Posted on 03/12/2020 4:41:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
Try this thought experiment. Envision the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as a living, breathing enemy -- which, of course, is exactly what it is.
But imagine for a moment that we are in real war with a cognizant, thinking and clever enemy whose sole reason to live is to hurt, maim or kill as many of us as it can.
COVID-19 may not have jets, tanks or nukes, like our past enemies. But its arsenal, numbers, cunning and willpower are said to be formidable.
To win its war against Americans, COVID-19 must infect and sicken lots of Americans each day. If it cannot infect enough victims to multiply and sustain a hungry army of viruses, COVID-19 will soon sputter and die. It will get trapped in just a few hosts among an otherwise victorious and healthy nation of about 330 million.
Nature has given COVID-19 some weapons that its defeated cousins -- the H1N1 swine flu and the MERS and SARS viruses -- lacked.
It is more clever by being less lethal -- and a little tougher in its ability to live outside a host. Viral resiliency ensures that it rarely turns into a suicide bomber by dying with a terminally sick host, and that it does not perish so quickly when orphaned in the air and on surfaces.
The coronavirus has allies. It infiltrates our defenses by using our own weapons against us -- our dirty hands, the habitual touching of the face, and indiscreet sneezing and coughing.
Poor personal and public hygiene gives the virus some sustenance and camouflage. To win -- defined as sickening or killing thousands of us -- COVID-19 counts on our laxity. It hates careful individuals who block its invasion into the eyes, nose and mouth.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
...and thats a GOOD thing.
Sorry Billy, Andy is right on this. The President is not banning travel to and from Europe just for show. Go read about Italy. Hanson said the virus is not as lethal as some viruses like SARS or Ebola, but more lethal than the common flu. That is pretty spot. Billy, I wish you well, take care of what you need to.
For a pandemic like this one, it is likely that the feedback mechanisms will include public response (containment and prevention), and development of hardened immunity among the recovered population.
Let me know when we start hearing about the almost 20,000 in this Country who are DEAD because of the common flu. Then explain why this is such a big deal?
The pure fact is the vast majority of those who claim to know about these things are saying we don’t know enough about this virus. So it seems as if you and others are scared to death because you blindly accept the end of the world scenarios the scare mongers love to spread.
BTW, I lived thru the Swine flu bs scare, The Avian flu the Aides scare of the 80’s which was a real beauty because then we were told the Aids virus was constantly mutating and there was little if any hope it would ever be contained and MILLIONS would die. How’d that work out?
You can sit in your little safe place and scare yourself to death by listening to all the conflicting info while of course only believing the worst while I will as I always do take reasonable precautions and wait until this all passes within about 45-60 days with real improvement being shown in a couple or three weeks.
What the president is doing is out of an abundance of caution but it is also a political move.
We will see how long this thing takes to pass.
After some education when you can write down the solution to the differential equation dN/dt=kN and explain it's meaning and relevance here then get back to us. Until then shut up because you are going to get a lot of people killed who didn't need to die.
Hint: what quarantine is about is changing k from 10 per week to a very small number hoping eventually to drive it negative so it just dies off before your population does.
It has already been suggested (Maria Bartiromo mentioned it just this morning) that China is withholding essential products and elements needed to fight COVID-19 from the rest of the world...saying that they are needed internally by China. One of the purported reasons for this is retaliation for the international response to Huawei (blackmail, in other words).
Also, it was suggested by oilman Harold Hamm yesterday that the skirmish between Russia and Saudi Arabia that was driving down oil prices was actually a "concerted effort" between those two counties to flood the oil market (to drive down prices) in hopes of killing the U.S. fracking industry.
As we all know, crises such as the ones created by COVID-19 greatly magnify already existing conflicts between countries.
That is the point - public response - containment which is what this whole argument is about. And yes we can talk about logistics curves, saturation, development over generations of a population with an immunity, etc. But hopefully we don’t have to kill off grandma to get there - and as the Italians are telling us, it isn’t just grandma that is being crippled or killed by this. A lot of younger people who survive are going to be scarred for life (lung damage, etc.).
Here’s the biggest problem:
Almost all of us will get it at one point or another.
I’m in my young 60s. In my long life, I’ve gotten a cold at least 50 times; usually once a year but sometimes it skips a year.
My immunity faculties must still work, as I don’t get colds as nearly as often.
But, since there’s no known cure for all the various human colds, eventually I run into someone who has one I don’t have immunity to and there it goes. I get it.
This corona virus is most similar to the common cold in that aspect.
All we can do is mitigate the more serious symptoms.
Talk to me about the the close to 20,000 who have died so far this yr right here in America and why that wasn’t a story. It wasn’t even a story when those deaths hit almost 60,000 but this is a BIG DEAL because the Media says so and people like you just blindly accept all they say even though their are voices of reason out there who talk a bit more sensibly about this.
Some people automatically gravitate to the worst case scenario in any crises and you are one of many who do so. I prefer and wait until the ridiculous hysteria winds down and common sense returns.
Dousing a fire before it burns your house down is not panicking. It's taking appropriate actions in an emergency.
How long are you going to wait? One week - 15,000 Americans will be infected. Two - 150,000. Three? 1.5M. Four 15M. Five? everyone.
I am not panicking. I am supporting the strongest possible public health measures to contain and control this. Now!
But apparently some of the coronaviruses exhibit antibody dependent enhancement (as does the already-known dengue fever virus) which means subsequent infections may end up being more likely to be fatal, than the first.
Oh goody.
Was the Spanish flu a story?
Quarantine is therefore also about changing the shape of the infected-vs-time bell curve, so the peak contagion doesn’t lead to the hospitals and ICUs getting overrun like they did in Hubei and in Italy.
Too true.
But it is easier to say that there should be a nationwide ban on all elective surgeries and procedures to minimize the strain on local hospitals during the coronavirus epidemic, including pregnancy termination, gender reassignment, tubal ligations and vasectomies.
Agreed. I am far less worried about it killing me than I am of unintentionally spreading it to elderly people I know, or my uncle who is undergoing chemo. Prudence is warranted.
Agreed. Quarantine Washington, NYC and SoCal now, and anywhere else there is “community spread”.
Exactly! Even if we all get infected, if it’s over the next 5 years perhaps everyone who will survive if they get to and ICU will be admitted unlike Italy now where if you are over 60 you are left to die.
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