We are your neighbors to the south. and our governor just closed all public schools for. 2 weeks over 7 cases, all acquired outside of the state.
I am all for proactive measures, but I really think this is premature. We’ve been testing and monitoring, it’s not like there’s a bunch of community transmission in Montana.
I guess we are the record-holders at 7, although NYC has eight times the number of people of my entire state.
Brace yourselves. If you didn’t watch the White House press briefing today, CDC is putting out new guidelines tomorrow. I can’t remember exact wording, but sounded like for general population. Someone specifically asked about restaurants and they asked them to hold for the new guidelines.
It could just be with space limitations or takeout or whatever. But.
I probably shouldn’t have read that before bedtime.
I agree, this thread is very reasonable and I also like getting a lot of points of view from other countries.
I lost 3 clients last week - a conference manager, a gym owner, and a professional rugby team. Think I’m just going to keep my Disney funds in the bank.
Sorry 
When people say we. don’t have a lot of capacity, they are looking at a static system. Elective inpatient surgeries are about 25% of all bed capacity, and use a dozen ventilators in an average sized hospital. Same for outpatient (go home on the same day) surgery- in fact, in some places outpatient surgeries are bigger than the inpatient units. There are a lot of vents that can be obtained for a short period of time, of course reserving a few for emergencies, OB, etc. You could double the number of ICU beds by temporarily co-opting elective surgery in the US, where we do a ton of it.
Also, if social distancing goes into effect, we should see less trauma as well, as people won’t be out and about.
I know effective tomorrow NYC is banning elective surgeries. The mayor did say that there are some cases where it will be phased, but all electives will drop to zero.
I hope they don’t classify cancer surgery as elective, but technically it is, because you can usually reschedule it. 
The example he gave was hip replacement. But we’ll see.
I did see that. Unfortunately a vaccine is probably a year away. Can we really be a hermit for that long?
I’m hoping it moves through gen pop before then. Then we keep vulnerable in seclusion.
This is going to sound mean, but it’s not intended to be. You might feel inclined to take it personally, please don’t. It may come across as offensive, but once again, it’s not intended to be. It will be a little cold and blunt, though, but I think it’s something worth considering.
I was on the same side as you and others, but I always took it seriously. I’ve just learned to live with some basic truths that seem to elude a lot of people (understandably so). We’ve never been “safe.” Life is risky business. Risk is everywhere, in everything we do. Lots of people die of dumb, avoidable stuff every day. Lots of others die of circumstances beyond their control. Either way, none of them woke up that morning thinking it was going to happen to them. Human beings have a remarkable capacity for self delusion. They go through life oblivious to real dangers all around them. Ignorance of danger is truly bliss. And we’ve never more blissful as a species than in the 21st Century. That’s because despite how bad some people want to tell you things are, there’s never been a better time in history to be a human on planet earth. The self-delusion works because life in general ain’t that bad.
You don’t feel safe because the illusion has been dispelled by events that seem to be tumbling out of control. You’ve been denied the comfort of the pleasant lie, and forced to confront an unpleasant truth. You’re having a hard time trying to recapture the magic of the illusion because you’re constantly bombarded with charts, graphs, obituaries, and travel bans, on and on, ad nauseam. You’re finding little or nothing in the news or on social media that reassures you that everything’s going to be OK. Quite the opposite, in fact.
This is not the end of days. But life has turned into something unfamiliar that you no longer recognize as safe. The truth is, in the overall scheme of things, you’re about as safe as you ever were. And I say this in defiance of all those who keep citing past contagions and past wars as evidence of the fear we should feel and the dark days ahead. So what? All those things happened, and even now there are still more people on the planet living better lives than at any time in human history.
Keep your chin up. All of this has happened before, and will happen again. And like before, this too shall pass.
It sounds like we’re going all-in on containment. It’s frightening because it will definitely disrupt all of our lives. But, I think the alternative is worse.
I think it again bears mentioning that China locked down 10% of the world’s population over this virus, and sacrificed their economy. They didn’t do that over 3000 deaths, and many of the early citizen reports out of there were horrific- before the CCP shut its all down. I don’t even want to repeat the things I saw in social media in late January. Soon after that, I decided to start this thread.
We haven’t been told the actual number of deaths in China and we never will. But Italy is giving us a glimpse of what this virus is like. I think our government at all levels has a better idea on what’s going on than we think they do, though each will act in different ways.
Somebody watched Battlestar Galactica.
I actually think there are a lot of lessons to be learned in that series regarding what we’re facing now. Among which is, do not sacrifice your values just because things go to hell. Civilization depends on acting civilized.
On behalf of overweight, tobacco using Americans everywhere…Leave us out of this.
Yeah, while I don’t 100% trust our government decision making, they know a whole lot more than I do!
But, we need to keep asking them the hard questions and giving them feedback from the trenches. That will help keep them on the right track. Or a less wrong one, anyway.
Yes somebody did. Twice.
But these were healthy women, 29 YO. Statistically they had a low vulnerability level. How do we know? There are always the exceptions; I really don’t want to be one of them
That’s what finally got Mayor DeBlasio to shut down the NYC schools- relentless pressure. I think that there’s a lot of wishful thinking that happens, even to those in charge.
But these ladies aren’t exceptions. As you say, statistically the chances are low- but they aren’t zero. Infect enough people and some healthy folks will suffer, because that’s what the data show.
Being elderly, or having high blood pressure, or diabetes are just risk factors. It doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to be fine- just that everyone else is at lower risk.
And there are many, many people of low risk. Eventually, some of them are going to be sick, and it could be quite a few, simply because most people fall in to that category.