Don, not trying to be critical of this piece but I'm not sure any Nation is willing to have a 7x supply of equipment or beds or personal just sitting unused and ageing just in case the are ever needed.
My thought too. Presumably everyone has enough equipment/beds to manage their load 99.9% of the time. How can they justify investing in unneeded equipment/beds? Where will they store all this stuff while waiting for the next pandemic? If the government wanted to fund some kind of backup support, great, but I don't see that as a priority.
This is article may be of interest: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
Disagree. Watch the 2015 Bill Gates video posted above. You can jump to 5:35 minutes, when he starts to talk about what we need to prepare for a pandemic. Gates correctly says we need to treat preparing for a pandemic like preparing for war, and we need to have adequate reserves, including trained personnel who can be mobilized. Eight thousand extra ventilators with a baseline of 160,000, when you know you need 750,000 to engage the enemy, is criminal complacency. By comparison, how many extra f*cking nuclear warheads do we have right now? Not having a National Guard equivalent medical corps of trained ventilator operators in every state to call up in a pandemic is criminal complacency. Why isn't operating a ventilator part of existing National Guard weekend warrior training? Our government knew a pandemic was coming. They just didn't know when. They should have been prepared as if for war.
That's a fine article from the perspective of simply combating the virus on a medical basis from where we are now. However, the issues we face go far beyond combating the virus. We need to ensure the country does not collapse economically, with all the ensuing suffering that will entail, and by extension ensure the country does not descend into civil war and revolution, and governmental collapse. This is a delicate balance to be achieved by our policymakers. You cannot "flatten the curve" fully and indefinitely. More people will die that way than from the virus. And our way of life (including MLS) could be lost forever.
Fifty restaurants in Seattle closed in just two weeks. https://www.seattletimes.com/life/f...stry-with-more-than-50-closures-in-two-weeks/ That's two for every localized death from Coronavirus. And if every closed restaurant accounts for ten jobs lost, that would be 20 jobs lost for each death. And if each worker has a family of four, on average, that's 80 unrelated persons in the local restaurant sector devastated in comparison to each local Coronavirus death. And that doesn't include the other small businesses that will need to close, and their workers and families. And it doesn't include all the other restaurants and small businesses that will shutter in the next 30 days, not just in Seattle but across the country. Someone can draw up the fancy charts, but the adverse economic ripple impacts of "flattening the curve" move more quickly than any virus. This suspended animation cannot be sustained indefinitely.
I'm not a physician but maybe its because like a cold or a flu, people tend to get sicker during cold weather and rainy seasons? So maybe it will pass in warmer weather?
. . . “In cold environments, there is longer virus survival than warm ones,” Hong Kong University pathology professor John Nicholls told AccuWeather exclusively. Nicholls and colleagues from a team at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, previously produced a study, which was published in February and has yet to be peer-reviewed, noting the effect of heat. Their research is based on one of the world’s first lab-grown copies of SARS-CoV-2. “Temperature could significantly change COVID-19 transmission,” the authors note in the study. They also pointed out that the “virus is highly sensitive to high temperature.” . . . https://www.accuweather.com/en/heal...al-of-new-coronavirus-pathologist-says/700800
You obliviously have never worked in a hospital, or know anyone who does. Hospital's have become like every other business that "estimates" how much they need, and only keep enough to meet those estimates. If there is a "spike" they quickly run out of even what would be considered the minimum needed i.e gloves masks, scrubs as most hospitals do not allow staff givers to use their own.
Personally, I do think there needs to be some federal department charged with nothing other than managing pandemic episodes or possible pandemic episodes. Even when the previous pandemic management cabinet position was eliminated, it was tracking a yellow fever outbreak and one other possible pandemic event. A real management team would not only manage the medical possibilities but also track the possible financial implications of any outbreak. Not every outbreak or virus will necessarily have the same impact on the economy or medical needs. The administration's claim that this came out of "nowhere" is bull**it, IMO. Pandemics are not a case of whether, but a case of when. It's not like there is no history. Being ready for one is as important as being prepared militarily. Just my opinion.
The military needs to be in charge. A pandemic is a national security threat on par with, or greater than, any nuclear threat. And it seems likely in this case that the Wuhan virus was a military exercise gone awry. The most plausible speculation I've heard of what transpired is that corrupt (underpaid?) workers at a Chinese bio-weapons site in Wuhan made unauthorized sales of animals experimented upon to the local marketplace instead of disposing of them appropriately. It's incredibly coincidental that an outbreak starts in the vicinity of such a site, because they are ridiculously rare (supposedly only two in all of China). This was no accident, though it probably was not intentional.
True, I don't know hospital administrators, but I do know good business practices. You don't want excess capacity (in general) but you do want to be able to manage demand. Trader Joes ran out of food; the hospitals can run out of beds. But the hospital licensing associations should have metrics that assess facilities based on use patterns, including worst case scenarios. I agree that this should be treated as if it were a war. Our national government still isn't taking this imminent threat seriously. Fortunately our local governments are. P.S Was that supposed to be "obliviously" or "obviously" -- I may be ignorant but I am not oblivious!
Toilet paper on black market 😂 #COVIDー19 #CoronaVirusUpdates pic.twitter.com/e1nBtjQ0Xf— FRIDAY (@cumaerdogan) March 15, 2020
Assuming it restarts, it will be our season sped up by a factor of 2 or 3. Our team constantly on the move to a different city, which will not favor the teams on the coasts.
I did a reconnaissance run to Midtown Safeway in San Jose this afternoon (Sunday, 3/15). I was out of macaroni salad (a staple of life in my household) and figured, hey, may as well pick up a couple supplies for the 18-month lock-down while I'm at it. I was there most recently Thursday evening (3/12). The insanity has increased a hundred-fold in less than 72 hours. People were generally calm and orderly within the store, but there were long lines at the registers of shoppers with overflowing carts, and shelves were bare or largely bare of several non-perishable staples. I slowly walked aisle-by-aisle to evaluate the situation. Bottled water, almost all gone. Boxed pasta, nearly all gone, except for lasagna, mini-shells, and a box of this and that here and there, including the last box of fettucine that I claimed. Apparently, the hordes prefer angel hair. Pasta sauce. The cheapest, store brands were virtually all gone. The $2.99 Safeway Arrabiata sauce, gone. But the Rao's at $8.99 per bottle, plenty of it. Canned soups and chili, highly picked over. Naturally, bean-free chili was gone altogether. Fortunately, I like beans. Quaker oatmeal. Gone. Damn that hurt. I have one left at home, but it would be good to have a spare to make it through this next quarter decade. Ground coffee. Safeway French roast in stock. $6.99 per, which is a good deal. $5.99 per if you buy three. I didn't need three, so I only grabbed one, but I can't understand the hoarders. Why wouldn't you want coffee if you're going to hole up in your bomb shelter with your Charmin indefinitely? Speaking of which . . . Toilet paper. More than I thought, but mostly the store brand. I didn't buy any, and don't intend to for the duration of this madness, since I have foliage in my backyard. Household cleaning supplies. Most crowded aisle in the store, with shoppers standing around pondering the half empty shelves. I needed some dish washing liquid, and fortunately no one else is interested in the Safeway generic stuff, so I got a bottle. Bread. Nearly out of rye. When the bread goes, the riots won't be far behind. Beer aisle. Thank God, it looked well appointed still. I grabbed a tall can Lagunitas IPA. I don't need to hoard beer -- yet. If all goes well, I'll be back to $15 brews at LOBINA to satisfy my thirst soon enough.
That tall can of Lagunita IPA that is $14-$15 at the LOBINA is $2.99 at my local store, which is probably at least a 100% markup. Do they really need to rip us off so dramatically at EQ stadium? Now, if they said beer sales would go to fund DP aquisitions, with a display board showing a running amount, I wouldn't feel so violated.
Thank you, again for the beer at the Quakes-1868 friendly. Hopefully we will be able to it again soon whether in SJ or Reno. I don't like the behind closed doors stuff with the teams.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom: state will be closing down "All bars, wineries, brewpubs and the like," but not closing restaurants. Restaurants must reduce occupancy by half.— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) March 15, 2020
The canaries in the coal mine. Harvard students thrown out of their campus housing with nowhere to go because of the virus, and for what purpose served? . . . “There are definitely students at the Law School who don’t have a home to return to because of their identity,” Shields said. “It’s a huge factor in our community in terms of being able to find safe and affordable housing.” . . . https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/13/harvard-coronavirus-hls-protests/ Remember this the next time you credulously listen to the "experts" tell you how they have the situation under control. If they can't f*cking run Harvard Law School humanely, they sure as hell won't blink twice before screwing up the lives of the proletariat.