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

[CardiacCoug]

This is just wrong. Nobody rational would support destroying our economy, and millions of people's lives, if the mortality rate is lower than the flu. Everyone has premised this on the fear that the mortality rate is something like 1 percent or higher. Let's not be out of touch with the horror being experienced by many millions of ordinary Americans who own small businesses or are otherwise economically vulnerable. If you're hanging out in your man cave or vacation house and eating take out or delectables from your local supermarket while posting on the Internet and collecting a paycheck from an entity unaffected by this, you really shouldn't be dismissing the economic side as not mattering.

I agree that social distancing, flattening the curve is an emotion decision more perhaps than a rational one.

If humans were robots I think the best approach would be government-enforced home quarantine with 100% isolation of everybody over 55 or so until a vaccine is available. The rest of us could go about our lives and the economy wouldn’t be cratering like this.

The way we are doing this is a very human reaction: we are emotional beings who believe in fair play and sacrificing for each other. I can see why SU hates it because it is illogical, irrational, unscientific, perhaps un-American.

[Omaha 680]

I agree that social distancing, flattening the curve is an emotion decision more perhaps than a rational one.

If humans were robots I think the best approach would be government-enforced home quarantine with 100% isolation of everybody over 55 or so until a vaccine is available. The rest of us could go about our lives and the economy wouldn’t be cratering like this.

The way we are doing this is a very human reaction: we are emotional beings who believe in fair play and sacrificing for each other. I can see why SU hates it because it is illogical, irrational, unscientific, perhaps un-American.

Well said. Also Cardiac is a doctor so if anyone disagrees with this you are anti-science.

[CardiacCoug]

Also there is no doubt that the anxiety related to this has real health consequences that are impossible to measure.

My Nextdoor feed is full of people afraid to pet their dogs in case the dog perhaps brushed up against a viral fomite, people who are wearing a hazmat suit while they transfer their delivered Doordash food into their own dishes.

I mean you read these online comments during the CNN thing right now and people are so anxious. 95% of people in Utah who run the gauntlet and somehow manage to get tested, then spend a few days agonizing over their test are testing negative — they are stressed out about nothing! That level of stress and anxiety has real health consequences.

[myboynoah]

I agree that social distancing, flattening the curve is an emotion decision more perhaps than a rational one.

If humans were robots I think the best approach would be government-enforced home quarantine with 100% isolation of everybody over 55 or so until a vaccine is available. The rest of us could go about our lives and the economy wouldn’t be cratering like this.

The way we are doing this is a very human reaction: we are emotional beings who believe in fair play and sacrificing for each other. I can see why SU hates it because it is illogical, irrational, unscientific, perhaps un-American.

Yeah, too bad we just can't lock up all the olds for two years.

We kind of tried that with some cruise ships.

[BigPiney]

https://www.papercitymag.com/culture/generation-x-earns-respect-conronavirus-pandemic-stay-home/

I have been training for this for years.

[Uncle Ted]

God bless Texas.

[Solon]

Do you know what this entails? And how much plasma you need to take from each patient who recovered to adequately cover another, if this is even proven to be effective? And what about the side effects and potential mortality (yes, death can happen) from plasma transfusion?

This is being looked at. And hopefully with some molecular modification this strategy can help some patients. But I can assure you this is not a viable plan to treat the masses.

Possibility of plasma treatments is gaining traction.
Maybe an act of desperation, or maybe a breakthrough.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/plasma-blood-covid-19-survivors/609007/

[myboynoah]

This would be great news.

Fauci said he's 'willing to bet anything' that people who recover from the new coronavirus are 'really protected from reinfection'

[myboynoah]

Who lives, who dies, who decides

If we apply that EPA figure, the monetized value of preventing 600,000 covid-19 deaths reaches $5.8 trillion. But this estimate may be too high. An infectious disease is different from a homicide or a workplace accident. Such methods have greater intuitive appeal when applied to rare, scary outcomes than to more widespread hazards. Many Americans likely to die of covid-19 are retirees with health vulnerabilities who already expect to live fewer additional years than younger people will.

Then again, this ballpark figure leaves out many factors. Maybe 98 percent of the people who become infected with the coronavirus will get sick, possibly very sick, but will recover. Some will live with the knowledge that they infected others close to them. Many of us at low risk of dying would still pay a lot to avoid these outcomes.

That ballpark figure also doesn’t consider the national trauma we would experience after choosing policies that allow the pandemic to rage, overwhelming our medical system and causing hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths before our eyes. We face considerable uncertainty. There’s value in extra precaution, should covid-19 prove more lethal or infectious than we surmise.

Talk of trade-offs also ignores our opportunities to buffer the worst economic and human consequences of strict containment measures. Nationwide shelter-in-place orders would produce a sharp decline in gross domestic product for several months, maybe more. But we can couple such policies with generous social insurance to protect people from hardship and businesses from bankruptcy. We can, as individuals and as a society, do many things to ameliorate the fear, loneliness and despair many Americans may feel because of social distancing policies.

None of this will be easy. Strict containment brings real pain and economic costs. It brings real benefits, too. In this frightening time, we can protect and sustain one another against an epidemiological and economic tsunami no one of us could endure if we were left to face it alone. That’s solidarity. It’s a precious thing.

[myboynoah]

Italy’s Poorer Southern Regions Brace for a Surge in Coronavirus Infections

[tooblue]

Italy’s Poorer Southern Regions Brace for a Surge in Coronavirus Infections

New York's paramedics unable to answer emergency calls as 20% of service ill, most with COVID-19

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/coronavirus-outbreak-is-stretching-new-yorks-ambulance-service-to-breaking-point

[myboynoah]

New York's paramedics unable to answer emergency calls as 20% of service ill, most with COVID-19

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...breaking-point

My nurse practioner niece in Tennessee says they are offering nurses $250 per hour to go to New York and work.

[myboynoah]

I risk triggering UT by posting this story.

Japan uses targeted coronavirus testing; South Korea goes big. The U.S. faces a choice.

By some measures, Japan has been successful. The country has so far avoided the acceleration in infections that hit South Korea, much of Europe and the United States. The health-care system in Japan has not been overwhelmed with cases.

Nevertheless, Masahiro Kami, executive director of the Medical Governance Research Institute, says the lack of testing has left the government in the dark on the extent of the coronavirus infections — and may have lulled people into a false sense of security.

“There is no way of understanding the situation accurately,” he said. “As a consequence, there is no way to design appropriate measures” to prevent the virus from spreading, such as social distancing, much less to implement them forcefully.

The Japanese helped prove his point. Earlier this month, residents of Tokyo gathered in parks to view cherry blossoms and packed into bars and restaurants. With the government taking a soft approach, social distancing broke down at the first sight of spring.

That all ended abruptly today. Tokyo has banned gathering for sakura events and the residents are being asked to stay home and only go out if necessary. Lots of warnings about an impending spike in cases and concerns about overwhelming healthcare systems. I wonder if government officials are seeing something they are not sharing.

Very strange timing. It seems that once the Olympics were postponed, Japan decided to be more agressive about addressing COVID.

[CardiacCoug]

https://www.papercitymag.com/culture...mic-stay-home/

I have been training for this for years.

That’s awesome. Go Gen X!!

[SeattleUte]

Why Germany's death rates are so low: isolating the elderly, so they don't get sick, and testing mainly the younger population with mild symptoms:

Germany has also been better at protecting its older residents, who are at much greater risk. States banned visits to the elderly, and policymakers issued urgent warnings to limit contact with older people. Many seem to have quarantined themselves. The results are clear: Patients over the age of 80 make up around 3 percent of the infected, though they account for 7 percent of the population. The median age for those infected is estimated to be 46; in Italy, it’s 63.

And many more young people in Germany have tested positive for the virus than in other countries. In part, that’s attributable to the country’s more extensive testing. But there’s also an element of chance and culture. Germany is a skiing nation — around 14.5 million Germans go skiing every year — and the Austrian and northern Italian Alps are popular locations. This year, after vacationers traveled to one of the centers of the European outbreak, Tyrol, they seemed to bring back the virus with them — and spread it.

Closer to home, there’s carnival. One of the most substantial early outbreaks occurred at one of the centers of carnival, which involves parades and parties, popular with the young. Hundreds of cases seem to be traceable to a couple who took part in festivities in the town of Langbroich. “Both skiing and carnival may have affected the low average age of the first wave of confirmed cases,” said Karl Lauterbach, a physician and a member of the Bundestag.

Both early testing and incubation of the virus among the young go part of the way in explaining why the country’s fatality rate is so comparatively low. “It’s how much and whom we test,” Martin Stürmer, a virologist who is the director of a lab that is running coronavirus testing in Frankfurt, told me. In general, countries that test less and reserve it for those already very ill, like Italy, have higher fatality rates.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/o...e=articleShare