Balta1701

So today I've seen an epidemiologist saying that this virus actually is mutating slowly enough that it makes tracking difficult since there are very few marker events that distinguish one virus from another, which would argue pretty strongly against that.

It has seemed that people show peak symptoms 5-7 or so days after infection in most cases but most of the deaths are delayed by about a week, most of the deaths happen something like days 10-14, so we're seeing the cases that were established last week right now, and the deaths will come next week.

A quick google news search shows that just from the top 4 headlines today, the Rays optioned 7 players today, the Angels optioned 4 players, and the Nationals optioned 6 players. I'm too lazy to search more.

I'll be in 2 months.

honestly, no it won't, because even if we did nothing, we don't hit the peak of cases until June or July per the Imperial college study, so the death and destruction option lasts a good 6 months.

Just to stress for reality, it's extremely important that we're testing the homeless, prisoners, people working 2 jobs/people without health insurance, immigrants, because after we get through this, those are the populations where this could continue simmering undetected. Homeless person sitting on a bench, person working 2 jobs with no insurance - those types of people could easily become spreaders and if they can't go to the doctor, that breaks our ability to trace them.

I think China has this decently under control right now. There could absolutely be more bodies, but the hospital videos are hard to block. When you've got an overwhelmed hospital, people are coming and going, and there's no information control on that. There is no guarantee they could not lose control again, but the strategy is out there. Lock down, beat it into submission, then "test test test test test". Test the underpriviledged. Test the people you don't like. Test everyone they come into contact with. All free from the government. You're hungover? Here's an aspirin and a COVID-19 test, don't ask why just take it. It can work.

Only other points I'd add are: 1. Those discussions have taken place in the bio-medical community and that's why we're trying to convince people to lock stuff down, because it's the least bad option. 2. I'm on record in this thread on March 3rd saying "OMG we're completely screwed we need to shut the doors of everything in California and Washington right now". 3. And yes, every time our President says "we need to get people back to work!" or every time the governor of Florida says "The beaches are open", we are heading towards a worst case scenario. I've seen epidemiologists say "this kind of lunacy, of refusal to follow these orders was something we never modeled".

1. It's not just the deaths of the elderly and the high risk population. There are plenty of "low-risk" people who die, so yes if you could somehow do what you're suggesting, you still kill hundreds of thousands this year rather than millions 2. It's not just the deaths. You are asking 10-20 million people or something like that to come down with very severe illnesses that hospitalize them for weeks, put them in medical care for weeks, kill extras because of the ventilators, there's not enough doctors trained in this country to do what you're proposing even if you could build enough hospitals quick enough. You can do that if the ill are in the tens of thousands, not tens of millions. This is why I mentioned the cancer patient. This is why I mentioned a person with a heart attack. How many heart attacks are there each year in this country? What does a heart attack victim do if the hospitals are full? They die. 3. There's no feasible way to do it, as if you let it burn through the 200 million "so-called healthy people" with a 0.2% chance of dying or whatever, then those people are going to go talk to their parents. They're going to buy food at the same grocery store as the others. They're going to the doctor. They're going to the pharmacy. You can't just say "Oh I'm sorry you can't go get your chemo drugs, you might die there's a virus" - the things that make them high risk will also kill them. 4. You seem to think that there's some strategy here that avoids a "great depression" but what you just proposed is a great depression. 10-20 million people out of work for weeks at a time while they're ill. Health care bills in the tens of thousands of dollars for each of them. Hundreds of thousands of supposedly healthy people dead. And 1/3 of the population somehow permanently quarantined for a year. This is another great depression. 5. Frankly, if you gave me the choice, I would live off my savings for a year and say *bleep* you to your plan even if I was 100% healthy. So even if another 25% of the population revolts against this plan, now you've got 1/2 of the population either sick or refusing to participate or under your mandatory quarantine. 6. Please note that the "extremely well respected" people you are referring to think that every version of what you're saying is horrifying and unworkable. There is 1 setup out there to avoid your feared depression that has been proposed. It is "shut everything down right now immediately". Beat the peak down, as we have seen at least 4 countries do including China. Then, extremely aggressive testing and tracing - as we should have been doing in February when the government was frittering. It can work, it can get some things back to semi-normal. That's the only thing people have come up with.

How do the super-quarantined 25% of society get food? How do we get to the pharmacy? How do you deal with the huge numbers of seemingly healthier people who still come down with severe cases? You still dramatically overwhelm the hospitals. How do businesses deal with the huge numbers of people out of work for weeks/months who came down with severe cases of the illness? Are you ok with hundreds of thousands of deaths because it's not millions? What about the 30 year old with cancer who can't get a hospital bed for the next 6 months? Or the 40 year old who has a heart attack? Bad timing, shame?

New York? They’re about to be our first nightmare. They run out of ICU beds on Friday and the Morgue already can’t keep up.

He was below water in 2004, and combining hating on the right minority with negative campaigning against his opponent was enough to put him over the top. And that was when we had the voting rights act and no other nations openly acting to hurt the country by supporting the worst candidate. 45%, plus campaign funds and unlimited airtime? https://www.people-press.org/2008/12/18/bush-and-public-opinion/

Well the good news is that due to his awful administration and multiple disasters, W was limited to 1-term.

And he's getting a free hour long commercial every day again.

As far as I can tell this is false.

until they die.

I would highly recommend everyone read through this detailed discussion by biologist Ed Yong, really well formatted and thought through. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

For all the talk of available tests, it seems like even this week people who should be tested either can't get one or they're having to wait many hours to get access to the test.

We've seen China reach a point where, if government numbers are believable, they have very low transmission on an average day. South Korea has passed their peak, and are down to a few dozen new diagnosed cases per day. If you have available testing for everyone, and I mean everyone whether they're prisoners, homeless, immigrants, of a race people don't like, whatever - then we can get past this peak over the next 3-4 weeks and then as new cases pop up, the US would have plenty of resources to trace where it came from. Once you're doing that, we've seen how the incidents drop. This can be done, but it requires everyone working together and a commitment from everyone, including the government.