D&D and the rising pandemic

[Zardnaar]

Ok, why would you even go that far?

China, which, frankly, lags MASSIVELY behind the US in health care, and is far more densely populated, is already seeing its numbers start to slow down.

Why would you think that the US would utterly fail to deal with this? Since when has the US ever totally failed to deal with things? When have you ever seen a complete breakdown in the US? Again, you're just fear mongering.

Yup, 80000 cases in the US. That's bad. But, we're look at a country of 350 million people. Perspective is very much needed here folks. No, this is not the apocalypse. We will get through this, just like we got through everything else that's been thrown at us. You're saying that in a few weeks we're going to see 60 000 deaths? in the US? dude, you really, really need to lay off of whatever it is that you're smoking.

Or, do you honestly believe that China was twenty times more effective than the largest economy in the world at dealing with a crisis?

I used Italy as a base line, USA is 5 times bigger and had dealt with it even worse than Italy.

China's numbers may be suspect but they at least did something USA hasn't even done that.

Italy also has a better health system in terms of capacity and had help from the EU.

So yeah not looking good. I don't mind if I get proved wrong.

The dying has barely started in New York. Boris Johnson has it.

 

[NotAYakk]

Oh, of course. ((Just to be clear, I'm Canadian, living in Japan))

No one is saying do nothing. But, claims that we're going to see 10's of thousands of dead in the next couple of weeks is just fear mongering at its worst. If this virus was really that deadly, wouldn't you think that China would be having a somewhat larger problem? Or Japan?

(a) they actually executed social distancing. (b) China did intense connection sharing, (c) China did a wartime level effort to contain it.

Japan? They are using masks everywhere and not phyiscally greeting and lots of hand sanitizer, and shutdowns at hot spots. That is lowering their exponential curve.

Because deaths and hospitalizations are delayed by 1-3 weeks from the point of changing habits, having a lower background growth rate makes responding with measures more effective.

In NYC, the growth rate of deaths is 33% per day. With a 20 day delay between infection and death, that means that when 10 people die, there are already 3000 people infected who will die in the next month, because 1.33^20 is 300.

If your background rate of spread is 10% instead of 33%, 10 deaths instead grows to 1.1^20 or 67 over the next 20 days with no new infections. So in introduce measures, starve the outbreak, and over the next month deaths are moderate.

In the case of NYC, it is 300 deaths, and it was growing 33% per day. So 10,000s of deaths is sadly plausible. Even if you stopped every new infection.

Heck, our kids go back to school next week. We did our due dilligence. We stayed home for a month. We closed down the country. And, cases have been relatively mild and it's being handled pretty well.

Understand that a background 10% growth rate means

It's like the testing thing. Testing doesn't really do anything. Guess what? This is a virus. They can do exactly nothing for you if you test positive. Zero. Zilch. There has never, ever been a cure for any virus. What they can do is treat the pneumonia that develops from the virus - but, if you don't develop pneumonia, which most people don't, Covid-19 is not going to kill you.

They can detect it spreading and strange it of hosts.

The problem in Italy was that they tested tons of people and then sent everyone who tested positive to the hospital

This is a lie.

, completely overwhelming their medical care and completely failing to triage the problem.

1000s of people are dead. What garbage are you talking about.

Because they panicked. And, frankly, Italy has largely the same demographic profile as Japan - lots of very old people which meant that the virus was a lot more deadly.

This kind of messages are killing people.

Stop killing people.

 

[seebs]

It's like the testing thing. Testing doesn't really do anything. Guess what? This is a virus. They can do exactly nothing for you if you test positive. Zero. Zilch. There has never, ever been a cure for any virus. What they can do is treat the pneumonia that develops from the virus - but, if you don't develop pneumonia, which most people don't, Covid-19 is not going to kill you.

This is wrong in several respects. There aren't exactly cures for most viruses, although there's a known treatment that cures HIV now, it's just not available to most people because it relies on genetics. (Bone marrow transplants from a compatible donor who's immune.) But there's lots of antiviral drugs of various sorts, and you can use antibodies. But most importantly, you can tell people they need to stay quarantined, which reduces the spread of the virus, and gives you some idea how much danger you're in.

(It's also a lot more complicated than just "pneumonia", there's also heart problems and such to consider.)

The problem in Italy was that they tested tons of people and then sent everyone who tested positive to the hospital, completely overwhelming their medical care and completely failing to triage the problem. Because they panicked. And, frankly, Italy has largely the same demographic profile as Japan - lots of very old people which meant that the virus was a lot more deadly.

The lack of triage isn't so much the issue as the lack of resources to treat even just the people who need treatment, because the number of people who need treatment got very large very fast because they weren't doing anything to slow down the spread.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ok, why would you even go that far?

China, which, frankly, lags MASSIVELY behind the US in health care, and is far more densely populated, is already seeing its numbers start to slow down.

Why would you think that the US would utterly fail to deal with this? Since when has the US ever totally failed to deal with things? When have you ever seen a complete breakdown in the US? Again, you're just fear mongering.

Yup, 80000 cases in the US. That's bad. But, we're look at a country of 350 million people. Perspective is very much needed here folks. No, this is not the apocalypse. We will get through this, just like we got through everything else that's been thrown at us. You're saying that in a few weeks we're going to see 60 000 deaths? in the US? dude, you really, really need to lay off of whatever it is that you're smoking.

Or, do you honestly believe that China was twenty times more effective than the largest economy in the world at dealing with a crisis?

Yes. China was more effective because they locked down 60,000,000 people.

 

[FrogReaver]

I dunno. Maybe I'm just a little more blase because this isn't exactly my first rodeo. I was here for SARS. I was here for MERS. Bird flu. Swine flu. Couple of others as well.

Still here.

Keeping calm, do your due dilligence and everything will be fine. Stories of welding people in their homes, well, if you're getting your news from The Sun, perhaps changing the channel might be a better notion.

We bnever defected 500,000 cases of any of those worldwide. Best we did was estimate some of those had alot of worldwide cases after the fact. We weren’t still growing in cases when those numbers came out.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Why would you think that the US would utterly fail to deal with this? Since when has the US ever totally failed to deal with things? When have you ever seen a complete breakdown in the US? Again, you're just fear mongering.

Yup, 80000 cases in the US. That's bad. But, we're look at a country of 350 million people. Perspective is very much needed here folks. No, this is not the apocalypse. We will get through this, just like we got through everything else that's been thrown at us. You're saying that in a few weeks we're going to see 60 000 deaths? in the US? dude, you really, really need to lay off of whatever it is that you're smoking.

Please don't insult someone's intelligence and rationale when it's you who is completely ignoring the actual facts.

Why would the US fail? Because we ARE failing. Between a large % who thinks they can keep doing what they do everyday and not taking this seriously, and complete incompetent leadership at the top on a criminal level of negligence (this isn't political, because no other person, republican or democrat, would have been so incompetent as Trump as an individual person is showing.) Between not doing anything for months, refusing tests, blaming everyone else, giving misinformation, outright lying, and telling governors that if they want help, they have to be nice to him, it's pretty clear the US is set up for failure here.

But even outside of that, look at the actual numbers, and the data we do have. It's not hard. People have been linking to it numerous times in this thread. Telling people they must be high just because they're looking at actual data is bad form.


This is a photo from Austin a couple days ago. It's attitudes like yours that cause scenarios like this

 

[Todd Roybark]

Heck, our kids go back to school next week

My spouse is a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Early, Thursday morning a parent of one of the children in her school died. The parent, had exhibited Covid 19 symptoms, and around midnight started to struggle breathing. The parent expired before paramedics arrived.

To be fair, cause of death is unknown. To be fair, lack of testing is also the problem.
Testing allows a tailored response, instead of blunt tools, such as shelter in place.

The coroners office will run a test, results in about a week. Confirmed Covid 19 related deaths, lag significantly from real time. This is not panic, this is reason.

Testing Capacity is very limited in the USA. National emergency protocols, still have not been utilized fully.

Japan as an island, has certain containment advantages.

The USA, used to have strategic reserves of PPE and Supplies as part of it’s nuclear response.
Those stockpiles were eliminated in favor of a Big Box Store theory of Inventory just in time.

In a disaster, if you want to buy a generator at the last moment, you are not just competing with your fellow residents, you are also competing with federal agencies, like FEMA.

I have seen this happen, across the country working natural disasters for a Fortune 500 American Insurance Company.

I doubt seriously, Japan runs emergency systems like this. One of my best friends, teaches for N.U.S. Yale in Singapore, the ‘second wave’ of infections is happening, and overall Singapore’s response was vastly more proactive and prepared than the USA.

Be Safe, Be Reasonable....and sometimes being alarmed is entirely sound.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The USA, used to have strategic reserves of PPE and Supplies as part of it’s nuclear response.
Those stockpiles were eliminated in favor of a Big Box Store theory of Inventory just in time.

In a disaster, if you want to buy a generator at the last moment, you are not just competing with your fellow residents, you are also competing with federal agencies, like FEMA.

Yeah, last week our governor, Kate Brown, shot back at Trump when he said that the governors should be getting the supplies themselves, "We can't, because all of the supplies were taken by the feds!"

And a few days ago Andrew Cuomo had said in a press conference that it's not fair because he's having to outbid other governors for the same supplies, so that's a) driving up costs of the supplies because they are being bid on like an auction, and b) poorer states are just screwed.

 

[ad_hoc]

I would think most nations at this point should ban any travel from the US, ban anything coming from the US, and isolate the US until they have had the plague go through it. They are the hotspot right now and it does not seem contained. Seems an easy way to get migration from COVID is to things come from the US to other nations.

Unfortunately Canada relies on the USA too much to do that.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

Folks, I know what I am about to say will make some things very hard. But, this thread really needs to stay apolitical. I know that we cannot really discuss this matter without discussing government action, but we need to be extremely thoughtful in how we do that.

"Trump is incompetent," is not acceptable.

"The administration's response has not been sufficient to curb spread of the disease, and has run contrary to expert positions on the matter," is demonstrably factually correct, and does not hinge on the person in question, or what party they are part of, and so is far more likely to pass muster.

Also, at this point this thread has diddly to do with gaming. Moving it to Off-Topic.