COVID-19 Mega thread

[GoTfan]

Is this it?

[GoTfan]

It feels like this is the megavirus that could kill millions.

[GoTfan]

Is this the one that could kill hundreds of thousands of people?

[GoTfan]

Is this the one that could kill hundreds of thousands of people?

It would be fantastic and amazingly great if it only killed hundreds of thousands of people. That does not look likely at the moment.

I meant hundreds and thousands. Like 100,000+.

[GoTfan]

I'm just feeling more and more depressed every time a headline comes out.

[GoTfan]

It's crazy that just three days ago I was calling a sub-1,000 surge "insane" and before that expressing shock at much smaller rises.

Death rate.

Officially 3,491 died and 57,389 recovered. The case fatality rate dropped to 5.7%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 102,186 (+4,145)
Hubei Province: 67,666 (+200)
Outside Hubei, China:  12,985 (+25)
South Korea: 6,088 (+760)
Iran: 4,747 (+1,234)
Italy: 4,636 (+1,547)

I think this is one reason my depression has relapsed.

[GoTfan]

I'd say Italy is more of a worst-case scenario for a developed nation and not every country will go down this route.

There is only a single route with exponential growth. All countries go on the same route, unless they implement drastic all-out containment/mitigation measures like China has done. Exponential processes are extremely unforgiving and don't care about any of our human concerns.

90% of what China did would be unconstitutional here at the federal level and probably 50% of would also be unconstitutional at the state/local level. 

However, there some things the federal government obviously can do.  I'm legitimately surprised passenger flights are still happening at SeaTac right now.   

Well that’s part of the problem with our cultural priority on “freedom” and our government, it hurts our response to crises. If Americans weren’t completely retarded, the Seattle metro would be under quarantine completely right now. Instead our politicians (specifically our president) only care about short term figures on the Dow for re-election and are too myopic to understand the long term implications of a pandemic.

A lot of people are voluntarily staying home/away from large indoor events, and a lot of business are volutarily closing/going remote, and all major airlines are waiving cancellation fees and reducing flights.  It may be possible to mitigate this without needing to officially ban/mandate all that much?  The private sector looks like it's out ahead of the government on taking this seriously just about everywhere.  The only case I can think of where a government ban was decisive is Austin shutting down SXSW.

To be clear, this is no endorsement of the "just let everyone catch it and get it over with" stuff we are hearing from libertarian economists.  That is idiotic.  This is about private action that is rightly being taken to mitigate the spread. 

Well we will see the true results of private action in two weeks.

Hang on, are you actually advocating for democracy to be suspended?

[GoTfan]

For those wanting math explained, and those doubting the severity of this situation, please read this whole article. It's long, but it explains things in easy to digest ways.

This whole thing has triggered a major flare-up in my anxiety and depression. I'm struggling to stay hpeful.

[GoTfan]

For those wanting math explained, and those doubting the severity of this situation, please read this whole article. It's long, but it explains things in easy to digest ways.

This whole thing has triggered a major flare-up in my anxiety and depression. I'm struggling to stay hpeful.

The article was written by the author of other noted classics in the field of epidemiology such as '8 Reasons Why Your Ad Attribution Approach Is Wrong' and 'What I Learned Building a Horoscope That Blew Up On Facebook'.

Anyway, if following this causing a major flare-up of serious mental health issues, then I would urge you to stop following this.

Yeah, here's the thing: stopping following something does not make it go away.

I've stopped going out of my house for really anything now.

[GoTfan]

Likely over a million.