It's about money, and it isn't. There are a lot of different sectors to an economy, but theoretically we can get through this assuming agriculture holds up. Everyone else can quit their jobs and stay at home and we print money for people to buy food on a temporary basis.
Does this work in the long run? Absolutely not. Is it highly hypothetical? Absolutely. Does it lead to problems with the incentive to work? Absolutely. But you're talking about a crisis.
Countries that have bad credit are going to have a lot more trouble. Schumpeter (I think it was him) once said that Keynesian economics goes overseas to die. There's a valid point buried in there.
Bill Gates, the eugenist who promotes mandatory population reduction and was
once the head of Planned Parenthood?
Oh, I see ... it's his kid. Interesting.
Oh, I see ... it's his kid. Interesting.
You can call it that if you want, but my Gates Derangement Syndrome is well
documented and I'm proud of it. I know the kind of person Bill Gates is,
and I still think the universe would be well served by having him fed feet-first
into a wood chipper.
As for the rest of us. A lot more people are going to get sick. Some will die. This is a fundamental truth and it's now a constant, and it's going to happen this way regardless of what else we do.
There is no vaccine. There isn't going to be a vaccine. Some people are responding well to various meds (hydroxychloroquine or remdesivir, depending on how you feel about Big Orange, apparently) buf if there were a slam-dunk game changer we would have known about it by now.
We were worried about the hospitals going over capacity. It didn't happen.
The makeshift hospital at the Javitz center has now been closed. The hospital ship has sailed away with barely any patients having been seen.
The governor of NY is now puzzled as to why the majority of new cases are people who have been quarantined at home.
No one is willing to say it because everyone is either enjoying the lies or is too chicken to tell the truth. There is NO plan to reopen anything that does not involve more people getting sick. We have to let this thing run its course.
A newly germophobic culture will continue washing hands, sterilizing things, wearing masks some of the time, etc. The curve will remain reasonable flat.
But the number of people UNDER the curve will remain static. So it's time to end the tyrannical wet dream that many officials are currently enjoying.
The above is my opinion, which is also known as science.
As for the rest of us. A lot more people are going to get sick. Some will die. This is a fundamental truth and it's now a constant, and it's going to happen this way regardless of what else we do.
There is no vaccine. There isn't going to be a vaccine. Some people are responding well to various meds (hydroxychloroquine or remdesivir, depending on how you feel about Big Orange, apparently) buf if there were a slam-dunk game changer we would have known about it by now.
We were worried about the hospitals going over capacity. It didn't happen.
The makeshift hospital at the Javitz center has now been closed. The hospital ship has sailed away with barely any patients having been seen.
The governor of NY is now puzzled as to why the majority of new cases are people who have been quarantined at home.
No one is willing to say it because everyone is either enjoying the lies or is too chicken to tell the truth. There is NO plan to reopen anything that does not involve more people getting sick. We have to let this thing run its course.
A newly germophobic culture will continue washing hands, sterilizing things, wearing masks some of the time, etc. The curve will remain reasonable flat.
But the number of people UNDER the curve will remain static. So it's time to end the tyrannical wet dream that many officials are currently enjoying.
The above is my opinion, which is also known as science.
Uhm Ig. What's the shortest time that it's ever taken for a vaccine to be
developed? Why do you seem to think that there won't be a vaccine ever? That's
fact and science. The curve in individual parts of the country is not flat
at all. The curve for overall isn't flat either. Unless we're looking at different
curves.
Bill Gates is not an infectious disease specialist or virus specialist. I
don't care what he plays on t.v.. I'm not counting on him.
Thu May 07 2020 09:13:43 PM EDT from IGnatius T FoobarIf Bill Gates creates vaccines anything like the way he created software, everyone would die.
Stop, Bill Gates wouldn't create anything. He would take credit for everything someone else created and blame the problem on the user. He would make sure he could make a lot of money in the process.
2020-05-08 00:19 from wizard of aahz
Bill Gates is not an infectious disease specialist or virus specialist.
I don't care what he plays on t.v.. I'm not counting on him.
He is resposible for the spread of Windows. Doesn't that make him an specialist in viruses and infectious diseases? XD
The antibody test is over $100. You pay for and pick the test kit up at one location then go to a separate lab with a separate fee to get the blood draw.
And there are reports of the tests coming up positive when they were given
to inanimate objects. This is the point -- I'm done with all of this. Everyone
is lying, nobody has any reliable information, and everyone is using the crisis
to further whatever agenda they already had. No sides here either -- *everyone*
is doing it. They've all exhausted my patience, and I think I am more representative
of the average citizen than, say, someone who has access to inside information
about critical trials. It is certainly possible that I'm completely wrong,
and in fact I hope I am.
The straw that broke this camel's back is, of course, Bill Gates. Pundits are painting him like some sort of f***ing white knight who is going to fund the development of a vaccine, and he's going to be the savior of humanity just like he was the savior of computing. And we all know what really happened there.
This is why my new attitude is "f**k the whole world".
I suppose it's legitimate to ask the question about the "curve" -- how flat is flat *enough*? There are only two legitimate answers; everything else is arbitrary. One is the answer given by rich people virtue signaling about how we're all in this together, while others are unemployed and broke: that the infection rate must be brought to near zero. The other, which assumes that there's no cure or vax coming within the next few weeks, is simply this: if the hospitals are not being overwhelmed, the curve is flat enough.
Yes this is a rant, and a somewhat hostile one. Know that my hostility is directed towards the so-called "experts", who have been wrong about everything, not towards anyone here, even those with whom I disagree on this topic. If you want the latter kind of mudslinging you know what room to unzap. I still love you all. Those on the outside who claim to be our betters can go die in a car fire.
The straw that broke this camel's back is, of course, Bill Gates. Pundits are painting him like some sort of f***ing white knight who is going to fund the development of a vaccine, and he's going to be the savior of humanity just like he was the savior of computing. And we all know what really happened there.
This is why my new attitude is "f**k the whole world".
I suppose it's legitimate to ask the question about the "curve" -- how flat is flat *enough*? There are only two legitimate answers; everything else is arbitrary. One is the answer given by rich people virtue signaling about how we're all in this together, while others are unemployed and broke: that the infection rate must be brought to near zero. The other, which assumes that there's no cure or vax coming within the next few weeks, is simply this: if the hospitals are not being overwhelmed, the curve is flat enough.
Yes this is a rant, and a somewhat hostile one. Know that my hostility is directed towards the so-called "experts", who have been wrong about everything, not towards anyone here, even those with whom I disagree on this topic. If you want the latter kind of mudslinging you know what room to unzap. I still love you all. Those on the outside who claim to be our betters can go die in a car fire.
We also have to stop using the phrase "avoid it like the plague" because apparently
that's a thing now.
within the next few weeks, is simply this: if the hospitals are not
being overwhelmed, the curve is flat enough.
I actually tend to agree with this. The mental health impacts of confining people to quarters for 18 months, in a doomed attempt to suppress R0<1.0 (doomed because of lack of compliance) need to be reckoned with. So there has to be some balance, even if there are lives at stake. Who knows what "balance" means exactly in practice...
Even if not precisely doomed-due-to-lack-of-compliance, we still have this major testing and tracing gap. With best-case compliance, it feels like we would be able to suppress the virus to a low, but nonzero level where it would simply be waiting to cause a second wave as soon as we take our foot off the gas pedal. The alternative is 10-25% of the population living on welfare until a vaccine emerges, and we just don't have the political will or a plan for that.
Any sort of sane "balance", however, depends on people being intellectually honest about what's going on.
There may never be a vaccine.... I think we're seeing the number of deaths
slow not so much due to the lockdowns, but due to better treatment protocols
and understanding who is the most vulnerable.
In the end, it's time to open back up. There can't be "balance".
In the end, it's time to open back up. There can't be "balance".
Any sort of sane "balance", however, depends on people being
intellectually honest about what's going on.
Yes. That. We've reached a point where people should be permitted to make their own reasoned decisions ... what we'd call a risk/benefit analysis. There's also a psychological aspect to it -- lots of people are simply burned out on quarantine protocols at this point. I have to admit though, I dig the full-face shields that are starting to appear. We're wearing them at the local community center where I volunteer as an election worker.
(Of course, that's coming from someone who has actually worn a bunny suit in a cleanroom)
Regarding vaccines, I have some data points to share.
I had a chat back-and-forth yesterday with a fellow recovered pt who knows two others. One of the two saw a 2-fold drop in antibody titer in a 30-day period. This is a lot like my results - I am antibody-low and antibody-negative according to two different tests lately, but out of caution I waited a long time after starting to recover and before getting the antibody tests, so I may have had a stronger response that faded away before any tests were done.
I got an email from a researcher about my test results. He confirmed that my case is not atypical. They see a strong correlation between PCR positivity, fever, and a strong antibody response. But a lot of people are in my boat. I never had a fever. Although one of the two people mentioned above had NO symptoms and a STRONG antibody response, so it's all over the place.
All this may have implications for a vaccine, and it may be the case that immune memory cells are critical for many people who will not sustain antibodies very long. But nobody really knows what it all means yet, except for my best buddy Ragnar who gets to make up his own facts based on pure political bias. Must be nice.
There was also a WSJ article recently that talked about T-cell cross-reactivity in a significant subset of the population who may have previously been exposed to one or more of the other coronaviruses, and this may reduce the threshold for herd immunity, but again, nobody knows what this means except Ragnar.