Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister, Has the Coronavirus (nytimes.com) 349
For weeks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was a defiant holdout among Western leaders in refusing to lock down his country against the spread of the coronavirus. On Friday, he became the first of those leaders known to have contracted the disease. From a report: Mr. Johnson's diagnosis, confirmed in a test on Thursday, threatened to throw an already rattled British government into turmoil. Fears of a wider contagion grew, as another senior official disclosed he was also infected. Britain faced the alarming prospect of having to confront its greatest crisis since World War II with much of its leadership in quarantine. Mr. Johnson, 55, insisted he would not relinquish his duties. In a remarkable two-minute video posted on Twitter, he used his own case as a sort of teachable moment for the country, appealing to people to work from home and comply with the more drastic social distancing measures he put in place last Monday.
This was deliberate wasn't it? (Score:2, Informative)
If I recall it was the the official position of the current UK government not long ago to spread the virus as widely and quickly as possible so to build up "herd immunity" as quickly as possible.
At the time the mortality rate was estimated low, something like 1% or less. They figured that was a reasonable price to pay.
So BJ the PM went around deliberately shaking hands as the leader of that thinking. There are Republican leaders still thinking that's what we should do here.
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There are Republican leaders still thinking that's what we should do here.
I'm sure they, just like Boris Johnson, are on the record as being sick of listening to experts.
Re: This was deliberate wasn't it? (Score:2)
So you are trying,
to convince somebody,
who you clearly consider to be a "scumbag left-wing",
by starting your argument with
"Scumbag left-wing journalists"?
@ Do you need Clippy to help you with that? :D
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... Those who dont die will desert the party for its incompetence.
You would think but...<waves hand at 40 years of getting fucked over and still voting R>
He got his wish (Score:2)
His clearly stated view is that most of the population will get COVID-19, and that the job of government is not to prevent that happen.
Kudos on him for acting on his belief. Hopefully he has not infected too many with different beliefs.
Re:He got his wish (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not as unreasonable as it sounds. There comes a point when containment is impossible - widespread infection becomes unavoidable. In those circumstances, the best approach is to slow it down as much as possible. That makes it a lot easier for medical services to cope. A million patients spread over a year are a lot easier to handle than a million patients in a month.
That's the expert position (Score:2)
No one thinks containment is possible anymore. That's why everyone is yelling about "flattening the curve" and not "isolate and overcome."
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No one thinks containment is possible anymore. That's why everyone is yelling about "flattening the curve" and not "isolate and overcome."
This is not entirely correct. We have failed at initial containment but there's been a gradual realisation, even in most countries that used to believe in herd immunity that just letting the virus run will always be unacceptable. Now we need to lock down in order to stop the virus and then, once the incidence is reduced we can revert to containment. There's a nice pair of articles which you might enjoy reading, the first of which explains why stopping the virus is the only option [medium.com] and the second of which
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I guess we know now why the British government did an about-face a couple weeks ago regarding how to deal with COVID-19.
He gets to experience it (Score:3)
Until now, he only "herd" of it.
Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
What a shame!
I do hope he and everyone else recovers, but I don't get the insistence on keeping business as usual that he and Pence (and probably many others) did - like refusing to stop shaking hands because "that's what we do". They probably think it makes them look like a brave, reassuring leader, like a general charging into battle, but instead this just sets a bad example and endangers them and the entire government.
Politicians here, for all their usual faults, seem to at maintain distance, wear masks and skip the handshakes.
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Talk about poetic justice (Score:2, Troll)
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Re:Talk about poetic justice (Score:4, Insightful)
If Obama was talking about how it was no big deal and COVID-19 should spread wide and fast to make the economy not skip a beat, you'd be okay to laugh when he got it too. This isn't "bad unrelated thing happened to person you dislike", this is "leader of a country plays stupid games while urging others to do so, personally wins stupid prizes"
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I'd love to live in your alternate reality where the US President lead the international fight against the coronavirus
In January, your links show they were urging people to get flu shots, as it was a more immediate (and preventable) threat. What's your point? By Jan. 31 they had moved on to "oh shit this is a big deal" Meanwhile, in March, Trump was still telling people it was a democratic hoax. And that the country could be open again by Easter. This while Italy has officials wandering the streets ye
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You know that Google serves up personalised results right. Your link gave me a bunch of stories discussing the scientific comparison between Covid-19 and influenza, several stories that were just summaries of what WHO has posted on any given day, and a few stories of Trump calling the virus a hoax.
If you're getting anti EU leader stories en mass in a google search result it points to a long history of your own searches containing nothing but confirmation bias and that Google thinks you're probably happiest
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And that is all one needs to know about the British conservative voters.
Conservative Greed (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
It’s a decision that boils down to the single fundamental difference between conservatism and liberalism. The decision and subsequent action is people or money. It’s really that simple. Its core value system that defines you as a person and every decision you make. Do we as a Nation choose to help the sick, the weak, the infirmed, the elderly; or do willingly choose to sacrifice a percentage of them for money. If we choose the latter, if we choose to sacrifice human life over wealth we must accept the consequences and the implications of that decision; for ever. We lose the right to dictate any humanitarian requirements, or condemn any country for its lack of humanitarian treatment of its citizens. We lose the right to stand behind any action we claim is “good”, because our values and interests are only driven by the pursuit of wealth. And, not to forget any who advocate sacrificing others for wealth can no longer claim to be Christian. Such behavior is the antithesis of all the teachings and principles of Christ.
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Conservatives are Ferengi without the ears.
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Maybe the planks of the 2020 Republican convention platform will just be the various Rules of Acquisition.
Nope (Score:4, Informative)
Conservatives could never adhere to the Rules of Acquisition. Hell, #74 is "Knowledge equals profit." Having everyone reopen violates #125 "You can't make a deal if you're dead. " and #57 "Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them. "
Now, a Ferengi might work themselves during a pandemic to make more money, but that's because they could jack prices up because no one else is. After all, #23 "Nothing is more important than your health⦠except for your money. "
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Yep...if things get desperate, then well..violence and the police aren't going to be there to save you. And just to make things even more pleasant...they are already letting folks out of the jails in some cities.
That's bad enough, but wait till the prisons don't hold the really bad guys anymore.....
It won't be pretty.
Re:Conservative Greed (Score:4, Insightful)
Economic shutdowns don't have to cost lives. They can just cost money. No one is advocating closing grocers, meat-packing-plants, etc.
We could just not let people get evicted and give them money for food and medicine and such.
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Before my company stopped production at our Alabama facility, they had 2 days of limited production because they didn't have enough people show up to work. This was before any state mandated closures in Alabama... simply people skipping work because they didn't want the risk.
My company has been extremely reasonable - I do know production must resume at som
Re:Conservative Greed (Score:4, Interesting)
At a certain point economic shutdowns cost lives too. This isn't a simple equation with saving lives on just one side
Yes but accounting for externalities it seems that the economic shutdown is actually saving lives completely irrespective of any pandemic currently underway. Less pollution, less accidents, road death toll is down, the flu season (actual flu) has taken a nosedive.
What is actually going to cost lives is some USA idealism that people should not be offered a social safety net. In most developed nations this isn't the case and we don't let people starve over their inability to go to work.
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And, not to forget any who advocate sacrificing others for wealth can no longer claim to be Christian. Such behavior is the antithesis of all the teachings and principles of Christ.
I take it you haven't heard of the (very hypocritical) Prosperity Gospel.
In all seriousness I agree with everything you wrote. It reminds me of this [thebulwark.com] article from The Bulwark discussing the hypocrisy of conservatives claiming to be pro-life, anti-euthanasia, pro-Christian when they make such arguments about how the economy is more valuable than our elderly and infirm.
With the rise of Trump, I think a lot of moderate Republicans (such as the editorial staff at The Bulwark), are being forced to look in the mir
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Money == people
Look, do you drive a car? Yes. Okay. 30,000 people die in the US every single year in car accidents.
But you're a conservative who doesn't give two shits in hell about those people, right? Because how else will you get where you want to go?
if you cared, you would quit driving and get everybody else to quit driving. Because those people matter and we could save 30,000 lives each year if we just quit.
Right?
That's what you sound like.
It's not just pursuing wealth or whatever - there are real
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Do we as a Nation choose to help the sick, the weak, the infirmed, the elderly; or do willingly choose to sacrifice a percentage of them for money.
This is a false dichotomy, because if we just let the virus run its course it's going to do far, far more economic damage than if we shelter in place. If you don't believe me, you haven't run the numbers on what just letting the virus go looks like. 40M deaths in the US is completely possible if you assume everyone goes back to normal and doesn't respond at all. The problem is that while the virus is minor for 80% of the people who get it, and definitely fatal for only 1-2%, the other 18-19% need medical t
Seems Sarah rewrote both history & Bible (Score:3)
Indeed! I don't know what New Testament they are actually reading. Did somebody sneak the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition into their Bible covers? Profits are now Prophets.
I hope there is accountability (Score:2)
When it is over (or sooner) I hope leaders across the world who saw what was happening elsewhere in real-time with their own eyes and decided only after it was too late to act are held fully accountable for their inaction and profound lack of leadership.
--
You'll have packed churches all over our country.
I think it would be a beautiful time.
Not so long ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
In summary, he's a fucking idiot.
Vacillating (Score:4, Interesting)
At the start of this crisis, in the middle of February Johnson took a two week holiday to celebrate brexit. When that was over he spent two weeks vacillating over how to act on the coronavirus. The result of that early failure is the current massive overreaction that looks a lot like a government in panic.
Silver linings (Score:4, Insightful)
This is possibly the best thing that could happen for the UK if he becomes unable to handle his duties and would have to be replaced with someone competent.
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Nice try, but actually we get Raab. Who's a complete fucking loon
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Trump-driven? What, do you think Trump disguised himself as a British citizen and voted seventeen and half million times to leave the EU?
More than half of your countrymen were smart enough to know independence was a good choice, don't blame Trump just because you weren't smart enough to be one of them.
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Very slightly more than half, after a campaign characterized by a lot of outright lying. If the referendum had been a month earlier, it would likely have been a narrow win for remain.
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More than half of your countrymen were smart enough to know independence was a good choice, don't blame Trump just because you weren't smart enough to be one of them.
Half of people are receptive to propaganda about dirty foreigners stealing their jobs. It's an old trick, but still effective.
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"More than half of your countrymen were smart enough to know independence was a good choice, "
Coincidentally half the population has an IQ of under 100.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Dominic Cummings and Cambridge Analytica deserve credit for bullshitting so many people. If you read the official campaign material now it's actually hilarious just how pie in the sky fantasy it is.
It's really screwing is now. We could have been part of the EU scheme to bulk buy ventilators but declined on ideological grounds. People will die for brexit.
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This specific case was hilarious. Borris Johnson, idiot extraordinaire, claimed that the EU offer came too late for the UK to participate. The EU replied that the entire scheme was conceived at a meeting where the UK was present and it was offered to the UK in addition to all other member nations at that first meeting and was declined. In several subsequent meetings where a few other member nations also agreed to join the UK was also present and still declined.
The really sad part is that Brexit is by all ac
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
More than half of your countrymen were smart enough to know independence was a good choice
No, more than half of the countrymen didn't vote. A good portion of those countrymen have been fed bullshit for the past 30 years. More than half of the countrymen have been consistently excused as being "sick of experts", and a good portion of them are just plain racist fuckwits.
Half the country definitely did not make any choice relating to any knowledge of what independence actually means for them, and they made the incredibly stupid choice of leaving the largest economic trading block in the world as a result.
But I guess they can buy straight bananas now. ... Oh wait the EU rules were an adoption of the WTO rules so no they still only get curved bananas.
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I have come to suspect that BEXIT is a plot decades long in the making.
Many of the UK's issues with the EU were self-inflicted. The UK would regularly enact regulations in response to EU law that were at the extreme end of the requirements.
The reason that the UK had so many immigrants from Poland when Poland became an EU member was that, unlike other nations, the UK allowed people to immigrate from Poland immediately, unlike other EU nations, which required a 2 year waiting period before allowing immigratio
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
More than half of your countrymen were smart enough to know independence was a good choice, don't blame Trump just because you weren't smart enough to be one of them.
About as "a good choice" as a US state leaving the Union. Truth is that in the services dominated globalized economy, size matters. A small country like the UK will never be able to negotiate trade deals on an even footing with giants like the US and China. Just ask Canada, the US forced it to renegotiate NAFTA to get better terms for the US, despite it being the biggest trading partner and oldest free-trade deal. Yet somehow Boris is shutting the UK out of the EU's market hoping it can somehow negotiate better trading deals with them. All the wolves see is a lonely lamb primed for slaughter.
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For another useful comparison it is not even two thirds of Germany, same as France and somewhat larger than Italy. Just three EU members give the EU more than three times the leverage, and there are 24 more of them.
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It is for specifically this upcoming Easter.
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No... it's not. Literally every Catholic and most Christians were already planning to go to church this Easter and have been hoping they'd be able to. Trump saying he hopes that churches will be packed on Easter isn't him saying anything other than he hopes we can get past this hysteria and back to the business of daily life in a few weeks. And honestly, if you don't hope for that then you're a fucking psychopath for hoping this drags on.
Re: Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Except that "Trumpster" never said it was ok to do it... He said he'd love to see it, which everyone outside of sick, twisted, disaster fetishists would likewise love.
Somebody stupid enough to drink fish tank cleaner deserves to be a victim of natural selection, Trump accurately relating speculation regarding the efficacy of chloroqiune as a potential treatment doesn't lay the blame for their stupidity at this feet.
The only ones who needs to shut up is folks like you who can't make it through a day without
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that "Trumpster" never said it was ok to do it... He said he'd love to see it, which everyone outside of sick, twisted, disaster fetishists would likewise love.
Trump went on national television and said "You'll have packed churches all over our country. I think it would be a beautiful time. And it's just about the timeline that I think is right."
Whatever nuance you think can be squeezed out of this if only you squint and tilt your head the right way doesn't mean shit. What matters is the message that was transmitted. That message was Trump the leader of the free world, the person leading the nations response to the pandemic believes on Easter people might be able to pack themselves into churches.
Leaders are not simply responsible for what they say. The are responsible for the message that is received. There is no excuse for this language. None whatsoever.
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There is no chance whatsoever that this all clears up by Easter. Trump may think that, but he's not listening very well to his health and science advisors. He has said both that he wants "packed churches" as well as keeping social distancing in place, two contrary ideas.
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I agree that April 12 is very unlikely that there will be some break in the pandemic that makes sending everyone to church on Easter at all realistic.
It's impossible not unlikely. His message was quite clear. This was not about easing up on restrictions or being smarter about managing spread as conditions get better in specific areas. His message explicitly referenced "packed churches". No matter what happens between now and April 12th, no matter where the church is located this is nothing less than gross negligence.
But a lot CAN happen in ~2 weeks. That doesn't make what he said a directive/command. It's hope. Doesn't matter if it's impossible hope, but that's all it was.
Nobody is saying Trump has the power to make people go to church. That isn't the issue. The issue is the irresponsible message he is s
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Jesus, are you daft. Here's Trump's thinking: Express wish to open business by Easter.
1. Opening causes no problems, Trump takes credit for being a fucking genius
2. Opening creates a second wave of the epidemic. Trump claims he didn't open anything, the businesses did this to themselves.
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In the middle of a pandemic, as the GP specified? Yes, yes I do [cnbc.com]. Why, do you have indications that he got the idea from someone else? Who?
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Hold up... now you think that going to church on Easter Sunday is an idea that Trump came up with???
Did you not hear Trump in his own words on camera? It was so "amazing" I decided to make it my new sig.
"You'll have packed churches all over our country.
I think it would be a beautiful time.
And it's just about the timeline that I think is right."
Coming April 12th 2020 to a packed circus near you.
--
You'll have packed churches all over our country.
I think it would be a beautiful time.
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Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's something everybody needs to get through their thick heads: in a pandemic like this you have to protect *everyone*. It is not good news when your enemy gets sick, because it's bad news when *anyone* gets sick.
You may hate the governor of New York, but New York collapsing under the strain of coronavirus will spread infection across the country. Same for Texas.
We're all in the same lifeboat. People in the left side of the lifeboat shouldn't cheer when the right half springs a leak, and vice versa.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
We are not all in the same lifeboat. The ultra-wealthy have the resources to sit this out, and if they DO contract the virus, they have the best of health care. They aren't worried about facing eviction, if not during the crisis, then immediately after it passes.
We're also not all equally responsible for being in the lifeboats, either. And if we live through this escape, we don't want to wind up in the same position again in a hot second.
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Why would you divorce your wife, move out, and hook up with a chick on the other side of town?
Geographic convenience doesn't always trump being sick of someone's shit. And for Ireland and Scotland, they've had several hundred years of being sick of England's shit.
Re: Good. (Score:4, Informative)
For Northern Ireland the geographically superior option is a reunification. Other than that, Scotland would have far more representation as a member of the EU than they have now.
So, why are you lying about this?
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Karma baby. It's a bitch.
Re:so what? (Score:4, Informative)
You do know that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 disease, has already mutated into at least 2 strains. Just like the common cold, there is no guarantee that being immune against 1 strain will mean that you are immune against a new strain.
It is likely that Covid-19 infections will come in waves for many months.
Re:so what? (Score:4, Funny)
Bad time to be a Creationist, I suppose.
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Why a bad time to be a creationist? Haven't you heard of "continual, gradual creation"? Its the new subject at Oral Roberts University
You do know ..mutated into at least 2 (Score:2)
No, I do not know that there are two strains of Covid-19.
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Bullshit.
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If it would stay this way it wouldn't, but it won't.
Re:Wait... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
pro-tip, if you're just going to pick a point in a pandemic, you can pick the first one.
"What ? One guy infected and it's the greatest crisis since WWII ?"
See, you would have looked much more stupid. Oh, you were not going for stupid ? Sorry, it's hard to tell these days.
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It was only one bat who had the mutated virus, I don't see what the fuss is all about.
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15,000 sick people and 800 dead is the "greatest crisis since WWII"?
Well if you measure WWII by number of German soldiers on UK soil it's about even.
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Speaking of Germany their leader is a scientist and they have a very low infection/death rate. How come we elected an idiot like Boris?
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Ok I give....
What the hell is a "kebab box"?
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What? Wasn't London bombed ... I'll just link it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm not saying it's not a big deal, for the record.
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Worse than both wars combined (Score:2)
If you want to comapre to WW2 Right now is the Anschluss. Even Poland has not been invaded yet and already 800 are dead.
5 weeks from now will be the Blitz and when its over more people will be dead in the UK than both world wars combined.
And this time the arsenal of democracy is on the Virus's side (still no nationwide shutdown in the US)
Re:Wait... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
15,000 sick people and 800 dead is the "greatest crisis since WWII"?
The problem with exponential is that everything seems fine one day, and 9 million are dead the next.
Exponential growth is so hard for humans to wrap their heads around. Which is why the scientists and doctors need to be running this and the armchair warriors need to shut the f**k up.
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You know, you can extrapolate into the future. It's exponential growth, checking how many people are infected early on (it 'll keep growing til May) is stupid.
The right way to do it would be to compare it to the crisis of WWII while Chamberlain was still in charge.
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15,000 sick people and 800 dead is the "greatest crisis since WWII"?
Without any action taken, this will change probably to 45 to 50 million sick people in the UK, and half a million to a million dead.
The action taken is bloody expensive. Yes, it's the greatest crisis since WWII.
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15,000 sick people and 800 dead
so far. The number of cases is on an exponential upswing that is showing no sign of abatement. The number of *deaths* is also increasing exponentially, doubling every four days.
To put this in perspective, the UK lost fewer than 500 soldiers supporting the US in Afghanistan over fifteen years. Coronavirus deaths should reach 2x that mark in the next day or so. In fact we'll likely be seeing that many deaths per day by this Sunday.
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Since WWII... not counting WWII.
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> Even if COVID-19 runs it course and kills say 2% of the population, then what? It's done. Over.
Over what time frame? 2% over a year, would suck. 2% between April and May would be a huge disaster. Not to mention that drawing it out, more people could be saved because beds and medical equipment will be freed up as we move through it slowly.
Without massive testing, drastically slowing it down -- flattening the curve -- is the most realistic option. We have no massive testing planned, so they are doing th
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Comparing this to World War II is totally irresponsible. Lets play this out: Even if COVID-19 runs it course and kills say 2% of the population, then what? It's done. Over. Things suck for a number of people, but done.
How does this compare to the fall of the entire country to an evil foreign government?
Wait, what? The Nazi's did not successfully invade Britain. The last people who did that were the Dutch, in 1688.
Re:Settle the Hell Down!! WWII? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if COVID-19 runs it course and kills say 2% of the population, then what?
England finds enough grave spots for 1.1 million people. You know, twice the number of deaths due to WW II.
It's done. Over. Things suck for a number of people, but done.
You say that like it's a WW II bomb or a bullet, not a virus which has already significantly mutated twice since this pandemic started. There's no indication that once you get one version of it you're immune to the rest. It could very well work like cold or flu viruses where you can catch different ones repeatedly throughout the year.
Not saying this isn't serious, but I'm so tired of irresponsible writers causing panic to the general population. Now, panic will cause people to get really stupid.
A) You're a fucking moron. B) We're at the point where panic is a good thing.
The 10% of people who get a bad case of this survive it pretty handily with medical attention. As soon as they can't get medical attention, because we've used up all the hospital beds, those 10% of people will hit something like an 85% casualty rate.
The US has about 1 million staffed hospital beds. Total. If only 2% of the US needs to be hospitalized by this at about the same time, that's like 7 million people. So say goodbye to 4-5 million of them.
The only way to get through this without mass death is if people do panic. If they do stay in. If they do stay home. If we can stretch out this pandemic a few months, we'll get through it. Next year will be less rough, and after that it's going to be another sort of seasonal flu.
The issue right now is that nobody is immune at all, and we have no vaccines. We're all going to get it. We just need to get it in quantities of "less than the available hospital beds" at a time.
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1.3 million additional deaths this year would be more than a temporary problem. Also it would be electoral suicide.
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Comparing this to World War II is totally irresponsible. Lets play this out: Even if COVID-19 runs it course and kills say 2% of the population, then what?
2% is the wrong number for your scenario. It's more like 8%, maybe a bit more. Although with good medical care the number is probably in the 1-2% range, if we "let it run its course", we won't have good medical care. Taking no action means that in two months 80% of the population has it, almost simultaneously. Of those ~250M sick people, 10-15% will require hospitalization with supplemental oxygen. That means we'd need hospital beds and oxygen for around 30M people, so 29.5M of those people would have
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Yeah, we don't have much finger pointing room in the being responsible department.
If you want to read about some people that rolled up their sleeves and remained professionals, this is a good read:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/f... [texasmonthly.com]
Pretty good thing they weren't paying attention to Fox News.
Re:Evidence of hysteria? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the hospital my wife works at the ICU is full of coronavirus patients—some are fairly young. This isn't just about making sure less people get the disease. It's about making sure that less people have the disease at any given moment because we don't have the resources to treat everybody without the social distancing.
Furthermore, you can't just quarantine "certain segments of the population" because that would mean quarantining everybody who knows somebody or knows somebody who knows somebody who is vulnerable: i.e. EVERYBODY. The logic you're using is the same logic that anti-vaxers use: "as long as everyone else gets vaccinated, then why do I?" When enough people don't get vaccinated, all of a sudden disease spread and those who can't get vaccinated because of legitimate medical reasons become the victims of everyone else's incompetence. Similarly, if people who are not part of the populations who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 just go around and live their lives like normal, then they will act as agents spreading proliferating the disease to those vulnerable populations.
One final note: people worry about the economic impact of all of this and rightfully so. But this disease is highly contagious and if people contract it they won't be able to go to work anyway. So it stands to reason that we would experience economic hardship either way: we shut things down preemptively and the economy suffers or we don't shut the economy down and the massive number of sick people will shut it down for us (while killing many and overwhelming our healthcare system).
There probably isn't a "more intelligent way" (Score:5, Informative)
The virus is far worse than previous outbreaks too. More lethal and many times more will need hospitalization. You wouldn't know this if you're not reading CDC announcements in detail. About 40-70% will get it depending on how much quarantining we do. 20% of those will need hospitalization. 5-10% of those will need ventilators.
Finally, we've been running our hospitals with the same high profit margin "Just in Time" business practices we use in retail. The result is massively understaffed hospitals. It's why we can have a high nurse to patient ratios but nursing wages are still going down. Hospitals aren't hiring anything more than the bare minimum needed to stay afloat, and we're not training more nurses so our colleges don't have enough capacity. My kid's about to graduate with a 4 year nursing degree from a major University, so I get an earful of this.
And it wasn't just China being irresponsible. _Everybody_ knew the unregulated wet markets were a bad idea. But they were great for the incomes of rural folk, so the risks were written off as justifiable in exchange for the benefits. There's plenty of foreign policy that should have been going on to make China tighten control of those markets and none of it was done because the good times they were a rollin'
One last thing, if you _do_ end up in the population that needs a ventilator prepare for hell. If you don't get one you die horribly, literally drowning in your own mucus. If you _do_ get one first, expect permanent lung damage. Next, get ready for a living nightmare. You will wish you died. It's called "intubulation" because they ram a breathing tube down your throat. You will instinctively try to remove it, so they will restrain you. For weeks. Up to 8 weeks depending on how serious a case you have.
This is way more serious, and Wall Street knows it. They want us back to work because they know we won't settle for starving to death and being homeless and they don't want to pay for us to take the 90-180 day vacation needed to stop this thing. Our lives, _your_ life, don't matter to them. [businessinsider.com]
The crazy thing is the number of people who, when told they must die for Wall Street, have responded with "Ok".
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He is (Score:3)
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If you really wanna go, nothing beats solid rock from at least 20 stories up. (That's where the survivability gets low enough to be pretty much a certainty.)
The saying amongst trauma surgeons: "Fall from seven, straight to heaven".
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Trump is still waiting for it to get really bad before he does that.
War powers act... well not yet... lets wait and see how bad it gets.