There are 78 comments.

1. Inactive
   Hammer, The

   @RyanM

   12:07 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   Mendel (View Comment):

   Steven Seward (View Comment):
   Any thoughts from infectious disease specialists?

   With any infectious respiratory disease, there are three obvious potential routes of transmission: droplets (i.e. accelerated particles emitted from sneezing or coughing), aerosols (i.e. the air we exhale normally), and by touch. While these are all theoretical possibilities, for most actual pathogens only one or two routes predominate in real life while the other(s) aren’t anywhere near as much of a threat.

   The problem is that we don’t know which of these three routes is the real driver of spreading SARS-CoV-2 and which play a more minor role. There are some clear-cut individual examples of all three, as well as laboratory demonstrations of the feasibility of all three. But all that means is that we can’t rule any of these routes out, not that all three are equally dangerous.

   Because we still don’t know which of those three routes is the major threat, the blunt tool of drastic social distancing is the most effective way of stopping the spread – there is quite a bit of evidence supporting this hypothesis. There is also plenty of evidence that drastic social distancing has by far the highest cost, as well. So if we could figure out whether the majority of real-world transmission was occurring by aerosols, droplets, or fomites, we could enact much more targeted measures that would be equally as effective at much less cost.

   But there’s a real Catch-22 here: in order to determine which route of transmission is the most important in the real world, we need to let people actually become infected (and then study them). But in order for people to get infected, we would need to loosen the drastic social distancing. But our leaders are obviously unwilling to loosen those measures without knowing more about the routes of transmission.

   I keep thinking about this: what stopped SARS? I don’t think anyone really knows. It just kind of died out. It’s a coronavirus. Other coronaviruses are common colds and seem perpetual. So which will it be? Again, nobody knows. 

2. Coolidge
   CarolJoy, Above Top Secret

   @CarolJoy

   12:24 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   Jack Shepherd (View Comment):

   Misthiocracy held his nose and (View Comment):

   Hammer, The (View Comment):

   Misthiocracy held his nose and (View Comment):

   MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

   the goal was to flatten the curve.

   The goal was never to lockdown until we eradicate the virus.

   Or so we were told.

   Always remember the story of the March Of Dimes whose goal was to eradicate polio but for some reason still exists.

   or feminism, or civil rights…

   there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.

   They start to solve a problem, they remain to justify their continued and eternal existence.

   To be fair, it’s not just “them”.

   Any organization’s first priority is the continued existence of the organization, regardless of whatever the organization’s mission statement says.

   (e.g. There’s an argument out there that cities could reduce their spending on fire departments substantially without increasing the incidence of house fires because construction techniques, materials, fire codes, and fire code enforcement have improved so substantially, but they don’t do that because no politician wants to be seen as “against” firefighters.)

   No, they keep adding new fire stations and giving them more and more “duties”, such that every single auto accident requires multiple Fire Department emergency vehicles, blocking off entire city blocks, while 15-20 “fire” personnel stand around for an hour or two. By requiring that ever call is a “3 alarm” emergency, they justify their continued existence and ever increasing funding.

   It’s sickening.

   With the 2.2 trillion dollar stimulus bill allowing for up to $ 300K to go to a state who has a patient that has been considered to be COVID – you can only imagine how many hospital admins in places like Nebraska will be falling all over themselves to ensure most patients are pronounced victims of the dread disease.

   I mean, why have a one or two alarm fire when you can have a three alarm event? Or have a regular old flu case when you can stamp it COVID? There is money to be made, and the CARES Act hillsides are flush with gold!

3. Coolidge
   CarolJoy, Above Top Secret

   @CarolJoy

   12:28 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   Steven Seward (View Comment):

   Danny Alexander (View Comment):

   #31 Jack Shepherd (and Misthiocracy)

   With respect, that’s asinine.

   Property/Casualty insurance companies make underwriting decisions on homeowners’ policies and business real property insurance policies in part by taking into account proximity to fire stations.

   Politicians may include “Don’t appear anti-firefighter” in their playbooks (so to speak), but realistically what registers higher on the Do’s-and-Don’ts List is “Don’t stupidly cause your constituents’ insurance rates to jump by closing Fire Station X.”

   It sounds like you’re defending politicians who hire unnecessary fireman on the grounds that more tax money should be spent to help keep certain homeowner’s insurance costs down. No?

   Steven, it sounds to me that he is not advocating for anything. He is merely explaining how the games are played.

   I live some mile and a third from a fire house here in California. My landlord was easily able to keep his insurance due to the fire house proximity he can point to. Two neighborhoods away, people are losing their fire insurance. (Although that won’t kick in til next year, due to emergency regulations now in place.)

   You better believe that when it comes to local political offices, people are now voting their pocket books, which involves protecting the ability to insure their homes and businesses.

4. Coolidge
   CarolJoy, Above Top Secret

   @CarolJoy

   12:34 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   Danny Alexander (View Comment):

   #58 The Reticulator

   The CCP/PLA regime possesses but is obscuring key information about the workings of this hyper-transmissible virus.

   Unless and until a vaccine is made available (and assuming it’s a reliable one, I know my mom wouldn’t flinch at a high price-tag — how’s that for personal responsibility and living in a world of acceptable tradeoffs?), our variables for assessing what constitutes an economically fair, Constitutionally viable, and physically minimally-lethal approach to re-opening the economy and our national life are, sorry to say, significantly more circumscribed than we all would wish.

   Not just because otherwise my mom’s probability of dying would hit Van Allen Belt levels (because I could more easily be exposed in my supermarket excursions to the virus and thus be far more likely to transport the virus by accident into our home, where she is now and would have to remain as a complete shut-in).

   But also because a surprisingly high percentage of otherwise presumably healthy people would also land in the ICUs as well; I suppose their untimely deaths would have to be chalked up to involuntary sacrifices for the rest of us, in the fitful ongoing effort to expand the frontiers of our understanding of the virus in the absence of CCP candor, while we all continue to await a vaccine.

   You seem to be overlooking the fact that the anti malarial hydroxychloroquine is available and should be utilized should an individual  get infected with COVID 19. It is criminal that this $ 20 remedy is being pushed aside, mostly at the whim of Big Pharma controlled Dem governors, while people who are suffering from COVID 19 need it.

   The drug is used routinely by lupus patients and other with various auto immune diseases. it is also used by many vets who suffered with malaria due tyo being stationweed in Vietnam or othe rplaces where malaria is rampant. opne expposed, you can have re-occurrences months and even years later.

   So for people who supposedly have taken a Hippocratic oath to swear up and down we need months long testing of this anti malarial is an abomination.

   It is also an abomination that bill gates is leading the way on the testing, because he has already screwed the pouch with regards to how he set up the placebo.

5. Coolidge
   CarolJoy, Above Top Secret

   @CarolJoy

   12:41 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   The Reticulator (View Comment):

   Danny Alexander (View Comment):

   Folks, if you’ve got a vaccine for this virus, one you’ve quietly been keeping in your back pocket as you’ve been reading how this thread plays out, please raise your hand(s).

   I mean, really, how impertinent I’ve been: The solution has been staring me in the face the whole time, evidently — just ask everyone here in plain English if we (my mom and I) can transact for somebody’s spare jab of whatever vaccine they’ve come up with.

   In fact, betcha 90 percent of you don’t need either your spare jab or the main one given to you; so maybe we could transact to get that one to someone else in the (what I’m told is the) 10 percent, too — one of those oddball 10-percenters whose blood oxygenation levels drop like a rock when they catch someone else’s cold which turns into bronchitis which turns into pneumonia quicker’n you can say “logarithmic scale.”

   Because we definitely know that healthy 40-year-olds don’t succumb to the Wuhan Virus, no sirree — and that’s just one tidbit from the encyclopedic knowledge base about this coronavirus that we have to hand.

   Ah, but silly me — sorry I forgot!
   After all, we know accordingly that herd immunity (“Monorail!…”) for sure functions as has been well expected — and that once developed it furnishes us with unmatched visibility into the workings of the virus, itself deemed undoubtedly uniform across the other 90 percent assumed to have developed antbodies.

    

   You are avoiding discussion of the tradeoffs that need to be made. You are talking as though there is only one variable that needs to be optimized.

   He is also bringing up a discussion of herd immunity, a concept that we were all told in the 1950’s we did not need to consider if we got a vaccine to prevent us being infected with an illness.

   Somehow in the 1950’s, missionaries and intrepid travelers could get a series of vaccines and then know that regardless of where they went, they would not be afflicted with polio, smallpox or other items they had been vaxxed  against. People who had their jabs could  visit Africa, India, the Far East, and South America with confidence even though those places had a mere ten percent vaccine rate for their populations.

   Now in a huge effort to continuously make money Big Pharma chortles that a vaccine only works if there is “herd immunity.” Which is absurd on the face of it as it totally twists the entire concept of herd immunity, as well as the principles that lie behind vaccines, on their heads.

6. Member
   The Reticulator

   @TheReticulator

   12:41 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   Hammer, The (View Comment):

   Mendel (View Comment):

   Steven Seward (View Comment):
   Any thoughts from infectious disease specialists?

   With any infectious respiratory disease, there are three obvious potential routes of transmission: droplets (i.e. accelerated particles emitted from sneezing or coughing), aerosols (i.e. the air we exhale normally), and by touch. While these are all theoretical possibilities, for most actual pathogens only one or two routes predominate in real life while the other(s) aren’t anywhere near as much of a threat.

   The problem is that we don’t know which of these three routes is the real driver of spreading SARS-CoV-2 and which play a more minor role. There are some clear-cut individual examples of all three, as well as laboratory demonstrations of the feasibility of all three. But all that means is that we can’t rule any of these routes out, not that all three are equally dangerous.

   Because we still don’t know which of those three routes is the major threat, the blunt tool of drastic social distancing is the most effective way of stopping the spread – there is quite a bit of evidence supporting this hypothesis. There is also plenty of evidence that drastic social distancing has by far the highest cost, as well. So if we could figure out whether the majority of real-world transmission was occurring by aerosols, droplets, or fomites, we could enact much more targeted measures that would be equally as effective at much less cost.

   But there’s a real Catch-22 here: in order to determine which route of transmission is the most important in the real world, we need to let people actually become infected (and then study them). But in order for people to get infected, we would need to loosen the drastic social distancing. But our leaders are obviously unwilling to loosen those measures without knowing more about the routes of transmission.

   I keep thinking about this: what stopped SARS? I don’t think anyone really knows. It just kind of died out. It’s a coronavirus. Other coronaviruses are common colds and seem perpetual. So which will it be? Again, nobody knows.

   Successful isolation of infected persons is given the credit, I think.  What works with one virus doesn’t necessarily work with another. It helps if you can easily identify those who are infected.

7. Member
   Steven Seward

   @StevenSeward

   1:31 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   Danny Alexander (View Comment):

   Hardly — and thus I repeat: Absent a vaccine being readied *beforehand*, all this blithe chatter about a rollback to the status quo ante, and about somehow getting to herd immunity is worse than frivolous — it is murderously irresponsible.

   You are not the only one counting on the vaccine to save our society from total meltdown, but I should point out one glaring fact.  Influenza has a vaccine, in fact many of them that they keep tweaking every year, yet tens of millions of Americans still get flu every year and tens of thousands die from it every year.  We have never even remotely considered shutting down our private workforce because of it. Pneumonia also has a vaccine that is 45%-80% effective and we still lose somewhere in the range of 50,000 people each year to the disease in the U.S.  Common Cold – No vaccine, and an estimated 4,500 die from it every year.

8. Member
   Steven Seward

   @StevenSeward

   1:38 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   Hammer, The (View Comment):

   I keep thinking about this: what stopped SARS? I don’t think anyone really knows. It just kind of died out. It’s a coronavirus. Other coronaviruses are common colds and seem perpetual. So which will it be? Again, nobody knows.

   According to my wife’s boss, who is a notable expert in the world of pathology:

   He said the SARS virus mutated itself into a harmless microbe during its rampage, in effect committing suicide.  I don’t know if that means that there is a harmless version of it moving around the human species today or not.

9. Coolidge
   CarolJoy, Above Top Secret

   @CarolJoy

   2:00 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

   I am trying to figure out my plans for the summer:

10. Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast

    @Ontheleftcoast

    2:04 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    Aesop’s latest:

    Pull out your calculators, kids.

    For the last three days, the J-H ArcGIS website has showed “Number Tested” in the upper right. Spiffy. So what?
    Well, e.g., in the last 24 hours, another 150K people got tested.
    Only 25,000 additional cases were confirmed.
    In the last 48 hours, those numbers are 300K, and 50,000 (rough napkin math).

    People can play games with numbers, based on open (or unstated) assumptions.
    But as we approach a test sample of not quite 1% of America, there are some statistically valid conclusions.

    First off, only about 1 person in 6 tested, has Kung Flu.
    Second, if we tested 327M more Americans, we probably wouldn’t find enough additional cases to worry about, nor enough to drastically alter the results.
    More testing isn’t going to wildly skew the results, at this point, given the size of the sample.

    If, at this point, with 42 states at least on moderate lockdowns, we have nearly 24,000 deaths, and we should taper down to a final death tally of around 50K or less dead.
    If we don’t try to get out of this stupidly, before we’re ready.
    (And full disclosure, I’m hoping NYFS getting better doesn’t just mean we’re in for 49 more separate peaks in every other state, before we get out of this.)
    (50,000 dead? That’s the front half of the graph which we already have, plus the yet-to-be-added back half of the graph, at the current apparent peak. Notice at no point do my hands leave my body, and there are no rabbits up my sleeves.)
    Which amounts to a bad flu year, except we’ll hit that marker in 8-12 weeks, not months.

    Then this:

    CDC: Nearly 10,000 Health Care Workers Had Coronavirus — But There’s Probably More
    A new CDC study likely dramatically undercounts the number of coronavirus infections among medical workers.

    The new report shows that among infected health care workers with data available, 73% were women and the median age was 42, “reflecting these distributions among the (health care personnel) workforce.” About 72% of these health care workers were white and 21% were black.

    More than half of these workers had only been exposed to the virus in a health care setting, but it’s unclear whether those infections were caused by contact with a patient, visitor or other health care personnel, or whether these health care workers were wearing personal protective equipment, the report says.

    “The PPE shortages are very challenging – we’re reusing things that we’ve never had to reuse before across the country,” Haddock says. “And so I think it’s important to know if that’s putting us at higher risk or not.”

     

    A typical COVID-19 distribution of illness and mortality. The article concludes: “[older] workers could be prioritized to work in lower-risk settings such as telemedicine or clinics for non-COVID-19 patients.“

11. Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret

    @CarolJoy

    2:14 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    Steven Seward (View Comment):

    Danny Alexander (View Comment):

    Hardly — and thus I repeat: Absent a vaccine being readied *beforehand*, all this blithe chatter about a rollback to the status quo ante, and about somehow getting to herd immunity is worse than frivolous — it is murderously irresponsible.

    You are not the only one counting on the vaccine to save our society from total meltdown, but I should point out one glaring fact. Influenza has a vaccine, in fact many of them that they keep tweaking every year, yet tens of millions of Americans still get flu every year and tens of thousands die from it every year. We have never even remotely considered shutting down our private workforce because of it. Pneumonia also has a vaccine that is 45%-80% effective and we still lose somewhere in the range of 50,000 people each year to the disease in the U.S. Common Cold – No vaccine, and an estimated 4,500 die from it every year.

    Great post Steven.

    I would add that the vax we have for pneumonia only tangles with one of the dozen or more types of pneumonia – so that vax is only 45 to 80% effective against the one variety.

    During this last winter, 2019 to 2020, some 89,000 Americans died from either pneumonia or the flu. But apparently Bill Gates did not feel it was necessary to bribe the WHO into declaring this season’s regular old flu a pandemic. Because vax manufacturers already have that market tied down.

    However the COVID 19 vax market is wide open for Gates. So all thinking individuals  have to wonder, if he was such a humanitarian, wouldn’t he he be shouting to the skies that COVID 19 patients should be given hydroxychloroquine? (But that anti malarial costs 95% less than the coming vaccine.)

12. Inactive
    Hammer, The

    @RyanM

    2:20 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    Steven Seward (View Comment):

    Hammer, The (View Comment):

    I keep thinking about this: what stopped SARS? I don’t think anyone really knows. It just kind of died out. It’s a coronavirus. Other coronaviruses are common colds and seem perpetual. So which will it be? Again, nobody knows.

    According to my wife’s boss, who is a notable expert in the world of pathology:

    He said the SARS virus mutated itself into a harmless microbe during its rampage, in effect committing suicide. I don’t know if that means that there is a harmless version of it moving around the human species today or not.

    That is my hypothesis.  There is plenty of reason to believe that this will happen…

    (here’s one:  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316)

    Obviously, the widespread anti-body testing will help with that.  But at the end of the day, the biggest sign will be that this thing disappears without giving us much warning.  As controversial as it has been to say this, my view of what we’ve seen supports that hypothesis.  First, we did all of this social distancing and locking down, which was supposed to flatten our curve and stretch the illness… but in most places, the epidemic seems to have sharply peaked and receded (or is receding) in defiance of our best efforts.  In that sense, despite its differences with SARS, it may end up being much closer than we imagined.  (and yeah, yeah, I know there are a lot of reasons to say I’m wrong.  Time will tell.)

13. Member
    jeannebodine

    @jeannebodine

    2:20 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    @dannyalexander, correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t you tell us that you came extremely close to losing your mother a few years ago when she contracted a flu that was severely complicated by her pre-existing respiratory problems?

    I don’t mean to be callous but why do you feel that the country needs to or can ensure that persons with compromised immune and/or respiratory systems will not suffer or die with COVID-19 when this can happen every year with the various strains of influenza.  I can sympathize because I lost my mother 6 years ago in January after she developed pneumonia after contracting the flu but I understand this to be an inevitable situation when dealing with persons over 65 and and those with significant commodities.

     

     

14. Member
    Western Chauvinist

    @WesternChauvinist

    

    2:50 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    We simply can’t wait for a vaccine next year some time. People’s lives are being destroyed right now.

    I’ve sent “pre-payments” to my hairdresser and dog groomer (who is raising four, young OPK (other people’s kids)) hoping to help them with their cash flow issues. These are small businesses and I imagine it’s going to be nigh impossible for them to make the rent for their store front. Oh, yeah, they can get “loans” — which have to be paid back. Where’s the money coming from? We can’t live like this. 

    I have vulnerable kids with serious health conditions. We’re being careful, but Mr. C is still going to work (considered essential services). If he gets furloughed and we lose our insurance, even temporarily? We’re screwed. We have pharmaceutical expenses in excess of $20k/month. We just got a $900+ bill for Little Miss Anthrope’s last 3-month MRI.

    It’s our responsibility to do everything we can to protect our kids and ourselves and we’re doing it. I scored more bleach yesterday; we’ve been sewing reusable, washable masks; I have spray bottles of rubbing alcohol and bleach solution on my kitchen counter that I use multiple times per day; and we practice sterile technique every time new things come into the house. It takes me longer to unload the groceries than it does to shop for them. I put the mail on the glass cook top for ease of cleaning and to burn off anything I might have missed. The kids aren’t going anywhere — all their appointments are either by telephone or internet. We’ll live this carefully as long as we need to, but this country has got to get back to work. And soon.

    Life has a 100% mortality rate. You do the best you can and adapt in difficult circumstances. That’s all anyone can do, and the government can’t do it for us.

15. Member
    Danny Alexander

    @DannyAlexander

    2:57 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    #73 jeannebodine

    A key (perhaps *the* key) difference this year is the virulence level — this thing is hyper-transmissible.

    See Ontheleftcoast’s comment a short ways up on this thread:  Nationally we’re on track to hit the numbers for flu deaths in a bad year but inside of 12 weeks.

    With even The Washington Post finally coming around to accepting the high probability that this virus resulted from a lab accident in Wuhan, rather than from some kind of zoonotic event in the main Wuhan “wet market,” the virulence-level issue becomes all the more salient.

    Why?

    Because researchers into bat-derived coronaviruses at both the China CDC Wuhan branch lab and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology spent the past several years frenetically amassing and cataloging a massive array of heretofore undiscovered coronaviruses from the wild — one estimate puts the CDC lab’s haul at approximately 2000 new coronaviruses collected, for instance.

    To me, the significance of this is that I believe the researchers had a mandate from Beijing to find a naturally-occurring coronavirus that could be stealth-deployed among older-generation Uyghurs, presently held in concentration camps in Xinjiang province, for ethnic cleansing purposes with plausible deniability.

    In other words, the researchers were tasked with determining which coronavirus in their expanding collection could be optimized for several deployment parameters:  They *selected* a novel coronavirus for optimal naturally present transmissibility and lethality attributes — and then they went and goofed up the whole evil genocidal scheme through negligent biosafety practice that turned their tool on Wuhan itself.

    So where the risk to my mom’s survival is concerned, by my lights, this time is markedly different.

16. Member
    jeannebodine

    @jeannebodine

    4:11 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    @Danny Alexander, your Mom seems like a very special person. You are lucky to have her and she’s fortunate to have such a loving son.

17. Inactive
    Hammer, The

    @RyanM

    4:42 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    Danny Alexander (View Comment):

    #73 jeannebodine

    A key (perhaps *the* key) difference this year is the virulence level — this thing is hyper-transmissible.

    See Ontheleftcoast’s comment a short ways up on this thread: Nationally we’re on track to hit the numbers for flu deaths in a bad year but inside of 12 weeks.

    With even The Washington Post finally coming around to accepting the high probability that this virus resulted from a lab accident in Wuhan, rather than from some kind of zoonotic event in the main Wuhan “wet market,” the virulence-level issue becomes all the more salient.

    Why?

    Because researchers into bat-derived coronaviruses at both the China CDC Wuhan branch lab and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology spent the past several years frenetically amassing and cataloging a massive array of heretofore undiscovered coronaviruses from the wild — one estimate puts the CDC lab’s haul at approximately 2000 new coronaviruses collected, for instance.

    To me, the significance of this is that I believe the researchers had a mandate from Beijing to find a naturally-occurring coronavirus that could be stealth-deployed among older-generation Uyghurs, presently held in concentration camps in Xinjiang province, for ethnic cleansing purposes with plausible deniability.

    In other words, the researchers were tasked with determining which coronavirus in their expanding collection could be optimized for several deployment parameters: They *selected* a novel coronavirus for optimal naturally present transmissibility and lethality attributes — and then they went and goofed up the whole evil genocidal scheme through negligent biosafety practice that turned their tool on Wuhan itself.

    So where the risk to my mom’s survival is concerned, by my lights, this time is markedly different.

    Danny- as a hypothetical, let’s say your mom was not at risk, but someone else was. And furthermore, let’s say your mom’s retirement was being reduced to nothing and her job was at stake if this lockdown continues. I think your priorities would change. As Jeanne says, your mom sounds lovely, and she is very lucky to have such a devoted son. But this is about the country as a whole, and there is a lot more to consider. My Dad is 68 and works in a hospital. I pray that he will stay safe. But he goes to work every day because staying 100% safe at all costs is simply not how we are able to thrive as a society or as individuals.

18. Inactive
    Phil Turmel

    @PhilTurmel

    5:39 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 14, 2020

    Danny Alexander (View Comment):

    #56 Phil Turmel

    Totally specious assertions made about what my mother does and doesn’t do, based on zero knowledge.

    Based on your own post, which …

    Today represents the first time in a month that she’s gone to meet a prospective real estate buyer at a listing; she is not physically getting within 25 feet of the prospect and will not be accompanying him into the house — and then she will drive right back home, resuming business via phone and laptop.

    You have now elaborated on.  Still not self-isolation by current (insane) standards, standards you seem to be  insisting on for the rest of us.

    Aside from the occasional stroll around our block, she has gone nowhere else outside the house and yard — again, for the past month.

    Still not excusing your demand that the rest of use suffer to prevent exposure of your mother to excess risk.

    My dad lost a longtime friend to the virus about ten days ago — does that qualify in this pissing contest you seem interested in conducting?

    You seem to be wholly investing, emotionally, in the idea that we should all cower in our homes until a vaccine is available.  My point is that life must go on, even without a vaccine, as has been true of all epidemics and pandemics through all the millennia of human history.

    Your insistence upon this is entirely understandable, given your circumstances, even though others who have already lost more are capable of still considering the benefit of society as a whole.

    And with that, I’ll leave you to your plaintive cries.