Topic: Corona Virus Panic/Discussion Thread

@themcnoisy I think the reason the percentage of deaths among closed cases is so high thus far is because it's going to take a lot longer for people to recover than for vulnerable people to die. Also, critically ill people are being prioritized for testing, which is going to drive up the numbers as well. Only 5% of active cases are considered serious, and that's being massively inflated by the lack of mass testing in a lot of countries alongside the numerous people who are so mild/asymptomatic that they don't bother going to the hospital (there's a "cold" going around our household; could be the virus, I guess, but I'm not going to go to a hospital and beg for a test over cold symptoms. This virus sucking all the air out of the room doesn't change the fact that the flu/common cold are still out there and way more prevalent.). So, when things pan out, we'll likely see a 1% or 2% mortality rate at most.

Which is still really bad. If you're one of 100 people in a room and told someone will be randomly selected to die, even if your individual likelihood of dying is fairly low, you'll still feel nervous when you realize literally everyone, including the person who is going to eat the bullet, has that same low likelihood of dying.

This sucks, but it's not the black plague. It just... wears on one's mental health when you constantly hear about people who weren't on death's door before suddenly croaking a day or two after being diagnosed. My sleep was not restful last night. In fairness, eating a large meal at 1 in the morning will also contribute to that.

Perhaps overall death rates in the country are actually down during this pandemic. With the lock downs, no one is on the highways and roads.

But then again... everyone is stuck at home with their families, so violent crime might be on the rise.

A friend did say to me the other day, “Well the entire world now at least has a common enemy to unite us.”
Not sure how much good it will do, but there’s a silver lining for you.

@Gremio108 I think Dale Winton died.

@Ralizah or it could be higher than we can fathom (unlikely). The lack of testing kits is an issue though, the lacking of planning for this current eventuality is staggering. When I was in the RN we had plans for everything. We then had backup plans for those plans. Sometimes we had a backup plan for a backup plan.

@Th3solution the current crop of political talent has more in common with 1938 than the 1990s. That commonn enemy can easily be repurposed for extremist ends.

@Arugula

I was just telling my sister this when she complained about Trump people saying "tests are readily available." Tests ARE readily available... for politicians, celebrities, Wall Street people, and other cultural elites. Meanwhile, health care workers throughout the States are still struggling to get tested when they have symptoms, despite being the people who should have highest-priority access to them.

But, like our legal system, our test kit distribution is two-tiered. You take care of the important people first, and then maybe you toss a few to the unwashed 98% of the country that exists purely to keep the engine of capitalism running.

And it's pretty clear we did almost nothing to keep this out. How many people have gone online and talked about how they just waltzed into the U.S. from Italy and other countries with almost no intervention now? No wonder our growth in cases every day is outstripping total cases in half the countries around the world.

China still doesn't get any points from me. The government, specifically. They knew about this for weeks. Doctors were warning them about how dangerous this could become, and they were muzzled. China only acted when it became impossible to ignore.

Also, I don't trust their numbers one bit. Censorship has been incredibly high during this entire process (which, unfortunately, is par for the course with pandemics, if the so-called "Spanish Flu" is any indication). China is shutting down their theaters again, so it'll be interesting to see what stories are coming out of there.

As angering as the Chinese response was, though, at least they are likely keeping semi-accurate internal numbers. That beats the U.S. strategy, which is no strategy at all.

@Ralizah Yeah, China may have sorta contained it but I guess that’s probably through nefarious means. Reports of doctors being silenced and infected being dragged off to containment facilities were ten-a-penny a couple of months ago. It’s almost as if authoritarianism is far better at containing viruses than so called freedom.

@nessisonett Depends.

One could argue the corruption inherent to a totalitarian state is what got this ball rolling in the first place. Free societies don't muzzle doctors who are trying to warn the world about a dangerous new threat.

On the other hand, it probably would have gotten out of control regardless. Democracies and free-ish republics are notoriously slow to adopt any sort of large scale action, which would've been needed to nip this pandemic in the bud. Especially ones that violate civil liberties.

Totaliarian societies have the "feature" of being able to take swift, decisive, and probably cruel steps to keep problems from spiraling out of control like this if they respond early enough. But, as pointed out, the people calling the shots in those countries usually aren't sober of judgment and concerned primarily with the public welfare.

The ideal arrangement would be for all countries to have wise philosopher kings who were able to step in during moments of national emergency and dictatorially marshal the resources of the state to drown something like this of oxygen, and then, once the problem vanished, step back from their thrones and allow normal democratic society to operate as usual.

But that's not the world we live in. The people attracted to power are neither wise nor trustworthy, and once they assume power, they'll do anything and everything within their means to keep it. And it's a lot easier to surrender civil liberties than it is to regain them afterward (something I do think we'll see after this pandemic resolves itself, one way or another). This is why democracy is so lauded in the first place: theoretically, it spits in the eye of the despot.

Now, of course, any half-way sober assessment of late stage capitalism demonstrates this naive notion to be at least partially false. "Free" societies today are still corrupted by kings and masters. Instead of obvious political power by divine mandate, they oppress the populace and secure excess means for themselves through the machinery of capital.

Yes, clearly the numbers are all unreliable, the U.S. and China. Whether by nefarious means or no, reporting and testing is certainly sporadic. Nevertheless, the fact that the numbers in the U.S. are skyrocketing means that more than just a few elite are actually being tested. Certainly it’s true that many don’t have access to care and are not being tested, no doubt about it, but clearly more than the 1% of mega-rich and wealthy are being tested. Across the nation many, many cities are doing public drive thru testing. One simply must go to one of these large areas, usually utilizing a public venue with a large parking lot and supposedly thousands of tests per week are conducted at these drive thru sites. People are screened for symptoms as they drive from station to station and the window is rolled down only when someone with PPE is ready to swab. I have no idea how many people are turned away, if any, when they qualify for testing based on symptoms. And I have no idea what percent of states and cities are doing mass testing like this at public centers, but I feel like it’s probably getting more and more common.

I assume these type of mass testing set ups are present in the UK and Europe. I’m too lazy to google it — Is the set up the same over in the Old World, or is testing only done in a hospital or clinic setting?

Well, yes, it is rolling out to more people now that it has become such a national emergency. Slowly. We're seeing the extent of the invisible damage that has been happening to us for weeks and months without a competent response from the national government.

The problem right now is that we're still being reactive instead of proactive. We're still telling ordinary people not to get tested if they don't have the worst symptoms. Which means we'll never get ahead of it, and instead of using mass testing as an informational tool to track the spread of the disease and try to limit its spread, we're just employing them to see how much damage the coronavirus is doing to us.

The Italian Government has promised economic aid to families after the first attacks on supermarkets. Just to tell you what might happen in the rest of the world in the next few days...

@Ralizah I agree insofar as the response has been too little too late and primarily reactionary. There was a time when things could have been curtailed better, but now it’s mostly too late.
Nevertheless, I don’t see that any highly international community has the hopes of containing this particular virus. The U.S. is at a bit of a disadvantage due to the melting pot that we are, having borders on both oceans, and being a center of commerce and travel. But yes, the democratic society with emphasis of personal liberties and rights makes it so much more difficult as well. I can only imagine the outrage if in the hypothetical situation that several months ago when we all saw the initial signs in China and Italy that the federal government closed the borders, banned travel, left Americans isolated in Asia and Europe not allowing them reentry, shut down non-essential business and services, poured billions into ramping up research and testing, quarantined any suspected individuals under martial law, etc, etc — all the things that would seem to have made sense in retrospect — there would have been outrage at the administration for the violation of rights and certainly the rest of the world would have been highly critical of such actions. Now that we have 80,000+ cases, or whatever it is, such actions are justifiable, but when there was little to no American cases, it would be hard to impose those things on the public in the proactive sense.

As I sit here playing Monday morning quarterback, I am pretty disappointed in most aspects of the U.S. response, but I also realize that the public sector is not nearly as tolerant of taking aggressive action on individual rights to protect the good of society.

It did bring a smile to my face though as I read:

and immediately saw the plot of Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones in that statement and heard Anakin debating with Padme about the failings of democracy as they picnic in the fields of Naboo 😄

But I completely agree — if society could have a monarch or ruler who was altruistic, wise, selfless, and had only the good of the people at heart then that would be the ideal scenario. In a democratic society, we get something akin to the collective faults of the populace to rule.
Anyways, ... a bit off topic, but it’s an interesting discussions and thought experiment.

@andreoni79 it's to be expected unfortunately.

If you have no source of income or savings, which approximately 4% of the adult uk population wont now, some will take the matter into their own hands. I'm talking the cash in hand workers, labourers etc. They can't target homes as people are all at home so supermarkets will be hit.

Appalling but expected as they will need to survive too. Sounds crazy but as gamers we have experienced this in post apocalyptic games, resource management, saving health potions etc. Except in this game you really can't level up and are always on dwindling resources.

@Th3solution @Ralizah The reason Britain and the USA are angry is China lied about the numbers of dead in their country. No way was it 3000 odd. So the strategy was to do little to nothing since the advice in January - the whole idea was to let it wash over once it arrived, with a manageable number of ongoing sick. Once Iran (lied about numbers but you could see the problem) and then Italy (real numbers) became over encumbered with sick it was too late. We had missed the window to protect ourselves.

Coronavirus is too contagious and the illness procrastinated In the sick. If it was over in a week, we wouldn't have too much of an issue. But it sticks around, 3-4-5 weeks in some people.

Take China's current total of 2500 ongoing ill. A ton of them have been in ICU for an age. The new cases have dried up but 2k of people are still really ill. That's the real issue.

Hopefully once we start fighting back and the world doesn't descend into war a new politik will take hold - more truth, more power to the people. The rich and powerful have messed around too much in a condensed time frame. The credit crunch (which affected my business att) and now an out of control virus.

Both were avoidable and the people in charge as @Ralizah mentions are both incapable and unintelligent. Power in truth is always more potent than power in lies.

The rhetoric from the USA, the trust we had in China, the misinformation coming from Russia, the fabrication of numbers in Iran etc etc.

@Th3solution This administration is no stranger to courting outrage. If he had tried to impose strict immigration controls early on and plead his cases to the American people, even if he hadn't succeeded, it would have demonstrated the sort of pro-active attitude I'd want in my leader.

But you do have a point insofar as the commander-in-chief isn't able to unilaterally dictate such drastic shifts in foreign policy.

Still, if nothing else, it would have been nice, at least, to have heard a competent voice in the government as this was going on. To have someone who could help to lead us through this.

@Ralizah @themcnoisy I agree with both your sentiments. Hopefully the nations of the world learn from this. I’m an eternal optimist by nature, but the next pandemic or global crisis is likely to be worse. Widespread corruption of many world governments is wearing my faith in humanity thin. Nevertheless, wherever there are intelligent and conscientious people gathered together, we have a chance.

I dunno, seeing the greedy, selfish nature of the public first hand in this crisis makes me lose the little faith I had left in democracy. Is it any wonder our elected officials are this ineffectual when we’re the ones voting them in?

Even though Japan has yet to issue isolation orders - I have to say I'd have little problem with it. I'm an introvert anyway. I am more than happy to stay home, play games, read, watch anime and sleep. My only issue is that I rarely, if ever, really have two weeks worth of food in my kitchen. My fridge and freezer just aren't built for that and honestly Japan doesn't do canned food like the US. They have some but the selection is far smaller. Most dry goods are meant to be cooked with things that need to be kept cold or frozen so... That's all that worries me personally.

I get that people want to go out because it's what they do for fun. But I have a real hard time empathizing with the "I'm at home and bored and I hate it" mentality. I can understand it the way I understand 2+2=4, but the feeling? I just can't relate.

@Th3solution Problem is the world never learns and things seem destined to repeat in a cycle. After the financial crash of 2008 the world's richest became richer than ever before while ordinary people have suffered years of austerity. Our current system of capitalism is not just broken - it's rotten to its very core. And those with vested interests seem to have a grip on power the world over. Hopefully this crisis will mark a turning point and break 40 years of free market neo-liberal orthodoxy.

As a result of the financial crisis right-wing populism and nationalism reared their ugly heads once more, spearheaded by governments who are not terribly well equipped to dealing with the current pandemic. The situation in Brazil is interesting because Bolsonaro's response has caused his support to plummet. So perhaps it will kill off such politics, or perhaps it will make it worse as people regress even further and blame easily targeted groups.

The pandemic has been shocking to people because it's reminded us that humans are very fragile. Throughout history repeated waves of pandemics have hit, yet modern society, medicine and technology have coddled us and perhaps caused westerners to feel that we have managed to outrun nature. This stark reminder - if governments have any sense - should lead to a massive increase in healthcare spending. There are still some countries that need to adopt universal healthcare!

Oh boy, there's a confirmed case in my small rural county now. It spreads quickly.

@mookysam I'm convinced at this point that the right will continue seizing power and shifting the overton window by preying on the fears of old people until there's a marked generational change in the U.S.. There is a lot of support in America among millennials and (probably) zoomers for universal healthcare, but they don't go out and vote when the chips are down, so they (we) are not a relevant voting bloc atm.

Entrenched corporate interest in keeping healthcare insurance private and ridiculously expense is just too strong here, and it's going to take a unified and muscular response from a large portion of the country to change that. And even then, that'll take years of groundwork, because even if we somehow got universal healthcare legislation passed right now, I'm convinced the supreme court Donald Trump has shaped for a generation would consider it to be "unconstitutional."

@Ralizah I have to admit that for the average Brit the opposition to universal healthcare in America is baffling. It should be viewed as a basic human right, yet giant corporations have this chokehold and won't relinquish control. The way many Americans have been led to believe that any form of socialism is wrong - particularly at a time when it is needed most - is difficult to comprehend. The general message seems to be that socialism is okay when it comes in the form of massive corporate bailouts at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Although the UK's own healthcare system has been battered and stripped to the bone by a decade of very deliberate underinvestment, we are still extremely lucky to have healthcare that is universal and free at the point of delivery. I am in awe of the work doctors and nurses do and feel extremely grateful on a personal level. If we didn't have the NHS I would probably be dead right now, or at least in debt for the rest of my life.

Do you think that the millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans who simply can't afford treatment could lead to the COVID-19 crisis worsening? Then there are migrants - whether legal or undocumented - who are very distrustful of federal government and as a result may not seek help if they fall ill.

@mookysam It being an election year in the U.S. it will be interesting to see. Healthcare reform is always one of the top 2 or 3 topics of debate. First Obamacare and now the proponents are calling it “Medicare For All” which is basically like a universal health care system. It has a lot of traction in the public and this pandemic is sure to influence voters.
It’s all complicated by the horrible related economic recession we are in, which will also be a factor.

@RogerRoger I literally read a tweet yesterday saying that thousands of guys are gonna shave their heads out of a mixture of necessity and boredom 😂😂😂