Also cook your own food. Like, conceded that there is very little the average Joe can do to mitigate their risks and the risks of others outside of these little things. But there is plenty of room for disgust with the preparedness of our institutions, who will have to do much more than the average Joe to mitigate things.
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Mortality rate is not a static quality of the virus that can be measured once and then solved. It’s also a function of the preparedness and the capacity of the health system, as more people will die when they have to be left untreated due to a tidal wave of cases.
Italy is milder than China. Everyone instructed to stay home. No public gatherings, so no nightlife, no sporting events, etc. Schools closed, churches closed. Restaurants are open with limited hours. Markets are open on weekdays only, and only if they can ensure a meter of space between customers.
Even that seems like a stretch for America. So many people would be instantly out of work. No way we could handle it for more than a couple weeks.
What is being done about the people (mostly in the service industry) whose jobs are significantly impacted by this? I imagine that there are a shitload of those people in Italy.
Yeah Italy’s lockdown restricts travel to that necessary for “work and family emergencies”, the latter presumably including “we need food”. It’s less authoritarian than China, more a communication to the population of the seriousness of events.
I find it hard to imagine a similar lockdown in America without civil unrest.
I thought of this while I was getting a toastie yesterday. Almost walked out after ordering it. Probably should have.
Oh well. I’ll let you know if I get COVID-19.
I only ever go to Costco for one thing. I get it. And I leave without it.
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I eat out every day for lunch… that doesn’t seem ideal anymore.
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Are you the guy having sex in the Costco bathroom?
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OK this thread convinced me to work from home today. Also it’s rainy and windy.
Doing my part!
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The discourse around this stuff is kind of crazy. It is not obviously justified to quarantine all of Italy for an indefinite period of time in the hope that it will soften the peak of the disease in a meaningful way. It’s much closer to being an obvious overreaction. There are a bunch of basic things that everyone can and should start doing immediately (stop shaking hands with people, avoid big meetings, stay home when sick, wash your hands a lot) that don’t impose disproportionate costs (for those who aren’t going to be badly impacted by missing work). Closing schools or imposing a general quarantine are vastly more costly and the benefits are far from obvious.
People are LARPing being in a movie about a much more dangerous disease. Coronavirus is obviously extremely serious and seems likely to kill a tragic number of people, but people get sick and die sometimes. If we can stop it, then we should, but if we can’t, ripping apart society just to “do something” is not actually helpful. I’m especially concerned that our government is about to enter into its own phase of wild overreaction, and running around claiming that COVID-19 WILL PROBABLY KILL 4-6% is just going to serve to justify Trump’s new China/Mexico/swine flu wall or internment v2 or whatever other crimes come next.
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I think it looks something like large gatherings being banned, places like schools shut down, and curfews being enforced. People would be strongly encouraged to stay home except for essential behavior such as work. Leisure activity would grind to a halt and businesses such as movie theaters and restaurants will be hit hard.
What happens during large-scale riots or after national disasters? Some of it will be similar.
Do you have a clear idea of what is currently going on in Northern Italy?
I’m generally on board that the world as a whole is overreacting to COVID-19, I’m not so sure Italy is.
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There is a part of me that is rooting for this to rip apart society in the sense of being enough of a game-changer to affect how people think about health care and inequality in America. I just don’t see a path to that occurring without something more traumatic than 9/11, so why not this instead of the worst war we’ve ever seen or the worst economic downturn of our lives? It’s not going to come from Bernie Sanders leading a revolution at the ballot box.
Thing is that if actions that appear drastic now aren’t taken, then they won’t be drastic enough later when the disease has spread further.
It sounds crazy that the Czech Republic shut down schools and banned large gatherings just based on a single community-spread case among 40 others but these things are only effective if done quickly.
There’s a logic short circuit among people when it comes to this stuff. If “drastic” actions are taken and nothing happens, people go, “Oh you overreacted for nothing!”. But the only reason it was nothing was because of those actions. Of course, if they aren’t taken then you have a ton of people telling you why you didn’t act earlier with more drastic measures.
It’s hard to gauge the correct reaction to something that is little-known in real-time but when it comes to public health, an overreaction is almost certainly better than an underreaction.
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I don’t know why you think the result will be free healthcare. Instead we’ll get more fascism.
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Man you’ve never seen V For Vendetta have you?
I don’t think the result will be free health care. I think the probability of free health care increases, with the downside of an increased probability of more fascism.
It’s a question of whether you prefer to ride the variance train or be risk-adverse.