Exactly right. Those numbers are beyond worthless they're dangerous as some people obviously haven't thought this through and actually believe that sort of misinformation.

Until we can rapid test ( results in under 15 minutes) AND contact trace all those who test positive we'll continue to fly blind.

According to Dr. Fauci we should be able to do mass scale rapid testing in about 4-5 months. Until then we must maintain separation or we will create a 2nd. wave.

Sad but true. Ross Rowland

I don't want to get "political" here, so I'm just going to rebut what I consider your "opinion" with a "fact":

For what can honestly be estimated as hundreds of millions of Americans, their NEED is to be able to have a way to support themselves and their families in anything close to a manner to which they have become accustomed, even with understandable self-sacrifice, without destroying the long-term future of this country and its allies with utterly unsustainable long-term economic debt and depression.

Said need is being destroyed for too many of them by political fiat by those "leaders."

There will very shortly come--we could debate whether it's here already, what with protests in states that are decidedly not New York City--a point where personal self-interest will vastly override this perceived "need" to protect every last person out there from any possibility of being infected with this virus--especially as the number of actual "victims" of life-threatening illness continues to at least appear to be an increasingly smaller sub-set of those testing positive for COVID-19/"Chinese Commie Party" virus.

Opinion:
And the more that people or groups where their scales have tipped, by necessity, to protecting their personal interest over some "herd" many states away are depicted as ogres, mass murderers, or worse, the worst the political and sociological divide in this country will get--as if it wasn't ugly before.

"Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough" has been the death of many, many missions and projects, well beyond rail preservation. (I've been watching a "perfectionist" build his house for eighteen years now......)

Duplicate deleted. Opps!

Other countries have started providing ~ $ 2,000 per month to their citizens. We chose to provide billions in "liquidity" to the Wall Street money markets.

There is no reason we could not be supporting Main Street folks as well.

Brian

Lets assume 300,000,000 US citizens would be eligible for that $2,000 per month payment. And then lets say that we follow with Ross's projection of at least a year before we can come out of our houses again.

300 million x $2,000 is $600 billion per month. After a year that is $7.2 trillion dollars. 3 1/2 times that first stimulus. 25% of our total national debt. A number larger than our entire national budget.

What do we as a society do with people who after a couple months of sitting idle decide that they cannot just sit around any longer and go outside anyways? We would basically be turning the entire country into a penal colony. Everyone on house arrest. People in prisons aren't exactly the best behaved. And since the number of people infected is so low, the rationale behind the stay at home orders not being readily apparent is going to cause people to disregard them in greater numbers.

The real problem, in my opinion, is that this is not just a pandemic. It is a pandemic being used as a wedge to divide the country along a pre-existing fault line that is not related to the pandemic. A real medical solution would require everyone to be pulling in the same direction, however the dividing wedge makes pulling together impossible. Also, the dividing wedge is creating growing conflict that will be far more dangerous than the pandemic.

REGARDING THE ECONOMY:

Right now there is dispute over whether to restart the economy or to maintain lock-downs until we are certain that it is safe to lift them. The latter seems to be the obvious answer. But we have yet to feel the effects of the shutdown, so that is easily dismissed. We are accustomed to the traditional reporting on the economy day to day with its minor booms and retractions. The things that cause recessions tend to be small nuanced forces that we can barely comprehend. They happen to align in a certain way, and the economy cools. We see recessions come and go without much problem. People who are working don't even notice a recession. The Great Depression was the biggest downturn we ever had, and most people tend to think it cannot be repeated because we are so much smarter now.

However, that is far different than what is happening now. We have never intentionally just hit the "OFF" switch to the economy before as we have done now. That will have a very powerful effect that most people cannot imagine and will not expect. It all depends on how long it stays off. The World Monetary Fund is predicting that just this modest shut down now and continuing for some reasonable time will have an effect greater than the Great Depression.

When depressions get bad enough, there is no food in the stores. It may not get that far. But with this developing only as far as it has to this point and then 2-3 months more, I expect at least massive shortages, almost no job openings, and fast rising prices on anything that is still available.

People are expecting to go back to work when the shutdown is lifted, but there may not be a job to go back to. Just because the State order is lifted does not mean that your job will be waiting for you. Some companies will go out of business, and others may hold off on reopening just because of the legal liability risk of getting sued if someone gets the virus after returning to work. So I think we are a long ways from getting back to normal, and that it could get a lot worse before it starts to improve.

Some good points. Obviously the key question raised here is how much is a human life worth?? Is it priceless?? Is it dependent on the persons age,gender, race, education, IQ etc.?? Is a 32 year old white male in excellent health who has a PHD in computer science from MIT and earns $ 2.5M/year working for IBM worth more than a 69 year old black man who has been a 2 pack a day smoker all his life and has advanced COPD, lives basically on his welfare and SNAP benefits ???? IMHO ALL lives need to be deemed priceless and receive the best efforts possible to preserve them.

At the end of the day it will come down to how the American people answer that question. According to the just released NBC/WSJ poll a strong majority say that we should go slow and cautious vs. fast in reopening. If that majority holds then the stay at home, maintain separation orders, wear a mask in public directives will continue to be honored.

The relatively small protests that have recently gotten lots of media coverage represent a tiny minority of the people in those states and not the majority opinion....not even close.

IMHO much better to be very measured and smart ( like Germany) how we re-open vs. fast and stupid ( like Italy & Spain) and create a 2nd. wave.

Interesting challenges. Ross Rowland

There must be a well thought out strategy with contingencies to getting back to some sort of normalcy. It won’t be fast but it must be smart.

Some non-political facts to digest in determining that strategy (note that some data on COVID-19 is in constant flux):

Rate of contagion or R0 which in a given population is how many people one person can spread a contagion to. Early rates of R0 For COVID-19 were estimated at over 5. As of April 18, it has dropped to 2.2 to 2.5 due to social distancing and general awareness. You want an R0 to be less than 1 meaning the rate of transmission is in decline. By comparison, the average flu generally starts out with an RO of 1.3 and declines from there since the onset of symptoms is almost immediate and people stay home when they’re sick. And we have tools to deal with it. With COVID-19, some data suggests you can be symptom-free and spreading the virus for weeks.

Death rate figures are currently hard to pin down to one number. Factors determining a rate vary by location, quality of care, population density, susceptibility and age. The overall rate seems to run from 0.8% to 3.4%. I won’t get into the demographics, but for us older folks the rate is much higher. Typically, the flu runs at an average rate of about 0.1%.

Right now, the chances of the average US citizen contracting the virus are, on average, relatively low but that chance increases exponentially given the rate of contagion. So, coupled with the constantly evolving death rate, you can understand why we shouldn’t, at this time, just throw the barn doors wide open and let everybody take their chances. The overall number of deaths could be frighteningly enormous. Time and data should drive these decisions.

We will have no clue as to the spread of COVID-19 until enough viral and antibody tests are available for at least every person in the country.

To any naysayers all I can say is the facts are out there if you care to look for them.

Eric hits the nail on the head. Until we have the tools needed to rapid test ( results in under 15 minutes) by the tens of millions AND immediately follow up all that test positive with contact tracing we will continue to be flying blind.

If you examine the lessons clearly learned in Europe where the Germans did the above and their infection and death rates are a tiny fraction of ours vs. Italy & Spain who did it haphazardly ( as currently being done in Georgia & Texas) and where they are now suffering the consequences.

As Eric says above, the facts are there if you care to examine them.

Let's hope that today's meeting in DC with Gov. Cuomo and other governors with POTUS and his team will result in an agreement to form a working coalition to tackle the mass rapid testing issue ( swabs, chemicals, testing machines) so that in 4-6 months we'll be able to replicate the German model and rapid test by the millions and do the all important contract tracing follow up.

Hope springs eternal. Ross Rowland

Just a note:

Last night and this morning's TV local news out of the Phoenix metropolitan area was crammed full of stories of people with secure employment (police officers, firefighters, workers whose companies are still running, people with secure pensions who have taken retirement, etc.) turning over their "federal stimulus checks" (direct deposit in most cases) to local food banks and other charities helping the currently-unemployed.

No doubt others will be inspired--or "shamed"--into doing the same, much as many insurers are following Allstate's much-publicized lead in reducing car insurance premiums for the duration.

Has your museum or non-profit made sure they're worthy of consideration for a donation?

I understand that there are facts about the virus spread and the probability of catching the virus. What I don't see is any concern about examining the facts about how the shutdown will affect the economy. If you leave that out, the shutdown is a free lunch.

We don't really need 'rapid' test -- but we do need something considerably better than 63% accuracy, and we need it to be low-subsidized or zero cost 'per unit. Keep in mind that the 'meaningful' test in this context is viral-particle ID (which could be done with flow cytometry techniques and nasal detergent flush) combined with specific RNA PCR (which takes time for the amplification to run from normal sample size, especially for those with minimal presence or expression). The key -- as with so much of precision scheduled railroading -- is in guaranteed and prompt TURNAROUND TIME (and proper dereferencing of HIPAA-concerned information, explicit or implicit, before providing the incidence statistics for 'pandemic oversight management... but that's another part of the picture). Then just offset your social measures by that time period plus response latencies.

The serological testing is likely to have to be sequential to mean anything. Ideally this will be reduced to little more than the intrusiveness required for diabetic monitoring; personally, I suspect more than one ratio between IgM and IgGs is going to be required to track prospective induction of ARDS, but that's essentially a refinement once the 'architecture' to produce, administer, and track serological results gets in place... which it likely won't if left to drug companies, even stimulus-primed ones.

The big thing that needs to be in place for the global lockdown to come off is going to be early cluster detection. The Internet-networked thermometers were a very good first step... which, as far as I can see, resulted in a virtual trip and fall as far as actually providing these things and the cheap bandwidth linking to 'the cloud' or whatever. In my opinion you make those things cheap and ubiquitous, and hand them to people getting serological or PCR testing, with the idea that they will use them 'at no cost to themselves' periodically to give an independent prompt indication across cohorts (again, in a way that can be appropriately dereferenced for privacy but still kept relevant by area, cohort, or other appropriate metrics).

The other big thing that needs to be in place is a prompt 'enough' set of modalities for the ARDS-susceptible who can't be kept sheltered/distanced by relaxed measures. That starts with prompt identification of outbreaks (so that prompt measures for sheltering and distancing and PPE can be instituted, at least for the susceptible) and very quickly extends to palliative therapy on actual viral induction before it proceeds to excessive futile immune modulation or cytokine storm. As I noted there has been at least one effective dialytic treatment for interleukin 6, since mid-2017, and ramping this up for rapid production combined with the necessary dialysis equipment and field training for medical personnel to run it ought to be one of our highest priorities.

In my opinion, only the witless use enhanced-infection statistics conflated with ARDS morbidity stats as if the one necessarily implies the other. They have to be addressed and treated separately if any coherent policy whatsoever is to be worked out -- and so far I see little evidence of that actually being done mindfully. Ron recently posted a link to a story involving critical statistics where the 'expert medical doctor' involved was literally witless about anything actually combining infection probability with resulting morbidity. That was depressing to say the least.

There is no need to invoke left-wing vs. right-wing economic red herrings about continued shutdown: it is functionally an intolerable situation, and cannot be continued very much longer no matter how much Hjalmar Schacht/weekend at Bernie's/John Law "money creation" can be tried. On the other hand, we as a society cannot, and should not, tolerate 300,000 or more prospective deaths from ARDS -- and right now, presenting at a hospital with ARDS being the presenting cause of symptoms is about an 80% death sentence even absent overcrowding -- as the eggs that have to be broken to make the economy omelette fluffy again. Any solutions have to keep both these priorities essential, and so far the 'popular' ones either don't or can't. Fortunately this isn't a guns and butter zero-sum game, even in the relatively short run needed to design short-term or 'bridge' solutions.

Mr. Ellsworth could you possibly reduce the above into simple street language I can understand?? Sounds like you might know what you're talking about and I'd like to be able to decipher it.

Thanks, Ross Rowland

And you can't consider the effect on the economy NOW without considering the effect of what happens if 10-20% of the population dies much earlier than would otherwise be expected.

Tell you what. You all go ahead and open things back up on May 1 or June 1, and I'll just stay here until mid-July and see how things work out, okay? I'm old, and I'm not quite ready to go yet, so I'll just play it safe.