Outrage: NYC subways still running and NY leaders are hypocrites

[basil67]

@Libby1 I have read that there appears to be a strong correlation of lower infection rates for those who obey their government.  In China, people were allegedly locked in their houses - can't imagine people in the West accepting this.    Would love to investigate further, but a lot of the info I'm finding is frequently a couple of weeks old.   Will look into it further.   

[Libby1]

23 minutes ago, basil67 said:

@Libby1 I have read that there appears to be a strong correlation of lower infection rates for those who obey their government.  In China, people were allegedly locked in their houses - can't imagine people in the West accepting this.    Would love to investigate further, but a lot of the info I'm finding is frequently a couple of weeks old.   Will look into it further.   

I get that they were very stringent in their approach.  Plus, they were forcibly removing people who had the virus from their homes and into coronavirus quarantine facilities/hospitals.  Still, less than 3,500 deaths in the country where it all began seems very low.  I don't want to put in links, for the usual reason, but various reputable sources I've seen say that the first confirmed case of coronavirus was actually mid November last year.  Wuhan didn't go into lockdown until 23rd January.

That said, I do think our government (UK) was remarkably blase about this until very recently - and the same with the US government.  During a visit to my father's care home weeks ago, I asked a member of staff about their policy re coronavirus and whether visits were likely to be curtailed in the near future.  The member of staff asked "well, do you have coronavirus?  As long as you don't have symptoms of coronavirus, there's no problem in visiting."  He was very confident sounding in his views, and I've always found him an intelligent guy...but I felt he wasn't recognising the severity, and it was my impression that he was following an official line in that respect. 

Same thing with supermarkets.  Any check out assistants I spoke to laughed off concerns about the virus on the basis that there were no confirmed cases in our city at that point (late February).  Maybe a week or two after my conversation with the care home employee, the care home closed its doors to visitors and policies began to change drastically.  But it was very much the case that so long as there were no confirmed coronavirus cases in our city, nobody was worried.  

But sorry to go off the main topic.  I think any city where there's widespread use of an underground/subway system is going to be more vulnerable.  When I lived in London, using the tube was my least favourite part of it all.  The extent to which people are packed together is a health and safety nightmare.  In Scotland, Glasgow & Clyde has by far the worst figures...and unlike most parts of Scotland, Glasgow has underground trains.  They're used by 13 million people annually.  Glasgow underground trains are still running, but on a reduced service.  I should have thought that just results in more essential workers packed into fewer trains - and New York is in the same position, except that it's a far more serious situation there given the numbers of people involved and the massive reliance on that mode of transport in NYC.

[elaine567]

23 minutes ago, Libby1 said:

I get that they were very stringent in their approach.  Plus, they were forcibly removing people who had the virus from their homes and into coronavirus quarantine facilities/hospitals.

We on the other hand are telling people to stay at home until they are at death's door before they contact medical services.
Even our PM was almost moribund before he sought help. 
Had he been  monitored in a quarantine facility 7-10 days prior to his emergency admission, he may never have ended up in intensive care.

[Fletch Lives]

They don't want to shut down essential services.

But, maybe they should? 

[Gaeta]

4 hours ago, Libby1 said:

.  Still, less than 3,500 deaths in the country where it all began seems very low.

There are still people  beleiving China only had 3500 deaths? Even though they had strict confinement measures their deaths total is closer to 100,000 than 3500....and the chinese expert that rang the alarm to the world without China's approval mysteriously found himself dead. 

[NuevoYorko]

5 hours ago, Libby1 said:

I get that they were very stringent in their approach.  Plus, they were forcibly removing people who had the virus from their homes and into coronavirus quarantine facilities/hospitals.  Still, less than 3,500 deaths in the country where it all began seems very low.  I don't want to put in links, for the usual reason, but various reputable sources I've seen say that the first confirmed case of coronavirus was actually mid November last year.  Wuhan didn't go into lockdown until 23rd January.

 

I think that there is a combination of the stringent enforcement you mentioned, including extensive testing and tracking - not only did they force quarantines but they had the capacity to track citizens who were in contact with affected people using cell towers, and they used it.

Also  there is significant questioning of the accuracy of China's numbers.

Edited April 10, 2020 by NuevoYorko

[Ellener]

8 hours ago, Libby1 said:

I just cannot get my head around the notion that New York has had double the amount of deaths that China, home to almost 1,4 billion people and the place where this virus began, has had.  I say notion rather than fact, because at this point it just seems so unfeasible that China's death rate from this is half of New York's.  Prediction models for the West are still being based on Wuhan figures, which is very troubling to me given the already massive disparity between China and the West in terms of how hard this pandemic has hit. 

People who were in China at the time were saying the lockdown in Wuhan was extremely severe, I mean people locked in homes with their dead, with their sick. By armed soldiers. Things people would never tolerate in other countries. And as you say it's hard to know whether media and official sources in China are just projecting government instructions. The good thing about their timeline is we can see that it does indeed pass and within a time frame.