Tracking the COVID-19-Virus in Germany, the USA, Italy and other hot spots in the world

It's become evident that trump is the weakest link in the situation. The best he can do is get out of the way and shut up, because he is incapable of leading in a real crisis.

 

Oh, that problem is easy to fix: test everyone.

 

Not directly related to the numbers in the OP, but I sent this tweet to a number of elected officials this morning. We are going to have to do some serious thought about this:



COG = continuance of government, a phrase from the Carter Era, part of the revamping of government in a time of crisis, including the current order of succession to the Presidency. What many people forget is: the presidency in a functioning Republic if the Legislative is not allowed to vote on legislation if is cannot meet the quorum requirements as proscribed in the US Constitution. There has never been an amendment to this passus in the Constitution.

 

I don't think you could do this in the US, but in those countries where you can mandate people to participate in a random test, I think a random test of people using a large enough sample would give us a good sense of the number of people who are carrying the virus in that community without the need to actually test everyone.

 

In an emergency situation, you'd think that Congress could teleconference in place of being physically present. When Carter was president, we didn't have computers or internet.

 

I don't think there is any shortage of volunteers to get tested.

 

But that (testing volunteers only) would take away from the 'randomness' of the tests. The 'random' part is important to extrapolate general, population-wide, numbers which could be considered reliable.

 

Teleconferencing makes a great deal of sense and it should technically be possible for member's to proxy their votes. So instead of all of the TX House Representatives being present in DC they would just need one GOP and one Dem.

 

Lord if Trump required that he would be called racist, then you have the problem of illegals, can you require them to come out of the woodwork to test? Do they get in front of citizens or wait at the back of the line? How many illegals are there?

 

Europe and the U.S. are likely to get hit harder than other countries due to age. Early on, a lot of people were worried that countries like Africa would be devastated due to lack of healthcare, but Africa has a low life-expectancy and high birthrate (I think it's 7 children per woman). 1st world countries are aging and not making babies.

Perhaps nature is balancing advanced human science which has enabled us to live "too long"?

 

Thanks for that data but I disagree on your observation about nature.

Instead we need to focus on what we are doing that made us vulnerable to this global pandemic. What we have today is 7.6 billion people and two nations with over 1 billion each. On top of that we have a network of air travel than enables a virus to reach all nations within a 48 hour window.

IOW's we created the conditions where something like Covid-19 could not only spread quickly and easily but also where it had population densities in which it could thrive.

A while back I was pondering why it was that Africa was the least infected continent and my research indicated that the answer stems from the Ebola virus outbreak. African nations put testing centers in place at all of their major points of entry and that was still functioning when the Covid-19 virus began.

That PoE testing significantly slowed the infection rate and has proven that it would be an effective ongoing strategy to have in place worldwide as one of the Lessons to be Learned from our current pandemic.

Obviously it is too late for it be effective now but if we do not learn from our mistakes we are doomed to repeat them.

 

Looking at the base data per country for whether they test a sample representative of "everyone", only "critical cases", or somewhere in between would skew the aggregate. It can't help but not. Every country would have to screen everyone or every country would have to screen critical-only, or some agreed-upon standard of who gets tested for the aggregate to be accurate. The base composition in the numbers of tests as the denominator is highly variable, where it should be as close to constant as feasibly possible.

Anyway, it looks like countries testing everyone have a 3-5% rate of infection and countries only testing people with symptoms have a 25-28% rate. I did only look at a small sample of countries....and you can't necessarily trust every country to be honest about who is or is not getting tested.

 

I'm reminded of Biblical history and the tower of Babel. Men became arrogant and thought they were smarter than their creator. They were going to build a tower to heaven. The tower was destroyed, the peoples' language was confused by giving groups separate languages, and those groups were scattered across the Earth into separate, sovereign nations.

Just a thought.

 

That might work, if the Senate and House passed rules permitting members to be "present" by teleconferencing. That rule would be subject to challenge in the courts, if anyone chose to try to challenge it.

 

We live in a different age now. Back when our nation was founded members had to ride horses over long distances in order to attend Congress. Nowadays they can fly instead. Teleconferencing during a period when gathering large numbers of people together in one room is asking for trouble is a reasonable compromise solution.

 

I agree. But all it takes is for someone to challenge the rules as unconstitutional.

 

On what basis would they make that challenge?

The Constitution merely stipulates that a majority forms a quorum. It does not stipulate that they must be physically present in person at any specific location. That could be in the House and/or Senate Rules but they can be changed as needed.

 

This data on the mortality rates broken down by country is illustrative and indicative of how different healthcare systems are able to handle the mortality rates for different age groups.

 

Fair point. The "present" requirement is in the Senate rules. Don't know about the House.

 

They have a lot more flexibility during a National Emergency as well.

 

Indeed. Only, the interpretation of "present" since the writing of the Constitution has been to mean being physically present. The congress would still need a bill, to be signed by the president, for allowing the condition of being "virtually" present, if for no other reason than to prevent future court challenges as to the viability of one or both Houses of Congress should it so be that one or the other is not longer quorum-ready and the only option would be to allow for virtual-attendance.

 

No, he wouldn't. It would be the right thing to do, once a month for the next 5 months.

 

Maybe, but until this day a quorum has required the voting members to be present, as in, in the chamber. So, whether or not the Constitution specifically stipulates it is moot. One did not go into this much detail back in the days of writing the Constitution because back then, the only way to be present was to be physically present.

 

Actually, teleconferencing should be the norm for society in general where possible. The fact that so many still trudge into the office who could work as efficiently (if not more so) at home is an outrage - not to mention it doesn't even make any business sense. I think this virus WILL change the way Americans work going forward. It's a damn shame that it took a pandemic to pull people's heads out of their asses.

 

Flexibility, yes, but not the ability to rip apart any requirement that is specific in the Constitition, which very specifically mentions a quorum for both houses of Congress.