Doubling time for cases in US is roughly 4 to 4 1/2 days, and has held more or less in that range for a couple of weeks. I'm neither a mathematician nor an epidemiologist, but a significant change in behavior is likely needed to reduce that growth rate. Without any change that means somewhere around 35-40M cases in the US by the end of April (roughly 30 days from now). That's scary...over 10% of the population and makes it more likely that each of us has interaction with someone affected. The big unknown is that we've been largely test kit constrained to date, and so it's impossible to know what the real data is.
Really? And what about the Chinese, who ultimately unleased this virus on the world thru their incompetance and hiding the truth? They don't get any blame in your world? If you want to Monday Morning quarterback, go right ahead, but put the blame where the blame lies, on the Chinese. President Trump is doing like the rest of the world, reacting to bad decisions by the Chinese. If the Chinese had been upfront about the virus and told the rest of the world about it in a timely manner instead of allowing the rest of the world to re-discover what they aready knew, then things would have been different. But, they didn't and here we are.
hold up, you think the US was adequately prepared for a pandemic? There are multiple reports that this is factually not true. There were tests of this very thing and the US was rated woefully underprepared. And if you want to throw the criticism of "upfront about the virus" then you have to acknowledge that literally days ago Trump was pushing for the country to be "back to normal" by Easter. A few days before that he was claiming this would go down to zero cases in the US. Your post reads like Trump has been taking this seriously from day one. He and (most of) his staff have been the exact opposite of that. Fouci has to spend almost half of his press briefings undoing the stupid shit Trumps says. Trump, in a time where he could easily rally the country and say we're all in this together, still bitches and complains about the dumbest shit. Calling Romney a RINO in the very same tweet where he is "happy" that he tested negative is all the proof you need. ******** off with your Trump defending. It's moronic - the guy is not handling this well. His personality has no idea how to handle this stuff. And going "no political snarky comments" while throwing shade to Obama and his staff is possibly the most ironic post of all time. Finally, vilifying the Chinese is such a dog whistle tactic. At best, it's a way of not accepting that we, as Americans, had plenty of blame in the current scenario. At worst, it's blatant racism.
Here’s my list: 1. Historically we know that pandemics and other viral threats impact humanity on a regular basis. For almost a century the US has maintained an effective level of preparedness. I t didn’t matter which administration or party was in office. One of President Trumps first moves after being elected was to fire the Pandemic Response Team and call them do-nothings even though they were critical to our amazing responses to H1N1 and Ebola. 2. After 3 major airlines announced they were suspending flights to and from China, the President announced restrictions on foreign travelers from China. The restrictions did not apply to Americans returning from China. These returning Americans were not tested for Coronavirus upon returning. 3. In January The President’s National Security advisors advised him that we have a Pandemic Response Plan and that we should dust it off and implement it. He didn’t. 4. In January the nations Health Care experts warned anyone who would listen that if coronavirus hit the USA there would be a massive undersupply of ventilators. That warning has been repeated often since then. The only person with the authority to actually force industry to produce materials needed for the defense of the nation is the President. Finally, last week he ordered a couple of automobile manufacturers to make ventilators. I guess it came as a big surprise that this would require expensive retooling and time. Precious opportunity was wasted due to inaction. 5. In February The President tweeted to the nation that the Fake News Media and his enemies, the Dems, had conspired to inflame the coronavirus threat way beyond the actual threat. in the same time frame he announced that the USA had 15 cases and was quickly headed to zero. He also said that coronavirus would go away - - - like a miracle. All of the White House messaging to the populace consistently signaled, “Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing to see here.” True leadership would have, at that time, been forthright about the potential and given us direction on what we, as, individuals and communities should do. The curve could have been flattened, or at least be made less steep. In summary, I can agree with you and rightfully point fingers at China. But China didn’t dictate the White House’s response. China didn’t fire our team of experts. China didn’t choose to ignore our plan. China didn’t cause the warnings from the health care industry to fall on deaf ears. China didn’t tell the American people, our Governors and our Mayors that coronavirus was overblown and under control. So, yes, if this virus kills me or anyone close to me I will be justified in blaming President Trump.
I agree with El-ahrairah that China's authoritarian tendencies against transparency is a key factor in how the pandemic is currently playing out. I wholeheartedly, vehemently disagree with him that China's culpability renders Trump's bungling attempts at mitigation to be anything even remotely approaching competent or effective.
Yes on both. I read that residents in Wuhan believe the number of deaths to be closer to 26,000 instead of the 2,535 reported. https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-covi...ata-cremations-shipments-urns-suggest-1494914
I’ve heard that deaths in Wuhan could have been as high as 40,000! Anyway, here’s another article that talks about modeling, specifically addressing that graph from the NYT I posted earlier: https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b Tl,dr: the models aren’t showing what happens once the lockdowns are over and transmission rates pick up again. All we are doing is buying time. This lockdown is just delaying, not solving anything. I thought this was obvious, but I guess a lot of people think a couple months of this, and the crises will be over. Nope! Hopefully we increase icu beds and ventilators, and make progress on medications and vaccines. Otherwise, all this isolation is for naught, and our dear loved ones (one’s self included) still won’t get access to the help they’ll need when they get infected.
The lockdown's biggest upside is that it prevents (at least to some degree) the hospitals from being completely overwhelmed. That is one of the biggest issues in Italy and why they surged past the (reported) numbers in China. Further, you point bolded above is the exact reasons why isolation is key. We should have been stockpiling these things ahead of time. Now we're paying for those actions as a country. However, it's not like the country is going into quarantine, more or less, and nothing else is happening.
And there’s this. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...al-protective-equipment-obeidallah/index.html
The social distancing policies are all about slowing the rate of spread in order to buy time to develop effective medical interventions. The fact that ventilators aren’t being produced en masse by now is disheartening. On the positive side, from what I can glean, the medical professionals directly involved with the care of COVID patients have learned quite a bit about what to do and what not to do. The speed at which they share information is astounding. Experimental treatments and vaccinations are being developed in several locations around the globe. There is a realistic hope that an effective vaccine will be developed in record time.
Not sure what the motivation was but generally I support helping them out as long as the supplies are expendable. When the article quotes “respirators” I wonder if the original message meant to say “ventilators”.
It could be the N95 "respirators". The point being that while getting information showing that the US should start getting prepared and in front of a possible, probably, health crisis our fearless leader was downplaying the virus and shipping off needed supplies that if I read correctly were not replaced for use in the US. Even worse if it was ventilators that were shipped out of the US. Fiddling, Rome, ...
There's an interesting piece on a failed attempt to stockpile newer, nimbler ventilators in today's New York Times.
I also posted this in the Former Player thread Robbie Russell scored the deciding penalty kick to crown @realsaltlake MLS Cup champs in 2009.Now he's in his first year as an ER resident in the era of COVID-19: https://t.co/9ax0sfoyJJ pic.twitter.com/6WHS91X5eF— Major League Soccer (@MLS) March 31, 2020
I suppose in an ideal scenario, proper social distancing would truly eradicate cases in any given area. Sadly the reality is that you're just going to slow the spread. Some people still have to work. Everyone else still has to get things like gas and groceries at the very least. Even still, if people are diligent, it's definitely possible to slow something like this, and greatly minimize the people infected. Sadly like many things, there are those that flat out refuse to deal with some inconvenience and will go about their day as if it's normal. Just seeing some reddit threads on people getting fined is maddening. So many people act like the person off doing their thing is fine because 'nobody else is around' yet fail to realize that if everyone starts to do that, then we're back to square one with everyone in close proximity. This isn't some crazy martial law situation. We're trying to slow/stop this thing before a shitload of people die from it. My hope is that once a vaccine is figured out, it'll become more like the flu, where we try and predict the strains that might be the worst for the winter, and send out vaccines for it.
Once that vaccine is figured out, the anti-vaccine community needs to shut the ******** up and get their shots. I'm not holding out hope for that one
The 'childhood' diseases we typically vaccinate for, like measles, have much higher rates of transmission than covid. I think measles' R0 is in the 12-18 range, while covid's is 2.0-2.5. This means that a lower vaccination rate can more easily convey herd immunity, and it's less likely that the anti-vaxxers can cause localized outbreaks. Most flu outbreaks 'only' need 80% vaccination rates to establish herd immunity, so if fewer than 1-in-5 people are not vaccinated, the disease can be eradicated. But, no, don't hope for rationality from the anti-vax crowd.
Would a higher vaccination rate reduce the number of annual influenza deaths? I’ve seen a range of like 25,000-65,000 Americans annually. That’s a lot of people.
So far there isn't much evidence that this strain of coronavirus mutates/evolves at a very quick rate like the flu does. Therefore the hope is that the vaccine will be only needed once.
Yes, and no. The flu mutates very quickly and so the vaccine is designed for the strains that are most likely to be spread in the next flu season. So, higher vaccination rates could reduce deaths but it also depends on how effective that seasons vaccination is. There is a lot of work being done right now to make a universal vaccination, which would be a one time deal, but it is still years away.