Is the cruise ship in international waters? If it is within 3 miles of California’s coast, it is technically in the US and its sick passengers should definitely be counted.
If China was pulling a stunt like this, we’d all be saying, “Well, that’s an authoritarian government for you!” Well, that’s what we have. A government that is OK with causing the suffering of hundreds of people because the homeland’s image must be protected at all costs.
It makes me wonder, if this thing is no worse than the flu, there shouldn’t be any problem letting these people get off the ship. If it’s a just bunch of mild symptoms, the president should let them disembark and treat them like you’d treat anyone else with mild symptoms, right? The longer he keeps those people out there, the more folks are gonna start noticing the glaring contradiction in podium doublespeak and action.
Statements like “this is no worse than the flu” aren’t great, because they may mean vastly different things to different people. And it may not be true. Time will tell. I think time will show the response to be excessive, but that doesn’t make the responses unjustifiable, unreasonable or without lessons for the next outbreak in the world of media saturation.
That said, cruise ship incubators are harder to justify than following proper procedures, including appropriate tests and sequelae.
It’s important to note those 21 positive cruise passengers are from a total of 46 passengers that were tested. Not all passengers were tested. There are 3500+ people on the ship and the rest of them need to be tested.
IF the study I linked to is accurate in the least, then the statement that children are not much affected at all needs a great deal of qualification. They may be infected at least as much as adults, but with such mild disease that they do not get counted. That has significant implications for controlling the spread and for the overall CFR.
Statements like “this is no worse than the flu” aren’t great, but statements like, “this has much greater mortality rates than the flu” are at least as bad. And we hear that a lot more, as people fail to hear the usual expert qualification of “may be” …
By both CFR and absolute mortality rates this may be not bad for kids at all. Influenza is not so bad for kids either. Across this country a bad influenza season (such as 2017-18) kills under 700 under 19 years old, while that in that same season about 51,000 65 years old and greater died due to influenza.
This MAY be that pattern maybe even exaggerated a bit.
The point being that your point is very important. The impact of this may be very different on different groups of people. Many many kids infected with mild disease may lower the overall CFR by an order of magnitude or more, making it less even than seasonal influenza… but the age-specific CFR for those 65+ or with significant chronic illnesses may still be worse.
Passengers held on Carnival Cruise Line ship in Long Beach
As the coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess cruise ship waits off the coast near San Francisco, another liner is stuck near Long Beach, Calif., while a passenger undergoes coronavirus testing “out of an abundance of caution,” its company says.
Trump ‘didn’t know people died from the flu.’ It killed his grandfather.
In 1918, Friedrich Trump was a successful, 49-year-old businessman, husband and father of three living in Queens, according to Gwenda Blair in her 2001 book “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.” One day in May, he came home from a stroll feeling sick. He died almost immediately.
He was a victim of the first wave of the Spanish flu pandemic. A second, deadlier wave hit in the fall. All told, the pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide and 675,000 in the United States, according to the CDC.
You and all of us are collectively guilty.
We have had three and a half years to try and remove or at least muzzle the idiot our system elected. We have had three and a half years to convince the people that voted for him that they were wrong. We have done nothing. A shift in the House, big whoop.
New cases and deaths in China continue to show steady decline (102 new cases 28 new deaths). If this is correct, it looks like China has managed to stamp it out, using quite harsh means of ordering factory closures, and isolating hot spots.
New cases in the rest of the world are starting to enter an exponential phase. (3633 new cases, 78 new deaths) 5 new countries. 93 countries in total have reported Covid-19. The cat is officially out of the bag.
More cases on cruise ships. It’s going to take a while for this industry to come back.
I continue to believe that there are WAY more cases in the US, but are unknown because of the complete Screw-up with testing. It’s too late now for testing. You need to assume that the virus is all over the community, and is over every public surface. That guy who sneezed on you in the supermarket? Thanks buddy, you just gave me the virus.
Because I couldn’t physically force someone else to vote the way you want them to I’m guilty. Really?
Sorry, no - WTF are you expecting people to do? Or are you one of the folks who want a civil war and damn the consequences?
I feel no guilt about the current BS in the US Federal government because I have done everything that I personally could do. I’m sorry it wasn’t effective, but I don’t feel guilty. And I refuse to take the blame for this bullshit because the blame all belongs are the Republicans who elected these assholes and the people who continue to enable them.
It’s a hair’s breadth from the Republican habit of blaming “the Democrats” for anything and everything bad whether or not there is a basis in truth. Sorry, not playing that game.
I do fear that there may be consequences I have to suffer for the “crime” of being born in this country because there are a lot of bigots out there that will hold all of a category responsible for the crimes of a few of that category. Sorry, not having much personal power there’s not much I can do about that either, but if an opportunity arises I’ll take advantage of it. Not holding my breath though.
One thing I haven’t heard a lot about is plans to prevent re-emergence of the virus after it has been contained. Even if China has contained the outbreak in certain areas, there’s no guarantee that the virus won’t make it back into that area later on. Even if countries put large areas under quarantine, what are they going to do to prevent an infected person from going into that community after the quarantine is over?
I don’t know if Trump is that heartless, but surely that thinking would be wrong, right? Old people vote Republican. I think he’s just surrounded by yes-men and used to (mostly) self-inflicted problems he can spin. But viruses don’t give a shit about PR.
The idea that there are tons of mild cases out there seems at odds with the data out of South Korea. They’ve done lots of testing, and they’ve done plenty of contact tracing through the religious group that it spread widely through. They’re showing a 0.7% fatality rate so far. I can’t find data on the number of people who require hospitalization.