Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Egras I appreciate the response. Things I think about are is this the new normal? Like I mentioned the cat is out of the bag. Say we quarantine and eradicated the virus from the US by early summer but this thing shifts South and survives till winter when it easily spreads back this way next winter... so we do this again? Do we really have an effective vaccine in that time frame available for masses world wide? Or what if it's completely gone and it's the next bug coming from China and quarantine is again that new normal. I guess I'm kind of numb to it and feel extremely nervous giving up some liberties that are not guaranteed to come back. I'm not saying my opinion is right but it is how I feel. It's not even the racing being gone that's the biggest issue for me (though it hurts) but this working from home, hoarding groceries, no being able to choose to go to church stuff that bug me. If the quarantine is prolonged and grocery stores shut down or simply can't get food watch out. This world will come unglued with reactions never seen before.

As of yesterday Pennsylvania was ranked 11th in the States with the most confirmed cases so Hey, Catch some slide jobs, get some Autographs, Shake some hands and hug it out with old race fans you haven't seen since last fall.  Party on....

That's just good ol' Central Pen-siv-vane-yuh! 

I grew up in Pennsyltucky. Currently live in Washington state. I've been embedded in both extremes of the far right and the far left. Not shocked at all. 

Liberty? Whatever. Both sides of the aisle have a list of things they don't want the other side to do. Each side has a list of things they want the "liberty" to pursue. There's no real right or wrong opinion. Only varying degrees of self interest. 

Well, if we're just throwing numbers around and throwing insults around....

Pennsylvania is ranked #11 with the most confirmed cases, but is actually ranked #5 in population. Does that mean Pennsylvania is ahead of the curve?

This was encouraging. A CNN article praising the president. 
 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/white-house-donald-trump-coronavirus-emergency/index.html

Long and short---they don't know.

Will it come back if we quench it now?  Almost certainly, but we will be more ready with testing and hopefully treatments with some of the drugs they are testing.  South Korea is trying to get life back to normal as soon as possible.  They said if they can knock it down to near nothing, test everyone from here on out with symptoms or contacts, they can control the exact areas where breakouts are occuring without causing mass disruptions.  This could also be knocked down and eradicated by summer's end-----but we have to start trusting disease experts as they have been training for this very scenario and are now being put to work.  

As for "is this the new norm?"  I honestly thought there would be many more instances of just this scenario over the last 20-30 years.  I'm shocked it took until I was 46 years old to have this play out.  My mom says she remembers a very similar short-term reaction like this playing out in 1976 with the swine flu and mass panic nationwide.  Luckily the 2009 swine flu was quickly identified as being mild.  I don't know what your thoughts are on global warming.  I say we can't deny the earth's climate is changing but I dispute how much of it is really my doing.  With that said, some say our climate change is driving new diseases.  I don't know.  I do know that most scientists agree with this however------we have too much livestock and "wildlife" in closed quarters and in constant human contact. As long as this continues to happen, our chances for swine flu, bird flu, and new coronavirus pandemics will increase as time goes on.  

The time is now for all nations of the world to invest trillions into developing broad vaccines that can be used to lessen the impact of these "new" viruses.  There are companies already working on just this very thing.  It's going to have to happen.  

You see the reaction to a virus with a 1%-3% death rate.  Imagine one with a 20% death rate.  We would be living with a shotgun at our door and would be fighting for survival.  Be thankful this one is "mild."  This "drill" should serve as a wake up call to our citizens as we have not been acting like human beings during this crisis and have not come together as one to say the least.  

He made some horrible mistakes early on when this was beginning and it cost us early.  He has since changed his tune and many of the nay sayers are finally listening because they are taking his lead.  So, to that end, I say good for him for turning it around.  It would go a long way if he would come out and say "I really screwed up early on and did not take this seriously..........I'm asking all of you to do so now"    He would get a lot of stubborn "tough-guys" to start following the guidelines if he did this. 

PA is the curve.........two curves, in fact,.......and two straightaways.  

"Coronavirus 50" ....... Posse vs COVID-19.

T-shirts would sell at a fevered pitch!

Funny that those who say keep politics out of it are the same ones who keep throwing the jabs at every opportunity. Remember when our President was called a racist for stopping travel from China too quickly. A move many experts outside twitter and message boards say bought us much needed time. Yea I didn't think anyone remembered that either. Many of the mistakes I hear about are to have happened before China left the worlld know it was going on. If you want to blame someone blame China Not Republicans or Democrats.

No----it thankfully means you are behind the curve and by practicing what the CDC is advising, your state will, in large, not turn into the disaster that areas of Washington, California, and New York are going to be in the short term.  

     Thanks. That made me laugh.

     To clarify- I'm not in Pennsylvania. I'm in the sate with the 46th rank in  population.

Italy sitting at a 7.7% mortality rate currently. 27980 cases confirmed, 2158 deaths. Very much hoping there's some kind of reason that would lead this number to be high - confirmed testing numbers underrepresented, one segment (ie: elderly) disproportionally impacted. Not a good look here. 

A large part is testing, there's absolutely thousands and thousands of cases that haven't been tested, no just in Italy but everywhere in the world. We actually got a nice sample from the cruise ship- 4000 people, 700 infected, 7 dead. Now in the real world there are other issues, but that's a baseline. South Korea's numbers capture the best rates because they've been testing in incredible numbers. 8320 cases and 81 dead. The true death rate is probably around 1 percent, which is still very high especially with the amount of likely people to get the virus. Now that rate can and will fluctuate for each country depending on how overwhelmed the medical systems get (reason to flatten the curve), age, culture, etc.

Now if you want good news. There's been a few scientific pre-prints that are coming to the conclusion that the virus will slow down in spreading as the weather gets warmer (it'll still be around, just not spreading as rapid). Also there was fears of reinfection, but now the consensus is that there was false negatives and the virus wasn't totally defeated so the person relapsed. We know pretty certainly you gain immunity after having the disease, but the big question is for how long. People with SARS were immune up to a few years. 
 

As for now, if people want to get to the other side quickly with as little death as possible, they should listen to the health experts and stay home. And things ARE going to get worse, we're already at 1000 confirmed cases for 3/17 and it's barely past noon on the east coast. The more we are actually able to be tested, be prepared for some large spikes in confirmed cases. 

While the governor hasn't cancelled racing yet, it appears he could based on his expanded powers due to the disaster emergency declaration. When you listen to his full response, I take it as he isn't going to be the one to close the tracks but is asking everyone, promoters and fans, to do what they know is the right thing. I see it as he is giving folks the chance to make the right decision on your own. That press conference was on Monday and the next race isn't until Friday. I think it wasn't urgent for him to make that decision at that time and he was waiting to see if he actually has to do something. I see two things occurring if racing tries to continue: 1) I see the governor condemning the racing community for not making the right call on their own and stepping in and forcing the closure. I cannot see him allowing any event where potentially thousands could attend when the current recommended group size is no more than 10. 2) If I am wrong about number 1 or number 1 doesn't happen right way and race does get run and there are cases of the virus that are linked to spread via attendance at a dirt track, dirt racing will get a serious black eye. We want the accolades of a professional sport and get miffed when dirt racing doesn't get the credit we feel it deserves. If you want to be thought of as a professional, act like it and that sometimes requires making the hard decisions. While Central PA racing has historically continued during times of adversity, I see this as something altogether different. During times of war, flood or nuclear accident no danger existed to those in attendance like we are dealing with here as well as those who weren't in attendance but come into contact with attendees in the days after. I want to race. We've waited through the winter months and race season is just starting to gear up. I don't want to sit at home during a time a know I should be at the track. That said, I just don't know that racing is worth it when you consider the potential consequences. If we do the right thing in the sort term, we'll hopefully get back to normal sooner. 

https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/spl/coronavirus-tom-wolf-emergency-powers-pennsylvania-20200315.html

https://twitter.com/allieberube?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

On the second one you'll have to scroll down a bit but it's the governor's press conference.

https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/sports/columnists/bryan-householder/2020/03/16/area-dirt-tracks-have-often-continued-racing-during-crisis-situations/5056095002/

Port Royal has canceled events until April 4. URC indicated on Twitter a release from the Grove is coming soon - thankfully it sounds like these tracks are doing the right thing. I know it sucks for them and fans, but I'm glad to see they are erring on the side of caution here.

Living proof of how serious this is.

A virus thread has mince meat out of other former king threads - Badlands sold, various Posse threads, Posse v. Outlaw threads, Tyler Walker threads......

I'm not surprised that all the tracks are shutting down.  Sad, but the right thing to do.

Can you see Mt Rushmore from your back porch?