This is exactly how it happened in Spain. Please guys, consider it, most media is just nonsense, people pretending to have knowledge about stuff they don't know shit about. Most of you here are smart enough to know what's an exponential, logit and even run your own SIR model.

You'll be in a situation where people will die by contagion of other people who isn't even aware they are infected. You might infect your loved ones.

If you don't lock down now, it will be bad.

This. I've been very very angry with the official response until last week because this is not really hard to estimate and the numbers were there already. I'm quite happy with the recent tough measures, they make sense and I expect/hope they're going to work. I don't think we have much of a choice here, it's either this or a toll that's simply unacceptable if you have the means to avoid it. And you have them: don't ignore common sense because of political choices or the excitement of gambling. Sometimes the obvious thing to do is the right thing to do. Don't try to be clever with this, this is a ruthless chain reaction headed to kill/maim millions, and not in the abstract way doing what needs to be done might or might not result in.

I've also been getting some too scarily close fitting done (not sharing that, it'd be irresponsible, this is not my job and I'm nowhere close to being an epidemiologist). I think the number of confirmed cases in Spain is going to grow appallingly this week and morale is going to be hit hard. Tiny in comparison of what we'd get if we did nothing about it, though. I also think (and hope) it'll start getting much better after that if we're effectively quenching contagion. I hope the authorities share their models with the public in order to give them a fuller picture. That might help psychologically.

At any rate, you don't have to wait for anything, you can start implementing social distancing and careful personal hygiene practices right now.

Spaniard here. I'm not looking forward to the >2 months I expect of lockdown but it is what it is. Why is everyone so cocky? It will happen to your country too, just like it happened to us other countries.

The people who distrust the CDC likely have been preparing for years.

This post (it's parents)!

The US already moving that way in baby steps but things will certainly get there. That it isn't there already is already bad but I can't see this taking more than a few more days.

What's the most recent example? It seems to me as though any diminution of the crisis stopped this weekend.

Here's somone running for public office in Clark County, Nevada trying to score points against AOC: https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/c...

That's kind of problematic. The population in New York City is much denser than in Las Vegas and the number of infected much higher, consequently you might need a lockdown in NYC while in suburban Las Vegas everyone can just retreat into their McMansion on Cobblestone Court Road and watch Foxnews for two weeks.

As a politician you can angle for votes by mocking the healthcare system in Lombardy, one of the best in the world, because your local hospital won't be hit quite as hard, while the healthcare personnel on the frontlines risks infection with coronavirus. The free-rider problem in politics in unsolved, it seems.

Literally several Republicans today. The Governor of Oklahoma tweeted a pic of himself at a busy restaurant last night (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETHs_hQUcAAu3Ep?format=jpg).

Sheriff David Clarke, who has nearly a million followers on Twitter just said this a few hours ago and got thousands of retweets and favorites:

> It is now evident that this is an orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM. First sports, then schools and finally commercial businesses. Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. Let people decide if they want to go out.

> GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, CHURCHES and demand that your schools re-open. NOW! If government doesn’t stop this foolishness...STAY IN THE STREETS. END GOVERNEMNT CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/1239324440934133760

These people are psychotic and should be expelled from polite society.

You shouldn't be downvoted for sharing facts.

He didn't just share facts, he expressed an extreme personal opinion.

I think that popular figures trying to exacerbate a pandemic by sowing public distrust deserve a bit of vitriol in response. It's not a subject that's really amenable to polite argument; Sherrif Clarke is killing people, as surely as if he walked up and shot them in the head.

As OP -- One of my really good friends (and a mother of 3) is currently undergoing chemo to knock out her immune system and prep her for a bone marrow transplant since she discovered she has severe aplastic anemia on Christmas, several of my family members work in primary care in hospitals, I have a large very close-knit family with ~10 uncles/aunts with significant Covid19 comorbidities and a 90-year old grandfather who lives in an urban center. If "Expelling people from polite society" for directly endangering all of their lives is extreme then I'm glad I didn't share my true opinion of what should happen to these charlatans.

Oh nonsense....he correctly noted that a person with no medical training was trying to use fear and political motivations to get followers to do things that put them in physical danger.

That is not an opinion much less an extreme one.

I don't think it's extreme. He's quoting someone demanding that people ignore all public health information and engage in insurrection. We should stop listening to people who are actively and willfully undermining public health.

I only see facts.

Tweets thankfully deleted by twitter.

Older Republicans are the ones spewing and buying into this crap, which is not surprising, since that's where a lot of the "you'll pry my liberty from my cold dead fingers" attitude resides.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/14/older-ame...

I’m not an “older republican” but having been through post 9/11 changes, I am too of a similar opinion.

The answer cannot be a choice between “lose all your freedoms forever” or “the virus kills a million Americans”.

You have the freedom to take personal responsibility in a time of crisis. Despite the zeitgeist freedom doesn't have to be all about being dangerously selfish.

Trusting people to take personal responsibility and act appropriately has failed in every country so far. Even Switzerland.

Do you believe the US is special in this regard?

Where did I mention any country? I only have to walk 3 mins outside my apartment in Berlin to find cafes teeming with irresponsible idiots. It's unbelievably demoralising.

Probably closer to several million if stricter measures aren't taken, because the severe cases will overload hospitals and there won't be enough ventilation equipment and doctors to go around.

You support going about your daily lives instead of social distancing to reduce the spread?

The Mayor of Austin and other City officials were still encouraging people to go out to clubs and restaurants after they canceled SXSW.

Stupid has no party.

To be fair, that was a week ago, at a time when there were no confirmed cases in Austin. The mayor has completely changed his tune: https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/full-interview-mayor-a...

You may say stupid has no party, but the hallmark of stupid is trying to pretend reality doesn't exist so that it fits whatever you said (sharpie'ing out the exponential growth curves won't cut it this time), instead of admitting you were wrong and changing as the facts require.

From that interview, sounds like he's set a headcount but otherwise still wants people to go out:

"We are not saying you shouldn’t go to restaurants, but we certainly don’t want any restaurants with more than 250 people, we have ordered that. If you are in a restaurant, try not to be on top of other people, increase the social distancing, social separation."

I kind of get it. This is going to devastate cafes, bars, clubs, restaurants, and tons of other small businesses. Hell, I doubt our dog boarding place will survive. Until our government steps up and promises replacement dollars, mayors and even governors are in between a rock and a really hard place. These small businesses rarely have a spare 1-2 months of rent, let alone payroll, sitting around.

Here's California Representative Devin Nunes on healthy families visiting restaurants to help local economy:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/487666-nunes-urges-americ...

Who knew? Electing badly can have bad outcomes.

The people that elected him probably don't and probably won't think this is a bad outcome.

The people who elected him are presumably on the older side, and thus the ones likely to die if this isn’t dealt with properly.

In a just society this would be grounds for negligence.

Who is saying this?

Sunday morning TV show, Fox News, Devin Nunes.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-a-great-time-to-go-out...

One of these is not like the others

I am at a loss. Fox News hosted Devin Nunes on a Sunday morning news show. Did I miss something?

I totally misparsed your comment lol. Definitely thought you meant those as three different things.

Yes, Trump is literally turning a blind eye to a plague for which most of the casualties will be his voters.

Highly ironic, but not really, because they're getting the government they voted for.

No incumbent President has lost reelection in wartime, and this crisis has many similarities. Trump has also shown a remarkable ability to overcome crisis after crisis, and his Republican supporters don't seem to show any sign that they are losing confidence in him.

Furthermore, it's densely populated cities which are the most likely to suffer casualties, and cities tend to vote more Democratic. On the other hand, Florida (a key battleground state) has a lot of older people and tends to lean Republican, as do older people on the whole.

Trump also doesn't seem to have the most inspiring Democratic opponent in the form of Biden. On the other hand Trump has himself been abysmally unpopular.

Something else to consider is that all the Presidential candidates and the President himself are old enough to be in the high risk category for succumbing to this illness, so it's quite possible that one or more of them won't even make it to November, which would throw the election in to chaos.

On the balance, both parties have their work cut out for them if they want to win in November. It could go either way.

As morbid as it is to consider, one must note that about 3% of total fatalities from the virus are people 60 and under, while about 97% are people 60 and older.

Or, to put it another way, somebody 60 and under who catches it has about a 0.06% chance of dying, while somebody over 60 has about a 1.94% chance of dying.

Of course, this is before considering the effects of overloaded hospitals, which would be likely to skew those numbers, as younger people would have a better chance of surviving without proper medical care than older people.

Your CFR numbers are likely too low across the board - about 2x off would be my guess.

Here's Wuhan's data: https://i.ibb.co/983SC13/covplot.png

> No incumbent President has lost reelection in wartime

This is not a particularly useful thing to say. Incumbents rarely lose anyway - it's only happened 3 times since WW2. Additionally, you have incumbents like Johnson who was so unpopular that he lost his parties' primary contest.

Truman elected just not to run. Yes, the spirit of the 22nd amendment was factor, but so were his terrible poll numbers.

I don't think this is a "rally behind the flag" moment, especially because the President isn't invoking the language of national identity to get people to respond to the crisis. That could change, but it won't be super effective at this point.

There is no war and the vulnerable demographic is the elderly who are all housed in group assisted living, but whatever.

The French yellow vests are still rioting saying this is a move by the capitalists to lower stock values so they can buy in cheap.

Honestly it does seem to have a lot of blatantly manufactured steps added on top of a normal health situation. Australia has implemented a 50k fine for people who break curfew.

When did 1984 become reality for the public? This is not the stiff upper lip, we don't give our lifestyle away to foreign threats, classic western attitude. This is blatant politicking for a police state off the back of dead people. Nobody wants to live like this and sometimes you have to choose for yourself.

I predict that in less than 3 weeks, most people like you will have changed your minds. When the time comes (and it will), please look back at how selfish you sounded here.

There are more ways to deal with this crisis than are being implemented. A desire to live outside of lockdown is not synonymous with selfishness, even if that were my motive.