Coronascreening of passengers arriving in California from India

by philg

From a neighbor:

I reached home last night (April 23) about 12:30. Nine hours of road
transport was followed by a three hour flight to Delhi, then a fifteen hour flight to San Francisco. and finally six hour flight to Boston in two legs (Delta via Atlanta) … i reached San Francisco about 5:30 AM yesterday. They said that the Customs would not open till 6 AM and we lingered on the runway. Coming to the terminal, the luggage did not show up for
two hours. Nobody explained. Then we were led to go to other terminal for our domestic flight. No testing or health checking was done. None of the airport employees (Police, TSA and Customs) had masks and nobody was enforcing anything. It was very different from Delhi where Corona warning was everywhere.

Californians pride themselves on having a lower rate of plague than New York, Massachusetts, and other parts of the U.S. They attribute this to their superior political leadership (yet the University of Washington prophets show that they shut down schools a little later than Massachusetts and non-essential businesses a little earlier; maybe they have a different strain of the virus?). But if they don’t at least pick up some masks and forehead thermometers for people arriving from the plague lands, won’t they just catch coronavirus as soon as they emerge from their bunkers?

57 thoughts on “Coronascreening of passengers arriving in California from India”

  1. What should they do at the airport with someone with a temperature? Send them back to India? Put them in jail?

    • Toucan: Great question, but I hope that the answer isn’t “Put them on a 6-hour flight to the East Coast so that they can infect 25 more people”! Park them in the “Covid Motel” for 14 days? “The virus checks in, but it doesn’t check out.” The U.S. is not short of hotel rooms right now.

      I just talked with a friend who teaches in Shanghai. A professor arrived through Frankfurt. Everyone was screened at the Shanghai airport after being pulled individually off the plane by two people in hazmat suits. Although the professor would have qualified for “home quarantine” for 14 days, another passenger on the flight tested positive and the guy had shared the air on the plane with that passenger. So it was off to a special hotel, paid for by the Chinese government, for 14 days. Basic meals were supplied and the inmates have the option to order food for delivery and/or have friends and relatives drop stuff off.

    • Phil, how were they screened in Shanghai, a relatively simple thermal camera? I wonder if someone has done the calculations (in COBOL!) for the percentage of people who have fevers if they have COVID-19? Maybe the vast majority of people who do attempt to travel (and may have a fever) cancel their plans? A better screening would be a swab test (while standing in line waiting for customs!) to see if there are any positives. No way we could do this in the USA, but in China it would be easier.

      BTW, I used to travel to China and when I felt like I might be sick, I always dunked my head into a bucket of ice before being screened with a thermal camera. I guess it worked, I passed all the checkpoints.

    • Paul: I think it was some kind of instant coronavirus test (looking for the viral DNA). Presumably by swab since they wouldn’t want to stick everyone.

    • Here in Canadastan all citizens arriving on international flights are required to self-quarantine for 14 days. A traveler was fined $880 on day 12 of his quarantine for leaving his Toronto apartment to take his dog out to do its business. Its only for citizens, though. A Toronto “migrant welcome center” (office building with beds, rented to the govt) has 74 residents with covid, but they are allowed to come and go freely.

  2. TSA and Customs are Feds. What looked like “police” were probably Feds as well. Maybe they’re following Drump’s lead and injecting themselves with bleach to stay safe.

    • True! I didn’t mean to imply that India was more plague-ridden that much of the U.S. Only that it is part of the world’s “plague lands”, which includes the U.S., Italy, Spain, France, Brazil, et al. (essentially everywhere other than some islands and some Asian countries)

  5. Regarding the mud-slinging above about Trump thinking out loud and asking some “out of the box” questions regarding a disease for which the current treatment (ventilators) has an 88% death rate… I think it is fascinating that the people who claim to be most in love with “science” are the quickest to want to ridicule someone for thinking out loud and being willing to consider innovative approaches (like a true child of the 1960s: stick a blacklight down the patient’s throat and see if the coronavirus is turned off by the groovy posters (https://www.ebay.com/b/70-S-Blacklight-Posters/28009/bn_7023268291 )).

    On the flip side, whenever someone wins a Nobel Prize, people like to highlight the winner’s wackiest ideas that everyone rejected, but which eventually proved to be useful.

    • (Americans in full coronapanic want to make sure that absolutely no stone is left unturned in terms of a potential therapy that will allow them to escape the silent menace. But at the same time they want to make sure that Trump never departs from a standard script promoting proven-to-fail treatments.)

    • If Trump had said “I’m just thinking out loud here, but Clorox kills viruses right? Hey, how about we drive around with an open bottle of Clorox in your car because that will kill any viruses in the air of the car.” would you do it? Do you think that would have been a valid “sciene”-based question?

    • FL: Trump is not a scientist. I don’t know why anyone would expect a scientific answer from a U.S. politician (most of whom took their last science class in high school). To the extent that a politician has a useful role on a scientific/technical subject, it would be asking questions for a scientifically or technically trained person to answer. Sometimes it is the simplest questions from laypeople that do lead to solutions. Scientists get stuck in ruts. Medicine is certainly stuck in a rut for coronavirus. All over the country, for example, doctors are sticking patients on ventilators. Chicago is apparently an exception: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/uchicago-doctors-see-remarkable-success-using-ventilator-alternatives-covid-19

      But for the rest of them, it probably would be good to have a layperson ask “If 88% of your patients on ventilators are dying, are you sure that there isn’t a better way to get oxygen into their lungs?”

    • You didn’t answer my question — would you have put an open bottle of Clorox in your van if Trump had suggested it?

      And second — do you really think he should have been allowed to get away with asking something so obviously harmful and stupid? Or are you just being sarcastic?

    • Would I take scientific or technical advice from a politician? No. I once read Hunt for Red October because Ronald Reagan said it was a good book (if he and I had ever met in person we would have had to agree to disagree on this point).

      Should Trump have been able to ask if anyone was looking at getting a UV light or a disinfectant of some sort directly into the lungs? (When he said “injected” I doubt that he was thinking of a blood injection, but presumably some sort of aerosol into the lungs.) Why not? If the virus is having a party in the lungs, maybe there actually is a way to break up the party with UV light or some sort of sprayed-in chemical (presumably it won’t be as simple as Clorox).

      Whenever I’m teaching I like to tell the students, who are always nervous about looking bad in front of their peers, that “There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.” If it makes you feel better to apply that principle literally to Donald Trump, nobody can or should stop you!

      Anyway, in science and engineering, most new questions and ideas sound stupid and nearly all actually are stupid (or at least wrong). But without those questions, I don’t know that we’d have as much progress. And if you ridicule every layperson who asks a question that a scientist or technician could character as stupid, you end up with a priesthood that is cut off from the rest of society. Do you want to be told that, because you didn’t attend medical school, you can never question a doctor’s advice?

    • I do not why everybody is so upset, obviously the treatment to test out is drinking plum brandy (an Eastern European specialty, that can taste like disinfectant) while suntanning in California, skip the sun tan lotion, to get the maximum UV exposure, just make sure to limit your time so you not get a sunburn. We should try a blind study, half of the subjects on a ventilator in a hospital, and the other half on a sunny beach drinking plum brandy.

    • A note to readers. Pavel is a foreigner who has admitted in trying to meddle in our election! This may be a crime. It is most certainly an impeachable offense.

  6. If Trump had asked whether there were other ideas that we should be investigating, I’d be all for it. But he didn’t…he suggested something so stupid and obviously harmful that it stopped the conversation rather than moving it forward.

    Regarding ventilators. If we had a centralized health care system, we would be collecting data from every hospital and every protocol in real time. Given that data we could find the best outcomes, and then push the best protocols back out. As it is, every hospital is on its own. Good luck with that.

    • I did a search for what Trump actually said:

      “A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. (To Bryan) And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?”

      “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”

    • From Snopes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-disinfectants-covid-19/

      Claim: U.S. President Donald Trump suggested during a White House briefing that injecting disinfectants could treat COVID-19.

      Rating: True

      What he said (with my emphasis)

      “And then I see **the disinfectant**, where it **knocks it out in a minute**. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, **by injection** inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it **gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs**.

      Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and global health policy expert and NBC News contributor, said:

      “This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible, and it’s dangerous. It’s a common method that people utilize when they want to kill themselves.”

      Being curious and open about whether there are other ways to do something is not stupid. But there are stupid questions, and this was one of them.

    • As I read this, Trump did not ADVISE anyone to pursue any particular therapy for coronavirus. He ASKED whether it would be possible to use UV light or a disinfectant, somehow, inside the lungs/body.

      “is there a way we can do something like” is the prefix to a question, not a “suggestion.”

      I personally don’t see why that is an off-limits question any more than a patient questioning a doctor who says that a potentially cancerous tumor would be removed via surgery.

    • Here’s the video of Trump’s remarks.

      “I personally don’t see why that is an off-limits question -”

      Because it’s a dangerous suggestion. He’s speaking before the American public. Half of them (more than 100 million people) still trust him. And he’s suggesting that a commonly available and highly poisonous household product could be an effective treatment for COVID-19. Lots of people are willing to try home remedies. After he talked up hydroxychloroquine, a couple in Arizona poisoned themselves trying to self-medicate with chloroquine (the husband died, the wife was hospitalized). The Republican governor of Maryland says that the Maryland health department’s emergency hotline received hundreds of calls asking about the safety of ingesting disinfectants – hopefully they called before trying it, rather than afterward.

      (Parenthetically, it seems to me that Trump’s supporters are often making excuses for him. Michael Lewis: “It really does remind me of a dysfunctional family with a psychotic, alcoholic dad, where everybody’s trying to cover for dad.”)

    • Russil: Trump did not suggest anything, other than research, if you simply read his words. “is there a way we can do something like” is the prefix to a question, not a “suggestion.”

      I do not doubt that Michael Lewis and his fellow coastal elite neighbors in Berkeley, California enjoy contemplating the stupidity of Trump voters and their own comparatively high intelligence. But, the last laugh was on them in 2016 when, as my Dutch friend put it, “They forgot to take away [the Deplorables’] right to vote.”

      It is people who support and trust Donald Trump who were calling a hotline in Maryland? This is a state that Hillary Clinton won by a landslide in 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Maryland

      Where did these ignorant and credulous Trump supporters come from? (And possibly non-English-speaking, since they did not parse “is there a way we can do something like” as the prefix to a question.) Maryland is a state whose citizens are on the right side of history (coincidentally, most of them also get richer as the federal government grows larger; See “The D.C. suburbs dominate the list of wealthiest U.S. counties” at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/12/the-d-c-suburbs-dominate-the-list-of-wealthiest-u-s-counties/ ).

      Folks in Iowa are apparently better at understanding the English language and are perhaps more equipped with common sense than the government workers and contractors of Maryland. https://www.radioiowa.com/2020/04/24/poison-control-center-getting-increased-calls-about-disinfectants/ : the Sioux City-based hotline has taken -no- calls about this topic [of ingesting or injecting disinfectant], but since the pandemic began, there has been an increase in calls about a variety of problems related to hand sanitizers, bleach and disinfectants. Noble says, “Callers are usually reporting exposures because they accidentally swallow it or sometimes the adults, while they’re cleaning, are inhaling the fumes from it, or they’re ending up with eye or skin exposures.”

      Remember that the same people who called that Maryland hotline asking if it was time to drink a glass of Clorox are the ones who will be implementing and executing Joe Biden’s plans starting in January 2021.

    • Now that I read this more carefully, I see that Trump actually explicitly said “don’t try this at home, but be guided by medical doctors”: “so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

      I really don’t know how anyone who was a native speaker of English could interpret this as advice to go to the supermarket, get some bleach, and drink a glass without first talking to a physician. But I guess the government workers/contractors of Maryland did!

    • @philg: Your defense of Trump reminds me of Obi Wan Kenobi: Who’s more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

      You keep writing that a prefix to a question is not a suggestion. Did you just make this stuff up? Since when can’t a suggestion be given as a question? Are you implying all suggestions must be declarative, such as “I suggest that …”? Here are some examples of suggestions as questions:

      – Would you mind lowering you guard?
      – Could you unclench your buttocks, so that our procedure goes smoother?
      – Shall we give your grandma some chlorine gas, since her lungs are so weak?

      I’m sure you will argue that it doesn’t really matter, but it must make you proud to have such a high-IQ individual as president.

  7. “It is people who support and trust Donald Trump who were calling a hotline in Maryland? This is a state that Hillary Clinton won by a landslide in 2016 -”

    Seriously? “A landslide” doesn’t mean “close to 100%” – according to the link, about a third of the vote in Maryland went to Trump in 2016 (nearly a million people).

    “Trump did not suggest anything, other than research, if you simply read his words -”

    People watching TV (even when they’re native speakers!) don’t necessarily parse words carefully. You know about the Arizona poisoning, right?

    The man’s wife told NBC News she’d watched televised briefings during which President Trump talked about the potential benefits of chloroquine. Even though no drugs are approved to prevent or treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, some early research suggests it may be useful as a therapy.

    The name “chloroquine” resonated with the man’s wife, who asked that her name not be used to protect the family’s privacy. She’d used it previously to treat her koi fish.

    “I saw it sitting on the back shelf and thought, ‘Hey, isn’t that the stuff they’re talking about on TV?'”

    The couple — both in their 60s and potentially at higher risk for complications of the virus — decided to mix a small amount of the substance with a liquid and drink it as a way to prevent the coronavirus.

    “We were afraid of getting sick,” she said.

    Within 20 minutes, both became extremely ill, at first feeling “dizzy and hot.”

    • “I really don’t know how anyone who was a native speaker of English could interpret this as advice to go to the supermarket, get some bleach, and drink a glass without first talking to a physician.”

      Not sure why you keep making excuses for Trump. Misunderstandings happen. (Not all people are as smart as you are!) When you’re speaking to an audience of hundreds of millions of people, you need to be careful to avoid misunderstanding – you can’t just say whatever comes into your head. The scenario you describe is exactly what happened with the couple in Arizona. The NBC article has an audio clip: they interviewed the wife (who survived), and she’s a native speaker. They were unfortunate enough to have chloroquine phosphate on hand, which sounded similar enough to hydroxychloroquine for them to mix up and ingest a small amount as a preventive measure. The fact that so many more people have disinfectants on hand is what makes Trump’s latest remarks so dangerous.

    • Philip: Guaranteed purchases would be a big help. Matthew Yglesias, summarizing a Mercatus Institute proposal:

      Right now, one huge barrier to scaling up N95 production is that companies have no idea how long the current surge in demand will last. Prestige Ameritech, a Texas-based company that is the largest American manufacturer of surgical masks in the United States, thought the surge in demand associated with the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009 would be a godsend. But in a recent NPR interview, co-owner Michael Bowen recalls that their efforts to scale up rapidly in that crisis nearly killed the company.

      “We hired a lot of people and ramped up,” he told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly. “And then we nearly went bankrupt afterward. We laid off 150 people and nearly went out of business. You know, it’s not like flipping on a switch. It’s building machines. It’s hiring people. It’s training people. That’s the issue.”

      Retooling a factory to make urgently needed medical equipment is an expensive proposition with an uncertain payoff. And it’s made more difficult by the fact that the normal way the manufacturing business works is you don’t get paid until the goods are delivered. So you need to incur the full expenses of setting up production and hiring trained staff before you see an ounce of revenue. The federal government has the power to offer guaranteed loans to companies that want to get into the N95 business. And it can guarantee to buy large quantities of masks at prices above the traditional rate.

      The idea would be to make a reasonable estimate of how many masks are needed and for how long, and then guarantee to buy more masks than that, and for a longer period. That way, if need turns out to be greater than anticipated, the US is covered. And if it turns out to be less than anticipated (as happened during H1N1), companies that stepped up get made whole anyway.

      Excess supplies can be added to national stockpiles and given away to lower-income countries that don’t have the financial resources to do this for themselves.

      The same principle could be applied to needed commodities beyond N95 respirators and surgical masks. There are persistent reports of swab shortages as an impediment to scaled-up testing, for example, and though many distilleries are now producing hand sanitizer, this largely seems to be a small scale play for goodwill rather than a real business model. At a time of soaring unemployment and low interest rates, it makes sense for the government to freely hand out purchase agreements at generous prices of everything that’s useful and in short supply.

      What’s actually happening now: there’s innumerable reports of states and hospitals purchasing PPE which is then seized by the federal government! A letter from a medical executive in your neck of the woods: In Pursuit of PPE.

      Before we could send the funds by wire transfer, two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrived, showed their badges, and started questioning me. No, this shipment was not headed for resale or the black market. The agents checked my credentials, and I tried to convince them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving my assurances and hearing about our health system’s urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. But I was soon shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was still considering redirecting our PPE. Only some quick calls leading to intervention by our congressional representative prevented its seizure.

  8. “…Californians pride themselves on having a lower rate of plague than New York, Massachusetts, and other parts of the U.S….”

    What a stupid statement.

  9. Hmmm… a friend pointed me to “Intriguing COVID-19 Prevention Being Researched By Two Nobel Prize Winners” https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/intriguing-covid-19-prevention-being-researched-two-nobel-prize-winners

    Many viruses including the novel coronavirus (the technical name of which is SARS-CoV2) have a membrane that can easily be killed by amphiphilic molecules (or surfactants) – which includes things like soap.

    That’s why medical professionals universally recommend frequent washing of hands to combat coronavirus infection. The soap’s amphiphilic molecules interact with the lipid membrane of the virus, destabilizing its structure and making it impossible for the virus to multiply.

    Novoselov and Geim have presented the hypothesis that by inhaling amphiphilic molecules, we might be able to kill the coronavirus in the upper respiratory system – before it can affect the lungs and cause deadly acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

    ————–

    In other words, the Nobel winners want to “try injecting the lungs with some disinfectant”!

    ———–

    https://news.columbia.edu/ultraviolet-technology-virus-covid-19-UV-light

    is about blasting public spaces with UV.

    —————

    “Aytu BioScience Signs Exclusive Global License with Cedars-Sinai for Potential Coronavirus Treatment” (April 20)

    https://apnews.com/b44f4531071e6204023f7b8e16f59d4b

    is the “stick a UV light source down into the patient’s lungs” idea. Developed by physicians at Cedars-Sinai apparently, starting in 2016 (before Trump even began to screw everything up!).

    • Inhaling is not injecting, but sure, keep trying.

      (This blog means never having to say you’re wrong or you’re sorry, so keep at it until everyone moves on.)

    • FL: The attack on Trump for not phrasing his question in precise medical language reminds me of my work with an MD/PhD. He came into my office at MIT and asked “Do you have any headache pills?” I said, “Shouldn’t a person with your level of training be using more precise terminology, such as ‘ibuprofen’?”

    • Drumpf’s job is to be Presidential and lead the country, it isn’t to say every stupid thing that comes into his head. If he’s not sure about what he’s saying then he should either a) shut up, b) let the experts speak, or c) if he really can’t help himself (which seems quite clear), he should preface it with “I’m not suggesting anyone do this but…” (but that’s way too empathic for him),

      He’s a buffoon, a narcissist, and he’s getting people killed (a la the chloroquine taking couple*). Comparing what he did to asking for a headache remedy instead of an ibuprofen makes you look desperate to say anything except “yeah, you’re right, Trump did f*ck up”.

      (* https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-dies-after-ingesting-chloroquine-attempt-prevent-coronavirus-n1167166)

    • I had the feeling someone, somewhere must have been thinking of attacking the lipid coat of the virus using amphiphilic molecules, based on my undergraduate-level knowledge of the structure of viruses. I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t tried it with earlier virus outbreaks. If they’re going to throw the kitchen sink at this thing, it makes a lot of sense.

      I think Birx is out of her depth, or maybe just uncooperative, backing up the President and explaining things like this — assuming she knew — which she should have. I don’t think he was trying to be malevolent or thinking about Clorox, but he doesn’t have the science chops to explain this stuff without some support.

      That blog entry was from the 16th and Trump’s infamous presser was the 24th, 8 days later. It’s too late now: everyone knows the “truth” about what a big, irresponsible idiot Trump was, how he was trying to kill people, how he’s obviously a “witch doctor” in the words of Barry Diller, etc., etc.

      Knowing every single word he says is going to be put on trial, this is now a blood sport, Birx and Trump should be working together a lot more hand-in-glove. This kind of stuff could be completely eliminated if Birx and Trump had a rule: “I’ll mention some promising things, from this list. Look at the list, you strike the ones you don’t want me to talk about today, and on the rest, do the homework so I can refer to you about the details, OK?”

      Just piss-poor communication strategy.

    • FL: Trump’s actual job has nothing to do with coronavirus! See https://www.dummies.com/education/politics-government/washington-d-c-constitutional-duties-of-the-president-of-the-united-states/ for what Trump is supposed to do under the Constitution.

      It was Democrats who gave him his current job and nightly stage by saying “2-3 million Americans will die unless the Great Father in Washington takes action.” If the goal was to get everyone in the U.S. who wants to live to tune into Trump’s briefings, it was accomplished superbly! What better way to inspire people to pay attention than to say “Whether you live or die depends on Donald Trump’s decisions”? And, unless 2-3 million Americans actually do die from Covid-19, what better way to give Trump credit for being a savior? (it will be a couple of years before the public health academics find the tens of millions people worldwide who died as a side effect of the health care system shutdown and the economic shutdown)

      If the Democrats had said “The virus won’t be dramatically affected by anything that the federal government does,” that would have been a lot smarter, in my opinion! (And if they wanted “science” to back it up, they could just roll this video from the former “Chief Scientist” of the European CDC: https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-johan-giesecke-shares-lessons-from-sweden/ )

    • Wow, you’re in such close contact with Drumpf that he’s told you the corona virus is not his job. What a privilege it must be to have that kind of inside access. And to be able to blame it all on the Democrats at the same time, how cool is that. Can’t wait to see you as his next Press Secretary…you must be tingling with excitement.

    • “It was Democrats who gave him his current job and nightly stage by saying ‘2-3 million Americans will die unless the Great Father in Washington takes action.'”

      ?? I thought it was the Imperial College epidemiologists who said that?

      Asked at a news conference with President Trump about what had led to the change in thinking by a White House task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the task force leaders, said new information had come from a model developed in Britain.

      “What had the biggest impact in the model is social distancing, small groups, not going in public in large groups,” Dr. Birx said. “The most important thing was if one person in the household became infected, the whole household self-quarantined for 14 days. Because that stops 100 percent of the transmission outside of the household.”

      According to Brookings, the social distancing guidelines announced by Trump on March 16 had more effect on people’s actual behavior than state guidelines. (This is consistent with the Kinsa thermometer data, which showed a nationwide drop in fevers.) So his subsequent push for states to “open up” again is somewhat worrying.

      The federal government could also help the states to obtain personal protective equipment (instead of seizing it!), accelerate the development of treatments (but don’t talk them up before they’re tested and available!), accelerate development of a vaccine, and help with economic aid (most states are limited in how much they can borrow).

    • There’s reason to think the fish tank cleaner story runs deeper than most people realize. She might have deliberately poisoned them both, murder/suicide attempt. Trouble in the marriage, a history of mental problems, etc. It wasn’t as cut-and-dried as people think.

      https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-on-that-deadly-fish-tank-cleaner-cocktail/

      https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/man-who-died-ingesting-fish-tank-cleaner-remembered-as-intelligent-levelheaded/

    • Sleep with the Fishes: That is a brilliant way to kill an unwanted husband and more than double her assets compared to divorcing him (even with a 50/50 property split, transaction costs would be substantial in the form of legal fees; see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Arizona ). Blame it all on Trump and then walk away with the cash (after drinking enough to get sick, but not die).

    • Russil: That makes sense that the federal government could be a big help in dealing with the logistical challenge of stocking hospitals with masks and other PPE. The private market is able to do only the basics, such as keep 100,000 skus in stock at each of 5,000 Walmarts nationwide. What would be a lot better is if the U.S. military stepped in with its nimble procurement and distribution processes.

    • Walmart sells 1000s of what sells tomorrow, they don’t have shit sitting around in a warehouse for a year or two or three or more on the off chance that there’s going to be a pandemic.

      What private, non-governmental agency, do you think is going to line up to create stockpiles of cotton swabs, PPE gowns, masks, etc.?

    • FL: I interpreted Russil’s comment as a longing for the Great Father in Washington to manage the current effort to stock hospitals with PPE, not as a desire for the Great Father in Washington to build a time machine and travel back to 2015, have the government officials at the time read a paper from their own CDC, and build up a big stockpile back in 2015. (see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/04/24/paper-titled-stockpiling-ventilators-for-influenza-pandemics-2017/ for a reference to the paper)

    • Russil: What do you want the Great Father in Washington to buy PPE? Why can’t He give money to hospitals via Medicare, as is already happening in the $trillions, and instruct the hospitals to order enough PPE to handle the next surge? There is already a mechanism in place for supplying hospitals with hundred of billions of dollars of stuff annually.

    • Philip: You don’t want to repeat the Prestige Ameritech situation, where they ramped up production during the H1N1 pandemic, and then had to do a mass layoff because demand dropped once the pandemic was over. The proposal is to guarantee that you’re going to buy enough PPE, for long enough, to make it worthwhile for the supplier. Individual hospitals can’t do this.

      In addition, a single large purchaser is going to have more bargaining power than hundreds of smaller purchasers who are all bidding against each other.

    • @Russil Wvong: It’s very difficult to predict what mentally ill and/or suicidal people construe as triggers and methods to take their own lives. That’s one reason why poisonings, particularly those that result in a fatality, need to be carefully investigated. In 2018, 19.1% of exposures reported to U.S. poison centers were intentional and attempted suicide was the biggest reason.

      https://www.poison.org/poison-statistics-national

      In 2017, CDC data showed 6,554 suicides from poisoning.

      https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml

      I’ll refrain linking directly to it here, but if you type “bleach suicide” into Google you can see how widespread the idea is. I won’t talk about the quantity of bleach someone needs to drink to kill themselves. Be careful out there!

      Since this thread began with a trip from India, I should also mention that ingestion of readily available poisonous liquids — particularly pesticides — is a common and well-documented method of suicide in India.

    • Russil: “The proposal is to guarantee that you’re going to buy enough PPE, for long enough, to make it worthwhile for the supplier. Individual hospitals can’t do this.” Why not? All kinds of enterprises, including hospitals, in the U.S. agree to long-term regular purchase contracts. I can do it myself for dog food with Amazon “subscribe and save”. How does having the Great Father in Washington place a single order make this somehow magically work better? If you didn’t or wouldn’t have voted for Donald Trump, why do you want him as your purchasing manager and then supply clerk?

    • “Why not? All kinds of enterprises, including hospitals, in the U.S. agree to long-term regular purchase contracts.”

      Again, the goal is to ensure that suppliers like Prestige Ameritech have enough guaranteed demand to be able to ramp up production. An individual hospital can’t use long-term contracts to provide this level of guaranteed demand.

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