Corvid-19 and its impact (name edit)

[Agema]

He did have a personal hand in it.

This depends what we mean by "personal".

I don't think Trump had any particular awareness of this. I don't think Trump has much awareness of a great deal that goes on, because where most presidents are keeping an eye on things, Trump is playing golf, phoning into Fox and Friends and insulting Swedish teeangers on Twitter. Metaphorically, Trump was fiddling while his appointee (Bolton) axed Rome's fire brigade.

The issue is that the buck stops at the president's arse. That's what being leader means and an administration is in large part an extension of the leader. A good leader steps up: however, Trump doesn't step up and doesn't think it's his responsibility.

 

[Silvanus]

Work is what gives everyone everything they need to survive. It's not society that makes people work, it's existence. Communism is dumb.

Is it "existence" that refuses people occupational sick pay or the ability to work from home? Or are those conscious decisions by private companies, prioritising profit over safety?

He's emphasizing his surprise at the number of people who die the flu. It's relatable. People who aren't well informed of random mortality statistics are likely to be surprised by that number. "Man, that's a lot, I wouldn't have thought the flu does that much" is a relatable way of taking in information like that. That's good persuasive rhetoric. But if you want to dismiss that, at least count for the context. The purpose of that statement was not to minimize the danger but to emphasize it.

Ok, so we're just supposed to ignore the part where he says, verbatim, "I didn't know people died from the flu".

We're back to ignoring the words he actually uses, and applying whatever interpretation is most politically convenient, then.

And telling people to treat it like the flu is correct. It spreads like the flu, you can avoid it with the same methods as the flu, it kills like the flu, and it's very likely to have a similar mortality rate to the flu.

Excuse me? This flies in the face of all expert opinion. Flu does not require self-isolation for up to 14 days. Flu does not require restricting social gatherings and closing schools, or mass testing for contact. The mortality rate for COVID-19 is between 1 & 3.4 percent, which is at the very least 10 times as lethal as seasonal flu.

No, we should listen to the fucking scientists and experts, not "hunches". What you're doing is doing your own amateur data analysis on whatever information you can grab online, and then using that to claim that the legitimate data analysis produced by the actual experts in the field is wrong.

===

Out of interest, I recall you also claimed the testing kits were faulty, and the administration chose to develop their own rather than relying on those faulty ones.

Are you referring to the CDC-produced ones, which did indeed have a fault?

Because the W.H.O. offered the US their approved testing kits as well, and the US refused them. The W.H.O. kits are not inaccurate and are in use globally at the moment, including in countries with a much more effective response.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

He did have a personal hand in it.

This depends what we mean by "personal".

I don't think Trump had any particular awareness of this. I don't think Trump has much awareness of a great deal that goes on, because where most presidents are keeping an eye on things, Trump is playing golf, phoning into Fox and Friends and insulting Swedish teeangers on Twitter. Metaphorically, Trump was fiddling while his appointee (Bolton) axed Rome's fire brigade.

The issue is that the buck stops at the president's arse. That's what being leader means and an administration is in large part an extension of the leader. A good leader steps up: however, Trump doesn't step up and doesn't think it's his responsibility.

I think it is far more likely he did actually have a personal hand in what teams were cut, that was during the same time he cut the cyber security team and all the scientists left the white house. Hell, he even fired the guy that was supposed to secure his cell phone because he didn't want the hassle involved with the added security. He was also calling for budget cuts to the CDC at the time as well. He has a habit of firing anyone or anything that does anything he doesn't understand or finds annoying. Isn't he threatening to fire the fed chief again? He has more turnover than any president in our history. He never takes responsibility for his actions though, so I am not surprised he would attempt to pass the buck as usual.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

An anime convention I wanted to go to next month got cancelled just now. Man this blows. It's the second biggest money bringer to Boston after pax east too. At least they're converting our registration towards next year's con. Always a silver lining I guess haha.

 

[Agema]

I think it is far more likely he did actually have a personal hand in what teams were cut, that was during the same time he cut the cyber security team and all the scientists left the white house. Hell, he even fired the guy that was supposed to secure his cell phone because he didn't want the hassle involved with the added security. He was also calling for budget cuts to the CDC at the time as well. He has a habit of firing anyone or anything that does anything he doesn't understand or finds annoying. Isn't he threatening to fire the fed chief again? He has more turnover than any president in our history. He never takes responsibility for his actions though, so I am not surprised he would attempt to pass the buck as usual.

Honestly, I just can't see Trump noticing that sort of detail. Can you imagine Trump having a sift through all sorts of agencies and departments and deciding what should be cut? I don't. I think he just appoints flunkies to go do stuff and spouts ideas off the top of his head, after which he's back to his real interests of bitching at fake news and soaking up the praise of adoring Republicans at rallies. He doesn't do detail, he doesn't know a lot of what's going on and he plainly isn't really interested in government beyond feeding his own ego.

That's part of why he keeps firing people. They try to do their job properly using conventional processes of collecting evidence, taking advice and assessing consequences of their action, and when this conflicts with Trump's idle whim enough they get dismissed.

We're back to ignoring the words he actually uses, and applying whatever interpretation is most politically convenient, then.

Pretty much. Perhaps one of the advantages of what Trump blathers on about is that it's usually so factually unsupportable, incoherent and superficial that it's easy to write meanings onto.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

I think it is far more likely he did actually have a personal hand in what teams were cut, that was during the same time he cut the cyber security team and all the scientists left the white house. Hell, he even fired the guy that was supposed to secure his cell phone because he didn't want the hassle involved with the added security. He was also calling for budget cuts to the CDC at the time as well. He has a habit of firing anyone or anything that does anything he doesn't understand or finds annoying. Isn't he threatening to fire the fed chief again? He has more turnover than any president in our history. He never takes responsibility for his actions though, so I am not surprised he would attempt to pass the buck as usual.

Honestly, I just can't see Trump noticing that sort of detail. Can you imagine Trump having a sift through all sorts of agencies and departments and deciding what should be cut? I don't. I think he just appoints flunkies to go do stuff and spouts ideas off the top of his head, after which he's back to his real interests of bitching at fake news and soaking up the praise of adoring Republicans at rallies. He doesn't do detail, he doesn't know a lot of what's going on and he plainly isn't really interested in government beyond feeding his own ego.

That's part of why he keeps firing people. They try to do their job properly using conventional processes of collecting evidence, taking advice and assessing consequences of their action, and when this conflicts with Trump's idle whim enough they get dismissed.

We're back to ignoring the words he actually uses, and applying whatever interpretation is most politically convenient, then.

Pretty much. Perhaps one of the advantages of what Trump blathers on about is that it's usually so factually unsupportable, incoherent and superficial that it's easy to write meanings onto.

If you remember, this was also the same time he was in a panic about leaks and was insanely paranoid and suspicious of people that were not yes men. He was ranting about Washington Post, NY times, CNN daily at the time. A month prior to the Pandemic team being fired, Trump also fired the guy on his national security team that was calling for bolstering pandemic preparation after Washington post praised him. You know how Trump is about people being in the media other than him, they usually get the axe shortly there after. He was clearing everyone out at the time in paranoid fits, and apparently at least one senator confronted him about it at the time.

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200315/capitol-insider--trump-didnt-know-about-cutting-pandemic-office-but-sherrod-brown-letter-shows-otherwise

 

[tstorm823]

We have no immunity to COVID-19 or a vaccine available as we do with the flu.

We have no acquired immunity to it, but that doesn't mean we have no immunity to it. A lot of people, notably children, seem to just not get sick from it. That's natural immunity. And with little reason to think children have some unique genetic or exposure factor, it's likely just not having a compromised immune system that's letting people shrug off the virus. Again, the large majority of that cruise ship didn't get it, and it seems less likely to me that they managed to actually avoid exposure than having people not be susceptible.

Asymptomatic carriers are usually more dangerous than those who show symptoms as they can infect larger swaths of people due to going about their daily business without even knowing they are sick.

Not if the virus spreads specifically by spit and everyone is washing their hands. Someone with no symptoms isn't coughing in peoples faces.

Sure, work is gives you money, but it gives little sense of purpose. AND your not using your talents, you just mindlessly following a leader, and your talents are generally squandered. (generally here, because some people are really luck and finds a boss whose actually interested in people and talents.) It's more about one a small segment wants rather than what society wants.

I'm not confident from reading this that you've ever worked, or at least if you've ever tried at work. There is no job where you can't use your talents. In chronological order, I've done newspaper delivery, cleaning and maintenance, lifeguarding, pharmacy tech work, run deep fryer, loaded trucks, managed a warehouse yard, supported and maintained surveying equipment, and supported Autodesk software. My talent is my enormous brain, those mostly aren't intellectually burdensome roles, but I was never not using my brain in them. If you do a job and don't make the most out of it, that's your own fault. With my current position, I've gotten to see people from all walks of life in action. I've been in the rafters of an opera house, through a machine shop during operations, all through a bunch of Hershey plants, behind the deli counter of the supermarket, and behind the scenes in a Merck research building. I've seen a casino's card dealing school, I've watched someone change out the brand of packaging on a flour bagging machine (shhh, they want you to think they aren't the same flour), I've helped path out the mechanicals in the ceiling of an OR. I've spent a lot of time talking to engineering and construction types, all the way from the guy designing giant bridges to the guy spraypainting sidewalks, and I've never seen a job where people couldn't enjoy it and do good work. Not pulling levers for Hershey, not driving a forklift, not demolishing piping from an old building, not grinding metal off a custom fabrication, not cleaning machines after work is done in a hospital, not stocking shelves. None of these jobs require being miserable and bored. If I can make stacking boxes in a truck a mentally stimulating task, you can do it with anything.

It's not about finding a boss who wants to assign you a task you have exceptional talent for. It's about using your talents in everything you're doing. That's your decision to make and nobody else's.

To me, it feels like a moot point. However we are under-reporting the number of cases doesn't change the rate of deaths. Sure, it could be 1% or even less. That's irrelevant if the only thing you've changed is how many cases you've found. It doesn't effect how many people died

It's not a moot point because you can't extrapolate incomplete information. If you don't know the rate, you don't know the real danger, which means you don't know what a proportional response is. People have died and will die prematurely from this virus. People also have died and will die prematurely from the response to this virus. Some people in China died because their caregivers got quarantined and they couldn't keep themselves alive. That's an extreme example unlikely in most places, but more subtle effects are going to happen everywhere. Shutting down the world for an extended period is not without consequence, people's lives will get worse if we don't keep things running. And beyond that, god knows how many people will kill themselves if they're stuck in their house in a state of perpetual fear. You can't just say "the virus is killing people, we need this response" because the response will also end up hurting people, and without knowing the damage covid-19 will actually do, we don't know what the lesser evil is.

I mean, that's part of the truth: your know-nothing president, facing a national crisis, as much as possible has run away and left other people to deal with it.

This sentence is meaningless nonsense based on nothing. Trump has been making statements and giving experts resources and a platform since before the US had a single case. What the hell are you talking about? Are you upset because reporters specifically asked him to blame himself for coronavirus and he didn't, so they put out stories that went viral online saying Trump won't take responsibility? Don't be upset at him, be upset at the people who are supposed to be reporting news and information. Is there anything anyone could possibly gain from asking Trump if people getting sick is his fault? It's just one of those "did you stop beating your wife yet?" or "did you ever suck a cock you didn't like?" type questions where yes and no are both designed to be incriminating. That's not reporting, that's being a turd. If he says he doesn't take responsibility, they report him running from responsibility. If he says he takes responsibility, they report that he admits he's killing people with bad decisions. It's not an honest question, it's a trap question designed to make people angry on purpose, and I only wish the people asking that would be fired.

Except it's not like the 'flu. The suspected mortality rate is about ten times higher.

The suspected mortality rate is nonsense. It's going to be lower than that. How's Germany doing right now? Less than .2%? Probably still have untested cases? Yeah, it's not 1%, put that out of your mind.

I cannot stress how dangerous that was, because it encouraged complacency: we make no particular effort to avoid 'flu, usually little more than vulnerable people such as healthcare workers getting shots. You need to seriously tell people to take reasonable precautions, and Trump stands up and implies don't bother when he says it's only 'flu.

Maybe you don't take the flu seriously. But here in this backwards, healthcare free dystopian landscape we call the USA, about half the population gets annual flu vaccines. Despite what communists suggest online, people absolutely take sick days. People make decisions to avoid crowded places every flu season. These are normal flu responses.

The mind boggles: it is political. The government's planning and execution of a response to a significant threat is a matter of vital importance to public debate and analysis. Are you really telling us no-one's allowed to criticise the Trump administration's handling of Coronavirus?

Of course not. People can criticize. But "Trump probably slowed down testing to make it look like there were fewer cases!" isn't a criticism. That's nonsense. "He walked off the stage while the reporters were still asking questions" isn't a criticism, that's nonsense. Hoping the virus makes Trump look bad enough to lose reelection isn't criticism, that's nonsense. And even the things that are criticism aren't honest criticism. Honest criticism considers circumstances and weighs pro and cons of decisions being made. There's a lot of dishonest criticism going around, people not even acknowledging what's happened or why.

The problem isn't people treating the planning and execution as a political action. The problem is trying to use coronavirus as a campaign tactic, and lying to do so.

You know what? Yes, some of the USA's action in response to Coronavirus has been appropriate and reasonable. That's a testament to the fact at least some people in the US government are professionals with their finger on the pulse who can get stuff done despite the ignorant, incoherent gibberish dribbling out the mouth of its executive.

Unfortunately for you, what you call the "echo chamber" is just about everyone on the planet except the most slavishly pro-Trump. For instance, I work in a medical school full of professionals such as medical doctors, microbiologists, epidemiologists, etc. and they have a very poor opinion of Trump's response to the outbreak.

No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to say "I think the person in charge bears ultimate responsibility" and then refuse to acknowledge anything good with the same mindset. Cut that crap off.

The USA's response to coronavirus is Trump's response to the coronovirus, full stop. That's what being the president is. I agree, leadership is being responsible for what happens under your watch. Now actually apply that principle when it isn't just confirming your own biases.

Your medical school is an echo chamber. All of those people have a poor opinion of Trump because that's socially popular in that environment at this time. You're not immune to bias because you're a professional. Do an experiment for me. Try and play devil's advocate with all these professionals. Point out all the good responses you've admitted to me have happened in the US. Take a stance of "well, Trump's response was at least better than some other countries." See what the response is.

No he isn't. There are elements of facts and reasoning popping up in those sorts of statements, but mangled and mashed up such that he's farting unclear, incoherent, poorly considered ideas out of his head.

You're just straining your credulity to fit some sort of comforting message into it because you're Team Trump.

Trump got elected because he's better at communicating than you care to admit. When it happens a second time, you'll be out of excuses to explain why I'm wrong.

 

[bluegate]

Not sure how much stock to put in this, but allegedly the US is trying to buy a German company that is working on a vaccine for the corona virus in order to be able to have a patent on it.

https://amp.welt.de/wirtschaft/article206555143/Corona-USA-will-Zugriff-auf-deutsche-Impfstoff-Firma.html

 

[Marik2]

Not sure how much stock to put in this, but allegedly the US is trying to buy a German company that is working on a vaccine for the corona virus in order to be able to have a patent on it.

https://amp.welt.de/wirtschaft/article206555143/Corona-USA-will-Zugriff-auf-deutsche-Impfstoff-Firma.html

Capitalism, bro.

 

[Agema]

This sentence is meaningless nonsense based on nothing. Trump has been making statements

Trump has been talking incoherent bollocks, much of which is either untrue or so mangled it's hard to tell what's true.

and giving experts resources and a platform since before the US had a single case.

The government had resources and platforms before Trump came along which he doesn't merit special congratulations for; he made cuts and that turned out to be an error. They made faulty kits, that's an error. Reporting to the public has been okay by officials like Fauci, but poorly handled by Trump himself (going from no big deal to national emergency in a few hours), that's an error. He low-balled a request for funding from Congress: thankfully Congress decided to up it for him; that's their credit.

Don't be upset at him, be upset at the people who are supposed to be reporting news and information... It's not an honest question, it's a trap question designed to make people angry on purpose, and I only wish the people asking that would be fired.

Why should I be upset at the media? They're doing their jobs. Do you think they only started asking difficult questions when Trump came along? These are questions a competent politician should bat off in an eyeblink. What's remarkable is how poor Trump is at answering them due to his shortcomings in temperament and knowledge. Then his fans all start whining about how unfair the press is to excuse the fact that Trump can't deal with difficult questions.

The suspected mortality rate is nonsense. It's going to be lower than that. How's Germany doing right now? Less than .2%? Probably still have untested cases? Yeah, it's not 1%, put that out of your mind.

I'm sure the mortality rate is lower than current figures. I don't that's good reason to encourage complacency like Trump spent weeks doing. But then, unlike president Trump, I knew that influenza could be lethal.

Take Trump's "hunch" that Coronavirus will be less lethal than the figures at the time. That's not a hunch. That's what advisors will have told him because the infection figures will miss a load of people with mild symptoms. This is important information that, employed correctly, could help everyone maintain perspective. Instead, he feels the need to pass off it off as a personal guess so he looks good, squandering it to seem just like some prick making stuff up.

But "Trump probably slowed down testing to make it look like there were fewer cases!" isn't a criticism.

Straw men, reaching accusations no-one you're conversing with has levelled, is not interesting. At worst, you're deliberately trying to make us seem unreasonable by tying us in with the further reaches of internet absurdity.

No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to say "I think the person in charge bears ultimate responsibility" and then refuse to acknowledge anything good with the same mindset. Cut that crap off.

The USA's response to coronavirus is Trump's response to the coronovirus, full stop. That's what being the president is. I agree, leadership is being responsible for what happens under your watch. Now actually apply that principle when it isn't just confirming your own biases.

Okay, we both agree that Trump has responsibility. But you don't think it's a problem that Trump doesn't agree that he has responsibility?

I have no problem accepting that the USA has done some things right. I have a problem that it also seems to have made unnecessary errors some which appear to relate to active presidential decisions, and that the president himself has approached the issue with erratic, incoherent statements and a continued tone of self-aggrandising divisiveness. That's a lot more interesting than the fact that USA got several boringly obvious and routine policies (like travel bans with China) right.

Your medical school is an echo chamber. All of those people have a poor opinion of Trump because that's socially popular in that environment at this time. You're not immune to bias because you're a professional. Do an experiment for me. Try and play devil's advocate with all these professionals. Point out all the good responses you've admitted to me have happened in the US. Take a stance of "well, Trump's response was at least better than some other countries." See what the response is.

I don't need to do that, because my colleagues already accept appropriate decisions made by the USA. That's because they aren't the childish caricature of frothing anti-Trumpists you want to portray them as. That you feel the need to blame everyone else (be it media, academia, other forum users etc.) for irrational bias when they criticise Trump says more about you than them.

Trump got elected because he's better at communicating than you care to admit. When it happens a second time, you'll be out of excuses to explain why I'm wrong.

Trump's very good at communicating in certain ways, of that there's no doubt: I have said so before.

His appearance of boundless confidence is a plus, because people respond well to confidence. I think his main plus is that he's very good at reading what people want to hear, and delivering it in order to appeal to them, especially on an emotional level. His language is simplistic and direct (if not always clear), which is especially endearing to those who don't like hoity-toity smart people. He can be clear the sense of hammering simple messages home repeatedy. He's boastful, mendacious, and shockingly low on empathy, which would normally be significant negatives. However, in a toxically divisive political environment, being his team's "bully-in-chief" is arguably a strong point.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Essentially, those doomsday, millions of dead numbers? Those are for if life went on by, as normal, and nobody lifted a finger to do a thing about it.

Which is obviously fucking ridiculously unrealistic.

160 X 1% = ?

They're lowballing their estimates. They're doing this based on a presumed 1% mortality rate, working off the entirely-reasonable assumption cases with mild symptoms go untested or unreported. As opposed to the 2.1-3.4% case fatality rate that has remained consistent thus far.

I'm no epidemiologist, but I can do basic math. Assuming 175 million people in the US contract coronavirus, and only the 20% with moderate or severe symptoms seek medical intervention and therefore count as a case, with a 2.1% CFR which is what we've seen in China that is still 735,000 fatalities. That's about the most optimistic number you can give.

The intervention methods spoken of are attempts to slow the spread of the disease, preventing catastrophic overload of our health care system, which would push the CFR through the roof which is what we've seen in Italy, France, and Spain (and probably Iran) due to the need to triage and ration care. Containment is no longer an option, so the priority now is to slow rate of new cases to ease the burden over time. The number of people who are going to be infected likely isn't to change, but neither is the availability of health care in such a short time frame -- and if anything, that availability will degrade over time without increasing production of medical equipment and reinforcing supply chains.

Hospitals across the country are already reporting critical PPE shortages and requesting supplies from state and national strategic reserves. And, this is just from the second generation of coronavirus cases, before the US began implementing measures to slow spread. And considering this first wave of measures have completely backfired, we can very much expect to follow Italy's trajectory if not well exceed it.

 

[Trunkage]

Sure, work is gives you money, but it gives little sense of purpose. AND your not using your talents, you just mindlessly following a leader, and your talents are generally squandered. (generally here, because some people are really luck and finds a boss whose actually interested in people and talents.) It's more about one a small segment wants rather than what society wants.

I'm not confident from reading this that you've ever worked, or at least if you've ever tried at work. There is no job where you can't use your talents. In chronological order, I've done newspaper delivery, cleaning and maintenance, lifeguarding, pharmacy tech work, run deep fryer, loaded trucks, managed a warehouse yard, supported and maintained surveying equipment, and supported Autodesk software. My talent is my enormous brain, those mostly aren't intellectually burdensome roles, but I was never not using my brain in them. If you do a job and don't make the most out of it, that's your own fault. With my current position, I've gotten to see people from all walks of life in action. I've been in the rafters of an opera house, through a machine shop during operations, all through a bunch of Hershey plants, behind the deli counter of the supermarket, and behind the scenes in a Merck research building. I've seen a casino's card dealing school, I've watched someone change out the brand of packaging on a flour bagging machine (shhh, they want you to think they aren't the same flour), I've helped path out the mechanicals in the ceiling of an OR. I've spent a lot of time talking to engineering and construction types, all the way from the guy designing giant bridges to the guy spraypainting sidewalks, and I've never seen a job where people couldn't enjoy it and do good work. Not pulling levers for Hershey, not driving a forklift, not demolishing piping from an old building, not grinding metal off a custom fabrication, not cleaning machines after work is done in a hospital, not stocking shelves. None of these jobs require being miserable and bored. If I can make stacking boxes in a truck a mentally stimulating task, you can do it with anything.

It's not about finding a boss who wants to assign you a task you have exceptional talent for. It's about using your talents in everything you're doing. That's your decision to make and nobody else's.

This makes me think you haven't been in a workplace before. Bosses, generally, hire you to do a job. They don't hire you to find holes in their business structure. Anything outside you contract, even if it is positive for the company, is bad. Because its the boss' way of doing things. It's never about what's right for the customer or the business.

I've literally stood in front of a national manager with my insights on weaknesses in a business and ways to improve it. They shot me down because they aren't interested in change. Too costly and all that. This is after the centre, regional and state managers had listened to my pitch and thought it was needed. And I have a certain satisfaction of knowing that 5 years that they went bankrupt with $900M worth of debt. Yep, my idea was too costly.

We've had new clients turn up to our centre. They literally tell the boss they are coming here because of what I specially can do for them. Is that worth anything? Nope. Management does keep coming in to hamper what I do, though. Because they see me as incompetent. Despite what the community says.

See, if you're a boss, you got there because of merit. Clearly. Thus, those under you DONT have merit and aren't worth your time. Nothing can disprove this

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

We have no immunity to COVID-19 or a vaccine available as we do with the flu.

We have no acquired immunity to it, but that doesn't mean we have no immunity to it. A lot of people, notably children, seem to just not get sick from it. That's natural immunity. And with little reason to think children have some unique genetic or exposure factor, it's likely just not having a compromised immune system that's letting people shrug off the virus. Again, the large majority of that cruise ship didn't get it, and it seems less likely to me that they managed to actually avoid exposure than having people not be susceptible.

Asymptomatic carriers are usually more dangerous than those who show symptoms as they can infect larger swaths of people due to going about their daily business without even knowing they are sick.

Not if the virus spreads specifically by spit and everyone is washing their hands. Someone with no symptoms isn't coughing in peoples faces.

First of all, this is a new virus and the data we have is rapidly changing. Second, we now have studies that are showing us that it can actually be transmitted by breathing, not just coughing.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, which publishes CIDRAP News, said that the results challenge the World Health Organization's assertion that COVID-19 can be contained.

The findings confirm that COVID-19 is spread simply through breathing, even without coughing, he said. They also challenge the idea that contact with contaminated surfaces is a primary means of spread, Osterholm said.

"Don't forget about hand washing, but at the same time we've got to get people to understand that if you don't want to get infected, you can't be in crowds," he said. "Social distancing is the most effective tool we have right now."

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/study-highlights-ease-spread-covid-19-viruses

We have also been finding that COVID-19 can survive on surfaces for at least a few days.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid19-days-surfaces-experiment-findings/story?id=69569397

What we already know of coronaviruses in general is why we have reason for concern and we still do not know how this particular coronavirus will mutate and impact the general population. Animal coronaviruses have been able to survive on surfaces for up to 28 days. We have not yet seen that in this virus, but we can only collect data on what we observe, that does not mean it hasn't happened somewhere with the right mutation or proper circumstance.

The reality here is when we are dealing with a new virus, we still have much to learn and what we know is constantly changing. It's impact, your immune response and the virus itself can all change as well. We did not initially think it would have spread as fast as it did, but it did it anyway. The initial idea that someone had to cough on you for you to contract it as now been shown to be inaccurate.

Due to how easily and quickly this has spread globally, we cannot be "confident" about anything yet. To be perfectly honest, If they are still reporting no incidents in your region, chances are it is due to lack of testing, not that it doesn't exist there. Eventually, everyone can expect to be exposed to COVID-19. We just hope to delay that a bit so we can be better prepared when they are. You should not be wooed into a false sense of security simply because you think you know how this works already.

BTW how many of the people who tested negative were tested using the faulty test kits?

 

[Trunkage]

To me, it feels like a moot point. However we are under-reporting the number of cases doesn't change the rate of deaths. Sure, it could be 1% or even less. That's irrelevant if the only thing you've changed is how many cases you've found. It doesn't effect how many people died

It's not a moot point because you can't extrapolate incomplete information. If you don't know the rate, you don't know the real danger, which means you don't know what a proportional response is. People have died and will die prematurely from this virus. People also have died and will die prematurely from the response to this virus. Some people in China died because their caregivers got quarantined and they couldn't keep themselves alive. That's an extreme example unlikely in most places, but more subtle effects are going to happen everywhere. Shutting down the world for an extended period is not without consequence, people's lives will get worse if we don't keep things running. And beyond that, god knows how many people will kill themselves if they're stuck in their house in a state of perpetual fear. You can't just say "the virus is killing people, we need this response" because the response will also end up hurting people, and without knowing the damage covid-19 will actually do, we don't know what the lesser evil is.

Just going to separate topics because they were very different.

If we report 1%/0.1% on the current rate of infection, you will get a really wrong extrapolation. We don't know what any of these percentages/ rates are. I get what Trump is saying, but it will lead to an underestimation. It's the uncertainty of science, it can change as new data comes in.

I'm not really get up Trump here, he's parsing the knowledge the best he can. I was more concerned that he was trying to say something that was really outside his wheelhouse instead of just relying on an expert that can deliver the message effectively

 

[tstorm823]

Do you think they only started asking difficult questions when Trump came along? These are questions a competent politician should bat off in an eyeblink. What's remarkable is how poor Trump is at answering them due to his shortcomings in temperament and knowledge. Then his fans all start whining about how unfair the press is to excuse the fact that Trump can't deal with difficult questions.

"How do you intend to minimize the impact of the coronavirus" is a difficult question. "Do you blame yourself for the coronavirus" isn't. It's an easy question that they'll attack you for answering honestly. You're saying it's a shortcoming of Trump that he gives honest answers to that type of question. The talented politician is supposed to avoid giving any answer to a question like that, but does anybody from any side anywhere like question avoidance? I don't. The most honest answer would be telling them to go to hell. Trump's not far off that (and that's what people like about him).

I'm sure the mortality rate is lower than current figures. I don't that's good reason to encourage complacency like Trump spent weeks doing. But then, unlike president Trump, I knew that influenza could be lethal.

Trump knew the flu kills people. You're making a dishonest claim.

Take Trump's "hunch" that Coronavirus will be less lethal than the figures at the time. That's not a hunch. That's what advisors will have told him because the infection figures will miss a load of people with mild symptoms. This is important information that, employed correctly, could help everyone maintain perspective. Instead, he feels the need to pass off it off as a personal guess so he looks good, squandering it to seem just like some prick making stuff up.

"Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and ? but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly."

You're complaining that he said something that you completely agree with. The mortality rate is almost certainly less than that 3.4%, you've agreed to that. Because people with only mild symptoms go untested, you agree to that. Trump's belief that it's less comes from conversations with "people that do this", you agree with that. And that in an effort to maintain a reasoned perspective when literally the WHO was putting out questionable statistics and starting a panic, which you seem to think is a good thing. What's the problem here? You agree with him. You're allowed to agree with him. It won't kill you, I promise.

Okay, we both agree that Trump has responsibility. But you don't think it's a problem that Trump doesn't agree that he has responsibility?

That's not the same question. Trump has responsibility for the actions and responses of the US Executive branch. Yes. They're asking him to take responsibility for specific failures as yes or no questions. Neither yes or no will deny that there was a failure. His answer, if you get beyond the most damning part you can take out of context, is to say there wasn't a failing. He literally says it was nobody's fault. Again, apply the principle of Trump being responsible for the government. If he says "yes, I take responsibility for that failure", he's also accusing his subordinates of failing. People are acting as though he was saying "it's not my fault, it's somebody else's fault", when he was disagreeing with the premise entirely. It's just another version of "did you stop beating your wife yet". And when Trump said "no, I never beat my wife", they cut off everything after the first word.

Also, feel free to watch that press conference [https://youtu.be/feycmqjsLNw?t=2620]. You can see things like the context that was removed, or see Trump actively encourage the reporters to ask the experts there questions as well. See all the truth the headlines ignore.

I don't need to do that, because my colleagues already accept appropriate decisions made by the USA. That's because they aren't the childish caricature of frothing anti-Trumpists you want to portray them as. That you feel the need to blame everyone else (be it media, academia, other forum users etc.) for irrational bias when they criticise Trump says more about you than them.

You don't need to do that, but you should, because you don't understand me. You don't understand the point of the experiment. I don't think they're all frothing anti-Trumpists, I doubt anyone is worse than you. But people naturally avoid disagreeing with obvious popular opinion among peers. If you, as just one person, were to emphasize agreements with Trump and his actions, you could very quickly moderate a whole group on the issue. I'm not accusing people of blind irrationality. I'm suggesting people aren't naturally going to go out of their way to seek the good parts of things that are socially frowned upon, and would strike a different tone entirely if presented with that information actively.

I do think your responses to me are irrational and biased, but I think that's less your honest consideration of Donald Trump and more with having a grudge with me.

His language is simplistic and direct (if not always clear), which is especially endearing to those who don't like hoity-toity smart people.

Pro-tip: being hoity-toity is unrelated to being smart. Simple, direct language is preferable in all situations where more precise language isn't necessary. You don't need surgical tools to cut open a cardboard box, doing that would be pretty actively stupid.

 

[tstorm823]

This makes me think you haven't been in a workplace before. Bosses, generally, hire you to do a job. They don't hire you to find holes in their business structure. Anything outside you contract, even if it is positive for the company, is bad. Because its the boss' way of doing things. It's never about what's right for the customer or the business.

Just do your job. The best you can do for the business or the customer is to do your job. You think you found holes in their business structure, but you're not omniscient. You're likely right sometimes and missing information in others. The people ultimately responsible aren't going to just take your word for it. They have to do what they think is best, and your word isn't going to be magically convincing every time. It's not stubbornness or personal slight if they dismiss what you're saying. Even if you're right and they're wrong in the end, it doesn't necessarily make their decisions wrong because they might still be making the best choices based on the information they have, and they're responsible for that. Your job isn't to try and be super boss that's better than the actual management. Your job is to do your job. Because that's what is right for customers and business. Being cynical and condescending about people isn't going to change that.

 

[Kwak]

"How do you intend to minimize the impact of the coronavirus" is a difficult question. "Do you blame yourself for the coronavirus" isn't. It's an easy question that they'll attack you for answering honestly.

Why are you using a question no-one asked him?
He was asked whether he accepted any responsibility for the slow testing, and he tried to blame Obama.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

It's very surreal to see all that disaster movie stuff happening around me. Schools closing down,toilet paper being unavailable almost anywhere, events getting cancelled, people getting quarantined, borders closing... it's weird. Hope it won't get as bad as it's in Italy.

 

[Satinavian]

Not sure how much stock to put in this, but allegedly the US is trying to buy a German company that is working on a vaccine for the corona virus in order to be able to have a patent on it.

https://amp.welt.de/wirtschaft/article206555143/Corona-USA-will-Zugriff-auf-deutsche-Impfstoff-Firma.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-usa/germany-tries-to-halt-u-s-interest-in-firm-working-on-coronavirus-vaccine-idUSKBN2120IV

Unlikely that anything like that will actually happen. Also rumors are that this was Trumps idea after the company was presented to him as a likely candidate to find a vaccine.

 

[Agema]

"How do you intend to minimize the impact of the coronavirus" is a difficult question. "Do you blame yourself for the coronavirus" isn't.

You need to be more accurate about how you discuss this. That wasn't the question - the question to which Trump said he didn't take responsibility was: "Dr. Fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing was in fact, failing. Do you take responsibility for that? And when can you guarantee that every single American who needs a test will be able to have a test? What's the date of that?"

That is a reasonable question.

That failure happened on his watch. You and I both agree his administration's response is his, so we both agree that it is his responsibility. When Yamiche Alcindor followed up on it later pointing out his administration's shutdown of the dedicated pandemic response team (which potentially delayed the US response), he called it a "nasty question". Nasty, no doubt, because he's bang to rights on it.

Trump knew the flu kills people. You're making a dishonest claim.

Maybe he did know, maybe he didn't. But he certainly said he didn't.

What's the problem here? You agree with him. You're allowed to agree with him. It won't kill you, I promise.

You're right, I don't disagree with him on that point. My problem is that it's rendered unclear, garbled and incoherent. Trump is a total bullshitter - he doesn't seem to care whether he speaks truths or untruths, they spill from his mouth as it pleases him. But I and many other people don't want to hear our national leader speak a load of stuff where the content is irrelevant and only the tone / attitude matters. We want to know what's going on and why.

This is sort of what I mean about Trump's communication skills. I suspect lot of his base like the fact they easily pick up the gist, in a largely emotional way, without caring about the detail. Simple slogans (build that wall, lock her up) married to appeals to emotion (ridiculing opponents, jingoism, etc.) The actual content of his speeches in informational value, logical coherence and fluency is borderline worthless, the sort of thing a seven-year-old could understand. And when I say something a seven-year-old could understand, that's partly a compliment. It's quite hard to do. And for a lot of people, as his rallies demonstrate, it's effective.

Trump has responsibility for the actions and responses of the US Executive branch. Yes. They're asking him to take responsibility for specific failures as yes or no questions.

There was a failure on the specific item in question, that's an undeniable fact. There is absolutely no way you can present sending out faulty tests, setting back a vital testing regime by weeks, as anything but a failure.

You don't need to do that, but you should, because you don't understand me.

You don't understand my colleagues. The microbiologist in particular speaks his mind and could not give a shit who he disagrees with.

I do think your responses to me are irrational and biased, but I think that's less your honest consideration of Donald Trump and more with having a grudge with me.

Let's be clear, I do not dislike you in the slightest, you have not offended me, and I am perfectly happy to discuss things with you without rancour or aggravation.

Pro-tip: being hoity-toity is unrelated to being smart.

I know. But some people sound smart in an aloof or superior sort of way, which many people really don't like. Someone like Clinton (H.) is a classic example.