COVID-2019 in America, effect on politics and economy

[Ironduke]

If 80% of the people don't require medical treatment, that means 20% of the people DO require medical treatment. There is no medical system on Earth that can handle that kind of burden, if we continue to let it progress unimpeded. The point where we run out of hospital beds and medical personnel is the point where the fatality rates jumps substantially, not just for coronavirus, but for other medical maladies.

I think you have a point. I can't remember what I was watching when I heard it being said, but in the US hospitals are pretty much at full capacity during normal conditions, and almost every ventilator that exists is currently being used by someone who needs it. According to the AMA, 86% of doctors work more than 40 hours per week. 50% work more than 50 hours per week.

I imagine if the caseload were to tick up to a few million the healthcare system is going to progressively break down. In addition to few spare hospital beds and ventilators, there's not enough doctors to go around. According to this source, the average number of people in inpatient care on a given day in the US in 2013 was 592,000. How many more can our hospitals and doctors handle?

[Officer of Engineers]

Dirty surfaces and washing your hands is insufficient because this can spread via air droplets and no one has natural immunity. This will spread very quickly if we continue to act like nothing is wrong, and we are maybe 6 weeks away from deciding whether we want the Black Death for the nation's elderly, or if we want a nation-wide lockdown for 2 months, enforced by the military.

Oh for Pete sakes, stop your panic. This is way overblown. Sounds like you want to execute an NBC event. Want to protect the Elderly? How about lock down their facilities instead of locking down the country? Influenza kills 20,000 a year in the US and this is after the flu shot. What was going on before the flu shot? And COVID-19 ain't infecting anything close to the flu.

We freaking work with dirty surfaces all the time. When I work in the barn cleaning out manure, there ain't a hand washing station around anywhere and the closest water ain't portable. When you come home, change, get into the shower.

Forget the country. That's not your pay grade. Just do your damned part to stay healthy.

[Officer of Engineers]

I think you have a point. I can't remember what I was watching when I heard it being said, but in the US hospitals are pretty much at full capacity during normal conditions, and almost every ventilator that exists is currently being used by someone who needs it. According to the AMA, 86% of doctors work more than 40 hours per week. 50% work more than 50 hours per week.

It's designed this way. We don't want doctors and nurses sitting around with nothing to do and not getting paid.

I imagine if the caseload were to tick up to a few million the healthcare system is going to progressively break down. In addition to few spare hospital beds and ventilators, there's not enough doctors to go around. According to this source, the average number of people in inpatient care on a given day in the US in 2013 was 592,000. How many more can our hospitals and doctors handle?

We prioritize. Those who needs immediate help. Those who can wait. Those we will help to ease their passing.

[Oracle]

We prioritize. Those who needs immediate help. Those who can wait. Those we will help to ease their passing.

Yes. In medical terminology, triage.

Colonel, isn't this used in battlefields mainly? The IT industry also uses this to prioritize the resolution of bugs, they call it 'bug triage'. Good thing to remember now.

[Double Edge]

I'd read before that brass has self-disinfecting properties, turns out it's more than just anti-bacterial. It has anti-viral properties as well. Maybe we ought to be using more brass in all the things people touch. Norovirus is supposed to be one of the tougher viruses to kill, completely resistant to alcohol.
.

I found this study, from which I'll post an excerpt.
https://aem.asm.org/content/81/3/1085

But not bleach or hydrogen peroxide

http://www.stopthestomachflu.com/

Chinese are spraying down their streets with dilute bleach

[Officer of Engineers]

Colonel, isn't this used in battlefields mainly?

It's used whenever it's needed be it battle or an earthquake. However, COVID-19 is not an NBC event.

[Double Edge]

No crackdown in India. I'm paying more than the MRP for smokes. Every year starting Feb, millions like me do.

We're an unregulated free market. Shop around. I refuse to pay above MRP for old stock. Don't patronise these people.

On a street there may be ten sellers. Most will push the new price. I insist on paying what it says on the packet. If you shop around you will find honest sellers that will agree. Then become a regular in these places.

Each time onion prices surge, govt imports and swamps the market.

[GVChamp]

Oh for Pete sakes, stop your panic. This is way overblown. Sounds like you want to execute an NBC event. Want to protect the Elderly? How about lock down their facilities instead of locking down the country? Influenza kills 20,000 a year in the US and this is after the flu shot. What was going on before the flu shot? And COVID-19 ain't infecting anything close to the flu.

We freaking work with dirty surfaces all the time. When I work in the barn cleaning out manure, there ain't a hand washing station around anywhere and the closest water ain't portable. When you come home, change, get into the shower.

Forget the country. That's not your pay grade. Just do your damned part to stay healthy.

The flu does not go from practically non-existent to overwhelming the Italian hospital system in a month. COV-19 did. It will likely do the same in huge sections of the West if we continue to operate business as usual. That's just fact, and this week everyone is waking up to this fact, which is why multiple nations are basically shutting down the country.

Locking up the nursing homes doesn't do any good if the workers are getting sick, show no symptoms, and infect the elderly.

[Officer of Engineers]

The flu does not go from practically non-existent to overwhelming the Italian hospital system in a month. COV-19 did. It will likely do the same in huge sections of the West if we continue to operate business as usual. That's just fact, and this week everyone is waking up to this fact, which is why multiple nations are basically shutting down the country.

Let's not exergeretae. No Field Hospital was ever deployed and there are no mass morgues.

Locking up the nursing homes doesn't do any good if the workers are getting sick, show no symptoms, and infect the elderly.

So test the workers. Still a lot easier than to impossibly quarrantine the entire country.

Look. You're basically giving up your Constitutional Rights of Free Assembly. That's your right. You can do as you please but you better be damned sure that this is the right call when you impose it on your population. COVID-19 ain't it. COVID-19 is NOT an NBC event.

As of right now, I intend to NOT live my life in fear of COVID-19. This is NOT an NBC event. I will be aware but not anxious and certainly I am nowhere near panic mode.

[Oracle]

We're an unregulated free market. Shop around. I refuse to pay above MRP for old stock. Don't patronise these people.

On a street there may be ten sellers. Most will push the new price. I insist on paying what it says on the packet. If you shop around you will find honest sellers that will agree. Then become a regular in these places.

Each time onion prices surge, govt imports and swamps the market.

I try not to patronise, but get bogged down by their complaints that the big guys are pushing prices and so they have too, else they'd have to make a loss. I give in. Onions are INR 40/kg, what's the price in Bangalore?

1 guy was found to be infected with COVID-19 here in my place. He got beat up (what I heard), now he is in Delhi with whoever he came in contact with. I wonder where did he get his blood test done? There is no place here to do that. There are 2 places where one can get tested in Assam, one is the GMC. There is a grand mela here every year during this time, that was cancelled by the administration.

Mela: People (mostly migrants) from other part of the country come with their troop and spend like a month here in a field. They have circus, some stunt shows, lots of places to eat, etc. Cheap utensils (not so cheap as compared to prices with Big Bazar), different types of pickles etc too.

[Oracle]

Coronavirus latest updates: Iran confirms over 1,000 new cases, 100 deaths in 24 hours

What the hell? They want nukes, destroy Israel but cannot control the virus outbreak. Mullah brigade, there is a special place in hell for you all.

Coronavirus: HIV drugs can be used in severe cases, says ICMR

Lopinavir, Ritonavir - are they available over the counter? Might stay prepared afterall.

Coronavirus in Nagpur: 5 Covid-19 suspects escape from Mayo, all traced

Can't believe this.

[JRT]

"For a while, life is not going to be the way it used to be here in the United States. We have to just accept that." ... "I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and bars. Whatever it takes to do that, that's what I'd like to see."
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, 15 March 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, does not rule out supporting temporary national lockdown to combat coronavirus.

By Devan Cole and Alison Main
Sun March 15, 2020
CNN

Washington (CNN)The nation's top infectious disease expert on Sunday did not rule out supporting a temporary national lockdown of the country's restaurants and bars in order to curb the spread of coronavirus, saying he'd like to see a "dramatic" reduction in activity in order to fight the disease.

Asked by CNN's Brianna Keilar on "State of the Union" if he'd like a "national lockdown" where people are being told they need to stay home and out of restaurants and bars, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said he'd "like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see" in those places.

"Whatever it takes to do that, that's what I'd like to see," Fauci added.

Fauci, a key member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, told Keilar that Americans will need to come to terms with the fact that life will begin to look much different as the country tries to slow the spread of the disease.

"We need to be very serious about -- for a while, life is not going to be the way it used to be in the United States," he said. "We have to just accept that if we want to do what's best for the American public."

The comments from Fauci come as officials continue to urge "social distancing" as a way to slow the spread of the disease. Dozens of national and local events have been canceled or postponed in recent days as companies, organizations and governments try to reduce the number of people congregated in a single area.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines "social distancing" as "remaining out of places where people meet or gather," and "avoiding local public transportation."

Already, some states and cities have implemented dramatic policies amid the pandemic.

The New Jersey city of Hoboken is implementing a city-wide curfew and new restrictions, starting Monday, in response to coronavirus. Residents must stay home from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. ET, unless they have to work during those hours.

The city of Austin, Texas, has banned gatherings of 250 people starting early Sunday until at least May 1, while New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said gatherings of 500 or more people -- except for schools, hospitals, nursing homes and mass transit -- are banned in the state because of the outbreak.

As of Sunday morning, there were 2,885 cases of coronavirus in the US and the disease had resulted in at least 60 deaths, according to figures from state and local health agencies, governments and the CDC.

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[TopHatter]

How Trump Is Tanking His Own Presidency

Until now, none of U.S. President Donald Trump’s many narcissistic foibles and failures of understanding has seriously hurt him, for the simple reason that his mistakes never really caught up with him.

Trump could start a trade war based on silly, debunked 18th-century concepts of economics and get away with it, because the U.S. economy was strong. He could walk away from a critical climate pact, because global warming happens slowly. He could discard a denuclearization treaty with Iran with no backup plan, because nuclear threats take time to reemerge. Most people really didn’t notice or care.

But now, in the face of a global health threat that is immediate and all around us—and requires, more than anything, a coordinated global response—Trump finds that his errors are flying back in his face like clown pies almost every time he opens his mouth. All the defining attributes of his presidency—his “America First” arrogance, his us-versus-them pettiness toward the rest of the world, his obvious desire for American self-isolation—are suddenly working against him. Trump had very little credibility before; it appears to be all but shot now. The markets, seesawing wildly all week, are having trouble believing him. His own experts—even his own vice president—regularly contradict him.

More than that, all those policies that he found he could fecklessly throw out with no consequence—all that hostile neo-isolationism and xenophobia—may well help sink his No. 1 argument for reelection: the treasured U.S. economy that Trump declared last month, in another error-filled performance at the State of the Union, to be “the best it has ever been.” His major policy response of the week, along with his declaration of a national emergency on Friday—the isolation of the United States from Europe and China—is likely to do serious economic damage on both sides of the Atlantic, further slowing an already stumbling world economy. On Friday, at a Rose Garden news conference, the president suggested that the United Kingdom could also be cut off.

And all this is happening, critically, when Trump has very little time left to set things right, with the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden, bearing down ahead of the Nov. 3 election and making the now-very-credible claim that he, a nice-guy middle-of-the-road former vice president, can show Americans how a president ought to handle a crisis. On Thursday, as Trump endured withering criticism over his disastrous speech to the nation the night before, Biden honed in, outlining specific steps he would take against the coronavirus. “Public fears are being compounded by a pervasive lack of trust in this president,” he said in a speech.

By the end of the week, Trump was in full damage control mode, declaring a state of emergency over a pandemic that he had only days before belittled as a minor annoyance even less damaging than the flu. But, strikingly, he announced no fiscal stimulus and made no mention of coordinating a response to a global threat with any other nation. Indeed, speaking in the Rose Garden, Trump actually said, “We’re not going to be talking about the world right now.” And as he has done since the start of his presidency, Trump blamed whatever might be wrong on his predecessor, Barack Obama—in this case, the devastating lack of coronavirus testing kits throughout the country, which has been holding back the U.S. response. “For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it,” Trump tweeted earlier Friday, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Obama. “President Obama made changes that only complicated things further.”

All this was an attempt to regain stature following his much-panned Wednesday night speech to the nation—clearly a panicky, ill-thought-out venture at which Trump announced a travel ban on Europe that he didn’t bother to alert the Europeans about. Trump made errors of fact that were mind-boggling for a national address from the Oval Office, a rarely used platform usually reserved for Cuban Missile Crisis-sized events. Although two esteemed health experts, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, later backed Trump up on the travel ban, the president announced there would be insurance coverage for treatment, and there isn’t. He said there were coronavirus tests available, and there aren’t. He said goods from Europe would be prohibited when they weren’t. Nor did the president say anything about tests or federally directed efforts at containment. The speech set the stage for a record plunge in the Dow the next day.

If it wasn’t clear then that Trump doesn’t grasp the concept of a coordinated international crisis response, it became so the day after his Oval Office address, when he casually allowed that he hadn’t bothered to talk to the Europeans because “when they raise taxes on us, they don’t consult us,” as if that situation could compare to a fast-spreading virus that has already jumped the Atlantic. He went on to invoke, once again, his neo-isolationist view of America: “Compared to other places, we are in really good shape, and we want to keep it that way,” he told reporters.

And then the narcissistic kicker: The markets—the gold standard of Trumpian success—were “still higher than they were when I came in,” he said. The Dow promptly plummeted again, ending its worst day since Black Monday in 1987. On Friday the markets rebounded dramatically after Trump announced that billions of dollars in emergency aid was available and millions of new testing kits would be coming soon, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reportedly came close to cutting a deal for economic relief with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (though Trump later said he wasn’t on board). Even so, many more economic repercussions will follow as businesses start to close. As Fauci said Friday: “It’s certainly going to get worse before it gets better. … There’s no doubt we have not peaked yet.”

When the economic hits come, the Dow may be within striking distance of that Trump inauguration-day mark of 19,827. If it gets there before November rolls around, then Trump, using his own favorite measure, will no longer be able to say things are better now than they were four years ago.
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Why...WHY did it have to take THIS form. :-(

[JRT]

Sunday, 15 March 2020:
Devin Nunes, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, in his own words...

[Double Edge]

Sunday, 15 March 2020:
Devin Nunes, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, in his own words...

Well, between Fauchi and this guy. I'd go with what Fauchi says.

People can still order online from restaurants. I'm thinking they will see lots of business that way.

Every govt is caught between a rock and a hard place with this crisis.

Too lax and you endanger the public or too strict and you kill the local economy.