At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

[jay santos]

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/22/italian-pm-warns-of-worst-crisis-since-ww2-as-coronavirus-deaths-leap-by-almost-800

More than 5,500 Italians are testing positive every day, with the average age of those dying 78.5.

[Bo Diddley]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-by-almost-800

Is business still the same? I keep hoping it'll pick up for you.

[Omaha 680]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-by-almost-800

Most articles I see on Italy (including this link) are quoting 2-3 day old stats. Turning the corner in this context doesn't mean things arent still bad, it just means there is light at the end of the tunnel because the rate of new case growth and deaths has slowed or reversed. But I'm just an amateur watching the data as I try to work from home so I'm not claiming I really know anything.

[tooblue]

This is from a conservative news source, albeit certainly nothing like Fox news. It is well put together, and they do call out China and their wet markets at about the 5:00 minute mark:

[Omaha 680]

Most articles I see on Italy (including this link) are quoting 2-3 day old stats. Turning the corner in this context doesn't mean things arent still bad, it just means there is light at the end of the tunnel because the rate of new case growth and deaths has slowed or reversed. But I'm just an amateur watching the data as I try to work from home so I'm not claiming I really know anything.

Case in point the Wshington Post article this morning that said the death toll in Italy "surged to 6,077". It didnt surge. The daily death toll is actually down 3 days in a row. The media is hyper focused on the overall body count, which is devastating but tells us nothing about the direction of the crisis.

Precision in language and analysis is what we (especially the majority of us who are non-experts) need to understand and support decisions made by our governments. Unfortunately trump and the media both suck at such precision.

[beefytee]

Regardless of what you think of the policy or person, it sure would be nice to have a President that could speak as clearly as this:

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/sta...87201334607886

That was a great speech by Boris Johnson, but man! It feels like it is out of an episode of Black Mirror or something. So surreal.

[wuapinmon]

One of my student's mom's runs a daycare center in a building next to her home. They live in a very rural county, with one hospital. Her mom watches the children of 15 medical professionals who work at the hospital. For now, she's just watching doctors' and nurses' and technicians' kids while they work, and checking temperatures at the door. Childcare during a pandemic is a real problem.

[Uncle Ted]

Good Twitter thread in the Democrats corona Bill. Like a Christmas list for lib pet projects. Congressional Democrats are blowing it as bad as Trump.


https://twitter.com/secupp/status/12...574087681?s=21

But doesn't congress deserve a $25m raise? They have been working hard (on this "green new deal")...

No voter ID to get a ballot, & anonymous “ballot harvesting” pg 650
$300,000,000 for Migrant and Refugee Assistance pg 147
$10,000 per person for student loan bailout
$100,000,000 to Nasa, because, who knows why.
$20,000,000,000 to the USPS, because why the hell not
$300,000,000 to the Endowment for the Arts / because fuck it
$300,000,000 for the Endowment for the Humanities/ because no one even knew that was a thing
$15,000,000 for Veterans Employment Training / for when the GI Bill isn't enough
$435,000,000 for mental health support / thats a lot of fucking suicide hotlines
$30,000,000,000 for the Department of Education stabilization fund/ because that will keep people employed
$200,000,000 to Safe Schools Emergency Response to Violence Program
$300,000,000 to Public Broadcasting / NPR has to be bought by the dems
$500,000,000 to Museums and Libraries / Who the hell knows how we are going to use it
$720,000,000 to Social Security Admin / but get this only 200,000,000 is to help people. The rest is for admin costs
$25,000,000 for Cleaning supplies for the Capitol Building / I shit you not it's on page 136
$7,500,000 to the Smithsonian for additional salaries
$35,000,000 to the JFK Center for performing Arts
$25,000,000 for additional salary for House of Representatives
$3,000,000,000 upgrade to the IT department at the VA
$315,000,000 for State Department Diplomatic Programs
$95,000,000 for the Agency of International Development
$300,000,000 for International Disaster Assistance
$90,000,000 for the Peace Corp pg 148
$13,000,000 to Howard University pg 121
9,000,000 Misc Senate Expenses pg 134
$100,000,000 to Essential Air carriers pg 162 This of note because the Airlines are going to need billions in loans to keep them afloat. $100,000,000 is chump change
$40,000,000,000 goes to the Take Responsibility to Workers and Families Act. This sounds like it's direct payments for workers. Pg 164
$1,000,000,000 Airlines Recycle and Save Program pg 163
$25,000,000 to the FAA for administrative costs pg 165
$492,000,000 to National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) pg 167
$526,000,000 Grants to Amtrak to remain available if needed through 2021 pg 168 (what are the odds that doesn't go unused)
Hidden on page 174 the Secretary has 7 days to allocate the funds & notify Congress
$25,000,000,000 for Transit Infrastructure pg 169
$3,000,000 Maritime Administration pg 172
$5,000,000 Salaries and Expensive Office of the Inspector General pg 172
$2,500,000 Public and Indian Housing pg 175
$5,000,000 Community Planning and Development pg 175
$2,500,000 Office of Housing

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Dems Worried Stimulus Bill Would Stimulate Economy

[jay santos]

Imagine a boundary curve like a production curve with deaths down one axis (X) and economic impact on the other (Y).

If one had perfect knowledge and prophetic capability, one could draw that curve with precision. It exists in theory.

Here are a few possible points on that boundary curve.

point A: X = next to none, Y = one million
point B: X = very little, Y = 200K
point C: X = catastrophic, major depression, Y = <10K
point D: ?? totally theoretical but somewhere between B and C, ie X = small impact bouncing back strong after a short period and Y = 30-100K

A few more assumptions to consider:
The traditional flu kills around 40K a year.
Economic depression comes with lives lost as well. (Not suicide which the president unskillfully referenced in a press conference yesterday--but moreso in terms of jobless or uninsured opting out of preventive medicine)
Economic depression leaves us more vulnerable to the next wave of coronavirus.
Coronavirus killing people with average age in 70's and not very deadly to healthy people under 60.

Put all this together and I wonder if our goal should be more point D when it appears our goal is C.

Obviously, this is unknowable right now, and when lives are at risk, you want to err on the lives side vs economy side.

[YOhio]

But doesn't congress deserve a $25m raise? They have been working hard (on this "green new deal")...

Shameless.

[Goatnapper'96]

Imagine a boundary curve like a production curve with deaths down one axis (X) and economic impact on the other (Y).

If one had perfect knowledge and prophetic capability, one could draw that curve with precision. It exists in theory.

Here are a few possible points on that boundary curve.

point A: X = next to none, Y = one million
point B: X = very little, Y = 200K
point C: X = catastrophic, major depression, Y = <10K
point D: ?? totally theoretical but somewhere between B and C, ie X = small impact bouncing back strong after a short period and Y = 30-100K

A few more assumptions to consider:
The traditional flu kills around 40K a year.
Economic depression comes with lives lost as well. (Not suicide which the president unskillfully referenced in a press conference yesterday--but moreso in terms of jobless or uninsured opting out of preventive medicine)
Economic depression leaves us more vulnerable to the next wave of coronavirus.
Coronavirus killing people with average age in 70's and not very deadly to healthy people under 60.

Put all this together and I wonder if our goal should be more point D when it appears our goal is C.

Obviously, this is unknowable right now, and when lives are at risk, you want to err on the lives side vs economy side.

These are good thoughts but this post makes me hearken back to my advanced composition class at West Point. The entire course hinges on your final essay and by the end of the semester I literally had a formula for the essay. 4 paragraphs, 7 sentences in paragraphs 1 and 4. Six sentences in 2 and 3. Your thesis sentence is the 6th sentence in paragraph 1. Sentence 7 in paragraph 1 and sentences 6 in paragraph 2 are your springboard into your two main points of support for your thesis. The last paragraph is almost a mirror of paragraph 1. Or something like that- it has been 25 years. But it would have made an English professor at a normal university cry their eyes out.

This is meant as a compliment but there are a lot of folks in US Army officer corps who think much like you. It appeals to me and I tend to agree with you. I do think that we need to have some type of reliable data to be able to make some cost benefit analysis. I don't think we had enough of that until it hit our country and the only way to deal with it initially was to be on the side of caution. The human and economic costs are sad but the experience is fascinating.

[tooblue]

Total Cost of Her COVID-19 Treatment: $34,927.43

https://time.com/5806312/coronavirus-treatment-cost/

"These problems aren’t coming out of the blue. Even when we’re not weathering a global pandemic, Americans face uniquely high health care costs, compared to the rest of the world, and millions of us already put off medical care because of concerns about how much it’ll cost. But with COVID-19 sweeping across the country, an old problem becomes increasingly urgent: many Americans could still face massive treatment bills, or seek to prevent those by avoiding testing and treatment—worsening the outbreak further."

[Northwestcoug]

I think we are going to see some clarity pretty soon with what happens in New York. Even if the most dire scenarios do not materialize, the health system will be strained more than we have seen in our lifetimes. If the health system there breaks, all the discussions of 'wildly overestimated mortality rates', herd immunity, and 'how much do we allow the economy to suffer to save 'X' amount of deaths' will become useless mind exercises. Once all needed ventilators and ICU rooms are taken up by COVID-19 patients, both the COVID and general mortality rates will rise. Once health care workers become infected, the mortality rate of inpatients will rise. Once both younger COVID and general patients start dying at a higher rate, the economic toll will rise. These worst case scenarios are most likely in the biggest urban centers, but no area in the country is going to remain unaffected.

No one is unsympathetic to the worry of a serious and maybe unneeded economic downturn. But the majority of evidence so far has been fairly well predicted by the adults in the room. We should continue to pay attention.

[Goatnapper'96]

I think we are going to see some clarity pretty soon with what happens in New York. Even if the most dire scenarios do not materialize, the health system will be strained more than we have seen in our lifetimes. If the health system there breaks, all the discussions of 'wildly overestimated mortality rates', herd immunity, and 'how much do we allow the economy to suffer to save 'X' amount of deaths' will become useless mind exercises. Once all needed ventilators and ICU rooms are taken up by COVID-19 patients, both the COVID and general mortality rates will rise. Once health care workers become infected, the mortality rate of inpatients will rise. Once both younger COVID and general patients start dying at a higher rate, the economic toll will rise. These worst case scenarios are most likely in the biggest urban centers, but no area in the country is going to remain unaffected.

No one is unsympathetic to the worry of a serious and maybe unneeded economic downturn. But the majority of evidence so far has been fairly well predicted by the adults in the room. We should continue to pay attention.

The site I track, worldometers.info, lists Gov Cuomo claiming that NY is now within 3 weeks of peak. I would think then NY is starting to clear up and return to some level of normalcy by the end of May. Others will lag behind NY but hopefully by the end of June the rest of the country is starting to make plans to come out of this deep freeze.

One of the problems of our modern world is the reality that it is so complex but yet the information is so easy to disseminate. So few people have the scientific or statistical background to comprehend what is really going on. In that awkward environment where folks feel as inadequate as Ned Flanders when they are serving footlong hotdogs, we are all prone to entrench into our echo chambers where we hear what we want to hear.

[Omaha 680]

I think we are going to see some clarity pretty soon with what happens in New York. Even if the most dire scenarios do not materialize, the health system will be strained more than we have seen in our lifetimes. If the health system there breaks, all the discussions of 'wildly overestimated mortality rates', herd immunity, and 'how much do we allow the economy to suffer to save 'X' amount of deaths' will become useless mind exercises. Once all needed ventilators and ICU rooms are taken up by COVID-19 patients, both the COVID and general mortality rates will rise. Once health care workers become infected, the mortality rate of inpatients will rise. Once both younger COVID and general patients start dying at a higher rate, the economic toll will rise. These worst case scenarios are most likely in the biggest urban centers, but no area in the country is going to remain unaffected.

No one is unsympathetic to the worry of a serious and maybe unneeded economic downturn. But the majority of evidence so far has been fairly well predicted by the adults in the room. We should continue to pay attention.

I agree we will know soon based on what happens in nyc. I think within the week. Do you think an Italy/Spain overstressing of the system in nyc is inevitable? What if they successfully ramp up to meet demand and/or critical cases are lower than feared? Wouldnt it then be time to recalibrate our national strategy? (Not that we have a great one at the moment)

Regarding you last paragraph, I think many are unsympathetic, or at least underestimating, the economic impact. The fact that you call it a worry of a serious downturn reflects that. This isnt a worry of a downturn that might materialize. It is an economic cliff that we have driven off. Its already here. We just have to see if we decide to deploy a parachute or not.

Again this isnt to argue current measures arent necessary. I think they clearly are. But economic impact has to be a continuing component of the discussion. Trump is obviously the worst messenger ever on this but the sentiment that we need to get back to work as soon as it is reasonably safe to do so is correct.

I heard Cuomo say today that hundreds of thousands may have been infected and they didnt know it and they should he tested for antibodies so they can go back to work. Sounds good to me but Is that even a thing that could be done?