Trump Puts Mike Pence In Charge of Response To Coronavirus, Says US Risk 'Remains Very Low' (cnbc.com) 326
Vice President Mike Pence will be put in charge of the U.S. response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday in an address from the White House. CNBC reports: Trump, in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room, maintained that the risk to the U.S. from the virus "remains very low," amid global fears that a pandemic could be imminent. But the U.S. is ready for "anything," Trump said, including an outbreak "of larger proportions." In that spirit, Trump said he would be putting Pence, who has "a certain talent for this," in charge of the response. The president cited his veep's experience with health care policy during his time as governor of Indiana.
Around noon Wednesday, the CDC had confirmed 60 coronavirus cases in the U.S., a majority of which came from passengers repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined off the coast of Japan. The Trump administration has taken numerous steps in response to the virus, such as declaring a public health emergency and imposing travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines. And White House officials, along with Trump himself, have worked to ease fears of a pandemic that have rattled governments and investors around the world.
Around noon Wednesday, the CDC had confirmed 60 coronavirus cases in the U.S., a majority of which came from passengers repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined off the coast of Japan. The Trump administration has taken numerous steps in response to the virus, such as declaring a public health emergency and imposing travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines. And White House officials, along with Trump himself, have worked to ease fears of a pandemic that have rattled governments and investors around the world.
Not that concerned (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not that concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
Spreads like the flu but has 10x the mortality rate. But that still only means a 1% rate. And that is mostly old folks or children. Still, I really don't think we are overhyping this.
It makes sense to take precautions. Personally, I plan on stocking up on a couple weeks of canned food. I am not worried about dying, but there will probably be some disruption of daily life. Lots of people are going to get sick all at once. And if I get sick, I know I won't be able to go out and get food.
Rate may be even lower (Score:2)
Spreads like the flu but has 10x the mortality rate.
Only if you assume that the number of cases confirmed is an accurate representation of all the cases there are. On that cruise ship when they switched from testing those with symptoms to testing everyone the number of confirmed cases shot up by a huge factor (IIRC about 5?).
If this is indicative of the general population that would suggest there are many more asymptomatic cases than those reported which would lower the fatality rate to a few tenths of a percent which would be close to regular flu.
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No, the assumption would be that the fraction of cases detected is similar to the flu.
Re:Not that concerned (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, children appear to have a very low mortality rate. Lower than nearly any other group.
And I *do* think the mortality rate is grossly overstated because most cases never show up on the official statistics. Of course that also means that it's a lot more prevalent than admitted.
As to how concerned we should be......
Well, the problem is it's a virus with a very high mutation rate. It's a new place where a extensively fatal disease could appear. So the current version isn't that concerning, but what it could turn into should be...and the only way to keep that from happening is to keep the predecessor disease from establishing itself, but I think it's too late for that.
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This virus puts 10% of people in intensive care, 5% have organ failure, if it becomes widespread then no country could cope with that, many of those 10% would die due to lack of resources.
And it is extremely contagious, contagious after 3-5 days but symptoms appear after 1 or 2 weeks.
If just one infectious person gets on an underground train with this disease during rush hour on a Monday morning then you've potentially got uncontrolled spread in a city. This virus is extremely close to exploding through gen
Re:Not that concerned (Score:4, Insightful)
If this arrives in a large city outside of a country that can control information tightly, we'll finally get a hint of what's waiting for us.
Just hope it ain't New York or something similar, because else all hell will break loose.
Re: Not that concerned (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020... [ucsf.edu]
Re: Not that concerned (Score:2)
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Curiously, infants seem protected somehow, even when the mother is infected. As of two days ago China had only reported 9 infant cases out of 75,000 infected people.
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Curiously, infants seem protected somehow
Contrary to antivaxxer believes, infants have a very strong immune system. Because they have to, immediately after birth they are exposed to millions of new antigens.
The major childhood weakness is lack of immunological memory, but it appears that nobody has any cross-immunity for COVID-19 anyway.
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Even if they're underestimating by 90% that's still a notable difference. They're investigating the difference to see if it will lead to any sort of treatment.
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Diamond Princess (ship): 3,711 passengers and crew were quarantined by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare after a passenger on the ship tested positive for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This was the largest coronavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. As of 24 February 2020, 691 passengers have tested positive for COVID-19.[3] On 25 February, Japan's health ministry announced that four passengers had died after contracting the virus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not that concerned (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not that concerned (Score:4, Interesting)
Likely true, however any international conference would rank a close second. Jam packed aircraft and airports got to be up there too.
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I understand that water capture and heat exchange adds weight and cost, both anathema to aircraft manufacturers, however the health benefits seem compelling. Airliners are well known contamination zones, perhaps the worst that the average person will encounter in everyday life. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet and up the regulation game.
True but those passangers were well to do (Score:4, Insightful)
The real fun starts if the virus gets out into the General American population. We don't have China's authoritarian system to force a quarantine and we don't have a universal healthcare system or paid sick leave, meaning the possibility for the virus to spread among our working class, especially the lower working class, is very, very high.
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I'm worried about Iran here, where it spready very quickly. They have difficulty getting medical supplies given the embargoes, and they're refusing to quarantine regions and only quarantine individuals.
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I'd like to see some actual numbers to justify your claim. The only way you might have anything close to a point is when you're talking mortality rates of those who go to receive medical attention.
Re: Not that concerned (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue isnt how many people die its how many require intensive care at the same time. We have a finite number of hospital beds, respirators, advanced support units, etc. if these services get overwhelmed then the death skyrockets
The key to surviving this will be limiting contact with others, reducing travel, and stocking basic food and medicine somewhere safe. This way if services get disrupted and shopping isnâ(TM)t safe then you have supplies to not starve. Eventually a vaccine or treatment will come out, the feds will buy it up and it will be a nonissue.
Re: Not that concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also the general panic that might arise. The moment school closings happen to curb infection then people will react accordingly. This has been outlined as part of the cdc potential options.
People will clean out the supermarket in a day and then it will take time to get things back in order.
Globally, supply lines are completely jacked and many people I know have seen the same things.
At least they have sent some trial antiviral out to China, but that wonâ(TM)t be accessible to anyone but the most critical condition.
Regardless, it wont hurt to have a few extra things around in case there is a run on the market.
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Re: Not that concerned (Score:2)
Also I find it hilarious that Trump is like "it's okay, virus isn't a big deal. umm... Pence could you go out there and deal with this." Haha hilarious.
Re: Not that concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
Also I find it hilarious that Trump is like "it's okay, virus isn't a big deal. umm... Pence could you go out there and deal with this."
Looks to me like he's using the same strategy as Xi, who put one of his political rivals in charge of tackling the virus outbreak. It's always good to have a fall guy to take the heat when things could go very badly.
Re: Not that concerned (Score:4, Informative)
Pence is not a political rival. He has been one of the most consistent, defenders of the president. Reliable even in the moments where its look ugliest for Trump and others have abandon him. Pence has stayed (and he has be right every time BTW).
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It doesn't matter whether he's a rival or a submissive lapdog. The point is, he's been set up to be the fall guy.
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Also I find it hilarious that Trump is like "it's okay, virus isn't a big deal. umm... Pence could you go out there and deal with this." Haha hilarious.
That's because a) the con artist has no idea how to lead and b) the con artist is a [politico.com] known [cnbc.com] germophobe [newsweek.com].
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Pence could you go out there and deal with this
I feel safer already!
Re: Not that concerned (Score:4, Informative)
Of course it would be great if we had fully functioning programs and resources to deal with diseases to both handle and limit outbreaks like this.
I mean we used to have them. But somehow in 2018 they started getting defunded and had resources redirected to somebodies other pet projects that have nothing at all to the health and wellbeing of the people of this nation.
Does anyone want 45 guesses to figure out what F-N moron did that?
I'll even give you a clue, it's not hillary or any other non-relevant person that doesn't currently hold an office.
It was obvious that kind of B.S. was going to be a problem, it's just that nobody predicted it would happen so soon.
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So far, this feels really overblown. Are we hyping this unnecessarily?
Yeah we should totally ignore it until everyone around us starts coughing and dropping dead.
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> So far, this feels really overblown. Are we hyping this unnecessarily?
I am not that concerned either, but I don't think this is being over hyped. This is fast spreading. Not super lethal, but lethal enough to be a concern.
If you wipe out 1% of the global population, you'll notice. We should be cautious. Making sure an executive stays on top of it seems reasonable. VPs don't do much anyway.
Re:Not that concerned (Score:4, Insightful)
VPs are mostly assassination brakes since Johnson. Take a look at the VPs since JFK and realize that they have mostly been picked for their quality of making a would-be assassin think "Sure, he's an asshole, but if I cap him, THAT dud takes over!"
Yes, it's overhyped (Score:2, Flamebait)
So far, this feels really overblown. Are we hyping this unnecessarily?
Yes, it's overblown at the present time, and for the US.
The only cases in the US so far have been repatriated citizens known to have the virus, a couple of people who brought it back from Wuhan, and their spouses who caught it from them.
To date there have been no cases in the US of unknown origin, and there should be no more contamination from the cases we know about. If we're lucky and successful in not importing more patients, the problem will fade without significant US infections.
The press is screeching
No, you're wrong. (Score:2)
Re:Yes, it's overhyped (Score:5, Informative)
To date there have been no cases in the US of unknown origin
The Washington Post just reported what appears to be the first case in the US "with no known link to foreign travel":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/northern-californian-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-in-first-us-case-with-no-link-to-foreign-travel/2020/02/26/b2088840-58fb-11ea-9000-f3cffee23036_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Yes, it's overhyped (Score:5, Interesting)
If we're lucky and successful in not importing more patients,
This is not 1918, we have a global economy and worldwide daily worldwide travel. When the virus has a symptomless incubation period of over a week there is nothing stopping it. Even with the SARS outbreak in 2002 travel was neither so fast nor as common as today. People daily fly from New York to Phuket for vacation, something which 20 years ago only the wealthy or the backpackers did. Our small department flew people from a dozen different countries to Seattle for a week of meetings recently (actual productive ones, fortunately). Other departments do the same thing and we're only one of a half dozen very large companies in the Puget Sound area. I wish I could remember how many people our company travel department said were in motion on any particular day, but it's an amazing number.
We're not escaping this one.
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Re:Not that concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
The CDC doesn't agree with you (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not that concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not overblown. Some things go from being a manageable problem to dangerous when you stop treating them with respect.
Unless you spend a lot of time thinking about disease transmission and studying the numbers, your gut feelings aren't probably much of a guide to what is or is not dangerous. Experience matters. If you felt the thing on your skin was cancer and your dermatologist felt it was a harmless skin tag, whose feeling would be more worth listening to?
We should listen to epidemiologists, who say this thing is serious. The problem is that the public doesn't really *know* how to deal with a serious problem like this. They have idea of what to do if a problem that falls between "not worth thinking about at all" and "apocalyptic", so they assume that "serious" means "apocalyptic". It's not.
Just be prepared for some things to be disrupted, like school. Take the same kind of common sense precautions you would take during a bad flu season, and almost certainly you'll be fine.
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No, it is not overblown. It is a serious matter. Could result in deaths of millions of Americans. Everyone should call the white house and demand a complete international travel ban. It is unacceptable to accept this danger.
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I could live with being racist.
I could not live with being dead.
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The best strategy now is to make sure that it doesn't hit with impact and you have an outbreak of millions at the same time. You can deal with millions spread out over a year, but not when they hit your hospitals in the same week.
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So far, this feels really overblown. Are we hyping this unnecessarily?
I just booked a trip to Italy in a few months, not because I think Italy will be virus free in a few months, but because I think it will be everywhere within a month.
And yeah it's serious. True it's generally only killing the old and/or weak, but there's probably a lot of old and/or weak people you don't want to die. And it sounds like this is 10-20x as lethal as the Flu and probably more contagious.
Seasonal flu kills ~500,000/year, it's not improbable that this will kill 5-10 million.
The bigger concern is
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Yes, its all hype. Mike Pence will pray for us so it'll all be OK. No reason to worry about the budget and staff cuts at CDC.
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No, but many people are overblowing it...not that avoiding a new disease becoming persistent is a bad idea.
What I really think is that there's no way this disease will be contained, so Trump put Pence in a job where he's guaranteed to fail in a very public way. (It's my guess that the fact that the failure will be unimportant is nearly irrelevant.)
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Thank God (Score:5, Funny)
I assume that's their strategy.
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Funny, but yeah, you be trollin' :)
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Well, at least they're not sitting around doing nothing!
Wait. A guy says Evolution is a lie. Evolved virus (Score:2, Insightful)
Now...WHY HAND THIS off to a complete RELIGIOUS imbecile?
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Well, that means they're not busy, right?
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Well, that means they're not busy, right?
Those license plates don't make themselves, you know.
Re:Wait. A guy says Evolution is a lie. Evolved vi (Score:5, Insightful)
Your comment is disingenious, to say the least. Firstly because being raised nominally Christian was the default for the societies almost all people you named lived in, unless one was Jewish or a member of another minority religion. They were raised to be Christian in societies where other options were non-existant, not to be spoken of or at the very least harmful to their careers and social standing. Calling them Christian is about as relevant as calling them white or male when looking at successful Western scientists of their respective eras.
Secondly, even as believers most of them clashed heavily with official religious doctrine, in both their personal lives and in their work. Presenting them as examples of smart Christians is dishonest when many of them were considered 'bad' Christians or outright apostates by their respective churches. It is like saying Rock is terrible because Nickelback sucks.
And thirdly, all the people you named posessed qualities that enabled them to excel in their respective fields, unhindered by their faith (if they actually were believers). Mike Pence on the other hand has no quality to qualify him for the position, and he has demonstrated repeatedly that his faith makes it impossible for him to make rational decisions based on the facts available. His faith actively disqualifies him. So even if 99% of believers were Nobel Price-level geniuses, GP's point still stands: Trump handed the job of dealing with a hard scientific problem to a guy who has been lining up for decades to get the Four Horsemen's autographs.
Pence? (Score:4, Funny)
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Well it worked for him. He's clearly been straight since he turned 23.
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Just asked him. He said we'll be splitting your daughters between us.
Strange. Something about leaving before he could explain Midianites.
Cool Scorpions quote, though.
Re:Pence? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, are we supposed to pray Coronavirus away?
Have a hypothesis as to how that could hurt?
Sure.
People don't seek proper medical treatment because they think God will save them.
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The US is fucked (Score:3, Funny)
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Nothing bad will happen probably as a result of this. Trump likes to keep things close. All of the important jobs are given to acting officers with loyalty to the President rather than Congress or the country. Despite Pence's failure to contain HIV in Indiana, as a seasoned politician he is likely the most adult-like person remaining in this administration. His selection could be a demonstration of how seriously Trump is taking this. He could have just given it to another hack, but when the economy is on th
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Re:The US is fucked (Score:4, Funny)
Well, technically, Pence didn't have a chance to make any mistakes yet as far as I can tell.
This will be his first. Oh, they grow up so fast...
Well (Score:5, Funny)
Sooo, thoughts and prayers it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, this is the kind of thinking I want to lead the battle against a potential pandemic.
Re: Sooo, thoughts and prayers it is (Score:2)
Well, that is the best tl;dr of Christianity I have seen in a long time.
God help us all.
Re:Sooo, thoughts and prayers it is (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy believes some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
So do a lot of excellent scientists, including at the CDC.
Pence's religion doesn't disqualify him for this post. His lack of qualifications disqualify him. Well, maybe. A good administrator can manage something they don't know anything about, by finding and employing people who do know a lot about it. If Pence immediately hires a good epidemiologist with an emphasis on public health, he can do a good job. If he tries to make the decisions himself, he'll botch it.
I think you'll find the athiest community (Score:3)
What you will find is people calling out attacking _Muslims_ as a hate crime. There is a difference between race & religion.
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Re:And he's not Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans do have an advantage there: A lot of the time they don't want government to work, as they oppose the existence of a large part of it.
History Rhymes (Score:2)
I remember when, prior to Katrina making landfall, and subsequently wiping out a big chuck of New Orleans, the Governor of Lousianna got all wishy-washy and didn't put her foot down and tell people to leave. You can read the transcript here.: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA... [cnn.com]
Trump just couldn't make a stand on his press conference about the Wuhan Virus... he's an asshole, but this took it to a new level. He needs to Lead, and help stave off a repeat of the Spanish Flu of 1918.... but... nope!
Re:History Rhymes (Score:4, Informative)
Just to put things in perspective, the first cases of COVID-19 showed up in Wuhan on around December 1. Here we are, less than 90 days later, and we're getting reports of endemic transmission around the world between people have not been to China nor have any connection to anyone who's been to China.
This thing has legs. Even if Donald Trump was the Second Coming of Walter Reed, he probably couldn't have accomplished much more in the time he's had to react. What we have to be careful of now is some kind of political security theater.
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False (Score:2)
About a half-hour later, Mr. Trump contradicted Ms. Schuchat’s assessment, telling reporters that “I don’t think it’s inevitable.”
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I think leadership, in this case, is to use the bully pulpit to pass on sound advice from people who are expert in these kinds of problems. It's not like nobody has thought about something like this happening and what people should do to prepare for it.
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I read the transcript, which is my preferred way to digest the President's words when one is available. It was a mixed bag; some of what he said was correct and needed to be said (the US *is* a world leader in public health), some was correct but potentially misleading (comparing COVID-19 to the flu), and some of it was plain wrong (that the number of cases are 15 and would soon be down to 5).
Things that I think make sense are: get a flu shot. While it won't provoke an immunological response to COVID-19,
Top men (Score:4, Funny)
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WHAT care? (Score:4, Informative)
The largest issue though is the uninsured. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in October 2016 that there were 27.2 million uninsured under age 65. That 26.2 million people are excluded from preventative care, and far less likely to seek medical attention in the event of a potential exposure.
WHAT preventative care? WHAT medical attention?
No vaccine is expected until next year or probably the year after - while the expected number of cases is something like 50% to 80% of the population.
The severe pneumonia form that leads to death is apparently a cytokine storm. We have no drugs to treat that - one in the pipeline that, even if it works, also won't be available until at least next year - and the only working treatment we DO have, as far as I know, is to hook the patient up to a blood filter - which doesn't scale to 16% of 50% of the population even if we did have enough machines and filters.
Korea claims that a combination of an anti-flu and an anti-aids drug helps. OK: So if there's enough of that to go around why not just make it over-the-counter for the duration?
Other than that, the main effect of gathering armies of sick people into health care centers is likely to be overwhelming the staff, infecting and killing some of them, and putting enough contagious people in one place that, if you go to the hospital WITHOUT the virus, you won't be without it once you're there.
If somebody has a suggestion for a way to actually help a patient and increase their likelihood of survival, if they get it THIS year, I'd really like to hear it. My wife (with lung trouble already) and I are old enough that we're not likely to survive this if we get it.
I get it (Score:3, Insightful)
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Even if the US somehow had perfect border control, there's a good chance that some people would've have gotten through before anybody even knew this was a thing.
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Doesn't work. The Berlin wall didn't work with guns etc. People dug under the wall, aside from playing with documents or legally getting permission and then simply defecting. Such as the huge portion of illegals in the USA which overstayed their VISA. You'd have to track everybody in the USA to boot them out as soon as they overstay.
Re:I get it (Score:5, Insightful)
We hate Trump, but we hate him for many good reasons.
We don't hate all Christians. We do hate homophobes, and politicians who put on a show of faith to appear morally better than the heathens and unbelievers, and the suckers who fall for it and vote accordingly, and the fanatics who don't see the reason for protecting the natural world because the apocolypse is coming soon anyway. It just happens that, in America, most of those people are Christians.
Did Everyone Miss the CDC Announcement? (Score:4, Informative)
Excerpts:
"We expect we will see community spread in this country," said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, during a press briefing Tuesday. "It's more of a question of exactly when this will happen."
"We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this is going to be bad," said Messonnier. "Now is the time for businesses, hospitals, communities, schools and everyday people to begin preparing as well."
Really ???? (Score:3)
The president cited his veep's experience with health care policy during his time as governor of Indiana.
So, the guy who started this managedhealthcareconnect.com [managedhea...onnect.com] will lead our response to the Virus ? Guess the CDC is correct in expecting overflowing hospitals
It's official (Score:3)
Vice President Mike Pence will be put in charge of the U.S. response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak
NOW you can all panic!
JAMA Report (Score:2)
I'm reading cites of this report on Fark before it appears on
If you can't spend the time to read and try to comprehend reports from doctors applying themselves to this issue in as specific and quantitative terms as their profession provides...
Just what are you doing?
Gloves instead of masks ... (Score:2)
... may work better to avoid 'community spread'.
A mask works great for protecting OTHER people from those wearing the mask by way of containing sneezes and coughs. It does little to nothing to protect the wearer.
Looking at the recommendation by CDC to wash hands in warm soapy water for at least 20 seconds, we discover the more serious vector for transmission: Hand to mouth, nose and eyes.
The first case of community spread MAY be in a county in California where the person who tested positive has not (as yet)
Not true (Score:2)
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
Re:Pence should not be in charge of this (Score:5, Informative)
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The UN has just been saying, "'we don’t have enough data on cases outside China to make a meaningful comparison on the severity of disease or the case fatality rate." Not at all the same thing.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2... [un.org]
Re: Handed it off to his best man (Score:5, Funny)
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Everyone should call the white house and ask for an international travel ban and to stop all incoming flights.
That won't work - because we also have an industry smuggling several million people a year across the southern border. (They'll be happy to smuggle a few more who couldn't get a flight - for a fee.)