KingRoyal wrote:Thad wrote:So COVID 19 is a problem, and it's not clear how big a problem it's going to be, but it's sure looking like it'll get worse before it gets better.
On the US side of things, Trump appears more concerned about its effect on the stock market (which has been bad these past two days) and his chances of reelection than on actually trying to do anything to prepare for it. The DHS, like most executive departments, is currently headed by an incompetent acting director who was chosen based on his history of persecuting immigrants and kissing Trump's ass rather than on fitness for the job.
So that's fun.
What I read is that, yeah, COVID-19 is going to be a problem, but the average death rate is at 2%. The most likely scenario is that it'll have a pandemic, then embed itself in to the cold & flu season, such that we get a cold, flu & COVID-19 season. We would have been further along with a vaccine at this point except all interest in coronaviruses went off a cliff once the panic around SARS and MERS died off.
Yeah, the reason the stock market is worried is productivity. It's not that people are going to be dying in the streets (though let's be clear, a flu pandemic is no joke; a 2% fatality rate can still mean a whole lot of people, mostly elderly or immunocompromised), it's that businesses are closing, supply lines are being disrupted, and there's a lot of potential for the situation to get worse.
Brentai wrote:At first I figured it was anti-Asian racism, but now I think the fears over COVID-19 being some bubonic plague type of global event are mostly driven by wishful thinking.
Racism absolutely plays a part in these periodic panics we see about diseases coming out of Asia and Africa.
Anyway, the president is going to give a speech, which I'm sure will reassure everyone.