White House turns to Big Tech to fix coronavirus blunders while classifying previous conversations Faced with a growing barrage of criticism over how it has handled the outbreak of the coronavirus, the White House has turned to tech giants to help it tackle the pandemic. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy held a meeting on Wednesday with representatives from Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Apple, …
If you rule out the dead, its 100% recoverable.....
Current death rate is 6% of outcomes, expected to be 3.4% based on the Chinese data. Symptoms appear in people infected but showing no signs in about 2 days. SARS Mk 1 had a death rate of 9.6%.
It's tempting to imagine millions of people running around infected with no symptoms would make that number look better. Perhaps you imagine you are immune?
@"The figures can look scary, but once you rule out the elderly and those with existing respiratory conditions, the numbers are very low indeed."
I assume your belief is that you are not elderly or have a respiratory condition and thus immune. Li Wenliang was only 33, had all the medical treatment possible. He went from infected to death in 4 weeks. Your belief in yourself is misplaced.
Wear your mask, wash your hands, avoid busy public places, avoid unnecessary contact, you are not immune, just stupid.
"I assume your belief is that you are not elderly or have a respiratory condition and thus immune. Li Wenliang was only 33, had all the medical treatment possible. He went from infected to death in 4 weeks. Your belief in yourself is misplaced."
Statistically Li Wenliang was a very unfortunate man, normally someone at that age would not die from COVID-33. it's more that possible that he had compund factors due to his job. It's been made abundantly clear who is "statistically at risk", Li was not ... That doesn't mean that 33 wont die, it jus means that there is a very low risk.
You my friend have been found guilty of scaremongering by the court of Common Sense...
" it's more that possible that he had compund factors due to his job"
Stay home, stop your twaddle, you have 12 days till the Italy scenario, 6.6% of current outcomes in Italy were deaths, the fix is to take the threat seriously, and isolate now.
Don't confuse wishful thinking with common sense.
You don't want to isolate yourself too early. Isolation is the hardest part of dealing with the disease. Isolate before you need to, and you're just prolonging that.
Isolation for two weeks is hard. Three weeks is very hard. Four-plus weeks is akin to being in prison, but without the regular feeding. If you put yourself into lockdown now, and in 12 days' time your government announces that everyone has to do it for two weeks, then you'll have condemned yourself to almost four weeks of that.
I feel this is a flaw in the current UK advice. Self isolate for seven days if you have a persistent cough. Fine. Then you get another persistent cough (I mean, hayfever season is starting, I spend months with a persistent cough...), you surely have to self isolate again, because you've no idea whether the first one was coronavirus and this one is fine, or the last one was fine and this one is coronavirus.
The alternative is NOT to self-isolate, and keep spreading the joy. cough cough.
Every single contact, every single meeting, kiss, hug, French kiss, that has 0,0000000001% chances to result in a case of infection. To many people, that seems to translate to zero, no reason to change things.
However, ALL those events added together, mean the certainty of catastrophic spread.
People who are self isolating are making it harder on themselves, but better for society as a whole. You welcome.
Those who are waiting for statesmen and well informed scientists to tell them what to do, meanwhile getting infected and infecting others, are the reason why we cannot have any of the nice things.
Your choice, if you will take it, is to be part of the problem or part of the solution.
Icon because facts and evidence just don't seem to have a chance when they meet common sense. As it is becoming clearer and clearer, it takes uncommon sense to make the necessary choices and accept the hardships of something like this.
I think it would be foolish for anyone to make very confident statements about the virus as yet but even if its fatality rate is as low as 0.2% which does nto seem to be the case then that is a big issue because no one has immunity. If we assume that close to 100% of the UK get it then we would be looking at more than 100k deaths, not a small number. In the US we would be looking at more than 0.5 million deaths. Then we have the possibility that it might be an order of magnitude or so worse than that and it is clear that this is not an insignificant threat.
Given all this I don't see much panic to be honest. Sure there is a bit of hoarding and people are not going out very much but you could argue that is sensible. Genrally people seem quite stoical about it, but I am in the UK and it may be different elsewhere.
Rush Limbaugh also said smoking doesn't kill anyone. He has lung cancer now. His weezes don't carry much weight.
My "thoughts and prayers" to Rush Limbaugh on his "advanced lung cancer."
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS. Lots and lots of thoughts and prayers. I'm sure some Republican snowflakes will think I'm being sarcastic and cruel, gloating over the impending death of an evil man the world will not miss, but no, I am genuinely offering BOTH *thoughts* AND *prayers*. The full thing, not just "thoughts OR prayers".. *AND* not *OR*.
Not healthcare or treatment. Now is not the time for "healthcare and treatment" for Rush, now is the time for him to accept our "Thoughts and Prayers". It's what he would have wanted/offered to others. Be sure he knows our "Thoughts and Prayers" are with him before he dies soon.
Thoughts and prayers Rush, Thoughts and prayers.
I didn't know Limbaugh has lung cancer. However, the only way to escape death is to never be alive. Limbaugh was born, therefore Limbaugh will die. Thoughts, prayers, good vibrations won't change that. For any of us.
He'll have all the morphine he needs to go out in a soft pink haze, until life stops. If you made him choose between "thoughts and prayers" and drugs, then you bet he'd take the drugs. So will I, when my time comes. (And it will, one way or another. That's a 100% solid bet.)
So my point is, Rush Limbaugh is a man who has used lies, racism, denigration, and hate in order to make a fortune as a talk-show clown. He's driven wedges of hatred deep into American society. Now he's got cancer. Tough break. But I'll keep my thoughts and prayers for others. He'll be much happier with the morphine.
Let me wish you the morphine and the corresponding machine is available when you need it. My mother, cancer "en cuirasse", we have been told the most painful possible, happened in a corrupt nation over there. Not even with all the Euros I had, could I get one of those drip machines, simply not a single one in the largest city there. Had to have her have injections, so either she was in terrible pain, or completely passed out, no way to drip it safely. Took forever to die, too, she was built though.
As this thing goes, you're lucky if you get infected soon and get it over with. Otherwise, those and other advanced machines might not be available when our turn comes...
You are unduly pessimistic about testing. The US has improved its position enormously since last week, commissioning sites in (I think) every state to run COVID-19 tests locally. Nationwide, the processing capacity for tests has gone up from "hundreds per week" to "thousands per day".
Of course, it's still a clusterfuck. When people are scared that if they get a test, (1) they'll have to pay for it, and (2) they'll then have to stay home and earn no money for at least two weeks, they are still not exactly going to rush for those tests.
Extending sick pay is one of the more effective measures being suggested here (and long overdue in its own right, even without a pandemic). But none of them does anything to help the unemployed, or gig workers, or those dependent on tips. I wonder how long it will take to dawn on Washington, collectively, that a "screw the poor" approach to public health really doesn't work, even for the rich?
I'm not sure about that. You may be right, but what I'm reading hasn't yet borne that out. As of yesterday, the reports indicated that the US has tested about 23 people for every million people. Fifteen times lower than the rate in the UK. About 25 times lower than South Korea.
Here's an excerpt from a news story written by Brian Resnic and David Scott yesterday (March 11):
"Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease scientist, called the testing situation a 'failing' at a congressional hearing on Thursday."
“'The idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it — we’re not set up for that,' he said. 'Do I think we should be? Yes. But we’re not.'“
"While the testing situation in America is getting better — private industry has stepped up to fill in the slow rollout of tests from the CDC, and the Cleveland Clinic announced it has developed a new rapid test that gives results in eight hours, rather than taking days — problems remain. The number of tests that can be performed per day is still limited and varies by testing facility. Part of that is due to a shortage of key chemicals needed to run the tests. It’s becoming increasingly clear that too-stringent testing guidelines early in the outbreak stymied researchers in knowing if Covid-19 was spreading in the US."
“'There was clear lack of foresight,' Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, says. 'We were very slow to roll out testing capacity to individual places — wherever that came from, it was a very bad strategy.'”
"Part of the confusion here is that there are different figures floating around for the number of tests that have been done. As private labs take up the slack from public health facilities, there’s no centralized database of numbers."
“'I think that we could have probably controlled this, if we had effective testing,' Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University virologist, says."
"We haven’t. As of March 11, according to an investigation led by the Atlantic, a little more than 7,000 Covid-19 tests have been performed — a number far behind other developed countries. (The Atlantic’s investigation is in partnership with independent researchers and is being updated daily.)"
"South Korea, for example, has tested more than 140,000 people and has even set up drive-though testing stations for people to access. So far, the Trump administration’s promises to increase testing have fallen flat."
Testing in the US is not as bad as being speculated. It's not very practical to compare what's being done here to other countries, such as South Korea. South Korea is smaller than many of the States that make up this country, and the population there is much more dense. Geographically, all the cases in my state (20 so far) are on one side of the state near a large metropolitan area. As of four hours ago, there are 219 people under investigation, 116 have tested negative, 81 are pending results, 20 presumptive positives, and 2 confirmed positive by the CDC. Our Department of Health for this state has assured us that we have enough tests for the current 'demand' and do not foresee running out of them. There have been just over 13,000 tested and we've found less than 1,300 positive results, I would speculate that testing is not falling horribly behind.
Fuck testing - the one true problem is that the human race has no immunity to this new (for humans) virus (excluding probably those who have caught but survived covid-19).
If you have a strong immune system you will beat the virus, if you have a weaker immune system you will get very ill before beating (or not) the virus. It is the sheer number of people with weaker immune systems (or no luck) that frightens most governments - no one runs a health care system sized for the worst worst-case scenario. Hence all the emphasis on flattening the peak infection rate, not reducing the overall infection numbers.
The overall infection numbers are "close to everyone". The question for politicians is "how many dead before I'm toast".
"If big tech gains access to medical data and patterns, they can support containment efforts by quickly pinpointing the source of illness within vulnerable communities."
Purely coincidentally, that's exactly what big tech have wanted for a while. Even better if it's an emergency measure bypassing current safeguards. Conspiracy theory about the root cause of the virus, anyone?
The entire world would be better off if all politicians everywhere were brought up on a steady diet of the likes of The Cramps Everything Goes ...
I have a feeling that most of the UK cabinet have already done the equivalent of the same to themselves, without any help from others, by putting themselves in a room with Nadine Dorries, and then refusing to get tested themselves and continuing to hold meetings...
The cynical amongst us might suggest that this is what happens when you deny science..
Americans, you have until 00:00:00 or 23:59:59 on Friday in one of your three timezones to get out of Giliad and into sanctuary in Canada.
I also made the mistake of looking at Trump's Twitter feed to clarify the time thing perhaps expecting a link to more details and bumped into a 50-50 mix between nonsensical bot army and real people also lobotomised down to their level. That's the real pandemic that will wipe out the human race, perhaps Twitter could be socially isolated before it's too late.
Which three of our six, or nine, or eleven timezones would those be?
(Admittedly, I don't think I'd be trying to escape to Canada from, say, American Samoa. That's quite a hike.)
Which in other countries is usually done by a working and universal health system, without any need to involve IT barons and their "AIs" to finally put their hands on data that escaped them till now to fully monetize them too.
Universal healthcare also costs less than half as much.
Cheaper and better.
There have even been studies showing that if the USA switched to a single-payer system, and paid a multi-year redundancy to all the insurance workers who wouldn't be needed anymore, it'd pay for itself in less than one year.
Sadly, the USA will never do this until something kills off a significant number of old, rich white men.
"Pity impeachment wasn't successful."
Actually, he was impeached. However, the Senate chose to ignore facts and allowed him to remain in office. For the moment. (Gut feeling is that even the conservative ultra-right old guard doesn't want that fucking nutcase Pence in the oval office, not even for a couple of months ...)
Pity impeachment wasn't successful.
That debacle at least showed that power mattered more than principle to the majority of Republican senators. The only one who voted to impeach stated that he did so from fear of his god rather than out of his duty to uphold the constitution, which basically says that if he hadn't been reminded of his oath of office at the beginning of the hearing he wouldn't have given a shit.
You're missing the potential catastrophic scenario:
One of the usual dodgy Republican States (e.g. Florida) cancel elections "for public safety".
Trump joins them declares martial law and cancels elections, "for public safety"
Elections never happen again.
There is no mechanism to force Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, and Trump to comply with any law in any way. The judicial branch can do all the rulings they like, but the enforcement of those rulings is blocked by Barr. The House can do all the impeachments it likes, but the enforcement of those impeachments is blocked by Moscow Mitch. Contempt of court cannot be enforced against Barr because those people who would arrest Barr, work for Barr.
Don't think they'd be that brazen?
Do you also think the meeting in Trump Tower was about adopting orphans?
The WH is nonchalant at best concerning the spread of this deadly disease. There are even talks about a mass quarantine now - the likes of a concentration camp! There is no news about a safe cure, or how long this is going to last. The last I checked, companies like UBER and Googdle were about to engineer AI to help with tracking and subsequent quarantine measures. While the disease is unmitigated, the response shouldn't have been - only because there used to be a Pandemic response team in the CDC - now, its not.
~Engineer.AI
I sincerely hope I'm wrong with this prediction, but America really does seem to be in the perfect position for a complete shitstorm of Covid.
The lack of free health care means that low income people wont go to get tested, meaning that if they are infected, they will pass it on to everyone they know. The same people even if they're a bit ill wont take sick days (because of the lack of paid sick days), and they absolutely wont take 2 weeks off as a precaution if they're exposed to someone who had Covid, because frankly without the sort of safety net you get in the rest of the western world, most people cant afford to take a couple of days off work (let alone 2 weeks!) and still meet their bills. That will also be a driver for people not to get tested, even if it suddenly became free, because the risk that they're ordered not to work, could mean them being unable to meet rent/afford food, etc.
In the rest of the western world, we have paid sick days, paid holiday, and unemployment benefits that mean that if someone is forced to not work for 2 weeks, they're unlikely to get into too much trouble, but the lack of any sort of safety net will only exacerbate the problem in the US.
As for trump, there was a great opinion piece in the BBC this week, that explained how the only thing that trump really cares about is keeping the stock market high (he's tweeted on average every 2 days throughout his presidency about the stock market one way or another). If the stock markets high he can argue the economy is great and thats what he campaigns on. Covid likely puts a big dent in that, it's driving down the stock market massively (more than 20% in the last few days), so is it any surprise he's trying to keep a lid on it and downplay it.
But the silly thing there is, by downplaying it, he's increasing the risk that Covid will be around for the long term in the US. Hit it hard and fast, get people reacting to it, and you can likely stop it relatively fast, well before the next election cycle, and you can point to that as an achievement, the economy would back up to normal levels, and Trump would be back in prime position. By reacting slowly, downplaying it, its effects are likely to be felt for so much longer and maybe into the next election. And Trump will bare the brunt of that. Still I shouldnt really be surprised, long term planning in a business man like Trump doesnt come naturally...
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