Corvid-19 & Travel

[DVass13]

Originally Posted by Poppyhome

And you guys will move out of the United States if you have a serious illness and need an operation.....................yeh right.

Ron

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

After stating we are generally around 15th I realized I had not looked in quite some time. Wish I had not. We've fallen to somewhere around 35th, or so.

Ron - when you rate a country's healthcare system you rate it for everyone in the country, not just those of us who are fortunate enough to afford good healthcare. I've got no quibble with my healthcare, but I have been able to afford it. 10's of millions in our country cannot.

Glenn is pretty spot on. I would generally think anyone who has the time and luxury to consider him or her self an audiophile and participate on this forum is going to have the other necessities (food, shelter, healthcare, etc.) covered. I'm sure many of us would look at coming down with even just the seasonal flu as more on an inconvenience than anything else. The truth is that for many people getting sick could potentially mean losing their job if they have to stay home sick or medical bills that will make them choose which necessities will have to go.

Obviously, this forum is not a place for politics, but I think it is safe to say that if this virus has the sort of impact that Puma Cat alludes to there could be tens of thousands of people in the US that won't have access to the healthcare they need or see other lasting ramifications beyond the virus itself. With no vaccine in sight, I can see why people are growing more worried.

[Antonmb]

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

After stating we are generally around 15th I realized I had not looked in quite some time. Wish I had not. We've fallen to somewhere around 35th, or so.

Ron - when you rate a country's healthcare system you rate it for everyone in the country, not just those of us who are fortunate enough to afford good healthcare. I've got no quibble with my healthcare, but I have been able to afford it. 10's of millions in our country cannot.

According to the World Health Organization, the US overall ranking is now 37, roughly in the same bracket as Slovenia, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Brunei. The ranking takes into account a variety of factors, including efficiency (dollars invested vs outcomes), distribution, equality of access, etc. One of the factors that impacts the ranking for the US is that, according to the US government (https://www.census.gov/library/publi...o/p60-267.html) there were 28 million people who had no healthcare insurance in 2018.

[Poppyhome]

Dr. Drew Pinsky's message to media: Stop fanning the flames of panic on coronavirus

"Let the professionals whose job it is to contain pandemic do their job," he exclaimed. "They're doing an amazing job. Worldwide, the efforts and [effectiveness] of the organizations like the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention} CDC and the World Health Organization [WHO] has been remarkable, and yet the media continue to take every effort to fan the flames of panic.

"Look, the WHO has said there's about a three percent fatality rate on this virus and every time they say that they always qualify it and say we expect it to drop a lot once we understand the full extent of the virus. ... It's among us. This is a flu season, everybody, There are 18,000 deaths from the flu," he continued.

"Why aren't we worried about that?" he asked. "Why isn't the message: get your flu shot? You're much more likely to die of the flu than the coronavirus."


Ron

[-E-]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Just heard some breaking news...

In Italy, there are now 4,636 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 197 deaths, 49 in the last...24 hours. There were 700 new cases yesterday and 800 in the 24 hours before that.

This makes the lethality index to be...4.2%.

A leading epidemiologist in Italy is stating the the Coronavirus is 4X more infectious than the strain first characterized in China. It appears that COVID may becoming more virulent. He also says this Coronavirus will be extant for the next year....

That index is almost certainly inflated - thankfully. We have to realize that there are likely thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) who are infected or have been infected before any testing models or surveillance data started coming in. Also some countries are likely under-reporting cases but deaths are reported fairly accurately (cough, Iran, cough).



This isn't meant to understate the fatal risk of COVID19, but that we are in dire need of more, honest scientific data. Hell, even at 2% - if every American contracted this virus, that means there's ~7million dead.

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by -E-

That index is almost certainly inflated - thankfully. We have to realize that there are likely thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) who are infected or have been infected before any testing models or surveillance data started coming in. Also some countries are likely under-reporting cases but deaths are reported fairly accurately (cough, Iran, cough).

This isn't meant to understate the fatal risk of COVID19, but that we are in dire need of more, honest scientific data. Hell, even at 2% - if every American contracted this virus, that means there's ~7million dead.

I agree with your overall points, E, but that is actual data came straight from Italy today; I copied it verbatim. There is a hypothesis that a more virulent sub-variant of COVID-19 may have evolved in Italy.

[Formerly YB-2]

Our concern with travel and the coronavirus is we are in the most affected age group (60+), which is not really a big deal, and, much more important to us, we do not want to be caught out of the country (Canada is OK) if travel restrictions become more stringent or we do get sick. Another downside would be all the cancellations and closings we cannot predict once we got where we were going.

Have replaced our European 'tour' with U.S. and Canadian travel.

We did order 54 rolls of toilet paper. But had to get that many in order to qualify for free delivery.

[For The Love of Music]

I’m going to enforce good practice, and not put myself in higher concentrations of people (audio shows) than I need to, and will not board the flying incubator - other than that I have enough to stay busy and move through the day and it’s attributes.

[radio times]

Italy has put it's Northern area under quarantine. 18 million people. The only thing open will be cafe's during daylight hours and patrons have to sit a metre apart. No supermarkets, schools, shops, museums, cinema, swimming pools; nada. A three month prison term if people try to break the quarantine.

[tweet]

We've been on a post-retirement cross-country road trip to the Death Valley Dark Sky Festival so my wife could take some dark sky photos during the February new moon. I've driven 4600 miles since mid-February and haven't heard this topic mentioned a single time. It seems more people are traveling now than our last trip cross-country in September.

[Poppyhome]

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE

Up to Date Dashboard — https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html


Ron