Would the pandemic look any different if the pandemic team was left intact?

[DixonHur 11213]

19 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

 

Mandatory quarantine for all entries is absolutely the right call.  If I read correctly in the article, they enacted that on Sunday. That could have made a difference back in January here, but assholes wouldn't have complied with a voluntary one.  We would have had to lock people down.  That should be implemented immediately to prevent additional waves entering, just as they did in SK. 

Does anybody have a chronological listing of the SK measures similar to what Dixon posted for the Czech measures upthread?

On my phone, so can't dive in, but looks like Wikipedia has a timeline

Link

[jimmyjazz 45558]

Wait . . . didn't we have personnel based in China that were specifically there to monitor disease outbreak?  I could have sworn I read that.  I don't have the time to dig into it right now, but if somebody knows one way or the other, it would be nice to know.

[Anastasis 23395]

9 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Wait . . . didn't we have personnel based in China that were specifically there to monitor disease outbreak?  I could have sworn I read that.  I don't have the time to dig into it right now, but if somebody knows one way or the other, it would be nice to know.

According to the report I read, we pulled some of our CDC resources from China last year.  They weren't there specifically to monitor disease outbreak per se, but were training chinese epidemiologists. Having some boots on the ground in the country embedded in their public health system sure as shit wouldn't have hurt. 

[TXSG8R 3360]

25 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Wait . . . didn't we have personnel based in China that were specifically there to monitor disease outbreak?  I could have sworn I read that.  I don't have the time to dig into it right now, but if somebody knows one way or the other, it would be nice to know.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-cdc-cut-health-expert-job-china-months-before-coronavirus-2020-3

Quote

The role was discontinued, according to one expert, because US-Chinese politics trumped public health. US officials had been mired in a years-long debate about whether the CDC should pay for an American health official to advise Chinese counterparts, according to Dr. George Conway, a medical epidemiologist who served as resident adviser from 2012 to 2015.

Over the past two years, the CDC has diminished its presence in China, according to the sources. 

By the time Quick's position was cut, "we had already withdrawn many technical public health experts," one person told Reuters.

 

[UpperWestside 6136]

5 hours ago, TXSG8R said:

This entire thread is an exercise in hypotheticals, so I'm not sure where you're going with that.  I'm not sure about SK's travel restrictions either, but their giant leg up on us is their testing and contact tracing.  The latter isn't feasible without the former.  Aggressive testing leads to catching asymptomatic carriers, possible before they are even contagious, so their contact tracing is hours or single days, not weeks.  Even if their travel restrictions weren't draconian, testing means you can catch people at the gates so to speak and means you can effectively quarantine them, not hit all travelers with blanket quarantines that many will ignore because they feel fine.  Its still a borderline miracle that they were able to keep this shit out of Seoul for the most part.  I dont think its a stretch to compare their initial outbreak (Daegu and Washington St) and how their testing kept it out of their equivalent of NYC, LA, etc.  By the time we got our testing rolling this thing was completely uncontrollable.    

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-korean-air/south-korea-says-flight-attendant-infected-with-virus-worked-los-angeles-route-idUSKCN20L03R  

Tomorrow will be one month from when this article was posted.  Pretty hard to square up Trump's travel restriction boasting and the quoted.  

Facts stopped mattering a long time ago to a large segment of our population. If Dotard came out tomorrow and said he only learned three days ago about Covid-19's ability to spread so quickly they would believe him. Facts just do not matter to the 60 million or so supporters he has that are still above ground. 

[ChiTownDoc 21101]

On 3/24/2020 at 2:15 PM, Brisketexan said:

I know that many workplaces (including mine) and local governments were already planning for how to deal with this WEEKS before the admin started doing ANYTHING substantive.  So, yes, at the very least, we likely would have seen some earlier action.

All of that said, it all depends on the man at the top.  Even if the team still existed, the minute they started telling him something he didn't want to hear, they'd have been shown the door.

So, maybe the answer is "no, nothing would have made a difference so long as Dotard is in charge."

Surly wins again.  First reply nails it.  Even if Trump hadn't already disbanded it, he would have buried them if he didn't like what he heard so it wouldn't have mattered anyway.  In the future, I'm hoping a 4th branch of government can operate independently...science.  Can call it what you want but in the year 2020 we need that. 

Edited March 25, 2020 by ChiTownDoc

[Sejjr 3246]

On 3/25/2020 at 5:28 AM, horn4life said:

I like Chelsea, but with Pulisic out and the Premier League playing I'm not able to watch right now.

But yes unequivocally with the coronavirus task force and a President who did not insist he was the smartest person in the room on every subject we might have done a LOT better. 

Mocking me for simply stating that Hillary would not have shit the bed is well... typical. No Worries @Sejjr - I looked back at a few of your posts and you would have a difficult time thinking your way out of a sealed paper bag. Let me know if you ever have an actual thought on a subject, I'd be interested to hear one from you?  Feel free to link when that day comes. I would say "if you are still alive" because of the coronavirus but I imagine you have been social distancing for a very, very, very long time. 😉

Such a classy response. Your expert insight into this unprecedented and world changing event is most welcome. It clearly takes a staggering intellect to discern from my history of lighthearted football related posts my cognitive abilities. And what a brilliant position it is to claim, "if a different person were President, everything would be better!"

I did actually appreciate your initial response to my comment. A comment which is often used on these forums (at least the football boards), and is usually meant as a lighthearted jab. I thought for a moment you had a decent sense of humor, something that I personally believe is crucial to maintain during this shit show of a scenario we are living in. But you couldn't help yourself and had to lean on the classic "you are not smart, you will probably die if you weren't such a loser" strategy. But you did throw in the winky emoji. Thanks for that.

We are in a fucking global pandemic. GLOBAL. It is a disaster. There are millions of people who don't even know how they will pay their rent, and there are just as many or more who are terrified of getting this horrible disease. I know plenty, and I live in Los Angeles, one of the "hot spots" and have been self-quarantined for over two weeks now. It seems to me that, during times like this, taking a step away from politicising every fucking thing and maybe coming together in a positive way might be in all our best interests. But please, carry on explaining how Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would have prevented 85,653 confirmed cases of Coronavirus infections in this country. It is super helpful, and hope is a dangerous thing, I'm told.

[FondrenRoad 4378]

The answer is yes. The outlook is much better in Japan and South Korea where early measures were inacted.  NYC could be in the same situation as Tokyo with a proper proactive response. Tokyo is also more dense and more transit oriented than NYC. The only reason we blew past Italy is that we fucked up like Italy.

And in the past, the CDC would have been the leaders of global decision making. Now the CDC has to fight to even have a voice in America. That's bigger than the loss of the pandemic team. Trump probably wouldn't have listened to the pandemic team either. 

[Anastasis 23395]

We are on the same course as every other Western country in the world.  And many of those countries have sophisticated surveillance networks for disease control, pandemic detection, and response. We absolutely fucked up our testing and containment strategy, but lets look a littler closer at Japan and SK.

It appears to me that there are other factors significantly influencing the case and death rates in Japan and SK, creating outlier situations, and perhaps limiting the comparability to the US. 

Look at Japan for example, a country where facial protection in public and other social practices that would decrease viral transmission are extremely common and have been practiced for a long time.  Japan has been criticize for their COVID response, specifically wrt testing and social distancing measures. Their public health response to the pandemic has been criticized as being lest robust than the US or Italy, yet they are the only country of any significant size that has clearly occupied a different trajectory with the case rate consistently from day 1. There is something else going on there beyond testing and containment strategy. 

SK, on the other hand, fell in line with the rest of the world initially with the case rate, but was able to bend the curve with aggressive testing, quarantine, and their other measures. But what I find interesting about the SK numbers is comparison of the case and death curves. In every other country the case and death curves follow the same general trajectory. The SK death rates follow far more closely the japanese, starting on day 1, and they appear to hold steady in spite of the high initial case rate.  SK would appear to be the only country in the world where the data have acted in this way. 

There appear to be other factors, beyond just the public health response, influencing the numbers in Japan and SK.

     

 

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Anastasis

[Biff Tannen 45494]

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

We are on the same course as every other Western country in the world.

The graph you posted shows otherwise, unless we suddenly flatten out.  Us and the UK look to be about on par.

[Anastasis 23395]

Not sure exactly what you are seeing those graphs, particularly the death chart. Trajectory of deaths appears fairly consistent among western nations. Japan and SK are clear outliers.  I don't think that we can place high confidence in counts coming out of Iran and China. Can you elaborate how you see that otherwise?

 

[Biff Tannen 45494]

Just appears to me that we are not flattening out while others are.  Specifically cases, not deaths.  Maybe I'm reading it wrong.  China numbers I'm sure are not real though.

[Anastasis 23395]

6 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Just appears to me that we are not flattening out while others are.  Specifically cases, not deaths.  Maybe I'm reading it wrong.  China numbers I'm sure are not real though.

Yeah, I don't trust the Chinese numbers at all.  I also don't think that we can rely too heavily on the case numbers in isolation.  Too many factors, test capacity, testing criteria, etc. across countries.  But god damnit we need to see a flattening ASAP.  Deaths is a more stable indicator imo, but there are likely differences in how the various countries are attributing death that can bias those numbers as well.

If there is any bright side I see in those charts its that we have a consistently lower death doubling time, despite a higher case doubling time, compared to most western countries.  That would seem to be a silver lining, at least until we max out our healthcare capacity. 

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

34 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Not sure exactly what you are seeing those graphs, particularly the death chart. Trajectory of deaths appears fairly consistent among western nations. Japan and SK are clear outliers.  I don't think that we can place high confidence in counts coming out of Iran and China. Can you elaborate how you see that otherwise?

 

The doubling factor for the US is way worse than others. Just because they follow parallel paths, doesn't mean we are tracking similarly. I'm sure you know this, but our catastrofuck becomes a bigger catastrofuck faster than everyone else if our trend line continues. 

Edited March 27, 2020 by SmokeyTheBear

[4th&Five 41461]

agree that we need to see a flattening soon, even a small one.  we all understand there's a 2-3 week delay in social distancing results but the orange fuck in the WH will just see it as not working anyway and open shit back up more quickly.

[DixonHur 11213]

24 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Not sure exactly what you are seeing those graphs, particularly the death chart. Trajectory of deaths appears fairly consistent among western nations. Japan and SK are clear outliers.  I don't think that we can place high confidence in counts coming out of Iran and China. Can you elaborate how you see that otherwise?

 

The slope of the US lines are much greater than the others, and we've tested far fewer as a percent of the population.  The US has tested 313 per million, while Italy has tested 3,500 per million.  

The chart is misleading at best.  By Easter, they might need to use a logarithmic scale just to include the US.

[Anastasis 23395]

20 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

The chart is misleading at best.  By Easter, they might need to use a logarithmic scale just to include the US.

Those graphs are on a log scale. 

[Anastasis 23395]

33 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

The doubling factor for the US is way worse than others. Just because they follow parallel paths, doesn't mean we are tracking similarly. I'm sure you know this, but our catastrofuck becomes a bigger catastrofuck faster than everyone else if our trend line continues. 

For cases, yes. Hopefully the trend off of the 2 day doubling trend line holds, and further decelerates.  But case counts again are heavily influenced by testing capacity.  I think death rates are better measures for the time being.  

For deaths, our doubling rate is on the low end of the western countries.  That will change as we exceed capacity, and as the virus take strong hold in regions where risk modifying factors are more prevalent (looking at you mississippi). If we don't bend the case curve in the next 10-14 days we are seriously fucked.

 

[FondrenRoad 4378]

26 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

For cases, yes. Hopefully the trend off of the 2 day doubling trend line holds, and further decelerates.  But case counts again are heavily influenced by testing capacity.  I think death rates are better measures for the time being.  

For deaths, our doubling rate is on the low end of the western countries.  That will change as we exceed capacity, and as the virus take strong hold in regions where risk modifying factors are more prevalent (looking at you mississippi). If we don't bend the case curve in the next 10-14 days we are seriously fucked.

 

Deaths are gonna get a whole lot worse when there is no room at the ER inn left. All the people dying now are some of the first to get it and have spent 3 to 4 weeks in the ICU.  And the death rate will look a whole lot worse in 3 weeks even if we manage to have a complete lockdown on new infections. 

[berlinerbaer 670]

One way or another, the team was never going to make it to summer 2020 before being disbanded, unless every member were to slob Trump's orange knob 24/7.

Do you really think Trump would let a bunch of "experts" look smart around him? Dr. Fauci already is on thin ice.

[JimmyJames 12271]

26 minutes ago, berlinerbaer said:

One way or another, the team was never going to make it to summer 2020 before being disbanded, unless every member were to slob Trump's orange knob 24/7.

Do you really think Trump would let a bunch of "experts" look smart around him? Dr. Fauci already is on thin ice.

I can guarantee you beyond a shadow of a doubt that trump’s primary concern right now is that Dr. Fauci is looking better than him. That right now is his biggest priority/concern.

[Anastasis 23395]

On 3/27/2020 at 7:35 AM, Anastasis said:

Look at Japan for example, a country where facial protection in public and other social practices that would decrease viral transmission are extremely common and have been practiced for a long time.  Japan has been criticize for their COVID response, specifically wrt testing and social distancing measures. Their public health response to the pandemic has been criticized as being lest robust than the US or Italy, yet they are the only country of any significant size that has clearly occupied a different trajectory with the case rate consistently from day 1. There is something else going on there beyond testing and containment strategy. 

SK, on the other hand, fell in line with the rest of the world initially with the case rate, but was able to bend the curve with aggressive testing, quarantine, and their other measures. But what I find interesting about the SK numbers is comparison of the case and death curves. In every other country the case and death curves follow the same general trajectory. The SK death rates follow far more closely the japanese, starting on day 1, and they appear to hold steady in spite of the high initial case rate.  SK would appear to be the only country in the world where the data have acted in this way. 

    

Coming back to this.  With obesity being recognized a key risk factor associated with COVID outcomes, esp among younger patients.

[AngryDragon 270]

On 3/25/2020 at 12:42 PM, Anastasis said:

 

Mandatory quarantine for all entries is absolutely the right call.  If I read correctly in the article, they enacted that on Sunday. That could have made a difference back in January here, but assholes wouldn't have complied with a voluntary one.  We would have had to lock people down.  That should be implemented immediately to prevent additional waves entering, just as they did in SK. 

Does anybody have a chronological listing of the SK measures similar to what Dixon posted for the Czech measures upthread?

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-14/south-koreas-rapid-coronavirus-testing-far-ahead-of-the-u-s-could-be-a-matter-of-life-and-death

This article should give you a good idea why they're so far ahead of the US in dealing with this. They started preparing for this years ago. 

Their measures would also never properly translate here because of the differences in cultural mentality and a general public trust in the government to do what's best for their citizens.

Edited March 30, 2020 by AngryDragon