Coronavirus Thread Political II

99.99% sounds like a pretty good figure.

That’s not parsing, that’s catching you in a direct contradiction. :wink:

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Yes, you answered. There it was. It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do regarding the Coronavirus, the only thing that would make it all better for you is if he resigns. Brace yourself … it ain’t gunna happen.

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It was a two part question … how are you going to accomplish that?

Yes.

80+% of those who contracted Spanish Flu recovered.

Still killed anywhere from 20-50 million people.

And many cities around the world shut down their economies during that pandemic…some for months.

That said, I agree we didn’t have to do it this way.

But we were neither prepared nor did we act on doing it the way we should have done it so we didn’t have to do it in this way.

I’m not going to reduce it to this.

I’m going to give Trump a slight benefit of the doubt on this one…it’s not an easy decision. In truth our modern economy is not designed to stay shut down for an extended period of time.

However…right now…the reason it doesn’t make sense from a health perspective is we STILL do not have either the testing or the contract tracing capacity in place to enter “The Dance” at this time. Therefore even places that don’t look like they have a lot of cases at present could potentially spike once we lift restrictions and we wouldn’t have very good ability to lock those spikes down. And we wouldn’t be able to do a good job or protecting the more vulnerable population among us, not all of whom are elderly so they are not easily identifiable.

Additionally while we like to think of the younger population and those without underlying conditions as the only ones vulnerable…truth is, 40% of the people in the hospital right now are ages 26-44. Similar numbers are appearing in Germany and France. Now much of this is likely because in their sense of invulnerability, these folks weren’t taking precautions. However, as more and more people get infected, the odds of one getting exposed to a lot of virus go up…and there are hints that as initial viral exposure goes up (resulting in an initially high viral load), odds of more severe infection go up.

Finally the longer this circulates, the more it mutates. Now the mutation could be beneficial or neutral (there is a mutation, for example, in Singapore which seems to have rendered that version of the virus LESS contagious) or it could be more deadly (Spanish Flu second wave). We just don’t know.

All this must be balanced against the economic effects of remaining shut down, which I know are bad.

However I don’t see any significant economic impact of opening some parts of the country early while large parts of the country that generate a large amount of economic activity (New York, California, Washington, Pennsylvania) are still largely shut down…as even Trump admits would have to stay that way for some time.

Additionally, Europe is still shut down and will be for some time and China is only cautiously re-opening. So I see limited economic impact while increasing the risk of spikes in areas not seeing those spikes yet.

This is why, instead of wishing for the virus to rampage unchecked or the economy ravaged, as one poster so ridiculously accused me of wanting to have happen, I proposed an alternative that I thought was reasonably well thought out that would give us time to assess…a 5-7 week Hammer followed by a Dance period. The Hammer period would allow us to get the infection rate low enough and give us time enough to develop the testing and tracking capabilities to effectively manage the Dance period…which would last until the virus petered out on its own (sometimes that happens) or we get a vaccine.

We even had a very nice and cordial back and forth discussion about it at the following thread, if people would like to go there and contribute to it.

We can debate about how long the Hammer should be, and there was a long debate about whether we can truly know the economic impact of the Hammer, which I grant, but in my mind, a two week Hammer is too short. The US is nowhere near ready to manage the Dance phase yet, and if the Dance phase gets out of control, we are back in a Hammer phase and a realm of uncertainty.

But it would be a discussion worth having…it’s a structured idea, a reasonably defined timetable would give give the markets the certainty they’re looking for and a reasonably structured plan would probably calm Americans down too.

It’s not perfect…but it’s better than what we’ve got going on here right now…where we seem to lurch in the wind depending on who the President has talked to most recently.

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Here:

From the article:

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co (GM.N) and medical equipment maker Ventec are speeding up efforts under a partnership code-named “Project V” to build ventilators at a GM plant in Kokomo, Indiana, to help combat the coronavirus outbreak.

GM said on Monday that work at its Indiana plant, which makes small electronic components for cars, is part of the effort to expand ventilator production. Sources said the GM-Ventec project is known internally as “Project V.”

As part of the effort to boost ventilator output from Ventec, GM has arranged for the supply of 95% of the parts needed to build the ventilator and is seeking to source the remaining 37 necessary parts, according to an email to suppliers from Shilpan Amin, GM’s vice president of global purchasing.

The goal of the venture is to build up to 200,000 ventilators, said people familiar with the plans who asked not to be identified.

It appears GM is partnering with the existing ventilator manufacturer Ventec where a GM electronic parts manufacturing facility will provide production capacity to increase overall output of Ventec ventilator units to the market.

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Elon musk said he would alter production line to manufacture them, though he was skeptical that it would do any good.

As he should be, you don’t just need more ventilators, you also need the professionals to run them. GM can’t supply those.

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The person I work for is an emergency consultant out in California during this time.

One thing he told me, that I hope people are looking into, is that the US has a surplus of mechanical ventilators, that work on nothing but the positive pressure of air, from the 1950s, and that in a pinch these ventilators work just as well as any electrically driven ventilator we’ve got.

If true, pull those out.

Agreed specialists to run the ventilators is going to be a limiting factor. Wonder if that’s the case for the mechanical ones?

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Where did the Cases recovered data go?

It was widely reported on all the common data bases and now it is suddenly hard to find. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places.

:man_shrugging:t3:

I’m using this site right now to track things globally. Recovered cases are there.

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OK. Thanks.

This is a very important number as immunity is built.

:chart_with_downwards_trend:

Hate to keep busting your bubble but we don’t know yet whether immunity is being built.

Also if you’re thinking herd immunity?

You can build that in a population one of two ways.

*A vaccine
*Allowing 60-70% of your population to become infected.

340,000,000 * .6 = 204,000,000 infections.

Assume 15% of those require medical care that’s 30,600,000 hospitalizations
Assume 5% need ICU that’s 10,200,000 ICU patients.
Assume 0.5% to 1.0% die that’s 1,020,000-2,040,000 deaths.

102,000 deaths if you assume seasonal flu death rate.

Yeah…I don’t think we want to build herd immunity that way.

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I heard it on the local news.

Are you blind in your left eye?

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Is the same not true of Clintons and Obama? Biden?

OK this was funny…I don’t care who you are.

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I don’t know that we can be “prepared” for this magnitude with a new virus. I don’t know that it’s feasible.

Other countries scaled rapidly to handle the threat.

And yes “handle” is subjective.

Why couldn’t we?