Kansas Crimson

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 4:16 pm

Feral wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 4:11 pm

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 3:25 pm Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they have been wrong almost every step of the way. As they have been predicting Worse case scenario the whole time. I’m glad they are wrong almost all the time.

MIchhawk, do you remember that this is a "new" virus, one that's related to viruses we know, but with properties that we can't begin to know, because it appears we've never seen it before?

The models that the "the elites" have been trying to construct in order to attempt to make predictions, predictions we're all eager for, are full of variables, unknown variables, when the pandemic started. Here's a partial list:
Transmission:

How is it spread?
Is it spread by asymptomatic people?
Is it spread by blood?
Aerosol?
Saliva?
Semen?
Fecal to oral?
Cough?
Sneeze?
Regular conversation?
Inanimate objects?
How long does it live on those objects?
What's the incubation period? How in the world can you give people efficacious advice if we don't know the time between exposure to the virus and when you become infectious?

And here's a variable for you: How compliant will over 300 million people in the US be with the public health recommendations? Because this variable has everything to do with the rate of transmission.

etc.

Right. And now, thanks to elitist assholes, we have the answers to many if these questions.

The big questions are things like the last one.

Geezer wrote: ↑Sat Feb 08, 2020 9:33 pm In a world of 7 billion people this is still pretty insignificant.

Geezer wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 7:39 pmOn Feb. 8?

Feral wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 4:11 pm

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 3:25 pm Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they have been wrong almost every step of the way. As they have been predicting Worse case scenario the whole time. I’m glad they are wrong almost all the time.

MIchhawk, do you remember that this is a "new" virus, one that's related to viruses we know, but with properties that we can't begin to know, because it appears we've never seen it before?

The models that the "the elites" have been trying to construct in order to attempt to make predictions, predictions we're all eager for, are full of variables, unknown variables, when the pandemic started. Here's a partial list:
Transmission:

How is it spread?
Is it spread by asymptomatic people?
Is it spread by blood?
Aerosol?
Saliva?
Semen?
Fecal to oral?
Cough?
Sneeze?
Regular conversation?
Inanimate objects?
How long does it live on those objects?
What's the incubation period? How in the world can you give people efficacious advice if we don't know the time between exposure to the virus and when you become infectious?

And here's a variable for you: How compliant will over 300 million people in the US be with the public health recommendations? Because this variable has everything to do with the rate of transmission.

etc.

Geezer wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 1:59 pm

Feral wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:28 pm

We don’t have a president, or a plan. 60 days into the coronavirus crisis, the White House does not have a plan, a framework, a philosophy, or a goal.

Here’s the truth: Lockdown is economically ruinous, and America can’t sustain it from now until a vaccine. And you don’t have to take it from me. “You can’t be in lockdown for 18 months,” says Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “We’ll destroy society as we know it, and we don’t know what we’ll accomplish with it.”

But this is also the truth: Reopening without a way to control the coronavirus will be lethal to both human life and economic growth, as an escalating death toll will force states back into lockdown. “We can’t just let the virus go,” Osterholm says. “Lots of people will die and it’ll shut down our health system, not just for Covid patients, but for anyone with a health problem.

“What we need,” he continues, “is a plan.”

It is shocking. More than 60 days after President Trump declared a national emergency over the novel coronavirus, there is still no clear national plan for what comes next. “The lockdown is not meant to be a permanent state of affairs; it’s intended to be a giant pause button that buys you time to get ready for the next phase,” Jeremy Konyndyk, of the Center for Global Development think tank, says.

But the Trump administration wasted the pause. Over the past two months, the US should have built the testing, contact tracing, and quarantine infrastructure necessary to safely end lockdown and transition back to normalcy — as many of its peer countries did. Instead, Trump has substituted showmanship for action, playing the president on TV but refusing to do the actual job. He has both dominated the airwaves and abdicated his duties. As a result, America’s progress against the coronavirus has stalled, even as the lockdown has driven the economy into crisis.


I am more sympathetic than some to the protesters, and others, who want to see states reopen, who believe the cost of lockdown overwhelms the apparent benefits. The economic agony is real, and they have been given no way to imagine its end, no clear understanding of the purpose behind their sacrifice. But the awful choice they feel we face — between endless lockdown or reckless reopening — needs to be understood for what it is: the failure of our political leaders to create a safer, middle path.

“What we want to avoid in the reopening process is creating the conditions that led to us having to stay home in the first place,” writes Caitlin Rivers of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. That was the Trump administration’s job — either they needed to do it or they needed to support and empower the states to do it.

They have failed. It is the most profound and complete failure of presidential leadership in modern history.

[...]

TraditionKU wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 5:16 pm if only it were that simple

Feral wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:28 pm

We don’t have a president, or a plan. 60 days into the coronavirus crisis, the White House does not have a plan, a framework, a philosophy, or a goal.

Forget a plan. There isn’t even a goal.

It is, in truth, incoherence all the way down. And I do mean all the way.

As my colleague Matthew Yglesias has argued, the White House — and thus the country — has not even chosen a goal. The Trump administration has never decided whether the aim is “mitigation,” in which we slow the virus’s spread so the health system doesn’t get overwhelmed, or “suppression,” in which we try to eradicate the virus so as to save lives. It is possible, as Thomas Friedman writes, that the US is actually pursuing neither goal; instead, officials are following Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the virus, and Trump “just hasn’t told the country or his coronavirus task force or maybe even himself.”

This, then, is the state of things: The White House does not have a plan, it does not have a framework, it does not have a philosophy, and it does not have a goal. That is not because these things are impossible. At this point, there are dozens of plans floating around and dozens of governments offering models it could choose from. Germany’s response has been a success, and I’m sure officials would share the lessons they’ve learned. In South Korea, professional baseball is restarting, and in Taiwan, there have been about a dozen new Covid-19 cases in the month of May so far.

It is not that the president is doing the wrong thing — he is doing basically nothing. But he has combined a substantive passivity with a showman’s desire to dominate the narrative and a political street fighter’s obsession with settling scores, so he is making the job of governors and mayors harder, neither giving them what they need to beat the virus nor leaving them to make their own decisions free from his interference and criticism.


They have failed. It is the most profound and complete failure of presidential leadership in modern history.

[...]

Feral wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 12:56 pm Today In: smfh, or, the plural of anecdote (still) isn't data.

an·ec·do·tal

/ˌanəkˈdōdl/
adjective

(of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.

"while there was much anecdotal evidence there was little hard fact"

Imagine you have the credentials and everything to offer that Dr. Bright does, and a physician/member of congress confronts you with this: