black321 wrote:
 
Solid questions...who knows.

I suggest that we keep everything open for the under 50 crowd....and have them do everything for the 50+ crowd.  The 50+ crowd hunkers down with parents/relatives they need to protect.  The only potential problem is that they might realize they like things with a younger demo...and add the virus to the food deliveries until we're gone.

 black321 wrote:
 
That's a big problem with our employer-based system of health insurance. Lose your job, lose your insurance (and by extension, access to healthcare). All these people being laid off now, what are they supposed to do? Find another job? How?

If they do get sick, heck not even the coronavirus, but anything, what do they do? Go to the emergency room? Yeah, that'll work.

I don't know if 'sheltering in place' is the best response, but absent widespread testing, we don't have much else. Social distancing in restaurants, for example, is not practical. Just think of the kitchen staff: they can't help but work in close proximity. Patrons are not such a problem if you limit seating, but all the staff?

I don't disagree with you - I question it too. I just don't know what other tools we have right now.
c.

What I can't get my head completely around is the response...the cost/benefit of the response. You have x% who are going to be hospitalized and y% who will die. X is costly, y is priceless...but what of the impact - financial & health - from the response. Goldman sachs estimated unemployment will rise to 6.25%....about 5m jobs (and that assumes the economy recovers by Aug). How many will lose insurance and healthcare due to being laid off?   Could we have kept restaurants, bars, stores open, but practiced safe distancing? How many private ventures will fail, causing bankruptcy, life dreams crushed in weeks? $1 trillion stimulus package, and thats just to start? All this, and all but the most sick still cant get tested?

Are these draconian measures really the best response?
 I'm not saying they aren't, but questioning.

 rgio wrote:
 
It depends on what you are going to do with the information. If someone tests positive and is told to self-isolate, but they are being told to self-isolate anyway, then the test doesn't have any value.

Australia is taking a much more laid-back approach to social distancing than the US. I hope they are making the right decision, but I think it would work better with greatly expanded testing so you could isolate the positive individuals.

 steeler wrote: 
Hey guy!

 sirdroseph wrote:
 
There are lessons in the NBA cases that are being ignored by the privilege arguments.

I haven't seen the details, but I guess it's safe to assume that 1 guy feels bad, and everyone who traveled with/contacted the team is tested.  It's not 4 tests....it's dozens.  From the dozens, 4 tested positive (so far).  3 of them feel fine, and the original symptomatic guy still feels like he has a cold.  We're talking about superior physical specimens in their 20's...likely to have a fatality rate near zero.

The other 3 guys are exactly like everyone else running around spreading the virus....young, likely single, feeling good.  

When you can test everyone, you can change the course of the spread.  In South Korea, they are like the Nets...test everyone who might have picked it up from player 1.  In Korea, 30% of all cases are 20-29. That's the most infected group!  In the US, if you don't pal around with Kevin Durant, you need to be bleeding out of your eyes with a dry cough and breathing difficulty to get tested.  Since the spreaders in their 20's don't show it...we don't test them.  There are probably tens of thousands of cases undiagnosed (and possibly never diagnosed) right now.  Korea's curve went flat at this point in their exposure....ours keeps climbing.  

Every day people have to wait for testing...people are going to die.  The administration is slapping each other on the back whenever possible for doing so much, but it's 2 to 4 weeks too late.

When asked about it today...Trump responded as expected:  Asked if wealthier individuals should be getting faster access to tests, Trump said he did not think so.

The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China, last year and has since caused a large scale COVID-19 epidemic and spread to more than 70 other countries is the product of natural evolution, according to findings published yesterday (March 17, 2020) in the journal Nature Medicine.

The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered.

Just saw an article regarding people questioning why NBA players have the luxury to all be tested when so many less fortunate need these test that are in such short supply and it got me to thinking of a most basic point.  Regardless of whether you are sick or not, if you have the financial resources to self quarantine it is your moral and social obligation to immediately do so and you should never get tested unless you develop severe symptoms.   There are so many that have to work to survive and they will have to do the best they can to social distance while being able to work if it all possible.  Basically there should be no well to do people in public at all until all of this blows over literally.

Odd coincidence.  I was going through my desk at work and came across some old folders to put papers in recycling.  One of them was a notice about some districts which were closing schools and suspending testing during the H1N1 virus outbreak in October 2009.

From column yesterday of Michael Gerson in the Washington Post:

It has recently been common in our politics to assert that the establishment has failed, that our institutions and systems are corrupt, and that we need political disrupters to shake things up or burn things down. This is now revealed as the political philosophy of spoiled children. We no longer have the luxury of apocalyptic petulance or the language of faux revolution. We need trusted experts to carry hard truths. We need our systems and institutions to bear enormous weight. We need public officials to encourage an orderly urgency, to repair what is broken and to calm irrational fears.

Food for thought.

 sirdroseph wrote:
 
I don't agree overall with your opinion, but as you said, that's fine.  I live in a college town and work in another and know quite a few students and academics - there's always a certain amount of privileged knuckleheads and irresponsible yahoos around but I don't see it as a majority (though I do have some neighbors who are young, loud, and inconsiderate).  Maybe it's the that neither of those schools (UNC and Duke) have reputations as "party" schools, and still our opinions are based on observational or anecdotal experiences.  Anyhow, there are valid arguments that baby-boomers were the most "entitled" (or privileged) and "irresponsible"generation in this country's recent history, but that is a topic for another thread (I don't necessarily adhere to those arguments either BTW).

 Proclivities wrote: 
I was young and stupid too and do not forget this, I would NEVER have behaved and thought this way under the same circumstances regardless of how young and stupid I was and I don't believe any other generation would have either.  This is more than just generational get off my lawn stuff, there really is a declining of personal responsibility and an entitlement that is different than any other generation.  You may disagree with this notion, that is fine but this is my opinion and I am sticking to it.

 sirdroseph wrote:
 
To be fair, it's a pretty tiny sampling of "our future generation" - undergrad, Spring-break yahoos in Florida.   Older generations have probably been expressing such disenchantment and lack of faith in younger generations throughout human history.  What did older people complain about with our lifestyles when we were 21?

'Ain't that serious': Miami spring breakers party on

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/aint-serious-miami-spring-breakers-074801407.html

 

"It's really messing up with my spring break. What is there to do here other than go to the bars or the beach? And they're closing all of it. "I think they're blowing it way out of proportion. I think it's doing way too much."

Others voiced frustration Miami's iconic South Beach was closed off.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) ATLANTIS WALKER, 21-YEAR-OLD SPRING-BREAKER FROM INDIANA, SAYING:

"What they're doing is bad, we need a refund.. This virus ain't that serious. There's more serious things out there like hunger and poverty, we need to address that."

 

These are the people that will go unscathed by the virus itself, this is our future generation folks.  Good luck and Good night.

 R_P wrote:
 

I know you are much smarter than I and everyone else for that matter, you spend much of your time here explaining this to us.  However there are many events the universe will throw at us that are far beyond the capability of governments and society to deal with regardless of who is in charge and someday it will all break down and leave us as we truly are, mammals with very little hair that have completely lost our primal contact with nature and the environment that sustains us and the skills necessary to co exist with her and survive.   When it comes down to it, no one is going to care what your politics are only what skills, resources, proper attitude and cooperation you have to offer for survival as well as kindness, compassion and teamwork that is required to take care of those that cannot take care of themselves on the ground.   Government will quickly be rendered either ineffective or something to fear and then will no longer exist and we are once again naked mammals at the mercy of the wild.  In the meantime, please continue to scold us in to compliance with your superior knowledge on how to vote and who to protest in the streets.

this seems interesting...

and this

There’s nothing so political as a pandemic
“Don’t politicise a crisis,” they say. But what’s more political than a global health emergency?

 R_P wrote:
 
The CEO being ousted is pretty damning. The statements by the German officials are pretty damning. I have read the various articles reporting on this and I haven't seen anything showing the original story was false, but there may well have been some walking back of the tone to appease Trump. If I were the Germans I'd just nationalize the company. 

 Steely_D wrote:
 
Thank you for your service.

Yeah, if you have a test result, what decision would you make that is different. I suppose people would self-quarantine but, with limited capacity, they probably should just do it if they are sick.

That being said, I'm all in favour of having enough data on the spread to help inform policy and, help understand what to do with future pandemics. That could be done with a statistical sampling method, which I haven't heard anyone talk about for any country. You don't need to test everyone.