[ul]
[li] For information on today’s anti-lockdown protest, see my earlier post.[/li]
[li] Austria has some notoriously strict blue laws that require almost all stores (including grocery stores) to remain closed on Sundays. Now owners of large shopping centres are calling upon the government to suspend these laws for the next two years, ostensibly to reduce overcrowding in the shops. A more cynical view might be that these owners are capitalizing on the pandemic in order to force through legal reforms that will benefit them at the expense of small business owners, for whom staying open seven days a week is not practical.[/li]
[li] The education minister has announced plans to gradually reopen schools. Graduating students will be invited back first (on 4 May), followed by students aged 6 to 14 (on 15 May), and finally students aged 15 and up (29 May). Students in each grade will be partitioned into two groups, such that there are around 12 students per classroom. Attendance at school will alternate between the two groups, with Group A attending on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Group B attending on Thursday and Friday; the schedule will then switch around each week. Students will be given plenty of homework to keep them busy on the days that they are not attending. Classes will be offered in the mornings only, with music and physical education classes being cancelled. Students and teachers will be required to wear face coverings and observe social distancing. There will be no written exams (except, as previous reported, for graduating students), the school year will not be prolonged, and no student will be obliged to repeat a grade except at the insistence of the parents. Students and staff belonging to risk groups are excused from attending class.[/li]
[li] Regional trains will be resuming normal scheduled service on 11 May.[/li]
[li] Current statistics: 15,083 confirmed infections, 530 deaths, 11,872 recovered. Today is the seventh consecutive day that the daily rise in new confirmed infections has been lower than 100.[/li][/ul]
Doctors are noticing a small-ish trend in strokes related to covid-19. These are people in the 30~50-y/o range, with negligible/no breathing trouble, showing incidence of massive occlusions of a type that is very uncommon for people under 60. In at least one case, as the surgeon was clearing one blockage, more were already forming.
I think the most important breaking news on this virus will relate to the extreme vulnerability of those with serious underlying issues. It is appearing more and more that the virus is of very little threat to the general public and the media has known this all along as well as the health organizations. I foresee a major scandal implicating corroboration between the health organizations and the media. The public was intentionally misled with total disregard for the public or the country at large.
…I just read a thread on twitter about a woman who has has just lost her aunt, her grandmother, and now her mum to Covid-19. I find the claim that this is of “very little threat to the general public” to be an extraordinary claim considering that Covid-19 has claimed nearly 200,000 lives worldwide, 50,000 of those lives in America. Can you quantify what drove you to this belief? Do you think I’m at risk? How about the other people posting in this thread?
The only scandal you should be worried about is the misinformation campaign being waged by the US Federal Government. There is no evidence of a “major scandal implicating corroboration between the health organizations and the media.” ZERO evidence of this.
The people you are accusing of “intentionally misleading with total disregard for the public or the country” are trying to save your life. And they will continue to try and save your life even as you make baseless accusations against them.
You are to refrain from posting idiotic conspiracy theories in this forum. If you want to post such nonsense, post it in Great Debates so it can be properly dealt with.
I wonder what percentage of normal healthy people are getting it? I know it is a serious bug, extremely serious for some groups. But I see young people every day traumatized and scared to death. Something is seriously wrong here and it has to do with the public being misled,
This is a very odd opinion given the number of people that clearly have died from it. Yes, only a small portion of the public is apparently susceptible, but we have no way of knowing whether we as individuals are or not, so it makes sense to be cautious. Even if you are asymptomatic, you may spread it to others who will have it much worse. I don’t think the public has been misled about the high percentage of asymptomatic infections; at least as I’ve been following the story as it’s developed, it’s been clear to me that the large amount of asymptomatic infections are the main reason it’s such a problem to contain. Unless you fully contact trace and test everyone, there are going to be people spreading it without knowing, and with a not-insignificant subset of the population susceptible, that’s why there are so many deaths.
Look again at this story that I linked a few posts back. The virus is affecting young people, 30~50 years old, causing massive strokes, and it seems to attack other organs as well, without presenting the classic lung symptoms. They are not even aware of having it at the time, and are not on the extremes of vulnerability. So far it is a small group of victims, but that is mostly because we have been trying to minimize the spread.
It will go free-range and reach a lot more people and harm them (having a cannot-talk type stroke is pretty bad, especially for a person in their 30s). This thing is not a hyperbovirus, it is not overblown and ultimately there will not be a scandal.
I’ll get to the point after a few sentences. Over the years, I have read many statistics related to wars and battles. They usually list the number of dead. Very occasionally they will mention the wounded, but this cohort seems to count less, although any wound, although maybe not life-threatening is definitely life-affecting. The loss of a finger or limb, impaired use of a hand, an arm, a leg, vision, hearing, to name a few. Now with covid-19, we have those death statistics (whether accurate or inaccurate), they are at least a ballpark figure. And now we are seeing the “recovered” statistics. My first reaction is that recovered implies that a patient is now 100%, back to normal. My question is, how true is this, are there health repercussions even for the “recovered”?
If you want to feel slightly less unnerved: at this point these seem more like indicators that we don’t know enough yet than that we’re utterly screwed. Maybe some or most recovered people actually are immune; not knowing that they’re immune isn’t the same thing as knowing that they’re not. Maybe better tests will be out in short order and the bad ones will be pulled off the market. But we are still way too early in this thing for anybody to get complacent.