Coronavirus

[dougthonus]

I still see a huge number of unknowns:
- Is the quarantining and social distancing working? Logic says that it has to be but Italy has been doing it for weeks and their situation seems to continue to deteriorate.
- Once we get past the initial surge, then what? Are we just going to keep the country locked down for 6 months? Will this die out? Is there some type of treatment or vaccine around the corner that can radically mitigate this?
- We still really don't know how rapidly the virus spreads and how severe it is. IMO, the data is still bad. You outright can't trust the Chinese and most of the rest of the world is rationing tests.

The economic situation is rapidly deteriorating. A $2T stimulus isn't doing bunk in the face of this. This is really uncharted territory from an economic standpoint. We are sitting on a mountain of debt in the private sector and most people stopped doing anything of value or spending discretionary income. I wouldn't be surprised if our day to day GDP wasn't down 35%. No one is buying anything of value, going out to restaurants or taking trips. The energy sector got nuked. Its basically just food and other consumer goods, defense spending, other government spending and medical.

This touches with my main problem about the social distancing plan. What is the end game here?

A vaccine is likely a year away for safety reasons, and if you try to flatten the curve, you will have to stay in this social distancing mode for that long unless you can completely wipe it out. Society will absolutely break down if you try to keep this up for that long.

If you thought social distancing until say April 15th would solve this problem, then sure, I'm all in, but there's really absolutely no reason to think that will do anything except slow it for a bit and the moment you stop, you're right back where you started a month later.

If you are trying to prevent the most economic impact while not causing lack of life then the ideal would be to flatten the curve enough that hospitals are always operating at maximum capacity, so that you don't make the duration too long.

[DuckIII]

If that's true, then the cost/benefit analysis of shutting down the entire economy shifts as there may be narrower, more targeted ways that still allow people to work and make a living.

That’s not what’s happening. Have you read Pritzker’s order word for word? I have about a dozen times. I had to deep dive it for work. It is “targeted” and was clearly given a significant amount of thought. It is nuanced. It is balanced. It has huge and varied exceptions. Not to mention those that can work at home.

You are just burning the same “panic” straw man as Breitbart Guy.

Are you serious, Duck? Have you seen the economic projections?

Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, says the economy is assured of a recession — at least two consecutive quarters of economic decline — with output falling 0.4 percent in the first quarter and 12 percent in the second. That would be the biggest quarterly contraction on record, but Goldman Sachs upped the ante on Friday, saying it expected a 24 percent drop in the second quarter.

“This is not just a blip,” Mr. Daco said of the outlook. “We’ve never experienced something like this.”

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims jumped 30 percent the previous week, to 281,000, the highest level since the aftermath of a hurricane in 2017. But even that number looks tiny next to the number of new claims that Goldman Sachs foresees in the next weekly report: 2.25 million.

That's from the NY Times. Is that left wing enough for you? Or, let me guess, some guy at Goldman Sachs once took a picture with a Breitbart writer 10 years ago, so this is all far-right conspiracy?

And yes, I've read Pritzker's order. And I also live in Chicago and have seen what has happened prior to the order taking effect. Chicago is virtually empty now. If this continues for another few weeks, there will be a massive loss of jobs and small businesses.

Nowhere did I say there would not be dire economic consequences. I absolutely believe there will be. Including specifically the type you mention.

Perhaps even much worse if we did less to stem the tide of the virus. But we don’t have the luxury of testing different models. It is most logical to defer to caution when dealing with unique high risk circumstances.

And the flip side to your coin is I live in a very rural area with a small base on which local businesses rely. I am certain some will not survive even with federal financial intervention.

And I don’t need my sources to be “left wing.” But I do need them to not be from the right wing lunatic fringe.

[Mech Engineer]

I'm thinking if the government should pay volunteers in their 20s, 30s to get exposed and get immune. After 3 weeks, these people can start working in all kinds of services and slowly restarting the economy. That way you keep buying more time for a cure or a vaccine.

[Bandit King]

There is no cure for the virus not even the flu! Vaccine is still year and half away even if they make one!

[DuckIII]

I still see a huge number of unknowns:
- Is the quarantining and social distancing working? Logic says that it has to be but Italy has been doing it for weeks and their situation seems to continue to deteriorate.
- Once we get past the initial surge, then what? Are we just going to keep the country locked down for 6 months? Will this die out? Is there some type of treatment or vaccine around the corner that can radically mitigate this?
- We still really don't know how rapidly the virus spreads and how severe it is. IMO, the data is still bad. You outright can't trust the Chinese and most of the rest of the world is rationing tests.

The economic situation is rapidly deteriorating. A $2T stimulus isn't doing bunk in the face of this. This is really uncharted territory from an economic standpoint. We are sitting on a mountain of debt in the private sector and most people stopped doing anything of value or spending discretionary income. I wouldn't be surprised if our day to day GDP wasn't down 35%. No one is buying anything of value, going out to restaurants or taking trips. The energy sector got nuked. Its basically just food and other consumer goods, defense spending, other government spending and medical.

This touches with my main problem about the social distancing plan. What is the end game here?

A vaccine is likely a year away for safety reasons, and if you try to flatten the curve, you will have to stay in this social distancing mode for that long unless you can completely wipe it out. Society will absolutely break down if you try to keep this up for that long.

If you thought social distancing until say April 15th would solve this problem, then sure, I'm all in, but there's really absolutely no reason to think that will do anything except slow it for a bit and the moment you stop, you're right back where you started a month later.

If you are trying to prevent the most economic impact while not causing lack of life then the ideal would be to flatten the curve enough that hospitals are always operating at maximum capacity, so that you don't make the duration too long.

So what is your alternative suggestion? This is a temporary measure so we can slow the spread while we increase testing and accumulate data on which to make subsequent decisions. I see a lot of complaining for complaint’s sake with absolutely no logically suggested alternative other than “do something less and hope for the best!”

As Dr. Fauci said, though it hardly needed saying:

"Some may look at [safety measures] and say they're going to be really inconvenient for people. Some will look and say, well, maybe we've gone a little bit too far? They were well thought out," he said. “I'll say it over and over again -- when you're dealing with an emerging infectious diseases outbreak, you are always behind where you think you are."

[rapstarter]

If you are trying to prevent the most economic impact while not causing lack of life then the ideal would be to flatten the curve enough that hospitals are always operating at maximum capacity, so that you don't make the duration too long.

I think that's the most logical option, but the difficulty will be with execution because our data won't be particularly credible due to low level of testing. It will be tough for the government to tell people to go back to their normal lives when they don't know just how many will be vulnerable again. Ultimately we will need the vaccine.

[whonka]

If that's true, then the cost/benefit analysis of shutting down the entire economy shifts as there may be narrower, more targeted ways that still allow people to work and make a living.

That’s not what’s happening. Have you read Pritzker’s order word for word? I have about a dozen times. I had to deep dive it for work. It is “targeted” and was clearly given a significant amount of thought. It is nuanced. It is balanced. It has huge and varied exceptions. Not to mention those that can work at home.

You are just burning the same “panic” straw man as Breitbart Guy.

Are you serious, Duck? Have you seen the economic projections?

Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, says the economy is assured of a recession — at least two consecutive quarters of economic decline — with output falling 0.4 percent in the first quarter and 12 percent in the second. That would be the biggest quarterly contraction on record, but Goldman Sachs upped the ante on Friday, saying it expected a 24 percent drop in the second quarter.

“This is not just a blip,” Mr. Daco said of the outlook. “We’ve never experienced something like this.”

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims jumped 30 percent the previous week, to 281,000, the highest level since the aftermath of a hurricane in 2017. But even that number looks tiny next to the number of new claims that Goldman Sachs foresees in the next weekly report: 2.25 million.

That's from the NY Times. Is that left wing enough for you? Or, let me guess, some guy at Goldman Sachs once took a picture with a Breitbart writer 10 years ago, so this is all far-right conspiracy?

And yes, I've read Pritzker's order. And I also live in Chicago and have seen what has happened prior to the order taking effect. Chicago is virtually empty now. If this continues for another few weeks, there will be a massive loss of jobs and small businesses.

All I can say as a front line medical worker seeing the deluge, your tune will likely change once you or someone you know is struggling to breath with no ICU beds available. How about arguing economic impact at that time?

[DuckIII]

That’s not what’s happening. Have you read Pritzker’s order word for word? I have about a dozen times. I had to deep dive it for work. It is “targeted” and was clearly given a significant amount of thought. It is nuanced. It is balanced. It has huge and varied exceptions. Not to mention those that can work at home.

You are just burning the same “panic” straw man as Breitbart Guy.

Are you serious, Duck? Have you seen the economic projections?

Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, says the economy is assured of a recession — at least two consecutive quarters of economic decline — with output falling 0.4 percent in the first quarter and 12 percent in the second. That would be the biggest quarterly contraction on record, but Goldman Sachs upped the ante on Friday, saying it expected a 24 percent drop in the second quarter.

“This is not just a blip,” Mr. Daco said of the outlook. “We’ve never experienced something like this.”

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims jumped 30 percent the previous week, to 281,000, the highest level since the aftermath of a hurricane in 2017. But even that number looks tiny next to the number of new claims that Goldman Sachs foresees in the next weekly report: 2.25 million.

That's from the NY Times. Is that left wing enough for you? Or, let me guess, some guy at Goldman Sachs once took a picture with a Breitbart writer 10 years ago, so this is all far-right conspiracy?

And yes, I've read Pritzker's order. And I also live in Chicago and have seen what has happened prior to the order taking effect. Chicago is virtually empty now. If this continues for another few weeks, there will be a massive loss of jobs and small businesses.

All I can say as a front line medical worker seeing the deluge, your tune will likely change once you or someone you know is struggling to breath with no ICU beds available. How about arguing economic impact at that time?

Or imagine what the consequential economic devastation will look like in Italy?

It requires huge logical gaps to argue that the wise step today is to take the virus less seriously than we are. There is no one in the medical/infectious disease community advocating that view. Maybe we should listen to them?

[HomoSapien]

My wife and I just found out she’s pregnant...

Congratulations!

On a side note, as this is in the coronavirus thread, have I missed something?

I posted it in here because this is just the absolute scariest time for this to be happening. She’s now severely at risk and no one knows yet what affect covid-19 could have on a new born.

[coldfish]

I still see a huge number of unknowns:
- Is the quarantining and social distancing working? Logic says that it has to be but Italy has been doing it for weeks and their situation seems to continue to deteriorate.
- Once we get past the initial surge, then what? Are we just going to keep the country locked down for 6 months? Will this die out? Is there some type of treatment or vaccine around the corner that can radically mitigate this?
- We still really don't know how rapidly the virus spreads and how severe it is. IMO, the data is still bad. You outright can't trust the Chinese and most of the rest of the world is rationing tests.

The economic situation is rapidly deteriorating. A $2T stimulus isn't doing bunk in the face of this. This is really uncharted territory from an economic standpoint. We are sitting on a mountain of debt in the private sector and most people stopped doing anything of value or spending discretionary income. I wouldn't be surprised if our day to day GDP wasn't down 35%. No one is buying anything of value, going out to restaurants or taking trips. The energy sector got nuked. Its basically just food and other consumer goods, defense spending, other government spending and medical.

This touches with my main problem about the social distancing plan. What is the end game here?

A vaccine is likely a year away for safety reasons, and if you try to flatten the curve, you will have to stay in this social distancing mode for that long unless you can completely wipe it out. Society will absolutely break down if you try to keep this up for that long.

If you thought social distancing until say April 15th would solve this problem, then sure, I'm all in, but there's really absolutely no reason to think that will do anything except slow it for a bit and the moment you stop, you're right back where you started a month later.

If you are trying to prevent the most economic impact while not causing lack of life then the ideal would be to flatten the curve enough that hospitals are always operating at maximum capacity, so that you don't make the duration too long.

There is a pretty clear example here and its not good. The Chinese basically completely shut down Wuhan in late January. Its been now two months and the virus may be under control but the economic situation has not got back to normal and it doesn't look to any time soon. There is good reason to believe it would take right back off if the curtain lifted and they tried to go back to normal.

Our shutdown is nowhere near as thorough as theirs. No way this works in the US. Like, there is no chance.

IMO, people are going to figure this out soon. I think that the rational plan is overwhelming fast testing. Like, anyone who wants it can get a test in a few minutes and results shortly after. If they have it, they get a check from the government and a requirement to stay at home for two weeks.

We are a few weeks away from being able to pull that off.

[coldfish]

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

Sums up my feelings.

[League Circles]

My wife and I just found out she’s pregnant...

Congratulations!

On a side note, as this is in the coronavirus thread, have I missed something?

I posted it in here because this is just the absolute scariest time for this to be happening. She’s now severely at risk and no one knows yet what affect covid-19 could have on a new born.

Yes, extremely scary. Nonetheless, a great blessing. Congratulations! Hopefully she's early enough along such that by the time she's due, we're somewhat back to normal especially the hospital system.

[samwana]

My wife and I just found out she’s pregnant...

Congratulations!

On a side note, as this is in the coronavirus thread, have I missed something?

I posted it in here because this is just the absolute scariest time for this to be happening. She’s now severely at risk and no one knows yet what affect covid-19 could have on a new born.

Congratulations to you and your wife HS enjoy the time despite everything around you going crazy. Let them be and concentrate on happiness and excitement. That's the best medicine around. Try to eat healthy and lots of different meals and I think the little one will do just fine. Try to avoid vaccine during pregnancy as much as you can, because it isn't clear what vaccine do to unborns.

Stay healthy and happy!

Sent from my POT-LX1 using RealGM mobile app

[League Circles]

I think the medium term will have to be maximal isolation. Everyone who can work from home or everyone whose job is not currently needed will have to be an isolation for probably nine months or something like that.

[samwana]

That’s not what’s happening. Have you read Pritzker’s order word for word? I have about a dozen times. I had to deep dive it for work. It is “targeted” and was clearly given a significant amount of thought. It is nuanced. It is balanced. It has huge and varied exceptions. Not to mention those that can work at home.

You are just burning the same “panic” straw man as Breitbart Guy.

Are you serious, Duck? Have you seen the economic projections?

Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, says the economy is assured of a recession — at least two consecutive quarters of economic decline — with output falling 0.4 percent in the first quarter and 12 percent in the second. That would be the biggest quarterly contraction on record, but Goldman Sachs upped the ante on Friday, saying it expected a 24 percent drop in the second quarter.

“This is not just a blip,” Mr. Daco said of the outlook. “We’ve never experienced something like this.”

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims jumped 30 percent the previous week, to 281,000, the highest level since the aftermath of a hurricane in 2017. But even that number looks tiny next to the number of new claims that Goldman Sachs foresees in the next weekly report: 2.25 million.

That's from the NY Times. Is that left wing enough for you? Or, let me guess, some guy at Goldman Sachs once took a picture with a Breitbart writer 10 years ago, so this is all far-right conspiracy?

And yes, I've read Pritzker's order. And I also live in Chicago and have seen what has happened prior to the order taking effect. Chicago is virtually empty now. If this continues for another few weeks, there will be a massive loss of jobs and small businesses.

All I can say as a front line medical worker seeing the deluge, your tune will likely change once you or someone you know is struggling to breath with no ICU beds available. How about arguing economic impact at that time?

Do you see sick people that have only Corona or do most of them have other problems and Corona on top?

Sent from my POT-LX1 using RealGM mobile app

[moorhosj]

I posted it in here because this is just the absolute scariest time for this to be happening. She’s now severely at risk and no one knows yet what affect covid-19 could have on a new born.

My wife is eight weeks pregnant. It is scary how little is known about the effects on the pregnant mother or the fetus. Just thinking about going to our first Dr visit on Thursday is un-nerving.

That said, CONGRATULATIONS!! Stay safe, stay sane and you will come out of this with the greatest gift you could ever imagine.

[dougthonus]

So what is your alternative suggestion? This is a temporary measure so we can slow the spread while we increase testing and accumulate data on which to make subsequent decisions. I see a lot of complaining for complaint’s sake with absolutely no logically suggested alternative other than “do something less and hope for the best!”

The alternative is to let the virus go and deal with the consequences as best you can, which might be extremely poorly and result in 2 million people dying.

If we don't learn something that puts us fundamentally in a better position to treat this without social distancing in the next two months then the social distancing decision will have been an unmitigated disaster and probably the worst thing we could do.

Because then, you will be faced with two choices:
1: Continue social distancing. By 6 months of social distancing, you will probably in a national state of emergency with military control all over the nation to attempt to stop riots. You will probably end up with unemployment levels higher than the great depression and cause the complete economic collapse of the country.

2: Stop social distancing. Now instead of causing complete economic collapse, you've just caused a great recession, but you are also now going to see the virus do the exact same thing it would have done had you not social distanced at all, because you won't have flattened the curve, you will have just pushed the peak of the curve out by 2 months.

We have chosen a tactic that is only going to work if we're willing to go all in at it for a year or if we are able to learn something over the time we're doing it that puts us in a fundamentally better place. To take that gamble on new information coming, we've likely caused a global recession already. To take the gamble on going all in to really flatten the curve, we will probably cause the meltdown of the entire global economy and widespread loss of standard of living.

It's a difficult situation, and I am not pretending it's not. There are hard choices to make here.

"Some may look at [safety measures] and say they're going to be really inconvenient for people. Some will look and say, well, maybe we've gone a little bit too far? They were well thought out," he said. “I'll say it over and over again -- when you're dealing with an emerging infectious diseases outbreak, you are always behind where you think you are."

For someone whom thinks that we're understating the impact of the virus, he sure understates the impact of social distancing on society. "Inconvenient" is not a word I'd use to describe creating the worst economic conditions in the country since the great depression with upside to be the worst in the history of our nation. We're not there yet, but it sure looks likely that we're headed there.

Many people are very convinced about the damage the virus will do, but seem blissfully unaware of the damage social distancing will do if we have to remain on this path for any length of time.

[Nikola]

I posted it in here because this is just the absolute scariest time for this to be happening. She’s now severely at risk and no one knows yet what affect covid-19 could have on a new born.

My wife is eight weeks pregnant. It is scary how little is known about the effects on the pregnant mother or the fetus. Just thinking about going to our first Dr visit on Thursday is un-nerving.

That said, CONGRATULATIONS!! Stay safe, stay sane and you will come out of this with the greatest gift you could ever imagine.

There is a lot of contradictory information out there. But hopefully this article is right. Says pregnant women do not pass it to the baby and are not considered more at risk.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/coronavirus-may-less-harmful-for-children-pregnant-women

[DuckIII]

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

Sums up my feelings.

Weird article. What he says all the way to the end makes sense - we don’t have adequate testing or data to really know what is going on or what is the best course of action. Anyone who has been following the virus knows and accepts this reality.

Where he gets completely off the rails is at the end when he starts suggesting lockdowns and hard line social distancing is akin to jumping off a cliff without adequate decision making data. That is utter nonsense and is actually backwards.

The lockdowns and social distancing mandates are temporary caution induced measures to hopefully buy us more time to accumulate this much needed data so that we can make better informed long term decisions. It is the opposite of jumping off a cliff. Once you jump off a cliff you just fall. You cannot reverse course, and instead just pick up speed until you terminate. Here, we can reverse course and undo lockdown and social distancing guidelines if the increasingly accumulated data suggests we should.

Ironically, it’s the contrary approach that is akin to jumping off a cliff. If you do not take steps to slow the spread while data is accumulated, you cannot undo the spread that occurs during that time. You just pick up speed. The toothpaste does not go back in the tube.

I realize the data can be attributed to numerous things, but look at the respective data between Kentucky and Tennessee. Border states which took completely opposite approaches (KY cautiously preemptive minded and TN business as usual minded), seeing the reported cases spread in very different ways.

[whonka]

Are you serious, Duck? Have you seen the economic projections?





That's from the NY Times. Is that left wing enough for you? Or, let me guess, some guy at Goldman Sachs once took a picture with a Breitbart writer 10 years ago, so this is all far-right conspiracy?

And yes, I've read Pritzker's order. And I also live in Chicago and have seen what has happened prior to the order taking effect. Chicago is virtually empty now. If this continues for another few weeks, there will be a massive loss of jobs and small businesses.

All I can say as a front line medical worker seeing the deluge, your tune will likely change once you or someone you know is struggling to breath with no ICU beds available. How about arguing economic impact at that time?

Do you see sick people that have only Corona or do most of them have other problems and Corona on top?

Sent from my POT-LX1 using RealGM mobile app

Most are older and with comorbid conditions. But there are a small number of younger or no comorbidities who get severely ill as well. Risk is lower in these people, but definitely not zero and it’s scary.