Merkel Gives Germans a Hard Truth About the Coronavirus (nytimes.com) 408
Chancellor Angela Merkel is on her way out and her power is waning, but in her typically low-key, no-nonsense manner, the German leader on Wednesday laid out some cold, hard facts on the coronavirus in a way that few other leaders have. From a report: Two in three Germans may become infected, Ms. Merkel said at a news conference that reverberated far beyond her country. There is no immunity now against the virus and no vaccine yet. It spreads exponentially, and the world now faces a pandemic. The most important thing, the chancellor said, is to slow down the spread of the coronavirus to win time for people to develop immunity, and to prevent the health care system from becoming overwhelmed.
"We have to understand that many people will be infected," Ms. Merkel said. "The consensus among experts is that 60 to 70 percent of the population will be infected as long as this remains the situation." Ms. Merkel's estimates were probably a worst-case scenario, though not wildly out of line with those of experts outside Germany. Her warning provided a stark contrast to the crimped pronouncements of many other world leaders, among them President Trump, who has mostly played down the contagion. In a televised address Wednesday night, Mr. Trump took a somber tone as he suspended travel from Europe, excluding the United Kingdom, for 30 days.
"We have to understand that many people will be infected," Ms. Merkel said. "The consensus among experts is that 60 to 70 percent of the population will be infected as long as this remains the situation." Ms. Merkel's estimates were probably a worst-case scenario, though not wildly out of line with those of experts outside Germany. Her warning provided a stark contrast to the crimped pronouncements of many other world leaders, among them President Trump, who has mostly played down the contagion. In a televised address Wednesday night, Mr. Trump took a somber tone as he suspended travel from Europe, excluding the United Kingdom, for 30 days.
Thermal cameras (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thermal cameras (Score:5, Informative)
Not everyone gets fever, some people are completely asymptomatic.
Symptoms like fever appear several days after the person has become infectious (infectious after 24-48 hours, symptoms typically after 5-7 days). By the time a person has fever they could have already spread the virus to several other people.
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But asymptomatic people do not spread the virus, except by very close or extended contact [github.com].
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She doesn't dispute what the experts are saying which is:
The infected person **is infectious** after 24 to 48 hours, the symptoms appear after 5 to 7 days. As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out about exactly how the disease spreads (such as is it airborne or droplet).
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No, she says "Basically, getting on public transit with an asymptomatically infected patient most probably isn't going to give you the disease unless you make out with them or lick their face or something."
Which implies there is not a period of ~4 days where you can be asymptomatic and infectious (as you say)
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I'd like to see proof of that one way or the other because this disease is spreading like wildfire and I don't think her assumption holds water. Infectious is infectious.
Unless she has actual proof for Covid-19 then it is simply an assumption.
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No, she says "Basically, getting on public transit with an asymptomatically infected patient most probably isn't going to give you the disease unless you make out with them or lick their face or something."
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Disagree on all counts.
Approx 80% get a mild symptoms.
Most (over 90%) people tested are not infected.
Mortality rate is about 1-3% but that could go higher if health services are overwhelmed, 5% of people need machines to keep them breathing, there is a finite number of those machines / not many.
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I didn't say I know it I gave a rough estimate, probably a low one. It's not rocket science to estimate based upon numbers of people tested, numbers of people infected, numbers of people in intensive care, numbers of people recovered, numbers of deaths etc.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] (this one is getting too popular / overloaded sometimes)
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[citation needed]
You keep saying this same line of fucking horseshit without showing any research or subject matter experts saying the same thing. Back up your fucking lies, or stop copy / pasting them over and over.
Show me one single person with a medical doctorate of any kind that will go on any record saying that 90% of infected people are asymptomatic.
Also stop saying that because this virus is related to one that causes a fairly benign infection that it also is benign. You sound like a god damn idiot
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Show me one single person with a medical doctorate of any kind that will go on any record saying that 90% of infected people are asymptomatic. ... that is easy. First of all you could listen to the news. Secondly you could google ... ...
Wow
If it does not break your attention span, listen to the first 15 minutes at least
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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And what that means is that we're already past the point where we can prevent what is happening in Italy, all because "it wasn't bad enough" yet.
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Fair point. The Cat phone has good value thermal imaging, I was temped to buy one myself for it's ruggedness but put off by negative reviews about it being a slow dog.
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Taiwan is attempting this. [focustaiwan.tw]
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They've already been doing this at various places around the world. As I recall, Singapore deployed thermal cameras at points of entry into the country and instituted mandatory screening for people who appeared to be infected. And it looks like their efforts are paying off. When you look at the growth rate of the outbreak as measured by how long it took for the last doubling of confirmed cases within each country (i.e. fewer days indicates the disease is spreading quickly, more days indicates the spread is
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True, but Singapore* is in a fairly unique situation with a small population, a totalitarian but benevolent government, a population willing to listen to the government and do things for the public good, and a small island nation that is relatively easy to control ingress / egress.
Good luck with any of that in say, USA.
*I lived in Singapore for 4 years and love it dearly.
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Taiwan [focustaiwan.tw] is democratic, has thermal cameras, and has the outbreak totally under control (just 49 total cases so far, and linear rather than exponential growth).
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I love that country. They had a problem with people sticking chewing gum everywhere so they simply banned it.
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Being that the normal body temperatures are between 97 - 99F
I doubt wide scale thermal imaging cameras will be accurate enough to pinpoint peoples internal body temperatures. As many peoples external body temperatures may run much differently.
There is a reason why Hospitals use Thermometers that come in physical contact with people, Head, Ear, Mouth, ummm other. For a medical diagnosis distance cameras are just not good enough. Hospitals would love technology that can monitor a patient's temp right when th
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That's not going to help - or at least it's not going to help MUCH. The distinctive property of this virus is that most people who have it are asymptomatic - and even those who do go on to get sick can take a couple of weeks to show symptoms...that means no fever in the vast majority of people who are spreading it.
The "test kits" that are out there use a finger-stick blood test that takes 15 minutes - and that can identify asymptomatic carriers as well as sick people.
Re:Thermal cameras wouldn't help (Score:4, Informative)
No, the "pandemic" is here because the World Health Organization has called it a pandemic.
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"No, the "pandemic" is here because the World Health Organization has called it a pandemic."
That's only scientists, just like Angela Merkel, who is one too.
This must be solved by 'hunches'.
Re:Thermal cameras wouldn't help (Score:5, Insightful)
The world's leading epidemiologists versus random guys on the Internet.
Who to choose...?
Re:Thermal cameras wouldn't help (Score:5, Insightful)
The WHO is most certainly NOT the world's leading epidemiologists, no one outside the US is capable of holding such a title.
The WHO are in with the establishment, which is trying to given their favored candidate (Biden) an excuse to not speak in public due to senility.
This is no different than the DNC running a dozen demographic-targeting candidates who all dropped out and pledged their delegates to Biden: it's election manipulation.
This looks so much like satire, but it's almost like you believe what you're writing.
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The Internet, where EVERYBODY can become an expert!
Re:Thermal cameras wouldn't help (Score:5, Insightful)
no one outside the US is capable of holding such a title.
'MUERIKA!!!!
You're a fucking moron.
The WHO are in with the establishment, which is trying to given their favored candidate (Biden)
The WHO can't give a shit about your crappy country's local politics.
You're a fucking moron.
I'd say it a third time, but I noticed someone called you a fucking moron in another reply so there's no need to repeat it anymore.
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The WHO's estimate is 3.4%. Once again, I don't fucking care what you say. Your vague claims of "biotech" expertise are meaningless. At best you're a deluded moron, at worst an outright liar. Please just go fuck yourself either way.
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90% of cases are asymptomatic and most of the rest look like the common cold (which coronavirus is.) This means the mortality rate is massively over-hyped, especially so since they're only testing people known to almost certainly be infected due to contact with the infected. The truth is this has been our for months, it's airborne, highly contagious, transmissible by people showing no symptoms, and happened to coincide with the worse cold and flu season in awhile (coronaviruses, by the way, happen to constitute some of the viruses considered a part of the "common cold.") Chances are you already caught this and got over it.
The "pandemic" here is psychological, people panicking is what is causing the markets to tank, schools to close, and businesses to stall. This is being amplified massively by the MSM and democratic party trying to push fear of it to manipulate the elections and distract from the fact Biden is senile by having a "legitimate" reason to cancel his speeches.
Wow. Can you show me your medical degree? Because every single doctor I know says you are full of shit.
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Wow. Can you show me your medical degree? Because every single doctor I know says you are full of shit.
Really? Checked with them that fast did you, liar?
Maybe he only knows one doctor?
Even if he doesn't. I'd still give more credit to "That random guy looks like he might know a doctor" over your insane conspiracy theory.
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Some crackerjack proof you got goin' there, I'm sold!
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Nothing I wrote is in the slightest bit insane.
You misspelled credible.
Re:Thermal cameras wouldn't help (Score:5, Insightful)
It really depends on what your perspective is. Sure, if you are young then this is totally overhyped, but if you are older or have a preexisting condition, this thing has a decent chance of causing you problems. If the hospitals become overwhelmed, then you're going to be on your own rather quickly and people who wouldn't die otherwise are going to die.
So we are then faced with a decision - do we sacrifice a bunch of older and sick folks because we don't want young people to be disrupted, or do we take measures to try to give vulnerable folk the best chance of getting through this?
I have one grandparent left who is in their late 80s. They live in a country with poor access to medical help. If this hits them there is probably a 50/50 chance they get killed by it. We have a couple of old people in our apartment building, and these are someone's grandparents. If I have to have my life disrupted for a couple months to give them a better chance at getting through this, it doesn't seem like that big a sacrifice to make. Maybe you think otherwise, but in many parts of our self-entered western civilisations there is still a thing called community.
As for why the markets are tanking, that is simply because the financial sector had spent the time since the GFC bullying central banks into supporting perpetually rising asset prices. They are now terrified that the central banks are losing the ability to continue feeding the ponzi scheme they have created, and that things like, you know, the ability to make a profit, might become important again.
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Given 90% of infected are entirely asymptomatic this suggests that that 2-3% mortality rate is at worst 0.2-0.3% in actuality.
You're completely ignoring what is happening in Italy. The mortality rate soars when there aren't enough beds, ventilators, blood oxygenators, etc to treat the serious cases.
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They have roughly the same number of ICU units per 1K citizens as we do. The problem is how many cases need them and how quickly.
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Ha "top notch." That's a good one!
Top notch until you try paying for it.
Get help. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an over-hyped cold and flu season to distract from the fact Biden, the preferred MSM and global elite candidate, is too senile to be able to speak in public without losing votes.
So it's not a Democrat hoax.
It's a global conspiracy...
All those countries are throwing themselves into chaos and killing off hundreds (/thousands). Just to stop Trump winning the election?
That seems rational to you?
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I'm sure it makes perfect sense that the MSM and global elite chose an old senile guy as their candidate. Literally couldn't find anyone else to do it, not even Bloomberg is who IS the global elite... Wait... Huh maybe it doesn't make sense after all.
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That seems rational to you?
If you've ever looked over NicknameUnavailable's post history you'd not be questioning if he thinks anything is rational, .... or even knows what rationality is.
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It'd be nice if the above statement were true. It's not. Dying of Coronavirus presents in a very similar manner to dying of other types of pneumonia. So the # of deaths attributed to Coronavirus is probably undercounted by a good amount. Especially when you consider that major outbreaks are happening in nations with poor public health systems. Like Iran and the USA.
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That seems like a reasonable theory - and I sort of buy into the fact our current downtown corridor is pretty exposed - but if this was true I'd expect a lot more deaths in old person homes than we see currently.
I bet a week or two until we're in the thick of it. I hope that I am wrong though, and we are already past it.
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Again, I would generally agree, except the flash point old people homes where 7 of 8 infected died or whatever.
Doesn't seem exactly like the common cold, in some circumstances.
Also, China doesn't lock down China for literally no reason.
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Uh the mortality rate is about 20% if you're elderly. That's pretty significant.
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Wishful thinking won't help (Score:2)
90% of cases are asymptomatic
There's no evidence of that at all. But lots to the contrary. ... and most of the rest look like the common cold (which coronavirus is.)
It can be asymptomatic at first. But except for the very young (like those under ten) it gets there after a while - and after it's been spreading from the asymptomatic person.
Sure it's a common cold. It's just one that puts about a third of its victims in intensive care, and kills about one in thirty.
Nothing new about that sort of thing. Pol
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The "pandemic" here is psychological, people panicking is what is causing the markets to tank, schools to close, and businesses to stall. This is being amplified massively by the MSM and democratic party trying to push fear of it to manipulate the elections...
OTOH, this would be an ideal opportunity for Biden to weigh in with a plan of his own, so we could see for ourselves how his proposed handling of the situation would compare to Trump's. This did come up as a debate question in February: Sanders responded with his usual empty sneer, while Biden promised to handle it in a similar way to Obama's handing of the Ebola outbreak.
But that was in debate. Now he has the opportunity to be more specific.
Yes, she did. Three months too late. (Score:4, Interesting)
Merkel said now what experts had been warning about since December. That we are facing this 'hard truth' is in no small part the result of her absolute lack of action and leadership. The Federal and State governments have universally screwed up the public response to the outbreak. Schools, kindergartens and universities should have been closed weeks ago, only in the last few days have large public events been cancelled (and even this not uniformly but with absolutely ridiculous exceptions). Testing of patients, of the deceased and, most critically, of health professionals has been avoided as much as possible to keep the numbers low on paper, putting those with pre-existing conditions at an enormous risk of exposure. Quarantine rules have been suspended for medical personnel, despite dire warnings about the likely consequences. Public authorities are not equipped or even legally authorised to competently handle the situation, coordination is virtually non-existent. Medical resources have been insufficient to deal with the day-to-day business before COVID-19, and they are maxed out already way beyond capacity despite the peak still being weeks ahead of us. This is common knowledge to anyone in the health community, and it has been openly decried by experts for months. Merkel has not given us a hard truth, she just admitted to herself what anyone informed already knew.
And why now, so late in the game? To keep the stock markets happy for as long as possible. "Aussitzen", waiting things out until the one sane but politically unpalatable solution has become "alternativlos", without alternatives, is her signature style. And it will cost us dearly in this situation.
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Anyone trusting the numbers as absolutes are guilty on this too. As soon as the first case made landfall in the US, containment measures should have been swift and drastic.
Even acting just one week ago would have prevented what happened in Italy from coming to pass here. We already knew we couldn't do enough tests by then to have accurate numbers and take precise, targeted containment measures.
But because of incubation period and time to severe symptoms, it's only a matter of time now. Enough cases to ov
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Three months ago it wasn't clear that it would become a global pandemic and that up to 70% of Germans would get it. That's just nonsense, in fact the first case was only on December 1st 2019 which is just over three months ago.
The very first official announcement of it was exactly three months ago on December 12th of Chinese state TV. If Merkel had said back then that 70% of Germans will be infected and we should all start preparing for that people would have laughed and dismissed her as a crazy fear-monger
Has anyone seen ANYTHING about Russia (Score:3)
Any news at all, other than Putin is what ever he is for another 1? years.
All is there, for all countries (Score:2)
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]
rectification (Score:5, Informative)
try https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]
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Re:Has anyone seen ANYTHING about Russia (Score:4, Informative)
There's a whole Wikipedia article about this. [wikipedia.org] It appears they have had cases, but not very many. They have blocked entry from China, and later Korea and Iran.
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They're reporting 28 confirmed cases (lol), and they're closing most entry points with China.
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I have seen absolutely nothing about Russia and this virus. Or I just missed it. How many cases have they experienced? Have they shut down the borders?
Russia is currently reporting [worldometers.info] 28 cases and three deaths.
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The low count probably has a lot to do with how many people go there for business and pleasure. It's Russia, so although it does have charming places, it isn't a big tourist destination - especially in the winter. Not as many people go there to or for work, because again, it's Russia. That helps a lot.
What I'd like to know is what the real numbers are for India. 74 cases seems awfully low. Admitedly not as much a travel destination as Europe, but much higher population density.
Testing in Russia (Score:2)
Russia doesn't really know how to even diagnose COVID-19.
Yet, they still managed somehow to run 51000 tests [themoscowtimes.com] :
Leave it to the Germans (Score:2)
To tell the truth.
Thank you.
Logarithmically (Score:2)
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You can see on a chart that it's not logarithmic growth. Even if it's approaching 100% infection rapidly, it's how it's getting there that determines the curve.
30% of Americans (Score:2)
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And if 30% or even 50% of Americans get COVID-19 over the course of 6-8 months there would be no real major problem except a spike like a bad flu year. That's not what's happening. It's happening in the course of a few weeks. That's what's making this bad.
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Cool Story, Bro.
Yup, Nihilism! Don't do anything about anything! Doesn't matter anyway, unless we ALL die, apparently.
Poor leader (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow! The US media declared Trump an utter incompetent failure when there were only a few cases and no deaths in the US.
I cannot even coprehend the beating she must be taking.
Re:Poor leader (Score:4, Informative)
Criticism of Trump wasn't about the number of cases or deaths in the US.
The criticism of Trump was due to his handling of the crisis.
Trump has consistently tried to downplay the threat of this pandemic because he thinks it'll make him look bad and it'll tank the stock market.
In contrast, Merkel clearly is clearly erring on the side of caution. Instead of downplaying the risk, she's talking about plausible worst-case scenarios.
That's why Merkel isn't getting slammed, but Trump is getting slammed.
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Admittedly Trump has been an utter incompetent failure since long before this.
The utter failure here is someone not having left their echo chamber long enough to see a single positive achievement done by the president.
Costly (Score:4, Interesting)
ventilator (Score:2)
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A ventilator is useless without a trained healthcare professional minding it.
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The ventilator machine factory is located in Wuhan, China. In fact, the very first case was from a fellow who worked at the Ventilator factory who fucked bats on his coffee break.
Um.... (Score:4, Informative)
..."slow down the spread of the coronavirus to win time for people to develop immunity"
I'm pretty sure that's not how immunity in this case works.
You don't just "grow" immunity over time.
You get it, you survive it, you develop immunity (or resistance; I think there's only 2 cases of reinfection and that's in China where the data is suspect AND IIRC ethnic Han are particularly vulnerable to corona-family virii)
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Actually, it does work, though not directly. Try it this way.
1. Some people get the disease, they get treated, they recover.
2. Now they are immune. So they can't catch the disease.
3. When the disease tries to spread and hits someone who's already immune it doesn't succeed.
This is called "herd immunity", where a contagious disease needs at least a certain fraction of the herd to be susceptible or it dies out.
The problems are:
1. If the medical system is overloaded, then people die because they can't be tr
RYFM (Score:3)
The manual is not only already out, but you can read it free on Gutenberg: Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. It's the founding document of epidemiology.
Yes, he was the Robinson Crusoe author. His description of London in the thick of the Black Death is highly relevant to our time. Back then, nobody knew what caused bubonic plague, how it was transmitted, or how to treat it. So Londoners had to take an epidemiological approach to it, just as we are doing now. Quickly they evolved the idea of social isolation, "closing houses" as a quick fix, just like the self-quarantining we are doing now. The rich fled to the countryside, and it did not take long to figure out that in some cases the disease was being spread this way. They had to learn quarantining, fast.
Bubonic plague is still a thing, and right here in my state. But because we understand the organism and the transmission vectors, at most one or two people a year get it. We need to arrive at that state with coronavirus as quickly as possible.
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"Why wasn't coronavirus being covered here in January/February when Slashdot could have been breaking news about it?"
You mean 'stuff that matters'?
Are you crazy?
Re:Ms. Mash - question (Score:5, Informative)
Why wasn't coronavirus being covered here in January/February when Slashdot could have been breaking news about it? It spread worldwide in that timeframe, and news/discussion about its spread would have been beneficial to all the readers. We're now being spammed with regurgitated junk from other sites we've already seen, and there is nothing "news" about it.
To rehash, coronavirus has been all over the world and "baking" in that time. We have been kept in the dark by the government. There was plenty of time to prepare in advance, which some of us did, but most didn't.
First article was tagged coronavirus Jan 21. There were 34 (not counting a dupe) stories in the time frame you referencing if I've counted correctly https://slashdot.org/tag/coron... [slashdot.org] feel free to check the numbers for yourself.
Re:Ms. Mash - question (Score:4, Funny)
So, including dupes, that's like 434, right?
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It's bizarre because mostly the feeling has been the over publishing of COVID articles around here.
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Why wasn't coronavirus being covered here in January/February when Slashdot could have been breaking news about it?
Here at SlashdotLabs, we pride ourselves on being neither virologists nor epidemiologists.
We're more like spectators. See we just post stories that other people have written and then we comment on them. Often those comments are silly and pointless, but at least now, we have lowered the bar to an all-time low.
Thanks for playing!
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Slashdot hasn't been current on breaking news for over a decade.
We still use it, because most other news sites were smart enough to disable comments on their site.
That being said, Coronavirus was isolated to mostly to one area of the world. Where back in the old days the CDC and WHO would have a plan in place to make sure it didn't spread like it did.
It seems that reducing the funds the likes of the CDC and their outreach to other countries seemed to have cost more to the taxpayers then actually allowing t
Re:Ms. Mash - question (Score:5, Insightful)
I highly doubt this whole issue could have been mitigated had we spent more money. The brutal truth of the matter is that common people regularly travel across the world these days. Rapid-spreading diseases, especially those with a long incubation time and which are highly contagious, are pretty much inevitable.
I suppose we could blame the politicians that simply didn't want to look bad or harm their economy by clamping off travel to China and isolating anyone who traveled to China immediately after this was a known threat, but it's pretty simple to look at these things with 20/20 hindsight and second-guess what should or could have been done.
In fact, I seem to recall Trump getting grief for over-reacting when the US banned travel to and from China months ago, some implying it was being used as a political or economic weapon, while (oddly to my view) at the same time declaring it was too late for such measures.
Breaking New: Just as I'm writing this, Europe is "angry with US" over travel bans. Apparently, they're still in denial over there.
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Speaking as someone in the healthcare industry, we're pretty well prepared. It's not going to be a walk in the park, but the supply chains and stocks are solid. We don't need epidemiologists in each hospital; that work is statistical in nature and can be done remotely (sampling and testing is what happens locally). And yes, all hospitals have an emergency continuity protocol, so yes, we're covered for continuity as far as can be humanly done in a pandemic.
The big issue is staff. You can have all the mas
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Airlines are carrying freight on flights with unused passenger capacity. This is a natural way of maintaining business while people aren't traveling. If it's medical freight, so much the better.
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See https://news.slashdot.org/?iss... [slashdot.org]
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Because back then all the self appointed geniuses here kept saying it was no big deal.
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Why wasn't coronavirus being covered here in January/February when Slashdot could have been breaking news about it?
Slashdot doesn't "break news" and it has never "broken news". It's a news aggregator that relies on submission of popular stories written by others.
We're now being spammed with regurgitated junk from other sites we've already seen
Maybe you should consider going to an actual news site then, rather than a discussion forum of news articles from other sites.
Turn on the light. (Score:2)
No we haven't, probably because the government lacks the capacity to do that. It might have been possible before we all had internet access, but .. well, no, even then it would have been ridiculously difficult for the government to hide the news. But if you're right and they actually did try to keep us in the dark, then I'd say their 100% failure rate has been every bit as high as you would have expected.
If you are not as concerned as the people of Wuhan were or Italy are. Then you have been kept in the dark.
Maybe that was self inflicted. Maybe it was mainstream media. Maybe it was Trump downplaying the whole thing.
It doesn't really matter. The thing that matters is you are running out of time to turn on the lights.
Re: Ms. Mash - question (Score:3, Interesting)
The US is most assuredly being kept in the dark because the government is keeping itself in the dark. Theyve had 2 months to develop and distribute tests and procedures but did nothing. Hell, there are so few tests available that members of Congress who have had direct interaction with infected people cant get tested because they dont meet some random "risk threshold".
Re: Ms. Mash - question (Score:5, Insightful)
The US is most assuredly being kept in the dark because the government is keeping itself in the dark. Theyve had 2 months to develop and distribute tests and procedures but did nothing. Hell, there are so few tests available that members of Congress who have had direct interaction with infected people cant get tested because they dont meet some random "risk threshold".
Na, Americans don't ration healthcare. That's only Socialists and Commies what do that.
America has the bestest healthcare system in the world.
Re:Exxageration? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you remember that wrong. Kekulé said that he estimates about 40.000 fatalities from COVID-19 in Germany (instead of up to 250.000 as projected by another specialist, Christian Drosten).
See https://www.focus.de/gesundhei... [focus.de] (German)
Huge exaggeration (Score:2, Insightful)
About 2% of the Wuhan population got it.
And if you believe it's actually a lot more than that, then a really huge number of people got it and didn't die and/or didn’t get sick enough to go to the doctor.
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What Germany has on its side is a culture of mass rule-following. it's the one country where when the government advises everyone to do Procedure X, they will do it. This probably accounts for the difference in incidence from Italy.
Re:Dihydrogen-Monoxide 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
It's highly contagious and transmissible from people showing no symptoms.
No it's not. Asymptomatic people do not transmit the disease except by abnormally close contact. [github.com]
90% of the infected are asymptomatic.
No it's not. The asymptomatic rate is up to 18% and likely much lower [github.com]
It's literally a variant of a coronavirus, coronaviruses make up a good chunk of the things we call "the common cold."
So what? Wolves are literally a variant of dogs, but I wouldn't want to be alone with a couple wolves.
It's literally a fake pandemic meant to give Biden a chance vs Trump and Sanders.
Seems you forgot to take your meds.
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Re: (Score:3)
Says the guy who gave literally zero support for his assertions?
The github page I linked to is run by an infectious disease expert, and it contains links to many other expert sites, including some med journals (despite the limited peer-reviewed literature at this point due to the compressed time scale).
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"Wolves are literally a variant of dogs, but I wouldn't want to be alone with a couple wolves."
You have that bassackwards. Dogs are variants of Wolves.
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They're not "resistant." They get sick and spread it just like everyone else. Just none of them get severe respiratory symptoms because their lungs don't get damaged badly enough quickly enough.
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It says few are diagnosed with it. But they also don't meet testing criteria that most countries have established. They're probably not infectious for very long either because the immune response is so much more rapid. That does not mean they don't get sick and don't spread it.