Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

So Lt Gov of Ga is on CNBC, stating one of the reasons why they are opening early, even before meeting federal guidelines, is because they did an inventory of the hospitals and feel they have enough beds and PPE's to handle an increase in cases because they are opening.

 

Not a good look for the gotus.

 

Lol, always a Tweet:

 

Not sure what the issue is. People get sick. Meanwhile, millions are suffering because the entire economy is shut down. We're essentially in the beginning stages of a great depression.

 

Someone needs to put together a website matching tweets with statements. That would be entertaining.

 

From what our governor said this is part of our process where counties have to provide info in their applications to open including beds & PPE. It’s a risk with known trade offs so this makes sense to me

 

I thought his answers were pretty good

 

35,000+ Tweets, No Self Awareness

 

Yes, right choice 100%

Economy will bounce back, lives lost will not...

No need for mass gatherings for awhile.. No sports, especially college "student" athletes...

 

Why shouldn't those with underlying conditions count? They sure count for heart attacks, strokes, cancer, the flu, etc?

 

That may sound like a nice cliche, but it isn't true. Assuming the economy will bounce back is a fool's errand. You never assume anything like that with the sort of economic destruction we've absorbed in such a small timeframe.

 

They don’t have to test to confirm deaths by COVID 19. They can confirm by ruling out flu when the person comes in and has the nasal A or B flu tests and by symptoms. With limited testing, it would be a shame to waste resources on people who are dead. But, keep making it up as you go along. We understand that the right wing actually doesn’t care about people. Which is why they have been lying and lying about this from the beginning. I’m this case, right wing pretend alternate reality word is dangerous to people. The lies FOX told have cost people their lives. And the “just like the flu” is one of the leading ones.

 

and it would be a shame to keep the economy closed longer than needed just because someone might have died from covid 19 and there is no proof, and yes, doctors have been known to be wrong, they are not the be all and end all in deciding who died from this.

 

Dont spend beyond your means.. Save money and have a nest egg... I did for a reason.. No guarantees in life...

 

So your solution is to base it only on people who tested positive then died? This would be every bit as misleading as you allege that doctors determining if COVID-19 was the presumed cause. We aren't wasting tests on the dead en masse so there has to be a compromise. Your way would have things open too soon.

 

Thank you. Of course, I already do this and am quite fortunate. But we both know 90% of Americans don’t do this and even if they did, we cannot simply get up from a -30% hit to GDP and brush off our clothes like nothing happened. It will likely take many years for us to get back to 6% or less unemployment.

 

The only real concern these guys have is how all this affects Trump's reelection chances. That is why they want to show fewer COVID-19 deaths than there actually are. And that is why they are so concerned with getting the economy reopened. It's all about Trump.

 

wel

l, how about the thousands upon thousands who most likely hadit, are over it, and would drive the death rate way,way down, thus showing it is not as dangerous as some think, although i still believe it is, just to certain portions of the population based on age and pre-existing conditions.

 

so the democrats would have no agenda, no thought to make it look worse than it is to oust trump, come on, both sides play that game.

 

The problem is it's near--if not completely--impossible to separate them all out, not even if it were occurring under less intense conditions. The decision to include those deaths of those symptomatic of covid-19 are because excluding listing symptomatic covid-19 on death certs would further perpetuate an undercount since at least some of them were almost certainly covid-19 related.

Down the road sometime, when the CDC and others calculate estimates with 95% CIs as they do for other diseases, this is where it becomes important. Plus, researchers will go through all of those cases to remove those unlikely to have been covid-19 related.

The reason for shutting things down?

We don't have any protections at all against sars-cov-2 or weapons to treat the actual virus, and it's far deadlier than the flu, and there is still so much we don't know--and that makes it even more dangerous.

Another way to think of it, why don't we shut down for the flu?

I'd answer first with a caveat--maybe we need to establish social distancing practices (without shutting down) during flu season? This would no doubt help slow down sickness and deaths from the flu because social distancing interrupts the spread.

But we don't shut down for the flu for several reasons:

1. We have a detailed national and world-wide year-round surveillance system regarding the flu
2. We have multiple protections including some herd immunity from people having the antibodies for various strains floating each year.
2a. We have vaccines that get tested and updated, and even where they don't cover all influenza strains, they help with herd immunity
3. We have several antivirals to treat the flu and we have treatment protocols that are effective
4. Those who die from the flu are often people with underlying chronic conditions and/or because they don't seek treatment don't necessarily die in hospitals but at home, sometimes thinking they'll be alright (but the more subtle issue here is that the flu can obviously be deadly, unlike the common cold, so how symptomatic individuals react plays a role, which is to say they treat it like a cold, meaning not serious enough).

This makes things much different than where we are at right now with sars-cov-2 since there is still so much we do not know and thus much to learn and all of this is happening on the fly as this outbreak continues to wreak havoc around the world.