Why You Must Act Now (2023 Update)

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idemiologists now estimate that less than 14% of the infected people develo ped symptoms serious enough to seek testing or treatment. This means they w eren't included in the mortality statistics, making everything about 1/6 of what they have been reporting.

Yeah, but if people don't know they have the disease and aren't counted, th en it's a bit like the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. The y don't really matter because they don't show up in any statistic.

Who cares about the exact numbers??? The point is lots of people will die of this disease. There are things we can do to help minimize that and we a re starting to do them. Let's focus on helping each other, ok?

Or you can worry about the hand sanitizer dispenser at your local Walmart.

If we actually had a population of "invulnerable youngsters" that would be a good idea. Unfortunately when you base your idea on a faulty premise the result is also faulty.

San Francisco and surrounding counties are on shelter-in-place lockdown for at least three weeks. That includes Silicon Valley - Apple, Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Twitter, Intel, LTC, all that. It must be costing billions a day. SF has allocated 10 MILLION! dollars to compensate people without sick leave; that might cover half an hour of off time.

Lots of small businesses are going to fail. All sorts of people will be in financial distress.

Driving is now illegal except for necessities. Looking down the hill onto Bosworth Avenue, traffic is down a little. This is going to save more lives from traffic accidents than from virus deaths.

All the ski areas are closed too; otherwise I'd be up there piling days on my season pass. This will be a giant hit on the Tahoe economy too.

When this enforced separation is ended, it will be interesting to see what the infection rate is. Maybe we will just peak later than the rest of the country.

I'm going to drive to work later today; I'll probably be alone there. According to the ordinance, that's legal for several reasons. I've got to drag the dumpsters in and Dropbox about a terabyte of stuff for people to use at home. The Brat and I are going to lay out a 10-layer board together; she loves to lay out boards.

What's a human life worth? That should be quantified as public policy. I've heard of cases that value a life from $3000 (stop signs, guard rails) to billions (possible carcinogens).

please tell, what central agency or central bureaucracy on health does the EU have?

You're being tediously literal and dull.

If we shelter the most-vulnerable whilst the pandemic works its way through the rest of us, we create a herd immunity that protects the most-vulnerable. Is that so controversial or hard to understand?

Cheers, James Arthur

Stop making sense. It's unpopular.

I understood it the first time. It's a poorly thought out idea. You are suggesting that we sacrifice a portion of the population to provide herd immunity to the rest. Are you willing to roll the dice by being infected and possibly dying?

Please don't be tediously uninformed and dull about this.

I meant the United States don't rely on a single central government the way, say, the U.K. might. The U.K.'s Dept. of Health should be compared to roughly a single state in the U.S., e.g. California's Dept. of Public Health.

I didn't mean that Europe relies on a central health agency in Brussels analogous to our CDC. I was pointing out the unrealism of such a model, and the error of Martin's expecting our CDC to perform like the administration of (or perform the functions of) the health authority over some diminutive fraction of Europe.

In short, there's a federal role here, but states (like European countries) can take care of themselves, and lack of central government ain't the problem here or in Europe. I mean, do we really need Big Brother's own lips to tell us from Brussels (or Washington) to wash our hands and not touch our faces, or could a state agency do that just as well?

Where I live people were doing that weeks ago, having informed themselves, without having to be told by anyone.

Cheers, James Arthur

Sorrrrrie. I know, I'll hoard toilet paper instead!

Cheers, James Arthur

Mostly high level groups that ensure that best practice is disseminated widely and helps to survey and review new threats and treatments. eg

They also ensure that EHIC cards are honoured in all EU countries which means any EU national can get treated in any of the other EU states.

The best way to react to Ricky is to ignore him. He's cheap, nasty, and doesn't know much about electronics.

Sloman and Always Wrong too.

Where are you going to get the paper to hoard? Tell me NOW!!!

I may not know as much as you do about transistors, but I know about many other things that you seem to know nothing about and are happy to learn wrong information. Your total lack of critical thinking is amazing.

I find it funny that you think addressing me like you are one of my aunts is some sort of insult. Ok, aunt Johnnie.

It is at present the only option that stands a decent chance of working.

Something like half the people off the cruise liner who tested positive for Covid-19 showed little or no symptoms of the disease. A fair number of the elderly with pre-existing medical conditions were very seriously ill. We can only realistically control the shape of the infection curve now - you cannot put the genie back in the bottle (or Pandora's box).

The UK was going to follow that approach based on the best available scientific advice until yesterday when they chickened out. The least worst option under the present constraints is to accept that something like 1% of the population - mostly elderly with pre-existing health conditions are going to die very soon. We can delay that by about six months with Herculean efforts and totally destroying the world economy but that doesn't look like a particularly rational approach to me.

If you look at the simulations that the new UK government policy is based on we live like medieval Puritan hermits for 6 months and then it all goes pear shaped in mid-November. I don't see that as much of an improvement over managing the infection rate during the summer. YMMV

This is a critical moment and the consequences of bad populist decisions made now will reverberate for years to come. I am amazed that the 2020 Olympics in Japan have not yet been called off. They are presently running a sumo tournament in Osaka with zero audience attendance. At least one rishiki has been dropped out for suspected Covid-19 infection.

There are almost no intercontinental flights left.

By your opinion only. It seems the UK was considering such a move and real ized what a bad idea it is.

None of this has any bearing on the issue.

The graph showing that it was only delayed was if they have lockdown for a few months and then remove it completely. Not a realistic scenario. A loc kdown removal would be gradual and if signs of the infection ramping up app ear it should be reinstituted. This will at least prevent a total overrun of the medical system.

Read it again. The info I looked at was for a limited time lockdown with a total removal.

So??? Your thinking seems to be all over the map.

It's not hard to understand - unfortunately, it is simply wrong. The median age for people hospitalised from SARS-2 is between 45 and 50. So if you want to shelter most of those that will need hospitalisation while letting the rest get the virus and develop immunity, you need to shelter everyone over the age of about 30. Otherwise there will be too many hospitalisations for the health service to cope - and people who would have survived with hospital care, will now die.

Britain's leading muppets seemed to be following your idea here, until just recently it dawned on them that millions would die as a result.

(As a side note, no one yet knows for sure that having SARS-2 and recovering from it imparts immunity. It is likely to do so, but there are certainly no guarantees - some pathogens can re-infect repeatedly. It's not a good idea to bet the survival of your country on likely guesses.)

A more sensible question could be "why does the US have so many"?

If you can use a ventilator to keep a dying patient alive for an extra week in intensive care, you can charge their insurer (or their relatives) a gre at deal of money for that extra week's care.

US medical costs per head are 50% higher then the next most extravagant cou ntries in the list (France, German and the Netherlands, amongst others) and twice what is spent in the UK.

Americans have shorter life expectancies, so the money isn't buying more ef fective medical care.

You did argue - back when Obamacare was being debated - the the UK didn't l ook after diabetes patients as well, but that was a sleigh of hand - the UK has a lot less type 2 diabetes (fewer obese people) than the US and type 1 diabetes is a lot harder to manage.

If you can aggressively protect them until somebody comes up with a vaccine, that argument falls flat.

The calculations I've seen say that you need 60% of the population to have caught the disease and become immune to provide enough herd immunity to stop exponentially expanding infection and protect the other 40%.

About 17% of the US population is over 65, so it might be worth trying, but it does look a trifle impractical.

They based their on/off decisions on ICU cases, which is necessarily somewhat delayed from infection numbers, I would expect leading to overshoot.

I would like someone to simulate a different, fixed on-off-on-off cycle (to be tried only as a next step after a strict lockdown has already diminished the number of cases to a small and manageable value): Step 1: In their terminology "Off" (no/less isolation measures), for slightly less than the typical time that it takes for a newly-infected person to become infectious to others, then Step 2: "On" (lockdown) for a time somewhat longer than the average time between a person being infected and noticing the first symptoms (averaged for those who have symptoms).

For example, based on guesses about these times, and rounding to make the repetition period be a multiple of 1 week, what if:

• People go to work and be allowed out for 4 days, then

• Impose a thorough lock-down for 10 days, (and repeat this cycle until a vaccine is available)

My reason for suggesting simulating this is that each infectious person could infect only one generation of new cases in 4 days, and then there is a decent (perhaps as good as 50%?) chance that each of these new cases will be detected by their symptoms and be isolated (and their household members also be isolated) before they get to meet and infect anyone outside their household. I would not expect it to be anywhere near perfect but might be better than some other proposed courses of action.