Jackstraw

I get what you're saying but I think your logic is skewed. Larger metro's are going to have higher infection rates simply due to the fact people are in closer proximity to each other, that's all it is. I live just outside of a town of 7-8k people and 90 % of them live in houses, rented or owned which puts them a good distance from their neighbors. The next closest towns are 10 miles away roughly the same size and the same type of neighborhoods. Have to drive 25 miles to get to a decent sized city of 25k or more. The bigger the city you tend to have more people living in say apartment complexes with people living right next each other, more people needing to use laundromats, cars parked right next to each other, hotels for travellers, companies that do business locally, nationally and globally amongst a myriad of other things.. Exponentially more chances of close contact because of the shear numbers of people puts everyone at a greater risk of infection. A little town of about 1k 8 miles away from me had my counties second death last week. The other one was in Anderson 25 miles away a city of 55k, but it also has 90 % of the infection rate of this county. Anderson has a fairly large oriental community by Indiana standards. Why is Anderson the hardest hit city in my county? Because they went to visit relatives over seas or vise versa? It's easy to get side tracked looking for answers during this time but it's important now more than ever that people be careful about how their comments would be perceived especially relating to divisive subjects. I'm sure you weren't trying to sound racist and were just trying to figure out a logical answer to your question. But you instantly saw how your logic was perceived as something else. We're all a bit on edge right now and it's going to get edgier. We all just need to give a little extra thought to how our comments and actions will be perceived by others. Not lecturing but you asked. Everyone just needs to slow down a tick, not just on social boards like this but in general, and think a little longer before speaking. Except for Alek, we all know he's an a... well lol

Like you posted about Iceland. If we don't have enough kits to test everyone the next best thing is random sampling. Doesn't take a lot to get a grip on an overall average. It's math, statistics, it works. When you posted that I was like geez, simple genius lol.

Should be a million infected "officially" worldwide by Tuesday or Wednesday. Will probably see a 1 day of 1k deaths in the US by next week, far from over. CDC reports 23k deaths from flu this flu season which runs from October to May the peak being February then dropping off drastically moving into March. Confirmed Covid19 infection rates will climb as testing gets better so not a good analogue. Deaths confirmed from the Covid19 infection are a better analogue sadly. With roughly 2200 deaths from this virus so far we've hit 10% of the flu deaths over this 8 month flu season in roughly 3 weeks with the curve continuing to rise. Even comparing to the 2017-2018 analogous flu season where death rates were 2- 3 times the average, this virus is winning at the moment.

The biggest silver lining in that article is thank your choice/no choice of deity that none of those had the asymptomatic characteristics of this one. That is what really differentiates this one from the others. Neither SARS nor MERS had substantial asymptomatic characteristics. That is people were sick before they could pass along the virus (That's why the majority of initial SARS cases were in clinical settings like hospitals etc.) therefore once identified a containment strategy could be implemented, ending with only about 8000 cases and about 800 deaths in SARS case, less with MERS. Ebola is a different kind of virus spread by direct exchange of bodily fluids, has very short incubation time and quite obvious symptoms so it is much harder to spread and "easier" to contain when an outbreak occurs. But it is also 1000% more deadly and scary. That's why it gets the widespread attention when an outbreak occurs. What we are slowly discovering is that this virus has much higher asymptomatic characteristics than SARS or MERS. It's starting to look like a person can show no symptoms and spread the virus and/or very mild cold like symptoms and spread the virus. I really think this is the case and this is the MAIN reason this sneaky little booger got on the fast train to where it's at. Viruses by their very nature exploit weaknesses in their hosts in order to replicate (technically they're not living things like we think of, they're copy machines in a sense). This one "found" a weakness not just in our bodies but in our overlying social structure. Double whammy. Force Concentration if you want to think of it as warfare lol. I think in the coming months and years we may discover that this virus possibly originated in extreme rural China months or even years earlier where populations are much more sparse, medical care much more inadequate or non existent, hiding itself as a cold or the flu or pneumonia, originating from mutated bat virus, infecting an intermediate host that has close contact with humans like chickens or pigs for example. (i.e. SARS host was the Masked Palm Civet which is wild caught and served in restaurants in China). That intermediate host is key to interspecies transmission of viruses. A virus just doesn't "appear" out of nowhere at a seafood market in a city of 11 million, it hitched a ride. Wuhan is the major trade and transportation point for central China, makes sense it would end up there, and by so, be discovered there because it wasn't knocking off a couple old farmers a couple times a month, it became focused and noticed when it started knocking off a bunch of old citizens all at once. I've always been fascinated by viruses. For something so simple in structure they are so difficult to predict, and for that matter, prevent. They are probably the oldest most important genetic material on the planet and also the most deadly. Fascinating that single nanoscopic strings of RNA/DNA that aren't really "alive" yet can evolve/replicate on their own and affect, shape and impact all of the complex living biology on this planet. Truly the missing link between rock and life. The TRUE silver lining will be that we get rid of our arrogance that we have teched ourselves into some insane darwinian future, that we be humbled by this little string of RNA, and properly educate and prepare because this viruses really nasty uncle is lurking somewhere. Mother Nature has warned us. Yeah I'm bored lol.

Random sampling always a good thing.

Hate to admit a poor choice from my youth, a weekend in the county jail back in the early 80's , but that's how you kept a cigarette lit back when you could smoke but they wouldn't let you have a source of ignition, toss it from cell block to cell block to cell block 24/7. Newbies pulled the longest shifts. God forbid if it went out on your watch lol.

US hit 100 deaths in 24 hours for the first time.

Buckle up folks. I think the next 7-10 days are going to be the true test of peoples nerves. I hope people will keep their heads but from my experience in hurricane disasters its the period between 2 and 3 weeks where people start getting edgy. I honestly don't know how sustainable our current actions are either economically or socially.

I lived in California then, duck and cover lol.

Also, I'm not gonna go into the reaction here in Mayberry but it's ridiculous. Focus has been on the big metro centers but there are a gazzilion Mayberry's across this country. Nothing is more corrupt than Mayberry politics and this thing is just now starting to hit the Mayberry's of this country. 7-14 days shits gonna start hitting the proverbial fan, especially in the Mayberry's. The current reaction is just not sustainable, especially in Mayberry.

We're all gonna get it eventually. We know these precautions are just to keep the medical infrastructure from being overwhelmed. My issue is that the richest country in the world isn't prepared to treat .02%, yes POINT zero two percent, of its population in a trauma ICU situation. .02%, thats just nuts.

Lmfao! How many commercials do we have to see and say "hey I got that" lol. RLS? Toe fungus? 100 different ways to be depressed and medicated? Malvina had it right a long time ago the year I was born lol.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUoXtddNPAM

Thought I saw Vinny Barbarino in that bubble lol

Always an alternative

I was astonished. I didn't realize this was a country of aristocrats... https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/21/health/how-to-cook-from-home-coronavirus-drayer-wellness/index.html

I hear ya but the "olds"? Lmao, I'm a year away from being the "olds".

So did IL issue a "Stay at Home" order or to SIP? There's a big difference.

Very hard to do? How about impossible lol

If you're staying home whether self induced or just trying to be socially responsible and want to geek out about this here ya go. It's a worthwhile internet rabbit hole to dive in to. If you can skim through some of the geek speak you can get a feel of how this came about, the groundhog day "we seen this before", and how far behind the information cycle we're being fed is from fact. Trust me if you have trouble sleeping like me this stuff is better than counting coronaviruses lol...... http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/infectious-disease-topics/covid-19#bibliography&1-7

Gotta love a P&C like this lol.....

Those are valid questions to my post and I guess one thing I should've clarified was when I said our medical infrastructure and system I was in no means singling out all of the medical professionals from researchers to doctors, nurses or hospitals. My take on medical infrastructure and medical system runs the gamut from federal to state and local governments to private entities. It is absolutely ridiculous to rely on one or some of each of those when there is a pathogenic pandemic affecting the entire social spectrum. Our medical infrastructure was and is woefully unprepared to handle this. The medical community (not the infrastructure) has been worried about this for over 30 years. Numerous studies and reports have been presented that we as a country and even as a world society are not prepared for a planet wide pandemic, including the John Hopkins report in 2018 which got shoved under the rug. Since this is mainly a weather board I was just trying to use the way we learned to become proactive instead of reactive to severe weather events to state how we should use that same approach when it comes to biological threats. I would've thought, especially after 9/11, our medical infrastructure would've been better prepared for a biological threat, be it terrorism or natural. My spouse and I have worked in the medical community for over 25 years and I will tell you this is one of the biggest fears from medical professionals I've heard over the years. This is the same stuff I heard when I lived in hurricane country 30 years ago, the big ones gonna happen and we're not ready, hence my loose analogy that hopefully this is the pathogenic Hugo. One fact I think people don't quite understand. The population of this planet has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. Half of that new population lives in densely packed environments. The odds of a zoonotic virus making its way into the human population have increased 100 fold over the last 50 years. We've now had a consistent outbreak of these viruses every 7-10 years for the last 40 years. Luckily, most of them haven't been as contagious as this one from a human to human standpoint. It's really simple math. Hindsight's 20-20 sure but my hope is, like the lessons learned from violent weather as populations increase and become more vulnerable, we can move forward with a better understanding of our own arrogance here and take measures to be proactive instead of reactive to something that can affect so many people in such a short period of time.

I don't believe a thing that China reports. This is going to come in waves until if/when we have an effective vaccine. Just like violent weather the best thing we can do is be prepared, which this show's we're woefully not. Over the last 30- 40 years we've updated building codes, evacuation plans, invested in public awareness campaigns and in science (like anything now-a-days not enough there) in hurricane prone areas from lessons learned since Cammile, Hugo, Andrew and Katrina all of which have undoubtedly saved thousands of lives. We've done very similar things when it comes to tornado outbreaks. Sure warning times have probably helped the most but without the investments in all of the above warning times would be much less effective. We can go spend 100's of billions to fill our emergency oil reserves during this yet our medical system and infrastructure is nowhere prepared. I kind of look at this as the biological Hugo. There's going to be another one, a biological Andrew, even a Katrina. Just like violent weather we know it's going to happen. Hopefully this will begin a trend to start investing in better "building codes", better "response plans", better "public awareness/education" and better "science" at a public health level. Nobody is 100% sure yet but more than likely this may eventually run it's course with time, maybe even a year or longer. But ones going to come along that is really a nasty one, that it is extremely resilient and resistant to whatever we throw at it. I hope it's not this one but when that bug comes around we better be a lot more prepared than we are now. Telling NY the big white ship with the big Red Cross is coming ain't cutting it

So much for social distancing, geez we've gone over the edge man.

No ball to watch on TV so I came across Mike Rowes (Dirty Jobs guy) "How Booze Built America". Explains everything going on today lol. Edit: I swear don't know how I missed this, it's the best show I've seen in ages. Maybe it was the booze lol.

I still don't understand, WHY toilet paper? I must be missing something lol.