Coronavirus - II

[scout24]

Leave the NSC pandemic unit intact in 2018, heed the warnings present in Presidential briefings in January and openly share that information, declare National Lockdown as daily new cases enter triple digits in early March, National Lockdown includes mandatory enforcement of all CDC guidelines, begin national coordination of emergency supplies such as ventilators/PPE/tests, advocate national production drive of ventilators/PPE/tests and recruitment campaign for healthcare workers.

Had intervention been this early and uniformly applied, it would have severely slowed the curve where it was left unchecked by states unsure of what to do or not interested in participating. This would most likely have resulted in a flattened curve by the end of April - that would mean tens of thousands fewer deaths and we would already be in the return-to-work phase.

The timing for this scenario follows other countries that reacted early and nationally, this is not a pie-in-the-sky or monday-morning-quarterback synopsis - I sincerely believe that this is what most any other president in American history would have done purely reflexively as part of the means given to them, regardless of party or belief system.

Pay for it and enforce it, please? And ask the senior representative from your state to not be inviting people to "come to Chinatown" in her district almost a month after she accused the President of being racist for putting a travel ban in place? Dr. Fauci has been with the CDC since I was born, has advised multiple presidents. Dr Birx was an Obama appointee. I'd say the current administration has listened to the advice of decades of bipartisan experience in the room...

And let's try moving forward, not second guessing and playing monday morning quarterback. Most of your post is telling me what you would have done AFTER surveying damage from the hurricane.I asked what would you do, not re-hash what would you have done...

Please also remember, doing anything by national decree requires cooperation at both the state and inside-the- beltway level this being the United States and all. Something the current administration has been a bit short on since day one.

 

[LGT]

Correct however it's not just coughs/sneezes. Your exhaust can carry the virus too hence the ported masks negating their purpose.

Not sure the source but my building has posted notices in the elevator that compare potential infection probability between two individuals, one with covid19 and the other without. The former without mask the latter with and the chance of transmission is still 70%. Reverse it and it's 10%. Both using a mask 2%.

Exhaust will escape from most masks, not just the vented. I notice this everyday when my eyeglasses steam up no matter how tightly I pinch the metal strip over the top of my nose. Your exhale is coming out from somewhere.

 

[StarHalo]

It was actually impressive how the American government banded together and got a lot done in a short time.

Americans from coast to coast had an awesome operation that no other country on planet earth could even dream of much less execute in a short time span

The public, private, military, federal, state and local government process probably saved way more lives

You sound like a very satisfied customer, you should just enjoy your purchase and not worry about the reviews.

Pay for it and enforce it, please?

And let's try moving forward, not second guessing and playing monday morning quarterback. Most of your post is telling me what you would have done AFTER surveying damage from the hurricane.I asked what would you do, not re-hash what would you have done...

Please also remember, doing anything by national decree requires cooperation

Part one critiques the plan you asked for, part two says that's not the plan you were asking for, part three says the plan isn't actually possible. You really need to take more time with these response posts, this isn't going well..

 

[scout24]

The plan I asked for was what you would do, not what you would have done. Re-read my post. I asked for you to explain how you would pay for and enforce it. You provided nothing. Part three reminds you where you live, and politely reminds you doing things by decree requires cooperation. You should perhaps read twice before responding, providing answers to the questions asked rather than push an agenda...

 

[scout24]

I'll try to go point-by-point from your plan for clarity.

1. Heed warnings in January? Like instituting a travel ban to be called racist and ridiculed? See: Pelosi/Chinatown a month later.

2. National lockdown? Again, would need support from Gov's and congress. Good luck.

3. National coordination of supplies? You can't get Cuomo or DiBlasio to tell anyone what they have. I'm sure you would have had better luck.

4. Advocate production drive? Like the Defense Production Act that was enacted?

5. Recruitment campaign? Like letting retired Dr's and Nurses whose credentials were only good in their state travel to other states to help out? Reach out to recently retired military with pertinent MOS's and ask them to come back? Like was done?

Do I have your plan pretty much covered, as was done in Washington since the beginning?

 

[StarHalo]

"No StarHalo, I meant national response as in what a national response would be after the states-only response. You may have given a comprehensive non-partisan answer, but you provided nothing and it pushed an agenda." :shakehead

 

[P_A_S_1]

Exhaust will escape from most masks, not just the vented. I notice this everyday when my eyeglasses steam up no matter how tightly I pinch the metal strip over the top of my nose. Your exhale is coming out from somewhere.

To some degree yes, hard to get a good seal without a gasket and even then proper fit is important. I had a few n95 with gaskets, they were good.

Imo non vented come much closer to the goal then vented even with the leakage.

 

[scout24]

"No StarHalo, I meant national response as in what a national response would be after the states-only response. You may have given a comprehensive non-partisan answer, but you provided nothing and it pushed an agenda." :shakehead

Your first sentence is nonsensical, and your comprehensive non-partisan plan mirrors what has already been done, as was broken down point by point... Your agenda seems to be "this is what I would have done, even though it's already been done. And it would have worked better if I did it."

I asked what you would do, how you would pay for it, and how you would enforce it. You answerd what you would have done, and ignored the other two questions. Seems pretty clear.. And I'm comfortable calling your last paragraph of your inital response to me today "pushing an agenda."

 

[bykfixer]

I'm pretty proud of how America handled the corona crisis Star. Was it perfect? No far from it.

Actually I stopped caring what the mass media said when I saw American pissed off at American when Vietnam vets came home. I was about 7 years old and was shocked to see little kids throwing rocks at soldiers. Yup. It happened thanks to a press that put out stories of attrocities being perpertrated by American soldiers based on stories told to them my enemy combatants. The press made up lie after lie about what was going on each evening on the. 6:30 news.

As a young adult American was pissed off at American during what was called "the Rodney King" situation.

Now in the new millenium that same mass media is trying to keep American pissed off at American. Shamefully on us, millions gobble up the nonsense and keyboard warriors repeat it day after day.

What's more shameful is the real facts can be found in less time than it took me to write this post, if one is even interested.

 

[knucklegary]

Amen Byk!!

 

[RedLED]

Fixer,

I said in part one of this thread that I hope they pay for what they have done, I really hope they pay.

 

[bykfixer]

China should have said "Houston we have a problem" long before they did. But there's blood on the hands of a whole lot of people in high places. History will show that later on.

 

[StarHalo]

But there's blood on the hands of a whole lot of people in high places. History will show that later on.

See, there's plenty we can all agree on. You can even "I told you so" that one later on, all good.

 

[bykfixer]

I generally do not keep score Star. I understand your point though. I just smile and say to myself "hmmm, saw that one a while ago".
I said a while ago "there's lots of blame to go around" due to a lot of screwing up going way back to the late 90's. AIDS research played a big part. Just use a search engine to see who some of the super stars were back then for clues. Then search anthrax researchers, ebola scientists. SARS, MERS. It's all out there and it all came together for a perfect storm in a place called Wuhan China.

It's a long list of well intentioned scientists and public officials who played a role in this thing. Leaders from several nations knew what was happening. Many countries funded it. Orange man just happened to reside in the white house of America when the storm occured. I don't say that to put him down or defend him. It was just like when fate put Woodrow Wilson in the white house when WW1 broke out at about the time the Spanish flu did it's thing.

 

[nbp]

Here's something I've been pondering today that I don't hear anyone talking about when comparing cases between countries: Age demographics. If you take a look at the number of people over age 65 (considered the highest risk group) across the world it's quite telling. Check out the top 20 countries with the largest number of people over age 65 and guess what you'll find?? Most of the outbreak and death hotspots, like the USA, UK, Italy, Spain etc. It makes sense to me that the nations with the largest numbers of high risk people would also see the highest number of deaths, regardless of mitigating factors. Someplace like Nigeria with a median age of 15 is just not going to be affected the same way as a place with mountains of aging folks by this particular disease.

 

[bykfixer]

Good morning C…P…Effffffffffff

Life during corona

NBP, a unique effect of this novel virus seems to be that in younger people who lack certain enzymes or something that triggers the body to defend itself the virus kinda goes in, dances around and dies. Where as we get older those enzymes or whatever have developed and it's those things that trigger the body to nuke itself when the virus enters.

With previous viruses it is the lack of those enzymes that allows a virus to loot and plunder the body of younger people.
I way over simplified that, but it's one of the things that has scientists scratching their heads. It's almost like mother nature created a super bug to seek out and destroy a particular group of humans and largely leave the rest alone. Kinda like a neutron bomb virus or something.

 

[Poppy]

A virus is an absolutely killing machine, a parasite if you will. It does not digest food and process food and create energy through the KREB cycle, instead, it invades a cell, steals the energy packets it has stored, and then uses the cell's DNA and digested proteins to replicate more versions of itself. It is an invading multiplicating organism. It is amazing that our body's immune system can fight them off.


_________________________________________
Immune responses to viruses

Kerry Laing, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, US
Via cytotoxic cells


When a virus infects a person (host), it invades the cells of its host in order to survive and replicate. Once inside, the cells of the immune system cannot 'see' the virus and therefore do not know that the host cell is infected. To overcome this, cells employ a system that allows them to show other cells what is inside them – they use molecules called class I major histocompatibility complex proteins (or MHC class I, for short) to display pieces of protein from inside the cell upon the cell surface. If the cell is infected with a virus, these pieces of peptide will include fragments of proteins made by the virus.




A special cell of the immune system called a T cell circulates looking for infections. One type of T cell is called a cytotoxic T cell because it kills cells that are infected with viruses with toxic mediators. more....


___________________________________________

Age-Related Differences in Percentages of Regulatory and Effector T Lymphocytes and Their Subsets in Healthy Individuals and Characteristic STAT1/STAT5 Signalling Response in Helper T Lymphocytes


The development, differentiation, and evolution of the immune system are dynamic processes evolving throughout the life of an individual. The immune system of a child begins to resemble that of an adult only after puberty under the influence of sex hormones, which promote full maturation of the immune system [1]. Alterations of the immune system continue with the gradual deterioration in the elderly, resulting in age-related immune dysfunctions (immunosenescence) such as increased malignancies, autoimmune disorders, susceptibility to both viral and bacterial infections, and diminished response to vaccination more....

________________________________________________

 

[lion504]

This is in the context of the federal budget - deficit spending has been the norm for some 60+ years for a variety of reasons of varying degrees of urgency; my argument is that considerably little of it was necessary. Had we better matched expenditures to revenues we'd be carrying less debt and the government would have fewer constraints on stimulating the economy during a downturn.

I agree with you because I'm against deficit spending. And similar to a variety of practices that, over time, accumulate compounding harms: smoking, gambling, etc. When you're at the back end of 30, 40, or 60 years of any of these habits, it's probably technically accurate to say that yesterday's event is not much worse than the day 1 event.

But it feels like hindsight bias to say that previous decisions to add more debt were not urgent or necessary given the fact it's needed now IF you allow for borrowing in an emergency. For example: assume deficit spending sufficient to "safer at home" for 18 months; in 20 years, if we experience a pandemic orders of magnitude worse than COVID-19 our response must be "COVID-19 wasn't that bad and we made a mistake borrowing the money."

In other words, who gets to say that today's crisis is worse than tomorrow's? Our time horizon can only be 2, 4, or 6 years.

 

[idleprocess]

I agree with you because I'm against deficit spending. And similar to a variety of practices that, over time, accumulate compounding harms: smoking, gambling, etc. When you're at the back end of 30, 40, or 60 years of any of these habits, it's probably technically accurate to say that yesterday's event is not much worse than the day 1 event.

But it feels like hindsight bias to say that previous decisions to add more debt were not urgent or necessary given the fact it's needed now IF you allow for borrowing in an emergency. For example: assume deficit spending sufficient to "safer at home" for 18 months; in 20 years, if we experience a pandemic orders of magnitude worse than COVID-19 our response must be "COVID-19 wasn't that bad and we made a mistake borrowing the money."

In other words, who gets to say that today's crisis is worse than tomorrow's? Our time horizon can only be 2, 4, or 6 years.

Our understanding of actions in the past will almost always be more comprehensive than our understanding of the circumstances surrounding a present decision. However, one can still make assessments of decisions using best-possible information that is known at the time. With COVID-19 we saw large sectors of the economy shut and record jumps in unemployment - on the latter point shattering anything that's ever happened - signs that this is immensely more urgent than another bump in general spending without a corresponding bump in revenues (be it explicit in raising taxes or even implicit reasonable projections of increases in collection due to a growing economy). In 20 years if there's a pandemic that's an order of magnitude worse than COVID-19, I hope our response is also an order of magnitude more intense and far more timely.

Given that this line of discussion stemmed from a member that hasn't since responded, I'm opting leave it be since this is veering towards the kinds of politics that CPF management prefers not to see and is better conducted on the other forum.

 

[StarHalo]

In 20 years if there's a pandemic that's an order of magnitude worse than COVID-19, I hope our response is also an order of magnitude more intense and far more timely.

That we should use any examples available to us, such as the reactions of other industrialized nations, to minimize the amount of economic downtime which is the scenario that would produce the least fiscal damage, amen.