coronavirus

[morekaos]

The data is in ? stop the panic and end the total isolation
Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.
Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.
Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.
Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.
Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.
The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let?s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.
[url]https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation[/url]

 

[eyephone]

I saw that on TV today and they said the people who died were not in contact with anyone who traveled from China.

So how did they get it? And... this seems to indicate that a milder strain of the virus may have been in circulation earlier this year.

Or may be one of those "Was it death due to the flu or COVID?" because we didn't have COVID testing back then.

I like how you and others the misinformation.
If it was not travel. It was community spread.

Marketwatch article:
U.S. government?s handling of the pandemic, and particularly its failure to take aggressive action early when the data coming from Asia and Europe were already becoming grim. President Donald Trump brushed off initial fears, dismissed the illness as being no worse than the regular flu and declared a national emergency only on March 13.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/c...l-cases-came-in-february-not-march-2020-04-22

 

[irvinehomeowner]

I saw that on TV today and they said the people who died were not in contact with anyone who traveled from China.

So how did they get it? And... this seems to indicate that a milder strain of the virus may have been in circulation earlier this year.

Or may be one of those "Was it death due to the flu or COVID?" because we didn't have COVID testing back then.

I like how you and others the misinformation

I think you misunderstand me.

This is from the news not me, there is evidence that coronavirus was in California earlier than the "first" reported death.

There could be more than one strain of the virus (another poster posted that).

Last year was one of the most deadliest years for the flu.

So there may be some overlap with the flu and coronavirus in regards to deaths which in one way is scary because that means the virus has been here longer than we thought but positive in another way because we might be farther along in developing herd immunity.

While what I'm saying is conjecture and opinion, the events are facts, not misinformation and actually the article on CNN says the same thing:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/us/california-deaths-earliest-in-us/index.html

(CNN)New autopsy results show two Californians died of coronavirus in early and mid-February -- up to three weeks before the previously known first US death from the virus.

These deaths now stand as the country's earliest two attributed to the novel coronavirus, a development that appears to shift the understanding of how early the virus was spreading in the country, health experts told CNN Wednesday.

Two deaths in Northern California's Santa Clara County happened February 6 and 17, the county said Tuesday in a news release.

The previously understood first coronavirus death happened on February 29 in Kirkland, Washington.

Time line
? December 31, 2019: China reports mysterious pneumonia cases to the World Health Organization.
? January 7, 2020: China says the cases were caused by a new coronavirus.
? January 17: US starts screening for symptoms at certain airports.
? January 21: First US case confirmed in Washington state.
? January 31: US says it will deny entry to foreign nationals who've traveled in China in the last 14 days.
? February 6: A person in California's Santa Clara County dies of coronavirus; link not confirmed until April 21.
? February 17: A second person in California's Santa Clara County dies of coronavirus; link not confirmed until April 21.
? February 26: CDC announces what's then thought to be the first possible US case of community spread, in California.
? February 29: A patient dies of coronavirus in Washington state -- then believed to be the country's first novel coronavirus death.

The two in California had no known travel histories to China or anywhere else that would have exposed them to the virus, Dr. Sara Cody, the county's chief medical officer, told The New York Times. They are presumed to have caught the virus through community spread, she told the Times.

"That is a very significant finding," Dr. Ashish K. Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN's "New Day" on Wednesday.

"Somebody who died on February 6, they probably contracted that virus early to mid-January. It takes at least two to three weeks from the time you contract the virus and you die from it."

If they did not contract coronavirus through travel abroad, that also is significant, Jha said.

"That means there was community spread happening in California as early as mid-January, if not earlier than that," Jha said.

"We really need to now go back, look at a lot more cases from January -- even December -- and try to sort out when did we first really encounter this virus in the United States," Jha said.

Hopefully once NIH or CDC finds the index patient(s), we can see the true history of this.

 

[Cornflakes]

I totally agree on the centralized part.

IF the  federal govt. had some smart people on staff that wanted to do the right thing, this is how it could have been or still be done.

Make a list of things that will be needed at hospitals across the nation (ventilators, PPE, some meds, other equipment)...
For time being, the makers of those product can only sell those products at a fair price to federal govt, who plays a role of inventory keeper...

Put a process in place that ensures that each hospital has x times the number of beds worth of supplies available on each day. Hospitals can place a request each night for next day delivery of needed supply..and there are emergency laws in place such that a 100-bed hospital does not place an order for 1M masks without risking severe penalties...

The last thing I will say on this is I don't quite get this desire to brush off Trump's mishandling of our initial response for the sake of "moving on"

I forgot to reply to this.

Conversely, I think people want to "move on" from the Trump blame too. No hot tub time machine... so let's just move forward and stop blaming the prez, the govs, the mayors, The Who (not the band ), China etc.

You seem to have a problem with me using aspects of Asian and European countries that are superior to ours. I said it before and I will say it again. We should learn from other countries' success and failure. It's just me pointing out " hey other places are doing it, it works, maybe we should too"

I don't think you answered me... what exactly are the other countries doing that will work for us? I don't think free Happy Meals are the answer.

I've posted numerous time just about healthcare. There are many things we can do both long term and short term.

Long term, we can start to move away from for profit healthcare.

Most cities in the U.S. long ago closed or privatized their public hospitals. Luckily not NYC. We still have a public system of 11 acute care hospitals.  Public hospitals dis-proportionally serve low-income patients. They turn no one away, regardless of ability to pay. This pandemic would have been unthinkably worse without them. We should reverse this trend of privatization.

Immediate term we can establish centralized control to produce and distribute medical supplies and PPEs.

Because we didn't do this, we had states competing and outbidding each other for ventilators/PPE.

We also didn't distribute supplies and PPEs to the most needed hospitals because we lacked central control.
Some hospitals still received new shipping of supplies when they have surplus, while other hospitals in need didn't and had to have them rationed.

This is the United States of America in the year 2020. And we are making our nurses lineup outside an office for the one mask that they rationed? when the mask was designed to be swapped out and be disposable in between each patient encounter.

We are seeing Round 2 of the Covid-19 Hunger Games play out right now in testing reagents. The scramble for the reagents needed for mass testing has begun.  Ingredients for testing are not the kind of thing you make with a home chemistry set. These are complicated reagents that must extract RNA from a sample.

Unfortunately there are not enough producers of this today in the U.S. That's why we need the feds to use the Defense Production Act.

 

[eyephone]

I saw that on TV today and they said the people who died were not in contact with anyone who traveled from China.

So how did they get it? And... this seems to indicate that a milder strain of the virus may have been in circulation earlier this year.

Or may be one of those "Was it death due to the flu or COVID?" because we didn't have COVID testing back then.

I like how you and others the misinformation.
If it was not travel. It was community spread.

Marketwatch article:
U.S. government%u2019s handling of the pandemic, and particularly its failure to take aggressive action early when the data coming from Asia and Europe were already becoming grim. President Donald Trump brushed off initial fears, dismissed the illness as being no worse than the regular flu and declared a national emergency only on March 13.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/c...l-cases-came-in-february-not-march-2020-04-22

Sounds like losing to me with 45k deaths so far.

 

[irvinehomeowner]

So is this misinformation?

Chinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/coronavirus-china-disinformation.html

 

[eyephone]

But you said not to blame China and not to talk about China.
Like I told Mety, sorry if you want to protect China. (Mety says he is not, but I had to bring it up)

Blaming the country of China is different from blaming the people.

 

[eyephone]

Missouri files lawsuit against China over coronavirus, Beijing calls claims 'absurd'
The state's attorney general said Beijing had caused an "unprecedented number of jobless claims.

On Wednesday, China?s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters that the Missouri suit was without any factual or legal basis.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...-over-coronavirus-china-calls-claims-n1189376

Not factual?

 

[sgip]

Just for giggles, try a Google Search limiting the word phrase to "Coronavirus Travel Ban" and limit the dates from Feb 3, 2020 to Feb 4, 5, or later. Why Feb 3? It was the first business day after the January 31st travel ban from China was enacted.

After reading the spew offered up in February by some of the "smartest folks in the room" - those who think today that we could have done more - you'd have to concur that these people must live in an alternate universe.

First it was little else other than 45's a racist for blocking travel. That the restrictions won't help, That it's an overreaction. About 95 days later it's now 45's an idiot for not doing more, how they should have been restocking ventilators and getting more PPE. One US case confirmed and 10 DAYS WASTED BEFORE PUTTING IN A BAN??? MURDER, MOST FOUL! I very much like the BREATHLESS NEWS HEADLINES about how in January 2017 45 was told there is a risk of a Pandemic some day. My guess is that the White House was also told there might be an alien invasion, a mega volcano eruption and a horde of Yeti's found living in the Rocky Mountains waiting to strike. One can plan for a few things in life, but not everything.

Please.  Pick one story and stick with it. It's really becoming hard to follow the zigs and zags of logic here. Any reasonable, context driven overview of the situation from 1/15 to 4/21 (again about 95 days!) would show that mountains have been moved to keep the death toll lower than the worst case scenarios we've been told would occur. Could things have gone better? Of course. Has it all been bungling and missteps? Not really.

 

[irvinehomeowner]

But you said not to blame China and not to talk about China.
Like I told Mety, sorry if you want to protect China. (Mety says he is not, but I had to bring it up)

Blaming the country of China is different from blaming the people.

Who are you addressing with this post?

 

[qwerty]

So there was no craziness around covid 19 when no one knew about it and people were dying. Then it got a new scary name, covid19 and people freak out?

Dead person from flu = keep it moving, nothing to see here
Dead person from covid= let?s ruin everything. We all need to pretend to care about lives now. I know, I didn?t care about them when they were dying of the flu, but now I care

 

[eyephone]

So there was no craziness around covid 19 when no one knew about it and people were dying. Then it got a new scary name, covid19 and people freak out?

Dead person from flu = keep it moving, nothing to see here
Dead person from covid= let%u2019s ruin everything. We all need to pretend to care about lives now. I know, I didn%u2019t care about them when they were dying of the flu, but now I care

Reuters Article: As Trump administration debated travel restrictions, thousands streamed in from China

In defending his strategy against the deadly coronavirus, President Donald Trump repeatedly has said he slowed its spread into the United States by acting decisively to bar travelers from China on Jan. 31.

Trump said, I was criticized by the Democrats when I closed the Country down to China many weeks ahead of what almost everyone recommended. Saved many lives, he tweeted, for instance, on March 2.

But Reuters has found that the administration took a month from the time it learned of the outbreak in late December to impose the initial travel restrictions amid furious infighting.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-nsc-idUSKBN21N0EJ

 

[Cornflakes]

Just for giggles, try a Google Search limiting the word phrase to "Coronavirus Travel Ban" and limit the dates from Feb 3, 2020 to Feb 4, 5, or later. Why Feb 3? It was the first business day after the January 31st travel ban from China was enacted.

After reading the spew offered up in February by some of the "smartest folks in the room" - those who think today that we could have done more - you'd have to concur that these people must live in an alternate universe.

First it was little else other than 45's a racist for blocking travel. That the restrictions won't help, That it's an overreaction. About 95 days later it's now 45's an idiot for not doing more, how they should have been restocking ventilators and getting more PPE. One US case confirmed and 10 DAYS WASTED BEFORE PUTTING IN A BAN??? MURDER, MOST FOUL! I very much like the BREATHLESS NEWS HEADLINES about how in January 2017 45 was told there is a risk of a Pandemic some day. My guess is that the White House was also told there might be an alien invasion, a mega volcano eruption and a horde of Yeti's found living in the Rocky Mountains waiting to strike. One can plan for a few things in life, but not everything.

Please.  Pick one story and stick with it. It's really becoming hard to follow the zigs and zags of logic here. Any reasonable, context driven overview of the situation from 1/15 to 4/21 (again about 95 days!) would show that mountains have been moved to keep the death toll lower than the worst case scenarios we've been told would occur. Could things have gone better? Of course. Has it all been bungling and missteps? Not really.

DId the search just as you said, didn't really find the content you said we'd find.

Anyways, learned something new today that I can search up old news articles like that. Thanks for that.

45th or any other for that matter....how would blocking travel from one or few countries prevent anything in this day and age of global mobility and connecting flights from everywhere to everywhere? Fine you screen people out whose passport has a specific type of stamp in past x days, but you can't and we could not screen people out who were sitting next to those virus carriers and brought home the gift.

More effective way would have been to isolate our country in a bubble...nobody comes in and nobody goes out. No prezi would have put that in place and it was not practical, still is not.

Blocking travel from China was more of a PR stunt than actual meaningful measure.

 

[usctrojancpa]

Just for giggles, try a Google Search limiting the word phrase to "Coronavirus Travel Ban" and limit the dates from Feb 3, 2020 to Feb 4, 5, or later. Why Feb 3? It was the first business day after the January 31st travel ban from China was enacted.

After reading the spew offered up in February by some of the "smartest folks in the room" - those who think today that we could have done more - you'd have to concur that these people must live in an alternate universe.

First it was little else other than 45's a racist for blocking travel. That the restrictions won't help, That it's an overreaction. About 95 days later it's now 45's an idiot for not doing more, how they should have been restocking ventilators and getting more PPE. One US case confirmed and 10 DAYS WASTED BEFORE PUTTING IN A BAN??? MURDER, MOST FOUL! I very much like the BREATHLESS NEWS HEADLINES about how in January 2017 45 was told there is a risk of a Pandemic some day. My guess is that the White House was also told there might be an alien invasion, a mega volcano eruption and a horde of Yeti's found living in the Rocky Mountains waiting to strike. One can plan for a few things in life, but not everything.

Please.  Pick one story and stick with it. It's really becoming hard to follow the zigs and zags of logic here. Any reasonable, context driven overview of the situation from 1/15 to 4/21 (again about 95 days!) would show that mountains have been moved to keep the death toll lower than the worst case scenarios we've been told would occur. Could things have gone better? Of course. Has it all been bungling and missteps? Not really.

DId the search just as you said, didn't really find the content you said we'd find.

Anyways, learned something new today that I can search up old news articles like that. Thanks for that.

45th or any other for that matter....how would blocking travel from one or few countries prevent anything in this day and age of global mobility and connecting flights from everywhere to everywhere? Fine you screen people out whose passport has a specific type of stamp in past x days, but you can't and we could not screen people out who were sitting next to those virus carriers and brought home the gift.

More effective way would have been to isolate our country in a bubble...nobody comes in and nobody goes out. No prezi would have put that in place and it was not practical, still is not.

Blocking travel from China was more of a PR stunt than actual meaningful measure.

Not only that, but probably most of the infections on the east coast probably came from people traveling in from Europe. It should have been an all or nothing travel ban.

 

[qwerty]

Everything should have been all or nothing.

And if we were going to to shut it down the government should have said all collections cease, just put everything on pause, so no rent mortgage, etc. landlords don?t have to pay etc.

Dole out 1500 per month per household for food/utilities for 12-18 months and we are good to go!

 

[sgip]

What little blocking there was done was met with cries not about healthcare, but of other implied motives. That ban made a campfire into a bonfire. Had it been a complete shutdown - right at the heart of impeachment and STOU - it would have been a constitutional crisis not seen since the founding of this nation. The blowback out of Washington would have been visible on an interstellar basis

Remember the times - The outrage wouldn't be over the need to protect the nation from a pandemic. The outrage would have been "a diversion"... a bully tactic.. an presidential thing, but now, an impeachable thing! Yes, let's change executives right at the start of a crisis. To think that this would stop at VP Pence is to underestimate the rabid responses a travel shutdown would have caused.

I am in agreement that a 100% ban should have occurred as early as possible, but in late January, early February - at that moment? It wasn't going to happen. Not only should there have been a travel ban, but also a shelter at home requirement. Would the States have gone along with this at that time? Find me a Governor in the first 1/2 of February advocating extreme steps like that. One may exist, but until I see it, I won't believe that person exists.

The Federal response question has morphed into an exercise of 2020 hindsight, in some cases a complete re-writing of history, Non-Doctors Monday morning quarterbacking ("Dr." Oz, et al)  with a heavy dose of "memory holing" going on. Remember that it was Dr. Fauci who in early March said it was still OK to gather together. I don't hold that against him then, nor now, as he was given only so much information from resources outside of this nation. By the end of March that tune changed considerably.

We'd all wish things were different today, assuming things woulda, shoulda, coulda been done differently 90 plus days ago. Feelings though aren't facts. The facts are these - limited information was presented and in many ways aggressively acted upon by a Federal government, one that came to rely on States to make local decisions based on local conditions. Had a heavy boot been placed on everyone's neck in early February, imagine how many pitchforks and torches we'd run through by now.

My .02c

 

[eyephone]

Sorry that argument is a joke that no one saw this coming.

 

[Kenkoko]

SGIP, I know your response is a lot more nuanced, but we basically didn't choose the best course of action because it was politically inconvenient?

And do you really expect people to believe not even a few of the 26 Republican governors would have gone alone with President Trump? Are we talking about the same Republican party that President Trump just recently touted having 96% support from?

 

[sgip]

I'd say the response by this government in the early days of this pandemic was done first through the lens of what was known at that time, and second what was politically possible to get done.

If it's possible to can find for me a contemporary news report from late January/early February about two or more name brand politicians of either party openly saying:

SHUT

EVERYTHING

DOWN!!

I'd want to reconsider my position and support the notion this government didn't listen to the best advice of the day.

Not wanting to set too high of a bar, but if it's possible to also find a name brand politician - State or National - saying let's make a billion ventilators and a trillion sets of PPE's back in late January or early February, that would be nice as well. Late February/early March, sure, but by then the genie was out of the bottle.

If verifiable examples of lack of action by this government early on of the pandemic threat do not exist, what then say you about their response to this crisis?

My .02c

 

[Kenkoko]

Not wanting to set too high of a bar, but if it's possible to also find a name brand politician - State or National - saying let's make a billion ventilators and a trillion sets of PPE's back in late January or early February, that would be nice as well. Late February/early March, sure, but by then the genie was out of the bottle.

Not everyone took it lightly. Andrew Yang on Jan 23rd "This coronavirus is very serious."
https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1220440518733303809

He was on numerous podcasts late Jan through mid Feb talking about getting ready for this and how our institutions were inadequately prepared.