All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (17 Viewers)

[Maxp]

I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?

 

[surada]

After what we have seen of models over the last few weeks, which ones do you trust?

I am looking at the fact that 16,000,000 are unemployed and that number is rising.

I think in the final analysis this virus is going to have a mortality rate about like the seasonal flu.

The plan was never to stay under house arrest until the Chinese virus was eradicated. I don't think we need to take a Justin Trudeau type approach to this. We can't wait until there is a vaccine before returning to normal.

If we don't get this economy rolling we are going to ruin and lose a lot more lives to poverty than we stand to lose to the virus.

We can of course look at other ways to mitigate the spread and effects of the virus, but just bankrupting the nation doesn't seem like a choice that is backed up by science as the most rational choice.

So why are Trump's family in lockdown?

 

[SystemShock]

it is not the forking flu, it has a higher fatality rate for anyone who catches it.

By "catching it", do you mean being exposed to it, or getting sick from it?
Either way, we really don't know.

And when it flares back up and fear overtakes people again, how will that help the economy. The best help for the economy is eradicating this virus and people having confidence in going about their business.

Speaking of the flu, we haven't eradicated that. We haven't eradicated COVID-19's first cousins MERS and SARS. How do you expect to eradicate this one?

So we either are going to have to manage it, like we should have done back in Dec-Jan, or we all are just going to die, or go back to Dark Ages.

 

[Richard]

Mississippi's governor says that his stay at home and chill order will expire in schedule a week from today.

Hopefully other states will remove their restrictions.

I know your info shows your location as "Gulf," but I assume you are on the Mississippi coast. I have two children and five grandchildren in Jackson County (plus three more kids and four grandchildren in Jones County) and I would hate to hear that the stay at home order was lifted down there. The cases are still rising there and throughout Mississippi, so I feel comfortable in saying that we haven't "flattened the curve" around here. To this point, I think the governor has done a pretty good job during this time, but I will be very disappointed if he lifts the order prematurely.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

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[Beach Friends]

I know your info shows your location as "Gulf," but I assume you are on the Mississippi coast. I have two children and five grandchildren in Jackson County (plus three more kids and four grandchildren in Jones County) and I would hate to hear that the stay at home order was lifted down there. The cases are still rising there and throughout Mississippi, so I feel comfortable in saying that we haven't "flattened the curve" around here. To this point, I think the governor has done a pretty good job during this time, but I will be very disappointed if he lifts the order prematurely.

Well, it wouldn't be lifted - it would expire and from what I understand he doesn't currently plan on extending it. That could change I suppose.

Get your kids out of Jackson County and move them to some place like Soso or maybe Tuckers crossing. Nothing ever happens there, good or bad.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/

Roughly 50 leading economists across the ideological spectrum from Neo-Keynesian to Austrian asked whether hastening the lockdown with the potential of resurgence lingering will improve long-term economic health. Not a single one agrees with that assertion.


There is no basis in reality for that inflammatory drive by nonsense, can we either demand credible substantiation or move on?

 

[Richard]

Well, it wouldn't be lifted - it would expire and from what I understand he doesn't currently plan on extending it. That could change I suppose.

Get your kids out of Jackson County and move them to some place like Soso or maybe Tuckers crossing. Nothing ever happens there, good or bad.

Well, except for the tornado that ripped through here yesterday. It came through about a half mile or so from my house, so we got through unscathed. Most of the people from our church weren't so lucky as a number of them lost their homes. From Seminary past Soso it looks a lot like Katrina.

I don't mind the stay not being extended if evidence suggests that it would be safe to do so. I am not convinced that it is. I really don't want to risk my family's health, because we rush to open things up. My mother is getting up there and my wife and I are 65. I don't want my wife to say, "yeah, Richard died from COVID-19, but I was able to get this nice dress at Misty's."

 

[N.O.Bronco]

Fonim

By "catching it", do you mean being exposed to it, or getting sick from it?
Either way, we really don't know.


Speaking of the flu, we haven't eradicated that. We haven't eradicated COVID-19's first cousins MERS and SARS. How do you expect to eradicate this one?

So we either are going to have to manage it, like we should have done back in Dec-Jan, or we all are just going to die, or go back to Dark Ages.

We are attempting to manage it, but without a vaccine it is not possible to treat it like the flu. And the healthcare system can not handle it.

Until that day comes you either minimize it to the point of country wide eradication(like the diseases you mentioned), or you risk the same situations re-occurring.

And unless you deal with it, the economy is not coming back. Period

 

[Beach Friends]

Well, except for the tornado that ripped through here yesterday. It came through about a half mile or so from my house, so we got through unscathed. Most of the people from our church weren't so lucky as a number of them lost their homes. From Seminary past Soso it looks a lot like Katrina.

I don't mind the stay not being extended if evidence suggests that it would be safe to do so. I am not convinced that it is. I really don't want to risk my family's health, because we rush to open things up. My mother is getting up there and my wife and I are 65. I don't want my wife to say, "yeah, Richard died from COVID-19, but I was able to get this nice dress at Misty's."

Sorry to hear that about the tornado. I heard in passing that one was on the ground for a long time. Not sure if that is the same one - but what you described is a good distance.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

And when it flares back up and fear overtakes people again, how will that help the economy. The best help for the economy is eradicating this virus and people having confidence in going about their business.
it is not the forking flu, it has a higher fatality rate for anyone who catches it. more people are dying from it a day in the US than cancer now.

The flu has a vaccine and the healthcare system has its annual occurrence built into its operating capacity, Covid does not. End of story.

Anyone ignoring that easily identifiable distinguishing differentiation in their commentary is simply exposing their lack of understanding and therefore their lack of credibility on the matter.

If you can’t account for the facts as they are, your offer on the matter isn’t worth accounting for imo.

 

[not2rich]

It's ironic that the same crowd that thinks government has no right to infringe on individual liberty thinks the government suddenly has the capability to "order" the economy to come back to life. As if the economy is something more than millions of individuals making daily decisions. And a lot of people aren't going to - for example - go to bars, restaurants, concerts, or sporting events, or fly or carpool or stay in hotels - if they think there's going to be a risk that they infect themselves or more importantly family or friends who may be vulnerable to Covid-19. It doesn't matter what Trump says if everyone intuits the reality is different.

It's ironic and also offensive that the same crowd that supports cutting any and every aspect of the social safety net at every opportunity suddenly has a newfound compassion for the economically vulnerable and their mental health due to economic misfortune. Disingenuous to say the least. I suspect what they really care about are the GOP's and Trump's political fortunes.

And people STILL comparing this to flu are dangerously ignorant. They should tour big city ER's and ICU units right about now so they can see how wrong they are. The people who this virus sends to the hospital are very, very bad off. And other than putting them on the vent and hoping for the best, there's basically nothing the medical professionals can do. So yeah, "reopen" the economy so that this thing spreads uncontrolled, and then see what happens to the hospitals and then the economy.

The fact that the restrictions and social distancing are working makes the people making these garbage "we need to reopen the economy and forget about the virus" arguments think they actually have a good point.

 

[SystemShock]

We are attempting to manage it, but without a vaccine it is not possible to treat it like the flu.

We are not attempting to manage it. We are reacting to gross mismanagement.

As for "treating it like the flu", sure, there is no vaccine for covid, but it attacks the respiratory system just like H1N1 (although with a nastier type of pneumonia), it is transmitted like H1N1, and we can prevent the transmission like H1N1 without locking ourselves in our houses.

But apparently we are too stupid to do so.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

Great post @not2rich , but in particular you hit on something Trump and his partisans don’t seem to grasp, the economy is not some machine you turn on and off, it is the collective results of millions of individual and group decisions based on circumstance and situation. And when the situation remains highly abnormal, people are not going to magically function normally.

And in globalized economy, the world is not going to treat America normally.

No country in their right mind is going to be inviting Americans to conduct business, leisure, or a simple layover without scrutiny if we are signaling out we haven’t actually stopped the spread.

And humans in general are not going to simply fall in line like drones because the president says get back to work.

The virus dictates the timeline and the only chance we have at speeding that up is dealing with the virus. So if you want an economy to get back to, you need to focus on eliminating the virus from America.

And the longer America takes to do that, the more space that gives other countries to chip away at our economic clout in the globalized market.

There simply is no scenario where America fails to fully eradicate the virus and magically V curves the economy.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

We are not attempting to manage it. We are reacting to gross mismanagement.

As for "treating it like the flu", sure, there is no vaccine for covid, but it attacks the respiratory system just like H1N1 (although with a nastier type of pneumonia), it is transmitted like H1N1, and we can prevent the transmission like H1N1 without locking ourselves in our houses.

But apparently we are too stupid to do so.

You have me and then you lose me.

Yes there is gross mismanagement at the federal level, but passable management at the state level(or more like in major cities)

But our system is simply not at a place with this level of community spread, at the level of capacity this virus demands, without a vaccine, without a level of testing and tracking not available, where we can lax social distancing. If anything it should be more intense than it currently is.

 

[SystemShock]

Yes there is gross mismanagement at the federal level, but passable management at the state level(or more like in major cities)

It's not really passable management. It's a reaction to a situation that got out of hand because of the lack of management at all levels.

But our system is simply not at a place with this level of community spread, at the level of capacity this virus demands, without a vaccine, without a level of testing and tracking not available, where we can lax social distancing. If anything it should be more intense than it currently is.

So, we all should just stay home, just not leave the house, for a year or two, until this goes away? Go back to the middle ages, without electricity, or clean water, because all of the utility workers are home? Hunt for our food because the supermarkets are all closed?

 

[N.O.Bronco]

It's not really passable management. It's a reaction to a situation that got out of hand because of the lack of management at all levels.



So, we all should just stay home, just not leave the house, for a year or two, until this goes away?

it’s a country wide problem and so the buck ultimately starts and stops at the federal level.

As to your second point, what is your basis for that assertion? With proper social distancing and the right federal management this would be a few months length problem. Like several countries have or are demonstrating as we speak.

Now granted, given the current self created cluster fork of a situation, we are likely talking a decent to significantly bit longer, but what is your suggestion? To accept failure and now pretend the healthcare system won’t get overwhelmed and people won’t die in enormous numbers if we just ignore it and try and carry on business as usual? I.E. the Trump solution? Because I have a significant other that is a nurse that would gladly tell you how forking stupid that is as she is reusing her disposable PPE, coming close to running out of ventilators, and is having to see the nurse tech screening patients outside the facility go without an N95 because they already don’t have enough to go around.

It simply doesn’t work like that.

 

[SystemShock]

As to your second point, what is your basis for that assertion? With proper social distancing and the right federal management this would be a few months length problem. Like several countries have or are demonstrating as we speak.

It isn't really an assertion, but I have to ask, since you state social distancing should be more intense than it currently is. What qualifies as "more intense" than what we have now?

Now granted, given the current self created cluster fork of a situation, we are likely talking a decent to significantly bit longer, but what is your suggestion? To accept failure and now pretend the healthcare system won’t get overwhelmed and people won’t die in enormous numbers if we just ignore it and try and carry on business as usual? I.E. the Trump solution? Because I have a significant other that is a nurse that would gladly tell you how forking stupid that is as she is reusing her disposable PPE, coming close to running out of ventilators, and is having to see the nurse tech screening patients outside the facility go without an N95 because they already don’t have enough to go around.

It simply doesn’t work like that.
[/QUOTE]

And that's all part of the cluster****. This is the U.S. of A. We should be able to crank N95s and Purell and ventilators and such all day and all night. We should all know how coronaviruses transmit, we all should know basic hygiene prevents viruses and bacteria from spreading...

... but we are too stupid and too unwilling...

 

[surada]

I know your info shows your location as "Gulf," but I assume you are on the Mississippi coast. I have two children and five grandchildren in Jackson County (plus three more kids and four grandchildren in Jones County) and I would hate to hear that the stay at home order was lifted down there. The cases are still rising there and throughout Mississippi, so I feel comfortable in saying that we haven't "flattened the curve" around here. To this point, I think the governor has done a pretty good job during this time, but I will be very disappointed if he lifts the order prematurely.

it would be a mistake to stop sheltering in place prematurely.. That could easily backfire. We still don't have a handle on testing and sufficient PPEs.