The Coronavirus Thread

How is, being a lot more pissed at China and the WHO, helping with the management of a public health care crises?
If anything, you should be pissed off with those who didn't prepare for one!

 

You will be very surprised with some of the locals that I spoken to. The really borderline right-wing guys who still think this virus was made by Democrats in order to destroy Trump. Others (including those who are older) don't agree that things should be shut down due to how great the economy is going and what Trump is doing is unconstitutional. I think a few heads changed their opinion once they see that Trump was getting serious, and so did Fox News.

 

And who are those people who did not prepare? Did you think about preparing for SARS2? THEY have not prepared. And it has nothing to do with the fact that the time for preparing was cut very short because Chine and WTO tried to hide the infection for weeks if not months. Nothing whatsoever...

 

Article from 2017!

https://time.com/magazine/us/4766607/may-15th-2017-vol-189-no-18-u-s/


Since President Donald Trump took office, key government positions remain unfilled, including a new director for the CDC. The budget the President proposed in March would have slashed critical funding at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by $15.1 billion, including deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which underwrites more infectious-disease research than any other agency in the world. The budget for the State Department and foreign aid–which power vital efforts to stop diseases overseas, where they usually originate–was set to be cut by 28%. Although a bipartisan congressional spending deal reached on April 30 blocked many of those cuts, the signals Trump has sent are worrying. “It’s early days, but if we compare to what we’ve seen in the past, it raises some alarm bells,” says Jeremy Youde, a global health expert at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.

The writing is on the wall


Do not leave home unless you have a very good reason.
Do not go to work or use public transport, unless you do a critical job.

Stay Safe!

 

@james444 Yes, my test-positive partner has that symptom as do many of her NYC conference attendees who walked away with the virus.

I’ve been watching this up close and personal for the last 2 weeks. My partner, age 40 endurance athlete, has been knocked flat worse than her treatment resistant pneumonia a couple years back, which was a pretty fucked up time. She’s never felt shittier. Her primary symptoms have been extreme nausea, GI distress, dizziness, chronic headache, acute fatigue. Fever lasted 4 days and cough has been moderate at worst. She’s on day 15 and I would imagine she’ll need another week to 10 days minimally to start any kind of part-time remote work again. That might be overly optimistic. If she’s improving, it’s slow and non-linear.

Financially? Yeah, we have some reckoning ahead. We have decent jobs but we have no safety net and it’s South Bay (enough said) so any income lost is felt immediately. The timing really sucked for us as she had forked over a lot of dough for some training and wasn’t working for 2 weeks before she got sick so it’ll be 4-5 weeks of not working (and counting). Anywhere else, I wouldn’t be sweating too hard yet, but the cliff is sheer out here and our professions rely heavily on the financial stability of others so we see where this could go. At this point, I’m applying for a forbearance on my grad loan through September (the Fed is waiving interest so it’s a no-brainer); we’re probably talking to our landlord about April rent; and she’s entertaining a small business loan to cover some bills. I’ve discouraged the latter, but at the same time, meaningful intervention is already too slow, especially for families hit early with the virus. $1K check isn’t going to do shit. If you want to talk about loan forgiveness or something comparably systemic, then I’ll start listening.

 

These guys are idiots, but they amuse me.

 

Spent a few hours trying to figure how well the risk and the the steps that need to be taken to mitigate this risk are understood by the decision and opinion makers. Remember 2008?

Bank and investment executives were making their decisions based largely on a single mathematical model, but really on a single number called VAR: Value at Risk. Behind the VAR number was very sophisticated mathematical model, at least two Nobel price winners in economy were behind it, but the purpose was to deliver, at the end of each trading day, how much money they are really risking. The trick was to do make a lot of money and keep the VAR low.
One "good" way to do it was to buy lot of credit default swaps, that turned to be an overpriced, worthless insurance on the risk that could not really be assessed. No one was even collecting the numbers of performance of mortgages, because that was the safest investment on the planet.

What we have now is even more frightening: a single number, the CV infections, and one mitigations strategy based on the Imperial College model, that is escalating shutdown of everything.
In the meantime every case is hyped up, and presented in the context "THEY should have solved it, or prevented it" which pushes politicians into even more drastic measures.
It is like the society stopped having any other needs but to lower the infection number, like people will stop dying or needing care for any other illness. life should stop because if it does not, we all are going to die of CV. No, if normal economic activity is stopped for 4-18 months we are likely to have problems well surpassing the CV mortality rate, even as predicted by the Imperial College model, and that model, by the way, does not seem to be a subject of any serious scrutiny.

There is a risk of escalating infections and deaths, it is real, not exaggerated, but there is also a human risk of shutting down of the economy and "non essential" human activity. What is the risk? For politicians it is much easier to keep buying "credit default swaps" than getting into a serious conversation on this subject.

 

The WHO the World HEALTH Organization was downplaying the pandemic at every chance they could.
If they rang the alarm sooner as they should have, instead of being a cheerleader fro China, maybe some more precautions would have been taken.

The guy you seen on TV representing the WHO isn't even a doctor.

 

If we end up like Italy, even the steps we have taken up till now will seem mild in comparison.

 

What ever the approach, also consider tipping generously as the staff rely on tips for a good portion of their income.

 

TODAY’S CORONA TOP TEN

1. I Can’t Get No Disinfection - Rolling Stones
2. Lost In The Supermarket - The Clash
3. Ghost Town - The Specials
4. I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea - Elvis Costello
5. Protection - Massive Attack
6. Stop Your Sobbing - The Pretenders
7. Every Breath You Take - The Police
8. Who Wants To Live Forever - Queen
9. Distant Lover - Marvin Gaye
10. Safety Dance - Men Without Hats

 

11. All Along the Watchtower

 

As someone who is involved with NIH funding, the majority of NIH funding is basic research and not boots on the ground/immediate health-related assistance.

https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/category/1

Basic research is a long-term investment for future treatments of diseases and health issues.

The NIH is providing funding for COVID-19 research, clinical trials & studies and not using their funds to procure masks/equipment for medical centers. Research is being done to study the virus and treatments against it. The studies and clinical trials will determine whether a new treatment or drug (such as the anti-malaria drug touted by Trump) is effective or not against COVID-19.

 

You do listen to some fake news if you think the UK particularly hates Trump. It's pretty much the one country in Europe that hates Trump the least.

No agency is perfect but it's a fact that the Trump administration not only dropped the ball on the whole coronavirus situation (Trump did take it lightly for too long), they've been cutting back on prevention for years, disbanding the NSC pandemic unit in 2018, then wanting to cut CDC budget by 15% for 2021 (they've reversed that decision since).

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-disbanded-nsc-pandemic-unit-experts-praised-69594177

 

EDIT: I saw this as a pretty tongue-in-cheek jab at what has been a pretty insane and very messy chain of events. I got a little laugh out of this equally absurd reduction of things, and thought it might be a way to lighten the air. Personally I think the politics coming with this whole thing are a bit ridiculous... over what is bound to be a crisis no matter where you go.

I see by the dislikes its not going over very well... I can see how it might be a bit much right now. I don't wish to take it down, because if I've made a mistake erasing it isn't my call. Live and learn. Maybe it's just that people here don't know me well enough yet, or vice versa. I could've thought things through better.

On a realer note... right now, I'm planning for the worst and hoping for the best. This has been nothing short of a tragedy in many places and we can only hope to put ourselves in front of it as soon as possible. It's not something we can solve via political moves. Everyone has to work together and realize that this is bigger than nations or even people in general.

 

The lying Chinese apparatchiks at least COULD be right twice a day like a broken clock. The Russians have always lied and their stooges were sychophants. When Soviet TV sent cameramen to bed-stuy and south central, many people thought they were lying about the US.

The WHO cannot be right. Like many other international bodies that are supposedly “democratic” in nature like FIFA, is controlled based on who can pay off the most incompetent shit hole countries who can’t even regulate and control within their own borders. There is no security council.

Listening to them talk about public health when their own countries have no sanitation, don’t even have pit latrines, and their hospitals can’t perform basic procedures for risk of infection is ridiculous. Hospitals in third world countries are places people go to die or when they are actually dying. Otherwise, with their massive misuse of antibiotics and lack of sanitation, people can easily get a resistant infection and die. In India, farmers can buy last resource antibiotics over the counter to hasten the chicken growth. Iranians won’t stay inside. They’re totally fucked with the Persian new year.

In 100 AD, would the Han Chinese or the Romans listen to what the designated representative of the hairy thatch root hut dwellers had to say? Hell no. They would just kill him for daring to talk to them without kowtowing. Slow slicing or crucifixion.

 

Germany is now in total lockdown for initially 14 days. Angela Merkel has moved into quarantine after having been close to an infected person.

No more than 2 people are allowed to hang out together in public (unless they are from he same family/household).