re: New Analysis Suggests Months Of Social Distancing May Be Needed To Stop Virus

Here is a response from Taleb but I would argue that he relies too heavily on the Chinese model, esp. since there are numerous questions about the Chinese data.

Suiting up for going outside be like:

I don't see how anyone of any political stripe can look at what's going on and think we should continue it for months.

I remain hopeful that we will get back to life by early April.

his faulty assumption is that we will identify "almost all" infectious people. that's impossible, basically

and yeah we cannot trust Chinese data. when we have more time for data from civilized Asian countries (SK/Japan/Singapore) we can respond

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Let's say they are right....the question really is how long will people tolerate this?

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This is what I have been thinking for a few days now. I give it 2-3 weeks maximum before people start coming to the realization that they can't completely upend every facet of their lives because our nation doesn't have enough ventilators.

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or see health care systems overwhelmed by people needing treatment for severe infections.

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I don't get this statement. The US healthcare system can handle 60 million seasonal flu sufferers, nearly 400K of which require hospitalization and 12k don't survive. The flu season is over, so that theoretical capacity is there for COVID19. We'd need a million or so cases at the current COVID19 hospitalization and mortality rates to even make a dent. Its even being reported that half or more of COVID19 patients have no symptoms, and therefore wouldn't even see a GP.

I could see some smaller regional systems getting strained during a flash outbreak, but overall this feels like a talking point.

Is this from the idiots who are saying that 2.2 million are going to die?

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The United States is facing a grim dilemma: either effectively shut down society for months to prevent transmission of the coronavirus, or

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let the science work out. Hell, there are reports of a drug already being in circulation that are making headway - HIV treatment drugs, malaria treatment drugs and others. These are already approved for human consumption and to get approval for CV19 could be a short runway.

So how about this, we hit pause for a week from all the panic inducement and let the experts work.

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So how about this, we hit pause for a week from all the panic inducement and let the experts work.

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Oh no.

No, no, no. Can’t have all that. It’d be wasting the crisis.

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There has to be something they’re not telling us.

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i agree

i also want to know exactly what was discussed initially about quarantining hot spots. it seems they made a political choice to avoid scrutiny and now it's hurting hundreds of millions of Americans more than what was really necessary