Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Yet you haven't. You just rush off to the next set of talking points.

If it is so easy, why haven't you been able to do it?

 

I find it amusing that he is complaining about the models showing endless exponential growth while showing a model without endless exponential growth.

 

If you arrive at your conclusion first, then look at the data with the right perspective ...

 

Why Trump Isn’t Using The Defense Production Act

 

How did you know I was in a snarky mood? Hacked my phone? Damn. The system works.

 

Mardis Gras

 

The poster doesn’t believe that the Russians hacked the DNC and spread the Seth Rich conspiracy. He finds links to liars, conspiracy theorists, bots and posts like the links are true. Facts don’t matter. Always in support of Trump. Often with the grammar of someone for whom English is not native. Where have we seen that pattern before?

 

Same curve. But Lower numbers.

 

Ignore is a wonderful feature. Like having a grown up table for holiday dinners it helps eliminate the childish noise from an otherwise informative conversation

 

You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead

 

I understand from FB posts of friends who live there, the Keys are now shut down to visitors.

Apparently true: Florida Keys closing off to all visitors in attempt to avoid spreading of coronavirus

 

JMHO and wish that would be nice to open this and similar topics and find links to hopefully accurate data and information with honest/object and thoughtful discussion thereof.

Instead, it’s just more attack and counter attack. insult and denigration. Same people posting, more or less, the same thing everyday on multiple discussions.

Perhaps it would be best if those people had a single pinned thread where they could post their hyper-partisan links, comments, and political attacks. Finding the same “crap”on every discussion is ridiculous.

 

A great example of what should be on this discussion.

 

I know. We all come at this differently. I probably worded that poorly so I can understand the pushback. My recent position isn't changing as much as I am just trying to stay optimistic..while also reminding people that fever is not below being treated fairly.

 

Cool perspective on the US response if you like Author Max Brooks who has a lot of intimate knowledge of the US disaster response system.


Max Brooks has researched disaster preparedness for his novels and has lectured on the subject at the U.S. Naval War College. He has also been a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His new book, Devolution, will be published May 2020.

Some cool excerpts from the article:

On the task forces that plan for situations like this

I can tell you that the federal government has multiple layers of disaster preparedness who are always training, always planning, always preparing, regardless of how much their budget gets cut. I have toured the CDC, and I've seen all their plans. I have witnessed what was called a "vibrant response." This is the homeland nuclear attack scenario, which was a coordination of FEMA, the Army, the National Guard, state and local officials, all working together in a massive war game to prepare us for a nuke. I have also witnessed what was called a "hurricane rehearsal of concept drill," where not only did the same players come in, but also bringing in our allies from Canada and Mexico. So I have seen that we have countless dedicated professionals who think about this constantly and they're ready to go. And they have not been activated.

On why these task forces haven't been activated yet

This all has to come from the federal government. This is why we have big government. Politically, you can argue about the role of big government in everyday society, but this is not every day. This is an emergency. The entire reason that we have these networks is when the bells start ringing — and they have not been activated. I don't know. I'm not sitting in the White House. I don't know whether the president is being lied to, whether he is holding onto a political ideology. I honestly don't know. But there is no excuse not to mobilize the full forces of the federal government right now and to centralize the response.

On how the Defense Production Act works when mobilized properly

What is supposed to happen is the federal government has to activate the Defense Production Act immediately. Now, what Defense Production Act does is it allows the federal government to step in and aggressively force the private sector to produce what we need. And what is so critical in this is timing. Because you can't simply build factories from scratch; what you can do is identify a supply chain in order to make it work.

For example, if New York needs rubber gloves, New York cannot simply build rubber glove factories overnight. However, there might be a rubber glove factory in Ohio that could produce it, but they might not have the latex. So therefore, the Defense Production Act allows the federal government to go to the condom factory in Missouri and say, "Listen, you have barrels of latex we need. We are requisitioning those. We are giving them to the rubber glove factory in Ohio. And then we are transporting the finished rubber gloves to New York." That's how it is supposed to work.

On how Trump warns about nationalizing private industry — but that's not how it works

President Trump is spinning some sort of tale about, I don't know, the federal government — black helicopters coming in and taking over factories. That's not how it works at all. What happens is the federal government has the network to identify where the production chain is and how to help the private sector work through this, because the private sector doesn't know.

And as an example, I have a World War II rifle made by the Smith Corona typewriter company. Smith Corona worked with the federal government to then partner up with the Winchester company, to then share resources and to share tools and talent to then produce the rifles that we needed. That's how it works. It's not some sort of KGB coming in and taking over everything. It is guidance and streamlining. And only the federal government has the experience to know how to do that.

 

Because this craziness puts us all in a snarky mood.

 

lets have a little fun, will be poster 3500 and who will be the first poster on page 200, levity always helps.

 

I'm voting @gator_fever on both.

 

They based the numbers against existing flu numbers from prior seasons. Then the exact numbers they do have like number of hospitalizations, length of average hospitalization, number of ICU, length in ICU and compare those number in a typical year, they came up with that number. Notice the range though. Between 8,000 and 18,000 died so why not a definite reason? Wouldn't you think they know when someone has H1N1 and died from it? And if you know that, you count them all up? Some hospitals didn't do that so it's a best guess.

This outbreak might have better tracking because it is 11 years later and social tracking is far better. The hospitals are also more connected (although you would be aghast at how dysfunctional our hospital system is in the US). Still, you have to ask these questions because it's interesting to see where we are in the timeline. But because the events are 11 years apart, it won't be easy to compare say daily numbers. More like what do both look in 6 months. We can't answer that until 7/20 when we reach the 6 month threshold. Safe to say so far we will blow H1N1 away in terms of number of deaths. In 6 months time, H1N1 had infected millions with more than 1,000 dead. We'll hit that in a little more than 2 months with Covid-19 when we cross that number in about 2 weeks - in deaths I mean.

 

From a conservative source. An actual timeline of developments that led to where we are now. Somehow, trump's approval rating is going up during this crisis. I assume it's because of ignorance and not a desire to see the world burn.

Warnings Ignored: A Timeline of Trump’s COVID-19 Response - The Bulwark