OT: Corona virus

[RangerJoe]

3M is producing more masks in the US as well as expanding production. I also saw where 3M is suing a distributor in NY for price gouging on its masks.

Now, get playtex or a similar company to produce medical gowns . . .

[witpqs]

How to Make China Pay

[JohnDillworth]

3M is producing more masks in the US as well as expanding production. I also saw where 3M is suing a distributor in NY for price gouging on its masks.

Now, get playtex or a similar company to produce medical gowns . . .

That's fine if we want to continue to play defense. We need tests, we need antibody tests on a massive scale, hundreds of millions of them, we need screening, we need to rework out just in time supply chain, we need infrastructure to fight this thing in the next couple of years and we need the ability to react better to the next one because this certainly wont be the last.

[JohnDillworth]

How to Make China Pay

You might want to do a quick inventory of the things you use every day. Perhaps flip over the keyboard you typed that on and see where it was made. If not the keyboard most of the computer parts, your phone, your TV, your appliances, your medicines, your tools, the parts in your car, your telecommunications infrastructure, clothes, shoes, chemicals, steel, aluminum .....stuff like that. Point is the supply chain is global and that is never going away. Nobody is going to pay $4,000 for a made in America cell phone. Besides, the rest of the world let us slide for the 1918 Spanish flu, which originated in Haskell County Kansas. Not to mention the Wright Brothers for making the flying machine that let this thing spread all over the place. Everybody gets a turn on the wheel and if you want a global economy we will continue to share global germ reservoirs.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

3M is producing more masks in the US as well as expanding production. I also saw where 3M is suing a distributor in NY for price gouging on its masks.

Now, get playtex or a similar company to produce medical gowns . . .

That's fine if we want to continue to play defense. We need tests, we need antibody tests on a massive scale, hundreds of millions of them, we need screening, we need to rework out just in time supply chain, we need infrastructure to fight this thing in the next couple of years and we need the ability to react better to the next one because this certainly wont be the last.

You mean that we should not have protection?

We don't need that many antibody tests, not if they are reusable. We do need to be able to test millions but that might take longer than being able to produce enough protective equipment. But the antibody tests also detect other antibodies to other corona viruses which may not provide any or enough protection for this deadly version.

[JohnDillworth]

You mean that we should not have protection?

Where did I say anything of the sort?

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Besides, the rest of the world let us slide for the 1918 Spanish flu, which originated in Haskell County Kansas.

Yes, that is one hypothesis. However, there are several theories and hypothesis on where the Spanish Flu originated. And, so far, I think it is safe to say that we do not know where the Spanish flue originated. You could as well say it originated in China as in USA, and you would have about the same amount of proof for both statements.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_f ... the_source

[obvert]

This is a very good article, focusing on Britain, but applicable to just about any place that thinks it's somehow different, more capable, better than the other more average nations out there. The messaging is British, and aimed at the English, actually. It focuses on some of the reasons for the Uk strategy around battling Covid, and how some ideological notions got in the way of good science and the evidence based on the experiences of other countries.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ptionalism

On 20 March, Boris Johnson announced the closure of pubs, clubs and restaurants. Even as he did so, however, he made it clear that this decision was an assault on the national character.

“We’re taking away the ancient, inalienable right of free-born people of the United Kingdom to go the pub,” he said. “And I can understand how people feel about that.” Lest his anguish be in any doubt, he underscored the point: “To repeat, I know how difficult this is, how it seems to go against the freedom-loving instincts of the British people.” The message was – what exactly? You must not go to the pub but your right to do so is “inalienable” (which is to say absolute and irrevocable). You must stay at home but, if you so do, you will be a disgrace to your freedom-loving ancestors.

That exceptionalism is not, alas, mere rhetorical self-indulgence. It helped to shape official policy towards the Covid-19 crisis. It lies behind both the idea that there should be a distinctive British response to this global challenge, and the assumption that there was something peculiarly unnatural in expecting Brits to obey drastic restrictions. Its legacy is the globally discredited policy of “herd immunity” and the late introduction, squandering Britain’s head start, of the lockdown.

[RangerJoe]

That's fine if we want to continue to play defense.

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

You mean that we should not have protection?

Where did I say anything of the sort?

JohnDillworth

That's fine if we want to continue to play defense. . . .

The impression is that I got was that you do not care about the protection but rather that you want to attack only. That is not prudent.

There is already a vaccine that is well proven that might provide protection. There are already working treatments. Those things have already been posted.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

How to Make China Pay

You might want to do a quick inventory of the things you use every day. Perhaps flip over the keyboard you typed that on and see where it was made. If not the keyboard most of the computer parts, your phone, your TV, your appliances, your medicines, your tools, the parts in your car, your telecommunications infrastructure, clothes, shoes, chemicals, steel, aluminum .....stuff like that. Point is the supply chain is global and that is never going away. Nobody is going to pay $4,000 for a made in America cell phone. Besides, the rest of the world let us slide for the 1918 Spanish flu, which originated in Haskell County Kansas. Not to mention the Wright Brothers for making the flying machine that let this thing spread all over the place. Everybody gets a turn on the wheel and if you want a global economy we will continue to share global germ reservoirs.

Surrendering to continued stupid is a bad option. In your prior post you said:

we need to rework out just in time supply chain

Yes, we do! And that means more than just having inventory. It means diversifying sources. It means things which are truly critical must have as near guaranteed availability as we can manage. It means recognizing how critical our economy is in bad times as well as good times, and making sure we do not chase the last dollar of reduced cost to the point of making ourselves so vulnerable to either natural disaster or the deliberate policies/actions of a totalitarian regime.

Getting ourselves to the point where it was a credible threat of harm when a foreign government's state media declared that country would withhold medications it exports so we would drown in Corona virus - we never should have allowed ourselves to be in that situation.

We need better balance. We need to recognize what is critical and treat it as such. We need to recognize what is important and treat it as such.

Global trade is good, IMO. Anything can be bad depending on how you use it/do it.

[JohnDillworth]

Yes, that is one hypothesis.

Well gravity is still a theory too but but most modern scholarship points firmly at Kansas, and then it jumped to Fort Riley, and spread through other over crowded Army bases, boarded a ship with the troops and landed in Breast France, infected thousands there, went quite in the summer, mutated (they have a solid genetic chain of evidence, much of it cited in the footnotes of the article you posted including the accepted best book on the subject and the meticulously referenced and researched The Great Influenza by John Barry), came back in a more deadly, mutated strain, brought 4 great armies to their knees, halted the 1918 German offensive, came back across the Atlantic and killed tens of thousands in Army bases and millions in cities and traveled around the world, again, killing millions more. It's not hard to trace these things over time. Heck, scholars have used written records to track the progress of great plagues since Roman times.

[witpqs]

This is a 15-minute interview with Dr Fauci. The title is a bit misleading, because only a little bit at the beginning is about the predictive models. The interview covered a wide range of Corona virus topics, mostly about what do we do now.

Dr. Fauci says coronavirus toll in China, Italy -- not models -- forced 'strong mitigation programs' in US

[RFalvo69]

Quarantine measures in Italy have been extended to May 3.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

Quarantine measures in Italy have been extended to May 3.

Be smart, stay safe, and be well. That is for everybody reading this.

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

How to Make China Pay

I wonder who would win an asset-seizure war?

China is not a signatory to the ICC and neither is the US. Can't use UN sanctions because they can veto. Private citizens suing and seizing Chinese assets might work but they would have to identify guilty individuals or even Chinese corporations to blame.

[RangerJoe]

Cut back on the number of Chinese students allowed in the US as well as encourage other countries to do so. Encourage compnies to move elsewhere. Pass laws/treaties that if the production of a certain product does not follow certain environmental standards, then add a tax to the product. HAVE CUSTOMS INSPECT EVERY SHIPMENT FROM CHINA. The delay on that will cost money. Inspect it on the ship before it unloads the cargo. Eliminate the mailing rate situation where it costs less to mail things from China to the US than it does from within the US.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Yes, that is one hypothesis.

Well gravity is still a theory too but but most modern scholarship points firmly at Kansas, and then it jumped to Fort Riley, and spread through other over crowded Army bases, boarded a ship with the troops and landed in Breast France, infected thousands there, went quite in the summer, mutated (they have a solid genetic chain of evidence, much of it cited in the footnotes of the article you posted including the accepted best book on the subject and the meticulously referenced and researched The Great Influenza by John Barry), came back in a more deadly, mutated strain, brought 4 great armies to their knees, halted the 1918 German offensive, came back across the Atlantic and killed tens of thousands in Army bases and millions in cities and traveled around the world, again, killing millions more. It's not hard to trace these things over time. Heck, scholars have used written records to track the progress of great plagues since Roman times.

Just want to note that "theory" in science is not the same as "theory" in colloquial language. In science, it means a model that is proven and encompasses all the evidence and principles therein. In conversation, it means simply a hypothesis. I wasn't aware of the research you mention - I'll have to dig into that sometime... sometime.


PS - Breast France sounds like a swell place.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Eliminate the mailing rate situation where it costs less to mail things from China to the US than it does from within the US.

Does it?

[obvert]

It seems we’re forgetting the symbiosis of the China and US situations. Very simply, the US needs them to make things but also to invest in the US. China needs the US to buy things.

Neither can really get along without the other right now or the economic system doesn’t work.

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: obvert

It seems we’re forgetting the symbiosis of the China and US situations. Very simply, the US needs them to make things but also to invest in the US. China needs the US to buy things.

Neither can really get along without the other right now or the economic system doesn’t work.

With a 10 year T-bill rate UNDER 1% it seems there are plenty of T bill buyers.

I think they Chicoms have more to lose than we do.