Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away

[Loco 3752]

 

Also the next person that quotes that auto play audio clip is getting negged.  

[Neonmoon 38129]

Well say goodbye to anyone living in that nursing home. 

[Pato del Muerto 52489]

[ChickenSandwich 9832]

6 weeks. Fuck Adler. 
 

he’s going to suspend property taxes for the same six weeks to help people stay in their homes correct?  
 

Our leadership is shit

[Skipper 6133]

2 minutes ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

Doubt I can find it now, for the link, but some epidemiologist wrote last week that today's numbers are a snapshot of 9 days ago infection rate.

If 'average" onset of initial symptoms is 5.1 days, then 9 days seems pretty dead on to me after we get tests up and running at scale.  We are probably starting to catch a decent amount in that time frame now but I would bet it's still currently a a few days further out.  

Speaking of, have we seen updated data for daily tests in Texas?  Are we still embarrassingly behind most?

[Huckleberry 32851]

1 minute ago, ChickenSandwich said:

6 weeks. Fuck Adler. 
 

he’s going to suspend property taxes for the same six weeks to help people stay in their homes correct?  
 

Our leadership is shit

President of The United States of America declares national emergency.
Governor of Texas declares statewide emergency.
President of The United States of America says people shouldn't eat in restaurants.
CDC says people shouldn't eat in restaurants.
Mayor of Austin issues order that people won't eat in restaurants.

"MAN FUCK THE MAYOR OF AUSTIN MAN!"

[ChickenSandwich 9832]

27 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

New ones will rise after the carnage. Will suck for many, though. 

They will all be Fligers 

[The People’s Elbow 707]

1 minute ago, Huckleberry said:

President of The United States of America declares national emergency.
Governor of Texas declares statewide emergency.
President of The United States of America says people shouldn't eat in restaurants.
CDC says people shouldn't eat in restaurants.
Mayor of Austin issues order that people won't eat in restaurants.

"MAN FUCK THE MAYOR OF AUSTIN MAN!"

I wonder what makes the mayor so different than the others. There’s really no way to know. 

[ChickenSandwich 9832]

3 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

President of The United States of America declares national emergency.
Governor of Texas declares statewide emergency.
President of The United States of America says people shouldn't eat in restaurants.
CDC says people shouldn't eat in restaurants.
Mayor of Austin issues order that people won't eat in restaurants.

"MAN FUCK THE MAYOR OF AUSTIN MAN!"

And why not 2 weeks or 4 and reassess when we have more accurate information?

[bluto 4916]

6 weeks. Fuck Adler. 
 
he’s going to suspend property taxes for the same six weeks to help people stay in their homes correct?  
 
Our leadership is shit

I’m in the prop tax game, ramping up for Texas appeals season. We’re getting daily emails from appraisal district offices closing to outsiders and they have been unable to conduct state mandated training for their review board members (private citizens who are generally retirees, 70-80 yrs old).

Even if they get through the training, If covid is still bouncing around in a few months when appeal hearings start, there’s no way they can subject the arb members to facing the public. Locked in 12x12 rooms with dozens of ppl rotating in/out, tons of parents bringing kids.

How that will impact the tax calendar, even just the delayed training, is TBD. I would think noticed will go out on time in April-ish and maybe appeal deadline stays May 15, but hearing season and certification (typically late July) of the tax rolls being pushed back.

[Bevo 13576]

29 minutes ago, Foosters said:

 

Pretty obvious that their home stash was cashed.

[ztejas 43418]

17 minutes ago, Skipper said:

Hence my prediction of initial loosening a little over 1 month from now.  And I'm guessing it will be a slow loosening of the standards.  Those thinking this is a 2 week thing are living in a fantasy world IMO.  The numbers are going to look horrible 2 weeks from now but that's all going to be infections/severe cases from the weeks leading up to this.  The reason this disease is such a problem is because it doesn't have a short incubation period with quick onset of symptoms like the flu.  If everyone was knocked on their ass with high fever 2-3 days after becoming infected it would be a lot less problematic.  

Yeah I'm sure we're probably agreeing with each other. Didn't mean to take you out of context. 

[clapclapclap 9000]

More Osterholm on the China Originated Virus Is Deadly-#19:

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/a-coronavirus-winter-michael-t-osterholm-on-the-road-ahead

Spoiler

An interview on the state of the pandemic with the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

We spoke with Michael T. Osterholm, professor of environmental health sciences and chair in public health at the University of Minnesota, author of Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, and a former Science Envoy for Health Security at the U.S. Department of State.

In the Q&A below, Osterholm tells us about the coming “coronavirus winter,” why looking at the pandemic as a single rolling wave is not helpful, his concerns over “mitigation fatigue” from the public, and why the most important goal of increased testing in the United States is to move away from “monolithic recommendations” and toward a more targeted approach.

Osterholm has also written about the coronavirus pandemic for the New York Times and has previously appeared as an interview subject in The New Atlantis (“The Ebola Gamble,” Spring 2015). This interview was conducted by phone yesterday, March 16, and has been condensed and edited for clarity.

 

The New Atlantis: How serious is this situation? Are we locking things down too early or too late?

Michael Osterholm: This is a very serious situation. We will overwhelm the American health care system. It won’t be equally distributed around the country — some places will get hit much harder than others. We will run out of critical personal protective equipment for health care workers, which will ultimately result in infections that they will acquire on the job.

We will continue to see, I’m afraid, certain political responses which will lead people to challenge public health recommendations on ideological as opposed to scientific grounds.

And we don’t have a sense of how this is going to play out relative to time. I tell people we’re responding to this just like we’re responding to a Minneapolis blizzard, where we’re going to lock down for a couple of days and everything will go back to normal — as opposed to the fact that this is going to be a coronavirus winter and we’re just in the first week or two of a long season. This could last for months.

There doesn’t seem to be a wave hitting yet. In the U.S. we’re not yet seeing the kinds of things we’re seeing in Italy. Is it about to hit?

MO: First of all, it’s not Italy, it’s the Lombardy region. This is not an unusual situation with respiratory pathogens, where we see a rolling set of epidemics that occur in some cases simultaneously, sometimes sequentially, but they over time merge into one big epidemic. We can see seasonal flu where we’ll have hot spots in the U.S. for several weeks in some places, and in other places no activity at all. So I think looking at this as a wave is not helpful, because it’s a collection of smaller, yet very significant outbreaks, that make up that total amount.

It probably takes at least 6 to 8 [transmission] generations before you have enough serious cases that people really pick it up. And we have been right on track with this in terms of number of cases.

In Wuhan, what data we have suggests the virus arrived around the middle of November. Yet it didn’t show up in a measurable way until around Christmastime because of the background of other respiratory illnesses, like influenza. In Seattle, the case came back from Wuhan in the middle of January, and then suddenly in the last week of February, Seattle blows.

Have you seen the Financial Times graph of the growth of case counts in different countries, which shows that the growth rate in the U.S. is similar to Italy and Spain?

MO: I think a lot of those data are meaningless. It doesn’t really tell you about what’s happening, it tells you about what’s being detected. When you have small numbers, to triple and quadruple them is nothing. It’s all within the margin of testing error, meaning who’s getting tested and who’s not. We have a lot more cases in the United States than our testing would give us the ability to show.

So given that the testing in the United States is still so inadequate, what do we actually look at then, what are the indicators of the progress of the disease?

MO: I think that we will begin to catch up with hospitalizations and intensive care. I think that is really the tip of the iceberg that is exposing what is underneath it. So as goes intensive care bed needs, so goes the epidemic in that area. And deaths also, but deaths are more difficult because it’s almost three weeks of illness before the average patient dies. So you’re going to expect to see the number of fatal cases delayed relative to the actual number of new cases by onset.

Everybody is looking at stats on the number of cases, and for the reasons that you outlined, that seems like an inadequate way to understand the situation.

MO: It is, but it’s the best we have. But we need it to be better. The reason is that the decisions we need to make about mitigation need to be based on just picking up that curve as it starts to spin upwards.

I’ve been very concerned — you know, we know that mitigation fatigue is a big problem. We saw that in 2009 [the swine flu pandemic], people will wear masks or respirators for a couple of weeks, and people just get used to it, and they don’t comply. What I’m concerned about is having one monolithic recommendation in the United States, because we’re in this series of rolling epidemics. And if I say here in Minnesota, “Do this now” and then nothing happens for three weeks, people are going to say, “Wait a minute, what did you make us do?”

On the other hand, you don’t want to get in when your emergency rooms and intensive care units are overwhelmed. You want to be able to get in early and interrupt that. So testing really helps, because you really need to be picking up early cases. Then you really come forward with forcible recommendations, and explain why.

So the main purpose of the testing right now is to figure out where to target the most heavy mitigation measures?

MO: Yeah, yeah. It’s a combination. You want to look at influenza-like illness, and know is it flu or not flu, COVID-19 or not COVID-19. Then next you want to test people who are not anybody’s idea of at-risk. That’s where you’re going to pick up all the totally unsuspecting cases that have had contact with someone that no one knows about.

Then the other piece you want, of course, is the hospital setting. You want to know for sure how many people requiring medical care are infected. You also want to curb any potential sources that could cause transmission in the hospital to health care workers and others. That’s what’s happened on multiple occasions, with MERS and SARS.

What do you make of the uncertainties about re-infection? The UK right now is pursuing a herd immunity strategy, which assumes that people will become immune.

MO: That probably is right. I don’t think we have any evidence that this won’t produce some immunity. At least in the short term, for the next month [after recovery], you’re likely to be immune. I can’t say that with certainty, but when you look at the vigorous immune response we’ve seen, it’s probably there. But this is clearly one of the major questions we have to answer.

The more people we can put into labs who have been infected and recovered and have had natural immunization — that’s going to be really important. The other thing that does is provide the ideal worker. If you’ve already had it and fully recovered, you’re the one that can work in the hospital, health care settings, grocery stores, care for aging parents and not worry about being a source. So we really need to figure out how to deal with recovered individuals, who can really play an important role in responding to this epidemic.

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by clapclapclap

[huge 3793]

32 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Imagine if Texas closed liquor stores indefinitely...how much money would you spend before it closes?

 

I have bourbon for days, but too much of it is too good.

 

So likely about $300 on $20-30 bottles.

[Beau Vine 54211]

33 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Imagine if Texas closed liquor stores indefinitely...how much money would you spend before it closes?

 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

52 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’m assuming if elective surgeries have still been happening, that we have plenty of gloves, masks, gowns, disposable tool kits, and whatever else gets used during surgery, such that we can afford to burn them on nose jobs and such. 

They're not in many hospitals.  I posted upthread about a cancer operation that was postponed today.

[Beau Vine 54211]

Will you two morons who posted/quoted the auto-loading video on the previous page go lick some public toilet seats?

[Beau Vine 54211]

San Marcos HEB only letting 25 people in the store at a time, which sounds smart, until people waiting do this:

[Thetexashammer 1062]

So now that we're "in it", is there a plan to get "out of it"? If we quarantine for six weeks, then people start starving and we have to release everyone, it won't have flattened the curve at all, just delayed it and added in a financial disaster on top of the pandemic.

In other words, now that we've tanked the economy, did we gain anything?

[RayDog 682]

44 minutes ago, RollLeft said:

That $50 per month adds up eh...

The typical bargirl supports 6 to 8 people and is asked to buy medicine and pay for doctor's visits for extended family, so they need around $400 a month plus emergencies. Cloths, makeup, and eating out are in addition to that. So if 5 to10 different women start coming to me as their go to guy, then it really adds up. There are over 10,000 people out of work here who are normally supported by tourists. The city emergency food reserves won't last a week.

The lockdown of Luzon is supposed to last until April 12, and by then a lot of people could be close to starvation and being put on the street. I am helping 2 families now and handing out a few pesos here and there so people can get a meal. I am going grocery shopping in the morning for my ex-gf, while my teacher student friend will come over a bit later. I am sure I will need to hand out more money as the lockdown continues, but I can only afford to help a few people.

[Hank_Hill 18803]

Surprisingly good spacing honestly

[NoName 16351]

2 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Will you two morons who posted/quoted the auto-loading video on the previous page go lick some public toilet seats?

can someone tell us what video is autoloading at this point? i dont have any autoloading on my end and don't want to accidentally quote it

[ChiTownDoc 21151]

48 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Very Facebookie

Strata is completely legit.  

43 minutes ago, NoName said:

naw, Strata is a legit company and what he is saying is legit. Ignore it if you want, but basically everything he said is accurate. I would be quite curious how many places are reaching out to bond holders to discuss their cash on hand covenants and to try and ask for a waiver for their next reporting period. 

OR's are the financial driver for a ton of places - and you generally aren't making a ton on trauma cases. "Elective" surgeries (vs emergent/urgent) are where the money is for a ton of places. So now you have the financial driver slowed way down (fewer cases) + places are going to have a hard time collecting (where are you spending your money if you are in the service industry - medical debt or rent?) and that combo is a double whammy almost everywhere. 

This is without considering what happens when healthcare workers - docs, APP's or nurses - get sick and can't come in and you still have to backfill with either folks on OT (more $ out the door) or with agency staff ($$$)

It's going to be a very tough Q2 for hospitals. 

^^^

[Skipper 6133]

2 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

So now that we're "in it", is there a plan to get "out of it"? If we quarantine for six weeks, then people start starving and we have to release everyone, it won't have flattened the curve at all, just delayed it

I don't think you understand how this flattening thing works

[tx 3 putt 76905]

3 minutes ago, RayDog said:

while my teacher student friend will come over a bit later. I am sure I will need to hand out more money as the lockdown continues, but I can only afford to help a few people.

Does the teacher want to move to Houston ?

asking for a friend 

Edited March 17, 2020 by tx 3 putt

[Wally Pryor 5261]

14 minutes ago, tjhooker said:

I'm clear! 

 

[Message Board User 12395]

 

[Thetexashammer 1062]

4 minutes ago, Skipper said:

I don't think you understand how this flattening thing works

I understand perfectly. I am saying that all we did was shift it to the right. Have we established herd immunity? How is the virus less dangerous in six weeks as compared to now? 

The US has 4,661 people infected. Even if it's 466,100, that still leaves 99% of the population to infect. You didn't flatten anything.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Thetexashammer

['stache 21802]

So most restaurants are still offering pickup or delivery, but it's only a matter of time until a food worker is diagnosed and that shuts down too, right? Or are we safe if even a sick person is taking proper sanitary protocols in the kitchen even if they have it and are not yet symptomatic.

[gmr548 16576]

A doctor friend says a report circulating in the medical community shows the virus has synthetic properties to it, FWIW.

FW: FW: FW: FW:

[Goofyboy 3278]

Except people are 100% on lock down. We’ve slowed the spread.

[Txzen 498]

1 hour ago, PhillyD said:

Thanks!  I'm going to give this the same weight as Junior Miller with the three cases in the Arlington Hospital and Greenspoint saying it's in the Houston jail according to his DA buddy.

How about published research then : The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2, Nature Medicine

In-depth molecular analysis, with the final conclusion: 

Spoiler

In the midst of the global COVID-19 public-health emergency, it is reasonable to wonder why the origins of the pandemic matter. Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events. For example, if SARS-CoV-2 pre-adapted in another animal species, then there is the risk of future re-emergence events. In contrast, if the adaptive process occurred in humans, then even if repeated zoonotic transfers occur, they are unlikely to take off without the same series of mutations. In addition, identifying the closest viral relatives of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in animals will greatly assist studies of viral function. Indeed, the availability of the RaTG13 bat sequence helped reveal key RBD mutations and the polybasic cleavage site.

The genomic features described here may explain in part the infectiousness and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.

More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another. Obtaining related viral sequences from animal sources would be the most definitive way of revealing viral origins. For example, a future observation of an intermediate or fully formed polybasic cleavage site in a SARS-CoV-2-like virus from animals would lend even further support to the natural-selection hypotheses. It would also be helpful to obtain more genetic and functional data about SARS-CoV-2, including animal studies. The identification of a potential intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2, as well as sequencing of the virus from very early cases, would similarly be highly informative. Irrespective of the exact mechanisms by which SARS-CoV-2 originated via natural selection, the ongoing surveillance of pneumonia in humans and other animals is clearly of utmost importance.

 

[clapclapclap 9000]

Anyone else think Phd got an insider tip that this was coming and has been in a bunker?

Edited March 17, 2020 by clapclapclap

[Coelenterate Fuccboi 13091]

2 minutes ago, Txzen said:

In-depth molecular analysis, with the final conclusion:

I tried to read that but TLDR, and I kept focusing in on the word cleavage.

[NoName 16351]

9 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

I understand perfectly. I am saying that all we did was shift it to the right. Have we established herd immunity? How is the virus less dangerous in six weeks as compared to now? 

The US has 4,661 people infected. Even if it's 466,100, that still leaves 99% of the population to infect. You didn't flatten anything.

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/science/coronavirus-curve-mitigation-infection.html

Quote

 

What exactly do those two curves show?

Both curves add up the number of new cases over time. The more people reporting with the virus on a given day, the higher the curve; a high curve means the virus is spreading fast. A low curve shows that the virus is spreading slower — fewer people are diagnosed with the disease on any given day. Keeping the curve down — diminishing the rate at which new cases occur — prevents overtaxing the finite resources (represented by the dotted line) available to treat it.

 

Full Text

Spoiler

 

At the end of February, Drew Harris, a population health analyst at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, had just flown across the country to visit his daughter in Eugene, Ore., when he saw an article on his Google news feed. It was from The Economist, and was about limiting the damage of the coronavirus.

The accompanying art, by the visual-data journalist Rosamund Pearce, based on a graphic that had appeared in a C.D.C. paper titled “Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza,” showed what Dr. Harris called two epi curves. One had a steep peak indicating a surge of coronavirus outbreak in the near term; the other had a flatter slope, indicating a more gradual rate of infection over a longer period of time.

The gentler curve ultimately results in fewer people infected and fewer deaths. “What we need to do is flatten that down,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during the coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on Tuesday evening. “You do that with trying to interfere with the natural flow of the outbreak.”

The infographic reminded Dr. Harris of something similar that he had designed years earlier for a pandemic preparedness training program. “Folks in the preparedness and public health community have been thinking about all of these issues for many years,” Dr. Harris said in an email. “Understanding and managing surge is an important part of preparedness.” But during the training course, Dr. Harris’s students had struggled with the concept of reducing the epidemic curve, so he added a dotted line indicating hospital capacity — “to make clear what was at stake,” he said.

After his visit with his daughter, Dr. Harris was waiting for his return flight in Portland when the first Oregon coronavirus case was announced; he had dinner at a busy airport bar and thought about how quiet the place would be in a week or two when the reality of the outbreak set in. Once home, he recreated his graphic and posted it on Twitter and LinkedIn, and was pleased to see the enthusiastic interest in flattening the curve.

Get an informed guide to the global outbreak with our daily coronavirus newsletter.

“Now I know what going viral means,” Dr. Harris said. (For a more detailed analysis, see a recent paper in The Lancet, “How will country-based mitigation measures influence the course of the COVID-19 epidemic?”)

The following is an edited version of our email conversation.

What does it mean to “flatten the curve”?

The ideal goal in fighting an epidemic or pandemic is to completely halt the spread. But merely slowing it — mitigation — is critical. This reduces the number of cases that are active at any given time, which in turn gives doctors, hospitals, police, schools and vaccine-manufacturers time to prepare and respond, without becoming overwhelmed. Most hospitals can function with 10 percent reduction in staff, but not with half their people out at once.

Some commentators have argued for getting the outbreak over with quickly. That is a recipe for panic, unnecessary suffering and death. Slowing and spreading out the tidal wave of cases will save lives. Flattening the curve keeps society going.

What exactly do those two curves show?

Both curves add up the number of new cases over time. The more people reporting with the virus on a given day, the higher the curve; a high curve means the virus is spreading fast. A low curve shows that the virus is spreading slower — fewer people are diagnosed with the disease on any given day. Keeping the curve down — diminishing the rate at which new cases occur — prevents overtaxing the finite resources (represented by the dotted line) available to treat it.

Think of the health care system capacity as a subway car that can only hold so many people at once. During rush hour, that capacity is not enough to handle the demand, so people must wait on the platform for their turn to ride. Staggering work hours diminishes the rush hour and increases the likelihood that you will get on the train and maybe even get a seat. Avoiding a surge of coronavirus cases can ensure that anyone who needs care will find it at the hospital.

What sorts of mitigation measures help transform the red curve into the blue curve?

Diseases spread when one person gives it to one or more others, who go on to give it to more people, and so on. How fast this occurs depends on many factors, including how contagious the disease is, how many people are vulnerable and how quickly they get sick.

The difference between seasonal flu and coronavirus is that many people have full or partial immunity to the flu virus because they have had it before or were vaccinated against it. Far more people are vulnerable to coronavirus, so it has many more targets of opportunity to spread. Keeping people apart in time and space with social distancing measures, self-isolation and actual quarantine decreases opportunities for transmission.

To take the subway example again, a packed car — or a packed subway platform — is a great place to spread the virus. But reducing the number of people on the train or platform, by asking people to work from home or to stagger their working hours, enables individuals to stay farther apart, limiting the spread of the virus. That is social distancing in action.

Mitigation efforts keep people farther apart, making every transmission opportunity marginally less likely. This slows the spread. We should, and will, take the most vulnerable people out of the population altogether by keeping them totally separate. This is what Washington State is trying to do by limiting visitors to nursing homes. Think of this as a reverse quarantine.

What are you doing day-to-day in response to these unusual times?

Like most everyone else, I’m more aware of my surroundings and behaviors. I try to use a sleeve or elbow to open doors, and I wash my hands or use hand sanitizers after I touch a surface that might be contaminated. And I made sure to have a good supply of my prescription and nonprescription medications, just in case any shortages occur after the shutdown of Chinese pharmaceutical suppliers. I’m following the lead of my public health officials here in Philadelphia, where there is only one case as of Tuesday, and travel isn’t restricted. I’m avoiding crowds and sick people. I am going out, and will continue to do so unless a quarantine is ordered or public places are closed.

I know there is a good chance that I will catch the virus before a vaccine becomes available, but I also believe I’m very likely to do fine. I’m not in any high-risk group. But I worry about the more vulnerable folks and want to do what I can to prevent the spread. I also worry about people who lack the resources I have. What happens to the self-employed, hourly workers and people in the gig economy when business stops? What about the homeless who depend upon charity and services for support? It’s these second-order effects that could be just as devastating if this epidemic really takes off.

 

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30567-5/fulltext

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by NoName

[Skipper 6133]

Just now, Thetexashammer said:

I understand perfectly. I am saying that all we did was shift it to the right. Have we established herd immunity? How is the virus less dangerous in six weeks as compared to now?

No we won't have herd immunity in 6 weeks but that has bought us time to do the following:

1.   Maximize testing and potentially have few enough cases in some areas that contact tracing is a viable option.

2.  Provide a window for healthcare infrastructure to expand (temporary hospitals, etc.)

3.  Potentially get us to warmer weather which we hope slows down transmission over the summer (early data is promising ).

4.  Buys time to develop "best practices" for treatment and preventing infection primarily via re-purposing of existing drugs and closer to new potential therapeutics.   No doubt our goal is to turn this into "just the flu" and literally the smartest people in the world are working on this.   I think very good odds that if you are one of the unlucky few to have a severe case, you are much better off becoming infected 2 months from now vs. today as we will know A LOT more in 2 months.

And to your final point about "shifting the curve to the right" absent items 3 and 4 above changing the game dramatically, I can't fathom we simply open up "business as usual" in 6 weeks.  Restaurants may be open at half capacity, offices may re-open, etc., but I wouldn't plan on going to a massive concert in May.  Flattening will still be the strategy.

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3868]

Texas National Guard called up. 

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-texas-national-guard-activated/269-3c5872a6-f9f3-4186-b3b7-b519cd32735c

[utee94 15811]

14 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

So now that we're "in it", is there a plan to get "out of it"? If we quarantine for six weeks, then people start starving and we have to release everyone, it won't have flattened the curve at all, just delayed it and added in a financial disaster on top of the pandemic.

In other words, now that we've tanked the economy, did we gain anything?

 

10 minutes ago, Skipper said:

I don't think you understand how this flattening thing works

Right.  The delaying of the next wave by 6 weeks IS the flattening of the curve.  It gives the medical community time to process the current batch of infected, move them through the system, and then gear up for the next wave.

 

There's nothing that's going to actually stop the spread of this, at least not in the next 12-18 months until a vaccine is widely available.  In the meantime, it's all about controlling the rate of infection and slowing it down to a manageable curve.

 

[Txzen 498]

1 minute ago, Casual Encounter said:

I tried to read that but TLDR, and I kept focusing in on the word cleavage.

'Spike protein' is sexier. 

[smuggs 9353]

2 minutes ago, Txzen said:

 

  Hide contents

However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.

 

 

I enjoy observing notable polybasic cleavage sites.

 

[bolverk 29660]

Anyone else wonder whether they should've delayed the demolition of Brackenridge in light of the need for hospital space or is it a totally unusable building right now?

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/umc-brackenridge-tower-demolition-begins-austin/269-19b5aa69-cc12-46b5-99ee-51272592758d

[Liquor and Poker 3659]

Just came to say Instacart is by far the best grocery delivery experience.  Been using HEB and Amazon Fresh in the pre-apocalypse, so I never tried it before.  But Sunday, Fresh just failed to deliver, and yesterday HEB delivered only 20% of what I ordered - both forders I placed last week. 

So on a whim I tried Instacart for the very same HEB last night.  Got a 3 pm delivery time today.  The ability to know when the person is shopping, chat with them in real time as they go down the aisles and pick substitutes myself is amazing.  Got everything on my list but frozen mixed vegetables, which suck anyway.  Delivery was an hour early, too.

And shopper/delivery woman was about 25 and more than reasonably attractive.

[El Tri 412]

2 hours ago, Digdogger said:

On a brighter note, APD is being heroic with traffic enforcement.  Very few cars on the road = easy picking for speeding tickets

just start coughing like a motherfucker when they approach your window. fucking heroes my ass

[bolverk 29660]

38 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

They will all be Fligers 

What the hell's a fliger?

[Js1 85311]

Just now, bolverk said:

What the hell's a fliger?

Flegro, please 

[Neonmoon 38129]

19 minutes ago, Thetexashammer said:

I understand perfectly. I am saying that all we did was shift it to the right. Have we established herd immunity? How is the virus less dangerous in six weeks as compared to now? 

The US has 4,661 people infected. Even if it's 466,100, that still leaves 99% of the population to infect. You didn't flatten anything.

You reduce the number of people flooding the hospitals at once. You're not stopping the spread at all, you are slowing the spread. You slow down the amount of hospital cases, allowing the hospitals to treat people, instead of being overwhelmed and triaging people aka if you are over 60, you are relegated to die. 

[ChickenSandwich 9832]

Shit

[DDD Dad 14332]

2 minutes ago, bolverk said:

What the hell's a fliger?

It's a female one of these:

[Thetexashammer 1062]

22 minutes ago, Skipper said:

No we won't have herd immunity in 6 weeks but that has bought us time to do the following:

1.   Maximize testing and potentially have few enough cases in some areas that contact tracing is a viable option.

2.  Provide a window for healthcare infrastructure to expand (temporary hospitals, etc.)

3.  Potentially get us to warmer weather which we hope slows down transmission over the summer (early data is promising ).

4.  Buys time to develop "best practices" for treatment and preventing infection primarily via re-purposing of existing drugs and closer to new potential therapeutics.   No doubt our goal is to turn this into "just the flu" and literally the smartest people in the world are working on this.   I think very good odds that if you are one of the unlucky few to have a severe case, you are much better off becoming infected 2 months from now vs. today as we will know A LOT more in 2 months.

And to your final point about "shifting the curve to the right" absent items 3 and 4 above changing the game dramatically, I can't fathom we simply open up "business as usual" in 6 weeks.  Restaurants may be open at half capacity, offices may re-open, etc., but I wouldn't plan on going to a massive concert in May.  Flattening will still be the strategy.

There was something I read where they said if everyone wore a mask in public, it would provide near perfect prevention. Basically, there are public health policies which need to be undertaken to prevent transmission. But I'm not sure there is a plan. This wasn't planned for. 

I'm not huge on "new hospitals", but more ICU's and vent beds will go a long way. I also think they get a vaccine sooner than later, but not in time before we have to release from quarantine obviously.

There was a second, larger spike in the fall after the Spanish Flu first happened. I think that is what we should expect here. At least, until someone figures out how to stop it. If you expect that we avoided restricting access to ICU beds I think you are mistaken.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Thetexashammer

[iodeac 138]

Guys please talk me out of going to my favorite bottle shop that's closing in an hour until God knows when. Official order in NC is that all bars and restaurants close at 5pm today

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