The P&R Plague Thread (Covid-19)

[NoLongerN]

@Moiraine, this was helpful.  Thank you.  

[NoLongerN]

2 hours ago, TGHusker said:

Trump, since he likes dictators,  may wish he had the tool of the open hospital window like Putin does

 

https://www.rferl.org/a/third-russian-doctor-mysteriously-falls-from-hospital-window-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/30591638.html

 

This type of talk wasn't helpful and really takes the political forum in a direction that is certainly free speech ... but brings out the worst in me.  So, I'll avoid you in this discussion moving forward.  

[commando]

3 hours ago, TGHusker said:

Trump, since he likes dictators,  may wish he had the tool of the open hospital window like Putin does

 

https://www.rferl.org/a/third-russian-doctor-mysteriously-falls-from-hospital-window-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/30591638.html

somehow gravity works much better on people putin has declared to be enemies of the people.

[Danny Bateman]

What the hell. Things are really getting pretty dangerous.

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[knapplc]

2 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

Give it to the old people and football players first!

[BigRedBuster]

41 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

Give it to the old people and football players first!

All students so they can go back to school.

 

[TGHusker]

Interesting interview  wt Laurie Garrett.  I do agree wt the bold part below - for sure>

 

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/opinion/she-predicted-the-coronavirus-what-does-she-foresee-next/ar-BB13yY8A
 

Quote

 

What (Laurie) Garrett has been warning most direly about — in her 1994 best seller, “The Coming Plague,” and in subsequent books and speeches, including TED Talks — is a pandemic like the current one.

She saw it coming. So a big part of what I wanted to ask her about was what she sees coming next. Steady yourself. Her crystal ball is dark.

 

 

Quote

 

Just as we come out of our holes and see what 25 percent unemployment looks like,” she said, “we may also see what collective rage looks like.”

Garrett has been on my radar since the early 1990s, when she worked for Newsday and did some of the best reporting anywhere on AIDS. Her Pulitzer, in 1996, was for coverage of Ebola in Zaire. She has been a fellow at Harvard’s School of Public Health, was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and consulted on the 2011 movie “Contagion.”

 

 

Quote

 

But there is one part of the story she couldn’t have predicted: that the paragon of sloppiness and sluggishness would be the United States.

“I never imagined that,” she said. “Ever.”

The highlights — or, rather, lowlights — include President Trump’s initial acceptance of the assurances by President Xi Jinping of China that all would be well, his scandalous complacency from late January through early March, his cheerleading for unproven treatments, his musings about cockamamie ones, his abdication of muscular federal guidance for the states and his failure, even now, to sketch out a detailed long-range strategy for containing the coronavirus.

Having long followed Garrett’s work, I can attest that it’s not driven by partisanship. She praised George W. Bush for fighting H.I.V. in Africa.

But she called Trump “the most incompetent, foolhardy buffoon imaginable.”

And she’s shocked that America isn’t in a position to lead the global response to this crisis, in part because science and scientists have been so degraded under Trump.

Referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and its analogues abroad, she told me: “I’ve heard from every C.D.C. in the world — the European C.D.C., the African C.D.C., China C.D.C. — and they say, ‘Normally our first call is to Atlanta, but we ain’t hearing back.’ There’s nothing going on down there. They’ve gutted that place. They’ve gagged that place. I can’t get calls returned anymore. Nobody down there is feeling like it’s safe to talk. Have you even seen anything important and vital coming out of the C.D.C.?”

The problem, Garrett added, is bigger than Trump and older than his presidency. America has never been sufficiently invested in public health. The riches and renown go mostly to physicians who find new and better ways to treat heart disease, cancer and the like. The big political conversation is about individuals’ access to health care.

But what about the work to keep our air and water safe for everyone, to design policies and systems for quickly detecting outbreaks, containing them and protecting entire populations? Where are the rewards for the architects of that?

Garrett recounted her time at Harvard. “The medical school is all marble, with these grand columns,” she said. “The school of public health is this funky building, the ugliest possible architecture, with the ceilings falling in.”

“That’s America?” I asked.

“That’s America,” she said.

And what America needs most right now, she said, isn’t this drumbeat of testing, testing, testing, because there will never be enough superfast, super-reliable tests to determine on the spot who can safely enter a crowded workplace or venue, which is the scenario that some people seem to have in mind. America needs good information, from many rigorously designed studies, about the prevalence and deadliness of coronavirus infections in given subsets of people, so that governors and mayors can develop rules for social distancing and reopening that are sensible, sustainable and tailored to the situation at hand.

 

 

[TGHusker]

15 hours ago, BigRedN said:

 

This type of talk wasn't helpful and really takes the political forum in a direction that is certainly free speech ... but brings out the worst in me.  So, I'll avoid you in this discussion moving forward.  

Please explain

[knapplc]

 

[Cdog923]

55 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

All students so they can go back to school.

 

 

Distance learning has actually been far more successful than I originally thought it would be, at least in my corner of the world. 

[BigRedBuster]

20 minutes ago, Cdog923 said:

 

Distance learning has actually been far more successful than I originally thought it would be, at least in my corner of the world. 

My three kids absolutely hate it and have the attitude of...why am I spending this much money to watch something on line.  All three are studying subjects that should have labs in many classes or clinical experiences they are missing.

 

I'll also admit that this is self serving too.  I need them back in school again so I can get back to enjoying being an empty nester.  

[Moiraine]

1 hour ago, TGHusker said:

Interesting interview  wt Laurie Garrett.  I do agree wt the bold part below - for sure>

 

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/opinion/she-predicted-the-coronavirus-what-does-she-foresee-next/ar-BB13yY8A
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The scariest part of all of this is that so many people, including people who used to post here, think our leadership isn’t really to blame. They can be utter failures and still not be held accountable. And here we are obsessing about a sexual assault accusation up against ~15 for Trump.

[Cdog923]

44 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

My three kids absolutely hate it and have the attitude of...why am I spending this much money to watch something on line.  All three are studying subjects that should have labs in many classes or clinical experiences they are missing.

 

I'll also admit that this is self serving too.  I need them back in school again so I can get back to enjoying being an empty nester.  

 

My school in particular has been using an online curriculum for almost 6 years now, so I certainly could be an outlier. I do have 3 students that will graduate as juniors because they've absolutely killed it, though. 

[Danny Bateman]

27 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

 

The scariest part of all of this is that so many people, including people who used to post here, think our leadership isn’t really to blame. They can be utter failures and still not be held accountable. And here we are obsessing about a sexual assault accusation up against ~15 for Trump.

 

Not to get all far afield in the Coivd thread but recency bias is definitely a thing. What people hear and see on the news is more important and front of mind for them. It's why October surprises are a thing. Trying to dump some bad stuff on your opponent at the last minute for voters to think about as they go off to vote.