Coronavirus (Sports-Related and General)

[LegoDoom]

I'm not sure why you say that. China is killing off the virus by making it so that it can't find a new host. Britain is saying that people should get the virus on purpose.

[flyers19rw]

Not to be a crepe hanger but how is all of this going to be paid for by the feds? If we had a sensible taxing policy that would be one thing. However when a nation is running the deficits that the U.S. presently is, it’s an issue. The rates on personal, and in many cases corporate income, in that last tax bill are going to hurt us going forward. The nation needs a new tax policy that fits the new economic environment.

[andyb]

Well it is clear from this crisis is that the "state" needs better funding. Hopefully we come out of this in a couple of years with higher taxes that do a better job of getting us there. Democrats will likely have to clean up this mess without any Republican votes unfortunately. Kind of what they do at the end of most Republican presidencies (raise taxes to help solve some of the problems Republicans created then lose control of Congress because that gets used against them).

[bkeich]

So, lets say we are locked down for 6 weeks... just for example.

We slow/stop the spread of the virus. We are down to say, 20-50 new cases a day in the US. Everyone is happy. We send everyone back to their normal life, everthing reopens, we celebrate averting disaster.

Without some type of vaccine arent we just back to where we were at the start of March. a few people have it, they unknowingly or uncaringly (not a word) spread it. It begins to grow slowly again.

The problem I have is that I have worked with the FDA in the past. I know how they operate. I know anything close to a vaccine will frankly be subjected to months/years of testing before it will be allowed to be used. Even then, it is not a trivial matter to have manufacturing facilities go through design, implementation, commissioning, validation and finally production. Even sped up, that is not a small task. We can use some of the existing manufacturing for flu vaccine, but those or completely dependent on egg-based products, what if the vaccine is not able to be introduced through chicken eggs (which may be very true).

I realize I am jumping the gun, but I already read that one company has started Phase 1 testing on a vaccine, but they literally started today. That process is normally at least 12-18 months and then look toward manufacturing assuming approval.

Are we just foolishly thinking that slowing the rate of infection will "release us"?

[bkeich]

Mentioned in Post above... not getting the crazy press I would have expected...

NIH clinical trial of investigational vaccine for COVID-19 begins

This is NOT close, at all if you read the article. Fast Tracking this would call for introduction in say 2024. I have seen 3 drugs in my career get "fast tracked", one of them has been in Validation at the manufacturing facility in Biberach, Germany since 2003 and is still not available to the general consumer. That is the FDA definition of "Fast Tracking".

[Lawman]

Is there any scenario where, given the situation, the either i) the FDA grants approval as soon as the vaccine shows that it won't harm and seems to be working; or ii) approves vaccine developed outside of the USA where that country has less rigid standards?

[bkeich]

Is there any scenario where, given the situation, the either i) the FDA grants approval as soon as the vaccine shows that it won't harm and seems to be working; or ii) approves vaccine developed outside of the USA where that country has less rigid standards?

Well, how much fun do you think Lawyers would have with that when someone who takes the vaccine develops a problem? You would actually be the first one on this board I would ask given your name. If you were the CEO of a Pharmaceutical Firm can you risk Trillion dollar judgements?

I think that is my point. It is not a trivial matter to reach "vaccine wont harm". Even Flu vaccine can harm some people in small groups. Even innocuous, natural things like penicillin can cause great harm to a small number of people.

I worry that we are fooling ourselves that this is just a matter of "slowing" the progression. Maybe I am wrong, certainly hope I am, but our current "system" does not even contemplate the fast introduction of a vaccine.

[bkeich]

ii) approves vaccine developed outside of the USA where that country has less rigid standards?

As crazy as it sounds, and it does I realize, most countries actually use the FDA as their approval body for pharmaceuticals. Maybe not Russia or China, but I can tell you for certain that Germany (a fairly advanced country with a large Pharmaceutical Industry) simply uses the FDA. They have similar body in Germany, but frankly what the government organization does is mimic and use US approval.

The only country I know with significant Pharmaceutical Industry I know that does not use the US's FDA is Indonesia, which has a fairly extensive industry. I honestly dont know how they get approval for their products outside the US (China? Russia? Not sure).

[Lawman]

Well, how much fun do you think Lawyers would have with that when someone who takes the vaccine develops a problem? You would actually be the first one on this board I would ask given your name. If you were the CEO of a Pharmaceutical Firm can you risk Trillion dollar judgements?

Agreed, and point well taken. I actually work in the healthcare industry. No way would I advise my CEO to take this risk unless the FDA/USA guaranteed an uncapped indemnification protection.

[Lawman]

What does Israel do?

[el-pietro]

What you do is shut everything down for 6 - 8 weeks. In the meantime you begin a program of aggressive testing. Once you get the infection rate down to a manageable level, and that's real infection rate based on far larger testing samples, you begin rolling quarantines along with contact tracing to prevent the virus from getting a foothold.
If a new outbreak spring up in Philly for example you institute an immediate curfew/quarantine - use contact tracing to understand how large an area needs to be quarantined for more than a few days.

This approach buys time for several months until a vaccine can be introduced. This vaccine should be free and available for everyone on the planet.

[julio]

Hopefully we come out of this in a couple of years with higher taxes that do a better job of getting us there.

Oh dear. This will set people off... because the "conservatives" who aren't Trumpists because of his ethno-nationalism (note that I nicely didn't say "rascism") are Trumpists because they want lower taxes (on themselves, not necessarily on others) - well, excluding the single-issue anti-abortion religious nuts who are willing to destroy our Constitutional system to impose their religious fanaticism.

Fundamentally, in the United States, we have a problem with responsibility - and not only with "individual responsibility," as evidenced by people like Trump blaming anybody and everybody except themselves for their own failings. We also have a fundamental problem with social responsibility - with the idea that we are all part of larger communities, and that we actually have responsibilities to those communities. We extol "rugged individualism," which is really just heavily sugar-coated selfishness, and far too many of us simply don't care what effect our actions and choices have on others - either on individuals, or on our society as a whole.

So we have people who rant about "socialism," when what they really object to are federal income tax rates that are similar to those in the Eisenhower administration. Now, they won't tell you it's the tax rates they object to - they'll make all manner of excuses - but at the end of the day, it's all about "I've got mine, so..."

[Lawman]

We need to completely re-write our tax code. Essentially start from scratch and figure out what we need to use the money for, how much we need to the tax payers to contribute, the percentages from each person/tax bracket and from each company, etc.....

And, given the nature of the fast changing world we live in, saying that the tax code probably needs to be re-written every 10-20 years to ensure it reflects current reality, is probably true.

[julio]

Many won't like this, but... If you want to truly "fast track" a vaccine, you have to take the process out of the hands of private industry. Not because private industry is "bad," but because in our society, it is (for better or worse) heavily influenced by its legal departments.

A publicly-developed and produced vaccine - yes, produced in factories operated by (gasp!) the federal government - administered by public health officers, can completely eliminate the legal/lawsuit barriers to rapid rollout. How? Easily. Said public agencies and officers are indemnified, by federal law, from lawsuits if the vaccine has negative side effects. No such lawsuits are permitted - period. Barrier is gone.

Now, will our attorney-dominated Congress enact such a program? Probably not; vested interests and all. In the abstract, it's not a complex problem to solve. But in a political realm, "simple" does not necessarily equate to "easy."

Comment on this thread vs. the other one. Merging them would be problematic - much more so than were we still using phpBB. (One of the tradeoffs - there are always tradeoffs.) I'm not inclined to even try. And realistically, coronavirus has become so much more our focus (seemingly, everybody's, now that Trump appears to have pulled his head out of the sand, or wherever it was) that a separate thread on "sports" isn't likely to stay differentiated. I suspect whatever I could do would have to be repeated multiple times.

I think I may have to just fire up the Roku, and start watching Phils' games from past seasons, assuming the archives are still working... If I turn off the "spoiler" options, I think it will hide results up front - and I certainly won't remember how individual games came out!

[fish]

Astonishing that they are still publishing reported infections less than 6,000. I'd be less shocked if the real number was closer to 100,000 than 6,000. The day is going to come when someone has to stand up and give a real number that is astronomically higher than the one reported the day before.

[schillingfan]

The Econ,y doesn’t need stimulus per se. some people need money just to pay basic expenses. I have social security, my daughter has sixty days paid sick leave stored up, and she’s still doing work from home, and emergency public defender work. Right now, our money isn’t being spent where it is normally. She had to cancel five days in San Diego and she goes out to social functions and entertainment a lot. We don’t need money. We can’t use the extra money to go down to Philly for a game. We will either save it or spend it on other things that can be done in isolation like Pelleton since she can’t go to the gym.

I think some sectors will gain, like home Home Chef and home gym equipment. Maybe people will buy more consumer goods online. This could be the death of many local retail shops. Thus far, restaurants are doing delivery and take-out. This keeps them in business at reduced rates. Some servers may become food deliverers. All sorts of thoughts fly? Does Amazon get bigger? What happens when warehouse workers get the virus? What will long distance truckers do? What happens when state and local governments have to blow their budgets? I’m not an economist, but I see fundamental changes possible in our economy that are mind blowing and go beyond airlines, food and drink and hotels.

[Lawman]

The Wuhan Virus and the Imperative of Hard Decoupling - The American Interest

[schillingfan]

Did you know that Pence has asked conservative commentators to start calling it China or Wuhan virus?

[bkeich]

A publicly-developed and produced vaccine - yes, produced in factories operated by (gasp!) the federal government - administered by public health officers, can completely eliminate the legal/lawsuit barriers to rapid rollout. How? Easily. Said public agencies and officers are indemnified, by federal law, from lawsuits if the vaccine has negative side effects. No such lawsuits are permitted - period. Barrier is gone.

An interesting concept, and I see your point, but a government run manufacturing facility has significant downside also. I have worked in one (well, as close as we have to one, a Nuclear Weapons Plant) and while having the government produce something to avoid the fallout of certain side effect phishing it brings other issues. The government has, at its core, insane rules which may no sense at all in a manufacturing environment. I give as an example the fact that I had to commission, fund and publish a study saying that the facility I worked at (on the 7th story of a building in South Carolina) was not going to be effected by any Pacific Ocean Typhoons. This is the type of abject stupidity that the government running something brings to the plate.

My fear that a government run manufacturing facility would take 500 years to produce anything. Anyone who has every worked with the Federal Government will attest that my estimate is, if anything, low.

[Lawman]

And that is where it originated, so I see nothing wrong w/ that.