This is just the number of reported cases. The US has tested less than 8k people and it hit us a month after some of these other countries.

I don't know how you're coming to that conclusion. Common sense will tell you, highly dense areas dependent on public transportation are at greater risk of community spread.

The data suggests that social distancing and aggressive testing are the best way to flatten the curve, with Japan being an outlier. I speculate they are under reporting.

I'm with you on this. That discussion is coming, as another worse outbreak later this year seems likely when looking at past viruses and what experts are saying.

The whole idea of people paid to cram people into trains is wild.

Closing borders is essentially useless at stopping a country from having the infection spread to the country in the first place. As part of a larger effort aiming to control and delay the spread it has some value, although it's more on a world/continent scale than a country scale. Closing borders is generally more likely to help reduce spread out of a country than into it.

Yes, a pandemic would cause any economy to go down under any President. But to what degree and duration until it rises up again depends on the response to the crisis, which we have to wait and see how it plays out.

Like today for instance, Trump took the first step and admitted we are in a dire situation and we can expect social distancing until July. This will most likely cause the market to plummet now, but would generally be looked back on as the correct response and cause the market to rebound more quickly in the future as it will help flatten the curve. We still drastically need more testing done but at least this was a step in the right direction.

Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand

This Imperial College London article touches a bit on the dilemma I pointed at (in regards to the C-19 endgame)

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-globa...n-coronavirus/

Worldwide stats have 182403 cases with 7144 deaths which is just under 4% death rate and that's not MSNBC math either

Michael Osterholm thinks the virus spreads via air/breathing (aerosols), not just the droplet spreading regime that is assumed by most govts. That means u just have to be in the same room and washing hands is not going to be enough.

I hope you can appreciate most countries are severely under-reporting non lethal cases because of lack of testing for anyone but extremely sick patients.

Diamond Princess cruise tested virtually everyone on board, and the rate was ~1%, and most of the passengers were seniors.

South Korea has the most widespread testing and the rate is 0.6%.

I was listening to a Sam Harris podcast with an epidemiologist from John Hopkins and the epidemiologist said the South Korea 0.6% is probably an upper bound for the real fatality rate.

This is of course assuming competent medical care. So the rate in countries with LOL healthcare like Iran and US the death rate might be higher just because of this.

I think flattening the curve will actually hurt the markets.

Markets don't care if people die. Flattening the curve will result in longer shutdowns and worse market impacts.

Yeah, I don't think there's any way 18 months of social distancing is going to fly.

I mean you’d be right in theory if we all got together and had a coronavirus orgy, rolling the dice as some utilitarian response to get back to business as usual for the sake of the markets, but that’s not how it’ll pan out in reality. The faster the spread the greater the reaction as our health system begins to be overburdened and doctors and nurses have to decide who lives and who dies. It won’t only be the elderly that are at risk. 1 in 5 healthy young adults will be hospitalized and need a ventilator that would otherwise die without one. There’d be chaos and we’d be in an even stricter lockdown with an even bigger hit to the economy. So basically, you’ll still be in lockdown and people will needlessly die. Following the advice of CDC is what’s best for the country.

Last time I checked we didn't have any effective vaccines for any of the other coronaviruses that are endemic, despite I am sure efforts to do so. So I don't even really see any reason to be optimistic we will an effective vaccine in 18 months.

It seems that this is likely just going to become an endemic seasonal virus like the flu. It will kill off the most susceptible, either due to genetic susceptibility or environmental factors (eg. age), the virus itself will most likely mutate to become less virulent (which is how these things work) and it will become normalized.

And history may or may not elucidate whether the extreme non pharmaceutical interventions we are undergoing now were a good idea or not, when taking into account the totality of the costs from NPI's.

Wow. Can you actually cite where this information is coming from. Because I have read absolutely nothing to suggest this. This seems to be Alex Jones level of propaganda.

My mistake, 1 in 5 is ridiculous. In young adults, 1 in 20 infected, about 5%, will be hospitalized and need ICU ventilators.

It might result in a far more aggressive approach towards flu as well with a commonplace testing and isolate system. Then we would also have a system ready to go for the next pandemic with developing the new test being the key requirement.

Is there any data even backing up 5%? This seems high too.

I would be especially interested to see any data coming out of South Korea or cruise ships backing up this claim, as our detection is so low our numbers are basically just funny numbers to begin with.

Bear in mind I'm not making an argument that we should do something just because it would make the market go down less.

But basically, unless the deaths reached a VERY catastrophic level they wouldn't have much market effect. Chaos and lockdowns? Sure, but that's what we have now. And as far as I can tell, the better job we do flattening the curve the longer the lockdown lasts.

Lol I'm not surprised you would support this kind of thing.

We will not be instituting any mandatory flu quarantining here in USA #1. I mean, I don't think I'm very "rah rah freedom" as far as Americans go but 18-month lockdowns and mandatory flu quarantines are about when I start forming my own militia.

****, if that happens, I'll begrudgingly admit the 2nd amendment people were correct.

? it would be an 'if you have the flu then why not stay home for a week or two (depending on what the infectious period is)'. With auto sick pay and job protection of course.

What I would definitively support is much more funding of science and tech. Much much more. Plus proper contingency plans.

edit: A home test kit for many known viruses would be bloody useful and probably not beyond the wit of man in the next decade.

No. **** you.

I got the numbers from an acquaintance who’s a medical professional. I probably should have stated that. I’m at my sister’s birthday party but I’ll ask him where he got that data from.

I shared this tweet and got this response.

@tilted

Yea, I do take it as just a hypothetical and it is a reasonable assertion. But the rea world affect would be that we would just be worse off, it would put us in a better situation to have mass cases at once because we would always react a greater response. If we somehow just all got coronavirus and let people die off in 2 weeks at home then yea, the markets would bounce back faster.

Isn't this basically where Italy is at? It definitely will be interesting to see how the parts of Italy that got hit so hard with no NPI's bounce back relative to us and our several month flattened curve intervention plans.

We really need to ramp up capacity. The point of flattening the curve is to keep it under the total capacity. The theory is that quarantine won't work with the long incubation and asymptomatic transmission you can't simply lock people down long enough to truly burn out the virus, there will always be someone that gets through, and as soon as you relax the quarantine the pandemic starts up again.