any insight into how she got her test done? did she have a script?

I usually lean towards the conservative side of things for financial reasons, but am socially pretty damn liberal. I have defended the man many times and criticized him at times. I will say that his initial downplaying of the virus when many of us even knew it was going to get bad, is inexcusable. I do think he assembled a good team in Fauci and Birx. I think though that this virus was in the US shortly after it became a big deal in China, and we should have been doing all we could to have testing infrastructure in place then. I'm in a pretty damn small area and we just announced out first case here today. I think it's safe to say it's everywhere.

Nothing has set us behind as much as the lack of testing. When the virus first appeared we weren't able to track it and now it may be out of control. Our only option now is to have everyone isolate, and that isn't happening to the degree it needs to.

In addition we could have gotten a month head start at least on procuring medical supplies. Hearing the CDC advise use of bandanas as masks is appalling.

She was having serious breathing problems and had recently(a few days) been in a rehab facility. I was honestly surprised the hospital in Eastern Kentucky had tests. They didn't say, but my guess is the high risk and the possibility of it being in a nursing home are what led to the test.

edit: She was in bad enough shape that an ambulance was called and she was taken to the ER. Just got an update that she'll need surgery for kidney stones and has a blood infection and a blood clot.

To casually toss in that statement in a serious, ideally non-political thread is a cheap shot. And I didn't realize Bernie was a champion for UBI or at least not when Yang brought it up.

I'll be glad to continue this discussion. Let's take it to the Trump or Democrat thread.

It's worth noting that the shutdowns are also because we have a lack of testing. We have to take the safest route. This virus could very well be common throughout the population and most people are asymptomatic and this is an overreaction (which was necessary). We just don't know.

The most interesting data will come when we can take a random sample of a population. Just test 10,000 random people in a city right now and track the results. Otherwise we're flying blind on what the true mortality of this is.

There arent any when there isnt a pandemic either. I mean who are the closest Rand Paul Amash and Massie? Didnt they all vote against the bill?

Oh, there are planty of libertarians. I just got home from Gatlinburg TN. There were no less than 3 shop owners that blamed the Dems, the media and.or the Chinese for this. And believe it is a false pandemic.

What is your definition of a Libertarian? Go to reason.com or someplace for Libertarian viewpoints. Most of them actually support social distancing (not government mandated, which I disagree with them on) and all believe the virus is real. I think those sound like Republicans.

Agreed, the closest thing we have to that controlled of an experiment are the Diamond Princess numbers.

In fact right now they (reason.com) are talking about some anti malaria drug chloroquine that apparently has been used successfully in Asia but the FDA doesn't like.

I'm seeing that mentioned a lot.

This makes it a little more real. I can't imagine what that family is going through. Unfortunately, I'm guessing there will be more.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...itals-n1163696

The GOP bill is out. Seems odd that it would limit the payouts to the poorest people. For instance, I'd think seniors could use the extra cash right now as they might need more money up front to stock up on supplies if this lasts awhile. And the poorest workers are the ones losing their jobs first and living paycheck to paycheck.

Seems like the big winners are middle-class folks with families.

GOP bill on immediate checks:

-- $1,200 per person ($2,400 if filing jointly)
-- $500 per kid
-- Begins to phase out above $75K
-- Phases out completely above $99K
-- Much smaller benefit, of $600, for millions w/o federal tax liability pic.twitter.com/mPggn8eepS

— Jeffrey Stein (@JStein_WaPo) March 19, 2020

This is my hometown.

I was born in that hospital.

My parents live 1/2 mile from there. My mom was playing bridge Monday. She knows several of the same people, thankfully none in the bridge game.

And it would be based on 2018 income. A lot of business owners would get screwed because they made good money until they suddenly had nothing.

Just give everyone money and raise taxes on upper income earners for 2020. Don’t make it complicated.

exactly, and like someone mentioned earlier, 75K means very different things depending on where you live.

I've mentioned it a few times. If I was to get that money 100% would go right back into the local economy.

I think it's a problem both ways. I don't think most of the politically oriented posts in this thread have been appropriate, Edward64's Bernie comments included. I'm just sort of trying to ignore that and focus on the larger, much more important at the moment issue, but …

This is fair and I appreciate your balanced view. I will stop the Bernie bashing in this thread.

That's a tougher nut to crack, and I haven't looked in depth into how much care people on ventilators need, but it certainly seems like there are parts of the process (like testing at drive thru testing places like they opened in New Rochelle, maybe even a large part of the monitoring if it's as simple as people need to be on ventilators) where we can quickly train up groups of people or even use parts of the National Guard to facilitate.

Trump got mocked here for the suggestion that a USS hospital ship in NYC harbor would only treat non-Corona patients, but it makes sense to separate them from the regular hospital population, and I'm not sure why we'd need to separately quarantine first responders or medical professionals who test positive but are asymptomatic - theoretically if you have like an armory or college dorm/auditorium as an area for Corona patients I don't see why they couldn't continue treating patients since all already have it.

Again though, I don't really know how much treatment patients need for Corona past "get them on a respirator and monitor them". Either way, I definitely agree this is a bigger hurdle than the idea that we won't have enough respirators, or masks, or bed space, in 2-3 weeks if the numbers continue soaring. We're seeing individualized reports of hospitals running out of supplies in places like Bellevue WA & Albany GA precisely because those are the first hot spots and the machinery hasn't been ramped up yet.
If you're going to continue arguing that China's initial response was markedly better than ours idk where this discussion is going to go. How It All Started: China’s Early Coronavirus Missteps - WSJ

So how does curbside service not spread the virus? I thought I read somewhere it lives for days on the surface, obviously they would try to be clean but seems fairly dangerous no?

For my part, I appreciate your humility. I think it's a rare trait in a poster and the one I aspire to improve at.

My guess is it reduces the # of "points of failure". The risk is not eliminated completely but it eliminates having to go into grocery store, walking by people, touching shopping carts etc. ... so say reduces maybe 70-80% of the risk?

And the drive thru. If they have the virus and are making the food and then handing it to you can't that spread it.

That's my understanding also - you're never going to eliminate spread/risk. The idea is to reduce it, i.e. flattening the curve. Barring the entire country going off the grid and living a hermit/survival lifestyle, which will never happen, the best that can be done is to walk a tightrope on this.

Those are 'theoretical' numbers, all they do is show you can detect viable virus. Not that it is still at sufficient density and virility to infect someone else or how likely it is. Especially since it would need to first go from someones facial area onto the surface, then onto the hand of the next Person and then again onto the facial area (more specifically inside mouth, nose or maybe eyes). Each step reduces the 'amount' of virus.

Basically it is a "yeah, it happens, but not nearly enough to come close to having the same relevance as close personal contact" situation. But there is a reason why one should, regardless of Corona, wash their hands much more often than most people do.

It is hard, at least for me, not to intertwine them when this administration is largely responsible for the position we are in.

When I die, please let it be known that it was probably because the cul-de-sac morons beside me have decided to throw a mini block party. Hey, we're all invited!!!! No thanks, I'll do my due diligence.

In our neighborhood FB we are talking about putting up Christmas lights to help cheer everyone up.

I'll throw out some Christmas lights a big Red C on my door if I need to lol.

and they probably think you're the asshole

At least my wife is on the same page with me on this.

My wife and I are totally in tune on all of this. I can't imagine living with someone who thinks it is no big deal. I wouldn't even know how to handle that

Houston's going to be much worse in a couple of weeks because they didn't shut down the rodeo until it was half over.


https://www.rodeohouston.com/About-U...Are/Attendance


About 630K for the rodeo + 219K for the cookoff. Oh, and one of the first cases in the area was confirmed to go there.


SI

Not great.

CALIFORNIA governor says he expects 56 percent of Californians to be infected within 8 weeks.

I'm in favor of this.


SI

So the cardiac surgeon for my MILK called her and told her to stay put and take her temperature. Apparently it was his assistant that told her to get tested. He doesn't want her somewhere she can potentially get infected.

Amazing that this lack of communication exists even with literally the best doctors in the world. This is Columbia Presbyterian, not Rochester general FFS

Oddly specific.

Technically yes. From what I've read, unless someone sneezed on your bun, you're probably fine. Hot food is usually a tough substance for a virus like that to survive on. Transfer from packaging would be rare considering how many point of contacts there are.

Just wash your hands after handling the bag/box/wrapper and maybe microwave it if you're really paranoid.

Marcus Smart of the Celtics and two Lakers players tested positive.

Former coworker I considered reasonable on FB: "Due to the coronavirus I am going to continue life as normal" and goes on to make a political statement I won't pollute this thread with.

This last week has not been good for my patience and blood pressure.

Well, it has some plusses and minuses. Actually, the FDA is fine with it - in, fact if you can find a "silver bullet" drug from something that's 50 years old, that's perfect. You already know about the side effects, which is a lot more than you can say for a new vaccine, which could potentially (but unlikely) do more harm than good. It's cheap and mass produceable - these are all great things!

However, I also read the French study (unpublished) and it's a really small sample size (40ish), it's not double blind, and the cohorts are substantially different (control group was statistically significantly different than group that got the drug). So the problem is not that it's a bad drug or had awful side effects, it's that it may not be much more effective than a placebo. They may have just been measuring noise. After all, this is a disease that /most/ people expect to recover from naturally with no intervention.

There's also a Chinese study out there about it (about 100 samples - also small), but, how do I put this delicately: the Chinese data on COVID-19 is easy to be skeptical of. It's clear they are trying to position themselves as the world's savior after their own poor response spread this thing like wildfire and their lack of transparency cost many of the lives they're trying to save.

In the study, the drug shows to drastically reduce viral loads, especially when used in conjunction with azithromycin (probably butchering the spelling; but it's the ye olde z-pak antibiotic that many of us have had for other stuff; not a microbiologist so I'm not sure why an antibiotic would help but I know you do sometimes toss them at a flu to help control secondary infections so maybe this is along those lines). But it's also a really small and flawed sample on a virus that most people recover from naturally so it's also possible there's noise in the data.

I badly want it to be the cure because it checks a TON of boxes (old, cheap drug that's easy to produce). Try it out, by all means - let's test on a much larger scale and see if it does! Worst case scenario is that we've wasted a bunch of a cheap drug with limited side effects on a population that was probably doomed anyway. But when paired with the upside of being a potential cure - it's a risk worth taking. There are a number of other drugs they're doing this with now, too, like the HIV cocktail, the Japanese flu drug, and the Ebola drug.

A vaccine is a nice idea but the best case scenarios for it are 18 month life disruption (at which point society will have substantially altered) and the chance that there are long term side effects. A cure can be done much, much sooner - it's just a lot harder to do.

SI

Just got home from Gatlinburg, TN. If ever there was a thought that Trump wasnt winning the 2020 election, that thought is erased.

I heard 3 theories from shop owners. I have no idea who these people were. I was just a dude in there shop. The theories were pretty much the same. The dems started the panic through the media to ruin the economy which in turn kills Trumps reelection. And one blamed the Chinese, saying they started it because of the trade war.

So, here we are. A country divided. I fall in the middle. My MIL and sister are former nurses who are saying this is legit and you should stay away from people, to these people in Gatlinburg.

All I know is that this country is so far divided, it will never come back.

So are we going to have the political discussions associated with CV in this thread or not?

Sen. Loeffler from GA also dumped a bunch of stock after a coronavirus briefing. Maybe this was the reason the briefings were confidential.

There is no way in hell that the numbers in China are accurate. No way. No way they shut it down that quickly. No way it didn't spread far across the US, but stayed isolated in China. No way. No math models in the world, best case, would ever have them to 0 new cases in a day 35 days after 14000 cases in a day. No way.

I wonder if certain regions it just doesn't take off in possibly? Are other parts of Italy hit as hard as Lombardy? I'm skeptical of China as well but do hope they are getting better regardless of true case count.

Italy has an old population that is close also. China is spread out and not as old.

I imagine that is in play.

I don't believe the China numbers either, but they didn't actually get 14k cases in a day. What they did is expand their criteria in the testing for what constituted a reported case - and that caused a bump in the numbers on that instance.

She also bought a teleconferencing stock which happened to go up. What are the odds.

Fucking traitors.

Newsom issues state wide stay at home order in California.

Inhofe sold a few hundred thousand in stocks a couple of days after the Senate briefing.

Run them all, GOP or DEM, out of the senate.

Why are Senators and Congressman allowed to own stock? They should have to sell it before taking office.

People are scared about food shortages, I think if the internet or netflix goes down all hell is going to break lose.

China doesn't give a fuck about saving lives. Any reason they ride in like a savior is strictly for economical reasons.

Statewide "stay at home" for CA. But apparently you can still go out but stay 6ft away (but I sure wish everyone has masks even though the experts initially said they "don't work"). Good bet that NY will follow soon.

California Governor Announces Statewide Order To Stay At Home | HuffPost

Details
Stay home except for essential needs - Coronavirus COVID-19 Response

A possible answer why Italy mortality is so out of whack.

The dailymail isn't the best of sources but it claims this is from "a study by the country's health service".

I'm not sure I buy it though. In the US, I'm willing to bet that majority of our elderly also have some sort of pre-existing conditions also. Who really knows right now but thought I'd share the blurb below.

Coronavirus Italy: 99% of patients killed 'had existing illnesses' | Daily Mail Online

What's considered a health condition? Most people over 65 have something. Heck, s good portion of adults have something that could be considered a health condition

The article said the below. I don't know how to translate or put it in context for the US.

Yeah I would think American numbers for high blood pressure wouldn't be that far off the Italians.

63% of people over 60 in this country have high blood pressure. It is even pretty high in younger groups.

That's a bit broad and toxic IMO, like Trump relishing calling this "Chinese Flu" every chance he gets.

There are doctors in China who literally gave their lives for this. (including the doctor who was initially most aggressive about warning others.) And policies and treatment implemented which has saved many lives. And there's respected American doctors telling us to look to the things the Chinese did well. And I haven't read any credible accounts contradicting the general story that they've gotten on the other side of this. But because it's "China" none of this news or data and measures taken count.

So it's frustrating to see people automatically dismissing the Chinese data and experience based on their own biases. But this is also a thread where I've read that old people are to blame because they all watch Fox News apparently, so I guess that's just where we are now.

FWIW new Pew poll. More good info in the link but thought to share the below section.

However, I'm not sure how to reconcile my thoughts to the stats yet.

Americans See Multiple Threats From the Coronavirus – and Concerns Are Growing | Pew Research Center

That snippet is useless without the actual data points right beneath it in the article. The Fox News crowd thinks it’s a hoax and believes Trump has been all over it since day 1.

Meanwhile the thoughts on the CDC are equal across the board since there is no Trump bias on that subject.

Air Force moves 500K coronavirus test swabs from Italy to US | TheHill

Did Italy give us these swabs? Did we buy them? Did we take them?

What does that say about us considering how far behind we are medically than them?

I think a lot of it based more on the data of what we do know about how China's government operates in general, and what we know they did in this specific instance. From my perspective, I'd totally agree with you that many Chinese doctors were and are heroes, esp. those who gave their lives combating COV-19 when it was at it's most potent and least understood. I also agree that we should listen to medical professionals about what they did well. What I don't agree with is the idea they have any kind of record which justifies confidence in their transparency with reporting numbers, including how they covered up the outbreak initially.

This isn't an indictment of the Chinese people; it is an indictment of their political system and leaders as a whole.

We bought them from a company in Italy that makes them.

What part of this is a country divided? Idiots on the right will say stuff, idiots on the left will say stuff, and at the end of the day the 15-20% of us who actually pay attention will hopefully swing the election.

Please stop trolling.

Presidents have historically gotten large approval bumps after crises, so I suppose there's a tiny chance Trump could epicly fuck this up for 6+ months and somehow still come out with better approval than ever on election day (tho at this point a ~6 month resolution seems like it would be worth practically any political cost).

This isn't trolling. How China and South Korea handles this is vastly superior to us.

Their hospitals are segregated with regular patients and virus patients. So if you have any symptoms at all, you show up to this special hospital wing. You get a CAT scan and tests done and know the results in a couple hours. Everyone in this hospital is covered head to toe in protective gear. This means their doctors and nurses don't get sick at the same rate as ours.

Positive results aren't sent home to infect their families. They are sent to housing where they recover. You can't enter the country, hot spot neighborhoods, or most buildings without having your temperature taken.

South Korea early on tracked everyone they could that was exposed, tested them, and isolated them. They also don't let you enter buildings or neighborhoods without your temperature being taken. They have sophisticated alerts sent to your phone that will tell you where an infected person had been thus telling you whether you need to quarantine yourself because you might have been exposed.

In this country we still can't test people. Well unless you're famous. Results can take a week to get back if you're one of the lucky few. A positive result doesn't come with government isolation, you're just told to isolate your self, scouts honor. We haven't gotten close to peaking and hospitals are already being told to use bandanas for when they inevitably run out of masks.

China botched things early on no doubt, but they recovered incredibly well. South Korea did an amazing job too. I don't know how you can look at those countries and think we're in the same ballpark when it comes to preparedness. It helps they had to deal with SARS back in the day and learned a lot, but there is no reason for us to not have researched their strategies and replicated it here.

Here's Peggy Noonan who sure seems like she has coronavirus talking about her troubles getting a test (and the long wait for results).

WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan has been sick for 2 weeks.

101 fever.

Cough.

Chills.

And she struggled for days to get a #COVID19 testhttps://t.co/Iw7E7XZGnX pic.twitter.com/YeCLrKCuDG

— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) March 20, 2020

We flat out stole them. We sent Nick Cage and Sylvester Stallone on a daring raid into heavily infested Italy to fly a plane of test kits back to their grateful country, cause 'Merica!

Updated title to "a non-political thread as of Mar 20".

There's going to be grey and overlaps but do the best you can.

To discourage, don't get sucked into the trolling and just ignore. If you want to make a political statement, take it to the Trump or Democratic thread. If you feel a compulsion to still talk politics here, consider creating your own Coronavirus thread.

Yes, I'm guilty of this as well. Let's all start over with a clean slate.

Small comfort to the family but at least the record is set straight.

I don't get why an ophthalmologist would have known about this (maybe by talking to other Drs)?

Coronavirus Whistleblower's Family Gets Apology From China Weeks After He Died : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR

Some good news this morning. According to MarketWatch tickers ...

Tracked European markets are all green, most with 2%+ (no Italy though). Asia markets (except for Nikkei) are all green and easily beating 2%+. The US big three futures are 1.5%+.

I think this is the first time in a long time (3 weeks) that I've seen this. For context, the market dropped approx 50% in the Great Recession. Our low (so far) has been 30%.

I'm pretty sure that even if this went as smoothly as possible from here on out and we did a 4-8 week quarantine with aggressive test, treat, track (ala the Korean model), the economic fallout of the quarantine and the number dead will still weigh heavily on poll numbers.


SI

Those two questions exist solely so they can keep up the lie that everyone who needs/wants to be tested can be tested.

It's spreading in the US via community spread and seems to be most contagious before someone develops systems. Asking if you have traveled internationally and if you have been in contact with a patient is as relevant now as asking your astrological sign.

I know this is not political, but responding to a post in this thread.

I believe 100% that this will be the tactic taken against the Dem candidate. "They're happy more people died, they can hold it against Trump!"

100%. It's coming.

I think it was Fauci or Birx that said (paraphrasing) don't get tested unless you have symptoms because we don't have enough test kits/capability right now. Once we are ramped up my guess is they would want to do more testing regardless of symptoms to get a better understanding of the spread.

Somewhat related, earlier in the crisis there were talking heads that said don't buy masks because masks don't work. It was pretty clear to me back then that masks do work, maybe not 100%, maybe only 25% but still better than nothing (and oh btw, China and SK were using masks). The narrative have shifted to now don't get a mask because our healthcare providers need it more than you since they are on the frontlines. Once we have mask production ramped up and we are still in the thick of this mess (hopefully the mess has receded but doubtful), I fully expect them to ask everyone to wear a mask.

Both times I believe the experts & government have not been forthright with us initially.

Damn.

There's the recession.

I guess they are optimistic things will begin to return to normal (or the new normal) this summer/Jul.

Yeah. Is it wrong to think this is potentially good news after hearing talk of 20% unemployment? To hear that we will be bouncing back in Q3 is a surprise.

N95 masks work. The other masks will not work very well if at all against this or the flu. We generally use those to protect against blood splatter and/or mucous that may come flying during a procedure(think suctioning a trach or something similar). They do not filter out droplets in the air very well though. The healthcare facility I work at had exactly 3 N95 masks available the last day I worked and I was informed that our supplier is not able to supply us with anymore. The spread of influenza and RSV among healthcare workers could skyrocket as well as COVID-19 without these masks. We are also rationing hand sanitizer. It takes multiple signatures to get a bottle that must be returned at the end of the shift. It’s like this virus has set our healthcare system back 100 years to a time where PPE was not a thing and we struggle to even keep our hands clean.

As a real example I was given report on a patient Wednesday who was going to be moved to one of my rooms that had Influenza A. When I asked about N95s was when I was given that information. Eventually after I asked questions about who would pay for my own Influenza case as a result of treating him without PPE he was transferred to a different facility.

We have one county in Colorado (San Miguel which has Telluride ski resorts) under a shelter in place order. No cases have been confirmed there by testing but several people hospitalized.

My coworkers are spreading rumors that DeWine is going to shut down Ohio today.

We've also started a guessing game on how many confirmed cases there will be in the state. I've won the last 3 days :p

Though Loeffler is saying that all her assets are in a blind trust. If true, then I would give her the benefit of the doubt (and I'm no fan of Loeffler).

I haven't seen her say blind trust. What I saw was her saying neither she or her husband made trades, that a third party buys and sells. The question, then, is did she or her husband advise or direct the third party in any way. If she can show proof of a blind trust, good for her, but she needs to clarify the rules on her investment portfolio.

Here is a good article with a best and worst case scenario.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/o....co/tuW24BkM1I

As far as Loeffler goes, I tend to believe what she is saying because her husband is the CEO of the company that owns the NYSE. I don't see that guy doing something like this.

She was on FoxNews this morning and she said all of her trades were 3rd party trades.

The one person from CA has claimed the same thing, 3rd party trades.

Time to send Martha Stewart to jail!

Right, she needs to show evidence that this wasn't something she effected. Her explanation buys her a bit of leeway, but now to verify (to paraphrase Reagan).

Her blind trust has impeccable timing and the wherewithal to acquire shares in a teleconferencing company that is flourishing in a pandemic.

It's Friday, and the Dow is up about 400 points so far this morning. Probably another "bear market bounce." If this pattern continues, expect another huge drop on Monday.

Yeah, I'm not expecting any sustained rallies until we get more good news (or get the big bad news out of the way) ... wait WTF, we are in the red now !!

First Bay Area "shelter-in-place", then CA state "stay-at-home", and now New York state "on-pause" (which stands for Policies that Assure Uniform Safety for Everyone).

Can we standardize already? They all mean remote work, remote school, stay at home as much as possible, but oh btw, if you want to go out and exercise stay 6ft social distancing.