Plan B Forum

 
 
School closures.  Businesses shuttered.  Employees forced to work from home, or furloughed indefinitely.  Others, who are still expected to work, being beaten over the head with admonitions to maintain a 'social distance' (six-foot or more separation) and directives to frequently wash one's hands, use tissues to cover one's mouth when coughing or sneezing, and otherwise observe and follow what (to me, anyway) are basic personal hygiene practices.  Grocery stores stripped of literally anything that isn't nailed down.  Cancellation of anything that brings more than three people together — sporting events, public gatherings, family reunions, even church services.  The government issuing declarations of "national emergencies" and issuing conflicting advisories.  Travel curtailed if not outright prohibited.  There's even talk of postponing elections!!

America, if not the world, has come to a sputtering, clanking halt as literally everything that we take for normal in our modern life is turned topsy-turvy due to a virus that sounds more like a slang name for the effects one might experience from overindulging in a popular Mexican beer ('my buddies and I had the Corona virus and were barfing all Sunday morning because we drank up an entire half-barrel at the beach party on Saturday').  Is it just me, or does it seem like we have over-reacted to something that we frankly don't know that much about?

The historic records are clear.  There have been other pandemics and epidemics in history — the Black Plague, smallpox, the Spanish flu pandemic of the early 1900s, tuberculosis, the polio crisis (also in the early 20th century), AIDS.  But even going back to Biblical days, even taking into account the exile/expulsion of those suffering from leprosy, there has never in human history been such ado over a disease about which — I repeat — we seem to know so very little about.

Let's take the AIDS epidemic. Most of us are old enough to remember when this disease first started making the news.  A sexually-transmitted disease, it was at first a near-certain death sentence as the virus swept through the body, affecting one's own immune system and leaving one vulnerable to the ravages of what would be, under normal circumstance, relatively benign diseases.  But did we shut down the world?  Did everything stop dead in its tracks to prevent the spread of this affliction?  Did someone even say, "Hey, it's sexually transmitted, so maybe we should just stop fucking. That'll stop it!!"  HELL NO!  We were told to practice "safe sex"; avoid certain types of sexual activities, and use a condom.

Same with leprosy or polio victims.  Did the entire world shut down as everyone, not just victims, were isolated and/or quarantined?  That used to be the norm — isolate and treat the victims, and let the rest of the world go about its business as usual.  The answer, of course, is certainly not.  Lepers used to be isolated with sharing the same affliction.  The story of Father Damian and the leper colony of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands is well known, along with the film images of Ben-Hur's mother and sister in the Valley of the Lepers in the 1959 movie.  Sanitariums were built and operated for the isolation, care, and treatment of tuberculosis victims while the rest of the (uninfected) world went on around them.  But it is only COVID-19 that has caused us to hide ourselves, to shelter in place, as if the virus were the Old Testament Angel of God walking the earth and striking down every first-born male of Egypt.  About the only thing we haven't done is smear the blood of a sacrificial lamb on our doorposts to ward off the terror — and I'm sure it won't be long before someone suggests it!

My feeling is this.  We have a new virus on our hands.  The human body has faced viruses in the past, and will face new strains of viruses in the future.  Many people will come into contact with it.  It will adversely affect some of them; it may even kill them (and I've got news for you — certain people are vulnerable and can still die of 'normal' strains of influenza or other 'common' diseases as well).  But many others will merely suffer some minor inconvenience until their body can produce, on its own, antibodies to the virus.  And, of course, as happened with polio, with tuberculosis, with measles, and with just about every other disease known to mankind, we will eventually find a safe and reliable vaccine for COVID-19.

And then we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

-"BB"-

What ignorant claptrap. This disease is as virulent and as a murderous as the plague. If you really want to contribute to wiping out a huge chunk of humankind, go ahead and repeat this. Or, you could be part of the community, and part of the solution, stop whining, and stay the fuck at home.

The population as a whole needs to be convinced of the potential result of this virus. Right now most people’s suffering is limited to lack of toilet paper and not being allowed to get drunk with a large group of people. If some day there are people who look back and say we overreacted, that will prove the strategy worked.

This is the ignorance of legends.

Reminds me of all the people who say: remember all the fuss about Y2K? All that crying wolf! All the people who warned us were Chicken Littles!

Of course that dismisses all the work that successfully went into changing the programs that run our lives.

BB, WTF? Your attitude is so cavalier that it's disturbing. Do you really believe what you're posting?

New Jersey is now setting up COVID-19 testing stations. One of the first in Marlton NJ opened up last week. My daughter, a radiologic technologist, voluntarily put herself on the front lines at this location so her hospital wouldn't have to randomly select a group of her coworkers.

Testing kits and PPE are in short supply, and things are getting worse not better. The medical community is really starting to worry about containment.

BB. no one with half a brain cell is taking this outbreak for less than it is -- a pandemic of frightful proportion. Let's hope someone will be able to screen you properly when your temperature starts to spike.

Mini-scare here t'other day. First positive CV19 (2 of 'em) at a school in Bloemfontein - a teacher and a mother as it turned out, altho' early stories said it was a child. The daughter of our pastor co-worker in the township, Johannes Thaele, was ordered - along with 599 others - to go for "testing" Friday. Group testing - a new concept in a closed school and given a ban on gatherings over 100??? No problem, they staggered the tests through the day.

Anyway, since Margaretta and I had been with Thapelo (Johannes' Sotho nickname) for many hours on Thursday, we decided not to risk others' health and stayed home. The "test" is the good old temperature on the forehead screen and all the kids were given a green light (yay!). But their parents were, of course, also told that if any of the kids develop symptoms - like a temperature that they didn't have at 12 noon on Friday - then they need a "real" test. Johannes is not very reassured but the chances are so slim that Mamello is infected that there's a measure of relief.

But it's here. 7 Thursday in the Free State after all had been congratulating themselves that it was only KZN, Gauteng, Western Cape and Mpumalanga that accounted for our 190 odd cases.

See, these are people BB - not ideas.

Joe Guy wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 20, 2020 6:22 am

The population as a whole needs to be convinced of the potential result of this virus. Right now most people’s suffering is limited to lack of toilet paper and not being allowed to get drunk with a large group of people. If some day there are people who look back and say we overreacted, that will prove the strategy worked.

You obviously don’t have (or don’t know anyone with) kids home from school, and trying to be teacher and childcare manager all while trying to do your work at the same time. Or worrying about your parents, some of whom may be in assisted living or nursing home, that are shut down to the outside and so you can’t even check on them in person pf have a face to face conversation with them.


I saw someone posting on social media, on a local community board, that they “Don’t deserve to be punished“ for the bad behavior of others. What a total missing of the issue. No one is being punished. We are all being asked to stick to social distancing for very specific reasons. Tropes like the one posted to start this thread only reinforce that ignorance (not to mention lack of empathy).

Guinevere wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 21, 2020 7:22 am

You obviously don’t have (or don’t know anyone with) kids home from school, and trying to be teacher and childcare manager all while trying to do your work at the same time. Or worrying about your parents, some of whom may be in assisted living or nursing home, that are shut down to the outside and so you can’t even check on them in person pf have a face to face conversation with them.........

You obviously don't know shit about me so don't throw that holier than thou crap at me. My point was clear. You missed it.

Not being holier than thou Joe, this quote:

Right now most people’s suffering is limited to lack of toilet paper and not being allowed to get drunk with a large group of people.

just isn't accurate.

But yes, I get that you seem to agree the restrictions are a good thing.

I am now being forced to work my job as a customer service rep from home.  However, there are still certain things that I am not authorized to do, such as cancel a lease on a cell phone so a person can pay it off and then unlock it or cancel multiple lines on an account; at least in the call center I had a supervisor/team leader on hand who could do that so that the customer was only inconvenienced for a few minutes rather than a few hours up to an entire day or so.  Then there are the people who have an over-endowed sense of entitlement and demand to speak to a supervisor — a supervisor who is nowhere around now — no matter what I am or am not able to do.  So while I am still able to do most of my job, there are some things that I will certainly fall short on.  Fortunately my employer recognizes this but there is a certain sort of customer who will not; to them I will be 'untrained', 'uncaring', 'incompetent', or worse, and will likely incur the scorn, disdain, and even wrath of the customer ... all because of these effin' overblown, over-reaching restrictions over this pea-pickin' virus.

Maybe I am being cavalier as RayThom has accused me.  Maybe I do not ooze empathy from every pore (Guinevere's assessment).  Maybe I'm not trying to preserve and extend every last (human) life on the planet.  Maybe I'm just being realistic and accepting the fact that there is something out there, like many of the diseases I mentioned in my original post, that people can and will contract, and that certain vulnerable individuals could and will die from — just like people die of pneumonia or the odd case of polio, smallpox, tuberculosis, or complications from vaping.

And here's another point to ponder.... we've declared a planetary emergency over a virus that has, depending on what expert you choose to believe, claimed roughly 13,000 lives out of 307,000 documented and confirmed cases (and remember, that's just the number of documented and confirmed cases ... God alone knows how many people actually have or had the virus without being confirmed).  According to this same source, almost 95,000 people have recovered.  Now according to my old mathematics lessons, 13,000 out of 307,000 is about 4%; while 95000 out of that same 307000 is 31%.

Now, assuming that every last person in the entire mother-loving world becomes infected with COVID-19, and the 4% fatality rate to date holds true, that means that we MIGHT see a total death toll of 301 million — ACROSS THE ENTIRE PLANET!!  Now while this is a significant number, it pales in comparison to the fact that 7.2 BILLION (with a 'B') people would survive.  And according to what I learned about viruses in college biology, viruses are countered by antibodies produced by the body's own immune system.  So while a host is vulnerable to a virus at its onset, as the virus runs its course the body develops its own microscopic army of defensive antibodies which eventually beat back the intruder.  And from that point on, the body has immunity.  That's why if you got a flu shot (vaccine) against the H1N1 strain of flu back in 2009 you didn't have to get another one in 2010 or 2011, and why the H1N1 variant is now merely a footnote to history.

I won't even bother going into the concept of 'herd immunity'.  Check it out for yourself if you're interested.

Incidentally, since I brought up the H1N1 epidemic, you might be interested in knowing this.  According to the CDC, this particular strain of influenza resulted in 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million); 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719); and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States during the time period from April 12 2009 to April 10 2010.  That's a pretty large set of numbers too — but my point is we didn't roll out these Draconian directives that we are all, like it or not, being forced to live under back then.  What makes this one different?

And as for the directives?  There's an old saying that once its been released one cannot put the genie back into the bottle — and baby, we've uncorked one powerful bastard this time.  We've set a precedent with these actions these past few weeks.  What's going to happen the next time some new disease, something really ghastly, pops up?

And don't forget all the 'vital' services that still must be provided — health care, public safety (police and fire protection), the transportation industry, food production and distribution (including restaurants where the staff is still cooking meals which are now available only for take-out), and of course the delivery services like UPS, the US mail, Uber Eats, and the Domino's guy. They're not allowed to 'shelter in place' — at least, not when we want that package, that government check, or that pizza!

So again, fuck the directives and the idea that if everybody self-isolates in their little virus shelters we will all emerge unscathed.  We also believed back in the 1960s that if we all listened for the air-raid sirens, tuned in to CONELRAD, and huddled in government-sponsored fallout shelters (or hid underneath our school desks — remember the 'duck-and-cover' drills?) we would be protected from the nuclear war that everyone was sure was just around the corner.  Fortunately the missiles never flew and the bombs never fell, but we now know that this 'official survival strategy' was little more than governmental bullshit.  And I seriously believe that what we are experiencing now is another round of the same thing.  It's just coming out of a different bull is all.

-"BB"-

The so-called "Spanish Flu" (the first known case was actually recorded in Kansas) of 1918-19—which killed more Americans than WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam combined—had a case-fatality rate of ~2.5%, which is roughly the same as the estimated 2.3% case-fatality rate I've seen for COVID-19. If that estimate proves accurate (it may be low) and if everybody in the US gets infected (that's probably high) that works out to over 7.5 million extra deaths in the US alone. Sure, that would still leave over 300 million alive here (which might or might not include me or you, but which probably won't include all our friends, relatives, and acquaintances) but personally I think that 7.5 million dead people is an appallingly large number. I get it that you (like Stalin) might feel that A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic...but this here liberal just can't seem to get his bleeding heart to agree.

BTW...here's an interesting article about the 1918 pandemic vis-à-vis the current one:

What 1918 Spanish Flu Death Toll Tells Us About COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic

Oh, and to briefly address one of your questions—"What makes this one different?": this virus is not related to *ANY* that we've previously experienced; we just don't know enough (i.e., not much at all) to be able to predict much of anything, and we *WON'T* know until we're able to significantly ramp up testing.

Econoline wrote:I get it that you (like Stalin) might feel that A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic...

Great quotation.  I just wish it had been someone other than a dictatorial despot like Stalin who had said it.  But along that same vein
     ● How many people lose their lives on the highways every year?
     ● How many people are killed annually in gun violence?
     ● In one year, how many people die from cancer caused by smoking?

But we haven't banned automobiles or guns or cigarettes.  Restricted them to some degree, sure, but an outright ban?  We tried that with alcohol, and we all know how "the great social and economic experiment," as Herbert Hoover once described it, turned out.

-"BB"-

You really aren't getting the point.

The fatality rate of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was 0.03%.

The fatality rate of COVID-19 is over 3%, and it is much more virulent (spreads easier and faster).

This isn't the flu. This is a SARS virus. Remember the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak? 9.6% fatality rate... but less than 8100 total cases with 774 deaths. It was contained... this one isn't.

The point of shutting things down is to reduce the fatality rate by slowing the progress. It will peak either way... but if that peak happens so fast and so high that it totally overwhelms ERs and ICUs then the death rate climbs, and secondary deaths (from other causes) due to the lack of hospital beds will spike as well.

If you're OK with killing off large numbers of elderly and lung-compromised people because you're inconvenienced, well, yeah, you're a pretty pathetic excuse for a human. But hey, maybe that solves the Social Security insolvency issue by killing off retired baby boomers early. (that's sarcasm, in case you don't notice).

Bicycle Bill wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 22, 2020 5:41 am

Econoline wrote:I get it that you (like Stalin) might feel that A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic...

Great quotation.  I just wish it had been someone other than a dictatorial despot like Stalin who had said it.  But along that same vein
     ● How many people lose their lives on the highways every year?
     ● How many people are killed annually in gun violence?
     ● In one year, how many people die from cancer caused by smoking?

Quick answer: less than 7.5 million; less than 1 million.

More detailed answer: ~38,800; ~33,000; ~343,000

Bicycle Bill wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 22, 2020 5:41 am

     ● How many people lose their lives on the highways every year?
     ● How many people are killed annually in gun violence?
     ● In one year, how many people die from cancer caused by smoking?

You do understand that those are human "activities" (or perhaps, choices depending on which end of the gun one is standing) and not an airborne/contact pathogen? And that these are not in "the same vein" (some sort of pun?)

Uh no, BB, my assessment has nothing to do with empathy. You’re being just plain ignorant. And in your ignorance you are endangering your life, and the lives of others.

Thanks for playing though.

As for vital services, my municipal clients are doing everything they can to provide services to their residents, while still protecting their employees and their residents by all sorts of modifications that I’m not going to go into here. It is not easy, and it is not guaranteed to be successful (in protecting their health), but that’s one of the costs of public service. I’m still working too (7 days a week pretty much all of March), but doing it from home.

he estimated 2.3% case-fatality rate I've seen for COVID-19. If that estimate proves accurate (it may be low)

It may also be high...

We just won't know until some decent amount of testing has been done...

But even at 1%, it would be ten times the mortality rate for the regular flu, and assuming widespread infection, which given how easily this virus is transmitted is a pretty safe assumption. The only question is whether or not you slow down the pace of infection to the point that it doesn't overwhelm the medical resources available ...(as is happening in Northern Italy, where yesterday 798 people died from the virus..following days where over 400 and then over 600 people were killed)

That's what the whole lock down and social distancing thing is about (and as I watch the numbers for Northern California, it looks like this approach is definitely having a positive impact)

but this here liberal just can't seem to get his bleeding heart to agree.

Neither can this hard-ass Reagan conservative...

Bill, I find your apparent callousness and indifference at the prospect of millions of deaths from this modern day plague frankly appalling...It seems like a level of misanthropy worthy of well, Donald Trump...

Or maybe Rand Paul...