3-30-20 Covid-19 open thread/snowflakes
I see reality and the reality is a vast majority of politicians are slimy people and don’t really care about you at all. They mostly enter their career in politics from modest beginnings and come out like Kings and Queens.
Maybe you should vote for better politicians.
From wikipedia
Politics is the set of activities that are associated with the governance of a country, stateor area. It involves making decisions that apply to groups of members[1
- since we are the group of members who those decisions apply to, it always perplexes me why politics is something people think doesn’t matter or is just an annoyance to be ignored. What should our taxes be, should we go to war, how much resources should we put towards education, the environment, human health. These are decisions that impact all of us and by participating in politics we can actually impact them.
We are blessed to live in a country that believes this is a fundamental right (you can questioningly how well we live up to that ideal, but it is definitely an american ideal). The preamble to the constitution could not make this clearer “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I think the below definition from Meriam-Webster highlights a big part of the problem. Because political activity can and does include “artful and often dishonest practices” (I would have said deceitful and dishonest myself), people think of it as all bad. But politics gave us our country, was key to mobilizing to win two world wars, has helped us to develop things we use every day like the internet and the highway system. Because it is a government about “we the people” we have an ability to influence who governs us and make it clear that we don’t agree with using dishonest and deceitful practices. Yes, this is a highly idealistic viewpoint and the real world Is messier, but bottom line is politics impacts us every day - you have an ability to influence how.
From Merriam-Webster
“Politics is a multifaceted word. It has a set of fairly specific meanings that are descriptive and nonjudgmental (such as “the art or science of government” and "political principles"), but it can and often does carry a negative meaning closely related to these (“political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices”)”
Exactly. And the less people pay attention to politics, the less able they are to gain knowledge about which politicians are corrupt, and thus are unable to hold them to account for their actions.
March 30th, 2020 at 10:54 AM ^
Stay home, stay safe.
Crimea said that and look where it got them
March 30th, 2020 at 11:07 AM ^
we need to grab this hoax by the pussy so we can get back to work by Easter
figured since it was a political thread I'd go over the top
March 30th, 2020 at 11:22 AM ^
here's my real response
I have been tracking this since January, I knew it was big and it is one of the reasons I moved my money. But I am still shocked at how big it is.
First, my best wishes go out to those who are sick or have family that are sick. Second, to those who are losing employment or businesses.
This sucks. I hope the long term impact to economy isn't as bad as I am starting to think it will be. I hope we keep the USA deaths below 250,000.
March 30th, 2020 at 11:58 AM ^
There are way too many people not taking this seriously enough and not following stay at home orders. Way too many.
March 30th, 2020 at 12:49 PM ^
Italy today ... 4050 new cases reported, for daily growth of 4.1%, a record low. If this is accurate (weekend reporting is sometimes low for some reason) they’re close to flattening this.
Yes, Italy's daily new cases number is promising.
There might be a bias toward Monday (or the weekend) being lower than necessarily expected, but I don't think there's conclusive evidence one way or the other. Last weekend the #s did look lower than expected, but 3 weeks ago they looked higher.
-------------
On another note, the "doubling time" (# of days it takes for total cases to double) is steadily rising across nearly ALL European countries.
Italy, Germany, Spain, UK, Switzerland The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Portugal - all hot spots in terms of absolute numbers for the virus - all saw that metric increase from 0.36 to 0.69 just from yesterday to today. That's a good sign.
France will likely be the same: they report their daily numbers later than their European peers, we'll know in a few hours. For reference, they went up 0.57 yesterday (from 5.34 to 5.91).
We’ll obviously get more info this week, but what do you make of the lower death toll in the US yesterday? Sign of progress or weekend anomaly?
It could be a good sign for New York specifically. Or just statistical noise. The curve for deaths isn’t going to be as smooth as for cases, since there is more variability : anyone can get sick from this, but the rate of death varies greatly depending on age/risk factor. It might be that on one particular day, a lot of young people got infected for some reason, and then a couple weeks later that results in a lower death toll.
For the country as a whole it’s probably just noise. Most states are still very early on their curves.
I’d really want someone else to double check this, but by my count, in the last Two weeks, the count has gone up 7 times, stayed similar 3 times snd gone down 4 times. During that period the clear trend was up. I’d definitely want to see more positive data before declaring it a trend Iand would not argue hard if someone double checked my numbers and dusagreed)
Oh there’s definitely still a general curve for deaths - yesterday was better than the day before but still one of the worst overall. But there is going to be more daily variance.
Almost certainly a blip - it's too early, I think, to be real.
The worldometers.info site is great --- but it does consider a new day to start at 0Z time. Which is anywhere from 5 to 8 local time in the 48 states. Also when a number of the new daily reports from the individual states come in.
That timing isn't an issue for Europe. But it can contribute noise to the daily USA data.
EDIT - never mind....new numbers came up and Spain is still not out of the woods.
Yeah Spain seems to update twice a day, in contrast to the others.
This could be a great thread, but the political nonsense makes it only skimmable. *NOTE THAT NONE OF YOU ARE CONVINCING EACH OTHER OF ANYTHING* Just as you haven't for years now, despite the shouting. People will vote as they have for years now, COVD won't change that.
Thanks for the log data and descriptions on the first page, that was really helpful and encouraging.
I know this was discussed in a a thread a few weeks ago...something to the effect of "I was sick in January did I have Coronavirus then?"
At the end of January I came down with really bad dry coughing and I finally went to the doctor alarmed with my shortness of breath.
Doctor tested me negative for flu but symptoms seemed like flu...gave me an inhaler, penicillin and a new flu horse pill to take. Took about 2 weeks or so to get better...very anecdotal I know but here in Michigan there are regular flights between Italy and Detroit due to Fiat. Without having an antibody test you can't say for sure but it doesn't seem impossible this flu may have been here longer than we thought.
All of the phylogenetic data I've seen suggests that this virus wasn't sitting around going undetected in areas for months at a time. Maybe a week or two max.
Keep in mind that there are other things that can give you flu like symptoms without being the flu. It is WAY more likely you had one of them. Even now if you have flu like symptoms it is much more likely you have something else than corona (unless you live in NYC).
It would be comforting to know that the virus has been around awhile, because that would suggest it's less dangerous than reported, but that just doesn't jibe with the facts on the ground.
Hospitals everywhere are now reporting a surge of patients with severe symptoms and in need of ventilators. If the coronavirus was among us all this time, this should have been happening all along, instead of blowing up right now.
What we've seen is consistent with the idea that we are in the early stages of a pandemic. The virus is following the same pattern everywhere: a couple of weeks after the first confirmed case in a place, the number of hospitalizations and deaths soars. Also there is the fact the big outbreaks are all in big cities - these are normally the first to see a new virus, because they are the most integrated in the global economy. (Take a look at where the airport hubs are in the United States, and compare that with outbreaks of COVID-19.) The rural regions are normally the last to get a new virus, and that's exactly what's happening.
The mainstream media is the enemy of the people. Only interested in pushing narratives. Change my mind
Don't tell me what to do.
You sound like a real douche.
I can’t even take the numbers seriously anymore. The only number that might be fairly accurate is the death count. # of cases and death % are both going to be way off because of the massive amount of people who have it aren’t being tested.
Avoid people, stay cleanly, and eat right/exercise to where if you do catch, you have a better chance of killing the virus.
Well, COVID-19 deaths in Oakland County doubled overnight. The next couple of weeks are not going to be very pleasant.
On the positive side, Detroit's getting rapid-testing kits. This is big, to eliminate that long lag before results come in.
That's a really high number (30) for a county that size. On any given day you would expect to see around 33 people die in Oakland County based in its size. So Covid has essentially doubled the daily death rate in the county. New York city had 161 deaths yesterday. Normal daily deaths there are around 180. Another way of saying that things in Southeast Michigan are getting as bad as anywhere in the US. Hopefully this number is an aberration and not a sign that we will see even higher numbers in the next few days.
Virginia's governor just issued a lockdown until June 10. I guess he wins today's round.
Not that quarantines aren't warranted, or that lockdowns are generally going to be rescinded long before then. I am quite worried about civil unrest and economic ruin at this point.
Most of us are fine. I worry about teens and young adults in small, crowded apartments. We need to put our heads together (in a manner consistent with proper social distancing) and come up with a way to relieve some of that pressure without screwing up the value of quarantining.
I have an idea for social distancing risk profiles and being matched to friends and family of similar risk profiles to allow for hanging out with people every now and then.
Age
Health
Risk tolerance
Age/health/risk tolerance of all those in your immediate living quarters
Score
Match
....???
Profit
Just call it OKStupid.
Do you think my idea is stupid or just not actually feeling like putting any heads together to solve anything? Or maybe by we you didn't actually mean you and I. Sometimes I can be a bit too literal.
We need to put our heads together (in a manner consistent with proper social distancing) and come up with a way to relieve some of that pressure without screwing up the value of quarantining.
I must be really slow. Why is the raw number of new cases indicative of anything on it’s own? With the new tests being approved, the number of positives are sure to go up dramatically.
What am I missing?