I mean I’m glad someone tried it, and I’m glad it was where the virus originated. But yeah there’s absolutely no evidence that I’ve seen that it was a good idea. They still had a massive outbreak, and it still got out. It gave the world a little bit more time than it otherwise would have, maybe, but that’s about it. Now that it’s gone wide it’s time to focus on having the resources to treat all the victims. I’m not even sure closing schools is a good idea.
You remember that old Stephen King book Salem’s Lot? At the end the main character smashes the shit out of a huge oak door with an axe that’s imbued with the pure power of good energy in order to get at the main vampire so he can stake his ass. We the people are the axe wielder, Bernie is the magic axe, the door is the DNC and the vampire is…shit idk, capital I guess. Point is Bernie is a vessel for good and is protected from all sickness. The MI was a test of faith.
This is a perfectly cromulent analogy
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Would be completely unsurprising to see state of emergency imposed this year to enforce quarantine for coronavirus. Hell he could use it prior to the elections to suspend them.
They waited too long and tried to talk down the problem, acting as though it wasn’t one at all and that everything was control when it wasn’t.
Sounds like what a certain politician in America is doing now.
This is a pretty common attitude across Europe imo and even more understandable in countries like Czechia that have been through tons of shit for a long time.
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Estimate of actual coronavirus cases in Iran is over 18,000:
Iran’s official counts—three hundred and eighty-eight confirmed cases and thirty-four deaths, as of Friday—may be grossly underreported. In an early analysis published on Monday, six Canadian epidemiologists calculated that Iran probably had more than eighteen thousand cases of coronavirus. Their mathematical model was based on Iran’s official death toll, the disease’s infection and mortality rates worldwide, inflections in other countries traced to Iran, flight data, and travel patterns. “Given the low volumes of air travel to countries with identified cases of COVID-19 with origin in Iran (such as Canada), it is likely that Iran is currently experiencing a COVID-19 epidemic of significant size,” they concluded. Because of the wide margin of error, the number of cases could range from as low as thirty-seven hundred to as high as fifty-three thousand.
Based on what I’ve seen there, people are still not being particularly cautious, so I guess we’re going to see what it looks like when the virus goes supernova in a country.
Also, that model is probably an underestimation, because in the past 24 hours there have been several more Iran-sourced infections reported, in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
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As each days passes I’m becoming more and more convinced that it will soon be prudent for me to self quarantine for a while. I’m 30, which is good, but immunocompromised, which seems pretty bad. And I work in a major casino, which seems really bad. Shitty part is that I’m out of work for a month currently rehabbing after surgery, and I will be ready to go back right around the time this could really be taking off. Lots of missed income is better than dying, but this could be a shitty year.
Here’s to hoping COVID-19 miraculously dies out really soon.
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I’m not a doctor but this seems like a risky profession for you.
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two genius parents were discussing this at school drop-off this morning
“I heard that only 2% of people that get coronavirus die.”
“You’ve got a better chance of being hit by a cab than dying form the virus.”
“I saw on TV that over 60,000 people died from the flu last year.”
“I hope I DO get it. That way I can be on the Today Show and write a song about it.”
Uh, yeah, if being an immunocompromised person is a long term thing rather than a short term thing, I’d self-quarantine and use the boredom to look for a new line of work.
Imagine if 2% of people got hit by a cab every day.
Also it would mean everyone in New York City would be hit every day, because there are very few cabs here in Texas.
Obviously, lots of people have it, haven’t been tested for it, so the real death rate is definitely below 2%, but the current survival rates for those tested are also based on a functioning healthcare system. if it gets overrun, i am sure the death rate will rise.
Vice President Mike Pence meets with the President’s Coronavirus Taskforce Wednesday, February 26, 2020, in his West Wing Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)
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Some info from a quite excellent newsletter I subscribed to yesterday giving daily Coronovirus updates:
The US and the rest of the world needs to be prepared for the numbers of COVID19 in the US to shoot up following the FDA announcement of allowing academic labs to carry diagnostic tests in the US. Dr Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner and physician, expects US testing capacity to ramp up to 10,000/day at the end of this week to 20,000/day at the end of next week. Given the undetected transmission likely to have happened in the US (as suspected by Trevor Bedford) due to faulty CDC test (more on this below) but also a very narrow criteria for CDC authorising to test a patient (travel to China initially) the extent of the lack of detection on current numbers will unfold over the next few days. However as Assistant Professor Caitlin Rivers from John Hopkins Center for Health Security and one to have carried excellent work on early detection from influenza-like illness data in the US argues in an excellent thread: we need to heighten hospital preparedness. There is actually a sobering (given the numbers) and hopeful (given that the analysis is being carried out and shared) paper by Eric Toner, MD, and Richard Waldhorn, MD (John Hopkins Center for Health Security) of different scenarios of overloading of the hospitals and ICU in the US in case of a severe pandemic. There has actually been some official planning assumptions already released by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) depending on a Moderate Scenario (1968-like) or Very Severe Scenario (1918-like AKA Spanish Flu). The former requires 1M hospitalisations and 200,000 patients needing ICU (Intensive Care Unit), the latter requires 9.6M hospitalisations and 2.9M ICU units. And “there are about 46,500 medical ICU beds in the United States and perhaps an equal number of other ICU beds that could be used in a crisis”. The mismatch is clear event if a severe pandemic would likely be spread out over several months (Twitter thread)
The narrative has dramatically and positively changed in the US for better preparation of both the care ecosystem and the public. Dr Anthony Fauci (part of Trump’s task force on COVID19 and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) has come out unequivocally publicly on TV that Coronavirus cases in US are becoming ‘community spread’ and could be more prevalent. Similarly and at the opposite end of the political spectrum, there is a story in Axios that a top federal scientist had raised the alarm on the contamination in the Atlanta lab which the CDC was using to make the early batch of coronavirus diagnostic test. His alarm was ignored. There is a strong narrative in the anti-Trump camp that this administration is against science and does not listen to what it does not want to hear. This story will be developing over the next few days particularly if the early testing fiasco which significantly hampered COVID19 testing (only 456 test had been carried out in the US at the end of last week) can be traced back to this lab. Here is the Axios story (Link)
You can go to 🦠Covid-19 - 01/03/20 US: 2 wars or is it one war? | 🤕89,074 | Deaths 3,050 and you should see an option to subscribe if interested (as well as todays full update).
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This is one of my biggest fears in all this. We’ve never had a weaponized group of idiots standing at the ready like Trumpfans. All it takes is one tweet from dear leader saying it’s time to panic and blame immigrants - and the cult instantaneously switches from sticking their head in the sand to violent freakout mode.
Some think we aren’t doing enough about the corona virus. Others think we are over reacting.
Facebook never forgets, so now is your chance to weigh in the comments with a prediction in terms of total deaths from this virus in the US, so that we can look back in 12 months and see if the alarmism was warranted.
As context, the CDC says there are between 12,000-61,000 deaths per year due to the flu.
So a simple prediction of “more” or “less” than the flu will suffice. Go.
Typical right-wing moron on FB.
(friend) I predict if there is a vaccine, too many won’t bother getting it.
(moron) Pretty safe bet there. I certainly won’t be getting it.
Bonus - he’s an anit-vaxxer!
I am speechless, utterly and inconsolably speechless.
If this virus had a different endpoint such as giving equal rights and free healthcare to everyone infected we’d be on lockdown under martial law right now.
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