I think the US government is doing a reasonable job at dealing with something which we have never dealt with before in real life. We can’t be prepared for every fictional scenario. When it’s real, we do the best we can. At least we had the opportunity to see what we are facing by looking at what has been happening in the rest of the world. Maybe we’ll be able to keep things from getting too out of control.
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Yeah the CDC is the one that failed us here in the US. They played around making the test kits identify more than the virus and those kits ended up being faulty. So lots of people were let go to freely spread this out in general pop. But I agree, when this first broke those incoming flights probably should have had all passengers force quarantene. But then again hind sight is always 20/20. At that time I dont think anyone really understood what we were dealing with. Mid January there were only 500 cases reported Globally and China was not offering a lot of info, other than they suddenly started building hospitals out of now where. I think that should have been a red flag. But it played out as it did nothing we can do about it now.
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Thank you S.B. I stick with my belief that the gov., and ALL are doing a good job. We aren’t going to stop this ‘‘instantly’’. It takes time to stop a ship.We will work through it but with loses. TomC
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just got home from shopping. Ended up at Walmart which is not my normal place to shop. Amazing how empty it was. beef, pork, chicken, cheese, beans, rice, bananas, apples, cabbage, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, isopropyl, peroxide, cold medicine, soap, laundry detergent, 3/4 of frozen foods, bread, carrots, eggs, batteries, flashlights, water, lots of camping gear, gas jugs, half the guns and most of the bullets were all gone. And lots more.
I have some pictures but can’t find the cord to move them onto the computer…Just imagine empty shelves. LOL
They did have a guy guarding the milk so each customer could only buy 2 gallons. I told him he might need a gun soon. He laughed and turned and lifted his shirt to show me the one on his hip. (which is not anything near uncommon here in Alabama, everyone carries a gun here).
But we got what we needed, which wasn’t much. Actually, all we really needed was some salts for the tomato and squash plants and peppers.
I’ll probably go Monday morning to get non-ethanol gasoline for the chainsaw, sawmill and other small engines, and diesel for the tractors and skid steer. Then if we get quarantined at home, we can just work away the days and get a lot of projects done.
Even though everyone is buying everything up around here, most people are basically unafraid of this thing. They are just responding to the fear of things being unavailable…
Everyone here had the H1N1 swine flu which was a joke, back in 2009. Everyone around here got all freaked out about it and then it was a flop. Probably to sell a bunch of expiring drugs that were stockpiled after 9/11. But I think the numbers on this one are significantly worse though, so I am a little concerned that people aren’t going to take it seriously enough after feeling they got duped on the last one. And it is going to spread. I could be wrong about the numbers, not sure.
I think Jeff is correct, and I fear for the grandparents. That is exactly what is going to happen. When you have two parents working in a chicken plant or a cabinet factory making $8 / hr. You kind of need the $8/hr and you can’t afford to pay someone to take care of children. So the worst vector will end up at the home of the most vulnerable.
Today Our governor announced closing all schools after Thursday. We have 5 confirmed cases now. At first it was thought they were all one family, but it turns out they are all five from different counties.
But we will trust in the Lord. 2Ti 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
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When my number is up it will be up, weather i like it or not, is my thought on this posible worse than know for sure flu or hype. Lord willing he has more time too use us as a whitness i supose. This one i think is hype too scare the people intoo voteing demicratic. The regular flu kills more people every year 40 too 60 thousand die. 20.000 so far this year just from the regular flu.They got everyone freaked out on 40 people of witch 20 were from a rest home. And just around the demicratic primary elections.Hopefully Anyway.
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Any body try any staghorn sumac berry tee,suposed too be anti inflamitory,lemon flavor like.
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Sure. makes a good lemonade-like drink. Not in season now though…
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Thanks for the info, i see them on sale 100 for around 100 bucks bare root cuttings.They grow good on hill sides in sand. Thats my best location for road side hedge. Maybe i plant that for berry tee and road blocker hedge.
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He guys, here in the Netherlands things are really going to start. In a little more then two weeks from zero to over a thousand now. The first young people on the IC. I don’t follow the news, it is that post from Chris what is happening in Italy that changed my mindset. We are staying home for at least two weeks. One month ago my colleague said old steel price dropped, because demand from China dropped. For me that was the reason to buy 8 tons Of steel that I don’t need at the moment, but I had better buy flower and rice. What is that with toilet-paper? Nothing in the supermarkets anymore??? And a good reason to start the vegetable garden once again.
So, several countries are locked here in Europe, that is not for nothing. Look at the Italian video’s, stay home and minimize contact. If you don’t , the mess will be bigger.
I don’t follow the news (it makes you depressed), important things will get to you anyway, but now there is a corona news update every half hour on the radio. Big shit. Stay healthy every one.
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It seems people are having a hard time getting past the normalcy bias. But it should be plain by now. If people move around normally and schools are open, numbers of infections double every few days. The elderly and immune compromised will become severely ill. Without doing something to slow transmission it will overwhelm the critical care system. Italy has roughly 3 hospital beds per 1,000 people. The US about 2, Canada probably the same. Spain, France, and Washington state locked down yesterday. It’s simple math what will happen without early intervention. And we failed to do early intervention.
I agree with Billy and Jeff, the school closures will just bring this directly to the most vulnerable. But that was foreseeable. If the feds had 1.5 trillion to bail out Wall street bankers a few days ago, they have cash to pay everyone to stay at home for a while. Just not the sense to come to grips with this.
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The USA has 1 million hospital beds for a population of 350 million. It is one of the issues with our for profit model we closed a lot of rural hospitals to maximize the profits.
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This virios sounds a lot like Y2k, after the primarys the whole pandemic thing will fizel out. ??
Italy, Spain and France haven’t gone into lockdown to influence the US election cycle.
Those are countries with good organization and sound public health systems. The virus doesn’t care about politics or borders, juzt how many people it can pass to, and how quickly.
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Well thats the true, though what makes this a pandemic, when the regular flu kills 40 too 60.000 every year just here in usa.
I think one of the things that is missed when there are comparisons made between covid and flu is the hospitalization rate. As we saw in China, the mortality rate is not very high if people are getting treatment. This is what explains the 0.9% mortality in the country as a whole vs something like 4% in wuhan where the hospitals were slammed. The chinese built whole new hospitals in like 10 days - thats how serious they were about providing treatment.
With the flu, looking at the CDC numbers, looks like 1.5-2% max of cases wind up needing to go to the hospital. Numbers for covid hospitalizations are all over the place, but I have seen numbers ranging from 5-50% with 10-20% seeming like they are thrown out more often. So it really is a numbers thing. More people are getting more seriously sick. If they dont get treated, they die. In order to keep the mortality rate down, we need to keep people out of the hospitals.
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Regular flu death rate 0.1%
CV19 WHO best data death rate 3.6%
Or 36x more deadly that the regular flu.
Best guess is because there is no natrual immunity to this virus 70% of the population will be infected. No where near that rate get the normal flu because alot of people are immune from past flu seasons.
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Yes thats for sure, last i heard they were useing hiv aids,& Hep c meds too treat them.That dont sound right too me, unless those meds are just a form of amune system booster, ?
I gess most or many will get and then have too hope our amune system is working good, Thanks.
Sadly, at this point, a lot of people are going to get sick. I think it is fair to assign blame to those in charge of guarding public health when they screw up. I think the CDC really dropped the ball with their test kits. We let this thing break out by being lax on early detection. And we totally knew this was coming. It has happened before, and will happen again. Thankfully it is not something like MERS, with like 30% mortality. Someday though, it could be, and we should look at countries like Thailand, Taiwan, and I am sure many others, which give a great example of what should have happened. They had cases early on and they immediately rolled out testing, did contact tracing and aggressively tracked all new cases to put them in quarantine. They had the lessons learned from the SARS outbreak back in 2003 to guide them, and it seems to have worked really well.
I hope that this pandemic will be a wake-up call, but I am not so sure. Public health should be something that has bipartisan support, but like everything else it has turned into a bitter fight. I will probably sign off there before this goes too far into the weeds 
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Kevin the best thing we can do is slow down the spreed by closing down public schools and events. We need to limit the rush on our healthcare system so it isn’t overwhelmed. Once we overwhelm the healthcare system there will be no ICU beds left for the normal daily need people who get in a car accident for example. That is the issue in Europe as we speak they closed down countries because the hospitals are unable to take all the people in need of care regardless of the need.
The hospital near me has a total of 23 beds it is the only hospital in a 100 mile radius. Granted I am in a remote area but that is a very bad bed to population ratio. The reality is this hospital is little more than a place to set broken bones for the ski areas. We end up air lifting or ambulance travel to the major cities hours away for most issues.
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