Coronavirus (COVID-19) is too exciting for adults to discuss (CLOSED)

[shetuck]

My point being if we had the ability to flex into testing at scale we wouldn't have had to nuke the economy to save lives.

the rest is much more nuanced and I'm just too tired to take it line by line

respect your views and opinion though bro, even if I don't agree with all of it

but that's all of us though isn't it? Only God/Woody and Kirk Herbstreit are perfect.

The Achilles heel in this whole thing is the healthcare system, no? More testing won't alleviate the surge of people flooding emergency rooms, right, or am I missing something?

Granted, if we'd ramped up testing in, say, January (when it seems that, finger-pointing aside everybody knew about this thing), maybe we could have put resources and emergency response / preparedness measures in place to handle the hot-spots. Though... I'm not sure what more we would have been willing to do in January after we realized that there aren't enough respirators in place. I think there were credible voices already raising flags on that (even without testing) as early as mid-February.

So... bottom line in my IMO... we definitely missed the boat on testing, but I don't think we could have summoned the political will to do anything with/about the results we'd see.

 

[ScriptOhio]

The Achilles heel in this whole thing is the healthcare system, no? More testing won't alleviate the surge of people flooding emergency rooms, right, or am I missing something?

Granted, if we'd ramped up testing in, say, January (when it seems that, finger-pointing aside everybody knew about this thing), maybe we could have put resources and emergency response / preparedness measures in place to handle the hot-spots. Though... I'm not sure what more we would have been willing to do in January after we realized that there aren't enough respirators in place. I think there were credible voices already raising flags on that (even without testing) as early as mid-February.

So... bottom line in my IMO... we definitely missed the boat on testing, but I don't think we could have summoned the political will to do anything with/about the results we'd see.

Under the premise that there are people out there who don't know that they are infected (i.e. no symptoms and/or they just think they have the common cold) passing the virus to others. If tested and confirmed that they do have the virus they can stay in quarantine (i.e. isolation) until well and not pass the virus to others. Thus reducing the spread of the virus and lessening the surge of people flooding the emergency rooms.

 

[shetuck]

Good question. It was cancelled 10 days before the start and I hadn't made a definite decision on that yet. As days went by I was leaning more and more to not go; however, since I was still actually agonizing over it I can't give you a definite yes or no reply. I was booked on back to back cruises (17 March & 1 April) and once the 1st one was cancelled I decided fairly quickly that I wasn't going on the 2nd one (which wasn't cancelled yet) either. Fortunately to get a full refund, it was cancelled a few days later too.

Another comment. You would like to think that companies in the travel business (i.e. like Celebrity Cruises) has your best interest heart and wouldn't put you in harms way; however, it appears that the primary reason Celebrity cancelled this cruise was just because India was refusing the ship entry into their ports (i.e. not necessarily your "safety and well being")...

Two things...
1. You're a lot braver than me. I would have cancelled as soon as I heard about the fiasco on the Japanese ship in February.
2. Carnival (or any other business, for that matter) probably made an assessment that they'd implemented sufficient measures and controls and precautions to protect their passengers. Whose to know whether it was / would have been enough. Maybe they were thinking that there's no reason to cancel the cruise as a precaution and cause a crisis of confidence among folks who still felt comfortable-enough to keep their bookings. Right? If you're a business owner and you've done whatever you think is necessary and appropriate to protect your customers you wouldn't then do a 180 turn and turn them away on the basis of "all of a sudden we're not sure we can keep you safe right now" or you'd risk losing those customers' trust and confidence and business for the forseeable future. I'm not taking Carnival's side on this. I'm just saying that without the benefit of hindsight, it's a tricky thing to navigate as a business...

 

[shetuck]

Under the premise that there are people out there who don't know that they are infected (i.e. no symptoms and/or they just think they have the common cold) passing the virus to others. If tested and confirmed that they do have the virus they can stay in quarantine (i.e. isolation) until well and not pass the virus to others. Thus reducing the spread of the virus and lessening the surge of people flooding the emergency rooms.

Why not just assume you're infected and stay home like everybody is asking?

Isn't that simpler / smarter?

You don't stay home just to get over it once you're infected. You also stay home in order to avoid coming in contact with it. Thus reducing the spread and lessening the surge without the need for broad testing.

 

[kujirakira]

Explain how the economy collapses for the decade without social distancing.

Just look what happened on 3/9. Eclipsed the 1929 fallout, despite all the circuit breaker protections.
Stay-At-Home orders didn't start for over another week later.
The US Government didn't even acknowledge shit was hitting the fan for another 4 days.

It's recovered some ... but remains highly volatile, and only recovered b/c they got their slush funds paired with optimistic outlook on stopping this (social distancing).
Put 20 million people in the hospital with some nontrivial number of them dying ... and a 1929 type crash (again, this already happened) paired with supply chain fallout (China isn't returning to normalcy that fast)
... all at the same time...
Yea, it would be total economic collapse. Not just a 1-3 month hiccup.

 

[kujirakira]

Under the premise that there are people out there who don't know that they are infected (i.e. no symptoms and/or they just think they have the common cold) passing the virus to others. If tested and confirmed that they do have the virus they can stay in quarantine (i.e. isolation) until well and not pass the virus to others. Thus reducing the spread of the virus and lessening the surge of people flooding the emergency rooms.

Except they can't stay home.
What % of Americans get 2weeks of sick leave a year?
How many people depend on 2nd job or overtime?
If they tested positive, but don't have symptoms... do we violate HIPAA and tell everyone? If their employer fires them, won't they just turn to gig economy?
If your life, and the life of your family, is dependent on working every available hour ... you're going to work as long as the body is able to do it. We've all worked with the cold.
Plenty of people still think this is a hoax or a conspiracy theory... plandemic, 5G sickness, etc.
They would rationalize it however they need to survive.

The stay home orders were only way to push expanded unemployment and a stipend through.
It'd be great if we were capable of passing laws that allowed sick people to survive a few weeks... but... we aren't. This is the system people voted for. So we get it.

 

[ScriptOhio]

Two things...
1. You're a lot braver than me. I would have cancelled as soon as I heard about the fiasco on the Japanese ship in February.
2. Carnival (or any other business, for that matter) probably made an assessment that they'd implemented sufficient measures and controls and precautions to protect their passengers. Whose to know whether it was / would have been enough. Maybe they were thinking that there's no reason to cancel the cruise as a precaution and cause a crisis of confidence among folks who still felt comfortable-enough to keep their bookings. Right? If you're a business owner and you've done whatever you think is necessary and appropriate to protect your customers you wouldn't then do a 180 turn and turn them away on the basis of "all of a sudden we're not sure we can keep you safe right now" or you'd risk losing those customers' trust and confidence and business for the forseeable future. I'm not taking Carnival's side on this. I'm just saying that without the benefit of hindsight, it's a tricky thing to navigate as a business...

It's not that I'm braver than you. It's just that I'm in a different situation. I'm 71 and have been retired since I was 55. My wife and I have always done a lot of traveling; however, for the past 16 years we have really done a lot of traveling. That and Ohio State football games is about all we do, that's our life. Basically we enjoy traveling, we don't have a lot of other activities, we are in good health, and I can't see just sitting home waiting to die. We do gravitate to cruises, group tours, and all inclusive resorts; which I think is safer/better than just trekking out on your own in some foreign country. We won't intentionally do anything stupid; however, almost anything can happen anywhere. We have been through a category 5 hurricane in Jamaica, volcanoes in Europe(Iceland) and Costa Rica, and an earthquake in Peru.

Celebrity Cruises is own by Royal Caribbean, not the Carnival Corp.; however, what you said about Carnival is basically true about Royal Caribbean too. Now the Princess cruise ship that was in Japan and the Holland America cruise ship off Panama (that you may have seen on the news in the last few days) are both owned by the Carnival Corp.

 

[ScriptOhio]

Except they can't stay home.
What % of Americans get 2weeks of sick leave a year?
How many people depend on 2nd job or overtime?
If they tested positive, but don't have symptoms... do we violate HIPAA and tell everyone? If their employer fires them, won't they just turn to gig economy?
If your life, and the life of your family, is dependent on working every available hour ... you're going to work as long as the body is able to do it. We've all worked with the cold.
Plenty of people still think this is a hoax or a conspiracy theory... plandemic, 5G sickness, etc.
They would rationalize it however they need to survive.

The stay home orders were only way to push expanded unemployment and a stipend through.
It'd be great if we were capable of passing laws that allowed sick people to survive a few weeks... but... we aren't. This is the system people voted for. So we get it.

Well I said "they can stay in quarantine", I didn't say they would stay home. I don't have the answers to your questions; and I agree, a lot of people will just do what they want and rationalize it. Still the responsible thing to do would be to stay in quarantine (i.e. isolation) until well and not pass the virus to others.

Why not just assume you're infected and stay home like everybody is asking?

Isn't that simpler / smarter?

You don't stay home just to get over it once you're infected. You also stay home in order to avoid coming in contact with it. Thus reducing the spread and lessening the surge without the need for broad testing.

Well, as kujirakira pointed out, some people just can't afford to. Needless to say, everybody's financial and/or employment situation is different.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

Just look what happened on 3/9. Eclipsed the 1929 fallout, despite all the circuit breaker protections.
Stay-At-Home orders didn't start for over another week later.
The US Government didn't even acknowledge shit was hitting the fan for another 4 days.

You do realize that the 1929 crash was due to a myriad of causes (poor wages, excessive bank loans, bad agriculture, shit-ton of personal debt to name a few) that were brewing for years leading up to the crash, vice a sudden media-fueled panic over a virus of which we still don't know how contagious or deadly it is. The 3/9 crash or the subsequent dropoff of the market was caused in absolutely no way by a faulty economic foundation.

It's recovered some ... but remains highly volatile, and only recovered b/c they got their slush funds paired with optimistic outlook on stopping this (social distancing).

And when that sole cause of the market dropoff/crash disappears in 3-6 months, the market will rebound with a vengeance.

Put 20 million people in the hospital with some nontrivial number of them dying ... and a 1929 type crash (again, this already happened) paired with supply chain fallout (China isn't returning to normalcy that fast)
... all at the same time...
Yea, it would be total economic collapse. Not just a 1-3 month hiccup.

Even if the rate of increase remain constant for another month, we won't see anywhere near those numbers, and that's cumulative from Day One.

 

[shetuck]

...Well, as kujirakira pointed out, some people just can't afford to. Needless to say, everybody's financial and/or employment situation is different.

The gap here is that testing and then quarantining ensures that you don't infect anybody. It doesn't cover the other half (or maybe even bigger) part where testing but not staying home doesn't ensure that others don't infect you. Unless, I guess, the idea is to test EVERYBODY more-or-less at the same time in order to create what they call a "clean point".

 

[lvbuckeye]

Canada is a failed terror state who wants to kill us all and make us drink syrup.

you know how we have a strategic oil reserve? if you watch Rotten on Netflix, not only will you learn that the Leafs have a strategic maple syrup reserve, but that some yahoos actually stole it.

 

[AKAK]

you know how we have a strategic oil reserve? if you watch Rotten on Netflix, not only will you learn that the Leafs have a strategic maple syrup reserve, but that some yahoos actually stole it.

I had nothing to do with that.

 

[BB73]

you know how we have a strategic oil reserve? if you watch Rotten on Netflix, not only will you learn that the Leafs have a strategic maple syrup reserve, but that some yahoos actually stole it.

Sounds like a sticky situation.

 

[buckeyebri]

It would be interesting to see if anyone is tracking the potential positive impact to the environment from the shelter in place.

 

[Onebuckfan]

We be had one case a 50 year old man people just wanted to know what part of the county he was from and where he worked. After a thousand internet rumors.,they said he lived at the rescue mission.They won’t let new people in ..but those exposed.