The Next Pandemic: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

12 minutes ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

I think the next two weeks are going to be very informative. With all the protest if the Covid numbers do not jump it is time to reopen everyrhing. A stadium is less packed then those protests and with widespread nature of the protest this is the petri dish I did not think we would have 

If numbers spike, it's time to drag the leadership in cities and states where protests were allowed to go unchecked into the street (figuratively, not literally) and cast them to the dogs (not actual dogs, btw). 

 

I'm not against protests in the least, but if leadership is not mobilizing forces to warn people about the dangers at every turn, and requiring and enforcing social distancing at an absolute minimum, they are complicit in what will follow. 

 

 

[SoCal Deek]

21 minutes ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

I think the next two weeks are going to be very informative. With all the protest if the Covid numbers do not jump it is time to reopen everyrhing. A stadium is less packed then those protests and with widespread nature of the protest this is the petri dish I did not think we would have 

Agreed! While many have screamed about the protests and Memorial Day partying that preceded it, I’m happy to see the experiment begin. Locking everyone in their houses proved nothing! It was like saying we can’t get skin cancer if we never go outside. So...let’s see where this goes. The predominantly young people who took to the streets weren’t forced to go there but we’re gonna find out pretty quickly if social distancing was actually as FULL OF CRAP as everything else the so called experts have told us. Bring it on!

[GG]

11 hours ago, Warren Zevon said:

The more we continue to be exposed to the 5G waves, to quicker we all become immune to them. Makes sense - the crisis is done. #FakeVirus

 

You'd better get a bigger set of Depends now that 6G is around the corner

[spartacus]

32 minutes ago, GG said:

I continue to be amazed at immediate condemnations of any positive observations of the Wuhan virus by the officials. 

 

HCQ?  Trump talking point, it can't work.

Infections dropping significantly?  Wait until the second wave.

Hospitalizations falling? Yeah, but what about this county in NW Iowa?

ICU capacity at all time low in the pandemic? Nothing to see here.

Deaths falling? Are you cheering that grandma died?

Asymptomatic transmissions are rare?  Because no one has bothered to formally study the obvious observation, it can't be true.

Viral loads have weakened? Because no one has bothered to formally study the obvious observation, it can't be true.

Virtually no evidence of outdoor transmissions? Stay away from the beach.  Do you want to kill grandma?

 

PS - Now I see the media cheering that there were a handful of positive cases at Tesla's factory.  No mention whether they were symptomatic or how serious the cases were.   

with viral loads weakening, the proper course of action should be to encourage interaction to speed up reaching herd immunity.

Treatments are available now that were not being used in Feb.

 

Forgotten is that the WHO inaccurately identified this as a pnemonia with ventilators as the major treatment.

The death rates was skewed heavily as a ventlator was essentially a death sentence.

Now oxygen masks are being used to get more oxygen into the cells.   

 

 

[GG]

2 minutes ago, spartacus said:

 

Forgotten is that the WHO inaccurately identified this as a pnemonia with ventilators as the major treatment.

The death rates was skewed heavily as a ventlator was essentially a death sentence.

Now oxygen masks are being used to get more oxygen into the cells.   

 

 

 

It hasn't been forgotten, it was ignored.

 

In retrospect, it sure looks to be a huge mistake to follow Italy's model, which was to keep as many people away from hopitals and throw the very ill on respirators.  But you'll never hear that reckoning.

[SoCal Deek]

4 minutes ago, spartacus said:

 

Forgotten is that the WHO inaccurately identified this as a pnemonia with ventilators as the major treatment.

The death rates was skewed heavily as a ventlator was essentially a death sentence.

Now oxygen masks are being used to get more oxygen into the cells.   

 

 

Is that actually true? I hadn’t heard that, but it’s really interesting. What’s the difference with a ventilator? Do they not add oxygen, but instead simply recirculate the air from the room?

Edited June 10, 2020 by SoCal Deek

[LB3]

18 hours ago, shoshin said:

 

The rising cases from reopening in the south and west should be a lesson. It takes a few weeks for the exponential growth to show a spike. Cases are rising everywhere after opening.It will take 6-8 weeks to see the rise if we use the south as an indication. AZ has its largest hospital system at capacity. NC has rising cases. UT has hugely rising cases. 

 

The fall could be tough. 

 

 

You started off even handed and logical. As the data and outlook has gotten more positive and optimistic, you are always are right there to push fear for the future. Maybe you're generally just a worrisome person or a Debbie Downer, it's just an interesting trend from you.

[GG]

Alex Berenson while on Carolla, reminded everyone that Wisconsin was the first state to truly open up in early May.

 

Let's check the data from that apocalypse?  

 

 

Quote

 

Wisconsin reported 270 new coronavirus cases Tuesday out of 14,227 tests run since the previous day, placing the percentage of positive tests at 1.9% – a new low since the pandemic began to pick up in the state. 

 

The percentage of positive tests, a metric that health officials once used to guide reopening after Gov. Tony Evers' stay-at-home order, has been on the decline with a few blips back upward since early May. Since May 28, it has hovered at or below 5%. 

 

In May, Ryan Westergaard, Department of Health Services chief medical officer, called the dropping percent positive rate an "encouraging sign," but warned that it doesn't signal for certain that transmission rates of the virus are slowing, especially because the state has still tested relatively few of its residents — 368,518 out of more than 5.8 million, as of Tuesday. 

 

The state reports that 21,308 residents have now tested positive for the virus, though nearly seven in 10 sick people have met health officials' definition of "recovered," meaning that symptoms have resolved, 30 days have passed since the onset of symptoms and the person has been released from isolation. 

 

 

[BuffaloHokie13]

Just scheduled my annual physical and tacked on a blood test for antibodies. Should be interesting since I commuted to work the entire time and interacted with a few people outside of work. 

[spartacus]

11 hours ago, Doc Brown said:

I guess it's who you follow.  I just assumed by now all states would be on the downside of the curve by now in hospitalizations.

 

 

 

facts should be facts- regardless of media outlet

the fact that above graphs are using different scales in the same looking format is done to intentionally skew and spin the message 

 

The use of a 7 day average is also highly misleading.

why not a 30 day ave- which would show the backside of the "curve"

with a 7 day ave, any movement seems like a big deal since the totals are so small

 

 

 

 

[spartacus]

1 hour ago, SoCal Deek said:

Is that actually true? I hadn’t heard that, but it’s really interesting. What’s the difference with a ventilator? Do they not add oxygen, but instead simply recirculate the air from the room?

the ventilator is used to assist the muscles of the lung in pumping

for covid, lack of lung muscle is not the problem

covid prevents cells from properly  processing oxygen- similar to high altitude sickness

the proper treatment is to provide more oxygen through standard oxygen masks & tubes- (no need to create crisis for lack of high cost ventilators)

many fewer ventilators - many fewer death sentences

 

[shoshin]

1 hour ago, LB3 said:

You started off even handed and logical. As the data and outlook has gotten more positive and optimistic, you are always are right there to push fear for the future. Maybe you're generally just a worrisome person or a Debbie Downer, it's just an interesting trend from you.

 

Just watching the numbers. The areas that opened first are seeing rising cases. 

 

Politically, more closures seem extremely unlikely. I have always been against the closures. 

 

But that doesn't mean we should not watch what's going on with eyes wide open. Maybe the cases are going up because those areas got spared initially. Maybe they are going up because they are reopening. But to avoid noticing is to put your head in the sand. 

[GG]

6 minutes ago, shoshin said:

 

Just watching the numbers. The areas that opened first are seeing rising cases. 

 

 

This is a gross misrepresentation.    Cases are rising due to more widespread testing.  The positive results continue to drop significantly.  The number of active cases that require hospitalizations and ICU are falling in states that opened up early!  The death rate is dropping faster than WHO Covid retractions. 

[B-Man]

EVEN THE GRAUNIAD IS NOTICING: We often accuse the right of distorting science. But the left changed the coronavirus narrative overnight.

 

This feels like gaslighting. Less than two weeks ago, the enlightened position in both Europe and America was to exercise nothing less than extreme caution. Many of us went much further, taking to social media to castigate others for insufficient social distancing or neglecting to wear masks or daring to believe they could maintain some semblance of a normal life during coronavirus. At the end of April, when the state of Georgia moved to end its lockdown, the Atlantic ran an article with the headline “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice”. Two weeks ago we shamed people for being in the street; today we shame them for not being in the street.

 

Well, at least the shaming continues. It’s almost like that’s the key bit. Plus:

Public health experts – as well as many mainstream commentators, plenty of whom in the beginning of the pandemic were already incoherent about the importance of face masks and stay-at-home orders – have hemorrhaged credibility and authority. This is not merely a short-term problem; it will constitute a crisis of trust going forward, when it may be all the more urgent to convince skeptical masses to submit to an unproven vaccine or to another round of crushing stay-at-home orders. Will anyone still listen?

 

Not likely. Trust is the most important asset to public health efforts, but it’s been squandered almost without a thought for the consequences, because our “experts” lack the self-discipline and capacity for reflection to do otherwise.

 

Finally, are you even allowed to say this? “Risk and safety are relative notions and never strictly objective.

 

However, there is one inconvenient truth that cannot be disputed: more black Americans have been killed by three months of coronavirus than the number who have been killed by cops and vigilantes since the turn of the millennium. We may or may not be willing to accept that brutal calculus, but we are obligated, at the very least, to be honest.”

 

 

 

 

 

[TPS]

On 6/3/2020 at 4:22 PM, GG said:

 

I'm saying that the March lock down didn't save nearly as many lives as the "experts" give it credit for because the majority of the real damage was done in February.  The City didn't fully shut down anyway.  The subways didn't shut down and the cases peaked around Easter.  The telling tale was the shocking revelation that 2/3 of positive cases into May were coming from people who were supposedly home quarantined.  That is bad news for the doomsday crowd, because either the virus had a longer shelf life (unlikely based on data) or there was still a hell of a lot of interpersonal contact for the virus to spread. 

 

All the data coming from NY area (corroborated with personal anecdotal evidence) is that this thing cycled through rapidly and lethally, and then ran its course.

 

My point is not that we shouldn't have shut things down, because based on data (very little) and absolutely zero understanding of his this thing evolves, shutting down was prudent.  My beef is that it is borderline criminal to shut down the economy based on very sketchy data and dubious models (now proven they were dubious), but drag your feet to reopen, when there's so much more known.

 

Yes, the Sweden story is bunk, because nothing changed in their scenario other than still having a higher death count than their neighbors, but much lower than other developed countries.   The theory remains that until you get to a cure, vaccine or herd immunity, the people who are susceptible to this virus, will die.  Sweden front loaded the cases (to be inelegant) and the numbers don't look good now.   Check back in a year when it fully cycles through the other Nordics

 

 

Sweden is not "much lower than other developed countries." It's fifth is deaths per million among countries with 20k or more cases.  Italy and Spain are currently higher because they were hit early and hard.  We'll see if Sweden overtakes them.  

 

The point of a lockdown was to prevent the health system from becoming overwhelmed.  The idea of "flattening the curve" doesn't mean fewer coronavirus cases overall, it means spreading the cases so the health system can accomodate both covid and other serious health issues.  This was the point made in Pueyo's articles. Interestingly he suggested less extreme measures, including masks and social distancing.  Maybe US politicians took more extreme measures due to your focus on culture--they realized many Americans won't adhere to the policies.  

 

Arizona is an interesting case study at the moment.  As cases have increased after re-opening, and reports that ICU facilities are nearing capacity, how should they respond?

[shoshin]

1 hour ago, GG said:

 

This is a gross misrepresentation.    Cases are rising due to more widespread testing.  The positive results continue to drop significantly.  The number of active cases that require hospitalizations and ICU are falling in states that opened up early!  The death rate is dropping faster than WHO Covid retractions. 

 

If you're going to make claims, please provide links. Here are some % pos. numbers for Florida, AZ, and NC. Note: I do not think % positive matters much one testing levels out but that's a different topic...even using it in the way you intend doesn't show what you hope it does.

 

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/florida

 

The cases...if it will let me post all the graphics (could not get AZ in--it has the biggest spike up):

 

 

 

The trends are not established yet and maybe they will come back but we are seeing increased cases and hospitalizations in many of those states. Most predictions around this have sucked but watch the numbers. "It's over" is a declaration that sounds a lot like Trump saying we were going from 15 to ZERO. Way way way too early. 

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by shoshin

[B-Man]

THE SHUTDOWN IS OVER: Thirty-One States Are Pushing Forward With Their July 2020 Bar Exams Despite COVID-19.

 

[Doc Brown]

3 hours ago, spartacus said:

facts should be facts- regardless of media outlet

the fact that above graphs are using different scales in the same looking format is done to intentionally skew and spin the message 

 

The use of a 7 day average is also highly misleading.

why not a 30 day ave- which would show the backside of the "curve"

with a 7 day ave, any movement seems like a big deal since the totals are so small

The graphs are from March to June as far as the number of hospitalizations.

[3rdnlng]

27 minutes ago, B-Man said:

THE SHUTDOWN IS OVER: Thirty-One States Are Pushing Forward With Their July 2020 Bar Exams Despite COVID-19.

 

If there ever was an opportunity to thin out the herd. 

[Reality Check]

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/big-pharma-criminal-influence-research-exposed-secret-recording-lancet-and-nejm-editors

 

 

More good news.