BaltACDhttps://www.businessinsider.com/testing-reveals-most-aircraft0-carrier-sailors-coronavirus-had-no-symptoms-2020-4
Well, since we're going to talk about this virus instead of trains....
That is somewhat similar to this writing in the Wall Street Journal. (Paywall.)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-data-suggest-the-coronavirus-isnt-as-deadly-as-we-thought-11587155298?mod=trending_now_pos2
In Balt's linked article there are 660 cases from the ship. "Over 350" were asymptomatic. Apparently, their bodies just dealt quite well with the virus. "More than half a dozen" have been hospitalized. That's like 1%. One sailor sadly died and one other is in an ICU. Admitidly, the sailors are a younger population who are eating healthy meals (at least while on the ship). Presumably, they're in good physical shape.
I'm 69 so I need to watch it. I don't want to minimize this. If it gets in to a nursing home it seems to be able to turn the place into a death chamber. But the mortality caused by this virus in the general population may have been greatly exaggerated.
"Pop Rocks" are not alive, but when you add water....
Pretty much the same thing with a virus.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
OvermodMeanwhile -- we could dance around the semantics of 'life' nearly as much as we can dance around the characteristics of 'when is human life protectable'. The one thing we can be certain of, with viruses, is that they don't have the consciousness necessary for any kind of 'free will'...
Dr. Birx says the virus can stay alive on hard surfaces:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmttyxPksHU
When you say we are dancing around the semantics of "life", but the virus does not have consciousness or free will, what exactly to you mean?
If you think it is alive but without consciousness, how do you know it does not have consciousness?
https://www.businessinsider.com/testing-reveals-most-aircraft0-carrier-sailors-coronavirus-had-no-symptoms-2020-4
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
tree68 zugmann Isn't the the point? So the medical system isn't completely overloaded? It is, but many people seem to believe it means that they won't catch it themselves at all... On the other hand, wouldn't you prefer to have your business completely shut down for a couple of weeks, then be back running full force after that, as opposed to limping along with few customers, etc for months more? Many small businesses here are hurting - dairy farmers are dumping milk, with some afraid they will go under. Some government "leaders" are so taken with their current ability to rule by fiat that they really don't want to give up that control. Banning golf - the original social distancing game. Setting curfews, so you can't take a walk around the block by yourself after 9PM. Closing parks and beaches. It's like they're testing us to see how much we'll take before we push back. A whole bunch of folks in Michigan did push back.
zugmann Isn't the the point? So the medical system isn't completely overloaded?
It is, but many people seem to believe it means that they won't catch it themselves at all...
On the other hand, wouldn't you prefer to have your business completely shut down for a couple of weeks, then be back running full force after that, as opposed to limping along with few customers, etc for months more?
Many small businesses here are hurting - dairy farmers are dumping milk, with some afraid they will go under.
Some government "leaders" are so taken with their current ability to rule by fiat that they really don't want to give up that control. Banning golf - the original social distancing game. Setting curfews, so you can't take a walk around the block by yourself after 9PM. Closing parks and beaches. It's like they're testing us to see how much we'll take before we push back. A whole bunch of folks in Michigan did push back.
Yes, and our illustrious commander-in-chief promptly threw gasoline on the fire, as is his wont.
Do you really think governors are taking these measures--which are bound to piss their constituents off--as nothing but a power trip? True leadership is the willingness to speak the truth and do what you think is the right thing, whether it's popular or not. Cowardice is putting out a set of guidelines one day, and then encouraging people to rebel against them the next.
EuclidI think I am agreeing with you here, but I am not sure you understood what I meant.
I think I understood with near laser clarity what you meant. Whether you intended to mean what you said you meant is, as usual, something entirely less clear, but that (also as usual) is something of a semantic infinite regress...
I think the belief that distancing and hand sanitizing is protecting us is absurd.
I think it is far from absurd. I think it is a major reason this infection has not in fact progressed to widespread pandemic, and I think it is in large part a reason the death toll has both not accelerated at a higher overall rate and has not reached much higher absolute numbers at this point.
I continue to think that abolishing 'sanitizing' mindfulness, or eliminating the social distancing and shelter-away-from-strangers precautions, now would only re-establish most of the pandemic characteristics, simply now taken relative to the offset for the new 'case zeros' -- of which we could expect there to be many, disseminated still further 'in the vacuum of contact' when exposed or infected people travel completely out of aerosol or fomite contact with prospectively infectable people.
The point about 'feel good' is that measures intended to slow down infection rate or spread but that don't actually have that effect are only 'feel good'. Wearing masks for influenza, where the airborne virus is several orders of magnitude smaller than any filtering can affect, and in fact where presence of filtration can accelerate practical infection in some cases, is a fairly well-established example in another disease. In my opinion, considering the death rate from skilled medical personnel applying largely state-of-the-art intrusive ventilation, most if not all of the current 'bridge ventilator' development is almost hideously misdirected 'feel-good' sentimentality (by Niven's definition of 'sentimentality'). Requiring masks but not requiring social silence is another feel-good mandate.
Likewise thinking that because you see something that is supposed to work means it's producing the 'working' is just the sort of cargo-cult feel-goodism I mentioned. Some percentage of droplet-to-surface transfer is, in fact, likely to be stopped by feel-good fabric masks. Is that a guarantee of safety? Don't be ridiculous. Does every bit help? Yes, but you'll also keep alive much better by actually recognizing where and how the virus affects you than by kinda-sorta showing you do your part by wearing the blue-eagle mask prominently.
But to your other point, how is "feel good" flattening the curve?
It is almost childishly simple to understand, and demonstrate, how even feel-good shelter-in-place, social-distancing, and personal-hygiene measures have 'flattened the curve' for this relatively difficult-to-transmit virus. In fact there are some discussions in this very thread that have fairly effectively shown why this is so.
There were some early observations that the actual death rate from COVID-19 peaked relatively quickly in an 'unrestrained' outbreak; I expect an interesting line of research (and perhaps statistical disproof) coming fairly rapidly out of available data once it becomes clear what the actual rate of recovery-to-asymptomaticity followed by recovery-to-lack-of-perceptible-shed is across a range of population 'cohorts'. On the other hand, I have seen exactly nothing to indicate that the 'pandemic' characteristic of SARS-CoV-2 clones has decreased in any way (e.g. the specificity of viral-coat binding to active sites on ACE2 and subsequent conformance to enhanced induction) and while that remains conserved the infectious characteristics of the virus are precisely as it was in Wuhan. You would ignore this very simple and obvious truth at your tremendous peril were you a policy-maker.
And if that is not what is reducing the infection rate, what is? I don't believe we have the answer to that question.
Well, when you ask questions to which no answer has yet been generated, you can expect to find answers that won't pass the Euclid conclusion test.
The critical timeline for this infection is really one that is separate from the accidents of epidemiology and spread, although far less commented on or even remarked in 'popular' culture. It starts with the Chinese isolation and sequencing of the actual viral genome (we can call this the effective t-zero of the intelligent response) followed by the possibly-heroic decision to publish this sequence freely and openly worldwide. (I believe subsequent sequences have been run, and I have seen no results since then that controvert the accuracy of the original one). You can then follow a number of subtracks, one of which was to isolate the point mutations vs. less-infectious (or human noninfectious) forms of coronavirus -- something the Chinese already had extensive experience in, thanks to FIP -- another of which was to locate key proteins that could serve as binding sites for therapies or engineered antibodies, or fluorescent promoters, or whatever. One effective track followed here -- it may not be the true most 'critical path' but was effectively one in a critical sense -- was the CDC's response after receiving the sequence data to produce an effective viral-presence test: according to Redfield this was done within '9 to 10 days' of initial receipt of the sequence data. One can ignore the subsequent fribbling with inadequate test reagents, failure to fix the rolled-out tests, 63% specificity for intrusive or casual swab methods, etc. as relatively circumstantial ... they certainly don't apply to any acceleration back into pandemic following relaxation of expedient methods.
We don't know the precise timing of some of the engineered responses to the virus (although I suspect there will be some screaming when the accurate story of the 'failed Trump conspiracy to restrict virus deployment to the United States first' actually gets described by neutral historians) although some of the 'milestones' in developing actual (vs. hyped or fake) serological test modalities are now established. I'd like to think there are more valid reasons for delay in developing ready responses to actually treating ARDS instead of heroically trying to palliate the symptoms, as a great deal of that basic science was done, some on a hurry-up emergency basis in more than one way reminiscent of now, as early as 2012 (with a practical and effective therapy described by mid-2017) but... well, I already see the required-ventilator statistics falling through the floor in state after state, and these certainly wouldn't be falling in the absence of effective antiviral treatment protocols if something weren't dramatically reducing the new-cases-in-susceptible-populations rate. (And, as I mentioned in other posts, in chronically-underserved nursing-home populations right along with the general geriatric population).
What is necessary to relax relatively widespread shelter-in-place and social distancing as pervasive 'default' practices is a combination of 'known' things: better quick and unintrusive serological or amplified-RNA testing that is either 'free' or easily compensated for; better multifactor identification of any developing 'outbreaks' or 'clusters' (including those in communities demonstrated at higher risk for COVID-19 outbreaks including many Hasidim, Latino communities in non-sanctuary regions terrified of enhanced INS scrutiny, and chronically 'underserved' or 'poverty-stricken' groups of the usual kinds that have poor access to things like pervasive cheap wireless broadband for Internet-connected thermometry) with prompt informed-response protocols and flying medical teams established and in reserve to contain any identified outbreak early; effective palliative therapy as needed to defuse any evolved viral symptom -- or dangerous recognized co-morbidity -- for the period necessary while a patient forms or is given an effective 'humoral immune' response to the specific virus. (That somewhere between 80% and 98% of Americans appear to be developing just this response, just as they have for the misery of common colds for many generations, is something that should not have escaped your notice...)
Ultimately the point that was made very quickly after the characteristics in Wutan were noted ... and that has been made, sometimes in only partial contexts afterward, here ... is that 'everyone will have to acquire immunity' before this is over. If we take that in conjunction with common knowledge about the 'incurable' nature of common colds, you get the picture that 'everyone will have to get COVID-19 sooner or later' (it's just that everyone doesn't always get really, really sick of it, or die with ARDS, you see...) and that the potential for acceleration into pandemic from any given cluster of infection hence remains until 'everyone has had the COVID-19'. (Or, of course, gotten the magic vaccine that will be rolled out after November 5th, or one of the vaunted artificial-antibody treatments that have been less than a month away for months now, with months and months still in the pipeline ... not that I disagree with carefully-considered testing, mind you.)
Meanwhile -- we could dance around the semantics of 'life' nearly as much as we can dance around the characteristics of 'when is human life protectable'. The one thing we can be certain of, with viruses, is that they don't have the consciousness necessary for any kind of 'free will' that would philosophically allow us to consider their attack consciously vicious or evil, or even particularly 'aware' that their convenient evolved reproductive host might happen to be alive and consider its own reproduction more paramount. Reflection on perceived 'over-generation' is a level of sophistication even above that ... and one that no longer benefits from many of the demonstrably-efficacious principles of natural selection.
Interestingly enough, something that is kinda-sorta like that (especially of value for any of you that are intelligent-design proponents) is the variable or shifting-antigen characteristic that many viral types display. It is relatively likely that a lethal antigenic shift in and of itself is likely either to further mutate out of high lethality (it pays to understand protein folding and interactions to see how this occurs, by the way) or to prove so prompt-lethal that it impedes its own spread and further transmission. So, to an extent, long-term viral 'selection' depends dramatically on very controlled lethality while continuing to value high effective multiplicity and spread...
Convicted OneI think that a big part of it is the imperative to not touch "portal" portions of your body once your hands have contacted potential sources.
This is where the folks who are wearing gloves are driving infection control types crazy. By the end of their trip through the grocery store, their gloves are at least as contaminated as their hands would be, and you can bet they aren't sanitizing them.
Of course some are just shedding the gloves in the parking lot, ignoring any trash containers that may be there. And there is a technique for removing gloves, which I doubt the vast majority understand.
NY's emperor has now mandated masks if you are in a situation where you cannot social distance. Some stores won't let you in without them. Again, the problem is how they're used. I see people pulling them down to rub their face, etc. And you can bet they aren't getting sanitized either.
My mask is in my pocket. It'll stay there until I'm forced to wear it. Seeing people in their own yards or walking alone down the street wearing a mask drives me crazy.
Bear in mind - I've had that mask in my pocket almost since the beginning of this event, because I'm an EMT and might need it on a call.
The kicker on the masks that many are wearing is that they are mostly ineffective against the virus...
On sanitizing cabs - most EMS agencies now have devices for that purpose. Essentially, it's a paint sprayer using a sanitizing solution...
EuclidIf you come out of a store with virus on your hands, it gets on the door handle of your car. If you sanitize your hands when you are back in your car, you have to sanitize the outside door handle when you get back out at home. Then you carry in several bags of groceries, all of which can have virus. Your clothes can have virus. You bring all of this into your house
I think that a big part of it is the imperative to not touch "portal" portions of your body once your hands have contacted potential sources.
Where I shop they have a fairly elaborate cart "de-con" procedure, setting carts that have recently been scrubbed out for you to grab upon entry...and I strive to have a fairly disciplined routine while shopping.
AND I usually get a dirty look as I stop to sanitize my hands prior to leaving the store, but it seems worth the bother.
I wash my hands, keys, and steering wheel upon re entering my car with 91% alcohol, And wash my hands with soap and water after putting everything away at home.
And I strive to leave everything just purchsed alone in storage at least 24 hours after getting home.
Admittedly not a fail safe routine, but one where the effort I put into it,... "feels" about right.
We have been told that the first two engines, at where the train is made up, the cabs will be sanitized. I have yet to see that or any documenting of that to prove the point. Basically rr workers are on their own. We all have always brought our own wipes to wipe down the interior of the eng cab when climbing on a consist. Many of us out onnthe job wear a mask when needed, me included. One jobs w/a brakman, that worker now rides a trailing unit as only the eng & condr are allowed to ride the same cab. Another factor has been the deadheading of employees an Amtrak trains. This is dome at several locations across the country. I would not step foot into an Amtrak train now. The deadheads ride in the coaches but if this is only two being deadheaded, then they should be able to ride a trailing Amtrak eng in leiu of the train coaches. I am on a non-Amtrak route and thus is nit my monkey, not my circus.
Overmod Euclid If you come out of a store with virus on your hands, it gets on the door handle of your car. If you sanitize your hands when you are back in your car, you have to sanitize the outside door handle when you get back out at home. Then you carry in several bags of groceries, all of which can have virus. Your clothes can have virus. You bring all of this into your house. They warn us to never shake clothing inside of the house because virus particles will fly out and land everywhere including your hands and face. Welcome to the true new normal. While it's not quite as nolite-me-tangere as you list it, there is certainly a wealth of potentially fomite-harbor surfaces around you, any of which can become virus-bearing either if contacted or if droplet transfer occurs. As we have noted (in the case of New York subways, at least) it can be extremely difficult to remove or denature the organic 'fomite' layer on many publicly-exposed surfaces ... and only 'social distancing' that keeps anyone from brushing them would preclude transfer to clothing or other contacted areas, which would then as you note require secondary sanitizing to become 'safed'.
Euclid
If you come out of a store with virus on your hands, it gets on the door handle of your car. If you sanitize your hands when you are back in your car, you have to sanitize the outside door handle when you get back out at home. Then you carry in several bags of groceries, all of which can have virus. Your clothes can have virus. You bring all of this into your house. They warn us to never shake clothing inside of the house because virus particles will fly out and land everywhere including your hands and face.
Welcome to the true new normal. While it's not quite as nolite-me-tangere as you list it, there is certainly a wealth of potentially fomite-harbor surfaces around you, any of which can become virus-bearing either if contacted or if droplet transfer occurs. As we have noted (in the case of New York subways, at least) it can be extremely difficult to remove or denature the organic 'fomite' layer on many publicly-exposed surfaces ... and only 'social distancing' that keeps anyone from brushing them would preclude transfer to clothing or other contacted areas, which would then as you note require secondary sanitizing to become 'safed'.
I think I am agreeing with you here, but I am not sure you understood what I meant. I think the belief that distancing and hand sanitizing is protecting us is absurd. But to your other point, how is "feel good" flattening the curve? And if that is not what is reducing the infection rate, what is? I don't believe we have the answer to that question.
I also am not convinced that the virus is not living. It may not comply with a set of characteristics we say are needed to define life, but there is a lot we don't know about life. Maybe our definition is incomplete.
EuclidOne thing we don’t know is whether the apparent slowing of virus spread is due to the lockdowns or whether it is just a natural response of the virus. And if it is a response of the virus, we don’t know why that is. We also don’t know if the virus will resurge, and if it does, we don’t know why it would.
This is more or less just silly. It would be like attributing free will to the virus, or consciousness.
If you look at a graph of new-case incidence above 100 confirmed cases, you can see a characteristic upward exponential increase (as for epidemic spread) followed by a rightward inflection past the 45% line (which is usually posted on these graphs as a parallel for reference) into a curve toward stability. In properly-plotted graphs, you can even see the transient influence of 'outbreaks' (which occur when, despite separative measures, the virus gets into a susceptible population and replicates as far as circumstances permit).
This particular virus has been sequenced, and the differences between it and the usual sort of common-cold virus have been very well characterized (as we know just where it is different). It is more than usually contagious because it 'just happens' to have an affinity for a surface enzyme complex on mammalian cells that are exposed to 'the outside world'. What has not yet quite been worked out (although I think the result will be interesting when the research is published and becomes more common knowledge) is what provokes the progression to severe autoimmune reaction, especially in the elderly -- I personally am expecting conserved triggers somewhere in the angiotensin-conversion pathway. Certainly my opinion at this point is that the actual deaths are vastly the result of specific autoimmune reaction, not 'virus induced disease' as other than semantics, and that directed therapy not only exists for this but has been demonstrated in other contexts. (However, imnsho, just evoking 'autoimmune modulation' and then looking for the quarter under the streetlight by testing, say, agents effective in AIDS is little better than cargo-cult voodoo by people who haven't looked at enough immunology...)
Remember also that presence of virus does not imply infection by virus -- and there are other safeguards in the body against viral infection, including mucus and the conserved leukotriene cascade. In a sense at least some of the reactions leading to ARDS are conserved reactions, as well, just as those inducing apoptosis are for variously-induced forms of cancer.
When I look at what is being done to protect people in stores, for instance, I get the impression that the distancing and sanitizing is doing very little good. Going grocery shopping involves so many ways for the virus to spread. You have to touch cart handles, cooler handles, and product on the shelves. If the virus can get on your hands, it can also get on your arms, face, and clothing.
Most of it has a significant component of 'feel-good', just like the masks that can't and don't work much of the time, or have 'valves' that actually increase the jet characteristics of sneezes or coughs without filtering action. It was highly amusing to watch the battling titans who were Razzle-like trying to get to the one true gum vs. candy Marxist truth of whether it spread aerially or via fomite contamination, all those weeks of deaths and spread, before they finally began to figure out that most of the transmission was technically via fomite surface, but 'gotten there' through droplet fallout. I'd be tempted to say this was pretty obvious from their own first principles, when you actually look at them, but... well, at least it's understood now.
The big thing that will tell you it's feel-good is that there's no ban on talking in public. Or in groups in public when the group is otherwise practicing the social-distancing rites. I have yet to see anyone cleaning off their glass... covered with finger debris... smartphone after yakking into it, sometimes animatedly, for minutes or hours, but I certainly see them put the phone away, handle stuff, then take it out and start punching characters or icons on it. They'll wait carefully 6' separated in lines, then jaw at the person taking the money from 3' away... cash-handling distance. If this were truly an infectious virus instead of an unexpected opportunist, there would likely be far more outbreaks than we observe; if the current shelter-in-place or social-distancing approaches were to be suspended, I'd expect to see things crank up a few days thereafter, from the usual sorts of outbreak foci.
We make a point of having our crews carefully scrub, then sanitize their hands, then don gloves. Fairly frequently we have them alcohol/quat scrub their gloved hands as they work, precisely to preclude any contact transfer of viral particles to new surfaces on which they can remain transmissibly infectious. We have them double-mask to ensure (reasonably) that any tendency to expel droplets bearing viral particles -- and these can be quite small -- is (again reasonably) "muffled". And we have them minimize conversation (and use hand signals) while on client premises, and use handsfree devices for phoning, and keep the vehicle surfaces wiped down with EPA N materials. They wear shoe covers that are (carefully) taken off and put in plastic when leaving each premise. When we return to the dispatch office all the vehicle surfaces are wiped down again when leaving, and any work-related cloths and clothing are laundered hot using a 'laundry sterilizer' (it's about 2.4% quat undiluted, with fabric softener to ensure contact) in the appropriate part of the cycle. We encourage use of the same product whenever employees do their own laundry.
Not to tempt the gods with hubris, but despite having gone into, by now, thousands of individual premises, none of our employees have shown viral infection despite voluntary testing, and none of our clients (again so far) have shown symptoms of COVID-19 subsequent to our cleaning.
Until we actually do have some means of either inducing or demonstrating both effective immunity and practical non-shedding of SARS-CoV-2, procedures such as this become as sensible as those for 'not getting colds' -- just now extended to both contact and 'close-aerosol' transfer. Note that once these can be done mindfully by significant groups of people, some of the current scattershot 'social-distancing' ukases could be relaxed ... but the cost of even minor-seeming violations a la McFarlane (not to single him out except he insisted) might then be further outbreaks, any of which might lead to Captain-Trips-style spread back into pandemic epidemiology.
Now, if we didn't already have effective 'therapy' for those cases proceeding through inadequately-protected viral induction to ARDS, this would be more of a 'showstopper' for restarting the economy. Even a relatively inadequate approach to serological 'prompt testing' in populations 'significantly at risk' will give the necessary lead time (probably no more than 2-3 days) for a combination of 3CLpro inhibition and Avigan to shut down progression to ARDS; adapting even existing dialysis equipment to selective interleukin filtration will shut down morbidity in many established cases of ARDS, perhaps even in those already with multifactor co-morbidity that would not tolerate measures like heroic misventilation.
I'd be far happier if so many of the practical short-term solutions for 'letting people get back to work' and then, later, 'rebuilding the parts of the economy shut down by SIP/SD' did not implicitly involve more or less fascist control over personal habits and choices. Even in a world with better common sense, where we segregated people at risk (with better privileges, like early-hours post-sanitization being reserved for over-60s) rather than shoved everyone apart and then casually ignored those with 'more privilege' of one sort or another, there would still be the problem of the 'next outbreak' ... and the collateral deaths it would threaten, and the potential 485-fire-like fun if you were to track down the prime case in such an outbreak.
Why there are not swaths of deaths running rampant through all the nursing-home death mills in this country has been, and still is, something of a mystery to me. Certainly nearly everyone I know who has 'died of coronavirus' has been either of advanced age or was immunocompromised in some way ... and was in some kind of managed care. Perhaps these are carefully excluded from statistical oversight in some kind of black-bottle way...
OTOH, the stay-at-home practices are likely keeping the influenza related death count artificially low, as well.
One thing we don’t know is whether the apparent slowing of virus spread is due to the lockdowns or whether it is just a natural response of the virus. And if it is a response of the virus, we don’t know why that is. We also don’t know if the virus will resurge, and if it does, we don’t know why it would.
"One death is a tragedy, and a million is a statistic." - Iosef Vissarionovich Stalin, as quoted by President Jack Ryan on page 750 of Executive Orders (Tom Clancy, 1996). The context there was an Ebola epidemic in the U.S. [only]. Worth reading: " . . . personal interactions are minimized, and that's how you stop one of these things." (same page, but by an infectious disesases expert)
Two reasonably short articles with a common author - neither behind a 'paywall' as far as I can tell - from almost 3 weeks ago advocating group testing to return to normal quickly. What they don't address is where those tests are going to come from. One of the authors of the first - likely the son of the other author - has some decent credentials.
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/490300-how-to-get-the-economy-safely-back-to-work-in-just-2-weeks#bottom-story-socials A quote: "If after a month the infection and death rates are down, which they surely will be, and we release everyone back into the wild, the rates will go right back up."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2020/03/29/group-testing-is-our-secret-weapon-against-coronavirus/#5449911936a6
I'll leave it to someone else to comment on some of the implications of these articles. One that struck me is it would require essentially mandatory testing by the government to get some of our freedom of movement back. Difficult tradeoffs.
- PDN.
We fought wars and ran businesses while waves of polio and measles hit the country. How did we survive?
MidlandMike It should be obvious to anyone whose has seen the evening news from New York
City. New York City. Once you get north of Westchester County, it's a whole different world. Outside of the metro areas of Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, you have entire counties with well under 100 total confirmed cases - and few of them are in the hospital. They are all isolating at home. My county has exactly two people in the hospital. And only 42 confirmed cases since the whole shebang started. The media rarely reports the thousands of confirmed cases that have recovered, either.
I think we've had either two or four deaths in a four county area.
Ninety percent of the cases in New York state are in the NYC metro area.
With the advent of antibody testing and more universal virus testing, the death rate will continue to drop. At one point, millions were going to die. Then it was hundreds of thousands. Now it's tens of thousands. Not insignificant, but no where near what the original doomsayers were predicting.
MidlandMike It should be obvious to anyone whose has seen the evening news from New York that COVID is much worse than the flu. No need to consult a politician.
Based upon numbers at the CDC website, there is not one state where the number of influenza related deaths exceeds the number of Covid-19 deaths...while in many states the number of Covid-19 deaths is double that from influenza.
And that includes influenza related deaths compiled over the previous several months spanning back to last year, compared to the current Covid-19 numbers.
tree68he death rate is under 2%, and will continue to drop as more testing is available, revealing more infected people. Antibody testing is in the works, which will further increase the number of people who have been exposed and are now likely immune, whether they had symptoms or not. This is equivalent to, or less than the death rate of the common flu, which we took almost no precautions for. ...
The death rate may be 2% but that is still a guess. The death rate in Italy was 12%, partly attributed to their elder population. The death rate for flu is 0.1%. It should be obvious to anyone whose has seen the evening news from New York that COVID is much worse than the flu. No need to consult a politician.
Juniata ManLarry: You've touched on one of my pet peeves with the stats that are being thrown around; i.e. the number of cases being reported is cumulative - not current or active. Curt
You've touched on one of my pet peeves with the stats that are being thrown around; i.e. the number of cases being reported is cumulative - not current or active.
Curt
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map
You can manipulate the map to hone in on the counties that interest you.
Juniata Man Larry: You've touched on one of my pet peeves with the stats that are being thrown around; i.e. the number of cases being reported is cumulative - not current or active. Curt
Larry:
At the risk of being briefly political - this whole exercise has been political. Previous outbreaks have not brought out this level of "scare." And the petit tyrants are having a field day, ruling by fiat.
Despite constant denials by those feeding on the hype, this is turning out little worse for most of the country than the annual flu. In fact, some areas probably have more deaths from the flu than from this virus.
abdklRemember that symptoms do not appear until days after the person IS a carrier, spreading droplets on many things that everyone else touches. And it's not just old folks who are dying. STAY apart to stop the spread.
The death rate is under 2%, and will continue to drop as more testing is available, revealing more infected people. Antibody testing is in the works, which will further increase the number of people who have been exposed and are now likely immune, whether they had symptoms or not.
This is equivalent to, or less than the death rate of the common flu, which we took almost no precautions for. In fact, I'd bet we all know someone who went to granny's house for Thanksgiving even though they had 'a touch of the flu.'
Everyone likes to post the number of positive tests - but that's since day one. 98% of those people have recovered, or are recovering. Many people have been put in quarantine, or isolation because of exposure, not because they actually contracted the virus. They're coming out of isolation as well, most symptom-free.
The big question is how long are we going to hide? How long can we afford to hide?
charlie hebdoIn Illinois walking in groups of two are fine, larger if families who reside together. Are you saying it's not allowed in NY State?
It was another state that had the curfew. I can't remember which. There's also an image circulating of two police officers arresting a solitary fellow for walking alone on the beach in Florida. They were much closer than six feet to him.
After 8PM tonight, you'll need to wear a mask if you are in public in a situation where social distancing is not possible (ie, grocery stores, etc.).
I went to Lowes today to get stuff to fix my garage door (it wasn't quite all the way open when I started backing in).
All of the staff and maybe half of the customers were in masks of various types. If the behaviors I saw there were any indication of how people are going to wear masks, they may as well not bother. The same goes for gloves.
NY's governor has extended the "pause" for another two weeks.
tree68 zugmann A group of people that gathered in a big mass. Becuase that makes sense. The proof will be in the pudding, as they say, in a couple of weeks. I understand the no mass gatherings and social distancing. What I don't get is why certain activities (like a walk around the block, or on the beach - especially if there's no one else in sight) need to be banned. Meanwhile, the parking lot at your local big box is full of cars.
zugmann A group of people that gathered in a big mass. Becuase that makes sense.
The proof will be in the pudding, as they say, in a couple of weeks.
I understand the no mass gatherings and social distancing. What I don't get is why certain activities (like a walk around the block, or on the beach - especially if there's no one else in sight) need to be banned.
Meanwhile, the parking lot at your local big box is full of cars.
In Illinois walking in groups of two are fine, larger if families who reside together. Are you saying it's not allowed in NY State?
Where I live beachs and trails were open, but then some people were congregating, so they were closed.
zugmannA group of people that gathered in a big mass. Becuase that makes sense.
People who venture out into public and then congregate in groups like they did on the Michigan capitol lawn, are vectors for infection, no matter their cause. The virus has no political affiliation.
tree68As long as people continue to test positive, the powers that be will enjoy their power trip and keep things locked down.
There is talk in Michigan of mass protests against the shut down, advancing the argument that " people who venture out in public aren't vectors for infection but rather freedom fighters standing up to oppression."
I'm more inclined to see the people who refuse to be forced back to the yolk just to satisfy Wall Street fat cats as the true freedom fighters
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