Interestingly, the last person born during the 1800's died rather recently.
Emma Martina Luigia Morano (29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017).

i would add FL to those two locales;

i am not trying to nit pick, but i think the infection rate is a logarithmic function, not exponential;
in the u.s., the # of infections is doubling ~2-4 days;
there was a base # of infections, which in our case is unknown due to a low rate of testing;
thereupon, the rate of infection is ~2-3 infections for every base infection; i think it is per day, if undetected and not contained;
since we have not had enough testing, there is no relevant base # of infections;
when new testing comes on board, infection #'s escalate;
so, as our testing increases, our # of infections will keep growing, which is part of the reason we, u.s., have surpassed china's infection total;

FL's infections will get really large given their population base; i think FL is going to regret not taking their situation more seriously; FL's health system is going to be overrun; FL will be asking for ventilators;

+++1. And by "Florida", I think you mean Governor DeSantis. Many cities and counties in Florida are taking independent action to do stay-at-home mandates. Unfortunately, they are coming late in the game and lack of state leadership makes it harder to enforce.

I think some of the apparent "leveling off" in hard hit areas is due to testing limits. At some point, there just aren't enough resources (test kits, lab capacity, lab technicians, etc.) available to meet the demand.

It's not looking that way:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics...-warm-weather/

From the European Center of Disease Control
"Seasonality: The four coronaviruses that are endemic in human populations are responsible for 10–15% of common cold infections and display a marked winter seasonality in temperate climates, with a peak between December and April, but are hardly detected in the summer months [61-64]. The seasonality of coronaviruses might be driven, in part, by environmental conditions and host susceptibility, because coronaviruses are more stable under low and midrange relative humidity (20–50%) when the defence mechanisms of the airways are suppressed [65,66]. However, based on preliminary analyses of the COVID-19 outbreak in China and other countries, high reproductive numbers were observed not only in dry and cold districts but also in tropical districts with high absolute humidity, such as in Guangxi and Singapore [68]. There is no evidence to date that SARS-CoV-2 will display a marked winter seasonality, such as other human coronaviruses in the northern hemisphere, which emphasises the importance of implementing intervention measures such as isolation of infected individuals, workplace distancing, and school closures."

LINK TO DOWNLOAD PDF OF THE ECDC REPORT

That's good news! But it's a little early to make a firm conclusion as still in the 14-day period from first implementation of social-distancing measures.

They can't open if it's not safe to open.

I don't see it either. LA will get bad but no city in US will be as bad as NYC.......being the most densely populated, largest travel hub, earliest cases here and spreading without lock down yet, etc.

Florida's aging population, major spring break destination, and nonchalant attitude is going to be a northern Italy situation.

Champions League match really sparking off Italy, Mardi Gras in New Orleans and spring break in Florida. yikes

I doubt that's even remotely true, but neither is likely.

There are people who are paid/elected to decide when its safe. And then its up to you as an individual to trust them or not.

New Orleans one month ago:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/us/ga...tos/index.html

Hard to believe the change a month can bring.

Regarding timelines for when the virus will be "under control" in the US, one of the latest models has been published by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and it's getting some traction in the media. I think it's an overly optimistic model, and note that its projections assume the continuation of strong social distancing measures and other protective measures (i.e. the whole of the US needs to go into semi-lockdown) for three months. That said, various research groups and experts are predicting a peak of cases in mid-April or early May (see fivethirtyeight, for example) and the shape of the graph in the IHME model looks reasonable. I think the Administration might even use this model to inform their policy. (If they use this model, you won't be going back to work by Easter).

Peak pressure on hospitals (and a peak in deaths) is projected to occur on April 14th or 15th, with almost a quarter of a million people in hospital beds. In this scenario, the US experiences 2340 deaths on one day at the peak (and ultimately has a total of 80,000 deaths by the end of July), but the model also shows there could be over 5000 deaths per day at the peak.

Click the link to see the (optimistic) fatality projections.

Meanwhile, excellent YouTube mathematician 3Blue1Brown has made a wonderful animated simulation of an epidemic and explains how various factors can affect the number of cases and how long it can last.

It's a non-political video, but hints at policy failures of various governments. One of the messages I inferred was that social distancing and lockdowns only have a small flattening effect on the graphs if the measures happen 'too late'. To really clamp down on an epidemic you need to identify (test) and quarantine the infected and their contacts very early on. Once a virus is out "in the wild" as it were, and growing exponentially, it's basically impossible to contain, and mitigation/suppression (inc. travel bans) doesn't have much effect at that stage.
Imo, it's not just Trump that reacted too slowly. Leaders of every country in the 'western' world lacked the political will to tackle the problem before it blew up in their faces. I don't even blame them, really. Who could say to their electorate "A new flu-like disease has killed <10 of our people and now you all have to stay indoors for two months", and not be thought to be insane? The various measures that western govts have taken weren't possible politically until a decent chunk of the population had the disease in their own neighbourhoods. By which time it was too late to do much about it. We'll learn from this and will be better prepared next time, but it's gonna be a painful learning process.

You aint kidding about them timelines Mr. McFly! And we could all sure use your Dolorean right about now.

"If I can turn back time .... If I could find a way, I'd take back those words that hurt you.... " - Singer (and songwriter?) Cher

The only question left we gotta all ask ourselves is what are the odds that President Donald Dump is playing that song today?

A UK government medical spokesperson just said that limiting UK deaths to 20,000 "would be a good result". Terrible choice of words by him but a scary low target, given that deaths today have only just reached 1000 in the UK. Which is up an alarming 33% from yesterday.

Sadly I am not surprised by these estimates, ~3 weeks ago 95% of people were not social distancing on trains and buses, 1 week ago ~60% still weren't, and a few days ago many of the public were ignoring social distancing guidelines/orders, and our government acted about 10 days too late with its measures.

Similar to in the USA, our government were complacent, acted too late and even when they finally acted they were too so softly, softly with the guidelines.

Plus the British (I am not ethnically British) are quite a dumb lot as a whole.

If you want to see how generally thick (dumb) British people are, you only have to watch the UK TV show Gogglebox which shows a good cross section of the population. 2 in 3 of the people on that show are thick, including their reaction to the pandemic unfolding which is covered in the show as it observes them watching TV including The News.

Only now and from about 2 days ago are the population finally waking up to how much of a disaster this is.

I feel especially sorry for the older people, not just because they are the group most let down by the government and by the younger people in the population, but also because the outlook is quite likely to be bleak for them because even if the virus is mainly under control they will still be living in fear of going back to normal life because small pockets of the population might still be infected.

I dislike Jeremy Corbyn the opposition leader here but I believe in this specific pandemic situation he would have acted more quickly and had less qualms about doing so and about shutting the economy down, because Corbyn has a cold-blooded type of intellect whereas Boris Johnson is too pally, pally. This situation requires a cold-blooded, clinical thinking leader, not a personality.

We are in big trouble here in the UK, all of us.

Second verse, same as the first! -

"If I could turn back time .... If I could find a way, I'd take back those words that hurt you...."

The below by ArtyMcFly is 100% accurate, but I believe there are some leaders that would have acted much earlier, risking their job in doing so, but ultimately being proven to be right. An oddball far left type politician, such as Corbyn, is someone who may have done.

By ArtyMcFly:

"Leaders of every country in the 'western' world lacked the political will to tackle the problem before it blew up in their faces. I don't even blame them, really. Who could say to their electorate "A new flu-like disease has killed <10 of our people and now you all have to stay indoors for two months", and not be thought to be insane? The various measures that western govts have taken weren't possible politically until a decent chunk of the population had the disease in their own neighbourhoods. By which time it was too late to do much about it. We'll learn from this and will be better prepared next time, but it's gonna be a painful learning process."

I suppose she has to have written at least one song on her own, but not that one.

I think opening on April 17 is unlikely. But it’s still 3 weeks away, and 3 weeks is a very long time in the context of this crisis. Three weeks ago, very few people were seriously considering that the casinos would close at all.

That said, the most likely opening date I’ve heard thrown around is about May 11.

There’s no one measure of whether it’s “safe to open”. There’s a lot of factors to balance here. And as the weeks go one, the marginal value of continued closure will decline while the marginal economic cost increases. Someone else posted an article suggesting the big casino companies could probably tolerate 5 months of closure before going completely bankrupt, so that would suggest a pretty hard limit to me.

I am an executive for a major hotel chain based in Los Angeles and there is no way Vegas hotels are opening in April. We have told our sales and support staff to anticipate opening back up June 1st with the hotels welcoming our customers several days later.
There is no way hotels will be opening up sooner IMO

LA is far worse off than Las Vegas at this point.

[QUOTE=PokerXanadu;55952651]+++1. And by "Florida", I think you mean Governor DeSantis. Many cities and counties in Florida are taking independent action to do stay-at-home mandates. Unfortunately, they are coming late in the game and lack of state leadership makes it harder to enforce.

yes, i did mean that 'who'; i did not wish to be too 'politico';

with regard to quarantine/social-distancing/just-stay-home, italy is in total lock-down with police checking where you are going, even if you just are going to buy food; their death rate for the 'day' just surpassed the 923/day high mark from days ago; the only positive number is that the confirmed infection rate/day seems to be dropping;
**social-distancing will take awhile to subdue infection-rate/day; given the lack of testing, i would guess/estimate well in excess of 2-months, and the u.s. is just getting started, ~2-wks; we are in this for the long haul, unless the 'policy-makers' are going to trade econ/$$ for lives; 'seasonality' might be the only thing that changes things, but covid is not going to 'magically disappear';
**if the 'policy-makers' go to 'herd-immunity', and the death rate is actually 1%, you can do the math for >300-million in the u.s.;

Yep. And knowing the Vegas worldwide clientele probably June 1st is a quite optimistic date.

I've never even watched that show but i'm aware that it's a programme for thick (dumb) people about thick (dumb) people.
Maybe try watching University Challenge instead as your reference point.

Making sweeping generalizations about an entire people isn't a good look; adding in that you are not one of those people makes it worse. If you think a reality TV show is a good way to take the measure of a people, I'm not sure what to tell you. And I can find you a good selection of people in almost any country that have done stupid **** in response to the pandemic. I don't know why you thought this was needed in your post, or what you hoped it would add to the thread, but it wasn't, and it adds nothing useful.

P.S. News Flash - Dumb people are everywhere. Lots of them.

Easy thing to say under a blanket of anonymity. The fact you made that statement shows you are dumber than 99% of people reading this thread that much is clear.

Yes because Vegas shut down quickly and has stayed shut down. They didn't beat the virus, they were just smart enough and lucky enough to get the critical head start needed to slow the spread and allow the hospitals to keep up until it's all over in a few months.

I think the biggest hope to getting things in America re-opened fast is getting the antibody tests to market in a widespread way. These test will identify who has already had the virus without realizing it (and thus most likely immune). These citizens can begin to go back to work, shop at malls, etc. and keep the economy afloat until things settle down. Immune people could still carry the virus on clothes/etc. so they would have to be very careful around non-infected family members.

My fear is that these tests may be weeks or months away from being widely available in the US. I'm basing this on the fact that the virus tests themselves took almost a month to become moderately available, and also basing it on the fact that I haven't heard the President or White House mention anything about these tests, only heard about them being deployed in other countries.


If these tests don't become available, I don't see how we can just reopen Vegas (or any other city) in April or May. Healthy people will swarm the city and the virus will have a field day.

Why wouldn't Vegas become the next hotspot infection city in America if it opens in the next month or so?

^ Cuomo mentioned the antibody test in his conference today. I didn't watch it, so I don't know if he gave a specific time-frame, but it sounds like the tests will be available sooner rather than later.


Meanwhile, Trump's announcement that he's considering quarantining New York might have the undesirable consequence of encouraging people to flee the state and take their infections elsewhere, in much the same way that people jumped on midnight trains to flee Wuhan and Lombardy when rumours of lockdowns were spreading there. (FWIW, I think it's already too late to bolt the door on the NYC stable. There's a horse on the loose in the hospital.)

True, yet no longer than 5 days ago UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson laughed at Covid-19 infection spreading everywhere.

Now he's hoping not to get a tube under his throat.