121–130 of 394 posts
https://www.ready.gov/pandemic Basic things the US gov recommends in the case of a pandemic. I personally went out and got 2 weeks of supplies last night.
> 2 weeks What a noob Seriouslu though, if it strikes it'd be at least for a few months.
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That 'might' is probably safely replace with 'are'. No country - even the richest - is prepared to deal with this many ICU cases. For instance in the UK (which has a very good healthcare system) there are about 6k ICU beds on a population of ~65 million. And then there is the risk of having ICU personnel become infected themselves. This is not a trivial challenge.
Perhaps that's why there's no point declaring a pandemic. If you do, some prepare, some panic, the panicking ones clog the ICU and the virus spreads like wildfire, the ICU can't keep up. If you don't, nobody prepares, everybody's sprung upon and taken by surprise, the stampedes oversubscribe ICU capacity in much the same way as above. At the end of the day I think the two variables all of this boils down to are infra…
Waiting with that declaration is the same as what the authorities in Wuhan did initially: they hoped it would blow over. But viruses do not care about our politics. And if we do not take relatively drastic measures to stop community spreading then the impact will be much higher, both economic and in terms of lives.
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Advising people to store food en masses is quite irresponsible. We have had rice, noodle, pasta, bleach and toilet paper shortages for around a month in Hong Kong caused by panic buying triggered by a rumour that there would be a supply disruption. We also went weeks where all of the fresh food was being bought out and frozen.
This point of view is reasonable only if food disruption is actually very unlikely. If there were food supply disruption in Hong Kong, having a great deal of nonperishable and frozen food on hand would be a good idea for most residents, wouldn't it? The fact that rumors were enough to generate shortages for a month in itself confirms a certain degree of insecurity...
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> - Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it I hate this advice. It's not "wrong," in the sense that technically it would be a good thing to do, but it's also so wrong that it transcends categories of right and wrong. Your refill schedule will not allow you to get extra prescription meds early. And if it did, your insurance wouldn't pay for it - which means paying sticker price, which means ... well,…
I guess buying sofas “isn’t a thing” by your logic since an insurance company doesn’t buy sofas for people.
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> - Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it I hate this advice. It's not "wrong," in the sense that technically it would be a good thing to do, but it's also so wrong that it transcends categories of right and wrong. Your refill schedule will not allow you to get extra prescription meds early. And if it did, your insurance wouldn't pay for it - which means paying sticker price, which means ... well,…
> Until that happens, I don't even know what to /do/ with that kind of "advice." My wife asked once, and was told that 3 month supply prescriptions are common for people that use mail order pharmacies, and was happy to write one. Insurance covered it too, since the refill schedule was every 3 months -- it comes out to the same cost in the end.
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Advising people to store food en masses is quite irresponsible. We have had rice, noodle, pasta, bleach and toilet paper shortages for around a month in Hong Kong caused by panic buying triggered by a rumour that there would be a supply disruption. We also went weeks where all of the fresh food was being bought out and frozen.
This point of view is reasonable only if food disruption is actually very unlikely. If there were food supply disruption in Hong Kong, having a great deal of nonperishable and frozen food on hand would be a good idea for most residents, wouldn't it? The fact that rumors were enough to generate shortages for a month in itself confirms a certain degree of insecurity...
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I think there is a real need to understand how much of a vector our phone screens are. People touch their phones, wash their hands, and then touch their phones again.
Yes, we should wash our phones too. It's very simple when the phone is waterproof.
Give me the numbers. People panic over everything imaginable. The only defense is logic. (which unfortunately is only a slow and long term defense) At this point I feel I am more likely to win the lottery and get struck my lightning twice before I get this virus. And even then, what is the death rate for healthy adults? It's amazing how easily people freak out these days.
For healthy adults death from a pandemic is rare, but in a true pandemic large parts of society are expected to stop working. If you are only interested in your own well being (which is fairly uncommon, do you not have family or friends?) Then make sure you have stocks of food, water and small bills.
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And yet 99% of the time, the authorities do a great job of running everything here in the west. The 1% of the time they fail, it proves the conspiracy theorists and fear mongers’ point.
Of all the national emergencies in the US since 2000, Katrina, Sandy, Puerto Rico, etc., does anyone know offhand how many were handled properly? Seems like ~20-40% are handled improperly if not more.
You never heard about the lead poisoning that didn't happen.. but you'll hear about Flint Michigan.
Try counting all the dams that didn't break and, thus, averted catastrophic floods.
Also count the forest fires that didn't happen because of regulation.
When something is declared a national emergency it's typically because society have failed to prepare.
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Conspiracy theorists tend to mistake incompetence for malice; or partial incompetence for total incompetence. Hurricane Katrina doesn’t invalidate health and building codes; education; law enforcement and EPA, FAA, and SEC regulations. Decisions made are both bad and good, but it’s irrational to think the decision makers are generally untrustworthy.
Didn’t all of these agencies come about after some incident happened that was disastrous? The SEC came about after/during the Great Depression. Building codes stiffened after terrible hurricanes.
There’s no doubt that politics, especially US politics and government, are pretty screwed up, but it doesn’t automatically follow that anarchy is better.
Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make.