Duffman

We have a serious problem on our hands and I think it's time to face facts that air travel, and possibly the economy at large, isn't recovering soon. Our only saving grace from opening early was that if everyone did their part and prevented the spread of the virus ::cue montage of America uniting:: then we could continue to drive down the virus, albeit at a slower rate, while saving the economy.


That didn't happen. Conspiracy theories, denial, "I'll have to see it to believe it," complacency with the guidelines, "**** you I got mines" mentality, terrible policy (IE opening bars in college party towns), the protests, people in govt who undermine the scientific community, divisiveness and politicizing everything, even when it's not in anyone's best interest; all these things have contributed to a poor reaction that has caused a second wave.

BoilerUP

At this point, the biggest issue isn't the actual medical impacts and outcomes of SARS-CoV-2...its FEAR, stoked by mass and social media. Fear that makes the concerns during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic look like a joke.

To be clear, SARs-CoV-2 is clearly more fatal than even a bad seasonal flu season by two or three times. The sum death toll in the US so far is staggering in sheer numbers...but only if you disregard the average monthly death toll from all causes. Considered through that lens, it is definitely a killer in certain populations and contributing to excess deaths but what it isn't is SARS, MERS, the Black Death, 1918 Spanish flu, Ebola, Marburg, MEV-1 from Contagion, or Motaba from Outbreak. Its IFR will likely end up somewhere near 1968 H3N2. SARS-CoV-2 has very very real medical impacts but it is NOT a society killer and shouldn't be an economy killer; we have GOT to stop thinking about it as such.

The media and certain folks are locked in on positive cases and death numbers but seemingly give little attention to actual infection estimates which drives down fatality rates. People pay no attention to all the asymptomatic or very mildly symptomatic cases, instead focusing on the senior citizens who are dying along with those statistical outlier cases of poor outcomes in younger people...yes, including some medical professionals.

Nobody wants nanna and papaw to get sick and die, nobody wants their parents to be on a vent, and people definitely don't want to see their children in an ICU...but guess what? Those things still happen every year with regular ole influenza, even with a vaccine and approved antivirals. COVID would quite possibly kill my father, but he's gone to work six days a week since this fun kicked off domestically in late February and isn't worried about what might or might not happen - he takes precautions and goes about his life.

Risk elimination isn't a practical option, so what we've got is risk mitigation. People can't wrap their heads around that. What some people also can't wrap their heads around is yes, some people are hard-headed and others are more risk tolerant and not everybody is going to do everything YOU as an individual believe is necessary - and that's okay. We are adults and should be able to make our own decisions based on our own acceptable risk without the self-professed Mask Police harassing us.

We were always told, as things reopened, there would be an increase in transmission BUT that would be fine so long as we had plenty of available testing, contact tracing, medical PPE and availability of acute care & intensive care beds and ventilators. Those things aren't an issue right now, even in places that are getting a ton of negative press like Texas and Florida (and places that aren't getting a ton of negative press, like California).

As the Northeast US and Europe reopens toward the level that many Sun Belt states were 3-4 weeks ago, it'll be interesting to see if they see corresponding increases in diagnosed disease.

TL;DR - people need to respect this virus the same as any other and take some simple basic precautions, but we as a nation have GOT to stop living in irrational fear stoked by 24/7 infotainment and Facebook News.

simuflite

Sounds like we’ve got a vaccine.
Efforts to downplay it are already underway.
”Must stretch this out until Election Day!”

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/coro...port-says.html

Downtime

Yeah great it was deemed safe in a phase 2 trial. That said they don’t know if it actually prevents you from getting sick yet. So no we don’t. This isn’t some conspiracy against Trump the longer we view this as politics instead of public health the longer we will exists on this 70 percent economy.

simuflite

You proved my point.
The coronavirus industrial complex is real.
And it has lemmings like you carrying its water.
The "yeah but" caucus.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Excargodog

See the original posting that started this thread. Everything posted is STILL valid.

Downtime

When you say lemming you mean someone who wants to know a vaccine works before injecting myself with it? Science takes time. Your gonna need to learn to live with that. The ******** group is gonna do more damage.

rickair7777

It produced anti-bodies at levels that reasonably should prevent covid infection. Still have to do the trials, but this is not the blind trial-and-error guessing game of historical pharma development. We have good visibility of what's going on at the genetic and molecular level.

Downtime

I agree I was more shooting down the idea that the vaccine is being suppressed to hurt Trump. Fauci has been as hopeful as you will hear a doc about it so I am confident. I was merely pointing out this was a small testing group.

Black Warrior

You and everyone else should/will be free to inject or not to inject. Personal risk assessment/management.