Coronavirus

[Daniel in SD]

I don’t think there has been enough care or strong enough plan put into place for those shut out of work. These stimulus checks won’t be enough for many.

If you believe @MXLRplus, people in CA can get more money right now on unemployment than working. I haven't actually looked to see if that's true or not.

meanwhile rich people sit at home in their McMansions telling everyone to just deal with it while they live easily off their savings or just working from home.

I've got a feeling the rich people sitting at home are the majority of the the let 'er rip crowd as well. Every dollar a rich person spends while sitting at home keeps people employed so I'm not sure about the logic here. Seems like a wealth transfer from the rich to the unfortunate people who have essential jobs.

I hate this virus.

I can definitely agree on that! It seems like some people think it's possible to ignore a pandemic. I wish that were true.

 

[ZeApelido]

We're not gonna get anywhere, and definitely not to the truth, if you resort to ad hominem attacks.

if your argument is 'everyone dies anyways', there's no discussion to have.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Basically: Why can't the US do something like South Korea did?

Or something even better? Is that asking too much?

First we need to turn back time to early March when our infection rate was ~10 per million per day. That's about where South Korea peaked.

We're probably ~20x that level right now.

 

[Norbert]

South Korea is essentially an island (Northern Border is a DMZ with armed guards on both sides) the rest is a close enough single government zone with water surrounding it. Very easy to cut off international travel by land, air, and sea.

Once you stop travel it's just about dealing with what you have. They had a much simpler equation to solve.

US has 50 states all with governments that don't want to cooperate with any other state they don't have to and don't want to cooperate with the federal government.

We have international land borders North and South that are passable by foot, car, etcetera. We have state borders that are passable by foot, car, etcetera in all directions.

We can't even stop travel, which was South Korea's first step, let alone do the 2nd step South Korea took. And that all comes down to Geography and Population Density.

So you are saying this happens because Trump's wall isn't finished yet?

 

[dhanson865]

First we need to turn back time to early March when our infection rate was ~10 per million per day. That's about where South Korea peaked.

We're probably ~20x that level right now.

you'd also have to stop all travel immediately at that point of time like South Korea did. Here in the US you'd have protests and riots in the streets locking everyone in place that quickly.

South Korea enforced quarantines with police/military force backing the rules. Not just saying you should and then ignoring the situation.

You can't police every single road and town in the US like you could in South Korea because of the decrease in population density / increase in area to patrol. The US is an unmanageably large place to lock down in that manner.

 

[dqd88]

if your argument is 'everyone dies anyways', there's no discussion to have.

Sadly, you missed the point due to your emotional reaction, which blinds you to facts and reason.
It's important to view the problem in it's entirety, not just one part. I.e. no one wants to believe that the cost matters, but that would be disingenuous of you and everyone, because we make choices about cost and life/death all the time. It's just that it's become taboo to discuss in the fog of overly dramatic rhetoric which makes it hard to find a holistic approach to solving this problem. Very sad state of affairs.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya puts it best - the decisions/policy we make depends on the death rate. E.g. If it's true that 1/1000 die we would not do a shut down, but if it's 3/100 then we would. Everyone assumed it's 3/100. But we don't have enough data. So he's trying to get it. His study is criticized, but he's not claiming it to be perfect, but it's something, it adds to insights that we did not have before.

 

[Norbert]

First we need to turn back time to early March when our infection rate was ~10 per million per day. That's about where South Korea peaked.

We're probably ~20x that level right now.

Yes, or: we need to approach a level from both sides where test & trace can take over. Both by mitigation from one side, and by increasing testing & tracing capacity from the other side.

 

[Papafox]

South Korea is essentially an island (Northern Border is a DMZ with armed guards on both sides) the rest is a close enough single government zone with water surrounding it. Very easy to cut off international travel by land, air, and sea.

Once you stop travel it's just about dealing with what you have. They had a much simpler equation to solve.

US has 50 states all with governments that don't want to cooperate with any other state they don't have to and don't want to cooperate with the federal government.

We have international land borders North and South that are passable by foot, car, etcetera. We have state borders that are passable by foot, car, etcetera in all directions.

We can't even stop travel, which was South Korea's first step, let alone do the 2nd step South Korea took. And that all comes down to Geography and Population Density.

There's actually a comparison in the U.S. to the island-nation of South Korea: Hawaii. Latest data shows 574 cases total in the state with a total of 9 deaths. Influencing those low numbers are strong shelter at home measures and a decision by the mayor of Honolulu that no transactions (other than financial) take place without both parties wearing masks). There's also the possible advantage of warmer weather and its effect upon how long the virus remains intact.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It seems T wants to limit money and effort spent on testing, with the excuse that not all ventilators were necessary.

He wants to open for business pretty much without further ado. I can't see how that will be anything else than a restart of the same problems.

He’s getting all those ventilators built in May (something like 50k+), so he’s darn well going to make sure they all get used this time around. Good ROI.

If you have enough ventilators, you don’t need to test.

 

[eevee-fan]

 

[SMAlset]

It would have been helpful know if this patient in the ABC7 news story on skin rashes had tested positive for COVID19 or not. But worth mentioning skin rashes or measles like spots may be another possible symptom of the disease based on what has been observed with patients in Europe.

Coronavirus news: Skin rashes emerge as possible symptom of COVID-19, dermatologists say

 

[SMAlset]

Belgium continues to have a lot of fatalities.

Infact in countries with over 50 deaths, it has the highest deaths /1 M population.

ps : The testing situation is either bad (> 25% of tests are +ve) or they have a very high infection rate. Brazil seems to be the worst in this - over 50% are +ve.

SkyNews had an article today on just this topic of why are Belgium’s numbers so high. Basically from the article it says they have always counted all related deaths including those at home, in care facilities, etc unlike other reporting countries that show just for reporting hospitals. Below is AppleNews link, tried to locate on SkyNews but didn’t find a search function.

Coronavirus: Why is Belgium a Europe hotspot for COVID-19 deaths? — Sky News

 

[dqd88]

So, how is Sweden doing?

Let's compare them to a handful of other countries - countries of Western Europe of similar size (Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal), as well as their Scadinavian neighbors (Denmark, Finland, Norway).

Total cases:

Belgium: 37,183
Netherlands: 31,589
Switzerland: 27,404
Portugal: 19,685
Austria: 14,671
Sweden: 13,822
Denmark: 7,242
Norway: 7,069
Finland: 3,681

Cases / million population:

Belgium: 3,208
Switzerland: 3,166
USA: 2,232 (for context)
Portugal: 1,931
Netherlands: 1,844
Austria: 1,629
Sweden: 1,369
Norway: 1,298
Denmark: 1,250
Finland: 664

We can see that Sweden, despite having somewhat relaxed measures, has not exploded in cases as some have predicted. Primary schools remain open. Shopping centers remain open. For now.

Are they doing great? Not exactly. Are they doing horribly? No
Somewhere in the middle. Which I would consider a success since they did not incur near the cost as most other countries.

Of course, the final chapter has not yet been written. They could still see numbers "take off". We will see.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

For someone with no training in biology to conceptualize removing RNA to make a vaccine, I'm mean, I think that's cool.

Yeah, you are like the David Baltimore of Internet Virus Experts.

 

[renim]

So, how is Sweden doing?

.....erland: 27,404
Portugal: 19,685
Austria: 14,671
Sweden: 13,822
Denmark: 7,242
Norway: 7,069
Finland: 3,681

Cases / million population:

Belgium: 3,208
Switzerland: 3,166
USA: 2,232 (for context)
Portugal: 1,931
Netherlands: 1,844
Austria: 1,629
Sweden: 1,369
Norway: 1,298
Denmark: 1,250
Finland: 664

We can see that Sweden, despite having somewhat relaxed measures, has not exploded in cases as some have predicted. Primary schools remain open. Shopping centers remain open. For now.

Are they doing great? Not exactly. Are they doing horribly? No
Somewhere in the middle. Which I would consider a success since they did not incur near the cost as most other countries.

....

Im not so sure their policy is popular with those who vote. Time will tell.

Another point, countries with national service tend to have more effective response re covid19. Im not sure why, i suspect they have greater training against of threat of chemical and biological warfare, that training permeates through society, as does unutilised resources like underground bunker hospitals etc.

 

[dqd88]

So it looks like @eevee-fan is going through all of my prior posts and thumbing them down. Mods is this ok? A blatant attack. Out of nowhere, like 12 thumbs down.
I mean, what the heck kind of behavior is this... real mature.
I guess someone is anti-free speech.

She/he reminds me of TSLAQ, how they attack Tesla fans on twitter (and elsewhere). Shady

@eevee-fan has given out 24 thumbs down in their entire account history - and I just got 12 of them! Hope you had a fun Sat night @eevee-fan, ya snowflake!

 

[NicoV]

Belgium continues to have a lot of fatalities.

Infact in countries with over 50 deaths, it has the highest deaths /1 M population.

ps : The testing situation is either bad (> 25% of tests are +ve) or they have a very high infection rate. Brazil seems to be the worst in this - over 50% are +ve.

I’m repeating the cause for the high number of fatalities in Belgium: we count suspect deaths as covid-19 victims, while other countries only count confirmed cases.
There ‘s a lot of critique in Belgium on the way our stats are counted, since it looks like we have a dramatic outbreak, while the reality is that we’re basically in the same death rate as The Netherlands. The reality is that our hospitals are not overloaded, and everybody who needs care gets the care they would have had in normal times.

Nowadays, one third of our reported deaths are confirmed deaths in hospitals, the remainder are deaths from nursing homes. We now have a lot of extra test capacity, and our government started an extra effort to test all residents and personnel in nursing homes. The initial results indicate that about half of the suspect deaths are not covid related. Over the next couple of weeks, we will get a lot of extra cases and extra deaths in the stats because the nursing home tests will detect cases that would otherwise have gone untested. That will keep skewing our stats to the high, but it doesn’t mean that our situation is worse than in the neighbouring countries. In fact, our situation is better than the neighbouring countries, because we barely had local outbreaks that required the local hospitals to move patients to other locations due to lack of capacity, while this has been very common in France and The Netherlands.

 

[NicoV]

So, how is Sweden doing?

Let's compare them to a handful of other countries - countries of Western Europe of similar size (Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal), as well as their Scadinavian neighbors (Denmark, Finland, Norway).

Total cases:

Belgium: 37,183
Netherlands: 31,589
Switzerland: 27,404
Portugal: 19,685
Austria: 14,671
Sweden: 13,822
Denmark: 7,242
Norway: 7,069
Finland: 3,681

Cases / million population:

Belgium: 3,208
Switzerland: 3,166
USA: 2,232 (for context)
Portugal: 1,931
Netherlands: 1,844
Austria: 1,629
Sweden: 1,369
Norway: 1,298
Denmark: 1,250
Finland: 664

We can see that Sweden, despite having somewhat relaxed measures, has not exploded in cases as some have predicted. Primary schools remain open. Shopping centers remain open. For now.

Are they doing great? Not exactly. Are they doing horribly? No
Somewhere in the middle. Which I would consider a success since they did not incur near the cost as most other countries.

Of course, the final chapter has not yet been written. They could still see numbers "take off". We will see.

Sweden hasn’t peaked yet. And if it has, it is still at a high plateau.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Why all the drama? Serious? It has been nothing but drama from your side for months. A total hysteria freak out.

A blatant attack. Out of nowhere, like 12 thumbs down.
I mean, what the heck kind of behavior is this... real mature.
I guess someone is anti-free speech.

Hmmm...

ya snowflake!

Speaking of snowflakes , look at this guy, having to have his leg amputated due to issues with the ECMO machine he had to be on due to coronavirus infection. Must just be a crazy exception or he has a pre-existing condition, as this is similar to a flu, amirite? /s

AK! ️ on Instagram: “My sweet husband needs your prayers please. Nick has been sick for awhile with what we were told last week was pneumonia. Unfortunately…”

Weird, doesn't seem like there is anything wrong with his lungs here?

@dqd88 do you think it was the lack of fitness, the poor diet, the old age (41 is basically normal life expectancy, right?), or what?

What else might have killed him this year if it hadn't been coronavirus (which hopefully does NOT actually kill him - he is off life support so that is good but ECMO cost him his leg), do you think?

 

[alloverx]