The Coronavirus

[Eric the Green]

(04-18-2020, 04:13 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(04-17-2020, 09:44 PM)gabrielle Wrote:

(04-17-2020, 07:43 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(04-17-2020, 07:40 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The way I am figuring it, the more you test, the more you find.  The more you find, the worse Trump looks in ignoring the problem early.

Sure - because your beliefs are politically motivated.  A lot of conservatives see it as the opposite:  the more you find, the lower the fatality rate becomes, and the better Trump looks.

Except that deaths are being under reported as well.  People are dying in their homes without being tested or being admitted to a hospital.

People who die outside hospitals get tested postumously in the US.  In fact, the very first deaths that died in that nursing home in Washington were tested posthumously.

This is different than in Europe, where a lot of countries actually are counting only those who die in hospitals.

Reports from New York are that a lot of sick people stay at home, especially because of our immigration policy. Lots of people can't afford health care too, thanks to Republican policies, so they stay home and are not counted and not tested, dead or alive. Many more are just sick and ride it out and are not counted. The USA is woefully inadequate in its testing while Germany, Spain, South Korea, China have much more. Cases and deaths in poor and war-torn countries may already be way under-counted. 

There are more cases in the USA alone than the top 4 most severely-affected European countries. Deaths are rapidly catching up, since the USA's spike came later than Europe's.

Maybe we could have contained the virus if all known travelers to the US had been tested and quarantined, like the first arrivals from the cruise ships were. Somehow this got away from us in California and Washington, and then Trump kept Europeans from coming here, but not Americans visiting Europe, and they weren't even tested. I said and knew this would happen as a result. Hundreds of infected people coming home from Italy and France swarmed into New York and infected hundreds of thousands. The corona was out of the bag. Now there are thousands of cases in almost every major country, and hundreds in all countries. Airlines and cruise ships will be out of business.

The lockdowns have abated the number of cases and deaths. But the economy is plummeting. The Trump government refuses to supply tests, protective equipment, or enough of the funds needed to help people economically; such help may not even be available without borrowing more money than there are lenders. The USA is already in debt beyond repair. This buries it.

I could see that March 2020 was going to be a major crisis turning point. I saw health and financial problems for that month in the USA. I thought this crisis would pass fairly soon, and we'd be on to others. It is more severe than I thought, and it is apparently some kind of trigger or turning point. The curve is not flattening anywhere. Cases and deaths continue to mount at a steady pace. Too many are infected to even consider going back to normal without triggering an even-worse outbreak for many months or years to come. And then we'll need to discover, make and distribute vaccines on a massive nationwide scale. It's been done before, and the relief and rescue efforts can employ the unemployed like in the Depression to get this done if the Green New Deal is declared.

Reaganomics and Trumpism just will not suffice to bring about the kind of national emergency actions that we had in the previous 4T, and which are needed now. It looks like the crisis will continue all year, especially because Trump does not want to respond to it adequately. He is digging his own electoral grave. It appears he is following Reagan rather than Mussolini (his former self) in this crisis, and it will not serve him. After 2020 the nation's policies will become still more collectivist, as is typical of 4Ts. I hear Hillary's and Obama's campaign slogan all the time now during this crisis. "We're all in this together." Reagan would never have uttered such a phrase. His time is rapidly passing away.

Today it appears New York's new cases count declined. New deaths declined a little bit from what it was a few days ago. California's new cases are going up (3rd place in new cases just for yesterday), and CA seems on the verge of getting back in 4th place in total cases. But new deaths was lower in CA, 11th among states just for yesterday. Where I live, one of the first counties in the USA infected (if not the first), the new cases count has leveled off in the last few days below where it was last week, so far. The number hospitalized is relatively low.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/