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Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

governor.wa.gov

471–480 of 568 posts

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#471
post #463

This may get downvoted, but I think the following judgement-free statement is true: this is starting to look scary/serious /solely/ because of the measures the governments are taking, and the media circus around it. Otherwise (while it would have almost certainly "started to look serious" eventually, probably for a short time), at this point, you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers.

Your suggestion here and elsewhere has been that it would be ultimately less harmful overall to let the disease run unchecked, even if it kills millions in a few weeks that way, than to attempt to control it in the ways our various levels of government are doing.

I have yet to see you substantiate that claim in any way.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#472

When talking about economic damage it is also worth thinking about what we are trying to avoid in the US- if SARS-Cov2 gets to 60% of the population, then at a 2% case fatality rate we are looking at 4 million excess deaths. Most importantly, that is a humanitarian tragedy that we must avoid. However, having numbers also let’s us put an economic value out there for what we are trying to save. A 1% reduction in the ca…

Perhaps an unknowable ahead of time, but if we go into recession due to shutting everything down rather than due to poor market fundamentals, the recovery from the recession could be fairly rapid by historical standards.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#473
post #463

This may get downvoted, but I think the following judgement-free statement is true: this is starting to look scary/serious /solely/ because of the measures the governments are taking, and the media circus around it. Otherwise (while it would have almost certainly "started to look serious" eventually, probably for a short time), at this point, you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers.

Either you don't do anything and it eventually _gets_ serious, or you do something and it _looks_ serious.

> you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers.

Surely you'd notice if 15%+ of your family's elders died in one year. People don't seem to get that it's not so bad (health wise) as long as you take serious decisions to slow the spread, so yes, you're right, it _looks_ serious, because it is, and it would be much worse if governments didn't do anything about it.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#474
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they'll sail under the US flag?

Then they'd have to pay U.S. wages and working conditions. Avoiding that is the whole reason they are foreign flagged.

I know. That'd be a great ancillary upside to this pandemic.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#475
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at some of the comments in this very thread, calling for us to adopt the "UK model". It's clear that some people DO NOT see this as a threat worth worrying about. Shame on them, I say. They're probably the same idiots that show up to work sick, and cough without covering their mouth around others. A lot of people who apparently don't believe in biology, and don't have the ability to see past their own 2 fee…

The UK model also happens to be the Germany model: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51835856 . The UK are focused on minimising deaths, by avoiding COVID-19 striking during next winter, when the NHS is at peak load due to winter flu. Instead, they will guide the first strike towards summer (NHS's least load), and impose measures to protect at-risk folk during that time.

> The UK model also happens to be the Germany model

Eh ? Germany is on lock down right now, we'll be at Italy's level by the end of the week imho.

UK says: "we're all going to get sick so let's not do anything." DE says: "we're all going to get sick so let's spread it over a long time as to not overwhelm our health system." That's a huge difference.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#476
post #463

This may get downvoted, but I think the following judgement-free statement is true: this is starting to look scary/serious /solely/ because of the measures the governments are taking, and the media circus around it. Otherwise (while it would have almost certainly "started to look serious" eventually, probably for a short time), at this point, you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers.

Your suggestion here and elsewhere has been that it would be ultimately less harmful overall to let the disease run unchecked, even if it kills millions in a few weeks that way, than to attempt to control it in the ways our various levels of government are doing. I have yet to see you substantiate that claim in any way.

AFAIK, covid-19 is basically a "slightly worse flu". Most people are not at risk of dying and in fact most people don't even need to go to the hospital to recover.

Surely there has to be a balance between protecting the vulnerable at the cost of ruining the economy and protecting the economy at the cost of ruining the vulnerable.

How about instead of shutting down planet earth we advise people over the age of 60 to self-quarantine for a few months. The disease will run its course and then they will be protected by herd immunity. Neighbors and friends can drop off supplies on the front doorstep during this time.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#477
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen studies that say anything about "permanent lung, kidney, and testicle damage, even in young and healthy patients". Where did you read this? "young patients, the ICU rate is as high as 10%." Any links?

>I've never seen studies that say anything about "permanent lung, kidney, and testicle damage, even in young and healthy patients". Where did you read this? It's obviously bullshit. How would we know about "permanent" damage from a disease a few months old.

Ya know, because we humans can't regenerate organs at the drop of a hat... or at all. So if your lung tissue starts dying, that's it. The best you can hope for is permanent scarring to replace the dead tissue. Scar tissue is a poor replacement for the original by many measures.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#478
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suggestion here and elsewhere has been that it would be ultimately less harmful overall to let the disease run unchecked, even if it kills millions in a few weeks that way, than to attempt to control it in the ways our various levels of government are doing. I have yet to see you substantiate that claim in any way.

AFAIK, covid-19 is basically a "slightly worse flu". Most people are not at risk of dying and in fact most people don't even need to go to the hospital to recover. Surely there has to be a balance between protecting the vulnerable at the cost of ruining the economy and protecting the economy at the cost of ruining the vulnerable. How about instead of shutting down planet earth we advise people over the age of 60 to s…

Sorry this is not a "slightly worse flu". The "Spanish Flu" was both less virulent and less deadly and killed ~50 million world-wide. This is the mostly deadly pandemic since the "Black Death" of medieval times.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#479
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about conceivably millions in the U.S. alone. 55% * 6% fatality rate * 330 million is >10,000,000. That's a lot of people to sacrifice to keep bars and restaurants open.

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry I assumed op was underestimating the mortality rate(which is easy to do if you just look at the mortality rates without digging into the overwhelmed vs not overwhelmed rates), not that he didn't care about human lives.

I think many people think that if we don't strongly mitigate/contain the virus the deaths are measured in 10's of thousands which would need more careful consideration of the downstream effects of closing off a part of our economy.

Looking at my comment the restaurants and bars could sound flippant but I posted that before the thread turned nasty so I wasn't as careful with my words as I would have been had I known this was a contentious subject.

I wish the tone in my head when I wrote the comment came through, I'll try to be more careful in the future, especially regarding this subject. Just sometimes the tone of a comment sounds very different in your head then how it might read.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#480
post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is still locked down. It can’t unlockdown until they have a way to stop it, they’ve basically managed to reset the clock to early January.

Wuhan is still locked down, but most of China seems somewhat "restarted" by now.

Yeah, most if not all of the larger cities are back to work now.
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