Magox

More on herd-like immunity being achieved at a much lower level than initially thought. This thought is becoming more mainstream as indirect references are being made by mainstream analysts such as Gottlieb and Silver. Contrary to popular belief the US is one of the highest mask compliance countries in the Western world. Germany and Italy I believe are/were slightly higher aside from that only Asia ranks higher with near 100% compliance.

Speaking of which

I have my strong convictions on what I believe in regards to masks and it is backed by actual data. With that said, I wear them in public if I Know I'm going to be close to other people simply out of respect to the community. I did find this to be interesting. This chart right here is from the CDC. It is an excess death chart and this one here shows the excess deaths EXCLUDING COVID-19. The portion that is in Maroon color is essentially the expected number of deaths. The portion in light grey is the excess deaths over the average expected number. Look at the excess deaths number. In some cases the excess deaths for outpace the expected number of deaths. Here is how they define it: This is partially what I'm talking about @Doc Brown To be able to properly analyze this, it is impossible to view COVID-19 in a vacuum which you seem to be doing. Some of these states have far more deaths than what they are normally seeing after excluding COVID-19 related deaths. Also, another factor in which we've touched on here. How many people do you honestly believe would still be here today that died "due to COVID-19" if COVID-19 hadn't have come about? I have very little doubt that excluding the NON COVID-19 related excess deaths that a significant portion of these people in their 80's and 90's were on the verge of dying and they just happened to have COVID-19. Or possibly that it accelerated their death by a few weeks/months. These people could have died in dignity with their family members around their death bed, but they were deprived of that and had to die alone or with strangers who often times don't care about their patients. It's heartbreaking to think of such circumstances but that is what these draconian lock downs did. They deprived people of dignity and proper funerals.

Once the virus breaks out, the virus is gonna do what viruses do.

Yet another country that doesn’t believe in masks. Read the article. Definitive sounding comments from their top public health official and from Norway. And for that matter it seems some from WHO are highly skeptical. They even say the same things some of us are saying in which there is very little data to support the notion that masks make any real impact.

Really good data for Florida And more

Gottlieb, as usual. Late to the game. Seems to be a nod to the 20% burnout threshold that we have been discussing for well over a month.

The logical thing to do would be to view all aspects both from public health and economic standpoints.

Oh!

Here is what the so-called experts were predicting. I would say considering all the dire predictions under tremendous pressure, with less COVID-19 draconian shut down related deaths and effects and with a better quality of life and economic activity. They did much better than anyone could have imagined.

If you lost a loved one to COVID-19 then it’s highly probable they were in their last few months. That’s the profile, 81 years old with close to 3 comorbidities. We’ve been discussing this Doc for months. There are many other effects other than COVID related deaths, you’re viewing this too much in a vacuum.

I don’t view it that way. It’s been a success, their chief health official had a good understanding of what he was doing going into this strategy that was viewed with skepticism throughout the world. In hindsight I wish we had not had as draconian shutdowns that we had.

I wish I could find the economic activity chart that I saw about a week ago, I should have posted it when I had it. Essentially the economic chart had the other Scandinavian neighbors along with the major European countries and Sweden’s LOCAL economy far outperformed the rest of nations including their neighbors. Plus look at the Apple mobility trends, Sweden never experienced the same downturns as the Scandinavian countries and returned to baseline sooner than they did. Not to mention that Sweden has burnt out, they are at a much less risk of viral reemergence than the rest of countries. Where Sweden messed up and they will be the first to admit that they didn’t put enough resources and attention to their seniors in their nursing homes. Also Keep in mind that the Scandinavians are unique in that they have very strict immigration dictates in place, Norway and Finland don’t have nearly the migration flows that the rest of Europe and that they don’t have many differing heterogeneous zones such as Brazil, India or the US and it’s pretty much one top down autonomous zone that is relatively small. Much easier for Norway to limit its spread and then implement successful contact tracing programs. Which of course Sweden could as well. The difference is that Sweden purposely went for this strategy and they are now at a much better position moving forward in terms of a potential viral outbreak.

And that they are socially distancing.

Remember how the mainstream media and some of their advocates on this board scoffed at the suggestion that Sweden took the right approach with staying open, no masks etc. Now most of Europe is beginning to trend higher aside from the hard hit regions and Sweden has now recorded 3 straight days of 0 deaths and essentially empty COVID-19 Hospitalizations. Remember their argument early in which was they would take a relatively harder hit but over time things would even out among their peers. And I remember seeing a chart of economic activity and Sweden’s didn’t go down nowhere near as much Norway or the rest of Europe. There were mainstream reports stating that Sweden still had nearly as much of an economic downfall as their counterparts. That was flat out false. As many of us said on this board, Sweden had the right strategy for their country.

I was reading from Matt Taibbi and he was interviewing an epidemiologist and his belief was that an oral polio vaccine would strengthen the immune system enough to serve as a good defense against COVID-19. Considering there seems to be pretty strong evidence that cross reactive T-cell immunity from previous human coronaviruses (common colds) offer levels of immunity and that anti malarial drugs that are widely used in Africa who seem to be “inexplicably” fighting off COVID-19 better than most countries, it wouldn’t surprise me that taking basic measures that increase immune defenses would offer additional levels of protection.

This is very difficult to explain, unless you believe that HCQ does serve as an effective prophylactic or some other natural immune response that Kenyans have that most others don’t

You’d skip him as biased because he has the capacity to critically think for himself whereas you don’t. You gulp down mainstream news and analysis like a Slurpee.

That’s not what it said. Most people had symptoms and that they said asymptomatic transmission “may” have occurred. In other words they don’t know. Also this is a setting where there were many staffers that were in settings with the students for long periods of time. Very highly likely that the staffers infected the students. Whoever was making the connection to this and implications for schools is a moron. Two totally different set of dynamics. But never underestimate the mainstream media, their mainstream viewers and politicians to somehow equivocate the two. Oh, wearing cloth masks in this setting would have done zilch.

He's good at aggregating mainstream data and understanding the analysis through a mainstream viewpoint. Anything outside of that? Forget about it

Clearly the point went right over your head. The frustration isn't so much about John Lewis, it's that for the selected few chosen by the political class of the left, it's ok to break the "rules" as long as it is a cause they support. Such as protests and in this case funerals. Whereas, for many many people a big complaint about these lock downs is that they haven't been either to attend a funeral for a loved one or that it was limited to a handful of people. That's the criticism, it's not about just scoring "political points". You just continue to keep missing the point or parroting mainstream analysis without any ability to critically analyze things. It happens on a daily basis with you.

There are tons of these studies that show that it helps with the right combination and stages of sickness of the Virus. And many that show it doesn’t work. Definitely enough to clearly suggest that it’s not conclusive one way or the other This is another new study

Despite all the real data that is available to us, you keep believing that they are an effective means of limiting viral spread. Cognitive dissonance

The modern day left is both intellectually and morally bankrupt. They are a cancer in our society.

Considering that you can catch COVID-19 with respiratory droplets through your eyes, Masks offer very limited protection. Fauci was never a real believer in them to begin with and yesterday’s comments just add more to his muddled messaging. None of the Scandinavian nations believe they are that effective. The Dutch don’t either. The data in regards to mask compliance regions in the Western world and infection rates don’t support it. Again, I believe that they help on the margins and I wear them out of respect to my community. But this is just another case where the media and their faithful viewers once again either overstate things or just get it flat out wrong.