We cannot and most of us likely should not stop working, stay at home, and all, but there needs to be more transparency and honesty in all of this. It should be sobering to everyone to understand the scope of challenge: (1) China locked down cities, bulldozed roads, (2) Israel has quarantine for everyone entering country, (3) Italy is under quarantine, etc. This is not typical flu and should not be dismissed as such. Every time Trump says it is, the reports suggest otherwise, and Trump looks bad. Just saying because it needs to be said. He keeps painting a rosey picture, his staff offer more sobering picture. I don't like that disconnect and I think it will get worse if not stopped. Do we really want to risk a Biden or Sanders getting elected?
Unfortunately you are correct. Trump the optimist earns political dividends for a few days at most. Trump realism will do the opposite in the short run.
Right now Trump needs to stick to explaining what we are doing to slow down and stop the spread of this virus. But mostly he needs to stop saying anything about outcomes.
He doesn’t know how widespread and deep this infection will go. NOBODY DOES. The straight truth has served Trump well. He should stick to it. The possibility of a President Bernie Sanders or President Joe Biden scares me more than this virus,
“It should be sobering to everyone to understand the scope of challenge”
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Yup:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1237020518781460480.html
(FULL TEXT AT LINK)
“If we want to understand how powerful an opponent SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is, let’s take a look what has been required to stop it in China. The Chinese government has essentially used a social nuclear weapon in its efforts. Let’s talk about this, to understand what US is facing.
The Chinese have had the most COVID19 cases so far (80,859), but the number of new cases has dropped from 100’s per day a month ago to ~46 per day now — in a country of 1.4B people. This is an astonishing achievement from a public health point of view.
We can get a sense of how strong something is by getting a sense of what sort of force is required to stop it, to borrow a Newtonian physics metaphor. COVID-19 requires a powerful force to stop. This is clear from the Chinese response”
Be careful what you wish for.
This comes down to the wisdom of the Chinese running a level 4 bioweapons facility in one of the most populated areas of their country. The distance between that lab and the wet market that the virus took off from is measure in hundreds of feet.
Chances are good a lab worker sold a test animal at that market and the rest is history.
Yes, nursing homes are going to get cleaned out. I think it is fifty/fifty as to whether that’s a tragedy or a blessing. I just watched my father in law die slowly over the last five years in one of those places.
Bottom line is China isn’t ready to be a superpower.
As for us being ‘ready’ for something like this. No country can be ‘ready’ for a novel virus. Period. Novel means ‘new’ and if the Chinese aren’t going to come clean with the sequencing you need in order to deal with it until it is clear that it is completely off the chain in China, then you really don’t have a lot of options.
Now they have it modeled down to the last atom - both the S and L strains. (Yup, two strains).
It takes time to spin up tests that are EFFECTIVE, and CHEAP. China’s were neither.
Wuhan virus will pass. CFR will likely be four times what seasonal flu is. That will suck, but it is not unexpected.