Posted on 03/10/2020 5:22:41 AM PDT by Vermont Lt
Continuation of the thread.
Please use this thread to consolidate the discussion and stories.
Great post. I’ve stopped posting here since things went crazy in Italy, as there is so much on Twitter coming directly from guys like Trevor Bedford and other specialists that it seems like the constant news feed from Twitter is easier to read. Also, since this became a political mess in the U.S., I have been quite enraged by Trump - I shouldn’t need to tell anybody who’s followed this thread since lat Jan/early Feb why. I glanced through the Rush Limbaugh thread and thought that those are simply the worst of FR - the ones with no brains and blind loyalty.
The Lombardy stats are terrifying, the situation in Iran is getting near apocolyptic, and Seattle is about to get a huge dose of it - with about 1/2 the city not even sure they should stay in or close schools. As a 20 yr Seattleite with many loved ones there, it’s honestly been hard to sleep just thinking about it.
Alaskans are largely complacent about it, secure in our “no cases yet!” stat - which will change any day now. Our chief medical officer Anne Zink seems pretty with it - and is not a “just the flu bro” gal at all - she actually said a couple of weeks ago to stock up on food/water/meds - even with that idiot Redfield was busy telling a hearing otherwise.
Our test criteria is still pretty stingy but I think they’re trying to widen it and test anything suspicious, which is good. But the Anchorage Daily news are the worst pushers of the just the flu mentality, stating in an article last week that this is LESS infectious than the flu, and not much deadlier. In another q&a article they said people should not be afraid to travel to Seattle, and that their risk was very low. That is, until is wasn’t...
So I think the overall mood here is very complacent - and a lot of people don’t read much news from the lower 48, some don’t even watch it on TV - so those folks only know what the Anchorage Daily News has told them, which isn’t much. They’ve not run any stories I can think of about Italy or Iran. This is the first week they even had a covid19 story “above the fold” - and that lasted maybe 2 days.
So I don’t know how things will play out when the virus begins showing itself here (it’s surely already here, the cases just aren’t severe enough to warrant ICU, so they haven’t discovered them). But with the Iditarod festivities from the weekend bringing visitors from “all over the globe” - our governor was proud of that - you can be sure if it wasn’t spreading before, it will be spreading soon. Plus all the spring breakers - which were also advised by Anchorage Daily News “no need to cancel your travel plans unless they are to Italy or China.”
Sad.
I hope all you FReepers are staying safe, #stayHome #workFromHome and #flattenTheCurve !!
Why would you think there would be any jobs for the young to go to work at, or schools for children to attend, without the seniors that own the businesses or the staff that run the schools, unlocking the doors? Commerce turns on seniors and their life-long efforts to build enterprise and shape society.
Auto-related deaths can be accepted. We know that auto makers build safety in and most wrecks these days are human error or drunks. That is, we know the cause.
Deaths from a virus we’ve never seen before, with no known mitigation, raises the concern level a whole lot higher. Seniors worry how they can protect their children and grandchildren. Children worry how to protect their parents. Both worry that they can’t see even each other because one group, the youth, most likely to be asymptomatic, are being allowed to infect each other to saturation it seems, while another group, the seniors, are told to isolate themselves. Allowing saturation seems counter-intuitive to a goal of eradication. What good does isolation of seniors do, if seniors can’t be mobile, can’t return to function, can’t get the wheels spinning, when the act of stepping out their door jeapordizes their health?
Seems to me, it should be the youth and their children under ‘house arrest’. For the 30 or so days it takes to express the virus. Reason being, the disease in youth is almost universally mild, and nowhere near the burden on the health system as 15% of the nation’s seniors being intubated in negative pressure ICUs. But what do I know? Most days I’m shaking hay off my jacket.
(and I get the university closings - better to get the students out of major metro areas where the hospitals may get crowded and back to their homes, which may not be so crowded. Otherwise the dorms risk becoming a cruise ship risk level)
Good post.
I agree with you about the quality of commentary available on twitter.
I am frankly astounded at some of what is being said here on FR. It is hard not to characterize it as stupidity or willful ignorance, at this point.
Thanks :)
I’m going to go with stupidity.
At this point it’s becoming somewhat survival of the fittest, where the most mediocre minds are just unable to process the idea of an exponential process, which is why they say things like “we’ve had XX,XXX flu deaths and nobody cares...”
They cannot grasp that however many deaths the flu causes, it doesn’t have the ability to add 2 places to that number, and covid19 does.
Another things to remember is that supposedly nearly 80% of the flu deaths are people who chose not to vaccinate. That may be off, but one can at least accept that a hefty portion of the flu deaths did not vaccinate. That’s a choice.
Nobody can make that choice here - so there will be no “avoidable” deaths other than the ones caused by the testing debacle, and the complacent attitudes that will also lead to additional deaths.
So very true. What I find interesting is to look back at photos of my grandmother in her 60’s, then my mother, and look at how those now present themselves in their 60’s. Quite a difference.
are they being held on RNA fragments or on live virus? The longest, I think, in China was 37 days? Those folks are at 37.. I’d be bored out of my mind by then. I hope that Gilead drug helps those in critical. There’s not much else.
I’m under the impression Trump is trying to play more relaxed view to hopefully quell the public’s anxiety. However, in the mean time that message may be misunderstood and is being received as if he is unaware of reality or not in sync with other gov officials.
buzz off
He tweeted this today:
“So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”
Hey Don, ever heard of the word “exponential?”
His words, and ongoing attitude about covid19 as no big deal, is pathetic. That is not playing relaxed, that is trying to gaslight the American public. As if China and Italy are just big ole overreactors.
His sad attempts to prop up the stock market are as transparent as a piece of glass. And at a time when the U.S. needs a Winston Churchill (w/out the booze, perhaps) - we get this crap? I voted for him - but right now the only thing more stupid than his statements are the ones made by Joe Biden, putting America in a serious jam.
I just read this letter from a woman on twitter. I think you will appreciate this.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESz-rgpUMAEf8gt?format=jpg&name=large
You seem pretty reasonable in asking what the big deal is, so I’ll tell you what happened in California, as I remember it from about 40 years ago:
One huge fear that agriculture had for eternity in California was the Fruit Fly - tiny little bugs that destroy crops. In other parts of the world, once they became infested, agriculture, as they knew it was wiped out. So California was always on the lookout for them. To this day, they have inspection points on Interstates going into California for just this reason. But, of course, some slip through (people bringing them from other states or countries, or wherever). So they have a monitoring system where they set up traps. If they find some in a trap, that means there is some level of fruit fly infestation. And they have a department at the state level that knows how to deal with it. They will use some level of chemical spraying to eradicate them. I remember listening to the news and hearing that 3 of them were trapped yesterday in Escondido (or wherever) and now they’re going to spray a 20 square mile area. And I would think that an overreaction.
So did Governor Jerry Brown, about 40 years ago, thought the same. Some were caught, the experts said you need to aerial spray this relatively small area, and truck-spray this larger area (or something like that). Governor Brown, however, was an environmentalist, and didn’t like using chemicals. So he had them do less spraying, far less. Of course the number being caught increased, and still Brown would not permit aerial spraying. Finally, they told him that the state’s agriculture would be lost, FOREVER, if they didn’t spray now and spray hard. So Brown relented, the planes came out, and dumped a boatload of malathion on crops, cars, people, and anyone/anything else unfortunate enough to be in that large area.
They did stop it...but they waited too long and the measures were much more severe, and people did get sick and cars damaged from that high-dosage spraying.
Bottom line, there’s a right way to fight infestations and infections (which is to cut them off early, as in Singapore), and there’s a wrong way. And even with today’s hair-brained politicians in California, no one ever second-guesses the people who deal with fruit flies.
You should check out the video I found on twitter at 1333. Some are doing more than playing around during this infection.
“They did stop it...but they waited too long and the measures were much more severe, and people did get sick and cars damaged from that high-dosage spraying.
Bottom line, there’s a right way to fight infestations and infections (which is to cut them off early, as in Singapore), and there’s a wrong way.”
Sounds like me with my chronic sinusitis as a 20-something. “It’s just a cold, I’ll get over it”. Antibiotics would have done the trick if I had ever gone to the doctor. Ended up in an 8-hour surgery with my forehead draped over my face and a 5 square-inch hole in my skull.
“We should be doing what South Korea is doing.”
“What are they doing?”
“I couldn’t tell you”
You should be advising Trump
You're overstating that number as of today.
But in two weeks I'm betting it will be accurate.
For the record, are you watching the daily report of VP Pence and all the various members of the task force? They provide expertise in the various areas of their expertise. The Report is around 5:30 or so
Are you watching that excellent presentation? Or are you getting your biased propaganda from conventional news?
The only accurate source is the task force
You really need to normalize those data points to make a meaningful comparison.
What is the average age of people in Italy? In HK?
Political considerations (Italy is in EU - can they just unilaterally close their borders?)
State of health care system prior to COVID-19? There's some anecdotal evidence that Italy's system in the affected areas was already under stress.
Etc.
Thanks for finding this!
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