Fair point, Juicy. And Clutch, also a fair point. I haven't spent much time looking at other (especially the 3rd world) countries data, or the liabilities therein. Simply put: the fucked up response has impacted the economy. Would things be this bad if we had enacted a functional response in January, as opposed to March? I highly doubt it. Time will tell, but I can't see how you can claim "this isn't Trump's fault". He's owned the economy as his accomplishment for 3.5 years now, and there's no reason to shift blame to the virus, when he was ultimately the decision-maker behind how we responded to it. We're not alone in the virus impacting economies, but we are certainly an outlier (especially among developed countries) in how we've let it go to the point that it costs us trillions. If he's accountable for the deaths (he is), he's just as accountable for the collateral damage as well and that starts with the folks this disease has crippled, and the economic damage.
It’s deliciously ironic you work for one of the preeminent federal agencies that has advised the president to entirely shut down the economy for all intents and purposes and want to claim the resulting stock market cratering is all on him. What perfect response in the ill defined window of opportunity was there outside of shutting off the economy to stop the spread? Shelter in place was the only option given by the expert, outside of Sweden. Even if we magically stopped the spread without the orders and we had zero deaths the economic shockwaves would have still cratered the markets as everyone else on earth was at a standstill. To not blame the virus is disingenuous at best outright delusion at worst. The Keynesian stimulus packages have been roundly supported and pushed in Congress on both sides. The eye popping deficit spending has made some insanely worried but the decision makers aren’t offering any other solution to this, that would actually fly. Even if he’d have given everyone making anything below the poverty level a million dollars it wouldn’t stop the standstill and anemic economy that has the spigot turned off.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/can...-gaps-are-hindering-the-coronavirus-pandemic/ Very interesting article that I find to be spot on... the work that we're doing is targeted at answering those exact questions. We're seeing many of the issues that they are pointing out, but we can't solve most of the problems, only work around them. The business issues they raise are exactly what we're trying to solve. Give it a month or two and you'll be reading about BC wildfires being fought during the pandemic.
It's very true, the resulting dip in the economy would have been the same regardless of what action was taken, outside of us closing all borders the minute we heard of the virus. However, take a country like Australia. They reacted to the virus in a similar manner to us. They enacted a stay at home order. They structure their stimulus money to actually go to affected workers during the shutdown. They haven't given huge bailouts with zero restrictions to businesses who have spent the last 5 years buying back stocks to prop up their profits to make it look like their companies are operating in a healthy manner. Their unemployment rate hasn't come even close to what ours is. They didn't have "hot zones" in their major cities where a place like Sydney was completely ravaged by the virus like NY was. They also have been testing and contact tracing far better then we will ever be able to do because people in the US are too stupid to understand why it's necessary. They are seeing weeks long downward trends in new cases and are starting to ease some of the restrictions they put in place. Granted, they did have some fuck ups along the way, but their PM hasn't gone on T.V. every day, argued with reporters, promoted an untested "cure" for the virus, or talked out loud wondering if sunlight or injecting disinfectant into the body is useful.
FEMA didn't "advise the president to entirely shut down the economy". That was HHS/CDC. Preparing a response the moment you learn of a threat is the appropriate tactic. In most cases, when we identify an outbreak of something affecting a major trading partner, we initiate at least a small ramp-up on things like supplies, testing, etc. The logic is if (Trading Partner) has to contain this thing, we should be prepared to mirror their actions and if necessary, support. For example, when Ebola happened in 2014, that's how we knew we could treat/contain it: we had already begun preparations, had everything ready to contain an outbreak and had the right posture to escalate containment. We didn't have to shut down the entire economy in January. We could have shut down the areas with initial outbreaks, at the municipal or county level (Washington and NYC were the first two, if memory serves). We could have front-loaded our testing and monitoring capacity, issued appropriate public health alerts and gotten it under control. We could have used our good relationships with countries facing the outbreak to assist and gain control. We've done it successfully for decades now, with few exceptions. Attempting an analogy here, but it's like a diabetic. "Cut down your sugar by January, or you will lose your foot by May." Diabetic: Ignores advice for two solid months, pretends sugar isn't an issue, calls diabetes a hoax, drinks bleach to cure diabetes. May: loses foot. The rest of the world's diabetics may risk losing appendages, but they don't guarantee it by ignoring medical advice and you can't blame the sugar for them losing their foot. Literally every other pandemic threat barely registered as a blip on the economic radar. The one President Tide Pod ignored for two months turns out to not be a drill, and we had to enact harsh countermeasures to save lives, because we blew our containment window. Those harsh countermeasures? Yeah, those and the resulting impact are his fault. I think fundamentally we disagree that we couldn't have prevented the spread of this virus and that we can't hold a virus accountable for human failures. Sure, the global economy was going to take a hit the moment this hit critical mass. I think eventually the Chinese will bear some of the blame for not being transparent about the spread, and trying to suppress information that could have changed outcomes. The difference between a momentary shock and losses measuring in the trillions? That's the difference between preparation & prevention and treatment...proactive or reactive. Who made the decision to forego prevention and is responsible for that? Trump. Why are we in reaction mode, instead of proactive stances? Trump. Very simple perspectives: every other pandemic we've faced didn't come with these consequences. Any other president would be held accountable for a crash of this magnitude. And if the opposite were still going on, he'd claim credit for it. Sorry, but that's not cherry-picking, that's leadership: if you can take credit for the good, you take blame for the bad.
I would recommend to everyone drawing conclusions about the economic impact that it hasn’t fully settled here yet and it hasn’t in Europe or Asia either. South Korea is just starting to report on it, and they had arguably one of the best responses It’s going to take 1-2 quarters before anything can be realized. It’s tantamount to shooting an arrow and drawing a target where it lands. The impact will probably settle here first and then Europe. On a lighter note, going to the store is now a stressful experience. I could really do without the Stop-and-Shop robot lurking around every corner trying to rape me.
Disinfectant manufacturers warning consumers against injecting their products into the body This is a real thing ladies and gents. This is why there's a warning label on irons saying don't use it while wearing the clothing. This is why tide pods say not for human consumption. People are genuinely this dumb.
I almost feel bad that his supporters stayed up all night crafting a defense about how he was actually referring to an advanced UV blood treatment and then he wakes up and tries to run with the "I was just trollin'" defense instead.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/g7l5ta/a_friend_offering_some_advice_to_the_covid/ This is like those jokes that Family Guy used to lean on where it goes on so long it becomes even funnier than when it started for reasons you can't explain. "God hates dipshits. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you."
Going back to the NY antibody testing. How is this affecting the calculus on the stay in place orders? At what point does the antibody prevalence level need to reach before the States relax the order? This is interesting as well. The testing that showed 20-ish percent exposure in NYC was collected in April, the information on the data sheet states that the antibodies tested for take 3-4 weeks to develop: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/s...adsworth-centers-assay-for-sars-cov-2-igg.pdf I have so many more questions for experts on this as well. I'm most interested in two things right now: 1. We claim to know incubation period, we are getting excess death data actuals, has anyone started to analyze peak excess death against social distancing recommendations and stay in place orders? Some non-Government folks are crunching this data and the findings are intriguing but clearly, based on much of this community, it isn't worth a shit until Wapo or NYT reports it. At this point, this is AAR stuff, the horses are out of the barn, this reaction to COVID-19 will be scrutinized for decades to come. 2. I'm interested to understand when this spirals out of control. People are going hungry, not working, etc. When does the civil unrest start up. People can only be scared into staying in their houses so long before the reaction starts.
That's kind of what is going on now. The peaks that everyone is talking about should have a "while social distancing and shelter in place is taking place" attached to it. Here in Ontario, they've said "we've reached the peak", and NY has said that as well, but if you remove those social distancing orders, it all starts to take off again. That's the "2nd wave" people are talking about. https://globalnews.ca/news/6850982/coronavirus-cdc-chief-second-wave/ That is the question that my project has been tasked with helping to answer... "how many deaths can we tolerate?" More people will die when the restrictions are lifted, but how many is an acceptable number for society, and how/when can it be done in such a way that it doesn't overrun the healthcare systems again? In Ontario here, they are at least waiting until all the proper resources are in place before relaxing any measures. For instance, they want proper PPE in place for worst-case conditions to better help the healthcare workers deal with the high loads of people that will be dealt with. If you think people are spiralling out of control now, just imagine what happens when it turns out a major percentage of GA gets sick and needs to be hospitalized all at once, and there are no hospitals or staff there to take care of them. There will be a ton of people sick and dying at home, and the rates of death will skyrocket. The numbers that are almost impossible to find right now are around those people who are symptomatic, that are bad enough to need hospitalization, but can't get the care that they need.
There are two separate items there. Social distancing occurred prior to shelter in place. You can look at the decline of air travel ahead of the shelter in place orders to see that people started social distancing on their own ahead of the orders. What I have asked and continue to ask is specifically the difference between the two and their impacts on curbing excess death. Like I have said before, I don't believe that it was all or nothing and I think there is data out there to show the difference between social distancing and shelter in place; what it says is another story but I would like to hear it. If I'm not mistaken, social distancing rules still apply in Georgia, don't they? If they don't, I think that is a mistake. If they do and people are still getting sick then we have a bigger problem because the WHO is saying that those with antibodies may be able to get sick again. If that is true, what hope is there in reality for an effective vaccine? Isn't that how vaccines work? They create the antibodies? Just out of curiosity, where is it presumed there are people needing hospitalization but can't get the treatment they need?
In Ontario we don't have shelter in place rules, only a state of emergency where we are doing social distancing and all communal activities (bars, restaurants, movie theatres, etc) are shut down. So right now all of the numbers that I'm most familiar with, and most of my comments, apply to only social distancing, as we haven't gotten to any "shelter in place". Hair salons and gyms are definitely on the "stay closed" list for that, unlike GA. I didn't say that... i said that if the social distancing rules and closures were relaxes, then healthcare would become saturated, and needed hospitalization would not be possible. That is what the "flatten the curve" has been all about, keep the rate of infection/hospitalization down within the capacity of current healthcare systems and resources. That is the fear of "early" openings that are going on.
I would love to see any data that shows that, as the one thing that nobody has is the right data. EVERY "smart" policy in place right now basically says, "we don't know, let us get the data, then make decisions on that data." There is next to no testing going on as it is, and they are ramping it up. Until there is testing, then you don't have data, and you can't make decisions. Even the current data that is available around "simple" shit like hospital stays, etc, is showing to be all kinds of fucked up, which is why you are seeing adjustments, etc. There is so much data that should be available, but is not... it's either so wrong that it's laughable, or it just isn't being captured and reported. On top of that, the information that we have is constantly evolving, and policies and plans are changing based on new info that is coming in. That's why the projections of dead have dropped so much, because initially there were no "social distancing" rules, but then they were instituted, and we saw an immediate inflection point in the curve of the data we have, and we see that it is working. In Canada, the overriding message is "just relax as best you can, wait for the data and science to catch up a bit, and then we can make more informed decisions... until then, we're not guessing and acting too early for fear of being wrong."
I'm seeing reports that people with antibodies could still get re-infected with COVID. Is that because it's mutating? And if they can get re-infected, making a vaccine pointless (I think?) wouldn't that then mean that we're stuck with COVID until it.... disappears?
Re-infection rates are complex because we don't know if the virus is mutating or if people aren't getting recovered the whole way before being declared healthy. Or it could be both. Uncertainty is the best feeling.