When will we see these kinds of crowds? In a few years perhaps, likely not this year and the next... — ssu

Next Trump rally maybe.

Wrong. The idea of suppression is to beat the virus as China and others have done. Take a look at New Zealand. If they did nothing, 60-80% of their population would likely have been infected. Right now, they're at 1,500 cases with only 8 new cases yesterday and 18 total deaths because unlike your leaders and pundits (and you) who were downplaying this the whole time, they are not anti-science and followed the best strategy available. So, they're in a position to open up in phased way within a month or two with proper track and trace and other measures in place that mean they will never get to 60-80% infection, just like China won't nor any country who also knows what they're doing. I mean, this is not all hypothetical, you can look around and see what's happening. Do you think China is going to reach 800 million infected (which would mean millions of deaths). If not, why? Your theory says they'll get there. Your theory is wrong.

In summary, first you were confusing preventative measures with curative measures and now its suppression with herd immunity. Anyway, if I'm wrong and you're right, the world will hit billions of infections and hundreds of millions of deaths, including close to a billion infections in China and India, respectively, despite all the shutdowns. Come back to me when that happens.

See: https://www.businessinsider.com/covid19-model-predicts-40-million-people-could-die-without-interventions-2020-3

"Their model puts hard numbers to the phrase "flatten the curve," which public health officials have been using when encouraging people to stay at home and keep their social distance. The goal is to keep healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed with too many critical cases at one time."

From that article, check the graph below (I couldn't seem to get it to embed). I know it's roughly done, but it presents as showing the same number of cases under the curve in either scenario.

Impact of the "social distancing" which really should be called "physical distancing" is going to last I know but today I felt the first hit to my heart.
I was walking into the grocery store and my pharmacist (we have become friends over time) was walking out. Our eyes met 6 feet apart and I mouthed to her that I love her and miss her. It was clear that by the tears welling in her eyes that she felt the same. She gave air huggs to me and I to her and we parted like lovers in the night. I made it through the first isle before I felt the tears coming and I couldn't stop. This is really hard to not have touch with people. I am a huggy person and hug hello and hug goodbye. And my children will tell you that I hug strangers all the time if it looks like it would warm their hearts.
When I go out, without a mask, I smile brightly because I can and it feels like society needs it.

It can be seen as "risky" behavior or selfish but it is real and I cannot live like this long and I won't.
I am still the one holding the door for another, complimening the ladies beautiful outfit, making babies laugh in the grocery store and give a thumbs up to kids playing with each other.

Whether I lose my life trying to descelate a domestic violence situation or dying because I hugged someone who needs it, if it happens than I think that is the way it is was supposed to end. Don't misunderstand me, I do not wish to die but I am not going to be afraid to live. I have a lot to do, a lot to give and a heart full of love.

Flattening the curve obviously helps to keep health services from getting overwhelmed but that's subsumed under the primary goal of the suppression strategy (as opposed to the herd immunity strategy), which is to reduce and eliminate the number of infections thereby reducing and eliminating fatalities. Success in terms of the suppression strategy means less infections and less deaths overall than otherwise would have occurred, and obviously not having your health service overwhelmed aids that, which is why you aim to modulate the degree of suppression to be below that level (the degree, not the fact of suppression). Success in terms of the herd immunity strategy, on the other hand, means getting enough people gradually infected so that you reach a point where the disease can't spread because most people are immune (ideally this is also done without overwhelming the health service, the difference being in the former case, you not only flatten the curve but aim to eliminate new infections, whereas in the latter continued infections are required). As I said, this is not hypothetical. If, as you claim, they are both the same thing, then 800 million people will eventually be infected in China (an absurdity if you look at the data) and this will not only happen but will be considered a success as long as their health system isn't overwhelmed. Pure nonsense because, of course, the difference was made clear here and all over the news over a month ago. The global consensus is suppression and this is why economies were shut down so severely. The result will be less overall deaths than a herd immunity strategy. How many less will depend on when we get a vaccine, what else we do to mitigate spread when we open up and so on.

Posted before. Here posted again. This is what New Zealand is doing to the letter. And it is working.

"Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks*, there shouldn’t be a big peak of infections afterwards, and it can all be done for a reasonable cost to society, saving millions of lives along the way."

*Unfortunately, most countries were too late starting for it to be a few weeks. Blame the politicians who delayed.

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

I wouldn't go around hugging people because I'm not sure whether or not I'm a carrier. It's not only about my safety.

In the interest of a little comic relief...

Fauci mentioned something about Brad Pitt playing him in a movie or something awhile ago.

@Hanover

To save you reading the whole thing:

"Option 2: Mitigation Strategy [Herd immunity strategy]
Mitigation goes like this: “It’s impossible to prevent the coronavirus now, so let’s just have it run its course, while trying to reduce the peak of infections. Let’s just flatten the curve a little bit to make it more manageable for the healthcare system.” [ What you're talking about and what's been largely rejected globally ]

Option 3: Suppression Strategy
The Mitigation Strategy doesn’t try to contain the epidemic, just flatten the curve a bit. Meanwhile, the Suppression Strategy tries to apply heavy measures to quickly get the epidemic under control. Specifically:
Go hard right now. Order heavy social distancing. Get this thing under control.
Then, release the measures, so that people can gradually get back their freedoms and something approaching normal social and economic life can resume. [ What I'm talking about and what's happening around the world"

Your mistake is mixing the two above strategies up completely and using that confusion to leverage some absurd objections to what's being done. Stop doing that, please.

Yes. I think the scare of Corona-virus will fade away once it isn't hyped by the media AND when the worst is over. At least next year we are tired about the whole pandemic. But then people will be worried about the jobs and the economy will simply suck. At least for a couple of years.

But think of the positive things: The recession decreases dramatically carbon emissions!

In China, carbon emissions were down an estimated 18 percent between early February and mid-March due to falls in coal consumption and industrial output, according to calculations first published by climate science and policy website CarbonBrief. That slowdown caused the world’s largest emitter to avoid some 250 million metric tons of carbon pollution—more than half the annual carbon emissions of the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, in the European Union, declining power demands and depressed manufacturing could cause emissions to fall by nearly 400 million metric tons this year, a figure that represents about 9 percent of the EU’s cumulative 2020 emissions target, according to a preliminary forecast issued last week.

It's been estimated that the pandemic could trigger the largest ever annual fall in CO2 emissions this year, more than during any previous economic crisis or period of war. At least, air pollution levels are notably lower.

Next Trump rally maybe. — Hanover

That indeed! Alhough Trump rallies aren't tourism. Perhaps for some Americans...

Comparing yesterday to today, the number of new cases of COVID in New York fell by 30%. The number of cases in Georgia nearly tripled. Wonder why... ? :chin:

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-04-24/georgia-allows-barber-shops-and-gyms-to-reopen-offering-a-preview-of-life-after-lockdown

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Your mistake is mixing the two above strategies up completely and using that confusion to leverage some absurd objections to what's being done. Stop doing that, please. — Baden

I read the article you sent, and it does clearly delineate three strategies to the coronavirus, which really can be described as varying levels of quarantining and social distancing. The more, the less spread, the less, the more spread. It does respond to an earlier question I had, which is how much the total infection rate will fall under each plan versus just how long we will need to prolong the infections in order adequately respond to the more serious cases. From the graph I posted, and from what I had read elsewhere, the primary focus of the social distancing was not to reduce total infection, but to decrease the rate of infection to a level where healthcare could address the problem.

I'll concede from the data you've provided that if we do nothing to reduce the spread, we will substantially increase the total number of cases with or without healthcare available. But even within the data posted, they continue to speak of the collapse of the healthcare system if we do nothing to address the issue, which is suggestive of the good the healthcare industry is doing to increase survival rates. I'm still not sure they really are, and that is not a conspiracy theory or anti-science mentality.

I'm still not sure — Hanover

That is the correct position. Scientists agree with you and so do I.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/we-still-dont-know-how-the-coronavirus-is-killing-us.html?utm_source=fb&fbclid=IwAR01zrImaGC9JDuO8Wr-ZhQWLyFnp86z-mBjNtitFDVN39kXHh_cyXD9uqA

A terrifying read.

But there are also certain unknowns which are more upbeat e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52435463
... and apparently this is also the case in Cambodia where I used to live

Shhh, it's just the flu.

Now they are studying heartburn remedies in New York.

In reviewing 6212 COVID-19 patient records, the doctors noticed that many survivors had been suffering from chronic heartburn and were on famotidine rather than more-expensive omeprazole (Prilosec), the medicine of choice both in the United States and among wealthier Chinese. Hospitalized COVID-19 patients on famotidine appeared to be dying at a rate of about 14% compared with 27% for those not on the drug, although the analysis was crude and the result was not statistically significant.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/new-york-clinical-trial-quietly-tests-heartburn-remedy-against-coronavirus

So if I smoke, stay in the sun, and down my heartburn meds with a shot of bleach I should be fine?

The shit has hit the fan in the UK, the growth of the virus in care homes is still growing rapidly and will probably outstrip the deaths in hospital rate over the next few weeks. Meanwhile when asked about this, the government squirms and claims care homes where their highest priority in this crisis. Somehow, I expect the details to come out later, infected people were shipped out to the carehomes from hospitals, probably when the NHS was trying to increase the number of beds they had available for treating Covid patients.

The problem is, how do we introduce a lockdown in the carehomes, to flatten the peak? We can't, because they were already adopting the maximum measures they could adopt and the death rate keeps accelerating.

This all falls inline with herd immunity philosophy, the weak are taken out of the herd.

do you reckon it would have been a lot different if Corbyn had won? Of course we’ll never know but I suspect not.

Yes I'm sure a Labour government would have taken the threat seriously right from the beginning and locked down at least a week earlier. Corbyn would have been vilified by the media and many Tory's, but that wouldn't have phased him.

"More than 5,000 Brazilians have lost their lives to the coronavirus – even more people than in China, if its official statistics are to be believed.

But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/so-what-bolsonaro-shrugs-off-brazil-rising-coronavirus-death-toll

Nice.

I don't think we need to fall to one extreme or the other, either completely ignoring it or full blown lockdown, but that we should be smart about how we treat it. While it may not be the deadliest virus out there, it is still contagious and can cause potential health problems for many people which we can't ignore. We also need to worry about what the shutdown is doing to families and individuals who are out of work, money, and struggling to pay for food and shelter. Stimulus checks are a very temporary solution, and as we all know $1200 doesn't last long. I think that we need to observe social distancing, avoid travel and contact with others whenever possible, and limit the amount of people allowed in buildings (restaurants, stores, etc.). This would limit exposure and allow for people to keep jobs and basic income. It is important for us to keep updated though, this is always constantly changing around us and the information available is always expanding. So use good judgement, stay up to date, and be precautionary where possible.

Remdesivir! Woot woot!

If you're an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, that's a voluntary quit," Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said Friday. "Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495050-states-telling-workers-theyll-lose-unemployment-benefits-if-they-refuse

So what's the deal with Sweden? By all accounts, the shit should've hit the fan by now, but that doesn't seem to be happening. In terms of overall infection and death rate, they are doing worse than some (their immediate neighbors), much better than others (Italy, Spain, France, NY), and about as well as Ireland, which has been praised for its active measures to suppress the epidemic, while Sweden has done almost nothing. Its elderly have been hit hard, but that is also happening elsewhere. On the other hand its health system hasn't been overwhelmed.

Apparently a very considerate and informed people that they keep their distance as much as possible without it having to be enforced. We tried a loose approach in the Netherlands as well and it didn't work, which resulted in more stringent rules.

About time the US got with the program: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/403978

Slow pokes.

SSU, pay attention to this prediction please, that will be #2. :joke:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/396667

↪praxis ↪ssu SSU, pay attention to this prediction please, that will be #2. :joke:

Corona. Next stop Brasil. I think the contenders for most deaths in the short term are Brasil and Iran. In the long run it will be India and China but that's once it's become seasonal. — Benkei

You might be right.

Yet I think both of these countries will try to hide the real numbers (especially Iran). It will be as murky as the number how many Iraqi children died because of the UN sanctions in Iran.

Speaking of predictions, the 60,000 nonsense is out the window and IHME have revised up to 72,000 for US deaths. I'm sticking with 100,000. The US are just not smart enough to deal with this properly. Australia and NZ on the other hand will be showing the rest of the West that these huge numbers didn't have to happen and it's not just the governments' faults, Every idiot who was told months ago what needed to be done and downplayed this is responsible.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-update-us-deaths-to-covid-19-exceed-vietnam-war-toll-and-pence-slammed-for-not-wearing-face-mask-2020-04-29

So, I guess Trump's Vietnam is no longer STDs.