You clearly have not read this thread if you think my perspective is black and white.

No conspiracy mate , just a timeline of what happened .
I should know , I was here .
How's it going in the corona capital

Fun story and clickbait headlines though.

Define highest risk threshold.

But it is false argument as the doc has REPEATEDLY said he is not for a full lockdown and you keep asking him to defend one.

P.S. New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Korea, etc have done a pretty bang up job controlling this thing. The Dakotas rank worst in the world. Wonder what the main differences have been in approach.

PantherCityPins Question, If you have had the virus you are " immune" to it for approx 4-6 months from what I have read. If this is true, could you still be a carrier of the virus and infect other people? Same question about the vaccine once you are vaccinated you would be safe but you could still infect others? Been a topic that has come up a lot lately around me. Thanks in advance for the answer!

No most of the Narative was complete garbage. Not unexpected though.

Believe in whatever woke PC cancel clap trap you want, I suppose.

Seems so - actually "at least 6 months" according to this report
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/immunity-to-sars-cov-2-lasts-at-least-six-months-data-show-68179

Ok Gilligan ..please elaborate on this "Big Reset" is it like power cycling your router? Or holding a paperclip in that little hole? Left flipper, start button?

I feel like Bruce Willis at the end of the Sixth Sense ....how come I didn't know?

Drop some truth bombs !
I'm watching the tree line ! I just don't see 'em!

The one positive thing the Pandemic has taught me is simply not to talk about it anymore Its a polarizing topic like religion or politics to say the least. Its been hugely disappointing for me to find out what some of my friends, family and co-workers are "thinking" especially people I look up to. Conversations can and have turned to arguments quickly. Its easier to smile and keep my thoughts to myself.

Everyone has an opinion, thinks they are the expert and can site references to support their argument. Most of the time though its how they "feel". Its subjective from person to person how "Risk Adverse" they are. We aren't going to change any ones mind over lockdowns, masks, social distancing blah blah.

Just yesterday a co-worker said that "This whole thing is being overblown and 99% of people survive it. I was about to say "Tell that to the 270,000 dead and thousands that have debilitating disabilities from it but I didn't. I just smiled (behind my mask) and changed the subject. No one gets upset.

For the first question you should not be infective once you have recovered. There is a small percentage of patients that will continue to test positive for several weeks to even months by the nasal swab test after they have recovered. From what the studies currently show these patients are not felt to continue to be contagious even though they may still test positive.

For the second question the two vaccines currently being talked about are mRNA vaccines so they don’t contain complete viral particles. There should not be any way you would contract COVID or be transmissible from these vaccines.

Thanks for the great questions and you are very welcome!

I try to have conversations all the time on Religion, Politics, and The Virus.
Many friends I have have very different opinions on these 3 subjects, but if there are a set of facts to agree on to some degree,
an intelligent conversation occurs.

The issues I face in discussion, where it degrades into an impossibility are often limited to 2 areas.
A lack of knowledge, and the worship of money as the primary force in decisions.

Fortunately, all Good Books throughout time, from all cultures address this.
Its simply sad to me that it is often turned upside down for a perspective, and then quoted as truth.

Ok...If you’re not for a lockdown what would you think would have been the best response?

If covid was a flesh eating disease we would have beaten it a long time ago. People really don't like having their flesh eaten. Everyone would be like..."Hell no, I'm not leaving my house". Since it's basically all internal damage, there's a lot less concern.

PantherCityPins
Denmark Immortal Mink mask on eBay. Buy it now price is $1,499.
Too much or good deal?

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Stay safe my friend

This is what the anti-vaxxers are labelling science as these days.

Isn't it bizarre that a pandemic, the virus, prevention, etc., all science based stuff, would be as polarizing as religion or politics? It's unfortunate that world leaders allowed the pandemic to become politicized and not something we all fight together.

The problem is that he is right, but that does not make it a good thing. 1% of the U.S. population dying is ~3.2 Million people. The medical system is already struggling and were only at 8% of that number.

Physical distancing and restricting spread long term has detrimental health impacts of course, with respect to coronavirus. About time more people paid some proper attention to all the other things going on, stop being ignorant like the "media"... people ignoring the elephant(s) in the room is not going to help humanity at all. Imoral in it's own way.

Extreme lockdown only making money for the big end of town given the effects, oh and it does undermine nature to boot. Pretending coronavirus "vaccines" are good for anything except making big money (at any cost) is a mugs game. Nature already fixes some screw up, yet again, but still in a "narative" mankind vaccines will take the credit, via simpleton strawman arguments. Patterns repeating.

Bet you that he has more issues than COVID, but we will blame that anyway

About time you took off your tin foil hat . Sometimes the news is just the news .
There's not always a smoking man behind every story .

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"Covid-19: Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine judged safe for use in UK from next week".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55145696

"The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for mass vaccination.
Britain's medicines regulator, the MHRA, says the jab, which offers up to 95% protection against Covid-19 illness, is safe to be rolled out.
The first doses are already on their way to the UK, with 800,000 due in the coming days, Pfizer said.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the NHS will contact people about jabs.
Elderly people in care homes and care home staff have been placed top of the priority list, followed by over-80s and health and care staff."

While I disagree with your perspective, I am interested to know What your solution to the Virus would be?
Say its February, you run the US, and you have just learned all about the Virus from your Experts.
What would you have done as President of the US, to Fix this, that is horrible now, so that this didnt happen and we arent where we are today?

Sounds like things are getting better CDC says we only have to quarantine 7-10 days rather than 14. Wonder what changed.

Amazingly compassionate photograph. Why would someone downvote this?

Here's another analogy. If we were at war with another country for 10 months where they were killing our troops/people at 1000 a day, 1500 a day or 2600 a day (yesterdays deaths) we would do everything possible to stop it.

Well, much to your surprise the answer isn’t black and white.

First of all, we have to understand that when dealing with a pandemic you can’t make decisions based on what you see today, you have to make decisions based on what will be happening two or three weeks from now. There’s an incubation period for any viral illness and measures take time to have any effect.

With that said, the initial step of the nationwide lockdown was probably overkill in hindsight but I do understand why they did it. At the time we didn’t have a good idea of the transmissibility of this coronavirus and the numbers we had showed a mortality as high as 5%. That’s a terrifying number. That’s 17.5 million dead Americans in a 3-6 month time frame. They had major cities like New York, LA, Seattle and Portland all blowing up at the same time. They locked things down to try and prevent other major cities from following suit. In hindsight that didn’t happen, at least not in those initial months. Was it because of the initial lockdown? Probably at least partially but it could have been done in a more precise and controlled way.

So, to answer your question, I would have probably agreed with the initial stay at home orders but I would have made them enforceable by the authorities. I would have copied the model of somewhere like South Korea. Strict lockdown for 3-4 weeks followed by massive testing of the population and then isolation of infected individuals. Mandate masking across the country. Restrict travel, especially interstate travel. Form a federal response team that can be deployed to hotspots to augment the existing medical personnel and do the community testing and isolation measures. Have a nationwide advertising campaign that plays every single commercial break with information about where the hotspots are, why masking and social distancing are important, what the symptoms of COVID are and when to seek care, etc. Drill the need for control into people’s heads. I would send 5 surgical masks to every single American household and tell them to wear them when outside the house. I would have a President who conveyed a coherent and consistent message to the American people and actually helped the effort instead of hindering it.

Once the initial 4 weeks is over you can then begin an actual phased opening of areas that aren’t significantly affected. By this I mean that counties and states ACTUALLY have to follow the rules. That’s not what we saw in Georgia, Florida or Texas and we are paying the price for it now. The guidelines put out by the CDC for reopening are actually pretty reasonable. The problem is they were ignored by many governors who were more concerned about getting re-elected than protecting their population. This disease should have never become a political issue. Coronavirus isn’t political, it infects Republicans and Democrats just the same. It’s a public health problem and should be treated as such. Both parties were in lockstep after 9-11, they held hands on the Capitol steps and sang God Bless America. That was a few thousand people dead. We are now over 260,000 dead and I have yet to see anyone from either party act like this isn’t politics as usual.

Bottom line is that the economy won’t get better until we have the pandemic under control. We have traded 2 months of actual lockdown for 10 months of partial lockdown. I would suggest that 2 months of actual lockdown with the federal government footing the bill to keep business owners afloat while their doors are closed followed by a region specific response based on case rates in those areas would have been much more effective than the disjointed and scattered measures that were taken. I would have designed my policy to try and limit the US death toll to < 75,000.

That is my answer to your hypothetical of “what would I have done”. The reality is that we are where we are and the cat is out of the bag now. The only reasonable way forward here is continued masking and wait for a vaccine. Hopefully the same people who don’t wear masks don’t become people who refuse a vaccine.

P.S. This was off the top of my head so there may be details or issues I have overlooked. Nationwide pandemic responses are usually decided by panels of experts over several months, not one dude on Pinside in 10 minutes.

Fat fingered from an iPhone. I’m sure I’ve accidentally downvoted long time ago. One reason I changed my settings to show upvotes only and don’t accidentally p/o someone.

This !

Not the guy you were asking, but here's my solution.

1) Absolute travel ban on entry into the US. No exceptions. Yes, this regrettably includes citizens currently abroad at the time but it is a matter of national security.

2) Ground all passenger air travel and suspend operations of large scale long distance passenger ground travel (trains, buses, etc). Declare martial law and set up blockades on the highways preventing nonessential travel until we can identify where (if anywhere) the virus has slipped into the country. Authorize the use of lethal force to deal with resistance.

3) Immediately secure supplies of PPE, disinfectants, etc. Do not allow any shipments of such to leave the country. Initiate emergency production of such materials at all domestic facilities capable of such.

4) Suspend all collection of rents, property tax, mortgage, bills, etc. for anyone in affected industries, starting from the bottom up.

5) Any city where cases are detected will be immediately quarantined no one in no one out. Lethal force to be deployed on people attempting to leave.

6) Activate the draft to secure a source of personnel to set up an emergency distribution network of PPE-equipped people to start distributing food, water, medicine, etc. to locked down people.

7) Recall troops from overseas (but put them through testing and quarantine procedures before bringing them in) to use to contain the domestic crisis. Abandon occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc and put those troops to work securing our nation from this existential threat.

8 ) Relief packages for any individuals and small businesses financially impacted from the lockdown. Large corporations, and especially banks and financial institutions, will be where we shift the economic burden, with companies involved in producing actual tangible goods, and services being favored for less burden, and those which simply financialize (banks, credit card companies, private equity firms) bearing the most. Companies which attempt to escape this burden by moving assets overseas will have those assets seized and their board of directors and CEOs arrested for treason.

9) Politicians and judges that attempt to block neccessary emergency actions will be arrested for treason. We can figure out what's "legal" and what's "constitutional" and all that bullshit when the crisis is over.

One of my old Junior High teachers died from Covid today. Two people my wife knows died of it the last couple weeks as well. The stress of this year and life in general pushed my 25 year old niece over the edge and she took her own life yesterday. Tough times for all. The vaccine can't get here soon enough.

Very sorry for your loss. Was your niece getting over just the virus or was it over not having a job and having no money?

I realize you may not have an answer for this, but running out of money and no means to get any money pushes people over the edge.

Arrested by whom? Who gets to decide what is a "necessary emergency action?"

Suspending the constitution would be a fascist's wet dream.

Baaaa haaaaaa goooood luck with all that.........how many private gun owners are in the US???

OMG I am so sorry for your family's loss. Suicide is so tough for everyone involved. My heart breaks for you guys. Condolences.

This, this right here, is why this pandemic needs to be over. Pronto. Mental health is being affected, whether you admit it or not.

*sigh*

More would die with your lethal force proposal than with the virus. Plus, no treatment for lethal force so 100% death rate.

Thanks. It's hard to say. She's had mental illness for a long time. On the outside she looked fine, but I know she was on medication. She had been hospitalized in the past. She had some drug issues off and on. She used to cut herself when she was younger. Covid may have had nothing at all to do with it, or it may have been the final straw. I know we didn't have our usual family Thanksgiving. That's usually at my older cousin's house and he tested positive for Covid last week. Two of my cousins have had it in the last month, but mild symptoms for both thankfully.

She left behind a 5 year old son. It's him and my mother, my sister, and my other nieces that I feel bad for.

i.e. the China approach with added economic assistance

Looking through some old posts and saw this gem. Lots of profound claims and predictions here. Curious to see if opinions have changed at all phil-lee

Uggg.
Typical of the tin foil hat nutters that seem to having a growing presence in society unfortunately

I'm sorry to hear about these losses. Hugs.

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So, that is what they are digging up all of those mink carcasses for.

Lord have mercy.

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Wife has noted an apparent shift in tone. Don’t get me wrong, she still got a “this whole thing isn’t real/a big deal and you guys are making it up for profit” today but now the more prominent theme is “where is my vaccine? Why won’t you give me the vaccine? I’m a better candidate than those other people. Why are you hoarding it? Where is it? Give it to me.”

People be crazy.

It's straight up people being selfish and lazy. Too selfish and lazy to wear a mask and social distance, now selfishly want the vaccine before others. These are people that don't care about their community or others, just themselves.

Thanks. Now is the dilemma. Funeral is Friday. I'm sure it'll be packed. It's SW Missouri where nobody believes in masks. Nothing will keep my parents away and they're 74. I hope this doesn't turn into a super spreader event. Another of my cousins is planning to fly in from Texas. He has a job maintaining medical equipment and is around people with Covid every day. He's planning to take a rapid test before coming, but you can be contagious before you test positive. My wife won't be going, she's high risk and pretty much hasn't left the house since March.

Plague..Murder hornets and now zombie minks...???