shoshin

Here's the thing: I think most people wouldn't drink bleach no matter what Trump said. But Trump still said we should investigate injecting surface disinfectants and UV light beneath the skin to kill a virus...as a treatment. It is, as stated above, evidence of a guy who doesn't understand the science here at a 5th grade level, and I guess that would be fine, if he would defer to the people who know better. Take for example, this interesting article about Sweden's approach and why its politicians and culture make a difference. Every time someone here says, "We should follow Sweden," I'm in agreement but note my belief that there's ZERO CHANCE we can do what Sweden is doing because we are culturally so different. Does the below sound like something Trump could stomach?

We are going on 2+ months where I'm guessing Trump gets a little information about this pandemic. He still doesn't get the difference between the virus and the disease. Disinfectants on surfaces kill the virus. Disinfectants in the body kill the...wait for it...body. It does not show that he's got a great understanding of the facts OR science and we should be at a point where he either should, or he should shut up and defer. It's more than a bad moment. It's a moment that shows our president has zero understanding of the very basic science around this, but it does show a certain laziness where he thinks he can complete the Hail Mary that scientists somehow can't. Today's bleach injection is yesterday's Hydrocholoquine "miracle." It's a magical thinking that ignores there are no easy ways out of this but only day-by-day upwards step where we follow a stringent plan (that smarter people than him set out the guidelines for).

It is less about that than the stupidity of Trump thinking he found a short cut like the HCQ miracle. The way out of this for healthcare and the economy is going to be long and hard. Not the Trump way.

Except that’s exactly what he said. His quote is a few posts below your post. Not here. You can read his quote. He was excited to hear about how disinfectants and UV light killed the virus on surfaces and suggested the experts look into how to do that inside the body. There’s no real defending this. Just hit Trump with the frying pan, move on to today, and pray that he doesn’t take up the mike as much.

Fauci, on how we lack the ability to do enough tests now. "We absolutely need to significantly ramp up, not only the number of tests but the capacity to actually perform them," Fauci said. That way, he continued, "you don't have a situation where you have a test, but it can't be done because there's not a swab, or not an extraction media or not the right vial -- all of those things got to be in place." "I am not overly confident right now at all, that we have what it takes to do that," Fauci added.

I had to find this clip. What a moron! Drinking 8 oz of bleach will also end your battle with Covid-19. So will cooking yourself for 2 minutes in a microwave. There are a lot of ways to deal with Covid-19.

Merkel sounding sensible again. But virologists have expressed concern that the loosening could result in a surge in the rate of spreading and strain the health system, which has so far been able to cope with the outbreak. Ms. Merkel said that she stood by her decisions to impose restrictions, and to allow them to be slowly eased, but cautioned against creating a false sense of security among the population by rescinding them too swiftly. “Nobody wants to hear this, but the truth is that we are not living in the final phase of this pandemic, but at the beginning,” she said. “We are going to have to live with it for a long time.” But the chancellor also noted that the outbreak and subsequent lockdown was proving challenging. “This pandemic is an imposition on our democracy, because it restricts our existential rights and needs,” she said.

Your political hackery aside, this is definitely true. The low mortality at the moment is not due to being open, but is a number that combines being open with what happened during closure.

My point was not about mortality. It's about what our hospitals have capacity to deal with. If those #s in NY are accurate and extrapolateable, they are still just telling the tale of NYC. If 20% of every region in the US had this, other hospital systems would be bottomed out like NYC hospitals got bottomed out. So though I am eager to open, we cannot do it just by throwing the doors open. We need to open, and now in most places, but I like the Trump guidelines as a model for doing it. You get 2 weeks of good data, you get to start opening. Two weeks of good data at that level, move to next step, etc. Bad data, move backwards. Stable data, stay where you are. It's simple, scientific, and relatively incontrovertible.

I think Birx and Fauci agree on the Trump guidelines. The guidelines are not being met to move into phase 1 in most places yet, even those that are about to open. Just noting this for the record. The southern states are doing well, which is probable weather driven. So it's a little hard to say the NE should follow their lead just because they may do better. I'm not arguing your point, just that what's good for Texas may not be good for NY. I do think regional opening based on data is the way to proceed.

Amen brother. I can work at home indefinitely, but the economy can't take it and really, I want my daughter to have some time with her school friends and a start to her first college year at college, though I am definitely concerned that may not happen at this point. Keep saying it. We are dropping an anvil on this and could be doing this much more surgically and probably better, because we'd be focusing on helping those most affected and not just spending energy on everyone.

The criteria put on PA to reopen puts those of us in the eastern half of the state probably 2+ months away from even the first phase of reopening. https://www.pennlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/after-further-review-most-midstate-counties-not-yet-ready-for-yellow-under-wolf-administration-formula.html My county is running on average about 7x per day higher than we need to sustain for 2 weeks to open, and we are still undertesting. I don't expect to be open under his criteria until July, as we haven't seen any downward trend in cases reported yet. This standard for PA is ridiculous. (We are nowhere near as bad as Philly and some others.)

If the NYC study can be extrapolated and is accurate, NYC at 20% is good for NYC being some ways to achieving herd immunity, but NYC definitely doesn't extrapolate to the rest of the US. If it did, other cities would have been bombed like NYC and they haven't been. So while the NYC data is interesting, it's only telling a little bit of the story so far. And that the rest of NYS is only at 4% means that we may have a long ways to go to achieve the herd immunity. I'm not saying we shouldn't see that data as interesting and potentially optimistic on mortality, but sort of like the rush to embrace HCQ, be sure to temper it.

Anything to add to the discussion?

Covid-19 also takes a lot more for many to recover from (see the health system in NYC). So there are quite a few important differences. That said, if we are looking at 0.5% mortality, that would be really good news. The rate limiter on being something like normal in the fall would be what % of people who get it end up in a hospital, because at 0.5%, and smart conduct for us all and social distancing for the most vulnerable, we could probably stomach the deaths without shutting down the economy a second time. My current senior who is missing all her senior year stuff would really like this to happen so she can be a true college freshman this fall, and not be staring at remote learning. For anyone with college kids, I'd encourage a listen to this optimistic take by the Chief Health Officer for the University of Michigan: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0rpFb8ZzIS4FbYxDAACCWx?si=tHMsUKRLTOGsiCZNdfhT9g

Agree but exercise some caution on herd immunity being particularly widespread even if those numbers can be extrapolated: The results differed across the state with the largest concentration of positive antibody tests found in New York City at 21.2%. In Long Island, 16.7% of the people tested were positive and in Westchester, where the state’s first major outbreak originated, 11.7% of the tests were positive. The Covid-19 pandemic across the rest of the state is relatively contained with just 3.6% of positive test results. The testing results also may be artificially high because “these are people who were out and about shopping,” Cuomo added. “They were not people who were in their home, they were not people isolated, they were not people who were quarantined who you could argue probably had a lower rate of infection because they wouldn’t come out of the house.”

14% of NYS and 21% NYC tests return positive. Biggest sample size for one of these yet. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-update.html?type=styln-live-updates&label=new york &index=1&action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#link-1ac474b4 More than 20 percent of people tested for virus antibodies in N.Y.C. tested positive. About 21 percent of people in New York City who were tested for coronavirus antibodies this week tested positive, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Thursday. The surprising results come from a state program that randomly tested 3,000 supermarket customers across New York State. Nearly 14 percent of those tests came back positive, Mr. Cuomo said.

Slavery is probably the biggest one, but there are others. War time in the past has suspended liberties that were granted back. And it doesn't sound like the federal government wants to run the surveillance here. Trump just told states they should put tracking in place before moving to Phase 1. It doesn't give guidance as to how to do it.

Hard to know where you come up with some of these things. Italy banned Chinese travelers before the US did. Jan. 30/31 depending on where you were. Lots of sources for this but I like this visa website as about as non-bisaed as you can get.

Gates says in that video that the faster we improve health with vaccines, food, water, and education, the more poor countries control their population growth issues. How does that "sound like China's one child policy?" I didn't hear him say governments should control how many kids you have. We have veered off topic but it doesn't sound like you watched the video. That's an overstatement of my and Trump's position, and to clarify: I think we need to track people to get our economy back up and running while we contain this outbreak. I am generally wary of big government and big data but here see the advantage.

Even in higher infected areas, the general shut down is way too severe.

His view as I understand it is that a healthier population with vaccines, clean water, and education doesn't have lots of kids that it can't maintain. Stated differently, one of the best ways to prevent population growth in areas with minimal resources and health issues is to improve their health and education. That seems like an observation, not an advocacy for killing people or whatever absurdity people extend it to on the Twitter. In this crisis, that he's on our side could be a good thing.

How is this not touting? "HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine." The Novartis study of HCQ will give us pretty reliable data if some other study isn't complete first.

PPP is here but I know what you're saying. PPE is less of an issue now finally and that should not be an issue for the fall rise in cases. There's no break. Once hospitals "reopen" for anything like normal, they will be flooded with non-Covid issues that will have only gotten worse since this began.