Coronavirus - the new pandemic

[Madner Kami]

The point that people keep missing (i'm not saying you are) is that seasonal flu killed 34,200 people in the US across 12 months. Covid-19 has killed 11,000 is just over one month. Unless this disease stops now, today, the comparable speed of those dying is staggering.
People who keep smugly comparing Covid to something else whilst decrying it as an overreaction need to shut up.

THIS! So much THIS! Plus that death-toll is WITH the actions taken. Imagine how much worse this would have gotten, if we didn't quarantine, like we do with the seasonal flu, where everyone still goes to work with mediocre to none measures of hygiene taken... If I'd superimpose the numbers from the worser hit regions onto the local citizenry, 1/4 to 1/3 of my town's population would be dead by the end of the pandemic, because we have a high amount of 60+ inhabitants here and that is a town with roughly 10,000 inhabitants...

[Darth Wedgius]

The point that people keep missing (i'm not saying you are) is that seasonal flu killed 34,200 people in the US across 12 months. Covid-19 has killed 11,000 is just over one month. Unless this disease stops now, today, the comparable speed of those dying is staggering.
People who keep smugly comparing Covid to something else whilst decrying it as an overreaction need to shut up.

And as an aside, this is what a world without vaccinations looks like. But like I was saying a few comments back, a high proportion of the human race is actually quite moronic. Their fear of producing the next Rain Man or whatever is for some reason scaring them more than their kids lungs slowly filling with fluid.

Thank you! I think that's worth emphasizing. A lot of people (I'm not pointing fingers at anybody on this forum) really don't seem to grasp even elementary statistics on an intuitive level.

More Americans die in their cars than by being eaten by a shark, but if I had to choose between getting into a car or getting into a shark...

[Rocketboy1313]

More Americans die in their cars than by being eaten by a shark, but if I had to choose between getting into a car or getting into a shark...

Was not really expecting vore to enter the conversation but here we are.

[Robovski]

So Hungary went rule by decree as a response to the emergency: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52095500

[Darth Wedgius]

More Americans die in their cars than by being eaten by a shark, but if I had to choose between getting into a car or getting into a shark...

Was not really expecting vore to enter the conversation but here we are.

I couldn't figure out how to rule 34 it without an admin objecting.

[Rocketboy1313]

So Hungary went rule by decree as a response to the emergency: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52095500

Yep.
Really fucking stupid.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

As of yesterday the Corona Virus has now killed more Americans than died in 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Essentially this just brought to an end the age of terrorism as the core topic of American policy.
You can see people struggling to fit it into that paradigm with the conspiracy theories about bio weapons.
But the truth is we are going to see a pathetic scramble to try and make the for profit American Health Care system fit into the new world this virus helps to illuminate.
For profit systems based entirely around having no backups, no flex space, no slack, and under staffing cannot deal with this sort of widespread nightmare.

I am certain we are going to see all the wrong kinds of policy come out of this just like with 9/11, where they will be buying hazmat suits for Sheriff's departments and stockpiling equipment that has expiration dates instead of creating manufacturing capacity and hardening distribution networks.

I wonder what lessons we'll fail to learn.
Especially because this is not the kind of problem you can get catharsis from by bombing something.

Tbh, I wish I could disagree with you more than I do. I don't agree with you 100% (I'm sure you're shocked) but more manufacturing capability (I'd add a "domestic" qualifier to that) that can be brought online quickly (maybe with stockpiled raw materials where not perishable) is a good idea, IMHO.

I do hope we look elsewhere at what worked and what didn't work across the world. The UK was hit pretty hard, death-wise (more than twice as many deaths per capita as the US); state-provided healthcare isn't a magic bullet. Germany was hammered hard with a lot of infections, but managed to keep their deaths per capita at about 2/3rds of the US's. I think Germany's response was helped by different regulations involving where tests could come from, and that could be worth doing here. The flawed tests the CDC put out (essentially rendered useless by false positives) may have been a big factor in the early spread in the US.

I think Greta Thunberg wants to give up commercial air travel (because of global warming). That might help contain similar diseases a lot. Yeah, that's huge, but, hey, it helps a little with global
warming too. It might not have even helped with this particular strain of coronavirus given the long time people are contagious before being symptomatic. Of course we had pandemics before widespread commercial air travel, too. And the 2009 H1N1 outbreak originated in Mexico.

Edit: One possible objection to Rocketboy1313's contention that this is a game changer is that many illnesses have surpassed Covid 19's current fatalities. For example, the CDC estimates 34,200 US flu deaths in the 2018 - 2019 flu season. But I don't think Covid 19 is done with us yet, and I think it's clear that Covid 19 has had a bigger psychological and economic effect.

The point that people keep missing (i'm not saying you are) is that seasonal flu killed 34,200 people in the US across 12 months. Covid-19 has killed 11,000 is just over one month. Unless this disease stops now, today, the comparable speed of those dying is staggering.
People who keep smugly comparing Covid to something else whilst decrying it as an overreaction need to shut up.

And as an aside, this is what a world without vaccinations looks like. But like I was saying a few comments back, a high proportion of the human race is actually quite moronic. Their fear of producing the next Rain Man or whatever is for some reason scaring them more than their kids lungs slowly filling with fluid.

I can't believe I'm agreeing with you on this, but...yes. 100% on point. Good show.

And yeah, the anti-vaxx movement is driven by people who would rather have a respectable dead child than a living autistic one.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

So Hungary went rule by decree as a response to the emergency: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52095500

Congrats, it's our first Corona Virus absolute dictatorship/monarchy declaration.

I really hope 45 doesn't get somebody to read the big words in that article for him.

[Riedquat]

So Hungary went rule by decree as a response to the emergency: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52095500

Congrats, it's our first Corona Virus absolute dictatorship/monarchy declaration.

I really hope 45 doesn't get somebody to read the big words in that article for him.

it at least demonstrates the dangers of accepting a "whatever it takes" mentality.

[Madner Kami]

So Hungary went rule by decree as a response to the emergency: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52095500

Congrats, it's our first Corona Virus absolute dictatorship/monarchy declaration.

I really hope 45 doesn't get somebody to read the big words in that article for him.

it at least demonstrates the dangers of accepting a "whatever it takes" mentality.

This isn't happening because of CoViD-19. Hungary's been on the way to a dictatorship since a while now and this pandemic is just the opprotunity that Orban was looking for to end a process that was already well on it's way.