What Happens If the US Does Absolutely Nothing To Combat COVID-19? (twitter.com) 595
On Monday, the Imperial College report on COVID-19 was released and the results are terrifying. For those who may not know, the Imperial College in London "has advised the government on its response to previous epidemics, including SARS, avian flu and swine flu," reports The New York Times. "With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies."
In a series of tweets, Jeremy C. Young, Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State, summarized what the report says would happen if the U.S. does absolutely nothing. That is, if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course. The Imperial College team plugged infection and death rates from China, Korea, and Italy into epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation... Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself. It gets worse. People with severe COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number available in the US. Nearly 100% of these patients die.
So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die. How many is 4 million people? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's 4 times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust. Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. If we extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (warning: MOE is high here), this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19, in 3-6 months. 15 Holocausts. 1.5 times as many people as died in all of World War II. The Imperial College then ran the numbers for what would happen if countries assumed a "mitigation" strategy and "suppression" strategy. You can read the full summarized breakdown of what happens in each scenario below, but basically the mitigation strategy flattens the curve with an actual death toll at around two million deaths while the suppression strategy has the death rate in the U.S. peaking at 3 weeks with only a few thousand deaths.
You can view a screenshot of the thread below:
In a series of tweets, Jeremy C. Young, Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State, summarized what the report says would happen if the U.S. does absolutely nothing. That is, if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course. The Imperial College team plugged infection and death rates from China, Korea, and Italy into epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation... Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself. It gets worse. People with severe COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number available in the US. Nearly 100% of these patients die.
So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die. How many is 4 million people? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's 4 times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust. Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. If we extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (warning: MOE is high here), this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19, in 3-6 months. 15 Holocausts. 1.5 times as many people as died in all of World War II. The Imperial College then ran the numbers for what would happen if countries assumed a "mitigation" strategy and "suppression" strategy. You can read the full summarized breakdown of what happens in each scenario below, but basically the mitigation strategy flattens the curve with an actual death toll at around two million deaths while the suppression strategy has the death rate in the U.S. peaking at 3 weeks with only a few thousand deaths.
You can view a screenshot of the thread below:
I fear for Miami (Score:5, Funny)
8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.
Miami would become a ghost town.
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How does about 10% fewer residents equal "a ghost town"?
Re:I fear for Miami (Score:4, Interesting)
The government can throw tremendous resources at these kinds of problems. The issue I take with our response is its more sledge hammer than surgeon's scalpel. I advocate for providing government funded (read: free to the consumer) video consultations to everyone to determine whether they are at risk from this disease, and how high their risk factors are. That would allow each individual to have their risk factors assessed, and allow the at-risk population to voluntarily self isolate. The government should then provide assistance with self-isolation in terms of subsidized grocery and medical delivery (prescriptions), and subsidized housing assistance for those in risk / non-risk mixed households. Either move the at-risk or move the not-at-risk members to temporary alternative housing if they so chose to separate, on their own accord.
Doing this, the not-at-risk can go back to school, work, etc. We would pull the economy back from the brink. The problem I see here is the economy will suffer, no matter if the US Govt throws $1T or $2T at the problem. The money will be ineffective and people will still lose jobs. When you have job loss, the impacts can be devastating on family units. We are listening to the advise of expert microbiologists, and that is great. But, we are tossing out the advise of economists. If your goal is to have the least number of infected persons possible, maybe the current strategy will work, but not focusing efforts on where they are needed most (the vulnerable) and wiping out TRILLIONS of economic value will destroy more lives and take way longer and do more harm than COVID-19 will do, either way.
Allowing the not-at-risk population to go about their lives will build up immunity through exposure in a large enough majority that we can stop the virus in its tracks as no more uninfected/unrecoverd/unimunized persons remain to carry on the disease. Everyone who might lose that battle is also saved through the self-isolation that was supported by government action.
Re:I fear for Miami (Score:4, Insightful)
You are spot on. The government cannot use a scalpel because if they do, the rich cannot take advantage of the cash grab... and keeping the rich happy is a governments first job and that is just how it goes.
If the economy was that important to them then governments would make laws against monopolies and make sure that we had loads of economic diversity but they don't. Sure, they do care about the economy some, but only so far as it ensures their wealth. The lives of the people are meaningless until it harms the economy, which is what is going on now and why government finally give a shit about the deaths. Because panic has now set in... and Exchange Systems are 100% emotional banking systems. Once the first person with a lot of money panics, everyone else follows. That is panic that is fear.
Panic and Fear will do more damage than Coronavirus and greedy interests are going to plague us from the fallout of the bailouts for a long time.
I only support money going to people that lost jobs or wages from closure... and zero money for banks and big businesses. Let them fail... the pain will be sharp up front but will be far less long term. Especially when they learn they have no safety net.
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If the economy was that important to them then governments would make laws against monopolies and make sure that we had loads of economic diversity but they don't. Sure, they do care about the economy some, but only so far as it ensures their wealth.
This has been done by replacing the focus that the US had on economic diversity (think unions, anti-trust, limits of ownership, etc) and replacing it with racial diversity. This had the simultaneous impact of fragmenting the 99% while also getting them to focus on things other than broad based economics. The results have been successful beyond their wildest dreams. So now instead of broadly shared economic growth we get a presidential candidate that promises that the VP will be a woman and his supreme co
Re: I fear for Miami (Score:5, Insightful)
The media has been dating the same thing in every other country in the world.
Your "MSM out to get trump" may or may not be true but it's irrelevant as an explains for what's going on right now. The fact that it's happening everywhere means there must be a much more significant non-Trump-related explainer. Indeed, looking at it through the lens of "abti-Trump-MSM" must be missing the picture.
Re: I fear for Miami (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, the American mainstream media must've really gotten to China. They have Xi by the balls!
Re: I fear for Miami (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn, the American mainstream media must've really gotten to China. They have Xi by the balls!
Not to mention Europe. And getting Von der Leyen and Merkel "by the balls" is quite an achievement!
Sorry, but Trump or no Trump, this is a serious health crisis, and it requires serious measures. Neither biology nor physics care if their results favour one political party, or another.
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Actually most of them have either a domestic civil aviation agency or they use a intergovernmental one like EASA or IAC.
Re: I fear for Miami (Score:4, Insightful)
" How many countries do you think have their own FAA that certify aircraft for example?"
All of them, only 7 countries, that accept the FAA just as the US does theirs and a few legacy ones, all of them in the EU.
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/a... [faa.gov]
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/a... [faa.gov]
Re:I fear for Miami (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me about this "not at risk" group? Even at 0.4% mortality, that's a 1:250 chance that the average healthy 30-50 year old will die. Does 1:250 of dying...and this isn't like "if I don't look both ways before I cross the street I might..." it's a "if I touch something someone coughed on and touch my eyes without washing first...".
You might think of yourself as not at risk, but 0.4% mortality is pretty crap when EVERYONE has to make that roll.
Re:I fear for Miami (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
I fear for you and the kids in Miami (Score:5, Insightful)
I advocate ... everyone to determine whether they are at risk from this disease, and how high their risk factors are. ... allow the at-risk population to voluntarily self isolate. ... the not-at-risk can go back to school, work, etc.
Which completely ignores that we're dealing with a contagious disease here. From the standpoint of spread, you're back to the "do nothing" scenario. That loads the environment with virus.
Then it also ignores how contagious this is (which is how it got loose repeatedly in the first place.) Self-isolation doesn't prevent exposure and contagion, it only delays it. So the isolated get it despite efforts to prevent it, and they get it rapidly enough that, despite the "revived" economy, they still overwhelm the health care system and drop like flies.
It also ignores that the decision makers are generally the very old, with fatality risk an order of magnitude or more higher. So when faced with mobs of young people ignoring the reverse-quarantine prescription and primed with think-tank output like TFA, they're likely to try to do something about it.
Big hammer? You ain't seen NOTHIN' yet.
But the things they can do, once persuasion has failed, are things like martial law. And that becomes things like rounding up the spring break partygoers, throwing them into concentration camps, and guarding them so that none get out alive - until all the survivors are non-contagious.
THAT works to substantially protect those outside. But it also builds a pesthole and dumps all of the scofflaws into it, so even with only a handful of starter cases all the susceptible get to "have the cold" in an environment where, if they get the "bad cold" form, their treatment is marginal at best.
The we get the fallout of the survivors' trauma warping politics afterward. Much like the Cold War and the vietnam-era draft traumatized a generation warped US politics at the time and since.
These things get REALLY out of hand. Ask a boomer about that time, while you still have a few to ask. Pay special attention to the bombings (like Madison) and the National Guard firing on crowds at Jackson State and Kent State.
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Never did I say that you did.
As opposed to the harm coming to family units drastically affected by hospitalization and ICU stays. Hello, medical bankruptcy.
And I'm arguing that that's every adult b
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You do realize this translates to $30,000 in the USA. At this margin, big pharma is going to pick up and run with it - if you give them a big enough bribe in the first place.
Re:I fear for Miami (Score:4, Insightful)
Except the person to person community spread caused zero new cases in Wuhan in the latest figures. So you can stop the virus and kill it dead. All the reported cases in China are from travelers from elswhere currently. So they may be lying a bit, but it is a lot better than Italy looks right now. You cannot hide the stream of body bags and incoherent mobile footage from inside collapsing hospitals forever and they have ended from China. Oh yes you say but what about the bounce, the return of the epidemic in the autumn. Well until we have really good antivirals or the vaccine comes along you may still have to trace and isolate the sick and their contacts to prevent the outbreak reoccuring. But we are learning all over the world how to do this. It does not mean permanant lock down, we are getting smarter at knocking it back as time goes by. We can win, now is no time to give in.
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The risk goes up linearly from the age of 50 to 80. Do you really want to make the virus endemic and shorten your own lifespan from 80+ to 50+. If it comes back every year it is going to get you sometime.
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We don't know how long immunity lasts. There are multiple well documented cases of people dying from the virus after getting better.
One or two anecdotes is neither "multiple" nor "well documented".
HOLOHAUX - OBLIGATORY SHILLING (Score:2, Informative)
The Tribe just can't summon the discipline not to shove that horseshit in our faces one last time.
They must get tiny little circumcised hard-ons every time they mash that holohaux button.
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I'm sure you mean this as a joke, but in truth overall MIami's population is far younger than you might suspect. The impact of the ICL simulation would be tragic, no doubt, but Miami would still be alive. It's actually been getting younger since about 2000 or so.
Re:I fear for Miami (Score:5, Insightful)
8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.
Thing is, about the same as the normal death rate for seniors. Would more die this year, or would they just die of this instead of the flu or anything else that came along and challenged their system?
We may end up with a controlled experiment to find out, if Britain goes ahead with it's "keep calm and carry on" approach the the Wuhan Flu, and America isolates everyone as much as practical. I think we'll see some difference in death rates, from better use of ventilators as the infection wave is spread out over more weeks, but everyone is still going to get it.
I'm not sure that's a good trade-off for destroying the economy. But I think this argument works better: lots of people are going to die. Afterwards, are we the people that did everything practical to save who we could, or are we the other group? Even if it doesn't make a real difference in death toll, it will make a real difference to the survivors to know we at least tried.
Re:I fear for Miami (Score:5, Informative)
"Thing is, about the same as the normal death rate for seniors. "
Um, the "normal death rate" is not inclusive of the people who would die from COVID-19. They would die in addition to that (with some tiny overlap).
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It's as much a political calculation as anything. The Republicans have an election to fight this year and they don't want a significant fraction of their supporters to die prematurely.
At the same time they have to consider how any action they take will affect their election chances.
The science is secondary to all those considerations.
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8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die.
Thing is, about the same as the normal death rate for seniors.
No, it isn't. The normal death rate for Americans aged 70-74 is 2.3% and 1.5% for men and women respectively. For 75-84 it's 6.6% and 4.8% (that's an average across a decade; obviously people at the low end of that range have lower rates and people at the high end of that range have higher rates). For 85+, now you're into COVID-19 range, at 16.7% and 14.2%.
Would more die this year
Yes, more would die this year. COVID19 death would be roughly independent of other causes of death.
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Flu - massive inoculation program (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Flu - massive inoculation program (Score:4, Informative)
1 billion people get infected and 500,000 die from flu every year. Fortunately, the current hand washing scare will help against flu also.
CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million â" 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 â" 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 â" 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/... [cdc.gov]
get your figures right
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Re:Flu - massive inoculation program (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flu - massive inoculation program (Score:4, Insightful)
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I know critical thinking is difficult while your mind is ravaged by the disease known as Republicanism, but do try, we're rooting for you!
The hilarious thing is that you're saying this to someone whose posting history is almost devoid of political opinions, yet if he doesn't support your position *in this one argument* then he must be a Republican? You may have just turned a centrist right.
Well Done!
(Check his posting history)
Panic is not the answer (Score:2, Insightful)
The numbers cited in the OP are quite simply bollocks.
It makes the assumption that 0.9% of people who get Coronavirus will die, and that is quite simply not the case. 0.9% of *severe cases* may die, but that is a far cry from all cases. All evidence points to the virus being minor to the point of not knowing you have it - for most people.
Furthermore, studies are showing that chloroquinine is effective in treating Coronavirus, we already know that this drug is safe, we have a lot of it on hand, and Bayer jus
Re:Panic is not the answer (Score:5, Informative)
The numbers cited in the OP are quite simply bollocks.
It makes the assumption that 0.9% of people who get Coronavirus will die, and that is quite simply not the case. 0.9% of *severe cases* may die, but that is a far cry from all cases. All evidence points to the virus being minor to the point of not knowing you have it - for most people.
You seem to be completely not getting this and need to read the Tomas Pueyo [medium.com] article which actually has more useful modelling than imperial college (though both are right). Lack of visible infection is the virus's killer feature. This enables it to spread fast enough with exponential growth that it will get to most people without us being able to isolate them unless we do widespread testing.
The death rate of 0.9% is optimistic and is based on proper health care. There have been a number of situations with entirely closed populations where almost everyone has been infected and in many of these case the death rate has been more of the 2%-5% level. In cases like Italy where the health care system has been overwhelmed similar, or even greater, death rates seem to be possible. E.g. 5% to 12%.
In other words, the low death rate numbers are dependent on heavy action now. To be frank it's probably a bit late for the USA.
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You still don't get it, do you? The goal is not to avoid it, the goal is to flatten the peak. The reason for this is that yes, 1% fatalities are possible. If, and only if, everyone who needs medical treatment can get it. Else fatality rates are closer to 5%, and that's the optimistic number, more pessimistic ones put it closer to 10%.
Now, ventilators will be a rare resource in the comming weeks. Twice so if we don't do jack shit. Ponder for a moment what will happen when you notice that something that could
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Claiming that the mortally rate because the majority of people are getting sick is an "invalid point" because not only did saloomy not provide any evidence - he's flat wrong only 31% of those catching it are 60+ [hindustantimes.com].
Similarly, 1/2 a million might die across the world from the flu every year is nothing compared to what this virus can do. It doesn't take a math degree to calculate that at an 80% infection rate and 1% Mortality
Re:Flu - massive inoculation program (Score:5, Insightful)
NO! both flyingfsk and saloomy fail at math, and thus both their points are invald.
Do go on.
6.16 billion infected. 6.16 * 1% = 616 million deaths.
Ah, the math equivalent of the traditional "your and idiot". Well, at least you tried to math.
Re:Flu - massive inoculation program (Score:4, Interesting)
The actual deaths in China are state sponsored fiction. They seem to have finally passed a rule a few weeks ago to write down cause of death using the same metric China uses to determine causes of death from influenza.
In case you don't know, China has utterly miraculous influenza death numbers. Nation of over one billion, less than hundred deaths from influenza a year for quite a while now. This is not because they have a magical way of dodging the mortality. It's because of the way China reports numbers. You see, in nations where every report has a political angle, deaths from complications of influenza are reported as deaths caused by influenza. I.e. if you get a pneumonia that kills you from influenza, your death certificate will cite influenza as well as pneumonia.
In China, it will merely cite pneumonia. Which is how you get those utterly miraculous looking numbers. Same appears to be true for coronavirus deaths. We have significant amount of reports of crematoriums across China being massively overcapacity even with 24/7 shift work being instituted since crisis started. If they're looking at 3k deaths in a nation of over a billion, that would be a drop in a bucket. Crematoriums wouldn't even notice. A single large city's crematorium capacity would be more than able to handle those extra deaths.
Yet it isn't.
Realistically, you can add at least two zeroes to the official death toll in China, and you'll likely be a lot closer to reality than the official number.
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A contrarian view, worst is very unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)
There are also good articles to read on why the worst case scenarios you read about simply will not come to pass [jpost.com] - a really great point in that article is that even under optimum virus catching conditions, people practically swimming in Covid19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, only 20% of the people there caught it. That indicates possibly a large percentage of natural immunity.
So far the death numbers in the U.S. are not increasing exponentially, so a more conservative scenario just seems much more lik
Re:A contrarian view, worst is very unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a whole lot of "possibly" right there. Not odds I'm interested in playing.
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But they also effectively jailed everyone on the Diamond Princess in their room with no outside contact. This is essentially the same action China took to shut down transmission in Wuhan.
So that doesn't represent the worst case scenario by a long shot.
The index case on the Diamond Princess was infected on January 20, and detected twelve days later on February 1. The ship was quarantined and passengers were confined to their rooms on February 5. So presuming all the infections occurred while people were s
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But they also effectively jailed everyone on the Diamond Princess in their room with no outside contact..
They had frequent contact with the crew, and many with each other via balconies.
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Yeah. About 2% of the Wuhan people got it. Maybe as many as 4%. Why would we guess that anything drastically different would happen anywhere else?
A lot of the let's hurry up and get a head start on total quarantine noise seems to ignore the treatment progress and the likelihood that warmer weather will help.
And the fact that the virus barely exists at all in many places. Why should Kansas City go on total lockdown, for example? They only have 2 cases.
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Yeah. About 2% of the Wuhan people got it. Maybe as many as 4%. Why would we guess that anything drastically different would happen anywhere else?
Exactly. Americans landed on the moon so I'm sure all the other countries have landed people on the moon too.
checking...
Oh it turns out that if you do different things, you get different results.
Who knew !
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So far the death numbers in the U.S. are not increasing exponentially, so a more conservative scenario just seems much more likely than a fully pessimistic one.
I hope you are right. However, in Italy, the cases rose from 1 case to 21,000 cases in 3 weeks. Conditions there are different from much of the U.S., but in some places like NYC, you might see a similarly dramatic rise in cases.
Re:A contrarian view, worst is very unlikely (Score:4, Interesting)
I share the contrarian viewpoint: the ICL article is based on computer simulation. Computers simulate humans poorly, to be kind. What's more, from the article itself you can see clearly the gaps in the simulation's capabilities: it fails to account for many different feedback mechanisms that herd society towards doing the right thing, and how far we will go to do it (including widespread mobility countermeasures, such as those enabled in Italy). The simulation's results show us the worst possible scenario, and people will get scared enough to avoid that eventually.
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There are also good articles to read on why the worst case scenarios you read about simply will not come to pass [jpost.com]
The article says the disease is slowing down in China and it's peak has passed there. The US is just starting to increase in the number of cases.
people practically swimming in Covid19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, only 20% of the people there caught it
You mean after detecting the first cases, passengers were immediately quarantined to their rooms? It seems like you left out a few details.
That indicates possibly a large percentage of natural immunity.
No it does not. In 2007, researchers found that the coronavirus actually evades parts of the immune system [nih.gov]: "Our data suggests that the SARS-CoV uses specific strategies to evade and antagonize the sensing and signaling arms of
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So far the death numbers in the U.S. are not increasing exponentially, so a more conservative scenario just seems much more likely than a fully pessimistic one.
Are you sure? [worldometers.info]
The start is going to be quite lumpy with lots of groups like the aged care facility. Expect it to smooth out and ramp up fast as more and more get infected.
What is worse is (Score:5, Insightful)
when the Spanish Flu hit in 1918, it came in 3 different waves, over a year total. It wasn't a one and done deal. Expect corona to pop up again a couple times.
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It's also in the Southern Hemisphere where fall and winter are both yet to come. Not that it matters - we all live and work in air conditioning now. Summer flu hiatus only applies to certain types of day jobs.
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SARS was contained and exterminated through extreme counter measures. It also was most contagious after symptoms so it allowed governments to identify people who had already self isolated.
Corona can be contagious prior to symptoms so it's next to impossible to completely contain like SARS.
The economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've yet to find a comparable serious study of the effects of the lock down on the welfare and the health of everyone who survives. The current course set by China and European countries is driving us towards freezing all economic activity. We risk not a recession, but an economic depression. That Imperial College report suggest keeping the lockdown for 18 months, we've never done anything so drastic. We know that unemployment and poverty have serious health consequences. We know that this kind of stress is terrible for everyone's health. I'd like to find if there is anything out there from experts trying to quantify it?
The most interesting statistic I saw is that the average dead patient in Italy is 79.5, wherehas the normal life expectancy is 82.5, so we're talking shortening the lifespan by 3 years on average for those who die. If 1% die, that's an effect of 0.3 years on the life expectancy. What is the effect of economic depression on life expectancy?
Re:The economy? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The economy? (Score:5, Informative)
FYI, the current average life expectancy of an 80 year old in Italy is a further 9.3 years [knoema.com], as they've already outlived nearly half their peers.
need an health insurance plan for all that is not (Score:3)
need an health insurance plan for all that is not just ER (does not cover all stuff) or People turning to the jail / prison system to get health care
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Considering Cubans have a longer life expectancy than Americans, it's a safe bet that the health of the stock market is not a suitable proxy for the health of the people. No depression will bring the American GDP down to the Cuban GDP.
But if money did inherently make you live longer, you could make an argument (as Castro might) that robbing and murdering Jeff Bezos to distribute his money to other people saves a bunch of lives and thus we should do it. That doesn't make it morally acceptable to murder him.
Re:The economy? (Score:5, Informative)
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80 year-olds likely aren't working, and they likely draw a pension either from the government or their employer, so not much.
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Endgame for SARS-NCOV-2? (Score:2, Interesting)
Realistically speaking, without a vaccine the virus is unstoppable. Right now it looks as if it's as infectious as measles, but unlike measles carriers are asymptomatic. And like measles, SARS-NCOV-2 will keep coming back for another encore.
So, hopefully that vaccine will work out and be ready to go ASAP.
Re:Endgame for SARS-NCOV-2? (Score:5, Informative)
Right now it looks as if it's as infectious as measles,
Complete rubbish. Measles [wikipedia.org] is far more infectious with an Ro of 12-18 [wikipedia.org] Estimates for COVID-19 max out around 4-5 or so.
Young people are affected too (Score:5, Interesting)
Although young people are less likely to die, 38% of patients requiring hospitalization were between the ages of 20 and 54. And if the hospitals are full...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
Re:Young people are affected too (Score:4, Informative)
H1N1 required different resources, resources that every hospital had aplenty. Covid requires ventilators, something that is not only in very short supply but also very noticable when someone has it and someone you love doesn't.
I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
In a series of tweets, Jeremy C. Young, Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State, summarized what the report says would happen if the U.S. does absolutely nothing. That is, if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course.
But we ARE doing something, and we will be doing more things as time goes on - I don't understand the point of this "if the US does nothing" theory.
I guess we could take their imaginary what if scenario, and subtract what actually happens after we do the things we are and will do, then we'll know how many people owe their lives to the actions taken by this administration. For example, the report says that if we do nothing 4 million people will die, but at the end of this only 500,000 people die, than we know the actions of the Trump administration saved 3.5 million lives, right?
Is that the point of this elaborate fictional report?
You may challenge me calling it fictional, but we know almost nothing about Covid-19 - for instance, is it a seasonal virus? We don't know, but the folks that wrote the report just made up a whole lot of missing facts and invented some dramatic possibilities.
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I don't understand the point of this "if the US does nothing" theory...
Lots of people like attention. They get a little dopamine hit from being the center of discussion.
Re:I don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess we could take their imaginary what if scenario, and subtract what actually happens after we do the things we are and will do, then we'll know how many people owe their lives to the actions taken by this administration. For example, the report says that if we do nothing 4 million people will die, but at the end of this only 500,000 people die, than we know the actions of the Trump administration saved 3.5 million lives, right? Is that the point of this elaborate fictional report?
The point is obviously to inform governments around the world what they should do. The report has already caused the UK government to significantly change course. We've seen the US administration also change course dramatically over the past few weeks -- presumably based on similar behind-closed-doors assessments, although whether those assessments are as good as those coming out of Imperial is anyone's guess.
You may challenge me calling it fictional, but we know almost nothing about Covid-19 - for instance, is it a seasonal virus? We don't know, but the folks that wrote the report just made up a whole lot of missing facts and invented some dramatic possibilities.
It's quite silly to call it "fictional". We always have to make predictions based on best available knowledge. It's what investors do. It's what government planners do. It's what military strategists do. It's what we do when we're dating. It's what everyone does all the time. They didn't "just made up a lot of missing facts and invented possibilities" -- they used their expert experience to make the well-informed guesses, probably the best educated guesses we've heard so far.
Is your point that we shouldn't make such sweeping changes to our economy without more certainty about Covid-19? That very assertion is itself a guess. It's a guess that the net outcome of delaying the changes until we have more certainty, is better than the net outcome of acting sooner. The only question is, is it a "best educated guess"? I can't tell because (if that is indeed your point) you didn't provide any working, any estimates of the outcomes under the two scenarios.
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You should read past the title of the story. Reading to the end of the summary (text) would tell you that there were three main scenarios covered in the report. Reading the irritating series of tweets would tell you about the other two scenarios. Or just read the summary in the report itself.
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But we ARE doing something, and we will be doing more things as time goes on - I don't understand the point of this "if the US does nothing" theory.
Maybe you should read Slashdot more. A large portion of the people are pointing to raw statistics and assuming we're doing nothing and that everyone is crying wolf. It is VERY important than when managing a crisis you also remind people why you are managing a crisis. Otherwise you get nothing but nutjobs out the other end saying the Y2K bug was a myth and a scam, and the next time you face a crisis you will find incredible resistance to your actions.
What if scenarios are important to model the success of so
I think we did already (Score:2)
Why not stagger the production? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like if after 3-6 months the vaccine was promising, you would start production immediately and simply not distribute it until the study was complete. It would be worth doing this with multiple vaccine candidates and only use the ones that pass the test.
The economic and death costs of not having it ready and waiting 4 additional months would GREATLY outweigh and economic loss of producing it ahead of time.
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It doesn't take that long to produce a vaccine dose, and try to defend warehouses full of hundreds of millions of believed good vaccines that you won't distribute yet, even though people are dying.
The danger is not the virus (Score:3)
Yes, the virus will kill a few people. But that is not the problem, and certainly not the reason why we go to extreme means to fight it. The reason is that we cannot deal with the fallout if it hits us undamped.
The main problem here is that people who develop a severe case need respiratory aid, i.e. intensive medical care of a very specific type. No country on the planet has enough facilities for such a case, not even if the virus was an insulated matter of a single country and everyone donates their ventilators to that country. Now ponder this for a moment:
a) Someone you love is sick and will die with about 5-10% chance if they don't get hooked to a ventilator, which five- to tenfolds their survival chances.
b) There are not enough such ventilators available.
Now who do you think will get those ventilators? You? Your father/grandfather? Or rather someone who "helpfully donated" some sum to the hospital that you won't even see in your life if you worked 'til you're 250?
This virus is a riot waiting to happen, when people start fighting over the medical equipment to allow their loved ones to survive. This is the main threat here. Whether the virus kills 1% or 0.1% of those it infects is meaningless. What's the powder keg here is that there is something you could do to improve someone's survival chances but the resources that allow you this are in very short supply and you can't really squirrel them away in some hiding place, they're right there in plain view for everyone to see that you get to die while some rich old guy gets to breathe.
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We could have had competent leadership.
Yeah, but Elon wasn't running.
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Re:Votes have consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
The ironic thing is that Trump appears to have actually stepped up his game in the past few weeks, but it's very late and VERY hard to erase the experiences of the past 3 years. This guy is a verified, demonstrated congenital liar and an unapologetic narcicist. Who's to know if he's telling the truth this time or gives any kind of real crap at all. He's changed his tone in the past week or so, and for the first time in 3.5 years he actually seems halfway serious about something other than Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, or Trump.
That doesn't mean that I'm going to re-elect him, though. If we make it through COVID-19 well, it will be in SPITE of him, not BECAUSE of him.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Votes have consequences (Score:5, Informative)
Biden has opposed abortion, more recently he's promised to veto Medicare expansion if it comes across his desk, and oh yeah he's mentally unfit. He's a piece of shit and fuck him.
Speaking of health care, Clinton did once champion single payer, but after she took a big fat wad of big pharma campaign contributions she declared that single payer is dead in America. Clinton is a piece of shit too.
If you knew what integrity was you couldn't support either of them.
Either would be better than Trump, but that's not an endorsement. I'd rather have herpes than HIV but neither is actually appealing.
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Re:Votes have consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
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Obama failed hardest (Score:2, Interesting)
The "minimum standard" basically banned plans that never cover anything. I was offered one of these once. It was $30/mo because it literally covered nothing. No doctors visits, no ER, no ambulance. Nothing. Around $300k of out of pocket it kicked in at a 90/10 split. At $1 million hit 80/20. It had a $500k lifetime maximum.
According to my brother these were mostly meant for young guys who were required by a divorce to have healthcare. The prob
Re:Obama failed hardest (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFY.
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Trump isn't trying to railroad people out their healthcare plans. Trump isn't making up new rules to govern everyone's life. He's repealing them.
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EU is bigger than the USA (Score:2)
Europe has more people in a smaller area than the USA; the EU is a subset and even then it's still more of a federation or union of states than a central government.
They were hit harder 1st than the USA; the comparison can't be made until afterwards because right now the timing is out of sync. Aside from the fact they have a different situation as I was just pointing out. Their socialized systems helped lessen the harm and mistakes in leadership or even incompetent leadership is a problem NO MATTER WHAT TH
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Re:Damned if you do damned if you don't (Score:5, Interesting)
It actually makes sense though. The less prepared you are for a situation, the more drastic actions you have to take, and the higher the cost if you don't take them.
It's clear from Trump's actions leading up to this he neither understood the need for preparedness, nor listened to people who did. He thought he could go out and hire the people he'd need if there was ever a serious pandemic, not dreaming how fast such a thing could move.
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So Biden, his main Democratic opponent, the day after the travel restrictions were announced, didn't say in response [nypost.com]:
I'm sure the NY Post will be happy to print a correction if you can provide them with a more accurate transcript of his statements. But be warned, there's actual video...
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I don't think you understand the "sword of Damocles". I also don't accept your analogy. And consider it ambiguous in a way that renders it ... not meaningless, but only containing conotational meaning. E.g. you need to specify what the "this" of "if Trump does this" is. You may have a clear idea of what you mean, but *I* need to guess, and my guess is that you don't have a clear idea.
P.S.: The "sword of Damocles" was supposed to ensure that the king judged cases fairly and dealt honorably with people.
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The point of the story is that being King comes with fear. This has been confirmed by modern studies of alpha males in highly social mammal species. It turns out alpha males have unusually high levels of stress hormones.
The main reward for being an alpha is preferential access to mates; however it turns out the beta males have almost the same access to females, but without the stress. Beta males are often older animals unable to contend for alpha status, but strong enough to play king maker for a younger
Re:Damned if you do damned if you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're saying Trump should have shown competence right from the start, instead of downplaying it so much and then doing a backflip?
Perhaps his choice to ignore it all and blame Democrats, will deservedly come back and bite him in the ass.
Re:Damned if you do damned if you don't (Score:4, Insightful)
Please explain how it isn't the Democrats' fault.
You've stumbled into the wrong class. This is Emerging Pandemics and how not to deal with them.
Remedial Political Whining is down the hall.
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Every vaccine is paid for, there are no "free vaccines" where the manufacturers aren't paid for their product. Don't be so ridiculous.