Coronavirus

[Bazza]

 

Quote

Spotted in Melbourne, the mural is a tribute to health workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

🎨: Brigitte Dawson and Melissa Turner via ABC Melbourne

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]

[ScottishFox]

10 hours ago, Cancer said:

The pros know this, and this aggravating uncertainty is one reason why different peoples' projections and models vary.

 

One of my concerns is that the original IMHE model was more than 20x higher than current projections and that the planet as a whole may have overreacted something fierce to something that is going to be far less deadly than expected.

 

I think we're on track for 35-40 million unemployed (if not more) now and that will have a body count of its own.

 

I know mileage varies considerably by location, but in Texas we're currently under 25% of what a bad flu season would do.  Obviously it would be worse without the shutdown, but ... bad enough to justify the tens of millions of unemployed and people losing their businesses forever?

 

I have a sense of growing dread that, with the best of intentions, made the situation worse.

 

Here's a good NPR article on how South Korea and Singapore shut down the virus early without the full bore shutdown that many countries (like the USA) have done.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/26/821688981/how-south-korea-reigned-in-the-outbreak-without-shutting-everything-down

 

The other thing that South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have in common is that they've been able to keep most factories, shopping malls and restaurants open. Singapore has even kept its schools open at a time when nations around the world are shutting down classrooms.

 

Here's South Koreas daily case count:

 

For a country with 51 million people they are kicking ass.  Low case count - very low death count.

[Cygnia]

[Ternaugh]

52 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

One of my concerns is that the original IMHE model was more than 20x higher than current projections and that the planet as a whole may have overreacted something fierce to something that is going to be far less deadly than expected.

 

I think we're on track for 35-40 million unemployed (if not more) now and that will have a body count of its own.

 

I know mileage varies considerably by location, but in Texas we're currently under 25% of what a bad flu season would do.  Obviously it would be worse without the shutdown, but ... bad enough to justify the tens of millions of unemployed and people losing their businesses forever?

 

I have a sense of growing dread that, with the best of intentions, made the situation worse.

 

Here's a good NPR article on how South Korea and Singapore shut down the virus early without the full bore shutdown that many countries (like the USA) have done.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/26/821688981/how-south-korea-reigned-in-the-outbreak-without-shutting-everything-down

 

The other thing that South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have in common is that they've been able to keep most factories, shopping malls and restaurants open. Singapore has even kept its schools open at a time when nations around the world are shutting down classrooms.

 

Here's South Koreas daily case count:

 

For a country with 51 million people they are kicking ass.  Low case count - very low death count.

 

Singapore isn't necessarily a good example, as they're now identifying a massive increase in the number of cases within the migrant worker community.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/world/asia/coronavirus-singapore.html

[Old Man]

Yes, my Singaporean coworkers are not happy about that.  At all.  Their case trajectory is starting to look like that of any other country, only delayed by 40 days.

[Old Man]

[Old Man]

[Old Man]

I hope you got your tax refund already: coronavirus cripples IRS

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

Singapore isn't necessarily a good example, as they're now identifying a massive increase in the number of cases within the migrant worker community.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/world/asia/coronavirus-singapore.html

 

This is the danger in making assumptions about how controlled the virus is, and relaxing controls too early. The damn thing can pop up again and spread, like embers of a fire you stop putting water on before it's completely cooled down.

 

The current tally of infections and fatalities is much lower than initially projected, because the projections were based on us doing nothing! It wasn't an overreaction, it was the appropriate reaction given what we knew at the time. The only way to tell whether it was more than necessary, will be after it's over and we can collect all the relevant data. Second-guessing now will just fuel anger and recriminations which we can't afford to be distracted by. In any case, overreacting is better than underreacting, because in the final analysis it saved lives regardless.

[Cygnia]

Study Of Hydroxychloroquine As Coronavirus Treatment Finds More Deaths, No Benefit

[megaplayboy]

[Lawnmower Boy]

6 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

One of my concerns is that the original IMHE model was more than 20x higher than current projections and that the planet as a whole may have overreacted something fierce to something that is going to be far less deadly than expected.

 

I think we're on track for 35-40 million unemployed (if not more) now and that will have a body count of its own.

 

I know mileage varies considerably by location, but in Texas we're currently under 25% of what a bad flu season would do.  Obviously it would be worse without the shutdown, but ... bad enough to justify the tens of millions of unemployed and people losing their businesses forever?

 

I have a sense of growing dread that, with the best of intentions, made the situation worse.

 

Here's a good NPR article on how South Korea and Singapore shut down the virus early without the full bore shutdown that many countries (like the USA) have done.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/26/821688981/how-south-korea-reigned-in-the-outbreak-without-shutting-everything-down

 

The other thing that South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have in common is that they've been able to keep most factories, shopping malls and restaurants open. Singapore has even kept its schools open at a time when nations around the world are shutting down classrooms.

 

Here's South Koreas daily case count:

 

For a country with 51 million people they are kicking ass.  Low case count - very low death count.

Hold on here a minute. The other day I was on in front when I heard a neighbour refer to "the United S--tshow of America," and it shook me up a bit. As an ordinarily partisan person, I was taking a certain amount of unholy pleasure in the egg on Donald Trump's face, but this has gone way, way too far. I'm glad to see that my friends here on the Hero Boards aren't going as crazy partisan as some, and observing that since the deaths in the United States haven't gone as high as some have predicted, the whole social-distancing/shelter in place thing was unnecessary. But. . . 

 

i) The United States has already seen 813,000 COVID-19 cases and 45,000 deaths. A reasonable extrapolation takes this forward to deaths in the six figure range, but only if social distancing measures remain in place. So far, no jurisdiction has been so bold as to end social distancing prematurely --and, make no mistake, it would be premature to do this in the United States right now-- but Italy, which implemented its lock down too late, has seen 60,000 deaths. By simple extrapolation, that would correspond to 350,000 dead Americans. I hope that we can all agree that that is completely unacceptable.

 

ii) Comparisons with the East Asian countries, which had institutional experience, cultural adaptation, favourable geography, and a timely response, is idle fantasy. Even had the United States had those advantages, the moment when this could have been Singapore, even assuming that Singapore's late spike is contained, is long gone.

 

iii) Texas, today, is reporting 20,200 cases and 517 deaths in the familiar pattern of exponential growth beginning to damp off after two weeks of lockdown. The distribution of cases is statewide. This is uncontrolled community spread. The only reason that the death totals seem reasonable is that this is comparatively early in the pandemic. Many more of those 20,200 will die, and more will catch the disease, and more will die. Tracking and monitoring is impossible in this situation. The only way that a jurisdiction can move to a managed reopening is by first getting new cases down to the point where each one can be identified and the contacts traced. That is not possible here, and won't be possible for several weeks, at least. Any scaling back of the lockdown will just throw away the gains already made. Again, the Italian case shows what can happen. You don't need complex models to understand what is going to happen to any jurisdiction so foolish as to try to ride out a COVID19 pandemic on the scale of Italy's. You just say to yourself, "Like Italy, but worse."

 

iv) When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbour, the result was, in the short term, massive unemployment. This ended as labour shifted to war work. But it also shifted because a full 10% of the American population was drafted, and was essentially paid to do nothing productive for five years. All of this was paid for by the familiar mechanics of war finance, and the United States came of the experience the stronger for it.

 

I'm not seeing why the coronavirus has to be different. I can see why one might choose for it to be different. The immediate postwar era was the golden age of what Keynes called "the euthanasia of the rentier, year after year of inflation higher than interest rates and high taxes to contain inflation. And yet it is also remembered as a period of prosperity for the middle and working classes --an era in which wealth inequality fell to historically low levels and in which we saw unprecedented social and technological progress.  

 

I say we choose that future. Since it also happens to be the future in which many fewer people die, it strikes me as a no-brainer. That being said, I don't have $10 billion in the bank subject to the insidious wealth tax of inflation-above-interest-returns, so maybe I'm just a special interest. 

[Old Man]

I'm not sure what to make of the handwringing over the economic effects of the lockdown.  First, people don't seem to realize they're advocating for jobs at the expense of an exponential increase in dead Americans.  Second, they don't seem to realize that an exponential increase in dead Americans will wreck the economy even worse than the lockdown.  So it's a position that's both reprehensible and poorly thought through.

 

The solution to the economic ramifications of the lockdown is monthly relief checks to the people that actually need it.  Just like in every other Western democracy that is experiencing the pandemic.  The solution is not to take off the parachute now that it has slowed our descent.

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

I'm not sure what to make of the handwringing over the economic effects of the lockdown.  First, people don't seem to realize they're advocating for jobs at the expense of an exponential increase in dead Americans.  Second, they don't seem to realize that an exponential increase in dead Americans will wreck the economy even worse than the lockdown.  So it's a position that's both reprehensible and poorly thought through.

 

How many people think past their next paycheck?  Or outside of the tunnel vision it creates?

[Old Man]

Exactly.  And you can't fault them for wanting to believe that we have this thing licked.  But we don't.  Not when the US case trajectory has been an almost perfectly straight upward sloping line for three weeks under lockdown conditions.

[Old Man]

A study of hydroxychloroquine and HCQ+azithromycin treatment outcomes in U.S. veterans hospitalized with COVID-19 (preprint)

 

CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19. An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone.

[Ragitsu]

2 hours ago, Lawnmower Boy said:

ii) Comparisons with the East Asian countries, which had institutional experience, cultural adaptation, favourable geography, and a timely response, is idle fantasy. Even had the United States had those advantages, the moment when this could have been Singapore, even assuming that Singapore's late spike is contained, is long gone.

 

This factor above all else cannot be stressed enough; the adverse effects of those other considerations you mentioned can be mitigated (to varying degrees) with the right mindset. At a time when we should be acting as Neutral Good or even Lawful Good, far too many have decided to embrace Chaotic Neutral instead.

[Pattern Ghost]

Very not safe for work rant:

[ScottishFox]

2 hours ago, Lawnmower Boy said:

i) The United States has already seen 813,000 COVID-19 cases and 45,000 deaths. A reasonable extrapolation takes this forward to deaths in the six figure range, but only if social distancing measures remain in place. So far, no jurisdiction has been so bold as to end social distancing prematurely --and, make no mistake, it would be premature to do this in the United States right now-- but Italy, which implemented its lock down too late, has seen 60,000 deaths. By simple extrapolation, that would correspond to 350,000 dead Americans. I hope that we can all agree that that is completely unacceptable.

*  It's a lot more than we want - to be sure - but it assumes the same age demographics, comorbidity levels and quality of healthcare.  At least in the realm of health care quality - the USA has a substantial advantage.

*  Multiple states are opening back up - in stages - to see how it goes.  They're trying to balance economic need and health risk.

 

ii) Comparisons with the East Asian countries, which had institutional experience, cultural adaptation, favourable geography, and a timely response, is idle fantasy. Even had the United States had those advantages, the moment when this could have been Singapore, even assuming that Singapore's late spike is contained, is long gone.

*  I'll agree that America as a whole does not have the same discipline level as say South Korea, but we can certainly make improvements to our current processes.

 

iii) Texas, today, is reporting 20,200 cases and 517 deaths in the familiar pattern of exponential growth beginning to damp off after two weeks of lockdown. The distribution of cases is statewide. This is uncontrolled community spread. The only reason that the death totals seem reasonable is that this is comparatively early in the pandemic. Many more of those 20,200 will die, and more will catch the disease, and more will die. Tracking and monitoring is impossible in this situation. The only way that a jurisdiction can move to a managed reopening is by first getting new cases down to the point where each one can be identified and the contacts traced. That is not possible here, and won't be possible for several weeks, at least. Any scaling back of the lockdown will just throw away the gains already made. Again, the Italian case shows what can happen. You don't need complex models to understand what is going to happen to any jurisdiction so foolish as to try to ride out a COVID19 pandemic on the scale of Italy's. You just say to yourself, "Like Italy, but worse."

* The numbers above reflect our running total.  That is certainly not what we've seen today.  In fact our daily trend is on the verge of declining.

* Texas Chart: 

 

iv) When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbour, the result was, in the short term, massive unemployment. This ended as labour shifted to war work. But it also shifted because a full 10% of the American population was drafted, and was essentially paid to do nothing productive for five years. All of this was paid for by the familiar mechanics of war finance, and the United States came of the experience the stronger for it.

*  This is an incredibly complicated scenario and I don't think any of us would say that intentionally causing mass unemployment lead to prosperity.

*  I don't have a degree in economics, but I'd hardly consider soldiers fighting Nazi's as doing nothing productive.  There was also a massive influx of labor to make all the bits required for war and that industrialization was a big contributing factor.  If I recall correctly we kind of woke up during that war and realized, "Hey, women can be super productive, even in factories, too!".

 

 

Also, I keep seeing this false dichotomy of choosing economics or lives.  They are very much related.  There have been multiple studies on the link between unemployment and increased rates of suicide and death from lack of food, medicine, shelter, etc.

 

I'd like to think that most people who are concerned with the severity of the shut down are worried that we'll do more damage than good - in terms of total lives lost - and are not just thinking about $$.

 

The fact that the initial IMHE estimates of 500k dead in the UK if they do nothing and 250k dead if they take action being reduced to 20k makes me seriously concerned that the lethality of this bug was grossly over-estimated and we'll end up losing more lives to the economic and social ruin (mental health, increased rates of domestic abuse/homicide, drug addiction, etc.).

[Ragitsu]

32 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Very not safe for work rant:

 

Unless you're working for Howard Stern or the late George Carlin, that is 😄.

 

Anyhow...I thought those bits appearing in the lower-left quadrant of the screen were insects flying in and out of the car; turns out, that's the man's saliva. Ho-lee crap is he pissed. Can't say I blame him, though, as we have socialism for the upper class (titans of business, to be specific) and near-anarchic capitalism for the middle-class/poor.

[ScottishFox]

15 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Very not safe for work rant:

 

Put a Witcher 3 beard on that guy and I would make him my spirit animal.

 

Better not tell him he owes $6,000 plus interest on that sweet $1,200 he got.  Is it even skimming when 80% of the payout goes somewhere else?  It's like we the people skimmed off the 2 trillion dollar insider slush fund.

[Ragitsu]

20 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

I'd like to think that most people who are concerned with the severity of the shut down are worried that we'll do more damage than good - in terms of total lives lost - and are not just thinking about $$.

 

Some of the more "vocal" protestors are being manipulated by interests that can't buy another yacht thanks to the inconvenience of a pandemic. People who want to help on the economic front should be protesting against the federal government in order to receive more than a one-time paltry check, to highlight their insistence on handing money to multi-billion corporations that are barely being regulated on how they spend their newly gained funds and to find ways to increase manufacturing infrastructure at home to help the economy flourish once opening the gates all the way becomes feasible. Fighting governors - many of whom are doing their best in this second iteration of the Wild West - is a frustrating plus counterproductive waste of time.