Love that he still works! My grandpa worked full time 6 days a week until he was 93. Much respect to that generation.
Those are all great questions, which no one really has the answer to, but hopefully will become more clear as time goes by.
I donât think the author means to offer a complete analysis of the problem, but what heâs doing is sounding the alarm.
And I agree with you that the isolation advice in there is pretty solid.
Yes, we are trying to frame it in a positive way. I told him everybody will remember the class of 2020. It will be a historical year. Also, in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. As long as we are healthy and together, all is well.
My husband works in supply chain, and is one of the people who interacts with drivers all day, every day. He is frightened too.
Yes, their role is so important in our everyday life.
@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:
I hate to break it to you, but thereâs a finite amount of time before this effort falls apart. Somebody knows something, and they need to share it. Good or bad.
What heâs doing, at this point, is beating a dead horse. Itâs not helpful. Itâs 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 âtheyâ know they need to share it. Otherwise you have 50% of the population declaring this is just the flu no big deal. You canât stop the spread with people not taking it seriously.
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.
My Hot Take.
Yeah. Thatâs true. There is no good answer.
If you read the original source material, it is a pretty bad bug. The problem is, we donât 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.
Hereâs my theory on âwhat we arenât being toldâ.
Pre-Harvey, they ran the flood models and said âThat canât be right!â They re-ran them with the same results. They contacted colleagues elsewhere to check their models.
Iâm not sure if itâs really withholding the info as much as trying to make it able to be communicated to the masses. Thus âflatten the curveâ 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 âWe arenât advising you to close, but here are the factsâŚâ. Some organizations are getting the message and closing down. Some arenât. Houston Zoo closed after briefing from mayorâs 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 isnât going to take a call from the VP?
They are trying to get buy in on voluntary closures so they donât 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.
Maybe. Maybe not. Thatâs the problem. âFar worseâ might not scare you so much if you actually knew what it was. But when you donât 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, âWeâre 50 weeks behind China.â OK, but are we comparing apples to apples? Is that a reliable metric for our situation? I suspect not, but I donât know. It will take as long as it takes. I still donât fear the virus itself. Iâd really prefer to just catch it and get it over with, however that turns out. But I still havenât heard anyone plainly state, âWe will begin to return to normal when [insert accomplishment here] happens.â And Iâm deeply concerned that if this is expected to be an extended siege, itâs not being managed for success over the long term.
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 donât know, or they wonât 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? Iâm 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 wonât 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."
â 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.
Heâs calling for the Army Corps of Engineers to come and help set up hospitals and bring ventilators. I donât know how much more messaging he can do.
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 ânormalâ is not possible bc of low to empty stock, worries about family members with health issuesâŚnot knowing has sent me to a low place. Iâm struggling with everyday things, just because there is so much lurking in the dark. Iâm a planner, I can handle emergencies when I know what to expect. Car wreck, call first responders, assess injuriesâŚChild breaks bone, urgent care or ERâŚFlu symptoms, treat at home unless ABC and then doctorâŚthis has too many unknowns and I donât 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 donât close, we recommend, no, we requestâŚeach level of government has something different to say, I donât completely trust public government speeches anyway, then trying to listen to foreign government is even more difficult to trust numbers,âŚevery doctor has their own inputâŚinformation wise it feels chaoticâŚand I struggle with chaos.
Itâs not easy, but you CAN do this.
Some guidance theyâve 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 youâre 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.
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 canât wrap my mind around that yet.
â 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.â
Which is really good. Because I was checking out my kids new teacher (in the mirror) and Iâm not overly confident in her dedication to state testing prep.