Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve McDonald
The wrong people are mostly in control of the federal government now. So we can look forward to a big change, when the right people are mostly in power.
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The only right person in power is you of yourself. Period.
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Let's talk about
balance here.
Testing is ramping up in the US, becoming more efficient. In two-three weeks, testing should be widespread to the point where - in conjunction with reported cases, hospitalization rates and deaths - enough data is collected to be able to pinpoint hotspots, vectors of outbreak, the most vulnerable sectors of the population, etc. Also more and more hospitals should be receiving enough personal protection equipment, especially those in the most affected areas. Of course not every single hospital will be fully equipped to everyone's satisfaction and the m
assbackwards media will magnify those cases and keep quiet on cases where things are going reasonably well.
In the meantime, lock downs for at least three weeks in counties and States that need it, by discretion of county and State decision-makers, longer if necessary where necessary, even if that means two months or so.
I could also understand some restrictions on inter-State travel for a while: for example, Governor De Santis of Florida has recently ordered anyone flying from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to Florida to be placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine.
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Italy has a population of around 60M - not 330M, not 1.4Bn - densely concentrated in urban areas where not uncommonly three generations live together in relatively small dwellings. By far, most cases are concentrated in one region, Lombardia, capital Milan, Italy's business and international travel center, including many Chinese textile and other businesses, with Chinese nationals who traveled from and back to Italy, through Milan, over the year-end break and into January.
Italy has been on maximum lock down for about two weeks now, not yet three full weeks. As some have mentioned, over the past three-four days, the quantity of new cases and deaths has leveled off, perhaps even tapering off. The Italians will probably need another two-three weeks of maximum lock down. Many regions of central and especially southern Italy are doing relatively well in terms of few cases.
About two days ago the Italian National Health Institute issued a report on CoViD-19 deaths in Italy.
In summary, so far most of the people who died:
1) 70-90 years old;
2) pre-existing high blood pressure, some kind of heart disease or fillibration, diabetes, chronic kidney failure, plus others, in that order, and/or a combination of two or three of those comorbidities;
3) most common symptoms leading to hospitalization were fever and trouble breathing;
4) median of 8 days from onset of symptoms to death;
5) median of 4 days from hospitalization to death;
6) most of the people under 50 who have died also had comorbidities.
In short, mainly elderly people already with mainly cardiovascular disease with fever and trouble breathing for four days at home rushed to the hospital and dying after four days.
This report doesn't say how many of these types the medical staff were able to save with oxygen masks and
ventilators.
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Coming back to the US,
at some point, indeed
the cure is worse than the disease. The worst affected areas will probably reach the
balancing point between the two in two-three weeks, if State and local officials - but mostly the people individually one-by-one - implement the lock down as they should.
Even now and going forward (say three more weeks), less affected areas need and will need fewer restrictive measures.
I know
most people, especially in this the Political Theater and Other Forms of Cheap Entertainment forum,
have trouble breaking out of the strait jacket of two dimensional thinking (stupid ideologies, selfish partisanship, deceiving either/or propositions. etc.)
But fact is many human beings are quite capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, much to the chagrin of those strait-jacketed two-dimensional thinkers.
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One last thing, actually a question, in reference to the Italian report that doesn't mention how many of the typical CoViD-19 patients the medical staff were able to save with oxygen masks and ventilators.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is, regardless of CoViD-19, that a person sick enough to need a ventilator (a breathing machine with tubes down the trachea forcing air into the lungs) probably has a low survival rate anyway, especially if elderly with comorbidities. And if one survives, for how long and what quality of life?
Again, I could be wrong, but even if we quickly retool factories, the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of new ventilators, inspecting them and distributing them could take many months, even a year, not days or weeks.
At the very least,
well worth the industrial exercise if carried out on US soil and a bit of theater.
The Italian economy is not robust enough to support a ventilator manufacturer. The best they have been able to do in recent weeks is have Ferrari retool its factories to produce some ventilator parts.
In short, no ventilators are produced on Italian soil. In fact, Italy's industrial base has been severely under-invested for the past thirty years since the onset of globalization and their best and brightest, going on three generations now, have moved to other countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, UK, US, Australia, Canada, roughly in that order. Italians on Italian soil have very little chance of recovering in the next thirty years from the short-sighted and selfish policy blunders that their septuagenarian and octogenarian decision-makers made some thirty years ago and ongoing.
This is a golden opportunity for the US to avoid a similar syndrome.
Good Luck!
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P.S. This post, and the entire thread, will get buried and lost because most people do not care about Italy, understandable. By the same token, most people did not care about Mussolini (or Salazar or Franco) until Hitler came along and made them care.
Just sayin'.
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