Fake web news reports on the coronavirus (OT)

I, and many others, have adopted a zero tolerance policy toward those calling for opening the economy, and fighting for the right to spread, and infect the rest of us.

One jerk (the nice word for him) who owns a local bar threatened to open up May 1 (today). The city attorney came down on him like a ton of bricks - threatening to yank all his business licenses. He folded like a cheap suit. In the process, he was threatened (he claimed he received death threats, and I don't doubt it), and his business reputation destroyed. After this is over, his business will never return to what it was, even if it does return. A pity, because I was hoping he'd actually open, get arrested, fined, and lose all his licenses.

Gear, living on the other end of PA (Bucks county, north of Philly), I also think it's the way to go, even though I expect we will be the last part of the state to reopen because of how close we are to New Jersey and NYC.

The plan also really points up the real key issue, which is not the number of deaths--or even the number of cases: it's the ratio of available hospital beds to the number of patients who need one--and that is very much regional.

It's frustrating for me in many ways--I would love to go spend some time this summer in Maine--we have property there--but the Maine governor's plan says that all out of state visitors must quarantine for 14 days--at least through June, and likely through July and into August. Never mind the challenge of driving there across New Jersey, New York (not much of NY, but a bit), Connecticut, Mass, and NH.

Agree Halbert on the available bed concept. We have numerous hospitals that are empty and are running out of money because they are shut down and waiting for a virus that has yet to show up much. Need to keep hospitals and its workers, and systems somewhat active to be effective. Each state and county has its own set of issues and each Governor will have a difficult time trying to balance things properly.... unless you are in Florida where it sounds like its opening up with less reporting. Not a good combination.

If 65k dead is waiting for the virus to arrive, I can't wait until it really gets here. What will that look like? 200k dead? More? A million? Two?

Going to drink some Lysol.

Hello guys,
I live on Queens, NYC in the belly of the beast, the hot zone. I am an essential worker, whether or not you like that terminology, I go to work. I work for Verizon as a cable fiber optic splicing technician, 23 years under my belt. We are making progress every day, splicing fiber that is..
As far as “The China Virus“ goes, too many stories to tell..
My wife is an essential worker also a food server for the NYC Board of Education. Her school is putting out 1000 lunches a day for any NYC resident who’s hungry..
Just dropping in to sound off, say hello and let the team know we are doing the best we can with what we got..

No, "waiting for a virus that has yet to show up much" (nearly 66k dead), that's not my plan. I know we don't have the needed testing to reopen. That's what the health experts tell us. That holds true for every state. If you have a health expert, who isn't some kind of conspiracy theory-pushing crank, that says otherwise, please share with us. A health expert, not a politician, or economist. I already know there isn't one. I know what sort of testing would be needed before we could consider reopening. I know, for a fact, a second wave will come, perhaps a worse one that the first. I know, for a fact, we are not ready to handle that.

The Senate can't even test its 100 members. Yes, you read that right. The Senate does not have the capability to test 100 members.

Nearly 66k dead because we didn't lockdown, weren't (and aren't) prepared, didn't have the needed equipment (we still don't). Our frontline people - the nurses, doctors, etc. - still don't have the PPE they need.

I base my opinions, regarding COVID-19, on science, just like I did for PCa - only science matters.

Now, for my morning Lysol latte, perhaps I will inject some bleach later today.

It's clearly too early. Younger, less experienced people usually have to learn the hard way. This older guy will continue to shelter at home. I do respect one's right to go out, get sick, and die.

I feel sorry for people in the certain states who want to do the right thing, but are compelled to return dangerously back work because they will lose unemployment benefits.

Try this logic - How about all the younger people continue to party and socialize until all have been exposed and past the illness then they can not pass it on to the older and health impaired folks? I figure that would take about a month if efficiently done and the government could fund the under-40 rock concerts in major indoor stadiums and provide beer stamps to those under 40 to socialize at night and on the weekends. The same with meat packing plants, the fact that 35% of all workers are infected does not mean much if they are under 40, just another flu to deal with. Just sleep at the plant and don't go home to Grandma. The rest of us could hunker down for another month and it would be over.

There could be cheap plane flights for the under 40 people right now with flights for the older people later on. How hard could this be? We can give people little red stickers that say "I was within 6 feet of young people and may be infected". Seems that playing political whack-a-mole will take years of this crazy stuff.

My guess is something like this will play out in the next month as the states relax guidelines and all older people stay home and wear masks everywhere avoiding younger people. I am thinking we should just do a good job of it and get it over with.

Not a single state has met the Federal guidelines for reopening, not one.

Here's the Federal guidelines; they call for a 14-day drop in cases to reopen. Not a single state is there, that I am aware of. I can take a look at various U.S. trackers, and verify it.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/openingamerica/

The idea of reopening certain sections of states would work how? Would travel from one part of the state to another be allowed? Because if so, I know the name of a virus who will hitch a free ride. In Michigan, during the reopen rally, people came from all over the state, with their guns, (they needed guns because they were going to shoot the virus?), and when they left the rally they took the virus all over Michigan. Here's a nice image of cellphone data re: those attending the rally, and where they took it back to: https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2020/05/04/cellphone-data-shows-operation-gridlock-protesters-dispersed-across-michigan-raising-concerns-of-spreading-coronavirus

I am amused some think that while we were all social distancing etc. the virus just went away.

Read this early this morning:
"If you look at the country minus NY, from April 25 to May 1, cases have GROWN from 24,322 to 28,437. So outside of NY, positive cases are increasing by 17% per week. Even if case growth doesn’t go up, that would put us over 50,000 new cases every day outside of NY by Memorial Day.

"This difference isn’t a result of testing. During that time, testing has gone up by 30% in NY vs 12% in the rest of the country.

"In fact, if you look at death rates in the top 10 major metro cities, NY is the only one falling. And the top 10 hot spots in the country are rural towns, only 1 hot spot in New York state."

May's 31 days might be blissful for many, in June, and July, all of us will begin to pay the price for that bliss. That which we were warned about: hospitals unable to deal with the influx of patients, etc., could happen in summer.

Buddy Blank said...
The governor of Mississippi changed his mind about reopening because the state just reported its highest single-day increase in Covid-19 cases and deaths.

We actually have reopened partially. I was at the hospital yesterday, and talking to some workers, and a bunch of them have been furloughed- like more than 1/2- but elective surgery had just started back up.

These figures could vary according to which actual day we are talking about. But as of 5/4, we had a total of 310 deaths in MS, which had increased by 7 in the previous 24 hr. I don't know what the previous daily records were. There is a chart, if you scroll about 1/2 way down this page, which shows new cases and deaths by date. Unfortunately, the numbers for deaths can not be read, they are too small. But looking at the size of the red bars(deaths), it appears the daily reported deaths were significantly higher a few weeks ago. Which is good news. By this chart, new cases per day peaked about 12 days ago, while new daily deaths(harder to tell) peaked about 22 days ago.
https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/14,0,420.html#map

As of today, we have 10 deaths per 100K. The worst in the nation is the North East and NY state with 129, NJ 89, CT 72 MA 59. For whatever reason, and ironically, (maybe it has not fully reached them yet? Maybe their population is not packed together near as much) the states that have not much shut down are doing the best: AR 3, SD 2, ND 3, UT 2. They have done the best so far, but of course things can change. I am really rather amazed that one state, NY, could have been hit so hard, along with it's surrounding states. I'm sure part of it is that the population density is so high, but I would like to see a chart for cities nation wide. Even small(population) states have cities that have very high population densities.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 5/5/2020 9:21:01 AM (GMT-6)

OK, someone give me some input on this confusing situation. The whole idea of this last 2 months of various amounts of quarantine is to avoid overwhelming our hospitals, right?(although, that is putting many hospitals in trouble due to to lack of business, hope they are OK when we need them later) But, the main reason for "sheltering" is to lower demand on the hospitals, because, once we finally come out of our caves, the virus is still there waiting to infect every one who is not immune, right? No matter how long we hide, the virus will still be waiting for us, right? So we have got to face it sooner or later, and most of us are going to get it sooner or later? In fact, a whole bunch of us have already had it and don't even know it? Or maybe it's that some think that we can hide until we get a vaccine, no matter how long that takes? If so, I hope the vaccine works a lot better than our flu vaccines do some years, although some good years help 50-60%.