Where's the petri dish thread?

[Deleted User 289]

I challenge all the "it's just the flu" people to watch Sky News videos from Italian hospitals.
Interesting how few videos there are of the hospitals in this country dealing with the virus.
As a matter of fact, I walked by Northwestern Hospital tonight and started to take a video on my phone of the area that is "quarantined" for testing.
I got a "SIR - DON'T DO THAT. YOU CAN'T TAKE PICTURES". I have 2 seconds of it on my phone.
I completely understand confidentiality and put my phone away instantly when I was commanded to do as such.

[seahawk]

Article about how South Korea handled the virus outbreak. It's an NYTimes article that you can read for free on the Times site, but you have to sign up.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ho ... spartandhp

[Deleted User 89]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... us/608395/

[Shirley]

A mother who was infected with the coronavirus couldn’t smell her baby’s full diaper. Cooks who can usually name every spice in a restaurant dish can’t smell curry or garlic, and food tastes bland. Others say they can’t pick up the sweet scent of shampoo or the foul odor of kitty litter.

Anosmia, the loss of sense of smell, and ageusia, an accompanying diminished sense of taste, have emerged as peculiar telltale signs of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and possible markers of infection.

On Friday, British ear, nose and throat doctors, citing reports from colleagues around the world, called on adults who lose their senses of smell to isolate themselves for seven days, even if they have no other symptoms, to slow the disease’s spread. The published data is limited, but doctors are concerned enough to raise warnings.

“We really want to raise awareness that this is a sign of infection and that anyone who develops loss of sense of smell should self-isolate,” Prof. Claire Hopkins, president of the British Rhinological Society, wrote in an email. “It could contribute to slowing transmission and save lives.”

[...]

[Shirley]

Nationwide lockdowns work?

[Deleted User 89]

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/artic ... o-78-cases

[Deleted User 89]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2 ... nity-work/

[jfish26]

Nationwide lockdowns work?

A smart path for establishing when we can go back to work is tying it to declining death rates (whether measured directly, or whether by days-to-doubled).

[HouseDivided]

Nationwide lockdowns work?

A smart path for establishing when we can go back to work is tying it to declining death rates (whether measured directly, or whether by days-to-doubled).

Sure they work. They also destroy mental health and there will be no economy to come back to. Seems like there's gotta be a reasonable middle ground somewhere.

[jfish26]

I'm not sure I can even engage where a basic premise of the "get back to work" line of thinking is that we will somehow avoid a depression if we just let 1-2% of the US population - 3,500,000 to 7,000,000 people! - die.

[DCHawk1]

I'm not sure I can even engage where a basic premise of the "get back to work" line of thinking is that we will somehow avoid a depression if we just let 1-2% of the US population - 3,500,000 to 7,000,000 people! - die.

You don't really believe that's what is being advocated by sane people, though, right?

[jfish26]

I'm not sure I can even engage where a basic premise of the "get back to work" line of thinking is that we will somehow avoid a depression if we just let 1-2% of the US population - 3,500,000 to 7,000,000 people! - die.

You don't really believe that's what is being advocated by sane people, though, right?

What defines "sane" in this context? And are you comfortable saying that a person who can be goaded into this sort of thing is himself sane?

[DCHawk1]

OK. Who has said we should sacrifice up to 7 million people for the economy?

[jfish26]

The coronavirus pandemic has made Trump's psychiatric issues clear. We should remove him for our own safety

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/tr ... 21441.html

“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were—they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” an intelligence official recently said about the lack of mobilization around the now deadly coronavirus pandemic.


His behavior is exactly of what we expect of someone who is dangerously lacking in mental capacity. Just when surveillance was needed, he was more preoccupied with “keeping the numbers low” than testing and containment. And when behavioral change would decide the scale of the eventual calamity, he defiantly appeared in crowds, shaking hands and touching surfaces all the more.


As his rallies were canceled, he used daily press conferences for his emotional compulsion to create a desired, alternative reality, through delusional-level distortion and misinformation, rather than working to save lives. The pandemic makes stark the deadliness of his symptoms, and if we believe those around him will be able to contain or go around them, we are mistaken.

[...]

Normal choices are flexible, adaptable, and life-affirming. Pathology is rigid, stereotypical, and follows very closely other cases of disease. No matter the immediate, accidental advantages — which the president calls his “gut”, when they are actually symptoms — the course is destructive: whether we look at healthcare, domestic tranquility, global security, pandemic preparedness, or an artificially bloated economy, pathological decisions have one eventual trajectory. It is the definition of disease.

As the death toll from coronavirus mounts, we have a decision to make. We have learned from the pandemic that prevention is key. A leadership worse than its absence can mean the difference between a contained outbreak and a catastrophe.


There will be many more critical junctures in not just the coming months but days and even hours as the crisis deepens. A president’s mental incapacity, at this level of severity, is not an issue that non-experts can grasp or handle. Whether it is impeachment, the 25th Amendment, or an ultimatum on resignation is for the politicians to decide, but our prescription is removal. It is a prescription for survival.

[jfish26]

OK. Who has said we should sacrifice up to 7 million people for the economy?

The Lieutenant Governor of our second most populated state, for one.

[Shirley]

Nationwide lockdowns work?

A smart path for establishing when we can go back to work is tying it to declining death rates (whether measured directly, or whether by days-to-doubled).

Sure they work. They also destroy mental health and there will be no economy to come back to. Seems like there's gotta be a reasonable middle ground somewhere.

Psych, you sound like the voice of lockdown experience.

But even a lockdown isn't a guarantee.

[DCHawk1]

Ah, yes. Brandy Lee.

Who has made a mint violating professional norms and standards.

In order to get the guy whose greatest crime is violating norms and standards.

She's right, though, about this episode exposing psychiatric illnesses.

Just not sure she has the right patient.

[Geezer]

almost 8,000 new cases so far today and another 114 dead

4:09 9100+ new cases and 132 new dead

[Deleted User 307]

almost 8,000 new cases so far today and another 114 dead

Dow is up 9.6%.Thanks to all the grandparents sacrificing for our indices

[DCHawk1]

OK. Who has said we should sacrifice up to 7 million people for the economy?

The Lieutenant Governor of our second most populated state, for one.

Well, for starters, he was who I intended to weed out with my initial qualifiers.

But also, that's not what he said.


There are problems with the model used in the Imperial College report, I'll concede. But since that seems to be the current gold standard (informing both Boris Johnson and, to a lesser extent Trump/Pence), I'll use it to address the situation as it currently exists. That report gives us three options: do nothing, do something (mitigation), and do everything (suppression).

If we mitigate, then according to the report, the expected death toll in this country is 1.1 million people. Not good.

If we suppress, however, that total drops significantly. The catch is that full-scale suppression would require severe measures -- closures, curfews, social distancing, work from home, etc. -- to remain in effect for 18 months (with a month off, here and there).

Now, to the best of my knowledge, you're not advocating suppression for 18 months. You don't believe that we could survive shutting down the world like that for that length of time, do you? In fact, to the best of my knowledge, NO ONE is advocating that. So, if you and I were arguing about which plan is superior, and I insisted that that ANY alternative to doing what I want to do is tantamount to long-term suppression -- WHICH, AGAIN, WOULD ISOLATE US ALL FOR 18 MONTHS! -- that would be ridiculous. That would be a textbook strawman argument.

As for the third option -- the IC report's "do nothing" strategy -- it suggests a death toll in the US of 2.2 million people -- so...significantly fewer than 7 million -- and even significantly less than 3.5 million

But here as well, NO ONE is advocating doing nothing, which means that even the worst case scenario -- 2.2 million dead -- is also a strawman argument.

Both sides in this -- the super-Trumpers and the super-Resistors -- are using worst-case scenarios advocated by NO ONE to make the other side look ridiculous. And it's both tiresome and distracting.

Additionally, the ideas that are being attributed to Trump -- end suppression and move to mitigation -- are the same ideas being advocated by almost everyone, just on different timelines. There is nothing inherently radical in what he is contemplating, except his schedule. In fact, his thoughts and proposed plans very much follow the patterns set forth by Nassim Taleb in his (very good) deconstruction of the Imperial College model.

Trump's problems here are twofold: first, he doesn't have the sense not to talk about ending suppression before the full brunt of the pandemic has hit. That's dumb, but what else is new. Second, his opponents are, both wittingly and unwittingly (because of their own issues), distorting what he has and has not said -- about suppression, about fish tank cleaner, about everything.