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The Coronavirus thread

You want to know what really pisses me off? The obligatory facebook hypocondriac who every time a new flu variant comes around posts on FB about her kids being the first ones in the area with it. So of course, her 10 year old daughter now has a 100 degree temperature and she is ranting and demanding the local hospital test her and asking the whole community for prayers. Updating that her complaints to the hospital management now will have her daughter tested probably ahead of older folks who really need a test. F'n people....

That's a good way to make your kid a lifelong paralyzed hypochondriac. Listen....growing up basically in a church I developed those tendencies myself based on some biblical stuff I was told that was very age inappropriate. I walked around as an elementary school kid looking for signs of the coming apocalypse everywhere, to the point that it was tough to enjoy my childhood all that much. I was in a constant state of worry ranging towards panic. I distinctly remember saying a special prayer every year on Christmas Eve from about 6 years old until I was about 12, asking God to wait one more day before ending the world so I would be able to open up my damn Christmas presents. That is pathetic looking back on it now.

Having kids I was damned if I was going to curse my own kids like that and burden them with bullshit they shouldn't be worried about while they are young. They need to be kids and worry about kid ****. The other day, my 12 year old also had a 100 degree temperature and we made it into a joke. She was going around saying "I got the corona!" and making everyone laugh.
 
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285

The issue with focusing on italy or china or the middle east is these are traditionally areas where the flu death rate is much higher for some reason than the rest of the civilized world...

Which is another reason why this all smells so contrived...

Several times I have brought up how Italys death reporting made no sense, even for the flu

IE tgeir deaths per 100,000 is extremely low but the death rate is high... really high looking at deaths per confirmed cases


Turns out they admitted they list deaths as deaths by IF the patient has the illness, not if that was tge likely cause of death....


So again this is serious, and really widespread, but not so serious that we should shut down the world for half a year
 
The past couple days in the news:

First Covid-19 death reported in Massachusetts!

First COVID death reported in Washington DC!

Was this news when the first deaths occurred from the flu in these places?
Its ridiculous out there.

The gentleman in Massachusetts was 81 years old with multiple comorbidities. What exactly makes his death a 'covid-19 death' instead of a death of natural causes? Media.
 
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You want to know what really pisses me off? The obligatory facebook hypocondriac who every time a new flu variant comes around posts on FB about her kids being the first ones in the area with it. So of course, her 10 year old daughter now has a 100 degree temperature and she is ranting and demanding the local hospital test her and asking the whole community for prayers. Updating that her complaints to the hospital management now will have her daughter tested probably ahead of older folks who really need a test. F'n people....

Solution- Delete Facebook.
 
I'll go on record as stating that I didn't agree with government bailouts during the Obama Administration, and I don't agree with them under the Trump Administration. Why do we have to put the country into even more debt over a bullshit scare tactic. Whatever the government sends me is going straight to my local foodbank since I can't outright refuse it.

Sending people back (in most cases) their own money when they desperately need it, I support. Pouring money into building life-saving medical equipment that we need, I support. I don't support something like bailing out a cruise industry that is part of this problem by packing thousands of people into tiny spaces to squeeze every nickel they can out of them. That industry is basically dead and should not be saved.
 
From what I have just had passed to me. 1. It can attach to hair and clothes. Wash daily..simple eh?2. metallic surfaces it can live up 9 days. 3. It starts in the throat and will stay 3-4 days. If you get any kind of sore throat warm liquids,salt water and such every 20 min. This will wash it into the stomach and the acid in the stomach neutralizes it. Also daily mouth wash and all of the other hand washing sanitation we all know. Direct sunlight also neutralizes it. So you can hang your clothes up outside if you want. Given how hot it is here in the sunshine state being outdoors is a good remedy.

Now back to your regular apocalypse programming.

Pretty simple.
 
Maybe instead of stock options and $10 million bonuses for their CEO's, cruise companies and airlines should have been planning on a rainy day fund.

It's not like we didn't know pandemics happen. Or even terrorist attacks.

My whole problem with the "shutdown" is not because it can do good. I know it will. But right now, there is no criteria (from anyone) on what conditions need to exist to STOP the "shutdown".

2-weeks is one thing. 6 months is another.

No amount of deficit spending by the government is going to replace shutting down businesses, work, the economy for 6 months. The math doesn't add up.

Corono virus is going to likely spread throughout our society like any normal flu season. We will alll be precautious. We will do better than most years. But 50 million infected is not out of the realm of possibility over the next 6 months.

So while this is happening (and remember, we're only at maybe 50,000 infect now - including those not tested), is the plan really going to be to shutter the entire country?

I just don't see an end game to this. Tibs, what do you think the end game is?
 
An article from February 2019, for a little perspective.... https://weather.com/health/cold-flu/news/2019-02-15-flu-season-vaccine-illnesses-deaths.

Crib notes:

By February of last year between 184,000 and 221,000 people had been hospitalized with the flu.

As of Feb. 9, 2019 between 15.4 million and 17.8 million people nationwide had caught the flu, the Centers for Disease and Control reported.

By mid-February 2019, there had been 11,600 to 19,100 flu-related deaths.

The CDC states the flu typically kills 12,000 to 56,000 people in the U.S. in a year.

In 2018 more than 80,000 people died of the flu and its complications in the United States, the highest death toll for the disease in at least four decades. Probably because our population has been getting older.

Last years flu vaccine was only about 47% effective.


Remember when we all locked ourselves in our homes and shut down the economy last year? Me neither.
 
Well some good news on the mathematical front the rate of Deaths in the US has started to slow the curve just a bit as of yesterday. Same with new infection. It is the first real evidence that we are having an impact. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/


Sent from my iPhone using Steeler Nation mobile app

If you saw the intro of Face the Nation this morning, the world is coming to an end, and Trump is the reason.

It is a real disgrace what the MSM has turned into. Maybe it has to do with them being in their NYC/Washington echo chambers. Whatever it is, I see absolutely no value in their reporting/propaganda.

I promptly changed the station to the NHL Network.
 
An article from February 2019, for a little perspective.... https://weather.com/health/cold-flu/news/2019-02-15-flu-season-vaccine-illnesses-deaths.

Crib notes:

By February of last year between 184,000 and 221,000 people had been hospitalized with the flu.

As of Feb. 9, 2019 between 15.4 million and 17.8 million people nationwide had caught the flu, the Centers for Disease and Control reported.

By mid-February 2019, there had been 11,600 to 19,100 flu-related deaths.

The CDC states the flu typically kills 12,000 to 56,000 people in the U.S. in a year.

In 2018 more than 80,000 people died of the flu and its complications in the United States, the highest death toll for the disease in at least four decades. Probably because our population has been getting older.

Last years flu vaccine was only about 47% effective.


Remember when we all locked ourselves in our homes and shut down the economy last year? Me neither.

Once again you entirely missed the point of why this is not the same. It is not just about total numbers or deaths, Flu season while horrible and deadly is spread out over a much more gentle curve and stays within the bounds of what our medical system can handle in almost all cases but it does strain them. This without these controls put in place would do to our medical system what it is doing in other countries and that is an overwhelming need for ventilators due to the much more severe respiratory issue associated with the severe cases. If you don't do what we are doing you will have a lot of deaths that can be prevented simply by slowing the progression of infections and minimizing the number of people with severe cases and needing ventilators at the same time. It is not the flu, with the proper behaviors and actions it won't be a big deal and that is the ******* point of what we are doing! If in the near future we have some treatments and a lot more ICU beds with ventilators the equation starts to change. Do you want to tell your parents sorry you will die because we don't have enough beds with ventilators and I could not stay home? That is what is happening in Italy and why so many are dying. It isn't because the disease is that deadly with proper treatment it is the total amount of cases overwhelming the system and keeping them from getting treatment.
 
I just don't see an end game to this. Tibs, what do you think the end game is?

I don't know, del. As I sit here today, it's difficult to wrap my head around it. It's tough right now on a personal level, and even more difficult to try and figure out the larger, global impact around the world.

For me personally, I'm at a loss for words as we've had to shut down our restaurant operations. We still do limited deliveries at three of our locations, within the downtown area. We've lost 75-80% of revenues and had to cut most of our staff, which is heartbreaking. We're barely able to keep things afloat. Maybe we'll continue like this for the next week or so, then we'll shut down for the foreseeable future. We've built this business from the ground up over the past two decades. So much love, labor and dedication to create something for ourselves, our customers and our staff. It's devastating to think it could slip through our fingers, in such a short amount of time, for reasons that are entirely out of our control. So the human & financial impact is substantial, we haven't even begun to calculate the total fallout, or what it would cost to get everything up and running again, in what 3, 4, or 5 months from now.

So that's my situation in a microcosm, which I imagine is multiplied ten thousand, or a hundred thousand times over around the world for owners and operators of small and medium sized businesses. Then you start looking at the economy at large, the factories, auto manufacturers, etc, it really starts looking like a global economic crisis that we may never have seen in our lifetimes.

As far as the virus itself, the fact high-tech bio research labs are cooperating very closely around the globe, including in Germany, China, Hungary, France, Italy, the States and elsewhere, should give us some hope. With this level of unprecedented cooperation, I do think there will be a breakthrough soon as far as effective medication for treatment, and in time, a proper cure and vaccine. This is not a nation-state crisis, it is a global pandemic that will require a global solution, which then gets folded back to all countries and helps people survive this.

I think - pray, hope - in the best case we're looking at a roughly six-month period, which will bring with it a lot of short-term misery and a major adjustment to our daily lives. Some places - more rural, agricultural - may be much less affected than higher population areas. Overall, in historical terms, there will be the pre-Covid 19 period and the post-Covid 19 period, I think it will have that type of transitional effect. Unemployment will be massive, the global markets will be severely tested, as will of course governments around the world as they try to keep economies and families afloat.

Once the medical crisis is under control, the focus will be - rightfully so - on getting things ready to start back up again, be it small businesses, manufacturing, industrial plants, schools, etc.

The best thing to do right now, by all indications, is to literally shut things down as intensely as possible to keep people from interacting. It may seem severe, unneccessary and an overreaction, I get all that. But in hindsight, I believe the thinking will be that we should have done this sooner, on a wider scale. Again, I'd rather have short term discomfort, get the spread under control, and hope science is able to jump in with a medical, clinical solution that can effectively put an end to it. Then, the re-boot can happen faster and things can get back to normal quicker. As opposed to dilly-dallying now, not taking it seriously, not limiting human interaction, which will push this thing into the future, the shutdown will take longer, and the re-start will happen that much later.

The worse case scenario is the virus will continue mutating, developing newer and stronger strains, and the medication and potential vaccines developed earlier will be ineffective. Then it becomes a cat and mouse game and a race against time.

Not being an alarmist, just sharing my personal views on the matter. More than anything, it will take incredible patience, self-discipline and the ability to stay calm and think straight, to best get through these next few months, so that we can take care of ourselves and our families.
 
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And the least surprising news of the year award goes to....

<samp class="EmbedCode-container"><code class="EmbedCode-code"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">College students in Florida test positive for COVID-19 after spring break trip <a href="https://t.co/7z8IzgsY6m">https://t.co/7z8IzgsY6m</a></p>— WGN TV News (@WGNNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/WGNNews/status/1241744405528272896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 22, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> </code></samp>
<iframe scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/widget_iframe.d0f13be8321eb432fba28cfc1c3351b1.html?origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.steelernationforums.com" title="Twitter settings iframe" style="display: none;" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe id="rufous-sandbox" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" style="position: absolute; visibility: hidden; display: none; width: 0px; height: 0px; padding: 0px; border: medium none;" title="Twitter analytics iframe" frameborder="0"></iframe>
 
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And the least surprising news of the year award goes to....

<samp class="EmbedCode-container"><code class="EmbedCode-code"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">College students in Florida test positive for COVID-19 after spring break trip <a href="https://t.co/7z8IzgsY6m">https://t.co/7z8IzgsY6m</a></p>— WGN TV News (@WGNNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/WGNNews/status/1241744405528272896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 22, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> </code></samp>
<iframe scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/widget_iframe.d0f13be8321eb432fba28cfc1c3351b1.html?origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.steelernationforums.com" title="Twitter settings iframe" style="display: none;" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe id="rufous-sandbox" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" style="position: absolute; visibility: hidden; display: none; width: 0px; height: 0px; padding: 0px; border: medium none;" title="Twitter analytics iframe" frameborder="0"></iframe>

3tlcq3.jpg
 
Does anyone know anyone personally who has or had a confirmed case?
 
The part that is unsustainable.

Instead of letting you free-load here, SN Management should charge you for the epic amount of stupid you bring to this board.

Once again you entirely missed the point of why this is not the same. It is not just about total numbers or deaths, Flu season while horrible and deadly is spread out over a much more gentle curve and stays within the bounds of what our medical system can handle in almost all cases but it does strain them. This without these controls put in place would do to our medical system what it is doing in other countries and that is an overwhelming need for ventilators due to the much more severe respiratory issue associated with the severe cases. If you don't do what we are doing you will have a lot of deaths that can be prevented simply by slowing the progression of infections and minimizing the number of people with severe cases and needing ventilators at the same time. It is not the flu, with the proper behaviors and actions it won't be a big deal and that is the ******* point of what we are doing! If in the near future we have some treatments and a lot more ICU beds with ventilators the equation starts to change. Do you want to tell your parents sorry you will die because we don't have enough beds with ventilators and I could not stay home? That is what is happening in Italy and why so many are dying. It isn't because the disease is that deadly with proper treatment it is the total amount of cases overwhelming the system and keeping them from getting treatment.

I'm gonna start questioning this theory. The "overwhelming the healthcare system" theory. Something's beginning not to make sense. Bear with me.

"If we don't shut down the country and this thing spirals out of control, our healthcare system is going to be overwhelmed." -- that's the talking point. Got it.

Points:
  • So far, nowhere on the planet, has COVID-19 surpassed the Flu in #s of infected/hospitalized/deceased. Nowhere (that I'm aware of).
  • The typical US flu season leads to 20,000-60,000 deaths. 2 years ago it spiked to 80,000 deaths.
  • In less than 3 months this year, CDC estimates 31Million Americans caught the flu, between 210,000-370,000 hospitalized, and nearly 30,000 dead.
  • The Flu is the 8th leading cause of death in the USA
Now here is where it gets interesting. How many typical flu patients develop pneumonia due to the flu? Per the American Lung Association, this is quite interesting:

What Is The Connection Between Influenza and Pneumonia?
Influenza (flu) is a highly contagious viral infection that is one of the most severe illnesses of the winter season. Influenza is spread easily from person to person, usually when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

Pneumonia is a serious infection or inflammation of the lungs. The air sacs fill with pus and other liquid, blocking oxygen from reaching the bloodstream. If there is too little oxygen in the blood, the body's cells cannot work properly, which can lead to death.

Influenza is a common cause of pneumonia, especially among younger children, the elderly, pregnant women, or those with certain chronic health conditions or who live in a nursing home. Most cases of flu never lead to pneumonia, but those that do tend to be more severe and deadly. In fact, flu and pneumonia were the eighth leading cause of death in the United States in 2016.

Both the Flu and Covid can leave a patient without symptoms
Both can cause the patient to get sick, have fevers, have respiratory issues
Both can lead to pneumonia in a % of cases
Both kill a lot of elderly

To this point per the World O Meter, there are less than 323,000 cases of COVID-19 in the entire WORLD.
We, the USA, may have already hospitalized 370,000 flu patients in less than 3 months........

And our healthcare system didn't crumble. We didn't run out of ventilators.

How is it we have the health care capacity to treat the flu, but not COVID-19, given the numbers? How can you tell me we CANNOT treat COVID when we have currently 30,239 cases nationwide, yet in two months we HOSPITALIZED nearly 400,000 people due to flu.

Yes, COVID is "incremental" to the flu. The flu didn't go away and now we have to treat both. I get that. But this "capacity" issue is starting to make less and less sense to me.
 
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I don't know, del. As I sit here today, it's difficult to wrap my head around it. It's tough right now on a personal level, and even more difficult to try and figure out the larger, global impact around the world.

For me personally, I'm at a loss for words as we've had to shut down our restaurant operations. We still do limited deliveries at three of our locations, within the downtown area. We've lost 75-80% of revenues and had to cut most of our staff, which is heartbreaking. We're barely able to keep things afloat. Maybe we'll continue like this for the next week or so, then we'll shut down for the foreseeable future. We've built this business from the ground up over the past two decades. So much love, labor and dedication to create something for ourselves, our customers and our staff. It's devastating to think it could slip through our fingers, in such a short amount of time, for reasons that are entirely out of our control. So the human & financial impact is substantial, we haven't even begun to calculate the total fallout, or what it would cost to get everything up and running again, in what 3, 4, or 5 months from now.

So that's my situation in a microcosm, which I imagine is multiplied ten thousand, or a hundred thousand times over around the world for owners and operators of small and medium sized businesses. Then you start looking at the economy at large, the factories, auto manufacturers, etc, it really starts looking like a global economic crisis that we may never have seen in our lifetimes.

As far as the virus itself, the fact high-tech bio research labs are cooperating very closely around the globe, including in Germany, China, Hungary, France, Italy, the States and elsewhere, should give us some hope. With this level of unprecedented cooperation, I do think there will be a breakthrough soon as far as effective medication for treatment, and in time, a proper cure and vaccine. This is not a nation-state crisis, it is a global pandemic that will require a global solution, which then gets folded back to all countries and helps people survive this.

I think - pray, hope - in the best case we're looking at a roughly six-month period, which will bring with it a lot of short-term misery and a major adjustment to our daily lives. Some places - more rural, agricultural - may be much less affected than higher population areas. Overall, in historical terms, there will be the pre-Covid 19 period and the post-Covid 19 period, I think it will have that type of transitional effect. Unemployment will be massive, the global markets will be severely tested, as will of course governments around the world as they try to keep economies and families afloat.

Once the medical crisis is under control, the focus will be - rightfully so - on getting things ready to start back up again, be it small businesses, manufacturing, industrial plants, schools, etc.

The best thing to do right now, by all indications, is to literally shut things down as intensely as possible to keep people from interacting. It may seem severe, unneccessary and an overreaction, I get all that. But in hindsight, I believe the thinking will be that we should have done this sooner, on a wider scale. Again, I'd rather have short term discomfort, get the spread under control, and hope science is able to jump in with a medical, clinical solution that can effectively put an end to it. Then, the re-boot can happen faster and things can get back to normal quicker. As opposed to dilly-dallying now, not taking it seriously, not limiting human interaction, which will push this thing into the future, the shutdown will take longer, and the re-start will happen that much later.

The worse case scenario is the virus will continue mutating, developing newer and stronger strains, and the medication and potential vaccines developed earlier will be ineffective. Then it becomes a cat and mouse game and a race against time.

Not being an alarmist, just sharing my personal views on the matter. More than anything, it will take incredible patience, self-discipline and the ability to stay calm and think straight, to best get through these next few months, so that we can take care of ourselves and our families.

I have to agree.
To see businesses fold all in a span of weeks is sad.

That impact is felt at the corporate level too.

I still think this will resolve in weeks. Thing is Tibs, viruses/bugs mutate seasonally. It’s not exclusive to Covid19.
The scary thing about covid19 is how easily contagious it is.

Now recovery rates look promising. But given the hysteria around it which has induced citizens to flood the medical industry. That’s where the problem is at.

It’s hard for our medical people to tend to those who actually need the help when people are coming in by the masses taking up resources.
If it’s mild symptoms, stay home. You’ll recover.

If it’s severe, then seek help. Now trying to explain that to billions of people on top of sensational journalism is a recipe for disaster
 
Instead of letting you free-load here, SN Management should charge you for the epic amount of stupid you bring to this board.



I'm gonna start questioning this theory. The "overwhelming the healthcare system" theory. Something's beginning not to make sense. Bear with me.

"If we don't shut down the country and this thing spirals out of control, our healthcare system is going to be overwhelmed." -- that's the talking point. Got it.

Points:
  • So far, nowhere on the planet, has COVID-19 surpassed the Flu in #s of infected/hospitalized/deceased. Nowhere (that I'm aware of).
  • The typical US flu season leads to 20,000-60,000 deaths. 2 years ago it spiked to 80,000 deaths.
  • In less than 3 months this year, CDC estimates 31Million Americans caught the flu, between 210,000-370,000 hospitalized, and nearly 30,000 dead.
  • The Flu is the 8th leading cause of death in the USA
Now here is where it gets interesting. How many typical flu patients develop pneumonia due to the flu? Per the American Lung Association, this is quite interesting:

What Is The Connection Between Influenza and Pneumonia?
Influenza (flu) is a highly contagious viral infection that is one of the most severe illnesses of the winter season. Influenza is spread easily from person to person, usually when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

Pneumonia is a serious infection or inflammation of the lungs. The air sacs fill with pus and other liquid, blocking oxygen from reaching the bloodstream. If there is too little oxygen in the blood, the body's cells cannot work properly, which can lead to death.

Influenza is a common cause of pneumonia, especially among younger children, the elderly, pregnant women, or those with certain chronic health conditions or who live in a nursing home. Most cases of flu never lead to pneumonia, but those that do tend to be more severe and deadly. In fact, flu and pneumonia were the eighth leading cause of death in the United States in 2016.

Both the Flu and Covid can leave a patient without symptoms
Both can cause the patient to get sick, have fevers, have respiratory issues
Both can lead to pneumonia in a % of cases
Both kill a lot of elderly

To this point per the World O Meter, there are less than 323,000 cases of COVID-19 in the entire WORLD.
We, the USA, may have already hospitalized 370,000 flu patients in less than 3 months........

And our healthcare system didn't crumble. We didn't run out of ventilators.

How is it we have the health care capacity to treat the flu, but not COVID-19, given the numbers? How can you tell me we CANNOT treat COVID when we have currently 30,239 cases nationwide, yet in two months we HOSPITALIZED nearly 400,000 people due to flu.

Yes, COVID is "incremental" to the flu. The flu didn't go away and now we have to treat both. I get that. But this "capacity" issue is starting to make less and less sense to me.


When sensational news stories have people in a panic. They start flooding the medical system with any small cough or sneeze.
 
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They're building a makeshift hospital in a marketplace for the influx of covid-19 patients in Madrid. These are the steps I think gov officials should be planning for, to lessen the impact on emergency rooms and hospital wards. Plus the risk of infection of non-patients is sky high, so seperating potential covid-19 patients at the very beginning, re-routing them to different locations seems like a smart, proactive measure.


90612227-2450124808633285-1012177118534041600-n.jpg
 
Does anyone know anyone personally who has or had a confirmed case?

One of my co-workers came down with a fever and is being tested. Waiting to hear if she has it.

I did not work with er the last couple of weeks so I'm not too worried.

I should say, I'm not too worried about me personally getting it. Unfortunately she was around others the day before she got sick.
 
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