COVID-19 Casino Impact

[notes1]

rascal, what medical profession are you retired from?

unfortunately, over the past few years, i have been to a large number of medical pros at the top of the food chain...physicians. all have been honest, but they have also provided hope for the future of whatever medical ailment i was facing.

unless one is facing certain death and the country is absolutely not facing certain death, people need hope, something to look forward to. not to worry, the media in general have provided plenty of fear and anxiety for the public. i am certain that the media would be more hopeful, if trump was not in office. dr. birx was essentially criticizing the media for stories that nyc currently had no icu beds and not enough ventilators. she was also critical about stories regarding DNR decisions, that medical have NOT had to encounter.

folks also need a light at the end of the tunnel. that is one of things we expect from our president.

[New2vp]

It's relatively easy to attain a single goal. It is more difficult to optimize when there are two goals, especially with incomplete information. When you do, you generally have to trade off some of one goal to get more of another. The "game" you are discussing is not like video poker where the pay table and card probabilities are known. When you involve multiple countries, businesses, states, political aspirations, and possible cures, it is not even as easy as solving a million equations in a million unknowns, which darn few of any of us could actually do.

When you are optimizing with constraints, even with known information, there are always going to be tradeoffs between multiple goals. There will be lives lost both from the virus and from people losing their livelihood. (Livelihood … that is an interesting word, with life as the root word.)

If you think you have an answer that will save more lives from the virus, chances are that there will be other lives lost due to unintended consequences caused by some aspect of your cure. At a minimum, resources will have to be rerouted from something that is important to someone else. That is just the way economics and the world works.

I certainly don't know the best answer, but I'm more certain that I haven't read it here or in other threads either. I don't blame anyone for not knowing, here or in the decision-making roles of our country. Certainly, the news media has mostly been negligent in their duty to improve the information set that we are working with; instead, many are busy pushing their own narratives, narratives that have nothing to do with the crisis we are all facing.

While I am thirsting for information, I can tell you that I certainly do not appreciate media using up my time to learn by asking loaded questions aimed at continuing their own causes and beliefs, whether or not they are even aware that is what they are doing.

It goes without question that there is bias for and against this president. That has been on clear display way before most of us ever heard the words novel coronavirus together. And it is hard to imagine that such bias does not color each of our judgments to some extent.

If you have something interesting and new to offer, many of us are a captive audience. My suggestion would be to listen to news from outlets other than your favorites, so that you can improve your own information sets. And maybe tell the rest of us something that would help our lives rather than telling us how you intend to vote in November.

Stay safe and healthy and hopefully, none of us will have to play the blame game for as long as anyone is now currently projecting.

[Tedlark]

To those who may be concerned about President Trump "opening up" by Easter, I ask this:

When individual states and major cities issued stay at home orders was this done with the President's help or did each Governor or Mayor issue these on their own and what would stop them from extending them past Easter? Afterall, Governor's are supposed to know whats best for their state, right?

[notes1]

NEW, good post.

it cannot be simply solving one problem (the virus), without considering the implications of the cure.

as far as searching for the truth, that is why i have encouraged people to watch/listen/replay the daily pressers (skip the trump part), and hear directly from the experts. i am amazed that things i hear fauci and birx say, are not reported, especially when favorable to the current state of the virus or the administration.

sorry, but i will play the blame game...it came from china and they lied. there is no dispute about this.

[rascal]

Notes1, as some of my friends on this forum/website already know, I am a former U.S. Navy physician, specializing in emergency medicine. I later was an instructor in emergency medicine at a large public university in Southern California. Now retired for quite a few years, I have been contributing to (along with many co-authors) medical textbooks from my Arizona home.

I agree with you that people need hope expressed from their president, but I would place accuracy one step above hope. Particularly in this situation, where so much completely misleading and confusing advice/news is floating around. As of today, the U.S. fatality rate for COVID19 is the second lowest among reporting nations, which speaks well of the medical response and the willingness of the population to follow instructions. But this is very much like fighting a major forest fire with shifting winds; things can get much, much worse in a hurry. Of course, it could also rain and extinguish the entire fire.

[notes1]

thanks for your military service!

you speak about misleading and confusing information going around. how much coverage has the stat you pointed out about the death rate being so much lower than predicted gotten? if obama was president, it would be the lead at nyt, wapo, cnn, etc. google it and you will see little if anything.

what else is trump to do? just let the media report their biased version and not give americans some hope. i keep saying, watch fauci and birx, they are the experts. birx stated yesterday that the 'models' they have used are not matching actual results on the ground. the UK has readjusted their models going from a predicted death number of 500,000 to 20,000. that is a big drop and good news.

any coverage of this? where?

[notes1]

the leader of a country, the leader of a business or the leader of a household must make difficult decisions.

you are married, have a couple of kids, make an ok living, but are not rich. your oldest child wants to attend harvard. doing so would give that kid a first class education and an advantage of others. but, the cost would be hundreds of thousands, you don't qualify for any aid, would not allow you to assist your other kids and prohibit you from retiring. what do you? screw everything else to satisfy just one person's wish. you make choices.

that is exactly what trump is facing, tough choices.

[FloridaPhil]

the leader of a country, the leader of a business or the leader of a household must make difficult decisions.

you are married, have a couple of kids, make an ok living, but are not rich. your oldest child wants to attend harvard. doing so would give that kid a first class education and an advantage of others. but, the cost would be hundreds of thousands, you don't qualify for any aid, would not allow you to assist your other kids and prohibit you from retiring. what do you? screw everything else to satisfy just one person's wish. you make choices.

that is exactly what trump is facing, tough choices.

Well stated. Half of the voters in America voted for Trump in the last election. I didn't vote for Obama in the previous elections, but I respected the decision of the people. Trump is the President, let him do his job. If you want to vote for someone else in the next election, do it. If Trump wins, don't spend the next four years trying to overturn the other half's choice.

[Vman96]

vman and all;

-do yourself a favor and replay the daily presser each day. don't want to hear trump, skip his comments. but, do listen to fauci and birx. they are the experts. yesterdays presser was the most optimistic i had heard, since they began.
-test everyone in the country?, all 300+ million. what happens a week later, one could be exposed in the meantime, retest everyone again. and, then do it again, a week later.
-the tracking system n.korea did, is likely illegal in the usa
-according to dr. birx, most of those zones with 200 cases, WERE and continue to test. they just don't have the density problem that others face. there are also many areas of the country where people are naturally more separated, like texas. 2nd largest populated state, lots of land mass, normal separation, greatly reduced homeless population, far fewer cases.
-both the dem governor and dem mayor should never have allowed mardi gras to take place in NO.
-unfortunately, there were delays and problems with the CDC (not due to funding), in the beginning. go ahead, blame trump for that.
-dr. birx stated that initially, the attack against the virus was done 'bluntly", but now, she states (and cuomo agrees), their actions can know be done on a 'laser' basis.

the entire country does not need to be treated the same. if one lives in a dense population, that is the risk one takes. if that group does not heed the government instructions (as cuomo stated), it will only worsen the situation. if one is in the most vulnerable groups (like me), they need to take added precautions.

Less than two hundred cases in wake of sufficient testing, sure. But did you read the posts I wrote last night?

The county I grew up in:

400,000 people
24 POSITIVE at off yesterday but only SIXTY-THREE tested! The outbreak is GROWING there. Now 32 positive as of today. It will likely be at 200 official positives within a couple of weeks.


But it sounds like she is referring to those less populous states. If you have at least 2000 tests in each of those 19 states and not over 200 positive cases, then they probably could stay open for awhile. And many of those governors took their time to shut things down anyway if they've bothered to close businesses. Unfortunately these states don't make up a large part of our nation's economy either. And eventually they'll get their turn sadly. Bring able to truly contain this has mostly passed.

[notes1]

yes, i read your posts. i am only repeating what dr. birx has stated, she is the expert. did you see that today, cuomo admitted that he has thousands of ventilators in storage? there goes your complaint about ny and ventilators.

of course, there are locations that need to take extra precautions, but not every place.

here is a question for you; if you were in charge and you were told you could open an area to normal activity (with precautions), but it was likely a couple folks might still die, would you keep it closed, until there was no chance of any death? if you were in charge and knowing up to 50,000 folks would die from the flu, would you close the country?

you're the leader, you decide. and, if you decide to keep the country open during flu season, is it fair to call you a murderer? that is what the left does.

i await your response, as our country's leader.