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 Orlanth wrote:
UK rise infection rates is similar to that elsewhere in Europe outside Italy. There is little difference.
The wise go with what virologists and epidemiologists say, I do, hopefully so do you. The problem is various virologists and epidemiologists say different things and do not agree. We can make our own minds up as to which expert is more likely to be right, and can logically differ.
Now must compound this with media attention which highlights the path not taken. In the UK herd immunity is questioned, in Italy lockdown is questioned. In both countries the media is saying not enough is being done.
Nobody knows which is the best route forward, there are too many variables.
However flip flopping between contrary poliicies is likely to be the worse option.
Pick a sound contingency and stick with it.

Except you don't. Actual experts who aren't his underlings called the de Spaffle plan 'a parody' - this alone should give you a pause and rethink moment.

The herd immunity plan is exceptionally stupid for three reasons - first, because because it doesn't give a damn about disease spread and tens of thousands who will die as a result. The point of lockdown is not stopping the spread, it's slowing it down so hospitals can manage things. There is already death triage going on in Italy even with lockdowns - think for a second, how much worse it will be in UK with far greater sick numbers? It's literally condemning people to die. Easily preventable death, at that, just because you piled so much work on doctors there were no resources left for most of the patients.

Second, because Covid, unlike what Murdoch media say, is not harmless. It damages the lungs of people who survive it - opening them wide open to subsequent bacterial and fungal infections. This not only will add tens of billions to healthcare costs down the road, it will add to number of deaths, even if said deaths are seemingly not work of Covid (and will add to dumb crowing "flu/cold/whatever is more dangerous" when the primary reason why these will soon become deadlier is because Covid broken the ground, so to speak).

Third, and most worrying case - viruses mutate. The more often the more of them there are. Bozo wants to explode their numbers, greatly increasing chance one mutates into something far worse, ready to reap already weakened population. How is that a sane plan? Just look at Spanish flu - terrifying as it was, its first stage was merely an appetizer. It's only when it really got going, it mutated by chance into the second stage that claimed the most victims, thanks to predecessor's work. A year from now, this moment might seem positively rosy compared to what came next. Then again, it might not - but what the Tories are doing right now is pulling at the pin of live grenade. Even if it doesn't go off, the mere idea of doing so is lunacy.

There is a reason why UK choose this, though. It's easy path, allows the PM to do nothing and just blame things at political opponents/poor/virus/foreigners/whatever, all while cutting more funds from the NHS (save for a few token splashes of money that can be quietly withdrawn once press reports these), plus giving a few more tax breaks to the 1%. After all, Singapore on Thames, etc, etc (ignoring the fact the real Singapore went hard into the lockdown, as usual doing exact opposite of what UK politicians say it supposedly did).

Irbis wrote:Sigh. I see a lot of the utterly ignorant 'more people die from X' (when X is something usually fully established and the Covid is barely beginning, so the comparison is nonsense to begin with) and wonder if there is something wrong with math education these days.

It was a facetious comparison, I admit. But shutting down New York City has a very real cost that will be measured in unemployment, economic disaster, crime, and even lost lives. Doing so without the coronavirus being a clear and present danger is irresponsible and dangerous.

To put it simply, suppose you have one sick person, who passes the disease to another once every 2 days (far smaller rate than Covid, by the way). Do you know how long that one person needs to infect every single human on earth? With 2 days between infections, and only one infection at once? Less than TWO MONTHS.

Except that is a completely naive way to model the disease. It doesn't factor in pretty much any factors in transmission. It assumes a 100% transmission rate, that people have equal social interaction, that they are all close together, that the conditions for transmission are perfect, that nobody successfully fights the disease, that climate and environment don't affect the transmission of the disease, and so on. Plus, well before you reached 100%, you'd hit herd immunity in certain populations that would act as a buffer against further spread of the disease. Even the Spanish Flu didn't infect every single human on earth, and it had the help of a world war and the most unsanitary conditions of the twentieth century.

What's most important is to avoid hyperbole or to blow things completely out of proportion due to paranoia and anxiety.

That's why people ""freak out"" about 7 infections - because it's last possible second to stop the pandemic. You do nothing, and a week later, you will have not 7 infections, but a hundred thousand. Guess how many ICU beds there are in the entire NY state - spoiler alert, it's two orders of magnitude less. And that's without considering one more week and the entire 20 million NY population will be sick, with a handful of exceptions. That's also 600.000 dead given the 3% mortality rate, which is coincidentally 50% more than USA lost in the entire World War 2, just from one state.

Poppycock. Let's dial the hysterical overreaction back a bit and look at the Diamond Princess cruise ship. There is probably no better conditions for the spread of a highly infectious disease than a closed environment like that with an open buffet. Presumably, every person on that ship was in close enough proximity to each other, breathing recycled air, to have encountered the virus. Of the 3,618 people tested, there were 692 confirmed with the coronavirus. Of those, 410 were asymptomatic (not sick), meaning only 282 showed any symptoms at all. There were 7 deaths. 3 Japanese citizens in their 80s, an "elderly Japanese man", a British national in his 70s, a 78-year old Australian man, and a Hong Kong man of undisclosed age or health.

By your reasoning, with a 3% mortality rate and 100% infected, the whole cruise ship should've become infected and had about 108 deaths. Of the entire group of people on the cruise ship, passengers and crew, the mortality rate is 0.19%. It you assume that the entire state of New York (which has 20 million people, the city only has 8 million) follows the same trend, you'd expect to see about 38,000 deaths. Not great, but far, far fewer than the apocalyptic 600,000 dead.

And good news, New York state is not a cruise ship. The numbers would only improve in real world conditions. Likely, there would be entire communities in the state which never get even a single case. And the numbers would improve further if simple, but non-draconian steps are taken to further reduce potential casualties in the populations that are most at risk. We don't need to lock everybody in their homes and close down all the businesses. We just have to focus our efforts where they will be most helpful. If you could save 30,000 people by doing something simple, but needed to basically destroy society to save 38,000 people, isn't saving 30,000 people enough?

And I have to ask - how well do you think an 83 year old with a chronic respiratory disease is going to do in isolation anyway? You think they can make their own meals, stave off loneliness, get exercise, get their medicine refilled, and so on? They can't even watch sports, now that they've cancelled them all. How many of them will have fallen and can't get up, dying on their kitchen floor from a fractured hip bone because they can't reach their phone? Quarantine will likely be the hardest (and most deadly) for seniors, even if they never get the disease.

 Sqorgar wrote:
It was a facetious comparison, I admit. But shutting down New York City has a very real cost that will be measured in unemployment, economic disaster, crime, and even lost lives. Doing so without the coronavirus being a clear and present danger is irresponsible and dangerous.

We have a whole bunch of experts who say that there is a clear and present danger. And, I'm sorry, but the experts trump 'guy on the internet who distrusts experts'.

Yeah, I’m losing a LOT of respect for ostriches in this thread (people putting their heads in the sand about how bad this is). It’s bad. If you disagree...well, get over yourself. The entire world is practically shut down. Do you have ANY idea how bad that is? How much it takes to do that? It’s never happened before in my lifetime and I’m 35. If the experts tell you it’s bad and you don’t want to listen...then just go blow all your cash at the game store, watch as your job shuts down and you’re broke because “it really wasn’t that bad”. Sheesh.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Yeah, I’m losing a LOT of respect for ostriches in this thread (people putting their heads in the sand about how bad this is). It’s bad. If you disagree...well, get over yourself. The entire world is practically shut down. Do you have ANY idea how bad that is? How much it takes to do that? It’s never happened before in my lifetime and I’m 35. If the experts tell you it’s bad and you don’t want to listen...then just go blow all your cash at the game store, watch as your job shuts down and you’re broke because “it really wasn’t that bad”. Sheesh.

People panic. Right now, Twitter is absolutely flooded with people saying that Oprah has been arrested for sex trafficking - doesn't seem to be any reliable source behind it. Thousands of tweets without a single source. A rumor goes halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on.

 insaniak wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
It was a facetious comparison, I admit. But shutting down New York City has a very real cost that will be measured in unemployment, economic disaster, crime, and even lost lives. Doing so without the coronavirus being a clear and present danger is irresponsible and dangerous.

We have a whole bunch of experts who say that there is a clear and present danger. And, I'm sorry, but the experts trump 'guy on the internet who distrusts experts'.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lost-cause?s=t

 Sqorgar wrote:
Right now, Twitter is absolutely flooded with people saying that Oprah has been arrested for sex trafficking - doesn't seem to be any reliable source behind it. Thousands of tweets without a single source. A rumor goes halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on.

The people that are warning that Covid needs to be taken seriously and urging for measures to try to flatten the curve are not random, unsourced strangers on Twitter.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Yeah, I’m losing a LOT of respect for ostriches in this thread (people putting their heads in the sand about how bad this is). It’s bad. If you disagree...well, get over yourself. The entire world is practically shut down. Do you have ANY idea how bad that is? How much it takes to do that? It’s never happened before in my lifetime and I’m 35. If the experts tell you it’s bad and you don’t want to listen...then just go blow all your cash at the game store, watch as your job shuts down and you’re broke because “it really wasn’t that bad”. Sheesh.

People panic. Right now, Twitter is absolutely flooded with people saying that Oprah has been arrested for sex trafficking - doesn't seem to be any reliable source behind it. Thousands of tweets without a single source. A rumor goes halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on.

Oh that's fething brilliant. Governments all over the world which are basically run by corporations and the upper class, whose number one priority is profits, are shutting down everything costing those corporations and governments fething trillions in said profits and taxes because of rumours and overreaction on social media? Do you actually think the people who actually run the world would let that happen? If the corporations, big banks, wall street executives, and hedge fund managers actually allow their stooge politicians, who they paid good money for, do that then this is some serious gak. Think for a damned minute.

If this scares them enough to risk their precious money and power then it should scare you too.

Equating unverified rumours on twitter with information from actual medical professionals?

Do you want antivaxxers? Because that's how you get antivaxxers.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Yeah, I’m losing a LOT of respect for ostriches in this thread (people putting their heads in the sand about how bad this is). It’s bad. If you disagree...well, get over yourself. The entire world is practically shut down. Do you have ANY idea how bad that is? How much it takes to do that? It’s never happened before in my lifetime and I’m 35. If the experts tell you it’s bad and you don’t want to listen...then just go blow all your cash at the game store, watch as your job shuts down and you’re broke because “it really wasn’t that bad”. Sheesh.

People panic. Right now, Twitter is absolutely flooded with people saying that Oprah has been arrested for sex trafficking - doesn't seem to be any reliable source behind it. Thousands of tweets without a single source. A rumor goes halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on.

I'm soryy.. Say what now ? Does anyone sane takes seriously what people on social media and more specifically twitter have to say?

Really, they should not be shutting down whole counties and closing schools, restaurants, etc...

Instead, what should be happening is identify and quarantine the vulnerable populations. The elderly and immune compromized who are vulnerable should be locked down by the authorities and kept isolated. Let the general population continue as normal, just keep the vulnerable people isolated till the pandemic passes.

I don't even know where to start with this.

 Ernestas wrote:
You guys should not trust science and scientists in general. They are known to be remarkably wrong and arrogant.

Why wouldn't you trust the people who decided their entire lives to a chosen field? Who are you going to trust?

 Ernestas wrote:
Recently there was tests done for an entire village in Italy. Almost entire village was diagnosed as infected with corona virus despite none of them showing any symptoms. This only confirms that coronavirus is only dangerous for the weak and various numbers pulled by scientists are utter nonsense.

Just because you are either A systematic or had mild symptoms (you are healthy) doesn't mean your not putting the vulnerable population of a given community at risk by being a carrier of the virus.

One study finds 30% mortality rate, another 10% then it is 2% and then it is as low as 0.5%.

That's because the projected mortality rate keeps changing. It would like you heard a tropical storm was heading your way and then 3 days later your hit with a category 5 hurricane, that doesn't mean the meteorologist was wrong 3 days ago when it WAS a tropical storm.

 insaniak wrote:
Equating unverified rumours on twitter with information from actual medical professionals?

Medical professionals are just as prone to it as anyone else, especially when they all get their information from the same one or two sources.

There used to be this thing that happened called "perpetual fever". What it was is that women, after childbirth in a hospital, would mysteriously develop a high fever and then die. In extraordinary numbers. Mortality rates for women giving birth rose as high 40% in the 1800s. Nobody could figure it out. Then doctor realized that women who gave birth with midwives had much much lower rates death. He figured out that if he washed his hands before handling a birth, he reduced the cases of childbed fever by 90%. It turns out, the doctors were handling corpses in the morgue and bringing disease with them, on their hands, and giving it to the mothers. Washing hands. That simple.

The other doctors HATED this guy. They didn't believe it (even when it was an easily tested hypothesis) because it went against what was understood to be the case in medical literature of the day. More than that, they were offended at the very idea that their hands could be dirty, and refused to wash their hands on principle. The doctor, under extreme pressure and ridicule from the medical profession, ended up moving out of the country before ultimately dying in a mental institution.

There's also the case of Sister Kenny. During the polio outbreak, this woman with no medical training created a method for treating polio paralysis using warm compresses and moving the muscles. Before this, paralytic polio was treated by surgically breaking and reforming the paralyzed limbs, and keeping them immobile in casts - sometimes for years at a time. The idea that paralytic polio could be treated by, gasp, moving the limbs seemed counter intuitive. Sister Kenny was able to ease the symptoms of paralytic polio using her methods (which became the foundation of physical therapy that we have today) in most cases, but the doctors hated her and didn't trust her. They would only let her work on patients that they had already failed to help, and she was still successful. The ended up making a movie about her, which was stampeded by parents hoping to get a glimpse of the person they credited with fixing polio.

Want more? Incubators. The guy who created incubators was completely ignored and rejected by the medical establishment. Not giving up, he created a sideshow on Coney Island where he charged people 25 cents to come in a stare at premature babies. He used the money from this sideshow in order to fund the nursing staff and incubators so that parents didn't have to pay for it. All told, he saved THOUSANDS of premature babies, that the medical establishment would've otherwise let die, before incubators became commonplace in maternity wards.

Here's another one. The reason why the polio epidemic got as bad as it did was because of tonsillectomies. It turns out that the tonsils are part of your body's defense mechanism and removing them cause a specific type of nerve damage that allowed the poliomyelitis virus to enter the body, and generally lead to the worst kind of paralysis - paralysis of the lungs (insert picture of hundreds of children chilling in iron lungs). In trying to cure a chronic sore throat, they increased the severity and size of the polio epidemic considerably.

The fact is, doctors get bad information too, and new, better information tends to be really slow to percolate - sometimes taking 50 to 100 years! The CDC's record keeping leaves much to be desired, and a vast number of their quoted disease rates are estimates. I mean, how could they know how many people actually get the flu every year? Well, they take a set of solid, but incomplete data, and then they multiply it by a set percentage. Since we have no way of seeing the actual numbers, we don't have any idea how correct those numbers are. They could be orders of magnitude off, or complicated by biases not represented in their estimates. But they base a lot of what they do on these estimates, and nobody is treating them like estimates. It is not uncommon for the CDC to significantly overestimate the danger and spread of a virus. If the CDC (or the WHO, for that matter) is wrong about something, then everybody who gets their information from them is wrong too.

 Ouze wrote:
Good luck, I just did this last page.

So did most of us. Some with hard numbers that you can actually use to calculate percentages - which are actually worse than the experts are saying.

With regards to school closings and kids not getting sick. Do you people really think kids are the only people in school?
Aside from parents/grandparents (!) picking up kids, there's teachers (but they're expendable, right?), administration staff, janitors, in some cases kitchen staff.
All of whom can contract the virus from one another or the kids causing another infection center. Closing schools shuts down that vector of infection, slowing the spread.
Which, as has been repeatedly pointed out and ignored is the point of the isolation or lockdown policies. Not to stop the spread, but to limit it so health services aren't overwhelmed and herd immunity is (eventually) achieved in a controlled manner.

The infected to death ratio, even if it only takes into account hospitalised is still far worse than flu. Put it this way I work in the hospital and we don't set aside 2 whole wards for flu patients but have for covid and they are filling quickly.
I mean I hope the death rate is lower than expected , I really do as I have seen first hand what it does to people and the effect on families.
To not take this seriously is irresponsible as we could potentially be looking at millions of deaths world wide.
Comparing it to something else is irrelevant as this is covid and it is killing people and is as tradegy and if taken measures to save lives work then its worth doing. Economies can recover the dead cannot.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Spoiler:

 insaniak wrote:
Equating unverified rumours on twitter with information from actual medical professionals?

Medical professionals are just as prone to it as anyone else, especially when they all get their information from the same one or two sources.

There used to be this thing that happened called "perpetual fever". What it was is that women, after childbirth in a hospital, would mysteriously develop a high fever and then die. In extraordinary numbers. Mortality rates for women giving birth rose as high 40% in the 1800s. Nobody could figure it out. Then doctor realized that women who gave birth with midwives had much much lower rates death. He figured out that if he washed his hands before handling a birth, he reduced the cases of childbed fever by 90%. It turns out, the doctors were handling corpses in the morgue and bringing disease with them, on their hands, and giving it to the mothers. Washing hands. That simple.

The other doctors HATED this guy. They didn't believe it (even when it was an easily tested hypothesis) because it went against what was understood to be the case in medical literature of the day. More than that, they were offended at the very idea that their hands could be dirty, and refused to wash their hands on principle. The doctor, under extreme pressure and ridicule from the medical profession, ended up moving out of the country before ultimately dying in a mental institution.

There's also the case of Sister Kenny. During the polio outbreak, this woman with no medical training created a method for treating polio paralysis using warm compresses and moving the muscles. Before this, paralytic polio was treated by surgically breaking and reforming the paralyzed limbs, and keeping them immobile in casts - sometimes for years at a time. The idea that paralytic polio could be treated by, gasp, moving the limbs seemed counter intuitive. Sister Kenny was able to ease the symptoms of paralytic polio using her methods (which became the foundation of physical therapy that we have today) in most cases, but the doctors hated her and didn't trust her. They would only let her work on patients that they had already failed to help, and she was still successful. The ended up making a movie about her, which was stampeded by parents hoping to get a glimpse of the person they credited with fixing polio.

Want more? Incubators. The guy who created incubators was completely ignored and rejected by the medical establishment. Not giving up, he created a sideshow on Coney Island where he charged people 25 cents to come in a stare at premature babies. He used the money from this sideshow in order to fund the nursing staff and incubators so that parents didn't have to pay for it. All told, he saved THOUSANDS of premature babies, that the medical establishment would've otherwise let die, before incubators became commonplace in maternity wards.

Here's another one. The reason why the polio epidemic got as bad as it did was because of tonsillectomies. It turns out that the tonsils are part of your body's defense mechanism and removing them cause a specific type of nerve damage that allowed the poliomyelitis virus to enter the body, and generally lead to the worst kind of paralysis - paralysis of the lungs (insert picture of hundreds of children chilling in iron lungs). In trying to cure a chronic sore throat, they increased the severity and size of the polio epidemic considerably.

The fact is, doctors get bad information too, and new, better information tends to be really slow to percolate - sometimes taking 50 to 100 years! The CDC's record keeping leaves much to be desired, and a vast number of their quoted disease rates are estimates. I mean, how could they know how many people actually get the flu every year? Well, they take a set of solid, but incomplete data, and then they multiply it by a set percentage. Since we have no way of seeing the actual numbers, we don't have any idea how correct those numbers are. They could be orders of magnitude off, or complicated by biases not represented in their estimates. But they base a lot of what they do on these estimates, and nobody is treating them like estimates. It is not uncommon for the CDC to significantly overestimate the danger and spread of a virus. If the CDC (or the WHO, for that matter) is wrong about something, then everybody who gets their information from them is wrong too.

I don't even know where to start with this.

Here's the thing - sometimes, people get things wrong. If, however, your, say, mechanic is mistaken about what's causing that knocking noise in your car, and it takes him a while to figure out the actual cause, the next time you have a problem with your car, do you take it to a mechanic, or do you ask some random person on the internet?

The simple fact is that despite the fact that they are not all-knowing, a medical professional is still the best source of knowledge on medical issues. On account of them being a medical professional. The fact that some doctors thought things that turned out to be wrong a hundred years ago, and medical knowledge and processes have evolved since then is not a reason to completely disregard the opinions of medical professionals now. Nor is the fact that some doctors make mistakes now. Because a doctor who makes mistakes is still exponentially more likely to be correct on medical matters than some guy who studies at the university of Google for ten minutes and thinks it makes him an expert.

MiguelFelstone wrote:
Just because you are either A systematic or had mild symptoms (you are healthy) doesn't mean your not putting the vulnerable population of a given community at risk by being a carrier of the virus.

Being asymptomatic doesn't necessarily mean you are an asymptomatic carrier either. There does seem to be the case that this coronavirus is being transmitted, at least in part, by asymptomatic carriers. It is a likely explanation for coronavirus transmission when known carriers can't be found, but the only article I've found is the suggestion that a woman was an asymptomatic carrier who infected her whole family, despite not having any symptoms and testing negative for the virus itself (either the test is wrong, or she wasn't the actual vector of disease - but someone was). At the very least, it appears that asymptomatic carriers were not the primary manner in which this disease has been spread, so it likely isn't particularly common.

It's probably unnecessary to treat everyone without symptoms as if they are a secret Typhoid Mary at this time. We'll need a bit more evidence to go on before we decide to go all monsters due on Maple Street.

Sqorgar wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I can get that, and as with anything, an individual can be wrong or negligent despite gobs of experience and training, for sure, and is why for most major medical procedures a 2nd or even 3rd opinion should always be sought. But when the overwhelmingly vast majority of a profession are saying "hey, this is serious and could be very bad", that bears listening to.

I don't know. I go through phases of learning everything I can about different things. A few years back, I did a deep dive into the US education system, and the stuff I learned shocked the hell out of me. And now, I'm reading about the history of disease and modern medicine, and I'm equally flabbergasted.

Guys guys guys! All the professors of virology and epidemiology are wrong. I've been reading the Internet for four days!

 insaniak wrote:

Here's the thing - sometimes, people get things wrong. If, however, your, say, mechanic is mistaken about what's causing that knocking noise in your car, and it takes him a while to figure out the actual cause, the next time you have a problem with your car, do you take it to a mechanic, or do you ask some random person on the internet?

The point of those stories was not that the doctors got it wrong, but how they behaved in the face of someone else who go it right. The point isn't that doctors didn't wash their hands. The point is that the doctors refused to wash their hands even in the face of evidence of its effectiveness - and then harassed and shamed the guy who thought it was a pretty nifty idea until he died in a mental institution. They didn't just make a mistake.

Because a doctor who makes mistakes is still exponentially more likely to be correct on medical matters than some guy who studies at the university of Google for ten minutes and thinks it makes him an expert.

There are medical experts saying as much as well. Here's a video by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a German physician and politician with a history of criticizing the WHO (and the influence of pharmaceutical companies on the WHO). Essentially, he says that we aren't measuring "the incidence of coronavirus diseases, but the activity of the specialists searching for them".

My point here is not to pass myself off as a medical doctor, but to provide an alternate, less doomsday perspective on this whole disease. I think that as we increasingly give up our freedom, security, and well being in our panic over this virus, some perspective might be needed to make sure that we don't give up something we may never get back in our fervor.

I don't think I've contradicted anything the WHO has said (even they admit that everything is estimated and they need more testing and hard numbers), except in my doubt of their projections of the future spread of the disease. Mostly, my opposition is against excessive quarantining. I don't think the WHO recommended that Florida shut down all bars for the foreseeable future or hold children back a grade or limit any social gathering of any size - that was the politicians interpreting the WHO's suggestions for social distancing in an extreme way. Last I heard, the WHO said wash your hands, don't touch your face, and stand 3 feet away from others. They certainly didn't tell anybody to buy all the toilet paper or to avoid all old people because YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY KILLED THEM.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Really, they should not be shutting down whole counties and closing schools, restaurants, etc...Instead, what should be happening is identify and quarantine the vulnerable populations. The elderly and immune compromized who are vulnerable should be locked down by the authorities and kept isolated. Let the general population continue as normal, just keep the vulnerable people isolated till the pandemic passes.

Historically, shutting down schools has slowed down epidemics. Particularly, children do not perform hygiene as well as adults, and entire households have contracted the virus. Thus, the contagion rate of parents is effectively as high as their children. If the parents work, then the contagion rates of their co-workers, even single ones, are effectively the same as a child in school.

There is no vaccine. Nobody in a first world country in their 20's to 40's, the "healthy" demographic for the virus, has lived through a period of time when a contagious disease has not had a vaccine. Polio, back in 1955, may be a similar situation to today, since at the time, Americans were waiting for a vaccine for it while it was virulent each summer. Even those who have not been vaccinated benefit from those who have, through the "herd effect", where a critical mass has immunity, suchthat any viral infection in one person is unlikely to spread to another. If the fatality rate is low, but the transmission rate is high (which happens when nobody has been vaccinated, schools remain open, people go to work, people travel, and people go to large social events), the final numbers will still be high and our hospital systems will be overwhelmed. Fatalities will rise for *all* patients, including those who cannot get a bed, even if they are in the hospital for a reason besides the virus.

"Because no one was immune to the new virus, “the majority of the population will be infected” absent the quick arrival of a vaccine or drastic public health interventions such as closing public places and canceling public events,"

The fatality rate, though based on Wuhan data is : "For those aged 15 to 44, the fatality rate was 0.5%, though it might have been as low as 0.1% or as high as 1.3%. For people 45 to 64, the fatality rate was also 0.5%, with a possible low of 0.2% and a possible high of 1.1%. For those over 64, it was 2.7%, with a low and high estimate of 1.5% and 4.7%." Assuming the same rate of transmissions and thus infections among age groups, those aged 15 to 44 can have the same fatality as those over 64 by congregating more often at work, school, and social events. A healthy person with a child and going to work five days a week has far more exposure and thus risk than a retired couple at home. Schools are being closed, but cases of elementary and high school children being infected have been reported in Sacramento, CA, and San Francisco Bay Area, CA.

Without a vaccine and without precautions, the expected high number of infections means that the actual number of infected healthy people will be much higher than the seasonal flu. The high number of severe cases in older victims and those with pre-existing conditions already means a shortage of hospital beds. So where will the new cases go? As Dr. Harris' twitter feed put it, "It's the difference between finding an ICU bed & ventilator or being treated in the parking lot tent." Without vaccines, the only way to slow down the spread of the virus so that hospitals are not overwhelmed is by isolation, or "social distancing". Unlike vaccines, this is less meant so you, as an individual, are infected ("containment"), than to not overwhelm hospitals ("mitigation").

Taiwan started taking action against CoVid in early January, while only now has the San Franciso Bay Area, one of the area of the country with the highest number victims, taken action. Taiwan has had only one death from CoVid. Meanwhile, the number of US cases is now over one hundred. Perhaps social distancing will have the same "herd effect" as a vaccine for those who choose to still go out. My own hope is that we will have a vaccine by the end of the year so will have a better idea of the actual danger of this virus.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/13/814602553/coronavirus-faqs-for-the-week-of-3-7-whats-flattening-the-curve-should-i-travel
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/lower-coronavirus-death-rate-estimates/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/16/taiwan-china-fear-coronavirus-success/

If anything, I read yesterday that it's statistically more likely to affect men, although I imagine that's more down to a higher percentage of males in the workforce, being exposed more, possibly having compromised immune systems from industry, smokers etc.

Can someone explain the Covid is a conspiracy to exert control narrative?

Seems to me it will both deeply financially harm any entity that would possibly wish to do so and as time goes on would seem more likely to wake up the meek to just how badly they've been already subjugated by the powerful.

 Eldarain wrote:
Can someone explain the Covid is a conspiracy to exert control narrative?

Seems to me it will both deeply financially harm any entity that would possibly wish to do so and as time goes on would seem more likely to wake up the meek to just how badly they've been already subjugated by the powerful.

No one can explain it, it's a conspiracy theory. Of course it doesn't make sense.

Covid-19 is clearly serious, and people should be taking appropriate precautions to prevent infection, and more to the point, to prevent passing on the virus to other people. This doesn't mean panic buying all the loo roll though! A loo roll fort isn't going to save you.

This corona virus if anything has done to me and my family is illuminate how dependant the economy is on services industries. And how many things we touch on a daily basis without noticing it.

So its day three quarantine here in chicago, its pretty interesting in the burbs people are out and about in the parks avoiding benches etc and just walking around talking with their families cause we have no confirmed cases in my burbs (Yet). But people are trying to make the best of it with their families to calm them which is a great idea, as long as people are practicing self distancing which is 6 - 18ft.

To see people freaking out online when in reality its quite normal for most of us, our lives are going on, and there won't be a panic in my state at least, everyone is relatively calm. Even when I went to vote today, people were just going on their daily lives, but staying farther away from each other, waashing their hands, being mindful of others etc.

This is going to be an interesting next few months.

Though in terms of the economy well.

https://i.imgur.com/c4RpRti.gifv

For laughs

 Eldarain wrote:
Can someone explain the Covid is a conspiracy to exert control narrative?

Seems to me it will both deeply financially harm any entity that would possibly wish to do so and as time goes on would seem more likely to wake up the meek to just how badly they've been already subjugated by the powerful.

In my experience, the only people I know who believe stuff like that are the ones who have that unique combination of consistently making terrible life decisions while (crucially) being abjectly aware of how poor their judgement is; the very sharpest tip of the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger chart.

The corona virus is bad for every country, every economy is going to take a few years to recover from it. As everything grinds to halt people will start to think... Oh crapolia our economy is based on the service industry! Gak! What ever shall we do without actual economical spenders, and consumers! People who think differently aren't watching the economy drop down a literal cliff. Every nation will suffer from this china had ceased production, the US is in a standstill and only the crazy companies are out working (when most people are at home). We are going to see a recession most likely, and our economy will suffer for ages to come. This isn't fear mongering more of a reality check personally. I don't really see riots in the streets, but I do see protests, people angry that our economy has gotten so gak.

People aren't making any money cause they can't go to work, or because their stores they worked at closed. Many americans live paycheck to paycheck have 0 money to spend to influence the economy cause they can't save for anything, an average american can only spend around 4k for a medical service. (UBI actually might be useful here to stimulate the economy just a bit)

Then we have all these other things that prove faults in our economic systems, social programs, and our social dynamics. This might be life changing to many people, entire cultures have shifted because of lesser things.

OK, so I don't know where exactly the line should be in terms of government-mandated social distancing, but this one feels like a bridge too far (or at least, a bridge too early):

 Ouze wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Can someone explain the Covid is a conspiracy to exert control narrative?

Seems to me it will both deeply financially harm any entity that would possibly wish to do so and as time goes on would seem more likely to wake up the meek to just how badly they've been already subjugated by the powerful.

In my experience, the only people I know who believe stuff like that are the ones who have that unique combination of consistently making terrible life decisions while (crucially) being abjectly aware of how poor their judgement is; the very sharpest tip of the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger chart.

There are easier ways to achieve something with much less damage to the exact Same thing you want.
Heck a good old fashioned military coup would sufice in most countries with detiorating and polarized societies.

Surely a medical alarm is a safety issue? Isn't that the point?

 Ouze wrote:
OK, so I don't know where exactly the line should be in terms of government-mandated social distancing, but this one feels like a bridge too far (or at least, a bridge too early):

Spoiler:

LMPD to no longer respond to hit and run wrecks, other incidents
Jason Riley and Travis Ragsdale
Mar 17, 2020 Updated 10 hrs ago

LOUISVILLE, Ky., (WDRB) – Louisville Metro Police will no longer respond to several emergency situations, including some burglaries and speeding, according to Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad.

Conrad said the department will take reports over the phone in many non-violent incidents, to protect officers and the public from spreading the coronavirus.

In addition, police will not be dispatched to public intoxication cases, speeding, illegal parking and loitering, among other incidents.

Conrad said the changes are being made "in the interest of focusing on making sure our officers are able to respond in an emergency situation or life is threatened and to keep them healthy."

The department hasn't seen any increase in officers out sick "with this particular illness," Conrad said, but attendance is being monitored as shifts begin.

Police headquarters, among other buildings, will be closed.

In addition, LMPD officers are no longer allowed to request vacation time.

In a memo written by Conrad on Monday, a “state of emergency” has been declared and only vacation requests already approved for this year will be allowed.

Conrad did not mention the memo at a press conference on Tuesday but said officers will get sick with the virus and the department is taking several precautions to ensure there is enough staffing.

He said he is moving personnel between divisions and using investigative staff to help patrol divisions "where absences are there."

In addition, Conrad said police will be limiting public access to headquarters, division stations and the city's impoundment lot. Visits to the lot and the LMPD property room will now be done by appointment, he said.

In a separate email sent by the assistant director of Louisville Metro Emergency Services as of 7 p.m. on Tuesday, police will not be responding to several types of events:

· Medical alarms, unless there is a known safety issue

· Non-injury accidents

· Hit-and-run accidents

· Disorderly persons

· Intoxicated persons

· Reckless drivers

Conrad did not mention all incidents police are currently not responding to during the press conference.

Copyright 2020 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.

that is failure, why not mobilize mp with Abc equipment or medical formations if they are this afraid Off risking regular police forces?