Covid-19

[Xville]

Xville, do you mean the effects of the virus as a result of the shutdown, or the effects if left entirely unchecked?

I know we had to do what we had to do this time because no one had other options and if we had not done anything, there would have been an astronomical amount of deaths.

However, the effects of this virus as a result of the shutdown are going to be astronomical. Printing 2 trillion plus dollars comes with a cost, shutting down small businesses that cant survive being down for a month comes with a cost...mentally and physically. The ramifications of this are going to be felt for a decade if not longer. Healthcare as we know it is going to be drastically different, healthcare renewals for businesses over the next year? Geezus...who knows to what rates those are going to go.

I have spoken to three general practices in the last week...two of the three are within 30 days of shutting their doors for good. Just saying, smart people need to get together and figure a different way for when something like this happens again.

[Snipe]

West coast is doing better than NYC. You almost have to treat them as separate outbreaks. You can't contain people in states though, and as New Yorkers fan out it will spread.

Do people have betting odds on the number of deaths? Would be interesting to see where people are putting their money. I would be betting less than the 100-200K, but maybe that is just wishful thinking.

China limits the travel of people that score unfavorably, and they give everyone a social score. When I first heard that I thought it was horrible. When I see people on spring break, or Mardi Gras, or even this past week having street parties in the hood or in the sticks people hugging after church, I am kind of softening to the Chinese. We really are a nation of idiots.

What good is it if I am on house arrest if people continue to spread the disease? If we did containment right it could work, but we can't do containment right because of who we are. The Japanese can be trusted to do what they are told. Same with Koreans. They are homogeneous populations with high IQs. They are all one big family. We have idiots who spit on fruit or lick toilets.

Does anyone know of a good way to do a cyber happy hour? It would be nice to get some friends together online and see their faces, do some shots and say some silly things.

[JTG]

I know we had to do what we had to do this time because no one had other options and if we had not done anything, there would have been an astronomical amount of deaths.

However, the effects of this virus as a result of the shutdown are going to be astronomical. Printing 2 trillion plus dollars comes with a cost, shutting down small businesses that cant survive being down for a month comes with a cost...mentally and physically. The ramifications of this are going to be felt for a decade if not longer. Healthcare as we know it is going to be drastically different, healthcare renewals for businesses over the next year? Geezus...who knows to what rates those are going to go.

I have spoken to three general practices in the last week...two of the three are within 30 days of shutting their doors for good. Just saying, smart people need to get together and figure a different way for when something like this happens again.

General practice, as in Drs ? How incompetent do have to be as a doc that you can't weather 30 days ? Anyway, this can't set a precedent. The country can't grind to a halt everytime there is a new virus. And all this antibacterial and antibiotic use is gonna screw up everyones immune system. Saw on the business channel this afternoon, the testing, treating and vaccine race is heating up and showing real promise amogst a number of pharma companies.

[xavierj]

I wonder how states that have not gone all in on the shelter in place, compare in cases and fatalities to states like California, Ohio and KY that shut down early on. I don’t think Tennessee has a mandated shelter in place for the entire state or at least they didn’t as of Friday. I think Arizona was pretty much still open for business until maybe today. Though it could be tough to see how things really compare due to population size.

[paulxu]

Does anyone know of a good way to do a cyber happy hour? It would be nice to get some friends together online and see their faces, do some shots and say some silly things.

Have used the Zoom app and done a few of these. It works pretty well for small to medium groups (6-12).

[xu82]

Have used the Zoom app and done a few of these. It works pretty well for small to medium groups (6-12).

We have an “event” scheduled for Saturday. Good friends from Florida. We never would have done this if not for this mess, so it’s one thing that will be better than it would have otherwise been. YAY!

[xudash]

Have used the Zoom app and done a few of these. It works pretty well for small to medium groups (6-12).

Zoom is good. Google Hangout and Skype are options.

[GoMuskies]

The Johns Hopkins tracker I've been using is showing a pretty substantial drop in new cases from 3/27 to 3/28. Could just be a blip, but hopefully it's a good sign that we might see some decline (or at least leveling off) in the number of new cases/day.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashb...23467b48e9ecf6

3/29 went up from 3/28, but new cases were still lower than on 3/27. Can only hope 3/27 was the global peak in new cases.

[xu82]

3/29 went up from 3/28, but new cases were still lower than on 3/27. Can only hope 3/27 was the global peak in new cases.

Amen!

[boozehound]

I know we had to do what we had to do this time because no one had other options and if we had not done anything, there would have been an astronomical amount of deaths.

However, the effects of this virus as a result of the shutdown are going to be astronomical. Printing 2 trillion plus dollars comes with a cost, shutting down small businesses that cant survive being down for a month comes with a cost...mentally and physically. The ramifications of this are going to be felt for a decade if not longer. Healthcare as we know it is going to be drastically different, healthcare renewals for businesses over the next year? Geezus...who knows to what rates those are going to go.

I have spoken to three general practices in the last week...two of the three are within 30 days of shutting their doors for good. Just saying, smart people need to get together and figure a different way for when something like this happens again.

Preparation would help a lot. We are not a nation of preparedness at the moment, and we haven't been for a long time. This spans multiple administrations and political ideologies. For decades we have sacrificed the future for today. Just look at all the deficit spending we have authorized in the last 20 years. The lack of investment in our infrastructure (think roads and bridges). Shipping production of critical goods to relatively untrustworthy countries like China and Mexico.

If we had A LOT more tests, PPE, and ventilators we would be in a much better position. With respect to opening up the country the tests are probably the most immediately of value, because they allow you to know who has the virus and who does not. Part of the reason we have to have the whole country on lockdown is because we can't test. You could theoretically shut this down relatively quickly if you could test the entire country (or as close to it as possible) and quarantine everybody who tests positive for 2 weeks. That's obviously an impractical example, but the closer you get to that the better. Many experts think that South Korea fared to well because they aggressively tested and quarantined the infected and exposed.

West coast is doing better than NYC. You almost have to treat them as separate outbreaks. You can't contain people in states though, and as New Yorkers fan out it will spread.

Do people have betting odds on the number of deaths? Would be interesting to see where people are putting their money. I would be betting less than the 100-200K, but maybe that is just wishful thinking.

China limits the travel of people that score unfavorably, and they give everyone a social score. When I first heard that I thought it was horrible. When I see people on spring break, or Mardi Gras, or even this past week having street parties in the hood or in the sticks people hugging after church, I am kind of softening to the Chinese. We really are a nation of idiots.

What good is it if I am on house arrest if people continue to spread the disease? If we did containment right it could work, but we can't do containment right because of who we are. The Japanese can be trusted to do what they are told. Same with Koreans. They are homogeneous populations with high IQs. They are all one big family. We have idiots who spit on fruit or lick toilets.

Does anyone know of a good way to do a cyber happy hour? It would be nice to get some friends together online and see their faces, do some shots and say some silly things.

NYC is a big problem. The people live in extremely close quarters. Now we are seeing the wealthy flee to their second homes on Long Island and the Jersey Shore and infection rates are rising there. The counties in New Jersey that are the hardest hit are all the counties where New Yorkers have second homes.

You are also right about us being a nation of idiots. We are a country of jackoffs. Not only can we not stay home for two weeks, we have parties almost to 'spite' being told what to do. Hell, somebody in Kentucky got Coronavirus from a 'Coronavirus party'. We definitely did not take this seriously enough initially and now we have to pay a much higher price.

China is interesting - while their government control makes it easy to stop things like this more quickly, they also lie all the time. We are now hearing that the actual infection rates and death tolls may be exponentially higher than we had been informed. Their government relies on people always feeling like 'big brother has it under control', so when they get hit with an epidemic their solution is to minimize and lie to the people about the scale of the impact. I suspect China was much harder hit than we initially thought.