Jump to content


The P&R Plague Thread (Covid-19)


Recommended Posts


Scathing editorial on how poorly the USA has handled the virus and the world is taking notice. 

This is reason alone for new leadership.

 


https://theweek.com/articles/921833/world-putting-america-quarantine

 

Quote

 

The United States is in the midst of a full-blown second wave of coronavirus. According to Worldometers, Tuesday had 36,015 new cases — the highest number since May 1, and the third-highest ever. Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, California, and Texas are headed for a dire emergency fast. So far deaths have thankfully not returned to their previous highs, probably in part because the new surge appears to be hitting younger patients. But deaths are also a lagging indicator, and they are highly likely to start increasing soon.

Europe, where most countries have largely contained the virus (after initial screw-ups), is looking at America with slackjawed horror. The European Union is likely to close its borders to American travelers when it restores some international travel on July 1. Canada will most likely keep its U.S. border mostly closed when the current agreement expires on July 21.

Around the world, it is beginning to sink in how profoundly rotten the United States is. Unless America manages to turn things around, it will slide from the center of the international order to a peripheral, mistrusted basketcase, and it will deserve it.

 

 

 

Quote

 

It is plainly obvious why the U.S. is experiencing a second wave. The point of coronavirus lockdowns, as I and dozens of others explained months ago, was to buy time for the government to set up more fine-grained containment protocols that could contain the virus more effectively. With transmission reduced to a manageable rate and a test-trace-isolate system in place, countries can return to something like normal life, and an increasing number are doing so. It's a tricky business and renewed lockdowns may be necessary, as fresh outbreaks in China and elsewhere have shown, but it can be done.

But the Trump administration did not even try this on a national level, or do anything of significance. Indeed, American politics is so broken that we couldn't even manage the simplest common-sense containment strategy of mandating universal mask-wearing in any indoor space. American public health experts spent weeks on a bizarre and scientifically illiterate crusade against masks — a study years ago found that even cheap homemade masks significantly reduce droplet-based infection — but even after plenty of new evidence has come in, Trump and most Republicans keep insisting a mask is a matter of personal choice. Instead masks got sucked into the conservative grievance industrial complex, becoming another postmodern cultural signifier for right-wingers trying to own the libs.

Trump simply cannot grasp what the pandemic is, because in his mind nobody save himself is a real person. Appearances are all that matter — he is plainly most upset about the Bad Numbers of infections and deaths, and continues to suggest in public that the U.S. should be testing less so he looks less bad. He promises there will be no more lockdowns even as cases spike

 


 

Quote

 

It is no doubt extremely alarming for people around the world coming to really grasp the fact that the world's most powerful country is being run by an incompetent buffoon who could not be trusted with a lemonade stand yet still commands the lockstep loyalty of one of two major political parties. "I can't imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it's unsafe," Siouxsie Wiles, a New Zealand disease scientist, told The Washington Post. "There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It's heartbreaking." Indeed, American political reporters have struggled to grasp the reality of Trump as well, though the ongoing catastrophe seems to have finally beaten it into their heads.

But Trump is not the only problem with the United States. New York had the worst outbreak in the country (so far) because Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio dawdled and procrastinated in its early stages. In this they exemplified perhaps the signature characteristic of American politicians: blame avoidance. When faced with a problem, most top politicians in both parties think first about how they can shift blame to others or appear the victim of circumstance. Halting the epidemic in its early stages would have required a lot of aggressive action before the need for it was clear — in a word, leadership. Politicians would have had to exercise power in a way that upset people, and carefully communicate why they were doing so. Instead they largely let events do their work for them — once outbreaks were underway and sports seasons were being canceled, they could impose lockdowns without risking a backlash. That cowardice killed tens of thousands of people. Only a handful of state governors, like Washington's Jay Inslee, actually listened to their scientists and got out ahead of events.

 

 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

It's going to be really interesting to see what happens in the next week or two.  The number of cases is clearly going up.  And...before someone says it's because of testing...no....the number of hospitalizations is going up also in the states that are increasing.  

 

The number of deaths have continued to go down or remain relatively low.  So, I'm interested in seeing if the deaths increase.

 

If they don't...why?  The number have decreased steadily while the number of cases remained fairly high.  This might be because of a couple reasons:

 

a)  the cases are more spread out throughout the country so hospitals aren't as overwhelmed like they were in New York and New Jersey.  This allows them to actually treat patients more carefully.

 

b)  The medical community has learned how to treat the patients better to save their lives.

 

I'm guessing it's a combination fo the two.

 

Of course, this doesn't mean much to the people who are getting it and end up with long term/life long lung and health problems.  Many of them are young or even kids.

 

Or numbers are being manipulated and Covid deaths are being attributed to other causes. 

  • Plus1 2
Link to comment
4 minutes ago, Born N Bled Red said:

 

Or numbers are being manipulated and Covid deaths are being attributed to other causes. 

Which....looking at the numbers, I actually thought about everyone who jumped on the bandwagon of accusing healthcare workers of attributing all deaths to COVID.  Well....if that's true, then why have they dropped so much?

 

I don't think either scenario is happening.  Are there some attributed to COVID that aren't? Probably.  But, there are probably some that aren't that should be.  So, in the grand scheme of things, I believe the numbers are in the ballpark.

  • Plus1 1
Link to comment

15 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Which....looking at the numbers, I actually thought about everyone who jumped on the bandwagon of accusing healthcare workers of attributing all deaths to COVID.  Well....if that's true, then why have they dropped so much?

 

I don't think either scenario is happening.  Are there some attributed to COVID that aren't? Probably.  But, there are probably some that aren't that should be.  So, in the grand scheme of things, I believe the numbers are in the ballpark.

 

I'm very curious after all is said and done, how total deaths over the duration of the COVID outbreak fit into the historical data. I think that will, ultimately, give us a much better idea of the total number of COVID deaths experienced verses what is being reported/attributed.

  • Plus1 1
Link to comment
11 minutes ago, Born N Bled Red said:

 

I'm very curious after all is said and done, how total deaths over the duration of the COVID outbreak fit into the historical data. I think that will, ultimately, give us a much better idea of the total number of COVID deaths experienced verses what is being reported/attributed.

Mortality in the U.S. noticeably increased during the first months of 2020 compared to previous years

 

There's some very good graphs and information in this.  It clearly went up during the pandemic.

  • Plus1 4
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
33 minutes ago, FrantzHardySwag said:

 

 

Is it possible that Covid has lost some of its "punch"? Thousands and thousands of new cases, and new daily high totals, but not the corresponding hospitalizations that we saw back in April? 

 

Is that even a thing for a virus?

Link to comment

1 minute ago, DevoHusker said:

 

Is it possible that Covid has lost some of its "punch"? Thousands and thousands of new cases, and new daily high totals, but not the corresponding hospitalizations that we saw back in April? 

 

Is that even a thing for a virus?

Haven’t seen hospitalization numbers for Florida. But hospitalizations in Texas have doubled in the last 20 days and ICUs are running out of beds, so I think it still has bite. My opinion is Florida and Texas will look like NYC, it’ll suck for a few weeks but then they’ll move into a period where the virus has moved through the vulnerable, and hospitalizations drop off - that’s just my opinion though. 

  • Plus1 1
Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

Visit the Sports Illustrated Husker site



×
×
  • Create New...