The Worldwide C0VlD-19 Coronavirus Pandemic Discussion Thread...

[MTEE1985]

These types of political articles aren’t helpful. We need to depoliticize this whole thing. I will state my bias, I think trump overall has been a good president. BUT.....I am not his cheerleader, and I will look at everything he does and call out when he does things I think are wrong.

I think many of the talking heads are doing a big disservice to people. Conservatives like Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity come to mind. They are both pushing that this is a media conspiracy. Have there been a bunch of media conspiracies about trump. YES, but that does not mean this is, and they need to cut out this crap.

There are tons of liberal news examples too. Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, etc...they cant do anything but cheerlead against trump. Cut out this crap.

likewise this huffington post article, is the opposite side of garbage. From the beginning you can tell it’s a rip piece...referring to trump as hamfisted, all they can say is negative, negative, negative. Point out to me what things are good and why, point out what is bad and how we can make the bad better. its obvious from the beginning they loath trump, and their analysis is not meant to be accurate, just throw shade on Trump.

Here is how I see it, albeit I admit that I have the benefit of hindsight bias as I write this. We all know more now than we did days and weeks in the past

What trump has done bad (IMHO)
- Down playing the severity of things early on
- Pumping up early on this was a media attack on him
- not deregulating labs right away to bring testing online faster.
- not securing available masks and protective material for the medical system early
- Not getting Americans off the diamond princess immediately, there was no reason to leave people in a hot zone.
- Others

What Trump Has done right
- Cutting travel to/from China early. Remember that he caught huge flack from the left on this when he did it.
- working with industry leaders to build up infrastructure to deal with this
- quarantining people from the beginning
- working with industry leader to ramp up supplies and testing capabilities.
- Others

Look, we learn more everyday. Trump or anyone else are making decisions are making them with conflicting data and advice. In hindsight some of these Decisions will be good some bad. That’s inevitable.

let’s discuss what’s good and why, and what’s bad and how to improve it.

Do you mind sharing your thoughts on the testing process and prioritization? I get that the most at risk demographics need the test more than others but are we just sticking our heads in the sand here by saying AZ only has 10 cases when logic says it’s much more?

Is it an availability issue? Do you think younger, otherwise healthy people may be infected and recovered before widespread testing is available?

Thanks again for offering more information than all the news outlets!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Lex DeVille]

Also I wanted to say remember viruses can "live" on surfaces. Your family probably already knows to wipe things down with bleach water when you drop it. Just saying, just in case.

Probably best to wash your hands after handling your mail too. I don't know how many people touch a piece of mail before it gets to its destination, but there's at least two - the person who sent it and the person who delivered it.

 

[rblitz]

Probably best to wash your hands after handling your mail too. I don't know how many people touch a piece of mail before it gets to its destination, but there's at least two - the person who sent it and the person who delivered it.

Well, everything from the outside that was touched by other people could be infected (if it wasn't given enough time to let the virus be inactive). e.g. the packaging of the food you want to eat because other people may have touched it in the store, etc.

Not to disregard your point though.

 

[GIlman]

Do you mind sharing your thoughts on the testing process and prioritization? I get that the most at risk demographics need the test more than others but are we just sticking our heads in the sand here by saying AZ only has 10 cases when logic says it’s much more?

Is it an availability issue? Do you think younger, otherwise healthy people may be infected and recovered before widespread testing is available?

Thanks again for offering more information than all the news outlets!

At this point testing really is more for isolation and trying not so spread it. I know there have been some antiviral therapies tried, but I haven’t researched this and I don’t really know if they have any real impact. I’ll have to research that more. If there is some effective therapy then knowing you are COVID positive could improve your disease course.

Until and unless we have some sort of therapy to limit the severity of the disease, anyone who gets it then it becomes a watch and wait scenario. There has been a huge deal about testing, but from a patient perspective (until we have effective therapy), other than knowing and isolating yourself so you don’t spread it to others, knowing you are COVID positive or not won’t impact your recovery course.

The reason why is that we treat people based on the symptoms they develop and severity of those symptoms-regardless of the cause. This is called supportive care, you are treating the symptom not the cause.

For Example: If you can’t keep your oxygen levels up, we would put you on oxygen...but it doesn’t matter what the reason why your o2 levels were low. If your symptoms are severe and you can’t survive on O2 alone we put people on a ventilator.

The majority of people will get the illness, wait it out at home, then return back to normal life. If people develop respiratory distress they will then seek out care from a hospital. If in doubt, go to the hospital or your doctor and get evaluated.

This is not the flu, but there are many things like the flu. For instance, I have never once in my life gone and got tested for flu, even though I’m sure I had the flu several times in my life. When I’m sick I stay At home in bed until I feel better.

Knowing if I had flu or not would not change what I did to recover. If I ever felt I needed to go to the hospital because of the symptoms I had (like shortness of breath), I would go. But knowing I had flu, or covid, or anything else would not change the decision when I went. That decision would be entirely based on how I was doing in my recovery.

NOTE: I will point out that this is what I do, but there actually is some therapeutic benefit to being tested for the flu (unlike COVID at this time), if done very very early. There are some antivirals against the flu, but to be effective they must be given early when symptoms first start. I am not the type of person that goes to see a doctor or the ER when I start getting a cough, so for me personally there is no practicality in getting a flu test. By time I tested I would not really be a candidate for these therapies. If you do go to the ER or doctor at the first sign of illness then getting flu tested may change your illness if they got you on flu antivirals right away.

if testing was widely available, would I get tested. Yes, but only so I could squirrel myself away from my family. Which I would probably do anyway without a test simply based on the fact that Covid is in the community.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MJ DeMarco]

And it looks like the partisan "get Trump" crowd has arrived.

If you're going to use this forum to express your Trump Derangement Syndrome, the "it's all Trump's fault!!" narrative, you will be removed from the thread. If you think Trump is 100% to blame and you think you're going to express that here in THIS thread, you are wrong. Take your esteemed opinion over to Reddit where your HuffPost and MotherJones links will be absorbed without question.

We've lasted 50+ pages without it.

 

[Gediger]

We'll be OK. My kids are OK. My immediate family is OK. I don't see this as apocalyptic (and if it was, so be it). We have a circle of immediate friends, and what I have they're welcome to. We will figure out the next chapters if needed.

My viewpoint is perfectly summed up by this old writing from C.S. Lewis, far more eloquent than I could ever be. It was written in 1948 after the dawn of the atomic age.

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948)

Awesome post, it’s too bad this isn’t shown on every news outlet. If people would take a deep breath and look around and see that the sky is not falling we would be much better off. The insanity that I saw yesterday in the middle of nowhere Kansas yesterday was dumbfounding.

 

[EVMaso]

NHL Gets suspended.

2 days later . . .

https://globalnews.ca/news/6671901/...YDPhNcEoklxDaw-TOh1h_37jFGdhMu0LdmHbRt0czMCVI

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ChrisV]

 

[Envision]

And it looks like the partisan "get Trump" crowd has arrived.

If you're going to use this forum to express your Trump Derangement Syndrome, the "it's all Trump's fault!!" narrative, you will be removed from the thread. If you think Trump is 100% to blame and you think you're going to express that here in THIS thread, you are wrong. Take your esteemed opinion over to Reddit where your HuffPost and MotherJones links will be absorbed without question.

We've lasted 50+ pages without it.

Thank you, I was gonna say someone needs to remove that dude cause he’s literally just spewing trash.

 

[Trevor Kuntz]

The public roasting of this guy is so deserved. He was making entrepreneurs look like unethical dicks.

He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them (Published 2020)

Amazon cracked down on coronavirus price gouging. Now, while the rest of the world searches, some sellers are holding stockpiles of sanitizer and masks.

www.nytimes.com

[/URL]

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Drive2Riches]

At this point testing really is more for isolation and trying not so spread it.

What do you think about the realities of testing availability in the US?
It's become obvious that the infection numbers are artificially low because of the lack of testing.

With all the information available about the local and national activity regarding testing for COVID19, what's your opinion about when testing will reach the non-elites normal people? And what might that look like? (Walmart/Walgreens parking lots?)

In Washington State there are no tests available. Clergy have still been going house to house TO people who have self isolated, and a few of these clergy have tested positive. (People ONLY get tested here if they can't breathe on their own.)

EVERYONE needs to be tested, starting with those with symptoms, and the healthcare workers who treat them. The high number of deaths in WA were clustered in a nursing home. The residents were tested. Okay, fine. But the carers who worked there were NOT tested until yesterday, and returned 47 positive, 24 negative, and still testing 18. So these healthcare workers continued working without knowing a thing.

 

[GoodluckChuck]

Target is completely out of vitamins. The grocery store .2 miles away is completely stocked.

If you're looking for supplies at this point and you can't find any, try the stores on the outskirts of town or the less-populated areas. There are also some uncommon places to get things. Someone mentioned autoparts stores for hand sanitizer.

I sympathize with folks that live in bigger cities. People will really have to come together to make it through. Here in the countryside most people are stocked up for a few months all the time. They don't need to raid the stores because they already have enough.

 

[Ernman]

Margin has very little, if anything, to do with gouging. Gouging is relative to the "expected" price of an item/service. If hand sanitizer normally retails for $3.99 and you are selling for $20, that could be considered gouging, however it could simply be a product of supply and demand. That itself is the great debate.

Also, having now read a few more takes on this article, a lot of people don't realize that it's not as inexpensive for the retail arbitrage person to ship a product to them. Even a good arbitrager can't compete with Walmart on logistics costs. I deal with this all the time on eBay - the shipping costing more than the product - but I am a very small bit player in this.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Ernman]

And it looks like the partisan "get Trump" crowd has arrived.

If you're going to use this forum to express your Trump Derangement Syndrome, the "it's all Trump's fault!!" narrative, you will be removed from the thread. If you think Trump is 100% to blame and you think you're going to express that here in THIS thread, you are wrong. Take your esteemed opinion over to Reddit where your HuffPost and MotherJones links will be absorbed without question.

We've lasted 50+ pages without it.

Thank you MJ - this is no place for politics

 

[loop101]

Looks like travel from UK and Ireland will be banned today. Maybe domestic places, too.

Trump expands travel ban to UK, Ireland; says domestic ban being considered

The White House announced on Saturday that the European travel ban has been extended to include the United Kingdom and Ireland.

1010wins.radio.com

 

[Andy Black]

Meanwhile, in England:

Cheltenham Festival bubble brings respite despite disbelief elsewhere

Cheltenham Festival’s sanitisers had plenty of use but otherwise it was business as usual for the huge crowd on Gold Cup day

www.google.ie

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[GIlman]

What do you think about the realities of testing availability in the US?
It's become obvious that the infection numbers are artificially low because of the lack of testing.

Infections are certainly orders of magnitude more than reported. The realities of testing is that there are virtually no tests available or being done at the moment. But we are seeing a significant ramp up which should be available in increasing numbers over the next few weeks. I only started tracking daily tests in Arizona about 3 days ago, but I’m the last 3 days we went from 13 to 23 to 44 daily tests done in Arizona. I expect next week we will be doing hundreds and the week after thousands a day. This is my projection so please take it as such

With all the information available about the local and national activity regarding testing for COVID19, what's your opinion about when testing will reach the non-elites normal people? And what might that look like? (Walmart/Walgreens parking lots?)

I see no evidence that elites or wealthy people are being tested to the exclusion of others. Right now it appears that we have used testing almost exclusively for the extremely ill. This has been to help understand why, but honestly knowing if they are positive or not has zero impact on their outcome or mortality. We have just crudely been tracking where infection was present. That’s all the tests we had.

based on what I have heard, news reports, and from trump. It appears that we are following SK model and planning to do a lot of drive up testing. I’m sure doctors offices and ER’s will also do tests when available.

the reality is many people will want/need testing multiple times. I keep hearing people talking about negative testing as if once tested negative you are cleared of the disease. NO, just NO. A negative test means at the very moment the swan was taken that there were no detectable virus. But it’s not an affirmation that your clear of the disease. You can develop it at any time. any test should be viewed as your current status, your status can change at anytime, and you should get rechecked accordingly. ESP if any pertinent symptoms develop at anytime.

In Washington State there are no tests available. Clergy have still been going house to house TO people who have self isolated, and a few of these clergy have tested positive. (People ONLY get tested here if they can't breathe on their own.)

I agree that clergy need to not be doing this. Start using Skype or the phone. Religion is important to many people, but life is too. EVERYONE needs to do all they can to limit exposure. I put my own family on essentially lockdown 2 days ago. Infection is all or nothing.

Everywhere you go, everything you touch, it’s all a risk. If your home survives initial contamination, and you don’t have shared AC duct work with others you should be able to avoid future contamination. Jackie and I work in the medical field, we are likely to get it at sometime. I’ve actually isolated my kids in one house and we are in the other (my kids are 18 and 24 though). As things develop I may change my mind and reverse course, but at the moment, based on what I know thats the decision I made.

Is this overkill, don’t know!!! But I expect in 7-14 days most places will be in quarantine and lockdown anyway, I just started a few days early - that’s a personal decision and I wouldn’t criticize anyone either way.

We did make one trip to the store for some last minute essentials because I had been out for town for a couple weeks. But we are not planning to be out in the community further unless absolutely required.

EVERYONE needs to be tested, starting with those with symptoms, and the healthcare workers who treat them. The high number of deaths in WA were clustered in a nursing home. The residents were tested. Okay, fine. But the carers who worked there were NOT tested until yesterday, and returned 47 positive, 24 negative, and still testing 18. So these healthcare workers continued working without knowing a

I agree we need more testing. We need surveillance testing in addition to diagnostic testing. Surveillance is when you test people whether they have symptoms or not whether they have had possible exposure or not - purely randomly. It’s how you determine prevalence in the population, so you can determine the actual risk. But testing can only happen when test kits are available. That’s happening but not as fast as anyone would like. But...it just takes time to develop, test, and manufacture. I fully believe they are going as fast as humanly possible at this time. Early on the ball might have been dropped and time lost. But all we can do is regroup and do better from now on out.

I want to reiterate. Testing (at this time) does not impact outcome. You will be treated based on your symptoms - there is no cure type treatment to administer. It does help limit spread if people quarantine. But, we need to figure out how long. Once sick o believe you need 5-6 weeks quarantine while you recover, until we have enough testing to prove you are not infectious, then quarantine until you test negative.

 

[Drive2Riches]

I see no evidence that elites or wealthy people are being tested to the exclusion of others.

Anybody who loves the NBA knows that after one player made a public fool of himself, another player tested positive, and subsequently 52 Jazz players were tested immediately.

Testing (at this time) does not impact outcome.

I disagree. If you're in a community of high risk people like I am -- small town, older population/social circles -- then they do NOT think about halting their knitting groups because they don't know anyone who got tested, thus affecting the local outcome of local contagion because so many low-risk people act like this isn't a problem. (Just look at Andy's pic of horse racing crowd. Denial.)

It appears that we are following SK model

I disagree with this as well. I think USA is closer in alignment to Italy. I hope I'm wrong, but USA is really messing things up at the top levels of government. (don't get me started)

 

[Fox]

Went for a walk around the city centre today. It is usually packed on a weekend...



No one at the station



Only the driver on the train



This is usually super busy - the main station in the city centre





^ Having a little fun!



^Just people taking photos of their shops and some smaller unprotected stores boxing away food and valuables.



So quiet I was able to climb this (obviously not allowed) which is part of the local sea museum haha.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[loop101]

Went for a walk around the city centre today. It is usually packed on a weekend...

View attachment 31069

No one at the station

View attachment 31070

Only the driver on the train

View attachment 31071

This is usually super busy - the main station in the city centre

View attachment 31072

View attachment 31073

^ Having a little fun!

View attachment 31074

^Just people taking photos of their shops and some smaller unprotected stores boxing away food and valuables.

View attachment 31075

So quiet I was able to climb this (obviously not allowed) which is part of the local sea museum haha.

What city is this?

 

[GIlman]

Anybody who loves the NBA knows that after one player made a public fool of himself, another player tested positive, and subsequently 52 Jazz players were tested immediately.

I disagree. If you're in a community of high risk people like I am -- small town, older population/social circles -- then they do NOT think about halting their knitting groups because they don't know anyone who got tested, thus affecting the local outcome of local contagion because so many low-risk people act like this isn't a problem. (Just look at Andy's pic of horse racing crowd. Denial.)

I disagree with this as well. I think USA is closer in alignment to Italy. I hope I'm wrong, but USA is really messing things up at the top levels of government. (don't get me started)

I don’t follow sports, based on what you say, then yes there has been some examples of prioritization. I stand corrected.

You didn’t read what I wrote. As far as the patient testing positive (vs not having being tested at all), it does not impact their individual outcome. As I said the benefit of testing is for isolation. But everyone SHOULD be isolating if they demonstrate signs of illness, regardless. I wish their was more testing at the moment, but there isn’t. You do have a valid point about social proof making people more aware of the risk, I hadn’t thought of that so thanks.

I didn’t say the US was like SK, I said the model for testing we are implementing seems to be along the SK model of drive up testing stations.

lastly, it’s kind of insulting when someone asks for you opinion, misreads what you write or projects extra meaning into what you said, then disagrees with your opinion because they misconstrue what your saying. If my writing was unclear, I apologize, but it doesn’t seem to me like what I wrote should be interpreted how you did.

If you have an opinion and don’t want to hear mine, don’t ask. I’m a very busy person, I happen to be on vacation this week, so I’m spending some of my free time sharing here.

I don’t claim to be right, I have particular experience and expertise, I’m sharing that here. But I like everyone else has limited data to go off of. My opinions and views will change over time as things become clearer. And I’m more than happy to point out or admit when my analysis is wrong.

 

[Fox]

What city is this?

Gdansk, Poland.

We are in semi lockdown - I think no one can fly in or out.
Only grocery stores and pharmacies are open really.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Drive2Riches]

You didn’t read what I wrote. As far as the patient testing positive, it does not impact their individual outcome. As I said the benefit of testing is for isolation. But everyone SHOULD be isolating if they demonstrate signs of illness, regardless. I wish their was more testing at the moment, but there isn’t. You do have a valid point about social proof making people more aware of the risk, I hadn’t thought of that so thanks.

Gotcha. Our differences are only nuanced.

it’s kind of insulting when someone asks for you opinion, misreads what you write or projects extra meaning into what you said

I have particular experience and expertis

No offense meant. It's precisely because you have experience and expertise that I asked you these specific questions. Opinion is opinion, and I value yours. Thank you for your response. Just trying to collect information and calm myself down by tapping into this thread.

 

[GIlman]

Gotcha. Our differences are only nuanced.


No offense meant. It's precisely because you have experience and expertise that I asked you these specific questions. Opinion is opinion, and I value yours. Thank you for your response. Just trying to collect information and calm myself down by tapping into this thread.

No worries man, I likely read aggression into your replies that wasn’t implied. Sorry if I overreacted to your reply.

honestly I kinda hate written communication, because there is no tone and it’s super prone to over interpretation. That why I have been wanting to do a podcast.

 

[Not Most People]

Anybody who loves the NBA knows that after one player made a public fool of himself, another player tested positive, and subsequently 52 Jazz players were tested immediately.

Anybody who loves the NBA knows there aren't anywhere close to 52 players on a team

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[loop101]

Some praise for Dr Campbell.

Retired UK doctor becomes YouTube sensation for coronavirus advice

Dr. John Campbell has 439,000 subscribers to his channel and views for his videos — daily updates on the pandemic as well as how-to’s, including one on hand-washing — have topped …

nypost.com

 

[EVMaso]

Anybody who loves the NBA knows there aren't anywhere close to 52 players on a team

Maybe he meant to say players and staff members who may have been in prolonged and close proximity to the infected player.

 

[Drive2Riches]

Anybody who loves the NBA knows there aren't anywhere close to 52 players on a team

I never claimed to know how many players are "on a team" but...

Oklahoma officials were prepared with test kits, and 58 people from the Jazz or with connections to the Jazz were tested because it was a “public health decision” based on direct contact with the initial player — Rudy Gobert — who had tested positive, OKDH spokesperson Jamie Dukes said Friday.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[• nikita •]

Lol, have you guys looked at the TP prices on Amazon lately? It's literally £40+ per a couple rolls here

 

[BizyDad]

For those interested in the business of creating vaccines for black swan events, I listened to this today:

Where's The Vaccine? : Planet Money

Coronaviruses didn't come out of nowhere. They've actually been around for years. But economics makes it hard to find a vaccine. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

www.npr.org