DeltaT13

This is the third new coronavirus in the last 20 years. To think it would be 100 years until we deal with something like this again is pretty off base. Our intermingling as a species, efficient global transportation, and world food shortages (which create the necessity of wet markets) will certainly increase the likelihood of this becoming much more common going forward. Almost more importantly is how the value of life has changed as we evolve. Just imagine this virus a few hundred years ago. We wouldn’t even know it was new or what it is was. It may have never even spread or took hold. And the people that caught it would just get fevers and coughs and die like many other diseases. In other words, almost no reaction to it. There was no medical system to overwhelm and everyone just lived knowing you could die at anytime from any number or illnesses. (This mindset still exists in third world countries and almost everywhere until the early 20th century) In 2020 every life is treated with incredible value. We try to keep people alive at all costs all the time. The length of life is also a huge metric on overall wealth and stature in society as a whole. This in itself poses major social scruples during a pandemic. All that said, we have just painfully learned we don’t even need a truly deadly new disease to blow up the world as we know it, the fear itself does it because our economies are fragile. Just imagine if we end up with a virus that truly wipes out 10 percent of the population. The panic would be unreal and terrifying combined with an actual loss of people and important skills that would have tangible effects on all our lives. If this current virus ends up as bad as it seems in regard to length and economic destruction, we may have a whole new normal in a few years. I can imagine a global entity signed by nearly every country to continually live in a state where we can handle a pandemic without shutting down by creating a massive “moth balled” medical system that can be expanded to take on orders of magnitude more people at nearly anytime. The entire reason this pandemic exists is because the global health system simply has almost no extra overhead (which I understand from a business and cost perspective). The game may change after this all ends, could this bring global unity? Or will it hasten the next great world war?

I agree, I think some jobs should have stayed online, mine included. I work in research and can easily avoid people if I schedule my day and work alone in my lab. But the blanket non-essential stamp just sent everyone home. Probably too extreme but half the population seems unable to follow directions so they had to just shut the whole thing down. The GIG economy is a tough one though, and thats where the big hurt has been. Restaurants, bars, ubers, its just hard to find a way around that one.

Kind of apples to oranges in my opinion. Sweden is a cute little country with a very high standard or living and a very manageable population of 10 million people. The US has 33 times that amount. We have national basketball tournaments with millions of spectators, International Hockey leagues, the NBA, NFL, concerts, festivals, etc etc. All events that have massive congregations of people. We also have a general urban density in our largest cities that is orders of magnitude larger and more complex than Sweden. NY, LA, and Chicago account for almost 40 million people alone. We take in and sent out millions of international flights a year. The US is not an easy place to manage during a Pandemic.. Just the 3 week NCAA basketball tournament probably encompasses more people and more cross contact of individuals than any event ever in Sweden. If we didnt/don't shut things down, there were/are going to be some incredible hot spots where thousands of people catch this at a single event.

After seeing all these protests I'm happy that we have so many eager canaries ready to fly into the coalmine. I'm going to maintain a lot of distance and shelter in place through mid to late May. If cases suddenly spike, I'll feel bad for the medical professionals, but hopefully I wont be one of the positive cases.

The common cold is also the goldmine for the OTC industry. It's just bad enough to make you uncomfortable for days or even weeks yet rarely kills. The perfect virus to make a myriad or OTC medicine that simply relieve symptoms. I bet a lot of companies would go under if the common cold was ever eradicated.

Well in that line of thought, we might never have a vaccine as they could never find one for the common cold, or maybe its just not important because the common cold is rarely deadly.

Just guessing, but modifying an existing flu vaccine must be easier than creating an entirely new vaccine from scratch. They also probably have all the infrastructure and knowledge in place as they have been making influenza vaccines for decades.

If there is one place I would feel is marginally safe it would be a beach. Between the high temps, high humidity, oppressive UV, and salt water it is the quintessential virus killer. There is no better combination of natural virus killers packaged neatly in one place. It's also very windy which quickly disperses any viral loads high enough to infect others. I think this is one reason we never saw much of an impact from the Spring Breakers who stormed the beaches in huge numbers last month.

Do you think Trump should be encouraging people to take arms and rebel against their state government? Do you think encouraging states into Civil war is a good idea? The year is 2020, stop saying the word Obama.

So you think trump should be tweeting things like that. Two wrongs make a right? Got it.

The 96-01 drop was the dot com bubble bursting.

What in the world is going on? Is he calling people to arms. Pretty reckless.

This graph just bums me out though. There was a really nice Trend going into 2016. How do you take a supposed red hot economy and turn into massive losses year after year? National Deficit in Billions of Dollars (I purposely found a super simple low tech graph so there is no political caption or spin.)

Obama’s policies were working pretty well and then trump came along and undid it all with massive tax cuts at a time when we were finally bringing down the deficit. Tax cuts during a fairly strong economic period is just plain stupid. It was a massive mistake and will have grave consequences over the next decade. The deficit was exploding (post tax cuts) before this pandemic, I have to imagine we will see a single year deficit of nearly 2-3 trillion dollars in 2021. Certainly not surprised with one of the worst businessman in history at the helm.

As a germaphobe, it just seems like a great way to open oneself up to another vector for catching this stupid virus. So that weights into my decision to forego takeout. Plus, I rarely feel like I can get a meal at restaurant that is better than what I can cook at home. Oh well, I'm glad some of you are keeping these places afloat, god knows they need all the help they can get.

I havent eaten food not prepared at home since March 7th (and they were lousy wings; what a crappy last meal). Its crazy. I feel bad for the local places but I didnt eat there much before this all happened so I'm not about to change now.

Sadly this is very true. Science programs and the national labs are the first to get knocked around when the purse strings get tightened. The average person does not understand the value of our science programs and science in general (whether its private of federal). It's frustrating. We are already getting emails about no raises this year, large projects being canceled, increased scrutiny on general spending. Very dark days ahead. The reality is starting to sink in. My goal is to save money every single month from now until 2021. At least being on lockdown makes that easier than usual with no concerts, bars, softball games, sporting events.

I had read your first number as 194000, instead of 19,400, so i couldnt figure out what that could be. My bad, carry on.

Is this new cases? I’m confused there are currently 668,000 cases in the US

That is all true. But Trump is just way to “buddy buddy” with a piece of shit commie dictator. It’s really not a good look.

We wouldnt be bickering if Trump or even one Republican would act like they care or chastise Russia instead of taking their side. Trump ****ing loves Putin and it's a disgrace You blatantly acknowledge it happened, thats all I ask of them at least. Just own up to it. It's the denial that is maddening to us libs.

He said large gatherings, like baseball games and concerts with 10,000-50,000+ people. They will advise you to not gather in large groups if possible at home, but it will just be a recommendation. Things will be weird, it will probably be advisable to know who in your group is vulnerable, who has gotten it and who hasnt, who is feeling sickly, who just has allergies, etc. Weird times ahead. We need to get our immunity cards!

I don't see any problem with how this went down. NY had and still has the highest amount of cases and deaths. We needed to be ready in case the curve didnt flatten. Now that things have more or less stabilized they are being redistributed. He isn't keeping them unnecessarily, other states didn't need them during this time so no one was deprived, it all worked out perfect. Hard to find fault in a what appears to be a well executed; better safe than sorry plan. Now if he had done all that screeching for ventilators and 6 people died, there would be an issue. The death toll in NYC is insane when you think about it.

Its an interesting conversation. A virus ideally wants to be infectious but not all out deadly. Dead people don't spread viruses so when something becomes too deadly it naturally fades away. A happy medium of making someone quite sick and infectious while not outright killing them is the happy medium a virus naturally mutates towards.

Things usually don't mutate in that way. Survival of the fittest would mean that the poorly transmitted mutation disappears while the highly transmitted version continues on.