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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the lock-em-down dept.

Politicians won't admit it yet, but it's time to prepare—physically and psychologically—for a sudden stop to all life outside your home.

[...] Whether you are reading this in your living room in Vancouver, office in London, or on a subway in New York City, you need to think hard, and fast, about two crucial questions: Where, and with whom, do you want to spend the next six to 12 weeks of your life, hunkered down for the epidemic duration? And what can you do to make that place as safe as possible for yourself and those around you?

Your time to answer those questions is very short—a few days, at most. Airports will close, trains will shut down, gasoline supplies may dwindle, and roadblocks may be set up. Nations are closing their borders, and as the numbers of sick rise, towns, suburbs, even entire counties will try to shut the virus out by blocking travel. Wherever you decide to settle down this week is likely to be the place in which you will be stuck for the duration of your epidemic.

To appreciate what lies ahead for the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, pay heed to Italy, France, and Germany. The United States, for example, is currently tracking exactly where Italy was about 10 days ago. France and Germany, which track two to five days ahead of the United States, are now revving up measures akin to those taken by Italy, including lockdowns on movement and social activity. In a matter of days, the United States will follow suit.

[...] Once tough location decisions have been made, the household must be readied for a long siege. While panic-buying has led to stockpiles of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, getting through eight months of confinement with others will require a great deal more, both physically and psychologically. This is especially true for households that span generations.

Long-term confinement that includes children undergoing remote schooling and adults trying to work requires designated spaces for each individual, a powerful Internet signal and Wi-Fi router, and a great deal of shared patience. Everybody in the household must understand how the coronavirus is spread, and what steps each should follow to eliminate their personal risk of passing infection to others in the home.

The virus is transmitted by droplets and fomites[*]—it isn't like measles, capable of drifting about in the air for hours. It dehydrates quickly if not inside water, mucus, or fomite droplets. The size of the droplets may be far below what the human eye can see, but they are gravity-sensitive, and will fall from an individual's mouth down, eventually, to the nearest lower surface—table, desk, floor. You do not need to clean upward.

However, a newly published study, backed by the National Institutes of Health, found that the virus survives in "aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel." This means an uncleaned surface can pose a risk to members of the household for a very long time—a doorknob, tabletop, kitchen counter or stainless steel utensil.

[*] Wikipedia entry on fomites:

any inanimate object that, when contaminated with or exposed to infectious agents (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses or fungi), can transfer disease to a new host.

[...] In addition to objects in hospital settings, other common fomites for humans are cups, spoons, pencils, bath faucet handles, toilet flush levers, door knobs, light switches, handrails, elevator buttons, television remote controls, pens, touch screens, common-use phones, keyboards, and computer mice, coffeepot handles, countertops, and any other items that may be frequently touched by different people and infrequently cleaned.

Researchers have discovered that smooth (non-porous) surfaces like door knobs transmit bacteria and viruses better than porous materials like paper money because porous, especially fibrous, materials absorb and trap the contagion, making it harder to contract through simple touch. Nonetheless, fomites may include soiled clothes, towels, linens, handkerchiefs, and surgical dressings


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by stormwyrm on Tuesday March 24 2020, @05:27AM (62 children)

    by stormwyrm (717) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @05:27AM (#974796) Journal
    Too bad the administration basically screwed the pooch on this one, and mired people who developed COVID-19 testing processes in red tape. The full story [gq.com] is rage-inducing.

    I... asked him what he’d tell President Trump if he had the opportunity to speak to him, if he knew that everything he asked for would be granted. Baird hesitated. He started a few sentences, each of which devolved into raw anger that he asked me to scratch from the record. Finally, he took a breath and said, “An immediate recognition of the primacy of fact and reason. That’s all.”

    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:25AM (41 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:25AM (#974809) Journal

    Yeah, well, blame it all on Trump. And - who was it complaining that shutting the borders would be "racist"? In this case, we had Team Idiot in one corner, and Court Fool in the other corner, fighting over our fates, and we may all lose.

    It's a bit late to be talking about what we should have done, isn't it? Or, do the Dems want to smuggle another million migrants in before we really really close the borders?

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:46AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:46AM (#974825) Journal

      and we may all lose.

      It's only March, not May yet.
      Oh, you meant "It might happen that we all lose"? No 'may' necessary then, that's 100% certain.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:53AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:53AM (#974837)

      And anyone who takes medical advice from Trump or his much stupider distant cousin, Runaway1111, deserves to die, in a nice racist fashion. In an intensive care unit, on a ventilator they share with colored people, nursed by Mexicans, and treated by a Muslim doctor. Die, racists, die!

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 24 2020, @09:53AM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 24 2020, @09:53AM (#974870) Journal

        Oh, Dear Jeeebus, don't let there be any Greek philosophers in the mix!!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:03AM (34 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:03AM (#974842)

      Yeah, well, blame it all on Trump

      You know, FUCK YOU. This is ALL on Trump. Any other sane president would have listened to the scientists that the disease is coming. That you need to prepare tests, fast and get shit ready. But what did we get from Trump??

      https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2020/03/trump-statements.jpeg [snopes.com]
      https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/timeline-trump-covid19-responses/ [snopes.com]

      China gave US and rest of the world 2 MONTHS to prepare. Only few places actually prepared and US definitely dropped the ball on everything. Now US has more sick people than anywhere in the world. Correction, Italy has more known sick, but who needs testing?? Just give US a few days to be #1 !! YAY!

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday March 24 2020, @11:03AM (3 children)

        by driverless (4770) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @11:03AM (#974895)

        Just give US a few days to be #1 !! YAY!

        If you look at the curves, even places like Italy are slowly, slowly starting to flatten. The US is still a straight line on a log-scale graph. "We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning" has never been more true, the only change is that there should be a comma after "sick".

        • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:11PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:11PM (#974917)

          Congratulations [twitter.com] - the US will surpass Chinese reported figures by early next week. [youtube.com]

          Perhaps you should instead be asking why China and the WHO, in mid January, were insisting there was no human to human transmission or requirement for travel restrictions.

          • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 24 2020, @02:53PM

            by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @02:53PM (#974997)

            > why China and the WHO, in mid January, were insisting there was no human to human transmission

            Indeed, even in February - how long did it take before WHO declared pandemic? *Everyone* knew it was a pandemic, yet WHO dragged its heels for about a week while infections were kicking off in Italy, Korea and Iran.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:24PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:24PM (#975177)

          If you look at the curves, even places like Italy are slowly, slowly starting to flatten.

          Yes, now, more than 4 weeks after their initial lockdowns [wikipedia.org] and, hey, right on schedule 2 weeks after the nation-wide lockdown. Italy's curve is flattening because they did something about it. More than the US is doing.

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by bobmorning on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:17PM (5 children)

        by bobmorning (6045) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:17PM (#974920)

        Wow, anger management classes for you. Get over it, he won, you lost. MAGA 2020 baby!

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:15PM

          by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:15PM (#975016) Journal

          Wow...seems more like you ALL lost.

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:35PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:35PM (#975029)

          Even now you maga idiots still support that shitty fucking human. There is no har low enough, no fuckup he can make to get reality through that thick skull.

          He is an incompetent self-centered corrupt douchebag and that has nothing to do with whether I wanted someone else in the White House. I would have preferred literally any other candidate now that we know just how bad Trump is. Seriously, any other person would have to.try to suck as hard as Trump does naturally.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:52AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:52AM (#975408)

            What's your point? Somehow you guys think Trump is the source of all evil. He's just one person. No matter who the President was, there would still be a bunch of people partying on the beach. A bunch of people hosting virus parties so they can get their infections over with and then ignore everything else. What about all the doctors writing fraudulent prescriptions for themselves and their families? Etc... Trump doesn't directly control everything in the country. There's plenty of people screwing up for various reasons. What I see is people in leadership positions tossing the blame around and all finger pointing at Trump, completely ignoring that they're in charge of their organizations/areas and could have easily made their own preparations or changes. Instead of anyone stepping up, it's all throw your hands up and stick your head in your ass (maybe that's why people need so much TP?) because I don't have any personal responsibility because I see the man in charge (of foreign policy and the military, not of law making) as God even though I hate him.

            When you find someone who's an incompetent self-centered corrupt douchebag you ignore him. You guys are doing the opposite and saying you can't do anything because you're spending so much time focused on him. Wake up.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:50PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:50PM (#975970)
              There's a lot that he could have done to help, but instead every move he's made has basically made things worse. He removed a pandemic-preparedness office in the National Security Council despite pleas to have it restored, and as a result hamstrung the administration's response to the crisis. He cut funding for the CDC. He is still arguably treating COVID-19 as a partisan political issue rather than a major international crisis. He's given the public mixed messages, with his officials saying one thing and him saying the opposite. This probably has contributed significantly to the climate of apathy over the crisis in the country that results in more idiots partying at the beach than not. People like Anthony Fauci can't just ignore the president and push on with their work, because the president can and has interfered with their work. And he's not just in charge of foreign policy and the military. He's very much in charge of domestic policy too, and his domestic policy so far has been very helpful to SARS-CoV-2.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @01:00AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @01:00AM (#975277)

          Can we still get Hillary to run the death panels?

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @01:50PM (13 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @01:50PM (#974957)

        Any other sane president would have...

        Not gutted the CDC and other evidence based federal institutions.

        Not been the star of his own reality TV series where he flaunted his managerial incompetency and narcissistic personality disorders.

        Not demonstrated total incompetency at use of a teleprompter.

        We get the leadership we vote for, most of us don't vote, so...

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dwilson on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:29PM (3 children)

          by dwilson (2599) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:29PM (#975074) Journal

          Might be offtopic, but which would actually be worse? Getting trump because most of you didn't vote, or getting him because most of you did?

          --
          - D
          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:45PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:45PM (#975090)

            It's like the people who don't try so they can't "really" fail...

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:37PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:37PM (#975160)

            The worst would be electing Biden and not teaching the DNC a lesson.

          • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:07AM

            by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:07AM (#975304) Journal

            Neither. No candidate from the top four parties deserved the presidency -- and only those four parties were on the ballot in all 50 states. Primaries are a joke. Things are so bad, we can't begin to answer the question you pose. (Which is unfortunate because we should be able to.)

        • (Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2020, @05:49PM (8 children)

          by sjames (2882) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @05:49PM (#975117) Journal

          The sad part is that Clinton actually got more of the popular vote than Trump, but the vagueries of the way we count votes gave Trump the win in the electoral college.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:05PM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:05PM (#975127)

            The sad part is that Clinton actually got more of the popular vote than Trump, but the vagueries of the way we count votes gave Trump the win in the electoral college.

            The sad part is that if you completed a high school education, you didn't learn enough civics to know how and why we've been electing presidents for the last 230 years.

            • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM

              by sjames (2882) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM (#975169) Journal

              I guess you skipped the whole reading comprehension thing...

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @09:57PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @09:57PM (#975219)

              Well, he also failed to learn the spelling of "vagary", so there's plenty of sad parts to go around.

              • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 25 2020, @08:58AM

                by sjames (2882) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @08:58AM (#975379) Journal

                When you nit-pick someone's spelling, it's really embarrassing to be wrong [yourdictionary.com].

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:26PM (3 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:26PM (#975132)

            I'm O.K. with the national popular vote not deciding the election... the rules are the rules, and presidential elections have been gamed to optimize to those rules for decades - Trump is far from the first to win with a minority popular vote. Maybe we should change the rules, but until we do there's not really any point in complaining about them.

            What I believe we really should do is erase the barriers to voting. If you're eligible to vote, voting (once) should be as easy as possible. Florida does pretty well at this: early voting open for weeks at convenient locations. Other states have varying degrees of shockingly discriminatory practices that are clearly aimed at shaping the outcome of elections.

            I'd also be very much in favor of anti-gerrymandering legislation, something algorithmic which would allow any petitioner to complain that the boundaries are drawn with "nonsensical" skew, and if they can propose a new set of boundaries which are, say, 10% less skewed than the current boundaries (according to some well accepted clustering algorithm), the legislature would be required to redraw the boundaries within 1 year or less to either the petitioner's proposed boundaries or other boundaries such that the legislature decides which exceed the low-skew measure of the petitioner's proposal. Unfortunately, that's way too much math for your average bear, much less politician, but I think when people saw the proposed map boundaries they'd support it overwhelmingly (unless, of course, they want the gerrymander skewed election results...)

            Meanwhile, we've got to deal with what we've got - just like the crappy level of true information coming in around actual COVID-19 infection rates, silent carriers, etc.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
            • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:52PM (2 children)

              by sjames (2882) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:52PM (#975142) Journal

              The rules are the rules. I point it out to deflate claims of having "a mandate from the people". With a margin that small, there is no mandate. With the popular vote going the other way, there isn't really even a grudging acceptance.

              I agree on removing gerrymandering. Ideally I would like to see it determined based on objective criteria that could be processed with a 'blessed' piece of software (some sort of iterative optimizer most likely) based on a public database, but that's probably not going to happen.

              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @10:37PM

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @10:37PM (#975230)

                I just about threw up on the TV when Bush W announced his "mandate from the people to continue the war in Iraq" based on his 52% victory.

                The problem with anti-gerrymandering software is that nobody would really trust/understand it. If there was a chance in hell of it passing politically, I'd try myself to work out an algorithm that both satisfies the math geeks and can be understood by at least 51% of the bears out there, it's possible, but pointless in the current political climate.

                --
                🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:30AM

                by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:30AM (#975267) Journal

                With a margin that small, there is no mandate.

                Thank you. With a 60% majority, the winner might begin talking of mandates. Low to mid 50%? He sounds like a damned fool when he mentions mandates. Given a 75% win, the winning party actually has a pretty clear mandate.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:07PM (7 children)

        by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:07PM (#975008) Journal
        In the news this morning: Trump was also responsible for getting rid of the position of a US person embedded in the Chinese equivalent of the CDC, whose job it would have been to communicate on this outbreak when it was first discovered. It would have been a few months more warning if that person had still been in their job.
        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:28PM (6 children)

          Dude... Controlling diseases is in the bloody name of the CDC. It's not like they didn't notice it just because they didn't have someone with a very specific job title that sits around playing minesweeper the rest of the time.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM (#975170)

            You don't think it would have made a tiny bit of difference whether that person was playing minesweeper from his bedroom in sunny Cleveland, or from a government facility in Wuhan?

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @10:46AM (4 children)

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @10:46AM (#975392) Homepage Journal

              No, I don't. China would have released exactly the same information whether we had another useless bureaucratic position or not.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday March 25 2020, @02:48PM (3 children)

                by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @02:48PM (#975472) Journal
                Yeah... no. The entire point of this kind of position is to stop governments from either actively covering up outbreaks or 'accidentally' forgetting to get around to notifying other countries for a few critical weeks.
                --
                sudo mod me up
                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:55PM (2 children)

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:55PM (#975502) Homepage Journal

                  Man, I dunno what world you're living in but in this one China controls information flow to and from China with an iron fist. Parking some bureaucrat with a fancy title in an embassy ain't gonna make a shit bit of difference to that.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday March 25 2020, @05:29PM (1 child)

                    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @05:29PM (#975546) Journal
                    Once again, you're misrepresenting what happened. This was not a bureaucrat in an embassy, this was an epidemiologist in the team responsible for responding to epidemics. It is not possible for China to hide the outbreak from such a person. It is possible for them to stop that person communicating, but then someone is going to start asking questions.
                    --
                    sudo mod me up
                    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @09:36PM

                      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @09:36PM (#975610) Homepage Journal

                      Dude, it don't matter if it was Jesus and Mohammad riding naked on a unicorn, they wouldn't have been allowed within a hundred miles of anything interesting and they would have heard fuck-all about it. There is no free flow of information in China. Speaking, much less publishing, out of turn gets your ass imprisoned.

                      --
                      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:17PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:17PM (#975417) Journal

        The president we despise is an abject failure who is personally responsible for killing everyone who dies in a pandemic.

        The president we like is not to blame because what can you do against a natural disaster except try to herd cats in a helpful direction?

        Does that about sum it up for you?

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:01AM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:01AM (#975676) Journal

        Be fair. Trump wasn't that much worse than several other "leader of their country" figures. Boris Johnson is only starting to acknowledge how serious it is.

        FWIW, COVID-19 spread all over the globe before anyone understood what it was. It had probably spread into the US in December, possibly with the Christmas holiday travelers. Remember, most cases are minor, and you won't even recognize the serious cases unless you know what to look for. Otherwise it just looks like pneumonia, and if you live through that a heart attack.

        What he *should* have done is prepare the health system for unexpected emergencies, and started focusing on being prepared for pandemic pneumonia in January. But most other countries didn't do that either. (That he did the direct opposite is an attempt to live up to his campaign promises. There were really stupid ideas, but enough states favored them that it helped give him the election, so cutting out parts of government that weren't currently being used is honest for him to do, if not reasonable.)

        I consider the promises he made incapable of being filled, and idiotic to attempt to fill, but when that's what people voted for you at least can't criticize him for dishonesty when he acts to fulfill them. I reserve that for his extortion of funds to his private purpose, and similar acts.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:59AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:59AM (#974862)
      President Truman once famously said "The buck stops here." President Trump on the other hand famously said: "I don't take responsibility." The only similarity between them are the first four letters of their surname.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:28PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:28PM (#975073)

      ...and when the ocean starts crawling up everyone's ass in a decade or two?

      Wait wait I already know: "It's a bit late to be talking about what we should have done, isn't it?"

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:39AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:39AM (#975271)

        Is that you, Saint Greta?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @01:54PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @01:54PM (#974960)

    Trump's done a lot of really stupid things, but the testing red-tape was pure CYA bureaucracy. It would have happened regardless of who was in office. He's still in charge, so the buck stops with him, but if you don't change the incentives for the bureaucracy it's just going to happen again next time. As was obvious last time something like this happened. Don't expect any actual improvements, in other words. Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy and all.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:20PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:20PM (#975019)
      I don't think this would have happened if you had a president that listened to the science and took the threat of COVID-19 seriously. For two months there had been news from China that COVID-19 was really bad. Any other president, heck probably even a dunderhead like George W. Bush, would probably have heeded these warnings and quickly relaxed the FDA's bureaucratic requirements to get tests like the one Dr. Alex Greninger had devised approved more quickly. Bullshit requirements like instructing him to test his method on the SARS and MERS viruses before approval (WTF?!) would have been waived immediately if you had a president who actually took the threat seriously. But no, instead we've had Trump still denouncing news of the spread of the disease as a Democratic hoax as late as two weeks ago and just this week viciously attacking a journalist who honestly asked him what he would say to Americans afraid of COVID-19. And no, with Trump, the buck stops, oh, somewhere way over there. "I don't take responsibility at all." Yeah, Harry Truman turns over in his grave, and is painfully ashamed that he even shares the first four letters of his last name with this successor of his.
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:41AM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:41AM (#975272) Journal

        The dunderhead to whom you refer ignored all intel from the intel community, then after the fact, twisted the intel available to fit his own agenda in attacking Iraq. WTF makes you think he was going to listen to medical science?

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:08AM (2 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:08AM (#975680) Journal

      No. It was a NIH syndrome. He didn't want to use the test that WHO had developed, he wanted to develop a different one. There were bugs in the development...and I'm not in a position to guess why. And I also can't guess the thought process behind refusing to use the test that had already been developed.

      Well, that's not true. I've got several guesses, but that's what they are. And I know I'm strongly biased against Trump, so I don't trust my guesses.
      As an extreme example:
      "He's a deep Russian agent intent on sabotaging the country, so he didn't want a test that would work."
      There's no real evidence that this is correct. Believing it only shows that you're willing to believe things that align with your beliefs even without evidence.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:59AM (1 child)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:59AM (#975702) Homepage Journal

        Because it was a shitty test that kicked out lots of false negatives. False positives are annoying to one person but false negatives are dangerous to millions. Also because testing doesn't do a damned thing for anyone who's sick, it's only good for data crunching after the fact.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:14PM

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:14PM (#975908) Journal

          It sure wasn't perfect, but it was a lot better than not having any test. And most US cases are still not tested at all (so saying they are cases is based on presumptive evidence that only catches one extreme).

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:37PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:37PM (#975081)

    The entire behavior of the administration has been so consistently rage-inducing it desensitizes people to the real problems, like this one.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:13PM

      by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:13PM (#975151)

      Consistently rage-inducing, hmm ...

      • Induce rage
      • Train AI to recognize and induce rage
      • Monetize rage
      • Profit!
      • Bonus: Save on Medicare costs when people die early of rage-linked conditions

      Congratulations on identifying the genuinely Trump-administration-specialty engine that will pull us out of this upcoming recession! You can expect your Nobel Prize in economics in the mail any day soon.

  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday March 25 2020, @07:49AM (9 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @07:49AM (#975367) Journal

    Personally I prefer the current CDC test that comes with false positives to the tests that the WHO and China shared that had false negatives, but thats just me. It took longer, but at least it's accurate. The WHO test was used on that first patient we had up in Washington who they tested multiple times a day and over the course of his two weeks in the hospital the test would switch between positive and negative each time with more tests showing negative than positive.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @10:53AM (8 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @10:53AM (#975394) Homepage Journal

      I don't really see the utility of a test at all aside from tracking outbreak for posterity's sake. Knowing which flavor of crap you feel like isn't going to change that you feel like crap or what you do about it.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 25 2020, @07:44PM (7 children)

        by quietus (6328) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @07:44PM (#975583) Journal

        Triage. It's also still flu season (over here). A test that can decide in 15 minutes whether an incoming patient has a bad flu (well-known procedure/treatment/medication) or corona will be increasingly valuable as your local ICU dept capacity becomes strained.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @09:53PM (6 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @09:53PM (#975614) Homepage Journal

          Triage.

          Nope. Not even maybe or sort of. An absolute nope. What type of badness is in your system is not part of triage. Triage is all about "is this person going to die soon, a while from now, or never". Also, it is not a "let's wait four hours on a test" process, it's immediate.

          And we already have gerzillions of flu tests to rule out the flu, so that's not a good argument either.

          Lemme splain. If you come in with severe respiratory distress from an illness, they're going to do the exact same things to you whether you have the flu, a nasty cold, or corona because there is no special treatment you get for corona right now and there won't be until they determine whether the malaria meds are effective.

          Now if you come in coughing a bit and running a low fever, you need your ass beat. Unless you have it bad enough to warrant a hospitalization, your ass needs to stay home and take some fucking Robotussin. Taking up time from people who are having real problems and are in real danger is a massive dick move.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:50AM (5 children)

            by quietus (6328) on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:50AM (#975802) Journal

            Nope. Treatment differs from [severe cases of] the normal flu.

            A number of pharmaceuticals are being used for severe and critically ill patients as potential treatments against SARS-CoV-2, including ribavirin, interferon β-1a, the antiviral combination lopinavir/ritonavir, the antimalarial chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine, the antiviral nucleotide analogue remdesivir and the antiviral favipiravir.

            (source [europa.eu])

            It is important that these treatments are started as soon as possible: that's what triage is all about.

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 26 2020, @11:11AM (4 children)

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday March 26 2020, @11:11AM (#975807) Homepage Journal

              That's nice and all for the EU but the US ain't Slashdot; we don't beta test on the entire nation. If you're not in one of the very small number of places they're testing those drugs, you will not get them.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday March 26 2020, @11:34AM (3 children)

                by quietus (6328) on Thursday March 26 2020, @11:34AM (#975811) Journal

                The United States alone holds over 45 percent of the world's pharmaceutical market. One assumes that, if push comes to shove, that production capacity can and will be directed as necessary.

                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 27 2020, @03:39AM (2 children)

                  It has nothing to do with production speed, it has to do with not telling doctors to start giving out drugs to the whole nation without testing them for efficacy and danger first.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @02:00PM (1 child)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @02:00PM (#976296)

                    We Americans like freedom. So your choices are: 1) take the experimental drug and hope it doesn't have any bad effects or 2) remain locked out from work and under house arrest.

                    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 29 2020, @04:38AM

                      Dude, you're not going to find anyone more pro-freedom than me but if the news put out that drinking a cup of bleach would immunize you to corona, half the fucking nation would be dead tomorrow, including a lot of doctors. This is very much a yelling fire in a crowded theater situation.

                      --
                      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:59PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:59PM (#975430)

    If our illustrious leader were smarter, he could use the "wartime act" we keep hearing about to shift at least part of the economy toward making more healthcare supplies AND FACILITIES. Remember how China was able to build a whole hospital in a week? We should be able to do that. Remember when an earthquake destroyed an overpass in California and they rebuilt it in a weekend -- a process that usually takes months? It can be done, and it creates jobs too. But no, this president... I can't say it. I don't want to break any laws.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:31AM (#975712)

      I can't say it. I don't want to break any laws.

      As far as I know, lèse-majéste [wikipedia.org] is not law in the United States. But not for long if things continue as they are.