Covid-19

[GoMuskies]

I think all data is important

Did you just say all data matters?!? That's a little problematic in 2020!

[STL_XUfan]

Did you just say all data matters?!? That's a little problematic in 2020!

Public reps as the man is holding me down.

I will attend a data sensitivity reflection session. If I remember correctly from 2011, a proper reflection session requires you to drink 2 Herschels and a pitcher of natty?

[paulxu]

I'm finding 2020 problematic.

[X-man]

It would be super helpful to get some real information on what is happening, so each of us could decide for ourselves the level of risk we are dealing with. I'm talking here about (perhaps daily) updated information as to who is getting sick (demographics), who is getting sick enough to be hospitalized(demographics), who is dying (demographics), as well as who is testing positive but asymptomatic (demographics). in other words, something more than just total numbers.

For example, I am above 65 and therefore in an at-risk group. However I am healthy, with no underlying health problems, and exercise quite vigorously with no problems. How safe is it for me to go out to a restaurant if I socially distance? Can I get together with friends at home if I am pretty sure that they are "safe"? If it turned out that (say) 90+% of people who are sick enough to be hospitalized, or (say) 95+% of people who are dying turn out to be either in long-term care, are incarcerated, or have underlying health issues, the risk to me doing any of these things seems pretty minimal and so I might do such activities.

We need such guidance to move forward with our lives. We need both the federal and state/local governments to provide such data as it becomes increasingly better understood what it implies for each of us. Yet what are we getting from Washington? Crickets. And frankly not much better locally. But it's at the federal level where the problem is most glaring.
And that is on our "commander in chief" who just today said that testing is over-rated and that mask wearing is a political act that actually increases the likelihood of getting sick. Here's what it says in the article from WaPo:

"President Trump called coronavirus testing “overrated” and suggested in a Wall Street Journal interview that some people wear masks not as a health precaution but to signal their disapproval of him. He also continued to defend his handling of the pandemic.

“I personally think testing is overrated, even though I created the greatest testing machine in history,” Trump said Wednesday during an Oval Office interview with the Journal. The paper reported that Trump cited more testing as the reason there are more confirmed cases. “In many ways, it makes us look bad,” he said.

Trump also criticized the way people wear masks and implied that wearing one makes a person more likely to be infected.

“They put their finger on the mask, and they take them off, and then they start touching their eyes and touching their nose and their mouth,” Trump said. “And then they don’t know how they caught it?”

Trump’s claims that new cases are simply the result of more testing and his dismissal of facial coverings contradict health experts.

The rate of new coronavirus cases in at least 14 states — most of which had previously low rates of infection — is increasing faster than the increase in the average number of tests, The Post has reported.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines continue to advise people to wear masks or some kind of face covering to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The president has repeatedly dismissed masks as politically correct and unnecessary and refused to wear one publicly even when it was required — moves that have raised the ire of even some fellow Republicans.

At Trump’s indoor campaign rally in Tulsa on Saturday, his first since the start of the U.S. outbreak, attendees will be given masks but will not be required to wear them."

[paulxu]

Here's all I need to know about masks:
New York has 20 million people, and 24,000 deaths from the virus.
Taiwan has 24 million people, and 7 deaths.

Everybody in Taiwan from day 1 wore a mask.

[xu82]

I'm finding 2020 problematic.

AMEN! Where is the fast forward button?

[Muskie in dayton]

Not sure if you are familiar with any of his other takes. It isnt just this one that makes him crazy.

I know he’s ridiculously chauvinist and he has tattoos of the Transformers. That is enough.

[paulxu]

He used his platform to belittle testing, which public health experts say is required to contain the outbreak. Because the strategy reveals what the president characterized as trivial cases, his direction was to curtail it. “So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down,’” he said, as the audience cheered.

For some reason this strikes me as an example of how messed up we all are.
The president instructs his people to slow the testing for a deadly virus...putting American lives at risk.
And other Americans cheer that, as if it is a good thing.

There is something really wrong with that.

[Muskie in dayton]

Interesting clue as to why the US may struggling with COVID.

[paulxu]

Somehow we've got to do a little better.
The EU has 100 million more people that we do, and their new case count is down below 5,000.