Good god. The Italian death rate is like 5%
And they’ve tested widely, so they’re not just seeing the worst cases of disease among infected people?
Norway hasn’t even moved to ban events yet - it’s pretty much up to the individual organizers, which is a terrible idea. My wife who works in healthcare had to insist that her boss put up a sign telling people not to come into the clinic if they’re sick - most reaction seems to be left up to individual hospitals/clinics, which is a terrible idea. There’s already been (IMO) way too many cases of doctors/nurses returning from vacation, and not being quarantined, resulting in both patients and other staff being exposed (~50) and thus being forced into quarantine. Here, at least, I suspect we are way behind the curve - I expect when the government response comes, it will be too little, too late.
As an example, until today, only Northern Italy has been considered a “dangerous area” in Europe. Which I honestly find absurd - if the Italian govt has taken the extraordinary step of locking down that region, it stands to reason that there is a large risk the virus has spread to adjacent regions. So at least, recommend quarantine for health personnel from neighboring regions if not everyone… but no. The result is as expected - an increasing number of cases coming from places outside of Italy (Tyrol is the new disease source for the past 24 hours), and instead of catching them as they arrive, the authorities are instead playing catch-up trying to contain things after these people have been home for days, having potentially already spread the virus to an unknown number of other people.
I wouldn’t say Korea is paying the wages of people in quarantine but certainly paying a stipend to them to ease the burden.
draxen
1737
The UK government had a press conference earlier and the chief medical officer made a statement about the response that I thought was interesting…
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-uk-preparing-for-move-to-next-phase-to-delay-outbreak-spread-11953898
England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said the advice that anyone with a mild fever should self-isolate would probably be issued in 10-14 days.
“What we’re moving to now is a phase when we will ask members of the public to do different things than they would normally do”
“Anything you do, you have to be able to do them for a period of time and there’s a risk if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and then it will be difficult to sustain this over time, so getting the timing right is absolutely critical to making this work.”
“Anything you do, you have to be able to sustain.”
So, perhaps the Norway government believes it’s still too early to impose restrictions?
Self isolate if fever. Ie don’t bother coming to the hospital unless you’re dying.
draxen
1739
Right, he was speaking about the strategy to the delay the pandemic. Any measures or restrictions the state imposes needs to be sustained. So there is a balance, a timing that they’re aiming for.
EDIT:
Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said the aim was to “be in control of where you are in the epidemic - not in reaction mode”.
White House response: tax cuts for corporations.
Menzo
1741
You had to know it was coming. Republicans have two buttons to press in case of emergency: 1) Bombs, and 2) Tax cuts for business.
Unfortunately for them, we can’t bomb our way out of this. So they are feverishly pressing the second button.
Can I just put a general “FUCK” in here? One of my lab mates (and a cool mathematician / geneticist that walked me through the COVID-19 phylogeny tree last week) just left today to go home because his grandfather died…in italy. He’s arriving in rome any time now, unless he gets turned away at the gate and has to come home.
I’m not psyched for him either way. Even if he gets back to the states immediately he’s quarantined, and worst case is he gets stuck (albeit with family) in Italy.
Oh, shit, you said that out loud. Now you have to hold their beer.
Guap
1744
This briefing is crazy. “We had VERY IMPORTANT meetings. Very Dramatic. We are are doing a great job”. And then he peaces out.
The genius administration idea for people who should stay home but won’t because they can’t miss a paycheck will be something like:
- you can now buy food or pay your rent using the funds from your tax-advantaged health savings account
- government will provide incentives to encourage payday loan operations to loan you more money
- businesses can opt to continue to pay you in return for your voluntary indenture for up to seven years
What else?
White masters took care of their slaves!
Menzo
1748
It’ll be stuff that sounds good, but really only works for people who have enough money already, like:
- Penalty-free withdrawal from your 401k
- Savings from our upcoming cut to the capital gains tax rate
- Tax-free borrowing from your trusts
Fine. Everyone on the ship is fine. We return to Miami on Sunday so most of the week yet to go. It’s causing us some problems, though. I’ll post more when I can.
I think that’s really sensible. There are two dangers for acting too earlier. First, the longer this social distancing goes on the harder for the extroverts in the world to maintain it. (Us introverts will be ok).
Any social gathering has risk associated with fire, terrorism, mass shoot, gang violence, drug overdose, building collapse, just some panic that causes people to trample folks. Plus there is always the risk of spreading diseases. if we say that Covid19 is 10x more deadly than the flu, but is it really higher than all other things I just named?
Second, the are the economic effects of acting too early. We don’t have sick care, or UBI, or way to cushion the impact on poor service workers. I have some hope that perhaps Congress will act and Trump, won’t stop them. But that is going to take time.
