How Can This Be Happening?

May 4, 2020 | Barnacle

[Barnacle]

Most of us have been in lockdown for about six weeks. The objective was to flatten the curve and reduce the total number of victims of COVID-19. Well, the curve has been flattened indeed, but how is it six-weeks later there are 25,375 new cases in a single day?

With all the laws and policies implemented to knock out this virus, I expected we’d be on the last leg of the downward curve by now. But, instead of a peak and decline, we’ve had three peaks and shallow valleys between them.

If people are staying at home, practicing social distancing, wearing masks in public, washing their hands and sanitizing everything in sight, how is it that COVID-19 continues to be transmitted from person to person?

A couple possibilities that occurred to me are that: 1) People flouting the laws, or 2) The virus is phenomenally virulent beyond anything ever seen before ( bio-weapon).

I was fully on board with the lockdown orders when they were issued. It was what we needed to do to beat this. However, we are at the point that the cure is becoming worse than the disease. In addition to what this virus has done to people directly, what about the collateral damage, such as long-term damage to our economy? For instance, consider the first two trillion dollar bail-out. Who pays for it? If you are among the approximate one-hundred-million US tax payers, you do. The federal government just signed your name to a $20,000 loan. Don’t think so? Do the math.

It would be particularly interesting to hear the stories of COVID-19 cases that you’ve heard of in the last couple weeks and theories of how they were exposed.

Should we just let this thing take an inevitable course, or should we double-down on lock-down?

[logi_cal869]

I’ve spoken til I’m hoarse, typed til my fingers bled.

To no avail.

I really, really, REALLY want to punch people who don’t understand that (your words).

Thanks for the sensible comment.

[Yo-Yo]

The objective was to flatten the curve and reduce the total number of victims of COVID-19.

Your're half right. The objective was to flatten the curve so that hospitals didn't get overwhelmed by a huge number of cases all at once.

We will end up with about the same number of victims, just spread out over a longer period of time so the hospital case load remains manageable.

If the standard is to wait until there are no more COVID patients before we reopen our lives, we never will reopen.

[norcal joe]

The “death total” only exceeds 75,000 in their data because they now count pretty much everyone who dies now as a CV death. I think most people are acting responsibly, but not so irrationally such that their mental health and economy greatly suffer.

[DoodleBob]

Here's another curve that must be flattened.

If I eyeball it, we're approaching an unemployment rate commensurate with an increase of 6 suicides per 100,000 people. If we have 330MM people, that comes to 19,800 new suicides because we've flattened the economy.

The rate of increase in fatalities has slowed - it's been less than 5% per day for the past eleven days. Further, those fatalities are likely arising from cases confirmed about 5-12 days ago. Thankfully, fatalities from coronavirus are on decline.

But people are despondent about their financial situation: they're either out of work, or their business is gone/Chapter 7. And finding a job in this market is very difficult. Should we ignore them?

If we open up business and do a risk-based approach to re-emergence, i.e., recognize that youthful, healthy people have a lower risk of fatality and don't suck the life out of the healthcare system, then we'll reduce the chance of an avalanche of suicides. If we keep fearing for the virus in favor of caring for the unemployed, their deaths are blood on the hands of hysterics and Dem Governors.

[Swirl]

Sorry Joe,

But the only people I have heard to say this in medical institutes are the ones who are losing money from Covid. There is no profit in Covid for the medical community. The lucrative money-making procedures have been postponed, not to mention routine appointments.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Given the large number of asymptomatic carriers of the disease; everyone should assume they’re a carrier until they know otherwise. There are only two ways to know you’re not a carrier: you passed a recent test; or, you had the disease and have recovered.

The laws are on the books — under your Constitution, they are constitutional until a judge (and, ultimately the SCOTUS) rules otherwise. Launch lawsuits — but, continue to act responsibly, and with due regard for the safety of others.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

The death total continues to rise — at a horrific rate. At this point, the death rate is driven by human behaviour. Act responsibly, and with due regard to the health of others. Don’t be responsible for adding to the deaths and suffering.

[Persevero]

How can masks be the number one way to stop the spread?

WHO says they aren’t effective and we shouldn’t wear them.

A few week ago the US government was telling us the same thing. The federal government isn’t advising it.

Many doctors have posted in here explaining the uselessness of masks for this.

[Mark17]

Now that’s funny.

[ConservativeMind]

Get over it, lady! We want more cases that don’t result in death. That is exactly why we need a lot more antibody testing.

A positive test is completely fine. A death is not. We already knew all the deaths, so why don’t you want to know about all the positives that were not known before?

[sport]

The truth is that there will be NO vaccine, there will be NO ‘magic bullet’.

That is true.

Like all viruses, it will simply have to work its way through the population until we have ‘herd immunity’ and/or it *DISAPPEARS* as these types of viruses have often done in the past.

That is true.

And no one knows why.

Not true. Those that foisted this scam on the sheep knew exactly why they were doing and why they were doing it.

The ‘experts’ are LYING on so many levels it impossible to keep count.

That is true.

Open the country back up

That is not going to happen.In their panic. In their irrational fear, the sheep have have demanded that the biggest control freaks the World has ever known take control of their lives. They are not about to release them.

but make everyone use masks, ‘social distancing’, desinfecting (as we are seeing in grocery stores),

They will at least do that. Problem is,it won't work. One can't build houses,fabricate machinery, build and repair ships, harvest crops, dig ditches or perform any of the services that an economy such as what ours used to be demands.

The toll will be in the hundreds of thousands. That cannot be changed.

Both these are true.

But we don’t have to drive the nation into a Depression over it.

That is true but one way or another a depression is coming. The genie is out of the bottle now.If President Trump can beat back the Democrat's efforts to get mail in voting he might be able to for stall it. But if the Democrats are successful at getting mail in voting. They don't have to get it for every State, Only those with the most electoral votes.

[ConservativeMind]

The infection rate does not equal the death rate.

We have millions and millions of people who had COVID but didn’t go to the hospital, meaning the death rate is tiny.

I want the infection rate to skyrocket, because it is simply catching what was already out there, not killing anyone.

[kaehurowing]

Most healthcare professionals are being forced to take major pay cuts in addition to having to deal with COVID-19.

[zeestephen]

Re: 25,375 new cases in a single day

The high rate of “new” infections is “caused” by the USA doing more testing than the rest of the world combined.

The USA has done 7.3 million tests.

We had 1.18 million positive tests.

The infection rate = 16%

Please keep in mind that most of those tests have been done on high risk individuals - persons with known exposure to the virus, persons who have recently traveled to highly infected countries or states, and persons who have obvious symptoms.

If we tested the whole country, the “real” COVID infection rate is probably close to 10% - which equals 33 million people.

The USA has 69,000 COVID deaths.

69,000 divided by 33 million = 0.002 = 0.2%

The Case Fatality Rate during an “average” USA influenza season is between 0.1% and 0.2%.

COVID-19 is a dangerous disease.

But - it is NOT more dangerous than influenza.

[kaehurowing]

Here are the facts.

80 percent will have mild to moderate symptoms.

20 percent will end up in the hospital.

20 percent of those who end up in the hospital will die.

[jonrick46]

I believe you are a liberal troll posing as someone with the creds to say throw caution to the wind. If people like you don’t act responsibly, they will create a new spike in the infectionss. It will set back all the self discipline that has just started to bring he numbers down. Then, you can cry to the rooftops it was all Trump’s fault and use that to defeat him.

I know your tactics.

[Hoosier-Daddy]

It’s called bullshit

[Hoosier-Daddy]

Stay at home and curl in a ball and suck your thumb

[Paul R.]

Most of us have been in lockdown for about six weeks. The objective was to flatten the curve and reduce the total number of victims of COVID-19. Well, the curve has been flattened indeed, but how is it six-weeks later there are 25,375 new cases in a single day?

With all the laws and policies implemented to knock out this virus, I expected we’d be on the last leg of the downward curve by now. But, instead of a peak and decline, we’ve had three peaks and shallow valleys between them. If people are staying at home, practicing social distancing, wearing masks in public, washing their hands and sanitizing everything in sight, how is it that COVID-19 continues to be transmitted from person to person?

A couple possibilities that occurred to me are that: 1) People flouting the laws, or 2) The virus is phenomenally virulent beyond anything ever seen before ( bio-weapon).

Mitigation efforts for people who had to, after all, go to the grocery store and such, ramped up slowly, as did store efforts to mitigate spread. It hasn't been very long since most states started requiring people out in public to wear masks, and, very few people have N95 masks, or even really effective cloth masks. (A good (good!) cloth mask can for a while reduce transmission by as much as 70%, but, I don't see a whole lot of people with such.) Then you have idiots with masks not covering their nose, no mask, etc. (I've seen some stores refuse entrance to the latter.) Dentists can still see true emergency cases, etc., etc., etc. We are not welding people into their apartments, like China.

OTOH, COVID-19 is quite contagious - obviously more so than flu*, but it is NOT "phenomenally virulent beyond anything ever seen before ( bio-weapon)." It is probably not even as contagious as the more contagious of the cold viruses. Heck, basically this thing IS a cold virus but with an extra punch for those with a weakness of one sort or another. COVID-19 is certainly not as contagious as measles or (IIRC) chickenpox, BUT, we have effective vaccines for those.

*COVID-19 certainly IS demonstrably more contagious than this year's flu strain. Mitigation for CV just stomped this year's moderately brisk (but not extraordinary) flu season.

Also note that once testing for CV got up to speed, the numbers of tests done are driven by demand -- that is, people who have whatever bug (like flu) that has them thinking maybe they have COVID-19 will want to be tested. If flu and other non-CV respiratory diseases are way down, we won't spot many of the asymptomatic CV cases: That means there could be a LOT of them - say, 5% of the population at this point? That in turn makes it very hard to snuff out COVID-19.

So... What we have is mitigation that appears to be SLIGHTLY stronger than the contagion, but not by much. That results in a slowly declining overall case rate* which can also be seen in the fatalities per day -- we've been in this long enough that allowing a little for the lag in fatalities the two slopes on average are very similar. A major treatment breakthrough would reduce fatalities faster, but that's not happened yet. I was fully on board with the lockdown orders when they were issued. It was what we needed to do to beat this. However, we are at the point that the cure is becoming worse than the disease. In addition to what this virus has done to people directly, what about the collateral damage, such as long-term damage to our economy? For instance, consider the first two trillion dollar bail-out. Who pays for it? If you are among the approximate one-hundred-million US tax payers, you do. The federal government just signed your name to a $20,000 loan. Don’t think so? Do the math.

Our glass jaw economy (and society) has caught up with us. I have no good answer for you.

It would be particularly interesting to hear the stories of COVID-19 cases that you’ve heard of in the last couple weeks and theories of how they were exposed.

A couple who are both Dr.'s and literally live within 300' of my wife's cousin (who functioned as "Mom and Dad" for my wife in her teens as Mom was dead and Dad deserted the family) both died of CV early on. They own a small establishment that hosts weddings (one 2 weeks before) and small group events, and so were likely exposed to many people in addition to their medical activities.

There has also been a CV death at the nursing home my Dad was in prior to his passing a couple years ago. My wife and I know 2 people who work there (both ok to date, so far as I know).

Should we just let this thing take an inevitable course, or should we double-down on lock-down?

Middle course - gradually reopen the country, try to "catch" outbreaks, and hope for the best.

"...sometimes the test is not to find the answer. It's to see how you react when you realize there is no answer." -- Dr. Lazarenn to Dr. Franklin in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations". Which was, of course, an episode about a really rough airborne "plague".

A lot of FReepers are failing this one.

[GreyHoundSailor]

Martial law is specifically prohibited in my state’s Constitution.