Covid-19 is a serious threat

[ShelbyM]

Anyone else not give a flip about the stock market or cruise lines? We taxpayers have been propping up and bailing out the stock market for a generation. Zero interest rates force folks into stocks who have no business there. What a simplistic measure of our economic health. Why give billions of dollars to keep airline shareholders from accepting the risk they happily assumed? Will the planes disappear? No, a new or reorganized company will quickly be up and flying. Give unemployment $ directly to the laid off employees, it will be much cheaper and more equitable.

[tcg]

The problem isn't the statistics, people are going to get sick and die. The flu does it over the course of a year. The flu is not as contagious and everyone does not get sick at the same time.

Flatten the curve really seems lost on many people.

[RollinStone]

[QUOTE=Donskiman;5186648]Like many people, I have been downplaying coronavirus. However, in light of all the cancelations and closures I have been doing some research. Many people on this forum are in the age range considered to be high risk.




I took the virus seriously long before our so called leader even acknowledged there was an issue. It didn't take a rocket scientist to understand what was happening in China!

[Solo_RV_Guy]

Think about this for a minute - what is the cash value of a human life? Not the moral or ethical value, but cash? It turns out there are lots of ways to calculate value and those ways weight various attributes differently; I found they range from $50,000 (for a specific type of statistical calculation) to over $9m. If a worker averaged $12.50/hour for an entire work life of 50 years, the worker would earn $1.3m. For the sake of easy calculation I settled on $4m per person in lifetime economic impact - feel free to use a different number if you like.


If the USA has 250,000 people die as a result of Covid-19 - people that would not have died otherwise - this year, that's an economic impact of $1 TRILLION. Add in the costs of treating those who died anyway, and the currently in-estimable losses to those who will have delayed or denied treatment for other illnesses or injuries due to a inundated health care system. Toss in the additional care for those who didn't get sick enough to die, but spent time in the hospital, on a ventilator, and needing respiratory therapy for weeks or months after. It's a big number even by government standards.


Six weeks ago I was doubting the virulence of this virus but as I watched Dr Osterholm change his mind, so did mine. When Dr Fauci said this was a big deal, I "evolved" when I read why he was saying what he said. When major league and university sports stopped, when music concert tours starting postponing or cancelling, when TV and movie production was suspended and Broadway shut down, with an impact in the low hundreds of $billions, I was convinced this was real. The people I work for don't leave money on the table for no reason.


I really, really hope this is as easy as some folks claim it will be, but right now Italy and Iran do not give me reason to think it will be. I hope it's not as bad as it easily could be.


Stay safe and healthy, everyone.

[HISSSSS]

Originally Posted by McRod

Umm, I think C5c5 below already debunked your epidemiologist theory.

Anyhow, China new cases seems to tapered off ALOT. Several days of NO NEW REPORTED CASES. Same with South Korea. ….

Yes this was true, except Hong Kong which was a shining light on what to do to prevent the spread a month ago in a large city will be in lockdown again very soon as a lot of new cases have just been reported. They had been holding at 150 total cases for weeks. You can't let your guard down if you want to stop a contagion that has no known cure at this time,

Let's see a show of hands, how many of you play Russian Roulette? This is basically what it's going to be for a lot of people in this world if they don't follow what the experts say about physical distancing, hand washing, etc. You may not kill yourself but you could kill others, probably those you associate with the most.

In statistics, there are two types of errors that can occur outside the statistical norm: Alpha and Beta. An example from post 9/11 is that Alpha types are when someone is mistaken as a terrorist and not allow to board a plane, that's only a problem/ inconvenience for them. The Beta type is when TSA doesn't stop the armed terrorist and then the plane gets blown up. Same applies to Covid-19, it's better to error on the side to have Alpha errors.

Yes, no one gets off the earth without dying, I want to be around a while to enjoy life, the grandkids, etc. and would appreciate it if you have some consideration for those of us of like mind and do what the health professionals are asking us to do so that we can survive this virus.

[the sights]

We got out of Florida on Saturday heading to Pennsylvania stopped near Savannah Ga for the night guess the people there don't care mid size groups restaurant open and full. We got home Sunday will be locked down till this is understood. cant hurt being smart

[doubleplay]

Originally Posted by McRod

Umm, I think C5c5 below already debunked your epidemiologist theory.

Anyhow, China new cases seems to tapered off ALOT. Several days of NO NEW REPORTED CASES. Same with South Korea. US transmission arrived later, so we have not cycled through our course yet.

Your point about the stock prices is EXACTLY my point. How much damage is going to happen to Americans in terms of prosperity and personal liberty? We are not the rest of the world. Every time there is a National crisis or world crisis, Americans give up both. It's easy to say, "Stay put and don't do anything!", but at what cost?

It's much, much harder to protect Americans liberty and prosperity while combating the problem, but that's why we are Americans, because we value those things. It also puts us in a different solution course.

What's the different solution? Let millions die because you'll lose money. You're right we as Americans unfortunately slaves to money because we are in ton of debt and half of our population can't afford a $1000 emergency. What liberties you're talking about? Your liberty stops where mine starts! As I write this my Marine son is deployed in an undisclosed location to protect your liberty and my daughter in law is hunkered down at home with a month old newborn and six year old. Check your priorities one more time and believe in science.

[McRod]

Originally Posted by doubleplay

What's the different solution? Let millions die because you'll lose money. You're right we as Americans unfortunately slaves to money because we are in ton of debt and half of our population can't afford a $1000 emergency. What liberties you're talking about? Your liberty stops where mine starts! As I write this my Marine son is deployed in an undisclosed location to protect your liberty and my daughter in law is hunkered down at home with a month old newborn and six year old. Check your priorities one more time and believe in science.

You don't have to lecture me on Liberty. I was deployed to MANY "undisclosed" locations before your children were born!

Millions are not going to die. Even if that is a speculative statement, the numbers don't bear it out. People will die, it will be sad. Let's not destroy everything else in the process.

Your right about Liberty. One person's Liberty can not impact another. So how can you think we can force people to not enjoy their liberties in order to protect yours? Liberty works both ways. It is not easy to protect it - that's what makes America both great and unique. Responsible Americans know when they are over stepping their boundaries and check themselves. Unfortunately, there are some that have to be told when that's happening.

It also sad that so many Americans willingly forego their liberties without blinking an eye that nearly 700,000 Americans have died to protect. Let alone the millions that have shed blood for it.

When this is over, we won't be measuring the death toll, we will be measuring the impact on society and reflecting on the cost to society in it's many different facets.

[CLIFFTALL]

Let’s all take a deep breath here and try harder to abide by our #1 rule here “ be nice “.
Thanks

[McRod]

Originally Posted by Solo_RV_Guy

Think about this for a minute - what is the cash value of a human life?...

Stay safe and healthy, everyone.

There is a known value. When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan we paid $10,000 US dollars CASH as a death gratuity payment to locals. US service members are paid $100,000. That's what it's worth.

Now put that in your calculator and recalculate.

Don't dismiss it as one person life is not worth someone else's.

So that's $1.6 Billion in world life cost (16,310 deaths as of 3/23) versus the world market has lost over $6 Trillion to the same date. As the death toll rises, so will the economic impact and loss of immeasurable impacts of Liberty.

[followingsea]

Originally Posted by C5c5

Both of my grandparents died within 1 week of one another from the flu in 2004 upon returning from a cruise.

.....

Sounds like a love story to me. A caregiver holding a hand and then dying of a broken heart.

At DW memorial service, one of her cousins told me not to take wrong how her 50 yo son acting. Her mother had died when she was very young. My DW had filled that role.

It is an interesting dynamic. When you are young you lose people who have always been part of your life. In a perfect world, you get to be a grandparent without losing a child and you spoil their children.

[Solo_RV_Guy]

Originally Posted by McRod

There is a known value. When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan we paid $10,000 US dollars as a death gratuity payment. That's what it's worth.

Now put that in your calculator and recalculate.

Don't dismiss it as one person life is not worth someone else's.

Afghani and Oranges comparison, Rod. My numbers were all from US sources for persons in the USA. I suspect there's a big difference in the typical standard of living and you'd know more about that than I. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Use $2 million per USA life if that makes you feel better - still $500B in impact. IF Covid infects 200M in the USA and the mortality rate is 0.3%, that's 600,000 deaths on top of typical mortality. $1.2 Trillion in economic impact on top of additional, unanticipated health care costs.

Like I said up-thread: I'd sure like for this to be as easy as some folks think, but I've seen no reasons to believe that will happen based on the behavior of humans. I'm sure hopeful it's not as bad as the worst models show.

[Paul Foster]

Originally Posted by C5c5

Here is one.

Did you even read the article? He was specifically referring to the ignorant actions of the US president who was acting on his own without even heeding the advice of the experts. This was also back long before it was even declared to be a pandemic which occurred on March 11.

What Trump should have been doing is to assure the US had plenty of tests from the WHO which were known to be effective and formulating a strategy like the one South Korea used to completely minimize the virus. Instead, he did virtually nothing other than to further his political agenda of restricting certain foreigners from entering the US while using this as an excuse to do so.

This was also quite evident when he announced that he was restricting The EU from being able to travel to the US while continuing to allow the UK and Ireland to do so where he conveniently owns golf course. This is despite the UK and Ireland already having just as many COVID-19 cases as most of the EU.

Originally Posted by C5c5

My humble opinion is that this event has been one gigantic learning curve for the world experts and citizens. No one got it correct - hindsight is 20/20 including for our experts. It is difficult for large beaurocracies to manage massive problems of every kind, especially now that our world is so much smaller. Its the nature of the beast and we should not be suprised nor expect things to go smoothly.

You are obviously completely ignoring what South Korea did.

Again, all the epidemiologists were essentially stating the very same thing, which Trump completely ignored. Instead of sending epidemiologists to China to study the problem, the administration fired nearly all of them, both on the NSC and at the CDC, including the one who was assigned to China.

Originally Posted by C5c5

This situation is life-and-death for a relatively tiny proportion of the world's people. For the rest - it is a huge inconvience. For many businesses, it could determine the course of their solvency. Thus it is not unreasonable to consider both the macro and the micro economic impact as an issue, nor is it silly to show some compassion to economic arguments. Real people's hard-fought livelihoods are at stake.

I have already posted an article from the NY Times which shows the CDC's worst case estimates are that between 160 million and 214 million Americans could be infected, 200,000 to 1.7 million could die, and that 2.4 million to 21 million could require hospitalization.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/u...-estimate.html

And all you seem to be able to consider is what an "inconvenience" it might happen to be.

Originally Posted by C5c5

Lets remain calm and weather this through.

My notion of "calm and weathering this through" is to heed the advice of the world's leading epidemiologists.Your notion doesn't appear to be anything of the sort.

[Paul Foster]

Originally Posted by C5c5

Both of my grandparents died within 1 week of one another from the flu in 2004 upon returning from a cruise.

No one batted an eye.

First, this pandemic obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with the seasonal flu.

Second, were they vaccinated as all seniors should be?

Third, it is a complete embarrassment that so many do die each year from the flu. The US is 27th in healthcare in the world. In 1990, it ranked 6th.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/...ic-stroke-2015

It is ranked 33rd out of the 36 OECD countries in infant mortality, last in obesity, and 28th in life expectancy.

https://www.americashealthrankings.o...nal-comparison

Our healthcare "industry" is a complete joke. We pay vastly more than any other industrialized country for healthcare that is below mediocre to them at best.