Personally I think COVID19 is a hidden blessing with its relatively low mortality rate but high transmission rate. In my opinion, this was a much needed fire drill for the entire world to show how unprepared we were, and how pandemics are a global problem that require all countries to work together. East Asia (maybe not including Japan, TBD for them) has done much better with handling COVID19 because they've had experience with SARS and MERS and their people and governments took the threat of COVID19 seriously even though they had less time to prepare than Europe or the US given their geographic proximity to China. Imagine if COVID19 had the same transmission rate but the 50% death rate of ebola? There would be tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of deaths worldwide, not to mention riots and a breakdown in society. Hopefully most nations learn from this experience and divert more resources and funding to their respective disease control organizations because it is only a matter of time before this happens again and with something deadlier.
Would you prefer to go with Fauci when he said the lockdowns will continue until there are no new cases? That seems to be an unrealistic strategy that will result in total destruction of the economy. We can't let fear drive us to complete irrationality. We have to find a balance and start to consider what can be reopened. Have you explored the strategies the Nordic countries are using? Iceland is certainly an interesting one. They are basically just a medium sized city, but they do have things they are doing that I think can be applied to larger scales. Taiwan, Singapore, and SK are also interesting potential leaders to follow. Secondly, you have to look at what is successful currently and if it can be applied to greater scales. We still have major high volume retailers and grocers open. They have operated with minimal spread of the virus. It's fine if you don't want to trust people but you have to look at what is happening and notice what is working and that we have things working. Gov Abbotts's words seemed measured and erring towards the side of caution and public health, but also having an eye on the future. We can't stay in this state forever and a month isn't very far away. We have to start planning. Also remember that our health is our responsibility. We can't always look to the govt to tell us what to do. That is clearly shown with their extreme tardiness in recommending mask usage. We know the steps that we need to take and those are primarily centered around cleanliness, masks, responsible distancing, and taking better care of ourselves.
Would I rather listen to legitimate doctors/scientists over Trump? Yes. I like what New Zealand has done. Right now they have the lowest death rate amongst their population for any highly developed country, they have done an excellent job and have already peaked. The second they had community spread they went into lockdown, they follow every single case closely. When community spread stops (IE cases with no known origin of contraction) they will relax their emergency level down a notch to allow for more work, but whenever community spread is found, they will completely lock down again. I don't think you can make the claim grocery stores are having minimal spread. Grocery stores are necessary for people to live, that's why we have them, and other "essential businesses" open right now, I wouldn't change that a WEEK before our hospitals even peak on resources. Health is our responsibility but you think the Gov making mistakes is an excuse for them to continue to make mistakes? That seems like an awful mindset. The gov needs to be doing the best it can to protect our people, relaxing quarantine a WEEK before peak hospital resource use is pathetic.
Given that there isn't much NBA news to report, can ESPN/ABC/Disney put Woj on the coronavirus beat for a while? I'd feel a lot more confident hearing news about talks of progress of vaccines and testing and legislative actions if Woj were to report them.
Oh Yung-Jun a Korean ICU made some amazing sketches documenting the struggle in his hospital to battle this disease. Scenes like this are being repeated around the World. https://www.latimes.com/world-natio...ZX4bYEqnCAx-GY74qDd-OhU3xaKxVEXYCYaJpkI5alfJA More at link.
with 60k backlog we thought my sister in-law in CA would have to wait a week to get her test result back. It was back in 4 days and thxfully also negative. We are like a 3rd world nation when it comes to testing.
I do, we are not in the lead so we cannot continue to be leading as the gov implied.. we are 2nd to dead last in testing. Without testing, we are blind. There has been inadequate supplies and that continue to be a major problem here and nationawide. There has been very little plan at the national level of how they are going to transition to containment - for example, to trace and isolate. Will all of that get worked out by next week suddenly? Doubtful. I suspect this is for political reason - election is coming up in Nov.
SK had massive testing early which we don't have. They also prepared and stocked up to prepare for a pandemic after their experience with MERS. I have first hand information on Singapore and while they didn't fully shut down as much as we did they also had much better testing and a much better health care system than we do. Even with those things Singapore is experience a renewed round of infections this past week and have recently implemented more stringent measures that are similar to what we have now. I agree we need to find ways to preserve and restore the economy. I don't live in Texas anymore but I won't dismiss Gov. Abbott's proposal without knowing more. Still the stay at home / shelter in place strategies appear to be working, slowly but we are seeing a decline in the rate of new cases. On the other hand we are seeing Sweden which tried a voluntary strategy appears to be failing in comparison to it's neighbors.
When did he said that? When I listen to him, he never say exactly the criteria, but he always imply when we have clear indication that we are improving (and that there have been positive signs).
I was wondering when we see more results... from the 1/29/2020 memo to the US President, this was called out as a potential stop gap solution and that we should a good idea by around now. "Remdesivir was originally developed by Gilead to treat Ebola but has shown potential with COVID-19. Clinical trials are being conducted in China, Japan, and Nebraska; and we should have a good idea within 30-60 days of its efficacy. HHS has already procured 4,500 doses at a cost of $2,200 per dose. It is imperative we secure 90,000 additional doses available as bulk product at a cost of $198 Million."
I seen C-Milks biking through China episodes in the past. He is a credible source about China Interesting to find out if that virologist is still alive and was she really pt 0
We will always have some sort of social distancing guideline until we have effective treatment or vaccine. That's not lockdown. When we transition from mitigation to containment (which ideally have all the things he mentioned - test, trace, isolate), we are going to continue social distancing (such as no group larger than 50 or whatever), we are going to continue wearing mask, we are going to continue being very careful with what we touch, washing hand... we won't be completely back to normal until we have effective treatment or vaccine.
Neat. About one for every 500 to 1k people in my zip has tested positive. Although, Texas is 4th lowest in testing per capita, not sure how abysmal Harris county is compared to the other major metro areas.
If we open up most of the country on May 2, 2020 without massive testing we will see the virus begin to spread quickly again, especially with summer coming and people making travel plans. We need cultural changes to help limit the spread. There is no vaccine and there is nothing that has proven to be effective treatment. We now are getting closer to confirming that those that had a mild viral load are capable of being reinfected. The contagion factor is quite high for this virus and it will continue to mutate over time and that is unpredictable. We know at this point there are three different strains. All social distancing does is hopefully flatten the curve. I am not saying we remain quarantined forever, no nation on earth can. At some point as a planet we have to go back to work and travel but it is highly likely that the virus will begin to successfully spread and people will die, likely in large numbers. How does society respond? I see no reason to believe the worst is over as it is all too unpredictable at this point. If I had to bet money it would be the worst will come later. There is nothing special that eradicates the virus in the next two week.
Around 700 New Yorkers a day are dying from CORVID19. When they start reviewing the cases that died at home (which they are starting to do) it will go up quite a bit as NY admitted. When the quarantined are taken back, the virus is likely to start spreading again and the numbers to start rising again.
This is inevitable and will be worse in the West where people in general are less likely to quarantine.
