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The US is going to shut itself down probably within a week. So for that to happen would warrant an event so catastrophic that I question. What really is going on, What are we not being told. There is more to this story than Covid19. More to it that people like Hanks are diagnosed and have a mild case and go home. Things just are not adding up with this level of panic and economic disaster. Surely others must be noticing this. This is not a Cholera or Bubonic. plague breakout.
I too have been telling people that something is going on that we aren't being told. It doesn't feel right. We accept far greater losses all the time. I don't know what's going on and I'm not a conspiracy theorist thinking it's some kind of New World Order take-over-the-world kind of thing.
My biggest question is do they really think shutting things down for 30 days is going to accomplish anything? Or do they know it's going to be much much longer and they are phasing it in?
The question then becomes, how many people would recover, if given proper palliative care, who would otherwise die, if denied hospital admission and told to go crawl under a park-bench? Is this millions? Thousands? How many?
Hundreds of thousands, if not several million, Ohio Peasant. That's your answer.
I'm not agreeing with this social distancing stuff. We need an economy. Massive layoffs could start soon.
Social distancing is meant to cushion the impact of the virus infections. What economy will we have if we are like Italy where everything is shut down AND many are dying. If look at Italy that did not do social distancing, the death rate is almost 4% (about 3.8%), in South Korea where they did social distancing, death rate is about 5x less and below 1% (about 0.7%).
Social distancing is not a choice between economy vs disease, the economy will be impacted either way, it is the cost of lives in the meantime. With social distancing, there is still an economy but more limited, the attempt is to prevent longer term massive layoffs. In Korea, the largest infected group is those in their 20's at almost 30% of all infections - while they may have better survival results, that is the group spreading the infection.
It is very selfish and irresponsible to ignore the guidance. It is views like this that WILL really shut down the economy if they have to put stronger measures in place to enforce social distancing.
Social distancing is meant to cushion the impact of the virus infections.
Exactly.
This thing spreads very quickly. Without these measures, we would have 10 million dead in the US within a fairly short amount of time. The hospitals would be severely overloaded and many who might have survived with adequate treatment would die due to the lack.
The intent of 'flattening the curve' is (1) to reduce the impact on health care facilities in order to make resources/treatment available to more people over time so that more can survive; (2) Buy time to dispose of the bodies that would start piling up if the disease were allowed to run it's course unchecked; and (3) Buy time in a frantic rush to find more effective treatments and/or a vaccine (and, possibly, the hope that, if denied hosts, the course of the virus will be significantly reduced...but I am not convinced that this hope is realistic, since many who experience mild symptoms may be likely to continue to spread the disease, unaware that they have it).
The consequences of allowing the disease to spread unchecked would be massive. The economy would likely suffer anyway, as people stay out of work attempting to care for the sick and dying. The bodies would start stacking up faster than they could be disposed of, and there would be more of them because people who might have survived with appropriate care will not, due to lack of available facilities/equipment.
Which consequence is worse? Who can say? But, I think it is fairly certain that there would be much criticism of a government that chose to be so callous as to make no efforts to check the disease...though, since the bulk of the dead would be in the older age range, and having seen some of the posts of certain members of this very site, it appears to me that there are *some* who would be happy to see that...
I too have been telling people that something is going on that we aren't being told. It doesn't feel right. We accept far greater losses all the time. I don't know what's going on and I'm not a conspiracy theorist thinking it's some kind of New World Order take-over-the-world kind of thing.
My biggest question is do they really think shutting things down for 30 days is going to accomplish anything? Or do they know it's going to be much much longer and they are phasing it in?
It probably won't be just 30 days, more likely we will call it every 30 days until that curve peaks and then flattens enough to have more resources in place to deal with those who are the sickest. We'll probably start slow, with certain industries returning while watching and waiting for the next hit and seeing how well we deal with it. Hopefully it won't require such drastic measures and we are dealing with now, at least in CA where the whole state is in a sort of lock down. Some industries may not return for quite awhile though, I'm think things where large number gather in close quarters like theaters, sporting events, churches, etc. Schools may fair better with their younger populations but if older people aren't willing to risk it then some places will remain shut for quite awhile.
In the meantime we'll be working on more and better treatments and even preventions, so it get's easier and easier to handle.
I'm amazed how many people are willing to let millions die for the economy. We're talking more people that died in wars. Either that or they refuse to believe covid-19 is serious.
Does anyone seriously think that millions dying off all around us would have no economic effect? There's no good way out of this. It's one of those once-in-a-century events and it's here.
It probably won't be just 30 days, more likely we will call it every 30 days until that curve peaks and then flattens enough to have more resources in place to deal with those who are the sickest. We'll probably start slow, with certain industries returning while watching and waiting for the next hit and seeing how well we deal with it.
Sounds like an approach doomed to failure. The economy is like a living breathing entity composed of millions of complex interactions that have reached an equilibrium. One sector cannot fire up without all the other sectors on which they depend. Namely customers, who are less likely to be customers without their jobs, however obscure and seemingly unrelated those jobs may be. It's like building a plane and expecting it to fly higher each time you add a part. Oh, here's a wing. Now take off and if all goes well we'll add the other wing.
I started a new thread because I haven't seen this theory discussed.
While doing some reading today I came across an article that quoted an infectious disease expert that was highlighting how the virus will end.
In his worst case scenario he said this can turn into the common cold or flu. He discussed how this has spread so much that it may be here to stay permanently and never go away like the flu or common cold. A vaccine could be developed that works relatively well but dosent provide immunity. Similar to the flu shot.
When would we know if this scenario is confirmed? If an effective vaccine isn't developed in the next year?
The doctor was of the opinion that containment was no longer possible. If that is the case when do we treat this like the flu and open back up businesses and schools and just bite the bullet that some people will die? Just like people die from the flu, pneumonia, and second hand smoke. But we dont shut down the world in fear of those. I obviously understand that coronavirus is not the flu and the unknown right now is what is causing the panic. However I think this is a conversation to be had.
Pretty likely. Coronavirus isn't uncommon. There's four widespread human coronaviruses, SARS, MERS, and now COVID-19 brings it up to seven. The first four are basically the common cold. They mutate quickly and never go away. SARS and MERS were pretty much contained. While they mutated from an animal coronavirus they never really reached numbers to survive in human to human transmission. That is whatever mutation that allowed them jump from animals to humans and then humans to humans never went widespread.
At this point containment of COVID-19 is optimistic. It's wide spread enough in humans that there's a good chance that it isn't going to go away. So yeah, there's a chance it will join the portfolio and we'll have five types of coronavirus that just circulate through. In that case eventually we'll all get it and it will become more like the other four.
Right now we're a bit like an isolated tribe in the Amazon or the Native Americans when Europeans brought some novel diseases over. If it doesn't go away in 20 years pretty much everyone will have gotten it and while it may continually mutate and recirculate year after year it will no longer be a novel coronavirus and much less deadly. Or it will mutate in new and exciting ways and become more deadly. That's less likely but also possible.
On the upside if you had to pick between MERS, SARS, and Covid-19 to join the portfolio, you'd pick Covid-19 every time. Assuming we can avoid overloading healthcare by slowing the spread it's not going to wipe out half the world's population. Even if we can't it's not going to wipe out half the world's population. MERS might have.
At this point containment of COVID-19 is optimistic. It's wide spread enough in humans that there's a good chance that it isn't going to go away. So yeah, there's a chance it will join the portfolio and we'll have five types of coronavirus that just circulate through. In that case eventually we'll all get it and it will become more like the other four.
Right now we're a bit like an isolated tribe in the Amazon or the Native Americans when Europeans brought some novel diseases over. If it doesn't go away in 20 years pretty much everyone will have gotten it and while it may continually mutate and recirculate year after year it will no longer be a novel coronavirus and much less deadly. Or it will mutate in new and exciting ways and become more deadly. That's less likely but also possible.
Right now, there are many strains of common flu so the annual vaccine targets a handful of strains projected to be the biggest problem. Sometimes their projections are off and the vaccine never protects against all strains so that is why many vaccinated people still get the flu. With the issues that COVID-19 presents it will probably be one of the strains targeted every year until it is eradicated, if ever.
COVID-19 genome has shown to be relatively stable so far, mutating about 10% the rate of other flu viruses. Typically, viruses mutate to be less lethal since killing the host is killing itself so the most lethal variants don't live as long or propagate as much as the less lethal variants.
I too have been telling people that something is going on that we aren't being told. It doesn't feel right. We accept far greater losses all the time. I don't know what's going on and I'm not a conspiracy theorist thinking it's some kind of New World Order take-over-the-world kind of thing.
My biggest question is do they really think shutting things down for 30 days is going to accomplish anything? Or do they know it's going to be much much longer and they are phasing it in?
You have to remember, this is officially a national crisis, FEMA has a lot of say right now, you can bet they have a hand in the content in Trumps daily speeches too.
Its interesting that during such a crisis, FEMA actually has the authority to withhold and even 'alter' news and information, if they feel it may cause a mass panic...I think this is why we are seeing many of the current actions being taken, like daily press conferences, relatively short 'lockdowns' that go from month to month, no real time line on opening things back up...they are sort of keeping the public held up on a string at the moment.
I have a feeling this is being done to prevent large scale mass panic in cities, but they wont be able to contain it forever.
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