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Home » Gone are the days: assuming the risk

Gone are the days: assuming the risk

The New Neo Posted on by

People used to take things in stride. I realize that by saying that, I sound like an old curmudgeon. But maybe I now understand better why old curmudgeons sound like old curmudgeons.

I grew up, as the somewhat-older author of this essay “Say Your Prayers and Take Your Chances: Remembering the 1957 Asian flu pandemic” did, in an era when nearly all children got a series of diseases that are now mostly distant memories. The vast majority of us survived quite nicely, unlike in previous eras:

Before the Modern Revolution child mortality was very high in all societies that we have knowledge of – a quarter of all children died in the first year of life, almost half died before reaching the end of puberty

Royalty was not immune; look at the record of the children of Peter the Great, for example. It’s horrific. It’s also one of many reasons people tried to have as many children as possible, although a lot of women died in childbirth or shortly after. Another terrible risk that was common in prior eras.

It was much much better when I was growing up. But still, in a few short years and while I was a toddler I had measles, mumps, German measles (is that racist?), and chicken pox, and that’s just what I remember. Polio was rather common, too, although a vaccine was developed when I was in grade school; I remember what a big big deal that was, and what a hero Salk was considered to be.

My only cousin had measles encephalitis when I was about two, and died a few years later of complications from it. I remember his death very very well, and his disabilities too. That’s the sort of thing that makes a deep impression on a child. My mother told me later that, when I had contracted measles not all that long after my cousin had them, she sweated it out because the risks were very clear to her. Another couple who were good friends of my parents had lost a child from measles even before I was born, and I heard about that periodically, too.

No one had to impress on me the seriousness of measles. I knew. And polio? We saw the photos of all those kids in the iron lungs, and we saw children walking around with braces on their legs.

But that personal knowledge is gone, along with those diseases and many others (for the most part, anyway, at least in this country; I’ve written about the anti-vax movement elsewhere and am not going to take it up now, but the lack of fear of certain diseases is partly responsible for the movement).

It’s a wonderful thing that the incidence of most of those diseases has been remarkably reduced. Wonderful, fabulous, a great reduction in human suffering. But there’s been a cost, too, and it’s the increasing fragility of our psyches’ ability to withstand and endure even the prospect of an increase in disease and mortality that mirrors what my generation experienced.

As Clark Whelton, the author of the City Journal essay I linked to earlier, writes:

It’s not that Asian flu—the second influenza pandemic of the twentieth century—wasn’t a serious disease. Worldwide, this flu strain killed somewhere between 1 and 2 million people. More than 100,000 died in the U.S. alone. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, governors did not call out the National Guard, and political panic-mongers did not blame it all on President Eisenhower. College sports events were not cancelled, planes and trains continued to run, and Americans did not regard one another with fear and suspicion, touching elbows instead of hands. We took the Asian flu in stride. We said our prayers and took our chances.

Today, I look back and wonder if an oblivious America faced the 1957 plague with a kind of clueless folly. Why weren’t we more active in fighting this contagion? Could stricter quarantine procedures have reduced the rate of infection and lowered the death toll? In short, why weren’t we more afraid?

His answer is that we were more used to infectious diseases. But a corollary of that is that we would have had to have closed down shop indefinitely. There were so many illnesses around all the time that there was no way to escape. You might say we were fatalistic, you might say we were resigned, you might say we were stupid, you might say we assumed the risk, or you might say we understood that the drawbacks of that sort of reaction were immense as well.

Of course, I wasn’t around in 1918. I wasn’t around when smallpox and tuberculosis or the Black Death killed far far more of the people on earth than any of the plagues of my lifetime have come close to killing. I cannot even imagine how terrible those things were; I don’t even want to imagine. And I doubt that people took them in stride at all. And I think a good part of the dread and fear now is that in the back of our minds – or for some people, even the front of our minds – we know that such catastrophes are still possible. Human beings know they are intensely vulnerable.

But COVID-19 is not shaping up to be that sort of event, and there’s no reason to think it will be. However, although many measures are prudent – handwashing, increased testing, hospital preparedness, some measure of social distancing at least for a while – the degree of fear I see and hear is far greater than anything I can recall in my lifetime around a medical event.

And it’s not just medical events, either. Students demand that colleges protect them from ever feeling bad or bullied or offended by anything anyone says. Woman have become so reactive to the idea of sexual harassment that many have redefined it to include what used to be considered standard compliments on appearance. People start bitter twitter wars about things like cultural appropriation. There seems to be a hair-trigger over-reactivity, a new emotional fragility and vulnerability, that is akin to what can happen when a person fails to develop normal immunities of the physical type, to use a medical analogy.

[NOTE: On a different but related topic, I also can readily recall when a president – any president of any party – would be cut slack by his critics during an emergency, particularly a medical one. Those days of near-reflexive pulling together are gone, long gone. Now it seems the chief focus of the Democrats’ reaction to this crisis is to criticize Trump and score political points. There are hopeful exceptions, though, and that’s why I cheered the reactions of governors Newsom of California and Cuomo of New York:

[From Newsom]: [Trump and I] had a private conversation, but he said, ‘We’re gonna do the right thing’ and ‘You have my support, all of our support, logistically and otherwise.’ He said everything I could have hoped for. And we had a very long conversation and every single thing he said, they followed through on.

Cuomo:

This sort of thing used to be standard and expected. If a politician didn’t do it, people would have been critical of the omission. No more.]

Comments

Gone are the days: assuming the risk — 139 Comments

  1. When you live such comfortable relatively easy lives you don’t stop worrying about things instead you create things to worry about and then REALLY worry about them.

    Climate change is the best example.

  2. In a similar vein —

    (h/t Mollie Hemingway) Ryan P. Williams @RpwWilliams: *** Very relevant famous person quote thread for Wuhan Coronavirus times:
    “In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’

    In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.

    We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances… and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

    This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

    C.S. Lewis
    — “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays ***

    https://mobile.twitter.com/RpwWilliams/status/1238551968374636544

  3. sdferr:

    That’s quite a quote.

    Makes me think of the movie “On the Beach,” where people facing the end of the human race from a massive atomic war and fallout did do those things – sing, get together, be with loved ones.

  4. What Italians are seen on video today to be doing in their “isolation”: going out on their balconies with their instruments; accordions, tambourines, guitars, voices and whatnot to sing songs together across the empty streets and courtyards. A fine purpose, that.

  6. Search through Amazon and see just how many books there are which feature “The End of the World As We Know It” (TEOTWAWKI) or close to it scenarios, and in how many of them the thing that wipes almost all of us and civilization out is some sort of disease–a pandemic of some sort.

    Given all of the people who have read these books, that has got to have some effect on their attitudes when something like the Wuhan virus comes along.

    You notice that I term it the “Wuhan virus,” and I do so because that’s where it originated–in Wuhan, which just happens to be in China.

  7. The acid test is what will Newsom and Cuomo do when they encounter, publicly or privately, the “Trump is an incompetent buffoon” truism cherished by so many. I’m not saying they have to endorse Trump for re-election but there’s a degree of Trump-criticism that is normal and defensible and then there’s some that is deranged. Mainstream political figures used to push back on that kind of crazy talk. They haven’t with Trump.

    Mike

  8. I guess it is unequivocal that if everyone stayed home, the pandemic would end.

    This would reduce the R, the reproducibility index, to less than one and that would mean a geometric series would be set up that would look like: 1 unit of viral load, 1/2 unit, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16….and poof!

    I wonder how quickly we could end this virus, practically, and still not collapse our food, water, energy, financial, and other critical materiel and service supply, necessary for civilization. Eg if plumbers all stayed home we would be in real trouble after how many days? If manufactures of soap or detergent stayed home, how many days?

    Of course I understand that we really cannot ALL stay home—a water main line has to be fixed stat and policemen have to be available—but we could approximate this for maybe what? a week?

    We are lucky this pandemic does not require a vector, like a flea or mosquito. It’s just us. And the therapy couldn’t be simpler.

  9. I rather like calling it the “WuFlu”.

    I just returned from the grocery store. The young man who rang me up was just finishing an 8-hour shift. He had had enough and was on the verge of snapping. I struck up a conversation. He looked at me and said quietly: “People, it’s the FLU!”

    By the way, it’s remarkable watching people hoard TP.

  10. Speaking of risk, there are reports that Biden’s handlers are trying to reduce the “risks” of Biden interacting with the public and his public appearances, and the things he might say during them by curtailing these interactions and appearances.

    Well, here is one of those recent interactions, in which Biden told an ordinary citizen–a union worker in Michigan–who was inquiring about Biden’s stated plans to grab some of our guns, who in return got told that he was a “horse’s ass,” got told he was “full of shit,” told that he “should be slapped,” and got challenged by the doddering Biden to “go outside” and duke it out, most of which interaction the MSM attempted to ignore, play off, or edit into something much less confrontational.

    Unfortunately, it seems that Ol’ Joe messed with the wrong hombre.

    What was that advice, “Hit back twice as hard?

    See https://twitter.com/NRA/status/1238588289747243009

  11. In early 1940, the writer Andre Maurois spoke with Paul Reynaud, who had just become Prime Minster of France. One of the topics was Reynaud’s long-standing rivalry with Edouard Daladier:

    “Nevertheless,” (Maurois) said, “Daladier is certainly a man who loves his country.”

    “Yes,” Reynaud said, “I believe he desires the victory of France, but he desires my defeat even more.”

    Rather chilling, in view of what happened in France a few months later and of the current bitter rivalries among the American political classes and indeed, of Americans vs Americans in general.

  12. Good news: the unprecedented level of panic choreographed by the mainstream media / Democrat coalition in an attempt to damage Trump may in fact inoculate him from further damage, assuming the trajectory of the disease remains well below the worst scenarios. That could make his re-election a true landslide.

    Bad news: the prospect of a Trump landslide that removes the ability of the media to constrain him would be a truly terrifying prospect to the Democrats, partly because that built-in thumb-on-the-scale allows them to operate essentially without a policy framework (or should I say with only one policy… win at any cost).

    But worse, now that the latest shot in their virtual assassination campaign against Trump seems to have missed, what will they try next? Will they set aside the idea of virtual assassination, and go for the real thing?

    Note that I don’t mean “Will it inspire some crazies?” I assume it already has, and we just don’t know about them yet. No, I mean will it inspire an actual armed coup / assassination? Don’t laugh – they are running out of options to stop the reveal of what is probably an unprecedented history of criminality, one that will rise to the level of capital crimes. The kind you hang for.

  13. Panic in the face of a little bit of real danger is a great form of entertainment. Leaving work with this sort of bullet-proof excuse (and who likes work?) to get “essential” supplies before they’re gone is great fun. It’s a scavenger hunt with “real-life” importance.

    Perhaps it even makes sense, economically speaking, to regard the cancellation of professional sports and the St. Patrick’s Day parades, the closing of Disneyland, and so on, as one form of entertainment displacing another in the marketplace. Too bad it won’t be reflected in the national GDP.

  14. The share of active cases which have been coded ‘serious / critical’ is as we speak as follows:

    China: 30%
    Singapore: 11%
    Italy*: 9%
    Hong Kong: 7%
    Diamond Princess: 6.4%
    Portugal: 6%
    Japan: 5.5%
    Spain: 5.2%
    Netherlands: 4.7%
    Ireland: 4.7%
    Kuwait: 4%
    France: 3.5%
    Belgium: 3.5%
    Poland: 3.4%
    Norway: 2.4%
    Israel: 1.6%
    Brazil: 1.3%
    Bahrain: 1.3%
    Czech Republic: 1%
    Philippines: 1%
    Roumania: 0.9%
    South Korea: 0.8%
    Iceland: 0.65%
    Australia: 0.46%
    Canada: 0.42%
    United States: 0.42%
    Denmark: 0.25%
    Sweden: 0.2%
    Germany: 0.2%
    Austria: 0.1%

    Not sure what the thresholds are to be coded as ‘serious/critical’ and if you’re moved to another category if you improve or only when you’re declared to have recovered. I think it might be the latter. China isn’t reporting many new cases and has reported that 80% of their patients have recovered. Their ‘serious’ cases would appear to be those lingering.

    I suppose this could reflect country-to-country differences in definition. It seems quite anomalous.

    NB, 17 of the 32 people defined as ‘serious-critical’ from among the Diamond Princess passengers have been reclassified. Since the number of reported deaths hasn’t changed, these would be recoveries. Thus far: 696 infections, 456 recoveries, 218 common-and-garden cases, 15 serious-critical cases, 7 deaths. Could be worse. [+]

    *San Marino included

  15. This sort of thing used to be standard and expected. If a politician didn’t do it, people would have been critical of the omission. No more.]

    Again, the TWANLOC problem. I’m bloody sick of the world’s chronic complainers.

  17. Again one of the doctors at briefing earlier said that between 98-99% of tests are coming back negative and in S. Korea it was 96%.

  18. My son, daughter-in-law and I were just talking about this very thing Neo, risk in normal life. Excellent post and comments.

  19. Being that my wife and I are 73 we are taking prudent precautions. I am rescheduling a Doc appointment and an elective procedure. We are staying in more. My wife’s church has canceled services for a month. I have started wiping down the grocery cast handles, washing my hands more, not touching my face. We are not panic buying things. We are usually stocked with food to last a long time. Only thing we buy regularly is fresh fruit and veggies.

    So much panic and fear is causing a really bad situation. I don’t remember the press going crazy over the Swine Flu.

    I would suggest one thing though, have some cash on hand. Yo
    u should have some anyway, if you are financially able to have cash on hand.

    Be safe and sane out there.

  20. Dnaxy: I guess it is unequivocal that if everyone stayed home, the pandemic would end.

    This link to a brief clip addresses the problem with the above and shows what China did to solve the outbreak. https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1238604080571772928

    On another point I think US might be more vulnerable than other countries because of the sheer size of the illegal immigrant population who will be reluctant to be tested even if they are assured that medical cost is free and that the immigration laws won’t be enforced.

  21. If I were President I’d order, er ask, every newspaper to carry an info box in the upper right corner of the front page that had the CDC provided total number of flu cases and total deaths for this season and both numbers but just for C-19. From memory the numbers are roughly a million and ten thousand versus five hundred C-19 cases and fifty deaths. The upper left corner would have a box with common C-19 symptoms. The networks and streaming channels would be expected to provide a CDC public service announcement with the same info before every show and movie.

    After two weeks, four max, the public would be wondering why the heck they are all cooped up for such a tiny threat.

  22. The standard used to be that we take reasonable precautions, get our affairs in order, pray if so moved, and get on with it. You’re right, Neo; this is an entirely different reaction.

  23. This fear of risk has definitely been increasing the last, I would say 20-25 years, but I think social media has amped it up a huge amount the last ten years.

    I also think that constant drip, drip, drip of news ( 2 new cases in some state, 4 in another, 1st death in some state) ratchets up the fear because it feels relentless.

    In earlier generations people had no idea about things in distant parts of the country or world so really had no reason to be afraid.

  24. We are transitioning from a “Risk Management” society that could put men on the moon towards the environmentalist “Precautionary Principle” society that assumes worst case scenario .

  25. Like neo I contracted many childhood diseases, including scarlet fever. The big dread of my parents was polio until the vaccine came along. My dad had TB, spent 9 months in a sanatorium. Mom, my siblings, and me did all of the heavy lifting on the farm for about 14 months until he was fully recovered. It made me grownup fast as I was the oldest kid. Missed a lot of school during spring planting, summer cultivating, putting up hay and silage, and fall harvest and plowing. I was 12 at the time.

  27. German measles, called that when I had it, is now “rubella”. Well, it’s always been rubella, but not referred to as that.

    I had the smallpox vaccination Twice, second time when I enlisted in the Navy in 1973. Was still a threat when I was born.

    My family was first in line in my town for the first mass polio vaccination with the sugar cubes placed in the mouth, vaccine on them. Found out doing family research a few years back that my oldest first cousin had an older brother. No one ever mentioned it, and I don’t think my cousins knew. Methinks cause of death was polio. I have other reasons for thinking that also.

  28. Thanks to the MSM, social media, cell phones and the internet, we have become a Mass Hysteria society.
    Fox News posts on my cell phone and millions more that Tom Hanks et ux tested positive in Australia. So effing what?
    My supermarket was mobbed yesterday, absolutely mobbed like we were facing a Cat 5 Hurricane momentarily. Today I checked it out again: all was calm, shoppers normal in #, shelves basically all restocked. Just like the Dow Thursday and Friday.
    A friend was in Sam’s Club yesterday, said it was full of blacks buying bottled water in enormous amounts. Maybe suffering from a delusion COVID comes via the tap? Who knows? Hysteria is not reason.

  29. As I was born in 1935 I witnessed many of the disturbances of the 20th century, and experienced some of them. Some I was simply too young to worry about; and as has been noted, many of the problems were so prevalent as to be simply taken as part of life. (Happily I did miss 1918, which by all accounts was truly horrible.)

    With respect to this current upset, I am accused by a certain person as being a scoffer. Maybe I am; and maybe at some point I will feel foolish for my skepticism. Which is not the same as scoffing.

    I am confused. I look at the numbers, even in the harder hit locales and wonder if they justify shutting down whole societies and economic systems. Then I look at our President, flanked by so many ultra-serious experts, and I wonder what they know that I cannot see.

    As an octogenarian, I intend to take the precaution of good hygiene, and try to practice some degree of social distancing. Maybe even a little more compulsively than usual; because even though death will come sooner rather than later, no one wants to die of stupidity. Still, I see no cause to live in a state of near hysteria. My better half is nearly there; and has a near panic attack if I go to the store. Thanks Media, in all of your various forms, including as Cicero noted, social media. Thanks all of you politicians who will never waste a crisis; or avoid the opportunity to create one.

  30. What would 9/11/2001 and the aftermath have been like in a social media environment like now? The reaction to this will have far more of a long range impact here than this virus.

  31. What happens if Europe tanks economically due to the REACTION to this? Who is in the wind to pick up the pieces and gain from that?

  32. If you at 12, along with a 10 year old sister, has castrated 50 odd 40 pound hogs, plus run a 1950s farm, tell me how hard it was. Otherwise you don’t know what hard work means. In my life, you do what needs doing. I left a good career for 2 years when Dad had a heart attack in 1978 to once again run the famiiy farm.still have the muscles.

    Not complaining, but we have become a nation of weak wristed sissies. Too many want a few to do the heavy lifting while they sit on their flat asses watching CNN retards.

  34. Neo, if you were a few years older you would also have had whooping cough, as my sister and father and I did in 1946. A couple of decades older and you might have had diphtheria, which an aunt of mine died from as a child. Not to mention the infections we were cured of, first by sulfa and then by penicillin; another aunt died of strep throat as a child.

  35. About 20 years ago I was editing, as a science editor, a Russian translation of the huge tome by Anderson and May titled “Infectious diseases of humans. Dynamics and control.” This was a grim reading, for a person of my generation, mostly ignorant about a great suffering of the previous generations. Since then I was experiencing a recurring nightmare about a new deadly virus pandemic like 1918 Spanish flu. I understood quite well that in such case the mankind would be just as helpless as it was then. And the spread will be much faster than hundred years ago due to civil aviation and cruise ships with thousands passengers. Every city with underground railroad would become totally infected in just days. When the first news about Wuhan virus emerged, I was very, very afraid. Later I understood that this is not the apocalipse I feared, more like 1957 or 1968 flu. And these events were bad enough, we simply were more psychologically resilent these days and now just mostly forgot what really happened.

  36. This is what happens when Pluto is in Capricorn.

    Just wait until people expect the sun to rise and realize it has gone offline. hahaha. Don’t worry, it’s just for 3 days until my faction resets it.

    Inevitably, just as with HIV, China’s Maoism and toxic capitalism, was always going to generate ill health effects. It just so happened the Heavens decreed that fate is now.

  37. Yes to wimpy, unable to take any hardship, snowflakes. “People used to take things in stride. ” Today many folk want all life’s experiences to be risk-free, except for the ones they’re “in control of” like an auto.

    I really like the idea of newspapers carrying the Flu statistics – how many have it, how many have died, along with Covid-19. I actually think there will be far far fewer flu deaths in 2020 Jan-April than in 2019, because of the panic.

    Less than panic is “maximum prudence”, which is still economically sub-optimal, but is oriented at saving the most lives.
    How much is one life worth?

    It’s also pretty good that OECD society is so “rich” that we can afford a few weeks of lockdown without too much disruption — and most folk ARE able to take lockdown problems in stride, as well as the problems and even deaths. Even lockdown problems in the dozens of deaths, tho likely with much bigger pushback if it becomes hundreds, as it’s unlikely to do even in worst hit Italy.

    The desire for a Zero-risk society is somewhat stupid, tho increasingly wide spread. It’s being spread further by political polarization, with the Dems, especially, complaining about Reps (Trump now, Bush 12 years ago) for any and all problems. The Reps certainly didn’t blame Obama for H1N1 (that would have been RACIST!). But voters are being encouraged to be snowflake whiners, blaming politicians of the other side for every problem.

    Voters who have already made the emotional choice to support a Dem, are then being encouraged to use “reason” in their asserting that the Rep has made them “less safe”. Climate alarmism is one such silly fear. This is another one.

    I’m getting hopeful the “panic social distancing” will actually work to the extent of keeping US deaths at less than 1000. So by that metric, panic works.

    How much is a life worth?

  39. Now Cuomo and others want the military called in. Is there any step too far for these people.

    Has anybody asked some of these people life Fauci if they think we should have taken all these draconian measures for H1N1?

    Is this the new way when one of these things comes along every ten years or so? Blow up society and the economy cost people their jobs and businesses? When will people say enough? Ever?

  40. Perspective: Thoughts on an Isolating Sunday.

    Recent work, “Mosquitoes A Human History of our Deadliest Predator” by Thomas C. Winegard offers a look at world history you did not learn in school: mosquitoes determined human history from ancient times with killing diseases. Wars were death by mosquito. The book amplifies many of the comments on the fragility of life in former times with examples of death rates, etc.

    Indoor activities: I don’t know how many readers take advantage of music streaming however BBC Radio 3 mostly classical has been playing in my house for months. One of the weekly programs is Choral Evensong, live or recorded, from various UK Churches and today’s service from Manchester Cathedral with brief sermons appropriate for today is an option.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_three

  41. Maybe when Cuomo gets his troops we can empower them to arrest anyone standing closer than six feet to another and send them to the gulag. Why not if it stops the spread of the virus.

    If that doesn’t work then just execute the offenders on the spot. I mean stopping the spread of the virus is all that matters.

    57 deaths. 57!!!

  42. I’m even getting fed up with Fox. Their website today has almost every story an angle on the virus. They’ve joined the fear mongering. And I’m also getting tired of Fauci. His pronouncements are starting to sound less like science, and more like adding to the panic.

    I see a few friends on facebook pushing back on the panic, but the majority are going forward. The media and the government are driving people crazy.

    As of now from Johns Hopkins site, the US death rate is 1.3% (40/2952). Does that really justify the mass hysteria?

  43. physicsguy,

    And remember of the current total of 57 deaths 27 came from the one nursing home here in Kirkland. So only approx. 30 deaths outside that.

    Fauci seems to bounce from reasonable to extreme from interview to interview.

  44. Dr Fauci:

    ‘I think we should be over aggressive and be criticized for overreacting’

    Yeah, that’s great for you doctor your job is safe so you stand to lose nothing while millions of people’s lives are totally upended.

    Also, where does over aggressive end we’re already seeing calls for the army to come in.

    Martial law? If the rubes won’t do as they’re asked we’ll make them.

  45. Stay at home?

    You might feel safe at home, but in reality, thousands of people died from home accidents in 2017.

    Uh-oh…

  47. physicsguy, from the website so helpfully posted by Brian Morgan a couple of days ago: US total cases 3286, deaths 60, mortality rate 1.9%. Which is a lot better than the 3.4% in China at the height of the infection (anyhow, what they reported). We should see the mortality rate decline as more cases are tested, and maybe by the end of two more weeks we’ll know what it’s actually going to be in the US.

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

  48. Kate, that site does have more up to date data. My question is can the country stand two more weeks of this insanity, both from a mental health aspect and also economic?

  49. If this goes more than a couple more weeks there are going to be a bunch of major retailers going out of business because lots of them were teetering before this. And with that goes thousands of jobs the commercial real estate market and a bunch more ancillary impacts and the government can’t bail them all out. And there are no backsees. The damage done to many businesses can’t be undone.

    The rosiest scenario is a sharp drop and then a sharp recovery and there will be some of that but the carnage will be large for many. This quarter will be down (January, February were ok, March will be brutal) but April and May is when it will hit.

    And that’s just private sector don’t forget all the lost sales tax and gas tax the states and localities are losing.

  50. Dr. Fauci is 79, yes 79, years old and still head of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. What gives with that? He has become some sort of an icon, an object of worship.

  51. Physicsguy, I think, or at least I hope, about two more weeks of this will knock the stuffing out of the initial spike of the virus transmission. After that, America will need to start running again, and people like me (in my 70s) will need to take responsibility for continued social distancing, since we’re the ones at risk, until effective anti-viral treatments and/or vaccines become available.

  52. Kate: That’s how we (in our 70s) are playing it: a two week break from the gym and church and the usual gatherings. That gives us more time for reading and and hobbies and naps in the afternoon. In two week’s time the boredom will be more lethal than the virus, and we’ll get back to cautiously doing what we were doing before all this started

  53. IsraelHayom: President pushes for unity deal, taps Gantz as PM-designate

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main challenger, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, won support on Sunday from two key parties in his bid to form a new government that would end the incumbent’s long tenure at the helm of the Israeli government.

    Rivlin announced on Sunday that in the wake of Gantz’s nominal lead in Knesset endorsements, he would get the first shot at forming a government.

    Rivlin will officially tap Gantz as prime minister-designated on Monday, kicking off a 28- to 42-day period in which the Blue and White leader can swear in a government.

    Rivlin summoned both Netanyahu and Gantz to hammer out a potential power-sharing deal that would have the two serve as prime ministers on a rotating basis, but it was unclear if there was any progress on that front.

    Fighting for his political life under the cloud of a criminal indictment for alleged corruption, Netanyahu has proposed that he lead a six-month “national emergency” government to confront the coronavirus crisis.

    It would include his right-wing Likud party and former general Gantz’s Blue and White faction, which has fewer ideological allies in the Knesset than Netanyahu’s Likud, but may get enough tacit support when it presents a government for a confidence vote.

    With no clear winner in a March 2 election, President Reuven Rivlin held consultations with the leaders of all parties that won legislative seats on who to tap to begin coalition-building.

    Endorsements by two bitter enemies, the Joint List of Arab parties and former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, appeared to give Gantz the edge with 61 of parliament’s 120 seats versus 58 for Netanyahu.

    https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/03/15/president-rivlin-summons-netanyahu-gantz-as-he-prepares-to-tap-pm-designate/

  54. Kate, thanks for the h/t. Regarding the worldometer site, I find it helpful to view “Total Coronavirus Cases in the United States” on a Logarithmic scale (click the button). Any sustained tendency to flatten would be a very positive sign.

  55. Some fascinating reading…

    Related (from September 2008):
    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/a-cure-for-flu-from-beyond-the-grave-933046.html
    H/T Martin Kramer

    Also extraordinary, especially to Shakespeare buffs (in particular, R and J groupies—cue Zeffirelli post of yore):
    https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/shakespeare-plague-influence-hot-hand-ben-cohen.amp
    H/T Powerline blog

    …and hoping you’re all managing as well as can be expected under the circumstances….

  56. Brian Morgan, with expanded testing coming in the next week or two, I expect the number of cases to go way up. What we can hope for is that the death curve will not get steeper.

  57. I wish I had kept track of the number of emails I have received from various companies about how they are doing everything to protect employees and customers from danger. I swear if someone was dropped in with no knowledge of what is going on they would think that people are dropping dead in the street by the thousand.

    But hey Barnes & Noble and Best Buy really care. Hope they are still in business in a couple months.

  59. Sorry, it’s “chloroquine.” I’m guessing that’s what my doctor told me about. When I think I’m going to have leg cramps in the night, because of daytime activity, I drink tonic. It helps. Doc said they used to have pills they could prescribe, but some people with heart irregularities had trouble with it, so it stopped being prescribed.

  60. German measles, called that when I had it, is now “rubella”. Well, it’s always been rubella, but not referred to as that.

    The term has been commonly used for nearly 50 years.

  61. Do we know if the kits test for Coronavirus alone? Will regular Influenza register a false positive? That would inflate the CV cases.

  62. Kate,
    my doc said the same thing, but tonic sure tastes funny without some gin in it.

    AD,
    But when we had it was well more than 50 years ago.

  63. Brian Morgan:

    As far as I know, coronavirus and flu are two very different beasties and there is no crossover whatsoever.

  64. Much depends on what you grew up with, it always seems normal. Corporal punishment used to be much more common also, but I expect it would be a shock to the current generation. The current response is overblown by historical standards, but historically there wasn’t much that could be done. If things don’t go as badly as projected I’m happy to regard the current response as a learning experience for when the big one does come around. As to the politics, the Democrats have been that way since the time of Bush, it is why I left the party.

  65. Too many comments to read all. Probably everyone self isolating and nothing else to do.

    Makes me think of the movie “On the Beach,” where people facing the end of the human race from a massive atomic war and fallout did do those things – sing, get together, be with loved ones.

    That book came out when I was in college and I almost quit college I was so sure it would happen. He had written two prophetic novels before, “Ordeal” in 1938 predicting the Blitz, and “No Highway” in 1950 predicting the the crashing of the Comet, the first jet passenger airplane.

    I still cannot read it.

  66. Gov. Pritzker has notified those in Illinois that bars and restaurants will cease service to the public come Monday night. Delivery orders will be booming. He then blames President Trump for the lack of leadership in regards to this international crisis – Pritzker wonders aloud why Trump didn’t take lead when closing down schools and so on; it was the state governors who did it not Trump. Hoo boy. Does he blame Trump for not predicating the weather?

    Anyways, I will be stocking up tomorrow not for the possibility if COVID-19 gets worse, but because my state’s administration seems like they’re literally going to make citizens stay home and quarantine themselves. Ah, our very own lives being dictated by the government.

  67. Very good post and perspective, Neo. Thanks for writing it for public consumption.

    I just had a bit of an argument with one of my sons. He’s usually reasonable for a 23 year old, but he was convinced I just didn’t understand what was about to happen; quite convinced his generation was experiencing something that I had no experience with, a GLOBAL PANDEMIC!!! (cue, ominous, bumm, bumm, bummmmm music) He left the room and I went on-line, gathered some statistics and text’ed him this:

    “In 2009 there were 1.4 billion worldwide cases of the swine flu in the year it was a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. There were 575,000 deaths worldwide. In the U.S. there were 61 million confirmed cases. 12,469 Americans died.”

    Of course I could have sent many other references, but I barely had to reach back a decade to site something similar (thus far). I have no idea how this will play out. I hope it is less deadly than Swine flu. But, as Neo wrote, we’ve been here before. Even my 23 year old son (he was very much alive in 2009). We need to keep perspective. Even when the situation on the ground is awful, panic is never a help.

  68. Social distancing to contain the contagion. Physical distancing to contain the antigen.

    Life is an exercise in risk management.

  69. MikeK:

    I read the book as a child and saw the movie, too. Terrifying to a child (or maybe to anyone) but very very memorable. I saw the movie again about a decade ago and thought it held up very well as a movie (I’ve heard criticisms of its scientific underpinnings, but I’m just talking about the movie and story aspects).

    I have been thinking of it, too, lately. I don’t think I’d want to watch it at the moment. Some scenes were heartbreaking.

  70. Maybe a virus will be the instrument that closes the Left-Right gap, since we’re all in the same bed, so to speak.

  72. Cicero, indulge in wishful thinking much? This is a wonderful opportunity to second guess and throw mud. Too good to overlook.

    Personally, I have a sinking feeling when I contemplate that all of the experts that President Trump is depending on are denizens of the swamp. Everyone knows that the best way to pull Trump down is to destroy the economy. Well under way.

    I see the Brits are taking a different tack from others. No closures. Self isolation for people who have symptoms. Scientific theory there is that the best way to contain the virus is for a large number of low risk people to develop immunity via mild cases; and for high risk people to avoid contact. They are clearly taking a risk; but, maybe a trace of “stiff upper lips” has survived since the 1940s. They may even have an economy when it is over, as well as fewer politicians who have become addicted to their emergency powers.

  73. Rufus T. Firefly:

    Well, your son would have been 12 or so at the time. And I doubt he would have been taught anything about the history of disease and epidemics in school. Maybe the Black Death, if that.

    Tell him to read “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.”

  74. Now the CDC is recommending all events with more than 50 people be cancelled for the next 8 weeks in the entire country. This is beyond ridiculous and maybe the most outrageous thing I have seen in this country in my life. If these things continue we are going to make the Great Depression look like boom times.

    I will not vote for Trump if he continues to let these things happen. This has to stop.

  75. I second neo’s observation that in the past people took diseases in stride because that was the reality.

    My best friend caught polio as a kid. Two of his brothers got it too. (Polio is pretty contagious.) They recovered, though not without problems.

    I caught measles, mumps and chickenpox as a kid and all can be serious. I remember how my elementary school classes would empty out with the waves of infection. But that was just the way it was. It was horrible to be sick and felt like it would go on forever but eventually it was over…usually.

    I remember the adults talking about the “Asian Flu” then the “Hong Kong Flu”, but I didn’t pay much attention. They were just a few more things out there that could get you.

    I loved Gahan Wilson’s comic series, “Nuts,” a sort of macabre meditation on childhood to counterbalance Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts.” The first strip shows The Kid — Wilson gives him no name — desperately sick in bed with his parents murmuring unhelpfully in the background:

    “The poor thing! Do you suppose he’s got polio?”
    “They don’t get polio anymore. He’s trying to stay out of school.”

    The last panel shows the kid hallucinating his germs are talking to him:

    “Hi, I’m one of your germs.”
    “Hi. I’m another.”
    “We’re going to kill you.”

    As Wilson writes in the first panel, “Those of you who remember how great it was to be a little kid, gang, don’t remember what it was like to be a little kid…”

  76. huxley:

    I have only the vaguest memories of my measles, chicken pox, etc. experiences. I was two and three at the time. I also only remember “Asian flu” as a lot of talk swirling in the background, and I was older then. It was just another thing one heard about, not all that much worse than all the rest, it seemed.

  77. Griffin:

    First of all, Trump doesn’t tell the CDC what recommendations to issue. But in addition, these recommendations are not at all insane and are based on simple math. If it continues on and on and on, that’s different. But two weeks buys time and reducing the number of contacts halts the spread and keeps the health care system from being overburdened.

    What’s happening in a country like Italy is something to be avoided and we could be headed there if this isn’t done. The idea is to keep the numbers from climbing while we get a bead on how fast this is growing, how effectively we can treat it, and in particular get hospitals and ICUs ready for what might be a sudden large influx that would threaten to overwhelm the system if it happens all at once.

    That’s what happened in China and Italy (and probably Iran); the system was flooded. If every critical patient comes in at once at high levels, we simply don’t have enough respirators and trained technicians to handle it. In Italy, people over a certain age are not given respirators if there is a shortage, and they are allowed to die. That sort of triage situation is tragic. This is the reasoning behind leaving off having large gatherings for two weeks – it markedly reduces the rate at which people will get this thing.

  78. For perspective: 57 Wuhan Virus deaths this year.
    Chicago has logged 80 shot to death this year, to date, 91 total homicides.I believe I predate Neo by a bit. I recall being sick when very young and my mother taking my temperature very frequently and making me lift my head to check my neck flexibility; that was apparently a home-test for polio. I had measles and chicken pox as a youngster. I also remember, more vividly, sleeping with windows open at Ft. Lewis in the cold because of the meningitis deaths in the Army, c. 1965-67. Life is a hazardous undertaking.

  79. neo,

    It’s 8 weeks not 2. Recommended for the entire country.

    And it’s the Trump administration as they say at every one of these press briefings the president has signed off on all these recommendations.

    When loads of young people lose jobs and struggle they are going to blame not only Trump but capitalism just like they did 11 years ago and will just turn more and more to socialism. I was just beginning to think Trump might get re-elected but this last week has me having second thoughts even if Biden is barely lucid.

  80. Griffin:

    If the health people are suggesting it whatever the length is, 2 weeks or 8, if all of them think that, are you really suggesting Trump should just say “screw that”? If he has built up some trust in people like Fauci, for example? If Trump defies the epidemiologists’ recommendations and things get really really bad – and believe me, that would be even WORSE for the economy than 8 weeks of meetings of only 50 or less – then he will be excoriated for really bad judgment.

    If we can’t survive 8 weeks of no meetings over 50 (something that, by the way, has pretty much already been put in place de facto, even before this particular recommendation), then the economy was brittle and vulnerable, if we can’t recover.

    Nor do I see why people would turn to Biden for solutions, even if they don’t like Trump’s solutions. Biden was still saying “don’t close the borders” quite recently.

  81. Another Mike:

    I believe that neck-bending test is for meningitis.

    By the way, the number of deaths at the moment from COVID19 is not the issue. It’s the graph of increase, and the idea that it has to be flattened or in a month or two the health care system can start to become overwhelmed, as I’ve described in some of the previous comments in this thread.

  82. Obviously we can’t shut down large groups indefinitely without doing grave damage to the world economy. But doing so for two weeks to two months looks like a good shot with COVID-19.

    Maybe we should have done so with earlier pandemics. It’s a testament to our resources and technology today that we can consider such a move.

    I believe we will learn some good stuff from this experiment.

  83. neo,

    I get that and this is just the final nail for me. But it’s not just meetings it’s concerts (even in smallish venues) it’s sporting events (NBA,NHL,MLB,NASCAR,Golf,Tennis)it’s movie theaters I would imagine, hell, the release even mentioned weddings. But it specifically excludes schools, higher education, and business, why? Have we turned over our lives to these experts? Do we have to consult Dr Fauci now before going to the movies?

    They have made a big deal about 14 days for many things and I’m pretty much ok with that but now it’s 8 weeks. You’ve written so much about H1N1 and 2009 I just can’t get past the very low precautions then to now we are going to decimate the economy which may lead to many more deaths through hardship, suicide etc. from financial stress.

    There needs to be an exit strategy to this and none of these people offer them.

  84. Huxley,

    ‘I believe we will learn some good stuff from this experiment’

    What about the bad stuff? Like taking massive sectors of the economy off line and causing trillions of dollars in stock losses and costing thousands if not millions of jobs and costing countless people their homes and businesses.

    I’m not saying do nothing but I’m just not willing to destroy the lives of millions in a possibly fruitless attempt to limit what may in the end be a virus that is no more lethal than a bad flu season.

  85. If these things continue we are going to make the Great Depression look like boom times.

    Over the period running from the fall of 1929 to the spring of 1933, the rate at which goods and services were produced in this country contracted by 30%. The boys at the Maddison Project inform us that production levels for the year 1921 were in real terms 2.7% lower than those for 1919.

  86. Art,

    Yes that was exaggeration for effect. But we have never seen something like what is being proposed right now. A virtual shut down of large parts of the economy in North America and Europe for an ever evolving (2 weeks, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, who knows) period of time. What will happen if we do that? What are the many side effects of that that we haven’t even thought of?

  87. A statistic from the Great Depression applied to a situation that is not remotely analogous shows only that Art has a hammer that he applies to all arguments.

  88. Om,

    In Art’s defense I brought it up earlier in a hyperbolic way so that’s on me. One of those don’t take me literally things maybe.

    Been so inundated with this story here in Washington it’s unbelievable.

  89. Now if the time to calm down, take a deep breath and if you are an older person limit your exposure to others outside of your home. This might be a real bad ride for the health of a lot of people and it might mean a lot of economic hardship for the more vulnerable who will need some help. As for now, today, the cards have been dealt and they will play out so the woulda, coulda, shoulda stuff has already sailed.

    Best case for a lot of people is we don’t get sick and have a lot of people die so we go to work and rebuild the economy, worst case is we don’t do enough and become another footnote in history of disease taking its toll on a lot of people. My thinking is that we might fit somewhere between the best and worst.

  90. Griffin:

    Art didn’t recognize the tone or context of your comment regarding the Great Depression but dropped some interesting but irrelevant statistical noise into the thread.

    You’ve been a bit stressed today, we will get through this.

  91. Om,

    Yeah, I know, I’ve been venting here today. I don’t usually do that online but today I did because these stories just kept coming.

  92. Neo– [response delayed due to evening horse care]
    The neck thing was for the polio. This was before 1950; it may also apply to meningitis, At the time the TV news had lots of kids in the iron lung machines. It was before Jonas Salk developed the vaccine.

    If the deaths were not the issue, I have to wonder why the numbers have to appear in nearly story. I think the high-90s for negative test results is a big deal. Especially when only those who appear sick enough to get to a medical facility are the bulk of those tested. That may change with greater availability of tests.

  93. Art didn’t recognize the tone or context of your comment regarding the Great Depression but dropped some interesting but irrelevant statistical noise into the thread.

    The term ‘irrelevant’ doesn’t mean what you fancy it means, stalker.

  94. What will happen if we do that? What are the many side effects of that that we haven’t even thought of?

    About 3,200 people have been killed by this ailment in China and another 3,200 are still on the critical / serious list. That’s 6,400 people, about 80% of whom are in the province of Hubei. Now, let’s posit that the situation will get as bad in this country as it did in Hubei. About 58 million people live in that province, so something as proportionately as severe would be (6,400 x 0.8) x (330 / 58) = 29,000 deaths. The Spanish flu in 1918-20 killed about 0.64% of the population in this country, which, if that experience were repeated, would amount to 2.1 million deaths in our own time.

    Of course, we do not know how many waves of the epidemic there will be. I think there were three in 1918-20.

  96. It’s the graph of increase

    And the fact that, given the incubation time, it will continue up at the same exponential rate for 7-10 days no matter what we do. That, and the high rate of fatalities, which is probably 5-10 times greater than that of this year’s flue. The real danger comes if the increase is sufficient to swamp the health care facilities. I think we will know how things are going to go within a month, maybe sooner. It is also possible that China will see a resurgence in cases…

  98. Art,

    Maybe. But we aren’t China and we aren’t Italy. There numbers can be interesting but I can’t just accept that it will be the same here and there are too many people out there pushing the most extreme scenarios and I don’t like that in any situation. Those people lose credibility with me.

    Also I have hard time using the Spanish Flu as anything but a historical event because modern medicine and communication is so much better not to mention we are generally far healthier with better diets now so the death rates will be lower and has been mentioned by many the SF killed an abnormally high level of young people while this is doing the exact opposite.

  99. Chuck:

    I completely agree that the issue at this point is to prevent overwhelming health care facilities. That would cause needless deaths of people who could be saved.

  100. the Matriarchy…. vs patriarchy…

    Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry.
    Mama’s gonna make all your nightmares come true.
    Mama’s gonna put all her fears into you.
    Mama’s gonna keep you right here under her wing.
    She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing.
    Mama’s gonna keep baby cozy and warm.
    Ooh baby, ooh baby, ooh baby,
    Of course mama’s gonna help build the wall.

  101. Griffin:

    The 1918 pandemic is not the precedent most people believe this will follow, fortunately. Actually, the 2009 H1N1 was far more closely related to 1918 and in addition had a similar pattern of affecting younger people. And yet although it was highly contagious (estimated to have infected about 66 million people in this country in 2009) it was nowhere near as lethal (killed about 18,000 here).

    The problem with COVID involves several things. The first is that at this point it does seem highly contagious and somewhat more lethal than H1N1 2009, and we don’t really know the figures. We do know that it flooded the hospitals when it hit China and is doing the same in Italy, so the potential is there. If hospitals have too many patients to treat, then modern medicine doesn’t get a chance to be applied (in the case of serious COVID, respirators and ICU care are necessary).

    Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that COVID is as contagious as H1N1, and infects 66 million Americans. Let’s also say it kills 1% of those who get it. That would be 660,000 people. But it’s possible, particularly if the hospitals don’t have enough respirators, etc., that a lot more people would die, perhaps at the rate of 3% or something like that.

    That would be about 2 million people.

  102. What about the bad stuff? Like taking massive sectors of the economy off line and causing trillions of dollars in stock losses and costing thousands if not millions of jobs and costing countless people their homes and businesses

    Griffin: Do you really believe the recommendations to limit groups for 2-8 weeks will be that catastrophic?

  103. How much is ONE life worth?
    Shut down half of the US economy for a day?
    So saving 8*7=56 lives is worth shutting down the US economy for 8 weeks?

    Or some other value?

    OECD countries are so very very rich, they have the option of shutting down a huge amount (10%? 50%? 90%?) of their economy in order to reduce the probability of old people getting sick and dying of a new virus.

    If you think it is “panic”, and too much, you should try to quantify what is the most to pay, in “lost GNP”, in order save 100 lives (or 10 or 1).

    Also, it’s not so clear that this “panic” is very dangerous as a panic. So … ALL the TP rolls have been bought. Didn’t some of your friends buy some of them? Have you already run out, and seen that there are none available in any store for 3 – 5 – 10 days?

    How fast do you use up a bar of soap to wash your hands?
    (Please, everybody should wash their hands before eating AND every time they come inside after being outside.)

    Yes, at some point the “prudence” meets “diminishing marginal returns”, meaning there’s a big benefit to washing your hands with soap every X hours (say 4), but while there is a bigger benefit to washing twice as often, say every 2 hours, that benefit is not twice as big altho the effort is twice as much. And washing every hour provides very little additional benefit, at even more additional work.

    Plus there’s an interesting self-negating prophecy aspect – by claiming, reasonably, that there are going to be thousands killed, according to the exponential growth rate, the prudent actions of washing hands and staying inside will hugely help negate the bad prophecy of thousands dying.

    Self-negating prophets need to be heard, and their advice followed.

    There’s also going to be more “free rider” talk, since those who don’t wash, and don’t stay inside, will be benefiting from the much reduced risk of all those who DO take the recommended steps. Just like the anti-Vaxers get free ride benefits.

    And like so many socialist snowflakes want.

  104. Huxley,

    Well, not like end of times catastrophic but how are businesses supposed to survive for that long with no income? Let’s use a big one; Nike is closing all their stores for two weeks at least but continuing to pay all employees. How long can that last. Now how about small businesses; can some small restaurant survive no income for weeks. Going to be tough. The government can’t bail out all these businesses. Then there all the businesses that see 40-50% declines in business. How many can survive that for 2-3 months. Then you got all the medium to large size businesses with debt that they may have to default on (this might be avoidable thru some govt policy). Then you got states losing sales tax and gas tax revenue for a month or two and lower levels for longer probably. What happens if Illinois goes bankrupt like people have been predicting for ages.

    I could go on and on and two weeks would probably be survivable for most but eight (and they aren’t saying that’s it they can always add to it) seems potentially catastrophic for many many businesses.

  105. Life’s a crap shoot. In my 87 years I have seen a lot of sickness, death, and chaos. This virus pandemic reminds me a bit of flying missions in Vietnam,. Every day I flew I was hoping I wouldn’t get bagged. It was a crap shoot. Like the wheel of fortune, you wondered if your number would come up. We took common sense precautions to avoid getting shot down, but the danger was always there. So it is today. Except you only go out if it’s necessary and you pick your spots. (And it’s not so necessary now that things can be ordered online and delivered) So,you go out to the store or to the doctor’s office or wherever you must go. You wear gloves or use sanitizing lotion/wipes to keep virus off your hands. You stay away from other people as much as possible. You don’t touch your face. All common sense actions. But they don’t guarantee that you won’t get the virus. It’s a crap shoot. No perfect safety can be had. If I were younger, I would not feel as threatened by this illness.

    Our fifty-three year old mental health counselor daughter continues to see her clients. And her clients continue to come in. They don’t hug or touch, as they might have before. Our daughter sanitizes her office after each visit. She doesn’t fear getting the virus as she is very healthy and would probably have a mild case. Life goes on normally for many, but just with much more caution and care.

    I’m hoping we get a medication to treat the virus soon. Chloroquine, which we took while in Africa years ago, seems promising. The Ebola drug remdesivir may help and the HIV drug mix, kelentra, could help. These treatments are being processed quickly. So, there’s, that.

    Anyway, we can only do the best we can, listen to the experts (even when they don’t seem to make sense to us), and hope this doesn’t turn out to be the Spanish flu. Stay well and keep a cool head.

  106. I guess I will leave it at this.

    What is the point that too much economic damage is done trying to stop this? Everybody stays home for a month? 12% unemployment? Massive foreclosures and bankruptcies?

    I must admit I’m a little surprised at how many conservatives are just going along unquestioningly as the government curtails civil liberties at an alarming rate. I’m not against many of these measures but is there no line that is too far? Lockdowns? Military patrolling cities? Anything?

  107. Griffin:

    Of course there is a line too far. I don’t think we’ve reached it yet, but this is a situation where it’s very difficult to judge what’s necessary because there are so many unknowns. The countries that appear to have clamped down successfully on this so far are China, which has almost no liberty at all, and South Korea, which has some. At some point I hope to write a post comparing the approaches of the two.

  108. Yet another reference to CS Lewis on living with the Atomic Bomb, from the Bayou blog of listening to another microbiologist:
    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/03/a-special-saturday-post.html

    The quote is longer:
    In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.

    All are sentenced to die before whatever threat is most threatening today. Most of us who die will die in some unpleasant way.

    Let us be prudent, to live longer, but also keep “living”.
    (Wash hands before every meal; after coming back in from outside.
    Avoid other people.)

  109. If you want to understand why people are freaking out, look at the WHO global numbers. Coronavirus has killed over 3,000 in China and around 2,500 in the rest of the world but 2,000 of those deaths are in just two countries, Italy and Iran. I’ve read that there’s a large Chinese national population in Italy but I don’t think ANYONE really understands why it is so much worse in those two places.

    Absent an explanation, I believe there comes a conscious or unconscious assumption that Italy and Iran are just ahead of the curve and EVERY country is going to follow the same path with the virus. That’s how you end up locking down the entire United States over a disease that has killed fewer people nationwide than the flu has killed in just Minnesota.

    I suspect we’ll learn in the aftermath there were specific factors at work in Italy and Iran that simply don’t exist in other nations which caused the coronavirus to run wild there.

    Mike

  110. “…factors…that simply don’t exist in other nations…”

    Well, except that they do….

    The question is, when will governments wake up and implement the draconian measures that are required. The answer is almost never, given political—and cultural—exigencies. (Only those with direct, or perhaps indirect, experience of the capabilities of the Four Horsemen can know what to expect.)

    Which is why EVERY country (some more, some less, it is true) are behind the curve and are, necessarily, playing catch-up.

    Because (almost) no one wants to be seen as an alarmist, alas. (For a whole slough of reasons….)

    But at some point, those draconian measures ARE implemented; MUST BE implemented. Though by that time it is usually late in the day.

    ‘Tis the way of the world. (Or maybe—especially—the western world.)

    (To be sure, even NK’s very oh-so-practical concept of shooting anyone who came into that country from China didn’t seem to work out all that well…. Can’t say they didn’t try, though.)

    The only thing to do is to hold on tight, not take chances, try to self-isolate (as much as possible—if at all possible), strengthen one’s immune system (if only as a psychological boost) and wait for an immune-system booster to be developed first (e.g., Darpa’s idea) and/or wait much longer—unless we get lucky—for a vaccine to be developed.

    Many, as well, will turn to prayer, certainly.

    (And try hard not to lose one’s dignity.)

    And even then…

    …Anyway, who said that COVID-19 can’t be a blessing?
    https://pluralist.com/hillary-clinton-appeals-deposition-emails-benghazi/
    https://pjmedia.com/trending/hunter-biden-is-trying-to-postpone-his-paternity-deposition-until-after-election/

    Wishing you all decent health and the strength to get through this.

  111. Well, I see overnight the discussion continued. I’m going to defend Griffin here a bit. I believe he raises some valid points that I also have been trying to raise. And I am also surprised at how many here seem to be accepting the government line in all this. Where’s the usual conservative skepticism of the government, no matter who’s in charge? I also think that Griffin’s concern about massive economic chaos with such draconian measures as 8 weeks of small business closures, etc. is quite justified for all the reasons he laid out. And as of this morning, it looks like the Dow will take another large plunge.

    According to our “go to” site this morning, worldometers, the US has 3664 cases, of which 3654 are mild and 10 (!) are serious. So at present about 3 tenths of 1 percent (3×10^-3) are requiring hospitalization. Not exactly a strong argument for overwhelming the health care system. Deaths stand at 69, 1.8%, but subtract out the 27 from the nursing home, and it goes down to 1.1%.

    I will admit we are in the exponential growth part of the curve, but it will turn over whether through mitigation or the fact that the disease will run its course. See the math here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/13/the-math-of-epidemics/ Using the worldometer data from Mar1 to present which is the exponential part of the curve, it is fit with a function: cases = 18.379*e^1.3183*(days), which predicts about 13,000 cases by Mar 22. The China data (again worldometers) shows their curve turning over in about 3 weeks of exponential growth (again read the referenced article on epidemic math). We will reach 3 weeks of exponential growth in a week. So, on that basis, let’s review where we stand on about Mar 25 and compare that data to the government’s measures. Hopefully, the current level of restrictions will help turn the curve.

    But, note that the left is already trying to use the situation for their own benefit…DeBlasio as the prime example. Griffin, I believe, and I also am concerned that Trump et al are playing into their hands. How many times has a government expanded its power only to voluntarily give it up??

  112. physicsguy:

    I agree with your assessment except regards President Trump and the Demo-media being able to get him (at last the walls are really closing in …..). But past performance is not a sure predictor of future results so there is always that unknown.

  113. If you could entertain the possibility for a minute that our world leaders are neither stupid or insane, and if you believe the virus itself is no big deal, what explanations does that leave for the current lock down? Other than “make trump look bad”, which is pretty unsophisticated for otherwise intelligent people, I must say. (I somehow doubt Italy locked itself down completely, murdering its own tourism industry, to have some distant effect on an American election, but you do you).

    Would it be loony toons to suggest there may be some OTHER event upcoming, which they know about, but you do not (yet)? An event for which a locked down and prepped population might be advantageous?

    We’ll see.

  114. A friend put together his own covid19 site..
    while the charts are good and getting better by the half day, and the resources area needs to be filled out with more links to hospitals and those areas.

    The news clipping area gets updated with up to the minute links to current news about covid19!

    http://covid19.rumments.com/index.cfm

  115. “Well, except that they do….“

    Then what are they? Why, out of all the nations on Earth, are these two so much worse off than every other country (besides China) put together?

    I’m not saying that things won’t get worse in the rest of the world but it is weird that there’s seemingly no explanation at all for why Italy and Iran are so much more terrible than anywhere else. Isn’t it vitally important to understand that Italy and Iran did X to make the coronavirus worse so the rest of us can do Not X?

    Mike

  117. “Why…”
    Hint: time line.
    In addition, you seem not to have heard of Spain, Germany, France, the UK. The US? (I’d prefer not to, either, actually….)
    =====
    “…so the rest of us can do Not X.”

    Which, I guess, explains why (aside from the country of origin) NO other country other than Iran and Italy is currently suffering from the onslaught of the virus…

    File under: It won’t happen to me/us.

    P.S. Yes, In theory you’re absolutely right. We should have learned from Italy and Iran. We should have run (but where?) when we first intimated the tsunami. (But then I guess, in theory, most people are right….)

  118. “File under: It won’t happen to me/us.“

    Take your ego out of the equation. This isn’t about you being right or about how smart is you are. This is about facts. You know, those things upon which decisions are supposed to be made.

    The disparity between Italy and Iran and the rest of the non-China world is a fact. Even if they are just earlier on the curve than the rest of the world, WHY that is the case is seemingly a pretty important question to answer.

    Mike

  119. Absent an explanation, I believe there comes a conscious or unconscious assumption that Italy and Iran are just ahead of the curve and EVERY country is going to follow the same path with the virus. That’s how you end up locking down the entire United States over a disease that has killed fewer people nationwide than the flu has killed in just Minnesota.

    Prior to the explosion of cases around 21 February, Italy had fewer cases than the United States or Germany. We’re three weeks down the line and thousands of cases have been identified in the United States and Germany, but we are still not seeing the hospitals swamped. This is true just about every place in the world outside of Italy, Iran, and the Chinese province of Hubei. Even in Italy, 80% of the cases are in Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where about 1/3 of the total population live).

  120. The short answer is, as soon as the horrific reports began to emerge from Northern Italy, lockdown should have been initiated in Mainland Europe, the UK, Scandinavia and elsewhere (US, Canada, Mexico, etc.).

    So we’re talking about losing approximately five days to a week. Boris Johnson sounded tough but his response was initially full of holes and loopholes. Trudeau is STILL allowing foreigners to fly into the True North without screening. Trump has tried to provide some tough leadership but without trying to sound (and be) too alarmist, which ultimately could not—and did not—last very long.

    Could lockdown have been implemented immediately?
    Probably not, given the political/economic/cultural dynamic, most didn’t see the dire need (including many commentators on this blog, who still don’t quite understand why all this is happening and why lockdown is necessary).

    Would it have made a difference if it had been?
    Possibly (if one were optimistic)—certainly one would very much like to think so—but given the virulently contagious nature of the virus, its long incubation period, its ability to mutate and its horrific tendency to utterly and totally overwhelm health care personnel and hospital services, not necessarily.

    Would be nice if I were absolutely wrong on this. (That’s my ego speaking, by the way.)

  121. OK, now that we’re all more pessimistic about this (including myself), here is an article and transcript from a TV spot with Dr. Drew Pinsky that tries to inject a little calm.

    I don’t much like celebrity doctors or physicists (Dr. M. Kaku is not bad) and Dr. Pinsky may be full of it, but he thinks most of the panic will be over in about a month. His view may be colored by the fact that he caught a serious case of H1NI flu.

    BTW, it occurs to me that this objective of “suppressing the curve,” or words to that effect, also prolongs the curve according to the generic statistical graphs being bandied about.

  122. And so it begins here in CT. Governor just closed all restaurants, etc…anything over 50 people. According to local TV station that’s 160,000 people in CT without work. Oh and here’s a quote from our esteemed governor: “We’ve got to work through this together. The feds have been asleep at the switch,” I wonder if he would have said this, or taken this action if Clinton was president?

    Good question as to why Italy is such an outlier.

  123. Good question as to why Italy is such an outlier.

    Just about every feature suggested is to be found elsewhere. Ample population of the old in Italy, but you have that in Germany and Japan as well. Ample population of smokers (but you have even more smokers in France). You have lots of social kissing, but plenty of that in France and (if I’m not mistaken) Russia. Maybe it all just adds up. The one thing that’s been suggested that seems like it might be a local phenomenon is hospitals themselves as vectors. Could it be that there were just wretched infection control protocols in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Veneto?

  124. This morning I arrived at my cafe, found it mostly deserted and with a sign on the door saying that, for the time being, cafe seating will be reduced by 50%.

    Sure enough, while my favorite window table was open, half of the tables had “No Seating Here” signs on them. The help behind the cash register have no idea how long this will last nor are they sure the cafe will even remain open.

    Today there are only 17 confirmed cases in all of New Mexico.

  125. De Blasio: We’re ‘Close to’ Needing Government to Ensure Food Supply Is ‘Equitably Distributed’

    https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/03/16/de-blasio-were-close-to-needing-government-to-ensure-food-supply-is-equitably-distributed/

    On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) called for the nationalization of certain parts of the supply chain, and stated that “we’re getting close to a reality where the government has to ensure that the food supply, that it is not only available, but that it’s equitably distributed.”

  126. I’ve been watching Dr. Marc Siegel on Fox Business. He seems very sensible. This morning he said he’s hopeful about chloroquine, remdesivir, and the drug cocktail that is used against AIDS. If medical personnel (this is my idea, not his) could take malaria pills might they not be safer to treat Wuhan virus patients?

    I’m with Griffin and physicsguy here, I think. Two weeks of everybody avoiding crowds, and then the younger cohort need to go back to living life, sanitizing wipes in hand. It’s up to me and my over-65 group to stay isolated as much as we can until this plays out. Younger people have lives to live, services to perform, things to build, and supplies to deliver.

  127. My guess about the quick spread in Italy and Iran is that it’s mostly cultural. Getting close, hugging, kissing, and other social practices that create much contact between people is a good way to spread germs and viruses. AD’s suggestion that they may also have let the virus into their hospitals on a large scale seems plausible as well. Though we don’t/can’t know for sure until post pandemic studies are done. Italy’s problem now is not enough ICU beds to accommodate the critically ill. That is what our experts fear may happen here.

    I just saw a Seattle based doctor on Fox say that the Seattle hospitals are seeing a big ramp up in people with fevers and coughs. That sounds a bit ominous as the infection rate thus far seemed to be relatively slow. Another doctor opined that this disease is slow redevelop, but it can go from mild to quite serious in a short time. It seems to indicate that there may be far more people actually infected than the data shows.

    Here in WA they are ramping up drive by testing. With many more tests we will have better data as to the extent of the infections. As Insty says, faster please.

  128. . . . the extent of the infections.

    On this question I’m interested to see the new serology testing become widespread, telling us not who currently has an active infection but who had an infection (now passed) some time ago. I have a suspicion we’ll learn things proving to be very telling, things the RT-PCR tests cannot tell us.

  129. The majority of confirmed cases are now outside China.

    China: 81,000
    Non-China: 98,100

    The scary part is the non-China curve is still in its exponential stage. Four days ago it was 47k.

    Somewhere ahead the curve plateaus. Further past that the curve decreases. But the timing of those changes remain unknown for now.

  130. I am just a foolish mortal and pray a lot.
    I think sometimes joy in the face of the thing itself can cause attention to be paid by those way above my pay grade.
    I am old and have seen it before.
    I know the math changes and maybe that is because that points to stuff we dance around.
    The band plays on.

  131. huxley on March 16, 2020 at 3:43 pm said:
    The majority of confirmed cases are now outside China.

    China: 81,000
    Non-China: 98,100
    ————————————————————————————-

    The faith you guys have in these numbers is kind of spooky.

  132. Solrist: The faith you have in your ability to mindread others is spooky.

    No one here, from what I can tell, believes the numbers represent unquestionable truth. But these numbers aren’t pulled out of a hat either.

    We’re dealing with a fast-moving, partly invisible phenomenon being reported by humans with their own biases and agendas. We do the best we can.

  133. I dare say if they were giving out numbers on the same day as admitting no one was being tested, the numbers may as well be pulled out of a hat.

    If in doubt, watch what someone does, not what they say. What are governments around the world right now doing?

  134. If in doubt, watch what someone does, not what they say. What are governments around the world right now doing?

    Solrist: It seems you have your agenda. Pray enlighten us.

  135. Huxley:

    Just to make Solrist happy use your own aphanmumeric code when speaking of all things COVID19 but don’t bother to tell us what the key is to decipher your information; that way you can always say you were a genius and prophetic. We’ve had commenters use this approach before on other topics, it works! 🙂

  136. Related:
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8118383/Italians-warn-not-underestimate-coronavirus.html

    Key graf:
    “In a hard-hitting video, citizens under quarantine admitted they initially underestimated the magnitude of the infection which has now crippled their country.”

    How it may have gotten to Italy in the first place:
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8117531/Shocking-images-reveal-lungs-two-Wuhan-residents-ravaged-coronavirus.html

  138. Facts without Context/ Compares = Fear the Risk.

    Facts with Context/ Compares = Understand the Risk.

    ***
    1) Influenza Virus Deaths: USA

    • 2019-2020: 22K (season not over)
    • 2018-2019: 60K
    • 2017-2018: 80K
    • 2016-2017: 38K
    • 2015-2016: 23K
    • 2014-2015: 51K
    • 2013-2014:
    • 2012-2013: 56K
    • 2011-2012: 12K
    • 2010-2011:
    • 2009: 12K [H1N1-Swine Flu Pandemic]
    • 1968: 34-100K [H3N2-Hong Kong Flu Pandemic]
    • 1957: 70-116K [H2N2-Asian Flu Pandemic]
    • 1918: 675K [H1N1-Spanish Flu Pandemic]

    2) Coronavirus – SARS-CoV2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) – Deaths: USA

    • 2019-2020: 69 (6,705 deaths worldwide) **as of March 16, 2020

    3) Coronavirus – MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) – Deaths: USA

    • 2012-2020: 2 cases, 0 deaths (862 deaths worldwide)

    4) Coronavirus – SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) – Deaths: USA

    • 2003-2005: 8 cases, 0 deaths (774 deaths worldwide)

    5) Coronavirus – “Common Cold” – Deaths: USA

    • No data

  139. Why Iran & Italy?

    A the Powerblog link below explains, simply because of the huge exposure that both countries had to Chinese citizens.
    The Iran-China connection was pretty obvious; the Italy-China connection less so.
    (Also clarified is just why China has been making such a tremendous effort, complete with propaganda, to “help” Italy extricate itself from the morass…. No, it’s not humanitarian….)
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/why-italy-and-iran.php

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