MattS,

At the time you wrote that there were no new cases in the past two days (Tuesday) my county had just announced its first confirmed case on Monday at 18:30.

That’s within your “no new cases within two days.”

While not trying to say that you are wrong, what I am saying is that the numbers are changing so rapidly, it is difficult to think and believe that the numbers – anyone’s numbers – are spot on accurate at any given moment.

Now, Walter. Be kind.

Personally, I’m awaiting the Morgan & Morgan TV ads to change focus from We Don’t Sue The Driver Who Hit You, We Sue The Insurance Company, to:

“We don’t sue your Doctor, we sue the insurance company.”

Meanwhile, just realize that people who don’t understand that practicing Defensive Medicine carries hidden, but very high costs either never studied economics, or flunked the course they took.

“The Life Care Center of Kirkland alone has 29 deaths. King County has 43, and Washington state has 50.”

Confirmed with tests of tissue samples, or are they just blaming any deaths from unknown causes on carona19?

“And of course you also do not believe the CDC’s, which are updated on a slower basis and currently stand at 4,226 cases and 75 deaths.”

Nope. The CDC has strong incentives to make the problem seem worse than it is. And they have been mashing the panic button hard.

Even if I did accept their number, they aren’t all that concerning. Despite the availability of inoculations, the US sees millions of seasonal flu cases every 6 month flu season. While corona19 might be more deadly than the seasonal flu, claims that it is more contagious than the seasonal flu, which have been made, are nonsense, when actual corona19 numbers are compared against seasonal flu data.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

Seasonal flu 2019-2020 estimate: 36,000,000 – 51,000,000 cases. for a six month flu season.

That’s

1,384,615 to 1,961,538 cases per week
197,802 to 280,219 cases per day

Stop the panic, just STOP.

And of course you also do not believe the CDC’s, which are updated on a slower basis and currently stand at 4,226 cases and 75 deaths.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

CDC itself says that “In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.” The NYT is collecting from the data reported by states, which are by CDC’s own standard the more current numbers.

Don’t believe the NYT’s numbers.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200316-sitrep-56-covid-19.pdf

US: 1678 confirmed cases. 41 Total deaths. Days since last new confirmed case: 2.

https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/coronavirus?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

“Consider also that epidemics cost both the economy in general and the government a lot.”

I would say that the majority of the economic and government cost is not due to the epidemic itself, but due to government overreaction and general panic.

According to the WHO sitrep report on corvid19 for yesterday, 3/16 the US still has lest than 1700 confirmed cases and only 41 deaths (for the whole country), and there have been no new confirmed cases in the US for 2 days.

Note: Those pounding on the panic button and pushing drastic government action have a vested interest in making the epidemic look/sound worse than it is.

To the extent that there are different numbers from different agencies/organizations, I will put the greatest trust in the lowest numbers.

Whether or not it would be expensive, or too expensive, isn’t really the same question as that of whether it could be done without federalism problems,