Billy_Bob
Diamond Member
Let me apologize in advance that this is going to appear heartless and without empathy. I am going to lay out the cold hard facts about pandemics and death. Many will take issue with the assessment I am about to lay out, but these are the statistics, the cold hard numbers and they represent lives lost that NO ONE was going to be able to save.
In 1918/1919 the Spanish flu pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people. It was a virus that humans had never before seen and it spread rapidly. It burned through cities and country sides unimpeded. Those people did not know how to respond to a new viral infection and hundreds of thousands died.
Once again we face a microorganism that is 10 times more lethal than our current flu strains and one the human race has never encountered before. As we have never encountered this virus it is capable of rapid burn and massive death. The University of Washington assessed the COVID-19 progression from information obtained from the Chinese and the WHO. The original projections were 2.2-2.5 million dead if we do nothing and 350,000 to 400,000 dead if we do everything right. A far cry from the 50 million dead of the Spanish Flu.
Even if we do mitigation and lock-downs the deaths in the US alone will be in the 400,000 range. Today we are at just 225,000 dead but we still have about 9 months to go before we near herd immunity and this virus naturally subsides. If we get the vaccines in the next month or two the expected deaths will decline rapidly as we will reach herd immunity far earlier.
In pandemics people die. I could go into the reasons they die but they differ with each virus and organism, so this is a highly subjective area to discuss and deals with the physical properties of the virus and the items used in treatments.
If we rate how Trump and the team responded we are well within the natural progression curve of DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLY RIGHT. Shutting down travel, quarantines, initial lock-down to slow the spread so we had time to ramp up medical support to a level with the ability to tackle the problem, Defense production act which allowed us to create the needed PPE and medical devices, the partnerships to create rapid testing, vaccines, and therapeutics, removing bureaucratic red tape to make it all happen at warp speed and be safe for use. No one has ever done what Trump was able to accomplish inside 7 months...
From everything I have discussed with others in the field of biological warfare what has been done is the best anyone could do with a new virus that the human body has never before seen. When you look at the hard numbers and fit them with the projections curve there is not a whole lot of room for improvements.
Every life is precious but we must still live in reality. Reality is a cold, hard, place and you can not hide from it in a basement...
In 1918/1919 the Spanish flu pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people. It was a virus that humans had never before seen and it spread rapidly. It burned through cities and country sides unimpeded. Those people did not know how to respond to a new viral infection and hundreds of thousands died.
SourceThe 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918.
It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.
Once again we face a microorganism that is 10 times more lethal than our current flu strains and one the human race has never encountered before. As we have never encountered this virus it is capable of rapid burn and massive death. The University of Washington assessed the COVID-19 progression from information obtained from the Chinese and the WHO. The original projections were 2.2-2.5 million dead if we do nothing and 350,000 to 400,000 dead if we do everything right. A far cry from the 50 million dead of the Spanish Flu.
Even if we do mitigation and lock-downs the deaths in the US alone will be in the 400,000 range. Today we are at just 225,000 dead but we still have about 9 months to go before we near herd immunity and this virus naturally subsides. If we get the vaccines in the next month or two the expected deaths will decline rapidly as we will reach herd immunity far earlier.
In pandemics people die. I could go into the reasons they die but they differ with each virus and organism, so this is a highly subjective area to discuss and deals with the physical properties of the virus and the items used in treatments.
If we rate how Trump and the team responded we are well within the natural progression curve of DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLY RIGHT. Shutting down travel, quarantines, initial lock-down to slow the spread so we had time to ramp up medical support to a level with the ability to tackle the problem, Defense production act which allowed us to create the needed PPE and medical devices, the partnerships to create rapid testing, vaccines, and therapeutics, removing bureaucratic red tape to make it all happen at warp speed and be safe for use. No one has ever done what Trump was able to accomplish inside 7 months...
From everything I have discussed with others in the field of biological warfare what has been done is the best anyone could do with a new virus that the human body has never before seen. When you look at the hard numbers and fit them with the projections curve there is not a whole lot of room for improvements.
Every life is precious but we must still live in reality. Reality is a cold, hard, place and you can not hide from it in a basement...
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