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[Reelya]

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out, U.S. government officials said.

Not "Ultimately, the department went from working in 49 countries to just 10."

So you're quibbling over the gap between "Dramatically downsizing" and "no longer working". Check.

Dramatically downsizing probably means they've abolished all their front-end spending programs and now only operate an office there that liaises with local health officials. Because the first thing you cut is frontline spending, and the last thing you do is close your branch office there.

Ok, so they only "dramatically downsized" their international disease prevention efforts in 80% of countries. Given that the point is asking whether the CDC slashed spending on disease prevention or not, the fact that they didn't slash exactly 100% of spending from any one country is kinda not the point here.

It's like someone saying their "pay was slashed to nothing", and you ask them how much they make now and it's "20 cents an hour" and you call them a liar, because 20 cents isn't "nothing". 20 cents and hour is functionally closer to not being paid at all than it is to earning a full salary, the same as dramatically slashing disease-prevention measures is functionally closer to just giving up than it is to making an effort.

[Folly]

How do you get from 0.001% infected to everyone definitely going to catch it, especially with how many vaccines and cures are in development now?

Exponential infection rates and estimated multiple years before vaccines will be ready for widespread deployment.

[TamerVirus]

How do you get from 0.001% infected to everyone definitely going to catch it, especially with how many vaccines and cures are in development now?

Gabriel Leung, Hong Kong's leading public health epidemiologist warns 60% of the global population could get infected if left unchecked

Marc Lipsitch, Harvard epidemiology professor, estimates 40-70% if containment fails

The WHO estimates a public vaccine to take 18 months 

[delphonso]

ZBridges isn't inventing that stuff themself. I've seen plenty of articles with headlines like: "Coronavirus, inevitable", and "Not a matter of if, but when". It is, of course, just to get clicks and views.

People are hopping on the opportunity to make money, and a few books about Covid19 are getting published. I'd be willing to hear them out, but the ones I've seen all are titled "Wuhan virus vs. The world" or some shit which villianizes Wuhan further.

And the newspaper I was getting updates about the virus seems to have pulled down all of their virus articles and information... So that's nice.

[TamerVirus]

a few books about Covid19 are getting published. I'd be willing to hear them out, but the ones I've seen all are titled "Wuhan virus vs. The world" or some shit which villianizes Wuhan further.

Dean Koontz wrote a book called The Eyes of Darkness where the world was devastated by a 100% lethal bio-weapon. In later reprints the bio-weapon was called Wuhan-400.

This book was written in 1981. A weird coincidence.

[delphonso]

Yeah, I read about that. It was originally a Russian name and then changed it in a reprint after the cold war or something. Weird coincidence, nonetheless.

There was that book that detailed the Titanic before that happened, too.

[Trekkin]

How do you get from 0.001% infected to everyone definitely going to catch it, especially with how many vaccines and cures are in development now?

Exponential infection rates and estimated multiple years before vaccines will be ready for widespread deployment.

Except that infection rates are already lagging, and vaccine development is faster than ever -- to say nothing of entry inhibitors. Sure, it would take years under the old model, but we're already well ahead of predictions.

[martinuzz]

We've got our first confirmed case in the Netherlands now as well.
A 56 year old man, whom had recently travelled to Italy, has been quarantained in a hospital in Tilburg.
Now let's hope he didn't spend the past week partying with the carnaval crowds in town.

[Cthulhu]

I'm less worried about the disease itself than the knock-on economic effects.  DOW dropped 1200 points today, and we haven't even hit the supply chain crunch yet.  Everything's just-in-time now so imagine what it's gonna look like if there's a panic rush for supplies and a shortage of said supplies at the same time.  I used to work at a grocery store, we got trucks in every day to maintain maybe half the store's on-shelf inventory in backstock.  The deli cooler had capacity for maybe 48 hours of normal shopping without a resupply, and the more I think about it the more that sounds optimistic.

If there's a panic, stores will be empty in hours, and there's not gonna be any restocking.

Meanwhile Turkey and Russia are openly clashing in Syria, and there's a locust plague running all the way from North Africa to China.  Which horseman is gonna hit the finish line first?

[scriver]

First is conquest, but we've already been acquainted with him for a while

[Loud Whispers]

Why not all 3

[Reelya]

If the coronavirus hits a conflict zone in the colder months then there could well be a big outbreak that's harder to contain.

EDIT:

Earlier on Thursday, CNN reported that Vice President Mike Pence's office would be in charge of all coronavirus messaging after several aides blamed negative coverage of the response on too many mixed messages from senior members of the administration. Later in the day, reports surfaced that a whistleblower at the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking federal protection after complaining that more than a dozen workers who had received the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, lacked proper training or protective gear for infection control.

Obviously it would be a waste to waste protective gear on mere lackeys dealing with potentially infected people coming off the planes. Those workers should clearly provide their own protective gear from the free market.

Seriously, this is how I think those high-level people think about the rank and file workers and citizens:

Say I'm an official, and I order you as a worker to go into a radioactive environment without proper protective gear. Well, that's not my fault, right, is it? You agreed to go in there after all. And if you were someone who actually mattered, you wouldn't be in the position of having to agree to go in there. Or, you say you weren't properly informed about the risk. Well, what sort of loser is in the position of risking their life without knowing the risks? A worthwhile person would have that information to start with.

[Loud Whispers]

If the coronavirus hits a conflict zone in the colder months then there could well be a big outbreak that's harder to contain.

Saudis closed Mecca & Medina to pilgrims; not hard to imagine if they kept the door open someone could bring coronavirus to the Arabian peninsula, where it could then spread to Iraq, Syria or Yemen. Granted it's already spreading in Iran so it could spread through the Arabian peninsula through the Zagros mountains

[Reelya]

Prices of facemasks have skyrocketed. They're trying price controls in some places. This is dangerous.

For example, say the black market price you can get for a facemask goes to $30, but there is a $5 price cap on the store-price. What happens is one guy will come in, buy 100 face masks for $5 each, and charge that $30. Except now that guys sitting on a stockpile of them, so the shortage is worse than before, so he can probably charge $50 each. So, what you have to end up doing is rationing the price-controlled product. This is what happened to the USSR in the 1970s btw. They wanted to deal with inflation, so they put price controls in, which lead to hoarding/speculating/black marketing, so they then implemented rationing, and that's when they ended up with the "bread lines". The lines weren't long because there's a shortage of bread, the lines were long because consumers had too much money vs the amount of bread, and someone could come in and buy up excess bread at the price-controlled price then scalp it on the black market for a significant profit if they didn't ration out sales. The lines were because the price was kept artificially low.

[TamerVirus]

-China
-South Korea
-Japan
Have all reported cases where ‘recovered’ patients have had a relapse in symptoms.
Either reinfection or a situation where they were never truly cured to begin with