What Does A Quarantine Due To Coronavirus Mean For Truckers?

Wow, you guys really are losing your minds over this. I think the constant exposure to the doom-and-gloom of the 24/7 news cycle is making you mad.

I've yet to hear anything from day one that leads me to believe there's anything special about this virus at all. The numbers don't bear it out, the symptoms seem the same as every virus I can remember since first grade, and we've heard from tons of people who have had it and all said they felt crappy for a few days and then were fine. Surprise! Same as every virus ever.

I've been wondering why the hospitals are being overrun by such a tiny number of patients. Look at these numbers again from a few days ago:

Quick comparison: Flu vs Coronavirus in the U.S.

• Flu
• Coronavirus
• Infected
• 46,000,000
• 50,000
• Hospitalized
• 550,000
• 3,000
• Dead
• 41,000
• 655

• Flu
• Infected: 46,000,000
• Hospitalized: 550,000
• Dead: 41,000
• Coronavirus
• Infected: 50,000
• hospitalized: 3,000
• Dead: 655

Now let's also remember this:

About 1 million adults in the US seek care in a hospital due to pneumonia every year, and 50,000 die from this disease.

So my question is why are the hospitals suddenly being overrun by such small numbers of coronavirus patients?

We have 1.5 million people in the U.S. hospitalized every year from the flu or pneumonia, and a combined 100,000 die from it. Yet the tiny number of coronavirus patients are suddenly overwhelming the medical system?

Let me remind you guys of this once again:

Italy has an ageing population. The average age of those who have died [from coronavirus] is 79.5 years according to the Ministry of Health, who also stated that over 99% had at least one pre-existing health condition.

You guys are spending so much time listening to the news and pondering global conspiracies that you're losing your minds.

Rick, as far as the testing goes, a virus is so small it can only be seen with an electron microscope. It can exist in a single cell. There's no way they can do a test that proves a person is 100% free of the virus. It's entirely possible a person could test negative even though they're positive. It's impossible to detect very tiny amounts, and even a completely resistant immune system would not eradicate every last trace of the virus from the body.

It's an absolute certainty that way more people have this virus than they could possibly know. 95% of us have never been tested, more than half of the people who get the virus will not have any symptoms, and tons of people have admitted to being sick recently but never letting anyone know. If I was sick I wouldn't have let anyone know either. So the death rates they're talking about are a joke. They can't possibly know how many of us have it, or have already gotten over it.

I came home from France a few weeks ago. I've never had any symptoms, but it seems impossible I was never exposed to it after spending my time in tourist trips, ski resorts, planes, hotels, and airports from France to Switzerland to Belgium to Newark. I mean, seriously, I was engulfed in people all over the world all that time.

I'll talk more tomorrow about the real problem we're facing right now, which is a lack of true leadership. All we have is people trying to push their own agenda, say the right things, or win a popularity contest. True leadership doesn't exist in this fiasco. I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

Two sided coin there Brett.

I am FAR FROM gloom and doom. Still think the best bet is just to expose everyone now (or soon after HHS & .mil have the facilities to deal with the overflow), and get past it.

The fact remains though - we are still too new in the cycle, to see if recovery also means CURE. And the bet place (with the longest timeline) is a country where THEIR BEST INTERESTS AND OURS, don't necessarily align.

Dr Fauci in New England Journal Of Medicine saying it's "less severe than the flu".

Still calling BS on the media driven panic - fire drill or whatever it may be.

As DJT and others said - "we don't want the cure to be worse than the disease".

My county issued a "stay at home order" yesterday (more like a suggestion - since it has no "penalties for failure to comply - most likely because THEY WOULD FAIL if challenged in a courtroom based on LAW, NOT PANIC).

My city sent me an email linking to local restaurants that are open for takeout (PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL EATERIES - otherwise THEY MAY NOT BE THERE when this is over), followed an hour later by a "stay at home order" issued by the city.

From a local Sheriff Sgt that I'm friends with, these orders have ZERO LEGAL VALIDITY unless they are ISSUED BY THE GOVERNOR (and DeSantis is not given to undue panic, though he is affected by his peers and media pressure to some extent).

NYC is getting HAMMERED. "Reported Cases" (that are certainly being under-reported) are 20K more than China in the US right now.

And then there's this stupidity.

I'm in a gas station locally - guy comes in with a (useless) mask & gloves, proceeds to go outside and take off the mask, and smoke a cigarette with the gloves he's TOUCHED EVERYTHING WITH - conveying everything he's (potentially) touched RIGHT INTO HIS MOUTH.

Sometimes I think a "thinning of the herd", might not be such a horrible thing...

Rick

Rick is right. The testing usually done for viruses is a search for antibodies. Normally. This one is a search for the virus itself. It has been long enough that those infected earlier would have the antibodies to fight it off. That is not happening.

Brett, brother . . . you are correct, the numbers don't match the craziness associated with this. Think of it this way . . . this is the flu but kills 20 times as many people. Therefore, right off the bat, it grabbed the attention of everyone. Then people started washing hands, social distancing, etc. Generally sound infection control type things. So that slowed it WAY down. The folks that found out how bad it is saved us. If we all ignored it (like we generally do the flu), this thing would be completely out of control, it would be a catastrophic meltdown of society. But we caught on to it early, educated the world, and took action. That has saved millions of lives. Even so, there are still hundreds of thousands that are getting it, even with all the forewarning.

Oldschool . . . I'm an old southern boy, raised more outside than inside. 20+ year Navy/Marine Corps vet. Been there, done that with medicine. Seen the ****tiness of the world. Might be where my doom and gloom comes from. BUT . . . My "safe space" is in the woods. The peace, the feeling of permanency, the overwhelming feeling of smallness. The lack of the damn doom and gloom 24/7 news cycle. The loss of service on my phone. The hilarity of 2 squirrels. Yep, THAT is home. I live on a farm now and the nearest town is 3000 people . . . WAY too many. Time to move. And I like my tin-foil hat, I think it looks stylish. I don't believe the news. I watch numbers. I compare history to where we are. We can't even compare this to the Great Depression. Happened too fast, too big, and the economy is very different now from where it was. We can't compare to weinmar republic, nor rome, nor to venezuela, nor to argentina. And no, not even to zimbabwe. The circumstances and the underlying economies and politics are completely different. Figuring this out will take a whole new paradigm. This has never happened in the history of the world. Transportation is so different, science is so different, economics is so different. Money is different. I'm gonna feed the cows in the morning, then head out. Catch some fish, build a crappy shelter to keep the rain off (i'm gonna cheat and take a tarp), drink me some corn whiskey, remember my ancestors, and just be. In the woods. I can't tell you the calming of the mind it brings, the clarity it forces on you, the humility that you feel. I just can't think too clear with like you said . . . the gloom and doom, the end of the world BS, the frenzy of hate of the (insert political party here). Time to rest the old brain housing group. Bring things down from max level frenzy of analysis.

Think of it this way . . . this is the flu but kills 20 times as many people

No, it doesn't. That's the thing - where do you get that from? They have absolutely no clue whatsoever how many people have been exposed to this. None. They haven't tested probably 99% of the population. I said 95% yesterday, but it's probably 99%.

If we all ignored it (like we generally do the flu), this thing would be completely out of control, it would be a catastrophic meltdown of society. But we caught on to it early, educated the world, and took action. That has saved millions of lives. Even so, there are still hundreds of thousands that are getting it, even with all the forewarning.

Again, I completely disagree with every word of that. You call it educating the world when a bunch of self-serving newspeople create a panic and then a bunch of self-serving politicians grandstand and pander?

Here is a quote from the article Rick linked to by Dr. Fauci In New England Journal Of Medicine:

“In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity, If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%.

This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to sSARS or MERS, which had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36% respectively.”

JCTrucker, instead of quoting the mainstream news, try looking up the facts. Look at the numbers. They clearly do not describe the same situation the news describes, the one you and many others have bought into.

Here is a great article by John P.A. Ioannidis, who is professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine:

A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

That article is a great read. Here are some quotes, but it's well worth taking the time to read the entire thing.

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.

This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.

Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.

That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.

Some musing from me:

Lack Of True Leadership

What we lack right now is true leadership. Leadership means that someone stands up and does what needs to be done for the greater good instead of what is self-serving or popular.

In the military that means making decisions that may cost some lives in order to save many more. In business that means laying off some employees to keep a company healthy and prevent a bankruptcy that would cost many more jobs. In a household that means making everyone cut back on their purchases to prevent a bankruptcy that would cost the family everything and clean the house so the household doesn't become dysfunctional.

Think about it - who are the true leaders right now in this situation? Who is making decisions that are neither self-serving nor necessarily popular? Now you might say that quarantine isn't popular, but if you're a politician it's the far more popular choice if you're running for re-election in today's climate of news-driven panic. If you're in the news business it makes for great news. If you're in the medical community it's what's most convenient for the medical community.

Oh I have a beauty about the medical folks in a minute. Stay tuned.

The fallout from this will be catastrophic for public health and well-being. The economic consequences will be devastating. The number of poor and middle-class people who will lose their jobs and therefore their healthcare will be overwhelming. The cutbacks that tens of millions of people will make to the quality of the food they eat and the recreational activities they can afford will be huge.

Tens of millions of people have spent many years or even decades building careers or businesses that went bankrupt almost overnight. The cascading effects of this will take many months or even years to be fully realized.

The anxiety and isolation will also have farreaching health effects in the form of depression, obesity, and of course suicide.

Then, of course, my greatest fear will come true - the re-creation of this panic by the media every time a new virus emerges. We've set a terrifying precedent by reacting the way we have to what appears by the numbers to be a rather ordinary flu-like virus, as it would have been labeled in most years and completely ignored.

Death By Transportation

What comes next? Do we eliminate all forms of travel to prevent deaths from crashing cars, planes, trains, and bicycles?

The Global status report on road safety 2018, launched by WHO in December 2018, highlights that the number of annual road traffic deaths has reached 1.35 million.

In the United States Alone:

Transportation-related fatalities constituted just under 2% of the 2.43 million deaths per year from all causes in the United States, or 1 in 56. Transportation was the biggest source of all “unintentional injury deaths” (38%) — those not caused by old age, disease, suicide or homicide.

Between 2000 and 2009, on average 6,067 pedestrians and bicyclists died on U.S. highways and in collisions with other modes of transport. Of these, 4,930 died when hit by cars and trucks operated by private users, 545 deaths resulted from collisions with commercial carriers, and 592 from commercial users not on highways.

We've shut down the globe to prevent an illness that has only killed 27,000 people globally so far. How can we allow people to keep using automobiles and other forms of transportation if it's killing millions every year?

Heck, if we eliminated cars and trucks we would eliminate the #1 cause of accidental deaths in America, saving tens of thousands of lives every year. How can we not do this? Don't we care about human lives?

Third Leading Cause Of Death In The U.S. - Medical Errors

Why isn't the medical community raising alarms about this little tidbit? Well, that certainly wouldn't be self-serving for them, would it? But it sure would be healthy for the rest of us! Read this:

The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about

• Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.
• A recent Johns Hopkins study claims more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other reports claim the numbers to be as high as 440,000.

Makary defines a death due to medical error as one that is caused by inadequately skilled staff, error in judgment or care, a system defect or a preventable adverse effect. This includes computer breakdowns, mix-ups with the doses or types of medications administered to patients and surgical complications that go undiagnosed.

The U.S. patient-care study, which was released in 2016, explored death-rate data for eight consecutive years. The researchers discovered that based on a total of 35,416,020 hospitalizations, there was a pooled incidence rate of 251,454 deaths per year — or about 9.5 percent of all deaths — that stemmed from medical error.

So we're in a global panic over a virus that kills maybe 1% of patients, but nearly 10% of the people who die in our hospitals die because of a medical error.

So far, 27,000 people have died globally from coronavirus and we're in a worldwide panic, but 250,000 people die every year in the U.S. alone from medical error, and no one says a word? According to some studies, the actual number could be closer to 500,000 deaths each year from medical errors! Now in my world, that's something to panic about.

Brett said it from the very beginning and keeps repeating it for every Chicken Little that comments: this a bad seasonal flu.

Below is a link to some statistical projections regarding the Coronavirus:

Coronavirus Projections

I saw this on the television news, which simply poured gasoline on the panic fire by emphasizing the shortage of the hospital beds in the report. As far as I'm concerned, because the report lists the hospital bed shortage first, it is biased in favor of fueling the panic. But look at the third statistical data summary, which is total deaths of 82,000 (rounded up) through August. The CDC reports an estimated 61,000 total flu deaths for the 2017-18 flu season. Given that the report, in my opinion is biased in favor of the panic, I expect that the final number of total deaths will actually be less than the 2019-20 flu season.

PJ said in Old School's thread "The 'Boogey Man' virus.

Yes I agree this bug is a bad thing, but I agree with Brett and several others. It is just another bad bug. Be cautious and clean and use good ole fashion common sense can go along way.

That thread shares the experiences that drivers have had with extreme measures in response to the Coronavirus.

After the data shows that the health impact on society is comparable to the seasonal flu, I think there are two questions that every American who jumped on the bandwagon and fed into the media narrative needs to ask themselves:

1. Will you acknowledge that the reaction to the Coronavirus was drastic overkill and the media hype was a fraud, similar to Y2K?

2. If you say yes to the first question, will you jump on the bandwagon next time and essentially never take a critical perspective to anything the media tells you and the government imposes?

I really hope that a majority of our citizens, will answer 1) yes, and 2) hell no!

This is all a manufactured last ditch effort to get Trump out of office

This is my substitution for a tinfoil hat

This is all a manufactured last ditch effort to get Trump out of office

This is my substitution for a tinfoil hat

TDS is a real thing. (Trump Derangement Syndrome)

Mainstream media has it, and has been proven time and time again for outright lying to the public.

Good info Brett.

At least with all the panic buying their is good freight to haul, still working on getting my stuff done so I can join in.

Accurate summaries derive from verifiable, concrete facts.

"Accuracy" pertains to the pool of underlying facts; selectivity in choice of facts in making any case inevitably introduces bias.

Math may be the purest science but statistics can be bent almost any which way and thus, lie.

I wish it were more of a goal here to eliminate bias instead of amplifying it, but, heck, free speech, right?

This is all a manufactured last ditch effort to get Trump out of office

This is my substitution for a tinfoil hat

If that's what it is, they have failed! I seen a few days ago that his approval rating was at its highest since he took office. #FakeNews