The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread

[Giordano]

The problem with that is that where I live every week of shutdown is a billion dollars in gdp lost. Probably more.
It also has had the effect of shutting down a lot of hospital work that is normally done to keep people healthy. Nurses and doctors are on furlough.

But in better news, the parents and teachers decided to open the school next week. We can because we are private. This is a big boon to the school, at very low risk given what we know about our own close knit community and how the virus has already affected us directly. And we are aware. Newsom can F off. He has no power here.

Thank you for recognizing that your own medical judgement is far superior to that of the virology, epidemiology, and public health experts. What do those pinheads know compared to your own common sense and good old American values?

Sorry, I am not in a good mood to indulge this today. I post this having learned of the Covid-19 death of yet another friend’s parent in an assisted living facility. This time 6 out of 8 of the residents in one facility died within a few weeks of one another. Their mother died 2 days of diagnosis. The virus was brought in by an asymptomatic staff member. The staff all thought they were clean and healthy probably like the members of your community; although requested no PCR screening of care facility staff members is available in their state due to insufficient testing capacity( true of most states). The staff are devastated.

Also I personally am toast if I am infected so I am not that thrilled with others who think they should be making these kinds of decisions on their own contrary to medical science and to the best efforts of the government.

I do wish you and particularly your most vulnerable loved ones good luck. Honestly.

 

[Armitage72]

 

[eerok]

This is interesting -- Rick Bright is fighting back.

Rick Bright, Former Top Vaccine Scientist, Files Whistleblower Complaint

The complaint alleges that Bright made repeated efforts to get the U.S. government to make adequate preparations for coronavirus, but was stymied by political appointees leading the HHS, including Azar.

 

[Stacyhs]

This is interesting -- Rick Bright is fighting back.

Rick Bright, Former Top Vaccine Scientist, Files Whistleblower Complaint

Good. I expect Trump to start tweeting nastygrams about this anytime.

 

[Giordano]

I must confess to often being overcome by depression about the covid-19 situation in the USA, and it now seems to me hopeless here. The incompetence, ignorance, and evil embodied by Trump and his followers will inevitably lead to the reversal of the progress made up to this point. It already has led to the enduring persistence of the plateau at the country wide level, in contrast to countries and even some states that, by maintaining strict restrictions, have achieved a strong decline in new infections. Models now suggest a doubling of deaths in the near future and the Trump administration appears to have no problem with this. We were so close to being able to achieve the success of Italy, France, Germany, etc., perhaps requiring only mere weeks of continued vigilance, but instead Trump has unleashed resistance to the science and the facts, with the result being the epidemic will soon reignite with restored strength.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Lawrence Summers is claiming that the US could implement a testing and contract testing program that would test everyone in the US once per week for about 10 percent of what it's spending on stimulus. That would, of course, presume that it would be possible to make 329,000,000 tests a week, which is HIGHLY doubtful. And would testing once a week be sufficient, given that the average person becomes contagious 3 days after contracting the virus?

 

[Meadmaker]

Lawrence Summers is claiming that the US could implement a testing and contract testing program that would test everyone in the US once per week for about 10 percent of what it's spending on stimulus.

But how would that help share prices?

In all seriousness, one of the things that disgusts me about Trump's reaction to the coronavirus pandemic is that he has been really wishy-washy about actually fighting the disease, but when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged, the dude jumped right on top of it and spent money like a drunken sailor.

To be fair, no one stood in his way, except a little bit of token resistance aimed at getting him to spend even more.

That would, of course, presume that it would be possible to make 329,000,000 tests a week, which is HIGHLY doubtful. And would testing once a week be sufficient, given that the average person becomes contagious 3 days after contracting the virus?

I don't have enough information to say what is and isn't possible, or how much it would cost, but one of the things about the Trump administration that I have been thoroughly unimpressed with is that in evaluating capability, whether of tests or PPE or even meat packing is that he always seems to look at existing companies and what they could do. 3M makes N95 masks, so he toured 3M. Fine and dandy, but they made them two months ago. The approach seems to be, "How many masks can 3M make? Ok. We'll take that." It really ought to be, "We need 600 million. Can you do it?" And if the answer is no, then start looking into what it takes to build a mask factory, and how much of whatever those things are made of can be produced or even imported.

The solution of businesspeople is to throw money at the problem, and hire someone to solve it for you. I think something else might be needed.

So could we make 300,000,000 tests a week? Why not? What's the long pole in that tent, and how do we fix it? We don't have to be limited by what existing companies can do. We've got a trillion dollars to work with. How do you turn that into coronavirus tests? Or, should we give it to people and hope they buy consumer goods to keep Wall Street afloat?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Lawrence Summers is claiming that the US could implement a testing and contract testing program that would test everyone in the US once per week for about 10 percent of what it's spending on stimulus. That would, of course, presume that it would be possible to make 329,000,000 tests a week, which is HIGHLY doubtful. And would testing once a week be sufficient, given that the average person becomes contagious 3 days after contracting the virus?

Does this model assume everyone would be going back to work right away and all businesses would take up where they left off? Reverse all the bankruptcies?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

I must confess to often being overcome by depression about the covid-19 situation in the USA, and it now seems to me hopeless here. The incompetence, ignorance, and evil embodied by Trump and his followers will inevitably lead to the reversal of the progress made up to this point. It already has led to the enduring persistence of the plateau at the country wide level, in contrast to countries and even some states that, by maintaining strict restrictions, have achieved a strong decline in new infections. Models now suggest a doubling of deaths in the near future and the Trump administration appears to have no problem with this. We were so close to being able to achieve the success of Italy, France, Germany, etc., perhaps requiring only mere weeks of continued vigilance, but instead Trump has unleashed resistance to the science and the facts, with the result being the epidemic will soon reignite with restored strength.

Agreed. I want to cry for the USA.

 

[The Don]

I must confess to often being overcome by depression about the covid-19 situation in the USA, and it now seems to me hopeless here. The incompetence, ignorance, and evil embodied by Trump and his followers will inevitably lead to the reversal of the progress made up to this point. It already has led to the enduring persistence of the plateau at the country wide level, in contrast to countries and even some states that, by maintaining strict restrictions, have achieved a strong decline in new infections. Models now suggest a doubling of deaths in the near future and the Trump administration appears to have no problem with this. We were so close to being able to achieve the success of Italy, France, Germany, etc., perhaps requiring only mere weeks of continued vigilance, but instead Trump has unleashed resistance to the science and the facts, with the result being the epidemic will soon reignite with restored strength.

Agreed. I want to cry for the USA.

I'm reminded of the whole "Year 2000" thing. The number of people who said that the spending on Year 2000 systems analysis and remediation was wasted because nothing bad happened. Apparently they forgot all the time and effort that went in to ensuring that things happened that way. I'd been addressing it in various systems since the early '90s.

Mrs Don is a professional (and excellent) project manager. She's been told on a number of occasions that, in retrospect, she was unnecessary on a project because nothing major went wrong.

I guess a lot of people don't realise that the Coronavirus infections and fatalities are as "low" as they are because of the measures which have been taken. Remove those measures and the numbers will get back up to where they should be.

People (including President Trump) are criticising the models saying that the predicted numbers were too high. I note that after a period of downward revision, the predicted fatalities are on their way back up to the original numbers. Maybe those models aren't that bad - and of course reports always ignore the error bars so that a "100,000 deaths prediction" isn't as precise as that but rather something like a 30,000 - 250,000 range with 100,000 being the most likely number so if the fatalities are anywhere in that range, the model is "correct".

 

[McHrozni]

I don't have enough information to say what is and isn't possible,

I have. A team of two egineers and a technician handling one machine should be able to get 500 tests done in one day. Add two administratos to each team for paperwork and a team of two epidemiologists and four asssistants to trace contacts and handle quaranene measures with police and other such forces.

To get to 55 million/day you therefore need about 110,000 such teams, each composed of 11 people, at least four of whom must have tertiary education in an appropriate field. Each team needs about $1 million worth of hardware and burns through ~$50k consumables each day, plus other expenses. This is if they all work for about 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, so you probably need about 150,000 teams in case of breakdowns, mechanical or mental. To provide sufficient consumables you'll need to upscale the production as well, so take those costs and double them.

This works about $1.5 trillion in immediate investments and a daily expense of about $15 billion plus wages, space and logistics and you have those 320 million tests a week. If you can get enough machines produced in time, which is a problem all by itself.

Or to put it in simpler terms, take the combined efforts of the Manhattan and Apollo projects at the same time and double the number of highly skilled people you need and you have a solid estimate as to what is needed to have any chance of reaching that milestone.

McHrozni

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Trump is shutting down the coronavirus taskforce

 

[The Don]

Trump is shutting down the coronavirus taskforce

Actually, he's talking about shutting it down. President Trump says a lot of things. He actually does very few things.

Saying that he's closing it down is "classic Trump". It panders to the right wingers who are trying to get the lockdown lifted. It gives the impression that the Coronavirus is well under control and that fatalities are dropping. It allows him to say that he's trying to get America back up and running - while doing precisely nothing and whilst being able to switch back to supporting the lockdown at a moment's notice.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

I keep wondering what these people are going to say decades form now when asked where they were during that whole Trump regime thing and the corona pandemic?

"Oh, uhm, well, um, grampa was shouting in the street with a rifle in his hand because people were mean to Trump and security guards and shop employees tried to get us to stay six feet apart."

 

[carlosy]

I keep wondering what these people are going to say decades form now when asked where they were during that whole Trump regime thing and the corona pandemic?

"Oh, uhm, well, um, grampa was shouting in the street with a rifle in his hand because people were mean to Trump and security guards and shop employees tried to get us to stay six feet apart."

Decades from now, people will have very different problems, probably the likes of which the modern human never had before. They will be very busy dealing with that stuff.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

Regarding travel restrictions, if they are done too late, when the spreading has already started and the cat is already out of the bag, then as shown they are not effective, and slow the spread at most. That link to the model posted previously assumed, rightly, that there were already seed clusters of infections before the travel bans take place; at that point its simply too late for there to be any big effect.

However, if done later when the outbreaks are coming under control or when there are little or no clusters, they definitely can be effective, as they stop any new seed clusters starting.

Hong Kong has (fingers crossed) managed to wipe out new local infections. We haven't had any for 17 days.

This is largely because the vast majority of travel to Hong Kong has been stopped, apart from HK residents returning. All tourism, business travel etc is forbidden. We had to ban all non-resident travel simply because there would not be enough capacity for the testing/quarantine measures described below.

All returnees are tested at the airport, and may only leave if the result is negative. If positive, straight into government quarantine or hospital, depending on symptoms.

If airport test is negative, and if they are able to quarantine at home they are tagged with wristband and must provide random location updates via an app to ensure they stay at home. After several cases of rule breakers being arrested and charged, this flouting has stopped, and people have been observing the home quarantine strictly.

If airport test is negative but they are unable to quarantine at home, straight into government quarantine.

After 14 days, they are tested again and must be negative before leaving quarantine.

So we have effectively stopped all imported causes entering the community, and local transmission has died down to nothing. Currently 135 active cases, 4 deaths overall.

Note these measures were taken in response to a local outbreak that was traced to ongoing imported cases from UK and USA, and as we were learning more how prevalent asymptomatic cases were.

But is shows that travel restrictions can and do have an effect, if used at the right time, and as part of a suite of supporting measures. Yes, they have an economic impact, but as part of the "hammer", all measures have an economic impact.

 

[zorro99]

Trump admits reopening states may cost lives, as U.S. death toll surpasses 70,000

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/06/coronavirus-update-us/

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Does this model assume everyone would be going back to work right away and all businesses would take up where they left off? Reverse all the bankruptcies?

I took his point to be that the additional amount that the US would have to spend in order to implement a thorough test and trace system would not mean a significant increase in spending, so he doesn't understand why the US doesn't seem willing to spend a little more right now that might possibly save a lot of money down the road.

 

[Meadmaker]

I have. A team of two egineers and a technician handling one machine should be able to get 500 tests done in one day. Add two administratos to each team for paperwork and a team of two epidemiologists and four asssistants to trace contacts and handle quaranene measures with police and other such forces.

To get to 55 million/day you therefore need about 110,000 such teams, each composed of 11 people, at least four of whom must have tertiary education in an appropriate field. Each team needs about $1 million worth of hardware and burns through ~$50k consumables each day, plus other expenses. This is if they all work for about 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, so you probably need about 150,000 teams in case of breakdowns, mechanical or mental. To provide sufficient consumables you'll need to upscale the production as well, so take those costs and double them.

This works about $1.5 trillion in immediate investments and a daily expense of about $15 billion plus wages, space and logistics and you have those 320 million tests a week. If you can get enough machines produced in time, which is a problem all by itself.

Or to put it in simpler terms, take the combined efforts of the Manhattan and Apollo projects at the same time and double the number of highly skilled people you need and you have a solid estimate as to what is needed to have any chance of reaching that milestone.

McHrozni

Certainly a daunting task.

However, I think you overestimate the problem. You added six people (two epidemiologists and four assistants) to each team. However, you only have to do that for the positive tests. The point of the exercise is that there won't be very many positive tests.

Two assistants to handle paperwork? How about bar codes on swabs instead? Requires some up front work, but really reduces paperwork.

Do you really need two engineers and a technician to run the machines? On this point, I don't know, but the vision I have of these things is that a swab and a certain number of chemicals are brought together and a machine makes an identification of which of those swabs had viral RNA on them. Maybe it's a lot more complicated than that. I don't know.

A big task? Certainly.

As big as the Apollo project? Probably. In terms of manpower, bigger, I would think. We did the Apollo project, didn't we? I watched it on TV. And it didn't even bankrupt us.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Trump reportedly is going to disband his coronavirus task force. And that seems reasonable. With the latest forecast that there will be 135,000 deaths in the US and there have already been 70,000, the US has past the half way point, it's clear that the US is on the home stretch so it's obviously time to wind down and move on.

https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...nals-it-will-wind-down-coronavirus-task-force

P.S. Since the US has experienced 70,000 deaths, can it now be officially declared that COVID-19 is worse than the flu?