Republican Senator asking if reaction to Corona goes to far
Lone_Wolf
Arizona
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/…
The Senator will pay a high price for having the balls to ask these questions.
The Senator will pay a high price for having the balls to ask these questions.
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26 comments
A question worth considering.
Personally, I’m ok with balancing the measures taken with preservation of the economy. So, broadly I agree that it’s a balancing act and that there will be significant costs no matter which side of the pendulum we land on, or even if the policy is a compromise somewhere in the middle.
The auto death and flu analogies are idiotic however. We don’t shut down the economy for flu or autos because we have other treatments. There are vaccines for flu. There are treatments for flu that don’t involve using a limited resource, ventilator. There are monstrous federal and state regulatory schemes that regulate the manufacture, sale, ownership, insurance and operation of autos. We already do something about both of those things. Right now, the best treatment for covid is prevention. After that, hope it’s not a bad case. If you are one of the 20% and it’s a bad case, hope you aren’t patient 60,001 and left without a ventilator when the music stops.
To me, that’s a huge difference.
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...and a massive increase in testing would help determine where the "hot spots" are so we don't need to shut down the entire economy in a panic.
This whole thing is a gross overreaction. I watched two guys in a restaurant on Monday lunch nearly get into a fistfight. It was a spicy Tex-Mex restaurant, and one guy covered his mouth with his arm and coughed once, lightly (the food was clearing my sinuses, too). There was noone within 15 feet. Another guy, over 30' away, stared daggers at him until the first guy was forced to say something. They were about to cone to blows until two plainclothes stepped in and stopped it. Because some coughed, covered, 30' away.
Where we disagree is merely the appropriateness of the ‘treatment’ for covid. You disagree that shutting everything down for 2-4 weeks is appropriate. I think it’s worth it to prevent a bigger danger.
I don’t know if the alarmists are right. I do know that the death rate in Italy is 5% and it’s not all because their population is older. They’ve run out of hospital beds and ventilators and are forced to decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t. The flip side is S Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. They don’t have the same freedoms we have here. They used cell phone tracking to isolate the infected and the exposed and quarantined them. Their infection rate and death rate vs population size is much much lower. Do we give up some freedoms and economics in order to be closer to those countries rather than Italy? I say yes.
And just to add something political into the mix, the overreaction you are seeing is coming from Trump. He’s overreacting because he was accused of underreacting early on. He’s compensating because he couldn’t take the criticism. I’m not a Trump fan obviously. I don’t think the virus is his fault. I do think his actions are purely based on how he’s treated by the media. That to me, is what got us here.
The government bureaucrats will loudly end the "emergency" within the next 45 days, but they will quietly fail to undo any of their emergency powers (in case another crisis occurs).
If COVID19 kills 50,000 people in the US this spring, it will still NOT be as deadly as this year's seasonal flu.
If COVID19 kills 50,000 people in the US this spring, it will not even be in the top five deadliest diseases: for real comparison, the complete 2018 totals (from the CDC) show 655,381 killed by heart disease, 599,274 killed by cancer, 159,486 killed by chronic lower respiratory disease, 147,810 killed by cerebro vascular disease, and 122,019 killed by Altzheimer's disease. Even ordinary accidents killed 167,127 people that year. The flu killed 59,120 people in 2018, and it wasn't a "bad" year!
At least our government is clearly taking action and all the politicians can clearly be seen "doing something." (more sarcasm!) Even Trump is in the game. This election year, he too, is trying to be seen, "doing something."
The UN, EU and the Fed bureaucrats are getting exactly what they want, autocratic powers across international borders and a chokehold on the global economy. I am not claiming that this is something they planned. I am saying they will use it!
Taking people's income is a sobering reality check.
Polititions are in a no win position. If the shut down works everyone will say it was an overreaction. If it doesn't, everyone will say enough wasn't done.
Regardless how it goes. I doubt Americans will ever allow a shutdown like this again no matter how dubious things look.
We'll start to hear tangible grumbling very soon.
The real bet is around how quickly the science will kick-in and allow for less stringent measures against the pandemic whilst starting to allow control and the regular economy to kick back in.
The actions now being taken are also partly due to the lack of strong data and knowledge on the disease and hence the higher than usual risk of a mis-step and under-estimating severity.
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The 1% mortality rate is probably close enough, but even the most pessimistic estimates are more like 50% of the population getting infected. So more like 1.7M
S. Korea's case is a bit unusual as almost 28% of their cases are 20 somethings which makes up easily their largest group (their next largest group is 50 somethings at just over 19% of cases; 1615 cases and 6 deaths), while Italy only has just under 4% of cases between 20-29 which is their smallest group besides those under 20 (1.2 percent) and those over 90 (3.0 percent). The next smallest group is 30-39 at 6.7% and their largest group is 70-79 at 20.4%.
All this shows is that S. Korea is testing a lot more relatively healthy people, while basically only sick people are getting tested in Italy. If Italy was testing like S. Korea, that 4,144 number of people under 30 (Italy's share is about 1,300) with COVID-19 would be closer to if not greater than 20k. I don't know if they would maintain 0 deaths at those numbers though, but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of under 30s with the disease are not having severe symptoms. So there's a good chance that there would still be slim to none deaths in that group. Also there have been over 800 90 somethings tested and confirmed in Italy (and over 165 deaths) but no such cases in S. Korea. I guess Koreans just don't live as long, although the Japanese do and beyond (although they're not as transparent with their data). But how many comorbidities do you think a 90+ year old has? Like even if they recover, they're probably not long for the world.
This is what makes the disease so perplexing and confounding. In a vacuum it causes almost no fear for young people, but for the elderly it's almost like catching a very quick killing cancer. So millennials and younger are probably just irritated and more concerned about economic fall out while boomers and older are much more concerned about health consequences as they are less likely to recover from those than the economic ones. Of course we don't live in a vacuum and the young folks can very well kill the older ones while the older ones can still hold the country hostage, or maybe they are the hostages depending on how you look at it. I have never seen anything like this. It's almost like class warfare, but between ages/generations and well, people that care more about money/materialism/net worth/standard of living than the human "cost".
1. We simply don’t have enough data on how far the virus has spread
2. Based on what we do know, it’s death rate is likely very low and is similar to the common flu
3. Imposing Social Distancing for as long as CoVid lasts is not practical
4. By focusing the health system on CoVid, many thousands may die from other, untreated, illnesses
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fi…