mannc

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.

I understand how pandemics spread. But this virus hasn't been behaving that way. Why haven't millions (or even tens of thousands) died in Iran or China where the disease has been around for four months or more? Why are there only seven deaths in the entire state of Texas two months into the "crisis"?

that's the point. There is no evidence that it will ever cause "millions and millions of deaths". It's been in the US for at least two months and its caused barely 500. In China, it's been around for the entire winter and it's killed only 4000 out of a population of 1.4 billion. It's nowhere near reaching even the number of deaths from seasonal flu, even in Italy, which is one of the worst countries in the world for seasonal flu deaths. If in fact CV is more deadly than seasonal flu, then it's MUCH harder to transmit, based on the much lower number of deaths. It depends how you define "cases". If "cases" includes everyone who's infected, then yes, but it is probably only people who have shown fairly serious symptoms. "Projecting" doesn't make it so. What I'm saying is that the numbers so far don't match the projections of the "experts".

We’ve been told that this disease is ten times deadlier than the seasonal flu and twice as easy to transmit...So where are the deaths? China (the epicenter) has only 80,000 cases and less than 4000 deaths. Some states have zero deaths and states like Texas (7) and Arizona (2) have only a handful. Half the counties in Oregon have zero cases. The numbers and the hype don’t add up.

I'd want to see what they do at QB first, but that does seem like a good bet. Hell, they won 5 last year and their talent level is going to be MUCH better.

Not necessarily, because Tua might not be there at 5 and I doubt they make that trade with Miami and then trade up from 5. If they make that trade, they probably would take Herbert at 5 or perhaps they're fine with taking whichever one is available there.

In other words, this will be Anthony Lynn’s last season in LA, unless they can land Herbert.

And thank you Two Bills Drive!