TrickstaPriest

Yes. And in some places that did shut down, the death rate per day is still higher than any event in the last century. edit: I don't disagree with the purpose of the point, that there are a lot of rural places that probably will stay very low. "The population density in South Dakota is 11.3 people per square mile (52nd out of 56)." "Texas has just 105.2 people per square mile and those figures are merely the 26th highest in the US." Because of exponential growth rate, the difference in infected is going to result in cases much higher than merely x10 the existing rate in South Dakota. There is a tipping point in terms of population density, but I can't speak to what that is. That's an argument for opening Texas, especially the rural parts of it. But don't use bad data to argue for it (2.7 death rate out of 100,000). That's disengenuous, and I'm calling it out for your sake. I don't want you or others spreading bad reasoning, even if it's quippy and quotable. The same goes for the tired parachute analogy. It's the assumption that there's a single totalular approach, when the workability of that was long behind us. Homicide and accidents don't increase exponentially with availability/effect. Please, stop using that as part of your argument as well. Disease is one of the only problems that does. We can argue that civilization breakdown/displacement could be another. I'm interested in how this 100 million starving will relate to the US. There are specific locations that are probably in danger of starving, and this is a good argument for reorganizing and making sure areas responsible for food production stay open. I'm literally arguing with you for the sake of you spreading good arguments for what you want. I literally despise the memes being used in this argument, comparing disease to accidents and giving wholly bad numbers for your argument. (edit2: to be clear, to my perspective these memes are simply being spread to you and then beyond you) edit: And I wanted to apologize for starting this as an argument to begin with. I tried to be more polite and general in my response.

That's... not a great time to be saying that, unless the death rate has dropped substantially... The basic of it is, any location that's had a high rate of deaths probably has had a high rate of infection regardless of testing. If it had a high rate at any time, it's certainly going to explode after lockdown is relaxed, far faster than the local government can react.

That's a somewhat disengenuous meme, because there are probably areas that can. But there's certainly businesses that probably can't open, and still need to be on some sort of support system.

It's not really a production issue but a preparation issue as far as I am aware. It's also much more likely to be close to a hot 1000 per 100000 deaths if quarantine wasn't in effect, mostly due to absurdly good transmission. I guess the point I'm (and others) are making is you are equivocating the wrong things. You are arguing that the virus isn't deadly because it hasn't infected a lot of people, so we should relax the extreme measures we are taking to prevent it from infecting people. That's a reasonable argument for certain areas. But you are arguing it with a statistic that comes only from those extreme measures. So it's a nonsensical reason you are proposing for your argument.

Getting to be a pretty rough future. The Saiga mass die off is just a little bit of extra nightmare fuel.

That's awful, even so. You have my sympathies.

Yeah. Available testing would have made a big difference.

I think it's to their political advantage to not demonstrate good INT. They (typically) have the skills they need for what they need... which has nothing to do with their job

Yeh. But not less than America... though. But I imagine aggressive testing helps, and just better organization/protection. I wonder how much public transportation there is in Germany.

Yep. If there's no political competition, politicians can do whatever the heck they want...

May have to walk back on that - thinking back over the last decade or so of being in AZ, I've always gotten sick for two places and two places alone - when going to work and getting sick from a coworker, and when going to a convention.

I can only imagine. That's interesting. I knew the population density was different, but it's probably particularly true when included with your other post - getting a million viral cells over the course of a day might have a world of difference compared to being exposed to a couple. I just don't know enough on the subject to say if that's the case or not. Something like this could probably still churn through Dallas, but more slowly. It's notable that suburbs are being hit less hard than I expected - with the substantial amount of delivery services and common 'watering holes' (like getting gas) I thought this would spread more. That's good news, because it seems this thing isn't going anywhere.

I mean, that's generally what I was suggesting - but Texas does have major cities. Diseases do hit smaller communities, but in very-slow-motion. So I dunno if 'fizzle out' is the right word... but generally yes. In this case I suspect it's kill-rate is low enough that its spreadability doesn't help it much in terms of 'damage'. I also suspect air quality might be an issue - it creates underlying conditions.

A big part of the move is financial - social security, pension, disability, I'm the only person among my direct kin and parentage not on these things. But it's also pretty unfortunately clear that 'we are not welcome'.

Good luck. I know people who've been getting work despite losing their job before all this hit. Things can turn around.

Get rest. Just having someone to talk to can help cool heads. I've avoided directing vitriol at others here I think. And I won't get into why I think we are stuck with so many bad options, but it's a huge mess regardless. I hope this drives more work-from-home options, and more companies take it seriously and learn how to manage it. I think that would save people money, stress, and time, even if it's only done for half the week.

It's going to have to be Canada. Not for the least of Australia being on fire a lot... But Canadian homes cost x3 as much as USA homes. Soo.... my parents are going to go from homeowners to renting. This isn't just about a red/blue thing, and I have no doubt you can get screwed in a blue state. The general attitude of this country has pretty much entered the idea of reckless disregard - and here I can state some things that I couldn't state in the Coronavirus thread. I find it pretty unbelievable that people have completely forgotten the only reason this closure has been so complete and total is our administration couldn't handle a wet paper towel, let alone figure out how to handle a possible pandemic. So yes, a total closure may have been unreasonable for very small locations. You can thank your federal government and your leadership for that. The analogies I've heard don't do this justice. The country is a mess because no one is even trying to run it. The cynic in me says that these 'expensive actions/solutions' only happened because no one with any authority wants to do anything. Do anything but exploit the situation, so when they realize someone has to actually do anything to have a situation to exploit, it's a complete mess. This country is going to probably destroy/collapse/destabilize/delibertify/bankrupt teaching itself how to swim when it literally had months to figure it out. It's not an overreaction or hysterics, it's procrastination and outright aversion of responsibility. Only after all that mess is history, the politically convenient excuses can come out to let more authoritarian actions take hold - we've talked about expense a lot, but it's very clear the authority doesn't actually care about expense. Everything is loyalty now, it doesn't matter if you are wrong or can't even hold up a job to clean dishes. This is something that at least appears to have started blatantly with Trump, but I'm sure existed before him. But now it's everything. This is functionally why dictatorships don't work. Capitalism only functions because it creates a reward system and depends on individuals figuring out how to obtain that reward system. When that reward system is 'be successful and make money', individuals get good at it. The government then has to act to make sure 'make money' doesn't mean 'pillage everything to the ground'. (see hedge fund managers). And when that reward system is 'kiss up to me or backstab your boss to advance', your government/company self-sabotages itself into ruin. It has nothing to do with running a country, and unfortunately it won't do anything to help you when your leadership cares only about loyalty above anything, and everyone is spinning basic facts to keep above the mayhem. Our leadership is already taking that spin as legitimate truth, and that informs how it behaves and acts. It's literally lying to itself and doesn't care. That's the very system that annihilates a government or country when it faces a disaster. You can't say "it'll end with the election", because I highly doubt the people that this government has enabled will give much of a care. It's created an entirely new system of political body out of this. I seriously thought these kind of people were behind us, and that maybe this country had a better future than McCarthyism and so much worse. edit: To be clear. I'm saying that I think this country's politics is being horribly damaged by the politics used by this administration. I'm sure this is only exasperated by the country's prior politics. But this pandemic event in particular, I think has permanently damaged this country's ability to work with itself. People in this country won't unite over anything if not this, and from what I've seen this people's reflections on it have only made it worse. So I'm leaving because this country doesn't have a future. It will take years to get there, but it will take years to move four people living in three places into another country in a way that won't bankrupt us all. Lord. Out of all of them, I am the only person able to earn money, and I'm not even married/with kids.

This administration has driven me, my parents, my brother, to all look to moving. We can't afford it, but to do it anyway. I'm not exaggerating to say it'll become more expensive and more dangerous to stay here over the next five years. The way people are talking about the coronavirus crap is just icing on the cake - an administration literally does nothing in preparation for six weeks and I have friends saying "well I guess he did an okay job. And him putting his signature on the check was genius!" I'm done with this country.

It's not hard, but it is somewhat despairing. Given how this thing has hugely impacted other locations, it's their fortune that they haven't been ruined. If they want to use that to argue they need to be opened up again, that's one thing. I'm fine with that (as expressed elsewhere for sure). It's another to say it was never a problem to begin with, which is pretty darn revisionist. We still don't know why the death rate in New York was so terrible. Extreme population concentration in public areas is probably a major factor, it allowed the virus to spread insanely fast. The numbers around it being much less, in the thousands, are because they shut down around the same time, while the reality is New York needed to close a month prior to that. The virus was spreading so fast that the several weeks it takes from 'getting sick to dead' meant that a tremendous amount of population was already sick before the city was closed. So do rural areas need to stay closed? Probably not. Was this not-real? It was pretty darn real for anyone caught unprepared. Fortunately it's pretty easy to be prepared when it moves so slowly through your area. A lot less easy when you have major public transit, or packed factories. And I'm sure people will call this a hoax, and climate change a hoax because of it. Maybe this is an argument for breaking up the states. That seems to be the only consensus that will make everyone happy.

Fundamentally why I hate everything about this administration and give them no credit whatsoever. Even less credit that people give the "Big Bads" of government, of which there are many. Look up in history the last time a government couldn't handle even low-grade criticism and you'll find deep, dark wells. And lots of dead people. edit: I'll try and be less Doomer. But it's not an exaggeration to say myself, my parents, my brother, we are all watching what this government is doing and how people are responding. It's a very real question as to whether we should sell everything we have and move in the next few years. Unfortunately homes in Canada are 2 or 3 times more expensive - they'd be going from homeowners to renters overnight. But staying may be worse - pensions, social security, my brother's disability... who knows how long any of this will continue to exist.

It might help explain the differing activity somewhat, but also confirms what I was worried about - people have been calling the virus 'static', but I saw no real evidence to believe that assertion at this early stage. Unfortunately, it seems like, as it wasn't contained in China or its spread stopped at any other point, it'll be a regular part of life. The significance of that is, because it can greatly affect the health of the lungs, subsequent attacks can be harder (not easier) to deal with... given sufficient/proper mutation. And that means immunity (via infection or vaccine) won't last very long. It also means people like me with breathing problems, or people with diabetes, are going to have a lot of a harder time, possibly for the next few decades it'll take to advance the very technology of medicine. Keep in mind I'm not a microbiologist, so there's some assumptions inherent in my summation.

This is a really important concept a lot of people don't get. Both in terms of the difference in responsibilities, and that neither party was exactly wrong. Keep in mind it's also about concentration. I did some pretty idiotic things at the start of this mess, and when I was sick. Not taking off my shoes after coming back from the hospital was just one of the stupid things I did.

Just curious to what that is. I have local friends freaking out over it, so I want to hear more about it so I can at least relate to what is being said (or disagree with it). I can't really do either without someone seriously explaining what they are hearing. Yep that's a whole other thing.

So... Michigan. I hear about protests and government overreach. How much of that overreach is going on? What is it?

Possibly. I'm not sure how well we can actually contain this. I'm not morally opposed to re-opening parts of the country that are relatively safe, but I had to step in and talk about the numbers because of how wildly-swinging the numbers being given are. We aren't likely to have a million dead at this rate, unless something really wildly bad happens. We also can't say how much of the 'second/third/etc' waves of Spanish Flu was caused by mutation or just the relaxing of restrictions. But I also wanted to stress that the population clusters that have been seriously hit by this appear to have taken more death than ever in living memory - and that taking even a single week too slow probably cost us a quarter of the lives we've lost.