Coronavirus (political)

[Schneed10]

Nursing home deaths are not the fault of anybody.

Where do the most fragile elderly people go, who can't take care of themselves anymore? Nursing homes.

Who is most susceptible from dying due to COVID-19? The most fragile elderly people who can't take care of themselves anymore.

What did you think would happen to them?

[Buffalo Bob]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Nursing home deaths are not the fault of anybody.

Where do the most fragile elderly people go, who can't take care of themselves anymore? Nursing homes.

Who is most susceptible from dying due to COVID-19? The most fragile elderly people who can't take care of themselves anymore.

What did you think would happen to them?

As someone who visited lots of elderly relatives in days gone by they vary quite a bit on cleanliness. Agreed they are housing people at extreme high risk for dying of corona-virus. If that didn't get them something else would. About 50% of nursing home residents don't last more than 6 months in one.

[sdskinsfan2001]

The need to blame every single COVID related death on a Democrat or Republican is pretty tiresome. This is a once in a generation type thing that is picking off the already vulnerable. It sucks. But unfortunately that's what happens in nature. Lion's don't go for the fastiest/healthiest gazelle. We don't need to blame it on someone. Need to find the best balance of protecting the most vulnerable and keeping the economy going. There is no perfect answer.

[MTK]

It's not about blaming a party, I guess it just points to a bigger issue that our nursing homes are often severely understaffed and we simply haven't done enough to protect the elderly through all of this. I don't accept the answer that well they're old and susceptible, what else can we do.

[sdskinsfan2001]

Originally Posted by MTK

It's not about blaming a party, I guess it just points to a bigger issue that our nursing homes are often severely understaffed and we simply haven't done enough to protect the elderly through all of this. I don't accept the answer that well they're old and susceptible, what else can we do.

I'm not saying sweep mistakes under the rug. But the fact is there were going to be a lot of elderly deaths from this no matter what was done with the resources that were available. And trying to blame every death on a particular person or persons is frustrating. I have no idea about senior care but I imagine that the system deficiencies have been going on for decades across all parties. Admit there are problems and work on fixing them.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by MTK

It's not about blaming a party, I guess it just points to a bigger issue that our nursing homes are often severely understaffed and we simply haven't done enough to protect the elderly through all of this. I don't accept the answer that well they're old and susceptible, what else can we do.

I get where you're coming from - the carnage is so high with the nursing homes that your gut says there had to be a way of dealing with this. But every tactic I can think of that would have improved matters would have been a much broader, nationwide approach. We should have been prepared to test more quickly, we should have performed contact tracing much more rigorously nationwide and isolated people like Korea does, we should have been much more aggressive in enacting social distancing and stay at home orders sooner.

All of those things would have worked well in nursing homes. But they are also what the entire country needed.

The nursing home residents are bearing the brunt of the administration's overall failures to act with foresight. But containing a pandemic isn't something you can do within a building. You need to stop it from getting inside a building like a nursing home, and that requires much more aggressive action on a much broader scale than anything targeting nursing homes specifically.

In many ways you and I are probably saying the same thing. I'm just turning it to focus on the pandemic as a whole. Fewer elderly folks would have died if we had learned from Asia and implemented the playbook they put into place following SARS. But we didn't and we're learning the hard way.

[CRedskinsRule]

so, I have stayed away from all this because I know the general tone in the thread. I will put this here, and if anyone wants to have a decent discussion I am all for it. The point stated up front is while the NY/NJ/Mass/Connecticut numbers are horrendous, the US as a whole did far better in mitigating the Coronavirus outbreak than European countries.

Northern European Countries with Deaths per million > 278 (US Average)
Country, Deaths per Million, Tests per Million
Belgium,784,"60,157"
Andorra,660,"48,543"
Spain,593,"64,977"
Italy,529,"50,294"
UK,513,"39,542"
France,433,"21,218"
Sweden,366,"17,588"
Netherlands,332,"17,358"
Ireland,314,"52,484"
Isle of Man,282,"49,035"

I will note Germany's exceptionally low number of 97 deaths per million, and credit German's strict "ordnung" or ocd to government laws as a part of their success.

Compare those major countries that are way over our average to our states
New York,1456,"73,018"
New Jersey,1167,"59,053"
Connecticut,956,"47,852"
Massachusetts,841,"66,859"
District Of Columbia,543,"51,755"
Louisiana,536,"57,041"
Michigan,490,"41,205"
Rhode Island,471,"106,243"
Pennsylvania,352,"26,881"
Illinois,330,"45,924"
Maryland,329,"32,242"
Delaware,298,"41,966"

Those 12 are mostly in the New York Corridor of the Pandemic, the outliers are Michigan, Illinois and Louisana. Coincidentally (or not) of those 12 states, 9 were definite losses for Trump before all this started.
If you took out NY,NJ,Connecticut and Massachusetts out of the total US count, I would imagine the 278 number would drop to close to 200, but I didn't do the math so not sure.

The other 38 states plus territories are well below the European countries

Indiana,260,"26,328"
Colorado,211,"21,937"
Mississippi,175,"38,011"
Georgia,152,"33,075"
Ohio,139,"22,625"
Washington,133,"37,887"
Minnesota,130,"26,705"
New Mexico,126,"63,550"
New Hampshire,126,"39,277"
Virginia,118,"24,700"
Nevada,114,"31,152"
Iowa,111,"31,771"
Alabama,100,"31,887"
Missouri,98,"25,588"
Arizona,93,"27,890"
Florida,92,"30,407"
Vermont,87,"37,188"
California,83,"31,465"
Wisconsin,78,"26,143"
South Carolina,75,"24,822"
Kentucky,75,"29,027"
Oklahoma,73,"31,204"
Kansas,67,"21,142"
North Carolina,65,"23,736"
Nebraska,64,"34,971"
North Dakota,56,"72,463"
Maine,52,"24,576"
South Dakota,50,"32,282"
Texas,47,"23,909"
Tennessee,44,"47,631"
Idaho,41,"20,521"
West Virginia,37,"42,123"
Arkansas,32,"28,227"
Oregon,32,"22,371"
Utah,25,"53,261"
Montana,15,"25,155"
Wyoming,14,"28,326"
Alaska,14,"47,367"
Hawaii,12,"29,514"

[Giantone]

Originally Posted by Chico23231

Lol could u imagine a travel restriction where we deny us citizens returning to the country? Could you imagine what the press would say? It’s like we don’t understand anything...yes the travel ban stopped people from coming in and naturally spread it. Biden and Pelosi both made statements criticizing the travel ban calling it racist. Lol, so they would have simply allowed travelers in spreading it around. We are too woke to stop the spread...

In the end...it was already here. Was it a solid wall? No

LOL, chico ,you're sad.

[Giantone]

Here is the site of the updated numbers in Maryland.

https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/

[SunnySide]

Cred - good morning

I think there are definitely epicenters for the us. It appears that travel from China to the US goes to about 5-6 airports. NYC, predictably, was an epicenter. I am surprised Los Angeles and San Fran have not been hit harder.

I think what’s good for NYC isn’t what’s needed for Nebraska or something like that. Some of the mid states have had outbreaks at meat plants that became their mini epicenter.

——//////
The big picture: At least 430,000 people have flown to the U.S. from China since Dec. 31, when China first informed the World Health Organization about cases of novel coronavirus in Wuhan, the Times reports.

Most passengers arrived in January at airports in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Newark, Chicago and Detroit.
"Thousands of them flew directly from Wuhan," the original epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, per the NYT.
——/-/

Trump travel restriction of China — yes other countries had them already in place but we were the first western nation to do it. Trump gets credit for that ... although I’m 100% convinced that he did it to spite China (And Iran) and not as some preventative measure. If the outbreak came from somewhere like Saudi Arabia, which he considers a friend.

I give trump credit for the travel restriction. I think he got to the right decision through wrong thinking ... but the ultimate decision, no matter how he got there, was the best decision for the US.

[BaltimoreSkins]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

so, I have stayed away from all this because I know the general tone in the thread. I will put this here, and if anyone wants to have a decent discussion I am all for it. The point stated up front is while the NY/NJ/Mass/Connecticut numbers are horrendous, the US as a whole did far better in mitigating the Coronavirus outbreak than European countries.

Northern European Countries with Deaths per million > 278 (US Average)
Country, Deaths per Million, Tests per Million
Belgium,784,"60,157"
Andorra,660,"48,543"
Spain,593,"64,977"
Italy,529,"50,294"
UK,513,"39,542"
France,433,"21,218"
Sweden,366,"17,588"
Netherlands,332,"17,358"
Ireland,314,"52,484"
Isle of Man,282,"49,035"

I will note Germany's exceptionally low number of 97 deaths per million, and credit German's strict "ordnung" or ocd to government laws as a part of their success.

Compare those major countries that are way over our average to our states
New York,1456,"73,018"
New Jersey,1167,"59,053"
Connecticut,956,"47,852"
Massachusetts,841,"66,859"
District Of Columbia,543,"51,755"
Louisiana,536,"57,041"
Michigan,490,"41,205"
Rhode Island,471,"106,243"
Pennsylvania,352,"26,881"
Illinois,330,"45,924"
Maryland,329,"32,242"
Delaware,298,"41,966"

Those 12 are mostly in the New York Corridor of the Pandemic, the outliers are Michigan, Illinois and Louisana. Coincidentally (or not) of those 12 states, 9 were definite losses for Trump before all this started.
If you took out NY,NJ,Connecticut and Massachusetts out of the total US count, I would imagine the 278 number would drop to close to 200, but I didn't do the math so not sure.

The other 38 states plus territories are well below the European countries

Indiana,260,"26,328"
Colorado,211,"21,937"
Mississippi,175,"38,011"
Georgia,152,"33,075"
Ohio,139,"22,625"
Washington,133,"37,887"
Minnesota,130,"26,705"
New Mexico,126,"63,550"
New Hampshire,126,"39,277"
Virginia,118,"24,700"
Nevada,114,"31,152"
Iowa,111,"31,771"
Alabama,100,"31,887"
Missouri,98,"25,588"
Arizona,93,"27,890"
Florida,92,"30,407"
Vermont,87,"37,188"
California,83,"31,465"
Wisconsin,78,"26,143"
South Carolina,75,"24,822"
Kentucky,75,"29,027"
Oklahoma,73,"31,204"
Kansas,67,"21,142"
North Carolina,65,"23,736"
Nebraska,64,"34,971"
North Dakota,56,"72,463"
Maine,52,"24,576"
South Dakota,50,"32,282"
Texas,47,"23,909"
Tennessee,44,"47,631"
Idaho,41,"20,521"
West Virginia,37,"42,123"
Arkansas,32,"28,227"
Oregon,32,"22,371"
Utah,25,"53,261"
Montana,15,"25,155"
Wyoming,14,"28,326"
Alaska,14,"47,367"
Hawaii,12,"29,514"

How much of this is due to the policy of states and the federal governments? I think a lot of it has to do with circumstances of the environment. Europe has over twice the population in roughly the same square area (3.7 million square miles for US vs 3.9 for Europe). When you look at some of the states that have similar population densities to some of the European countries we have higher deaths per million people. There is also the geography making Europe more susceptible. I do think European countries should have been more proactive and recognized their susceptibility sooner. Trump was smart to close the border earlier. I think a more comprehensive federal response instead of a state by state response would have been better but what do I know I am just a socialist.

On a side my wife is a counselor in a local school district. She had a student counselor getting his Master's at Johns Hopkins this year. He is from China and got back to the US from China winter break just before the Trump limited travel. Since he has been back his advising professor at JHU died and now that he has completed his Master's program he is stuck here but his student visa is expiring. Feel bad for him.

[MTK]

No big surprise here

Nearly Half Of The Twitter Accounts Discussing ‘Reopening America’ May Be Bots

[SolidSnake84]

Originally Posted by MTK

No big surprise here

Nearly Half Of The Twitter Accounts Discussing ‘Reopening America’ May Be Bots

People are so split on the issue, even without the bots.

A lot of my Democrat friends want a long term shutdown, until a vaccine is developed. They don't seem to know, or care, about the economic consequences, and in fact over the past couple of days i have even been accused of not being a "real" democrat because i have been vocal about the lockdowns doing more harm than good.

One of my best friends told me that straight up the only way to get Joe Biden elected would be if we could destroy the country and the economy. So i was accused that by supporting a desire to reopen America, i was supporting Trump.

Maybe this is the small minority of Democrats, but i'm not sure. Theres an awful lot of people right now hoping America stays shut down for good.

[SunnySide]

I received my covid stimulus money. Dont think it was the right amount but close enough.

[MTK]

Originally Posted by SolidSnake84

People are so split on the issue, even without the bots.

A lot of my Democrat friends want a long term shutdown, until a vaccine is developed. They don't seem to know, or care, about the economic consequences, and in fact over the past couple of days i have even been accused of not being a "real" democrat because i have been vocal about the lockdowns doing more harm than good.

One of my best friends told me that straight up the only way to get Joe Biden elected would be if we could destroy the country and the economy. So i was accused that by supporting a desire to reopen America, i was supporting Trump.

Maybe this is the small minority of Democrats, but i'm not sure. Theres an awful lot of people right now hoping America stays shut down for good.

I honestly don't think the divide is that great. Polls show that most people are concerned about states re-opening too quickly. Out in public most people are wearing masks and observing social distancing just fine.

What you're talking about with destroying the economy to get Trump out or keeping the country shut down for good are discussions not even worth having IMO because they just lack common sense and rationality. People with those views are on the fringe.