I know. I said "blanket over reaction." , not "stay at home", at least that's what I meant, guess I need more punctuation. There certainly has been a blanket stay at home suggestion from Fauci, etc.... that was my point.
I agree. Pretty sure I've read, but who really knows what exactly is the truth that really not any country has perfect test. Many countries can use test that our laws in the US simply don't allow.
Nope, not suggesting that at all. I was just commenting on the continent where I happen to live. In fact, I should have just said "Canada and the US", as I am not in the position to comment about what Mexico did or didn't do.
Karen, I heard something anecdotally literally yesterday that might explain some of this. Someone who actually "knows" this to be true/false please chime in. Apparently, the current "determinative" (meaning not the one that delivers false results so often that it really doesn't result in a "test" at all) virus test costs something like $1500 USD? If that's true, it does make sense, partially, about how hard it is to test as that is a significant financial pressure. I say, "if that's true," as I have no damn idea. Here's how I heard this: One of my best friend's 11 y/o son lives with his mom, her husband and the son's two half-sisters. The half-sisters had gone to Disneyland on a planned vacay with their dad (not same as either of the other 2 dudes) which had them In Disneyland on the day that all the stay-at-home/shelter-in-place came down, so they had to travel back to Texas from California. The sister I'm referring to is 19 years old. The sister developed a cough... which in Southeast Texas in early April is NOT out of the ordinary, as our atmospheric allergen density is through the roof. Pretty much everyone has some sort of reaction, which in other states we'd probably call hay fever. It's a Gulf Coast thing. Mold, pollen, more mold, pollen-pollen-pollen, and don't forget pollution from the chemical plants (smells like money, that's the joke but it ain't funny). Her symptoms continued, not worsening, but additive, meaning that she slowly developed additional things like the fever (which she hadn't had before that), so they thought she might have the flu, though of course they were also worried about pandemic stuff. One of our major Houston hospitals ahs a smartphone app, which they added to a sub-tab thing where you could tele-medicine in your profile, report signs & symptoms, and you'd get further evaluation from docs at the other end of the app. Apparently, while the docs were on their ... downtime (??) from seeing patients physically, they were taking turns fielding these inquiries. Long story trying to be shortened, the docs got back to her mom by Phone Call (What?), and told her that the sister was "in the profile for how the Corona virus effects persons of her age group." So, they asked everyone int hat house to self-quarantine for the next two weeks (sort of already doing that, but hey...), and to have the siter brought in for a formal, determinative blood test. They took the sample, sent everyone home, and told them as soon as the results came in they'd be in touch. That test had a co-pay price tag of $1500, which the insurance company Had set up an assistance program for, so they din't have to come up with an "extra" $1500 when nobody was working. Just a couple hundred. 5 days later they were contacted that she was not corona virus positive, they figured she had influenza-A and was fighting it off, but slowly, which is why her illness seemed to be dragging on and on... So, all of that for a $1500 factoid, if indeed it is one. Keeping numbers fun & games going in a creepy way.... according to Wikipedia, Vancouver's population is around ~631K folks.... so 631,000 times $1500 = $634,155,000 USD.... Over half a billion just to test Vancouver city. Whoa. Clearly, we know Now that we need a less expensive, yet determinative and medically-reliable, test. Back to Steve's O/P. Karen's pointing out the fallacy is accurate, however, the resistance of some folks to seeing all sides of this problem sort of boggles my mind. If we did nothing at all, would things have been worse, perhaps much more so? I think that goes without saying... though we'd need a definition of "much worse" to really get an idea. My mother (50+ years as an active R.N.) has a very uncompromising attitude/opinion about all of this. She's quite cynical, as you can tell for yourself as I quote, "People die. That's what people do. Happens every day, all the time. If it isn't just getting old and body failing for any number of reasons, it's pneumonia, sepsis, blood clots, vessels bursting, whatever." Get over it. This COVID thing... I don't buy it." So, I asked her, "Do you think you'd have had that attitude during the bubonic plague?" She looked at me a bit funny, but then said, "Probably so. Plague or not, it is the natural course of things. Trying to outlive life, that's unnatural." Like I said... cynical. All right, take the statements above, albeit sort of unrelated, and consider them as a whole, along with everything else we Now know. Personally, I think that we should get back to work. Just jump right back in, full open throttle, nope... but we should really start to get things going again before the economy tanks so bad that it doesn't result in a mere "correction," or recession, but a full-tilt boogie Depression. I also think it ought to be phased. We can't say that people "don't know" about the infection possibilities now, what the symptoms are, etc. So, we "should" be able to rely on one another to be smart about things. Parts of the country not hit as bad as other places should be re-opened systematically (so they can be monitored for rapid increases of COVID) but get back in business, stimulate what can be stimulated, make money move from one place to another (i.e. economy), with the now "operating" areas asked to assist areas which are not back to operating as quickly. A grand plan... which, if people, cities, states cooperated instead of "Looking Out for No. 1" might actually work. I don't want to live through a complete collapse of the real estate system in place across the world.... utility collapse... food shortages... the gamut. I also don't want a bunch of folks to die who otherwise would not have, but for the re-opening process. Talk about a thin edge balancing act.... no authority figure is safe, no matter what they do. I think the "toe the party line" approach demonstrated above in Wisconsin is frightening, actually. There Should Be discussion, debate, opposing points of view. I'm just thinking through my fingers, y'all... feel free to disagree. I find this stuff, these conversations/discussions... stimulating, economic pun intended.
Hey John @Stacia_and_John. I agree, we need to get back to work, with changes. This will be much easier for some industries that others, and some very important industries are going to have great difficulties, the major one coming to mind being restaurants. I don't know how restaurants can survive social distancing of tables, as they have such narrow margins to begin with. You and I are both lawyers. All the lawyers I know are working remotely, as are their paralegals. I do insurance defence work, so I never meet with my client (the insurance company). I have to prepare my defendants for depositions, which we are now shifting to being done via Zoom meeting (which intimidates the hell out of me as a technophobe...but I digress). Plaintiff's counsel can also meet virtually with their clients. I think the virus is going to have the positive effect of easing many office-based industries into being more home-based. The virus is overcoming by necessity the barriers to telecommuting: distrust on the part of employers and the expense (or perhaps more the bother) of investing in setting up employees to work from home. I have always worked from home (now you know why I post so much lol), and the future I see is more office-space sharing while employees work partly from home, particularly given how expensive office space is in big cities. World air quality has greatly improved during the virus, in part because as we aren't all driving to and from work every day, so there is an environmental bonus here, too. And imagine how much less unpleasant people's daily commute would be if there were 20% less people on the road every day. I see a new way of working as one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic. Let's mobilize the famed American (and Canadian) ingenuity to reimagine work so that we can restart the economy as quickly as possible for those industries that have the ability to do things a different way.
OK, I was an order of magnitude off, then. Back to the numbers... to test all of Vancouver, BC would cost... $94,650,000. I hope the city has that lying around in a slush fund somewhere.
Like the US is doing, they can just print the money. Print as much as is needed. Worry about where it comes from later. Hell, I’m sure if asked nice enough, The Donald will even sign each and every bill printed. You’ll just have to wait for him to get to it before you can receive it.
OK, that was disingenuous. And, sort of makes my point, so... thanks, I guess. Testing everyone doesn't seem practically, or financially possible with the current cost of testing -- even with your wife correcting my anecdotal number (Thanks for that, by the way, it really Did help to bring that issue into "reasonable" instead of "Oh boy, that's a huge problem in per unit cost"), so why is the media seeming to focus on that? I'd advise about not getting caught up in trying to figure "why" the shortfall of tests exists, that'll make your head explode getting granular with that. But,, I'll humor us all and run down the rabbit trail a ways and see what happens... just looking at the money aspect, I wonder how much "new money" could be printed... that's an interesting question.... Hold please... Well, that didn't take long. $541,000,000/day, apparently. That was it back in 2017. That's about a buck-sixty for each person in the U.S., a day. I think it's been going on for a while, too. Maybe even before *gasp* The Donald was President. Facts About U.S. Money Numbers... numbers... Population Clock: World So, if we take the current U.S. population, which was estimated at ~329M on/about April 1 and multiply that by the per unit test cost we'd have the total cost to administer tests to the entire U.S. population. Then, divide the product of the above by the amount of cash printed each day... cancel out the unit labels to get how many days it'd take at "average" printing rates to have enough new money to pay for it all. Wallah! Which totally ignores the fact that nobody actually "owns" the new money, it's just paper until injected into the system... which it could be very easily (see the discussion of stimulus checks, which "have to come from somewhere," right?)... So, 329,000,000 X $150 = $49,350,000,000 -- then $49,350,000,000/541,000,000/day = ~91.5 days So, at average production rates, it'd take us slightly more than three months to print enough money then give it to everyone to "pay," so to speak, for their own tests. Wallah! I hope that you have enjoyed this program.
