Sorry for minimizing things by classifying it as a "public health emergency."....and the proper mask (R 95) offers 5X protection of being unmasked.

Yes Xultaif, I've got good friends in Northern Italy and in the Far East, so I know that the pandemic is real, and given the contagious nature of the virus and global mobility today, it's only a matter of time until America is hit with the same intensity as in Korea or Italy. This might be a once in a lifetime pandemic event, we've never gone through it before, so people will tend to downplay its potential gravity until it hits home.

OaktownBear said:

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Cal88 said:

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Yes Xultaif, I've got good friends in Northern Italy and in the Far East, so I know that the pandemic is real, and given the contagious nature of the virus and global mobility today, it's only a matter of time until America is hit with the same intensity as in Korea or Italy. This might be a once in a lifetime pandemic event, we've never gone through it before, so people will tend to downplay its potential gravity until it hits home.

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I think there is a middle ground between recognizing a significant health crisis and accepting someone pulling a death toll of 100,000,000 out of their butt with no basis other than to compare it to a pandemic of a century ago 35 years before we had a polio vaccine. I'm very worried about coronavirus. I don't find your posts constructive. As near as I can tell you have no expertise and you should leave the predictions and recommendations to people who do. Getting people to panic isn't the best course.

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It's a good thing I had the polio vaccine when I was a kid.

All kidding aside, I'm in agreement with you, Oaktown.

Cal88 said:

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Yes Xultaif, I've got good friends in Northern Italy and in the Far East, so I know that the pandemic is real, and given the contagious nature of the virus and global mobility today, it's only a matter of time until America is hit with the same intensity as in Korea or Italy. This might be a once in a lifetime pandemic event, we've never gone through it before, so people will tend to downplay its potential gravity until it hits home.

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Do you live in Europe or something? How is China the Far East, especially for those of us in California? Yes, I understand that's how it was referred for centuries by the Europeans, but given (1) we know the Earth is round and (2) we (mostly) live in California, shouldn't China be considered the Near West?

It's a pet peeve of mine because referring to China as being in the East threw off my learning the cardinal directions (at least in English). I mean, in California, China's to our west and we're much closer to China than we are to England. So why the heck do people refer to it as the East (or worse, the Far East)? To this day, it still takes me a second or two to figure out if I mean to say East or West, thanks to the inane Eurocentrism employed by generations past.

But I digress, at this point no one knows just how "bad" Covid-19 really is (let alone, will be). China hasn't been transparent with its reporting on the disease. Additionally, the efforts it took to minimize the spread of Covid-19 smacked of closing the barn doors after the horses escaped. Until the actual transmission rate and fatality rate are really known, we won't know if this is a once-in-a-century-pandemic virus or if it's on par with the flu or SARS/MERS.

This isn't to say we shouldn't take steps to prepare for and prevent its spread in the U.S. Rather, we shouldn't be panicking about it (let alone making spurious claims about the estimated death toll in the U.S. absent any data driven analysis).

bearister said:

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Sorry for minimizing things by classifying it as a "public health emergency."....and the proper mask (R 95) offers 5X protection of being unmasked.

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Bearister, I'm not sure we're at the level of "emergency" just yet. If anything, it seems that we should approach with caution and take preventative steps and measures to keep ourselves safe.

Still, given the premature emergency declarations issued by some of the local cities and counties, I guess you're technically correct. I may be mistaken, but IIRC, you don't exactly hold government officials in the highest esteem. This must be a strange alignment for you, then.

Sebastabear said:

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I just want to be clear. The fact that it's 80 degrees at the end of February and hasn't rained one drop in the Bay Area for six weeks since the middle of January is totally normal and not a sign of anything to be concerned about at all, but the coronavirus is the end of human civilization? Am I getting this right? I will now await the posting of the 800 charts prepared by a weather man in the mid-west who is in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry to show how everything is just peachy on the climate side.

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At the risk of wading into the political feeding frenzy, but didn't Trump the Magnificent tell us all that global warming is a hoax invented by China? We have nothing to worry about, then!

(Of course, the foregoing was said with tongue well-embedded in cheek.)

Big C said:

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..Re the OT Board....when people start threads over there that used to start here, it's just no-holds-barred from the original post. Less enjoyable. Less "cyberbears" (.org).

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Hey, haters gonna hate, litigators gonna litigate.

LunchTime said:

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I sent a PM.

I have a very low level of distaste for BB. Not enough to rehash old things in public. He doesnt rate high enough to dislike. But, yeah, he is soft. Like a millennial meme soft.

I poke him sometimes, he pokes me. He seems to get more upset than me, by orders of magnitude.

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Whoa is me! I've got a lot of
work to do just to get this sap
to "dislike" me!

01Bear said:

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Do you live in Europe or something? How is China the Far East, especially for those of us in California? Yes, I understand that's how it was referred for centuries by the Europeans, but given (1) we know the Earth is round and (2) we (mostly) live in California, shouldn't China be considered the Near West?

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So what is the area at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean and around the Persian gulf?

OldenBear said:

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In short, act rationally.

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OK, you're bouncing around BI one day and you notice that the email notice icon has triggered.

"What's this? You say." You decide to click on the icon to see your email. A message is waiting for you from guy who calls himself "Mr. Pick" and it reads:

"I see you love Cal football & have been participating in the Covid-19 thread on FG. Here's my offer - in exchange for making sure Cal wins the Rose Bowl, and you'll have prime tickets on the 50 to see the game in person, you have to agree to come down with Covid-19 while at the game. Won't tell you how severe it will be and what happens to you from catching it.

To accept, rely back with the word "YES." Not Interested, just delete this email."

What would you do?

As for me, "YES." (Am a boomer with T2 diabetes - high risk group).

Cal88 said:

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The epidemic has started to spread outside of China and east Asia, school is cancelled in Milan, Italy, and championship soccer games last week have been played without any spectators. By March most soccer games in Europe will be played with empty stands. All classes in northern Italian universities have been suspended.

I will guess this virus will hit CA and N. America in March, and the maximum impact will be felt by April, with schools cancelled. I think the NCAA BB tourney will be disrupted, if it does go on at all, it will be in empty arenas.

The epidemic will present special challenges in large cities, with the large homeless population and overcrowded prisons that will turn into virtual quarantine wards.

I think the Tokyo Olympics will probably be cancelled or postponed to next Summer.

It's hard to assess the impact on the upcoming Fall football season, but chances are classes and finals will be cancelled this term, and Summer School might be cancelled as well.

This is an unprecedented black swan crisis, the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu. I hope we can weather it with minimum losses. It seems like none of the western governments are taking it with the seriousness it deserves.

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Chicken Little was right.

Cal88 said:

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The epidemic has started to spread outside of China and east Asia, school is cancelled in Milan, Italy, and championship soccer games last week have been played without any spectators. By March most soccer games in Europe will be played with empty stands. All classes in northern Italian universities have been suspended.

I will guess this virus will hit CA and N. America in March, and the maximum impact will be felt by April, with schools cancelled. I think the NCAA BB tourney will be disrupted, if it does go on at all, it will be in empty arenas.

The epidemic will present special challenges in large cities, with the large homeless population and overcrowded prisons that will turn into virtual quarantine wards.

I think the Tokyo Olympics will probably be cancelled or postponed to next Summer.

It's hard to assess the impact on the upcoming Fall football season, but chances are classes and finals will be cancelled this term, and Summer School might be cancelled as well.

This is an unprecedented black swan crisis, the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu. I hope we can weather it with minimum losses. It seems like none of the western governments are taking it with the seriousness it deserves.

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Chicken Little was right.

OskiBear11Math said:

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Big C said:

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Cal88 said:

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What a coincidence: I was just going to suggest, "Let's find out what Bill Gates thinks about the COVID-19 threat!" After all, he was in the right place at the right time and dropped out of Harvard to start a computer software company and is worth fifty or a hundred billion dollars (so he MUST know about everything).

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He has devoted a large part of his fortune and post-Microsoft life to fighting pandemics and diseases.

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It's his lifetime quest to redeem himself from having unleashed the blue screen of death plague on humanity.

First confirmed case in Oregon is in my county. The sick person reportedly visited a grade school in the city next to mine. This is fun.

Big C said:

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Cal88 said:

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What a coincidence: I was just going to suggest, "Let's find out what Bill Gates thinks about the COVID-19 threat!" After all, he was in the right place at the right time and dropped out of Harvard to start a computer software company and is worth fifty or a hundred billion dollars (so he MUST know about everything).

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Nailed it!

TandemBear said:

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bearister said:

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Sorry for minimizing things by classifying it as a "public health emergency."....and the proper mask (R 95) offers 5X protection of being unmasked.

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NPR yesterday interviewed a health care professional who said healthy people shouldn't wear masks. They should be worn by those who are sick. One sick individual can spread billions of virus particles, so a mask is key in that case. That ONE mask on the sick person can inhibit virus transmission to hundreds or more people. Doing the reverse means instead that hundreds of people, more actually, must wear masks. This is how you make a limited resource more effective. In other words, much better to mask 1,000 sick people than struggling and failing (due to shortages) to mask millions of healthy people. The resulting shortages result with unmasked sick people effectively transmitting their bugs.

Plus, this "expert" said mask wearing tends to give the healthy a false sense of security, so they fail to take more important precautions: WASH YOUR HANDS FREQUENTLY!

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I heard the same thing from the public health official for our city who spoke to my Rotary club on Wednesday. She said it is the sick person who needs a mask and that it does protect those who don't have the virus.

Coincidentally I spoke with a friend afterwards who owns a paint supply store. He said he called and tried to order more masks but they were completely out everywhere. His supplier said they come from China ironically and are not being shipped now.

01Bear said:

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Cal88 said:

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Yes Xultaif, I've got good friends in Northern Italy and in the Far East, so I know that the pandemic is real, and given the contagious nature of the virus and global mobility today, it's only a matter of time until America is hit with the same intensity as in Korea or Italy. This might be a once in a lifetime pandemic event, we've never gone through it before, so people will tend to downplay its potential gravity until it hits home.

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Do you live in Europe or something? How is China the Far East, especially for those of us in California? Yes, I understand that's how it was referred for centuries by the Europeans, but given (1) we know the Earth is round and (2) we (mostly) live in California, shouldn't China be considered the Near West?

It's a pet peeve of mine because referring to China as being in the East threw off my learning the cardinal directions (at least in English). I mean, in California, China's to our west and we're much closer to China than we are to England. So why the heck do people refer to it as the East (or worse, the Far East)? To this day, it still takes me a second or two to figure out if I mean to say East or West, thanks to the inane Eurocentrism employed by generations past.

But I digress, at this point no one knows just how "bad" Covid-19 really is (let alone, will be). China hasn't been transparent with its reporting on the disease. Additionally, the efforts it took to minimize the spread of Covid-19 smacked of closing the barn doors after the horses escaped. Until the actual transmission rate and fatality rate are really known, we won't know if this is a once-in-a-century-pandemic virus or if it's on par with the flu or SARS/MERS.

This isn't to say we shouldn't take steps to prepare for and prevent its spread in the U.S. Rather, we shouldn't be panicking about it (let alone making spurious claims about the estimated death toll in the U.S. absent any data driven analysis).

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Sounds like you just need to study more history (far east) rather than geography (west). The world was still flat and much of navigation was based on land wars and shipping routes that followed known coast lines when the far east was a term of art.

Cal88 said:

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01Bear said:

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Cal88 said:

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Yes Xultaif, I've got good friends in Northern Italy and in the Far East, so I know that the pandemic is real, and given the contagious nature of the virus and global mobility today, it's only a matter of time until America is hit with the same intensity as in Korea or Italy. This might be a once in a lifetime pandemic event, we've never gone through it before, so people will tend to downplay its potential gravity until it hits home.

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Do you live in Europe or something? How is China the Far East, especially for those of us in California? Yes, I understand that's how it was referred for centuries by the Europeans, but given (1) we know the Earth is round and (2) we (mostly) live in California, shouldn't China be considered the Near West?

It's a pet peeve of mine because referring to China as being in the East threw off my learning the cardinal directions (at least in English). I mean, in California, China's to our west and we're much closer to China than we are to England. So why the heck do people refer to it as the East (or worse, the Far East)? To this day, it still takes me a second or two to figure out if I mean to say East or West, thanks to the inane Eurocentrism employed by generations past.

But I digress, at this point no one knows just how "bad" Covid-19 really is (let alone, will be). China hasn't been transparent with its reporting on the disease. Additionally, the efforts it took to minimize the spread of Covid-19 smacked of closing the barn doors after the horses escaped. Until the actual transmission rate and fatality rate are really known, we won't know if this is a once-in-a-century-pandemic virus or if it's on par with the flu or SARS/MERS.

This isn't to say we shouldn't take steps to prepare for and prevent its spread in the U.S. Rather, we shouldn't be panicking about it (let alone making spurious claims about the estimated death toll in the U.S. absent any data driven analysis).

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England is actually closer to SF than China, the distance from SF to London is shorter than to Chinese cities. The old world has most of the land mass, 4 continents and historic precedence in setting geographical references. As well the International Dateline cuts off the Pacific and sets the cardinal directions. I guess there is some cultural and historic bias with the Greenwich Meridian set as a reference, but there is also a practical element there given that the Pacific is so huge, acting as a natural geographical separator.

I agree we shouldn't panic but I'm just a bit worried about the social issues in America making the containment of the epidemic more challenging than in Asia or Europe:

-lack of access to healthcare by a significant portion of the population due to lack of coverage or high deductibles
-huge prison population
-large homeless population, and a more physically vulnerable underclass
-"unruly" population that will be hard to quarantine

Maybe one silver lining is that this might spur the cause of universal health care, highlighting the externality cost to the general public of not having everyone covered during a pandemic.

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The healthcare debate taken in the context of a pandemic will prove out that we all will pay for societal health one way or another. If you agree that we will pay for the cost of a healthy society either way, then to think that people shouldn't have medical coverage is just a position that you think some people should die while others live. A very Christian value, apparently. The fact that many of those people will be non-white, would be just racist.

+1. It's an interesting, quick read.

KenBurnski said:

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+1. It's an interesting, quick read.

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Yeah, about a flights worth. I know because I picked it up in an airport and gave it to a friend when I landed.

LunchTime said:

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TheFiatLux said:

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Big C said:

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Cal88 said:

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What a coincidence: I was just going to suggest, "Let's find out what Bill Gates thinks about the COVID-19 threat!" After all, he was in the right place at the right time and dropped out of Harvard to start a computer software company and is worth fifty or a hundred billion dollars (so he MUST know about everything).

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Et tu Big C?

We're now going to diminish the opinion of people like Bill Gates - to what end? Honestly, you don't think he might have some insight into this the rest of us don't? He's dedicated billions of dollars to eradicating diseases, and I don't mind saying this, he's smarter than most of this board combined (would probably have to remove SebastaBear from that equation because his inclusion might even the scales out for us!).

And then of course we diminish... I mean, he was just in the right place at the right time, right? Or maybe he helped create that place and time.

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I read a book called "Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War" about how far DoD research to prevent troops from dying before they can be shot has brought us in medical fields, including this type of problem.

There is a chapter on the resources Gates Foundation puts into DoD to help fund some research. Gates Foundation is funding defense medical research that the government wont fund. In terms of medical research, I would trust Bill Gates over anyone who isnt a director at a research org. That dude may be a CEO and not a virologist, but he has put his executive skills to work in the field in a way that is probably without peer, and certainly has driven outcomes that would justify making public proclamations about health. He is a long way from MSFT.

I would recommend the book. It has everything from flies on your food to transgender surgery advancements.

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I haven't read that book, but I've read others by Mary Roach. She has a wicked sense of humor and I've liked her books a lot. I'll have to pick that one up. On a local note, she's from Oakland.