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| Science & Technology |
| Why Flattening the Curve is Overrated |
| 2020-03-26 |
| [Pensford] I’m about to upset a lot of people this week and I apologize in advance. I actually deleted a lot of this from last week’s newsletter after I got eviscerated by friends and family. Eviscerated. Shamed. I can’t recall another time in the 11 years of writing this newsletter that I self-edited so heavily. These are people I love, respect, and trust more than anyone else. They made clear I was on the wrong side and needed to keep my ignorant opinions to myself. So I quarantined my opinion. Which lasted all of one week. With the market plunge over the last week, I wonder if the larger societal quarantine will last any longer than my opinion quarantine? Coronavirus is exceptionally dangerous and highly contagious. We were ill-equipped to handle a pandemic. I personally was ignorant to the risks and to our own inability to counteract them. None of what I am about to say is rooted in a belief that this virus isn’t terribly serious. With those caveats out of the way.... |
| Posted by:Beavis |
| #10 VDH is our voice of reason. We need to get back to making and buying our own stuff. High quality stuff, priced appropriately. Less but better stuff. Self-reliance. Emerson had it right. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-03-26 23:19 |
| #9 I'm going to open another front along the lines of Besoeker: There is much discussion about the medical ethical policy of shuttering for a few more weeks, I agree with that so long as people admit the economic ramifications of burning the village to save the village. (Hedley Lamar - I hate that cliché!) Consider the social ramifications of extended shutter. How many millions urban people are going to sit on their butts, starving and out of money, before the kettle boils over? How many homeless can one cram into a stadium before what percentage needs to get their drug fix and try to force the door. How long before that incident throws a match in the hay and starts a barn fire? We've seen it sooner, for less, for political gain. How long before Sharpton calls the quarantine of Brooklyn racist? Or the first report of food delivery dude infected had 1000 customers the last 7 days? Before the social animal Human gets the stir crazy? Gonna do a Dark Knight Rises?, cuz' this is how you get a Bane. Or even The Joker's Boat Gambit. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2020-03-26 22:48 |
| #8 Be confident, Besoeker. Take a longer view. The tide of history is flowing in our direction. The madness of 35+ years of Sinophiliac globalism has exhausted itself. It's spent. Over. Done. There's no going back to that deluded "global citizen" nonsense. We have entered a new era, with new challenges, but certainly not those monsters of our elites' own making. Now we need to look inward and repair our culture, our communities, our families and ourselves. Lincoln's admonition needs to be tweaked; "We have it within our power to remake OURSELVES"-- not "the world." That world is nasty and toxic and fatal to us. Turn inward. Rebuild. Reinforce. F--- China and f--- idiotic, toxic globalism. It is literally killing us. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-03-26 22:33 |
| #7 I'm about ready to 'flatten' the teevee. That's all that's on, and has been on for three weeks now. I'm sick of it. Does anyone think that we could let these loathsome, shithouse bat eating communist bastards invade the country for 60 years, take our industry, overrun our educational system and scientific community, and not expect some repercussions? If this is the limit of our understanding of culture, genetics, and human migratory trends, perhaps we deserve our globalist fate. We have only ourselves and the Deep State elite in Washington to blame. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-03-26 19:41 |
| #6 ^this |
| Posted by: Beavis 2020-03-26 19:06 |
| #5 Flattening the curve does not change the area under the curve -- the total number of cases. We're all still going to get it. If we can treat it, then there is no longer a compelling reason to flatten the curve, and we can all get back to work. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2020-03-26 17:31 |
| #4 First we have a treatment, then we relax the quarantine - which's the only way to deal with it we have right now, TW. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-03-26 16:25 |
| #3 Every day more test kits are available, more masks (both N95 and donated reusable), more more-or-less sturdy makeshift ventilators (plus proper traditional machines with all the bells and whistles), more doses of hydroxychloroquinine and zithromax, more acceptance of the benefits of high doses of vitamins C and D for the stricken, more hospital beds... and even more retired medical professionals stepping forward to help their unretired brothers and sisters. All of which has raised the line that the scary bell curve graph has to cross to reach total system overload and collapse. It will be nice to have a vaccine(s) when it arrives in a year or two, but the key is to have treatments so that patients need not pile up in the hospitals while slowly dying — or at home, if they are the triaged elderly. If we can reduce this to the problem level of something like strep throat instead of the current situation like polio needing hospitals full of patients in iron lungs, we need no longer keel even the elderly and immune-compromised locked away from any possibility of contamination. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2020-03-26 16:02 |
| #2 It should be, yes. |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2020-03-26 12:37 |
| #1 I’m about to upset a lot of people this week Not me. I'm used to people who know, considerably, less than nothing mouthing off. We flatten the curve to prevent overburdening the medical system. Should be clear to anybody with an IQ above room temperature. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-03-26 12:27 |