That's a horseshit question. No one would be taking your mother's ventilator.

When you get to productive members of society, that really sounds like letting the poor die in order to save the rich. Do you really look at the world in those terms?

I never once said anything about their care

that is your interpretation. Poor doesn't equate to criminals, do you look at the world in those terms?

Really?

Are ventilators an infinite resource?

I guess to turn the question around (because you've gone straight to one extreme to make your point) would you be OK with your mother who was in prison on a short sentence for a DUI or a white collar crime just being left to die because she happened to be in prison in the middle of a pandemic?

I'd have thought there was an obvious solution - within reason treat them like any other member of society who needs critical care within the confines of the prison system. Obviously many of those in prison aren't going to get put onto regular medical wards, but there are prison hospitals and other medical resources and they should be treated and prioritized like anybody else would be. The other solution seems to be once you've gone to prison, you are SOL when it comes to medical or other care if we need the resources elsewhere.

You're the one that said productive members of society. What's that mean if not less affluent?

It means people who don't commit crimes.

Plenty of less affluent people are productive members of society. To suggest otherwise is comical.

Well you said we shouldn't be providing resources to it. I'm just pointing out that these aren't closed systems. If the virus runs rampant through a prison, workers and guests in that prison are going to get it and bring it back to their communities.

Okay, let's play this game. Would you take away a ventilator from a foreign national to save your mom? A cancer patient? A child? What exactly is your hierarchy of life worth? Surely your mom ranks higher than just above prisoner.

Would I be OK with it? I would be sad. Would I understand it? Yes I would.

We all want to seem so altruistic and act like all lives are equal. The reality is there are POS people out there and in extreme situations I would prioritize those who contribute to society over those who chose to flaunt the rules of society.

You're the one that used the Randian language.

Why, then, limit it to people currently in jail? What about the person released yesterday? Is their life worth more because of an accident of the calendar?

My problem is the assumption that we're in that situation now. We aren't, and even if we were already rationing ventilators there are a lot of other care and sanitation options.

For one most prisons are closed to guests. For another I think it was implied I meant prisoners. I would be all for guards to be given PPE.

the reality is we only have so many resources and if we find ourselves in extreme situations do we really want to dedicate those resources to the worst of our society?

They served their time.

I can respect your point of view - but I just feel like it's a massively slippery slope. Your mom could have made terrible life choices that contributed to her being at risk, contracted the virus by flaunting a shelter in place order and could be prioritized over a pillar of the community that was falsely convicted or made one poor decision in their life. There are definitely bad people in prison I wouldn't feel bad about if they died in agony tomorrow but how you apply these kind of moral rules across large scale populations - I feel a lot better being on the other side of the argument.

I am all for those options.

What I am not for is when and if we have to take extreme measures diverting resources to prisoners.

Listen, I am not a callous person. I don't want to see anyone die like a caged animal, but if we have to triage patients in ERs we certainly need to do it on a broader scale.

Just be aware then that the other side includes all those bad people.

we all want to feel good about ourselves, but when push comes to shove and there are limited resources something has to determine who has access to them.

There are more than just guards entering prisons. Plenty of other workers do too.

But since we are rationing supplies based on value, why would prison guards get them? Seems a health care worker or grocery store employee should be considered much more valuable in this situation.

Lots of bad people out walking the streets as well. Real life isn't cut and dried like that.

you act like doctors can even get them at this point

again. Would love to hear anyones solution or should we all just circle jerk about the poor inmates to make ourselves feel like good humanitarians?

This thread is going to get real ugly before this is over. It won't be a month until we're desperately wishing we were where we are now. I hope we're able to keep it civil (not aimed at anyone who has posted recently, just the nature of such difficult issues).

I was texting with a friend today basically saying my worst fear is that three weeks from now we are going to look back at where we were today and realize how silly we were for thinking things were bad.

One thing to remember with jails is a bunch of new people come in every day (upwards of 300+ a day). So, if a guy comes into jail with the virus, it could take off. And many people in jail (not prison mind you) are there for minor drug offenses.

I think it’s pretty prevalent now and we haven’t seen massive death numbers. I expect some areas with older people will have pretty stressed ICUs, but I can’t really see the total death rate being more than 0.7-1.0% by the time we get the full numbers. It’s still bad, but I think people looking to Italy as a preview for the US are going to be way off.

The fatality rates in Germany have been shockingly low. Not sure if it's because they are handling it differently or because they are testing so many people. But it does give some hope that this virus doesn't have to be as deadly.

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

One thing to keep in mind is that prisoners, unlike private citizens, have a SCOTUS-recognized constitutional right to government health care. The healthcare system could collapse, but the government still has a constitutional duty to take care of prisoners - they have no such duty to take care of private citizens.

And it's pretty easy to quarantine someone in prison. Governments can only wish they had the information on movements and contacts that they have on every prisoner when trying to trace the progression of an illness. A prison could get really unlucky, but, I don't think a prison environment is necessarily a disaster.

Jail is a different story and conditions vary widely. Depending on the jail and the location and the law in the state, I could definitely see jails or courts just releasing everybody and waving bond to anyone coming in on new charges. They should probably be doing that already. Everybody there is either serving time on misdemeanors, or haven't been convicted of anything yet. The people in the latter group who pose a severe threat to the safety of society can still be housed in a prison or less-crowded and more secure and emptied jail facility, or hospital. But jails shouldn't be operating as normal, that'd be way too dangerous right now. I imagine that's already happening to some degree at the micro level - cases being delayed or judges not imposing bond on cases they normally would.

(Plus once someone is released, even from jail, and even pretrial detainees - the government is no longer responsible for their healthcare. That's a little cynical and I don't think that's a direct motive of anything usually, but, it may end up being a factor here if resources are strained.).

I can meet you halfway on this. I think so far the data does indicate you are right on the direct death rate from the coronavirus. At the same time, Italy's rate wouldn't be what it is as far as I can tell if their system could handle the amount of patients they are getting (though it'd still be a lot higher than ours). I think the shortages are what's going to cause ours to go up significantly.

Definitely grateful that Italy appears to be an outlier in terms of the mortality issue so far, but I'm not sure that's even half the battle here when compared to the indirect/shortages-related casualties.

That is hilarious. Had to look it up.

The real story behind Mister Rogers' joyful flipping of the bird / Boing Boing

FWIW, re: prisons.

When appropriate for a city/state, non-violent prisoners should be released in tranches with the expectation they'll serve out their term when things stabilize. Non-violent drug offenses, tax fraud etc. Let them out. Others should stay in prison, this includes but not limited to people convicted of murder; spousal, sex, child etc. abuse; crimes where arms are used etc. I'm not sure non-violent is the exact criteria and there will be some grey areas but you get the idea.

Those remaining are the immediate threats and they get to stay in jail. And yeah, they will get lesser health services than the general population.

Re: ventilators, if we do think the health system will be overwhelmed, absolutely there will be choices to be made. I am going to assume that public hospitals will get first pick of ventilators, drugs etc. vs prison hospitals and I'm okay with that.

Re: prison guards ... I don't get the whatabout prison guards. They get treated just like the general population, why wouldn't they?

Re: improving and sanitizing prisons more. Absolutely.

I kinda agree with you. It's been out there for 2-4-6 weeks now, why hasn't there been more deaths? and that does give me some optimism.

However, it just may be that deaths are delayed and takes 4-6-8 weeks to occur. It may also be that once/if the health system is overwhelmed, deaths will spike.

The CDC nos. (admittedly outdated by now) say low-high range for ICU and Deaths are 6.7 to 14.9%. The problem is we do not have a good estimate of total infected.

Test kits and testing are ramping up (for real this time). I think we'll know more about how good-bad shape the US is in less than 2 weeks.

Article on US citizens stuck in foreign countries (and there was another on cruise ships).

I get in normal times we would do this for a foreign country in strife but is it the US responsibility to get you out of a non-violent foreign country during a worldwide zombie apocalypse? There are about 38M that travel abroad in 2019. To approximate, divide it by 26 so at any 2-week period there could be 1.4M citizens running around (let's say 700K to 1.4M). The US should help with communicating with family, help with money, medicine, and accommodations, but essentially shelter-in-place as best you can.

For those stuck on cruise ships now, I'm thinking you heard about the other cruise line fiasco in late Feb and you still chose to get on a cruise ship? That's on you.

Thousands of Americans stranded abroad as money, patience run out

That's a much different stance than your earlier statement that we should take away resources from prisons.

And we have ample proof of arrest and sentencing disparities between whites and people of color. As you say, the slippery slope is enormous once you start assessing the objective worth of individual lives.

I have a problem with the idea of for-profit prisons the same way I feel like some business (non-essential) are truly fiscally irresponsible during the high times and then need bailouts during the lows. I'm not saying I'm wholly against bailouts for the greater good but I find the irony of being uber-capitalist when it is an income redistribution one way and the minute things go south we're high on socialism redistribution.

FWIW I'm against private prisons period.

Re: People stuck abroad:

Where exactly are they supposed to shelter ? Countries want to shut down hotels and touristic infrastructure. And why should locals be assume the risk of Catering to their needs when their country of origin can damn well afford to do it ? Public infrastructure is shutting down, which means everybody without a firm 'private Infrastructure' is vulnerable.

You can't refuse to tell people it is serious and then expect them to not go or somehow wave their right to expect their country to help them return. Not to mention a lot of those stuck will not be tourists per se but abroad for work or study as well. Or will have started their vacation 3,4 weeks ago and now have already been stuck for 1,2 already.

2 (!) weeks ago, which is a perfectly plausible time of vacation, it was still deemed ok to have athletes play in front of thousands of people, in the US as well as almost everywhere else.

This whole "well, this is your own fault, fix it yourself" is part of the same thought process why the US us fucked as far as the health care system and social security is concerned. With the USs ressources and success elsewhere it is a joke that it clings to this idea that somehow the country would be worse off if it lends a hand to people in need to the degree almost every other semi-comparable country manages to. Rather than kicking them and telling them it is their fault they don't have money/insurance/jobs/a way to get home.

I total agree we have major disparities, but that is a totally different conversation.

As for assessing the worth of individual lives, isn't that what part of triage is and could start happening here?

I apologize for coming across abrasive last night, and I get that my stance is unpopular, but I think it is something that will potentially have to be addressed in the coming weeks. I don't think just throwing our hands up and saying generic lines about morality accomplishes anything more than making people feel good. It doesn't solve the problem.

I don't believe infections and mortality rates at all, nor in Spain where I live nor anywhere in the world.

Just a sample, one of my employees, (we have been working remote from home 2 weeks already) 38 years old female felt bad yesterday, high fever, pain in the chest, cough, hard to breathe. Called the emergency number for coronavirus, she answered some questions and they said yes, probably you have it but you are young and have no other issues, so stay at home (with your husband and 5 years old kid) , take paracetamol to lower the fever, and if you feel really really bad, come to the hospital.

She won't count in the infected numbers as she has not been tested, so the number of infections is probably much higher than the 25k we have in Spain, but also the mortality rate is lower than calculated as it's deaths/infected.

Regarding low mortality in Germay for sure it's weird and good news, but maybe they are testing a lot of people, so the ratio of death/infected is obviously low.

Now in USA, if only a few people is tested like in Spain because lack of testers, or because their inmune system is strong so they think they have just the common flu or cold or unlike in Spain (where btw everything is going to public health as insurance companies had a pandemia clause) because lack of public health so you our your insurance need to pay for it, then the numbers and infections/habitant rate is still low, but be aware, it will come to USA as well and will hit you as hard as the other countries because that people has not tested positive doesn't mean they aren't infected.

We in Spain reacted 2 weeks later due to incompetent leaders, when we had the China and Italy examples, and we are going to suffer more than them, also because we are way less disciplined than chinesse regarding the home cuarantine. People think they are so smart because they walk 5 miles with bread under their arm in case the police stop them so they can say they went out shopping. Hope Darwin laws wipe all the stupids out, sadly they don't just get sick themselves.

I hope I'm wrong but it's going to be even worse in USA or UK where more time is being lost due to overconfidence from the leaders or because every nation is flat out lying the whole world to show they can handle the crisis and their lack of prevention meassures thinknig it was just the other nations less prepared for it.

Of interest to fellow Georgians ...

Mar 10 - Fulton schools closed
Mar 12 - 31 cases, 1 death
Mar 22 - 555 cases, 20 deaths

Also, not sure we can read too much into the 15.3% below.

EVENING UPDATE: 555 coronavirus cases confirmed in Georgia; 20 deaths

More stats:

COVID-19 Daily Status Report | Georgia Department of Public Health

• M-F is roughly equal
• Age wise they have a breakdown but used 18-59 as one scale. Cynical me thinks they are trying to hide that younger people catch it less or more mild than older folks.
• Fulton has largest # cases by far at 99.

Dola, I just read this in the CNN regarding USA, that supports what I wrote avobe about people not being tested so not counting as infected as it's happening in every country except maybe Germany and Soth Korea (also with lower mortality rate).

"(CNN)As the coronavirus pandemic grows and more states order residents to stay home, officials are making a tough choice to only test high-risk patients and those who are severely ill.

The number of coronavirus deaths has surged to 326 in the United States as the virus tightens its grip, leading to fears of a widespread shortage of medical supplies.

Officials in hard-hit states such as New York and California are warning that panicked people are flooding hospitals for tests and health care facilities will run out of crucial items. The focus has shifted to avoiding broad testing to conserve rapidly dwindling resources such as masks, ventilators and intensive care beds.
Authorities are recommending that health care providers avoid testing patients except in cases in which results would significantly change the course of treatment.
New York health officials issued guidance asking medical facilities to stop testing non-hospitalized patients in an effort to preserve medical supplies."

This was the security line from Atlanta airport this morning. ��

�� @MPetchenikWSB pic.twitter.com/qD43VIivi6

— Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) March 21, 2020

I think GameStop may become a casualty of the virus

https://www.nintendoenthusiast.com/g...closes-stores/

I just don't get it.

We've shut down schools across the country--so there is a sense of what a big deal this is.

But we are still allowing non-essential air travel?

I just don't get the priorities here.

Either it isn't a big deal, in which case we should be living our lives normally.

Or it is a big deal, in which case you shouldn't have 10,000 people in a security line at ATL.

We seem to be doing the worst of all worlds here. Massively disrupting schools and destroying small businesses but not actually containing the problem.

I just got back from Mexico last Sat and went through Atlanta. There was no line and one of the workers said it was dead compared to normal. Glad I got back when I did.

I'm struggling to think of one excuse why I would travel now. I guess the death of a very close loved one?

I suppose some are returning from trips, but I would think at this point most of those have cycled through already.

As with a number of things that have pooped up in the last two weeks, it is a matter of how much of our collective rhetoric do we actually believe in and where that line is as to when that rhetoric is no longer applicable. A number of absolutes that sound wonderful in a political pep rally (both sides) are proving not to be so absolute.

As I type this, I am remembering the thread we had on here about the prioritizing of the amendments in the Bill of Rights or which rights were most important to us. It would be interesting to see where everyone stood now that we are in a crisis.

Weren't they already close to going out of business?

What "collective rhetoric" or "absolutes" at a pep rally are you referring to?


I actually don't remember this thread, assume it happened after 9/11.

At this point, the choice should be out of the hands of the ordinary consumer. The government should restrict air travel to essential purposes.

We are past the point of Kayleigh thinking really hard about it and deciding that flying to Addison's 25th birthday bash is worth it. But don't worry because she'll wash her hands a lot.

If you are young and believe you are invulnerable, it was Spring Break last week. Chance to strut your stuff and get laid? :)

It was only 2 Wed ago when Trump gave his "I can't read" speech. I can see not wanting to have a nation-wide stay-at-home then because it hadn't sunk in and would have panicked the nation.

I do think it is time to have the nation-wide stay-at-home for 2 weeks with some exception for "essential" services and people. Trump, are you listening?

As I understand it, the whole point of treatment protocols is so that doctors are not assessing the value of each individual life. They may make decisions on life expectancy or age, but doctors aren't going around saying these people are worth more than those people.

There was a heartbreaking Ted Koppel interview just this morning where a doctor was still obviously suffering trauma from having to follow similar protocols in Haiti ten years ago.

You should get that checked out.

triple dola?

...

Wont a lot of those also be students wanting to return home (rather than be in.their room for months) or people that worked in different cities from where there Family stays ?

I personally know more tgan a dozen people like that who temporarily moved for a job or uni and are now returning to their Family (spouses/partners and kids) or to move back in with their parents for a while as their jobs have been put on hold or terminated or Unis have shut down. I imagine this happens a lot in the US as well and with greater distances.


Also, since it came up by Icy: Germany is indeed testing a lot more than other countries. Last estimate was about 25k a day capacity for analysis and rising. Not everybody that should gets tested, but a much larger percentage.
France for example just upped theirs from 2k - 2.5k ... I am fairly certain Italy and Spain haven't been able to test much out of hospitals (f.e known contacts) for a while now unfortunately and did not start at a high number to start with :(

And like i said before: Testing is crucial to identify patients early with a disease that on average needs just 4 days to go from first symptoms to needing hospitalisation and in Italy 8 days from first symptoms to death.
For most it does not happen, but if it goes bad it goes bad fast.

Analysis on Italy deaths: https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronav..._marzo_eng.pdf

My 68 year old mom just had to fly yesterday. My sister (doctor) and brother in law (coroner) are working really long hours with schools and daycares closed and had no one to watch their kids for a week and she flew to where they lived to watch the kids. They are all smart people, all taking this seriously, worried about the serious risks they were all incurring, but in a bind without a better option. My sister, especially, knows she could have exposed my mom to it. My mom knows she's in a high risk group. They all know going to the airport and flying is an awful idea right now. They all took horrible risks to do this and we're hoping that in a month they won't be regretting it. But it was a bad situation without a better remedy.


(and before we play the "there are lots of people out there who could watch their kids" game, don't think they weren't doing that for 3 weeks prior and had no luck finding them in the very limited time they had to look; they finally found someone last week so my mom actually left a week before she was planning on doing it)

SI

I hate to say it, but I think the issue is that politicians are merely doing something so they can say they did something.


As long as day care is allowed to remain open, it tells me that we're not they're more interested in political fallout than truly slowing the spread.


Yes, some people would still try to do in-home, but...


1. You put out a strong message saying "DON'T DO THAT" to underscore the seriousness of the situation.

2. Those that still ignore the request will have far fewer rugrats in the same building as a typical day care facility. The one owned by the folks I referenced in this thread who were out partying last weekend has over 100 kids in the building.

I would prefer not to delve into politics. I would offer to you this though.


That is from the Department of State's website. That seems absolute to me.

If sheltering in place is the best way to to protect the lives and interests of U.S. citizens overseas, by all means do that.But if that is not the case, I can understand why someone would expect the State Dept. to use the routine and emergency services to bring our fellow citizens home in this medical emergency. Especially when we have already shown a willingness to do so in another case.

UPDATED: Stranded women's football team in Honduras headed home

That’s a tough one but makes perfect sense.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETrRUebX...name=4096x4096

(sorry, image posted too large for forum settings)

Are any of you seeing people wear masks in public?

I was at grocery store this morning and several people (employees and non-employees alike) were wearing masks.

I can also say the grocery store was out of Ramen, Slim-Jims and Chicken Tenders. What the hell is a bachelor suppose to live off of!?

Has anyone seen communication from any doctor or nurse not controlled by the White House that has said any of these...


...we have enough tests.
...we have enough PPE.
...we are doing well in controlling this.
...we'll be fine if we loosen restrictions.



I ask because I have a fair number of medical folk on my social media feed, and the concerning answer for me is "no." But a whole bunch--including a significant number who typically never post anything but kid/vacation type pics and who are long-time conservatives from my very conservative home town--are sounding the alarm in my feeds.

I think the answer on that is a clear hard no. I also think it's becoming more and more obvious that tests, once we get enough, won't even matter that much because the PPE issue is so prevalent that you have to limit who you test for that reason. Stuff is happening on that front - 3M has doubled the amount of N95 masks they produce for example - but it's not nearly enough to keep up with the need/demand. The new normal for at least a while - and while there is good news as others have said, so far the info I'm getting is that warmer weather doesn't affect this thing much - is going to be that if you aren't severely ill, don't bother going to the hospital. .

Nope.

Several friends in that field as well and all say they are basically screwed. My Uncle is a retired doctor associated with Mass General. He said 80% of the population will likely get sick, and if 5% of those require hospitalization it would exhaust all out resources.

Dola...and that's not to mention the repeated impassioned pleas for us to stay at home, wash our hands, social distance, etc., from doctors' spouses who fit the above profile. Two weeks ago it was just my pulmonologist buddy here in GSO; it feels like a near-tsunami now.

How does the distribution of masks factor in as well?

I have tried to distance myself from listening to the government the last few days, but I was under the impressions states are on their own to procure what they need? Will 3M sell them to the highest bidders or will there be some form of equal distribution?

Correlation does not necessarily lead to causation and all that jazz.

5 University of Tampa students test positive for coronavirus after spring break | WFLA

No idea on distribution.

very fair statement.They did indeed do an amazing job. Like they actually tookit seriously and we did not.
we still are running around with our heads cut off.

when i went for groceries i wore 2 scarvs over my mouth and gloves. the checkout lady and bagger made fun of me for it.

This was like last week. I just can't believe there are people still not taking this seriously

Yes, except to the PPE part which shifted on, hmm, Thursday I think it was. (prior to that he'd expressed no concern on that topic afaik)
Name escapes me, he's an Illinois doctor who also does a lot of social media.

Note: believe him, don't believe him, whatever works for anybody in thread.
The question asked was "has anyone seen..." and that's the one I was answering.

The FEMA Director couldn't give Tapper even a rough estimate of masks shipped or purchased.

GM said they aren't making ventilators, they're just doing a feasibility study at present.

Rand Paul positive.

edit: How many Senators and Reps are positive or in quarantine?

Well now he can't slow down the stimulus bill. They really need to go to electronic voting.

Yes. It's frankly shocking that they didn't agree to a distance voting procedure after 9/11. We can end up in a dictatorship simply because Congress has no ability to legislate from a distance and the President would then almost have to take over everything.

Germany now with a national 2-or-less rule in public (especially parks etc) unless already in the same household and more stuff closing. Basically all Public life put on hold for 2 weeks.
Supermarkets etc adding more distancing measures as well.

I like putting in a 'loophole' so that people living alone aren't forced to 'sneak out' for at least some human contact. Rather meet in pairs outside then visit them in their flat/house. Been keeping to that myself only meet friends that live alone as well with limited Family contact.

Doesn't shock me personally. It's tough to get a bipartisan coalition around the idea that water is wet, nevermind making a significant change in the way the country votes.

The question of our testing abilities makes it hard to trust the infection numbers entirely, but I assume the mortality numbers remain realtively accurate.

It's all too early and tiny of a shift to call it a trend, but it's at least enough to give a pause to my ever-rising anxiety, which is worth something.

FYI already 94 US deaths reported today. Over half of them in NY which has doubled it's total case count from yesterday even with reduced testing. Certainly looks, as others have noted, that the Big Apple is where things are going to get the worst soonest in the US.

I've seen a few older people at the grocery store wearing them.

You've been around long enough to know that I try to be as precise as I can with my wording. ;) I asked it that way because that's what I wanted to know. Let me know if you remember the name. It's for a good cause. Tried googling and haven't found anything...

Dewine just ordered stay at home in ohio


lovelovelove dewine

Over 38k confirmed cases in the US

Yeahhhh, about that. The new cases number was weird yesterday, there was a report of something like 1500 new cases very late yesterday and its being counted today apparently. Additionally, today already there are 16,000 new cases reported, over 3 times more than any day recently. This is with still extremely limited testing and testing that really doesn't help us curtail anything since we pretty much only test people already, and congress apparently :D

I may be staring at the youtube livestream that tracks reports coming in in real time. Its certainly not an official source but the Johns Hopkins site that tracks cases just seems to lag a few hours behind and I've yet to see a large report of new cases (1000+) on the livestream be inaccurate.

and that's not even close to what there probably actually are.

So does anyone know why exactly anyone can't just tested? They are saying only those at risk can get tested. Why is that?

I have gotten tested for flu before.
They stuck a long swap up my nostril and into my sinus. Was quite horrible.
I assume the process is similar for tested covid only specifically ran against a specific outcome. So why is this a problem?

PPE is the issue. Masks, gowns, etc. They have to be used to when testing anyone, otherwhise there's a significant risk of an asymptomatic patient infecting the medical staff doing the test, and so on. Having anyone gets tested takes equipment away from critical patients and doctors at this point.

do you have a link yo that stream?

I believe it goes into effect 11:59pm Monday.

Which means I have one day to stock up on alcohol and MCU movies.

If my boss grew out his hair he'd probably be tearing it out right now.

The Congressional gym and swimming pool was open all the way until at least this morning. Paul went to both this morning after he was tested but before he got results.

Why are all the old people running the country still going to the gym?

Rand Paul tested positive so there's that

The guy who heads the epidemiology section for the NC Department of Public Health shared this article recently, with the comment:



How NYC can get through the coronavirus crisis - New York Daily News


I found this section particularly instructive:

okay jphillips beat me by like a lot

But Rand was tested with no symptoms. He had it, felt fine and could have been spreading it to others. Now he knows he has it and is quarantined. Regular people with actual symptoms can't get tested and are they staying home? Rand didn't.

Because they have no more sense or self-awareness than many of their constituents. I can't even begin to understand why they thought it was a good idea. There are exercises you can do while isolated. Wake Up.

it still sounds like a lot of excuses. didn't rainmaker's post say south korea were giving out tests like candy?

I kinda feel like some of the reason is to keep the numbers down.

Yes they were, but they had drive-up testing locations ready, locations to segregate people who were infected ready, sufficient testing capacity ready, etc. way faster than we did. As in, we still don't. They still have more infections per capita than we do, but on a pure numbers basis we're getting roughly as many positives a day with limited testing right now as they have had during the entirety of the outbreak. It's simply way too late for mass testing to do any good now, the point of it is relative containment and we've lost that fight. Also, countries like that accept limiting freedom for the public good a lot easier than we do. American independent spirit or whatever you want to call it has many virtues. It also carries a cost with it. This is one of them.

For whatever it's worth I have a friend who is a USPS carrier and he says they aren't preparing worth a shit and are practically operating as normal.

That said, I was reading an article by some sort of 'pandemic expert' yesterday that suggested that a necessary step of the herd immunity process was getting our essential service workers infected & immune before everybody else, which is an interesting wrinkle.