I have yet to see anyone on this thread advocate quarantining healthy people. Where did you see that?
It has been confirmed by several countries now that children are silent spreaders. They won’t get sick but they will carry it to vulnerable populations, and not just elderly. Obesity is another high risk as well as many other common conditions, and now you are talking about half if America.
These measures are not to stop the spread, but to SLOW the spread. Left unchecked, this virus will deplete our healthcare system within weeks. Then you have collateral damage because people with other health conditions cannot get hospital care.
I am not advocating giving up our rights but at the same time, I believe our rights do stop where another’s begins. We cannot go around endangering others because “muh rights”. Here is an article you really need to read to understand the scope of what we are facing here without mitigation:
What does the coronavirus mean for the U.S. health care system? Some simple math offers alarming answers
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19/
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 !!
I see the actual call for quarantine of healthy people, and the lauding of those who have done the same (healthy diamond princess people, China with their extreme quarantine) frequently on these threads.
I’m not going to comb through all but offer the first one I saw after your response, by blue plum:
“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.”
I don’t say this to insult blue plum who is entitled to their opinion. Just to offer an example it took me ten seconds to find. This opinion is frequent in the threads.
Blue plum I pinged you because I quoted you and I understand that is proper etiquette. I mean no offense.