Lucky it's just a mild corona virus

Yes. It's not about what's happening today but about what could happen given what we know. Maximum precautions are necessary and while we're late to the game, it's better late than never.

Only thing I'll add is if there was a 98% chance I would survive a flight, I wouldn't take that flight.

Hey fart, then never fly. Nor drive, or eat, or do anything for that matter. While you are "not" doing so many things, why not stop spreading hysteria like CNN and Co.?

You have an incredible grasp of nuance. Understand domain dependence.

I would never fly if there were a 2% risk of dying. You can honestly say you would?

However I would absolutely have a needed surgery if there were a 2% risk of dying. Why? Different domain.

This is what I mean when I say modernity has made us blind to risk assessment. I see patients all the time with a very real 2% risk of dying in surgery. You can bet your a** they aren't as flippant as some of ya'll. Until your skin is in the game you don't know s***.

And for the love of god, STOP talking about the media hype. Media response is not part of the equation. STOP referring to precautionary measures in the face of novel infectious contagion as "panic" or "hysteria".

Oddly enough this worked for Gunnison Colorado during the Spanish Flu pandemic. The key is to quarantine anyone who tries to enter the community after the community is isolated.

This didn’t work out too well on the Diamond Princess because they couldn’t distinguish between sick and non-sick when the quarantine was enacted.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/gunnison-colorado-the-town-that-dodged-the-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic

Bloomberg, is that you?

fartlekpa wrote:

And for the love of god, STOP talking about the media hype. Media response is not part of the equation. STOP referring to precautionary measures in the face of novel infectious contagion as "panic" or "hysteria".

Yeah. Its becoming a US norm, just as there is a pandemic of attacks on enforcement of the Constitution against the "infectious contagion" of dismantling checks and balances. We certainly wouldn't want to annoy false patriots of the founding principles of our country!

fartlekpa wrote:

And for the love of god, STOP talking about the media hype.

Pay NO attention to the man behind the curtain! LMAO

Don't look now, but the markets are done with this. They heard about the new deaths in Seattle today and didn't miss a beat, kept on gaining! Nobody cares about the doomsaying anymore. You lose!

Best of luck using complex financial markets as a measure for how a pandemic is evolving. You do you.

But if you honestly view this as a "who wins" vs "who loses" you're even more intellectually stunted than I thought. You lose if you get the virus, end up critically ill from it, and/or die from it. That's the metric. Some of us would like very much to prevent that from happening as much as possible and any prediction made about tomorrow is mental masturbation.

To be clear to the non-idiots: I would love for this to be over, but I'm not nearly stupid enough to say that it is.

Again, this is the guy who said "it's over" before most countries were even testing for it (US included) and who seems to willfully not understand the difference between "don't panic" and "don't prepare".

Wigins is the biggest troll on this site since xfit_guy. Pay no extra attention to him.

seattle prattle wrote:

I doubt any government entities would entertain any such thing. You ought to be embarrassed for even suggesting it.

That is very naive of you. Government entities are always looking to get out of paying promised pensions.

In fact, here's a quick history lesson. When the Social Security Bill was passed, the life expectancy was under 60 for men and about 60 for women. In other words, they passed a bill that makes everyone pay into social security with the expectation that very few people will reach "retirement age." There was no way to know in 1935 that advances in medicine would increase life expectancy to where it is today. The same story applies to Medicare.

It's not embarrassing at all to ponder the idea that government entities are looking to get out of paying pensions and early death is certainly a way to get out of it.

If it weren't for the media, WE wouldn't be talking about it.

Wouldn't you? wrote:

Every government must be eyeballing the upside of this - let it spread and cull the elderly, thereby saving vast amounts on state pensions and health/social care, while leaving the economically active generations more or less intact. Wouldn't you?

I don't doubt that some analysts are evaluating events with an eye for economic returns. How many here haven't already thought of how it might be a good time to start a cremation service? Or a a home clean-up service?

It is part of homeland security to figure out what the future might be. But, I don't think they are necessarily attempting "malign neglect" to cull the huge baby boomer bubble...but you never know.

1000 wrote:

In nature, you typically find two types of viruses (there are always exceptions):

(1) Viruses that have a high mortality rate (how many people per 100 the virus kills), but the virus does not infect many people.

For example, Ebola has a mortality rate of about 50%, but it does not infect many people. In the 2014 outbreak of Ebola only about 30,000 people were infected; therefore, Ebola in the 2014 outbreak, killed about 15,000 people.

(2) Viruses that have a low mortality rate, but infect many people.

For example, The Common Cold has a mortality rate of about 0.1%, but can infect millions or billions of people.

If The Common Cold infects one billion people, then it will kill about one million people.

The Common Cold is actually far more deadly than Ebola, SARS, MERS etc. combined because the Common Cold infects so many people.

You are kind of right, but not exactly.

It is not just the mortality rate of a virus like Ebola, it is the speed in which it presents and kills, and the bloody obviousness of having it. (see the pun?)

So it does not get a good chance to re-infect.

HIV-Aids had a high mortality rate too, but took longer, less obvious etc, so more infections, more deaths, even though it was harder to transmit, and retrovirals were crucial to stop it.