Coronavirus Outbreak...

[carpedm9587]

Please, mister Infectious Disease Expert, tell me how they should have handled it differently?

That list has been posted many times. I see no reason to waste my time posting it yet again since history suggests it will simply be ignored again. And then they accuse me of hand-waving...

Maybe you guys should have let him put up the fence along the border in the first place?

You guys? I think I'll let you talk to whoever "you guys" is.

Maybe the dems shouldn't have complained when he shut down flights from China and other places.

Yep - they were wrong. Understandable - but wrong. Given the harping on anti-immigration for the past 4 years, and the specific targeting of the ban on non-us-citizens with about 11 exceptions, their skepticism is understandable. Frankly, Trump should have done what Italy did: ban ALL travel originating from China with no exceptions the day after our first China-related case was detected. Instead he waited 10 days to announce it, it took effect 3 days later, and it was partial with exception you could drive a truck through.

Oh well - at least he did SOMETHING.

Maybe Trump should have panicked and told us that the world was going to end, initiated Martial Law and placed everyone under house arrest?

I doubt it. I don't even think that is warranted now, much less so then.

[NorrinRadd]

Here's a funny little statistic. The 15 richest people in the U.S. are sitting on $870B in wealth. In the U.S. today:

• 70M people earn less than $25K/year
• 45M earn $25-50K/year
• 34M earn 50-100K/year

If we assume the average for each group is near the median (probably a high assumption actually), these 15 people could pay the salaries of everyone of these Americans for two months and then have to get by on a measly $1B each. If we factor in that not all of these people are unemployed, and we add in the next 85 richest people, we might even get half a year!

What do you say, top 0.1% - time to step up? After all - you made a substantial percentage of those riches on the backs of those very people!


ETA: I have to admit, it came as a bit of a shock that 115M people in the U.S. are living on less than $50K per year, 70M of them below 25K.

I'm not sure I know anyone who makes more than $50K per year. Maybe a few.

[little_monkey]

Interesting. There actually IS a difference between their numbers and the JHU numbers. I use the latter because they also break them down by county in the U.S. I checked two other sites and none of their numbers align perfectly, although the differences between them are a small fraction of the totals, so it doesn't concern me that much. Clearly the trend lines remain closely aligned, and it may well be that they receive numbers at different times, so their numbers at any given time are slightly skewed. I think that may be the explanation because the drift between the Worldometer numbers and JHU show the same skew as the difference between my numbers and JHU because they end their day 24-hours at mid-night and I end mine at 10:00 PM. Midnight is WAY past my bedtime!

Yes, Worldometer takes its number at GMT+0, that is, midnight in Greenwich village, England. The east coast is 4 hours behind, so any reported cases between 8 pm and midnight would be reported the next day on Worldometer.

[carpedm9587]

gee, right after the WHO declared it a pandemic. Amazing.

If "right after" = about a week. The WHO declared the pandemic on 3/11. Trump first acknowledged it on 3/17. In a pandemic showing exponential growth, a week is a lifetime. And in that week Trump was still spouting "we have it all under control" and "I take no responsibility" (a.k.a. - "the buck stops there -->").

Sorry, Sparko. Long before the WHO declared the pandemic, there were countries around the world that were taking strong action to test, isolate, and even shut down borders. Our leader had a task force, did nothing to get production moving on critical supplies, spread misinformation (and he's STILL doing it), and did nothing to nationally coordinate logistics.

As an example of "still doing it," Trump has been touting the testing at every news conference, and even claimed last night that we have done the most tests overall (true) as well as per capita (false). As of this morning, we are 43^rd per capita. I'm sure that there will be a host of reasons why that is acceptable...

[carpedm9587]

I'm not sure I know anyone who makes more than $50K per year. Maybe a few.

Statistically, 37.9% of U.S. Households made under $50K per year in 2018. That leaves 62.1% that make more than that. The majority of U.S. households are at or above $50K.

[carpedm9587]

Yes, Worldometer takes its number at GMT+0, that is, midnight in Greenwich village, England. The east coast is 4 hours behind, so any reported cases between 8 pm and midnight would be reported the next day on Worldometer.

Ahh...there we have it. Now I have a conundrum: use Worldometer which doesn't align with my timezone but has much richer statistics, or continue to use JHU because they align with my timezone and have a really spiffy interface?


I guess I'll follow my globalist statistical heart (and the spiffy interface actually makes it harder to see the numbers) and go with WorldOMeter!

[NorrinRadd]

So much for the (rather obvious) "nobody expected this" lie. Apparently - some people within the administration did expect it, and it was even part of the discussion at a 2019 BioDefense summit.

The man just cannot seem to stand in front of a podium or microphone without lying....

So you agree that Bad Orange Man should pay less heed to people like that weird little turd Fauci and the head of the CDC.

[carpedm9587]

So you agree that Bad Orange Man should pay less heed to people like that weird little turd Fauci and the head of the CDC.

I have no clue how you derived that conclusion from anything I have posted.

[NorrinRadd]

Statistically, 37.9% of U.S. Households made under $50K per year in 2018. That leaves 62.1% that make more than that. The majority of U.S. households are at or above $50K.

Hmm. Ok. I'll have to ponder this.

[shunyadragon]

Will the cases taper off? I do doubt that there will a classic bell, the bell curve implies that it has run its course. We don't have a single epidemic, but a series of outbreaks at differing time and differing severity with differing local responses. If NYC experiences a tapering off, it has to deal with new cases brought in from other areas, other states. What we have is a rolling epidemic, rolling across the countryside.

The epidemic has only hit a few major cities at the present, hospital capacity is not stressed for most of the country. Across New York State, the first cases are only now hitting the nursing homes in most of the state (they are admitted over the protests of administrators hoping to delay the inevitable). When peaks are hit in one place, the cases will be ramping up in others.

We had one governor encouraging citizens to eat at Bob Evans, boasting how crowded it was. Then he closed things down. In spite of the evidence, public officials are hesitant to recognize the potential severity of this. We even have some here questioning if it is some evil media misinformation campaign. A consensus has not been had among 50 governors, which does suggest difficulty among 300 million to proceed with caution through this.

Pandemic skeptics will play a role in allowing the hoped for tapering off.

There is a great deal of evidence from previous virus pandemics that is neglected particularly in the bold above. Natural bell curve paths of viruses are indeed not perfect nor classic(?), but this pattern is nonetheless clear in the data. The present data shows the initial spread is very slow and long before the rapid growth. This is where countries like South Korea, Japan and Germany jumped in proactively and aggressively and were successful in reducing the impact of the virus.

The differences between countries is related to the timing of the introduction of the coronavirus to the population, and the degree of proactive and aggressive efforts to deal with the virus. All follow a bell curve path.

We have the previous pandemics of the 1919-1920 flu pandemic, and the H1N1 pandemic of 2008 as working examples of the natural bell curve of the course of a virus in the population. The virus collectively changes over time as the severity and fatality rate decreases and the pandemic fades away naturally.

[little_monkey]

Ha, the military knew it in 2017.

In addition to anticipating the coronavirus pandemic, the military plan predicted with uncanny accuracy many of the medical supply shortages that it now appears will soon cause untold deaths.

The plan states: “Competition for, and scarcity of resources will include…non-pharmaceutical MCM [Medical Countermeasures] (e.g., ventilators, devices, personal protective equipment such as face masks and gloves), medical equipment, and logistical support. This will have a significant impact on the availability of the global workforce.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/po...tage-pandemic/

[little_monkey]

Ahh...there we have it. Now I have a conundrum: use Worldometer which doesn't align with my timezone but has much richer statistics, or continue to use JHU because they align with my timezone and have a really spiffy interface?


I guess I'll follow my globalist statistical heart (and the spiffy interface actually makes it harder to see the numbers) and go with WorldOMeter!

I'm converting one person at a time...

[Sparko]

Some things South Korea did immediately:

- asked the private sector to develop testing kits
- tested everyone entering country
- tracked the movement history of infected people for their past two weeks using statements, credit card history, cctv footage, transport pass history and mobile phone data history.
- tested infected people’s family and anyone they had contact with for past two weeks
- published and routinely updated the findings and warned people when they were nearing a known infection area
- set up testing booths in numerous locations based off the data
- actively sought out and tested every single person found in known infection zones

Most importantly the South Korean government was transparent in what and how they handled things and their citizens started practicing social distancing and other common sense precautions without government intervention. I don’t know if it’s an asian thing, but I feel that the Australian government took a similar approach but we either don’t listen or we lack common sense. South Korea seems to have got through the worst part without closing their borders or locking down their communities.

I wonder how North Korea is doing..

Most of the stuff on your list would be unconstitutional. As far as tracking, that is up to the CDC not Trump and they were doing it at first then they stopped and put their resources into fighting the disease instead of tracking it. They got the testing and equipment going as fast as they could (you seem to forget this is only a month into when it all started in this country) -- and SK is about the size of one of our states and there is no way to do what they did on the scale of a nation the size of the USA. Johns Hopkins published a tracking map based on the CDC's reporting of cases so that has been done too.

Everything on your list that could be done has been done.

I am sick and tired of you pissant armchair quarterbacks using this crisis to just attack Trump some more, when the attacks against Trump was one of the factors in this entire country being distracted by the Impeachment fiasco in the first place. We need to stop pointing fingers and work together, and that includes the government itself.

[carpedm9587]

Ha, the military knew it in 2017.

https://www.thenation.com/article/po...tage-pandemic/

Prediction: responses will include something akin to "but that predicts the FLU - not a coronavirus!" and "It's The Nation - are you really going to believe that leftist rag?"

[Sparko]

That list has been posted many times. I see no reason to waste my time posting it yet again since history suggests it will simply be ignored again. And then they accuse me of hand-waving...



You guys? I think I'll let you talk to whoever "you guys" is.



Yep - they were wrong. Understandable - but wrong. Given the harping on anti-immigration for the past 4 years, and the specific targeting of the ban on non-us-citizens with about 11 exceptions, their skepticism is understandable. Frankly, Trump should have done what Italy did: ban ALL travel originating from China with no exceptions the day after our first China-related case was detected. Instead he waited 10 days to announce it, it took effect 3 days later, and it was partial with exception you could drive a truck through.

Oh well - at least he did SOMETHING.



I doubt it. I don't even think that is warranted now, much less so then.

Yeah you are more interested in whining and pointing fingers and using the crisis as an excuse to complain about Trump some more. On any team there are those who suggest solutions and those who just tear down every idea and action. You are the latter. You have no solutions, just complaints.