About 12 days ago, Italy had as many cases as we do now…
An Italian doctor has said that the “war on panic” has made us dangerously complacent:
It’s kind of surreal how different this approach is to the one being taken in Sacramento. As a CA resident, I’m so disappointed.
Not only that, but we haven’t even begun to do the amount of testing Italy has been doing. It certainly doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence for what the next weeks may have in store here.
@jym626 , I wasn’t particularly singling anyone, or any place, out to be the butt of a joke, and I applaud Georgia for its efforts (and if similar space can be utilized in my state of NJ I’m all for it).
I just lived just across the border from GA for seven years, and–like pretty much any state, city, or country, it has its own “vibe.” I was basically just laughing at the name “Hard Labor State Park,” and the phrase, “You do you.”
For most of the past few decades I’ve lived in Hoboken, NJ, which has been the butt of jokes (even in “Bugs Bunny” episodes) forever. I can laugh at those as well.
A little laughter–not meant to be mean-spirited or “snarky”–can be a pretty nice thing to indulge in at times like these. I appreciated a bit of levity among all of these sobering posts, when so much is uncertain.
Feel free to hammer away at Hoboken, if it makes you feel better. 
So as colleges close, send student’s home, go online learning - why do we continue to pack schools with hundreds and thousands of people in single buildings - is this not ripe for “community spread”?
Save the college professors and students - not our teachers and students.
Sick of this.
I’m trying to understand your post. The previous poster expressed that there should be leadership on the federal level and your response pointed to the possibility of coordination with the state health officer. How would this indicate leadership at the federal level? I ask only because the response here in the US between the states seems chaotic and unorganized to me. Do you have a link to a cite that indicates the state health officer from California is coordinating with federal authorities on this?
I get the point but gotta do the math (public health 101). Sacto metro is 2.5x the size of Westchester County, but has just 10 active cases. New Rochelles has many times that amount.
Also, Sacto is following the lead of King County, WA.
The infectious disease doctor, one of the leading ones in central Texas, told Dad he can keep going to church. He said if you use hand sanitizer often, avoid touching your face or lots of surfaces, you’ll be fine. I will just make sure that Dad is the first one to drink from the cup!
He also said that vitamin B3 hasn’t been proven to treat yeast infections effectively. Off to tell the interfering relatives to back off and not bring up the subject again…
Just one of the many issues that will arise if we close K-8 schools is that our health care providers and support personnel with kids of this age may not be able to go to work…because they will have to stay home to take care of the kids. Not all have childcare options or family/friends willing to help out.
It’s difficult to “do the math” when adequate testing hasn’t been done to actually have the correct figures to work with. And it seems contradictory to say, on the one hand, there are only 10 active cases in Sacramento, but on the other hand, say that there are too many cases in Sacramento to effectively use containment measures. Something about that math doesn’t add up.
WaPo had a good summary of events in SATX. We are to get our third set of evacuees this week. Despite one infected person going to a local hospital and a mall, no one in San Antonio has come up positive. Pretty amazing. I wonder what will happen with our big local festival in five weeks. To be cancelled or not? It attracts local people, not an international crowd, but like those St Paddy’s Day parades, it is such an opportunity for the virus to spread.
FWIW one selling point for the new group of evacuees was that they are mostly Texans.
@Asmother- There is nothing funny about any of this, and finding a “bit of levity” potentially at others’ expense (as in the state of GA) seems a tad sad. COVID-19 is not funny. (Oh and the park is named for either the toils of Indians or slaves).
I’ll save any comments about the smells along I-95, the Garden State, the NJ turnpike or what have you, for elsewhere.
@jym626 I’m sorry you see it that way. I do agree that there is nothing funny about Covid-19, or people being ill or at risk, or, God forbid, dying. And I worry about my son, in limbo up in Boston. I also agree about the smells along the highways in NJ (I actually wrote to Mayor Lindsey of NY about it back when I was in, like, kindergarten). Some humor helps me process things when times are hard, as it does for some other people.
Yes! More of these kind of decisions, please.
This is really well said. Let’s learn from the other countries - what has been done and also what has not been done soon enough. Let’s stop hoping that this will all go away on its own anytime soon.
I am in GA and I took a double take yesterday about this. I take no offense to any GA jokes or NJ jokes, or the meme going around with the person wearing the cone of the Shame and the dog having a good time about it.
Except that CA has the exact same ability to test as does NYS (and WA, for that matter). Assuming that all three state health departments are competent, we just can’t dismiss one set of numbers while accepting the other. (see confirmation bias)
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
It’s time for all to move on from this particular sub-sub-sub-topic.
Looking for a little advice, kind of related to coronavirus in terms of whether it is wise to go to a minute clinic. My D17 is on spring break in Hawaii (Maui). She had a sore throat and congestion yesterday, today feels like she can’t get out of bed, feels feverish (no thermometer on hand), achy, and bad congestion. This sounds like flu to me (she did not get a flu shot despite my many reminders). I feel like her options are to go to some sort of minute clinic and try to get a flu test and Tamiflu, or stay in her room and ride it out. She doesn’t feel like she can get out of bed, says the nearest MinuteClinic is 78 miles away, but yet…she has a lot of important projects going on right now with school and being down and out for 7-10 days with the flu would be tough, too. She is scheduled to fly back to college/off campus apt Thursday.
And of course, is going to a minute clinic just adding risk. What would you guys have her do? @HImom any suggestions? Thanks all. I haven’t done a search for minute clinics yet myself, or called our health insurance to see if they are doing telemedicine…I will do that soon.
Assuming that to be true, again, there are contradictions here that don’t appear to make sense. Sacramento, with 10 active cases, decrees quarantines to be ineffective and unnecessary. New York/Rochelle has many more cases and is implementing a number of containment measures. I’m not accepting or dismissing one set of numbers or the other. I think both sets of numbers are likely too low. But one jurisdiction is implementing more aggressive and likely more effective measures to slow the spread of the virus than the other.
The decentralization of government in the US, relative to many other countries, can mean that the national government and various state (and local) governments work toward different goals or in an unorganized manner, sometimes because the politicians in power in the various governments disagree with or do not trust each other. The current response to COVID-19 is hardly the only instance in US history where this has occurred.