Coronavirus / COVID-19

[Greyblades]

At least the fit and healthy wont have spent the last 4 years in gore filled ditches this time.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

At least the fit and healthy wont have spent the last 4 years in gore filled ditches this time.

Ironically enough, the US military (who had less than 18 months of "gore-filled ditch" duty compared to the almost 4 years for some of those fighting for "Blighty") had a higher rate of influenza infection than the UK's military. The USA experienced somewhere between 20% (hospitalized & recovered or died) and an estimated 40% (milder cases, many never hospitalized, with the really mild ones -- pardon the pun -- soldiering on) of active forces. UK rates were lower, with 303k hospitalizations among 4.6 million (USA had over the same hospitalization and a higher overall infection rate despite having 750,000 fewer under arms). US training camps were apparently among the highest infection rates of all.

At least COVID-19 does not have the deadly "second phase" associated with the 1918 outbreak.

[Greyblades]

Ironically enough, the US military (who had less than 18 months of "gore-filled ditch" duty compared to the almost 4 years for some of those fighting for "Blighty") had a higher rate of influenza infection than the UK's military. The USA experienced somewhere between 20% (hospitalized & recovered or died) and an estimated 40% (milder cases, many never hospitalized, with the really mild ones -- pardon the pun -- soldiering on) of active forces. UK rates were lower, with 303k hospitalizations among 4.6 million (USA had over the same hospitalization and a higher overall infection rate despite having 750,000 fewer under arms). US training camps were apparently among the highest infection rates of all.

Insert joke about american army rations here.

[rory_20_uk]

Yeah, but life isn't going to be back to normal when that 2% fatality ends up taking away a grandparent or great uncle from every family.
Expect people to be mad as fuck at anyone and everyone in government.

First off, in the USA, if there was a sure fire cure, many americans couldn't afford the treatment. As is the case with every other condition.

Americans allow guns, massive wealth inequality, healthcare unaffordable for about 30% of the populace, racism and xenophobia. How many does this kill every year with barely anyone batting an eyelid?

Look at other countries that have experienced proper disasters. People adapt to a new normal pretty quickly.

Hope your leaders are more intelligent and informed than ours

One website baldly states the government weigh up the health, social and economic facets. So they are currently accepting a few will die rather than loose economic GDP. So, yeah, Governments around the world so far are viewing the number of deaths acceptable compared to the potential economic downturn.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

First off, in the USA, if there was a sure fire cure, many americans couldn't afford the treatment. As is the case with every other condition.

Americans allow guns, massive wealth inequality, healthcare unaffordable for about 30% of the populace, racism and xenophobia. How many does this kill every year with barely anyone batting an eyelid?

Look at other countries that have experienced proper disasters. People adapt to a new normal pretty quickly.

You're using an over-wide brush in painting your picture of healthcare in America. All of the issues you note are, indeed, problematic -- but some of them are hardly controllable and you've left other concerns off that might be controllable yet bother us as is.

Our healthcare system offers free childhood vaccinations to all (though we do not force the anti-vaxers to be vaccinated and systemic pressures pushing them to vaccinate anyway are limited). Were some virus to reach crisis proportions this same system would be used to provide vaccines as needed and there likely would be legislation passed to fund it for all. Our love of the "rugged individualist" is not a suicide pact. Moreover, any person can present themselves to an emergency room and receive care, even if unable to pay (though the system is cumbersome and reactive instead of proactive -- which I acknowledge may be costing us as much if not more than funding across the board preventative medicine would save).

Firearms have been ubiquitous in the USA since before our inception. Sadly, they do make would-be suicides easier and more effective (as you are probably aware, some 60% of our firearm deaths are suicides). The original reasons for personal use of firearms and their ubiquity were food, protection, and as a final stopgap against government tyranny. The need provide food has, except for certain wilderness areas in Alaska, been obviated by modern food production and distribution. Protection, while still valid to some extent, no longer requires the local militia to be armed since the development of modern policing (both protection responses are reactive) and is simply a question of personal defense prior to a police response. The only continuing reason of the original three is the final stopgap against tyranny, which any number of people think is silly as they believe our government cannot degenerate into tyranny (some few think it already has, but all societies have their fringers). I am not opposed to firearms ownership as I like that final stopgap concept and also note that it makes my country functionally unconquerable by an external power that does not command the high orbitals. That said, I think we might want to seriously consider the requirement that firearms under 15" barrel length be banned/rendered inoperable. Protection against tyranny is best served by weapons that would be useful on a modern battlefield and your typical handgun is largely irrelevant in such a context -- yet it is handguns easily held and used that are the source of most of our suicides and homicides. I wonder how many would be prevented simply by the choice to violence requiring you to use both hands to lift a multiple pound object...

Racism and Xenophobia are problems in the USA, I agree. We have been working on them for hundreds of years and while we have enjoyed much success we are all too prone to backsliding on both. But you're well aware that these things exist in all cultures and that the USA's culture is, by no means, the worst practitioner of either. Do these weaknesses kill people? Absolutely, at least by laying the groundwork that allows people to be mistreated or forgotten or marginalized or even, at least in some cases, specifically targeted for violence. Both concerns are still being better addressed than they were when I was a child. I can assure you that my children are even less likely to further either and very likely to work against both as opportunity presents. Which is as it should be. These are cultural changes that require sustained effort over time. Cultures do not change by fiat.

You did not mention auto accidents (40k+ per year), or plain old accidents (120k+ per year), or overdoses (60-70k+ depending on year), or the metabolic syndrome stuff (800k+ per year) that underlies much of our healthcare risks on the national level (increase in sedentary, increase in calories, increase in simple carbs/fats as a ratio of diet).


I do agree with you as to government choices on same. Governments can never have the resources to address all concerns, so they MUST make calculated choices as to how much to spend on what and to counteract x, y. or z. That's unlikely to ever change. All we can do is help make those choices generate the greatest good for the cost expenditure made.

[Montmorency]

One website baldly states the government weigh up the health, social and economic facets. So they are currently accepting a few will die rather than loose economic GDP. So, yeah, Governments around the world so far are viewing the number of deaths acceptable compared to the potential economic downturn.

Which website? It seems rather difficult to plan to contain disease deaths within an "acceptable" range, and I don't know what an acceptable range would be as far as allaying social unrest and economic losses goes. And this imputed autotomic motivation seems to contrast with all the governments around the world who have taken drastic quarantine measures to the loss of billions in economic activity already.

The Soviet Union, by the way, ended WW2 with the same GDP it started with. Losing people is inherently draining of the economy.

Our healthcare system offers free childhood vaccinations to all (though we do not force the anti-vaxers to be vaccinated and systemic pressures pushing them to vaccinate anyway are limited).

Having started on the fringes of liberal upper-middle class lifestyle woo, anti-vax has come dangerously close to being Republican mainstream, right up to the White House.

Were some virus to reach crisis proportions this same system would be used to provide vaccines as needed and there likely would be legislation passed to fund it for all. Our love of the "rugged individualist" is not a suicide pact.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/27/...ordable-trump/

Let them eat cake.

This is effectively what Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Americans when asked about whether a treatment for the fast-moving coronavirus will be affordable.

“We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest,” he told a congressional committee on Wednesday in response to a question about affordability. “The priority is to get vaccines and therapeutics. Price controls won’t get us there.”

Moreover, any person can present themselves to an emergency room and receive care, even if unable to pay (though the system is cumbersome and reactive instead of proactive -- which I acknowledge may be costing us as much if not more than funding across the board preventative medicine would save).

And be billed thousands of dollars later, which discourages voluntary self-admission.

The only continuing reason of the original three is the final stopgap against tyranny,

The problem remains that this was not an explicit motivation shared by many at the time in connection to firearms, and that in practice those availing themselves of this theoretical motivation to ownership are the likeliest candidates to become brownshirt paramilitaries themselves.

also note that it makes my country functionally unconquerable by an external power that does not command the high orbitals.

We have oceans and breadth and nukes. No one has tried to conquer us in at least 200 years, and I see no reason why anyone would have the means or motivation to try. Vladimir Putin didn't need to fire a shot...

I wonder how many would be prevented simply by the choice to violence requiring you to use both hands to lift a multiple pound object...

I'm not opposed to (trying to) eliminate handguns, but as a conservative you can think of numerous workarounds to such an approach, and accompanying perverse incentives. A comprehensive approach would be the most successful, and that requires acknowledging the depth of gun culture in this country and its umbilical attachment to the whole ecosystem of far-right ideology. As with so many other areas robust reform would have to be generationally transformative to the limit of the final decisive confrontation with the forces of Reaction sksdjdksk

But you're well aware that these things exist in all cultures and that the USA's culture is, by no means, the worst practitioner of either.

Crucially, if liberal democracy (at the least) cannot persist in America then humanity at large is condemned. Our fate is enormously important to the rest of the world. Shining city and all that.

You did not mention auto accidents (40k+ per year), or plain old accidents (120k+ per year), or overdoses (60-70k+ depending on year), or the metabolic syndrome stuff (800k+ per year) that underlies much of our healthcare risks on the national level (increase in sedentary, increase in calories, increase in simple carbs/fats as a ratio of diet).

We do more to address these problems than we do gun violence and culture, but I'm sure we could do more. For example:

Establish universal healthcare free at point of service, minimize sectoral influence over food and agriculture policy, and - most controversially - accelerate urbanization with social housing, massive public transit infrastructure, and curtailment of private automobile production and ownership/usage. (The latter is so controversial that even the AOC/Sanders Green New Deal incorporates mass private ownership of electric vehicles.)

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...Having started on the fringes of liberal upper-middle class lifestyle woo, anti-vax has come dangerously close to being Republican mainstream, right up to the White House...

Two years past I would have said you were being entirely silly. However, with any number of folk like George Will, Max Boot, and myself having (at least functionally) left the GOP as it has become more and more the party of Trump, it is plausible that the anti-vaxers are in the ascendancy there. Of course, many of those folks are the same ones who believe that the federal government is ALREADY a tyranny...

[a completely inoffensive name]

First off, in the USA, if there was a sure fire cure, many americans couldn't afford the treatment. As is the case with every other condition.
Americans allow guns, massive wealth inequality, healthcare unaffordable for about 30% of the populace, racism and xenophobia. How many does this kill every year with barely anyone batting an eyelid?
Look at other countries that have experienced proper disasters. People adapt to a new normal pretty quickly.

Conservatives in the US generally inversely assert individual responsibility to the degree that the issue impacts their own life. I'm not trying to be flippant to you Rory, just pointing out the real American psychology which might not be apparent in British media coverage.

'I thought gay marriage is bad until I knew someone who is gay.' Because if they are telling me they didn't choose to be gay, then my world view on their inherent sinfulness or 'activism' melts away and I am left with empathy.
This is also how so the prevailing views on the subject flipped so fast in less than 10 years because the LGBT community simply made themselves known on a more individual level.

'I thought the ACA was terrible until I had a pre-existing condition and was denied/child that was under 26 struggle to find a job/got medicare when my state expanded it'.

'I thought paid child leave was for welfare queens until I had my first child.'
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/08acdo...te-intolerance

Pandemics and other natural disasters are on their face equal opportunity killers, there is no special reasoning or conjecture as to why some people die and others don't other than blind luck.
This means that everyone feels the threat to its intensity and conservatives must either downplay the danger or they too will become enraged that not enough is being done. But keep in mind, this anger over government ineptitude is not some general awareness of public safety measures, they simply want government to protect the right people.

[Montmorency]

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/hea...240476806.html

After returning to Miami last month from a work trip in China, Osmel Martinez Azcue found himself in a frightening position: he was developing flu-like symptoms, just as coronavirus was ravaging the country he had visited.

Under normal circumstances, Azcue said he would have gone to CVS for over-the-counter medicine and fought the flu on his own, but this time was different. As health officials stressed preparedness and vigilance for the respiratory illness, Azcue felt it was his responsibility to his family and his community to get tested for novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19.

He went to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he said he was placed in a closed-off room. Nurses in protective white suits sprayed some kind of disinfectant smoke under the door before entering, Azcue said. Then hospital staff members told him he’d need a CT scan to screen for coronavirus, but Azcue said he asked for a flu test first.

“This will be out of my pocket,” Azcue, who has a very limited insurance plan, recalled saying. “Let’s start with the blood test, and if I test positive, just discharge me.”

Fortunately, that’s exactly what happened. He had the flu, not the deadly virus that has infected tens of thousands of people, mostly in China, and killed at least 2,239 as of Friday’s update by the World Health Organization.

But two weeks later, Azcue got unwelcome news in the form of a notice from his insurance company about a claim for $3,270.

In 2018, President Donald Trump’s administration rolled back Affordable Care Act regulations and allowed so-called “junk plans” in the market. Consumers mistakenly assume that the plans with lower monthly costs will be better than no insurance at all in case of a medical catastrophe, but often the plans aren’t very different from going without insurance altogether.

Hospital officials at Jackson told the Miami Herald that, based on his insurance, Azcue would only be responsible for $1,400 of that bill, but Azcue said he heard from his insurer that he would also have to provide additional documentation: three years of medical records to prove that the flu he got didn’t relate to a preexisting condition.

These people are very stupid.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1233423437286211585

Although to be fair, state media in other authoritarian regimes aren't much better.
https://twitter.com/rafsanchez/statu...76847255224320

Holy crud, watch those two clips. Now for a humor break:

Trump understands, old men are the future.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: