@gnrldsppntmnt here is an article that goes a little bit more in depth regarding how delivery people can be protected. They apparently did the successfully in China:
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I hate to break it to you, but there’s a finite amount of time before this effort falls apart. Somebody knows something, and they need to share it. Good or bad.
What he’s doing, at this point, is beating a dead horse. It’s not helpful. It’s not even his job.
Then I apologize for communicating my thoughts so poorly, because I thought his advice was pretty useless given the inconsistencies.
Totally correct. And the stores will be empty so you can go get your TP without having to wait in line with 100 coughing people.
This is where my fear lies. It seems wherever the virus lands the reaction is severe. So it must be far worse than we are hearing. If there is truly something “they” know they need to share it. Otherwise you have 50% of the population declaring this is just the flu no big deal. You can’t stop the spread with people not taking it seriously.
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I agree, but if they tell us everything, I fear the panic that will ensue. Look are where we are now and a good amount of people feel that it is not a big deal.
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My Hot Take.
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Yeah. That’s true. There is no good answer.
If you read the original source material, it is a pretty bad bug. The problem is, we don’t know how circumstances in the US can change the outcome. We smoke far less than the Italians or the Chinese. However, we likely have more HTN diabetes and heart disease. However, we have far more intensive care capacity than they do, however the Chinese can enforce lockdowns, however we have far more space per capita and on and on and on.
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Here’s my theory on “what we aren’t being told”.
Pre-Harvey, they ran the flood models and said “That can’t be right!” They re-ran them with the same results. They contacted colleagues elsewhere to check their models.
I’m not sure if it’s really withholding the info as much as trying to make it able to be communicated to the masses. Thus “flatten the curve” was born rather than show the actual models.
I wonder if they ran the models last Wed and it was very, very bad. And they kicked off behind the scenes plans to make personal pleas at the local, state, and federal level to close things down.
And they went “We aren’t advising you to close, but here are the facts…”. Some organizations are getting the message and closing down. Some aren’t. Houston Zoo closed after briefing from mayor’s office. Houston MFA cancelled all special events but stayed open. Apple stores closed. AMC went half capacity.
There is a local list they are working down. There is a state list they are working down. There is a federal list they are working down. Thus, the importance of Pence. Who isn’t going to take a call from the VP?
They are trying to get buy in on voluntary closures so they don’t need to mandate. Because that significantly reduces the push back and enforcement needs. Not sure at this point if mandates are inevitable or the voluntary closures will be enough. Not sure if they know.
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Maybe. Maybe not. That’s the problem. “Far worse” might not scare you so much if you actually knew what it was. But when you don’t know, your mind can wander to all kinds of dark places. We can deduce, from context, that this will go on longer than a few weeks. But how much longer? I keep hearing this morning, “We’re 50 weeks behind China.” OK, but are we comparing apples to apples? Is that a reliable metric for our situation? I suspect not, but I don’t know. It will take as long as it takes. I still don’t fear the virus itself. I’d really prefer to just catch it and get it over with, however that turns out. But I still haven’t heard anyone plainly state, “We will begin to return to normal when [insert accomplishment here] happens.” And I’m deeply concerned that if this is expected to be an extended siege, it’s not being managed for success over the long term.
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I agree with you 100%
Just keep in mind, no matter what we read, most epidemiologists believe the Chinese are not giving us all the numbers, either because they don’t know, or they won’t tell. Always remember that. Our government probably has good hunches on what went on over there, but would you tell the people this is only a hunch? I’m not sure I would.
Watch what the various governments do- this matters more than the numbers they cite. And what they are doing means this is very serious indeed.
This is why we must watch Italy, and learn- fast.
Also, what we want to know is the Infection Fatality Ratio or IFR (all infected people/deaths). We won’t know this for years, if ever. What we are seeing is the Case Fatality Ratio or CFR. This is recognized cases to fatalities.
Here is what the experience is so far in NYC:
Cuomo mentioned these data for New York State yesterday: "137 of the 729 people are in hospitals of which 65 are in the ICU and 46 are intubated."
— Jonas Persson (@BishopBlougram) March 16, 2020
This is not good, and will very quickly overwhelm capacity, probably within two weeks.
New York has had 6 deaths so far, but they lag cases by about two weeks.
He’s calling for the Army Corps of Engineers to come and help set up hospitals and bring ventilators. I don’t know how much more messaging he can do.
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My mind wandering into the dark places is where I find myself now. As I said earlier, we are in middle America, we knew it would hit us later than the coasts and cities with major international airports. Yesterday hearing all the closings, attendee restrictions, and no cash acceptance, shopping for “normal” is not possible bc of low to empty stock, worries about family members with health issues…not knowing has sent me to a low place. I’m struggling with everyday things, just because there is so much lurking in the dark. I’m a planner, I can handle emergencies when I know what to expect. Car wreck, call first responders, assess injuries…Child breaks bone, urgent care or ER…Flu symptoms, treat at home unless ABC and then doctor…this has too many unknowns and I don’t know how to plan when everything around me is treating it as unknown. By unknowns, I mean multiple instructions, multiple diagnosis numbers, symptoms will be severe, symptoms will be mild, do this, do that, close this, no don’t close, we recommend, no, we request…each level of government has something different to say, I don’t completely trust public government speeches anyway, then trying to listen to foreign government is even more difficult to trust numbers,…every doctor has their own input…information wise it feels chaotic…and I struggle with chaos.
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It’s not easy, but you CAN do this.
Some guidance they’ve given us around hurricanes.
Give yourself a couple days to adjust mentally that life is different now. Eat the junk food. Binge watch news and/or Netflix or whatever. Only adult the necessities.
Then start taking one day at a time (without doing anything that will tank you long term).
Get yourself some structure. Get dressed, even if you’re not leaving the house. Eat regular meals. Sleep on schedule. Figure out your preferred news source(s) and keep up with regularly but NOT non stop. Turn them off except for planned checks or high level breaking news. Inject some joy into every day. Do what productive you can each day. Be kind. Help others. Stay connected to others virtually. Hang on to hope.
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We were going to have a party in early June as well, it is so hard to imagine still living like this is June! I can’t wrap my mind around that yet.
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“ Governor Greg Abbott announced that he has waived the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) testing requirements for the 2019-2020 school year.
Additionally, Abbott is requesting that the Department of Education waive federal testing requirements for the 2019-2020 school year.”
Which is really good. Because I was checking out my kids new teacher (in the mirror) and I’m not overly confident in her dedication to state testing prep. 
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We actually don’t have more intensive care capacity than Italy or China. See here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/13/coronavirus-numbers-we-really-should-be-worried-about/
@sanstitre_has_left_the_building - I haven’t finished this thread yet, but I do see you asked several times about what makes this particular virus different. Since you are a math teacher, I’m a little surprised to hear you ask it this way - the exponential factor of contracting the disease, coupled with the lack of resources to address it is the difference. I was in the same camp as many others a few weeks ago - this is nothing! it’s not as severe as the flu! But, when you think about how many people are likely to get it, and you consider how many of those may need intensive care, and then look at the available resources, it’s not a good outcome. The whole push by the US right now is to “flatten the curve” - the idea being that if we can slow the spread (not eradicate it), we will not overwhelm our healthcare facilities and will be able to more successfully treat it.
I heard an NPR story this morning on the UK approach - it’s an interesting take - to wait on quarantine until the situation becomes more dire because of all the factors you’ve alluded to already (likely the US will have SEVERE economic repercussions from this), but it’s a gamble. Everything we’ve been told is the US is about 11 days behind Italy, so the country is trying to get ahead as best we can. I find great comfort that the majority of folks are uniting behind the “social distancing” - to me, it’s the first sign of solidarity that the community matters.
However, it does enrage me that when 20 school children were murdered, the country did NOTHING to stop gun violence. It enrages me that as we face this new challenge, people fail to see that a for-profit healthcare system and a societal infrastructure that does not provide paid sick leave or free child care are part of the problem. So I do agree with you, @sanstitre_has_left_the_building, that I would have expected most of this country to sit back and say, “oh well, I’m relatively fit and I have a good job and can afford to take two months off work if I really need to, so no need to self isolate here.” And, in fact, I HAVE heard people say that - in grocery stores and at gas stations and on my social media feed. My sense is that all of this social distancing came from peer pressure - first a couple colleges made the decision to move to remote learning, then a few more, then some sports teams decided to delay some games, then suddenly local governments were making decisions. NONE of this came from the top down. It was a ground up phenomenon - and so, for the time being, I will sit back and find hope in the fact that we (or most of us anyway) have elected, as a country, to do what we can together to try and reduce the negative health impact of this particular situation. And who knows?! Maybe when we’re on the other side of this, folks will start to consider the impact they can have on all the other broken systems. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
In the meantime, here’s an article that I think outlines a ton of really important points that are very easy to follow: 11 coronavirus pandemic charts everyone should see - Vox
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My son goes to college in a county with ~ 45,000 people and they now have two positive cases. Drive miles and miles between houses. They were to close Wednesday and I just got an SOS call from here. Kids told to leave now. I think he’s scared.
And your numbers @Pod ar e terrifying me.
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Am I misinformed? I thought the CDC was saying 80% would be mildly affected. If you have a family of 10, eight might not know the difference between this and any other flu
Are we confusing draconian measures to smooth the curve (social distancing) with expectations of actual numbers of cases? How many of us here won’t even know we’ve got it? How many times has a family member been sick and you thought maybe your allergies were acting up or possibly a sore lymph node. Did you have it, too?
Google number of ventilators in the US. The actual purpose of this exercise is not to discern the actual number. The point is to see what was being said back in 2009 or even 2013 when that year’s emerging virus had folks concerned about ventilators and possible infectious rates.
Early fatality reports from China have fatalities for persons over 80 at nearly 15%. Italy has numbers at nearly half that at 8%.
Is social distancing so that we don’t get sick? Or is it so healthcare can try to keep up with the really really sick ones.
One of my uncles traced his mother’s family tree back to the 1600s in Norway. Being a genealogy geek, he produced a book of charts of ancestors with all pertinent dates. Being the totally normal person that I am, I perused those numbers minutely. And found a family from the late 1600s. Mom, dad and 10 kids. The deaths of mom and eight of the kids occurred over the course of a week’s time. Dad and the two oldest - in their late teens - were left. That’s a catastrophe. And I am sure that what we’ve got here now is nothing like that.
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I also don’t fear it. I would rather just get it and get it over with as well. Watching the government reaction disturbs me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them respond to something like this since 9/11. Prior to that probably WWII. That gets my spidy senses tingling a bit.
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Standardized state testing . . .
vs corona virus.
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