Know anyone with Coronavirus?

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Don't get me wrong, I think people trust the government much less these days, but the country spent a year after 9/11 being pretty nationalistic and happy to comply with whatever the government threw out.

And thus, 19 years later we still have the “temporary” restrictions of the Patriot Act on our liberties.

 

[Chip D]

That’s nice. Tell her to explain the 4-8x drop then. It’s not lag.

I’m a student in Centennial looking for a mentor. Feel up to it??

 

[EdFred]

Well, the 27 year old Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez is having heart complications as a result of Coronavirus.

ItS jUsT tHe FlU

and 5 year olds die from cancer which generally hits later in life. We can always pick outliers to make a point, Whats your point besides hysterics?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Study in the Lancet examining those factors which are related to increased Covid-19 deaths across countries. Things like obesity and age are important. Having a full lockdown not significantly related to mortality. Smoking frequency related in a weird way as protective.


https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext

 

[denverpilot]

I’m a student in Centennial looking for a mentor. Feel up to it??

??? Like aviation stuff or... ???

I’m always willing to chat airplanes on the phone or whatever pretty much anytime I’m not working from home out here in the boonies.

Not really up to hanging around the airport yet nor any great place to do it... but I’m around...

Toss me a PM or whatever... will send numbers.

I ate my second meal out in about six months tonight so hurry, might be dead in two weeks? LOL (just yo stay on thread topic... ha...) Celebrated two very old friends moving back to Denver after almost 20 years. Yay.

 

[DavidWhite]

Whats your point besides hysterics?

That if we took this seriously like was done in other countries we would be done with it by now.

This shouldn’t be a partisan political issue. The longer people stick their heads in the ground and use the ostrich method of “If I can’t see it, it can’t see me!” the longer we will have these stupid lockdowns and travel restrictions. I’m tired of the lockdowns, I’m tired of flying COVID patients, and I’m tired of people making this thing hang around way longer than it need to.

 

[denverpilot]

Well, the 27 year old Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez is having heart complications as a result of Coronavirus.

ItS jUsT tHe FlU

And I have scarring on a lung from either pneumonia as an infant or influenza two years ago. They can’t tell. Didn’t even find it until I was 46.

Thousands of people with my disorder which they don’t even know the cause nor the mechanism of have major damage to multiple organs. They won’t let me donate blood nor get new life insurance ever again. Oh well.

(Nothing new there. Half of my life insurance wasn’t active when flying anyway, nor the freebie company accidental death & dismemberment policy. Aviators are no newbies to actual calculated risks by actuaries.)

Another friend won’t ever walk right again without a cane from a missed jump off a longboard as a 40-something.

Your point? **** happens.

The chances any human isn’t in some way permanently injured by 50 is nearly nil. Most don’t complain about it so you never see it. Country takes ibuprofen like candy after a certain age. Some even get liver damage from it.

Lots and lots of us have worse problems and risks than the current hard numbers of Covid. It’s serious but many levels below where we’ve already been, including the usual emotional four stages of grief in any loss.

People who thought life was “safe” are having the hardest emotional time with this new risk. Those of us with bigger risks are already equipped to handle yet another one.

Bummer for her pitcher. Here’s hoping he finds a good new career and a long life with his new but fairly common problem. He’s just a few years early.

If you like I can get ya in touch with some kids with my disorder. They’re really good at handling life. Some get bonus autoimmune diseases to go with it. They still get up and go live every day.

Big brains, puny bodies. Adaptability is what makes us humans. We’d be dead long ago if we didn’t apply our brain cells. Like... “ahhh. Look at that. Urbanization has a significant unintended consequence when a zero immunity virus shows up...”.

Maybe we’ll have to rethink those tight living quarters and shared HVAC... maybe we don’t need office buildings after all... etc.

And one pitcher won’t probably be a top athlete because he got sick. We’ve named other diseases after baseball players... shrug.

200,000 a year get my “fun” in the US. Treatment doesn’t always work.

We’re cheering on the girl who’s trying out an experimental drug. Nothing else has even slowed hers. She jokes “My full body PET scan looks like a glowing teddy bear.”

She’ll be dead in less than two years if it doesn’t work.

For quite a few, it’s their first real taste of the line from Shawshank Redemption. “Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. “

My grandma used to make my mom and her sisters take an afternoon nap to ward off polio. Thought only the “run down” people caught it. LOL. That was only two generations ago. Three, we didn’t even have a microscope capable of seeing a virus.

If the concern is that people will be hurt by illness... and nature doesn’t care who... join the club!

 

[EdFred]

I agree I'm tired of the morons making this thing drag on way longer than it needed to do we should have just had everybody get together in March let the weak die off and be done with it before spring break arrived. We could have ended this in a month. But no we took the flattening the curve approach. Great idea.

 

[denverpilot]

If you're paying, she'll run a study on it and get back to you in 6-8 months. Get your checkbook out though, she don't work cheap.

I’d at best start a GoFundMe. I’m sure someone would be interested. LOL.

What was your point as pertains to the discussion then if she’s indisposed / disinterested?

A curving downward slope is as exponential as an upward one. Nothing has yet explained it.

But it’s there in the data. Fell right off a cliff.

 

[DavidWhite]

I agree I'm tired of the morons making this thing drag on way longer than it needed to do we should have just had everybody get together in March let the weak die off and be done with it before spring break arrived. We could have ended this in a month. But no we took the flattening the curve approach. Great idea.

Galaxy brain idea. Let’s all get sick from something we know nothing about, overwhelm the hospitals, and have a good societal cleanse.

We’d have mass graves in the USA from a disease that most other countries were able to completely squash, some with 0 fatalities.

Just kidding. We already have mass coronavirus graves in America!

 

[Dav8or]

Late to the thread. Didn't read all the usual arguing. Just answering the original question. My brother in-law and his whole family had it. He was pretty sick, my sister in-law was really sick and the kids pretty mild. This was back in March. They all recovered, but both the adults now complain of fatigue. This week I learned my best friend and his wife now have it. They are still sick, but say they're OK so far. They are very much an "at risk" group, so I worry. It's out there and coming for us. Where I live the vast majority of people think it's BS and do little to stop it. Our local infection rates are WAY up.

 

[DavidWhite]

But it’s there in the data. Fell right off a cliff.

I’m sure the fact that it’s gone right off a cliff has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that all the data is now going to a private third party company overseen by the white house instead of the CDC!

 

[denverpilot]

I’m sure the fact that it’s gone right off a cliff has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that all the data is now going to a private third party company overseen by the white house instead of the CDC!

ROFL no. The data is direct from the States. You can download it in raw form from most of them. Try looking.

 

[Palmpilot]

Late to the thread. Didn't read all the usual arguing. Just answering the original question. My brother in-law and his whole family had it. He was pretty sick, my sister in-law was really sick and the kids pretty mild. This was back in March. They all recovered, but both the adults now complain of fatigue. This week I learned my best friend and his wife now have it. They are still sick, but say they're OK so far. They are very much an "at risk" group, so I worry. It's out there and coming for us. Where I live the vast majority of people think it's BS and do little to stop it. Our local infection rates are WAY up.

What would you estimate as the compliance rate with mask requirements in your area, expressed as a percentage?

 

[EdFred]

Galaxy brain idea. Let’s all get sick from something we know nothing about, overwhelm the hospitals, and have a good societal cleanse.

We’d have mass graves in the USA from a disease that most other countries were able to completely squash, some with 0 fatalities.

Just kidding. We already have mass coronavirus graves in America!

Nature gonna nature. I'm all for a good culling once in a while.

 

[MuseChaser]

...

We’d have mass graves in the USA from a disease that most other countries were able to completely squash, some with 0 fatalities.
...!

You are welcome to your opinion, but backing it up with blatant fiction completely invalidates your position .

 

[Juliet Hotel]

I agree I'm tired of the morons making this thing drag on way longer than it needed to do we should have just had everybody get together in March let the weak die off and be done with it before spring break arrived. We could have ended this in a month. But no we took the flattening the curve approach. Great idea.

My apologies that the fact that myself and all the members of my family are still alive displeases you.

 

[EdFred]

My apologies that the fact that myself and all the members of my family are still alive displeases you.

If you are alive, you weren't one of the weak ones. No apologies necessary. For the most part this thing is the equivalent of lions and wildebeest. Its picking off the old and the weak. Sure once in a while, the lions grab a healthy one.

 

[Juliet Hotel]

If you are alive, you weren't one of the weak ones. No apologies necessary. For the most part this thing is the equivalent of lions and wildebeest. Its picking off the old and the weak. Sure once in a while, the lions grab a healthy one.

Members of my family are old and weak. If you would gotten your wish and they had been infected back in March, there is a good chance some of them would now be dead. So I say again, my apologies that the fact that myself and all members of my family are still alive displeases you.

 

[DavidWhite]

You are welcome to your opinion, but backing it up with blatant fiction completely invalidates your position .

Can you please tell me which part of it is fictional? There are absolutely mass graves in New York from Covid. Other countries absolutely handled it better than us. Vietnam has 0 deaths, so they also beat us at coronavirus just like they did at *ahem* that other thing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-53196009

In other fantastic news, we have death panels in everyones favorite state for COVID.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...d-19-death-panels-starr-county-hospital-texas

Remember when the for-profit healthcare system was going to prevent things like this from happening?

 

[Dav8or]

What would you estimate as the compliance rate with mask requirements in your area, expressed as a percentage?

Compliance with regulations is actually quite good. The mandates on stores, restaurants and public buildings isn't too bad. Some companies definitely take it more serious than others. Masks are being worn probably 95-97% of the time indoors. Six feet separation indoors, maybe 70%.

Where it all falls apart is the unregulated private areas. It's summer time on the Delta and that means it's party time and time for big family gatherings. Plenty of big parties and plenty of big gatherings all like it was 2019. I think the feeling is, if you know the person and they tell you they aren't sick, that's good enough and of course a majority here think the whole thing is no big deal and it's just a simple flu, so our infection rates and hospitalization rates are going up.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Can you please tell me which part of it is fictional? There are absolutely mass graves in New York from Covid. Other countries absolutely handled it better than us. Vietnam has 0 deaths, so they also beat us at coronavirus just like they did at *ahem* that other thing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-53196009

In other fantastic news, we have death panels in everyones favorite state for COVID.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...d-19-death-panels-starr-county-hospital-texas

Remember when the for-profit healthcare system was going to prevent things like this from happening?

Don't forget New Zealand. They had 22 deaths and has recovered, some time ago. This in a free, democratic country.

 

[denverpilot]

Don't forget New Zealand. They had 22 deaths and has recovered, some time ago. This in a free, democratic country.

The size of a fraction of one of our cities, essentially an island, and stopped ALL travel, way back while we still had four direct flights per day arriving from Wuhan into JFK and dumping people into a packed and running public train system.

Comparing those two systems and responses as a whole from an engineering and logistics standpoint, isn’t even useful in the slightest.

What they did was literally impossible even in only one of our cities. Let alone nationally.

They’re closer to Hawaii as a system — with tons less Meth and crazy tourists. LOL (And Hawaii has completely lost control of them both. LOL.)

They also had an extra month, at least, to observe and prepare.

Some of the similar geographically isolated places, like other smaller islands, have done decently, but all continue to rise in infections and deaths. Slowly. Still linear.

Culturally, many like NZ also aren’t aren’t locking the high risk ill inside mass nursing home death camps either ... they actually empty them or never had an old people storage unit culture in the first place. They’re at home with family.

With the real world numbers showing time of exposure is far more critical than total cases in an area, smaller less urbanized places continue to be just fine and never reached even epidemic levels except in small hotspots.

In other words, their circumstances helped quite a bit, and life doesn’t deal everyone the same cards. Give NYC the hand NZ was dealt, they’d look as good or similar.

 

[Palmpilot]

Compliance with regulations is actually quite good. The mandates on stores, restaurants and public buildings isn't too bad. Some companies definitely take it more serious than others. Masks are being worn probably 95-97% of the time indoors. Six feet separation indoors, maybe 70%.

Where it all falls apart is the unregulated private areas. It's summer time on the Delta and that means it's party time and time for big family gatherings. Plenty of big parties and plenty of big gatherings all like it was 2019. I think the feeling is, if you know the person and they tell you they aren't sick, that's good enough and of course a majority here think the whole thing is no big deal and it's just a simple flu, so our infection rates and hospitalization rates are going up.

Thanks. You're not that far from me, and I have relatives in that general area, so I wondered how worried I should be.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

The size of a fraction of one of our cities, essentially an island, and stopped ALL travel, way back while we still had four direct flights per day arriving from Wuhan into JFK and dumping people into a packed and running public train system.

Comparing those two systems and responses as a whole from an engineering and logistics standpoint, isn’t even useful in the slightest.

What they did was literally impossible even in only one of our cities. Let alone nationally.

They’re closer to Hawaii as a system — with tons less Meth and crazy tourists. LOL (And Hawaii has completely lost control of them both. LOL.)

They also had an extra month, at least, to observe and prepare.

Some of the similar geographically isolated places, like other smaller islands, have done decently, but all continue to rise in infections and deaths. Slowly. Still linear.

Culturally, many like NZ also aren’t aren’t locking the high risk ill inside mass nursing home death camps either ... they actually empty them or never had an old people storage unit culture in the first place. They’re at home with family.

With the real world numbers showing time of exposure is far more critical than total cases in an area, smaller less urbanized places continue to be just fine and never reached even epidemic levels except in small hotspots.

In other words, their circumstances helped quite a bit, and life doesn’t deal everyone the same cards. Give NYC the hand NZ was dealt, they’d look as good or similar.

They also have a population which worked together. And trusted their medical experts. And a leader who knew how to run a country.
Over here, a large minority claimed "democrat hoax" or some such garbage, and inhibited better action. Or they protested the shutdowns in their state. Claimed the experts were "alarmist". They probably don't have self-proclaimed "experts" claiming shut-downs and masks don't work, or saying it is impossible to close a country.

They really didn't have an extra month. They simply did what we didn't do- make use of the time before the virus made its way there. We also had plenty of time. I'll keep repeating this- I knew there was a virus in late December from my friends and colleagues on WeChat. I knew it was really bad when China cancelled all travel for Spring Festival. That means our government knew it too, and we wasted all that time sitting on our butts. New Zealand closed their borders 19 March, a little more than 2 weeks before USA national command authority claimed the virus was a "democratic hoax".

And they have a lot of tourists, mainly from China- the place the virus started. Chinese who used to go here to the USA have been going to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand since about 2017. Or Finland, for that matter, I was surprised to see so many Chinese there in 2017. There is also a lot of investment by Chinese in New Zealand, and Australia, too, so there is a lot of traffic between China and those countries. When I was in both Oz and New Zealand, I was surprised how many hoardings (billboards) were in Mandarin.

I take it you haven't been to New Zealand; I have. Auckland is a reasonably large city. It has a population of ~1.7 million- similar to Phoenix or Philadelphia. Wellington isn't as large, population of about 400K. That's about the size of Tampa or New Orleans. Christchurch and Cleveland are about the same size, at 381K each. We could have closed our cities too, given proper leadership and the cooperation of more people.

In New Zealand, the people of European descent do use nursing homes quite a bit, about the same as we do here: http://archive.stats.govt.nz/Census...s/outside-norm/residential-old.aspx#gsc.tab=0

Australia didn't do as good a job as New Zealand, but much better than here. Larger population, larger land mass. With modern communication, the size of the country doesn't matter. For that matter, Europe is reopening now, starting schools, and everything we might not be able to do until next year.

I mentioned New Zealand because it is a democratic country. VietNam is a lot more open in some ways than China, but they have the same basic government structure which can direct an entire nation very quickly at need (and also has a lot of disadvantages).

I agree with you in one way- this country has a lot of people who, despite having no education in a particular area, decide the experts in any field don't know what they are talking about, and that they magically have more knowledge than those experts. That makes it difficult to deal with a crisis that requires some education or thinking ability.

 

[EdFred]

0 reported deaths.

"Vietnam is a unitary Marxist-Leninist one-party socialist republic, "

Probably believe everything out of NK too.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

0 reported deaths.

"Vietnam is a unitary Marxist-Leninist one-party socialist republic, "

Probably believe everything out of NK too.

And that's why I mention New Zealand.

 

[DavidWhite]

And that's why I mention New Zealand.

It’s all fake news since it doesn’t fit their narrative. Which no one is really sure what their narrative is anymore other than ignoring doctors, scientists, and front-line medical workers.

 

[denverpilot]

They also have a population which worked together. And trusted their medical experts. And a leader who knew how to run a country.
Over here, a large minority claimed "democrat hoax" or some such garbage, and inhibited better action. Or they protested the shutdowns in their state. Claimed the experts were "alarmist". They probably don't have self-proclaimed "experts" claiming shut-downs and masks don't work, or saying it is impossible to close a country.

They really didn't have an extra month. They simply did what we didn't do- make use of the time before the virus made its way there. We also had plenty of time. I'll keep repeating this- I knew there was a virus in late December from my friends and colleagues on WeChat. I knew it was really bad when China cancelled all travel for Spring Festival. That means our government knew it too, and we wasted all that time sitting on our butts. New Zealand closed their borders 19 March, a little more than 2 weeks before USA national command authority claimed the virus was a "democratic hoax".

And they have a lot of tourists, mainly from China- the place the virus started. Chinese who used to go here to the USA have been going to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand since about 2017. Or Finland, for that matter, I was surprised to see so many Chinese there in 2017. There is also a lot of investment by Chinese in New Zealand, and Australia, too, so there is a lot of traffic between China and those countries. When I was in both Oz and New Zealand, I was surprised how many hoardings (billboards) were in Mandarin.

I take it you haven't been to New Zealand; I have. Auckland is a reasonably large city. It has a population of ~1.7 million- similar to Phoenix or Philadelphia. Wellington isn't as large, population of about 400K. That's about the size of Tampa or New Orleans. Christchurch and Cleveland are about the same size, at 381K each. We could have closed our cities too, given proper leadership and the cooperation of more people.

In New Zealand, the people of European descent do use nursing homes quite a bit, about the same as we do here: http://archive.stats.govt.nz/Census...s/outside-norm/residential-old.aspx#gsc.tab=0

Australia didn't do as good a job as New Zealand, but much better than here. Larger population, larger land mass. With modern communication, the size of the country doesn't matter. For that matter, Europe is reopening now, starting schools, and everything we might not be able to do until next year.

I mentioned New Zealand because it is a democratic country. VietNam is a lot more open in some ways than China, but they have the same basic government structure which can direct an entire nation very quickly at need (and also has a lot of disadvantages).

I agree with you in one way- this country has a lot of people who, despite having no education in a particular area, decide the experts in any field don't know what they are talking about, and that they magically have more knowledge than those experts. That makes it difficult to deal with a crisis that requires some education or thinking ability.

Let’s address a couple points ...

The “media hoax” garbage is just our media highlighting and constantly disseminating a tiny minority on repeat for ratings. Real conversations with normal people (like here) have contained none of it and really aren’t any indication of reality. Especially not back in March.

They really did have an extra month. Look at when the Seattle / Portland area started initial response, followed by us with our ski area outbreak. They were easily a month behind that, as were numerous other US cities. We knew it was here on the front page of USA Today alongside the day after report of Kobe Bryant’s crash. It’s there. That places were not even responding yet is flat out documented.

A quick Google search says Phoenix is four to five times more populous than Auckland so not sure where your number came from.

As far as their form of government being different, really doesn’t matter much other than a national level activity like forced closure of airports, and no national politician here of any tie color was ever in anyone’s lifetime going to order that. The States here are in charge of disasters and always have been. Nothing new. Or unexpected, even if whichever side is currently out of power and not offering any solutions from hiding wants to make political hay by tossing rocks at the people in power. Totally normal and boring childish cult behavior just like the last half a century or more.

As far as most areas go, we did essentially close our cities. What we didn’t do was stop travel, close public transport, and keep the thing contained. That’s squarely on the States but none would ever do it fully. It’s incompatible with our supply chains. So we hid and sent the pizza guy and the Amazon delivery folk our to get our virus delivering completely non-essential stuff. Talked to whole piles of people remodeling kitchens... because you know... flatten the curve and stop the spread but only for me. Not the construction components delivery guy. That dishwasher looks outdated. LOL.

As far as the experts go, they were “alarmist” but needed to be in March. They’re now orders of magnitude wrong but well within their initial margin of error. Now we just use the actual data instead of the three month old models. And stop freaking out about the fully predicted linear infection rates. Never was a plan that was compatible with our size of cities and logistics systems to stop that, nor feasible to even try.

Wasn’t happening ever. Not in March, and not now.

Thus, the increasing extremely slow rise in affirmative posts in this thread. When it started there was genuine curiosity about if anybody had it. Now it’s just a list that’ll keep being added to.

Technically can still go do what NZ did but I doubt any politician has the balls to say they’re locking everyone already in a hot spot inside of it. Not exactly a very “loving” or “compassionate” thing to do, but locking the rats in the colony to the west world mean nothing ever made its way to my county, which still holds at two deaths the entire time.

Not sure either political pursuation would take a proper quarantine of the *ill* very well emotionally now. So it’s not going to happen. Try cutting off their Amazon X-Box and DVD orders. LOL. Sure...

The good news is we continue to be passed by multiple countries on a ratio basis for deaths now. Also probably expected. Our “terrible” healthcare system still marginally is kicking many’s butts. We aren’t perfect but we’ll be over it sooner by half a year, two years from now at current infection rates.

If something materially changes in that math, great. Hope isn’t a plan. And we missed the travel lockdown forced-quarantine ship months ago. Hell I got on an airplane and flew back to a State a month ahead on TP hoarding and crap while the midwestern state I was in, only closed restaurants the day before I left. Home had been closed for weeks.

My family was jokingly texting me that they managed to find a single large ham to stick in our fridge for when we arrived and we were on our own after that! LOL. We thanked them for watching the dogs and told them to raid our rural normal TP stash. Haha.

Maybe YOU went the same time as NZ, but the powers that be all knew we went way way before that. We had already killed three at a SuperWalmart by then and had outbreaks at four other grocery stores.

Most of what’s saving people now is getting nasty asses to finally wash their hands once in a while. And stop picking their noses. And getting people out of sick buildings.

It was always dumb to commute to a second people box every day, really. Many have been able to work from home for decades, but no circumstance forced it. Many can’t. Many will have to decide if they’re changing careers. Some have been working the entire time laughing at everyone else wringing their hands over the risks they had no choice but to take with bad predictions.

Now the real numbers are in, they’re far better than expected, and folks get to get on with their little grief cycle and decide what they want to do. Some people drive 20 over all the time. Some eat all fried foods.

Kinda a great big yawn now. Exponential growth squashed. Linear growth won’t be. It’ll spread from the logistics and dense rat colonies for a long time.

We’ll still be seeing new posts in this thread at Christmas. Folks who live in dark northern climes will just *love* catching it in November or December vs a nice hot July day. All those forced air heating systems sharing it with the household... no open windows or fresh air. It’ll be spiffy. Or quarantine mom in a room and turn it off and hope the pipes don’t freeze.

What’s your plan for no HVAC? Got one?

How’s the BMI vs a NZ resident? Working out hard in prep for fall?

The typical American is at 99.7% survival now. Add fifty pounds, less. Be lucky enough to be young, way better. Aww bummer. Life ain’t fair. Cry to the household nurse who’s going to work every day.

She’ll laugh and tell y’all to buck up, little campers! Maybe the Thunderbirds will fly over for ya. LOL.

 

[Matthew Rogers]

I agree I'm tired of the morons making this thing drag on way longer than it needed to do we should have just had everybody get together in March let the weak die off and be done with it before spring break arrived. We could have ended this in a month. But no we took the flattening the curve approach. Great idea.

In New York, we did flatten the curve and now it’s the safe place to be, relatively. Testing is still high and free and we only have 0.5-1.0% positive tests. So it does work. Now if only we could keep out everyone else from the rest of the country, we could actually eliminate it in a few months with good contact tracing.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Let’s address a couple points ...

The “media hoax” garbage is just our media highlighting and constantly disseminating a tiny minority on repeat for ratings. Real conversations with normal people (like here) have contained none of it and really aren’t any indication of reality. Especially not back in March.

They really did have an extra month. Look at when the Seattle / Portland area started initial response, followed by us with our ski area outbreak. They were easily a month behind that, as were numerous other US cities. We knew it was here on the front page of USA Today alongside the day after report of Kobe Bryant’s crash. It’s there. That places were not even responding yet is flat out documented.

A quick Google search says Phoenix is four to five times more populous than Auckland so not sure where your number came from.

As far as their form of government being different, really doesn’t matter much other than a national level activity like forced closure of airports, and no national politician here of any tie color was ever in anyone’s lifetime going to order that. The States here are in charge of disasters and always have been. Nothing new. Or unexpected, even if whichever side is currently out of power and not offering any solutions from hiding wants to make political hay by tossing rocks at the people in power. Totally normal and boring childish cult behavior just like the last half a century or more.

As far as most areas go, we did essentially close our cities. What we didn’t do was stop travel, close public transport, and keep the thing contained. That’s squarely on the States but none would ever do it fully. It’s incompatible with our supply chains. So we hid and sent the pizza guy and the Amazon delivery folk our to get our virus delivering completely non-essential stuff. Talked to whole piles of people remodeling kitchens... because you know... flatten the curve and stop the spread but only for me. Not the construction components delivery guy. That dishwasher looks outdated. LOL.

As far as the experts go, they were “alarmist” but needed to be in March. They’re now orders of magnitude wrong but well within their initial margin of error. Now we just use the actual data instead of the three month old models. And stop freaking out about the fully predicted linear infection rates. Never was a plan that was compatible with our size of cities and logistics systems to stop that, nor feasible to even try.

Wasn’t happening ever. Not in March, and not now.

Thus, the increasing extremely slow rise in affirmative posts in this thread. When it started there was genuine curiosity about if anybody had it. Now it’s just a list that’ll keep being added to.

Technically can still go do what NZ did but I doubt any politician has the balls to say they’re locking everyone already in a hot spot inside of it. Not exactly a very “loving” or “compassionate” thing to do, but locking the rats in the colony to the west world mean nothing ever made its way to my county, which still holds at two deaths the entire time.

Not sure either political pursuation would take a proper quarantine of the *ill* very well emotionally now. So it’s not going to happen. Try cutting off their Amazon X-Box and DVD orders. LOL. Sure...

The good news is we continue to be passed by multiple countries on a ratio basis for deaths now. Also probably expected. Our “terrible” healthcare system still marginally is kicking many’s butts. We aren’t perfect but we’ll be over it sooner by half a year, two years from now at current infection rates.

If something materially changes in that math, great. Hope isn’t a plan. And we missed the travel lockdown forced-quarantine ship months ago. Hell I got on an airplane and flew back to a State a month ahead on TP hoarding and crap while the midwestern state I was in, only closed restaurants the day before I left. Home had been closed for weeks.

My family was jokingly texting me that they managed to find a single large ham to stick in our fridge for when we arrived and we were on our own after that! LOL. We thanked them for watching the dogs and told them to raid our rural normal TP stash. Haha.

Maybe YOU went the same time as NZ, but the powers that be all knew we went way way before that. We had already killed three at a SuperWalmart by then and had outbreaks at four other grocery stores.

Most of what’s saving people now is getting nasty asses to finally wash their hands once in a while. And stop picking their noses. And getting people out of sick buildings.

It was always dumb to commute to a second people box every day, really. Many have been able to work from home for decades, but no circumstance forced it. Many can’t. Many will have to decide if they’re changing careers. Some have been working the entire time laughing at everyone else wringing their hands over the risks they had no choice but to take with bad predictions.

Now the real numbers are in, they’re far better than expected, and folks get to get on with their little grief cycle and decide what they want to do. Some people drive 20 over all the time. Some eat all fried foods.

Kinda a great big yawn now. Exponential growth squashed. Linear growth won’t be. It’ll spread from the logistics and dense rat colonies for a long time.

We’ll still be seeing new posts in this thread at Christmas. Folks who live in dark northern climes will just *love* catching it in November or December vs a nice hot July day. All those forced air heating systems sharing it with the household... no open windows or fresh air. It’ll be spiffy. Or quarantine mom in a room and turn it off and hope the pipes don’t freeze.

What’s your plan for no HVAC? Got one?

How’s the BMI vs a NZ resident? Working out hard in prep for fall?

The typical American is at 99.7% survival now. Add fifty pounds, less. Be lucky enough to be young, way better. Aww bummer. Life ain’t fair. Cry to the household nurse who’s going to work every day.

She’ll laugh and tell y’all to buck up, little campers! Maybe the Thunderbirds will fly over for ya. LOL.

Nate- you may know IT, but you sure don't know how to write. I'm not going through all of that verbal diarrhea.
I'm not sure how your undoubted expertise in information technology makes you an expert in epidemiology, virology,nor any other aspect of medicine.

I'll just note following:
- The numbers for city populations came from Google, as yours did.

- New Zealand had the same information form China that we did. Any country that had a functioning intelligence agency knew no later than mid-January China had a real problem. New Zealand didn't have more time than we did. I travel to China enough, and work with them enough to get a little more information than most people. I heard from my friends and colleagues in late December that there was an outbreak in Wuhan. I also heard from them that they weren't going anyplace, as they planned, because the Chinese government stopped travel between cities. I repeat this because, if I knew, out government knew

 

[EdFred]

And that's why I mention New Zealand.

As you previously said to me that's not a fact it's just what you want to believe. Plus comparing a country with 4 million people versus 300 million people is not even a valid comparison.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

As you previously said to me that's not a fact it's just what you want to believe.

Huh? New Zealand still has an epidemic problem?

Plus comparing a country with 4 million people versus 300 million people is not even a valid comparison.

New Zealan's population is closer to 5 million.
Why not compare the two? Take a large country like the USA, and have the states use their local authority, with guidance from the federal government.
Australia, 25 million people, also has it under control.
Vietnam, 96 million, has it under control

Face it- the USA fouled up the response.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

If you are alive, you weren't one of the weak ones. No apologies necessary. For the most part this thing is the equivalent of lions and wildebeest. Its picking off the old and the weak. Sure once in a while, the lions grab a healthy one.

I suppose your friend's mother was one of the weak ones?

 

[Bob Noel]

Huh? New Zealand still has an epidemic problem?


New Zealan's population is closer to 5 million.
Why not compare the two? Take a large country like the USA, and have the states use their local authority.
Australia, 25 million people, also has it under control.
Vietnam, 96 million, has it under control

Face it- the USA fouled up the response.

A question is how much international travel is there between China and New Zealand? Vietnam and Chine? etc. as compared to travel between the US and China.

I don't think the population size matters so much as the sources of the spread. Parts of the USA have had very few cases... parts got scrawged big time. Some small countries have higher number of cases per 1M residents than the USA rate, same goes for deaths per 1M residents (if you believe the worldometer numbers)

 

[Cap'n Jack]

A question is how much international travel is there between China and New Zealand? Vietnam and Chine? etc. as compared to travel between the US and China.

I don't think the population size matters so much as the sources of the spread. Parts of the USA have had very few cases... parts got scrawged big time. Some small countries have higher number of cases per 1M residents than the USA rate, same goes for deaths per 1M residents (if you believe the worldometer numbers)

Actually, you'd be surprised. I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but there's a lot to read in the thread, too. With respect to Australia and New Zealand, when I was last there, there were so many Chinese that there were billboards in Mandarin, mostly for real estate. The Chinese have invested a lot of money in both countries. Up until 2017, the USA was a tourist destination for Chinese. During 2017 through the pandemic, they went to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other places. I saw a lot of them in Finland, of all places; I was told it was inexpensive for them. Chinese students used to attend USA universities, and that has fallen off a lot. The beneficiaries are mainly Canada, and some to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

VietNam- There is a little tourism from China, but VietNam is more closely aligned with the USA. Part of that is because China is being more aggressive and claims some territory VietNam believes belongs to them that is located in the South China Sea, and the gulf of Tonkin. Complicating that is the USA tariffs. Some material was started in China, shipped to VietNam, finished there, and sent to the USA to avoid tariffs.

 

[Bob Noel]

Actually, you'd be surprised. I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but there's a lot to read in the thread, too. With respect to Australia and New Zealand, when I was last there, there were so many Chinese that there were billboards in Mandarin, mostly for real estate. The Chinese have invested a lot of money in both countries. Up until 2017, the USA was a tourist destination for Chinese. During 2017 through the pandemic, they went to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other places. I saw a lot of them in Finland, of all places; I was told it was inexpensive for them. Chinese students used to attend USA universities, and that has fallen off a lot. The beneficiaries are mainly Canada, and some to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

VietNam- There is a little tourism from China, but VietNam is more closely aligned with the USA. Part of that is because China is being more aggressive and claims some territory VietNam believes belongs to them that is located in the South China Sea, and the gulf of Tonkin. Complicating that is the USA tariffs. Some material was started in China, shipped to VietNam, finished there, and sent to the USA to avoid tariffs.

I think the number of Chinese residents, while related, isn't the same as the number of people (both Chinese and non-Chinese) traveling to/from China...

 

[denverpilot]

Face it- the USA fouled up the response.

Everyone saying this offers ZERO workable solutions that were actually feasible, Ive noticed.

Of course I do mention them in my “verbal diarrea” they refuse to bother to read when they read a DISCUSSION text based forum, willingly.

There’s absolutely nothing about that writing style you wouldn’t discuss in person verbally. You’re just lazy. It’s a whopping page of text. Oooh.

Want to discuss more than your sound bytes? Jump on in. We all have plenty of sound bytes from the media. Useless.

Say it. Say what you wanted politicians to do. Exactly what you wanted them to do. I bet they couldn’t. Well past time to get over it because it was yesterday. What do you want them to do now?

We closing all the exits into the cities and nobody crosses until it burns out? Stay in there and enjoy your Covid? Say it if that’s what you want. It’s an option.

If you don’t like discussion then scroll on by. I have zero interest in platitudes like “we messed up”.

No ****. Everybody messes up. Seen any perfect pilots here yet?

Offer a solution. Talk through it. Let’s hear it. Don’t be lame. One liners don’t operate the world and humanity doesn’t work that way.

Anyway... Was this too long for you. sire? Shall I get your robe and slippers now? I forget that you get to demand things of others on the Internet and pretend that was a response to the points made. LOL.

Take the beach. Hand wringing isn’t gonna get ya past the machine gun nest. Our grandparents did it and some survived and some didn’t. Some sat around and whines that they “did it wrong”. Still do. It adds no value.

Well it does add entertainment value to say Eisenhower was a doofus. But that’s about it really.

To be clear I’m not offended or even mad if you say I’m wrong and come up with a better idea that’s actually workable. Go for it. What’cha want? Full lockdown go nowhere for two years? Say it. Wide open get everybody sick? Say that. I don’t mind.

Did you *really* ever believe the same people who bring you the DMV and TSA were NOT going to mess things up?? LOL. No. Completely predictable.

Just the sheer number of doofuses that have to be involved at our scale vs New Zealand?? LOL. Human error multiplies.

Yay. They win the “we did better with a tiny fraction of problems to manage” award. Hahaha. Who cares?

The fight is at the county, city, block, and house level now. There’s no Statewide “emergencies” anymore. Firebreaks and stamping out embers.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I think the number of Chinese residents, while related, isn't the same as the number of people (both Chinese and non-Chinese) traveling to/from China...

Who said anything about residents? Even if that were the case, they still travel to the home country, usually during the Spring Festival that was cancelled this year.

I mentioned tourists, students, and investors. People in China are investing in real estate outside of China. I suppose they have a local management company look after the properties, but they still come down to see what they are buying, and come periodically how it is being maintained. Students travel back and forth during the school breaks.

The Chinese have their own cruise line, Dream Cruises, which goes to Australia and other places:
https://www.dreamcruiseline.com/en-us/plan-your-holiday/cruise-destinations/

It seems the Chinese almost own Cambodia, from what I could see there. I saw more Mandarin signage than anything else.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Everyone saying this offers ZERO workable solutions that were actually feasible, Ive noticed.

Of course I do mention them in my “verbal diarrea” they refuse to bother to read when they read a DISCUSSION text based forum, willingly.

There’s absolutely nothing about that writing style you wouldn’t discuss in person verbally. You’re just lazy. It’s a whopping page of text. Oooh.

Want to discuss more than your sound bytes? Jump on in. We all have plenty of sound bytes from the media. Useless.

Say it. Say what you wanted politicians to do. Exactly what you wanted them to do. I bet they couldn’t. Well past time to get over it because it was yesterday. What do you want them to do now?

We closing all the exits into the cities and nobody crosses until it burns out? Stay in there and enjoy your Covid? Say it if that’s what you want. It’s an option.

If you don’t like discussion then scroll on by. I have zero interest in platitudes like “we messed up”.

No ****. Everybody messes up. Seen any perfect pilots here yet?

Offer a solution. Talk through it. Let’s hear it. Don’t be lame. One liners don’t operate the world and humanity doesn’t work that way.

Anyway... Was this too long for you. sire? Shall I get your robe and slippers now? I forget that you get to demand things of others on the Internet and pretend that was a response to the points made. LOL.

Take the beach. Hand wringing isn’t gonna get ya past the machine gun nest. Our grandparents did it and some survived and some didn’t. Some sat around and whines that they “did it wrong”. Still do. It adds no value.

Well it does add entertainment value to say Eisenhower was a doofus. But that’s about it really.

To be clear I’m not offended or even mad if you say I’m wrong and come up with a better idea that’s actually workable. Go for it. What’cha want? Full lockdown go nowhere for two years? Say it. Wide open get everybody sick? Say that. I don’t mind.

Did you *really* ever believe the same people who bring you the DMV and TSA were NOT going to mess things up?? LOL. No. Completely predictable.

Just the sheer number of doofuses that have to be involved at our scale vs New Zealand?? LOL. Human error multiplies.

Yay. They win the “we did better with a tiny fraction of problems to manage” award. Hahaha. Who cares?

The fight is at the county, city, block, and house level now. There’s no Statewide “emergencies” anymore. Firebreaks and stamping out embers.

I did offer a workable solution, The same as successful countries. Shut down for 3-4 weeks. Stop all travel. 1 person goes out once a week for food. As you alluded, the Greatest Generation won the beaches and silenced the machine guns. All we had to do was sit on out butts for a few weeks. We can't even do that. Some states that tried to shut things down had armed protesters. We can still do shut things down for a month and open schools in September.