StrangeSox

Insanity

Ireland has temporarily nationalised their health care system. There are ways to solve the problem of "isn't profitable for capital."

There's a concerted effort by a small but very loud group who wants to just turn the economy back on right away and have begun/restarted downplaying that COVID was a serious threat at all in the first place. These people have a lot of money, power, and media influence. We're already seeing political groups funding anti-social distancing protests, and we're seeing some states already starting with bad opening back up measures (Florida is reopening beaches!)

Some more info on the remdesivir trials, definitely reason to be cautious and skeptical of results so far. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/17/whats-happening-with-remdesivir To put it clearly, the comparison in the trial that got leaked is a 5-day treatment of Remdesivir vs. a 10-day treatment of Remdesivir. Gilead's stock jumped nicely today, though *dons tinfoil hat*

Sweden is in bad shape and getting rapidly worse anyway. Just as all those experts said would happen, almost as if they *do* know what they're talking about even if the specific data on COVID-19 is limited right now. Belgium also tried the YOLO route and we can see how it's working out for them:

WGN had one of their epidemiologists (or virologist, someone with relevant expertise anyway) on this morning. He was also very hopeful with the initial results on the UofC trials but did note that this did not include a control group. However, a number of other area hospitals/researchers are doing remdesivir trials with control groups and hopefully we'll know more soon. I think the "lock her up" was aimed at Whitmer this time, but ultimately it's the same reactionary message.

Good news in NYC

How many people have to be brought in to work in order to get a bag of fertilizer on the shelf in a store, though? Plant workers who supply the base materials to the fertilizer plants; shipping/logistics from plant-to-plant; packaging material manufacturers and their shipping; Plant workers to manufacture and package; warehouse workers for the manufactuer; shipping company employees to get to a retailer's centralized warehouse; various warehouse employees for the retailer to redistribute to the appropriate store; receiving and inventory at the store; stockers; cashiers; and then you driving to the store and all the support that goes with getting those people to their jobs and you to and from the store. I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting but the primary and secondary links in all of our supply chains are enormous. It takes a lot of effort to get any product on to a store's shelf and then into your car and back home. The concern there wouldn't be fomite transmission along the chain necessarily, but in all of those people having to work to get pretty non-essential products on a store shelf. At a time when supply chains are already going to be stressed, why clog it up with lawn care stuff and have that whole chain of people coming into workplaces and potentially getting and spreading infections? Without adequate testing so sick people can self-quarantine, we really shouldn't be engaging in all this frivilous activity that really does increase risk. That may only be a tiny fraction of a percent for the bag of fertilizer that you decided you really needed to go get, but in the aggregate that's a whole lot of additional risk, and for what? It's at least something that needs to be seriously considered on a deeper level rather than dismissed out of hand. edit: sorry supply chain/massive web was on my mind recently as we tried to get my toddler to eat her food by explaining all the effort it takes to get to her plate! When you step back and think about it, there is a ton of labor from dozens of people that go into getting almost anything onto a retail shelf.

These protests are being astroturfed heavily, expect them to get worse.

Motor boats also require additional fuel and maintenance. Same with driving far away to second homes/cabins, just more chances to spread infections to new places and new communities.

Lol Late edit: wait why are we assuming nearly everyone in Sweden is already infected that doesn't seem to match up to reality at all! For some reason this comes to mind: Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't.

Oh not like these individual people are getting a paycheck for protesting or anything, but the promotion and organization is being astroturfed. These protests will get favorable coverage in conservative media, from big name networks to various social media groups. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/13/trump-reopen-economy-conservative-groups-coronavirus/ White House aides, outside groups launch effort to reopen economy, but Mnuchin says decision poses risks So some of the anger and anxiety is definitely real, especially from those who have lost their jobs already and don't know how they're going to make ends meet. These people shouldn't be shamed for feeling scared or anxious, but they have seriously misdirected their anger and misunderstand the possible solutions imo. But this legitimate fear then gets stoked and amplified by these larger, well-funded groups into something bigger than it originally was.

These protests are being funded and stoked by interested parties. They're not really organic. edit: I count a few dozen cars here. It looks like a big group thanks to the vehicles, but now imagine maybe 80 people standing on the lawn. Not such an impressive looking protest then. I also have to wonder how these same people reacted a few years ago to any BLM or other more liberal-minded protests that blocked traffic.

People are going to the hospital because they're sick, not to get tested. Getting tested doesn't make people sick. Testing can occur at clinics or doctors offices or various other places.

Why would not testing keep hospital admissions down?

Calling this a "strategy" seems a tad bit generous

Interesting blog on COVID from an infectious diseases doctor who has worked on Ebola in the past: https://covid19-insights.squarespace.com/ This entry covers potential immunity insights, this stood out to me as potentially good news, or at least better-than-worst-case: The take-home message on Covid19 immunity is pretty clear, and hopeful: while immunity to MERS and SARS coronaviruses may not last decades or be lifelong, immunity to SARS and MERS develops quickly during the acute illness, is robust, and persists for months to years in recovered patients. Covid19 immunity is very likely to be the same. As a result: 1. People who recover from Covid19 infection are likely to have long-term immunity (although we will have to watch closely in people who recover from mild cases of Covid19). 2. An effective Covid19 vaccine that induces neutralizing antibodies should provide long-term protection, although booster shots may be necessary.

It definitely seems like a combo. The raw numbers are almost definitely worse than the 'official' counts (which happens in many or maybe all epidemics as they're underway), but we can still suss out some rough trends from them.

Testing is slowing down substantially. We need to be ramping up if we want to start opening things back up. We're hitting underlying test component resource limits though. There's no easy fix here since we wasted 8-10 weeks doing nothing but insisting this was a hoax. @Dick Allen to your point:

The choice isn't 40-80k additional if we simply give up on quarantine measures and attempt a foolish notion of "just go back to normal." A solid if depressing article. This is really key imo: So much of the talk has been around flattening the curve, and then it's "whew, we flattened the curve. we won!" No. This won't be over until we can vaccinate our way out of it. We can't just do a one-time shelter in place and fix everything. And make no mistake, we're in such a terrible spot because of historically incompetent denial and inaction from the federal government. We had months to prepare that were not just wasted but were used to call the whole thing a hoax.

NYC has added 3,700+ deaths to their COVID totals today. These are not lab-confirmed but likely COVID deaths. They've been seeing big spikes in "coronary events," deaths at home etc. that weren't being officially classified since they didn't get a formal test. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-deaths.html New York City, already a world epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, sharply increased its death toll by more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it. The new figures, released by the city’s Health Department, drove up the number of people killed in New York City to more than 10,000, and appeared to increase the overall United States death count by 17 percent to more than 26,000. [...] The revised death toll renewed focus on shortcomings in testing that have hamstrung city and state officials since the beginning of the outbreak. A limited number of tests have been available, and until now, only deaths where a person had tested positive were counted among those killed by the virus in New York. But for weeks, the Health Department also had been recording additional deaths tied to the virus, according to two people briefed on the matter. Those cases involved people who were presumed to have been infected because of their symptoms and medical history. [..] Epidemiologists who study such events said a complete account would include an analysis of the number of so-called excess deaths caused by the coronavirus, comparing the number of New Yorkers who died of all causes during the outbreak with the number of people who die during the same time period in an average year. Those deaths, not caused by the disease but by other factors, can be connected to the outbreak, epidemiologists said, in part because of the way it overwhelmed the normal health care system. City health officials have been gathering data on “excess deaths” as well, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions at the department. It was not clear when those figures would be released.

Our institutions are failing us when we need them most.

Need to watch for tomorrow's numbers anyway. We've been seeing weekend and Monday dips followed by heavy Tuesday reports. But ultimately we are still far, far short of where we need to be with testing anyway.