Coronavirus:

[HONDO74]

My understanding is that this week there were more new Covid-19 cases at the White House than in all of New Zealand.

New Zealand an Island in the Pacific with a population half of NYC closed it's borders at the beginning and anyone interning was quarantined for 2 weeks. That's what Cuomo should have done for New York. That would have been one heck of a circus to see.

[Chris Rock]

Holy cow! I saw this thing was up to page out of sight and had to take a look.

My great uncle got a virus during the 1918-1918 Pandemic. He was in St. Elizabeth's for the rest of his life and never said a word. From what I've read, that pandemic had 650,000 US dead. Adjusting for population increase would work out to be 1.3 million today. Estimates were 50 million dead worldwide.

A few weeks before I had even heard of the coronavirus, my wife and I were grocery shopping and there was a guy in the water aisle filling up two karts with jugs of water. I asked my wife if she thought he was planning on filling up a pool. Looking back I know what he was doing.

A few weeks later, the night the President came on TV and the NBA shut down, my wife and I looked at each other and said this is going to be bad. We went out and stocked up that night and saw long lines at the store at that 11:00 hour. With all the reaction I thought this was going to be something like a 25% death rate event or something with chaos in the streets. My wife thought the same and she asked if we were going to buy a gun. I told her I think so.

So, looking at the numbers now, they look pretty good to me. Of course nobody wants to get the virus or for anyone else to get it either. But pandemics come along, they kill a bunch of people and then people develop immunity or a vaccine and the virus goes away. If neither of those happens then we're pretty screwed no matter what you do. If you are lucky enough to live then we just have to be thankful for that. Flattening the curve will help heathcare workers and slow the spread but not stop it. My thought is the virus is going to keep coming around in waves until a vaccine is found. Those places where the curve is flattened now are just going to have numbers rise at some point, 1 week, month or whenever they open.

New York city is up to 1,500 deaths per million people, probably will go to 2,000+. It seems like they'll be a good barometer to set a high mark for the rest of the country or where the rest of the country might expect to go. At 2,000 deaths per million gives us 640,000 deaths nationally. At 3,000 deaths per million gives us 960,000 deaths nationally. If you take the total for the 1918-1919 pandemic of 650,000 dead and multiply it by 2 for population growth gives us 1.3 million for that event so the numbers of the coronavirus are not shocking to me in the least.

I guess I'm most confused as to why we keep hearing how unprecedented this event is, or how unfathomable it is. It is very "precedented" and very fathomable since pandemics, some likely much worse have happened throughout history.

The only thing I see here that is unprecedented is the nature of the virus itself in that some people show no signs of having it. And maybe that the world is actually going to great lengths in an experiment to fight it. While it is admirable to think that people in the US are going to shelter in place until a vaccine comes along, it also seems ideal and unrealistic to me. It's like developing the perfect plan to win the Super Bowl and handing it to an ADD high school team to implement.

At any rate, my wife and I are blessed that we still have our jobs and we have worked from home for years already. We follow pretty strictly what we should be doing to avoid the virus and figure things actually have not changed a whole lot for us. Even when things do open up, we'll still adhere to a great level of avoidance on our own until a vaccine is available. I understand this doesn't give me a leg on which to stand in an argument to keep the shutdown going, and if we were out of jobs, I'm pretty certain we'd be very pissed at the shutdown.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I guess I'm most confused as to why we keep hearing how unprecedented this event is, or how unfathomable it is. It is very "precedented" and very fathomable since pandemics, some likely much worse have happened throughout history.

Yup!

The only thing I see here that is unprecedented is the nature of the virus itself in that some people show no signs of having it. And maybe that the world is actually going to great lengths in an experiment to fight it. While it is admirable to think that people in the US are going to shelter in place until a vaccine comes along, it also seems ideal and unrealistic to me. It's like developing the perfect plan to win the Super Bowl and handing it to an ADD high school team to implement.

At any rate, my wife and I are blessed that we still have our jobs and we have worked from home for years already. We follow pretty strictly what we should be doing to avoid the virus and figure things actually have not changed a whole lot for us. Even when things do open up, we'll still adhere to a great level of avoidance on our own until a vaccine is available. I understand this doesn't give me a leg on which to stand in an argument to keep the shutdown going, and if we were out of jobs, I'm pretty certain we'd be very pissed at the shutdown.

Same here actually. Very little has changed for us except to eliminate 2 errand runs during the week; I do miss the library though..........but I will be doing a drive through at the bank tomorrow.

[robert.]

"Same here actually. Very little has changed for us except to eliminate 2 errand runs during the week; I do miss the library though..........but I will be doing a drive through at the bank tomorrow."" Bucks county's library sent out emails " we now have 5000+ E books. with more being added" Please do not return books or dvd to the library return bins."

[Rufus T. Firefly]

"Same here actually. Very little has changed for us except to eliminate 2 errand runs during the week; I do miss the library though..........but I will be doing a drive through at the bank tomorrow."" Bucks county's library sent out emails " we now have 5000+ E books. with more being added" Please do not return books or dvd to the library return bins."

Yeah, so did out county system - basically same message, but most of anything I want to read isn't available as an E books.

[Roy]

I just now learned that Pres. Wilson got the Spanish flu during the 1919 Paris peace negotiations:

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/03/24/lessons-coronavirus-1918-flu-pandemic

I always wondered why Wilson caved in to Clemenceau. FDR also got it. My grandmother told me about how Mrs. Wilson ran the country for the last 18 months of Wilson's term, after he had his stroke.

[rogruth]

Well, I am now going to join the kook crowd. I know many already thought I was. I have never believed that there was a vast plot hidden away somewhere to get us, our country. BUT.
China wants to be THE world leader so China needs to find a way to mess up the U.S. and it looks to me that they have. I don't need to list a lot here
but look at the stock market, employment, sales.

Some want the government to "take care of everyone" and we are getting closer. Incentive money. Free food. Provided by the "gummint". No large
groups. No church. Cover your face so all look alike. School by government computers. No sporting events as in the past. Same for musical events.
No hand shakes, high fives, hugging or kissing. What about love making?
Soon the powers that are will control everything.

There is more but I have bored you long enough. Besides most of you are much smarter and better informed than I so you already have your opinions.
Better state them soon because soon you will not be allowed to state your opinion. This is not in reference to any U.S. political party.

OK. Tear it apart. I don't have any answers. The above is just how strange my thinking has become over the past eleven years.

[chuck]

Roger,

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

And boy are we seeing stupidity in spades from all over the place. It takes very little in the way of analysis to blow up all of the conspiracy theory clap trap that is being peddled on a global scale. No 5G wifi. They (whoever they are) wreck their own economy and everyone else's as part of a plan for world domination. etc, etc. Ignore warning/advice because it's inconvenient or you don't "like it", especially the science that has guided us through previous editions of pandemics?

I have never seen stupid displayed on such a global scale.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Life is like a box of chocolates...

And that's all I have to say about that.

[HONDO74]

Life is like a box of chocolates...

And that's all I have to say about that.

In California we had See's chocolate. My dad would stick his fingernail in the bottoms of each one until he found the ones he liked. And that is how you do it. Find the one's you like and leave the one's you don't like for others to suck on.....

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I have never seen stupid displayed on such a global scale.

And this is why aliens study us from afar and never visit,

[bob turner]

I am actually starting to get encouraged here. Most of my liberal friends are afraid to say anything for fear of alienating their buddies.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I am actually starting to get encouraged here. Most of my liberal friends are afraid to say anything for fear of alienating their buddies.

And, that's why we are where we are - fear.

[Roy]

I've been expecting to read that the death toll in the U.S. has gone over 70,000. I must've fallen asleep. It's now over 80,000. Where is the testing?

[v8vega]

TV news is giving it all they got to keep the hysteria going.