The 2nd death in Portugal was the president of the portuguese branch of Santander bank.
General / Off-Topic The safest place
- Thread starter Robin of Spiritwood
- Start date
- Status
The 2nd death in Portugal was the president of the portuguese branch of Santander bank.
Turns out that poor people hoarding two dozen toilet roll is way more frowned upon than 1% of people hoarding hundreds of billions of dollars.
What is/are the reasons why you feel that way? Are you guys getting good results from any measures taken, or it's just patriotist/optimism? Please mind that this is not a bait question, I'm not very informed about how things are going in the US or what measures are being taken, but by looking at just the numbers things seem to still be going to a grim direction, not otherwise.
I do know that the US has a huge industrial capacity that can be mobilized if necessary to produce needed equipment, but on the other hand it has no public health system, and without insurance, medical costs can run a family to bankrupcy fast. Are insurance companies paying for covid-19 treatments (usually medical insurances exclude epidemics/pandemics), or people have to pay from their own pockets?
And some very, very bad news.
Unlike other human coronaviruses COVID19 is unlikely to show seasonal patterns. In other words: it will likely not go away with an increase in temperature and/or humidity.
www.ecdc.europa.eu
Redirect Notice
www.google.com
Unlike other human coronaviruses COVID19 is unlikely to show seasonal patterns. In other words: it will likely not go away with an increase in temperature and/or humidity.
Rapid risk assessment: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: increased transmission in the EU/EEA and the UK – seventh update
On 31 December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown aetiology was reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. On 9 January 2020, China CDC reported a novel coronavirus as the causative agent of this outbreak, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Last edited:
I had that hope too at first, back when the southern hemisphere was still virus free, that hotter weather would help turning the tide, or at least buy us time. But it turned out that the southern hemisphere simply has less tourism and the virus took longer to get there.
Last edited:
Expectations are pretty much divided based on in who you put more stock: medical experts or Trump. Those who listen to medical experts are very concerned for, among others, the reasons you mentioned. Many regions are barely enacting any measures (though on state level plenty other regions have shown decisive leadership!), access to healthcare is for tens of millions prohibitively expensive, millions don't have sick days and can't afford to stay away from work, supplies are dwindling and till this day many still don't grasp the seriousness due to prolonged denials by Trump and Fox that this is a very serious matter.
Those however who consider Trump to be a razor sharp leader with profound insight into these matters feel he is on top of it, and will fix it due to his great skills in things. There isn't any actual suggestion as to how this can be over in a few weeks without orders of magnitude more casualties compared with modern EU/Asian countries. Hope is based on the assumption there will be sudden new positive developments in treatment and industrial output. It is largely a faith-driven sentiment. I hope it will occur too but remain... doubtful.
Last edited:
The inability to perform basic arithmetic and a propensity to hype up vague promises of panacea shouldn't be conflated with patriotism. That said, despite a lagged initial response, this pandemic is generally being treated seriously, and many States have enacted sensible measure to slow it's spread and support their residents.
As for costs, who pays for actual treatment is highly variable. The gamut of insurance in the US ranges from none at all, to comprehensive plans that cover everything with virtually non-existent deductibles/co-pays. Many of those being treated for severe cases will be broken, financially, without further assistance. However, a far larger threat is looming unemployment (or underemployment), and losses of savings, as this will hit vastly more people than those who wind up in intensive care from COVID-19. However, this is not to say that mitigation policies should be dropped or softened. Contrary to what some believe, doing nothing would almost certainly be more expensive, even in a purely economic sense, than rational best efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Regardless, this whole situation is revealing more underlying issues in the US status quo--administrations that cannot plan past the next election; prosperity that hinges on rampant consumerism and unsustainable levels of growth; and often unnecessary employment that amounts to busywork. Comically greedy opportunism, that's still absent basic enlightened self-interest, is prominent at all levels of society. Support systems and contingency plans, even for entirely foreseeable events, are grossly deficient. This is where my optimism comes in; if it only costs a few hundred thousand lives and seven or eight trillion dollars to prompt a meaningful reevaluation of the status quo, it will be a bargain. My pessimistic side fears it will be worse and amount to less meaningful long-term change.
The test part is still proving to be a hurdle that disrupts the rest of that chain.
I'm in NY, which is doing more tests per capita than any other US State (or most of the rest of the world), but most people still cannot get tested. There simply aren't enough tests to go around, so they are being reserved for medical personnel, those being hospitalized, and a few priority demographics.
Without being able to know who is infected, you cannot do reliable contact tracing and have to rely on blanket measures to mitigate the spread. Frankly, I think contract tracing is a lost cause in any but the most lightly affected areas at this point...the assumption should be that it's everywhere.
Last edited:
Update:
-Number of daily new cases doubled in Belgium.
-Number of daily hospitalizations and casualties remais somewhat linear.
-Peak expected beginning of April, so still 1-2 weeks away.
-Currently at almost 30% of ICU capacity
So in short, testing increase seems to be going as expected. Too early to tell if full lockdown has the desired effect (prevent overload of ICU) but I am somewhat positive we'll succeed. Dutch update in +-90 minutes, less hopeful there but hoping to be surprised!
-Number of daily new cases doubled in Belgium.
-Number of daily hospitalizations and casualties remais somewhat linear.
-Peak expected beginning of April, so still 1-2 weeks away.
-Currently at almost 30% of ICU capacity
So in short, testing increase seems to be going as expected. Too early to tell if full lockdown has the desired effect (prevent overload of ICU) but I am somewhat positive we'll succeed. Dutch update in +-90 minutes, less hopeful there but hoping to be surprised!
I am not offering my opinion on this, I am really just parrotting people whose life = dealing with this kind of crisis . Why ? Because I know I am an idiot when it comes to this . I am lucky enough to be able to absorb the information those people give me, and here and there even understand what they are saying .
In lieu of medicinal treatment and/or a vaccine, containment and migitation measures will not stop this pandemic . Surveillance ( which can only be based on testing ) is really important because of planning and logistics, amongst other reasons . The second an actually working medicinal treatment for patients at any stage of infection/disease is approved, you want to have an as exact as possible idea of where you need that stuff the most, and immediately .
Last edited:
Getting ready to go to get my men lined out for the day so don't have time to engage this like I would normally. Seems like you're being insulting for the sake of being so. Poor people, health insurance, economic impact was being addressed by a staggering two trillion dollar bill that Trump just made happen. Four more trillion being lined up to follow, all to fill those gaps. If that isn't leadership, I don't know what is.
The virus itself...I assume we'll see modified, regional lock downs while testing is massively ramped up. And it would be nice if we started seeing accurate data on the real mortality rates in various regions and countries, because an error of 88% in Italy and probably everywhere else is helpful only with respect to freaking everyone out.
Providing actual health insurance instead of a $1200 check that covers less than 1% of the hospital bill for those in ICU for example. But this is going to be a discussion about the usual tropes again, so again: I provided a number of facts relevant to this discussion. No intent to offend anyone. Best of luck to all out there.
If we had an economic system that worked for the majority of people, then he wouldnt be facing such a massive issue in the first place, and let's face it, he's backed into a corner and has no other alternatives. Even a monkey could pull the right lever in the same situation. Short term profit is king in Capitalism, planning for the future, not so much.
Capitalism won't survive this. And a good thing too.
Last edited:
Bahrain, Belgium report coronavirus treatment touted by Trump is working for patients
Clinical Tests of Hydroxychloroquines to Fight COVID-19 in Bahrain prove successful
justthenews.com
Ford to restart U.S. truck plants in April to beat pandemic-linked cash squeeze
Ford Motor Co <F.N> announced plans on Thursday to shore up its finances amid the coronavirus pandemic, aiming to generate more cash by resuming production next month of its most profitable vehicles while saving money through further cost cuts. To conserve cash, Ford announced belt-tightening...
Last edited:
Unfortunately the only people garunteed to do well are the opportunists.
The private hospital beds being used to flesh out the NHS for example are being paid for by the taxpayer and the deal is no Covid-19 patients. All the profit none of the risk.
Yes, testing is important, even if you can't test everyone, because it will allow the extent of the problem to be extrapolated...and that's what's being done.
However, detailed surveillance is only practical very early on and contract tracing (outside of what is essentially a statistical sampling, rather than an effort to isolate specific individuals) falls apart when the number of cases and patients outstrips the manpower available to conduct the trace. NYS, for example, has a population of twenty million people and has ramped up the rate of testing from 1k to 16k per day...at the current rate, which is far in excess of anywhere else in the US, it would take four years to test everyone. Testing rates will continue to rise, but there is no believable scenario where the rate of infection doesn't outpace it. We have nearly thirty-thousand confirmed cases and conservative estimates of at least an order of magnitude more infected, both increasing geometrically. To even attempt contact tracing on all of the confirmed cases and you'd need a whole army of interviewers and statisticians, wasting resources that could be better used elsewhere, mostly just to discover that everyone who hasn't been holed up for the last few weeks has been exposed to someone who was contagious.
Which isn't even tax exempt.
I honestly doubt it. Capitalism has flaws (the biggest one the fact that it can't sustain itself forever), but so far all alternatives have proven worse at creating wealth, better wages and with it better standards of living, even though nobody likes to admit it.
- Status