March Madness and Covid-19

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paboomersooner said:
Nope. Nope. Never said I was an expert. I leave that up to you.:facepalm Which stands to reason why I can't answer all of your other questions.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he believes when researchers do more testing, they will probably find the disease was in the U.S. earlier than first believed.

Hmmm...He a Facebook poster?

And...you need a hug (From someone Corona free of course).
Click to expand...

Dr. Dre said it Ain't Nuthin' but a G Thang
 
"Influenza-like illnesses" had a large increase in the country beginning in December 2019. I wouldn't be surprised if it was here in the country earlier than late February. In fact, we HAD to have been missing cases of COVID even in the critically ill early on because we weren't testing anyone.

It could be very likely that the death rate from COVID is actually pretty low since it is pretty much consensus that most people are asymptomatic. If most people are asymptomatic, then those people haven't been tested -- because we have largely only tested symptomatic people...unless you are an NBA player. If that is true, the US has MILLIONS of cases. And if the death rate is very low -- closer to flu, it would take millions of cases in order to start seeing the number of hospitalizations and deaths. This may be why you didn't see hospitals see an influx of serious cases in the beginning -- which very well could have been December.

This would mean that COVID is insanely infectious.
 
sheepdogs1 said:
What page is the question. And then how many shrews can a person tame at the same time? Woof!
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Here was the question, in response to mict.

"Question about this... and keep in mind it's not meant as a criticism or anything. Let's say we do that... Employers open their doors and an employee gets sick and dies. Is the company liable for that in any way? Would there be any legal ramifications in terms of lawsuits, unsafe workplace claims, or medical claims if people are out for weeks after getting sick?"

And MJSooner.... your response was great! I just wanted the people who were advocating for going back to work to address this issue.
 
thebigabd said:
Here was the question, in response to mict.

"Question about this... and keep in mind it's not meant as a criticism or anything. Let's say we do that... Employers open their doors and an employee gets sick and dies. Is the company liable for that in any way? Would there be any legal ramifications in terms of lawsuits, unsafe workplace claims, or medical claims if people are out for weeks after getting sick?"

And MJSooner.... your response was great! I just wanted the people who were advocating for going back to work to address this issue.
Click to expand...

We live in a country where its citizens tend to incorporate an "I'll get even state of mind," so nothing would surprise me. Do you believe if an employer were open for business while the weather was adverse such as snow/ice or heavy rains causing a degree of flooding are the employers then liable in those situations, too.

On a side note,there was a strike at an Amazon facility very recently concerning the safety of the employees. Amazon, a liberal run organization, canned the leader of the strike.
 
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thebigabd said:
Here was the question, in response to mict.

"Question about this... and keep in mind it's not meant as a criticism or anything. Let's say we do that... Employers open their doors and an employee gets sick and dies. Is the company liable for that in any way? Would there be any legal ramifications in terms of lawsuits, unsafe workplace claims, or medical claims if people are out for weeks after getting sick?"

And MJSooner.... your response was great! I just wanted the people who were advocating for going back to work to address this issue.
Click to expand...

The vast majority of the country hasn't closed their doors. Some are working form home, but even restaurants and stuff are still open, and still interacting with employees. Even curb-side delivery has risks, right?

So what would happen now if an employee caught the virus? If the 22 year old girl running food out to people's cars catches it and dies, is the restaurant responsible?

My quick answer is probably not. You'd have a very tough time proving that somebody caught this while at work anyways.
 
SoonerJK12 said:
"Influenza-like illnesses" had a large increase in the country beginning in December 2019. I wouldn't be surprised if it was here in the country earlier than late February. In fact, we HAD to have been missing cases of COVID even in the critically ill early on because we weren't testing anyone.

It could be very likely that the death rate from COVID is actually pretty low since it is pretty much consensus that most people are asymptomatic. If most people are asymptomatic, then those people haven't been tested -- because we have largely only tested symptomatic people...unless you are an NBA player. If that is true, the US has MILLIONS of cases. And if the death rate is very low -- closer to flu, it would take millions of cases in order to start seeing the number of hospitalizations and deaths. This may be why you didn't see hospitals see an influx of serious cases in the beginning -- which very well could have been December.

This would mean that COVID is insanely infectious.
Click to expand...

This is not true, according to recent studies, only 1-3% of people who get the virus are asymptomatic carriers. Of course, some people catch the virus from covid-19 positive individuals before they start displaying symptoms. (See link below)

If this virus had been here in December or earlier, with no social distancing and no testing, ICUs across the nation would have been overwhelmed by January. We know this because we have a good idea how the virus behaves. It didn't change radically from the time it was identified in China and the time it made it to America. Of course, the first cases may have gotten here a couple of weeks before it was officially identified, that would have put it at mid to early January, but the data says that it wasn't any earlier than that.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-study-estimates-rate-of-silent-transmission
 
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WTSooner said:
The vast majority of the country hasn't closed their doors. Some are working form home, but even restaurants and stuff are still open, and still interacting with employees. Even curb-side delivery has risks, right?

So what would happen now if an employee caught the virus? If the 22 year old girl running food out to people's cars catches it and dies, is the restaurant responsible?

My quick answer is probably not. You'd have a very tough time proving that somebody caught this while at work anyways.
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That's not the question.... The question is if we go back to normal to save the economy despite the virus (which is an option being talked about, to basically sacrifice 200,000 people to return to normal)... would employers be liable for what happens to their employees IF we return to a more normal state? Knowing that increases of spread, contact, etc increase significantly and knowing that we are basically just trying to save the economy.
 
thebigabd said:
That's not the question.... The question is if we go back to normal to save the economy despite the virus (which is an option being talked about, to basically sacrifice 200,000 people to return to normal)... would employers be liable for what happens to their employees IF we return to a more normal state? Knowing that increases of spread, contact, etc increase significantly and knowing that we are basically just trying to save the economy.
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Sorry, I missed the original question cuz the thread conversation took off like crazy.

I’m no lawyer so I can’t pretend to be an expert. My opinion is, no they wouldn’t be liable. Employers aren’t liable for employees who get sick with the flu or any other illness, so why would this be different? The fact that it’s a pandemic may be viewed differently in the eyes of the law, but again, I don’t know. My guess is, they wouldn’t be liable because they’re not forcing anyone to do anything. The employer-employee is an at-will relationship, not a contract. So if the employee returns to work, they are choosing to do so during this pandemic of their own free will. An illness is not anything an employer would be liable for
 
mict085 said:
Sorry, I missed the original question cuz the thread conversation took off like crazy.

I’m no lawyer so I can’t pretend to be an expert. My opinion is, no they wouldn’t be liable. Employers aren’t liable for employees who get sick with the flu or any other illness, so why would this be different? The fact that it’s a pandemic may be viewed differently in the eyes of the law, but again, I don’t know. My guess is, they wouldn’t be liable because they’re not forcing anyone to do anything. The employer-employee is an at-will relationship, not a contract. So if the employee returns to work, they are choosing to do so during this pandemic of their own free will. An illness is not anything an employer would be liable for
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I am thinking because its a declared pandemic that would change the game. But, I am not a legal expert.

For example.... lets say you were a coal miner. Something was discovered in the mine that is giving everyone pneumonia. A bunch of the miners get sick, and managers get together and present two options.

A.) Shut down the mine for 30 days until the it can be cleaned out, sanitized, etc. However, this option is devastating for the mine financially. They will have to fire miners, and not be able to deliver coal that people depend on.

B.) They put up hand-washing stations, put in some basic distancing guidelines... but know that sending the miners down into the mine will kill some of them. Let's say there are 100 miners, and they know 4-5 of the people will die, and many others will get sick, but they can keep the mine open, keep the jobs, etc. They may even hire more miners to replace the dead and sick ones.

Are they legally liable for damages?

The same variables would apply in this situation. How do I know the guy didn't get it from Walmart instead of the mine? However, what we did know was that not keeping people at home increased odds of spread, etc.

You may be right, I am just wondering if this situation is different.
 
steverocks35 said:
This is not true, according to recent studies, only 1-3% of people who get the virus are asymptomatic carriers. Of course, some people catch the virus from covid-19 positive individuals before they start displaying symptoms. (See link below)

If this virus had been here in December or earlier, with no social distancing and no testing, ICUs across the nation would have been overwhelmed by January. We know this because we have a good idea how the virus behaves. It didn't change radically from the time it was identified in China and the time it made it to America. Of course, the first cases may have gotten here a couple of weeks before it was officially identified, that would have put it at mid to early January, but the data says that it wasn't any earlier than that.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-study-estimates-rate-of-silent-transmission
Click to expand...

I should be more clear -- I don't mean most people are asymptomatic. Most people have MILD symptoms which they would not got the doctor for. Which under current testing methods, would NOT be tested in the United States. We are still only testing people who need to be treatment in many places! So we have a lot more cases than 180,000!

A good case example is the Diamond Princess cruise -- On the Diamond Princess Cruise, 18% of all INFECTED people on the ship had NO symptoms. I think the number of MILD symptoms might be even higher -- again which might not have been tested if they were in general population.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00885-w

And a recent study by the Lancet suggests that the case fatality rate is closer to 0.66% which is similar to Diamond Princess rate ~1%.

So right now, we probably have at LEAST 500,000 cases of COVID..we just don't know it. This started much early, we just didn't know it.

Was it here in December? That's probably early. But I just think it was interesting that we had a big spike in flu-like illnesses. Maybe that happens every year though? Not sure. Haven't looked at that yet.

I think it probably started earlier in China than anyone realizes, but how would we know...you can't trust any of that data.
 
SoonerJK12 said:
I should be more clear -- I don't mean most people are asymptomatic. Most people have MILD symptoms which they would not got the doctor for. Which under current testing methods, would NOT be tested in the United States. We are still only testing people who need to be treatment in many places! So we have a lot more cases than 180,000!

A good case example is the Diamond Princess cruise -- On the Diamond Princess Cruise, 18% of all INFECTED people on the ship had NO symptoms. I think the number of MILD symptoms might be even higher -- again which might not have been tested if they were in general population.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00885-w

And a recent study by the Lancet suggests that the case fatality rate is closer to 0.66% which is similar to Diamond Princess rate ~1%.

So right now, we probably have at LEAST 500,000 cases of COVID..we just don't know it. This started much early, we just didn't know it.

Was it here in December? That's probably early. But I just think it was interesting that we had a big spike in flu-like illnesses. Maybe that happens every year though? Not sure. Haven't looked at that yet.

I think it probably started earlier in China than anyone realizes, but how would we know...you can't trust any of that data.
Click to expand...

There is also a possibility which exists where the first people infected were those who get out more and socialize more which likely tends to be the younger crowd who are the least likely to succumb to the illness.
 
SoonerJK12 said:
I should be more clear -- I don't mean most people are asymptomatic. Most people have MILD symptoms which they would not got the doctor for. Which under current testing methods, would NOT be tested in the United States. We are still only testing people who need to be treatment in many places! So we have a lot more cases than 180,000!

A good case example is the Diamond Princess cruise -- On the Diamond Princess Cruise, 18% of all INFECTED people on the ship had NO symptoms. I think the number of MILD symptoms might be even higher -- again which might not have been tested if they were in general population.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00885-w

And a recent study by the Lancet suggests that the case fatality rate is closer to 0.66% which is similar to Diamond Princess rate ~1%.

So right now, we probably have at LEAST 500,000 cases of COVID..we just don't know it. This started much early, we just didn't know it.

Was it here in December? That's probably early. But I just think it was interesting that we had a big spike in flu-like illnesses. Maybe that happens every year though? Not sure. Haven't looked at that yet.

I think it probably started earlier in China than anyone realizes, but how would we know...you can't trust any of that data.
Click to expand...

Yes, every year we have a spike in flu-like symptoms. "Flu Season."
It's bad science to look at an anecdotal case like the Princess Cruise Lines mass infection and extrapolate that to the entire population. You can't say this started "much earlier," because the data does not support that (depending on what you mean by "much"). If it had been here much earlier, then the ICUs would have been packed much earlier. It's just a fact. Now if you mean a couple of weeks earlier, then I will agree with you, there is some lag time obviously because of incubation periods.

(Look at the last paragraph in the article you posted, the author states "a whole country is not a ship." He's right and that's why you have to take these with a grain of salt. We have literally thousands of data points right now besides the extremely few talked about in this article)
 
sheepdogs1 said:
There is also a possibility which exists where the first people infected were those who get out more and socialize more which likely tends to be the younger crowd who are the least likely to succumb to the illness.
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Yep, LOTS of possibilities. Despite what some folks say they know as fact, we still don't know much about this virus. There are what, 8 different strains? Could be that it mutates quickly. Could be that that first strain over here was the most mild of the 8 strains. I would be shocked if this thing wasn't in the states, to some degree, in December.

We won't have answers like that for a year. That kind of stuff takes time to come to light and be proven out, one way or another.

It's like the old saying goes.....you don't know what you don't know. This thing is 3 months old. I promise we don't know half of what there is to know about it.
 
WTSooner said:
Yep, LOTS of possibilities. Despite what some folks say they know as fact, we still don't know much about this virus. There are what, 8 different strains? Could be that it mutates quickly. Could be that that first strain over here was the most mild of the 8 strains. I would be shocked if this thing wasn't in the states, to some degree, in December.

We won't have answers like that for a year. That kind of stuff takes time to come to light and be proven out, one way or another.

It's like the old saying goes.....you don't know what you don't know. This thing is 3 months old. I promise we don't know half of what there is to know about it.
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Do you have a source for your claim that some strains are less lethal than others besides techstartups<dot>com? Lol

I've been looking around and I couldn't find one.
 
not sure why you guys offer up caveats about not being lawyers or other experts in a field because when someone actually is an expert in the field you argue with them and deny what they say anyway if you don't like the info.
 
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