mannc

Very well said. I focused on number of hospitalizations because the shelter at home rules are designed to prevent too many patients at one time from overwhelming the hospitals. But it’s a nasty disease and many who aren’t hospitalized are suffering. (My sister, who lives on the east Coast, has it and says she had never been sicker.) I understand the reason for shelter at home rules, but they should be done in a common sense way and the need for continuing them has to be carefully considered on a week-to-week basis.

This thing is going to behave differently in different parts of the country, which is why criticism of Trump for not enacting a one-size fits all, federally mandated national shutdown is so off base.

I'd be surprised, but after what I've seen the past week or so, I won't say it's impossible.

As I write this, the entire state of Oregon has been shut down with the governor's "shelter in place" order, issued on Monday. Among other things, doctors and dentists statewide have been ordered to perform no non-emergency procedures. The public health emergency that made all this necessary: Through today, a grand total of 90 people in the state have been hospitalized for the coronavirus--it's not even clear how many of them were already in hospital when they were infected--and 11 deaths, all of people over 63-years old, with pre-existing medical conditions.

The fact that I don't agree with you on these things does not mean I'm not willing to listen. And I'm not sure what the bolded part means in the context of this discussion.

I will respectfully decline to go down this rabbit-hole since it's not what I came here to talk about. But I will say that I disagree with a number of your statements above. Trump did not give deadly weapons to Ukraine; the US Congress did, and Trump (infamously) tried to stop it. He has not strengthened NATO; he has essentially said he would not come to the aid of certain NATO members if they were attacked. And I can never forget nor forgive his despicable performance in Helsinki, where all but fellated Putin on the world stage. (I guess I did go down that rabbit-hole after all.) I will also add that you make a valid point with regard to your comments about Trump discouraging Europe from relying on Russian oil and gas. It's not all one way or the other.

Sorry, I can't agree with you on this. Trump was/is knee-deep with Russia/Putin, and the fact that he was not charged with a crime in no way exonerates him.

Well, we can argue about what "exponential" means, but it's hard to tell what to make of 82,000 "cases". What is a case? Is it defined the same from state to state and country to country? Does it mean positive tests? If so, it's not very meaningful since many who test positive exhibit few or no symptoms. Here in Oregon, they have performed 7,300 tests. Of all those tests, which are probably given mainly to people exhibiting symptoms, there have been only 316 positives, which is the number the state uses for CV19 "cases". (It's incredible to me that the percentage testing positive is so low.) But of those 319 positives, there have been only 90 hospitalizations and 11 deaths (all over 63 years old and all with pre-existing conditions) across the entire state. (It's not clear how many of those 90 were already hospitalized or in nursing homes before they contracted the disease.) If the same ratios apply to the national number of "cases" that should mean only about 23,000 hospitalizations nationwide. That's not a huge number and it should be nowhere near enough to inundate emergency rooms and ICU units around the country. As the numbers begin to flatten in NY, it's becoming clear that this is not going to look anything like some of the doomsday predictions.

If you had asked me three weeks ago, I would have said the likelihood of me voting for Trump was literally zero. One of my biggest issues with him is the lack of transparency--the refusal to release his tax returns and medical records, the fact that he did not divest of his interest in his company or even put it in a blind trust. He is also the most extreme narcissist I've ever seen. His opinion of other people is based entirely on whether they have said nice things about him or "treated him fairly." I also despise his anti-immigrant policies and statements. As I said, though, this recent self-inflicted crisis has been a huge eye-opener for me. Trump has been ruthlessly attacked by the media and the Twitterverse for doing nothing more than pushing back against panic and lunacy with common sense and optimism. I still hold largely negative views of Trump, but I am seeing why many of his supporters believe he is treated unfairly by the media. And if he gets us through this mess in one piece, he might just win my vote.

If things don’t crater here in the next month (spoiler alert: They won’t) I believe this crisis is Trump’s ticket back to the White House. For the past four years, I’ve been virulently anti-Trump, despite my conservative tendencies, because of his narcissism and corruption. The past few weeks have been eye-opening for me. The herd mentality that has gripped the media and politicians has been shocking to me—the ready willingness to shutter the economy and institutions of individual states and the United States as a whole without serious consideration of the short and long-term cost of doing, and weighing that cost against the possibility that more targeted, conservative steps, adapted to particular localities might also work. And then there was the simpering rush to adopt as gospel the worst case scenarios and shout down (or worse) anyone who questioned them. Against this background, Trump has been the only leader who has kept his head and pushed back against the doomsaying and the rush to abandon our entire economic, social and educational systems. And the reaction to his courage and sound instincts has been nothing short of disgusting—literally calling him a mass-murderer, without any sound evidence (or should I say, contrary to the evidence?). It’s hilarious watching the pundits cluelessly ponder the soaring approval rating for Trump’s handling of the crisis. The extreme reaction to his Easter comment was the tipping point for me. What the hell is wrong with a leader saying “I hope we’re done with this nightmare in a few weeks”? Can’t we assess the situation as we go, rather than closing everything indefinitely? i still don’t think I can vote for Trump, but this has truly been an eye-opening experience.

What's your conclusion?

Makes sense to me...

Is that true in all parts of Italy, or just the north? What about Sicily? Here is depends where you are. Some cities and states are more or less locked down and some are not.

Except it looks like it’s only growing by around 8000/day. At that rate there will only be another 120,000 cases in 2 weeks.

Yep, totally different animal. It’s absolutely incredible that the subways and buses are still running...those should have been shut down long ago.

Then why even publish the “new case” data if it’s going to be disregarded anyway on the grounds that they’re not testing enough people? OK, let’s look at deaths from the disease then. Guess what? That’s not showing exponential growth (or anything close to it) either, at a national or a state level. And the deaths from CV19 data is probably overstated because of the age and underlying conditions of most of the victims.... It’s also becoming pretty clear that NYC is unlike any other places in the country when it comes to CV19. It’s definitely not spreading like that in places like Florida or Texas or even California. Well, given the fact that the entire state of Arizona has suffered exactly two CV 19 fatalities (and only 63 diagnosed cases), I’d say they were victims of media-induced panic..

That’s not exponential growth. The last four days the number of new cases (whatever that means) has remained about the same.

True, but presumably the same criteria are being used throughout the relevant period to measure the number of new cases each day.

So not exponential

We keep reading this, but it really hasn't happened anywhere. There will undoubtedly be pockets where there are more deaths than other places, but there is nothing going on that justifies shuttering entire states and provinces. The state where I live just issued a "shelter at home" edict, yet more than half the counties in the state have zero reported cases and a third of the counties have 2 or 3. I'm sure it's similar in NY State. We need targeted, common sense measures, not statewide martial law.

8% of what? The whole population? Confirmed cases? People who go to the hospital? People who test positive? It's not a very meaningful metric without defining the denominator. And of course Italy has a much older population than say, the US.

That's a great point. We don't do that because it's been around for a long time, it usually doesn't kill people who aren't already sick (although unlike CV19 flu does kill lots of children). And you can vaccinate for it. I do think we should be taking serious action to prevent the spread of CV19, but we should NOT be committing economic suicide, which is what's happening now.

According to the WHO, every year 500,000 to 600,000 people die worldwide of the seasonal flu. Four months into this crises, we've got about 11,000 deaths from CV19 worldwide. Something is wrong with the experts' projections.

And China was criticized for not acting quickly enough.

People can argue all day about what the number of "cases" is and whether we are under-counting those by not testing enough. But what really matters is how many people get really sick or die from the virus and right now, that number is not very high (relatively speaking) anywhere. Italy has a much older population than almost any other country, which is why they are particularly vulnerable to seasonal flu. I'm all in favor of social distancing and taking reasonable precautions such as restricting bar and restaurant business, but the current state of our knowledge about CV19 does not justify the economic suicide we are committing. BTW, it's incredible that mass transit is still operating in NY and other cities. That has to be the most massive vector for transmission of the virus and is probably the single reason why NYC has so many cases.