mannc

You're either being willfully obtuse, or you don't understand the term "best case scenario." I would have thought that everyone here understands the meaning of that term.

I still don’t believe there will be 100-200,000 deaths. There is still a lot we don’t know about the virus, but social distancing measures are already arresting the spread of the disease—or at least reducing hospitalizations and deaths—and at this point, the fatality rate is mostly speculation, because we still don’t have widespread random testing anywhere, except maybe Iceland. There will continue to be hotspots but I believe the doomsday predictions of medical facilities all around the country being overrun are never going to come to pass. Despite having said some dumb things, Trump is going to (rightly) get credit for not panicking at a time when many other politicians and the media were losing their minds.

In a way, by leaving things up to the governors and mayors, this IS the approach we are taking. (You can argue whether some of the state and local measures are too weak or over the top.). And Trump is doing what the President should do in this situation: encouraging reasonable precautions, while considering the short and long-term costs of a general shutdown. What we really need is more reliable data about the virus so that we can truly understand how it works and how great a risk we would be taking by re-opening certain segments of the economy and society. The alarmism and panic being promoted by the MSM is distinctly unhelpful in this regard.

Vancouver and BC are in good shape...relatively few deaths/hospitalizations and no danger at this point of "overwhelming the system".

Are you serious? He has no idea. None.

Regarding mutation, that would be good news indeed. I have always assumed this virus was just going to be part of our landscape for the foreseeable future. It might be growing exponentially (whatever that means) in NYC, but that does not mean it is doing so "across the country". In my neck of the woods, it most definitely is not.

No. No, they did not.

You might be right about the vaccine. I'm not an expert but from what I have read, almost all viruses mutate. I have not heard that this one is different. I do not believe it's true that 100,000 to 200,000 deaths is the government's current "best case scenario." That's one outcome that was suggested by Fauci, but I've never heard it put forth as a best case scenario. The fact that we are only at around 2000 makes 100,000 to 200,000 seem more like a worst case scenario at this point.

There won't be a cure, ever, just like there is not a cure for the flu. We'll have a vaccine that will make it more manageable, but people will still die. At some point, we're just going to have to put on our big-boy pants and get out there.

The guidelines Trump extended involve relatively low-cost measures like social distancing, not draconian "Shelter in Place" rules that have been imposed by various state and local governments and which effectively shut down the entire economy. Lunacy.

I agree that using "first to 100 deaths" is a more meaningful measurement, but there are such a massive number of variables involved that even that number doesn't mean much. You would need to know where the deaths occurred, the ages of the victims, the existence of pre-existing medical conditions, etc. And the US is such a huge place that I think it's impossible to make any valid generalizations about how far "behind" or ahead we are as a country. I'm not saying you are doing this, but this sort of metric is being used to cause alarm and panic and to seed the ground for largely unnecessary "emergency measures". I'll make a future prediction, but it doesn't have much to do with the virus itself: By Easter, the real costs of shutting down the world economy are going to start to become clearer and harder to ignore, and there is going to be a reckoning. As one of the few politicians to even recognize this side of the equation, Trump will be one of the few who come out of this in better shape than when this started.

Yeah, the idea that anyone can pinpoint the date at which Italy or the US reached 100 total cases is simply laughable. And for people to use those alleged dates to forecast doom for millions of Americans is pretty reprehensible.

How irresponsible to suggest that it might not be necessary to quarantine 330 million people indefinitely.

Given how little is known about CV19, as opposed to the flu, those “total case” numbers really are guesswork at this point. That’s why there is so little agreement on the “mortality rate”, as well; it’s impossible to say what the mortality rate is when we don’t have a handle on the actual number of infections.

As discussed previously in this thread, the “number of cases” metric is essentially worthless. On a national basis, it is really nothing more than a function of how extensive testing is at any given time. You can’t seriously contend that there is any point in time where we knew how many infections there were in the entire US, or in Italy, for that matter.

How do you know this? I see this repeated as a truism in the media, but I’m not aware of any actual evidence to support it. It’s more of a perception, really. The US is a huge a diverse country and it’s impossible to accurately generalize about whether the country as a whole is behind some European countries or not. In many states the rates of death and hospitalization are stable or even declining, and it is unlikely that their health care systems will ever be overwhelmed, an outcome you seem to assume is inevitable.

There is no metric that accurately tracks new cases. There is no way to really know the number of new cases unless you test 100 percent of the population, which of course we aren’t even close to doing. Sorry to be so simple-minded.

It would if it accurately reflected the number of infections, but it doesn’t.

Thank you. Hospitalizations and deaths are the only numbers worth tracking...the “new cases” metric is basically meaningless and is probably just a reflection of wider testing. It is being used to scare-monger. Please stop with this logic. I thought the goal was to terrify as many people as possible, and shout down anyone who suggests that It might not be worthwhile to shut down every part of our country indefinitely.

Offered without comment: According to state of Oregon: Number of CV19 patients on ventilators: 31 Number of Ventilators available: 715 In Oregon, all nonessential businesses are closed by government fiat.

Good question. That’s why it can be highly misleading to count the deaths of those with “underlying medical conditions” as CV19 deaths, even if they test positive. Every single death attributed to CV19 here (Oregon) has been of a person with underlying medical conditions.

As I understand it, viruses mutate almost constantly. I wonder if the strain that is present in Italy is different in some important way from what's over here...

No idea. But my understanding is that even if everyone got vaccinated every year, the flu would still be around because the virus mutates and the vaccine is not perfect.

More than many recognize. There isn’t going to be a neat end to this, when everyone can just resume normal life, risk-free. It is possible that, even after this pandemic ends—and we will eventually have a vaccine for it—coronavirus may now be a permanent part of the human health landscape, waxing and waning on a seasonal basis around the world. Like the flu vaccine, the CV vaccine will help but probably not eliminate sickness from the virus. Hundreds of thousands still die every year from the flu, despite our vaccines against it. The extent to which we might just have to grin and bear it with regard to CV19 remains to be seen.

Gates is a very smart guy and he’s spent a lot of time (and money) on public health issues, so he is to be taken seriously on this topic. But you make some good points here.