- Location
- Stinkwater
Right? Totally not serious. Gonna be back to normal next week.
Coronavirus
- Thread starter Kevin B.
- Start date
Right? Totally not serious. Gonna be back to normal next week.
- Location
- Never Far From Nowhere
Nothing serious happening at all...
'We are collapsing': Virus pummels medics in Spain and Italy
MADRID (AP) — By the time Patricia Núñez’s cough started, she was already familiar with the dreaded dry hacking sound tormenting patients who had for weeks been filling the Madrid emergency ward where she works.
apnews.com
Hey, don't you be knocking my hay bails
Unimog
Eric
- Location
- Stansbury Park, UT
I've no doubt that working as an ER doc in NYC (or any large city) is not a pleasant job right now.
Houndoc
Registered User
- Location
- Grantsville
@Noahfecks
First, do you really think death of 500,000 or so Americans, with the associated hospitalization of those who die and the millions of others hospitalized won't impact the economy? Dead people make bad employees and customers.
And that is besides the very simply fact that you are willing to sacrifice the lives of half a million or so people just to keep your personal standard of living up is pathetic at best.
First, do you really think death of 500,000 or so Americans, with the associated hospitalization of those who die and the millions of others hospitalized won't impact the economy? Dead people make bad employees and customers.
And that is besides the very simply fact that you are willing to sacrifice the lives of half a million or so people just to keep your personal standard of living up is pathetic at best.
- Location
- The Land Northward (Bountiful), Utah
While you guys may not agree with each other, I would encourage you to show respect.
Calling names is disrespectful and useless online.
Calling names is disrespectful and useless online.
Whatever.... Doo Doo head.
- Location
- West Jordan
I don't recall anyone saying that the death of half of a million Americans is a good thing - it's a horrible thing, but it's a reality that we accept year in and year out. The only thing changing here is the cause of death. Dead people do make bad employees and customers, but bad economies also make dead people. Don't think for a second that there aren't casualties and widespread misery on both sides of the line...
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
I don't think I understand the situation very well.
But it sounds to me, like flattening the curve, will reduce the number of deaths, by an unknown amount. But that a lot of those deaths, perhaps most, even, are going to occur just the same. Just not all at once.
Destroying the economy by flattening the curve is going to cause lower quality of life, increased stress, health, mental issues, bankruptcies, failed businesses, job loss, divorce/broken families, dreams of retirement gone, and so on and so on for tens of millions of people with effects that will be felt for decades. I don't understand criticizing anyone for wishing to preserve a standard of living. But the effects are going to be way beyond just driving older cars and living in smaller houses for an awful lot of people. Permanent damage is already done and mounting. There are real people, really being hurt, badly, by the economic fallout. Right now. It's going to get way, way worse, the longer this goes on.
People have died and will die because of the virus, people are hurting and will hurt more for a very, very long time because of the reactions to the virus.
At some point, public sentiment will result in moving the balance point from where it is now at one extreme end of the scale back towards the other. It's inevitable. And I doubt science or good policy decisions will have much to do with it. Those things have very little to do with anything in our society.
- DAA
But it sounds to me, like flattening the curve, will reduce the number of deaths, by an unknown amount. But that a lot of those deaths, perhaps most, even, are going to occur just the same. Just not all at once.
Destroying the economy by flattening the curve is going to cause lower quality of life, increased stress, health, mental issues, bankruptcies, failed businesses, job loss, divorce/broken families, dreams of retirement gone, and so on and so on for tens of millions of people with effects that will be felt for decades. I don't understand criticizing anyone for wishing to preserve a standard of living. But the effects are going to be way beyond just driving older cars and living in smaller houses for an awful lot of people. Permanent damage is already done and mounting. There are real people, really being hurt, badly, by the economic fallout. Right now. It's going to get way, way worse, the longer this goes on.
People have died and will die because of the virus, people are hurting and will hurt more for a very, very long time because of the reactions to the virus.
At some point, public sentiment will result in moving the balance point from where it is now at one extreme end of the scale back towards the other. It's inevitable. And I doubt science or good policy decisions will have much to do with it. Those things have very little to do with anything in our society.
- DAA
- Location
- Stinkwater
I don't think anybody does.
The initial calls to "flatten the curve" anticipated releasing the calls for isolation to let the economy breath and following that with more flattenings and releases, kinda like ABS brakes pulsing to prevent locking up. That wouldn't do anything to stop the eventual number of infections, just spread out the load on the hospitals. Under that model the same number of people would be eventually infected, but less overload on the hospitals meant theoretically more lives saved. They've had more time to think it through now, and they're anticipating a "rapid" test that gives results in minutes/hours instead of days/weeks (China says they've got one right now, and multiple western labs are near to having their own version). The new idea is that we maintain a hard isolation until the number of infections drops to a manageable level, and then with an adequate supply of reliable and near-instant tests and a lesser number of overall infections, we can go back to chasing individual infection chains which is how they normally deal with a viral episode like this. And if that works, the load on the hospitals drops dramatically and maybe we can all get back to business-as-almost-usual while we wait for the vaccine.
The big wrench in the works in this whole thing has been that COVID-19 can be transmissible before the person is symptomatic. That's prevented any real management of the spread, and what's led to these mass lockdowns. The rapid test is key to getting around that roadblock. Once we've got it, we won't have to rely on symptoms to track and isolate affected individuals, and we can hopefully go back to a more relaxed model of behavior that doesn't require everyone to isolate.
Because we clearly can't stay locked down forever. That's never been in dispute. Hopefully the federal rescue money will come in time for the folks that need it right now (and won't cause too much inflation), and hopefully the new tests come online quick, and hopefully the surge to get PPE and medical devices to the hospitals is effective, and hopefully there's no stalls in development of the vaccine. If any of those things don't come through we'll probably have huge pressure to relax the isolation and if we have to do that before we've got at least partial control over the spread, it's going to get really ugly.
Right now, there's an end-game. There's an exit strategy here, and though it requires sacrifice and hardship for everyone, some more than others for sure, it doesn't require the complete destruction of lives and economy that would come with a long term lockdown OR a complete relaxation of social distancing and isolation protocols - both of those things lead to ruin. If that plan goes to hell, if the exit strategy fails, then it'll be time to ask the really hard questions, questions like how many lives are worth the rest of us going hungry? How many lives should we sacrifice to keep everybody else from living in tent cities for the rest of our lives? Tough questions that I don't have the answers to. And maybe we should be thinking about them. I just don't think it's time to ask those questions yet, and definitely not time to answer them.
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- Location
- Stinkwater
Somebody asked earlier why Germany, forex, had a smaller infection and fatality rate despite doing less, socially, to contain the virus. The short answer is, we screwed up:
www.theatlantic.com
That entire article is a good read. It is the Atlantic and they just can't help themselves - like him or hate him you're going to need to hold your nose and ignore the jabs against Trump (I'm no fan of his and I still find them distracting - stick to the point, jerks). It's still full of good info, and every factual claim they make is cited and linked. They lay out the steps to containing this thing very clearly, including the pressing need for social distance in the near future, and anticipate a return to "normal" relatively soon, in the scheme of things. They do quote a Harvard guy as saying that even with the rapid test, multiple waves of social distancing might be necessary? Which is not what I think most others are predicting, but whatever. Nobody is an expert right now, but they're getting there.
Opinion time - as a nation, we were unready and unprepared for this thing and we are behind now and we are paying for it now and will continue to pay for it. But we're rapidly getting up to speed. Pearl Harbor is over, and the giant is waking up, and I really feel like the U.S. is going to do what we do and crush this thing. It's going to take sacrifice, and the next several months aren't going to be terribly pleasant for anybody. But if we, the little people, can hold the line and do our part to slow the spread and flatten that curve then we're going to buy the time the wizards need to get their heads on straight and do their job. We're going to come out of this thing ok as individuals and a nation. Between Federal aid and neighbors being neighbors, I fully expect to see people's needs met. Very very few people are going to lose their houses or starve over this. But to see the most people come out the far side intact, to preserve the best quality of life for everybody across the board, we've got to ignore the panicking stock traders and CEOs who are the real source of these "back to work" calls, and hold the line.
That's my argument. That's my response to anybody and everybody that is kicking against social distancing and isolation right now. A little bit of personal sacrifice now, on everyone's part, saves everyone a world of hurt down the road. And if people don't see that, if too many people continue to be selfish and do what they wanna do right now and take the easy road right now, well, those people will be the reason that this pandemic response fails. If we fall, if this thing gets really ugly, it'll be because of selfish people taking more than they need and depriving others.
And if that's calling names, then so be it. Maybe it's time for that.
How the Pandemic Will End
The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out.
www.theatlantic.com
That entire article is a good read. It is the Atlantic and they just can't help themselves - like him or hate him you're going to need to hold your nose and ignore the jabs against Trump (I'm no fan of his and I still find them distracting - stick to the point, jerks). It's still full of good info, and every factual claim they make is cited and linked. They lay out the steps to containing this thing very clearly, including the pressing need for social distance in the near future, and anticipate a return to "normal" relatively soon, in the scheme of things. They do quote a Harvard guy as saying that even with the rapid test, multiple waves of social distancing might be necessary? Which is not what I think most others are predicting, but whatever. Nobody is an expert right now, but they're getting there.
Opinion time - as a nation, we were unready and unprepared for this thing and we are behind now and we are paying for it now and will continue to pay for it. But we're rapidly getting up to speed. Pearl Harbor is over, and the giant is waking up, and I really feel like the U.S. is going to do what we do and crush this thing. It's going to take sacrifice, and the next several months aren't going to be terribly pleasant for anybody. But if we, the little people, can hold the line and do our part to slow the spread and flatten that curve then we're going to buy the time the wizards need to get their heads on straight and do their job. We're going to come out of this thing ok as individuals and a nation. Between Federal aid and neighbors being neighbors, I fully expect to see people's needs met. Very very few people are going to lose their houses or starve over this. But to see the most people come out the far side intact, to preserve the best quality of life for everybody across the board, we've got to ignore the panicking stock traders and CEOs who are the real source of these "back to work" calls, and hold the line.
That's my argument. That's my response to anybody and everybody that is kicking against social distancing and isolation right now. A little bit of personal sacrifice now, on everyone's part, saves everyone a world of hurt down the road. And if people don't see that, if too many people continue to be selfish and do what they wanna do right now and take the easy road right now, well, those people will be the reason that this pandemic response fails. If we fall, if this thing gets really ugly, it'll be because of selfish people taking more than they need and depriving others.
And if that's calling names, then so be it. Maybe it's time for that.
- Location
- Grantsville, Utah
Good hell.
- Location
- Stinkwater
Wow. Maybe they're not doing less socially than we are. That's crazy.
- Location
- Grantsville, Utah
Yesterday I delivered to Havre, MT. It was refreshing to spend so much time in such a rural area. I think they are better equipped for a pandemic because they are so far from any city. They have to keep plenty of supplies stocked up for every day life. What nice people. So many waved at me as I neared town, and a few approach me to express thanks for my deliveries. That got me pretty emotional.
On the flip side, I couldn't stop thinking about how likely it is that I could be the one infecting their town. Last week I was in California, the week before it was Seattle/Tacoma. My hands are pretty dry from using hand sanitizer.
On the flip side, I couldn't stop thinking about how likely it is that I could be the one infecting their town. Last week I was in California, the week before it was Seattle/Tacoma. My hands are pretty dry from using hand sanitizer.
Noahfecks
El Destructo!
- Location
- Glenwoody Springs, CO
Well, to be realistic, hospitalizing lots of people will be a stimulus to the medical sector, so plus economy. Realistically the demographic that this virus is hitting the hardest are no longer a part of the workforce so they certainly are not part of the employee pool. If they were to pass it's not as if their wealth would evaporate, it would pass to their beneficiaries who would likely spend it at a faster rate that the owners, again plus economy. Not trying to be callous here, but that is the reality of what you asked, no emotion just fact.
I notice you are less passionate about the 85,000 Americans who died from the flu last year, or the 3MM elderly that die from various illnesses each year. So pathetic that you have never raised your voice about that travesty.
So are we, my point was that they were not any faster to respond yet no one is making that less dramatic comparison.
A good deal of the assumptions in the modeling have been debunked by the creator, even he is admitting the model is overly dramatic. He changed his prediction of deaths in the UK from 500K to 20K and admits 10k would have died before the end of the year of natural causes. That's a pretty big reality check.
Houndoc
Registered User
- Location
- Grantsville
Agreed, this needs to be taken more seriously than some people are doing.
Yes, people die daily of various causes- cancer, accidents, heart disease, flu whatever. But that does not mean we do not do what we can to prevent death when possible.
Flattening the curve is indeed designed to lessen the number of cases and deaths- not simply delay them. Avoiding overloading hospitals and slowly building immunity in the general population will increase the positive outcomes and over time slow the spread of the virus.
No, hospitalizations are not good for the economy anymore than hurricanes, building fires or broken windows are. Every dollar spent on any of these is money not spent somewhere else, such as car purchases, travel or even eating out that adds to the economy.
@Noahfecks , I am not sure what you mean by "modeling being debunked by the creator" (God perhaps?). There has been far more than one single study done to model potential disease impact. And while I recognize that computer modeling has great limitations in predicting long-term outcomes of anything, we need to work with the knowledge we have.
I own my on business and certainly worry about the economic impact of current policies. But I will take that risk any day over the experience in Italy right now.
So, considering very few here are infectious disease experts or epidemiologists, and probably a handful with medical training, this is a time for us to listen to the experts (which is not the president) and follow their advice. I certainly do not believe for a minute there is some grand conspiracy but the world's medical profession to destroy the world economy and enslave us all.
Where did you get your 85,000 number (not saying it isn't true I just haven't seen that number). Also, things are being done, and have been done about the flu. We currently have vaccines and treatments and new medicines come out each year.
I also, don't understand the modeling debunked by the creator statement. Are you saying only one model is being used world wide that was created by one guy? That no one else looked at any numbers and just assumed his were right? Many countries worldwide are being shut down because of one model?
I haven't been comparing us to Germany because, looking at the numbers, I did not see us the same. We have more cases and more deaths. We have 4 times the population yet we have less than 2 times the number of cases. We also have more than 4 times the deaths. Maybe we are testing better and that is why we have more cases. If that is true then we are right on pace with Germany as far as deaths vs. population is concerned. So maybe we need to compare ourselves more to Germany than I initially thought. I will relook at my stance on that.
Either way I am less worried about an economic downturn than I am the effects of the virus. I guess I feel that the economic problems will be on the less dramatic side and the Virus will be on the more dramatic side if it goes unchecked. I don't think that make me a sky is falling guy.
The way this issue is dividing people is typical of many issues. Either this is the apocalypse and everyone will die, or this is the end of all money as we know it and we will be trading sea shells by years end. Reality will land somewhere in the middle. I feel like we as a country are more set up to handle financial issues than we are a pandemic. Luckily for the U.S. we should peak with Covid19 after regular flu season is over which will free up a lot of medical supplies/equipment. Countries like Italy and Spain were not so lucky.
Many people I have talked to that are super worried about the economy(understandably so) make fun of those "overreacting" about the seriousness of the virus. They may be right, but they are the same ones that say that our economy will completely collapse, which also seems like an over reaction. I am happy about the discussion and the reflection people are in right now. Overall, I believe we will band together as the dust settles and come out more prepared and better for it.