I am not an expert in epidemiology. I am, however, wise enough to listen to epidemiologists.
It did not have to be this way. It does not have to be this way. But it will be this way for the foreseeable future, because Donald Trump refuses to change his non-response and his lame attempt to pawn the problem onto governors, which CANNOT AND WILL NOT WORK, because we need a simultaneous national lockdown.
This failure to shut down simultaneously across the USA is going to cause an economic catastrophe.
Even many of the doctors on TV do not get it. The epidemiologists get it.
These networks need to stop with the doctors who do not get it. These doctors, and many on all sides in our country, are carried along with the Trump madness about opening regionally like seaweed with the tide.
I invite you to offer links to epidemiologists that are currently (summer, 2020) calling for a nationwide shutdown.
This is hysteria-mongering. Please stop.
We need testing. We desperately need data at the hyper-local level. We need to establish mechanisms for directing critical resources where they are needed when they are needed.
We do NOT need people demanding that everything stop simultaneously.
I do not accept homework assignments.
Laurie Garrett.
150,000 dead.
“Hysteria-mongering?” Let’s see how well that term ages over the next six months.
Which is 0.05% of the US population and about 3.3% of cases. More than 2 million Americans have also recovered. This is not the Black Death and should not be treated as such. Less than 2% of Americans are reported to have it.
You want a link? How about 150 public health experts:
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-07-24/over-150-medical-experts-urge-trump-congress-and-states-to-shut-us-down-again-amid-coronavirus-surge?context=amp
It is becoming all too apparent on this blog that I am NOT the one not paying attention to the evolution of this pandemic.
For you to direct me to go find links for you as if this is a doctoral dissertation, when that very request just reveals several of you not to be paying attention to MASSIVE DEATH. It also makes it is clear that it is several of YOU that are not paying attention to this pandemic or thinking this through.
Why not try addressing the issue?
It isn’t helpful to run around yelling “the sky is falling”.
I invite you provide a cite as a more courteous way of saying “I think you’re making it up.” Since your response to that courteous request is to redouble your attack, I won’t bother next time. I think you’re offended by being asked to cite links because you know as well as I do that there aren’t any.
I’m well aware of the case count. I’m well aware of the death count. Did you know that the death count lags the case count by pretty much exactly 18 days?
Look at http://covid.zeetix.com/. That’s my site. I update it every day.
The highest daily case count in a US county yesterday was in Harris County, Texas, at 1,758. The highest daily case count ever record in the US was 8.021.
Harris County, TX is neighbored by Chambers, Liberty, Montgomery, Waller, Fort Bend, Brazoria, and Galveston counties. Each of those had ZERO new cases yesterday.
The nearest county in Texas with ANY cases is Travis county — halfway across the state (and it’s a big state) with 247 cases. The nearest county with any cases at all is Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, with 162. That part of Texas is actually improving from last week.
This pandemic is the essence of a HYPER LOCAL phenomenon. Yes indeed EVERY county should be on a hair trigger. No, we should NOT shut down all of those.
You are demanding that we burn the village to save it.
We correctly stopped a US government from doing that about 50 years ago.
“You are demanding that we burn the village to save it.”
This is totally absurd. If we had done what I am saying we should do on March 15 we would be no different from Germany or the other countries in the European Union today we would have a thriving economy. I would not call that burning down the village.
But by all means, just keep being swept along with the tide passively.
You’re living in a dream world. Germany is a fraction of the size of the US. I’ve already posted the information here in other threads. Germany is about the size of the Northeast, and has about twice the population. We DID shut down the northeast, and the Northeast IS approximately tracking the path of Germany.
I encourage you to review the columns of Paul Krugman about the economic effects of this. We already did shutdown the US economy. That was supposed to buy us time to get the pandemic under control. We squandered that time. Our economic situation is now dire. We suffered all the pain of the worst economic impact of the modern era, and we gained none of the benefits.
It does not make sense to redouble that.
Shutting down the economy as you apparently propose ALSO has a devastating effect. We have a private food distribution network. If we shut down that network, people starve. By the tens of millions.
There are 320 million people in the US. It is not possible to “shut down” the US economy without killing at least as many people who are at risk from the pandemic. More likely it will kill even more, because shutting down WILL NOT stop the pandemic — it’s too late for that.
The effect of what you propose will be to exacerbate the worst of the issues we already face. Minorities and immigrants will fare the worst, because they are already on the short end of EVERY economic stick.
We need to remove this traitor from power. We need to stop him from sabotaging each and every aspect of our desperately needed federal response. We need to empower our scientists, not punish them. We need to proactively educate local officials about what to watch for and what to do when it happens.
We need to STOP demanding quick “fixes” that don’t work. We need to stop dreaming impossible dreams about what might have been and face the reality of what IS.
That letter is an example of media lobbying.
If you drill down into, you’ll see that those are self-described “medical experts”. A “medical expert” is different from an epidemiologist.
The letter itself is unspecific about the scope and scale of what it proposes. It explicitly invites people who are NOT “experts” to sign.
It is a political, not scientific, document.
You’re the one passively accepting Trump’s politicized frames, and I’m the one being unscientific?
That’s rich.
Terry, deep breaths. Please.
Listen to Dr. Fauci. Listen to epidemiologists. Calm down.
The situation is already bad, and likely to get worse. It doesn’t help to yell at people who agree with you.