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2020-04-11 05:17:26
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5777|London, England

uziq wrote:

jay: ‘hah! liberal cowards! it has peaked already!’

US has just put on 200,000 cases in the last week like an american puts on weight over Easter.

meanwhile trump still hasn’t enlightened himself as to the difference between a virus and a bacterium. seems he’s just about getting up to date with the scientific literature of 2005 on hospital superbugs. there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

who can be surprised that jay is utterly illiterate when it comes to virology when this is his man in the white house?

america is officially being led and propped up by a bunch of people with sub-high-school scientific education. but remember trump’s excellent credentials! he surely can swing with the big grown ups! stop being such snobs!
The two temporary hospitals that were set up to ask as overflow for the primary hospitals are at 5% and 10% occupancy respectively, with less serious cases arriving at hospitals daily. Our numbers are growing because testing is growing. I'm sure if other countries actually tested at the rate we are, you'd see higher numbers of overall cases, and less severity overall.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
2020-04-11 05:21:21
uziq
Member
+527|3871
whups meant to edit and deleted my post.

the US's rate of tests per capita is far below most other countries.

the weirdly self-congratulatory tone of your post is a bit misguided, considering your absolute failure to test at the appropriate time is the reason you're in this mess (the UK too).


The two temporary hospitals that were set up to ask as overflow for the primary hospitals are at 5% and 10% occupancy respectively, with less serious cases arriving at hospitals daily.
and what about the news that reports on inundated hospitals in places like queens? what's the deal with the logistics and resources allocation in NYC? you have empty hospitals and also overflowing ones at the same time?

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-11 05:25:19)

2020-04-11 05:21:43
Larssen
Member
+99|2307
It is both economic and political in nature as the north and south are again fighting to preserve their capacity to determine their own economic policies. Eurobonds would help the south in that sense, conditional loans the north. As you're aware, the balance of power is in the north.
2020-04-11 06:34:33
uziq
Member
+527|3871
and forget testing — what about the death figures, which only represent those who die in hospital? where’s america there? perhaps all the other countries of the world aren’t recording their hospital dead etc?

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-11 06:35:01)

2020-04-11 07:01:26
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,822|6525|eXtreme to the maX

Jay wrote:

The two temporary hospitals that were set up to ask as overflow for the primary hospitals are at 5% and 10% occupancy respectively, with less serious cases arriving at hospitals daily.
You do know that overflows aren't supposed to fill up? They're supposed to act as, you know, overflows?
Our numbers are growing because testing is growing. I'm sure if other countries actually tested at the rate we are, you'd see higher numbers of overall cases, and less severity overall.
Yes, only Bahrain, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Australia, Denmark, Canada, South Korea and Belgium perform more tests per capita than America, well done. And yet they all have lower per capita figures. Sad!
Fuck Israel
2020-04-11 08:15:29
Larssen
Member
+99|2307
I see the U.S. government setting itself up for a second failure as well by insistently pushing the narrative that they're peaking / have already peaked and are on the way down. The country will open up again soon! Meanwhile literally every graph on case numbers in the U.S. is still in a steep climb. Whether you look at 5 day averages or daily increase. Not even accounting for the fact that the number of deaths lag from confirmed cases, i.e. your peak human cost is still a week or so away, if you do peak today in terms of daily case increase.

"it's like a miracle it will disappear"
2020-04-11 10:05:21
uziq
Member
+527|3871
america now has the highest death toll in the world, surpassing italy's but with nothing like italy's strong national planning and emergency measures.

they're talking about opening back up for business. people like jay think they're really doing a great job.

this is going to be an interesting month.

America has the greatest number of coronavirus cases in the world. It is a public health crisis, an economic crisis and – this is where we in Washington come in – a crisis of leadership. Trump, a property developer and reality TV star, was the first US president elected with no prior military or political experience. It was all a bit of a lark. Well, we’re not laughing now. He is the man in charge of America in its biggest emergency since the second world war. And it seems that history’s verdict will be unforgiving: he is not up to the job.

I was there one evening when, defying medical advice, Trump talked baldly about reopening the economy by Easter. It was just a little scary, this realisation that the most powerful person in the world is unhinged – the closest any of us will get to the court of King George III with its mix of awesome power and terrifying capriciousness. Fortunately, on that occasion, Trump eventually bowed to the experts and kept the physical distancing guidelines in place until the end of April.

It’s also a presidential election year. Trump can no longer hold campaign rallies with big crowds. He has turned the daily briefings into a substitute, still airing grievances, spinning untruths, bullying reporters and narcissistically promoting his favourite brand: himself. “I have, you know, hundreds of millions of people,” he mused on April Fools’ Day. “Number one on Facebook. Did you know I was number one on Facebook? I mean, I just found out I’m number one on Facebook. I thought that was very nice, for whatever it means.”

The wartime president Harry Truman kept a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here.” Trump adheres to the opposite view. Having downplayed the virus for so long – “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” he said on 26 February – and failed to prepare resources, he is now, extraordinarily, trying to sell a potential death toll of 100,000 Americans as a success. Even for this master of razzle-dazzle, it would be quite a magic trick.
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/ … -reporting

oh boy.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-11 10:09:26)

2020-04-11 11:03:29
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+796|7104|United States of America
Listening to a podcast discussing it with a disease researcher yesterday was disheartening knowing the mindset of many Americans. They were discussing at what point it is appropriate to issue stay-at-home orders and shut down businesses, the answer being quite early on in an exponential growth curve. But the reverse is you're going to immediately get flak from the "pro-business" crowd if you shut down a state that has 15 cases. The number to cause worry in people's minds is always going to be WAY past when it's a useful proactive measure. Even in the best case scenario after this is all over, we can only hope we would look back and say "we overreacted". However, that's gonna be seen as evidence of those pesky, panicky scientists making a mountain out of a molehill and trying to crater the economy with their liberal, academic bias.
2020-04-11 12:15:24
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,072|7191|PNW

uziq wrote:

america now has the highest death toll in the world, surpassing italy's but with nothing like italy's strong national planning and emergency measures.

they're talking about opening back up for business. people like jay think they're really doing a great job.

this is going to be an interesting month.
I constantly hear people in denial (even those who "take this threat seriously") just waving it away as the USA having a higher population as if this were some sort of statistical coup. (numbers link). Up front, USA with nearly 309 million has roughly 20,000 deaths (.000064). Italy has a population of about 60 million (.000325), with about 20,000 deaths. "Big victory" for the American method? New York alone has a population of about 20 million, with about 8.6k deaths (.00043). 783 died there yesterday alone. How many will it add up to in the next two weeks.

Further notes:
- US: 33.67 persons/sqkm; Italy: 200.6 persons/sqkm
- Setting aside the veracity of Chinese numbers, USA #1 in total cases, new cases, total deaths, new deaths, critical condition cases, #6 in recoveries, #43 in tests/1m pop.

Seems like an abysmal performance considering the resources such a wealthy nation could have put into prep and management.

This all before the headache of estimating how many infected there are who are untested, and after everything estimating how many deaths and infections could have been avoided had we been prepared for a pandemic.

Also, "scoring" death toll based on total population has its place, but on the personal level it's a really dehumanizing sort of one-upmanship. It comes off as "someone losing half their family in a more populous area is not as bad as someone losing an equal number of family in a less populous area."

The important thing in this thread though is that we don't rib Jay for his military virtue signalling or taking advantage of the chaos to replace half his wardrobe (y'all cowards just won't let that go!). But he's allowed to cast shade at other users for "not having responsibilities" despite the opposite, or "loving this shit because you get to wash your hands without being seen as weird." What a circus.

Jay wrote:

No need for that.
2020-04-11 12:22:44
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+659|4139
The pro-business crowd are Republicans who hate liberal NYC. No amount of deaths in the city is too many. Same for all of the major cities. Rural and to a lesser extent suburban people are seeing this as a well earned punishment on the liberals urbanites. Maybe it can even decrease the amount of D. voters in the swings states they hope.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
2020-04-12 02:35:24
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,822|6525|eXtreme to the maX

DesertFox- wrote:

Listening to a podcast discussing it with a disease researcher yesterday was disheartening knowing the mindset of many Americans. They were discussing at what point it is appropriate to issue stay-at-home orders and shut down businesses, the answer being quite early on in an exponential growth curve. But the reverse is you're going to immediately get flak from the "pro-business" crowd if you shut down a state that has 15 cases. The number to cause worry in people's minds is always going to be WAY past when it's a useful proactive measure. Even in the best case scenario after this is all over, we can only hope we would look back and say "we overreacted". However, that's gonna be seen as evidence of those pesky, panicky scientists making a mountain out of a molehill and trying to crater the economy with their liberal, academic bias.
Maybe people should study maths and critical thinking in high school and not get their factoids and opinions from ranting youtubers, I don't know.
The stupid people seem to have reached critical mass, there's no-one left to challenge their stupidity and anyone who does is a fag.

Here we have about 20 people in hospital and ~2,000 hospital beds idle and available - all public and private elective surgery cancelled, private sector hospital beds have been rented and two mothballed hospitals scheduled for demolition reactivated.
Maybe a huge overreaction OTOH we're not shoving bodies into mass graves. Its still possible there could be a sudden surge with 750 people ordered into quarantine as a precaution just today.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-04-12 02:42:48)

Fuck Israel
2020-04-12 03:03:47
uziq
Member
+527|3871
the thing is, this behavioral aspect of human reaction is well-known. any epidemiologist is familiar with the truisms about 'taking action early seeming hysterical; taking it too late is catastrophic'. the goddamn ancient greeks knew about this in their myth of cassandra.

we are almost conditioned to react to news and warnings in this way. nothing is a problem and it'll surely be handled by silent, invisible (and in america they should be invisible, dammit) 'experts', somewhere; and then suddenly it's a very big problem, all because the experts have been stifled or de-funded or disallowed to act. but of course,  the buck still stops with the experts. why didn't you warn us! no, not that warning, a proper warning! no cost can be too high! here's $3 trillion dollars!

meanwhile news stories are still hitting the press here daily about the federal government still seizing supplies from state-level for the federal stockpile. is trump literally trying to kill off democrats? what the hell is going on over there?

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-12 03:07:30)

2020-04-12 03:16:01
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,822|6525|eXtreme to the maX
People are stupid, they shouldn't be involved in voting, certainly not decision-making.

Whatever happens Trump will spin this as someone else's fault and his moronic base will lap it up.
Any moment now we'll have car bombs going off outside the offices of epidermal specialists.
Fuck Israel
2020-04-12 03:27:14
Larssen
Member
+99|2307
Trump is fucking up on the daily. He appointed multiple contradictory taskforces at the federal level (pence vs kushner vs back-to-work taskforce vs probably his daughter&sons) while also insisting that much of it is a problem for the state governments. He has several teams of experts advising him, but in the end he has more or less admitted that it all comes down to his arbitrary gut feeling. Add the anecdote of Susan Gordon to understand that he values Fox News and 'alternative' sources as much as/above his expert advisers. He doesn't read anything and spends a lot of his time throwing tantrums in press briefings (reportedly averaging 2 hours in length).

It's quite plausible not having president would have been better.

Jay: the journalists are the problem!
2020-04-12 03:45:22
uziq
Member
+527|3871
journalists should stop beetling the president with obstinate questions! let him do his job of vacillating wildly and avoiding committing to a strategy!

who cares if every day of delay or mixed-messaging adds 10,000s to the eventual death toll! we have *checks notes* 330 million humans! i've run the math and, trust me, that's a very tiny fraction!

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-12 03:46:59)

2020-04-12 04:27:26
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+659|4139

uziq wrote:

meanwhile news stories are still hitting the press here daily about the federal government still seizing supplies from state-level for the federal stockpile. is trump literally trying to kill off democrats?
Yes. He is taking the supplies the blue states ordered and is giving them to the red states.

His behavior almost makes me wish the virus blows through every small red state town and city. The red states are cheering on about the dead New Yorkers anyway too.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
2020-04-12 05:55:06
uziq
Member
+527|3871
in another timeline the theranos spill (thanks, annoying journalists) hadn't happened yet and elizabeth holmes is currently in contact with jared kushner to roll-out testing to the entire population.

trump would definitely have gone for it.
2020-04-12 06:40:05
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,822|6525|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

who cares if every day of delay or mixed-messaging adds 10,000s to the eventual death toll! we have *checks notes* 330 million humans! i've run the math and, trust me, that's a very tiny fraction!
If you take a wide enough, and long enough, view nothing actually matters, statistically speaking.

What I think is ridiculous is New York only used 5-10% of its contingency hospital beds, seems like some dumbass oversized the contingency capacity, they should fire his dumb ass.
Fuck Israel
2020-04-12 07:59:57
uziq
Member
+527|3871
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/23/de … ronavirus/

“The Trump administration’s self-centred, haphazard, and tone-deaf response [to Covid-19] will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars and thousands of otherwise preventable deaths,” wrote Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard.

“But that’s not the only damage the United States will suffer. Far from ‘making America great again’, this epic policy failure will further tarnish [its] reputation as a country that knows how to do things effectively.”

This adverse shift could be permanent, Walt warned. Since taking office in 2017, Trump has insulted America’s friends, undermined multilateral alliances and chosen confrontation over cooperation. Sanctions, embargoes and boycotts aimed at China, Iran and Europe have been globally divisive.
2020-04-12 08:23:17
uziq
Member
+527|3871


whew, 2014 seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? a different world. america still actually making sense and justifying its self-declared eminence.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-12 08:26:28)

2020-04-12 08:37:02
uziq
Member
+527|3871


boris johnson thanking, with tears in his eyes, a nurse from ... portugal ... for saving his life.

leader of a conservative party who have beaten drums for the most extreme version of brexit possible, and tried to privatize the NHS for years.

you couldn't make it up.
2020-04-12 09:36:09
Larssen
Member
+99|2307

uziq wrote:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/23/death-american-competence-reputation-coronavirus/

“The Trump administration’s self-centred, haphazard, and tone-deaf response [to Covid-19] will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars and thousands of otherwise preventable deaths,” wrote Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard.

“But that’s not the only damage the United States will suffer. Far from ‘making America great again’, this epic policy failure will further tarnish [its] reputation as a country that knows how to do things effectively.”

This adverse shift could be permanent, Walt warned. Since taking office in 2017, Trump has insulted America’s friends, undermined multilateral alliances and chosen confrontation over cooperation. Sanctions, embargoes and boycotts aimed at China, Iran and Europe have been globally divisive.
To nuance that a bit from an EU perspective: the relations have been in decline for 2 decades now. Ever since the 'with us or against us', 'old europe vs new europe' rhetoric, it became clear that a strain of US politics and government has been increasingly convinced the world is transactional and that we're all in a win-or-lose game. As it stands the relationship between Europe and the US is mostly carried by those who entered public service in the cold war and who will retire soon.
2020-04-12 10:07:24
Pochsy
Artifice of Eternity
+702|5962|Toronto
One thing I don't particularly understand is the focus on the death rate as a measure for how effective the response to COVID-19 has been. At least in Canada, we're constantly hearing how well or poorly we're doing because 'x' number of people died yesterday. Isn't that particular statistic somewhat independent of our efforts in the absence of a targeted treatment or vaccine? Much more fruitful to focus on the infection statistics at this point, until the time we can actually influence the death rate through care or treatment, no? People still die on ventilators relatively commonly, which appears to be our most effective treatment/mitigation at this point. 

We understand that the death rate is somewhere around 10%, give or take. Beyond that piece of utility it seems to me like the death rate is what it is, and we should be concerned with the spread at this point.

What am I not getting?
The shape of an eye in front of the ocean, digging for stones and throwing them against its window pane. Take it down dreamer, take it down deep. - Other Families
2020-04-12 10:19:17
uziq
Member
+527|3871
well, on the most immediate level, the death toll of an illness is a big symbolic thing. why do we fear and try to deter illnesses at all? because they bring death and suffering. for lack of a grip on an 'invisible enemy', the death figures sure give people something to fasten upon. it's the absolute worst-case outcome of any episode of illness, no? not to mention obviously the most dramatic. people are rightfully afraid of infections that cause a lot of people to die. the whole world was in paroxysms of fear and planning over ebola because of its high mortality rates, and it really takes concerted effort to get ebola to spread far and wide.

a certain number of people are going to die regardless, yes. but avoidable death is the big thing, which is where infection rate is clearly the more meaningful metric. avoidable deaths occur when too many people have the disease at once. but to get a true grip on that figure, you need widespread and massive rollouts of testing. i mean, even the death rates, as morbid and slightly distracting as they are, are not accurate. it's really hard to properly record and index this thing. most nations now reporting death rates aren't even counting citizens dying in private in their homes or in in care facilities. it's just hospital-registered deaths. to try and concentrate on infection rates is even more nebulous and vague. we simply do not know how many people have it.
2020-04-12 10:32:33
Pochsy
Artifice of Eternity
+702|5962|Toronto
That's a fair assessment. The fear of the morbidity rate is reason enough to keep it on the radar. Your post also got me thinking that my own post assumes there is some exact way of knowing when we do have influence over the death rate, and should switch reporting from infection statistics (as you point out, difficult to measure) to death statistics (also difficult, but easier than infection).
The shape of an eye in front of the ocean, digging for stones and throwing them against its window pane. Take it down dreamer, take it down deep. - Other Families

 

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