Does the coronavirus merit investment, or personal, concern or consideration?

I already scheduled my tax payment for 4/15. Don’t see a lot of point to delay it for 3 months.

I really hope we don’t end up like Italy. It’s getting really depression and worrying.

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I thought herd immunity is more like over 90%+ vaccination or immunity but I could be wrong.

I sound like a broken record about testing but I just have such a hard time getting over such a huge FAIL. I’m sure someone was screaming their head off to hurry the @$!% up. I’m sure we will find out a lot more but it wouldn’t fix anything now except why is the number of test still so tiny after more than 2 weeks of emergency?

This gets into far more strategy than I think the government (regardless of who’s in charge) is capable of. But to an unknown extent, wide-spread testing can be counter-productive - a negative test gives people a false sense of security. It would inherently relax the measures (or, individual compliance with the measures) that are currently controlling the spread.

I’ve said before - the panic will prove to be excessive, but the panic itself is what will render it excessive. Widespread testing would remove a lot of the panic that comes from not knowing - and that’s when I would start to get really concerned.

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Yes.

“A successful shelter-in-place means you’re going to feel like it was all for nothing, and you’d be right: Because nothing means that nothing happened to your family. And that’s what we’re going for here.”

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That doc’s speech is great for people who aren’t taking the virus seriously, or those who just need a simple, overly dramatic, presentation. For people, already on edge (you know who they are),I believe it will only increase anxiety, depression, fear.

Unfortunately, that’s a lot of the point. The “desperate” measures like a lock-down, for me or you it might not have been necessary at all. It’s those people who are still packing the beaches every day that are to blame for the effects we’re seeing today, as much as the virus itself.

I still think it’s questionable to have closed schools, force restaurants to close, etc. But I understand that, to some degree, it’s happening because a certain segment of the population is leaving us with little other choice.

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The segment who might be spreading the virus without any symptoms?

Agree. If people won’t stay home, the only solution is closing the stuff they’re going out for. People in my city of New Orleans kept going out to bars well after it was prudent to stay home, but before the mandatory shutdown almost a week later.

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The United States needs large trade and fiscal deficits to maintain its standard of living.

If other countries aren’t producing surplus goods and services then there may not be enough goods to export to the United States. If it comes down to us getting goods or China getting goods, then China is going to keep their domestic production. If everyone figures this out they will hoard even more than they’re doing now. We will be left high and dry with empty shelves and not enough manufacturing capacity to support our standard of living.

Additionally, because of the large national debt and huge fiscal deficits we require countries to constantly buy our US tresuries. If countries don’t have surplus savings because they are spending money fighting the virus, then there is no excess savings for us to borrow. They might even start selling treasuries because they need the money to prop up their economy.

Previously all the inflation the Federal Reserve created went into the asset markets (real estate, stock market, bonds, bitcoin, gold, etc). That helped keep a lid on consumer inflation (besides the housing prices). All of the inflation the Federal Reserve is creating now is going into consumer goods and they are buying up everything.

Add in the Federal Reserve creating trillions of dollars of new money and all this could be highly inflationary… way more money chasing fewer goods.

Even if a state is Covid-19 free, what’s stopping an asymptomatic person from coming into the state and infecting people? The stay-at-home order in California will last until further notice but it may take the nation a year or more to be completely free of the virus. The shit storm that is now grocery shopping isn’t acceptable as the “new normal”. Someone with the virus is eventually going to infect a herd of shoppers and then it will be the National Guard forcing people in line to actually stay six feet apart and handing out bread and gruel for the week.

COVID -19 is a deadly virus to which no one is immune and every single person who comes into contact with it can get it. This means, if everyone got it at once, hospitals and medical facilities would be overwhelmed, as well they would be short-staffed as health professionals would also be sick and dying. It’s estimated several dozen health professionals died in Wuhan, including multiple doctors, indeed, three died in one day, so there would be an even greater shortage of medical care, not just for coronavirus, but for everything else.

In addition, all essential services would be suffering the same problem; police, fire, utilities, grocery stores, transportation staff, etc. The military might be no help because they could all be sick as well.

There would not be enough equipment like ventilators and enough hospital beds or medical staff to handle it, as we’re already running into this problem.

Many more people would die.

A proven method of slowing down this problem in a pandemic is isolation and quarantine.

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Nearly everyone infected in the US so far seems to have been by someone asymptomatic. There are probably at least a million people (perhaps several million) who already have it.

Have you noticed people self-quarantining all seem to be people who came into contact with a seemingly healthy person who later fell ill and tested positive for the virus afterwards?

That’s the big problem. Not everyone or every state/country has been taking this seriously enough. On a global scale if it were possible to coordinate and quarantine everyone for 3 weeks this virus would be past us. However, that is unfortunately not possible to do.

It would have to have major militant oversight and healthcare facilities and import/export supplies would still need to be distributed to ration food/etc.

As has been proven somewhat successful in China and Korea, it requires either a complete lockdown or a surplus of excessive testing with moderate lockdown.

The only real option is make every attempt to flatten the curve until we have a vaccine, which is at best several months out. Tighten your belts.

I think it’d need even longer than 3 weeks because there’s multiple people in most households. It could work through one of them at a time in a chain. Of course, with the 3 week everyone quarantined (have to distribute the food/medicine/etc first so grocery stores aren’t open either), it’d be pushed way back.

Or the segment of idiots who can’t be bothered to follow good basic hygiene, let alone instructions to stay home when they could be living it up at a local party or bar. They’re like that guy in the zombie movie who doesn’t tell people he got bitten.

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I suspect the cases of people who contracted the virus from “unknown origins” would be those who came in contact with a seemingly healthy person who later fell ill and tested positive.

For all your sinners:

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My point seems to have missed the mark, let me rephrase.

No, it’s not a certain segment of the population that’s leaving us with little other choice. It’s because the virus is silent AND deadly – plenty of people could be spreading it without any symptoms. Even if they don’t party it up like idiots.

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I can hardly believe my little country town has just completed a sheltered virus testing compound.

It’s located across the parking lot of the emergency hospital entrance. I drove by today & it has even started testing. There were about 4 people in line for testing. Many clothed & masked Dr’s & nurses working.

Unbelievable & terrific! This town is ready & working! Central Valley in CA. :relaxed:

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Come on glitch, that is a terrible article with a really dumb and illogical clickbait headline and insinuation. Cities are more densely populated by definition, so they’re obviously more conducive to spreading a highly contagious virus. Cities also happen to vote blue, even in red states.

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