StrangeSox

I can only go off of this article and the discussion I heard, but basically: Superspreading is still poorly understood overall Some people seem to shed a lot more viral load than others Conditions e.g. indoors matter Behavior e.g. not socially distancing, not frequently washing hands, participating in choral practice matters

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all This was talked about in the TWiV podcast I linked a page or two ago.

If you want to listen to a bunch of infectious disease doctors, epidemologists, and virologists talk about this stuff weekly, you can check out this podcast. They seem to understand that they've gotten a broader audience than they're typically used to over the past couple of months and so do a decent job of explaining some of the jargon. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/ Interesting case/treatment updates and discussions of latest research out there.

The CDC is also conflating testing stats. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/

trillions but we're the world reserve currency and borrowing's free right now so print those checks

France and Spain did large studies as well and both came up with 5%. These are two of the hardest hit countries.

Hope these changes are based on medical expertise and not economic or political pressure

Never could have seen this coming

I probably won't eat in a restaurant until we hit phase 5 (treatment or vaccine or minimal cases in state). Unfortunately probably the same for travel.

in the picture on the right, he could be my older brother's twin (minus the tats), down to the facial expression

Virginia and Colorado are also including antibody tests as well I believe, though I'm not so sure about only counting positive COVID tests. Either way, lots of states are juking the stats for total testing, positive test rates, and death rates. We're going to take the "magical thinking" option of pretending the problem isn't even real and suppressing any information to the contrary.

I think we'll see initial surges of pent-up demand (and some people trying to make a political point) followed by a tapering off to levels much lower than they were in the Before Times.

" And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."

If only we had first hand accounts of this, on this very thread. Oh well.

More lazy responses to arguments nobody actually made.

He wasn't telling people to stay calm. He was saying we had 15 cases and it was going to go to zero soon. Either he was profoundly unprepared to handle what was coming very shortly, something that he had been warned about internally for weeks by that point, or he was lying to the American people in a deeply damaging way. He continues to push unproven and dangerous fixes to this day. It's dangerous. Ventilator production was eventually ramped up after long delays. Thankfully, thanks to effective social distancing measures, our hospitals haven't been overwhelmed and the initial shortages didn't cost lives. Instead, states have had to bid against each other while the federal government confiscates supplies to do who knows what with them. A competent government would have ramped up PPE production in January or February. Other countries haven't seen the level of dysfunction we have. He has no direct power to force states closed or open. What he has done is claim that he has this power, told states to do what they think is best, had his administration release guidelines for opening and then strongly attacked those states and encouraged protests and defiance if they don't open up right away in contradiction with his own guidelines. The CDC is not advocating for locking down forever. This is more lazyiness. They in fact have put out guidelines for states reopening, though they were initially blocked by Trump officials. I'm not willing to simply write off the lives of the elderly or have some other disease. A competent federal government would be able to stem the economic damage, but the failures there include both parties in Congress. I too have friends who have suffered huge downturns in their business, but they both fully support taking sane, rational measures to address a pandemic. This is one lazy half-truth excuse after another.

It's a Monday! We always get low reports on Mondays. I'm happy that my MIL is one of the negative tests today, though. It was fun having to wait all weekend. My boss took an antibody test today and will get those results in a few more days.

The CDC does lots of things. He specifically fired the pandemic preparation team. Lots of people wrote, at the time, that this was going to leave us seriously unprepared in the event of a pandemic. Not hindsight, foresight. Really obvious foresight. A reasonable President: wouldn't have been insisting in late February that this would never break out in the US. wouldn't be peddling snake oil cures or lying about testing availability or necessity. may have invoked the DPA much earlier in order to ramp up production of PPE and other medical equipment. would have implemented a national strategy for PPE purchasing and distribution rather than states having to do James Bond-level shit including guarding their purchases with state national guard forces so they don't get confiscated by the federal government and then disappear would have implemented a national strategy for locking down for a duration and then safely reopening rather than constantly going back and forth over whether he has total authority over states would not try to wash his hands and eventually say "well it's up to the states" while at the same time attacking any states that don't do exactly what he wants would not have stopped the CDC from issuing reasonable, science-based guidelines for states to reopen That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's plenty more. The failures here are not solely within the White House or at the federal level, though. You can find numerous posts from me and others in this thread criticizing Cuomo, De Blasio, and others. I think the House Democrats are still failing to put forward the policies we need and the leadership we're lacking. You just keep saying any specific criticisms of the way the federal government has addressed or failed to address this pandemic are lazy without ever really addressing anything. The federal government has failed here, and it's cost Americans lives, and their failures will continue to cost lives.