My State Has Gone Full Fucking Clownship

[seeahill]

Pics of lady friend to assess the value of her opinion.

I say my lady friend because "girlfriend" isn't appropriate. We look like your grandparents.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipN ... Q6EyGnH4xT

[Bram]

The entirety of Southern Cal, from the border up through Santa Barbara is grossly under reported. There are no tests. In LA county the health department has essentially said we are only testing if the testing will warrant some type of difference in treatment. I.E. they need to figure out if it is Covid 19 or something else.

I've got a friend in L.A. proper who her doctor said "yeah, you probably have it. We can't test. Just stay home." But she's scared as fuck because before she had symptoms she took groceries to her parents, who are older. Who then visited her grand parents. Etc. Etc.

Contrast that with Taiwan where they tested, then stalked the shit out of you if you had it. And it worked to contain the spread.

A month from now will not be a good scene.

[Gene]

Just out of curiosity, how many weeks have you been in self quarantine and why?

I had the flu late in January. Been at it since then.

[motherjuggs&speed]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu and we have accepted the destruction of our society. WTF is going to happen when people run slam out of money awaiting their unemployment and relief checks? My state allows open carry, that is if they will even let people out of the house, and it may be a good idea to approach a trip to the store like it's the raid on Entebbe.

I don't understand why people accept this. We are all doing time in solitary with no crime committed and no acts of a legislature either. Our industries will never recover and our society is already lost. People don't understand that this is going to create chaos like we have never seen.

[Grandpa's Spells]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu

This is a completely bananas take. FFS turn off Fox and talk to your doctor.

[newguy]

I'm wondering how things could have been different if from the start everyone was instructed to wear masks, keep distance, up the hygiene, etc. I think the messaging that masks are only good for medical workers did a lot of damage.

Here in Southern Cali Los Angeles has made it mandatory for people to wear masks when out and entering essential businesses - both customers and employees. Businesses can refuse entry for not wearing one. I think if we can get 100% on board with that, it will make a big difference in spreading.

But different areas are responding differently. One market I went to in a predominantly asian neighborhood was all in. Masks for everyone. Everything being wiped down. People keeping distance. Etc. Another I went to was a free for all. And the general health of the people in it....they did not want to be catching this.

Finding toilet paper or any baking shit is still hard. You have to go first thing in the morning. The local costcos will have lines starting anywhere from 4:00 to 5:00 AM. Which is insane. I'm not waiting at costco for 5 hours to get toilet paper. I'll go outside and hose my ass off if it comes to that.

[Fat Cat]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu

This is a completely bananas take. FFS turn off Fox and talk to your doctor.

It's not as crazy as you make things out. There are countries right now that are going with business. Just as an example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21O0X6

Are they bananas? Austrians are really known for a lax and freewheeling style.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

Dr. Peter Attia has a good point on how we should be going about seeing if we need to clamp down at all, or to what level - we don't know the actual infection rate because our testing is shit.
We need to test a large number of asymptomatic people who have no reason to believe they have the virus, i.e. they don't knowingly have contact with anyone who has/had it. That way we can get a handle on how far the asymptomatic positive spread is. If you test 5,000 people and over 50% have the antibodies from having had it with no symptoms, that speaks to this thing maybe being no nearly as big of a deal as if only 1% tested positive while asymptomatic.
Without information we're just shooting blindly in the dark. In that situation, the most conservative course of action (total lock down) probably makes sense. If we gather the information and it shows a large benign spread, then you can at least make informed decisions.
Combine that knowledge with the growing understanding that treating it like a pneumonia with physical breathing interventions is the wrong course of action and we should be treating it as a blood oxygen ailment in severe cases, and we can get on top of this PDQ. Then we can get down to the business of rallying the west against China.

[motherjuggs&speed]

This is a completely bananas take. FFS turn off Fox and talk to your doctor.

Not Fox news, dummy:

https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m1113

The CFR among the initial Wuhan cohort was reported as 4.3%, with a rate of 2.9% in Hubei province.15 But outside Hubei the CFR has been 0.4%. Deaths occurred only in cases deemed “critical.” Importantly, the CFR from these reports is from infected, syndromic people presenting to healthcare facilities, with higher CFRs among older patients in hospital

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... ality-rate

In research developments today, scientists from the MRC Center for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London estimated that symptom onset to death is 18 days and that the case-fatality rate (CFR) in and outside of China is 1.4%, but declined to 0.66 after adjusting for undiagnosed cases.

[motherjuggs&speed]

Which is insane. I'm not waiting at costco for 5 hours to get toilet paper. I'll go outside and hose my ass off if it comes to that.

Make sure to get the bit I left in your yard. Sorry about that m8.

[newguy]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu

This is a completely bananas take. FFS turn off Fox and talk to your doctor.

It's not as crazy as you make things out. There are countries right now that are going with business. Just as an example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21O0X6

Are they bananas? Austrians are really known for a lax and freewheeling style.

From the article it sounds like they went in on a restrictive lockdown for three weeks and are now easing out of it. I don't know how strict or to what extent they did lock down.

I think Sweden has been just going about business as normal though.

New Zealand has done a really good job, but I think they have robust testing and contact tracing.

I think the thread connecting the countries that have dealt with this successfully has been strong testing and isolation as needed.

I get why everyone is trying to avoid an Italy, Spain, New York situation.

[nafod]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu...

We had 10,000 deaths by Monday, and it has had a twice-weekly doubling rate, so tracking for 40,000 total by next Monday, or 30,000 just this week. And then doubles again twice the week following. Yeehaa, exponential growth.

I expect the distancing will start bending the curve down, hopefully this week? So my estimate is off? But it has tracked really close so far.

This is definitely not the flu.

[Grandpa's Spells]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu

This is a completely bananas take. FFS turn off Fox and talk to your doctor.

It's not as crazy as you make things out. There are countries right now that are going with business. Just as an example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21O0X6

Are they bananas? Austrians are really known for a lax and freewheeling style.

It's bananas to talk about "the flu" which only crazy people are comparing it to now, and ignoring data. Austria had a nationwide lockdown for weeks already. They have compulsory mask usage in public. Most importantly: new cases graph has been going steadily down. It's completely appropriate for them to consider reopening, because they are on the downswing of new infections:



But here is where we are:

weekends report fewer new cases, and some areas are barely taking flattening steps and have virtually no testing. They are further to the left of the curve.

The idea that the US gets to skip the "wait for the new cases to drop down" step is what is bananas. The longer you wait to lock down, the worse it gets, so unfortunately it may be a while for us.

New York is a few weeks ahead of most of you, though you may avoid the brunt since NYC was particularly late to lock down. The husband from this post died today, and was certainly infected way before things looked bad in New York.

I don't know why you think your situation gets to be special compared to the rest of the world. Ignore China. Countries that lock down early and take this seriously get off relatively light. Countries that fuck up get it pretty bad. People in many parts of the US are still casting "let's fuck this up as bad as possible" votes.

[motherjuggs&speed]

It really depends on how you classify deaths: by COVID-19 or not? If you count everyone who tests positive who dies and probably would have anyway (an old person already in the ICU, for example), you get one rate. Also there are false positives, as well as people who the test didn't detect. There's been discussion of this: there is no standard for determining whether to atribute a death to the virus or not. You know that the numbers for the "regular" flu are higher than most people realize:

CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

I bought into the scare too, but we have better information now.

[Fat Cat]

Don't hyperventilate, dude. I appreciate your thoughtful response. However, let's take a fictional country X. It has a sudden outburst of COVID-19 and they undergo a strict lockdown with all it entails. They "flatten the curve" so to speak. Then, they open up for business, and try to get back to normal. What happens the next time corona-chan comes to town? They lock down again? And again? I think it's reasonable to imagine that this disease will have a resurgence this coming fall and winter. Are you thinking we would just duck and cover each time until a vaccine and herd immunity is achieved?

I understand that you are trying to avoid the worst impacts of the disease on your community and country. That's very laudable. I am less convinced you, or any of us frankly, understand the gravity of the economic woes this method entails.

[Turdacious]

The racial aspect of this is going to make it interesting:

The coronavirus doesn't discriminate, but minorities and low-income families are bearing the brunt.

Why it matters: The impact of the coronavirus is reflecting the racial and socioeconomic disparities of the cities where it’s spreading and the health care system that’s struggling to contain it [...]

The catch: Researchers would need better data to fully confirm this trend, but these initial signals from multiple cities align with almost everything we know about who’s most at risk.

“Even though we can’t necessarily perfectly understand the racial disparities in COVID risk and death once infected, we know all the other risk factors that increase the risk of getting covid and increase the risk of complications are higher for these groups,” said Hedwig Lee, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.

A slew of pre-existing disparities are contributing to this coronavirus disparity.

African-Americans are more likely to have several underlying health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and some cancers that can make COVID-19 infections more severe.
Lower-income areas — which tend to have larger non-white populations — have less access to health care services and the quality of that care is often worse than what wealthier parts of the countries receive.
Lower-income workers are less likely to have health insurance. They’re also less likely to be able to work from home, and therefore more likely to have to keep going to work and putting themselves at risk.
Substandard housing, multiple families living together, and homelessness all facilitate the virus’ spread.

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-cases ... 677ec.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/earl ... rming-rate

I'm wondering if other comorbid factors-- like smoking rates, illegal drug abuse, use of cheap vs better quality weed, lack of physical activity, and obesity-- also play a role, and what role those factors will play as this spreads to more rural areas. It's not like poor whites are particularly healthy.

[motherjuggs&speed]

One problem is that to many people "economic" means something like "those rich greedy capitalists more concerned about their stock price than people". The economic impact is people not earning so they can't pay bills, small businesses going under and being unable to start back up, chaotic conditions for businesses, and so many other things that affect everyone. My view is that the death rate, even if it's greater without flattening, is survivable for a nation as a whole. Hard but survivable. The lockdown may cause a depression worse than the Great Depression. And in some ways harder to deal with since things change so quickly in a more interconnected world.

[Turdacious]

The idea that the US gets to skip the "wait for the new cases to drop down" step is what is bananas. The longer you wait to lock down, the worse it gets, so unfortunately it may be a while for us.

New York is a few weeks ahead of most of you, though you may avoid the brunt since NYC was particularly late to lock down. The husband from this post died today, and was certainly infected way before things looked bad in New York.

I don't know why you think your situation gets to be special compared to the rest of the world. Ignore China. Countries that lock down early and take this seriously get off relatively light. Countries that fuck up get it pretty bad. People in many parts of the US are still casting "let's fuck this up as bad as possible" votes.

It's probably more complicated than that. Most of the major metro areas that have been hit hard are more densely populated than the areas that haven't been hit hard yet. It isn't going to help if the metro areas start scooping up ventilators and don't want to give them back out of caution. As overwhelmed as hospitals in NYC are, if there's a problem that even approaches that scale in more rural areas, the hospitals are a lot less likely to have the providers, beds, or equipment to handle it.

[newguy]

Don't hyperventilate, dude. I appreciate your thoughtful response. However, let's take a fictional country X. It has a sudden outburst of COVID-19 and they undergo a strict lockdown with all it entails. They "flatten the curve" so to speak. Then, they open up for business, and try to get back to normal. What happens the next time corona-chan comes to town? They lock down again? And again? I think it's reasonable to imagine that this disease will have a resurgence this coming fall and winter. Are you thinking we would just duck and cover each time until a vaccine and herd immunity is achieved?

I understand that you are trying to avoid the worst impacts of the disease on your community and country. That's very laudable. I am less convinced you, or any of us frankly, understand the gravity of the economic woes this method entails.

What I am hoping is that the initial lock down is to prevent catastrophe. You lock down and slow the spread in order to give time to not overwhelm the healthcare system and give the city time to get ducks in order, ducks being testing, PPE for health care workers, ventilators, etc. Along with the holy grail of either an effective treatment or vaccine. Then when you open back up for business you are far better prepared to test and isolate as well as handle and outbreak. An outbreak may entail everyone putting on masks and going about business as normal and keeping highly at risk people home.

I am worried about how well we are getting ducks in order though. California is doing really shitty with testing. And treatment plans seem to be all over the place but I guess that would be expected at this stage. And a vaccine seems like it will happen and hopefully sooner rather than later.

But I don't think we will need to wait for a vaccine to get back to business. We just needs beds and treatment.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

The racial aspect of this is going to make it interesting:

The coronavirus doesn't discriminate, but minorities and low-income families are bearing the brunt.

Why it matters: The impact of the coronavirus is reflecting the racial and socioeconomic disparities of the cities where it’s spreading and the health care system that’s struggling to contain it [...]

The catch: Researchers would need better data to fully confirm this trend, but these initial signals from multiple cities align with almost everything we know about who’s most at risk.

“Even though we can’t necessarily perfectly understand the racial disparities in COVID risk and death once infected, we know all the other risk factors that increase the risk of getting covid and increase the risk of complications are higher for these groups,” said Hedwig Lee, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.

A slew of pre-existing disparities are contributing to this coronavirus disparity.

African-Americans are more likely to have several underlying health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and some cancers that can make COVID-19 infections more severe.
Lower-income areas — which tend to have larger non-white populations — have less access to health care services and the quality of that care is often worse than what wealthier parts of the countries receive.
Lower-income workers are less likely to have health insurance. They’re also less likely to be able to work from home, and therefore more likely to have to keep going to work and putting themselves at risk.
Substandard housing, multiple families living together, and homelessness all facilitate the virus’ spread.

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-cases ... 677ec.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/earl ... rming-rate

I'm wondering if other comorbid factors-- like smoking rates, illegal drug abuse, use of cheap vs better quality weed, lack of physical activity, and obesity-- also play a role, and what role those factors will play as this spreads to more rural areas. It's not like poor whites are particularly healthy.

Poor white kid of 15 died in my little mid GA hometown. Lived in a trailer park. Family waited until the 11th hour to call an ambulance because they couldn't afford healthcare. Absolutely criminal for that to happen in this country.
So far the average cost of treatment I'm seeing is ~$30,000 if hospital care is needed. If you have shitty or no insurance, you're going to put off that decision for as long as you possibly can. By the time the decision is made for you, it's quite possibly too late.

Edit: Said the kid's race because I wanted to emphasise that it's going to be the poor across the board who are going to have to triage themselves on just how sick you have to be before you pull the trigger on financial ruin for the family to hopefully save a loved one's life. Can't imagine having to make those decisions. And nobody in this country should ever have to make them.

[Turdacious]

Local governments around the US are starting to take more draconian measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus by banning "essential" stores such as grocery chains or big-box retailers from selling "non-essential" items such as clothing and electronics.

These stores, which have been allowed to stay open during state lockdowns across the US because they are deemed as "essential" businesses by selling groceries or offering pharmacy services, for example, are now required by law in some parts of the US to remove any non-essential items from their stores or rope off areas of the store so that customers are unable to access these products.

https://www.businessinsider.com/costco- ... tes-2020-4
Jeff Bezos has really upped his campaign contribution game.

[nafod]

They "flatten the curve" so to speak. Then, they open up for business, and try to get back to normal. What happens the next time corona-chan comes to town? They lock down again? And again?

By then we can use testing and contact tracing to deal with outbreaks, which will be smaller and slower to grow because everyone is using PPE and not shaking hands or licking doorknobs. Plus we might have some serum and big pharma products to help. So for the next year or so, we’ll be dealing with it as part of the continual background of life.

Sorry to hear about your friend, Spells. That will go on too.

[aussie luke]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu

This is a completely bananas take. FFS turn off Fox and talk to your doctor.

It's not as crazy as you make things out. There are countries right now that are going with business. Just as an example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21O0X6

Are they bananas? Austrians are really known for a lax and freewheeling style.

From the article it sounds like they went in on a restrictive lockdown for three weeks and are now easing out of it. I don't know how strict or to what extent they did lock down.

I think Sweden has been just going about business as normal though.

New Zealand has done a really good job, but I think they have robust testing and contact tracing.

I think the thread connecting the countries that have dealt with this successfully has been strong testing and isolation as needed.

I get why everyone is trying to avoid an Italy, Spain, New York situation.

Here in Western Australia I’m trying to figure out how we haven’t become known yet as one of the greatest success stories. Today we have only three new cases. Yesterday was 8. Almost all are passengers from cruise ships or return travellers, or close contacts of them. There are “only” 6000 cases in the country and around 60 deaths.

We never went full lockdown, but they started social distancing and working from home pretty early on, which meant businesses closing down almost instantly and many, including me, losing their jobs completely.

They closed the borders to our state from the rest of Australia and have forced 14 day quarantine for anyone and everyone who entered the state. So all of the known cases are also contained and isolated. There is essentially zero community spread here.

Yet they still suggest things will get worse before they get better. But at this point I cannot see how that is possible.

They could keep the borders closed and open up businesses again this week and still keep the majority of social distancing measures in place. Who knows I might even be able to find a job again. But at the moment it doesn’t look like that is going to happen anytime soon.

Even if there was another outbreak here, they now know that another two-week “pause” on normal life would be just about enough to end it.

[DrDonkeyLove...]

My state has joined the insane clown posse. This is the biggest outbreak of mass insanity in history. With what we know now this thing seems to be about as deadly as the flu

This is a completely bananas take. FFS turn off Fox and talk to your doctor.

It's not as crazy as you make things out. There are countries right now that are going with business. Just as an example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21O0X6

Are they bananas? Austrians are really known for a lax and freewheeling style.

From the article it sounds like they went in on a restrictive lockdown for three weeks and are now easing out of it. I don't know how strict or to what extent they did lock down.

I think Sweden has been just going about business as normal though.

New Zealand has done a really good job, but I think they have robust testing and contact tracing.

I think the thread connecting the countries that have dealt with this successfully has been strong testing and isolation as needed.

I get why everyone is trying to avoid an Italy, Spain, New York situation.

Here in Western Australia I’m trying to figure out how we haven’t become known yet as one of the greatest success stories. Today we have only three new cases. Yesterday was 8. Almost all are passengers from cruise ships or return travellers, or close contacts of them. There are “only” 6000 cases in the country and around 60 deaths.

We never went full lockdown, but they started social distancing and working from home pretty early on, which meant businesses closing down almost instantly and many, including me, losing their jobs completely.

They closed the borders to our state from the rest of Australia and have forced 14 day quarantine for anyone and everyone who entered the state. So all of the known cases are also contained and isolated. There is essentially zero community spread here.

Yet they still suggest things will get worse before they get better. But at this point I cannot see how that is possible.

They could keep the borders closed and open up businesses again this week and still keep the majority of social distancing measures in place. Who knows I might even be able to find a job again. But at the moment it doesn’t look like that is going to happen anytime soon.

Even if there was another outbreak here, they now know that another two-week “pause” on normal life would be just about enough to end it.

Good luck to you!
I'm not saying that the cure has been worse than the disease but there definitely comes a time when it is.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

Good luck to you!
I'm not saying that the cure has been worse than the disease but there definitely comes a time when it is.

Dr. Peter Attia has been posting some good videos on youtube about the virus and how testing is our key to getting back to normal. Today he showed a simple little blood test that reads similar to a pregnancy that has a strip where you put a drop of blood and a few drops of a catalyst. First a bar shows up and shows the test is valid, then one or both of two test bars shows up. First bar test shows current infection, second shows other side of infection. So if just the first shows up you're on the way into the illness. Both bars and you're coming out the other side of the illness. Just the second bar and you're past it and good to go. No bars and you've never contracted the virus, so still good to go but be very careful.

He was talking about a system where nearly everyone had a set of these tests. At a minimum anyone who needs to go out and work, etc. Have some sort of signal that you've taken the test and are either not exposed or have already had it and are safe.