Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)

[Bob Kuczewski]

Take a comedy break. This is better if you listen first without watching. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/sbPQCJtnT6o

[Bob Kuczewski]

On a more serious note, Bill Cummings posted this video on another topic, but it fits here as well.

https://youtu.be/l2ZRT-gWZ8M

[Bob Kuczewski]

A little perspective ...

I've been keeping up with COVID19 through a number of sources including this web site:

     https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus

I like that site because it shows what I believe is the most important metric - deaths per million of population. If you go there, you'll find that you can sort the list by clicking the column heading "Deaths/1M pop". Here's what that looks like this morning:

Here's a zoom into the top of that list:

It's important to look at those numbers and really think about what they mean.

The first on that list is "San Marino" with 619 deaths per million people. That's the absolute worst case that we've seen on the planet. Six hundred and nineteen out of one million. And that's an extreme outlier because it's such a small sample (about 35,000 inhabitants).

The second worst percentage of deaths is Italy with 151 deaths per million people. That's 151 deaths per million since the start of this outbreak. Of course any deaths are horrible for those involved, but 151 out of a million isn't much different from your odds of getting rich in the lottery.

And those are the worst cases of either terrible mismanagement and/or really bad luck. For the United States and most of the world, there have been only 3 to 5 deaths per million people during the entire course of this pandemic.

My point is that we should not panic. I do feel that the draconian assaults on our liberties and our economy have been out of proportion to the actual threat. I don't fault people for being cautious, and it is better to be safe than sorry. But as we're beginning to get a better perspective on the threat, we should begin backing off on these drastic measures.

[brianscharp]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opin ... tages.html
Opinion
It’s Too Late to Avoid Disaster, but There Are Still Things We Can Do
Our leaders need to speak some hard truths and then develop a strategy to prevent the worst.

Of all the resources lacking in the Covid-19 pandemic, the one most desperately needed in the United States is a unified national strategy, as well as the confident, coherent and consistent leadership to see it carried out. The country cannot go from one mixed-message news briefing to the next, and from tweet to tweet, to define policy priorities. It needs a science-based plan that looks to the future rather than merely reacting to latest turn in the crisis.

Let’s get one thing straight: From an epidemiological perspective, the current debate, which pits human life against long-term economics, presents a false choice. Just as a return to even a new normal is unthinkable for the foreseeable future — and well past Easter, Mr. Trump — a complete shutdown and shelter-in-place strategy cannot last for months. There are just too many essential workers in our intertwined lives beyond the health care field — sanitation workers; grocery clerks, and food handlers, preparers and deliverers; elevator mechanics; postal workers — who must be out and about if society is to continue to function.

A middle-ground approach is the only realistic one — and defining what that looks like means doing our best to keep all such workers safe. It also means leadership. Above all, it means being realistic about what is possible and what is not, and communicating that clearly to the American public.

When leaders tell the truth about even near-desperate situations, when they lay out a clear and understandable vision, the public might remain frightened, but it will act rationally and actively participate in the preservation of its safety and security.

Our leaders need to begin by stating a number of hard truths about our situation. The first is that no matter what we do at this stage, numerous hospitals in the United States will be overrun. Many people, including health care workers, will get sick and some will die. And the economy will tank. It’s too late to change any of this now.

In three to four weeks, there will be a major shortage of chemical reagents for coronavirus testing, the result of limited production capacity, compounded by the collapse of global supply chains when the epidemic closed down manufacturing in China for weeks.

The second hard truth is that at this stage, any public health response that counts on widespread testing in the United States is doomed to fail. No one planned on the whole world experiencing a health conflagration of this magnitude at once, with the need to test many millions of people at the same time. Political leaders and talking heads should stop proffering the widespread-testing option; it simply won’t be available.

Much better, instead, to immediately gear up for epidemic intelligence, based on techniques used for many decades. Among those is so-called illness surveillance, in which epidemiologists survey a sample of doctors’ offices in a given geographic region each day to learn how many patients sought care for illnesses with symptoms of fever, cough and muscle aches. The increasing or decreasing occurrence of patients with these symptoms provides a reliable estimate of influenza activity during the winter months — or now, the incidence of Covid-19.

A third hard truth is that shortages of personal protective equipment — particularly N-95 masks — for health care workers will only get worse in the United States as global need continues to rise precipitously. There is no point holding out the false hope that the Defense Production Act will save the residents of the United States. Not enough manufacturing activities can be converted to produce masks in a matter of weeks. You can’t turn engine-making machinery into an N-95 respirator assembly line just because you want to.

For example, even as 3M was producing at 100 percent of its capacity (35 million N-95 masks a month), a single hospital in New York City used up more than two million masks in February, before the surge in Covid-19 cases there. And new production won’t happen for many months.

If you can’t make nearly enough masks to meet the need, then you must conserve the masks you can make. Unfortunately, some hospitals in the United States are not employing science-based methods for conserving these invaluable lifesaving masks.

Making ventilators — machines that breathe for patients who cannot effectively do so on their own — poses an even more formidable challenge. For example, a Medtronic ventilator has about 1,500 parts, supplied by 14 separate countries. More machines might, at best, be manufactured by the hundreds a month — but not by the thousands, as is needed right now.

It is precisely in the face of such hard truths that a national strategy and leadership are crucial. Otherwise, hospitals, governors and politicians will only vie against one another in the reasonable service of their own constituencies.

“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Mr. Trump said on a recent conference call with governors. “We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

This is exactly the wrong message. The White House must take charge, keeping track of national inventory, purchasing the precious resources and distributing them where they are most needed at the moment. As Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, has suggested, ventilators could then be redistributed as outbreak hot spots shift around the country.

More than anything, what the United States needs right now is for the president to undertake an intellectual Manhattan Project: gather the best minds in public health, medicine, medical ethics, catastrophe preparedness and response; political leadership; and private-sector manufacturing and the pharmaceutical industry.

It took nearly three years to develop the atomic bomb. The effort against Covid-19 will need to be bear fruit within days — and come up with a comprehensive but realistic blueprint for getting America through the next 12 to 18 months, or however long it takes for a vaccine to become widely available or herd immunity to take hold in the population. Once a plan has been devised, the president will have to dispense with any happy talk and instead actually convey what the experts are telling him. He will have to define the new normal for a frightened nation that is looking for facts, direction and a common purpose.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Just the facts:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus

COVID19_20200328_14_Deaths_per_Million.png (122.28 KiB) Viewed 2795 times

[Bill Cummings]

Self sufficiency for me was when I lived in Minnesota 23 years ago.
Mostly it was at my dad’s direction that I had cases of canned food
on shelves in the basement. Enough to last a family of four an entire
year. When the natural gas company came to town people were giving
away fuel tanks (265 gal) and CRANE fuel oil furnace guns of which I
collected 3 for spares. I also had three electric stack controls. I had two
oil tanks in my basement. Both were full (530 gal), topped up in July
when #2 fuel oil was the cheapest. With all the oil plus a cord of wood
for the wood stove in the basement we could make it all winter without
ordering fuel oil. If we lost electricity I could gravity oil feed the wood
stove. The kitchen stove was LP gas. We could heat water with the wood
stove keeping the water heater water hot. (Electric otherwise.)
Although I’m not as self sufficient as 23 years ago lately I’m thinking
I’ve got to fix that.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Self sufficiency ... Enough to last a family of four an entire year.

Aha!!!

So YOU'RE THE ONE buying out all the toilet paper!!

Panic_at_Walmart.png (160.76 KiB) Viewed 2786 times

[Bob Kuczewski]

Some additional perspective from Wikipedia:

Year	U.S. Traffic Deaths	Per Million of Population
1997	42,013	156.9
1998	41,501	153.6
1999	41,717	153.0
2000	41,945	148.6
2001	42,196	147.9
2002	43,005	149.3
2003	42,884	147.5
2004	42,836	145.9
2005	43,510	146.7
2006	42,708	142.7
2007	41,259	137.0
2008	37,423	123.2
2009	33,883	110.5
2010	32,999	106.7
2011	32,479	104.2
2012	33,782	107.5
2013	32,893	104.0
2014	32,744	102.8
2015	35,485	110.6
2016	37,806	115.9
2017	37,133	114.0
2018	36,560	111.8

Year	U.S. COVID-19 Deaths	Per Million of Population
2020	2,231	7

Now that's not to say that thousands of deaths per year aren't important. They are important. But every year we choose to operate our highways knowing that about 35,000 people will die. We don't do that because we want people to die. We do that because we want people to live.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Congressman_Massie.png (300.64 KiB) Viewed 2770 times

"I Came Here To Make Sure Our Republic Doesn't Die By Unanimous Consent In An Empty Chamber"
RealClearPolitics 2 days ago

The stimulus package that just passed is the biggest wealth transfer from common folks to the super-rich (Wall Street and bankers) in the history of mankind. Done in the name of a virus with $1200 checks as the cheese in the trap. This will be obvious in short order.
Twitter · 8 hours ago

Massie has been described as a libertarian Republican and is associated with the House Liberty Caucus of Tea Party Republicans.

Thomas Massie was born in Huntington, West Virginia. He grew up in Vanceburg, Kentucky. He met his wife Rhonda in high school in Vanceburg. His father was a beer distributor.

Massie earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and a master of science degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thomas participated in the MIT Solar Car Club, which took second place behind a Swiss team in the Solar and Electric 500 at the Phoenix International Raceway in 1991. At the time, the team set several world records including a lap speed in excess of 62 mph (99 kmph), and straight-away speeds in excess of 70 mph (112 kmph).

In 1992, Massie won MIT's then-named 2.70 ("Introduction to Design and Manufacturing", now named 2.007) Design Competition. MIT professor Woodie Flowers, who pioneered the 2.70 contest, mentioned that Massie watched this contest on television in seventh grade and wanted to come to MIT to win this contest.

In 1993, at MIT, Massie and his wife started a company called SensAble Devices Inc. Massie completed his Bachelor's degree in the same year and wrote his Bachelor's thesis, Design of a three-degree of Freedom force-reflecting haptic interface. Massie was the winner in 1995 of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventors, and the $10,000 David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Grand Prize in the sixth annual MIT $10K Entrepreneurial Business Plan Competition. The company was re-incorporated as SensAble Technologies, Inc., in 1996 after partner Bill Aulet joined the company. They raised $32 million of venture capital, had 24 different patents, and 70 other employees.

Also in 1996, Massie completed his Master's degree (SM) and his master's thesis was titled Initial haptic explorations with the phantom : virtual touch through point interaction.

Massie sold the company, and he and his wife returned to their hometown in Lewis County.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington:
https://archive.org/details/MrSmithGoes ... 939480x360

[Bill Cummings]

survivor interview: Mrs. Edna Register Boone of 1918 influenza.
https://youtu.be/7k20VFZeLKY