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The response to this disease is not instilling much confidence that we can slow the spread. In fact, the bumbling of the CDC and government agencies has allowed it to go unchecked.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavi...sor-2020-3

Broad-scale testing is a crucial step in properly containing and mitigating the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, Forman said. But so far, the US hasn't been able to test enough people who meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's criteria.

"It is well within the realm of possibility that there are 100,000 people infected with this right now in the United States," Forman said. "Healthcare providers may be being exposed, other patients may be being exposed, and until you can give confidence to people about those answers, we are in a crisis here."

Forman said coronavirus testing needed to happen on a bigger scale than flu testing — and so far, that's not happening. As more cases go undetected, the spread of the disease becomes more likely, Forman said.

South Korea is way ahead in their preparedness and testing.

https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-teste...00719.html

The US and South Korea announced their first cases of the coronavirus on the same day: January 20. More than six weeks later, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tested around 1,500 people for the virus. South Korea, meanwhile, has tested about 140,000.

The nation is capable of conducting as many as 10,000 tests per day and has built drive-thru testing clinics that can detect coronavirus cases in just 10 minutes. Officials say the clinics can reduce testing time by a third.

This quick response has allowed South Korea to detect more than 6,000 coronavirus patients, around 35 of whom have died. That means the country's fatality rate — the number of deaths out of the total number of infections — is around 0.6%.

(03-06-2020 07:14 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  This is why the spread of the disease went unchallenged 6 weeks prior to the nursing home outbreak. What a cluster-F of a response.

https://news.yahoo.com/california-man-se...42979.html

He said "the alarm bells" sounded when he saw how the outbreak was being addressed at San Francisco International Airport.

"They literally had no idea what they were doing," he said, adding that one airport official even admitted that since things had escalated so quickly they were in disarray.

As passengers got off the plane, no one was at the gate to record their temperatures, he said. (One of the symptoms of the disease is a fever, though a few cases are asymptomatic.)

He also said no one was wearing masks.

It took him hours to go through customs, get his temperature taken at customs, and fill out paperwork. The man said the paperwork that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave him was handwritten and then photocopied.

People returning from China were taken from the immigration gate to a designated area to have their temperature taken. But since neither he nor his family members exhibited any symptoms or felt sick, they weren't tested for COVID-19.

Passengers coming from China had to wait in "the little black room" in the airport, typically used for passengers with visa problems, he said.

The Bay Area resident said immigration officials didn't wear any sort of protection and were impatient with people, telling them to stop asking questions when they inquired about the wait time.

"It was really not a good experience at that point," he said.

If he had returned from China's Hubei province, he would have been given a government-mandated quarantine.

But what he was given instead was a verbal recommendation to stay home and avoid going in public for 14 days. CDC officials also gave passengers cards with guidelines about how to self-quarantine and told him to give it to a primary-care doctor, should he visit one.

One very big problem I see with this protocol is that they potentially exposed healthy travelers in a confined space of “the little black room” to someone who may have the disease for a prolonged period of time. Thus spreading the virus instead of mitigating it.

(03-06-2020 07:47 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  South Korea is way ahead in their preparedness and testing.

https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-teste...00719.html

The US and South Korea announced their first cases of the coronavirus on the same day: January 20. More than six weeks later, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tested around 1,500 people for the virus. South Korea, meanwhile, has tested about 140,000.

The nation is capable of conducting as many as 10,000 tests per day and has built drive-thru testing clinics that can detect coronavirus cases in just 10 minutes. Officials say the clinics can reduce testing time by a third.

This quick response has allowed South Korea to detect more than 6,000 coronavirus patients, around 35 of whom have died. That means the country's fatality rate — the number of deaths out of the total number of infections — is around 0.6%.

Yep, the more testing done will get you closer to the true mortality rate. I'd wager there have been well over a million infections rather than the 100,000 reported.

(03-06-2020 09:03 AM)GRBRONCO Wrote:  

(03-06-2020 07:47 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  South Korea is way ahead in their preparedness and testing.

https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-teste...00719.html

The US and South Korea announced their first cases of the coronavirus on the same day: January 20. More than six weeks later, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tested around 1,500 people for the virus. South Korea, meanwhile, has tested about 140,000.

The nation is capable of conducting as many as 10,000 tests per day and has built drive-thru testing clinics that can detect coronavirus cases in just 10 minutes. Officials say the clinics can reduce testing time by a third.

This quick response has allowed South Korea to detect more than 6,000 coronavirus patients, around 35 of whom have died. That means the country's fatality rate — the number of deaths out of the total number of infections — is around 0.6%.

Yep, the more testing done will get you closer to the true mortality rate.

Families in WA are pissed that they can’t get their loved ones tested who are residents of the afflicted nursing home. Those who are not sick should be moved out of there. 7 have already died from that outbreak. Why is testing for all the residents not being done?

Members of the union National Nurses United said they have faced shifting guidelines and a shortage of supplies as the tally of known infections has increased. They called on the Centers for Disease Control to quickly increase testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and demanded that federal officials implement emergency standards for hospitals and clinics around the country.

“The CDC has been behind the ball at almost every step of the way,” said Jane Thomason, an industrial hygienist for the union.

Bonnie Castillo, a registered nurse and the union’s executive director, said nurses were confident they could help contain the spread of the virus, but only if “we are given the protections and resources we need to do our jobs.” 

More than 80 of the union’s nurses have been quarantined due to possible contact with infected patients, and Castillo said many facilities still lack the personal protective equipment that workers need to handle the outbreak.

“It is not a successful strategy to leave nurses and other health care workers unprotected,” Castillo said at a press conference in Oakland on Thursday. “When we are quarantined, we are not only prevented from caring for COVID-19 patients, but we are taken away from caring for cancer patients, cardiac patients and premature babies.”

https://apple.news/AMOjfgl6jR3K_5LckMXfgGg

(03-06-2020 09:07 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  

(03-06-2020 09:03 AM)GRBRONCO Wrote:  

(03-06-2020 07:47 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  South Korea is way ahead in their preparedness and testing.

https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-teste...00719.html

The US and South Korea announced their first cases of the coronavirus on the same day: January 20. More than six weeks later, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tested around 1,500 people for the virus. South Korea, meanwhile, has tested about 140,000.

The nation is capable of conducting as many as 10,000 tests per day and has built drive-thru testing clinics that can detect coronavirus cases in just 10 minutes. Officials say the clinics can reduce testing time by a third.

This quick response has allowed South Korea to detect more than 6,000 coronavirus patients, around 35 of whom have died. That means the country's fatality rate — the number of deaths out of the total number of infections — is around 0.6%.

Yep, the more testing done will get you closer to the true mortality rate.

Families in WA are pissed that they can’t get their loved ones tested who are residents of the afflicted nursing home. Those who are not sick should be moved out of there. 7 have already died from that outbreak. Why is testing for all the residents not being done?

The facility was fined $67,000 last year for deficiencies during 2 flu outbreaks. Sounds like they don't have their $hit together to me..

(03-06-2020 10:12 AM)GRBRONCO Wrote:  

(03-06-2020 09:07 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  

(03-06-2020 09:03 AM)GRBRONCO Wrote:  

(03-06-2020 07:47 AM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  South Korea is way ahead in their preparedness and testing.

https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-teste...00719.html

The US and South Korea announced their first cases of the coronavirus on the same day: January 20. More than six weeks later, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tested around 1,500 people for the virus. South Korea, meanwhile, has tested about 140,000.

The nation is capable of conducting as many as 10,000 tests per day and has built drive-thru testing clinics that can detect coronavirus cases in just 10 minutes. Officials say the clinics can reduce testing time by a third.

This quick response has allowed South Korea to detect more than 6,000 coronavirus patients, around 35 of whom have died. That means the country's fatality rate — the number of deaths out of the total number of infections — is around 0.6%.

Yep, the more testing done will get you closer to the true mortality rate.

Families in WA are pissed that they can’t get their loved ones tested who are residents of the afflicted nursing home. Those who are not sick should be moved out of there. 7 have already died from that outbreak. Why is testing for all the residents not being done?

The facility was fined $67,000 last year for deficiencies during 2 flu outbreaks. Sounds like they don't have their $hit together to me..

They likely have no negative pressure rooms to prevent the spread of this. We are airdropping test kits to a cruise ship off of SF but we can’t get the elderly at a facility in Seattle tested? That’s not on the nursing home. They don’t dictate who gets tested.

Dropping the ball


The CDC and other health officials have come under fire for how slowly Americans are being tested.

'I'm not happy about the lack of the appropriate number of test kits – that's for sure – but other areas of the response, I think, are going well,' Dr Fauci said.

He's also frustrated at the lack of screenings at US airports.

In a press conference on Monday evening, Pence said there will be 100 percent screening at all airports with direct flights from Italy and South Korea over the next 12 hours.

However, Vice News producer Julia Lindau said she did not undergo any health screenings or additional questioning after landing at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York from Italy on Thursday night.

'I just landed at JFK after reporting on #coronavirus in Milan and Lombardy - the epicenter of Italy's outbreak - for @vicenews,' she tweeted.

'I walked right through US customs. They didn't ask me where in Italy I went or if I came into contact with sick people. They didn't ask me anything.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...night.html

American culture is great in a lot of ways, and why I would bet on us over South Korea in many crises in the long-run, but it's very much oriented against not being able to stop a minor pandemic (figuring out how to fix it though...). Consider our views on authority, responsibilities to others, following basic orders, organization and efficiency of purpose.

"We are airdropping test kits to a cruise ship off of SF but we can’t get the elderly at a facility in Seattle tested?"

We can fly to the moon, but damn it man, you bet your ass we're going to do with it our fly unzipped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXjqTyQuq4w

Interesting analysis on the spread of the disease and the systemic effects.

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/all-hos...g-analysis

Importantly, I cannot stress this enough: even if I’m wrong – even VERY wrong – about core assumptions like % of severe cases or current case #, it only changes the timeline by days or weeks. This is how exponential growth in an immunologically naïve population works.

Undeserved panic does no one any good. But neither does ill-informed complacency. It’s wrong to assuage the public by saying “only 2% will die.” People aren’t adequately grasping the national and global systemic burden wrought by this swift-moving of a disease.

I’m an engineer. This is what my mind does all day: I run back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to estimate order-of-magnitude impacts. I’ve been on high alarm about this disease since ~Jan 19 after reading clinical indicators in the first papers emerging from Wuhan.

Nothing in the last 6 weeks has dampened my alarm in the slightest. To the contrary, we’re seeing abject refusal of many countries to adequately respond or prepare. Of course some of these estimates will be wrong, even substantially wrong.

But I have no reason to think they’ll be orders-of-magnitude wrong. Even if your personal risk of death is very, very low, don’t mock decisions like canceling events or closing workplaces as undue “panic”.

Seems a foregone conclusion most of us will contract the virus. The question is how severely?

Worthwhile review / David Grimes

(03-08-2020 02:32 PM)ess Wrote:  Worthwhile review / David Grimes

Maybe an engineer but also a PhD in Biology. the reality in Italy is that there are likely not enough vents to support critical patient. The same can easily happen here. The hospitals in metro Detroit are all near capacity during this flu season. Several have been full since early January. Projected numbers aside she made many valid points, of which he did not refute.

North Korea shoots Coronavirus suspects:

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/24761...avirus.htm

(03-08-2020 08:28 PM)WMUlaxer97 Wrote:  Maybe an engineer but also a PhD in Biology.

The author simply urged people to use caution while reading social media about this issue.

Nothing more.

A degree in engineering and/or biology does not qualify one to speak knowledgeably about epidemiology.

Nor does it disqualify them.

People often get in trouble when they don't know what they don't know.

Something we should all remember.

Great time to re-finance your home and buy stocks on the cheap. I'm in the process of transitioning my 30 year to a new 15 yr loan.

(03-09-2020 09:47 AM)GRBRONCO Wrote:  Great time to re-finance your home and buy stocks on the cheap. I'm in the process of transitioning my 30 year to a new 15 yr loan.

Smart!

Good time to invest into a Roth IRA as well!

(03-09-2020 09:57 AM)GullLake Wrote:  

(03-09-2020 09:47 AM)GRBRONCO Wrote:  Great time to re-finance your home and buy stocks on the cheap. I'm in the process of transitioning my 30 year to a new 15 yr loan.

Smart!

Good time to invest into a Roth IRA as well!

I had maxed out my 2019 and 2020 contributions the first week of January....

These past few weeks have given me flashbacks to those weeks following 9/11. This is the most off-kilter the world has been since then. Maybe even moreso, given how much it's affected daily events and lifestyles.

Much like getting caught up in terrorism, the chances you will die from coronvirus is extremely low. But like the aftermath of 9/11, it sure makes people hyper-aware of their, and their family's, mortality.