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From what I can tell (even here on HN by a few bad actors), they seem to have pivoted to a “we simply can’t do this to the economy; it’s not an option for a dis

From what I can tell (even here on HN by a few bad actors), they seem to have pivoted to a “we simply can’t do this to the economy; it’s not an option for a disease that only kills old and sick people”, without the faintest hint of a plan for what they’d actually do given what we know and the resources that we have. We can all wish for the culture, test availability, and competent government that South Korea and Singapore and Taiwan apparently have, but we don’t have those. So their “plan” is effectively a plan to just let millions of people 60+ or with pre-existing conditions die without much effort to save them. It’s not only unconscionable, it’s incredibly stupid. Do they think we’re just going to go back to work and restaurants and on vacation while millions of our loved ones take their last gasps in a converted convention center somewhere? The economy grinds to a halt either way, and there’s no moral or political path forward for what they want to do. Which is why they don’t have the courage to even spell it out, it’s just some magic handwaving about how we must do something different. And all this against the backdrop of them and people like them downplaying this from the start and putting us in this position.

baybal2 7y ago
> We can all wish for the culture, test availability, and competent government that South Korea and Singapore and Taiwan apparently have, but we don’t have those. So their “plan” is effectively a plan to just let millions of people 60+ or with pre-existing conditions die without much effort to save them. It’s not only unconscionable, it’s incredibly stupid. Why we had to wait until a crisis like this for this to be rendered bare for the wider population? As I've said countless times before, the West has been on the downward trajectory for a very long time, both as a society, and as state entities. What I call an "ultrapopulism" has been an ever growing trend in the West since around mid-nineties. The Western nations are not just weak as societies, and nations, they are diseased (sorry for having to use this word now.) The reasons for me moving from comfy life in the West to China is not because I so much enjoyed it, but for me having a realisation that this accelerating downward trend will have very real consequences in my lifetime, and that even money alone no longer favours the West.
- OCASM 7y ago
  Well, lets not forget that this whole mess started in China. It was the chinese government which decided to hide information and pretend everything was under control while allowing it to spread all over the world.
  - joubert 7y ago
    Trump COVID-19 timeline: https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/20/how-donald-trump-responded-coronavirus-pandemic/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/20/how-donald-tr... Elon Musk COVID-19 timeline: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/19/21185417/elon-musk-coronavirus-tweets-panic-ventilators-chloroquine-tesla-factory https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/19/21185417/elon-musk-coro... Both reckless, uniformed, self-absorbed in their arrogance.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.
      - joubert 7y ago
        Apologies; my thinking was: * demonstrate failure by business and political leadership in the US to be science-based, humanitarian * counter the emerging anti-Asian sentiment Agree that my last statement could have been more productive.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    > Well, lets not forget that this whole mess started in China. Yes, China is a patently dysfunctional society. This is what I can say as person whose life and career depends on it, and who actually lived there. I'd say the "good" performance of Chinese state looks like that only in comparison to catastrophically bad showing from Western nations. 20 year ago, I would've said that what China did after the monumental screw up at the start, would've been an expected level of response from an upstanding Western nation. Now, the West can not do the same what it could've done 20 years ago easily. That's the only message for that particular point. Is Chinese society a healthy, functioning society? No, but at least critical parts are still coasting on inertia from the time China had half sane political leadership. Is the West a healthy, functioning society? Some things there work, but the most important, critical parts are failing in broad daylight, and people don't damn care.
tmpz22 7y ago
Isn’t the South Korean government known for massive amounts of corruption between itself and entities like Samsung? The good does not wash away the bad, nor the bad the good...
- baybal2 7y ago
  This is the point worth talking. I'd say that even overt corruption is not necessarily a white or black determinator on the overall health of the institute of government. South Korea is not only known for "Samsung bribing *," but also countless successful cases of corruption prosecution, including 2 Samsung CEOs in a row going to real jail. In overall, a health on the very top of society stems from strength at the bottom.
avz 7y ago
Another counter-point to the inhumane position you're rebuking - one which speaks to people's self-interest - is that as the healthcare systems become overwhelmed they will eventually stop treating conditions and accidents which afflict everyone including young people.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
Not all Americans are doing that. I am actively trying to promote work from home options and mostly being ignored. I am actively trying to talk about home health care options. It's been extremely controversial, so I am reluctant to push too hard. There's a lot of disinterest or active blow back against any attempt at a grass roots movement in the absence of sufficient leadership from the top. Given how powerful America is, it's not unreasonable for the world at large to be concerned.
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  Doreen, your home health care options are good, and I appreciate your comments! You're not making ridiculous claims or pushing some off-label drugs. I told several friends about your advice to prop up your head and back in bed when feeling shortness of breath. Cautiously I also recommend tonic water for a cough - not because of a medical benefit, but because the bitterness makes sputum in my mouth and that soothed my sore throat. Also wasabi for a blocked nose. Normally I think cough medicine would be better, but I know that pharmacies are overloaded right now. I also think the placebo effect is very real - doing something positive might help, instead of just sitting and worrying.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Please don't recommend things for a cough that you clearly know nothing about. Tonic water absolutely has a medical history. It's not hard at all to find that out by reading the label and doing a little online research. It makes me extremely uncomfortable for you to talk about tonic water for a very long list of reasons. Because it contains an actual for serious drug -- quinine -- you can get serious side effects from overusing it. These include vision problems, headache and nausea similar to migraines. IIRC, you can cause yourself permanent vision problems. Because it's a powerful alkaloid, overuse can cause your stomach to become too alkaline. This can cause you to be unable to digest food and can result in vomiting. The name "tonic water" is medical in origin. The bitter flavor you speak of was common to a class of medicinal herbs typically referred to as "bitters." Quinine is a drug related to the drug currently being tested as a possible treatment for covid19: Chloroquine. So casual and uniformed use of it could create resistance in the virus, making actual medical treatment less effective in the future. I highly recommend you keep a journal and actually read up on anything you are finding personally helpful. I'm not here trying to tell people what to do with home remedies for casual use. My consistent framing has been "If the shit really hits the fan and doctors have nothing for you, there are other options that may make sense to gamble on if your options are take a chance or die." I know a helluva lot about medical stuff. My mother wanted to be a doctor and she personally changed the practices of two cancer clinics when she kept my dad alive after they wrote him off for dead. I have another relative who works at the CDC and has for years. I've been surrounded by medically knowledgeable people my entire life. I also absolutely don't hawk home remedies. I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out if there is any way to effectively share what I know about CF and other health issues to either be helpful or to somehow get actual medical professionals and scientists to do studies. I would love to finally have credibility and be taken seriously in the world and have actual respect. And it matters vastly less to me than avoiding potential harm to potentially millions of people because I'm cute and charismatic and people want to be my fwend and it goes amazingly bizarre places and always has. I know you mean well. I know you think I'm pathetic and sad and a social outcast and a poor person and you think you are doing something nice by publicly patting me on the head. I absolutely don't see it that way. I'm extremely uncomfortable with you and other people here clearly desiring some kind of feel good emotional attachment to me personally as your primary goal of engaging me, very much at the expense of best practices for disseminating medically useful information.
teddyvangogh 7y ago
It seems to be happening everywhere: Netherlands: TOTAL CORONAVIRUS CASES QUADRUPLE IN A WEEK TO 4,204; DEATH TOLL REACHES 179 https://nltimes.nl/2020/03/22/total-coronavirus-cases-quadruple-week-4204-death-toll-reaches-179 https://nltimes.nl/2020/03/22/total-coronavirus-cases-quadru...
forgottenplans 7y ago
We can’t build temporary quarantine centers, hermetically sealed units, gas mask or ventilators. We could predict all this and did, but incompetence. We could had made a coronavirus vaccine that could had potentially worked now, years ago. We could have general tests or fast tracked specific tests months ago. All this seems like a much bigger problem than the virus itself. Our system is incapable of being efficient, effective or proactive.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > We could had made a coronavirus vaccine that could had potentially worked now, years ago. That isn't really true. Some viruses are more susceptible to vaccination than others but all have one thing in common: about 12-18 months between the first confirmed sighting of a virus and the time to make a vaccine if one is possible. And for plenty of Viruses we have not been able to make a vaccine and some of those are coronaviruses.
qqqwerty 7y ago
And they are entirely ignoring the impact of this virus on our healthcare workers. Due to high exposure levels to the virus, they are at much higher risk of not just getting infected, but also developing higher severity of the disease. We need to make "Support our Healthcare Workers" a bigger part of the messaging strategy. They are on the front lines of this battle, and when we fail to implement control measures, we are putting their lives at risk.

baybal2 7y ago

> We can all wish for the culture, test availability, and competent government that South Korea and Singapore and Taiwan apparently have, but we don’t have those. So their “plan” is effectively a plan to just let millions of people 60+ or with pre-existing conditions die without much effort to save them. It’s not only unconscionable, it’s incredibly stupid. Why we had to wait until a crisis like this for this to be rendered bare for the wider population? As I've said countless times before, the West has been on the downward trajectory for a very long time, both as a society, and as state entities. What I call an "ultrapopulism" has been an ever growing trend in the West since around mid-nineties. The Western nations are not just weak as societies, and nations, they are diseased (sorry for having to use this word now.) The reasons for me moving from comfy life in the West to China is not because I so much enjoyed it, but for me having a realisation that this accelerating downward trend will have very real consequences in my lifetime, and that even money alone no longer favours the West.

OCASM 7y ago
Well, lets not forget that this whole mess started in China. It was the chinese government which decided to hide information and pretend everything was under control while allowing it to spread all over the world.
- joubert 7y ago
  Trump COVID-19 timeline: https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/20/how-donald-trump-responded-coronavirus-pandemic/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/20/how-donald-tr... Elon Musk COVID-19 timeline: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/19/21185417/elon-musk-coronavirus-tweets-panic-ventilators-chloroquine-tesla-factory https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/19/21185417/elon-musk-coro... Both reckless, uniformed, self-absorbed in their arrogance.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.
    - joubert 7y ago
      Apologies; my thinking was: * demonstrate failure by business and political leadership in the US to be science-based, humanitarian * counter the emerging anti-Asian sentiment Agree that my last statement could have been more productive.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > Well, lets not forget that this whole mess started in China. Yes, China is a patently dysfunctional society. This is what I can say as person whose life and career depends on it, and who actually lived there. I'd say the "good" performance of Chinese state looks like that only in comparison to catastrophically bad showing from Western nations. 20 year ago, I would've said that what China did after the monumental screw up at the start, would've been an expected level of response from an upstanding Western nation. Now, the West can not do the same what it could've done 20 years ago easily. That's the only message for that particular point. Is Chinese society a healthy, functioning society? No, but at least critical parts are still coasting on inertia from the time China had half sane political leadership. Is the West a healthy, functioning society? Some things there work, but the most important, critical parts are failing in broad daylight, and people don't damn care.

tmpz22 7y ago

Isn’t the South Korean government known for massive amounts of corruption between itself and entities like Samsung? The good does not wash away the bad, nor the bad the good...

baybal2 7y ago
This is the point worth talking. I'd say that even overt corruption is not necessarily a white or black determinator on the overall health of the institute of government. South Korea is not only known for "Samsung bribing *," but also countless successful cases of corruption prosecution, including 2 Samsung CEOs in a row going to real jail. In overall, a health on the very top of society stems from strength at the bottom.

avz 7y ago

Another counter-point to the inhumane position you're rebuking - one which speaks to people's self-interest - is that as the healthcare systems become overwhelmed they will eventually stop treating conditions and accidents which afflict everyone including young people.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

Not all Americans are doing that. I am actively trying to promote work from home options and mostly being ignored. I am actively trying to talk about home health care options. It's been extremely controversial, so I am reluctant to push too hard. There's a lot of disinterest or active blow back against any attempt at a grass roots movement in the absence of sufficient leadership from the top. Given how powerful America is, it's not unreasonable for the world at large to be concerned.

peterburkimsher 7y ago
Doreen, your home health care options are good, and I appreciate your comments! You're not making ridiculous claims or pushing some off-label drugs. I told several friends about your advice to prop up your head and back in bed when feeling shortness of breath. Cautiously I also recommend tonic water for a cough - not because of a medical benefit, but because the bitterness makes sputum in my mouth and that soothed my sore throat. Also wasabi for a blocked nose. Normally I think cough medicine would be better, but I know that pharmacies are overloaded right now. I also think the placebo effect is very real - doing something positive might help, instead of just sitting and worrying.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Please don't recommend things for a cough that you clearly know nothing about. Tonic water absolutely has a medical history. It's not hard at all to find that out by reading the label and doing a little online research. It makes me extremely uncomfortable for you to talk about tonic water for a very long list of reasons. Because it contains an actual for serious drug -- quinine -- you can get serious side effects from overusing it. These include vision problems, headache and nausea similar to migraines. IIRC, you can cause yourself permanent vision problems. Because it's a powerful alkaloid, overuse can cause your stomach to become too alkaline. This can cause you to be unable to digest food and can result in vomiting. The name "tonic water" is medical in origin. The bitter flavor you speak of was common to a class of medicinal herbs typically referred to as "bitters." Quinine is a drug related to the drug currently being tested as a possible treatment for covid19: Chloroquine. So casual and uniformed use of it could create resistance in the virus, making actual medical treatment less effective in the future. I highly recommend you keep a journal and actually read up on anything you are finding personally helpful. I'm not here trying to tell people what to do with home remedies for casual use. My consistent framing has been "If the shit really hits the fan and doctors have nothing for you, there are other options that may make sense to gamble on if your options are take a chance or die." I know a helluva lot about medical stuff. My mother wanted to be a doctor and she personally changed the practices of two cancer clinics when she kept my dad alive after they wrote him off for dead. I have another relative who works at the CDC and has for years. I've been surrounded by medically knowledgeable people my entire life. I also absolutely don't hawk home remedies. I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out if there is any way to effectively share what I know about CF and other health issues to either be helpful or to somehow get actual medical professionals and scientists to do studies. I would love to finally have credibility and be taken seriously in the world and have actual respect. And it matters vastly less to me than avoiding potential harm to potentially millions of people because I'm cute and charismatic and people want to be my fwend and it goes amazingly bizarre places and always has. I know you mean well. I know you think I'm pathetic and sad and a social outcast and a poor person and you think you are doing something nice by publicly patting me on the head. I absolutely don't see it that way. I'm extremely uncomfortable with you and other people here clearly desiring some kind of feel good emotional attachment to me personally as your primary goal of engaging me, very much at the expense of best practices for disseminating medically useful information.

teddyvangogh 7y ago

It seems to be happening everywhere: Netherlands: TOTAL CORONAVIRUS CASES QUADRUPLE IN A WEEK TO 4,204; DEATH TOLL REACHES 179 https://nltimes.nl/2020/03/22/total-coronavirus-cases-quadruple-week-4204-death-toll-reaches-179 https://nltimes.nl/2020/03/22/total-coronavirus-cases-quadru...

forgottenplans 7y ago

We can’t build temporary quarantine centers, hermetically sealed units, gas mask or ventilators. We could predict all this and did, but incompetence. We could had made a coronavirus vaccine that could had potentially worked now, years ago. We could have general tests or fast tracked specific tests months ago. All this seems like a much bigger problem than the virus itself. Our system is incapable of being efficient, effective or proactive.

jacquesm 7y ago
> We could had made a coronavirus vaccine that could had potentially worked now, years ago. That isn't really true. Some viruses are more susceptible to vaccination than others but all have one thing in common: about 12-18 months between the first confirmed sighting of a virus and the time to make a vaccine if one is possible. And for plenty of Viruses we have not been able to make a vaccine and some of those are coronaviruses.

qqqwerty 7y ago

And they are entirely ignoring the impact of this virus on our healthcare workers. Due to high exposure levels to the virus, they are at much higher risk of not just getting infected, but also developing higher severity of the disease. We need to make "Support our Healthcare Workers" a bigger part of the messaging strategy. They are on the front lines of this battle, and when we fail to implement control measures, we are putting their lives at risk.