Dire situation in New York State

[ivinsfan]

If there were enough tests for the majority of those who get sick, but just have a mild case, vs. no tests for them and they get better, but are not in the official count, then the numbers are very skewed understated.

What's your point about this ..you seem really hung up on this testing point?

What exactly are you trying to say, that everyone with a slight cough should overrun the medical facilitates and demand a test?

You keep wanting to gloss over the fact that 95% or so of sick people deemed at high risk are testing negative, in my state.

 

[Amethyst]

Governors, watching their people go nuts, were forced to step up while the administration fiddle-faddled around. Every state is different, so naturally each governor does something different. They'll say they want decisive Federal leadership but they also will fight it, if it's not what they want. It can make for an awfully lubberly crisis response.

I wonder how long it took various administrations who are now seen as competent, to figure out what to do in a crisis? Just wondering, in a general, historical way.

I think the problem in the US is that we have a weak central government that basically left it all up to the states. There has been no coordinated response and this is now biting us in the butt. And I agree it's not malice but incompetence.



This crisis has been compared to a war but in a real war the federal government is in complete control and directs were and when the troops are deployed. Each individual state doesn't decide which battle its troops are going to fight or whether it should even bother to raise an army.


I still don't understand why discovering that the mortality rate is lower because there are many more cases than we thought is a good thing. What that means is that there are infected people walking around who don't know they are infected and spreading the virus. This has led to complacency rather than panic. Even now you still have governers that look at the numbers and say well we only have 200 cases and that's easy to control.



Finally, I don't give a damn about the stock market and I don't think others should either. Those that invested just before the crisis will lose money. Those that invest during the crisis or as it ends will make money. Those that have been investing for years will be OK more or less. Just like all previous market crashes - that's the thing about stocks they can go down as well as up. Once the crisis is over it will recover to a level commensurate with the strength of the economy - but the people that die from this disease are never coming back.

 

[Dtail]

What's your point about this ..you seem really hung up on this testing point?

What exactly are you trying to say, that everyone with a slight cough should overrun the medical facilitates and demand a test?

You keep wanting to gloss over the fact that 95% or so of sick people deemed at high risk are testing negative, in my state.

For example in my county, they had a mobile testing center with long lines. They closed it down after 2 days, as they had no more tests.
Where should those people go next?

 

[Fermion]

For example in my county, they had a mobile testing center with long lines. They closed it down after 2 days, as they had no more tests.
Where should those people go next?

Home?

 

[aja8888]

Home?

That seems to be the next logical place!

Or if they are REALLY sick, go to the ER.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I mentioned elsewhere earlier that the number of confirmed cases is not as important as the number of hospitalizations, and the morbid number of deaths.

It is true that many of the infected have symptoms so mild that they just stay home and tough it out, and are not counted. But if the number of people needing hospitalization exceeds the number of hospital beds, we have a real problem here.

This is an excellent point. DW and I have already said that the *only* way we would go to an ER (or seek testing) is if we had symptoms that were bad enough that we were genuinely in fear for our lives. DW had surgery a few weeks ago and she was in the hospital when at the same time there were positive patients there...so there is that. I am to assume that there are MILLIONS of people out there that have the same idea, so unless there is MANDATORY testing, the numbers from testing will never be accurate.

 

[ivinsfan]

For example in my county, they had a mobile testing center with long lines. They closed it down after 2 days, as they had no more tests.
Where should those people go next?

Home and then they can worry if they stood in line next to someone that actually had the virus. Use some common sense..

 

[Dtail]

Home and then they can worry if they stood in line next to someone that actually had the virus. Use some common sense..

So all those folks standing outside the Queens hospital shown on TV waiting to get inside/tested are all idiots then......

 

[ivinsfan]

So all those folks standing outside the Queens hospital shown on TV waiting to get inside/tested are all idiots then......

They are scared and not thinking straight. No one in NY right now with Covid will get any kind of treatment unless they are seriously ill. Sick enough that they can't stand in a long line.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

So all those folks standing outside the Queens hospital shown on TV waiting to get inside/tested are all idiots then......

Idiots? I won't go that far but I would guess than over 50% should have just STAYED home. *IF* you can stand in a line for over 5 minutes, you probably shouldn't be going to the hospital.

 

[Masquernom]

I wasn't going to post this link. It's an article about what happened with testing in the US. If it's too political, moderators please delete it. Just seems like a lot of questions about how/why/when tests were available.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/t...-chance-at-containment/ar-BB11MJRy?li=BBnb7Kz

In any emergency such as this, I know there is scrambling and confusion that lead to delays. But we saw this coming with lead time from China. Other countries did/have developed rapid tests and performed much more testing. This is an embarrassment compared to some of the rest of the world.

 

[Dtail]

I wasn't going to post this link. It's an article about what happened with testing in the US. If it's too political, moderators please delete it. Just seems like a lot of questions about how/why/when tests were available.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/t...-chance-at-containment/ar-BB11MJRy?li=BBnb7Kz

In any emergency such as this, I know there is scrambling and confusion that lead to delays. But we saw this coming with lead time from China. Other countries did/have developed rapid tests and performed much more testing. This is an embarrassment compared to some of the rest of the world.

Exactly.
When there is an historical accounting for how this virus was handled with testing and many other aspects.......... that's all I will say.
Now since some posters like to get the last word in some spirited discussions, go ahead.

 

[Midpack]

I wasn't going to post this link. It's an article about what happened with testing in the US. If it's too political, moderators please delete it. Just seems like a lot of questions about how/why/when tests were available.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/t...-chance-at-containment/ar-BB11MJRy?li=BBnb7Kz

In any emergency such as this, I know there is scrambling and confusion that lead to delays. But we saw this coming with lead time from China. Other countries did/have developed rapid tests and performed much more testing. This is an embarrassment compared to some of the rest of the world.

+2. While testing has ramped up, it's still not readily available on a scale needed for the US. For a variety of reasons the US blew it, and we have more cases than any other country - even though the population of China is more than 4 times ours and they didn't have the benefit of anyone going before them. If we're so advanced (we're not with routine medical care IMO), how did South Korea manage so much better than we did? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coro...rsus-united-states_n_5e729a8fc5b63c3b6489eb9a

 

[ivinsfan]

Exactly.
When there is an historical accounting for how this virus was handled with testing and many other aspects.......... that's all I will say.
Now since some posters like to get the last word in some spirited discussions, go ahead.

Hindsight is usually perfect..the problem is these things happen in real time ...

 

[Freedom56]

The situation in California will appear worse, as testing ramps up. No other state is testing at the same rate as New York. However, the early shutdown of San Francisco and Los Angeles should help contain the spread.

"The number of coronavirus cases in California topped 4,000, but that number is expected to skyrocket as testing expands. Eighty-five people have died."



https://www.latimes.com/california/...s-two-weeks-as-coronavirus-cases-deaths-surge

 

[anethum]

Hindsight is usually perfect..the problem is these things happen in real time ...

It happened in real time around the world. Yet other countries managed to get their testing up and running successfully while testing in the US has been a complete snafu. Thousands of Americans are going to die because of the testing failure. Had there been early, quick, & reliable testing, contact tracing could have been much more easily done with the smaller number of infected individuals early on. The economic damage will also be far worse now than it otherwise would have been.

Another aspect contributing to the spread of the coronavirus in the US is the lack of universal health insurance/healthcare. If some symptomatic folks are afraid to seek medical care or get tested due to financial concerns, that will also cause the virus to spread.

 

[NW-Bound]

Another aspect contributing to the spread of the coronavirus in the US is the lack of universal health insurance/healthcare. If some symptomatic folks are afraid to seek medical care or get tested due to financial concerns, that will also cause the virus to spread.

European countries all have universal healthcare. That does not seem to help them all that much.

The only thing that helps is the lockdown measure. People are learning that now.

 

[anethum]

European countries all have universal healthcare. That does not seem to help them all that much.

The only thing that helps is the lockdown measure. People are learning that now.

No, lockdown is not the only thing that helps. Many European countries did not learn from what was done in some countries in Asia (e.g. S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore). Early testing & contact tracing helped enormously. Germany had aggressive testing and contract tracing early on, and it has helped a lot. Western hemisphere countries had the benefit of seeing what had happened in Asia and then in parts of Europe, but that benefit was squandered in the US.

In the coming month, I think the US is likely to see huge differences in Covid-19 cases in states where governors acted quickly to shut things down, and those states where governors waited (and in some cases are still waiting) until the virus had spread significantly more in the population.

 

[48Fire]

Did your wife stay home the minute she started feeling badly? Did you stay home and quarantine the minute your wife felt ill? If the answer to those questions is yes, then who would you have spread it to? I don't know where you live but our state government has been extremely responsive.

Give your daughter a couple days to process. Dads in delivery is only around a 40 year concept.

Yes, my wife stayed home, and yes, I stayed home as well. However, without a test, nobody knows whether she had or even has COVID-19. Many that carry the virus are asymptomatic, like Rand Paul.

We live in Florida, but are currently residing in Indiana waiting on the arrival of Granddaughter #2. At the time my wife called on 3/14/20, there were only 100 test kits in the entire state.

I don’t think our daughter will magically process this. One of her best friends died this week of breast cancer, age 31. Not a good week for her.

 

[youbet]

European countries all have universal healthcare. That does not seem to help them all that much.

The only thing that helps is the lockdown measure. People are learning that now.

+1

While it's fun to poke blame someplace other than ourselves, a clear lack of cooperation, defiance really, on the part of some citizens and a lack of clear leadership by many local gov't officials came into play. We locked down slowly and incompletely compared to many other countries. That would be part of our "independent and free" culture, which sometimes does not serve us well.

For example, I believe it was just yesterday that Mayor Lightfoot of Chicago came down hard on citizens blowing off the lockdown rules and now they have even made a few arrests. Part of the news coverage included a crowd of young people pumping fists in the air and chanting about their right to congregate however and wherever they wished......

I don't think S Korea had that much pushback from citizens. And when they did, I don't think their leaders hesitated to use appropriate force to quarantine and contain. Here we could test and attempt to isolate the infected and those they've been near, but would definitely meet resistance (here comes the ACLU!) from a significant percentage who didn't want to be forcefully isolated.

 

[audreyh1]

I don't think S Korea had that much pushback from citizens. And when they did, I don't think their leaders hesitated to use appropriate force to quarantine and contain.

I don’t think they did major lockdowns in South Korea. I believe they focused on aggressive testing and contact tracing and quarantining individuals and let most business go on as usual.

 

[48Fire]

Hindsight is usually perfect..the problem is these things happen in real time ...

My Dad used to tell me, "Son, you don't have to make all of the mistakes yourself. You can learn some of them from other's mistakes." Usually after a mistake I had made

The virus didn't just show up real time. It was many weeks, if not months, in the making. This morning I was comparing it to the build up of an oncoming hurricane. For a tornado, there is little warning. Same with earthquakes, although in both cases there is some increased probabilities depending on where you live.

We could have developed a "Best Practice", but instead, we were extremely slow to react.

 

[youbet]

Yes, my wife stayed home, and yes, I stayed home as well. However, without a test, nobody knows whether she had or even has COVID-19. .

Good for you doing the right thing!

It's too bad your wife can't be tested so you'd both know whether she is infected with COVID-19 or her similar symptoms are from some other issue. Not knowing makes you feel uncomfortable and that's not good. But you're doing the same thing in regard to containing the virus now (self-isolation) as you would do with the test.

 

[youbet]

I don’t think they did major lockdowns in South Korea. I believe they focused on aggressive testing and contact tracing and quarantining individuals and let most business go on as usual.

Exactly. They were able to force contact tracing and to mandate quarantining. I suspect we would have had trouble, a lot of trouble, doing that nearly as effectively here. Even today, people in many areas are slow and/or resistant to follow procedures.

Bottom line, while having more testing capability earlier couldn't have hurt anything IMHO, I doubt we would have gotten as much out of it as S Korea due to our culture, our diversity and our dispersion.

 

[statsman]

Exactly. They were able to force contact tracing and to mandate quarantining. I suspect we would have had trouble, a lot of trouble, doing that nearly as effectively here. Even today, people in many areas are slow and/or resistant to follow procedures.

Bottom line, while having more testing capability earlier couldn't have hurt anything IMHO, I doubt we would have gotten as much out of it as S Korea due to our culture, our diversity and our dispersion.

Sadly, people have already resorted to finger pointing for something, as you said, would have made it difficult in this country to approach the success rate of S. Korea. Even on this forum, which has more level-headed individuals than just about any other website I visit, the implied political and social blame I'm seeing has been a disappointment. I had hoped for better, but it looks like politics has become a great divide in this country. Hopefully this forum survives that. I suspect this is going to cause a good amount of friction in the country as we try to work our way back into something resembling a normal lifestyle after dealing with COVID-19.