shoshin

Is the "he" you're talking about the TX Governor and conservative judges who wrote the decision in support of the "tyrannical rule" that an abortion clinic is non-essential? The decision is not a simple political litmus test. I am surprised that a conservative court set up so much governmental power in this crisis but at least as far as tracking contacts go, it's a good sign. As far as making sure the government doesn't overstep its bounds, not so much.

So you think the abortion clinics should be allowed to be open?

I'm commenting not on letting people parade in cars, which is trivial, but on the tracking that the Surgeon General mentioned and the Birx hinted at too.

Every day this thread starts out civil and information filled. Court case today from the 5th Circuit ruled that abortion clinics are non-essential services, a topic I'll avoid but this quote speaks to what the Surgeon General was saying about tracing contacts and some of the debate here about it. Judge Duncan is a Trump appointee and the Jacobsen case he refers to found that states could force people to get vaccinated (during a smallpox outbreak). The emphasis on "all" is in the opinion. "Jacobson instructs that all constitutional rights may be reasonably restricted to combat a public health emergency," wrote Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan for the majority.

Surgeon General mentioned tracing yesterday. Birx mentioned testing people's contacts being the goal in the presser according to Buffalo_Gal's summary (thank you). And now this:

Not many people died for lack of live-saving supplies that I have heard. This thing is bad enough without making it sound worse.

He's already got a lot of quotes on this that are brutal. The HCQ stuff, even if it turns out to be wrong, is not even in the top 5. Trump on a microphone is cringeworthy every time. Trump's actions are usually much better. And with the Surgeon General talking about tracing contacts on FoxNews, it sounds like they are teasing this idea out little by little. That's fine politically, but it's good news practically.

Healthcare systems are mandating that they be put off. It's not a doctor-patient decision in many places.

3700 people were on the Diamond Princess. Again with the numbers. 700 people got Covid 19. 6 died. Not easy to extrapolate from a tin can that had an undertaxed healthcare system in Japan supporting it (ill patients were moved off the ship) to what is happening now in the general population.

Fair. For sure. Once we are testing anyone who wants it, plus randomized (oh no my rights!), we will have a much clearer picture of this.

You really should drop this. You've been proven badly wrong on a point that I think only you and Buffalo_Gal are pushing, that somehow there is a massive death overcoat underway that proves...what...this isn't as bad as everyone knows it to be? I'll link the source document again in case you didn't believe the Washington Examiner story that it was based on. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/2017sum.pdf

If that's true, the contagiousness of this would be much, much higher than believed. I'm not saying you're wrong but I doubt it. The study you linked is in progress and the early data was a 500-person sample thus far in a small town. It's like drawing conclusions about this based on the Diamond Princess. Nowhere near enough data there yet. I do hope you're right.

People leave and move to NYC all the time. You don't calculate a death rate by doing any calculation around population and life expectancy. You count bodies in the morgue. That's why I linked to the NYC Health Dept source. If you can beat that source for deaths/day in NYC, have at it. But if they say 147/day on average, it's going to be pretty damn close.

The health systems really had no choice, and I see you acknowledge that. My wife's medical system needed/needs resources to deal with covid patients and can't put their nurses, doctors, and other patients at risk by having lots of already-sick people (with other conditions) coming into the place where there are covid patients. And because this rose so quickly and without adequate preparation, we could not set up covid wards and dedicated hospitals. For the next wave, which may be much bigger, we may have that in place. Your speculation on the fatality rate is speculation so far but even in Korea, it's higher than your count and given its very high contagiousness, even if it's 0.5%, that's a lot of bodies. But you're right: The number of sick people currently not getting treatment is going to take a really big toll. My wife's team is juggling knives right now trying to help people in their homes through telemedicine and it's a clusterF. A necessary clusterF but one nonetheless. And when the covid patients clear, the hospitals/doctors will be rampaged by all these people who have stayed away and gotten a lot sicker with whatever they had...and if covid rises again what that happens...bottom line: Give your health care workers a lot of support right now. They are getting crushed and come June, it's not over by a long shot. I noted before that I have two relatives in nursing who volunteered to work at St Joe's on the covid ward. I haven't heard much from them but it was bad just a few days ago. I'm sure it's not gotten better since.

The effort here to somehow minimize the death count is baffling. We know that deaths are being UNDER and OVER counted. It is the most accurate measure we have. We can't use case count because we literally have no idea how many people are just staying home with a family member who tested positive, clearly have it, and are not tested. And we can't know how many people know they have it because of symptoms but don't need to/want to get tested. We can't trust hospitalizations because hospitals are mostly over capacity so many are sent home. Fewer positive cases and fewer hospitalizations is a good trend but it's a vague indicator. Deaths are a certain statistic. RoyBatty came here doubting that the funeral/death business was struggling. Another guy wants proof that hospitals are struggling. I don't know what to tell you guys. Drive to NYC or any other big city right now and do a walking tour of a major hospital. Hell, if you're here then just go try to do a walk through at St. Joe's in Buffalo. It's real. I'm not saying we need to live in grave fear of it but don't doubt this is a huge deal and creating a big mess of bodies and crushing the health care system in many places. Maybe where you live is not that bad yet and I hope that continues, but it's a real problem, not a media fiction.

145 people die on average every day in NYC pre-coronavirus. Your 7,000 stat is not even close to accurate. If you don't believe the Washington Examiner story, here is the underlying data. Yesterday 518 people died of coronavirus in NYC. No matter what point you're making below about over counting (and it runs counter to many reports of undercounting), deaths are running 3+ times normal. There is no system built to deal with that. You sound like the guy who is skeptical because he hasn't seen videos of hospitals overflowing and Americans dying in hallways on Twitter. This is real.

Some people don't believe in it and/or don't want that. One of my parents is dead set against cremation.

Not much of a gamble. He gambled on saying CV-19 was under control, cases would go to zero, etc. He just says things. When he's wrong, he gets called on it and his supporters don't care. When he's right, his supporters yell at the media and the media doesn't care. In November, the voters can decide if he did a good job. If HCQ works, it won't be because Trump got the science right, but just because he guessed right. And that's fine. I hope he guessed right. I'd have rather he guessed right on controlling the outbreak though. Fauci, you'll note, didn't guess. He just keeps saying we have to wait and see. And he's not against the field tests. That's a scientific mind. He understands the stakes and is fine with testing it in the field due to what is happening, but he's not drawing conclusions. I love the anecdotal evidence--keep it coming. We need any good news we can get with respect to controlling the virus because distancing is a devastating way to do it. I have been on HCQ and I know others who have as well (they give it to you before you go to malaria-risk countries). It sucked for me (I'm very healthy otherwise) and I had to stop after two days. I probably couldn't take it, and when my doctor prescribed it, she gave be a truckload of warning signs to look for. But that's n of 1. Others I know have had limited issues.

I would like my right to assemble back. I'll trade some tracking for that. In KR, they use teams of people to contact trace. I'd be fine with that but we can't set up that kind of infrastructure in 3 weeks. The phones are already in most people's pockets.

The Surgeon General hinting at tracking and isolating contacts. We won't be doing this with manual teams like Korea, guaranteed. We can't set that infrastructure up in 3 weeks. Only tech can provide it. "And, number two: we want to see cases start to come down for ideally two weeks. And, once that happens, we want to make sure we have a public health infrastructure in place so that we can follow up on positive tests and isolate case contacts," added Adams. "Once we feel comfortable we can do that, we can start reopening in places that have flattened their curve and have a low-lying level of cases, because we have confidence that one case won't turn into 10, 100, a thousand," he concluded. https://www.foxnews.com/media/us-surgeon-general-jerome-adams-advice-to-american-workers-coronavirus First admin statement I've seen about this. I'm glad they are saying this is a prerequisite to opening.

That is the IHME model on an NPR webpage. It's wildly off in some states already (PA has 2x as many deaths n the last two days as it projects) and they just adjusted the model two days ago. It's a GIGO issue but it's the same model everyone has been discussing/attacking here and in the media.

Very good news. I assume he got the best care possible and don’t see it as a political thing no matter what he got for treatment. Keep getting better Boris!

Took a while but this discussion is now a bully pulpit. Any chance we can revert back to Covid-19?

I am practical. You've conflated this into some grand epic. I will survive Covid, a true economic meltdown, big brother tracking my covid status, or not. But this is not the grand "give me liberty or give me death" moment you suggest. Unless you're in one of 14 states, you're home stripped of your liberty right now. And if Covid comes back in waves as it is set to be, it will happen again. You could exercise your freedom and join 300 people in a rave in your local park to stick it to "the man," but you won't because that would be bad for their/your health. I want the right to assemble back. I place that higher than the right of someone to trace my contacts. When I get my right to assemble back, I will want my right to privacy too. We're back and forth on this. No need to reply but if you do, you get the last word.

That is an exaggeration that is not true but it's not Covid-19 related and I'm not interested in the academic exercise of debating it. I don't mean that personally, but just make the statement to let you know I recognize it's not true. We would have to be diligent, like the many people who have had to be diligent about every surveillance call-out. What you see as a gateway to Big Brother, I see a doorway to getting back to a functioning economy. I don't think its binary though and we will have to fight to make sure it's limited. I'd like that fight to happen in a healthy economy than to celebrate in the ashes of what once was one. Both of us may be overreacting. I for one would love for the economy to reopen, no tracking, and not have another wave like this. But it seems extremely unlikely that we have any chance to return to normal starting this summer without contact tracing, because there will be outbreaks and when they happen, we need to ensure they are contained.