Magox

You're quickly approaching the "not to take serious" group of this board.

Ron Desantis taking this chick out to the woodshed. Ouch!

I know that you can be pretty stubborn even when confronted with reason and facts. I didn't post that to say "Look, Hydroxycholoroquine works!" I have said from the very beginning that we don't know, that there are some anecdotal accounts confirming backing that up. And there are some that say it doesn't. All anecdotal, not in a controlled study. And the AZ doctor one should be treated just the same way as the VA one. Not conclusive but both with roughly the same sample sizes showing two different results. The fact that you call it "embarrassing" just points to your biases. There is ample evidence on both sides to catch your coattails onto. My hunch is that it helps people out prophylactically and in the early stages of contracting the virus, and most likely it's not something that is all that effective entirely on it's own. And even then it wouldn't be something that is 100% effective. Just that it assists on some level. That's just based off studies and things that I have read on it. That's what my intuition tells me. I think once it reaches a certain stage then it has no purpose. Also, it will be interesting to see how the controlled studies are conducted. Will it be with some of these combo's that are purported to work? At what stage of the virus is it being tested? What are the demographics? Is it being studied on prophylactically? No one can definitively say one way or the other. To say it's dangerous is flat out wrong. It's a proven drug that has been used for many years and there are very few reported deaths as a direct result of the drug. And to say that it doesn't work is not knowable at this point.

Whoever is saying definitively that it doesn't work is either misinformed or telling outright lies. It has not yet been determined and what Cavuto did was highly irresponsible by saying "it will kill you" - "this will kill you" He should be taken off the air temporarily or at the very least reprimanded. It is beyond crazy that he made such a reckless comment when the nothing definitive has come out and that his comment about exaggerating the risk was flat out wrong. There are just as many positive reports as negative ones, you can find them online all over the place.   There are tons of anecdotal accounts Like this one in India. That was published in a credible site. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20094193v1.full.pdf Or this: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/covid-treatment-hcq-shows-some-promise-finds-telangana-government-report/amp-11589957584026.html?__twitter_impression=true The point is that there is plenty enough to grab on from both sides. And those that are making definitive statements about how dangerous it is are flat out wrong. This is between a doctor and his patient, period!

Great news all the way around. That test positive rate off of such a big sample of 75k tests is remarkable. Despite all the crying of "We need more tests to get through phase 1", this clearly shows that whoever wants or needs a test can get a test. My question now would be who are taking these tests? I'd like to know are they being conducted on a surveillance basis in the nursing homes/strategic areas and or low income communities - senior focus. But it's a very low rate.

Kinda. But it still captures the most symptomatic, the second tier then next tier and so on and so on. Meaning that you no longer have so many symptomatics and in fact many multiples lower which is precisely why you see a lower positive test rate. Keep in mind even the other tests that aren’t testing the symptomatics are a form of surveillance or precautionary sort of testing. Higher testing capacity theoretically will not only test those that Possibly suspect having the virus but in the areas most at risk as well. And if you have a low % test positive rate that would be a very good sign. Not like those super high positive test rates back in late March to mid April. But yes, as the testing increases from these levels it will dilute the %’s some as you alluded to and there is a sort of diminishing returns element to it even though the additional testing that is conducting the precautionary and surveillance element of it (the excess testing) does serve an important purpose as it would capture some positive tests in potentially critical areas. The R rate is another gauge but the way that is calculated is basically guess work as well as it is dependent on inputs that aren’t conclusive either. The good news is that most places are trending down.

I posted that on my FB page a few days ago. Awesome awesome clip. Super hilarious

Ok, that made me chuckle a little. lol

Have you ever said anything of substance on this board?

I’m sure you do. Just speaks to what sort of a person you are. And if he got it he’d be just fine. People his age are barely affected by the virus.

Damn straight I think the politicians who are supporting stronger restrictions are going to have a price to pay this November.

Testing going up up and up. Test positive rate Down Down down. This is a great trend. When and what rate does it bottom out?

Improvement across the board. Positive test rate at 5%. Will we bottom at nationally at around that 5% rate? If we can get to around 2-3% throughout the summer I think that would be an optimistic rate heading into the fall.

No it doesn't. From Marc Caputo of Politico. So the numbers weren't cooked and the data is still available.

This is another fantastic article. Some of the most well written stuff on the media and censorship have been coming from the left wing of the country with Greenwald and Taibbi. The only difference is that these guys are true blue lefties, the old school kind that used to care about civil liberties. Not today's left wing hacks. The article goes into Ronan Farrow, "Resistance Journalism", Russia gate conspiracy and general views on today's broken media. If you have about 7 minutes to read this, I highly suggest you do. It's fantastic. This point with me resonates.

A good sign that the economy is beginning to rebound some is Oil demand.

Also, more potentially good news. On a subject matter that was brought up weeks ago. Not conclusive but there have been quite a few studies that back this assertion up.

I think that's the correct manner. And I like what Colorado did, which was slightly different than this. Colorado made determinations that some of the people who died even though they had COVID, died not because of COVID but their other underlying issues. I honestly believe that this is something that is not being discussed enough. The reason being is because it's a sensitive topic and it's difficult talking about this in a public manner without appearing callous. This is guidance from the CDC by the way, and I honestly believe THIS IS A HUGE SOURCE OF TENSION between Dr. Birx and the CDC. The problem is that there is a financial incentive to list the death as COVID from the Cares Act, and that I do believe serves as a motivator for hospital systems to consider them COVID deaths as opposed to other underlying medical reasons. It's easy to say "Well, he had COVID, so let's just say COVID". I mean, who is going to argue that aside from some people on the internet? But if you do deeper inspection and you see that over 40% of these deaths are people in Nursing homes and hospice centers, then it's only logical to assume that a decent % of these people were in their last weeks, considering that the average time of stay in a nursing home is 4 1/2 months (vast majority of them never leave the nursing home). I hope that what Colorado and New Jersey have done begins a trend.

Hospitalization and death rates are more lagging indicators, death being the one that lags the most. Death's on average don't occur until after about 15-35 days after the infection occurs. Hospitalization doesn't occur until after about a couple weeks. So it's not forward looking. With that said, positive test rate isn't a perfect metric, and it certainly isn't an infallible metric but it's the best one we have available to us at this time. Let me try to explain why. Let's say you have a community that has a high prevalency rate where the number of people who are infected are very high. The way the testing system largely works is that they are going to first test the ones who are showing symptoms. The most severe ones first, then it goes down in a tiered fashion. Do you Remember how bad it was in New York a few weeks ago? Look at the chart. Back in late March and all the way to Mid April you had these extremely high rates of positive tests. They went as high as 60% and stayed up around 50% all the way until Mid April. That indicated a very strong community prevalency rate. Think about that for a second, over half the people who were taking the tests were testing positive. Just imagine how many truly infected people were getting the virus at that time. Keep in mind that the number of asymptomatic carriers are thought to be anywhere from 10 X as high to possibly 30 X as high as the actual infected count. Even According to New York's (the city) serology tests they estimate around 25% of the population has been infected, which is around a X18 rate (I think it's higher). As testing increased, they were able to begin testing the next tier of people, which to begin with were the most symptomatic carriers, then it went to the next level of people showing milder symptoms, then the next and so on and so on. Now New York is saying that they have too many tests and that they need to test more people. Clearly, they could use the tests for surveillance purposes but that's another matter. The point is that, as the testing increases, less and less people are not testing positive, and that's not due to some rate of attrition because of higher testing. That's because less people have the virus in that community. There is a reason why state/local governments, guys like Avik Roy, Gottlieb, Silver and other respected statisticians are citing this number so often. They are citing it because as of right now at this moment, there is no better forward looking metric to gauge community prevalency.

You are not correcting anyone...You are just making a fool out of yourself. I enjoy substantive debate but what you are doing is not engaging in anything that approaches that. For whatever weird reason, you have this desire to try to correct me and then I have to continuously demonstrate that you are wrong with verifiable data and I think pretty much everyone on this board that is paying attention sees that. If you wish to continue to go down this path where I just keep correcting you, then that's on you.. However, if you wish to discuss these things in a constructive manner without coming off as smug, then all the better.

Just stop it. You keep trying to find arguments with me and I keep posting things that show you are wrong over and over and over.

The best metric there is to gauge Virus infection prevalency within a community is the positive test rate. Hospitalization is an important metric to gauge whether or the hospital systems are stressed. Two different metrics that point to two different conclusions. The positive test rate is the best leading indicator.

More good news from Florida. Florida is leading the way. From DeSantis:

This is either sheer stupidity or craven partisanship. Or maybe a little bit of both. Only one of the three can exist here.

Here is the Florida website. It is probably the best website out of any state. I have seen about 15 of them and most of Florida's data points update daily, some of them weekly They periodically update different subsets of data throughout the day. It's about as thorough as you get. I view this website every single day. https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429 And for other more granular data you can get it here https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/