No Excuses

We need to buy as much time as possible until anti-viral drugs and hopefully a vaccine are available. I think this can eventually be beat back like SARS-classic but it will take a Herculean scientific effort, a healthy dose of luck and likely some extreme policy measures like global travel bans. I’m mostly theorizing now but I doubt this virus will mutate new functions or radically change its nature. It’s currently transmitted at a fairly stable rate and it’s not a mutation prone strain to begin with. There isn’t much selection pressure for it to change its infectiousness or lethality. That gives us time to develop a vaccine which if rolled out at speed, can make a huge difference.

We need to institute a global travel ban if this pandemic keeps growing in other parts of the world. Halt incoming traffic from all over the world indefinitely and the essential personnel who do come in need to be tested and screened at the airport. Quarantined until they are cleared. Only way to beat this back and open the economy if Africa, India, Southeast Asia are the next outbreak zones.

The South Korea 10-minute testing kit looks like an antibody test. So it will only detect people who have started producing antibodies. That doesn’t capture a lot of early stage cases but it will still be a critical tool to see how widespread the virus was in a given population since it will also catch people who may have been asymptotic throughout the viral infection.

It’s a very good thing that someone like you has no role in public policy. And that’s accounting for the monumentally stupid people currently in charge.

Anthony Fauci is all of us, bewildered that somehow such a stupid person is running the show.

Burr and Loeffler seem to be in their own category. The rest of the Senator's trading activity doesn't seem alarming.

Imagine getting flamed that hard for flexing about going to Red Robin of all places.

Need this rolled out ASAP.

It's happening in Northern Italy right now. It almost happened in China until they built temporary hospitals within days. It's really not that difficult to find source material on why temporarily shutting down the economy is necessary to preserve the healthcare system. And why the healthcare system becoming extremely overburdened will have even worse downstream effects on all other forms of illnesses.

Good thing we’re not China and facing this crises at a time when we at least know what it is. Yes, if you apply this to diseases like cancer then it’s true. Most cancer diagnostics fail and never make it to market because of these issues. By most estimates, the sensitivity and selectivity of the coronavirus tests is far below what is typically accepted in the medical community. And we’re still using them because we have no other choice. For once, spend more time listening and reading than blathering nonsense.

It’s not a difficult concept to understand. Economic disruption in the short term is needed to prevent long lasting damage to the healthcare system. If you don’t take these measures now, we risk facing an unthinkable collapse of healthcare delivery which will have severe effects on people with all other kinds of illnesses. China’s economy seems to be getting back online just fine after a pretty serious shut down over two months. South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan contained the outbreak without mass shutdowns. The only way to prevent serious economic damage is by actually combating the virus, not shrugging your shoulders and saying stupid things.

It’s kind of disappointing to read an otherwise sensible poster just posting complete nonsense. No this is not the flu or even “flu-like”. And saying this will “go away” like H1N1 is also just complete nonsense. We actually don’t know if this will go away or not. But we do know that this is far more infectious that the first SARS outbreak while being less lethal. That’s actually not a good thing. It’s so infectious that it’s taking hospitals even in developed countries to beyond peak capacity in a timespan that is unsustainable. We don’t know how this virus will mutate and if it will reoccur as seasons change. I suspect how much we can control this depends in large part on how it’s controlled in poorly developed countries. If Iran and India can’t get a handle on this, then the long-term narrative changes quite significantly. And then on top, will people who built immunity in the short term, remain immune long-term? Probably not. How effective will vaccinations be? We are pretty much doing science on the fly against a viral infection that is magnitudes more deadly and infectious than any other respiratory illness that broadly circulates in human populations. Yes, extreme caution is warranted. And yes, you’re an absolute idiot if you keep trying to compare this to past pandemics.

I checked out of news for most of the day. Catching up now. Still sounds like rollout of testing is a ****show. Sounds like Trump admin is doing absolutely nothing to send critical support on time to front line healthcare providers. Social distancing and quarantines accomplish jack squat if we are flying blind on this. This is a **** up of historic proportions. It’s a slow rolling disaster. And it should be a warning to everyone that the consequence of electing morons can be very dangerous. We really are no longer in a position to accept the science and expertise denying morons in our society as nothing but a pesky nuisance. This is decades of ignorance coming home to roost unfortunately.

Just.... ok. Your understanding of medical care is truly something.

If someone requires ICU care due to their symptoms, they will get it regardless of testing or not. The point of testing isn’t to send people into emergency care situations. The only real concern would be drugs but since there are no anti-viral drugs involved here that can be falsely prescribed, it’s a non-issue. As usual you are making **** up.

A false positive would not contribute to health systems being swamped if the symptoms don’t require hospitalization. People aren’t going to be put on ventilators if they don’t need it.

Never stop grifting at light speed. Evil people empowered by dumb people.

I do a lot of computationally intensive modeling work and recently got an Alienware laptop for work that is decked out with an NVidia RTX GPU and an i9-9900 intel cpu. Loaded up some of my PC game backlog on it. Running AC Origins and The Division 2 maxed out on ultra settings... It was so beautiful I felt guilty about using it for gaming and just shut it down. Might be staying up late tonight however...

Strongly encourage everyone to read this interview with Dennis Carroll, who has been at the forefront of scientists ringing the alarm about zoonotic diseases in the world for the last few decades. A lot of important information shared here on why this is happening, what we can do to prevent it and his view on why the US response has been so badly bungled so far (hint: it's stupid people put in charge by other stupid people). http://nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/the-man-who-saw-the-pandemic-coming?utm_source=pocket-newtab

There is unfortunately no quick remedy to a poor education system and an enormous population of idiots. Idiots who are convinced that they are in fact, not idiots. So I’m not optimistic that the warts being exposed by this crisis will be addressed. There are a few very special cases of Dunning Kruger on this board and when you think about how there’s millions of similar people just spread throughout the country... yeah I don’t expect many significant changes unless there is a major politics shift in the coming elections.

Morons are in charge, put into power by complete idiots.

Ultimately the return to normalcy is entirely dependent on how fast we can scale up diagnostics in this country. The lockdown ends when there is concrete evidence that we are slowing transmission. Unfortunately we are on week 7 of the dumbest people in the country telling us “anyone can get tested by the end of this week!”.

I bought a kettlebell to make up for a few months of no gym access.