111–120 of 298 posts
Meanwhile, the US still has very little testing capacity, with no signs of if and when that will change. One problem with the death of journalism is that no one is even reporting on this.
On a per capita basis yes, but the US has done more tests than any other country. Once the US doubles testing capacity again it will be on par with other large countries.
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Lots of people are reporting on this - I'm not sure where you're looking that you're missing it.
It's entirely possible I have missed something, and I'd love some links! I'm especially looking for reporting on why it's so slow, what the bottlenecks are, and who's responsible. Even if there is some good reporting out there, I think this should me one of the main news items in a healthy society. I have seen reporting on the bungling of the initial testing rollout, like this one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve…
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/...
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> Bill Gates has literally been preparing the last 20 years to make enormous amounts of money on a forced vaccination program Is this one of those conspiracy theories I’ve been hearing about? Bill Gates’ foundation has been giving away money for decades. If you think he’s planning to make a bunch of money off “forced vaccination”, you’re stuck in the past — Gates doesn’t care about making more money, he cares about g…
> he cares about getting the respect of his peer group & broader society. He’s not going to earn money off this, he’s going to earn respect. Whatever the case, you have to admit that you are taking for granted that his intentions are benign. There's no rule that billionaires have to be benevolent. There's a lot of soft power associated with a mandatory vaccination program but aside from that, the chipping that he is…
Huh? I made no such assumption. I simply speculated that he was doing this for one form of currency, and not another. He may well want to track everybody, I have no idea.
But the whole premise is absurd. Bill Gates doesn’t need to inject tracking microchips into everyone through a forced vaccination program to “sway elections” — that’s Hollywood supervillain-level garbage: a massively intricate complex plan that achieves so little. It’s like inventing a time machine just to use it to prove to your friend that he really did say that thing he denies he said in 1972.
Bill Gates doesn’t need a crazy plan to sway elections — he can just buy tons of ads! He can fund others’ campaigns!
I don’t know Gates’ intentions — but I’m pretty sure he’s not stupid.
South Korea demonstrated from the beginning on how to deal with this (despite their slow start - which still is super quick compared to most western countries). But its completely wrong to think they passed it. They also have massive impediments at the moment. Back to normal? Far from it.
I am stuck in my flat in Spain for the 5th week now. Just read they extended it another two, to 8 in total. I am wondering how other countries can be a bit more relaxed (UK and Belgium are allowed out for an our for exercise), or in the case of Sweeden a lot more relaxed, and are still managing to flatten their curves.
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On a per capita basis yes, but the US has done more tests than any other country. Once the US doubles testing capacity again it will be on par with other large countries.
Per capita is all that matters.
The US dropped many balls and started late with ramping testing in particular, but now the ramping is happening and just takes time. There was also no way the US could test enough people using the original set of tests that simply took too long. New technology had to be developed.
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There is no evidentiary basis for the extreme lock-down Spain is using. While this disease is pretty contagious, you are pretty unlikely to get it walking around outside or going for a run. Especially if everyone is wearing a mask. It's possible you could catch it by running through a cloud of an infected persons breath, but the risk is low enough that we shouldn't ban outside activities. The vast, vast majority of i…
This is an ancient understanding though, it ignores aerosol transmission. But you are still correct that outside is safe, there is absolutely no need to restrict it at all, it's confined poorly ventilated spaces that are a problem, like almost any building, cars, buses, planes, where the virus can concentrate in the air and close range contact isn't even needed, just breathing such air is bad enough. Wearing a mask i…
https://mobile.twitter.com/zeynep/status/1251556084424347649
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> “masks, masks, masks.” Exactly. I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we (western/European countries) didn’t have such an aversion to wearing face masks, even in a time of pandemic?
No one has done a controlled study on this, so no one really knows. It ranges from zero to many. The reason government and medical signaling on the subject has been so mixed is that it isn’t apparent they are very effective, especially the jury rigged cloth masks that people are using.
I have yet to see a single western leader to recommend those masks for all the interactions (indoor at least). Case point - yesterday I went shopping in fairly large supermarket in Switzerland, and there were maybe 5 other customers (out of at least 100 in the store during that time, probably close to 200 plus all the staff) wearing masks, or gloves. People at least often kept their distance (not always possible in aisles), but that's about it. In a country which has one of most per-capita infections globally.
Why? They rely heavily on politicians doing right stuff. Mostly it works, but in these times politicians prefer keeping economy running (they delayed strong measures when things were getting worse than bad in Italy few kms from their border due to fear of financial impacts... well now they are worse but delayed by few days).
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The article and discussions about Korea seem to mainly revolve around testing and contact tracing. These are complex and expensive, and substantially more difficult to manage in a country like the US which is 7x the population, and is somewhat decentralized (50 states). Meanwhile, the on the street observations in the article are: masks, masks, masks. Masks are cheap and easy. So let's start with masks, masks, masks…
> “masks, masks, masks.” Exactly. I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we (western/European countries) didn’t have such an aversion to wearing face masks, even in a time of pandemic?
My wife and I were one of the few people wearing masks at the start of the pandemic, before the closing and work from home orders came. We were harassed by random people shouting at us.
Also, I don't really get the societal penalty for disaster preparation. It's completely illogical. Just a few weeks before the news was really onboard with the pandemic, a woman at my apartment was looking at how many amazon boxes I had on my hand cart. I told her, "In times like this, it pays to be prepared." She looked at me like I was scum. My understanding is that some news outlets were actually denigrating disaster preparation at that point.
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This video has a good explanation of why the Spanish policy is ineffective. https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-joh...
Can you summarize or link to the time in the video where it is addressed?