Elsewhere was an approving link to a NYT editorial that since there’s “no evidence” of kids being vectors that it was a useless mistake to close schools. That’s the kind of thing that’s contributed to my confusion of the past couple of posts.
But your general point about unknowns is well taken.
They’re trying to reduce the big spike that is inevitable a couple-three months into the outbreak. That spike is likely to overwhelm the medical system. If we get the same number of cases, but they’re spread out over several months rather than all at once, it’s a win.
China is already working on it by restricting incoming visitors. They don’t want anyone bringing it back into China now that they are seeing a downward trend in new infections.
This question is premature since Italy’s recent troubles have not yet abated. Once they have begun to abate, yes, there will be a chance that things could rebound and start the numbers climbing again.
No, they’re trying to delay a possible spike in the hope that by the time it hits we’ll have our pants up and be prepared.
Also, delaying it might mean that it won’t be anywhere near as much of a spike, but that cases instead may be spread out at lower (though quite possibly still varying) levels over a longer period of time. If half the country’s going to eventually catch it, but does so over several years, the medical system can probably deal with it, and the number of people capable of working at any given time should be enough to keep things going. If half the country all catches it at once, all systems will be overwhelmed; we’ll still pull out of it eventually, but there’ll be a whole lot more damage, and a lot more types of damage.
Think about the number of cases like cars on the road. With a certain number of cars, traffic flows smoothly and everyone can drive the speed limit. But if 2x or 3x the number of cars are on the road, you have slowdowns, backups, and bumper-to-bumper traffic. That’s a hassle when you’re trying to get home, but the consequences could be fatal if it happens to the medical system. If a hospital gets overwhelmed and gets into the rush-hour traffic situation, then people die because there is no one to treat them or no place for them to go. That’s true whether you come in with pneumonia, heart attack, pregnancy, or anything. The medical system can only provide so much service. Once the needs are greater than that, people start to die from lack of service.
All the shutdowns and social distancing going on now serve to spread out the number of cases so that the medical system never gets overwhelmed. In the traffic situation, it would be like encouraging people to leave work more evenly between 3 and 7 rather than everyone at 5 o’clock so that the road never gets into the bumper-to-bumper situation. But since the virus is a life and death situation, we’re taking very drastic measures because we don’t want to get into that overload situation. Because we don’t want anyone to die, everything is shutting down so the number of infections will be as low as possible. And there’s a chance that might not be enough. We just don’t know.
Sure, but others have had the thought that next week, after everything gets back closer to normal, the traffic jam happens anyway, just as bad, only this time people are less willing to stay off the road because they already had to once.
Now I see thorny locust seems to address it. Fair enough; I suppose we can’t do nothing on the fear it won’t work. So I guess the sacrifices are worthwhile. Just hope the public sees it that way if this has to happen again.
(I also didn’t think I was implying that Italy was out of the woods yet, but that may be just me.)
Dupe post.
Big spike in cases in Spain.
Actually, I think it’s the other way around—the verb hamstern is named after the animal and its propensity to stuff its cheeks with food.
So Hamsterkäufe (note the corrected spelling—earlier I misspelled it as Hamsterkaufen) comes from hamstern (the verb “to hoard”) via Hamster (the noun for the animal).
Thanks, but at the moment I’m none too worried. I went to my usual supermarket again today, this time around 17:30. This time a lot of shelves were empty, but only for very specific products. For example, two brands of milk were completely sold out, but other brands were well-stocked. All the white sandwich bread and rolls were gone, but there was still plenty of rye bread. All the green pesto was gone, but there was still lots of red pesto. All the rice was gone, but there was plenty of couscous, tarhonya, and wheat and spelt berries. All the frozen pizza was gone, but there were still lots of other frozen dishes. My conclusion: if I continue to shop there, I may not be able to buy all of what I normally eat, but I’ll certainly be able to buy enough (possibly unusual) stuff for a well-balanced diet.
By contrast, the Turkish supermarket across the street looked almost completely normal. Shelves full of everything, only a bit short on vegetables.
Things will not be better next week. Or the week after that. Or the next one. By May we be able to see a leveling off and/or downturn. If we’re lucky. Very lucky.
This.
Closing things for another week? A week isn’t going to make any difference.
It was not meant to be taken literally. You could’ve replaced “next week” with “next year” if it really bothered you. My point was confirming that there was reason to cancel stuff now when the spike could return later just as strongly.
Dunno which of the half dozen active threads on this I can put this…since this one is in MPSIMS, and seems mundane enough, but isn’t affecting me personally per se, in here it goes…
I just wonder if advertisers are going to redo some of their ads. Today in the gym:
Wendy’s commercial for their chicken sandwiches, young woman is eating one, points at the burger (“The virus is in here! Yum!”)…
Corona Beer ad. Yes I know the beer is as safe as any other, just the juxtaposition was apropros…
Hockey commercial, developmentally disabled kid kisses the Stanley Cup, after presumably all of the winning players had all just handled it.
I just had to LOL at the unfortunate implications there.
When you say “now” do you mean “‘now’ now” or do you mean “sometime in the distant future”?
:dubious:
I can only reply to the words I see in front of me, dude.
In any event, this is a Breaking News thread, not an IMHO thread.
Good luck to you and your family.
The Governor of Illinois just ordered the closing of all schools in the state.
Leaper, post 811
The point of all of this is to flatten the curve. We need to slow down the number of cases that require hospitalization, so that the system isn’t overwhelmed. We need testing to ramp way up so that we can start tracking the virus and accurately measure which individuals are safe to work, teach, travel, etc.
This can’t be eradicated, but we need to stop the exponential growth here, or we’ll be in serious trouble.
Closures
-Contra Costa County schools
Many of the Camino pilgrim hostels, as well as the pilgrim office and the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela are closed.
Color me dense, but I don’t get that. 