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


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18 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

82 mil folks compared to 350m.  It's an easier population to test just in terms of numbers.  What's the % difference ?

 

Unrelated, how are things down in the Tidewater, being able to keep folks working wise ?

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BERLIN — For weeks, virologists here have been asked a persistent question: Why, compared to other countries, are so few of the Germans who are diagnosed with the coronavirus dying?

In Italy, 9.5 percent of the people who have tested positive for the virus have succumbed to covid-19, according to data compiled at Johns Hopkins University. In France, the rate is 4.3 percent. But in Germany, it’s 0.4 percent.

The biggest reason for the difference, infectious disease experts say, is Germany’s work in the early days of its outbreak to track, test and contain infection clusters. That means Germany has a truer picture of the size of its outbreak than places that test only the obviously symptomatic, most seriously ill or highest-risk patients.

Merkel says coronavirus presents gravest crisis since WWII

“At the beginning, when we had relatively few cases, when it came to finding them and isolating them, we did quite well in Germany,” said Reinhard Busse, head of the department of health care management at the Berlin University of Technology. “That’s the major reason.”

Other factors, such as the age of those infected and the timing of Germany’s outbreak, also play a role in the differing death rates. But testing widely has been key. Germany, with 31,150 cases at midday Tuesday, appeared to have a larger outbreak than France, with 20,149. But the higher death rate in France implies there were more undiagnosed cases there. France’s outbreak could be larger than Germany’s.

Initially, at least, the country’s health authorities tracked infection clusters meticulously. When an individual tested positive, they used contact tracing to find other people with whom they had been in touch and then tested and quarantined them, which broke infection chains.

Medical workers demonstrate coronavirus testing at a test center for public service employees in Munich. (Matthias Schrader/AP)

Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Charité hospital in Berlin, said he’s “firmly convinced” that Germany’s high diagnostic capacity had “secured us an extreme lead . . . in the detection of the epidemic.”

Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.

But he cautioned against complacency, and said the death rate would increase: “We are no exception.”

Epidemiologists say it’s important to look at Germany’s outbreak in two distinct phases. As community spread became prevalent, infection chains in some cases became impossible to trace. Some doctors said they had no choice but to send people seeking tests back home to call jammed coronavirus hotlines because they lacked protective equipment to conduct them safely.

As coronavirus surges, a frantic Europe scrambles for hospital beds, ventilators, supplies

With cases growing exponentially, health authorities have moved on to ordering social distancing and banning mass events. Federal states have restricted gatherings outside the home to a maximum of two people.

South Korea, which has been praised as a model for responding to the outbreak, has a death rate of 1.2 percent. Busse credits Germany’s lower rate to timing.

“In South Korea, there’s been a longer duration of infections, so we can’t really compare,” he said. “We have lots of newly positive cases. They didn’t have the chance to die yet.”

Busse said Germany is more comparable to Norway. The Scandinavian country is at a similar point in its outbreak, it’s also worked to test and contain cases, and it also has a death rate of 0.4 percent.

Physician Holger Hildebrand tests a full-face mask at the coronavirus intensive care unit of the Klinikum Bad Hersfeld hospital in Bad Hersfeld. (Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty Images)

Whether Germany’s distancing measures will “flatten the curve” is not yet clear. Lothar Wieler, president of the federal agency responsible for disease control, was hopeful Monday that a period of exponential growth might be slowing, but cautioned that it was too early to say, given fluctuations in data. He said the picture should be clearer by Wednesday.

Germany’s initial testing criteria were no wider than Italy’s. People were tested if they had symptoms and had been to a risk area, or if they had contact with a confirmed case. But many initial cases had clear links to overseas travel.

The guidelines have since been expanded and testing has been boosted in recent weeks. The number tested jumped from 35,000 in the first week of March to 100,000 in the second, according to Germany’s medical association. The estimates don’t include tests conducted inside hospitals.

Japan, International Olympic Committee agree to postpone Tokyo Games

Epidemiologist Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, noted that the German outbreak started with large numbers of young people — “people who came back from holidays.”

Inside an Italian hospital with an influx of coronavirus patients

Roberto Cosentini, head of emergency care at Bergamo, Italy's main hospital, said March 19 the coronavirus outbreak has put a massive strain on the hospital. (Alexa Juliana Ard/The Washington Post)

The young have fared better with the coronavirus than the elderly. Italy’s initial outbreak struck at the heart of an aging population. Lauterbach said he expected Germany’s death rate to rise as more vulnerable segments of society are infected.

Because testing is not universal, and many people with the coronavirus might never be diagnosed, a true death rate is impossible to ascertain. But experts say the rate is likely to be significantly higher in countries such as Spain and Italy, where care is collapsing.

Mapping the spread of the coronavirus

With more intensive care beds and ventilators than most other European nations and early measures to prevent the spread of the virus, Lauterbach said, he didn’t see Germany turning into Italy or Spain. Still, he has been advocating for wider restrictions.

“I think with all things considered, Germany will do reasonably well in this first round of a long fight,” he said.

 

 

It's crushing restaurants and small retail obviously. Traffic is noticeably light, so it's pretty sobering. Construction is basically wide the fuck open for the moment.

 

How about up in your neck of the woods?

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5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

$5 and 6.50 per mask seems like price gauging. That’s usually the price for a 5 pack. 

Also, I get the higher prices if they're trying to ramp production etc, but selling stock that you've stashed away at $5 a pop just sounds like a labor union being really freaking greedy and not actually concerned with protecting their union members.  Pretty par for the course.  

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Relief bill passed the House.   Treasury claiming some of us getting deposits in 3 weeks.  

Alabama governor ordered all non-essential businesses to shutdown through the 17th

“Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said in a news conference today that he has closed in-person instruction for the remainder of the school year, but is asking schools to continue virtual learning.”

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2 minutes ago, G650 said:

 

 

It's crushing restaurants and small retail obviously. Traffic is noticeably light, so it's pretty sobering. Construction is basically wide the fuck open for the moment.

 

How about up in your neck of the woods?

Pretty much the same. Everybody is trying to work, but permitting has ground to a stop. I have clients wanting to meet to discuss projects already in the pipeline.

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4 hours ago, landman said:

I get this is serious, just have a lot of questions.  When I see numbers that show over 85% of all tests are negative, seems we are heading in the wrong direction with testing.  Something like 600k have tested negative to the 80k positive.  That's a lot of testing that for whatever reason is being done on people that maybe  don't need it?  In turn it is tying up doctors, staff, and using test kits that should be done on others.  Do these people have symptons, or are they panicking due to what they are hearing?  Either way, they are having an impact on hospitals, etc. 

I also am curious as to if the flu vaccine has any impact.  How many people that are positive had the vaccine?  And how many people that tested negative have had the vaccine?  Valid questions in my opinion.  

Dr Birx 2 or 3 weeks ago at one of the White House press briefings said that as testing was ramping up in the US results were coming back at a 1-2% positive rate as opposed to the 3-4% positive other countries were seeing at the time and that those results were indicative of the spread in the US being pretty minor. Meanwhile we hear story after story after story of people that meet every symptom being denied testing because they didn’t fit some very specific travel criteria. As testing has ramped up, the positive rate has soared. We now see that this has been spreading in New York for more than 2 months.

South Korea was the first hot spot outside of china. They contained it with aggressive early measures, widespread testing, extensive contact  tracing. Last Sunday our daily cases surpassed their total cases. By this Sunday our daily cases will be more than double their total cases. Tomorrow Italy’s DEAD will surpass SKs total cases. At some point our dead will pass that number too.

there is no such thing as over testing. 

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3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Sad stuff on the guy from NB. Taken too soon. 

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4 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Pretty much the same. Everybody is trying to work, but permitting has ground to a stop. I have clients wanting to meet to discuss projects already in the pipeline.

Permitting seems to still be going, but most of my stuff was already in the pipeline. The biggest freeze we have right now are recordations at the courthouses, which are moving at a trickle. Thankfully all the projects I'm starting have closed, but something needs to break soon.

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If Germany’s thinking is their death rate is lower than neighbor countries due to increased testing, what does that mean, if anything, for our low death rate?

i know chitowndoc said maybe because we have the best doctors and facilities on the planet and they are not currently over stressed. Can we keep the death rate at 1% of positive cases, which would be more like .2% or less of estimated cases?  And does it take this level of shutdown to do it?

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Just now, Pato del Muerto said:

If Germany’s thinking is their death rate is lower than neighbor countries due to increased testing, what does that mean, if anything, for our low death rate?

i know chitowndoc said maybe because we have the best doctors and facilities on the planet and they are not currently over stressed. Can we keep the death rate at 1% of positive cases, which would be more like .2% or less of estimated cases?  And does it take this level of shutdown to do it?

I personally still strongly believe there is a shit load to learn about this, because it's becoming apparent there are big differences in genetic response to this thing. Also we clearly have two strains going.

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1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

If Germany’s thinking is their death rate is lower than neighbor countries due to increased testing, what does that mean, if anything, for our low death rate?

i know chitowndoc said maybe because we have the best doctors and facilities on the planet and they are not currently over stressed. Can we keep the death rate at 1% of positive cases, which would be more like .2% or less of estimated cases?  And does it take this level of shutdown to do it?

Seems like it can take some that are put on vents a long time to die as well.  This may be why we're seeing a spike in deaths in Italy

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1 minute ago, JesusSweatDuck said:

Seems like it can take some that are put on vents a long time to die as well.  This may be why we're seeing a spike in deaths in Italy

Death reportedly lags initial onset by 20 days on average.  And also read either death or recovery once vented averages something like 7-10 days.

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Until we have massively widespread testing the places that make the money (cities) are not going to fire back up and let commerce loose. I say this because the optics of what is coming is going to be very up close and personal as time goes on. The raw number once you apply whatever percentage to a population of 330 millionish, and insert that top number into a graph of our current trajectory of infection?   

The single biggest thing I think will help us both from a health and economic perspective is testing,  because it will help calm the herd.  Stressing supply chains already under stress from hoarding doesn't help at the grocery store, much less for the billions of gloves safely stored and unlikely to be used in households all over the country.   The advantages of being able to cull people who have the most resistance to the virus, could be very helpful in better aiming research for both preventative and palliative care.  From a science standpoint we are living (hopefully) through one of the most cataclysmic health episodes to ever face the globe.  

Just as lack of testing prevented the identification of early hot spots, and attempts to isolate. Mitigation became the only option, and again testing causes us to spread our resources thinner than they might otherwise be spread.  No part of the herd wants to give up a respirator to a hot spot, because they simply cannot be even remotely confident they might not be the next hot spot. So we find ourselves in sort of a Groundhog Day meets Catch 22 moment.  Each morning we wake up on groundhog day and know we could do a much better job fighting this with better testing. The when we know we need testing we know we can never catch up on testing.  

There is no possibility of testing catching up to a population of 330 million at this point.  It might happen, but it will be months from now. So we isolate now, in the hope that when we or our loved ones inevitably contract the virus, there might, just might be enough hospital staff, beds and equipment to take care of us. It will move through the herd, but then the irony will be that the worst hit places will then be the most remote with the least resources because of our vastness geographically of our population as well. Once it cascades through the cities the country folks are next.

Edited by horn4life
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10 minutes ago, G650 said:

I personally still strongly believe there is a shit load to learn about this, because it's becoming apparent there are big differences in genetic response to this thing. Also we clearly have two strains going.

Those Huns are a hardy damn lot... 

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10 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

If Germany’s thinking is their death rate is lower than neighbor countries due to increased testing, what does that mean, if anything, for our low death rate?

i know chitowndoc said maybe because we have the best doctors and facilities on the planet and they are not currently over stressed. Can we keep the death rate at 1% of positive cases, which would be more like .2% or less of estimated cases?  And does it take this level of shutdown to do it?

From the reading it looks like Germany was able to get vulnerable populations isolated earlier, hence the cases they have are among the more robust individuals wrt this virus and thus lower death rate.  Other factors could also account for some of the rate but this looks like the most obvious.

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15 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

If Germany’s thinking is their death rate is lower than neighbor countries due to increased testing, what does that mean, if anything, for our low death rate?

i know chitowndoc said maybe because we have the best doctors and facilities on the planet and they are not currently over stressed. Can we keep the death rate at 1% of positive cases, which would be more like .2% or less of estimated cases?  And does it take this level of shutdown to do it?

estimated cases should be/is going to be way higher than 5X known positives.

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1 hour ago, Elmer_Fudd said:

Finally found some TP this morning at an Aldi.

it finally occurred to me why people are hoarding TP:  they are substituting it for thoughts and prayers.

Edited by Hmmm
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3 hours ago, Loco said:

 

Wouldn’t people, regardless of required social distancing, start to social distance on their own once word of mass infection/deaths got to a level that grabbed their attention.  My point is there was never going to be pure inaction that would meet that high number.  There are always and will always be variables that will make that high number completely unreachable in real life. That’s great that he’s still has that as his high possibility but that was never going to happen because there is always a point where people will adjust what they are doing.  

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Just now, stork642 said:

Wouldn’t people, regardless of required social distancing, start to social distance on their own once word of mass infection/deaths got to a level that grabbed their attention.  My point is there was never going to be pure inaction that would meet that high number.  There are always and will always be variables that will make that high number completely unreachable in real life. That’s great that he’s still has that as his high possibility but that was never going to happen because there is always a point where people will adjust what they are doing.  

GTFO with that logic shit

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I agree definitely a difference on the morning commute, but 281 north was just as much of a shitshow as a typical day at 5:30 PM yesterday. People are getting out just as much as they normally would in the afternoons.

Surly happy hour at Rebecca creek after all this blows over? On Thursday’s they have steak and open mic night
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Yes, late February.  Which is not the same as late January.  
I don't disagree with you.  But I'm also not talking about February.
We had intelligence reports in January that this was coming. Hell, by the end of January, it was obvious to Mikey reading reddit that this shit was coming.
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46 minutes ago, JBJ said:

3) If we are under reporting infected, it's a good thing actually.  The way a virus spreads isn't exponential, it is close to a sigmoid:

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRb4M6a3zgDUSQjh4tgTvS

If we are 4x further along the curve than reported cases show, then the transmissivity is less than we think and the growth rate function there at the bottom peaks lower.  The math behind this is kind of hard to explain, but the slope of the sigmoid above flattens which lowers the overall peak of the chart commonly posted.  And because we are saying we are further along than we are, it is shrinking the curve moreso than the usual flattening where it pushes out to a later date.

It also means that hospitalization, intubation, and mortality rates are 1/4 of what we think.

 

re bolded: there's an exponential growth "phase" of the sigmoidal curve, which we're in right now.  Since testing is so variable and unknown, one estimate of where we are on the curve is looking at death rates in Italy/Spain/France when they went lockdown compared to today, then apply our "delayed" start of social distancing date relative to Europe's.

Italy shut down March 9 and had 366 deaths.  They're at about 8,100 deaths today.

France and Spain shut down about March 14 and had 79 and 121 deaths, today at 1700 and 4000 respectively.

On March 20 (rough avg natl shut down date ?), US was at 150 deaths, 3 days later was at 340.  Given the sheer size of our population, the fact that we have the most cases of any nation in the world and have started social distancing the latest relative to all other major nations with believable data, and similar association of curve to relative shut down dates, we're probably going to end up with the most absolute deaths for any country in the immediate future, and it probably won't be close.

I'm using these tables as a reference.  Also not so concerned about those table wrt accuracy to the case, just looking at gross relative numbers and associated points on curve.

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1 minute ago, Mikey4 said:
1 hour ago, utee94 said:
Yes, late February.  Which is not the same as late January.  
I don't disagree with you.  But I'm also not talking about February.

We had intelligence reports in January that this was coming. Hell, by the end of January, it was obvious to Mikey reading reddit that this shit was coming.

We knew end of Jan that this was person to person transmitting.  China kept telling everyone it wasn't up until they had to.

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4 minutes ago, stork642 said:

Wouldn’t people, regardless of required social distancing, start to social distance on their own once word of mass infection/deaths got to a level that grabbed their attention.  My point is there was never going to be pure inaction that would meet that high number.  There are always and will always be variables that will make that high number completely unreachable in real life. That’s great that he’s still has that as his high possibility but that was never going to happen because there is always a point where people will adjust what they are doing.  

Agreed.  And by that same token it doesn't really matter when any individual location 'declares' the shutdown over as a lot of people and businesses will make their own determination as to when it's prudent to start easing back into anything resembling normal life.

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1 hour ago, triplehorn said:

Normal quantities for restocking medical supplies got disrupted (I think cut in half in some cases) back in January due to the internal demand in China and other areas that got hit first by the pandemic.  So even without our surge in need for mass PPE supplies, there was an acute shortage by any standard.  Add that our demand has risen by some order of magnitude in a span of weeks and It's a deadly double hit.

Yeah, but that is a supply issue, not a demand issue. The main reasons for the shortage is the rest of the world's general public is purchasing masks while China and Asia shut down production for a time period. Plus, all of Asia could care less who it sells to and has no preference selling to the general public in Asia verses selling to the US medical teams. So Cuomo should be working with suppliers and manufacturers and not so much with the general public. The public isn't allowed to buy that stuff through medical and dental channels except by gray market suppliers through Amazon and such.

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I don’t know why, but LA having a 4% death rate, having Mardi Gras and all of that shit earlier makes me mad.

 

We’ve got enough shit going on in the most metro of all metro places in the country. We don’t need to be focusing our attention and resources to your shithole because you had to party in your streets

 

 

There’s a hell of a lot of state with similar population numbers that have this shit controlled much better than you

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2 minutes ago, Mikey4 said:
1 hour ago, utee94 said:
Yes, late February.  Which is not the same as late January.  
I don't disagree with you.  But I'm also not talking about February.

We had intelligence reports in January that this was coming. Hell, by the end of January, it was obvious to Mikey reading reddit that this shit was coming.

HEB was communicating with China in January and doing tabletop exercises. because they are AWESOME 😁

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I guess it all depends on asymptomatic cases and a variety of other factors (like how we decide to proceed moving forward with social distancing/economic concerns). But I think 20 million infected sounds very high over the next two months. We are at 90k now. That would require 200x the amount of people we have now to get infected. People are starting to take this seriously. Im sure the infection rate will slow dramatically soon. 
Infection rate only has to double 8 times to get to 20M.

Our current rate is 2.4x every 4 days. If that rate holds, we'll hit 100M confirmed cases by end of April.

That is unlikely to be the case. Theoretically, at this rate, everyone in the U.s. will have it by May 4, and the all clear would be here by June.
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9 minutes ago, stork642 said:

Wouldn’t people, regardless of required social distancing, start to social distance on their own once word of mass infection/deaths got to a level that grabbed their attention.  My point is there was never going to be pure inaction that would meet that high number.  There are always and will always be variables that will make that high number completely unreachable in real life. That’s great that he’s still has that as his high possibility but that was never going to happen because there is always a point where people will adjust what they are doing.  

Wouldn’t it be too late if we waited until it was very bad to voluntarily distance?  This is one of the things government is supposed to be for, to see it coming and attempt to stop it from getting very bad. 

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1 hour ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Just got a text from my son that he and my ex are out shopping for flowers at Home Depot. 

Is there an Ex-wives and the stupid shit they do/say thread?

I'm sure she is buying flowers for their own funerals.  Very thoughtful you ... insensitive bastard!

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1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Wouldn’t it be too late if we waited until it was very bad to voluntarily distance?  This is one of the things government is supposed to be for, to see it coming and attempt to stop it from getting very bad. 

Of course but my point is social distancing was going to happen, at some point, with or without government intervention.  That by itself would make his highest/worst prediction unreachable.  That number really doesn’t mean anything to me if it will never happen.  

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2 minutes ago, stork642 said:

Wouldn’t people, regardless of required social distancing, start to social distance on their own once word of mass infection/deaths got to a level that grabbed their attention.  My point is there was never going to be pure inaction that would meet that high number.  There are always and will always be variables that will make that high number completely unreachable in real life. That’s great that he’s still has that as his high possibility but that was never going to happen because there is always a point where people will adjust what they are doing.  

Media took the straight line estimate, reported it hysterically, and hysteria ensued. It's not hard to understand why it's called the outrage industrial complex. The lie, on purpose, in predictable ways. 

 

 

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We knew end of Jan that this was person to person transmitting.  China kept telling everyone it wasn't up until they had to.

Agreed. On January 23, Wuhan went on lockdown. Between the time the lockdown was announced and the time it went into effect, hundreds of thousands of people streamed out of Wuhan by train and car. This was known and publicized in late January.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/23/wuhan-lockdown-police-guard-train-stations-cars-queue-leave/

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Wuhan_lockdown

 

Around January 24 is when the viral (no pun intended) videos of Wuhan hospitals being overrun began to circulate.

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/distressing-scene-video-wuhan-hospital/story?id=68509728

 

By late January, it was obvious that the virus had escaped Wuhan, gone person to person, was extremely contagious, and was causing severe, life-threatening illness.

 

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17 minutes ago, Mikey4 said:
2 hours ago, utee94 said:
Yes, late February.  Which is not the same as late January.  
I don't disagree with you.  But I'm also not talking about February.

We had intelligence reports in January that this was coming. Hell, by the end of January, it was obvious to Mikey reading reddit that this shit was coming.

This very fucking thread started on January 22. 

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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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