OT Coronavirus: America in chaos, News and Updates. One million Americans dead and counting

Yes, trivializing the Holocaust by comparing everything and anything to it does dishonor the memory of those murdered. I realize that was not the intent but it is how I react, and frankly most Jewish people do as well.

The yellow star was intended as a badge of "racial inferiority" (since you really can't tell by looking who is Jewish), to mark people for scorn, discrimination and finally mass murder. I also don't like mass surveillance although understand need for contract tracing. NOTHING being done to contain spread of a virus is comparable to a yellow star, or to Nazi Germany as an Idaho Republican claimed, or as Michigan "protests" claim, or as attacks on Colorado's Jewish governor claim. The Nazis were not trying to prevent spread of virus, or get people health insurance, or provide family planning (which in fact they banned), all of which have been called "just like Nazi Germany".

 

I was going to amend my above post for the reason of yours. Hard to get sunlight when you are stuck indoors.

Maybe those Floridian beach dwellers are on to something basking in the sun. lol.

 

Social distancing and proper hygiene is another way

 

That’s what the I remembered hearing from pandemic team. The focus was hospitalizations, ICU beds and ventilators. The entire premise of stay at home was to flatten those curves so we don’t overload hospitals.

 

And the advice for reopening states is a 14 day decline. What state has reopened that meets that? Georgia?

 

My response was in response to your comment on the link you cited from the other poster you quoted. You don't think the curve is based on new cases? Tennessee had been doing well until the last few days.

New cases going way up for the last FIVE days, is not "baseless" because an increase of positive tests also means that new hospitalizations will also rise in proportion.

And generally speaking, most every state only tests people who actually have symptoms which also implies an increase. In other words, you most likely have to have people with symptoms in order to have the need for a test.

 

Hey, he's on a roll, and he does not like to be questioned when he's rolling.

 

This actually touches on something I've felt a little odd talking about.
When things were first ramping up it was, "stay home to level the curve for hospitals", the numbers a.) were never ever close to what their models predicted. b.) That was supposed to be 15 days, and then it became '45' days. The numbers of this are still nowhere near what they thought it would be. The hospitals are not flooded and over-ran. It appears the mortality rate isn't nearly as high as predicted early on. It also looks like a LOT of people have had it never knew and are already over it. The notion that stay at home to stay safe, well ok I get that, but what does that mean? They can never eliminate the danger of going outside, just like they can't eliminate the dangers inside. So fine we can stay home, we can keep social distancing, but what is the actual goal and our those goals reasonable to keep the world, or the US at home and the economy sputtering, and all of that?

It's not that I take anyone's death lightly, but if the goal is "no new cases", well ok then we will never open up again. If the goal is the "curve" needs to look like a certain thing well ok, what is it the curve should look like?

I'm not even pushing "lets open everything back up", I just feel like it feels very ambiguous as to what they want to accomplish and I heard someone say "no new cases" and to that, I was like well that's not realistic.

Also if the numbers are not anywhere close to what they thought, why do we think there will be a huge spike now and the hospitals will be over-ran?

 

There was a big scare with the situation in Italy. Rightfully so btw. Then you had the models predicting extreme death tolls and Hospitalizations and ICU beds being overrun by this virus. Like you said, that didn't happen at the levels being modeled.

But controlling spikes isn't about infection rates. It was always about making sure the health care system doesn't crash. A lot of hospitals are losing a ton of money because they can't do elective surgeries during this lock down. Many nurses were being laid off. My ex-wife was let go because her hospital was mainly empty.

 

From the beginning it has been about capacity and learning more about the virus. The largest % of the public can withstand the sickness based on reporting. People older than 65 /or with underlying conditions are the most at risk and thats still true. With more testing and SD along with testing for antibodies will help in measuring the progression of the virus and what should be done.
To govern a reasonable opening up in Oregon makes since, especially in certain areas.

 

I think city lay out comes into play a bit as well. Most European cities are very tight knit, on top of each other, where we have all the sprawling suburbs. Narrow streets and roads with little sprawl creates an even more dangerous environment requiring Italy to lock down in a more severe way than us.

But yes, I too remember it was all about overrunning our emergency services.

The other factor is what is currently deemed as non essential small businesses is a fallacy. EVERY small business is essential to its employees and owners. Its not just about the customer and goods served. $1200 doesn't pay the lease on most business buildings let alone pay the mortgage and feed the family of the owner.

It just comes down to common sense based on geographical quarters.


Let not forget to look at our poverty increase over the next year and the deaths that result from it.

 

Sounds to me the modeling was in error and could that have been done on purpose. Predict a huge number knowing it won't come close and then you declare some sort of victory and doing a great job. Just 2015 trump campaign lying to people how bad of shape the country is in and then he gets elected and now everything is the best because of trump. Taken right out of the trump playbook of the 3 D's.

 

The only counter argument I get is trafficking. Okay we open up our state. Does that mean we still shouldn't leave it, lets say if WA remains in a lockdown? vice versa? How will that work and affect those living on borders like us and Vancouver. KC, NYC area, etc. Seems ion this regard, there needs to be more clarity on what can be done from state to state before any state opens anything, so the nation as a whole knows what is to be expected of them as we lift in increments.

With that said, this isn't going away and the longer we remain in lock down and increase the unemployment line and business shut downs the more deaths we will see due to poverty stricken homes. (suicides, unmaintained health issues, etc.)
When does the crossing point hit and we see that we may be costing more lives than not being in lock down?

I'm not saying this is the case, but numbers are numbers and the longer we stay in lockdown the closer we will be to that crossing point. If we haven't already hit it, we will eventually. It will eventually be inevitibe

 

So now you think the modeling estimate errors are Trump's fault? Got it.

 

I live in Vancouver and travel to Portland to work every day. I also have a number of other things that need my attention in Oregon. The crazy thing is that i have changed my life very little during this entire episode. Granted i do very little other than these things. So not really a huge issue.

 

Not sure how my comment got added to that conversation?

 

I've been critical of the lockdowns, and have thought that we should've followed Sweden's model.... but to call the modeling errors purposeful is just asinine.
People (scientists) are trying to predict and estimate what is going to happen based on VERY LIMITED information. Of course the models are not going to be right. They may have taken a slightly more 'conservative' view of the model so that more people would take it seriously - but to imply that it was intentional with ulterior motives is beyond dumb.

Having said that, I fully believe that SOME of the politicians and media are utilizing it to push their agenda.

 

I thought the initial models were from UofW and (some other university? sorry my mind is melting). I think much of Trump's strategy of trying to turn himself into a wartime president with this is definitely for election purposes.
Again I'm not pushing an "open it up" agenda, which has been claimed in this thread whenever I ask questions (not by you) just want to make it clear.
I am definitely getting to a point of like, "ok so what's next" though. To me (and maybe me alone) the goalposts keep moving. In Feb / early march it was 2.2 dead Americans in the next few months, close it down. Then they started to (kinda our version of a Quarantine is like a college frat party compared to China's...) shut things down, It was flatten the Curve, it now seems to be so ambiguous that I don't quite understand the goals, and plans to get to the goals.
I come back to though, the numbers have never, ever during this pandemic have come close, they are orders of magnitudes off.
So is the goal 0 cases? 14 days of trending down in cases? because if testing ramps up more and more it seems like cases will go up even if the people who are tested positive have almost 0 risks of health complications from it.

We can stay closed till they have a vaccine if we want I suppose, but I don't know how realistic that is. It just seems like at this point it's gone off in some weird political twilight zone.