jaydreb

That’s the number that was cited by the Task Force at yesterday’s press conference. It’s based on cases around the world.

Good post. We need to respond to this threat as we would to an attack on our country and band together to fight it. I think most eveyday Americans understand this and are acting responsibly.

We simply don’t know the actual death rate. We know that it kills roughly 3% of actual confirmed cases but, as you say, there are certainly many undiagnosed cases out there. But it’s prudent to assume that this is many times worse than the flu and act accordingly. And this is about much more than the death rate. About 20% of confirmed cases end up requiring hospitalization, and about 5% require ventilators/respirators. That would put a catastrophic strain on our hospitals resulting in some unnecessary deaths. People are dying in Italy that could otherwise be saved because doctors have to choose which ones get scarce hospital resources. We need to avoid that. We need to assume the worst and plan accordingly. Not hope for the best. IMHO.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/does-closing-schools-slow-spread-novel-coronavirus

I’m with you. These steps will literally save lives. The economy will suffer for sure but it will bounce back eventually.

Spot on but I’m slightly optimistic that we can keep the total number below 60,000,000 by taking the social distancing and mitigation steps that we are doing now. We didn’t do much of those things with swine flu, although we did have the benefit of a vaccine.

Yeah, it’s not great (around 3%) but probably not as bad as that in reality because we don’t have anywhere near an accurate count of the total number of cases. Even 1% would be pretty bad though and about 10x worse than the flu.

Where are you getting that second number? 40/127k?

If you are 20 this will be a blip in the chart by the time you retire. Stay the course and buy more if you can.

Good to hear. Honestly, you should just assume you have Corona and avoid contact with people as much as possible. A test would be great from an information standpoint, but it’s not like it would change much. There’s no special treatment or medication that you would get.

I’m not an expert in any of this- not even close. Ideally, the steps we’re taking this week would have been done weeks ago, but that could just be 20/20 hindsight. You say our country is faring far better than most, but how do we know that is true when we have no sense of the scope of the spread? We could just appear better off because we are simply a few weeks behind them with the progression. I agree that the travel ban from China probably bought us a few weeks, but did we use them wisely? I do know there are a few things that could have been done better in my opinion (and I say this as someone who is pretty non-political), most of which have to do with mixed messaging: —Not saying in a speech to the nation that “prohibitions will apply to trade and cargo” when, in fact, that is not the case —Not saying that the virus will “die with the hotter weather” when we don’t know that to be the case —Not saying the number of US cases is “going very substantially down” to “close to zero,” which everyone knows is nonsense (even at the time) —Not saying that everyone who wants a test can get a test, when that wasn’t true then and isn’t true now. I don’t want to start a political war on a weather message board. It’s unfortunate this is happening in an election year because everything will be colored by that context. Hopefully as a country we can move past the blame game (both sides) and deal with this challenge. Stay well everyone.

Absolutely agree. The response has not been good IMO. Everyone having a free Corona test showing up at their door is not a realistic expectation, but it would be nice to hear a coherent plan. Thankfully it seems we are waking up to this and all these closures will make a difference. It may not be enough to prevent a bad outcome but it should slow the spread somewhat. Of course I have absolutely no qualifications in any scientific area so I probably don’t know what I’m talking about.

I don’t want this to sound at all political, but around 60,000,000 people got the swine flu in the US alone. I don’t think excellent leadership had much to do with it. We were just fortunate that it was not as severe an illness as coronavirus and, as you say, vaccines provided some limited protections. I think our government and society in general is a mess with these things, no matter who is in charge.

If I had to venture a guess, I would say that the NCAA tourney will be cancelled, as well as the remainder of the NHL season. Sad.

Anyone else check the GFS at 5:30 only to abruptly realize that it’s DST and we have to wait an hour longer to learn about our failures?

Correct. Waaaay too far north and warm. Rain for all except Maine.

Pity flakes!

I think these numbers are going to stand. Very unlikely we get any further measurable snow this season.

Huh? Finally in the yellow!

Thanks so much for writing this up!

Lol. .1” twice - unreal. At least we got that beat.

Seems like EPS took that beastly Pacific ridge that was tormenting us and gradually shifted it over us.

Just about.