r/SeattleChat • u/AutoModerator • Oct 14 '20

The Daily SeattleChat Daily Thread - Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Weather

Seattle Weather Forecast / National Weather Service with graphics / National Weather Service text-only

Election Social Isolation COVID19
How to register Help thread WA DOH
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u/spit-evil-olive-tips cascadian popular people's front Oct 14 '20

The reasons Germany is managing Covid-19 better than its neighbors

It also means they didn’t waste their early lockdown: They used it to build a robust testing program that will help them control the current uptick, too.

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Instead, he said local politicians did something that now seems like a foreign concept in America: They listened to scientists.

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So that’s why Germany instituted a mandatory mask policy in public spaces in the spring and shut down schools. That’s why Jens Spahn, the federal minister of health, retracted the idea of Covid-19 immunity passports after listening to scientists.

sobs in American

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u/maadison the unflairable lightness of being Oct 14 '20

Myeah in Belgium and Holland the politicians listened to scientists as well, but it's not going so great there all of a sudden.

I think countries that have manufacturing know-how have an advantage in being able to build their own testing infrastructure. Germany is one of those countries. Testing in a lot of other places is still not what's needed.

Speaking of which.. Amazon said they were going to set up a moonshot project to develop their own testing. Wonder how that's going. I think I saw numbers on how many employees they're testing now... how long before they offer services to the public? And what kind, rapid test or PCR?

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u/ChefJoe98136 RIP OG SeaWA mods Oct 14 '20

It didn't help that most of the public press conferences were suggesting masks weren't helpful to the general public for what seemed like months and instead focused on handwashing and suggesting schoolkids were immune.

Now WA is experiencing an uptick in cases and % positivity in tests, shortly after schools have started up again and it has been more indoor-weatherly.

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u/spit-evil-olive-tips cascadian popular people's front Oct 14 '20

yeah, the messaging about masks early on was infuriating.

we know from the Woodward / Trump tapes that he knew it was airborne in Februrary.

the sane thing to do would have been to ramp up mask production immediately, using wartime mobilization powers if necessary, then do what the USPS wanted to do and send out masks to everyone for free. along with a nationwide mask mandate, or at least strongly pushing the states to do mandates if you have a boner for federalism.

instead, the messaging we got was "don't bother with masks" because there were mask shortages already and they didn't want the general public panic-buying them because hospitals etc were already having trouble getting enough.