Coronavirus

Well, this thing is out now permanently. It will flare back up again yearly. Social distancing is a decent stalling tactic and does work to limit the pneumonia deaths by lowering the number of ventilators needed at any given time (at great individual and social economic cost). However it doesn't solve the core problems at all. The US needs public healthcare. The US needs a balance between oligarch profits and quality of life for the 80%. We need to have a public discussion about how much treasure to spend on 70+ year olds while denying a fraction of that effort for children and young adults. But I guess not now, we have decided that the choices are four more years of Trump or status quo Joe.

I also take umbrage and someone saying that there was a case of a healthy person dying at ~40. Then they use the example of a doctor in China working 16 hour days for weeks on end, experiencing extreme mental stress fighting the CCP brainwashing, surrounded by death. Uhh, maybe he had complicating factors?

What I find very distressing at the moment is the recovery time. No one is talking about this.

On the CNN Town Hall last night they had a Princess cruise passenger come on remotely and he's still testing positive and in quarantine after nearly 30 days.

We only have 31 confirmed cases in the U.S. where the person has returned successfully from infection.

How can a country deal with a significant portion of its population isolated? How can we deal with this cost economically and socially? Is there hope?

That's a good point. Most info mentions the transmissible time as considerably less than that, so the spread might be contained, but people impaired by the illness might have a much longer wait. I guess the question will be if the contagious period really is that short.

One of my friends told me about this girl he works with...she had all the COVID-19 symptoms. She went to the doctor and they’d only test for flu, which was negative. She continued to work. She went to an Atlanta United game that set an attendance record. All while taking DayQuil.

The boss at this office just got back from Italy. He’s been coming to work feeling unwell.

This person almost definitely had it and they’ve spread it to who knows how many people. The reality is that there are likely thousands and thousands of cases in the US -right now- that aren’t reported simply because they aren’t tested. Because that’s what Trump wants- low numbers and good optics. So they can say “oh hey, only 1000 cases!, it’s contained! AMERICA HAS DEFEATED THE FOREIGN VIRUS!”.

But those unreported cases are going to mount real fucking quick.

This is bad, ya’ll. I don’t think it’s the end of the world, but there’s going to be a lot of unnecessary sickness and some preventable deaths among our most vulnerable citizens. All because of this man’s vanity and this country’s commitment to capitalism.

I hope people remember his deeds come November.

Iran has already dug mass graves for their coronavirus deaths. That's gonna be hard to hide when its the US's turn.

Here is a sobering image:



It’s like exponential growth is predictable. Or something. Too bad reality doesn’t care about machismo, bravado, and anyone’s desire for good optics and a surging S&P500.

We’ve had one confirmed case in my county. The board of education just announced that they are not closing schools, but don’t worry, they are keeping a close eye on it.

This is borderline insane to me. There is no testing. And at least four of my family and friends think it’s all media hype.

Well, I have a 71yo mom, a 96yo grandmother, and a good friend with an immunocompromised 11yo. I get that exponential curves are unintuitive to mammalian brains, but if I lose any of them I will have a hard time keeping any of the ignoramuses in my life.

I was trying to avoid politics but since (a) Barnes blew up the dam a couple times already and (b) it’s kind of unavoidable when talking about a widespread social catastrophe, I’ll recommend the following to anyone wanting to know why relying on the US government to do anything is a forlorn hope:

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/0...-coronavirus/607342/

In short, you can’t bully a virus, you can’t spin deaths as a hoax (although he will try). No human institution is perfect but maybe don’t put a fucking TV host in charge of anything important.

Edit-

Dysjunct, that is a powerful graphic, though two days old. As of today, the U.S. is at 2,030 cases, so still tracking right in line with where Italy was at a comparable stage. And Italy is now at nearly 18,000 cases. However, at some point the U.S. is going to blow past Italy exponentially, because Italy has a population of 60 million people, while the U.S. has a population of 330 million people. Also, Italy has more hospital beds per capita than the U.S., because our profit-based healthcare system doesn't see a profit in excess hospital beds.

Danish borders will close tomorrow so things just got very real. But officials are not testing a lot of persons. Instead we are told to consider ourselves infected if we have symptoms and then they'll concentrate on the cases that require medical attention. Our prime minister is handling things really well and I'm not all that worried - Denmark is probably in the top three or at least top five countries to be in when shit like this happens. But it also helps that children aren't affected that hard by the virus. Knowing they are safe makes it much, much easier to stay calm.

What I am worried about, though, is the rampant racisms against Chinese people were seeing/going to see. And the economy, obviously. I'm working in learning games, so while I sometimes make stuff that has an imporant function, it's hardly essential. And my other gigs - writing books, comedy and hobby board games - will most likely also take a hit during a recession. But that is for the future. Right now it's a matter for managing at least 2-4 weeks of home schooling and working at home at the same time.

Just delivered a lecture on the concept of social distancing to a local FB game group that was "proudly announcing that we aren't canceling anything and, in fact, have a special game day set up tonight" at a local brewery. Fully expecting to get bounced from said group and not really concerned (other than that this is the kind of behavior that dysjunct's graphic is spotlighting.)

Here in British Columbia Canada, the provincial government put the kibosh on gatherings larger than 250 people a few days ago. Today the theatre company I'm currently doing a show for cancelled the remainder of our performances. The theatre holds just under 100 people. I am absolutely gutted but understand. Being able to get free testing I think has helped to track numbers and sources of infection.

I changed my next planned game day into a tabletop simulator day.

mads b. wrote: What I am worried about, though, is the rampant racisms against Chinese people were seeing/going to see.

It's going both ways. The CCP just promoted an anti-American up the ranks in the foreign ministry who is messaging that the virus was brought to China by the US military. It's almost like Trump and Xi are working from the same playbook.