Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

South Korea's "spike" in cases is all the way up to 35 and has declined back to 29 (4 deaths this week). Sure, those are relative spikes when they were down to single digits per day, but hardly unmanageable. Given where we are if we saw similar spikes, you would be talking about tens of thousands of cases per day extra.

 

Why would I want to do that? Is it where you say you now understand that Sweden being 6th in mortality and not “ in the middle”. That was the point I was countering when you provided the link.

 

South Korea's measures were not particularly draconian.

How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

 

Really? Seems to me their goal was to get the virus down to where it was very low levels of circulation. They recognized that immediately. They could then go about their normal lives (or as close to normal as possible). Do that, then when there is an outbreak you can find the individuals that were exposed and have those individuals treated and quarantined from the healthy population. That's called containment. It doesn't allow a 100% economy, but probably a 80% economy.

That should be our goal too! But the idiocracy won't allow it. We'll keep watering the plants with Brawndo and wondering why our economy is in the shitter and people are dying left and right.

 

My symphony horn friends that we've talked about before both think they're gonna be out of jobs. A bunch of rich old people gathering in groups is probably the last thing to come back. They both expect the worst.

 

That's right - I remember you mentioning a buddy who plays trumpet in the Jax symphony. My heart goes out to them. All the symphony halls are closed - no live music events of any sort. I'm sweating our jobs in education, but can't imagine what the performers are going through. Truly heartbreaking. Hope you can get your pub back up and running soon.

 

Luckily my trumpet playing buddy has other sources of income. My friend that plays Trombone for Nashville is super stressed. Thanks for the kind words.

 

There is an alternative. Look around the world at countries opening. These alternatives were presented up thread. The alternative is to suppress case until well down the curve, then reopen. Slovenia is an example. The do testing and contact tracing to control outbreaks. Quarantine and testing for those exposed. We just quit in the middle and are accepting the higher death totals and whatever happens by reopening too soon. All because of the utter incompetence in the handling of this. Our policy was founded on the lies Trump told iN January and February. So that states and local governments did not have accurate information on which to base policies. And Trump has a base of people who post what you did: an alternative has to be presented. Because they refuse to question his incompetence, lies and stupidity. And ask questions like this when a little research into the science of suppression and the experience around the world informs. Trump is lucky to have a base that blindly accepts anything he says.

 

How are you calculating FL's active and recovered cases? Maybe inverted the numbers.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

There is some truth in this, but I think there is also some truth in that some regions are fine to open up because their case counts are so low, along with population densities. Much of this would be in "Red" regions, which partially explains backlash among Trump supporters.

Of course in this scenario, they would actually be following CDC guidance I imagine... if only Trump would allow the CDC guidance to be published. Always covering shit up when it makes him look bad. Which is pretty much nonstop.

 

The country needs to be re-opened, carefully. There are millions of people in this country who cannot afford to pay their bills, take care of their kids, etc. without working. Many have no savings, and whatever they had is gone already. We have to do the best we can on this. Regarding the base of people you love to complain about, there is a whole base of people on the other side who are somewhat disconnected from reality, and don't recognize the extreme, serious damage done to people by a prolonged shut down.

As far as contact tracing and testing go, I agree that we need to keep ramping it up. If we want to talk in real terms instead of hypothetical. We have somewhere between 5 to 10% (no one knows the true number) of people in this country who live in the shadows. We also have millions of homeless people who live in the shadow. I'm not blaming any of them for their current situation, but contact tracing will be at best somewhat effective, and with this virus, somewhat isn't good enough. So whatever course of action we take, there will be consequences.

 

Abbott rapid response test misses 31% of positive tests at 250 mg/l detection level and 48% of positive tests at 125 - 150 mg/l detection level based on NYU study.

This is the test being used by White House. This is the "GAME CHANGER" test.

Covid-19: NYU Team Finds Abbott’s Rapid Test May Not Be Accurate | Physician's Weekly

Compared to the Cepheid using swabs stored in stabilizing solution, Abbott’s test missed a third of the positive samples, and compared with collecting samples using a dry swab, the Abbott product missed 48% of the positive cases.

 

We go with probabilities all the time.
We know the vast majority get better without incident.
We clearly know who has the greatest risk to have issues. This is worse than the flu, however the Flu kills young health people also. In fact H1N1 in 2009 killed a far higher number of young compared to old than other strains(with a vaccine)... Where was the lockdown then? Where was the mantra about protecting every life?

 

I don't think it is necessary to bring facts into the mix.

 

Can we just call them domestic terrorists?

Michigan Cancels Legislative Session to Avoid Armed Protesters

 

In an entire year, there were around 12,000 estimated H1N1 deaths in the U.S.

In basically a couple of months, with lock-downs, there are already 85,000 Covid-19 deaths (and most likely we are already well above 100,000 based on what is hinted from some "deaths above normal" analysis).

Back in the H1N1, the guidance was to close any school that had an outbreak. Close it for 7 days. H1N1 only stayed in the body contagious for a few days, and only people that were symptomatic were contagious. So this was an effective mitigation strategy to contain outbreaks. It was a very different calculation as far as how to respond to it. You keep comparing apples to bananas any time you raise "the flu", even in admitting this is obviously far more deadly.