'worst of the pandemic' ahead in US with no apparent strategy, experts say | Hacker News Reader

'worst of the pandemic' ahead in US with no apparent strategy, experts say

theguardian.com

18 pointsadamsea13 comments

I fully expect to see another economic dip within the next 2-4 months. We've learned nothing from the previous corona wave and this winter is only going to exacerbate it due to everyone staying inside.

The Federal Reserve is participating in QE∞, so they'll never allow any real crash.

Especially since they're now buying corporate debt like the house of cards economy in Japan.

The virus came at a horrible time. The presidential election has politicized the response and numbers and media to a disturbing degree.

It is likely that state-by-state numbers are manipulated/suppressed by any of a dozen possible actors at various levels of government. Hopefully now that the major election is done, we can get numbers that we can trust.

The explosion has been massive, almost 25% increase week on week. Is this all traceable to the beginning of school? That doesn't line up with what I know about incubation time. Is it the rallies?

Well at least now we know there will be a plan in 2 months, as opposed going into the 'worst of the pandemic' knowing there would continue to be no plan in 2 months.

The strategy (in the US and worldwide) seems pretty apparent to me:

individuals: wear masks, wash your hands, keep your distance, stay quarantined if you are sick, protect vulnerable people

businesses: post and follow public health regulations, reduce density, improve ventilation

public health agencies: test as much as possible, trace contacts when possible, try to develop and deploy a vaccine

The US is not following or promoting any of them.

At the individual level the whole idea of wearing masks is politicized.

At the business level, businesses (and their employees) who should be reducing capacity based on regulations, for example, are not doing so because there is no government support.

At the public health level maany states are still engaged in keeping the numbers down as opposed to finding everyone.

>stay quarantined if you are sick

Many jobs don't have sick days, they just have days you're not paid and, if the boss is nice, you still have a job afterwards. These workers cannot do the right thing without taking a hard hit.

This isn't the only snag those very sensible measures hit in our economic system. We really need to just hand individuals money a few more times and help businesses cover upkeep. The $1200 check early on was a great idea. No complex applications, no oversight of how banks handle loans, no unexpectedly unused piles of cash, no need to negotiate for months about what concerns should be covered and how. Money goes out, people spend it as needed, keep an eye on the budgets of critical things (hospitals, local governments) to plug holes if not enough of the cash flows to them. Maybe reinstate the paycheck protection program and make sure nobody worries about paying it back. Done. And it's not going to be done beyond a year, so there's little reason for landlords to jack up rent and vacuum the cash.

This is a short term crisis, so we just need to use a crutch until we can run again.

At what point will Joe Biden work to calm the American people by telling them that Cornavirus has a 0.13% IFR [1] and that it has T-Cell immunity like all other viruses? [2]

Will Joe work to calm the nation about Cornavirus?

Will Joe "keep us safe" or will he calm the nation by telling the numbers behind Coronavirus?

[1] - Oct 05 WHO announces 750m cases and was at 1m deaths that day worldwide. 750m / 1m = 0.13%

[2] - In undergrad / 101 college classes they teach about T-Cell immunity. When your body gets and beats a virus the T-Cells remember that virus in case you get it again. If the virus comes back the T-Cells will create new anti-bodies. This happens for virtually all viruses that humans come in contact with including Covid.

Death is not the only bad thing that can happen. Getting so sick your doctor admits you to a hospital. Permanently Losing lung capacity or your sense of smell. The death rate zooms up when the virus runs free and medical services are overwhelmed.

Got a link for [1]? I'm looking at https://covid19.who.int/table, and it says there are 49,578,590 cumulative cases worldwide and 1,245,717 deaths. Which gives a case fatality ratio of 2.5%. Of course, to get the true IFR, we'd have to account for unreported cases and the last between infection and death (a really big deal for a rapidly communicable disease with an exponentially growing incidence rate).

So, it's actually Plasma cells that make antibodies. Plasma cells can differentiate from Memory B cells. But, B cells can be activated by T-Cells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_cell

I'm being pedantic because I think it's super interesting, not because any normal person should care about this.

You honestly think "It's OK, you only stand a one-in-a-thousand chance of dying" is a good way to calm people?

For those interested in more realistic and relevant numbers, this is the most comprehensive COVID19 age-stratified IFR analysis I know of: https://github.com/mbevand/covid19-age-stratified-ifr

For a bit more color on why global single number IFRs make little sense, LSHTM epidemiologist Adam Kucharski has a recent thread: https://twitter.com/adamjkucharski/status/132318304125527654...

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