Some groups in my office have been directed to take their laptops home nightly; that there may be an email any day now saying for everyone to work from home for the next few weeks.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
This is getting outlandish. Received an e-mail just now from OHSAA. Umpiring meetings are cancelled due to the covid 19, whether you've been to the necessary number or not.
This is for me, softball, but baseball as well, and I would assume any spring sport.
For softball, you need to attend 1 state meeting, and 4 local meetings every year to be legit/licensed - every year after you get your first license.
(for the record, I made the state meeting plus 5 local meetings already).
This covid 19 is either super serious, or people are panicking. I know which one I think.
But, good news: I won't go to meeting number 6 tonight, at 6, since it's cancelled. But, I will go to our church's life planning at 7.
(had a meeting at church last night. Pastor jokingly said "glad you could make it since we won't be having church soon............)
Moves like this are just panic and overreaction by people who have not bothered to inform themselves. They are making decisions in a bubble, or on poor advice.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
The thing to be watching is transmissability in the southern hemisphere. I was talking with my CEO yesterday and he was saying he had just gotten off the phone with Brazil and they said they weren't seeing it spread there. That said, I was looking at news reports from Brazil last night and found that they DO have cases of community transmission, so it is still a waiting game there.
There were 31 cases in Brazil this morning. There are 37 now. I'm trying to find out if the new cases are travelers returning home or if it is local transmission.
A week ago, they got their first case. Four days ago, they had 13.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
A post on Facebook by a woman named Cristina Higgins. I have not, yet, seen additional verification of the state of things. Take it for what it's worth.
I am writing to you from Bergamo, Italy, at the heart of the coronavirus crisis. The news media in the US has not captured the severity of what is happening here. I am writing this post because each of you, today, not the government, not the school district, not the mayor, each individual citizen has the chance, today to take actions that will deter the Italian situation from becoming your own country’s reality. The only way to stop this virus is to limit contagion. And the only way to limit contagion is for millions of people to change their behavior today.
If you are in Europe or the US you are weeks away from where we are today in Italy.
I can hear you now. “It’s just a flu. It only affects old people with preconditions”
There are 2 reasons why Coronavirus has brought Italy to it’s knees. First it is a flu is devastating when people get really sick they need weeks of ICU – and, second, because of how fast and effectively it spreads. There is 2 week incubation period and many who have it never show symptoms.
When Prime Minister Conte announced last night that the entire country, 60 million people, would go on lock down, the line that struck me most was “there is no more time.” Because to be clear, this national lock down, is a hail mary. What he means is that if the numbers of contagion do not start to go down, the system, Italy, will collapse.
Why? Today the ICUs in Lombardy are at capacity – more than capacity. They have begun to put ICU units in the hallways. If the numbers do not go down, the growth rate of contagion tells us that there will be thousands of people who in a matter of a week? two weeks? who will need care. What will happen when there are 100, or a 1000 people who need the hospital and only a few ICU places left?
On Monday a doctor wrote in the paper that they have begun to have to decide who lives and who dies when the patients show up in the emergency room, like what is done in war. This will only get worse.
There are a finite number of drs, nurses, medical staff and they are getting the virus. They have also been working non-stop, non-stop for days and days. What happens when the drs, nurses and medical staff are simply not able to care for the patients, when they are not there?
And finally for those who say that this is just something that happens to old people, starting yesterday the hospitals are reporting that younger and younger patients – 40, 45, 18, are coming in for treatment.
You have a chance to make a difference and stop the spread in your country. Push for the entire office to work at home today, cancel birthday parties, and other gatherings, stay home as much as you can. If you have a fever, any fever, stay home. Push for school closures, now. Anything you can do to stop the spread, because it is spreading in your communities – there is a two week incubation period – and if you do these things now you can buy your medical system time.
And for those who say it is not possible to close the schools, and do all these other things, locking down Italy was beyond anyone’s imagination a week ago.
Soon you will not have a choice, so do what you can now.
Please share.
Last edited by PrplPplEater; 03/11/2006:40 PM. Reason: This was posted yesterday at 6:42pm
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
But if Italy is on lockdown, how will rich Italians register their lambo’s and Ferrari’s in Switzerland to avoid paying taxes?
Definitely not fair.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
There has been a LOT of speculation about that, especially early on. It was pretty much universally shot down , but I never saw any concrete reasoning as to why the "experts" were so certain. The notion died out pretty quickly and people generally haven't been asking since.
Personally, I feel that it probably doesn't matter at all at this point, but I never fully accepted that this isn't an escaped pet. It is just TOO MUCH COINCIDENCE for something like this to pop up out of nowhere right next to their ONLY Level 4 facility.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
I have never understood what motivates someone to become a serial killer. [yes, I have read all the reasons, but damn man.] I have never understood why people tamper w/food, medicines, etc in order to poison others. I have never understood why some people create computer viruses. I don't understand why someone would want to unleash a virus that kills millions.
Yet, I do know it's been an active topic of discussion for quite some time and there have been books and movies made about such an event.
If people will kill complete strangers and do the other things I mentioned above, isn't it therefore logical that others would create and unleash a virus that is designed to kill millions?
I'm not even a conspiracy guy, but it's all too convenient.
I would like delve deeper into someone purposely developing this virus, but before I do..........would that be considered a political conversation or a society conversation? I will refrain if it is the former, but I think it would be an interesting societal conversation. Germ warfare has been a scary, but relevant topic for a long, long time.
Definitely it's own thread, but I don't think this is a deliberate release.... though, I have entertained the idea that the widespread nature would have easily been attainable by a few dozen volunteers self-infecting and then choosing to travel. It's certainly more effective than flying planes into buildings.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
Things are escalating quickly with closures, precautions, etc. After reading that post from the girl in Italy, I’m a bit concerned ..
"First down inside the 10. A score here will put us in the Super Bowl. Cooper is far to the left as Njoku settles into the slot. Moore is flanked out wide to the right. Chubb and Ford are split in the backfield as Watson takes the snap ... Here we go."
Things are escalating quickly with closures, precautions, etc. After reading that post from the girl in Italy, I’m a bit concerned ..
I'm one of the worriers, but I'm a bit skeptical of that story. It's possibly true, but I'd wait until a real Italian official or scientist confirms that stuff. Anyone could be posting crap on FB and hoping it goes viral (no pun intended).
“...Iguodala to Curry, back to Iguodala, up for the layup! Oh! Blocked by James! LeBron James with the rejection!”
So, I've done a little more digging after sharing that, and while I cannot confirm the story, yet, I've seen a few items that do lend a degree of credence to it. I will come back and post those things in a bit, but I'll list them now. 1. An article in The Atlantic describing the decisions Italian doctors are facing. 2. Another story, I think it was the BBC, reporting on some of it, but focusing more in different areas that weren't quite at that level, yet. 3. A brief interview with the mayor of Bergamo basically begging the world to learn from them and act faster
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
Update. The Cleveland Clinic has developed a COVID 19 test that gives results in 8 hours as opposed to the 2-3 days it takes for the other tests. They developed the test in NINE days, I repeat nine. Scientists worked 24/7 once the CDC gave them the okay on 3/2
The Cleveland hospitals are also developing drive thru testing centers. Why on earth would the CDC wait till 3/2 to give the okay? One would think they would have begged for all the resources they could get since President Jenius, MIT Nephew cut all their funding.
I have a question, Eve. If more people are staying at home, wouldn't that actually help your business?
You (and I) would think so. But the people who spend money on my games are typically young adults and the business world is in flux right now. And the market is down. So everybody is sitting on their money.
All businesses in every sector is affected. And so people arent gonna blow money on games.
Thanks for answering. When I first heard the news, I thought businesses such as yours would actually have an uptake because more people would be looking for in-home entertainment. But, you are living it and I am not. Thanks again.
The Extraordinary Decisions Facing Italian Doctors There are now simply too many patients for each one of them to receive adequate care.
12:56 PM ET Yascha Mounk Contributing writer at The Atlantic
Two weeks ago, Italy had 322 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could lavish significant attention on each stricken patient.
One week ago, Italy had 2,502 cases of the virus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could still perform the most lifesaving functions by artificially ventilating patients who experienced acute breathing difficulties.
Today, Italy has 10,149 cases of the coronavirus. There are now simply too many patients for each one of them to receive adequate care. Doctors and nurses are unable to tend to everybody. They lack machines to ventilate all those gasping for air.
Now the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (SIAARTI) has published guidelines for the criteria that doctors and nurses should follow in these extraordinary circumstances. The document begins by likening the moral choices facing Italian doctors to the forms of wartime triage that are required in the field of “catastrophe medicine.” Instead of providing intensive care to all patients who need it, its authors suggest, it is becoming necessary to follow “the most widely shared criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources.”
The principle they settle upon is utilitarian. “Informed by the principle of maximizing benefits for the largest number,” they suggest that “the allocation criteria need to guarantee that those patients with the highest chance of therapeutic success will retain access to intensive care.”
The authors, who are medical doctors, then deduce a set of concrete recommendations for how to manage these impossible choices, including this: “It may become necessary to establish an age limit for access to intensive care.”
Those who are too old to have a high likelihood of recovery, or who have too low a number of “life-years” left even if they should survive, will be left to die. This sounds cruel, but the alternative, the document argues, is no better. “In case of a total saturation of resources, maintaining the criterion of ‘first come, first served’ would amount to a decision to exclude late-arriving patients from access to intensive care.”
In addition to age, doctors and nurses are also told to take a patient’s overall state of health into account: “The presence of comorbidities needs to be carefully evaluated.” This is in part because early studies of the virus seem to suggest that patients with serious preexisting health conditions are significantly more likely to die. But it is also because patients in a worse state of overall health could require a greater share of scarce resources to survive: “What might be a relatively short treatment course in healthier people could be longer and more resource-consuming in the case of older or more fragile patients.”
These guidelines apply even to patients who require intensive care for reasons other than the coronavirus, because they too make demands on the same scarce medical resources. As the document clarifies, “These criteria apply to all patients in intensive care, not just those infected with CoVid-19.”
My academic training is in political and moral philosophy. I have spent countless hours in fancy seminar rooms discussing abstract moral dilemmas like the so-called trolley problem. If a train is barreling toward five innocent people who are tied to the tracks, and I could divert it by pulling the lever, but at the cost of killing an innocent bystander, should I do it?
Part of the point of all those discussions was, supposedly, to help professionals make difficult moral choices in real-world circumstances. If you are an overworked nurse battling a novel disease under the most desperate circumstances, and you simply cannot treat everyone, however hard you try, whose life should you save?
Despite those years of theory, I must admit that I have no moral judgment to make about the extraordinary document published by those brave Italian doctors. I have not the first clue whether they are recommending the right or the wrong thing.
But if Italy is in an impossible position, the obligation facing the United States is very clear: To arrest the crisis before the impossible becomes necessary.
This means that our political leaders, the heads of business and private associations, and every one of us need to work together to accomplish two things: Radically expand the capacity of the country’s intensive-care units. And start engaging in extreme forms of social distancing.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
YASCHA MOUNK is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and a senior adviser at Protect Democracy. He is the author of The People vs. Democracy.
Browns is the Browns
... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.
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