My State Has Gone Full Fucking Clownship

[Fat Cat]

Yesterday, that Yertle the Turtle looking zipperhead motherfucker, our Governor David Ige held a press conference wherein he said he was:

1. Directing all bars and clubs to close. Restaurants should go to take-out only, Ige said, and tour companies should limit or shut down operations immediately.

2. Asking tourists to stay away for at least 30 days.

3. Bolstering screening of cruise ship passengers, with temperature checks and questions about symptoms and recent travel. Airports would also be bolstering their procedures.

4. Stopping all non-essential state travel, including inter-island travel. Those who do have to travel will have to go into self-isolation for 14 days.

5. Directing all movie theaters, visitor attractions and places of worship to close.

6. Closing all state libraries, parks, events at the State Capitol building, Aloha Stadium and Hawaii Convention Center.

...also all schools are closed through April 7, for now. Then, this just came in from the County of Kauai, one island over:

"Mayor Derek S.K Kawakami has implemented, via emergency rule, an islandwide nighttime curfew beginning Friday, March 20. The curfew will be in effect from 9 p.m. through 5 a.m. daily until further notice. Every individual within the County of Kaua‘i must remain in their residence during these specified hours."

Has your state gone whole banana? Or is it just us? I'm used to the fact that my homeland is a banana republic with an American sticker slapped on its ass, but this is too much. I cannot overstate how damaging closing all service industries is here, where every second job is in a hotel, restaurant, airport, or similar visitor industry sector.

The cure is far more harmful than the disease.

[Turdacious]

DC is close to that. The business district is nearly deserted, restaurants are takeout only, and schools are closed/online classes only. Tourism is basically dead, and COVID cases keep popping up. Suburbs are a mixed bag of restrictions.

I know two guys who might have it. Unfortunately I was in proximity of one of them this weekend.

[Fat Cat]

I'm absolutely baffled how a nighttime curfew has any bearing on a virus that is communicable at any time of the day or night.

On the plus side, I am a member of the #HOMEGYMMASTERRACE so my gains are safe from the clutches of the gubbermint.

[Grandpa's Spells]

I'm absolutely baffled how a nighttime curfew has any bearing on a virus that is communicable at any time of the day or night.

See photos of New Orleans from a few nights ago. Curfew makes it easy just send idiot gatherings home.

[seeahill]

All that in Montana, but no curfew.

[Fat Cat]

All that in Montana, but no curfew.

That's because the only thing to do in Montana at night is drink yourself to death.

[Fat Cat]

I'm absolutely baffled how a nighttime curfew has any bearing on a virus that is communicable at any time of the day or night.

See photos of New Orleans from a few nights ago. Curfew makes it easy just send idiot gatherings home.

But not the other idiot gatherings that happen at all hours of the day? Does not compute.

[newguy]

Southern Cal (los angeles) has been the same. The mandate so far has been schools closed, no restaurants except for delivery or takeout, no bars or clubs. No theaters. No gym. Deptartment stores are closed (I don't know if that is mandate or just voluntary). Every day more things just shut down. We do not have a curfew and have not been ordered to stay in except for essentials yet, but I'm guessing that is the next step.

The local golf course is still open and boomers are out golfing like it's nothing.

Our cases are starting that escalation you see. And in reality they must be a lot higher. My healthcare provider is only testing if you have symptoms AND are in a risk category. Other than that their attitude is you should be home for two weeks anyways.

Word on the street is that schools are possibly just done for the school year.

[Grandpa's Spells]

There’s a lot of uncertainty in what could happen but at the shitty end it’s catastrophic. Millions dead in 1-3 months. South Korea had their first case the same day we did and locked shit down.

[DrDonkeyLove...]

The cure is far more harmful than the disease.

Why is no one asking if the cure is worse than the disease?

So far, since around March 1st to this moment, the US has lost 153 lives to the virus. A good share of those deaths were people who were >90% dead already. If you increase this death rate 16 fold, you get approximately the number of US lives lost on D-Day (2,500). 3,675 Americans died in the battle of Antietam which is a 24 fold increase. My point is that America can survive a lot of deaths in the short term.

We're tanking the economy, locking down individual liberties, utterly changing our lives, and adding trillions to our national debt - and I don't see anyone doing a cost/benefit analysis. Instead of contrarian perspectives, there is only hive mind.

Is this societal lock down worth it for another week or two or six? Maybe. I'm complying pretty well and am not complaining about my circumstances. Fuck, I'm part of one of the groups in danger and I want to live.

Everything being done may be absolutely necessary, but it comes at a huge cost. By the end of the month, with much better data we need to look at this with something that's lacking right now - perspective.

But, at this moment, I feel like I'm part of a herd of sheep that saw a lightening strike right beside them and decided to mindlessly run as a group at full speed into the dark unknown.

[motherjuggs&speed]

There are no good answers, just which horrible ones we prefer, or more accurately, which the governments prefer.

Check me on this:

~10,000 confirmed U.S. cases early morning 3/19/20

Since the U.S. has mostly only tested patients presenting with symptoms or those deemed likely to be exposed, the true total must be higher.

If there are 100,000 actual U.S. cases right now, and the current rate of increase (a doubling time of four days per the Johns Hopkins data) continues for 6 weeks, then that would mean 10 doublings in 40 days, which gives us the figure of 96 million infected on April 30.

With 20% of infected requiring hospitalization to survive, that gives us ~20 million patients above the current capacity of just under a million beds. While it may be possible to connect 4 patients to one machine as demonstrated theoretically by Scott Weingart, there is a shortage of machines right now. It may be possible to use plasma from recovered people to speed recovery, but we are still looking at 20 million people in need of intensive care for 3-6 weeks. Some percentage of the medical staff will get sick and reduce capacity. These factors are unchanged by adding buildings by whatever means. Let's say we are somehow able to increase the current capacity to treat patients by making more ventilators and diverting clinicians from other roles or bringing retired doctors and nurses back into the hospital. Even if we were to reach a capacity of 5 million beds, which seems very unlikely, that leaves us with ~15 million people dying in the U.S. by mid May.

That's what I come up with. It seems to me the figure of around one million dead is unrealistically optimistic.

[motherjuggs&speed]

Government reaction has been too little and then a patchwork of overreaction. It's too late for containment. We see the flatten the curve graph everywhere but without numbers on the axes. If my numbers are approximately correct, to get the peak near the hospital capacity would require, let's see, 1/20th the peak infected at one time. But if we assume the same number of infected then that gives us a run time of 30 months. Are we going to be able to produce enough food and other essential goods for 300 million people if we're running at what would have to be greatly diminished capacity?

We are going to have a worldwide depression no matter what. What scenario is least catastrophic long term? Officials want to act quickly to minimize deaths, but if we stretch the curve into the Winter, isn't that actually worse, since we will still be dealing with crisis conditions but in Winter? No one is going to say, let's get most of the dying over with in the Summer, when it's more manageable and we haven't compromised our productive capacity too badly.

[motherjuggs&speed]

We will also face severe long term damage in other ways. The U.S. has been a surveillance state since 9/11 and it's getting worse all the time. If there are state of emergency actions, which there are and will likely be more of, those societal and legal precedents remain with us forever. We are going to have a lot more, let's call it extralegal actions by the feds and the states. They will think of new measures almost daily. And the people will be so afraid, both of the virus and of their government (who work for us, but everyone on both sides forgets that) that they will surrender whatever shreds of freedom and dignity we have left.

[Gav]

I’m dumbfounded by the reaction from you guys. Spells already gave you the perfect example on how to stop it. Just copy what South Korea did.

This is the army in Bergamo transporting the dead to other cities because all their morgues are full.

6BD9B014-DF58-4DBB-B1EB-1450F5A25A0F.jpeg (83.8 KiB) Viewed 6215 times

[motherjuggs&speed]

It's too late to do what S. Korea did. They got on it early and hard, testing basically everyone. We have no idea where all the infected are.

[DrDonkeyLove...]

I’m dumbfounded by the reaction from you guys. Spells already gave you the perfect example on how to stop it. Just copy what South Korea did.

This is the army in Bergamo transporting the dead to other cities because all their morgues are full.
6BD9B014-DF58-4DBB-B1EB-1450F5A25A0F.jpeg

My only point is that there are costs to the disease and costs to the cure. So far the US has come up with imperfect, but hopefully effective, disease mitigation plans. Pretty soon, with more testing, we'll probably be able to game out scenarios for the cost of the disease. So far no one has gamed out the cost of the cure plans - which could be horrific, generational, and very deadly. Both things need to be done before we go too much further.

The Dutch have apparently decided to let the virus burn through the population to create a herd immunity. That goes against all conventional wisdom but we shall see...

Also, Germany is much larger than Italy and has 60% of the cases and 14% of the deaths. What are they doing that we should be looking at?

Living through what you're seeing has to be a real life horror movie. Thanks for the perspective provided by the pic you posted.

[Grandpa's Spells]

As far as cost to doing something vs. nothing, the range of possible outcomes are pretty wide, but the range of "bad" (we do nothing or almost nothing, e.g., what a few states are actually doing doing) could be horrific because people don't grasp exponential growth. CDC was describing millions dead in 1-3 months. That completely devastates the country.

Abbott is about to start cranking out a million tests a week, but we don't have a way to process that many yet.

[Gav]

Exactly, 3% of 100,000,000 people is a lot of dead people. 9/11 was less than 2000 people and you’re still talking about it nearly 20 years. The only sensible thing to do is lockdown for everyone. It’ll be a lot cheaper in the long run. The economy is going to be fucked anyway so get used to the idea. I have my own business with fixed overheads. How many months do you think I can not work until it folds?

[Fat Cat]

There’s a lot of uncertainty in what could happen but at the shitty end it’s catastrophic. Millions dead in 1-3 months. South Korea had their first case the same day we did and locked shit down.

I understand that it's a very serious situation, and I actually am okay with most of it, but there's got to be a balance because COVID-19 is not the only threat to human health and safety. Poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, etc. are real too, and there's no vaccine in development for that.

Also, you must be the absolute life of parties.

[Fat Cat]

I’m dumbfounded by the reaction from you guys. Spells already gave you the perfect example on how to stop it. Just copy what South Korea did.

This is the army in Bergamo transporting the dead to other cities because all their morgues are full.
6BD9B014-DF58-4DBB-B1EB-1450F5A25A0F.jpeg

You can't. It's as simple as that. You might as well wish that we all started speaking Korean overnight. South Korea has laws that allow for invasions of privacy that are simply impossible to institute in the United States, and your inability to contextualize is what is really dumbfounding. In SK, if you test positive for COVID-19, they will text your name to all your neighbors and coworkers, telling them to report for mandatory testing. These kinds of measure violate so many US laws that you would create 100 years of litigation.

[Fat Cat]

All that said, I'm just bullshitting here. Stay healthy guys, we'll get through this!

[nafod]

With 20% of infected requiring hospitalization to survive, that gives us ~20 million patients above the current capacity of just under a million beds.

This is really the core of it. While with full medical care the death rate might be 1%-ish. With a policy of Inshallah and the veritable patient pig going through the healthcare system snake, it'd explode. Roughly 5% need critical care, and you don't know which of the 20% are in the 5%. The death rate would explode. But...once you're done you're done. Bury the dead and move on. We could see 5% of 150M = 7M dead.

Of course we'd have to have death panels in order to decide who gets the rare available ventilator. Conservatives love death panels.

What I hope happens is we beat this down, then we can use super hard core contact tracing as the means of controlling it while Big Pharma figures out some sort of anti-viral or vaccine or all of the above. You could have a system where you allow yourself to be cellphone tracked and let out, so if you pop positive, they can insta-trace your contacts. Stuff like that.

As people get sick and then better, a bar could just serve them. All employees and customers now immune, and can party hard.

I REALLY feel for our bars and restaurants. Big part of our life, and these people are our friends.

[Grandpa's Spells]

There’s a lot of uncertainty in what could happen but at the shitty end it’s catastrophic. Millions dead in 1-3 months. South Korea had their first case the same day we did and locked shit down.

I understand that it's a very serious situation, and I actually am okay with most of it, but there's got to be a balance because COVID-19 is not the only threat to human health and safety. Poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, etc. are real too, and there's no vaccine in development for that.

Also, you must be the absolute life of parties.

I know. We are doing webinars and fielding questions on this stuff from customers, while some very noisy voices in the industry are doing the “nothing to see here” routine, people who just so happen to have gigantic financial incentives to not believe what may be coming. So that’s partly informing the tone.

Also, I’ve been slow on the draw getting supplies and some other materials twice because the demand is accelerating, so when I read something that suggests things may be fairly normal for people still, I’d say take precautions now unless you have real downside to doing so.

[johno]

My only point is that there are costs to the disease and costs to the cure. So far the US has come up with imperfect, but hopefully effective, disease mitigation plans. Pretty soon, with more testing, we'll probably be able to game out scenarios for the cost of the disease.

I agree. At some point the cure will be worse than the disease.

1 - Lock down now.
2 - Ramp up testing & ventilator production. Hopefully in the next few weeks.
3 - Loosen the reins and evaluate.

Look on the bright side - if the ChiCom Virus hits seniors hardest, maybe Social Security & Medicare will become solvent.

[nafod]

The vaccine will be important, but the near-term Manhattan Project on this needs to be on

TESTING

When we can test fast and often, once we beat this shit down to a dull roar of polite coughing, we can do daily testing and use quarantine and contact tracing whenever it blips up. Worked for the SORKs.