And the CDC was apparently not allowed to tell the public that ”elderly and physically fragile Americans“ should not fly.

https://apnews.com/921ad7f1f08d7634bf681ba785faf269

“The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, a federal official told The Associated Press.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the plan as a way of trying to control the virus, but White House officials ordered the air travel recommendation be removed, said the official who had direct knowledge of the plan. Trump administration officials have since suggested certain people should consider not traveling, but have stopped short of the stronger guidance sought by the CDC.”

Are we going to be another China?

In Taiwan, there were a lot of discussions on the cover-ups on Mainland China and people ask "could this happen in Taiwan"? In China, apparently one of the blames being laid out was the HuBei provincial officials were waiting for the Central Government's approval on alarming people.

The medical people in Taiwan said that Taiwan has a process where decisions and announcements are made by the TW CDC and it does not require higher approval. The TW CDC is pretty transparent (but they do try to downplay some stuff to avoid adding fear) and so far has most people's trust. Taiwan's politic is as polarized as the US but both sides in general trust their CDC so far.

Trust is very important right now.

There is some evidence of that, such as the lack of transparency on the testing numbers, the CDC cancelling scheduled tele-briefings and being slow to update numbers, and the CDC recommendations being screened/approved/edited by politicians.

My hopes were and still are that this being an election year everyone will be on their best behavior and doing their best, but the flip side risk of that is possible minimizing and cover ups.

On the other hand, someone could argue that these are efforts to be balanced and measured, and keep a balance between public health, economy, individual freedoms and quality of life, but this is somewhat subjective and debatable, too. But let's avoid OMNI stuff.

Then there's local health departments, like this

https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavir...good-time.html

Ironically, and unfortunately, "elderly and physically fragile individuals" is the likely prime target audience for cruises...

any government that cares more about its citizens' health than the cruise industry's profits should be advising all their citizens, especially the elderly, to avoid cruises for the time being and pressure the industry into giving out refunds.

Thanks, that's what I read too. I wish I could have gotten rubbing alcohol. Store shelves are empty.

I will take both products, as wipes, and will be mindful of the other comment about violet water. I certainly won't spray it about randomly.

Since it can be spread by those without symptoms there's no stopping it. However, we will probably have a vaccine or treatment in time, the more we slow it down the fewer people will die before that happens. And by keeping the case count down we reduce the number that die because they can't get medical care.

You know what will effectively stop cruising? If insurance companies pull plug covering ships/crew and individually people taking cruises.

I'm surprised that they have not done it yet. Travel insurance companies in split second invalidate your coverage if you travel in 'known, affected areas'. Why can't cruise ships being designated such 'areas' before even cruise takes place?

I am coming to the opposite conclusion, looking what is going on in Italy - if right now they are having their healthcare system in the affected regions under enormous stress, how it is going to handle the situation when more patients are added?

Confucianism philosophy think everyone has two loyalties. To your parents (and higher), and to your country (emperor). So obeying order from the government is natural for most people. But if you are a government official and there is a conflict, 忠孝不能兩全, you can petition to the emperor to allow you take leave to go home. Although the emperor can demand priority to him, in great majority of cases the emperor feels obligated to let you serve your parents first. At the top end of the society, emperor has absolute power, but emperor not only is not a Dad who knows everything, emperor is assumed to be the Dad who knows nothing. Emperor must hire the smartest and most capable intellectuals as his advisers. In addition to the normal measurement of loyalty, their loyalty is also judged on how much they dare to advise on issues that the emperor dislike. 武官死戰， 文官死諫 （Military officials die by fighting battle, civilian officials die by expostulation") . Under this philosophy good emperors will survive better than bad ones, leading to a more authoritative system.

The problem is that when San Francisco declared emergency, citizens were asked to prepare according to a list already in place that is intended for earthquakes. In Houston it is mainly for hurricane floods. In every city's list there is water and other stuff that are unlikely to be disrupted by viruses. So it makes sense to store things to decrease frequent of going out to shopping, but not to worry about water supply.

It may be important to stratify death rate according to age. Clearly those under 40, 40-60. >60 are very different. a 0.5% or 2% for the population is not very meaningful for me, At my age it is 8%, for those order which is near 15%

Colleagues at UW told me that Seattle is nearly an empty town yesterday. The psychological impact of the 9 death nursing home appears very large. People don't seem to know that they should be more scared if there are 3 deaths scattered in random spots

Italy is still early, sadly. Have to be on the downside of the peak and without an overloaded health care system. Italy is what we don't want to repeat in Seattle or anywhere else. Need a shallower and later case peak then they have had.

Of note, Singapore has had cases for 6+ weeks and the new cases reported is closer to linear than exponential. As many people are leaving quarantine cured as ones who are newly infected (although there is a bit of a spike in new cases over the last 2 days). Not sure if warmer weather is helping cut down transmission, or aggressive quarantines, but it is a very densely populated area so one would expect a more robust spread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c...k_in_Singapore

an overwhelmed healthcare system is also more likely to detect fewer of the infections, so the denominator in the fatality rate (the number of cases) will be lower than the real number of infections.

Especially in eg Italy with the case count still increasing rapidly (likely indicating that most of the increase is from detection catching up with previously infected more severe cases, rather than from detecting new infections) it seems likely there are many more infected but asymptomatic or low severity people who will not become a case.

It�s also pretty obvious that when a country reports deaths on the very same day they report their first cases (as both Italy and Iran did) that they will likely have had uncontrolled community transmission for perhaps a week or more before that date, putting detection (and thus number of cases and the denominator of the fatality rate) behind the curve.

Deaths almost always get counted, and usually on the day they occur. Infections on the other hand are much harder to count accurately, and when things are overwhelmed only the most serious ones will get counted.

Please don't. Many people are allergic to flowers/fragrances and even those who aren't probably don't want their clothes to smell from flowers.

Taiwan is a first-world country with strong, independent state institutions (unlike the US these days). And, while there's certainly a degree of political polarization, it's spawned nothing like the scorched-earth campaign of destruction being waged on the US civil service.
I truly fear the US is facing a rampant, uncontrolled epidemic.