. . . those who still maintain that the coronavirus pandemic is overblown, that it’s no worse than the flu, that the authorities are overreacting and using the pandemic as an excuse to take away our civil liberties . . . sorry, but you’re wrong.
This is the reality of the coronavirus in full swing, in Bergamo in Italy. Watch for yourselves.
Coming soon to a hospital near you – perhaps with you and your family in starring roles – if we don’t shut down social contact and halt the spread of this disease.
Here in the US there’s every reason to think our experience could be far worse than China’s without immediate action. It is not confined to just one city; we have large outbreaks on both coasts and more popping up everywhere. All 50 states now have cases. Worse, we are reacting much later than China did. I am convinced that a rigorous national lockdown and social distancing is the only way to stop this from reaching epically tragic proportions. Yes, it will have a huge economic cost. We just have to collectively pay it. The alternatives are worse.
He’s not joking. Neither is Aesop, who’s already on the front lines of the US health care crisis. (Note: doctors and nurses currently account for over 8% of coronavirus cases in Italy. How long will it take until we reach, or surpass, that proportion in this country?)
We need to listen to other countries, learn from their bitter, hard-won experience, and act accordingly.
Peter
Not pretty by any means… Prayers for the families of those who have been lost.
old people die all the time. Sorry.
Look at the graphs. It isn't the same rate of transmission, nor the rates of death everywhere.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/why-such-a-large-difference-in-fatality-rates.html
Some folks like to only go on :estimates" and panic using the higher numbers.
I may be wrong, I Really hope you (and Aesop) are.
Either way, the rates are's as high as predicted, even in China.
Fearmongering doesn't help though.
One thing people tend to gloss over: that "huge economic cost" can involve Famine, and War, and millions of deaths.
Disrupt the supply chains badly enough, and the cities don't get fed. I don't for a minute trust the politicians in charge of statewide shutdowns to manage necessary exemptions properly.
@Bruce,
Risking the host's ire, you're a blisteringly stupid f**k.
If that hospital is anything to go by, there's no other healthcare available.
Not for car accidents. Not for appendicitis. Not for seizures.
Not for heart attacks, strokes, diabetes complications, COPD, asthma.
I've admitted people with appendicitis from age 5 to 85.
People have strokes in their 30s and 40s.
They have hypertension in their 20s and 30s.
They have asthma and diabetes in their teens down to pre-adolescence.
Did you mean those "old" people?
8, 10, 12 years old?
And you seriously think this will be "just" old people?!?
Like I said, you're a blisteringly stupid f**k.
And you're also a waste of skin, and an oxygen thief, and those are your good qualities. You thought you were being flip, but you're really just a sociopathic useless eater, lacking both humanity, and any reason to be, except that it's not legal to hunt you down and shoot you on sight. May God have mercy on you, because no one else should.
@Peter,
Sorry/not sorry for the tantrum, but some people's kids…
Posted those vids myself.
Thanks for this. Sort of.
Best wishes.
Before the SKY news team talked over the doctor @1.20, he was saying 'we've got fifteen patients'.
And, and I'm sorry to say this, all of them look to be 'advanced in years'.
Which is where you'd expect EoL infections to strike. ( And I speak as a 59 yo ).
He also says, it's more like pneumonia. Which is interesting to me because I took my wife into hospital about five weeks ago and she was diagnosed with pneumonia. Saw the GP on Wednesday, who sent her away with no diagnosis, to Sunday morning taking her into A&E at 2am.
Pleased to say, she's ok, but tired now. And taking full advantage of the Consultants advice to rest as much as possible.
Given the freedom of travel between the West and China, I believe this strain of Covid has been through the population already. I can't believe that on Jan 19, nada! Jan 20 Chinese authorities shut down sixteen of their cities.
Meanwhile, no travel advisories from the Chinese government, no travel ban when they must have known they had a big issue well before Jan 20 and no warnings to Westerners not to travel to affected parts of China.
By the way, the survival rate of someone on a 'ventilator' is about 50% in a normal circumstance.
When you try to save everybody, you save nobody.
Triage exists for a reason.
We have to hold on (some with more discomfort than others, some more financially ruined than others) until a vaccine comes to market. There will be various treatments (malaria drugs, etc.) that may reduce the impact of the symptoms, but it's still a virus that we have no immunity against.
I hope that we can take a pound of flesh from China for bringing this on.
What's your "B" plan, LL?
AIDS is a virus. It has been around for 40 years.
Still no vaccine.
Ebola was around since the 1970s as such.
We only got a working vaccine for that one last year.
I'm good, but I don't have quite 45 years of food and expenses tucked away to hold on until there's a vaccine.
And McChuck, we triage to save the most we can with what we have.
We don't triage to do nothing, and save no one.
Italy's triaging now.
Despite appearances, those people in the video were all in their 50s. The ones 65 and older were told by Italian hospital staff to go home, and "Good luck".
Since we insist on following that model, we'll probably be doing that here soon, too.
Okay, so the virus is real, but the contrived idiotic response is worse than the virus.
Funny that the leftard media attacks Trump daily but were perfectly okay with open borders where someone with a virulent strain of TB could infect many people.
The death rate is extremely low for this virus. Flu will kill more year after year but we don't shutdown the economy.
The death rate is chump change.
If the hospitalization rate is 5%, and 100M people get it, the resultant cases kill all healthcare in the country.
That means no medical care or treatment for ordinary problems.
So the death rate suddenly becomes everyone who needs to see a doctor right now, because slammed, busy, and no chance.
So what's the amended death rate, at that point?