Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Malthus]

Should have known CC would use a crisis to cheer about how great his country is. Why? No one knows.

It is a comparison. And troubling if you are American.  But go ahead and deflect.  It is what a lot of your fellow citizens do.

It's not, what is the population density of Massachusetts vs that of populated Canada?

I'm not sure that's a useful measure - the majority of Coronavirus cases are in cities, and most of the Canadian population lives in cities. The real issue is what makes places like Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal different from (say) New York.

[Monoriu]

Toronto - 3,682 cases, 181 deaths.

Hong Kong - 1,026 cases, 4 deaths.

Now, population density in HK must be higher, and we are also closer to Wuhan.  Our first cases were in January.  Actually HK has never been on total lockdown.  I go to restaurants every day. 

I can only guess what the difference is, but the most obvious theory is that here, almost 100% people wear facemasks when going out. 

[Malthus]

Toronto - 3,682 cases, 181 deaths.

Hong Kong - 1,026 cases, 4 deaths.

Now, population density in HK must be higher, and we are also closer to Wuhan.  Our first cases were in January.  Actually HK has never been on total lockdown.  I go to restaurants every day. 

I can only guess what the difference is, but the most obvious theory is that here, almost 100% people wear facemasks when going out.

Hong Kong is a single city that acts like a city-state. My understanding is that it closed its borders, imposed mandatory quarantine on any entering, and had very strict tracing of all cases.

Such measures are simply not possible for, say, Toronto. Toronto had no natural borders that it can close against the rest of the country, as Hong Kong can (and did) against China. Nor does a municipality have the power in Canada to act like a city-state.

So Toronto could never imitate Hong Kong in that respect.

[alfred russel]

An interesting comparison.  Massachusetts on Sunday had 1,705 new cases and a total of 38,077 with 146 new deaths for a total number of deaths of 1,706.  That number is striking because it is almost exactly the number of deaths in all of Canada just recently reported by the CBC of 1,709.  Canada has a total of a little over 36,000 cases.

Man Massachusetts sucks and could learn from Canada.

But you know that Florida has just 823 deaths, despite a population of 21.3 million? They have 38.3 deaths per million, versus 45.3 for Canada. Florida is way more densely populated as well. Maybe Canada should take some tips from Florida. Actually, 31 of the 50 states have death rates below Canada's...if you want to learn how to control things maybe you should look at the approaches south of the border that are putting your country's to shame.

[alfred russel]

Remember how I told you guys the excessive lockdown stuff was going to backfire? I don't want to say I told you so, but....

Ahead of a lockdown protest scheduled in Georgia, the governor has announced that gyms, bowling alleys, salons, massage parlors, and some other stuff can open by Friday, and by Monday we are reopening restaurants.

[mongers]

Remember how I told you guys the excessive lockdown stuff was going to backfire? I don't want to say I told you so, but....

Ahead of a lockdown protest scheduled in Georgia, the governor has announced that gyms, bowling alleys, salons, massage parlors, and some other stuff can open by Friday, and by Monday we are reopening restaurants.

It was nice knowing your AR. 

This time you and amore really should head for the hills.

[Malthus]

Remember how I told you guys the excessive lockdown stuff was going to backfire? I don't want to say I told you so, but....

Ahead of a lockdown protest scheduled in Georgia, the governor has announced that gyms, bowling alleys, salons, massage parlors, and some other stuff can open by Friday, and by Monday we are reopening restaurants.

How is the idiocy of the Governor of Georgia attributable to excessive lockdown measures? Seems the culprit here is his own stupidity.

[Legbiter]

Opening up suddenly may not be enough to save the service sector economy anyway because many people themselves have enacted a bottom-up lockdown/social distancing anyway while the virus is perceived as being widely prevalent. That's what happened here.

[Monoriu]

Hong Kong is a single city that acts like a city-state. My understanding is that it closed its borders, imposed mandatory quarantine on any entering, and had very strict tracing of all cases.

Such measures are simply not possible for, say, Toronto. Toronto had no natural borders that it can close against the rest of the country, as Hong Kong can (and did) against China. Nor does a municipality have the power in Canada to act like a city-state.

So Toronto could never imitate Hong Kong in that respect.

Yes and no.  It is more complicated than that.  Hong Kong did eventually close the border with the Mainland, but that did not happen on Day 1.  The first wave broke out in January, and at that time there was huge political pressure for the HK government to close the Mainland borders.  The government refused for many weeks.  It got so bad that a significant minority of public health workers went on strike to force the government to close the borders, and that made the government even more reluctant to do so.  The borders were only closed in mid February, weeks after the strike had failed. 

There are also lots of Hong Kongers returning from elsewhere in the world, and it is not possible to quarantine all of them.  It is not a small number.  The returnees number in the hundreds of thousands. 

[Habbaku]

Time to see how soon until my employer decides to follow our idiot Governor's recommendations.

[alfred russel]

Remember how I told you guys the excessive lockdown stuff was going to backfire? I don't want to say I told you so, but....

Ahead of a lockdown protest scheduled in Georgia, the governor has announced that gyms, bowling alleys, salons, massage parlors, and some other stuff can open by Friday, and by Monday we are reopening restaurants.

How is the idiocy of the Governor of Georgia attributable to excessive lockdown measures? Seems the culprit here is his own stupidity.

If it was just Georgia, you can attribute it to a lone wolf governor. The details haven't been announced to the extent of Georgia, but Tennessee and South Carolina are also rolling back their lockdowns (the Tennessee governor announced today that "For the good of our state, social distancing must continue, but our economic shutdown cannot") and the moves in those three states today was coming out of a discussion that also included Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Georgia alone has the population of Sweden, and Florida is twice the population of Georgia. That group of states is quite a bit more than all of Canada.

[FunkMonk]

In Georgia, you live free and die hard, it seems.

[Malthus]

Remember how I told you guys the excessive lockdown stuff was going to backfire? I don't want to say I told you so, but....

Ahead of a lockdown protest scheduled in Georgia, the governor has announced that gyms, bowling alleys, salons, massage parlors, and some other stuff can open by Friday, and by Monday we are reopening restaurants.

How is the idiocy of the Governor of Georgia attributable to excessive lockdown measures? Seems the culprit here is his own stupidity.

If it was just Georgia, you can attribute it to a lone wolf governor. The details haven't been announced to the extent of Georgia, but Tennessee and South Carolina are also rolling back their lockdowns (the Tennessee governor announced today that "For the good of our state, social distancing must continue, but our economic shutdown cannot") and the moves in those three states today was coming out of a discussion that also included Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Georgia alone has the population of Sweden, and Florida is twice the population of Georgia. That group of states is quite a bit more than all of Canada.

Okay, so the stupidity of Southern Governors generally. Not sure what the relative populations of these southern states and Canada have to do with anything - I thought the point was that these actions somehow prove that the original lockdown measures were excessive.

Looks to me that these Governors are taking a huge chance, which will likely end badly.

[merithyn]

Remember how I told you guys the excessive lockdown stuff was going to backfire? I don't want to say I told you so, but....

Ahead of a lockdown protest scheduled in Georgia, the governor has announced that gyms, bowling alleys, salons, massage parlors, and some other stuff can open by Friday, and by Monday we are reopening restaurants.

How is the idiocy of the Governor of Georgia attributable to excessive lockdown measures? Seems the culprit here is his own stupidity.

If it was just Georgia, you can attribute it to a lone wolf governor. The details haven't been announced to the extent of Georgia, but Tennessee and South Carolina are also rolling back their lockdowns (the Tennessee governor announced today that "For the good of our state, social distancing must continue, but our economic shutdown cannot") and the moves in those three states today was coming out of a discussion that also included Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Georgia alone has the population of Sweden, and Florida is twice the population of Georgia. That group of states is quite a bit more than all of Canada.

Yes, by all means, southern states. Follow one another over the cliff.

[DGuller]

They're probably betting on the fact that if this turns pear-shaped, they'll figure out a way to make it the fault of liberals.  It's not like they're going to pay a price for making a bad call, Trump presidency made it clear that his supporters will believe whatever is required of them to believe, regardless of what actually happened.  On the other hand, if COVID-19 turns out to be far less deadly than believed due to widespread benign stealth infections, they look like geniuses.