Your premise is so far off it's almost laughable.

Had not we did what you mentioned of getting our defeated enemies back on their feet, we likely would today be the lone democracy in the world, our standard of living would be second tier, and English would not be a nearly universal language.

Our problem is mainly three fold, a consumer addiction for cheap products, greed for profits all the way down the corporate line, and taking our eye off the ball on making a better mousetrap at an efficient cost.

It has nothing to do with "shooting ourselves in the foot" post war.

Do read any books, or is this just internet sound bite wisdom you are repeating?

When there's a pandemic going on, and a neighboring county relaxes standards yet people treat it like a 3-day weekend and fail to social distance, they create a health hazard.

It's just common sense.



I don't really have a tolerance for stupidity when it endangers the health of the general public. At least require masks if they're gonna relax things, but they didn't even do that.

It isn't so difficult to understand.

And yet Sweden is doing just fine, sans lock down... In fact after initially claiming they were going to condemn the Swedes to mass death, the near useless WHO now says Sweden's become a model example. Finally the w.h.o. might have gotten something right.

Meanwhile certain US "State" leaders are loving their newfound power to inflict their every whim upon the masses. Counting on the fact that a large percentage of their supporters are mindless sheep. That they will obey whether it makes sense or not. Heck in one of the biggest screw ups in the nation, NY actually ordered that old people with Covid should be returned to the rest homes they came from, & apparently no one(other than rest homes) questioned it... so they were returned to continue wiping out the rest of the home.
"(March) New York State Health Department mandated, “no resident shall be denied readmission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” The directive also prohibited nursing homes from “requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”"

Hopefully they let people back to work, before the small businesses that employed 1/2 the nation throw in the towel. Because the US will be gone if they decide to wait for a vaccine... The H1N1 vaccine only has a 37% effective rate and they've been working on that one for over a decade. It seems like the only ones winning are the big techs that benefit from everyone working from home, & China, that is buying up more US Oil fields in Texas cheap, now that some are all but bankrupt. Hows that for rubbing salt in the virus wound they let spread unabated.

The story of how Henry Ford sent German speaking Ford Motor Co engineers to help build the “people’s car” factory in 1930s NAZI Germany is very interesting history and I recommend it, and also how Ferdinand Porsche got early release from a French prison by designing the Citroen 2 CV .

Porsche’s wrong headed ideas of how to build a superior tank,
on the other hand,
greatly hurt the NAZI war effort and so helped the Allies.

I am more and more optimistic that drugs are being found that can greatly reduce the confirmed case fatality rate in COVID-19 soon.

I have high hopes for the simple, cheap, non-toxic treatments
4000 mg per day Quercetin and
90 mg per day of generic Famotidine ( trade name Pepcid heart burn drug).

Japanese Avigan also seems to be very helpful, but can cause birth defects in pregnant women.

And yet Sweden is doing just fine, sans lock down... In fact after initially claiming they were going to condemn the Swedes to mass death, the near useless WHO now says Sweden's become a model example. Finally the w.h.o. might have gotten something right.

Meanwhile certain US "State" leaders are loving their newfound power to inflict their every whim upon the masses. Counting on the fact that a large percentage of their supporters are mindless sheep. That they will obey whether it makes sense or not. Heck in one of the biggest screw ups in the nation, NY actually ordered that old people with Covid should be returned to the rest homes they came from, & apparently no one(other than rest homes) questioned it... so they were returned to continue wiping out the rest of the home.
"(March) New York State Health Department mandated, “no resident shall be denied readmission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” The directive also prohibited nursing homes from “requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”"

Hopefully they let people back to work, before the small businesses that employed 1/2 the nation throw in the towel. Because the US will be gone if they decide to wait for a vaccine... The H1N1 vaccine only has a 37% effective rate and they've been working on that one for over a decade. It seems like the only ones winning are the big techs that benefit from everyone working from home, & China, that is buying up more US Oil fields in Texas cheap, now that some are all but bankrupt. Hows that for rubbing salt in the virus wound they let spread unabated.

AGREE 100% with what Runner2go said above ^^^

cleanliness and sanitation abounds.
some European countries are super clean and the populace work to stay healthy.
My dad was in the Navy during WWII and Merchant Marine before (he was too young for active duty) and for a couple years after. He said the Swiss ships were the cleanest on the seas, evidenced by no sea gulls following their ships.
American society would likely not measure up in compliance nor respect of others.

Patting Sweden on the back for their strategy is a little premature. A good look at the numbers shows some real trouble there.

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/28/21240381/coronavirus-sweden-death-rate-cases-new-york

i believe Citroen made the 2 CV.

The Swedish example is not entirely accurate. The coming weeks may make your point but it is not trending in the Swedish models favor.

Good luck and be safe!

TY
Kevin

VOX May as well quote Sesame Street.

Take a country with a small population and relatively small footprint, and compare it to a nation with a massively larger population, spread-out over a huge geographic footprint. And then use a dividing factor of "Per Million" instead of Per 100k... to further exaggerate the results. That's the same logic used by VOX to claim that Alabama & Mississippi are nothing but hotbeds of welfare recipients.

This thread has been edited again...And to the member who is the poster child for a certain party....You are not being singled out. You happen to push the limit almost more than anyone here.

OK, sure.

"We need to stay home to keep healthy and to help everyone else stay healthy."

https://autism.sesamestreet.org/coping-with-covid/

Or if you were joking and don't like Sesame Street, I have another quote for you:

"Despite reports to the contrary, Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown. As of today, 2462 people have died there, a much higher number than the neighboring countries of Norway (207), Finland (206) or Denmark (443). The United States made the correct decision!
4:45 AM · Apr 30, 2020"

As much as I dislike Vox, they're not wrong. Sweden's numbers are worse than neighboring Nordic states. This doesn't mean that their strategy is worse though. It's estimated that 80% of a given country will contract Covid. The 80% of the population is the area under the curve. A herd-immunity approach sees that population infected at a much faster pace than one that implements hard quarantine. The danger is keeping the peak under the line where the hospital system gets swamped, because if that happens then the case fatality rate spikes. If you can successfully keep that spike low enough so that hospitals can cope while undergoing the herd-immunity approach you greatly reduce the overall impact on the economy, because you didn't lock down and the outbreak is over in a much shorter amount of time. This is probably the best course of action, but it also carries the most risk for the fatality rate if isn't managed just right. And it should be said that the only thing that is going to see us through this is immunity through either naturally produced anti-bodies or a vaccine. The question is do you hard quarantine and wait for a vaccine, or take the managed approach of trying to build up the population's immunity?

We'll only know if Sweden's approach worked when this is all said and done. Only then can we really compare the numbers.

You're misreading the numbers. The only thing that sees use through to the other side is when the virus runs out of viable hosts - this happens through either a vaccine or anti-body production from a previous infection. Sweden's strategy takes an accelerated approach to inevitable infections. So as long as they can keep the health system from being overwhelmed, this is the correct approach, but it is risky and hard to manage due to the long incubation period. They'll be done with this far sooner than a hard quarantine will while still having people die.

speaking of numbers, it would be nice to have a reporting standard for all countries, states and municipalities to use. This pandemic is hitting when the worlds population is at an all time high. Numbers are one thing, percentages anr another. Socially designed reporting is useless in understand the full effect of what is going on. What's to gain by padding, or hiding numbers.

Yes, provided all things remain the same, re-infection is found not viable and the virus does not mutate.

Quarantine, besides buying time for a vaccine, buys time for an effective treatment that can lower the mortality rate for those who are infected. Vaccines and herd immunity are great, of course, but effective treatment is also a life-saver.

560 person clinical trial on whether any of the available ACE inhibitor drugs for blood pressure aid recovery or make COVID-19 worse:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-clinical-trial-hypertension-drug-ameliorates.html