[HN Gopher] Army Corps of Engineers to Build Temporary Hospitals...
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Army Corps of Engineers to Build Temporary Hospitals in NY
Author : antoncohen
Score : 275 points
Date : 2020-03-22 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.governor.ny.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.governor.ny.gov)
| narogab wrote:
| We have plenty of space (churches, meeting halls, school and
| university dormitories) to use for temporary hospitals w/o the
| Army building temporary buildings that will cost a fortune and
| later be torn down all on the taxpayers' dime. Charitable
| organizations, universities and institutions should be willing to
| donate those resources.
|
| I don't want to pay the army for building: I want their _doctors_
| doing research on a cure /fix for Covid-19 and I want their
| _soldiers_ alert and ready. It would be cheaper to hire immigrant
| Mexicans to build temporary hospitals.
|
| Using the army to build hospitals when better space is already is
| a waste of time, a waste of money and little more than a
| boondoggle for the suppliers who are chosen.
|
| And isn't this possibly a violation of the _posse comitatus Act_?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
| crooked-v wrote:
| > We have plenty of space (churches, meeting halls, school and
| university dormitories) to use for temporary hospitals
|
| Making these spaces fit the physical needs of these hospitals
| (massive power requirements for equipment, hallways and
| elevators with certain amounts of clearance for transporting
| patients, extremely well-controlled ventilation systems,
| sanitizable surfaces everywhere, rooms laid out with central
| access for doctors and nurses) would take so much time and
| effort that it would be more money- and time-efficient to build
| new buildings with the expertise of a group practiced in
| building new, reasonably high-quality buildings as fast as
| possible... like, say, the Army.
|
| These need to be _modern hospitals_ , not 19th-century
| sanitariums where patients just get dumped into a bed and left
| to die or recover on their own.
|
| > It would be cheaper to hire immigrant Mexicans to build
| temporary hospitals.
|
| Right, and I'm sure hiring random people to construct temporary
| buildings as fast as possible would result in something that
| won't fall in on peoples' heads immediately.
|
| > And isn't this possibly a violation of the posse comitatus
| Act?
|
| The Posse Comitatus Act applies to the use of the military as
| law enforcement, so, no.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Posse Comitatus doesn't really apply they're not enforcing a
| law or acting as a policing force which is all that law
| actually cares about. The Army Corps of Engineers does a lot of
| projects like this, it's part of the reason they exist at all.
| Lots of the flood control along the Mississippi for example are
| COE works and they come in during emergencies to do stuff like
| this. For example during Katrina they were the ones repairing
| the dykes that had failed around New Orleans.
| chupa-chups wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22657717
| deng wrote:
| According to
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
|
| the NY numbers have more than doubled today (from ~10k to ~22k).
| What is happening? Are some belated test results coming in?
|
| EDIT: Numbers were just corrected, are now at total ~16k with ~5k
| new cases. Still high growth, but more reasonable.
| sesutton wrote:
| New York state has been increasing testing pretty rapidly. A
| few days ago they were at 10,000 a day.
| ardit33 wrote:
| They started testing in mass the last couple of days, so you
| see the spike...
| tosser0001 wrote:
| In Massachusetts we were told the numbers would go up quickly
| because there were a lot of results backlogged at the CDC.
|
| I wish I knew where the official numbers were coming from. For
| a while we'd hear about "presumptive positive" cases, where a
| person had tested positive according to a state test, but it
| wouldn't be counted until confirmed by the CDC. I don't know if
| that's still the case.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's a reflection of improved testing, but it is _also_ an
| indicator of how bad things really are. The reason for the huge
| jump is that the virus has been spreading unchecked and
| undetected for much too long.
| briandear wrote:
| However the death rate goes down the more people are tested.
| So how bad is this really? Destroying the economy for
| effectively a disease similar to a flu. It's madness.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > effectively a disease similar to a flu
|
| Not again, please. I think that one has had its run.
| laurentlb wrote:
| I think there was a typo. Earlier this day, NY had +5k. Then it
| went to +12,345 (which looked like a suspicious number to me).
| And now, the number is back to +5,429.
|
| It's still growing fast though.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I think generally the case numbers reflect more how much
| testing is being made in the country than how many people are
| infected. I think I got infected, called a relative of mine who
| is a doctor and followed UK guidelines which is to self
| isolate. So I appear in no statistics whatsoever. As the vast
| majority of people with none or mild symptoms. I think you can
| pretty much ditch the official case numbers as meaningless.
| roskilli wrote:
| New York is now testing more daily per-capita than South Korea
| and China, so naturally due to the higher test rate (which
| gives ability to find the clusters) New York is going to pull
| ahead of the rest of the country because it will have the
| ability to actually show the cases that are active but weren't
| able to be tested.
| Izkata wrote:
| The numbers seem to update in a weird staggered way; for
| example right now for New York I see 15801 + 5429, which is
| right about the +33% the US has been seeing since Mar 1.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is a lot of noise in the data but the general trend is
| more than clear.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I very much admire Gov Cuomo - he is perfectly straight forward
| in his approach, putting aside partisanship and truly care about
| his state and the New York City. I encourage everyone to watch
| his updates to see for yourself. We need more leaders like him.
| In his presentation, he is telling how to run the Federal
| goverment and recommendations - which just illustrates the
| competance of the executive branch of the US Govt. Same thing
| with Gov Newsom of California.
|
| Latest update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZeKTlpcqU
| [deleted]
| untog wrote:
| This article sums up the feelings of many New Yorkers, myself
| included:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/media/cuomo-new-...
|
| In normal times he is utterly infuriating and represents some
| of the worst qualities you see in a politician. In a crisis...
| well, you need a solid pair of hands and a leader capable of
| making big decisions effectively. And he is definitely that.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Seconded. I can't stand the guy, but contrast his leadership
| to that of our Mayor and he comes out looking like a hero.
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I am not ready to change my assessment of him. There were
| ample situations in in "peace time" for him to push harder
| but he didn't. DeBlasio may be more inept, but Cuomo only
| pushes things hard after they become very popular. That's
| still not leadership.
| foota wrote:
| There's a difference between leading with ideas and such
| and executing well. The latter is more important in a
| crisis.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I'm not even asking for ideas, though. Subway, weed,
| rent, cannabis, etc didn't need ideas.
|
| I'm not asking for Good Robert Moses, I am asking for
| Good Robert Moses's Oddjob.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Churchill was the same way. Great wartime leader. Rubbish in
| peacetime.
| nashashmi wrote:
| My wife likes him but I get quite infuriated at how slowly he
| moves. The NYC mayor is doing better with the little he can do.
| And Cuomo keeps overruling NYC mayor.
|
| In comparison to Trump, he is less partisan and more decisive.
| But overall, his press conference is very little material.
|
| Still in this difficult time he is a beacon of hope.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Except New York has roughly 50% of all cases in the U.S ---
| ~15k of the 32k total as of this writing. Newsom at ~1.5k seems
| to be doing much better if we're judging by that metric
|
| https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en
| CathedralBorrow wrote:
| Some places don't even test at all so they have zero known
| cases. They must be doing something right.
| learc83 wrote:
| NY is doing far more testing than anywhere else. That's why
| they have more _confirmed_ cases.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| the death stats aren't subject to that effect. today it was
| +58 in NY and the next highest state was GA with +9.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Germany has the lowest death rates on record even though
| the population of infected per age group was similar to
| Italy, but they are being very selective on testing dead
| people, so it could be a very misleading statistic - we
| may not know the true data, Germany may be doing
| something better than Italy or it could be worse and we
| just do not know, same as with all the states in the USA,
| if something is not being measured, all bets are off
| without a representative sampling or full sampling.
| blondin wrote:
| > Germany may be doing something better than Italy
|
| been curious about that super spreader story we have been
| hearing about italy. they probably need to study what
| happened there so we can all learn from it.
|
| maybe italy has a life style that made it easier for the
| virus to go around?
| hibikir wrote:
| The shape of social graphs is likely very different
| across countries, but I don't know of studies checking
| this. However, there are anecdata aplenty. My hometown in
| Spain has a lot of part timers in senior living
| facilities, so you will find, for instance, physical
| therapists working 2 or 3 facilities over the course of a
| week. We have confirmed examples of one therapist who
| contracted the virus somewhere, and now it's on every
| facility he visited: Over a hundred people tested
| positive with him as the only link.
|
| There is also how common it is for adult children to live
| with their parents, who might be retired already.
| Different networks do seniors and millennials that go to
| different places and have different links, but help the
| infection travel fast.
|
| Given the low ICU capacity, a single case like this can
| overwhelm a local hospital system, with predictable
| results.
| cm2187 wrote:
| When the dust settles, it will be interesting to not
| think in term of absolute number of deaths, but in term
| of additional mortality over a normal year. I understand
| that something like 99% of people who died of this virus
| had pre-existing conditions, in many cases serious ones.
| Logically, a fraction of the victims may have died of
| something else that same year.
| [deleted]
| plants wrote:
| I've seen this claim around a lot - is there a handy link
| that shows the testing that NY is doing and/or their true
| positive rates as compared to other regions?
| usaar333 wrote:
| https://covid-19.direct/state/NY
| usaar333 wrote:
| Well yes, but they also almost certainly have it the worst.
|
| Their testing rate is not even particularly high -
| Washington State has tested more per capita and has a
| drastically lower positive rate
|
| https://covid-19.direct/state/NY
|
| (If anything Washington, which is facing roughly linear
| case growth without a shelter in place in effect, is
| arguably handling the best of anywhere in the US. But I
| recognize NYC being so dense is intrinsically in a bad spot
| in a pandemic)
| Izkata wrote:
| Any idea how they got a negative number of tests on Mar
| 8?
| jsight wrote:
| I don't really know, but I'll guess. Maybe the estimate
| is done by taking the total for one day and subtracting
| out the total for the previous day? If the data were a
| bit messy and revised down, this might result in an
| occasional negative value.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The United States jumped from position 20 or so on the world
| ranking for the number of cases to spot number 3 in a manner of
| days. NYC doubled overnight. There was an article published all
| of seven hours ago that claimed the US was #4:
| https://www.newsweek.com/u-s-now-has-third-highest-number-co...
| it has already been made outdated by developments:
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .
|
| Wonder what degree of revisionism the 'it is just a flu' crowd
| will engage in where they are on the record.
| vondur wrote:
| Now many people need to be hospitalized vs reported cases? Last
| I heard here in Los Angeles county we had like 270 reported
| cases and like 40 people hospitalized. This is in a county of
| around 10 million people.
| greedo wrote:
| Roughly 20% of those infected required hospitalization.
| [deleted]
| teddyvangogh wrote:
| Very important:
|
| 1. Gov. Cuomo announces trial of hydroxychloroquine and
| azithromycin to start in NY
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/22/coronavirus-ny-gov-cuomo-say...
|
| 2. CDC: Healthcare workers OK to use homemade masks
| (bandana,scarf) as last resort.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2020/03/20/calling-all-...
|
| "Healthcare personnel (HCP) use of homemade masks:
|
| In settings where facemasks are not available, HCP might use
| homemade masks (e.g., bandana, scarf) for care of patients with
| COVID-19 as a last resort. However, homemade masks are not
| considered PPE, since their capability to protect HCP is
| unknown. Caution should be exercised when considering this
| option. Homemade masks should ideally be used in combination
| with a face shield that covers the entire front (that extends
| to the chin or below) and sides of the face."
| jjjensen90 wrote:
| Although NY is probably seeing an explosion in infections, this
| doubling is probably not a true growth in number of cases
| overnight, but instead representative of massively increased
| testing in NY.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| I'm amazed they managed to scale testing.
| vkou wrote:
| That's true.
|
| But an _actual_ doubling, measured by the number of people
| who can 't breathe in a hospital currently takes 3-4 days.
| Taek wrote:
| Is there a reliable link to the number of people on
| ventilators? I've only been able to find time series data
| for number of deaths. Which is helpful, but way too much of
| a lagging indiactor.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The 'critical' column on worldometers is a starting
| point. The general consensus is that the deaths are the
| most reliable, the criticals are somewhere in the middle
| and verified cases the least reliable due to lack of
| tests. But it is hard to fudge a death.
| cma wrote:
| For the US that critical column as been way out of date
| (just from what I knew of one hospital vs what it was
| reporting for the country several days after; I don't
| know if it is still far out of date).
| ambicapter wrote:
| > But it is hard to fudge a death.
|
| Not that I think the number of cases is grossly
| overstated, but Italy lists deaths from coronavirus if
| the patient dies for ANY reason while they are afflicted
| by the coronavirus. This would be the source of some
| "fudging" of the numbers.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. Even so, and even if there is a lot of noise
| in the data the trend is alarming to put it mildly. With
| earlier testing and a more transparent picture people may
| have taken the warnings more serious. Now they are partying
| like it is 1999 and the results of that will only become
| visible two weeks from now. By the time tests will be more
| common across other populous states the USA will likely be
| the #1 country in the world regarding case count and the
| delayed response means they'll peak a lot higher than China.
|
| This is far from over.
| teddyvangogh wrote:
| I've seen several of your comments about coronavirus and
| you've been very critical of the US. While some skepticism
| is healthy, you seem to have a very dim view of what's
| going on in our country. Do i sense a hint of jealousy
| here?
|
| Meanwhile, in your country.
|
| "Confirmed Dutch Coronavirus Cases up 16% to 4,204, With 43
| New Deaths"
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-03-22/confi
| r...
|
| Dutch show 'worrying' disregard for corona hygiene rules:
| survey
|
| https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/03/dutch-show-worrying-
| di...
| dang wrote:
| Please don't.
| shishy wrote:
| The rate of spreading is still >> rate of testing
| bob33212 wrote:
| Increase of testing is 300% a day at times. For infections
| to increase greater than that you would need each infected
| individual to infected 3+ people a day. You may mean that
| the number of infected is still higher than the number of
| tests available
| jacquesm wrote:
| The only way to stop the spread is to have accurate
| testing and a population willing to abide by quarantine
| measures on a voluntary basis when tested positive as
| well as immediate tracing of contacts. Anything less than
| that and the spread will continue.
| [deleted]
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| How do you know the rate of spread if you can't test?
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Wonder what degree of revisionism the 'it is just a flu'
| crowd will engage in where they are on the record
|
| Just check Elon Musk's twitter apparently
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I'm pretty doubtful that this is much worse than the flu. But I
| am self quarantined, stocked up on food etc. my level of doubt
| is not nearly strong enough to counter the severity of
| consequences if I am wrong.
|
| My wife has asthma, and my parents are elderly. I'm middle
| aged. I'm much more concerned about hurting other people.
|
| That said, flu statistics aren't great. I'm pretty sure I've
| had the flu, due to severity of illness. But I've never been
| tested for it. I don't know anyone who has. When people die of
| pneumonia etc they Aren't automatically tested for flu.
| marvin wrote:
| Well, the flu doesn't infect 100 million Americans in the
| same quarter. Just to mention one way in which Covid-19 is
| clearly worse than the flu.
| sbilstein wrote:
| I was wrong. Been in isolation now for 9 days.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| From what I can tell (even here on HN by a few bad actors),
| they seem to have pivoted to a "we simply can't do this to the
| economy; it's not an option for a disease that only kills old
| and sick people", without the faintest hint of a plan for what
| they'd actually _do_ given what we know and the resources that
| we have.
|
| We can all wish for the culture, test availability, and
| competent government that South Korea and Singapore and Taiwan
| apparently have, but we don't have those. So their "plan" is
| effectively a plan to just let millions of people 60+ or with
| pre-existing conditions die without much effort to save them.
| It's not only unconscionable, it's incredibly stupid. Do they
| think we're just going to go back to work and restaurants and
| on vacation while millions of our loved ones take their last
| gasps in a converted convention center somewhere? The economy
| grinds to a halt either way, and there's no moral or political
| path forward for what they want to do. Which is why they don't
| have the courage to even spell it out, it's just some magic
| handwaving about how we must do something different.
|
| And all this against the backdrop of them and people like them
| downplaying this from the start and putting us in this
| position.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| And they are entirely ignoring the impact of this virus on
| our healthcare workers. Due to high exposure levels to the
| virus, they are at much higher risk of not just getting
| infected, but also developing higher severity of the disease.
|
| We need to make "Support our Healthcare Workers" a bigger
| part of the messaging strategy. They are on the front lines
| of this battle, and when we fail to implement control
| measures, we are putting their lives at risk.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > We can all wish for the culture, test availability, and
| competent government that South Korea and Singapore and
| Taiwan apparently have, but we don't have those. So their
| "plan" is effectively a plan to just let millions of people
| 60+ or with pre-existing conditions die without much effort
| to save them. It's not only unconscionable, it's incredibly
| stupid.
|
| Why we had to wait until a crisis like this for this to be
| rendered bare for the wider population?
|
| As I've said countless times before, the West has been on the
| downward trajectory for a very long time, both as a society,
| and as state entities.
|
| What I call an "ultrapopulism" has been an ever growing trend
| in the West since around mid-nineties.
|
| The Western nations are not just weak as societies, and
| nations, they are diseased (sorry for having to use this word
| now.)
|
| The reasons for me moving from comfy life in the West to
| China is not because I so much enjoyed it, but for me having
| a realisation that this accelerating downward trend will have
| very real consequences in my lifetime, and that even money
| alone no longer favours the West.
| OCASM wrote:
| Well, lets not forget that this whole mess started in
| China. It was the chinese government which decided to hide
| information and pretend everything was under control while
| allowing it to spread all over the world.
| joubert wrote:
| Trump COVID-19 timeline:
| https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/20/how-
| donald-tr...
|
| Elon Musk COVID-19 timeline:
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/19/21185417/elon-musk-
| coro...
|
| Both reckless, uniformed, self-absorbed in their
| arrogance.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Well, lets not forget that this whole mess started in
| China.
|
| Yes, China is a patently dysfunctional society. This is
| what I can say as person whose life and career depends on
| it, and who actually lived there.
|
| I'd say the "good" performance of Chinese state looks
| like that only in comparison to catastrophically bad
| showing from Western nations.
|
| 20 year ago, I would've said that what China did after
| the monumental screw up at the start, would've been an
| expected level of response from an upstanding Western
| nation. Now, the West can not do the same what it
| could've done 20 years ago easily. That's the only
| message for that particular point.
|
| Is Chinese society a healthy, functioning society? No,
| but at least critical parts are still coasting on inertia
| from the time China had half sane political leadership.
|
| Is the West a healthy, functioning society? Some things
| there work, but the most important, critical parts are
| failing in broad daylight, and people don't damn care.
| OCASM wrote:
| The response to this from the western world has indeed
| been disgraceful. China's was too. They managed to
| contain due to their authoritarian policies but the real
| examples of good responses from asian nations are SK,
| Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan. They've managed to
| contain it much better than anyone else without the need
| of massive government overreach.
| baybal2 wrote:
| This crisis was a very good slap to the face to Chinese
| establishment. It was very much needed for a long time.
|
| I heard even most hardcore communists starting to
| question Xi's mandate to rule now, and how much such a
| weak leader is costing them.
|
| What I heard myself was pretty much a question "What if
| it was a war?"
|
| Were Xi to hide in a bunker when the military can't do
| anything without his explicit approval, they would've
| been screwed.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Isn't the South Korean government known for massive amounts
| of corruption between itself and entities like Samsung? The
| good does not wash away the bad, nor the bad the good...
| baybal2 wrote:
| This is the point worth talking.
|
| I'd say that even overt corruption is not necessarily a
| white or black determinator on the overall health of the
| institute of government.
|
| South Korea is not only known for "Samsung bribing *," but
| also countless successful cases of corruption prosecution,
| including 2 Samsung CEOs in a row going to real jail.
|
| In overall, a health on the very top of society stems from
| strength at the bottom.
| avz wrote:
| Another counter-point to the inhumane position you're
| rebuking - one which speaks to people's self-interest - is
| that as the healthcare systems become overwhelmed they will
| eventually stop treating conditions and accidents which
| afflict everyone including young people.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Not all Americans are doing that.
|
| I am actively trying to promote work from home options and
| mostly being ignored.
|
| I am actively trying to talk about home health care options.
| It's been extremely controversial, so I am reluctant to push
| too hard.
|
| There's a lot of disinterest or active blow back against any
| attempt at a grass roots movement in the absence of
| sufficient leadership from the top.
|
| Given how powerful America is, it's not unreasonable for the
| world at large to be concerned.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I am actually terrified about home remedies regular people
| provide without deep understanding of human physiology and
| medicine.
|
| Please refrain from providing advice to people if you're
| not in the position to do so unless you're a medical
| doctor. It sounds good hearted but this is exactly the kind
| of things we shouldn't be perpetuating. You can cause
| inadvertent loss of life in worst case.
|
| My parents are forwarding all kinds of shit from social
| media from fake vaccine news to completely insane home
| remedies such as going to a sauna when you have fever to
| "kill the virus". I am not suggesting you're doing this,
| but just to illustrate extreme case of misinformation.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Yes, I know. I've actually been around this block before.
|
| I have a form of cystic fibrosis, as does my 32 year old
| son who still lives with me. I left all the CF lists
| years ago because people with CF live in terror and
| mostly don't want to take chances on trying anything not
| prescribed by a doctor, even though they are facing
| certain death.
|
| Doctors don't know how to fix them. When I was diagnosed
| in 2001, life expectancy in the US was age 36.
|
| Like anyone who has CF or who has a loved one with CF, I
| know quite a lot about germ control and daily home
| management of potentially deadly lung problems. Unlike
| most people with CF, I'm currently drug free. My
| condition is managed with diet and lifestyle.
|
| I think it's outright irresponsible to say nothing at all
| in cases where I know a thing and no one else is speaking
| up, even though I surely an not the only person who knows
| X. I've mostly spoken up to say, essentially, "If there
| aren't enough ventilators to go around, airway clearance
| techniques have been around forever and some of them are
| non invasive and don't require mechanical intervention.
| You may still have options, even if the worst comes to
| pass, the medical system is overloaded and you are trying
| to survive a deadline epidemic while locked down at
| home."
|
| If you want to see my past remarks, I've added the link
| to that discussion to my profile. I'm disinclined to do
| too much cage rattling on HN in discussion.
|
| I'm currently working on developing a blog in hopes of
| putting together useful information about best practices
| for simply avoiding germs in day-to-day life.
|
| I think I know a lot of useful information. I don't think
| I'm behaving irresponsibly.
|
| I'm still trying to sort out for myself what I think
| works going forward. I don't think there's anyone on the
| planet who can tell me what that is.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| _Yes, I know._
|
| Then stop already.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Please don't do any of this. I beg you.
|
| If you want to help, volunteer in a hospital.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I absolutely cannot volunteer in a hospital. Cystic
| fibrosis puts me in a high risk category. That's like
| asking me to intentionally become the Typhoid Mary of
| covid19.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Doreen, your home health care options are good, and I
| appreciate your comments! You're not making ridiculous
| claims or pushing some off-label drugs.
|
| I told several friends about your advice to prop up your
| head and back in bed when feeling shortness of breath.
|
| Cautiously I also recommend tonic water for a cough - not
| because of a medical benefit, but because the bitterness
| makes sputum in my mouth and that soothed my sore throat.
| Also wasabi for a blocked nose. Normally I think cough
| medicine would be better, but I know that pharmacies are
| overloaded right now. I also think the placebo effect is
| very real - doing something positive might help, instead of
| just sitting and worrying.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Please don't recommend things for a cough that you
| clearly know nothing about.
|
| Tonic water absolutely has a medical history. It's not
| hard at all to find that out by reading the label and
| doing a little online research.
|
| It makes me extremely uncomfortable for you to talk about
| tonic water for a very long list of reasons.
|
| Because it contains an actual for serious drug -- quinine
| -- you can get serious side effects from overusing it.
| These include vision problems, headache and nausea
| similar to migraines. IIRC, you can cause yourself
| permanent vision problems.
|
| Because it's a powerful alkaloid, overuse can cause your
| stomach to become too alkaline. This can cause you to be
| unable to digest food and can result in vomiting.
|
| The name "tonic water" is medical in origin. The bitter
| flavor you speak of was common to a class of medicinal
| herbs typically referred to as "bitters."
|
| Quinine is a drug related to the drug currently being
| tested as a possible treatment for covid19: Chloroquine.
| So casual and uniformed use of it could create resistance
| in the virus, making actual medical treatment less
| effective in the future.
|
| I highly recommend you keep a journal and actually read
| up on anything you are finding personally helpful.
|
| I'm not here trying to tell people what to do with home
| remedies for casual use. My consistent framing has been
| "If the shit really hits the fan and doctors have nothing
| for you, there are other options that may make sense to
| gamble on if your options are take a chance or die."
|
| I know a helluva lot about medical stuff. My mother
| wanted to be a doctor and she personally changed the
| practices of two cancer clinics when she kept my dad
| alive after they wrote him off for dead. I have another
| relative who works at the CDC and has for years.
|
| I've been surrounded by medically knowledgeable people my
| entire life. I also absolutely don't hawk home remedies.
|
| I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out if there
| is any way to effectively share what I know about CF and
| other health issues to either be helpful or to somehow
| get actual medical professionals and scientists to do
| studies.
|
| I would love to finally have credibility and be taken
| seriously in the world and have actual respect.
|
| And it matters vastly less to me than avoiding potential
| harm to potentially millions of people because I'm cute
| and charismatic and people want to be my fwend and it
| goes amazingly bizarre places and always has.
|
| I know you mean well. I know you think I'm pathetic and
| sad and a social outcast and a poor person and you think
| you are doing something nice by publicly patting me on
| the head.
|
| I absolutely don't see it that way. I'm extremely
| uncomfortable with you and other people here clearly
| desiring some kind of feel good emotional attachment to
| me personally as your primary goal of engaging me, very
| much at the expense of beat practices for disseminating
| medically useful information.
| teddyvangogh wrote:
| It seems to be happening everywhere:
|
| Netherlands: TOTAL CORONAVIRUS CASES QUADRUPLE IN A WEEK TO
| 4,204; DEATH TOLL REACHES 179
|
| https://nltimes.nl/2020/03/22/total-coronavirus-cases-
| quadru...
| forgottenplans wrote:
| We can't build temporary quarantine centers, hermetically
| sealed units, gas mask or ventilators. We could predict all
| this and did, but incompetence. We could had made a
| coronavirus vaccine that could had potentially worked now,
| years ago. We could have general tests or fast tracked
| specific tests months ago.
|
| All this seems like a much bigger problem than the virus
| itself. Our system is incapable of being efficient, effective
| or proactive.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > We could had made a coronavirus vaccine that could had
| potentially worked now, years ago.
|
| That isn't really true. Some viruses are more susceptible
| to vaccination than others but all have one thing in
| common: about 12-18 months between the first confirmed
| sighting of a virus and the time to make a vaccine _if_ one
| is possible. And for plenty of Viruses we have not been
| able to make a vaccine and some of those are coronaviruses.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| I predict nothing will come of it except further declining
| trust in media. The speed with which the media and the
| authorities pivoted from "it's just the flu, bro" and "wearing
| a facemask is stupdid" to "we're doomed" is truly amazing.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| We wont know the extent until 1-2 years from now when
| statistical studies are done to show the true danger of the
| Chinese coronavirus. It could very well be the flu, a 10x flu,
| or worse, or better. It's the uncertainty that's killing us,
| for lack of a better term.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| US was delayed with the onset compared to Europe and the rest
| of the world. This is not some competition that lowest number
| of cases wins. If anything else, you need to account for
| cases/capita. Furthermore, India, a country of 1 billion+
| citizens has less than 1000 cases. Why? Because they haven't
| got enough testing capacity.
|
| Please stop this ranking nonsense. It is not helping in anyway.
| If we want to assess how effective each country will fare -
| look no further than totalitarian and authoritarian states.
| Also, wait for all of this to be over with and then we can
| assess who did better and who did worse. Amidst the crisis, I
| am frankly concerned about comments such as this.
|
| Ranking by cases/capita (per 1M)
|
| 1. Iceland: 978
|
| 2. Switzerland: 864
|
| 3. Spain: 612
|
| 4. Norway: 417
|
| 5. Austria: 396
|
| 6. Germany: 297
|
| 7. Belgium: 293
|
| 8. Iran: 258
|
| 9. France: 245
|
| 10. Netherlands: 245
|
| 11. Denmark: 241
|
| 12. Sweden: 191
|
| 13. Ireland: 183
|
| 14. S Korea: 174
|
| 15. Portugal: 157
|
| 16. USA: 98
|
| Ignoring smaller countries such as Estonia, Vatican City, etc
| Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
|
| Even the aforementioned ranking is _useless_ because the onset
| is staggered. It is like taking a slice of a timeseries data in
| the middle of highest rates of changes and saying "Here! Look.
| We have some definitive answers."
|
| I am in no way opposed to spreading the message to folks in
| deep south states who are largely ignoring this crisis. But
| using misleading data to alarm them is not the right way to go
| about this. The press should be doing their job of
| communicating what exactly is going on in hospitals, pressuring
| leaders of the states to consider the warnings, and generally
| taking an objective, scientific approach in informing the
| public.
| eezurr wrote:
| This list is meaningless unless you factor in the geographic
| sizes of the countries and what percentage of the land passes
| some density threshold.
|
| If you split up the united states into regions, we definitely
| would not be 16th on the list.
| Taek wrote:
| These rankings are important because it helps us get a feel
| for what type of quarantine action is getting the virus under
| control.
|
| Any country with sufficient testing that's managed to bring
| the growth rate below exponential is worth an enormous amount
| of attention, because we seem to have many countries who have
| taken action yet failed to stop exponential growth.
| klipt wrote:
| > we seem to have many countries who have taken action yet
| failed to stop exponential growth
|
| Remember the virus has an incubation period of around 2
| weeks. China's numbers appeared to be increasing
| exponentially for 2 weeks after the lockdown, but those
| were mostly people infected _before_ the lockdown.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Then use cases/capita. US has 330 million people and
| comparing it with #2 spot (Italy with 60 million) is
| completely insane, not to mention that the worse is yet to
| come to US.
|
| I am all for taking a critical look at American systems and
| their effectiveness of the response, but the ranking by the
| case numbers is naive, misleading and unproductive.
| codeulike wrote:
| Every country starts with (let's say) 1 imported case.
| From there, it grows. Cases/capita doesn't really mean
| anything until you get into the millions of cases and
| start thinking about what the upper bound might be.
|
| And so ranking countries by size of outbreak seems
| reasonable to me.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I edited my comment with some data. The onset is
| staggered, the entire ranking thing is useless until the
| pandemic is over. It is simply a tracker, not an
| objective measure of the efficacy or the effectiveness of
| the measures each country is taking. It is too soon.
| codeulike wrote:
| I've seen plenty of graphs where people plot the
| epidemics correcting for start date in each country, that
| seems pretty useful.
|
| Edit: Here you go, here's one corrected for day of 100th
| case.
|
| https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1241149458089418752
| jacquesm wrote:
| Be concerned all you want, but look at it this way: without
| the most populous nations (for instance, the USA) at the top
| of a list like this politicians can downplay the seriousness
| of the threat. HN has a small army of people who do nothing
| else than trying to make it seem like this is 'just a flu',
| or something slightly worse.
|
| All of that taken together translates into people simply
| ignoring the danger and continuing their life making things
| _much_ worse in the long run.
|
| Viruses don't have legs, they need people to transport them.
| And as long as we're willing it gets spread around and some
| people will die. If rankings like these send the message loud
| and clear that this also concerns you then I'm all for the
| rankings, even if they are a bs statistic without taking into
| account the total population size. People find it much easier
| to relate to 5000 people dead than they do to 2000 people per
| million infected.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Agreed that we need to spread the message far and wide.
| Just slamming down on people that are doing their best to
| cope with this situation isn't very productive, if not
| discouraging and harmful. In these times, Solidarity is
| needed. Just the way we support Italian crisis, we need to
| do the same to the US and the rest of the countries.
|
| Slam governments, take it up on the streets to address
| issues after this pandemic is over.
| mindslight wrote:
| There will be no revisionism, because that would require
| respect for the value of speaking truthfully and standing
| behind your words. Rather, bringing this up will just be met
| with shallow denials that it wasn't important at the time, that
| nobody could have known, that the questioner is part of the
| problem, etc.
|
| You can already see the narrative of the ignorance club is
| shifting to "we're doing a good job" - focusing on current
| nascent actions and completely ignoring the month long head
| start given to the pandemic in the US by inaction,
| incompetence, and outright lies (eg masks).
|
| Not that it makes sense to waste energy bickering about these
| things when there is still a major problem to be addressed, but
| the point is that the month or two long societal shutdown we're
| experiencing is best attributed to a failure of our
| institutions rather than the force of nature.
| soared wrote:
| > The Army Corps is expected to immediately begin work to
| construct the [four] temporary hospitals. The Governor is also
| requesting FEMA designate four field hospitals
|
| NY is creating EIGHT temporary hospitals total. I can't imagine
| the logistics, staffing, materials, etc. A few days ago I wasn't
| terribly concerned, but it continues to look worse and worse for
| the US.
| Balgair wrote:
| The acoup blog just did a piece on chemical weapons and their
| dis/use in modern times. Part of that analysis was a dive into
| Modern v. Static armies.
|
| Static armies are what Saddam, Assad, and the Iranians have.
| Though their weapons are pretty up to date, they still get
| squished when fighting Modern armies like the US or France.
| That is because their 'doctrine' is Static, mostly to be coup-
| proof. In Static Armies, you don't give field commanders a lot
| of lee-way or control. You send orders, they execute. They
| don't get to play jazz. This is due to regime issues that don't
| translate into up to date warfare.
|
| In Modern armies, you have terribly expensive weapons too. But
| the _training_ is what makes it really work. You have to train
| field commanders to play jazz and improvise. It 's a constant
| blitzkrieg of movement and mechanized/digitized warfare. There
| is no sitting around. That takes training people to think for
| themselves; a big no-no in regimes.
|
| The US is _the_ example of a modern force, complete with fancy
| gadgets and fancy training.
|
| We should _expect_ that NYNG could get eight field hospitals
| going in hours. That is the entire basis of our military, to
| move really fast and get things done. Imperfectly? Oh hell yes.
| But fast is the entire name of the game.
|
| https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
| rb808 wrote:
| from the article: > The Governor is also requesting FEMA
| designate four field hospitals with 250 beds each for the
| state, intended for use in the Javits Center in addition to the
| temporary hospital to be constructed by the Army Corps.
|
| I think putting 1000 beds in a conference centre sounds a lot
| less dramatic than 4 new hospitals.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I wonder why Wuhan authorities opted for new construction
| over using available spaces that surely must exist in a 10M
| city when everything is shut down?
| makomk wrote:
| PR reasons, probably. It gave a big, visible, livestreamed
| 24/7 impression of progress towards doing something against
| the disease in a way that other countries wouldn't be able
| to match.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Available spaces were most probably not fit to serve as
| hospital for airborne infectious disease. Water/air ducts,
| isolation rooms, medical equipment and so on.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Wuhan wanted to put the hospital away from city center. And
| did not want to contaminate existing spaces.
|
| In NYC, there is very little space for something new. And
| the existing structures are poor locations for actual
| hospitals.
|
| If the economy is going to be down for a while, might as
| well use a public space that is shut down for that purpose.
| subroutine wrote:
| Perhaps it was to enlist the unemployed. Lots of people
| losing jobs because of the epidemic + need for hospitals to
| mitigate epidemic effects = build hospitals?
| nitrobeast wrote:
| There were convention centers converted to isolate patients
| in Wuhan too. Basically, Wuhan needed both more hospital
| beds for people requiring intensive care, and more beds for
| isolating infected patients with mild symptoms. Only the
| second kind can be in placed in conventional centers.
| _asummers wrote:
| Why are they not using college dorms instead? There's already
| beds there and there's a modicum of isolation.
| soared wrote:
| I have no actual idea, but would venture to guess that all
| dorms in NY are old buildings with
| HVAC/Electrical/Elevators/Hallway sizes that aren't good
| enough for medical care.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Lived in the international house in NY many years back. I
| would add bedbugs to the list!
| wan23 wrote:
| Here in New York, they're building a facility at one
| university, though the dorms are going to be used to house
| workers rather than patients.
|
| https://riverheadlocal.com/2020/03/22/as-suffolk-
| coronavirus...
| jacques_chester wrote:
| Being prepared to defend against and then defeat an
| intelligent, organised enemy with a strong industrial base
| requires the maintenance of an incredibly expensive logistical
| apparatus with massive stockpiles of reserve materiel and
| operating capacity.
|
| This is one of the few respects in which military wastefulness
| is useful, since those capabilities are repurposable for zero-
| sum games played against nature.
| op03 wrote:
| More like for NYC. NY is reporting more than half the cases in
| the US.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > NY is creating EIGHT temporary hospitals total. I can't
| imagine the logistics, staffing, materials, etc. A few days ago
| I wasn't terribly concerned, but it continues to look worse and
| worse for the US.
|
| I think the logistic complexity of building 4 field hospitals
| is like nothing compared building 30-40+ FOBs, MOBs, firebases,
| landing grounds, airfield, and other field logistic elements in
| the warzone, during an invasion.
|
| Saying that, one need to think how shockingly bad the showing
| of American state apparatus been in recent years despite such
| an enormous resource at its disposal, unless the actual army is
| involved.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I saw an image of the rate of total diagnosed cases per day of
| Italy vs the USA and the curves appear to overlap suggesting
| were going to see a similar swell and they're preparing for it.
| I've not confirmed any of this but everything else I've read
| seems to suggest that this may be the case.
|
| I live in NYC with elderly family members as well as at-risk
| family members. I also have family in CA. My Friends are also
| in the same boat.
|
| Unfortunately my business is critical so it will remain open
| though they are taking this very seriously. They have a
| rigorous cleaning policy as well as split shifting a crazy
| schedule to minimize people in the building at once yet moving
| production along. All office people who can work remote (not
| me, im tech) are home with laptops. Thankfully I have my own
| microwave and fridge in my pretty isolated office so im
| hunkering down there by myself. Only bringing food prepared at
| home which I have a little stock of. They also said I am free
| to hide all I want unless it's an emergency which is usually
| once a week when some old machine decides to throw a hissy fit.
| jacquesm wrote:
| NYC is the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States
| right now, they essentially doubled overnight in the number
| of confirmed cases. Pretty grim given the absolute numbers
| involved.
| listennexttime wrote:
| So what changed in the last few days? What is playing out is
| EXACTLY what epidimiologists, scientists, mathemeticians, the
| US intelligence agencies, and the WHO have been saying for over
| a month at this point. This has ALL been predicted and no one
| fucking cared or listened until it is BY DEFINITION TOO LATE.
|
| I've even been saying this for weeks now, and I get challenged
| on it. Even though _every single day_ we continue to just
| follow or beat the worst trend lines from the worst affected
| countries BECAUSE WE 'RE NOT DOING ANY OF THE THINGS WE KNOW
| WORK.
|
| What's going to be different next time? Are we going to have a
| global conversation about our inability to plan more than 2
| days out? Our inability to grasp truly horrific facts and
| accept them, instead of letting fearful human brains go "That
| could never happen in America" (lol) even in the fact of raw
| statistics? Or is this just another thing I'm going to be eye-
| rolled at and told "it's just how it is". A global pandemic and
| economic slump (I'm metering my predictions here because this
| site doesn't seem to be able to handle realistically gloomy
| predictions for the future) still isn't enough to get us to ask
| how we got here?
| tekkk wrote:
| I today saw the number of infected for US jump 8k (it seemed
| to have been reduced from 14k, which was really alarming).
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
|
| A quite worrying turn that rate of cases is ramping up so
| quickly in US. Don't know what else to say. And there isn't
| really that much you can do as an individual, if the other
| people are not taking it that seriously. Just yesterday I saw
| a child with his parent cough with a rattling sound in a
| supermarket without covering his mouth. It is these types of
| small actions of neglectedness that compound, making this
| virus so hard to stop from spreading.
|
| Hopefully you at least build antibodies when you get sick.
| Otherwise this will never stop spreading until we get a
| working vaccine.
| ep103 wrote:
| Just a reminder that trump still has a 43% approval rating
| among Americans. If you want to solve the problems you're
| talking about, you have to solve the underlying reason for
| this one first.
| 1996 wrote:
| You should not worry about the current low approval
| ratings.
|
| I'm sure it will easily go >50% once people see results
| coming - like field hospitals, hydroxychloroquine available
| to treat patients, etc.
|
| Even below 50%, everyone seems to comply and follow up on
| the lockdown at the moment. I don't know about the precise
| situation in Europe, but I've been told France had to go to
| martial law because people were not complying with the
| voluntary lockdown.
| fma wrote:
| A quick video on the "underlying reason"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKbwDf51bA
| twomoretime wrote:
| The structural rot in American society that are leading to
| cascading failures across all industries and efforts began
| long before Trump was even a republican.
|
| And the depths of complacency and ignorance to which our
| society has fallen is such that individuals are culpable as
| well. Our culture has grown totally void - the average
| person is a helpless adult child. You all know the sorry
| state of our schools, churning out children who cannot
| perform basic Civic duties. This goes far beyond petty R-D
| politics.
| pjmorris wrote:
| I keep having this crazy, irresponsible, dangerous... hopeful
| idea: virus cruises. Take one or more available cruise ships,
| equip it with ventilators, tests, supplie, ask for volunteer
| crew, passengers, and medical staff, and send everyone off for a
| two week cruise to get deliberately infected with the virus,
| study its characteristics, and start to build herd immunity.
| Seems like it'd be a way to get started fighting back.
| fma wrote:
| You're getting a lot of downvotes...but this is how the
| eradication of Smallpox started...through inoculation.
|
| https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/smallpox/sp_variolation.h...
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| If this is not peak HN I don't know what it is.
| burfog wrote:
| It gets interesting if you start people on the anti-viral
| medication before infecting them. That should make the disease
| very mild. There might not be anybody who gets severe illness.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You'd be murdering people. That's an un-ethical medical
| experiment. About as unethical as what already happened to
| those on the Diamond Princess. 8 of them are dead now, there
| are still another 15 in critical with some of those expected to
| eventually die.
| natalyarostova wrote:
| Lol that's retarded.
| jawns wrote:
| I don't think you realize what the severe cases look like.
|
| This isn't chickenpox.
|
| This is people drowning in their own fluid-filled lungs, having
| to be physically restrained to keep from pulling out their
| tubes, with a surprisingly rapid progression from mild symptoms
| to requiring a ventilator to being declared dead.
|
| You willing to sign up for that?
| [deleted]
| MiguelVieira wrote:
| This blog post covers the math of why this is necessary
|
| https://medium.com/@donnellymjd/covid-19-nyc-should-brace-fo...
| gist wrote:
| Interesting life lesson for those who are not familiar is the
| concept I think it's called 'don't spit into the wind'.
|
| By this I mean all of the politicians who constantly gave Trump a
| hard time at each and every turn. I don't mean any in particular
| investigation and I don't mean they needed to agree and not
| criticize him at all at any time. But maybe they should have
| thought that this person 'The President' has the ability to give
| their region (or their state) what they need 'greenlight' and yes
| he should do it because 'it's the right thing to do' but human
| decision making and interaction is more than that. And people are
| people. This is no different for any political process or
| politician. Sometimes you have to simply (to use the phrase) 'not
| be a dick' if there is a person in power who can give you things
| you need to play the game. Doesn't mean you should like the game
| and doesn't mean it shouldn't be that way but in the end it is
| the way life often is.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Wow, ok, finally.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| As an onlooker I feel like once America awakens to a crisis it is
| impressive to watch. I mean this kind of should have happened
| weeks ago, and the executive branch is a bit of a panicked joke.
| But I mean... You've got this colossal capacity to deploy field
| hospitals and hospital ships and such and ramp up capacity.
|
| Terrible hurricane? Show up with a massive floating power plant
| and water treatment facility plus air logistics.
|
| And I think one of the strongest virtues of the United States is
| being proven by Trump: the incredible power of leadership at all
| levels of government. In the absence of a leader at the top
| you've got senators and congresspersons and governors and mayors
| and CEOs all getting shit done. This is all an incredible (but
| regrettable) exercise of numerous fail safes inherent in the
| American system.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes, the wheels of production are starting to turn. Right now,
| there's a virus test shortage, a toilet paper shortage, a mask
| shortage, and a hand sanitizer shortage. Production of all
| those small items has already gone way up, and most of those
| shortages should be solved in a week or two.
|
| Bigger items like ventilators, ICU suites, and hospitals take
| longer.
|
| As for levels of government, that's very real. People outside
| the US often don't realize it, but the states have more power
| than the Federal government in many areas. I'm in San Mateo
| County, California, and we're in lockdown because the County
| Medical Officer and the county supervisors decided it was
| necessary. They didn't have to ask permission from any higher
| authority to do that. Action by the state governor came later.
| Action by the Federal government came even later, and was
| mostly advisory.
|
| California has wildfires, earthquakes, and floods routinely. So
| the state's Office of Emergency Services is large and well-
| funded, and their emergency operations center is usually
| dealing with something. Most large cities have emergency
| operations centers.
|
| It won't be enough at first. But this is going to be a months
| long problem, if not a year or two. The support facilities will
| catch up.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| There is a retail level toilet paper shortage due to hoarding
| and swine reselling it at massive markups. The supply
| continues to flow however
| akiselev wrote:
| _> People outside the US often don 't realize it, but the
| states have more power than the Federal government in many
| areas._
|
| Especially when a local or a statewide emergency is declared.
| At that point, all bets are off and authorities can do pretty
| much whatever they want until someone gets a judge to issue
| an injunction, which they're a lot less likely to do in a
| state of emergency unless its gross abuse of civil liberties.
| Even then, if it goes on long enough, executive power at all
| levels of government becomes even harder to curtail.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| Yeah it's true and when America does wake up to global warming,
| it'll be a juggernaut on so many fronts. I genuinely believe
| that when America decides to act on global warming there will
| be zero room for negotiation by others.
|
| It's not in America's short term interest though so this won't
| happen any time soon.
| Aloha wrote:
| Thats one of the things about americanism, we have little
| reverence for tradition or authorities - we culturally value
| results more than process to achieve them. It has some
| downsides yes, but in times of crisis ie means that, we all
| just pick up and do our part - and frankly the best ideas
| usually float to the top.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It looks sloppy as hell too. Which is partly why there's
| always so many complaints about how the US responds to any
| event.
| Aloha wrote:
| It does, but it's mostly effective, just slow to get
| started in the absence of someone priming the pump.
| watwut wrote:
| > we culturally value results more than process to achieve
| them
|
| Frankly, that was not my impression from American management
| or institutions. The most important was rule following, then
| appearance of effort, results largely unimportant.
| tanilama wrote:
| It is certainly more comforting/assuring to see more actions
| take right now. Once mobilized, US starts to impress more.
|
| But I fear what has been done is not enough, because it only
| feel necessary, but the virus is an exponential growing crisis,
| our capacity can not possible catch up with it.
|
| Strict lockdown right now. Take the short term pain, but better
| for long term.
| lonelappde wrote:
| > Terrible hurricane? Show up with a massive floating power
| plant and water treatment facility plus air logistics.
|
| The US has a disastrous recent history of failing to respond to
| multipld hurricanes with adequate support, from Katrina to
| Maria.
| nimbius wrote:
| >the incredible power of leadership at all levels of
| government.
|
| anyone remember when Mike Pence actually created an HIV
| epidemic in his state by ignoring the CDC in favour of
| prayer? :)
|
| or when Trump recommended mixing two tentatively researched
| drugs to combat COVID-19 that could induce fatal arrhythmia?
|
| Or Hurricane Katrina? when Bush basically sat on his hands
| while nearly 2000 people died?
|
| C-level leadership is dog-earing their pockets and preparing
| to shill the government for bailouts, despite buybacks and
| record profits. Companies like Apple are completely debt free
| and doing nothing.
|
| As an American i feel like the strongest force in this crisis
| is the teenager at the gas station and the army of people
| working swing shift at supermarkets for the same garbage wage
| theyve always earned and no healthcare.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The people who continue to work the supermarkets definitely
| are heroes. How can they not be scared?
| beefield wrote:
| What makes you think they are not scared? Fear is smart
| and necessary. Keeps you alive. As long as you control
| the fear and not the other way round.
| scollet wrote:
| The CEOs bit got an audible laugh out of me! Wash your hands of
| all sarcasm too.
| gwright wrote:
| > I mean this kind of should have happened weeks ago, and the
| executive branch is a bit of a panicked joke.
|
| And I feel like these sorts of virtue-signaling remarks makes
| it harder to focus on what to do _now_. It isn 't even clear
| that anyone would have listened to the federal government weeks
| ago. Look at the criticism that was made when Chinese flights
| were restricted in January.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| True, but as an American, it definitely feels like we're
| bringing our B game to one of the nastiest challenges the world
| has ever faced. We had the ability to write a blank check and
| fire up mask, ventilator, and test production the second it was
| clear this was a global problem.
|
| So instead of sending excess equipment around the world, we're
| playing catch up on our own shortage, and the control measures
| have to be a lot stricter because of it.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yes we could have tested the fuck out of everything in
| January and road it out the biggest functioning industrial
| power like WII. Instead we get effected like everyone else.
|
| On the other hand, for the sake of the world it's about time
| the US faced a real (non Perl Harbor / 9/11 bullshit)
| domestic crisis. The US needs to be humbled, and cede more
| power to the EU within the western world.
|
| So in that sense I am glad we didn't play the new-world-
| defense game and instead fucked this up, exposing the rot.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Awful to say but I think there's truth to this. Maybe
| people will respond more properly when their politicians
| move to defund important services.
| mantas wrote:
| As a citizen of a EU member, EU is laughing stock these
| days.
| 1996 wrote:
| Don't you have each state trying to steal supplies from
| each other? Like CZ stealing Chinese aid to IT, DE
| stealing masks made for BG etc?
| holler wrote:
| > and cede more power to the EU within the western world
|
| Why would any nation cede power willingly to another? Would
| the EU willingly cede power to the US? What about Britain?
| That's not how sovereignty works.
|
| The US response has been massive and unprecedented.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into political or
| nationalistic or ideological flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| gentleman11 wrote:
| > one of the nastiest challenges the world has ever faced
|
| Unfortunately, Covid probably will not be in the top 100
| nastiest challenges. Our global history has some truly
| terrible things in it
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > the second it was clear this was a global problem
|
| The problem is that the west has nobody in power with living
| memory of a pandemic. An unfortunate failing of human
| cognition is that most humans discount that which they have
| no direct experience of. So it was never going to be clear to
| most people that this was a problem until we had waited way
| too long. I mean, most people can't be bothered to not spend
| everything they make when the last recession was 12 years
| ago, so what do we expect when there hasn't been a pandemic
| in the west in over 100 years...
| ajross wrote:
| OK, so... how does that explain Taiwan or Korea, who had
| the same "living memory" we do and managed to get this
| under control without breaking their health care systems?
|
| I mean, your point is true, but the lack of action wasn't
| the fault of the average citizen or their living memory.
| The decision-makers should have had access to better info,
| and of course they did. Doctors from China and Italy told
| us long ago that PPE equipment was a bottleneck.
| Epidemiologists could see what was going to happen with the
| rate of spread. Local health officials in states knew at
| the outset that they needed more tests. Hell, the federal
| government has a whole departmental center dedicated
| specifically to the control of disease; they've spent
| decades modeling out how to respond to crises like this.
|
| Yet... no decisions got made. That wasn't for a lack of
| "living memory of a pandemic".
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Taiwan is ethnically Han, has lots of ties to mainland
| China, and is an island just if the Chinese coast. Korea
| is a peninsula attached to mainland China. They both had
| to deal with and care about SARS in a way that the west
| did not.
| klipt wrote:
| > Taiwan or Korea, who had the same "living memory" we do
|
| They faced SARS, which never took off in the West.
| icedata wrote:
| There were 44 deaths in Canada
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/6458609/looking-back-toronto-
| sars...
| throw0101a wrote:
| An interview with a team in Ontario, Canada that dealt
| with SARS, including the Minister of Health (Clement) at
| the time:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPOkpIc2Z7U
| baybal2 wrote:
| I would like to ask people to not to attach "Asianness"
| to having a working government.
|
| Even back just 2 decades ago, in every Asian country, a
| typical saying would've been "When will we live like in
| America?"
|
| The West was the envy of the world in its best years, and
| it can be again.
|
| If you can fix your societal problems, you will be, if
| you can not, you will not.
| nrp wrote:
| Other commenters mentioned SARS, but specifically for
| Korea, they faced a MERS outbreak in 2015 that resulted
| in deliberate policy changes that made their response to
| COVID-19 rapid and effective.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The problem is that the west has nobody in power with
| living memory of a pandemic._
|
| Irrelevant. It's why we have things like (history) books:
| so that we don't have to relive past events to learn from
| them and repeat every mistake done in the past. It's
| cheaper to learn from other people's mistakes than your
| own.
|
| The Trump Administration was specifically warned about
| pandemics before they even took power:
|
| > _"Health officials warn that this could become the worst
| influenza pandemic since 1918," Trump's aides were told.
| Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and
| Texas._
|
| > _The briefing was intended to hammer home a new,
| terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the
| incoming president's responsibility to protect Americans
| amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic
| currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn't
| really happen -- it was among a handful of scenarios
| presented to Trump's top aides as part of a legally
| required transition exercise with members of the outgoing
| administration of Barack Obama._
|
| * https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-
| inauguration-...
|
| Trump could have done something between 4-6 weeks sooner
| per briefings in January:
|
| * https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-
| intellig...
|
| When H1N1 appeared in April 2009 the response was swift and
| decisive:
|
| > _The CDC 's summary report[1] of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic
| outlines how tests were administered at the time. The virus
| was first detected in the US on April 15. The CDC informed
| the World Health Organization about initial cases April 18.
| A test to detect this strain of swine flu was developed by
| the CDC and cleared for use 10 days later, on April 28, and
| the CDC began shipping tests across the US and around the
| world on May 1._
|
| * https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/politics/fact-checking-
| trumps...
|
| China's lack of transparency did not help matters:
|
| > _The research also found that if interventions in the
| country could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or
| three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66
| percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively -
| significantly limiting the geographical spread of the
| disease. However, if NPIs were conducted one week, two
| weeks, or three weeks later than they were, the number of
| cases may have shown a 3-fold, 7-fold, or 18-fold increase,
| respectively._
|
| * https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2020/03/covid-19-china
| .pa...
|
| * Study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03
| .20029843v...
|
| But all the "technical" knowledge to do the right thing was
| there. There is nothing new to this situation that we
| didn't already understand from an epidemiological
| perspective.
| avz wrote:
| > The problem is that the west has nobody in power with
| living memory of a pandemic. [...] there hasn't been a
| pandemic in the west in over 100 years...
|
| Recent counter-example:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_in_the_Unit
| e...
|
| Key stats:
|
| * global cases: 700 million - 1.4 billion
|
| * global deaths: 150,000-575,000
|
| * US cases: 60.8 million
|
| * US deaths: 12,469
|
| A few more counter-examples can be found here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
|
| (Edit: added key stats)
| devy wrote:
| Also just to point out, for 2009 Swine flu pandemic, we
| had vaccines (effective 43%) and antiviral treatments can
| significantly help. This time since COVID-19 is a novel
| virus, we have nothing.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Do the math on the death rate. Same as normal flu. Not
| the same thing as this pandemic.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There have been multiple pandemics in living memory of ~all
| current world leaders, many of which killed millions.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| What pandemics have people in the west directly
| experienced in living memory? As far as I am aware, all
| pandemics in recent memory have happened in Africa or
| Asia.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| In addition to AIDS, there were major American flu
| pandemics in 2009 and 1968. 1957 too, depending on how
| old you consider to be "living memory" - many federal
| leaders were teenagers at the time.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| IIRC, I was a teenager when AIDS came out. It was not
| classified as a global pandemic.
|
| It's quite hard to catch and was mostly limited in the US
| to IV drug users and gay men. It became a human rights
| issue because both of those populations were generally
| deemed to be sinners and people tended to not care if
| they died.
|
| The fight was not just against the disease itself. It was
| very much against prejudice and the threat of draconian
| measures aimed at specific populations.
|
| Non drug using heterosexual populations in the US mostly
| didn't care. It was largely deemed to be irrelevant if
| you weren't one of the "sinners" that most folks wished
| would drop dead anyway because we're so loving and
| Christian and all that.
|
| I don't think we've ever had a global pandemic in my
| life. SARS was the closest and it was mostly in Asia,
| IIRC.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Stating facts plainly gets you downvotes.
| avip wrote:
| Had to downvote your stated fact for breaking guidelines.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Pot, meet kettle.
|
| ;)
| lostapathy wrote:
| Why the downvotes on this? Yes, what parent post has to
| say is disgusting by modern sensibilities, but it's
| historically pretty accurate.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| I agree, but my guess is the last sentence. It did become
| a global pandemic. Today 0.8% of people age 15-49 are
| infected.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Maybe it needs a "/s" somewhere? You would think my
| disgust and contempt would be clear from context, but
| maybe not.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| It was absolutely clear. I suspect a few of the downvotes
| are coming from some of those "loving christians" you
| mention.
| microcolonel wrote:
| So basically nothing on this scale.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| For years, all diagnosed AIDS patients were expected to
| die within 12 months. It wasn't spread as broadly, and
| the flu pandemics weren't as deadly, but the general
| concepts that pandemics can strike hard and fast were
| definitely within leaders' personal knowledge.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| But you don't have to shut down the economy to deal with
| AIDS because it's sexually transmitted. That's my point:
| the vast majority of people have never had to make
| serious changes to their behavior or lifestyle to avoid
| contagion before.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| That I agree with, but as far as I can tell the degree of
| measures we're trying to take are unprecedented even in
| non-living memory. School closures and public gathering
| bans, sure, but those measures happen pretty frequently
| during lesser scale outbreaks. If anyone tried to ban
| social calls during the Spanish Flu, I'm not aware of it.
| pmorici wrote:
| The closest thing that people in the US might have a
| living memory of is the polio epidemic in the US in 1952.
| [0] Granted anyone who is old enough to have lived
| through that and remember it is probably on lock down in
| a nursing home right about now. The people in power now
| would have been children around that time so who knows if
| it would have a made an impression on them.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2012/10/16/1626708...
| akiselev wrote:
| Mitch Mcconnell, the person who sets the legislative
| agenda in the Senate, wrote this in his memoir:
|
| _It's one of my life's great fortunes that Sister's home
| was only about sixty miles from Warm Springs, Georgia,
| where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had established a
| polio treatment center and where he'd often travel to
| find relief from the polio that paralyzed him at the age
| of thirty-nine.
|
| My mother took me there every chance she had. The nurses
| would teach her how to perform exercises meant to
| rehabilitate my leg while also emphasizing her need to
| make me believe I could walk, even though I wasn't
| allowed to._
|
| I bet it left an impression.
| wbronitsky wrote:
| Comments like this are exactly where HN fails the hardest
| right now. This is someone very strongly asserting that
| their ignorance should be listened to. It would be
| trivially easy to google the actual facts in this case,
| and yet this person chooses to instead to assert that
| ignorance is the better solution.
|
| I understand we aren't supposed to get personal on HN,
| but people are causing the site to devolve, and we should
| hold these people accountable to try and fix the issue.
|
| Please use facts.
| bsder wrote:
| AIDS? Legionnaire's disease? People forget the panic
| these caused until they were understood.
|
| In addition, we have had some _horrible_ flus over the
| years. 1994(ish) and 1977(ish) stick out in my mind.
|
| Anyone who says: "Oh, it's just a nasty flu" _has never
| had a bad flu_. I can 't imagine being _more_ sick than
| being stuck in bed for two solid weeks not wanting to
| move because it hurts so bad but you have to make
| yourself some food and then choke it down only to throw
| it up.
|
| And Covid-19 is _WORSE THAT THAT_! Holy hell, people, I
| 'd do _ANYTHING_ to avoid that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I had a couple of weeks paralysis as a result of a bad
| flue in my teens. Scary as hell.
| 1996 wrote:
| Guillan Barre syndrome (paralysis) can be seen after
| vaccines or viral infection
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| >> _As far as I am aware..._
|
| Doesn't really matter what you are aware or not. USA and
| the major countries have thousands of people that do just
| that, monitor epidemics.
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html
| That's their job and they have ways to notify leadership.
| Other look out for steroids, others for hackers hacking
| power plants, others look out for terror threats and so
| on.
|
| It turns out that out intel services knew about this and
| its potential since January but civilian leader more or
| less ignored it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
| security/us-intellig...
| ptero wrote:
| I am pretty sure H1N1 (aka swine flu) was declared a
| worldwide pandemic by the WHO.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Fatality rate similar to the normal flu.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| AIDS, Swine Flu, probably MMR?
| toasterlovin wrote:
| AIDS: easily avoided
|
| MMR: easily avoided
|
| That leaves swine flu. According to this Wikipedia page
| about the 2009 flu pandemic (which is what the term
| "swine flu" references, as best as I can tell), worldwide
| fatalities are estimated at 575 thousand (upper bound)
| and worldwide infections are estimated at 700 million
| (lower bound). Given those numbers, the worst case
| fatality rate is 0.08%. Then there is this quote:
|
| > A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that
| the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1
| flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.
|
| So my point remains: no one in the west had direct
| experience of a pandemic.
|
| Wikipedia page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
| Jeema101 wrote:
| AIDS was not easily avoided. The blood supply was not
| screened early on. Many people early in the epidemic were
| infected from simple transfusions. Famous American tennis
| player Arthur Ashe contracted it and died in this manner.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Wow, AIDS and MMR has not affected the western world.
| That's a new one.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| That is not what I have said anywhere in this thread.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| >> So my point remains: no one in the west had direct
| experience of a pandemic.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| From Wikipedia (pandemic and epidemic entries):
|
| > A pandemic (from Greek pan pan "all" and demos demos
| "people") is a disease epidemic that has spread across a
| large region, for instance multiple continents, or
| worldwide.
|
| > An epidemic (from Greek epi epi "upon or above" and
| demos demos "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a
| large number of people in a given population within a
| short period of time.
|
| AIDS does not meet those definitions, unless you restrict
| "given population" to mean male homosexuals or recipients
| of blood transfusions.
| Retric wrote:
| AIDS cases have been to every country in the world which
| easily satisfies as a pandemic.
|
| Epidemic is different with Covid19 not yet qualifying.
|
| What's useful about separating the ideas is discovering
| the root cause. Scurvy used to be epidemic among sailers,
| making it easier to find the root cause and treatments.
| fma wrote:
| > So it was never going to be clear to most people that
| this was a problem until we had waited way too long.
|
| Sorry, but we knew it was serious. On January 25th, we
| closed down and evacuated the US consulate in Wuhan. That
| was 2 months ago.
|
| Unless by 'most people' you mean Trump and the Fox News
| audience.
| cma wrote:
| > The problem is that the west has nobody in power with
| living memory of a pandemic.
|
| Doesn't help that the WH pandemic response team was
| disbanded (fired/resigned and not replaced).
| senderista wrote:
| The President, with unlimited access to the best public
| health advice in the world, has zero excuses.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yep, the Intelligence Community was sounding the alarm
| back in January. By February, all IC reports to the
| president warned of an imminent pandemic threat.
|
| Trump of course downplayed it and ignored them.
|
| edit: yep, go ahead and downvote. i'm sure the truth
| hurts.
| gwright wrote:
| This is wishful thinking. It is doubtful that there was
| even a concensus from public health officials 8-10 weeks
| ago.
|
| There are way too many people using what they know now to
| criticize decisions that were made 8 weeks ago when the
| information/evidence wasn't obvious.
|
| It still isn't clear to me if the severe economic
| shutdowns are going to not have secondary affects that
| are just as bad as the virus. I think we should all be a
| little more humble about what should have been done until
| we are on the other side of this crisis.
| 23B1 wrote:
| To what (honest) standard are you holding the United States
| to? Curious, given the totally black swan nature of the event
| and the wildly different geopolitical, cultural, legal,
| cultural, and even geographical differences between, say,
| Taiwan and the United States.
| handedness wrote:
| We have a long history of bringing our B-game until we
| realize it's time to bring our A-game, make it happen, and
| almost entirely without meaning to, reshape the global order:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22658475
| ColanR wrote:
| > write a blank check and fire up mask, ventilator, and test
| production the second it was clear this was a global problem
|
| I think part of the problem is that we instead specifically
| prohibited pricing the masks in accordance with the extra
| costs associated with ramping up production.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If it is any comfort Spain, UK and Italy also failed
| responding to the crisis, so it is not like the American
| authorities are obviously worse?
| sgt101 wrote:
| Also France and the Netherlands....
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| > And I think one of the strongest virtues of the United States
| is being proven by Trump
|
| Strong military logistic?
|
| I think it is such a strong side of US military, that if you
| compare the entire logistic capacity of the rest of world's
| militaries taken together, it will still not surpass the US.
| [deleted]
| handedness wrote:
| Relevant article:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22658475
| primitivesuave wrote:
| I don't see why this was downvoted as it is certainly an
| interesting discussion- will this crisis prompt the wealthiest
| nation in the world to enact a suitable response to a viral
| pandemic?
|
| My opinion is a strong no. After hurricanes and floods, we
| simply rebuild houses where they once stood and forget they
| ever happened. Our modern hurricane response is nothing to be
| proud of.
|
| Before WW1, Britain was the wealthiest nation in the world.
| They controlled the seas of the entire world and despite having
| one of the smaller populations, could bend huge populations to
| their will (e.g. India). It took only 4 years for an enormous
| transfer of wealth to take place from the British Empire, which
| had itself been sucking up the wealth of the world for
| centuries, to the United States. The financial hub of the world
| moved from London to New York. I could certainly see it moving
| again, and right now the most likely candidate is Beijing.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" right now the most likely candidate is Beijing."_
|
| Beijing is not even the financial hub of _China_. That would
| be Shanghai.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Interesting to learn this, thanks for the information.
| mlindner wrote:
| The wealth shifted because the British Empire lost it's navy
| and thus it's force projection which made it lose it's way to
| control it's colonies and it handing it's colonies to the US
| in lend lease. That was combined with a guarantee of global
| seas protection from the US navy. CCP has zero force
| projection even over their local area of the world and are
| wholly dependent on imports from the rest of the world for
| its economy. The US could shut down the economy of China and
| send it in to millions of people dying famine by just putting
| some blockades up between the middle east and China and China
| would cease to be a country.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > They controlled the seas of the entire world
|
| In their heads. But meanwhile, the Dutch, Portuguese and
| Spanish had more than their fair share as well. This whole
| re-writing of history is what enables 'MAGA' and other
| idiotic revisionist trends, please don't contribute to them.
| It only gives more credence to the kind of exceptionalism and
| nationalism on display.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's romantic to speak in such absolutes.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| To be fair, the British are pretty exceptional. All of the
| germanic/viking derived nations are.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It depends what era you're talking about, but the period
| leading up to WWI the UK was _pretty dominant_. Neither the
| Spanish or Portuguese challenged them during that period.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Britannica
| matwood wrote:
| Evacuation orders are given almost a week ahead of hurricanes
| now. Updated building codes after Andrew have made wind
| almost a non-issue for houses built in the last 20 years.
| Expanded flood zones have forced more houses to be built
| above the 100 year flood line. Local utility lines have
| mostly been moved underground to avoid wind and falling
| trees. The last time we received hurricane force winds we
| didn't even lose cable.
|
| Clearly we have learned nothing from hurricanes.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Thank you for the information, my opinions were largely
| formed by contemporary news articles - had I been more
| informed I would not be so negative about hurricane
| response.
| sgt101 wrote:
| The British Empire was the pivot of world power through to
| 1947. Yup, then it dissolved and Britain was bankrupt, but
| the transfer of wealth didn't go from London to New York, the
| continental power of the United States made all the wealth
| anyone needed. Bismark said it "God has a special providence
| for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America."
| primitivesuave wrote:
| This is a great point and love the quote.
| sbilstein wrote:
| Huh? I lived through hurricane Andrew. Building codes were
| updated. People were significantly more ready for the string
| of hurricanes that came through 1999-2005. Miami is still
| gonna be underwater due to climate change but the response to
| hurricanes was dramatic. People know how to deal with
| hurricanes in South Florida.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Agree with you on this, like I mentioned above I was
| uninformed - happened before I was born :) Thank you for
| the information.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| California especially has a lot of really great people in
| disaster management, from CalOES on down to the various county-
| level agencies that they coordinate with. That's not to say
| that things don't sometimes go upside-down; the destruction of
| the town of Paradise was an event that nobody had trained or
| planned for and there were a lot of relatively little things
| that got mishandled in the process, which slowed down some of
| the bigger things.
|
| But then it was all used as a case study over the next year and
| became a training drill with new operations manuals for all the
| agencies involved.
|
| So yeah, I get what you mean. New York seems to be taking the
| right steps here in the absence of a functioning federal
| government. I hope we don't get to see California in action,
| but if we do, I expect it will be a very fast, competent
| response.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Weeks ago??? Nah. YEARS ago. The idea of a pandemic is so old
| even Hollywood is done rehashing it. Do you seriously believe
| the pro-globalization faction had no idea this would happen?
| Are you that naive?
|
| We've had plenty of warnings (e.g., Ebola, SARS, etc.) and
| there's no stockpile of the basics (e.g., masks, sanitizers,
| etc.) That's obviously systemic.
|
| If you're blamimg the current admin in full you're a fool. This
| snafu has much greater depth and breadth.
| adventured wrote:
| The US always lags on a major crisis and then surges over time.
| It happens in every instance. It's because of the scale and
| nature of Federal -> State -> Local as a system, mixed with
| human rights and democracy (no authoritarian switch to throw,
| so to speak). The US has to put a lot of things in motion to
| mobilize at all levels and it's extraordinarily expensive, so
| you don't want to do it unless you must.
|
| As recently as mid January the WHO was still repeating Chinese
| propaganda about the virus not being transmitted from person to
| person (China had known at that point for at least 30-45 days
| that that was a lie, they were trying to keep the world from
| isolating them and hammering their economy, hoping they could
| stop it quickly).
|
| Trump's delays cost the US three to four weeks of additional
| prep time. From the first week of February (closer to when the
| US should have began to prepare nationally), versus the end of
| Feb / first week of March. It was also entirely unclear how
| infectious it was and what the mortality rate was likely to be,
| until well into February.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The Army Corps of Engineers is one of the finer things in the US.
| I find it encouraging that they are involved with this effort.
|
| Please note that's an extremely specific observation and doesn't
| implicitly suggest anything else, positive or negative, about the
| rest of this situation.
| throwaway8291 wrote:
| At current pace the whole US will be infected by May (I wonder,
| whether the market have priced that in already).
| cm2187 wrote:
| To be fair, the market isn't pricing deaths of old and sick
| people. It is pricing the suppression of economic activity as a
| result of the lockdown. If the whole of the US were really
| infected by May and if by June the lockdown would be off and
| the virus in the rear mirror, you would see a big market
| rallye.
| robomartin wrote:
| A couple of observations:
|
| First, most of what's out there in the media and popular
| discussion is nothing less than ignorant. Sometimes I feel people
| watch too many movies and think they are real.
|
| Under normal conditions it can take over a year to go from
| nothing to making something as simple as a certified N95 mask at
| scale. Under normal conditions component lead times in
| electronics can easily be in the 8 to 16 week range. Not to
| mention such things as manufacturing tooling, molds, test
| systems, etc.
|
| Making hardware is hard for a reason. It takes time, and money
| can't always accelerate the timeline.
|
| And so, reporters pounding away at test kit, mask or PPE is
| ignorant and counterproductive. Making 100 million masks in haste
| could result in ineffective masks that provide little protection.
|
| This problem is exacerbated by a supply chain that has been the
| subject of major disruption.
|
| The sad reality is, when you don't control the entire supply
| chain you can only accomplish so much. This is surely a lesson
| that might change the world post COVID-19.
|
| Aside from that. It seems to me converting cruise ships to
| temporary hospitals might be the quickest way to expand capacity.
| They are self-contained little cities with rooms for thousands.
| Taek wrote:
| I really don't think they are doing enough. The virus is still
| growing at an exponential rate, and when you look at the other
| countries that managed to get things under control vs. the ones
| that didn't, the actions that NYC and the rest of America are
| taking fall squarely into "this looks like the ones that didn't
| get things under control."
|
| Public transport needs to be disabled. People need to be required
| to wear a mask when they go out. Police need to enforce people
| staying inside.
|
| Italy got the growth rate down to 15% per day. That's still
| enough to hit the whole population by early May.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Who is driving all the essential workers to work without public
| transport?
| mrfusion wrote:
| No thanks. I'll keep my bill of rights.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| For the sake of the rule of law, we need to reform our
| constitutions into something we will actually follow. A mix
| of lofty and silly aspirations that nobody can take seriously
| is far worse than something less ambitious but precise.
|
| I am 100% for a constitutional amendment that abridges the
| freedom of assembly in pandemics, provided that pandemics
| have a _mathematical definition_ that is hard to abuse.
| hibikir wrote:
| Newer constitutions have this features. For instance, a
| prime minister that can put a state of emergency limiting
| rights for 2 weeks without approval, but needs a
| significant majority in the house and senate to extend it
| further.
|
| Spain's first two weeks are almost up, but no major party
| in the house sees the measures as excessive or partisan, so
| the next 15 day extension will pass very easily.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Honestly, for the US at least, the existing system is
| sloppy but workable.
|
| * In times of crisis, the government abuses the Bill of
| Rights in a state of emergency
|
| * People who feel sufficiently aggrieved can sue (once,
| y'know, order has been restored and courts are functioning)
|
| * Sometimes, there is precedent showing the government
| overstepped and the plaintiff gets a nice payout to make
| them whole
|
| It's win-win, in the sense that whatever the emergency was
| that necessitated infringement of rights can be mitigated
| and the aggrieved can essentially be retroactively bribed
| to be okay to be a part of a society that has survived a
| situation that exceeded the planned-for circumsntances the
| Constitution was written to handle.
| briandear wrote:
| Something with barely a 1% death rate ought not count.
| macintux wrote:
| The irony of course is that 1% is only achievable if we
| take it seriously enough to try to keep it under that
| percentage; otherwise our health care system might well
| collapse under the load, and lead to large numbers of
| unnecessary deaths.
|
| But more importantly: 3.5 million deaths in the U.S.
| alone (1%) doesn't strike you as a pandemic?
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Offhand thought reading yet another argument that this
| will be okay because it's going to cull the herd of the
| weak and unworthy. Is that we don't have some much a
| problem with old, sick and frail people as we do smug
| arrogant people.
| wbronitsky wrote:
| Asserting that 3.5 million deaths ought not to trigger
| our country's most aggressive emergency response systems
| is vile and disgusting.
| zamfi wrote:
| > Italy got the growth rate down to 15% per day. That's still
| enough to hit the whole population by early May.
|
| We won't know the lockdown's effect until all the severe cases
| from people who got sick pre-lockdown have shown up at the
| hospital. That will be in the next few days. If the number of
| new reported cases starts to drop from day to day, we'll know
| they succeeded.
|
| If not...
| Taek wrote:
| It's hard to accept that Italy hasn't even been under water
| for a full two weeks yet, it feels like months.
|
| But I guess you are right, Italy didn't really crack down
| until early March.
| dnhz wrote:
| How can it still be spreading like that if people are staying
| indoors away from each other? I read that grocery stores even
| limit the number of people shopping at one time. Is it
| spreading though essential-type workers?
| umanwizard wrote:
| The typical latency between being infected and testing
| positive is quite long, I'd guess around two weeks. The new
| cases being reported now are from before the shutdown
| measures started in earnest.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's a period of days between exposure and symptomatic
| infection. The social distancing started ~a week ago Friday
| (and ramped up over the next several days).
|
| We are only beginning to see the impact from that, and it
| will be quite a few more days until we see the full impact
| (and with some states taking longer to put the measures in
| place, even longer).
| sixothree wrote:
| Unfortunately social distancing in some states didn't start
| until two days ago.
| mrfusion wrote:
| We should weld their doors shut!
| jacquesm wrote:
| At least try to stay serious. If you can't maybe write
| nothing at all?
| mrfusion wrote:
| So abandoning the bill of rights is ok but welding doors
| shut isnt?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Depends.
|
| * Is welding the doors shut going to get people killed?
|
| * Is dogmatic adherence to the letter of the Bill of
| Rights during a state of emergency going to get people
| killed?
| jacquesm wrote:
| You are giving credence to something that is based on
| false premises, making things worse rather than better.
| Nobody is going to weld shut any doors in Western
| countries.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You brought in the welding shut of doors. Which has only
| been reported from Wuhan but which did not actually
| happen there and has been blown wildly out of proportion
| by the usual suspects on the web.
|
| https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/46044/were-
| covi...
|
| If you seriously suggest that the US or any other Western
| government will resort to such measures than I don't know
| how to continue the conversation. It is preposterous.
| jmull wrote:
| > People need to be required to wear a mask when they go out.
|
| Well, you can't do that here because those masks don't exist.
| We don't have enough for healthcare workers, much less everyone
| else.
| 13415 wrote:
| It's probably not surprising to anyone who knows how
| industrial production works, but to a layman like me it's
| really surprising how hard it seems to be to produce more
| suitable masks in a short time. I didn't expect the supply
| chain and machines for such simple products to be that
| complex and hard to set up.
| Taek wrote:
| Not surprising at all. First off you need screens, molds,
| and other one-per-machine equipment that has to be fully
| custom to whatever product you want to build. When
| expedited, these things can still take a week or more to
| create.
|
| From there you need to assemble a pipeline and do an
| enormous amount of tuning. Your first runs are generally
| going to completely unusable products because of a large
| number of mistakes in the manufacturing process. It takes
| time (also generally weeks) to find all the places where
| errors are happening and make the appropriate adjustments.
|
| When you are making 10,000 (or more) of something per day,
| no product is "simple".
| kevmo314 wrote:
| It's probably not hard to increase production, but it's
| definitely hard to increase it 100x.
| lrem wrote:
| I have no clue about softer materials, but setting up the
| tooling for making the simplest of plastic parts is a
| multi-step process where each step takes weeks. And, for
| roughly the same reasons as in software development,
| making that shorter is likely to be both expensive and
| drop some quality. With medical equipment you generally
| don't want to drop quality. So, if making these masks is
| any similar to the only industrial process I know about,
| we might have the needed capacity just in time for the
| autumn rebound.
| fma wrote:
| That's what happens when manufacturing is outsource to
| China. They were able to ramp up by 20x and produce 200
| million mask per day. As a comparison, 3M makes 300 million
| per year and said they will increase by 30%.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/814929
| 2...
| fortran77 wrote:
| And the response is to tell people "don't worry! Masks don't
| help. They only work for doctors!"
|
| See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-
| face-...
| 1996 wrote:
| Like inkjet cartridges, masks have a DRM chip: if they
| detect you are not licensed to use them, they stop working!
| saila wrote:
| I don't think this is necessarily contradictory. Masks need
| to be worn correctly and not be reused. There's a good
| chance that a lot of people are wearing them incorrectly,
| and most people aren't going to have a sufficient supply on
| hand to avoid reuse. As such, they might give some people a
| false sense of security.
|
| This article gets into some of the potential issues:
| http://blogs.hcpro.com/osha/2009/05/ask-the-
| expert-n95-respi...
|
| It at least seems plausible that for the average person
| masks won't do much good and that it's much more important
| for health care and public safety workers to have access to
| them.
| jariel wrote:
| I think in this case any piece of cloth will do - we're not
| talking N95s. Basically, it reduces the likelihood of spittle
| etc. and so it reduces spread.
|
| That said Taiwan, S. Korea, Singapore are all riding the
| Subways, going to Restaurants, going to work.
|
| They're more aggressive with testing and tracking.
| ajross wrote:
| It also keeps your hands away from your mucus membranes.
| Just tying a bandana around your face is absolutely a
| useful mitigation. But staying home is better.
| DanBC wrote:
| If anything it makes you touch your face more -- masks
| are weird and itchy, and they need to be adjusted when
| they slip.
|
| There's good reasons why the CDC, Public Health England,
| The World Health Organisation, etc etc _all_ say that
| masks don 't work. ANd that's because they don't work.
|
| > Just tying a bandana around your face is absolutely a
| useful mitigation.
|
| This "protective" mask will helpfully absorb any moisture
| droplets and hold them in place in front of your mouth
| and nose, and you will breathe in the virus as these
| droplets dry out. https://twitter.com/MedtechMustKnow/sta
| tus/12412950342860841...
| fludlight wrote:
| The Instagram and Etsy crowd need to popularize fashionable
| home-made masks like the ones the new Slovakian president
| wears.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/fmeyis/corona_fash
| i...
| watwut wrote:
| And day before https://i.redd.it/njkm2on8kwn41.jpg
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Over the past days, an inspection team led by the Army Corps of
| Engineers, and including state officials from the Office of
| General Services, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New
| York
|
| Huh? What? How was this not already done? YEARS ago? What if this
| was something _fast_ moving?
|
| We knew a pandemic was inevitable. No stock pile of mask? No plan
| for ad hoc hospitals? If they're making it up as they go then
| what has FEMA, the DoD and the CDC been doing with our money?
| Using it for TP?
| jawns wrote:
| I am very curious about the "technical issue" that is preventing
| NY from receiving aid in the relief bill.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Cuomo addressed this in the press conference. I believe it
| relates to Medicaid. New York modified some Medicaid rules in
| January and the relief bill won't grant money to states with
| modified Medicaid rules. He didn't get into specifics, but said
| that the bill needed to be updated.
| danielfoster wrote:
| I am as well, but overall I'm very frustrated by the lack of
| coordination and leadership overall. This combined with de
| Blasio's proven inability to lead is making the situation much
| worse than it needs to be.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| This is a pandemic. Across country and state lines.
|
| Any response that is not federal is going to struggle.
|
| The buck stops solely at the white house and congress for
| failing to see the warning signs and properly respond.
| pmorici wrote:
| I think they saw the warning signs. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/03/burr-unloaded-
| stock...
| m0zg wrote:
| Cuomo OTOH has been quite effective at working with the
| administration to ramp up testing to the highest throughput
| in the nation, as well as enacting other measures, and
| getting FEMA involved, while DeBlasio's response was pretty
| much only to point out that "orange man bad", and dragging
| his staff around with him to infected areas. As of 2 days
| ago, he went to the _gym_.
|
| If you listen to WH pressers, you will see that federal
| government wants the governors to do what they can to
| procure stuff and enact measures for their states, and step
| in when the governors feel their response will be
| inadequate. Which is what we're observing in CA and NY as
| the governors of those states chose to put politics aside
| for the time being and actually engage.
|
| The reason for delegating frontline response to the states
| is that if the federal government steps in to buy medical
| supplies for example (which BTW it still does from time to
| time - they ordered $500M worth of N95 masks yesterday),
| such a purchase would first soak up available capacity, and
| then it'd have to be disbursed to the states, instead of
| going to them directly, adding delay and confusion.
|
| FWIW, I have not seen this level of coordinated response to
| _anything_ and I've been in the US for 20 years now. I did
| not know some of the things that are being done are even
| possible. FEMA and Army Corps of Engineers started to step
| in massively over the past week. Companies are starting to
| make ventilators. Drugs and testing equipment are approved
| for use in weeks instead of years. The list goes on.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| > _Cuomo OTOH has been quite effective at working with
| the administration to ramp up testing to the highest
| throughput in the nation_
|
| Let's be honest, Cuomo just went out and outbid everyone
| to get the materials his people needed. He didn't work
| with the admin to do a thing, he waved money around in
| the global marketplace. Not hating on him, that's his
| job. He's supposed to look out for New Yorkers. But a lot
| of states out there don't have New York's bottomless
| checkbook. Nor do they have New York's influence.
|
| Easy to look good when you're not really depending on the
| federal government for testing throughput. Again, guy's
| done a great job. But he's done it by circumventing the
| limitations set by the administration not really by
| living with them like the rest of us have to.
| pplante wrote:
| Anything to back up your claim of him out bidding
| everyone else? I believe right now there are restrictions
| on price gouging for necessary supplies.
| acomjean wrote:
| "Cuomo also urged the federal government to nationalize
| the effort to acquire protective medical supplies --
| including masks, gowns and gloves -- that are in short
| supply. He says masks that used to cost 85 cents are now
| priced at $7 as states are forced to bid against each
| other for limited supplies."
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
| updates/2020/0...
| m0zg wrote:
| Now imagine an entity which can literally print money
| outbid _NY_ and sent a substantial part of that capacity
| to WA (which initially was the epicenter, but where there
| were no new cases in the past 24 hours) and CA (which
| seems to have much less of a problem), as well as to the
| remaining 47 states where the number of cases is pretty
| low. Imagine what that'd do to NY and their case load a
| week from now. I'd like to also remind you that the three
| states hardest hit by the virus have some of the deepest
| pocketbooks in the nation. CA and NY have huge economies.
| WA has two of the richest people in the world who they
| could "ask" to "share their wealth" as it were.
| dmix wrote:
| There are so many unfair takes against politicians these days
| it's hard to tell who is actually right anymore.
|
| It's good people are holding them up to a high standard
| (elections are regularly presented as choosing the lesser of
| evils) but when all of them seem to be getting killed it
| makes you wonder if it's just the nature of the beast.
| Especially in the west.
|
| The few who have gotten praise (South Korea) were the ones
| that were more likely to ignore WHO and bypass other typical
| established political processes, allowing them to react
| quickly - and are by far the rare exceptions, not the rule.
|
| 'Government' and 'moving quickly' are rarely things you see
| in the same sentence in normal times, nor would 'good'
| politicians typically be defined as the ones who ignore the
| recommendations of international organizations, but yet it's
| something everyone thinks can immediately be fixed on demand
| like flipping a switch.
| tomrod wrote:
| > There are so many unfair takes against politicians these
| days it's hard to tell who is actually right anymore.
|
| Here is a handy guide:
|
| - If they are angry at the media, they are confused and
| should be muzzled for a time
|
| - If they are exercising insider trading, they should be
| removed from office
|
| - If they are coordinating and appear to be going to too
| much of an extreme regarding lockdown and response, they
| are actually well informed and should be granted additional
| responsibility and leadership, if capable
|
| - If they are offering help to business but not
| individuals, they should be muzzled for the extent of the
| crisis and not allowed to submit amendments or legislation
|
| - If they are deliberately slowing down responses, they
| should be muzzled for the extent of the crisis and their
| decision powers be given to their deputies
|
| - If they are ensuring the public nothing is wrong they are
| incorrect and should be muzzled for the extend of their
| crisis, and their decision and executive powers given to
| their deputies.
|
| These heuristics would ensure incompetence is kept in its
| place -- away from the lives and livelihoods of
| individuals, and ideally removed from office during the
| next election cycle as incompetent politicians have no
| business executing the will of their constituents during
| wartime or peacetime.
| trothamel wrote:
| https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/03/loophole-in-fed...
|
| Apparently, it prevents states from making changes to Medicaid
| this year, but NY already did.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Honestly, if this goes through, New York should just bus
| people to the closest states that got the coronavirus bill
| money.
|
| This should ensure that people get the proper care and
| definitely won't cause large amounts of spreading outside of
| New Tork.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I know I may sound naive asking this, but wouldn't it just
| be easier to change the Bill? If the bill doesn't help New
| York, what good is it? It should provide Coronavirus relief
| for everyone in the nation who needs it.
|
| But I'm not a political type, so if I'm thinking about this
| wrong I'm open to being corrected.
| lonelappde wrote:
| New York votes for Democrats. Making them suffer and look
| bad is part of Trump's campaign.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| This didn't just happen... someone wanted to screw one of
| those liberal states in this democrat hoax...
| bilbo0s wrote:
| If that be the case, I mean, yeah, just, no words.
|
| I'm disappointed I guess.
|
| I've always had limited faith and political and economic
| leaders, but this crisis has really just cratered the
| little faith I did have.
|
| Let's screw the liberal states?
|
| Let's make a few bucks on the stock market?
|
| Just, wow. Can't even be angry really, I don't deserve
| any better. In a democracy, you get exactly the leaders
| you are deserving of. I guess I know how much we rate.
| Lesson learned.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Also keep in mind the proposed $1000 check has a salary
| _minimum_ in order to qualify, not just salary maximum.
|
| I suppose the poor cannot vote you out if they are dead.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Wow. Didn't know that either.
|
| Just, yeah.
|
| To not only do all the stuff that our politicians, of
| every political stripe, are doing, but then to screw over
| the poor at a time like this as well?
|
| I think I'm done here for the day. I'm pretty sure I
| don't want to know anything more about what the
| politicians are doing.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Yeah, $75,000 maximum, $18,000 minimum...
|
| If you make $75,000 in New York, you're probably
| homeless... but in the red states that's fuck you money.
| briandear wrote:
| If you aren't making money before the disaster, why
| should you get a check to compensate for a salary you
| aren't losing?
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Because the kind of people who are in that bracket will
| spend it...
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Does anyone know if it is possible to volunteer for the Army
| Corps of Engineers?
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" The Governor also issued an executive order temporary
| closing the Department of Motor Vehicles for all in-office
| visits. Online transactions, including for license renewals, are
| still be available."_
|
| It seems a bit dated to even have in-office visits for things
| like driving license renewals. The UK equivalent, DVLA, closed
| all their office counters a few years back. Now everything is
| done online and by post.
| lostapathy wrote:
| On the contrary, I wish we'd be more aggressive about drivers
| licensing. The whole process is fairly meaningless.
|
| My mother-in-law barely has enough motor control to turn the
| key to start the car, yet somehow she just renewed her license.
| People like her need to be taken for a test drive, not allowed
| to renew online.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That more of a retesting requirement than a renewal problem.
| We can have both, easy online renewal for most people and an
| age cutoff for people where they require periodic retesting.
| refurb wrote:
| You can do a lot online with the DMV, but not everything.
|
| That said, the DMV is probably one of the most archaic,
| bureaucratic and dysfunctional government services in the US.
|
| Ripping on the DMV is a part of US popular culture for a
| reason.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's still things like driving tests that need to be done in
| person how do they do those? Most things can be done online but
| they keep the locations open for things like RealID and
| driving/vision tests.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Driving test centres still operate as before. You register,
| book, and pay for your test online, then go to the test
| centre at the booked time.
|
| But routine things like vehicle taxes, license renewals,
| updating addresses, etc, are all done online.
| dev1n wrote:
| Here is the very informative briefing Cuomo gave today [1]. Quick
| facts for the state of New York:
|
| 1. ~15,000 cases of confirmed COVID-19
|
| 2. 114 individuals have died from COVID-19 a.
| 70% of deaths were ages 70 and over and "majority" had underlying
| health conditions. b. ~80% of those who died under
| the age of 70 had underlying health conditions.
|
| 3. 18-49 years old represent 53% of all confirmed COVID-19 cases.
|
| 4. hospitalization rate of 13% which is very good, flattening the
| curve works. Stay inside.
|
| Cuomo has mandated the City of New York to hand over a plan in 24
| hours (as of today) to outline how exactly the local governments
| will curtail overcrowding in parks and other public places. When
| asked why Cuomo can't do this himself, he stated in a fair manner
| that while he does have the power to do so, he would not be as
| apt to devise the plan as the local governments are. This is the
| right move.
|
| Gov. Cuomo made a similar judgement when pressing the federal
| gov't to curtail fed regulations and to allow him to open over
| 200 labs available within the state of New York to provide faster
| testing than what the federal government was able to do.
|
| This opening of state-wide labs is why NY has nearly 15x the
| number of confirmed COVID-19 cases when compared to the next
| highest, the state of Washington. NY also has a more accurate
| hospitalization rate because of this, which is a very important
| number to be tracking when figuring out how to "flatten the
| curve" which currently sits at 13%.
|
| Governor Cuomo is following the playbook of South Korea as
| effectively as possible in this current political climate and has
| successfully deployed every move available to him and helped push
| federal barriers down to allow NY to attack this virus faster
| than any other state. He is showing leadership that everyone
| wishes to see at the Federal level.
|
| Having all of these laboratories in the state of NY makes me
| grateful every time I think about how much I pay in state taxes.
| But I can't help to think about how all of the bloodshed is a
| direct result of the failure of leadership at the federal level
| to be proactive about the situation. There is nothing of greater
| importance than every individual human life. The federal
| government sacrificed these people and all the people who will
| suffer and die in the future in the name of better polling
| numbers, placating a fan base, and keeping stocks afloat for a
| mere month longer than they would have.
|
| Edit: Moved 53% statistic into its own bullet. Don't know know
| why I had it as a sub-bullet of the deaths statistic.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjbIVnnMT18
| baxtr wrote:
| It's interesting that you are "relatively" optimistic about the
| situation in New York. I've been watching Mayor De Blasio in
| the recent weeks, and, he seems to have become more and more
| nervous over the course. Almost desperate. Maybe he is just
| playing it or he is not as cool as Cuomo, who, granted, does a
| good job so far.
| ttul wrote:
| Perhaps residents of WA will now contemplate the wisdom of
| higher taxes.
| manacit wrote:
| WA resident here, I am quite happy with the response here
| relative to many other places.
|
| UW has been running 2-3k tests per day for much longer than
| the NY testing apparatus has been spun up, we've actually run
| more tests per capita than NY (though I expect things to look
| more normal soon), with additional capacity coming online
| soon. Those tests have maintained a ~7% positivity rate,
| which is good news.
|
| We were some of the first to report community transmission
| thanks to the hard work of our research community.
|
| In addition, the business community in the Seattle area
| worked to push people to WFH long before other places,
| keeping hundreds of thousands of people from being potential
| vectors for spreading COVID-19.
|
| Frankly I don't think now is the time to be making remarks
| like this. WA is not perfect, but it does not boil down to
| tax rate.
| kitteh wrote:
| I took a covid test on Tuesday. Still haven't gotten a
| result :/
| crowbahr wrote:
| I suspect Washington will have an income tax roughly around
| the time we've got a functional self sufficient colony out on
| Ganymede.
| gwright wrote:
| > But I can't help to think about how all of the bloodshed is a
| direct result of the failure of leadership at the federal level
| to be proactive about the situation.
|
| I feel like this is hindsight thinking and it is also a waste
| of energy and divisive at this point in the situation. We
| should all be focusing on what to do next. There will be lots
| of time for retrospectives afterwards.
| gist wrote:
| > a. 70% of deaths were ages 70 and over and "majority" had
| underlying health conditions.
|
| > b. ~80% of those who died under the age of 70 had underlying
| health conditions.
|
| Underlying health conditions is a very broad metric. It could
| mean something as simple (possibly I don't know for sure) as
| 'high blood pressure'. I think we'd like to think of it as more
| severe than what that category includes.
|
| It's similar in a way when their is a fire and the local papers
| say 'had several building code violations'. Without knowing
| what the violations were (and if they even mattered to the
| fire) I don't think many conclusions could be drawn.
|
| And this assumes things are even categorized correctly in the
| first place.
|
| Of course 'age' is age so that is most likely an accurate
| metric.
| dev1n wrote:
| I agree. I don't like having underlying health conditions
| listed as a statistic. I think it leads to people thinking
| "oh it only really affects people who are sick" and then
| those people go about their day as usual and spread the
| disease further. I didn't want to skip over it though out of
| fear of someone saying I tried to frame the stats to fit a
| narrative or something.
| phd514 wrote:
| The state tax rate in NY has nothing to do with this response
| (that seems quite good) to the COVID-19 pandemic. The labs that
| will be performing these extra tests are private labs, not labs
| funded by NY state taxes. I wish people could separate their
| criticism of the different governmental responses to this
| pandemic from their preferred stance on domestic tax policy.
| akiselev wrote:
| AFAICT the State of New York is contracting out these labs
| directly and paying for all of the testing.
| phd514 wrote:
| The expenses involved in the response to the pandemic
| aren't in any state's budget. All the states are going to
| petition the federal government for aid and the Fed is
| going to print money to cover it. In other words, we're all
| going to pay for it through inflation. Honestly, that's
| probably not the worst outcome, but there's no way any
| individual state, high tax rate or not, was going to be in
| a position to respond to a severe pandemic like this.
| akiselev wrote:
| The California and New York legislatures were already
| seriously looking at funding single payer healthcare in
| their states, largely pending a cooperative federal
| government. Covering the cost of hospitalization for at
| most 15% of their states would be a drop in the bucket. I
| wouldn't be surprised if California, Texas, and New York
| would be able to raise $100+ billion each in state bonds
| on rather favourable terms for healthcare expenses and
| direct stimulus despite the federal liquidity injections
| (or because of them, I can't figure whats going on there
| right now). It's not enough to keep the economic regions
| from collapsing and taking the rest of the country down
| with them long term, but it's probably enough for the
| people there until the federal response is adequate
| enough to take over.
|
| If we're talking about the massive bailouts that'll need
| to happen for national security's sake, then I agree
| fully. There is no way any state can go it alone and at
| that point at least inflation spreads the pain a little
| bit more fairly, considering how bad multiple
| metropolitan regions collapsing would be for the rest of
| the country.
| dev1n wrote:
| We have a well-funded state university system paid for by tax
| dollars which provides these labs with competent, well-
| educated employees. But yes, these labs are not directly
| funded by state dollars.
| alkibiades wrote:
| yes private universities like stanford and harvard would
| have no way of creating competent well educated employees.
| do you have proof the employees even when to state schools?
| fyp wrote:
| The NY governor in your video cited that 40-60% of people are
| going to get it (20 min mark) and the same thing was said by CA
| governor a couple days ago too (56%):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633570
|
| So it seems like there's a consensus within the top-level
| leadership that containment is impossible. I still don't
| understand why we've given up when China managed to do it.
| dev1n wrote:
| My understanding of containment is that it is only effective
| when testing and tracing are radically pursued. There just
| are not enough resources at the state level (at this point)
| to do this with the effectiveness China has managed to do it.
| So we are left with one tool to fix this which is flatten the
| curve to not overwhelm the healthcare system and lead to
| further deaths. South Korea has been doing a lot of tracing
| and they are starting to see this as a great success, but
| mostly due to south korea's ability to track phones of people
| diagnosed positive.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Having all of these laboratories in the state of NY makes me
| grateful every time I think about how much I pay in state
| taxes.
|
| Those labs paid for by federal money?
| dev1n wrote:
| Nope most are private labs! But what do you think drew these
| labs to New York? Possibly a well-educated populace driven by
| a successful state university system funded by tax dollars?
| You better believe it!
| baxtr wrote:
| 2.c is not related to the 114 who died, is it?
| dev1n wrote:
| No - sorry for the confusion.
|
| 18-49 year olds represent 53% of all confirmed COVID-19 cases
| in the state of New York.
| baxtr wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying!
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