There will always be people that live beyond their means, there will always be people that live pay check to pay check, there will always be poor people. It's a fact of life now and it won't change. People were more self sufficient in the past but that time has come and gone. Even Jesus said "you will always have the poor among you."

Thank you for having the sense and the guts to write this.

Wow, that zoomed right over your head. Talk about cherry picking, the cherry trees are blooming here. Absolutely beautiful. You should see it.

The food situation could be part of the 2020 new deal. Rather than funneling huge amounts of $ through layers of profit-taking to make roads black perhaps the concept of co-operative farming should be explored. Instead of handing out money to those without jobs let them earn it. Quit subsidizing tobacco, and other corporate owned endeavors and instead invest in getting people off their can.
This virus laid upon a handicapped economy has created the situation we need to not go down the same path we know does not work.
I shudder to think about home values and low interest. Homes are selling for twice their construction cost and people are paying for their homes padded with the cost of last years entertainment and dinners out. I cannot figure how young families are going to get out of the rut of the past few years and the chasm of cv19.
Sure, I digress and drift, I worked hard and know what worked for me and I do not see society poised to move forward without attaching themselves to the hard workers that live with few luxuries.

Everyone? Not quite.

And the efforts took far longer to get to this point than it should have. It was "a hoax", before it was a Pandemic, remember?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-stay-at-home-order.html

Well those states should get with the program!

Or told up front

"Piss Poor planning on your part does not make it an Emergency on My part!".

Then when they get the double tap of this virus and come crying 'We Need your help....." [crickets chirping]

I guess I can take some comfort in knowing that I have better things in life to get upset about than the fact that a handful of low population states haven’t issued stay in home orders. It’s not like people from North Dakota and Wyoming are wandering the country as modern day Typhoid Marys spreading Covid 19 to urban areas.
It’s been determined that the virus’s hotspot in the US, New York City, was seeded by travelers arriving from Italy. But let’s not let that fact get in the way of anyone pushing their thinly veiled political agendas.
The item at the top of my upset list is my moms assisted living place, which is near me in Evanston IL. I posted here early in this thread that several residents there were diagnosed. Just heard a few minutes ago a 3rd resident passed away out of 6 residents diagnosed at this point. Also one nurse has tested positive.
Since it’s been a month since their first several cases were diagnosed, I’d like to think her facility has got things under control to the best degree that is possible given that so many similar types facilities have seen a couple cases blow up to dozens of cases within a week. Nevertheless the situation has given me a lot to worry about.
16000 cases diagnosed here in IL so far with over 500 deceased. But they did just say that numbers are showing signs of leveling out here, which gives some hope.

I found it difficult to monitor the various data offered for cases. At first there were few tests and lack of reports. As tests became available better data appeared, and many areas had no test kits (as here where I live). Now more places have tests, but reporting is not always current. i.e. here in California cases fall over the weekend and then go back up and exceed the previous weeks numbers. These lags, and now reports of decreased testing beg the question if all cases are being reported. Until a trend develops, consistent reporting and there is a leveling off and a fall of new cases with a corresponding increase of demise (for a short period) will the actual crest have happened WITH sheltering. If people lax off too soon on sheltering (I feel this is why the date in early May (1 or 3) was selected) the trend may run flat, or even increase for awhile. I've only monitored California and I am seeing an increasing trend over the past 4 days. More days will tell for sure. It will be equally interesting to see what happens in those locales with no shelter orders and also if there are Easter gatherings. Also age specific demographics of ill and deaths will be interesting, but doubtful if public would be given access. I'm also curious as to if testing of more people would be helpful in relaxing shelter orders if it shows many people with no or slight (un diagnosed) cv19 exist in the general population.

Mayor's didn't act & Governor's didn't act early on. But they very-well COULD HAVE. But NO: stayed deaf-dumb-blind til the 23rd hour.
Then all you heard was "where's the federal gov'nt? Tell us what to do Etc. Etc. Some didn't "dare" take any type of civil-action early on: Fear of the legal aspects. No that the Sh1t hits the fan: they willing to take those actions. Didn't want to be "dictated to" early on & now "cry" for help. Stupid (i.e. inaction) started at the bottom.

The theory of whether a state should isolate with a lockdown depended on:

1. Did that state have enough ICU beds for the fraction of their state population that was at risk, and enough staff and supplies for those ICU beds? ( with 20/20 hindsight Utah and Wyoming for example might not needed a lockdown, but New York and New Jersey were not)

2. Do we isolate as a State for a period long enough for researchers to come up with drugs and treatments that reduce the fatality rate to some acceptable level, say like that of the average fatality rate for +60 year olds getting yearly influenza?

We cannot reduce the risk of death by epidemic to zero. We cannot take to zero all risk of death outside of disease either.

People do not like to talk about it but we need to set a price each year for what it is worth spending to reduce the loss of one year of life. Once set as a price, spend the money on the “low hanging fruit” to compassionately save the most “lost years of life.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/country/united-states/

12 months from now the column in the above table for
Deaths per One Million population
Should be examined.
The 25 States that are higher than average should reform
by studying the States or foreign countries that did better.

In the case of COVID-19
perhaps a new column
Deaths of +60 year olds per million
should be used.

About two years ago I was a little shocked to learn that KY had the highest yearly death rate for 80 year olds and HI the lowest.
Notice that KY has the 2nd highest “Confirmed case fatality percentage” for COVID at 5.44% even though the total deaths is only 79.

So now "leadership" comes from the bottom up? In what universe? This is a national crisis dude. Things that happen on a national level require a federal response. Generally, in a leadership hierarchy the lower levels take their cues from the top. From day one of this crisis there has been little to no coherent guidance or any semblance of coordinated, definitive action from the top. Pretending the "Chinese Virus" is nothing to worry about and hoping it just goes away when it gets warmer out is the exact opposite of what an appropriate response would have been.

Please explain who you refer to that is crying for help that didn't want to be dictated to? In fact, the exact opposite scenario is true. No national stay-at-home-order, well I'm not going to lock down my state! Think about the last stay-at-home holdouts, they were all waiting like puppies to be told to shut things down and some still have not. Maybe they get lucky and are spared from becoming overwhelmed but that does not seem likely given how this virus has spread to everywhere so quickly. Those states that acted in their own self interest decided they better do something since no one form the top was telling them what to do.

How do you feel about the decision made two years ago to dismantle our national pandemic response office? Think that was a good idea? Seems like that could have been a useful thing to have right now.

While the vulnerable populations are isolated, they should have let healthy people go back to work. Keep the distancing and other restrictions in place. Let the healthy who won't be symptomatic get the virus and get over it. All we've done is kick the can. The overwhelming majority aren't symptomatic or have limited impact from the virus. Once restrictions start rolling back May 1st, people you'll start to see the 2nd wave. Healthy people will end up giving to vulnerable people or those that care for vulnerable people. The only hope in limiting the death impact, is treatment. You're not going to avoid the transmission of the virus. This has been grossly mishandled.

A cool paper came out yesterday that shows a lot of promise. A study done with over 1000 patients. The result?


The HCQ-AZ combination, when started immediately after diagnosis, is a safe and efficient treatment for COVID-19, with a mortality rate of 0.5% in older patients. It avoids worsening and clears virus persistence and contagiosity in most cases.

https://www.mediterranee-infection....qxIUYZ0KQClkrqaoxZLUnH1IHYyD7IIeVR2d9Mdg

Everyone should use the summer to get their health in order. Lose weight, exercise and get sun light. You have to build your body to fight the next iteration of this and other virus's. The data is clear that the overwhelming, as in 80%+ of patients who have serious issues, suffer from other co-morbidities. Which you do have an impact on with your eating and exercise habits. The combo of doing that with medication should make this an after thought going forward.

You make a good point of saying let it run it's course. Keep in mind the caveat of hospital capacity to handle the peak and also with higher numbers of infected the more variants will present.. I've found no data of age profile of hospitalizations and we know there are at least two strains with different manifestations.
Even running it's course there will be more than one returns of this virus.
It is right to attempt to limit the amount of infected at any given time and it's good to quickly develop a vaccine.

Another half truth...

Since everything is "top down" as you put it...why do individual states have their own laws and their own control over what happens in their state?

Thx to those who contribute honestly but this has turned into...

It's a shame that for some, the expectations as to the basic role of government have been lowered so dramatically that there is almost no expectation at all. And then to vehemently defend that? What does that prove? I've said this before and it bears repeating - the virus does not care if you are a tree-hugging liberal, bible-thumping conservative or a rural Chinese peasant. Once that sinks in, nothing else should matter to anyone except trying to figure out how to stop it so we can all go back to hating each other without worrying about getting sick or dying.

Again, this is a national crisis, not a local one. A national crisis should be met with an appropriate federal response since states may or may not have the resources, manpower, mobilization and coordination ability that the federal government does. What's the point of disputing whether that is true or not?

But just for argument's sake, read below and let us know what you think about it.

Snopes: Did Trump fire the Pandmeic Team?

Published 26 February 2020
Updated 13 March 2020

Claim

The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.

Rating
True

About this rating

Origin
As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.

Amid warnings from public health officials that a 2020 outbreak of a new coronavirus could soon become a pandemic involving the U.S., alarmed readers asked Snopes to verify a rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump had “fired the entire pandemic response team two years ago and then didn’t replace them.”

The claim came from a series of tweets posted by Judd Legum, who runs Popular Information, a newsletter he describes as being about “politics and power.” Legum’s commentary was representative of sharp criticism from Democratic legislators (and some Republicans) that the Trump administration had ill-prepared the country for a pandemic even as one was looming on the horizon.

Legum outlined a series of cost-cutting decisions made by the Trump administration in preceding years that had gutted the nation’s infectious disease defense infrastructure. The “pandemic response team” firing claim referred to news accounts from Spring 2018 reporting that White House officials tasked with directing a national response to a pandemic had been ousted.

Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior.

It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.

Legum stated in a follow-up tweet that “Trump also cut funding for the CDC, forcing the CDC to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics in 39 of 49 countries in 2018. Among the countries abandoned? China.” That was partly true, according to 2018 news reports stating that funding for the CDC’s global disease outbreak prevention efforts had been reduced by 80%, including funding for the agency’s efforts in China.

But that was the result of the anticipated depletion of previously allotted funding, not a direct cut by the Trump administration. And as the CDC told FactCheck.org, the cuts were ultimately avoided because Congress provided other funding.

On Feb. 24, 2020, the Trump administration requested $2.5 billion to address the coronavirus outbreak, an outlay critics asserted might not have been necessary if the previous program cuts had not taken place.

Fortune reported of the issue that:

The cuts could be especially problematic as COVID-19 continues to spread. Health officials are now warning the U.S. is unlikely to be spared, even though cases are minimal here so far.

“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a press call [on Feb. 25].

There is data on age profile and death, I know that isn't hospitalizations. My point is that the healthy population isn't having to go to the hospital. Health population defined as under 50 with no preexisting conditions that have been identified. You need them getting the virus and getting over it before the populations "returns". All we've done by isolating everyone is ensure a 2nd curve will happen. The only thing that might offset that are all the various distance/cleaning measures combined with warm temperatures.

The sad part is people that totally ignore the unintended consequences from quarantine. Domestic violence is up 20% in multiple large cities across the country. Those with mental health/anxiety issues are really struggling as well. It's harder to understand those impacts vs get a virus and die. Although the odds of that happens are so limited. I'd love to see the data pulled apart. I'd want to see how many people outside of hospitals for other things, long term car facilities and rest homes are actually dying. I have a feeling parsed out, it would be a fraction of a percent.

Snopes...

Exactly why your statement is a half truth...

Read around a little...

What happened to the budget for the CDC?

Problem with too many people is they believe everything as soon as they read it...some may verify it's authenticity...some may not...

Others will read several articles considering the slant in each and then make a informed decision for themselves...

This is where something as simple as common sense comes into play...Word is it's the least common of all sense's...

I can assure you I don't need you or anyone else to decide for me...I put in the work to be well informed...

That's why when you blatantly lie and post crap for others to read I will call you out on it...Redditt this place ain't...

This is from your article

Updated to clarify that cuts to programs intended to fight epidemics globally did not take place.
Updated to clarify that the 2018 reductions in CDC efforts referenced were a result of the anticipated depletion of previously allotted funding, not a direct cut by the Trump administration.
EDIT
This was DIRECT from your post.. zero words changed