stevenkesslar

[MEDIA=twitter]1244019186973597696[/MEDIA] He was in the hospital for a week. It's serious business.

I do have a few questions. I haven't filed 2019 taxes yet. If I do that this week, is it likely or even possible I'm captured in this first round of people who filed in 2019? I do my own taxes and I've always found it easier to just do them on paper, and mail them. I'm not particularly worried about when I get a check. But I've been toying with the idea of doing them online this week, for the first time in my life. Is there any reason to think that makes any difference? Is there a cut off date, like if you file your taxes by April 10 and include bank info you get captured in this first wave? The other reason I usually wait until April is I almost always owe money. So if I have never given them bank information before, and I actually owe the IRS money (which is now due July 15) can I still file and give them bank info for purposes of sending me a stimulus payment? Thanks.

Treasury Secretary says Americans can expect stimulus checks to be direct deposited within 3 weeks Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that Americans could expect checks from the historic $2 trillion stimulus bill to be direct deposited in their accounts within three weeks but experts have determined it could take longer to receive the money. Congress and President Donald Trump enacted the stimulus bill last week to address the dramatic economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Included are direct payments to many Americans, an unprecedented expansion in unemployment benefits and $350 billion in small business loans. Mnuchin told CBS' "Face the Nation" that there will be a web-based application for those who don't receive direct deposit to give the IRS the necessary information. It is not clear how long it would take the agency to send out all the money, but it would likely take weeks before the first payments start going out. Mnuchin said last week that the IRS would begin issuing payments within three weeks of the legislation being signed into law. The bill simply calls for payments to be made "as rapidly as possible." That makes sense, if they can figure it out. There should be a way for taxpayers who did not use direct deposit before to give the IRS their deposit info now. In addition, people who did use direct deposit for their 2018 taxes could have filed electronically over a year ago. Some percentage of the bank info the IRS has must be outdated. People moved or changed bank accounts. So it seems like some way to update old info makes sense, anyway.

Amy Klobuchar's husband returns home from hospital to recover from coronavirus [MEDIA=twitter]1243269061733220353[/MEDIA] Utah Democrat Rep. Ben McAdams, one of the first two lawmakers who tested positive, was hospitalized Friday and said Tuesday that doctors had told him he still needs to be in the hospital as they monitor his supplemental oxygen needs. That says something about how much stronger this must be than the regular seasonal flu. McAdams is in his 40's, and looks as fit as can be.

Here's three more of Gates. The first goes the deepest, ans is a "socially distanced" TED interview. It is only a few days old so it is very timely in terms of the biggest challenges in focus right now. It's close to one hour long. The second and third are pieces of the CNN interview. I'm posting it because it's a shorter version that makes some of the same points, in case you don't want to watch an hour. This is the closest I've heard to the voice of global leadership. I listen to Gov. Newsom, because that is what will save my ass if I get sick. And he is thinking and planning on this like the crisis it is. My guess is that the number of lives Newsom saved by taking action aggressively and quickly will be measurable by the time this is over. I also listen to Dr. Fauci and Dr. Blix, but I assume 10 % + of what they say is basically BS they have to say to protect themselves from the wrath of you know who. I'm assuming Gates reflects the thinking of much of the global scientific, medical, political, and philanthropic communities here. As such, the TED interview is full of insights not only about where we are right now, but where we are likely headed. Gates does point out that if had spent tens of billions back in 2015 or so, we might saved saved trillions now. Oh well. This is probably my lifetime's version of the Fireside Chats. I found it comforting. It's the voice of optimism, grounded in reason, science, and the ability of humanity to go high when a killer virus tries to drag us down. The first five minutes of this one below are definitely worth watching. Gates predicts that infections will peak in about a month, and we could be ready to start to loosen up by late May - if we remain in lock down and people comply. He also talks about why - duh! - everyone in the US needs to do this at the same time. The idea that some areas are able to reopen because there are only 100 cases is just wrong. Do that, and they'll soon have 1000, and then 10,000..

Interesting Ted talk with Bill Gates. At the time, he said a major flu epidemic could reduce global wealth by $3 trllion. Hell, we had a $1 trillion a year deficit to start with. And we just added $2 trillion to it. Next time, prevention might be cheaper.

An interesting biographic look back on how it worked in a small town in 1918: "Be aware the it could happen again ... Of course I'm sure hospitals are. But the shock wave that sets in when something like this happens kind of stuns people."

I assume that, and also that they may get "regular unemployment", which in California as that article I posted said is up to $450 a week. Same thing Kevin said. What I'm reading into it is that people will have to "prove" what their regular Gig income is. I talked to my escort buddy/tenant and he had no idea this was possible. He just figured he didn't qualify for unemployment, period. Which was true, before this week. He was obviously delighted. He has filed taxes as self-employed for years (as have I) so if needed he can use that. Maybe both things Kevin posted are correct. It could be that for people who don't have documentation, like last year taxes, they will just give them half the maximum state benefit. In California I think you may be able to apply online. https://www.edd.ca.gov/unemployment/UI_Online_File_a_Claim.htm I'll know better in a week after he has gone through the hoops.

Answered my own question: For the first time, Uber drivers and other gig workers would qualify for unemployment insurance as part of the Senate's $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill Federal law says unemployment payments should be the same weekly pay as they would earn from their employer, capped by a maximum amount set by the state. The max amount varies by state. For instance, Florida's maximum is $275 a week; California's is $450 a week. But the coronavirus stimulus bill also provides for four months of additional unemployment insurance, up to an additional $600 a week, for everyone who qualifies for unemployment, including gig workers. The extended unemployment benefits in this bill attempt to protect workers "whether they work for small, medium or large businesses, along with the self-employed and workers in the gig economy," Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a press release.

Have you seen any written info on how unemployment works for gig workers? One of my tenants is an escort, and several are gig workers of various types. My assumption is they all file returns - I know my escort buddy does, for example. Eventually they will educate me on how it works, I'm sure. I was wondering what the IRS would do about bank accounts. If they have info on file from a year ago, i.e. Tax Year 2018, I would think some of that is going to be bad data. People move, people change accounts. For people who have filed Tax Year 2019 it would obviously be much more recent, and this far more likely to be accurate. If you assume 5 % of people who filed electronically moved or changed accounts, the IRS has to factor that in. And they can't know which 5 % those people all, of all the electronic filings. Hopefully they are directed by POTUS to figure that out. I'm not a tech guy. But it seems like figuring out a way for us to say, "Here is my tax ID and here is my bank acct. info" would be easier to the IRS than them sending refunds to accounts automatically and then finding out that maybe 5 % of them are wrong.

I posted that image because I think it is a great metaphor for reactive thinking. One minute before that image, both drivers were just fine. There was no problem. What could possibly go wrong? One minute after that image, both drivers are dead. Things change very quickly in a car crash. Everybody gets that basic concept. One thing we are learning is that we are not trained to think like epidemiologists. Probably the biggest advantage the Asian countries had is they have gone through this recently with SARS and other epidemics in a way the US has not. So the public in Asia is just more informed, I think. We need to get up to speed on this, if we want to manage this successfully like they appear to be doing. Gov. Abbott is not wrong to restrict travel from hot spots. The problem is that he is not going far enough. Right now there are 100 diagnosed cases where I live, Riverside County. So an epidemiologist will tell you that 100 people diagnosed today - probably because they are so sick that they sought medical care - means they got infected maybe a week ago. And a week ago there were probably 500 infections at least, 20 % of which got sick enough to now be showing up in hospitals. Before we went into lock down, the number of people infected was doubling every four days or so. So that would mean the 500 + people infected a week ago are now 2000 + infected people. So let's just assume I am one of them. And I get on a plane and go to Texas. And 5 days from now I start coughing. If I happen to be one of the unlucky 20 % that have a severe case, or the 5 % that may need to be in an ICU, I sure as shit don't want to be in Texas. More important, from an epidemiological perspective, is that I may have infected other people on the plane or in Texas, without even knowing I was sick. That is clearly how this virus managed to spread everywhere in a matter of about two months. My point is that if we want to beat this virus, we are going to have to beat it on its terms. It is always going to be one or two week's ahead of us. We can't negotiate with the virus about that. If we want to beat it, we have to beat it at its own game. I'm glad this bipartisan bill essentially bails out the airline industry. We do need a functioning airline system. But right now, it will be the hardest hit. And the last piece of the puzzle we put back together. What I like about this county-centric plan is that we should be able to open up a lot of businesses in a lot of places, locally. First, we have to have testing tools to know what is really going on. And this testing thing is really not rocket science. Asian countries have proven that. The last thing we need is for one person, like me, to innocently fuck everything up for some county in Texas by getting on a plane and going to some bbq joint with my aunt in Texas and infecting three or five other people before I know I am sick. Because soon enough that will mean 300 or 500 people are sick, and maybe 60 or 100 are headed to the hospital, a handful of them to die. That is what we don't want! But that is exactly how this virus works. South Korea had only about two cases a day until the beginning of March, when they found some secretive church sect had infected people showing up in hospitals. They were praying close together, sharing glasses or plates, whatever. So of 10,000 people tested, 4,000 were sick. Some of them are dead now, and some are in ICUs or hospitals. Fortunately, South Korea has it under control. They went from almost 1000 news cases a day to now somewhere in the double digits in terms of new daily cases. But that one church fucked things up for a lot of South Koreans. Again, people like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Blix know this. They beat AIDS. We should listen to them. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters on Tuesday that officials still needed more data to determine whether areas without current outbreaks might face them soon. "I think people might get the misinterpretation you're just going to lift everything up and ... that's not going to happen," Fauci said. "It's going to be looking at the data."

Trump outlines plan to classify counties by risk level for coronavirus President Trump on Thursday outlined plans for his administration to classify each county across the United States based on its risk for an outbreak of coronavirus and use that information to create targeted guidelines. In a letter to the nation's governors, Trump spoke optimistically about expanded testing capabilities that would allow officials to identify which areas of the country are grappling with outbreaks and where the virus is spreading. Based on that surveillance testing data, federal agencies would determine if a specific county is high-risk, medium-risk or low-risk for the virus. The administration is simultaneously working on new guidelines for social distancing that would apply to an area depending on its classification, Trump wrote. Just to be clear I'm posting this here as an apolitical "facts, facts, and only the facts" thing. I'm guessing this is what the scientists and doctors, like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Blix, are recommending. Whoever is recommending it, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. This is essentially what China did, using a very different toolbox. One province, the epicenter, was a complete mess. It required extremely aggressive action. Everyplace else was on lock down, but to lesser degrees. India is probably in the lead right now in having done a bunch of random testing, where they found most areas they tested appeared to be "clean". The message has also gotten through that if there is a way to prevent every city and really every small town from not becoming like New York City, it is through sensible testing protocols - which we will have to figure out as we go. It should be obvious now that this is not like cancer, where you get a "clean" bill of health, and then you can just stop worrying. The reality is that every state in the US, and a whole bunch of counties in that state, now have somebody infected because we didn't worry. The flip side is that we can prevent "clean" areas from getting infected, and gradually test and trace and treat so that the areas that are risky become smaller and the areas that appear to be "clean" become bigger. This whole strategy calls for restrictions on movement that no one is talking about yet. It makes no sense to send 1000 spring breakers to Florida, make sure every one is infected, and then send them home to 1000 "clean" counties across America. That is what you would do to help the virus spread, not to defeat it. That's a hypothetical. But some version of that did just happen in Florida, with Spring Break. And in New Orleans, with Mardi Gras. My point is that if we want to contain this thing, so we can get back to a fairly normal economy, we are going to have to accept some restrictions on movement. That is the lesson of Asian countries like Japan and South Korea ad Taiwan and Singapore, where it is working. In practice, that could mean that in Nebraska restaurants can pretty much be open for business. But there should be clear guidelines to prevent the spread of virus - like maybe they operate at half capacity. That is obviously better than not being open at all. And if somebody does test positive, they may need to put people in lock down mode. People like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Brix will have some very good ideas. Brix is known to be a Republican, I think, which in this situation is good. It underscores the idea that whatever they recommend, it is not a partisan idea. Just from the standpoint of science, that is the lesson of past epidemics. It is also what is allowing lots of countries in Asia to keep their economies going at maybe 75 % of normal, as opposed to 0 % of normal. They are just accepting some more restrictive but temporary rules, and a heavy dose of social distancing strategies, to keep ahead of the virus until it goes away or, more likely, is vaccinated to death.

Debit cards may be used for stimulus payments The IRS will also issue paper checks to some people. I'm reading that to suggest that they will use electronic payments, if possible, for people who filed electronically, complete with banking information. Or, it could just mean they are looking into options and they don't know yet.

From the article: Self-employed workers, those seeking part-time work, and workers who quit their job or can’t reach their place of work as a result of COVID-19 are among those eligible for benefits. How do others read that? The way I read it is that an escort or a massage therapist who is self-employed could make an unemployment claim. Does that sound right? Obviously, escorts will have listed their occupations as something else. But it sounds like they are not just talking about people who worked for "traditional" employers.

This is changing the subject, but you made me think about something else. I think it's a given that the infection rate, unmitigated, is that one person infects two to three other people. And presumably this may happen over a period of up to a week, partly when you are asymptomatic if no precaution is taken. That's not very many people, really. In a city like New York or Paris I'd guess an average person might cross paths with thousands in a week - on a subway, in a cinema, at work, in a restaurant. I've read things that make distinctions between "community spread" and "person to person spread". The argument is that community spread is a misnomer, because really this passes from close contact between two people. It's not like 1000 people go to the beach, and half of them get infected from something in the air. The more academic it gets, the less I care. But there is a valid point there. Chinese reports have said that a family sharing a meal and passing plates around was a good way to spread the virus. Much of the infection was within families, who obviously spend a lot of time being physically close together. On the other extreme end, South Korea has apps where they send out phone alerts if you have been near someone infected in public. I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming that could mean you were in Walmart together, or on a subway together. They can use cell phone and car GPS to track where an infected person has been - which is kind of Big Brotherish to me. It seems like overkill. It may help psychologically, as a sort of "always be on the alert" message. But in terms of actually breaking the transmission chain, I'm not sure it adds much value. Finally, the reality is that "test, trace, treat" seems to be working in the countries that have actually tried it. China is the best example, since it was part of their draconian lock down. But half a dozen other countries have practiced variations of it - without having total lock downs or having to stop all office work or close all restaurants. It's mostly working, once an infection is under control and the "virus killer" detective tools are actually in place. My point is that the math seems to be on our side on this, if we learn to be really smart about it. One way I'm looking at what Asian countries do is they are essentially choosing slower growth over faster death. That doesn't require a lock down. You can still shop, work, and play, but in modified forms with more limits. And with an especially huge aversion to large gatherings where people are packed in close together. This is the kind of stuff I think we should be debating. To be specific, I don't feel like the risk of going grocery shopping is very high. On the other hand, going to a political rally or an indoor sports arena packed with people seems like something we'll just have to give up for a while. Check this out: The last baseball players standing during the coronavirus shutdown With sports shut down almost universally, the two best baseball leagues outside MLB — Japan's NPB and South Korea's KBO — are still soldiering on, with numerous restrictions and safety measures in place, of course. That's probably a good example of how we can manage this until there is a vaccine, or somehow it just goes away - which is probably pretty unlikely. Play baseball games without packed stadiums. The team owners may not like it. But they can still get all the TV ad revenue. One of the things I think is good about a global lock down is that it just changes the game completely. A month ago, everybody was thinking, "Wait. I can't do that anymore?" Now I think the stage is set to moving toward a phase where we can do things, but with a different set of rules that there is more social pressure to abide by.

5 lessons on social distancing from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic An interesting article about how the world has been here and done this before. Including social distancing. Some of my takeaways: This article claims that cities that were well prepared and implemented mitigation strategies - school closures, a ban on mass gatherings, social distancing - were able to reduce the rate of deaths by about half. When these measures were relaxed prematurely, infection rates - and deaths - spiked again. Same pressures between health, work, and play we are experiencing right now. The lesson from history is that the best way to save lives is to not let off until the storm really passes. In our case, that would presumably be when we have a vaccine, which was not available in 1918. The overall US infection rate is estimated in Wikipedia to be 28 % of a population of 105 million in 1918. So that would be about 30 million Americans who got sick. Of those, an estimated 500,000 to 675,000 died, or between 1.7 % and 2.2 % of all people infected. None of these numbers seem very well documented. There's nothing even remotely comparable to the online data about COVID-19 in every country on the planet. One of the most interesting things about the article is the comparison between Philadelpia and St. Louis. There is very specific documentation of weekly death rates there. Based on the charts in the article, it looks like about 1 % of the total population died in Philadelphia. In St. Louis, it looks more like 0.5 % of the total population. So I'll go with Wikipedia's estimate and assume about one in three people was infected. That would triple the death rate to 3 % of everyone infected in Philadelphia, and 1.5 % of everyone infected in St. Louis. I say that because these death rates don't sound so different than what's happening with COVID-19. Even in South Korea, the death rate is well over 1 % of infected people who die. And their testing does include a lot of younger adults who only get mildly ill. In countries like France and Spain and Iran, the death rate is more like 3 - 5 %, probably reflecting the fact that younger people who don't get as sick aren't counted in the total. COVID-19 is also like the Spanish flu in that the primary cause of death is that people succumb to bacterial pneumonia. The main difference is that for some reason the Spanish flu was particularly deadly to young adults aged about 20-40. COVID-19 isn't. Another interesting point the article makes is that back in 1918 epidemics and quarantines were much more common. Some of them involved diseases that we don't even think about today, like polio and smallpox. So the article suggests people might have been more compliant to the "social distancing" measures of that era because they knew the drill. They had lived through the consequences of epidemics before. A related point is that once the outbreak started, people wanted social distancing, because they were afraid of getting sick and dying. In that sense, people in 2020 are just like people in 1918. I find it interesting that some politicians and talking heads have either subtly or bluntly pitched the idea of "herd immunity" as kind of inevitable. Their argument is that a large percentage of the population is simply going to get this virus, anyway. A few will die, but most will be fine. So let's just get on with it, shall we? Boris Johnson initially earned the nickname "The Grim Reaper". Now he has clearly backed off. He now seems to be acting on the idea that people would prefer to embrace a likely recession than embrace a huge wave of illness, and hospitals that are death mills. What hadn't occurred to me until I read this article is that part of the reason people may view this as an exaggerated crisis is that they can't understand what they haven't experienced. None of us personally had friends or relatives who died of polio or smallpox epidemics. Our concerns are cancer, heart disease, diabetes, HIV. And with the young it's doubly true. They feel invulnerable. And they understand Spring break much better than they understand pandemic. I wonder if that explains why the world seems to be choosing the path of certain recession over the path of possible death. We are just like people were in 1918. Once death actually appears at our door, people get scared. If it's true that in 1918 people were more likely to simply accept epidemics as a part of life, that actually could mean we are more terrified than a century ago. At least once the reality of what an epidemic is hits. We all of course know death is coming eventually. But we have no experience whatsoever with it coming this way. That may explain what seems to me like a pretty strong reaction against these ideas of "herd immunity", except perhaps among elites. 1918 may also give us a clue about whether we are headed into a recession, or a depression. The more I read about the Spanish flu, the more it sounds like it was in the ballpark of COVID-19: in terms of death rates, mitigation strategies like school closures and restrictions on gatherings, and people just being afraid. I haven't read anything about factories shutting down, and stores closing. So one big difference is that the economy probably just kept going back then. But if 675,000 people died (the equivalent of over 2 million today) and lots more got sick, and people were afraid to be out in public, that had to have an impact on the economy, as well. In at least two ways, there were a few things in 1918 that might have made the situation worse. A lot of 20 to 40 years olds were sick or dying from Spanish flu. I suspect some of the descriptions I read of that time - like how young men woke up fine and dropped dead on the way to work - may be urban legends that simply speak to the fear people had. Whether it was death, illness, or simply fear of it, having that going on in a big chunk of the young adult workforce had to be a drag on the economy. Also, WW1 had ended. So unemployment spiked when lots of soldiers came home. And wartime production dropped. In fact, the 1918 recession is usually described as the "Post-World War I Recession". The Spanish flu isn't even mentioned in several summaries of it I've read. So the good news, if 1918 is used as a model, is that the recession in 1918 was "a brief but very sharp recession" according to Wikipedia. It lasted only seven months, from July 1918 to March 1919. That made it the shortest recession between The Civil War and The Great Depression. They didn't record unemployment rates and GDP data back then. But the measures that were used for recessions, which you can scan on that Wikipedia link, suggest that the 1918 recession was moderate. There was a 25 % reduction in business activity. That looked like about average for recessions during that period. The 1920-21 Depression saw a 38 % drop in business activity, by comparison. The one thing that is completely absent from that article about social and political responses to the 1918 virus is the idea of "test, trace, treat". They didn't even know in 1918 that what was causing the disease was a virus. So there was no vaccine, and no test for it - or for antibodies for people recovered from it. There may have been health departments. But I haven't read anything that suggests that there were people trying to trace the contacts of people who had the virus. There certainly were not cell phones or GPS systems you could use to track where people had been. The best news to me in a bleak picture is that "test, trace, treat" has mostly worked in many Asian countries. It's contained the virus and allowed people to get on with work, school, and at least some percentage of normal social life - like eating in a restaurant, or shopping. While aspects of it may fit somewhat better with their culture, it was not "normal" for them, either. That chose to embrace it after they got hit by past epidemics like SARS. So there's no particulars reason to thin Europeans or Canadians or Americans can't embrace it, too. If that is true, that would be the most significant innovation compared to 1918. Going back to the estimated infection rate then, 28 %, that close to 100 million Americans getting sick, and 1 million or more dying. No matter how well we spread that out, it is just going to be ugly. South Korea, with 60 million citizens, has had the most cases of any Asian country outside China to have a well organized "test, trace, treat" mitigation strategy. Two months into an epidemic, 8000 people - which is 0.01 % of their population, has been infected. There's a massive difference between 0.01 % and 28 % of a population. If we can bend the curve and swiftly implement these mitigation strategies as soon as we end the lock down, there's at least reason to hope that we can shoot for 0.01 %. That would probably also involve a year without mass gatherings, including ones like The Olympics and sports and political rallies. Whether that is possible to agree to as a society is a very good question. But it actually looks like an improvement when the baseline is now a lock down without end in sight. Speaking for myself, that sounds better than three months or so of a death game in which we are the contestants. We can call it "Survival Of The Fittest: Pandemic Edition." Some experts thought it

Everything I've read is that soap is better, anyway. If that's an option. I think part of it is that the chemicals in the soap break down the things that bind the virus to our hands. (Someone who understands chemistry can explain that better for me.) And the pressure of the water pushing it off the hands helps, too.

I thought that was a beautiful image.

But it's in German. What the fuck? Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt. All people are brothers, where Your gentle wing lingers. Couldn't be more spot on for the moment!

I've read things that you want this to be an upper respiratory infection. When it gets into your lungs, that is when it puts you at greater danger. This is the best article I've read about when people with COVID-19 should worry that they are about to fall over a cliff: How a mild case of the novel coronavirus can quickly turn deadly The serious problems begin when the infection spreads to the lungs. When that happens, the disease can snowball from moderate to severe "very, very quickly," said Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general with the World Health Organization. Most of the time, COVID-19 starts in the nose before attacking the epithelial cells that line and protect the respiratory tract. If it hangs out there in the upper airway, patients will experience symptoms similar to the common cold. They'll be contagious but still mobile, still likely to go out in public. In 10-15 percent of the moderate cases, the infection slides down the trachea and into the peripheral branches of the lungs, where it attacks two kinds of lung cells — the ones that make mucus, which protects against pathogens and lubricates the airway, and those with hair-like cilia. In another thread I posted about the two US Reps who have COVID-19, they describe their symptoms. Believe it or not, I actually do try to edit what I write. So one thing I left out is that they sound like poster children for two aspects of this virus. I'm not a doctor, but Diaz-Balart is describing upper respiratory issues that are the most common: fever, coughing, headache. McAdams is describing something going on in his lungs that hurts like hell. That may be one of the factors in why different people experience this differently. Whether that has to do with how the virus enters your body - by touching your nose, or breathing it in through your mouth - who knows? I'm becoming more and more suspicious of the idea that there are a whole bunch of "walking well" who just work through this without knowing they have COVID-19. More likely, people are just not symptomatic yet. Even in South Korea, which I think is the data source for the theory that there are a whole bunch of young "walking well". I think most of the young (20ish) people tested were either symptomatic and referred by a doctor, or asymptomatic and referred by one of the tracing "detectives" based on very recent contact with someone infected. Unless I'm missing something, South Korea's testing does not suggest to me that all these young people with no symptoms at any point got tested and were found to be positive. It also doesn't square with the CDC that report that 15 % or so of young adults who get this require hospitalization, even though all but one recovered. The CDC data from the 2018-2019 flu season show that less than 1 % of young adults with flu typically end up in a hospital. When it's all over and sorted out, my guess is that the scientists are right, and this is worse than the "normal" flu for most people.

'It’s pretty bad': Diaz-Balart, McAdams detail their struggles with COVID-19 Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart spoke out Saturday about his battle with COVID-19 after testing positive for the coronavirus, saying he believes the “worst part" has passed. “It’s a tricky bug because just when I thought I was over it or I was pretty close to getting over it, the fever will come back,” the Florida Republican said during his first on-camera interview on NBC's "Nightly News." Diaz-Belart, 58, recalled the symptoms he said “hit him like a ton of bricks” last Saturday after he voted on a coronavirus response bill on the House floor, describing a headache that quickly developed into a fever and cough. “Now luckily, I have not had an issue breathing so I’ve never had a scary moment but obviously very, very unpleasant with headaches, with coughing, and with a pretty intense fever — all coming at the same time it seems,” he recounted. Rep. Ben McAdams, 45, the second congressman who has tested positive for the coronavirus, detailed a similar experience. “I’m feeling about as sick as I’ve been,” the Utah Democrat said during a CNN interview on Friday. “I got really labored breathing. I feel like I have a belt around my chest, really tight. When I cough, my muscles are so sore so I just feel pain every time I cough, which is frequently. I feel short of breath, and I have a fever of about 102. So, it’s pretty bad.” Kudos to Rep. Diaz-Balart and Rep. McAdams for sharing their stories. I think it helps that, randomly, nature picked a 45 and 58 year old Congressperson as a poster child. McAdams is a good example of someone "youngish" and fit who should come out of this just fine. Diaz-Balart is right at the edge of where the death rate starts to go over 1 %, and the chance of a hospital stay significantly increases. It also helps that one is a moderate Republican, and one a moderate Democrat. This is a nonpartisan virus, and it could happen to anyone. The messages it sends to me are: 1) Calm down. You are not going to die. 2) This is serious. Don't take it lightly. We've yet to resolve as a nation or a globe whether the strategy is to suppress this virus until we have a vaccine or it goes away. And if we do resolve to do whatever it takes to suppress it, it's not clear that we can actually do that. I think this will tilt the scale, particularly for the small group of individuals that are members of Congress. The average age of US Reps is 58, so Diaz-Balart is right there. The average age of Senators is 61. They have every reason to not want to experience this. And their colleagues' experiences will likely drive that preference home.

Friedman is pushing the same "herd immunity" plan as the Israeli Defense Minister. A Plan to Get America Back to Work Some experts say it can be done in weeks, not months — and the economy and public health are at stake. By Thomas L. Friedman Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, an epidemiologist and co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center, pointed out in a March 17 essay on statnews.com, that we still do not have a firm grasp of the population-wide fatality rate of coronavirus. A look at some of the best available evidence today, though, indicates it may be 1 percent and could even be lower. “If that is the true rate,’’ Ioannidis wrote, “locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.’’ As Katz argued, governors and mayors, by choosing the horizontal approach of basically sending everyone home for an unspecified period, might have actually increased the dangers of infection for those most vulnerable. “As we lay off workers, and colleges close their dorms and send all their students home,’’ Katz noted, “young people of indeterminate infectious status are being sent home to huddle with their families nationwide. And because we lack widespread testing, they may be carrying the virus and transmitting it to their 50-something parents, and 70- or 80-something grandparents.’’ “Now that we have shut down almost everything, we still have the option of pivoting to a more targeted approach. We may even be able to leverage the current effort at horizontal, population-wide, interdiction to our advantage as we pivot to vertical, risk-based, interdiction.’’ How? “Use a two-week isolation strategy,’’ Katz answered. Tell everyone to basically stay home for two weeks, rather than indefinitely. (This includes all the reckless college students packing the beaches of Florida.) If you are infected with the coronavirus it will usually present within a two-week incubation period. “Those who have symptomatic infection should then self-isolate — with or without testing, which is exactly what we do with the flu,’’ Katz said. “Those who don’t, if in the low-risk population, should be allowed to return to work or school, after the two weeks end.” Meanwhile, we should do our best to sequester from any contact with potential carriers the elderly, people with chronic diseases and the immunologically compromised for whom coronavirus is most dangerous. And “we could potentially establish subgroups of health professionals, tested to be negative for coronavirus, to tend preferentially to those at highest risk,” Katz added. This way, Katz said, “the most vulnerable are carefully shielded until the infection has run its course through the rest of us — and the tiny fraction of those of us at low risk who do develop severe infection nonetheless get expert medical care from a system not overwhelmed. … We are not counting on zero spread after the two weeks; we cannot achieve zero spread under any scenario. We are counting on minimization of severe cases by sheltering the most vulnerable from spread whether by those with, or those without, symptoms.’’ That is why we should also use this two-week (or longer, if that is what the C.D.C. decides) transition period to establish through data analytics the best possible criteria for differentiating the especially vulnerable from everyone else. For instance, some younger people have been killed by coronavirus. We need to better understand why. There is some research, Katz says, that suggests many of them, too, had other serious chronic primary medical conditions, but this needs more data and analysis. Who exactly is at high risk must be based on the most current data and updated routinely by the relevant public health authorities. This is why pushing the federal government to expand testing as broadly and quickly as possible is so important. This sounds like a plan that will work better in theory than in practice. That said, if the alternative plan is to suppress the virus by keeping everybody not essential at home for a year, that won't work all that well in practice, either. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ If you look at the demography of who is at most risk, thinking about a more targeted approach makes sense - at least as something to think about. If those numbers are right, if you are under 50 the overall risk of dying is one half or one quarter of what it would be for seniors over 65 in a normal flu season. If you eliminate people under 50 with serious pre-existing conditions, it's getting in the ballpark of the typical risk of the entire population in a "typical" flu season. How this gets organized in the next 4 or 8 weeks is a good question. And whether it's practical that young people will comply and old people can be kept in a bubble until ................... well, whenever ........................... is a good question, too. And keeping a quarter or a third of the population in bubble wrap for three months or six months still means the economy takes a major hit. That said, this is what California is planning on, as far as I can tell. Right now, the immediate goal is to lower the transmission rate while the state ramps up care capacity and builds temporary hospitals and manufactures respirators. But implicit in that is the idea that we can't stop the course of the virus at this point. The "flatten the curve" plan is to just slow it down and try to shelter the people most at risk.

[MEDIA=twitter]1240968861236822016[/MEDIA] NAFTALI BENNET: I want to share with you the single most important insight of the entire corona epidemic. The most important thing -- more than social distancing, more than testing, testing, testing, more than anything else -- is to separate old people from younger people. The single most lethal combination is when grandma hugs her grandson. Why is that? Because corona is a unique virus in the sense that it is way more lethal for old people than for young people. In many countries, zero young people died. Countries where many people died, 0.1% were folks under the age of 30 or 20. Whereas old people over the age of 70 and 80, one out of five of them who get the virus die. So what we need to do over the next period of time is to take care of grandma and grandpa from far away. Lots of WhatsApp and Skype and you name it. Bring them food, clean the box before you leave, and then they take it in the house. But do not enter the house, do not hug them, because you're risking them. Finally, people ask me: Will the old people have to be isolated forever? The answer is no. Over the next few months, gradually the rest of the population, want it or not, is going to get the coronavirus. Most, the overwhelming majority of people who get the coronavirus, won't even know it. It will take three or four weeks, they won't know they have the virus, and by the end of those four weeks, they'll be immune. It will start with 1%, 5%, 20% -- when it reaches just about 60-70% of the population that will be immune, the epidemic is over and then grandma and grandpa can come out. It might take a month, two or three months, maybe a bit more, but that is the plan. Good luck. Take care of grandma and grandpa.

[MEDIA=twitter]1239518642510761984[/MEDIA] One more germane to this topic. Seth Doane of CBS is not exactly a 20-something. And the fact that he got through this without too much drama offsets some of these other stories on this thread about how horrible this is. A bunch of people anecdotally have said that the worst part of having COVID-19 is having that swab stuck up your nose. The main reason I posted this is what he talks about as the psychological part of this virus. In his case, he says the psychological part of calling people he may have infected was worse than the physical part of the illness itself. But imagine if you are 25 and you get COVID-19 and you have to wonder whether you are the one who gave Grandpa, or that nice senior you work with, the infection that killed them? I know how shitty I felt knowing that I gave a client an STD that it took a shot and a week of not having sex to get rid of. I wouldn't feel very good if I knew I did this to somebody.