"It's Just the Flu, Bro!"

So you’ve changed from this morning already?

“I refuse to live in OTHER people’s fear. YOU social distance. YOU wear a mask. YOU continue fearing the government.”

It’s hard to say you’re concerned for others after this. You know a lot of people who are working now (I’m essential as well) have been wearing masks as directed by their companies in certain situations for a while now.

Surely you’ll do the right thing and quit if your company asks? Freedom doesn’t come free, we shouldn’t even be asked to do something for someone else.

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That’s true. I guess I’m bummed that I’m living through another cycle of divisiveness, and our leaders stoking and trading in divisiveness.

FDR, JFK, Reagan, Obama. Really good orators with messages of hope, unity and achievement for all Americans. The current POTUS makes GW look like a great and sophisticated orator. I, along with the rest of the country (i think) crave an uplifting, unifying message from our leaders… and we are getting the opposite.

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Well…best of luck Los Angeleans.

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That is good IMO if true. The point of debating is to convince. We shouldn’t hold it against people if they change their mind. It is a sign of reasonableness.

Me too. I would take boring politics any day.

I know they have already started easing restrictions, so i wonder what the continued “stay at home” order will entail, and how they plan to ease it. Not many details out there about this unfortunately.

Completely agree, but I have my doubts considering how he’s posted about this in the past.

Good reason to be skeptical. Even if you can only get someone to budge a bit, it is a win IMO. Most are to stubborn to change on topics like this.

Trying to be objective in an argument is hard, and something that I have to remind myself of often. I hope I change opinions if shown to be of a weaker position.

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Yeah, if it was current level I would seriously doubt their capacity to enforce it, or the willingness of the populace to comply.

They should probably clarify this fast if it doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means.

I think some confusion is going to take place no doubt. Are places saying stay at home orders are in effect even as they open up? I know most places seem to be doing a phase type thing as they open up places, but what everyone does and calls it may vary. Even that article talks about the county already opening up more so the headline seems a bit misleading?

Especially when you start using terms like safer at home and such like the article does. I’ve heard from friends a lot of people who were working from home can now work from their office if needed but they are encouraged to stay home as much as possible. That’s essentially what our office just started as well.

It was meant for one other thing - to buy time for authorities to develop a plan and improve testing, contact tracing, further down the road of treatments, vaccines, etc. We squandered that time.

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They are effective.

How about the Annals of Internal Mediciene?

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Did you read it? You might want to.

“A petri dish (90 mm × 15 mm) containing 1 mL of viral transport media (sterile phosphate-buffered saline with bovine serum albumin, 0.1%; penicillin, 10 000 U/mL; streptomycin, 10 mg; and amphotericin B, 25 µg) was placed approximately 20 cm from the patients’ mouths.”

20 cm = 7 inches.

“This experiment did not include N95 masks and does not reflect the actual transmission of infection from patients with COVID-19 wearing different types of masks. We do not know whether masks shorten the travel distance of droplets during coughing. Further study is needed to recommend whether face masks decrease transmission of virus from asymptomatic individuals or those with suspected COVID-19 who are not coughing.”

You can divide the infected into three groups:

  1. Those who will survive no matter what;
  2. those who will die no matter what; and
  3. those who will survive if they receive medical support.

It is this last group that benefits from curve-flattening, ie, from mitigation efforts. At any given point in time, Group 3 pts who are unable to get a hospital bed will die unnecessarily. Curve flattening minimizes the chance of that happening.

Thus, while curve-flattening doesn’t decrease the total # of infected, it does decrease the total # of dead.

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Right. The total number of infected is the same regardless. We just want people infected over a longer period of time to ensure the level of service for each patient remains high.

I think this point gets lost on both extremes at times.

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I suppose the quality of life of the surviving Group 3 patients will also depend on the quality of care, judging by the reports about unpleasant lasting effects the illness appears to have on those who have recovered.

Regarding post-recovery deficits, some are referring to Covid-19 as ‘the new polio.’ Time will tell if that moniker is warranted.

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This is interesting, @EyeDentist.

We do know that those with serious disease and prolonged intubation who recover at not going back to a normal baseline state of health.

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This level of divisiveness scares the absolute shit out of me. Maybe it’s because I’m a verifiable adult now, but it really seems like it’s way worse than ever before. Life itself seems to be about opposing the “other” side, regardless of morality or logic, simply because they’re the other side. Social media is a straight garbage dump and “real” media is heading that way quickly as well, on both sides of the aisle. Even at ground level, lefties hate righties’ actions no matter what and righties hate lefties’ actions all the same. To make things even better, there isn’t a mainstream presidential candidate on either side that seems poised to help fix that.

Truth be told, we were headed this way before the virus, but the virus has given people even more reason to be virulent with their disdain for any potential opinion or action outside of their own.

I’ll step down off of my soapbox now and see myself out…

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I remember thinking in the 90s that the level of division was ridiculous…now I wish we could go back to that level

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