Coronavirus

[TespaceX]

Elon dared them to re-open...
Gov. Newsom Addresses Criticism Of Stay-At-Home Orders From Tesla Founder Elon Musk
Gov. Newsom defends California’s coronavirus response after Elon Musk rant
Passing the political hot-potato to the counties...

You are probably right about that.

Apparently CA gov Newsom announced earlier that hair and nail salons can be open if local counties authorize it.
He now seems to be following the federal gov playbook of passing on the planning and decision making.

It seems as though the county health directors are left to basically do all the work and take all the blame.

 

[rxlawdude]

Exactly. Treat this as you would a measles outbreak. Test, trace and don't shut down the economy. More than 140,000 die from measles as cases surge worldwide

Sure. Other than the fact that there's an effective vaccine for measles and there is not for COVID-19, your example is spot on.

 

[TespaceX]

Column: Moderna execs sold $29 million in stock after its early vaccine announcement

Hmm...

Executives are required to schedule sale of stocks in advance. But, announcements don’t have to be scheduled in advance. If innocent, their timing is impeccable.

Edit: MRNA is down 32% from last week.

 

[madodel]

Yeah, obviously you've been hitting those Clorox Suppositories just a little too hard! I had to cut back too plus I found out you can't mix them with the ammonia suppositories. Bummer!

Do you add vodka to those to increase the burn?

 

[Beltsbear]

We've had more deaths (26) the last two days in R.I. than Hawaii has had total (17). No tourists until a vaccine? Shutdown was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, not to eliminate this virus. Get back to where "we" once belonged. Open the doors and let em in. For the record, I'm not "Macca".

Couldn't a place like Hawaii just test everyone coming in?

 

[AZRI11]

Sure Hawaii and several other states and many counties. But we don't really hear that those have a well organized strategy in using test & trace to replace mitigation. Many apparently do some of it, but as far as I have have heard, they don't commit officially to do a 100% cover.

R.I. is ahead in "test and trace" we even have a smartphone app https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...proposal-to-defy-state-virus-orders-withdrawn I don't have the virus, but I've downloaded the app. Whatever helps, I'm in.

 

[HG Wells]

You are probably right about that.

Apparently CA gov Newsom announced earlier that hair and nail salons can be open if local counties authorize it.
He now seems to be following the federal gov playbook of passing on the planning and decision making.

It seems as though the county health directors are left to basically do all the work and take all the blame.

That's why they pay them the BIG bucks. /S

 

[P3dStealth]

It's funny how we all assume we aren't going to be the person to die if we open everything up and go back to normal. I am in NY. People at my work have died, two of my girlfriends students died and a teacher died, I have an uncle that died.

I have no solution but there are people significantly underrating this virus because we all assume the odds are in our favor. What if you end up alone in a hospital bed trying to text your family and struggling to breath. Even I just assume it's not going to be me.

Saying we need to open up the bars and nail salons and accept more death so someone can make money sounds horrible. As far as NY goes this thing is definitely coming back full force when we all start taking the subway to work again. You can't contact trace someone in NYC. 1 person can expose 200 on one train ride. The news won't say it but obviously that's why NY and long island are bad. We cram into trains.

Maybe we will get a vaccine, maybe we won't. I'd rather not die before we find out though so you won't see me out and about this summer.

 

[TespaceX]

R.I. is ahead in "test and trace" we even have a smartphone app https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...proposal-to-defy-state-virus-orders-withdrawn I don't have the virus, but I've downloaded the app. Whatever helps, I'm in.

I wonder what percentage of people testing positive actually volunteer to use a contact tracing app and identify themselves as having been infected. Not just in RI, but across the country.

To be effective, IMO, a positive test should be automatically entered into tracing databases. But, of course, we have privacy advocates against such things.

GIGO.

 

[dfwatt]

Do you add vodka to those to increase the burn?

OMG! You must be some kind of burn junkie. You're already getting plenty of burn from the combination of ammonia and chlorine bleach. That liberates copious amounts of free chlorine which means those little viral boogers don't stand a chance. Of Course. . neither does anything else, which gives new meaning to the term 'side effect'!!

But that's a small detail

 

[Daniel in SD]

It's funny how we all assume we aren't going to be the person to die if we open everything up and go back to normal. I am in NY. People at my work have died, two of my girlfriends students died and a teacher died, I have an uncle that died.

I have no solution but there are people significantly underrating this virus because we all assume the odds are in our favor. What if you end up alone in a hospital bed trying to text your family and struggling to breath. Even I just assume it's not going to be me.

Saying we need to open up the bars and nail salons and accept more death so someone can make money sounds horrible. As far as NY goes this thing is definitely coming back full force when we all start taking the subway to work again. You can't contact trace someone in NYC. 1 person can expose 200 on one train ride. The news won't say it but obviously that's why NY and long island are bad. We cram into trains.

Maybe we will get a vaccine, maybe we won't. I'd rather not die before we find out though so you won't see me out and about this summer.

People also seem to think if you get COVID-19 you die or you have the sniffles. Even after clearing the virus many people still haven't fully recovered months later.
South Korea, Japan, and China all have a lot of public transit and have managed to get it under control. There's hope that NYC will as well.

Couldn't a place like Hawaii just test everyone coming in?

There's a lot of info out there saying that PCR tests are only about 80% accurate (though I think this has a lot to do with the skill of the person collecting the sample). Also, you don't test positive until a few days after becoming infected. I think the countries that plan on keeping the virus out are all quarantining people for 14 days in government run facilities right now. I would think that Hawaii's best option would be to try to become part of a "travel bubble" with COVID "free" countries. It's not clear if they'll be able to keep it form getting reintroduced from the mainland though.

 

[TEG]

Just as Covid-19 cases keep rising in 17 states, holiday revelers cram together without masks - CNN

Nearing 100,000 COVID-19 Deaths, U.S. Is Still 'Early In This Outbreak'

Coronavirus is just 'tip of iceberg,' Chinese researcher cautions

 

[dfwatt]

Just as Covid-19 cases keep rising in 17 states, holiday revelers cram together without masks - CNN

Nearing 100,000 COVID-19 Deaths, U.S. Is Still 'Early In This Outbreak'

Coronavirus is just 'tip of iceberg,' Chinese researcher cautions

With all due respect to the Fox News link (blaming the Chinese for the pandemic), this pandemic is not some big surprise or some kind of shocking news to anyone who's been listening to ID specialists. I remember very distinctly sitting in our medical staff cafeteria about 5 years ago listening to the ID guys talk about how totally unprepared we were for any version of a severe respiratory viral epidemic. Alarm has been out there for a long time. It was only our current group of morons in Washington that dismissed that warning, and didn't want to be listening to a bunch of geeky pointy-headed intellectuals, and who subsequently disassembled the pandemic preparedness team, leading to the current inept and unprepared moment. It should be painfully obvious from this one that we're clearly not remotely prepared for the next one.

God save us if we have a similar crew of anti-science, arrogant, incompetent, or sociopathic knuckleheads running the show once again. The outcome will be about the same. Frickin disaster both from an economic and health standpoint. What people don't understand is that control over the transmission chain process is not only essential to the health of the population, it's the only way to minimize the damage to the economy. If you don't get control over the transmission chain process you're toasted on both of those counts. This is what the "open up" agitators don't really seem to understand. Public health and economic health cannot be separated. While there are trade-offs, ultimately the best protection for the economy is for people to feel safe. In the absence of that people are not going to transact economically in an optimal fashion.

 

[madodel]

OMG! You must be some kind of burn junkie. You're already getting plenty of burn from the combination of ammonia and chlorine bleach. That liberates copious amounts of free chlorine which means those little viral boogers don't stand a chance. Of Course. . neither does anything else! But that's a small detail

I missed the ammonia. Ammonia and chlorine is a well tested combination. Do people need to be ventilated first or are you expecting this combo to take care of any lung issues, like breathing?

 

[FreshPrince]

With all due respect to the Fox News link (blaming the Chinese for the pandemic), this pandemic is not some big surprise or some kind of shocking news to anyone who's been listening to ID specialists. I remember very distinctly sitting in our medical staff cafeteria about 5 years ago listening to the ID guys talk about how totally unprepared we were for any version of a severe respiratory viral epidemic. Alarm has been out there for a long time. It was only our current group of morons in Washington that dismissed that warning, and didn't want to be listening to a bunch of geeky pointy-headed intellectuals, and who subsequently disassembled the pandemic preparedness team, leading to the current inept and unprepared moment. It should be painfully obvious from this one that we're clearly not remotely prepared for the next one.

No pandemic preparedness plan I have seen predicted Federal Government pretending there's no pandemic while at the same time blaming foreign power for anything that is happening within our borders.

 

[SVMike]

It's funny how we all assume we aren't going to be the person to die if we open everything up and go back to normal. I am in NY. People at my work have died, two of my girlfriends students died and a teacher died, I have an uncle that died.

I have no solution but there are people significantly underrating this virus because we all assume the odds are in our favor. What if you end up alone in a hospital bed trying to text your family and struggling to breath. Even I just assume it's not going to be me.

Saying we need to open up the bars and nail salons and accept more death so someone can make money sounds horrible. As far as NY goes this thing is definitely coming back full force when we all start taking the subway to work again. You can't contact trace someone in NYC. 1 person can expose 200 on one train ride. The news won't say it but obviously that's why NY and long island are bad. We cram into trains.

Maybe we will get a vaccine, maybe we won't. I'd rather not die before we find out though so you won't see me out and about this summer.

Sorry for your losses. You make some very good points.

However, what is missing and seems to be taboo is any kind of adult conversation about what the limits are that society could/should take to eliminate every single possible COVID-19 death compared to the efforts/dollars/GDP spent to stop other deaths.
A very simple (and incomplete) example is that the lock downs have caused traffic deaths to drop about in half. That is half of ~40K deaths per year but we spend very little to stop this, relatively. And there are about a million non-fatal injuries per year in addition.
Why not just have a permanent shut down to stop all these deaths and injuries?
Please discuss in a calm manner.

If you were to assume that no vaccine ever arrives, what is the end game for all the closures and what mitigation efforts should be done going forward? We all know how the death rates are skewed to older and other factors.

 

[bkp_duke]

Sorry for your losses. You make some very good points.

However, what is missing and seems to be taboo is any kind of adult conversation about what the limits are that society could/should take to eliminate every single possible COVID-19 death compared to the efforts/dollars/GDP spent to stop other deaths.
A very simple (and incomplete) example is that the lock downs have caused traffic deaths to drop about in half. That is half of ~40K deaths per year but we spend very little to stop this, relatively. And there are about a million non-fatal injuries per year in addition.
Why not just have a permanent shut down to stop all these deaths and injuries?
Please discuss in a calm manner.

If you were to assume that no vaccine ever arrives, what is the end game for all the closures and what mitigation efforts should be done going forward? We all know how the death rates are skewed to older and other factors.

There is a key difference, and where your analogy fails:
With traffic deaths there are possibly other ways to mitigate and reduce the risk (reduce speed limits, improve car safety, etc. etc.).

Right now, we have no vaccine, until recently we had no treatments that would reduce the death rate for sick patients (and the one we have is only marginal). Social distancing is literally the only weapon we have.

That is a significant difference, and one I think the proponents of releasing the restrictions either ignore or gloss over.



Note, I'm not saying keep people locked down completely, but we (the USA) have shown the entire world how NOT to do things. It has been a failure at every level, because of stubborn ignorance. Japan does not have the same restrictions, but their population wears masks when they are sick (for anything), and you have not see the same problem as here. Their population is even older, and should be more affected than us.

 

[kbM3]

Horowitz: The CDC confirms remarkably low coronavirus death rate. Where is the media?

Elon was right all along. IMO.

I am responding to you in the coronavirus thread. That article is wrong. Valid sources of news can sometimes be wrong, but they are never as disingenuous as this article. They are conflating the WHO CASE fatality rate with the CDC INFECTION fatality rate, plus they are using the asymptomatic percentage from another study, rather than from the CDC study, from which they are quoting, in order to further exaggerate their case.

I stopped reading after that. Doubtlessly they made many other mistakes.

So it is highly recommended, you drop this as a source of news. Articles displaying this kind of disingenuousness, will always be a source of disinformation purposely.

 

[TEG]

...Social distancing is literally the only weapon we have...

( In your Monty Python spam & baked beans voice ):

"Mask! Masks! Masks!, Hand-washing and Masks!"

 

[UrsS]

Sorry for your losses. You make some very good points.

However, what is missing and seems to be taboo is any kind of adult conversation about what the limits are that society could/should take to eliminate every single possible COVID-19 death compared to the efforts/dollars/GDP spent to stop other deaths.
A very simple (and incomplete) example is that the lock downs have caused traffic deaths to drop about in half. That is half of ~40K deaths per year but we spend very little to stop this, relatively. And there are about a million non-fatal injuries per year in addition.
Why not just have a permanent shut down to stop all these deaths and injuries?
Please discuss in a calm manner.
.

..but we spend very little to stop this.. Really? Although I have no data to support my inkling here, but I think that the amount of money spent on an ongoing base to reduce traffic injuries and death far exceeds whatever is, has been, and will be spent on Covid-19; probably including the trillions of tax payer's Dollars going to big corporations right now.
One example is the efforts made by Tesla to build the safest (read: prevent injuries and death) car. Do you think that did - and still does - not cost anything? And this has been going on for over a century now.