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petrov27 wrote:
So your solution is that society should ignore the virus, send everyone back to work/school/etc and let the chips fall where they may? If you are old and have pre-existing conditions tough luck mate, sucks to be you?

We'll be feeling the effects of closing school/work/etc for decades. Entire industries are at risk. This will have an unprecedented effect on the GDP and affect international trade, and could very send us into another depression. We're losing freedom and privacy that we may never get back (we've still got the patriot act almost twenty years after 9.11).

But yeah, let's focus on the 80 year old smoking diabetics with hypertension who probably won't survive another half decade even without a virus. That's totally where our priorities should be.

petrov27 wrote:
So your solution is that society should ignore the virus, send everyone back to work/school/etc and let the chips fall where they may? If you are old and have pre-existing conditions tough luck mate, sucks to be you?

Welcome the dystopia hyper-individualism made, where human life and compassion have no value "as long as I got mine".

I'm all for being a heartless hyper-individualist and letting all the old people die because I have the empathy level of a peanut, but it bears mentioning that 20% of hospitalizations for coronavirus are occurring in people aged 20-44, and about 40% are between ages 20 and 54, so yknow - maybe letting the virus run rampant because you're a dogmatic adherent of a contrarian ideology that prioritizes economics and abstract conceptualizations of freedom over healthy living isn't a good idea, the healthcare system would still be overwhelmed one way or another, and it would be more than just 70 and 80 year old short-timers with complications dying at that point.

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

- Personally not a fan of the idea


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominus_qui_sunt_eius.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I'm all for being a heartless hyper-individualist and letting all the old people die because I have the empathy level of a peanut, but it bears mentioning that 20% of hospitalizations for coronavirus are occurring in people aged 20-44, and about 40% are between ages 20 and 54, so yknow - maybe letting the virus run rampant because you're a dogmatic adherent of a contrarian ideology that prioritizes economics and abstract conceptualizations of freedom over healthy living isn't a good idea, the healthcare system would still be overwhelmed one way or another, and it would be more than just 70 and 80 year old short-timers with complications dying at that point.

but... but... an ob/gyn was wrong once, therefore all medical professional are wrong about everything!

For those in the U.K. suffering at the hands of selfish hoarders, I’ve been finding village convenience stores pretty good for stock levels.

Likewise dedicated Butchers and Greengrocers etc.

Yes they’re inherently pricier than the giants due to economy of scale, but they’re arguably better quality. Plus, there’s the added bonus of putting money in the hands of local businesses

We have a traditional butchers who sets us up every Christmas. Can't stress enough how good they are.

Also, there's one thing that's been really getting me down about this (apart from the deaths). My grandad died the day after new years, and it was to be gran and grandad's 60th wedding anniversary. As a tribute I'd done a portrait of them together, and I was supposed to show it last weekend. But obviously that can't happen now. Don't know when or if it'll happen actually.

I really hope Gran survives this.

 Sqorgar wrote:

That doesn't mean dealing with pre-existing conditions more aggressively in the future isn't worth doing; clearly it is. But NOW is not... how do I say this? "Not the most opportune moment..."

There's nothing to suggest that this coronavirus will behave any differently than the others we know about, all of which operate seasonally. By the end of April, there should be so few new cases (naturally, without us having to do anything) that everybody is going to stop paying attention. The WHO can't operate under the assumption that this will happen, since COVID19 is essentially a "new virus", and also because nobody really knows why these things are seasonal and hoping for something that we don't understand to happen is going to be seen as doing nothing.

https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/
There is ZERO evidence that this will go away with warmer weather. This poster must be a troll trying to get yuks for himself. Ignorant.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For those in the U.K. suffering at the hands of selfish hoarders, I’ve been finding village convenience stores pretty good for stock levels.

Likewise dedicated Butchers and Greengrocers etc.

Yes they’re inherently pricier than the giants due to economy of scale, but they’re arguably better quality. Plus, there’s the added bonus of putting money in the hands of local businesses

I don't think it's arguable at all, actually!

 Togusa wrote:
https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/
. There is ZERO evidence that this will go away with warmer weather.

Ergo, the poster's beef isn't actually about how the actions of governments aren't sufficiently grounded in science.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For those in the U.K. suffering at the hands of selfish hoarders, I’ve been finding village convenience stores pretty good for stock levels.

Likewise dedicated Butchers and Greengrocers etc.

Yes they’re inherently pricier than the giants due to economy of scale, but they’re arguably better quality. Plus, there’s the added bonus of putting money in the hands of local businesses

The supermarkets are starting to struggle under the strain, reduced opening hours already, stream lining of product lines, and that's before we are even near peak virus time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Marxist artist wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For those in the U.K. suffering at the hands of selfish hoarders, I’ve been finding village convenience stores pretty good for stock levels.

Likewise dedicated Butchers and Greengrocers etc.

Yes they’re inherently pricier than the giants due to economy of scale, but they’re arguably better quality. Plus, there’s the added bonus of putting money in the hands of local businesses

The supermarkets are starting to struggle under the strain, reduced opening hours already, stream lining of product lines, and that's before we are even near peak virus time.

From article on bbc.

Edit how did the toilet roll rush begin and why?

 Togusa wrote:


https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/
There is ZERO evidence that this will go away with warmer weather. This poster must be a troll trying to get yuks for himself. Ignorant.

I read your link.

It says, "yeah, well, all of these things might help slow down CV-19 but it is not going to evaporate on its own."

It doesn't say "anyone who thinks summer is going to save us from this pandemic is a smooth brain troll."



Maybe you're just being overzealous as atonement for your 3/16/20 self:

 Togusa wrote:
People need to clam their tits. This is no worse than seasonal flu. I couldn't even buy any fething hot pockets at the store because some people came in and bought them all.

 Togusa wrote:

https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/

. There is ZERO evidence that this will go away with warmer weather. This poster must be a troll trying to get yuks for himself. Ignorant.

Did you read through that link completely? Because it was nothing but speculation.

"So the first problem with this myth is that we don’t know whether those coronaviruses, which go by the evocative names like OC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63, are good analogies for this virus."

"For some viruses, we have evidence for which factors are most important, for others, we have to extrapolate."

"For coronaviruses, the relevance of this factor is unknown."

"Few children have been identified as cases. This may mean they do not get easily infected and don’t do much transmitting. Or it may mean only that they don’t get severe symptoms when they are infected, and transmit nonetheless. Or something in between."

"It is possible that the condition of the average person’s immune system is systematically worse in winter than summer."

"Even seasonal infections can happen “out of season” when they are new."

"For the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, we have reason to expect that like other betacoronaviruses, it may transmit somewhat more efficiently in winter than summer, though we don’t know the mechanism(s) responsible."

Look, the truth of the matter is that scientists don't actually know why viruses act seasonally. They've tried to identify different factors that they believe would affect seasonality, and while some tests have shown some relationship, for the most part, they can't fully explain the phenomenon. This article was basically written from an alarmist perspective of "it might do this, it might not. Don't just assume things will work out okay" - which is fine, but it is hardly fact-based evidence that it won't dissipate during the summer.

The only bit of halfway convincing argument in that entire thing is that novel viruses (ones new to the general public) may not behave like its brethren. I'm not sure I buy the idea that this is due to people being unfamiliar with the virus alone. That feels like a wholly unconvincing argument when we can track COVID19 across a hundred different countries and see the rate of infection is completely different in spread and severity. Environment seems to have a non-trivial effect.

According to the Institute of Human Virology, they found that all the cities that experienced the most significant outbreaks of the virus all existed in the same narrow climate band with an average temperature of 41F to 52F and humidity of 47% to 79%. According to their laboratory tests, they've found that the coronavirus spreads most easily at a temperature of 39F and a humidity of 20% to 80%.

“Through this extensive research, it has been determined that weather modeling could potentially explain the spread of COVID-19, making it possible to predict the regions that are most likely to be at higher risk of significant community spread in the near future,”

“I think what is important is that this is a testable hypothesis,”

It's important to point out that this is a hypothesis (one that should be proven right or wrong fairly quickly), but the identification of the worst outbreaks happening in the same climate band is pretty strong evidence. What this means is not that the virus will disappear completely, but if climate is a strong indicator of where it will be the worst, this area will increasingly move north as the temperature rise.

I don't think most people are particularly worried about the light cases of coronavirus going around. They are worried about being the next Wuhan or the next northern Italy. They are worried about hospital beds being overrun and turning stadiums into makeshift morgues. If you can look at the climate and see where this is most likely to happen, we can target our resources to how best to serve those most in danger.

Cronch wrote:
Your freedom ends where the freedom of others begin. You want to party like it's the decameron? Sure, but remember they decided to seclude themselves, not go pub crawling like a bimbo version of typhoid mary.

Yes, some fictional characters secluded themselves, but plenty of people of that time did not. Flagellants crucified themselves in the streets. Some people ran around partying. Can't say I recommend it myself.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/

. There is ZERO evidence that this will go away with warmer weather. This poster must be a troll trying to get yuks for himself. Ignorant.

Did you read through that link completely? Because it was nothing but speculation.

"So the first problem with this myth is that we don’t know whether those coronaviruses, which go by the evocative names like OC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63, are good analogies for this virus."

"For some viruses, we have evidence for which factors are most important, for others, we have to extrapolate."

"For coronaviruses, the relevance of this factor is unknown."

"Few children have been identified as cases. This may mean they do not get easily infected and don’t do much transmitting. Or it may mean only that they don’t get severe symptoms when they are infected, and transmit nonetheless. Or something in between."

"It is possible that the condition of the average person’s immune system is systematically worse in winter than summer."

"Even seasonal infections can happen “out of season” when they are new."

"For the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, we have reason to expect that like other betacoronaviruses, it may transmit somewhat more efficiently in winter than summer, though we don’t know the mechanism(s) responsible."

Look, the truth of the matter is that scientists don't actually know why viruses act seasonally. They've tried to identify different factors that they believe would affect seasonality, and while some tests have shown some relationship, for the most part, they can't fully explain the phenomenon. This article was basically written from an alarmist perspective of "it might do this, it might not. Don't just assume things will work out okay" - which is fine, but it is hardly fact-based evidence that it won't dissipate during the summer.

The only bit of halfway convincing argument in that entire thing is that novel viruses (ones new to the general public) may not behave like its brethren. I'm not sure I buy the idea that this is due to people being unfamiliar with the virus alone. That feels like a wholly unconvincing argument when we can track COVID19 across a hundred different countries and see the rate of infection is completely different in spread and severity. Environment seems to have a non-trivial effect.

According to the Institute of Human Virology, they found that all the cities that experienced the most significant outbreaks of the virus all existed in the same narrow climate band with an average temperature of 41F to 52F and humidity of 47% to 79%. According to their laboratory tests, they've found that the coronavirus spreads most easily at a temperature of 39F and a humidity of 20% to 80%.

“Through this extensive research, it has been determined that weather modeling could potentially explain the spread of COVID-19, making it possible to predict the regions that are most likely to be at higher risk of significant community spread in the near future,”

“I think what is important is that this is a testable hypothesis,”

It's important to point out that this is a hypothesis (one that should be proven right or wrong fairly quickly), but the identification of the worst outbreaks happening in the same climate band is pretty strong evidence. What this means is not that the virus will disappear completely, but if climate is a strong indicator of where it will be the worst, this area will increasingly move north as the temperature rise.

I don't think most people are particularly worried about the light cases of coronavirus going around. They are worried about being the next Wuhan or the next northern Italy. They are worried about hospital beds being overrun and turning stadiums into makeshift morgues. If you can look at the climate and see where this is most likely to happen, we can target our resources to how best to serve those most in danger.

That's my point. They DONT KNOW, which means you stating that it will go away just like others have in the past is not based on any fact.

By the end of April, there should be so few new cases (naturally, without us having to do anything) that everybody is going to stop paying attention.

Directly from your post. You are saying that it WILL, when YOU do not know. So, stop. Fortunately the Government and population aren't listening to people like you and are instead taking this seriously.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gorgon wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-own-in-warmer-weather/

There is ZERO evidence that this will go away with warmer weather.

Ergo, the poster's beef isn't actually about how the actions of governments aren't sufficiently grounded in science.

I'm assuming he/she is either trying to start gak, or taking the piss. Either way, I don't suffer the ignorant.

To add to my previous post, here's another study on temperatures released yesterday. It's got graphs.

"An increase of just one degree Celsius and 1% relative humidity increase substantially lower the virus's transmission..."

In applying the paper's findings to the forecast temperatures and humidity, the authors concluded that the arrival of summer and rainy seasons in the Northern Hemisphere can "effectively reduce the transmission of COVID-19,"...

"With much of the U.S. forecast to see higher-than-normal temperatures in March and April, according to AccuWeather meteorologists, there is a chance that the virus could eventually "burn itself out,"...

"If such temperature increases do occur, the paper's R value findings suggest that the U.S. will see a far lower transmission rate by the summer than the country is currently seeing in March."

"The transmission of viruses can be affected by a number of factors, including climate conditions (such as temperature and humidity), population density and medical care quality," the researchers said. "Therefore, understanding the relationship between weather and the transmission of COVID-19 is key to forecast the intensity and end time of this epidemic."

I don't engage in these discussions to be right or act superior. This is just a subject that I am intensely interested in, and somewhat well read about. I honestly don't know where the hostility is coming from. For the life of me, I can't figure out why a dissenting opinion is so threatening to someone else. With that said, this backs up everything I've been saying, so I hope this vindicates me against claims of being "full of gak" or a "troll trying to get yuks for himself". Or "taking a piss". Or "trying to start gak".

Togusa wrote:I'm assuming he/she is either trying to start gak, or taking the piss. Either way, I don't suffer the ignorant.

The poster made their stance pretty clear in the post at the top of the page:

Sqorgar wrote:

petrov27 wrote:
So your solution is that society should ignore the virus, send everyone back to work/school/etc and let the chips fall where they may? If you are old and have pre-existing conditions tough luck mate, sucks to be you?

We'll be feeling the effects of closing school/work/etc for decades. Entire industries are at risk. This will have an unprecedented effect on the GDP and affect international trade, and could very send us into another depression. We're losing freedom and privacy that we may never get back (we've still got the patriot act almost twenty years after 9.11).

But yeah, let's focus on the 80 year old smoking diabetics with hypertension who probably won't survive another half decade even without a virus. That's totally where our priorities should be.

So, it is a Utilitarian sort of stance, that economic interests are the first and foremost. It might have been, initially and intermittently, framed as a critique of the scientific method and the limits and nature of inductive reasoning, but, since the poster just goes on the invoke both scientific studies and use inductive reasoning in their own argument, there really isn't much of substance there.

Id say you could make an educated prediction that warmer temperatures will slow this virus, in correlation to all others in its family. If I were a gambler I'd say the odds were in favour of that happening.

I don't know the science though.. I always thought colds and flu generally hit worse in winter because the cold lowered immune systems somewhat, whilst simultaneously providing a better environment for those virus? I assumed the science behind it was known?

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's actually growing. In 2012, the rate of autism was 1 in 69. In 2014, it was 1 in 59. In those two years, we did not significantly change how we identified autism. Going back to 2000, it was 1 in 150. Today, it is 1 in 40. That's 1 out of every 40 children born 5 years ago now has some form of autism. Children born today have even worse odds, and we won't know for another 5 years just how bad.

Your conclusion isn't actually backed up by your data. Growing diagnosis rates don't automatically mean that cases are increasing, just that more of them are being identified. As the meme says, Pluto wasn't discovered until the 1930's... but it was sure as hell still out there before that.

While diagnosis methods may not have changed in that time, what has been changing is society's awareness and acceptance of the autism spectrum. So while your statistics certainly could point to an increasing number of kids with autism, they could just as likely point to more parents getting their kids tested. We would need more data to know either way.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Id say you could make an educated prediction that warmer temperatures will slow this virus, in correlation to all others in its family. If I were a gambler I'd say the odds were in favour of that happening.

I don't know the science though.. I always thought colds and flu generally hit worse in winter because the cold lowered immune systems somewhat, whilst simultaneously providing a better environment for those virus? I assumed the science behind it was known?

I'd speculate it has nothing to with temperature so much as longer days and stronger sunlight, as UV light is a well known and excellent disinfectant. Where a virus might hang around on say a keypad on a door or cashpoint (ATM) for up to 3 days now, I suspect that would be much less in strong sunlight.

Plus, IIRC, there's something about rhinovirus where it prefers a slightly lower temp than our core body offers, so colder weather gives it opportunity to reproduce in our nasal passages that spend more time than usual at cooler temperatures than in the summer. But that may be apocryphal.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I don't know the science though.. I always thought colds and flu generally hit worse in winter because the cold lowered immune systems somewhat, whilst simultaneously providing a better environment for those virus? I assumed the science behind it was known?

The science is not known. Basically, there's a bunch of different theories that have some evidence backed by laboratory experiments, but ultimately, none of them fully explain it. It's likely a combination of all these things, or there could be a certain X factor that nobody has figured out yet.

Here's a decent article about the science: http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/the-reason-for-the-season-why-flu-strikes-in-winter/

 Sqorgar wrote:

petrov27 wrote:
So your solution is that society should ignore the virus, send everyone back to work/school/etc and let the chips fall where they may? If you are old and have pre-existing conditions tough luck mate, sucks to be you?

We'll be feeling the effects of closing school/work/etc for decades. Entire industries are at risk. This will have an unprecedented effect on the GDP and affect international trade, and could very send us into another depression. We're losing freedom and privacy that we may never get back (we've still got the patriot act almost twenty years after 9.11).

But yeah, let's focus on the 80 year old smoking diabetics with hypertension who probably won't survive another half decade even without a virus. That's totally where our priorities should be.

Yes, you're absolutely right. Our priorities should lie with the life of a human being over the financial systems which are there to service us, not the other way around.

There's a lot of moaning about horders (which is fair enough especially for the almost totally unnessesary to horde toilet paper),

but what a lot of folk haven't grasped is that a lot of people, anybody over 70, anybody with an appropriate health condition (like respiratory problems, heart problems, kidney problems, immune system problems etc) have been told they need to stay indoors for the forseable future (or at least 12 weeks) so there is a significant chunk of the population who do need to stock up with a lot of stuff

 insaniak wrote:
Your conclusion isn't actually backed up by your data. Growing diagnosis rates don't automatically mean that cases are increasing, just that more of them are being identified. As the meme says, Pluto wasn't discovered until the 1930's... but it was sure as hell still out there before that.

While diagnosis methods may not have changed in that time, what has been changing is society's awareness and acceptance of the autism spectrum. So while your statistics certainly could point to an increasing number of kids with autism, they could just as likely point to more parents getting their kids tested. We would need more data to know either way.

Hmm... This would be a little off topic, but since you are a mod, I guess I'll answer you.

I have seen a study which measured proximity of autistic diagnoses to see if there was a social connection between the increased rate of autism diagnoses. It's been a while, but I believe the study said that there was a social element to it (kids are more likely to be diagnosed with autism if they were closer to another kid diagnosed with it), though they could not rule out the possibility of a shared environmental element (which would also partially explain why autism diagnoses clump together). So I can't say for certain that the reason for some of the increase isn't diagnostic or social. But the incidence rate has quadrupled in the past twenty years and up about 6,250% (not a typo) from 1980.

Autism was identified 70 years ago by a guy named Dr. Kanner, who said it was “a behavior pattern not known to me or anyone else theretofore.” The idea that autism is like Pluto and always around would mean that we'd see an increase of autism diagnoses for adults - that is, once we know how to find Pluto, we should be able to find all the Plutos that we missed before. But that's not really the case. There's not an increasing number of older Plutos out there, but there are an increasing number of younger ones (even compared to only a year earlier).

They did a study to determine if the incidence rate could due to changes in diagnosis criteria.

"It also revealed that no more than 56 percent of the estimated 600-to-700 percent increase, that is, less than one-tenth of the increased number of reported autism cases, could be attributed to the inclusion of milder cases of autism."

Beyond that, autism isn't the only neurological disorder that is on the increase among children. Stuff like ADD, Tourettes, siezures, narcolepsy, asthma, food allergies, and so on are all on the rise. There's been studies linking neurodevelopmental disorders (like autism) to the proximity of pesticides (like glyphosate) during pregnancy. While the increase in incidence was only about 15% (if I remember correctly) and can't explain the entire autism epidemic, it does suggest that environmental causes can and have increased the incidence rate.

Side note: I recently learned that when autistic children get high fevers, they get "better" - more alert, social, and communicative . Many parents describe it as getting their child back, or seeing what their child would've been like without autism. As absolutely bizarre as that is, it might indicate that autism can actually be reversed or at least reduced somewhat, and it may not be a permanent lifelong disability. Research is still ongoing, but I just thought that was worth sharing. The Fever Effect doesn't appear to be that well known.

 Sqorgar wrote:
We'll be feeling the effects of closing school/work/etc for decades. Entire industries are at risk. This will have an unprecedented effect on the GDP and affect international trade, and could very send us into another depression. We're losing freedom and privacy that we may never get back (we've still got the patriot act almost twenty years after 9.11).

Yahbut, if I understand your post correctly, if we don't close down schools and workplaces, our hospital systems will be overwhelmed (they're already so in some parts of the US) and, obviously, those sick will not be working, anyway.

Closing work spaces, unfortunately, looks to be a case of YMMV. Some companies, such as those with work-from-home procedures already in place, will be less affected. Also, some employers, such as Gamestop, are ignoring the warnings, and telling employees to work. Essential services, like groceries, are currently exempt from US orders to stop working. Even without orders to close, consumers are reducing non-essential services, such as air travel, so supply-and-demand is already affecting the economy, at least in the short-term.

 Sqorgar wrote:
To add to my previous post, here's another study on temperatures released yesterday. It's got graphs.

"An increase of just one degree Celsius and 1% relative humidity increase substantially lower the virus's transmission..."

In applying the paper's findings to the forecast temperatures and humidity, the authors concluded that the arrival of summer and rainy seasons in the Northern Hemisphere can "effectively reduce the transmission of COVID-19,"...

"With much of the U.S. forecast to see higher-than-normal temperatures in March and April, according to AccuWeather meteorologists, there is a chance that the virus could eventually "burn itself out,"...

"If such temperature increases do occur, the paper's R value findings suggest that the U.S. will see a far lower transmission rate by the summer than the country is currently seeing in March."

"The transmission of viruses can be affected by a number of factors, including climate conditions (such as temperature and humidity), population density and medical care quality," the researchers said. "Therefore, understanding the relationship between weather and the transmission of COVID-19 is key to forecast the intensity and end time of this epidemic."

I don't engage in these discussions to be right or act superior. This is just a subject that I am intensely interested in, and somewhat well read about. I honestly don't know where the hostility is coming from. For the life of me, I can't figure out why a dissenting opinion is so threatening to someone else. With that said, this backs up everything I've been saying, so I hope this vindicates me against claims of being "full of gak" or a "troll trying to get yuks for himself". Or "taking a piss". Or "trying to start gak".

Only problem with that study is it relies on questionable data, would be interesting to see a more up to date study from other countries data.

Given I live in a warmer clime I have my fingers crossed but doing nothing until then is still to risky IMO.

 insaniak wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's actually growing. In 2012, the rate of autism was 1 in 69. In 2014, it was 1 in 59. In those two years, we did not significantly change how we identified autism. Going back to 2000, it was 1 in 150. Today, it is 1 in 40. That's 1 out of every 40 children born 5 years ago now has some form of autism. Children born today have even worse odds, and we won't know for another 5 years just how bad.

Your conclusion isn't actually backed up by your data. Growing diagnosis rates don't automatically mean that cases are increasing, just that more of them are being identified. As the meme says, Pluto wasn't discovered until the 1930's... but it was sure as hell still out there before that.

While diagnosis methods may not have changed in that time, what has been changing is society's awareness and acceptance of the autism spectrum. So while your statistics certainly could point to an increasing number of kids with autism, they could just as likely point to more parents getting their kids tested. We would need more data to know either way.

Or widening the standard of what's included under the umbrella term 'autism,' which is what largely happened.
It has happened in several areas, including PTSD.

Pluto, ironically, fell victim to the opposite case: narrowing the technical definition.

 r_squared wrote:
Yes, you're absolutely right. Our priorities should lie with the life of a human being over the financial systems which are there to service us, not the other way around.

I acknowledge you as a morally superior person. Consider your virtue signaled.

But over here in the real world, things are more complicated. Let's say there are two people who need a liver transplant. One is a 20 year old female with her whole life ahead of her and one is a bedridden 80 year old alcoholic. Is the decision of who gets the liver not as obvious to you as it is to me?

A prolonged lockdown would kick us so hard in the recession that our grandchildren will feel it. It will affect every single person in the country. Already, thousands of people have been fired from the service industry and we haven't even technically started a lockdown yet. Who's gonna pay for their unemployment? Most places have a hiring freeze on right now. When will they be able to get jobs again? I guess they could work at Amazon warehouses...

The stock market has wiped out many people's retirement funds - and a lot of them won't be around long enough to see it rebound and come back. Who knows how this will affect them if they need that money for healthcare? There's several industries which are already on the verge of collapse, and local businesses don't have the capital to go several months without income. Many of those unemployed people won't have jobs to come back to.

Isolation is literally considered a form or torture, and the effect on the mental health of people asked to spend a month or longer away from other human contact will be measured in depression and suicide. And with all this will come an increase in crime. And all this for a disease that has taken less lives than the seasonal flu?

It isn't that I don't feel bad for the bedridden 80 year old alcoholic, but if I have to choose who to give the liver to, I'm going to give it to the person with a future, who might have kids one day, and who might survive more than a few more years with it.

Just came back from the drive thru pharmacy. My wife’s medications (treating her respiratory condition) have gone up tremendously since January, up to $250 and over $900 each month, after insurance and manufacturer’s coupons, up from $10 and $400 after coupons. Mine went up to $250 after coupon, up from $10. These price hikes were mostly caused by the manufacturer, as our insurance did not change.

She was planning to try alternatives, and I was planning to start taking my meds every other day, but the middle of the Covid19 pandemic seems like a bad time to start messing with respiratory medication.

I really hope this pandemic leads to real changes in how we handle preventative care and its accessibility.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Just came back from the drive thru pharmacy. My wife’s medications (treating her respiratory condition) have gone up tremendously since January, up to $250 and over $900 each month, after insurance and manufacturer’s coupons, up from $10 and $400 after coupons. Mine went up to $250 after coupon, up from $10. These price hikes were mostly caused by the manufacturer, as our insurance did not change.

She was planning to try alternatives, and I was planning to start taking my meds every other day, but the middle of the Covid19 pandemic seems like a bad time to start messing with respiratory medication.

I really hope this pandemic leads to real changes in how we handle preventative care and its accessibility.

Price gouging during an emergency is illegal, except for medication. Sigh.

I'm sorry to hear that has happened, that is awful.