D&D and the rising pandemic

[FrogReaver]

I don't think I share that opinion.

Perhaps it would be a good job done by the US if it accomplishes this from here on out...

On the otherhand, I think good job would have been far below 100K deaths if the US had been proactive about it before this point.

Of course, similar thoughts could be expressed towards how many various nations have reacted to it thus far.

China may end up looking really good in comparison.

It seems a Major possibility China lied about their numbers.

 

[Garthanos]

Average of expert opinions is now at about 240,000 deaths in the US this year from covid-19. So, yeah, 100,000 would be us doing a good job.

I will give credit they are broadly far far from certain

 

[slobster]

If wishes were fishes. Given where we are now, it looks like 100,000 will be a good job.

It's the "given where we are now" part that is the most frustrating. When this is all over, we need to take a serious look at the failures all along the line that led to us not using the time and warning we had to properly prepare for this crisis. I'm on the "inside" somewhat, in that the lab where I work is currently doing testing and speaking every day with the healthcare system in our area, and I can tell you that we are STILL not prepared for the level of threat that this virus poses, not by a long shot. And those preparations would have been far, far easier to make months ago, when the economy wasn't shut down and resources weren't being pulled in a million directions. And that's not getting into things like the FDA rejecting the WHO test or the failure to ramp up our stores of PPE and testing equipment in the years since the last pandemic.

But yeah, in the middle of a crisis, we deal with what's in front of us. Minimize the suffering by whatever means we can take, don't spend valuable time on what-ifs.

Once the crisis is past, we need to understand why we flocked it up so incredibly badly, and where necessary heads are gonna have to roll when it's discovered that people knew better and weren't raising a fuss because they didn't want to upset the central government/wanted to profit/had ideological reasons to ignore it for personal power/were deeply stupid and people suffered and died for that stupidity.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It seems a Major possibility China lied about their numbers.

This. Anyone who takes the word of any Communist government at face value is just fooling themselves.

 

[Janx]

In the bucket of crazy ideas I have:

Companies in non-essential markets could furlough their employees, donate their pay to a charity that pays those employees, and write the entire thing off on their taxes (kinda like what Amazon did).

They could pay those employees and order them to do anything. Like charity work reading to kids, making masks, whatever is safe to help with. And write that off on their taxes.

The bigger companies that just laid people off lack imagination.

 

[briggart]

This. Anyone who takes the word of any Communist government at face value is just fooling themselves.

I feel it has little to do with the government and more with lockdown and health system being overrun. It's the same thing here in Italy: resources are limited (it's getting better, but we are still in the thick of it) so tests are given mostly to people admitted to the hospitals, which are those already in very bad conditions. A lot of people are passing away at home or anyway before they can get tested, so they don't figure in the official statistics for covid-19.

I recently read an analysis of the death rate in Nembro, a small town which is one of the worst affected area of Italy. During Jan-Mar, ~30 people positive to the virus died there. The historical number of deaths for Jan-Mar period is ~35. The actual number of deaths since beginning of the year is over 150, so there were an additional ~90 deaths which are very likely due to the virus but did not enter the official statistics. In other words, the official numbers there accounted for ~1/4th of the actual deaths. This is not a general result, other areas are not showing such a large discrepancy, but once you enter full disaster mitigation mode, the numbers become sketchy everywhere.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This. Anyone who takes the word of any Communist government at face value is just fooling themselves.

Mod Note: while cautioning against misinformation is wise, politicizing the warning is against ENWorld’s rules. We’ve already had a handful of warnings about politics in this thread, and have kept it open because we think the value of this discussion is high.

But if people keep getting political, this thread will get shut.

 

[Zardnaar]

6am day 6 of lockdown. Wife's got the rest of the week off. Was planning on running some D&D but not really in the mood.

Overall situation is a buzzkill.

 

[NotAYakk]

This year 20 million more people where born than died. 31+29+30 days is 90 days, so 222 thousand per day.

Yesterday, for which we have complete stats, there where 3,204 deaths. As noted above, this may be an undercount.

Over the past week, deaths have grown from 14,640 to 34,065, a rate of 12.8% per day. The deaths per day has also been growing at roughly that rate.

3204 * 1.128^X = 222,000 is the number of days, at this rate, before Covid-19 causes deaths to overtake births for a day. Solving for X we get ln(69)/ln(1.28) or 18 days.

So at the current rate of growth, on April 17th more people will die than are born. Definitely for the first time since WW2, and if not that since the 1918 pandemic.

Spoiler

There are many ways the rates can change. Social isolation may prove effective, reducing the curve from larger areas. New outbreaks may be preempted with early response.

But the 13% per day already includes the under control Wuhan deaths, and the relatively under control Seattle, Italy, etc. There are a number of places where it is getting out of control (NY, France, Spain, UK) and there are weeks of growth left, plus a myriad of under tested places where an epidemic could be exploding.

A week ago, the USA looked good with a declining growth rate in deaths; then NYC exploded and overtook Seattle. That wasn't a surprise; that was expected to happen. If not NYC, then somewhere else.

Every week we should expect an exponentially increasing number of new hotspots in the USA and around the world, as pandemics have local exponential epidemics, and a global exponential number of epidemics.

 

[NotAYakk]

6am day 6 of lockdown. Wife's got the rest of the week off. Was planning on running some D&D but not really in the mood.

It is really nice to just hear people talk. Join a game if you don't feel like running one.