The people not WFH in my office are now making light of the situation / poking fun of those of us who are WFH
Governor Cuomo is deploying the National Guard to New Rochelle to help containment efforts.
There is going to be a demand for video chat therapy sessions if people are locking it down in self-quarantine on a widespread basis. They should make plans to advertise that on social media, use Skype and Venmo or whatever, and proceed accordingly.
The biggest problem is the strain on the healthcare system. Running out of beds is a big problem. These policies should help the system.
I already asked about that as an option… apparently you have to be licensed first. Sigh.
So I guess you take the fatalistic approach. By the time you decide it is close enough to 1918 pattern it will be way too late. Since you’ve already decided that it’s not even though the infectivity and morbidity are similar* **
i agree completely that’s it not near as bad as 1918 so far and it is not likely to have a second wave as bad as 1918. I do think it has pretty decent likelihood to be 5-10% as bad which is enough to overwhelm many local systems.
I don’t see any citation as to why from a shear numbers standpoint you think this is that different. Maths please.
emphasized textAnd the goal of social isolation isn’t to stop it cold, just to keep it below disaster level so that people don’t die unneccesarily from lack of care and maybe buy some time to see if any existing drugs help or what treatments work best and eventually a vaccine. strong text
A utilitarian argument about how many people die due to economic fallout is never going to carry the day in public health. You save the lives you can today and tomorrow when it gets here, especially when the speculation factor is so hi.
*again similar order of magnitude. What number are we ok with worldwide, 1,000,000?
** remember the 1918 flu denominator is based on # sick people, not number of people tested. Testing methodology wasn’t available. One nice thing is that about CV is that a lot of people don’t get sick or only mild symptoms. Not sure what is know about 1918.
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And remember you can prick your finger in public, but you can’t finger your prick.
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Rob Petrie is screwed. And that wife of his…
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As for what we should be doing literally right now at the federal level:
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Cut out the bullshit with the slow walking of tests, we need millions available two weeks ago. Pull in the CEOs of the companies making them and tell them to disclose their cost, tell them they get a 5% profit margin and the price is fixed, all the red tape on selling them is gone.
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Test everyone coming in on international flights, quarantine all the positives.
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Temporarily lock down travel from areas in the US that have community spread cases for 3-5 days while we get enough tests in place to test everyone who wants to travel from those places.
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Direct all localities within close proximity to outbreak cities or with an outbreak to set up hospitals that will treat COVID-19, and hospitals that will treat everything else. Set up processes to minimize spread within healthcare facilities.
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Set up federal facilities near outbreak cities that can handle stabilized cases by administering oxygen or whatever else is necessary. This can be in schools that are closed, arenas, empty buildings, on military bases, whatever it takes.
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Set up to transport stable cases from local hospitals to those facilities, and from outbreak cities to COVID-19 hospitals in nearby non-outbreak cities.
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Issue an executive directive that everyone who can work from home should work from home, issue urgent social distancing guidelines, etc. Give major cities guidelines on how to disinfect public transit. Subsidize efforts to get people to work from home by giving businesses who pay them for an extra two weeks of sick leave a tax credit for doing so.
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As we pass the peak in each city and know that the curve will stay flat enough, we can start to ease up on everything.
Why we should do this:
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There’s a significant likelihood that places like New York and Seattle are going to experience overloaded hospital systems soon. If we can slow the spread to other nearby cities and set up a process for offloading stable cases to other facilities, we can reduce the stress on the hospital systems and spread it around a bit. If we wait until the overload starts, it’ll be way too late.
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In order to do this we need the outbreaks in nearby cities to be slowed down so that they can afford to help out their neighboring cities that are going to get hit really hard. Again, if we wait until they’re inevitably going to get hit just as hard, it’ll be way too late.
If executed properly, you could significantly reduce the death toll, reduce the panic, and actually protect the markets somewhat. Instead of pricing in the likelihood of mass death and hysteria, you’d be pricing in the certainty of a rolling 2-4 week economic slowdown with government-subsidized stimulus for businesses that had to pay employees to stay home.
What we should have done a month ago:
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Order a shit ton of tests, test everyone coming into the country, and follow roughly what South Korea is doing with pushing out information to people with a lot more details to catch more positive tests before they’re symptomatic and flatten the curve.
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Set up (or prepare to set up) regional government facilities to handle the severe, but non-ICU level cases once they’re stable. Essentially, be ready to scale these up within a couple weeks so that if/when it got to the point we’re at now, these would be able to be set up.
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Urge the public to take this seriously, and set up a process to reduce the number of people on public transit together, in public together, at work together, etc with minimal effect on the economy. You could do this by asking businesses to alternate who works from home, stagger work hours, etc. Get cities to coordinate this to shift some businesses to 6-2, 7-3, 8-4, 9-5, 10-6, 11-7… Hopefully this would reduce traffic on public transit at a given time significantly and allow for more disinfecting throughout the day. They could also have some employees work from home on M-W-F and others on Tu-Th.
What would likely have happened is that we’d have dramatically flattened the curve without ever realizing it, and people would have made fun of the government for overreacting… but it would have worked, and in the context of what should be done now (but probably still won’t) it’s not that severe at all.
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I have 102.5 fever and an awful cough. My son is home sick too. Gl :(
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To you first paragraph, do we take that to mean the feds will ground all air traffic?
“I want to read you one statement from a senior Republican official involved in this response,” she continued. “They say, ‘The message is, if you’re on the wrong side of this administration, you are gone. People are afraid, either there was a terrible incompetence or there was a heavy hand on the scale.’ So this is deeply chilling and disturbing, this idea that President Trump’s obsession post-impeachment with loyalty might play a factor in all of this and how they’ve handled it, particularly given a point where we’re now calling this a pandemic and there are dozens, if not hundreds of people trying to get answers.”
Where are you located? How old are you? Any underlying health issues? You should probably go to an ER (and if so you should call first so that they know a potential COVID-19 case is coming), that fever and cough are primary symptoms of a severe case. Do you have shortness of breath? Is it a dry cough?
Hope it’s something else, but you should definitely be taking action if the symptoms match like that.
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From what I have heard and read the Orthodox Jews up there to some degree see themselves as sovereign to their own laws. So I could see them not wanting to obey local edicts and not listening to initial govt warnings. Apparently the one lawyer who came back with it spread it to 57 people (directly or indirectly) within a couple weeks.
Again if I’m wrong please tell me. Not trying to be racist.
I feel like people aren’t getting my point. I’m not talking about the initial containment efforts. I know this will help with hospital beds and all.
I’m talking about a worst-case scenario where as soon as you lift containment an outbreak starts up again. It’s unclear to me when containment can be lifted if you do such a good job of containment that say only 5% contract the virus, and therefore have no herd immunity.
Costco TP TR: Didn’t get TP yesterday so went back, got in at 9:50 which was a little late and Fucking every cart had toilet paper and paper towels, some people had 2 each stacked in a cart and that was all they were getting. the side room where the toilet paper was fucking packed with people and it looked like it was about to get nasty there was a huge traffic jam. Anyways I just grabbed that and some snacks and was out of there again at 10:05 and the parking lot was definitely more full than yesterday at the same time. Also it seemed like there were more seniors out buying stuff than the last week but it might have just been a coincidence.
FWIW, half is a WAG. Enough heard immunity that the growth rate slows to something the hospitals can deal with is when you can consider going back to normal probably. Curfews or however you want to call it should be fairly localised.
But yeah, what you’re suggesting seems possible.