Semi-OT: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[NBAFan93]

Interesting. Guess they did some autopsies and found covid deaths in CA 3 weeks earlier than what was thought of as the first US death.

https://news.yahoo.com/autopsies-reveal-first-confirmed-u-042339932.html

I really wonder if there were more in New York earlier too seeing how infected the city eventually became.

[Topofthekey]

This isn't a Trump issue when it comes to America's response. Everyone was caught with their pants down. Heck, Fauci himself said he wasn't overly concerned towards the end of February. Part of that can be blamed on the lack of transparency coming out of Wuhan.

Again, how do you explain the way most Asian countries handled it?

For example, Singapore. Here is an interview with a virologist from Singapore, on January 21st

He confirmed that human to human transmission was happening. He also described the stringent checks being set up in Wuhan

(source: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/21/798088813/coronavirus-in-china-spreads-by-human-to-human-transmission)

On January 23rd, Singapore recorded its first case, and immediately started contact tracing and testing

Did the lack of transparency not affect them as well?

[BadMofoPimp]

It was WELL known that this was a major deal and coming honestly by min jan, but certainly by the end of it. Worse is that it had been brought up that this kind of thing was more likely that not and that the US wasn't ready. It's not political to be critical of government's when they aren't ready for disasters, especially ones they absolutely should have been aware of, not months but years prior. There's no excuse for the US to have not restrocked masks from the last event that happened under the prior administration. This isn't some budget destroying expense. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone should get criticized at some point, that's just part of life and being in leadership. This was a big screw up and it seems the US is still playing catch up.

I remember mid to late January up into February very well. Nobody was thinking the Virus was a big deal including the Who. Mainly because, the Chinese Government was declaring it was no big deal and they had it under control. But now, mass media will make it like we knew all along that a disaster was coming, but I remember well, the news wasn't saying jack back the nor a single world leader of any impending worldwide disaster.

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19

By mid January the WHO had made it clear that this could be a much wider outbreak. By the end of January they had a consensus that this was serous. Hell by the end of January we were talking about stocking up toilet paper....i thought that was a bit crazy but it seems I was wrong there, lol.

So not sure what you were reading or seeing, but the general public certainly knew this was at the VERY least concerning and if the federal government wasn't WELL into researching how prepared they were for this, well that's absolutely a massive failing of leadership. Leadership should be acting BEFORE a crisis, especially on the supply chain and defense side.

I am sorry, but I do recall nobody panicking or freaking out in January. It must be easy in hindsite to think that now, but I saw nobody freaking out and there was plenty of TP in the stores. TP didn't start disappearing til mid to late February.

[BadMofoPimp]

This isn't a Trump issue when it comes to America's response. Everyone was caught with their pants down. Heck, Fauci himself said he wasn't overly concerned towards the end of February. Part of that can be blamed on the lack of transparency coming out of Wuhan.

Again, how do you explain the way most Asian countries handled it?

For example, Singapore. Here is an interview with a virologist from Singapore, on January 21st

He confirmed that human to human transmission was happening. He also described the stringent checks being set up in Wuhan

(source: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/21/798088813/coronavirus-in-china-spreads-by-human-to-human-transmission)

On January 23rd, Singapore recorded its first case, and immediately started contact tracing and testing

Did the lack of transparency not affect them as well?

And still, even though that may have happened, the entire rest of the world wasn't panicking or thinking this was going to be any worse than it became.

[Fairview4Life]

And still, even though that may have happened, the entire rest of the world wasn't panicking or thinking this was going to be any worse than it became.

It turns out being prepared and having competent leadership you can trust keeps people from panicking.

[Liminy]

I'm not sure what is wrong with posting about how the virus might have come from the lab. I think that is pretty legitimate question at this point and frankly their are still so many things that we don't know about how it started and what really happened in Wuhan. Here is one source that I think is worthwhile to look into.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/documentary-tracking-down-the-origin-of-wuhan-coronavirus_3313091.html

I can’t read that article but will take the evidence of scientific studies published in scientific journals such as Virology by scientists who have studied/sequenced the virus and concluded that it is a virus of natural origin. If accidentally released from a lab which was experimenting with bats or bat viruses which is not impossible but well down the list of the probable imo and according to most, then it is a matter of record that the CDC summarily shut down a US virology lab in August-September 2019 for safety reasons which can prompt and has prompted an alternative conspiracy theory.

It's actually not an article but a documentary that is almost an hour long that has over 70 million views.

[DowJones]

It was WELL known that this was a major deal and coming honestly by min jan, but certainly by the end of it. Worse is that it had been brought up that this kind of thing was more likely that not and that the US wasn't ready. It's not political to be critical of government's when they aren't ready for disasters, especially ones they absolutely should have been aware of, not months but years prior. There's no excuse for the US to have not restrocked masks from the last event that happened under the prior administration. This isn't some budget destroying expense. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone should get criticized at some point, that's just part of life and being in leadership. This was a big screw up and it seems the US is still playing catch up.

Fauci didn't know it was coming. Towards the end of February he said he wasn't overly concerned. How can I rip Trump and his response when Fauci himself wasn't ringing alarm bells?

So lets assume that's true. I don't think that's the case, but lets take that. We have data showing that as far back as 2017 people were concerned about our preparation of such an event.

Now of course that's not true, he knew this was an issue just like everyone else talking to trump. Just like every medical official in the world.

Towards the end of February Fauci said that the Coronavirus threat to Americans was "minuscule" compared to the seasonal flu. This is a fact that you can easily look up. I am not saying this to rip Fauci. He is someone I trust. He is one of the best in the world at what he does. I am saying this to emphasize the point that the idea everyone knew this would hit America the way it has is nothing short of gaslighting for a political purpose.

[Fairview4Life]

The risk could have been low and it didn't have to hit the US as hard a it did, is kind of the point here.

[Liminy]

I'm not sure what is wrong with posting about how the virus might have come from the lab. I think that is pretty legitimate question at this point and frankly their are still so many things that we don't know about how it started and what really happened in Wuhan. Here is one source that I think is worthwhile to look into.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/documentary-tracking-down-the-origin-of-wuhan-coronavirus_3313091.html

You should probably understand the epoch times before using them as a source. Just do some prelim research and you'll see why they can't be used as an accurate source for just about anything, if accuracy is your main concern.

You may align politically with them (many do given how staunchly anti-ccp they are) but they're not a reliable source for any kind of real information.

You can think what you want about the Epoch Times but it would probably take more than a preliminary amount of research to find the truth because, since they are so anti-CCP, the CCP has been trying to discredit them for a long time and sometimes other major media outlets have joined in, as many of them are also influenced by the CCP. The fact is that the Epoch Times was the first news source to point out that China was lying about their numbers from the very beginning. They were also the first to report about SARS, actually before anyone else in the world new about it, they were the first to report about organ harvesting in China, nearly 15 years ago and people are finally catching on to that reality. Their reporting on organ harvesting is aspect of why they were discredited for so long, but it turns out it is all true. And probably, soon, it will become apparent to most people the virus ended up coming out of the lab in Wuhan, whether it was a naturally occurring virus, one they were researching to make vaccines or genetically modified.

[DowJones]

It was WELL known that this was a major deal and coming honestly by min jan, but certainly by the end of it. Worse is that it had been brought up that this kind of thing was more likely that not and that the US wasn't ready. It's not political to be critical of government's when they aren't ready for disasters, especially ones they absolutely should have been aware of, not months but years prior. There's no excuse for the US to have not restrocked masks from the last event that happened under the prior administration. This isn't some budget destroying expense. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone should get criticized at some point, that's just part of life and being in leadership. This was a big screw up and it seems the US is still playing catch up.

Fauci didn't know it was coming. Towards the end of February he said he wasn't overly concerned. How can I rip Trump and his response when Fauci himself wasn't ringing alarm bells?

I think we had discussion yesterday on when to open up the economy and I have suggested that observing the data and intepreting the trend will just provide us with the answers. So it seems like the number of daily deaths has increased again (4/21 - 2776 deaths) and I suppose we can at least agree that the economy cannot be open (at least not completely) until a downward trend is established, right?

I don't agree with opening the entire country back up right now. That would be insane. This is a state by state call.

[michaelm]

I'm not sure what is wrong with posting about how the virus might have come from the lab. I think that is pretty legitimate question at this point and frankly their are still so many things that we don't know about how it started and what really happened in Wuhan. Here is one source that I think is worthwhile to look into.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/documentary-tracking-down-the-origin-of-wuhan-coronavirus_3313091.html

I can’t read that article but will take the evidence of scientific studies published in scientific journals such as Virology by scientists who have studied/sequenced the virus and concluded that it is a virus of natural origin. If accidentally released from a lab which was experimenting with bats or bat viruses which is not impossible but well down the list of the probable imo and according to most, then it is a matter of record that the CDC summarily shut down a US virology lab in August-September 2019 for safety reasons which can prompt and has prompted an alternative conspiracy theory.

It's actually not an article but a documentary that is almost an hour long that has over 70 million views.

I couldn’t access it in Australia as I said. I actually have a medical degree and have been very interested in all of this, have read everything I could find on the internet for a couple of months, and have been aware of the claims and counterclaims over the origins of the virus since early March.

I am not a virologist or trained epidemiologist and even those trained in those fields seem to be mainly working in the dark with this virus, but I was trained to have, and hopefully still possess, a capacity to examine scientific/medical studies and data critically and am rather convinced by numerous publications in the scientific literature which have dismissed the virus being a manufactured virus; I believe even FOX have stepped away from that claim. As I said a laboratory origin is not impossible, but detailed in a long post earlier in this thread that I find the evidence for the virus escaping from a lab conducting experiments on bats or bat viruses circumstantial at best, with the evidence for an American lab origin not all that much less credible than the evidence for a Chinese lab origin. As I said in the previous post it is a matter of known fact that bats carry viruses that can transfer and have transferred to humans and cause serious illnesses, SARS, MERS, Hendra virus and rabies among them, naturally without any laboratory accidents. I don’t consider farming wildlife such as bats alongside domestic animals or selling wildlife in wet markets all that natural btw, and if this is the cause the Chinese need to address that obviously as they should have done after SARS which was fairly definitely of wet market origin from bats through civet cats as an intermediate host.

I read something from a Chinese virologist involved with the Wuhan lab who absolutely rejected any error at the lab concerning which she was convincing to me at least; perhaps she would say that but she attributed the outbreak to Chinese farming practices of which she disapproved and which would hardly endear her to the Chinese government either.

[michaelm]

Fauci didn't know it was coming. Towards the end of February he said he wasn't overly concerned. How can I rip Trump and his response when Fauci himself wasn't ringing alarm bells?

So lets assume that's true. I don't think that's the case, but lets take that. We have data showing that as far back as 2017 people were concerned about our preparation of such an event.

Now of course that's not true, he knew this was an issue just like everyone else talking to trump. Just like every medical official in the world.

Towards the end of February Fauci said that the Coronavirus threat to Americans was "minuscule" compared to the seasonal flu. This is a fact that you can easily look up. I am not saying this to rip Fauci. He is someone I trust. He is one of the best in the world at what he does. I am saying this to emphasize the point that the idea everyone knew this would hit America the way it has is nothing short of gaslighting for a political purpose.

An Australian doctor came back from the USA in the first week of March, had very minor URTI symptoms while there which had mainly resolved and chose to go to work, then later in the week, I think about the 5th of March, decided to get tested himself and proved positive to the corona virus necessitating testing a significant number of patients he had seen. It was fairly obvious then together with what was going on in Italy that despite it being a virus of Chinese origin just stopping flights from China wasn’t going to cut it.

[DowJones]

So lets assume that's true. I don't think that's the case, but lets take that. We have data showing that as far back as 2017 people were concerned about our preparation of such an event.

Now of course that's not true, he knew this was an issue just like everyone else talking to trump. Just like every medical official in the world.

Towards the end of February Fauci said that the Coronavirus threat to Americans was "minuscule" compared to the seasonal flu. This is a fact that you can easily look up. I am not saying this to rip Fauci. He is someone I trust. He is one of the best in the world at what he does. I am saying this to emphasize the point that the idea everyone knew this would hit America the way it has is nothing short of gaslighting for a political purpose.

An Australian doctor came back from the USA in the first week of March, had very minor URTI symptoms while there which had mainly resolved and chose to go to work, then later in the week, I think about the 5th of March, decided to get tested himself and proved positive to the corona virus necessitating testing a significant number of patients he had seen. It was fairly obvious then together with what was going on in Italy that despite it being a virus of Chinese origin just stopping flights from China wasn’t going to cut it.

On March 11th the United States placed a travel ban on Europe. That fits your timeline.

Look, I am not trying to say the United States handled this well, but we were in a VERY tough spot when you consider how the virus spread in Italy and the amount of travel in our country to and from Italy. I think our country handled the spread of the virus very well from China. It looks like all the travel between NY and Italy is what killed us. NY is also such a dense city. That combination made NY extremely vulnerable.

Australia, for example, was in a MUCH better geographic position. The virus also spread during the summer months in Australia. In the Western countries it was winter. The mistake so many make here is comparing the results in different countries without taking everything into consideration.

[BadMofoPimp]

And still, even though that may have happened, the entire rest of the world wasn't panicking or thinking this was going to be any worse than it became.

It turns out being prepared and having competent leadership you can trust keeps people from panicking.

Using those standards, I reckon France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Iran and the UK also have incompetent leadership. I look at it more as entire government failure.

We will always get half the people on one side and half on the other. I take it you are on the half that is angry side and intend to blast the internet. Keep it on the Current "Liberal" Affairs board.

[michaelm]

Towards the end of February Fauci said that the Coronavirus threat to Americans was "minuscule" compared to the seasonal flu. This is a fact that you can easily look up. I am not saying this to rip Fauci. He is someone I trust. He is one of the best in the world at what he does. I am saying this to emphasize the point that the idea everyone knew this would hit America the way it has is nothing short of gaslighting for a political purpose.

An Australian doctor came back from the USA in the first week of March, had very minor URTI symptoms while there which had mainly resolved and chose to go to work, then later in the week, I think about the 5th of March, decided to get tested himself and proved positive to the corona virus necessitating testing a significant number of patients he had seen. It was fairly obvious then together with what was going on in Italy that despite it being a virus of Chinese origin just stopping flights from China wasn’t going to cut it.

On March 11th the United States placed a travel ban on Europe. That fits your timeline.

Look, I am not trying to say the United States handled this well, but we were in a VERY tough spot when you consider how the virus spread in Italy and the amount of travel in our country to and from Italy. I think our country handled the spread of the virus very well from China. It looks like all the travel between NY and Italy is what killed us. NY is also such a dense city. That combination made NY extremely vulnerable.

Australia, for example, was in a MUCH better geographic position. The virus also spread during the summer months in Australia. In the Western countries it was winter. The mistake so many make here is comparing the results in different countries without taking everything into consideration.

Absolutely, geographical location at end of the chain of transmission, being an island continent which can be isolated from the rest of the world, not having the highest number of international flight arrivals in the world from everywhere in the world which I imagine the USA probably has, having to get only 6 states and 2 territories to co-operate rather than the number of states in the USA, having less than a tenth of the population, etc are among marked advantages for Australia.

This was just my personal experience, before I started thinking about things after what happened with that doctor for which he was criticised by the premier of his home state, many at the time thought unfairly, I like most presumably including even someone much more brilliant than I am in Dr Fauci thought that China from which travel was stopped at a similar time to the USA was their problem rather than Australia’s, that something strange, perhaps a mutation was going on in Italy and was also not of great relevance to Australia, and that the number of known cases in Australia which were measured in tens were negligible. I had thought for a couple of weeks that holding the Australian F1 GP was madness though despite being a motorsports fan. Things changed very rapidly, and the state leader who had insisted the race would go ahead until the weekend for which the race was scheduled, pivoted to being called too draconian in a couple of weeks.

[michaelm]

Double

[DowJones]

An Australian doctor came back from the USA in the first week of March, had very minor URTI symptoms while there which had mainly resolved and chose to go to work, then later in the week, I think about the 5th of March, decided to get tested himself and proved positive to the corona virus necessitating testing a significant number of patients he had seen. It was fairly obvious then together with what was going on in Italy that despite it being a virus of Chinese origin just stopping flights from China wasn’t going to cut it.

On March 11th the United States placed a travel ban on Europe. That fits your timeline.

Look, I am not trying to say the United States handled this well, but we were in a VERY tough spot when you consider how the virus spread in Italy and the amount of travel in our country to and from Italy. I think our country handled the spread of the virus very well from China. It looks like all the travel between NY and Italy is what killed us. NY is also such a dense city. That combination made NY extremely vulnerable.

Australia, for example, was in a MUCH better geographic position. The virus also spread during the summer months in Australia. In the Western countries it was winter. The mistake so many make here is comparing the results in different countries without taking everything into consideration.

Absolutely, geographical location at end of the the chain of transmission, being an island continent which can be isolated from the rest of the world, not having the highest number of international flight arrivals in the world from everywhere in the world which I imagine the USA probably has, having to get only 6 states and 2 territories to co-operate rather than the number of states in the USA, having less than a tenth of the population, etc are among marked advantages for Australia.

This was just my personal experience, before I started thinking about things after what happened with that doctor for which he was criticised by the premier of his home state, many at the time thought unfairly, I like most presumably including even someone much more brilliant than I am in Dr Fauci thought that China from which travel was stopped at a similar time to the USA was their problem rather than Australia’s, that something strange, perhaps a mutation was going on in Italy and was also not of great relevance to Australia, and that the number of known cases in Australia which were measured in tens were negligible. I had thought for a couple of weeks that holding the Australian F1 GP was madness though despite being a motorsports fan. Things changed very rapidly, and the state leader who had insisted the race would go ahead until the weekend for which the race was scheduled, pivoted to being called too draconian in a couple of weeks.

Off-Topic but do you have any thoughts as to when Australia might open up? I had a planned vacation to Italy this August that I canceled. I want to go somewhere this fall but most places I would visit are probably going to be dealing with the virus. I have never been to Australia, but I am looking into a trip in October. I would probably stick to the southern part of the country, specifically starting in Melbourne and driving along the coast for a few days until I got to Sydney. Obviously if the Coronavirus is still bad here I probably wouldn't go anywhere.

[Liminy]

I can’t read that article but will take the evidence of scientific studies published in scientific journals such as Virology by scientists who have studied/sequenced the virus and concluded that it is a virus of natural origin. If accidentally released from a lab which was experimenting with bats or bat viruses which is not impossible but well down the list of the probable imo and according to most, then it is a matter of record that the CDC summarily shut down a US virology lab in August-September 2019 for safety reasons which can prompt and has prompted an alternative conspiracy theory.

It's actually not an article but a documentary that is almost an hour long that has over 70 million views.

I couldn’t access it in Australia as I said. I actually have a medical degree and have been very interested in all of this, have read everything I could find on the internet for a couple of months, and have been aware of the claims and counterclaims over the origins of the virus since early March.

I am not a virologist or trained epidemiologist and even those trained in those fields are mainly working in the dark with this virus, but I have been trained to have, and hopefully still possess, a capacity to examine scientific/medical studies and data critically and am rather convinced by numerous publications in the scientific literature which have dismissed the virus being a manufactured virus; I believe even FOX have stepped away from that claim. As I said a laboratory origin is not impossible, but detailed in a long post earlier in this thread that I find the evidence for the virus escaping from a lab conducting experiments on bats or bat viruses circumstantial at best, with the evidence for an American lab origin not all that much less credible than the evidence for a Chinese lab origin. As I said in the previous post it is a matter of known fact that bats carry viruses that can transfer and have transferred to humans and cause serious illnesses, SARS, MERS, Hendra virus and rabies among them, naturally without any laboratory accidents. I don’t consider farming wildlife such as bats alongside domestic animals or selling wildlife in wet markets all that natural btw, and if this is the cause the Chinese need to address that obviously as they should have done after SARS which was fairly definitely of wet market origin from bats through civet cats as an intermediate host.

I read something from a Chinese virologist involved with the Wuhan lab who absolutely rejected any error at the the Wuhan lab concerning which she was convincing to me at least; perhaps she would say that but she attributed the outbreak to Chinese farming practices of which she disapproved and which would hardly endear her to the Chinese government either.

Why exactly was she convincing to you? Are you aware of the research she is well known for and the papers she published? Do you also believe the narrative that China has basically contained the virus and their are very few, mostly imported cases there, as reported by China and corroborated by most of the mainstream press? The Epoch Times has reported that the virus was never really contained in China and there are continued outbreaks throughout the country. It will be interesting to see who eventually ends up being correct about that. Given the fact that China's leadership tried to open the economy and send everyone back to work after a few weeks, I find it very hard to believe that the virus has been controlled their and most of the cases are imported.

[NBAFan93]

I remember mid to late January up into February very well. Nobody was thinking the Virus was a big deal including the Who. Mainly because, the Chinese Government was declaring it was no big deal and they had it under control. But now, mass media will make it like we knew all along that a disaster was coming, but I remember well, the news wasn't saying jack back the nor a single world leader of any impending worldwide disaster.

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19

By mid January the WHO had made it clear that this could be a much wider outbreak. By the end of January they had a consensus that this was serous. Hell by the end of January we were talking about stocking up toilet paper....i thought that was a bit crazy but it seems I was wrong there, lol.

So not sure what you were reading or seeing, but the general public certainly knew this was at the VERY least concerning and if the federal government wasn't WELL into researching how prepared they were for this, well that's absolutely a massive failing of leadership. Leadership should be acting BEFORE a crisis, especially on the supply chain and defense side.

I am sorry, but I do recall nobody panicking or freaking out in January. It must be easy in hindsite to think that now, but I saw nobody freaking out and there was plenty of TP in the stores. TP didn't start disappearing til mid to late February.

In my area no one was freaking out at all until mid March when things started to cancel.

Once our local schools shutdown (3/13) you haven’t been able to consistently get toilet paper anywhere. Sometimes if you happen to be at the right store at the right time you can get some, but it’s usually not the good brands.

I don’t really think people are hoarding per se now, it’s more like a mentality of going to the store is such a scary event that you want to make sure you don’t have to come back again for a really long time so you buy a lot more than usual. Maybe that is hoarding, but most people probably wouldn’t be buying the quantities they do if it wasn’t so frightening there.

We now have a mandatory mask rule here and it’s just a very depressing and grim scene seeing all those people in the store w/ masks on - I am hoping things start to relax some before I have to go back again.

[HotRocks34]

In a move that even Ray Charles saw coming long ago, the UFC will reportedly hold their next event in Florida:

https://www.mmafighting.com/2020/4/21/21230214/ufc-249-pay-per-view-headed-to-florida-on-may-9

Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion’s plans confirmed to MMA Fighting that the May 9 pay-per-view event is slated to take place in Florida. The people, who requested anonymity because the promotion’s plans aren’t public, also confirmed that fighters will fly into Jacksonville before traveling to the still-undisclosed location.

The north part of the state (near Jacksonville) seems to be in better shape than the south part of the state, as regards the virus. Map seen here shows the story (darker blue = more virus cases):
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429


We'll see if this gets done. Since Gov DeSantis has said that sports are "essential businesses," it would seem that the UFC (and their partner ESPN) could avoid the situation that took place in California when the UFC was forced to cancel a planned event there because it violated the state's coronavirus shutdown order (even though the event was scheduled to be held on sovereign Native American land):

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/492894-desantis-defends-labeling-wwe-sporting-events-essential-people-are

Florida's Division of Emergency Management on April 9 issued a memo noting that employees at pro sports and media productions with a national audience would be added to the list of "essential services" as long as events were closed to the public. The memo amended DeSantis's executive order, mandating people remain home unless they are working in a job deemed essential.

Under the same directive, WWE has been operating live, no-crowd shows in Orlando since April 13:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/14/834098998/florida-designates-pro-wrestling-essential-business