re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

Can you tell us what about this virus compares to the swine flu?

Other than being a pandemic respiratory virus

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Objectively, the US has to do a much much much better job with widespread testing.

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But we simply don't have the capacity to test nearly enough people right now. That's why aggressive social distancing measures are so critical right now: they can help us get the time we need to help catch up on testing.

Right now, Orleans and Jefferson Parishes should, for a week:

- Cancel school and tell kids to stay home
- Tell all non-essential government personnel to stay home
- Order/ask that all public gatherings of more than 250 people be canceled (obviously, people have the freedom to meet in church, etc., but hopefully they'd be willing to skip a week)
- Ask private companies to allow all employees who can telecommute to do so for a week

That would dramatically slow the spread of the virus for a week, and since most of those who get it show symptoms within five days, would give us some time to catch back up.

In the meantime, we should, as a state, rapidly be ramping up our testing abilities. Get the LDH lab staffed 24/7 and add additional equipment to it. Get LSU to repurpose a lab and start testing, the way that the University of Washington is doing.

But ordinary people, like a lot of those on this board, just don't get it. They would see those strong measures and say, "well, it isn't bad yet! There are only a few cases in Louisiana." But of course, if you wait until the problem in the state is bad, then it's impossible to stop.

We can keep this virus from spiraling out of control in our state, if we're willing to take strong actions now. That way, we don't end up with the National Guard in control later.

The daily capacity was posted earlier and its estimated to be 15,500. That should be enough.

that's f'd up

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China has had this virus since December (4 months) and still only a tiny fraction of Chinese have contracted it

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I'm never going to trust numbers coming from China.

The emergency meeting at the White House with the top health officials doesn’t sound good. Those officials were supposed to be testifying before the House.

College basketball CBI cancelled.

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My people just modified low end best case fatalities to 500k in US from 350k based upon new data from Italy. I am not giving you worst case numbers, and characteristic unique to us. (Obesity rate etc) . Recession is also now off probabilities table and considered Eminent unavoidable threat.

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:oh no:

The global CFR or US CFR?

For one, swine started here and not 3rd world China if we are talking global. The US CFR is going to fall because the first deaths/cases were a huge spike at a nursing home and we don’t have the testing out yet.

Did we demand testing like this for Swine? Another serious question.

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China has had this virus since December (4 months) and still only a tiny fraction of Chinese have contracted it

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You can't trust the Chinese numbers and they practically shut down the country for a month. It isn't really a mystery.