News COVID-19 pandemic

[Notebook]

PM BJ is giving a nationwide address at 20:30.

I can imagine what its about considering the week-end behaviour.

 

[Urwumpe]

PM BJ is giving a nationwide address at 20:30.

I can imagine what its about considering the week-end behaviour.

I know what he will say:


We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

 

[Linguofreak]

I know what he will say:


We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Protip: listen to a few Churchill "things are, really, really bad, but we're not screwed" speeches, then, with his voice still echoing in your head, crack open LOTR and read a few of Gandalf's "things are really, really bad, but we're not screwed" speeches. The results are quite entertaining.

 

[Urwumpe]

For comparison some numbers:

Before COVID-19, Germany had 28000 ICU beds (33.8/100K)
Now, Germany has 40000 ICU beds (48.3/100K)
Target is having 56000 ICU beds (67.6/100K)

Italy started into the crisis at 5000 ICU beds, no new numbers known.

Problem now: Not enough staff to operate the ICUs.

 

[Urwumpe]

Protip: listen to a few Churchill "things are, really, really bad, but we're not screwed" speeches, then, with his voice still echoing in your head, crack open LOTR and read a few of Gandalf's "things are really, really bad, but we're not screwed" speeches. The results are quite entertaining.

Of course. I am pretty sure, any older british actor playing such a situation will sound like Churchill. :lol:

 

[Notebook]

Must admit that wasn't the first thing that came to mind!

I think we are going to get a national b********g, and told to pull our socks up.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

First day of virtual classes, taught all three of my lectures. Blackboard did not implode and worked pretty well. It wasn't the unmitigated disaster it could have been.

Our governor, Charlie Baker, just issued a stay-at-home advisory and non-essential businesses have been closed, groups more than 10 people banned. He seems to be doing well and taking this seriously.

 

[Notebook]

Well, as expected. More closures, no gatherings above 2.
All to be enforced, not just advice.

And he said the key phrase "National Emergency".
Well delivered and not the BJ that has been, no political points there.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think we are going to get a national b********g, and told to pull our socks up.

You must have been really nasty kids in the past weeks. Is that really three weeks of curfew? :blink:

 

[Notebook]

If you’re just joining us, UK PM Boris Johnson has just announced a major ramping up of coronavirus measures.
Here are the major points of his speech:
From tonight, people in Britain will be allowed to leave their homes for only “very limited purposes” - shopping for basic necessities; for one form of exercise a day; for any medical need; and to travel to and from work when “absolutely necessary”
People are warned not to meet friends or family members who they do not live with
Shopping is only permitted for essentials like food and medicine, and people are advised to do it “as little as you can”
Police have powers to enforce the rules, including through fines and dispersing gatherings
All shops selling non-essential goods, such as clothing and electronic stores, are ordered to close
Libraries, playgrounds, outdoor gyms and places of worship are to close
All gatherings of more than two people in public - excluding people you live with - are banned
All social events, including weddings and baptisms are banned
Funerals are not included in the new restrictions
Parks will remain open for exercise but gatherings will be dispersed
Restrictions “under constant review” and will be checked again in three weeks. They will be relaxed “if the evidence shows we are able to”

 

[Urwumpe]

So, not much different to what is now already reality in Germany. We are all naughty boys, it seems.

As it seems, we even need a permit for travelling. Passierschein A38?

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Angela Merkel has tested negative for COVID-19, good news.


It's good to have fully-functional leadership. Can't wait until we get that in the U.S., but I digress...

 

[Notebook]

Might be needed in the long dark weeks ahead...

 

[Linguofreak]

I've seen that ZeroHedge article floating around. From my perspective, the author’s dismissing the entire world’s aggressive efforts to flatten the curve seems callous to me. This quote from the author sums it up:



So the author is correctly pointing out that that the goal of flattening the curve via social distancing is to lower the death rate / severe complications from running out of hospital beds / healthcare capacity for severe cases. But one sentence later, the author basically says, “...but that lockdown is not worth doing because of the economic costs of doing it.” From my perspective, life is a balance; i.e., “How much lockdown is necessary to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed?”

Unfortunately, by the time I tried to access the article, it seems to have been taken down. The thing is, there does get to be a point at which the cost of economic damage starts to be measured in lives. At the 2-3 month mark, at least in the developed world, we probably won't have reached this, but, as I see it, if we're still under strict quarantine measures at the 6-12 month mark, the economic damage is likely to be not only severe but catastrophic, and I think we're at a sharply increased risk of seeing famine, war, scapegoating and persecution of groups perceived to be "responsible", etc, and such things, in the past, have been known to rack up some fairly steep body counts.

Aside from that, the article insanity linked a few pages back makes the point that if indirect deaths due to people having other medical emergencies while hospitals are swamped with coronavirus cases get to be too bad, flattening the curve could actually make things worse by extending the time for which that situation exists.

Another thing I can think of, though I don't know whether flattening or not flattening the curve would make it worse, is that some number of people who have other medical emergencies will end up catching coronavirus in hospital.

None of this means that doing absolutely nothing is the best way to handle coronavirus, but it does mean that the potential consequences of a given reaction must be weighed carefully.

Now, in favor of a strong reaction is the fact that if we can manage to isolate each household enough to prevent any transmission between households, then the whole thing will be over in a few weeks, which will do less economic damage long term across a fairly broad range of parameters for the behavior of the disease.

We will likely have no way to know “what would have happened” if medical experts and governments around the world did not take these aggressive steps to flatten the curve, but personally, I would rather we as a race do err on the side of caution.

That applies to both sides of the argument, though. If we react strongly enough to prevent a huge number of casualties, we'll never know if it was going to reach that point or not. If we react weakly enough to prevent a complete economic meltdown, we'll never know if strong measures actually would have broken down the economy. And there's no way to know if measures in the middle might be worse than either extreme, bringing both economic meltdown and millions of coronavirus deaths, without actually finding ourselves in that situation.

 

[insanity]

That applies to both sides of the argument, though. If we react strongly enough to prevent a huge number of casualties, we'll never know if it was going to reach that point or not. If we react weakly enough to prevent a complete economic meltdown, we'll never know if strong measures actually would have broken down the economy. And there's no way to know if measures in the middle might be worse than either extreme, bringing both economic meltdown and millions of coronavirus deaths, without actually finding ourselves in that situation.

We only get the luxury of the data we have, sadly. But that doesn't mean we can't look to approaches that worked and adopt them. I'll be a broken record here but: SOUTH KOREA.



To my mind, social distancing is the right thing to do to buy time for us to put together a massive testing infrastructure, build up our medical supplies, and adopt strong contact tracing. It is the patriotic and humane thing to do. But if we are not working towards an end-game that actually is trying to manage this so we can resume life than I am struggling to see how this ends other than the Italian scenario of what looks to be 6-8 weeks of hell followed by the peaks and valleys of reinfection.

 

[Sbb1413]

Re: Epidemic of coronavirus

A user from Facebook theorized that God kills 5 crore (50 million) people every 100 years.

• 1720: An epidemic killed 5 crore people
• 1820: Cholera epidemic killed 5 crore people
• 1920: Spanish flu killed 5 crore people
• 2020: Coronavirus epidemic will kill 5 crore people

However, the actual value is lower than they theorized.

• 1720-22: Great Plague of Marseille killed more than 100,000 people
• 1816-26: Cholera epidemic killed more than 100,000 people
• 1918-20: Spanish flu killed up to 100,000,000 people
• 2019-present: Coronavirus epidemic is killed up to 19,000 people as of 25 March 2020 8:00 PM IST

 

[Ripley]

Facebook + God + random user + theories... not my soup.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I'm just bummed that it's not zombies

But seriously, at work there is a volunteer list to be sequestered here on site. There's not details, but I've signed up for it.

Also, I'm not getting anything from the "stimulus bill". But it the two parties can't remove their heads from their posteriors, there won't be anybody getting anything (except a headache).

I just can't figure it out though. I'd have thought by now the sphincter ring would have clamped down and they'd have all suffocated by now. :shrug:

 

[jedidia]

I just can't figure it out though. I'd have thought by now the sphincter ring would have clamped down and they'd have all suffocated by now.

Politicians have the ability to suspend brain functions to avoid suffocation. They need it regularly, otherwise they'd have to breathe too much in between all the talking...

 

[Urwumpe]

The German Army managed to lose 6 million face masks in Kenia.

They try to support the German department of health with the orders, but somehow a large order managed to get lost on the airport. Likely stolen by criminals because of the huge black market prices, though it is also not unlikely that the supplier simply decided to sell them to a better paying customer.