Social Distancing Is Slowing Not Only COVID-19, But Other Diseases Too 251
"As governments around the world have pushed their citizens away from populated places to slow the spread of Covid-19, they may not have realized that they were also combatting other infectious diseases, such as the seasonal flu," reports Quartz. The data comes from Kinsa Health, a company that collects anonymized thermometer readings from its active user base to estimate the share of people that are ill in different geographies. From the report: By comparing current thermometer readings to historical trends, researchers have used Kinsa's data to predict flu outbreaks weeks before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's surveillance program, which uses hospitalization records. Recent data clearly show the spread of Covid-19. On March 19, the share of Americans with temperatures indicating they had flu-like symptoms was about 4.9% when it typically would be expected to be about 4.0%. This was likely a result of the spread of Covid-19, according to Kinsa's researchers.
But by March 23, it was down to 3.3%, when it would typically be at 3.7% (the share of fevers decreases quickly at this time of year because of the end of winter). The drop -- from 0.9% above typical flu-like illness rates to 0.4% below -- in just four days is the largest one Kinsa has ever observed in such a short period of time, according to Kinsa CEO Inder Singh. "There is no known precedent for this type of extensive social distancing in recent time," said Singh. "We have nothing to compare this to, but this extreme drop is exactly what we would hope and expect with the measures currently in place."
But by March 23, it was down to 3.3%, when it would typically be at 3.7% (the share of fevers decreases quickly at this time of year because of the end of winter). The drop -- from 0.9% above typical flu-like illness rates to 0.4% below -- in just four days is the largest one Kinsa has ever observed in such a short period of time, according to Kinsa CEO Inder Singh. "There is no known precedent for this type of extensive social distancing in recent time," said Singh. "We have nothing to compare this to, but this extreme drop is exactly what we would hope and expect with the measures currently in place."
I bet it reduced car crash fatalities too, so what (Score:5, Interesting)
With less people commuting, less people in cars, I bet the number of accidents and therefore number of car accident fatalities fell as well. Not sure how actionable such data this is though, if at all.
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Here in Belgium, it even seems as if there are less strokes or heart attacks... Doctors aren't quite sure how or why, but the numbers are there.
Re:I bet it reduced car crash fatalities too, so w (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I bet it reduced car crash fatalities too, so w (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, no one is doing anything, and the stress of bills to come and massive unemployment hasn't quite hit anyone yet.
It's a very relaxed (boring?) life at the moment.
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It would be nice if more companies kept allowing remote working and if people kept in the habit of respecting other's personal space.
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It would be nice if more companies kept allowing remote working and if people kept in the habit of respecting other's personal space.
I ain't never going back. If they don't like it they can fire me.
Re:I bet it reduced car crash fatalities too, so w (Score:5, Interesting)
WILL we see fundamental changes in the workplace?
lets talk about software/hardware devel, which is what a lot of us do for a living. I've been working in the bay area for over 25 years, now; started in the boston area (10 years there) - so I have some feel for how tech on both coasts, work.
in the bay area, the 'open office' concept took over about 10-15 years ago, give or take. we used to have cube dividers; but now I have not seen one for well over a decade. when I started back in boston, we had dividers that were taller than a person (I was at DEC for several years; one of the best places I was ever at, btw; sad to see them go, all those years ago). by the time I left DEC, the dividers were less than a person's height.
moved out to bay area and we still had dividers (early 90's). but since then, they have entirely disappeared (well, maybe HR has them - they are 'special' right? sigh).
in fact, I've seen the sweatshop return, in terms of look/feel. one company I interviewed with last year had desks arranged end to end, in a long row, like cafeterias. no space at all between desks - people sitting bench style (almost) next to each other. packed like friggin sardines. I left the interview thinking "hmmm, no personal space, no respect for employees, I think I'll pass". (fwiw, I checked in with some friends who do work there, and that company showed its real nature; they held people there to the very last day before the mandatory shelter-in-place rule was announced. other bay area companies were letting their employees WFH if they felt unsafe, even weeks before the forced WFH change.
what I'm getting at is: when the 'all clear' (narrator: it won't be all clear, not even close) is given and we have to report back to work - do you expect or even demand changes in your physical work area? do you think HR is going to listen?
let me say this: every so often, the tech industry 'toys' with the idea of unions. there are people who will lie and tell you that you don't need it- but seriously guys, we need bargaining power, right now. we need to demand more realistic working conditions, including the right to WFH without static from management (assuming you actually can do remote work) - we have to have more distance between our desks and ideally even the return of the barrier.
we were all getting more colds and flus when the barriers were removed. now, its more important than ever that we demand they be returned. its not realistic to ask for hardwall offices, but it IS very realistic (should be legally required if employees request) to have a return to larger cubes and more space all around.
think about it, guys. historically, engineering has an ego problem in that they dont' want to admit they need help with collective bargaining. but trust me, we need this. only together can we return to a more safe work environment.
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I also wondered if traffic fatalities were down due to reduced travel associated with both the pandemic quarantines and with the general economic downturn.
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Latest numbers from Denmark support your hypothesis:
Car traffic is down by 47%
Car accidents are down by 54%
Wow! Who knew? (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been a lot of thoughtless people in the UK, lately, expatiating on this kind of theme. Who would ever have imagined that, when people stay home and do not spend much of the day driving around and operating factories, pollution might decrease? Isn't it stunning that when people avoid crowding together and remain in small groups, the spread of disease decreases?
Taking the idea to its logical extreme, we would all be better reverting to the prehistoric hunter-gatherer life. Unfortunately our ancestors removed that option when the agricultural revolution began. Even 3,000 years ago there were far too many people to live sustainably by hunting and gathering. As Yuval Noah Harari pointed out in "Sapiens", “With time, the ‘wheat bargain’ became more and more burdensome. Children died in droves, and adults ate bread by the sweat of their brows Paradoxically, a series of ‘improvements’, each of which was meant to make life easier, added up to a millstone around the necks of these farmers.
“Why did people make such a fateful miscalculation? For the same reason that people throughout history have miscalculated. People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions”.
Every good harvest tempted people to have more children, but they failed to see the long-term implications. Eating grains weakened their immune systems while being crowded together with farm animals encouraged infectious diseases; and even when they had a surplus of food, that just attracted robbers and enemies so they had to build walls and lose workers to become soldiers. “The trap snapped shut”.
The considerable upside of the present lockdowns is completely dwarfed by the downside: we cannot live without working, and work requires most people to travel and cooperate physically.
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It's that last quarter sentence I take issue with: "work requires most people to travel and cooperate physically"
I think perhaps, it doesn't. Not really. We have technology now to eliminate both. We just need to expand that technology to more industries.
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Force them to do it long enough, they'll figure it out. Just last week it was "impossible" to deliver me my updated pay letter from my manager except in person. I'm expecting it tomorrow emailed and encrypted.
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Eating grains weakened their immune systems
I agree with everything you wrote, except this. Why would you say that ?
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Probably a misunderstanding of the fact that many early agricultural societies did have worse diets and generally worse health than hunter gatherers. But I think this had mostly to do with sanitation and limited food variety, maybe also a lifestyle that didn't allow for easy escape in times of drought and famine.
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Is knowledge really that dangerous? It can only be if you've lost your ability to way pros and cons.
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There have been a lot of thoughtless people in the UK, lately, expatiating on this kind of theme. Who would ever have imagined that, when people stay home and do not spend much of the day driving around and operating factories, pollution might decrease? Isn't it stunning that when people avoid crowding together and remain in small groups, the spread of disease decreases?
Sure, it is obvious, what is not is by how much. I expect that after things settle down, researchers will take advantage of that unplanned large scale experiment and draw more precise conclusion than "duh", with error bars [xkcd.com].
Eating grains weakened their immune systems while being crowded together with farm animals encouraged infectious diseases.
I see not relationship between eating grains and a weakened immune system, is there some proof about that? But the second part is definitely true, and results in strengthened immune systems.
By living crowded together with animals, we created the perfect conditions for plagues to appear an
This just in! Video gaming saves lives! (Score:5, Funny)
Video games save lives. I told you guys. I fucking told you so. So there.
Saturday night fever (Score:2)
A simple lesson we shiould have learned 40y ago (Score:2)
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Careful- too far in that direction you might stumble upon Distributism....where even ownership is more distributed.
Check the box that says "401k" (Score:2)
If you want distributed ownership, check the box that says "401k". Now you've got ownership. You're welcome.
If you want the Trump administration to use your money to build whatever they decode to build, maybe some nuclear reactors and GMO seed companies, then put the government in charge of business ownership.
Authorities say we need 6'/2m social distancing (Score:2)
Scandinavian Minnesotans thought "that's still a little close, isn't it?"
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So... (Score:2)
How is the spread ... (Score:2)
Wow! This far into the thread (Score:2)
And I haven't seen anyone complain - or even notice - that some IoT thermometer is apparently sharing your temperature back to its manufacturer?
We care... sometimes (Score:3)
I'm amazed out how freaked out people are by COVID-19 because it MIGHT kill a few hundred thousand (in US) if we are really careless. So we shut everything down and go overboard on containing this. Fine.
But every winter without fail, we flood shopping malls, travel all over the country to see each other while cramming way too many people into our homes, throwing big parties, and literally do the complete opposite of what we are being shamed/threatened into doing now... and kill tens of thousands with flu EVERY YEAR. And we don't even bat an eye. It's just a little weird.
Numbers don't add up (Score:4, Insightful)
On March 19, the share of Americans with temperatures indicating they had flu-like symptoms was about 4.9% when it typically would be expected to be about 4.0%. This was likely a result of the spread of Covid-19, according to Kinsa's researchers.
Unless 0.9% of the population was sick with it on March 19 (that's about 3 million people), that couldn't have possibly been the reason.
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:5, Informative)
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I saw that mythbusters episode too. Much better to take enough DXM so that you don't cough at all and wear a mask.
Re:That's actually quite bad too. (Score:4, Informative)
You're right, this is not a behaviour that will avoid contagion in 100% of the cases,, but coughing into your arm is still much better than doing it into your hand (or nothing, of course) given that you use your hands to touch objects - spreading the infection - much much more than the inside of your elbow or your torso.
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Re:That's actually quite bad too. (Score:5, Funny)
You're right, this is not a behaviour that will avoid contagion in 100% of the cases,, but coughing into your arm is still much better than doing it into your hand (or nothing, of course)
Yeah, but coughing into your arm is going to devastate the square dancing community.
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Coughing into your arm/elbow but towards people, still causes the upward air to reach them. Or the downwards air, if there is e.g. a table below the arm. But, worse....
This is for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Who/What is Tom?
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Tom "Myspace" Anderson?
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:5, Interesting)
In Belgium they yesterday made a law that can put you in jail for five years if you cough in somebody's face intentionally.
This is to ensure that this 'trend' (among some of the most disturbing idiots of society) in the Netherlands to intentionally cough in a police officer's face doesn't catch on in Belgium.
So they warned on the radio and some media outlets that our government is creating a law that throws you in jail for five years if you do that.
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this 'trend' ... in the Netherlands
Too late, it's already another pandemics! [dublinlive.ie]
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In Belgium they yesterday made a law that can put you in jail for five years if you cough in somebody's face intentionally.
This is to ensure that this 'trend' (among some of the most disturbing idiots of society) in the Netherlands to intentionally cough in a police officer's face doesn't catch on in Belgium.
So they warned on the radio and some media outlets that our government is creating a law that throws you in jail for five years if you do that.
I'm pretty sure that's already covered on most places by the same laws that cover spitting at police officers, etc. ie. It's classed as assault, and punishable.
It's not a bad thing to formalize it and get the message out there.
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In the US, such action is now classified as terrorism.
No, I am not joking.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
https://www.deseret.com/u-s-wo... [deseret.com]
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
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Sadly, this is happening elsewhere in the world, and not just directed at police officers. A recent incident (after COVID-19 confirmed in the area) was caught on a surveillance camera at a service station located on a reserve in rural Manitoba, Canada. Individual admitted he is sick, and was there to spread the contagion into the First Nations population in the hopes of "wiping you mother....rs off the face of the earth".
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Funny, if at anytime someone coughed in my face intentionally, their face would most likely meet my fist for being stupid. COVID-19 aside...
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, not.. This will make the epidemic take LONGER...
The social distance rules are to reduce HOW FAST the infection spreads. There is an exponential curve as the pathogen enters a population where there is no immunity and in this case, due to the relatively large morbidity rate for this virus, this initial spike of cases threatens to overwhelm the medical system with more critically ill patients than can be handled. We want to spread out this initial peak, make it take longer and reduce the rates of infection. But that slows it down and makes it take longer.
Reality says that most of us will get this virus eventually. The social distancing thing is an attempt to save lives by slowing down the rate of spread so the seriously ill don't over run our strained medical resources and we don't have folks dying because we don't have the resources to keep them alive.
So all this will make the epidemic take longer to run its course but will save lives.
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:4, Insightful)
Bobbled: excellent summary. As you stated, an unchecked pandemic will overwhelm medical resources. A guaranteed consequence of that will be vastly increased fatalities from non-COVID causes, due to closed medical facilities couple with large numbers of medical staff missing, due to COVID-19 infection.
An equally serious problem: the likely closing of research facilities as staff deals with personal infection and fatalities. There is a very tight timeline open to develop, and test, possible vaccines and disease specific drugs or drug treatment plans. Time loss to COVID-19 infection worsens the chances of having an effective medical response treatment for COVID-19.
Why worry? The 2020 pandemic is round one. The majority of the population will not get COVID-19 this year, even without the social distancing rules. Next year, and the years afterwards, COVID-19, or a close cousin, will return. Absent new medical treatments, it's the same exercise next time.
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At the University where I work everyone has been kicked out except those working on COVID-related topics. There has even been a call for volunteers who don't work with Coronaviruses but who are experienced in rt-PCR to join the clinical teams running Coronavirus tests. I'd be surprised if that's not a common approach, anyone with the right expertise was classified as Essential Staff right a
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:4, Informative)
Mask work like vaccination, have enough of the population wear one and you have a good chance of stopping the disease from spreading. If you only wear one after you started getting sick and coughing, it's already too late, you ran around for two weeks spreading the disease.
The issue with the response to the mask shortage is that they actively discouraged people from wearing masks, thus making the problem worse, instead of encouraging the wearing of DIY masks, which can still be very effective.
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Corvid19 is infectious after day 2 or 3, long before you even have the slightest symptoms. So: wearing a mask makes sense, assuming that you are infected without knowing it.
The fact that masks are sold out is only a symptom - oops, pun intended - in what a fucked up country you are living.
Having not enough at the first place, because being prepared is: communism.
A huge part of the society so anti social that they horde what they can and hurt their neighbours, heir police, their nurses, and in the end: thems
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I"m sorry, the official line is that face masks are useless for us commoners
Not 100% useless.
(and genuine N95 masks are massively better than common surgical masks)
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While I don't have any virus spread vs distance research, I'd bet it falls off pretty quickly with distance. So even if it doesn't stop the spread completely, any measurable reduction could have a huge impact on the rate of growth. Also some places are starting to require that people wear masks when out in public, again not perfect protection but every bit helps especially at such a low effort.
I also thought this could be a perfect opportunity to get rid of other diseases now that we shut everything down. S
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:5, Funny)
but also regular flue
Naturally spread by contact with chimney sweeps.
Re:Gievn a cough can spread germs way more than 2m (Score:4, Informative)
While I don't have any virus spread vs distance research, I'd bet it falls off pretty quickly with distance.
That is a pretty safe bet, since the professionals who do have the research are telling us to keep our distance from each other. It is just another example of how the general populace doesn't have to be an expert in every scientific field, they just need to listen to consensus in the scientific community. Other scientists can then question those viewpoints in their own research, just so long as the average person isn't questioning that consensus.
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In general your germs will still follow the inverse square rule. So while germs can travel more than 2m it is less concentrated over that distance. And if you do things such cough into your arm, or try to move away from people then all the better.
There is a lot of thinking that the goal from the WHO and the CDC isn't 0%. But lower the transmission to a level wich we can manage it properly.
The virus will spread. However the goal is to get it at a level where the health care infrastructure of the world can
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Yep, in ~ nine months we'll have #coronababy trending for sure.
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Yep, in ~ nine months we'll have #coronababy trending for sure.
I doubt it. You'll see couples will be more likely to keep their distance to avoid catching something, parents will be caring for sick kids, etc. There's other things keeping people occupied.
My guess is the next couple years will see fewer deaths because of this virus taking out a few more old and sick people months earlier than they would have otherwise. Especially if we see a rebound of the disease this fall. Well, mostly if we see a rebound this fall. The body count isn't all that high just yet.
Re:Wait 9 months (Score:4, Funny)
In 13 years we'll be calling them the quaran-teens
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It may have started as the Chinese Virus. Disease has little respect for national borders though - it's everyone's virus now.
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It's a virus. It spreads. Even without 'globalism,' if every country were to have closed their borders completely, that would only slow it down.
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The preventative measures we are collectively taking are incredibly expensive, each
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Well, yeah, but science is about *evidence*. Somebody has to collect evidence of things that everyone just knows to be true, otherwise we'd be treating this thing with blood letting and cupping.
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Well, as a fly fisherman if leeches are going to become a thing I certainly know where to get them.
double standard cockatoo (Score:2)
The whole point of the scientific method is that nothing you believe out of common sense is reliable until it's been formally studied.
Is "Science Validates Common Sense" dog bites man, or man bites dog? Or is it a chimerical 50/50—as some kind of whale vs squid death-69?
Little girls are made of sugar and spice.
Little boys are made of snips and snails.
Common sense is made out of the blindingly obvious.
Common sense is also made out of wives' tails and things you scraped off the bottom of your shoe.
Re:Cutting down other diseases, too? (Score:5, Informative)
You've got to be kidding. Trump doesn't do anything but run his mouth. State governors were the first line of defense against Covid-19. Some of them have actually done pretty well. How can you possibly pin this pandemic on anyone other than the PRC?
It spread in China because Xi's CCP refused to admit there was a problem early on and covered it up. Now we all suffer as result. Good job, China.
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Spoiled child trying to shift blame (Score:5, Insightful)
China officially contacted the WHO about corona on 2019-12-31.
The WHO published their official test protocol on 2020-01-15, after Chinese scientists sequenced the virus and Charité developed the test protocol.
The US, who got rid of their pandemic response team, refused to do anything until march 2020 and still is spreading nonsense about packed churches in april.
While the CCP is to blame for a lot, especially for silencing scientists, doctors and journalists, the situation developing in the US is exclusively the fault of the US. They have been warned for months.
Someone set fire to the apartment block and - after trying to hide it to save face - finally realized that they can't extinguish the fire alone and called 911.
The US, who removed their smoke detectors and fire extinguishers because they were installed by the black tenant before, ignores the alarm. The US ignores the announcements of the fire brigade and the other people running. Instead the US forces their family to stay inside for hours over dinner and now the US is complaining about their family burning to death.
You can only ignore someone else's idiocy for so long before it becomes your own.
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Snopes says you're full of it:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com]
Here's a timeline showing how Trump has screwed this up at almost every step:
https://thebulwark.com/warning... [thebulwark.com]
Re: Spoiled child trying to shift blame (Score:2)
Snopes might be wrong:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Spread in US cause no1 took it serious (Score:5, Informative)
January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
February 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
February 28: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5: “The United States has, as of now, only 129 cases and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6: “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9: “This blindsided the world.”
March 13: [Declared state of emergency]
March 17: “This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
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I blame it on the travel industry. If we all just stayed home on the internet and only used transportation for shipping goods, we'd all be a lot more safe.
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Oh? US death rate from covid-19 is about the same as the world average. And considerably below the Chinese death rate from same....
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China lost ~8K people to covid-19, with a base pop of about 1380M.
The USA has lost (to date) about 1K people with a base pop in the 330M range.
So, with one quarter the population, we've had one eighth the deaths.
Which certainly sounds like China has had a higher death rate and more deaths.
Now, that may change. We're nowhere near through this. China is, at least nominally, done with it for the year.
Note that China isn't big on admitting to failures in their system. It's possible they had more than the
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Re:Cutting down other diseases, too? (Score:4, Informative)
China lost ~8K people to covid-19, with a base pop of about 1380M.
The USA has lost (to date) about 1K people with a base pop in the 330M range.
So, with one quarter the population, we've had one eighth the deaths.
No idea why you feel the need to completely make up your own number when the facts are trivial to find [worldometers.info] a pretty picture [ourworldindata.org] in case words are not your thing.
America is already worse than China. and getting further away. [ourworldindata.org]
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We're doing worse than China because they haven't had new cases for weeks now, while we have had months of heads-up and the number of US infected continues to grow.
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Hubei lockdown is mainly lifted besides Wuhan. And I know people in Hubei. If you don't think China has this under control, you're mistaken.
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Oh? US death rate from covid-19 is about the same as the world average. And considerably below the Chinese death rate from same....
Depends what you mean by death rate.
America already has more deaths per million [worldometers.info] than China. And getting further in front by the day.
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why is Germany so low? Because they don't have a culture of kissing random strangers in the street or on the beaches.
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I can't exactly comment on Germany, but in the US, it is nearly impossible to get tested, in most places.
If you're doing death rate to confirmed cases, certainly for the US, it's almost meaningless.
Source: I talk to a charge nurse in a large Denver hospital nearly daily.
If you're shaming us for pure numbers - yeah - we let the ship sail a long time ago. I thought we were just going to let the whole thing sail, was surprised we shut down the economy, honestly.
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And we have 330 Million people too..
Look at RATES, Cases per 100,000, we are pretty low in that regard. It's too early to tell though about the death rate, but it's looking pretty good here too so far.
But don't fool yourself, there was no way to avoid this getting loose in the USA. It is a small world with lots of folks moving about.
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Look at RATES, Cases per 100,000, we are pretty low in that regard. It's too early to tell though about the death rate, but it's looking pretty good here too so far.
Cases are not that reliable an indicator if you aren't testing properly. Deaths are harder to miss.
Deaths per million people [worldometers.info] America is already worse than China.
It's not up to Italy or Spain levels yet, but both of those countries have 10x the number of recoveries that the US has. America was hit later, but so far not any less hard. It takes about 2 weeks to get better from a mild case. America has hardly anyone getting better yet. It takes longer to die and a lot of the hospitals are just about full up
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Well, to be fair on that one singular point, we have a different government and society in the US, with more guaranteed civil liberties....they can't lawfully clamp down on the citizens in the US like they can in those countries.
So, that's not truly apples to apples comparison.
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The birth rate in the US has been hovering around ZPG - 2.1 children per family- for the past 60 years.
But I suspect that will change greatly with married couples stuck at home with children all day......
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But I suspect that will change greatly with married couples stuck at home with children all day......
Yep, stuck at home with children is the best contraceptive