There are some pretty shocking worst-case estimates of what the coronavirus can do in America. The New York Times reports that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected a nightmare scenario in which 217 million people in this country are infected and 1.7 million die. But that was predicated, in part, on people doing essentially nothing to stop the spread of the disease.
Other specialists have produced predictions based on what they think is most likely to happen.
Dr. [James] Lawler [an infectious diseases specialist and public health expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center] recently presented his own “best guess” projections to American hospital and health system executives at a private webinar convened by the American Hospital Association. He estimated that some 96 million people in the U.S. would be infected. Five out of every hundred would need hospitalization, which would mean close to five million hospital admissions, nearly two million of those patients requiring intensive care and about half of those needing the support of ventilators.
Dr. Lawler’s calculations suggested 480,000 deaths, which he said was conservative.
If that’s the conservative estimate, we’re in pretty big trouble. So, why is President Trump refusing to declare a national emergency? After all, he declared one “last February to divert billions that had been appropriated for the military to fund construction of his wall along the southern border.”
Why is Trump refusing to allow Medicaid to expand what they’re willing to cover?
Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.
In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs.
But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.
Why is Senate Majority Leader lying about what is in the House’s emergency coronavirus bill and refusing to support it?
The answer appears to be that ego and ideological rigidity are blinding the Republicans in charge of our country. Trump doesn’t want to admit that he blundered badly by not taking the crisis seriously, and McConnell just opposes things like unemployment insurance, paid time off, and Medicaid because he always takes the side of employers and never of employees.
In this case, however, they’re simply getting people killed unnecessarily. If folks don’t take off work when they’re sick, they’ll spread the virus around. To give an example of what this can mean, the person referred to as Patient 31 in South Korea singlehandedly infected thousands of people. How much cheaper is it to pay sick people not to leave their house?
Little things can have enormous consequences at a time like this, which is precisely why it’s such a disaster to have Trump and McConnell crafting the policy. In truth, neither of them are offering anything constructive. They’re just standing in the way of the folks who are trying to protect the public.
To be clear, now that the Trump administration has blown any chance of containing the spread of the virus (by actively impeding efforts for the last two months) so that the US will almost certainly have a full-blown epidemic with at least 500,000 deaths, Trump and Republican senators are continuing their campaign of obstruction which will result in *additional* deaths.
I still see so many people, largely the Fox News crowd, making fun of the small numbers here in our State, and comparing it to the flu. The Ohio Department of Health Director, Amy Acton, conservatively estimated in the news conference yesterday with Governor Mike Dewine that there are likely more than 100,000 people currently infected in the state. That sent the Fox News crowd ballistic, saying she was just pulling numbers out of her ass to fan the flames of hysteria. But we are going to quickly find out what reality actually is. In the next 2-3 weeks we will see what the numbers are. Serious measures are being taken here, and for the most part it seems everyone is viewing them as necessary and prudent.
Anything they do is too late, and not by a little bit. By months.
This is going to be extremely bad in the US. Buckle up everyone, and stay safe.
I live in Wisconsin. Other than toilet paper disappearing off the shelves, nothing has really manifested here yet. I felt a little guilty going to the gym today. And what did I see? The usual group of old guys, standing around talking about the stock market. I expected these guys too be at home. They’ve got more to worry about than the stock market.
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We are so screwed. The information coming out that testing was delayed for political advantage should spark another impeachment, if not a full blown criminal investigation. Being willing to let many hundreds of thousands of Americans die for a reelection campaign is beyond words in its appalling callousness.
My hot take, that probably won’t be popular, but oh well.
This virus is deadly if you’re elderly and/or immunocompromised. If you don’t have an already existing respiratory problem, and you aren’t over 60, it’s essentially a cold.
My theory is that this virus has already been hitting the world’s population since June/July/August, and it’s just now that it’s starting to hit vulnerable populations as more and more people spend more time indoors in the northern hemispheres because of the colder weather.
We can’t quarantine away the common cold, and we won’t quarantine away this more-bad cold.
In fact, the very reason this “pandemic” is so prolific, is because unless you’re already vulnerable to an upper respiratory infection going lower and causing serious problems, it isn’t really a threat. It spreads, not just because it is symptom-less for 14 days, but because it isn’t really that bad.
Yes, congestion and cough and fever is uncomfortable, but if you aren’t at risk for it turning into a lower respiratory disease, i.e. pneumonia or bronchitis, it’s just a cold, albeit a more-bad cold.
Or: the common cold isn’t reported on the local or national news, otherwise it’d look eerily similar to this “pandemic”.
FWIW: I’m a RN who works in an Atlanta city hospital. I’ve swabbed people for COVID-19. Y’all are trying to avoid it, I get paid to walk into the isolation room to treat people who may have it.
The numbers of people infected are probably logarithmically higher than reported, most likely because –
A) very few people are tested for it (mostly people with lower respiratory issues/or rich fucks who can buy better healthcare than you, or the doctors and I on the front line)
and
B) most of the people who are going to test positive for this, have already had this cold, and it was just a cold they shrugged off already.
Vote this comment down accordingly.
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