SF Bay Area (6 counties, I'm in Marinm north of the Golden Gate bridge) just issued a shelter-in-place order:

[url]https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/Bay-Area-must-shelter-in-place-Only-15135014.php[/url]

[i][url=https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/files/HealthOrderC19-07-%20Shelter-in-Place.pdf]The order[/url] falls just short of a full lockdown, which would forbid people from leaving their homes without explicit permission. The order calls for county and city sheriffs or police chiefs to “ensure compliance,” and local authorities said they would not “rush to enforce” the directives as residents adjusted to understand what activities are no longer allowed.

A wide swath of businesses that do not provide “essential” services must close. Among those remaining open are grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants for delivery only and hardware stores. Most workers are ordered to stay home, with exceptions including health care workers; police, fire and other emergency responders; and utility providers such as electricians, plumbers, and sanitation workers.
...
The is the first to direct people to stay at home as much as possible and avoid even small social interactions. On Friday, Santa Clara County banned all gatherings of people 35 and under. “I thought that announcement was hard, this one is exponentially harder,” [Dr. Sara Cody, health officer for Santa Clara County] said.[/i]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;539878]Trump is of course doing his usual mix of NYC RE wheeler-dealer, pro wrasslin heel and carnival barker, but it seems there is no lack of "doh!" company among the leaders of fellow western nations:

[URL="https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-europe-incompetence-pandemic/"]Coronavirus: The incompetence pandemic[/URL] | POLITICO[/QUOTE]
Welcome to the fog of war.
Fear of public speaking alone typically knocks several IQ points off any normal person nearest a microphone, in real time. (I took a class years ago where taking turns at the mic was common in a crowd of ~200, and the facilitator could see at certain points the person at the mic was not getting a concept while the audience did and became restless and impatient, and the facilitator stopped the action briefly to remind us of the invisible IQ-reduction cloud that centers around a microphone) And that was for far far lower stakes.

[QUOTE=kriesel;539886]Welcome to the fog of war.
Fear of public speaking alone typically knocks several IQ points off any normal person nearest a microphone, in real time. (I took a class years ago where taking turns at the mic was common in a crowd of ~200, and the facilitator could see at certain points the person at the mic was not getting a concept while the audience did and became restless and impatient, and the facilitator stopped the action briefly to remind us of the invisible IQ-reduction cloud that [color=red][b]centers around[/b][/color] a microphone) And that was for far far lower stakes.[/QUOTE]
Points off for dreadful illiterism!

Also, the notion does not explain [i]Il Duce[/i]'s penchant for idiocy via tweet.

As of this evening:
total confirmed cases 181584, deaths 7139, recovered 78956 worldwide;
deaths/(deaths+recovered) = 7139/(7139+78956) = 0.0829 = 8.29%
deaths/cases = 7139/181584 = .0393 = 3.93%
That's a case increase rate of 181584/167444 = 1.0844 ratio per day

US cases 4661, 85 deaths, 17 recovered;
on 3/14 it was 2175, 46, 12. sqrt(4661/2175) = 1.464 ratio per day. Yikes.

Case count is still a small fraction of total population, so little effect of saturation would be present.

[url]https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/03/05/johns-hopkins-dashboard-maps-global-coronavirus-cases.aspx[/url]

March 16th Covid-19 modelling from Imperial College London:
[URL]https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf[/URL]

Going proactive [url]http://nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/the-man-who-saw-the-pandemic-coming[/url]

You can always count on drug companies to unnecessarily complicate things just to make sure they can turn a profit.
There are tens of thousands of recovered humans with ready to use antibodies in their blood plasma yesterday. Yet:
[url]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/regeneron-aims-to-have-coronavirus-drug-ready-for-testing-early-summer.html[/url]

Coronavirus: US volunteers test first vaccine
[url]https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51906604[/url]

Coronavirus will cause mass insanity.

This is because it is causing many schools to close. Consequently, the kids will be [i]home[/i] instead of at school.

Their parents will be driven mad, stark raving [i]mad[/i], I tell you!

Regular NC reader/commenter "David", long the go-to guy re. the Yellow Vests protests, gave an [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03/links-3-17-2020.html#comment-3318971]update from France[/url] this morning:
[quote]As of a few minutes ago, France is effectively under house arrest. Everybody with a mobile phone received a message from the government this morning with instructions to stay at home except for a few defined purposes. There was a link to a form which you have to print and fill in each time you want to go out, or write out in manuscript. One hundred thousand police and gendarmes will be deployed to enforce this policy, which in the first instance will last for two weeks.
Macron’s speech last night – the second in less than a week – was not particularly well received. From a technical perspective, I thought it was badly constructed and unconvincing, probably written in a great hurry. For example Macron spoke of a state of “war” seven times, but also said that these measures were unprecedented “in peacetime.” These are the sorts of contradictions that experienced speechwriters pick up, but the Elysée seems to have missed them. There was lots of vacuous rhetoric, but much less direct information. It was left to Castaner, the Interior Minister, to fill in the gaps at a news conference later;
The reason why the speech was broadcast last night is probably that the government realized very quickly that the decision to go ahead with the first round of the municipal elections last week was a mistake, and it was therefore necessary to cancel the second round on Sunday. But a government can’t just say “sorry, we made a mistake”, so other things have to be added as well, probably measures that were going to be announced in a few days anyway. Rather like Johnson, Macron has discovered that this isn’t quite the job he thought he was applying for.

You’ll probably see pictures of the Champs Elysées deserted at midday, but that’s not where the problems are likely to come from. They will come from two sources, possibly echoed in other countries as well. One, the major concern, is the [i]banlieuex[/i], the rough suburbs around Paris and the major cities. There, the population is mainly of immigrant origin, sometimes first generation. Many older people don’t speak French: quite a few, especially the young, are illiterate, many are there illegally, and whole extended families of 8-10 people live crowded together in one apartment. Over the last fifteen years, the State has pretty much given up on these areas: no serious attempt, for example, is made to oblige parents to send their children to school. The social and educational services are overwhelmed, the police are largely absent for fear of provoking conflict and even the emergency services rarely go into some areas for fear of being attacked as representatives of the State. Power at street level is held by drug traffickers and Salafist preachers from the Gulf who are taking over the mosques, and at local level by politicians (often white and some of them allegedly left-wing) who make accommodations with these [i]caids[/i] in return for votes. So we’ll see, but let’s just say that there are parts of France, where millions of people live, in which enforcing these edicts is going to be tougher than enforcing them in a chic arrondissement of Paris or Bordeaux. Likewise, there are areas of several cities where there are large groups of illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe, living in tents (if they are lucky) with no running water or sanitation. Most of them are happy if they get to wash their hands once a day. Such encampments may well be ground zero for any sustained outbreak, and it’s not helped by the fact that there are already other relatively rare diseases reported from such areas.[/quote]
Aside: can one of our French-speaking readers lmk of the proper pluralization of [i]banlieu[/i]? I would've expected either [i]banlieus[/i] or [i]banlieux[/i].

Relatedly, I've seen online commentary to the effect that the French government is now advising against the use of anti-inflammatory drugs, specifically NSAIDs, notably ibuprofen. Has anyone heard more about this? Many folks, first onset of classic "flu-like symptoms", reach for the ibuprofen. If that is implicated in Covid-19 susceptibility, it's important to know.

Re anti-inflammatory drugs,
See this post and the following 3 posts:

[url]https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?170332-Disease-and-pandemics-thread-(because-it-s-science)&p=2507327#post2507327[/url]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;539997]Relatedly, I've seen online commentary to the effect that the French government is now advising against the use of anti-inflammatory drugs, specifically NSAIDs, notably ibuprofen. Has anyone heard more about this? Many folks, first onset of classic "flu-like symptoms", reach for the ibuprofen. If that is implicated in Covid-19 susceptibility, it's important to know.[/QUOTE]
The only identified problem I know of in this regard is called Reye's Syndrome, which is quite rare. It is associated with the use of aspirin specifically, by those with viral infections like flu or chickenpox. I believe there is a warning about it on every bottle of aspirin sold in the US. Aspirin is also rough on the stomach.

Acetaminophen is known to be tough on the liver. There are warnings about taking too much of it on bottles of acetaminophen, and of medications containing it, like Excedrin. I don't know of any virus-related "syndromes" associated with its use.

Ibuprofen can be rough on people in various ways, but I don't know of any virus-related "syndromes" associated with it.

I've heard people claim that reducing a fever is a Bad Idea, but I'm not sure it is.

Globally tonight:
197126 confirmed cases, 7905 deaths, 80845 recovered
7905/(7905+80845) = 0.0891 = 8.9% CFR
deaths/cases= 7905/197126 = 0.0401 = 4%

US:
6362 cases, 108 deaths, 17 recovered

[URL]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/URL]

You know it's serious when Ireland closes its pubs on St. Patrick's Day.
And the hardest-drinking college towns in the US close their bars.

[QUOTE=kriesel;540004]You know it's serious when Ireland closes its pubs on St. Patrick's Day.
And the hardest-drinking college towns in the US close their bars.[/QUOTE]

It isn't just college towns closing the bars. In a bunch of states, [i]all[/i] the bars -- and restaurants, too -- are forbidden to serve "sit-down" customers for the next two weeks, by order of their Governors. Take-out and delivery still allowed.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;539985]Coronavirus will cause mass insanity.

This is because it is causing many schools to close. Consequently, the kids will be [i]home[/i] instead of at school.

Their parents will be driven mad, stark raving [i]mad[/i], I tell you![/QUOTE]

I'm home schooling my 6-year old first-grade granddaughter. She's learning plenty of math!

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540005]It isn't just college towns closing the bars. In a bunch of states, [I]all[/I] the bars -- and restaurants, too -- are forbidden to serve "sit-down" customers for the next two weeks, by order of their Governors. Take-out and delivery still allowed.[/QUOTE]Yes. But "sleepy midwest states close their bars" just didn't seem to me as good a line. I live in Wisconsin, which has a statewide ban started 5pm tonight that's swiss-cheese riddled with exceptions. You can't serve anyone in a bar or restaurant, indefinitely, but delivery, takeout, or drivethru is ok. There are no limits on grocery stores, gas stations, etc. as long as people don't get too close to each other. The local village library closed starting yesterday. [url]https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/WIGOV/2020/03/17/file_attachments/1403535/Gov.%20Evers_DHS%20order_3.17.20.pdf[/url]

[QUOTE=a1call;539922]You can always count on drug companies to unnecessarily complicate things just to make sure they can turn a profit.
There are tens of thousands of recovered humans with ready to use antibodies in their blood plasma yesterday. Yet:
[url]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/regeneron-aims-to-have-coronavirus-drug-ready-for-testing-early-summer.html[/url][/QUOTE]

Not defending the Big Pharma greedheads, but I see several potential problems with an antibody-derived treatment:

1. We're dealing with a relatively-rapidly-evolving RNA virus, so besides the fact that antibody-based passive immunity fades quite rapidly and thus leaves one still-vulnerable should the bug still be circulating months later - very likely in this case - you have the issue of the antibody sub-serotype production keeping up with the natural evolution of the various strains. AFAIK we've no idea as yet as to the partial-immunity-providing properties of one specific-strain antibody against different strains.

2. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_immunization]Wikipedia[/url]:[quote]Artificially acquired passive immunity is a short-term immunization achieved by the transfer of antibodies, which can be administered in several forms; as human or animal blood plasma or serum, as pooled human immunoglobulin for intravenous (IVIG) or intramuscular (IG) use, as high-titer human IVIG or IG from immunized donors or from donors recovering from the disease, and as monoclonal antibodies (MAb). Passive transfer is used to prevent disease or used prophylactically in the case of immunodeficiency diseases, such as hypogammaglobulinemia. It is also used in the treatment of several types of acute infection, and to treat poisoning. Immunity derived from passive immunization lasts for a few weeks to three to four months. There is also a potential risk for hypersensitivity reactions, and serum sickness, especially from gamma globulin of non-human origin. [u]Passive immunity provides immediate protection, but the body does not develop memory, therefore the patient is at risk of being infected by the same pathogen later unless they acquire active immunity or vaccination[/u].[/quote]
OK, so regular revaccination will be required to maintain resistance to a given viral strain, until (we hope) an effective vaccine is developed. Next, the "serum sickness from gamma globulin of non-human origin" bit is important, because large-scale antibody mass-production typically requires a non-human substrate. Wikipedia sums up:
[quote]A disadvantage to passive immunity is that producing antibodies in a laboratory is expensive and difficult to do. In order to produce antibodies for infectious diseases, there is a need for possibly thousands of human donors to donate blood or immune animals' blood would be obtained for the antibodies. Patients who are immunized with the antibodies from animals may develop serum sickness due to the proteins from the immune animal and develop serious allergic reactions. Antibody treatments can be time consuming and are given through an intravenous injection or IV, while a vaccine shot or jab is less time consuming and has less risk of complication than an antibody treatment. Passive immunity is effective, but only lasts a short amount of time.[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540010]Not defending the Big Pharma greedheads, but I see several potential problems with an antibody-derived treatment:

1. We're dealing with a relatively-rapidly-evolving RNA virus, so besides the fact that antibody-based passive immunity fades quite rapidly and thus leaves one still-vulnerable should the bug still be circulating months later - very likely in this case - you have the issue of the antibody sub-serotype production keeping up with the natural evolution of the various strains. AFAIK we've no idea as yet as to the partial-immunity-providing properties of one specific-strain antibody against different strains.

2. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_immunization]Wikipedia[/url]:
OK, so regular revaccination will be required to maintain resistance to a given viral strain, until (we hope) an effective vaccine is developed. Next, the "serum sickness from gamma globulin of non-human origin" bit is important, because large-scale antibody mass-production typically requires a non-human substrate. Wikipedia sums up:[/QUOTE]

I concur with ewmayer's analysis, with a slight caveat: coronaviruses have a [url=https://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/E162]repair mechanism[/url] that should make their error rate lower than you'd expect for an RNA virus, though I do still expect a relatively high mutation rate. I don't know of any numbers yet on COVID-19 yet.

[QUOTE=kriesel;540009]Yes. But "sleepy midwest states close their bars" just didn't seem to me as good a line.
<snip>[/QUOTE]
Probably just as well.

You'd have the States of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio on Line One complaining about being called "sleepy."

You'd have the States of California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington on Line Two complaining about being called "midwestern."

And the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico on Line Three complaining about being called "midwestern" [i]and[/i] "states."

[quote=yours truly;539869]Here is a sampling of our Great Leader's pronouncements:[quote]Jan. 22: "We have it totally under control."

Jan. 24: "It will all work out well."

Feb. 14: "We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It's like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we're in very good shape."

Feb. 19: "I think it's going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let's see what happens, but I think it's going to work out fine."

Feb. 24: The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2020

Feb. 26: "Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low. … 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."

Feb. 28: "It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear."

March 12: "It's going to go away. ... The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point … when you look at the kind of numbers that you're seeing coming out of other countries, it's pretty amazing when you think of it."

March 15: "This is a very contagious virus. It's incredible. But it's something that we have tremendous control over."[/quote][/quote]

And, from the Gaslighter-in-Chief on Saint Patrick's day:
[quote]I mean, I have seen that, where people actually liked it. But I didn't feel different. I've always known, this is a real -- this is a real -- this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do was look at other countries...no, I've always viewed it as very serious. It was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar, but some people said it wasn't.[/quote]

[url]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/us-govt-expects-18-month-pandemic-with-widespread-supply-shortages/[/url]

Excellent data and graphs at the [URL="https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441"]Financial Times[/URL].

A 33% growth rate [I]per diem[/I] fits the data from sundry sources remarkably well.

There is an interesting up-tick in the US rates over the last couple of days. My view is that it may well be significant but could just be a statistical blip.

[QUOTE=xilman;540066]There is an interesting up-tick in the US rates over the last couple of days. My view is that it may well be significant but could just be a statistical blip.[/QUOTE]

Reflects the US finally getting going with widespread testing... I hope?
If so, is that a subset of "blip"?

[QUOTE]
10:55 am: Volunteer threatened with lawsuit after 3-D printing an $11,000 valve for $1

In Italy, a good Samaritan could be facing legal action for providing a hospital with special valves needed for breathing equipment that keeps coronavirus patients alive, according to a report from Techdirt.

Cristian Fracassi used a 3D printer to make the valves after the original manufacturer could not provide them due to overwhelming demand. Fracassi had to design the valves himself after the manufacturer refused to provide the 3D files, and he ultimately donated more than 100 valves to the hospital, each one costing him around $1 to make.

The regular listing price of the valve is about $11,000, and the manufacturer has threatened to sue Fracassi for patent infringement, leaving him fearful of sharing the 3D file with other hospitals that need the valve. —Hannah Miller


[/QUOTE]
[url]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/coronavirus-live-updates.html[/url]

A view from Spain:

[url=https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/17/welcome-to-dystopia-my-life-under-lockdown-in-spain/]Welcome to Dystopia: My Life Under Lockdown in Spain[/url] | Nick Corbishley for Wolf Street
[quote]Pressure is also mounting on the government to suspend mortgage payments, rents and utility bills for the next month, as has already happened in France. To prevent the virus crisis from “triggering a new housing crisis”, the government needs to implement broad social and economic measures, said a joint statement by the country’s two largest tenants unions, whose membership has soared in recent days

Even before this crisis hit, many tenants in cities like Barcelona, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca and Malaga were already struggling to pay their astronomical rents. Even if landlords demand full payment this month, in many cases they won’t get it. Then, what will they do? Throw out the tenants, knowing full well that the same thing is happening in buildings across the city? Who will they rent out the newly vacated apartments to? Tourists? Ha!

Finally, this crisis can also hit in another more subtle way, as my Mexican mother-in-law has learned. And that is through currency depreciation. A month and a half ago, she sold her apartment in Mexico City with a view to using the money to live in a rented apartment in Barcelona, where her only daughter lives. But since she had no bank account in Spain she could not transfer the funds (in pesos) straight away and had to wait until she got here. By the time she arrived the already weak peso had lost roughly 20% of its value against the euro.

Now, my mother-in-law is on lock down in her daughter and son-in-law’s apartment. In euro-terms, she’s 20% poorer than she was a month ago. For the moment, the three of us are living in relative harmony. We do not want for anything, apart from job security and the occasional evening stroll together. We have enough food (having stocked up in the preceding weeks), some toilet paper (but not too much), lots of books to read (and reread), films to watch (and re-watch), card games to learn, friends to speak to, the Mediterranean sun shining on the balcony and through the windows, and even the sound of birdsong, a weird but welcome element of our new reality. Most importantly, we have our health (touch wood) and each other.[/quote]

Re. the a1call-linked story about the 3D "guerilla printing" of a key medical part and the resulting threatened lawsuit by the manufacturer - governments can (and I expect will do en masse in short order) simply invoke emergency powers here:

[url=https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/488226-trump-invokes-defense-production-act-as-coronavirus-response]Trump invokes Defense Production Act as coronavirus response[/url] The Hill
[quote]President Trump announced Wednesday that he will invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA), which would allow the administration to force American industry to manufacture medical supplies that are in short supply in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Hospitals, health workers and state and local officials have said they are quickly running out of personal protective equipment (PPE), like masks, gowns and gloves, that are crucial to keeping doctors and nurses on the front lines of the pandemic safe.

“There’s never been an instance like this where no matter what you have it’s not enough,” Trump said at a White House briefing with reporters.

“If we need to use it, we’ll be using it at full speed ahead," he said.

Hospitals are also sounding the alarm on the lack of ventilators, or breathing machines, that are expected to be in high demand as the coronavirus spreads in the coming weeks and months.

Democrats in Congress, hearing about shortages of supplies from hospitals in their states and districts, have urged Trump to invoke the DPA to direct the domestic production of necessary medical equipment.

“This would ensure we have the materials we need at the ready, rather than wait for disruptions in the global supply chain to subside,” 57 House Democrats wrote in a letter to Trump last week.

The issue of supply shortages is likely to come up during the president's discussions with nurses and doctors Wednesday.

Supply chains are extremely strained due to tariffs on China, the main supplier of medical goods to the U.S.

While the Trump administration has recently taken some action to ease those tariffs, China and other countries are also blocking exports of those products as they seek to combat the pandemic within their borders.

Of top concern to health workers in the U.S. is the shortage of N95 respirators, which are viewed as more effective at blocking viruses than the looser-fitting surgical masks.

In a letter sent to Vice President Pence Tuesday, Dr. James Madara, the CEO and executive vice president of the American Medical Association, wrote that he is "deeply concerned" about the shortages.

"The AMA continues to hear from physicians across the country about short supplies and limited access to personal protective equipment (PPE), which is necessary to keep the health care workforce safe and to protect the health of patients," Madara wrote.

"Physicians are reaching out to their state and local health departments, but their supplies of PPE are also inadequate," he continued.

Officials in several states say they have only received a fraction of the protective equipment they requested from a national stockpile of medical supplies managed by the federal government.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told The Hill the role of the stockpile is to “fill the gap temporarily until states and localities working with the private sector can respond to the state and local needs.”[/quote]
More on the surprisingly tricky aspect of N85 mask manufacture:

[url=https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/814929294/covid-19-has-caused-a-shortage-of-face-masks-but-theyre-surprisingly-hard-to-mak]COVID-19 Has Caused A Shortage Of Face Masks. But They’re Surprisingly Hard To Make[/url] NPR
[quote]Both the masks made for medical personnel and for consumer purchase require a once-obscure material called melt-blown fabric. It’s an extremely fine mesh of synthetic polymer fibers that forms the critical inner filtration layer of a mask, allowing the wearer to breath while reducing the inflow of possible infectious particles.

‘We’re talking about fibers where one filament has a diameter of less than one micron, so we are in the nano area,’ said Markus Müller, the sales director at German company Reicofil, a major provider of melt-blown machine lines. And there’s now a global shortage of melt-blown fabric due to the increased demand for masks — and the difficulty in producing this material.[/quote]
Note that this sort of issue - everything else is easy, but there is one tricky subcomponent that is very difficult to manufacture - is ubiquitous in modern manufacturing chains. So the western world's wartime-rationing-style crash course in re-onshoring of manufacture, and refurbishment and re-use of existing gear is going to involve a lot of creative solutions. Suspending patent enforcement in this context is more or less required.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540103]Suspending patent enforcement in this context is more or less required.[/QUOTE]If textbook suppliers don't come up with some creative and open solutions soon, I think we might see targeted copyright suspensions on schoolbooks.

[QUOTE=a1call;540073][url]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/coronavirus-live-updates.html[/url][/QUOTE]Easy enough for the company to protect their patent rights and yet not lose the PR situation.

Grant the guy a personal license to their invention at a fee set at, say, 1 cent per device. Said license to be valid for a period of two years or the manufacture of 10,000 devices, whichever comes first.

Along side this, make a charitable donation for a sum significantly in excess of $100 to the hospital where the guy works, along with an ex gratia payment to the chap himself, again in excess of $100. Account for it as "advertising expense" or the like.

[QUOTE=a1call;540073][url]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/coronavirus-live-updates.html[/url][/QUOTE]

An important update on this subject:
No threats of legal action:


[url]https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21184308/coronavirus-italy-medical-3d-print-valves-treatments[/url]

[QUOTE=a1call;539999]Re anti-inflammatory drugs,
See this post and the following 3 posts:

[URL]https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?170332-Disease-and-pandemics-thread-(because-it-s-science)&p=2507327#post2507327[/URL][/QUOTE]
From later in the thread, I love these signature pearls. The Leif Ericson starship link is really interesting, too.
[QUOTE]The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." — Abraham Lincoln

[COLOR=#4b0082]I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you [I]prove[/I] that I am wrong?[/COLOR]

[SIZE=1][URL="http://www.projectrho.com/SSC/model.html"][COLOR=#000000]The Leif Ericson Cruiser[/COLOR][/URL][/SIZE][/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540103]
[URL="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/814929294/covid-19-has-caused-a-shortage-of-face-masks-but-theyre-surprisingly-hard-to-mak"]COVID-19 Has Caused A Shortage Of Face Masks. But They’re Surprisingly Hard To Make[/URL] NPR

Note that this sort of issue - everything else is easy, but there is one tricky subcomponent that is very difficult to manufacture - is ubiquitous in modern manufacturing chains. So the western world's wartime-rationing-style crash course in re-onshoring of manufacture, and refurbishment and re-use of existing gear is going to involve a lot of creative solutions. Suspending patent enforcement in this context is more or less required.[/QUOTE]The impression I get from a quick web search is this manufacturing is dominated by China and perhaps even more so India. The box in my home bought years ago is from India.

Numbers update
 

Tonight's numbers:
Global:
cases 214894, deaths 8749, recovered 83313
CFR1= 8749/(8749+83313) = 0.0950 = 9.5% still climbing
CFR2= 8749/214894 = 0.0407 = 4.07%
active cases= 214894-8749-83313 = 122,832

US: cases 7769, deaths 118, recovered 106
CFR1= 118/(118+106) = 0.527 = 52.7%! Numbers still small enough that one Washington state nursing home has a substantial effect.
CFR2= 118/7769 = 0.0152 = 1.52%
active cases = 7769-118-106 = 7545

[URL]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/URL]

Tonight's numbers:
Globally:
cases 242726, deaths 9870, recoveries 85676
CFR1 = 9870=(9870+85676) = 0.1033 = 10.33%
CFR2 = 9870 / 242726 = .04066 = 4.07%
active cases = 242726-9870-85676 = 147180

US: case increase is substantially related to an increased testing rate
cases 13678, deaths 200, recovered 108
CFR1 = 200/(200+108) = 0.649 = 64.9%!
CFR2 = 200 / 13678 = 0.0146 = 1.46%
active cases = 13678-200-108 = 13370

[url]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/url]

[QUOTE=kriesel;540191]Tonight's numbers:
US: case increase is substantially related to an increased testing rate
cases 13678, deaths 200, recovered 108
CFR1 = 200/(200+108) = 0.649 = [COLOR="Red"]64.9%![/COLOR]
CFR2 = 200 / 13678 = 0.0146 = 1.46%
active cases = 13678-200-108 = 13370[/QUOTE]The highlighted number is highly biased by that facility in Washington state.

California now has what amounts to a "STAY the [SPOILER]____[/SPOILER] HOME" order.
You can go out and walk around. Go to the park, but stay away from people. Stores that are non-essential (selling things like clothes, electronics, books, etc.) are to close. Some guberment workers are to stay home.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;540203]The highlighted number is highly biased by that facility in Washington state.[/QUOTE]All the numbers are biased and useless. You need to test the entire population to know the actual figures.

[QUOTE=retina;540212]All the numbers are biased and useless. You need to test the entire population to know the actual figures.[/QUOTE]I agree.

The statistics of one country, South Korea, could be less biased because of their hunting up all contacts of infected people and testing them.

Jacob

[QUOTE=retina;540212]All the numbers are biased and useless. You need to test the entire population to know the actual figures.[/QUOTE]

You can get a decent idea with stratified random sampling, but we don't even have enough tests for that right now. It would be very useful, though, because it would give an idea of the level of community-acquired COVID-19.

[QUOTE=S485122;540219]The statistics of one country, South Korea, could be less biased because of their hunting up all contacts of infected people and testing them.[/QUOTE]The selection criteria are still biased towards finding infected people, and ignoring people they think are not involved.[QUOTE=CRGreathouse;540242]You can get a decent idea with stratified random sampling, but we don't even have enough tests for that right now. It would be very useful, though, because it would give an idea of the level of community-acquired COVID-19.[/QUOTE]I don't quite understand what you mean by "stratified random sampling". If that is the same as ordinary random sampling then I agree.

[url=https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/19/818295972/chinese-authorities-admit-improper-response-to-coronavirus-whistleblower]Chinese Authorities Admit Improper Response To Coronavirus Whistleblower[/url][quote]Li Wenliang, the ophthalmologist whose early warnings about the coronavirus earned him a reprimand from Chinese authorities, is finally receiving justice — albeit posthumously. Authorities in the country are apologizing to his family and dropping their reprimand, six weeks after his death from the disease caused by the virus.

Widely known as a whistleblower who spoke up about the outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China, the 34-year-old doctor was initially punished by local authorities. They said he was "spreading rumors" in early January, after he had tried to warn others about the emergence of the novel coronavirus that has now become a global pandemic.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540265][URL="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/19/818295972/chinese-authorities-admit-improper-response-to-coronavirus-whistleblower"]Chinese Authorities Admit Improper Response To Coronavirus Whistleblower[/URL][/QUOTE]Yes, and it's even worse than that.
More precisely, local officials arrested several local doctors on Jan 1 and 2 more on Jan 3, with accusations they were spreading FALSE rumors, and used the power of the state to try to intimidate them into participating in suppressing the truth and coerce them into going along with the state's preferred falsehoods. For weeks afterward, there was a pretense that it was not capable of spreading human to human.

The world situation would be very different now if the initial official reaction had been more enlightened and reality-based in China. They had a real opportunity to drastically reduce the worldwide impact compared to what it already is. That would also have benefited China's economy, world image, and the residents of the Hubei province.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;540203]The highlighted number is highly biased by that facility in Washington state.[/QUOTE]Less so by the day as the 34 deaths from the nursing home get diluted by the rest of the nation's fatalities. And I noted the significant impact of that location with the previous days numbers.
I've seen claims that some of the low paid help at that nursing home were reporting to work while themselves ill. And the misdiagnoses certainly didn't help. They had nearly complete infection of the patients, at 81+34=115 out of 120.

[url]https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/washington-nursing-home-with-34-coronavirus-deaths-mistook-outbreak-for-pneumonia-flu.html[/url]

[QUOTE=retina;540212]All the numbers are biased and useless. You need to test the entire population to know the actual figures.[/QUOTE]
No.
Population,
fraction that has exhibited enough symptoms to attract medical attention,
fraction diagnosed as the disease in question times,
fractions of those diagnosed as having disease X, that recover or die,
contain useful information, as do time trends in each.
Without providing means of calculating any individual's odds of becoming exposed, or infected, or clinical, or dead.
Exhaustive testing would only provide a snapshot in staggered time anyway. The situation would have changed for someone before one round of testing of every person could have been completed.

A useful and encouraging figure is that the Washington state nursing home had 81 sickened, and 34 dead, out of a confined and vulnerable population of 120; 5 apparently escaped it entirely, in about the worst scenario there is, as it ran rampant unidentified for about a month in close proximity.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;540203]California now has what amounts to a "STAY the [SPOILER]____[/SPOILER] HOME" order.
You can go out and walk around. Go to the park, but stay away from people. Stores that are non-essential (selling things like clothes, electronics, books, etc.) are to close. Some guberment workers are to stay home.[/QUOTE]

Found out yesterday that the local coffee joint, Dr. Insomniac's, remains open for business, like other food service places it's in takeout-only mode, but the owner lady said it's OK to sit at the outside tables, the local cops have been doing it themselves - just maintain distance from other parties using the area. Downstairs Whole Foods remains open, just on slightly reduced hours, lotsa empty shelves due to the mass-stocking-up tsunami, but the manager says they're getting new supply in, they just don't usually order TP by the truckload in their weekly purchasing. :)

A plausible reason why Northern Italy has been so disproportionally hard-hit by Covid-19:

[url]https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany[/url]

Long story short, large numbers of Chinese workers in the textile regions of Italy. Their job, disassemble the machinery to send it to China, or work in the region's famous textile plants for cheap.

A phrase (not my coinage) comes to mind: "Globalization is a disaster everywhere you care to look." Thanks for that, "unchallenged-for-over-50-years consensus of nearly all of the world's leading economists".

[QUOTE=retina;540244]I don't quite understand what you mean by "stratified random sampling". If that is the same as ordinary random sampling then I agree.[/QUOTE]

You could take a uniform random sample from the US at large (ordinary random sampling) and that would at least tell you the overall level of infection. If tests were really hard to come by you could sample 5 people and draw very weak conclusions about the overall level: if none of them are infected or have antibodies (and hence have been previously infected*), we can say with 95% confidence that at most 1-.05^(1/5) ≈ 45% of the population is or was infected.

With more resources you could test 1000 people uniformly at random throughout the country (like polling agencies do!) and get decent error bars on the percentage, something like 0.2%.

But when you know more about the disease and its distribution, and have the resources to take advantage of that, it makes sense to stratefy instead of taking the whole population as a uniform chunk. For example, you might sample [url=https://abc7ny.com/health/rockland-county-warns-residents-coronavirus-is-widespread/6031040/]Rockland[/url] and [url=https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/news/2020/March/18-covid.aspx]King[/url] more heavily (geographic stratification), you might age-stratefy because the virus [url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/19/coronavirus-illnesses-can-serious-young-adults-cdc-report/2874271001/]acts differently on different age groups[/url], or you might simply [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversampling_and_undersampling_in_data_analysis]oversample[/url] the elderly because they are at higher risk. You might similarly oversample other at-risk populations like the institutionalized, especially those in nursing homes. Normal sampling will miss these populations, which are a small percent of the overall population but appear to represent a large percentage of COVID-19 risk.

* For the purpose of this exercise, we'll suppose immune memory is sufficient.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540311]A phrase (not my coinage) comes to mind: "Globalization is a disaster everywhere you care to look."[/QUOTE]Cases in point:

[url=https://apnews.com/6d9382c1e8ee36f9ed1a4dfe7815ceb1]Imports of medical supplies plummet as demand in US soars[/url][quote]The critical shortage of medical supplies across the U.S., including testing swabs, protective masks, surgical gowns and hand sanitizer, can be tied to a sudden drop in imports, mostly from China, The Associated Press has found.

Trade data shows the decline in shipments started in mid-February after the spiraling coronavirus outbreak in China led the country to shutter factories and disrupted ports. Some emergency rooms, hospitals and clinics in the U.S. have now run out of key medical supplies, while others are rationing personal protective equipment like gloves and masks.

The United States counts on receiving the vast majority of its medical supplies from China, where the coronavirus has infected more than 80,000 people and killed more than 3,200. When Chinese medical supply factories began coming back on line last month, their first priority was their own hospitals.[/quote]

[url=https://apnews.com/4aac3a10664097f38633149367ac3928]US virus testing faces new headwind: Lab supply shortages[/url][quote]WASHINGTON (AP) — First, some of the coronavirus tests didn't work. Then there weren't enough to go around. Now, just as the federal government tries to ramp up nationwide screening, laboratory workers are warning of a new roadblock: dire shortages of testing supplies.
<snip>
There are "acute, serious shortages across the board" for supplies needed to do the tests, said Eric Blank, of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local health labs.

Late Friday, Blank's group and two other public health organizations recommended that testing be scaled back due to "real, immediate, wide-scale shortages." The groups said only patients with COVID-19 symptoms who are elderly, have high-risk medical conditions or are medical staff should be tested.
<snip>
The coronavirus test uses a chemical chain reaction to detect tiny traces of the virus' genetic material and reproduce it many times. State and local health labs follow the technique first developed by the CDC, which calls for a specific genetic kit made by German diagnostic firm Qiagen. Labs around the globe are reporting shortage of those kits.

Qiagen said this week it is trying to boost production from normal levels, which are capable of testing 1.5 million patients per month, to amounts that would allow for testing more than 10 million patients by the end of June.[/quote]

Yawn. Either we could have been inefficiently producing them all along, or we could have just [url=https://www.phe.gov/about/sns/Pages/default.aspx]buffered our own supply[/url] and price-signaled that we wanted more, so [url=https://fortune.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-mask-hand-sanitizer-factory/]foreign[/url] and [url=https://qz.com/1820705/the-challenges-of-non-medical-companies-making-coronavirus-supplies/]domestic[/url] sources get you supplies. It works decently, as long as you don't [url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-tariffs-leave-the-u-s-short-on-vital-medical-supplies-11584551602]stop yourself from buying what you need[/url]. Of course if you find out your supply lines are too fragile (as our rare earths certainly were) you should diversify -- but that's a problem you could face regardless of international trade, and indeed one that becomes worse if you cut off trade.

[QUOTE=CRGreathouse;540339]Yawn. Either we could have been inefficiently producing them all along, or we could have just [url=https://www.phe.gov/about/sns/Pages/default.aspx]buffered our own supply[/url] and price-signaled that we wanted more, so [url=https://fortune.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-mask-hand-sanitizer-factory/]foreign[/url] and [url=https://qz.com/1820705/the-challenges-of-non-medical-companies-making-coronavirus-supplies/]domestic[/url] sources get you supplies. It works decently, as long as you don't [url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-tariffs-leave-the-u-s-short-on-vital-medical-supplies-11584551602]stop yourself from buying what you need[/url]. Of course if you find out your supply lines are too fragile (as our rare earths certainly were) you should diversify -- but that's a problem you could face regardless of international trade, and indeed one that becomes worse if you cut off trade.[/QUOTE]

"inefficiently producing" - you mean "actually paying our own country's workers a fair wage for producing them, perhaps charging a bit more for the end product, and not letting greedy CEOs ratchet up their own compensation to the moon?" Because the latter phenomenon is where a lot of the "promised cost savings" from offshoring have magically disappeared to. You prefer the "efficiency" of eliminating a huge % of once decent-paying domestic manufacturing jobs and telling their former holders to slave in Amazon warehouses without bathroom breaks, then once their bodies are broken, "go eat some opioids, deplorabes?"

And how does domestic manufacturing interfere with "diversified supply chains", in a country as large and diverse as the US? E.g. for medical masks, one would expect/require multiple maunfacturers to compete for market share. They just wouldn't be able to offshore the manufacturing pollution and so eaily be able to hide abusive workplace conditions in some distant state-owned-enterprise in China.

Also, "buffering one's supply" sounds well and good, but since one typcially doesn't know in advance what sectors will be especially hard-hit by those "exogenous supply shocks", to do it for everything one can think of is the definition of inefficiency, and an invitation for piling up unused inventory. Many of these products, even "durable" ones have limited useful shelf lives, and even so, you gotta store 'em somewhere.

A good model in my view is not so much a huge supply chain disruption but rather its converse, the huge demand spike the US experienced when it entered into WW2. The ensuing unprecedented-in-world-history crash retooling and effciency-upgrading of domestic industry was only possible because it *was* domestic industry - raw materials suppliers were able to work closely with factories, and efficiency experts were literally able to travel the entire supply chain in a matter of days or weeks and give tongue-lashings and ass-kickings (at least of the metaphorical variety) as needed.

I'm not preching xenophobia here, just a return of a significant amount of autarky, especially with respect to products which clearly are, or can very easily become, critical to national security or, as in the present crisis, public health.

The Smugness of Celebrity Self-Isolation -by Binoy Kampmark
 

[URL]https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/20/the-smugness-of-celebrity-self-isolation/[/URL]
[QUOTE]The rush to elevate self-isolation to Olympian heights as a way to combat the spread of COVID-19 has gotten to the celebrities. Sports figures are proudly tweeting and taking pictures from hotel rooms (Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton being a case in point). Comics are doing their shows from home. Thespians are extolling the merits of such isolation and the dangers of the contagion. All speak from the summit of comfort, the podium of pampered wealth: embrace social distancing; embrace self-isolation. Bonds of imagined solidarity are forged. If we can do it, so can you.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]Self-isolation has seen the rich with their entourages making an escape for holiday homes and vast retreats. Then come the eccentric and the slightly ludicrous options: the well-stocked and equipped bunker; the safe room. Such an approach is far more representative of the estrangement between haves and have-nots. “One of the best options is in Middle America,” [URL="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/03/coronavirus-survivalist-bunker"]comes the recommendation[/URL][SIZE=4]* [/SIZE]from Adam Popescu in [I]Vanity Fair[/I]. “If you’re part of the 1%, why wait or sluggish government support when you can burrow 175 feet underground in a refurbished Air Force missile silo in rural Kansas that markets itself as a survival condo?”[/QUOTE][SIZE=4]*[/SIZE]Do have a look at this Vanity Fair link. Some mind-boggling stuff.

[QUOTE=kladner;540345][URL]https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/20/the-smugness-of-celebrity-self-isolation/[/URL][/QUOTE]
For a mere $3M [url]http://survivalcondo.com/full-floor/[/url]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540340]"inefficiently producing" - you mean "actually paying our own country's workers a fair wage for producing them, perhaps charging a bit more for the end product, and not letting greedy CEOs ratchet up their own compensation to the moon?" Because the latter phenomenon is where a lot of the "promised cost savings" from offshoring have magically disappeared to.[/QUOTE]

I prefer to let the American economy focus on where it is efficient, and to let other economies focus on where they are efficient.

China has a fantastic model of gearing an entire town to the production of a single item. They produce it in great quantities, then when it's no longer needed everyone is retrained to produce the next thing. It's not something that we do in the US, but it's a major driver of the Chinese economy. This tends to require what we would consider unskilled to semi-skilled labor, though I think the term is somewhat unfair: though the workers may not be particularly skilled at this particular task, they have good general skills that allow them to be quickly retrained.

American labor is terrible at producing the kinds of products that China produces, in general. What American labor is good at is semi-skilled labor, like automotive assembly. In recent years companies have worked out how to have parts requiring minimal skill done in Mexico (a market unlike China, but also possessing many relatively unskilled laborers) resulting in less unskilled car parts and assembly in the US but more semi-skilled car parts and assembly in the US: a better fit for our strengths. Similarly, we've been increasing, year over year, our banking sector (a major export sector -- other countries increasingly bank with us) and our IT industries (another export sector). But it's not just skilled and semi-skilled labor that have increased. Some jobs are just hard to export, like delivery services. They have also increased. In exchange for these sectors increasing, others have decreased, with their products either no longer being consumed or being imported.

I'm very happy to modernize and optimize. If we stop trading, we'll have to do things we're bad at, and other countries won't be able to benefit from our strengths. Everyone loses.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540340]And how does domestic manufacturing interfere with "diversified supply chains", in a country as large and diverse as the US?[/QUOTE]

Considering that I not only mentioned but linked to an article on domestic manufacturing of medical supplies, I'm certainly all in favor of it. In a situation like this, price is used as a signal to industry as to when they should retool existing manufacturing to make, say, masks or ventilators instead. (Of course other tools are available; economists use the term "moral suasion".)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540340]They just wouldn't be able to offshore the manufacturing pollution and so eaily be able to hide abusive workplace conditions in some distant state-owned-enterprise in China.[/QUOTE]

Agreed: they need to [url=https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcast-series/episode-11-externalities]internalize their externalities[/url]. It's hard to change foreign countries policies (but we should try!), but at the very least we can tax them for their pollution. (And when we can do more, we should, keeping with the general principle that externalities lead to inefficient solutions in a market economy.)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540340]Also, "buffering one's supply" sounds well and good, but since one typcially doesn't know in advance what sectors will be especially hard-hit by those "exogenous supply shocks", to do it for everything one can think of is the definition of inefficiency, and an invitation for piling up unused inventory. Many of these products, even "durable" ones have limited useful shelf lives, and even so, you gotta store 'em somewhere.[/QUOTE]

It's pretty easy to think of solutions to all of these problems, but fortunately I wouldn't even need to do that considering that it's already been done. (Good thing, too, because I suspect the Trump administration would not have thought to set it up.) But surely every organization of a reasonable size runs disaster simulations -- I've done them professionally, at places not very large at all -- and one would hope that the US government has done them in sufficient detail to have an idea of the amount of supplies needed in various scenarios, based on various other scenarios which have happened around the world. From there it's just a matter of prioritizing scenarios, concomitant equipment, and pricing things out to do proper cost/benefit analyses and you have a plan on what you want. Finding a place for it is trickier, as you want a particularly secure location (the locations of the Strategic National Stockpile are not disclosed) but I think you can imagine that building underground bunkers is already a skillset the US has in spades. Then it's just a matter of setting up the supply chain: who you'll buy the equipment from, at least two suppliers per item of course, with long-term purchase agreements, production guarantees, etc.; but also who you'll sell the items to, so you can rotate the inventory appropriately. That's just a general outline but I think you get the idea.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540340]I'm not preching xenophobia here, just a return of a significant amount of autarky, especially with respect to products which clearly are, or can very easily become, critical to national security or, as in the present crisis, public health.[/QUOTE]

You could build a beautiful Maginot line of autarky, by which we're ready to fight the last war, the last plague, and live in the last economy. Trump would surely approve of this return to the nonspecific past of American greatness. But I want to live in a world where we all move ahead together, and [url=https://fee.org/resources/if-goods-dont-cross-borders/]soldiers don't cross the borders because they're thick with goods[/url]. When North Korea is threatening us with [url=https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/hwasong-15-kn-22/]ICBMs[/url] and [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_121]hacking[/url], it won't do much good to have Ford roll out tanks from Detroit.

Last night's numbers:
globally:
cases 275427, deaths 11397, recovered 88250
CFR1= 11397/(11397+88250) = 0.1144 = 11.44%
CFR2= 11397/ 275427 = 0.0414 = 4.14%

US:
cases 19624, deaths 260, recovered 147
CFR1 = 260/(260+147)= 0.6388 = 63.88%
CFR2 = 260 /19624 = 0.0132 = 1.32%
[url]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/url]

Life imitates art...
 

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;539816]Good evening. My name is Paul Ryan. I used to be Speaker of the House. Dr Sardonicus has kindly let me post using his login.

Everyone's bound to get infected anyway, so we should just get on with life as usual. Not only would this be much less disruptive than shutting down all social gatherings, schools, restaurants, international travel, etc., but it will truly end the epidemic as quickly as possible. Besides, with a "frighteningly high" mortality rate among the elderly, it would work wonders to solve the financial problems of Medicare and Social Security.

Thank you.[/QUOTE]
I had the right state, but the wrong politician:
[quote]I'm not denying what a nasty disease COVID-19 can be, and how it's obviously devastating to somewhere between 1 and 3.4 percent of the population. But that means 97 to 99 percent will get through this and develop immunities and will be able to move beyond this.

But we don't shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It's a risk we accept so we can move about. We don't shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu.[/quote]-- Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

Life is cheap. And for the practitioners of abortion, deliberately ending lives generates a lot of revenue. [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States[/URL]
Averaging around a million deaths a year in the US over the decades.
"in 2014, almost one in five pregnancies ended in abortion" [url]https://www.guttmacher.org/report/abortion-incidence-service-availability-us-2017[/url]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540367]I had the right state, but the wrong politician:
[QUOTE]I'm not denying what a nasty disease COVID-19 can be, and how it's obviously devastating to somewhere between 1 and 3.4 percent of the population. But that means 97 to 99 percent will get through this and develop immunities and will be able to move beyond this.

But we don't shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It's a risk we accept so we can move about. We don't shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu.[/QUOTE]
-- Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee[/QUOTE]

That's horrifying.

Ron Johnson seems to echoing similar sentiments as his across-the-pond namesake, [url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-12/johnson-faces-backlash-over-u-k-s-roulette-response-to-virus]UK PM Boris Johnson[/url]. Social Darwinism at its finest!

[quote]Money is life, don't you agree? The lack of it has killed more people one way or another than a hundred Assassination Bureaus.

Human life is possibly the most expendable commodity we possess. It's so easily replaced, and so pleasurably.[/quote]-- lvan Dragomiloff, in [i]The Assassination Bureau[/i] (1969)

Top causes of death according to the CDC. Note they do not include abortions. [URL="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm"]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm [/URL]

The freedom to kill one's own children before a certain age is a huge Darwinian selection experiment in progress now. There are indications that following generations have been selected in the Darwinian sense to be less willing to do that.

A person can be prosecuted for homicide including murder of an unborn child, when the death is by means other than abortion. [URL]https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/20/us/when-the-death-of-a-fetus-is-murder.html[/URL]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540400]Ron Johnson seems to echoing similar sentiments as his across-the-pond namesake, [url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-12/johnson-faces-backlash-over-u-k-s-roulette-response-to-virus]UK PM Boris Johnson[/url]. Social Darwinism at its finest![/QUOTE]

IMO, cold, maybe wrong, but not horrifying. There is little doubt that the upcoming sharp global recession, perhaps depression, will cost many lives in the coming years. Expect more suicides, deaths from inability to afford healthcare, deaths due to side-effects of poverty, etc.

Is an 80 year old's life now worth the same as a 40 year old's life 4 years from now?
Will most of the elderly population get the virus anyway before a vaccine is ready?
Would an extended shelter in place for all 60+ year olds that leaves the economy limping along been a better solution?

What is the right balance? I think that is an unanswerable question.

Gleaned from the [url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/21/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-march-21-a69117]Moscow Times[/url]:

March 7 — Russia confirmed four new cases of coronavirus, taking the total number to 17 (4 new cases)

[March 8 - no new cases reported]

March 9 — Another three people in Moscow have been diagnosed with coronavirus overnight (3 new cases)

[March 10 - no new cases reported]

March 11 - The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia rose to 28 from 20 (8 new cases)

March 12 — Russia has confirmed six new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases to 34

March 13 — Russia confirmed 11 new cases of coronavirus

March 14 — Russia has confirmed 14 new cases of coronavirus

March 15 — Russia registered four more cases of coronavirus, Interfax reported, bringing the total number of infections to 63.

March 16 The number of coronavirus infections in Russia has risen to 93 (30 new cases)

March 17 — The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia has risen to 114 (21 new cases)

March 18 — Russia reported 33 new cases of coronavirus

March 19 — Russia has reported 52 new cases of coronavirus

March 20 — Russia confirmed 54 new cases of coronavirus

March 21 — Russia confirmed 53 new coronavirus infections

[QUOTE=Prime95;540421]There is little doubt that the upcoming sharp global recession, perhaps depression, will cost many lives in the coming years. Expect more suicides, deaths from inability to afford healthcare, deaths due to side-effects of poverty, etc.[/QUOTE]And survivor's guilt, and family members who know that they gave it to a family member that died, doctors and nurses that had to make a hard choice like giving a ventilator to a 30 year old and not the 75 year old, just among others.

Someone I know lost a family member due to the fall out of survivor's guilt from September 11th.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540424]Gleaned from the [URL="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/21/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-march-21-a69117"]Moscow Times[/URL]:

March 7 — Russia confirmed four new cases of coronavirus, taking the total number to 17 (4 new cases)

[March 8 - no new cases reported]

March 9 — Another three people in Moscow have been diagnosed with coronavirus overnight (3 new cases)

[March 10 - no new cases reported]

March 11 - The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia rose to 28 from 20 (8 new cases)

March 12 — Russia has confirmed six new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases to 34

March 13 — Russia confirmed 11 new cases of coronavirus

March 14 — Russia has confirmed 14 new cases of coronavirus

March 15 — Russia registered four more cases of coronavirus, Interfax reported, bringing the total number of infections to 63.

March 16 The number of coronavirus infections in Russia has risen to 93 (30 new cases)

March 17 — The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia has risen to 114 (21 new cases)

March 18 — Russia reported 33 new cases of coronavirus

March 19 — Russia has reported 52 new cases of coronavirus

March 20 — Russia confirmed 54 new cases of coronavirus

March 21 — Russia confirmed 53 new coronavirus infections[/QUOTE]
I can't help being as skeptical of the Russian numbers as I am of those bandied about for the States. I expect orders of magnitude higher if and when more accurate numbers are released.

[QUOTE=kriesel;540416]...The freedom to kill one's own children before a certain age...[/QUOTE]
Friendly moderator request: please use the thread we have in the Soapbox for discussions like that, not the Lounge.

[url=https://apnews.com/e5f39091afda3b07a70464e602d844ec]Iran leader refuses US help, citing virus conspiracy theory[/url][quote]DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's supreme leader refused U.S. assistance Sunday to fight the new coronavirus, citing an unfounded conspiracy theory that the virus could be man-made by America.
<snip>
"I do not know how real this accusation is but when it exists, who in their right mind would trust you to bring them medication?" Khamenei said. "Possibly your medicine is a way to spread the virus more."

He also alleged without offering any evidence that the virus "is specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians which they have obtained through different means."

"You might send people as doctors and therapists, maybe they would want to come here and see the effect of the poison they have produced in person," he said.[/quote]

[QUOTE=kladner;540434]I can't help being as skeptical of the Russian numbers as I am of those bandied about for the States. I expect orders of magnitude higher if and when more accurate numbers are released.[/QUOTE]
Even if they're lowballing to the extreme, their numbers are starting to climb. There appears to be something of a jump in the number of new cases reported every few days or so. If that doesn't flatten out right quick, the numbers soon will be orders of magnitude higher...

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540454][URL="https://apnews.com/e5f39091afda3b07a70464e602d844ec"]Iran leader refuses US help, citing virus conspiracy theory[/URL][/QUOTE]
"is specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians which they have obtained through different means."

Right, and the economic devastation in the US and hundreds of dead and counting in the US and complete nonspecificity to Iranian ethnicity and genetics is a myth. No.

It takes a very virulent kind of stupid stubborn irrationality to take the position that "leader' did. Let the "Great Satan" send help? No, far better to maintain a hostile posture so thousands more Iranians needlessly die, a level of infection be preserved in Iran to reseed other parts of the world, and the religiously fervent of Iran are persuaded to back Iran's existing regime a while longer over the objections of the many intelligent rational Iranians, and to the death for many of them. Never mind that the virus has already thinned out the current Iranian leadership and is likely to do more.

Last night's numbers
Global:
confirmed casses 297090, deaths 12755, recovered 91540
CFR1 = 12755/(12755+91540) = 0.1223 = 12.23%
CFR2 = 12755/297090 = 0.0429 = 4.29%

US:
confirmed cases 22177, deaths 278, recovered 147
CFR1 = 278/(278+147) = 0.654 = 65.4%
CFR2 = 278/22177 = 0.0125 = 1.25%

[URL]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/URL]

[url]https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/21/us/west-virginia-coronavirus-patient-one-test[/url]

The return on^w of pandemic bonds
 

[url=https://apnews.com/9b6191d5d82145c237b470525e2e9515]Pandemic bonds prove good for investors, less so for nations[/url][quote]Upon their launch, the bonds were described by the World Bank as a way "to help prevent a high-severity infectious disease outbreak from becoming a pandemic" by making essential financing available to key responders.

According to the bonds' criteria, 12 weeks must pass before a payout for a coronavirus epidemic can be made. The outbreak must also be sustained, have affected at least two countries, and have caused at least 250 deaths.

The World Bank said that date would be met on March 23 and that a decision for a payout would then be made by an independent agency. The bank said the maximum potential payout was about $196 million. Only the world's poorest countries are eligible for funds, making any immediate pay-out unlikely, as the hardest-hit countries include China, Italy, Iran, Spain and South Korea.

Taxpayers in Australia, Germany and Japan and the International Development Association, meanwhile, have put up about $176 million so far to back the bonds.

In a 2019 paper published in the BMJ, Clare Wenham of the London School of Economics and a colleague found that as of last year, the pandemic bonds had paid nearly $115 million to investors while providing only $61 million via a "cash window" mechanism to Congo, for its most recent Ebola epidemic.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540424]<...> Russia <...>[/QUOTE]
This reminds me of ~35 years ago when they didn't want to host the paralympics olympic games because "What? We have no disabled people in Russia!" :shock: and it has to be split between US and England (I think it was the 7th summer edition? maybe the only case in history where the hosting was split between 2 countries).

[QUOTE=kriesel;540460]It takes a very virulent kind of stupid stubborn irrationality to take the position that "leader' did.[/QUOTE]
There's been a lot of it going around. The Chinese have also been peddling the nonsense that the US Army brought the virus to China.

In response, the Administration has taken to calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus," which is irritating the Chinese no end.

The "Polio vaccines are a Western plot to sterilize Muslims" insanity has kept that disease going for decades in areas where it could be stopped.

It probably qualifies as ancient history now, but not long after the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami, I read an account by one of our diplomats of his having had to spend hours explaining to the authorities in Turkey (IIRC) that, no, the US had not caused the earthquake.

[QUOTE=Prime95;540421]IMO, cold, maybe wrong, but not horrifying. ...
What is the right balance? I think that is an unanswerable question.[/QUOTE]
It comes down to what are the tradeoffs, and what are the values in the moral and ethical sense. There have been some small attempts to determine the outcomes in different scenarios, and thereby the tradeoffs, of disruption and cost versus lives. (College of London study)

There is little agreement about what the values ought be. You can see that, in this thread, where Johnson's or any sober rational or blunt statement about it is objectionable, and horrifying to some, or mention as a point of comparison germane to this discussion, of how our society accepts in case law deliberate elevation by nearly 20% fatality rate, of the mortality of the very young, is discouraged here, diverted to a distant corner of the forum.
If you believe your own survival and that of others you care about is important, it's important we're able and allowed to be honest about the details.

[QUOTE=LaurV;540466]This reminds me of ~35 years ago when they didn't want to host the paralympics olympic games because "What? We have no disabled people in Russia!" :shock:[/QUOTE]
Ha! [i]That[/i] reminds me of the myth of the Red Army's soldiers all having perfect vision.

And it's true that you could watch them marching by during, say, a May Day parade, and not a single one of them was wearing glasses.

But perfect vision? Er, no. None of them were wearing glasses [i]because glasses were not available![/i] This circumstance was also largely responsible for the fact that radial keratotomy was invented in the Soviet Union.

Around Thanksgiving one year during the first term of the Reagan Administration, Ed Meese (I don't remember whether he was yet AG) made the observation that there were no hungry people in America. In response, one cartoonist portrayed Ed Meese and another man bundled up in winter coats, looking at a thin figure of a man in threadbare clothes, huddled over a grate. The other man is saying, "No, Mr. Meese, he's not hungry. He's dead."

[b]EDIT:[/b] Meanwhile, back at Ranch COVID-19 (nominally the subject of this thread), I've already posted a selection of our own Great Leader's attempts to happy talk the virus out of existence.

In more recent days, he has been touting chloroquine as a magic cure.

Yet, despite promising test tube results, Dr. Fauci stubbornly insists on testing this drug, used to treat malaria, on Coronavirus patients to see whether it's safe and effective before approving its off-label use for this disease.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540468]There's been a lot of it going around. The Chinese have also been peddling the nonsense that the US Army brought the virus to China.

In response, the Administration has taken to calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus," which is irritating the Chinese no end.[/QUOTE]Indeed.
Even though it's been customary for a very long time to name such things for where they're first identified. Lyme disease, Ebola, etc. Calling it Wuhan SARS2 is accurate. The Chines have good reason to be defensive, having botched the early response, and either through culture or leakage from their BSL4 lab, created the problem in the first place. They also gave us SARS, MERS, and swine flu repeatedly. Will they ever address the underlying issues that breed new pathogens like clockwork?

There seems to be a steady supply of ignorance in leadership, "Idiocracy" style. The dolts out-reproduce the bright. Dunning-Kruger gives the woefully incompetent, ignorance of their own ignorance, and thereby unjustified confidence, while competence supports reason for questions and doubts.
Maybe this is the answer to Fermi's paradox; intelligent life is self-limiting.
I sometimes regard the question of intelligent life anywhere in the universe including earth as unsettled.

Long ago I took an optomechanical design course. The instructor, from Arizona State's prominent optics lab, had a tale about a US general who thought that since a huge glass optic was made of transparent material, it ought to be as low weight as an equal volume of air! Part of the instructor's course notes, subsequently published as a book, included an illustration of a supercharged V8 engine, to convey the amount of mechanical power required to maneuver that optic at the acceleration rates an early version of the space defense initiative ("Star Wars") specifications would have required. Pretty tough to operate an internal combustion engine like that in orbit.

[QUOTE=CRGreathouse;540352]It's pretty easy to think of solutions to all of these problems, but fortunately I wouldn't even need to do that considering that it's already been done.[/QUOTE]Yet there is no toilet paper to be found in the last 3 retail stores I visited. Other household supplies such as cleaning supplies are lightly stocked. Test kits for the Wuhan SARS2 virus in human patients are in short supply and so are the reagents with which the next millions of them would be built and processed. Test kits for the epidemic after that are not designed yet, since the next epidemic's pathogen has not been identified yet. Ventilators and hospital beds and gowns and masks ...
Nobody wanted China's latest export, but here we are. And we can anticipate the probability of more such pestilence, originating from China in the future, at least until parts of its culture are changed.

It's morally repulsive how corporations are exploiting this crisis.Workers will suffer Robert Reich
 

More from the Contemptible Scumbag Department:
[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/22/large-corporations-exploiting-coronavirus-crisis[/URL]
[QUOTE]Using power and privilege to exploit the weak and vulnerable in the face of a common threat is morally repugnant. Call it ‘Burring’ after Richard Burr’s stock sell-off.

Societies gripped by a cataclysmic wars, depressions, or pandemics can become acutely sensitive to power and privilege.

Weeks before the coronavirus virus crushed the US stock market, Republican senator Richard Burr apparently used information he gleaned from his role as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee about the ferocity of the coming pandemic to unload 33 stocks held by him and his spouse. They were estimated at being worth between $628,033 and $1.72m , in some industries likely to be hardest hit by the global outbreak.

While publicly parroting Trump’s happy talk at the time, Burr confided to several of his political funders that the disease would be comparable to the deadly 1918 flu pandemic.

Then the market tanked, along with the retirement savings of millions of Americans.

Even some pundits on Fox News are now calling for Burr’s resignation.

When society faces a common threat, exploiting a special advantage is morally repugnant. Call it [U][B]“Burring.”[/B][/U] However tolerable [B][U]Burring[/U][/B] may be in normal times, it isn’t now.[/QUOTE]

Is it that New York takes testing much more serious than other US states, or do they really have so many more cases?

[URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/[/URL]


Btw. the worldometer corona pages update faster than John Hopkins, great site I think.

[QUOTE=Till;540506]Is it that New York takes testing much more serious than other US states, or do they really have so many more cases?[/QUOTE]I think that question is a good illustration of how meaningless the current figures are. The values we have now can't answer that sort of question.

Wait until there has been testing of everyone, or a proper randomised proportion of everyone. Then the figures will mean something.

Something doesn't quite add up
 

"According to an announcement from the school on Saturday, the[B] five [/B] students were traveling together with other UT students during spring break. [B]One[/B] of the students did not return to campus after their trip [B]and the other three[/B] returned to campus, according to UT." [url]https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/coronavirus/4-university-of-tampa-students-test-positive-for-coronavirus[/url]

Take the electronic engineer's advice here, related to coronavirus:
"Better insulated than grounded."

(sent by a friend, haha)

[QUOTE=retina;540510]I think that question is a good illustration of how meaningless the current figures are. The values we have now can't answer that sort of question.

Wait until there has been testing of everyone, or a proper randomised proportion of everyone. Then the figures will mean something.[/QUOTE]


Actually I question all the numbers. First and mainly because I think that in many places, testing capacities are too limited. Second thought is that the will to show up "bad numbers" is limited; just think of forthcoming elections.

[QUOTE=kladner;540488]More from the Contemptible Scumbag Department:
[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/22/large-corporations-exploiting-coronavirus-crisis[/URL][/QUOTE]

Burr wasn't the only SSCI member to sell stock this way ... and the 2013 loophole introduced via 10-second-floor-discussion amendment to the 2012 STOCK Act which allowed him to do so passed both houses of Congress by unanimous consent, and was signed into law by then-president Obama. Again, the scandal is what's legal, and the fact that it's only legal for the same clique of lawmakers who made it legal for themselves and their cronies.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540468]The "Polio vaccines are a Western plot to sterilize Muslims" insanity has kept that disease going for decades in areas where it could be stopped.[/QUOTE]

They may not be a Western plot to sterilize Muslims, but the role of US Intel agencies in subverting such programs to serve their own ends certainly feeds into such conspiracy theories:

[url=https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/20/314231260/cia-says-it-will-no-longer-use-vaccine-programs-as-cover]CIA Says It Will No Longer Use Vaccine Programs As Cover[/url] NPR
[quote]A White House official says the CIA will no longer use vaccine programs as cover for spy operations, answering health experts' complaints that it had hurt international efforts to fight disease.

The CIA famously used a vaccination program as a ploy to gain information about the possible whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. That effort didn't succeed, and the doctor involved was sentenced to a prison term. But the revelation had immediate effects — particularly in the fight against polio.

As The New York Times reported in 2012, vaccination teams were banned in some areas of Pakistan.

And vaccination workers have been assassinated, the deans from Tulane, Emory, Columbia and other universities wrote in a letter to President Obama dated Jan. 6, 2013. They also compared the use of vaccine programs to the CIA's early infiltration of the Peace Corps, saying that in both cases, the practice had to be stopped to protect volunteers and gain access where people are most vulnerable to disease.[/quote]
In the case of Iran, the fact that the US is maintaining its brutal "maximum pressure" program of economic sanctions in its ongoing attempt to force regime chamge in Iran certainly boosts various "they will stop at nothing to destroy us" CTs. All widespread CTs of which I am aware have that underlying element of truth. In the case of China, there was indeed an international military games event held in Wuhan last October which included US servicemembers, so the now the CCP, desperate to deflect from their horrific role in allowing the initial local cluster of cases to absolutely explode and likely costing themselves, and now the world, any chance of containment, has that convenient hook on which to hang their official CT. I've heard more than a few folks who normally are anything but Trump backers agreeing with his aggressively shoving their odious party-line BS back into their faces. Oh, y'all are *annoyed* no end? Well, the rest of the world is being a hell of a lot more than 'annoyed' by the results of your derelection of public safety of your own citizens.

====================

Good article with bending-the-curve-or-not charts over on Wolf Street today:

[url=https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/21/hottest-battlegrounds-in-the-coronawar-is-social-distancing-kicking-in/]Hottest Battlegrounds in the CoronaWar: Is "Social Distancing" Kicking In?[/url] | Wolf Street -- Iceland? That surpised me, until I saw this comment-#1 update by the author:
[quote]Two very fresh updates to the text:

(1) The Bay Area reported today 135 new cases confirmed yesterday, far above the 50-per-day of the last 6 days. Not a welcome sign. But still below the South Korea curve.

(2) Iceland has a wikipedia page on their outbreak which says most of their early cases came from ski tourists returning from northern Italy and nearby Alpine hot spots.[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540518]BAll widespread CTs of which I am aware have that underlying element of truth.[/QUOTE]CT?

Please expand that TLA. TIA. HAND.

[QUOTE=xilman;540525]CT?

Please expand that TLA. TIA. HAND.[/QUOTE]

The sentence leading in to the CIA-related link above the 'CT'-containing paragraph contains the whence-the-initialism, though I didn't explicitly write "...conspiracy theories (CT)".

Also, I neglected to add something to the following:

"I've heard more than a few folks who normally are anything but Trump backers agreeing with his aggressively shoving [the CCP's] odious party-line BS back into their faces."

...namely that of course Trump is using said kerfuffle to deflect from his own early-dismissal-of-the-pandeic-threat inanities.

[QUOTE=Till;540506]Is it that New York takes testing much more serious than other US states, or do they really have so many more cases?

[URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/[/URL]

Btw. the worldometer corona pages update faster than John Hopkins, great site I think.[/QUOTE]


Funny, I could swear that a few hours ago US charts showed 38k+ cases (now down to 32k+)...

[QUOTE=Till;540531]Funny, I could swear that a few hours ago US charts showed 38k+ cases (now down to 32k+)...[/QUOTE]

Hey Till, is this you? If so take care! :smile:

[url]https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/thailand-hospitals-use-ninja-robots-to-fight-coronavirus/[/url]

I'm sure LaurV can confirm for us whether or not that is really you, since this is in his back yard..

Hmm. Are you refering to the similarity of my (default) avatar pic with the robot?
No comprendo ;-)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540518]All widespread CTs of which I am aware have that underlying element of truth.[/QUOTE]
Really? How about the ones involving space aliens? The Illuminati? The "Moon landings were faked" ones? The JFK assassination ones? By golly, there were [i]hundreds[/i] if not [i]thousands[/i] of people on that grassy knoll blazing away! The "9-11 was an inside job" ones? The "mass shootings are all staged" ones?

[QUOTE=Till;540540]Hmm. Are you refering to the similarity of my (default) avatar pic with the robot?
No comprendo ;-)[/QUOTE]

Yes, that's it. I thought the resemblance was close enough so there would be no question about it. :)

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540542]Really? How about the ones involving space aliens? The Illuminati? The "Moon landings were faked" ones? The JFK assassination ones? By golly, there were [i]hundreds[/i] if not [i]thousands[/i] of people on that grassy knoll blazing away! The "9-11 was an inside job" ones? The "mass shootings are all staged" ones?[/QUOTE]

You confuse "credible amount of evidence a reasonable person would believe" with my "element of truth", which makes no claim as to the relative amount of said element. Let's take your space-aliens example: Government has long been conducting secret flight tests at Area 51 - thus mysterious lights in the sky, etc - and giving implausible explanations by way of cover stories. Thus official secrecy feeds the CTs, another common aspect when the CT involves the government.

I'll let other readers comment on the various CT-feeding elements of truth in your other exemplars - busy trying to get some actual work done just now, you happened to catch me just as I was going to edit a post about that.

[quote=ewmayer;540552]You confuse "credible amount of evidence a reasonable person would believe" with my "element of truth", which makes no claim as to the relative amount of said element. Let's take your space-aliens example: Government has long been conducting secret flight tests at Area 51 - thus mysterious lights in the sky, etc - and giving implausible explanations by way of cover stories.[/quote]

I see. Hmm, that would serve equally well as an "element of truth" for angels and demons, as for space aliens.

So your "element of truth" can range from the trivial, through the trivially trivial, to the totally meaningless.

Examples:

Illuminati conspiracies: Element of truth: There [i]was[/i] a group called the Illuminati.

9-11 conspiracies: Element of truth: The 9-11 attacks [i]did[/i] happen.

JFK assassination conspiracies. Element of truth: He [i]was[/i] shot. (Not all the bats:censored:t crazy "theories" concede that he was killed)

"Mass shootings never happened" conspiracies: Element of truth: Mass shootings [i]were[/i] widely reported.

Tonight's numbers from [URL]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/URL]

Global:
cases 335972, deaths 14632, recovered 97881
CFR1 = 14632/(14632+97881) = 0.1300 = 13%
CFR2 = 14632/335972 = 0.4355 = 4.36%

US:
cases 33276, deaths 417, recovered 178
CFR1 = 417/(417+178) = 0.7008 = 70.%
CFR2 = 417/33276 = 0.0125 = 1.25%



Pretty similar numbers at [URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/[/URL]
global cases 336075, deaths 14613, recovered 97636
CFR of resolved cases 13%
active cases 95% mild, 5% serious or critical

US: cases 32783, deaths 416, recovered 178; active 32189, of which 795 (2.5%) are serious or critical
8576 new cases, 114 new deaths

Latest from the [url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/22/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-march-22-a69117]Moscow Times[/url]:

[quote]March 22 - Russia confirmed 61 new cases of coronavirus, bringing its official count to 367[/quote]

Also,[quote]Moscow authorities again ruled out the possibility of a citywide lockdown. Meanwhile, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the city's metro will not close down.[/quote]

The following might also be of interest:

[url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/21/exclusive-rich-russians-are-hoarding-ventilators-to-protect-themselves-against-the-coronavirus-a69703][b]Exclusive: Rich Russians Are Hoarding Ventilators to Protect Themselves Against the Coronavirus[/b]
Meanwhile, doctors worry that Russia’s regions don’t have enough.[/url][quote]While Russia’s rich can self-isolate in splendor, there will be some hardships they might be forced to bear if the coronavirus spreads throughout the country: State-run hospitals are the only institutions taking in patients of the virus.

But The Moscow Times has found evidence, based on dozens of interviews, that Russia’s rich are setting up makeshift clinics in their own homes to ensure they can have better care than the masses if they get infected. And in what may have severe ramifications down the road for Russia's battle against the coronavirus, they are buying up and hoarding the ventilators that have proven essential in saving lives in severe cases.

"We've been able to get one so far and are trying to get two more," one family member told The Moscow Times, asking to remain anonymous to speak candidly on the subject, and noting that the device cost 1.8 million rubles ($22,500). "But there's an eight-month waiting list."[/quote]

[QUOTE=Till;540506]Is it that New York takes testing much more serious than other US states, or do they really have so many more cases?

[URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/[/URL]
Btw. the worldometer corona pages update faster than John Hopkins, great site I think.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the link.

I suspect that the higher NY numbers are, in part, from having large high-density and population centers, as well as better testing capabilities. At this point the latter has to be dominant, though just having more subjects to test is bound to run up the numbers when so little is known.

My partner is able to work from home, as are the rest of his working group. He started this past week.

My job is necessarily on-site. I did not go to work in that period either. On Weds, it was an offer to take the night off from the manager I was going to be working with. Things at the Center on Halsted were already seriously curtailed, so there was not much to do except to keep the homeless youth and young adult homeless patrons from hiding out in stairwells and restrooms. This sounds harsh, but we can't fix the general tragedy, and can't have people inhabiting internal fire escape stairs and the garage.

The Center is now officially shut down, though we still have to have someone there to control the lobby, which we share with our Whole Foods tenant. Staff has been told that if we are not working we will be paid what we would have made until the end of March. After that, we can use up accumulated personal, sick, and vacation time. Then we can file for unemployment. We have been given detailed instructions on the last procedure. I have accumulated hours to get me past the middle of April.

At 67 years old, I guess I should be glad to shelter at home, even if work was available. The Center has way over a thousand people pass through the lobby every day. Must state that many are on their way through the lobby to get to WFMarket. The point is that there a very many to cough and sneeze in the course of the day. It is good not to be in the line of fire.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540561]So your "element of truth" can range from the trivial, through the trivially trivial, to the totally meaningless.

Examples:

Illuminati conspiracies: Element of truth: There [i]was[/i] a group called the Illuminati.

9-11 conspiracies: Element of truth: The 9-11 attacks [i]did[/i] happen.

JFK assassination conspiracies. Element of truth: He [i]was[/i] shot. (Not all the bats:censored:t crazy "theories" concede that he was killed)

"Mass shootings never happened" conspiracies: Element of truth: Mass shootings [i]were[/i] widely reported.[/QUOTE]

You're either unaware of the various main kinds of 'evidence' believers-in/promoter-of said CTs marshal, or being deliberately obtuse. E.g.:

9/11: Extremely symmetric, near-simultaneous stack-of-pancakes-collapse of both main towers which a professional demolition team would have been hard-pressed to match, while some nearby buildings were 'suspiciously' unscathed. (Alleged) lack of impacting-plane debris at the Pentagon. Bush administration seeking a ready pretext for its War on Terr[or|a], with Orwellian mass domestic surveillance a bonus.

JFK: Zapruder film seems to indicate some weird physical reactions to a bullet coming from the direction of the book depository Oswald used. Kennedy had allegedly been mulling a major drawdown of the Vietnam war effort, thus the DoD warheads and MIC profiteers had him taken out.

I could go on, but I suspect 'deliberately obtuse' hits it, so no point. You are so famous for quickly marshaling impressive amounts of web-links when the urge moves you, I'm sure starting with e.g. the Wikipedia articles on these various famous CTs will be quite easy for you, should you so desire.

[QUOTE=kriesel;540481]Test kits for the Wuhan SARS2 virus in human patients are in short supply and so are the reagents with which the next millions of them would be built and processed.[/QUOTE]

The problem with test kits was that the CDC messed up the first generation and prohibited state labs (and others) from using theirs. There's no lack of reagents anywhere I know of; the problem is that to do a test you have to gather a sample, and that consumes valuable PPE. Right now PPE are in more demand (at least here in New York State) than reagents or test throughput. We could run still more (and we're leading the nation) if we were able to gather them. We have amazing labs and the best lab personnel; hats off to them. Without their tireless work we wouldn't have a chance in this fight.

[QUOTE=kriesel;540481]Yet there is no toilet paper to be found in the last 3 retail stores I visited.[/QUOTE]

There's no national stockpile of toilet paper; you'll just have to wait for this one to wend its way through the supply chain. The experts I've heard say we'll be swimming in it soon as orders have all gone through and people won't buy once they've stockpiled. :lol:

[QUOTE=kriesel;540481]Ventilators and hospital beds and gowns and masks ...[/QUOTE]

Masks are a serious problem now; gloves and OP/NP swabs I don't hear about as much, but they're getting critical as well. Actually swabs are probably the worst of it. Vents I've heard are predicted to be the worst of it eventually, and that's why there's so much emphasis about them (companies retooling to build them), but no one in the country is short of them now. (The real issue is going to be finding people to staff all the new vents -- using them takes a lot of monitoring, even the new ones which are considerably easier to use than the old ones.)

We're building several new hospitals here and increasing existing hospital space 50-100% so hospital beds will be in demand, but I don't have any idea how hard they will be to source. Honestly it will probably be much easier for New York and other states that are hit early on than states that get it later when initial supplies have been depeated.

[QUOTE=Till;540506]Is it that New York takes testing much more serious than other US states, or do they really have so many more cases?[/QUOTE]

NY has the best testing in the US. But NY also has two of the hardest-hit places in the nation -- NYC and Westchester.