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The Official MacNN COVID-19 Thread (Page 10)
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Originally Posted by Doc HM
New advice here is to "stay alert".
Personally, I would have called it orange alert.
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We can all rest easy about COVID-19. Trump has declared victory.
Trump declared victory over the “invisible enemy” as deaths surpassed 80,000 in the US. “We have met the moment and we have prevailed,” Trump, flanked by ventilators and testing supplies, said during a briefing in the White House Rose Garden on Monday. He later said he was referring to testing.
So ... we have prevailed over those nasty tests? What did we win?
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I think his ego is just putting a positive spin on C-19 showing up in the White House and everyone now having to wear masks (except him, of course) Apparently, anyone entering the west wing is now getting tested, too.
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Originally Posted by reader50
What did we win?
If you are lucky, 4 more years of Trump — or so the President thinks. ![Wink](http://forums.macnn.com/images/smilies/oldschool/wink.gif)
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Originally Posted by subego
Oh... it’s much too valuable a resource to put in food.
I don’t like veggies in my pasta for whatever reason. Maybe a little pea action in a carbonara. Or, in pasta salad, but that’s different.
Depends on the veggies. My mum likes to put baby carrots in macaroni cheese but I find them a little too sweet. Mushrooms always work, I've done small florets of broccoli which adds some nice texture and I was always fond of grating a courgette or two, sweating it down a bit in a pan and adding that to pasta.
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I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
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Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
...and I was always fond of grating a courgette or two, sweating it down a bit in a pan and adding that to pasta.
For our American viewers, courgette = zucchini.
Thank you.
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Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
Depends on the veggies. My mum likes to put baby carrots in macaroni cheese but I find them a little too sweet. Mushrooms always work, I've done small florets of broccoli which adds some nice texture and I was always fond of grating a courgette or two, sweating it down a bit in a pan and adding that to pasta.
I do not like it with a carrot.
I do not like it with a floret.
I do not like it with a cremini.
I do not like it with a zucchini.
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Originally Posted by subego
We’re also starting to approach the breaking point because of it, and I predict we’re going to have to loosen up regardless of the public health risk.
What does the breaking point look like? Iowa has had a terrible response to this (Trump wanna-be governor), and has the terrible numbers to show for it. I'm expected to be back in the office full time next week. As of two weeks ago we had 10 reported cases in a plant of ~1300 people. As the state opens back up I assume we'll see a big ol' resurgence.
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Originally Posted by Laminar
What does the breaking point look like?
I’d say it looks like a combo of people going stir, the weather changing, the economy collapsing under the weight of shutdown, and the weird nature of this virus.
What I mean by the last one is it’s just not deadly enough. The whole point of the lockdown is so we stay under capacity. We turned the largest convention center in the city into a field hospital. It never got used, and has been shut down.
These are incredibly bad optics in terms of judging whether the lockdown is too severe.
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As the meme I've seen posted goes, something like: if it looks like you overreacted you were doing it right. Better to be overprepared than not.
People are restless here too. The MA driveins are the only ones in the area not open, the owners are chomping at the bit and their fans are ready to storm the gates... saying it's more crowded going shopping at Walmart or Lowes... but a) MA has more cases, and b) the bathroom situation is not ideal for a place you'll be for 6 hours eating and drinking.
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Here in Indiana, things are opening up. The salon where the woman who cuts our hair opened this week. We're scheduled to see her tonight. Needless to say, we're both nervous about it. Obviously we'll all wear masks. It's been about three months since my last haircut, and I have this Dr. Emmett Brown thing going on up top, but with less control.
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Originally Posted by andi*pandi
As the meme I've seen posted goes, something like: if it looks like you overreacted you were doing it right. Better to be overprepared than not.
Oh, I agree.
That’s why I qualified my example with “optics”.
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Originally Posted by Thorzdad
The salon where the woman who cuts our hair opened this week. ... Obviously we'll all wear masks.
I'm getting shaggy too. But barbers are not open in CA yet, and I've been thinking about the practicalities. They'll have to at least move the mask retaining straps to do a good job. Or ask you to remove one strap at a time.
Let us know how they compensate for masks.
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My dudes, I haven't had a haircut in... almost 2 years? I have felt the urge to go short though. Long hair is work. I have hairdresser scissors... hmm.
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I have electric clippers, so I could always shave the Bern, but I’m kinda curious what’ll happen if I just let it go. I started shaving my head before the male pattern baldness really started to kick in, so I’m not sure what my hair even looks like anymore.
Same with the facial hair, which has never been anywhere near this long. I’ve learned some serious, 19th century grade mutton chops are an option.
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I can do some minor trimming at the tips, but I have a head of very unruly, very independent, curls that react violently to any amateurish attempts to actually tame them.
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Originally Posted by subego
I’d say it looks like a combo of people going stir, the weather changing, the economy collapsing under the weight of shutdown, and the weird nature of this virus.
I don't get what is so hard about the restrictions placed upon us — for the vast majority of people. There are edge cases for which this is tough, e. g. if for unmarried couples where the partners live in different cities or countries and can't see each other. (That's the situation for a friend's PhD student.) But by and large much less is asked of us than e. g. during WW2. Since when have we gotten so whiny?
Is being cooped up with my family all day always fun? No. Do I look like one of the Beatles? Yes, and I call it my corona cut (it's funnier in Japanese). This is a marathon, and the restrictions on movements and businesses are part of that. Anyone expecting that we will go back to business as usual very soon is fooling themselves and needs to adjust their expectations.
Originally Posted by subego
What I mean by the last one is it’s just not deadly enough. The whole point of the lockdown is so we stay under capacity. We turned the largest convention center in the city into a field hospital. It never got used, and has been shut down.
These are incredibly bad optics in terms of judging whether the lockdown is too severe.
Since when is good disaster management bad optics? That's like complaining you don't need as many fire trucks in your fire department, they are standing around unused most of the time anyway. People should be very proud of that! Maybe that's a cultural difference, but Germans are quite proud of their disaster management — even though we never had New York City-type or Bergamo-type scenes in German hospitals.
Of course, some people will see this as evidence that some measures weren't necessary, but we know better. Public officials should not plan for the best case scenario, but prepare for the worst. And as we have seen in some regions, even that may not be enough.
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Originally Posted by subego
I have electric clippers, so I could always shave the Bern, but I’m kinda curious what’ll happen if I just let it go. I started shaving my head before the male pattern baldness really started to kick in, so I’m not sure what my hair even looks like anymore.
I use a #0.5 clipper all over everything every couple of weeks, so nothing has changed for me. I think I'm naturally a Rob Corddry. so it'd be pretty embarrassing if I didn't. I also cut the 7 year old's hair so no change there either. 2 y/o doesn't have enough hair to cut yet.
Wife started graying like 7 years ago so by now it's pretty severe. Her salon offered curb-side pro coloring supplies with instructions via Instagram video message, so I became her quarantine colorist. It went decently well. She's due again, but now that salons are starting to reopen they're not offering just color anymore, so she'll wait until it's safe and then get a cut/color.
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Originally Posted by OreoCookie
I don't get what is so hard about the restrictions placed upon us — for the vast majority of people. There are edge cases for which this is tough, e. g. if for unmarried couples where the partners live in different cities or countries and can't see each other. (That's the situation for a friend's PhD student.) But by and large much less is asked of us than e. g. during WW2. Since when have we gotten so whiny?
Is being cooped up with my family all day always fun? No. Do I look like one of the Beatles? Yes, and I call it my corona cut (it's funnier in Japanese). This is a marathon, and the restrictions on movements and businesses are part of that. Anyone expecting that we will go back to business as usual very soon is fooling themselves and needs to adjust their expectations.
I think most are being whiny. I have sympathy for two groups.
The first is people who aren’t psychologically equipped to deal with isolation. Thankfully, I’m not one of those.... in fact I’m secretly enjoying it.
The second is people who are financially underwater. Thankfully, I’m not in this group either.
Originally Posted by OreoCookie
That's like complaining you don't need as many fire trucks in your fire department, they are standing around unused most of the time anyway.
Umm... we had fire trucks (hospital beds). Thousands of them. They were sitting around unused, so we got rid of them.
Those are the bad optics.
Edit: I wasn’t as constructive with this second bit as I could have been. It’s been bothering me, and I want to apologize for it.
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Last edited by subego; May 15, 2020 at 12:39 PM.
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Originally Posted by OreoCookie
But by and large much less is asked of us than e. g. during WW2. Since when have we gotten so whiny?
If you consider the concerted, and ongoing, 40+ year conservative attack on government, the rise of talk radio and Fox News, and the attendant libertarian hurf-durf of "mah freedumz!", is it so hard to see how we in the US got here? We're living the ugly fallout of it all. And, now it's being even further amplified by social media and foreign influence therein.
Add on top of that the unspoken anxiousness and fear from living in a society with next to no social safety nets, and you have what you call whininess.
It's really an unprecedented moment in the history of the country.
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Originally Posted by subego
I think most are being whiny. I have sympathy for two groups.
The first is people who aren’t psychologically equipped to deal with isolation.
I see that, too, amongst friends, family and people I am responsible for at work. People with chronic (but managed) mental illness or serious cases of cancer. Old relatives.
Originally Posted by subego
The second is people who are financially underwater. Thankfully, I’m not in this group either.
These are two valid points, and I surely wasn't trying to say things are easy for everyone. I was mostly looking at people who do the complaining, and the loudest voices are people like us, i. e. those who still have a job and can work from home. That's who my comment was aimed at. Speaking for myself, my hardest sacrifice is spending more time with my daughter, which mostly destroys my professional productivity. (My wife and I are both working from home, and one of us has to take care of her, unless she is sleeping.)
Originally Posted by subego
Umm... we had fire trucks (hospital beds). Thousands of them. They were sitting around unused, so we got rid of them.
Those are the bad optics.
Agreed 100 %. And it shines a light on issues to what degree do you want the health care system to be operated like a profit-oriented business? Keeping unused ICU beds is very expensive and makes no short-term sense. This saved Germany from disaster: not only did they start out with one of the highest number of ICU beds per capita, they managed to empty beds by moving non-essential procedures and added new ones. Had our numbers been more like in other, neighboring countries, we would have had very different images coming out of my country of birth.
I have not voted for any party that is in Germany's federal government (mid-right, mid-left coalition), but I nevertheless appreciate how the government has dealt with the situation. Nothing is perfect, and there are a lot of things that could and should have been done better. But nevertheless, the broad strokes were good: they activated the entire society, researchers (epidemiologists, virologists and the like with whom they shared data), companies (they asked VW to tap into their supply network to acquire PPE in China), etc.
Originally Posted by Thorzdad
If you consider the concerted, and ongoing, 40+ year conservative attack on government, the rise of talk radio and Fox News, and the attendant libertarian hurf-durf of "mah freedumz!", is it so hard to see how we in the US got here? We're living the ugly fallout of it all. And, now it's being even further amplified by social media and foreign influence therein.
I totally agree. As a non-American, I really, really never got the outright hatred some people have for “the government”. To me, the government was always “us”, government has always been a reflection of society. And this thin veneer of federalism (when it suits us) is also something that in my political tradition has no left-right bias in any form. (Germany has a very strong form of federalism like the US.)
And indeed, the response inside Germany strongly relied on that federal structure, the fact that local governments, municipalities and states have a lot of power sped up the process of implementing testing while taking local considerations into account. At the same time the federal government mediated between the states and was coordinating things like purchasing PPEs, medical supplies and running point on the scientific efforts. Coordination was and is to a large degree voluntary — but you can decide to do a lot of things voluntarily even when you have no legal obligation to do so.
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I had to bail when South Korea was chosen as the point of reference. For all intents and purposes, South Korea is an island, and has had decades of practice rallying themselves to meet a threat.
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Originally Posted by subego
I had to bail when South Korea was chosen as the point of reference.
It is a good article aimed at average people and focussing more on the political aspects (which is important). South Korea’s response shares a lot in common with other countries that have dealt with Covid-19 successfully (Taiwan comes to mind). Or countries that were a bit late with their initial reaction, but got their act together (Germany, Austria). So you should definitely read it.
Originally Posted by subego
For all intents and purposes, South Korea is an island, and has had decades of practice rallying themselves to meet a threat.
Nothing is an island for pandemics, for there is air travel, and Seoul’s Incheon airport is one of the important local hubs (and one of the most pleasant airports I have ever been to). If anything, South Korea was way more exposed than the rest of the world due to the strong ties to China (business and tourism). And it is very close to Japan, you can take a hydrofoil from Kyushu for a day trip or fly for 1–2 hours, depending on where you are and where you are flying to. Yes, they do have experience with SARS and reacted way more quickly and coherently — which is the point. But that isn’t exactly “decades of experience”.
If your point is that it doesn’t have a land border, then yes. But there are other factors that are in its disfavor. Its big cities are incredibly densely populated, which makes it easier for diseases to spread. And just like any first-world country (except for the US, I guess), they also have a well-developed high-speed train network, which accelerates the spread. They have a big problem with poverty amongst the aging population, i. e. the part of the population for which Covid-19 is the deadliest. That is despite not having the CDC, which, on paper at least, is the most advanced government entity when it comes to infectious diseases.
The measures that made South Korea so successful also have nothing to do with it being “a quasi-island nation”. It reacted early and coherently. It rolled out mass testing in a safe way. Tests were free and easy. You can even get tested anonymously now. They have a decent health care system that is accessible to the population. Taiwan, which is a proper island (and it doesn’t matter that it is for the same reasons), coordinated with the industry very quickly. They pooled the best engineers from various companies and made them design manufacturing lines for PPE. Could the US have done the same? According to existing law, yes. None of that has anything to do with geography.
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Last edited by OreoCookie; May 17, 2020 at 09:44 AM.
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Taiwan is also an island, with a decades long history of rallying themselves to meet a threat.
One could almost begin to detect a pattern.
Apart from that, I stand by my position that islands have an advantage over continents when it comes to pandemics. I can’t even believe this was questioned.
Continental examples are subject to all the problems you describe in addition to easy land access.
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Originally Posted by OreoCookie
Could the US have done the same? According to existing law, yes. None of that has anything to do with geography.
And to be clear, I don’t take issue with this claim.
What I’m saying is an accurate appraisal would have compared the U.S. to Germany or Austria. As in “we are attempting to isolate as many variables as possible when doing the comparison”.
Edit: Austria’s kinda tiny, I guess.
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Last edited by subego; May 17, 2020 at 01:02 PM.
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The UK is an island. With a leader like yours. Not quite as dumb but every bit as useless.
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I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
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Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
The UK is an island. With a leader like yours. Not quite as dumb but every bit as useless.
As another island dweller, I was hoping you’d check in.
Would you say...
1) Being an island country confers no advantage in a pandemic.
Or
2) Being an island country confers a rather clear and obvious advantage, but in the case of the U.K. most or all of it was squandered.
My answer is 2.
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Both South Korea and Taiwan have massive amounts of trade and travel. The island concept isn’t really applicable here.
On the other hand, they do both have a long history of taking $hit very seriously. Taiwan has a total of 440 cases so far, with only 7 deaths (according to these statistics), while South Korea has had 11,050 cases with 262 deaths ( similar stat site).
Some of South Korea’s success can be attributed to very rapid response, developing tests very quickly and massively testing as many people as possible. This particular coronavirus is not their first experience with that virus family. But they also took some pretty harsh measures related to privacy: using financial, cell phone, and surveillance camera data, they were able to track contacts between people who tested positive and people who (possibly) hadn’t been tested. That helped them test even more people, particularly those who may not have been thought of as at risk, and/or those without any symptoms.
Contrast that with how New York City reacted. It was almost like the beginning of The Stand, with literally thousands of infection vectors panicked citizens fleeing the city. Often to Florida. Uh oh... Florida kept stuff open way too long and now where are they?
If we had had a pandemic crisis action team at the top of the federal government, we might have been able to develop a test and field it quickly - maybe even pay Seoul for the rights to their test and skip the development time. But no, POTUS got rid of that (already established and apparently quite effectively organized) team a couple of years ago. Water under that particular bridge seems to be littered with corpses.
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Both South Korea and Taiwan have massive amounts of trade and travel.
And are in a position to highly regulate both. It’s far harder to regulate land travel, and it has far more capacity.
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Posting Junkie
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Originally Posted by subego
As another island dweller, I was hoping you’d check in.
Would you say...
1) Being an island country confers no advantage in a pandemic.
Or
2) Being an island country confers a rather clear and obvious advantage, but in the case of the U.K. most or all of it was squandered.
My answer is 2.
I would say it absolutely should confer a huge advantage. But only under vaguely competent leadership or better. We still aren't quarantining people getting off planes. And there are still planes landing.
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Originally Posted by subego
As another island dweller, I was hoping you’d check in.
Would you say...
1) Being an island country confers no advantage in a pandemic.
Or
2) Being an island country confers a rather clear and obvious advantage, but in the case of the U.K. most or all of it was squandered.
My answer is 2.
But you should weigh that against the clear and obvious disadvantages these densely populated countries have compared with the US. Just seeing the advantages of Korea and Taiwan is not the right answer either. And if you look at the response in countries that have been more successful, you see that for the larger ones at least, none of that has to do with some of them being islands. If you want to look at an island nation that could take advantage of it, I think a good example would be New Zealand. It is also sparsely populated, so it had an easier time to deal with the crisis. But Korea is not as much an “island” as you think, at least in the epidemiological sense (in the same way that the UK is not separated sufficiently from its neighboring continent). Conversely, remote regions in e. g. Canada have a much, much stronger island effect than Korea even though they are part of a contiguous continent.
Originally Posted by subego
And are in a position to highly regulate both. It’s far harder to regulate land travel, and it has far more capacity.
In that respect, Korea is no that different from many e. g. European nations, many of which have closed their borders as well (at least until recently, some are opening their borders again just now).
Originally Posted by subego
What I’m saying is an accurate appraisal would have compared the U.S. to Germany or Austria. As in “we are attempting to isolate as many variables as possible when doing the comparison”.
Edit: Austria’s kinda tiny, I guess.
Special snow flake-ism is not a good perspective — every country is unique and has features that make it stand out. But the US is not meaningfully different so that it would change best practices in a pandemic response.
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Clinically Insane
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The article isn’t “let’s compare America’s response with that of the best in the world”, it’s “this is how Trump ****ed up”.
A comprehensive appraisal would note he’s not alone.
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Originally Posted by subego
A comprehensive appraisal would note he’s not alone.
Who else would you blame?
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Clinically Insane
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He is not alone in the group of “world leaders who have ****ed things up”.
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Posting Junkie
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He's not in great company though. ****wits and scumbags.
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Clinically Insane
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Totally fair point.
All I’m arguing for is apples to apples, ****wits to ****wits.
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Are you saying that unless an article about bad Covid responses includes more than just Trump, it feels like a Trump hitpiece and is less likely to be written from an objective perspective?
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Laminar
Are you saying that unless an article about bad Covid responses includes more than just Trump, it feels like a Trump hitpiece and is less likely to be written from an objective perspective?
Oh, no no no. Not at all.
The thesis of the article is “Trump ****ed this up”. I’d say that’s an accurate thesis.
As evidence, the article started to go into a comparison of the country which both had the world’s best response, and began with a couple good cards in their hand.
That’s where I got “hit piece” from. That the author is more interested in making Trump look as bad as possible. If this wasn’t their intent, well, they just happened to make the choice which did it anyway.
Germany or France make much better choices.
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Originally Posted by subego
He is not alone in the group of “world leaders who have ****ed things up”.
Sure, Johnson, Bolsonaro and to a lesser degree Abe come to mind. But you sound a bit sour that Trump is singled out in an American newspaper.
Why do you call the article a hit piece? Every day about 2/3 of a 9/11 is happening in terms of death toll. For weeks on end. And a lot of those deaths were, unlike 9/11, preventable. A hit piece to me implies a smear campaign where facts are twisted or manufactured to make someone look unnecessarily bad.
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Knowing the US media, I doubt they are comparing Trump to anyone else, good or bad. He's just obviously dreadful, even in a vacuum.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by OreoCookie
Sure, Johnson, Bolsonaro and to a lesser degree Abe come to mind. But you sound a bit sour that Trump is singled out in an American newspaper.
Why do you call the article a hit piece? Every day about 2/3 of a 9/11 is happening in terms of death toll. For weeks on end. And a lot of those deaths were, unlike 9/11, preventable. A hit piece to me implies a smear campaign where facts are twisted or manufactured to make someone look unnecessarily bad.
Let me try it this way.
Think of this as a science experiment, because it is. We’re assessing Trump’s performance by comparing it to a control.
The more similar the control is to our test subject in all aspects beyond competency of the executive, the more reliable the conclusion we can draw from the comparison.
Our best option for a control is... South Korea?
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Last edited by subego; May 19, 2020 at 10:22 AM.
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Originally Posted by subego
Our best option for a control is... South Korea?
You say that as if SK is some kind of mud hut third world nation.
Anyway...here, you pick one off this list for your control.
Worldwide COVID-19 Deaths per Million Inhabitants
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Thorzdad
You say that as if SK is some kind of mud hut third world nation.
No. I say it like I don’t understand it as a choice for “most like the United States independent of executive competence”.
I again offer the options of France or Germany.
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Originally Posted by subego
The more similar the control is to our test subject in all aspects beyond competency of the executive, the more reliable the conclusion we can draw from the comparison.
Our best option for a control is... South Korea?
What speaks against South Korea? You seem to be hung up on geography, whereas epidemiologically the more relevant criterion is how much movement you have (domestically as well as in and out of the country). Rural communities in Kentucky, Saskatchewan or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are much, much more isolated than South Korea or the UK (as a whole).
Originally Posted by subego
I again offer the options of France or Germany.
In what way are France and Germany better options than South Korea? All of those countries are first-world countries, democracies and tightly woven into the fabric of international commerce. Surely, no comparison is exact here and you can always finagle your criteria to exclude comparisons. Germany? Population density is too high, total population too small. France, ditto. South Korea? Too isolated geographically. Singapore? Not a democracy. New Zealand? Geographically isolated, small total population. We can play this game all day long.
From where I am sitting it seems that you object to comparing a country with one of the best responses to the first-world country with arguably the worst response to the Covid-19 pandemic. And even if there are factors which are peculiar to one nation and not another, that does not invalidate the comparison. The US's expensive, yet extremely inefficient and unequal health care system comes to mind, no other first-world country has a health care system like the US does. But I would argue this is precisely why comparisons to other countries are useful.
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We may be on the verge of swearing in President Pence. Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative to being infected. In lieu of a mask perhaps. It can cause heart problems, and has not been tested as a preventative.
What are the risks in taking hydroxychloroquine?
There are a number of side-effects. The most serious is that it can interfere with the rhythm of the heart. Other side-effects include headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, skin rash or itching or hair loss. Research published by the Mayo Clinic has suggested that “off-label” repurposing of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine could lead to “drug-induced sudden cardiac death”.
Although Trump’s official physician has said he was in “very good health” at his last official checkup, the president is 73 and his recorded weight would put him in a BMI category of “clinically obese”.
He got the White House doctor to give him the meds, possibly against the law. It's supposed to be released to patients with infections. Wonder what would happen if he asked for methamphetamines.
In a surely unrelated matter, Trump is now threatening to cut WHO funding permanently, and pull the US out of the organization. There were no explicit mentions of squirrels. Also, I think Congress has ultimate authority over donations to the WHO, not the executive.
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Trump has been allowed to do whatever he wants, why buck tradition?
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Posting Junkie
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Do we believe Trump is actually taking hydroxychloroquine? I'm not convinced to be honest. I'm not convinced he's any kind of risk taker when it comes to himself. Its just an advert. The latest subsection of his presidential con tour.
Can you have a heart attack if you don't have a heart?
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Clinically Insane
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@Oreo
I outlined this before.
South Korea is geographically isolated, and has decades of experience rallying themselves to meet a common threat. I’ll also add South Korea values conformity way more than the United States, or any European country for that matter.
What makes France and Germany more suitable is they are, like the U.S., not these things.
Please retain from accusing me of arguing in bad faith. I do not do this to you, and expect the same in return.
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