Apparently some young Italian lady is repeatedly testing positive for corona, even after 60 days. To me, it looks she just can't clear the virus and lives in equilibrium with it or something. Is this what a superspreader looks like? Maybe convalescent plasma therapy can help her? Those bat viruses sure are interesting. This kind of reminds me of how ebola reactivated in some doctor's eye after supposedly being deemed virus free. Read that it can hide in retinal pigment cells.

"A 23-year-old in Italy being treated for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus continues to test positive, despite two months of quarantine and continual swabs."

https://www.newsweek.com/italian-woman-tests-positive-covid-19-after-60-days-quarantine-swabbing-1500202

I'm not defending American approach. Finland has a good social security system and our government has done something similar and managed to slow down the virus significantly. I'm fine with that. But you can't sustain it forever without risking economic crisis and depression. Last time it happened here in early 90s it was brutal. 

And by saying it's not as simple as protecting all life at all costs I mean sometimes you can't save a life because doing so would risk the life of others. And then, traffic kills people each year but you don't ban cars to protect these people. Costs would be too much.

I'm a cop so I guess I'm also a first responder then. Yes when on duty it's simple, you do what you can to save lives. What sucks though is seeing that life then fuck up or even end the life of others if you know what I mean. Some lives just aren't worth saving..

Now I'm not sure where I'm going with this :D I guess I'm saying I'd hope that if something similar happens when I'm 70, they won't fuck up the lives of my children and grandchildren in attempt to save my sorry ass. At some point you have to think about economy. We can still protect the elder and others at risk while opening up the economy. 

edit. Just read this lockdown is estimated to cost 5 billion euros a month for Finland. This is huge..not good. 

The US has 1m cases on less than 6m tests. Me thinks someone isn't testing enough and as a result is critically under reporting. Under reporting that results in people feeling too safe and demanding reopen, exacerbating the problem even more. Meanwhile I'm hearing numerous reports of people being denied tests. What's their current testing capacity?

The depression is unavoidable, you cannot sustain economic growth indefinitely, you will have depressions, you will have recessions, it's a part of economic life.

The cost impact is temporary, people will be back driving the economic wheels at some point...

But the people who are dead... Are Dead. - And will never contribute to the economy ever ever again.

After World War 2 concluded many countries entered into a depression because... A large percentage of their population was dead, they couldn't come back and re-contribute to the economy.

The difference is... One infected individual can infect dozens more and they can all potentially infect several dozens more on top of that resulting in exponential increases in infections and thus death rates...
It's exponential... Remember the hundreds of thousands of deaths today all originated from one person.

The difference with your car analogy... (And I am a road crash technician!) is that cars are made safer year by year by learning from vehicle accidents... And one person isn't going to be directly attributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Plus... Only a tiny percentage of vehicles will have an accident... And an even smaller percentage of those accidents still will be fatal... And the fatality rates are decreasing every year from improved vehicles, road/infrastructure and us first responders getting better at our jobs with better equipment.

We have very different training obviously.. I respond to vehicle accidents, hazmat, structure fires, bush fires, vertical rescue, marine rescue, confined space, restricted space, flood and storm and so much more.

All lives are worth saving, we don't get to decide who is worth saving and who isn't... Especially when it's just the value of a dollar that is being questioned over life.

I have known individuals who were drug-addicts, they were homeless, abusive... They turned their lives around, went to university, became contributing tax payers. - They were worth saving and investing in.

Economy comes second to life. The economy will always be there.

The debt is irrelevant, debt isn't always a bad thing either, especially if you are a nation with a sovereign currency... And over time the economy will start to grow again and that debt will be paid off or become such a small fraction of the overall economy that it's redundant anyway.

I actually can't believe I am having a discussion where someone values the worth of a dollar over a life...

The simple reality is... That opening the markets up and letting people get infected and die could potentially result in a larger and longer economic impact than closing things down for a month or two... Australia and New Zealand are starting to return to normal now... Whilst the Americans are potentially yet to hit the peak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_economic_expansion

Economy will start to grow again but at what cost. When you put out bush fires you don't necessarely see the effects collapsing economy has to life and quality of life. Social security system is not some magical safety net that can prevent all the shit from happening. Especially when our country is in debt already. Most economists are very much worried about where things are headed, and for a good reason.

At his point in many countries it's not about closing things down for a month or two anymore. Finland did it too and we are potentially yet to hit the peak. I'm also not saying everything needs to be opened at once. But continuing this level of lockdown will result in huge economic impact and affect lives. And these lives I'm worried about despite you accusing me of valuing the worth of dollar over a life. Which is insulting by the way.

Good for Australia and New Zealand if you can put all this behind already. But it's too late for many countries and I think we'll be living with COVID-19 for a long time, it can't be erased anymore. And trying to protect everyone from infection will result in worse.

The USA came out of it rather well, but they didn't loose 10's of millions of people like most of Europe... They didn't have all their production/factories bombed or wiped out. - Europe/United Kingdom and other areas after WW2 saw economic collapses of 70% or more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_World_War_II#Economic_aftermath

However by the end of the 1950's most economies had bounced back.

The British Empire went from controlling 23% of the worlds population and now holds a paltry 0.87% of the worlds comparative population. - It lost tons of controlled states/territories/dependencies as well, Hong Kong is a fairly significant one for example.

The United States economy after it got hit by Japan shifted gears, economically there was a big focus on manufacturing, R&D and military, that really never stopped minus a recession here or there.

When a region is hit by the bushfires.
The community steps in with financial aid... The community donated hundreds of millions of dollars so people could rebuild.

People like myself gave up several months of their life protecting communities.

The Government also stepped in and provided aid so that people could rebuild.

You are right, Social Security isn't a preventative, it was never meant to be a preventative, it is part of the response phase, debt and money isn't as important as human life... Anyone who places money above human life isn't a human being in my opinion.

Finland hasn't taken the same measures as Australia and New Zealand, I did a case study a few weeks ago of another island nation similar in population size and density to New Zealand... And they haven't been as successful.

Let the economic impact happen, let it effect lives... Force the government to step in with measures to support the people and weather the storm.

And yes, you are valuing the dollar over life because you are more worried about the economic impacts rather than peoples health, no that isn't insulting, let's not sugar coat it. - It is exactly what your stance is.

And it's those countries own fault.

If the United States took instant proactive measures, they wouldn't be in the situation they are in, they would instead be looking at the possibility of having defeated the virus and getting back to normalcy.

But their laggard approach and nonchalant way of thinking is what has gotten them into this predicament which could have been entirely avoided. - And let's be realistic here, this isn't the first wide-spread disease the United States has had to deal with, H1N1 was also a "test" they could have learned from, but didn't.

Today only 171 new cases, 88 new hospitalisations (of which 10-15 in ICU) and 48 new deaths were reported here in The Netherlands. Seems very low, but it was King's Day yesterday, so most is probably not registered yet. Even though there were obviously no festivals and the king and queen weren't out and about drawing crowds everywhere, pretty much everyone still had a day off yesterday. I wanted to post some new graphs today, but I'll wait until tomorrow when they're probably going to be more accurate.

Today UK is gonna pass Germany in cases with a fraction of the tests.

The are coming down, but it's a long way down and the fall and rise due to weekend reporting interfering can make it seem it goes back up again every week. Also since there are many more undetected cases, more and more mild cases will be detected as a percentage of the increased testing capacity.

Italy is current at 26,977 reported deaths. Fatality ratios estimates are between 1% and 3.2%, thus cases should be between 940K and 2.7 million. So far Italy has reported just shy of 200K cases. Many will never be detected (or only with anti body tests since the the disease is done already) but there are still plenty milder cases around to detect.

Week over week progression:

Counted by lock down date, daily reported cases

Week -2  5.53x over week 1.280x daily increase (testing ramped up)
Week -1  3.96x over week 1.217x daily increase
Week  0  2.27x over week 1.125x daily increase (Lock down at start of this week)
Week  1  1.64x over week 1.073x daily increase
Week  2  0.90x over week 0.985x daily decline (14 days since lock down at start of this week)
Week  3  0.83x over week 0.975x daily decline
Week  4  0.94x over week 0.991x daily decline
Week  5  0.74x over week 0.957x daily decline
Week  6  0.73x over week 0.956x daily decline

Compared with daily reported deaths

Week -2 5x over week (from 2 to 10 deaths daily)
Week -1 8.9x over week (from 10 to 89 deaths daily)
Week  0 3.33x over week 1.188x daily increase (lock down start of this week)
Week  1 2.30x over week 1.126x daily increase
Week  2 1.20x over week 1.026x daily increase
Week  3 0.75x over week 0.960x daily decline (21 days since lock down at start of this week)
Week  4 0.88x over week 0.982x daily decline
Week  5 0.85x over week 0.976x daily decline
Week  6 0.74x over week 0.957x daily decline

The higher the peak, the longer it takes to come back down. Higher peak also means more uncounted cases and deaths to find later.