COVID-2019 in America, effect on politics and economy

[tbm3fan]

If the Governors of Washington and Michigan are not more appreciative then Mike Pence won't call you anymore, (and to your citizens f*ck them), it is your governor's fault. Great ad for the citizens of those two states, especially Michigan, in the upcoming election.

The gift just keeps on giving...

After watching CBS news I can say that there are 10 year olds out there with more heart than Trump. I will never say he acts like a child again because it insults children.

[surfgun]

W.H.O. Are you?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/who-ch...st-coronavirus

[Bigfella]

Your link proves my point and adding to my link about H1N1. No one believes that there were no H1N1 victims in Central Africa. More than that, Central African countries are still eyeing the Central Reublican Civil War and ethnic strife between the Hutus and the Tutsis are far from over. The Congo Wars ended with no clear victor, leaving no side willing to accept the situation.

They're far more serious about killing each other than about COVID-19.

Even Egypt, I count them and South Africa as the more realistic countries in Africa, is not putting resources into the fight, recording 536 cases while next door Israel has over 3,000. You cannot tell me that Egypt is anywhere close to ready to handle COVID-19. Willingly or forced by circumstance, the Egyptians are ignoring COVID-19. You can't treat people for COVID-19 if you don't know they have it. The young gets bed ridden. The old dies and very few people would learn if it's COVID-19 or not. That is just life in Egypt

A couple of posts ago you were claiming that because Eric only provided the names of 3 nations who were doing anything that Africa wasn't taking this seriously. I provided the names of several dozen nations who are closing borders, shutting down school systems, banning public gatherings, obtaining test kits, training workers and putting plans into place. Many of these places either have no cases or a tiny handful, yet have taken far more drastic action than any non-African nation had at the same point. Yet somehow you ignore all that to declare that you were right all along.

Sorry Sir, but you are just flat out wrong. African nations are taking this seriously. Not every one everywhere, but many. Continuing to assert otherwise is to stubbornly ignore the evidence.

[Ironduke]

Heh, this virus might turn out to be kind of like "the wave".



Travels around the world before eventually making its way back.

[Double Edge]

Burn out has occurred in China and Italy, both countries who were NOT ready for COVID-19 no matter what Xi said.

Not sure about Italy flat lining yet. but doubling time is at a 8 days now which means community spread has stopped.

Click the graphics to get interactive chart and even modify it




Even for the East Asian ones its not clear they've flatlined maybe only Taiwan, Singapore & Vietnam




Doubling times look decent though

South Korea 25 days
Japan 14 days
Singapore 9 days
Vietnam 8 days
Taiwan 7 days
Thailand 6 days
Indonesia 6 days

To say the US will do far, far worst than those countries is just plain fear mongering.

Agree, or for any other country for that matter.

Do you actually believe no one in Central Africa died from H1N1?

300 dead in India last March. The figure varies by month.

But nobody talks about it here.

[Officer of Engineers]

A couple of posts ago you were claiming that because Eric only provided the names of 3 nations who were doing anything that Africa wasn't taking this seriously. I provided the names of several dozen nations who are closing borders, shutting down school systems, banning public gatherings, obtaining test kits, training workers and putting plans into place. Many of these places either have no cases or a tiny handful, yet have taken far more drastic action than any non-African nation had at the same point. Yet somehow you ignore all that to declare that you were right all along.

Sorry Sir, but you are just flat out wrong. African nations are taking this seriously. Not every one everywhere, but many. Continuing to assert otherwise is to stubbornly ignore the evidence.

You jumped in way later than I started this. I specifically stated going by the H1N1 example and gave the link to it. Eric replied with those 3 nations and then you chimed in. 3 nations still does not a continent make. Going by the H1N1 wiki site, both Egypt and South Africa reported signifcant H1N1 infections while their neighbours to the south and north respectively reported very little. When your neighbours are infected and you have none even though you share tribes across the border, something is not right and it's the paper work.

After Eric mentioned Rwanda, I stated that Rwanda has ethnic military and political agendas for locking down her borders and that is more than factual. It's not to stop COVID-19 but to stop the Hutu movements across the borders using COVID-19 as the excuse.

Again using your link, are you seriously telling me that Egypt can limit COVID-19 to 500 cases while Israel is exploding with 3000? The ONLY reason why Egypt is reporting 500 is because that's all they can find, not that there are not more. Whether you like it or not, COVID-19 is going to run rampant throughout Africa and I believe their publsihed numbers less than I do the Chinese. They will do what they've always done and what we are doing. Wait until the virus burns out.

And as I have continually stated, this is not the Black Plaque nor a Zombie breakout. The death toll would be very little out of the ordinary. It would not even be a bump in the statistical deaths. Hell, the more I think about this, the more I will assert that most of Africa would not even notice this virus. We in the West are panicing because we don't have enough ventilators for the old. African old people are more stoic. They don't have ventilators and it doesn't matter if you test them or not. It's their time.

And the simple fact about that is they don't care. Else, they do what the Chinese did and I do not see any forced quarrantine if you have any symptons. Hell, the best they did was to impose a curfew. China closed down whole province and locked people in. I'm not saying that it was effective but these countries could have done a lot more draconian measures with what they have. You don't need test kits to know symptons and an AK47 is just as effective a locked clean room.

So I stand by my statement, they would neither care nor notice. The young will get bed ridden and the old dies. Life as usual.

Know what? I also stand by my statement that the only thing the entire world could do is to wait until this thing burns out. Anything else is just feeding into the hysteria.

Thinking this more, in population congested Wuhan, the infection rate was 1 in 22,000 and the death rate is just 3% of that. Good God, it's not even a statistical blip.

I change my mind. Everyone is going to pat themselves on their backs for doing absolutely nothing but claiming to advert a catastrophy that burned itself out.

[Double Edge]

I am not saying that the Chinese are knowingly lying - though that is also possible - but that in all such things absolutely accurate statistics are nigh on impossible to gather. How do we count Covid 19 deaths? Well first a person has to be tested and known to have the virus and then he/she dies so unless you test 100% of the population others who die, as in Muscovy, are attributed to other causes; flu in Muscovy but could be age. It's like asking how many men did Napoleon invade Muscovy with? Though a real and correct number does exist nobody at the time did or could have accurately counted even had they tried.

What about affected ? this is the big number for every one



Something happens after Feb 13 in China and their daily case load just plummets

Change in reporting methodology, hmmm

[Officer of Engineers]

To put this in perspective. Influenza and COVID-19 uses identical infection methodologies. Infected human droplet transmission.

2019 influenza cases - minimum 38 million Americans infected (at which point, the vacine is useless). Minimum 18 million Americans tested. Minimum 400,000 hospitlalized. 24,000 to 62,000 deaths. The total world wide current COVID-19 numbers don't even make a statistical dent against these numbers.

And the ONLY difference between the two is that we don't have anti-viral medications for COVID-19 but to preach that COVID-19 is is going to wreck mankind on any continent is statistically untrue.

[Double Edge]

Again using your link, are you seriously telling me that Egypt can limit COVID-19 to 500 cases while Israel is exploding with 3000? The ONLY reason why Egypt is reporting 500 is because that's all they can find, not that there are not more.

Israel seemed quite proactive right from the start. Any one from abroad got put into one week quarantine. It seemed like they had this contained. Something must have screwed it up for them. Their graph looks like its heading north

Hell, the more I think about this, the more I will assert that most of Africa would not even notice this virus. We in the West are panicing because we don't have enough ventilators for the old. African old people are more stoic. They don't have ventilators and it doesn't matter if you test them or not. It's their time.

Funny if that came true because people do worry about what could happen there.

This btw is exactly what some one said to me on a local board. We got enough shit going on here this ain't no big thing.

Know what? I also stand by my statement that the only thing the entire world could do is to wait until this thing burns out. Anything else is just feeding into the hysteria.

In other words we don't say it or deny it but the default policy is do the 'herd immunity' thing ?

Thinking this more, in population congested Wuhan, the infection rate was 1 in 22,000 and the death rate is just 3% of that. Good God, it's not even a statistical blip.

It is one in 22,000 so long as you're not intermingling. Otherwise the risk goes up orders of magnitude ; )

Why does the CCP lock the place down like that then. They don't exactly have a habit of caring for their people either.

IN fact that was exactly how it began, there is no problem, stop saying its a problem then it went oh crap maybe there is problem.

I change my mind. Everyone is going to pat themselves on their backs for doing absolutely nothing but claiming to advert a catastrophy that burned itself out.

It sounds like you're saying this is just a load of hyped up nonsense.

[DOR]

snapper,



boils down to more centralized authority and willingness to put aside political/economic opposition.

here, there's 50 states and each state governor determines the risk they are willing to accept. Trump can talk about "opening up the US for business", but he can't actually -force- governors to do so.

this is not to say the Chinese system is superior, of course. with appropriate precautions, the US could have avoided 75% of the pain, but that is contingent on us actually having national leadership.

Not centralized; authoritarian.
Decisions were made and implemented, but so far I'm not seeing a lot of work teams fanning out into the provinces to ensure everyone's following Chairman Xi's Thoughts.

[DOR]

Didn't take it seriously enough and act in time. Just like Europe.



But you cannot just reject it wholesale either.

I find this rejection of Chinese data so knee jerk. Commies lie. It's what they do. Then show me where the lies are.

Look at them

Why does the CCP admit to so many in Wuhan & Hubei. Makes the victory that much sweeter if you paint the opponent ten times taller. How does commie psychology work here snapper ?

Notice the numbers in Taiwan & HK. Can we trust them. If not then Taiwan & HK are lying too. So is Japan.

Otherwise why is it that other cities in China cannot replicate the same

When all four have had experience of SARS already.

That experience is lacking in countries that did not go though it

Their decision making was slower as a result.

I spent most of my life dissecting CCP lies, and have very extensive experience with the data, propaganda, and socioeconomic cultures of Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The CCP lies about everything, it is just part of their nature. When they aren’t lying, it is because the truth serves their propaganda purposes. Read Talks at the Yennan Forum on Literature and Art, or Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Then read Deng Xiaoping’s Speech Greeting the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists. By the way, there is no differentiation among art, literature, and news.

South Korea lies when it is in their national security interest, or under dictatorships. Since the 1990s, they’re more like Japan than like they themselves were in earlier decades. Japan doesn’t lie so much as reshape facts to create a new narrative (e.g., WWII). Taiwan is very much running along the same lines as Korea.

In Hong Kong, there is no real culture of official lying to the public. Oh, they think they’re master spin doctors, but the media is so open that the public generally can see right through any official messaging. The only dedicated liars in Hong Kong’s political world are the CCP stooges and their lackeys.

[GVChamp]

All closed.

That ain't rural. I'm an hour away from Ottawa and there has been only one COVID-19 case in the next county 2 weeks ago and nothing since. I know it's ancedotic but the math ain't there for a panic about rural areas.

Also, SOP is always whatever we can't handle, we ship to the nearest available help be it Ottawa, Kingston, or Brockville. It may suck for those cities if being swarned but nowhere in the West have we left people out to die on the streets.

3 countries out an entire continent is hardly Africa and Rwanda has an ethenic political/military agenda for lockdown and it ain't about COVID-19.

Again. Looking at this from a military POV, COVID-19 deaths are regrettable, extremely so, but acceptable.

Like Astralis said, the churches and restaurants are not all closed. Certain states are not only not taking action, but prohibiting local areas from taking action. Mississippi is going to get rocked.

But....yes, they need to be closed, it's not an over-reaction to close them. And even if they are closed, if you have friends or family over, that's still an infection vector. It's definitely an infection vector enough to screw over areas with few hospital beds, even if it wouldn't be enough to screw over, say, Chicago. One sick person comes to town to stay with you a few days, that's enough to get Grandma and Grandpa sick, and the county might only have 1 ICU bed.

It's not like we're talking the death of Western Civilization, but my parents and my in-laws aren't even retired yet, and they are all either about to hit 60 or above it. It's insane that they should be working their entire lives and then just die from a contagious disease because we didn't want to limit economic activity for 6 months. We're not talking about sending the US back into the stone-age, we're talking about a temporary reduction of economic activity down to the level of 2005, with so much freaking connectivity that you can still watch new-to-theater movies with your friends in Belgium, Japan, Singapore, and Rwanda. And then afterwards you can watch high-definition porn for hours because Pornhub made it free, while ordering a plate of wings that is literally delivered right to your door.

It really sucks for people who are negatively impacted because their job shut down, but most nations are passing huge spending packages that make up for a lot of lost wages.


Also, the difference between flu and COV is that:
-COV appears to be a hell of a lot deadlier
-COV is novel: most influenza strains are not. I cannot spread influenza to you if you have already been infected with a similar strain previously. There is some level of herd immunity for most influenza strains, but there is none for COV.
-COV has longer incubation and can spread by people who are asymopatmic. There are a bunch of cases in China where people returned from Wuhan with the virus, infected friends or family, and the friends or family actually showed symptoms before the initial carriers. Some people never show symptoms at all but are still spreading it to other people.

[JRT]

On a lighter note, here is a video clip from a Presidential news conference (yesterday) where the great orator President Donald John Trump tells a reporter, "Look, don't be a Cutie-Pie", for pressing Trump on comments about availability of respirators.

[Officer of Engineers]

It is one in 22,000 so long as you're not intermingling. Otherwise the risk goes up orders of magnitude ; )

Wuhan was intermingling. No one had a clue about this and everyone was prepping for Chinese New Year.

It sounds like you're saying this is just a load of hyped up nonsense.

I'm saying no one has bothered to look at the numbers. We have one side that is hyping the end of the world. We have another who are doing everything stupid to spread this thing (beaches). Real medical professionals have been saying be alert but not anxious. Well, that is stupid in itself. How can you not be anxsious if you can't pay rent or too scare even to go buy food or even having no money to buy food? Neither Washington DC nor Ottawa can get any promised help to anyone on 1 April. You know, the day rent is due.

Well, you can't help stupid but I refuse to listen to stupid and stupid is telling me to lock myself in my home when I need social contact for my own mental health.

Also, the difference between flu and COV is that:
-COV appears to be a hell of a lot deadlier
-COV is novel: most influenza strains are not. I cannot spread influenza to you if you have already been infected with a similar strain previously. There is some level of herd immunity for most influenza strains, but there is none for COV.
-COV has longer incubation and can spread by people who are asymopatmic. There are a bunch of cases in China where people returned from Wuhan with the virus, infected friends or family, and the friends or family actually showed symptoms before the initial carriers. Some people never show symptoms at all but are still spreading it to other people.

The same could be said of H1N1 which attacks the young, not the old, the productive age of the population. And we got through that without this hoopla.

Military speaking, I completely agree with shutting down everything. Attack this with overwhelming force. Strong on weak. BUT I EXPECT CASULATIES. This, however, does NOT relieve you of your own personal responsibility for your health. Whether that restaurant or church is open or not, you're the one who must decide whether to break bread together with other people or to group prayer. It is damned important to me to get out of bed in the morning to goto the nearest Tim Horton's not because I can't make coffee at home but because I need to see a smile from the young pretty thing behind the counter ... and leave a large tip. Just don't be stupid.

[Double Edge]

I spent most of my life dissecting CCP lies, and have very extensive experience with the data, propaganda, and socioeconomic cultures of Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The CCP lies about everything, it is just part of their nature. When they aren’t lying, it is because the truth serves their propaganda purposes. Read Talks at the Yennan Forum on Literature and Art, or Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Then read Deng Xiaoping’s Speech Greeting the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists. By the way, there is no differentiation among art, literature, and news.

South Korea lies when it is in their national security interest, or under dictatorships. Since the 1990s, they’re more like Japan than like they themselves were in earlier decades. Japan doesn’t lie so much as reshape facts to create a new narrative (e.g., WWII). Taiwan is very much running along the same lines as Korea.

In Hong Kong, there is no real culture of official lying to the public. Oh, they think they’re master spin doctors, but the media is so open that the public generally can see right through any official messaging. The only dedicated liars in Hong Kong’s political world are the CCP stooges and their lackeys.

So which of the countries and which sets of their numbers is workable ? Key question

If i go with affected. Your answer does not address it. Because you are using a political framework to decide whether to even look at the numbers.

Is Wuhan's case load credible. I don't see why not given numbers of other countries. Or even Hubei. What needs more examination is the change in methodology they adopted after mid Feb. Because as you know from unemployment figures this sort of tweaking of the counting method ain't uncommon. The new methods somehow always shows less bad news. Oh see how the case load dropped. Just compare our performance today with two or three weeks ago. We're doing good. If China does it so can any other country. In fact even more likely as other govts have to go to polls to remain in office.

Deaths we can leave out as they won't be up to date. Whether fatality is 1 or 5% isn't important. Whether cases are spiking, flat lining or dropping matters. And what causes that. We're flying blind otherwise. We already are to a certain extent.

There is a more fundamental issue with testing. The Czechs found out 80% of their testing kits from China aren't reliable. Spain rejected 10k Chinese testing kits gifted to them. I hear NY doctors also saying the test kits they use cannot be relied on. and when it does work it still does not tell you enough. This is mostly to do with the kind of test being done. The RNA kind. The ones that look for antibodies are more meaningful. That would mean numbers from most countries are iffy too as most of this data comes from RNA tests while slowly transitioning to antigen tests.

This has a huge bearing on policy. How do you tell if measures taken or practices in other countries work or not. Who's winning, who's losing this fight.

All the while taking a massive hit to the economy the longer business remains closed.