end all, Japan should have hundreds of thousands of cases, right? More time, incredibly high population density, etcetc.
In reality, Japan as a whole has....2,617 cases. Now whilst low levels of testing mean it's probably double or even quadruple that? That just takes it to a small gap away from the UK. That is (to put this point to bed) with a population density roughly comparable to New York as New York is to London. So...yeah. You're wrong. And I suspect the reason you don't want to acknowledge that is buried in this little gem here:-
Due to the lack of testing, actual cases are probably much much higher than quadruple. I would put my guess at more in the hundreds to thousands of times larger.
Same in the states. I expect millions of people are infected at this point due to how virulent it is. And we will never know because the vast majority of those infected will never show symptoms or only have mild cold/flu symptoms and think its just that.
Socialized medicine is not "better equipped" to handle a crisis of this magnitude. Italy and Spain are overrun and they have Socialized medicine. China is not to be trusted to give an accurate image of what is going on with them. Which if they had been honest from the get-go, it might have allowed the rest of the world some earlier warning.
How could a centralised system not be inherently more efficient at dealing with crises? Do you think governments lock down procedure and freedoms during full scale wars for fun? A centralised command structure allows you to plan and deploy resources for optimum efficiency. My query on healthcare systems has nothing to do with 'catching' coronavirus, as you seem to be so fixated on, but treating it. 'Socialised medicine' (which as a Brit I have to say, is the weirdest way I've ever heard it put - you guys are really obsessed with reds over there) is to do with treating it more effectively! When the Governor of NYC is going on the air and saying that he's having to bid against other states for basic medical supplies, something is clearly broken in the system.
Ours here is literally just starting to get into stride. They opened the Nightingale hospital today, they've two more in the works, and they announced another two today established in other cities. The system is under strain right now, but from everything I'm reading, they're bringing more resources online ever so slightly faster than consumption is rising. Meaning things should, theoretically, start to ease gradually over the next month.
No no, it's all very well and good for a government to decide to turn on the money tap, it's even better when the industry base exists to manufacture. But it's all bloody useless if it can't be distributed effectively and efficiently to where you need it! Logistics is the underpinning of everything, and from what I'm reading, the fragmented nature of the American medical system is really biting the US response in the arse.
Centralization has benefits its true. It also has massive downsides. Downsides that I personally find utterly unacceptable on a moral level. I'm more worried about the side effects that this pandemic will cause in that department. Long term government control is no bueno.
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r_squared wrote: I'd argue that having Nationalised health care, Im not going to debase the ideal by using the American perogative term "socialised" with its intrinsic negative connotations, actually helps situations exactly as we are seeing by the fact that population is willing to seek treatment earlier because they know that it is unlikely to cause them financial destitution.
Obviously every system has an upper limit before it is overwhelmed in times like these. No system can withstand such an onslaught without help, but I'll be damned if I'll concede that privatised health care is in any way the superior system to deal with a global pandemic.
Lets not forget the US healthcare system is designed to operate near capacity full-time, as its a for-profit system and excess capacity is financially inefficient. Thats whats really going to hurt us as we have significantly fewer hospital beds per capita than most other developed nations.
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queen_annes_revenge wrote: In other news, my supermarket had toilet roll today for the first time in 3 weeks. I seemingly arrived at the right time as I walked straight in, but there was a massive queue outside when I finished. I can't really understand how it worked, as there wasn't anyone counting the numbers going in.
Similarly I headed out to Aldi for the first time in about 4 weeks, and was impressed by the stoic, well spaced and patient queue outside only to be met by every aisle inside filled with staff trying to fill the shelves with all their stock in the middle of the aisle, thus forcing everyone into close contact anyway.
The only time I've been touched by another human being in the last 4 weeks, thanks to living in the mess away from home, was when a bloke tripped and fell backwards into me in the bread aisle.
Immediate decontamination drills ensued.
Well hopefully some of the hysteria has started to die down and people have realised that there aren't going to be food shortages. Or toilet roll shortages.. Maybe some common sense might begin to return to the general public.
Ketara wrote: God damn. America, what the hell are you playing at? I've largely paid attention to what's been going on at home; with half an eye on Italy and South Africa. Then I turn around a week or so later, and New York alone is only 500 odd deaths behind the entire UK!!! And 250,000 cases?!
Is this the price of not having centralised healthcare? Or is it the orange chimp? Serious question, I've no idea why things are looking so bad over there as compared to elsewhere. From where I'm sitting, it looks like your society has just more or less decided that the poor and vulnerable might as well shuffle off and die (unless they've got money). What the hell is the American Government thinking:?
Well US has been uniquely well prepared to get it worst. US itself is basically geared up to suffer from epidemics badly. In the "modern" westernized countries US was always highest chance of getting hit worst. Lucky for US corona isn't THAT deadly or they would be really screwed.
How could a centralised system not be inherently more efficient at dealing with crises? Do you think governments lock down procedure and freedoms during full scale wars for fun? A centralised command structure allows you to plan and deploy resources for optimum efficiency. My query on healthcare systems has nothing to do with 'catching' coronavirus, as you seem to be so fixated on, but treating it. 'Socialised medicine' (which as a Brit I have to say, is the weirdest way I've ever heard it put - you guys are really obsessed with reds over there) is to do with treating it more effectively! When the Governor of NYC is going on the air and saying that he's having to bid against other states for basic medical supplies, something is clearly broken in the system.
Ours here is literally just starting to get into stride. They opened the Nightingale hospital today, they've two more in the works, and they announced another two today established in other cities. The system is under strain right now, but from everything I'm reading, they're bringing more resources online ever so slightly faster than consumption is rising. Meaning things should, theoretically, start to ease gradually over the next month.
No no, it's all very well and good for a government to decide to turn on the money tap, it's even better when the industry base exists to manufacture. But it's all bloody useless if it can't be distributed effectively and efficiently to where you need it! Logistics is the underpinning of everything, and from what I'm reading, the fragmented nature of the American medical system is really biting the US response in the arse.
Firstly: Multiple reasons to the centralised parts, especially when you have it to do with historic fragmented societies, making decentralised systems especially small scale ones head and shoulders MORE efficent then centralized ones.
Secondly: Centralised command structures are also inflexible and lead to trenchwarfare and actual waste on burocracy or flexibility.
THirdly: You can have an massivily decentralised medical system still available to your population via the third way, aka corporatism.
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GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
My point was that lockdowns are arbitrarily waived when they endanger profit.
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