COVID-19

[taxi1]

Americans were not told that "flatten the curve" = elongate the problem.

The fatality rate now is a lot less than it was in March/April, and goes further down every day as we learn what to do, so it is not just elongating. It is saving lives.

So I've been curious, for the "We're all going to get it anyway" crowd...

How many of you have taken the opportunity while things are shut down to go ahead and get it? Either passively by not doing anything special to avoid it, or actively by hitting up the crowded bars sans mask and maximizing your exposure? Especially for the airline pilots, it'd seem like now is the time to get it and get it behind you. Since we're all going to get it anyway.

 

[Pags]

In a nutshell, I think this is why Americans are so upset:

1. Americans were not told that "flatten the curve" = elongate the problem.
2. Americans were not given a choice about a "flatten the curve" decision. We were simply told by the CDC there was no choice. The CDC was allowed to make the call - they did it from the WH press podium. No one in government or the news media entertained the alternative perspective of the economy, workers, small business, taxpayers, and parents with kids in schools.

So Americans are upset because they don't understand how govt works? The CDC didn't make the call, they provided the rationale. Various levels of democratically elected leadership then decided to implement that guidance. Americans don't get a vote for everything, they vote for leaders who are then put in a position to use the various levels of government to respond to crises and make decisions on behalf of the American people.

 

[Treetop Flyer]

The fatality rate now is a lot less than it was in March/April, and goes further down every day as we learn what to do, so it is not just elongating. It is saving lives.

So I've been curious, for the "We're all going to get it anyway" crowd...

How many of you have taken the opportunity while things are shut down to go ahead and get it? Either passively by not doing anything special to avoid it, or actively by hitting up the crowded bars sans mask and maximizing your exposure? Especially for the airline pilots, it'd seem like now is the time to get it and get it behind you. Since we're all going to get it anyway.

I haven’t actively tried to get it but I’ve been eating at restaurants, occasionally going to bars (I don’t go to bars a lot normally), flying all over the country and staying in hotels. For someone my age and health driving to drill is a greater risk than the virus.

 

[Jim123]

In a nutshell, I think this is why Americans are so upset:

1. Americans were not told that "flatten the curve" = elongate the problem.
2. ...

I agree with your second point but the blame for miscommunication on number one is about 50-50 government-people.

For the government's share of the blame, the government could have done a better job and done it in pictures- simply by putting lots of tiny little people under the tall, narrow curve and the short, wide curve. Use blue ones for the people who are gonna get sick and pepper the diagram with a few red ones for the ones to represent the ones who are gonna die. For the tall curve, everybody over the "hospitals are overwhelmed" line is red.

For the people's share of the blame, it's because so many damn people's have a "hurr durr math is hard reading is hard" attitude towards taking the time to learn something. (It'd be interesting to see how many people who didn't grasp the mathematical meaning of "flatten the curve" are the same people who cut and paste angry social media posts about "my son's/daughter's common core homework confuses me..." but I digress.)

Regardless, we're all to blame for getting ourselves in this mess. Let's keep working to get out of it.

 

[scoolbubba]

I haven’t actively tried to get it but I’ve been eating at restaurants, occasionally going to bars (I don’t go to bars a lot normally), flying all over the country and staying in hotels. For someone my age and health driving to drill is a greater risk than the virus.

same-o, same-o.

 

[Python]

I haven’t actively tried to get it but I’ve been eating at restaurants, occasionally going to bars (I don’t go to bars a lot normally), flying all over the country and staying in hotels. For someone my age and health driving to drill is a greater risk than the virus.

Yup

 

[wink]

So Americans are upset because they don't understand how govt works? The CDC didn't make the call, they provided the rationale. Various levels of democratically elected leadership then decided to implement that guidance. Americans don't get a vote for everything, they vote for leaders who are then put in a position to use the various levels of government to respond to crises and make decisions on behalf of the American people.

And how do you square the prevailing wisdom that we must follow the data and listen to the scientist/experts? That is the cudgel that is being used to beat up everyone that would suggest an alternative or specialized approach. Leaders have little choice here. Most don't have the courage or communication skills to deviate from the CDC and the lock down crowd and sell it to their constituents. The decisions were largely out sourced to the "experts" and the policy folks nodded their heads. And that is why we have gotten mixed messages and poor implementation. Experts should not be setting policy. And that is especially so when the information they have is incomplete, variable and evolving. Leaders make policy and lead. That is not the case in this crisis on any level thanks to the notion that we must do what the experts say.

 

[Hair Warrior]

So Americans are upset because they don't understand how govt works? The CDC didn't make the call, they provided the rationale. Various levels of democratically elected leadership then decided to implement that guidance. Americans don't get a vote for everything, they vote for leaders who are then put in a position to use the various levels of government to respond to crises and make decisions on behalf of the American people.

I completely agree with you - Americans truly don’t understand how govt works, based on the coronavirus related hyperbole and arguing I’ve seen both in person and online. And because they have both fear and confusion, that upsets them.

 

[Spekkio]

The fatality rate now is a lot less than it was in March/April...

PFR is a cumulative statistic; it mathematically cannot go down.

 

[HAL Pilot]

Hawaii supposedly had a hurricane over the weekend.

 

[nittany03]

At what point do we acknowledge the scientific indicators that the virus was likely manipulated in a lab environment (called “gain of function”) at the Wuhan BSL4 for research purposes? It may never happen, because the U.S. NIH had given grant money to Wuhan to research bat coronaviruses, so the blame is not singular. If one were a cynic, one might think that the NIH thought the research had value to the scientific community but was too risky to conduct on U.S. soil, so it outsourced it to a country willing to take on the risks/ be nontransparent if anything happened.

I'm more than a little concerned to see an intelligence officer, of all people, trafficking in debunked conspiracy theories.

University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy: "'Exactly zero' evidence COVID-19 came from a lab"
Cornell University: "Evidence of COVID’s natural origin mounts even as conspiracy theory about Chinese lab refuses to die"
National Institute of Health: "Genomic Study Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19"

 

[Hair Warrior]

I'm more than a little concerned to see an intelligence officer, of all people, trafficking in debunked conspiracy theories.

"Debunked" is a stronger word than the word I used ("likely") - nothing's been completely debunked yet or eliminated from possibility yet.

University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy: "'Exactly zero' evidence COVID-19 came from a lab"

Ha, wow. So this opinion piece (which it is) discounts the possibility of an accidental release of a test environment sample because Dr. Le Duc of Galveston thinks that Dr. Shi Zhengli of Wuhan (former director of the Wuhan Virology Institute) was a swell lady, and seemed real reputable when he heard her speak at conferences.

Here are some alternative viewpoints:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220300528
"we identified a peculiar furin-like cleavage site in the Spike protein of the 2019-nCoV, lacking in the other SARS-like CoVs"

https://www.newsweek.com/controvers...may-have-started-coronavirus-pandemic-1500503

 

[Spekkio]

I completely agree with you - Americans truly don’t understand how govt works, based on the coronavirus related hyperbole and arguing I’ve seen both in person and online. And because they have both fear and confusion, that upsets them.

The part where the public doesn't understand civics 101 is when they blame POTUS for policies that state and local government crafted.

However, there's been substantial mission creep going on. We were originally supposed to just ensure that hospitals could have ICU space to treat people. I actually give the public the benefit of the doubt that they know this, and that risking acute illness is a just fact of life.

 

[taxi1]

The part where the public doesn't understand civics 101 is when they blame POTUS for policies that state and local government crafted.

Things like pandemics (and wars) are precisely why we need a federal government, so there aren't peeing and non-peeing sections of the pool.

ANY other President within recent memory would have exercised leadership rather than washing their hands of it and throwing it all to the states to compete with each other for PPE and testing. We are at 10-14 day lags in test results her in PA, due to the surge in testing down in the peeing section of the pool.

None of the other Presidents would have openly undermined their own administration in public. There's your Patient Zero for confusion.

 

[Spekkio]

Things like pandemics (and wars) are precisely why we need a federal government, so there aren't peeing and non-peeing sections of the pool.

ANY other President within recent memory would have exercised leadership rather than washing their hands of it and throwing it all to the states to compete with each other for PPE and testing. We are at 10-14 day lags in test results her in PA, due to the surge in testing down in the peeing section of the pool.

None of the other Presidents would have openly undermined their own administration in public. There's your Patient Zero for confusion.

The President is limited by the Constitution. Allowing him to issue stay at home orders and enforce it with federal police would have our founding fathers rolling in their graves.

He put out guidelines through the Dept of HHS that governors have largely adopted.

The reason you can't get a test result in 14 days is why doctors were being stingy in the first place. The 24/7 news cycle has many people convinced they're an asymptomatic carrier, so naturally people want to get tested. The amount of positives hovering at 5-10% of total tests says we're testing way too many people. Also this time line in Pennsylvania is unaffected by policies of other states.