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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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1 hour ago, closetojumping said:

Listen, I’ve really enjoyed this thread and you’ve been a highlight, but I’ll be sober for a minute. Yes, it is really fucking hard to imagine roughly 30% of the population being infected with this bug shortly. That doesn’t happen with entrenched bugs that circulate yearly. Then beyond that, yes, it’s hard to imagine that 1% is the mortality rate. 

Just go ahead and admit that you were hoping this thing was Captain Trips and you’re going to be disappointed if that doesn’t come to fruition. 

Reading some of y’all’s bullshit on this thread is like reading posts ahead of major hurricanes landing. There’s always a faction that secretly wants to see the carnage, talks their way around that fact by disclaiming that they don’t want to see the horror, that they’re not with the crazies, but they really are amazed that the mainstream media and public “just don’t see it coming”. Go ahead and put the tinfoil hat on and let your doomsday flag fly. You’re not fooling anyone, so you might as well own it. 

That's utterly ridiculous.  There are like three people I wish were dead.  Tops.

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21 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Sort of related.

Late January, I ordered 120 engraved iPads from Apple.  I've done this for several years now, and usually, the turnaround on engraved iPads is 5 days or so.

It's March 3, and I've still not received notification from Apple that they have shipped.

T&P. 

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13 minutes ago, Hanrahan said:

Remember a few years ago when there was a super scary thread on the ebola outbreak and we were all going to die?  Same thing.

You mean the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak that ended up with ~28,600 cases - with 99.9% of the cases limited to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea in Western Africa.

There were a total of 36 other cases worldwide associated with this and of those, there were 4 in the US, 1 in Italy, 1 in the UK and 1 in Spain. That is it that were outside of Africa. 

Of the 4 cases in the United States the first one was a guy who got it there then traveled back - the next 2 cases were nurses who treated him, and the fourth case was a doctor who treated Ebola patients in West Africa.

There were 0.024% of the cases outside of Africa.

This was the most widespread Ebola outbreak in history. 

Meanwhile, COVID-19 has 92,300 cases worldwide, has cases and deaths on every continent and this number is almost guaranteed to actually be low (who thinks there are only 3 cases in Russia? only 100ish cases in the US? only 9 in all of Africa - with 0 in Sub-Saharan Africa? only 2300 in Iran?)

This is a fucking stupid comparison.

Edited by NoName
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49 minutes ago, akhornfan said:

They didn’t know what we know now. 

Wait, what do we know now?  The only "good" news I've seen was the Vox article saying that even with China's draconian quarantine measures in place the virus is still spreading there, just not as fast.

I mean, yay?  It certainly isn't bad news, but it doesn't make me think, "Golly, things are looking up!"

I don't know how anyone paying attention to the spread occuring around the globe can't think this thing is just getting started.

Edited by Somnio
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35 minutes ago, Hanrahan said:

Remember a few years ago when there was a super scary thread on the ebola outbreak and we were all going to die?  Same thing.

This is where I am. Everyone wants to panic and yes it's serious but it ain't a Stephen King novel, either. In 2-3 months we will have adapted and moved on. 

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8 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

Now that you put it that way, well, perhaps the dark karmic energy I've sewn into this universe spawned this coronavirus in the first place. Sorry everybody. 

It's because those darned socks have become the fabric of society.

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In 2009 the then-novel H1N1 infected 60M. It turned out to be very mild.

Maybe it does turn out to be easier to slow down and stop. That would be awesome. But for now my mom is a 72 year old smoker so I'm tossing out the weird stuff from her freezer and looking up real estate agents to list her house.

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9 minutes ago, crimsonlonghorn said:

This is where I am. Everyone wants to panic and yes it's serious but it ain't a Stephen King novel, either. In 2-3 months we will have adapted and moved on. 

0.024% of the cases from that Ebola outbreak were outside of Africa. 99.9% of them were in Western Africa (3 countries.) 10 countries had cases. There were about 28000 total cases

Compared to COVID-19 - about 40% of the countries in the world report at least 1 case (I think 76 at last count) and there are more than 93,300 cases world wide.

This is a bad comparison

Edited by NoName
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15 minutes ago, Somnio said:

Wait, what do we know now?  The only "good" news I've seen was the Vox article saying that even with China's draconian quarantine measures in place the virus is still spreading there, just not as fast.

I mean, yay?  It certainly isn't bad news, but it doesn't make me think, "Golly, things are looking up!"

I don't know how anyone paying attention to the spread occuring around the globe can't think this thing is just getting started.

They would not do what they did if it was just starting today. But it’s full CYA now. It’s done so might as well make it look like a brilliant decision. 

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5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Not sure if it’s been announced yet, but wife’s coworker says she got an email from school district in Scarsdale NY saying the parent of a student has tested positive. 

This truly is a Scarsdale Surprise!

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20 minutes ago, crimsonlonghorn said:

This is where I am. Everyone wants to panic and yes it's serious but it ain't a Stephen King novel, either. In 2-3 months we will have adapted and moved on. 

Again, huge gulf between some doomsday Stand-like event, and something similar to a repeat of the Spanish Flu. 

It's not tin-foil hat to think that something like the Spanish Flu will happen again.

As a matter of fact I've heard my entire life from the experts that it's not a matter of if, but when.

I guess they're all a bunch of fear-mongering, tinfoil hatwearing, doomsdayers!

Edited by Somnio
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9 minutes ago, NoName said:

0.024% of the cases from that Ebola outbreak were outside of Africa. 99.9% of them were in Western Africa (3 countries.) 10 countries had cases. There were about 28000 total cases

Compared to COVID-19 - about 40% of the countries in the world report at least 1 case (I think 76 at last count) and there are more than 93,300 cases world wide.

This is a bad comparison

I wasn't necessarily agreeing with the Ebola comparison,  just the idea that IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD FIRE FIRE FIRE JUST SHOOT ME NOW!

Hardly anything is ever as bad as the predictions make it out to be. The world keeps turning.  

I know I'm a sunshine pumper, but I'm also not a cynic. 

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28 minutes ago, Somnio said:

I don't know how anyone paying attention to the spread occuring around the globe can't think this thing is just getting started.

Yes, we know given you have told us 137 times.

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1 minute ago, crimsonlonghorn said:

I wasn't necessarily adhering to the Ebola comparison,  just the idea that IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD FIRE FIRE FIRE JUST SHOOT ME NOW!

Hardly anything is ever as bad as the predictions make it out to be. The world keeps turning.  

Ebola was a regional outbreak with a very high mortality (90%) and scary symptoms. This is a worldwide pandemic with a 10X higher mortality rate than the flu (0.3-1% compared to 0.03%). Think 200 degrees in the sunlight, minus 200 in the shade, canyons of razor-sharp rock, unpredictable gravitational conditions, unexpected eruptions, things like that.

 

 

 

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15 hours ago, akhornfan said:

The number from Korea is a hard figure(doesn’t mean it’s accurate as a predictor, but it is a real calculation). Actual deaths divided by confirmed cases. It is more likely a ceiling than a floor. It does not count anybody that didn’t test but may have been infected with very mild symptoms. Signs point to the Korea number decreasing not increasing 

I didn't say it wasn't a "hard" figure. But, it is just the result of testing from one country (though the country that has been the most aggressive in testing). Of the countries that have reported data, South Korea's mortality figure is the lowest reported. I agree it is almost certainly closer to the real mortality figure than say the same sort of calculations we've gotten out of China. But, there are a several caveats to that: (1) mortality figures will almost certainly vary from country to country due to population specific features like genetics, (2) the figures will also vary from country to country based upon their healthcare systems and their responses to the virus (we've already seen this in the China data were the mortality figures for the area of initial appearance were much higher than reporting for other regions in the country), and (3) other biases can exist in the data (for instance, testing and mortality figures may be primarily reporting data for urban areas with access to advanced healthcare rather than rural areas that may lack testing abilities AND have higher mortality rates due to lack of care).  

My point: even taking the low-ball estimate that this is at worst "just" another flu, you're still talking about a very significant public health event that has the potential to cause extreme stress to a healthcare system/nation not prepared for it. Doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies in the United States spend significant resources every year preparing for flu season. Adding another flu-like season on top of that, one that hasn't been prepared for in advance, is a big fucking deal.  

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1 minute ago, Bevo said:

Ebola was a regional outbreak with a very high mortality (90%) and scary symptoms. This is a worldwide pandemic with a 10X higher mortality rate than the flu (0.3-1% compared to 0.03%). Think 200 degrees in the sunlight, minus 200 in the shade, canyons of razor-sharp rock, unpredictable gravitational conditions, unexpected eruptions, things like that.

 

 

 

I'm not going to give you the satisfaction by responding with the Scariest Environment Imaginable gif from Armageddon.

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19 minutes ago, akhornfan said:

That it’s not killing everybody 

What's the threshold on the number of US deaths as a result of this outbreak that would cause you adjust your outlook that this is just like Ebloa?  25?  100? 1,000? 10,000?  I'm curious where folks like you, Zork and the rest of the Ministers of Information might draw the line here.

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derp
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10 minutes ago, crimsonlonghorn said:

I wasn't necessarily agreeing with the Ebola comparison,  just the idea that IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD FIRE FIRE FIRE JUST SHOOT ME NOW!

Hardly anything is ever as bad as the predictions make it out to be. The world keeps turning.  

I know I'm a sunshine pumper, but I'm also not a cynic. 

I mean, it was really fucking bad.

40% of people who got it died. Of the 17,000ish people who survived MANY  have post-Ebola syndrome and deal with symptoms for the rest of their lives.

The CFR for Hospitalized Ebola patients was 57-59%. Overall it was about 71%,

By comparison, COVID-19 is around 2% (2.3% is what I am seeing reported now, it was 2.4% for a while)

If you do not understand how scary Ebola is once it gets going you need to spend like 2 minutes reading up on it. 

COVID-19 is bad in a different way - not in an Ebola "everyone is going to die" way but in a "everything has the potential to be fucked in every way - plus a ton of people will die" way. 

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9 minutes ago, Somnio said:

Again, huge gulf between some doomsday Stand-like event, and something similar to a repeat of the Spanish Flu. 

It's not tin-foil hat to think that something like the Spanish Flu will happen again.

As a matter of fact I've heard my entire life from the experts that it's not a matter of if, but when.

I guess they're all a bunch of fear-mongering, tinfoil hatvwearing, doomsdayers!

Dude, the fucking Stand was inspired in part by King's research into the Spanish Flu. He ticked the concept up one magnitude and wrote an entertaining story with a paranormal/perhaps religious component, as he does. 

Anyone with a college education or even a vague interest in doomsday concepts from comic books, movies, shows, books, whatever has heard of and read about the Spanish Flu. The premise that it's a matter of "if" is fucking laughable. Sure as shit it could happen again or worse. So could aliens shooting lasers from spaceships. Or a nuclear holocaust. So yeah, outside of going with the Keynesian outlook of "in the end, we're all dead anyway," something somewhere sometime could show up and be Spanish Flu or worse while someone you or I are related to is alive and kicking. 

But it probably won't happen. And this ain't it. AI synthesized a fucking vaccine for this strand in a week's time. I'm not even sure AI existed in works of fiction in 1918. We were barely coming to grips with how microbes worked. Drugs cocktails didn't exist. The state of cleanliness in even wealthy environments was less hospitable for good health than most even poorly civilized environments today. People worked and lived in far less healthy environments and atmospheres most of the world over. Everyone fucking smoked and ate poorly. 

In short, while you've got a hint of thinking around how chaos works, you're doing it wrong. The next near extinction event won't look like the last one. This isn't Spanish Flu 2.0. It will probably either be man-made or come from space and in the grand scheme, it might not happen in the next 1million years, which is a fucking speck on the timeline of this spinning rock.

1 minute ago, Bevo said:

Ebola was a regional outbreak with a very high mortality (90%) and scary symptoms. This is a worldwide pandemic with a 10X higher mortality rate than the flu (0.3-1% compared to 0.03%). Think 200 degrees in the sunlight, minus 200 in the shade, canyons of razor-sharp rock, unpredictable gravitational conditions, unexpected eruptions, things like that.

Okay, so the scariest environment imaginable. That's all you gotta say, scariest environment imaginable.

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33 minutes ago, akhornfan said:

They would not do what they did if it was just starting today. But it’s full CYA now. It’s done so might as well make it look like a brilliant decision. 

Old people And their families vote here in the US.  They absolutely would be doing a lot.   No politician wants to say “who gives a fuck if granny dies?”

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9 minutes ago, The Royal We said:

What's the threshold on the number of US deaths as a result of this outbreak that would cause you adjust your outlook that this is just like Ebloa?  25?  100? 1,000? 10,000?  I'm curious where folks like you, Zork and the rest of the Ministers of Information might draw the line here.

I have only been arguing against the alarmist math. Making potential claims in the face of pretty simple numbers. I’ve never mentioned Ebola. 
 

And my belief that the current numbers do not support extreme measures in the US

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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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