COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[Grassroots]

(snip)

Current death rate in the United States is pushing 3%. Far far far deadlier than the common flu. Please do not wrap yourself up in disinformation, or at least at the minimum do not spread it to others. Practice social distancing, not factual distancing.

Best line of the thread.  This should be on T-shirts.

If it is 3% in US, what is it in Italy/Spain/France then? 10%?

No. Closer to 5%. And those are very elderly populations.

[brucejoel99]

538 posted an article (which I didn't read yet) about case counts

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts-are-meaningless/
Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless*
*Unless you know something about testing. And even then, it gets complicated.

If anything, at a minimum, this just gives you an indication of how f**ked up things really are.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/scontorno/status/1246432338860523523

[Roll Roons]

https://twitter.com/scontorno/status/1246432338860523523

Look what happens when you stray from the word of our lord and savior Jeb!

[Skill and Chance]

Do we know when things will be back to normal? (meaning: large gatherings, multiple people shopping, non-essential businessis open, no National Gaurd at state boarders, not having to wear masks, etc)?

Businesses/Schools open: mid-late may.
Large gatherings: Late June

I really don't envision insurers going along with international conferences or full stadiums until there is mandatory vaccination next year.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The small business loans, which are absolutely vital to get fully functional immediately to prevent a massive wave of small business failures, are... a clusterf***

https://twitter.com/SRuhle/status/1246444951791157248

https://twitter.com/SRuhle/status/1246446084605513728

There are 30 million small businesses, a huge % of which need this to work, and need it now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month. Now.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Working at Target I can tell you that we have strict limits on essential items now, panic buying has pretty much been banned. I can tell you this cause I’ve been verbally harassed and berated over the past few weeks upholding them. But guess what? Those customers can get f**ked. Done being polite.

Besides toilet paper and cleaning supplies, what are people trying to hoard?

Today at Walmart I noticed absences of TP/PT, bleach, ammo, eggs, hot dogs, gatorade, rice, and canned fruit. Walmart brand of certain things like tylenol, guaifenesin, spaghetti and grits were all gone but more expensive brands were available. Milk and Bread aisles were stocked. Surprisingly still a lot of plastic sheeting. 1:6 customers wore masks. I got there at 8 and there was no line but there were a few dozen people waiting when I left.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

(snip)

Current death rate in the United States is pushing 3%. Far far far deadlier than the common flu. Please do not wrap yourself up in disinformation, or at least at the minimum do not spread it to others. Practice social distancing, not factual distancing.

Best line of the thread.  This should be on T-shirts.

If it is 3% in US, what is it in Italy/Spain/France then? 10%?

No. Closer to 5%. And those are very elderly populations.

How did you guys calculate 3% for US and just 5% for the Italy/Spain/France?

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1246457825720553472

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1246564473189675009

[T'Chenka]

https://twitter.com/scontorno/status/1246432338860523523

Look what happens when you stray from the word of our lord and savior Jeb!

They should have clapped.

[T'Chenka]

https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1246457825720553472

Bill Gates could hands down do Trump's job better than Trump.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Working at Target I can tell you that we have strict limits on essential items now, panic buying has pretty much been banned. I can tell you this cause I’ve been verbally harassed and berated over the past few weeks upholding them. But guess what? Those customers can get f**ked. Done being polite.

Besides toilet paper and cleaning supplies, what are people trying to hoard?

Condoms and, weirdly, garlic powder have been pretty scarce in my area. It seriously took my days to find some damn garlic powder. I guess a lot of people anticipate cooking at home...and then having sex. With garlic breath?

https://twitter.com/scontorno/status/1246432338860523523

You get the elected officials you deserve.

[GeorgiaModerate]

On the subject of garlic: fresh garlic, which I like to cook with, has been impossible to find for the past several weeks.  What I've heard is that most of it for sale in the US comes from China, as opposed to years ago when most of it came from the area around Gilroy, California.  I've been using a jar of minced garlic instead.

[Progressive Pessimist]

On the subject of garlic: fresh garlic, which I like to cook with, has been impossible to find for the past several weeks.  What I've heard is that most of it for sale in the US comes from China, as opposed to years ago when most of it came from the area around Gilroy, California.  I've been using a jar of minced garlic instead.

I never thought about that aspect. Interesting.

[T'Chenka]

Working at Target I can tell you that we have strict limits on essential items now, panic buying has pretty much been banned. I can tell you this cause I’ve been verbally harassed and berated over the past few weeks upholding them. But guess what? Those customers can get f**ked. Done being polite.

Besides toilet paper and cleaning supplies, what are people trying to hoard?

Condoms and, weirdly, garlic powder have been pretty scarce in my area. It seriously took my days to find some damn garlic powder. I guess a lot of people anticipate cooking at home...and then having sex. With garlic breath?

If you both have garlic breath, it doesn't have to be a big deal unless one of you make it a big deal. Neither one if you is being gross as compared to the other and it cancels out.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Working at Target I can tell you that we have strict limits on essential items now, panic buying has pretty much been banned. I can tell you this cause I’ve been verbally harassed and berated over the past few weeks upholding them. But guess what? Those customers can get f**ked. Done being polite.

Besides toilet paper and cleaning supplies, what are people trying to hoard?

Condoms and, weirdly, garlic powder have been pretty scarce in my area. It seriously took my days to find some damn garlic powder. I guess a lot of people anticipate cooking at home...and then having sex. With garlic breath?

If you both have garlic breath, it doesn't have to be a big deal unless one of you make it a big deal. Neither one if you is being gross as compared to the other and it cancels out.

Can we call this sex math?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Working at Target I can tell you that we have strict limits on essential items now, panic buying has pretty much been banned. I can tell you this cause I’ve been verbally harassed and berated over the past few weeks upholding them. But guess what? Those customers can get f**ked. Done being polite.

Besides toilet paper and cleaning supplies, what are people trying to hoard?

Condoms and, weirdly, garlic powder have been pretty scarce in my area. It seriously took my days to find some damn garlic powder. I guess a lot of people anticipate cooking at home...and then having sex. With garlic breath?

If you both have garlic breath, it doesn't have to be a big deal unless one of you make it a big deal. Neither one if you is being gross as compared to the other and it cancels out.

Can we call this sex math?

For mathochists.

[Fuzzy Bear]

When are we going to be willing to have a conversation about whether we have massively overreacted without people saying that anyone who doesn't repeat the #StayAtHomeFor18Months #FlattenTheCurve mantra is wanting people to die?

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1246491967841882112

Hopefully soon.  I'm a 63 year old in an essential occupation.  I have come to believe that this is an overreaction that has arisen out of good and bad motives.

The medical and scientific "experts" (and I'm not denying their expertise) have, indeed, been repeatedly wrong about this issue, and that includes the now Iconic Dr. Fauci.  John Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it and Anthony Fauci thought this would be a minor deal before it came the Bubonic Plague Lite.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/02/17/nih-disease-official-anthony-fauci-risk-of-coronavirus-in-u-s-is-minuscule-skip-mask-and-wash-hands/4787209002/

If that testing shows the virus has slipped into the country in places federal officials don't know about, "we've got a problem," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA TODAY's Editorial Board Monday.

Short of that, Fauci says skip the masks unless you are contagious, don't worry about catching anything from Chinese products and certainly don't avoid Chinese people or restaurants.

That was February 19, 2020.  Here's what he said April 2:

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/fauci-national-lockdown-stay-at-home-orders-152802623.html

As more U.S. states issue stay-at-home orders and the federal government recommends a 30-day period of social distancing, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday suggested the need for a national lockdown, while acknowledging he does not have the authority to order one.

Fauci has lectured Americans about how people will die and how we need to stay at home longer, or "people will die".  And I get that.  I get it about "lowering the curve".  But will people not die if we tank the economy and they cannot maintain basic necessities?  Tucker Carlson stated last night in pondering the issue that we can go on like this long enough to where we become a poorer nation going forward.  Is he wrong?  Is that an outcome that can happen.  Carlson also suggested that poorer nations are less healthy than richer nations.  Is he wrong?

Our system of government is not an "expertocracy".  There's a place for experts, and Fauci is indeed that, but it's easy for him to talk how others need to hang in there because he's not losing his job and he's got the means to ride out whatever comes.  The same can't be said for millions of Americans' their entire future can be altered for the worse, and permanently so, if they have to do without doing business for 3-4 months (or even longer).  Business "experts" predict all sorts of 1929 scenarios should this go on for 5-6 months; are they to just be blown off?

There does become a point where the cure is worse than the disease.  That needs to be honestly discussed.  I'm not convinced that locking down America to the extreme degree we have is a solution that is smaller than the problem.  Perhaps it IS necessary.  But I'm not willing to blindly listen to "experts" uncritically.  It was the foreign policy Anthony Faucis that advised LBJ prior to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution all the way up through the Tet Offensive.  

So America is now somehow special from literally every other country that has gone under lockdown?
We have the most cases in this country because of people like you, who fail to understand that a complete collapse of the healthcare system and millions of deaths as a result (not just from Covid, but from the hospital collapse) will also hurt the economy. We had months before to prevent this outcome, and you people called us “alarmists”, told us to stop panicking over every little thing, compared it to the flu, etc. Your actions have consequences and it’s too late to prevent any harm to the economy. The smart thing to do would be to go under a strict lockdown for two weeks nationally, and then to ease restrictions based on infection rates in certain states. Of course, you would still cry about the economy and “muh big government” no matter what. We get it, you think science is an imprecise guessing game and Fauci doesn’t know what he is doing. We get it, your amazing internet biology knowledge triumphs over decades of public work and experience in fighting epidemics.

Your post is an ignorant personal attack.  Ignorant, in that it ignores my central point.

I've never been opposed to a "strict lockdown" for a "two-week period"  I have never said I'm opposed to THAT.  But there has been talk from "experts" (including Dr. Fauci) about continuing a stay at home order for several months, drastic restrictions for up to a year, and massive shutdowns of part of our economy for an extended period of time, and these proposals (which are, indeed, out there) are proposals that propose a long-term cutting back on things that are the stuff of life.  And it's being made by people who underestimated the scope of the problem not that long ago.  

I'm not the one that predicted what Fauci predicted, and I don't have the credentials to give an expert opinion.  I'm not a science guy, period.  But I'm acquainted on a daily basis about the economic devastation this quarantine has been on the most ECONOMICALLY vulnerable in our country, and that's the relatively unskilled working poor.  They may receive checks to get them through for a while, but what after that?  I'm also not a "much big government" Republican; go through my posts and find me emphasizing that theme.  (That's an argument which required you to use your reading glasses and not your flamethrower.)

I'll again remind people of the Vietnam War.  All of the "experts" were for it after they were against it.  What's the pre-eminent book about the Brain Trust of experts that got us into Vietnam, and got us stuck there?  It's David Halberstram's The Best and the Brightest.  The questioning of experts is often silenced until after they're proven wrong, when other people are paying for their miscalculations.  Dr. Fauci is an expert, and I'll give him that.  I'll give him a number of benefits of the doubt.  But I'm not going to agree to the idea that, yes, a 5 month lockdown is OK; anything to beat this virus.  That's a cure that is likely worse than the disease, yet people are proposing that in this situation.  

[T'Chenka]

LMAO!!!!!

Imagine declaring that Dr. Fauci might not be an expert, but posting it in a tone that bssically demands that everybody take you seriously.

[GP270watch]

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1246564473189675009

We should just save ourselves time. This is the summary for every Trump press briefing.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1246457825720553472

He's dealt with viruses ever since Windows 95 & survived them all. He's perfect for this.

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

U.S Case Stats today:
311,357   +34,196   

Deaths: 8,452   +1,048

Some states will report final daily numbers later tonight.

[It’s so Joever]

When are we going to be willing to have a conversation about whether we have massively overreacted without people saying that anyone who doesn't repeat the #StayAtHomeFor18Months #FlattenTheCurve mantra is wanting people to die?

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1246491967841882112

Hopefully soon.  I'm a 63 year old in an essential occupation.  I have come to believe that this is an overreaction that has arisen out of good and bad motives.

The medical and scientific "experts" (and I'm not denying their expertise) have, indeed, been repeatedly wrong about this issue, and that includes the now Iconic Dr. Fauci.  John Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it and Anthony Fauci thought this would be a minor deal before it came the Bubonic Plague Lite.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/02/17/nih-disease-official-anthony-fauci-risk-of-coronavirus-in-u-s-is-minuscule-skip-mask-and-wash-hands/4787209002/

If that testing shows the virus has slipped into the country in places federal officials don't know about, "we've got a problem," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA TODAY's Editorial Board Monday.

Short of that, Fauci says skip the masks unless you are contagious, don't worry about catching anything from Chinese products and certainly don't avoid Chinese people or restaurants.

That was February 19, 2020.  Here's what he said April 2:

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/fauci-national-lockdown-stay-at-home-orders-152802623.html

As more U.S. states issue stay-at-home orders and the federal government recommends a 30-day period of social distancing, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday suggested the need for a national lockdown, while acknowledging he does not have the authority to order one.

Fauci has lectured Americans about how people will die and how we need to stay at home longer, or "people will die".  And I get that.  I get it about "lowering the curve".  But will people not die if we tank the economy and they cannot maintain basic necessities?  Tucker Carlson stated last night in pondering the issue that we can go on like this long enough to where we become a poorer nation going forward.  Is he wrong?  Is that an outcome that can happen.  Carlson also suggested that poorer nations are less healthy than richer nations.  Is he wrong?

Our system of government is not an "expertocracy".  There's a place for experts, and Fauci is indeed that, but it's easy for him to talk how others need to hang in there because he's not losing his job and he's got the means to ride out whatever comes.  The same can't be said for millions of Americans' their entire future can be altered for the worse, and permanently so, if they have to do without doing business for 3-4 months (or even longer).  Business "experts" predict all sorts of 1929 scenarios should this go on for 5-6 months; are they to just be blown off?

There does become a point where the cure is worse than the disease.  That needs to be honestly discussed.  I'm not convinced that locking down America to the extreme degree we have is a solution that is smaller than the problem.  Perhaps it IS necessary.  But I'm not willing to blindly listen to "experts" uncritically.  It was the foreign policy Anthony Faucis that advised LBJ prior to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution all the way up through the Tet Offensive.  

So America is now somehow special from literally every other country that has gone under lockdown?
We have the most cases in this country because of people like you, who fail to understand that a complete collapse of the healthcare system and millions of deaths as a result (not just from Covid, but from the hospital collapse) will also hurt the economy. We had months before to prevent this outcome, and you people called us “alarmists”, told us to stop panicking over every little thing, compared it to the flu, etc. Your actions have consequences and it’s too late to prevent any harm to the economy. The smart thing to do would be to go under a strict lockdown for two weeks nationally, and then to ease restrictions based on infection rates in certain states. Of course, you would still cry about the economy and “muh big government” no matter what. We get it, you think science is an imprecise guessing game and Fauci doesn’t know what he is doing. We get it, your amazing internet biology knowledge triumphs over decades of public work and experience in fighting epidemics.

Your post is an ignorant personal attack.  Ignorant, in that it ignores my central point.

I've never been opposed to a "strict lockdown" for a "two-week period"  I have never said I'm opposed to THAT.  But there has been talk from "experts" (including Dr. Fauci) about continuing a stay at home order for several months, drastic restrictions for up to a year, and massive shutdowns of part of our economy for an extended period of time, and these proposals (which are, indeed, out there) are proposals that propose a long-term cutting back on things that are the stuff of life.  And it's being made by people who underestimated the scope of the problem not that long ago.  

I'm not the one that predicted what Fauci predicted, and I don't have the credentials to give an expert opinion.  I'm not a science guy, period.  But I'm acquainted on a daily basis about the economic devastation this quarantine has been on the most ECONOMICALLY vulnerable in our country, and that's the relatively unskilled working poor.  They may receive checks to get them through for a while, but what after that?  I'm also not a "much big government" Republican; go through my posts and find me emphasizing that theme.  (That's an argument which required you to use your reading glasses and not your flamethrower.)

I'll again remind people of the Vietnam War.  All of the "experts" were for it after they were against it.  What's the pre-eminent book about the Brain Trust of experts that got us into Vietnam, and got us stuck there?  It's David Halberstram's The Best and the Brightest.  The questioning of experts is often silenced until after they're proven wrong, when other people are paying for their miscalculations.  Dr. Fauci is an expert, and I'll give him that.  I'll give him a number of benefits of the doubt.  But I'm not going to agree to the idea that, yes, a 5 month lockdown is OK; anything to beat this virus.  That's a cure that is likely worse than the disease, yet people are proposing that in this situation.  

Understood.
I apologize for misinterpreting your position.
You are correct that in theory, there is a point in which we would need to balance out the costs of human life with the costs of economic/societal damage of long term lockdowns. All that being said, we are nowhere near that point, and likely won’t have to get to that point if we enforce these lockdowns in the short term. Unfortunately, the argument you make is abused by people to justify completely reversing lockdowns, and “going back to work” now. Fauci did talk about some Americans being under lockdown for eight weeks, but that would be a worst-case scenario if it had to be implemented nationwide for that long. As for your comments about how Fauci “underestimated” the problem, that is false. Fauci was well aware of this problem from the beginning, and it was Trump and a few select governors who ignored/downplayed the problem. It is definitely too early to tell how long we will need these restrictions, but I would expect some States to be ready to transition slowly back to normal after a few weeks of lockdown. I can understand completely why you would be opposed to a five-month lockdown, and I think we won’t need something like that anyways.

[Brittain33]

The small business loans, which are absolutely vital to get fully functional immediately to prevent a massive wave of small business failures, are... a clusterf***
...
There are 30 million small businesses, a huge % of which need this to work, and need it now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month. Now.

I can't hold the Trump Administration directly responsible for this - it was laughable to think you could launch a massive new program like this overnight. This is why you need items like this planned in advance so you can launch when it's needed. Unfortunately on its best days the Trump administration is merely reactive, whereas on most days it's actively destroying any knowhow and planning put there by previous leaders.