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gowlerk

covid-19

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3 minutes ago, nigel99 said:

Do you know why the UK has been so badly hit? 
My dad is so glad he’s not there right now!

It's why we're called "Great" Britain. :tongue:

More seriously, it's because the UK government tried half-hearted contact tracing until around March 11th but didn't back it up with testing. Then people were arriving from all over the world, especially Italy and Spain, without any testing, screening, or self-isolation.

Then there was about a 2 week delay since the government seemed to think "herd immunity" was the right strategy, if only to play the maverick as opposed to what the other European countries were doing. Only when the Imperial College model was released that they realised it was a stupid strategy, then made a u-turn and locked down on 23rd March.

The thing with exponential growth is that the slightest delay will punish you severely. They're under-testing for a reason, it's to hide the fact that we're a lot worse than Spain or Italy. We've overtaken Spain in deaths, we'll overtake Italy within the next 3 days.

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22 minutes ago, billvon said:

We hit 2800 dead per day about a week ago.  Since then we've seen a decrease.  Given that, maintaining current social distancing, we'll top out at about 100,000.  With foolish decisions we _might_ hit 200,000 - but I tend to doubt it.   The people now in charge of managing this crisis (i.e. the governors) are getting smarter.

Unfortunately, the governors are facing growing resistance to managing it 'smartly'.

Wisconsin is currently seening the Rs sue the D governor to open up the state NOW. THe fact that the lines from election day resulted in a bunch of new infections is being ignored. So are all the new infections at  several meat processors. Brown County (Green Bay) has seen numbers go from 200 to over 1000 in two weeks.

 

In Michigan, lawmakers put on body armor when voting on opening up the state because the protesters decided to enter the captol bulding...

With their guns.

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17 minutes ago, olofscience said:

It's why we're called "Great" Britain. :tongue:

More seriously, it's because the UK government tried half-hearted contact tracing until around March 11th but didn't back it up with testing. Then people were arriving from all over the world, especially Italy and Spain, without any testing, screening, or self-isolation.

Then there was about a 2 week delay since the government seemed to think "herd immunity" was the right strategy, if only to play the maverick as opposed to what the other European countries were doing. Only when the Imperial College model was released that they realised it was a stupid strategy, then made a u-turn and locked down on 23rd March.

The thing with exponential growth is that the slightest delay will punish you severely. They're under-testing for a reason, it's to hide the fact that we're a lot worse than Spain or Italy. We've overtaken Spain in deaths, we'll overtake Italy within the next 3 days.

Only one thing to do - open up the US as well.  Otherwise we're going to lose.

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22 minutes ago, olofscience said:

It's why we're called "Great" Britain. :tongue:

More seriously, it's because the UK government tried half-hearted contact tracing until around March 11th but didn't back it up with testing. Then people were arriving from all over the world, especially Italy and Spain, without any testing, screening, or self-isolation.

Then there was about a 2 week delay since the government seemed to think "herd immunity" was the right strategy, if only to play the maverick as opposed to what the other European countries were doing. Only when the Imperial College model was released that they realised it was a stupid strategy, then made a u-turn and locked down on 23rd March.

The thing with exponential growth is that the slightest delay will punish you severely. They're under-testing for a reason, it's to hide the fact that we're a lot worse than Spain or Italy. We've overtaken Spain in deaths, we'll overtake Italy within the next 3 days.

All of that. I'd also point out that,excluding the micro states, England is the second most densely populated country in Europe. Approximately twice Germany and Italy and four times France and Spain. IMO that means the delay in action meant it travelled around the country even faster than it would have elsewhere. In Italy it was reasonably confined to Lombardy for weeks. In England it's everywhere.

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50 minutes ago, billvon said:

Only one thing to do - open up the US as well.  Otherwise we're going to lose.

Starting this coming Monday, the majority of states are doing just that.

Doors are opening, numbers will climb. We'll see another spike.

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(edited)
51 minutes ago, normiss said:

Doors are opening, numbers will climb. We'll see another spike.

For about a week we were seeing a lot of stories about how the poor and darker complexioned communities have been hit hardest. I see those stories have disappeared lately. I believe that news has encouraged many to believe that they won't be affected very much and has contributed to the clamor for re-opening. But the virus will not discriminate in the end, it will just take a little longer to reach some people. When middle America is more strongly affected attitudes will change. But it will be a little late in the game. The time around the fall and the election is going to be telling.

Edited by gowlerk

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28 minutes ago, billvon said:

We hit 2800 dead per day about a week ago.  Since then we've seen a decrease.  Given that, maintaining current social distancing, we'll top out at about 100,000.  With foolish decisions we _might_ hit 200,000 - but I tend to doubt it.   The people now in charge of managing this crisis (i.e. the governors) are getting smarter.

This graph doesn't include today, which is not over and has 2201 new deaths.  

image.png.19cf6c836668b62eb391ada1a8f60b33.png

 

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1 minute ago, airdvr said:

You can't close business indefinitely.

There is truth in that. There are some businesses (like tandem skydiving for instance)  that have very little real value for the risk they pose. Hopefully the time that has been gained through sacrificing has been used wisely.

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42 minutes ago, airdvr said:

You can't close business indefinitely.

Local business owners we know here are saying they won't open yet anyway. They restaurant restriction of sanitizer dispensers, staff wearing masks, 25% occupancy are the most complained about rules we're seeing now. They say it's not worth the risk to not make the money to make it worthwhile. 25% isn't profitable, sustainable, or worth the risk of repeating the efforts of the last 30-60 days.

But yeah, like the government says, get back to work. Nobody cares if you die, and if you refuse to  return to work, you can no longer collect any assistance anyway.

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34 minutes ago, airdvr said:

You can't close business indefinitely.

True and it seems as if nobody is interested in following the guidelines that trump personally set out. Which states a downward trend in cases for 14 days.

Currently the US has deaths doubling every three weeks and cases increasing. Vermont has a relatively flat rate, its the lowest and deaths are doubling every seven weeks.

Here is a excerpt  from a article on leadership. Something trump knows nothing about. Written by "Leonard J. Marcus is founding co-director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Center for Public Leadership"

'The best guide is former Johnson & Johnson CEO James Burke's response to the Tylenol poisonings in 1982. When three people died in the Chicago area after taking Tylenol, Burke shaped the company's future with a nationwide recall of the product. He went big and moved fast with the company's response, putting consumer confidence above short-term sales. Burke's efforts became an enduring exemplar of crisis response by a CEO."

trump doesn't give a rats ass about his business legacy. Nor that of the US. No US banks will lend to him. Only China's national bank and Deutsche Bank. His base is all that matters.

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3 minutes ago, Phil1111 said:

trump doesn't give a rats ass about his business legacy. Nor that of the US. No US banks will lend to him. Only China's national bank and Deutsche Bank. His base is all that matters.

Hi Phil,

I've posted it before; Trump will be the vilified person in the world once he out of office.

Jerry Baumchen

PS)  Thanks for the history nugget; I remember when Tylenol did that, at great expense to the company.

 

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Trump actually tweeted something sensible:
 

 

Despite reports to the contrary, Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown. As of today, 2462 people have died there, a much higher number than the neighboring countries of Norway (207), Finland (206) or Denmark (443). The United States made the correct decision!

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2 hours ago, airdvr said:

You can't close business indefinitely.

Definitely true.  But we can close them until deaths drop significantly.  And we may even be able to close them until we have a cure.  Remdesivir is showing some promise.

Now, I know what you're saying.  That's an antiviral, not malaria prophylaxis, tremendous powerful light or disinfectant!  It can't possibly work on a virus!  Well, give it time - stranger things have happened.

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21 minutes ago, ryoder said:

This should be good for a tweet-rant:

At this point Stern should:

1) Say he was just asking a question, wait a few days then

2) Have his supporters point out that he didn't ORDER anyone to inject themselves so it's perfectly fine to suggest it, wait a few days and then

3) Say it was all sarcastic, then

4) Cancel his show for the weekend out of spite.

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14 hours ago, billvon said:

Can't be.  We have heard from Trump supporters that he didn't say anything about injecting or drinking disinfectant, and that anyone who even considers that is too stupid to live.

No one ever said he didn't utter the specific words.

He did NOT suggest that people inject themselves, as so many would have you believe.

If that statement was unclear, and it raised questions, as it apparently did, then clarification was needed.  Evidently clarification was given as well.

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11 minutes ago, turtlespeed said:

No one ever said he didn't utter the specific words.

He did NOT suggest that people inject themselves, as so many would have you believe.

If that statement was unclear, and it raised questions, as it apparently did, then clarification was needed.  Evidently clarification was given as well.

He never said "oh minions, go try this at home." But neither did he say anything to suggest "don't try this at home." And when you're discussing an easy miracle cure, don't you think a lot of people are going to try it at home? It shows a pretty basic lack of understanding of or respect for cause and effect to say something like that and not figure people will try it out.

Wendy P.

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25 minutes ago, turtlespeed said:

No one ever said he didn't utter the specific words.

He did NOT suggest that people inject themselves, as so many would have you believe.

If that statement was unclear, and it raised questions, as it apparently did, then clarification was needed.  Evidently clarification was given as well.

a) He didn't tell anyone specifically to inject themselves.

b) No media outlet is stating that he specifically told people to inject themselves - you've been corrected on this already.

c) Suggesting in a live broadcast that injection was a possibility worth investigating is the idea of a naive child or an adult moron.

d) Trump is 73.

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(edited)
50 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

He never said "oh minions, go try this at home." But neither did he say anything to suggest "don't try this at home." And when you're discussing an easy miracle cure, don't you think a lot of people are going to try it at home? It shows a pretty basic lack of understanding of or respect for cause and effect to say something like that and not figure people will try it out.

Wendy P.

Actually, I believe he said that it would all have to be done by doctors.

Quote

 So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. 

Was it a well thought out thing to say? No.

Has it been tortuously blown out of proportion by the media, yes.

 

Edited by turtlespeed

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The reference was unclear, just like a lot of things. He said "You're going to have to use doctors," but he wasn't real specific as to for what.

Here's the whole quote:

Quote

"So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you're into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it goes in one minute, that's pretty powerful."

Remember this is a population that's being encouraged to dis science, because common sense is enough for a lot of stuff. And everyone has disinfectant and light around, so why not try? After all, high school students are making ventilator parts (of course, the in-depth article about the local college student who's made a splitter that measures the airflow also went into some detail about the formalized testing that's being done at a medical center, advised by several doctors and other engineers -- but who reads newspapers? That's mainstream news).

The larger the population, the more likely it is that there will be outliers of all kinds. Some of them will be high end, some low end. The high end outliers don't tend to do as many headline-worthy things.

Wendy P.

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13 minutes ago, turtlespeed said:

Has it been tortuously blown out of proportion by the media, yes.

No, it hasn't.  When the leader of the free world, being 100% serious, suggests disinfectant can be used as treatment via injection it deserves front page news.

Why?  It's not brainstorming, or coming up with new creative ideas or novel solutions.  It's beyond stupid.  And deserves all the derision, laughter, and scorn that it's received.  

Just admit it.  Trump is an idiot conman trying to peddle any potential cure in order to look like the hero who saved the day. 

No wonder the US has become the laughing stock of the world.  Kallend's post about the world pitying the US is spot on.

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10 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

Remember this is a population that's being encouraged to dis science, because common sense is enough for a lot of stuff.

Yes.  Alcohol and sunlight supposedly kill the corona, so if you see me drunk on the beach consider it medical research.

 

(lost internet meme)

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6 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Yes.  Alcohol and sunlight supposedly kill the corona, so if you see me drunk on the beach consider it medical research.

 

(lost internet meme)

Oh, I've seen that internet meme ^.^. Likewise the upended bottle of Corona, with "I'm doing research" as the caption.

Wendy P.

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