Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

What is your solution? Sweden famously did less than most first world countries. There death rate per capita was higher but there hospitals were not overwhelmed and they saved the economy. Or, did they?
Yesterday I read in National Revies that:
Economists at Swedish bank SEB estimate Sweden’s GDP will drop 6.5 per cent this year, about the same as the US and Germany,

So more people died and it didn't seem to help the economy much if at all.

 

what is "the media"?

 

The media is the enemy of the people.

 

Actually there have been people suggesting we just open up just as there were people suggesting that we shouldn't even shut down. Both have been part of the overall discussion for months now, and yes, it has been treated as binary by some.

There are no doubt negative consequences from shutting down, in some ways terrible terrible consequences, seen and unseen. As you mention the delay in getting needed medical treatment. Perhaps this has led to deaths if not at least suffering. Skyrocketing unemployment too. Social isolation. Suicides and mental health issues. Spikes in domestic violence. Alcohol and drug abuse. Death. Misery.

As horrible as these consequences are, they reflect us having to fight the most immediate fight--one we didn't ask for--just as we would if we were invaded by a foreign country because we know the catastrophic potential of a novel animal virus.

This is why public health authorities around the world jump to action when new viruses emerge. We've learned this from history, in particular a history that moved away from religious explanations for disease and death to scientific understanding. And what makes this, perhaps, worse now is that given the modern division of labor, we are more reliant on others for survival; few of us can survive off the land, far less so now than in 1918, eg. This matters because the disruption to our economic and social activity is much greater and more harmful.

 

https://elemental.medium.com/corona...isease-which-explains-everything-2c4032481ab2

 

If true this is welcome news.
New coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says

 

The Link says (and wow this would be great news!)

A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken.

“The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today,” said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.

“It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different.”

 

Sorry if I missed it (or my reading comp was not up to par). Did these Italian Drs. mean weak as in less infective or dangerous, or weak, as in not a prevalent?

 

This seems to make sense based on what is going on in FLORIDA. Since late April, the positive test count has had a positive slope, but the number of hospitalizations have been trending downward. With increased testing, you are likely to find more people that have few, minor, or no symptoms. So that would explain the increase in count, but with the new hospitalization numbers going down, that seems to suggest that it's not hitting people as hard. @gtr2x asked earlier about the beach experiment in Jacksonville (using FL residents as guinea pigs or something to that effect), and this is exactly why I think these things are a good idea. Sometimes testing and carefully learning about something doesn't give you nearly as much information as opening up a bit more. It's a risk, but not all risks are bad ideas (even if the risk turns out to produce negative data.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

we now have almost 600,000 recovered cases, almost 1/3 of all cases, yet I see no mention in the media about this, it is really a shame that most media outlets basically refuse to report positive news.

 

So you think "the media" (whoever that is) is in the business of accurate and fair reporting? Those days (if they ever existed) are long gone. They exist to sell ads and make money. Also perhaps it's not being reported because it's common sense. We've had 1.5m known cases and we know that most people aren't badly affected. Of course we are going to have a large number of recovered. Just my $.02.

 

I’m not even sure of his point. 66% wouldn’t even be good if it were the true recovery rate. Is he saying if your odds are better than 50/50 it’s “good news” and the media should report that???

Even the worst projections for Covid had a 3-5% death rate. That would have put the recovery around 95%. Of course most people I think started looking to South Korea to get a better idea, and their early/comprehensive testing put it more towards .8%. That is still a scary number when you consider it spreading to 70% of the population.

 

That's not really worth reporting. We should have well over 90% recovery rate when all's said and done. In fact, we're probably pretty close to that mark if we haven't reached it yet. It's just we can't track all the cases to confirm all the recoveries. Given the disease course though, you can probably count everyone who wasn't diagnosed in the past month and isn't still in the hospital or dead as recovered.

 

Also haven't heard any whining and moaning about the rioters and looters spreading covid and killing people due to their lack of masks and zero social distancing.

 

That’s a mighty broad brush you are painting with RIP. The media, like any entity, is made up of people. There are good and bad people in society and inside any organization of size you want to examine. The media is no different.

They get attacked for leaning left and right. They get attacked period.

Check out this article from USA TODAY:

Our journalists are being attacked while doing their jobs. This is unacceptable.

George Floyd protests: Stop attacking journalists. We have job to do.

 

I was mostly referring to TV media (and even further narrowed to CNN, Fox, MSNBC) which is usually who people mean when they use the term "the media". I know they are excellent sources of print media and online media.

 

Good news if true.

I’m curious if the Italian strain is similar to our East or West coast strain. Or do all of them eventually weaken.

If it weakens and comes back in the fall, maybe businesses Can stay open with restrictions?

 

I believe I had read in the past that the NYC strain was from the Italian strain. The virus mutating to a weaker form is our best hope, so hopefully this is true. The deaths to new cases ratio has dropped since April but this could be due a number of factors. We are likely better at treating covid patients now than we were, so that would lead to a reduced death rate. Also, we may be counting more mild cases in the new cases totals, so that would also lead to a lower death rate. And, hopefully, the virus itself isn't as deadly as it was just a month ago.