Herd immunity is pretty much bs, if nearly everybody gets it within a short time and you have no restrictions then the vulnerable will have high death rates. Infected "healthy" people not dying aren't going to make the vulnerable immune.

If you let things go then you'll get a huge spike of infections, health system can't cope and because of that you have more deaths.
Putting massive restrictions in place early before you get a huge spike will flatten the spike but also extend it. The health system will be strained for many weeks but it's less likely to break completely.
That's the theory, but it has worked it practice historically afaik.

When I heard the line 'herd immunity' I did think it was a bit flippant. If ten people have been vaccinated but one person hasn't, the theory is that the person who hasn't been vaccinated wont get ill because of 'herd immunity'. Im not sure that works in this context like you mentioned.

I think the policy now is contain and delay. Contain the virus and delay the spread. So they still want people to get it but over a longer period of time putting less stress on health services.

There's no cure for this and probably won't be until maybe the end of the year or sometime next year.
Trump saying a cocktail of drugs can be used doesn't really work. The anti-malaria drug in particular can kill people, like if they have heart problems. It's an old drug anyway so the possible side effects and risks are known.

Multiple people have died from self medicating since Trump said that too. Awful!

So here in New Zealand in 14 hours unless you are emergency services or health care everyone must go home and stay home for at least the next 4 weeks, i can travel to get Medicine or essential food but strict measure on distancing while doing so.

News Link Here With A Speech From Our Prime Minister Why

I was doing some reading - getting updates about our federal and state restrictions (I'm following state advice more closely than fed, our PM is a moron).
After that I clicked on something about the US just because I was curious and it appears known infections have jumped significantly.
Trump wants to end lockdown restrictions by Easter because "the cure is worse than the disease" or some crap. I can only assume he's pissed the economy is going to be hit hard including his own interests, so I guess he's thinking - hey if I can't get things moving again to make money instead of haemorrhaging it my peers will simply laugh at me.
Somewhere else mentioned (think it might've been a UK study) a projection of 20-30% unemployment rate for the US.

Last thing I read about predicted unemployment rate for over here was like 10-12% or something, but we actually do have a welfare and public health system (albeit not perfect). Maybe that prediction has changed now idk.

Here are the scary maths.

US stands at 55K cases right now, and confinement/lock-down is not global and even recently some didn't care much (look at Florida Spring Breakers spreading the disease even further last week).

The cases double each 3~4 days right now. So USA will pass China in reported cases within 2~3 days.
You can't stop it, these people are already infected but they don't know it yet.

If the country was on full lockdown starting now, we'd still have the same doubling each 3~4 days for another 2~3 weeks.

So the 55K cases today could easily me multiplied by 11.3 (that's the optimistic scenario of 2 weeks with doubling each 4 days) or by 128 (pessimistic scenario of 3 weeks with doubling each 3 days).

Optimistic projection: 621K cases
Pessimistic projection: 7M cases

If you get a Korea mortality rate of 1% that's 6K~70K casualties.
If you get Italy mortality rate because the healthcare system collapsed, that's 10% mortality rate and 60K~700K casualties.

And this assumes there is no more contamination after these 2~3 weeks because the country is in full lockdown.

India just shutdown 1.3B people at home, because of these maths -- and they have 500+ cases and 10 deaths.
USA needs to shutdown completely ASAP.

STAY HOME, Trump asking for people to leave confinement quite soon is borderline of mass murder.

Julien

Yeah and cases doubling every 3-4 days is probably a low estimate anyway. Every infected person can infect 3 people quite easily so tripling the cases is possible if most people just don't take things seriously. Doesn't help if you have the leader of your country trying to downplay how out of control this can get very quickly and not implementing a strict lockdown immediately. NZ is doing the right thing but Australia isn't at a federal level atm.

Julien I've been telling people for weeks this ain't the flu for one reason, the Govts of the world have had intel this could get real bad for a while and wouldn't shut down travel/commerce if it was just the flu. Why else would we trash our own economy? No government wants to do that. They'd have to have a REALLY good and real reason. STILL People in Australia are STILL ignoring the pleas from the prime minister and STILL say "it's just a flu". They live in this bubble where they're different and nothing effects them. They have their own reality. As a country, we f***ing deserve what we get.



Wow you hate Trump so much huh? Don't worry, we'll get to 30% unemployment here in Australia probably by next week. Worse than the depression, overnight. The thing with our retarded rescue package is it forces people into the centrelink system and a lot of part timers and casuals will actually get pay rises to sit on their asses. There is no reward to companies for holding on to staff unlike in the UK where there package is also tied to the employee's former renumeration. Much like the US unemployment insurance system which will kick in for most US workers laid off. Basically you get the majority of your former wage for a limited time to tide you over until the next job.

Our system has always been s**t though, basically puts you on peanuts from the beginning and scares you off being unemployed so you take any job rather than waiting a few months for the right position.

Pray that if we crash quickly we'll also recover quickly with mass re-hirings after this but a lot of industries were already against the wall here before this due to power costs, rents and wage bills.

I predict depression and with the recent selfish behaviour of most Australians, probably looting and mass home invasions will kick off. Prepare to defend you and yours.

Don't worry about the money so much, the government has heaps more than it is throwing at this.
It simply boils down to them doing the right thing instead of trying to save the economy, which won't work the way they think it will.
Full lockdown now and throw money at people so they can get through this. Short term pain for long term gain.

The alternative is a large portion of the population will be infected, health care breaks completely, high death rates, nothing works properly because of all the sick people, economy is messed up for 6 months or more. And yeah, huge recession/depression.

The countries that deal with this efficiently will be better off compared to those that don't.

Truly scary

It's OUR money, not the government's and no, we don't have heaps, in fact we have 0. It's all been borrowed money for a long time.



Yeah, the way our government is handling things and the attitudes of modern Australians we'll get both, high death rate and instant depression. The Great Depression at its peak was 25% unemployment that took years to get to. We are easily going to get to 25-30% in days/weeks.

Going by percentage of GDP or even per capita we aren't the worst in the developed world.
You sound like a lib worried about getting a surplus. Times like this you forget about that.

I wouldn't mind a shutdown but jobs might not be kept. Though I wouldn't mind quitting my job but everything needs money which I don't have much of. I am almost in apartment from transitional housing. unable to get stuff out of storage.

This sucks. It's like the end is here. What country will be able to survive after all this?

China probably.
Maybe that's another reason Atgolf Twitler wants everything working for Easter.

America under quarantine:

This will shock you but Trump is dumb and also only cares about money. We should have locked down and much sooner. South Korea and the US had their first confirmed case on the same day.

Tokyo is finally going for partial lock-down this week-end + restriction on international flights to ALL countries.

Tokyo Governor to call on residents not to go out
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200325_48/

Japan to raise travel alert for entire world
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200325_49/

I'm already self-confining since Monday, makes no difference to me now.

My guess is that people will still go out enjoy the Cherry Blossoms this week-end and, comes Monday, the lock-down restrictions will be raised further.
Also gives people time to stock up food and goods.

Julien

Apparently Prince Charles has tested positive.

Alot of those numbers are off or I don't get them.

K's are thousands and there are some typos.
So far according to BBC news India only has 500 confirmed cases.

It will be bad and won't get better anytime soon but we do have over 7 billion people on the earth, this is just a way of thinning the herd
of over population.

Lets not forget we had NO technology when we had something like the black plague, we didn't know what was going on and how people died for some time.
Then when we as humans did know we tried our best without things like soaps and disinfectants that we now have.

There will be a lot of deaths, there will be more sick but we just have to stay as safe as we can, don't panic and hopefully China isn't lying about how many they have.

Lets also not forget how convenient it was for China to put all the sick into an old hotel that somehow collapsed......