# Coronavirus Discussion WITHOUT POLITICAL COMMENTS



## mmsbls

There is a Community Forum thread on the coronavirus that was started back in January. A large number of members posted in the thread, but with time many of those members stopped posting. The current thread has become overly political and likely unwelcome to many. The moderators felt that the topic was important to many so we tried to keep that thread going, but I believe we failed to keep it welcoming to most members.

In the interests of having a coronavirus thread in which many more members will feel comfortable participating, I have started this one. The rules are fairly simple - no politics. What can be discussed?

The coronavirus
Statistics about Covid-19 infections, deaths, mortality rates
Information on how to interpret these statistics
Testing kits, testing protocols, testing statistics
Details of personal protective equipment and how it affects health care workers
Potential vaccines and drugs to reduce symptoms or infections
Policies to prevent viral spread
Policies to reduce the financial effect
Information from or about health care workers
Personal feelings about the virus or policies related to the virus
Reliability of information about the virus
What actions should be taken to prevent future such outbreaks
Differences between policies in different countries
Studies related to the Virus
.
.
And lots, and lots, and lots of other things related to the virus

What can't you discuss?

DO NOT POST PURELY POLITICAL CONTENT.
DO NOT POST PROVOCATIVE POLITICAL RELATED CONTENT

If you are not sure if something will be considered too political, do not post it. If you are not sure if something will be considered provocative, do not post it. If you feel the coronavirus cannot be discussed without politics, do not post here.

Political posts will be removed and a PM warning sent. A second violation of these rules will result in a formal warning. After a third violation we will revoke privileges to post in ANY THREAD in the Community Forum.

Enjoy the thread and be considerate of other members.


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## KenOC

After a very late start, Russia is experiencing a rapid growth in Covid-19 cases. It has recorded over 10,000 cases a day for the last nine days and now has the fourth highest case count in the world. It looks like after the current day it will surpass the UK and take the number three position.

Fortunately its fatality count (at least as reported) is still pretty low, considering. Let’s hope it stays that way.


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## Art Rock

KenOC said:


> After a very late start, Russia is experiencing a rapid growth in Covid-19 cases. It has recorded over 10,000 cases a day for the last nine days and now has the fourth highest case count in the world. It looks like after the current day it will surpass the UK and take the number three position.
> 
> Fortunately its fatality count (at least as reported) is still pretty low, considering. Let's hope it stays that way.


I've read in the Dutch news that deaths by lung diseases have gone up dramatically in Russia in the past few weeks. The obvious explanation is that these are unidentified Corona deaths.


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## DaveM

In reports/discussions of the recent retrospective study that indicated a possible reduction of morbidity and mortality from the virus with both oral and IV famotidine/Pepcid, there was mentioned the following anecdotes by one of the lead investigators (where oral famotidine was used):

_Dr David Tuveson, director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center, recommended famotidine to his 44-year-old sister, an engineer with New York City hospitals. She had tested positive for COVID-19 and developed a fever. Her lips became dark blue from hypoxia. She took her first megadose of oral famotidine on 28 March. The next morning, her fever broke and her oxygen saturation returned to a normal range. Five sick co-workers, including three with confirmed COVID-19, also showed dramatic improvements after taking over-the-counter versions of the drug, according a spreadsheet of case histories Dr Tuveson shared._


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## erki

KenOC said:


> After a very late start, Russia is experiencing a rapid growth in Covid-19 cases.


Interstingly they start lifting some restrictions as of today. It seems that the nations with "late start" have better information and the experience of others to make better decisions.
Maybe we get some kind of good strategy worked out universally to deal with this and future pandemics.


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## Guest

But don't dare to suggest *there isn't anything at all remarkable about old people dying in nursing care*!! Since when is this something new to Covid-19? Hysteria unlimited.

Listen up; 80 years plus people die every day in nursing care, from the flu and any number of ailments. That's a feature of being in 'god's waiting room'. To conflate this with a world-wide hysteria about the pandemic (which *the vast majority* of under 60s do not die from) suggests an unhealthy degree of mollycoddling and preciousness completely out of step with the real, harsh world of living and dying.

But the writers on here need not worry; they are going to be protected from life's depredations due to the very fact that they're very very special. If you're all breathlessly waiting for a vaccine I've got some very bad news.

Try some Bach; he lived with death his whole life and wrote some of the most magnificent music ever created on the planet from his position of mortal insecurity. I wonder what difference it would have made for him to be huffing and puffing and living in fear and moral panic?

A consequence of living with the relentless fear of climate catastrophe and its endless old testament apocalypse tropes has meant that a lot of people who fear extinction have actually forgotten what it means to be alive.


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## Eclectic Al

Christabel said:


> But don't dare to suggest *there isn't anything at all remarkable about old people dying in nursing care*!! Since when is this something new to Covid-19? Hysteria unlimited.
> 
> Listen up; 80 years plus people die every day in nursing care, from the flu and any number of ailments. That's a feature of being in 'god's waiting room'. To conflate this with a world-wide hysteria about the pandemic (which *the vast majority* of under 60s do not die from) suggests an unhealthy degree of mollycoddling and preciousness completely out of step with the real, harsh world of living and dying.


I am an actuary by training, and worked for decades on annuity contracts (which pay a lifetime income to those in retirement) and also on care annuities (which are purchased when people enter care homes, and pay out a lifetime income for those). The typical life span of people from entering care homes is about 2 years in the UK (although for those who pay their own fees, and tend to be of higher social class, it is a year or so longer). The impact of Covid 19 on care homes is likely to be that there is a marked increase in deaths currently, but that will then work through, and the death rate will be below normal soon (because those who might otherwise have died in December will have died in April instead). Another issue will also arise for care homes, in that they may find it harder to fill places, because they will have an unusually high number of vacancies, and there may be reluctance among the elderly to enter care homes, if they are seen as high risk because of the earlier pattern of deaths.

One way of looking at these matters is by reference to expected number of life years lost. On that basis the death of a young person can lead to (say) a loss of 70 years of expected future life, whereas that of someone in a care home means a loss of 2 years of expected life. This might sound callous, but on the other hand everyone knows how the death of a young person does seem so cruel, whereas the death of an elderly person often sparks thoughts of a long life well lived (hopefully).

I have fairly recently lost both my parents (who died in care homes), and both were (in a sense) ready to go, my father in particular. It's not really possible to generalise about personal situations, but I am certainly glad that they are not around to experience being cut off from family in an environment of fear, in an apparent attempt to lengthen their lives, when they would have preferred to spend the inevitably brief time left to them being able to meet up with friends and family.

My feeling is that the negative impact of lockdown measures is heavy (mental health of the young, missed screening tests, missed treatments, etc) but hard to count, and the positive impact is limited once the possibility of health services being overwhelmed is ameliorated, with lockdown then serving only to spread out the deaths rather than materially reduce them, but it is easier to measure. Hence, I think politicians are running scared of the media because they will be blamed for Covid 19 deaths and so have to be seen to be doing something, and they are less likely to be blamed for other deaths which result from the lockdown itself (because those are harder to count).


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## elgar's ghost

Again I have to say that the UK death total is terrible, but about as all-inclusive as it can be. Some countries may not be including non-hospital deaths or deaths where Covid-19 was diagnosed but which was not necessarily the actual cause of death. The UK is factoring all of this in, which is obviously going to make the death rate look far worse than those countries who set different, less rigid, parameters. This isn't a pop at any of those who report their figures in good faith, but the fluctuation in statistical criteria from country to country means that either some nations' mortality rates are artificially low compared to the UK, or that those of the UK are artificially high. I hope I'm not premature in saying this, but the reduction in total UK deaths over the last three days (even allowing for the post-weekend time lag in reporting numbers) is cause for optimism. What does frustrate me is no information relating the amount of recoveries there have been in the UK, which means that the current cases total is a travesty because only deaths are being subtracted from it.


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## mrdoc

Oh Christ a Bell you are a heartless son of a gun you cant compare the times of Bach with to day we have matured a bit since then, well most have, just remember the 80s+ are some of the ones that prevented the world being taken over by a certain little ex Corporal that wanted to cleanse the world of all those filthy ... you know what I am getting at, they are the people that you should thank for the fact that you can express "free speech" well most of the time admittedly there are still people that like to try and control what you say but they cant stop the old grey matter from working things out, btw have you heard that a mutant of C19 has now started on our children? not to mention all the front line workers. I suggest that 100% of the 80+ know exactly what it is like to be alive and they value life a hell of a lot more than you do.


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## Guest

mrdoc said:


> Oh Christ a Bell you are a heartless son of a gun you cant compare the times of Bach with to day we have matured a bit since then, well most have, just remember the 80s+ are some of the ones that prevented the world being taken over by a certain little ex Corporal that wanted to cleanse the world of all those filthy ... you know what I am getting at, they are the people that you should thank for the fact that you can express "free speech" well most of the time admittedly there are still people that like to try and control what you say but they cant stop the old grey matter from working things out, btw have you heard that a mutant of C19 has now started on our children? not to mention all the front line workers. I suggest that 100% of the 80+ know exactly what it is like to be alive and they value life a hell of a lot more than you do.


Matured? Oh, so you're a Darwinian who thinks that all life before the 21st century was a dress rehearsal for the real thing. Uh, no, it's ALL part of the human condition. This woman agrees with me:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/11/there-is-nothing-unprecedented-about-the-virus-itself/


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## mrdoc

Christ o bell is that your best shot?....


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## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I am an actuary by training, and worked for decades on annuity contracts (which pay a lifetime income to those in retirement) and also on care annuities (which are purchased when people enter care homes, and pay out a lifetime income for those). The typical life span of people from entering care homes is about 2 years in the UK (although for those who pay their own fees, and tend to be of higher social class, it is a year or so longer). The impact of Covid 19 on care homes is likely to be that there is a marked increase in deaths currently, but that will then work through, and the death rate will be below normal soon (because those who might otherwise have died in December will have died in April instead). Another issue will also arise for care homes, in that they may find it harder to fill places, because they will have an unusually high number of vacancies, and there may be reluctance among the elderly to enter care homes, if they are seen as high risk because of the earlier pattern of deaths.
> 
> One way of looking at these matters is by reference to expected number of life years lost. On that basis the death of a young person can lead to (say) a loss of 70 years of expected future life, whereas that of someone in a care home means a loss of 2 years of expected life. This might sound callous, but on the other hand everyone knows how the death of a young person does seem so cruel, whereas the death of an elderly person often sparks thoughts of a long life well lived (hopefully).
> 
> I have fairly recently lost both my parents (who died in care homes), and both were (in a sense) ready to go, my father in particular. It's not really possible to generalise about personal situations, but I am certainly glad that they are not around to experience being cut off from family in an environment of fear, in an apparent attempt to lengthen their lives, when they would have preferred to spend the inevitably brief time left to them being able to meet up with friends and family.
> 
> My feeling is that the negative impact of lockdown measures is heavy (mental health of the young, missed screening tests, missed treatments, etc) but hard to count, and the positive impact is limited once the possibility of health services being overwhelmed is ameliorated, with lockdown then serving only to spread out the deaths rather than materially reduce them, but it is easier to measure. Hence, I think politicians are running scared of the media because they will be blamed for Covid 19 deaths and so have to be seen to be doing something, and they are less likely to be blamed for other deaths which result from the lockdown itself (because those are harder to count).


Bravo. Intelligent comments. We live in a culture of perpetual blaming and victimhood. I'm sorry that you lost your parents but I'm one who thinks that life only has a certain value once things start falling apart. We are hearing on the nightly news headline reports about the aged dying of Coronavirus. It has certainly run cancer and heart disease right off the map.

Living is the best antidote to the fear of dying. What were the immortal words of FDR during WW2? I certainly have a problem with the notion of a "world in crisis" when I look at documentary films about the 75th anniversary of the end of WW2 and piles of corpses of Jewish people in Buchenwald (et al) mile-high piles of hair, gold dental fillings, wallets, watches and other 'loot' from the most abominable crimes in human history. I just cannot do hysteria and 'woe is me' after seeing all that, the power of which never diminishes for me no matter how many years elapse.


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## Eclectic Al

elgars ghost said:


> Again I have to say that the UK death total is terrible, but about as all-inclusive as it can be. Some countries may not be including non-hospital deaths or deaths where Covid-19 was diagnosed but which was not necessarily the actual cause of death. The UK is factoring all of this in, which is obviously going to make the death rate look far worse than those countries who set different, less rigid, parameters. This isn't a pop at any of those who report their figures in good faith, but the fluctuation in statistical criteria from country to country means that either some nations' mortality rates are artificially low compared to the UK, or that those of the UK are artificially high. I hope I'm not premature in saying this, but the reduction in total UK deaths over the last three days (even allowing for the post-weekend time lag in reporting numbers) is cause for optimism. What does frustrate me is no information relating the amount of recoveries there have been in the UK, which means that the current cases total is a travesty because only deaths are being subtracted from it.


Indeed, making sense of numbers is terribly difficult, when the information is emerging in the midst of a crisis and is inevitably somewhat sketchy and unreliable. National differences in reporting standards are hugely important. The UK does have wider reporting criteria than some (so pushing up the apparent death rate per capita in comparison), and Belgium captures many deaths which would not be counted as Covid 19 under other approaches, hence its high rate. Germany, on the other hand, is only counting (I believe) deaths under the Covid 19 heading following appropriate confirmation of diagnosis. No approach is necessarily wrong; it's only naive comparisons which are wrong.
This brings me back to the media. A focus by media outlets on bad news and on blaming those who are having to manage the crisis is bound to shape political decisions in a way which is geared to managing headlines, not real world outcomes. I try not to watch the news or read newspapers because so little that they report is factual as opposed to opinion and hindsight-based attempts to criticise. It is too easy to publish a story such as "One doctor says they are short of PPE", and much more difficult to determine what the PPE position is, where any issues are (supply, distribution, faultiness, etc ????), so they publish the former. Interestingly, it is not considered news to publish a story such as "One doctor says they have plenty of PPE", whereas the negative story is regarded as news. A situation like the current one is not the time for news to be biased in the scaremongering direction, but that does seem to be what is happening in many outlets.


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## atsizat

How many hates will I get if I say I dont believe in Corona?

I think all this fear is made up by world meroeorlogical service.

Somebody wants corona virus to look worse than it actually is.

All this fear about corona is bu******. I dont think its something any worse than the viruses we had previous years.


If I was the president, I would punish anybody with money who says the word corona or wears masks.

As far as I know, Turkmenistan does something 
smilar. Well done to Turkmenistan.


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## Art Rock

Sure. Tell that to the doctors and nurses.


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## atsizat

Art Rock said:


> Sure. Tell that to the doctors and nurses.


The way I see it is way over too exeggerated.


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## arpeggio

Even without the politics(?) it is getting nasty.


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

Don't worry, the coronavirus doesn't discriminate. It takes both believers and non-believers. It might take more non-believers if they properly avoid doing anything that might protect them.


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## EdwardBast

atsizat said:


> The way I see it is way over too exeggerated.


You haven't had a friend who died of it, have you? I have: A healthy man in great physical condition.


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## Eclectic Al

atsizat said:


> How many hates will I get if I say I dont believe in Corona?
> 
> I think all this fear is made up by world meroeorlogical service.
> 
> Somebody wants corona virus to look worse than it actually is.
> 
> All this fear about corona is bu******. I dont think its something any worse than the viruses we had previous years.
> 
> If I was the president, I would punish anybody with money who says the word corona or wears masks.
> 
> As far as I know, Turkmenistan does something
> smilar. Well done to Turkmenistan.


I think it's pushing it a bit far to say that it is made up. On the other hand, the new Corona strain looks like it's shaping up to be along the lines (in impact) of a fairly bad flu outbreak, but not one of the horrendous ones of the past. In that sense you are probably correct that it is no worse than viruses that we have had in previous years. However, it is one of the bad ones.
There seems to be a bit of a false dichotomy, in that you seem to have to be in one of two camps: (i) not a big deal at all, or (ii) unprecedented catastrophe, so let's close down the world. The middle ground position which does not seem to be possible is (iii) this is a bad virus so urgent action is needed, but putting in place an unprecedented shut down of the world economy on the basis of educated guesswork (which is all we have, or can have, at the moment) may well be an experiment that will do more harm than good, in health as well as economic terms.
Sweden seems to be more in the camp of (iii), and I hope it works out OK for them. At the moment their experience of Covid 19 does not seem to be worse than that of countries which have gone for more extreme approaches, and they remain perhaps the most interesting example to watch.


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## science

South Korea, one of the countries that has best dealt with the first wave, may be beginning a second wave. The total number of cases increased yesterday for the first time since mid-March. 

In the US, it looks like things might be beginning to cool off a little in the NYC area, but perhaps not in the rest of the country. I'm very skeptical of the decision to "reopen economies," but we'll see. The total number of known cases in the US hasn't gone down or held steady for a day since late February. 

I suspect that this is an even bigger deal than we've realized yet, both for the US and for the world, in terms not only of suffering and death and grief now but in terms of its long-term cultural impact. I hope to live to see how this affects the worldview of the young people experiencing it. 

Y'all stay safe. Lots of craziness is out there, so be as safe as you can for yourself and your family.


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## Kieran

science said:


> South Korea, one of the countries that has best dealt with the first wave, may be beginning a second wave. The total number of cases increased yesterday for the first time since mid-March.


How are South Korea handling that? Same way as the first time? Any further restrictions?


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> South Korea, one of the countries that has best dealt with the first wave, may be beginning a second wave. The total number of cases increased yesterday for the first time since mid-March.
> 
> In the US, it looks like things might be beginning to cool off a little in the NYC area, but perhaps not in the rest of the country. I'm very skeptical of the decision to "reopen economies," but we'll see. The total number of known cases in the US hasn't gone down or held steady for a day since late February.
> 
> I suspect that this is an even bigger deal than we've realized yet, both for the US and for the world, in terms not only of suffering and death and grief now but in terms of its long-term cultural impact. I hope to live to see how this affects the worldview of the young people experiencing it.
> 
> Y'all stay safe. Lots of craziness is out there, so be as safe as you can for yourself and your family.


It's not going to "go down" because we are testing more. So while we will still continue with tracking confirmed cases, it is a tricky statistic to use for anything since it is a moving target, so to speak.

I had heard somewhere, but can't find the source, so it might be bogus - that while the number of confirmed cases is still going up, the percentage of positive tests as we increase testing is going down.


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## Room2201974

I can only express in a negative number the likelihood that my State will ever acknowledge the true death count. It will take future historians and researchers time to sift thru the data and compare it to obits. I can tell you that what I hear from the ICU nurse across the street does not jibe with "official reports." There is a false impression that my State is somehow "safer" than it really is. I can't see this as being the prudent course of action as it jeopardizes the health of others.

Because we know we are being lied to we have established a very simple and rational view of our continued lockdown: when doctors and scientists say that it's okay for hospitals to have visitors, then it will be okay to be in crowds and come out of our self imposed quarantine. We don't have a choice - underlying medical conditions make any risk a fools errand. So while our state is officially halfway "open" we aren't buying any of it.

We order take out, have our groceries delivered, and the outdoor activities that we have engaged in have been far, far, away from other people. When it comes to planning my wife could run circles around Joseph (he of the many coloured coat) - we can keep this up pretty much indefinitely - because we knew we had little choice. The Spanish Flu came in four waves and lasted 10 months. This is going to last longer.

On a more positive personal note I've used these last two months (our 60th day of lockdown is today) to spend a lot of time pushing myself musically. The result is that any day now my playing will approach the almost passable level.


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## science

Kieran said:


> How are South Korea handling that? Same way as the first time? Any further restrictions?


Not that I know of. SK didn't actually lock down the first time. Mostly they relied on testing and tracing.

It's pretty impressive actually. Yesterday I got a text message from the government letting me know that someone who lives in my neighborhood had been at a club where a person now known to have been infected had gone. There's some kind of website (I haven't visited it) that shows the movements of people who've been found to be infected to help people figure out if they're at risk.

Based on what I observed over the past couple of weekends in Seoul, I'd guess they'll have a lot of new cases within the next few weeks because there was a kind of over exuberant bounce back from social distancing.... If even one person in the neighborhoods I was in had the virus, quite a few more people would've caught it.

The good thing is that testing is so abundant here and almost everyone is eager to take basic precautions, but it seems like as a society they might have let down their guard too soon.

I feel almost ridiculous saying that while looking at numbers in the US. The majority of US states had more new known cases yesterday than the entire country of South Korea, which has about 1/6th the population of the US. But if South Korea let its guard down too soon, then almost everywhere in the US is too. OTOH Seoul is a much bigger and more densely packed metropolitan area than anywhere in the US except NYC, so maybe geography will save the US from at least some of the potential consequences.

I have a hard time scaling my thoughts. Given how frightening it is in Korea to learn this news, how can I conceive of what is going on in the US?


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

It seems like the places where responses have been better have a few things in common - relatively small in size, easily isolated (island nations, small foreign borders, fewer neighboring countries). So South Korea has the benefit of it's only land border being with North Korea, and there isn't a lot of traffic back and forth there. Otherwise they are surrounded by water - a great natural barrier. 

In contrast, you have the U.S., bordering 2 countries with very lengthy land borders, the Southern one already notoriously porous. That being said, I don't know the numbers, but I'm not sure Mexico was a major source for infection. Our air travel entry points were our downfall, particularly Seattle and NYC. Perhaps heightened shutdown of these airports of entry, at least initially until proper screening procedures can be put in place, is the better option. Of course, a lot of that first depends on getting proper and prompt notification that there is something that might be coming our way.

I think this was also the case with the hardest hit European countries, especially those surrounded by numerous other countries and travel between them so open as part of the EU. Germany is obviously the notable exception.


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## Jacck

science said:


> Not that I know of. SK didn't actually lock down the first time. Mostly they relied on testing and tracing.
> 
> It's pretty impressive actually. Yesterday I got a text message from the government letting me know that someone who lives in my neighborhood had been at a club where a person now known to have been infected had gone. There's some kind of website (I haven't visited it) that shows the movements of people who've been found to be infected to help people figure out if they're at risk.


South Korea had the lessons from SARS and MERS. Their response to SARS was not that impressive, but they obviously learned. These smart quarantines are what our government is trying to build instead of lockdowns. Exactly as you say, the will use cell phone and credit card data to trace the infected people and send warnings to people who might have come into contant with them etc. They did some preliminary testing and claim that it is as effective as full lockdown.


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## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> It's not going to "go down" because we are testing more. So while we will still continue with tracking confirmed cases, it is a tricky statistic to use for anything since it is a moving target, so to speak.
> 
> I had heard somewhere, but can't find the source, so it might be bogus - that while the number of confirmed cases is still going up, the percentage of positive tests as we increase testing is going down.


My point was to compare the US to what I'd written about South Korea in the first paragraph. The number of cases in South Korea had been going down for several weeks until the past few days. On many days during that span, the only new cases they found were people returning to Korea. The US hasn't had any days like that.

I don't think the difference between the countries is due to America testing more. At this time the US has tested far more people than South Korea -- 29k tests per million people in the USA versus 13k per million in South Korea -- but the number of known cases in the two countries has been going in very different directions. The US currently has 4k known cases per million people, almost 20x as many as South Korea. (The numbers in terms of deaths are much worse. South Korea so far has had 5 known deaths due to coronavirus per million people, while the US has almost 50x times that.)

Instead, the reason SK's numbers were going down is that people had been recovering or dying faster than new cases were found.

Anyway, it's scary here with ~60 new known cases over the past few days. All but thirteen states had more than 60 new known cases just yesterday. Like I said in the post before, maybe the lower population density will save America and the higher population density will doom South Korea, but for now I'm just having a really hard time comprehending the enormity of the catastrophe in America.

Over 80k known deaths. About 1 out of 4000 Americans are known to have died of this so far. About 1 in 300 people are known to have an active case.

As scary as it is here in South Korea right now, I do wish all my elderly family members were here. It's hard to think about.


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## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> It seems like the places where responses have been better have a few things in common - relatively small in size, easily isolated (island nations, small foreign borders, fewer neighboring countries). So South Korea has the benefit of it's only land border being with North Korea, and there isn't a lot of traffic back and forth there. Otherwise they are surrounded by water - a great natural barrier.
> 
> In contrast, you have the U.S., bordering 2 countries with very lengthy land borders, the Southern one already notoriously porous. That being said, I don't know the numbers, but I'm not sure Mexico was a major source for infection. Our air travel entry points were our downfall, particularly Seattle and NYC. Perhaps heightened shutdown of these airports of entry, at least initially until proper screening procedures can be put in place, is the better option. Of course, a lot of that first depends on getting proper and prompt notification that there is something that might be coming our way.
> 
> I think this was also the case with the hardest hit European countries, especially those surrounded by numerous other countries and travel between them so open as part of the EU. Germany is obviously the notable exception.


Wouldn't the number of people traveling in and out be a bigger factor than the length or nature of the borders?

And anyway, once the virus gets into a country, no matter how it gets there, wouldn't domestic factors (like the average age of the population) play a bigger role than borders?

The US's problems don't seem to include large numbers of infected Mexicans and Canadians pouring across the border.


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## science

Jacck said:


> South Korea had the lessons from SARS and MERS. Their response to SARS was not that impressive, but they obviously learned. These smart quarantines are what our government is trying to build instead of lockdowns. Exactly as you say, the will use cell phone and credit card data to trace the infected people and send warnings to people who might have come into contant with them etc. They did some preliminary testing and claim that it is as effective as full lockdown.


I hope it works for you guys.


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## tdc

The media and health institutions that are promoting the fear over this virus are owned by the same people. When you hear references to the CDC, WHO, NIH, etc etc. It is actually just one group behind this narrative funding each other and promoting this thing. They create the illusion of neutrality and objectivity by creating these different institutions and only hiring people who will go along with their narrative. These same people stand to make lots and lots of money off this crisis and that is why it doesn't seem surprising they clearly want to make this 'the new normal' and an ongoing thing. Surprise most governments seem to be deciding they will give lots and lots of money to these organizations, and comply with their demands.

Fauci predicted the Trump administration would face a 'surprise' outbreak years ago (isn't that a little odd? If he is predicting it, how is it then a 'surprise'?). They also simulated a similar virus outbreak event just months before the actual event (event 201). Gates later lied about this, saying they weren't prepared for this, although this information is public.



EdwardBast said:


> You haven't had a friend who died of it, have you? I have: A healthy man in great physical condition.


He must be one of the first of his kind. But seriously the covid-19 tests often result in false positives. The president of Tanzania recently pointed out, they have had a piece of paw paw fruit test positive for covid-19. Consider this taken with the fact that victims are often being diagnosed on symptoms alone, are being listed as covid deaths even when they have other serious health conditions, hospitals are receiving larger sums of money from covid victims than other types of deaths from insurance. Countless health professionals are being censored if they speak out against the official narrative. Does any of this raise some red flags to you?

People are being lied to on a massive scale over this and having their rights taken from them with no due process and alternate views being censored. People are being conditioned to believe that having freedom is selfish.


----------



## science

tdc said:


> ...
> People are being lied to on a massive scale ...


So do you believe the virus doesn't even exist? That the doctors who do believe in it are lying?

A few of my friends are doctors in the NYC area who've been treating coronavirus patients. I don't believe they're lying. Are they being fools?

What's your theory?


----------



## Open Book

tdc said:


> Fauci predicted the Trump administration would face a 'surprise' outbreak years ago (isn't that a little odd? If he is predicting it, how is it then a 'surprise'?). They also simulated a similar virus outbreak event just months before the actual event (event 201). Gates later lied about this, saying they weren't prepared for this, although this information is public.
> 
> He must be one of the first of his kind. But seriously the covid-19 tests often result in false positives. The president of Tanzania recently pointed out, they have had a piece of paw paw fruit test positive for covid-19. Consider this taken with the fact that victims are often being diagnosed on symptoms alone, are being listed as covid deaths even when they have other serious health conditions, hospitals are receiving larger sums of money from covid victims than other types of deaths from insurance. Countless health professionals are being censored if they speak out against the official narrative. Does any of this raise some red flags to you?
> 
> People are being lied to on a massive scale over this and having their rights taken from them with no due process and alternate views being censored. People are being conditioned to believe that having freedom is selfish.


Let's pretend for the sake of argument this particular COVID-19 thing is fake. It isn't entirely clear to me whether you think it's totally fake or just exaggerated, i.e. not very deadly.

Do you believe it's _possible_ for the world to experience a real pandemic from a newly evolved virus that imposes a high death rate? That we don't well understand at first, for which we see few positive avenues (no immunity conferred, vaccine difficult to produce)?

If such a thing is _possible_, how would you personally want to see such a thing handled? What kind of response from our leaders and medical experts would meet with your approval?


----------



## Room2201974

Hmmm ...from the President of Tanzania.

https://www.theafricareport.com/27787/coronavirus-tanzanias-handling-of-pandemic-raises-eyebrows/


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> Wouldn't the number of people traveling in and out be a bigger factor than the length or nature of the borders?
> 
> And anyway, once the virus gets into a country, no matter how it gets there, wouldn't domestic factors (like the average age of the population) play a bigger role than borders?
> 
> The US's problems don't seem to include large numbers of infected Mexicans and Canadians pouring across the border.


No, but it might play a bigger role in Europe, where for many countries, crossing borders is as easy as going from one state to another here.

The control of the ports of entry is critical in the early stages. Once it is in and has taken a foothold, then that ship has sailed, but you still don't want to introduce new cases while trying to control the internal spread. Once it is in the country, there are other factors then that need to be considered. But early on, you need to limit traffic - just like we are now talking about limiting traffic internally with lockdowns and social distancing.


----------



## neofite

I hope this is not too far off-topic, but I would be interested in hearing about how the current tragic corona virus situation is affecting members' relationships with music. For example, for those of us who are spending more time at home, are we also spending more time (1) listening to music, (2) practicing music, (3) composing music, (4) exploring our existing music collections, (5) searching for new music to listen to, (6) reading and participating in Talk Classical? Likewise, is the gravity of the current situation having any effect on the types of music we listen to?


----------



## Guest

tdc said:


> *The media and health institutions* that are promoting the fear over this virus *are owned by the same people*. When you hear references to the CDC, WHO, NIH, etc etc. *It is actually just one group behind this narrative* funding each other and promoting this thing. They create the illusion of neutrality and objectivity by creating these different institutions and *only hiring people who will go along with their narrative*. *These same people stand to make lots and lots of money off this crisis *and that is why it doesn't seem surprising they clearly want to make this 'the new normal' and an ongoing thing. Surprise most *governments seem to be deciding they will give lots and lots of money to these organizations*, *and comply with their demands*.
> 
> Fauci predicted the Trump administration would face a 'surprise' outbreak years ago (isn't that a little odd? If he is predicting it, how is it then a 'surprise'?). They also simulated a similar virus outbreak event just months before the actual event (event 201). Gates later lied about this, saying they weren't prepared for this, although this information is public.
> 
> He must be one of the first of his kind. But seriously the covid-19 tests often result in false positives. The president of Tanzania recently pointed out, they have had a piece of paw paw fruit test positive for covid-19. Consider this taken with the fact that victims are often being diagnosed on symptoms alone, are being listed as covid deaths even when they have other serious health conditions, *hospitals are receiving larger sums of money from covid victims than other types of deaths from insurance*. *Countless health professionals are being censored if they speak out against the official narrative*. Does any of this raise some red flags to you?
> 
> *People are being lied to on a massive scale *over this and *having their rights taken from them with no due process *and alternate views being censored. *People are being conditioned to believe that having freedom is selfish*.


Even if I was to take your theory seriously, I'd need to check out all the claims you make (emboldened) and then consider your opinions and analysis. Not only are there far too many for a Forum such as this, but the nature of some of the claims - unsubstantiated thus far - would inevitably take us away from the intent of the OP, which is not to consider conspiracy theories, and towards a political discussion.

Why not treat this thread the same as you would any thread about a composer you can't bear: keep out of it so those who want to discuss the subject can get on without a distracting contrary view.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

tdc said:


> The media and health institutions that are promoting the fear over this virus are owned by the same people. When you hear references to the CDC, WHO, NIH, etc etc. It is actually just one group behind this narrative funding each other and promoting this thing. They create the illusion of neutrality and objectivity by creating these different institutions and only hiring people who will go along with their narrative. These same people stand to make lots and lots of money off this crisis and that is why it doesn't seem surprising they clearly want to make this 'the new normal' and an ongoing thing. Surprise most governments seem to be deciding they will give lots and lots of money to these organizations, and comply with their demands.
> 
> Fauci predicted the Trump administration would face a 'surprise' outbreak years ago (isn't that a little odd? If he is predicting it, how is it then a 'surprise'?). They also simulated a similar virus outbreak event just months before the actual event (event 201). Gates later lied about this, saying they weren't prepared for this, although this information is public.
> 
> He must be one of the first of his kind. But seriously the covid-19 tests often result in false positives. The president of Tanzania recently pointed out, they have had a piece of paw paw fruit test positive for covid-19. Consider this taken with the fact that victims are often being diagnosed on symptoms alone, are being listed as covid deaths even when they have other serious health conditions, hospitals are receiving larger sums of money from covid victims than other types of deaths from insurance. Countless health professionals are being censored if they speak out against the official narrative. Does any of this raise some red flags to you?
> 
> People are being lied to on a massive scale over this and having their rights taken from them with no due process and alternate views being censored. People are being conditioned to believe that having freedom is selfish.


What seems more likely - that we are being hit by a pandemic, not the worst in mankind's history, but worse than the flu for sure, that is crippling countries, or that so many countries, that normally don't really come together in agreement on much of anything are somehow all coordinating a fake crisis? You know what the problem with conspiracies is? The second the number of conspirators increases above one, the odds of it falling apart increase exponentially.


----------



## Room2201974

neofite said:


> I hope this is not too far off-topic, but I would be interested in hearing about how the current tragic corona virus situation is affecting members' relationships with music. For example, for those of us who are spending more time at home, are we also spending more time (1) listening to music, (2) practicing music, (3) composing music, (4) exploring our existing music collections, (5) searching for new music to listen to, (6) reading and participating in Talk Classical? Likewise, is the gravity of the current situation having any effect on the types of music we listen to?


Start a thread. I mentioned something along those lines at the end of post #24.


----------



## Eclectic Al

It seems to me plain that we have a nasty virus doing the rounds. What happens then?
Well, all interest groups seek to present the situation, and act, in a way which is best for their objectives.

Governments in democratic countries seek to manage it in a way which will secure support from their electorate, and one of the good things about democracies is that that should tend to be in line with a good outcome for their electorates.

Governments in non-democratic states seek to preserve the position of the regime. Autocracies, for example, may wish to claim benefits of being able to implement strong policies quickly.

Scientists want to be first to make a breakthrough, which is likely to be helpful, as long as it doesn't hinder collaboration.

Anti-capitalists want to see a collapse in the economic system, so lockdowns suit their ends. Similarly, trade unions who are opposed to an incumbent government want to extend lockdowns, so that the economic harm is increased, in the belief that the government will be blamed for that.

Green campaigners want to claim benefits from lack of travel and industry, to oppose bailouts for airlines etc, to suggest long term restrictions on various areas of the economy, and so on.

Supra-national entities such as the WHO, the EU, etc want to show they have a reason to exist. They seem to be doing a very poor job of that at the moment.

Media outlets want to make mischief, because that is what they do, using hindsight to claim smugly how obvious it is that their own government is messing up (and usually being more sympathetic to government challenges in other countries). That's the UK media anyway. It may be different elsewhere.

I could go on, but you probably get the picture. It seems to me that if you live in a democracy the best thing to do is to go with the government line, even if you don't agree with it. They will most likely get it wrong (as no one knows what "getting it right" would require) but they are the group most likely to be trying to sort it out, because it's their jobs and reputations that are on the line.


----------



## philoctetes

This thread is now right back where the last one left off, thanks to the last several posts... I had nuthen to do with it and now I am going to report every mention of "hot words" and you all know what they are... one down already and more to go...

To me all the non-contrary "facts" are still controversial but with this kind of selective muzzling this thread will simply be a stinking echo chamber with no ventilation... a perfect place to get *infected*...


----------



## Guest

In the UK, the overwhelming majority of the population has complied with the mantra:

Stay at Home; Protect the NHS; Save Lives.

However, the government last week trailed extensively through "leaks" to the press that the lockdown would be substantially lifted. When he spoke to the nation on Sunday evening (well, to those that tuned in at any rate) he made a bit of a mess and his ministers had to spend yesterday and today "clarifying" what the new mantra means. For example, he clearly said that if you couldn't work from home, and you worked in, for example, construction and manufacturing, you would be actively encouraged to return to work from Monday morning. That gave relevant employers 12 hours to ensure they were in a position to do the "active encouraging", and employees to make suitable child-minding arrangements, based on an assumption that there was no longer a list of businesses that had to stay closed.

In fairness to the PM, any statement he made to the nation could only be short and not very detailed. But leaking plans to the press, telling us that the would not speak to the nation until Sunday (even though the Welsh First Minister made his address on Friday);making statements that had not been shared with the First Ministers of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland; and not having ready the detailed guidance for business, schools and the general public was asking for confusion.

Whatever our government has got right during this crisis (and we may not know that until the dust has settled well into the future) its comms practice has been poor.


----------



## Jacck

Hydroxychloroquine shows no benefit against coronavirus in N.Y. study
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...-against-coronavirus-in-new-york-study-249429
let the lawsuits begin


----------



## Room2201974

Eclectic Al said:


> I could go on, but you probably get the picture. It seems to me that if you live in a democracy the best thing to do is to go with the government line, even if you don't agree with it. They will most likely get it wrong (as no one knows what "getting it right" would require) but they are the group most likely to be trying to sort it out, because it's their jobs and reputations that are on the line.


Nope, not for me and mine. I'll stay in the control group thank you because in every scientific study it is the experimental group that gets the effect. And in this case, the experimental group risks death. My State is partially open and I'm not going anywhere until doctors and scientists and NOT governments tell me it's safe.


----------



## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> Hydroxychloroquine shows no benefit against coronavirus in N.Y. study
> https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...-against-coronavirus-in-new-york-study-249429
> let the lawsuits begin


someone said "distractions" were bad, but not when they have certain targets, obviously... all I have seen for years have been distractions... political and legal... now we clamor for "science" and then sue the scientists who are *wrong* for trying...so lawyers and politicians win in the end when science will get ya in jail... see what kind of civilization ya get


----------



## Eclectic Al

Room2201974 said:


> Nope, not for me and mine. I'll stay in the control group thank you because in every scientific study it is the experimental group that gets the effect. And in this case, the experimental group risks death. My State is partially open and I'm not going anywhere until doctors and scientists and NOT governments tell me it's safe.


That's the difficulty, and I'm not being hostile to you: I'm just trying to point to how difficult it is for governments. We can only stay in because we receive deliveries, so that means other people have to be out and about to make the deliveries. Equally, people who need cancer treatment (say), can only get that because others are out and about - and that doesn't just mean the doctors and nurses; it also means cleaners and receptionists, etc, etc. Similarly, we can only get milk (say) because cows are still being milked, and the milk is being processed and delivered. Then you have the question of how safe food is: do we need food inspectors to the out and about, or are we now trusting that no one will take the opportunity to sell rotten food.
An interesting academic comment in the UK recently suggested that maybe 2 months of lockdown was beneficial, but by the time you reached 3 months the number of additional deaths from the consequences of the lockdown was going to overtake those that might be saved by it. Take the example of cancer screening: is it a waste of money or not? If it is a waste of money then why are we doing it? However, I assume it is not a waste, in which case suspending it will lead to increased deaths. These are the sorts of things that get worse and worse as the lockdown goes on. Another example is mental health.
I have no answers but the reason I plan to follow my government line (although I disagree with it personally) is because we need to follow a plan together. The only plan that can achieve general acceptance is going to be the government one.


----------



## DaveM

Regarding a post above:
_'But don't dare to suggest *there isn't anything at all remarkable about old people dying in nursing care*!! Since when is this something new to Covid-19? Hysteria unlimited.

Listen up; 80 years plus people die every day in nursing care, from the flu and any number of ailments. That's a feature of being in 'god's waiting room'. To conflate this with a world-wide hysteria about the pandemic (which *the vast majority* of under 60s do not die from) suggests an unhealthy degree of mollycoddling and preciousness completely out of step with the real, harsh world of living and dying.'_

As someone who has a mother in assisted living awaiting a nursing home bed, I am well aware of the perspective at play when dealing with a parent who will inevitably pass away during the nursing home stay. My guess is that, rather than the children of those in nursing homes being in some sort of 'hysteria unlimited' or in a state of 'mollycoddling and preciousness', they are far more concerned about the prospect that their parents might die in an unnecessary state of gasping, choking air hunger requiring intubation and ventilation, all the while being alone without any family member nearby. It's the reason we have palliative care and hospice. Personally, I would hope that 'god's waiting room' is a place of compassion.


----------



## Open Book

neofite said:


> I hope this is not too far off-topic, but I would be interested in hearing about how the current tragic corona virus situation is affecting members' relationships with music. For example, for those of us who are spending more time at home, are we also spending more time (1) listening to music, (2) practicing music, (3) composing music, (4) exploring our existing music collections, (5) searching for new music to listen to, (6) reading and participating in Talk Classical? Likewise, is the gravity of the current situation having any effect on the types of music we listen to?


I think this is a fine subtopic. Maybe it could get big enough for its own thread but maybe not.

I'm a Berlin Philharmonic subscriber. I see their live concerts every Saturday. Digitalconcerthall.com.

As a consequence of the pandemic the orchestra curtailed their scheduled season. They have substituted programs that are a mixture of live chamber music and full orchestra concerts taped in the past. The chamber concerts are performed by orchestra members who stand or sit at a distance from each other onstage and play to an empty hall to prevent infection.

They played a transcription of Mahler's 4th symphony for a chamber-sized group, a kind of compromise. But mostly it's been "real" chamber music. Sad as it sounds, the chamber concerts have been wonderful. I hope they go deeper into this and maybe someday consider a permanent chamber series.

I fear for what this pandemic will do to live classical music. How soon will people dare to go back into the concert hall? Especially where the audience is mostly older people at risk for severe reaction to the virus. Artists will have to devise other ways to make their music heard, perhaps they will do more live concerts online.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> I fear for what this pandemic will do to live classical music. How soon will people dare to go back into the concert hall? Especially where the audience is mostly older people at risk for severe reaction to the virus. Artists will have to devise other ways to make their music heard, perhaps they will do more live concerts online.


It's so hard to predict, isn't it. Hopefully the Covid 19 virus will turn into something which is regarded as just another aspect of life (along the lines of flu). That's as optimistic as I can be, as I can't see it going away. My optimism also extends to the virus evolving into less fatal variants, and more effective treatments and/or a vaccine being developed.

The question then is what might be the long term behavioural changes. I hope none, and we just come to accept it as another hazard of life, aided by anti-viral treatments and/or a vaccine. The idea of a world where people don't get together in large groups (for things like musical performances) because of the risk of spreading a virus is more scary to me than one where in some years there is a higher than usual number of deaths from viral causes. Neither is appealing, of course.


----------



## Tristan

Open Book said:


> I fear for what this pandemic will do to live classical music. How soon will people dare to go back into the concert hall? Especially where the audience is mostly older people at risk for severe reaction to the virus. Artists will have to devise other ways to make their music heard, perhaps they will do more live concerts online.


I worry about it too. I'm 23 and I've been going to concerts since I was a young child. It was going to concerts that really cemented my love of classical music and my preference for it over any other genre. And I have always noticed the preponderance of gray hair in the concert hall and I can understand why that demographic may avoid going for years to come. Many of us have been framing this pandemic and the response to it like a light-switch, then we can just flip the switch and everything will go back to normal right away, but some of the consequences may last years, some may be forever (cf. the way 9/11 changed airport security forever). Online streaming is such a poor substitute for the concert hall experience. Live classical music has already been in danger of surviving, and I worry this will hurt it irreparably.


----------



## pianozach

Christabel said:


> But don't dare to suggest *there isn't anything at all remarkable about old people dying in nursing care*!! Since when is this something new to Covid-19? Hysteria unlimited.
> 
> Listen up; 80 years plus people die every day in nursing care, from the flu and any number of ailments. That's a feature of being in 'god's waiting room'. To conflate this with a world-wide hysteria about the pandemic (which *the vast majority* of under 60s do not die from) suggests an unhealthy degree of mollycoddling and preciousness completely out of step with the real, harsh world of living and dying.
> 
> But the writers on here need not worry; they are going to be protected from life's depredations due to the very fact that they're very very special. If you're all breathlessly waiting for a vaccine I've got some very bad news.
> 
> Try some Bach; he lived with death his whole life and wrote some of the most magnificent music ever created on the planet from his position of mortal insecurity. I wonder what difference it would have made for him to be huffing and puffing and living in fear and moral panic?
> 
> A consequence of living with the relentless fear of climate catastrophe and its endless old testament apocalypse tropes has meant that a lot of people who fear extinction have actually forgotten what it means to be alive.


Well, if THIS post isn't subversively *political*, I don't know what *is*.

Suggesting that we *"sacrifice old people because they're going to die anyway"* narrative *is* part of one of the talking points of one of the political factions.

It appears that it only took 6 hours and 6 posts for the "non-political coronavirus thread" to turn political.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> The WHO will not invite Taiwan to the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly because China objects to it.
> https://www.nationalreview.com/news/world-health-organization-says-it-cannot-invite-taiwan-to-annual-summit-after-china-says-participation-would-severely-violate-the-one-china-principle/?fbclid=IwAR22WDPnB59taqvKBSJywQFY3BhH4zPiBjy2irzibqP3hR7NX-2kb3KAf18


Now that the US has pulled funding it's Bill Gates through his two foundations (Bill & Melinda, & GAVI) that is the largest contributor. I think he might have been before as well or very close to it.


----------



## Open Book

Tristan said:


> I worry about it too. I'm 23 and I've been going to concerts since I was a young child. It was going to concerts that really cemented my love of classical music and my preference for it over any other genre. And I have always noticed the preponderance of gray hair in the concert hall and I can understand why that demographic may avoid going for years to come. Many of us have been framing this pandemic and the response to it like a light-switch, then we can just flip the switch and everything will go back to normal right away, but some of the consequences may last years, some may be forever (cf. the way 9/11 changed airport security forever). Online streaming is such a poor substitute for the concert hall experience. Live classical music has already been in danger of surviving, and I worry this will hurt it irreparably.


Where were all the 23 years olds at live concerts when I was 23? Did you go with parents as a child?

Online streaming with a nice big TV isn't bad, it has its virtues. It's fun to watch. It has to be edited well, I wouldn't want to watch a concert where the camera is just planted in a long view. There are nice interviews with the performers with Berlin. The atmosphere does feel live, there was even a big goof-up that happened once involving a principal clarinet player.

It doesn't sound as good as it would in the hall. It's a different experience from being there.


----------



## Flamme

Art Rock said:


> I've read in the Dutch news that deaths by lung diseases have gone up dramatically in Russia in the past few weeks. The obvious explanation is that these are unidentified Corona deaths.


Ive heard many russian doctors commit suicide by jumping from their windows...


----------



## philoctetes

Christabel's post is no more subversively political than those calling for lawsuits or waving guns at state capitols... and it's expressed with creative passion which I far prefer to all those loud obnoxious bold-faced fonts which represent passion with no creativity... and after reading her post I was motivated to look at the age statistics... and there are enough people below 65 getting this disease to give me pause...

so I don't agree with Christabel but admit I am conflicted, and I worry that without pressure against extended closures that more of the social / economic damage could be permanent... without opposing forces we cannot find the optimal equilibrium point


----------



## Bulldog

Flamme said:


> Ive heard many russian doctors commit suicide by jumping from their windows...


Don't you think it's more likely that they were thrown out their windows?


----------



## SixFootScowl

atsizat said:


> How many hates will I get if I say I dont believe in Corona?
> 
> I think all this fear is made up by world meroeorlogical service.
> 
> Somebody wants corona virus to look worse than it actually is.
> 
> All this fear about corona is bu******. I dont think its something any worse than the viruses we had previous years.
> 
> If I was the president, I would punish anybody with money who says the word corona or wears masks.
> 
> As far as I know, Turkmenistan does something
> smilar. Well done to Turkmenistan.


There definitely seems to be a bigger picture in the background that we are not aware of. Many conspiracy theories going on out there and some seem rather plausable. Won't get into them, but we are being given a snow job. Many are marked down as dying of corona when there is not certainty that it was indeed corona. The test can throw false positives from other causes too. So all the stats are rather worthless.


----------



## philoctetes

I worry very much about the insertion of spyware for COVID monitoring and especially about the illusion Bill Gates has created over the years, simply by inundating the world with his crappy software, that he is some kind of Messiah who can define future policy in what? healthcare? vaccines? for the whole planet? 

Giving away all that software cost him nothing but made Gates a very powerful man... he's obsessed with controlling mankind in more ways than one... why do people trust this punk who got rich by providing a low-cost replica of Apple OS 30 years ago? why can't he just go sailing with Larry Ellison..


----------



## SixFootScowl

Art Rock said:


> I've read in the Dutch news that deaths by lung diseases have gone up dramatically in Russia in the past few weeks. The obvious explanation is that these are unidentified Corona deaths.


My sister has lung issues and says that with the social distancing and much lower vehicle traffic the air is clearer and she hasn't felt better in years than she has felt the past couple months.


----------



## Flamme

Bulldog said:


> Don't you think it's more likely that they were thrown out their windows?


Dunno buddy. L8ly I have a weird feelin g I cannot trust any1 or anything. Dont know why...


----------



## Bulldog

neofite said:


> I hope this is not too far off-topic, but I would be interested in hearing about how the current tragic corona virus situation is affecting members' relationships with music.


Being retired, a solo-type person, and one who has no particular attraction to live performances, the viral situation has had no effect on my listening regimen.

Still, I want this virus gone from the Planet. I have known folks who have died from it, and not all of them were elderly. I'm 72 years old; when I go out to buy food and cleaning supplies, I have my super-duper mask, special gloves, and a strong suspicion about every person who gets near me. When I get home, first thing is to remove and clean the shoes, wash my hands, and dump the clothes and hop into the shower. I've never been so clean!!


----------



## Guest

SixFootScowl said:


> There definitely seems to be a bigger picture in the background that we are not aware of.


If we're not aware of it...how do we know it's there?


----------



## Guest

Bulldog said:


> Being retired, a solo-type person, and one who has no particular attraction to live performances, the viral situation has had no effect on my listening regimen.
> 
> Still, I want this virus gone from the Planet. I have known folks who have died from it, and not all of them were elderly. I'm 72 years old; when I go out to buy food and cleaning supplies, I have my super-duper mask, special gloves, and a strong suspicion about every person who gets near me. When I get home, first thing is to remove and clean the shoes, wash my hands, and dump the clothes and hop into the shower. I've never been so clean!!


Hyper cleanliness is highly recommended here in the UK too, but there's no data yet on _how _people are contracting the virus. Is there any info on that in the US or any other country?


----------



## philoctetes

A rock band I love, Wire, is scheduled in SF in October... some of their recent songs seem to embrace current events by coincidence... but I'm not sure I would take the chance at this point and will have to see how everything plays out...

I had tickets to see Michael Formanek's Kolossus in SF last month.. I guess that money is now a donation... I had ideas to travel this summer, maybe go to some festivals, such as Ojai and Kate Wolf, all cancelled now, fortunately had not bought tix yet... 

sfjazz.org is now streaming recorded concerts on Friday nights... The on-schedule streaming format is not very convenient compared to on-demand, but of course we can't expect every live music house to have an expensive server farm for on-demand... and I hope we never have to take it that far to see *live* music...


----------



## pianozach

neofite said:


> I hope this is not too far off-topic, but I would be interested in hearing about how the current tragic corona virus situation is affecting members' relationships with music. For example, for those of us who are spending more time at home, are we also spending more time (1) listening to music, (2) practicing music, (3) composing music, (4) exploring our existing music collections, (5) searching for new music to listen to, (6) reading and participating in Talk Classical? Likewise, is the gravity of the current situation having any effect on the types of music we listen to?


I instigated a *virtual choir*.

The idea was to use a short song in the P.D. to get my feet wet. I chose *Hail Poetry* from *Pirates of Penzance* by G&S. Then I floated the idea to my facebook friends, and got a great response. I created a private *Hail Poetry Facebook group*, and the "fun" began.

Creating guide audio was a snap, but creating a conductor video took three attempts.

Then we sent the link to the *YouTube* conductor vid, and waited for the videos from the participants. There was some attrition, with several people that had been interested simply not bothering. One lady accidentally sent her video to a DIFFERENT *Hail Poetry virtual choir group*, and they used her video anyway, even though the audio didn't synch up at all (different fermatas, tempi, rubato, con moto) [. . . and that choir got *theirs* up (April 19) before ours (April 29)]. One submitted a video of her singing it, but NOT to the accompaniment track. Others had tech issues. People dragged their feet getting it done.

One of the soloists sang ALL of the solos, so we had to 'hide' him with the other soloists.

Here's the finished product:






.

.

The funny thing about the OTHER *Hail Poetry* video . . . It's a little sloppier video editing, but the choir is almost too perfect, as though there may have been some pro audio supplementing it . . . but no matter.

It's funny because the singer got a notification that "the video" was up, and she excitedly posted it on social media. She was a little surprised that she didn't recognize ANYONE else in the video, and when we pointed out that the video she was in was not OUR video, THAT'S when we were mystified how THEY had gotten a hold of HER video, and seemingly posted it in THEIR Hail Poetry without her knowledge or permission.

After some sleuthing we discovered she had searched Google Drive for the submission link, instead of submitting it to *our* Dropbox link. The OTHER people were also mystified at her video submitted for THEIR choir, and wondered how she'd even HEARD that they were doing one, and even though she was obviously not singing THEIR version, they used her video anyway 'cause she looked so good . . . AND because, after all, she HAD submitted it.






.

.

Of course, neither of us got one up first . . .

*Thomas Nelson Community College* got theirs up on April 15






.

.

. . . and, obviously, we won't be the last either

Here's the "Corona Choir"


----------



## mmsbls

MacLeod said:


> Hyper cleanliness is highly recommended here in the UK too, but there's no data yet on _how _people are contracting the virus. Is there any info on that in the US or any other country?


I asked this question today. I assume the vast majority of infections have not been investigated to determine the cause. There are just too many. But I wonder if enough have been investigated to give a statistical sense of how people get infected.

There was a study in China that looked at a large number of infections and indicated that outdoor infection was extremely rare.


----------



## wkasimer

SixFootScowl said:


> Many are marked down as dying of corona when there is not certainty that it was indeed corona.


Would you be so kind as to provide some evidence for this statement? I work in a hospital - I'm a laboratory medical director - and am quite familiar with how cases are reported and now hospitals are paid. And I have seen, in my own institution and in others with which I'm in contact, absolutely no evidence that this is occurring.



> The test can throw false positives from other causes too.


This is simply wrong. The molecular test for COVID-19 is highly specific, with vanishingly few false positives. And whatever false positives may occur are dwarfed by large numbers of false negatives due to poor sampling of the upper respiratory tract.



> So all the stats are rather worthless.


Only to those who don't understand them.


----------



## philoctetes

MacLeod said:


> If we're not aware of it...how do we know it's there?


There are ALWAYS things we are not aware of, this is the essence of information science...


----------



## Flamme

Is it true there is an additional outbreak among children in ny, w/o symptoms of covid?


----------



## DaveM

SixFootScowl said:


> There definitely seems to be a bigger picture in the background that we are not aware of. Many conspiracy theories going on out there and some seem rather plausable. Won't get into them, but we are being given a snow job. Many are marked down as dying of corona when there is not certainty that it was indeed corona. The test can throw false positives from other causes too. So all the stats are rather worthless.


I'm not sure which conspiracy theories you think might be plausible and which snow job you're referring to, but I don't see how the current stats are worthless. If anything, the death toll is higher than given. When it comes to deaths in the hospital, where most deaths are occurring, there is now reliable certainty that those 'marked down' with Clovid-19 actually have the disease whether they have been tested or not. When the pandemic started, little was known about the characteristics of the end stages that occur in the ICUs. There is no doubt about the sequence now. It is different from any other way of dying including by the flu.


----------



## philoctetes

wkasimer said:


> This is simply wrong. The molecular test for COVID-19 is highly specific, with vanishingly few false positives. And whatever false positives may occur are dwarfed by large numbers of false negatives due to poor sampling of the upper respiratory tract.
> 
> Only to those who don't understand them.


Don't blame him... what are "vanishingly few false positives"? were they higher at one point? all this has been in dispute for months...

To paraphrase Macleod, how does one know that a test error is a test error without "review"... where is this feedback coming from? how can we be sure that controlled tests are an exact replica of field conditions around the world? the beta test for these tests is in the field, in practice... not the highest hill to stand on...

I worked in AI and industrial testing btw... you suggest the tests are now biased for low false positives and high false negatives... it could be the opposite, and some reports have claimed it was, but either way that's not really a very good test and something I would not be able to accept in my business..


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> There was a study in China that looked at a large number of infections and indicated that outdoor infection was extremely rare.


Measures taken against the *Spanish Flu* a century ago included moving many normally indoor activities to the outdoors. I'm a little surprised that this hasn't been considered in the current pandemic -- or maybe it has?


----------



## erki

There is one thing that has lost all the relevance for me: corona statistics. I can not figure where is the meaning to give new countdown every morning. What does it tell in reality? Yes, you probably say it is to see the trend up or down. But why should I care to know that? At this point of the game when we have suppressed(or going to) the virus we have no clue what will happen next. Does it come back with more vicious wave or "miraculously disappear". Will it hit the communities worse who have enjoyed(and bragged about) low rates or not? 
I have found my peace not to care for statistics, not to care about people dying because thats what people do in anyway and follow my own strategy to be as safe as possible but keep on living as normally as possible.
Only when scared/panicking people impose some silly restrictions on everyone I shall argue against these.


----------



## philoctetes

Kawasaki syndrome was *fake news* literally yesterday

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/youre-not-end-all-rand-paul-slams-fauci-heated-exchange-over-lockdowns

>He then offered a 'but, the children!' argument - latching onto Paul's comment that we don't know everything about the virus, and that "we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children."

"Because the more and more we learn - we're seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn't see from the studies in China. Or in Europe. For example, right now children presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory symdrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome. I think we better be careful that we are not cavalier in thinking that children are not immune to the deleterious effects.<

So for Fauci it's not about old fossils anymore... it's about children... based on fringe news reports... and one point Rand Paul makes well is that the models keep changing and the goal posts keep moving... so there you are, something that is going on that you probably weren't aware of... which I believe would be the service real *news* is supposed to provide, but nowadays people don't like that if it doesn't fit their own "models"

Don't blame me for the link, the WaPo paywall blocked me from seeing their report on this...


----------



## DaveM

erki said:


> ...Only when scared/panicking people impose some silly restrictions on everyone I shall argue against these.


The alleged 'silly restrictions' have been imposed in countries where deaths from the virus was wiping out a number of members in families that had been at close quarters, people working at close quarters in working situations such as meat processing/packing, elderly people in nursing homes, where unprotected people had held parties or church services, etc. The restrictions haven't been designed by scared/panicking people, but rather very sober educated scientists and physicians.


----------



## Bulldog

philoctetes said:


> There are ALWAYS things we are not aware of, this is the essence of information science...


It's also the basis of off-the-wall conspiracy theories.


----------



## philoctetes

So if Fauci has his way, infants will soon be taken into quarantine away from their families... 

looking more like *some other country not to be named* every day...


----------



## philoctetes

Bulldog said:


> It's also the basis of off-the-wall conspiracy theories.


Exactly why Thomas Pynchon combines both into great *fiction*...

Anyway, conspiracies are real... it's the theories that have to pass the BS test...

The world is changing rapidly and none of us are in control but we're still going to pretend that we know EXACTLY what is happening and nothing is hidden from us... that "science" will save us, etc... go ahead, but that's not my choice...

btw, if you want to check my record on the old thread about how this thing would play out, since February, I'm happy to let ya... about the only thing that has surprised me is how the stock market holds up but it's had a LOT of help... and I've refrained from going so far as other people to place full blame on anybody, I might speculate but I'm not deranged and hysterical... I'm not cheering for anybody to fail or die... I just like to see what I can find outside the manufactured consent forms of information that come too easily and don't age well...


----------



## DaveM

I am wondering whether the restrictions on posting in this thread include provocative premises of ‘fake news’ regarding valid medical reports of possible or actual complications from Clovid-19?

The Kawasaki-like Syndrome has been reported in, at least, 4 European countries in a significant number of children aged 3 to 17. One of the theories is that rather than children responding with a cytokine storm that many hospitalized adults do, they have a more delayed inflammatory response that can affect the heart and major blood vessels. A direct connection with the virus is yet to be proven in the laboratory, but virtually all of the affected children have had antibody evidence of contact with the virus.


----------



## wkasimer

philoctetes said:


> Don't blame him... what are "vanishingly few false positives"? were they higher at one point? all this has been in dispute for months...


What has been in dispute?



> To paraphrase Macleod, how does one know that a test error is a test error without "review"... where is this feedback coming from?


When a test is developed, the specificity is established by taking healthy individuals without evidence of disease and testing them. If they are positive, but show no evidence of exposure through other methods (such as antibody testing), they are assumed to represent false positives.



> you suggest the tests are now biased for low false positives and high false negatives...


It's not bias - it's inherent in the nature of any test when you're attempting to identify the presence of an organism - the test is only as good as the sample that the laboratory receives, and since the sample for COVID-19 is one that is difficult to obtain, it is likely to be subject to false negatives due to poor sample quality.



> it could be the opposite, and some reports have claimed it was,


From reliable sources?



> but either way that's not really a very good test and something I would not be able to accept in my business..


It's what we have. Like most laboratory tests, it's imperfect. An important aspect of the art of medicine is knowing which lab results are reliable, and which ones are not. And for the molecular test for COVID-19, a positive result is reliable, and a negative one is less so.


----------



## Open Book

Bulldog said:


> when I go out to buy food and cleaning supplies, I have my super-duper mask, special gloves, and a strong suspicion about every person who gets near me. When I get home, first thing is to remove and clean the shoes, wash my hands, and dump the clothes and hop into the shower. I've never been so clean!!


I walk laps for exercise in my driveway and I'm always watching for cyclists and joggers who might be passing just as I happen to be near the street, exhaling their virus-infected breath.


----------



## philoctetes

Thanks for the man-splaining Bill, but you just dodged all the points... and your knowledge of testing came short...


----------



## KenOC

Yesterday I forecasted that Russia today would pass the UK to have the third highest Covid-19 case count in the world. So I was shocked by the BBC headline today -- *Coronavirus: Russia now has second highest virus case total*. No, thought I, impossible.

Turns out it was a careless bit of headline writing. As the story explained, "Russia has confirmed 232,000 cases of coronavirus - the second highest toll in the world after the US." So, third it is.


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> Yesterday I forecasted that Russia today would pass the UK to have the third highest Covid-19 case count in the world. So I was shocked by the BBC headline today -- *Coronavirus: Russia now has second highest virus case total*. No, thought I, impossible.
> 
> Turns out it was a careless bit of headline writing. As the story explained, "Russia has confirmed 232,000 cases of coronavirus - the second highest toll in the world after the US." So, third it is.


Typical distortion from the media, it happens so often that nobody should be ridiculed for thinking it's deliberate... but someone will follow this comment by defending it...


----------



## arpeggio

It seems that the only solution to the hostile tone is to ban any threads about the virus.

One can not ban the political elements. It seems that the basis for so many of the contributions are tainted by politics.


----------



## wkasimer

philoctetes said:


> Thanks for the man-splaining Bill, but you just dodged all the points... and your knowledge of testing came short...


You'll have to get over it. In the meantime, this:

https://www.aruplab.com/news/4-21-2020/How-Accurate-Are-COVID-19-Tests


----------



## Guest

As governed by one of the rules set out in the OP ("Differences between policies in different countries") I post this:

UK takes a pasting from world's press over coronavirus crisishttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/uk-takes-a-pasting-from-worlds-press-over-coronavirus


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> As governed by one of the rules set out in the OP ("Differences between policies in different countries") I post this:
> 
> UK takes a pasting from world's press over coronavirus crisishttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/uk-takes-a-pasting-from-worlds-press-over-coronavirus


For those who are not British, let me just note that The Guardian is a newspaper that can normally be assumed not to be in tune with the current government on the basis of party politics, and to have an agenda in relation to UK membership of the EU which is again not in tune with the current government. Enough said.


----------



## Kieran

neofite said:


> I hope this is not too far off-topic, but I would be interested in hearing about how the current tragic corona virus situation is affecting members' relationships with music. For example, for those of us who are spending more time at home, are we also spending more time (1) listening to music, (2) practicing music, (3) composing music, (4) exploring our existing music collections, (5) searching for new music to listen to, (6) reading and participating in Talk Classical? Likewise, is the gravity of the current situation having any effect on the types of music we listen to?


Good question! I bought a keyboard because I'm in lockdown, and it arrived today, so I went on YouTube trying to find good tutorial videos because I'm a total beginner - any suggestions would be welcome. It's a Casio CT X700, a beauty of a thing, and I love it already. Have sore wrists from holding my hands and fingers at unnatural angles and and playing using all ten fingers, unlike the way I type.

I was listening to more Schubert than ever before, but I listen to a lot of Bob Dylan now, in anticipation of his forthcoming record. I try to listen to new music, but I think learning to play an instrument will be the only New for me now...


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> For those who are not British, let me just note that The Guardian is a newspaper that can normally be assumed not to be in tune with the current government on the basis of party politics, and to have an agenda in relation to UK membership of the EU which is again not in tune with the current government. Enough said.


Yeah, the Guardian is like a students union rag. It's consistent, though...


----------



## Kieran

KenOC said:


> Yesterday I forecasted that Russia today would pass the UK to have the third highest Covid-19 case count in the world. So I was shocked by the BBC headline today -- *Coronavirus: Russia now has second highest virus case total*. No, thought I, impossible.
> 
> Turns out it was a careless bit of headline writing. As the story explained, "Russia has confirmed 232,000 cases of coronavirus - the second highest toll in the world after the US." So, third it is.


Is it true that, despite this unhappy news, Putin is throwing open the doors and ending the lockdown?


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> For those who are not British, let me just note that The Guardian is a newspaper that can normally be assumed not to be in tune with the current government on the basis of party politics, and to have an agenda in relation to UK membership of the EU which is again not in tune with the current government. Enough said.


Interesting. Do I take it that European newspapers Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Corriere della Sera, El País, Le Monde, de Volkskrant and Svenska Dagbladet have nothing of note to say about UK *Covid-19 policies compared to their own countries*?


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Yeah, the Guardian is like a students union rag. It's consistent, though...


Interesting that you think that of a Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/apr/15/theguardian-national-newspapers
Anyway, back to the Coronavirus crisis and the differences in national policies... run along, now.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Think we might be getting a little political now? Just a thought.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Think we might be getting a little political now? Just a thought.


Very interesting.


----------



## KenOC

Kieran said:


> Is it true that, despite this unhappy news, Putin is throwing open the doors and ending the lockdown?


The Covid-19 situation in Russia and Putin's evolving policies are discussed in some detail in this article. While opinionated, it seems higher quality than the usual CNN fare.

*Uh oh, Putin's following Trump's Covid-19 playbook*


----------



## Room2201974

So many infectious disease experts on this forum spinning so many conspiracy theories.

But I quote a REAL expert in infectious diseases when he said today:

Fauci added: "So in direct answer to your question, I think you are correct that the number is likely higher. (Deaths) I don't know exactly what percent higher, but almost certainly it's higher."

So, now, let the attacks on Dr. Fauci begin from those who let conspiracy theories replace fact. When you mix that Kool Aide up, don't forget to add a lot of sugar because:

A Spoonful of sugar helps the Kool Aide go down
The Kool Aide go down-wown
The Kool Aide go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the Kool Aide go down
In a most distorted way

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/opini...ical-examiners-from-revealing-covid-19-deaths


----------



## Kieran

TalkingHead said:


> Interesting that you think that of a Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper.
> https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/apr/15/theguardian-national-newspapers
> Anyway, back to the Coronavirus crisis and the differences in national policies... run along, now.


Yep. I think that of it...


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> For those who are not British, let me just note that The Guardian is a newspaper that can normally be assumed not to be in tune with the current government on the basis of party politics, and to have an agenda in relation to UK membership of the EU which is again not in tune with the current government. Enough said.


In which case, it could be argued that _The Guardian_'s coverage of the pandemic is much less likely to toe the government line, and be so much the better for it.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> To paraphrase Macleod, how does one know that a test error is a test error without "review"... where is this feedback coming from?


Paraphrase? I don't recall saying anything like that at all, in any form of words.


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> In which case, it could be argued that _The Guardian_'s coverage of the pandemic is much less likely to toe the government line, and be so much the better for it.


If the government was Labour The Telegraph would generally slate it, and The Guardian would back it. Vice versa when the government is Conservative. The idea that it is inherently good for a paper to oppose the government line is both wrong and juvenile, especially when there is a genuine crisis. Now is not the time for silly political games. The truth is no one knows what is the best strategy, and I guess governments generally (of various persuasions) are doing their best, as fallible human beings.


----------



## DaveM

DaveM said:


> In reports/discussions of the recent retrospective study that indicated a possible reduction of morbidity and mortality from the virus with both oral and IV famotidine/Pepcid, there was mentioned the following anecdotes by one of the lead investigators (where oral famotidine was used):
> 
> _Dr David Tuveson, director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center, recommended famotidine to his 44-year-old sister, an engineer with New York City hospitals. She had tested positive for COVID-19 and developed a fever. Her lips became dark blue from hypoxia. She took her first megadose of oral famotidine on 28 March. The next morning, her fever broke and her oxygen saturation returned to a normal range. Five sick co-workers, including three with confirmed COVID-19, also showed dramatic improvements after taking over-the-counter versions of the drug, according a spreadsheet of case histories Dr Tuveson shared._


Specific information on the use of famotidine has been sparse presumably because the researchers are trying to limit hoarding and misuse of the drug. Particularly, it has not been clear what kind of oral doses have been used in some of the cases mentioned above. Finally, after a lot of online sleuthing it appears that at Northwell Health where they are doing the famotidine studies, one of the doses used in mild cases is 40mg 3 times a day. Typical doses of famotidine for heartburn are 20 to 40mg twice a day.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> If the government was Labour The Telegraph would generally slate it, and The Guardian would back it. Vice versa when the government is Conservative. The idea that it is inherently good for a paper to oppose the government line is both wrong and juvenile, especially when there is a genuine crisis. Now is not the time for silly political games. The truth is no one knows what is the best strategy, and I guess governments generally (of various persuasions) are doing their best, as fallible human beings.


In fairness, I agree with MacLeod here in principle, that it can keep a government on its toes if there's a strong opposition, and that includes in the media, and though obviously I don't rate the Guardian, and you're right, they _do _oppose the Tory's and would oppose them even if they cured Covid, but I agree with MacLeod if his point is that they're not just there towing the party line, which I think is harmful. If they're asking questions in a proper way, then this should be done.

And you're right about the Telegraph, they play for the other tribe and need to be filtered carefully too...


----------



## erki

DaveM said:


> The alleged 'silly restrictions' have been imposed in countries where deaths from the virus was wiping out a number of members in families that had been at close quarters, people working at close quarters in working situations such as meat processing/packing, elderly people in nursing homes, where unprotected people had held parties or church services, etc.


No, almost every nation has gone for pretty high level of lockdown "jus to be safe". Most of the time this has not been necessary or smart and it surely is short sided if not silly.



> The restrictions haven't been designed by scared/panicking people, but rather very sober educated scientists and physicians.


Right, but the goal was not to suppress the virus to oblivion. Instead to maintain the medical capability. However they made the sport out of the restrictions and passion out of the statistics. I find this notion really silly or even stupid: "we got low infection/hospitalisation/death numbers because our restrictions WORK! ie these are the "good thing". For one we don't know if low numbers are indeed a "good thing" and we don't know what numbers would have been without the restrictions and we don't know if these numbers are important at all.

BTW I am willing to admit myself being stupid if the virus just disappears in the summer and the lockdown was what killed it.


----------



## Kieran

DaveM said:


> Specific information on the use of famotidine has been sparse presumably because the researchers are trying to limit hoarding and misuse of the drug. Particularly, it has not been clear what kind of oral doses have been used in some of the cases mentioned above. Finally, after a lot of online sleuthing it appears that at Northwell Health where they are doing the famotidine studies, one of the doses used in mild cases is 40mg 3 times a day. Typical doses of famotidine for heartburn are 20 to 40mg twice a day.


That's really interesting Dave, thanks...


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> The truth is no one knows what is the best strategy, and I guess governments generally (of various persuasions) are doing their best, as fallible human beings.


No, they are not all doing their best, and criticism of government is just as important in a time of crisis as in less critical times. If the performance of any government could be improved by sensible opposition, why wouldn't you welcome it?



Kieran said:


> In fairness, I agree with MacLeod here in principle, that it can keep a government on its toes if there's a strong opposition, and that includes in the media, and though obviously I don't rate the Guardian, and you're right, they _do _oppose the Tory's and would oppose them even if they cured Covid, but I agree with MacLeod if his point is that they're not just there towing the party line, which I think is harmful. If they're asking questions in a proper way, then this should be done.
> 
> And you're right about the Telegraph, they play for the other tribe and need to be filtered carefully too...


All media need to be 'filtered'. That's what keeps _us _all on our toes.


----------



## HenryPenfold

Kieran said:


> Yep. I think that of it...


That's a bit harsh. I read the Guardian every day, thanks to the lack of a pay wall. The Guardian is a niche left-wing journal of relatively low readership numbers (still not even in the top 10 UK papers) that has in recent years posted consecutive losses in region of £70-£80 million per annum. Over the last 18 months or so, it has implemented a new business model based largely on asking its small readership to donate money to keep it in business. This seems to have worked as it appears to be a financial going-concern once again, even though its confirmation-bias seeking readers are still a small number. This I suppose is not because it does not agree with the government's take on things, but because its editorial line is out of kilter with most of the British people.


----------



## atsizat

I keep travelling. I dont stay at home.

I am forced to wear masks but for outside, police doesnt force much. For inside, that is not allowed. Zero torelance. When inside super markets, it is not allowed.


----------



## KenOC

Slight segue. The Guardian, then the Manchester Guardian, published a very interesting account of Beethoven near the end of his life in 1827, *here*.


----------



## Kieran

KenOC said:


> Slight segue. The Guardian, then the Manchester Guardian, published a very interesting account of Beethoven near the end of his life in 1827, *here*.





> BEETHOVEN: We regret to learn, that the greatest musical genius of the present age, Ludowig Von Beethoven [sic], is, by this time, probably no more. He has just completed his 56th year. It appears that a Mr. Stumpff, of Vienna, from a noble desire to testify the high esteem he entertains for him, procured, at a very great expense, the entire Works of Handel, in forty volumes folio, Arnold's excellent edition, handsomely bound, and sent them as a present to Beethoven. They were delivered to him free of any expense; but Beethoven at the time was laid up with dropsy in the abdomen, and though the operation of tapping had been performed, his physicians have pronounced him to be in extreme danger; he pointed his finger to Handel's Works, and said, with feeling and emphasis -- "That is the true thing." He signed his name very legibly to the document, acknowledging the receipt of Handel's Works.


That's beautiful...


----------



## DaveM

erki said:


> No, almost every nation has gone for pretty high level of lockdown "jus to be safe". Most of the time this has not been necessary or smart and it surely is short sided if not silly.


I don't know the significance of 'almost every nation', unless you are referring to very small countries such as yours (Pop circa 1.4 million), but the nations of China, Japan, South Korea, U.S., U.K., Italy, France etc. have locked down for reasons having to do with thousands of deaths and millions of cases, something more serious than 'just to be safe'. As for the 'short sided [sic] if not silly' comment, there are results to the contrary.


----------



## Room2201974

The subterfuge of slipping in Beethoven's death bed vote for Handel as the Greatest Composer in a thread about a deadly infectious disease should not be lost on this group.

Well played! :tiphat:


----------



## KenOC

Politics. I see the House Demcrats are preparing another $3 trillion relief spending bill, on top of the $3 trillion already passed. I am afraid, deeply afraid, that this is a parallel to what a military officer said during the Tet offensive in Viet Nam: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

At the end of this year we will have a level of debt that our children and grandchildren can never hope to repay. And if we try to inflate our way out of the debt trap, older people onfixed pensions and social security will, frankly, be plunged into the deepest poverty, unsure whether life or death is the best outcome for them.

Rand Paul speaks the truth in this case: We're spending imaginary money, money that doesn't exist. Even without the most dire immediate outcomes, if interest rates rise to their more usual historical levels, debt service will more than eat up the entire discretionary portion of the federal budget.

I am afraid that we will continue along this course and ruin our country for a very long time to come. Right now it all stinks of cynical vote-buying (by both parties) along with the sickly aroma of a hugely overdrawn credit card.

We would be well ahead to take our lumps and accept nastier flu seasons with more deaths, at least for the time being.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> ...We would be well ahead to take our lumps and accept nastier flu seasons with more deaths, at least for the time being.


Speaking of lumps, are you lumping Clovid-19 in with those 'nastier flu seasons'?


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Yep. I think that of it...


A prize with zero credibility, it has to be said.


----------



## Guest

eljr said:


> you realize you are using a logical fallacy, right?


You cannot tolerate one without tolerating the other. Road traffic accidents are almost entirely preventable. Death itself from disease isn't. If you want to make a difference start a campaign to reduce road deaths first.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> Speaking of lumps, are you lumping Clovid-19 in with those 'nastier flu seasons'?


Absolutely, yes.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Absolutely, yes.


Totally agree. Let's agree, too, that deaths from drug overdoses are huge in number; and I suspect (only suspect) that many of those NYC victims of Covid-19 probably had co-morbidities such as drug and/or alcohol addiction.

But that will never satisfy those who wish to apportion blame. There's something deeply political in their motivations, I'm sure.

The over-drawn credit card comment of yours is very pertinent indeed. And something which will be a growing problem long after the panic over Covid-19 has subsided, and some other form of moral panic emerges to take its place. There's always the good old "climate catastrophe" to get us by, though!!!


----------



## senza sordino

I thought I would share with you my experience as a high school teacher during this pandemic and lock-down. 

We were instructed by the administration right away that no student would be penalized during the school shutdown. No students' marks would drop because of a lack of participation. 

I use a platform for short lessons (like zoom) and posting assignments. Students submit their assignments, I offer feedback and hints to make corrections, and then they resubmit. This can go back and forth until the student gets every question correct. Initially, there was quite a bit of interest and work from students, but lately it has waned. My computer is on all day and week-end, so they can submit at anytime and I will give fairly quick feedback. 

Today I gave an online lesson and only three students were there, out of 23 in total in that class. The lesson was at 3pm, and one of my students had only just woken up. 

In my worst class there have been three assignments so far (in seven weeks), and only a 20% completion rate. 

It's not all that bad, my best class has a completion rate of about 50%. 

I know there are a variety of reasons why some students are not participating: parents have lost jobs, sharing one computer in a house, lack of structure and routine, they know there is no consequence for not participating etc. But there has definitely been a level of malaise settling in with my students, less participation and less homework completed lately compared with initially. 

I know we will not be going back to a normal class routine this month, nor in June. We teachers might be back in the classroom in June, but not all of the students. We are thinking there might be some sort of blended model of in class instruction and online instruction. But I hope this doesn't go on much longer, the students need some sort of education and structure.


----------



## KenOC

Christabel said:


> Have people who comment here realized at all that 40,000 people in the USA die from road accidents every year? Entirely preventable, yet never a murmur.


Absolutely true. We judge those deaths "worth it" in terms of time, cost, and convenience.


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## eljr

Christabel said:


> You cannot tolerate one without tolerating the other. Road traffic accidents are almost entirely preventable. Death itself from disease isn't. If you want to make a difference start a campaign to reduce road deaths first.


do you not understand what a logical fallacy is?

here ya go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy


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## Varick

KenOC said:


> Politics. I see the House Demcrats are preparing another $3 trillion relief spending bill, on top of the $3 trillion already passed. I am afraid, deeply afraid, that this is a parallel to what a military officer said during the Tet offensive in Viet Nam: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
> 
> At the end of this year we will have a level of debt that our children and grandchildren can never hope to repay. And if we try to inflate our way out of the debt trap, older people onfixed pensions and social security will, frankly, be plunged into the deepest poverty, unsure whether life or death is the best outcome for them.
> 
> Rand Paul speaks the truth in this case: We're spending imaginary money, money that doesn't exist. Even without the most dire immediate outcomes, if interest rates rise to their more usual historical levels, debt service will more than eat up the entire discretionary portion of the federal budget.
> 
> I am afraid that we will continue along this course and ruin our country for a very long time to come. Right now it all stinks of cynical vote-buying (by both parties) along with the sickly aroma of a hugely overdrawn credit card.
> 
> We would be well ahead to take our lumps and accept nastier flu seasons with more deaths, at least for the time being.


Great Post. Well said!

V


----------



## Varick

eljr said:


> you realize you are using a logical fallacy, right?


It may be a fallacy, but it depends on the context.

I had someone tell me when I stated that this one-size-fits-all worldwide (and particularly US lock down, since that's where I live) will be one of the worst mistakes that man-kind ever did. That we should re-open 90% of the economy. I won't get into all the details of the conversation, but when he said, "Oh, so you care more about the economy than people's lives?" I told him how foolish it is to moralize this situation is such ways. After I told him the economy IS people's lives and lively hoods, I then used the exact same analogy:

Almost 40K people die in the US on average in auto accidents. There is a very simple way to practically eliminate ALL auto deaths: 15-20 MPH National Speed limit. Of course he wouldn't be for such an idiotic law, to which my response would be, "Oh, I guess you don't care about those 40K lives?" Illuminated the idiocy of the argument and moralizing such ideas. In that sense, it is a perfect analogy when moralizing an argument in the context I provided.

However, I must say, I have no idea in what context Christabel is using it in, so I can not make a judgement.

V


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## DaveM

I would hazard a guess that those who are playing fast and loose with theories that involve accepting thousands of lives have not had personal experience with either a death or near death of someone close from this disease. Anyone here sat in the waiting room wondering whether a close relative in respiratory distress about to be placed on a ventilator was going to make it? Anyone here seen someone die like this? Unlike influenza and it’s consequences, there is no cure or treatment. 

You want to make comparisons between a highly contagious deadly disease with no vaccine or cure with traffic accidents? Really? Well have at it in the quiet of your safe and sound room because you might get a different perspective after a visit to an ICU.


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## KenOC

And perhaps all this ruinous spending is for nothing. Here's a short essay from* The Lancet*, absolutely worth reading in full. The last paragraph:

"In summary, COVID-19 is a disease that is highly infectious and spreads rapidly through society. It is often quite symptomless and might pass unnoticed, but it also causes severe disease, and even death, in a proportion of the population, and our most important task is not to stop spread, which is all but futile, but to concentrate on giving the unfortunate victims optimal care."


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## eljr

DaveM said:


> You want to make comparisons between a highly contagious deadly disease with no vaccine or cure with traffic accidents? Really?


that was just a poster being provocative


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## DaveM

......Double post


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## mmsbls

I have made some edits and deleted some posts. The edits generally were to political posts while most of the deleted posts were due to chiding. sniping, and generally impolite behavior (remember: Be polite to your fellow members is the first guideline for general forum behavior). We're going to be more much more aggressive moderating this thread in an attempt to make it more comfortable to a wide range of forum members. It;s an important topic so, again, please be considerate to other members.


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## Guest

Kieran said:


> Yep. I think that of it...


Fake news, the order of the day! This from 2019:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/02/28/the-guardians-anti-brexit-fake-news/


----------



## Guest

Varick said:


> It may be a fallacy, but it depends on the context.
> 
> I had someone tell me when I stated that this one-size-fits-all worldwide (and particularly US lock down, since that's where I live) will be one of the worst mistakes that man-kind ever did. That we should re-open 90% of the economy. I won't get into all the details of the conversation, but when he said, "Oh, so you care more about the economy than people's lives?" I told him how foolish it is to moralize this situation is such ways. After I told him the economy IS people's lives and lively hoods, I then used the exact same analogy:
> 
> Almost 40K people die in the US on average in auto accidents. There is a very simple way to practically eliminate ALL auto deaths: 15-20 MPH National Speed limit. Of course he wouldn't be for such an idiotic law, to which my response would be, "Oh, I guess you don't care about those 40K lives?" Illuminated the idiocy of the argument and moralizing such ideas. In that sense, it is a perfect analogy when moralizing an argument in the context I provided.
> 
> However, I must say, I have no idea in what context Christabel is using it in, so I can not make a judgement.
> 
> V


I'm using facts available on the internet about the road toll in the USA - largely undiscussed - as compared to the death toll from Coronavirus which is, of course, somebody else's fault. One a problem that can be dealt with, and plainly isn't, and another which has no known fix but which is causing hysteria and economic meltdown. Yeah, that's the 'context'. Fix the road toll if you're in such a furore about deaths from a pandemic, *to show you're really serious about mortality in the general population!!*

I've pinched somebody else's words on this subject from our national newspaper in Australia, with which I couldn't agree more:

*Global upheavals like the Great Depression, WW1 and WW2 made previous generations stronger, more resilient, resourceful and self-reliant. Alas, governments' overblown and panicked response to the current coronavirus pandemic will have exactly the opposite effect on current and future generations*.


----------



## Open Book

KenOC said:


> And perhaps all this ruinous spending is for nothing. Here's a short essay from* The Lancet*, absolutely worth reading in full. The last paragraph:
> 
> "In summary, COVID-19 is a disease that is highly infectious and spreads rapidly through society. It is often quite symptomless and might pass unnoticed, but it also causes severe disease, and even death, in a proportion of the population, and our most important task is not to stop spread, which is all but futile, but to concentrate on giving the unfortunate victims optimal care."


Part of giving victims optimal care is buying enough time to develop treatments. Also maybe we will be able to develop a profile of those who are most likely to suffer severe effects. Maybe there's a genetic factor.

We desperately need more knowledge. This has been going on for too short a time for us to know much and there is a lot of conflicting information.

There is a model that showed that severe shutdowns may actually be worse than more moderate shutdowns, will postpone but actually raise the number of deaths in the long run. We're not even sure about the model of spread yet.


----------



## Open Book

DaveM said:


> I would hazard a guess that those who are playing fast and loose with theories that involve accepting thousands of lives have not had personal experience with either a death or near death of someone close from this disease. Anyone here sat in the waiting room wondering whether a close relative in respiratory distress about to be placed on a ventilator was going to make it? Anyone here seen someone die like this? Unlike influenza and it's consequences, there is no cure or treatment.
> 
> You want to make comparisons between a highly contagious deadly disease with no vaccine or cure with traffic accidents? Really? Well have at it in the quiet of your safe and sound room because you might get a different perspective after a visit to an ICU.


Traffic accidents feel preventable but they're not, there will always be a certain number. I don't think yours is a good argument though because traffic accident deaths can be gruesome and hard on loved ones, too.

I think it's the nature of the virus that is gruesome and more repellent than other risks to many of us, the way it came out of nowhere, and we have little understanding of it. It's nature at its worst. It's a monster. That's why some of us are more afraid of going out in public than of driving a car.


----------



## eljr

Christabel said:


> *Global upheavals like the Great Depression, WW1 and WW2 made previous generations stronger, more resilient, resourceful and self-reliant. Alas, governments' overblown and panicked response to the current coronavirus pandemic will have exactly the opposite effect on current and future generations*.


dude, this is nonsense

just another fallacy from you, it is getting old


----------



## Open Book

Christabel said:


> But don't dare to suggest *there isn't anything at all remarkable about old people dying in nursing care*!! Since when is this something new to Covid-19? Hysteria unlimited.


How do you know there isn't something new to Covid-19? Maybe it will be the one that kills the entire human race. Maybe it will mutate into such a thing.

Anyone who confidently says "No virus would totally annihilate its host" is foolish. That virus would be a self-destructive failure but there are all kinds of failures in nature, always have been, species that don't survive. Viruses that don't survive could take their hosts with them. Viruses aren't intelligent planners.



Christabel said:


> Listen up; 80 years plus people die every day in nursing care, from the flu and any number of ailments. That's a feature of being in 'god's waiting room'. To conflate this with a world-wide hysteria about the pandemic (which *the vast majority* of under 60s do not die from) suggests an unhealthy degree of mollycoddling and preciousness completely out of step with the real, harsh world of living and dying.


Yes, very old people are very vulnerable. Now they have one more thing to be vulnerable to and will die at an even higher rate in nursing homes than before. Will you admit that? "The vast majority of those under 60"--what about the young people getting strokes from this virus? What about people possibly being able to be reinfected? If the virus doesn't kill them the first time, maybe it will the second or third time. Will you admit any of that?



Christabel said:


> But the writers on here need not worry; they are going to be protected from life's depredations due to the very fact that they're very very special. If you're all breathlessly waiting for a vaccine I've got some very bad news.


You have a point, we do live more comfortably in the First World and we are spoiled and unused to tribulation. That's why people are yammering to be let out of their houses and end the shutdown because they can't take the isolation. They can't even sacrifice that much.



Christabel said:


> Try some Bach; he lived with death his whole life and wrote some of the most magnificent music ever created on the planet from his position of mortal insecurity. I wonder what difference it would have made for him to be huffing and puffing and living in fear and moral panic?
> 
> A consequence of living with the relentless fear of climate catastrophe and its endless old testament apocalypse tropes has meant that a lot of people who fear extinction have actually forgotten what it means to be alive.


Some truth here. I'm always impressed that most of my favorite composers lived in harsh times and many of them died far too young or their children died before reaching adulthood and broke their hearts. They lived always with the possibility and reality of death and yet they produced wonderful art. They had the comfort of religion to help them psychologically which we have largely lost. And we don't know that they didn't live in fear sometimes.

But we're capable of fighting back against things they had to just put up with. We have more weapons, and we're trying to use them wisely. That's better than passively taking it on the chin to build moral character.

I'm curious, are you going to go to live concerts and sit among possibly infected people or are you going to stay in quarantine at home (assuming you are a fan of live concerts)? I recall you saying you were of a certain age and were going to remain quarantined. If you feel that way, so do many others, and the economy will suffer by your behavior anyway, whether things are reopened or not.


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## philoctetes

Social media breakdown since COVID-19


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## DaveM

Open Book said:


> Traffic accidents feel preventable but they're not, there will always be a certain number. I don't think yours is a good argument though because traffic accident deaths can be gruesome and hard on loved ones, too.


How come I knew that someone would post that. If one is going to make comparisons between traffic accidents and the pandemic, then let's compare apples with apples. First off, of course traffic accidents can be 'gruesome and hard on loved ones'. Annual U.S. deaths from traffic accidents are 38,000. But most of those accidents involve human error or negligence so whenever they occur either the one injured or killed caused the accident or vice versa or both were at fault. We know what is causing these accidents and the fault and solution lies with humans. Not exactly a good comparison with a deadly, highly contagious disease for which there is no cure and for which most of the people dying are not to blame.

So here's a better analogy: Picture a critical part in a car that for reasons unknown is suddenly causing brakes to fail to the tune of 80,000 lives lost -with no fault of the driver- within a slightly over 3 month period. Annualize that to about 300,000 lives lost. That's a better comparison to the coronavirus. That would be likely to get people's attention compared to a 38,000 figure due to accidents that are within peoples' power to change.



> I think it's the nature of the virus that is gruesome and more repellent than other risks to many of us, the way it came out of nowhere, and we have little understanding of it. It's nature at its worst. It's a monster. That's why some of us are more afraid of going out in public than of driving a car.


Well, yes. And the gruesome end to peoples' lives in ICUs due to the virus is occurring at a frequency many times more than that due to traffic accidents.

Btw, traffic accidents are preventable. Don't drink and drive. Don't text while driving. Don't speed. Don't drive without a seatbelt fastened. Don't drive unrested. Exercise defensive driving. One of the reasons that people 'put up' with 38,000 lives lost annually is because of the frustration that we know the solutions and people insist on ignoring them. Another reason is that we know that if we follow the auto-safety behaviors above, that 38,000 figure is far less likely to apply to us. Again, not exactly a situation that bears any comparison with a pandemic.


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## SixFootScowl

MacLeod said:


> If we're not aware of it...how do we know it's there?


We are aware of many conspiracy theories and I suspect there is something going on but the exact nature of it and the players I am not aware of. There are suggestions and/or assertions of who they are, but do we take that word for truth? We may only be scratching the surface of what is really going on.


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## SixFootScowl

> Originally Posted by SixFootScowl View Post
> Many are marked down as dying of corona when there is not certainty that it was indeed corona.





wkasimer said:


> Would you be so kind as to provide some evidence for this statement? I work in a hospital - I'm a laboratory medical director - and am quite familiar with how cases are reported and now hospitals are paid. And I have seen, in my own institution and in others with which I'm in contact, absolutely no evidence that this is occurring.


According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided *preliminary guidance* for how to record virus-related deaths in case of uncertainty, such as when test results are not available. The last Q&A in the linked Preliminary Guidance document (my underlining):

"Should "COVID-19" be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?

"COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory testing, etc. If the decedent had other chronic conditions such as COPD or asthma that may have also contributed, these conditions can be reported in Part II. (See attached Guidance for Certifying COVID-19 Deaths)"


----------



## pianozach

senza sordino said:


> I thought I would share with you my experience as a high school teacher during this pandemic and lock-down.
> 
> We were instructed by the administration right away that no student would be penalized during the school shutdown. No students' marks would drop because of a lack of participation.
> 
> I use a platform for short lessons (like zoom) and posting assignments. Students submit their assignments, I offer feedback and hints to make corrections, and then they resubmit. This can go back and forth until the student gets every question correct. Initially, there was quite a bit of interest and work from students, but lately it has waned. My computer is on all day and week-end, so they can submit at anytime and I will give fairly quick feedback.
> 
> Today I gave an online lesson and only three students were there, out of 23 in total in that class. The lesson was at 3pm, and one of my students had only just woken up.
> 
> In my worst class there have been three assignments so far (in seven weeks), and only a 20% completion rate.
> 
> It's not all that bad, my best class has a completion rate of about 50%.
> 
> I know there are a variety of reasons why some students are not participating: parents have lost jobs, sharing one computer in a house, lack of structure and routine, they know there is no consequence for not participating etc. But there has definitely been a level of malaise settling in with my students, less participation and less homework completed lately compared with initially.
> 
> I know we will not be going back to a normal class routine this month, nor in June. We teachers might be back in the classroom in June, but not all of the students. We are thinking there might be some sort of blended model of in class instruction and online instruction. But I hope this doesn't go on much longer, the students need some sort of education and structure.


Thanks for sharing that.

I work as a "Music Specialist" at a local high school, and a middle school with an award-winning choir program. In this context "Music Specialist" means that I am the primary accompanist, and do not have a teaching credential.

After my wife and I made the Hail Poetry Video (we invited the very skeptical High School choir teacher to participate), the Principal at the school asked him if he could "put together one of those virtual choir things" for graduation, so he called me.

I had asked both the choir teachers back at the beginning of April how the online choir teaching was going, but neither had gotten back to me about it until this project came up. Since then the middle school teacher finally answered with a *"Online Choir Classes are very difficult--and very time consuming. A lot of the kids are mourning the loss of choir--and more importantly their lives. We all are coming to the realization that next year will not be anything even close to normal. "*

But attempting to put together a virtual choir with the graduating seniors told a different story. The choir teacher told me that there were students he hadn't heard from since the middle of March.

Of the 27 graduating choir students, 16 actually attempted to submit videos. One senior simply declined to be involved. Two of the participants actually did so pretty grudgingly, judging by their behavior during the video.

This choir teacher has been pretty vague about his online teaching. I'm guessing it's actually an unsatisfying way to teach this subject. And, of course, my involvement has been unneeded.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> ...Btw, traffic accidents are preventable. Don't drink and drive. Don't text while driving. Don't speed. Don't drive without a seatbelt fastened. Don't drive unrested. Exercise defensive driving. One of the reasons that people 'put up' with 38,000 lives lost annually is because of the frustration that we know the solutions and people insist on ignoring them. Another reason is that we know that if we follow the auto-safety behaviors above, that 38,000 figure is far less likely to apply to us. Again, not exactly a situation that bears any comparison with a pandemic.


An interesting argument but not entirely convincing. Regardless of driver behavior, most of the 38,000 lives lost would be spared if we simply enforced a 10 mph speed limit. And yet we don't, because those lives are simply "not worth it."

In any event, it's little comfort to the survivors of a family whose car was struck by a drunk driver that they were not at fault. The 10 mph speed limit would have prevented their tragedy. Assigning blame is useless.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> An interesting argument but not entirely convincing. Regardless of driver behavior, most of the 38,000 lives lost would be spared if we simply enforced a 10 mph speed limit. And yet we don't, because those lives are simply "not worth it."
> 
> In any event, it's little comfort to the survivors of a family whose car was struck by a drunk driver that they were not at fault. The 10 mph speed limit would have prevented their tragedy. Assigning blame is useless.


You're ignoring the main points in my post which doesn't surprise me. The 10 mph speed limit solution is a dodge away from the real issue that brings to mind the expression 'Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.' We don't enforce a 10mph speed limit because those lives are not worth it, but because it would make cars useless. There are other solutions that I listed which allow reasonable use of a car.


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> ...We don't enforce a 10mph speed limit because those lives are not worth it, but because it would make cars useless.


More exactly, it would make cars expensive to drive and very inconvenient. And the lives lost simply aren't worth that.

Note that per capita traffic fatality rates in the US have declined almost three-fold since their peak in 1937. This has been due primarily to auto safety features and especially improved road design, including channelization, signage, and improved road engineering. I can't say how much of the improvement is due to better driver behavior, but I'd guess there's some of that in there too. But the remaining reduction in traffic death rates from trying to improve driver behavior may be limited.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> More exactly, it would make cars expensive to drive and very inconvenient. And the lives lost simply aren't worth that.
> 
> Note that per capita traffic fatality rates in the US have declined almost three-fold since their peak in 1937. This has been due primarily to auto safety features and especially improved road design, including channelization, signage, and improved road engineering. I can't say how much of the improvement is due to better driver behavior, but I'd guess there's some of that in there too. But the remaining reduction in traffic death rates from trying to improve driver behavior may be limited.


Interesting to ponder on, but the real issue is that the original premise -that we 'ignore' 38,000-40,000 lives annually so why are we concerning ourselves with 80,000 lives lost per 13 weeks at the expense of the economy (the extent to which is unknown yet)- is pretty hard to defend...on any level.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM and KenOC are looking at the issue of deaths from car accidents in the correct way. We must compare the present situation (i.e. 38,000 traffic fatalities per year) with _an alternative situation_ (i.e. everything necessary to reduce traffic fatalities to a very low number). What would change in the world where the US has few traffic fatalities? We're not certain but something like a) only driving at 15 mph or b) extremely expensive cars or road systems. Presently. neither of those seem worth the reduction in lives although maybe a future situation with automated cars would reduce fatalities to a very low number.

The question with the pandemic is similar. We must compare at least two scenarios _fully_. One scenario is the present situation where we have the present level of deaths from Covid-19 and NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) that cause significant economic loss and some not well understood other issues such as mental health degradation. An alternative scenario might be where we vastly reduce the NPIs ("open up society") and have presumably greater deaths and also significant economic loss and mental health degradation.

There are large uncertainties for both of the above scenarios. The comparison is _not_ between high deaths and high economic loss. The comparison is between one situation with high deaths coupled with economic loss and another situation with a different level of high deaths and economic loss. At least on TC, no one has given a very convincing argument for either continuing the present NPIs or for opening society up. What has happened is that one group has criticized those favoring opening up for not caring about deaths while another group has criticized those favoring continued NPIs with not caring about the economy. Neither is true. _Obviously_, neither is true. So why is either side being criticized when we understand those two generic possibilities so poorly?

We don't know what the best scenario is. I suspect that a good scenario might be a rather complicated combination of NPIs, extensive testing once proper tests are available along with contact tracing, opening up certain sectors of the economy in certain locations with careful social distancing, and a coordinated effort to find vaccines and appropriate anti-Covid-19 drugs. That scenario is not well defined since I haven't defined details of the NPIs and details of "opening up".

The various potential scenarios are much, much, much more complicated and the choices are vastly more difficult than people are suggesting. If only it were as simple as the discussion here that would be wonderful, but it's far from that simple.


----------



## Guest

SixFootScowl said:


> We are aware of many conspiracy theories and I suspect there is something going on but the exact nature of it and the players I am not aware of. There are suggestions and/or assertions of who they are, but do we take that word for truth? We may only be scratching the surface of what is really going on.


I am aware that there are conspiracy theories, but your earlier post referred to thinsg we're not aware of, which, by definition, we know nothing about. Of course, it's _possible _that "there is something going on" (by which I assume you mean, some very large all-encompassing conspiracy to someone else's benefit), but just because we're unaware of it, doesn't mean something _must _be going on.



KenOC said:


> I am afraid that we will continue along this course and ruin our country for a very long time to come. Right now it all stinks of cynical vote-buying (by both parties) along with the sickly aroma of a hugely overdrawn credit card.


Governments' first responsibility, we are often told, is for the safety and security of its citizens. Whilst the future remains uncertain (and given the failure of many economic forecasters to forecast the 2008 crash, I don't have too much faith in what they might say) I would have thought it prudent for any government to do what it felt right to secure the lives of their voters. That's not cyncial. That's just common sense. However, my instinct is not frame it in your terms anyway. Governments have choices, and I for one am content with the one taken by the UK government to err on the side of caution and not treat the virus as if it were just the 'flu'.

Besides, we still need to challenge our governments on what they do - and we do - about deaths from flu.



Christabel said:


> Road traffic accidents are almost entirely preventable. Death itself from disease isn't.


Death from disease _is _preventable. We can campaign to reduce both death by disease and RTAs



KenOC said:


> And perhaps all this ruinous spending is for nothing. Here's a short essay from* The Lancet*, absolutely worth reading in full. The last paragraph:
> 
> "In summary, COVID-19 is a disease that is highly infectious and spreads rapidly through society. It is often quite symptomless and might pass unnoticed, but it also causes severe disease, and even death, in a proportion of the population, and our most important task is not to stop spread, which is all but futile, but to concentrate on giving the unfortunate victims optimal care."


Perhaps all this spending will prove not to be ruinous, but to have been the right thing to have done. I'd rather be alive to see the outcome, I think.


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> Perhaps all this spending will prove not to be ruinous, but to have been the right thing to have done. I'd rather be alive to see the outcome, I think.


The big problem is that we cannot presuppose that the lockdowns will save lives. One possibility is that short lockdowns may save lives, by avoiding collapse of healthcare systems, but longer lockdowns cost lives, because of the cancellation of medical appointments, screening tests, the consequences of mental health issues, the general weakening of the economic ability to afford healthcare treatments, etc. To give an example, the ability to recover from stoke can depend on swift intervention, with the consequence of slower intervention being death or a more severe consequent disability. In future years we will have lost some people, and will have some people with severe disabilities when without the lockdown they would have survived with lesser disabilities. One could go on, but the point is (as has been raised earlier in this thread), this is all very complicated. It seems simple: lockdown and save lives, or relax the lockdown and see more deaths, with the implication that those who are sceptical about the lockdown prioritise the economy over life. It ain't that simple. The lockdown costs lives as well as saving them, and there are good grounds for believing that a long lockdown will cost more than it saves.


----------



## Kieran

senza sordino said:


> I thought I would share with you my experience as a high school teacher during this pandemic and lock-down.
> 
> We were instructed by the administration right away that no student would be penalized during the school shutdown. No students' marks would drop because of a lack of participation.
> 
> I use a platform for short lessons (like zoom) and posting assignments. Students submit their assignments, I offer feedback and hints to make corrections, and then they resubmit. This can go back and forth until the student gets every question correct. Initially, there was quite a bit of interest and work from students, but lately it has waned. My computer is on all day and week-end, so they can submit at anytime and I will give fairly quick feedback.
> 
> Today I gave an online lesson and only three students were there, out of 23 in total in that class. The lesson was at 3pm, and one of my students had only just woken up.
> 
> In my worst class there have been three assignments so far (in seven weeks), and only a 20% completion rate.
> 
> It's not all that bad, my best class has a completion rate of about 50%.
> 
> I know there are a variety of reasons why some students are not participating: parents have lost jobs, sharing one computer in a house, lack of structure and routine, they know there is no consequence for not participating etc. But there has definitely been a level of malaise settling in with my students, less participation and less homework completed lately compared with initially.
> 
> I know we will not be going back to a normal class routine this month, nor in June. We teachers might be back in the classroom in June, but not all of the students. We are thinking there might be some sort of blended model of in class instruction and online instruction. But I hope this doesn't go on much longer, the students need some sort of education and structure.


It's a great summary of a common problem, and we see similar here in Ireland, where students are adrift, exams are postponed or results are predicted from the year so far, and in colleges and universities where next years intake will be dramatically affected.

I don't envy you trying to motivate students who are going through all this, it's tough for you all...


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> DaveM and KenOC are looking at the issue of deaths from car accidents in the correct way. We must compare the present situation (i.e. 38,000 traffic fatalities per year) with _an alternative situation_ (i.e. everything necessary to reduce traffic fatalities to a very low number). What would change in the world where the US has few traffic fatalities? We're not certain but something like a) only driving at 15 mph or b) extremely expensive cars or road systems. Presently. neither of those seem worth the reduction in lives although maybe a future situation with automated cars would reduce fatalities to a very low number.
> 
> The question with the pandemic is similar. We must compare at least two scenarios _fully_. One scenario is the present situation where we have the present level of deaths from Covid-19 and NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) that cause significant economic loss and some not well understood other issues such as mental health degradation. An alternative scenario might be where we vastly reduce the NPIs ("open up society") and have presumably greater deaths and also significant economic loss and mental health degradation.
> 
> There are large uncertainties for both of the above scenarios. The comparison is _not_ between high deaths and high economic loss. The comparison is between one situation with high deaths coupled with economic loss and another situation with a different level of high deaths and economic loss. At least on TC, no one has given a very convincing argument for either continuing the present NPIs or for opening society up. What has happened is that one group has criticized those favoring opening up for not caring about deaths while another group has criticized those favoring continued NPIs with not caring about the economy. Neither is true. _Obviously_, neither is true. So why is either side being criticized when we understand those two generic possibilities so poorly?
> 
> We don't know what the best scenario is. I suspect that a good scenario might be a rather complicated combination of NPIs, extensive testing once proper tests are available along with contact tracing, opening up certain sectors of the economy in certain locations with careful social distancing, and a coordinated effort to find vaccines and appropriate anti-Covid-19 drugs. That scenario is not well defined since I haven't defined details of the NPIs and details of "opening up".
> 
> The various potential scenarios are much, much, much more complicated and the choices are vastly more difficult than people are suggesting. If only it were as simple as the discussion here that would be wonderful, but it's far from that simple.


You describe the situation very well except it ignored the fact that the position favoring re-opening the economy was stated by one or two, not with a considered perspective that took into account the value of all lives, but rather with what came across as a callous dismissal of those lives including the premise (paraphrasing) that nursing homes are 'god's waiting room' so why are we concerning ourselves so much with those elderly. Fwiw, I'm not referring to KenOC though he appeared to favor some of those posts (I could be wrong) hence our interchange.

IMO, an enlightened position is that we need to find places we can open the economy safely because jobs and how the loss of them affects lives is important and that some losing of lives unnecessarily in the name of the economy is not the solution.


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## Guest

'Finally, a virus got me': Ebola expert on nearly dying of coronavirusSome intereesting thoughts on the long-term impact of Covid-19 by the director of the *London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine*:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...expert-on-nearly-dying-coronavirus-peter-piot


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## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> 'Finally, a virus got me': Ebola expert on nearly dying of coronavirusSome intereesting thoughts on the long-term impact of Covid-19 by the director of the *London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine*:
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/global-...expert-on-nearly-dying-coronavirus-peter-piot


Thanks for this post. The final remarks from the Prof resonated with me: "We are learning while we are sailing. That's why I get so annoyed by the many commentators on the sidelines who, without much insight, criticise the scientists and policymakers trying hard to get the epidemic under control. That's very unfair."


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## Jacck

TalkingHead said:


> 'Finally, a virus got me': Ebola expert on nearly dying of coronavirusSome intereesting thoughts on the long-term impact of Covid-19 by the director of the *London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine*:
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/global-...expert-on-nearly-dying-coronavirus-peter-piot


"predicting many people will be left with chronic kidney and heart problems"
Covid-19 isn't just a respiratory disease. It hits the whole body

that is exactly what I have been saying for some time. We do not know enough about the virus, and buying time through lockdowns is the most sensible answer to the virus. Sweden acts irresponsibly, because they do not know, what the virus can potentially do to the people. What if they find out in a year, that all their young boys are sterile? And all those wanting to reopen asap and advocating herd immunity are wrong. Though to be fair, I would enable these people to infect themselves, if they so wish it. Maybe they would win the Darwin prize


----------



## erki

DaveM said:


> Interesting to ponder on, but the real issue is that the original premise -that we 'ignore' 38,000-40,000 lives annually so why are we concerning ourselves with 80,000 lives lost per 13 weeks at the expense of the economy (the extent to which is unknown yet)- is pretty hard to defend...on any level.


Traffic versus economy is rather comparable by the numbers of casualties as the effect on our lives. I think this is valid to say that we do not kill traffic to save some lives as we should not kill the economy to save some lives.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> At least on TC, no one has given a very convincing argument for either continuing the present NPIs or for opening society up. [etc]


Good post. Thanks.

A glib response might be that if anyone here can see clearly what should be done, they should run for office. The more considered answer would be no-one in the world right now has _all _the answers, because no-one alive today has all the relevant expertise! This is a unique situation.



Eclectic Al said:


> The big problem is that we cannot presuppose that the lockdowns will save lives.


It's not a big problem, but it is a problem that we cannot presuppose _anything _about this situation.

More generally, I don't see this in terms of what is an acceptable 'cost' at all, and certainly not human lives and suffering. The language is unnecessarily economic. I'm not in the insurance business where such calculations may be necessary. This doesn't need to be discussed by declaring that this 80k of deaths is "acceptable" while that 40k isn't. I've still not seen anyone on TC actually try to declare that by the time a human has reached x age, their death becomes acceptable.

Given that (in the UK at least) the pandemic has frozen our lives and rendered us incapable of recollecting what was going on in the world before corona, it's worth trying to remember that there are campaigns to reduce deaths from RTAs, flu, cancer, heart disease - you name it, there's a campaign for it, and often government funded. The general public understands that death is a part of life, though the extent to which that is embraced or taboo varies from one culture to another. Suffice to say that in much of the west, we're generally uncomfortable about the prospect of it, especially if it comes prematurely to our loved ones, but we nevertheless continue our lives accepting varying degrees of personal risk and managing that personal risk to varying degrees. What most of us don't accept is the inevitability of all deaths, regardless of cause, regardless of the age of the victim. We have an inbuilt sense of what is "a good innings" and what is a "tragically early/avoidable" death. But it seems more critical that I now think less about myself and give consideration to the risks posed by interaction with others. It seems, however, that some have the same variable view of risk to others as they do of the risk to themselves. They are willing to be more reckless, regardless of the potential cost to others. This is where governments may need to intervene and make calculations, and for two principle reasons.

First, they have to aggregate the risks that we accept personally, for the benefit of society, and we should accept for each other. It's up to them to try to manage our way of life according to the remit given them by their constituents (or assumed by them if they're unelected dictators!). I am content to recognise that my attitude to personal risk and the government attitude to countrywide risk may not always coincide. Second, because that management costs, and government resources must be prioritised (they are not actually finite, since for example, borrowing against the future is, potentially, limitless) they do have to weigh one cost against another.

It seems that only a few governments have decided to allow daily life to proceed more or less unchanged. Most have taken some action to prevent what they forecast would be, in government terms, an unacceptably high impact (deaths, suffering, economic disadvantage) on the prosperity of the country for which they are responsible. I don't like the situation I am in, or the country is in, but at the moment, the current course of action seems to me, broadly, the right thing to do for the UK, because NOT doing anything interferes with the sense of personal risk and risk to others (and an as yet un-calculable risk to the economy and our environment).
YMMV.


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## Guest

'There is a glimmer of hope': economists on coronavirus and capitalismAnother Guardian article, this time in the form of a discussion between Greece's former finance minister *Yanis Varoufakis* and Irish economist *David McWilliams*: 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...hope-economists-on-coronavirus-and-capitalism


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## Guest

TalkingHead said:


> *'There is a glimmer of hope': economists on coronavirus and capitalism*
> 
> Another Guardian article, this time in the form of a discussion between Greece's former finance minister *Yanis Varoufakis* and Irish economist *David McWilliams*:
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...hope-economists-on-coronavirus-and-capitalism


Yes, a useful insight, and one which encouraged me that there will be light at the end of the tunnel (assuming me and mine don't catch the virus from the supermarket or out walking the dog - which is all I do when I leave my home at the moment!)


----------



## erki

Jacck said:


> "predicting many people will be left with chronic kidney and heart problems"
> Covid-19 isn't just a respiratory disease. It hits the whole body
> 
> that is exactly what I have been saying for some time. We do not know enough about the virus, and buying time through lockdowns is the most sensible answer to the virus. Sweden acts irresponsibly, because they do not know, what the virus can potentially do to the people. What if they find out in a year, that all their young boys are sterile? And all those wanting to reopen asap and advocating herd immunity are wrong. Though to be fair, I would enable these people to infect themselves, if they so wish it. Maybe they would win the Darwin prize


We don't know much indeed. But what I argue about is that we need to be able to live instead of hiding in the bunkers or wearing scafanders. And accept the possible casualties. Like how long this "buying time" could continue - we don't know that either - specially if no cure/vaccine is possible. I feel there is a desire of various reasons to prolong time buying for as much as possible. In one point the "buying time" will start hurting more than it would benefit.
So I welcome all attempts to find sensible ways to live with the virus as normally as possible. Sweden will be my champion even if they fail totally.


----------



## Guest

erki said:


> We don't know much indeed. But what I argue about is that we need to be able to live instead of hiding in the bunkers or wearing scafanders. And *accept the possible casualties*. Like how long this "buying time" could continue - we don't know that either - specially if no cure/vaccine is possible. I feel there is a desire of various reasons to prolong time buying for as much as possible. In one point the "buying time" will start hurting more than it would benefit.
> So I welcome all attempts to find sensible ways to live with the virus as normally as possible. Sweden will be my champion even if they fail totally.


Er, no, we don't need to accept the _possible _casualties, since that figure is, potentially, unlimited, precisely _because _we don't yet know enough. By all means accept yourself as a casualty, but no need to inflict your acceptance on others.


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## Eclectic Al

I read a fascinating article in the past week (apologies, but I can't remember the link) from an expert (- well they're all from experts aren't they). This one was talking about evolution, in the sense that viruses evolve. His point was that different strains of a particular virus circulate together, and there is a tendency - not a certainty - that the less dangerous forms come to predominate, because it is beneficial for viral spread not to disable or kill the host. To the extent that exposure to one strain gives a degree of protection against other strains the random variation in viral strains biases things towards less dangerous versions over time. However, this works most effectively if the virus can spread. If you contain the virus then you are more likely to get continued hot spots of particularly dangerous strains, because you impede the natural evolutionary tendency among strains by impeding natural selection.
Now I have no expertise to judge the rights and wrongs of the above. The reason for posting it is to note that you can't even assume the lockdowns are beneficial in terms of the implications of the virus itself. All they may be doing is allowing dangerous strains to last longer, and deferring the evolution of the virus into "just another virus".
This doesn't help, of course, in determining what is the "best" approach, whatever that may mean. It's just another point to put in the Ease Lockdown bunch of arguments, to weigh against the Keep Lockdown bunch. I'm glad I don't have to choose.


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## Kieran

MacLeod said:


> Er, no, we don't need to accept the _possible _casualties, since that figure is, potentially, unlimited, precisely _because _we don't yet know enough. By all means accept yourself as a casualty, but no need to inflict your acceptance on others.


Well, we know enough to know it's not going to kill everybody, and that there are high risk groups and there are a vast majority who might catch this virus and not even blink. We need to be cautious but we also need to be realistic. There can be false compassion (and don't take this as me talking about you here, because I think in principle we're along the same lines) but false compassion is a form of sentimentality that weeps over every single death as if it's a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, whereas most deaths from Covid seem to have a familiarity about them, as if we've seen this happen in previous winters too...


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## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> Well, we know enough to know it's not going to kill everybody, and that there are high risk groups and there are a vast majority who might catch this virus and not even blink. We need to be cautious but we also need to be realistic. There can be false compassion (and don't take this as me talking about you here, because I think in principle we're along the same lines) but false compassion is a form of sentimentality that weeps over every single death as if it's a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, whereas most deaths from Covid seem to have a familiarity about them, as if we've seen this happen in previous winters too...


My father died about 1 year ago. He was very frail; he got an infection, likely viral; he died of pneumonia. He lived in a care home. I guess that sounds familiar these days, although it could just have been a cold, given his frailty. We saw him last a few days before he died, and by his standards he was quite happy then and enjoyed the chocolates we took him.

Was it sad? Yes. Was it a relief? Yes, as he had been "ready to go" as they say, for some years. Was it remotely comparable to me losing one of my daughters? No - I can't bear to imagine that. Was it a "bad death"? No - His oxygen sats were very low and he drifted away and no serious attempts were made to intervene, entirely in line with his expressed wishes. Was he going to die in the next year or so, come what may? Almost certainly. Might that death have been more unpleasant for him? Quite possibly.

This is just one personal experience. I can't judge, and wouldn't presume to, any other situations. The point is that we are all going to die, and it may well be unpleasant, for the deceased and/or for those around them. I am just unconvinced, for example, that compelling elderly people who are likely to die in the next year, and have come to terms with that likelihood, to spend their last months forbidden from close contact with their loved ones is necessarily compassionate. I am glad he died before all this. This photo is 3 days before he died.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> My father died about 1 year ago. He was very frail; he got an infection, likely viral; he died of pneumonia. He lived in a care home. I guess that sounds familiar these days, although it could just have been a cold, given his frailty. We saw him last a few days before he died, and by his standards he was quite happy then and enjoyed the chocolates we took him.
> 
> Was it sad? Yes. Was it a relief? Yes, as he had been "ready to go" as they say, for some years. Was it remotely comparable to me losing one of my daughters? No - I can't bear to imagine that. Was it a "bad death"? No - His oxygen sats were very low and he drifted away and no serious attempts were made to intervene, entirely in line with his expressed wishes. Was he going to die in the next year or so, come what may? Almost certainly. Might that death have been more unpleasant for him? Quite possibly.
> 
> This is just one personal experience. I can't judge, and wouldn't presume to, any other situations. The point is that we are all going to die, and it may well be unpleasant, for the deceased and/or for those around them. I am just unconvinced, for example, that compelling elderly people who are likely to die in the next year, and have come to terms with that likelihood, to spend their last months forbidden from close contact with their loved ones is necessarily compassionate. I am glad he died before all this. This photo is 3 days before he died.
> 
> View attachment 135770


I sympathise, my dad passed the same way in December 2018, aged 83, and of course for us in the family, it was horrible to watch him waste away. He had Alzheimer's, a cruel affliction. Many times we got a text from the care home to say there were bugs in the home and not to come in, the residents are in lockdown. These times are brutal for the care staff, residents and families, but they're also the final moves in a long chess match (if people will forgive the crude and tasteless metaphor) and we all understand this.

I wouldn't think anyone should say we let people in care homes be sacrificed (basically) to Covid but at the same time, we have to be realistic. In any given winter, old people pass away in large numbers. My mother made it through Christmas and the new year, and passed away in January 2016. She had pulmonary fibrosis. If she lived to catch Covid she'd have been classified as a Covid death, which hardly tells the tale...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Indeed. I can imagine many with Alzheimer's don't have a clue what is happening at the moment, and that they find the moves being made "to protect them" overwhelmingly distressing.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Indeed. I can imagine many with Alzheimer's don't have a clue what is happening at the moment, and that they find the moves being made "to protect them" overwhelmingly distressing.


in high age, most people have some form of cognitive decline. Often people function relatively well at home, but when they come to a hospital, they suddenly become confused, desoriented etc. Typically they break their hip (fractura colli femoris), undergo a surgery and the stress and the change in environment lead to a delirium. But that can be temporary. In severe Alzheimer, the state of confusion is permanent


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> Indeed. I can imagine many with Alzheimer's don't have a clue what is happening at the moment, and that they find the moves being made "to protect them" overwhelmingly distressing.


A friends mother is in a care home with Alzheimer's, surrounded by staff wearing spaceman outfits, with no family allowed to visit. She's 92, was diagnosed with covid and has recovered. She's always had a great physical constitution, despite alcohol problems, she's strong and stubborn as an ox. But of course, it would be very disorientating for her to be in this situation...


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## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> View attachment 135770


By the way, you're the image of your dad!


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> in high age, most people have some form of cognitive decline. Often people function relatively well at home, but when they come to a hospital, they suddenly become confused, desoriented etc. Typically they break their hip (fractura colli femoris), undergo a surgery and the stress and the change in environment lead to a delirium. But that can be temporary. In severe Alzheimer, the state of confusion is permanent


Indeed. As those who have experienced it know, changes to routines, including changes to the people whom they see, among those with such cognitive decline (whether or not connected to Alzheimer's) can be a massive problem, as they may have little to no ability to comprehend or adapt to what is going on.

There is a question of quality of life as well as length of life floating around here: to what extent is it compassionate to damage quality of life to extend its length. Clinicians, public health professionals etc are all routinely involved in taking into account quality of life as well as length in their work, and one can only hope that similar considerations are guiding actions currently.


----------



## Triplets

erki said:


> Interstingly they start lifting some restrictions as of today. It seems that the nations with "late start" have better information and the experience of others to make better decisions.
> Maybe we get some kind of good strategy worked out universally to deal with this and future pandemics.


I know that we are supposed to avoid Politics here, but Russia is more authoritarian than most Western Countries and probably doesn't have to be very mindful about Public Opinion re: reopening.


----------



## erki

I think I have to add that I get a lots of support to my arguments from my 95 year old mother who is mentally as sharp as you can imagine(a former school teacher and pianist). Her message is pretty much in lines: you can not stop living in the face of dying. She is much more worried about how we would survive as humans than some virus being rather deadly.


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## Guest

For anyone who thinks government should be left uncriticised so it can get on and manage the pandemic, here is an extract from UK government guidance to the care sector, not withdrawn until 12 March.

“It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected.”


----------



## Jacck

erki said:


> I think I have to add that I get a lots of support to my arguments from my 95 year old mother who is mentally as sharp as you can imagine(a former school teacher and pianist). Her message is pretty much in lines: you can not stop living in the face of dying. She is much more worried about how we would survive as humans than some virus being rather deadly.


some old people talk a lot about death and some are mentally ready to go. And it is not true that the virus kills just old people
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
about 27% of deaths are among people under 65
"you can not stop living in the face of dying" - nature does not care about such wise sayings. When WW2 came or medieval plagues came, people also could not live as they were used to, but tried to survive as best as they could. I understand that the virus is unpleasant for all of us, and we all have to ajust our lifes, but it is better to accept it.


----------



## science

Sweden's known deaths per capita is actually worse than the United States's now.


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Well, we know enough to know it's not going to kill everybody, and that there are high risk groups and there are a vast majority who might catch this virus and not even blink. We need to be cautious but we also need to be realistic. There can be false compassion (and don't take this as me talking about you here, because I think in principle we're along the same lines) but false compassion is a form of sentimentality that weeps over every single death as if it's a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, whereas most deaths from Covid seem to have a familiarity about them, as if we've seen this happen in previous winters too...


I'm not sure I'm reassured that it's not going to kill everybody. Besides, we've only known about this virus for roughly six months, whereas we've known and been learning about the flu virus for many years. We don't yet know the extent to which it may mutate to such a degree that it becomes a more virulent strain.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/10/will-covid-19-mutate-into-a-more-dangerous-virus

We also don't know what the longer term health effects might be. The 'student rag' again...

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...expert-on-nearly-dying-coronavirus-peter-piot

As for compassion, I am turned off by the daily phrase at government briefings that people have 'sadly died' (I daresay they were sad), and that we must "remember that everyone of the 30,000 deaths is a loved one...etc" as if I need a prompt to remember this. I am so far fortunate in not knowing any friend or family member to have suffered, but then, I shouldn't need to have personal experience to be able to imagine what it's like. Furthermore, I don't need to imagine what it's like to form a view about how we should respond to a pandemic, and what to make of the media coverage that gives me much of the immediate information on what's happening.

I think I've already said that we should pay much more attention to how we handle flu and the thousands of deaths it causes, rather than pay less attention to Covid-19


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## Eclectic Al

science said:


> Sweden's known deaths per capita is actually worse than the United States's now.


I thought the US was currently fairly low down in deaths per capita. Looking at European countries, last time I looked we seemed to have Belgium much the worst, then you had Spain, Italy, the UK, France, and you had Sweden a bit better than those, and just worse than the Netherlands. Germany is much the lowest.

However, Belgium counts many deaths as Covid-related which would not be counted as such in some other countries, and the UK has also now shifted to an approach which captures more than earlier. Germany has a definition which, I believe only counts a death as Covid-related if there is proper confirmation. Comparisons are therefore not particularly meaningful.

Equally, to the extent that there are differences they could relate to so many social differences between countries (such as population density, forms of management of old age care), and indeed compositional differences (such as age profile). In the UK there is a particular issue at the moment that death rates from Covid vary a lot by ethnicity for reasons which are not clear (-but then what is), so it is possible that ethnic mix could be a factor.

Given all the above differences, plus the difference in terms of policy response, what strikes me in looking at European countries is how similar the figures are across countries (with one or two outliers such as Belgium and Germany, which may be partly down to definitions).

Wasn't Cuomo quoted recently as saying that experience in New York state was that the infection rate in locked down households was not that different from among those who were more out and about?

All in all, is anyone really clear what is the best approach? I'm not, I just wish all well.


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## Jacck

Herd immunity is irresponsible and infeasible
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-03-...ponsible-and-infeasible-OSJtBPedpu/index.html
this is an interesting article, because it was written in March and comes from China. It is critical of the UK's herd immunity strategy.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Only the anarchist will consider the condition holistically . 
Medicine + politics = politics .


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## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> Herd immunity is irresponsible and infeasible
> https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-03-...ponsible-and-infeasible-OSJtBPedpu/index.html
> this is an interesting article, because it was written in March and comes from China. It is critical of the UK's herd immunity strategy.


This is data from the Internet today. All caveats about reporting differences need to be remembered.

Perhaps it's just me, the what strikes me more than anything is the relatively narrow range from Italy down to Ireland (all lying broadly in the 300-500 per million bracket). I can only presume that experts are looking at all the low examples and seeking to determine the drivers for their outcomes (differences in reporting definition, population density, age profile, testing regime, lockdown approach, etc).

Deaths per Million
1	Belgium 767
2	Spain 576
3	Italy 512
4	United Kingdom	492
5	France 403
6	Sweden 325
7	Netherlands	320
8	Ireland 307
9	United States	251
10	Switzerland	219
11	Canada 143
12	Ecuador 136
13	Portugal 113
14	Germany 93
15	Denmark 91

Latest data from Statista (13/5/2020)


----------



## Bigbang

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure I'm reassured that it's not going to kill everybody. Besides, we've only known about this virus for roughly six months, whereas we've known and been learning about the flu virus for many years. We don't yet know the extent to which it may mutate to such a degree that it becomes a more virulent strain.
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/10/will-covid-19-mutate-into-a-more-dangerous-virus
> 
> We also don't know what the longer term health effects might be. The 'student rag' again...
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/global-...expert-on-nearly-dying-coronavirus-peter-piot
> 
> As for compassion, I am turned off by the daily phrase at government briefings that people have 'sadly died' (I daresay they were sad), and that we must "remember that everyone of the 30,000 deaths is a loved one...etc" as if I need a prompt to remember this. I am so far fortunate in not knowing any friend or family member to have suffered, but then, I shouldn't need to have personal experience to be able to imagine what it's like. Furthermore, I don't need to imagine what it's like to form a view about how we should respond to a pandemic, and what to make of the media coverage that gives me much of the immediate information on what's happening.
> 
> I think I've already said that we should pay much more attention to how we handle flu and the thousands of deaths it causes, rather than pay less attention to Covid-19


I think you answered your own question. Because you have not experienced a loved one dying or being deathly sick you think we do not need to concern ourselves with this virus over the flu. However it has already been addressed so many times that I get it. Even doctors on the front lines can tell the difference of how the strains are different. And the statistics on the flu are not the same thing as what doctors see everyday as this is done on some level to compile data for flu deaths. Bottom line, you bet they will worry their tails off and learn all they can as how else will they mount a response to this virus and the ones to come. It is not about just finding a vaccine but using methods to control the virus.


----------



## Guest

Bigbang said:


> I think you answered your own question.


I didn't ask one...did I?



Bigbang said:


> Because you have not experienced a loved one dying or being deathly sick *you think we do not need to concern ourselves with this virus over the flu. *


Is that what I said? I don't think so.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> Herd immunity is irresponsible and infeasible
> https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-03-...ponsible-and-infeasible-OSJtBPedpu/index.html
> this is an interesting article, because it was written in March and comes from China. It is critical of *the UK's herd immunity strategy*.


This again. The UK does not have, nor did it ever have, a herd immunity strategy. There is plenty of evidence that one was discussed, but not that it was adopted.


----------



## Eclectic Al

An interesting announcement from BUPA (- for non-UK readers this is a provider of private healthcare in the UK). This sort of development is very good news, as negative aspects of the Covid response need to be managed downwards, to allow other health care needs to be met which are currently being deferred.

_Hospitals resuming treatments

In March the NHS began a partnership with the UK's independent hospitals to help manage the crisis. They also introduced new guidelines restricting care to only the most urgent cases, and we have continued to cover these for our members as normal. This was to protect capacity in hospitals, especially in intensive care, for COVID-19 patients, and also to protect other patients from catching the virus.

A number of weeks on and progress is being made in tackling the virus. The number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 is falling and NHS and independent hospitals have beds available.

In England, the NHS has now confirmed that it will begin to ease the restrictions on the hospital system, expanding the range of procedures that NHS and independent hospitals can carry out. We expect the other parts of the UK to take a similar approach soon. Although this is good news, hospitals are still dealing with some of the challenges of COVID-19 and aren't fully back to normal yet, so will focus on the most urgent cases first.

While COVID-19 remains a threat, doctors will of course need to carefully consider the risks of treatment, particularly if there's a possibility that a patient has the virus or the treatment may make a patient more vulnerable to it._


----------



## Bigbang

I reread your post. Actually misread some of it as it appears to state your concern that "kill everybody" but really I am not getting the point. Remember, the stuff we read and see is brought to us in a way so we will consume it. It is so easy to put a slant on every aspect of Covid-19. And when I read they (scientists) say so much is unknown, yes but that much is known and this is why they know what they do not know. At least they are not simpletons as the money they need to do research is in jeopardy, as least in some areas.


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## Open Book

DaveM said:


> How come I knew that someone would post that. If one is going to make comparisons between traffic accidents and the pandemic, then let's compare apples with apples. First off, of course traffic accidents can be 'gruesome and hard on loved ones'. Annual U.S. deaths from traffic accidents are 38,000. But most of those accidents involve human error or negligence so whenever they occur either the one injured or killed caused the accident or vice versa or both were at fault. We know what is causing these accidents and the fault and solution lies with humans. Not exactly a good comparison with a deadly, highly contagious disease for which there is no cure and for which most of the people dying are not to blame.
> 
> So here's a better analogy: Picture a critical part in a car that for reasons unknown is suddenly causing brakes to fail to the tune of 80,000 lives lost -with no fault of the driver- within a slightly over 3 month period. Annualize that to about 300,000 lives lost. That's a better comparison to the coronavirus. That would be likely to get people's attention compared to a 38,000 figure due to accidents that are within peoples' power to change.
> 
> Well, yes. And the gruesome end to peoples' lives in ICUs due to the virus is occurring at a frequency many times more than that due to traffic accidents.
> 
> Btw, traffic accidents are preventable. Don't drink and drive. Don't text while driving. Don't speed. Don't drive without a seatbelt fastened. Don't drive unrested. Exercise defensive driving. One of the reasons that people 'put up' with 38,000 lives lost annually is because of the frustration that we know the solutions and people insist on ignoring them. Another reason is that we know that if we follow the auto-safety behaviors above, that 38,000 figure is far less likely to apply to us. Again, not exactly a situation that bears any comparison with a pandemic.


Of course some accidents are caused by premeditated bad behavior, e.g. drinking or texting, but some occur in the blink of an eye due to a confluence of bad circumstances. In fact, more than you think.

Even a good driver has unavoidable lapses. Nothing physical or mental is done perfectly every time. Do you watch gymnastics? The best gymnasts in the world make mistakes every so often and fall. This applies to any sport, or to any physical activity, such as driving. This is what you have labeled human error, but human error is not completely preventable.

You'll probably tell me that these are a tiny minority of accidents.

I hate this virus, too, and I'm in favor of proceeding with caution, buying time to develop knowledge and treatments if feasible. It's too bad we didn't wipe it out when we might have been able to.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> Herd immunity is irresponsible and infeasible
> https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-03-...ponsible-and-infeasible-OSJtBPedpu/index.html
> this is an interesting article, because it was written in March and comes from China. It is critical of the UK's herd immunity strategy.


Isn't there a "not" missing in the above? I think it should say "this is NOT an interesting article, because it was written in March and comes from China".

March is quite a long time ago now, and the motivation of articles from China may be something to think about.


----------



## mmsbls

science said:


> Sweden's known deaths per capita is actually worse than the United States's now.


I'm not sure I truly know what Sweden is doing. Certainly the impression many give is that Sweden is much less restrictive than other European countries. I just spoke with colleagues in Norway, and they mentioned that Sweden, while somewhat different than other Scandinavian countries in their approach, was still in line with many of the practices that other countries use.


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## Open Book

Kieran said:


> Well, we know enough to know it's not going to kill everybody, and that there are high risk groups and there are a vast majority who might catch this virus and not even blink. We need to be cautious but we also need to be realistic. There can be false compassion (and don't take this as me talking about you here, because I think in principle we're along the same lines) but false compassion is a form of sentimentality that weeps over every single death as if it's a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, whereas most deaths from Covid seem to have a familiarity about them, as if we've seen this happen in previous winters too...


"No Well, we know enough to know it's not going to kill everybody"

We don't even know that for sure. It's unlikely to kill everybody, there are so freaking many of us. But what if it changes and gets worse? A year from now we could be looking back at May 2020 as a time when things were still not so bad.

Don't think a virus never entirely kills its host. Viruses don't intelligently plan not to annihilate their host, they just do what they do. Evolution might favor viruses becoming less virulent (see post #158 by Eclectic Al), but that's not a guaranteed outcome.


----------



## philoctetes

What it the difference between "what we don't know about" and "what we are not aware of"... one is about disease (science) and the other is about the people in power control and authority (psychology), as interpreted by we who are the target... buried in noise and entropy...

"what we are not aware of" leads to politics which is a hazard but it's clear that almost everybody posting here doesn't trust somebody - bio-labs, doctors, media, politicians, the public intelligence - take your pick - and applies their own rules of "psychology" to set their bias... another mental test that can lead to false positives and negatives etc...

Occam's Razor is never about probability, risk, or reward, which is why I never think about it... gamblers, investors, and black swans probe deeper into the unlikely when high numbers are involved... this is the essence of seeking life in the universe and other scientific missions... also divisive and controversial buy I see no reason to "eliminate" the low probabilities, especially since the Raptors beat the Warriors..


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> some old people talk a lot about death and some are mentally ready to go. And it is not true that the virus kills just old people
> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
> about 27% of deaths are among people under 65


The latest data in the UK is that 88% of deaths which are reported as relating to the new virus are 65+, so that's 12% which are below, compared with your 27%.

It's harder to find data quickly, but the UK position seems to be that about 90% of deaths are among people with underlying health conditions.
If that applied to the under 65 group then that would mean 1.2% of deaths were among people under 65 with no underlying health conditions (ie 10% of 12%).
I would guess (caveat - I'm no expert) that it is more likely that age itself is a factor, so you would expect the proportion of deaths with no underlying condition to be higher in the 65+ than in the below 65 group. That would imply perhaps 1% of deaths being among those below age 65 and with no underlying health condition.
UK is reporting around 32,000 deaths, so far. Hence 1% of those would be 320. Back of the envelope there are about 54 million people in the UK below age 65, and in 2018 there were broadly 96,500 deaths among people aged below 65 in the UK (according to Government stats). 320/96,500 is 0.3%, so the Covid-19 related deaths would represent an increase of 0.3% if they were all additional. That is among the under 65 population for every 100 "normal" deaths we would see an extra 0.3 deaths. Clearly this is likely to go up for the moment, but that's where we are now.

I say all this, not to reduce the concern one would have about 320 apparently healthy people below age 65 dying from anything, but to place the situation for healthy younger people in context. If suicides, for example, increase because of mental health issues connected with lockdown, or if some people put off going to the doctor to have a lump examined, you do not need to see that many additional deaths from those causes before you could see a net negative impact on the under 65 group.


----------



## Guest

Bigbang said:


> I reread your post. Actually misread some of it as it appears to state your concern that "kill everybody" but really I am not getting the point. Remember, the stuff we read and see is brought to us in a way so we will consume it. It is so easy to put a slant on every aspect of Covid-19. And when I read they (scientists) say so much is unknown, yes but that much is known and this is why they know what they do not know. At least they are not simpletons as the money they need to do research is in jeopardy, as least in some areas.


You need to have read what kieran wrote in his post to which I was replying, as well as be aware that he and I have been exchanging views over several posts and days.

My points were, in summary.

1 There are significant things we don't know about the virus now, or how it might evolve, which means we should treat it with much greater caution than we treat those infectious/contagious diseases with which we are already familiar and for which we have either treatment, vaccine, or we have more or less eliminated (such as smallpox).
2 Like kieran, I don't like false compassion (and I illustrate with examples of what I take it to mean).
3 I reject the argument that you must have direct experience of the virus to be able to form a valid view of how the government should handle it. (Not that anyone _here _has explicitly advanced this argument, but it seems to be implied in some posters' wishing to reject the apparently heartless arguments that we must stop the lockdown now or the economy will be ruined.)
4 Comparison with flu is misleading because, for example, it causes people to say "because we accept tens of thousands of flu-related deaths, we should accept tens of thousands of covid related deaths. The opposite is the case. We should pay more attention to flu than we do currently (I don't mean "more attention than we pay to covid"), and not accept the death rate.

I hope that clarifies.


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## philoctetes

I don't agree with Christabel as long those below 65 make up 25% of the counts, that's too many... and actuarial life tables don't agree either... but on a psychological level I've been ready for weeks to hear this kind of stuff.. 

I'm over 65 myself, I've mentioned the public crowding around my house which authorities can't do much to stop... that I don't even have to leave my house to count violators coming here, including someone I know from NY... so one poster here replied last week that I'm not entitled to limit this crowding at my home... 

so my suspicion is that MANY people are pretending to support the lockdown while cheating on it... preaching but not practicing... after all, that's just psychology... cheating is animal nature, common in symbiotic relationships, studies have been conducted on how often one can cheat and get away with it. I once read that 1 out of 7 is the magic limit... do it more than that and it won't be tolerated... but can't remember how it was determined...

I heard a story last week about the wife of a friend of a friend who goes to WalMart every day now with a friend of hers just to have somewhere to go... to kill boredom, they leave in the morning and return hours later... when they got tired of the local WalMart they started taking longer trips to the Napa WalMart... buying cheap stuff they don't need to justify it...

LA is about to go mad with confusion over this, and will spread ripples all the way here to the Redwoods... it's far from over and the psychology is just going to get crazier, but unfortunately we won't be able to discuss that here, or anywhere, unless we adhere to very strict limits... we'll see how that goes huh


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## Eclectic Al

philoctetes said:


> I don't agree with Christabel as long those below 65 make up 25% of the counts, that's too many... and actuarial life tables don't agree either... but on a psychological level I've been ready for weeks to hear this kind of stuff..
> 
> I'm over 65 myself, I've mentioned the public crowding around my house which authorities can't do much to stop... that I don't even have to leave my house to count violators coming here, including someone I know from NY... so one poster here replied last week that I'm not entitled to limit this crowding at my home...
> 
> so my suspicion is that MANY people are pretending to support the lockdown while cheating on it... preaching but not practicing... after all, that's just psychology... cheating is animal nature, common in symbiotic relationships, studies have been conducted on how often one can cheat and get away with it. I once read that 1 out of 7 is the magic limit... do it more than that and it won't be tolerated... but can't remember how it was determined...
> 
> I heard a story last week about the wife of a friend of a friend who goes to WalMart every day now with a friend of hers just to have somewhere to go... to kill boredom, they leave in the morning and return hours later... when they got tired of the local WalMart they started taking longer trips to the Napa WalMart... buying cheap stuff they don't need to justify it...
> 
> LA is about to go mad with confusion over this, and will spread ripples all the way here to the Redwoods... it's far from over and the psychology is just going to get crazier, but unfortunately we won't be able to discuss that here, or anywhere, unless we adhere to very strict limits... we'll see how that goes huh


There was a survey in the UK and I think (from memory) 1 in 3 indicated that they had met up with people in breach of the lockdown rules. So quite widespread.


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## philoctetes

The market seems to have reached a peak and what does Goldman advise "The worst is over" hahahahahaha


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure I truly know what Sweden is doing. Certainly the impression many give is that Sweden is much less restrictive than other European countries. I just spoke with colleagues in Norway, and they mentioned that Sweden, while somewhat different than other Scandinavian countries in their approach, was still in line with many of the practices that other countries use.


The Swedish foreign minister was interviewed on BBC a couple of Sundays ago and contradicted the claim that they were relaxed and doing nothing as part of a herd immunity policy.



Eclectic Al said:


> The latest data in the UK [ etc...].


The latest data - comes from different sources and says different things. Yesterday, "official figures" put the UK death toll at over 40,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-death-toll-passes-40000-official-figures-say

Despite this, "official figures" today will still be reported as around 33,000.


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## arpeggio

philoctetes said:


> Social media breakdown since COVID-19
> View attachment 135743


It seems to me that there are more people in the 'me' section than you think.


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## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> The latest data - comes from different sources and says different things. Yesterday, "official figures" put the UK death toll at over 40,000.
> 
> Despite this, "official figures" today will still be reported as around 33,000.


I think much of that difference seems to relate to questions over excess deaths in care homes and so is not relevant for the younger group. But even if we ignore that, it doesn't really impact my point. I can rework my numbers using 40,000 deaths, and it gives 0.4 additional deaths per 100 "normal" deaths among the below 65 group.

But again, the exact numbers aren't my point. My point is that the numbers are sufficiently low that the adverse consequences of the lockdown can readily exceed them without requiring much change to suicide rates, late-diagnosed cancers, etc. The opposite may well indeed be true for those with health conditions and the older group.


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## Jacck

MacLeod said:


> This again. The UK does not have, nor did it ever have, a herd immunity strategy. There is plenty of evidence that one was discussed, but not that it was adopted.


Unfortunately for the UK, the international press misread and misrepresented the Brittish strategy then
See for example a random example here of what was written about the UK strategy in Czech press 
https://translate.google.com/transl...koronavirus-prelstit-plan-je-nakazit-60-lidi/
(pretty much all main media wrote something similar)


----------



## DaveM

Open Book said:


> Of course some accidents are caused by premeditated bad behavior, e.g. drinking or texting, but some occur in the blink of an eye due to a confluence of bad circumstances. In fact, more than you think.
> 
> Even a good driver has unavoidable lapses. Nothing physical or mental is done perfectly every time. Do you watch gymnastics? The best gymnasts in the world make mistakes every so often and fall. This applies to any sport, or to any physical activity, such as driving. This is what you have labeled human error, but human error is not completely preventable.
> 
> You'll probably tell me that these are a tiny minority of accidents.
> 
> I hate this virus, too, and I'm in favor of proceeding with caution, buying time to develop knowledge and treatments if feasible. It's too bad we didn't wipe it out when we might have been able to.


Of the 38,000 traffic deaths, drunk-driving, speeding and unbelted drivers accounted for 31,000. Distracted drivers and unrested/drowsy drivers accounted for 4,000. So, yes, the exceptions you mention are, by far, the minority of accidents.


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## philoctetes

arpeggio said:


> It seems to me that there are more people in the 'me' section than you think.


Don't try to read my mind and you'd be welcome to join... and bring a sense of humor


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## arpeggio

I am going to have to stop reading this thread. It is depressing me.

My wife and I are in the at risk group. I am a cancer survivor. I had lymphoma. We are not ready to die yet.

Yet it seems that there are many who are willing to sacrifice us for the sake of the economy and other political factors which we can not mention here.


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## philoctetes

arpeggio said:


> I am going to have to stop reading this thread. It is depressing me.
> 
> My wife and I are in the at risk group. I am a cancer survivor. I had lymphoma. We are not ready to die yet.
> 
> Yet it seems that there are many who are willing to sacrifice us for the sake of the economy and other political factors which we can not mention here.


Very sorry to hear that... depression is no stranger to me either... I live totally alone with no company... I need dental work and had to call for an emergency appointment... but I keep all that to myself...

ya know, the Venn diagram was not meant to be "me" as in ME alone... I got it from twitter but I can't even make a joke without someone being snide... don't go poking dogs if you don't like dog bites...

it seems that you aren't one of the me's anyway...


----------



## Eclectic Al

arpeggio said:


> I am going to have to stop reading this thread. It is depressing me.
> 
> My wife and I are in the at risk group. I am a cancer survivor. I had lymphoma. We are not ready to die yet.
> 
> Yet it seems that there are many who are willing to sacrifice us for the sake of the economy and other political factors which we can not mention here.


I hope people aren't saying that, although some of the wording can be careless. I think the concern is more (i) that lockdown policies have negative health consequences in themselves and (ii) the ability to support healthcare systems depends on a functioning economy.

This takes you to valid questions about how to manage lockdown policies. For example, are we going to shield those who are at risk, while allowing those who are not particularly at risk to get back to a more normal situation, because that is necessary if the ability to shield those who need it is to be maintained? Take people who are taking immuno-suppressant treatments. Those treatments still need to be made, and the situation of those people needs to be monitored properly. They are at risk of the virus, but they are also at risk of shortages in the drugs they rely on to survive, and on monitoring to confirm that the treatment continues to work. Even Sweden, which is portrayed as not doing anything, is definitely taking a range of steps, so it would be a complete mis-representation to say they are not taking steps; they are just a bit of an outlier in their strategy.

Governments then need to manage all this against a background of no certainty over what is best. I think we all need to keep our fingers crossed, and I wish you well.


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## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Governments then need to manage all this against a background of no certainty over what is best. I think we all need to keep our fingers crossed, and I wish you well.


For me, the situation has been clear from the beginning. The best strategy was a strict lockdown at the beginning to manage the first wave, which enabled gaining time to study the virus, its effects on the body and immune response of the body, and also use the time to prepare - hospitals, PPE, equipment, ramp up testing, contact tracing, smart quarantines etc. After this, gradually reopen the economy and manage it further using those things that you build up during the lockdown phase. Survive like this one year or two and hope for a cure or a vaccine. There are already some promising medicaments on the horizon and vaccine tests are planned to be finished until the end of the year. This is the best strategy. Anything else does not make much sense to me.


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## Eclectic Al

I agree with this as an outline of the general approach. My concern is that the strict lockdown phase can only be brief before its adverse consequences become too high.
That takes you to the question of how to get out of it, and there I think we need to rely quite a lot on people's common sense. Remember that this is a statistical matter. It doesn't matter if some people break the rules, as long as most don't, because this is a matter of a probabilistic system determined by stochastic processes, not a deterministic one where we have a little equation that it will follow.
The population needs to be nudged in a sensible direction to allow economic activity to pick up while keeping the virus in check. The challenge with that, of course, is that no one really knows what is a sensible direction.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> I agree with this as an outline of the general approach. My concern is that the strict lockdown phase can only be brief before its adverse consequences become too high.
> That takes you to the question of how to get out of it, and there I think we need to rely quite a lot on people's common sense. Remember that this is a statistical matter. It doesn't matter if some people break the rules, as long as most don't, because this is a matter of a probabilistic system determined by stochastic processes, not a deterministic one where we have a little equation that it will follow.
> The population needs to be nudged in a sensible direction to allow economic activity to pick up while keeping the virus in check. The challenge with that, of course, is that no one really knows what is a sensible direction.


I do not know how strict the lockdown is in your country, but are gradually coming out of it. Most shops are already open, people are allowed to move freely, businesses are opening, even swimming pools are going to be opened etc. But our curve looks good
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/czech-republic/
I think the bigest problems have countries that underestimated the initial response, and thus got hit with bigger waves. Because of this, the lockdows will need to last longer.


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## philoctetes

arpeggio... I doubt you meant to annoy me... I probably over-reacted, but in a forum like this I bristle whenever someone claims to know what I think... it's become an automatic reaction on my part for years now... 

I am one of the over-65 and certainly have a right to care more about my personal risk... but I also don't want younger people to live in a broken society forever... which is kinda surprising cause I don't have any kids and younger people don't seem to give a whiz about me anymore... but I have a small home where I can retreat from the worst of it most of the time...not everybody is so comfortable...

my youth was both terrible and wonderful in ways that aren't acceptable nowadays, but it was full of possibilities... now I see healthy people with a choice to either cheat or protest or behave like livestock... depending on "intelligence" which is really many complex psychological factors aside from how many books are on your shelf... looks like a lot of them won't be going to colleges anymore...

Certainly, I wish that you, your wife, and all of us live as long as we like, but also that our society not degenerate into some Dhalgren-like anarchy where infrastructure breaks down, nobody is safe and food is hard to get etc.... or just that people can have friends and be able to see them.. so yeah I belong in the Me intersection and I do in fact feel alone there sometimes, but it's not my choice or intention... good luck to you...


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> *Unfortunately for the UK, the international press misread and misrepresented the Brittish strategy then*
> See for example a random example here of what was written about the UK strategy in Czech press
> https://translate.google.com/transl...koronavirus-prelstit-plan-je-nakazit-60-lidi/
> (pretty much all main media wrote something similar)


Exactly so. And the government made a mess of its comms on the matter. And if its policy ever _was _herd immunity, it rapidly reversed it, with the lockdown in place the week after the article you cite (which offers no sources for its information).


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> I think the bigest problems have countries that underestimated the initial response, and thus got hit with bigger waves. Because of this, the lockdows will need to last longer.


This is where Sweden is so interesting. I read an article quoting their leading adviser as believing that because they had a more relaxed policy about legal restrictions they will not get such a bad second wave as those which had been more strict initially (- because there will already have been a wider spread of infection). Who knows, but they are certainly the one to watch.


----------



## wkasimer

SixFootScowl said:


> According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided *preliminary guidance* for how to record virus-related deaths in case of uncertainty, such as when test results are not available. The last Q&A in the linked Preliminary Guidance document (my underlining):
> 
> "Should "COVID-19" be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?
> 
> "COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory testing, etc. If the decedent had other chronic conditions such as COPD or asthma that may have also contributed, these conditions can be reported in Part II. (See attached Guidance for Certifying COVID-19 Deaths)"


You are apparently unaware that every diagnosis is a statement of probability. If an 80 year-old with pre-existing comorbidities dies from a respiratory illness that looks clinically like COVID-19, who resided in a nursing home with documented active cases, I think that it's fair to "assume" the cause of death as COVID-19.


----------



## philoctetes

The US is at high risk as long as interstate travel is easy... and summer coming... gas is cheap, "family visits" by automobile will come back, just like the old days... if there is not a second wave I will be very surprised...


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## Eclectic Al

philoctetes said:


> The US is at high risk as long as interstate travel is easy... and summer coming... gas is cheap, "family visits" by automobile will come back, just like the old days... if there is not a second wave I will be very surprised...


Let's hope that it proves to be seasonally driven, and spreads less well in summer!


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## philoctetes

wkasimer said:


> You are apparently unaware that every diagnosis is a statement of probability. If an 80 year-old with pre-existing comorbidities dies from a respiratory illness that looks clinically like COVID-19, who resided in a nursing home with documented active cases, I think that it's fair to "assume" the cause of death as COVID-19.


And in a certain percentage of cases, that diagnosis or assumption will be wrong... at this point, there is a lot of noise in the statistics and the testing errors... doesn't matter that you have all these probabilistic tools if the data it's based on is noisy, or the reagents you test with react uncertainly, calibrate poorly, get spoiled in shipping, etc... there are many ways that our probabilistic knowledge maybe should not be over-rated or misinterpreted...


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## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> This is where Sweden is so interesting. I read an article quoting their leading adviser as believing that because they had a more relaxed policy about legal restrictions they will not get such a bad second wave as those which had been more strict initially (- because there will already have been a wider spread of infection). Who knows, but they are certainly the one to watch.


I am against this strategy, because it resembles Russian roulette. Maybe they will get lucky, maybe they will not. In general, I consider it a very hazardous and irrensponsible stragy. I will consider it an irresponsible strategy even if in hindsight it will show itself that Sweden comes out best out of it. They will just be lucky.


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## DaveM

Whether it was SARS, MERS and Ebola or is Clovid-19, there was and is a recognizable pattern to the affliction affecting patients arriving in ICUs that is no mystery to the physicians and nurses working there. In the latter case the application of ‘probabilistic knowledge’ is far more accurate than not. It’s understandable that this may be a mystery to those without medical intensive care experience. Errors in diagnosis due to inaccurate testing is a separate matter.


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## philoctetes

I do not feel so confident that we have a handle on diagnosing COVID by probability in the 50+ age range... that we have enough accurate feedback to verify them... and that inaccurate feedback could actually be exaggerating or even skewing the statistics.. a classic bias condition due to incorrect training in a neural net... I mean you can accuse me of overthinking these things but that won't stop me... 

I'm not a user of probabilistic testing and diagnostic systems, but I was a designer of them for 20 years...


----------



## Jacck

MacLeod said:


> Exactly so. And the government made a mess of its comms on the matter. And if its policy ever _was _herd immunity, it rapidly reversed it, with the lockdown in place the week after the article you cite (which offers no sources for its information).


but even Guardian was writing something similar
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...egy-questions-unanswered-coronavirus-outbreak
so maybe the international media just took it over from the UK press


----------



## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> but even Guardian was writing something similar
> https://www.theguardian.com/comment...egy-questions-unanswered-coronavirus-outbreak
> so maybe the international media just took it over from the UK press


the same dog wags all their tails...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Oh look. We're back with The Guardian again. I wonder if they don't like the current government? Just a thought.


----------



## philoctetes

Eclectic Al said:


> Oh look. We're back with The Guardian again. I wonder if they don't like the current government? Just a thought.


Don't miss your daily dose of propaganda, Al


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Oh look. We're back with The Guardian again. I wonder if they don't like the current government? Just a thought.


They are doing their job in functioning as watchdogs of democracy and in criticizing the government. What should they do? Be a state propaganda press like in China, that is only allowed to report good news about the government?


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Oh look. We're back with The Guardian again. I wonder if they don't like the current government? Just a thought.


The article was not written by a Guardian journalist, it was written by Anthony Costello, *professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London* and a *former director of maternal and child health at the WHO*.
Try to address the content of the article. Just a thought.


----------



## philoctetes

"Democracy" was always the word the Bushes used when they really meant "capitalism"...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> They are doing their job in functioning as watchdogs of democracy and in criticizing the government. What should they do? Be a state propaganda press like in China, that is only allowed to report good news about the government?


You see we're instructed to avoid politics, so I struggle to respond, or we'll be in trouble. The point is that newspapers have an editorial position, and are watchdogs to the extent that it suits their position, and lap dogs if that suits them. The most interesting thing to do is look at papers which criticise the party they would be expected to support. Looking to The Guardian for an objective view of a Conservative government, is like asking The Daily Telegraph about Jeremy Corbyn. Apologies, but I don't know how closely you follow UK politics, or the extent to which readers of this thread are interested in that. What I do think is an objective truth is that UK papers have political biases and must be interpreted with that in mind.


----------



## philoctetes

sorry double post..........................................

let's not get political again


----------



## philoctetes

TalkingHead said:


> The article was not written by a Guardian journalist, it was written by Anthony Costello, *professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London* and a *former director of maternal and child health at the WHO*.
> Try to address the content of the article. Just a thought.


Um well, this dam*ing of media pathways has been too prevalent here already... what goes around comes around... and really, why the fonts?


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> The article was not written by a Guardian journalist, it was written by Anthony Costello, *professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London* and a *former director of maternal and child health at the WHO*.
> Try to address the content of the article. Just a thought.


Oops, going political again. The term "sustainable development" in a professorial title is a bit of a pointer, and the WHO is not perhaps seen currently as blank slate. We were all playing nicely, and off we go again. Whoops.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> You see we're instructed to avoid politics, so I struggle to respond, or we'll be in trouble. The point is that newspapers have an editorial position, and are watchdogs to the extent that it suits their position, and lap dogs if that suits them. The most interesting thing to do is look at papers which criticise the party they would be expected to support. Looking to The Guardian for an objective view of a Conservative government, is like asking The Daily Telegraph about Jeremy Corbyn. Apologies, but I don't know how closely you follow UK politics, or the extent to which readers of this thread are interested in that. What I do think is an objective truth is that UK papers have political biases and must be interpreted with that in mind.


But I do not know why you bring politics or media biases into this. A strategy to counter the virus is a relatively simple thing to formulate and the professor who wrote the Guardian article, was just asking some sensible questions about the UK strategy at that time (or the lack thereof). But from what I know, the almost universal feeling outside of the UK at that time was that the UK is underestimating the situation and I think they had a deliberate herd immunity strategy (if they did not communicate it to the public, they were implicitly following it for at least 2 critical weeks even after most other countries went into lockdown already). I do believe there was a deliberate policy not to do massive testing at the beginning in the UK. Contrast the UK with Germany. The countries are comparable, have a similarly strong economy and size.


----------



## philoctetes

I find it's a good idea, if difficult, to review this thread's previous activity before jumping into the activity at the very end of it...to see why something is being discussed... how it came up... before unwarily confronting the last person to say something about it....


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> But I do not know why you bring politics or media biases into this. A strategy to counter the virus is a relatively simple thing to formulate and the professor who wrote the Guardian article, was just asking some sensible questions about the UK strategy at that time (or the lack thereof). But from what I know, the almost universal feeling outside of the UK at that time was that the UK is underestimating the situation and I think they had a deliberate herd immunity strategy (if they did not communicate it to the public, they were implicitly following it for at least 2 critical weeks even after most other countries went into lockdown already). I do believe there was a deliberate policy not to do massive testing at the beginning in the UK


I suppose I'm just a bit more sympathetic about the challenges for governments. I personally don't agree with the government policy in the UK, but I suspect I am less well informed than they are.
One thing that puzzles me is that the government here does a daily briefing, and lots of journalists who participate are political journalists, and they are more vocal than health or science journalists. I don't really understand why.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

The previous virus thread was won by the anarchists and ended on a note of hapless peace .
Such a peace is just too odd I suppose . It is resolve without domination .

Who would like Science to dominate ? Who shall rule the Earth ?

Political Science is what's weird and confucting and devious .


----------



## KenOC

'The *Abbott Laboratories coronavirus test* that's been used at the White House to rapidly confirm whether someone is infected may miss as many as half of positive cases, according to a report from New York University.

' "Based on our findings we could argue that the Abbott ID NOW detects samples with high viral load or possibly viable virus that could be of importance for transmission," the researchers concluded. "But, the fact that it misses positive samples on patients being admitted to the hospital with clinical picture of COVID-19 makes this technology unacceptable in our clinical setting."

'The new paper, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, is casting doubt on the effectiveness of the tests and may confirm that the Abbott tests produce very high false negatives. Abbott is reportedly evaluating the NYU study's results.'


----------



## DaveM

Tikoo Tuba said:


> The previous virus thread was won by the anarchists and ended on a note of hapless peace .
> Such a peace is just too odd I suppose . It is resolve without domination .
> 
> Who would like Science to dominate ? Who shall rule the Earth ?
> 
> Political Science is what's weird and confucting and devious .


The 'confucting' worries me. I didn't know that anything like that was going on.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Oops, going political again. The term "sustainable development" in a professorial title is a bit of a pointer, and the WHO is not perhaps seen currently as blank slate. We were all playing nicely, and off we go again. Whoops.


Who is "going political", here? Read the article and address the content. I would have posted the same article had I come across it in another source.


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> Who is "going political", here? Read the article and address the content. I would have posted the same article had I come across it in another source.


I have read the article. I don't see how it is possible to respond to it rationally. It just reads as a series of somewhat scattergun statements about a whole range of matters connected to the outbreak that it would take a team of specialists to address. The only common thread is UK response bad, anyone else's (especially China's) response good, so I assume that was the intention. No reader who was not a world leading expert in the topic could be expected to be able to walk away with any real reaction beyond that the writer has it in for the UK public health infrastructure. Fine, but not really getting us anywhere. I certainly can't really comment meaningfully about the content.


----------



## Bigbang

MacLeod said:


> You need to have read what kieran wrote in his post to which I was replying, as well as be aware that he and I have been exchanging views over several posts and days.
> 
> My points were, in summary.
> 
> 1 There are significant things we don't know about the virus now, or how it might evolve, which means we should treat it with much greater caution than we treat those infectious/contagious diseases with which we are already familiar and for which we have either treatment, vaccine, or we have more or less eliminated (such as smallpox).
> 2 Like kieran, I don't like false compassion (and I illustrate with examples of what I take it to mean).
> 3 I reject the argument that you must have direct experience of the virus to be able to form a valid view of how the government should handle it. (Not that anyone _here _has explicitly advanced this argument, but it seems to be implied in some posters' wishing to reject the apparently heartless arguments that we must stop the lockdown now or the economy will be ruined.)
> 4 Comparison with flu is misleading because, for example, it causes people to say "because we accept tens of thousands of flu-related deaths, we should accept tens of thousands of covid related deaths. The opposite is the case. We should pay more attention to flu than we do currently (I don't mean "more attention than we pay to covid"), and not accept the death rate.
> 
> I hope that clarifies.


My bad, and noted as I skipped the posts. Really getting too time consuming these days. However, a few comments:

1) Here I prefer to say the "experts" or scientists but given the political BS involved it is really a trying time because of the economy/outcomes etc., but I do not think scientists are that puzzled as it is that the media selling us the stories. They are obviously dealing with probabilities of outcomes but if you have so many things happening around the world now, how can they predict the virus mutations. However they know so much that we are not getting on the news, I mean, we are not the scientists. I do not go on and on about climate change if I am not able to understand all the math/details that experts must know to evaluate what is happening to our earth. So it is, I am sure some scientists are frustrated that they have to "dumb" down their conversations to media questions over and over. But, other than it is now worldwide, I am not sensing any mysterious ominous outcome other than how we handle it.

2) Yes, but this is TV world.
3)Agree, more or less, as there is no manual already in place. But, funny thing is those who do have direct experience seem to have different opinions, not that they should have the final say.
4) Agree, more or less, but this again, is based on people going around the block on the covid-19 issue. I already posted on this before but this Covid-19 already exposed the "we care" before about the flu. Imagine if we practiced social distance and regularly wash our hands, and stayed home if sick/coughs during flu seasons. And we used mask when needed--how many flu deaths would be prevented? Don't know but in hindsight it is obvious we should have been more aggressive against flu strains rather than get so casual because of vaccines.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> I have read the article. I don't see how it is possible to respond to it rationally. It just reads as a series of somewhat scattergun statements about a whole range of matters connected to the outbreak that it would take a team of specialists to address. The only common thread is UK response bad, anyone else's (especially China's) response good, so I assume that was the intention. No reader who was not a world leading expert in the topic could be expected to be able to walk away with any real reaction beyond that the writer has it in for the UK public health infrastructure. Fine, but not really getting us anywhere. I certainly can't really comment meaningfully about the content.


the main point was, that the UK was not following the WHO recommendations, while most other countries did. It does not really matter now. Now we have to look to the future. The countries should not reopen until they are ready, ie they have developed the capacity for extensive testing and contact tracing


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> the main point was, that the UK was not following the WHO recommendations, while most other countries did. It does not really matter now. Now we have to look to the future. The countries should not reopen until they are ready, ie they have developed the capacity for extensive testing and contact tracing


That would have been a much clearer article. Thanks for the summary.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> UK papers have political biases and must be interpreted with that in mind.


We covered this yesterday.

What actually needs to be borne in mind is that _The Guardian _is the only one of the "quality dailies" that isn't behind a paywall, so it's an easier target than _The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Financial Times.

_By all means try _The Mirror, The Express _and _The Mail_. Let's have some variety!


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I have read the article. I don't see how it is possible to respond to it rationally. It just reads as a series of somewhat scattergun statements about a whole range of matters connected to the outbreak that it would take a team of specialists to address. The only common thread is UK response bad, anyone else's (especially China's) response good, so I assume that was the intention. No reader who was not a world leading expert in the topic could be expected to be able to walk away with any real reaction beyond that the writer has it in for the UK public health infrastructure. Fine, but not really getting us anywhere. I certainly can't really comment meaningfully about the content.


Now that's much better than just saying "Oo-er, we're getting political here, oh dear". Keep that up.
I actually agree with you about the somewhat "scattergun statements" but bear in mind the article is more than a month old and opinions are changing all the time even among the experts.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> We covered this yesterday.
> 
> What actually needs to be borne in mind is that _The Guardian _is the only one of the "quality dailies" that isn't behind a paywall, so it's an easier target than _The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Financial Times.
> 
> _By all means try _The Mirror, The Express _and _The Mail_. Let's have some variety!


And what also needs to be kept in mind is to read the articles we post and address the content. I believe it's called "playing the ball, not the man."
Just a thought.


----------



## EdwardBast

tdc said:


> The media and health institutions that are promoting the fear over this virus are owned by the same people. When you hear references to the CDC, WHO, NIH, etc etc. It is actually just one group behind this narrative funding each other and promoting this thing. They create the illusion of neutrality and objectivity by creating these different institutions and only hiring people who will go along with their narrative. These same people stand to make lots and lots of money off this crisis and that is why it doesn't seem surprising they clearly want to make this 'the new normal' and an ongoing thing. Surprise most governments seem to be deciding they will give lots and lots of money to these organizations, and comply with their demands.
> 
> Fauci predicted the Trump administration would face a 'surprise' outbreak years ago (isn't that a little odd? If he is predicting it, how is it then a 'surprise'?). They also simulated a similar virus outbreak event just months before the actual event (event 201). Gates later lied about this, saying they weren't prepared for this, although this information is public.
> 
> *He must be one of the first of his kind. But seriously the covid-19 tests often result in false positives.* The president of Tanzania recently pointed out, they have had a piece of paw paw fruit test positive for covid-19. Consider this taken with the fact that victims are often being diagnosed on symptoms alone, are being listed as covid deaths even when they have other serious health conditions, hospitals are receiving larger sums of money from covid victims than other types of deaths from insurance. Countless health professionals are being censored if they speak out against the official narrative. Does any of this raise some red flags to you?
> 
> People are being lied to on a massive scale over this and having their rights taken from them with no due process and alternate views being censored. People are being conditioned to believe that having freedom is selfish.


Ridiculous conspiracy theories ^ ^ ^. No, my friend wasn't the first nor the last. I know he was in great shape because I spent twelve-hour days climbing in the back country with him. False negatives are a bigger problem than the false positives.


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> And what also needs to be kept in mind is to read the articles we post and address the content. I believe it's called "playing the ball, not the man."
> Just a thought.


Sorry, I had read it. However, as I said in my earlier reply I couldn't see that it was worth addressing the content, as the motivation was too clear, and the detailed content just read as a means to a predetermined end.


----------



## KenOC

Eclectic Al said:


> The latest data in the UK is that 88% of deaths which are reported as relating to the new virus are 65+, so that's 12% which are below, compared with your 27%.


I just updated my own county's numbers to today's date. It seems that here, a person in the over-65 crowd is 1.6 times as likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19 than a person under 65, 8.1 times as likely to die once diagnosed, and overall 12.7 times as likely to catch the virus and die from it than one of those youngsters. These figures take into account the number of people in the county falling into each age group.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> but even Guardian was writing something similar
> https://www.theguardian.com/comment...egy-questions-unanswered-coronavirus-outbreak
> so maybe the international media just took it over from the UK press


Yes, and The Guardian was not the only paper reporting this...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ach-herd-immunity-amid-coronavirus-fight.html

Followed by their coverage of government denial that it was a strategy...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...nst-critics-herd-immunity-virus-strategy.html


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> Yes, and The Guardian was not the only paper reporting this...
> 
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ach-herd-immunity-amid-coronavirus-fight.html
> 
> Followed by their coverage of government denial that it was a strategy...
> 
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...nst-critics-herd-immunity-virus-strategy.html


Indeed. I don't think it's in doubt that the WHO spent a while having a pop at the UK. Jacck's summary was very concise.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Sorry, I had read it. However, as I said in my earlier reply I couldn't see that it was worth addressing the content, as the motivation was too clear, and the detailed content just read as a means to a predetermined end.


I don't see it that way but thank you for explaining your thinking instead of giving the all-too-prevalent knee-jerk response. If we keep this up we may end up having a real dialogue.


----------



## EdwardBast

DaveM said:


> Interesting to ponder on, but the real issue is that the original premise -that we 'ignore' 38,000-40,000 lives annually so why are we concerning ourselves with 80,000 lives lost per 13 weeks at the expense of the economy (the extent to which is unknown yet)- is pretty hard to defend...on any level.


Especially since extreme mitigation measures were required to limit the number of deaths to that figure


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> I don't see it that way but thank you for explaining your thinking instead of giving the all-too-prevalent knee-jerk response. If we keep this up we may end up having a real dialogue.


Well anything's possible. To be honest I think this whole thread has a lot of sound and fury, but the differences are less than they come across.
There's tension over the extent to which one should blame governments or cut them some slack, and also about tactics regarding the strictness of lockdowns and the speed of relaxation. It's all just detail.


----------



## philoctetes

EdwardBast said:


> Especially since extreme mitigation measures were required to limit the number of deaths to that figure


a very good point but some communities may be overdoing the mitigation.... many are obviously under-doing it... we really don't know yet (that again) where to optimally say enough is enough.... but again, I fear it's the mobility in the US that will eventually spread it from the under-doers to the over-doers... we'll know by July or August...


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Well anything's possible. To be honest I think this whole thread has a lot of sound and fury, but the differences are less than they come across.
> There's tension over the extent to which one should blame governments or cut them some slack, and also about tactics regarding the strictness of lockdowns and the speed of relaxation. It's all just detail.


unfortunately these are not mere details. Some people are pushing for reopening too soon, without having brought the first wave under control, and a second wave might follow
https://www.thedailybeast.com/coron...eady-be-doomed-for-a-second-lockdown?ref=home
ideology and greed is driving some politicians to sacrifice human lifes.


----------



## philoctetes

... just sharing... not a statement of anything I believe or don't...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> unfortunately these are not mere details. Some people are pushing for reopening too soon, without having brought the first wave under control, and a second wave might follow
> https://www.thedailybeast.com/coron...eady-be-doomed-for-a-second-lockdown?ref=home
> ideology and greed is driving some politicians to sacrifice human lifes.


Well I'm going to struggle to disagree that some might be a bit too keen on opening up, but I suspect some are also a bit too keen on not opening up at all. It's in that sense (along with a large dollop of irony) that I was referring to detail. To be more precise, I really meant tactics, and when it comes to tactics I think everyone who has a strong view is really just guessing. I am just glad it is not my decision to make.


----------



## KenOC

Here's a *gloom-and-doom viewpoint* from Marketwatch forecasting a full-scale depression in our immediate future, and even worse for China. Interesting reading.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The debate going into [the November] election will be Wall Street getting bailed out and Main Street having done poorly," he warned. "The price of assets are going to go up. Every rich person that owns those assets, they're going to get richer, and the middle class that either has to rent or buy those assets, this becomes more unattainable."

Wondered Bass: "What happens if we get to November and stock markets are at all-time highs, and we're at 15% unemployment, and the food [banks] don't have food? Imagine this world. That world in a much lesser way is what brought us Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders."


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> ... just sharing... not a statement of anything I believe or don't...


Neither of these things is happening or likely to happen any time soon.


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> Here's a *gloom-and-doom viewpoint* from Marketwatch forecasting a full-scale depression in our immediate future, and even worse for China. Interesting reading.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "The debate going into [the November] election will be Wall Street getting bailed out and Main Street having done poorly," he warned. "The price of assets are going to go up. Every rich person that owns those assets, they're going to get richer, and the middle class that either has to rent or buy those assets, this becomes more unattainable."
> 
> Wondered Bass: "What happens if we get to November and stock markets are at all-time highs, and we're at 15% unemployment, and the food [banks] don't have food? Imagine this world. That world in a much lesser way is what brought us Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders."


Yes Wall Street and the Fed are, by shake and bake, having a business merger at this point and deflation will suck the financial atmosphere right off the face of the earth as we masses know it... and it seems that nobody has any resistance to this since other economic rebuilding strategies have been cut off by disease... and when the lucky ones working from home now have nobody to hire them, they won't be able to walk outside and restart their lives...


----------



## philoctetes

Christabel said:


> Neither of these things is happening or likely to happen any time soon.


That's why it's a cartoon, Christabel...


----------



## Guest

News scoop: we're all going to die. Nobody is going to leave this life alive!! Stop worrying and start the real business of living.

Have some empathy for the zillions of people who died young up until the time Penicillin was available - from TB to pneumonia to a simple tooth or ear infection. These things routinely carried people to their graves - not to mention appalling infant mortality.

The modern-day fear and panic mostly derives from populations which have felt protected from the vicissitudes of disease. It's a good thing that we enjoy such a high standard of living, but it also 'weakens' people psychologically when they're faced with a vicious pandemic. This one does discriminate; mostly the over 65 cohort is affected, but there are still younger people who succumb. As my late father-in-law used to say, "a lot of people have died today that haven't died before" (!!!)

But there's always the natural disaster to 'comfort' those who think they're safe from Covid-19. Or a war, or mass shooting, or terrorism. Some nations live with this daily or hourly. Air travel has delivered disease to us all swiftly and efficiently. 

My own adult children aren't worried about Covid-19 but they're certainly worried about the economic consequences, you bet. That's why I've named this the 'inheritance pandemic' - 1. because it's killing off their parents' generation and 2. it's bequeathing them the horrendous debt and deficit which they will have to repay.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> That's why it's a cartoon, Christabel...


Cartoons are often deeply serious. I did hear that some people in France died as a consequence of a cartoon or two that they produced.


----------



## philoctetes

Christabel said:


> Cartoons are often deeply serious. I did hear that some people in France died as a consequence of a cartoon or two that they produced.


Indeed! down with cartoons, up with COVID-19!


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Indeed! down with cartoons, up with COVID-19!


"Down Eros, up Mars". Sorry, that was "Ben Hur".


----------



## mountmccabe

Estimating the burden of SARS-CoV-2 in France



Linked Article said:


> *Abstract*
> France has been heavily affected by the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and went into lockdown on the 17 March 2020. Using models applied to hospital and death data, we estimate the impact of the lockdown and current population immunity. We find 3.6% of infected individuals are hospitalized and 0.7% die, ranging from 0.001% in those <20 years of age (ya) to 10.1% in those >80ya. Across all ages, men are more likely to be hospitalized, enter intensive care, and die than women. The lockdown reduced the reproductive number from 2.90 to 0.67 (77% reduction). By 11 May 2020, when interventions are scheduled to be eased, we project 2.8 million (range: 1.8-4.7) people, or 4.4% (range: 2.8-7.2) of the population, will have been infected. Population immunity appears insufficient to avoid a second wave if all control measures are released at the end of the lockdown.


Saw this via one of the authors sharing on Twitter.



Henrik Salje via Twitter said:


> Despite 20,000+ COVID19 deaths, we find only ~5% of France infected. The lockdown, eased on Monday, reduced transmission by 80%, however R still close to 1 (~0.7) with 3-6k daily infections, leaving little room for post-lockdown increases


It should be noted that the "3-6k daily infections" is an estimate based on assumptions that confirmed cases are an undercount (which is the basis of much of this).

A study from Spain (no paper yet) also found only ~5% of the population infected there.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> *Cartoons are often deeply serious*. I did hear that some people in France died as a consequence of a cartoon or two that they produced.


I quite agree. 
Here are details of your next course: https://www2.uea.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/taught-degree/detail/ma-comics-studies


----------



## Jacck

mountmccabe said:


> Estimating the burden of SARS-CoV-2 in France.


in my country that did a serological study too and found out that less then 1% had the disease. So some herd immunity is out of the question. But thanks for the link. I am not going to read the pandemic paper, but thanks to it, I discovered a Science Special Issue on The immune system's first steps
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6491/598
this is closer to my area of interest. I am interested in the effect of early immune insults on brain development. I don't even want to think about what the COVID might do to pregnancies and to what kinds of developmental disorders it might lead.


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> .. That's why I've named this the 'inheritance pandemic' - 1. because it's killing off their parents' generation and 2. it's bequeathing them the horrendous debt and deficit which they will have to repay.


On the other hand, the children may inherit an estate sooner than expected...


----------



## mountmccabe

mountmccabe said:


> A study from Spain (no paper yet) also found only ~5% of the population infected there.


Discussion of preliminary results from the seroprevalence study from Spain, quoting a 1.5 hour press conference video (in Spanish)



Linked Tweet said:


> BREAKING NEWS: Preliminary results of Spain's seroprevalence study #ENECOVID.
> 
> >60,000 participants
> 
> Antibodies for #SARSCoV2:
> 5% of Spanish population
> 11% in region with highest incidence (Madrid)
> 
> So far from herd immunity in country with 2nd largest number of cases after U.S.


----------



## philoctetes

mountmccabe said:


> Discussion of preliminary results from the seroprevalence study from Spain, quoting a 1.5 hour press conference video (in Spanish)


I'm curious what the confidence intervals would be on those percentages, if you happen to know them... hardly matters with such a low percentage tho...


----------



## wkasimer

philoctetes said:


> And in a certain percentage of cases, that diagnosis or assumption will be wrong... at this point, there is a lot of noise in the statistics and the testing errors... doesn't matter that you have all these probabilistic tools if the data it's based on is noisy, or the reagents you test with react uncertainly, calibrate poorly, get spoiled in shipping, etc... there are many ways that our probabilistic knowledge maybe should not be over-rated or misinterpreted...


Do you have any actual background in laboratory medicine? Based on the above, I suspect that you do not.


----------



## mountmccabe

philoctetes said:


> I'm curious what the confidence intervals would be on those percentages, if you happen to know them... hardly matters with such a low percentage tho...


I don't have any further information on the Spanish study. The press conference likely contains more, but my Spanish is very rudimentary.

The paper on France I linked to (which is much shorter than I would have figured) gives confidence intervals for many values, including the ones that match



Linked Paper said:


> We forecast that by the 11 May 2020, 2.8 million (range: 1.8-4.7, when accounting for uncertainty in the probability of hospitalization given infection) people will have been infected, representing 4.4% (range: 2.8-7.2) of the French population (Fig. 3E). This proportion will be 9.9% (range: 6.6-15.7) in Ile-de-France, which includes Paris, and 9.1% (range: 6.0-14.6) in Grand Est, the two most affected regions of the country (Fig. 3F and fig. S5).


I appears they were working from data as of 7 May 2020, so the "forecast" was only a few days out.


----------



## Bigbang

Christabel said:


> Neither of these things is happening or likely to happen any time soon.


Yes, it was a mere two million years ago, give or take, the days of storytelling and passing along the myths (and lessons of the great fall) of how we were cast out of paradise and now we must remember what happened so history is repeated. Hence, the stories such as Atlantis. Must be so ingrained into our psyche that this is so universal, the fear of our annihilation.


----------



## philoctetes

wkasimer said:


> Do you have any actual background in laboratory medicine? Based on the above, I suspect that you do not.


I already answered that question so maybe you need to get over yourself...


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> 'The *Abbott Laboratories coronavirus test* that's been used at the White House to rapidly confirm whether someone is infected may miss as many as half of positive cases, according to a report from New York University.
> 
> ' "Based on our findings we could argue that the Abbott ID NOW detects samples with high viral load or possibly viable virus that could be of importance for transmission," the researchers concluded. "But, the fact that it misses positive samples on patients being admitted to the hospital with clinical picture of COVID-19 makes this technology unacceptable in our clinical setting."
> 
> 'The new paper, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, is casting doubt on the effectiveness of the tests and may confirm that the Abbott tests produce very high false negatives. Abbott is reportedly evaluating the NYU study's results.'


I'll assume you're using information published by Fox News, as that's where your photo of the device is from.

Yeah, when the news source that's traditionally supportive of this president publishes something that puts him in a bad light, you should definitely sit up and take notice. If not Fox News, then the NY Daily News is reporting this as well https://www.nydailynews.com/coronav...0200513-pxnvwss7uffdpmyno2praqpxmi-story.html - noting that the ID NOW testing machine from Abbott Laboratories misses 48% of positive cases. That's pretty much half the time. Like tossing a coin.

You know, if the L.A. Rams' kicker was accurate only 52% of the time, they'd be immediately sidelined. If you had a machine that put eggs in cartons that was accurate 52% of the time, you'd send it to the junkyard.

So . . . the White House is using a testing procedure that is accused of giving false negatives? Sadly, that's amusing. Especially as the White House is suddenly a hot spot of POSITIVE cases. Three members of the coronavirus task force, Trump's personal military-provided valet, Ivanka's personal assistant, Pence's spokeswoman. On Saturday it was announced Pence would be "Self-quarantining", but the White House contradicted that announcement.

Now . . . let's imagine that they're now testing the entire staff everyday, and it's missing half of the positive cases.

Comedy writes itself these days.


----------



## philoctetes

mountmccabe said:


> I don't have any further information on the Spanish study. The press conference likely contains more, but my Spanish is very rudimentary.
> 
> The paper on France I linked to (which is much shorter than I would have figured) gives confidence intervals for many values, including the ones that match
> 
> I appears they were working from data as of 7 May 2020, so the "forecast" was only a few days out.


Thank you very much... so the general and specific intervals overlap... indicative of the kind of uncertainty in the data mix at this stage...


----------



## KenOC

pianozach said:


> I'll assume you're using information published by Fox News, as that's where your photo of the device is from.
> 
> Yeah, when the news source that's traditionally supportive of this president publishes something that puts him in a bad light, you should definitely sit up and take notice. If not Fox News, then the NY Daily News is reporting this as well https://www.nydailynews.com/coronav...0200513-pxnvwss7uffdpmyno2praqpxmi-story.html - noting that the ID NOW testing machine from Abbott Laboratories misses 48% of positive cases. That's pretty much half the time. Like tossing a coin.
> 
> You know, if the L.A. Rams' kicker was accurate only 52% of the time, they'd be immediately sidelined. If you had a machine that put eggs in cartons that was accurate 52% of the time, you'd send it to the junkyard.
> 
> So . . . the White House is using a testing procedure that is accused of giving false negatives? Sadly, that's amusing. Especially as the White House is suddenly a hot spot of POSITIVE cases. Three members of the coronavirus task force, Trump's personal military-provided valet, Ivanka's personal assistant, Pence's spokeswoman. On Saturday it was announced Pence would be "Self-quarantining", but the White House contradicted that announcement.
> 
> Now . . . let's imagine that they're now testing the entire staff everyday, and it's missing half of the positive cases.
> 
> Comedy writes itself these days.


The article itself is linked right at the top of my post. If you read it you'll find it's straight reporting. The information in it is from a study at New York University. A political angle never occurred to me, nor do I think one is present in this case. I remember that Dr. Fauci was quite enthusiastic about the Abbot machine. Not everything works out the way we'd like.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> The national debt was 35% of GDP as recently as 1980. Then we really started spending...
> 
> And really, for what?


Has government _spending_ been the biggest change since the 1980s?


----------



## philoctetes

I guess just posting pictures really incites people now huh? This is getting ridiculous... 

and it was reported by someone else here (please stand up) that low false positives were "flooded by false negatives" in general COVID-19 test practice...

so if there is a better test somewhere, I haven't heard of it yet, but would like to... with performance specs please... or else this is just more politics..


----------



## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> I guess just posting pictures really incites people now huh? This is getting ridiculous...
> 
> and it was reported by someone else here (please stand up) that low false positives were "flooded by false negatives" in general COVID-19 test practice...
> 
> so if there is a better test somewhere, I haven't heard of it yet, but would like to... with performance specs please... or else this is just more politics..


Better test? Maybe one is mentioned in the article, which quotes the researchers: "Regardless of method of collection and sample type, Abbot ID NOW COVID-19 missed a third of the samples detected positive by Cepheid Xpert Xpress when using NP swabs in VTM and over 48 percent when using dry nasal swabs."

I wonder if Abbot, like Amazon, pays return shipping on these things? :lol:


----------



## Bigbang

KenOC said:


> I want to get on my hobby horse again. The US has already authorized $3 trillion for the coronavirus campaign and looks likely to spend as much more again. However, we here will pay none of this. It will all be borrowed and repaid (to the extent it can be) by our children, grandchildren, and so on. It's been several decades since we paid down _any _of our public debt after all; we just roll it over into new debt while adding more each year. As for ourselves, we find it easy to be noble with other people's money.
> 
> I see this as a true crisis of intergenerational equity. In order to possibly lengthen lives of our seniors (a group that I'm a decade into) we are saddling our offspring with a ruined economy and a truly huge debt burden, likely with no real way to pay it back.
> 
> Right now the national debt is $76,318 for every man, woman and child in the country, and $202,531 for every taxpayer. And the debt is rising faster than ever with the trillions in new borrowing. Note that these figures don't include items such as unfunded pensions, unrepayable student loans, debts of the individual states and their subsidiary agencies, and private debt. Note also that every dollar of the national debt is money owed to somebody on a specific date, to be paid in cash. There may well come a point when the US is viewed as a feckless borrower and we actually have to raise taxes - a lot - to make those payments.
> 
> The national debt was 35% of GDP as recently as 1980. Then we really started spending: It was 58% by 2000 and is 118% of GDP now. That's nosebleed territory, the equivalent of having more than a year's income in credit card debt. It seems to me that we had pretty well spent away any chance of our offspring leading economically fruitful lives even before the coronavirus crisis. Now we're simply making absolutely sure of it.
> 
> And really, for what?


I brought this up before, more or less without your detailed analysis, me being a simpleton, but I am afraid you may be a little off. I think that taxes will have to go up. All the perks are over. Game over. Social Security--ha! One way or another it has to start when the recovery takes hold.


----------



## Bigbang

Even the democrats want to pass out all the money so they can win the election. It would help if world peace comes sooner than expected, women take hold of power (transfer of power from masculine to feminine) and so we can focus worldwide on the issues facing the planet. If all our energies are going to defense (thus, worldwide partnership) and dealing with dictators and old systems in place that men use for power, then it ain't lookin pretty. If women accede to the position of power then a new game plan is in the works as evolution allowed men to have more balance of this energy in the beginning. As you know this has already began with the "me too" movement. I think.


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> Better test? Maybe one is mentioned in the article, which quotes the researchers: "Regardless of method of collection and sample type, Abbot ID NOW COVID-19 missed a third of the samples detected positive by Cepheid Xpert Xpress when using NP swabs in VTM and over 48 percent when using dry nasal swabs."
> 
> I wonder if Abbot, like Amazon, pays return shipping on these things? :lol:


Thanks! That's terrible! Apparently the analyzing machine is one more source of noise... but you know, technically, you gotta look at both false positives and negatives to judge... in theory a testing system can trade off the two error types... by varying detection thresholds to be inclusive v exclusive ...

Now, I'm searching for anything about testing standards, equipment and error rates and it's pretty murky, at Cepheid *speed* seems to be the buzz and I wonder if that forces a compromise in accuracy until something better comes up...


----------



## KenOC

For those who break out in hives when they see a Fox story, however benign, here's the *same story on the Abbot machine* from the WaPo. Hint: It says the same things. There is, however, more info on false negatives with the Abbot machine from several other sources.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> The article itself is linked right at the top of my post. If you read it you'll find it's straight reporting. The information in it is from a study at New York University. A political angle never occurred to me, nor do I think one is present in this case. I remember that Dr. Fauci was quite enthusiastic about the Abbot machine. Not everything works out the way we'd like.


Ah. Didn't realize that was a link. I thought that you had merely highlighted and used colored text *like this* for emphasis. So naturally I didn't bother to hover the cursor over your text.

In any event, the news source here is irrelevant, nor did it occur to me that this particular piece of news might be biased.

In spite of being the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, I don't ever know what to make of Dr. Fauci's statements. I feel like he waffles back and forth and I don't feel comfortable taking his statements at face value any more.


----------



## philoctetes

pianozach said:


> Ah. Didn't realize that was a link. I thought that you had merely highlighted and used colored text *like this* for emphasis. So naturally I didn't bother to hover the cursor over your text.
> 
> In any event, the news source here is irrelevant, nor did it occur to me that this particular piece of news might be biased.
> 
> In spite of being the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, I don't ever know what to make of Dr. Fauci's statements. I feel like he waffles back and forth and I don't feel comfortable taking his statements at face value any more.


Welcome to the conspiracy club...


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> For those who break out in hives when they see a Fox story, however benign, here's the *same story on the Abbot machine* from the WaPo. Hint: It says the same things. There is, however, more info on false negatives with the Abbot machine from several other sources.


Yeah. *WaPo*. Paywall. Can't read it.

It's alright - I found the news in the NYDailyNews. I'll assume it's basically the same story.


----------



## KenOC

pianozach said:


> Yeah. *WaPo*. Paywall. Can't read it.
> 
> It's alright - I found the news in the NYDailyNews. I'll assume it's basically the same story.


That's odd. I heard it before, but I can access the WaPo just fine, no paywall. On average, less biased than Fox, but not by much.


----------



## DaveM

Regarding the money the Fed and the government is ‘spending’ during the pandemic. The two operate differently. It is estimated that the Fed will use about 3.5 trillion by the end of the year to mainly inject money into banks (so that banks will have money to lend to businesses) and to buy a fraction of the debt being incurred by the government. This does not represent an increase in the debt because it is ‘printed’ money. On the other hand, the government has spent 2.4 trillion so far to support businesses and taxpayers. This is added to the debt. 

Overall, the government also has the ability to pay down the debt with printed money via the Fed. The consequence of printing too much money has traditionally been inflation, but that didn’t happen during the Great Recession. It remains to be seen if it will happen this time.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> That's odd. I heard it before, but I can access the WaPo just fine, no paywall. On average, less biased than Fox, but not by much.


Some of the paywall news sources will give you three free articles per month. Sometimes if the article is related to the coronavirus you can access it.


----------



## Guest

pianozach said:


> *In spite of being the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, I *don't ever know what to make of Dr. Fauci's statements.


Your slightly ambiguous grammar leads me to conclude that you are the Director. I assume that's not the case


----------



## Guest

On a separate issue, what is the view about the risks in schools? The research referred to in the media gives a mixed picture, with no clear view yet on whether children transmit ("shed") the virus much. The papers here highlight the challenges, even if one of them is seen by some to be the scaremongering of the unions.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-DIFFERENT-schools-staggered-start-times.html



> Young children face the daunting prospect of being sent to different schools than normal from next month as Boris Johnson plots a way to restart education after the coronavirus lockdown.
> The Government wants primary pupils back for at least a month before the summer break but social distancing rules mean sweeping changes, including a maximum 15 pupils per class and staggering start and finish times, are planned.


The Education Secretary will not have made himself popular with the home education lobby - very strong here in the UK - with his comment that ""The best place for children to be educated and to learn is in school,"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/52393241


----------



## Guest

And one more point of interest. Death rates. I'm sure I had no idea what the death rates were before covid19, so it's worth knowing, isn't it, to help consider the questions raised about how 'dispensable' any age group is.

So, here's an animated graph showing how the rate has changed from 1915 to 2015 in England and Wales (so not the UK, not even GB)https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rate-by-age-group-in-england-and-wales?time=2015
Death rates in England and Wales by age group, measured as the number of deaths from all causes per
1,000 individuals per age bracket.

Unsurprisingly, it underlines that there is quite a sharp rise in death rates for the over 80s (though this is an 'uncapped' interval so not quite comparable with the preceding intervals)

Take care though. The age intervals shift up and down the graph across the century. They are not always in 'age order'.


----------



## erki

I wonder with these the recent serological studies: if the virus is so contagious(the choir practise in Seattle, Football game in Italy) how come so few of the population get infected. The 5% seems to be consistent regardless of the severity of the lockdown measures. Would it be that as soon you start practicing a bit social distancing the virus stops spreading?


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> On the other hand, the children may inherit an estate sooner than expected...


They are going to need THAT and much, much, much more to pay off the debt - as you will in all other developed nations. Read Prof. Niall Ferguson on some of the debilitating effects of sovereign debt. It makes for *very sober reading*. I've read 3 books by Prof. Ferguson and been to one of his lectures. He says the only thing which will dint sovereign debt is galloping inflation!!!

Also, please forward to 3 minutes here for some very alarming comments from the super smart Lionel Shriver which are absolutely accurate and largely what Prof. Ferguson says:






Stop worrying about Covid-19; this stuff is FAR bigger.


----------



## science

MacLeod said:


> So, what is the right thing to do? Be noble with other people's livelihood's and lives?


It's very instructive to note that we're asking working people to sacrifice their lives for the economy rather than asking billionaires to give up some of their fortunes to save working people's lives.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> It's very instructive to note that we're asking working people to sacrifice their lives for the economy rather than asking billionaires to give up some of their fortunes to save working people's lives.


This is what you'd expect from "The Guardian"...."sacrifice their lives for the economy". A more centre to centre right comment would be "people want to return to work to feed their families and improve their standards of living". But hysteria works for some. Apparently. And last time I looked Bill Gates had given a vast amount of money via philanthropy for health-related causes in third world nations. These same billionaires, by the way, who provide MILLIONS of jobs for Americans and others.

Simplistic drivel is repeated mindlessly after it's been ingested from glass-half-empty, shallow media. Caveat emptor.


----------



## Guest

Having just listened to two UK economists (Jonathan Portis and Lord O'Neill) give their views on handling the UK national debt, I'm not sure I need to listen to the venerable Mr Ferguson, a noted historian, as well, though maybe he has something useful to say that applies to the US.

Both Portis and O'Neill agreed that the borrowing for the UK is nothing like as great as the debt we'd accumulated after WWII, and we've not gone bankrupt yet. Both agreed, nevertheless, that it will be wise to take some measures soon to begin the process, but that they needn't be punitive in taxation or spending terms.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> This is what you'd expect from "The Guardian"....


It would be interesting to know what The Mail (correction - one of the biggest selling national dailies) has to say on the economy, but it's comment pages are thin. Here's the alleged home of their editorials (not even signposted in the menus):

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/columnist-1012802/Mail-Sunday-Comment-Daily-Mail.html

Note the dominance of gossip articles. Not exactly a wealth of editorial comment. I can't find their opinion on the £360bn our chancellor is spending on corona measures. I assume The Mail knows it's readership and it doesn't want to be bothered with the trivia of economic debate.

Perhaps someone else can help me out here?


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> It would be interesting to know what The Mail (biggest selling national daily) has to say on the economy, but it's comment pages are thin. Here's the alleged home of their editorials (not even signposted in the menus):
> 
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/columnist-1012802/Mail-Sunday-Comment-Daily-Mail.html
> 
> Note the dominance of gossip articles. Not exactly a wealth of editorial comment. I can't find their opinion on the £360bn our chancellor is spending on corona measures. I assume The Mail knows it's readership and it doesn't want to be bothered with the trivia of economic debate.
> 
> Perhaps someone else can help me out here?


I definitely read something far more substantial than "The Mail". I wouldn't read it even if I was British, which I'm not. Books, internet discussions with experts, magazine articles and essays from economists; that's the way to go.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> Having just listened to two UK economists (Jonathan Portis and Lord O'Neill) give their views on handling the UK national debt, I'm not sure I need to listen to the venerable Mr Ferguson, a noted historian, as well, though maybe he has something useful to say that applies to the US.
> 
> Both Portis and O'Neill agreed that the borrowing for the UK is nothing like as great as the debt we'd accumulated after WWII, and we've not gone bankrupt yet. Both agreed, nevertheless, that it will be wise to take some measures soon to begin the process, but that they needn't be punitive in taxation or spending terms.


Professor Ferguson is an Applied Economic Historian. You might remember his series made for television. While it may be true that the debt levels are not the same as WW2 there are 2 significant differences: 1. Post war GROWTH and RECONSTRUCTION, 2. The Marshall Plan. Even then, Germany was WAY ahead of the pack - developing from a total dust heap with the proceeds of the Marshall Plan to be the economic leader of Europe. That's a staggering achievement (and they had war reparations as well).

Today's circumstances are *very different* because we've used debt to get out of debt. We also have robots doing the work of human beings. Soon there will be driverless vehicles; ergo, the social welfare bills are HORRENDOUS. Watch the discussion with Lionel Shriver who has written a novel about the financial system and has engaged in extensive research. It's on the link further above. And the ponzi scheme for economic growth is now immigration because government have realized that capitalism can only grow from increasing the number of consumers! I remember going to a seminar in Sydney about this well over a decade ago and it disturbed me then.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> I definitely read something far more substantial than "The Mail". I wouldn't read it even if I was British, which I'm not. Books, internet discussions with experts, magazine articles and essays from economists; that's the way to go.


Let's compare like with like. You dislike _The Guardian _as a source of opinion. I offered you an alternative with a much greater circulation/readership than The G, and which is available online without payment.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> Professor Ferguson is an Applied Economic Historian. You might remember his series made for television.


Yes, I know about Niall Ferguson and I'm sure his learned opinion is worthy - but still one opinion among so many worthy opinions available to government (and us, but I'm not going to be making the decisions on which opinion should be picked).


----------



## science

Christabel said:


> This is what you'd expect from "The Guardian"...."sacrifice their lives for the economy". A more centre to centre right comment would be "people want to return to work to feed their families and improve their standards of living". But hysteria works for some. Apparently. And last time I looked Bill Gates had given a vast amount of money via philanthropy for health-related causes in third world nations. These same billionaires, by the way, who provide MILLIONS of jobs for Americans and others.
> 
> Simplistic drivel is repeated mindlessly after it's been ingested from glass-half-empty, shallow media. Caveat emptor.


I'm sure I didn't get my idea, whether it's simplistic drivel or not, from the Guardian.

The issue is, if people are to feed their family and so on, whether that is best to be done at the present moment by endangering their lives or redistributing a little wealth. One answer is, let the workers endanger their lives and the billionaires keep their money. The other answer is, let's protect people's lives for a few more weeks and tax billionaires to pay for it.

It really is working class lives on one side and oligarchical fortunes on the other. Which one do we care about enough to preserve?


----------



## Eclectic Al

erki said:


> I wonder with these the recent serological studies: if the virus is so contagious(the choir practise in Seattle, Football game in Italy) how come so few of the population get infected. The 5% seems to be consistent regardless of the severity of the lockdown measures. Would it be that as soon you start practicing a bit social distancing the virus stops spreading?


Interesting point this. The tests used so far seem highly unreliable, so we are in the "don't really know" position still about how many people have had the disease (and I include in that those who didn't even notice).

The positive point is that (a) if the number is really high then it suggests that the mortality rate from catching it is overall really low, and low risk individuals can get on with their lives as long as the vulnerable can be screened, or (b) if the number is not high then it does not spread very readily so that, as you suggest, a degree of sensible distancing should see it decline quickly in the population, but on the other hand the mortality rate is higher.

(a) is the better answer as one might then hope that one can reach a herd immunity type situation without Spanish flu levels of death. Under (b) you're probably more into the tracing app type situation to snuff out any new hotspots as quickly as possible.


----------



## Kieran

erki said:


> I wonder with these the recent serological studies: if the virus is so contagious(the choir practise in Seattle, Football game in Italy) how come so few of the population get infected. The 5% seems to be consistent regardless of the severity of the lockdown measures. Would it be that as soon you start practicing a bit social distancing the virus stops spreading?


Also that the vast majority of people with the virus apparently display absolutely no symptoms, so they haven't been tested and recorded as having it...


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> I'm sure I didn't get my idea, whether it's simplistic drivel or not, from the Guardian.
> 
> The issue is, if people are to feed their family and so on, whether that is best to be done at the present moment by endangering their lives or redistributing a little wealth. One answer is, let the workers endanger their lives and the billionaires keep their money. The other answer is, let's protect people's lives for a few more weeks and tax billionaires to pay for it.
> 
> It really is working class lives on one side and oligarchical fortunes on the other. Which one do we care about enough to preserve?


I'm going to ignore the financial aspects in this response, but my feeling is that the current situation is the opposite of what you posit. The lockdown approach is quite comfortable for many white-collar workers on good pay, as many can continue to work remotely and they live in relatively spacious accommodation. Meanwhile, the blue-collar workers are often unable to work, their jobs are particularly at risk (for example in the hospitality sector) and their living conditions tend to be more cramped and difficult to accept in lockdown, with increases in domestic violence resulting, etc. The adverse health consequences of continued lockdown are much worse for this group. Of course, the white collar workers are living a fool's dream at the moment, because the economy is collapsing around them and their current relatively comfortable situation cannot last.


----------



## Kieran

MacLeod said:


> On a separate issue, what is the view about the risks in schools? The research referred to in the media gives a mixed picture, with no clear view yet on whether children transmit ("shed") the virus much. The papers here highlight the challenges, even if one of them is seen by some to be the scaremongering of the unions.
> 
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-DIFFERENT-schools-staggered-start-times.html
> 
> The Education Secretary will not have made himself popular with the home education lobby - very strong here in the UK - with his comment that ""The best place for children to be educated and to learn is in school,"
> 
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/52393241


That's a good question. I heard another virus maestro declare the other day that children don't transmit it, but I don't believe that argument has been won yet, and until it is, we need to expect that they do transmit it. Soon the restrictions will be lifted and the kids will have to get out and run around anyway. But in terms of education, I think this year has been badly affected and in Ireland, instead of having final exams in school (for the older kids who would the leave school and head to college or try find jobs), they'll predict the results instead, based upon the kids results this year so far, which is hardly satisfactory given that we tend to study harder coming up to a big exam.

But home-schooling and any other ways of examining the results of this won't work in every situation. The ideal is classroom teaching (which is probably what the Education Secretary was saying) - but that won't return until September at the earliest, and even then, who knows for how long...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> Also that the vast majority of people with the virus apparently display absolutely no symptoms, so they haven't been tested and recorded as having it...


I also understand (having a daughter with a masters in biochemistry and another daughter with a masters in public health) that people can have the disease and defeat it without producing antibodies (if killer T cells do the job before an antibody response is triggered) and children may well have a difference in their ACE2 receptors which means the virus cannot really get a hold on them at all. Hence, even with a reliable antibody test for past infection, you would not get the full picture.

Personally I'm amazed at the ability of humanity to develop tests for stuff like this so quickly, and with sufficient specificity to be useful at all. When people then say "why is it taking so long to get a test" I marvel at their insight into the detailed biochemical understanding and production capabilities that are needed to manufacture such tests. Maybe they could build a lab in their garden shed, or spare room, and assist.


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> I'm sure I didn't get my idea, whether it's simplistic drivel or not, from the Guardian.
> 
> The issue is, if people are to feed their family and so on, whether that is best to be done at the present moment by endangering their lives or redistributing a little wealth. One answer is, let the workers endanger their lives and the billionaires keep their money. The other answer is, let's protect people's lives for a few more weeks and tax billionaires to pay for it.
> 
> It really is working class lives on one side and oligarchical fortunes on the other. Which one do we care about enough to preserve?


I'm not a socialist and I dislike socialism, but in a situation like we see now, I think billionaires and banks should contribute more to help bail out the economy and their customers/staff, and also that perhaps a payment like UBI might work too, for a defined period of time...


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> I'm going to ignore the financial aspects in this response, but my feeling is that the current situation is the opposite of what you posit. The lockdown approach is quite comfortable for many white-collar workers on good pay, as many can continue to work remotely and they live in relatively spacious accommodation. Meanwhile, the blue-collar workers are often unable to work, their jobs are particularly at risk (for example in the hospitality sector) and their living conditions tend to be more cramped and difficult to accept in lockdown, with increases in domestic violence resulting, etc. The adverse health consequences of continued lockdown are much worse for this group. Of course, the white collar workers are living a fool's dream at the moment, because the economy is collapsing around them and their current relatively comfortable situation cannot last.


The blue collar workers are who I'm calling working class. White collar workers tend to be who I'd call middle class.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> I also understand (having a daughter with a masters in biochemistry and another daughter with a masters in public health) that people can have the disease and defeat it without producing antibodies (if killer T cells do the job before an antibody response is triggered) and children may well have a difference in their ACE2 receptors which means the virus cannot really get a hold on them at all. Hence, even with a reliable antibody test for past infection, you would not get the full picture.
> 
> Personally I'm amazed at the ability of humanity to develop tests for stuff like this so quickly, and with sufficient specificity to be useful at all. When people then say "why is it taking so long to get a test" I marvel at their insight into the detailed biochemical understanding and production capabilities that are needed to manufacture such tests. Maybe they could build a lab in their garden shed, or spare room, and assist.


Yeah, the technology is incredible. Mind-boggling, actually, and the ingenuity of humans constantly amazes me. I think - and hope - that one thing we'll all become aware of, post-corona - is the necessity to eat well, develop our immune systems and try live healthier lives.

That would probably keep us busy for about a month in the post-corona world :lol:


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> I'm not a socialist and I dislike socialism, but in a situation like we see now, I think billionaires and banks should contribute more to help bail out the economy and their customers/staff, and also that perhaps a payment like UBI might work too, for a defined period of time...


I suspect you will see billionaires making it visible that they are contributing voluntarily, because to promote that impression is very good for their self-interest. However, I don't think there are really enough of them to make that much difference to the overall economic pain, so it's primarily a matter of virtue-signalling and PR management for them. More relevant will be things where someone might support a particular initiative, a bit like the way Bill Gates has focused on things like malaria over the years.

On the question of banks, I think they will have a lot of interesting questions about debt forbearance, and the risks on their balance sheets have certainly shot up. It will be in their interests to suck a lot of that up, but there are limits, as banks can go bust too! The attitudes of financial regulators to bank capital requirements will be critical in the first instance, and then the willingness of government to support ailing banks as a lender of last resort. Ultimately the numbers are going to be so large in the area of debt that it will inevitably be governments that step in. Of course all that means is that, as national populations, we are paying ourselves with money that we are borrowing, or more likely just printing, for the purpose. Ultimately that will need to unwind, so you will indeed end up with a question of how that unwind is distributed. I'm not entering into that debate is it will be a political question, no avoiding that.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> I suspect you will see billionaires making it visible that they are contributing voluntarily, because to promote that impression is very good for their self-interest. However, I don't think there are really enough of them to make that much difference to the overall economic pain, so it's primarily a matter of virtue-signalling and PR management for them. More relevant will be things where someone might support a particular initiative, a bit like the way Bill Gates has focused on things like malaria over the years.
> 
> On the question of banks, I think they will have a lot of interesting questions about debt forbearance, and the risks on their balance sheets have certainly shot up. It will be in their interests to suck a lot of that up, but there are limits, as banks can go bust too! The attitudes of financial regulators to bank capital requirements will be critical in the first instance, and then the willingness of government to support ailing banks as a lender of last resort. Ultimately the numbers are going to be so large in the area of debt that it will inevitably be governments that step in. Of course all that means is that, as national populations, we are paying ourselves with money that we are borrowing, or more likely just printing, for the purpose. Ultimately that will need to unwind, so you will indeed end up with a question of how that unwind is distributed. I'm not entering into that debate is it will be a political question, no avoiding that.


Well, in Ireland the tax-payer bailed out the banks after the financial crash in 2008, and so the saying now is, "we bailed out the banks, now the banks can bail us out." But I agree, there are limits and how this all can be done is beyond me, but I tend to think in terms of us as a community, and a community should look after its own, and as a community in Ireland, I think that now is a time for beneficiaries of capitalism to try help ensure the hard landing doesn't become a crash landing, which not only doesn't benefit anyone, but would also be avoidable - which _would _benefit everyone.

But on the details of how such things could happen, I haven't a clue...


----------



## Guest

We're going to start rolling out an antibody test soon

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52656808


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> ... I tend to think in terms of us as a community, and a community should look after its own...


Unfortunately, within our communities are a lot of people who believe "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals."

At least that's what they believe when you and I need help. When they need help, well, trillions of dollars can be created in a matter of hours.


----------



## starthrower

Electric Al, the blue collar workers aren't sitting home in cramped quarters, they are working. They are the reason the comfortable people aren't starving to death. They are the retail store employees, truck drivers, farm workers, trash haulers, meat packers, Amazon warehouse workers, etc.


----------



## erki

It has been said many times that 5% hold/control/own 95% of wealth of the world - so some sharing could be welcomed. However most of the money we talk about here is virtual - it exists only in the form of numbers/algorithms and paper(the stuff we keep on printing). Since the last crisis we have printed more than any time before to keep the economy going so this time it may not work any more - there may not be anything physical to share.
One of the fundamental part of the capitalism is a human psyche(emotion) that deals with another virtuality - stock exchange. So when people get nervous lots of that virtuality could just disappear.
We may find out that we can not eat money i.e. some kind of hyper inflation may loom in the future. Or since this all is virtual in anyway nations could just cancel all their depths.


----------



## Eclectic Al

starthrower said:


> Electric Al, the blue collar workers aren't sitting home in cramped quarters, they are working. They are the reason the comfortable people aren't starving to death. They are the retail store employees, truck drivers, farm workers, trash haulers, meat packers, Amazon warehouse workers, etc.


Entirely agree about those people. They are indeed among my heroes in all this. It's those who are forced to stay at home because they are not allowed to work which I was referring to, say construction workers and those in the hospitality industry or in much of the retail sector.

Your point is well made.


----------



## erki

science said:


> Unfortunately, within our communities are a lot of people who believe "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals."
> 
> At least that's what they believe when you and I need help. When they need help, well, trillions of dollars can be created in a matter of hours.


It has been said right on the mark: in the face of crisis even die hard conservatives become socialists - usually they talk how too much government is bad for the economy(nanny state) but when something happens they demand good care from the very same government. 
Or profit belongs to the individual but loss to the society.


----------



## starthrower

Eclectic Al said:


> It's those who are forced to stay at home because they are not allowed to work which I was referring to, say construction workers and those in the hospitality industry or in much of the retail sector.


Hopefully these folks are receiving unemployment insurance. But there are an awful lot of self employed construction and remodeling contractors that are most likely having a tough time. And there are some odd pandemic based restrictions on some of these contractors. I had a yard/landscaping contractor at my house two weeks ago who told me he could clean up my yard but he can't spread mulch. But the retail stores are selling mulch, so I'm not sure how this ties in in with the virus issue?


----------



## Bigbang

Kieran said:


> That's a good question. I heard another virus maestro declare the other day that children don't transmit it, but I don't believe that argument has been won yet, and until it is, we need to expect that they do transmit it. Soon the restrictions will be lifted and the kids will have to get out and run around anyway. But in terms of education, I think this year has been badly affected and in Ireland, instead of having final exams in school (for the older kids who would the leave school and head to college or try find jobs), they'll predict the results instead, based upon the kids results this year so far, which is hardly satisfactory given that we tend to study harder coming up to a big exam.
> 
> But home-schooling and any other ways of examining the results of this won't work in every situation. The ideal is classroom teaching (which is probably what the Education Secretary was saying) - but that won't return until September at the earliest, and even then, who knows for how long...


Children do not get it? I must have been asleep. I have yet to hear this and wonder who is saying this. It should be obvious children get it so how can they not transmit it.

Sorry I am a thinker. I do not accept or merely pass on stuff unless I have given it some thought. I have not even a mere fraction of knowledge of the encyclopedia minds, but no matter as a mind liberated from bondage can easily poke holes in strange theories. Yes, please supply the source.....


----------



## Bigbang

DaveM said:


> Regarding the money the Fed and the government is 'spending' during the pandemic. The two operate differently. It is estimated that the Fed will use about 3.5 trillion by the end of the year to mainly inject money into banks (so that banks will have money to lend to businesses) and to buy a fraction of the debt being incurred by the government. This does not represent an increase in the debt because it is 'printed' money. On the other hand, the government has spent 2.4 trillion so far to support businesses and taxpayers. This is added to the debt.
> 
> Overall, the government also has the ability to pay down the debt with printed money via the Fed. The consequence of printing too much money has traditionally been inflation, but that didn't happen during the Great Recession. It remains to be seen if it will happen this time.


On Good Morning America, today (5/14/2020) the host asked Rebecca Jarvis (financial journalist) how will all this (the free money being handed out) be paid for? She said (I am not kidding)--"someone will have to pay for it in higher taxes."

Someone? I guess that means *all* americans but for sure the working middle class. I guess they did not wish to alarm or disturb our breakfast with more dire bad news. Fortunately I have been planning for this and knew long ago to never depend on any outside help (job/government/family etc) and so I sacrificed immediate pleasures to ensure I can forgo it all by myself if need be.

I highly recommend any young people starting out in their lives to really think about this situation and not put your future in debt.


----------



## Kieran

Bigbang said:


> *Children do not get it? * I must have been asleep. I have yet to hear this and wonder who is saying this. It should be obvious children get it so how can they not transmit it.
> 
> Sorry I am a thinker. I do not accept or merely pass on stuff unless I have given it some thought. I have not even a mere fraction of knowledge of the encyclopedia minds, but no matter as a mind liberated from bondage can easily poke holes in strange theories. Yes, please supply the source.....


I didn't say "children don't get it", I said there are experts who say they don't transmit it:

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/news.sk...nts-as-they-do-not-transmit-covid-19-11980568

You may have been asleep but you can wake up now...


----------



## Eclectic Al

The children point is fascinating. It doesn't seem like anyone really knows why, but children seem to be far less susceptible to this virus (and indeed to SARS/MERS) than adults, and the same is true of young mice versus old mice.

A few hypotheses include:
- ageing of the immune system
- prevalence of ACE2 receptors
- exposure to other non-dissimilar viruses such as common cold.

The one I read most about was the ACE2 receptor issue. Humans have lots of ACE2 receptors in some cells in the mouth/nasal pathways and in the lungs. It is the ACE2 receptor that this coronavirus uses to get into human cells (which it needs to do to reproduce). I read some stories about how the number or detailed nature of ACE2 receptors in young children may be different from adults and this prevents the virus from getting into the cells. If the virus can't get into the cells then it cannot multiply.

The "other virus" idea seems little more than speculation, but the idea is that children are encountering what are for them fairly new viruses all the time, and their reaction to encountering this provides a sort of cross-protection against the non-dissimilar coronavirus. As I say, I have only seen that mentioned as speculation.

The ageing of the immune system is the one you would naturally reach for as a general idea. The ability of the immune system to mount a response to a novel pathogen falls with age, and apparently this is particularly the case in your lungs (maybe to damp down problems of over-reaction leading to asthma, for example). There are also a whole range of ways in which the immune system of children is different from that of adults, as the immune system is one which has to learn but which also creates risks to the child as it learns (eg childhood leukaemias), so the system changes as it matures as the balance of advantage changes. Hence, there are presumably a whole host of possibilities for why children may handle the Covid-19 virus differently from adults (and may in many cases barely notice it).


----------



## Bigbang

Kieran said:


> I didn't say "children don't get it", I said there are experts who say they don't transmit it:
> 
> https://www.google.ie/amp/s/news.sk...nts-as-they-do-not-transmit-covid-19-11980568
> 
> You may have been asleep but you can wake up now...


Thanks. However this has been addressed before about young children. The article, to me, is really dangerous assumption in the USA. And it would be really odd that kids cannot transmit it.

Let's see, how can we set up an experiment? I know, have the kids play with cats and dogs, and kissing them and dogs licking their faces.

Or better yet, assume they can transmit and use due caution. I get that you were quoting someone else on this point.


----------



## eljr

starthrower said:


> Hopefully these folks are receiving unemployment insurance. But there are an awful lot of self employed


self employed are entitled to unemployment under this Emergency Act. That said, I applied and have heard nothing. Never received my $1200 either.


----------



## Room2201974

"Winter is coming." ~ Ned Stark


----------



## Eclectic Al

Bigbang said:


> Thanks. However this has been addressed before about young children. The article, to me, is really dangerous assumption in the USA. And it would be really odd that kids cannot transmit it.
> 
> Let's see, how can we set up an experiment? I know, have the kids play with cats and dogs, and kissing them and dogs licking their faces.
> 
> Or better yet, assume they can transmit and use due caution. I get that you were quoting someone else on this point.


The trouble with all this is that you have to read things like this (and pretend to understand them) to even talk about the issues:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7113798/

I wouldn't pretend to understand the detail, but this is just one of a whole range of articles on this topic that are readily found. It seems to be accepted that children rarely get it, and don't materially spread it. The why of that is in question.

I was reading something today saying the opening up schools for young children was very low risk indeed, provided that the teachers did not meet up in the staff room. The risks were around teachers spreading to teachers.


----------



## Bulldog

eljr said:


> Never received my $1200 either.


If you have direct deposit, something is very wrong.


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## starthrower

Paper checks are just arriving. My parents received theirs last week.


----------



## Bigbang

Eclectic Al said:


> The children point is fascinating. It doesn't seem like anyone really knows why, but children seem to be far less susceptible to this virus (and indeed to SARS/MERS) than adults, and the same is true of young mice versus old mice.
> 
> A few hypotheses include:
> - ageing of the immune system
> - prevalence of ACE2 receptors
> - exposure to other non-dissimilar viruses such as common cold.
> 
> The one I read most about was the ACE2 receptor issue. Humans have lots of ACE2 receptors in some cells in the mouth/nasal pathways and in the lungs. It is the ACE2 receptor that this coronavirus uses to get into human cells (which it needs to do to reproduce). I read some stories about how the number or detailed nature of ACE2 receptors in young children may be different from adults and this prevents the virus from getting into the cells. If the virus can't get into the cells then it cannot multiply.
> 
> The "other virus" idea seems little more than speculation, but the idea is that children are encountering what are for them fairly new viruses all the time, and their reaction to encountering this provides a sort of cross-protection against the non-dissimilar coronavirus. As I say, I have only seen that mentioned as speculation.
> 
> The ageing of the immune system is the one you would naturally reach for as a general idea. The ability of the immune system to mount a response to a novel pathogen falls with age, and apparently this is particularly the case in your lungs (maybe to damp down problems of over-reaction leading to asthma, for example). There are also a whole range of ways in which the immune system of children is different from that of adults, as the immune system is one which has to learn but which also creates risks to the child as it learns (eg childhood leukaemias), so the system changes as it matures as the balance of advantage changes. Hence, there are presumably a whole host of possibilities for why children may handle the Covid-19 virus differently from adults (and may in many cases barely notice it).


Good points. But in the USA, kids do not roam on their own. They cannot drive, go out to social gatherings, to parks, without adult supervision. (I am being funny but also referring to younger, say 16 and younger) If schools are closed, daycares very limited, and being at home, the virus spread will be hard to follow. This is very basic logic: We cannot test anyone on a dime. So as it is kids are not the main source of the transmission. But imagine if kids were in some imaginary world, roaming the streets and kissing strangers, hugging the elders, sneezing in tight crowds...you get the picture...then what would happen...

So as it is, we do not really need to assume too much now about kids and transmission as we adults are reining them in so to speak.

The thing about adults/older adults/seniors: We have for the first time in human history the largest group of "older" people. Medicine is keeping them going as well as lifestyle, so if people are not dropping dead at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 you have all these people still hanging on so to speak. They are not superhumans at 50,60,70, and they are not in excellent health, lack due exercise, and so forth. So the human body, evolutionarily speaking have not adapted to various viruses that can now crop up. Scientists and doctors know the aging populations are vulnerable to a host of issues not affecting younger people. Really I am not that surprised about this at all. What scientists are studying is the "science" behind why, such as the terms you used.

At the end of the day, I would be eating as healthy as possible, moving around physically as often as possible, and stay away from young kids .


----------



## Iota

MacLeod said:


> Having just listened to two UK economists (Jonathan Portis and Lord O'Neill) give their views on handling the UK national debt, I'm not sure I need to listen to the venerable Mr Ferguson, a noted historian, as well, though maybe he has something useful to say that applies to the US.
> 
> Both Portis and O'Neill agreed that the borrowing for the UK is nothing like as great as the debt we'd accumulated after WWII, and we've not gone bankrupt yet. Both agreed, nevertheless, that it will be wise to take some measures soon to begin the process, but that they needn't be punitive in taxation or spending terms.


May I ask where you heard Portis and O'Neill?

Interesting to hear the comparison with WWII debt. Perhaps even encouraging. Though I guess our ability to dive back into to rebuilding the economy is going to be greatly affected by social distancing requirements, etc.

Although the horrors of WWII were far greater, the end of the war was in one sense a fresh economic page on which people could begin to build, as Japan demonstrated so spectacularly. But there will be no clean end to coronavirus (save the emergence of a vaccine?), so the actual ability to rebuild will be correspondingly affected presumably.


----------



## Bigbang

Eclectic Al said:


> The trouble with all this is that you have to read things like this (and pretend to understand them) to even talk about the issues:
> 
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7113798/
> 
> I wouldn't pretend to understand the detail, but this is just one of a whole range of articles on this topic that are readily found. It seems to be accepted that children rarely get it, and don't materially spread it. The why of that is in question.
> 
> I was reading something today saying the opening up schools for young children was very low risk indeed, provided that the teachers did not meet up in the staff room. The risks were around teachers spreading to teachers.


[Conclusion
We can speculate that high ACE2 receptor concentrations, trained immunity and a constitutional high lymphocyte count in children may partially explain the mild disease observed in this group of patients (fig. 1). Real reasons will probably remain a mystery fortunately because the number of infected children is too low to allow good-sized immunological studies.]

You are right! Hard to read unless a background so I put paragraph summary here. As it states..real reasons a mystery...and as I put in another post why as part of the reason. Remember this: Even if kids in themselves are not big transmitters per se, they give it to adults who themselves are out and about in the world.

You know E Al, I think some of us are talking to each other and others are spending sums of time talking over each other, and I have not the time to pass on all this stuff as what would be the point. No one is listening...but I just think and get the basic idea and move on. I think.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Interesting article here on UK prevalence suggesting 29% may already have had it.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ijcp.13528

Also worth noting that one of the criticisms of the Imperial model that has been underpinning the UK approach is that is assumes a single value for "R", the reproduction factor that we want to get below 1. A description of the Imperial model is here.

https://www.cecan.ac.uk/blog/part-3...s-importance-complexity-science-public-health

The "same R for everyone" assumption is not plausible, but is a simplification for modelling purposes. Some people (because of their job, or whatever) are likely to have a much higher R value than others. It is not difficult to see that a care worker or a hairdresser (say) might have a higher R value than a farmer or a home-based worker operating on their own.

The Imperial model is a stochastic simulation, and with models like that it is not the case that modelling all individuals at the average level will give the same modelled outcome as modelling individuals at different levels which average out at that same level. Indeed the results can be vastly different. You will get a whole range of non-linearities in such models, and you can also get situations where small changes can give rise to the difference between explosion and collapse.

The Imperial model suggested 60% or so for herd immunity and ultimately 80% or so being infected, although I understand that that was on the somewhat unlikely assumption that in the absence of a legal lockdown people would not change their behaviour at all). By assuming different R values for different groups (population inhomogeneity) you readily get different overall figures, and I believe the tendency is that they are generally lower. You will get some areas of rapid growth in infection, and other areas where the disease never gets going at all - because of differences in R. We can readily see that sort of thing in care homes. The good messages from all this appear to be twofold: (1) you tend to get herd immunity at lower levels and (2) you can concentrate efforts on reducing R where it is high and other interactions which have an inherently low R can go on more at normal levels.

I have seen model results which indicate that at 29% (which, if we believe the Manchester study above we have already achieved) you have already reached the level for herd immunity, and the number infected eventually may reach no higher than 40% of so.

Too optimistic - possibly. However, I think the points are clear, in that one needs to take steps in high transmission risk activities to get R down, but that in other areas the balance of advantage will be in letting things get back to more like normal as soon as possible.

Also, this thread needs a bit of optimism occasionally.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Interesting article here on UK prevalence suggesting 29% may already have had it.


I am lazy to read it. What exactly is their evidence for this? Similar overoptimistic guesses have been coming from the UK in the past. Data from all other countries that actually measured antibodies do not support this.


----------



## Flamme

I heeard on BBC that ppl who show minor symptoms dont develop immunity but ppl who suffer the hardest form of disease.2day I went 2 get a haircute bot forgot my mask so I went home 2 get it. Apparently w/o masx u cant get a haircut although the guy b4 me didnt have a mask but got it anyway...So much chaos all around.


----------



## Guest

Iota said:


> May I ask where you heard Portis and O'Neill?
> 
> Interesting to hear the comparison with WWII debt. Perhaps even encouraging. Though I guess our ability to dive back into to rebuilding the economy is going to be greatly affected by social distancing requirements, etc.
> 
> Although the horrors of WWII were far greater, the end of the war was in one sense a fresh economic page on which people could begin to build, as Japan demonstrated so spectacularly. But there will be no clean end to coronavirus (save the emergence of a vaccine?), so the actual ability to rebuild will be correspondingly affected presumably.


BBC Radio 4 Today, just this morning. You should be able to catch up on BBC Sounds


----------



## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> I am lazy to read it. What exactly is their evidence for this? Similar overoptimistic guesses have been coming from the UK in the past. Data from all other countries that actually measured antibodies do not support this.


The paper states that the estimate of 29% comes not from testing but from extrapolating average daily infection rates (ADIRs). They state:



> Regression analysis across UTLAs found that the only factor relating to reduction in ADIR was the historic number of confirmed number infection/000 population. There is however wide variation between Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLA) areas Extrapolation of these results showed that unreported community infection may be > 200 times higher than reported cases, providing evidence that by the end of the second week in April, 29% of the population may have already had the disease and so have increased immunity.


I've heard health experts suggest that the expected percentage being exposed Covid-19 in the US is likely between 5-10%.

Given that many of the antibody tests seem to be unreliable (how unreliable, I don't know), I wonder what health experts view as the uncertainty in that estimate. Maybe the 5-10% covers the uncertainty, but I don't have a good sense.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> I am lazy to read it. What exactly is their evidence for this? Similar overoptimistic guesses have been coming from the UK in the past. Data from all other countries that actually measured antibodies do not support this.


Of course it's a guess. We don't know, of course, whether it may or may not be "overoptimistic" or not. I must also note that most of the data we see in the UK about the UK is anything but optimistic.

Anyway, the abstract was not very long, so it is below:








The article itself is about 20 pages, so the extent to which this analysis is potentially optimistic, pessimistic, realistic, or just a plain guess would lie in there.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> The paper states that the estimate of 29% comes not from testing but from extrapolating average daily infection rates (ADIRs). They state:
> 
> I've heard health experts suggest that the expected percentage being exposed Covid-19 in the US is likely between 5-10%.
> 
> Given that many of the antibody tests seem to be unreliable (*** unreliable, I don't know), I wonder what health experts view as the uncertainty in that estimate. Maybe the 5-10% covers the uncertainty, but I don't have a good sense.


Hi Thanks for this. Our posts crossed.


----------



## philoctetes

This is in most news outlets today but the G is free and commonly accepted here...

China hacking poses 'significant threat' to US Covid-19 response, says FBI

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/china-hacking-poses-significant-threat-to-us-covid-19-response-says-fbi

Another "conspiracy theory" elevated to FBI confirmation and media coverage... widespread hacking was mentioned last week somewhere... data security at hospitals and labs broken by weak passwords, phishing attacks, etc.. another noise source, and potential destructive one, for data analysts and their results... all of which can feed back and create a catastrophic error condition that impacts all levels of the recovery effort...

However, I don't accept this story on face value either... it's just another window into what we weren't aware of yesterday and may learn more about tomorrow... but I no longer have the reaction to think something like "nobody would do that, why would they?" ...arrows point to China, but as with so-called Russian election interference, I have cause for doubt, especially after the NSA vaults were raided... in 2017 hospitals across the world, many using Win7, were hit with a bug called WannaCry that spread globally within 24 hours... followed by other similar bugs... I have no reason to assume these facilities are secure to skilled hackers now... who would do everything to spoof or mask the origin(s) of the attack...

On a gut level I fear that the US is losing the cyber-wars, in fact lost them during the Bush and Obama years, that we have too many conspirators inside US institutions, and that all their eggs may be about to hatch... we need Sigourney Weaver with a blowtorch...


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> This is in most news outlets today but the G is free and commonly accepted here...


 The G - no problem for me!


----------



## Eclectic Al

Flamme said:


> I heeard on BBC that ppl who show minor symptoms dont develop immunity but ppl who suffer the hardest form of disease.2day I went 2 get a haircute bot forgot my mask so I went home 2 get it. Apparently w/o masx u cant get a haircut although the guy b4 me didnt have a mask but got it anyway...So much chaos all around.


Interesting possibility. If people who show minor symptoms don't develop immunity then I guess 2 questions arise: (1) if they get it again are they very likely only to be affected slightly again or might they get it seriously the second time, and (2) how much of a spreading risk will those people be if they keep getting it.

Of course there is the question of how the immunity of these people is being assessed. If it is by the continued presence of antibodies, then as I understand it that is not the only immune response which the body may mount, so absence of antibodies may not imply continued risk. There is a good link here:
https://www.immunology.org/public-i...athogens-and-disease/immune-responses-viruses


----------



## philoctetes

How many people do YOU know who say "I had something in December [or January] that was strange and lasted 2-3 weeks"... I just head that from another neighbor yesterday.. a 66yo who is fairly healthy, he said he had major problems breathing.... in fact, I may be the ONLY person I know who can't report feeling bad during that period... it's very common to hear around here.. but there were times in February when I felt very mild chills and my breathing was tighter than usual...

One friend, my home contractor, was sick in December and now claims he's risk-free because "I have antibodies"... whatever...

Curioser and curioser... I suspect it came here 1-2 months before the arrival of cruise boaters etc..


----------



## Kieran

philoctetes said:


> How many people do YOU know who say "I had something in December [or January] that was strange and lasted 2-3 weeks"... I just head that from another neighbor yesterday.. a 66yo who is fairly healthy, he said he had major problems breathing.... in fact, I may be the ONLY person I know who can't report feeling bad during that period... it's very common to hear around here.. but there were times in February when I felt very mild chills and my breathing was tighter than usual...
> 
> One friend, my home contractor, was sick and now claims he's risk-free because "I have antibodies"... whatever...
> 
> Curioser and curioser...


I know many people who had a bad dose of something over Christmas. Many people. Everyone was talking about it over here, that there was some terrible dose going around. New Years Eve party was cancelled because the hostess was banjaxed, then guests for new years day, were both laid out. It could have been the virus, though we all just accepted it was a nasty dose of flu...


----------



## Eclectic Al

This case (in France) was widely reported. It's a December case.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52526554

It's also interesting that this guy had not been abroad, so he got it from someone else in France.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> This case (in France) was widely reported. It's a December case.
> 
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52526554
> 
> It's also interesting that this guy had not been abroad, so he got it from someone else in France.


Exactly. We may have been exposed to this for a long time now, and who knows who has had it? The antibodies test they're close to finalising in the UK may shed some light...

EDIT This test:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52656808

MacLeod posted it earlier...


----------



## philoctetes

conspirators and moles exist... even CNN will tell you now... but I have been shunned for years for warning people about this stuff... I saw it happening 20 years ago in SV... this "Thousand Talents Scholar" type stuff has been wool over the eyes for decades...

Simon S. Ang: FBI arrests NASA researcher who allegedly failed to report ties to China

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/simon-s-ang-fbi-arrests-nasa-researcher-who-allegedly-failed-to-report-ties-to-china/ar-BB13ZSC8


----------



## Jacck

mmsbls said:


> The paper states that the estimate of 29% comes not from testing but from extrapolating average daily infection rates (ADIRs). They state: _Regression analysis across UTLAs found that the only factor relating to reduction in ADIR was the historic number of confirmed number infection/000 population. There is however wide variation between Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLA) areas Extrapolation of these results showed that unreported community infection may be > 200 times higher than reported cases, providing evidence that by the end of the second week in April, 29% of the population may have already had the disease and so have increased immunity._


I looked at the paper and I am not convinced. Their main result is the regression line that is shown in the Figure at the end of the paper (last page). There seem to be some outliers on the left of the graph, that are likely skewing the slope of the line. If they removed those, the line would have been almost straight. Their regression model is also strange and does not take into account possible confounds. For example, communities with more reported cases might be more cautious and keep stricter social distancing measures, which might explain the reduction in R (instead of their hypothesized herd immunity).


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Interesting possibility. If people who show minor symptoms don't develop immunity then I guess 2 questions arise: (1) if they get it again are they very likely only to be affected slightly again or might they get it seriously the second time, and (2) how much of a spreading risk will those people be if they keep getting it. Of course there is the question of how the immunity of these people is being assessed. If it is by the continued presence of antibodies, then as I understand it that is not the only immune response which the body may mount, so absence of antibodies may not imply continued risk. There is a good link here:
> https://www.immunology.org/public-i...athogens-and-disease/immune-responses-viruses


There is humoral immunity and cell-mediated immunity. The humoral immunity are the antibodies produced by the B cells, the cell mediated immunity is through the T cells. The immune responses of both types are coordinated by T-helper cells. I read some papers about the immune responses to SARS, and the virus produced both types of immunity. The antibodies however lasted only a couple of months, while the memory T-cells last longer, possibly decades. The memory T-cells likely offer some form of incomplete protection against future reinfections.

There is in theory the possibility, that only a fraction of people infected by corona develop antibodies, while some produce only cell-mediated immunity and the antibody tests do not detect these people. But these are mere speculations at this point and no policy should be based on this.


----------



## philoctetes

now my county supervisors have decided to play the fools... they are going to defy the county health officer and Newsom's minimal standards... they actually WANT interstate tourists to come here... or they'll run out of grift... when I know these clowns in person it makes my blood boil...

Sonoma County supervisors seek broader reopening despite top health officer's reservations

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/10961609-181/sonoma-county-supervisors-seek-broader


----------



## pianozach

pianozach said:


> *In spite of being the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, I *don't ever know what to make of Dr. Fauci's statements.





MacLeod said:


> Your slightly ambiguous grammar leads me to conclude that you are the Director. I assume that's not the case


Thank you Grammar Police.

In spite of Dr. Fauci being the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, I don't ever know what to make of his statements.


----------



## philoctetes

Coronavirus surveillance [testing] program in King County put on hold because of FDA concerns

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/coronavirus-surveillance-program-in-king-county-put-on-hold-due-to-fda-concerns/

"The SCAN program has tested more than 8,500 specimens from volunteers so far, *with a 1.3% positive rate among people with symptoms. At least five people with no symptoms also tested positive*. The results confirmed that many infections are not being diagnosed and that the number of known cases represents the tip of a much bigger iceberg."

"Both SCAN and the Seattle Flu Study are funded by Gates Ventures, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' private office. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has also been funding research to determine the reliability and usefulness of self-swabbing systems for widespread coronavirus testing"


----------



## philoctetes

pianozach said:


> Thank you Grammar Police.
> 
> In spite of Dr. Fauci being the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, I don't ever know what to make of his statements.


and for the sake of grammar policing, we got to witness the logical train wreck between a conclusion and an assumption...


----------



## pianozach

Dr. Rick Bright testified before Congress today, specifically the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's health subcommittee.

Bright is an American immunologist and the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, leading the authority from 2016 to 2020. In May 2020, he filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging that his early warnings about the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic were ignored and that he was moved to a new position in the NIH and ousted from his role in retaliation. 

He dropped a few bombshells during his testimony, claiming that the administration missed "early warning signals" to prevent the spread of the virus. He also charged that he was removed from his post at BARDA and transferred to "a more limited and less impactful position" at NIH after he "resisted efforts to promote" the "unproven" drug chloroquine.

Bright said his warnings on supply shortages were ignored, and also warned that the "window of opportunity" is closing, and that "2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history". 

The President's was immediately on the offensive about Bright in and impromptu interview in front of the White House helipad. Trump, via Twitter, called Bright "a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected . . . "


----------



## philoctetes

pianozach said:


> Dr. Rick Bright testified before Congress today, specifically the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's health subcommittee.
> 
> Bright is an American immunologist and the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, leading the authority from 2016 to 2020. In May 2020, he filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging that his early warnings about the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic were ignored and that he was moved to a new position in the NIH and ousted from his role in retaliation.
> 
> He dropped a few bombshells during his testimony, claiming that the administration missed "early warning signals" to prevent the spread of the virus. He also charged that he was removed from his post at BARDA and transferred to "a more limited and less impactful position" at NIH after he "resisted efforts to promote" the "unproven" drug chloroquine.
> 
> Bright said his warnings on supply shortages were ignored, and also warned that the "window of opportunity" is closing, and that "2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history".
> 
> The President's was immediately on the offensive about Bright in and impromptu interview in front of the White House helipad. Trump, via Twitter, called Bright "a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected . . . "


I'm not gonna look it up, but very early in the hydrochloroquine dispute there was supply-related news coming out of India, where I recall much of it is manufactured... and it seemed like a case of manipulation, either of perception or supply itself, and I've heard nothing about it since...

according to other sources, it's supposedly inexpensive and available, which does not sound like a supply problem...

that name Bright sounds familiar, perhaps this is not his first time speaking out? back for Round 2?


----------



## philoctetes

more on hydrochloroquine, hot from the press...

Reuters - NIH to study malaria drug championed by President Trump against COVID-19

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hydroxychloroq-idUSKBN22Q37C

Is it not interesting how Dr Bright pops up just by coincidence


----------



## pianozach

philoctetes said:


> I'm not gonna look it up, but very early in the hydrochloroquine dispute there was supply-related news coming out of India, where I recall much of it is manufactured... and it seemed like a case of manipulation, either of perception or supply itself, and I've heard nothing about it since...
> 
> according to other sources, it's supposedly inexpensive and available, which does not sound like a supply problem...
> 
> that name Bright sounds familiar, perhaps this is not his first time speaking out? back for Round 2?


He was demoted on April 20, after giving warnings about the virus and his opposition to off-label use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine. He'd been serving as the Director of BARDA, as well as being the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).

He filed a whistleblower complaint on May 5, claiming his demotion was retaliatory.


----------



## DaveM

philoctetes said:


> more on hydrochloroquine, hot from the press...
> 
> Reuters - NIH to study malaria drug championed by President Trump against COVID-19
> 
> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hydroxychloroq-idUSKBN22Q37C
> 
> Is it not interesting how Dr Bright pops up just by coincidence


Not really. It's not a coincidence when Dr. Bright is part of the current news on the subject.


----------



## Bigbang

......................................................


----------



## Bigbang

pianozach said:


> Thank you Grammar Police.
> 
> In spite of Dr. Fauci being the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, I don't ever know what to make of his statements.


What exactly is it about Dr Fauci statements you are perplexed about? I see he is stuck between a rock and a hard place...........


----------



## KenOC

I seem to remember that all this social distancing and so forth was intended to "flatten the curve" so that ICU's wouldn't be overwhelmed, and that there was little thought of actually lowering case counts os deaths in the long run - only of stretching them out over time.

Of course an effective vaccine _may _be fund in that time, or better treatment methods to improve outcomes. But it makes me wonder if, given the new case downslopes and the chances and the likely numbers, cratering our economies for the long term is really worth the reward.

Here's a perspective from the WHO, *as reported by the BBC* (just a snippet here).
-------------------------------------------------------
The coronavirus "may never go away", the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, WHO emergencies director Dr Mike Ryan warned against trying to predict when the virus would disappear…

"It is important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away," Dr Ryan told the virtual press conference from Geneva.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> I seem to remember that all this social distancing and so forth was intended to "flatten the curve" so that ICU's wouldn't be overwhelmed, and that there was little thought of actually lowering case counts os deaths in the long run - only of stretching them out over time.
> 
> Of course an effective vaccine _may _be fund in that time, or better treatment methods to improve outcomes. But it makes me wonder if, given the new case downslopes and the chances and the likely numbers, cratering our economies for the long term is really worth the reward.


I think the plan was always to first flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, then drive the curve down to lower new infections to a point where we could contract trace with proper testing, and finally to control the virus by preventing any significant spread such that cases would be few and far between. If everything worked, the virus would be eradicated or kept to a very low manageable level.


----------



## pianozach

Bigbang said:


> What exactly is it about Dr Fauci statements you are perplexed about? I see he is stuck between a rock and a hard place...........


He contradicts himself. He'll say one thing, then retract it the next day.

Repeatedly.

Not "knowing what to make of his statements", in the context I was using the phrase, is that I feel I can no longer take any of his statements at face value, as tomorrow he may be singing a completely different tune.

Yep, between a rock and a hard place. He needs to choose . . . either say what he thinks, or say what the President thinks. But his waffling isn't working for me.


----------



## pianozach

mmsbls said:


> I think the plan was always to first flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, then drive the curve down to lower new infections to a point where we could contract trace with proper testing, and finally to control the virus by preventing any significant spread such that cases would be few and far between. *If everything worked, the virus would be eradicated or kept to a very low manageable level.*


As I understood the concept, it was never intended that we'd "win": "Eradication" was not a theory put forth by anyone except the White House. We were simply attempting to "flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed".


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> He contradicts himself. He'll say one thing, then retract it the next day.
> 
> Repeatedly.
> 
> Not "knowing what to make of his statements", in the context I was using the phrase, is that I feel I can no longer take any of his statements at face value, as tomorrow he may be singing a completely different tune.
> 
> Yep, between a rock and a hard place. He needs to choose . . . either say what he thinks, or say what the President thinks. But his waffling isn't working for me.


There was one occasion a few weeks ago where he used terminology that Trump didn't like so after a few days he 'clarified' his statement. Since then I'm not aware of his saying one thing one day and another thing the next day as some sort of pattern. What things has he specifically waffled on lately?


----------



## mmsbls

pianozach said:


> As I understood the concept, it was never intended that we'd "win": "Eradication" was not a theory put forth by anyone except the White House. We were simply attempting to "flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed".


I assume the health care community had and currently has a longer term outlook with ideas on how to handle a pandemic over long timescales. I never heard anyone talk about steps after contact tracing, but I hope there is a plan to lessen the effect as low as possible including the possibility of eradication.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> There was one occasion a few weeks ago where he used terminology that Trump didn't like so after a few days he 'clarified' his statement. Since then I'm not aware of his saying one thing one day and another thing the next day as some sort of pattern. What things has he specifically waffled on lately?


As I remember, early on Dr Fauci was asked if it wouldn't have been better if Trump had acted sooner. His reply was the equivalent of "Well, obviously," while clearly thinking (but not saying) that there was a real question of whether a reasonable person would have acted sooner or not. Pretty much the equivalent of rolling his eyes and saying "Duh!"

The press ran with it, claiming things like "Fauci says Trump delay made things worse, cost lives." Trump evidently asked Fauci to clarify his answer, which he did.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> I think the plan was always to first flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, then drive the curve down to lower new infections to a point where we could contract trace with proper testing, and finally to control the virus by preventing any significant spread such that cases would be few and far between. If everything worked, the virus would be eradicated or kept to a very low manageable level.


I guess my faith that we'll ever see the last part of this is growing weaker by the day. What we're doing with our current policies is ruining our children's futures for our (older people's) benefits, certainly not theirs. In my county, the number of Covid-19 deaths among people under 25 is...zero.

Nonetheless, the California State University system just announced that its 23 campuses will remain closed through the fall semester. Cui bono?


----------



## Bigbang

pianozach said:


> He contradicts himself. He'll say one thing, then retract it the next day.
> 
> Repeatedly.
> 
> Not "knowing what to make of his statements", in the context I was using the phrase, is that I feel I can no longer take any of his statements at face value, as tomorrow he may be singing a completely different tune.
> 
> Yep, between a rock and a hard place. He needs to choose . . . either say what he thinks, or say what the President thinks. But his waffling isn't working for me.


I do not see it that way. On the big picture: Open up too soon and can invite more terrible consequences. He cannot be too optimistic as he cannot control what states do. He cannot control the president. People are begging him to stay on for the sake of saving lives because if he and other leave who will be in charge?

And not to criticize but I asked you about his statements and you did not give one example. I get that people are being constantly bombarded on this subject but he has not changed any position though he has soften his comments to please a few people if you know what I mean.


----------



## Bigbang

KenOC said:


> As I remember, early on Dr Fauci was asked if it wouldn't have been better if Trump had acted sooner. His reply was the equivalent of "Well, obviously," while clearly thinking (but not saying) that there was a real question of whether a reasonable person would have acted sooner or not. Pretty much the equivalent of rolling his eyes and saying "Duh!"
> 
> The press ran with it, claiming things like "Fauci says Trump delay made things worse, cost lives." Trump evidently asked Fauci to clarify his answer, which he did.


That is one of those situations where people with a brain who are not into conspiracies can figure out that Dr. Fauci (and Dr Bright) stated the obvious and had to be delicate not to offend massive egos. Got it. In other words I am smart enough not to blame Dr Fauci for imperfections when I can see the source of the issue at hand.


----------



## Bigbang

BTW, Dr Bright apparently is really bright as he stated we waited too long in doing the educational thing (mask, social distancing etc). I mean, could we not have had tv ads (propaganda?) telling people to visit websites (too late of course) and role playing on tv ads showing people how to practice social distance and so forth. My biggest problem is the lie about face masks though was done to save health care workers. They knew this from day one to use anything but, oh well. Now you have people all alone in the country (as in by themselves) wearing a face mask. I mean, there is a strategy to using a face mask and I wonder if people are not getting it if they are wearing them all the time.


----------



## Bigbang

One of the things I do when around people too close for my comfort but not speaking to them is I hold my breath for an extended amount of time. This way I am not immediately breathing on them or letting them breathe on me (that is inhaling their particles) but this was my idea. Not sure how practical but it seem logical thing to do.


----------



## Kieran

Bigbang said:


> One of the things I do when around people too close for my comfort but not speaking to them is I hold my breath for an extended amount of time. This way I am not immediately breathing on them or letting them breathe on me (that is inhaling their particles) but this was my idea. Not sure how practical but it seem logical thing to do.


I do this. It's a feature of the Supermarket visit that in narrow aisles, there maybe shelves being stocked, dawdlers weighing the tin of beans, and another straggler heading towards me with their trolley. Inhale, move, exhale when clear. I think it helps, and you know, I don't live in fear of this virus, but nor do I want to catch it unnecessarily, either...


----------



## Andrew Kenneth

In 2018 the Indian state of Kerala was faced with an outbreak of the Nipah virus. 
(a virus that originated from bats and is very lethal ) This outbreak was contained; 23 people got infected & 2 survived.

info on Nipah : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipah_virus_infection

In 2019 a movie was made about this Nipah outbreak in Kerala.
trailer => 





Because of their earlier experience with virus outbreak corona was taken very seriously in Kerala. 
They started with screening, tracing and quarantining two months before the rest of India.
To date only 4 people have died from covid-19 in Kerala. (pop. 36 million)

more info : https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/12/asia/india-coronavirus-kerala-flatten-curve-intl-hnk/index.html

interview with Kerala health minister :
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19


----------



## Guest

Bigbang said:


> Explain? Whether under 70 or not, age has nothing to do with it. The main way people get the virus and how much is breathing the air around them. Also controlling your breathing is good exercise so not to be excessive in breathing in or out.


The over 70 cohort is massively over-represented in the mortality figures. Fact. It appears, from what I heard on news today, that amongst those the vast majority had dementia, diabetes or other co-morbids. It's obviously not at all pleasant catching Covid-19 but you don't have to fear dying from it unless you are in the demographic I've mentioned.

I remember those immortal lines from the film "Aunty Mame" where Mame instructs the naive and inexperienced Agnes Gooch (her secretary) to "live, live, live". When Agnes returns to the house heavily pregnant (as a result of one night out) she asks for Mame, telling the butler: "she said I had to live, live, live; I need to find out what I have to do next!!!"

Well, I would advise YOU to live, live, live and not fear Covid-19.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> The over 70 cohort is massively over-represented in the mortality figures.


So what?



Christabel said:


> Well, I would advise YOU to live, live, live and not fear Covid-19.


We all want to live, live, live - though as we already know from what goes on here, that means different things to different people, never mind corona.

I think what a number of posters here are arguing is not in favour of 'fearing' what Covid19 might do to us ('me, me, me') as individuals (though treating it with respect), but what it does to, and says about, the society to which we belong.


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> So what?
> 
> We all want to live, live, live - though as we already know from what goes on here, that means different things to different people, never mind corona.
> 
> I think what a number of posters here are arguing is not in favour of 'fearing' what Covid19 might do to us ('me, me, me') as individuals (though treating it with respect), but what it does to, and says about, the society to which we belong.


I just respond to this post to note that it is a perfectly reasonable reaction to Christabel's post, and to contrast it with that of Jacck.
We can disagree about things, but I think the post from Jacck might mean that this whole thread could deservedly be closed down.


----------



## Kieran

Christabel said:


> The over 70 cohort is massively over-represented in the mortality figures. Fact. It appears, from what I heard on news today, that amongst those the vast majority had dementia, diabetes or other co-morbids. It's obviously not at all pleasant catching Covid-19 but you don't have to fear dying from it unless you are in the demographic I've mentioned.
> 
> I remember those immortal lines from the film "Aunty Mame" where Mame instructs the naive and inexperienced Agnes Gooch (her secretary) to "live, live, live". When Agnes returns to the house heavily pregnant (as a result of one night out) she asks for Mame, telling the butler: "she said I had to live, live, live; I need to find out what I have to do next!!!"
> 
> Well, I would advise YOU to live, live, live and not fear Covid-19.


I live live live perfectly happily, and I'm aware of the stats, I don't live in any fear of Covid, accepting still that the stats are so low - but I don't mind to take minor precautions too. The thing is to not internalise these precautions so they become a mania, a normal conduct...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Indeed, that's exactly where I am.

I follow my Government's advice, because there needs to be an approach, and the only approach that can be implemented generally will be the one the Government and the law back. I personally don't agree with it in detail, but (i) I should follow it anyway, and (ii) I understand where they're coming from, and I think they are doing what they believe is right for us, the population.

The only impact of widespread criticism of Government actions, especially hindsight-based criticisms about what a Government did weeks ago, is negative on the population, and I query the motives of those who spread doubts and stoke fear. As I said, I don't agree in detail, but I wouldn't spread criticisms, especially of past actions or suggestive of incompetence. Now is not the time.

I could go out and about more than I do, but I don't. The reason is not that I am worried for myself about catching it (- I don't want to get it, but if I did I think my first reaction might be relief tinged with a bit of anxiety, and then I would face whatever the outcome turns out to be - I have no underlying health problems, although I am of an age where the risks have started to rise). If I had a health condition, or was much older, I might be staying in in my own interests.

The reason I don't go out much is because I could become a spreader, and it would be selfish of me to become a spreader by pursuing my personal interests. The Government is telling me I can go out more; they are not telling me that I must. Hence, I don't, because I don't have to.

If I had a job which required me to leave my home, I would go to work, because we can only support each other if there is a functioning economy. I would follow the approach my employer laid out. I would then take my chances. If I had a health condition and was being asked to go out to work, then I accept I would have a dilemma, and might challenge my employer's stance in relation to me personally.

My own position is easy: I don't work and I have a nice garden. Hence, I cannot complain at all about any constraints being imposed on me. I do miss being able to meet my daughter, who lives away from home, but my other daughter has moved back in with us, which is a blessing. Longer term I want to be able to travel again. (I always clap if I see a plane going overhead - I live near Gatwick.)

It is interesting to hear how others are feeling personally. I imagine that attitudes are shaped by personal situation, at least in part.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> .
> 
> My own position is easy: I don't work and I have a nice garden. Hence, I cannot complain at all about any constraints being imposed on me. I do miss being able to meet my daughter, who lives away from home, but my other daughter has moved back in with us, which is a blessing. Longer term I want to be able to travel again. (I always clap if I see a plane going overhead - I live near Gatwick.)
> 
> It is interesting to hear how others are feeling personally. I imagine that attitudes are shaped by personal situation, at least in part.


Amen! I have my holiday booked for September in Sicily and I'm holding out hopes it'll happen. It'll be bittersweet if it does, because Italy is so badly affected and I have friends there, but it'll be a tonic for me personally to fly, arrive and wear summer clothes, taste the gorgeous food, swim in the beautiful Med.

But if it can't happen, I think I'll cope. I'm waiting for the first opportunity to take off in a plane to somewhere beautiful...


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I just respond to this post to note that it is a perfectly reasonable reaction to Christabel's post, and to contrast it with that of Jacck.
> We can disagree about things, but I think the post from Jacck might mean that this whole thread could deservedly be closed down.


Thanks for the endorsement.

Whilst I chose to respond to Christabel's post in a different way from Jacck, it's worth observing that Christabel's post (#375) is one of the milder versions of a longer series of posts stretching back into the now closed thread, some making the same essential point more plainly: why are we wrecking our economies _just _to save the over 70s, most of whom are either near death in care homes, or who have other illnesses. The implication is that deliberate action should be taken to preserve the economy, knowing the consequences, and any deaths arising are a cost worth paying.

Some of us wish to frame our dilemma in a different way altogether.

This is not a zero sum game.



Eclectic Al said:


> *The only impact *of widespread criticism of Government actions, especially hindsight-based criticisms about what a Government did weeks ago, is negative on the population.


I completely disagree with your premise. I accept that *one *possible impact is negative on the population, but it won't be the only.



Eclectic Al said:


> The only impact of widespread criticism of Government actions, especially hindsight-based criticisms about what a Government did weeks ago, is negative on the population, and I query the motives of those who spread doubts and stoke fear. As I said, I don't agree in detail, but I wouldn't spread criticisms, especially of past actions or suggestive of incompetence. Now is not the time.


You've made this point several times, but not returned to engage with those, like me, who have put an opposite viewpoint. So, I'll put it to you again. How are we to distinguish between those things that the government does which should be challenged now, and those that could wait until later? I agree that complaining that the UK government started the lockdown later that it should have done (and we can know that without hindsight) is now pointless, and can wait until later. Provided that the government doesn't repeatedly return to such history itself, to claim that it has been doing the right thing all along (as the UK government does).

More importantly, if the UK government continues to make flawed decisions, and these can be reversed or modified for the better, isn't it our responsibility, and that of the official Opposition, to point them out?

Not all those who criticise are intent on spreading doubts and fear, and I resent your suggestion that the motives of those who criticise should be questioned.


----------



## mrdoc

Christabel said:


> The over 70 cohort is massively over-represented in the mortality figures. Fact. It appears, from what I heard on news today, that amongst those the vast majority had dementia, diabetes or other co-morbids. It's obviously not at all pleasant catching Covid-19 but you don't have to fear dying from it unless you are in the demographic I've mentioned.
> 
> I remember those immortal lines from the film "Aunty Mame" where Mame instructs the naive and inexperienced Agnes Gooch (her secretary) to "live, live, live". When Agnes returns to the house heavily pregnant (as a result of one night out) she asks for Mame, telling the butler: "she said I had to live, live, live; I need to find out what I have to do next!!!"
> 
> Well, I would advise YOU to live, live, live and not fear Covid-19.


I suggest you do a bit more reading on the subject, you think you are safe no no no, children are catching it as well so be careful!


----------



## Kieran

What does anyone think of this idea here, I'm not sure I fully understand it:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hea...ded-over-covid-19-second-wave-risks-1.4244841



> The seasonal flu vaccination programme is to be extended to children and other groups in order to minimise the risks of a second wave of Covid-19 coinciding with the winter flu season, under plans put forward by Minister for Health Simon Harris.


----------



## Bigbang

Kieran said:


> I do this. It's a feature of the Supermarket visit that in narrow aisles, there maybe shelves being stocked, dawdlers weighing the tin of beans, and another straggler heading towards me with their trolley. Inhale, move, exhale when clear. I think it helps, and you know, I don't live in fear of this virus, but nor do I want to catch it unnecessarily, either...


Exactly.............................


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> What does anyone think of this idea here, I'm not sure I fully understand it


I understand it this way: that you _can_ catch the 'flu and Covid-19 at the same time and so better to roll-out the 'flu vaccine (I know, it's not 100% effective each season) to avoid a double hit (a "double whammy") on the organism.


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> What does anyone think of this idea here, I'm not sure I fully understand it:
> 
> https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hea...ded-over-covid-19-second-wave-risks-1.4244841


I assume they want to do this to


minimise the risk of a larger than usual flu outbreak 
reduce the number of people who might catch in hospital, or bring into hospital, Covid 19, while receiving flu treatment 
 The assumption seems to be that there will likely be a Covid19 resurgence at the same time as the usual flu season, with the potential to compromise hospital capacity.

As has been regularly pointed out, we seem to make less fuss about the thousands of flu deaths each year - so here's an indication that at least one government is taking steps to do something about it.


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> Not all those who criticise are intent on spreading doubts and fear, and I resent your suggestion that the motives of those who criticise should be questioned.


I agree with your first point. On the second, though, I don't agree entirely. You don't seem happy for me to suggest that the actions of those who criticise governments should be questioned, but you seem to want open season on questioning the actions of government. I think it is in principle OK to question anyone's actions (- after all, we all have our agendas), but I am wary at the moment of questioning the actions of the government (ANY government) too closely, because I do think we are in a crisis and need to suppress our own positions a bit. This is precisely because I think the current situation is particularly serious and critical.

As an aside, for random reasons I was watching 12 o'clock High (the classic war film with Gregory Peck in it) the other day. Early on they are sitting around and Lord Haw-Haw comes on the radio. The officers listen because they want to understand the possible impact on the morale of the air crews, and the air crews listen because they do. The Lord Haw-Haw broadcast is effective at damaging morale because it is largely accurate factually: it has to be, because otherwise it wouldn't be effective. I couldn't help noticing, though, that the form of the broadcast was not dissimilar from that of media coverage by UK media about actions by the UK Government. To give an example, the stories a while ago over shortages of ventilators, say, would parallel stories about how inadequate the air force was (and indeed it was) compared with the Luftwaffe. The whole storyline of 12 o'clock High is about a group of people who are in a crisis situation and about the critical importance of morale. Thankfully, sitting on your sofa, or indeed going out to work, is not as dangerous as flying a bomber in WW2, but morale is important for a good outcome.

Anyway, I suppose I have a puzzlement (for example) about why at the government briefings so many of the journalists are political journalists. Their profile in these gatherings seems to dwarf that of health or science correspondents, and that tells you something about what the media outlets think this story is about. I think it is about managing a health emergency, and they think it is more a continuation of political gameplaying.

From the fact that journalists have been out and about during the lockdown I assume they were regarded as essential workers, and I'm not clear why. Do I say that in jest? I'm genuinely not sure.

Anyway, a bit of a ramble, but my general take on things is to consider anyone's take on something in the context of what I know about their world view more generally. It is always telling if someone who normally opposes someone else says they support them, or when someone who normally agrees with someone says they don't. If someone who would be expected on the basis of their overall worldview to criticise someone does so, and in a way which is consistent with their general position, then I think I'm entitled to take that into account. To give an example or two: green campaigners currently like to push for no bailouts for airlines - well they would, wouldn't they; people who would like a collapse of the world economy, to bring about a revolution of some sort, will want to push for a continued lockdown, as they think that may cripple economies - well they would, wouldn't they. I'm not saying those people are right or wrong: I am just saying that their statements need to be considered in the light of their overall world view, and not treated as necessarily being objective statements about the specific matter of the Covid-19 situation.

In comparison the position of the government seems straightforward: they want to be re-elected, and it will help their chances in that if they take steps which make it more likely that they will be popular in a few years time. That will tend to mean that they are believed to have managed this crisis well.

They may make a whole load of mistakes, but the time for those who oppose them to raise these will most likely be in a few years, and certainly not now. I say that also believing that it will be in the interests of the opposition to behave like that too: they will then be seen to have been responsible during the crisis; their criticisms will be more accurate because they will have the benefit of hindsight; and the criticisms will be closer to the time of the election.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I agree with your first point. On the second, though, I don't agree entirely. You don't seem happy for me to suggest that the actions of those who criticise governments should be questioned, but you seem to want open season on questioning the actions of government. I think it is in principle OK to question anyone's actions (- after all, we all have our agendas), but I am wary at the moment of questioning the actions of the government (ANY government) too closely, because I do think we are in a crisis and need to suppress our own positions a bit. This is precisely because I think the current situation is particularly serious and critical.
> 
> As an aside, for random reasons I was watching 12 o'clock High (the classic war film with Gregory Peck in it) the other day. Early on they are sitting around and Lord Haw-Haw comes on the radio. The officers listen because they want to understand the possible impact on the morale of the air crews, and the air crews listen because they do. The Lord Haw-Haw broadcast is effective at damaging morale because it is largely accurate factually: it has to be, because otherwise it wouldn't be effective. I couldn't help noticing, though, that the form of the broadcast was not dissimilar from that of media coverage by UK media about actions by the UK Government. To give an example, the stories a while ago over shortages of ventilators, say, would parallel stories about how inadequate the air force was (and indeed it was) compared with the Luftwaffe. The whole storyline of 12 o'clock High is about a group of people who are in a crisis situation and about the critical importance of morale. Thankfully, sitting on your sofa, or indeed going out to work, is not as dangerous as flying a bomber in WW2, but morale is important for a good outcome.
> 
> Anyway, I suppose I have a puzzlement (for example) about why at the government briefings so many of the journalists are political journalists. Their profile in these gatherings seems to dwarf that of health or science correspondents, and that tells you something about what the media outlets think this story is about. I think it is about managing a health emergency, and they think it is more a continuation of political gameplaying.
> 
> From the fact that journalists have been out and about during the lockdown I assume they were regarded as essential workers, and I'm not clear why. Do I say that in jest? I'm genuinely not sure.
> 
> Anyway, a bit of a ramble, but my general take on things is to consider anyone's take on something in the context of what I know about their world view more generally. It is always telling if someone who normally opposes someone else says they support them, or when someone who normally agrees with someone says they don't. If someone who would be expected on the basis of their overall worldview criticises someone who they would be expected to criticise, and in a way which is consistent with their general position, then I think I'm entitled to take that into account. To give an example or two: green campaigners currently like to push for no bailouts for airlines - well they would, wouldn't they; people who would like a collapse of the world economy, to bring about a revolution of some sort, will want to push for a continued lockdown, as they think that may cripple economies - well they would, wouldn't they. I'm not saying those people are right or wrong: I am just saying that their statements need to be considered in the light of their overall world view, and not treated as necessarily being objective statements about the specific matter of the Covid-19 situation.
> 
> In comparison the position of the government seems straightforward: they want to be re-elected, and it will help their chances in that if they take steps which make it more likely that they will be popular in a few years time. That will tend to mean that they are believed to have managed this crisis well.
> 
> They may make a whole load of mistakes, but the time for those who oppose them to raise these will most likely be in a few years, and certainly not now. I say that also believing that it will be in the interests of the opposition to behave like that too: they will then be seen to have been responsible during the crisis; their criticisms will be more accurate because they will have the benefit of hindsight; and the criticisms will be closer to the time of the election.


Interesting as the detour about Lord Haw Haw is, you're still making generalised accusations about all those who criticise the government, rather than offering specific examples, and avoiding my question about whether any criticism of government is valid.

Are you saying that, specifically, Keir Starmer, should not criticise the UK governmment in any way while they are dealing with this crisis?

Are you also saying that because all 'political' journalists have an axe to grind, they should not criticise either, and that any criticism they do make should be dismissed or ignored?


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> Interesting as the detour about Lord Haw Haw is, you're still making generalised accusations about all those who criticise the government, rather than offering specific examples, and avoiding my question about whether any criticism of government is valid.
> 
> Are you saying that, specifically, Keir Starmer, should not criticise the UK governmment in any way while they are dealing with this crisis?
> 
> Are you also saying that because all 'political' journalists have an axe to grind, they should not criticise either, and that any criticism they do make should be dismissed or ignored?


I think I was fairly clear. I do think there should be a fairly general "suspension of political hostilities" in relation to crisis management unless someone making a pointed criticism says they think the crisis is over.

I think it is in Keir Starmer's interests to avoid much criticism of "Corona matters" at the moment, and I think he should avoid. I thought Labour was having quite a good crisis in its own interests before his election, because Ashworth was being measured. I think they are doing less well (in their own interests) now.

On political journalists, I didn't say that. I said I think the statements of all need to be considered in the light of their normal overall positions. Their criticisms need to be taken in that light. I do continue to wonder, though, why so much political journalism is devoted to the topic.

Feel free to disagree, but I don't think I'm being unclear.


----------



## Flamme

Using it as a ''bio-weapon'' interesting and crazy...I rememb er junkies in 80s and 90s threatening ppl with syringes ''infected with aids'' 2 extrot monies, is this how ''new normal robberies'' will be conducted...Cuff, cuff, your money or health, the choice is yours!https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugx9xX7mnexjUwL-uxR4AaABCQ


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## Guest

Just returned from a drive-in test centre, having been swabbed (Well, DIY, so self swabbed)!

As part of a research programme, I was invited to be tested, as I'd reported on Wednesday that I had a headache. Not that I think I've got corona though.

Results in 48 hours.


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## Flamme

How much was it...In my country there are speculatiions it will cost around 50 euros...


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## Guest

Flamme said:


> How much was it...In my country there are speculatiions it will cost around 50 euros...


Free, but that may be because I'm a research volunteer.


----------



## Jacck

CZECH STUDY SHOWS EXTREMELY LOW LEVEL OF COLLECTIVE IMMUNITY TO COVID 19 VIRUS
https://www.radio.cz/en/section/cur...evel-of-collective-immunity-to-covid-19-virus
we also had here some scientists who believed that many people are asymptomatic and that a large part of the population already had an asymptomatic infection. Magical thinking.


----------



## KenOC

Today's news, from NASDAQ. A snippet from the *full story*:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shares of Sorrento Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SRNE) are rocketing higher today on reports that the biotech company has made a breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19. Sorrento Therapeutics's shares are up by more than 100% as of 11:49 a.m. on Friday.

In an interview with Fox News, Dr. Henry Ji, CEO of Sorrento Therapeutics, said: "We want to emphasize there is a cure. There is a solution that works 100 percent. If we have the neutralizing antibody in your body, you don't need the social distancing. You can open up a society without fear."

The cure in question is an antibody called STI-1499 that Sorrento Therapeutics has been developing. If Dr. Ji's claims prove accurate, it would be, to put it mildly, a big deal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There's more detail in the *Fox News interview*.
​


----------



## DaveM

^^^ It’s an interesting report, but I’m a little concerned when someone is so effusive before human testing, not to mention saying there are no side effects. Still, if it works as ‘advertised’ it has the potential to be a game-changer.


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> Today's news, from NASDAQ. A snippet from the *full story*:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Shares of Sorrento Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SRNE) are rocketing higher today on reports that the biotech company has made a breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19. Sorrento Therapeutics's shares are up by more than 100% as of 11:49 a.m. on Friday.
> 
> In an interview with Fox News, Dr. Henry Ji, CEO of Sorrento Therapeutics, said: "We want to emphasize there is a cure. There is a solution that works 100 percent. If we have the neutralizing antibody in your body, you don't need the social distancing. You can open up a society without fear."
> 
> The cure in question is an antibody called STI-1499 that Sorrento Therapeutics has been developing. If Dr. Ji's claims prove accurate, it would be, to put it mildly, a big deal.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> There's more detail in the *Fox News interview*.
> ​


Well let's hope he's right. Both for all of us, and also for Dr Ji, as he's going to look a bit silly if this is untrue - and I wonder what any listing authorities might feel about possibilities of price manipulation.


----------



## Eclectic Al

And here's some vaccine news

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/o...-significantly-reduces-viral-load-in-monkeys/

More fingers need to be crossed, but it seems like it's good news for monkeys.


----------



## philoctetes

More healthcare hacking... I expect more of these incidents that won't make the front page... but this site is one place to follow them...

Romania: Wannabe ransomware operators arrested before hospital attacks

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/wannabe-ransomware-operators-arrested-before-hospital-attacks/


----------



## Eclectic Al

Eclectic Al said:


> And here's some vaccine news
> 
> https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/o...-significantly-reduces-viral-load-in-monkeys/
> 
> More fingers need to be crossed, but it seems like it's good news for monkeys.


Shouldn't quote myself, I know, but I just remembered that my biochemical daughter (who went to Oxford) told me that one of her friends was engaged in a research project there, but not this one. That friend has now had her project ended, because they are devoting most of the relevant lab space to pursuing the corona stuff. I guess that will not be untypical of relevant research facilities around the world.


----------



## KenOC

Went in today for some dentistry (supposedly emergency but not really). Got to talking about the coronavirus. The dentist thought we were going overboard, distancing too much, wearing masks too much, spending too much, and all to little effect.

The dental assistant went farther. He said his cousin in Nevada went to the hospital with some breathing issues and was immediately diagnosed with Covid-19 without a thorough examination or any tests. He thought that was because the hospital would be quickly reimbursed by the feds with that diagnosis.

But he went farther yet, sliding down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories. He said, for instance, that all those boxes a drone photographed being buried in trenches in NYC were too small to hold corpses. “Show me the bodies!” he said.

We certainly live in interesting times.


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## philoctetes

I also went to the dentist today... mine just had a son before the breakout and is happy to stay home on unemployment and play it safe... our conversation got no further down the rabbit hole than me saying "I don't trust authority and I'm not confident in the testing"...


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> The dental assistant went farther. He said his cousin in Nevada went to the hospital with some breathing issues and was immediately diagnosed with Covid-19 without a thorough examination or any tests. He thought that was because the hospital would be quickly reimbursed by the feds with that diagnosis...


The question on my mind is, did the cousin end up having the virus? And what was the cousin's expectation of a 'thorough examination'? If one goes into a hospital with 'breathing problems', other than listening to your chest and heart, checking your throat and taking a brief history, what does one expect before making a quick presumptive diagnosis and quickly treating the 'breathing problem'. 'Hey there doc, shouldn't you be checking my knee reflexes?'


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> Went in today for some dentistry (supposedly emergency but not really). Got to talking about the coronavirus. The dentist thought we were going overboard, distancing too much, wearing masks too much, spending too much, and all to little effect.
> 
> The dental assistant went farther. He said his cousin in Nevada went to the hospital with some breathing issues and was immediately diagnosed with Covid-19 without a thorough examination or any tests. He thought that was because the hospital would be quickly reimbursed by the feds with that diagnosis.
> 
> But he went farther yet, sliding down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories. He said, for instance, that all those boxes a drone photographed being buried in trenches in NYC were too small to hold corpses. "Show me the bodies!" he said.
> 
> We certainly live in interesting times.


sounds to me like you need to change dentists


----------



## KenOC

Interesting. *Russia is in a fight* with a couple of Western newspaper that claim autjorities in Moscow are sandbagging the coronavirus death numbers. It's certainly true that Russia, which now ranks #3 in cases, has a far lower death rate than other highly infected countries. The issue? Maybe how you classify deaths, as we've discussed here more than once.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The Russian Foreign Ministry attacked the newspapers on Thursday, accusing them of "disinformation," and demanding retractions. Russian lawmaker Vasily Piskaryov also demanded the publications be stripped of their press accreditation…

Moscow's Health Department reacted to the press reports on Wednesday with a statement saying that more than 60% of deaths among the city's coronavirus patients are not being included in the official virus death toll because their deaths resulted from underlying causes. Officials said autopsies are being conducted in all suspected coronavirus deaths, and defended their methodology as "exceptionally precise."

Russian officials have also claimed that the large scope of testing contributed to low mortality, allowing the detection of infections at early stages. According to the Russian healthcare watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, 6.4 million COVID-19 tests have been done as of Friday.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Shouldn't quote myself, I know, but I just remembered that my biochemical daughter (who went to Oxford) told me that one of her friends was engaged in a research project there, but not this one. That friend has now had her project ended, because they are devoting most of the relevant lab space to pursuing the corona stuff. I guess that will not be untypical of relevant research facilities around the world.


Wouldn't it be good if we had a vaccine or cure for the common cold (a Coronavirus)? That would save millions of babies from croup, asthma, pneumonia, ear infections, high temperatures and other life-threatening conditions. Alas, not at this stage.

Meanwhile, the fear-mongering continues - in a context of international fear, panic and hysteria over climate change:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/fear-kills/

*Clue*: people stop listening to hysteria. If you want to convince them of something then reasoned, well-argued propositions with the possibility of positive outcomes will get them engaged. Folks won't buy into hopelessness and the apocalypse. Winston Churchill knew that very well indeed.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> The question on my mind is, did the cousin end up having the virus? And what was the cousin's expectation of a 'thorough examination'? If one goes into a hospital with 'breathing problems', other than listening to your chest, heart and throat and taking a brief history, what does one expect before making a quick presumptive diagnosis and quickly treating the 'breathing problem'. 'Hey there doc, shouldn't you be checking my knee reflexes?'


Pneumonia is very common even absent Covid-19 with appx. 3 million cases a year in the US. It may be caused by a virus, bacteria, or fungi. Obviously treatment methods will vary depending on the cause and maybe other factors. But once diagnosed as Covid-19, you're likely to go on the "standard" treatment for whatever hospital you're at.

I've also read that pneumonia from a Covid-19 infection can be identified by a chest X-ray, which will show a pretty distinctive pattern of round lesions in the lungs.

Where I live, I believe _all _clinical diagnoses of Covid-19 are supported by actual tests for the virus, not just the patient's symptoms.


----------



## elgar's ghost

KenOC said:


> Interesting. *Russia is in a fight* with a couple of Western newspaper that claim autjorities in Moscow are sandbagging the coronavirus death numbers. It's certainly true that Russia, which now ranks #3 in cases, has a far lower death rate than other highly infected countries. The issue? Maybe how you classify deaths, as we've discussed here more than once.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> The Russian Foreign Ministry attacked the newspapers on Thursday, accusing them of "disinformation," and demanding retractions. Russian lawmaker Vasily Piskaryov also demanded the publications be stripped of their press accreditation…
> 
> _Moscow's Health Department reacted to the press reports on Wednesday with a statement saying that more than 60% of deaths among the city's coronavirus patients are not being included in the official virus death toll because their deaths resulted from underlying causes_. Officials said autopsies are being conducted in all suspected coronavirus deaths, and defended their methodology as "exceptionally precise."
> 
> Russian officials have also claimed that the large scope of testing contributed to low mortality, allowing the detection of infections at early stages. According to the Russian healthcare watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, 6.4 million COVID-19 tests have been done as of Friday.


I don't know if the exclusion of 60% of deaths is happening just in Moscow but if an extra 60% were factored into the nationwide total then the new figure of less than 4000 deaths in the whole of Russia would still seem unfeasibly low against over a quarter of a million cases. If it is true then good luck to them.


----------



## Bigbang

Christabel said:


> The over 70 cohort is massively over-represented in the mortality figures. Fact. It appears, from what I heard on news today, that amongst those the vast majority had dementia, diabetes or other co-morbids. It's obviously not at all pleasant catching Covid-19 but you don't have to fear dying from it unless you are in the demographic I've mentioned.
> 
> I remember those immortal lines from the film "Aunty Mame" where Mame instructs the naive and inexperienced Agnes Gooch (her secretary) to "live, live, live". When Agnes returns to the house heavily pregnant (as a result of one night out) she asks for Mame, telling the butler: "she said I had to live, live, live; I need to find out what I have to do next!!!"
> 
> Well, I would advise YOU to live, live, live and not fear Covid-19.


 I did not say I have any fear about covid, actually I have no fear of death. I am very healthy right now and would like to keep it that way. Just as we are to take precautions I am doing what I think is practical given the main risk for me is being in the company of someone who might be infected.

And btw, you must be missing something as I am seeing people on tv with tubes in their noses who were apparently healthy but ended up in the hospital. A virologist traveling ended up this way even taking precautions. I guess the issue is about probabilities of outcomes. Who wishes to be sick or quarantine for weeks at a time?


----------



## Bigbang

eljr said:


> sounds to me like you need to change dentists


This is hysterical...I basically wrote the same thing and cancelled it. Here is your post later...


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Where I live, I believe _all _clinical diagnoses of Covid-19 are supported by actual tests for the virus, not just the patient's symptoms.


Ultimately yes, but initial treatment for 'breathing problems' is going to be similar if not the same whether from the coronavirus or some other cause, specifically evaluating whether pneumonia is present, what the SpO2 (oxygen saturation) is and whether any other systems are affected (eg. cardiovascular, renal). That can occur fairly quickly.

Testing takes time so it will be used to confirm a diagnosis and also support the appropriate drug treatment. Some drug treatment may be system-specific (eg. bronchial, cardiovascular) and has to be given before Covid-19 tests are back. Covid-19 specific drug treatment, such as it is, may or may not be held until the results of tests.

Meanwhile, if it was me, I'd be taking a good dose of my heartburn Rx.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> ^^^ It's an interesting report, but I'm a little concerned when someone is so effusive before human testing, not to mention saying there are no side effects. Still, if it works as 'advertised' it has the potential to be a game-changer.


The UK bought 3.5 million antibody tests which the PM announced would be a 'game changer'.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...y-test-for-covid-19-really-be-a-game-changer/

They were duds and we're asking for our money back.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...s-rejected-unreliable-government-sold-online/

I'm a little wary of anyone making such a claim at the moment!



Christabel said:


> Meanwhile, the fear-mongering continues - in a context of international fear, panic and hysteria over climate change:
> 
> https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/fear-kills/


Spiked! sells its own exaggerated brand of hysteria. Spot the rhetorical devices!



> *The media *in this country have no *shame*. For two months they've been *ramping up fear and hysteria *over Covid-19. *They predicted apocalypse*. *They reported *the daily death tolls like *gleeful grim reapers*. *They said *hospitals would be overwhelmed. *They interviewed *doctor after doctor and nurse after nurse who told us in tearful tones that the health service was at breaking point. *They painted *a picture of a nation falling apart, of a *plague visiting death *upon every community, of institutions collapsing under the sheer weight of this *mini Black Death*.


It was the government who declared that hospitals would be overwhelmed. The media reported their declaration.

It's certainly true that the various media outlets have chosen different paths to reporting. Some have seemed 'hysterical', others more sober. I'd rather consider something without the extensive rhetoric.

https://www.id-hub.com/2020/03/05/role-can-media-play-managing-covid-19-outbreak/

There is, of course, no such thing as "*the *media" - there are various media who make different contributions to the information available to the public using different methods. Some are reliable, some are not. You pays your money (or you don't) and you takes your choice.

As for Churchill, I'm reminded of the many reports of the music industry searching high and low for the new Beatles...but they never came. His ghost still infects the UK's body politic because too many politicians think that he represented the zenith of political leadership. He may have been the man for his time (he was, no doubting that), but the UK needs to find leaders for the 2020s: this is not 1940. He was, of course, a fear-monger too, only his fear was justified!


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> Spiked! sells its own exaggerated brand of hysteria. Spot the rhetorical devices!
> 
> It was the government who declared that hospitals would be overwhelmed. The media reported their declaration.
> 
> It's certainly true that the various media outlets have chosen different paths to reporting. Some have seemed 'hysterical', others more sober.
> 
> I'd rather consider something without the extensive rhetoric.
> 
> There is, of course, no such thing as "*the *media" - there are various media who make different contributions to the information available to the public using different methods. Some are reliable, some are not. You pays your money (or you don't) and you takes your choice.


Spot on comments, MacLeod.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> The UK bought 3.5 million antibody tests which the PM announced would be a 'game changer'.
> 
> https://www.newscientist.com/articl...y-test-for-covid-19-really-be-a-game-changer/
> 
> They were duds and we're asking for our money back.
> 
> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...s-rejected-unreliable-government-sold-online/
> 
> I'm a little wary of anyone making such a claim at the moment!
> 
> Spiked! sells its own exaggerated brand of hysteria. Spot the rhetorical devices!
> 
> It was the government who declared that hospitals would be overwhelmed. The media reported their declaration.
> 
> It's certainly true that the various media outlets have chosen different paths to reporting. Some have seemed 'hysterical', others more sober. I'd rather consider something without the extensive rhetoric.
> 
> https://www.id-hub.com/2020/03/05/role-can-media-play-managing-covid-19-outbreak/
> 
> There is, of course, no such thing as "*the *media" - there are various media who make different contributions to the information available to the public using different methods. Some are reliable, some are not. You pays your money (or you don't) and you takes your choice.
> 
> As for Churchill, I'm reminded of the many reports of the music industry searching high and low for the new Beatles...but they never came. His ghost still infects the UK's body politic because too many politicians think that he represented the zenith of political leadership. He may have been the man for his time (he was, no doubting that), but the UK needs to find leaders for the 2020s: this is not 1940. He was, of course, a fear-monger too, only his fear was justified!


Brendan O'Neill from "Spiked" is one of the few, true leaders of free speech around these days. Instead of trying to shut people down he does the opposite. And "Spiked" is one of the only places you'll find a VARIETY of opinion, which makes it difficult to pin down their political ideologies - which is exactly how the media should be and is not. You are wrong that there is no such thing as "the media". There very much is and I'm afraid it must carry the blame for much of the poor leadership you claim that the UK endures. Better people generally end up with better leaders.

You can buy into hysteria if that does it for you!! Churchill gave the people hope when there was little hope...."their finest hour" - which is light years away from the infantile "how dare you"!!


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> Brendan O'Neill from "Spiked" is one of the few, true leaders of free speech around these days. Instead of trying to shut people down he does the opposite. And "Spiked" is one of the only places you'll find a VARIETY of opinion, which makes it difficult to pin down their political ideologies - which is exactly how the media should be and is not. You are wrong that there is no such thing as "the media". There very much is and I'm afraid it must carry the blame for much of the poor leadership you claim that the UK endures. Better people generally end up with better leaders.
> 
> You can buy into hysteria if that does it for you!! Churchill gave the people hope when there was little hope...."their finest hour" - which is light years away from the infantile "how dare you"!!


I didn't pay any attention to who was writing. I paid attention to what was written. I stand by my comments (playing the ball, not the man, as they say.)


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## Flamme

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31103-X/fulltext


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I think I was fairly clear. I do think there should be a fairly general "suspension of political hostilities" in relation to crisis management unless someone making a pointed criticism says they think the crisis is over.
> 
> I think it is in Keir Starmer's interests to avoid much criticism of "Corona matters" at the moment, and I think he should avoid. I thought Labour was having quite a good crisis in its own interests before his election, because Ashworth was being measured. I think they are doing less well (in their own interests) now.
> 
> On political journalists, I didn't say that. I said I think the statements of all need to be considered in the light of their normal overall positions. Their criticisms need to be taken in that light. I do continue to wonder, though, why so much political journalism is devoted to the topic.
> 
> Feel free to disagree, but *I don't think I'm being unclear.*


Well, maybe you do, and maybe you are, but I prefer to make sure. Interesting that you think it was alright for Ashworth to criticise because he was being "measured", but not Starmer. Is he not being measured? And are you saying that he shouldn't be critical because it's not in his or the party's interests, or because no-one should criticise the government?

I suspect that whatever your answer, we'll have to agree to disagree.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> I didn't pay any attention to who was writing. I paid attention to what was written. I stand by my comments (playing the ball, not the man, as they say.)


Then you don't seem to be aware that the media hunts in packs, is partisan, activist and influences politics - rather than the other way around. The shrill, demanding and yelling media - which advocates for this or that - scares the bejeezers out of politicians and causes them to make the decisions they do. Possibly more discredited than at any other time in history, the media has a huge case to answer for the kind of society we have in our developed nations. When you read, listen or watch a particular arm of the media you don't expect to be lectured to - yet this is all we get today; that and panic and hysteria, partisanship and fake news. "Spiked Online" calls this out, and brilliantly. I've been to Brendan O'Neill's lectures and they make people sit up and take notice.

Read Douglas Murray, "The Madness of Crowds" or Tucker Carlson "Ship of Fools" or Dave Rubin, "Don't Burn this Book". It's all in all of those books and many many more about what has happened to democracy because of the media. They've whipped the people into a frenzy over several issues because now, more than ever, they are competing for space and relevance and standards have gone to hell in a handbag. Trust in the media is today equivalent to that of a used car salesman.


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> Well, maybe you do, and maybe you are, but I prefer to make sure. Interesting that you think it was alright for Ashworth to criticise because he was being "measured", but not Starmer. Is he not being measured? And are you saying that he shouldn't be critical because it's not in his or the party's interests, or because no-one should criticise the government?
> 
> I suspect that whatever your answer, we'll have to agree to disagree.


I think I'm repeating myself, but I think that criticisms of the Government actions regarding the coronavirus crisis should be very carefully considered currently, and I personally will certainly be judging the integrity and stature of politicians on the basis of how responsible their actions are in the current situation. In relation to other matters (because, of course, the world goes on) then the normal rules of the game apply, although even there I prefer grown-up debate to point-scoring and stunts.

The reason I favoured the approach being adopted before Starmer became leader was because the opposition contributions seemed more directed towards discussion of current actions - a grown up discussion of steps which could be taken. Since Starmer took over there has been more of a shift to criticising past actions with the benefit of hindsight, and seeking thereby to gain headlines and party advantage. I find that inappropriate in the current situation, and see it as a failure of stature: it comes across as small. It is on that basis that I don't even think his approach has been in the interests of his own party.

If Starmer has suggestions for future actions then I am sure he could communicate them. As far as his opinion on the past, as I said before, I don't think now is the time. There will doubtless be endless public enquiries in due course, and well before the next election, at which all manner of criticisms will be raised.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> Then you don't seem to be aware that the media [...]


I am well aware of the problems presented by "the media". My point was that the definite article "*the *media" was being misused to suggest that all the media are of the same intent. They are not. "Media" is a plural. As you well know, The Guardian is not the same as Spiked, and they are not the same as Twitter or Instagram.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I think I'm repeating myself, but I think that criticisms of the Government actions regarding the coronavirus crisis should be very carefully considered currently, and I personally will certainly be judging the integrity and stature of politicians on the basis of how responsible their actions are in the current situation. In relation to other matters (because, of course, the world goes on) then the normal rules of the game apply, although even there I prefer grown-up debate to point-scoring and stunts.
> 
> The reason I favoured the approach being adopted before Starmer became leader was because the opposition contributions seemed more directed towards discussion of current actions - a grown up discussion of steps which could be taken. Since Starmer took over there has been more of a shift to criticising past actions with the benefit of hindsight, and seeking thereby to gain headlines and party advantage. I find that inappropriate in the current situation, and see it as a failure of stature: it comes across as small. It is on that basis that I don't even think his approach has been in the interests of his own party.
> 
> If Starmer has suggestions for future actions then I am sure he could communicate them. As far as his opinion on the past, as I said before, I don't think now is the time. There will doubtless be endless public enquiries in due course, and well before the next election, at which all manner of criticisms will be raised.


Ah, so criticism is permitted. No, you're not repeating yourself. But I will. As I said, I don't think criticisms should dwell on past issues - that will be for the enquiry that should come later. But if the government claims that it has all along been doing the right thing at the right time, then it is perfectly legitiamte to point out where they haven't.

A government retains trust on its current actions and its record. Both are legitimate targets. The manner of the criticism is important. I see nothing wrong in Starmer's approach thus far.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52606980


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## Flamme

Some right wing parties in my country peddle not exactly anti vaxxing but ''home made vaccines'' agenda...It is true that we had high quality state operated vaccine institutes and factories, in time of socialism but 2day they are mostly ''privatised'' by shady tycoons and politicians...It is kinda ironic that right wingers praise the socialist yugoslavian period, without mentioning it, only referring 2 it as ''the past''', Im sure there is moral in that!


----------



## erki

For me every government deserves the criticism because they continued to run on politics(to please their electorate) instead of common good under the universal threat. I refuse to understand the reasons why in the crisis like this the game of antagonism of opposition and coalition(party in power) is played still.


----------



## Kieran

erki said:


> For me every government deserves the criticism because they continued to run on politics(to please their electorate) instead of common good under the universal threat. I refuse to understand the reasons why in the crisis like this the game of antagonism of opposition and coalition(party in power) is played still.


Yeah, I think it's a crisis where cross-party panels should be helping the governments in each country, not just governments alone making all the calls, while the opposition "oppose". It's too big a situation for old tribal political herds to be bleating and squeaking about....


----------



## Flamme

I agree and Im by no means a supporter of ANY government system but when is ENOUGH...When the world starts 2 LIVE??? In thrid world countires which like it or not cover most of the Globe, ppl say they more willing 2 take the risk of catching the CV19 than dying of HUNGER or other diseases.


----------



## eljr

Christabel said:


> Wouldn't it be good if we had a vaccine or cure for the common cold (a Coronavirus)? That would save millions of babies from croup, asthma, pneumonia, ear infections, high temperatures and other life-threatening conditions. Alas, not at this stage.
> 
> Meanwhile, the fear-mongering continues - in a context of international fear, panic and hysteria over climate change:
> 
> https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/fear-kills/
> 
> *Clue*: people stop listening to *hysteria*. If you want to convince them of something then reasoned, well-argued propositions with the possibility of positive outcomes will get them engaged. Folks won't buy into hopelessness and the apocalypse. Winston Churchill knew that very well indeed.





Christabel said:


> Brendan O'Neill from "Spiked" is one of the few, true leaders of free speech around these days. Instead of trying to shut people down he does the opposite. And "Spiked" is one of the only places you'll find a VARIETY of opinion, which makes it difficult to pin down their political ideologies - which is exactly how the media should be and is not. You are wrong that there is no such thing as "the media". There very much is and I'm afraid it must carry the blame for much of the poor leadership you claim that the UK endures. Better people generally end up with better leaders.
> 
> You can buy into *hysteria* if that does it for you!! Churchill gave the people hope when there was little hope...."their finest hour" - which is light years away from the infantile "how dare you"!!


Reads to me that you are the only one here that is hysterical.

Clue, your opinions are not facts as you portray them.

another clue, free of charge, "you may have an opinion in the absence of facts, not in conflict with them." You may quote me.


----------



## millionrainbows

I think the pandemic has been good, in the respect that it has slowed everything down. I think this will have lasting effects, as far as people reconnecting with their creativity, learning how to cook, shop, and eat wisely, less driving & traffic, less "herd" mentality at sports events, parents reconnecting with their children, etc.


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## Guest

I am wholly in favour of cross party collaboration. It's difficult to tell from the sidelines whether its absence is due to reluctance on the part of the govt, opposition or both.


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## Flamme

Also many ppl have shown their TRUE face so it was a Purgatory of sorts as well...I cant understand it because this crisis didnt make me more egotistic and selfish but I cared 4 ppl as much as b4 4 some even more, but some ppl in my life turned out very nasty and senseless...Good thing is it made lots of us self sufficent, so it was kind of a test in durability...


----------



## Kieran

MacLeod said:


> I am wholly in favour of cross party collaboration. It's difficult to tell from the sidelines whether its absence is due to reluctance on the part of the govt, opposition or both.


It's probably the political culture nowadays is too poisonous and tribal for anyone to make the first move? Really, politics has become a dirty and shameless game over the last couple of decades...


----------



## Kieran

millionrainbows said:


> I think the pandemic has been good, in the respect that it has slowed everything down. I think this will have lasting effects, as far as people reconnecting with their creativity, learning how to cook, shop, and eat wisely, less driving & traffic, less "herd" mentality at sports events, parents reconnecting with their children, etc.


I bought a keyboard, and I'm learning how to play an instrument for the first time ever. I know where the basic chords are, can play a piece which has 6 chords in it, but slowly, and with fumbles still. I'm still mainly only using my left hand, coordinating them is an issue. But I love it! It's mentally draining but also very stimulating. And I agree, a lot of people are going to find another door opening for them, and life will change in many positive ways from now on, too...


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## Art Rock

MacLeod said:


> I am wholly in favour of cross party collaboration. It's difficult to tell from the sidelines whether its absence is due to reluctance on the part of the govt, opposition or both.


In the Netherlands, we have to have 2-5 political parties working together (depending on the election) to form a government for 4 years. In the first weeks of the Corona crisis, the minister for medical care collapsed in the parliament, and had to resign the next days for health reasons. Prime minister Rutte decided not to bring in someone else from the same party (incidentally his own party), but have him replaced by the department's minister from the previous government, even though that person's party was now in the opposition.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> Yeah, I think it's a crisis where cross-party panels should be helping the governments in each country, not just governments alone making all the calls, while the opposition "oppose". It's too big a situation for old tribal political herds to be bleating and squeaking about....


There might be merit in this.

From a partisan perspective I can see why it might appeal to governing parties, so that they avoid getting all the blame, and having to take decisions which then inevitably open them up to criticism. I am less clear that many opposition parties would want to participate, for precisely the same reason. It would take a really big opposition politician to go into the tent on this issue, when they can stay on the outside and carp.

I was going to say that I am not sure that it would make much difference to the decisions taken, as they are just driven by whichever scientists dominate the advisory groups. However (mid-sentence) I think I've changed my mind while writing this!

I now think it would be better to have a cross-party action group of some sort, in order to blunt the impact of media criticism and let those taking the decisions go for those they think are best, rather than those which seek to minimise damaging news stories. However, I still think that an opposition would be unlikely to get involved.

My comments are of course about a situation with a governing party and opposition, rather than more of a coalition in place already.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> In the Netherlands, we have to have 2-5 political parties working together (depending on the election) to form a government for 4 years. In the first weeks of the Corona crisis, the minister for medical care collapsed in the parliament, and had to resign the next days for health reasons. Prime minister Rutte decided not to bring in someone else from the same party (incidentally his own party), but have him replaced by the department's minister from the previous government, even though that person's party was now in the opposition.


That's fascinating. Has there been any speculation about Rutte's choice. Is the person chosen particularly competent or knowledgeable, or might Rutte be looking for a fall guy from the other side?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> In the Netherlands, we have to have 2-5 political parties working together (depending on the election) to form a government for 4 years. In the first weeks of the Corona crisis, the minister for medical care collapsed in the parliament, and had to resign the next days for health reasons. Prime minister Rutte decided not to bring in someone else from the same party (incidentally his own party), but have him replaced by the department's minister from the previous government, even though that person's party was now in the opposition.


Also, sorry to hear about the health minister. Looking at many people involved in taking decisions about this, they look absolutely exhausted half the time.

In the UK, I wouldn't cut Boris any slack because he got ill with the virus, but you can't help thinking that overwork while suffering from it may well have contributed to the severity of his case.


----------



## elgar's ghost

I would not have been against all-party involvement to this particular crisis, as perhaps it would if only for a short while have actually created an _esprit de corps_ in which politicians, scientists etc. are reminded that once in a blue moon something comes along which makes it more important to be united rather than divisive. That said, it would be inevitable that some elements of the media would still snipe at the government - _any_ government - for virtually admitting that it couldn't solve this sort of crisis on its own.


----------



## Art Rock

Eclectic Al said:


> That's fascinating. Has there been any speculation about Rutte's choice. Is the person chosen particularly competent or knowledgeable, or might Rutte be looking for a fall guy from the other side?


He had four years experience in the job, so he was a perfect choice to take over right on the spot.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> He had four years experience in the job, so he was a perfect choice to take over right on the spot.


Thanks for that.


----------



## Eclectic Al

elgars ghost said:


> some elements of the media would still snipe at the government - _any_ government - for virtually admitting that it couldn't solve this sort of crisis on its own.


Sadly, I think you're right


----------



## Jacck

elgars ghost said:


> I would not have been against all-party involvement to this particular crisis, as perhaps it would if only for a short while have actually created an _esprit de corps_ in which politicians, scientists etc. are reminded that once in a blue moon something comes along which makes it more important to be united rather than divisive. That said, it would be inevitable that some elements of the media would still snipe at the government - _any_ government - for virtually admitting that it couldn't solve this sort of crisis on its own.


some politicians ran their campaigns of divisiveness and negative emotions and flood of lies and even after elected, they made it clear that they are there only for those, who voter for them. Such politicians cannot unite a country even in the time of national crisis.


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## mmsbls

Just a reminder: Recent posts have focused on politics rather than the virus. Please make sure your comments are tied closely to the virus.


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## Flamme

Some experts are saying that the Psychological consequences of virus and lockdowns will be worse than physiological 1s!!! Like we havent already been seriously damaged, from internet and all sorts of technological influence that started since 2000th...I think ''mental hygiene'' is at all times low all across the world...


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## philoctetes

my favorite non-political topic is the testing and diagnostics, the statistical base upon which it all functions, and how errors and feedback can corrupt the global detection system ... I've tried to encourage this topic but all I get is a couple med dudes telling me I'm stupid.. this is one of those reasons people don't trust doctors, all the way up to Fauci... when they sneer at a career test systems / AI designer, say "you're not an expert", and block the discussion it's a good indication they are bluffing..

When a doctor looks at a patient, sees breathing difficulty, says to self "COVID-19 is going around, this must be COVID-19", while the world is shutting down catastrophically because of these diagnoses, and thinks there are no negative consequences for this, I gotta shake my head...

But really the problem must be the dentist who told this story, and the dentist should probably be shuffled away in cuffs for misinformation, right?


----------



## Jacck

philoctetes said:


> my favorite non-political topic is the testing and diagnostics, the statistical base upon which it all functions, and how errors and feedback can corrupt the global detection system ... I've tried to encourage this topic but all I get is a couple med dudes telling me I'm stupid.. this is one of those reasons people don't trust doctors, all the way up to Fauci... when they sneer at a career test systems / AI designer, say "you're not an expert", and block the discussion it's a good indication they are bluffing..
> 
> When a doctor looks at a patient, sees breathing difficulty, says to self "COVID-19 is going around, this must be COVID-19", while the world is shutting down catastrophically because of these diagnoses, and thinks there are no negative consequences for this, I gotta shake my head...
> 
> But really the problem must be the dentist who told this story, and the dentist should probably be shuffled away in cuffs for misinformation, right?


you approach the topic from the position of an engineer. Errors of measurement and the laws of error propagation etc. In reality, for any kind of medical test you only need to know its sensitivity and specificity and the ROC curve (which you can compute from the two previous ones)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity
tests with sensitivity and specificity above 90 are generally good for doctors


----------



## eljr

philoctetes said:


> When a doctor looks at a patient, sees breathing difficulty, says to self "COVID-19 is going around, this must be COVID-19", while the world is shutting down catastrophically because of these diagnoses, and thinks there are no negative consequences for this, I gotta shake my head...


I gotta shake my head at your perspective.

It is what it is, right or wrong this is how most diagnosis are done. This is nothing new. This is how 98% of all flu cases are diagnosed each year.

Think in macro not micro and you'll understand.


----------



## eljr

Jacck said:


> you approach the topic from the position of an engineer. Errors of measurement and the laws of error propagation etc. In reality, for any kind of medical test you only need to know its sensitivity and specificity and the ROC curve (which you can compute from the two previous ones)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity
> tests with sensitivity and specificity above 90 are generally good for doctors


Bingo!

His perspective disallows for all the great advantages an algorithm, for example, provides as they are never exact but rather reasoned extrapolations.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Flamme said:


> Some experts are saying that the Psychological consequences of virus and lockdowns will be worse than physiological 1s!!! Like we havent already been seriously damaged, from internet and all sorts of technological influence that started since 2000th...I think ''mental hygiene'' is at all times low all across the world...


The lockdown is certainly a huge experiment, with great risks. The benefits are easy to point to (by which I mean numbers can be produced which can then be used to imply that it was worthwhile, whether the numbers are reliable and establish that, or not). The negatives are much more tricky to support with statistics, and will play out over a long time period, but they are at least as scary.

If we see an increase in deaths from a whole range of conditions over the next few years it may be that they result from the lockdown, but it will be really difficult to prove that or quantify it. One obvious example is cancer: deferral of screening, not having lumps checked out so quickly. Another is stroke: not seeking medical opinion on "funny turns", slower treatment for bleeds, etc. Ditto heart problems: chest pains ignored rather than checked out, deferral of treatments.

Recent large "excess deaths" could be Covid-19 not recorded as such, or could be other causes and be driven by the lockdown itself. Studies will explore this over time, and perhaps we'll work it out. However, the point is that the lockdown may have benefits in terms of spread of coronavirus, but it is not without direct health costs (before considering economic costs and their knock-on impact on morbidity and mortality).

This is before picking up your point on mental health.


----------



## eljr

Flamme said:


> Some experts are saying that the Psychological consequences of virus and lockdowns will be worse than physiological 1s!!! ..


no worries, they are VERY wrong.


----------



## philoctetes

Nassim Taleb, Mr Black Swan, is one of the alarmists and I think his reasoning is good... and takes little thought. Most of us know how sensitive basic exponential growth is to the exponent or growth coefficient... when our estimate of that parameter is in doubt, which it is, that amount of uncertainty is exponentiated into the future estimates, producing a ridiculously wide range of possible outcomes - at the low end the damage could be limited and require no serious precautions, while at the high end the whole world gets wiped out... do your own research...

in this wide range of possible outcomes... as time goes by and the curves are flatter than expected three months ago, the idea that the "wipe-out" outcome is not so likely anymore is catching on, perhaps not so analytically in the public mind, but it's not hard to see compare the old estimates with the real numbers and ask questions...


----------



## eljr

philoctetes said:


> in this wide range of possible outcomes... as time goes by and the curves are flatter than expected three months ago, the idea that the "wipe-out" outcome is not so likely anymore is catching on, perhaps not so analytically in the public mind, but it's not hard to see compare the old estimates with the real numbers and ask questions...


you need to cross reference man's actions to effect change


----------



## philoctetes

eljr said:


> Bingo!
> 
> His perspective disallows for all the great advantages an algorithm, for example, provides as they are never exact but rather reasoned extrapolations.


please tell me about algorithms, I am an algorithm designer...

Give me actual error rates and confidence intervals ... I will decide what is acceptable m-k?


----------



## Sad Al

I love all this Coronavirus Discussion porn – WITHOUT POLITICAL COMMENTS!!!


----------



## Jacck

philoctetes said:


> please tell me about algorithms, I am an algorithm designer...


and what is it that you don't understand? For any binary medical test, you only need to know its sensitivity and specificity, which you can dermine from how many false positives and false negatives and true positives and true negatives the test has. As far as the epidemiological modeling goes, I don't trust those models very much myself. Input data is too uncertain and the models have relatively big sensitivity to initial conditions.


----------



## Sad Al

philoctetes said:


> please tell me about algorithms, I am an algorithm designer...


So you're Al Gore's rithtm designer? Someone who designs his bio-rithtms?


----------



## Flamme

Eclectic Al said:


> The lockdown is certainly a huge experiment, with great risks. The benefits are easy to point to (by which I mean numbers can be produced which can then be used to imply that it was worthwhile, whether the numbers are reliable and establish that, or not). The negatives are much more tricky to support with statistics, and will play out over a long time period, but they are at least as scary.
> 
> If we see an increase in deaths from a whole range of conditions over the next few years it may be that they result from the lockdown, but it will be really difficult to prove that or quantify it. One obvious example is cancer: deferral of screening, not having lumps checked out so quickly. Another is stroke: not seeking medical opinion on "funny turns", slower treatment for bleeds, etc. Ditto heart problems: chest pains ignored rather than checked out, deferral of treatments.
> 
> Recent large "excess deaths" could be Covid-19 not recorded as such, or could be other causes and be driven by the lockdown itself. Studies will explore this over time, and perhaps we'll work it out. However, the point is that the lockdown may have benefits in terms of spread of coronavirus, but it is not without direct health costs (before considering economic costs and their knock-on impact on morbidity and mortality).
> 
> This is before picking up your point on mental health.


It might sound ''heartless'' but Im glad my mum wasnt alive and suffering her predicament in age of ''corona virus''...She had a very terrible disease but in precopvid conditions she got ALL the care possible and was operated by 2 surgeons and a professor of medical university...I cant even think of Golgotha she would go through if she was in such conditions NOW...Cruel ''silver lining'' but still some comfort in this TOTALK madness.


----------



## DaveM

philoctetes said:


> When a doctor looks at a patient, sees breathing difficulty, says to self "COVID-19 is going around, this must be COVID-19", while the world is shutting down catastrophically because of these diagnoses, and thinks there are no negative consequences for this, I gotta shake my head...


I also gotta shake my head when I read this. What does that even mean? Do you have special knowledge that there is some sort of wanton Covid-19 diagnosing going on? As in, 'I don't know what this respiratory thing is in this person, but I'm going to say it's the coronavirus regardless of the negative consequences in the country.'


----------



## philoctetes

And the answer to dave's question is obvious... this is a continuation of yesterday's discussion which he has a personal or professional need to invalidate... Ken's story being disqualified for no good cause, Dave can return to the usual "where's your evidence" of errors when it's obvious they exist... 

no testing system is perfect, I've been citing examples of statistical errors all week, but the deniers persist, and their motivation is more suspect by the day...


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> my favorite non-political topic is the testing and diagnostics, the statistical base upon which it all functions, and how errors and feedback can corrupt the global detection system ... I've tried to encourage this topic but all I get is a couple med dudes telling me I'm stupid.. this is one of those reasons people don't trust doctors, all the way up to Fauci... when they sneer at a career test systems / AI designer, say "you're not an expert", and block the discussion it's a good indication they are bluffing..
> 
> When a doctor looks at a patient, sees breathing difficulty, says to self "COVID-19 is going around, this must be COVID-19", while the world is shutting down catastrophically because of these diagnoses, and thinks there are no negative consequences for this, I gotta shake my head...
> 
> But really the problem must be the dentist who told this story, and the dentist should probably be shuffled away in cuffs for misinformation, right?


I'm not refuting anything you've said in your post Philoctetes but I'm just going to give two personal anecdotes.

1) I've had to see my doctor several times during the lockdown for non-urgent reasons (allergies, high-blood pressure, voices in my head telling me to kill my neighbours...) and he's very much in favour of the wearing of surgical masks, maintaining social distancing and so on. He now offers video consultations (many doctors are doing this in France these days). He takes the coronavirus crisis very seriously and I tend to respect his opinion on these matters.

2) I visted my dentist yesterday (after nearly a year!) because I had a toothache during the lockdown and then a bit of one of my molars broke off. My dentist's surgery was closed during the lockdown and there was no way I was going to see an emergnecy dentist during this period as I was able to deal with the toothache. Anyway, when I arrived at the surgery it had been fitted out with all the necessary anti-Covid 19 measures: floor markings for social distancing, disinfectant gel next to the entrance, all the support staff wearing masks, plastic partition on the reception desk, and the dentists in full medical scrubs, plastic aprons, plastic hair covers, masks, visors and disposable surgical gloves. Did I feel secure? You bet I did!
Anyway, the upshot: he is another medical professional who takes the Covid-19 very seriously.

Stay healthy!


----------



## DaveM

philoctetes said:


> And the answer to dave's question is obvious... this is a continuation of yesterday's discussion which he has a personal or professional need to invalidate... Ken's story being disqualified for no good cause, Dave can return to the usual "where's your evidence" of errors when it's obvious they exist... no testing system is perfect


Btw, you have taken to saying that people don't trust or like their doctors. If you take a look at surveys, doctors are among the most trusted of people that affect peoples' lives.


----------



## philoctetes

TalkingHead said:


> I'm not refuting anything you've said in your post Philoctetes but I'm just going to give two personal anecdotes.
> 
> 1) I've had to see my doctor several times during the lockdown for non-urgent reasons (allergies, high-blood pressure, voices in my head telling me to kill my neighbours...) and he's very much in favour of the wearing of surgical masks, maintaining social distancing and so on. He now offers video consultations (many doctors are doing this in France these days). He takes the coronavirus crisis very seriously and I tend to respect his opinion on these matters.
> 
> 2) I visted my dentist yesterday (after nearly a year!) because I had a toothache during the lockdown and then a bit of one of my molars broke off. My dentist's surgery was closed during the lockdown and there was no way I was going to see an emergnecy dentist during this period as I was able to deal with the toothache. Anyway, when I arrived at the surgery it had been fitted out with all the necessary anti-Covid 19 measures: floor markings for social distancing, disinfectant gel next to the entrance, all the support staff wearing masks, plastic partition on the reception desk, and the dentists in full medical scrubs, plastic aprons, plastic hair covers, masks, visors and disposable surgical gloves. Did I feel secure? You bet I did!
> Anyway, the upshot: he is another medical professional who takes the Covid-19 very seriously.
> 
> Stay healthy!


So 3 of us had dental appts yesterday. I met my dentist one-on-one with no assistant... dental offices here can't even operate the way you describe yet... she said there are patients waiting to get the kind of treatment you got...

did I ever say I was not OK with this... no I simply want an honest discussion about the statistical issues with those who are able .. but every time I do that someone ascribe a political motive to it all, and has a political response, to push me into a political corner.. and fighting back against the bias of others is how I spend my time on this thread every time I raise technical issues... to see patterns in numbers and their effects is not "right" or "left" or political no matter how hard you try to paint it that way...


----------



## philoctetes

"many doctors are doing this in France these days"

What they do in France should always be of immense importance to the civilized world

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2020/05/10/hydroxychloroquinenumber-of-prescriptions-explode-in-france/#74e186c180f8

Apparently doctors in France are prescribing lotsa Hydoxychloroquine as well (man I get tired of typing that word out)


----------



## Flamme

Some Question how the doctors and scientists will make a functional vaccine in such a short amount of time, when NO vaccine was ever invented 4 any other corona type virus...


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> "many doctors are doing this in France these days"
> 
> What they do in France should always be of immense importance to the civilized world
> 
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexle...prescriptions-explode-in-france/#74e186c180f8
> 
> Apparently doctors in France are prescribing lotsa Hydoxychloroquine as well (man I get tired of typing that word out)


You only partially quoted my post, Philoctetes, son of Poeas, king of Meliboea in Thessaly, and Demonassa!
I said that many doctors in France are offering *video consultations*.
I believe the Hydoxychloroquine "solution" has been pretty much debunked but I could be wrong. 
As an ex-smoker, I'd be more interested in a recent study (can't remember where I read it, maybe here in France) that nicotine could be "useful" in combatting the virus. Do you know what? I still have an old packet of nicotine patches!!


----------



## mmsbls

Please refrain from personal comments. I have edited or deleted some posts.


----------



## Eclectic Al

False positives and false negatives. I'm going to risk going off-virus, but at least it's not political. It's philosophical.

To define a concept such as false positive or false negative requires the knowledge of truth. To say that a test is a false positive means that you know that the "true" result should be negative, despite your test coming up positive. The reverse applies for false negative.
So how do you know the truth? That must be on the basis of an alternative test, as you can't verify a test using itself.

What is that test in medical settings? It would appear that it is often clinical judgement. To claim that clinical judgement defines "false" means you have confidence in clinical judgement. Why? If that was reliable you could just "ask a doctor" and not do the test. Maybe the test is more scaleable. Whatever, I wouldn't have confidence that clinical judgement is 100% reliable.

Alternatively, the definition of truth could be another test. Maybe that test takes too long, or is too expensive, so it is better to use a less reliable, but more practical test. I am not aware that that is the case with Covid-19, but perhaps it is.

Anyway, just to note that the whole concept of false positive or false negative is fraught with philosophical questions about truth.

In this particular context you have the challenge of lack of knowledge about the condition and the immune reaction. If the test relates to the presence of anti-bodies then might someone have had the disease and not generated anti-bodies? As I understand it that is a possibility, depending on the nature of the immune response any particular individual might mount.

Lots of uncertainties, that's all I'm saying.


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> You only partially quoted my post, Philoctetes, son of Poeas, king of Meliboea in Thessaly, and Demonassa!
> I said that many doctors in France are offering *video consultations*.
> I believe the Hydoxychloroquine "solution" has been pretty much debunked but I could be wrong.
> As an ex-smoker, I'd be more interested in a recent study (can't remember where I read it, maybe here in France) that nicotine could be "useful" in combatting the virus. Do you know what? I still have an old packet of nicotine patches!!


I believe that possibility is being tested, by studies funded by the tobacco giants. Whatever, hopefully it works.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Flamme said:


> Some Question how the doctors and scientists will make a functional vaccine in such a short amount of time, when NO vaccine was ever invented 4 any other corona type virus...


Speaking to someone in the field recently, their opinion was that there were no functional coronavirus vaccines because of economic payback. The recent dangerous coronavirus epidemics had tended to fade before vaccines ended their testing procedures, etc. Hence, no demand, so no money in it to progress to a final solution. Also, too few test subjects left to confirm efficacy, because the epidemics died out anyway. Not my field, but that's what I understood.

As I understand if the challenge may be more about lung infections, because the surface of the lung is not regarded by the immune system as fully "inside" the body, so it is compromised, and it is harder to prompt the body to mount a strong immune response. Again, not my field.


----------



## Flamme

This virus will DECIMATE travel and tourist industry...! 14 days quarantine in most countries! Who can afford that...Flights got cheaper but tests must be counted in total sum given for the trips.


----------



## philoctetes

TalkingHead said:


> I believe the Hydoxychloroquine "solution" has been pretty much debunked but I could be wrong.


I never saw much to debunk... but I saw a lot of energy wasted over a well-known, inexpensive treatment for difficult breathing... when the alternative is made of unobtainium (ventilators), is also known to be risky, carries a whopper of a rental fee, and seems worth avoiding at almost any cost...

Those who drop their fears of capitalistic and even political agendas when it comes to healthcare services are being kinda naive but that's just my opinion, it's my business if I want to think that way... <zip>


----------



## philoctetes

Eclectic Al said:


> False positives and false negatives. I'm going to risk going off-virus, but at least it's not political. It's philosophical.
> 
> To define a concept such as false positive or false negative requires the knowledge of truth. To say that a test is a false positive means that you know that the "true" result should be negative, despite your test coming up positive. The reverse applies for false negative.
> So how do you know the truth? That must be on the basis of an alternative test, as you can't verify a test using itself.


This is what i've been saying for three days now... maybe someone will listen to an actuary if not an engineer... (I took the first two SOA courses btw, just for post-retirement recreation..)

but I've dome to the conclusion that some are not here for truth but to defend their industries from the same suspicions that would be normal with other enterprises... whatever happened to the awareness that drug companies try to gouge their patients? do we need to dig up history every time we have a new suspicion, just to validate our right to suspect? I say no to that...


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> False positives and false negatives. I'm going to risk going off-virus, but at least it's not political. It's philosophical.
> 
> To define a concept such as false positive or false negative requires the knowledge of truth. To say that a test is a false positive means that you know that the "true" result should be negative, despite your test coming up positive. The reverse applies for false negative.
> So how do you know the truth? That must be on the basis of an alternative test, as you can't verify a test using itself.
> 
> What is that test in medical settings? It would appear that it is often clinical judgement. To claim that clinical judgement defines "false" means you have confidence in clinical judgement. Why? If that was reliable you could just "ask a doctor" and not do the test. Maybe the test is more scaleable. Whatever, I wouldn't have confidence that clinical judgement is 100% reliable.
> 
> Alternatively, the definition of truth could be another test. Maybe that test takes too long, or is too expensive, so it is better to use a less reliable, but more practical test. I am not aware that that is the case with Covid-19, but perhaps it is.
> 
> Anyway, just to note that the whole concept of false positive or false negative is fraught with philosophical questions about truth.
> 
> In this particular context you have the challenge of lack of knowledge about the condition and the immune reaction. If the test relates to the presence of anti-bodies then might someone have had the disease and not generated anti-bodies? As I understand it that is a possibility, depending on the nature of the immune response any particular individual might mount.
> 
> Lots of uncertainties, that's all I'm saying.


in practice, it is easier, because you perform multiple tests on the patient to arrive at a diagnosis. For example to diagnose COVID, you have the lung CT scan (which shows typical lesions), you have the result of a PCR test (with very high specificity and sensitivity) and you have the result of clinical symptoms (patients describes shortness of breath, lack of smell etc). By combining all that information, you make a diagnosis. And that diagnosis is pretty reliable. The biggest problems in practice are various symptoms. For example a patient comes with vertigo. Vertigo is one of the least specific symptoms in all of medicine. It can result as a side effect of medicaments, from a disturbance in the stato-acustic organ, from heart arrhytmia, from low blood pressure and most commonly from anxiety. So you need to search further by performing further examinations to rule out all possible causes and arrive at the most probable cause.



> To define a concept such as false positive or false negative requires the knowledge of truth. To say that a test is a false positive means that you know that the "true" result should be negative, despite your test coming up positive. The reverse applies for false negative.
> So how do you know the truth? That must be on the basis of an alternative test, as you can't verify a test using itself.


exactly. You need an alternative test to find the true negatives and true positives. So to find the sensitivity and specificity of an antibody test, you can use the PCR test to make sure the subjects had the virus. PCR is higly specific and senstive because it measures directly the viral DNA


----------



## philoctetes

"exactly. You need an alternative test to find the true negatives and true positives. So to find the sensitivity and specificity of an antibody test, you can use the PCR test to make sure the subjects had the virus. PCR is higly specific and senstive because it measures directly the viral DNA"

this is now going somewhere... how to train the diagnostics with truth... but like any tool it needs a lot of training data to learn distributions... and the more dimensions (features) you are measuring, the more volume of data you have to fill.. increasing by the power of the number of dimensions... this has to be done to fill the tails of the distributions.... someone mentioned outliers a couple days ago and this is how you include or exclude them...

so there is a cost in the analysis to adding more discriminators, in the form of higher training data requirements... for industrial testing applications, test samples are often manufactured, and no animals are harmed in testing, but I wonder how available human samples may be for COVID testing...and you also need to include samples of those with symptoms but not having COVID, those who have it but have no symptoms, etc...

Then we have the Abbott machines being ridiculed this week... is this just an anomaly in the industry, or is it just another normal flub, what is the story behind this? are the Cepheids "variable" - sorry bad astronomy joke...


----------



## KenOC

Recent news: Colorado has revised its coronavirus death count from 1,150 downward to 878. It had previously been counting all disease-related deaths where Covid-19 was present, but has revised this to deaths “due to” Covid-19.

I’ll skip the link because I see this story only on Fox News, and Fox reliably triggers some people here…


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> Recent news: Colorado has revised its coronavirus death count from 1,150 downward to 878. It had previously been counting all disease-related deaths where Covid-19 was present, but has revised this to deaths "due to" Covid-19.
> 
> I'll skip the link because I see this story only on Fox News, and Fox reliably triggers some people here…


they only reply i have for this would be political in nature so i'll just scroll on by


----------



## eljr

Jacck said:


> in practice, it is easier, because you perform multiple tests on the patient to arrive at a diagnosis. For example to diagnose COVID, you have the lung CT scan (which shows typical lesions), you have the result of a PCR test (with very high specificity and sensitivity) and you have the result of clinical symptoms (patients describes shortness of breath, lack of smell etc). By combining all that information, you make a diagnosis. And that diagnosis is pretty reliable. The biggest problems in practice are various symptoms. For example a patient comes with vertigo. Vertigo is one of the least specific symptoms in all of medicine. It can result as a side effect of medicaments, from a disturbance in the stato-acustic organ, from heart arrhytmia, from low blood pressure and most commonly from anxiety. So you need to search further by performing further examinations to rule out all possible causes and arrive at the most probable cause.
> 
> exactly. You need an alternative test to find the true negatives and true positives. So to find the sensitivity and specificity of an antibody test, you can use the PCR test to make sure the subjects had the virus. PCR is higly specific and senstive because it measures directly the viral DNA


I don't believe for one second that a full blown vertigo attack can be from anxiety and I am sure this cannot be proved.

Seems anxiety is blamed for about everything from bunions to toothaches. It's time medicine progressed. Just sayin. LOL


----------



## eljr

Bundesliga is back and on TV! 

Today was the first Bundesliga match I watched in my life. The absence of sport, besides Korean baseball, has really made me open to new horizons. 

I watched cornhole the other day.


----------



## Jacck

eljr said:


> I don't believe for one second that a full blown vertigo attack can be from anxiety and I am sure this cannot be proved. Seems anxiety is blamed for about everything from bunions to toothaches. It's time medicine progressed. Just sayin. LOL


of course it can be from anxiety. I guess you never had a panic attack or agoraphobia. In practice, you ask the patient when he gets the vertigo attacks and if he describe you specific situations that generate anxiety, then it is clear. A lot of people who get a panic attack end up in the internist ER for suspicion for MI. They find no changes on ECG and diagnose a panic attack. It is more common than you think


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I believe that possibility is being tested, by studies funded by the tobacco giants. Whatever, hopefully it works.


Hah! I suppose that would make sense. Maybe the "tests" will prove that I should start smoking again?
I still have the odd moment when I feel like a ***.
I'd be interested to read the sources that claim these studies are being funded by the tobacco industry.


----------



## Jacck

TalkingHead said:


> Hah! I suppose that would make sense. Maybe the "tests" will prove that I should start smoking again?
> I still have the odd moment when I feel like a ***.
> I'd be interested to read the sources that claim these studies are being funded by the tobacco industry.


you should not start smoking. Smoking induces the expression of ACE2 receptors in the lungs, that the virus uses to enter the cells. 
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202002.0051/v1
_"However, we observed significantly higher ACE2 gene expression in smoker samples compared to non-smoker samples. This indicates the smokers may be more susceptible to 2019-nCov and thus smoking history should be considered in identifying susceptible population and standardizing treatment regimen."_


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I'll skip the link because I see this story only on Fox News, and Fox *reliably triggers some people here*…


Hah! Just like articles from The Guardian! Snort.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> you should not start smoking. Smoking induces the expression of ACE2 receptors in the lungs, that the virus uses to enter the cells.
> https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202002.0051/v1
> _"However, we observed significantly higher ACE2 gene expression in smoker samples compared to non-smoker samples. This indicates the smokers may be more susceptible to 2019-nCov and thus smoking history should be considered in identifying susceptible population and standardizing treatment regimen."_


Don't worry Jacck, I won't start smoking again. I've still got an old packet of nicotine patches and nicotine chewing-gum just in case...


----------



## philoctetes

TalkingHead said:


> Hah! Just like articles from The Guardian! Snort.


As a concession to hecklers and politically motivated info sifters, I now try to find links that won't chafe their sensitivities... even though it doesn't matter... but they should keep some talcum powder and fresh diapers on hand in case they poo themselves...

Ladies and gentlemen, for you convenience, here is same story in the Denver Post

Colorado reports 1,150 deaths of people with coronavirus, and 878 that were due to COVID-19

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/05/15/coronavirus-covid-colorado-new-cases-deaths-may-15/

Now let's wait for the next doctor who demands "hard evidence" of errors... :lol:


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> Hah! I suppose that would make sense. Maybe the "tests" will prove that I should start smoking again?
> I still have the odd moment when I feel like a ***.
> I'd be interested to read the sources that claim these studies are being funded by the tobacco industry.


Here's a link for one. I don't think it's the only one.

https://www.pmi.com/media-center/news/medicago-develops-a-plant-based-vaccine-for-coronavirus


----------



## eljr

Jacck said:


> of course it can be from anxiety. I guess you never had a panic attack or agoraphobia. In practice, you ask the patient when he gets the vertigo attacks and if he describe you specific situations that generate anxiety, then it is clear. A lot of people who get a panic attack end up in the internist ER for suspicion for MI. They find no changes on ECG and diagnose a panic attack. It is more common than you think


Not buying it and you sure can't prove it.

Not trying to be argumentative, you are a valued poster I respect. It's just that when one has had a serious vertigo attack, you know damned well it can't be triggered by anxiety.

Maybe part of the disconnect is that people often misuse the word vertigo.

Most folks can't distinguish between light headed, dizzy, full blown vertigo, unbalanced...

I just did a search on anxiety and vertigo, nothing except that vertigo causes anxiety. Typically I am way to sick to have anxiety when I have vertigo. I did find this at teh University of Iowa, "Anxiety, by itself, does not produce vertigo."

Who told you anxiety causes vertigo? I am just curious.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> in practice, it is easier, because you perform multiple tests on the patient to arrive at a diagnosis. For example to diagnose COVID, you have the lung CT scan (which shows typical lesions), you have the result of a PCR test (with very high specificity and sensitivity) and you have the result of clinical symptoms (patients describes shortness of breath, lack of smell etc). By combining all that information, you make a diagnosis. And that diagnosis is pretty reliable. The biggest problems in practice are various symptoms. For example a patient comes with vertigo. Vertigo is one of the least specific symptoms in all of medicine. It can result as a side effect of medicaments, from a disturbance in the stato-acustic organ, from heart arrhytmia, from low blood pressure and most commonly from anxiety. So you need to search further by performing further examinations to rule out all possible causes and arrive at the most probable cause.
> 
> exactly. You need an alternative test to find the true negatives and true positives. So to find the sensitivity and specificity of an antibody test, you can use the PCR test to make sure the subjects had the virus. PCR is higly specific and senstive because it measures directly the viral DNA


Thanks for the response. "Pretty reliable" is interesting. That may just mean that another clinician would agree, or there needs to be another test. When it comes to PCR, that might tell you someone died "with" it, but not necessarily "of" it. The combination of various indicators is clearly highly suggestive, but certainty is a tough benchmark.

I'm not being awkward, as I am aware that absolute certainty is not possible. In a way that's all I'm saying, and urging a little caution in being too confident.

I don't know if it's true, but the picture painted in the UK recently was that the reporting physician was being asked to use their judgement, so if someone died of pneumonia in a care home where there had been a confirmed coronavirus case then they would be inclined to point to that. Well sadly old people in care homes die of pneumonia quite often, like my dad last year, and a corona case in the home does not mean that was the cause for all of them.

I am just challenging the idea that this is straightforward.


----------



## KenOC

An interesting similarity to Russia, which says its coronavirus death rates are low considering the number of cases because they use the "due to" standard. The gov't official reporting this says their judgments are "quite precise."

Also, he adds, greatly increased testing yields a lot of cases with few or any symptoms, further lowering the apparent rate of deaths.

Of course there are those who suspect the true number of deaths is being covered up...


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> Thanks for the response. "Pretty reliable" is interesting. That may just mean that another clinician would agree, or there needs to be another test. When it comes to PCR, that might tell you someone died "with" it, but not necessarily "of" it. The combination of various indicators is clearly highly suggestive, but certainty is a tough benchmark.
> 
> I'm not being awkward, as I am aware that absolute certainty is not possible. In a way that's all I'm saying, and urging a little caution in being too confident.
> 
> I don't know if it's true, but the picture painted in the UK recently was that the reporting physician was being asked to use their judgement, so if someone died of pneumonia in a care home where there had been a confirmed coronavirus case then they would be inclined to point to that. Well sadly old people in care homes die of pneumonia quite often, like my dad last year, and a corona case in the home does not mean that was the cause for all of them.
> 
> I am just challenging the idea that this is straightforward.


Is it this important?

Just look at the last 5 years average deaths and this years. The numbers, however counted are under counted.

When I hear people argue over exact counts, well, I think it kinda fool hardy. It's been made political. let's be honest.


----------



## Jacck

eljr said:


> Not buying it and you sure can't prove it.
> Not trying to be argumentative, you are a valued poster I respect. It's just that when one has had a serious vertigo attack, you Dnow damned well it can't be triggered by anxiety.
> Maybe part of the disconnect is that people often misuse the word vertigo.
> Most folks can't distinguish between light headed, dizzy, full blown vertigo, unbalanced...
> I just did a search on anxiety and vertigo, nothing except that vertigo causes anxiety. Typically I am way to sick to have anxiety when I have vertigo. I did find this at teh University of Iowa, "Anxiety, by itself, does not produce vertigo."
> Who told you anxiety causes vertigo? I am just curious.


maybe I am just lacking the English vocabulary and lumped under the term vertigo all those different symptoms such as light headed, dizzy, full blown vertigo, unbalanced. I spend some time in Germany and they distinguish between "Drehschwindel" (a feeling of rotation) and "Schwankschwindel" (more like the light-headidness). The anxiety produces more light-headidness and usually not feeling of rotation, which is more common in a Ménière's disease. But again, you have further examinations to differentiate it, such as neurological examination, the observation of nystagmus etc.


----------



## Eclectic Al

eljr said:


> Is it this important?
> 
> Just look at the last 5 years average deaths and this years. The numbers, however counted are under counted.
> 
> When I hear people argue over exact counts, well, I think it kinda fool hardy. It's been made political. let's be honest.


It is indeed a bit political, because these sorts of figures are driving policy, and the media critique of government actions. When it comes to care homes there are a lot of excess deaths. It is important to understand how many are driven by the virus, and how many are driven by the reaction to the virus. This proportion may well shift over time. It is key to do the best possible job in assessing this, because policy follows.


----------



## eljr

Jacck said:


> maybe I am just lacking the English vocabulary and lumped under the term vertigo all those different symptoms such as light headed, dizzy, full blown vertigo, unbalanced. I spend some time in Germany and they distinguish between "Drehschwindel" (a feeling of rotation) and "Schwankschwindel" (more like the light-headidness). The anxiety produces more light-headidness and usually not feeling of rotation, which is more common in a Ménière's disease. But again, you have further examinations to differentiate it, such as neurological examination, the observation of nystagmus etc.


"anxiety produces more light-headidness" correct!

very different than full blown vertigo where one cannot even stand and vomits for hours every few minutes.


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> It is indeed a bit political, because these sorts of figures are driving policy, and the media critique of government actions. When it comes to care homes there are a lot of excess deaths. It is important to understand how many are driven by the virus, and how many are driven by the reaction to the virus. This proportion may well shift over time. It is key to do the best possible job in assessing this, because policy follows.


like I said, just look at the 5 year average vs this year. That will give you all the info you need to base judgement on.

This arguing about one here and one there, IMHO is ridiculous. The death toll is off the charts no matter how you count.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I don't know if it's true, but the picture painted in the UK recently was that the reporting physician was being asked to use their judgement, so if someone died of pneumonia in a care home where there had been a confirmed coronavirus case then they would be inclined to point to that. Well sadly old people in care homes die of pneumonia quite often, like my dad last year, and a corona case in the home does not mean that was the cause for all of them.
> 
> I am just challenging the idea that this is straightforward.


It isn't straightforward. You're right. That's why, for example, international comparisons are to be treated with considerable caution. Whilst the WHO has a recommended process for diagnosis of cause of death, this is not practised by all countries. They prefer to use the process set by their own health authorities. I gather that in some countries, there are even regional variations, state to state.

But note that there is still an expectation that doctors follow a common, documented process. They're not expected to just act on a hunch, or the latest scare. The fact that some doctors might not follow procedure, or might misdiagnose tells us that either they're incomptent (nothing new there - why should doctors be exempt from incompetence?) or the process still requires a clinical judgement: it's not a black and white matter.

I previously posted links to the documents setting out procedure for the NHS and the WHO - but they're not too difficult to find if someone is of a mind to.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...eting-a-medical-certificate-of-cause-of-death


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Ken's story being disqualified for no good cause, Dave can return to the usual "where's your evidence" of errors when it's obvious they exist...
> 
> no testing system is perfect, I've been citing examples of statistical errors all week, but the deniers persist, and their motivation is more suspect by the day...


How many 'deniers' are there here, and what is it that they are denying. Perhaps you'd like to cite the content of their posts, rather than make vague declarations.

As for Ken's story - about the dentist? It was an anecdote. Was it meant to prove something? If so, you might like to explain. Ken isn't talking to me.


----------



## philoctetes

Eclectic Al said:


> It is indeed a bit political, because these sorts of figures are driving policy, and the media critique of government actions. When it comes to care homes there are a lot of excess deaths. It is important to understand how many are driven by the virus, and how many are driven by the reaction to the virus. This proportion may well shift over time. It is key to do the best possible job in assessing this, because policy follows.


So, are we to use statistics for decision-making or not? If not, then let's throw out all the statistics books, dismantle everything AI, everything that estimates, or predicts "intelligently", let's do away with guidance systems, with warning systems, ad nauseum... even Cristobel's AC...

One should be careful what they complain about... this is true on all sides of this discussion, not to dispose of the good with the bad... one has to understand how decisions are critically connected to numbers... we have all the computational power at our disposal, but the real problem is that the numbers are political by default in when applied to decision, and they can be manipulated or corrupted... and nevermind statistical distributions, who can say what the "risk" and "payoff" functions are in these decision systems... does anybody care?

the same is true for voting... and I'm pretty sure most of us would demand accuracy in counting votes...


----------



## philoctetes

MacLeod said:


> How many 'deniers' are there here, and what is it that they are denying. Perhaps you'd like to cite the content of their posts, rather than make vague declarations.
> 
> As for Ken's story - about the dentist? It was an anecdote. Was it meant to prove something? If so, you might like to explain. Ken isn't talking to me.


There is nothing vague and I won't chase my tail in circles for you. I'm not supposed to get personal so don't ask me to do so, just recognize that there is context for what I'm saying that you "are not aware of"... you want I should roll over and play dead too?

This fits the denier mentality by asking me to constantly revisit history for them, to serve it on a platter for them, and we just did that in the last two hours... and we avoided talking about each other... apparently you missed that and you'll have to find it yourself... once a day is enough.. m-k?


----------



## KenOC

*Imperial College model Britain used to justify lockdown a 'buggy mess', 'total unreliable', experts claim*
---------------------------------------
Experts have derided the coding from Professor Neil Ferguson, warning that it is a "buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming."

"In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust," David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco, told the Daily Telegraph…

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have further claimed that it is impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data using the model. The team got different results when they used different machines, and even different results from the same machines.
---------------------------------------
The article claims that this model was used by the US government as well in its decision to take a "more serious approach" to the disease.


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> *Imperial College model Britain used to justify lockdown a 'buggy mess', 'total unreliable', experts claim*
> ---------------------------------------
> Experts have derided the coding from Professor Neil Ferguson, warning that it is a "buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming."
> 
> "In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust," David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco, told the Daily Telegraph…
> 
> Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have further claimed that it is impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data using the model. The team got different results when they used different machines, and even different results from the same machines.
> ---------------------------------------
> The article claims that this model was used by the US government as well in its decision to take a "more serious approach" to the disease.


quick question, Ken. Are you suggesting NYC should not have shut down?

and that shutting down has not saved ten's of thousands lives?

I am just looking to understand your point, where you are coming from. Thanks.


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> As for Ken's story - about the dentist? It was an anecdote. Was it meant to prove something? If so, you might like to explain. Ken isn't talking to me.


I'm not talking to you? Huh?

Yes, of course it was an anecdote and, further, from a person who recounted conspiracy tales that seemed to me of very low probability. I wouldn't place it high on the credibility scale.

BTW it was the dentist's assistant, not the dentist who is a nice older Persian lady and quite skilled. She thinks entirely too much is being made of the disease but doesn't fall off the deep end of the pier.


----------



## Guest

Remember that following discussion on a forum is not straightforward, with several conversations often going on across different groups of posters. That means that some things get missed or misunderstood. There may be some here that follow every line of every post assiduously, but I think quite a few (me included) follow some lines of conversation more closely than others.

Consequently, I might have posted something you're not happy with and I might like the opportunity to respond.



KenOC said:


> I'm not talking to you? Huh?
> 
> Yes, of course it was an anecdote and, further, from a person who recounted conspiracy tales that seemed to me of very low probability. I wouldn't place it high on the credibility scale.
> 
> BTW it was the dentist's ***'t, not the dentist who is a nice older Persian lady and quite skilled. She thinks entirely too much is being made of the disease but doesn't fall off the deep end of the pier.


So, I read your anecdote right. Thanks.


----------



## Eclectic Al

philoctetes said:


> So, are we to use statistics for decision-making or not? If not, then let's throw out all the statistics books, dismantle everything AI, everything that estimates, or predicts "intelligently", let's do away with guidance systems, with warning systems, ad nauseum... even Cristobel's AC...
> 
> One should be careful what they complain about... this is true on all sides of this discussion, not to dispose of the good with the bad... one has to understand how decisions are critically connected to numbers... we have all the computational power at our disposal, but the real problem is that the numbers are political by default in when applied to decision, and they can be manipulated or corrupted... and nevermind statistical distributions, who can say what the "risk" and "payoff" functions are in these decision systems... does anybody care?
> 
> the same is true for voting... and I'm pretty sure most of us would demand accuracy in counting votes...


I'm not sure whether we're in much the same place or not.
My view is that we want to do the best we can in data gathering and modelling, but that models in this context are mainly helpful is proving a guide to plausible upside and downside risk.
It seems to me too many people (not saying you) seem to think these models give you the answer.
My worry is that the models are often so sensitive to small differences in assumptions that they don't help that much. They then introduce issues of their own if people naively believe them.
Of course, if they're the only models we've got then so be it, as long as they are just seen as part of the decision toolkit.


----------



## philoctetes

Eclectic Al said:


> I'm not sure whether we're in much the same place or not.
> My view is that we want to do the best we can in data gathering and modelling, but that models in this context are mainly helpful is proving a guide to plausible upside and downside risk.
> It seems to me too many people (not saying you) seem to think these models give you the answer.
> My worry is that the models are often so sensitive to small differences in assumptions that they don't help that much. They then introduce issues of their own if people naively believe them.
> Of course, if they're all we've got then so be it, as long as they are just seen as part of the decision toolkit.


sorry this was more of a response to the poster you replied to, who seemed dismissive of stats, and I used your post to piggy back with... so we have several camps here with respect to stats and numbers... I caution over-confidence for all the reasons I've stated, such as how errors explode when magnified through predictions and I'm tired of having to re-justify my reasons... but that doesn't mean I take the opposite extreme...

even with good data, risk and reward multipliers typically remain arbitrary in decision system theory... they are determined by application, cost numbers, etc... in another context, such as wartime, the risk of economic self-destruction would probably not be ignored...


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> *Imperial College model Britain used to justify lockdown a 'buggy mess', 'total unreliable', experts claim*
> ---------------------------------------
> Experts have derided the coding from Professor Neil Ferguson, warning that it is a "buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming."
> 
> "In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust," David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco, told the Daily Telegraph…
> 
> Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have further claimed that it is impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data using the model. The team got different results when they used different machines, and even different results from the same machines.
> ---------------------------------------
> The article claims that this model was used by the US government as well in its decision to take a "more serious approach" to the disease.


Interesting read, so far as it goes. There's not enough science in it to make it meaningful, but too much would make it incomprehensible for the layreader.

The problem for the layreader is a line like this:



> The heralded model United Kingdom experts have largely used to guide their coronavirus policies is "totally unreliable," *according to experts*.


So, the work of one bunch of experts is being dissed by another bunch of experts. How am I supposed to make sense of any of it? I'm neither a data analyst, an epidemiologist, a micro-biologist...you name the science, and I'm not it.

So, we're caught in a lockdown implemented on the basis of what may have been dodgy science. If I accept that for now, and I look to one of the new experts in the article, Michael Bonsall, I note that he is now involved in research into how we get out of the lockdown. I'll follow him with interest.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1256951048054493187
BTW, I'm puzzled by what looks like a link to another current article under the big headline.



> Imperial College model Britain used to justify lockdown a 'buggy mess', 'total unreliable', experts claim
> Britain set to extend COVID-19 lockdown as other European countries begin to reopen


In fact the second article - beneath the attractive video of a boarded up pub - is a month old. Is the Fox News website always this messy?


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> ...BTW, I'm puzzled by what looks like a link to another current article under the big headline.
> 
> In fact the second article - beneath the attractive video of a boarded up pub - is a month old. Is the Fox News website always this messy?


Fox, like other Internet news sources, constantly provides links to older stories, without mentioning their dates, in order to build traffic. This is one trick; another is to leave links to negative stories (if they fit your agenda) on the home page for days or weeks. This seems to be a common practice in an age of press polarization.

In any event, the story I linked to is quite current, since current coronavirus figures for the UK are included in the text. It seems, however, that it is undated.


----------



## philoctetes

Neil Ferguson is at least month-old news... since he got caught hanging out with a married gal just 2 weeks after being diagnosed... and his best defenders aren't sticking up for him or his code...

I actually posted some pseudo-code from github, used to calculate Rt values, on this site a couple weeks ago and alluded to how it convolves distributions, all of which would have been "noisy", and how that noise multiplies in the output... nobody seemed to have a "fix" for me then either... not for lack of trying tho...


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> Fox, like other Internet news sources, constantly provides links to older stories, without mentioning their dates, in order to build traffic. This is one trick; another is to leave links to negative stories (if they fit your agenda) on the home page for days or weeks. This seems to be a common practice in an age of press polarization.
> 
> In any event, the story I linked to is quite current, since current coronavirus figures for the UK are included in the text. It seems, however, that it is undated.


Check your hairdo and clothing, Ken, cause it's all about glamour and cosmetics...


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> In any event, the story I linked to is quite current, since current coronavirus figures for the UK are included in the text. It seems, however, that it is undated.


Yes, I know, the date is provided at the top. That's why I said, "by the way". It was not meant to cast doubt on the validity/ relevance of the main item you were linking to.


----------



## KenOC

Just a note on the currently-maligned Imperial College model. One objection is that it won’t give the same result twice. Actually this is quite common among so-called probabilistic (or stochastic) models, where random numbers are used to adjust values and internal distributions to account for uncertainties. In fact, these models will usually yield different results among individual runs.

Such models are often used in “Monte Carlo simulations,” where thousands of runs are made, usually resulting in mean “expected” results and associated probability distributions around them.


----------



## DaveM

I read up on the subject of Colorado changing to 'deaths due to Covid-19' vs 'deaths while infected with Covid-19'. It isn't clear how the distinction is being made. If it means that if someone dies due to, say, a heart attack or stroke, and the person tests positive for the virus, but has no symptoms specific for the virus then that might be justifiable. But it's tricky because if that person only recently recovered from the virus, then the heart attack or stroke could have been cause by sequelae of having had the virus. I'm not sure how they are getting around that.

It's interesting that some news outlets are reporting this story straightforwardly, while Fox News is calling it 'stunning'. I always like the way semantics is played with when one wants to slant objective information towards an agenda, in this case making the story sound as if there is something nefarious going on. So, in Colorado it was reported that 1150 people had Clovid-19 while 878 of those had died of Clovid-1. Fox reported this as 1150 had been infected by Clovid-19 but _*only*_ 878 died of the virus. The 'only' infers a low or perhaps a more insignificant number. In my book, it's 76% and my guess is that some of those deaths 'while infected with Clovid-19' occurred partly or even significantly due to the virus.


----------



## Guest

Here's a thought-provoking article which goes way beyond the cookie cutter style of groupthink:

https://quillette.com/2020/05/12/sw...but-that-doesnt-make-it-a-bastion-of-liberty/


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> Here's a thought-provoking article which goes way beyond the cookie cutter style of groupthink:
> 
> https://quillette.com/2020/05/12/sw...but-that-doesnt-make-it-a-bastion-of-liberty/


PS: Ricky Gervais defines *dogma*: "*that which cannot be questioned*".

Welcome to Talk Classical.


----------



## DaveM

Regarding diagnosis of Clovid-19: As experience with the virus is increasing, diagnosis is becoming more reliable. Apparently, in the early stages of the disease the virus can be detected from nasopharyngeal swabs, but later on the virus literally moves down the respiratory tract and now is more likely to be detected in bronchoalveolar secretions rather than from the nasopharynx.


----------



## eljr

Christabel said:


> PS: Ricky Gervais defines *dogma*: "*that which cannot be questioned*".
> 
> Welcome to Talk Classical.


who is Ricky Gervais?


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> Just a note on the currently-maligned Imperial College model. One objection is that it won't give the same result twice. Actually this is quite common among so-called probabilistic (or stochastic) models, where random numbers are used to adjust values and internal distributions to account for uncertainties. In fact, these models will usually yield different results among individual runs.
> 
> Such models are often used in "Monte Carlo simulations," where thousands of runs are made, usually resulting in mean "expected" results and associated probability distributions around them.


One article I read said that his code got different answers with the same seeds, which sounds like a problem... like a buffer overflow, or a precision problem... but there are other reasons a Monte Carlo model can be inaccurate... when the underlying model itself is technically wrong...

and there is the same problem that I mentioned about filling up the distribution tails, with a Monte Carlo program you are simulating the samples... and it takes time to simulate and process all those samples in computation... and so yeah if you don't fill up the distros you'll get different expectations with each run, which for many purposes makes the whole thing worthless if you can't get stable results... to have enough samples you can average a bunch of runs or just run more samples in one run, either way it's gonna take time... a crucial limitation 20-30 years ago when I worked on these things... not so much now thanks to Moore's Law... I'd like to see an actual peer review of his code but that won't likely happen...

There are also, of course, problems with random number generators themselves, which are always of interest for many reasons, but they can also color a Monte Carlo analysis...


----------



## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> ...and there is the same problem that I mentioned about filling up the distribution tails, with a Monte Carlo program you are simulating the samples... and it takes time to simulate and process all those samples in computation... and so yeah if you don't fill up the distros you'll get different expectations with each run, which for many purposes makes the whole thing worthless if you can't get stable results...


I think the old saying about "making a silk purse from a sow's ear" applies here. If you have no true knowledge of the R0 under any conditions, then (for instance) defining a more general relationship between R0 and population density is likely an exercise in futility. You end up with a machine with spinning wheels and flashing lights, but which yields meaningless results. I admit to building a few of those in my time... :lol:


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> I think the old saying about "making a silk purse from a sow's ear" applies here. If you have no true knowledge of the R0 under any conditions, then (for instance) defining a more general relationship between R0 and population density is likely an exercise in futility. You end up with a machine with spinning wheels and flashing lights, but which yields meaningless results. I admit to building a few of those in my time... :lol:


Well, a good Monte Carl simulation has to be FAST for reasons I stated above, to get as many samples as possible, or else have a lot of computers dedicated to cranking out those samples... so... if one doesn't have the necessary speed, one can whittle away at the overhead at the cost of accuracy - a common one is to take means and deviations from limited data and then assume a normal distribution for the model...


----------



## philoctetes

re: silk purse from a sow's ear... I have heard AI referred to as a "self-licking ice cream cone" which I will never forget....


----------



## Guest

eljr said:


> who is Ricky Gervais?


A *super bright* writer, comedian and ripper-off of Hollywood bien pensant: from 10 minutes here.


----------



## science

Does the Sorrento thing just solve our problems? Like, can we all just get the antibodies and everything goes back to normal? How come it's not bigger news?


----------



## philoctetes

science said:


> Does the Sorrento thing just solve our problems? Like, can we all just get the antibodies and everything goes back to normal? How come it's not bigger news?


"Confirming a Fox News report, Sorrento said " well then read no further, it must be false

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sorrento-therapeutics-rips-higher-reports-144947455.html


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Does the Sorrento thing just solve our problems? Like, can we all just get the antibodies and everything goes back to normal? How come it's not bigger news?


Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip... Anyway, we have only the developer's word (that I've seen) that their antibody works. Remember Gyro Gearloose...


----------



## pianozach

DaveM said:


> There was one occasion a few weeks ago where he used terminology that Trump didn't like so after a few days he 'clarified' his statement. Since then I'm not aware of his saying one thing one day and another thing the next day as some sort of pattern. What things has he specifically waffled on lately?


Fauci

He's used up his welcome with me, so I don't follow his every word lately. From the start of the outbreak his directions have been inconsistent - that makes him unreliable. Just like his boss Trump.

But he was originally telling the public (January 21st to be specific), via OAN, a far right news source, that *"This is not a major threat to the people of the United States . . . this is not a thing that the citizens of the United States should be worried about."* Either he was just wrong, or he was lying. I think he was lying, because previous to THAT he was rattling the doors about us needing to be prepared for an eventual and very likely pandemic.

So LAST week Trump threw him under the bus: *"Everybody, even Tony Fauci, was saying, 'It's going to pass, not going to be a big deal,'"* Trump said.

Earlier THIS week Fauci contradicted Trump's death toll prediction, and Dr. Rand Paul slammed him for it.

Fauci says don't worry, and now Fauci says the death toll is going to be bad. Which is it?

He should quit. THAT would give me some respect for him. But he should have quit weeks ago when he buried his head in his hand during a press conference. Birx too . . . like when Trump was telling the nation we should look into strong light and injected disinfectant. On both occasions neither stood by their principles . . . Birx actually tried to defend him, and the White House then contradicted her excuse for him.

They may THINK they're more valuable on the inside than the outside, but compromising on science just makes them as irresponsible as the President.


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> ...He should quit. THAT would give me some respect for him. But he should have quit weeks ago when he buried his head in his hand during a press conference. Birx too . . . like when Trump was telling the nation we should look into strong light and injected disinfectant. On both occasions neither stood by their principles . . . Birx actually tried to defend him, and the White House then contradicted her excuse for him.
> 
> They may THINK they're more valuable on the inside than the outside, but compromising on science just makes them as irresponsible as the President.


That's a pretty harsh judgment. I still see him as a courageous person who at age 79 has been working harder than anyone else to do the right thing as part of the scientific wing of this government. He has absolutely no record of waffling on the scientific truth in the past under several administrations. Why would he start now?

A more realistic scenario is that working under this administration, it is impossible to be perfect in how you frame things scientifically because you're likely to get the rug pulled from under you without the least warning. And then there was the scenario in the Friday Rose Garden (alleged) Clovid-19 Update on Friday where the masked Dr. Fauci was never called upon to speak and had to stand like a potted plant behind the president. I couldn't do it. Could you? An alternative is to resign and I'm sure he thinks about it every night, but for an infectious disease scientist, this is the biggest challenge one will ever see and I think he wants to see it through. He may not make it though...


----------



## science

DaveM said:


> I read up on the subject of Colorado changing to 'deaths due to Covid-19' vs 'deaths while infected with Covid-19'. It isn't clear how the distinction is being made. If it means that if someone dies due to, say, a heart attack or stroke, and the person tests positive for the virus, but has no symptoms specific for the virus then that might be justifiable. But it's tricky because if that person only recently recovered from the virus, then the heart attack or stroke could have been cause by sequelae of having had the virus. I'm not sure how they are getting around that.


This is almost a philosophical issue, but the variations between how things are being counted country-to-country, state-to-state within the US, and maybe even hospital-to-hopsital, not to mention how many deaths are just slipping through the cracks in the US, mean that in the end the only numbers that will have any kind of real meaning will be the excess deaths.

That is more complex than "coronavirus killed this many people" -- South Korea (maybe even China) may actually have a negative number of excess deaths because the reduction in pollution and traffic deaths probably saved more lives than the virus killed here. But absent massive testing, such at we can be reasonably certain that every single death is accounted for, complications like that cannot be disentangled.


----------



## science

It's interesting, in terms of understanding human nature, how much more visceral our national reaction to 9/11 was than our reaction to covid-19 has been. At least 20, maybe 30 times as many deaths, but it seems to me that most people -- even 65+ people who have diabetes and heart problems but own almost no stocks -- are more worried about the stock market. Outside of "the radical left" there is almost no reflection on how the country's healthcare system could've dealt with it better, and outside of the medical community there is a complete absence of grief. 

I don't know what to make of it.


----------



## Guest

pianozach said:


> Fauci
> 
> He's used up his welcome with me, so I don't follow his every word lately. From the start of the outbreak his directions have been inconsistent - that makes him unreliable. Just like his boss Trump.
> 
> But he was originally telling the public (January 21st to be specific), via OAN, a far right news source, that *"This is not a major threat to the people of the United States . . . this is not a thing that the citizens of the United States should be worried about."*


Not quite what he said, according to another source.

https://www.politifact.com/factchec...id-fauci-tell-us-not-worry-about-coronavirus/

And back on 21st January, what was _anyone_ saying about it?


----------



## DaveM

Just listened to a gastroenterology podcast with guest Dr. Conigliaro who is heading up the Northwell Health famotidine/Pepcid study in New York which has been going on for about a month now. There wasn’t much new information, but it was interesting to hear him confirm what has been written already. 

Although he couldn’t say anything about results at the moment, I got the feeling that there was a hint about possible good news so far. (I could be wrong.) As well, there is also the possibility that famotidine has been used on patients who are not in the study. If there had been no positive results there I would have thought that would have been mentioned by now.

One of the interesting things was the thinking behind the IV dose of 120mg three times a day which is 9x the usual oral dose. The objective was to load up as many receptors on the virus as possible so that there was minimal chance of underdosing and, thus, missing benefit.


----------



## science

Nearly one in 5 Americans say they would not take a coronavirus vaccine, and another 26% say they might not. The article focuses on Evangelical Christians who have religious reasons for saying such things, but the identify of the people doesn't matter as much as the fact that 41% of Americans say (at this time, we'll see how they feel in a year) that they would choose not to get vaccinated.


----------



## Eclectic Al

philoctetes said:


> One article I read said that his code got different answers with the same seeds, which sounds like a problem... like a buffer overflow, or a precision problem... but there are other reasons a Monte Carlo model can be inaccurate... when the underlying model itself is technically wrong...
> 
> and there is the same problem that I mentioned about filling up the distribution tails, with a Monte Carlo program you are simulating the samples... and it takes time to simulate and process all those samples in computation... and so yeah if you don't fill up the distros you'll get different expectations with each run, which for many purposes makes the whole thing worthless if you can't get stable results... to have enough samples you can average a bunch of runs or just run more samples in one run, either way it's gonna take time... a crucial limitation 20-30 years ago when I worked on these things... not so much now thanks to Moore's Law... I'd like to see an actual peer review of his code but that won't likely happen...
> 
> There are also, of course, problems with random number generators themselves, which are always of interest for many reasons, but they can also color a Monte Carlo analysis...


Indeed. I think one of the problems pointed to in his model was, though, that it sought to model "individuals", I suppose in fact representatives of types of individual, stochastically, but it assumed the same R number applied for all individuals.
Others have investigated what happens in this sort of model, and claim that having R vary for different types of individual routinely gives rise to lower levels before herd immunity might apply, and lower ultimate proportions of the population infected. His numbers were originally 60% for herd immunity, and 81% ultimately infected. It is claimed that by having R vary those numbers can quite readily make big differences, down to herd immunity at 20-30%, and ultimate proportion infected in the 40s of percent.
I think that standing back from the detail of these particular models (which I don't have) it seems on the face of it plausible that that would be the case (ie R would vary and that would be beneficial), in that what you would presumably expect to see is some people spreading a lot (say in care homes or hospitals or certain other jobs, and among the more socially active), and others less so. That would tend to create clusters of high infection, with other areas less affected. The clusters will run their course, and the areas of low R will never see much of an epidemic take off, so you will end up with lower totals, especially if you do take some sensible precautions in the hot spot areas (and we know where they are likely to be), and minimal precautions elsewhere. Hence, that sort of thinking suggests policy actions: tight shielding measures in high risk areas, but others allowed to carry on largely as normal.
Note, I also understand that the early phase of the epidemic indicated that a very large proportion of those in hospital with Covid-19 acquired it there, and that there may well also have been a lot of transmission at GP surgeries. In the UK a lot of people were shipped out from hospital to care homes to clear hospital space (which was one of the actions driven by previous disaster planning for a pandemic, rather than a spontaneous policy!), with consequences for care homes. Hence, you see a bias of infection towards those who already had health conditions (by definition, given where the spreading occurred), and so hot spots. More R variation, and a particularly lethal type in the short term.
His model was also used to justify legal lockdown, on the basis that his default scenario (the 60%/81% one) assumed no change in behaviour otherwise. Meanwhile the Swedes went for a guidance, but not much legal enforcement, and have seen substantial voluntary change in behaviour. Apparently if you recalibrate his model to the Swedish situation (which others claim to have done), then his model predicts Armageddon there by now, because he assumes no action without legal compulsion (and also because his model might just be wrong, especially the varying R point). Clearly we do not yet know whether the Swedish approach will ultimately prove to have been a good one (when questions about implications of lockdown and about second waves clarify). However, it raises questions about the necessity of legal compulsion. On the other hand, stereotypes of Scandinavian countries suggest that they are good at social cohesion, and I think it is true that Sweden has poorer outcomes so far than its neighbours. It is also worth noting in this context, though, that I think Sweden is quite a densely populated country (in the sense that a particularly high proportion of its population live in the densely populated areas) so if population density is critical then Sweden would not be expected to fare particularly well.

Your point about tails of distributions is also well made. I don't know the extent to which policy is being shaped by consideration of modelled outcomes in relation to the downside tails, but I wouldn't have much confidence in the ability of the modellers to know enough about the distribution shapes to provide a meaningful assessment of those tail outcomes, especially when the need to produce results quickly may be impacting on (i) run sizes, and (ii) simplification requirements in the model structure. I can well imagine that policymakers would be minded to take a lot of account of predictions of horrendous outcomes in downside situations, but whether there is any reliability at all in such predictions I would doubt.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> ..Note, I also understand that the early phase of the epidemic indicated that a very large proportion of those in hospital with Covid-19 acquired it there, and that there may well also have been a lot of transmission at GP surgeries.


Do you have a source for that? I haven't seen or heard of any evidence of a large proportion being acquired in the hospital in the UK.


----------



## KenOC

A *VERY long article* comparing New York's coronavirus response to California's. I doubt many will take the time to read this, but it seems to me of interest.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> Do you have a source for that? I haven't seen or heard of any evidence of a large proportion being acquired in the hospital in the UK.


I'm not sure if these were the places I originally picked it up from, but a couple of links are below. The first is just noting the importance of the point (and is more academic in nature), the second is painting the picture (and is more journalistic in tone). For those who don't follow UK media, Matt Ridley is a conservative-oriented journalist who specialises in science and sits in the House of Lords (as it happens). The Spectator is hard to describe. It is the oldest journal of its type in the world - you might describe its politics as libertarian, but it focuses more on prose style than anything else, and many of its contributors seem to have articles accepted only because they write beautifully.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/are-covid-19-patients-in-hospital-or-admitted-to-hospital/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-know-everything-and-nothing-about-covid

The text below is snippets from Matt Ridley's article in The Spectator:

_In Britain, the data shows that the vast majority of people in hospital with Covid-19 at every stage have been 'inpatients newly diagnosed'; relatively few were 'confirmed at the time of admission'. The assumption has been that most of the first group had been admitted on an earlier day with Covid symptoms. But maybe a lot of them had come to hospital with something else and then got the virus.

Even if you combine both groups, there are hardly enough admissions to explain the number of deaths in hospitals, unless nearly everybody admitted to hospital with Covid has died. It is likely that the frail and elderly, which the virus singles out for punishment, were more likely to be going to hospitals or clinics for other ailments and it was there that many of them got infected during February and March.

In Belgium, the country with the worst epidemic per head of population (though the numbers are inflated by the way the country defines a Covid death), all 210,000 people in care homes, both residents and staff, were tested in the second half of April. Some 10 per cent of them tested positive for the virus. That's actively having it at the time of the test, not having had it: one in ten!

If Covid-19 is at least partly a 'nosocomial' (hospital-acquired) disease, then the pandemic might burn itself out quicker than expected. _


----------



## Jacck

science said:


> Nearly one in 5 Americans say they would not take a coronavirus vaccine, and another 26% say they might not. The article focuses on Evangelical Christians who have religious reasons for saying such things, but the identify of the people doesn't matter as much as the fact that 41% of Americans say (at this time, we'll see how they feel in a year) that they would choose not to get vaccinated.


let them catch it. They will be raptured right to Tartarus. You can't fix these people.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Great cartoon in The Sunday Telegraph today.

Here's a link:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/telegraph-cartoons-may-2020/

In case the link doesn't work, picture a young boy sitting in bed with his mother perched on the end of it:

Boy: I think there's a monster under my bed
Mother: Oh my darling. You'll just have to hide under the covers for the rest of your life to avoid certain death

Well it made me laugh.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> It's interesting, in terms of understanding human nature, how much more visceral our national reaction to 9/11 was than our reaction to covid-19 has been. At least 20, maybe 30 times as many deaths, but it seems to me that most people -- even 65+ people who have diabetes and heart problems but own almost no stocks -- are more worried about the stock market. Outside of "the radical left" there is almost no reflection on how the country's healthcare system could've dealt with it better, and outside of the medical community there is a complete absence of grief.
> 
> I don't know what to make of it.


Personally I'm fatalistic by nature, so it rings true for me.

9/11 would be seen as a deliberate act by some people to kill other people.
The coronavirus is, in the old phrase, an "act of God", or these days one might say "****** happens".

By contrast, the policy reaction to the coronavirus crisis does relate to acts of people, and I think you can see on this thread, and more generally, that people get quite worked up if they persuade themselves that others are advocating the "wrong" course of action, or being callous in their proposed solution.

When it comes to the disease itself, that is just a thing. If it turns out that it was the result of an escape from a lab (or even worse, although this seems not to be the case, a genetically engineered strain) then I think attitudes might become more aggressive. If it was the result of spread from a "wet market" then questions can be asked about why they are allowed to operate, but no one intended it to happen and no one was playing with the virus but incompetent at containment measures.

I guess the medical profession are different for 2 reasons: (1) they are so much more likely to observe the severe corona cases in their lives than others, and (2) they see disease as something that they should (?) be able to fix.

Speaking personally I don't know anyone who has had the disease particularly severely, and only a handful who seem to have had it at all (and I don't think I know anyone who has tested positive). If someone close to me suffered from it badly and died, I am sure I would feel grief, but at the moment I am aware that (for example) around 1.5 million people die of TB every year, around 0.4 million of malaria, etc. I feel a generalised sense of sadness about all of those too, but it cannot be a sharp sense of grief or one couldn't go on living.


----------



## Flamme

KenOC said:


> An interesting similarity to Russia, which says its coronavirus death rates are low considering the number of cases because they use the "due to" standard. The gov't official reporting this says their judgments are "quite precise."
> 
> Also, he adds, greatly increased testing yields a lot of cases with few or any symptoms, further lowering the apparent rate of deaths.
> 
> Of course there are those who suspect the true number of deaths is being covered up...


In russian media there are stix and stones thrown at the decision of Poland and nato 2 hold some war simulation drills although coroa is ''raging'' and also on offer of Poland 2 take the Nukes that are currently in germany...Also the wetern media are attacked because ''russophobia'' 4 a ''wish that more ppl die''...Idk y the numbah is so low, perhaps because natural resilience in most ex communist european countries...


----------



## mrdoc

In NZ some clowns are setting fire to Cell Phone towers as they believe the 5g system is transmitting Convid19


----------



## Flamme

I still dont have all the data about the radiation of that netwerk but I think its an over-the-top reaction...Ppl are definitely sliding off the rails, going of deep ends of deep ends...


----------



## Guest

mrdoc said:


> In NZ some clowns are setting fire to Cell Phone towers as they believe the 5g system is transmitting Convid19


I read about the same thing happening in Britain. Oh lord, the insanity of it!! Are these specimens of humanity all anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers, I wonder?


----------



## Eclectic Al

mrdoc said:


> In NZ some clowns are setting fire to Cell Phone towers as they believe the 5g system is transmitting Convid19


We had some of that here. And yesterday Jeremy Corbyn's brother (who is, shall we say, eccentric) was detained by police at an ease-the-lockdown demo while using a megaphone to denounce the fake virus connected in some way with the 5G network.


----------



## Flamme

Its happening all over...I personally am AGAINST the ever encreasing encroaching of technology in our daily lives but this is a bit extre me...It definitely sends more ''waves'' than 4g towers but in future maybe humanity will go 2 10g, what will ppl do then...In the same time ppl want faster internet and more stability and less influence by towers...The major difference compared 2 4g is that there will be much more towers if Im correct...


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> Just returned from a drive-in test centre, having been swabbed (Well, DIY, so self swabbed)!
> 
> As part of a research programme, I was invited to be tested, as I'd reported on Wednesday that I had a headache. Not that I think I've got corona though.
> 
> Results in 48 hours.


Negative. .


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> Negative. .


Great news and a great relief to you and us, I'm sure !!


----------



## Guest

Did singing together spread coronavirus to four choirs?https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/17/did-singing-together-spread-coronavirus-to-four-choirs

The upshot: Does public singing - not just in choirs, but at football matches or at birthday parties - help transmit the coronavirus that is the cause of Covid-19?


----------



## Art Rock

I missed this in the Dutch news, but I found an extended article (in Dutch) about it from May 9th. This happened in March, before the first safety measures were applied in the Netherlands. According to the interviewed choir members, it is quite common that regular flu is passed on between members during rehearsals and performances, so indeed, one would expect that the current pandemic virus can pass on as well. But as they did not practice social distancing (yet), it is not conclusive. For instance, it was also reported that after the rehearsals they drank coffee together, standing in line close to each other while talking.


----------



## Bigbang

BTW, much is made of coughing and sneezing in the presence of others and certainly talking and singing as well but think 'laughing' needs to be pointed out. I mean, it should be so obvious that it not be mention but I see it all the time, talking and laughing, and the spew of particles from laughing is a lot like sneezing and coughing---I think.


----------



## Bigbang

There are articles about Thailand/Laos where they do a daily rinse of the nose (regular habits) and they have lower rates of infections. Regardless this is common sense stuff and I use a saline spray often anyway. There are now studies underway and anyone can google but remember, this is not new as many people did this before as a preventive measure against a variety of issues.


----------



## Room2201974

KenOC said:


> Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip...


In a thread devoid of humor and entertainment you cannot slip that expression in without me invoking one it the coolest unknown songs from the 60's: 

https://m.youtube.com/watchv=uayk1cedfjc


----------



## Art Rock

I've seen reports that hospitals in Colombia are now using hospital beds that can easily be converted to coffins. One can be too practical, methinks.


----------



## Art Rock

Room2201974 said:


> https://m.youtube.com/watchv=uayk1cedfjc


"This page isn't available. Sorry about that.

Try searching for something else."


----------



## pianozach

pianozach said:


> Fauci
> 
> He's used up his welcome with me, so I don't follow his every word lately. From the start of the outbreak his directions have been inconsistent - that makes him unreliable. Just like his boss Trump.
> 
> But he was originally telling the public (January 21st to be specific), via OAN, a far right news source, that *"This is not a major threat to the people of the United States . . . this is not a thing that the citizens of the United States should be worried about."* Either he was just wrong, or he was lying. I think he was lying, because previous to THAT he was rattling the doors about us needing to be prepared for an eventual and very likely pandemic.
> 
> So LAST week Trump threw him under the bus: *"Everybody, even Tony Fauci, was saying, 'It's going to pass, not going to be a big deal,'"* Trump said.
> 
> Earlier THIS week Fauci contradicted Trump's death toll prediction, and Dr. Rand Paul slammed him for it.
> 
> Fauci says don't worry, and now Fauci says the death toll is going to be bad. Which is it?
> 
> He should quit. THAT would give me some respect for him. But he should have quit weeks ago when he buried his head in his hand during a press conference. Birx too . . . like when Trump was telling the nation we should look into strong light and injected disinfectant. On both occasions neither stood by their principles . . . Birx actually tried to defend him, and the White House then contradicted her excuse for him.
> 
> They may THINK they're more valuable on the inside than the outside, but compromising on science just makes them as irresponsible as the President.





DaveM said:


> That's a pretty harsh judgment. I still see him as a courageous person who at age 79 has been working harder than anyone else to do the right thing as part of the scientific wing of this government. He has absolutely no record of waffling on the scientific truth in the past under several administrations. Why would he start now?
> 
> A more realistic scenario is that working under this administration, it is impossible to be perfect in how you frame things scientifically because you're likely to get the rug pulled from under you without the least warning. And then there was the scenario in the Friday Rose Garden (alleged) Clovid-19 Update on Friday where the masked Dr. Fauci was never called upon to speak and *had to stand like a potted plant* behind the president. I couldn't do it. Could you? An alternative is to resign and I'm sure he thinks about it every night, but for an infectious disease scientist, this is the biggest challenge one will ever see and I think he wants to see it through. He may not make it though...


I think we're actually on the same page here. You're just not willing to commit.

Fauci's expertise has been overridden by an administration that doesn't care an iota about science unless there's a profit to be made (Hydroxychloroquine). Even now the Prez is promising a vaccine in the next 7 months, when practically every expert in the field agrees on a timeline of 18 months minimum.

Speaking of vaccines, Trump just picked Ex-Drug Company Exec to run his new Operation Warp Speed.

And then Dr. Rick Bright, a whistle-blower who said he was removed from his job as director of BARDA after objecting to the widespread use of malaria drugs promoted by Mr. Trump.

When working with the Prez, one may not criticize him.

We live in a weird world.


----------



## pianozach

pianozach said:


> Fauci
> 
> He's used up his welcome with me, so I don't follow his every word lately. From the start of the outbreak his directions have been inconsistent - that makes him unreliable. Just like his boss Trump.
> 
> But he was originally telling the public (January 21st to be specific), via OAN, a far right news source, that *"This is not a major threat to the people of the United States . . . this is not a thing that the citizens of the United States should be worried about."* Either he was just wrong, or he was lying. I think he was lying, because previous to THAT he was rattling the doors about us needing to be prepared for an eventual and very likely pandemic.





MacLeod said:


> Not quite what he said, according to another source.
> 
> https://www.politifact.com/factchec...id-fauci-tell-us-not-worry-about-coronavirus/
> 
> And back on 21st January, what was _anyone_ saying about it?


I found *Fauci*'s comments on video, and transcribed them to the best of my recollection. The video was embedded in a news report from somewhere. That actual video interview doesn't seem to be in the archives of OAN's YouTube channel though.

Here's his comments since January 31st.






*FOUND IT* . . . . Found part of Fauci's OAN interview as part of an *OAN* _compilation_ on Fauci. *OAN*, Mr. Trump's new favorite news channel, has been very critical of Dr. Fauci since his interview on January 21, which comes up right away in this video:

_*My transcription was very close to his actual words. Compare.*_


----------



## Kieran

Bigbang said:


> BTW, much is made of coughing and sneezing in the presence of others and certainly talking and singing as well but think 'laughing' needs to be pointed out. I mean, it should be so obvious that it not be mention but I see it all the time, talking and laughing, and the spew of particles from laughing is a lot like sneezing and coughing---I think.


I definitely would have people arrested for laughing, and anyone who was unfortunate enough to be within hearing distance of a good belly laugh should be quarantined for 2 weeks...


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> I think we're actually on the same page here. You're just not willing to commit...


Hmm. I see it the other way around. I'm supporting Fauci; your past comments appear to throw him under the bus.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> A *VERY long article* comparing New York's coronavirus response to California's. I doubt many will take the time to read this, but it seems to me of interest.


This was an interesting article. The general sense seems to be that NY state and NY city politicians did not listen properly to the health community and acted too slowly compared to California. Even though the actions were delayed by only a week or so, the effect was enormous due to the exponential growth of infections.

I agree with that general consensus, but I will also say the NY response was not at all surprising given human thinking. Perhaps San Francisco and California politicians should be greatly commended for acting sooner than others would have, but I don't see clear reasons to condemn the NY response. The one striking part of the article for me was the disconnect between NY state and NY city health departments as the virus issue grew. Assuming the reporting is true, I was rather surprised that the two groups did not communicate smoothly throughout the crisis.

Humans have trouble understanding risks they are not already familiar with. Even though health officials can show people their models, talk about past events such as the Spanish flu, and explain the science in detail, people can't easily incorporate the new information since the outcomes seem remote or theoretical. On March 16 there were 40 cases and no deaths in San Francisco when the mayor issued the order banning essential movement. That's amazing.

Health officials apparently feel that had NY shutdown a week or two sooner, up to a half of deaths could have been prevented. That would still have led to very large number of deaths and likely people questioning why officials had not acted sooner. The decisions to shutdown cities, states, or countries have significant consequences and obviously can't be taken lightly. Those decisions require extraordinary courage and forethought.

No one alive has experienced something like Covid-19. Yes, we know about infectious diseases, but H1N1, SARS, and Ebola never had a strong effect on the world. Humans don't think analytically about the future when the events seem contrary to experience. Look at Climate Change. Scientists have been increasingly warning of dire outcomes for 40 years now, but many don't fully incorporate these views into their own thinking. The consequences seem far off and unlike anything they've experienced.

I would love to see an analysis of why NY's infections curves has turned over and dropped significantly while California's has leveled off but is not dropping. I have been waiting to see that strong fall off of cases in California, but it is not occurring. Actually I think Northern California may be seeing a dropoff while Southern California has increased cases.


----------



## Bigbang

pianozach said:


> I think we're actually on the same page here. You're just not willing to commit.
> 
> Fauci's expertise has been overridden by an administration that doesn't care an iota about science unless there's a profit to be made (Hydroxychloroquine). Even now the Prez is promising a vaccine in the next 7 months, when practically every expert in the field agrees on a timeline of 18 months minimum.
> 
> Speaking of vaccines, Trump just picked Ex-Drug Company Exec to run his new Operation Warp Speed.
> 
> And then Dr. Rick Bright, a whistle-blower who said he was removed from his job as director of BARDA after objecting to the widespread use of malaria drugs promoted by Mr. Trump.
> 
> When working with the Prez, one may not criticize him.
> 
> We live in a weird world.


This is a case of taking Dr Fauci words (1-21) literally and not in the context. Perhaps another scientist would have screamed "fire" and hit the panic button. I read it carefully so I will not bother to convince you though I can sense what the problem is.

Of course President Trump promises all the things we want to hear so he can win. To smart people, they know it means very little to be speaking like this. Ok, Obama say something simple--VOTE. The issue is really not Donald Trump. It is with those who cannot grasp what Donald Trump is doing and those that do know lie to themselves. This type of thing goes on all the time. So it is a matter of outvoting the Trump supporters to help up deal with this virus and any others that might come up in the near future. As I said this was for the coronavirus issue; it is not political though I am responding to the poster where DT name is used.

So to recap, Dr Fauci is under pressure but not really predicting any outcome with certainty.

BTW, if I was asking Dr. Fauci questions in a free, without real restraints situation the answers would have been different as I would have followed up so I could grasp the situation. You do not ask a scientist simple questions a child could ask and expect a complicated scientific answer where follow up is necessary. And the answer would have been, dang right, it can spread anywhere because that is the history of viruses.. Duh!


----------



## Bigbang

Kieran said:


> I definitely would have people arrested for laughing, and anyone who was unfortunate enough to be within hearing distance of a good belly laugh should be quarantined for 2 weeks...


I just thought of something...a good cry is off limits too unless in private. Just imagine all that sobbing...and blow thy nose....arrest them too....:lol:


----------



## Kieran

Bigbang said:


> I just thought of something...a good cry is off limits too unless in private. Just imagine all that sobbing...and blow thy nose....arrest them too....:lol:


Round them up! How dare they hear about their dead dog so close to my safe space? They endangered my life - _and _they triggered my dog! :lol:


----------



## KenOC

TalkingHead said:


> *Did singing together spread coronavirus to four choirs?*
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/17/did-singing-together-spread-coronavirus-to-four-choirs
> 
> The upshot: Does public singing - not just in choirs, but at football matches or at birthday parties - help transmit the coronavirus that is the cause of Covid-19?


Looks like it. Read the sad story of the *Skagit Valley Chorale*.


----------



## Flamme

MacLeod said:


> Negative. .


Test seems 2 b rather simple, I thought 4 such a virus it would b more serious, with blood sample and whatnot...Not just a simple swab in 1s throat?


----------



## KenOC

Russia, still running at ~10,000 new cases each day, has moved past Spain to become the country with the second-highest number of Covid-19 cases. The US remains in the lead position by a very wide margin.


----------



## Guest

Flamme said:


> Test seems 2 b rather simple, I thought 4 such a virus it would b more serious, with blood sample and whatnot...Not just a simple swab in 1s throat?


Well all I can say is, I hope I did it correctly. Swabbing both tonsils, then the back of the throat, without touching tongue, teeth or lips wasn't easy. It made me gag, so had to hastily withdraw the swab-on-a-stick. I then had to push it up one nostril and rotate for 10-15 secs. I hope I pushed it up far enough to make it a valid test!


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> I definitely would have people arrested for laughing, and anyone who was unfortunate enough to be within hearing distance of a good belly laugh should be quarantined for 2 weeks...


Hah! I would have anyone playing WAM's _Eine kleine Nachtmusik_ locked up and water-boarded but that's just me.


----------



## philoctetes

Bigbang said:


> There are articles about Thailand/Laos where they do a daily rinse of the nose (regular habits) and they have lower rates of infections. Regardless this is common sense stuff and I use a saline spray often anyway. There are now studies underway and anyone can google but remember, this is not new as many people did this before as a preventive measure against a variety of issues.


I must be Thai or Lao, as I've been doing morning sinus rinses for 30 years... highly recommended, very simple...


----------



## pianozach

pianozach said:


> Fauci
> 
> He's used up his welcome with me, so I don't follow his every word lately. From the start of the outbreak his directions have been inconsistent - that makes him unreliable. Just like his boss Trump.
> 
> But he was originally telling the public (January 21st to be specific), via OAN, a far right news source, that *"This is not a major threat to the people of the United States . . . this is not a thing that the citizens of the United States should be worried about."* Either he was just wrong, or he was lying. I think he was lying, because previous to THAT he was rattling the doors about us needing to be prepared for an eventual and very likely pandemic.
> 
> So LAST week Trump threw him under the bus: *"Everybody, even Tony Fauci, was saying, 'It's going to pass, not going to be a big deal,'"* Trump said.
> 
> Earlier THIS week Fauci contradicted Trump's death toll prediction, and Dr. Rand Paul slammed him for it.
> 
> Fauci says don't worry, and now Fauci says the death toll is going to be bad. Which is it?
> 
> He should quit. THAT would give me some respect for him. But he should have quit weeks ago when he buried his head in his hand during a press conference. Birx too . . . like when Trump was telling the nation we should look into strong light and injected disinfectant. On both occasions neither stood by their principles . . . Birx actually tried to defend him, and the White House then contradicted her excuse for him.
> 
> They may THINK they're more valuable on the inside than the outside, but compromising on science just makes them as irresponsible as the President.





KenOC said:


> Looks like it. Read the sad story of the *Skagit Valley Chorale*.


I'm familiar with the Seattle choir that became a petri dish, and it happened prior to the general alarm being sounded, so it's tough to blame them for their predicament.

But as a choir accompanist, the choir stories are almost like death to my workplace. I accompany LIVE, in person, choirs. And singers in a choir spray all over each other when they are singing.

I'm reduced to virtual choirs and backing tracks.


----------



## pianozach

MacLeod said:


> Well all I can say is, I hope I did it correctly. Swabbing both tonsils, then the back of the throat, without touching tongue, teeth or lips wasn't easy. It made me gag, so had to hastily withdraw the swab-on-a-stick. I then had to push it up one nostril and rotate for 10-15 secs. I hope I pushed it up far enough to make it a valid test!


Did you see Gov. Cuomo's live CV nasal swab test this morning during his press conference? They push that swab far enough up to reach China.

He tolerated it well, but I got the heebie-jeebies watching it.


----------



## Guest

pianozach said:


> I think we're actually on the same page here. You're just not willing to commit.
> 
> Fauci's expertise has been overridden by an administration that doesn't care an iota about science unless there's a profit to be made (Hydroxychloroquine). Even now the Prez is promising a vaccine in the next 7 months, when practically every expert in the field agrees on a timeline of 18 months minimum.
> 
> Speaking of vaccines, Trump just picked Ex-Drug Company Exec to run his new Operation Warp Speed.
> 
> And then Dr. Rick Bright, a whistle-blower who said he was removed from his job as director of BARDA after objecting to the widespread use of malaria drugs promoted by Mr. Trump.
> 
> When working with the Prez, one may not criticize him.
> 
> We live in a weird world.


Comments pass muster here OK when critical of Trump. Dogma in action.

You cannot stop the people from voting in a particular way by suppressing alternative arguments; this just results in propaganda. People are alert to that and it gets their backs up unless, of course, it happens at the point of a gun. Only then does censorship become a 'viable' proposition!!


----------



## Guest

This is a legacy issues to do with Covid-19:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/18/we-are-pushing-the-worlds-poorest-to-the-brink/


----------



## KenOC

Cars, politics, and the virus. Elon Musk's Tesla factory, the only auto maker remaining in California, is located in Fremont in Alameda County and employs 10,000 people. As the state began to loosen its lockdown, the County refused to allow the factory to re-open. So Musk re-opened it anyway, working alongside the other workers, and dared the County to come and arrest him. He also said he had decided to move Tesla's headquarters and all future programs to another state, probably Nevada or Texas (both of whom sent warm welcomes). The future of the Fremont plant itself, he said, would depend entirely on how Tesla was treated.

Somebody had to blink, and it was Alameda County, who has now *accepted the reopening*. As for Musk, today he tweeted "Take the red pill." This is a reference to the movie _Matrix _but is also used to describe a switch in political viewpoint from liberal to conservative. He was immediately answered by a tweet from Ivanka Trump: "Taken."


----------



## DaveM

^^^The coronavirus is going to have a vote which may come as a surprise to those who want ‘to be free to live as they wish’. You would think from the behavior already starting to occur that people think the virus has gone away.


----------



## science

It's almost unbelievable, but the US had less than a thousand new known deaths from covid-19 yesterday and less than 20k new known cases. With the exception of Mother's Day, this is our best day for deaths since March 30 and for cases since March 28. 

Something is working!


----------



## pianozach

science said:


> It's almost unbelievable, but the US had less than a thousand new known deaths from covid-19 yesterday and less than 20k new known cases. With the exception of Mother's Day, this is our best day for deaths since March 30 and for cases since March 28.
> 
> Something is working!


Love your optimism, but Weekends generally end up with lower numbers due to reporting numbers Saturday through Monday.

If on Wednesday we find that Tuesdays numbers are lower than the previous Tuesday, then we're making progress.


----------



## Guest

pianozach said:


> Did you see Gov. Cuomo's live CV nasal swab test this morning during his press conference? They push that swab far enough up to reach China.
> 
> He tolerated it well, but I got the heebie-jeebies watching it.


I didn't, but it would have given me the heebie-jeebies too.

Btw, on the issue of what Fauci said, it wasn't querying the accuracy of _your_ reporting, but the accuracy of the reporting by OAN. Or, rather, the spin on what Fauci said. It seemed plain to me that he said in both interviews that the virus must be taken seriously. When asked specifically, "Should we be scared/frightened", it made sense to me that he would say, "No."


----------



## erki

I heard about some fan-less football games being played in EU. I think it has taken the reaction to the virus a step towards absurdity again. Players were condemned for celebrating a goal by jumping on one and another backs so players in question apologised thereafter. Also the ball gets disinfected every time it goes out. Not that I care for the game at all but if that is not silly I don't know what is.
The rules need to be smart and logical. Where is the logic in disinfecting the ball?! And taking the body temperature readings(do you think that person could play football if he has 38* fever!).
Again, I like how Sweden conducts its restrictions: basically it explains to the people what is the principle the stay max healthy in the time of pandemic and leaves people to decide how they do it. Because PEOPLE ARE SMART. However in many countries governments tend to think that only they have some brains and people are stupid or like flock of sheep that needs a good shepherd with some able dogs.


----------



## DaveM

Sweden has a population of circa 10 million. Given that that amounts to 1/3 the population of California, I’m not going to look at what Sweden does as a benchmark for this country.


----------



## Eclectic Al

erki said:


> I heard about some fan-less football games being played in EU. I think it has taken the reaction to the virus a step towards absurdity again. Players were condemned for celebrating a goal by jumping on one and another backs so players in question apologised thereafter. Also the ball gets disinfected every time it goes out. Not that I care for the game at all but if that is not silly I don't know what is.
> The rules need to be smart and logical. Where is the logic in disinfecting the ball?! And taking the body temperature readings(do you think that person could play football if he has 38* fever!).
> Again, I like how Sweden conducts its restrictions: basically it explains to the people what is the principle the stay max healthy in the time of pandemic and leaves people to decide how they do it. Because PEOPLE ARE SMART. However in many countries governments tend to think that only they have some brains and people are stupid or like flock of sheep that needs a good shepherd with some able dogs.


I have, in general, been disappointed with the lack of efforts on TV in particular to replace "event" television, and by the cessation of sports. I contrast this with the continuation of current events programming with almost no interruption - a gap would have been a blessed relief. (And why are journalists essential workers, when professional sportsmen and women are not? It seems to me that the sports players add much more to the mental health of the nation.)

To give some examples, it would recently have been the Eurovision Song Contest (a hugely camp event which many love every year). There was a very half-hearted attempt at running a show in the UK. The host did his best, but there was no real attempt to turn it into an event, with online voting, etc.
Similarly with sports, I was expecting a serious attempt to rebroadcast, perhaps, classic examples of previous events. Some attempts have occurred, but again, very half-hearted. I love the example of darts, where the players were competing from their homes - not many sports where you can do that, though. Why haven't snooker players (for example) isolated as a group and run a special event. If any didn't want to, then fine, but I would think well of those who did so for the rest of their careers.
On sport, I thought the financials of top-level sport were primarily about media rights, not attendance at games, and top level players get paid enough that it is not unreasonable to expect them to give a bit back by isolating for a while (- after all, they don't mind going on tour for competitions), and competing. Again, I would have a lot of subsequent respect for any who did. They are also young and fit, so their risks are very low. I could go on, and many examples might not be possible, but some might, and there seems to have been little effort.
I wonder if there is not a puritan spirit around, and the idea of enjoyment is to be frowned upon. The attitude of the police in the UK seems often to have been like that, where the current laws have been implemented by some forces with nit-picking enthusiasm. To give an example, many old people cannot necessarily exercise much, but could sit out in the sun, which is very good for them. A great example was 3 old people sitting outside their sheltered homes, in their own little front gardens and able to engage with each other from there, being told by the police to go back inside, because they were outside but not exercising, and yet Vitamin D is helpful in fighting the disease. (Apologies if this is fake news, but I am not aware that it is.) Bizarrely, joggers were allowed out early in the UK (to pant over each other, and over walkers, as they pass) but sunbathers boosting their Vitamin D and mental health were not, however far apart they were. I guessed the reason was sunbathing = pleasure, so forbidden, jogging = serious effort, so allowed.
It appears that a chunk of the population has been turned completely risk-adverse (and also enjoyment averse), and won't do anything unless they are told it is OK (zero risk!) by nanny, and don't approve of any activity unless it is serious and "necessary". It has never been necessary to go on a skiing holiday, and it is not without risk, but people seemed to think it was OK. How will we ever get our sense of proportion and fun back? Fun is essential.


----------



## Guest

^^^The attitude of "the police" should not be judged on a handful of reports of individual policemen being over-zealous (or plain daft).

Besides, that is history, given the relaxation of the rules from last weekend.

As for TV, theres been plenty of revisiting of top football from the past, though I've not chosen to watch any. More interesting was a rerun of the 1964 election coverage! That was fun!


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## science

DaveM said:


> Sweden has a population of circa 10 million. Given that that amounts to 1/3 the population of California, I'm not going to look at what Sweden does as a benchmark for this country.


There's also the fact that Sweden is not actually doing that hot. Among the Nordic countries, which are the best comparisons because they have similar cultures and healthcare systems, Sweden has by far the worst per capita numbers of cases (almost doubling Norway's) and deaths (more than tripling Denmark's and about 8x of Norway's).

Sweden's per capita numbers actually appear worse than California's, despite having a better healthcare system and less homelessness, but to be fair California's numbers are probably undercounted much more drastically than Sweden's.


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## erki

Rules stupidity undermines its necessity.
Like the people were reprimanded for driving to their country homes while moving restrictions were implemented(I think it was in UK early into restrictions where one health official did just that). What kind of danger represents a person going into his/her car driving to the house and gets into the house? Or some boys in my country riding home taking shortcut by crossing the border - since the borders were closed they were apprehended and fined for illegally crossing the border! In the middle of nowhere.
Also it seems to be in some instances some politicians really like to lock down societies. Our parliament almost did not pass the law that would allow the lifting of state of emergency because some conservative members voted in one unimplementable piece of legislation. Luckily it was fixed and as of today many restrictions are lifted(some remain though).


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## erki

science said:


> There's also the fact that Sweden is not actually doing that hot.


It is way too early to state that as a fact. Most of the countries however dived into absolute unknown with the total lockdown having no clue and often not caring much about it what this may do to their people. I bet they felt like "great leaders" taking their people to the battle - well with some casualties but that is inevitable in the war, isn't it.
There was an interview with Swedish health officials where they say that eventually everybody in the world has to follow the similar procedure - restrict ONLY as much as needed and as less as possible while monitoring the situation.
In the nutshell what Sweden has done different from the rest is that they followed the standard procedure(not the irresponsible/unusual as many think) when facing the infectious disease - watch and learn and try to cope with it.
I think we should forget the numbers all together right now. At this point of the saga they don't tell you much and are mostly confusing if not inadequate.


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## Eclectic Al

I must be feeling in a good mood, but I was just reflecting on what has impressed me over the past weeks. So many have been willing to carry on (at some personal risk), have shown flexibility and imagination in rising to new challenges, or have simply been responsible to avoid spreading to others, and so few have abandoned their responsibilities (demanding guarantees of safety before coming out of their safe little nests, where they can only stay because others are out and about delivering stuff to them), or been stupid.
Here is the role of honour, in no particular order:
Doctors and nurses who have just got on with it. Tick. Plus all the other staff needed to keep places like hospitals open. I'm thinking of people like cleaners, maintenance engineers, etc. Tick.
Supermarkets have kept the food etc flowing, and upped their delivery operations. Tick
The army got involved in putting together Nightingale hospitals (- it's not relevant if they proved needed or not). Tick
Businesses which deliver to restaurants etc, have repositioned to deliver to retail customers. Tick
Bus and other drivers have kept services going. Tick
Delivery people in general, and including the postal service. Double tick.
F1 teams repositioning to make medical devices. Tick.
Even James Dyson (and I'm not normally a fan) making ventilators (even if not, I think, ultimately used). Tick.
People who have been sensible, and that is most people. Tick.
Even banks and their IT staff have kept the money flowing. (Imagine the panic if people were stuck at home, and couldn't buy food because the banking system went kaput.)
My favourite is those small businesses which have repositioned. One of our local small hotel chains starting running a click-and-collect food service, because it had access to suppliers, and both the suppliers and the hotel wanted to keep in business. When it was difficult to obtain slots with the supermarkets for food delivery, it was great that local wholesalers had shifted from supplying restaurants to supplying retail customers, with the existence of the service being communicated by word of mouth, and I now feel loyalty to those businesses. Our local brewery also expanded its retail operations! What's great about this is that it is spontaneous activity: people coming up with their own solutions.
I believe most people want to do things to help others, even if it exposes them to a bit more risk, and I am encouraged by how few seem to be seeking to use the crisis to justify staying home unless they can have guarantees of safety.
I try to think about things like this, which I can see happening, rather than listening to gloom-mongers 
(mostly journalists) who seem to want to create a mental depression to go with the economic one, those who want to engineer a mental lockdown, to go with the physical one.


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## erki

> who seem to want to create a mental depression to go with the economic one, those who want to engineer a mental lockdown, to go with the physical one


I feel that too and try not to let that happen as much I personally am able to.


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## science

erki said:


> It is way too early to state that as a fact. Most of the countries however dived into absolute unknown with the total lockdown having no clue and often not caring much about it what this may do to their people. I bet they felt like "great leaders" taking their people to the battle - well with some casualties but that is inevitable in the war, isn't it.
> There was an interview with Swedish health officials where they say that eventually everybody in the world has to follow the similar procedure - restrict ONLY as much as needed and as less as possible while monitoring the situation.
> In the nutshell what Sweden has done different from the rest is that they followed the standard procedure(not the irresponsible/unusual as many think) when facing the infectious disease - watch and learn and try to cope with it.
> I think we should forget the numbers all together right now. At this point of the saga they don't tell you much and are mostly confusing if not inadequate.


We certainly have to be critically aware of the uncertainties in the numbers but simply ignoring them is not wise. Some information is better than none.

In the comparison between Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, the numbers are very clear.


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## Kieran

I don’t think the numbers are going to be properly understood until we see how this thing plays out over the next twelve months. Sweden haven’t crashed their hospital system and though their numbers are high, it’s because they’re more exposed to it. Unfortunately, we all have to become more exposed to it. In twelve months we may say Sweden took the correct approach, because like Thanos, the virus is inevitable - for all countries. We can’t stay locked up until it vanishes. It’s there waiting on the corner for us all to come out of hiding, which was always the plan once we “flatten the curve...”


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## science

Some guys published an interesting idea in the NYT....



> People can work in two-week cycles, on the job for four days then, by the time they might become infectious, 10 days at home in lockdown. The strategy works even better when the population is split into two groups of households working alternating weeks.


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## erki

science said:


> the numbers are very clear.


Well right, the numbers! 
I think with the bombardment of these everyday numbers we loose the ability to think. So following the numbers becomes the sport or fetish of its own and is used to justify every decision regardless of being right or wrong. It has been going on from very start in Wuan and it seems going so strong in many people minds.
We should start comparing the harm done not only by virus but also by the remedies.


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## Flamme

erki said:


> I heard about some fan-less football games being played in EU. I think it has taken the reaction to the virus a step towards absurdity again. Players were condemned for celebrating a goal by jumping on one and another backs so players in question apologised thereafter. Also the ball gets disinfected every time it goes out. Not that I care for the game at all but if that is not silly I don't know what is.
> The rules need to be smart and logical. Where is the logic in disinfecting the ball?! And taking the body temperature readings(do you think that person could play football if he has 38* fever!).
> Again, I like how Sweden conducts its restrictions: basically it explains to the people what is the principle the stay max healthy in the time of pandemic and leaves people to decide how they do it. Because PEOPLE ARE SMART. However in many countries governments tend to think that only they have some brains and people are stupid or like flock of sheep that needs a good shepherd with some able dogs.


The way it seems cons, not zombies 4 time being, will ROAM the europe in corona and postcorona ''new normal'' https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-mafia.html


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## Eclectic Al

erki said:


> We should start comparing the harm done not only by virus but also by the remedies.


I am wholeheartedly in agreement with this. I think the challenge is that some numbers are easy to find and quote (even if not very meaningful), and some are harder to gather (even if critical).

Just as one example, a future uptick in cancer rates following deferral of screening, deferral of GP visits, and even deferral of treatment. You will never be able to point clearly to how much of that will be caused by lockdown with any precision, but I fully expect that over the next few years there will be a slice of cancer deaths directly caused by lockdown. Cancers deaths may even come down (because of other unconnected developments), so you will not have an increase to point to, but under the radar the numbers have been worsened. The same for a whole range of other conditions, before you start worrying about mental health.

By the time (say in 5 years time) someone does a thorough academic study of this sort of issue the journalistic eye will have moved on, and there will be no headlines to be had.


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## eljr

erki said:


> We should start comparing the harm done not only by virus but also by the remedies.


you go first, let's do this.


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## elgar's ghost

erki said:


> I heard about some fan-less football games being played in EU. I think it has taken the reaction to the virus a step towards absurdity again. Players were condemned for celebrating a goal by jumping on one and another backs so players in question apologised thereafter. Also the ball gets disinfected every time it goes out. Not that I care for the game at all but if that is not silly I don't know what is.
> The rules need to be smart and logical. Where is the logic in disinfecting the ball?! And taking the body temperature readings(do you think that person could play football if he has 38* fever!).


Perhaps it's just as well that Frank 'The Spitting Cobra' Rijkaard is long retired...


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## eljr

Kieran said:


> I don't think the numbers are going to be properly understood until we see how this thing plays out over the next twelve months. Sweden haven't crashed their hospital system and though their numbers are high, it's because they're more exposed to it. Unfortunately, we all have to become more exposed to it. In twelve months we may say Sweden took the correct approach, because like Thanos, the virus is inevitable - for all countries. We can't stay locked up until it vanishes. It's there waiting on the corner for us all to come out of hiding, which was always the plan once we "flatten the curve..."


i am not sure one can look at Sweden and say it is an example for NYC, for example.


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## Flamme

Not 2day satan! #coronavirus #socialdistance #mask


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## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> sports players add much more to the mental health of the nation.


insightful perspective


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## Kieran

eljr said:


> i am not sure one can look at Sweden and say it is an example for NYC, for example.


Which - of course - nobody has said. We don't all think in terms of what the virus means to America...


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## science

Kieran said:


> Which - of course - nobody has said. We don't all think in terms of what the virus means to America...


Lots of Americans have held up Sweden's response as ideal for America. (They are usually not the same people who hold up Sweden's healthcare system as an ideal for America.)


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## Flamme

My dad who, until this pandemic, played football with his chums, every week, usually on sunday is on needles and pins 2 continue that ''tradition''...Also there are news he could work since june...He is like a caged animal, although he is already 68 he cannot rest. But in my country there is a RISE in cases so situation changes from hour 2 hour...So much uncertainty and stress. Life was hard even b4 coronamia but now it is heavy as lead...


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## Kieran

science said:


> Lots of Americans have held up Sweden's response as ideal for America. (They are usually not the same people who hold up Sweden's healthcare system as an ideal for America.)


As we come to know, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with Covid, and we even see equally qualified experts in the field differ in how they think we should handle it, how to classify deaths, how organise statistical projections etc, so looking at other countries maybe instructive, but as you say, they're not really alike in the systems they have in place, or even in the culture of the people. I know as an Irish person, we're not the same as Swedes, so their response might culturally be difficult for us. We're more tactile, I suppose. The Italians even more so. Glad to see that things are improving in Italy and Spain, by the way...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> As we come to know, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with Covid, and we even see equally qualified experts in the field differ in how they think we should handle it, how to classify deaths, how organise statistical projections etc, so looking at other countries maybe instructive, but as you say, they're not really alike in the systems they have in place, or even in the culture of the people. I know as an Irish person, we're not the same as Swedes, so their response might culturally be difficult for us. We're more tactile, I suppose. The Italians even more so. Glad to see that things are improving in Italy and Spain, by the way...


I'm English, and I love not touching people. How this idea of hugging and kissing people when they come round to your house started I just don't know! A possible upside when this calms down is if I can go back to a brief nod from a safe distance.


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## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> I'm English, and I love not touching people. How this idea of hugging and kissing people when they come round to your house started I just don't know! A possible upside when this calms down is if I can go back to a brief nod from a safe distance.


Oh brother, you and me both. I think it's a European disease that caught on, that soon as you're introduced to a complete stranger, they're in close groping and smooching and you're closing your eyes and thinking of England (or Ireland, in my case)...


----------



## elgar's ghost

Like an old joke I heard when an Italian hostess opened her arms to embrace an English guest - he handed her his hat and coat.


----------



## mmsbls

science said:


> We certainly have to be critically aware of the uncertainties in the numbers but simply ignoring them is not wise. Some information is better than none.
> 
> In the comparison between Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, the numbers are very clear.


The numbers for deaths and infections do appear to be fairly clear even if there is some uncertainty. What has surprised me is the estimation of effects on the economies of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. As I understand things, economists don't believe Sweden will see significantly improved economic numbers over the coming quarters compared to other Scandinavian countries. Part of that has to do with other countries economies, but I think much of it has to do with the fact that Sweden is not as open for commerce as some might think.

I guess we'll have to see how the deaths and economy fare in late fall, winter, and next year. Certainly there does not seem to be much positive evidence for opening up being clearly better.


----------



## DaveM

Kieran said:


> Which - of course - nobody has said. We don't all think in terms of what the virus means to America...


Actually someone has said the following which is why the subject got resurrected. If one lives in America, particularly in one of the hardest hit areas in the world, NYC, then one might disagree with the below and comment. 

'_[Again, I like how Sweden conducts its restrictions: basically it explains to the people what is the principle the stay max healthy in the time of pandemic and *leaves people to decide how they do it*. Because PEOPLE ARE SMART. However in many countries governments tend to think that only they have some brains and people are stupid or like flock of sheep that needs a good shepherd with some able dogs./I]_


----------



## mmsbls

erki said:


> Well right, the numbers!
> I think with the bombardment of these everyday numbers we loose the ability to think. So following the numbers becomes the sport or fetish of its own and is used to justify every decision regardless of being right or wrong. It has been going on from very start in Wuan and it seems going so strong in many people minds.
> We should start comparing the harm done not only by virus but also by the remedies.


I suspect that most of us do not have access to the information necessary to properly evaluate the various numbers (especially with uncertainties). I can't imagine health officials and economists don't work hard to understand both the most relevant numbers along with uncertainties in order to inform policymakers. Without the numbers, experts would not know anything about the virus situation, and without information from those experts, policymakers (e.g. politicians) would have no idea how to proceed.


----------



## erki

eljr said:


> you go first, let's do this.


Oh, you have awaken - that's the easy one! I have no work due to murder of the economy. Do you need more?


----------



## science

erki said:


> Oh, you have awaken - that's the easy one! I have no work due to murder of the economy. Do you need more?


On the other hand, you're still alive!

So I guess it's 50/50....


----------



## mountmccabe

KenOC said:


> Cars, politics, and the virus. Elon Musk's Tesla factory, the only auto maker remaining in California, is located in Fremont in Alameda County and employs 10,000 people. As the state began to loosen its lockdown, the County refused to allow the factory to re-open. So Musk re-opened it anyway, working alongside the other workers, and dared the County to come and arrest him. He also said he had decided to move Tesla's headquarters and all future programs to another state, probably Nevada or Texas (both of whom sent warm welcomes). The future of the Fremont plant itself, he said, would depend entirely on how Tesla was treated.
> 
> Somebody had to blink, and it was Alameda County, who has now *accepted the reopening*.


Some clarifications and context here. Tesla resisted the order to shut down back in mid-March. They tried to claim that they were an essential business and should be allowed to remain open, which was denied and thankfully they closed.

Then a few weeks ago state and county officials decided to allow manufacturing plants to re-open if they submitted plans for how they were going to do that safely. Showing measures they were taking to allow social distancing and other protections for their workers.

Tesla decided they were going to open before submitting their plan and getting it signed off. They weren't singled out because of any grudge against Tesla, but because they hadn't done what was required for them to open.

I could decide to go fishing and then yell and scream about injustice when I get in trouble but the people around me don't. But when those people have fishing licenses and I don't, that's the issue.

So it seems like the entity that blinked here was Tesla, not Alameda county. It sounds like there are at least some adults at the company.


----------



## mmsbls

erki said:


> ...We should start comparing the harm done not only by virus but also by the remedies.


I hope people with knowledge of health, economic, and other effects for opening up, continuing to shelter in place, and in between policies have been doing this. I will say that such a project is rather difficult. Putting monetary values on deaths and economic loss are relatively straightforward, but it's not so easy to determine the number of deaths arising from various scenarios or the continued economic loss in future quarters especially from scenarios where we open up completely but incur large deaths from the virus.

In this thread I get the impression that people either discount the value of a life (i.e. overvalue economic loss compared to lives) or over inflate the value of a life (i.e. discount economic loss compared to lives) given that many here feel it's obvious how to proceed. I do feel that people here perhaps underestimate the effect of many deaths from opening up causing the economy to decrease significantly. In other words, even if we open up, there will likely be significant economic loss.


----------



## KenOC

erki said:


> ...We should start comparing the harm done not only by virus but also by the remedies.


We should have started doing that quite a while ago.


----------



## pianozach

MacLeod said:


> ^^^The attitude of "the police" should not be judged on a handful of reports of individual policemen being over-zealous (or plain daft). . . .


I think you're referring to them being overzealous in regards to the public not wearing masks, or forming large groups, right.

Here in the US it's certainly more than a "handful" of reports of "over-zealous" police. But this has been going on for a long, long time.


----------



## KenOC

mountmccabe said:


> Some clarifications and context here. Tesla resisted the order to shut down back in mid-March. They tried to claim that they were an essential business and should be allowed to remain open, which was denied and thankfully they closed.
> 
> Then a few weeks ago state and county officials decided to allow manufacturing plants to re-open if they submitted plans for how they were going to do that safely. Showing measures they were taking to allow social distancing and other protections for their workers.
> 
> Tesla decided they were going to open before submitting their plan and getting it signed off. They weren't singled out because of any grudge against Tesla, but because they hadn't done what was required for them to open.
> 
> I could decide to go fishing and then yell and scream about injustice when I get in trouble but the people around me don't. But when those people have fishing licenses and I don't, that's the issue.
> 
> So it seems like the entity that blinked here was Tesla, not Alameda county. It sounds like there are at least some adults at the company.


That is quite a different story compared with the reporting from several sources I checked, though it seems quite reasonable. Is there any chance you can supply a reference for what you report in your post?


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> ...In this thread I get the impression that people either discount the value of a life (i.e. overvalue economic loss compared to lives) or *over inflate the value of a life* (i.e. discount economic loss compared to lives) given that many here feel it's obvious how to proceed...


How does one 'over inflate the value of life' in this situation? If the disease was affecting mostly those over 70 and relatively few under 70, my guess is that those over 70 would not have expected a major economic shutdown to save their lives at the expense of jobs and the economy in the first place. But, in actuality, the virus is killing many in the 30-70 age group -some in that age group are suffering strokes which is peculiar to that group- which includes a lot of breadwinners and has been almost wiping out some families. Hundreds were infected in one meat-packing plant alone.

My gripe is that those in this thread who are pushing an 'open things up' agenda are doing so with no perspective about how that is going to be done without killing many of those who return to work.


----------



## eljr

DaveM said:


> My gripe is that those in this thread who are pushing an 'open things up' agenda are doing so with no perspective about how that is going to be done without killing many of those who return to work.


My gripe is the arrogance and nastiness with which so much has been posted.


----------



## eljr

mmsbls said:


> I hope people with knowledge of health, economic, and other effects for opening up, continuing to shelter in place, and in between policies have been doing this. I will say that such a project is rather difficult. Putting monetary values on deaths and economic loss are relatively straightforward, but it's not so easy to determine the number of deaths arising from various scenarios or the continued economic loss in future quarters especially from scenarios where we open up completely but incur large deaths from the virus.
> 
> In this thread I get the impression that people either discount the value of a life (i.e. overvalue economic loss compared to lives) or over inflate the value of a life (i.e. discount economic loss compared to lives) given that many here feel it's obvious how to proceed. I do feel that people here perhaps underestimate the effect of many deaths from opening up causing the economy to decrease significantly. In other words, even if we open up, there will likely be significant economic loss.


also, if one opens up the uptick runs the very real risk of overrunning hospitals in which case we would need to choose who gets care and who does not like happened in Italy


----------



## mountmccabe

KenOC said:


> That is quite a different story compared with the reporting from several sources I checked, though it seems quite reasonable. Is there any chance you can supply a reference for what you report in your post?


Local coverage from KRON 4 from last week

Tesla and the county had been in conversation on how to reopen safely.

Tesla started production again Monday, May 11 after the lasted Twitter tirade from Musk.

It sounds like Tesla finally submitted their plan late that Monday, which the Alameda County health department received Tuesday.



KRON 4 Article said:


> "I do think that Tesla does have the means and the technology to run a plant safely. I think they can do that but this plan has to be verified by the Alameda County health professionals," Vinnie Bacon said.
> 
> However, Fremont City Councilmember Vinnie Bacon urged Tesla to be patient with the process.
> 
> "I think safety must come first so I think that Tesla does need to take direction from Alameda County," Bacon said.


This NPR article from Monday, May 11 tells a similar story, though it was written before Tesla submitted their plan.

See also this Tweet from the Alameda County Public Health Department and the embedded press release on the situation as of May 12.


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> Which - of course - nobody has said. We don't all think in terms of what the virus means to America...


I very specifically used NYC not the America (contrast) because of how people live here, much different than the rest of America.


----------



## Guest

eljr said:


> I very specifically used NYC not the America (contrast) because of how people live here, much different than the rest of America.


I would dearly love to visit the heartland of the USA as my sisters did a few years ago when they drove up the old Route 66 all the way to Chicago (I think it was). These are the American people I'd like to meet and I'm betting they're 'salt of the earth' types like we meet in rural and regional Australia. (Alas, I think my days of travelling are over; we have other financial priorities now and, like Victor Meldrew in "*One Foot in the Grave*", I have 'too many miles on the clock!!'


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## Guest

DaveM said:


> How does one 'over inflate the value of life' in this situation? If the disease was affecting mostly those over 70 and relatively few under 70, my guess is that those over 70 would not have expected a major economic shutdown to save their lives at the expense of jobs and the economy in the first place. But, in actuality, the virus is killing many in the 30-70 age group -some in that age group are suffering strokes which is peculiar to that group- which includes a lot of breadwinners and has been almost wiping out some families. Hundreds were infected in one meat-packing plant alone.
> 
> My gripe is that those in this thread who are pushing an 'open things up' agenda are doing so with no perspective about how that is going to be done without killing many of those who return to work.


People are not 'discounting' the value of life by expressing concern about keep alive very old people who are languishing in nursing homes at the expense of the rest of the population - especially the vigorous young who are entitled to earn a living and prosper. In Australia the people advocating for the economy and society to remain shut down (we have very few people in hospital in the state of Victoria with that part of our country still effectively closed!!) are cozy public servants on the taxpayer teat who have no fear of losing their jobs and continue to be paid. Economic apartheid. Those in the private sector (the majority employer in Australia) are living a very tenuous existence right now and, of course, suicide rates are climbing. There's an opportunity cost in protecting the elderly, I'm afraid, and it cannot come at the expense of the younger generations of fit and healthy people (99% of whom will not be killed by Covid-19). The VAST majority of those who return to work are not going to be 'killed'. Are you concerned about the significant numbers who die from drug overdoses? Or road accidents? Or cancer, heart disease? If you've lost 90,000 people in the USA from Coronavirus (most of whom have co-morbidities) then you've effectively rolled 2 years of road toll into one. Let's try and protect the vulnerable at the same time as the society and economy gets back to business. I'm afraid there just isn't an alternative without vast amounts of pain in the near future. It's morphed from "flattening the curve" to "getting rid of the virus". The latter just cannot be done.

My 'gripe' is the default position of emotion and hand-wringing sentimentality rather than common sense and practical realities for the many many millions who are making the sacrifice. And, of course, there's a strong political impetus to the hand-wringing and blame game.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> How does one 'over inflate the value of life' in this situation? If the disease was affecting mostly those over 70 and relatively few under 70, my guess is that those over 70 would not have expected a major economic shutdown to save their lives at the expense of jobs and the economy in the first place. But, in actuality, the virus is killing many in the 30-70 age group -some in that age group are suffering strokes which is peculiar to that group- which includes a lot of breadwinners and has been almost wiping out some families. Hundreds were infected in one meat-packing plant alone.


To properly evaluate policies one must estimate the costs and benefits of each scenario. In general one must estimate mortality and morbidity as well as economic loss. Economic loss is usually measured in $ (in the US), but one has to give an estimate of the value of a life in order to compare using the same metric. So standard cost benefit analysis attempts to estimate a value for a human life. Today's numbers tend to be around US$9 million / life. Obviously one can argue that value. If one used a value of US$1 trillion /life, that would mean that we should spend the entire US budget to save 4 lives. To most people, that would be over inflating the value of a human life.



DaveM said:


> My gripe is that those in this thread who are pushing an 'open things up' agenda are doing so with no perspective about how that is going to be done without killing many of those who return to work.


There are 2 huge uncertainties with "opening up." The first is what you mention - how many additional lives will be lost compared to further sheltering or other policies. The second is the negative effect on the economy due to a potential large increase in deaths from opening up too soon. Will opening up now or soon lead to very large economic losses because of high deaths and morbidity? If so, perhaps opening up to save the economy might actually hurt the situation even more.


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## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> We should have started doing that quite a while ago.


Some of us tried, but I don't think anyone here really cares about that kind of analysis.


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## Guest

Christabel said:


> People are not 'discounting' the value of life by expressing concern about keep alive very old people who are languishing in nursing homes at the expense of the rest of the population - especially the vigorous young who are entitled to earn a living and prosper.


I think you've just confirmed that's exactly what you're doing. You're weighing one person's right to life against another's and you _appear _to have decided (though you might not have made up your mind yet, I'll allow that) the vigorous young has a prior entitlement over the old.


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## Kieran

It's an interesting topic, or - "how this topic gets scanned" - the question of Lives vs Economy, although I haven't actually seen anyone put it such stark terms yet, but that seems to be the gist of the allegation, that some people want to sacrifice older people so they can keep the economy afloat. We shouldn't forget that the cost of the economy crashing will _most definitely_ be measured in human lives too. But really, I think this debate becomes a little circular, and if I may say so, there's an element of virtue signalling going on too. And of course, the dreaded politics of false compassion.

Hypothetically speaking (and let me be clear about that), if the virus was guaranteed to *only *kill people over 95, but they could catch the virus from the general population, would anyone argue for a huge lockdown, and the economic crash that would follow, in order to protect our extremely elderly population for the few months they have left? Their lives are precious too, right? Or would we say, well, we'll try keep them safe as much as we can, but we can't crash the economy in this circumstance?

Let's be sensible about this. I'm in favour of the lockdown for the reason we were given - a valid reason - which is that our health service was in danger of becoming overrun. So the blurb was, "we must flatten the curve", but also, that we would then spread the infections more evenly so the health system could cope. Now it seems to be that even if this happens, there are people who want to prolong the lockdown until the virus is gone away, since it might endanger our elderly folks.

Of _course _it will endanger our elderly folks, so we must try protect them. My own mother passed away from pulmonary fibrosis - had she lived to see this year, we would have had to take special measures to protect her. She couldn't go out and and we'd make sure she had everything she needs, to be safe. And this is what I think most people who want to start try get back to their jobs, to earn money to pay rent, and utility bills, feed their kids, also want for their elders - that they should be kept safe, cherished and hopefully they'll see this out. But once the curve is flattened, we have to start thinking of getting people outdoors, back to work and school, in stages maybe, but that's got to be the goal. The virus isn't going to sulk away from here because we're all hiding.

Now, I also happen to largely agree with this:



mmsbls said:


> There are 2 huge uncertainties with "opening up." The first is what you mention - how many additional lives will be lost compared to further sheltering or other policies. The second is the negative effect on the economy due to a potential large increase in deaths from opening up too soon. Will opening up now or soon lead to very large economic losses because of high deaths and morbidity? If so, perhaps opening up to save the economy might actually hurt the situation even more.


But there is already a huge cost in the lockdown. In Ireland, the helpline for abused children is already getting 20% more calls than usual. Drink, domestic violence, anxiety, fear, this is a tinderbox waiting to explode. Massive unemployment. There huge costs already for people psychologically. We've begun stage one of opening up, which includes restrictions and warnings about how to behave. We get it. We've gotten it for two months, already...


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## Guest

We're all worried about the economy, though since there are many opinions on the economy and how it should be managed, there are bound to be degrees of difference in the extent of that worry.

But if the argument is presented in pure economic terms (eg "trashing the economy and the livelihood of our young"), it's hardly surprising that it provokes a counter reaction.

Instead, it would have made more sense to argue somthing like this:

In order to protect the health of the nation, we need to introduce social distancing measures everywhere, including the workplace, and other measures to reduce transmission.

The probable consequences are these 
[list of consequences].
Here are the alternative actions 
[list of alternatives] and their consequences.
Here are the mitigating actions we could take to offset the negative consequences 
[list of mitigating actions].
Your government believes that the best course of action would be to [course of action] and, as we need to move very swiftly on this, it's what we're going to do.

It didn't happen like that. But there could still be a sober debate about how we move forward.


----------



## Kieran

MacLeod said:


> We're all worried about the economy, though since there are many opinions on the economy and how it should be managed, there are bound to be degrees of difference in the extent of that worry.
> 
> But if the argument is presented in pure economic terms (eg "trashing the economy and the livelihood of our young"), it's hardly surprising that it provokes a counter reaction.
> 
> Instead, it would have made more sense to argue somthing like this:
> 
> In order to protect the health of the nation, we need to introduce social distancing measures everywhere, including the workplace, and other measures to reduce transmission.
> 
> The probable consequences are these
> [list of consequences].
> Here are the alternative actions
> [list of alternatives] and their consequences.
> Here are the mitigating actions we could take to offset the negative consequences
> [list of mitigating actions].
> Your government believes that the best course of action would be to [course of action] and, as we need to move very swiftly on this, it's what we're going to do.
> 
> It didn't happen like that. But there could still be a sober debate about how we move forward.


That's actually what's happening here in Ireland, that there are still lists of restrictions and prohibitions, and the opening up is tentative, but not complete yet. We're going in stages. There are photos of people queuing up outside B&Q (men only, actually), to maybe do all those jobs around the house they've been promising to do, "but never got around to." My cousin went back to work in a hardware store, and there are limits to how many can enter. People are old hands at this stuff by now, having to form a line outside the supermarkets, and in fact we all seem to be able to adopt to it...


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> .... There's an opportunity cost in protecting the elderly, I'm afraid, and it cannot come at the expense of the younger generations of fit and healthy people (99% of whom will not be killed by Covid-19). The VAST majority of those who return to work are not going to be 'killed'. Are you concerned about the significant numbers who die from drug overdoses? Or road accidents? Or cancer, heart disease? If you've lost 90,000 people in the USA from Coronavirus (most of whom have co-morbidities) then you've effectively rolled 2 years of road toll into one. Let's try and protect the vulnerable at the same time as the society and economy gets back to business.


I pointed out in my post that the guidelines that have been put in place have not been an attempt to save the elderly at the expense of the younger generations. As the pandemic has progressed it is apparent that the latter have been affected far more than thought possible 4 months ago.

Your comparison of 90,000 coronavirus deaths to 2 years of road-related deaths is misleading. Why compare coronavirus deaths over just 4 months to 2 years of traffic deaths? Annualize projected losses to the virus to get an accurate comparison which, so far, amounts to 250,000+in the first year if this continues unabated.

Why would I not be concerned about drug overdoses, road accidents and cancer/heart disease deaths? Seems to me that your perspective is 'we have all these deaths from other causes, why is everyone getting so concerned about coronavirus deaths and taking major measures to stop them?'


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## science

Let's consider four kinds of things: 

A. Things we can do that aren't terribly inconvenient and don't harm the economy but save lives. 
B. Things we can do that are inconvenient but save lives and don't harm the economy. 
C. Things we can do that are inconvenient and harm the economy but save enough lives to make up for it. 
D. Things we can do that are inconvenient and harm the economy but don't save enough lives to make up for it. 

I don't know if anyone's arguing for D, but I know that people are arguing against A, B, and C and claiming it's because they're against D. For a lot of people, doing church virtually (A) is too much to ask. For a lot of people, wearing masks (B) is too much to ask. For a lot of people, closing barbershops and manicure places (C) is too much to ask. 

This is who we are, and who we have always been, really, as long as no one particularly close to us is in direct danger.


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## Open Book

Kieran said:


> Let's be sensible about this. I'm in favour of the lockdown for the reason we were given - a valid reason - which is that our health service was in danger of becoming overrun. So the blurb was, "we must flatten the curve", but also, that we would then spread the infections more evenly so the health system could cope. Now it seems to be that even if this happens, there are people who want to prolong the lockdown until the virus is gone away, since it might endanger our elderly folks.


I don't think anyone is expecting the virus to go away anymore. Authorities aren't being clear about their plans because their exact plans are still up in the air because we still don't know enough, for certain, about the virus and the scope of the harm it can do. We keep finding unpleasant new surprises.

The lockdowns are to keep the hospitals under control but also to buy time to study the virus and come up with treatments.

If we didn't have the lockdowns the number of cases and deaths curves would have risen steeply. How would people feel then? Would they feel like going out and leading their normal life? Where would the economy be then?



Kieran said:


> Of _course _it will endanger our elderly folks, so we must try protect them. My own mother passed away from pulmonary fibrosis - had she lived to see this year, we would have had to take special measures to protect her. She couldn't go out and and we'd make sure she had everything she needs, to be safe. And this is what I think most people who want to start try get back to their jobs, to earn money to pay rent, and utility bills, feed their kids, also want for their elders - that they should be kept safe, cherished and hopefully they'll see this out.
> 
> But once the curve is flattened, we have to start thinking of getting people outdoors, back to work and school, in stages maybe, but that's got to be the goal. The virus isn't going to sulk away from here because we're all hiding.


Just don't expect things to be the same or the economy to be restored. It can't be because there will be restrictions. The restrictions will mean that businesses can't operate at the level of productivity they had before. A restaurant that is half full due to distancing requirements will bring in only half the revenue unless they double their hours. Same goes for a hair salon where only every other station can now be used to keep customers physically apart.



Kieran said:


> We've begun stage one of opening up, which includes restrictions and warnings about how to behave. We get it. We've gotten it for two months, already...


No, too many people still don't get it. Too many aren't wearing masks or other protection. They're careless about how physically close they get. They have to be constantly reminded. Some of them obviously think opening up means things are back to normal.

Sweden is wrong, the average person isn't smart enough to take precautions on their own and doesn't care enough to protect their fellow human. They need to be given orders.


----------



## Open Book

Christabel said:


> There's an opportunity cost in protecting the elderly, I'm afraid, and it cannot come at the expense of the younger generations of fit and healthy people (99% of whom will not be killed by Covid-19).





Christabel said:


> The VAST majority of those who return to work are not going to be 'killed'.


We don't know that for sure. All we know is the majority of those who catch the virus will survive _that one infection_.

We don't know what will happen with _future infections_. If a person gains no immunity from their infection, they will catch it again.

We don't know the exact death rate, but it's much higher than the flu.

It's too early, there's a lot we don't know. It' seems like forever but it's only been a few months. Yes, that is terrible for the economy, but's it's not a lot of time to study a virus.



Christabel said:


> If you've lost 90,000 people in the USA from Coronavirus (most of whom have co-morbidities) then you've effectively rolled 2 years of road toll into one. Let's try and protect the vulnerable at the same time as the society and economy gets back to business. I'm afraid there just isn't an alternative without vast amounts of pain in the near future.


What? The U.S. has lost 90K people *only* because we've shut things down and practiced social distancing. If we hadn't done that, the toll would be much higher. The toll was projected into the _millions_ if we had done nothing.

You are using the figure 1% fatality. Don't know where you got that, but let's say it's that low, that's *3.27 million* people lost if every American were to catch the virus.



Christabel said:


> It's morphed from "flattening the curve" to "getting rid of the virus". The latter just cannot be done.


No, it hasn't. You're either not reading or not understanding arguments that are being made on this board.


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## pianozach

So.

_THIS_ is the story today.

*Trump is now criticizing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's Decision to reopen his state*.

No paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/trump-georgia-governor-kemp-coronavirus.html


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## Open Book

What are you all planning to do if someone gets sick in your household? I haven't seen this addressed at all here and there is little advice from the experts.

Lock them in their room and slip food under the door?

Get them tested or not? I suppose that's up to your doctor, who will go by a description of the symptoms.

Unnerving. You'd want to nurture your sick loved one, but you would want to stay far enough away to avoid infection yourself.


----------



## science

Open Book said:


> What are you all planning to do if someone gets sick in your household? I haven't seen this addressed at all here and there is little advice from the experts,
> 
> Lock them in their room and slip food under the door?
> 
> Get them tested or not? I suppose that's up to your doctor, who will go by a description of the symptoms.
> 
> Unnerving. You'd want to nurture your sick loved one, but you would want to stay far enough away to avoid infection yourself.


I assume that if anyone who lives with me gets it, I will already have it by the time they find out.

What's really hard for me to imagine is if my parents get it. They won't be able to take care of each other. The only answer, assuming that they're allowed to be at home, is that I or one of my siblings will have to quit our job and move to their little town to take care of them, and I'm probably the one it would have to be. And if I got sick, man do I hope South Korea would let me back in to be treated here rather than in the States.


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## Open Book

science said:


> I assume that if anyone who lives with me gets it, I will already have it by the time they find out.
> 
> What's really hard for me to imagine is if my parents get it. They won't be able to take care of each other. The only answer, assuming that they're allowed to be at home, is that I or one of my siblings will have to quit our job and move to their little town to take care of them, and I'm probably the one it would have to be. And if I got sick, man do I hope South Korea would let me back in to be treated here rather than in the States.


True, it usually takes time for symptoms to show up and by then it has already spread where it can.

I sympathize with your parent situation. I'm glad my mother didn't live to see this, and especially not the death of her brother from the virus.

Are you from South Korea and are stuck in the U.S. for now? Are your parents in the U.S.?


----------



## pianozach

Open Book said:


> What are you all planning to do if someone gets sick in your household? I haven't seen this addressed at all here and there is little advice from the experts,
> 
> Lock them in their room and slip food under the door?
> 
> Get them tested or not? I suppose that's up to your doctor, who will go by a description of the symptoms.
> 
> Unnerving. You'd want to nurture your sick loved one, but you would want to stay far enough away to avoid infection yourself.


I have some in-law relatives whose daughter was in Spain with some other college students when the alarm went out. She managed to get the last flight out, although some of her classmates didn't. When she came back she had to be QUARANTINED, which she did at home. That home had three bedrooms upstairs, which were a guest room, her old room, and her older brother's old room, so the upstairs was simply not being used anymore (the master bedroom was downstairs).

She quarantined upstairs . . . he folks brought her food, left it at the door, and that's how she lived for two weeks.

Obviously, the home conditions were ideal for this, but if you get sick with COVID-19, I don't know what the protocol is . . .


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## Open Book

pianozach said:


> I have some in-law relatives whose daughter was in Spain with some other college students when the alarm went out. She managed to get the last flight out, although some of her classmates didn't. When she came back she had to be QUARANTINED, which she did at home. That home had three bedrooms upstairs, which were a guest room, her old room, and her older brother's old room, so the upstairs was simply not being used anymore (the master bedroom was downstairs).
> 
> She quarantined upstairs . . . he folks brought her food, left it at the door, and that's how she lived for two weeks.
> 
> Obviously, the home conditions were ideal for this, but if you get sick with COVID-19, I don't know what the protocol is . . .


Sounds like a decent setup as long as she had a bathroom to herself. 
Two weeks is a long time but better at home than in a hospital.

As far as protocol, I get the feeling authorities weren't saying much because they didn't want the hospitals being inundated. Even benign cases take time away from treatment of hard cases so they would rather that people stay home as long as their symptoms were mild. Just stay home and hope it's "merely" a cold or the flu, which it might be. But act like it's COVID-19 (strict quarantine).


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## mrdoc

*It escaped from Area 51 via a UFO which dropped it in China, remember you heard it first here. *


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## DaveM

So it turns out that Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc prophylactically presumably after close contact with a valet and one or two others who tested positive.


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## Rogerx

mrdoc said:


> *It escaped from Area 51 via a UFO which dropped it in China, remember you heard it first here. *


really funny


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## tdc

In my view one should *never* trade in basic human freedoms for a (false) feeling of safety, it is never worth it. A life without freedom is slavery, and a life in slavery is not worth living.


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## Eclectic Al

Here's a link - apologies if there is a problem with accessing The Times:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...-lives-than-coronavirus-study-warns-nxrn3bzbs
Anyway, the gist is that a Professor of Risk Management at Bristol University (which is a very well-regarded university, for those who are not from the UK) has concluded that a 6.4% reduction in GDP is the point at which the adverse consequences for life years via linkages between the economy and health is greater than the benefits of suppressing the coronavirus.
Now who knows if he is correct, and it should be 6.4% be 10% or 15% or 8%. I don't know, but I don't think it matters too much, the point is that there is a linkage and it is likely to switch at reductions in GDP which are highly plausible as a result of a continued lockdown.
I have read this thread and very much got the impression that some are arguing on the basis that the economy is primarily about money. Well no. The economy is about the exchange of goods and services, such as medical services, medical treatments, care services, transport, food, etc. Money can be used as a way of measuring economic activity, and the role of money in the economy is important (although you can have economies without money, say via barter), but the economy is not mainly about money. The economy is about how people connect to provide each other with things, and to share capabilities, how we exploit the benefits of specialisms (such as medical training, so that doctors don't have to spend all their time growing their own food, but can treat people instead).
So, the economy is about how goods and services are exchanged, and there are clear links between the health of an economy and the health of the nation. It is a false position to say you can choose the economy over the lockdown or vice versa; they are too inter-connected. Equally, it is true that a relaxation of the lockdown might be bad for the economy if it caused much more widespread ill heath and death.
A further point is that the professor's study talks about loss of future life years. Although it does not state it in that way this implies that young healthy people count more than old people or than young sick people, because they have more expected life years to lose. You cannot avoid this question because it is not objectively clear that the "right" way to compare outcomes is to count deaths; it is equally arguable that counting expected future life years is more appropriate. Neither is obviously (to me at least) the moral choice, and the other immoral. I am around retirement age, and don't remotely object emotionally to the idea that I count less than a 30 year old, although I don't accept either that it is intellectually obvious that I count for less.
Where I end up is that a lockdown was appropriate (although if the Swedish approach of trusting people to observe sensible precautions, rather than enforcing them legally works then that is better, but we don't know the truth or otherwise of that), but only a short one. I say this because I do buy the argument that collapse in economic activity plus the direct health consequences of the lockdown combine to be highly adverse for health, and the health benefits of the lockdown were primarily about avoiding a peak which would have overwhelmed health services. I say that because I do believe that the virus will always be with us (- I don't think any can seriously have believed otherwise from the start of this), although I think its adverse consequences will wane over time, with or without a vaccine. Hence, I would bias the risk equation currently in the favour of taking more risk in the opening up direction, but I don't challenge the ethics of those who take a different position. And I certainly don't challenge the morality of those who believe differently.


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## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> ^^^IMO, the above post is the worst form of political and should be removed


I'm not sure about that. It's more a post about political philosophy, rather than the grubby business of practical politics or comments about particular current politicians. And Orwell was a great and ultimately, I think, wise man. His personal journey is very interesting, and many of his works (Animal Farm and 1984, plus Homage to Catalonia) are required reading, and then there is The Road to Wigan Pier. I also really enjoyed Burmese Days and Keep the Aspidistra Flying, oh and A Clergyman's Daughter, although so long ago that I can't remember why.

What has frightened me personally regarding this current crisis (and this is genuine) is not the disease and its consequences (as I'm fatalistic about that); it's that people have been so willing, even enthusiastic, to enter a mode where they only do things that they are told they can by "the authorities". They have also been willing to snitch on their neighbours about supposed infringements, without necessarily knowing the whole story (- when is a family visit the delivery of necessary medical supplies, etc?) There has been a joy in sniping about others that I have found distasteful and scary, and a delight among some about using their powers, or even powers they don't actually have. One example is the threat being made that police would examine people's shopping to check it was essential - when the legal position was that a shop which was permitted to open could sell its range of goods, and there was no legal requirement only to sell those items judged by some policeman as essential. The police had no powers to do any such checks. It's the fact that anyone, especially someone in a police uniform, would think that is reasonable which scares me.

I have certainly felt like I am living in an environment which is scarier than I had thought in terms of the continuation of civil liberties. But then I look at all the people who have behaved so well (as I posted yesterday) and try and cheer up.


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## erki

I think with the argument of "saving lives" we are walking on really thin ice. Because there is no good counter-argument to this it can be used to justify almost anything. This happening is not too apparent as yet on the level of governments but people among themselves do it routinely - also here.


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## science

Open Book said:


> True, it usually takes time for symptoms to show up and by then it has already spread where it can.
> 
> I sympathize with your parent situation. I'm glad my mother didn't live to see this, and especially not the death of her brother from the virus.
> 
> Are you from South Korea and are stuck in the U.S. for now? Are your parents in the U.S.?


No, it's the other way around. I'm from the US (mostly Wyoming, some West Virginia, a bit of Connecticut) and stuck in South Korea. Sometimes it really feels "stuck" for for the moment I feel pretty blessed to be here. I think the only thing that could make me consider going back to the States right now would be something like a family member getting sick.

Sorry to hear about your uncle. I hope you and your family are able to grieve together a bit in spite of all the precautions.


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## Kieran

science said:


> No, it's the other way around. I'm from the US (mostly Wyoming, some West Virginia, a bit of Connecticut) and stuck in South Korea. Sometimes it really feels "stuck" for for the moment I feel pretty blessed to be here. I think the only thing that could make me consider going back to the States right now would be something like a family member getting sick.


Would you be able to travel? Are there flights coming out of SK to the States now?



science said:


> Sorry to hear about your uncle. I hope you and your family are able to grieve together a bit in spite of all the precautions.


Times two. Sad to hear about your uncle, Open Book, and like you, I'm glad my mother didn't live to see the day, if only because it would be impossible for me to visit her where I live now, and if anything happened to her, it might even be impossible to attend her funeral, which would be unbearable. But it's horrible for you all to have this loss in your family...


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## science

Kieran said:


> Would you be able to travel? Are there flights coming out of SK to the States now?


I haven't seriously looked into it, so I may be wrong, but it appears I'd be allowed into the States and that flights cost a lot less than usual. I assume South Korea would let me back in here as well (I have permanent resident status here) and they've been testing everyone on their way in at the airport for a couple months now. (Until the recent outbreak, which seems to be getting under control, almost all the new cases here were people arriving at the airport.) Both countries would want me to stay in quarantine for a couple of weeks after arriving on either end.


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## Guest

DaveM said:


> I pointed out in my post that the guidelines that have been put in place have not been an attempt to save the elderly at the expense of the younger generations. As the pandemic has progressed it is apparent that the latter have been affected far more than thought possible 4 months ago.
> 
> Your comparison of 90,000 coronavirus deaths to 2 years of road-related deaths is misleading. Why compare coronavirus deaths over just 4 months to 2 years of traffic deaths? Annualize projected losses to the virus to get an accurate comparison which, so far, amounts to 250,000+in the first year if this continues unabated.
> 
> Why would I not be concerned about drug overdoses, road accidents and cancer/heart disease deaths? Seems to me that your perspective is 'we have all these deaths from other causes, why is everyone getting so concerned about coronavirus deaths and taking major measures to stop them?'


You've missed the point; we live with death and disease on a grand scale all the time. A lot of health problems are self-inflicted as well - in fact, huge numbers fall into this category. We're never going to stop people dying. In Australia this pandemic has not been nearly as bad as elsewhere but individual states are in lockdown with some having only 6 people in hospital. Businesses are going to the wall, bankruptcy is on the rise, as is suicide and probably domestic violence. Our 2nd carrier airline - Virgin - has gone bankrupt.

Just how much of a price do you want us all to have to pay to save the lives of (predominantly) elderly people while we await the silver bullet (vaccine)? In the state of Victoria there are 5 people in hospital and the border with NSW is closed, tourism has gone to the wall and people want to see their loved ones. Already there are legal class actions being formed in Australia to sue government over the loss of business and livelihoods. We have endured horrific bushfires within the last months and still haven't come out of a prolonged drought. People are at the end of their ropes and to hear the nightly news tell of a 93 year old woman dying of Coronavirus in a nursing facility makes me say, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING: is this why we're all going bankrupt"?


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> they've been testing everyone on their way in at the airport for a couple months now.


What kind of test? Temperature test?



science said:


> Both countries would want me to stay in quarantine for a couple of weeks after arriving on either end.


This is gonna be a huge problem, particularly for tourist industries but also for business and personal travel. I know that some countries are gonna be more relaxed about this, but the blurb I'm hearing in Ireland is, there'll be 14 day quarantine when we return from foreign travel...


----------



## Guest

The cure is proving worse than the disease in many countries. Australia is now well and truly in that category.


----------



## Kieran

Christabel said:


> . People are at the end of their ropes and to hear the nightly news tell of a 93 year old woman dying of Coronavirus in a nursing facility makes me say, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING: is this why we're all going bankrupt"?


I have a good friend in Sicily who I've been in touch with over the course of it, and she explained to me how the lockdown was working, this was just before the Irish were all interred into our homes, for lockdown. But one thing she said struck me, at the beginning. Oh please think of my grandmother in your prayers, she's 97 years old.

I understood and admired her great love for grandmother, and the granny is still well and I think it's great, but my immediate thought was, your granny's had a good innings, there are other things going on here. But this is the multifaceted thing about this virus, we can keep our kin of great age as safe as possible, without everything having to come to a halt. A pals mother is 92, dementia, nursing home, and she beat Covid. Any given year in that home, she could fall prey to another bug, which is the natural exit strategy at that age...


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> A pals mother is 92, dementia, nursing home, and she beat Covid. Any given year in that home, she could fall prey to another bug, which is *the natural exit strategy* at that age...


I see what you're trying to say but I find your terminology chilling. It strikes me as a Human Resources term.


----------



## starthrower

It's difficult to discuss this subject and the effects on society leaving out politics and economics. I'm not worried about some new totalitarian order but I think most people are very concerned about the economic destruction that is unfolding. And it looks like the banks and private equity firms will emerge victoriously over small business owners and landlords across the nation who are going broke. 

Things are starting to reopen here in central New York and in my opinion it's getting too crowded for comfort at some places including a large and popular nursery and gift shop down the road from my house that is just jammed with people in the past couple of weeks. It's actually kind of roomy at the grocery stores now which is the only place I'm going these days.


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> You've missed the point; we live with death and disease on a grand scale all the time. A lot of health problems are self-inflicted as well - in fact, huge numbers fall into this category. We're never going to stop people dying. In Australia this pandemic has not been nearly as bad as elsewhere but individual states are in lockdown with some having only 6 people in hospital. Businesses are going to the wall, bankruptcy is on the rise, as is suicide and probably domestic violence. Our 2nd carrier airline - Virgin - has gone bankrupt.
> 
> Just how much of a price do you want us all to have to pay to save the lives of (predominantly) elderly people while we await the silver bullet (vaccine)? In the state of Victoria there are 5 people in hospital and the border with NSW is closed, tourism has gone to the wall and people want to see their loved ones. Already there are legal class actions being formed in Australia to sue government over the loss of business and livelihoods. We have endured horrific bushfires within the last months and still haven't come out of a prolonged drought. People are at the end of their ropes and to hear the nightly news tell of a 93 year old woman dying of Coronavirus in a nursing facility makes me say, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING: is this why we're all going bankrupt"?


So, the pandemic has not been as bad in Australia as elsewhere and you're afraid that there has been an over-reaction to it there. I don't understand why your comments in the past have been extrapolating that concern (i.e. about over-reaction) to other countries where you know the statistics to be so much worse.

Still, perhaps Australia hasn't been affected as much because the lockdown has been effective given perhaps also that Australia was in a better position to limit people coming into the country. I don't know; I'm no expert on Australia's pandemic situation.


----------



## mmsbls

erki said:


> I think with the argument of "saving lives" we are walking on really thin ice. Because there is no good counter-argument to this it can be used to justify almost anything. This happening is not too apparent as yet on the level of governments but people among themselves do it routinely - also here.


From what I've seen in public pronouncements, governments are not doing a good job of explaining how they expect to recover from the economic loss. They seem to focus on saving lives, lessening the probability of hospital overload, and saying we'll open up gradually at the appropriate time. I realize the policies are somewhat complex and likely not at all simple to explain, but I think it would be useful to have some description of how the economy will approach normal in the coming months to year or so. With such a description they can say we are BOTH saving lives AND lessening economic loss.

I think people understand how social distancing and other NPIs help save lives, but people have little idea of how the economy can return to close to normal. Will 50% of small businesses fail? Will the debt incurred by trying to steady the economic loss now be too large and destructive later? These questions are not easy to answer, but maybe there should be an attempt to explain the expected plan just as there has been for sheltering in place and business lockdowns.


----------



## pianozach

DaveM said:


> So it turns out that Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc prophylactically presumably after close contact with a valet and one or two others who tested positive.


So it turns out that Trump *says* he has been taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactically for 1 to 2 weeks, and it's being administered by his "private doctor".

And yet, Mr. Blabbermouth managed to not spill that during his frequent Twitter storms.

Somehow I doubt the veracity of his hydroxychloroquine story.


----------



## Jacck

Florida removes data scientist who refused to manipulate COVID-19 numbers to support reopening
https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/n...moved-florida-moves-re-open-state/5212398002/


----------



## pianozach

Jacck said:


> Florida removes data scientist who refused to manipulate COVID-19 numbers to support reopening
> https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/n...moved-florida-moves-re-open-state/5212398002/


THIS is the sort of thing I find the most chilling: *The War on Science*. Someone brought up Totalitarianism, and it seems to be the 'intellectuals', as a group, that are always amongst of the victims.

_*"Wherever the people are well informed,"*_ Thomas Jefferson wrote, *"they can be trusted with their own government."*


----------



## mmsbls

Christabel said:


> You've missed the point; we live with death and disease on a grand scale all the time. A lot of health problems are self-inflicted as well - in fact, huge numbers fall into this category. We're never going to stop people dying. In Australia this pandemic has not been nearly as bad as elsewhere but individual states are in lockdown with some having only 6 people in hospital. Businesses are going to the wall, bankruptcy is on the rise, as is suicide and probably domestic violence. Our 2nd carrier airline - Virgin - has gone bankrupt.
> 
> Just how much of a price do you want us all to have to pay to save the lives of (predominantly) elderly people while we await the silver bullet (vaccine)? In the state of Victoria there are 5 people in hospital and the border with NSW is closed, tourism has gone to the wall and people want to see their loved ones. Already there are legal class actions being formed in Australia to sue government over the loss of business and livelihoods. We have endured horrific bushfires within the last months and still haven't come out of a prolonged drought. People are at the end of their ropes and to hear the nightly news tell of a 93 year old woman dying of Coronavirus in a nursing facility makes me say, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING: is this why we're all going bankrupt"?


Based on reported new cases in Australia, your country would seem a very good candidate to have opened up a couple of weeks ago. What is the actual status? Do you know if robust testing and contact tracing are good options there?


----------



## Art Rock

Based on the numbers from Australia: what is now happening in Europe in terms of slowly reducing the restrictions should have happened Down Under in Mid April, just looking at the curves. In that sense the problem you describe looks to be very much an Australian problem. The initial lockdown is quite defensible everywhere for various reasons, but one has to have an exit strategy, when the new cases are steadily declining - with the proviso that any sudden jump in new cases may necessitate another lockdown. That is basically what's happening in many European countries now.

Australia definitely is having it much easier than many other countries. At a population of 25 million, you have 100 deaths - The Netherlands has a population of 17 million, and we are at 5715 deaths... and we're not doing very bad compared to others around here.


----------



## Guest

Why worry? Prof Dolores Cahill says we didn't need the lockdown and we can end it within a week (referring to Ireland, but the principles are the same.)

Take lots of zinc, Vit A and D and soon we'll all have immunity for life. Social distancing not necessary either, nor a vaccine, as lots of us have immunity already to SARS and that will work for Covid 19.

See Debunking the Narrative on YTB if you've an hour to spare.


----------



## Guest

Australia has been opening up. My brother in law is back in class in Brisbane, and niece doing hairdressing for a fortnight at least.


----------



## Jacck

Art Rock said:


> Based on the numbers from Australia: what is now happening in Europe in terms of slowly reducing the restrictions should have happened Down Under in Mid April, just looking at the curves. In that sense the problem you describe looks to be very much an Australian problem. The initial lockdown is quite defensible everywhere for various reasons, but one has to have an exit strategy, when the new cases are steadily declining - with the proviso that any sudden jump in new cases may necessitate another lockdown. That is basically what's happening in many European countries now.
> 
> Australia definitely is having it much easier than many other countries. At a population of 25 million, you have 100 deaths - The Netherlands has a population of 17 million, and we are at 5715 deaths... and we're not doing very bad compared to others around here.


but autumn is coming to australia, so at least we will see if the infection gets worse


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Jacck said:


> Florida removes data scientist who refused to manipulate COVID-19 numbers to support reopening
> https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/n...moved-florida-moves-re-open-state/5212398002/


So that article has a lot of speculation and not very much evidence. It relies heavily on the opinions of the person no longer working on the project - hardly an unbiased source. After all, she had a fairly high opinion of her work:


> As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.


Then it has a bunch of people speculating that things might now be worse in terms of reporting.

I love how you post these articles that are heavy on bias and speculation as unchallenged fact.


----------



## Jacck

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> So that article has a lot of speculation and not very much evidence. It relies heavily on the opinions of the person no longer working on the project - hardly an unbiased source. Then it has a bunch of people speculating that things might now be worse in terms of reporting. I love how you post these articles that are heavy on bias and speculation as unchallenged fact.


https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...onavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/
it is hardly an isolated incident, but rather fits with the general pattern of data supression and manipulation. One would expect this from Russia, not from the USA


----------



## Kieran

MacLeod said:


> Why worry? Prof Dolores Cahill says we didn't need the lockdown and we can end it within a week (referring to Ireland, but the principles are the same.)
> 
> Take lots of zinc, Vit A and D and soon we'll all have immunity for life. Social distancing not necessary either, nor a vaccine, as lots of us have immunity already to SARS and that will work for Covid 19.
> 
> See Debunking the Narrative on YTB if you've an hour to spare.


I watched that video the other day, funny enough. Have never heard of her, and the first few minutes she reeled off her impressive experience and credentials in the field. But I don't know if it was because of the lousy interviewer, or her own caginess, but she was allowed to make statements without backing them up. Such as, she says she had the virus herself and is now immune for life. But she says she had the virus based only upon symptoms she had, not a test result, and she never explained why she thinks she's immune for life, when this is still an argument in her field.

She mentioned taking zinc, vitamin A and D as if these are kryptonite to all ailments, but she didn't expand. By the way, the properties of these things most likely help, but she never expanded on why it seems so simple. She said if the virus was let run loose through the population, it would take ten days and then vanish, and I thought, explain that to Sweden and ask them why they're getting new cases.

There was more, but it was such a lousy interview, conducted in an echo chamber, that she was allowed to go unchallenged on big issues. I would hope that the next time she gets a platform, she's more helpful, because it's not just enough to say something without an explanation to why...


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Jacck said:


> https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...onavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/
> it is hardly an isolated incident, but rather fits with the general pattern of data supression and manipulation. One would expect this from Russia, not from the USA


Now you're being absurd. This is nothing like Russia, and you know it.


----------



## philoctetes

Jacck said:


> https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...onavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/
> it is hardly an isolated incident, but rather fits with the general pattern of data supression and manipulation. One would expect this from Russia, not from the USA


Not sure why anybody has high expectations of US science / engineering nowadays... but when these incidents are reported they are typically dismissed as conspiracy theory or ignored as inconvenient...


----------



## Jacck

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Now you're being absurd. This is nothing like Russia, and you know it.


maybe not yet fully like Russia (doctors being murdered by being thrown out of windows to scare the others into keeping mouth shut), but certainly moving in that direction


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Jacck said:


> maybe not yet fully like Russia (doctors being murdered by being thrown out of windows to scare the others into keeping mouth shut), but certainly moving in that direction


Not hardly. We have free elections, and if citizens don't like what the current leadership is doing, they can vote them out, and when they do, all this stuff gets aired publicly.


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> What kind of test? Temperature test?
> 
> This is gonna be a huge problem, particularly for tourist industries but also for business and personal travel. I know that some countries are gonna be more relaxed about this, but the blurb I'm hearing in Ireland is, there'll be 14 day quarantine when we return from foreign travel...


I hadn't looked into it, but it turns out that only the temperature test is for everyone but they have walkthrough testing booths for anyone with symptoms and a mandatory 14-day quarantine at a government facility for all inbound travelers! You can self-quarantine if you have a residence in Korea. You apparently can't board a flight to South Korea unless you sign something agreeing to that condition, though there is a "quarantine exemption" form you can fill out to request exemption. People who get it have to get the covid-19 test and wait a day in the government facility for the test results.

My wife and I were talking about the 14-day self-quarantine if we travel. To me, it's worth it. But we'll see how the rest of the world feels....


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> I hadn't looked into it, but it turns out that only the temperature test is for everyone but they have walkthrough testing booths for anyone with symptoms and a mandatory 14-day quarantine at a government facility for all inbound travelers! You can self-quarantine if you have a residence in Korea. You apparently can't board a flight to South Korea unless you sign something agreeing to that condition, though there is a "quarantine exemption" form you can fill out to request exemption. People who get it have to get the covid-19 test and wait a day in the government facility for the test results.
> 
> My wife and I were talking about the 14-day self-quarantine if we travel. To me, it's worth it. But we'll see how the rest of the world feels....


Interesting. That quarantine facility will fill up fast, no?

The problem with the 14 day quarantine period for tourists is obvious, that if they're travelling for two weeks, then that two weeks will be spent in quarantine, then when they get home they have another two weeks locked up, even if they have to go back to work It'll kill tourism. I have a trip to Sicily booked for September from the 3rd-14th. If there are strict quarantine rules at either end, it'll jeopardise that, although at this stage I'm open to whatever is going to happen....


----------



## Room2201974

pianozach said:


> So it turns out that Trump *says* he has been taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactically for 1 to 2 weeks, and it's being administered by his "private doctor".
> 
> And yet, Mr. Blabbermouth managed to not spill that during his frequent Twitter storms.
> 
> Somehow I doubt the veracity of his hydroxychloroquine story.


The only reason why we are hearing about it now is because of a constant embarrassment factor with respect to scientists and doctors over the past couple of weeks climaxing in a Sunday night interview with someone who actually HAS intelligence. (I'd also check stock transactions too.)


----------



## Guest

*Message for moderator mmsbls*
I believe a certain poster on this thread has been pushing an alt-right agenda. I wish to counter this and want the opportunity to debunk the views expressed by the poster in question who provides links to _I wanna-be-Hitchens-but-I-don't-have-the-depth_ Douglas Murray and the publication known as Quillette. How may I do so without contravening the straightjecket you have placed us in and without incurring infractions?


----------



## Flamme

Have test, will travel...


----------



## erki

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Not hardly. We have free elections, and if citizens don't like what the current leadership is doing, they can vote them out, and when they do, all this stuff gets aired publicly.


It may look so. I have not experienced this power personally. Unless I vote along the pack, but then what freedom we are talking about.


----------



## Flamme

TalkingHead said:


> *Message for moderator mmsbls*
> I believe a certain poster on this thread has been pushing an alt-right agenda. I wish to counter this and want the opportunity to debunk the views expressed by the poster in question who provides links to _I wanna-be-Hitchens-but-I-don't-have-the-depth_ Douglas Murray and the publication known as Quillette. How may I do so without contravening the straightjecket you have placed us in and without incurring infractions?


I dont c. Who?


----------



## Guest

Flamme said:


> I dont c. Who?


You don't c? Well babes, I ain't telling. All I want is the green light from the Mods to expose and debunk the crap.


----------



## philoctetes

Seeing Hitchens mentioned here just made me wonder if the last survivor of COVID-19 will be Henry Kissinger...


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> So it turns out that Trump *says* he has been taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactically for 1 to 2 weeks, and it's being administered by his "private doctor".
> 
> And yet, Mr. Blabbermouth managed to not spill that during his frequent Twitter storms.
> 
> Somehow I doubt the veracity of his hydroxychloroquine story.


I believe it and I think I know how he happened to take the combination of HCQ, Azithromycin and zinc. He started it right at the time that reports of a retrospective study came out from NYU Grossman School of Medicine. It was a retrospective study of 932 patients who received the HCQ and Azithromycin while 400 of them also received 100mg zinc. Those who took the zinc along with the other two drugs had a 44% less mortality and generally did better. The big difference here is that this combination worked better when given early. It did not help later in the course of severe disease.

This study was reported on Fox News but from what I can tell not other news outlets hence Trump likely heard about it from his friend Laura Ingraham who reported it.

I have repeatedly said that just because HCQ and Azithromycin has not been shown to work in later stages of the disease that doesn't mean that it doesn't work early in the disease. The above study is one of the first to look at that. Also, zinc is thought to have some antiviral activity and there is a theory that HCQ aids in getting it into cells.

It appears that CNN and MSNBC pundits have decided that HCQ is useless and a dangerous drug, a gross overstatement given present knowledge. It does appear that the combination of HCQ and Azithromycin may be hazardous in later stages of the disease and in people with heart disease and certain arrhythmias, but there is no reason to believe it is dangerous in otherwise healthy people early in the disease. And it may be useful at the onset of the disease which was the situation when it was first reported on.


----------



## KenOC

I don't think anybody is stopping you from pointing out inaccuracies is any posts. The two rules seem to be: Directly related to the coronavirus, and, courtesy.

Merely pointing out that the source is a well-known scoundrel (whose ideology differs from yours, of course) is unlikely to accomplish anything.


----------



## philoctetes

TalkingHead said:


> You don't c? Well babes, I ain't telling. All I want is the green light from the Mods to expose and debunk the crap.


no guts no glory in this game, take your chances like the rest of us without authority holding your hand...


----------



## Flamme

No wish 2 interfere with any1 here, but I have experience on many internet 4ums and all I can tell is discussion here is more than civilised and on point...


----------



## Eclectic Al

philoctetes said:


> Seeing Hitchens mentioned here just made me wonder if the last survivor of COVID-19 will be Henry Kissinger...


Which Hitchens are we talking about? The relationship between Peter and Christopher is a fascinating one to follow. Very different opinions, lots of friction at times, but I think a sort of reconciliation when it started to matter (-ie Christopher's terminal illness). Peter wrote a very moving article about his relationship with his brother: I'd find the link if I thought anyone would be interested in how people with very different opinions might achieve a sort of reconciliation.


----------



## KenOC

*'Call it fate, call it karma' - Why the coronavirus is merely 'the final kick into the abyss' for the U.S. economy*

An interesting article from Marketwatch, somewhere south of pessimistic. But don't be sad. I'm sure Mr. Smith is quite mistaken. And just to put a smile on your face, at the end there's a picture of a bunch of cute kittens. Don't worry, be happy!​


----------



## Eclectic Al

Eclectic Al said:


> Which Hitchens are we talking about? The relationship between Peter and Christopher is a fascinating one to follow. Very different opinions, lots of friction at times, but I think a sort of reconciliation when it started to matter (-ie Christopher's terminal illness). Peter wrote a very moving article about his relationship with his brother: I'd find the link if I thought anyone would be interested in how people with very different opinions might achieve a sort of reconciliation.


Quoting myself again: here is Hitchens on Hitchens:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...moriam-courageous-sibling-Peter-Hitchens.html

Please read it. It is very moving, and I think a number of people on this thread need to reflect on this sort of thinking.


----------



## KenOC

*Vaccine experts say Moderna didn't produce data critical to assessing Covid-19 vaccine*

After rising 900 points yesterday on "encouraging" vaccine news from Moderna, the DJIA fell 400 points in the final hour of trading today on this highly critical article in _Stat_.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Who is taking Vitamin D supplements?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-growing-evidence-on-vitamin-d-and-covid


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> Who is taking Vitamin D supplements?
> https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-growing-evidence-on-vitamin-d-and-covid


I'd read about vitamin D deficiency elsewhere. It was a bright sunny and hot day today, I got a bunch of vitamin D in the natural way...


----------



## KenOC

Eclectic Al said:


> Who is taking Vitamin D supplements?
> https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-growing-evidence-on-vitamin-d-and-covid


I started a week ago, on advice found on this forum. Very cheap, a year's worth (5,000 IU a day) is $15 on Amazon. I get another 1,000 IU a day from my calcium pills, taken on the advice of my doctor. Calcium pills usually include some Vitamin D3 to help your body absorb the calcium.


----------



## pianozach

DaveM said:


> It appears that CNN and MSNBC pundits have decided that HCQ is useless and a dangerous drug, a gross overstatement given present knowledge. It does appear that the combination of HCQ and Azithromycin may be hazardous in later stages of the disease and in people with heart disease and certain arrhythmias, but there is no reason to believe it is dangerous in otherwise healthy people early in the disease. And it may be useful at the onset of the disease which was the situation when it was first reported on.


Cavuto on Fox News also called it dangerous. Repeatedly.


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> Cavuto on Fox News also called it dangerous. Repeatedly.


This is the problem when those without any education on drugs and disease come to misleading conclusions. For some reason, even some of the medical experts on the news channels do not provide context and perspective when the pundits that they are on with make broad inaccurate statements. Hydroxychloroquine should not be dismissed across the board as a dangerous drug. (Chloroquine likely is). If it were, thousands of people wouldn't be taking it for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus. Used with Azithromycin in severe Clovid-19 with co-morbidities it may be hazardous. Used early alone and selectively with Azithromycin with otherwise healthy patients, it may be helpful.


----------



## mmsbls

TalkingHead said:


> *Message for moderator mmsbls*
> I believe a certain poster on this thread has been pushing an alt-right agenda. I wish to counter this and want the opportunity to debunk the views expressed by the poster in question who provides links to _I wanna-be-Hitchens-but-I-don't-have-the-depth_ Douglas Murray and the publication known as Quillette. How may I do so without contravening the straightjecket you have placed us in and without incurring infractions?


In general I think it's much better to PM moderators about these type of questions rather than posting them on threads. They can act as a distraction; furthermore, you can't speak as freely making it harder for the moderator to understand your questions.

There are really no special restrictions for this thread. I have asked people not to discuss pure politics or provocative politics. Those restrictions apply to all of the TC main forum. The other request is to be polite, but that's the most important part of the Terms of Service so not special. Comparison to straightjackets seems a bit extreme (or else I have no idea what you mean).

If we view a post as provocatively political or not aimed at the coronavirus issue, we may delete the post and possibly send a PM explaining our actions. If anyone continues to post pure politics or provocative politics, we may follow up with an official warning. Further such posts may result in being banned from the Community Forum but not TC.

Perhaps you should PM me with more details so I can give you a more explicit answer.


----------



## KenOC

pianozach said:


> Cavuto on Fox News also called it dangerous. Repeatedly.


That's fairly meaningless anyway. Every drug is dangerous -- just read the little folded paper that comes with it. And as the TV ads always say, "Ask your doctor if these side-effects are right for you." :lol:


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

DaveM said:


> This is the problem when those without any education on drugs and disease come to misleading conclusions. For some reason, even some of the medical experts on the news channels do not provide context and perspective when the pundits that they are on with make broad inaccurate statements. Hydroxychloroquine should not be dismissed across the board as a dangerous drug. (Chloroquine likely is). If it were, thousands of people wouldn't be taking it for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus. Used with Azithromycin in severe Clovid-19 with co-morbidities it may be hazardous. Used early alone and selectively with Azithromycin with otherwise healthy patients, it may be helpful.


Hell, my insulin is a dangerous drug. Take too much and I could end up with a dangerously low blood sugar which could lead to death.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> That's fairly meaningless anyway. Every drug is dangerous -- just read the little folded paper that comes with it. And as the TV ads always say, "Ask your doctor if these side-effects are right for you." :lol:


From what I know of the medical profession, prescriptions, and drugs, a medical doctor can be reprimanded or even lose their license for prescribing a drug for a condition for which it is not intended.

*Can*. Occasionally a state medical board will yank a license over prescriptions. But generally, a doctor has to really try extra hard to be disciplined for prescription offenses. (And since medical licenses are issued by states, you can lose your license in one state, and still retain your licenses in other states. Many doctors hold a fistful of medical licenses.)

For instance, a year ago a NC doctor lost his medical license after accused of over-prescribing opioids to possible addicts. Back in 2007 a PA doctor was convicted on criminal charges of 
1. Prescribing Outside Accepted Medical Treatment Principles; 
2. Criminal Conspiracy to Obtain Possession of a Controlled Substance by Misrepresentation or Fraud; 
3. Dispensing/Prescribing to a Drug Dependent Person; 
4. Refusal or Failure to Keep Required Records; 
5. Willful Dispensing of a Controlled Substance without Proper Labeling; 
6. Delivery of or Possession with the Intent to Deliver a Controlled Substance; 
7. Criminal Use of Communication Facility; and 
8. Criminal Conspiracy to Commit Delivery of or Possession with the Intent to Deliver a Controlled Substance

In 2009 a doctor in Puerto Rico was convicted of "Distribution of Oxycodone, Alprazolam, and Hydrocodone" outside the scope of professional practice *and not for a legitimate medical purpose*.

So, *hydroxychloroquine* is currently indicated _only_ for the treatment of malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.

The list of possible side effects range from very minor to very major.

https://www.rxlist.com/plaquenil-drug.htm#side_effects


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> From what I know of the medical profession, prescriptions, and drugs, a medical doctor can be reprimanded or even lose their license for prescribing a drug for a condition for which it is not intended.
> 
> *Can*. Occasionally a state medical board will yank a license over prescriptions. But generally, a doctor has to really try extra hard to be disciplined for prescription offenses. (And since medical licenses are issued by states, you can lose your license in one state, and still retain your licenses in other states. Many doctors hold a fistful of medical licenses.)
> 
> For instance, a year ago a NC doctor lost his medical license after accused of over-prescribing opioids to possible addicts. Back in 2007 a PA doctor was convicted on criminal charges of
> 1. Prescribing Outside Accepted Medical Treatment Principles;
> 2. Criminal Conspiracy to Obtain Possession of a Controlled Substance by Misrepresentation or Fraud;
> 3. Dispensing/Prescribing to a Drug Dependent Person;
> 4. Refusal or Failure to Keep Required Records;
> 5. Willful Dispensing of a Controlled Substance without Proper Labeling;
> 6. Delivery of or Possession with the Intent to Deliver a Controlled Substance;
> 7. Criminal Use of Communication Facility; and
> 8. Criminal Conspiracy to Commit Delivery of or Possession with the Intent to Deliver a Controlled Substance
> 
> In 2009 a doctor in Puerto Rico was convicted of "Distribution of Oxycodone, Alprazolam, and Hydrocodone" outside the scope of professional practice *and not for a legitimate medical purpose*.
> 
> So, *hydroxychloroquine* is currently indicated _only_ for the treatment of malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.
> 
> The list of possible side effects range from very minor to very major.
> 
> https://www.rxlist.com/plaquenil-drug.htm#side_effects


Where to start...
Actually, physicians have a fair amount of leeway in prescribing drugs off-label. I don't know why you would think that examples of doctors being reprimanded for excess and/or inappropriate prescribing of controlled drugs has anything to do with prescribing hydroxychloroquine which is not a controlled drug.


----------



## KenOC

I take it that all those doctors engaged in hydroxychloroquine trials, and those heads of major practices using it routinely in Covid-19 treatment (some quoted earlier in this thread), will now have their licenses ceremonially shredded in front of their medical boards, their stethoscopes ceremonially plugged by molten lead, and then be ceremonially frog-marched off to the gaol.


----------



## Guest

philoctetes said:


> Seeing Hitchens mentioned here just made me wonder if the last survivor of COVID-19 will be Henry Kissinger...


Actually, it's Professor Niall Ferguson who is writing the biography of Kissinger; he's onto the last volume now and it will make for splendid reading.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

KenOC said:


> I take it that all those doctors engaged in hydroxychloroquine trials, and those heads of major practices using it routinely in Covid-19 treatment (some quoted earlier in this thread), will now have their licenses ceremonially shredded in front of their medical boards, their stethoscopes ceremonially plugged by molten lead, and then be ceremonially frog-marched off to the gaol.


Poking your voodoo doll with a needle ?


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I take it that all those doctors engaged in hydroxychloroquine trials, and those heads of major practices using it routinely in Covid-19 treatment (some quoted earlier in this thread), will now have their licenses ceremonially shredded in front of their medical boards, their stethoscopes ceremonially plugged by molten lead, and then be ceremonially frog-marched off to the gaol.


About a month ago two Californian doctors doubted the statistics and likely national morbidity of Covid-19. Their statistic-driven discussion about this on U-Tube was summarily taken down by Google; it didn't conform to Google's ideological agenda.

Don't think this is anything to worry about? A tech giant seizing control of international censorship?

If you think it's OK I've got an old bridge to sell you.


----------



## KenOC

Christabel said:


> About a month ago two Californian doctors doubted the statistics and likely national morbidity of Covid-19. Their statistic-driven discussion about this on U-Tube was summarily taken down by Google; it didn't conform to Google's ideological agenda.
> 
> Don't think this is anything to worry about? A tech giant seizing control of international censorship?
> 
> If you think it's OK I've got an old bridge to sell you.


Actually I have some sympathy for the operators of the major social media. They have been forced into a censorship role, one they fought rather vigorously. The make no money and gain no glory from acting as content police.

But once you say (for instance) that Nazi propaganda content is bad, then other forms of "badness" will defined by the prevailing political morality as seen from the censors' perspectives. It can't be avoided.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Actually I have some sympathy for the operators of the major social media. They have been forced into a censorship role, one they fought rather vigorously. The make no money and gain no glory from acting as content police.
> 
> But once you say (for instance) that Nazi propaganda content is bad, then other forms of "badness" will defined by the prevailing political morality as seen from the censors' perspectives. It can't be avoided.


Actually, Google behaves like a cartel so governments should intervene to prevent censorship. Even the most mild-mannered people - like James Damore - have been fired from Google and de-platformed because he produced a report saying the mens and womens interests are very different and that this might account for the variability in outcomes in the workplace. "As seen from the censors' perspective". Very bad.

To think that Damore's report was worthy of world-wide censorship, based on scholarly research as it was, is an appalling indictment of the world we are inhabiting. A sackeable offense at Google for going against identitarianism and dogma.

Remember the trouble W.R. Hearst found himself in for less reasons than this? A film was made about it and HE censored that film ("Citizen Kane") in much the same way Google is doing today with its monopoly practices. Nobody liked Welles being censored, yet where is the criticism of "Citizen Google" today?

Of course, hypocrisy goes hand in hand with this kind of censorship. Where is the film about "Citizen Zuckerberg"? It would never be allowed to mass muster.


----------



## KenOC

Christabel said:


> Actually, Google behaves like a cartel so governments should intervene to prevent censorship...


If governments intervene at all, it will be to demand more censorship, not less.

Sorry, politics, my bad.


----------



## Room2201974

https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...865/florida-ousts-top-covid-19-data-scientist


----------



## Open Book

tdc said:


> In my view one should *never* trade in basic human freedoms for a (false) feeling of safety, it is never worth it. A life without freedom is slavery, and a life in slavery is not worth living.


Tyrannical regimes are scary. Has a tyrannical regime ever replaced a democracy before? Can a totalitarian government overcome tribal differences to achieve worldwide power?

But I am more afraid of the virus. It is real and not fully understood. I am willing for now to trust government and scientific institutions to make decisions that are in our collective best interest to deal with it. This can't be done without cooperation and you're not going to get that if everybody is allowed to do their own thing.


----------



## KenOC

tdc writes: “In my view one should never trade in basic human freedoms for a (false) feeling of safety, it is never worth it. A life without freedom is slavery, and a life in slavery is not worth living.”

In 1759 Ben Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I believe these words are memorialized on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty.


----------



## Guest

Well, Franklin was not right for all time.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> tdc writes: "In my view one should never trade in basic human freedoms for a (false) feeling of safety, it is never worth it. A life without freedom is slavery, and a life in slavery is not worth living."
> 
> In 1759 Ben Franklin wrote, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." I believe these words are memorialized on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty.


Accepting Franklin's statement, we are still left to evaluate "essential" and "temporary."


----------



## DaveM

I don’t recall a totalitarian regime or tyrannical government arising out of a pandemic.


----------



## science

Just months ago we were being told that keeping kids in cages after ripping them from their parents was nothing to worry about, but now being told to wear masks, or at worst to sit on a sofa and watch tv for a few weeks, is slavery. 

I don't know. 

We have 32 new cases so far today in South Korea and it makes me nervous. Yesterday only 9 states in the US had fewer than 32 new cases, and none of those states have a population as large as South Korea. 

I remember a couple of years ago when Malaysia Flight 370 disappeared and 239 people died. Such a big deal at the time. Yesterday in the US, over 1500 people died that we know of -- over 6 Malaysia Flight 370s. 

The only thing comparable to this in my lifetime other than war is the 2004 tsunami, which killed about half as many people as covid-19 is known to have killed so far in the world. 

As for wars, covid-19's total is catching up fast to the Syrian Civil War and is about halfway to the Iraq War, the two deadliest conflicts of our century. 

And neither the cases nor the deaths show any sign of slowing down. Over 95,000 new known cases and over 4500 new known deaths, only yesterday. 

But sure it's no big deal and being asked to wear masks and stay home is tyranny. I just don't see how that computes. 

If it's actually too expensive to fight the virus, that's one thing. Maybe we just can't afford it. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that what we're unwilling to afford is things that would save working-class lives because no one weeps about spending trillions to bail out big corporations and their shareholders.

Who knows. I've got no idea. 

32 new cases in South Korea so far today. Not good at all.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> I don't recall a totalitarian regime or tyrannical government arising out of a pandemic.


There's no halfway for you then? Either black or white; no room for in between or the slippery slope. In Australia right now our State governments are already in breach of our Constitution which allows for the 'free trade and movement unhindered between states" (or words to that close effect). So, here we have our first major set of basic freedoms eroded. It's so easy to move to the next one; in our own best interests. Of course.


----------



## KenOC

I am well within the "danger ages" with multiple comorbid conditions. And I say, get on with your normal lives. Don't be idiots.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> Just months ago we were being told that keeping kids in cages after ripping them from their parents was nothing to worry about, but now being told to wear masks, or at worst to sit on a sofa and watch tv for a few weeks, is slavery.
> 
> I don't know.
> 
> We have 32 new cases so far today in South Korea and it makes me nervous. Yesterday only 9 states in the US had fewer than 32 new cases, and none of those states have a population as large as South Korea.
> 
> I remember a couple of years ago when Malaysia Flight 370 disappeared and 239 people died. Such a big deal at the time. Yesterday in the US, over 1500 people died that we know of -- over 6 Malaysia Flight 370s.
> 
> The only thing comparable to this in my lifetime other than war is the 2004 tsunami, which killed about half as many people as covid-19 is known to have killed so far in the world.
> 
> As for wars, covid-19's total is catching up fast to the Syrian Civil War and is about halfway to the Iraq War, the two deadliest conflicts of our century.
> 
> And neither the cases nor the deaths show any sign of slowing down. Over 95,000 new known cases and over 4500 new known deaths, only yesterday.
> 
> But sure it's no big deal and being asked to wear masks and stay home is tyranny. I just don't see how that computes.
> 
> If it's actually too expensive to fight the virus, that's one thing. Maybe we just can't afford it. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that what we're unwilling to afford is things that would save working-class lives because no one weeps about spending trillions to bail out big corporations and their shareholders.
> 
> Who knows. I've got no idea.
> 
> 32 new cases in South Korea so far today. Not good at all.


"....keeping kids in cages after ripping them from their parents". Highly emotive and inflammatory words aside, millions of people regard that as 'border control'. It would be very interesting to hold a vote now to determine peoples' views on being forced to stay inside their own houses, neighbourhoods, states while business is going to the wall and millions are on the dole queues.

I say let's open for business and take care of the vulnerable and see how that goes.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I am well within the "danger ages" with multiple comorbid conditions. And I say, get on with your normal lives. Don't be idiots.


I like your style, KenOC. A man of sense and maturity. Hope you remain well!!

I've had breast cancer in the last 18 months and should be afraid of Covid-19? The bogey man is coming to get me, either way!! The trick is to LIVE while on planet earth.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> I am well within the "danger ages" with multiple comorbid conditions. And I say, get on with your normal lives. Don't be idiots.


And 'your normal lives' would be?


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> 32 new cases in South Korea so far today. Not good at all.


I just did some quick sums about TB.

World population is about 7.6 billion and South Korean population is 51.6 million (both 2018 figures). That means that SK is 0.7% of the world population.

New cases of TB in 2017 were 10 million, according to WHO, and the number of deaths was 1.6 million (of which 0.3 million were HIV-positive, which is disproportionate, but still leaves 1.3 million deaths among the HIV-negative, which is not to be sneezed at). Sorry about the sneeze reference, but it is also worth noting the TB spreads via droplets in the air, particularly in enclosed spaces.

If you assumed that TB was spread uniformly across the world, that would imply circa 68,000 cases per annum in SK, or 186 per day. The death rate from TB would have seen around 11,000 deaths per annum, or 30 deaths per day in SK. This goes on all the time.

Who knows what the death rate is from Covid-19, but I haven't seen anyone credibly suggest rates anywhere near TB levels. According to the WHO "Without proper treatment, 45% of HIV-negative people with TB on average and nearly all HIV-positive people with TB will die." The disease is, of course, often treatable but drug-resistance is growing. The reason for the continuation of infections and deaths at this sort of level is economic, because there is a massive link between strong economies and the ability to implement good healthcare solutions. If an economic slump occurred worldwide, then the ability to tackle all diseases would weaken, affecting responses to Covid-19, TB and all the others.

I would in principle be more worried about TB than Covid-19, but then I live in a relatively affluent, developed country, so TB is not so much my problem. You'd like to think all this might make people reflect a bit more on the everyday lives of people in poorer parts of the world, but I suspect what it will do is direct research resources towards "our problem" and reduce what is left for "their problem", especially as our economic problems will reduce willingness to contribute to resolving their problem.


----------



## Guest

If I'm worried at all, it's that the bogeyman might get someone else, and I've been the one to give him directions!


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> I am well within the "danger ages" with multiple comorbid conditions. And I say, get on with your normal lives. Don't be idiots.


I'm interested. Given your situation, are you personally staying very much locked down (while suggesting that others should be free to make their own choices) or are you more going out and about (and, if you like, taking your chances)?

I'm not in a particularly high risk group, but I think if I was I would be keen for others to be able to be getting on with their lives, and would personally be hiding away.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> I just did some quick sums about TB.
> 
> ...
> 
> If you assumed that TB was spread uniformly across the world, that would imply circa 68,000 cases per annum in SK, or 186 per day. The death rate from TB would have seen around 11,000 deaths per annum, or 30 deaths per day in SK. This goes on all the time.


Are you saying that TB deaths make covid-19 deaths less likely? Otherwise, what's the point? You want to tell someone, "Sure, your mom died of covid-19 but she was going to die of TB or something anyway someday."

I've already said that so far covid-19 has probably saved lives in South Korea because the drastic (almost shocking) reduction in pollution from both South Korea and China probably did much more good for people's health here than covid-19 hurt.

So should I be rooting for the virus to kill more people?


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> Are you saying that TB deaths make covid-19 deaths less likely? Otherwise, what's the point? You want to tell someone, "Sure, your mom died of covid-19 but she was going to die of TB or something anyway someday."
> 
> I've already said that so far covid-19 has probably saved lives in South Korea because the drastic (almost shocking) reduction in pollution from both South Korea and China probably did much more good for people's health here than covid-19 hurt.
> 
> So should I be rooting for the virus to kill more people?


Not at all. I think that would be an odd interpretation of my remarks. I just tend to the view that Covid-19 is a dangerous thing, but the policy reactions carry their own dangers. The risk assessments, if you like, of the different possible courses of action seem out of balance. I think that is because Covid-19 is more clearly definable in people's minds than the myriad of possible knock-on effects of policy responses. This is getting us into the territory of Social Psychology, and I think academics in that field are going to have a whole load of fun unpicking what the Covid-19 thing seems to be telling us about people's assessment of relative risk.


----------



## science

MacLeod said:


> If I'm worried at all, it's that the bogeyman might get someone else, and I've been the one to give him directions!


You seem to be concerned about other people, maybe even people you don't know.

Perhaps because I believe it's wise and virtuous to be as cynical about other people's motivations as one can manage to be, I don't see your concern being very widely shared in the world today. "Let them die, I don't like wearing masks," is all the rage.

We can pretend to care about small businesses, but whether we advocate for policies that would be convenient for us and kill people and maybe keep small businesses open rather than for policies that would keep small businesses open without the convenience for us or the deaths for others, I don't know.

Like many people, my wife and I got a card with about $600 from the government of South Korea that will only work for the next month at small businesses in our neighborhood. So what do you think we do? We look for opportunities to spend some money at small businesses in our neighborhood over the next few weeks. It's almost as though the government here doesn't just talk about supporting small businesses in order to avoid having to tax the families that own Samsung and LG and Hyundai, but actually wants to support small businesses.

And it's still a vibrant democracy. (Well, actually, maybe I'm already a slave and don't know it yet, right? I guess I should look for the scars on my back. Jesus, I can't understand what people are thinking when they use words like slavery. True fact: actual slaves just watch youtube all the time. It's terrible.)

I really don't know. People want to hurt each other is all that I can make of this. They're antsy to get out there and introduce the bogeyman to as many people as they can. No policy is going to work as long as that's true. We might as well open everything up and give people dollar every time they cough on someone, maybe two dollars for coughing for coughing on an old person or a healthcare professional. Then I guess we'd all be happy again.

Good luck out there guys. I can't figure any of this out.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> Not at all. I think that would be an odd interpretation of my remarks. I just tend to the view that Covid-19 is a dangerous thing, but the policy reactions carry their own dangers. The risk assessments, if you like, of the different possible courses of action seem out of balance. I think that is because Covid-19 is more clearly definable in people's minds than the myriad of possible knock-on effects of policy responses. This is getting us into the territory of Social Psychology, and I think academics in that field are going to have a whole load of fun unpicking what the Covid-19 thing seems to be telling us about people's assessment of relative risk.


They're already able to do that with things like air travel vs. car travel, accidental death by a gun in your home vs. being killed by an intruder, and so on. We are definitely not a rational species. A step or two up from alligators, to be sure, but our intuitive sense of relative danger has certainly not been set for modern living conditions.

I posted a few pages ago about all the Americans who say they would refuse a covid-19 vaccine. Most of them will actually be able to be among the first in line if one is ready, while many of the people who say they'd be eager to get it will not be able to get it until later. I wonder who is refusing TB vaccines and who is at most risk.

Anyway, the bottom line is that no matter what I think or anything, we're going to intentionally do things that lead to other people's deaths, sometimes directly, and sometimes to people that we know. I guess that's what we've always done, though it usually hasn't been this obvious.

But I still don't understand the relevance of the TB numbers to the covid-19 numbers. Your argument is that doing something about covid-19 hurts the economy so that then we won't be able to do anything about covid-19?

I already assume that around the world, with no exception for any kind of government or race or religion and in every kind of institution, the question on policy makers' -- not necessarily the politicians but the people who actually hold power -- minds is not actually "what's good for the people we govern," but "what's good for us?" And once they're assured that their own families' lives are as safe as they can make them, the rest of the answer is "what's good for our finances?" We're seeing what their answer is in different countries and companies. We're not seeing honest attempts to save lives but to save things like corporate profits and oligarchical fortunes. They've already calculated the value of their workers' and consumers' lives for themselves (not for their workers or consumers) and decided that X policy is what's best for themselves. If you're saying, hey, they calculated wrong, take it up with them, I guess.


----------



## Eclectic Al

The purpose of the TB example, was to point to an existing health catastrophe that we do very little about, in comparison with the huge dislocation that is being caused by the policies implemented to tackle Covid-19. It prompts me to think of the possible reasons for that difference. I tend to think it is because TB largely affects poor people outside the wealthy developed world (although not exclusively). Hence, little is done about it. A risk that affects "us" is seen as different in kind.

I then point to the possible economic consequences of the policy reaction to Covid-19. I must then acknowledge that this derives from my own personal thinking style. I have a deep scepticism that we can understand the consequences of our actions when we intervene into a complex system, and this makes me very conservative - with a small "c". I am wary of radical change, because the consequences are unpredictable. We observe the Covid-19 virus and that it is having health consequences. We then take actions to attempt to ameliorate those, but because those actions affect very complex systems - the whole world economy, individual economies, personal lives, social interactions, etc, etc - in a radical way, we are taking entirely unpredictable risks and we haven't a clue what the consequences will be. Therefore I am worried.

What I therefore see (to my way of thinking) is reckless risk-taking to deal with a medical crisis which is not likely to be any more serious than existing ones which we simply accept. And when I say risk-taking, I do not mean about wealth, but I mean about all the consequences of economic downturns and of a massive experiment about how people interact socially. To put it simply, I don't think we have a clue what the consequences may be of our policy actions in this area, and so I would have been cautious about taking the radical steps which have been taken (although I might have taken many of them briefly), and I am deeply worried (or even scared) about the implications of continuing them for long.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> You seem to be concerned about other people, maybe even people you don't know.
> 
> Perhaps because I believe it's wise and virtuous to be as cynical about other people's motivations as one can manage to be, I don't see your concern being very widely shared in the world today. "Let them die, I don't like wearing masks," is all the rage.


Perhaps I slightly overstated. Yes, I am occasionally worried about myself, but it's a constant worry. What I have taken on board is the possibility that if I get the virus, carrying on with a "normal life" presents greater risks to others than if I were passing on a cold or the flu. I am not willing to be responsible for the transmission of a potentially more lethal illness to others - friends, family or strangers.

What it has also woken me up to is that I probably need to improve my hygiene so that I don't pass on the flu either, and that I should have the flu vaccine.


----------



## Eclectic Al

I am prompted to think of a recent course on Social Psychology that I attended.
One interestingly relevant point was research about how people are not good at assessing the risks associated with highly unlikely events, and are very much influenced by how easily they can bring them to mind. Hence, if your risks of acquiring and then suffering serious consequences from Covid-19 are very remote, but you have in front of you TV coverage or pictures showing what it could be like, then your whole behaviour will change in a way consistent with seeing this as a high risk, even when it is not.
Another interesting snippet is that if you are put into a "risk-conscious" mindset then you are quite likely to become more risk averse generally, including about unconnected things. It is certainly my impression that driving styles during the lockdown have become far more tentative than usual - my family and I have remarked upon this on various occasions. I wonder if that is because of this spillover from being in a risk-conscious state of mind. I find that far more plausible than that people are consciously being careful in order to avoid putting pressure on (or having to interact with) health services via an accident.
I think a real challenge for policymakers currently is how to bring behaviour more into line with a realistic assessment of relative risk, when the population (often because of earlier actions by those same policymakers, but definitely also because of the style of media coverage) has been put into this highly risk-conscious state, with the Covid-19 risk much more easily brought to mind (and therefore magnified in importance) compared with all other risks.


----------



## science

MacLeod said:


> Perhaps I slightly overstated. Yes, I am occasionally worried about myself, but it's a constant worry. What I have taken on board is the possibility that if I get the virus, carrying on with a "normal life" presents greater risks to others than if I were passing on a cold or the flu. I am not willing to be responsible for the transmission of a potentially more lethal illness to others - friends, family or strangers.
> 
> What it has also woken me up to is that I probably need to improve my hygiene so that I don't pass on the flu either, and that I should have the flu vaccine.


Trying to look for the silver linings in the clouds, I'm hoping that a lot more people are going to be getting flu shots in the coming years. (Maybe also washing hands and so on.) If so, that's anther way covid-19 might end up saving more lives than it costs. We'll see. I guess there's always hope!


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> In general I think it's much better to PM moderators about these type of questions rather than posting them on threads. They can act as a distraction; furthermore, you can't speak as freely making it harder for the moderator to understand your questions.
> 
> There are really no special restrictions for this thread. I have asked people not to discuss pure politics or provocative politics. Those restrictions apply to all of the TC main forum. The other request is to be polite, but that's the most important part of the Terms of Service so not special. Comparison to straightjackets seems a bit extreme (or else I have no idea what you mean).
> 
> If we view a post as provocatively political or not aimed at the coronavirus issue, we may delete the post and possibly send a PM explaining our actions. If anyone continues to post pure politics or provocative politics, we may follow up with an official warning. Further such posts may result in being banned from the Community Forum but not TC.
> 
> Perhaps you should PM me with more details so I can give you a more explicit answer.


Thank you for your response. I will PM you shortly.


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> Trying to look for the silver linings in the clouds, I'm hoping that a lot more people are going to be getting flu shots in the coming years. (Maybe also washing hands and so on.) If so, that's anther way covid-19 might end up saving more lives than it costs. We'll see. I guess there's always hope!


After the elections the media circus will stop and with it the fear people have of this virus. We can't deny the political element to this.

Hopefully everyone can see that this is a political game and not get too stressed out.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> After the elections the media circus will stop and with it the fear people have of this virus. We can't deny the political element to this.
> 
> Hopefully everyone can see that this is a political game and not get too stressed out.


The elections in South Korea ended several weeks ago and they still have the virus.


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> The elections in South Korea ended several weeks ago and they still have the virus.


I was referring to the US elections.


----------



## Flamme

1996D said:


> After the elections the media circus will stop and with it the fear people have of this virus. We can't deny the political element to this.
> 
> Hopefully everyone can see that this is a political game and not get too stressed out.


Sadly the damage is already DONE...Ppl have literally became wolves or rats 2 another...2 me this is the bigger damage than ppl who passed away from the virus itself...


----------



## 1996D

Flamme said:


> Sadly the damage is already DONE...Ppl have literally became wolves or rats 2 another...2 me this is the bigger damage than ppl who passed away from the virus itself...


People are acting politically without even knowing it. The left and their followers have chosen to inflate the virus, and the right to pretend everything is under control.

If you hear a Trump press conference he's just trying to hold the frame that he's doing an amazing job, repeating it over and over, while Bill Gates and the left impose their frame of control with their bought scientists and doctors. It's a battle of authority.

Bunch of buffoons all of them.


----------



## Flamme

Not just that bro but the ENVY, GREED, THE SELFISHNESS of it all...Countries stealing masx and respirators from others even on airdrome runways, total tearing apart of world solidarity, and countries and ppl going at loggerheadss with each other, entrenching themselves, that is very very bad. Imho


----------



## Flamme

Like I sad b4 I saw some of the UGLIEST displays of behaviour from my domestic and ''foreign'' freinds that hurted my deeply and truly rocked my world...I was not prepared 4 that...Every man 4 himself, trample on the naivety of ''good willing'', thats 2 much 4 me.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> I was referring to the US elections.


But the virus doesn't appear to be limited to the US. Is it also going to go away from Russia and Brazil after the US elections?


----------



## Room2201974

"Well I saved all my pennies
I saved all my dimes
Giddy up giddy up four oh nine

When I shoot her in my veins she really shines
Giddy up giddy up four oh nine
She always leaves the cleanest lines
Giddy up giddy up four oh nine
My multi pupose, spray injected, posi-action four oh nine"


----------



## science

1996D said:


> People are acting politically without even knowing it. The left and their followers have chosen to inflate the virus, and the right to pretend everything is under control.
> 
> If you hear a Trump press conference he's just trying to hold the frame that he's doing an amazing job, repeating it over and over, while Bill Gates and the left impose their frame of control with their bought scientists and doctors. It's a battle of authority.
> 
> Bunch of buffoons all of them.


One of my fairly good friends from college is an ER doctor who got sick from the virus. She's recovered now. Did Bill Gates fool her into thinking she was sick so that he could get more control over her life? How's this supposed to work?


----------



## Art Rock

science said:


> One of my fairly good friends from college is an ER doctor who got sick from the virus. She's recovered now. Did Bill Gates fool her into thinking she was sick so that he could get more control over her life? How's this supposed to work?


5G obviously. Duh.


----------



## EdwardBast

1996D said:


> After the elections the media circus will stop and with it the fear people have of this virus. We can't deny the political element to this.
> 
> Hopefully everyone can see that this is a political game and not get too stressed out.


Hopefully everyone can attempt to be serious about this. It's primarily a public health crisis and secondarily a political issue. It's easy not to get stressed out if one isn't an "essential worker," if one doesn't have parents in nursing facilities, or live in a town near a meat processing plant, or a community near a prison, or in a high density population center - and especially if one hasn't had friends who've died of Covid-19. Health professionals and scientists are warning that a resurgence of the virus in the fall is a likely scenario. Apparently they haven't heard that elections are an effective antiviral measure.


----------



## 1996D

Flamme said:


> Like I sad b4 I saw some of the UGLIEST displays of behaviour from my domestic and ''foreign'' freinds that hurted my deeply and truly rocked my world...I was not prepared 4 that...Every man 4 himself, trample on the naivety of ''good willing'', thats 2 much 4 me.


I understand what you're saying, but you can't let yourself become a cynic. Keep loving your neighbour no matter what.


----------



## Flamme

Im trying...Im realy reaching inside myself in reserves of energy I left 4 the ''end of the world'', but I get tougher and tougher every day...


----------



## 1996D

Flamme said:


> Im trying...Im realy reaching inside myself in reserves of energy I left 4 the ''end of the world'', but I get tougher and tougher every day...


It's not the end, it's just a period and the feelings will pass. Use it to strengthen your faith.

You can read history on far worse plagues and diseases to put it into perspective.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Flamme said:


> Not just that bro but the ENVY, GREED, THE SELFISHNESS of it all...Countries stealing masx and respirators from others even on airdrome runways, total tearing apart of world solidarity, and countries and ppl going at loggerheadss with each other, entrenching themselves, that is very very bad. Imho


It may be bad, but it is probably inevitable. Countries will always put their own first in a crisis.
Whether you or I like it or not, I think two likely consequence of this episode will be greater scepticism about supra-national institutions and a tendency to restore domestic capabilities.

On the first, take the EU, for example. The banking crisis already revealed that solidarity had its limits, so it should have been no surprise when countries put themselves first this time. It would be a welcome development if people realise that this is inevitable, and hence treat supra-national institutions with due scepticism.

On the second, as an example the UK outsourced much manufacturing capability to other countries, expecting to be able to buy stuff with the money we made from other activities: we gave up the capability to make in volume our own vaccines, reagents, PPE, you name it. We didn't give enough attention to the possibility that in a crisis people might not be willing to sell the stuff to us. Second lesson, therefore: make sure you have scalable domestic manufacturing capabilities, even if that involves economic inefficiency in normal times. You can't rely on international trade in a crisis, precisely for whatever goods you desperately need in that particular crisis.

I think the above is just realism, and recognition of things like these was just waiting for a crisis to reveal them.


----------



## 1996D

EdwardBast said:


> Hopefully everyone can attempt to be serious about this. It's primarily a public health crisis and secondarily a political issue. It's easy not to get stressed out if one isn't an "essential worker," if one doesn't have parents in nursing facilities, or live in a town near a meat processing plant, or a community near a prison, or in a high density population center - and especially if one hasn't had friends who've died of Covid-19. Health professionals and scientists are warning that a resurgence of the virus in the fall is a likely scenario. Apparently they haven't heard that elections are an effective antiviral measure.


The media is overdramatizing the virus and the stress from that is not helping people, after the elections this will stop.

What would be helpful would be to promote the importance of a healthy diet, exercise, weight loss for the obese, and an optimistic outlook. People are dying because of their poor health.


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> The media is overdramatizing the virus .


could not disagree more.

The media simply reports as it always has/does


----------



## 1996D

eljr said:


> could not disagree more.
> 
> The media simply reports as it always has/does


Fear is not good for the immune system, and the media is fear mongering for their own interests. It's disgusting what they do.

There is a good point being made about how selfish everyone is acting.


----------



## Eclectic Al

eljr said:


> The media simply reports as it always has/does


Media outlets make editorial choices. It is quite possible for different outlets to present coverage of the same topic which gives completely different impressions, while both are entirely true and factual. It is in what media outlets report that their main biases lie, not in whether they misrepresent the stories that they choose to present. Mainstream outlets are rarely so stupid as to publish untruths, because those can be readily found out. Instead their bias is in editorial selection.

For example, if there is a decent supply of PPE, then one media organisation will report that, and another will interview a doctor who is experiencing a local shortage and report that. If there is a shortage overall, then one organisation will report that and another will find a hospital where supply has improved and report that. If deaths are going up one will report that, and another will emphasise that cases are going down, etc, etc.

Which stories each publishes will depend on whether they support those seen as in charge or not, and that support will typically be because of matters entirely unconnected with the subject in question - often the general political stance of those people relative to that of the media organisation.

That is just how the media game is played, and I think we all know it.


----------



## Open Book

science said:


> Are you saying that TB deaths make covid-19 deaths less likely? Otherwise, what's the point? You want to tell someone, "Sure, your mom died of covid-19 but she was going to die of TB or something anyway someday."
> 
> I've already said that so far covid-19 has probably saved lives in South Korea because the drastic (almost shocking) reduction in pollution from both South Korea and China probably did much more good for people's health here than covid-19 hurt.
> 
> So should I be rooting for the virus to kill more people?


Does reducing pollution for just three months actually make much of a dent in deaths if people have been living with polluted air all their lives?


----------



## 1996D

"This lockdown has had an enormous negative effect on the health of people in the United States and worldwide," said Bhattacharya, enumerating some of the lockdown's tragic unintended but foreseeable consequences. "There have been people who have delayed their chemotherapy as a result of the lockdown."

"(People) have had heart attacks and not gone to the doctor," he said.

"I just saw a report estimating that 75,000 will have committed suicide as a result of the lockdown," he continued. "Seventy-five thousand 'deaths of despair' are predicted in the U.S. alone - a number that currently exceeds the total number of deaths due to the coronavirus in this country."

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/stanford-medical-prof-says-pandemic-lockdowns-are-doomed-to-fail


----------



## Room2201974

The U. S. has a long history of media aligning with political positions as any reader of Jefferson V. Adams will attest. It comes with the territory. But no media from either side can shine up the t¥rd of 90,000 dead and an upward trend of new cases that *is not leveling off*.

Not leveling off.
Not leveling off.
Not leveling off.

Meanwhile, we have never made a successful vaccine for a cornonavirus before. So in November, after the election, the wasteland of 200,000+ dead will not be a story in the media????? Yeah, riiiiiiight!


----------



## 1996D

A lockdown is not an effective way to prevent the spread, it's simply delaying it. Once everything reopens it will spread again.

There is no way around it but everyone getting the virus and achieving herd immunity, thus what should be promoted is good health practices (diet, exercise, mental fortitude) in order for people to survive the infection.

The media is not doing this, they have the elections and making Trump look bad as a priority.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> "There have been people who have delayed their chemotherapy as a result of the lockdown."


My father-in-law has continued to receive his chemo and radiation therapy during the virus. Perhaps some particular hospital has not been able to do that, but there's no reason for that to have happened as a general thing.


----------



## science

Open Book said:


> Does reducing pollution for just three months actually make much of a dent in deaths if people have been living with polluted air all their lives?


I don't know. I've read that it saved more lives in China than covid-19 took there, and if there's even an argument for that to have happened in China, then (I suspect) there's an even better chance that it happened in Korea, where they had far fewer deaths. I experienced the change in air quality myself, directly, so I can confidently report that it's not something to laugh at.

Air pollution kills a lot of people around the world every year.


----------



## science

BTW, almost as a joke, but if the reduction in air pollution is saving that many lives, and if the so-called "lockdown" is also saving lives, then it's a kind x2 argument for the lockdown. 

I don't know if I'd stand by that upon scrutiny, but it's something to bear in mind.


----------



## science

Room2201974 said:


> The U. S. has a long history of media aligning with political positions as any reader of Jefferson V. Adams will attest. It comes with the territory. But no media from either side can shine up the t¥rd of 90,000 dead and an upward trend of new cases that *is not leveling off*.
> 
> Not leveling off.
> Not leveling off.
> Not leveling off.
> 
> Meanwhile, we have never made a successful vaccine for a cornonavirus before. So in November, after the election, the wasteland of 200,000+ dead will not be a story in the media????? Yeah, riiiiiiight!


I could imagine it, not for political reasons, but if at some point we just get used to the idea that 200k (or more) Americans are going to die, it'll stop being a story.


----------



## Eclectic Al

A couple of Profs summarise knock on effects of lockdowns on death in this link.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article...book SM+CID_51a26dfb9f542831020c1f75fd33e4e8

I haven't a clue about the politics of these two, but it's scary stuff.


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> BTW, almost as a joke, but if the reduction in air pollution is saving that many lives, and if the so-called "lockdown" is also saving lives, then it's a kind x2 argument for the lockdown.
> 
> I don't know if I'd stand by that upon scrutiny, but it's something to bear in mind.


If a vaccine is not developed there is no other choice but herd immunity, Sweden is already ahead in this.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> If a vaccine is not developed there is no other choice but herd immunity, Sweden is already ahead in this.


Sorry, I originally misunderstood your post.

But even so, we did it with SARS without a vaccine.

We'll see.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Eclectic Al said:


> Media outlets make editorial choices. It is quite possible for different outlets to present coverage of the same topic which gives completely different impressions, while both are entirely true and factual. It is in what media outlets report that their main biases lie, not in whether they misrepresent the stories that they choose to present. Mainstream outlets are rarely so stupid as to publish untruths, because those can be readily found out. Instead their bias is in editorial selection.
> 
> For example, if there is a decent supply of PPE, then one media organisation will report that, and another will interview a doctor who is experiencing a local shortage and report that. If there is a shortage overall, then one organisation will report that and another will find a hospital where supply has improved and report that. If deaths are going up one will report that, and another will emphasise that cases are going down, etc, etc.
> 
> Which stories each publishes will depend on whether they support those seen as in charge or not, and that support will typically be because of matters entirely unconnected with the subject in question - often the general political stance of those people relative to that of the media organisation.
> 
> That is just how the media game is played, and I think we all know it.


What we see is selecting how they report stories. For example, so much attention has been paid to Florida with their reopening, in spite of the very low incidence there, while ignoring Colorado - a Democrat-governed state that also opened under very similar rules. Or that Florida is always held up as a horrible example while New York and its governor are heralded, in spite of the fact that so many mistakes were made (sending known infected people back to nursing homes?). So it is not only choice of stories, but choice of spin on those stories, and ignoring inconvenient truths that distract from the narrative being pushed.


----------



## science

How many people will have to die for us to get herd immunity? 

For example, I've read that only about 15% of people in the NYC area had been infected by the virus. To reach 55% (which is sometimes cited as the threshold for herd immunity), we'd have to be 3 to 4 times as many infections, 3 to 4 times as many cases, and AT LEAST as many deaths because of course the hospitals will be overwhelmed. 

I mean, maybe it has to happen, but it seems like -- assuming that we view human suffering as something to be avoided -- we might try something else first. 

Sweden has a much better situation than the US going into this because everyone there has had good healthcare for their entire lives. Not the case here. It'd be much worse here than it would be there.


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> Sorry, I originally misunderstood your post.
> 
> But even so, we did it with SARS without a vaccine.
> 
> We'll see.


SARS wasn't symptomless. The thing with this one is that perhaps as much as half of the people infected show no symptoms.

It's spreading now even with the lockdown.


----------



## mmsbls

I deleted a few posts and edited some others due to either pure politics or responses to deleted comments. Again, given the past thread derailments into politics and the unpleasantness which has arisen, please try to remain on topic.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> SARS wasn't symptomless. The thing with this one is that perhaps as much as half of the people infected show no symptoms.
> 
> *It's spreading now even with the lockdown.*


I don't think this is the right way to look at it. It's spreading now because we're choosing not to test and trace, not to wear masks, not to observe social distancing, not to supply our healthcare workers with PPE, not to make hand sanitizer widely and freely available, etc.

South Korea did those things and has done a pretty good job of stopping the spread of the virus (so far) without a lockdown.

The virus is spreading because of choices that we -- not necessarily you and I but the people who have had the power to make these choices -- have made. EDIT: BTW, to be clear, this does not only refer to choices made by the Trump administration. Many of these choices have been being made for generations by people and politicians of almost or perhaps even all descriptions.

As for the lockdown, as far as I can tell, there hasn't been an actual lockdown. The so-called lockdown seems to be sort of like communism or Scotsmen.


----------



## science

Art Rock said:


> 5G obviously. Duh.


I did not appreciate the cleverness of this post initially.

Now, to be fair, her husband, who is also a doctor, made the initial diagnosis via an ultrasound device he hooked up to his phone in their own home. So hypothetically perhaps his phone was hacked in such a way as to deceive him and her....

LOL.

Gallows humor, I guess. When we're on the gallows, why not?


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> I don't think this is the right way to look at it. It's spreading now because we're choosing not to test and trace, not to wear masks, not to observe social distancing, not to supply our healthcare workers with PPE, etc.
> 
> South Korea did those things and has done a pretty good job of stopping the spread of the virus (so far) without a lockdown.
> 
> The virus is spreading because of choices that we -- not necessarily you and I but the people who have had the power to make these choices -- have made.
> 
> As for the lockdown, as far as I can tell, there hasn't been an actual lockdown. The so-called lockdown seems to be sort of like communism or Scotsmen.


The virus is too contagious and too symptomless to contain. It's all over the world now, it can't be stopped.

Right now most places are reopening, people are accepting the virus.

There can't continue to be lockdowns forever.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> The virus is too contagious and too symptomless to contain. It's all over the world now, it can't be stopped.
> 
> Right now most places are reopening, people are accepting the virus.
> 
> There can't continue to be lockdowns forever.


To be clear, are you actually advocating that -- since (you say) we cannot ultimately stop the virus -- we should just go about life normally, letting it spread freely and accepting the deaths as inevitable? Trying to slow it down while we look for a vaccine or better treatments is not worth... whatever the cost of that is?


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> To be clear, are you actually advocating that -- since (you say) we cannot ultimately stop the virus -- we should just go about life normally, letting it spread freely and accepting the deaths as inevitable? Trying to slow it down while we look for a vaccine or better treatments is not worth... whatever the cost of that is?


Places are reopening, deaths can be prevented through good health practices.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> *I don't think this is the right way to look at it. It's spreading now because we're choosing not to test and trace, not to wear masks, not to observe social distancing, not to supply our healthcare workers with PPE, not to make hand sanitizer widely and freely available, etc.
> *
> South Korea did those things and has done a pretty good job of stopping the spread of the virus (so far) without a lockdown.
> 
> The virus is spreading because of choices that we -- not necessarily you and I but the people who have had the power to make these choices -- have made. EDIT: BTW, to be clear, this does not only refer to choices made by the Trump administration. Many of these choices have been being made for generations by people and politicians of almost or perhaps even all descriptions.
> 
> As for the lockdown, as far as I can tell, there hasn't been an actual lockdown. The so-called lockdown seems to be sort of like communism or Scotsmen.


I'm not sure what you are talking about here. We are testing 300,000-400,000/day. True - we aren't tagging people and tracking them like the strategy used in South Korea, but that clearly violates many civil liberties we have constitutionally protected here. We are, in fact, practicing social distancing. Perhaps imperfectly, but we are, and have been for months. Healthcare workers are getting PPE. It took time to ramp up production, as it always does when faced with unprecedented events, but saying that we aren't doing any of those things just doesn't comport with the facts on the ground.


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> I'm not sure what you are talking about here. We are testing 300,000-400,000/day. True - we aren't tagging people and tracking them like the strategy used in South Korea, but that clearly violates many civil liberties we have constitutionally protected here. We are, in fact, practicing social distancing. Perhaps imperfectly, but we are, and have been for months. Healthcare workers are getting PPE. It took time to ramp up production, as it always does when faced with unprecedented events, but saying that we aren't doing any of those things just doesn't comport with the facts on the ground.


Then you have to tell me, why is it terrible news in South Korea when they have 32 new cases in a day but it's pretty good news in the US if we have less than 10,000 new cases in a day? We found our first case on the same day. Have our reactions actually been the same? Have we really tried to do the same things?

I mean, I'm here in South Korea. I know what's happened here. No one here has gotten dirty looks for wearing masks.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> I could imagine it, not for political reasons, but if at some point we just get used to the idea that 200k (or more) Americans are going to die, it'll stop being a story.


Dangerous territory, as I'm in danger of sounding callous.

Population of the USA: 331 million. Hence, 200,000 deaths is 0.6 people per thousand. At first sight it appears that that means if you knew 1,000 people on average you would have a bit more than a 50:50 chance of knowing someone among that 200,000. It's not quite like that because if the most sociable people have high death rates then more people will know them. On the other hand if sociable people are low risk for mortality (say if they are young, and spread but don't succumb) then it might be lower. Anyway, the likely picture is that very many people will know only a tiny number of deaths in their social network, and many may know none. Because of media coverage everyone will, of course, hear about people who have succumbed.

In 2017 there were 2.8 million deaths in the US, and the death rate was 0.73%. If all the 200,000 corona deaths were excess deaths then that would push the death rate up from 0.73% to about 0.78%. Clearly a fair number of the corona deaths will be among people who would have died in that year anyway so you would not expect that increase in full: allowing for that, if you rounded the death rate to the nearest 0.05% it is quite possible that the figure would go from 0.75% to 0.75%! In reality what is likely to happen is that the death rate will go up and it will be tricky to establish how much is due to corona itself, and how much is due to lockdown and other consequences (such as change in hospital priorities).

My intention is not to be callous (but I am an actuary so counting deaths is something that is part of the day job) but to point out that the impact on the overall mortality rate of 200,000 deaths is not that great. The reason that observation is important is the corollary: that if an impact of the policy response is bad for health and death, it doesn't need to be a large effect for that to generate more than 200,000 deaths. You only need to add about 0.05% to the annual death rate: lockdown consequences may easily do that. After all, as noted above it is only an extra 6 deaths in every 10,000 of the population, from all other causes. Of course, as has been noted elsewhere in this thread, there may be good effects of lockdown (eg road traffic accident injuries and deaths down).

The worst outcome is that policies are implemented which have bad consequences, but aren't especially effective at tackling the deaths from the coronavirus. My worry is that the lockdown falls into that category. We then get the corona deaths (maybe with a shifted profile over time) plus additional deaths from the lockdown itself. Furthermore, if the lockdown deaths are among the young then many more of them will be be excess deaths, and (if you are interested in this measure) the number of future life years lost will be very high indeed from the lockdown deaths.


----------



## Room2201974

Herd immunity? If there is such a thing with Covid it will cost the US millions of lives to get there without a vaccine. Seems to me the most reasonable approach is to stay in the control group. Those who wish to be in the experimental group you can be my guest.

https://news.yahoo.com/herd-immunity-help-stop-coronavirus-230355956.html


----------



## science

Also, I can't see that it's about civil liberties. We couldn't surrender civil liberties fast enough after 9/11, which killed about 1/30th as many people _as we know to have died_ so far just in the US. (Never mind the true number of deaths or the number that would die if we actually chose to do nothing.)

Because for some reason we cared about 9/11 more than we care about this.

That's just the way it is. Our reactions to the two things have not been proportional. For whatever reason.

It's all reason in service of passion here. We're legitimizing what we want to legitimize based on what we fundamentally care about.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> Dangerous territory, as I'm in danger of sounding callous.
> 
> Population of the USA: 331 million. Hence, 200,000 deaths is 0.6 people per thousand.


Just to be clear, that's the number of deaths we're looking at if current policies work well, not the number that would happen if we did nothing.



Room2201974 said:


> ... it will cost the US millions of lives ...


This is.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> It's all reason in service of passion here. We're legitimizing what we want to legitimize based on what we fundamentally care about.


Indeed. I am sure there is a lot in what you say.


----------



## 1996D

According to Dr. Giesecke, lockdowns are solely a means of delaying the inevitable. "You're pushing your cases and deaths into the future, they are not disappearing,"

https://en.as.com/en/2020/05/18/other_sports/1589796373_875369.html

The WHO and Bill Gates don't like Sweden's approach because it means less power for them, they'd love to have a digital ID tracking every citizen.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> Just to be clear, that's the number of deaths we're looking at if current policies work well, not the number that would happen if we did nothing.


Depends of course, if you think they work. My concern is the current policies won't achieve very much. But as you noted in your other post, I agree entirely that we're all posting things which support what matters to us.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> The WHO and Bill Gates don't like Sweden's approach because it means less power for them, they'd love to have a digital ID tracking every citizen.


I'll guess that people whose loved ones would still be alive if Sweden's response had been more like Norway's or Denmark's are even more unhappy than Bill Gates.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> In 2017 there were 2.8 million deaths in the US, and the death rate was 0.73%. If all the 200,000 corona deaths were excess deaths then that would push the death rate up from 0.73% to about 0.78%. Clearly a fair number of the corona deaths will be among people who would have died in that year anyway so you would not expect that increase in full: allowing for that, if you rounded the death rate to the nearest 0.05% it is quite possible that the figure would go from 0.75% to 0.75%! In reality what is likely to happen is that the death rate will go up and it will be tricky to establish how much is due to corona itself, and how much is due to lockdown and other consequences (such as change in hospital priorities).


There's a big problem with your numbers. 200,000 deaths is what is predicted with the strong social distancing. In the scenario where social distancing and lockdown are not done the predictions were more like 2 million deaths. That almost doubles the death rate, and would cause a huge reduction in life expectancy. That's not good for the economy either. Dead people are poor customers.

You can claim that the cure is worse than the disease, and in fact when you are sick most of the symptoms you experience are the effect of your immune response. But if you have no immune response you also die, but with different symptoms.

The worst case scenario is that we implement distancing, suffer economic consequences, lift distancing too soon, and the disease comes back and kills 2 million. Then you get suffer from the cure _and_ the disease. That seems to be the plan in the U.S. We are supposed to hold the restrictions until a plan is in place to suppress by tests and tracking. The Federal government is nowhere near that goal, but restrictions are being lifted anyway.


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> I'll guess that people whose loved ones would still be alive if Sweden's response had been more like Norway's or Denmark's are even more unhappy than Bill Gates.


Rest assured that when it's said and done Norway and Denmark will have around the same deaths as Sweden. Lockdowns are simply delaying the inevitable.


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> According to Dr. Giesecke, lockdowns are solely a means of delaying the inevitable. "You're pushing your cases and deaths into the future, they are not disappearing,"
> 
> [/URL]
> 
> The WHO and Bill Gates don't like Sweden's approach because it means less power for them, they'd love to have a digital ID tracking every citizen.


Do you understand why one would do this?

and

it IS NOT inevitable

we MAKE TIME to do work arounds like social distancing

plus, meantime, the likelihood is that we find a vaccine

Your link is extreme nonsense in other words.

as to the "power" thing, that is just ridiculous.


----------



## 1996D

eljr said:


> Do you understand why one would do this?
> 
> and
> 
> it IS NOT inevitable
> 
> we MAKE TIME to do work arounds like social distancing
> 
> plus, meantime, the likelihood is that we find a vaccine
> 
> Your link is extreme nonsense in other words.
> 
> as to the "power" thing, that is just ridiculous.


The vaccine is not a guarantee. You can prevent large gatherings to slow the spread but not shutdown people going to work.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Baron Scarpia said:


> The worst case scenario is that we implement distancing, suffer economic consequences, lift distancing too soon, and the disease comes back and kills 2 million. Then you get suffer from the cure _and_ the disease. That seems to be the plan in the U.S. We are supposed to hold the restrictions until a plan is in place to suppress by tests and tracking. The Federal government is nowhere near that goal, but restrictions are being lifted anyway.


I agree with this in part: ie that the worst case is doing something which has bad effects of its own, but doing it in such a way that it doesn't really work. You think that relaxing the lockdown walks into that trap; I am more in the camp that extending the lockdown is to walk into the same trap, because I am more sceptical about the effectiveness of lockdown.

I fully accept, though, that everyone is guessing really. I certainly wouldn't claim to be doing more than that. Hence, I agree with Science that we are posting things which suit our wider world views.


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> Depends of course, if you think they work. My concern is the current policies won't achieve very much. But as you noted in your other post, I agree entirely that we're all posting things which support what matters to us.


They already have achieved much. Lot's in fact.

We in the states lost 100,000 with a complete shutdown.... think about that. In 2 months.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> Rest assured that when it's said and done Norway and Denmark will have around the same deaths as Sweden. Lockdowns are simply delaying the inevitable.


Not even worth a try, then?

Again, I just can't imagine actually advocating this in real life. On the internet, sure, be a tough guy, but in real life, let's say you're a politician. I can't imagine you would actually go in front of people and say, "Look folks. I don't think these doctors and immunologists know what they're talking about. I think all the people that could die from this are going to die anyway and it's not worth trying to put that off for a while. If any other country manages to save people, I'll take personal responsibility for this decision."

I mean, we'll see. But I'd bet that in the end we'll be able to identify some policies as having been more effective than others.


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> The vaccine is not a guarantee. You can prevent large gatherings to slow the spread but not shutdown people going to work.


and that is what we are doing

we needed a full shutdown to get things under control

now we SMARTLY open up... different than when we shut down

the vaccine is likely although it is not a guarantee as you said


----------



## eljr

science said:


> Not even worth a try, then?
> 
> Again, I just can't imagine actually advocating this in real life. On the internet, sure, be a tough guy, but in real life, let's say you're a politician. I can't imagine you would actually go in front of people and say, "Look folks. I don't think these doctors and immunologists know what they're talking about. I think all the people that could die from this are going to die anyway and it's not worth trying to put that off for a while. If any other country manages to save people, I'll take personal responsibility for this decision."
> 
> I mean, we'll see. But I'd bet that in the end we'll be able to identify some policies as having been more effective than others.


I could see Trump uttering that quote.


----------



## science

eljr said:


> I could see [someone] uttering that quote.


Just saying, if I were you, I'd edit this away before someone who likes this politician can report you.


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> Not even worth a try, then?
> 
> Again, I just can't imagine actually advocating this in real life. On the internet, sure, be a tough guy, but in real life, let's say you're a politician. I can't imagine you would actually go in front of people and say, "Look folks. I don't think these doctors and immunologists know what they're talking about. I think all the people that could die from this are going to die anyway and it's not worth trying to put that off for a while. If any other country manages to save people, I'll take personal responsibility for this decision."
> 
> I mean, we'll see. But I'd bet that in the end we'll be able to identify some policies as having been more effective than others.


Many, many doctors are saying that lockdowns are useless, just not ones bought by the WHO.

Right now the decision made is to reopen and it's the right one, people need to enjoy the summer and strengthen their immune systems. A healthy person will not die from this virus, however old they are.


----------



## eljr

Baron Scarpia said:


> There's a big problem with your numbers. 200,000 deaths is what is predicted with the strong social distancing. In the scenario where social distancing and lockdown are not done the predictions were more like 2 million deaths. That almost doubles the death rate, and would cause a huge reduction in life expectancy. That's not good for the economy either. Dead people are poor customers.
> 
> You can claim that the cure is worse than the disease, and in fact when you are sick most of the symptoms you experience are the effect of your immune response. But if you have no immune response you also die, but with different symptoms.
> 
> The worst case scenario is that we implement distancing, suffer economic consequences, lift distancing too soon, and the disease comes back and kills 2 million. Then you get suffer from the cure _and_ the disease. That seems to be the plan in the U.S. We are supposed to hold the restrictions until a plan is in place to suppress by tests and tracking. The Federal government is nowhere near that goal, but restrictions are being lifted anyway.


The federal governments response to Covid has been shockingly chaotic and incoherent. We all know why but no one acts to replace the problem.


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> Many, many doctors are saying that lockdowns are useless
> .


You sound liek someone we all know.

Let's go with science. That is always best.


----------



## 1996D

eljr said:


> You sound liek someone we all know.
> 
> *Let's go with science.* That is always best.


You mean the WHO... that happens to be incredibly corrupt.

Stanford doctors Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis among many others have been posted here saying that the lockdowns are useless.


----------



## science

Baron Scarpia said:


> There's a big problem with your numbers. 200,000 deaths is what is predicted with the strong social distancing. In the scenario where social distancing and lockdown are not done the predictions were more like 2 million deaths. That almost doubles the death rate, and would cause a huge reduction in life expectancy. That's not good for the economy either. Dead people are poor customers.
> 
> You can claim that the cure is worse than the disease, and in fact when you are sick most of the symptoms you experience are the effect of your immune response. But if you have no immune response you also die, but with different symptoms.
> 
> The worst case scenario is that we implement distancing, suffer economic consequences, lift distancing too soon, and the disease comes back and kills 2 million. Then you get suffer from the cure _and_ the disease. That seems to be the plan in the U.S. We are supposed to hold the restrictions until a plan is in place to suppress by tests and tracking. The Federal government is nowhere near that goal, but restrictions are being lifted anyway.


This is a great point.

And again, I think we can take for granted that the people whose money is most at stake in this -- the people who hold power in various countries -- have already calculated what's best for them economically as well as they could, and the policies that have been implemented are their best guesses.

It happens, thank fortune, that to some extent in this case what's good for them probably saves lives, but I can't imagine being naive enough to think that all the rulers of all these different countries have decided to put their working people's lives above the fortunes of their most powerful people. I can't imagine that ever happening in almost any country, never mind lots at once.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> Many, many doctors are saying that lockdowns are useless, just not ones bought by the WHO.
> 
> Right now the decision made is to reopen and it's the right one, people need to enjoy the summer and strengthen their immune systems. A healthy person will not die from this virus, however old they are.


I know dozens of doctors personally. I doubt any of them -- let alone all of them -- would lie about all this no matter how much money the WHO gave them.


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> I know dozens of doctors personally. I doubt any of them -- let alone all of them -- would lie about all this no matter how much money the WHO gave them.


There are more doctors standing against the WHO than with it.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> There are more doctors standing against the WHO than with it.


Oh, I see. I'll check my Facebook feed again.

To protect identities, I'll give initials:


ACA -- Has had the virus personally and is working to get PPE to more healthcare professionals 
AJH -- Believes the virus is real, is in favor of social distancing, etc. 
AK -- Believes the virus is real, says poor people are not getting treated for it enough, is in favor of social distancing, etc 
EA -- Believes the virus is real, is in favor of social distancing, etc. 
JD -- Believes the virus is real, is in favor of social distancing, etc.; vocally critical of Sweden 
JL -- Believes the virus is real, is in favor of social distancing, etc.; actively involved in sharing treatments for coronavirus 
JT -- Believes the virus is real, posts videos about how to stop it from spreading 
LP -- Believes the virus is real, advocates social distancing, etc.
MMT -- not a doctor but works in healthcare (her husband is a doctor but I've never met him); hardcore Republican; believes the virus is real, advocates social distancing 
PV -- Believes the virus is real, advocates social distancing, etc., on TV as well 
SdV -- Hasn't posted about it as far as I can tell 
SK -- Believes the virus is real, advocates social distancing, etc.
SZ -- Believes the virus is real, advocates social distancing, etc.

That's 13 people, 12 doctors, and I'll stop there because this is boring. I was gonna stop at 12 but then I remembered one (JL) who I couldn't omit in good conscience because he's actually such a cool guy and I'm privileged to know him.

So out of 13, we've at best got 1 who isn't actively responding to the virus. (And I know her well enough to be confident that without very clear science on her side, she would not advocate just letting the virus spread willy-nilly).

Now either I'm so well-connected to the WHO that I should be getting some of that money too, or there's no conspiracy.


----------



## eljr

science said:


> Oh, I see. I'll check my Facebook feed again.


exactly

......


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> Oh, I see. I'll check my Facebook feed again.


The bottom line is the world has to open up again and that's what's happening; lockdowns are very unhealthy. I can only tell you to take care of your health so when you inevitably get the virus it doesn't hurt you.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I agree with this in part: ie that the worst case is doing something which has bad effects of its own, but doing it in such a way that it doesn't really work. You think that relaxing the lockdown walks into that trap; I am more in the camp that extending the lockdown is to walk into the same trap, *because I am more sceptical about the effectiveness of lockdown.*
> 
> I fully accept, though, that everyone is guessing really. I certainly wouldn't claim to be doing more than that. Hence, I agree with Science that we are posting things which suit our wider world views.


I'm naturally skeptical. My skepticism about lockdown was eased by this graph.










Lockdown started towards the end of March. The infection rate was roaring up on an exponential curve, 100 per day, 1000 per day, 10,000 per day. After lockdown if flattened at about 30,000 per day. Without lockdown the exponential would have continued, 100,000 per day, 1,000,000 per day (except we didn't have the testing) until everyone was infected.

If we had locked down sooner it could have flattened at a lower level, maybe 3,000 per day instead of 30,000, and we could have done contact tracing.


----------



## 1996D

Lockdowns are a momentary delay, they are already being lifted. 

Almost all countries are partially or completely reopening right now.


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> A healthy person will not die from this virus, however old they are.


And your source for this is?


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> The bottom line is the world has to open up again and that's what's happening; lockdowns are very unhealthy. I can only tell you to take care of your health so when you inevitably get the virus it doesn't hurt you.


it is going to open up differently so one does not have to inevitably get the virus


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> Then you have to tell me, why is it terrible news in South Korea when they have 32 new cases in a day but it's pretty good news in the US if we have less than 10,000 new cases in a day? We found our first case on the same day. Have our reactions actually been the same? Have we really tried to do the same things?
> 
> I mean, I'm here in South Korea. I know what's happened here. No one here has gotten dirty looks for wearing masks.


There are a lot of differences, at many levels.

First, South Korea much more drastically shut down travel and implemented better screening measures - that combined with the fact that you just don't see as much international travel to South Korea as to, say, NYC, or LA. So it was always going to be harder to keep cases out of the U.S.

South Korea has a much smaller population that they need to test, and a much smaller geographic region. Additionally, the initial false start by the CDC, and their slow response in acknowledging the mistake, cost us dearly in the early ramp up to get testing going.

South Korea hasn't seen the possible different variants like we see - the one originating on the West Coast, and the one that originated in NYC (likely first passing through Europe, whereas the West Coast variant likely came directly from Asia - I'm guessing that the South Korean variant is much closer to our West Coast variant - which doesn't seem to spread as rapidly).

As for masks - well, plain and simple, the American people were initially lied to about the use of masks. We were told they were ineffective, and so initially most people did not wear them. Then when the government turns around and says, well, nevermind, they are good - well, that is definitely going to make a lot of people skeptical. I understand they were trying to preserve masks for healthcare workers, but the law of unintended consequences definitely applies here.

There was no way a massive country like the U.S., a major (THE major?) international travel hub, with different laws and customs, and different population size, was ever going to see the same scenario as South Korea. There is just no comparing them at any level. It's not even apples to oranges - it's apples to cinderblocks.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> Many, many doctors are saying that lockdowns are useless, just not ones bought by the WHO.
> 
> Right now the decision made is to reopen and it's the right one, people need to enjoy the summer and strengthen their immune systems. A healthy person will not die from this virus, however old they are.


Whether that is true, that many, many doctors are saying that, there is an important thing to recognize here.

Doctors are doctors. They are very good at diagnosing and treating ailments, depending on their specialty. They will have some general knowledge as well, but in the medical profession, they tend to specialize. So while I would expect my child's pediatrician to have some general knowledge of the brain, I would not turn to him for neurosurgical needs.

Doctors are not scientists. Some may be, but not all. Just because a doctor has knowledge of disease, it doesn't mean they will have in depth knowledge that is needed to make such calls about things like lock downs. That is the realm of others, like microbiologists and epidemiologists - those that study the growth and spread of microorganisms.

I have a great respect for doctors - as a diabetic, I have a whole team of them working with me. I also verify. I had a doctor once see elevated liver enzyme levels and tell me he was quite certain I had hepatitis C. Nevermind the fact I've never done i.v. drugs or had a blood transfusion - I have engaged in none of the risky activities that would put me at risk. I argued with him about it, but he was quite certain - but I insisted he test specifically for it. In the meantime, I went to my endocrinologist, who noticed that my A1C had been high (average measure of blood sugars over a 3-month period) and laughed - no, he said, your blood sugar has not been well managed, and that has caused some minor liver damage. He was positive the hep C test would come back negative, and it did.

All doctors don't know everything.


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> There are a lot of differences, at many levels.
> 
> First, South Korea much more drastically shut down travel and implemented better screening measures - that combined with the fact that you just don't see as much international travel to South Korea as to, say, NYC, or LA. So it was always going to be harder to keep cases out of the U.S.
> 
> South Korea has a much smaller population that they need to test, and a much smaller geographic region. Additionally, the initial false start by the CDC, and their slow response in acknowledging the mistake, cost us dearly in the early ramp up to get testing going.
> 
> South Korea hasn't seen the possible different variants like we see - the one originating on the West Coast, and the one that originated in NYC (likely first passing through Europe, whereas the West Coast variant likely came directly from Asia - I'm guessing that the South Korean variant is much closer to our West Coast variant - which doesn't seem to spread as rapidly).
> 
> As for masks - well, plain and simple, the American people were initially lied to about the use of masks. We were told they were ineffective, and so initially most people did not wear them. Then when the government turns around and says, well, nevermind, they are good - well, that is definitely going to make a lot of people skeptical. I understand they were trying to preserve masks for healthcare workers, but the law of unintended consequences definitely applies here.
> 
> There was no way a massive country like the U.S., a major (THE major?) international travel hub, with different laws and customs, and different population size, was ever going to see the same scenario as South Korea. There is just no comparing them at any level. It's not even apples to oranges - it's apples to cinderblocks.


They had enough international travel to get their first case the same day we did. The population of the US is only about 6.5x as big as South Korea's, and if anything the population density should've hurt Korea.

And every other thing there is a result of different choices made by the two countries over years and years.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> And your source for this is?


https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus/covid-19-hope-women-recover-from-covid-19-they-are-103

If you get killed by something that didn't kill a centenarian, you're not in good health.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> Many, many doctors are saying that lockdowns are useless, just not ones bought by the WHO.
> 
> Right now the decision made is to reopen and it's the right one, people need to enjoy the summer and strengthen their immune systems. *A healthy person will not die from this virus, however old they are.*


In the first place, that's not true. Initially healthy people die, although at a lower rate.

In the second place, your point is that people who are not healthy should just get it over with and die immediately?


----------



## science

Baron Scarpia said:


> I'm naturally skeptical. My skepticism about lockdown was eased by this graph.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Lockdown started towards the end of March. The infection rate was roaring up on an exponential curve, 100 per day, 1000 per day, 10,000 per day. After lockdown if flattened at about 30,000 per day. Without lockdown the exponential would have continued, 100,000 per day, 1,000,000 per day (except we didn't have the testing) until everyone was infected.
> 
> If we had locked down sooner it could have flattened at a lower level, maybe 3,000 per day instead of 30,000, and we could have done contact tracing.


I should not be posting.

Every time you come to one of my posts, you should skip it and read one of Baron Scarpia's posts an extra time.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> They had enough international travel to get their first case the same day we did. The population of the US is only about 6.5x as big as South Korea's, and if anything the population density should've hurt Korea.
> 
> And every other thing there is a result of different choices made by the two countries over years and years.


They are also right next to China. You could take a boat. And Asians in general have a long history of wearing masks (I suspect they have been suspicious of China spreading diseases like this for a lot longer).

Yes, there are different choices. As I understand it, the tracking involves the following:
The person is given a tracker, and when they return to their apartment, they are told to go to the furthest reaches of the apartment to map the limit of where they can go. At that point, if they ever go outside that, they get reported. The government tracks their every step. I heard a report of one person getting phone calls up to 10X per day.

Now, maybe they accept that level of government intrusion in South Korea, but that would never fly in the U.S. People freaked out when they thought the government was tracking their library visits - how many do you think would willingly allow the government to track their every step? We usually only do that with people under house arrest.

You just can't compare the two countries. Their only land border is with North Korea - they already had that border controlled.


----------



## 1996D

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2020/05/20/these-6-countries-are-cautiously-reopening-summer-travel/

Lockdowns are already being lifted, even travel is ready to happen.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Baron Scarpia said:


> I'm naturally skeptical. My skepticism about lockdown was eased by this graph.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Lockdown started towards the end of March. The infection rate was roaring up on an exponential curve, 100 per day, 1000 per day, 10,000 per day. After lockdown if flattened at about 30,000 per day. Without lockdown the exponential would have continued, 100,000 per day, 1,000,000 per day (except we didn't have the testing) until everyone was infected.
> 
> If we had locked down sooner it could have flattened at a lower level, maybe 3,000 per day instead of 30,000, and we could have done contact tracing.


That really isn't how exponential growth works - It would have eventually hit a limit, for whatever reason. Nobody is seeing 100% infection rates, either. I'm not arguing against the lockdown. I'm just saying that your counterfactual (what would happen if we didn't) I don't think is quite accurate.


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> They are also right next to China. You could take a boat. And Asians in general have a long history of wearing masks (I suspect they have been suspicious of China spreading diseases like this for a lot longer).
> 
> Yes, there are different choices. As I understand it, the tracking involves the following:
> The person is given a tracker, and when they return to their apartment, they are told to go to the furthest reaches of the apartment to map the limit of where they can go. At that point, if they ever go outside that, they get reported. The government tracks their every step. I heard a report of one person getting phone calls up to 10X per day.
> 
> Now, maybe they accept that level of government intrusion in South Korea, but that would never fly in the U.S. People freaked out when they thought the government was tracking their library visits - how many do you think would willingly allow the government to track their every step? We usually only do that with people under house arrest.
> 
> You just can't compare the two countries. Their only land border is with North Korea - they already had that border controlled.


Again, the land border (or boats) doesn't matter. The virus didn't get to the US across the land borders (or to Korea by boat). That's just ... another thing that for some reason you think about even when it isn't relevant...

Again, I might buy that civil liberties are the problem if I hadn't seen the response to 9/11 which killed many, many times fewer people than are going to die of this. But regardless, even if this were one of the things that have mattered, this too would be a choice. South Korea has not been tracking my every step. It's a free country here -- arguably a more vibrant democracy than the US, actually.

Y'all should all read one of Baron Scarpia's posts again!


----------



## mmsbls

Open Book said:


> Does reducing pollution for just three months actually make much of a dent in deaths if people have been living with polluted air all their lives?


Here's a paper that estimates the reduction in pollution related premature deaths and pediatric asthma cases due to reduced economic activity. They use ground-level measurements from air quality stations after accounting for meteorological variations to estimate pollution levels for nitrogen oxides, ozone, and particulate matter. Then they estimate short-term health outcomes using empirical exposure response functions.

They estimate a net total of 7400 (340 to 14600) premature deaths and 6600 (4900 to 7900) pediatric asthma cases avoided during two weeks post lockdown (mostly from China and India). They state "assuming that the lockdown-induced deviations in pollutant concentrations are maintained for the duration of 2020, we estimate 0.78 (0.09 to 1.5) million premature deaths." That's mostly extrapolating from the 27 countries they looked at.


----------



## KenOC

Well now, here's an idea that has a *certain novelty*…

"Ricky Sandler is ready for America to get back to business. Immediately.

"The hedge-fund manager, who oversees some $8 billion inassets at Eminence Capital, just penned an open letter touting herd immunity asthe best path forward during the coronavirus pandemic…

"Sandler said that he envisions young and healthy peopleattending "virus relief concerts" in hopes of getting the virus and thendonating the antibodies to be used as a treatment or prophylactic."


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus/covid-19-hope-women-recover-from-covid-19-they-are-103
> 
> If you get killed by something that didn't kill a centenarian, you're not in good health.


Otherwise healthy people have been dying from this virus everyday. If you believe otherwise, assuming you're healthy, take a tour of your closest ICU (without a mask and other protection) where there is active Clovid-19 and test your theory.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> Otherwise healthy people have been dying from this virus everyday. If you believe otherwise, assuming you're healthy, without a mask and other protection, take a tour of your closest ICU where there is active Clovid-19 and test your theory.


It's simply a numbers game. If you're over 65, you're 8 to 12 times as likely to catch and die from Covid-19 than a younger person. At least these are the results from two analyses I did. It can kill you at any age, although deaths of people under ~25 are extremely rare.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> Otherwise healthy people have been dying from this virus everyday. If you believe otherwise, assuming you're healthy, take a tour of your closest ICU (without a mask and other protection) where there is active Clovid-19 and test your theory.


I'm pretty sure everyone will get the virus, places are reopening and there is no vaccine coming for some time, if at all.

The things happening around the virus have been much more disheartening, namely the bad leadership and corruption.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Well now, here's an idea that has a *certain novelty*…
> 
> "Ricky Sandler is ready for America to get back to business. Immediately.
> 
> "The hedge-fund manager, who oversees some $8 billion inassets at Eminence Capital, just penned an open letter touting herd immunity asthe best path forward during the coronavirus pandemic…
> 
> "Sandler said that he envisions young and healthy peopleattending "virus relief concerts" in hopes of getting the virus and thendonating the antibodies to be used as a treatment or prophylactic."


I'm not creative or knowledgeable enough to justify it, but I was thinking something like this too. Maybe there could be a bunch of relatively young, healthy people who volunteer and get screened a bit (i.e. that they don't have diabetes or anything) who just go out and get the virus intentionally (this should not be too hard to arrange) and take their chances. They'd have to promise to quarantine themselves immediately for a certain period of time, but then they could emerge.... It could be arranged "in shifts" to prevent hospitals from being too overwhelmed by those who get very sick (as some of them would).

If we need 55%, that could get us a fair way there. If we need 80%, that's probably not going to be a big enough help.

But it's an interesting idea.


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> I'm pretty sure everyone will get the virus...


Hmm, now you're at the other extreme vs.:



1996D said:


> A healthy person will not die from this virus, however old they are.


----------



## pianozach

science said:


> Then you have to tell me, why is it terrible news in South Korea when they have 32 new cases in a day but it's pretty good news in the US if we have less than 10,000 new cases in a day? We found our first case on the same day. Have our reactions actually been the same? Have we really tried to do the same things?
> 
> I mean, I'm here in South Korea. I know what's happened here. No one here has gotten dirty looks for wearing masks.


Ah. Yes.

There seems to be a rather large cultural divide between developed Asian countries such as South Korea, and the United States when it comes to science.

In the USA we have a large percentage of people that look upon science, intellectuals, and facts with a proudly ignorant disdain.

There are many reasons for this, one of which is a political one, so I'll just stow my jaw and tackle and belay.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> That really isn't how exponential growth works - It would have eventually hit a limit, for whatever reason. Nobody is seeing 100% infection rates, either. I'm not arguing against the lockdown. I'm just saying that your counterfactual (what would happen if we didn't) I don't think is quite accurate.


Well, yes of course you are right that exponential growth would have saturated as the infection rate approached 100%. Lockdown put the brakes on before it got to that point.


----------



## pianozach

science said:


> Not even worth a try, then?
> 
> Again, I just can't imagine actually advocating this in real life. On the internet, sure, be a tough guy, but in real life, let's say you're a politician. I can't imagine you would actually go in front of people and say, "Look folks. I don't think these doctors and immunologists know what they're talking about. I think all the people that could die from this are going to die anyway and it's not worth trying to put that off for a while. If any other country manages to save people, I'll take personal responsibility for this decision."
> 
> I mean, we'll see. But I'd bet that in the end we'll be able to identify some policies as having been more effective than others.


Sadly, many of our leaders, almost all from the political right, ARE saying this. Maybe not in language as blunt as this, but they're saying this.

*Senator Ron Johnson*, a Republican from Wisconsin, published his opinion in *USA Today*, on March 29.

_" . . . we should evaluate the total societal cost of this awful disease and try to put things into perspective.

"Each year, approximately 48,000 Americans commit suicide and an estimated 67,000 die of a drug overdose. That level of individual despair has occurred in a strong economy with near-record low levels of unemployment in virtually every demographic.

"Imagine the potential psychological and human toll if this shutdown continues indefinitely, unemployment reaches 20% or higher, as some now predict, and we sink into a deep recession or depression. . . .

". . . Every premature death is a tragedy, but death is an unavoidable part of life. More than 2.8 million die each year - nearly 7,700 a day. The 2017-18 flu season was exceptionally bad, with 61,000 deaths attributed to it."_

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...ve-ron-johnson-editorials-debates/2937302001/

Same message, but instead of a stark framing, it's sitting in a plush easy chair.

There are plenty of others that have advocated the "they're gonna die anyway" philosophy. I quote Sen. Johnson because he came up first in my two second Google search.


----------



## pianozach

Baron Scarpia said:


> I'm naturally skeptical. My skepticism about lockdown was eased by this graph.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Lockdown started towards the end of March. The infection rate was roaring up on an exponential curve, 100 per day, 1000 per day, 10,000 per day. After lockdown if flattened at about 30,000 per day. Without lockdown the exponential would have continued, 100,000 per day, 1,000,000 per day (except we didn't have the testing) until everyone was infected.
> 
> If we had locked down sooner it could have flattened at a lower level, maybe 3,000 per day instead of 30,000, and we could have done contact tracing.


Great graph.

Here's the most recent version.

From 0 cases to 34,000 daily cases in two weeks. By the end of March there were lockdowns of various sorts countrywide.

There was quite a spike on April 24, with 38,000 new cases

7 weeks later we're down to 20,000 - 25,000 new cases daily. You can see the very slow average decline since the beginning of April.

It didn't "disappear", as predicted by a reality TV star. That's why I listen to scientists.


----------



## KenOC

I think Sen.Johnson's arguments are weak. Here’s maybe a better one.

As long as we lock people up, we will send them monetary relief. And that’s pretty easy, since we borrow it. As for that recent $3 trillion coronavirus spending bill – the one that gave us those nice checks – that borrowing, for our own questionable benefit, has added about $30,000 dollars in new and very real debt to the small family of my son, his wife, and their newborn child.

But why worry? We’ll never have to pay it back. That’ll be somebody else’s job, right?

We like to squabble over who’s at fault in this mess. But looking in a mirror may be more useful. The generation that fought in WWII is often called “the greatest generation” because they were willing to make great sacrifices for the benefit of generations to follow. Since we seem quite happy to do the opposite, maybe we’ll be remembered as “the basest generation”.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> I think Sen.Johnson's arguments are weak. Here's maybe a better one.
> 
> As long as we lock people up, we will send them monetary relief. And that's pretty easy, since we borrow it. As for that recent $3 trillion coronavirus spending bill - the one that gave us those nice checks - that borrowing, for our own questionable benefit, has added about $30,000 dollars in new and very real debt to the small family of my son, his wife, and their newborn child.
> 
> But why worry? We'll never have to pay it back. That'll be somebody else's job, right?
> 
> We like to squabble over who's at fault in this mess. But looking in a mirror may be more useful. The generation that fought in WWII is often called "the greatest generation" because they were willing to make great sacrifices for the benefit of generations to follow. Since we seem quite happy to do the opposite, maybe we'll be remembered as "the basest generation".


This article shows projected Covid-19 spending contributing to increasing US debt as a percentage of GDP to levels close to that immediately after World War II. The trick will be to reduce that debt in a very roughly similar manner as was done from 1950-1980.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> As for that recent $3 trillion coronavirus spending bill - the one that gave us those nice checks - that borrowing, for our own questionable benefit, has added about $30,000 dollars in new and very real debt to the small family of my son, his wife, and their newborn child.
> 
> But why worry? We'll never have to pay it back. That'll be somebody else's job, right?


Unless they're set to inherit tens of millions of dollars, they're not among the prime beneficiaries of any of the big tax cuts of the past 60 years, nor of the big deregulations of those years, nor are they among the prime beneficiaries of the big bailout, and so they're not among the ones who should be on the hook for much of that debt. The people who arranged for those policies because they were the ones who most benefitted from them, and who have consequently received almost all of the new wealth generated for the past 40 years, and their heirs, are the ones who should have to pay for that.

And, yeah, it looks for the moment like the boomers are in fact the greatest obstacle to us raising taxes on the billionaires who have been the beneficiaries of all those policies. We need to go back to the tax rates our society enjoyed in your childhood, because they made possible much of what we look back on with pride in that era.


----------



## science

To be clear, though, based on the example of Japan at least, the US is not even nearly pushing the limits of debt/GDP that a prosperous modern economy is capable of. 

But it would be unwise to push those limits since, after all, some huge tragedy could strike at any moment requiring us to borrow a huge amount of money....


----------



## science

For the moment at least, the US's number today doesn't look too bad. 

The world's numbers are still getting worse though.


----------



## mmsbls

pianozach said:


> Great graph.
> 
> Here's the most recent version.
> 
> From 0 cases to 34,000 daily cases in two weeks. By the end of March there were lockdowns of various sorts countrywide.
> 
> There was quite a spike on April 24, with 38,000 new cases
> 
> 7 weeks later we're down to 20,000 - 25,000 new cases daily. You can see the very slow average decline since the beginning of April.
> 
> It didn't "disappear", as predicted by a reality TV star. That's why I listen to scientists.
> 
> View attachment 136325


What's interesting to me is why some countries or US states show strong reductions in new cases down to close to zero while others flatten but do not significantly decrease. Australia peaked and now has close to zero cases. So has Hawaii. Maybe being islands with modest to low population density helps a lot. Italy and Germany have drastically reduced new cases. New York state has vastly reduced new cases as well although they still have a reasonable number. California started to decrease cases, but now the curve has risen and appears flat. The US as a whole (when New York is removed) is still increasing.

Some of this presumably has to do with the exact timing and implementation of NPIs, but California has had shelter in place since before any other state. Is it simply non-compliance?


----------



## pianozach

mmsbls said:


> What's interesting to me is why some countries or US states show strong reductions in new cases down to close to zero while others flatten but do not significantly decrease. Australia peaked and now has close to zero cases. So has Hawaii. Maybe being islands with modest to low population density helps a lot. Italy and Germany have drastically reduced new cases. New York state has vastly reduced new cases as well although they still have a reasonable number. California started to decrease cases, but now the curve has risen and appears flat. The US as a whole (when New York is removed) is still increasing.
> 
> Some of this presumably has to do with the exact timing and implementation of NPIs, but California has had shelter in place since before any other state. Is it simply non-compliance?


The US is large and populous, with vast ranges of population density and geographical differences. And a large spectrum of political/religious/cultural differences.

It would be far more useful to _*use the statistics of the individual states*_ when comparing to other nations.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> This article shows projected Covid-19 spending contributing to increasing US debt as a percentage of GDP to levels close to that immediately after World War II. The trick will be to reduce that debt in a very roughly similar manner as was done from 1950-1980.


Paywall, can't read the article referenced. But I'm familiar with the numbers.

Our national debt measured against GDP peaked about 1945/46, as huge borrowings financed a war that pretty much everybody today thinks was necessary and a "good thing" for the world.

Now we have exceeded that debt level during times, in our nation, of unparalleled prosperity with only minor and temporary reverses. Our new and even more massive borrowings, it seems, have mostly been for bigger houses, newer cars, and other such things that we consider our due. Our national credit card is hot to the touch and threatens to spontaneously combust at any time.

As for reducing the debt as we did after WWII, Wiki doesn't think so and neither do I.


----------



## science

mmsbls said:


> Is it simply non-compliance?


I think that has to be part of it, but to know about this very well we'd have to go case-by-case because of all the anomalies in how cases have been recorded and reported. At least within the US, it seems like it varies almost hospital to hospital, not just state to state.

And... I would bet that a lot of the numbers are even ... iffier... than they could be if everyone involved all stages and levels of the process were motivated by nothing but a desire to find the truth and let the public know it.


----------



## mmsbls

pianozach said:


> The US is large and populous, with vast ranges of population density and geographical differences. And a large spectrum of political/religious/cultural differences.
> 
> It would be far more useful to _*use the statistics of the individual states*_ when comparing to other nations.


OK, I mentioned some but let me mention more.

Hawaii and Vermont have reduced infections to close to zero. New York and New Jersey have enormously decreased infections and the trend is still strongly negative. California, Illinois, and Virginia all issued shelter in place orders by March 30 but infections have remained flat. North Carolina instituted shelter in place by March 30 and their infections have risen sharply.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> Our national debt measured against GDP peaked about 1945/46, as huge borrowings financed a war that pretty much everybody today thinks was necessary and a "good thing" for the world.
> 
> Now we have exceeded that debt level during times, in our nation, of unparalleled prosperity with only minor and temporary reverses. Our new and even more massive borrowings, it seems, have mostly been for bigger houses, newer cars, and other such things that we consider our due. Our national credit card is hot to the touch and threatens to spontaneously combust at any time.
> 
> As for reducing the debt as we did after WWII, Wiki doesn't think do and neither do I.


This may get too political away from Covid-19 so let's leave it here.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> I think that has to be part of it, but to know about this very well we'd have to go case-by-case because of all the anomalies in how cases have been recorded and reported. At least within the US, it seems like it varies almost hospital to hospital, not just state to state.
> 
> And... I would bet that a lot of the numbers are even ... iffier... than they could be if everyone involved all stages and levels of the process were motivated by nothing but a desire to find the truth and let the public know it.


See also *The Uncounted Dead*, a 538 article on why likely Covid-19 deaths may not be counted as such. Yawn alert: The article doesn't blame anybody.


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> See also *The Uncounted Dead*, a 538 article on why likely Covid-19 deaths may not be counted as such. Yawn alert: The article doesn't blame anybody.


What's the point of that then? Blaming people is the whole point; the dead are just collateral damage.


----------



## science

From a (not particularly surprising) article about India's coronavirus situation, I have discovered that it is possible to write "this needs caveating" in English. Some online dictionaries agree; others don't. I find myself on the pro-"caveating" side of this urgent controversy.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> See also *The Uncounted Dead*, a 538 article on why likely Covid-19 deaths may not be counted as such. Yawn alert: The article doesn't blame anybody.


Ever since the Yale study a month ago, I've been privately of the opinion that the true number of US deaths is... perhaps 50% higher than the number we ... "know."

To avoid arguments, I'll stick with the reported numbers for now, but in my own mind they come with large error bars.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> From a (not particularly surprising) article about India's coronavirus situation, I have discovered that it is possible to write "this needs caveating" in English. Some online dictionaries agree; others don't. I find myself on the pro-"caveating" side of this urgent controversy.


I can live with caveating, as long as it is not turned into caveatting. From a brief check, though, it seems that use of caveat as a verb is linked with Al Haig. This may cause some US citizens to pause for thought.


----------



## eljr

pianozach said:


> There are many reasons for this, one of which is a political one, so I'll just stow my jaw and tackle and belay.


yes, we all know


----------



## KenOC

Eclectic Al said:


> I can live with caveating, as long as it is not turned into caveatting. From a brief check, though, it seems that use of caveat as a verb is linked with Al Haig. This may cause some US citizens to pause for thought.


And where's Al Haig when we really _do _need somebody in charge here? Ah well...

600+ doctors have sent Trump a letter urging an end to the shutdowns. From *the story*:
------------------------------------
The letter outlines a variety of consequences that the doctors have observed resulting from the coronavirus shutdowns, including patients missing routine checkups that could detect things like heart problems or cancer, increases in substance and alcohol abuse, and increases in financial instability that could lead to "[p]overty and financial uncertainty," which "is closely linked to poor health."

"We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients," the doctors say in their letter. "The downstream health effects ... are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error."
------------------------------------
Fox warning. Skip if allergic.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> And where's Al Haig when we really _do _need somebody in charge here? Ah well...


It was always reassuring to know that our Secretary of State at the time knew the correct order of transfer of power. Mike Pompeo be ready!

'Constitutionally, gentlemen, *you have the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state in that order,* and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. He has not done that. *As of now, I am in control here*, in the White House, pending return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.'

- Alexander Haig, "Alexander Haig" 1981


----------



## pianozach

DaveM said:


> It was always reassuring to know that our Secretary of State at the time knew the correct order of transfer of power. Mike Pompeo be ready!
> 
> 'Constitutionally, gentlemen, *you have the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state in that order,* and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. He has not done that. *As of now, I am in control here*, in the White House, pending return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.'
> 
> - Alexander Haig, "Alexander Haig"


*The correct order of power is actually the president, the vice president, and the Speaker of the House, in that order.*


----------



## DaveM

Double post.....


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> *The correct order of power is actually the president, the vice president, and the Speaker of the House, in that order.*


You don't get my sly sense of humor after all this?  It was that gaffe followed by one or two others in the following year that led to his resignation.


----------



## KenOC

A bit of heartburn here. My county of 3+ million souls has experienced relatively few Covid-19 deaths, just short of a hundred. We have successfully "flattened the curve" it seems, at least partially since we have been well-behaved, wearing masks everywhere, policing entries into supermarkets, keeping that six feet (or more), closing down all my favorite restaurants, etc.

But now, as other places seem to be going down the other side of the curve, we're still on the upslope and likely to remain that way for a long time. How can we open up while our situation isn't improving but actually growing worse? Would we be better off if we had behaved worse?


----------



## pianozach

DaveM said:


> You don't get my sly sense of humor after all this?  It was that gaffe followed by one or two others in the following year that led to his resignation.


Missed the humor.

But *Haig* was committing a real power grab, wasn't he?

In an attempt to keep everyone calm after *Reagan* was shot, Haig committed a huge public relations faux pas, and showed a glaring lapse in basic knowledge of the Constitution, by telling the press that he was in control while the President was in surgery.

And, even back in 1981, we had somewhat sophisticated communications. Even though Vice President was on a plane, and was technically the person who Constitutionally 'in charge' when the President is suddenly incapacitated, Haig instead decided that HE was "in charge" because *George H. W. Bush* was in a plane.

Silly man.

It wasn't so much his "in control" statement that did Haig in, as his suggestion that a "nuclear warning shot" in Europe might be effective in deterring the Soviet Union.

Ah. Simpler days. Now our President himself asks his staff why he can't use nukes. He even suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them.

Much like his ruminating-out-loud suggestions to use disinfectant and 'strong light' internally to fight the coronavirus.

Is science dead yet?


----------



## KenOC

A new and still limited *outbreak in China* has doctors worried about mutations.

"Patients found in the northern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang appear to carry the virus for a longer period of time and take longer to test negative, Qiu Haibo, one of China's top critical care doctors, told state television on Tuesday.

"Patients in the northeast also appear to be taking longer than the one to two weeks observed in Wuhan to develop symptoms after infection, and this delayed onset is making it harder for authorities to catch cases before they spread, said Qiu, who is now in the northern region treating patients.

" 'The longer period during which infected patients show no symptoms has created clusters of family infections,' said Qiu, who was earlier sent to Wuhan to help in the original outbreak."


----------



## EdwardBast

1996D said:


> A lockdown is not an effective way to prevent the spread, it's simply delaying it. Once everything reopens it will spread again.
> 
> *There is no way around it but everyone getting the virus and achieving herd immunity*, thus what should be promoted is good health practices (diet, exercise, mental fortitude) in order for people to survive the infection.
> 
> The media is not doing this, they have the elections and making Trump look bad as a priority.


Unless you haven't heard, there is no evidence yet of lasting immunity among those who have contracted Covid-19. Unless there is immunity of sustained duration, herd immunity is a fantasy. This is not quite as annoying as the paranoid conspiracy theories, but why not try to do a reality check?


----------



## EdwardBast

1996D said:


> Many, many doctors are saying that lockdowns are useless, just not ones bought by the WHO.
> 
> Right now the decision made is to reopen and it's the right one, people need to enjoy the summer and strengthen their immune systems. *A healthy person will not die from this virus, however old they are*.


I know this to be incorrect. One of my friends who was in excellent health and extremely fit - I know because I had been on twelve hour treks in the wilderness with him - died of Covid-19.


----------



## Bigbang

EdwardBast said:


> Unless you haven't heard, there is no evidence yet of lasting immunity among those who have contracted Covid-19. Unless there is immunity of sustained duration, herd immunity is a fantasy. This is not quite as annoying as the paranoid conspiracy theories, but why not try to do a reality check?


I was under the impression that this is unlikely (herd immunity) without a vaccine as far as the science goes.


----------



## Bigbang

EdwardBast said:


> I know this to be incorrect. One of my friends who was in excellent health and extremely fit - I know because I have been on twelve hour treks in the wilderness with him - died of Covid-19.


The problem is with the term "healthy." A man works out daily and stays active and boom --a heart attack. Of course he is shocked to find out he has heart disease, and what to do if already working out?

No choice but to examine diet. Usually a physical exam gives out most of the issue but eating foods that keep heart healthy for as long as possible. In other words give the body good food to absorb and use for the whole health.

Obviously anyone can get very sick and die from covid-19. I cannot understand why this issue goes around in circles here but the issue is multifaceted. One has to "think" about all the factors in one's mind at all times and not chase every story on covid-19.

So anyway people are getting (theory) various doses of virus in various degrees in different circumstances. The exposure and how long is a factor. If a so called healthy person comes into more virus than the body would expect then perhaps with unknown health issues, death could be the result. And even if young and nothing abnormal (even here it is impossible to know everything) on physical tests, might be too much to handle. So I look at it in different ways. Keep the exposure as low as possible and over time might work out. And give those super foods a look!

I am not responding to your post specifically.


----------



## KenOC

Bigbang said:


> The problem is with the term "healthy." A man works out daily and stays active and boom --a heart attack. Of course he is shocked to find out he has heart disease, and what to do if already working out?
> 
> No choice but to examine diet. Usually a physical exam gives out most of the issue but eating foods that keep heart healthy for as long as possible. In other words give the body good food to absorb and use for the whole health.
> 
> Obviously anyone can get very sick and die from covid-19. I cannot understand why this issue goes around in circles here but the issue is multifaceted. One has to "think" about all the factors in one's mind at all times and not chase every story on covid-19.
> 
> So anyway people are getting (theory) various doses of virus of various degrees in different circumstances. The exposure and how long is a factor. If a so called healthy person comes into more virus than the body would expect then perhaps with unknown health issues, death could be the result. And even if young and nothing abnormal (even here it is impossible to know everything) on physical tests, might be too much to handle. So I look at it in different ways. Keep the exposure as low as possible and over time might work out. And give those super foods a look!
> 
> I am not responding to your post specifically.


A good post I think. This is a numbers game, start to finish. There are some probability rules for perishing from this virus:

Young < Old
Healthy < Diseased
Good diet < Bad diet
Less exposure < More exposure

And so on. If we're so moved, we can load the dice to some extent. But we'll still be playing with the same dice, the same spots.


----------



## Guest

This seems pretty relevant, but you've got to have an understanding of Judeo-Christianity to understand where Donne is coming from:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.


----------



## DaveM

Something seems to be protecting the president from the virus and it certainly isn’t a good diet...


----------



## Bigbang

1996D said:


> https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus/covid-19-hope-women-recover-from-covid-19-they-are-103
> 
> If you get killed by something that didn't kill a centenarian, you're not in good health.


Well, yes and no. You are stating absolutes like this when it is about many things. If someone managed to live to 100 or more, they have genes/life style that supported them and fought off health problems more readily. But how and why a 100 year old got the virus? When is the last time you saw a 100 year old at party? Working all night on a project? Around all types people going around doing your business? So the type of strand and how much is an issue, and a 100 year old has been taking it easy I am sure in the last few years, sleeping good and eating what they want I would think.

No doubt many people are in poor health, mostly due to lifestyle. I would be upping my game plan.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> Something seems to be protecting the president from the virus and it certainly isn't a good diet...


Hubris and the weakness of his opponents are keeping him healthy and vigorous. And he's probably read the poetry of John Donne:

...For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me....

Or Ted Hughes:

....Continual wars and wives are what
Have tattered his ears and battered his head.


----------



## Bigbang

DaveM said:


> Something seems to be protecting the president from the virus and it certainly isn't a good diet...


Funny thing, read his family played a part in his taking hydroxychloroquine. Must really care about him as they know his diet (presumably any underlying issue) and his lack of concern by not social distancing and not wearing a mask. Because if he did get it then he has underlying health issues and he has not been exposed to the virus a lot, well, my guess.


----------



## Room2201974

I don't wish that any harm befall my fellow TC'ers, but if you are advocating the experimental group position then you should also advocate getting the experimental group effect. In fact, you should be the first to volunteer. There are several colloquial expressions that cover this:

Walk the walk
Put your money where your mouth is
All hat, no cattle

I, being of sound mind and chicken hearted, shall remain in the control group.....where by its very definition, nothing happens.


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> I don't wish that any harm befall my fellow TC'ers, but if you are advocating the experimental group position then you should also advocate getting the experimental group effect. In fact, you should be the first to volunteer. There are several colloquial expressions that cover this:
> 
> Walk the walk
> Put your money where your mouth is
> All hat, no cattle
> 
> I, being of sound mind and chicken hearted, shall remain in the control group.....where by its very definition, nothing happens.


'Twer to consider too curiously to consider so" (Hamlet).


----------



## DaveM

Since quoting passages seems to be in at the moment, here's one that seems appropriate:

'_ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way'_

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> Something seems to be protecting the president from the virus and it certainly isn't a good diet...


Plenty of fat to survive the lean years, plenty of exercise with his golf, and plenty of the best nutrition MacDonald's has to offer. And maybe some aquarium cleaner, too.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

EdwardBast said:


> Unless you haven't heard, there is no evidence yet of lasting immunity among those who have contracted Covid-19. Unless there is immunity of sustained duration, herd immunity is a fantasy. This is not quite as annoying as the paranoid conspiracy theories, but why not try to do a reality check?


Well given that the virus has been known for no more than half a year, that isn't surprising. I wouldn't think anybody who was infected early on is even at a point where we could really measure lasting immunity.


----------



## science

Y'all fellas have to tell me how this is going to go because I don't know.

White House's Own Data Crunchers: Southern Counties About to Get Hit Hard.

It's just guessing, but you've gotta hope this is fake news.

Maybe it's a blessing to get hit hard with this early on so that you learn your lesson.


----------



## DaveM

science said:


> Y'all fellas have to tell me how this is going to go because I don't know.
> 
> White House's Own Data Crunchers: Southern Counties About to Get Hit Hard.
> 
> It's just guessing, but you've gotta hope this is fake news.
> 
> Maybe it's a blessing to get hit hard with this early on so that you learn your lesson.


My impression has been that the southern states have not taken the pandemic as seriously as eastern and pacific coast states. There was talk of a hoax, attempts to take away freedoms and over-reactions of the scientists and officials. The re-opening has not been particularly careful and people there seem generally ready to go back to life as usual. So, we'll see what the consequences, if any, are.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> My impression has been that the southern states have not taken the pandemic as seriously as eastern and pacific coast states. There was talk of a hoax, attempts to take away freedoms and over-reactions of the scientists and officials. The re-opening has not been particularly careful and people there seem generally ready to go back to life as usual. So, we'll see what the consequences, if any, are.


From the _Daily Beast_ article Science cites: "In several cases, counties will see hundreds of additional cases by June 17." My county had 250 new cases today. I'm not terribly impressed.


----------



## 1996D

Bigbang said:


> Well, yes and no. You are stating absolutes like this when it is about many things. If someone managed to live to 100 or more, they have genes/life style that supported them and fought off health problems more readily. But how and why a 100 year old got the virus? When is the last time you saw a 100 year old at party? Working all night on a project? Around all types people going around doing your business? So the type of strand and how much is an issue, and a 100 year old has been taking it easy I am sure in the last few years, sleeping good and eating what they want I would think.
> 
> *No doubt many people are in poor health, mostly due to lifestyle. I would be upping my game plan.*


People here are worried because of their age but they shouldn't be if in good health. Young people who are obese or have a history of illness should be the ones staying at home waiting for the vaccine.

If you're healthy there is no reason for you to be in isolation, or for there to be a general lockdown.


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> People here are worried because of their age but they shouldn't be if in good health. Young people who are obese or have a history of illness should be the ones staying at home waiting for the vaccine.
> 
> If you're healthy there is no reason for you to be in isolation, or for there to be a general lockdown.


Do you have some special knowledge that the experts don't? Have you not educated yourself about who is at risk? The fact that older people are more at risk does not mean that younger people are safe. Young healthy people have died from the virus. Young, otherwise healthy, children have developed a serious syndrome. Sometimes I'm reminded of a saying by Forrest Gump.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Some of this presumably has to do with the exact timing and implementation of NPIs, but California has had shelter in place since before any other state. Is it simply non-compliance?


Surely some of this is to do with how and where the virus entered the country. If lots of infected people travelled from China or Italy to this part of a country but not to that, the virus would spread in one place but not in another.

Some of the (amateur) analysis of countries' comparative success/failure has only considered the interventions, and based on the assumption that every country has had an even distribution of carriers. Plainly, that's nonsense. Add in local age and health profiles and population density, which vary considerably from one country to another, and you get variable outcomes.



1996D said:


> People here are worried because of their age but they shouldn't be if in good health. Young people who are obese or have a history of illness should be the ones staying at home waiting for the vaccine.
> 
> If you're healthy there is no reason for you to be in isolation, or for there to be a general lockdown.


Wait a minute. I thought that we we're all supposed to just go out and live our lives, that the lockdown is a waste of time, and that no vaccine is going to come anyway. Which is it?

It seems to me that "good health" is not a 1/0 state, but a continuum. Predicting that "those in good health have nothing to fear" is based on the idea that everyone can identify themselves as healthy/unhealthy and act accordingly, when all we really have to go on is a statistical probability which shows that the older you are (ie, the nearer you are to the natural age of death anyway) the more likely you are to have a serious and/or fatal encounter with the virus. Well d'uuuh!

I have been taking medication for over a year to control a granuloma on my vocal chords. As far as I understand it, it's a minor condition. Am I healthy, or unhealthy? When I was 35, I was treated for Wolff Parkinson White heart arrhythmia. As far as I know, the treatment fixed the arrhythmia, but have I been left with a residue of "fault" in my heart? And I know that I could be much fitter. I walk the dog daily, and eat a fairly healthy diet - but my knees are a bit dodgy and I'm on the borderline between average BMI and slightly over. Am I fit?

Life just isn't that binary.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> Do you have some special knowledge that the experts don't? Have you not educated yourself about who is at risk? The fact that older people are more at risk does not mean that younger people are safe. Young healthy people have died from the virus. Young, otherwise healthy, children have developed a serious syndrome. Sometimes I'm reminded of a saying by Forrest Gump.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8342293/Crowds-sun-seekers-escape-outdoors-tubing-Texas-Colorado.html

Look at those pictures, no one is ill.

Experts are saying contradictory things depending on their agendas.


----------



## KenOC

Here's an interesting video about the black death. Interesting viewing, and maybe giving some perspective on our current pandemic.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rs-escape-outdoors-tubing-Texas-Colorado.html
> 
> Look at those pictures, no one is ill.
> 
> Experts are saying contradictory things depending on their agendas.


Look at this picture.









America is deserted!


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8342293/Crowds-sun-seekers-escape-outdoors-tubing-Texas-Colorado.html
> 
> Look at those pictures, no one is ill.


Did you read the article or just look at the pretty pictures? From the article:

'_*Few states have moved faster to reopen than Texas*, where Abbott has warned that the numbers of new cases would rise as the state reopened and that has borne out. A nine-day streak of at least 1,000 new daily cases that ended Sunday saw the one-day infection rate hit a record-high of 1,801 on Saturday. *The 110 deaths over last Thursday and Friday was easily the highest two-day fatality rate since the virus was first detected in the state.*'_


----------



## 1996D

MacLeod said:


> Surely some of this is to do with how and where the virus entered the country. If lots of infected people travelled from China or Italy to this part of a country but not to that, the virus would spread in one place but not in another.
> 
> Some of the (amateur) analysis of countries' comparative success/failure has only considered the interventions, and based on the assumption that every country has had an even distribution of carriers. Plainly, that's nonsense. Add in local age and health profiles and population density, which vary considerably from one country to another, and you get variable outcomes.
> 
> Wait a minute. I thought that we we're all supposed to just go out and live our lives, that the lockdown is a waste of time, and that no vaccine is going to come anyway. Which is it?
> 
> It seems to me that "good health" is not a 1/0 state, but a continuum. Predicting that "those in good health have nothing to fear" is based on the idea that everyone can identify themselves as healthy/unhealthy and act accordingly, when all we really have to go on is a statistical probability which shows that the older you are (ie, the nearer you are to the natural age of death anyway) the more likely you are to have a serious and/or fatal encounter with the virus. Well d'uuuh!
> 
> I have been taking medication for over a year to control a granuloma on my vocal chords. As far as I understand it, it's a minor condition. Am I healthy, or unhealthy? When I was 35, I was treated for Wolff Parkinson White heart arrhythmia. As far as I know, the treatment fixed the arrhythmia, but have I been left with a residue of "fault" in my heart? And I know that I could be much fitter. I walk the dog daily, and eat a fairly healthy diet - but my knees are a bit dodgy and I'm on the borderline between average BMI and slightly over. Am I fit?
> 
> Life just isn't that binary.


If you think you might be in poor health you should stay home, only you know. Mind you there have been centenarians that have recovered.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> Did you read the article or just look at the pretty pictures? From the article:
> 
> '_*Few states have moved faster to reopen than Texas*, where Abbott has warned that the numbers of new cases would rise as the state reopened and that has borne out. A nine-day streak of at least 1,000 new daily cases that ended Sunday saw the one-day infection rate hit a record-high of 1,801 on Saturday. *The 110 deaths over last Thursday and Friday was easily the highest two-day fatality rate since the virus was first detected in the state.*'_


Of course there will be an increase in infections, and many will be asymptomatic.

You have to take calculated risks in life and this is that type of situation.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> If you think you might be in poor health you should stay home, only you know.


You completely miss my point, which is that good health/bad health is not so easily declared. We can no more divide the population in two as you suggest, than we can (or should) keep everyone cooped up indefinitely.


----------



## 1996D

MacLeod said:


> You completely miss my point, which is that good health/bad health is not so easily declared. We can no more divide the population in two as you suggest, than we can (or should) keep everyone cooped up indefinitely.


I got your point, but you should know your health and make decisions for yourself; giving up that independence won't save you.

It's not up to the state to decide who stays home and who doesn't, and certainly not Bill Gates.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> I got your point, but you should know your health and make *decisions *for yourself; giving up that independence won't save you.
> 
> It's not up to the state to *decide *who stays home and who doesn't, and certainly not Bill Gates.


You obviously didn't get my point, which is that no such decision can be taken. I refer to myself only to illustrate the point. I'm not asking for advice.


----------



## KenOC

1996D said:


> I got your point, but you should know your health and make decisions for yourself; giving up that independence won't save you.
> 
> It's not up to the state to decide who stays home and who doesn't, and certainly not Bill Gates.


In times of epidemic, prophylactic measurers are very much a matter of public policy that are binding on all citizens. It has always been that way and pretty much has to be.


----------



## 1996D

MacLeod said:


> You obviously didn't get my point, which is that no such decision can be taken. I refer to myself only to illustrate the point. I'm not asking for advice.


The WHO is corrupt, the UN is corrupt, governments are corrupt.

They are all acting politically at this point for their own interests. Your personal decision, even with all your doubt, will be sounder that what anyone else recommends.

It will change in the future, there will be a time when things are not this corrupt, but right now the evidence is overwhelming that everyone is trying to profit from the virus.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> Do you have some special knowledge that the experts don't? Have you not educated yourself about who is at risk? The fact that older people are more at risk does not mean that younger people are safe. Young healthy people have died from the virus. Young, otherwise healthy, children have developed a serious syndrome. Sometimes I'm reminded of a saying by Forrest Gump.


Your demand for "special knowledge" and "experts" followed by your invocation of Forrest Gump and the patois of the cute but harmless 'philosopher' is very intriguing.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> The WHO is corrupt, the UN is corrupt, governments are corrupt.
> 
> They are all acting politically at this point for their own interests. Your personal decision, even with all your doubt, will be sounder that what anyone else recommends.
> 
> It will change in the future, there will be a time when things are not this corrupt, but right now the evidence is overwhelming that everyone is trying to profit from the virus.


Stick to the point. You're still repeating that I've a decision to make. This isn't about me. It's about, as KenOC rightly points out, public policy decisions which need to be informed by nuanced thinking, not crude binary analysis.


----------



## 1996D

MacLeod said:


> Stick to the point. You're still repeating that I've a decision to make. This isn't about me. It's about, as KenOC rightly points out, public policy decisions which need to be informed by nuanced thinking, not crude binary analysis.


The decisions will be made partisanly, they already are.

If your state is opening up but you think you're not healthy then you should stay at home.


----------



## tortkis

mmsbls said:


> What's interesting to me is why some countries or US states show strong reductions in new cases down to close to zero while others flatten but do not significantly decrease. Australia peaked and now has close to zero cases. So has Hawaii. Maybe being islands with modest to low population density helps a lot. Italy and Germany have drastically reduced new cases. New York state has vastly reduced new cases as well although they still have a reasonable number. California started to decrease cases, but now the curve has risen and appears flat. The US as a whole (when New York is removed) is still increasing.
> 
> Some of this presumably has to do with the exact timing and implementation of NPIs, but California has had shelter in place since before any other state. Is it simply non-compliance?


About half of California's confirmed cases come from LA (25% of CA's total population). I suspect something similar to NY is happening there. In terms of daily new cases, LA has over 1000 cases and it's increasing, while the other counties have about 1/10 or less, most of which are decreasing or being flatten. For example, Santa Clara's daily new cases number has dropped significantly and is about 20-30 now.

I think the quick moves of tech companies to work-from-home policy contributed the relatively better situation of Silicon Valley. Large technology companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. were letting their employees work from home even before the states/counties issued the shelter in place orders, and big tech conferences were already being cancelled in February. And now those companies are deciding to extend the work from home period (Microsoft until October, Facebook until December) regardless of the state's reopening plan. Twitter is going to allow employees to work from home permanently.


----------



## Guest

The last very serious epidemic I can remember which affected our countries was AIDS. It took years and years before medicine could prolong the lives of sufferers of this terrible disease, so I wouldn't hold my breath about a vaccine for Covid-19. I think (just a personal opinion after a fair bit of reading) the best we can hope for is "management". As with Asthma, management is the key - a cure is not yet available for that condition after centuries!! Neither is a vaccine. Medicine has only started to relatively effectively deal with CF (Cystic Fibrosis) in quite recent years, but I remain unsure of the life expectancy for CF sufferers. 

Magic bullets are usually elusive.


----------



## Flamme

1996D said:


> It's not the end, it's just a period and the feelings will pass. Use it to strengthen your faith.
> 
> You can read history on far worse plagues and diseases to put it into perspective.


If this crisis taught me something it is Im ALONE againt the world and ''universe'' I cannot count or rely on any1, whether a family or friend...Its a bitter pill 2 take but better now than ever...
Found an interesting link https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...-through-testing-center-for-horse-and-buggies Isnt the modern medicine ''verboten'' for amish volx???


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

DaveM said:


> My impression has been that the southern states have not taken the pandemic as seriously as eastern and pacific coast states. There was talk of a hoax, attempts to take away freedoms and over-reactions of the scientists and officials. The re-opening has not been particularly careful and people there seem generally ready to go back to life as usual. So, we'll see what the consequences, if any, are.


My impression is that there have been lots of doom prognostications about Southern states such as Florida and Georgia that have yet to be proven true, while states that re-open with similar rules (Colorado) are largely ignored.

The rhetoric might be different, but in practice, places like Florida took certain key things more seriously - compare and contrast the issue of nursing homes in Florida with New York state. In Florida, no known infected person was allowed to return to a nursing home. In New York, they did the exact opposite, sending infected people right back to nursing homes. But which do you hear about more?

I'll note that the beaches in Jacksonville, FL, were opened back in March, I believe? The doom that was predicted has yet to occur.

Sometimes these models work, sometimes they don't. We'll see. I don't think it is unreasonable for states that have not seen a major impact from the virus going ahead and trying these phased re-openings. Somebody has to be the first one. But honestly, I doubt anybody is going to go flocking back to what they used to do. Human nature being what it is, there will be a lot of caution. Most of the measures people have taken were self-imposed initially, rather than government-mandated. Like people who wore masks even back when the government was telling them they were pointless.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

KenOC said:


> From the _Daily Beast_ article Science cites: "In several cases, counties will see hundreds of additional cases by June 17." My county had 250 new cases today. I'm not terribly impressed.


That also doesn't impress me much. We are testing so much more now than we were before - 300,000-400,000 per day was the last figure I read. So of course we will see cases rise. But I have heard some reports that while the number of overall cases are going up as we test more, the frequency of positive tests is actually going down.


----------



## EdwardBast

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Well given that the virus has been known for no more than half a year, that isn't surprising. I wouldn't think anybody who was infected early on is even at a point where we could really measure lasting immunity.


Precisely, which means counting on herd immunity as the solution, as 1996D suggested, is unjustified.


----------



## Guest

Here's an engaging video report from *The Guardian* that asks which *UK public figures* inspire most confidence or comfort during the Covid-19 crisis. No surprises that the Queen is high on the list. For me, an even bigger surprise is the increasing popularity of *Piers Morgan*. Now, I'm no fan of Morgan but I have to say he has gone up considerably in my estimation. He's the equivalent, I suppose, of Hannity and Tucker over in the US but far more intelligent.
*



*


----------



## Guest

TalkingHead said:


> Here's an engaging video report from *The Guardian*


 .


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

EdwardBast said:


> Precisely, which means counting on herd immunity as the solution, as 1996D suggested, is unjustified.


That's true, but at some point we'll just have to move ahead. If 6 months out, we still don't know whether natural infection confers long-term immunity, then it stands to reason that even if we were to get a vaccine in record time, it will take some time to know whether it confers long-term immunity. And we probably can't keep people in lockdown for that long.

I'm hoping we'll start getting some reliable drugs out soon - hopefully some existing drugs that have already gone through safety testing. I don't know what the pipeline looks like for new drugs, but I'm crossing my fingers, as a diabetic. I read something yesterday about some study, not yet published, that one class of diabetic drugs looks like it might be able to target one of the viral proteins. Don't know how that works, or if they have actually tested it. Of course it isn't one of the drugs I'm currently taking. But any possible treatment would be great. Don't know whether you could use it on non-diabetics (make all you sugar eaters hypoglycemic!).


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> .


Dear Dr MacLeod, are you an ageing, pearl-clutching alt-right bourgeois type triggered by The Guardian, too?
I salute you, Sir!


----------



## 1996D

EdwardBast said:


> Precisely, which means counting on herd immunity as the solution, as 1996D suggested, is unjustified.


It's working for Sweden.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> It's working for Sweden.


What is your measure of success? They are testing, as a percentage of population, half of what the U.S. is doing. Their deaths per million is higher than the U.S., and among the highest in Europe. A report today in Business Insider says that, by their own estimates, they only have about 20% immunity (don't know how they measure that - have they re-exposed these people to see?) - I don't know the exact percentage needed for herd immunity, but I usually hear numbers around 80%. So at this rate, how many people will be dead before they reach their herd immunity? And once it burns through the most vulnerable, what other groups will they next be comfortable with losing?


----------



## Art Rock

Sweden (10.0 M People): 
Infections confirmed: 32172
Deaths: 3871

Norway (5.4 M People)
Infections confirmed: 8281
Deaths: 831

Denmark (5.8 M people):
Infections confirmed: 11182
Deaths: 561


----------



## Guest

TalkingHead said:


> Dear Dr MacLeod, are you an ageing, pearl-clutching alt-right bourgeois type triggered by The Guardian, too?
> I salute you, Sir!


I've done that much clutching I've got through 5 strings since the lockdown began.


----------



## 1996D

Art Rock said:


> Sweden (10.0 M People):
> Infections confirmed: 32172
> Deaths: 3871
> 
> Norway (5.4 M People)
> Infections confirmed: 8281
> Deaths: 831
> 
> Denmark (5.8 M people):
> Infections confirmed: 11182
> Deaths: 561


Belgium (11 million people) had an early lockdown yet has 56,235 cases.

They are useless and at best delay the inevitable.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> What is your measure of success? They are testing, as a percentage of population, half of what the U.S. is doing. Their deaths per million is higher than the U.S., and among the highest in Europe. A report today in Business Insider says that, by their own estimates, they only have about 20% immunity (don't know how they measure that - have they re-exposed these people to see?) - I don't know the exact percentage needed for herd immunity, but I usually hear numbers around 80%. So at this rate, how many people will be dead before they reach their herd immunity? And once it burns through the most vulnerable, what other groups will they next be comfortable with losing?


A lot of infections are asymptomatic so Sweden might actually be getting close to herd immunity, they'll certainly be the first country to get there.

Those who don't want herd immunity and continue to fear monger want to make money off the vaccines, it's looking to be a very profitable industry.


----------



## Guest

Press reports on Sweden are mixed.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.me...study-shows-little-sign-of-herd-immunity/amp/


----------



## EdwardBast

1996D said:


> A lot of infections are asymptomatic so Sweden might actually be getting close to *herd immunity*, they'll certainly be the first country to get there.
> 
> Those who don't want herd immunity and continue to fear monger want to make money off the vaccines, it's looking to be a very profitable industry.


Once again, what is your evidence that lasting immunity is conferred on those recovered from Covid-19?


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> Belgium (11 million people) had an early lockdown yet has 56,235 cases.
> 
> They are useless and at best delay the inevitable.


you make very broad statements which are never supported by science

why?


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> A lot of infections are asymptomatic so Sweden might actually be getting close to herd immunity, they'll certainly be the first country to get there.
> 
> Those who don't want herd immunity and continue to fear monger want to make money off the vaccines, it's looking to be a very profitable industry.


One metric which has been conserved over infections in all countries where good data has been collected is that the mortality rate is 0.7%. (In New York, for example, randomized antibody testing indicated that 13% of the state population had been infected and 0.1% of the population had died of Covid-19.) Effective herd immunity requires that about 70% of the population has immunity. You can only conclude Sweden is close to herd immunity if close to 0.5% of their population is dead of Covid-19.

Actually in Sweden about 4000 deaths in about 10 million people, or 0.04%. That's rather high. But if 0.04% have died and 0.7% of infected people die, the fraction of people who have been infected is 0.04/0.7 = 0.057, or 5.7%. Sweden is nowhere near herd immunity.

The only way you want to get herd immunity is through a vaccine, because herd immunity (if it occurs) requires 70% of the population to be infected, and 0.5% of the population to die.


----------



## 1996D

EdwardBast said:


> Once again, what is your evidence that lasting immunity is conferred on those recovered from Covid-19?


It has to, otherwise the vaccine won't work either, and we're just going to have to live with the virus permanently. Can lockdowns be permanent? No.

But actually that's not the case, the virus is related to SARS.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/sars-antibodies-can-block-covid-19-infection-study-1.4943895


----------



## 1996D

Baron Scarpia said:


> One metric which has been conserved over infections in all countries where good data has been collected is that the mortality rate is 0.7%. (In New York, for example, randomized antibody testing indicated that 13% of the state population had been infected and 0.1% of the population had died of Covid-19.) Effective herd immunity requires that about 70% of the population has immunity. You can only conclude Sweden is close to herd immunity if close to 0.5% of their population is dead of Covid-19.
> 
> Actually in Sweden about 4000 deaths in about 10 million people, or 0.04%. That's rather high. But if 0.04% have died and 0.7% of infected people die, the fraction of people who have been infected is 0.04/0.7 = 0.057, or 5.7%. Sweden is nowhere near herd immunity.
> 
> The only way you want to get herd immunity is through a vaccine, because herd immunity (if it occurs) requires 70% of the population to be infected, and 0.5% of the population to die.


That's not the mortality rate, many people have not been tested that have had the virus.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Baron Scarpia said:


> Effective herd immunity requires that about 70% of the population has immunity. You can only conclude Sweden is close to herd immunity if close to 0.5% of their population is dead of Covid-19.
> 
> The only way you want to get herd immunity is through a vaccine, because herd immunity (if it occurs) requires 70% of the population to be infected, and 0.5% of the population to die.


You seem very sure of this 70% number. I have seen that number quoted too. In the UK that was the figure from the Ferguson model, and if you recalibrate his model to Swedish conditions I understand that they should have had catastrophic numbers of deaths, because they didn't follow his advice. (For the UK he suggested around 500,000 deaths if we didn't do what he recommended.) The Swedish numbers are in fact in the range of other European countries: that's about the only thing we do know.

The main criticism I have seen of the Ferguson model is that it uses a single R value for all the individuals which it uses in its modelling (along with a whole load of other criticisms, not least that the answers depend on what computer you run it on, and the code is appalling). Apparently if you employ different R values for different sub-groups you can readily come up with lower levels needed for herd immunity - and they can be a lot lower. It is also highly plausible that R varies by individual, dependent on job, tendency to socialise or be a recluse, individual biology, etc. You might expect hot spots which see lots of cases (and deaths) linked to a high R value across that community (eg in care homes) and other areas with much lower R values where the epidemic simply collapses because spreading is inefficient (- say sparsely populated farming areas).

Linked to the above modelling tweaks, I have seen articles suggesting herd immunity at exposure levels in the 20s of percent, with ultimate infection rates around 40%.

I'm not claiming either is correct (- I haven't a clue), nor that lockdowns haven't reduced the experienced R values (- which may well be the case). All I am reasonably confident about is: (i) to date Sweden has not had a catastrophic outcome relative to others, (ii) Ferguson's model says that they should have had, (iii) Ferguson's model has been widely criticised, (iv) if models employ differential R values then some say that that pulls the level of herd immunity down drastically.


----------



## Flamme

I just read somewhere that if u want 2 go 2 greece, 1 day in quarantine is 180 euros! Not bagatelle really and most ppl here go hlidaymaking in greece and I know many englishmen do as well...


----------



## 1996D

Eclectic Al said:


> Linked to the above modelling tweaks, I have seen articles suggesting herd immunity at exposure levels in the 20s of percent, with ultimate infection rates around 40%.
> 
> I'm not claiming either is correct (- I haven't a clue), nor that lockdowns haven't reduced the experienced R values (- which may well be the case). All I am reasonably confident about is: (i) to date Sweden has not had a catastrophic outcome relative to others, (ii) Ferguson's model says that they should have had, (iii) Ferguson's model has been widely criticised, (iv) if models employ differential R values then some say that that pulls the level of herd immunity down drastically.


I think a lot of people are infected and have no symptoms so will never go get tested. Herd immunity will be achieved by Sweden before any vaccine.

A lot of countries are reopening now and regular travel will be resumed also, therefore there is no chance that the virus won't continue to spread. Herd immunity will be naturally achieved worldwide if the vaccine takes a long time.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> A lot of infections are asymptomatic so Sweden might actually be getting close to herd immunity, they'll certainly be the first country to get there.
> 
> Those who don't want herd immunity and continue to fear monger want to make money off the vaccines, it's looking to be a very profitable industry.


Nope - the antibody testing they are doing suggests that they may actually have less actual immunity than the 20%.

You put a lot of stock in herd immunity - the scientists who talk to us about herd immunity are also those who are big proponents of vaccines. Why would you believe them in one instance and not the other? That is the whole purpose behind vaccines - to achieve herd immunity. Would you reject an available vaccine? You think natural infection will get us to herd immunity? How did that work throughout history? Smallpox was around for centuries - it wasn't until an effective vaccine was introduced that we finally achieved herd immunity and eradicated it. Same with polio. Same with measles. Same with so many other diseases - natural disease progression did not bring about herd immunity, vaccines did. Why do you suppose that it will be different now with this virus?


----------



## wkasimer

Christabel said:


> You can buy into hysteria if that does it for you!! Churchill gave the people hope when there was little hope...."their finest hour" - which is light years away from the infantile "how dare you"!!


I recently read Erik Larson's new book "The Splendid and the Vile", and had the same thought - that the heroism of the British people in the face of months of Luftwaffe bombing and Churchill's leadership were a far cry from the displays of timidity by many segments of the the American populace and our pusillanimous leaders.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Nope - the antibody testing they are doing suggests that they may actually have less actual immunity than the 20%.
> 
> You put a lot of stock in herd immunity - the scientists who talk to us about herd immunity are also those who are big proponents of vaccines. Why would you believe them in one instance and not the other? That is the whole purpose behind vaccines - to achieve herd immunity. Would you reject an available vaccine? You think natural infection will get us to herd immunity? How did that work throughout history? Smallpox was around for centuries - it wasn't until an effective vaccine was introduced that we finally achieved herd immunity and eradicated it. Same with polio. Same with measles. Same with so many other diseases - natural disease progression did not bring about herd immunity, vaccines did. *Why do you suppose that it will be different now with this virus?*


Because of the widespread plane travelling, how easily it's spread person to person, and the fact that it's as we speak worldwide. If you give it enough time the required amount will get it, it's unavoidable.

It's also not very deadly, so as soon as people start needing money they'll stop fearing it altogether. Lockdowns can't work long term.

That magic herd immunity number will be achieved.


----------



## Guest

wkasimer said:


> I recently read Erik Larson's new book "The Splendid and the Vile", and had the same thought - that the heroism of the British people in the face of months of Luftwaffe bombing and Churchill's leadership were a far cry from the displays of timidity by many segments of the the American populace and our pusillanimous leaders.


What utter pomp and bombast. Or rather specious humbug - take your pick. 
Cue Elgar: *



*


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> That's not the mortality rate, many people have not been tested that have had the virus.


That is the mortality rate. It is based on absolutely random testing done through the state of New York. They tested people without regard to symptoms, exposure or any other criteria. 13.1% of New Yorkers tested postive for antibodies, 0.1% of New Yorkers dead. 0.1/13 = 0.0077, or 0.77%.


----------



## Art Rock

This discussion is 2020 in a nutshell. It's like playing chess with a pigeon.


----------



## 1996D

Baron Scarpia said:


> That is the mortality rate. It is based on absolutely random testing done through the state of New York. They tested people without regard to symptoms, exposure or any other criteria. 13.1% of New Yorkers tested postive for antibodies, 0.1% of New Yorkers dead. 0.1/13 = 0.0077, or 0.77%.


https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-strains#2

There are two strains, some sites say there are three.

Too little is known to say that that's the mortality rate. If health is what influences mortality and Americans are quite obese, then the rate will be higher than a healthier nation.

That explains why countries have such different death tolls, but they might also have different strains of the virus.


----------



## Room2201974

Art Rock said:


> This discussion is 2020 in a nutshell. It's like playing chess with a pigeon.


"Like a Martian talking to a fungo." ~ Crash Davis


----------



## 1996D

I'll say it again that the world should do as Sweden is doing. The economic consequences of the lockdowns have been severe, much too severe for a virus that has such a low death rate.

Countries are opening up and hopefully no new restrictions will be placed when the virus inevitably picks up again.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-strains#2
> 
> There are two strains, some sites say there are three.
> 
> Too little is known to say that that's the mortality rate. If health is what influences mortality and Americans are quite obese, then the rate will be higher than a healthier nation.
> 
> That explains why countries have such different death tolls, but they might also have different strains of the virus.


Actually there appear to be at least 8. The difference are very minor and reports indicate there is no reliable evidence that any of the strains is more or less infectious than any other. The presence of multiple strains mainly allows scientists to trace the origin of an outbreak. If an outbreak occurs with a given strain, then it must have come from someplace that was infected by the same strain.

https://www.fastcompany.com/9048389...ins-of-coronavirus-spreading-across-the-world


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> It's also not very deadly,..





1996D said:


> *
> Too little is known to say that that's the mortality rate.* If health is what influences mortality and Americans are quite obese, then the rate will be higher than a healthier nation.


So how do you know it's not very deadly? Credibility is inversely proportional to how often one contradicts oneself.

I think you have thought up a different virus than the one we're talking about. Let's call it Clovid-1996D


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> Because of the widespread plane travelling, how easily it's spread person to person, and the fact that it's as we speak worldwide. If you give it enough time the required amount will get it, it's unavoidable.
> 
> It's also not very deadly, so as soon as people start needing money they'll stop fearing it altogether. Lockdowns can't work long term.
> 
> That magic herd immunity number will be achieved.


I'm not sure that is true. Why wouldn't there have been localized herd immunity before? Densely populated areas would still be hit with outbreaks of diseases that had been in a population for centuries. We achieve herd immunity with vaccines because we purposely give enough people the vaccine. In contrast, with natural infection, even without lockdowns, people avoid the infected - you aren't going to see the numbers of natural infection comparable to what you get with vaccination programs. I think that is all mostly wishful thinking. I think the best option is probably somewhere in the middle - Sweden's extreme doesn't seem like a good choice. And if so many countries are limiting travel, that kind of throws a wrench into your plan as well - you aren't going to get that global spread that you think we need for global herd immunity.

Before we had vaccines, when there was disease, we always practiced some form of distancing - we would quarantine known cases, people would be warned away from infected cities, whatever could be done to protect from infection was done. Nobody ever said: go about your normal activities and let's just let this do its thing. Why do you have so much faith in that model this time? Does it kill at really high percentages? No. But high enough. Higher than nasty flu seasons. And it does so much quicker. And how quickly did it spread around the world? How quickly have we gotten to the deaths we now have? 6 months? And that is in the modern era, when we have much more advanced medical knowledge and technology.

Why not some mix, rather than just wait for some wishful thinking herd immunity to arrive? Why not give the science a little longer to come up with some solutions/remedies? If next month we discover some drug that is very effective in lowering mortality, would it have been worth the higher death rates in Sweden just for a couple months of not having to limit contact?


----------



## 1996D

Art Rock said:


> This discussion is 2020 in a nutshell. It's like playing chess with a pigeon.


If a person has a fear of getting ill, they'll go through infinite mental gymnastics to justify anything that makes them feel safer.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> I'm not sure that is true. Why wouldn't there have been localized herd immunity before? Densely populated areas would still be hit with outbreaks of diseases that had been in a population for centuries. We achieve herd immunity with vaccines because we purposely give enough people the vaccine. In contrast, with natural infection, even without lockdowns, *people avoid the infected - you aren't going to see the numbers of natural infection comparable to what you get with vaccination programs.* I think that is all mostly wishful thinking. I think the best option is probably somewhere in the middle - Sweden's extreme doesn't seem like a good choice. And if so many countries are limiting travel, that kind of throws a wrench into your plan as well - you aren't going to get that global spread that you think we need for global herd immunity.
> 
> Before we had vaccines, when there was disease, we always practiced some form of distancing - we would quarantine known cases, people would be warned away from infected cities, whatever could be done to protect from infection was done. Nobody ever said: go about your normal activities and let's just let this do its thing. Why do you have so much faith in that model this time? Does it kill at really high percentages? No. But high enough. Higher than nasty flu seasons. And it does so much quicker. And how quickly did it spread around the world? How quickly have we gotten to the deaths we now have? 6 months? And that is in the modern era, when we have much more advanced medical knowledge and technology.
> 
> Why not some mix, rather than just wait for some wishful thinking herd immunity to arrive? Why not give the science a little longer to come up with some solutions/remedies? If next month we discover some drug that is very effective in lowering mortality, would it have been worth the higher death rates in Sweden just for a couple months of not having to limit contact?


This virus can be asymptomatic or have the effects of a mild cold. That's the way healthy people experience it.

We''ll see with Sweden how long it takes them to achieve herd immunity and they can set the example for the world to follow.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> If a person has a fear of getting ill, they'll go through infinite mental gymnastics to justify anything that makes them feel safer.


No. You are acting like this is an irrational fear. It isn't. And most people are simply being prudent. It is a new virus. We know very little. It has rapidly spread worldwide in a very short period of time, and we currently have no drug or vaccine. So we are being cautious. We don't want to see careless deaths - we recognize we can't prevent all death, but we try to do what we can.

True - there are so many other diseases out there that we have become accustomed to and accepted a certain level of infection or even death. But we have seen those diseases for a while, we've seen the limitations of it, and we have a firm grasp of how to protect ourselves as best we can against them. We have none of that yet with COVID-19. So we are being cautious until we have the information we need.


----------



## DaveM

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> .. If next month we discover some drug that is very effective in lowering mortality, would it have been worth the higher death rates in Sweden just for a couple months of not having to limit contact?


That's something that should be considered wherever re-opening is occurring too fast or inappropriately.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> This virus can be asymptomatic or have the effects of a mild cold. That's the way healthy people experience it.
> 
> We''ll see with Sweden how long it takes them to achieve herd immunity and they can set the example for the world to follow.


So you're basically saying they are the world's guinea pigs? They are the control group - look how bad it gets when you do nothing? All those dead Swedes will no doubt be proud to have given their lives in such a noble cause.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> No. You are acting like this is an irrational fear. It isn't. And most people are simply being prudent. It is a new virus. We know very little. It has rapidly spread worldwide in a very short period of time, and we currently have no drug or vaccine. So we are being cautious. We don't want to see careless deaths - we recognize we can't prevent all death, but we try to do what we can.
> 
> True - there are so many other diseases out there that we have become accustomed to and accepted a certain level of infection or even death. But we have seen those diseases for a while, we've seen the limitations of it, and we have a firm grasp of how to protect ourselves as best we can against them. We have none of that yet with COVID-19. So we are being cautious until we have the information we need.


It would be quite embarrassing to get killed by a virus that spared a couple of centenarian women, I'll give you that.

I'm actually happy about what the virus has revealed about the structure of the UN and its corruption. I had no idea billionaires were allowed to own parts of the UN - a true world oligarchy we live in.


----------



## EdwardBast

1996D said:


> It has to, otherwise the vaccine won't work either, and we're just going to have to live with the virus permanently. Can lockdowns be permanent? No.
> 
> But actually that's not the case, the virus is related to SARS.
> 
> https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/sars-antibodies-can-block-covid-19-infection-study-1.4943895


No, it would mean the vaccine won't work permanently and would need to be administered more than once. Some might think this a better option than millions of deaths.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Baron Scarpia said:


> That is the mortality rate. It is based on absolutely random testing done through the state of New York. They tested people without regard to symptoms, exposure or any other criteria. 13.1% of New Yorkers tested postive for antibodies, 0.1% of New Yorkers dead. 0.1/13 = 0.0077, or 0.77%.


This appears to be another area of current interest. It seems that some who have recovered from Covid-19 disease have antibodies at readily detectable levels. However, studies also seem to be indicating that others can have the disease and recover, while only having antibodies at low levels, and even at levels below the threshold for detection. The authors of a relevant Chinese study noted that this "may suggest that other parts of the immune response play as great or a greater role in allowing patients to recover from coronavirus". There was also an age pattern in this with the antibody level higher in older subjects. Overall in their study about 30% had low levels of antibodies and about 6% had no detectable antibodies. This was among a group who were believed to have had the disease because of clinical presentation, and so did not include any who may have had it but been asymptomatic.

What this is saying to me (as someone with no expertise in the field!) is that older people are relying on an ultimate antibody response to deal with Covid-19 whereas younger people (and I guess children particularly) are employing other aspects of the immune system (more generalised responses or a strong T-cell response) to clear the infection. Hence, if a lot of younger people have been exposed to the virus with very limited (or no) symptoms you may well not pick up that they have had it from antibody tests: they can deal with it readily without a strong antibody response. Also, if the level of antibodies is quite low anyway, then if a few months have passed before antibody testing the level of circulating antibodies may have fallen below detectable levels.

Hence, the death rate defined by using those testing positive for antibodies as the denominator may well be overstated because of a low antibody response among many who have recovered.

No one really knows.


----------



## 1996D

Eclectic Al said:


> This appears to be another area of current interest. It seems that some who have recovered from Covid-19 disease have antibodies at readily detectable levels. However, studies also seem to be indicating that others can have the disease and recover, while only having antibodies at low levels, and even at levels below the threshold for detection. The authors of a relevant Chinese study noted that this "may suggest that other parts of the immune response play as great or a greater role in allowing patients to recover from coronavirus". There was also an age pattern in this with the antibody level higher in older subjects. Overall in their study about 30% had low levels of antibodies and about 6% had no detectable antibodies. This was among a group who were believed to have had the disease because of clinical presentation, and so did not include any who may have had it but been asymptomatic.
> 
> What this is saying to me (as someone with no expertise in the field!) is that older people are relying on an ultimate antibody response to deal with Covid-19 whereas younger people (and I guess children particularly) are employing other aspects of the immune system (more generalised responses or a strong T-cell response) to clear the infection. Hence, if a lot of younger people have been exposed to the virus with very limited (or no) symptoms you may well not pick up that they have had it from antibody tests: they can deal with it readily without a strong antibody response. Also, if the level of antibodies is quite low anyway, then if a few months have passed before antibody testing the level of circulating antibodies may have fallen below detectable levels.
> 
> Hence, the death rate defined by using those testing positive for antibodies as the denominator may well be overstated because of a low antibody response among many who have recovered.
> 
> No one really knows.


If this is true then it's possible that levels of infection are extremely high and death rates very low.

Hopefully that's the case. I have a feeling China and the WHO know the intricacies of the virus and aren't releasing the information.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> It would be quite embarrassing to get killed by a virus that spared a couple of centenarian women, I'll give you that.
> 
> I'm actually happy about what the virus has revealed about the structure of the UN and its corruption. I had no idea billionaires were allowed to own parts of the UN - a true world oligarchy we live in.


One has nothing to do with the other. I'll be the first to join you in criticizing the UN and the WHO.

That being said, we have a pandemic to deal with - the virus could care less about the UN and the WHO.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> If this is true then it's possible that levels of infection are extremely high and death rates very low.
> 
> Hopefully that's the case. I have a feeling China and the WHO know the intricacies of the virus and aren't releasing the information.


You don't think scientists in other countries are studying it? That they can't find out everything the Chinese know? I wouldn't trust anything that came out of China right now (or really at all).


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> One has nothing to do with the other. I'll be the first to join you in criticizing the UN and the WHO.
> 
> That being said, we have a pandemic to deal with - the virus could care less about the UN and the WHO.


They're using the virus to get their way though. Bill Gates has his ID2020 he wants to implement and he will surely pair it up with the vaccine to supposedly 'track' who is vaccinated.

He didn't give the WHO more than a billion dollars for nothing.

The level of corruption is really depressing.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> He didn't give the WHO more than a billion dollars for nothing.


He gave the world health organization a billion dollars to fight infectious disease and you consider that corruption.

Now that is depressing.

That an individual can accumulate that much wealth strikes me as problematic.


----------



## 1996D

Baron Scarpia said:


> He gave the world health organization a billion dollars to fight infectious disease and you consider that corruption.
> 
> Now that is depressing.
> 
> That an individual can accumulate that much wealth strikes me as problematic.


It's an investment, you really think he's getting nothing back? He was a killer at Microsoft and is still a killer.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> They're using the virus to get their way though. Bill Gates has his ID2020 he wants to implement and he will surely pair it up with the vaccine to supposedly 'track' who is vaccinated.
> 
> He didn't give the WHO more than a billion dollars for nothing.
> 
> The level of corruption is really depressing.


Bill Gates doesn't get that kind of power. Nobody is going to allow him to use the vaccine to track people. Do you have any basis for claiming this happens? The vaccine will come out from whoever can make an effective one that is proven safe first. Bill Gates doesn't actually own a company that produces vaccines.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> It's an investment, you really think he's getting nothing back? He was a killer at Microsoft and is still a killer.




I think we're veering off into irrelevant land here, so probably best to just end this little digression.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Bill Gates doesn't get that kind of power. Nobody is going to allow him to use the vaccine to track people. Do you have any basis for claiming this happens? The vaccine will come out from whoever can make an effective one that is proven safe first. Bill Gates doesn't actually own a company that produces vaccines.


https://id2020.org/

Bill Gates owns GAVI the vaccine alliance and Microsoft, just scroll down the page. What do vaccines have to do with digital ID?


----------



## Open Book

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> No. You are acting like this is an irrational fear. It isn't. And most people are simply being prudent. It is a new virus. We know very little. It has rapidly spread worldwide in a very short period of time, and we currently have no drug or vaccine. So we are being cautious. We don't want to see careless deaths - we recognize we can't prevent all death, but we try to do what we can.


It's amazing how quickly and evenly the virus spread. I've been watching the graphs and charts. Even when the numbers were very low in the U.S., it seemed to be everywhere to some degree. First it was in a few states, then it appeared in small numbers in every state, then it looked like every state was evenly covered with dots on those maps (some dots being larger than others to show greater concentration, of course) in just a few days. At first there was a continent that looked free of it (Africa) but then it spread to a few countries there, then all countries there, with the same kind of wide spread, dots all over the place.

Tells me it's very contagious and that people travel a lot and spread it.

I don't mean that the concentration is the same everywhere, just that it has had a presence almost everywhere.


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> It's also not very deadly, .


come on dude, be serious.


----------



## eljr

wkasimer said:


> I recently read Erik Larson's new book "The Splendid and the Vile", and had the same thought - that the heroism of the British people in the face of months of Luftwaffe bombing and Churchill's leadership were a far cry from the displays of timidity by many segments of the the American populace and our pusillanimous leaders.


so much, so wrong with this.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> It's an investment, you really think he's getting nothing back? He was a killer at Microsoft and is still a killer.


Bill Gates has so much money that he can give billions to fight a disease. What exactly do you think a mess of an institution like the UN could give him? And why would he want to track anybody?


----------



## philoctetes

Baron Scarpia said:


> He gave the world health organization a billion dollars to fight infectious disease and you consider that corruption.
> 
> Now that is depressing.
> 
> That an individual can accumulate that much wealth strikes me as problematic.


It's problematic to accumulate it, but not problematic to use it for power...

It's impossible for me to have both of these thoughts at once without some kind of discomfort... and given past experience, better to "resist", just as others would resist their own political paranoias... and when it seems this is something I would not be allowed to vote on, or even have an opinion about... the paranoia gets a natural boost...

Most people would at least question the medical qualifications of someone leading the kind of health platform Bill Gates does... by the usual standards he has none... his true peers see him as an appliance maker with deep pockets.... an ideal target as a funding source... he is part of a capitalist "cabal" that seems immune to such considerations...


----------



## 1996D

philoctetes said:


> It's problematic to accumulate it, but not problematic to use it for power...
> 
> It's impossible for me to have both of these thoughts at once without some kind of discomfort... and given past experience, better to "resist", just as others would resist their own political paranoias... and when it seems this is something I would not be allowed to vote on, or even have an opinion about... the paranoia gets a natural boost...
> 
> Most people would at least question the medical qualifications of someone leading the kind of health platform Bill Gates does... by the usual standards he has none... his true peers see him as an appliance maker... but he is part of a capitalist "cabal" that seems immune to such considerations...


Bill Gates is cunning and slithery and always in pastel colors to look like a sweet grandpa. People really ought to research what he did in Microsoft.

He's not a good person, and he doesn't fool many.


----------



## DaveM

The paranoia over Bill Gates is pathetic. I can tell that those posting all sorts of cr*p about him know absolutely nothing about the man other than what they read on sites designed to feed the unlimited appetites of those who see a cabal and deep state under every rock.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> The paranoia over Bill Gates is pathetic. I can tell that those posting all sorts of cr*p about him know absolutely nothing about the man other than what they read on sites designed to feed the unlimited appetites of those who see a cabal and deep state under every rock.


He's a fake humanitarian oligarch who has a history of appalling behavior towards his competitors and his own employees.

He's a lot like Trump except worse and more ruthless, hence why he's ten times richer.


----------



## mmsbls

I deleted a series of personal comments between members. I had to also delete some posts that responded to those posts. Let's stay on topic without personal comments.


----------



## philoctetes

Those outside the computer industry are so dependent on Microsoft products that blind loyalty is their only choice... they do not understand the difference between technical innovation and the shadier aspects of corporate entrepreneurialism.... as a humanitarian Bill Gates infected the global internet with his products because they were cheap to give away, and had the modern advantage of control through subscribed services, violation of privacy, ... already someone on this thread suggested that vaccines would be a similar "subscription" service... will they tell you when they slip in a new "feature" or "upgrade" your kernel? oh, and that contact tracking app, no thanks...

now Gates controls enough of the medical industry that its professionals must bow on their knees to their great software idol... their blind loyalty commands them to defend Bill Gates from any suspicion whatsoever... there is no reason to reserve special reverence for one rich capitalist dweeb if all of the other rich dweebs and healthcare related businesses are supposedly up to no good... but that's where he is and the public has a right to make their own choice between their knowledge and instincts and what they are told to think by know-it-alls

Where do they get that right? it's guaranteed in the US, yet sometimes one would not know that...


----------



## Bulldog

The distaste shown here for authority figures is off the charts.


----------



## 1996D

Bulldog said:


> The distaste shown here for authority figures is off the charts.


He's not an authority figure, he's not an elected or appointed official. He's an oligarch in every sense of the word looking to subvert democracy.


----------



## philoctetes

Bulldog said:


> The distaste shown here for authority figures is off the charts.


Well, according the recent social media (just yesterday on twitter) there is a 2D grid on which our sentiments re COVID-19 scatter.. one axis is the usual left / right and the other axis is libertarian v authoritarian... I would post one of the very funny graphics but this forum is not politically robust by definition... so go find it yourself

anyway, to put a political label on a discussion about Bill Gates and vaccines was not my intention... so that's all I have to say in response about that..


----------



## 1996D

It's not really political, he's dangerous in a completely different way. Politicians are at the mercy of the voters, they are inherently limited in their power and independence.

Gates reports to nobody.


----------



## DaveM

The more someone rails about someone like Bill Gates, the more I think it has to do with what is going on in their own lives. No matter what they might think about his software, specifically Windows -which he has had nothing to do with for years- Bill Gates has been nothing but one of the most generous philanthropists for some time. Anybody suggesting otherwise or that he controls the medical industry or is subverting democracy should provide some proof or stifle themselves.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I deleted a series of personal comments between members. I had to also delete some posts that responded to those posts. Let's stay on topic without personal comments.


Some of the posts that you deleted were, in my view, harmless (hot dogs, critiques of bad music composed in bad faith...). 
I'm not sure how long I will accept such editorial emasculation.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> The more someone rails about someone like Bill Gates, the more I think it has to do with what is going on in their own lives. No matter what they might think about his software, specifically Windows -which he has had nothing to do with for years- Bill Gates has been nothing but one of the most generous philanthropists for some time. Anybody suggesting otherwise or that he controls the medical industry or is subverting democracy should provide some proof or stifle themselves.


There's no need, you'll see for yourself what he does. I'm just venting, there is nothing anyone can do to stop what he's going to do.


----------



## Flamme

DaveM said:


> The paranoia over Bill Gates is pathetic. I can tell that those posting all sorts of cr*p about him know absolutely nothing about the man other than what they read on sites designed to feed the unlimited appetites of those who see a cabal and deep state under every rock.


I thought so 2 b4, I thought of him as a sort '':angel:'' but as i got older I became sceptical...My instinct tells me there is something more...Its usually not wrong about ppl in my life as well...


----------



## philoctetes

The more someone rails to defend Bill Gates, the more I think it has to do with their own lives... No matter what they might love about his software, specifically Windows -which he has had nothing to do with for years- Bill Gates has been nothing but inscrutably meddlesome for some time. He doesn't need money but for some reason he is more attracted to expanding his global power network into new unconquered realms by political force. Anybody claiming that he doesn't do this do not understand how the world works... where is their proof?


----------



## KenOC

Reading the most recent pages of posts, I must conclude that we have a new symptom of the ever-mutating coronavirus: It makes you crazy.


----------



## philoctetes

Somehow the posts just write themselves Ken...


----------



## mmsbls

Can we please get back to the virus? If you think Bill Gates or other wealthy people control reality, that's fine but too far off topic to be interesting to others here.


----------



## Flamme

KenOC said:


> Reading the most recent pages of posts, I must conclude that we have a new symptom of the ever-mutating coronavirus: It makes you crazy.


Cabin fever lol Now I know how Jack torrance felt in the ''Lookout''...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Getting back to the virus. It's a bit of a bother, isn't it.


----------



## Room2201974

Amazing that in the past few years whenever an online discussion like this occurs, it's often driven by bots.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bots-a...g-coronavirus-misinformation-researchers-say/


----------



## Flamme

Im not a bot lol Im too real...If u think 4 urself boits cannot swing u 2 any side...


----------



## 1996D

Room2201974 said:


> Amazing that in the past few years whenever an online discussion like this occurs, it's often driven by bots.
> 
> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bots-a...g-coronavirus-misinformation-researchers-say/


This virus has revealed a lot of corruption, if people point it out they're called bots or crazy.

Those might have been bots but those who unleashed them had a good cause - these lockdowns are inhumane.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Reading the most recent pages of posts, I must conclude that we have a new symptom of the ever-mutating coronavirus: It makes you crazy.


The pandemic has been affecting almost everyone's life to a greater or lesser extent. I know that many are suffering far more than me, but having said that I have to fight feeling sorry for myself and my wife because we can't take part in any of the social life we used to, can't go out to restaurants we used to enjoy and, particularly, can't get together with my daughter, son and a couple of little critters that have been the joy of my life.

That is tough enough by itself. But what would make me crazy is if, in addition to the above, instead of focusing on positive things and the good people who are trying to get us back to some semblance of normality, my head was full of all sorts of the paranoid detritus that, regardless of the virus, the world was going to hell in a handbasket or was already there.


----------



## philoctetes

"Where is my beautiful wife, where is my beautiful house, well, how did I get here?"

This one wrote itself too, cause I'm a bot...


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> The pandemic has been affecting almost everyone's life to a greater or lesser extent. I know that many are suffering far more than me, but having said that I have to fight feeling sorry for myself and my wife because we can't take part in any of the social life we used to, can't go out to restaurants we used to enjoy and, particularly, can't get together with my daughter, son and a couple of little critters that have been the joy of my life.
> 
> That is tough enough by itself. But what would make me crazy is if, in addition to the above, instead of focusing on positive things and the good people who are trying to get us back to some semblance of normality, my head was full of all sorts of the paranoid detritus that, regardless of the virus, the world was going to hell in a handbasket or was already there.


If you accept it now you don't have to be shocked later.


----------



## 1996D

philoctetes said:


> He's writing about me.... and the mods should put a stop to it... he just can't stop his obsession... which must be a kind of sickness of it's own...


Well, you've written very sensible things.

In a way writing about it helps accept the reality, it's pretty hard to accept anyway.


----------



## Flamme

1 of the good things in this coronamia is that I finally MET myself, guided by old latin saying, ''nosce te ipsum'', I mined into the greatest depts of my soul, in places I was 2 afraid 2 enter b4...And I developed a passion for a good wheat beer!!!


----------



## science

Looks like the US is going to pass 100k known deaths by the end of this week. We had a few days with under 1000 new known deaths, but they don't seem to be normal.


----------



## Flamme

Cmon guys...This nasty virus isnt worth so much squabbling...We are all in this 2gether and all our experiences are precious 4 learning and going through this hot mess as unscathed as possible...


----------



## TurnaboutVox

This thread has once more had a number of political comments posted to it: these have been removed as they are off topic.

It has also had a number of negative personal comments posted to it: these too have been deleted as they are contrary to the forum rules.

Please do not post political comments here (see the thread title!) and DO NOT post negative personal comments or insults. This could well result in us taking further measures against those members who do.

As ever - if you see a post that offends you or you think is against our ToS - report it, don't respond in the thread.

OK. As you were. :tiphat:


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Hence, the death rate defined by using those testing positive for antibodies as the denominator may well be overstated because of a low antibody response among many who have recovered.


Yes, the antibody tests are not a perfect indicator of infection history. Some might have been infected but left with too few antibodies to detect, and others might have antibodies to other types of coronavirus and without ever having had Covid-19. It can be too high or too low. But most reports seem to indicate that the antibody tests correlate well with Covid-19 infection.

BTW, I just read a report on the progress of herd immunity in Sweden. Apparently herd immunity isn't going so great. They have a disappointing 7% of the population with measurable antibodies. With 4000 deaths in a population of 10 million, they have 0.04% of the population dead. Taking 7% infected and 0.04% dead means mortality is 0.04/7 = 0.0057 or 0.57%. Pretty close to the 0.7% mortality recorded in NY, and in many other studies. Again, the mortality comes in consistently in the range 0.5% to 1% when the data is good.

Revision: I noticed that the 7% figure was for Stockholm, not the country as a whole. I think the infection rate is typically higher in more urban areas. If the rate were lower for the country as a whole that would push the mortality rate up.


----------



## Guest

Clearly the use of wildlife as esculent is the major vector in Covid-19 since these carry transgenic diseases. We have a problem with bats in Australia (protected species, believe it or not!!) and they carry the "Hendra" virus which is found in horses and which kills people. A few years ago two famous Veterinary Surgeons died in Queensland from "Hendra virus" directly attributed to bats and horses. It is an ongoing source of concern in the racing industry. Hendra kills quickly. There are no known treatments.

In the longer term it seems reasonable to help lift nations which use wildlife as esculents out of poverty. It's a complex problem but AIDS came from Africa and had the same vectors. A well-known Danish political scientist suggests that if you help lift people out of poverty you help prevent disease and give them a standard of living sufficiently adequate to enable them to care about their own environments as well!! 

The devil is in the detail.


----------



## KenOC

It's looking like maybe the virus doesn't confer a durable antibody response, and herd immunity may be a false hope. Likewise, a reliable vaccine may be a more difficult thing than we may have wanted. If so, then Covid-19 becomes one of our seasonal diseases, like the flu but more serious.

One additional hope may be an effective antibody infusion, possibly one to be taken annually. In that respect, there's been little noise lately about *Sorrento Therapeutics*, which claimed a week ago to have developed an antibody that "demonstrated 100% inhibition of COVID-19 in an in vitro infection experiment at a very low antibody concentration."

Sorrento's CEO, Dr. Henry Ji, was back in the news yesterday addressing his company's stock price. "There is a lot of investors suspecting this is another pump and dump, which is typical, which is normal, but we don't believe that's the case… So what we are focusing on instead of watching the stock going up or going down, we are focusing on making sure we have the real deal. So you have the antibody that can prevent the virus from infecting healthy cells. That means you will have a real product. If you have a real product, eventually the stock will be reflecting the assets you have."

Meanwhile, Trump is saying that if there is a second wave, we won't be shutting down again.


----------



## KenOC

Christabel said:


> ...In the longer term it seems reasonable to help lift nations which use wildlife as esculents out of poverty. It's a complex problem but AIDS came from Africa and had the same vectors. A well-known Danish political scientist suggests that if you help lift people out of poverty you help prevent disease and give them a standard of living sufficiently adequate to enable them to care about their own environments as well!!
> 
> The devil is in the detail.


In fact, officials in Wuhan's province of Hubei actively supported the development of "wild animal farms" to service the wet markets. They considered it an anti-poverty measure, specifically to generate more wealth for poorer farmers.


----------



## Bigbang

1996D said:


> People here are worried because of their age but they shouldn't be if in good health. Young people who are obese or have a history of illness should be the ones staying at home waiting for the vaccine.
> 
> If you're healthy there is no reason for you to be in isolation, or for there to be a general lockdown.


I don't know what to make of this point. I agree generally that age is not as big of a factor compared to health status. But isolation/lockdown is not about any one person. People cannot choose these circumstances so it is what it is.

But getting sick no matter is not fun based on the stories I am hearing so it does not matter about health as one can pass it on whether feeling sick or not


----------



## Room2201974

KenOC said:


> It's looking like maybe the virus doesn't confer a durable antibody response, and herd immunity may be a false hope. Likewise, a reliable vaccine may be a more difficult thing than we may have wanted. If so, then Covid-19 becomes one of our seasonal diseases, like the flu but more serious.


I posted this link before but I'm sure it got ignored in the back and forth broadsides. It explains exactly why a vaccine will be difficult.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616

"One of the problems with corona vaccines in the past has been that when the immune response does cross over to where the virus-infected cells are it actually increases the pathology rather than reducing it," Professor Frazer said.


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> I posted this link before but I'm sure it got ignored in the back and forth broadsides. It explains exactly why a vaccine will be difficult.
> 
> https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616
> 
> "One of the problems with corona vaccines in the past has been that when the immune response does cross over to where the virus-infected cells are it actually increases the pathology rather than reducing it," Professor Frazer said.


I said the same thing here about 3 weeks ago and was roundly castigated. There won't be a vaccine, as there is also none for the common cold - another Coronavirus. Naturally I'll be more than grateful if somebody cracks it, but not holding out much hope. Ergo, my earlier posting about helping to lift poor nations out of poverty so that they can eat a basic, good diet and not have to eat bats and other wildlife.

Bill Gates understands this and this is why he's been providing billions of dollars to African countries; disease and famine - the twin killers. Then, of course, their own cruel and barbarous rulers. Those unfortunate people are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We need to help them in situ instead of having them migrate in vast swathes to European nations.


----------



## Bigbang

1996D said:


> He's a fake humanitarian oligarch who has a history of appalling behavior towards his competitors and his own employees.
> 
> He's a lot like Trump except worse and more ruthless, hence why he's ten times richer.


I think you are a little off on your math. Listen, I get not everyone is a saint in everyone's eyes but there are many people who are wealthy and not doing much in the way of alleviating suffering with their money.


----------



## Guest

Bigbang said:


> I think you are a little off on your math. Listen, I get not everyone is a saint in everyone's eyes but there are many people who are wealthy and not doing much in the way of alleviating suffering with their money.


You are absolutely correct. But when you're angry and resentful about the world this will colour your view of the human race and people who do good things. I think Gates is a great man; his business activities are less dodgy than Google and Facebook who de-platform those who don't share their ideologies. That latter is just dangerous, particularly in a democracy such as the USA which has freedom of speech enshrined in its Constitution. It doesn't take very much at all to fall foul of these Thought Police.


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> I said the same thing here about 3 weeks ago and was roundly castigated. There won't be a vaccine, as there is also none for the common cold - another Coronavirus...


Only 10-20% of them.


----------



## tdc

When John D. Rockefeller's public reputation was at its lowest, when he was being accused of shady business practices, and mysterious deaths were pointed out of business rivals and striking workers, Rockefeller hired Ivy Lee, (the grandfather of Edward Bernays who became a key figure in American propaganda) to help fix his public image. Lee instructed him to take a photo of himself handing over a cheque to a poor person and put it in the newspaper. This kind of thing had a pronounced effect on his public persona, and low and behold today many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world also happen to be philanthropists. Aren't we lucky to be surrounded by these guys?

However on close inspection of Gates we see that there seems to be a kind of circular system in the institutions he has set up so that whatever he funds seems to get cycled right back to him.

Also, if we look closer at vaccines we can see that:

The measles vaccine kills 140,000 a year, the pneumococcus vaccine kills between 2 and 2.5 million a year, the hepatitis B vaccine kills 140,000, the tetanus vaccine leads to 89,000 annual deaths, the rotavirus vaccine kills 800,000, the HPV vaccine kills 250,000, the tuberculosis vaccine kills 1.5 million and the influenza vaccine kills 650,000 to 1 million deaths a year.

Further, since 1989 when Reagan made it impossible to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccine damages we have seen an explosion of new vaccines, coinciding with an astronomical increase in auto immune disorders, allergies, autism and health and cognitive disorders in general.

The vaccine crisis dwarfs the covid-19 crisis. But it seems as though the majority of people are only able to puppet whatever their tell-a-vision programming tells them to.

This is called mind control. Isn't it neat?

Of course anyone who questions these narratives are probably heartless, not to mention racist.

Bill Gates has suggested that the world should be vaccinated as a result of this crisis and that 'we don't have a choice'. This is blatant criminal activity under the Nuremburg Code.

Another pattern some researchers have pointed out is that as human rights in countries become less, sexual freedoms tend to get emphasized. I'm not sure if this is some kind of psychological trick, but it seems like it is a key aspect of the psychological manipulation. Many people seem to quickly identify Trump as a tyrant, but maybe not so much vulture capitalist Paul Singer who is a 'philanthropist' because he supports LGBQT. And lets not forget Bill Gates who looks and speaks like a nerd and he even wore a pink sweater, surely this guy is harmless?

Look here is Melinda Gates speaking recently, also wearing a pink shirt. She must be so warm, caring and gentle! Hey, is that an upside down cross around her neck?

Seriously, look for yourself there is an upside down cross with a red corona around her neck. You can't make this stuff up.


----------



## Guest

tdc said:


> The measles vaccine kills 140,000 a year, [...] You can't make this stuff up.


Well, more than 140,000 people died from _measles _in 2018.

https://www.who.int/news-room/detai...000-die-from-measles-as-cases-surge-worldwide

Where's your source? Otherwise, some might think that you _can _make this stuff up.


----------



## Guest

tdc said:


> When John D. Rockefeller's public reputation was at its lowest, when he was being accused of shady business practices, and mysterious deaths were pointed out of business rivals and striking workers, Rockefeller hired Ivy Lee, (the grandfather of Edward Bernays who became a key figure in American propaganda) to help fix his public image. Lee instructed him to take a photo of himself handing over a cheque to a poor person and put it in the newspaper. This kind of thing had a pronounced effect on his public persona, and low and behold today many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world also happen to be philanthropists. Aren't we lucky to be surrounded by these guys?
> 
> However on close inspection of Gates we see that there seems to be a kind of circular system in the institutions he has set up so that whatever he funds seems to get cycled right back to him.
> 
> Also, if we look closer at vaccines we can see that:
> 
> The measles vaccine kills 140,000 a year, the pneumococcus vaccine kills between 2 and 2.5 million a year, the hepatitis B vaccine kills 140,000, the tetanus vaccine leads to 89,000 annual deaths, the rotavirus vaccine kills 800,000, the HPV vaccine kills 250,000, the tuberculosis vaccine kills 1.5 million and the influenza vaccine kills 650,000 to 1 million deaths a year.
> 
> Further, since 1989 when Reagan made it impossible to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccine damages we have seen an explosion of new vaccines, coinciding with an astronomical increase in auto immune disorders, allergies, autism and health and cognitive disorders in general.
> 
> The vaccine crisis dwarfs the covid-19 crisis. But it seems as though the majority of people are only able to puppet whatever their tell-a-vision programming tells them to.
> 
> This is called mind control. Isn't it neat?
> 
> Of course anyone who questions these narratives are probably heartless, not to mention racist.
> 
> Bill Gates has suggested that the world should be vaccinated as a result of this crisis and that 'we don't have a choice'. This is blatant criminal activity under the Nuremburg Code.
> 
> Another pattern some researchers have pointed out is that as human rights in countries become less, sexual freedoms tend to get emphasized. I'm not sure if this is some kind of psychological trick, but it seems like it is a key aspect of the psychological manipulation. Many people seem to quickly identify Trump as a tyrant, but maybe not so much vulture capitalist Paul Singer who is a 'philanthropist' because he supports LGBQT. And lets not forget Bill Gates who looks and speaks like a nerd and he even wore a pink sweater, surely this guy is harmless?
> 
> Look here is Melinda Gates speaking recently, also wearing a pink shirt. She must be so warm, caring and gentle! Hey, is that an upside down cross around her neck?
> 
> Seriously, look for yourself there is an upside down cross with a red corona around her neck. You can't make this stuff up.


Huge number of conspiracy theories here. Very sad.


----------



## Jacck

Sweden's per capita coronavirus death toll is among the highest in the world - a sign its decision to avoid a lockdown may not be working
https://www.businessinsider.com/swe...ita-death-rate-among-highest-2020-5?r=US&IR=T


----------



## Guest

Baron Scarpia said:


> BTW, I just read a report on the progress of herd immunity in Sweden. Apparently herd immunity isn't going so great. They have a disappointing 7% of the population with measurable antibodies. With 4000 deaths in a population of 10 million, they have 0.04% of the population dead. Taking 7% infected and 0.04% dead means mortality is 0.04/7 = 0.0057 or 0.57%. Pretty close to the 0.7% mortality recorded in NY, and in many other studies. Again, the mortality comes in consistently in the range 0.5% to 1% when the data is good.


And our ONS published their latest data on this for England (not the UK) yesterday.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...ctionsurveypilot/england21may2020#main-points



> At any given time between 4 May and 17 May 2020, it is estimated that an average of 0.25% of the community population had COVID-19 (95% confidence interval: 0.16% to 0.38%).
> 
> This equates to an average of 137,000 people in England (95% confidence interval: 85,000 to 208,000); a similar level to the previous estimate indicating that the number of people with COVID-19 is relatively stable.
> 
> There were an estimated 61,000 new COVID-19 infections per week in England (95% confidence interval: 29,000 to 111,000); the incidence rate per week was 0.11 new cases per 100 people.
> 
> There is no evidence of differences in the proportions testing positive between men and women, or between the age categories 2 to 11, 12 to 19, 20 to 49, 50 to 69 and 70 years and over.
> 
> There is no evidence of a difference between the proportions testing positive for patient-facing healthcare or resident-facing social care roles and people not working in these roles.
> 
> 
> These statistics refer to infections reported in the community, by which we mean private households. These figures exclude infections reported in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings.


----------



## erki

You could look at Gates, Musk and the like little bit like alternative to governments choosing what to invest into. Since it is your own money you can do things fast and without bureaucracy and fund stuff that public money never will.
So it is like government skins you with taxes they do it with profit margins but both give you back some. But this is rather nice way to look at filthy rich(as we see aristocracy supporting all this beautiful classical music in spite of being ruthless tyrants).


----------



## science

MacLeod said:


> Well, more than 140,000 people died from _measles _in 2018.
> 
> https://www.who.int/news-room/detai...000-die-from-measles-as-cases-surge-worldwide
> 
> Where's your source? Otherwise, some might think that you _can _make this stuff up.


Who'd want to share any responsibility for anything that led to someone's child or parent or lover or friend dying of a preventable disease?

But what am I saying? Remember all those scientists who said smoking was safe? At least they got some money out of it. And the addicts who pretended to believe them, at least they didn't have to suffer through quitting.


----------



## KenOC

Jacck said:


> Sweden's per capita coronavirus death toll is among the highest in the world - a sign its decision to avoid a lockdown may not be working
> https://www.businessinsider.com/swe...ita-death-rate-among-highest-2020-5?r=US&IR=T


While certainly high, Sweden's per capita death toll is exceeded by France, UK, Italy, Spain, and Belgium. But Denmark, Finland and Norway all enjoy much lower per capita death rates.


----------



## DaveM

tdc said:


> The measles vaccine kills 140,000 a year, the pneumococcus vaccine kills between 2 and 2.5 million a year, the hepatitis B vaccine kills 140,000, the tetanus vaccine leads to 89,000 annual deaths, the rotavirus vaccine kills 800,000, the HPV vaccine kills 250,000, the tuberculosis vaccine kills 1.5 million and the influenza vaccine kills 650,000 to 1 million deaths a year.
> 
> Further, since 1989 when Reagan made it impossible to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccine damages we have seen an explosion of new vaccines, coinciding with an astronomical increase in auto immune disorders, allergies, autism and health and cognitive disorders in general.


Some of the most bizarre, inaccurate, distortions I've ever read.



> Look here is Melinda Gates speaking recently, also wearing a pink shirt. She must be so warm, caring and gentle! Hey, is that an upside down cross around her neck? Seriously, look for yourself there is an upside down cross with a red corona around her neck. You can't make this stuff up.


Well, you can and you did:


----------



## science

erki said:


> You could look at Gates, Musk and the like little bit like alternative to governments choosing what to invest into. Since it is your own money you can do thing fast and without bureaucracy and fund stuff that public money never will.
> So it is like government skins you with taxes they do it with profit margins but both give you back some. But this is rather nice way to look at filthy rich(as we see aristocracy supporting all this beautiful classical music in spite of being ruthless tyrants).


Don't want to get too political, but if you live in a democracy, you're supposed to have a say in how your government collects and spends its money.

You don't get that say in a business unless you happen to own voting shares. They might make some token donations to charity so that people will kiss their behind, or even because someone with the ability to distribute that money wants to be nice to someone, but they don't have to love you when you want to be loved.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Don't want to get too political, but if you live in a democracy, you're supposed to have a say in how your government collects and spends its money.
> 
> You don't get that say in a business unless you happen to own voting shares. They might make some token donations to charity so that people will kiss their behind, or even because someone with the ability to distribute that money wants to be nice to someone, but they don't have to love you when you want to be loved.


A government can and does demand your money at the point of a gun. In the normal course of events, you choose to enter a voluntary contract when you give your money to a private business, with a clear understanding (if you have your eyes open) of what you'll receive for it.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> A government can and does demand your money at the *point of a gun*. In the normal course of events, you choose to enter a voluntary contract when you give your money to a private business, with a clear understanding (if you have your eyes open) of what you'll receive for it.


Well, not in the UK.

It's what they then do with it that is the point, I think. Not all is transparent in either case.


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> A government can and does demand your money at the point of a gun. In the normal course of events, you choose to enter a voluntary contract when you give your money to a private business, with a clear understanding (if you have your eyes open) of what you'll receive for it.


after the fall of communism, under the influence of the ideology "free market über Alles", we privatized some vital formerly state owned assets such as water. Now many cities rely for water on foreign private for profit companies and the state and the citizens have no control over it. It is a bad idea to privatize water, critical energetics infrastructure, prisons or critical healthcare infrastructure. Look at the disaster of the railway privatization in the UK under Thatcher or the inefficient healthcare in the US. Some things are better if the state owns them. Then it belongs to the public and the public has control over those things through elections. There is no control if those things are private.


----------



## pianozach

USA
USA
USA
USA

We're Number One
We're Number One
We're Number One
We're Number One

*96,354​*


----------



## Eclectic Al

Baron Scarpia said:


> Yes, the antibody tests are not a perfect indicator of infection history. Some might have been infected but left with too few antibodies to detect, and others might have antibodies to other types of coronavirus and without ever having had Covid-19. It can be too high or too low. But most reports seem to indicate that the antibody tests correlate well with Covid-19 infection.
> 
> BTW, I just read a report on the progress of herd immunity in Sweden. Apparently herd immunity isn't going so great. They have a disappointing 7% of the population with measurable antibodies. With 4000 deaths in a population of 10 million, they have 0.04% of the population dead. Taking 7% infected and 0.04% dead means mortality is 0.04/7 = 0.0057 or 0.57%. Pretty close to the 0.7% mortality recorded in NY, and in many other studies. Again, the mortality comes in consistently in the range 0.5% to 1% when the data is good.
> 
> Revision: I noticed that the 7% figure was for Stockholm, not the country as a whole. I think the infection rate is typically higher in more urban areas. If the rate were lower for the country as a whole that would push the mortality rate up.


Of course, you could have a strong correlation whether antibody tests pick up on 1/4 or 1/3 or 100% of infections, provided that they do that fairly consistently. That unknown ratio of antibody positive as a proportion of actual cases then feeds directly into the calculation of mortality rate. If the antibody tests pick up on 1/4 of cases then the mortality rate will be 1/4 of that which comes out of the calculation assuming they pick up 100% of cases.

One of the problems is that many cases may be asymptomatic. There seems to be plenty of evidence of that. It is difficult to investigate this because a case which is asymptomatic and only briefly gives a positive antibody test result is hard to identify, as there is no clinical presentation to confirm the infection. I guess you would sample lots of people randomly to see if they have active infection via tests for viral RNA, and then follow them through to see how many generated antibody counts sufficient to test positive. It may be difficult to do that practically, though, if the ongoing rate of active infection is low. The Chinese study I mentioned looked at symptomatic people, and so is not the complete picture (as well as being quite small). (Of course even viral tests are not entirely reliable, which seems to be behind the scare stories of repeated infection.)

If we take it that asymptomatic infections will generate low antibody counts, many not detectable (with that proportion increasing over time), then you have a real estimation problem. You will underestimate the prevalence if you ignore this point, and hence you will overstate the mortality rate. Furthermore, if (and it is an if) the people missed in the estimation do not spread the virus in future then you would be closer to herd immunity than you realise. On the other hand, it is difficult to know how to scale up the assumed prevalence. Who knows whether Sweden is close to herd immunity or not. Well I'm certainly not wise enough to make a strong claim either way, given that we don't know the prevalence of people who may have had the disease, we don't know if they could spread it in future, and our ability to model the outcomes anyway (and so determine what level is needed for herd immunity) is very questionable.

The lack of knowledge gives rise to the rows on threads like this: some think the low risk thing is to lock down (thinking to minimise spread of this unpredictable pathogen), and others want to relax the lockdown (thinking of the risks of the lockdown itself). I'm glad it's not my call.


----------



## KenOC

Jacck said:


> after the fall of communism, under the influence of the ideology "free market über Alles", we privatized some vital formerly state owned assets such as water. Now many cities rely for water on foreign private for profit companies and the state and the citizens have no control over it. It is a bad idea to privatize water, critical energetics infrastructure, prisons or critical healthcare infrastructure. Look at the disaster of the railway privatization in the UK under Thatcher or the inefficient healthcare in the US. Some things are better if the state owns them. Then it belongs to the public and the public has control over those things through elections. There is no control if those things are private.


Utilities and some other entities are known as "natural monopolies" and, if privately owned, are regulated closely by the states they operate in. There is plenty of control. This has not been much of a problem in the US.

Hospitals, similarly, are a mix of public and private ownership. This also has not been much of a problem since about 60% of US healthcare expenditures are government-paid in any case. To the extent that US healthcare is inefficient, the cause must be looked for elsewhere.

I will note that some public hospitals are often thought to be underfunded and to employ lesser-quality staff due to poor pay. Many, if really sick, will want to avoid the "county hospital".


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

tdc said:


> Also, if we look closer at vaccines we can see that:
> 
> The measles vaccine kills 140,000 a year, the pneumococcus vaccine kills between 2 and 2.5 million a year, the hepatitis B vaccine kills 140,000, the tetanus vaccine leads to 89,000 annual deaths, the rotavirus vaccine kills 800,000, the HPV vaccine kills 250,000, the tuberculosis vaccine kills 1.5 million and the influenza vaccine kills 650,000 to 1 million deaths a year.
> 
> Further, since 1989 when Reagan made it impossible to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccine damages we have seen an explosion of new vaccines, coinciding with an astronomical increase in auto immune disorders, allergies, autism and health and cognitive disorders in general.


Ummmm . . . no. Just . . . no. Nothing in this statement bears any resemblance to anything even remotely tangent to the truth. It would have to travel numerous light years to come close to being in the same universe as the truth.

And that is the politest thing I can say here, so I'll leave it at that.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> Look at the disaster of the railway privatization in the UK under Thatcher.


I assume from this that you didn't use British trains before privatisation. Admittedly it was tricky, because they were so often not running. Now there was a mess!

Oh and that reminds me, power companies were in state hands then. How did that go? Well I remember doing homework by candlelight several evenings per week, because of rolling power cuts. It was quite exciting, but perhaps not the best way of running a power supply system.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> Who'd want to share any responsibility for anything that led to someone's child or parent or lover or friend dying of a preventable disease?
> 
> But what am I saying? Remember all those scientists who said smoking was safe? At least they got some money out of it. And the addicts who pretended to believe them, at least they didn't have to suffer through quitting.


And the drug addicts and alcoholics who continue despite industrial-strength health warnings.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Eclectic Al said:


> I assume from this that you didn't use British trains before privatisation. Admittedly it was tricky, because they were so often not running. Now there was a mess!
> 
> Oh and that reminds me, power companies were in state hands then. How did that go? _Well I remember doing homework by candlelight several evenings per week, because of rolling power cuts_. It was quite exciting, but perhaps not the best way of running a power supply system.


Ah, yes - the depressing Ted Heath years... My dad worked at a chemical company while all this was going on - the shop floor workers and lab/office staff were given free tallow (tallow was regularly used as a raw material in the factory), cord and laboratory sample jars so we could make our own candles (which, I was told, there was a shortage of in the shops due to the Three-Day Week).

But I digress...my apologies.


----------



## Eclectic Al

elgars ghost said:


> Ah, yes - the depressing Ted Heath years... My dad worked at a chemical company while all this was going on - the shop floor workers and lab/office staff were given free tallow (tallow was regularly used as a raw material in the factory), cord and laboratory sample jars so we could make our own candles (which, I was told, there was a shortage of in the shops due to the Three-Day Week).
> 
> But I digress...my apologies.


We used to huddle around the radio in the evening, in the room with a coal fire (perversely). I say perversely because I was probably unfair on the power suppliers (the glorious Central Electricity Generating Board was in charge and we were in the North West Electricity Board [NORWEB] area), as they needed coal, and that could be tricky to get hold of. Oh, that was in state hands too, wasn't it. We're back in the glory days of the National Coal Board.

Mind you, it's not that everything was nationalised back in those days. Thomas Cook had been de-nationalised in 1972, so that natural candidate for state ownership, travel agency, was back in private hands.
I think we probably already had a Trimphone by then, because the General Post Office (GPO) allowed us to rent those as the stylish alternative to the old style. There's a great link here about Trimphones, which were a bit radioactive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimphone
Of course it was illegal to own your own phone: you could only rent them from the state-owned GPO which was the monopoly telephone service provider until 1982. Except in Kingston-upon-Hull - don't you just love that. Kingston Communications continues to this day, separate from BT, and now in private hands.

Good times!


----------



## 1996D

https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/98-percent-of-Tennessee-inmates-asymptomatic-officials-say--570215421.html

98% of inmates who tested positive were asymptomatic.

This virus is a joke.


----------



## Eclectic Al

1996D said:


> https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/98-percent-of-Tennessee-inmates-asymptomatic-officials-say--570215421.html
> 
> 98% of inmates who tested positive were asymptomatic.
> 
> This virus is a joke.


If this is remotely generalisable then it is of course very interesting, and sounds like good news.
A key missing piece of the jigsaw though is the number of people who may had had the disease (potentially without symptoms) and now do not test positive for antibodies. Random samples do not necessarily show large proportions of the population testing positive, so the question is whether that is because it has not spread widely already or because many do not test positive for antibodies despite having had the virus.

Everyone should hope it is the latter, but we don't really know.


----------



## Eclectic Al

There's a really interesting story here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52754280
This points to a crash in T-cells among those with severe forms of Covid-19. My interest is not so much in the possibility of a drug treatment (although great if that helps) but in the increase in understanding. If T-cells often do a good job in clearing the virus (potentially without antibodies being generated much) but in some people the T-cell numbers crash for some reason, and that is why those people have a worse outcome, then that would raise the tantalising prospect that large numbers of people may have had the disease (maybe without knowing) and yet not test positive for antibodies.


----------



## science

Over 5 million officially known cases now, and just over 335,000 officially known deaths. 

The US's count of 28k new officially known cases yesterday was the most we've had since May 8. It's starting to hit Illinois hard. 

My parents live in a county with less than 50k people. A month ago, it had its first known case. Today it has 30 known cases. Barring the sudden appearance of a cure, how many do we suppose it will have a month from now?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Eclectic Al said:


> If this is remotely generalisable then it is of course very interesting, and sounds like good news.
> A key missing piece of the jigsaw though is the number of people who may had had the disease (potentially without symptoms) and now do not test positive for antibodies. Random samples do not necessarily show large proportions of the population testing positive, so the question is whether that is because it has not spread widely already or because many do not test positive for antibodies despite having had the virus.
> 
> Everyone should hope it is the latter, but we don't really know.


Ah, reading the story again it says tested positive for the virus, not tested positive for antibodies. That would indeed be spectacularly good news, but I'm not holding my breath.


----------



## 1996D

Eclectic Al said:


> Ah, reading the story again it says tested positive for the virus, not tested positive for antibodies. That would indeed be spectacularly good news, but I'm not holding my breath.


That would mean that everybody has or will get it very soon and next to none will ever know they had it. Deaths will start dropping as soon as everything reopens.


----------



## Bigbang

tdc said:


> When John D. Rockefeller's public reputation was at its lowest, when he was being accused of shady business practices, and mysterious deaths were pointed out of business rivals and striking workers, Rockefeller hired Ivy Lee, (the grandfather of Edward Bernays who became a key figure in American propaganda) to help fix his public image. Lee instructed him to take a photo of himself handing over a cheque to a poor person and put it in the newspaper. This kind of thing had a pronounced effect on his public persona, and low and behold today many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world also happen to be philanthropists. Aren't we lucky to be surrounded by these guys?
> 
> However on close inspection of Gates we see that there seems to be a kind of circular system in the institutions he has set up so that whatever he funds seems to get cycled right back to him.
> 
> Also, if we look closer at vaccines we can see that:
> 
> The measles vaccine kills 140,000 a year, the pneumococcus vaccine kills between 2 and 2.5 million a year, the hepatitis B vaccine kills 140,000, the tetanus vaccine leads to 89,000 annual deaths, the rotavirus vaccine kills 800,000, the HPV vaccine kills 250,000, the tuberculosis vaccine kills 1.5 million and the influenza vaccine kills 650,000 to 1 million deaths a year.
> 
> Further, since 1989 when Reagan made it impossible to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccine damages we have seen an explosion of new vaccines, coinciding with an astronomical increase in auto immune disorders, allergies, autism and health and cognitive disorders in general.
> 
> The vaccine crisis dwarfs the covid-19 crisis. But it seems as though the majority of people are only able to puppet whatever their tell-a-vision programming tells them to.
> 
> This is called mind control. Isn't it neat?
> 
> Of course anyone who questions these narratives are probably heartless, not to mention racist.
> 
> Bill Gates has suggested that the world should be vaccinated as a result of this crisis and that 'we don't have a choice'. This is blatant criminal activity under the Nuremburg Code.
> 
> Another pattern some researchers have pointed out is that as human rights in countries become less, sexual freedoms tend to get emphasized. I'm not sure if this is some kind of psychological trick, but it seems like it is a key aspect of the psychological manipulation. Many people seem to quickly identify Trump as a tyrant, but maybe not so much vulture capitalist Paul Singer who is a 'philanthropist' because he supports LGBQT. And lets not forget Bill Gates who looks and speaks like a nerd and he even wore a pink sweater, surely this guy is harmless?
> 
> Look here is Melinda Gates speaking recently, also wearing a pink shirt. She must be so warm, caring and gentle! Hey, is that an upside down cross around her neck?
> 
> Seriously, look for yourself there is an upside down cross with a red corona around her neck. You can't make this stuff up.


Yes, so coincidental about the rise of all these health disorders. Perhaps, your time would be better well spent in other forums claiming these due to vaccines against other conspiracies abound competing for the right to blame on other causes. Too numerous to even bother but there are many. So naturally the question: Who or what to believe.

So you see a pattern or connection to Melinda wearing a necklace? Me, never see anything but one thing I know. This is a "thing" that people in general will find connections but when it gets to the point where you are feeling all alone, time to seek some help in getting answers. Because you can only influence those like yourself not those who do not share your passions on seeing the "hidden" in everything. Good Luck.


----------



## 1996D

Bigbang said:


> Yes, so coincidental about the rise of all these health disorders. Perhaps, your time would be better well spent in other forums claiming these due to vaccines against other conspiracies abound competing for the right to blame on other causes. Too numerous to even bother but there are many. So naturally the question: Who or what to believe.
> 
> So you see a pattern or connection to Melinda wearing a necklace? Me, never see anything but one thing I know. This is a "thing" that people in general will find connections but when it gets to the point where you are feeling all alone, time to seek some help in getting answers. Because you can only influence those like yourself not those who do not share your passions on seeing the "hidden" in everything. Good Luck.


They are not to be trusted, it's that simple. There is evidence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation causing sterility in African and Indian girls because of contaminated vaccines; she's indeed wearing an inverted cross in the video; and Bill Gates controls the WHO's agenda through his large contributions.

I wouldn't listen to anything they say; they have bought influence to determine how nations act. If that's not corruption I don't know what is.


----------



## Bigbang

1996D said:


> They are not to be trusted, it's that simple. There is evidence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation causing sterility in African and Indian girls because of contaminated vaccines; she's indeed wearing an inverted cross in the video; and Bill Gates controls the WHO's agenda through his large contributions.
> 
> I wouldn't listen to anything they say; they have bought influence to determine how nations act. If that's not corruption I don't know what is.


 Nothing you write can influence me as I do my own thinking so it does not matter. You are simply one of many who are in online media spouting every conspiracy out there. Save your energy to do the opposite as the road is a dead end. I know a guy who thinks President Trump is the greatest president the USA ever had and that was two years in his presidency. I am sure if I see him nothing has changed so the issue is with him as circumstances do not matter.


----------



## Guest

1996D said:


> They are not to be trusted, it's that simple. There is evidence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation causing sterility in African and Indian girls because of contaminated vaccines


There is no evidence.

https://www.politifact.com/factchec...axxers-spread-conspiracy-about-bill-gates-an/

And as for the upside down cross...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/melinda-gates-upside-down-cross/


----------



## Guest

This is all just too wacky for me to deal with!! Barking mad.

As Dave Rubin says, talking on twitter or social media is like having a conversation with a pink fox crossing the road!!


----------



## 1996D

MacLeod said:


> There is no evidence.
> 
> https://www.politifact.com/factchec...axxers-spread-conspiracy-about-bill-gates-an/
> 
> And as for the upside down cross...
> 
> https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/melinda-gates-upside-down-cross/


https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...rom-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms


----------



## 1996D

Bigbang said:


> Nothing you write can influence me as I do my own thinking so it does not matter. You are simply one of many who are in online media spouting every conspiracy out there. Save your energy to do the opposite as the road is a dead end. I know a guy who thinks President Trump is the greatest president the USA ever had and that was two years in his presidency. I am sure if I see him nothing has changed so the issue is with him as circumstances do not matter.


There is no conspiracy, it's in the open for everyone to see.

One man gives more money to a huge branch of the UN than entire countries - he's in fact the top contributor.


----------



## 1996D

Gavi is a branch of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

MacLeod said:


> There is no evidence.
> 
> https://www.politifact.com/factchec...axxers-spread-conspiracy-about-bill-gates-an/
> 
> And as for the upside down cross...
> 
> https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/melinda-gates-upside-down-cross/


Me: 2020 can't get any more bizarre.
2020: Hold my beer.....

Wow, so we now have people on here wanting us to believe Melinda Gates is a Satanist, and that she and her husband have created some new vaccine for polio that sterilizes kids.

I'm trying really hard here to bite my tongue, but shouldn't the site's TOS also stipulate " no posting of bat guano crazy conspiracy theories?"


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> View attachment 136448
> 
> 
> Gavi is a branch of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


Seriously, all you need now is to Photoshop a picture of Bill Gates with an eye patch and holding a white Persian cat and you've turned him into the perfect old school James Bond villain. Does he also have a secret lair hidden in a dormant volcano from which he will launch a laser-equipped satellite that will have the ability to drain us all off our precious bodily fluids while his wife bathes in the blood of virgins?


----------



## Art Rock

How about ignoring all the idiotic side steps, and focus on the virus again?

In the Netherlands we are slowly coming out of the so-called intelligent lockdown (somewhere between most countries and Sweden), and people immediately flocked en masse to the parks and beaches - disregarding social distancing in many cases. Fingers crossed that we do not see this back as a new wave of infections in 1-2 weeks.


----------



## wkasimer

Art Rock said:


> In the Netherlands we are slowly coming out of the so-called intelligent lockdown (somewhere between most countries and Sweden), and people immediately flocked en masse to the parks and beaches - disregarding social distancing in many cases. Fingers crossed that we do not see this back as a new wave of infections in 1-2 weeks.


This is happening in the US as well. Most experts consider the risk of outdoor transmission to be quite low - we'll know for sure in a couple of weeks.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Me: 2020 can't get any more bizarre.
> 2020: Hold my beer.....
> 
> Wow, so we now have people on here wanting us to believe Melinda Gates is a Satanist, and that she and her husband have created some new vaccine for polio that sterilizes kids.
> 
> I'm trying really hard here to bite my tongue, but shouldn't the site's TOS also stipulate " no posting of bat guano crazy conspiracy theories?"


That's not what I'm saying... It just proves that it's a front for him.

He's a billionaire that uses his wealth to influence politics under the guise of philanthropy.

This virus is not dangerous, 98% of inmates that tested positive for the virus felt no symptoms. https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/98-percent-of-Tennessee-inmates-asymptomatic-officials-say--570215421.html

The guidelines from the WHO were incompetent because it's a corrupt organization financed by a billionaire.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

1996D said:


> That's not what I'm saying... It just proves that it's a front for him.
> 
> He's a billionaire that uses his wealth to influence politics under the guise of philanthropy.
> 
> This virus is not dangerous, 98% of inmates that tested positive for the virus felt no symptoms. https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/98-percent-of-Tennessee-inmates-asymptomatic-officials-say--570215421.html
> 
> The guidelines from the WHO were incompetent because it's a corrupt organization financed by a billionaire.


Tell me - why is the overwhelming data from everywhere else so much different? All the world has been duped by Bill Gates, but lonely ol' Sweden knows better than them all? So many different countries - which normally couldn't get together to agree that water is wet are somehow now all in on this great conspiracy? Because Donald Trump has such love for Europe?

Bill Gates is pumping so much money into infectious disease research. That is a good thing. He isn't the first wealthy person to do something like this. The free public library system in the United States is largely thanks to the donations of Andrew Carnegie. Was he trying to take control of everybody as well? Howard Hughes established a foundation - the Howard Hughes Medical Institute - that still funds millions in biomedical research. And he did that as a way to shelter his money after he died so the government couldn't get it!

What is the play for people pushing vaccines if not to improve public health? What possible reason would a person have to push something if it is supposedly so deadly? Just to line the pockets of a few pharmaceutical companies? That makes no sense.


----------



## eljr

1996D said:


> This virus is not dangerous.


You keep making ridiculous statements just to set people off.

Enough already.


----------



## 1996D

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Tell me - why is the overwhelming data from everywhere else so much different? All the world has been duped by Bill Gates, but lonely ol' Sweden knows better than them all? So many different countries - which normally couldn't get together to agree that water is wet are somehow now all in on this great conspiracy? Because Donald Trump has such love for Europe?
> 
> Bill Gates is pumping so much money into infectious disease research. That is a good thing. He isn't the first wealthy person to do something like this. The free public library system in the United States is largely thanks to the donations of Andrew Carnegie. Was he trying to take control of everybody as well? Howard Hughes established a foundation - the Howard Hughes Medical Institute - that still funds millions in biomedical research. And he did that as a way to shelter his money after he died so the government couldn't get it!
> 
> What is the play for people pushing vaccines if not to improve public health? What possible reason would a person have to push something if it is supposedly so deadly? Just to line the pockets of a few pharmaceutical companies? That makes no sense.


It's a different world now, we're much closer to true democracy.

The fact that it's Sweden that ignored the WHO's guidelines is no coincidence, they are the most advanced country on earth and have a true social democracy. If every Western country was like Sweden Bill Gates would not be able to do what he does.

We're not too far from wealth redistribution policies very much like Sweden's; after Trump leaves (most likely in 2024) the trend will be wealth redistribution and more equality policies.

With the US the entire West will follow.


----------



## mmsbls

Let's get back to the virus. In particular let's discontinue discussion of governmental actions not related to the virus, conspiracy theories unrelated to the virus, and anything to do with Bill Gates not related to the virus.

I know people love to talk politics, but the problem is that any discussion of politics often leads to more divisive politics which can lead to people sniping, chiding, or insulting each other. No one likes to read those comments so please let's try to focus on the virus.


----------



## Kieran

Chinese now claim to have a vaccine!

https://www.independent.ie/irish-ne...9lmCnR-nU3fiBzGRsQaltNNVBA2zsx1Y8HiTpZKs7Ndu8


----------



## science

Here are the things I want to know. 

How many people in the US and around the world are going to die from this? 

How long will it be until the number of active cases in the US and around the world starts declining (recoveries plus deaths outnumbering new cases)? 

As for the economy, as far as I can tell that's purely a political question -- who do the decision makers care about enough to help? We all know the answer to that without having to discuss it. So the questions are how long this is going to last and how many people are going to die. 

As for who they'll be, obviously none of us know that. No one is safe. We can tell ourselves comforting lies, or we can hope the rolls of the dice work out, but we're all chips on a craps table. Well, some of us are plaques. But the dice are the gods.


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> Chinese now claim to have a vaccine!
> 
> https://www.independent.ie/irish-ne...9lmCnR-nU3fiBzGRsQaltNNVBA2zsx1Y8HiTpZKs7Ndu8


Ah ha!

So we'll see how long it is before nearly everyone can get it...


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> Ah ha!
> 
> So we'll see how long it is before nearly everyone can get it...


Ah, but can we believe it? That's the thing...


----------



## Flamme

They ought 2 spray vaccines rain from gods good heavens, so every1 could get it, even those who ''refuse'' it!!!


----------



## 1996D

science said:


> Ah ha!
> 
> So we'll see how long it is before nearly everyone can get it...


Countries are already reopening and mass production takes time. It will be for the very old and sick only, healthy people show no symptoms and won't pay for a vaccine.


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> Ah, but can we believe it? That's the thing...


Well, we'll see. We will see.


----------



## science

1996D said:


> Countries are already reopening


Yeah.



1996D said:


> and mass production takes time.


Yeah.



1996D said:


> It will be for the very old and sick only,


Power and privilege.



1996D said:


> healthy people show no symptoms


I wonder if this is tautological.



1996D said:


> and won't pay for a vaccine.


If one becomes available, let's see how much anyone will be expected to pay in various countries.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Whether that's true or not, the question of what people would pay of a vaccine is a fascinating one, if you live in a territory where you might pay for your own treatment. Even if you don't pay individually, the same sort of question arises in relation to what the drug company can charge, whoever is paying in any particular territory.

My daughter works on the provision of pricing consultancy to pharmaceutical companies - yep, that's all she does, all day, every day. What should be charged for a medical treatment is a hugely tricky question.

If you took a vaccine against the common cold you would probably find that you couldn't charge much. If you had something which protected against breast cancer, say, then you could charge a lot.

Indeed, one of the reasons why there are no vaccines against coronaviruses may be partly economic. Some coronaviruses cause colds, and although people dream of a cure for the common cold it is not clear that developers could charge much for it. On the other hand with some others (say MERS) the epidemics have never really got going, so by the time any candidates were going to progress through the process the prospective economic demand had collapsed.

I am aware that there are some specific challenges about producing vaccines against lung viruses, but it may well be that the lack of any existing vaccine against a coronavirus is as much economic as scientific.


----------



## DaveM

Interesting view of 'its over' and life 'as usual': 4 1/2 thousand deaths worldwide yesterday. Good reporting! Keep up the good work. You're right, we won't forget.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> Interesting view of 'its over' and life 'as usual': 4 1/2 thousand deaths worldwide yesterday. Good reporting! Keep up the good work. You're right, we won't forget.
> 
> View attachment 136464


That's because a lot of people are infected but show no symptoms, and now that countries are reopening it's sure to be everyone. The death rate is probably not much higher than the flu.

You want to know how many people are dying of other diseases?


----------



## Flamme

My comment was deleted and I only pointed out an inconsistency...If there is some new info that made our fellow colleague change his mind, I think we should know about it!


----------



## 1996D

The people who lost their jobs and are now homeless are the true sufferers of the WHO's incompetence.

Now lets hope that the economy can recover hastily.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8326541/800-000-people-end-HOMELESS-summer-COVID-19-unemployment-hits-14-7-cent.html


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> That's because a lot of people are infected but show no symptoms, and now that countries are reopening it's sure to be everyone. The death rate is probably not much higher than the flu..


But 4 1/2 thousand dead yesterday. I thought you said it was over.


----------



## perempe

1996D said:


> I posted a link that showed that people show no symptoms and another member made a good argument on the fact that some people don't even show antibodies because the infection is so light.
> 
> It's really not serious, stop being so afraid.


Only 10% of the healed patients' blood can be used for plasma therapy.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> But 4 1/2 thousand dead yesterday. I thought you said it was over.


The lockdown is over and the economy has to get rolling again. Sports are coming back and soon people will gather again.

If we constantly tracked deaths from other diseases and put them all over the media it would look bad also.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Baron Scarpia said:


> ...or until we disappear?


The movie is Mass Suicide ?

Covid scientists predicted a mental health crisis . Get help from ELIZA now ! She
scared the hell out of her Creator . So powerful ! And so free ...

Eliza, Computer Therapist

http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm


----------



## KenOC

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Covid scientists predicted a mental health crisis . Get help from ELIZA now ! She
> scared the hell out of her Creator . So powerful ! And so free ...


"Why do you feel that way?"


----------



## Art Rock

A bit of positive news: it has been reported in Dutch media that over the past two months, in spite of the Corona issues, suicide numbers have decreased considerably in our country.


----------



## cwarchc

What I can not understand is the reaction to this "coronavirus"
In 1968 the, so called Hong Kong flu killed in the region of 85,000 people in England alone.
If you compare the population size to mortality rate, a rather large increase in what we are seeing now.
However, there was no mass panic, no media outrage and no destruction of the economy.
The medicine we have taken upto now, will already "cost" more than the virus
He who controls the media controls the mind
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both
I expect this post to be removed.
Fear distils into power


----------



## Bigbang

Christabel said:


> This is all just too wacky for me to deal with!! Barking mad.
> 
> As Dave Rubin says, talking on twitter or social media is like having a conversation with a pink fox crossing the road!!


Well, ok, you went there.....'Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference' (who knows the source) and 
'a wise man changes his mind, a fool never will', and 'if you argue with a fool he succeeds.'


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Bigbang said:


> Well, ok, you went there.....'Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference' (who knows the source) and
> 'a wise man changes his mind, a fool never will', and 'if you argue with a fool he succeeds.'


A similar riff on the same tune: Never wrestle with a pig - all you get is dirty, and the pig likes it.


----------



## DaveM

cwarchc said:


> What I can not understand is the reaction to this "coronavirus"
> In 1968 the, so called Hong Kong flu killed in the region of 85,000 people in England alone.
> If you compare the population size to mortality rate, a rather large increase in what we are seeing now.
> However, there was no mass panic, no media outrage and no destruction of the economy.
> The medicine we have taken upto now, will already "cost" more than the virus
> He who controls the media controls the mind
> People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both
> I expect this post to be removed.
> Fear distils into power


Apples and oranges. That 85,000 was over 1 1/2 years. There have been circa 37,000 Clovid-19 deaths in the U.K. in 3 months. There are other important differences, but I'm too tired of these kind of posts that throw out misleading information to go into it.


----------



## eljr

Art Rock said:


> A bit of positive news: it has been reported in Dutch media that over the past two months, in spite of the Corona issues, suicide numbers have decreased considerably in our country.


how interesting

maybe the stress of normal daily life is far greater than we realize


----------



## eljr

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> A similar riff on the same tune: Never wrestle with a pig - all you get is dirty, and the pig likes it.


well put!

............


----------



## eljr

cwarchc said:


> What I can not understand is the reaction to this "coronavirus"
> In 1968 the, so called Hong Kong flu killed in the region of 85,000 people in England alone.
> If you compare the population size to mortality rate, a rather large increase in what we are seeing now.
> However, there was no mass panic, no media outrage and no destruction of the economy.
> The medicine we have taken upto now, will already "cost" more than the virus
> He who controls the media controls the mind
> People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both
> I expect this post to be removed.
> Fear distils into power


After shutting down the economy how many did England lose? In how short a time?

Point is, England would lose wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than 85,000 (also, how is this computed) a year.

NY lost 30000 in 2 months with everything locked down.

I find the notion that the media has anything to do with this kinda silly.
All the media does is report. It's the scientists that prodded us to act not the media.


----------



## aleazk

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> A similar riff on the same tune: Never wrestle with a pig - all you get is dirty, and the pig likes it.


And yet another variation: never play chess with a pigeon - it will spread sh*it all over the board while strutting and throwing the pieces down.


----------



## KenOC

*Fatality Rate based on New York City Actual Cases and Deaths*

"Worldometer has analyzed the data provided by New York City, the New York State antibody study, and the excess deaths analysis by the CDC. Combining these 3 sources together we can derive the most accurate estimate to date on the mortality rate for COVID-19, as well as the mortality rate by age group and underlying condition. These findings can be valid for New York City and not necessarily for other places…"

An interesting analysis.


----------



## Room2201974

DaveM said:


> Apples and oranges. That 85,000 was over 1 1/2 years. There have been circa 37,000 Clovid-19 deaths in the U.K. in 3 months. There are other important differences, but I'm too tired of these kind of posts that throw out misleading information to go into it.


Not to mention that we have flu vaccine yet have never made a corona vaccine. But hey, the last thing we need in a discussion about a virus is science when conspiracy theories are more comforting. The main purpose of this thread has been to distinguish between the merely odd and the bat schizen crazy. But when you think that your music is so great that it can and will change the world, then any conspiracy or half baked unsubstantiated quote is FACT. End of discussion.

I wonder how many brave talkers are walking the walk. Damnn few I would bet.


----------



## Jacck

Moderna unveiled encouraging coronavirus vaccine results. Then top execs dumped nearly $30 million of stock
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/22/investing/moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-stock-sales/index.html


----------



## Bigbang

Ok I post this a while back. This is a top korean scientist talking about vaccine. Of course changes have taken place since then but this is his take on this. I see it this way...let's listen this to the best of the best and not get caught up in-- "will never find a vaccine because--" or "herd immunity is?"


----------



## erki

cwarchc said:


> What I can not understand is the reaction to this "coronavirus"
> In 1968 the, so called Hong Kong flu killed in the region of 85,000 people in England alone.
> If you compare the population size to mortality rate, a rather large increase in what we are seeing now.
> However, there was no mass panic, no media outrage and no destruction of the economy.
> The medicine we have taken upto now, will already "cost" more than the virus
> He who controls the media controls the mind
> People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both
> I expect this post to be removed.
> Fear distils into power


There is good point in it regardless if you pick on the details - apples and oranges and what not. Diseases have killed people in the past and will be killing in the future. Some do more(and have done so) some do less. 
I can not figure out what happened this time that triggered such extreme response into total unknown pretty much world wide as well. Usually politicians must be very careful about their decisions because any gross miscalculation will cost their further employment. Well maybe they think that since everybody is doing it then no-one is responsible. 
One possibility is that many affluent societies with the advances of modern medicine have started to believe that human life can be saved always and the failure to do so is just the technical problem. But in the same time since we are so powerful every unsaved life is seen as a failure of us as a society or even humanity. This view has been expresses countless times here as well every time when phrase "saving lives" comes up.
I understand that many think that this virus is something unusually big that justify these extreme measures. Could this be nothing more than wishful thinking to put your mind at ease and not to think of the consequences.
Or we are just so excited to participate in fantastic world wide experiment or training for the apocalypse.


----------



## Bigbang

Here is another expert on Coronavirus from South Korea: His expertise has him concerned about the return of the virus in september and october. I have no reason to doubt him or his expertise. I am hoping that for once we will dodge a bullet because of the unknowns and the virus will not return.





 Please watch informative video to learn from an expert not being jerked around like other scientists.


----------



## DaveM

erki said:


> There is good point in it regardless if you pick on the details - apples and oranges and what not. Diseases have killed people in the past and will be killing in the future. Some do more(and have done so) some do less.
> I can not figure out what happened this time that triggered such extreme response into total unknown pretty much world wide as well. Usually politicians must be very careful about their decisions because any gross miscalculation will cost their further employment. Well maybe they think that since everybody is doing it then no-one is responsible.
> One possibility is that many affluent societies with the advances of modern medicine have started to believe that human life can be saved always and the failure to do so is just the technical problem. But in the same time since we are so powerful every unsaved life is seen as a failure of us as a society or even humanity. This view has been expresses countless times here as well every time when phrase "saving lives" comes up.
> I understand that many think that this virus is something unusually big that justify these extreme measures. Could this be nothing more than wishful thinking to put your mind at ease and not to think of the consequences.
> Or we are just so excited to participate in fantastic world wide experiment or training for the apocalypse.


It's easy to ponder what appears to be the premise that there's something unusual about the fact that 'this time' societies are supporting 'extreme measures' to save lives as if it is an aberration rather than the fact that maybe societies are evolving. In any event, the funny thing is that one hopes that extreme measures are in place when it's your life on the line.


----------



## Bigbang

I still think it is important to think about the coronavirus not as a reaction (on the scientific stage) to fix the issue on some immediate level but that we come together in various ways to change our habits that address what we eat (farming/harm to animals) and what we do to the environment because to me, that IS the best long term strategy. If not then no telling how bad it can become in the future. 

I find it funny that the top religious leaders are so quiet. I mean, they have so much clout to talk to God about everything but get so scared to bring up the almighty virus as a topic. Hmm. If it was up to me I would be getting a world on lockdown to be getting the attention of God/ the Gods/The universe/the essence of our existence (materialists can sit this one out but still make efforts.

So the whole world is petitioning the gods, knowing we have to change the course of our actions to avoid more conflict with nature. Hindus/Christians/Buddhists/and all other faiths can do a worldwide prayer and reflection....hmm, and yet I hear not a whisper. Are we afraid of the power called "nature"? Must be because we get really vocal when it come to our individual lives but this "power" seems so pervasive and scary we cower to it.


----------



## KenOC

Bigbang said:


> Here is another expert on Coronavirus from South Korea: His expertise has him concerned about the return of the virus in september and october...


Here's what the CDC says about that on *MSN*:.
---------------------------------------
Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Tuesday that the coronavirus could have a second wave worse than now.

"There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Redfield told the Washington Post. "And when I've said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don't understand what I mean."

Redfield added, "We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time."


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-twenty-eight-children-hospitalized-with-inflammatory-syndrome-linked-to-covid-19/
28 kids hospitalized with an inflammatory syndrome linked to COVID-19. But remember, it is only the old and sick that need to worry.


----------



## Bigbang

KenOC said:


> Here's what the CDC says about that on *MSN*:.
> ---------------------------------------
> Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Tuesday that the coronavirus could have a second wave worse than now.
> 
> "There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Redfield told the Washington Post. "And when I've said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don't understand what I mean."
> 
> Redfield added, "We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time."


So should be getting ready like as if preparing for battle? Get hospitals ready and all but are we going to get education on how to prepare ourselves. Here is my idea: For starters, there should be national tv ads explaining how to keep practicing social distancing. It may seem obvious but I see the problem as getting people to understand how to behave as if they have it and at the same time practice avoidance of situations that could expose them to the virus. So TV commercials with perhaps endorsements of well-known figures, like Bill Gates:lol:.

I see it as a continuous ongoing education thing over and over until people do not even think about it. One of the biggest obstacle is thinking I am OK and my family is OK BUT them over there are NOT OK. This must be addressed with due diligence.


----------



## science

Very bad day for Illinois yesterday. The kind of bad day that only New York and New Jersey used to have. 

Placing a lot of hope in that vaccine.


----------



## Open Book

A woman, her daughter, and her sister all died from the virus within three days. They all worked in their family's small market in a Portuguese neighborhood in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Yes, two were over 75. The daughter was 40. The fact that they're closely related makes me wonder if there can be a genetic component. Or did they just all catch the virus in a particularly nasty way from the same environment, their grocery store.

The story is a eulogy, no science in it.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/27/metro/three-members-family-that-owns-beloved-amarals-market-fall-river-die-coronavirus/


----------



## Woodduck

Bigbang said:


> I still think it is important to think about the coronavirus not as a reaction (on the scientific stage) to fix the issue on some immediate level but that we come together in various ways to change our habits that address what we eat (farming/harm to animals) and what we do to the environment because to me, that IS the best long term strategy. If not then no telling how bad it can become in the future.
> 
> I find it funny that the top religious leaders are so quiet. I mean, they have so much clout to talk to God about everything but get so scared to bring up the almighty virus as a topic. Hmm. If it was up to me I would be getting a world on lockdown to be getting the attention of God/ the Gods/The universe/the essence of our existence (materialists can sit this one out but still make efforts.
> 
> So the whole world is petitioning the gods, knowing we have to change the course of our actions to avoid more conflict with nature. Hindus/Christians/Buddhists/and all other faiths can do a worldwide prayer and reflection....hmm, and yet I hear not a whisper. Are we afraid of the power called "nature"? Must be because we get really vocal when it come to our individual lives but this "power" seems so pervasive and scary we cower to it.


Perhaps we're hearing so little from the godly because the godly are hearing so little from the gods.


----------



## KenOC

BBC: *Coronavirus: Leading economist warns of 10 years of depression and debt*
-----------------------------------------------------
Even if the global economy recovers this year from the impact of the coronavirus, it will be "anaemic".

He warned of "unprecedented" recession…."During the global financial crisis it took about three years until output fell sharply," he told the BBC's Talking Asia programme from his home in New York. "This time around it didn't take three years, not even three months. In three weeks there was a freefall of every component." …

"These jobs that are gone are going to come back only in part, with lower wages, no benefits, part-time," he said.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> A woman, her daughter, and her sister all died from the virus within three days. They all worked in their family's small market in a Portuguese neighborhood in Fall River, Massachusetts.
> 
> Yes, two were over 75. The daughter was 40. The fact that they're closely related makes me wonder if there can be a genetic component. Or did they just all catch the virus in a particularly nasty way from the same environment, their grocery store.
> 
> The story is a eulogy, no science in it.
> 
> https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/27/metro/three-members-family-that-owns-beloved-amarals-market-fall-river-die-coronavirus/


The genetic component may well be part of the story. I would also note the question of viral load if people are locked down together (I don't know if these particular individuals were living together in the period prior to hosptialisation.)

In a way gathering people with connected genetic inheritances into common households and getting them to stay inside in domestic environments together is a recipe for hot spots of serious illness if various points have some validity (i) genetic element to susceptibility, (ii) viral load important in severity, (iii) internal environments good for spread via droplets and surface contamination, (iv) Vitamin D important in reducing severity, (v) general health important in reducing severity. You add a chance infection into that mix, and sadly you may expect to see family groups with multiple deaths.


----------



## Guest

eljr said:


> I find the notion that the media has anything to do with this kinda silly.
> All the media does is report. It's the scientists that prodded us to act not the media.


I meant to pick up this point when made by another member less willing to concede that it's not just the media.

It's true that the media shapes the way we receive the news- and which sector of us receives it in a certain way (_The Guardian _v _The Mail _for example). It's also true, that some sections of the media exaggerate news stories, making something out of nothing - often putting celebrities on the front page. And they are not always reliable, with tight deadlines, poor research, and the imperative about not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

BUT

None of that means that they never tell the truth. Exaggerating is not the same as lying, and it's up to us to keep an open mind, and to use other sources (whose reliability also has to be checked) to help form a balanced view.


----------



## Eclectic Al

eljr said:


> All the media does is report. It's the scientists that prodded us to act not the media.


On the media, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the media makes editorial choices. To draw a parallel, a lot of the posts on this thread are, in themselves, true. Some posters persistently report studies which (to put it crudely) are on the doomsday side of the argument, and other posters report studies which are on the "just another bit of flu" side of the argument. Some of these reports, on each side, are extreme and doubtful, but loads are "true", in the sense that they report scientists or facts or reasonable speculation.

The media are the same. Each outlet biases their reporting to suit their stance. Then people listen to outlets that suit their own world views.

Governments, in democracies, at least are then heavily influenced by the balance of media coverage, and what it does to public opinion.

As for scientists, in the UK there have been media (!) reports how the government (which has been claiming to be guided by science) has been surprised that the scientists don't agree. Apparently they have been surprised that scientists have egos, and tend to claim that their work is valid and that of others is less reliable or less relevant or whatever. Also, apparently scientists like to claim that their vaccine programme or favourite treatment is the most promising avenue for accelerated research and a sharp increase in funding. Modellers are even worse, as they only have their own models to back: not even science. There is no scientific position to follow: there are just scientists with different opinions and their own agendas, and modellers with their own speculative models. And again, different media outlets will quote the scientists who agree with their own editorial stances.

Well if the government was surprised to discover that scientists are just people with their own interests then they would indeed deserve a bunch of criticism. After all, that is one thing that was entirely predictable.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> Here's what the CDC says about that on *MSN*:.
> ---------------------------------------
> Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Tuesday that the coronavirus could have a second wave worse than now.
> 
> "There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Redfield told the Washington Post. "And when I've said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don't understand what I mean."
> 
> Redfield added, "We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time."


And who says history doesn't repeat itself?


----------



## Kieran

The media are influencers and pressure groups. Lobbyists. It doesn’t matter if it’s The Guardian or Fox News, they’re screeching into a tribal echo chamber and hoping to create stories. Hoping to shape policy, hoping to cause downfall. 

Of course they’re a problem...


----------



## Kieran

Bigbang said:


> Here is another expert on Coronavirus from South Korea: His expertise has him concerned about the return of the virus in september and october. I have no reason to doubt him or his expertise. I am hoping that for once we will dodge a bullet because of the unknowns and the virus will not return.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Please watch informative video to learn from an expert not being jerked around like other scientists.


I look forward to watching this when I'm on my WiFi, but I think it's taken for granted we'll have this invisible beast around for a while. In fact, because we're in hiding from it, it's safe to assume the virus is patiently waiting for us, standing at the corner chewing tobacco, staring at our gaff.

I'm kinda reaching the stage where I'm blase about what the scientists are saying, not because I'm a "science denier", as the foul and slow of mind have it, but because the science seems not to have fully reached a consensus. New contradictions and fresh new expert claims face us every morning, only to be in the dubious box the next day, having been assailed by the next days fresh new expert claims, and contradictions.

I'm not saying this, by the way, to cast aspersions on the chap in the video, I'm looking forward to this one...


----------



## Bigbang

Kieran said:


> I look forward to watching this when I'm on my WiFi, but I think it's taken for granted we'll have this invisible beast around for a while. In fact, because we're in hiding from it, it's safe to assume the virus is patiently waiting for us, standing at the corner chewing tobacco, staring at our gaff.
> 
> I'm kinda reaching the stage where I'm blase about what the scientists are saying, not because I'm a "science denier", as the foul and slow of mind have it, but because the science seems not to have fully reached a consensus. New contradictions and fresh new expert claims face us every morning, only to be in the dubious box the next day, having been assailed by the next days fresh new expert claims, and contradictions.
> 
> I'm not saying this, by the way, to cast aspersions on the chap in the video, I'm looking forward to this one...


For sure science is not the "all-knowing" entity some make it out to be. In fact, it is only about as good as the generation it is in and backward looking, but science cannot ask questions of the unknown if the questions needed to be ask are not even known to ask.

So the virus, smirking, says enough of these clowns, this will teach them all about climate change for now, and not to mess with us, as we can destroy the whole planet and start over. Experiment failed.


----------



## science

Bigbang said:


> For sure science is not the "all-knowing" entity some make it out to be. In fact, it is only about as good as the generation it is in and backward looking, but science cannot ask questions of the unknown if the questions needed to be ask are not even known to ask.
> 
> So the virus, smirking, says enough of these clowns, this will teach them all about climate change for now, and not to mess with us, as we can destroy the whole planet and start over. Experiment failed.


I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that scientists created this virus and climate change in order to let the world know that scientists can destroy everyone?


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> The media are influencers and pressure groups. Lobbyists. It doesn't matter if it's The Guardian or Fox News, they're screeching into a tribal echo chamber and hoping to create stories. Hoping to shape policy, hoping to cause downfall.
> 
> Of course they're a problem...


For the most part, the media are employees. The media are owned by capitalists who want certain stories told (and not others) and want them told in certain ways (and not others). You'll never see a big media outlet fairly reporting something like Occupy Wall Street. Maybe some little guys will do that, but not the big ones. It's not their job to do that.

I'm not sure that the media relates to the virus though. Sure, they want eyeballs and disaster porn is disaster porn, but the 97 thousand officially recognized deaths in the US and the 340 thousand officially recognized deaths around the world are not merely media creations.


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> For the most part, the media are employees. The media are owned by capitalists who want certain stories told (and not others) and want them told in certain ways (and not others). You'll never see a big media outlet fairly reporting something like Occupy Wall Street. Maybe some little guys will do that, but not the big ones. It's not their job to do that.
> 
> I'm not sure that the media relates to the virus though. Sure, they want eyeballs and disaster porn is disaster porn, but the 97 thousand officially recognized deaths in the US and the 340 thousand officially recognized deaths around the world are not merely media creations.


They're not media creations at all, actually. But the political media is constantly agitating, trying to collapse their opponents, trying to shape an indecent narrative. We need strong filters to access the media. The business of media is sales, the method is carefully crafted propaganda. Biden, rape? Jog on chap, nothing to see here! Kavanaugh? A proven sex beast. They shape the narrative in the image of their intended victims, and they shape their victims by pushing a narrative.

It's a symbiotic stew that serves nobody well, despite the occasional truth they tell. I think the media get in the way, more than anything.

Anyway, let the buyer beware - or in the case of freebie student union rags, let us all beware! :lol:


----------



## Art Rock

Suppose we're lucky and we see the first wave of the virus flame out in the coming weeks - where is it supposed to 'hide' to initiate a second wave in (late) autumn? AFAIK it needs a live host to survive for more than a few days, and infected persons would be either unaffected (which I assume means that the body takes care of the virus before it wreaks havoc), sick and cured (which means the virus has been eliminated), or unfortunately dead (taking the virus with them to the grave). I'm sure I'm missing something, but what?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> Suppose we're lucky and we see the first wave of the virus flame out in the coming weeks - where is it supposed to 'hide' to initiate a second wave in (late) autumn? AFAIK it needs a live host to survive for more than a few days, and infected persons would be either unaffected (which I assume means that the body takes care of the virus before it wreaks havoc), sick and cured (which means the virus has been eliminated), or unfortunately dead (taking the virus with them to the grave). I'm sure I'm missing something, but what?


As I understand it you are correct. If there was no one at all infected (and no reservoir of animal infection) then the virus would not come back. However, getting to zero is a tall order. I'm not expert - I'm just basing this on links like the following:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/why-dont-viruses-like-the-flu-die-off-when-no-one-is-ill/

Some viruses are different (like say herpes) because they can lurk in the body and reemerge, so a shingles patient can give chickenpox to someone else (for example), and I think HIV is also good at lurking because it is a retrovirus and effectively alters the DNA of host cells in order to hide in that. However, as I understand it these coronaviruses would die out if no one (and no bat or whatever!) was still infected.


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> Anyway, let the buyer beware - or in the case of freebie student union rags, let us all beware! :lol:


 Ho ho! Are you referring to Spiked? It's a freebie rag alright. Get that begging bowl out, chaps!


----------



## eljr

erki said:


> There is good point in it regardless if you pick on the details - apples and oranges and what not. Diseases have killed people in the past and will be killing in the future. Some do more(and have done so) some do less.
> I can not figure out what happened this time that triggered such extreme response into total unknown pretty much world wide as well. Usually politicians must be very careful about their decisions because any gross miscalculation will cost their further employment. Well maybe they think that since everybody is doing it then no-one is responsible.
> One possibility is that many affluent societies with the advances of modern medicine have started to believe that human life can be saved always and the failure to do so is just the technical problem. But in the same time since we are so powerful every unsaved life is seen as a failure of us as a society or even humanity. This view has been expresses countless times here as well every time when phrase "saving lives" comes up.
> I understand that many think that this virus is something unusually big that justify these extreme measures. Could this be nothing more than wishful thinking to put your mind at ease and not to think of the consequences.
> Or we are just so excited to participate in fantastic world wide experiment or training for the apocalypse.


you seem to think Covid trite

had you worked an ER in NYC I am sure your perspective would change and you would understand

still, numbers alone should tell you something


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> Here's what the CDC says about that on *MSN*:.
> ---------------------------------------
> Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Tuesday that the coronavirus could have a second wave worse than now.
> 
> "There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Redfield told the Washington Post. "And when I've said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don't understand what I mean."
> 
> Redfield added, "We're going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time."


am I missing something? This has not been a seasonal disease. I expect it to react to the relaxed restrictions and to the cooer weather a little as people stay indoors but I see no flu like seasonality to it.


----------



## eljr

Bigbang said:


> So should be getting ready like as if preparing for battle? Get hospitals ready and all but are we going to get education on how to prepare ourselves. Here is my idea: For starters, there should be national tv ads explaining how to keep practicing social distancing. It may seem obvious but I see the problem as getting people to understand how to behave as if they have it and at the same time practice avoidance of situations that could expose them to the virus. So TV commercials with perhaps endorsements of well-known figures, like Bill Gates:lol:.
> 
> I see it as a continuous ongoing education thing over and over until people do not even think about it. One of the biggest obstacle is thinking I am OK and my family is OK BUT them over there are NOT OK. This must be addressed with due diligence.


it would help if all our leaders wore masks

not doing so causes people to do the same and the divide helps spread the virus

we need responsible leaders


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> As for scientists, in the UK there have been media (!) reports how the government (which has been claiming to be guided by science) has been surprised that the scientists don't agree. Apparently they have been surprised that scientists have egos, and tend to claim that their work is valid and that of others is less reliable or less relevant or whatever. Also, apparently scientists like to claim that their vaccine programme or favourite treatment is the most promising avenue for accelerated research and a sharp increase in funding. .


The biggest impediment to the science of tomorrow is the science of today.


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> They're not media creations at all, actually. But the political media is constantly agitating, trying to collapse their opponents, trying to shape an indecent narrative. We need strong filters to access the media. The business of media is sales, the method is carefully crafted propaganda. Biden, rape? Jog on chap, nothing to see here! Kavanaugh? A proven sex beast. They shape the narrative in the image of their intended victims, and they shape their victims by pushing a narrative.
> 
> It's a symbiotic stew that serves nobody well, despite the occasional truth they tell. I think the media get in the way, more than anything.
> 
> Anyway, let the buyer beware - or in the case of freebie student union rags, let us all beware! :lol:


I find it easy to get the truth from the old school MSM.


----------



## science

Art Rock said:


> Suppose we're lucky and we see the first wave of the virus flame out in the coming weeks - where is it supposed to 'hide' to initiate a second wave in (late) autumn? AFAIK it needs a live host to survive for more than a few days, and infected persons would be either unaffected (which I assume means that the body takes care of the virus before it wreaks havoc), sick and cured (which means the virus has been eliminated), or unfortunately dead (taking the virus with them to the grave). I'm sure I'm missing something, but what?


I don't think the trough between the waves means that we get to zero new cases for many days.

In South Korea, they're having about 20 new cases a day now, but at the peak of the first wave they were having more than 500 new cases a day. A second wave would just mean that we have something like 500 new cases a day again, right? And this could break out any time, if (say) one Sunday morning someone in church coughs and everyone's shaking hands, and then a lot of those guys go to restaurants, touch the tables... If just a few people happen to do the right things for the virus, there'll be a second wave.


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> They're not media creations at all, actually. But the political media is constantly agitating, trying to collapse *their opponents*, trying to shape an indecent narrative. We need strong filters to access the media. The business of media is sales, the method is carefully crafted propaganda. Biden, rape? Jog on chap, nothing to see here! Kavanaugh? A proven sex beast. They shape the narrative in the image of their intended victims, and they shape their victims by pushing a narrative.
> 
> It's a symbiotic stew that serves nobody well, despite the occasional truth they tell. I think the media get in the way, more than anything.
> 
> Anyway, let the buyer beware - or in the case of freebie student union rags, let us all beware! :lol:


Their opponents are not simply "the other party" but anyone who challenges their power. The people who run the media are in power. They're not just on "one side or the other." There on the top side.

I don't know who are you, so I don't know for sure where you stand, but I am not on the top side.


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> Their opponents are not simply "the other party" but anyone who challenges their power. The people who run the media are in power. They're not just on "one side or the other." There on the top side.
> 
> I don't know who are you, so I don't know for sure where you stand, but I am not on the top side.


If you're politically non-tribalist, identify as neither left nor right, open to good ideas no matter who brings them, then I think we're on the same side, bro. I certainly never get a whiff of ugly partisanship from your posts...


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> If you're politically non-tribalist, identify as neither left nor right, open to good ideas no matter who brings them, then I think we're on the same side, bro. I certainly never get a whiff of ugly partisanship from your posts...


Philosophical question.

Can one be vehemently against one tribe yet not tribal because they are not part of "the other" tribe either. (View one tribe as the lesser of the two evils as it were.)


----------



## Art Rock

Interesting article listing what's wrong with lots of bogus claims (and the people behind them) on the virus:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/coronavirus-spin-doctors


----------



## starthrower

I went over to Mom and Dad's last night to help them with their computer so they could watch a live video stream of their step grandson's high school graduation ceremony. I witnessed a couple hundred people seated at an indoor facility with not one person wearing a mask. This was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at a private religious school. The valedictorian mentioned the fact that this special occasion was happening during an historic pandemic but apparently the irony was lost on those in attendance? I'll be waiting to see the health effects of this behavior around the country in the coming months.


----------



## Kieran

eljr said:


> Philosophical question.
> 
> Can one be vehemently against one tribe yet not tribal because they are not part of "the other" tribe either. (View one tribe as the lesser of the two evils as it were.)


I don't think of either tribe as "the lesser of two evils", and I don't know if what you're saying is possible, but it probably is. I think a specific example would be necessary, but in principle, sure, I think that's possible.

But for me, the problem we face now in politics, is "tribalism", regardless of how people identify politically. I don't care for how people identify, politically, I'm more interested in if they have something useful to say. And can they say it without prejudice to others who might hold - in good conscience - opposing views. That's the real important thing, because then we might actually listen to each other, and make real progress in some form of collaboration.

Also, I think that the terms "left" and "right" are highly deceptive, these are very malleable terms, and we'd be reckless to define ourselves in such limited ways. The Overton window slides, and so your great-granny may have been a liberal but today if she held the same views, she's an arch-conservative. When so-called progressives believe that *only *their answers should be listened to, and likewise with so-called conservatives - that's the problem. In fact, we have enough evidence to know that neither of these "wings" have all the answers, and also, that good answers can come from either side...


----------



## science

Art Rock said:


> Interesting article listing what's wrong with lots of bogus claims (and the people behind them) on the virus:
> 
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/coronavirus-spin-doctors


Fantastic article!

I found one that you might be interested in about bots spreading conspiracy theories about the virus, but I felt it had too much political content to post here, so if you're interested in that you can google it.


----------



## science

One of my doctor friends posted this on Facebook.

It's funny and relevant, but there's a little bit of language in this video.

More fun from the same channel.... I think this one is funnier but without as much relevant content....


----------



## pianozach

Kieran said:


> The media are influencers and pressure groups. Lobbyists. It doesn't matter if it's The Guardian or Fox News, they're screeching into a tribal echo chamber and hoping to create stories. Hoping to shape policy, hoping to cause downfall.
> 
> Of course they're a problem...


Yes.

Because much of our mainstream media is attempting to attract money, almost always through publishing advertisements alongside the content. The larger the audience, the better the income for them.

Hence we have programming that entices, or even "hooks", the viewer.

So the content never really reached its potential as the great mediums of television, newspapers, magazines, and radio delivering lofty art, and education, and wisdom and philosophy. It has developed from merely mindless generic entertainment to divisive, manipulative, sensational drivel. Mostly.

So we have sensationalistic news, reality and competition shows, . . . and commercials that make the most of their 30 or 60 seconds . . . little mini-dramas/comedies.


----------



## KenOC

Car rental firm Hertz, much of whose business is concentrated at airports, has *filed for bankruptcy* in the US.


----------



## cwarchc

Dave
You think the 37,000 deaths are "from" Covid 19?
I'm not wanted to enter into an argument, just a question.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Car rental firm Hertz, much of whose business is concentrated at airports, has *filed for bankruptcy* in the US.


It had accumulated 24 billion in debt, most of which was before the pandemic. How does a business like that run up so much debt? I'm guessing it was losing business to Uber and Lyft and it hadn't changed its business plan to adapt to changing times in the rental business.


----------



## Luchesi

Art Rock said:


> Interesting article listing what's wrong with lots of bogus claims (and the people behind them) on the virus:
> 
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/coronavirus-spin-doctors


How else would these fake experts make a living and pay their bills. It's interesting to look at the subjects they rode for their outrageous conspiracies before the pandemic.


----------



## DaveM

cwarchc said:


> Dave
> You think the 37,000 deaths are "from" Covid 19?


Yes.








---------------------


----------



## Luchesi

erki said:


> There is good point in it regardless if you pick on the details - apples and oranges and what not. Diseases have killed people in the past and will be killing in the future. Some do more(and have done so) some do less.
> I can not figure out what happened this time that triggered such extreme response into total unknown pretty much world wide as well. Usually politicians must be very careful about their decisions because any gross miscalculation will cost their further employment. Well maybe they think that since everybody is doing it then no-one is responsible.
> One possibility is that many affluent societies with the advances of modern medicine have started to believe that human life can be saved always and the failure to do so is just the technical problem. But in the same time since we are so powerful every unsaved life is seen as a failure of us as a society or even humanity. This view has been expresses countless times here as well every time when phrase "saving lives" comes up.
> I understand that many think that this virus is something unusually big that justify these extreme measures. Could this be nothing more than wishful thinking to put your mind at ease and not to think of the consequences.
> Or we are just so excited to participate in fantastic world wide experiment or training for the apocalypse.


"One possibility is that many affluent societies with the advances of modern medicine have started to believe that human life can be saved always and the failure to do so is just the technical problem.'

In the big picture, limited lifespans were such a huge survival advantage to the lines of descent which inherited it that the other lines of descent couldn't compete and died out. At the cellular level - what is involved in a limited lifespan? I've read about this but I'm not able to remember the technical details.


----------



## Kieran

cwarchc said:


> Dave
> You think the 37,000 deaths are "from" Covid 19?
> I'm not wanted to enter into an argument, just a question.


Well I suppose the question is, are they from Covid *alone*?

Covid may have issued the coup de grace, but I'd imagine that a lot of those deaths occurred because the victim was already compromised, with regards to their immune system. I wouldn't count them as deaths "from" Covid, but deaths "with" Covid. Like in a chess match, when your pawns, rooks, bishops and queen are taken, and your opponent has a far superior position, you may linger on for a while, but when the end comes, you didn't _only _ lose because your opponent made the final move...


----------



## Art Rock

It will be interesting to see whether the total deaths statistics by year end for each country supports that. If it's true, the excess deaths compared to previous years should be clearly less than the deaths ascribed to corona.


----------



## Room2201974

Kieran said:


> Well I suppose the question is, are they from Covid *alone*?
> 
> Covid may have issued the coup de grace, but I'd imagine that a lot of those deaths occurred because the victim was already compromised, with regards to their immune system. I wouldn't count them as deaths "from" Covid, but deaths "with" Covid. Like in a chess match, when your pawns, rooks, bishops and queen are taken, and your opponent has a far superior position, you may linger on for a while, but when the end comes, you didn't _only _ lose because your opponent made the final move...


Except, these folks would still be alive without Covid.


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> Well I suppose the question is, are they from Covid *alone*?
> 
> Covid may have issued the coup de grace, but I'd imagine that a lot of those deaths occurred because the victim was already compromised, with regards to their immune system. I wouldn't count them as deaths "from" Covid, but deaths "with" Covid. Like in a chess match, when your pawns, rooks, bishops and queen are taken, and your opponent has a far superior position, you may linger on for a while, but when the end comes, you didn't _only _ lose because your opponent made the final move...


we know the 5 year average death rates and we know the Covid counts are likely a gross underestimate. Why people want to downplay this disease devastation is beyond me.

Can you tell me why?


----------



## DaveM

Kieran said:


> Well I suppose the question is, are they from Covid *alone*?
> 
> Covid may have issued the coup de grace, but I'd imagine that a lot of those deaths occurred because the victim was already compromised, with regards to their immune system. I wouldn't count them as deaths "from" Covid, but deaths "with" Covid. Like in a chess match, when your pawns, rooks, bishops and queen are taken, and your opponent has a far superior position, you may linger on for a while, but when the end comes, you didn't _only _ lose because your opponent made the final move...


People live for years with all sorts of health limitations. If a virus comes along and they come down with severe symptoms and die then they died from the virus.

The statistics are what they are. You can argue with them and try to imply all sorts of theoretical limitations all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that thousands are dying with the typical Covid-19 acute respiratory failure on ventilators. By far the great majority didn't arrive there primarily because of their various co-morbidities and the majority had every indication they would have lived longer if not for the virus. (There might be a few exceptions such as where a person has a terminal disease and then came down with the disease.)


----------



## eljr

Room2201974 said:


> Except, these folks would still be alive without Covid.


it's a crazy argument but he is not the only person to go with it


----------



## Luchesi

Christabel said:


> You've missed the point; we live with death and disease on a grand scale all the time. A lot of health problems are self-inflicted as well - in fact, huge numbers fall into this category. We're never going to stop people dying. In Australia this pandemic has not been nearly as bad as elsewhere but individual states are in lockdown with some having only 6 people in hospital. Businesses are going to the wall, bankruptcy is on the rise, as is suicide and probably domestic violence. Our 2nd carrier airline - Virgin - has gone bankrupt.
> 
> Just how much of a price do you want us all to have to pay to save the lives of (predominantly) elderly people while we await the silver bullet (vaccine)? In the state of Victoria there are 5 people in hospital and the border with NSW is closed, tourism has gone to the wall and people want to see their loved ones. Already there are legal class actions being formed in Australia to sue government over the loss of business and livelihoods. We have endured horrific bushfires within the last months and still haven't come out of a prolonged drought. People are at the end of their ropes and to hear the nightly news tell of a 93 year old woman dying of Coronavirus in a nursing facility makes me say, "YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING: is this why we're all going bankrupt"?


It sounds like the economy would snap back if govmints would let up. This makes me wonder how inexperienced people view large moves in capital markets. Investors are generally very misunderstood. It's greed and fear.


----------



## KenOC

The shutdown is killing the few Mom & Pop restaurants in my neighborhood. Two just announced permanent closings in the last week. One was a mostly breakfast restaurant, very small, with a bit of a French flair and really good prices. The other was a Thai restaurant, probably the best within easy driving distance (and almost next door to me). Both were among my family’s favorites and had been part of the neighborhood not just for years but for decades. Now both are gone.

This shutdown is looking more and more like it isn’t gaining us much but is certainly resulting in poorer lives for all of us, even aside from the disasters befalling our small business owners.


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> The shutdown is killing the few Mom & Pop restaurants in my neighborhood. Two just announced permanent closings in the last week. One was a mostly breakfast restaurant, very small, with a bit of a French flair and really good prices. The other was a Thai restaurant, probably the best within easy driving distance (and almost next door to me). Both were among my family's favorites and had been part of the neighborhood not just for years but for decades. Now both are gone.
> 
> This shutdown is looking more and more like it isn't gaining us much but is certainly resulting in poorer lives for all of us, even aside from the disasters befalling our small businesses.


i don't have official word but i knew the day the shutdowns were ordered that many of my fav places would be gone for good

very sad


----------



## Kieran

What happened with Hertz is another workable metaphor for what's happening with Covid. Reading the article Ken gave, from the BBC, we see that Hertz was already compromised to its immune system, to the tune of $24b, but "the firm, which earns much of its income from car rentals at airports, said it had been affected by the sharp downturn in global travel." They weren't in good shape, were they?



> *"The impact of Covid-19 on travel demand was sudden and dramatic, causing an abrupt decline in the company's revenue and future bookings," Hertz said on Friday.*


Had they not been $24b in debt, they wouldn't be filing for bankruptcy, and Covid wouldn't have killed them off. 

Look, we can pretend that all the people dying in nursing homes were perfectly healthy and - but for Covid - they'd be outdoors playing tennis in the fine weather. This is dishonest. We had this discussion back on the old thread. How to classify deaths where Covid contributed, where the person died with Covid, has distinctions which are fairly obvious. Here's one article about it, but there are plenty of others.




> *The distinction between dying 'with' Covid-19 and dying 'due to' Covid-19 is not just splitting hairs. Consider some examples: an 87-year-old woman with dementia in a nursing home; a 79-year-old man with metastatic bladder cancer; a 29-year-old man with leukaemia treated with chemotherapy; a 46-year-old woman with motor neurone disease for 2 years. All develop chest infections and die. All test positive for Covid-19. Yet all were vulnerable to death by chest infection from any infective cause (including the flu). Covid-19 might have been the final straw, but it has not caused their deaths. *


----------



## Flamme

Was just down town and the city is eerily quiet, so unusual 4 saturday evening...Caffees almost empty...


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> What happened with Hertz is another workable metaphor for what's happening with Covid. Reading the article Ken gave, from the BBC, we see that Hertz was already compromised to its immune system, to the tune of $24b, but "the firm, which earns much of its income from car rentals at airports, said it had been affected by the sharp downturn in global travel." They weren't in good shape, were they?
> 
> Had they not been $24b in debt, they wouldn't be filing for bankruptcy, and Covid wouldn't have killed them off.
> 
> Look, we can pretend that all the people dying in nursing homes were perfectly healthy and - but for Covid - they'd be outdoors playing tennis in the fine weather. This is dishonest. We had this discussion back on the old thread. How to classify deaths where Covid contributed, where the person died with Covid, has distinctions which are fairly obvious. Here's one article about it, but there are plenty of others.


your comparison is a logical fallacy


----------



## Kieran

eljr said:


> your comparison is a logical fallacy


It may not be a perfect metaphor, but it works. You can understand it, if you try. And as the pathologist in the article says, there's a "distinction between dying _with _Covid-19, and dying _due to_ Covid-19."

We knew this already, but suddenly it's become a thing?


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> It may not be a perfect metaphor, but it works. You can understand it, if you try. And as the pathologist in the article says, there's a "distinction between dying _with _Covid-19, and dying _due to_ Covid-19."
> 
> We knew this already, but suddenly it's become a thing?


logical fallacies are not valid metaphors, that was my point

like i keep saying, look at the 5 year death average and compare it to this year and you will see your theory is not valid


----------



## DaveM

Kieran said:


> It may not be a perfect metaphor, but it works. You can understand it, if you try. And as the pathologist in the article says, there's a "distinction between dying _with _Covid-19, and dying _due to_ Covid-19."
> 
> We knew this already, but suddenly it's become a thing?


Well yes, because you brought it up again. It was discussed before and you have revived it as if it's a new issue. Why?


----------



## Kieran

eljr said:


> logical fallacies are not valid metaphors, that was my point
> 
> like i keep saying, look at the 5 year death average and compare it to this year and you will see your theory is not valid


What is my theory? In response to a post by another, I made a distinction between dying _*from *_Covid, and dying _*with*_ Covid. This isn't only a valid distinction, it's a perfectly useful one. Not everybody who dies with Covid dies _*solely from*_ Covid and would be perfectly healthy, but that they caught the virus. There's a reason why the CDC and every responsible health agency issue warnings to people with underlying conditions. It's misleading to act as if all things are equal, and Covid might just as easily kill a healthy 20 year old, as kill a 80 year old with compromised lungs, heart and immune system...


----------



## Kieran

DaveM said:


> Well yes, because you brought it up again. It was discussed before and you have revived it as if it's a new issue. Why?


I didn't revive it as an issue. I replied to a recent comment, as you yourself did. But your reply and my reply were different. But am I to take it that you agree with me, and with the pathologist in the article, and with the CDC who say there are people who are more at risk from Covid, because already their immunity is compromised?


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> What is my theory? In response to a post by another, I made a distinction between dying _*from *_Covid, and dying _*with*_ Covid. This isn't only a valid distinction, it's a perfectly useful one. Not everybody who dies with Covid dies _*solely from*_ Covid and would be perfectly healthy, but that they caught the virus. There's a reason why the CDC and every responsible health agency issue warnings to people with underlying conditions. It's misleading to act as if all things are equal, and Covid might just as easily kill a healthy 20 year old, as kill a 80 year old with compromised lungs, heart and immune system...


what, on earth, is your point?

Covid IS KILLING people, period. Are you disputing this? No.

We are talking about how many, correct?

Well, I gave you the formula. What point further do you think you need to make? ???


----------



## science

It's too bad that our governments haven't cared enough about the few remaining "mom and pop" places to enable them to survive shutdown.


----------



## KenOC

eljr said:


> we know the 5 year average death rates and we know the Covid counts are likely a gross underestimate. Why people want to downplay this disease devastation is beyond me...


What "we know" seems to be more speculation than fact, unless you can provide an analysis that shows death rates are noticeably above historical levels and the excess can reliably be laid to Covid-19. I have seen no such analysis.


----------



## eljr

science said:


> It's too bad that our governments haven't cared enough about the few remaining "mom and pop" places to enable them to survive shutdown.


they would have died anyway, they were the vulnerable


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> It's too bad that our governments haven't cared enough about the few remaining "mom and pop" places to enable them to survive shutdown.


This has long been an issue, the local corner shop sacrificed at the altar of supermarket chains. The cosy local caff destroyed by the ugly plague that's Starbucks. In a way, we're all complicit in this. If we shopped local, the local shops might have a better chance to survive. But yeah, I agree, it would be ideal if governments could help more right now to save them...


----------



## DaveM

Kieran said:


> I didn't revive it as an issue. I replied to a recent comment, as you yourself did. But your reply and my reply were different.


Don't weasel out of it. I gave a direct answer to a direct question about the death rate in the U.K. as given by official tables. You revived the question of the accuracy of those figures based on a theory raised by a retired pathologist. You are implying that these figures are inaccurate. If an 85 year old person in a nursing home with heart disease comes down with Clovid-19 and dies on a ventilator, the primary cause of death on the death certificate is listed as the virus. In my mind, case closed. (Full disclosure: depending on the circumstances, the death certificate might say Clovid-19 and [something like] heart failure or heart disease.)


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> This has long been an issue, the local corner shop sacrificed at the altar of supermarket chains. The cosy local caff destroyed by the ugly plague that's Starbucks. In a way, we're all complicit in this. If we shopped local, the local shops might have a better chance to survive. But yeah, I agree, it would be ideal if governments could help more right now to save them...


seriously, are these not the weak, financially, stores that would be apt to go out soon anyway?


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> It's too bad that our governments haven't cared enough about the few remaining "mom and pop" places to enable them to survive shutdown.


$670 billion was made available for *aid to small businesses* in the first Covid-19 relief bill. There was quite a kerfuffle when a goodly portion of this was claimed by larger companies, even publically-traded ones. It looks like poor drafting of eligibility requirements may have contributed to this.

Treasury Secretary said, "The intent of this money was not for big public companies that have access to capital. We're going to put up very clear guidance so that people understand what the certification is, what it means if you're a big company. To the extent these companies didn't understand this and they repay loans, that will be OK, and if not there will be potentially other consequences."

That said, the amount offered was obviously not enough.


----------



## Kieran

DaveM said:


> Don't weasel out of it. I gave a direct answer to a direct question about the death rate in the U.K. as given by official tables. You revived the question of the accuracy of those figures based on a theory raised by a retired pathologist. You are implying that these figures are inaccurate. If an 85 year old person in a nursing home with heart disease comes down with Clovid-19 and dies on a ventilator, the primary cause of death on the death certificate is listed as the virus. In my mind, case closed.


You're wrong. I didn't question the accuracy of the figures based upon the article.

The fact is, that most people die *with *Covid, but not always *solely from* it, wouldn't you agree? This is a distinction the CDC make, wisely, when they warn of people being in a high risk category. We need to know these details if we're to fully understand the trend of the virus, and also, so that the more fearful among us wouldn't just see blank stats and conclude that everybody is in the same boat. Quite obviously, we're not all in the same boat, and among us there are more vulnerable people who need to be more protected than others...


----------



## Kieran

eljr said:


> seriously, are these not the weak, financially, stores that would be apt to go out soon anyway?


I don't know, are they $24b in debt? I know there are small shops who are going to go bust in Ireland, and that this is solely because of Covid. We would need to distinguish these from shops that were already struggling, and may have gone bust soon anyway...


----------



## KenOC

Kieran said:


> This has long been an issue, the local corner shop sacrificed at the altar of supermarket chains. The cosy local caff destroyed by the ugly plague that's Starbucks. In a way, we're all complicit in this. If we shopped local, the local shops might have a better chance to survive. But yeah, I agree, it would be ideal if governments could help more right now to save them...


Times change. Not all that long ago 80% of US employment was in agriculture. Industrialization eliminated almost all those jobs and totally new forms of commercial life appeared. I never saw a tear shed over all those lost jobs.


----------



## eljr

Kieran said:


> I don't know, are they $24b in debt? I know there are small shops who are going to go bust in Ireland, and that this is solely because of Covid. We would need to distinguish these from shops that were already struggling, and may have gone bust soon anyway...


lol

..................


----------



## Kieran

KenOC said:


> Times change. Not all that long ago 80% of US employment was in agriculture. Industrialization eliminated almost all those jobs and totally new forms of commercial life appeared. I never saw a tear shed over all those lost jobs.


I like the local stores and cafes, but I also have to use supermarkets too. In this regard, I shop in Irish supermarkets the vast majority of the time. But also for some people, finances are an issue. Sometimes people just can't afford to shop in more expensive local stores, when the bigger brand name supermarkets are so much cheaper. There's no straightforward way of getting around this...


----------



## Flamme

In tesco???


----------



## Kieran

Flamme said:


> In tesco???


Tesco is a UK firm, I'd shop there after I've failed to get organic oranges in Supervalu or Dunnes - Irish supermarkets. I never shop in Aldi or Lidl, who are also nearby...


----------



## DaveM

Kieran said:


> You're wrong. I didn't question the accuracy of the figures based upon the article.
> 
> The fact is, that most people die *with *Covid, but not always *solely from* it, wouldn't you agree? This is a distinction the CDC make, wisely, when they warn of people being in a high risk category. We need to know these details if we're to fully understand the trend of the virus, and also, so that the more fearful among us wouldn't just see blank stats and conclude that everybody is in the same boat. Quite obviously, we're not all in the same boat, and among us there are more vulnerable people who need to be more protected than others...


The CDC warns that if you are in a high risk category, then you are more likely to die *from* Clovid-19. For some reason, you are still playing around with '*with*. The only reason can be that you _are_ questioning the accuracy of the Clovid-19 mortality statistics because that's what the article you referred to was doing.

One can split hairs all day over this, even to the point of saying nobody dies from Clovid-19; they all die from cardiac arrest. Or one can step back, use a little logic and say: one day, the person was alive, walking, talking and eating in the nursing home with their hypertension and heart disease and the next day came down with pneumonia and 2 days later was pronounced dead on a ventilator with the primary cause being the virus..


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Times change. Not all that long ago 80% of US employment was in agriculture. Industrialization eliminated almost all those jobs and totally new forms of commercial life appeared.* I never saw a tear shed over all those lost jobs.*


You kidding? Three generations ago, everyone in my family owned a small farm. Probably not in Washington or New York City, but out where the dark fields of the republic roll on under the night, plenty of tears have been shed.


----------



## KenOC

Kieran said:


> ...I know there are small shops who are going to go bust in Ireland, and that this is solely because of Covid. We would need to distinguish these from shops that were already struggling, and may have gone bust soon anyway...


A lot of small business closings occur because nobody in the family wants to keep them going when gramps and gramma get old. In the case of the two restaurants I mentioned, they had been open for over 30 years and the owner/operators had been slaving away for long hours, and not a lot of reward, for all that time.

But there's a downside to a forced, premature closing. Most Mom & Pop restaurants are in leased space. They have typically committed to 5-year leases and are liable for the rent that entire period. Further, there is usually a requirement that the property be returned to its original condition at the end of the lease (if not renewed), and that cost, in the case of restaurants, can be considerable. I hope gramps and gramma weren't looking forward to anything but poverty in their retirement!

Alternatively, if they're lucky, they can find somebody to take over the lease and at least escape with their skins. But who wants a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in these days of plague?


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> Alternatively, if they're lucky, they can find somebody to take over the lease and at least escape with their skins. But who wants a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in these days of plague?


most leases contain equity which can be profited on


----------



## Kieran

DaveM said:


> When the CDC warns that if you are in a high risk category, then you are more likely to die *from* Clovid-19. For some reason, you are still playing around with '*with*. The only reason can be that you _are_ questioning the accuracy of the Clovid-19 mortality statistics.
> 
> One can split hairs all day over this, even to the point of saying nobody dies from Clovid-19; they all die from cardiac arrest. Or one can step back, use a little logic and say: one day, the person was alive, walking, talking and eating in the nursing home with their hypertension and heart disease and the next day came down with pneumonia and 2 days later was pronounced dead on a ventilator with the primary cause being the virus..


There's no need for us to split hairs at all, I enjoyed reading what you wrote here. But I think there's an important distinction to be made also, which is clearly made by the pathologist in the article, but it's one that was discussed by us here long ago. It's that there are people who need to be more careful than others. And that not everybody need fear the virus in the same way. A healthy 29 year old strapping lad is far more noteworthy if he dies from Covid, and has no underlying condition that made his death an inevitability, a collaborative cocktail of misfortunate ailments. Scanning the deaths for further details is helpful for us all to understand this virus.

It was never a point that needed a page or so of debate, but sure, where's the fun otherwise?


----------



## KenOC

eljr said:


> most leases contain equity which can be profited on


I have no clue what that means. You may elaborate if you like.


----------



## Kieran

KenOC said:


> But who wants a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in these days of plague?


It's a sobering thought. I was discussing with my sister in Madrid today, they head into the next phase of the opening up. Would she go to a bar, or a cafe? She was anxious about it. It's understandable but it's the big test for restaurants etc, when they reopen: how can they reassure the public, and make us feel safe?

And will the measures they take to do this mean that it's hardly worth their while reopening?


----------



## KenOC

Re the discussion earlier, here are the recorded Covid-19 death rates in my county by age group. Bear in mind that the incidence of co-morbid conditions such as diabetes, obesity, COPD, and so forth all increase with age; these are factored in. There have been zero deaths among those under 25 here in California's third-largest county.


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> I have no clue what that means. You may elaborate if you like.


if you have a long term lease it's value is generally worth more as time passes

example, in 2010 you sign a lease for 10,000 a month. Now if someone were to rent the same space it would cost them 15,000 a month. You can sell the lease at current market price and the differance is your profit. ($5,000 per month times as many months as remain on the lease)


----------



## KenOC

eljr said:


> if you have a long term lease it's value is generally worth more as time passes
> 
> example, in 2010 you sign a lease for 10,000 a month. Now if someone were to rent the same space it would cost them 15,000 a month. You can sell the lease at current market price and the differance is your profit. ($5,000 per month times as many months as remain on the lease)


Of course, if times are prosperous. Right now I doubt those closed M&P restaurants have leases that would arouse much interest (an understatement).


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> Of course, if times are prosperous. .


in normal times this is how it works, everyday

and just because a space is fitted to be a restaurant at present does not mean that space needs stay a restaurant.


----------



## DaveM

Somewhere, there must be a bartender named Iris which raises the possibility that a man goes into a bar and says, ‘Give me a Corona, Iris’.


----------



## KenOC

eljr said:


> in normal times this is how it works, everyday
> 
> and just because a space is fitted to be a restaurant at present does not mean that space needs stay a restaurant.


Given the number of "For lease" signs in the windows of empty storefronts around here lately, I'm sure our local landlords would wish your views reflected reality.


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> Given the number of "For lease" signs in the windows of empty storefronts around here lately, I'm sure our local landlords would wish your views reflected reality.


You asked me how it worked, I explained it to you. You have/had no clue. It's not my "view." It's how business works.

Your signs mean nothing in reference to lease values, equity.

why the attitude?

good grief


----------



## Open Book

Restaurants here have not been allowed to serve people on site. They have only been allowed to do takeout orders. Not all of them could adapt to that model of business and some didn't try. Is that true everywhere? 

When things "open up", which is in stages in my state, there will be restrictions on numbers of people indoors and the restaurant experience will be different. I don't know if they can survive on that volume although let's face it, many restaurants are hardly half full in normal times. One restaurant owner says takeout has not been enough to keep them going for long.

Even if you seat people far apart in a restaurant, I don't like the idea that the waitstaff goes from table to table. Actually, I never did like that about restaurants, but I try not to think about it.

There is a plan to revise every type of business. I'd love to know how close-contact hairdressers and dentists are going to work and be low-risk to the public and themselves. I can't imagine. Seems like you'd have to test everyone in their business every day for the virus, which isn't feasible.


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> Restaurants here have not been allowed to serve people on site. They have only allowed to do takeout orders. Not all of them could adapt to that model of business and some didn't try. Is that true everywhere?
> 
> When things "open up", which is in stages in my state, there will be restrictions on numbers of people indoors and the restaurant experience will be different. I don't know if they can survive on that volume although let's face it, many restaurants are hardly half full in normal times. One restaurant owners says takeout has not been enough to keep them going for long.
> 
> Even if you seat people far apart in a restaurant, I don't like the idea that the waitstaff goes from table to table. Actually, I never did like that about restaurants, but I try not to think about it.
> 
> There is a plan to revise every type of business. I'd love to know how close-contact hairdressers and dentists are going to work and be low-risk to the public and themselves. I can't imagine. Seems like you'd have to test everyone in their business every day for the virus, which isn't feasible.


I read some time ago the "Stage 2" restaurant re-opening rules for inside dining in California. I can't find them now but I think they included:

- Monitoring employee's for the virus.
- Fewer tables, more widely separated.
- Fewer allowed diners per table - two?
- All staff to be masked.

Restaurants generally track their financial health partly by number of covers (a bill for one table) per day and average dollar amount of the covers. With the new rules, it looks like both these measures will be forced lower, kind of a double whammy. But it's probably better than serving only take-outs.


----------



## science

This article from the Atlantic (How Will We Ever Be Safe Inside?) has pretty good information. I think we'll be finding safe ways to resume relatively normal life soon.


----------



## pianozach

Kieran said:


> Well I suppose the question is, are they from Covid *alone*?
> 
> Covid may have issued the coup de grace, but I'd imagine that a lot of those deaths occurred because the victim was already compromised, with regards to their immune system. I wouldn't count them as deaths "from" Covid, but deaths "with" Covid. Like in a chess match, when your pawns, rooks, bishops and queen are taken, and your opponent has a far superior position, you may linger on for a while, but when the end comes, you didn't _only _ lose because your opponent made the final move...


That may be the worst case of semantics twisting I've heard all week.


----------



## Open Book

KenOC said:


> Times change. Not all that long ago 80% of US employment was in agriculture. Industrialization eliminated almost all those jobs and totally new forms of commercial life appeared. I never saw a tear shed over all those lost jobs.


It will be interesting to see if any revolutionary new types of business come out of this predicament. And how existing ones change or fade away, which could sadden us.


----------



## Open Book

DaveM said:


> People live for years with all sorts of health limitations. If a virus comes along and they come down with severe symptoms and die then they died from the virus.
> 
> The statistics are what they are. You can argue with them and try to imply all sorts of theoretical limitations all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that thousands are dying with the typical Covid-19 acute respiratory failure on ventilators. By far the great majority didn't arrive there primarily because of their various co-morbidities and the majority had every indication they would have lived longer if not for the virus. (There might be a few exceptions such as where a person has a terminal disease and then came down with the disease.)


We've all heard about the bad preexisting conditions.

Anyone know if asthma or even just somewhat mild allergies are enough to push somebody into a state from which they can't easily recover from covid-19 infection?


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> A lot of small business closings occur because nobody in the family wants to keep them going when gramps and gramma get old. In the case of the two restaurants I mentioned, they had been open for over 30 years and the owner/operators had been slaving away for long hours, and not a lot of reward, for all that time.
> 
> But there's a downside to a forced, premature closing. Most Mom & Pop restaurants are in leased space. They have typically committed to 5-year leases and are liable for the rent that entire period. Further, there is usually a requirement that the property be returned to its original condition at the end of the lease (if not renewed), and that cost, in the case of restaurants, can be considerable. I hope gramps and gramma weren't looking forward to anything but poverty in their retirement!
> 
> Alternatively, if they're lucky, they can find somebody to take over the lease and at least escape with their skins. But who wants a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in these days of plague?


Here's where debt trickles up.

Mom and Pop will file for bankruptcy if they have to continue to pay rent on a retail space they are no longer making money from.

The people suing them for the rent will not get recompensed, as you cannot squeeze blood from a stone. They will instead write this off on their taxes as a "loss", for which they have a lower net income to pay taxes on. The gub'mint has less money . . . and the first budget cuts are safety net services usually. Next thing you know it's "Austerity" Government.

The dominoes, or house of cards, (or whatever metaphor you'd prefer) have already started falling.


----------



## pianozach

eljr said:


> if you have a long term lease it's value is generally worth more as time passes
> 
> example, in 2010 you sign a lease for 10,000 a month. Now if someone were to rent the same space it would cost them 15,000 a month. You can sell the lease at current market price and the differance is your profit. ($5,000 per month times as many months as remain on the lease)


There will be no takers.

Spaces built out for restaurants will stand empty. No one is going to open a restaurant under these conditions.

Sure, some retail spaces may be filled with 99¢ Stores or Payday Advance Loan establishments, but you're going to see more vacant retail spaces.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> I read some time ago the "Stage 2" restaurant re-opening rules for inside dining in California. I can't find them now but I think they included:
> 
> - Monitoring employee's for the virus.
> - Fewer tables, more widely separated.
> - Fewer allowed diners per table - two?
> - All staff to be masked.
> 
> Restaurants generally track their financial health partly by number of covers (a bill for one table) per day and average dollar amount of the covers. With the new rules, it looks like both these measures will be forced lower, kind of a double whammy. But it's probably better than serving only take-outs.


Again . . . it's trickle up debt.

Fewer tables. Fewer people per table. Less overall income if your capacity is kneecapped.

Less income leads to fewer employees. Multiply that by the number of restaurants closing because they are no longer profitable. Higher unemployment leads to loss potential customers, as they no longer have the discretionary income to dine out.

And so even more restaurants close.


----------



## KenOC

My previous post on California dine-in opening restrictions was too specific, it seems. Regardless, our restaurant experience will be quite different in the future. Here is the *Cal/OSHA checklist*.


----------



## Open Book

Something I don't get:

Everyone knows the virus isn't going away.

We're reopening and there is talk about some future time, supposedly in the fall, when there will be another spike in cases.

Why won't there be a resurgence as soon as we start opening up? Because we will have modified our behavior and put in all these rules for keeping a distance? 

We don't even know how well all this will work. Certainly not as well as staying at home (which we can't do forever).

So why won't cases rise again immediately? Why is a spike projected in the fall when we don't really know if this virus waxes and wanes with the seasons?


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> ...So why won't cases rise again immediately? Why is a spike projected in the fall when we don't really know if this virus waxes and wanes with the seasons?


I think there's a lot of sticking pins in dolls and that sort of stuff involved. 

Anyway, we worry about a vastly increased national debt. How about *the states*, though?

"SACRAMENTO - California's government faces a $54.3-billion budget deficit through next summer according to an analysis released Thursday by advisors to Gov. Gavin Newsom, marking the largest projected fiscal hole in state history and raising the possibility of deep spending cuts or substantial new tax revenues to make up the difference."


----------



## DaveM

Open Book said:


> ...So why won't cases rise again immediately? Why is a spike projected in the fall when we don't really know if this virus waxes and wanes with the seasons?


Good question. A lot about this virus is a guessing game, even for the 'experts'. Cases might not rise drastically again immediately while people are still being cautious, but, if over the next 2 months its business as usual, a spike might occur before the fall.


----------



## pianozach

DaveM said:


> Good question. A lot about this virus is a guessing game, even for the 'experts'. Cases might not rise drastically again immediately while people are still being cautious, but, if over the next 2 months its business as usual, a spike might occur before the fall.


Exactly.

There is still a great deal we don't know about this specific virus, and different experts are making their "best guesses" as to how it will play out.

Oh, and there are plenty of _non_-experts publicly making _their_ "best guesses" as well.

As an ex-healthcare professional, I've read an awful lot of material written about SARS-CoV-2, as well as a lot of material on other pandemics, including the lesser known ones, and less deadly ones.

I think that trying to make a model of potential ways it may play out may be far more complex than predicting the path of a hurricane.

First off, there are actually seven variants of coronaviruses (more if you count the ones that don't affect humans). SARS (SARS-CoV) and COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) are the most closely related. Four are common and are relatively benign: 229E, NL63, OC43 and NKU1.

The others, SARS, COVID-19, and MERS (MERS-CoV) have had some serious impact.

SARS appeared in 2002 and quickly spread around the world. The CDC reported that 8,098 people were infected in 26 countries, and that 774 died. THIS is partly why the general population wasn't concerned about COVID-19. The SARS pandemic was short-lived. Only eight months separated the first reported case in November 2002 to the end of the crisis in July 2003.

Here's the big difference: With SARS, most human-to-human infections occurred in health care settings that lacked robust infection control procedures. Infection control practices were implemented it was virtually eliminated.

COVID-19 appears to spread person-to-person, through droplets that are expelled when a person coughs or sneezes and then are inhaled by a nearby person. Less often, it may be spread by touching an infected surface and then touching one's mouth, nose, or eyes. Transmission may also occur before a person becomes symptomatic.

And we still don't know much about it.

We DO know that in two months it has killed almost 100,000 people in the USA (we'll be there by Monday).

In this the SARS-CoV-2 virus is actually more comparable to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1920.

For that reason, I predict that in light of our "opening up" the country too early (which has already begun) will lead to a second wave, probably around September/October. In the meantime our leaders will have Trumpeted how we've been victorious because of their great leadership . . . the economy will have taken some hits, though, and those 'hits' will continue to have ripples right up to when the second wave begins, which, like the 1919 second wave, will likely be far worse, and the economy will take some very crippling blows.

You can certainly take as many potshots at my prediction as you like. You can point out the flaws in my assessment. But it's a likely scenario no matter how you slice it.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> Something I don't get:
> 
> Everyone knows the virus isn't going away.
> 
> We're reopening and there is talk about some future time, supposedly in the fall, when there will be another spike in cases.
> 
> Why won't there be a resurgence as soon as we start opening up? Because we will have modified our behavior and put in all these rules for keeping a distance?
> 
> We don't even know how well all this will work. Certainly not as well as staying at home (which we can't do forever).
> 
> So why won't cases rise again immediately? Why is a spike projected in the fall when we don't really know if this virus waxes and wanes with the seasons?


As I understand it, the most important parameter in a simple model is "R0," the average number of people that an infected person infects. Without social distancing, it seems to be in the range from 3 to 4. That gives you a geometric progression.

But it isn't that simple, it is not uniform. Some people will give up distancing right away, some will maintain it longer. Some infected people will give the virus to one or two people, or no one, others will go to a big event and give it to 100 people. Some people don't travel much, some people will travel widely and spread infections outside their community. The time course is sensitive to unknowable data in the form of the individual decisions of infected people.


----------



## Guest

Kieran said:


> The media are influencers and pressure groups. Lobbyists. It doesn't matter if it's The Guardian or Fox News, they're screeching into a tribal echo chamber and hoping to create stories. Hoping to shape policy, hoping to cause downfall.
> 
> Of course they're a problem...


I'm not sure anyone said they are not a problem. But if Jo Public is looking for information, where is she going to get it from, but the media? There comes a point where we either dismiss them all as untrustworthy, or we must accept what they offer to some cautious degree.

I don't agree that they are all lobbyists in the sense that all are active in wanting to achieve a specific political outcome through pressure on government, nor that they merely screech into an echo chamber. That would assume that the only people consuming their product are the already converted. I think most papers and national broadcasters are consumed by a much wider audience, particularly the BBC.

On the issue of numbers of UK deaths, the exact figure isn't the issue. It may well be inaccurate for several reasons, but if the general picture shows a substantially higher than usual all-causes death rate compared to, say, a five year average for the time of year (and that doctors are no worse than usual at certifying cause of death) then I think it's safe to say that we have a serious problem with Covid19.


----------



## Kieran

Open Book said:


> When things "open up", which is in stages in my state, there will be restrictions on numbers of people indoors and the restaurant experience will be different. I don't know if they can survive on that volume although let's face it, many restaurants are hardly half full in normal times. One restaurant owner says takeout has not been enough to keep them going for long.
> 
> Even if you seat people far apart in a restaurant, I don't like the idea that the waitstaff goes from table to table. Actually, I never did like that about restaurants, but I try not to think about it.
> 
> There is a plan to revise every type of business. I'd love to know how close-contact hairdressers and dentists are going to work and be low-risk to the public and themselves. I can't imagine. Seems like you'd have to test everyone in their business every day for the virus, which isn't feasible.


Hairdressers here say they clean their hands so often, they'll wear masks, they won't be in the face of any customer for long enough etc, but the burden of proof will always be on them to make the customer feel safe. There's suggestions that they'll have to change clothes several times per day. Them, and any other workers and practitioners who work in close proximity to others.

After this, it's up to us how we feel about it. I'm something of a germaphobe, I dislike unnecessary physical contact with people I don't know, I have a few things which repel me in others, though I'm not quite like Howard Hughes, you know? But, I haven't been worried about the virus at all. I take precautions, but I don't worry about it. And so, I might be wary of restaurants, but at the same time, I can't wait for my favourite cafe to open again. I know the owner and I trust her. I'll even drink coffee from a takeaway cup. I'll take my chances. But not everyone will, and anyway, with new rules on social distancing, there won't be the same space as before.

Likewise in pubs. A beer garden in summer never seemed so welcoming. A pint of Guinness with my brothers, I look forward to the day. The dreaded plastic beer glasses will become the norm. So really, there'll be an urgency to reassure the public that they're safe, but knowing as we do that virus is going to be out there anyway, a lot of it will come down to each person and their own decisions. Things are most likely going to become even weirder once the lockdown ends...


----------



## Eclectic Al

I posted earlier about the production of vaccines against coronaviruses. One point was that in the case of MERS (say) a problem was that the outbreak declined too quickly for vaccine development to go through its full process. You need to establish safety and efficacy, and to do that you need enough subjects.
See the link below where a key figure in the Oxford vaccine development efforts for Covid-19 is cautioning that the virus is declining so quickly that they may be unable to complete their development process.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ovid-19-vaccine-trial-has-50-per-cent-chance/

Of course, it is possible that the interview is damage limitation for the Oxford team (if they think their vaccine is looking unlikely to work) but I doubt that. The point he is making relates to efficacy: they will not be able to establish efficacy because too few people get the disease anyway. I guess they could deliberately try to infect volunteers who had been vaccinated (and who hadn't), but I guess that is not considered ethical.

If you take the interview at face value it's clearly bad and good. Bad in that he cannot complete his testing; good in that the virus is declining really rapidly.


----------



## Kieran

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure anyone said they are not a problem. But if Jo Public is looking for information, where is she going to get it from, but the media? There comes a point where we either dismiss them all as untrustworthy, or we must accept what they offer to some cautious degree.
> .


This is the sensible route, for me. Shop around, compare. Something that's "news" to one, doesn't appear anywhere in another. Approach with scepticism but accept that somehow the news will reach us...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> It's a sobering thought. I was discussing with my sister in Madrid today, they head into the next phase of the opening up. Would she go to a bar, or a cafe? She was anxious about it. It's understandable but it's the big test for restaurants etc, when they reopen: how can they reassure the public, and make us feel safe?
> 
> And will the measures they take to do this mean that it's hardly worth their while reopening?


And a related point - I would only go to a bar or restaurant if it is a pleasurable experience. If it's too much like entering a bio-hazard area then I won't go. (Or I would only go if I'm sufficiently public spirited to want to help the business survive.)


----------



## Art Rock

edit: replying to post 1157.

Well, if the second wave doomsday prophets are right, just continue developing now, and in the autumn they'll have plenty of people to test it on. If the virus meanwhile mutates, we're screwed anyway.


----------



## Kieran

I


Eclectic Al said:


> And a related point - I would only go to a bar or restaurant if it is a pleasurable experience. If it's too much like entering a bio-hazard area then I won't go. (Or I would only go if I'm sufficiently public spirited to want to help the business survive.)


Yeah, I think there'd be novelty value if the caffs were decked out like biohazard crime scenes, but that would wear thin fairly quickly. Or maybe we'd become enamoured of it, in some wartime spirit kind of way. But certainly, I agree with being public spirited, and if they make the effort, so will I...


----------



## Kieran

An optimistic biochemist, working on treatments for switching off the inflammatory process in Covid, in Trinity College, Dublin:

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and...finitely-beatable-covid-19-1.4258229?mode=amp


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> edit: replying to post 1157.
> 
> Well, if the second wave doomsday prophets are right, just continue developing now, and in the autumn they'll have plenty of people to test it on. If the virus meanwhile mutates, we're screwed anyway.


The mutation point tends to work the other way (- although it might not).

Point 1 is that Covid-19 does, or course, mutate (as all viruses tend to do), but it does not mutate as much as influenza viruses do, say. I understand that this relates to it being an RNA virus, rather than a DNA type.

Point 2 is that viruses tend to mutate into less dangerous strains rather than more dangerous, because that is more effective for spreading. You can't be 100% sure of this, but we are in a statistics game here. If you have different viral strains competing to infect hosts and spread then it is an evolutionary advantage to do as little damage as possible to the host. Of course, we might get unlucky, but it is statistically in our interests (as hosts) for the viral strains to be allowed to compete. Nasty strains will tend to last longer if they are kept separate from other strains by policies such as isolating the hosts from each other (- ring any bells?). (This assumes that the strains are sufficiently similar that infection with one gives a degree of immunity to the other.)


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> Don't weasel out of it. I gave a direct answer to a direct question about the death rate in the U.K. as given by official tables. You revived the question of the accuracy of those figures based on a theory raised by a retired pathologist. You are implying that these figures are inaccurate. If an 85 year old person in a nursing home with heart disease comes down with Clovid-19 and dies on a ventilator, the primary cause of death on the death certificate is listed as the virus. In my mind, case closed. (Full disclosure: depending on the circumstances, the death certificate might say Clovid-19 and [something like] heart failure or heart disease.)


I don't think that's how it normally works. The WHO definition of cause of death is: "the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death".
Also UK statistics show "Deaths of people who have had a positive test result confirmed by a Public Health or NHS laboratory", and they are referred to in the stats as "COVID-19 associated deaths" not "COVID-19 caused deaths". 
My mother, father and brother all died ultimately of pneumonia. As I recall it, in no case did the certificate state the nature of the pathogen causing the pneumonia: I don't think that was looked into at all. This is because the underlying cause was (WHO definition) congestive heart failure, stroke, and Parkinson's disease respectively.
At the moment I think we have two types of Covid-19 associated deaths: (1) people with underlying health conditions who die ultimately from Covid-19 pneumonia but another underlying condition was the real reason, in that it initiated the train of morbid events, and (2) healthy people (or unhealthy people where the existing conditions are not connected with their death) who die from Covid-19 where that is genuinely the reason. For example, it seems that one possibility is that some healthy people are seeing clots in pulmonary blood vessels which mean that they can breathe, but very inefficiently, and they die of Covid-19 as the condition which initiated the train of morbid events.

Note, I'm not remotely suggesting that we should not be capturing Covid-19 associated deaths, as the UK is doing (don't know about other countries), but just noting that many of these would not normally have Covid-19 considered to be the underlying cause.


----------



## Kieran

Open Book said:


> It will be interesting to see if any revolutionary new types of business come out of this predicament. And how existing ones change or fade away, which could sadden us.


I was thinking of this in a different way last night, while I was watching the trailer for Christopher Nolan's new blockbuster, Tenet. It's definitely a film I want to see, but already it's out of date. The big studios which produced this summers blockbusters must be getting edgy now. The trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 didn't entice me much, but I'll go see the new Bond movie when I can.

But the thing is, there's going to be a huge change in film-making. So there's a huge challenge facing directors now, on how to streamline their tales, maybe reduce the cast, tell more personal tales rather than effects based stories. The Marriage Story is a great film, can't have cost a fortune to make, but I also loved The Irishman, but this did cost a fortune to make, and Scorsese's next movie was heading up into similar loss-making territory until filming closed down.

The music industry will also face a moment. Things will change, new geniuses will emerge, and new ideas will happen. But what they are, time will tell..


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> But the thing is, there's going to be a huge change in film-making. .... tell more personal tales rather than effects based stories.
> ..


More animations? Greater reliance on CGI? More effects-based films? Drive in cinema seems to be being mentioned in some stories.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> More animations? Greater reliance on CGI? More effects-based films? Drive in cinema seems to be being mentioned in some stories.


Yeah, I was wondering about that. See this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/arts/television/the-blacklist-animated-season-finale.html

Blacklist TV show used animation to finish the season after shooting was shut down. And of course, great Pixar movies can be made, but opening cinemas will be a test, on how they'll lay out the seats. Maybe skipping rows, and a reduced audience count, but most times I've gone to the cinema lately, it's been empty-ish, so maybe they'll survive.

Drive in movies! That's a way to go...but in Ireland? It would definitely create a buzz during summer...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Insofar as you can have a balanced article, here's a link about how scared you should be of coronavirus:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52758024

The really interesting thing is (above childhood ages) the chance of dying from coronavirus seems to track the annual chance of dying so closely. This is presumably just a fluke in itself (- after all, why not the 6 month chance of dying, or the 2 year chance of dying, as there's nothing special about a year).
However, it gives a useful way of thinking about it: if you get coronavirus then (for the average person) your chance of dying is a bit like advancing your chance of dying in the coming year into the next few weeks (as well, obviously, as still facing your normal risk of dying if you survive the coronavirus). Hence, if you are aged 30, and not particularly concerned that you won't make it to 31, you shouldn't be particularly bothered about getting Covid-19. It's the same order of risk.
Clearly, if you have a relevant underlying condition (eg obesity coupled with diabetes) then you already have an elevated chance of dying, but it seems like your Covid-19 risk may be much larger. However, if that is true, then that would imply (because it has to add up in total) that if you do not have one of those conditions then your Covid-19 risk is likely to be lower than your normal annual chance of dying, so you should be correspondingly less concerned.


----------



## Bigbang

science said:


> I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that scientists created this virus and climate change in order to let the world know that scientists can destroy everyone?


I should have left off the "experiment failed" as it was not clear enough. I was responding to Kieran post and going with the same flow of the conversation.

Anyway, I was making a point that Nature (whether aspects of evolution, God, the gods etc.,) is a force that must be reckon with and as of right now, we human beings are the stewards of the planet. (Hence the myths/stories as in the Bible we will have dominion over the animals--nevermind the translation or how to interpret) but it appears we are becoming increasingly arrogant in demanding resources without regards to other animals welfare or the planet as a whole. This can be debated in numerous ways but the bottom line (and is also in the stories) is Nature can punish us and we can bring this own by our actions both individual and collectively. The virus is but one of many things going on and not to be singled out as punishment from God/the gods but rather a way to see it in light of our actions. The point about science is that some people use science as a "god" and say it is the best "all knowing" way to see the world. Unless it is scientific (and who are the gatekeepers) it is not worthy to be included as relevant to the modern world. But science cannot ask the questions it cannot yet know and so it is limited in its view. So as of right now the "answer" is scientific, to put out the fire by finding a vaccine for it. But that does not address how to handle all of our problems going on right now in the world, too numerous to cover.


----------



## Bigbang

eljr said:


> it would help if all our leaders wore masks
> 
> not doing so causes people to do the same and the divide helps spread the virus
> 
> we need responsible leaders


Well, nothing like a good teacher and when a well known figure goes down for the count, well, it is a lesson to be studied as an example. And we are in what quarter or period in the game?

BTW, I still don't get why people are driving and doing stuff in isolation wearing a mask. Makes me wonder if they are grasping what the use of the mask is for--to protect the person wearing the mask and spreading it to others. But overkill can't hurt. I think.


----------



## Bigbang

eljr said:


> The biggest impediment to the science of tomorrow is the science of today.


True, but thankfully science as a way of self correcting itself and purging stupidity out of it's rank, that is of the past. You see, scientists are human beings born in the time period they live in so they cannot burden themselves of ideas of the past.


----------



## Eclectic Al

I've done some sums, in case anyone finds them interesting. I have used a UK population table for mortality, but it's not going to matter much what developed country table you use.
I have then calculated the life expectancy. I have assumed everyone dies at 100, which doesn't affect the answer much at all for the ages I am looking at.

If you are 30 then on this table your life expectancy is 55 years (taking you to 85) for a male or 58 years (taking you to 88) if you are female.

Now lets recalculate, but multiplying your chance of dying in the first year by 8. The numbers (wait for it!) don't change. Of course that's because of rounding. The life expectancies are 55.1 years (male) and 57.9 years (female) without the increased first year mortality, and 54.8 years (male) and 57.8 years (female).

If you look at 60 year olds then you get a reduction in life expectancy of about 1 year.

In an earlier post I referred to an article suggesting that multiplying year 1 mortality by 2 might be more plausible. I used 8 here to exaggerate the effect, as it's so small.


----------



## Bigbang

Kieran said:


> It may not be a perfect metaphor, but it works. You can understand it, if you try. And as the pathologist in the article says, there's a "distinction between dying _with _Covid-19, and dying _due to_ Covid-19."
> 
> We knew this already, but suddenly it's become a thing?


I am guessing a person dying with covid-19 was more or less in the dying stages (weeks to months in gradual shutdown).


----------



## Bigbang

science said:


> It's too bad that our governments haven't cared enough about the few remaining "mom and pop" places to enable them to survive shutdown.


Yes, but the thing about mom and pops operations are that it is from paycheck to paycheck usually and not many employees. Not judging here but I think some would call it "casualty of war."


----------



## Bigbang

Woodduck said:


> Perhaps we're hearing so little from the godly because the godly are hearing so little from the gods.


And in tradition books..."ye are the gods." If we are co creators we have to reap what we sow, but we can always try to avert more disaster for the sake of the future.


----------



## science

Bigbang said:


> Yes, but the thing about mom and pops operations are that it is from paycheck to paycheck usually and not many employees. Not judging here but I think some would call it "casualty of war."


Entirely a policy choice. They helped who they cared about enough to help, and didn't help those they didn't care about enough to help.


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> A beer garden in summer never seemed so welcoming. A pint of Guinness with my brothers, I look forward to the day. The dreaded plastic beer glasses will become the norm.


This appears to be almost completely safe, even with glass mugs.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> I don't think that's how it normally works. The WHO definition of cause of death is: "the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death".
> Also UK statistics show "Deaths of people who have had a positive test result confirmed by a Public Health or NHS laboratory", and they are referred to in the stats as "COVID-19 associated deaths" not "COVID-19 caused deaths"...


The WHO does not determine what a physician puts on a death certificate. The following is a description of the process in the US. My guess is it is similar in the U.K.:

'_Cause of death is determined by medical professionals attending to patients, not by state agencies or the CDC, according to the statement. "CDC wants a medical professional's best judgment for any cause of death," the statement reads. "Generally, a cause of death is determined by the medical professional in attendance at the time of death, or by a medical professional who tended to the decedent."
*
The Health Analytics and Vital Records statement explained that if a person is classified as having died "of" or "from" COVID-19, that means the disease was put on the death certificate as a primary or contributing cause of death.* A person is said to die "with" COVID-19 if something else (like a car crash) was the primary cause of death but the person also had a positive confirmed case of the disease. In a case like that, COVID-19 would not be listed on the death certificate at all, the employees wrote in the statement.

The state experts explained that cause of death is recorded as a chain of events - the medical events that directly lead to a person's death. *The "immediate" cause of death is listed on the first line of a death certificate, and it's the "final disease or condition that resulted in death,*" the statement reads.

Next, there are two lines available for one or two "intermediate" causes of death to be listed. "Here, the medical professional outlines the logical sequence of causes that leads from the underlying cause of death to the immediate cause of death," the statement reads. "Sometimes, there is no intermediate cause of death."The fourth or last line on the death certificate is reserved for the "underlying" cause of death, according to the state's response._


----------



## Bigbang

science said:


> Entirely a policy choice. They helped who they cared about enough to help, and didn't help those they didn't care about enough to help.


Yes, but the point is that small business can become big business. And even those that don't have influence at local levels and so forth, you get the picture. A local diner or flower shop is hardly on the rader. Again, this is not about my opinion here.


----------



## Open Book

Bigbang said:


> BTW, I still don't get why people are driving and doing stuff in isolation wearing a mask. Makes me wonder if they are grasping what the use of the mask is for--to protect the person wearing the mask and spreading it to others. But overkill can't hurt. I think.


Because once you get out of your nice safe car you might run into someone you have to talk to, and they might be one of those thick-headed people, unmasked, who keeps forgetting how far away he's supposed to stand. That's what bothers me, that other people who are too impatient or have no attention span or just don't take things seriously will violate my space. You have to be ready for everything.

If we're basing when the next spike will be on the presumption that everyone will competently practice social distancing, I think we're going to be wrong, the spike will happen sooner than we think.


----------



## Open Book

science said:


> Entirely a policy choice. They helped who they cared about enough to help, and didn't help those they didn't care about enough to help.


A restaurant owner could have put their life savings into opening their business and it's all gone. And because they are not big enough to be worth saving, they don't get saved. I don't know if insurance covers acts of God like pandemics. If it did, insurers would probably be out of business now.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> The WHO does not determine what a physician puts on a death certificate. The following is a description of the process in the US. My guess is it is similar in the U.K.:
> 
> '_Cause of death is determined by medical professionals attending to patients, not by state agencies or the CDC, according to the statement. "CDC wants a medical professional's best judgment for any cause of death," the statement reads. "Generally, a cause of death is determined by the medical professional in attendance at the time of death, or by a medical professional who tended to the decedent."
> *
> The Health Analytics and Vital Records statement explained that if a person is classified as having died "of" or "from" COVID-19, that means the disease was put on the death certificate as a primary or contributing cause of death.* A person is said to die "with" COVID-19 if something else (like a car crash) was the primary cause of death but the person also had a positive confirmed case of the disease. In a case like that, COVID-19 would not be listed on the death certificate at all, the employees wrote in the statement.
> 
> The state experts explained that cause of death is recorded as a chain of events - the medical events that directly lead to a person's death. *The "immediate" cause of death is listed on the first line of a death certificate, and it's the "final disease or condition that resulted in death,*" the statement reads.
> 
> Next, there are two lines available for one or two "intermediate" causes of death to be listed. "Here, the medical professional outlines the logical sequence of causes that leads from the underlying cause of death to the immediate cause of death," the statement reads. "Sometimes, there is no intermediate cause of death."The fourth or last line on the death certificate is reserved for the "underlying" cause of death, according to the state's response._


You are correct about what is normal practice, and that's why we need to be very careful about interpreting these statistics. In the cases which I mentioned relating to my family the death was not attributed to any particular pathogen (whether the death was listed as from congestive heart failure or pneumonia or other candidate co-morbidities), and it was the pathogen point that I sought to make in my earlier post. Hence, the decision of physicians to list death as "Covid-19" when a year ago they would not have pointed to the specific underlying pathogen which may have caused the pneumonia is a change in common practice.

I was also (in a more loose way) seeking to note that to everyone who knew them the deaths of my family members would have seemed to be "correctly" attributed to congestive heart failure, stroke/frailty, or Parkinson's, and in none of those cases would we have felt that the right way to view the situations was that pneumonia was the cause of death. I think that is a relevant point because this thread sometimes gets heated when people note that a lot of Covid-19 deaths may be among people with co-morbidities, and it seemed to me personally that for my family members the co-morbidities were what we "blamed", if you want to look at it like that.

When I have sometimes in the past analysed trends in mortality in my work it is problematic for drawing reliable conclusions if there is a change in practice. All my remarks were intended to note was the the distinction between "death from Covid-19" and "death with Covid-19" is a very meaningful distinction to make when talking about the situation, and the UK stats which are most commonly quoted make it clear that they are in relation to deaths with Covid-19.

It is also relevant to note that some are pointing to excess deaths (all causes) as the key thing to look at. I think there is merit in that, but that then brings in another issue: that this does not distinguish between increase in deaths as a result of Covid-19, increase (or indeed decrease) in deaths as a result of lockdown, and increase (or decrease) in deaths from unconnected causes.

We're in difficult territory being sure about any of these statistics, and therefore I just suggest caution in being sure we have a good picture of what is happening.


----------



## science

Open Book said:


> A restaurant owner could have put their life savings into opening their business and it's all gone. And because they are not big enough to be worth saving, they don't get saved.


I believe that "not big enough to be worth saving" is a political judgment, based on who has power to access money, not an economic judgement. I rather suspect it would be better for the economy as a whole if many of the powerful corporations (who did have the ability to arrange for themselves to get the money) had instead gone bankrupt.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Eclectic Al said:


> I've done some sums, in case anyone finds them interesting. I have used a UK population table for mortality, but it's not going to matter much what developed country table you use.
> I have then calculated the life expectancy. I have assumed everyone dies at 100, which doesn't affect the answer much at all for the ages I am looking at.
> 
> If you are 30 then on this table your life expectancy is 55 years (taking you to 85) for a male or 58 years (taking you to 88) if you are female.
> 
> Now lets recalculate, but multiplying your chance of dying in the first year by 8. The numbers (wait for it!) don't change. Of course that's because of rounding. The life expectancies are 55.1 years (male) and 57.9 years (female) without the increased first year mortality, and 54.8 years (male) and 57.8 years (female).
> 
> If you look at 60 year olds then you get a reduction in life expectancy of about 1 year.
> 
> In an earlier post I referred to an article suggesting that multiplying year 1 mortality by 2 might be more plausible. I used 8 here to exaggerate the effect, as it's so small.


Oh, and it is important to know that the mortality table includes an allowance for improvement in mortality over time (which is normal practice, and highly appropriate). That means that we can look at how many years into the past it is necessary to go in order that the life expectancy then was worse than life expectancy now after allowing for worsened mortality in the current year.

The answer, with a factor of 8 is 2 years for a 30 year old woman and 3 years for a 30 year old man.
That is, if you were a 30 year old man in 2017 or a 30 year old woman in 2018 your life expectancy was worse at that point, than the life expectancy of someone who is a 30 year old man or woman now (allowing for sharply increased mortality this year).

In other words, if 30 year old people in 2017 or 2018 were not frightened about their longevity prospects, then 30 year old people now should not be worried either (- if life expectancy is what matters). And that's with my arbitrarily exaggerated multiple of 8 for this year's mortality.

Caveat: the above is, of course, not valid for people with health factors that render them specifically susceptible to Covid-19.


----------



## Kieran

Open Book said:


> A restaurant owner could have put their life savings into opening their business and it's all gone. And because they are not big enough to be worth saving, they don't get saved. I don't know if insurance covers acts of God like pandemics. If it did, insurers would probably be out of business now.


Well, I know it's not a like situation, but Wimbledon had the foresight to buy pandemic insurance since 2003 (because of SARS?) and this years cancellation means they got a payout of £100m from their insurer. A lot of other tournaments are going to try reschedule, but obviously they all can't. I suspect we'll see none or little tennis for the rest of the year...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> Well, I know it's not a like situation, but Wimbledon had the foresight to buy pandemic insurance since 2003 (because of SARS?) and this years cancellation means they got a payout of £100m from their insurer. A lot of other tournaments are going to try reschedule, but obviously they all can't. I suspect we'll see none or little tennis for the rest of the year...


I can only think that Wimbledon did that because the former Chairman of the club was Phil Brook, and he used to work as an actuary specialising in general insurance. I bet it was his idea originally.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> You are correct about what is normal practice, and that's why we need to be very careful about interpreting these statistics. In the cases which I mentioned relating to my family the death was not attributed to any particular pathogen (whether the death was listed as from congestive heart failure or pneumonia or other candidate co-morbidities), and it was the pathogen point that I sought to make in my earlier post. Hence, the decision of physicians to list death as "Covid-19" when a year ago they would not have pointed to the specific underlying pathogen which may have caused the pneumonia is a change in common practice.
> 
> I was also (in a more loose way) seeking to note that to everyone who knew them the deaths of my family members would have seemed to be "correctly" attributed to congestive heart failure, stroke/frailty, or Parkinson's, and in none of those cases would we have felt that the right way to view the situations was that pneumonia was the cause of death. I think that is a relevant point because this thread sometimes gets heated when people note that a lot of Covid-19 deaths may be among people with co-morbidities, and it seemed to me personally that for my family members the co-morbidities were what we "blamed", if you want to look at it like that.
> 
> When I have sometimes in the past analysed trends in mortality in my work it is problematic for drawing reliable conclusions if there is a change in practice. All my remarks were intended to note was the the distinction between "death from Covid-19" and "death with Covid-19" is a very meaningful distinction to make when talking about the situation, and the UK stats which are most commonly quoted make it clear that they are in relation to deaths with Covid-19.


Your response to my original post was '_I don't think that's how it normally works._ I pointed out with my most recent post that that _is_ how it normally works. Your post above appears to be about how you and others would _prefer'_ it to be. If a person has some serious co-morbidities and the final event is pneumonia, then it is the immediate cause of death and the person is considered to have died from pneumonia. Contributing factors can be listed on the death certificate. That's just the way it is.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> Your response to my original post was '_I don't think that's how it normally works._ I pointed out with my most recent post that that is how it normally works. Your post above appears to be about how you and others would _prefer'_ it to be. If a person has some serious co-morbidities and the final event is pneumonia, then it is the immediate cause of death and the person is considered to have died from pneumonia. There can be contributing factors listed in lines that follow the immediate cause. That's just the way it is.


My fundamental point is that the statistics here (like all statistics) are to be treated with caution, and it is important to use words carefully - apologies if I was not careful enough for you.

Depending on your purpose it may be appropriate to regard the "cause" of death as one thing or another, which is fine as long as one is clear. The ultimate cause and the underlying cause, if we can put it that way, both matter, and are relevant for different analytical purposes. We are seeing this importance as the linkages between conditions become a little clearer. With the Covid-19 crisis raging, the distinction between deaths with Covid-19 and deaths from Covid-19 would seem to be an important one. I don't think that's a particularly contentious remark. I certainly hope not.


----------



## Art Rock

Kieran said:


> Well, I know it's not a like situation, but Wimbledon had the foresight to buy pandemic insurance since 2003 (because of SARS?) and this years cancellation means they got a payout of £100m from their insurer. A lot of other tournaments are going to try reschedule, but obviously they all can't. I suspect we'll see none or little tennis for the rest of the year...


I've heard that the organizer of a huge four days' pop/rock concert event in the Netherlands, that was scheduled for next month, last year accidentally crossed the box "do you want pandemic insurance". Luckiest man in the business.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> My fundamental point is that the statistics here (like all statistics) are to be treated with caution, and it is important to use words carefully - apologies if I was not careful enough for you.
> 
> Depending on your purpose it may be appropriate to regard the "cause" of death as one thing or another, which is fine as long as one is clear. The ultimate cause and the underlying cause, if we can put it that way, both matter, and are relevant for different analytical purposes. We are seeing this importance as the linkages between conditions become a little clearer. With the Covid-19 crisis raging, the distinction between deaths with Covid-19 and deaths from Covid-19 would seem to be an important one. I don't think that's a particularly contentious remark. I certainly hope not.


Per se, it is not a contentious remark, but the issue of 'with Clovid-19' and 'from Clovid-19' has been made contentious in the recent past because there was an agenda to diminish the serious of the disease by inferring that too many deaths were being attributed to Clovid-19 and there were some in this thread who insisted that if there were serious co-morbidities, such as in nursing home people, deaths should be listed as 'with Clovid-19' not 'from Clovid-19'.

I reiterate that when people come into an ICU with a history of serious co-morbidities, but they have all the symptoms of a Clovid-19 pneumonia and they pass away on a ventilator, pneumonia by Clovid-19 will be listed as the disease they died *from*.

On the other hand, I get your point about the importance of knowing underlying co-morbidities for analytical purposes. It is of importance to everyone to know where and to whom the major risks from this disease lies. There is some comfort, if one can put it that way, to younger people without co-morbidities that mortality in those under 70 is quite a bit less.


----------



## Kieran

Art Rock said:


> I've heard that the organizer of a huge four days' pop/rock concert event in the Netherlands, that was scheduled for next month, last year accidentally crossed the box "do you want pandemic insurance". Luckiest man in the business.


I'd say he kicked himself for months until this outbreak became serious. But I wonder if it cost him much? Probably not, since most people wouldn't want it, thinking they'd never need it...


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Entirely a policy choice. They helped who they cared about enough to help, and didn't help those they didn't care about enough to help.


As always, ideology drives beliefs. In fact, the *first tranche* of small business assistance, a mix of low-interest loans and outright grants worth $367 billion, was part of the first coronavirus relief bill. That's more than $1,000 per capita for the entire US.

A *further $310 billion* has been allocated to the main program since then. This was all mentioned earlier.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> As always, ideology drives beliefs. In fact, the *first tranche* of small business assistance, a mix of low-interest loans and outright grants worth $367 billion, was part of the first coronavirus relief bill. That's more than $1,000 per capita for the entire US.
> 
> A *further $310 billion* has been allocated to the main program since then. This was all mentioned earlier.


Also mentioned earlier that much of that was actually "allowed" to go to ... not exactly what most people would consider small businesses.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Also mentioned earlier that much of that was actually "allowed" to go to ... not exactly what most people would consider small businesses.


Yes, some of that money was claimed by larger businesses. Much is made of publically-traded businesses getting the money, but that seems to have been $1.52 billion, or only 0.22% of the total funds authorized. And, as previously noted, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has demanded the money be repaid, threatening unspecified "consequences". As a result, about a third ($550 million) has already been returned according to the New York Times, "including most of the larger loans."

Facts seem so much more satisfying, at least to me.


----------



## Bigbang

Open Book said:


> Because once you get out of your nice safe car you might run into someone you have to talk to, and they might be one of those thick-headed people, unmasked, who keeps forgetting how far away he's supposed to stand. That's what bothers me, that other people who are too impatient or have no attention span or just don't take things seriously will violate my space. You have to be ready for everything.
> 
> If we're basing when the next spike will be on the presumption that everyone will competently practice social distancing, I think we're going to be wrong, the spike will happen sooner than we think.


I got a haircut today. Wore my mask, got my temperature checked and sanitizer. Father and son already in front of me had no mask and were arguing about the new rules. They left pissed but I was Ok with it of course. Point taken.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Yes, some of that money was claimed by larger businesses. Much is made of publically-traded businesses getting the money, but that seems to have been $1.52 billion, or only 0.22% of the total funds authorized. And, as previously noted, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has demanded the money be repaid, threatening unspecified "consequences". As a result, about a third ($550 million) has already been returned according to the New York Times, "including most of the larger loans."
> 
> Facts seem so much more satisfying, at least to me.


Well, you've persuaded me. I'm sure everything is fine. None of the small businesses that are going bankrupt could possibly have been saved by any kind of policy that would've tried to help them more effectively.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Well, you've persuaded me. I'm sure everything is fine. None of the small businesses that are going bankrupt could possibly have been saved by any kind of policy that would've tried to help them more effectively.


This being an appropriation, the legislation was prepared by the two houses of the legislative branch, who also set eligibility requirements. Trump merely approved it. Yes, of course the Congress could have appropriated more money. Do you think they should have?


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> This being an appropriation, the legislation was prepared by the two houses of the legislative branch, who also set eligibility requirements. Trump merely approved it. Yes, of course the Congress could have appropriated more money. Do you think they should have?


How much of my time should I put into trying to answer this question?

My point is that the people in power -- the people who tell the politicians they've bought what to do -- did what they wanted to do, helped who they wanted to help. If someone hasn't been helped, it's not because gosh darn it the powerful folks tried to find the money but just couldn't do it, it's because the powerful folks didn't care enough to do it.

Also, what does Trump or this fine 8th grade civics lesson have to do with anything?


----------



## science

For a little bit of fun, let's pretend that I'm as stupid and ignorant as KenOC believes I am! Here's a flashback from my childhood that I will study so that I can begin to aspire to understand the great depths of thought hitherto closed to my poor little weak mind:






Maybe someday I will be able to understand Domhoff's _Who Rules America?_

Probably not but we all can dream.


----------



## KenOC

Getting back to retail leasing: Here's an article on Covid-19 relating to *shopping malls*, whose pre-existing troubles have been accelerated by the pandemic.

"Department store operators Macy's and J.C. Penney take up the largest share of mall space in the U.S., according to CoStar's analysis, or 6.2% and 6% of space, respectively.

"Penney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month and is already planning to shut about 240 locations, or nearly 30% of its 846 stores, as part of its restructuring proceedings. Macy's told analysts this week that management is taking a "hard look" at its real estate and could accelerate previously announced plans to shut 125 stores over the next three years.

"In addition to Penney, department store chains Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores and apparel brand J.Crew have all filed for bankruptcy protection during the Covid-19 crisis. It is unclear how many of these retailers' stores will ultimately close forever…

"Under such intense pressure, some malls could go dark forever."


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> How much of my time should I put into trying to answer this question?
> 
> My point is that the people in power -- the people who tell the politicians they've bought what to do -- did what they wanted to do, helped who they wanted to help. If someone hasn't been helped, it's not because gosh darn it the powerful folks tried to find the money but just couldn't do it, it's because the powerful folks didn't care enough to do it.
> 
> Also, what does Trump or this fine 8th grade civics lesson have to do with anything?


Apologies, certainly, if you didn't need that little civics lesson! In any event, whatever any of us learned in civics doesn't much matter if things work the way you imagine: Faceless "powerful people" telling corrupt and fawning legislators who to help with their legislation.

It would be interesting to know why you think this is the case.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Apologies, certainly, if you didn't need that little civics lesson! In any event, whatever any of us learned in civics doesn't much matter if things work the way you imagine: Faceless "powerful people" telling corrupt and fawning legislators who to help with their legislation.
> 
> It would be interesting to know why you think this is the case.


It could be interesting, but that would be politics rather than coronavirus. Anyway, I'm sure you're already familiar with K-street, campaign finance, revolving doors, think tanks, etc. etc. etc.

For anyone seriously interested in thinking about this seriously, Domhoff's _Who Rules America?_ really isn't a bad place to start. Despite the sexy title, he's a prof at UC Santa Cruz, not a conspiracy theorist. He's something like a sociologist of American power structures.

My favorite book in this line (because it's simultaneously brief and broad) is Fraser & Gerstle's _Ruling America_. Again, not conspiracy theorists: I believe Fraser is retired but he taught at Columbia, Princeton, UPenn, NYU; Gerstle is at Cambridge University; it's published by Harvard University Press.

Some other books that I can recommend relevant to the question of who rules America right now include Jane Meyer's excellent _Dark Money_. If you get into that, Kim Philips-Fein (NYU)'s _Invisible Hands_ nicely fills in the story going a little further back. I haven't read any books by Duke's Nancy MacLean, but her books like _Democracy in Chains_ have a good reputation and promise to be informative.

Robert Reich, who was Clinton's labor secretary (maybe I can find a cute cartoon to educate myself on what the Cabinet is), has recently written _The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It_. Again, not a mere conspiracy theorist.

There are many, many more people doing good research and serious thought on this stuff. Joseph Stiglitz, Daniel Markovitz, Anand Giridharadas, even Matt Taibi (such as _The Divide_), on and on and on.

However, to be honest, I suspect all of us already know as much as we want to about all of this.


----------



## KenOC

I pretty much endorse anything from Prof. Wiliamm Dumhoff, who was/is the granddaddy of explorers of distribution of wealth and income in the US. His very informative web site used to be hosted by UC Santa Cruz (despite its well-deserved reputation as a party schol) but I can't seem to find it now. Where did it go?

I am vaguely familiar with a few of Science's other mentions and generally find some of them at least to be typical screaming heads on the left with opinions that are never surprising.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> opinions that are never surprising.


Maybe they're unfamiliar with how bills become laws.

Anyway, back to the point relevant to the coronavirus:

The people who were in a position to take the money took the money. That's how the world works, beneath all the fancy words we say to make it seem just or legitimate or inevitable. Power pays. If our leaders worried more about citizens than about donors, they would've made different decisions. We don't need to go line-by-line through everything to know that.

Domhoff's website is still here.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Anyway, back to the point relevant to the coronavirus:
> 
> The people who were in a position to take the money took the money. That's how the world works, beneath all the fancy words we say to make it seem just or legitimate or inevitable. Power pays.


"The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a $669-billion business loan program established by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) to help certain businesses, self-employed workers, sole proprietors, certain nonprofit organizations, and tribal businesses continue paying their workers." (Wiki)

I suggest that you read the *eligibility requirements* and see if you can still say, of this program, "The people who were in a position to take the money took the money." That would require an almost pathological cynicism IMO.

Anyway, I'm closing down on this. The last word is yours, if you want it.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> I'm closing down on this.


Never mind then. I'd replied, but I guess it doesn't matter.

Like I said before, I suspect all of us already know as much as we want to about all of this.


----------



## science

Yesterday was a very good day for American numbers. 19,608 new officially known cases -- since March 27th, there's only been one day (May 11, the day after Mother's Day) with fewer new officially known cases. 

Even better, only 617 officially recognized deaths, fewer than any day since March 29th. 

It was the fourth straight day that the numbers of cases and deaths have both declined.

On the downside, one of my former hometowns, Worland, Wyoming, population 5000, found 11 new cases in an assisted-living center. (That news is a few days old, but I just found out about it today.) 

South Korea, on the other hand, while it still has better numbers, is going in the wrong direction, with 25 new cases yesterday, and an increase in active cases (from 705 to 711) for the first time since May 11th, and the second time since March 15th (near the peak of the first wave). The mortality rate stubbornly remains near 2.5%.


----------



## science

Husband of Reopen NC leader 'willing to kill people' in resistance to emergency orders



> The husband of the woman who leads the Reopen NC movement says people should be willing to kill, if necessary, to resist the "New World Order" and emergency orders imposed by state government to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
> 
> Adam Smith posted a string of Facebook Live videos on Facebook on Friday, May 22, 2020 that culminated with a chilling threat.
> 
> "But are we willing to kill people? Are we willing to lay down our lives?" he asked. "We have to say, 'Yes.' We have to say, 'Yes.' Is that violence? Is that terrorism? No, it's not terrorism. I'm not trying to strike fear in people by saying, 'I'm going to kill you.' I'm gonna say, 'If you bring guns, I'm gonna bring guns. If you're armed with this, we're going to be armed with this.'"
> 
> A retired Marine who owns a payment-processing company in Burke County, nestled in western North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, Smith posted four Facebook Live videos over the course of the day while driving his car. Smith said in the videos that he feels called by God and by his understanding of the Constitution to prepare for a violent showdown.
> 
> At the outset of the final video, he interrupted his testimonial to accept a bag of fast food from a restaurant worker through a drive-thru window.
> 
> "I believe God's drawing a plumb line," he said. "And he's wanting us to choose which side we'll be on…. Had to grab me a little grub - which of history we'll be on."
> 
> In another video, captioned "Those who are awake must be ready to fight," Smith complained about a "bombardment" of media stories and social marketing surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, along with appeals to social solidarity and cooperation, which he contended are "just making it normal for this quarantine level of society that they want us to live in.
> 
> "This is a test," he continued. "This is seeing if we are ready to accept the mark of the beast, if we are ready to accept this New World Order system they want to implement over humanity."
> 
> Ashley Smith, the cofounder of Reopen NC and the movement's most visible leader, is organizing simultaneous rallies in five cities - Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Asheville and Wilmington - on Monday to commemorate Memorial Day and protest Gov. Roy Cooper's handling of the coronavirus response. The rallies have attracted considerable support from Republican politicians, with state Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey and lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson speaking at the Greensboro event.
> 
> Adam Smith called on fellow military veterans to attend the rallies one of the videos, warning that "today is the day the Constitution is under attack and tomorrow might be the day where all our rights are removed."
> 
> Smith has removed the videos from his Facebook page since being contacted by Raw Story.
> 
> Reached by phone on Saturday, Smith at first appeared to walk back his statement about being "willing to kill people," saying it was more of a tribute to the American revolutionaries of 1776 than a comment on the emergency orders issued by Gov. Cooper. But pressed further, he insisted that violence has to be an option.
> 
> "I'm trying to make the men of this country stand up," Smith said. "The last thing we want is bloodshed, but that's something they should know we're willing to do."
> 
> He said he can understand how some people would see his statement as an incitement to domestic terrorism, but added, "If you think about terrorism, the whole act is to incite terror in people. We don't instill terror in people. The point is to instill fear in the government…. It's to create a check and balance. We know that freedom from time to time has to be renewed by the blood of tyrants. We were founded through rebellion and bloodshed."
> 
> A self-described "constitutionalist," Smith expounded an argument for American citizens' right to redress grievances against the government through force of arms that is broadly consistent with the far-right militia movement. An Anti-Defamation League backgrounder on the militia movement for law enforcement states that proponents have "claimed that militia groups were: (a) equivalent to the statutory militia; (b) not, however, controlled by the government; and (c) in fact, designed to oppose the government should it become tyrannical."
> 
> Central to the militia movement that first emerged in the early 1990s is a conspiratorial worldview.
> 
> "But the militia movement not only accepted the traditional conspiracy theories, it created a host of new ones; combined, they described a shadowy movement intent on creating a one-world socialist government no matter what the cost," the backgrounder says. "This 'New World Order,' using the United Nations as its primary tool, had already taken over most of the planet. The United States was still a bastion of freedom, but its own government was collaborating with New World Order forces to strip Americans slowly of their freedoms in preparation for the final takeover."
> 
> Adam Smith's violent rhetoric is seemingly at odds with the stance of Reopen NC, which describes itself as "a peaceful action group."
> 
> But in an interjection during her husband's interview with Raw Story, Ashley Smith backed his argument that a citizen militia has the right to act as a check on duly elected officials.
> 
> "When we have a governor that's not acting under the constitutional guidelines that we set for his oath of office, then it's up to the people to check his authority," she said. "That's at the heart of the Constitution."
> 
> Ashley Smith said her comments do not represent the official views of Reopen NC.
> 
> Adam Smith's call for violent resistance to the "New World Order" and his involvement with a boogaloo group that has been carrying firearms through downtown Raleigh signals a blurring of the line between the fringe and mainstream wings of the North Carolina reopen movement.
> 
> On May 16, Smith showed up clad in a matching camouflage jacket and hat, a black face covering and sunglasses while wielding a high-powered rifle to join a local boogaloo group that has gained national notoriety after photos of armed members ordering food at Subway went viral.
> 
> The embryonic boogaloo movement originated as meme shared in online forums by gun enthusiasts that references Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo - essentially a second-rate sequel - as code for a second civil war, or revolutionary war. Adherents began modifying the term in 2019 to variants like "big luau," giving rise to Hawaiian-style shirts as a visual cue. Young men inspired by the boogaloo mythology showed up wearing Hawaiian-style shirts and body armor at the January 2020 Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va., and have become a mainstay of reopen rallies across the country over the past two months.
> 
> Smith introduced himself to the boogaloo activists on May 16 by saying that he was invited by Stephen Wagner, who is the president of the Johnston County chapter of Reopen NC.
> 
> "Do you not know that it's actually the right and responsibility of the people to be evenly matched with the government armament?" Adam Smith asked a counter-protester during the May 16 boogaloo walk. "Do you not know that constitutional responsibility?"
> 
> Ashley Smith told Raw Story that the notion that a citizens militia has the duty to maintain a level of armament equal to the government comes from Federalist Paper No. 46, by James Madison.
> 
> Madison's essay is an argument for federal government that is intended to allay the fears that the power of the states would be overwhelmed. "Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government," Madison wrote. "Still it would not be going too far to say that the state governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
> 
> The boogaloo gatherings, a weekly occurrence in Raleigh since May 1, have taken place separate but alongside the reopen rallies. The Raleigh police have threaded a needle to avoid making arrests by accepting the boogaloo activists' assertion that their gatherings are not protests; North Carolina law makes it illegal to carry a dangerous weapon as participant or spectator at a demonstration. In turn, the boogaloo activists have complied in some instances with the officers' requests to put away signs and flags. While the boogaloo activists use euphemisms like "exercising" to describe their activity, they frequently disparage the state response to the pandemic terms similar to the reopen protesters - as a government overreach and as a public-health threat that is exaggerated for the purpose of scaring people into giving up their rights to assemble and conduct business.
> 
> Meanwhile, the reopen rallies, where participants abide by the law against carrying firearms at demonstrations, have provided a more respectable forum for Republican politicians. US Rep. Dan Bishop has addressed the reopen rallies, along with Robinson, and state Rep. Larry Pittman. Meanwhile, Ashley Smith told followers on Facebook that she met with Lt. Gov. Dan Forest and he encouraged their cause.
> 
> Smith was arrested by State Capitol Police during the April 28 reopen rally after being warned not to step on the sidewalk in front of the executive mansion.
> 
> As the officers placed her under arrest, Smith can be heard in a video posted by the Raleigh News & Observer saying, "My tax dollars paid for this. You're dishonoring the flag. You're not an oath-keeper. You're ashamed of this Constitution."
> 
> Following behind, Adam Smith berated the officers.
> 
> "Look at these thugs arresting her over walking on the sidewalk," he said.
> 
> Smith faces charges in Wake County court for misdemeanor resisting an officer and violation of executive orders. On March 14, Gov. Cooper signed an executive order to prohibit mass gatherings in North Carolina. A modification of the order issued on March 27 defined mass gatherings as "any event or convening that brings together more than 10 persons in a single room or single space at the same time." That provision is the basis of the charge against Smith.
> 
> In his livestream on Friday, after saying his "brothers in arms" must be "willing to kill people," Adam Smith turned his attention to the executive orders.
> 
> "See, that is why America has been free, and that's why we remain free - because we're willing to step up and fight against the forces of tyranny," he said. "We're willing to speak out against these insane edicts and these insane executive orders that were allowed to be passed."
> 
> Then he mentioned a recent protest he had read about in England, in which people protesting lockdown orders had been arrested.
> 
> "See, if we'd have had the guns, armed up and lined all around the park, [we could have] said, 'No, you're going to let 'em speak,'" he said. "And when they came and said, 'We're gonna take this freedom of speech from you,' someone would have said, 'No, you're not. Not unless you want a gunfight on your hands. Unless you want the OK Corral, you better back down.'"


The text of the article contains a lot of links, so if you want to chase anything down you can follow the link.


----------



## Guest

What a frightening article.


----------



## Flamme

4 3 months I didnt use the public transport! I dont know how will I get use 2 it again in juine...U can enter and exit only on 1st and last doors...This has shaken our rulers 2 the core, they dont know what 2 do and how 2 m ake this new normal reality!!!


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> This appears to be almost completely safe, even with glass mugs.


Your lips to God's ears, brother!


----------



## Kieran

Flamme said:


> 4 3 months I didnt use the public transport! I dont know how will I get use 2 it again in juine...U can enter and exit only on 1st and last doors...This has shaken our rulers 2 the core, they dont know what 2 do and how 2 m ake this new normal reality!!!


In Ireland, the buses have limited access, with seats covered so that you won't be sitting beside or too close to anyone...


----------



## Kieran

In Italy, they're adding a Covid tax in some places, which is interesting:



> *"We are receiving dozens of reports on the increases in the price lists of hairdressers" said Codacons which - based on average costs in large cities - has calculated how the price of a cut has gone from an average of €20 to €25, an increase of 25 per cent, reports Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore**.*


It's understandable, but of course, could be counterproductive. Meanwhile, in Rome, they're experiencing a gelato boom. Good!


----------



## eljr

TalkingHead said:


> What a frightening article.


nah... there are all kinds of nuts in the world and always have been

Trump simply provides a war cry for the unhinged.


----------



## eljr

Page after page after page of how to count is nothing but a distraction from the devastation Covid has brought. 

Some just want to ignore the profound affect of the virus and blame the "media" as if they caused the deaths and economic destruction. WTF? 

Sorry all, not trying to troll but I find it ridiculous. 

OK, I said my peace.


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> Your lips to God's ears, brother!


Don't trust me or God!

Trust _The Atlantic_ monthly.


----------



## science

Another accidental oversight on the part of our benign policymakers: CEOs cut millions of jobs amid coronavirus yet keep their lofty bonuses.


----------



## Art Rock

science said:


> Another accidental oversight on the part of our benign policymakers: CEOs cut millions of jobs amid coronavirus yet keep their lofty bonuses.


In the Netherlands, any company receiving state support because of the pandemic is explicitly forbidden to pay out bonuses. If there is no state support, there's little you can do to stupidity like this. Well, as consumer you could boycott them, but unfortunately their competitors probably do the same.


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> Another accidental oversight on the part of our benign policymakers: CEOs cut millions of jobs amid coronavirus yet keep their lofty bonuses.


That's just wrong, and we'd have to hope that whatever business they own, people will vote with their purses. Wealthy CEO's might be more prudent to work without pay for a while, than to let this happen...


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> Another accidental oversight on the part of our benign policymakers: CEOs cut millions of jobs amid coronavirus yet keep their lofty bonuses.


What a very Marxist mentality.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

science said:


> Another accidental oversight on the part of our benign policymakers: CEOs cut millions of jobs amid coronavirus yet keep their lofty bonuses.


Has your congress person or governor given up their pay?


----------



## Flamme

In my country many ''older guys'' like my dad work occasional jobs and he is now itchy 2 get back 2 work even for a short time...It gave him a sense of action, duty and probably of being alive...But in this situation we dont know what will happewn 2morrow let alone in june...


----------



## Room2201974

Ah yes ladies and gentlemen. I was just scanning the annals of history and read about the splendid round that Abe Lincoln turned in at the Old Course; 32, 36, 68. I believe this was during the first Battle of Manassass. Nothing, and I mean nothing says "pandemic buster" more than a 7 hncp.*


*S.S. Foot Wedges by Taylor Made® and a pencil eraser aided.


----------



## Totenfeier

science said:


> Another accidental oversight on the part of our benign policymakers: CEOs cut millions of jobs amid coronavirus yet keep their lofty bonuses.


They _earn_ their lofty bonuses by having the savvy and guts to make the necessary _adjustments_ to save the companies' profits...don't they? Hm?


----------



## eljr

Totenfeier said:


> They _earn_ their lofty bonuses by having the savvy and guts to make the necessary _adjustments_ to save the companies' profits...don't they? Hm?


lol

.......
.......


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Totenfeier said:


> They _earn_ their lofty bonuses by having the savvy and guts to make the necessary _adjustments_ to save the companies' profits...don't they? Hm?


The good ones. But then how do you prepare for a government shutdown of most of the economy? They aren't having financial problems right now because of anything they have done wrong. There aren't a lot of businesses that can do really well when they aren't allowed to conduct their business. But sure, poke fun at capitalism, when that isn't what is occurring here.


----------



## pianozach

science said:


> For a little bit of fun, let's pretend that I'm as stupid and ignorant as KenOC believes I am! Here's a flashback from my childhood that I will study so that I can begin to aspire to understand the great depths of thought hitherto closed to my poor little weak mind:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe someday I will be able to understand Domhoff's _Who Rules America?_
> 
> Probably not but we all can dream.


These versions are probably more appropriate these days.


----------



## KenOC

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Has your congress person or governor given up their pay?


I believe our president has given up his rather generous paycheck to charity, 100%, since he took office. That must make him a hero to the left wing. Right? (pause for silence...) Right?

Hmmm.. I guess it's not the sacrifice that matters, but who makes it. :lol:


----------



## erki

Look what this virus situation has done:
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/...st_for_first_time_in_nearly_70_years/11365791


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> Getting back to retail leasing: Here's an article on Covid-19 relating to *shopping malls*, whose pre-existing troubles have been accelerated by the pandemic.
> 
> "Department store operators Macy's and J.C. Penney take up the largest share of mall space in the U.S., according to CoStar's analysis, or 6.2% and 6% of space, respectively.
> 
> "Penney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month and is already planning to shut about 240 locations, or nearly 30% of its 846 stores, as part of its restructuring proceedings. Macy's told analysts this week that management is taking a "hard look" at its real estate and could accelerate previously announced plans to shut 125 stores over the next three years.
> 
> "In addition to Penney, department store chains Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores and apparel brand J.Crew have all filed for bankruptcy protection during the Covid-19 crisis. It is unclear how many of these retailers' stores will ultimately close forever…
> 
> "Under such intense pressure, some malls could go dark forever."


Some malls have already folded. While brick and mortar shopping isn't dead, "Mall shopping" is obsolete. Consumers now want to drive right up to the Apple Store...go in, buy something, come out and leave.

Online sales have risen from roughly 6% to roughly 9% in the last five years (2014-2019)

*Abandoned malls photography*: https://sephlawless.com/inside-creepiest-abandoned-malls/


----------



## pianozach

Have a safe and sane Memorial Day, everyone.

Oh, and . . . .

*99,464*​


----------



## KenOC

First I've seen of something like this.

"*A mink is believed to have infected a farmworker in the Netherlands with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Dutch officials said.*"


----------



## Art Rock

Yes, it's true. There's been a report of a second case today.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> First I've seen of something like this.
> 
> "*A mink is believed to have infected a farmworker in the Netherlands with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Dutch officials said.*"


If true, this is a game changer.


----------



## Krummhorn

Open Book said:


> We've all heard about the bad preexisting conditions.
> 
> Anyone know if asthma or even just somewhat mild allergies are enough to push somebody into a state from which they can't easily recover from covid-19 infection?


Yes. My wife has connective tissue disease and can be easily infected unless she takes extreme precautions. We are both over 65 of age and I have diabetes which also complicates the situation for both of us.

We are committed to staying home and going out only for grocery and medical appointments. I go to church on a regular basis to practice and to record music for the weekend worship service.

We are also using lots less gasoline ... I am currently about 50 days between fill-ups whereas before I was filling up every 12 days or so.

For us and many, imho, there will never be a return to 'normal' as we knew it. The new "normal" will be quite different and will take a long time to get everybody on board. I am startled at the number of people in the grocery store that are not wearing masks! We wear seatbelts, we drive on the correct side of the road, mostly out of fear ... the Covid 19 IS something to be feared as well.

I would rather not have my wife get ill at this time in our lives. We are quite happy at home with our two cats ... we both love to cook and have a house large enough (nearly 2,000 sq. ft) where we can do our own thing and not disturb the other.

Kh


----------



## Art Rock

Further to the minks:

Two workers on a mink farm where some animals have been infected with the virus caught it from the minks (there are still some details that I'm puzzled by). It is known that cats, ferrets, hamsters, rabbits and minks are sensitive for this category viruses, far more than dogs. Apparently ducks and chickens are not bothered. I would conclude from this that having a cat increases your risk right now if the cat goes outside.


----------



## Room2201974

Art Rock said:


> Further to the minks:
> 
> Two workers on a mink farm where some animals have been infected with the virus caught it from the minks (there are still some details that I'm puzzled by). It is known that cats, ferrets, hamsters, rabbits and minks are sensitive for this category viruses,* far more than dogs. * Apparently ducks and chickens are not bothered. I would conclude from this that having a cat increases your risk right now if the cat goes outside.


The World Heath Organization lifted all quarentines on canines several months ago........

Wait for it.....


----------



## KenOC

Ah, Memorial Day! Summer is starting, we're coming out of enforced hibernation, around here you can once again sit down in a restaurant, boat parades, crowded beaches, and shootings are getting back to normal!


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Ah, Memorial Day! Summer is starting, we're coming out of enforced hibernation, around here you can once again sit down in a restaurant, boat parades, crowded beaches, and shootings are getting back to normal!


Conditions are twice as dangerous around here (NM) as they were a month ago. We're nowhere near peaking.


----------



## KenOC

I took another look at the numbers for my county. Here's how likely you are to die from Covid-19 if diagnosed with it - the case fatality rate, or CFR -- by age group. It's good to be young!


----------



## DaveM

An unmasked 45-50 year old Michigan man was interviewed on a street in a busy tourist area in Michigan. He said he wasn’t going to wear a mask because he’s not going to catch the virus or pass it on to anyone. He said, ‘This thing is going to go away. God is going to heal this land.’ How come I don’t feel reassured.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> An unmasked 45-50 year old Michigan man was interviewed on a street in a busy tourist area in Michigan. He said he wasn't going to wear a mask because he's not going to catch the virus or pass it on to anyone. He said, 'This thing is going to go away. God is going to heal this land.' How come I don't feel reassured.


People are silly that way. Like the guy who missed his plane, which then crashed. "I know God loves me, because he made me miss that plane and I lived." Too bad God wasn't nearly so fond of those other 143 people...


----------



## Bigbang

KenOC said:


> I took another look at the numbers for my county. Here's how likely you are to die from Covid-19 if diagnosed with it - the case fatality rate, or CFR -- by age group. It's good to be young!


It just dawned on me! The older you are the harder it is to run away! Reflexes are not as agile so cannot do evasive maneuvers in crowds. And so many elderly are dependant on help so they are like sitting ducks for the virus. If they are weak with health issues they are getting megadoses of the virus.

Another reason to keep moving and stay active as possible.


----------



## Bigbang

pianozach said:


> If true, this is a game changer.


Oh yea, why? I already knew about cats getting it and maybe passing it on to other cats? Dogs are the most social animals around humans. If humans are their own worst enemy then I do not see what the implications this might have long term.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> I believe our president has given up his rather generous paycheck to charity, 100%, since he took office. That must make him a hero to the left wing. Right? (pause for silence...) Right?
> 
> Hmmm.. I guess it's not the sacrifice that matters, but who makes it. :lol:


His financial 'resources' make the Presidential paycheck unnecessary. He donates it "for show".

Yeah, he makes a big, big show of that.

His financial 'empire' was not divested, and there are an awful lost of questions about how his empire stays afloat. Obviously, we all know that he stiffs contractors, sues anyone that crosses him, countersues anyone that sues him, and uses the legal system to his advantage IN A LEGAL WAY. Of course, it's likely that there's an awful lot of 'dark' money and unethical financial practices going on, but so far, no one have been able to get a good look at his taxes or finances.


----------



## tdc

If you see someone out and about with others or at the store and they are not wearing a mask, most likely it is not because they are being careless or cavalier about the safety of others, but because they have realized this is a fake crisis. The numbers aren't outside of a bad flu season and they've been padded in various ways I've already discussed in this thread.


----------



## science

On comparing covid-19 deaths to flu deaths.



> In the last six flu seasons, the CDC's reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths-that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus-has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts.
> 
> ...
> 
> Can we accurately compare the toll of the flu to the toll of the coronavirus pandemic?
> 
> To do this, we have to compare counted deaths to counted deaths, not counted deaths to wildly inflated statistical estimates. If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu. In other words, the coronavirus is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.


----------



## science

pianozach said:


> His financial 'empire' was not divested


Let KenOC discuss politics... but we better not take the bait. Everyone who isn't actively avoiding facts already knows about many ways that Trump has profited from being president, so there's no use discussing it here.


----------



## science

Another excellent day yesterday for the US in terms of official numbers: only 505 deaths, the fewest since March 29th, and 19,790 new cases, which is more than two days ago but still low relative to the past few weeks. Judging by an uneducated eye test, it's looking like the US might be able to top out at around 1.25 million known active cases and start declining from there. 

For South Korea, though the numbers are still better than the US, they continue to trend in the wrong way, with 16 new cases and 2 new deaths, and once again the total of number of active cases increased. Two days ago there were 705 active cases and now there are 713. 

Brazil found over 13k new cases yesterday, and over 800 deaths. It looks like they'll eventually reach a million cases.


----------



## Guest

tdc said:


> If you see someone out and about with others or at the store and they are not wearing a mask, most likely it is not because they are being careless or cavalier about the safety of others, but because they have realized this is a fake crisis.


There may be more reasons than you allow for. The one you give seems to me the least likely.


----------



## DaveM

Saying that this is a fake crisis is like a passenger in a 747 in a deep dive with an engine on fire refusing the deployed oxygen mask because it’s all a hoax.


----------



## KenOC

The market opens tomorrow after the Memorial Day holiday, and DJIA futures are trading up by 5%, supposedly on hopes of a new vaccine by Novavax Inc, whose stock was _down _7.9% at last count. Go figure.


----------



## Eclectic Al

In these technological days wouldn't it be great if news sites contained an option where you could choose to be (i) corona junkie or (ii) "other".
You would be able to select "Corona", just like you can currently select Sport or Business or whatever. 
On the Corona site you would get endless political chit-chat disguised as about coronavirus, speculation about what might happen, what could have been done differently in the past, more disguised political chit-chat, anecdotes from 1 person (treated as generalisable), stories about how other countries are guessed to be doing things well/badly (take you pick), yet more disguised political chit-chat. Indeed perhaps the Corona choice could take you to the same stuff as if you selected Politics: that would reflect the balance of current coverage and would surely be easy to engineer.
On the main site you would get a brief digest of corona stuff as one story (covering things like any changes to rules, latest official statistics, any major scientific developments). The rest of the stuff would be normal news: a storm has killed people in India, a plane has crashed in Pakistan, China is trying to stamp down on Hong Kong while no one is looking, Richard Branson's space rocket fails, the New York Stock Exchange opens, etc, etc.

I don't watch broadcast news much any more, because you have to put up with the junkie stuff, but surely this can be avoided online. In the last few days in the UK it has become completely absurd, perhaps because the only meaningful things to say about the corona situation have already been said so many times, so you just end up with nonsense chit-chat and political manoeuvring. The China/Hong Kong story (for example) seems huge, but it barely gets a mention. Perhaps the problem is that it is harder for journalists to explore real stories because they can't get out and about so readily, and as a result they report stuff which is easier to get hold of (and political gossip is the easiest of all). The BBC news site is genuinely bizarre today: the lead story is about how the government is trying to shift the focus of the lead story. Well that's a scoop! Presumably they can report in their lead story tomorrow how the government did or did not manage to change the focus of the lead story from the story the BBC had decided was the lead story prior to the story when they said the government was trying to change the lead story. It's so meta.


----------



## Kieran

Yeah, that’s so true, and there is a feeling that as a news narrative, so much has been said about Covid that it’s difficult to discern what’s “news” and what’s filler. Even within news items, it’s hard to tell if the story stacks up, and if the science will be contradicted by lunchtime. Things then become circular and come around again as news stories, because although this is the huge event, it feels like there’s less of value being said. I avoid corona news but it doesn’t avoid me, so I end up getting it anyway. But I never look up covid in my news feeds...


----------



## Kieran

Just a question on the masks: they’re not a requirement in Ireland, are they required in the UK?

And where are people buying them, if they do become a requirement? The pharmacy? Supermarkets? Are they being issued by the government?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> Just a question on the masks: they're not a requirement in Ireland, are they required in the UK?
> 
> And where are people buying them, if they do become a requirement? The pharmacy? Supermarkets? Are they being issued by the government?


I believe that in the UK they are not a requirement anywhere (except, say, in a medical facility as part of the medical procedures). It has been suggested that it might be advisable to wear them in internal spaces where distancing is a problem (eg public transport). If you are out an about in the UK very few people indeed are wearing them.

Of course, because it's what we're doing in the UK, most UK media will be convinced that it is the wrong approach, dependent on their political stance relative to the government.

I don't think there are any special sources of supply for the general population, and I haven't been in shops to see if anyone has them on the shelves - I can't think they'd be there for long. My wife got some from (wait for it) China, and has also made some of her own. I have no idea whether those would be of any use.


----------



## science

In South Korea, it's impolite not to wear a mask in public, and some businesses (such as banks) seem to be requiring their employees to wear them, but the only place they are required by the government is on public transportation.


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> In South Korea, it's impolite not to wear a mask in public, and some businesses (such as banks) seem to be requiring their employees to wear them, but the only place they are required by the government is on public transportation.


The bank robbers over here wear them, I think it's a requirement for them. :lol:

But the idea of it being impolite not to wear them, I wish we had such a sense of courtesy and regard for others in the west. Not necessarily for masks, but in general...


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> I believe that in the UK they are not a requirement anywhere (except, say, in a medical facility as part of the medical procedures). It has been suggested that it might be advisable to wear them in internal spaces where distancing is a problem (eg public transport). If you are out an about in the UK very few people indeed are wearing them.
> 
> Of course, because it's what we're doing in the UK, most UK media will be convinced that it is the wrong approach, dependent on their political stance relative to the government.
> 
> I don't think there are any special sources of supply for the general population, and I haven't been in shops to see if anyone has them on the shelves - I can't think they'd be there for long. My wife got some from (wait for it) China, and has also made some of her own. I have no idea whether those would be of any use.


Our media in Ireland are tending to not be too disagreeable or inquisitive with regards to the government policies on covid, which considering the governing party came 3rd in a 2 horse race general election way back in February, but still haven't vacated their office, is remarkable.

I haven't used public transport because I have a car, but I don't think we have masks as a requirement for the public in hospitals, but I could be wrong. I've seen absolutely no guidance on where to buy them, which I should have by now, if they're a requirement anywhere...


----------



## elgar's ghost

Eclectic Al said:


> I believe that in the UK they are not a requirement anywhere (except, say, in a medical facility as part of the medical procedures). It has been suggested that it might be advisable to wear them in internal spaces where distancing is a problem (eg public transport). If you are out an about in the UK very few people indeed are wearing them.
> 
> _Of course, because it's what we're doing in the UK, most UK media will be convinced that it is the wrong approach, dependent on their political stance relative to the government_.


The mask seems to be a polarising issue with some people in the UK. Most seem to think that it's up to the individual as there is no law for or against, but on the opposite sides of this middle ground opinion the roundheads say that wearing a mask should be mandatory everywhere in public while the cavaliers say that they are little more than a virtue signalling device (especially when worn by younger people).


----------



## science

A lot of discussion about masks seems to center on whether they are effective at preventing the wearer from getting sick, but it seems to me that the purpose is to prevent the wearer from making others sick. 

As always, I wonder, what is the alternative to virtue signaling? In this case it seems to be signaling, "I don't care enough about anyone around me to bother attempting to prevent them from catching anything I might have." Seems rather antisocial. 

Fortunately it seems to be ending as the US had fewer than 20k new known cases yesterday and the UK had fewer than 2k. I suppose we can go on not caring about each other.


----------



## mrdoc

Kieran said:


> Just a question on the masks: they're not a requirement in Ireland, are they required in the UK?
> 
> And where are people buying them, if they do become a requirement? The pharmacy? Supermarkets? Are they being issued by the government?


They are not compulsory in NZ but personally I wish they were,. they must help by catching the exhaled droplets of breath. If you catch the specials they cost NZ$70/100 although NZ has made good progress in keeping its citizens as safe as it can the people are getting over confident and impatient they are asking for a quick move to level 1 lock down this could be a trigger for a second wave add to this the inclusion of animals (birds-fish-sheep-cattle) as carriers and you have a very dangerous situation. I just get the feeling that there is something that we are not being told, I hope I am wrong.


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> A lot of discussion about masks seems to center on whether they are effective at preventing the wearer from getting sick, but it seems to me that the purpose is to prevent the wearer from making others sick.


This was explained to me last year, because I wondered why Oriental people were wearing masks, I wondered if they felt the air was too polluted, or what was going on, and it was explained that it was because they may have a cold and didn't want to spread germs. The mask wasn't to protect them, but to protect others. It impressed me much, I have to say.

There are plenty of people wearing masks here, but it just isn't compulsory. There hasn't been a huge discussion of it yet. Whatever the efficacy of masks, I think that whatever makes people feel they're safer, is a good idea. Stress, and fear of the virus, is a debilitating thing. Today in the post office a woman was very nervous in the queue and her behaviour suggested that she needed more than the 2m distance that was marked on the floor, so I stayed well back. Some people groaned behind me, but what's the difference? It took the lady two minutes at the counter to do her thing, so nobody was gonna lose anything taking an extra precaution, in order to make her feel secure...


----------



## Kieran

mrdoc said:


> If you catch the specials they cost NZ$70/100


What does this mean? A box of masks in NZ$70/100? Are they masks you dispose of after one use? How many masks per box?

I doubt there's "something that we are not being told" - it seems that every government and scientist is active in this, and so no secrets could be held from us, but you never know...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Just back from sitting on a "beach", actually a sandy area near a lake where people can swim. Interesting to observe behaviour. (No masks in evidence, by the way.)
All groups that I say were well-distanced from groups they didn't know (although not particularly further than normal I don't think, given that it wasn't that busy and people keep their distance anyway - it is England, after all).
Groups that seemed to be meeting up for a day out were interesting, and I am sure there was mixing of households (- burn them at the stake). Heard remarks along the lines of: "Just out breaking the rules" in their banter. Adults seemed to be keeping their distance (- I saw no hugs, or even handshakes), but willing to meet in groups (which I think is against the current rules), and kids were mixing fairly indiscriminately.
There was an interesting couple of mothers talking about Dominic Cummings (big media storm here at the moment), with remarks along the lines of "Seemed OK to me" and "Don't think they'll stop until they've got him, though", in relation to the media. They then moved onto sending kids back to school where the attitude seemed to be "When the school's open then they're going back".
I came away with the impression that I had been in the company of ordinary people, just getting on with their lives and making their own (to them) reasonable compromises with the situation, and not obsessing with Twitter and rules.
Came back on the M25, which seemed much busier than a few days ago. I live on a fairly major road, and that's certainly much noisier and busier now than it was. I welcome the return of the noise, and even the longer time it takes to cross the road. Good old traffic.
I can't help feeling that out in the real world there's a drift (no less powerful because it is unspoken) of people just feeling that they've done their bit, seen the numbers fall drastically, and now wanting to get on with their lives, with a "second wave" something that they will react to as and when it happens.


----------



## wkasimer

science said:


> A lot of discussion about masks seems to center on whether they are effective at preventing the wearer from getting sick, but it seems to me that the purpose is to prevent the wearer from making others sick.


That's exactly right. Whenever someone writes "masks don't do anything", I would like to suggest to them that next time they're having surgery, they should tell the surgeon and the other five people in the room not to bother wearing masks, and see how that works out.


----------



## Eclectic Al

wkasimer said:


> That's exactly right. Whenever someone writes "masks don't do anything", I would like to suggest to them that next time they're having surgery, they should tell the surgeon and the other five people in the room not to bother wearing masks, and see how that works out.


I have provided a link below.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/

This is genuinely the top hit I got from Google in response to my enquiry: "why do surgeons wear masks". I didn't have to go and find something that gave me the answer I wanted, or anything like that.
The research is interesting, in that it seems to conclude that no one really knows whether they achieve anything in surgery, for the patient or the surgical staff.
I post this not because I hold any brief particularly for or against masks, but just because it seems (like so much in this ongoing spectacle) that no one really knows.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> A lot of discussion about masks seems to center on whether they are effective at preventing the wearer from getting sick, but it seems to me that the purpose is to prevent the wearer from making others sick.
> 
> As always, I wonder, what is the alternative to virtue signaling? In this case it seems to be signaling, "I don't care enough about anyone around me to bother attempting to prevent them from catching anything I might have." Seems rather antisocial.
> 
> Fortunately it seems to be ending as the US had fewer than 20k new known cases yesterday and the UK had fewer than 2k. I suppose we can go on not caring about each other.


My understanding is that, as you say, the mask is mostly effective when worn by the infected person. If you sneeze, cough, or exhale hard there is a jet of air that can spread a substantial distance (hence the 2m "social distancing"). The mask will disrupt this jet of air and result in a more diffuse flow of air and less potential spread. If you are inhaling virus, it is probably microscopic virus-laden droplet which will go through anything but a sophisticated mask used correctly.

I wear a mask when I am out of the house in an indoor setting (a store). I don't wear one if I am in a public outdoor setting (a park) because I can always maintain a large distance from others.


----------



## science

Baron Scarpia said:


> I don't wear one if I am in a public outdoor setting (a park) because I can always maintain a large distance from others.


It is starting to sound like outdoor spaces are safe generally anyhow, and certainly a park would be.


----------



## elgar's ghost

For anyone keeping their eyes on the UK cases/fatality figures on Worldometer today's case figure is incorrect - for 4043 read 2004. Also, on May 20 Worldometer recorded the daily case figure as -525 instead of 2472 so I have no idea what that was about. BBC's site has the correct up-to-date information.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> It is starting to sound like outdoor spaces are safe generally anyhow, and certainly a park would be.


I do wear a mask outdoors if the situation is congested, waiting on line to get into a store that restricts the number of customers allowed in, for instance. I think it would make sense to wear a mask outdoors in an urban environment with crowded sidewalks, etc, but I don't live in an urban environment and the outdoor venues I visit are low density.


----------



## Open Book

A fortune cookie in my recent Chinese takeout order seemed to refer to sitting at home to avoid coronavirus:

"One of the best things to do sometimes is simply to be."

Especially since we both got the same fortune.


----------



## erki

With the questions of masks there are two things to consider. One is the new waste item (along with pampers and everything in plastic) that ends up in the ocean. The other thing to think about is if you really want to establish "the new normal" that people wearing masks everywhere for whatever reason(not only to protect others). 
For one I don't like the prospect being able to go out in some kind of protective suite only - now masks but what next. So I do not wear the mask - if I am sick I stay home. Eventually every virus will be here to live with and we have the body already to protect us. If that is not enough - so be it.


----------



## Open Book

Why is it so hard for people to wear masks? Is that really asking so much? Even for a few more months more?

In past times of crisis, in times of war, people were asked to put their lives at risk on the battlefield and to make do with rationing at home. It isn't so much to be asked to wear a mask.


----------



## Kieran

Open Book said:


> Why is it so hard for people to wear masks? Is that really asking so much? Even for a few more months more?
> 
> In past times of crisis, in times of war, people were asked to put their lives at risk on the battlefield and to make do with rationing at home. It isn't so much to be asked to wear a mask.


I suffer from claustrophobia, a mask might be a problem if I have to wear it too long. But if it becomes a condition of travel, for example, well, I have my holidays booked, I intend to travel if it's practical to, but I don't fancy wearing a mask for the whole duration of my trip (including swims in the Med  )...


----------



## Open Book

I get that, I don't love masks and I am claustrophobic, too. I don't think it's at all practical to wear them swimming. They are needed less outdoors unless it's a crowded open air place where you're going to inadvertently be bumping into people.

I believe in more than two meters of distancing. And not being downwind of someone you are talking to outdoors.

As for the environmental waste issue, there's nothing we can do about that any more than the huge amount of waste produced by hospitals.


----------



## Kieran

Open Book said:


> I get that, I don't love masks and I am claustrophobic, too. I don't think it's at all practical to wear them swimming. They are needed less outdoors unless it's a crowded open air place where you're going to inadvertently be bumping into people.
> 
> I believe in more than two meters of distancing. And not being downwind of someone you are talking to outdoors.
> 
> As for the environmental waste issue, there's nothing we can do about that any more than the huge amount of waste produced by hospitals.


I think that we'll know more as the summer progresses (northern hemisphere). Has the seasonality of the virus been decided, or excluded? I don't know yet. I definitely believe in keeping a respectful distance, but this is my default setting anyway. I remember howling at the episode of Seinfeld, with the close-talker. I'm a bit wary of people in my space. I'll wear a mask if I have to, for indoors shopping, air travel, etc.

As for the environmental waste issue, it's definitely going to be a big issue, if everybody is wearing these masks...


----------



## elgar's ghost

I'm still slightly confused about quarantine for travellers. For example, I think Spain said they will be lifting the 14-day quarantine rules for travellers in July(?), but what about people arriving in Spain from countries where the virus still hasn't peaked by then?


----------



## Open Book

erki said:


> For one I don't like the prospect being able to go out in some kind of protective suite only - now masks but what next.


I'm expecting space helmets.


----------



## erki

Open Book said:


> Why is it so hard for people to wear masks? Is that really asking so much? ...


Yes, it is too much to ask - it should not be for anyone to decide but me. You could ask me and I may comply however. But it is not right and as I said above I do not want to live in the world like that. Well maybe I shall not be able to - either I die or some mask freaks will stone me to death.



> I'm expecting space helmets.


Here you go!


----------



## Open Book

erki said:


> Yes, it is too much to ask - it should not be for anyone to decide but me. You could ask me and I may comply however. But it is not right and as I said above I do not want to live in the world like that. Well maybe I shall not be able to - either I die or some mask freaks will stone me to death.
> 
> Here you go!


Would you comply with being drafted to fight if your country were in danger?

Seems so quaint now with volunteer armies. And no wars on First World soil in at least a generation. Well, except for some civil wars.


----------



## KenOC

*Elon Musk wants you to read this story about 'one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time'*

Yes, Elon is a fan of "tech entrepreneur, military vet and bioengineer" Yinon Weiss.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"In the face of a novel virus threat, China clamped down on its citizens. Academics used faulty information to build faulty models. Leaders relied on these faulty models. Dissenting views were suppressed. The media flamed fears and the world panicked."
…
Weiss took shots at the government for taking extreme action when the fatality rate for those under 65 years old "is no more dangerous than driving 13 to 101 miles per day." He used this chart to downplay the risks facing those not in the most vulnerable categories:


----------



## Kieran

elgars ghost said:


> I'm still slightly confused about quarantine for travellers. For example, I think Spain said they will be lifting the 14-day quarantine rules for travellers in July(?), but what about people arriving in Spain from countries where the virus still hasn't peaked by then?


They may not be allowed to travel. Flights are opening in July from Ireland, and I suppose each country has to decide when it's safe to leave, and who it's safe to allow enter...


----------



## KenOC

Here's the *article by Weiss* that the *Marketwatch story* I posted earlier refers to. Weiss's bombardment of Neil Ferguson is impressive in its intensity.

"The March 16 report by Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson is credited (or blamed) with causing the U.K. to lock down and contributing to the domino effect of global lockdowns. The model has since come under intense criticism for being "totally unreliable and a buggy mess."

"This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2005 predicted 200 million could die from the bird flu. Total deaths over the last 15 years turned out to be 455. This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2009 predicted that 65,000 people could die in the U.K. from the swine flu. The final number ended up around 392. Now, in 2020, he predicted that 500,000 British would die from coronavirus."

"His deeply flawed model led the United States to fear over 2 million deaths and was used to justify locking down nearly the entire nation. Dr. Ferguson is a character of Shakespearean drama and tragedy. His March 17 presentation to British elites on the dire need to take action ironically may have infected Boris Johnson and other top British officials, as Mr. Ferguson himself tested positive for COVID-19 two days later. Then in May he resigned in disgrace after he broke his own quarantine rules to meet clandestinely with a married woman."

It is not recorded, however, that Prof. Ferguson ever kicked his dog.


----------



## Open Book

C.D.C. Warns of 'Aggressive' Rats Searching for Food During Shutdowns

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/24/us/cdc-coronavirus-rats.html?action=click&algo=combo_lda_unique_clicks_decay_6_50_ranks&block=more_in_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=291540556&impression_id=968579700&index=0&pgtype=Article&region=footer


----------



## Open Book

KenOC said:


> *Elon Musk wants you to read this story about 'one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time'*
> 
> Yes, Elon is a fan of "tech entrepreneur, military vet and bioengineer" Yinon Weiss.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> "In the face of a novel virus threat, China clamped down on its citizens. Academics used faulty information to build faulty models. Leaders relied on these faulty models. Dissenting views were suppressed. The media flamed fears and the world panicked."
> …
> Weiss took shots at the government for taking extreme action when the fatality rate for those under 65 years old "is no more dangerous than driving 13 to 101 miles per day." He used this chart to downplay the risks facing those not in the most vulnerable categories:


Isn't that chart actually saying that risk of dying from coronavirus equals the risk of dying from all other causes of death put together (regardless of age)?


----------



## Kieran

KenOC said:


> It is not recorded, however, that Prof. Ferguson ever kicked his dog.


Private Eye Phillip Marlowe mentions "a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."

If Ferguson doesn't have a stained glass window, I suggest the dog hide. We've all seen photos of the Blonde...


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> Isn't that chart actually saying that risk of dying from coronavirus equals the risk of dying from all other causes of death put together (regardless of age)?


For the coronavirus risk to equal the riskof all other causes of death combined, it would have to kill just over 2.5 million people each year who otherwise would have lived. The actual death rate seems like it will be well beyond an order of magnitude lower than that, though clearly more than deaths incurred in a typical flu season.

I believe it shows that if you catch the virus, you'll be twice as likely as otherwise to die within a year, from any cause, than it you didn't catch it. For people below about 65, since their mortality chances are low to begin with, doubling them really doesn't add much. For older people, it makes more of a difference.


----------



## Open Book

KenOC said:


> For the coronavirus risk to equal the riskof all other causes of death combined, it would have to kill just over 2.5 million people each year who otherwise would have lived. The actual death rate seems like it will be well beyond an order of magnitude lower than that, though clearly more than deaths incurred in a typical flu season.


2.5 million in the whole world? Or the U.S.? With or without social distancing? If the latter, and everyone in the U.S. catches it in a year, that would equal about 2.5 million deaths. That is about what was projected by some models.



KenOC said:


> I believe it shows that if you catch the virus, you'll be twice as likely as otherwise to die within a year, from any cause, than it you didn't catch it. For people below about 65, since their mortality chances are low to begin with, doubling them really doesn't add much. For older people, it makes more of a difference.


Yeah, it wasn't quite right for me to say regardless of age. From about age 40 on what I said is true. It's the same as saying the mortality rate is doubled.

To me for one single new cause of death to equal the previous mortality rate is a big deal. Musk is spinning it in a way that is advantageous to industry.


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> 2.5 million in the whole world? Or the U.S.? With or without social distancing? If the latter, and everyone in the U.S. catches it in a year, that would equal about 2.5 million deaths. That is about what was projected by some models.


2.5 million (actually, a few more) people die each year in the US from all causes per the census bureau. The number is pre-coronavirus.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Here's the *article by Weiss* that the *Marketwatch story* I posted earlier refers to. Weiss's bombardment of Neil Ferguson is impressive in its intensity.
> 
> "The March 16 report by Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson is credited (or blamed) with causing the U.K. to lock down and contributing to the domino effect of global lockdowns. The model has since come under intense criticism for being "totally unreliable and a buggy mess."
> 
> "This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2005 predicted 200 million could die from the bird flu. Total deaths over the last 15 years turned out to be 455. This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2009 predicted that 65,000 people could die in the U.K. from the swine flu. The final number ended up around 392. Now, in 2020, he predicted that 500,000 British would die from coronavirus."...


I read the article by Weiss. IMO, it is highly flawed with a lot of inaccuracies and a selective cherry picking of data to fit his agenda. If he was going to criticize Ferguson, it might have been in his own interest to not put out such a fluff piece.


----------



## science

It is not apparent to me that the US's numbers are getting better outside of the NYC area. 

My prediction at this point is that social distancing, wearing masks, and so on are just too unpopular to last. People will soon be back in churches and restaurants and offices in sufficient numbers to keep this spreading for a long time. Right now we know of 100k deaths in the US, but we also know that there have been many more. I would not be surprised if we hit 200k before it's over. 

If we'd done absolutely nothing, the numbers would of course be much larger. 

Let's say we saved 800k American lives. Was that worth it to most Americans? Seems to me the answer is no. If we saved even fewer, the answer is definitely not.


----------



## KenOC

Worldometer has published an interesting analysis of *New York's experience* with the current pandemic. Bear in mind that this analysis is for New York only, the full story has yet to be told, and there are obviously some estimates and assumptions. Most of the analysis is from early May.

There are 1,671,351 cases of infection, about ten times the official estimate. At the same time, there are 23,430 deaths, about twice the official estimate. 1.40% of cases have died, or 0.28% of the general population.

0.09% of the under-65 aged population has died from the virus. 89% of these deaths were of patients with an underlying condition known to exacerbate the disease.

1.46% of the 65+ aged population has died from the virus. That's a death rate about 17 times higher than the younger group.

Takeaways from these numbers, to be taken with some obvious reservations:

- If you are under 65, your chances of catching and dying from the coronavirus are, on average, less than one in a thousand. If you have no serious underlying condition, they're closer to one in ten thousand.

- If you are over 65, your chances of catching the virus and dying are one in 70; you are at much greater risk.


----------



## mountmccabe

science said:


> It is not apparent to me that the US's numbers are getting better outside of the NYC area.
> 
> My prediction at this point is that social distancing, wearing masks, and so on are just too unpopular to last. People will soon be back in churches and restaurants and offices in sufficient numbers to keep this spreading for a long time. Right now we know of 100k deaths in the US, but we also know that there have been many more. I would not be surprised if we hit 200k before it's over.
> 
> If we'd done absolutely nothing, the numbers would of course be much larger.
> 
> Let's say we saved 800k American lives. Was that worth it to most Americans? Seems to me the answer is no. If we saved even fewer, the answer is definitely not.


Most metrics are not getting better outside of the NYC area. This tweet thread has details including some discussion of individual states looking both at new cases and positive rates, since we've had such a mixed experience.

It seems that most people are remaining cautious. In many locations people started staying home more before restrictions went in place, and it seems that while there is some more movement as some jurisdictions loosen their restrictions, many people (and businesses) are not ready to go.

I expect people will start to feel more safe, which is dangerous given the length of time it takes to see effects. The deaths we are seeing now are largely from what was happening a month ago, not last week.

I don't like making predictions, but basically I see no plausible scenario in which there are fewer than 100k more deaths from COVID-19 in the US this year.


----------



## mrdoc

Kieran said:


> What does this mean? A box of masks in NZ$70/100? Are they masks you dispose of after one use? How many masks per box?
> 
> I doubt there's "something that we are not being told" - it seems that every government and scientist is active in this, and so no secrets could be held from us, but you never know...


 NZ$70/100 means NZ$70 per 100 masks I don't know what type but suspect that at that price they are for single use


----------



## KenOC

mountmccabe said:


> ...I don't like making predictions, but basically I see no plausible scenario in which there are fewer than 100k more deaths from COVID-19 in the US this year.


This is above the upper bounds of any of the major forecasting models I know of. Nevertheless, they've been quite wrong in the past, and anything can happen.

In my own area, the numbers are low but have been climbing for 2-3 months. No sign of the climb ceasing. Nevertheless we're opening, with restrictions: Churches, parks, beaches, nail and hair salons, inside seating at restaurants, etc. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder whether all this hunkering down and economic damage has actually saved many lives, or merely deferred deaths for a few months.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> This is above the upper bounds of any of the major forecasting models I know of. Nevertheless, they've been quite wrong in the past, and anything can happen.
> 
> In my own area, the numbers are low but have been climbing for 2-3 months. No sign of the climb ceasing. Nevertheless we're opening, with restrictions: Churches, parks, beaches, nail and hair salons, inside seating at restaurants, etc. It will be interesting to see what happens.
> 
> Meanwhile, I have to wonder whether all this hunkering down and economic damage has actually saved many lives, or merely deferred deaths for a few months.


In some areas, the hunkering down was meant to avoid overloading the ICUs i.e. flatten the curve.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> In some areas, the hunkering down was meant to avoid overloading the ICUs i.e. flatten the curve.


Yes indeed. Of course by flattening the curve you may only be making it wider (longer) without reducing the area under the curve (total deaths).


----------



## DaveM

My guess is that as long as hospitals are not in danger of being overloaded, the country, pretty quickly in some areas (eg. Trump’s base states) and little by little, in other states is going to open up to, theoretically, get the economy going again regardless of lives lost in the process. I say ‘theoretically’ because it’s hard to tell how many people are going to turn out in support of a lot of businesses (eg. restaurants, movies, brick and mortar stores) anytime soon.


----------



## DaveM

Fwiw: Alabama cases are on the rise and ICU beds are at capacity. Minnesota ICU cases are on the rise with ICU beds at almost 90% capacity. Nebraska in-hospital Clovid-19 cases are at an all-time high.

Regarding those who wonder whether shutting down businesses was worth it, I’m wondering what the alternative could have been. Considering how contagious the virus is, I can’t imagine people having crowded into restaurants, movie theaters, stores and all the other areas where they might be coughing, talking loudly, laughing and anything that might cause the resulting effluent to hit people within 6+ feet of them. I hate seeing all these businesses going under or in danger of it, but what alternative could have worked is beyond my pay grade or overall cognitive ability to come up with.


----------



## Open Book

If anybody turns out en masse it will be young people since they are repeatedly being told that they face little viral risk (not saying it isn't true) and since they have less fear of death anyway.


----------



## pianozach

Open Book said:


> Isn't that chart actually saying that risk of dying from coronavirus equals the risk of dying from all other causes of death put together (regardless of age)?


I think you're right.

The trouble with using statistics is that they can be manipulated and still be true, but look like something else.

So . . . the three overlaid curves are quite similar looking (Also note that they are using a "log scale" on the left to show the rise; I'm not sure I know what they mean by that).

So the chance of death rises for both males and females as they age. Check.

But it's being compared to the death rate/cases for the 'Red Dots' graph. Yes, the chance of death rises with age at the same rate. But somehow the male/female "normal death rates" don't seem like the same measurement as that of death rate/age/case. There's a third factor not present in the male/female graphs.

As the *male/female deaths per age* graphs are *xy* graphs, and the deaths per diagnoses per age is more of an *xyz* graph, something is missing, or being mis-applied.


----------



## Open Book

The log scale is just that the left side grid is not equally spaced by 10's, but by _powers _of 10. Otherwise it would be hard to get all the info on one page without squishing it and making it less legible (ages 0 to 40).

They've combined genders for the coronavirus deaths, dotted line. OK.

The way the graph might be misread is that people might think the dotted line represents a _total _of deaths from all other causes _plus_ coronavirus deaths and think, gee, they're not much different, coronavirus doesn't change the death rate that much. When actually the dotted line is coronavirus deaths _alone_.

For children coronavirus is way below other causes of death, which was a tiny number to begin with, 0.01%

For adults over 35 coronavirus deaths start to equal or exceed all other causes of death combined. This is still kind of OK for relatively young adults since their death rate is only 0.1% (or less) and doubling it, it still remains small at 0.2%, as Ken said. This sounds optimistic and is probably what Musk is trumpeting.

For much older adults when the death rate doubles it's a bigger deal. At 85 you can go from a death rate of 10% to 20%, a big increase. But Musk doesn't have many 85 year olds working for him.


----------



## DaveM

There continues to be anecdotal reports of positive effects of famotidine on Clovid-19 patients. A recent article presents a 47 year old with hypertension, type 2 diabetes, lipid abnormalities and a BMI of 36 (fairly, but not morbidly obese). He was given famotidine early on in treatment and while showing the beginning of potentially serious respiratory symptoms went on to have only mild to moderate symptoms, in other words, less of a protracted severe disease than was expected. 

The article points out some of the more recent rather surprising findings that famotidine does not inhibit the attachment of the virus to cell receptors and does not inhibit replication. A theory presented is that famotidine may cause an effective histamine H2 receptor blockade and inhibit mast cell activation and degradation that may explain some of the major inflammatory complications of the disease.

This means that to be effective, famotidine has to be given early in the onset of Clovid-19 and would likely not help those with already advanced disease.

If this theory is true, it opens the door to the possibility of other drugs with similar effects being useful.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Yes indeed. Of course by flattening the curve you may only be making it wider (longer) without reducing the area under the curve (total deaths).


Almost every day you post some news about a potential cure or better treatment, and some of those will turn out. So delaying the deaths will eventually mean saving a lot of lives.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> To me for one single new cause of death to equal the previous mortality rate is a big deal. Musk is spinning it in a way that is advantageous to industry.


As KenOC pointed out, that is not what the chart is saying. The all causes mortality rate here has been calculated by dividing deaths by total population. By contrast, the rate shown for Covid-19 involves dividing only by the population who have Covid-19. Suppose that the numbers have been calculated assuming that 10% of the population have the virus. Then the Covid-19 mortality for an average person in the total population would be 10x lower than is shown,

I assume that a number of estimates are floating around in plotting this chart, but as it notes at the bottom the implication (if we accept the numbers) is that if you have the Covid-19 virus it can broadly be taken that your chance of dying from it is similar on average to the risk you were previously running that you might not live out the coming year.
The on average point is also key in that people in good heath have a lower risk than people with existing conditions both (i) of dying anyway, and (ii) of dying [earlier] of Covid-19. For some particular conditions (diabetes with obesity, immuno-compromised) it would appear that the Covid-19 risk is particularly severe. That would imply, however, that if you haven't got one of those conditions then your Covid-19 risk if you have the virus is lower than your normal chance of not living 1 more year. If the bulk of Covid-19 deaths are among those with a particular group of pre-existing conditions then the excess risk for other people will be very low indeed.

I posted some calculations earlier, based on UK population mortality tables. In those I assumed that everyone was subject to the extra risk (so I was implicitly assuming that we are all doomed to get it quite soon). I also assumed that the effect was to multiply mortality by 8, rather than by the 2 implied above. These showed that if you were (say) 30 years old then to the nearest year this made no difference to your life expectancy - the impact was too small.
I also looked at life expectancies based on normal mortality but starting in previous years. This showed that for 30 year olds my 8x factor applied to mortality starting in the year 2020 was equivalent to using normal mortality starting in the year 2017 for men or 2018 for women. That is, the impact of the exaggerated Covid-19 effect which I used was equivalent to assuming that the improvements in mortality which the table assumes happen all the time were reset back in time by 2 or 3 years. In terms of life expectancy, if you don't have one of the pre-disposing conditions and weren't worried in 2017 then you shouldn't be worried now.

The way I look at this is that it implies that if the mortality rates in the chart are correct then it is entirely irrational for healthy younger people to be particularly bothered about Covid-19 for themselves, if what matters is life expectancy. However, it has a degree of rationality for them to be somewhat concerned if it is noted that life expectancy does not weight years of life higher in the near future than in the distant future. That is, the impact of Covid-19 is that a small number of people lose a large number of years of expected future life because they are excess deaths in the current year. People might be more concerned about this than about everyone in the population losing 3 months of expected future life, spread over the next 50 years (for example, by everyone being a tiny bit less healthy).
Of course, the above point is dangerous territory in this thread, because it is akin to saying that imminent deaths of younger people matter more than imminent deaths of older people, because the older people do not have so many future years of life to lose.
I think that to the extent that young people might be scared on their own account the reason is simpler than above: some young people don't like considering that they could die soon, and Covid-19 is bringing this idea into their minds, whereas the risk was always there and it has not changed drastically but they didn't previously think about it much. This is yet another reason why I find the media the villains in this piece: the style of their coverage puts this idea in the minds of younger people (because of the blanket nature of coverage and the doomsday nature of some of it) and prompts a drastic mis-estimate of relative risk in the minds of healthy young people. I think then that the drivers of public opinion arising from this media storm prompt governments to take wrong decisions, in seeking to manage a situation where the population is massively mis-estimating the risks.


----------



## Mandryka

Eclectic Al said:


> As KenOC pointed out, that is not what the chart is saying. The all causes mortality rate here has been calculated by dividing deaths by total population. By contrast, the rate shown for Covid-19 involves dividing only by the population who have Covid-19. Suppose that the numbers have been calculated assuming that 10% of the population have the virus. Then the Covid-19 mortality for an average person in the total population would be 10x lower than is shown,
> 
> I assume that a number of estimates are floating around in plotting this chart, but as it notes at the bottom the implication (if we accept the numbers) is that if you have the Covid-19 virus it can broadly be taken that your chance of dying from it is similar on average to the risk you were previously running that you might not live out the coming year.
> The on average point is also key in that people in good heath have a lower risk than people with existing conditions both (i) of dying anyway, and (ii) of dying [earlier] of Covid-19. For some particular conditions (diabetes with obesity, immuno-compromised) it would appear that the Covid-19 risk is particularly severe. That would imply, however, that if you haven't got one of those conditions then your Covid-19 risk if you have the virus is lower than your normal chance of not living 1 more year. If the bulk of Covid-19 deaths are among those with a particular group of pre-existing conditions then the excess risk for other people will be very low indeed.
> 
> I posted some calculations earlier, based on UK population mortality tables. In those I assumed that everyone was subject to the extra risk (so I was implicitly assuming that we are all doomed to get it quite soon). I also assumed that the effect was to multiply mortality by 8, rather than by the 2 implied above. These showed that if you were (say) 30 years old then to the nearest year this made no difference to your life expectancy - the impact was too small.
> I also looked at life expectancies based on normal mortality but starting in previous years. This showed that for 30 year olds my 8x factor applied to mortality starting in the year 2020 was equivalent to using normal mortality starting in the year 2017 for men or 2018 for women. That is, the impact of the exaggerated Covid-19 effect which I used was equivalent to assuming that the improvements in mortality which the table assumes happen all the time were reset back in time by 2 or 3 years. In terms of life expectancy, if you don't have one of the pre-disposing conditions and weren't worried in 2017 then you shouldn't be worried now.
> 
> The way I look at this is that it implies that if the mortality rates in the chart are correct then it is entirely irrational for healthy younger people to be particularly bothered about Covid-19 for themselves, if what matters is life expectancy. However, it has a degree of rationality for them to be somewhat concerned if it is noted that life expectancy does not weight years of life higher in the near future than in the distant future. That is, the impact of Covid-19 is that a small number of people lose a large number of years of expected future life because they are excess deaths in the current year. People might be more concerned about this than about everyone in the population losing 3 months of expected future life, spread over the next 50 years (for example, by everyone being a tiny bit less healthy).
> Of course, the above point is dangerous territory in this thread, because it is akin to saying that imminent deaths of younger people matter more than imminent deaths of older people, because the older people do not have so many future years of life to lose.
> I think that to the extent that young people might be scared on their own account the reason is simpler than above: some young people don't like considering that they could die soon, and Covid-19 is bringing this idea into their minds, whereas the risk was always there and it has not changed drastically but they didn't previously think about it much. This is yet another reason why I find the media the villains in this piece: the style of their coverage puts this idea in the minds of younger people (because of the blanket nature of coverage and the doomsday nature of some of it) and prompts a drastic mis-estimate of relative risk in the minds of healthy young people. I think then that the drivers of public opinion arising from this media storm prompt governments to take wrong decisions, in seeking to manage a situation where the population is massively mis-estimating the risks.


Thanks.

By the way, have you read Derek Parfit? If you're interested in attitude to future times and other people, you will be interested in his writing I think.


----------



## science

Clearly Elon Musk needs to talk to Bill Gates.


----------



## science

At least 40 new cases found in South Korea today, the highest since April 8.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Mandryka said:


> Thanks.
> 
> By the way, have you read Derek Parfit? If you're interested in attitude to future times and other people, you will be interested in his writing I think.


No, although thanks for the suggestion. I do read bits of philosophy from time to time.


----------



## Eclectic Al

The world is mad.
The RNLI is a UK charity, providing lifeguards for beaches and running lifeboats, using volunteers. These heroic people take risks (sometimes severe risks) with their own lives to try and save others, for example by taking their boats out in storms. Unsurprisingly they are also fit and healthy.
What has the leadership of the RNLI been doing lately? Saying that the public should be banned from beaches because lifeguards can't rescue people safely as some people may have Covid-19. Apparently over the bank holiday weekend (with excellent weather) beaches did not have lifeguards, as the RNLI has not fully worked out how to keep its volunteers safe from Covid-19.
A 17 year old girl and a man drowned in Cornwall over the bank holiday. Who knows if there was any connection with the RNLI leadership's stance. I hope not.
I am waiting for the RNLI leaders to ban their lifeboats from going out in choppy water, as it's a bit risky. I think the chief executive (Mark Dowie is his name) should next be given the job of running the fire service. Perhaps he could make sure that fire fighters never go near a burning building, as it might be a little dangerous.
Has anyone asked the volunteers if they would be happy to continue to patrol? I imagine many of them, having chosen to take risks for the sake of others, may be bemused and severely disillusioned.

Here is some of Mr Dowie's biog from the RNLI website:

"Mark brings with him significant corporate leadership experience having been a senior commercial and investment banking professional who was most recently Chief Executive Officer, Corporate and Institutional Bank at Standard Chartered Bank. In this role he led the bank’s global wholesale banking business and was responsible for nearly 20,000 people in 62 countries around the world.

"He has a very wide range of experience in international business management including strategic, financial and organisational change, governmental advice, and small business investment and ownership."

That's reassuring then.


----------



## science

Not having lifeguards seems like a perfect example of relying on personal responsibility rather than institutional policy.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> Not having lifeguards seems like a perfect example of relying on personal responsibility rather than institutional policy.


I don't disagree. There's a lot in that, and the RNLI is indeed an institution, albeit a voluntary one.

It's a bit tricky to see what it's for, though, if it doesn't accept that its volunteers head into dangerous situations rather than avoiding them until they themselves are absolutely safe.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> I don't disagree. There's a lot in that, and the RNLI is indeed an institution, albeit a voluntary one.
> 
> It's a bit tricky to see what it's for, though, if it doesn't accept that its volunteers head into dangerous situations rather than avoiding them until they themselves are absolutely safe.


On the other hand, I believe it's been shown that outdoor gatherings are pretty safe, so that's something we might as well get going again ASAP.


----------



## Art Rock

I've seen several people state that it is safer outside, but what is it based on? Hopefully not on the Wuhan data which showed that - but with one person catching it outside their home (whether real outside or in public transport or shop or office) they would infect four others at home - leading to 20% outside/80% inside figures......


----------



## Flamme

In my couhntry and with me personally it is almost like all is gone and it was a BAD DREAM...I was informed that I will work the whole month next couple of months which is gr8 and will help my psyche cope with baggage of stress corona brought in my life.


----------



## eljr

science said:


> On the other hand, I believe it's been shown that outdoor gatherings are pretty safe, so that's something we might as well get going again ASAP.


who showed it? How? Link?


----------



## Guest

science said:


> On the other hand, I believe it's been shown that outdoor gatherings are pretty safe, so that's something we might as well get going again ASAP.


I wouldn't go so far. My sense that a mask is not necessary outdoors is based on the fact that I am not in a confined space and have no trouble avoiding strangers. I'm only close to members of my household. At an outdoor "gathering" you will be in relatively close contact with people outside your household, which is the thing to avoid.


----------



## Art Rock

science said:


> On the other hand, I believe it's been shown that outdoor gatherings are pretty safe, so that's something we might as well get going again ASAP.


A recently updated NYT article suggests that outside is safer than inside, but only when social distancing is practiced. So small gatherings obviously.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/coronavirus-what-to-do-outside.html


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> For the coronavirus risk to equal the riskof all other causes of death combined, it would have to kill just over 2.5 million people each year who otherwise would have lived. The actual death rate seems like it will be well beyond an order of magnitude lower than that, though clearly more than deaths incurred in a typical flu season.
> 
> I believe it shows that if you catch the virus, you'll be twice as likely as otherwise to die within a year, from any cause, than it you didn't catch it. For people below about 65, since their mortality chances are low to begin with, doubling them really doesn't add much. For older people, it makes more of a difference.


The virus could likely kill 2 million people in the US, if you let it spread unchecked and infect everybody. There are actually two probabilities in this calculation or risk assessment. 1) How likely am I to catch the virus? 2) if I catch the virus, how likely am I to die? The first one is obviously heavily dependent on the policies of containment. The second one not so much.

and this survival statistics is more complicated than you likely think. I remember from a course of medical statistics something called the survival function and hazard function and that the mathematics is quite complicated (I have never used it myself)
https://web.stanford.edu/~lutian/coursepdf/unit1.pdf


----------



## EdwardBast

Art Rock said:


> I've seen several people state that it is safer outside, *but what is it based on?* Hopefully not on the Wuhan data which showed that - but with one person catching it outside their home (whether real outside or in public transport or shop or office) they would infect four others at home - leading to 20% outside/80% inside figures......


The chance of infection is related to viral load, the quantity and concentration of microbes taken in. A passing, momentary exposure is far less dangerous than the continued breathing of the same virus saturated air. Since the air supply outdoors is moving, replaced constantly in any one place, only passing exposures are likely there. When infected persons are present indoors, however, the virus is less likely to be effectively dispersed and concentrations of the virus in the air increase, as do the chances of infection. Also, UV rays in sunlight are inhospitable to the virus.


----------



## science

There have also been some pretty good studies now of how transmission has occurred, and most of them occurred in enclosed areas such as busses and restaurants. Several news sources have reported on these studies, but the one I found most helpful was it the Atlantic.

Unfortunately that doesn't include the study of some people who attended a Buddhist festival in China, which is particularly revealing. You can get a PDF of the study online, but Vox summarizes:



> Another recent study out of China investigated an outbreak that started at a Buddhist temple event.
> 
> Two buses brought people to the function. On one of the buses, there was a person who later tested positive for the coronavirus who had not yet started to feel symptoms. The other bus was free of infected people.
> 
> Both buses brought people to the same temple, where they mixed and mingled. But who was most at risk of getting sick? Those who rode the bus with the infected person. Twenty-four out of 67 people on that bus got sick. No one on the other bus did. The event was attended by another 172 people who arrived by other transportation. Only seven of these people got sick.
> 
> The lesson? The confines of a bus are a much riskier environment for viral spread than a larger space, like at the temple. The risk in the temple was not zero. But it was much reduced compared to the confines of the bus. So if you have to choose between a big open indoor space and a smaller one, choose the larger one, where people can spread out.


The article assumes we all know that Chinese temples are for the most part essentially outdoors. Unlike a conventional church, most of the activity takes place in open courtyards, and although there are some indoors parts, they're generally fairly well ventilated because a lot of incense smoke has to get out.

So places like busses and restaurants are pretty dangerous, but just about anything outside is ... not quite entirely safe, but about as safe as anything in life can be. Let's pretend that everything is generalizable (it's not but let's pretend) and declare that you've got a 24/67 (call it 3/8) chance of catching an infection from a sick person on a bus and a 7/172 (call it 3/75) chance of catching it from a sick person outside.

Probably worth adding that like anything scientific, this is subject to change upon new data, but for the moment it looks like you should be fine outdoors even in somewhat crowded places, while you should avoid public transportation and indoor gatherings like the (ahem) plague.


----------



## Open Book

Eclectic Al said:


> As KenOC pointed out, that is not what the chart is saying. The all causes mortality rate here has been calculated by dividing deaths by total population. By contrast, the rate shown for Covid-19 involves dividing only by the population who have Covid-19. Suppose that the numbers have been calculated assuming that 10% of the population have the virus. Then the Covid-19 mortality for an average person in the total population would be 10x lower than is shown,
> 
> I assume that a number of estimates are floating around in plotting this chart, but as it notes at the bottom the implication (if we accept the numbers) is that if you have the Covid-19 virus it can broadly be taken that your chance of dying from it is similar on average to the risk you were previously running that you might not live out the coming year.
> The on average point is also key in that people in good heath have a lower risk than people with existing conditions both (i) of dying anyway, and (ii) of dying [earlier] of Covid-19. For some particular conditions (diabetes with obesity, immuno-compromised) it would appear that the Covid-19 risk is particularly severe. That would imply, however, that if you haven't got one of those conditions then your Covid-19 risk if you have the virus is lower than your normal chance of not living 1 more year. If the bulk of Covid-19 deaths are among those with a particular group of pre-existing conditions then the excess risk for other people will be very low indeed.
> 
> I posted some calculations earlier, based on UK population mortality tables. In those I assumed that everyone was subject to the extra risk (so I was implicitly assuming that we are all doomed to get it quite soon). I also assumed that the effect was to multiply mortality by 8, rather than by the 2 implied above. These showed that if you were (say) 30 years old then to the nearest year this made no difference to your life expectancy - the impact was too small.
> I also looked at life expectancies based on normal mortality but starting in previous years. This showed that for 30 year olds my 8x factor applied to mortality starting in the year 2020 was equivalent to using normal mortality starting in the year 2017 for men or 2018 for women. That is, the impact of the exaggerated Covid-19 effect which I used was equivalent to assuming that the improvements in mortality which the table assumes happen all the time were reset back in time by 2 or 3 years. In terms of life expectancy, if you don't have one of the pre-disposing conditions and weren't worried in 2017 then you shouldn't be worried now.
> 
> The way I look at this is that it implies that if the mortality rates in the chart are correct then it is entirely irrational for healthy younger people to be particularly bothered about Covid-19 for themselves, if what matters is life expectancy. However, it has a degree of rationality for them to be somewhat concerned if it is noted that life expectancy does not weight years of life higher in the near future than in the distant future. That is, the impact of Covid-19 is that a small number of people lose a large number of years of expected future life because they are excess deaths in the current year. People might be more concerned about this than about everyone in the population losing 3 months of expected future life, spread over the next 50 years (for example, by everyone being a tiny bit less healthy).
> Of course, the above point is dangerous territory in this thread, because it is akin to saying that imminent deaths of younger people matter more than imminent deaths of older people, because the older people do not have so many future years of life to lose.
> I think that to the extent that young people might be scared on their own account the reason is simpler than above: some young people don't like considering that they could die soon, and Covid-19 is bringing this idea into their minds, whereas the risk was always there and it has not changed drastically but they didn't previously think about it much. This is yet another reason why I find the media the villains in this piece: the style of their coverage puts this idea in the minds of younger people (because of the blanket nature of coverage and the doomsday nature of some of it) and prompts a drastic mis-estimate of relative risk in the minds of healthy young people. I think then that the drivers of public opinion arising from this media storm prompt governments to take wrong decisions, in seeking to manage a situation where the population is massively mis-estimating the risks.


Not sure why you felt compelled to write a huge 'splanation to my one simple statement and I don't see how it is any different from what Ken said or what's wrong with it or why I'm more wrong than Ken was.

The chart is not particularly well annotated. The statement at the bottom is what we are supposed to take away. We can guess what kind of data was used. Pre-existing conditions were not separated out in the chart, so why bring that up?

You're saying COVID is less morbid than it looks on the chart because only a tiny minority of the population will contract it this year. Hmm, Musk should have plotted that figure, deaths per total population. That would have supported his position even more.

We don't know how many will contract COVID-19 in a year, it depends on a lot of conditions. Why not assume the worst, that nearly everyone will contract it in a year? This probably would have occurred if we had not practiced social distancing. The number of cases per day curve was so steep, and getting steeper, before we flattened it by our precautions. This probably will happen when we go back to normal practices.

Then it wouldn't matter that the "all other causes" mortality rate is based on "total population" and the COVID-19 mortality rate based only on people who caught COVID-19. In both cases a population was examined and deaths in that population attributable to a certain killer were used. Yes, one is deaths in a given year from all causes and the other is deaths from contracting a disease one time.

I've never understood why people feel comforted by those "deaths per million population" figures being low due to most people never having had the opportunity to contract the disease - at least NOT YET. A stabbing in the heart doesn't have low mortality just because few people are stabbed.


----------



## science

Open Book said:


> I've never understood why people feel comforted by those "deaths per million population" figures being low due to most people never having had the opportunity to contract the disease - at least NOT YET. A stabbing in the heart doesn't have low mortality just because few people are stabbed.


I don't understand this argument well enough to get involved, but this strikes me as a good point. AFAIK, even really hard hit areas like the NYC area have had fewer than 20% of people infected.

If not for measures like social distancing and wearing masks, more people -- twice as many? three times as many? -- would eventually have been infected. And you've got to imagine that if two or three or four times as many people were infected, the death rates would be _at least_ two or three or four times as high, particularly because the hospitals would simply not be able to treat so many people.

But as we are apparently deciding that preventing the spread of the infection is not worth the cost and inconvenience, perhaps that many people will eventually be infected.

We'll see. I have a sense that we're something like a community of prairie dogs who have decided that since coyotes haven't been killing many of us, avoid coyotes is no longer worth the trouble. God forbid, but we'll see.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> I've never understood why people feel comforted by those "deaths per million population" figures being low due to most people never having had the opportunity to contract the disease - at least NOT YET. A stabbing in the heart doesn't have low mortality just because few people are stabbed.


OK. Briefer.
The interpretation by KenOC of the chart was correct, but even if we follow your version, the impact on life expectancy is tiny for young people in normal health.

My point was about relative risk. People age 30 are already at risk of dying without the presence of Covid-19. Covid-19 increases their risks (which is a bad thing), but not to the extent that they should be allowing it to dominate their lives. I tried to be very clear that those with pre-disposing conditions were in a different position.

I don't think at any point was I saying anyone should be comforted by anything.


----------



## mmsbls

Art Rock said:


> I've seen several people state that it is safer outside, but what is it based on? Hopefully not on the Wuhan data which showed that - but with one person catching it outside their home (whether real outside or in public transport or shop or office) they would infect four others at home - leading to 20% outside/80% inside figures......


The only study I have seen is the one I posted here. It was from China using Wuhan data. I have seen several health professionals say they now believe that contracting the virus is more difficult in open spaces. Also there seems to be a sense that contracting it from surfaces is less of a concern; nevertheless, the health professionals always suggest social distancing, masks, and repeated washing of hands.


----------



## mountmccabe

KenOC said:


> This is above the upper bounds of any of the major forecasting models I know of. Nevertheless, they've been quite wrong in the past, and anything can happen.
> 
> In my own area, the numbers are low but have been climbing for 2-3 months. No sign of the climb ceasing. Nevertheless we're opening, with restrictions: Churches, parks, beaches, nail and hair salons, inside seating at restaurants, etc. It will be interesting to see what happens.


I guess that description of what is happening is exactly why I expect there to be more spread of the virus. In many locations there are climbing numbers paired with easing the restrictions that have kept them in check.

Things have not gotten as bad as they could yet because many people and businesses know it is not yet time to reopen. But there is a long lead time; the deaths we are seeing now are mostly people who were infected a month or so ago. I fear more and more people will be lulled into thinking the pandemic is over. That's even beyond those insisting it's a hoax, or pushing inadequate controls such as "stay home if you're sick."

That long lead time makes it difficult to see how things actually are. We can't retroactively impose restrictions. Look at the travel restrictions the US and various states have imposed (flights from China, from Europe, states around NYC limiting out-of-state travelers); all of them have been well after they would have been useful.


----------



## DaveM

It should not be forgotten that while Covid-19 related mortality remains low in younger people, older people can catch it from younger people who may or may not show symptoms. For those who still suggest that damaging the economy in the name of ‘saving’ the elderly was not worth it, I ask what the alternative would have looked like? 

People over 50-60 are involved in the lives of younger people more than ever these days. Often younger, even married, people over 25 are living with their parents. Grandparents are frequently providing the day care for their children’s kids. And then, of course, even if none of those apply, younger people want to have a close relationship with their parents whether they are living independently or are in assisted living or a nursing home.

So how would it have worked to not make the lives of those over 60 a priority? IMO, like it or not, younger people are just too dependent on that age group to cut them out of their lives.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> ...We'll see. I have a sense that we're something like a community of prairie dogs who have decided that since coyotes haven't been killing many of us, avoid coyotes is no longer worth the trouble. God forbid, but we'll see.


If the prairie dogs have to get out to find food to survive, they'll certainly brave the coyotes and accept the increase in mortality. Unlike us, they can't write themselves checks for groceries that their children will have to cover in future years.


----------



## Room2201974

Eclectic Al said:


> I don't think at any point was I saying anyone should be comforted by anything.


There has been nothing stated in either this thread or the one that was closed down that has been comforting.

On one hand we have a virus that can kill us and it's being aided by human stupidity. OTOH, we have cloth masks, social distancing, and science that has never successfully created a coronavirus vaccine. So far in this battle, the virus and human stupidity are winning.

My comfort is in the 55 gallon drum of industrial strength Xanax that Amazon delivered to my door last week. At my present rate of consumption I'm good for another month!


----------



## KenOC




----------



## Eclectic Al

Room2201974 said:


> There has been nothing stated in either this thread or the one that was closed down that has been comforting.


I think there is little about being alive which is comforting beyond enjoying what you can. All we can do is get on with it. Carpe diem. Eat the strawberry. Whatever floats your boat (and doesn't sink someone else's, as that's unethical). But don't spend your life worrying about the fact you are going to die. You are. Don't let it spoil the journey.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> they can't write themselves checks for groceries that their children will have to cover in future years.


Remains interesting to note when this is a concern and when it isn't.


----------



## Room2201974

Eclectic Al said:


> I think there is little about being alive which is comforting beyond enjoying what you can. All we can do is get on with it. Carpe diem. Eat the strawberry. Whatever floats your boat (and doesn't sink someone else's, as that's unethical). But don't spend your life worrying about the fact you are going to die. You are. Don't let it spoil the journey.


Oh I do plan on enjoying life as much as possible.....while remaining in the control group.


----------



## aleazk

DaveM said:


> It should not be forgotten that while Covid-19 related mortality remains low in younger people, older people can catch it from younger people who may or may not show symptoms. For those who still suggest that *damaging the economy in the name of 'saving' the elderly was not worth it*, I ask what the alternative would have looked like?
> 
> People over 50-60 are involved in the lives of younger people more than ever these days. Often younger, even married, people over 25 are living with their parents. Grandparents are frequently providing the day care for their children's kids. And then, of course, even if none of those apply, younger people want to have a close relationship with their parents whether they are living independently or are in assisted living or a nursing home.
> 
> So how would it have worked to not make the lives of those over 60 a priority? IMO, like it or not, younger people are just too dependent on that age group to cut them out of their lives.


That idea is just obscene, and whoever thinks that is probably a sociopath.

What makes us humans is precisely our capability to postpone immediate gain or wellbeing if that's necessary for helping a fellow human. If we start to think like those sociopaths, then where to draw the line? Who deserves to live? It's the same line of reasoning that lead to the nazis to kill people with mental illness and other undersirables because they were "worthless, sub-human beings" that didn't deserve to live because they were consuming resources.


----------



## KenOC

aleazk said:


> That idea is just obscene, and whoever thinks that is probably a sociopath.


Dear Sir or Madame as the case may be:

I strongly object to loading our offspring with a huge new burden of debt, to an extent that is likely to prevent them from having prosperous lives, simply to save ourselves a few years of living and possibly not even achieving that.

Yours sincerely,

A sociopath well into the danger ages with several comorbid conditions.


----------



## KenOC

WaPo: Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine
----------------------------------------------
"This virus is here to stay," said Sarah Cobey, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. "The question is, how do we live with it safely?"


----------



## Room2201974

KenOC said:


> Dear Sir or Madame as the case may be:
> 
> I strongly object to loading our offspring with a huge new burden of debt, to an extent that is likely to prevent them from having prosperous lives, simply to save ourselves a few years of living and possibly not even achieving that.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> A sociopath well into the danger ages with several comorbid conditions.


Well alrighty, "A bat in every pot and a Hooverville in every town" it is then. Maybe the Okies will flock back to SoCal.

"I got that dust pneumony, pneumony in my lung,
I got the dust pneumony, pneumony in my lung,
An' I'm a-gonna sing this dust pneumony song."


----------



## Guest

Looking after society now, even if it costs, is about looking after _everyone _now, not just the elderly and those with comorbidities. This 'loading our children with debt' as if we're giving ourselves something for nothing is just nonsense.

Of course, that does depend on our actually looking after the _whole _of society now. Not just those not in care home.


----------



## DaveM

The premise of not saddling our children with debt is simply not a zero sum situation. Any attempt to keep businesses open that meant people were at close quarters would have taken young lives (those under 60) as well as the older albeit not as many. But I think it is a common belief that the younger the life lost, the larger the toll and the larger the impact, so how many extra losses of younger lives would have made it worth it to save the economy. Not to mention the fact that businesses would have suffered anyway because a lot of people wouldn’t have wanted to go out in the midst of a pandemic anyway.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> The premise of not saddling our children with debt is simply not a zero sum situation. Any attempt to keep businesses open that meant people were at close quarters would have taken young lives (those under 60) as well as the older albeit not as many. But I think it is a common belief that the younger the life lost, the larger the toll and the larger the impact, so how many extra losses of younger lives would have made it worth it to save the economy. Not to mention the fact that businesses would have suffered anyway because a lot of people wouldn't have wanted to go out in the midst of a pandemic anyway.


This argument doesn't hold water. The closure of the event industry cost my son his career. In fact, the death risk from Covid-19 for people under 65 ranges from one in a thousand with comorbid conditions to one in ten thousand without.

Instead, we have loaded my son and his small family with $30,000 in new debt for the benefit of us oldsters, certainly not for his. This is just counting the first coronavirus relief bill, debt that we will never repay in our lives but that becomes his inheritance from us. And more to come, it would seem.

What kind of people are we?

Apologies if I am taking this personally. I am. My generation is buying some (probably) illusory comfort by mortgaging our children's' futures, and I feel ashamed.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> This argument doesn't hold water. The closure of the event industry cost my son his career. In fact, the death risk from Covid-19 for people under 65 ranges from one in a thousand with comorbid conditions to one in ten thousand without.
> 
> Instead, we have loaded my son and his small family with $30,000 in new debt for the benefit of us oldsters, certainly not for his. This is just counting the first coronavirus relief bill, debt that we will never repay in our lives but that becomes his inheritance from us. And more to come, it would seem.
> 
> *What kind of people are we?*
> 
> Apologies if I am taking this personally. I am. My generation is buying some (probably) illusory comfort by mortgaging our children's' futures, and I feel ashamed.


I asked exactly the same question from a different point of view.

This is not about a "we" or a "them", nor about your son or mine. This is about a decision taken by the governments of most other countries round the world with the intention to prevent the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, regardless of age or health, and to ensure that such steps were funded to preserve as far as possible, at least a minimum of susbsistence for all affected by the measures - again, regardless of age or health.

We cannot say what might have happened had we chosen a different course. We can only guess what impact this pandemic might have had if we'd simply gone about our business and chosen to live with the virus as if were just the common cold, whatever the consequences.

Hindsight is, curiously, useless to us, even when we're in a position to yield it properly. I suspect that I am now grateful for the loans given to the UK during and after WWII. It's impossible to say what kind of society I might have been born into in 1959 had we not borrowed sums of money only now only recently paid off. Your son and mine might curse us or thank us when we're both gone, for "saddling them with debt" - I don't know. But I'd prefer not to have saddled them with a society that blithely said that the ill and the elderly are a price worth paying for your personal financial security.


----------



## science

Again, KenOC, unless your son is worth at least tens of millions of dollars -- in which case he's probably bringing home a lovely profit from all of this -- it's not on him to pay off any of this debt. He hasn't benefitted from it, and he shouldn't have to pay it off.


----------



## science

Meanwhile, I'm sure this is fine and nothing to worry about:

Bad state data hides coronavirus threat as Trump pushes reopening



> By DARIUS TAHIR and ADAM CANCRYN
> 05/27/2020 08:21 PM EDT
> Updated: 05/27/2020 11:01 PM EDT
> 
> Federal and state officials across the country have altered or hidden public health data crucial to tracking the coronavirus' spread, hindering the ability to detect a surge of infections as President Donald Trump pushes the nation to reopen rapidly.
> 
> In at least a dozen states, health departments have inflated testing numbers or deflated death tallies by changing criteria for who counts as a coronavirus victim and what counts as a coronavirus test, according to reporting from POLITICO, other news outlets and the states' own admissions. Some states have shifted the metrics for a "safe" reopening; Arizona sought to clamp down on bad news at one point by simply shuttering its pandemic modeling. About a third of the states aren't even reporting hospital admission data - a big red flag for the resurgence of the virus.
> 
> The spotty data flow is particularly worrisome to public health officials trying to help Americans make decisions about safely venturing out. The lack of accurate and consistent Covid-19 data, coupled with the fact that the White House no longer has regular briefings where officials reinforce the need for ongoing social distancing, makes that task even harder.
> 
> New examples seem to sprout up daily. The District of Columbia this week became the latest jurisdiction to endure scrutiny, with the city using a "community spread" metric - excluding nursing homes, correctional facilities and others - as a justification for reopening the area.
> 
> Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds told reporters that the state will share information about outbreaks at meatpacking plants only upon request. And Georgia has only just begun to differentiate between the two types of coronavirus tests it's been adding into its testing totals for weeks.
> 
> "All these stories about undercounts, overcounts, miscounts, are undermining our ability to deal with the pandemic," said Irwin Redlener, a public health expert at Columbia University. The country, he said, is confronting an "unheard of level of chaos in the data, the protocols, the information."
> 
> The problems are widespread and have infiltrated federal health agencies as well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blended diagnostic and antibody tests, boosting the nation's overall testing numbers.
> 
> The Department of Health and Human Services took out of context data on the danger of "deaths of despair" from overdoses and suicides amid an economic debacle, according to the authors of the report in question. On Tuesday, an ethics center at Harvard rebuked the White House for misleadingly citing numbers from one of its studies to buttress the administration's national testing report.
> 
> Nearly half the U.S., meanwhile, has registered rising caseloads as states press ahead with reopening the economy. While some of that reflects increased testing, an accompanying uptick in hospitalizations is worrying experts, including former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
> 
> The White House, which has insisted it's following a "data-driven path" to reopening, did not respond to questions about the data that it's relying on.
> 
> But within the Trump administration, some officials aren't merely ignoring the warning signs. They're also selectively using scientific advice and models in their quest for a swift reopening. For instance, HHS Secretary Alex Azar warned during a recent Cabinet meeting that the U.S. could see 65,000 additional "deaths of despair" if the country does not get back on track to normalcy soon.
> 
> In reality, the study he cited explicitly warned against lifting lockdowns before health data showed it was safe to do so.
> 
> "Some might use this report to argue that this is why our economy needs to open up fast. But that's NOT what we are saying," wrote the authors of the report, which was published by the American Academy of Family Physicians and Well Being Trust. "Even as of today parts of the country are opening, data suggest that this is premature due to a lack of consistent testing, which allows public health authorities to trace, treat and isolate to prevent further spread."
> 
> Harvard University's Safra Center for Ethics similarly publicly chastised the administration. HHS used one of the center's testing models to suggest the U.S. was already testing enough people to contain the virus - when the center was arguing that testing is woefully inadequate to ensure a safe reemergence from "stay at home."
> 
> "The Department's Report does not provide an accurate summary of the modeling supporting our recommendations," said the center's director, adding that HHS had cited a "nonprimary" model in the study's appendix and then adjusted the assumptions underpinning it.
> 
> The data challenges are making it even harder for the states to balance health and economic imperatives. In addition to pulling back from its historic role as the central health authority during public health crises, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established few firm standards for how states should monitor Covid-19 and made little overt effort to coordinate its messaging with state and local health departments.
> 
> That's created a patchwork system where key health information is collected and communicated with little uniformity, and amid rising concern over whether Americans are receiving reliable reports about the pandemic fight.
> 
> At least a half-dozen states have admitted to inflating their testing figures by mixing two different types of tests into its totals, a practice widely derided as scientifically unsound.
> 
> In Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp has been among the strongest proponents of reopening, the inclusion of antibody tests inflated the state's overall testing count by nearly 78,000 - a disclosure that came a few weeks after officials posted a chart of new confirmed cases in Georgia with the dates jumbled out of order, showing a downward trajectory.
> 
> Like several other states, Georgia's health department began listing separate totals for its antibody and diagnostic test counts only after reporters discovered it had been quietly combining the two.
> 
> Georgia's count of hospitalized coronavirus patients also includes only those who were already in the hospital when their diagnosis was reported to the state, a limitation that the state has openly admitted likely creates "an underestimation of actual hospitalizations."
> 
> "It's going through political filters there in the same way that maybe we're seeing some information go through political filters at the federal level," said Harry Heiman, a professor at Georgia State University's School of Public Health, of the state's coronavirus data. "It makes it really hard to know what's going on."
> 
> Florida has weathered a string of controversies over its evidence to support GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis' boasts that the state is faring better than most, including an attempt to block access to information on nursing home deaths and the firing of a health department official who now alleges she was pushed out for refusing to manipulate the state's data.
> 
> A separate dispute involved the health department's attempt to suppress the coronavirus death count published by Florida's medical examiners - a figure that was initially higher than health officials' tally.
> 
> "Never, before today, has the Department of Health raised an eyebrow that this information is confidential and privileged," said Stephen Nelson, the district medical examiner for Polk County, Fla.
> 
> By the time the examiners' death toll was finally released almost two weeks later amid public pressure, the number was lower than the one published by the health department.
> 
> States led by Democratic governors haven't been immune from transparency questions either. New Jersey revised down its nursing home coronavirus death count by about 1,400 after concluding it would only count those with a lab-confirmed diagnosis of the disease, a move a GOP state legislator called a "whitewash."
> 
> And Illinois briefly drew fire after it limited its public reporting on nursing home cases and deaths to only those with "active" outbreaks - a decision that the state quickly reversed.
> 
> Nursing homes have been particularly weak on transparency, with state leaders trying to give the appearance of a blunted impact for older Americans.
> 
> "Political leaders would like to trim their numbers, and a convenient way to do that is to count only those deaths that are proven by testing to involved Covid-19," said Joanne Lynn, a former geriatrician and current analyst at Altarum. Some officials within the Trump administration have embraced this approach amid skepticism over the rising national death toll.
> 
> Data suppression in nursing homes is a particularly hard blow in a sector that has historically struggled for transparency. In a Senate Aging Committee hearing last week, one expert noted: "Right now, [patients and caregivers] can't easily find which ones have Covid outbreaks. We need to give them that information so they can make good decisions."
> 
> Those abrupt alterations make it more difficult to track the progression of the virus as the pandemic response fragments - and to hold political leaders accountable for their decisions.
> 
> "I have never seen politicians come in like this and question the science," said Melissa Marx, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University and former CDC official. "In my mind, it's unprecedented."
> 
> Yet unlike in past public health emergencies, the Trump administration has signaled little interest in overseeing how states combat the pandemic in this next phase, and what evidence they rely on to do it.
> 
> In response to questions about states manipulating and altering their coronavirus data, an HHS spokesperson told POLITICO that "state leaders have the clearest insights into the situation on the ground in their states, and we stand ready to provide support as states begin to reopen safely."
> 
> As for the CDC, the vaunted public health agency spent the past week under fire for its own data issues, after confirming it, too, was combining different types of tests in calculating the nation's testing totals. The CDC, which blamed the lapse on combined testing numbers reported by individual states, said it will break out figures for the different tests "in the coming weeks."
> 
> *It's an environment that threatens to erode public trust*, experts warn. "You want people to trust what authorities are telling them," said Jennifer Kates of the Kaiser Family Foundation, and that trust is going to be difficult to earn.


Admittedly, it's no Fox News, but Politico is unwaveringly pro-establishment. We may not want to find ourselves in a situation where even they are wondering about public trust.


----------



## Flamme

I dont think even the wealthiest societies can afford 2 pay allowances day in day out 4 months with no end 2 ppl sitting at home doing nothing, but walking in concrete cubes, between 4 walls and overthinking stuff!


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> This argument doesn't hold water. The closure of the event industry cost my son his career. In fact, the death risk from Covid-19 for people under 65 ranges from one in a thousand with comorbid conditions to one in ten thousand without.
> 
> Instead, we have loaded my son and his small family with $30,000 in new debt for the benefit of us oldsters, certainly not for his. This is just counting the first coronavirus relief bill, debt that we will never repay in our lives but that becomes his inheritance from us. And more to come, it would seem.
> 
> What kind of people are we?
> 
> Apologies if I am taking this personally. I am. My generation is buying some (probably) illusory comfort by mortgaging our children's' futures, and I feel ashamed.


What a sad, angry, opinionated perspective.

All I can do is shake my head.

You know, even with a complete shutdown we are digging mass graves in NYC. Of course most victims are black and Hispanic so....

100,000. Need I say more? (with a complete shutdown)


----------



## Flamme

4 the life of me I cannot understand how there are so many casualties in 1 of the most developed capitalist countries like USA but in many from the western standpoint ''developing countries'' and ''dictatorial systems'' they are almost on a level of statistical error...Is it the especially ''virulent'' strain of the virus that ''attacked western democracies'' or a different disease al2gether???


----------



## eljr

Flamme said:


> 4 the life of me I cannot understand how there are so many casualties in 1 of the most developed capitalist countries like USA but in many from the western standpoint ''developing countries'' and ''dictatorial systems'' they are almost on a level of statistical error...Is it the especially ''virulent'' strain of the virus that ''attacked western democracies'' or a different disease al2gether???


I "get it"

NY and TRump has caused such bad numbers.

The virus was seeded in NYC before anyone knew it. NYC was very lucky to get it under control as well as it did but look at the terrible numbers.

Trump of course has helped to proliferate the virus with his lies and contradictions. Now with the mask thing which has become a political identity, thanks to him.

Covid is something that cannot be ignored and must be approached steady and with science. That just has not happened in the USA.

you can't talk Covid in the USA without talking politics, Trump has interwoven them.


----------



## Room2201974

Flamme said:


> 4 the life of me I cannot understand how there are so many casualties in 1 of the most developed capitalist countries like USA but in many from the western standpoint ''developing countries'' and ''dictatorial systems'' they are almost on a level of statistical error...Is it the especially ''virulent'' strain of the virus that ''attacked western democracies'' or a different disease al2gether???


Let me explain America to you and in that explanation lies the reality of why our Covid numbers are so high.

Isaac Asimov put this into perspective many years ago:

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."


----------



## Flamme

L8ly, which is very unusual 4 me, I started 2 follow musings of some orthodox monk who holds protests in front of our ''government'' almost every day and accuses them and the official church of treason, corruption, moral decay and fall...Although I have my own deep grudge with God which can be seen with naked eye from things I post, even my ringtone is ''2 hell with god'' from deicide which sounds very ominous, with ''what u about 2 hear is very disturbing indeed'' cue the sounds of ''hell'', since my mum died, I have found in that simple and holy man, something painful but healing, I starterd 2 really think and deny things which are against my deepest instincts and beliefs...Although I dont support most of his bald claims, with what I know and feel now, I probably never will, 1 thing is true...We live in a time of global deceit and discord and great is the manipulation of masses by TV, internet, all sorts of rumours, half truths, mostly truths and such...1 has 2 open his eyes and think 4 himself and decide what is right and what is wrong...I think I have a strong ''inner axis'' and a minds eye, or a ''third eye'', take it as u will, that I often chose 2 ignore but not anymore...I decided 2 be brave and unbreakable, so I try 2 b more and more strong both in body and soul so I can stand behind my decisions when I make them and not backtrack because of weaknesses...I feel its a hard decision but I will try 2 stay on that path as far as I can and hopefully transform into both wise and experienced person...


----------



## Art Rock

I know it's not important in the bigger picture, but I'm delighted to see that the English Premier League (football, or soccer for the yanks) will re-start in a few weeks.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> This argument doesn't hold water. The closure of the event industry cost my son his career. In fact, the death risk from Covid-19 for people under 65 ranges from one in a thousand with comorbid conditions to one in ten thousand without.
> 
> Instead, we have loaded my son and his small family with $30,000 in new debt for the benefit of us oldsters, certainly not for his. This is just counting the first coronavirus relief bill, debt that we will never repay in our lives but that becomes his inheritance from us. And more to come, it would seem.
> 
> What kind of people are we?
> 
> Apologies if I am taking this personally. I am. My generation is buying some (probably) illusory comfort by mortgaging our children's' futures, and I feel ashamed.


I'm sorry for the loss of your son's career. I would probably have taken it personally also with the consequences of this pandemic hitting so close to home. Nothing I will say about this subject will be an attempt to change that fact.

In the end, I don't know if my arguments hold water or not. It's all hypothesis and hindsight with the first major pandemic, on this level, we have seen in very modern history. But I have not seen any realistic alternative put forward to the steps that were taken as the deaths rapidly mounted and ICUs were in danger of being overwhelmed.It didn't help that this country was totally unprepared such that some blame may lie elsewhere rather than on older generations with the exception of one particular member of that generation.

I'm assuming that the $30,000 debt you mention is a theoretical part of the collective federal debt secondary to the pandemic. I don't think we have any way of knowing how that debt is going to affect younger generations. Past history has shown that the U.S. can print several trillion without consequences. If the federal debt is going to affect the present younger and future generations, it's more likely to be the 21 trillion that was already in place.


----------



## DaveM

Flamme said:


> 4 the life of me I cannot understand how there are so many casualties in 1 of the most developed capitalist countries like USA but in many from the western standpoint ''developing countries'' and ''dictatorial systems'' they are almost on a level of statistical error...Is it the especially ''virulent'' strain of the virus that ''attacked western democracies'' or a different disease al2gether???


I'm surprised that, in response to this post, no one mentioned that the count of people infected and the mortality thereof in 'developing countries' and 'dictatorial systems' can't be relied on at all. Undercounting in those situations is common and is due to a lack of a reliable structure to do proper counting and/or an agenda on the part of dictatorial governments to evade responsibility.


----------



## senza sordino

We school teachers are resuming in class instruction next week, Monday June 1st. It will be a modified schedule, and only 20% of the students are allowed in the building at any one time. So the students will be divided into four groups by last name on the alphabet. (I don't know why it's four groups and not five, I just work there and report the news, I don't make the decisions!) And only half day instruction. 

In the afternoon we teachers will continue our online instruction for those students not in the building. And only four days per week (M, T, Th, Fr) the students will be in the building. The lunch room is off limits, water fountains are turned off and only one per time in the washroom. There will be a maximum of seven students in each classroom, and a maximum of 300 in the building. 

There are 120 staff (teachers and support), and a regular population of 1800 students. 

They are asking the teachers to remain in the building in the afternoons and on Wednesdays when no students are in the building. I think the administration are trying to put a stop to all the goldbricking / cyberloafing that's been going on among the staff. 

Elementary schools will be at a maximum of 50% attendance. I don't teach elementary so I don't know the details of their in class instruction. 

This is for June until school breaks for summer holidays. And for many school holidays began last March. I have still only about 50% of my students in my best class completing work. My worst class has about a 20% completion rate. The students have been told that they will not be penalized for their homework, or lack of homework, while at home during the school closure. Their final grade for the school year, which we will determine at the end of June, will be based on their school assignments from September 2019 to March 2019 only. If they have been doing their assigned work while at home during the pandemic, we can reward them, at the discretion of the teacher. We can't penalize, but we can reward student work during the pandemic. 

Most or all schools in Ontario and Quebec remain closed, where the Covid-19 numbers have been worse, here on the west coast, it's not been that bad.


----------



## Kieran

Art Rock said:


> I know it's not important in the bigger picture, but I'm delighted to see that the English Premier League (football, or soccer for the yanks) will re-start in a few weeks.


Yeah, me too! I'm a Leeds fan and we're in the boss seat for promotion. I also want Liverpool to win the league. It'll be great to see some football again


----------



## Room2201974

senza sordino said:


> We school teachers are resuming in class instruction next week, Monday June 1st. It will be a modified schedule, and only 20% of the students are allowed in the building at any one time. So the students will be divided into four groups by last name on the alphabet. (I don't know why it's four groups and not five, I just work there and report the news, I don't make the decisions!) And only half day instruction.
> 
> Elementary schools will be at a maximum of 50% attendance. I don't teach elementary so I don't know the details of their in class instruction.


Does your school have central air and heat? You won't be able to completely stop the spread of aerosol particles if you do. Good luck with that!


----------



## Flamme

Art Rock said:


> I know it's not important in the bigger picture, but I'm delighted to see that the English Premier League (football, or soccer for the yanks) will re-start in a few weeks.


I saw somewhere they play with dolls on stadiums or just big cardboard picures of die hard fans...Nothing will be like it was, never again. The profound,tectonic Change is coming. I can feel it in my bones like I feel the bad weather rolling in.


----------



## Totenfeier

senza sordino said:


> We school teachers are resuming in class instruction next week, Monday June 1st. It will be a modified schedule, and only 20% of the students are allowed in the building at any one time. So the students will be divided into four groups by last name on the alphabet. (I don't know why it's four groups and not five, I just work there and report the news, I don't make the decisions!) And only half day instruction.
> 
> In the afternoon we teachers will continue our online instruction for those students not in the building. And only four days per week (M, T, Th, Fr) the students will be in the building. The lunch room is off limits, water fountains are turned off and only one per time in the washroom. There will be a maximum of seven students in each classroom, and a maximum of 300 in the building.
> 
> There are 120 staff (teachers and support), and a regular population of 1800 students.
> 
> They are asking the teachers to remain in the building in the afternoons and on Wednesdays when no students are in the building. I think the administration are trying to put a stop to all the goldbricking / cyberloafing that's been going on among the staff.
> 
> Elementary schools will be at a maximum of 50% attendance. I don't teach elementary so I don't know the details of their in class instruction.
> 
> This is for June until school breaks for summer holidays. And for many school holidays began last March. I have still only about 50% of my students in my best class completing work. My worst class has about a 20% completion rate. The students have been told that they will not be penalized for their homework, or lack of homework, while at home during the school closure. Their final grade for the school year, which we will determine at the end of June, will be based on their school assignments from September 2019 to March 2019 only. If they have been doing their assigned work while at home during the pandemic, we can reward them, at the discretion of the teacher. We can't penalize, but we can reward student work during the pandemic.
> 
> Most or all schools in Ontario and Quebec remain closed, where the Covid-19 numbers have been worse, here on the west coast, it's not been that bad.


Except for the fact that I'm done for the year without ever having gone back, I probably could have written your post. Our online Distance Learning guidelines were essentially the same: Seniors were done as of March 6; their semester average on that day was their grade; if passing, they received a PC19 (course passed, full credit) or a WC19 (withdrawal from class; no failure; to be made up either by retaking course or credit recovery, which is three weeks in the summer sitting and doing minor computer assignments). Underclassmen could pick either the PC19, WC19, or their numerical grade as of March 6. We had seven weeks of online "learning;" no one could be harmed by it and no grades were given. As you observed, once this came out of the down-low and became generally known, "participation" - compliance - took a nosedive. Still, pretty much those who were inclined to work in the classroom worked online, and those who were less inclined to work in the classroom without prodding anyway did nothing. My takeaway? Before schools go full-on digital learning, the student accountability piece has to be fully developed, front and center, high, wide, and proud.


----------



## pianozach

Room2201974 said:


> Well alrighty, "A bat in every pot and a Hooverville in every town" it is then. Maybe the Okies will flock back to SoCal.
> 
> "I got that dust pneumony, pneumony in my lung,
> I got the dust pneumony, pneumony in my lung,
> An' I'm a-gonna sing this dust pneumony song."


The response in the US has been quite like the response for the 1919 Spanish Flu. Anti-Mask leagues, delayed response, denial.

The economy may certainly remain 'tanked' for the foreseeable future, with some industries not able to recover as quickly, or at all (I'm looking at YOU, "entertainment"). Yeah, performances, conventions, sports, choirs, churches, symphonies, ballets, live theatre, concerts. When all these industries start failing, they take thousands of people over the cliff with them . . . not just performers, stage hands, ushers, transportation companies, teachers, costumers, directors, painters, sound designers, lighting designers, ticket companies, concessionaires . . . the list just keeps rippling outward.

And then the restaurants . . . with limited capacities, and most already operating on minimal profit margins, this industry will also tank.

There's more, but you get the idea.

In the early 1930s we had *Hoovervilles*. I suspect that in the 2020s we'll be seeing *Trumptowns*.


----------



## pianozach

senza sordino said:


> We school teachers are resuming in class instruction next week, Monday June 1st. It will be a modified schedule, and only 20% of the students are allowed in the building at any one time. So the students will be divided into four groups by last name on the alphabet. (I don't know why it's four groups and not five, I just work there and report the news, I don't make the decisions!) And only half day instruction.
> 
> In the afternoon we teachers will continue our online instruction for those students not in the building. And only four days per week (M, T, Th, Fr) the students will be in the building. The lunch room is off limits, water fountains are turned off and only one per time in the washroom. There will be a maximum of seven students in each classroom, and a maximum of 300 in the building.
> 
> There are 120 staff (teachers and support), and a regular population of 1800 students.
> 
> They are asking the teachers to remain in the building in the afternoons and on Wednesdays when no students are in the building. I think the administration are trying to put a stop to all the goldbricking / cyberloafing that's been going on among the staff.
> 
> Elementary schools will be at a maximum of 50% attendance. I don't teach elementary so I don't know the details of their in class instruction.
> 
> This is for June until school breaks for summer holidays. And for many school holidays began last March. I have still only about 50% of my students in my best class completing work. My worst class has about a 20% completion rate. The students have been told that they will not be penalized for their homework, or lack of homework, while at home during the school closure. Their final grade for the school year, which we will determine at the end of June, will be based on their school assignments from September 2019 to March 2019 only. If they have been doing their assigned work while at home during the pandemic, we can reward them, at the discretion of the teacher. We can't penalize, but we can reward student work during the pandemic.
> 
> Most or all schools in Ontario and Quebec remain closed, where the Covid-19 numbers have been worse, here on the west coast, it's not been that bad.


I'm not sure where you're located geographically, but it sounds like you're in BC.

I, too, work for the local school district as a "Music Specialist", which in this case means that I'm 90% accompanist.

I'm here in Ventura County, and, for the most part the school districts here tend to reflect the decisions made by the massive LAUSD in Los Angeles, which has recently laid out its own new guidelines.

I've tried to ignore them, as they're not very hopeful sounding for my work. They're limiting students to 16/classroom, no common areas like cafeterias, one-way hallways.

Choirs and sports and theatre will be impacted in unknown ways. We also won't be opening back up until the Fall semester. And plans do change, sometimes daily. September could see great loosenings of restrictions, or we could be in full-blown Second Wave mode.

I'm currently in Wait-and-See mode.


----------



## Flamme

Its easy 4 big fishes 2 ''stay at home'' and crunch on their stashes of green currency but 4 a ''little guy'' a ''small time'' actor, like they were before themselves, its sink or swim, they are in real dire straits...


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> ... But I have not seen any realistic alternative put forward to the steps that were taken as the deaths rapidly mounted and ICUs were in danger of being overwhelmed.It didn't help that this country was totally unprepared ...


I agree. Everything I have read has suggested that the best plan was a shutdown with sheltering in place until the new infections could be handled in an effective manner. The best numbers for mortality rate seem to be roughly 1% for all those infected. Projections showed the US would have 150 - 250 million infected leading to the conclusion that 1.5-2.5 million would die. Actually that conclusion assumes that each infected person would get the present health care and non-infected people would not be adversely affected. If 100s of million of people were infected, the hospitals and especially their ICUs would be overloaded causing both Covid-19 and other mortality rates to increase.

Obviously the shutdown along with sheltering rules (NPIs) greatly affected economic activity. I wonder how much different things would be without those NPIs. With so many people dying in such a short time, I can't imagine the economy would not have experienced similar issues. People would not fly, go on vacations, go to restaurants, and do other critical economic activity. My understanding is that Sweden is not expected to see much economic advantage over other Scandinavian countries.

My biggest question is whether health officials are surprised by the lack of social distancing over the past months. Was it unreasonable to expect that large communities would abide by the health warnings?



DaveM said:


> I'm assuming that the $30,000 debt you mention is a theoretical part of the collective federal debt secondary to the pandemic.


I'm not sure exactly what KenOC did to get the $30,000, but it's close to what I would have done. The first spending bill was roughly $2.5 trillion. I think the Fed has or will spend close to $4 trillion. The new bill from the House would be another $3 trillion. Adding that up comes to $9.5 trillion. Assuming that debt is spread over everyone in the US (330 million), the added debt per person comes to roughly $29,000 per person.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> ...I'm not sure exactly what KenOC did to get the $30,000, but it's close to what I would have done. The first spending bill was roughly $2.5 trillion. I think the Fed has or will spend close to $4 trillion. The new bill from the House would be another $3 trillion. Adding that up comes to $9.5 trillion. Assuming that debt is spread over everyone in the US (330 million), the added debt per person comes to roughly $29,000 per person.


That was simply (and roughly) $3 trillion divided by a population of 300 million, yielding a per capita new debt of $10,000, and applying that to a family of three. My generation certainly won't pay a penny of that debt, since we have not had the guts to have a budget surplus since the Clinton years. Nowadays I would have to paraphrase something de Toqueville wrote around 1830: "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the people with their children's money."


----------



## Jacck

Britain has the HIGHEST rate of excess deaths in Europe as figures show up to 55,000 more people have died in the UK this year than expected
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8343371/Britain-HIGHEST-rate-excess-deaths-Europe.html
a lot of excess deaths in Europe.


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## senza sordino

Room2201974 said:


> Does your school have central air and heat? You won't be able to completely stop the spread of aerosol particles if you do. Good luck with that!


We do not have AC, though we don't need it here. I'm not too worried about that. There are plenty of things done to prepare us for the return: extra cleaning and day time custodians, two isolation rooms and more hand washing stations throughout the school.



Totenfeier said:


> ......Before schools go full-on digital learning, the student accountability piece has to be fully developed, front and center, high, wide, and proud.


Agreed. My 'mistake' during this was insisting that students get the correct answers. When they submitted work online and it was full of mistakes, I would say which answers were wrong, provide hints and feedback and return it to them for resubmission with corrections. Many of my colleagues have been marking work as done no matter how many wrong answers. One of my colleagues has over 80% completion, but his students don't have to get the correct answers, just make an attempt.

There has been a slow decline in standards for years now. High school graduation rates are increasing by lowering standards. This school closure has amplified this message. But this is a coronavirus thread and I don't want to hijack it with an education rant.



pianozach said:


> I'm not sure where you're located geographically, but it sounds like you're in BC.


I am a science teacher in here British Columbia. We have multiple sinks in our science labs to wash hands frequently.


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> ...I'm not sure exactly what KenOC did to get the $30,000, but it's close to what I would have done. The first spending bill was roughly $2.5 trillion. I think the Fed has or will spend close to $4 trillion. The new bill from the House would be another $3 trillion. Adding that up comes to $9.5 trillion. Assuming that debt is spread over everyone in the US (330 million), the added debt per person comes to roughly $29,000 per person.


The 3-4 trillion from the Fed is 'printed' -actually just added to the positive balance on Fed computers- as per Fed Chairman Powell himself and it is not added to the listed debt. The amounts voted by Congress are. The consequence of too much 'printed' money has traditionally been inflation, but it didn't happen after the Great Recession and the Fed doesn't seem to think it will occur here.

In any event, the effect of added debt per person while interesting does not and cannot reflect some kind of equivalent financial or economic effect on each individual. There are just too many unknowns having to do with the to-date unknown consequences of the already accumulated debt and individual socioeconomic variables.


----------



## KenOC

Jacck said:


> Britain has the HIGHEST rate of excess deaths in Europe as figures show up to 55,000 more people have died in the UK this year than expected
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8343371/Britain-HIGHEST-rate-excess-deaths-Europe.html
> a lot of excess deaths in Europe.


Just to clarify: "Around 55,000 more Britons than normal have died in 2020, up nearly 70 per cent compared to the five-year average by May 8. A quarter of these deaths were not officially attributed to COVID-19 but experts say excess fatalities paint a much clearer picture of the outbreak."

In other words, by this analysis there may have been about 14,000 more deaths from Covid-19 than the official figures show. So the "true" coronavirus death count is about 36% higher than officially recorded.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Flamme said:


> I saw somewhere they play with dolls on stadiums or just big cardboard picures of die hard fans...Nothing will be like it was, never again. The profound,tectonic Change is coming. I can feel it in my bones like I feel the bad weather rolling in.


You must have seen the story from South Korea, where the audience was made up of dummies provided by a sex toy manufacturer. Unusual profile of football fans, to say the least.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> The 3-4 trillion from the Fed is 'printed' -actually just added to the positive balance on Fed computers- as per Fed Chairman Powell himself and it is not added to the listed debt. The amounts voted by Congress are. The consequence of too much 'printed' money has traditionally been inflation, but it didn't happen after the Great Recession and the Fed doesn't seem to think it will occur here.
> 
> In any event, the effect of added debt per person while interesting does not and cannot reflect some kind of equivalent financial or economic effect on each individual. There are just too many unknowns having to do with the to-date unknown consequences of the already accumulated debt and individual socioeconomic variables.


Here's a detailed and very informative article on the likely impacts of the massive coronavirus relief spending on the US economy. It covers both national debt impacts and the Fed's continuing use of "magical dollars" to stimulate economic activity and keep rates low.

There are quite a few helpful graphs and charts, most of them more than a little worrying.


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> Here's a detailed and very informative article on the likely impacts of the massive coronavirus relief spending on the US economy. It covers both national debt impacts and the Fed's continuing use of "magical dollars" to stimulate economic activity and keep rates low.
> 
> There are quite a few helpful graphs and charts, most of them more than a little worrying.


https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-internationally

US has comparatively low taxes (especially for the rich). You collect 4 trillion USD yearly, so increase taxes to collect 6 trillion USD yearly and the debt will be paid within 10 years.


----------



## KenOC

Jacck said:


> https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-internationally
> 
> US has comparatively low taxes (especially for the rich). You collect 4 trillion USD yearly, so increase taxes to collect 6 trillion USD yearly and the debt will be paid within 10 years.


Much longer, I think, since the national debt was growing at about $1 trillion a year even prior to the coronavirus. It's a moving target, and moving in the wrong direction.

BTW, it seems that most of the committed coronavirus spending will, indeed, add to the deficit and will increase the national debt further. "The Congressional Budget Office predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic would raise the FY 2021 deficit to $2.1 trillion. The FY 2020 deficit will be $3.7 trillion."


----------



## Eclectic Al

RIP Bob Weighton
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-52840535
Just to note that people do die of things other than Covid-19. Nothing to do with this thread really, but what a great bloke!


----------



## science

The debt question really is purely political. It's a choice we (in the USA at least) made 40 years ago and have continued making since then, expect for a spell in the 1990s. If we decide to start paying the debt instead, that will be a political decision as well. Covid-19 _might_ have made it more serious, but not moreso than all the frivolous things we've done over the past 40 years.


----------



## senza sordino

It's political suicide to propose raising taxes, so I don't know how this will be paid off. Canada's deficit will explode from $19 billion to an estimated $250 billion. That's yearly shortfall, not the debt. 

You can take 99% of the Jeff Bezo's wealth and he'd still be a billionaire, but you can't raise taxes. 

Stopping our economy for the coronavirus brings to my mind the following analogy. And all analogies have limitations. Suppose you're driving on the highway at a great speed and you see some sort of road block ahead and you jam on the brakes. You stop 50 m short of the road block. Instead, you could have let up on the braking and stopped over a greater distance. Or if you prefer the analogy, the road block ahead is actually moving slower than you are, so you had to slow but not brake so dramatically.


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## KenOC

science said:


> ...Covid-19 _might_ have made it more serious, but not moreso than all the frivolous things we've done over the past 40 years.


There's truth in this, but the coronavirus response has vastly increased the _rate _of our frivolity.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Here's a detailed and very informative article on the likely impacts of the massive coronavirus relief spending on the US economy. It covers both national debt impacts and the Fed's continuing use of "magical dollars" to stimulate economic activity and keep rates low.
> 
> There are quite a few helpful graphs and charts, most of them more than a little worrying.


Is this a house of cards? From everything we know about income and debt in businesses one would think so. But the U.S. so far evades comparisons to a business. The world depends on the U.S. economy and the dollar like never before and until the Great Recession it was not known that it was even possible for the Fed to print money to the extent it did (billions per month -quantitative easing- for years) with so few apparent negative consequences.

We have no way of knowing how long this can go on and how it will affect any particular generation in the future. When the debt become unsustainable -and it's anyone's guess when that will be- what will stop the Fed from printing 8-10 trillion? I'm not justifying any of this. It's a bad way to run a country. Just saying that the consequences of this bad behavior could be put off for decades.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> Is this a house of cards? From everything we know about income and debt in businesses one would think so. But the U.S. so far evades comparisons to a business. The world depends on the U.S. economy and the dollar like never before and until the Great Recession it was not known that it was even possible for the Fed to print money to the extent it did (billions per month -quantitative easing- for years) with so few apparent negative consequences.
> 
> We have no way of knowing how long this can go on and how it will affect any particular generation in the future. When the debt become unsustainable -and it's anyone's guess when that will be- what will stop the Fed from printing 8-10 trillion? I'm not justifying any of this. It's a bad way to run a country. Just saying that the consequences of this bad behavior could be put off for decades.


Comparing the Sovereign debt to normal debt make no sense, because only the Federal government has the power to create currency. What makes a country rich is not having lots of money, it is having everyone working productively. If printing money gets everyone working it makes us rich. If "sensible" fiscal policies have skilled people sitting home unemployed, it makes us poor. The problem is not running up the national deficit, it is running up the national deficit for something stupid, like giving tax breaks to rich people who already don't know what to do with their money.


----------



## pianozach

DaveM said:


> Is this a house of cards? From everything we know about income and debt in businesses one would think so. But the U.S. so far evades comparisons to a business. The world depends on the U.S. economy and the dollar like never before and until the Great Recession it was not known that it was even possible for the Fed to print money to the extent it did (billions per month -quantitative easing- for years) with so few apparent negative consequences.
> 
> We have no way of knowing how long this can go on and how it will affect any particular generation in the future. When the debt become unsustainable -and it's anyone's guess when that will be- what will stop the Fed from printing 8-10 trillion? I'm not justifying any of this. It's a bad way to run a country. Just saying that the consequences of this bad behavior could be put off for decades.


I'll second this.

It's a House of Cards, and has been for a long time. They had to rebuild it from scratch after the 1929 Stock Market Crash . . . so they put in safeguards to prevent some of the loopholes that let it fall.

Those loophole corks have been removed as of late . . . that's why we came close to losing banks and other financial institutions in 2008. We bailed out banks, and the auto industry.

But we didn't fix the cracks in the dam. And 2020 is shaping up to be a real disaster: We've already had our little pandemic, and it's tanking the economy.

There is a reasonable chance of there being a second wave, and it may be far worse than the first.

Climatologists and meteorologists are predicting a robust hurricane season, tornado season, and fire season this year. Simultaneous disasters could cripple the economy worse than the broken finger it has now.

Add an earthquake, or volcano, or tsunami, and the economic consequences could crumple the system.


----------



## science

I guess we're probably more resilient than we imagine. Barring nuclear war, the questions are how many people are going to die, who they're going to be, and who is going to be richer and poorer afterwards.


----------



## Iota

Eclectic Al said:


> RIP Bob Weighton
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-52840535
> Just to note that people do die of things other than Covid-19. Nothing to do with this thread really, but what a great bloke!





> He said the secret to his longevity was "to avoid dying".


:lol: Sage advice.

He does indeed sound like a very worthwhile guy. RIP


----------



## eljr

Jacck said:


> Britain has the HIGHEST rate of excess deaths in Europe as figures show up to 55,000 *more people have died in the UK this year than expected*
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8343371/Britain-HIGHEST-rate-excess-deaths-Europe.html
> a lot of excess deaths in Europe.


these are the numbers to use.


----------



## eljr

Room2201974 said:


> "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."


great quote

...........


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## Art Rock

The plot thickens. Apparently the Chinese Center for disease control has now concluded what has been speculated for a while already: the corona virus did NOT start at the notorious animal market in Wuhan. They conclude that Patient zero picked up the virus somewhere and spread it around, inter alia on the animal market. Undoubtedly, this will fuel theories that it did originate from one of the bio laboratories in Wuhan.

(read in a Dutch newspaper, where it is stated that several big newspapers are coming out with the news, including WSJ).


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## Flamme

Those markets r still pretty dreadful tho...If they are like westenr media shows them 2 b...


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## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> The plot thickens. Apparently the Chinese Center for disease control has now concluded what has been speculated for a while already: the corona virus did NOT start at the notorious animal market in Wuhan. They conclude that Patient zero picked up the virus somewhere and spread it around, inter alia on the animal market. Undoubtedly, this will fuel theories that it did originate from one of the bio laboratories in Wuhan.
> 
> (read in a Dutch newspaper, where it is stated that several big newspapers are coming out with the news, including WSJ).


How long is it going to be before Donald tries to sue the Chinese Government for damages?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> The plot thickens. Apparently the Chinese Center for disease control has now concluded what has been speculated for a while already: the corona virus did NOT start at the notorious animal market in Wuhan. They conclude that Patient zero picked up the virus somewhere and spread it around, inter alia on the animal market. Undoubtedly, this will fuel theories that it did originate from one of the bio laboratories in Wuhan.
> 
> (read in a Dutch newspaper, where it is stated that several big newspapers are coming out with the news, including WSJ).


More seriously there is a huge difference between it coming out of a lab or not. I don't mean that the virus was genetically engineered (as that seems to have been ruled out). The distinction I am drawing is between (i) a virus existing and uncontrolled social practices allowing it to spread and (ii) a Government-approved facility, supposed to be competent to investigate dangerous pathogens, allowing an escape to occur.

The former is just one of those things: you could argue that these animal markets should be sorted out, but this sort of thing is going to happen occasionally somewhere in the world whatever you do.
The latter is a failure on the part of Chinese institutions, who are then clearly to blame for the outbreak. If you link this to suggestions of suppression of information early on in the outbreak then you have a recipe for massive recriminations, different by an order of magnitude from anything we have seen to date. And rightly.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Love this story:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52849560

For non-UK folk, Wales has a partially devolved administration (as does Scotland) so they are making sure that they follow approaches slightly different from England to emphasise that (and ideally to embarrass the government in London - different political parties in charge). Hence the England/Wales border has become an interesting topic for silly point-scoring. Build a wall!

I expect the Welsh police may try and fine the bloke with the helicopter £50 or something.


----------



## pianozach

Racist murder in Minneapolis prompts the end of social distancing as riots ensue when no charges are filed.

#SecondWave


----------



## senza sordino

Monkeys steal Covid-19 samples. Blood samples later recovered undamaged.

The Guardian - Monkeys steal Covid-19 samples


----------



## Art Rock

An interesting item in the Dutch news. If you catch the virus, very soon virus particles will show up in your feces. The Amsterdam sewage treatment plant has tracked the virus concentration in the sewage over the past few months, and they find a pretty good correlation with the curves generated based on testing of people with complaints - with a shift of about 2 weeks (incubation time). This would be a tool to predict when a second wave can be expected, and would give a warning 1-2 weeks before it actually happens - allowing preparation time for the intensive care.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> An interesting item in the Dutch news. If you catch the virus, very soon virus particles will show up in your feces. The Amsterdam sewage treatment plant has tracked the virus concentration in the sewage over the past few months, and they find a pretty good correlation with the curves generated based on testing of people with complaints - with a shift of about 2 weeks (incubation time). This would be a tool to predict when a second wave can be expected, and would give a warning 1-2 weeks before it actually happens - allowing preparation time for the intensive care.


This story sounds like a load of crap. :lol:


----------



## science

The "second wave" seems to be hitting South Korea, with 79 new cases yesterday and at least 58 so far today. 79 was the most since April 5. They'd gotten as low as 681 active cases, but now they're back up to 735. 

So far it's not as bad as the first wave, but of course that can change fast.


----------



## KenOC

Sweden's neighbors are not happy with its Covid-19 policies, nor with the results. Norway and Denmark say they will open up tourism between their two countries from 15 June but will maintain restrictions for Swedes.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Good games in England.

Police are warning people not to meet up this weekend as the rules are not relaxed until Monday. Clearly it's unacceptably risky on Sunday, and it is worth police time to be patrolling for offenders over the next 2 days, checking people's back gardens for visitors, but on Monday it will be fine. It reminds me of George Edwin Ellison, the last British solider to die in WW1, who was shot by a sniper 1 hour 30 minutes before the armistice. That sniper would be dishing out fines this weekend.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Eclectic Al said:


> Good games in England.
> 
> Police are warning people not to meet up this weekend as the rules are not relaxed until Monday. Clearly it's unacceptably risky on Sunday, and it is worth police time to be patrolling for offenders over the next 2 days, checking people's back gardens for visitors, but on Monday it will be fine. It reminds me of George Edwin Ellison, the last British solider to die in WW1, who was shot by a sniper 1 hour 30 minutes before the armistice. That sniper would be dishing out fines this weekend.


But surely if some people can't adhere to the restrictions for just two more days after being fair warned two days prior to that then its their own fault if they end up being fined? I appreciate that the police have been heavy-handed prior to this but this particular relaxation is a significant step so it shouldn't hurt that much to wait two more days for it.


----------



## Guest

elgars ghost said:


> But surely if some people can't adhere to the restrictions for just two more days after being fair warned two days prior to that then its their own fault if they end up being fined? I appreciate that *the police have been heavy-handed *prior to this but this particular relaxation is a significant step so it shouldn't hurt that much to wait two more days for it.


'Some individual police officers' would, I hope, be a more accurate definition. And perhaps, some chiefs of constabulary have directed their force to take a more heavy-handed line than others.

The government passes laws which we expect to be enforced - that's what the police are for. I'm puzzled that some people would prefer that they pick and choose which they should enforce, and/or, enforce it against the other feller.

As a by-the-by...what is this obsession with BBQs??


----------



## Eclectic Al

elgars ghost said:


> But surely if some people can't adhere to the restrictions for just two more days after being fair warned two days prior to that then its their own fault if they end up being fined? I appreciate that the police have been heavy-handed prior to this but this particular relaxation is a significant step so it shouldn't hurt that much to wait two more days for it.


I suppose my feeling is that it is a waste of police time if they investigate this stuff at this stage - and I would hope they don't. I don't really mind too much if some senior officers want to grandstand by talking to journalists, as long as the officers on the ground have a better sense of priorities. I think it just makes any such senior officer look a bit foolish.

If people are getting a couple of days ahead of themselves, I don't really care. I can't imagine the "science" is so accurate that the picture is "Saturday catastrophic, Monday OK".

Here's another parallel beyond my WW1 example: a law legalising homosexual acts has passed all its parliamentary stages but has not yet become law; the police are still actively seeking out examples and getting newspapers to remind people that such behaviour is illegal. Well, the law is the law.


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## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I can't imagine the "science" is so accurate that the picture is "Saturday catastrophic, Monday OK".


I agree. Some scientists are saying that Monday isn't okay either.


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## Flamme

A thought appeared in my subconscience somehow, somewhere, that there will b NO SECOND WAVE...Dont know why, I was just meditating, literaly on past, present and future, actually trying 2 ''conjure'' my mums spirit with a small ''crystal skull'' in my hand when it materialised out of blue...Or dark more likely, because it was l8 at night/early morning. Its strange because the second wave would probably mean bigger paychex 4 me and yesterday I talked 2 some colleagues who are convicned 100% that there will be another outbreak in autumn...


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## Guest

*'This man knows he's dying as surely as I do': a doctor's dispatches from the NHS frontline*

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...i-do-a-doctors-dispatches-from-intensive-care

For me, one key extract from the article is this:

_You could argue - indeed, some commentators have essentially done so - that there was little point to a man like Winston. He was 89 years old, after all, and probably hadn't been economically productive for three decades. He was lucky, frankly, to have had an innings like that. Of course the young must come first. You might even champion another old man's exploits - the charm and determination and ebullience of Captain Tom - while being secretly at peace with the expendability of certain parts of the herd.
_
_But to those of us up close with this dreadful disease - who see, as we do, the way it suffocates the life from you - such judgments are grotesque. The moment we rank life according to who most "deserves" it, we have crossed into a realm I don't want to be a part of - and I struggle to believe many other Britons do either. The way out of this pandemic cannot, surely, entail the sacrifice of those deemed less worth saving?_


----------



## Guest

Some realism, rather than bleeding heart hand-wringing:

https://www.spiked-online.com/video/lockdown-is-not-the-safe-option/


----------



## Eclectic Al

TalkingHead said:


> *'This man knows he's dying as surely as I do': a doctor's dispatches from the NHS frontline*
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...i-do-a-doctors-dispatches-from-intensive-care
> 
> For me, one key extract from the article is this:
> 
> _You could argue - indeed, some commentators have essentially done so - that there was little point to a man like Winston. He was 89 years old, after all, and probably hadn't been economically productive for three decades. He was lucky, frankly, to have had an innings like that. Of course the young must come first. You might even champion another old man's exploits - the charm and determination and ebullience of Captain Tom - while being secretly at peace with the expendability of certain parts of the herd.
> _
> _But to those of us up close with this dreadful disease - who see, as we do, the way it suffocates the life from you - such judgments are grotesque. The moment we rank life according to who most "deserves" it, we have crossed into a realm I don't want to be a part of - and I struggle to believe many other Britons do either. The way out of this pandemic cannot, surely, entail the sacrifice of those deemed less worth saving?_


Dangerous territory this but here goes.
I wouldn't argue that Winston had "little point". His situation sounds somewhat like my father's, who died of pneumonia aged 93, as a frail old man who had not been economically productive (if you want to look at it like that) for 33 years. At his funeral I expect I did remark that he had had a long life, because that was true.
I did not witness his final moments (being on a train up to Sheffield at the time to get to him), but I was told that his sats declined gradually, and he passed quite peacefully. They might have been being kind to me. He looked calm when I saw his body.
In any event, with someone like Winston and my dad and indeed me, there will be a final day and it may not be pleasant, or it may be not too bad. The question with life is more about the journey to that day. In the case of my dad, he often indicated that he had had enough, but then he would have better days. I don't know about Winston. Would my dad have preferred to have more months before his last day, or not? I don't know. He often said not. Maybe his last day would have been better or worse if it had come later. I don't know.

In terms of deciding who "deserves" things I am lucky enough not to have had to do that, but it is not unusual for doctors. There are queues for things like hearts for transplant, and the choice of who gets to go first is not random. We are already in the realm that is mentioned in this article, and doctors are often the people who have to make such difficult choices. It is not a matter (I would guess) in their minds about someone not having a point; it will be more a matter of making difficult choices, when any choice has bad consequences.

I am not aware of commentators saying that we should do anything other than seek to shield the particularly vulnerable. Maybe some are, and I would disagree with them.
There is clearly a difference of opinion about the correct strategy, because no one really knows, and you will find plenty of articles concerned about the linkage between economic downturn and bad health outcomes of all sorts. Of course, if lack of lockdown led to a huge rise in sickness and death then that would have bad economic consequences too. Who is right? Search me, but then I don't think anyone else can be sure either.


----------



## Guest

Some might argue that we're not put on this Earth merely to be "economically productive", though I recognise that the civilisation we have built ourselves (not necessarily with my consent - it was here long before I was born and I must live with it as best I can) is highly dependent on economic productivity.


----------



## Guest

You've made some very interesting comments. Talking about 'deserving' conjures up notions of who can and cannot afford health costs and/or insurance. People spend years on hospital waiting lists for serious surgeries like prosthetic limbs and so forth - at least they do in Australia.

And then there's the moral issue of people engaging in risky behaviours like drug abuse and alcoholism, riding motor bikes without helmets - and these people take up hospital beds, often at the expense of other seriously ill patients. But, hand-wringing about elderly people dying from Covid-19 makes no sense - unless you think as I do that living in full time nursing care, often incontinent and with cognitive impairment is something that shouldn't be preserved. Life has a certain value and no more; it doesn't have an infinite value. There are ethics courses on such things at universities; resuscitation, abortion, palliative care, euthanasia; these things concern our culture more and more as the population ages. 

Wynton Marsalis has just lost his father from Covid-19; his was an early death when the pandemic was getting underway. Yet you'll not hear a trace of bitterness from Marsalis and his family over this. They were thankful for his wonderful life, his 85 years and his own acceptance of his fate.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> Some might argue that we're not put on this Earth merely to be "economically productive", though I recognise that the civilisation we have built ourselves (not necessarily with my consent - it was here long before I was born and I must live with it as best I can) is highly dependent on economic productivity.


The question as to why or otherwise we were put on this earth has vexed generations for millennia - long before western capitalism arrived on the scene. I'm guessing those who forged implements from stone and lived to be 30 years of age would be grateful to live to 60 with the latest labour-saving devices money can buy.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> There are ethics courses on such things at universities; resuscitation, abortion, palliative care, euthanasia; these things concern our culture more and more as the population ages.





Christabel said:


> The question as to why or otherwise we were put on this earth has vexed generations for millennia -


I'm glad we both recognise the moral dilemma we face. Ethics courses don't provide solutions, only exploration of the problems and possible options about how we can handle them in an imperfect world.


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> ..But, hand-wringing about elderly people dying from Covid-19 makes no sense - unless you think as I do that living in full time nursing care, often incontinent and with cognitive impairment is something that shouldn't be preserved. Life has a certain value and no more; it doesn't have an infinite value. There are ethics courses on such things at universities; resuscitation, abortion, palliative care, euthanasia; these things concern our culture more and more as the population ages. ..


Well, we know that you won't be doing any hand-wringing about elderly people dying from Covid-19 and that you've decided that 'living in full time nursing care...shouldn't be preserved.' My guess would be you don't have any parents or other loved ones in a nursing home and/or have had any pass away from the virus.


----------



## science

I suppose I don't mind people lining themselves and their own parents up to be sacrificed at the altar, but I'm not a fan of offering up mine.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> Well, we know that you won't be doing any hand-wringing about elderly people dying from Covid-19 and that you've decided that 'living in full time nursing care...shouldn't be preserved.' My guess would be you don't have any parents or other loved ones in a nursing home and/or have had any pass away from the virus.


No; I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to that kind of lifestyle. It might interest you to know (but I doubt it, since it conflicts with your ideology) that the vast majority of these 'inmates' never receive any visitors. I've been inside them and you see sad old people lining the walls of shared areas with no visitors from one year to the next. You call that living? I don't.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> I'm glad we both recognise the moral dilemma we face. Ethics courses don't provide solutions, only exploration of the problems and possible options about how we can handle them in an imperfect world.


I'm sure you'll find these discussions have been well underway for decades. We have individual states in Australia which have their own euthanasia laws and these couldn't come quickly enough!!

Our youngest patient to die from Coronavirus was a man of 30 who had a disability and seizures. The rest of the 103 people were elderly. For this we have destroyed our national economy, yet our road toll remains stubbornly high in the thousands; doesn't stop people continuing their reckless behaviour on our roads. Something is wrong with the national debate when both of those things can happen simultaneously. It means somebody is trying to kid somebody else.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> I suppose I don't mind people lining themselves and their own parents up to be sacrificed at the altar, but I'm not a fan of offering up mine.


Some societies have taken a more active hand in managing their elders' departures from life. Inuit peoples, for example, used to set their old folks adrift on ice floes or simply abandon them when they slowed down the tribe's travels or simply consumed too much scarce food in lean times. I doubt they felt a lot of moral conflict over this, agreeing with Hamlet that "there is nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so." So, it was simply a matter of public policy.

There are many other examples of senicide, both real and (probably) legendary.


----------



## Flamme

In some parts of my country there was long time ago a custom called ''lapot'' where familes took their old members into hills and forests and killed them with a blow 2 the head with blunt edge of the axe...


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> No; I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to that kind of lifestyle. It might interest you to know (but I doubt it, since it conflicts with your ideology) that the vast majority of these 'inmates' never receive any visitors. I've been inside them and you see sad old people lining the walls of shared areas with no visitors from one year to the next. You call that living? I don't.


My ideology on the subject is, by far, that of the majority in advanced societies. Yours, on the other hand, not so much:



Christabel said:


> .. But, hand-wringing about elderly people dying from Covid-19 makes no sense...


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> My ideology on the subject is, by far, that of the majority in advanced societies. Yours, on the other hand, not so much:


It must give you great comfort belonging to the herd; thinking is surplus to requirement.


----------



## Guest

Flamme said:


> In some parts of my country there was long time ago a custom called ''lapot'' where familes took their old members into hills and forests and killed them with a blow 2 the head with blunt edge of the axe...


This doesn't surprise in the least. My late father used to say that in countries with difficult conditions (deserts, polar caps etc.) the people had no choice but to drop the ailing (remember 'elderly' is a comparatively recent demographic) in the snow as they just had things too tough to be able to literally 'carry' them and support the young as well.

But try telling that to people living in the pampered developed world who have ideologies about 'equality'. It would be tremendously sad if it wasn't entirely risible!!


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> .. thinking is surplus to requirement.


You would know.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> You would know.


Yes, I do know. Consistent wide reading and personal life experience cannot be substituted by blind ideology and superficial thinking. Not if you want to be taken at all seriously in this world. I feel you've spent too much time here (3,091 postings!) to be learning very much elsewhere. Ergo, I'm wasting my time talking to a wall.


----------



## Eclectic Al

I feel it is a pity this is polarising so much again. I am sure there have been societies (say nomadic ones) where senicide was part of the culture, as there was no alternative.
Equally, in a wealthy society we can doubtless support the elderly into advanced old age, precisely because our successful economic development enables this.
That leads to two points: (1) we must keep the economic situation at a level which can sustain this, and (2) we must be careful that we do not commit the other error, and enforce survival on those who have in reality had enough.
I refer to point (2) on the basis of personal experience. At the risk of personalising things again, I should note that my father was economically beneficial to the family in his last years. His pension exceeded his care costs so he was a profit centre for the family, and his surplus income was passed on to his grandchildren tax free (in line with his wishes). I had every reason to want him to continue to live if my motivation was economic, but from a human perspective, not so much. It was a relief when he passed away, because living was a trial for him, although it did represent an economic loss for the family.


----------



## KenOC

Eclectic Al said:


> ...I had every reason to want him to continue to live if my motivation was economic, but from a human perspective, not so much. It was a relief when he passed away, because living was a trial for him, although it did represent an economic loss for the family.


At much risk, I had to chuckle in reading this, thinking of the woman who was discovered a few days ago to have hid her mother's body in a freezer downstairs while continuing to collect her mother's social security checks for 15 years.


----------



## Flamme

Stuff of nigtmares...Should post it in ''bizarre storiees...''


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> Yes, I do know. Consistent wide reading and personal life experience cannot be substituted by blind ideology and superficial thinking. Not if you want to be taken at all seriously in this world...


Whether you are being taken more seriously than anyone else will be decided by others, your wide reading and life experience notwithstanding.


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> At much risk, I had to chuckle in reading this, thinking of the woman who was discovered a few days ago to have hid her mother's body in a freezer downstairs while continuing to collect her mother's social security checks for 15 years.


I think maybe the thing is that at a certain age you start wading through death. In the past very few years I have lost my uncle, aunt, mother, father and brother, plus miscellaneous other family friends of my parents' generation. I think they're all gone now. That's just because I am around 60. In the end you realise that death is not the issue; it is the manner of it, and of the last years. What is best for them? I found the Guardian post offensive because it seemed to me to be exploiting death (in particular that of Winston, RIP) in a cheap fashion, imputing motives to others in order to make a juvenile debating point. I hope the doctor quoted was having a weak moment (and Lord knows why not) but if he was politically motivated, as I am sure the Guardian journalists were, then where have we come to?


----------



## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> Some realism, rather than bleeding heart hand-wringing:
> 
> https://www.spiked-online.com/video/lockdown-is-not-the-safe-option/


Sorry, but seeing how Citizens United is slowly eating the soul of America, I find that any advocate of "dark money" cannot be trusted with any opinion on Covid. Forty years ago dark money was known by its moral equivalent: bribery. But we've made bribery legal now because the very rich live by a different set of moral rules. So anyone who advocates dark money is on the take and whatever they say about Covid will be a position that favors money.


----------



## eljr

Christabel said:


> Yes, I do know. Consistent wide reading and personal life experience cannot be substituted by blind ideology and superficial thinking. Not if you want to be taken at all seriously in this world. I feel you've spent too much time here (3,091 postings!) to be learning very much elsewhere. Ergo, I'm wasting my time talking to a wall.


Dude, this nonsense again?

You can't even not use a fallacy when you post yet you tell us of your superiority?

That is an indictment on you, my man.


----------



## eljr

Christabel said:


> But try telling that to people living in the pampered developed world who have ideologies about 'equality'. It would be tremendously sad if it wasn't entirely risible!!


I could teach you so much if your opened your mind.


----------



## KenOC

Here's an interesting BBC article about Covid-19 conspiracy theories, especially those involving Bill Gates, whose dire plots evidently involve secretly implanting microchips in all of us.

"Conspiracy theories about Bill Gates have reached the Italian Parliament, where an independent MP called for Bill Gates to be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity."

The article also discusses other issues such as India's "cow dung vaccine."


----------



## pianozach

I spent some time this morning responding after a friend posted a link to an article attempting to link COVID-19 hot spots to 5G cell towers.


----------



## DaveM

Those who think that Clovid-19 is a simple matter of 80% mortality of those over 70 and those under 60 have limited risk of dying -and that's what they are basing their perspective of the shutdown on- should think again. It is becoming apparent that a significant number of people in the younger category who recover from the virus are suffering an array of side effects, some of which may become chronic:

'_ many of the more than 1.7 million Americans who've contracted the disease are confronting puzzling, lingering symptoms, including aches, anxiety attacks, night sweats, rapid heartbeats, breathing problems and loss of smell or taste. Many are living a life unrecognizable from the one they had before.'_


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Some societies have taken a more active hand in managing their elders' departures from life. Inuit peoples, for example, used to set their old folks adrift on ice floes or simply abandon them when they slowed down the tribe's travels or simply consumed too much scarce food in lean times. I doubt they felt a lot of moral conflict over this, agreeing with Hamlet that "there is nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so." So, it was simply a matter of public policy.
> 
> There are many other examples of senicide, both real and (probably) legendary.


Okay. But so what?


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Okay. But so what?


I was trying to point out that societies have many different ways of looking at things and often far different value systems. Of course that's a very difficult idea for some of us.


----------



## mrdoc

Christabel said:


> This doesn't surprise in the least. My late father used to say that in countries with difficult conditions (deserts, polar caps etc.) the people had no choice but to drop the ailing (remember 'elderly' is a comparatively recent demographic) in the snow as they just had things too tough to be able to literally 'carry' them and support the young as well.
> 
> But try telling that to people living in the pampered developed world who have ideologies about 'equality'. It would be tremendously sad if it wasn't entirely risible!!


Interesting view on life would you include Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies, mentally retarded, black people or any other groups that you feel are holding society back. And people always have a choice.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> I was trying to point out that societies have many different ways of looking at things and often far different value systems. Of course that's a very difficult idea for some of us.


Why are we talking about those societies? My parents live in the United States. You're arguing that I should let them die.

And if that's not what your comment meant, then in what way was it relevant to my post that you quoted?


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Why are we talking about those societies? My parents live in the United States. You're arguing that I should let them die.


I am? (scratches head) I know my memory isn't as good as it once was, but I honestly don't remember that part!


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> I am? (scratches head) I know my memory isn't as good as it once was, but I honestly don't remember that part!


I don't mind helping you out a bit. I'd posted this:



science said:


> I suppose I don't mind people lining themselves and their own parents up to be sacrificed at the altar, but I'm not a fan of offering up mine.


You quoted that with this reply:



KenOC said:


> Some societies have taken a more active hand in managing their elders' departures from life. Inuit peoples, for example, used to set their old folks adrift on ice floes or simply abandon them when they slowed down the tribe's travels or simply consumed too much scarce food in lean times. I doubt they felt a lot of moral conflict over this, agreeing with Hamlet that "there is nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so." So, it was simply a matter of public policy.
> 
> There are many other examples of senicide, both real and (probably) legendary.


So clearly in your mind there is some relationship between the fact that I am unwilling to submit my own parents to "senicide" and the fact that other societies have done so.

Feel free to spell it out yourself. I gave you the chance to do so:



science said:


> Okay. But so what?


But you declined:



KenOC said:


> I was trying to point out that societies have many different ways of looking at things and often far different value systems. *Of course that's a very difficult idea for some of us.*


I note that the bolded part implies that I'm too stupid to understand the profound depths of thought you're exploring here.

Maybe I am. Spell it out for me then.

How exactly is that fact that some people kill their elders supposed to relate to me and my family?


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> ...How exactly is that fact that some people kill their elders supposed to relate to me and my family?


Does it? I hope not. The idea that various societies have different approaches to such matters, perhaps based on totally different value systems, seems anathema to you. I regret any discomfort this idea may have caused you, of course.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Does it? I hope not. The idea that various societies have different approaches to such matters, perhaps based on totally different value systems, seems anathema to you. I regret any discomfort this idea may have caused you, of course.


As you know very well, I haven't expressed any discomfort with that information. Like nearly everyone in the world today, I've been familiar with such information since my childhood.

As you also know, you intentionally linked that information to my family.

Why did you do that? Why won't you answer this question forthrightly? I know you're big on honor. Answer it honorably.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> As you know very well, I haven't expressed any discomfort with that information. Like nearly everyone in the world today, I've been familiar with such information since my childhood.
> 
> As you also know, you intentionally linked that information to my family.
> 
> Why did you do that? Why won't you answer this question forthrightly? I know you're big on honor. Answer it honorably.


You think I was purposely referring to your family? I won't discuss this any more because you obviously have some sort of issue that I can't deal with. Good night.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> You think I was purposely referring to your family? I won't discuss this any more because you obviously have some sort of issue that I can't deal with. Good night.


So you only accidentally quoted my post when you shared that information. That's an explanation, I guess.


----------



## Guest

Igor Levit to play 20-hour Eric Satie piece as 'silent scream'Playing Satie's _*Vexations*_ (quite an apt word for this thread) - an artist's response to the Covid-19 lockdown:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...lay-20-hour-eric-satie-piece-as-silent-scream


----------



## elgar's ghost

^
^

I certainly wish him well with that.


----------



## Art Rock

In the Netherlands the latest daily figures keep looking encouraging (e.g. 5 dead, the lowest number since mid March). Starting tomorrow restaurants and bars will re-open with strict instructions to ensure social distancing. We'll see how that goes. The general feeling is a bit too much "it's over". Even this week, the virus flared up in the Hague, in a small mosque where against the rules still services were held (at least 20 participants in services tested positive, one dead so far).


----------



## Eclectic Al

Very much enjoyed a remark in one of the papers today about corona commentary.
The suggestion was that items can be rated on the Piers Morgan scale.
For example, a suggestion that it's quite risky to ease lockdown might be a Force 2 (Light Breeze), but the idea that a government is deliberately following policies designed to make their friends rich at the expense of thousands of deaths would be a Force 10 (Storm Force). The Piers Morgan scale is employed to measure the flow of hot air re Covid-19.
I will keep this scale in the back of my mind when I read posts on this thread.
For those who are not aware of his work, Piers Morgan is a joke broadcaster who wants to be taken more seriously than he is as a "journalist", and seems to have picked on the corona crisis as a good way of boosting his approval ratings on Twitter. Every cloud, as they say.


----------



## Flamme

Even if it weasnt a weapon b4 it seems it now is, a vehicle 4 certain social and political engineering agendas...


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> I was trying to point out that societies have many different ways of looking at things and often far different value systems. Of course that's a very difficult idea for some of us.


but those sociaties are not the ones we live in. Good grief. Of course that's a very difficult idea for some of us.


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> have some sort of issue that I can't deal with. .


quoted for irony


----------



## Bigbang

KenOC said:


> Here's an interesting BBC article about Covid-19 conspiracy theories, especially those involving Bill Gates, whose dire plots evidently involve secretly implanting microchips in all of us.
> 
> "Conspiracy theories about Bill Gates have reached the Italian Parliament, where an independent MP called for Bill Gates to be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity."
> 
> The article also discusses other issues such as India's "cow dung vaccine."


I think reporters (with a straight face) ought to ask President Trump if he thinks Bill Gates is trying to implant microchips to cause the election to go the way of democrats.....just sayin........


----------



## Luchesi

Art Rock said:


> In the Netherlands the latest daily figures keep looking encouraging (e.g. 5 dead, the lowest number since mid March). Starting tomorrow restaurants and bars will re-open with strict instructions to ensure social distancing. We'll see how that goes. The general feeling is a bit too much "it's over". Even this week, the virus flared up in the Hague, in a small mosque where against the rules still services were held (at least 20 participants in services tested positive, one dead so far).


In a sermon I heard that God in His infinite wisdom created viruses, but we can't understand it.


----------



## Bigbang

Luchesi said:


> In a sermon I heard that God in His infinite wisdom created viruses, but we can't understand it.


God, the gods, evolution, it is all the same, we cannot understand it no matter how hard but it certainly a teaching moment. BTW, before we deny basic tenets of evolution, viruses and vaccines to combat them are based on understanding the role of evolution.


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> In a sermon I heard that God in His infinite wisdom created viruses, but we can't understand it.


Nature is indeed marvelous.

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum."


----------



## Luchesi

Bigbang said:


> God, the gods, evolution, it is all the same, we cannot understand it no matter how hard but it certainly a teaching moment. BTW, before we deny basic tenets of evolution, viruses and vaccines to combat them are based on understanding the role of evolution.


I figured it out, but people don't like the answer.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Luchesi said:


> I figured it out, but people don't like the answer.


I would like to hear your answer. The world is waiting. 

I do think one thing that is entertaining about the current crisis is that people in the "developed" world do seem to think that they are separate from nature. The idea that infectious disease is a problem seems to be a surprise, and the comforting myth in response is that somehow if we stay in our little safe homes and wait then the world will move on we can carry on being impervious to these threats. We can just log on and live our lives online, with physical stuff being delivered by "underlings?", "lesser people?". The Internet will keep working; the water will keep coming out of the taps; the sewage will continue to be dealt with; the electricity will continue. Well you have to eat and if you stay in your safe little home that means some else must be out and about getting your food for you. Same for all the other essentials of privileged western life today. Why is it that they have to do that, and not you? Is that moral? If you are lurking at home because you are concerned about others then fine; if you are lurking at home because of concern about yourself then shame on you - unless you have a particular risk indicator.


----------



## Open Book

Age alone is a big risk. Right? And older people are expendable, we're learning. 

So older people shouldn't feel at all bad for lurking at home.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> Age alone is a big risk. Right? And older people are expendable, we're learning.
> 
> So older people shouldn't feel at all bad for lurking at home.


Depends what you mean by old. I'm about 60 without any health issues, so if people are going to deliver stuff to me then I can't see that I have any right to shield myself. If I was pushing 70 I might start to feel differently. Broadly this seems to tally with working age, so if I am of working age then I am feeling like I am obliged to keep serving others. A different question if I was immuno-compromised or whatever.


----------



## Open Book

Entertainers are setting a bad example for social distancing.

We looked for sports that aren't reruns and found a cornhole tournament yesterday (yes, we're that desperate). Everyone wore masks and gloves and was careful until the end when one contestant hugged the other.

Berlin Philharmonic musicians have been broadcasting live chamber concerts from an empty concert hall. They were able to keep the minimum 1.5 meters while playing but then sat down afterward and passed around a bottle of wine. Oy! I think I'd want to be much more than 1.5 meters from blowing brass players also.


----------



## Open Book

Eclectic Al said:


> Depends what you mean by old. I'm about 60 without any health issues, so if people are going to deliver stuff to me then I can't see that I have any right to shield myself. If I was pushing 70 I might start to feel differently. Broadly this seems to tally with working age, so if I am of working age then I am feeling like I am obliged to keep serving others. A different question if I was immuno-compromised or whatever.


I don't really like to give my age, but I'm of the age where I have to be somewhat concerned, kind of on the cusp. Also, I don't want to get it and spread it to a loved one. Some stats say preexisting conditions are more important, others indicate age alone is the big factor. Probably old age _is_ a preexisting condition.

It hasn't been lost on me that I should be grateful for delivery people and others and that they are shielding me from taking some risks myself. They are typically under 30 and often don't wear masks when they arrive and probably meet with their friends on weekends. They don't seem worried and probably see these jobs as good opportunities. If they weren't delivering groceries they'd be working _at_ the grocery store where they would be even more exposed to the virus. So I don't feel that guilty.


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> Age alone is a big risk. Right? And older people are expendable, we're learning.
> 
> So older people shouldn't feel at all bad for lurking at home.


Actually we seem to consider older lives more precious than younger ones. We are quite willing to wave our flags, sing our patriotic songs, and send off our young to die by the thousands or even millions when that seems required.

Old folks may be denied payment for dialysis beyond a certain age, be refused a transplant, etc., but the order of magnitude seems quite different.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> Depends what you mean by old. I'm about 60 without any health issues, so if people are going to deliver stuff to me then I can't see that I have any right to shield myself. If I was pushing 70 I might start to feel differently. Broadly this seems to tally with working age, so if I am of working age then I am feeling like I am obliged to keep serving others. A different question if I was immuno-compromised or whatever.


I'm not sure on what basis you have decided that being 60 is enough of a difference from being 70 to not have to 'shield yourself' or not. While the mortality figures after 70 are startling high, the mortality figures really start to separate from the younger demographic at 60: Those in the 60-69 age group have a mortality rate of 2-3 times that of the 50-59 age group.


----------



## Open Book

DaveM said:


> I'm not sure on what basis you have decided that being 60 is enough of a difference from being 70 to not have to 'shield yourself' or not. While the mortality figures after 70 are startling high, the mortality figures really start to separate from the younger demographic at 60: Those in the 60-69 age group have a mortality of 2-3 times that of the 50-59 age group.


Everybody who can is trying to convince himself that the bad things mostly happen to other (older, sicker) people.


----------



## Jacck

Asymptomatic coronavirus: how common is it and can its spread be contained?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-common-is-it-and-can-its-spread-be-contained


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> Everybody who can is trying to convince himself that the bad things mostly happen to other (older, sicker) people.


I suppose it's linked to the fact that my work over several decades has been directly connected with mortality rates and risk. We're all looking at an uncertain future and can get lucky, or not. I could notice something tomorrow, and it turns out that it's motor neurone disease or a cancer or Covid-19 or whatever. I can't live my life worrying about all the bad things that could happen. I need to take a reasonable stance in the context of what is known about the risks,

When it comes to Covid-19 we should be taking sensible precautions and certainly I wouldn't want to become likely to spread it if I could sensibly avoid that possibility. Where the stats seem to sit, though, I'm not especially worried for myself. At a higher age the risks would be a lot higher, as you note, so I might feel differently, but it's never going to be a situation of age 65 OK, age 66 no way. At 55-65 in good health, I'm not too worried. At some point I will die of something. It probably won't be Covid-19, and it probably won't be soon, but it could be either or both. Fine: that's life.


----------



## Room2201974

KenOC said:


> Actually we seem to consider older lives more precious than younger ones. We are quite willing to wave our flags, sing our patriotic songs, and send off our young to die by the thousands or even millions when that seems required.
> 
> Old folks may be denied payment for dialysis beyond a certain age, be refused a transplant, etc., but the order of magnitude seems quite different.


Yo *Ken*,

I posted a bad link to your "many's the slip twixt the cup and the lip" remark. For some reason, that link now works. So, as I stated before, enjoy one of the lost great tunes of the 60's. I don't think they had enough payolla to push this nationally. Pity, you don't hear many harps in rock and roll.






This concludes the entertainment portion of this thread. Carry on!


----------



## mmsbls

For those who actually wish to compare economic affects and deaths/infections, there is a nice website that compares various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) with economic outcomes for states in the US. One can compare the effect of 6 levels of NPIs from no interventions to the most extreme (Close schools, bars, and restaurants; ban large events; close nonessential businesses; and issue a shelter-in-place order for everyone but essential workers). The model projects cumulative deaths through Sept 1, cumulative infections through Sept 1, and change in gross state income from March 1 through 15 days from the start of the changed NPIs.

Ideally one would want the model to extend the projections for a longer time, but presumably, the uncertainties tend to get large. I've only played with the model for a couple of states and NPIs, but it seems that the $ economic loss per death is well under US$1 million. Again, it's hard to know what the effects would be if extended into next year.


----------



## Bigbang

Eclectic Al said:


> I would like to hear your answer. The world is waiting.
> 
> I do think one thing that is entertaining about the current crisis is that people in the "developed" world do seem to think that they are separate from nature. The idea that infectious disease is a problem seems to be a surprise, and the comforting myth in response is that somehow if we stay in our little safe homes and wait then the world will move on we can carry on being impervious to these threats. We can just log on and live our lives online, with physical stuff being delivered by "underlings?", "lesser people?". The Internet will keep working; the water will keep coming out of the taps; the sewage will continue to be dealt with; the electricity will continue. Well you have to eat and if you stay in your safe little home that means some else must be out and about getting your food for you. Same for all the other essentials of privileged western life today. Why is it that they have to do that, and not you? Is that moral? If you are lurking at home because you are concerned about others then fine; if you are lurking at home because of concern about yourself then shame on you - unless you have a particular risk indicator.


I have always thought that separating oneself from the environment can lead to mental problems, not mental illness per se but just issues that lead to a less healthy balance existence. For example, being in an environment too clean, exterminate all the bugs, and build a moat around the house. Can this be healthy?


----------



## science

Open Book said:


> Everybody who can is trying to convince himself that the bad things mostly happen to other (older, sicker) people.


One of the key things to think about is whether someone perceives themselves as vulnerable to this (or any other thing) or not. We're all just human. It's pretty easy for us to be cavalier about the lives and well-being of people we don't know. If they are very different, or seem threatening, it's actually very hard to be at all sympathetic to them. But if it's us or our families, or even simply people like us, well, _then_ it's serious.


----------



## That Guy Mick

Eclectic Al said:


> I would like to hear your answer. The world is waiting.
> 
> I do think one thing that is entertaining about the current crisis is that people in the "developed" world do seem to think that they are separate from nature. The idea that infectious disease is a problem seems to be a surprise, and the comforting myth in response is that somehow if we stay in our little safe homes and wait then the world will move on we can carry on being impervious to these threats. We can just log on and live our lives online, with physical stuff being delivered by "underlings?", "lesser people?". The Internet will keep working; the water will keep coming out of the taps; the sewage will continue to be dealt with; the electricity will continue. Well you have to eat and if you stay in your safe little home that means some else must be out and about getting your food for you. Same for all the other essentials of privileged western life today. Why is it that they have to do that, and not you? Is that moral? If you are lurking at home because you are concerned about others then fine; if you are lurking at home because of concern about yourself then shame on you - unless you have a particular risk indicator.


The ending statement "_if you are lurking at home because of concern about yourself then shame on you_" lacks continuity with the the opening statement "_people in the "developed" world do seem to think that they are separate from nature._"

Aside from that, the rest of the claims seem purely sanctimonious. Perhaps you could provide a more lucid explanation of how people should behave in the context of social distancing requirements by the authorities.


----------



## mmsbls

The flu doesn't seem to leave lasting effects, but early studies tell a very different story about Covid-19. COvid-19 patients who recover sometimes exhibit lung scarring, stroke, embolisms, blood clotting, heart damage, and neurocognitive mental health impacts. Children also seem to sometimes experience lasting effects that are not well understood. Even if one recovers from Covid-19 apparently there maybe fairly serious long term effects.

So even if the fatality rate is roughly 1%, many others could experience serious health effects . My understanding is that these effects have been seen in children as well as working age adults.


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> The flu doesn't seem to leave lasting effects, but early studies tell a very different story about Covid-19. COvid-19 patients who recover sometimes exhibit lung scarring, stroke, embolisms, blood clotting, heart damage, and neurocognitive mental health impacts. Children also seem to sometimes experience lasting effects that are not well understood. Even if one recovers from Covid-19 apparently there maybe fairly serious long term effects.
> 
> So even if the fatality rate is roughly 1%, many others could experience serious health effects . My understanding is that these effects have been seen in children as well as working age adults.


Yes, those can be added to what I mentioned yesterday. 



DaveM said:


> Those who think that Clovid-19 is a simple matter of 80% mortality of those over 70 and those under 60 have limited risk of dying -and that's what they are basing their perspective of the shutdown on- should think again. It is becoming apparent that a significant number of people in the younger category who recover from the virus are suffering an array of side effects, some of which may become chronic:
> 
> '_ many of the more than 1.7 million Americans who've contracted the disease are confronting puzzling, lingering symptoms, including aches, anxiety attacks, night sweats, rapid heartbeats, breathing problems and loss of smell or taste. Many are living a life unrecognizable from the one they had before.'_


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## Guest

The flu can be devastating. No lasting effects? The 45 year old woman down the road (the wife of the local butcher) died several years ago from influenza, when nobody else much seemed to have it. They simply couldn't get her temperature down; the end result was that an otherwise healthy woman, energetic and not overweight, ended in a pine box after multiple organ failure. 

I myself have had Pertussis (Whooping Cough) twice; first at 47 years and second at 57 years. People stopped immunizing their kids and it spread through the high schools and that's how I caught it. Elderly relatives have also caught it from babysitting their grandchildren; I can assure you it's life-threatening in the elderly as well as infants. But you seldom hear anybody talk about this. So preventable; if only people would vaccinate their infants and children.

Hint: Whooping Cough vaccination doesn't last a lifetime and has a use-by date of about two decades. Ask your doctor about it.


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## KenOC

Regarding long-term serious after-effects of Covid-19 infections, has anybody seen any numbers on these? We see somebody say "a significant number" but that's not a very meaningful statement.


----------



## mmsbls

Christabel said:


> The flu can be devastating. No lasting effects? ...


I think we're talking about different things. We all know the flu causes deaths. The mortality rate is about 0.1%. But if you recover from the flu, do you still experience potential issues similar to the ones mentioned for Covid-19? My understanding is those longer term effects are different from the flu.


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## DaveM

The flu does not cause anything comparable to the complications listed above in those who first appear to have recovered from the main Clovid-19 symptoms. It’s just a fact.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Regarding long-term serious after-effects of Covid-19 infections, has anybody seen any numbers on these? We see somebody say "a significant number" but that's not a very meaningful statement.


It's meaningful if it's the result of multiple medical reports from different sources across the country. It's too early to get exact numbers not only because it's only relatively recently that unusual complications were being recognized as sequelae of the disease, but also because of the wide variation of them. This is probably due to the result of an overall pathologic immune response with release of substances such as histamine & cytokines that cause inflammation, blood clotting and all sorts of other mayhem. Numbers will likely come out before long.


----------



## science

On the economic response to the coronavirus:

How the Fed Bailed Out the Investor Class Without Spending a Cent: Just announcing $4.5 trillion in future spending to support securities markets was enough to keep owners of capital protected from the downsides of the coronavirus.



> By David Dayen
> 
> Key Takeaways
> 
> The Federal Reserve announced on March 23 that it would start direct purchases of corporate debt-an unprecedented rescue of corporate America.
> Since then, the stock market has risen over 30 percent, corporate bond funds have recovered, and companies have saved tens of billions in borrowing costs.
> Thanks to this massive government subsidy, large companies like Boeing and Carnival Cruises were able to avoid taking money directly-and sidestep requirements to keep employees on-by instead issuing bonds.
> The Intercept and The American Prospect have identified 49 companies that issued corporate debt since March 23, adding up to hundreds of billions they otherwise couldn't have secured so cheaply-providing a safety net to the investor class and making a mockery of the alleged virtues of free-market capitalism.
> This sets the stage for companies with functionally no revenue path in the near future to take on mounds of additional debt-and could set the stage for a series of defaults.


There's a whole article there and it's good. If you'd rather listen to an interview with the author, Sam Seder has done a good one.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I think we're talking about different things. We all know the flu causes deaths. The mortality rate is about 0.1%. But if you recover from the flu, do you still experience potential issues similar to the ones mentioned for Covid-19? My understanding is those longer term effects are different from the flu.


I would think (and I'm not a doctor) that weakened immune system and lung problems are a consequence of influenza. That and a susceptibility to asthma (which still kills). After I had Pertussis I had a serious pre-disposition to Upper Respiratory Tract Infections and Asthma that lasted for years. Only recently I've stopped having these infections. But I will ask my friend who is a general practitioner.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Christabel said:


> I would think (and I'm not a doctor) that weakened immune system and lung problems are a consequence of influenza. That and a susceptibility to asthma (which still kills). After I had Pertussis I had a serious pre-disposition to Upper Respiratory Tract Infections and Asthma that lasted for years. Only recently I've stopped having these infections. But I will ask my friend who is a general practitioner.


Interesting study here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17497-6

The conclusion is that those who suffered from a particular influenza can suffer long-term complications: "long-term lung disability and psychological impairment in H7N9 survivors persisted at 2 years after discharge from the hospital"

Oh, and here's another:
https://www.mdlinx.com/article/5-su...-and-flu-complications/2RIynpqlR8Jo4EZElIIRmh

To be honest, I didn't have to try very hard to find links to long-term severe complications of flu (or even the cold).

The issue we have at the moments is that journalists get up to Force 8 on the Piers Morgan scale by referencing possible complications of Covid-19, in a way which makes it seem to the poor old man or woman in the street to be a different order of problem from flu, when in reality that can have many long-lasting complications too. This stirs up fear in the population, likely (- can't say for sure) at a level which is not related to the relative risks of different possible problems they could face. Journalists have their own motivations for doing this, which will likely vary by country and the political situation.

Flu is a potentially serious condition, which is capable of causing long-lasting complications, but which most people survive with relatively minor consequences. Covid-19 seems to be similar - not some sort of civilisation-ending scourge.

You might then think that the problem with Covid-19 is the existence of asymptomatic spreaders, which is not the case with flu. Whoops again:
https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/

Here's a snippet from the link above:

_"This is very much a "good news, bad news" story. It is good news in that so many people with a flu infection are spared the burden of a nasty infection. However, limiting the spread of a future pandemic could be challenging, as it would be unclear who is infected. This reinforces the importance of practising essential hygiene habits to stop flu spreading, such as frequent hand washing and cleaning surfaces so that they are free of germs - especially if there is an ongoing flu pandemic."_

Sound familiar? My guess is that if Covid-19 was an influenza virus, but it had precisely the same consequences as we are seeing with Covid-19, then we would have reacted to it very differently, and you would not have seen lockdowns of the form we have. Would that have been better or worse in terms of ultimate outcomes? Haven't a clue.


----------



## Guest

Very interesting read; thank you Eclectic Al. As I've said before, we have Hendra virus here in Australia; a transgenic disease which has gone from bats to horses and can kill a vet within 36 hours. And yet bats are a protected species in this country, despite tens of thousands of them inhabiting regional areas, killing trees, fouling the ground and driving residents insane. Still no right to kill them!! 

(You mention Piers Morgan; hardly the sharpest tool in the work shed. He's just a propagandist who loves to upset anyone who isn't of the 'progressive' Left. Above all, his sole concern is, of course, Piers Morgan! He has the imagination of an ashtray.)


----------



## mmsbls

Eclectic Al said:


> ...
> Sound familiar? My guess is that if Covid-19 was an influenza virus, but it had precisely the same consequences as we are seeing with Covid-19, then we would have reacted to it very differently, and you would not have seen lockdowns of the form we have. Would that have been better or worse in terms of ultimate outcomes? Haven't a clue.


It was my understanding that neither the media nor the public drove the push for lockdowns and sheltering in place. I thought it was health care experts who assessed the situation and recognized that Covid-19 was vastly more problematic for several reasons. They understood that humans had no general immunity to Covid-19 so the majority of the population was susceptible to infection. Further, the death rates were vastly higher.

In this thread we've discussed how to estimate deaths due to Covid-19. According to this paper, estimates for Covid-19 and flu are done quite differently. Flu deaths are determined "not as raw counts but as calculated estimates based on submitted International Classification of Diseases codes." The estimates of flu deaths are roughly 6 times the reported counted numbers. In comparison, Covid-19 deaths are counted and reported directly as raw counts. The mean number of counted deaths in the US during the peak week of recent influenza seasons was 752. That number for Covid in late April was roughly 15,000 or roughly 20 times as great. The expectation was that Covid-19 deaths would increase without interventions.

The paper states, "The demand on hospital resources during the COVID-19 crisis has not occurred before in the US, even during the worst of influenza seasons. Yet public officials continue to draw comparisons between seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2 mortality, _often in an attempt to minimize the effects of the unfolding pandemic_" (my italics).

If Covid-19 were an influenza like virus to which humans had no general immunity and it resulted in an enormously larger number of deaths and demand on hospital resources, I suspect the epidemiologists would have reacted similarly.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> It was my understanding that neither the media nor the public drove the push for lockdowns and sheltering in place. I thought it was health care experts who assessed the situation and recognized that Covid-19 was vastly more problematic for several reasons. They understood that humans had no general immunity to Covid-19 so the majority of the population was susceptible to infection. Further, the death rates were vastly higher.
> 
> In this thread we've discussed how to estimate deaths due to Covid-19. According to this paper, estimates for Covid-19 and flu are done quite differently. Flu deaths are determined "not as raw counts but as calculated estimates based on submitted International Classification of Diseases codes." The estimates of flu deaths are roughly 6 times the reported counted numbers. In comparison, Covid-19 deaths are counted and reported directly as raw counts. The mean number of counted deaths in the US during the peak week of recent influenza seasons was 752. That number for Covid in late April was roughly 15,000 or roughly 20 times as great. The expectation was that Covid-19 deaths would increase without interventions.
> 
> The paper states, "The demand on hospital resources during the COVID-19 crisis has not occurred before in the US, even during the worst of influenza seasons. Yet public officials continue to draw comparisons between seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2 mortality, _often in an attempt to minimize the effects of the unfolding pandemic_" (my italics).
> 
> If Covid-19 were an influenza like virus to which humans had no general immunity and it resulted in an enormously larger number of deaths and demand on hospital resources, I suspect the epidemiologists would have reacted similarly.


I am not privy to the inner workings of the minds in government here, but the media pressure to do something was certainly building very strongly in the run-up to the lockdown. I don't know what might have been done without that pressure, but it would have been a very brave government who "did a Sweden".

Most of your post may be completely accurate, but it's on a different topic to the one I was addressing.

I was merely pointing out the fact that flu can have long lasting complications, and the fact that people can readily have flu and spread it while being asymptomatic carriers, because it seems to me that various posts in this thread seemed to be implying that this was not the case, and that Covid-19 was unique in those regards. There is sometime almost a relish for painting Covid-19 as some sort of star, when to me it looks not dissimilar to a new severe strain of flu emerging out of the blue, which does not respond to existing treatments or vaccines.

In terms of epidemiologists, again you might be correct, but I haven't necessarily seen a uniformity of view among those, so who knows how the balance might have settled regarding the best way forwards if a new very nasty influenza outbreak was getting going. I think novelty does influence the public debate and that influences policy responses. "Novel coronavirus" is sexier than flu for headlines.

Perhaps I'm rambling, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's not the disease itself which exercises me: it's the way it is "marketed", if you like. There seems to be such relish to point to its supposed invincibility or whatever, but many other things look just as nasty.


----------



## mmsbls

Eclectic Al said:


> I am not privy to the inner workings of the minds in government here, but the media pressure to do something was certainly building very strongly in the run-up to the lockdown. I don't know what might have been done without that pressure, but it would have been a very brave government who "did a Sweden".


I agree, but I'd rather have a smart government than a brave one.



Eclectic Al said:


> I was merely pointing out the fact that flu can have long lasting complications, and the fact that people can readily have flu and spread it while being asymptomatic carriers, because it seems to me that various posts in this thread seemed to be implying that this was not the case, and that Covid-19 was unique in those regards. There is sometime almost a relish for painting Covid-19 as some sort of star, when to me it looks not dissimilar to a new severe strain of flu emerging out of the blue, which does not respond to existing treatments or vaccines.


I don't know how long-lasting effects from COvid-19 will compare to the flu. The things I read gave me the impression that Covid-19 effects were not like those we're familiar with, but I don't know. We'll have to see.



Eclectic Al said:


> ...Perhaps I'm rambling, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's not the disease itself which exercises me: it's the way it is "marketed", if you like. There seems to be such relish to point to its supposed invincibility or whatever, but many other things look just as nasty.


I agree that the media markets news so people will tune in, and certainly some of the news I've seen doesn't really inform me much. Personally, I'm much more concerned with the disease than the media response.


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> I am not privy to the inner workings of the minds in government here, but the media pressure to do something was certainly building very strongly in the run-up to the lockdown. I don't know what might have been done without that pressure, but it would have been a very brave government who "did a Sweden".
> 
> Most of your post may be completely accurate, but it's on a different topic to the one I was addressing.
> 
> I was merely pointing out the fact that flu can have long lasting complications, and the fact that people can readily have flu and spread it while being asymptomatic carriers, because it seems to me that various posts in this thread seemed to be implying that this was not the case, and that Covid-19 was unique in those regards. There is sometime almost a relish for painting Covid-19 as some sort of star, when to me it looks not dissimilar to a new severe strain of flu emerging out of the blue, which does not respond to existing treatments or vaccines.
> 
> In terms of epidemiologists, again you might be correct, but I haven't necessarily seen a uniformity of view among those, so who knows how the balance might have settled regarding the best way forwards if a new very nasty influenza outbreak was getting going. I think novelty does influence the public debate and that influences policy responses. "Novel coronavirus" is sexier than flu for headlines.
> 
> Perhaps I'm rambling, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's not the disease itself which exercises me: it's the way it is "marketed", if you like. There seems to be such relish to point to its supposed invincibility or whatever, but many other things look just as nasty.


Al, Covid is not flu.

Come on, you have to know this.


----------



## Eclectic Al

eljr said:


> Al, Covid is not flu.
> 
> Come on, you have to know this.


I am well aware that it is not a flu virus. However, if you look at the consequences then it is another viral infection doing similar things to a society.

I am also aware that Covid-19 is a coronavirus, but that other coronaviruses behave differently, so it's not particularly interesting (except to virologists) to say that it is a coronavirus. Similarly, I am aware that different flu viruses can behave differently from each other, and it is not very interesting (except to virologists) to say they are flu viruses.

I have a sense on this thread that people think that flu is not a very threatening family of viruses. I do not share that complacency. What I am concerned about is how the pathogen behaves, and what can be done about it, not how virologists classify it. I am aware that different families of virus tend to be open to different therapeutic interventions, and in that sense it matters whether a particular pathogen is of one type of another. Again, though, it is the possible interventions that I am interested in.

What I am not interested in doing is putting Covid-19 on a pedestal and giving it a round of applause - sort of saying "Ooh, aren't you scary! That flu thing is nothing compared to you." Then we are hitting high numbers on the Piers Morgan scale.


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> Actually we seem to consider older lives more precious than younger ones. .


Ken, this seems a rather extreme interpretation.

But none the less, after 90 pages of you posting "let the old to die", don't you think we understand your position by now?

enjoy the day

eljr


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> I am well aware that it is not a flu virus. However, if you look at the consequences then it is another viral infection doing similar things to a society.
> 
> I am also aware that Covid-19 is a coronavirus, but that other coronaviruses behave differently, so it's not particularly interesting (except to virologists) to say that it is a coronavirus. Similarly, I am aware that different flu viruses can behave differently from each other, and it is not very interesting (except to virologists) to say they are flu viruses.
> 
> I have a sense on this thread that people think that flu is not a very threatening family of viruses. I do not share that complacency. What I am concerned about is how the pathogen behaves, and what can be done about it, not how virologists classify it. I am aware that different families of virus tend to be open to different therapeutic interventions, and in that sense it matters whether a particular pathogen is of one type of another. Again, though, it is the possible interventions that I am interested in.
> 
> What I am not interested in doing is putting Covid-19 on a pedestal and giving it a round of applause - sort of saying "Ooh, aren't you scary! That flu thing is nothing compared to you." Then we are hitting high numbers on the Piers Morgan scale.


I understand you point. (good post)

I do disagree with your last paragraph however for several reasons. For example Covid is far more contagious and we have no defenses against it. Also, it is more debilitating than the flu for those that do survive.


----------



## Luchesi

Has the level of activity in TC increased since the lockdown? 10 percent increase? 50 percent increase?

Will a decrease be noticeable as the restrictions are slowly lifted?


----------



## Flamme

1st bus ride 2day, not 2 many ppl, lots of social distance...U can enter on 1st door and exit on third and 2econd...Many ppl wear, but quite few dont wear mask or gloves...I had a mask on 2 my nose because of allerigies attax...


----------



## Eclectic Al

eljr said:


> I do disagree with your last paragraph however for several reasons. For example Covid is far more contagious and we have no defenses against it. Also, it is more debilitating than the flu for those that do survive.


I think where we disagree is that I do not feel that we know those things.

Here are links to some research (and there is a lot more on this topic):
https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674(20)30610-3
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/t-cells-found-covid-19-patients-bode-well-long-term-immunity

It seems to be becoming clear that there is substantial T-cell activity against Covid-19 among people who are believed not to have been exposed to it. The suggestion is that exposure to other coronaviruses (eg common cold) provides a cross-immunity against Covid-19 in 40-60% of their non-exposed subjects. Hence, a sizeable chunk of the population may have defences against Covid-19 already in place within their T-cell response. How effective that protection may be is hard to assess.

We also don't really understand how contagious it is. An interesting example is the cruise ship Diamond Princess. The passenger who may have started the outbreak boarded on 20/1 and disembarked on 25/1. He tested positive on 1/2 and passengers were confined to cabin from 5/2. That means 5 days for him to spread it, and then 11 days for others to do so (if he was the only original carrier). Ultimately 17% of the crew and passengers seem to have caught it, despite ideal spreading conditions for about 16 days.
https://www.princess.com/news/notices_and_advisories/notices/diamond-princess-update.html
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.10.2000180

I find that 17% number reassuringly low.

Here is some more interesting research:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-...-for-sars-cov-2-tell-us-about-immunity--67425

This discusses how those with minor consequences from infection by coronaviruses may not develop detectable levels of antibodies. One interesting quote is "the magnitude of an antibody response correlates well with how big the infection was". Given that we are discovering that many people are asymptomatic with Covid-19 it is plausible (at least) that there will be people around with undetectable levels of antibodies despite having been exposed. Perhaps this is because of a healthy killer T response as described above, which also explains why their symptoms were mild to non-existent.

Put this all together, and you may end up with the following: many people with a healthy killer T cell response to Covid-19 who therefore exhibit all of the following (i) no history of symptoms, (ii) undetectably low levels of antibodies, and (iii) effective immunity. To find these people you would need to look for a killer T response to Covid-19 among those with no antibodies (which we are seeing, as above) and a belief that this will confer immunity. This is the optimistic view.

You would then have people who appeared not to have been exposed (because they have no detectable antibodies), but who are well-protected. If there are many of these people and you ignore the point, then you would understate the number of people who had been exposed and survived with immunity. This would lead you to overstate the case fatality rate (as these people would not be in the denominator as having had the disease) and to overstate the number who remained susceptible. You would therefore predict a future calamity, even though the thing had nearly run its course, and the infamous herd immunity had been achieved.

The above is probably too optimistic, even for me, but I find it at least as plausible as an epidemic of biblical proportions. Fundamentally, I don't think we know, but I don't feel minded to accept all predictions of bad outcomes and to ignore all predictions of good outcomes.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Luchesi said:


> Has the level of activity in TC increased since the lockdown? 10 percent increase? 50 percent increase?
> 
> Will a decrease be noticeable as the restrictions are slowly lifted?


And what are the health consequences of an increase in TC activity? We need to know.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Flamme said:


> 1st bus ride 2day, not 2 many ppl, lots of social distance...U can enter on 1st door and exit on third and 2econd...Many ppl wear, but quite few dont wear mask or gloves...I had a mask on 2 my nose because of allerigies attax...


One of the things which has been amusing me lately is that when I am out and about (in the open air) very few people indeed are wearing masks. However, if I watch the BBC then a much higher proportion of people would appear to be doing so (also in the open air).

I also like the way they shoot pictures of things like beaches, so that it looks like people are really close together (and they have a reporter doing a voice over about distancing), whereas when I have been to busy places it looks like people are close together as you approach (- ie the favoured BBC camera angle), but when you are there they are not.

I think they're about Force 4 on the Piers Morgan scale in terms of the matters above.


----------



## Luchesi

Eclectic Al said:


> And what are the health consequences of an increase in TC activity? We need to know.


I do other things. lol

I notice that you construct and type posts very quickly according to your timestamps. Expertly.

i can only imagine what you'll learn in the decade that separates us. I was a very different person ten years ago, AND I never thought I would change so much.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Luchesi said:


> I do other things. lol
> 
> I notice that you construct and type posts very quickly according to your timestamps. Expertly.
> 
> i can only imagine what you'll learn in the decade that separates us. I was a very different person ten years ago, AND I never thought I would change so much.


I'm a lot nicer than I was 10 years ago!:angel:


----------



## Guest

@Electic Al
I don't recall anyone being as dismissive of flu as you suggest. In fact some have suggested that we need to do more to prevent flu deaths than we currently do.

We could also do with some media coverage of the flu season comparable to what we've had of Covid, just so we can make an informed comparison.

But I'm unaware of any disease that has killed in the region of 40,000 people in two months in the UK in my adult lifetime. When I last had flu in 2009, I had a week off work, but it did not have anything like the alarming symptoms of Covid.

If you're not alarmed by its potential, I'd say you simply don't understand the pandemic.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> You might then think that the problem with Covid-19 is the existence of asymptomatic spreaders, which is not the case with flu. Whoops again:
> https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/


Well yes, 'Whoops again' because the important question is not so much whether asymptomatic flu patients occur, but whether the asymptomatic flu patients can predictably spread the flu compared to the spread of Covid-19 from asymptomatic patients. The following is from 2 medical reviews/studies:
_
'We performed a systematic review of published studies describing the relationship between viral shedding and disease transmission. *Based on the available literature, we found that there is scant, if any, evidence that asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals play an important role in influenza transmission*. As such, recent articles concerning pandemic planning, some using transmission modeling, may have overestimated the effect of presymptomatic or asymptomatic influenza transmission.'

*'Although the dynamics of viral shedding patterns over time has been studied in symptomatic individuals, very few studies have systematically examined viral shedding in persons with asymptomatic influenza virus infection*. The potential contribution of asymptomatically infected persons to influenza virus transmission depends on the proportion of infected persons who are asymptomatic, the infectiousness of these asymptomatic cases, and likely host factors as well as immune factors in their close contacts. The greatest gap in our knowledge is regarding the relative infectiousness of asymptomatic cases.'_



> Sound familiar? My guess is that if Covid-19 was an influenza virus, but it had precisely the same consequences as we are seeing with Covid-19, then we would have reacted to it very differently, and you would not have seen lockdowns of the form we have. Would that have been better or worse in terms of ultimate outcomes? Haven't a clue.


You have done some internet searches and come to some extreme conclusions. But you are cherry-picking what you select and base your evaluation on such as finding a 17% figure of transmission 'reassuring' based on the Diamond Princess example while ignoring other statistics such as 52 of 60 members in a choir being infected from one individual after only one practice. Internet searches don't suddenly make one enough of an epidemiologic or diagnostic expert enough to come to conclusions that conflict with those of scientists and physicians dealing with this pandemic.

Of course there are some similarities of Clovid-19 to the flu; initially in some cases it can be difficult to distinguish between the two. And we know that there were similarities to the Spanish Flu pandemic. Also, there have been some severe chronic complications to the flu, especially the more unusual variants. *But experts who are seeing the complications of this pandemic are all too familiar with those of the flu and they are dismayed at the unique constellation of symptoms and the forms of damage -some possibly chronic- caused by Clovid-19*. They are different than the flu from the point of view of the overall severity, array and variation of symptoms, timing during and after the main infection and in the age-groups affected by these complications.


----------



## Eclectic Al

I agree with you on the importance of flu. Even the fact that we call it flu, like a chummy old friend, is revealing.

I also agree that 40,000 or so Covid-19 associated deaths in the UK is a large number over a couple of months, although it is difficult to assess causality.
By comparison in 2018 the main causes of death in the UK represented the following numbers over the whole year (with these being about 40% of all deaths):
Dementia and Alzheimer disease 69,478 
Ischaemic heart diseases 55,995 
Chronic lower respiratory diseases 32,355 
Cerebrovascular diseases 31,288 
Malignant neoplasm of trachea, bronchus and lung 29,626

Hence in a couple of months "Covid-19 associated" has already got to 3rd in the above list, although we don't know how many of these may end up being substitutions for other causes (quite likely others in the main causes lists), nor (as I said) do we yet understand the causal side of things (and we likely never will given challenges over reporting cause of death). However, it would clearly be ridiculous to trivialise it, and I don't think I have been doing that.

The thing which exercises me is that there seems to be a tendency in some areas to exult in the threat of what could happen.

I am inclined to think back to the premature birth of my twin daughters. One of them had lung issues and she ended up on a ventilator for some days. She pulled through and is now 23 and fine. What the doctors did not do is give us a running commentary of all the bad possible futures; they gave us useful information about what might likely happen next, what they were doing, etc. In a way they were preparing us for a possible bad outcome, but what they weren't doing was showing us videos of "this is how she might die", and "look, this is how the lung tissue can be torn if we get the pressure wrong". You might say, well they knew what was going on, whereas Covid-19 is new, but I don't think doctors every really know the outcome for a single patient with that certainty.

My feeling with a lot of the media coverage of Covid-19 is that there is a delight in showing material representing speculations about worst case outcomes.

One could say, well people needs facts. But I think that is a misrepresentation of what is going on, especially when many of the "facts" are speculation. People are not good at assessing this sort of information - there is a wealth of behavioural and psychological research on that, where people misrepresent risk because of cognitive biases, heuristics, etc. As a result presenting information in this fashion is highly unlikely to lead to a fair perception of relative risks in the minds of the viewer. It is more a question of making a possibility visible to people, which then triggers a tendency for them to overestimate its likelihood. By bombarding people with speculation about adverse outcomes their takeaway from the coverage is likely to be anything but objective or factual, and I include myself in that (as I'm no different).

After that ramble (apologies) I would just say that I am well aware that we are in the middle of a pandemic, and that many people are dying, and indeed that I might do so too. The thing I am railing against, though, is a sort of end-of-the-world frenzy about what is a deeply serious, but not unexpected threat.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> Well yes, 'Whoops again' because the important question is not so much whether asymptomatic flu patients occur, but whether the asymptomatic flu patients can predictably spread the flu compared to the spread of Covid-19 from asymptomatic patients. The following is from 2 medical reviews/studies:
> _
> 'We performed a systematic review of published studies describing the relationship between viral shedding and disease transmission. *Based on the available literature, we found that there is scant, if any, evidence that asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals play an important role in influenza transmission*. As such, recent articles concerning pandemic planning, some using transmission modeling, may have overestimated the effect of presymptomatic or asymptomatic influenza transmission.'
> 
> *'Although the dynamics of viral shedding patterns over time has been studied in symptomatic individuals, very few studies have systematically examined viral shedding in persons with asymptomatic influenza virus infection*. The potential contribution of asymptomatically infected persons to influenza virus transmission depends on the proportion of infected persons who are asymptomatic, the infectiousness of these asymptomatic cases, and likely host factors as well as immune factors in their close contacts. The greatest gap in our knowledge is regarding the relative infectiousness of asymptomatic cases.'_
> 
> You have done some internet searches and come to some extreme conclusions. But you are cherry-picking what you select and base your evaluation on such as finding a 17% figure of transmission 'reassuring' based on the Diamond Princess example while ignoring other statistics such as 52 of 60 members in a choir being infected from one individual after only one practice. Internet searches don't suddenly make one enough of an epidemiologic or diagnostic expert enough to come to conclusions that conflict with those of scientists and physicians dealing with this pandemic.
> 
> Of course there are some similarities of Clovid-19 to the flu; initially in some cases it can be difficult to distinguish between the two. And we know that there were similarities to the Spanish Flu pandemic. Also, there have been some severe chronic complications to the flu, especially the more unusual variants. But experts who are seeing the complications of this pandemic are all too familiar with those of the flu and they are dismayed at the unique constellation of the forms of damage caused by Clovid-19. They are different than the flu from the point of view of the array and variation of symptoms, timing during and after the main infection and in the age-groups affected by these complications.


You are entirely missing my point. I am sorry if I was not clear enough. I wasn't drawing any conclusions at all, and in a way I am agreeing with you.

My target is the presentation of the issues. As you note, we can go to the Internet and get snippets of research which support the idea that it will all go away quite soon, and equally we can get stuff which suggests deaths will mount inexorably. You can quote your studies, and I can quote mine. I don't really think that gets anyone anywhere.

I tried to make clear what I was meaning by mentioning that what I was posting was too optimistic even for me.

I just think we don't really know, and I then get a bit bothered when claims are made which seem to express a sort of certainty, well ahead of what is known. My feeling is that that is usually towards the doomsday end, but I am aware there are over-optimistic claims in the other direction.


----------



## KenOC

Since we seem to need some good news around here, how about this?

ROME, May 31 (Reuters) - The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday. "In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.


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## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> Since we seem to need some good news around here, how about this?
> 
> ROME, May 31 (Reuters) - The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday. "In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.


Nope. Good news is definitely verboten.


----------



## KenOC

eljr said:


> Ken, this seems a rather extreme interpretation.
> 
> But none the less, after 90 pages of you posting "let the old to die", don't you think we understand your position by now?
> 
> enjoy the day
> 
> eljr


eljr, if you're tired of reading my posts, they can be avoided easily by putting me on "ignore." That would be a better approach, I think, than repeatedly indulging in personal insults.

But before you do that, be aware that half the total health care expenditures in America are incurred by people in the final year of their lives. So if everybody died just one year sooner, we would have plenty of money for building a few more aircraft carriers, buying off any number of rioters, and in fact spending it any way we like. You may thank me for this potentially useful information whenever its utility becomes clear to you. Cheers!


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## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> You are entirely missing my point. I am sorry if I was not clear enough. I wasn't drawing any conclusions at all, and in a way I am agreeing with you.


No I wasn't 'entirely missing your point' which was an attempt to diminish the response to this pandemic by selectively comparing it to the flu as partly encapsulated in one of your conclusions:
_
'Sound familiar? My guess is that if Covid-19 was an influenza virus, but it had precisely the same consequences as we are seeing with Covid-19, then we would have reacted to it very differently, and you would not have seen lockdowns of the form we have.'_

Of course we would have reacted to it differently. We have antivirals and vaccines for the flu. In any event, if you still want to make comparisons of this pandemic to the flu, at least use the Spanish Flu before antivirals and vaccines were available for it.

Also, I didn't misunderstand your 'reassurance' of your calculated 17% transmission rate based on a single situation while ignoring far worse statistics in other situations. And I didn't misunderstand the presentation of asymptomatic flu patients -with the 'Whoops again' exclamation which inferred some kind of eureka moment- ignoring the more important fact as to whether there was the ability to transmit. You are throwing out random information and drawing conclusions from it.



> My target is the presentation of the issues. As you note, we can go to the Internet and get snippets of research which support the idea that it will all go away quite soon, and equally we can get stuff which suggests deaths will mount inexorably. You can quote your studies, and I can quote mine...


The sources of our information and the conclusions we are drawing from it are not the same. Feel free to try to discredit mine.


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## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> No I wasn't 'entirely missing your point' which was an attempt to diminish the response to this pandemic by selectively comparing it to the flu as partly encapsulated in one of your conclusions:
> _
> 'Sound familiar? My guess is that if Covid-19 was an influenza virus, but it had precisely the same consequences as we are seeing with Covid-19, then we would have reacted to it very differently, and you would not have seen lockdowns of the form we have._




Of course we would have reacted to it differently. We have antivirals and vaccines for the flu. In any event, if you still want to make comparisons of this pandemic to the flu, at least use the Spanish Flu before antivirals and vaccines were available for it.

Also, I didn't misunderstand your 'reassurance' of your calculated 17% transmission rate based on a single situation while ignoring far worse statistics in other situations. And I didn't misunderstand the presentation of asymptomatic flu patients -with the 'Whoops again' exclamation which inferred some kind of eureka moment- ignoring the more important fact as to whether there was the ability to transmit. You are throwing out random information and drawing conclusions from it.

The sources of our information and the conclusions we are drawing from it are not the same. Feel free to try to discredit mine.[/QUOTE]

Nope. You're missing my point again. I have no interest in trying to discredit "your" sources. (I don't own any sources personally.) I assume they are reputable people trying to do a good job. Equally, I was positing a new flu virus which was not responsive to existing anti-virals and vaccines. Again, apologies if I did not make that clear - I certainly intended to.
Feel free to discredit the sources I have referred to if you wish. (They're not mine, so I don't feel any identification towards them.) I believe the sources I quoted are also trying to do a good job.

I just don't think that all the sources which are a bit on the doomsday side are necessarily reliable, and all the ones which are a bit more positive are somehow what? (dishonest? wrong?) I just don't know, and have to continue to live my life in that state of ignorance.

I genuinely don't see why this is so hard to understand. There seems to be such a sense of offence felt if someone suggests that Covid-19 is not going to lead to armageddon, but is a bad viral pandemic, such as could have happened with a really nasty flu.

My current feeling is that we have got very lucky. The outbreak could have been much worse, and hopefully it will prompt better planning against a future outbreak of a much nastier pathogen.


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## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> Nope. You're missing my point again. I have no interest in trying to discredit "your" sources. (I don't own any sources personally.) I assume they are reputable people trying to do a good job. Equally, I was positing a new flu virus which was not responsive to existing anti-virals and vaccines. Again, apologies if I did not make that clear - I certainly intended to.
> Feel free to discredit the sources I have referred to if you wish. (They're not mine, so I don't feel any identification towards them.) I believe the sources I quoted are also trying to do a good job.
> 
> I just don't think that all the sources which are a bit on the doomsday side are necessarily reliable, and all the ones which are a bit more positive are somehow what? (dishonest? wrong?) I just don't know, and have to continue to live my life in that state of ignorance.
> 
> I genuinely don't see why this is so hard to understand. There seems to be such a sense of offence felt if someone suggests that Covid-19 is not going to lead to armageddon, but is a bad viral pandemic, such as could have happened with a really nasty flu.


I am discrediting the basis on which you are coming to conclusions regardless of your sources. You have made outright misleading comments and inferences. If your point is encapsulated in the statement: '_I just don't think that all the sources which are a bit on the doomsday side are necessarily reliable.'_ then IMO, you'll have to do a better job than throwing out random things like a single instance of a self-calculated 17% transmission rate, the fact that asymptomatic flu patients have existed without mention of whether they transmit the disease and so on.

Also, your are diminishing the 'speculations' and 'predictions' being made about the pandemic. A significant number of these are coming from educated and experienced scientific and medical sources. You can't just lump them all under some general group that you dismiss.


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## Eclectic Al

Whoops again. A little cross? (At risk of repeating myself, I was not coming to any conclusion .... My point was about the way in which the debate was conducted, not about what may or may not be "true"). Whoops again, I've gone all post-modern about truth. Not like me.

The 17% was about that particular cruise ship, and I don't think I generalised it. I just noted that I didn't find it scary. A bit boring now, though. Move on? Just a thought.


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## Art Rock

Dutch doctors state that there may be a correlation between severity of effect of the virus and deficiency of Vitamin K - in many intensive care cases, they noted that the patients had well below average vitamin K contents.

Vitamin K intake can easily be increased by eating green vegetables like spinach, broccoli or kale. Fortunately, my wife and I already eat a lot of those. It can't hurt anyway to make this a regular part of the diet.


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## Eclectic Al

Here's a link
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52...t-meeting-for-grandparents-and-new-grandchild
This is what life is about. Not about how long it lasts.


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## Jacck

Art Rock said:


> Dutch doctors state that there may be a correlation between severity of effect of the virus and deficiency of Vitamin K - in many intensive care cases, they noted that the patients had well below average vitamin K contents.
> 
> Vitamin K intake can easily be increased by eating green vegetables like spinach, broccoli or kale. Fortunately, my wife and I already eat a lot of those. It can't hurt anyway to make this a regular part of the diet.


which vitamin K? K1 or K2? They are quite different and have different effects. Most people are defficient in the K2


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## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> Dutch doctors state that there may be a correlation between severity of effect of the virus and deficiency of Vitamin K - in many intensive care cases, they noted that the patients had well below average vitamin K contents.
> 
> Vitamin K intake can easily be increased by eating green vegetables like spinach, broccoli or kale. Fortunately, my wife and I already eat a lot of those. It can't hurt anyway to make this a regular part of the diet.


Nope. A bit positive. Can't post that.


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## Art Rock

The (short, and in Dutch) article just states Vitamin K.


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## Bulldog

Luchesi said:


> Has the level of activity in TC increased since the lockdown? 10 percent increase? 50 percent increase?
> 
> Will a decrease be noticeable as the restrictions are slowly lifted?


Looks to me like the increase is quite large across the TC field, and I thank you for injecting a needed break from all the pontificating about the virus.


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## Eclectic Al

Just got some information from a former colleague who works on long term care annuities (ie annuities to cover care home fees). They have seen a spike in deaths (which is good for an annuity provider, as long as you haven't reinsured the risk away). No surprise there. However, new business is poor. No surprise there either: people don't want their parents to go into care homes. Too scary.

There was some comment a while ago that care homes might get into financial difficulty because they would have low occupancy. For those who have had relatives in care homes you will be familiar with the euphemism about a better room "becoming available". There might be quite a lot of that, but no one wanting to fill the less attractive rooms.


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## eljr

Luchesi said:


> Has the level of activity in TC increased since the lockdown? 10 percent increase? 50 percent increase?
> 
> Will a decrease be noticeable as the restrictions are slowly lifted?


i have subjectively noticed it become more active since the lock down.


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> I'm a lot nicer than I was 10 years ago!:angel:


Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant.

Elwood P. Dowd


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## Open Book

Eclectic Al said:


> There seems to be such a sense of offence felt if someone suggests that Covid-19 is not going to lead to armageddon, but is a bad viral pandemic, such as could have happened with a really nasty flu.


It isn't that anyone is disappointed by the lack of an armageddon, it's just that too much good news gives some people an excuse to think it's "all over", and that's dangerous.

The Covid-19 death rate looked much worse when they didn't take hidden cases into account, but it seems it is settling in at about 10 times worse than that of a typical flu. Even a "nasty" flu hasn't gotten anywhere near that bad. We can't compare the Spanish flu death rate because medicine was so much less advanced then. We don't know what that rate would be today.

I guess everyone has their number at which they become cautious. To me 0.1% odds of death from a typical flu, 1 in 1000, I can deal with. I'll get vaccinated and avoid sick-looking people.
1% from coronavirus, 1 in 100, nope, I will go further to keep myself safe from it, I'll stay in. Especially with the age bias.

There's lot we still don't know. How bad can it get, how often does it get very bad. So let's not discredit anything unless it sounds really absurd.

The pandemic is teaching us a lot about viruses in general and at breakneck speed. We should have lots of ammunition to fight the next bad viral pandemic when it comes.



Eclectic Al said:


> My current feeling is that we have got very lucky. The outbreak could have been much worse, and hopefully it will prompt better planning against a future outbreak of a much nastier pathogen.


Yes, it could be much worse. As it is, I think an immediate freezing of activity was the right initial reaction.


----------



## Luchesi

eljr said:


> Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant.
> 
> Elwood P. Dowd


That's amazing. This Dowd said pretty much the same thing!


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## KenOC

A report: The wife and I went out for lunch at a sit-down restaurant today for the first time in almost three months! It was fabulous. Between us we had chile verde, shrimp enchiladas (“Enchiladas Puerto Nuovo”), spicy salsa with oven-hot tortilla chips, a tub of really excellent guacamole, the usual beans and rice, and a jalapeno margarita.

Masks for diners were not in evidence, and mask discipline among the servers seemed quite relaxed. But no matter either way – the food was great, as was the slow revival of a past lifestyle.


----------



## KenOC

BTW, Green Jalapeño Margarita: Virus got you down? This will cure what ails you! Don Julio Reposado, fresh green jalapeños, cucumbers, organic agave nectar, and fresh lime.


----------



## Guest

eljr said:


> Al, Covid is not flu.
> 
> Come on, you have to know this.


Correct. It comes from the same family of viruses responsible for the common cold. For this reason I feel that vaccine and/or treatment is highly problematic as there's never been a 'cure' for the common cold. Mind you, I'd be mighty happy if they found a cure for the cold. These can be very unpleasant and downright dangerous for infants.


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## Open Book

Christabel said:


> Correct. It comes from the same family of viruses responsible for the common cold. For this reason I feel that vaccine and/or treatment is highly problematic as there's never been a 'cure' for the common cold. Mind you, I'd be mighty happy if they found a cure for the cold. These can be very unpleasant and downright dangerous for infants.


But it's not a virus that infected humans until recently so it may not be all that closely related to viruses responsible for the common cold. I wonder how long it's been infecting and evolving among its animal hosts, maybe millenia.

https://www.covid-19facts.com/?p=84367


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## Open Book

KenOC said:


> A report: The wife and I went out for lunch at a sit-down restaurant today for the first time in almost three months! It was fabulous. Between us we had chile verde, shrimp enchiladas ("Enchiladas Puerto Nuovo"), spicy salsa with oven-hot tortilla chips, a tub of really excellent guacamole, the usual beans and rice, and a jalapeno margarita.
> 
> Masks for diners were not in evidence, and mask discipline among the servers seemed quite relaxed. But no matter either way - the food was great, as was the slow revival of a past lifestyle.


Waitstaff coming up to table within 6 feet without masks? So no difference from before the pandemic? No plexiglass? Patrons seated far apart?

And, "no matter"?


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> But it's not a virus that infected humans until recently so it may not be all that closely related to viruses responsible for the common cold. I wonder how long it's been infecting and evolving among its animal hosts, maybe millenia.
> 
> https://www.covid-19facts.com/?p=84367


I did read that Covid-19 specifically belongs to the Coronavirus of common cold. But your link suggests the common cold may be caused by other viruses than Coronavirus. I'll have to consult my physician, who is also a friend.

Whatever is the case they're absolutely miserable and can make you very sick. Why can't we find a cure for gastro-intestinal disease like Rota Virus, which can kill quickly, particularly children.


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> Waitstaff coming up to table within 6 feet without masks? So no difference from before the pandemic? No plexiglass? Patrons seated far apart?
> 
> And, "no matter"?


No matter to me. Apologies if I'm not in the state of abject panic that seems _de rigueur_ in these parts. From the stats around where I live, I'm more likely to be crushed by a falling refrigerator than to die from the virus.

I do wear a mask in public, but only because some people will be upset if I don't. It's too tiresome to quote them the WHO's advice on that subject.


----------



## KenOC

Christabel said:


> I did read that Covid-19 specifically belongs to the Coronavirus of common cold. But your link suggests the common cold may be caused by other viruses than Coronavirus. I'll have to consult my physician, who is also a friend.


I believe the common cold is most often caused by a rhinovirus.


----------



## pianozach

Christabel said:


> I did read that Covid-19 specifically belongs to the Coronavirus of common cold. But your link suggests the common cold may be caused by other viruses than Coronavirus. I'll have to consult my physician, who is also a friend.
> 
> Whatever is the case they're absolutely miserable and can make you very sick. Why can't we find a cure for gastro-intestinal disease like Rota Virus, which can kill quickly, particularly children.


Yes, the common cold is more commonly one of the rhinoviruses, but can also be a coronavirus (which is the 2nd most common "Common Cold"). There are other considerably less common viruses as well.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> But it's not a virus that infected humans until recently so it may not be all that closely related to viruses responsible for the common cold. I wonder how long it's been infecting and evolving among its animal hosts, maybe millenia.
> 
> https://www.covid-19facts.com/?p=84367


Indeed, so the question arises whether or not there may be any crossover resistance from previous exposure to other coronaviruses which might provide a degree of protection against Covid-19, or not. Are they similar enough? A priori, it's not clear, so in this sort of situation scientists do experiments.

My understanding is that some experiments are indicating that many people likely have T cells which exhibit activity against Covid-19 even though the subjects are not believed ever to have been exposed to it. Even if that is the case then there is the further question over whether this provides useful protection against Covid-19. Ethical concerns would make testing this problematic, but in other contexts challenge studies are apparently being proposed, and there is no shortage of people willing to be exposed to Covid-19 to advance the research. Some people to admire.

However, I can't draw any conclusions about there possibly being a smidgen of good news here, or I'll be flamed. Just not gloomy enough.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> No matter to me. Apologies if I'm not in the state of abject panic that seems _de rigueur_ in these parts. From the stats around where I live, I'm more likely to be crushed by a falling refrigerator than to die from the virus.
> 
> I do wear a mask in public, but only because some people will be upset if I don't. It's too tiresome to quote them the WHO's advice on that subject.


Was it indoor seating or outdoor seating, and if the former, where did you sit relative to the airflow and the other people?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> I guess everyone has their number at which they become cautious. To me 0.1% odds of death from a typical flu, 1 in 1000, I can deal with. I'll get vaccinated and avoid sick-looking people.
> 1% from coronavirus, 1 in 100, nope, I will go further to keep myself safe from it, I'll stay in. Especially with the age bias.


Hi, a few quick comments. I think we are pretty much in agreement.

On the point about 1:1,000 or 1:100, I probably have similar feelings. It's difficult to comprehend a 1:1,000 risk, but 1:100 seems more meaningful. To give a context, UK population mortality (average annual rate, all causes) hits 1% at 63, whereas it is 1:1,000 at 35.
If you were 63 and added 1% to this year's mortality it would be like becoming age 71 just for this year (and then going back to normal next year, hopefully).

It does seem, though, that your risks are also hugely impacted by other health conditions, so if you are a healthy 63 year old then your chance of dying is much lower, but so (it seems) is your Covid-19 risk. According to data I have regarding the pricing of underwritten annuity contracts, one provider would estimate the risk of a healthy (reasonably affluent) 63 year old male dying in that year as about 1.5 in 1,000. I am not even going to guess how Covid-19 risk varies with health at age 63.

Personally, at age 58 and with no known health problems (and not too overweight) I'm genuinely not exercised by my own risk (- I'm too fatalistic for that), but I don't want to spread it to others. I tend to follow the rules here because I'm generally law-abiding, and also because I think we need to have a plan and that is the one we've got. In terms of protecting myself, I'm washing hands more, not touching things I can avoid, and not going into enclosed spaces much. If I had a job that required me to go into work premises then I would do so, and follow whatever guidelines were in place there.


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## Art Rock

Yesterday there was a demonstration in the centre of Amsterdam against police violence in the USA. Thousands of people showed up, standing body against body on a central square. If the virus is still alive and kicking, the second wave has just been initiated for our country. The mayor did nothing, except asking everyone one day later to self-quarantine. Fat chance. People who are so stupid will not follow those instructions either.


----------



## Guest

Whatever scientific/mathematical analysis one is either looking for on the internet, or attempting to carry out for oneself, the basic fact is that most of live in a society where there no diseases that you can catch that will kill you. Before this pandemic, I was assuming that my most likely cause of premature death would be heart attack or cancer - neither of which do I catch from someone else, nor can I infect someone else. Aside from a general wish not to die at all yet (I know it'll come eventually) I accept the management of risk that that entails - do my best to keep fit and healthy, which is down to me and not anyone else. I also accept that I might have an accident in my car or crossing the road. Again, I accept the management of that risk is mine.

Covid 19 is the first worldwide disease to emerge in recent times that has caused getting on for four hundred thousand fatalities - that's clear even if the calculations are not exactly right - in a very short space of time, many many more than die during a bad flu season.

In short, I now have to figure the possibility that there is a disease out there that I might catch and/or give to my family which carries a significantly higher risk of death than the flu. That is not something I have ever had to contemplate before in the same way that, say, smallpox, cholera, TB, measles etc might have carried us or our forebears children, and was something that they learned to live with.

Set aside the bizarre theories that capitalist governments - or the secret societies behind them - have conspired to wreck their countries economies for personal gain by strking mass panic into their populations; and that our various media tend to overstate whatever they are reporting on, it still seems likely to me that there is a substantial truth that I now have to factor into my daily life, and, most importantly, is dependent on everyone else factoring into their daily lives too. That requires government action to ensure that the risks to us all are managed equitably while trying to restore something resembling normal economic productivity.

I'm content to wait until the dust has settled and "the science" is able to paint a more accurate picture of the pandemic, rather than clutch at any scrap of data or information that only adds to our still incomplete store of 'facts' and adds little to the more comprehensive understanding we need.


----------



## Jacck

Coronavirus is a blood vessel disease, study says - and its mysteries finally make sense
https://www.salon.com/2020/06/01/co...dy-says-and-its-mysteries-finally-make-sense/

BTW, blood vessels and blood clotting have connections to vitamin K


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> Whatever scientific/mathematical analysis one is either looking for on the internet, or attempting to carry out for oneself, the basic fact is that most of live in a society where there no diseases that you can catch that will kill you. Before this pandemic, I was assuming that my most likely cause of premature death would be heart attack or cancer - neither of which do I catch from someone else, nor can I infect someone else. Aside from a general wish not to die at all yet (I know it'll come eventually) I accept the management of risk that that entails - do my best to keep fit and healthy, which is down to me and not anyone else. I also accept that I might have an accident in my car or crossing the road. Again, I accept the management of that risk is mine.
> 
> Covid 19 is the first worldwide disease to emerge in recent times that has caused getting on for four hundred thousand fatalities - that's clear even if the calculations are not exactly right - in a very short space of time, many many more than die during a bad flu season.
> 
> In short, I now have to figure the possibility that there is a disease out there that I might catch and/or give to my family which carries a significantly higher risk of death than the flu. That is not something I have ever had to contemplate before in the same way that, say, smallpox, cholera, TB, measles etc might have carried us or our forebears children, and was something that they learned to live with.
> 
> Set aside the bizarre theories that capitalist governments - or the secret societies behind them - have conspired to wreck their countries economies for personal gain by strking mass panic into their populations; and that our various media tend to overstate whatever they are reporting on, it still seems likely to me that there is a substantial truth that I now have to factor into my daily life, and, most importantly, is dependent on everyone else factoring into their daily lives too. That requires government action to ensure that the risks to us all are managed equitably while trying to restore something resembling normal economic productivity.
> 
> I'm content to wait until the dust has settled and "the science" is able to paint a more accurate picture of the pandemic, rather than clutch at any scrap of data or information that only adds to our still incomplete store of 'facts' and adds little to the more comprehensive understanding we need.


Do you know what? I think that's a great summary of the situation for those of us living in the developed world.
People can quibble about details (and let's see), and certainly disagree about what should be done, but that's a very fair broad outline.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> Coronavirus is a blood vessel disease, study says - and its mysteries finally make sense
> https://www.salon.com/2020/06/01/co...dy-says-and-its-mysteries-finally-make-sense/
> 
> BTW, blood vessels and blood clotting have connections to vitamin K


Indeed. I seem to recall also some stories about how some of those with impaired lung function seemed to have blockages in blood vessels in the lungs as the main problem, rather than damage to other lung tissues. That goes along with the above.


----------



## science

Art Rock said:


> Yesterday there was a demonstration in the centre of Amsterdam against police violence in the USA. Thousands of people showed up, standing body against body on a central square. If the virus is still alive and kicking, the second wave has just been initiated for our country. The mayor did nothing, except asking everyone one day later to self-quarantine. Fat chance. People who are so stupid will not follow those instructions either.


At least it was outside, but you may be right.

The next few weeks are going to be very interesting, and perhaps yet more tragic than what we've seen so far. (Edit: Unfortunately, several states in the US are no longer even trying to give us reliable numbers, so we might never know the consequences of various things....)

Besides everything else going on, it seems like right now a lot of people are celebrating that only X number of people have died so far (depending on the country) by taking actions that will ensure that X is not even nearly the highest number we're going to see.


----------



## Jacck

science said:


> At least it was outside, but you may be right.
> 
> The next few weeks are going to be very interesting, and perhaps yet more tragic than what we've seen so far.
> 
> Besides everything else going on, it seems like right now a lot of people are celebrating that only X number of people have died so far (depending on the country) by taking actions that will ensure that X is not even nearly the highest number we're going to see.


should we really care? After 3 months, everybody could obtain as much information as he wanted to obtain. If they want to engage in risky behaviors (such as mass gatherings), should we weel any pity of they die? Personally, I don't. 
People like this pastor
Pastor who decried 'hysteria' dies after attending Mardi Gras


----------



## science

Jacck said:


> should we really care? After 3 months, everybody could obtain as much information as he wanted to obtain. If they want to engage in risky behaviors (such as mass gatherings), should we weel any pity of they die? Personally, I don't.
> People like this pastor
> Pastor who decried 'hysteria' dies after attending Mardi Gras


Well, I can see that, but those people are also going infect other people who tried to be more responsible. There are also people who don't have a choice about whether they're going to work. And so on.

Let's say a guy has donated a kidney... he might be taking all the responsibilities he's supposed to take, but if one of his coworkers chooses to lie about having the virus...


----------



## Jacck

science said:


> Well, I can see that, but those people are also going infect other people who tried to be more responsible. There are also people who don't have a choice about whether they're going to work. And so on.
> 
> Let's say a guy has donated a kidney... he might be taking all the responsibilities he's supposed to take, but if one of his coworkers chooses to lie about having the virus...


obviously that is the issue with infectious diseases - if you catch it, you are a threat to others and potentially to the whole society. That is why many countries have laws about mandatory quarantines or even mandatory vaccinations. In the US, people have misconceptions about unrestricted personal freedom to do whatever they want, even if their behavior could hurt or endanger others. All these right-wing think tanks sponsor protests about quarantines and lockdowns, and pay propagandists like Hannity. I wouldn't care a bit about them or their deaths, were it not for the fact that they could endanger and kill others.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> should we really care? After 3 months, everybody could obtain as much information as he wanted to obtain. If they want to engage in risky behaviors (such as mass gatherings), should we weel any pity of they die? Personally, I don't.
> People like this pastor
> Pastor who decried 'hysteria' dies after attending Mardi Gras


Indeed - it's a tricky one.
I have been wiling to accept the need for legal prohibitions on various freedoms for two reasons: (i) I might get badly ill and therefore consume scarce medical resources, so it is reasonable for me to be compelled not to be reckless, and (ii) I might spread the disease to others who then suffer the consequences. Externalities, as the economists say.
Managing my own personal risk in itself does not justify legal prohibitions: there I would only accept that guidance is reasonable. It is my risk to run, and if I do you might validly say "why should I care?".

Hence, I sort of agree with you, and regard it as a bit like people going skiing or bungie jumping, etc. However, I worry about the externalities in a way that applies less to things like skiing - although even there a parent (say) might be considered to have an obligation to their children not to put themselves at risk recklessly.

On the specifics of these protests, though, I wonder about the ethnic mix of the protesters. There was stuff published a while ago suggesting that black people were at much higher risk from Covid-19 than other ethnic groups. Has that idea evaporated? If it is still a thing, and the protestors have a relatively high proportion of black people amongst them, then that would be especially risky for them and their relatives, if they are in contact with those.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Managing my own personal risk in itself does not justify legal prohibitions: there I would only accept that guidance is reasonable. It is my risk to run, and if I do you might validly say "why should I care?".


paradoxically, we have pretty strick laws regulating drug consuption, even though in this case, the danger is primarily to the consumer himself (though not only, the drug consumers can become violent, steal, drive intoxicated etc)


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> paradoxically, we have pretty strick laws regulating drug consuption, even though in this case, the danger is primarily to the consumer himself (though not only, the drug consumers can become violent, steal, drive intoxicated etc)


Indeed, although to cover the topic of the legalisation or otherwise of various drugs might require a separate thread.


----------



## science

Jacck said:


> paradoxically, we have pretty strick laws regulating drug consuption, even though in this case, the danger is primarily to the consumer himself (though not only, the drug consumers can become violent, steal, drive intoxicated etc)


An idea that seems pretty common nowadays is that the people who are dying of coronavirus are mostly old, past their productive years from an economic point-of-view, and assuming that no other points-of-view matter (like who cares if the grandkids get to know their grandparents), something that threatens to kill workers who are still productive (in the sense helping corporations make money) is a much bigger problem.


----------



## Jacck

science said:


> An idea that seems pretty common nowadays is that the people who are dying of coronavirus are mostly old, past their productive years from an economic point-of-view, and assuming that no other points-of-view matter (like who cares if the grandkids get to know their grandparents), something that threatens to kill workers who are still productive (in the sense helping corporations make money) is a much bigger problem.


the corporate slave lords that rule over America naturally want the population to return to work in order not to endanger their profits, so they pay all these propagandist right-wing think tanks to shape the public narrative about the virus. It is not true that just the old die
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
1/4 of deaths are under 65 years and we do not yet know about the long-term health consequences for the younger survivors. If it is a blood vessel diesease (vasculitis), it can damage the endothelium and start the degenerative process of athelosclerosis, leading to premature heart infarcts or strokes some years later. (a hypothetical possibility, but quite real)


----------



## Guest

"Old people" are not necessarily economically unproductive. I'm retired, but I pay tax on my pension. I presume that will continue until I die?


----------



## science

MacLeod said:


> "Old people" are not necessarily economically unproductive. I'm retired, but I pay tax on my pension. I presume that will continue until I die?


I just want to make it clear that I wasn't intending to endorse that point of view, only that it is common.


----------



## Guest

*Isaac Newton proposed curing plague with toad vomit*

Not as bad as suggesting injections of disinfectant? You decide!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/02/isaac-newton-plague-cure-toad-vomit


----------



## Flamme

A toad? 1 would think he would have used a NEWT!!!


----------



## Kieran

Art Rock said:


> Yesterday there was a demonstration in the centre of Amsterdam against police violence in the USA. Thousands of people showed up, standing body against body on a central square. If the virus is still alive and kicking, the second wave has just been initiated for our country. The mayor did nothing, except asking everyone one day later to self-quarantine. Fat chance. People who are so stupid will not follow those instructions either.


We had one of them in Dublin. It's bizarre, it has nothing to do with us, but virtuous empty heads want to be seen, so they crowded and waved placards about stuff that's far away. Hopefully, the nurses and doctors who collapsed keeping the health system open ere sleeping during this, they may need their energy...


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> We had one of them in Dublin. It's bizarre, it has nothing to do with us, but virtuous empty heads want to be seen, so they crowded and waved placards about stuff that's far away. Hopefully, the nurses and doctors who collapsed keeping the health system open ere sleeping during this, they may need their energy...


UK too in Trafalgar Square and Manchester and Cardiff


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> UK too in Trafalgar Square and Manchester and Cardiff


What the hell is wrong with people? They're like sheep...


----------



## Kieran

KenOC said:


> Since we seem to need some good news around here, how about this?
> 
> ROME, May 31 (Reuters) - The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday. "In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.


That's definitely good news! I have a holiday in Italy booked for September, really looking forward to it now..


----------



## Kieran

KenOC said:


> A report: The wife and I went out for lunch at a sit-down restaurant today for the first time in almost three months! It was fabulous. Between us we had chile verde, shrimp enchiladas ("Enchiladas Puerto Nuovo"), spicy salsa with oven-hot tortilla chips, a tub of really excellent guacamole, the usual beans and rice, and a jalapeno margarita.
> 
> Masks for diners were not in evidence, and mask discipline among the servers seemed quite relaxed. But no matter either way - the food was great, as was the slow revival of a past lifestyle.


More good news from Ken! I'm looking forward to stuff like this. Gonna finally visit my favourite caff next weekend. Better have decent cakes in, maybe a nice scone too. I miss sitting in the window over a flat white, staring at the world going by...


----------



## DaveM

Jacck said:


> Coronavirus is a blood vessel disease, study says - and its mysteries finally make sense
> https://www.salon.com/2020/06/01/co...dy-says-and-its-mysteries-finally-make-sense/
> 
> BTW, blood vessels and blood clotting have connections to vitamin K





Jacck said:


> ...If it is a blood vessel diesease (vasculitis), it can damage the endothelium and start the degenerative process of athelosclerosis, leading to premature heart infarcts or strokes some years later. (a hypothetical possibility, but quite real)


The first sentence of the main article says, _' A new report from a well-respected medical journal suggests that the coronavirus may be a blood vessel disease *as well as a respiratory infection'*._

It can be misleading to repeatedly call it a blood vessel disease as if that is what it is primarily.


----------



## Room2201974

Now come on daughters throughout the land, pack off grandpa to neverland,
Come on sons don't hesitate, send grandma off before its too late,
Be the first one on your block, to have your grams come home in a box

And it's 1,2,3, what are we isolating for
Don't you dare call me a rogue
The next stop is the county morgue

And it's 5,6,7, open up the pearly gates
Ain't no use to wonder why
Whoopee we're all gonna die


----------



## Eclectic Al

I'm a bit soppy, but I thought this was very moving:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-52883708
Positive to some extent, but also very sad.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> Was it indoor seating or outdoor seating, and if the former, where did you sit relative to the airflow and the other people?


Both indoor and outdoor seating. Both were open. We sat inside. The number of tables was reduced to get the six-foot separation. We sat in a booth under the front window, but I couldn't tell if they were skipping every other booth (which would give them about six feet) or not. Airflow seemed quite normal.


----------



## Jacck

DaveM said:


> The first sentence of the main article says, _' A new report from a well-respected medical journal suggests that the coronavirus may be a blood vessel disease *as well as a respiratory infection'*._
> 
> It can be misleading to repeatedly call it a blood vessel disease as if that is what it is primarily.


it simply enters cells with the ACE-2 receptor
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...irus-blood-vessel-disease-study-suggests.html
_"Coronavirus enters lung cells through a receptor - like a cellular dock - known as ACE2. These receptors are very common in the lungs, and the virus has fairly direct access to these receptors because it's transmitted primarily through inhaled particles. 
But ACE2 receptors are also found along the endothelium. That makes blood vessels throughout the body susceptible to infection, which may explain the full-body effects seen in coronavirus patients who suffer from everything from 'Covid toes' to the multi-system inflammation condition, Kawasaki Syndrome, seen in children infected with coronavirus. "_

worryingly, the ACE2 receptors are also found in the testes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucel...to-do-with-covid-19-coronavirus/#7a69c6db1690
after the SARS epidemic, they found out that some survivors became infertile


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> Both indoor and outdoor seating. Both were open. We sat inside. The number of tables was reduced to get the six-foot separation. We sat in a booth under the front window, but I couldn't tell if they were skipping every other booth (which would give them about six feet) or not. Airflow seemed quite normal.


You posted earlier that the food was great. So that's what really matters. Carpe diem.


----------



## DaveM

Jacck said:


> it simply enters cells with the ACE-2 receptor
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...irus-blood-vessel-disease-study-suggests.html
> _"Coronavirus enters lung cells through a receptor - like a cellular dock - known as ACE2. These receptors are very common in the lungs, and the virus has fairly direct access to these receptors because it's transmitted primarily through inhaled particles.
> But ACE2 receptors are also found along the endothelium. That makes blood vessels throughout the body susceptible to infection, which may explain the full-body effects seen in coronavirus patients who suffer from everything from 'Covid toes' to the multi-system inflammation condition, Kawasaki Syndrome, seen in children infected with coronavirus. "_
> 
> worryingly, the ACE2 receptors are also found in the testes
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucel...to-do-with-covid-19-coronavirus/#7a69c6db1690
> after the SARS epidemic, they found out that some survivors became infertile


What does that have to do with my post? I'm well aware of the potential effect of the disease on blood vessels. That doesn't change the fact that Covid-19 remains primarily a respiratory disease.


----------



## Bulldog

KenOC said:


> Both indoor and outdoor seating. Both were open. We sat inside. The number of tables was reduced to get the six-foot separation. We sat in a booth under the front window, but I couldn't tell if they were skipping every other booth (which would give them about six feet) or not. Airflow seemed quite normal.


My wife and I are about ready to eat at a restaurant, but the first time will definitely be seating outside.


----------



## Jacck

DaveM said:


> What does that have to do with my post? I'm well aware of the potential effect of the disease on blood vessels. That doesn't change the fact that Covid-19 remains primarily a respiratory disease.


not necessarily, it can also be transmitted through the fecal-oral route and from the gut infect the blood vessels
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85315
of course the respiratory route is the most common, but I find it misleading to call it a respiratory disease


----------



## KenOC

A bit of rather startling news, though we saw it clearly in the nation's first Covid-19 outbreak, in Seattle.

"Over the last three months, more than 40,600 long-term care residents and workers have died of COVID-19 - about 40% of the nation's death toll attributed to the coronavirus, according to an analysis of state data gathered by USA TODAY."


----------



## DaveM

Jacck said:


> not necessarily, it can also be transmitted through the fecal-oral route and from the gut infect the blood vessels
> https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85315
> of course the respiratory route is the most common, but I find it misleading to call it a respiratory disease


I am calling it primarily a respiratory disease,_ just as I posted._ It is contracted by inhaling infected droplets and/or aerosolized particles. It is spread by coughing out infected droplets and/or aerosolized particles.

You have a medical background. Do you have medical evidence to the contrary? And I don't mean just what what you think; I mean how it is being defined in the medical community.


----------



## Flamme

Wil juz drop it ere


----------



## Jacck

DaveM said:


> I am calling it primarily a respiratory disease,_ just as I posted._ You have a medical background. Do you have medical evidence to the contrary? And I don't mean just what what you think; I mean how it is being defined in the medical community.


I don't care about definitions, but about the substance. And the substance is, that the virus infects cells that express the ACE2 receptors, and those are in the respiratory tract, in the gut, in the vessels. Based on what it infects, it can be called a bronchitis, a pneumonia, a vasculitis, enteritis etc. I will leave it to others to classify and name the disorder. 
But from what I remember from school (microbiology, infectious disease courses), there are several viruses that behave like this, for example the adenovirus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_infection


----------



## DaveM

Jacck said:


> I don't care about definitions,


Okay, now that we've got that clear.



> but about the substance. And the substance is, that the virus infects cells that express the ACE2 receptors, and those are in the respiratory tract, in the gut, in the vessels. Based on what it infects, it can be called a bronchitis, a pneumonia, a vasculitis, enteritis etc. I will leave it to others to classify and name the disorder.


Even from a medical 'substance' point of view, it is primarily a respiratory disease. It is contracted via the respiratory system, it is spread by the respiratory system and in the great majority of patients, it is expressed as primarily respiratory system symptoms over secondary symptoms [that may or may not occur] involving the blood vessels.



> But from what I remember from school (microbiology, infectious disease courses), there are several viruses that behave like this, for example the adenovirus
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_infection


Opening statement of your link above:
_Adenovirus infections most commonly cause illness of the respiratory system;.._


----------



## science

At least according to the officially known numbers (which I guess we all know better than to put a lot of trust in), Brazil had more new cases than the USA yesterday, while within the US, California, Texas, and Illinois each had more new cases than New York and New Jersey put together.


----------



## DaveM

Apparently SARS-CoV-2 didn’t get the message that the pandemic was on the down-swing and it was time to open everything up again.


----------



## pianozach

It's as though the government WANTS a nice continued pandemic.

They actually found a way to get liberals AND white supremacists to pile into the streets by the hundreds: Public lynching by a cop in broad daylight on video.

Eight states had primary elections today. I'm betting the turnout was actually low. I know that the news outlets are barely giving it a mention.

So they got their "open up". They also got chaos. They got white supremacists posing as protestors. There's been organized vandalism, arson, and looting.

I predict a SECOND WAVE sooner than later.


----------



## science

pianozach said:


> I predict a SECOND WAVE sooner than later.


All we can do is hope not.

Maybe enough people are continuing to observe social distancing protocols so that the second wave won't get very big before effective treatments are developed....


----------



## Mandryka

KenOC said:


> Since we seem to need some good news around here, how about this?
> 
> ROME, May 31 (Reuters) - The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday. "In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.


"Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians," Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement."


----------



## Mandryka

Eclectic Al said:


> Managing my own personal risk in itself does not justify legal prohibitions: there I would only accept that guidance is reasonable. It is my risk to run, and if I do you might validly say "why should I care?".
> .


But you can't trust the guidance, because it's given by a capitalist government which wants to get the economy moving and is willing to cut corners over safety to save costs.


----------



## KenOC

It’s interesting to compare Covid-19 with the Ebola situation in 2014. Only two cases were contracted in the US, neither of whom died. Nine others were contracted abroad or flown into the US for treatment. But at the time there was near-panic among some denizens of this forum, of the “OMG we’re all going to die!” variety. Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Which leads to my question: If it weren’t for our environment of instantaneous Internet communication and the constant bombardment of death counts and so forth from a sensationalist media -- in other words, if things were as they were not so very long ago – would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?


----------



## Krummhorn

Christabel said:


> . . . Mind you, I'd be mighty happy if they found a cure for the cold. . . .


Actually, Chiropractic adjustments can relieve many of the symptoms. Many a time in my younger years while being treated for a curved spine, I would have some sinus congestion. A couple of adjustments later, the congestion was completely gone.

A dear friend of mine was nearly crippled in a car accident ... they carried him in on a stretcher to the Chiropractor, and the friend was able to walk out quite normal. I was there - witnessed this for myself.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> It's interesting to compare Covid-19 with the Ebola situation in 2014. Only two cases were contracted in the US, neither of whom died. Nine others were contracted abroad or flown into the US for treatment. But at the time there was near-panic among some denizens of this forum, of the "OMG we're all going to die!" variety. Needless to say, that didn't happen.
> 
> Which leads to my question: If it weren't for our environment of instantaneous Internet communication and the constant bombardment of death counts and so forth from a sensationalist media -- in other words, if things were as they were not so very long ago - would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?


Even without the internet, I think word would have gotten around that something more than a 'nasty flu' was going on after instances such as a choir (as first reported to a local newspaper) after one practice had 52 out of 60 come down with the virus and 2 deaths, meat packing plants report hundreds have come down with it, families have been wiped out and ICUs in several cities reached dangerous capacity.

If that isn't convincing enough then consider that there was nowhere near the media coverage at the time of the Spanish Flu -which was just a little more than a 'nasty flu' and may have not been even as contagious as this virus- and yet, word got around before long that a pandemic was at hand.


----------



## Art Rock

KenOC said:


> Which leads to my question: If it weren't for our environment of instantaneous Internet communication and the constant bombardment of death counts and so forth from a sensationalist media -- in other words, if things were as they were not so very long ago - would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?


Without that information, there would not have been any countermeasures. The amount of people dying would have been much higher than now (And before someone yells 'Sweden!', a number of countermeasures have been taken there as well, just less strict than most countries). To keep on comparing it to (a nasty) flu may suit your purpose, but it is simply wrong.


----------



## KenOC

Art Rock said:


> Without that information, there would not have been any countermeasures. The amount of people dying would have been much higher than now (And before someone yells 'Sweden!', a number of countermeasures have been taken there as well, just less strict than most countries). To keep on comparing it to (a nasty) flu may suit your purpose, but it is simply wrong.


Without disagreeing with anything you're saying, my question remains. "..._would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?"_


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> It's interesting to compare Covid-19 with the Ebola situation in 2014. Only two cases were contracted in the US, neither of whom died. Nine others were contracted abroad or flown into the US for treatment. But at the time there was near-panic among some denizens of this forum, of the "OMG we're all going to die!" variety. Needless to say, that didn't happen.
> 
> Which leads to my question: If it weren't for our environment of instantaneous Internet communication and the constant bombardment of death counts and so forth from a sensationalist media -- in other words, if things were as they were not so very long ago - would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?


How long ago is "not so very long ago"?

Before the internet was invented, there was TV and Radio - remember them? You would have listened to Cronkite, wouldn't you, and got your panic from him instead!



KenOC said:


> Without disagreeing with anything you're saying, my question remains. "..._would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?"_


No, "we" wouldn't, because the press and broadcast media would not have been reporting it that way.


----------



## Art Rock

KenOC said:


> Without disagreeing with anything you're saying, my question remains. "..._ would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?"_​


Given the fact that so many people would die in a few weeks, of course we would question whether it was more than a flu. Don't just look at figures per country, within each country there have been regions that have been hit much harder. Numbers of people dying there would have been orders of magnitudes higher than with a regular flu


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> It's interesting to compare Covid-19 with the Ebola situation in 2014. Only two cases were contracted in the US, neither of whom died. Nine others were contracted abroad or flown into the US for treatment. But at the time there was near-panic among some denizens of this forum, of the "OMG we're all going to die!" variety. Needless to say, that didn't happen.
> 
> Which leads to my question: If it weren't for our environment of instantaneous Internet communication and the constant bombardment of death counts and so forth from a sensationalist media -- in other words, if things were as they were not so very long ago - would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?


It _is_ quite thought-provoking to compare people's responses to Ebola with their responses to coronavirus, and to speculate on the reasons underlying that difference.


----------



## KenOC

Art Rock said:


> Given the fact that so many people would die in a few weeks, of course we would question whether it was more than a flu. Don't just look at figures per country, within each country there have been regions that have been hit much harder. Numbers of people dying there would have been orders of magnitudes higher than with a regular flu


Regional death rates within countries would not have been available, I think. And even now, the hardest-hit countries have death rates of less than one in a thousand, some of which doubtless cannibalize on the expected death rates from the annual flu seasons or other diseases of the aged.


----------



## Mandryka

Krummhorn said:


> Actually, Chiropractic adjustments can relieve many of the symptoms. Many a time in my younger years while being treated for a curved spine, I would have some sinus congestion. A couple of adjustments later, the congestion was completely gone.
> 
> A dear friend of mine was nearly crippled in a car accident ... they carried him in on a stretcher to the Chiropractor, and the friend was able to walk out quite normal. I was there - witnessed this for myself.


Or LSD. When I was 17 I had a terrible cold and I remember I had to take a flight. A friend gave me a tab of acid so that I'd trip on the plane and you know what, when I came down the cold had completely gone!

QED.


----------



## Art Rock

KenOC said:


> Regional death rates within countries would not have been available, I think.


Don't know about the USA, but here we have regional newspapers who definitely would have picked it up. And our national newspapers (and national TV) pick up news items from the regional ones.



> And even now, the hardest-hit countries have death rates of less than one in a thousand, some of which doubtless cannibalize on the expected death rates from the annual flu seasons or other diseases of the aged.


The Italian region of Lombardy was hit disproportionately, accounting for half the death cases of the country (which by itself is already among the most hard hit). It's well over 1/1000 there. Yes, part of that will include people who would have died anyway in the time frame, be it from flu or natural causes. But a substantial part not.

And once more, these figures would have been MUCH higher without countermeasures.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> Regional death rates within countries would not have been available, I think. And even now, the hardest-hit countries have death rates of less than one in a thousand, some of which doubtless cannibalize on the expected death rates from the annual flu seasons or other diseases of the aged.


The excess death numbers don't "cannibalize" on those numbers at all, and they indicate that coronavirus is actually a lot worse than the numbers of known cases and known deaths in many countries, including the USA.

On an unrelated note, due to a spike in new cases over the past few weeks (49 new cases just today), South Korea has been limiting large gatherings again... but school started today and as far as I know students went, so... I don't exactly understand that. The government here has also passed another stimulus bill, once again aimed primarily at helping small businesses and the unemployed, but with some special funding for tech. Their economy shrank by 1.3% last quarter, a little less than expected but still the worst since 2008.

Total case numbers have been rising slowly, but with kids going back to school, I suspect the second wave will hit here within a few weeks, and this one will probably not be as easy to control. I don't know, of course, and even the people with the relevant expertise don't know, but I sure hope they are not making the wrong choice.


----------



## science

Art Rock said:


> And once more, these figures would have been MUCH higher without countermeasures.


It's very important for someone arguing against countermeasures not to acknowledge this....


----------



## Eclectic Al

Mandryka said:


> But you can't trust the guidance, because it's given by a capitalist government which wants to get the economy moving and is willing to cut corners over safety to save costs.


Ooh those naughty capitalists. Scary, scary.


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> It's interesting to compare Covid-19 with the Ebola situation in 2014. Only two cases were contracted in the US, neither of whom died. Nine others were contracted abroad or flown into the US for treatment. But at the time there was near-panic among some denizens of this forum, of the "OMG we're all going to die!" variety. Needless to say, that didn't happen.
> 
> Which leads to my question: If it weren't for our environment of instantaneous Internet communication and the constant bombardment of death counts and so forth from a sensationalist media -- in other words, if things were as they were not so very long ago - would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?


I do think that we are in a position that leads to maximum mayhem.

We know enough to identify that this is something new and different (so we can worry about that), but not enough to be able to come up with a cure in a couple of days (as science is not advanced enough for that). And alongside that we have the new world of social media where stories of any degree of ridiculousness (about how bad this could be or about it not being a big deal at all) can circulate widely and rapidly. If we knew less we might have reacted less, and if we knew more we also might have reacted less.

If we didn't know as much as we do then we might have resorted to similar measures to an influenza outbreak: advise people to focus more on personal hygiene, stay at home if they are ill, not visit elderly relatives - all the usual advice. We're used to that when there's flu about. The consequences would then have been whatever they turned out to be. Who knows what that means: it's way too complex to model.
If we knew enough, we'd just have cured it promptly. No problem.

As it is, we've engaged in a massive experiment regarding social control which will keep academic researchers happy for decades.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> The excess death numbers don't "cannibalize" on those numbers at all, and they indicate that coronavirus is actually a lot worse than the numbers of known cases and known deaths in many countries, including the USA.


Well they do and they don't. Here's a hypothetical example.

A disease arises which kills people in May and then vanishes completely. Furthermore, it only kills people who were already very ill, and had a 50% chance of dying in the 6 months from May to October even without the new disease.

In May you see excess deaths, because you thought that the people who died of the new disease in May had a 50% chance of dying in the 6 months from May-October, but the way it panned out they all died in May. Everyone else dies according to their normal pattern, so you see excess deaths.

Now is where it gets interesting. If you reset the number of expected deaths for June to be based on the population who are alive at the start of June then we are back to normal: no excess deaths and no reduction. There is no cannibalisation. All you observe is excess deaths in May and normal deaths in every other period.

However, if you look at it differently and consider how many people you expected to die in the period May-October. You now find that you get a negative number of excess deaths in the period June-October. That is because the excess deaths in May had a high probability of dying in June-October, but now can't - because they already died. (This would be true, although to a lesser extent, even if these people had a normal chance of dying in June-October, simply because they are not there to die in June-October, but the number of deaths expected assumed that many of them would be.)

Hence, if your time frame for assessing excess deaths is the 6 months from May-October you will see that the excess deaths occurring in May are partly compensated for by negative excess deaths in June-October. Thus you do see the cannibalisation effect. The question is how frequently do you reset your "exposed to risk" in the jargon?

To reduce the thing to an absurdity, if you set your time period to be 1 trillionth of a second, then this is so short that the expected number of deaths in the period is zero. Any death you get will be "excess", and there will never be any offsetting cannibalisation, because you never expect any deaths.

It's a matter of judgement what makes sense. People often look at deaths over a year, because there are seasonal patterns which average out over a year. If you do that with the current Covid-19 then I would expect you would see a reasonable amount of cannibalisation, because a higher than random proportion of Covid-19 deaths are among people with a higher than normal chance of dying in the balance of the year.

It will get even more complicated because we are expecting to see an increase in cancer deaths, heart-related deaths, etc because of deferral of treatment during the lockdown. Hence, it will ultimately be important to analyse patterns according to cause. We may see the cannibalisation effect in older people (so negative excess deaths in due course), but positive excess deaths from other causes spread across a wider age range. At least that's what I think the maths might suggest.


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> It's interesting to compare Covid-19 with the Ebola situation in 2014. Only two cases were contracted in the US, neither of whom died. Nine others were contracted abroad or flown into the US for treatment. But at the time there was near-panic among some denizens of this forum, of the "OMG we're all going to die!" variety. Needless to say, that didn't happen.
> 
> Which leads to my question: If it weren't for our environment of instantaneous Internet communication and the constant bombardment of death counts and so forth from a sensationalist media -- in other words, if things were as they were not so very long ago - would we even be aware that there was a pandemic? Or would we say simply be saying that it was a really nasty flu season?


Why post in such a sarcastic, chiding, baiting manner all the time?

When I don't even disagree with you I get pissed at the tone and attitude.

Geeez...

You are not alone I admit but why so much of this at TC? What is it about classical music that makes one so... arrogant?

good bye


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Well they do and they don't. Here's a hypothetical example.
> 
> A disease arises which kills people in May and then vanishes completely. Furthermore, it only kills people who were already very ill, and had a 50% chance of dying in the 6 months from May to October even without the new disease.
> 
> In May you see excess deaths, because you thought that the people who died of the new disease in May had a 50% chance of dying in the 6 months from May-October, but the way it panned out they all died in May. Everyone else dies according to their normal pattern, so you see excess deaths.
> 
> Now is where it gets interesting. If you reset the number of expected deaths for June to be based on the population who are alive at the start of June then we are back to normal: no excess deaths and no reduction. There is no cannibalisation. All you observe is excess deaths in May and normal deaths in every other period.
> 
> However, if you look at it differently and consider how many people you expected to die in the period May-October. You now find that you get a negative number of excess deaths in the period June-October. That is because the excess deaths in May had a high probability of dying in June-October, but now can't - because they already died. (This would be true, although to a lesser extent, even if these people had a normal chance of dying in June-October, simply because they are not there to die in June-October, but the number of deaths expected assumed that many of them would be.)
> 
> Hence, if your time frame for assessing excess deaths is the 6 months from May-October you will see that the excess deaths occurring in May are partly compensated for by negative excess deaths in June-October. Thus you do see the cannibalisation effect. The question is how frequently do you reset your "exposed to risk" in the jargon?
> 
> To reduce the thing to an absurdity, if you set your time period to be 1 trillionth of a second, then this is so short that the expected number of deaths in the period is zero. Any death you get will be "excess", and there will never be any offsetting cannibalisation, because you never expect any deaths.
> 
> It's a matter of judgement what makes sense. People often look at deaths over a year, because there are seasonal patterns which average out over a year. If you do that with the current Covid-19 then I would expect you would see a reasonable amount of cannibalisation, because a higher than random proportion of Covid-19 deaths are among people with a higher than normal chance of dying in the balance of the year.
> 
> It will get even more complicated because we are expecting to see an increase in cancer deaths, heart-related deaths, etc because of deferral of treatment during the lockdown. Hence, it will ultimately be important to analyse patterns according to cause. We may see the cannibalisation effect in older people (so negative excess deaths in due course), but positive excess deaths from other causes spread across a wider age range. At least that's what I think the maths might suggest.


This is all very well, but why treat corona death certificate data with such suspicion, and yet assume that all other death certification is accurate?

I'd guess there are problems with the various systems for certifying causes of death for many illnesses and conditions, not least being the chain of people involved and the health systems in place in different countries to operate them. There may well be additional difficulties with new diseases such as Covid19, but we already know there are big confidence intervals for influenza - they don't even collate them under that name (rather, "ILI" for influenza like illness).

So, my inclination is to recognise that there are errors in the system, not expect a high degree of exactitude, and try to watch the big picture.


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> This is all very well, but why treat corona death certificate data with such suspicion, and yet assume that all other death certification is accurate?
> 
> I'd guess there are problems with the various systems for certifying causes of death for many illnesses and conditions, not least being the chain of people involved and the health systems in place in different countries to operate them. There may well be additional difficulties with new diseases such as Covid19, but we already know there are big confidence intervals for influenza - they don't even collate them under that name (rather, "ILI" for influenza like illness).
> 
> So, my inclination is to recognise that there are errors in the system, not expect a high degree of exactitude, and try to watch the big picture.


Hi
I'm not really taking a view on that.
My point was really just that the maths demand that excess deaths in one time period will lead to a partial offset via negative excess deaths in the future, if the mortality rate goes back to normal, unless you reset your prior expectations to reverse that out. It's not to do with uncertainties about new conditions or whatever. It is just the maths of the situation.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> Hi
> I'm not really taking a view on that.
> My point was really just that the maths demand that excess deaths in one time period will lead to a partial offset via negative excess deaths in the future, if the mortality rate goes back to normal, unless you reset your prior expectations to reverse that out. It's not to do with uncertainties about new conditions or whatever. It is just the maths of the situation.


It is not true that everyone who has died of coronavirus would have died within 6 months anyway. Not even close. That is such ... an implausible... construal of what has happened that I don't see the value of the hypothetical.

Anyway, this is basically the same as Keynes's bon mot "In the long run we are all dead."

True enough.

And yet what happens between now and then can matter. Especially if we're talking about years and even decades of life. And it does to me, at least in the case of myself and people I love. And if it doesn't matter to you, well, we disagree in such a way that renders further discussion impossible.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> It is not true that everyone who has died of coronavirus would have died within 6 months anyway. Not even close. That is such ... an implausible... construal of what has happened that I don't see the value of the hypothetical.
> 
> Anyway, this is basically the same as Keynes's bon mot "In the long run we are all dead."
> 
> True enough.
> 
> And yet what happens between now and then can matter. Especially if we're talking about years and even decades of life. And it does to me, at least in the case of myself and people I love. And if it doesn't matter to you, well, we disagree in such a way that renders further discussion impossible.


It does matter to me. It is just that it is a mathematical fact that if you have excess deaths in a period then you will have a partial reversal in the future, unless you make some other change to the assumptions. You have to make further assumptions to remove such "cannibalisation". I am making no point beyond this mathematical fact.


----------



## pianozach

Krummhorn said:


> Actually, Chiropractic adjustments can relieve many of the symptoms. Many a time in my younger years while being treated for a curved spine, I would have some sinus congestion. A couple of adjustments later, the congestion was completely gone.
> 
> A dear friend of mine was nearly crippled in a car accident ... they carried him in on a stretcher to the Chiropractor, and the friend was able to walk out quite normal. I was there - witnessed this for myself.


As a former chiropractor, I can corroborate that there most certainly ARE chiropractic miracle cases of all sorts. Unfortunately, most are anecdotal.

My wife, who was very suspicious of chiropractic, was unable to sleep on her right side as she had been unable to turn her head to accommodate that position. A quick assessment, and an adjustment, and she's been fine ever since. Not a *spectacular* *"miracle"*, but it made a big difference to _her_.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Don't know if it has already been posted here, but the data from the papers published in Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine claiming that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous in COVID patients is being seriously brought into doubt. Turns out there is a lot that is fishy about the data analysis group (Surgisphere out of Chicago) that provided the data, including numerous instances of data that simply could not be accurate (more deaths in regions than were actually reported). Both journals are looking into it. Many clinical trials on the drug were halted because of these papers. Researchers around the world have been condemning these two papers, saying they seemed suspicious from the beginning, as these drugs have been in use for decades. You can read the story in the journal Science:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s-coronavirus-papers-top-medical-journals-may-be-unraveling


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

pianozach said:


> As a former chiropractor, I can corroborate that there most certainly ARE chiropractic miracle cases of all sorts. Unfortunately, most are anecdotal.
> 
> My wife, who was very suspicious of chiropractic, was unable to sleep on her right side as she had been unable to turn her head to accommodate that position. A quick assessment, and an adjustment, and she's been fine ever since. Not a *spectacular* *"miracle"*, but it made a big difference to _her_.


My three interactions with chiropractors have left me in more pain than before.


----------



## KenOC

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Don't know if it has already been posted here, but the data from the papers published in Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine claiming that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous in COVID patients is being seriously brought into doubt. Turns out there is a lot that is fishy about the data analysis group (Surgisphere out of Chicago) that provided the data, including numerous instances of data that simply could not be accurate (more deaths in regions than were actually reported). Both journals are looking into it. Many clinical trials on the drug were halted because of these papers. Researchers around the world have been condemning these two papers, saying they seemed suspicious from the beginning, as these drugs have been in use for decades. You can read the story in the journal Science:
> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...papers-top-medical-journals-may-be-unraveling


Possibly related:

"GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to resume its trial of hydroxychloroquine for potential use against the new coronavirus, its head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, after testing was suspended due to health concerns."


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

pianozach said:


> As a former chiropractor, I can corroborate that there most certainly ARE chiropractic miracle cases of all sorts. Unfortunately, most are anecdotal.
> 
> My wife, who was very suspicious of chiropractic, was unable to sleep on her right side as she had been unable to turn her head to accommodate that position. A quick assessment, and an adjustment, and she's been fine ever since. Not a *spectacular* *"miracle"*, but it made a big difference to _her_.


My three interactions with chiropractors have left me in more pain than before.

Is it true that the founder of chiropractic, D. D. Palmer, claimed to have been taught the tenets of chiropractic by a person who had died 50 years previously?


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

KenOC said:


> Possibly related:
> 
> "GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to resume its trial of hydroxychloroquine for potential use against the new coronavirus, its head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, after testing was suspended due to health concerns."


It likely is. Some groups did not halt their studies, the WHO did, but in the article it is said they were reviewing now whether to restart the trials. Surgisphere has been reluctant to make much of the data available for scrutiny. They are apparently a very small outfit - they say in the paper that there are about 11 employees (by Surgisphere's own information). And yet they were able to coordinate massive data accumulation with over 100 different hospitals in (I think) 46 different countries with numerous different languages - all from a very new company.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

One criticism raised by some of the people critical of the studies was that there was diminished scrutiny about these two studies due to the political issue around these drugs - that maybe there was too quick a rush to publish these papers in the hope of giving President Trump a black eye.


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> Possibly related:
> 
> "GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to resume its trial of hydroxychloroquine for potential use against the new coronavirus, its head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, after testing was suspended due to health concerns."


waste of time with this quack cure promoted by the French quack doctor. I find it sad, that in modern days, even a cure for a pandemic becomes a target of disinformation and various interest groups with vested interests spread lies for such reasons as to raise the value of certain stocks. If the HCQ were some miracle drug, we would have known it by now, instead many countries abandoned it.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Jacck said:


> waste of time with this quack cure promoted by the French quack doctor. I find it sad, that in modern days, even a cure for a pandemic becomes a target of disinformation and various interest groups with vested interests spread lies for such reasons as to raise the value of certain stocks. If the HCQ were some miracle drug, we would have known it by now, instead many countries abandoned it.


Did you read the report in Science that I posted? Nobody ever claimed it was a miracle cure - but there was some evidence to suggest it might be beneficial in some circumstances. This isn't a ridiculous drug - it is one that has been used for decades. And countries abandoned it based on what now looks to be bad data.

Are you letting political considerations turn you away from actual evidence?


----------



## Jacck

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Did you read the report in Science that I posted? Nobody ever claimed it was a miracle cure - but there was some evidence to suggest it might be beneficial in some circumstances. This isn't a ridiculous drug - it is one that has been used for decades. And countries abandoned it based on what now looks to be bad data.
> 
> Are you letting political considerations turn you away from actual evidence?


Even if the paper in the Lancet is wrong or is completely fake, there is no evidence that the HCQ has benefits. I read about some Swedish study, that abondoned the HCT because of higher incidence of arrhythmias. It is not surprising. If the virus attacks the heart (endothelium), it is a massive strain on the heart + a drug causing changes of heart rthytm = higher mortality. Sure, continue the trials so that we learn the truth. My personal opinion is that it is a waste of time.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Did you read the report in Science that I posted? Nobody ever claimed it was a miracle cure - but there was some evidence to suggest it might be beneficial in some circumstances. This isn't a ridiculous drug - it is one that has been used for decades. And countries abandoned it based on what now looks to be bad data.
> 
> Are you letting political considerations turn you away from actual evidence?


I would indeed assume that that is the case, based on past posts.


----------



## KenOC

Remember Sorrento, which claimed to have an infusible antibody that was "100% effective" in both preventing and curing Covid-19 infections? They're back in the news, but not in an entirely happy way.

"Shares of Sorrento Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SRNE) had fallen 10.6% lower as of 11:12 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. The company hadn't reported any news, but a couple of factors may have been behind the sell-off.

"First, the stocks of most drugmakers working on COVID-19 vaccines fell after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), stated in an interview with JAMA editor Howard Bauchner that COVID-19 vaccines likely won't provide a long period of immunity.

"Second, Sorrento has been hit with a deluge of lawsuits over the last few days. These lawsuits allege that the company made misleading statements about its clinical programs, with some of the legal filings specifically referring to public statements about Sorrento's COVID-19 program."

The first point confuses me. Sorrento is not working on a vaccine. Its antibody is more of a curative and prevents infection, probably for a limited time. Absent an effective vaccine, it may be more valuable rather than less. If it works, of course!


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> It likely is. Some groups did not halt their studies, the WHO did, but in the article it is said they were reviewing now whether to restart the trials. Surgisphere has been reluctant to make much of the data available for scrutiny. They are apparently a very small outfit - they say in the paper that there are about 11 employees (by Surgisphere's own information). And yet they were able to coordinate massive data accumulation with over 100 different hospitals in (I think) 46 different countries with numerous different languages - all from a very new company.


This is what is sometimes called "big data." It is a trend in many fields, to aggregate publicly available data and try extract information.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Baron Scarpia said:


> This is what is sometimes called "big data." It is a trend in many fields, to aggregate publicly available data and try extract information.


Yes - both of the studies used the same data from Surgisphere. The problem with these is the problem with all such data analysis - garbage in, garbage out.


----------



## pianozach

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Don't know if it has already been posted here, but the data from the papers published in Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine claiming that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous in COVID patients is being seriously brought into doubt. Turns out there is a lot that is fishy about the data analysis group (Surgisphere out of Chicago) that provided the data, including numerous instances of data that simply could not be accurate (more deaths in regions than were actually reported). Both journals are looking into it. Many clinical trials on the drug were halted because of these papers. Researchers around the world have been condemning these two papers, saying they seemed suspicious from the beginning, as these drugs have been in use for decades. You can read the story in the journal Science:
> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s-coronavirus-papers-top-medical-journals-may-be-unraveling


I was hopeful about this article, as it has a nice website name, *Sciencemag*. Sciencemag is from the *AAAS*, which didn't sound familiar, so I clicked. It's the "*American Association for the Advancement of Science*".

Still not ringing a bell, but those names seem innocuous.

O.K. - well, then . . . to the actual article . . . *The Lancet* is mentioned, a name well respected in medical circles. But *AAAS* says that *The Lancet* published this faulty study, and that the study used stats from "*Surgisphere*", a "little-known data analytics company".

The kicker: *The Lancet* later issued an EOC about the study, as did the *NEJM* (another well respected medical journal).

The doctors (with quite decent mini-bios) that authored the study used 3rd party data from Surgisphere.

Following the article narrative, the *WHO* paused the testing of Hydroxychloroquine based on this faulty study, which has now damaged the ability to doctors to test it properly, not to mention delaying it.



*This* is how I approach articles that I feel have suspicious information . . . with suspicion. So I question the sources, the website, the authors, as well as the writing style (poorly written, typos, incomplete sentences, misuse of terminology). I'll do some minimal 3rd party checking.

And this article actually appears to be well-written and unbiased. The writer and editor both APPEAR to be real people with credible credentials, without suspicious ties to organizations that lobby for specific biases. The writer has also contributed to *Scientific American* and *Wired*.

So . . . it appears that "*Surgisphere*" is the big mystery here, although the doctors that authored the study seem somewhat to blame in their neglect of vetting the data they were getting.

*Good find*. It does beg the question of whether there is an underlying ulterior *motive* by either Surgisphere or the study authors to suppress research into hydroxychloroquine.


----------



## DaveM

It doesn’t look promising that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is going to be the game-changer that we thought it might be early on, but that said, I’ve never seen so much misinformation on a drug as has occurred in the last 3 months. For a start, reporters and governments officials couldn’t seem to distinguish between HCQ and chloroquine, the latter having far more worrisome side effects, and so they were lumped together and HCQ became frequently described as a dangerous drug.

Then, rather than HCQ being used earlier in the disease where it seemed to have benefits when first used, it started to be used in higher doses along with azithromycin in later stages of the disease and it was bound to be more hazardous in that situation especially when it came to arrhythmias. The study that has been talked about didn’t seem to carefully distinguish between all the different scenarios HCQ was used in and the results were, once again, reported as if HCQ and chloroquine were much the same drug. Overall, the reporting of the study was poorly done. Personally, I don’t think there was any agenda to make Trump looked bad; he’s doing a good job on that on his own. 

Edit: A new study released in the New England Journal of Medicine has found no benefit of HCQ when given early in the disease.


----------



## pianozach

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> My three interactions with chiropractors have left me in more pain than before.
> 
> Is it true that the founder of chiropractic, D. D. Palmer, claimed to have been taught *the tenets of chiropractic by a person who had died 50 years previously?*


Ah. A quote directly from the Wikepedia article on Chiropractic.

Looking briefly at the article I can see several odd things, including

_"Several deaths have been associated with this technique[12] and it has been suggested that the relationship is causative,[14][15] a claim which is disputed by many chiropractors.[15]"_

There has been ONE death attributed, in a hundred years, where a cervical manipulation was given by a trained chiropractor. There have of course been OTHER deaths linked to cervical manipulations, but they were administered by MEDICAL doctors. Under the law in every state, Medical doctors are authorized to perform procedures by chiropractors regardless of training.

The article has also been tagged as part of a series on "Alternative and pseudo‑medicine".

The AMA has a long history of attempting to discredit Chiropractic, and even lost an anti-Trust against them by the ACA (American Chiropractic Association), although the exact damages awarded were sealed.

After that the AMA used far more subtle means to sabotage the Chiropractic profession, sometimes to their own detriment. Methods include flooding "helpful" anti-chiropractic messaging to the public (e.g., edits to Wikipedia), or teaching the insurance companies methods of denying claims from chiropractors. They've prevented chiropractors from renting office space in medical campuses, and have a systemic anti-chiropractic bias endemic in their medical education. The AMA also has a history of suppressing other 'alternative' methods of healthcare, such as acupuncture, midwifery, homeopathy, and non-Western health practitioners.

Yet chiropractors are still around. If they all sucked, and if their branch of health care had nothing to support its continued existence, it would be a relic of the past.

So. Just as there are bad and good medical doctors, there are also great and lousy chiropractors.

But here's the final word . . . from the insurance industry. Malpractice insurance for medical doctors is sky high compared to rates for chiropractor. Why? Chiropractors don't kill their patients. The insurance companies consider them to be very low risk.


----------



## DaveM

pianozach said:


> ...But here's the final word . . . from the insurance industry. Malpractice insurance for medical doctors is sky high compared to rates for chiropractor. *Why? Chiropractors don't kill their patients.* The insurance companies consider them to be very low risk.


That's a rather low blow! Did I miss something and chiropractors are performing hazardous surgeries and prescribing drugs for cancer, autoimmune disorders, antibiotics for dangerous infections etc.?

While I'm on the subject, some chiropractors claim to be able to treat all sorts of diseases, but there are virtually no double-blind studies supporting any of it. They may be helpful in treating some back/spinal-related problems, but other than that, the placebo effect is very much at work.


----------



## Flamme

I sense a strong disruption in a confidence field in doctor-patient relation! I personally feel like I need 2 take with a grain of salt things doctors and nurses tell me...I have a cousin who is nurse and Im cautious even 2 her advice.


----------



## KenOC

To get us even farther off topic, Danny Aiello plays a great part as a chiropractor who helps Tim Robbins discover the truth about his rather horrifying past in the 1990 flick _Jacob's Ladder_. A good 'un.


----------



## Flamme

That movie went through me like a razor...So disturbing.


----------



## KenOC

Flamme said:


> I sense a strong disruption in a confidence field in doctor-patient relation! I personally feel like I need 2 take with a grain of salt things doctors and nurses tell me...I have a cousin who is nurse and Im cautious even 2 her advice.


I feel the opposite. Had some medical issues this week and the doctors I saw were efficient and smart -- probably because they agreed with my assessment of the situation. So now I'm scheduled for more lab tests, an ultrasound, and a surgical procedure too disturbing to describe in mixed company.


----------



## Flamme

I wish u luck. I actually missed couple of my appointments because of corona chan but I feel good in general, knock on wood, so Im kinda going with my daily business and try 2 not stress about anything...I feel like a stress is a gr8 trigger 4 many on 1st look physical ailments...My mum stressed about so many things but my dad was as cool as ice and now he is around and she sadly isnt. I told her so many times not 2 bother about things she cannot change but it was stronger than her...


----------



## senza sordino

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2562261/
I thought this was interesting.

I would like to embed this animation here, but I don't know how.

This is an animated bar graph that shows the global deaths due to various causes vs time for the previous five months.


----------



## Roger Knox

KenOC said:


> I feel the opposite. Had some medical issues this week and the doctors I saw were efficient and smart -- probably because they agreed with my assessment of the situation. So now I'm scheduled for more lab tests, an ultrasound, and a surgical procedure too disturbing to describe in mixed company.


Best wishes for a successful result. In addition to your doctors, it sounds like you too have taken the right steps to be prepared.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

pianozach said:


> I was hopeful about this article, as it has a nice website name, *Sciencemag*. Sciencemag is from the *AAAS*, which didn't sound familiar, so I clicked. It's the "*American Association for the Advancement of Science*".
> 
> Still not ringing a bell, but those names seem innocuous.
> 
> O.K. - well, then . . . to the actual article . . . *The Lancet* is mentioned, a name well respected in medical circles. But *AAAS* says that *The Lancet* published this faulty study, and that the study used stats from "*Surgisphere*", a "little-known data analytics company".
> 
> The kicker: *The Lancet* later issued an EOC about the study, as did the *NEJM* (another well respected medical journal).
> 
> The doctors (with quite decent mini-bios) that authored the study used 3rd party data from Surgisphere.
> 
> Following the article narrative, the *WHO* paused the testing of Hydroxychloroquine based on this faulty study, which has now damaged the ability to doctors to test it properly, not to mention delaying it.
> 
> 
> 
> *This* is how I approach articles that I feel have suspicious information . . . with suspicion. So I question the sources, the website, the authors, as well as the writing style (poorly written, typos, incomplete sentences, misuse of terminology). I'll do some minimal 3rd party checking.
> 
> And this article actually appears to be well-written and unbiased. The writer and editor both APPEAR to be real people with credible credentials, without suspicious ties to organizations that lobby for specific biases. The writer has also contributed to *Scientific American* and *Wired*.
> 
> So . . . it appears that "*Surgisphere*" is the big mystery here, although the doctors that authored the study seem somewhat to blame in their neglect of vetting the data they were getting.
> 
> *Good find*. It does beg the question of whether there is an underlying ulterior *motive* by either Surgisphere or the study authors to suppress research into hydroxychloroquine.


Ummm, the journal Science is considered one of the top science journals. It has a very high impact factor.


----------



## KenOC

senza sordino said:


> ...This is an animated bar graph that shows the global deaths due to various causes vs time for the previous five months.


An interesting animation, but possibly a bit misleading since it doesn't include the leading causes of death worldwide per the *WHO*. It makes it seem like Covid-19 is the leading cause of death right now, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Even the WHO's number 10 (tuberculosis) looks like well over twice the deaths of the coronavirus.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

pianozach said:


> Ah. A quote directly from the Wikepedia article on Chiropractic.
> 
> Looking briefly at the article I can see several odd things, including
> 
> _"Several deaths have been associated with this technique[12] and it has been suggested that the relationship is causative,[14][15] a claim which is disputed by many chiropractors.[15]"_
> 
> There has been ONE death attributed, in a hundred years, where a cervical manipulation was given by a trained chiropractor. There have of course been OTHER deaths linked to cervical manipulations, but they were administered by MEDICAL doctors. Under the law in every state, Medical doctors are authorized to perform procedures by chiropractors regardless of training.
> 
> The article has also been tagged as part of a series on "Alternative and pseudo‑medicine".
> 
> The AMA has a long history of attempting to discredit Chiropractic, and even lost an anti-Trust against them by the ACA (American Chiropractic Association), although the exact damages awarded were sealed.
> 
> After that the AMA used far more subtle means to sabotage the Chiropractic profession, sometimes to their own detriment. Methods include flooding "helpful" anti-chiropractic messaging to the public (e.g., edits to Wikipedia), or teaching the insurance companies methods of denying claims from chiropractors. They've prevented chiropractors from renting office space in medical campuses, and have a systemic anti-chiropractic bias endemic in their medical education. The AMA also has a history of suppressing other 'alternative' methods of healthcare, such as acupuncture, midwifery, homeopathy, and non-Western health practitioners.
> 
> Yet chiropractors are still around. If they all sucked, and if their branch of health care had nothing to support its continued existence, it would be a relic of the past.
> 
> So. Just as there are bad and good medical doctors, there are also great and lousy chiropractors.
> 
> But here's the final word . . . from the insurance industry. Malpractice insurance for medical doctors is sky high compared to rates for chiropractor. Why? Chiropractors don't kill their patients. The insurance companies consider them to be very low risk.


You challenge the issue of deaths caused by chiropractors. But you don't address the original question. Is D. D. Palmer the founder of chiropractic, and did he claim to learn the tenets from a doctor who died 50 years previously?


----------



## science

senza sordino said:


> https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2562261/
> I thought this was interesting.
> 
> I would like to embed this animation here, but I don't know how.
> 
> This is an animated bar graph that shows the global deaths due to various causes vs time for the previous five months.


That is amazing. Thank you for sharing that.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

KenOC said:


> An interesting animation, but possibly a bit misleading since it doesn't include the leading causes of death worldwide per the *WHO*. It makes it seem like Covid-19 is the leading cause of death right now, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Even the WHO's number 10 (tuberculosis) looks like well over twice the deaths of the coronavirus.


I agree - it is interesting, but I'd rather see the animation comparing COVID to the leading infectious diseases, rather than things like fire.


----------



## senza sordino

I can't confirm the data in that animation. I don't trust the data from Russia or China. And many countries are counting their Covid-19 cases differently. And if the data in the animation doesn't include TB or heart disease, that's not good. My mother sent me the link, I found it interesting, and I thought I would share it with you. It's created by some guy, not an official health agency.

This is another bar graph animation that he created. This shows the deaths by Covid-19 by Canadian province.
https://app.flourish.studio/visualisation/2486886/


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## DaveM

Pretty low mortality in Saskatchewan and Manitoba where I grew up. Guess this coronavirus doesn’t much like the prairies!


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

DaveM said:


> Pretty low mortality in Saskatchewan and Manitoba where I grew up. Guess this coronavirus doesn't much like the prairies!


Wow - not even the coronavirus wants to go there! (sorry, couldn't resist!)


----------



## Eclectic Al

I think we have a new irregular verb floating around:

To post stuff about Covid-19. In the singular it conjugates as follows:

I post reliable information about Covid-19
You post unsubstantiated stories about Covid-19
He/She posts deliberate misinformation about Covid-19 for political reasons.

Here's another:

I know what's true about Covid-19
You can't be sure about your beliefs regarding Covid-19
He/She is swallowing made-up stuff about Covid-19 and being manipulated for political reasons.


----------



## KenOC

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Wow - not even the coronavirus wants to go there! (sorry, couldn't resist!)


Old joke. Q: Why don't violists get the coronavirus? A: Even viruses have their standards.


----------



## DaveM

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Wow - not even the coronavirus wants to go there! (sorry, couldn't resist!)


Well, many years ago I came down to Southern California, met my wife and never returned to Canada -somehow 30 below in the winter wasn't my thing- so I have to sympathize with the virus.


----------



## Eclectic Al

A really interesting article is here:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/could-the-key-to-covid-be-found-in-the-russian-pandemic
I hope it's accessible.
With a bit of luck it won't prompt a bout of flaming, as it's just interesting speculation about a supposed flu epidemic in the late 19th century, and isn't particularly positive or negative about our current affliction.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> A really interesting article is here:
> https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/could-the-key-to-covid-be-found-in-the-russian-pandemic
> I hope it's accessible.
> With a bit of luck it won't prompt a bout of flaming, as it's just interesting speculation about a supposed flu epidemic in the late 19th century, and isn't particularly positive or negative about our current affliction.


it is pretty close to my own view of the coronavirus


----------



## Guest

It's all a redundant discussion when we should be discussing the gigantic elephant in the room.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> A really interesting article is here:
> https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/could-the-key-to-covid-be-found-in-the-russian-pandemic
> I hope it's accessible.
> With a bit of luck it won't prompt a bout of flaming, as it's just interesting speculation about a supposed flu epidemic in the late 19th century, and isn't particularly positive or negative about our current affliction.


An interesting speculation, and a nice thing is that it admits it is speculation.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Yes - both of the studies used the same data from Surgisphere. The problem with these is the problem with all such data analysis - garbage in, garbage out.


More fair to say, mess in, output depends on the skill of the analysis.


----------



## Guest

The state of Texas is proceeding with progressive re-opening despite the fact that reported new infections are at a record level in the state. Oh dear, I guess it is inevitable. The rational, as I understood it, was "we will close down until testing and contract tracing can be made adequate." I guess the new rational is, "we have no intention of doing that, so we might as well reopen."

We will see what happens. Given the epidemiological parameters it is inevitable that basically everyone will get it eventually. It is just a matter of when.


----------



## pianozach

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Ummm, the journal Science is considered one of the top science journals. It has a very high impact factor.


Oh.

I thought that *Sciencemag* was something _other_ than *Science*, the journal. I've heard of _that_.


----------



## pianozach

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> You challenge the issue of deaths caused by chiropractors. But you don't address the original question. Is D. D. Palmer the founder of chiropractic, and did he claim to learn the tenets from a doctor who died 50 years previously?


DD Palmer is considered the "father of chiropractic", although I can't say I've ever heard that he learned it from a half century old dead doctor.

In chiropractic circles DD is more of a precursor to modern chiropractic, like Hippocrates is considered the father of doctoring.

BJ Palmer developed the philosophies and methods of modern chiropractic.

Since then there have been many others that have developed different methods and procedures.


----------



## Roger Knox

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Wow - not even the coronavirus wants to go there! (sorry, couldn't resist!)


Well, I'd go to the Prairies just for Saskatoon berries and Winnipeg goldeye ... mmmm!


----------



## DaveM

Roger Knox said:


> Well, I'd go to the Prairies just for Saskatoon berries and Winnipeg goldeye ... mmmm!


Every year we would go to the outskirts of Saskatoon and collect the berries, unique to the area. Saskatoon is actually a pretty nice city, prettier than Regina, with the large Saskatchewan River flowing through it. The population has skyrocketed since I lived there.


----------



## KenOC

The study published in Lancet and discussed here earlier, that pretty much trashed hydroxychloroquine as useful in treating Covid-19, has now been retracted by its authors. They wrote, "We can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources."

Other studies, though, are coming up empty as well. A nice quote from the article: "The advocacy and widespread use of hydroxychloroquine seem to reflect a reasonable fear of SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, it would appear that to some extent the media and social forces - rather than medical evidence - are driving clinical decisions and the global COVID-19 research agenda."


----------



## science

Coronavirus finally got someone I know personally: New Haven's "Shakespeare Lady."

Back in '95 to '02, when I worked with homeless people in New Haven, she was one of the stereotype defying ones who helped broaden my mind considerably about the problem of homelessness. She had an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and she was not the only homeless person with a degree like that. Rather than just ask for money like other panhandlers, she would ask if she could perform a soliloquy from Shakespeare for you. It was a challenge: you could pick what you wanted to hear, and if she could do it you had to give her a dollar or two. She would recite it dramatically and powerfully, inevitably drawing a crowd and earning more than just a few dollars. I didn't spend much time with her because she could take care of herself well enough, and I didn't believe in giving money to homeless people, but every now and then it was fun to hear her.

Anyway, RIP to a fine lady who bravely led a tough life.


----------



## science

Baron Scarpia said:


> The state of Texas is proceeding with progressive re-opening despite the fact that reported new infections are at a record level in the state. Oh dear, I guess it is inevitable. The rational, as I understood it, was "we will close down until testing and contract tracing can be made adequate." I guess the new rational is, "we have no intention of doing that, so we might as well reopen."
> 
> We will see what happens. Given the epidemiological parameters it is inevitable that basically everyone will get it eventually. It is just a matter of when.


We're just going with hope and prayer now. States have decided that paying unemployment is too expensive.

Maybe enough people will still be able to work from home and willing to take reasonable precautions. We'll see.


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> However, it would appear that to some extent the media and social forces - rather than medical evidence - are driving clinical decisions and the global COVID-19 research agenda."


What are they not driving??


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> What are they not driving??


"Social forces" includes a lot of stuff.


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> "Social forces" includes a lot of stuff.


Can't disagree with you there!
To be honest, it's probably too general to be meaningful.

It's the media that bother me. Whatever your politics, you will have media outlets that you don't like and that you think are pursuing objectives which suit their backers and are not accountable to anyone else in any visible fashion. But if you're honest, I think you would have to accept that the same is true of those you do like. Are there any left when you have eliminated those? I doubt it these days.
Covid-19 is just an example, but you could take almost any issue, and I would struggle to point to a media outlet which I would trust to be reporting facts without reference to an overriding political agenda. I might agree with their agenda or oppose it, but it would be nice to imagine that there was an outlet just reporting "the stuff". I've gone all post-modern. Perhaps there is no meaningful concept of objectivity.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Baron Scarpia said:


> The state of Texas is proceeding with progressive re-opening despite the fact that reported new infections are at a record level in the state. Oh dear, I guess it is inevitable. The rational, as I understood it, was "we will close down until testing and contract tracing can be made adequate." I guess the new rational is, "we have no intention of doing that, so we might as well reopen."
> 
> We will see what happens. Given the epidemiological parameters it is inevitable that basically everyone will get it eventually. It is just a matter of when.


How can we honestly tell business they cannot reopen now when most major American cities seem to be okay with permitting the protests in their streets, where hundreds, if not thousands, of people are congregating, in very close proximity? What is the rationale? No - you can't go open up your business to earn money to support your family, but we'll step back and let people march in the streets, and maybe some of them destroy your business in the meantime.

The protests will very quickly test just how necessary the current level of lockdown is. I agree that we needed it initially. But if we fail to see a spike in cases as a result of these mass protests, it really makes it hard to argue that re-opening should continue to be delayed.


----------



## DaveM

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> How can we honestly tell business they cannot reopen now when most major American cities seem to be okay with permitting the protests in their streets, where hundreds, if not thousands, of people are congregating, in very close proximity? What is the rationale? No - you can't go open up your business to earn money to support your family, but we'll step back and let people march in the streets, and maybe some of them destroy your business in the meantime.
> 
> The protests will very quickly test just how necessary the current level of lockdown is. I agree that we needed it initially. But if we fail to see a spike, possibly major, as a result of these mass protests, it really makes it hard to argue that re-opening should continue to be delayed.


You make a good point, but my guess is that there is going to be a spike, possibly major, from these protests given the ideal circumstances: a lot of people not wearing masks screaming, shouting and overall venting in other peoples' faces.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

DaveM said:


> You make a good point, but my guess is that there is going to be a spike, possibly major, from these protests given the ideal circumstances: a lot of people not wearing masks screaming, shouting and overall venting in other peoples' faces.


It could be - particularly in NYC. What will be interesting to see is whether we see regional differences. Do the protests here in Columbus, OH, yield a proportionately similar spike to NYC? Or the ones they are having down in Alabama?

Like it or not, this is the big test we needed to see whether it was safe to go back out.


----------



## mmsbls

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> How can we honestly tell business they cannot reopen now when most major American cities seem to be okay with permitting the protests in their streets, where hundreds, if not thousands, of people are congregating, in very close proximity? What is the rationale? No - you can't go open up your business to earn money to support your family, but we'll step back and let people march in the streets, and maybe some of them destroy your business in the meantime.
> 
> The protests will very quickly test just how necessary the current level of lockdown is. I agree that we needed it initially. But if we fail to see a spike in cases as a result of these mass protests, it really makes it hard to argue that re-opening should continue to be delayed.


It's true that the protests along with other group activities that we've seen over the past several weeks should increase infections. Many states have significantly increased infection rates over the past couple of weeks presumably due to people not taking the sheltering in place and social distancing seriously enough.

One possible difference between protests and opening businesses is that protests occur outside where transmission is more difficult. Removing New York and New Jersey from the US numbers shows increasing infections in the US. If the deaths increase significantly, officials will have a very tough decision about whether to shutdown again.


----------



## Open Book

Remember when New York's numbers and rate of infection looked the worst of any state? We half joked that the rest of the country should keep New Yorkers out. New York's numbers have been looking great, they've come way down. The rest of the country looks disappointing in comparison.

It may not do any good. People are getting tired of the restrictions and will do what they want. It doesn't look possible to keep people shut up at home indefinitely or even to do it periodically. The protests are getting the populace in an anti-authoritarian mood.


----------



## DaveM

Another small famotidine (Pepcid)-related study has just been released. 10 people, none hospitalized, started taking famotidine while feeling poorly from diagnosed Covid-19. All reported feeling noticeably better after 1 or 2 days and all recovered in 2-4 weeks without requiring hospitalization. A study of hospitalized patients is in progress and a study of people who have just become ill at home is planned.

There are now 2-3 reports, albeit anecdotal, and this study of noticeable improvement, especially when taken early, of the Covid-19 symptoms. As I’ve mentioned before, the drug appears to be a very effective H2 receptor blocker -moreso than other drugs in the same class- helping prevent the release of histamine and cytokines from mast cells, thus reducing the inflammatory-related complications of the disease. 

This may end up being one of the most important weapons to reduce morbidity and even mortality from the virus until effective antivirals and vaccines can be made available.


----------



## Roger Knox

DaveM said:


> Another small famotidine (Pepcid)-related study has just been released. 10 people, none hospitalized, started taking famotidine while feeling poorly from diagnosed Covid-19. All reported feeling noticeably better after 1 or 2 days and all recovered in 2-4 weeks without requiring hospitalization. A study of hospitalized patients is in progress and a study of people who have just become ill at home is planned.
> 
> There are now 2-3 reports, albeit anecdotal, and this study of noticeable improvement, especially when taken early, of the Covid-19 symptoms. As I've mentioned before, the drug appears to be a very effective H2 receptor blocker -moreso than other drugs in the same class- helping prevent the release of histamine and cytokines from mast cells, thus reducing the inflammatory-related complications of the disease.
> 
> This may end up being one of the most important weapons to reduce morbidity and even mortality from the virus until effective antivirals and vaccines can be made available.


This sounds promising, hoping that results continue to be successful.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> most major American cities seem to be okay with permitting the protests in their streets,


I'm not sure they're "okay with permitting". What choice is there if large numbers of people take to the streets, some of whom are prepared to take on the riot police and the teargas?


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure they're "okay with permitting". What choice is there if large numbers of people take to the streets, some of whom are prepared to take on the riot police and the teargas?


Around here, police seemed absent during the looting and pretty thorough destruction of an institution providing low-cost rentals to children unable to afford to buy instruments.

Violent, armed looters overrun Santa Monica Music Center: 'They took everything from us, and no one stopped them'

Police say they can come out in two or three weeks (!) to write up a formal report. The article is pretty horrific. Fox article, nobody else that I can find reported on this.

Positive about this post: Music-related. Negative: Politics, of a sort.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> Can't disagree with you there!
> To be honest, it's probably too general to be meaningful.
> 
> It's the media that bother me. Whatever your politics, you will have media outlets that you don't like and that you think are pursuing objectives which suit their backers and are not accountable to anyone else in any visible fashion. But if you're honest, I think you would have to accept that the same is true of those you do like. Are there any left when you have eliminated those? I doubt it these days.
> Covid-19 is just an example, but you could take almost any issue, and I would struggle to point to a media outlet which I would trust to be reporting facts without reference to an overriding political agenda. I might agree with their agenda or oppose it, but it would be nice to imagine that there was an outlet just reporting "the stuff". I've gone all post-modern. Perhaps there is no meaningful concept of objectivity.


The "non-partisan" media was always an illusion, but we'd better talk about media in a different thread.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Around here, police seemed absent during the looting and pretty thorough destruction of an institution providing low-cost rentals to children unable to afford to buy instruments.
> 
> Violent, armed looters overrun Santa Monica Music Center: 'They took everything from us, and no one stopped them'
> 
> Police say they can come out in two or three weeks (!) to write up a formal report. The article is pretty horrific. Fox article, nobody else that I can find reported on this.
> 
> Positive about this post: Music-related. Negative: Politics, of a sort.


Just before we get too far away from the point, I was mildly contesting the idea that the authorities can't refuse to let businesses open, when the same authorities are "okay with permitting protests". The fact there is also looting going on should not, IMO, be taken as a sign that those authorities are okay with permitting protests and that therefore they should allow businesses to open.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

mmsbls said:


> It's true that the protests along with other group activities that we've seen over the past several weeks should increase infections. Many states have significantly increased infection rates over the past couple of weeks presumably due to people not taking the sheltering in place and social distancing seriously enough.
> 
> One possible difference between protests and opening businesses is that protests occur outside where transmission is more difficult. Removing New York and New Jersey from the US numbers shows increasing infections in the US. If the deaths increase significantly, officials will have a very tough decision about whether to shutdown again.


They can't shut down again - not after they made the conscious choice to allow the protests. How can you now tell people they are free to violate the shutdown laws to exercise their First Amendment right to freedom of assembly, but not to exercise their right to religious practice? No - you can't have more than 5 or 6 people come together for a Jewish funeral, but by all means, lets put thousands out on the streets for protests? That ship has sailed. I remember when they decried the people partying at the Lake of the Ozarks. But people are celebrated for protesting in much bigger numbers? And what about the denunciation of people going to the beach - that was outdoors, and in nowhere near the concentrations of, say, downtown NYC during the protests.

The shutdown ship has left the dock - we won't get it back. For better or worse, our leaders have been called on it.


----------



## KenOC

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> ...The shutdown ship has left the dock - we won't get it back. For better or worse, our leaders have been called on it.


Regardless of the politics, I have few concerns about Covid-19. Where I live, and in my age group, my chances of dying from the disease are between 5 and 8 in a million. Needless to say, I don't lie awake at night worrying about it!

That may change in the future, but right now this seems a very minor worry.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure they're "okay with permitting". What choice is there if large numbers of people take to the streets, some of whom are prepared to take on the riot police and the teargas?


Several mayors have gone on record, justifying the protests while defending preventing religious gatherings - including de Blasio in NYC.

There is an open letter, signed by nearly 1300 health professionals, advocating, among other things:


> Support local and state governments in upholding the right to protest and allow protesters to gather.
> Do not disband protests under the guise of maintaining public health for COVID-19 restrictions.


You can read it here.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Several mayors have gone on record, justifying the protests while defending preventing religious gatherings - including de Blasio in NYC.
> 
> There is an open letter, signed by nearly 1300 health professionals, advocating, among other things:
> 
> You can read it here.


Thanks. You make my point for me well. Public protest is a legitimate right. That's why I was querying the connection you made between "okay with permitting protests" over which they may feel they have no control (unless protesters breach what is permitted for public protest) and "okay with permitting businesses to open". But I don't know what laws each city/state has to intervene - doubtless, they are not the same everywhere.

I'm sure some authorities are not just okay with it, but positively recognise a citizen's right to protest. Equally, some authorities much prefer that they didn't even have the right to public protest, never mind execising that right during a pandemic.

So, there's the issue of the right to protest - some won't be "okay" with it, they just know that they have little choice - and then there's the pragmatic decisions being taken about when to intervene (if at all). Again, an apparent decision not to intervene should not also be taken as a sign that the authorities are _okay _with permitting protest.


----------



## science

After Reopening Schools, Israel Orders Them To Shut If COVID-19 Cases Are Discovered

That's NPR so it's somewhat pro-establishment but the info is interesting:



> Two weeks after Israel fully reopened schools, a COVID-19 outbreak sweeping through classrooms - including at least 130 cases at a single school - has led officials to close dozens of schools where students and staff were infected. A new policy orders any school where a virus case emerges to close.
> 
> The government decision, announced Wednesday evening, comes after more than 200 cases have been confirmed among students and staff at various schools. At least 244 students and school employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Ministry of Education. At least 42 kindergartens and schools have been shuttered indefinitely. More than 6,800 students and teachers are in home quarantine by government order.
> 
> It's an abrupt reversal of the post-pandemic spirit in Israel as officials lifted most remaining coronavirus restrictions last week. With fewer than 300 deaths in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had declared victory in early May over the pandemic and last week told Israelis to go to restaurants and "enjoy yourselves."
> 
> But by the weekend, the spike in cases led him to consider reimposing restrictions, including closing all schools. The education minister, Yoav Gallant, argued that the overall number of virus cases in Israeli schools remains low and closing them all would not be justified.
> 
> Schools first began to reopen in early May, with classes staggered in smaller groups or "capsules" of students to prevent a wide outbreak. By May 17, limitations on class size were lifted.
> 
> The most significant outbreak appeared last week in the Gymnasia Rehavia, a historic middle and high school in Jerusalem. There, 116 students and 14 teachers were infected, according to the Ministry of Education, and the school closed. Built in 1928, its graduates include prominent novelists, politicians and Netanyahu's late brother.
> 
> Health officials said they're investigating how the virus spread there. A teacher told NPR a seventh-grader was first discovered to be carrying the virus and the entire grade was ordered to quarantine at home. Then a ninth-grader tested positive, and the school was shut down.
> 
> "It was a mistake to go back to school in this format," the teacher said. She spoke on condition of anonymity because teachers were ordered not to speak with the press and she feared losing her job if identified.
> 
> Across Israel, many parents have yanked their children from schools that remain open. When the Collège des Frères, a French Roman Catholic school in the city of Jaffa, announced that the father of some students had tested positive for the virus, his children's classmates were sent home - but other parents pulled their children out, too.
> 
> Dr. Arnon Afek, who is helping manage Israel's coronavirus response, played down the outbreak, saying a spike in cases was expected when schools reopened. "It wasn't a surprise," he said. "It happened also in South Korea and Singapore."


My wife tells me that Afek's 411 on South Korea is not exactly correct. The recent spike in cases in South Korea has happened at the same time that the schools have opened back up, but so far no cases have been known to have been spread through schools. (Some were spread through a hagwon, but that is not the same as a school.) I'd suspect that's only a matter of time but as I've said before, hopefully the immunologists here know what they're doing better than I do!

As for the spike in cases in South Korea -- it's bad but only in a way that makes the USA seem terrifying. After having gotten as low as 681 active cases on May 26, they're back up to 857 now. It is enough to suggest that there could be 10,000 cases in two weeks (as happened in late February and early March) and maybe containing it would prove impossible this time. OTOH, only ten US states have fewer active cases than Korea, only two have fewer cases per capita, and no state has less than double the deaths per capita. I mean, whew. Interesting times, as the saying goes.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

MacLeod said:


> Thanks. You make my point for me well. Public protest is a legitimate right. That's why I was querying the connection you made between "okay with permitting protests" over which they may feel they have no control (unless protesters breach what is permitted for public protest) and "okay with permitting businesses to open". But I don't know what laws each city/state has to intervene - doubtless, they are not the same everywhere.
> 
> I'm sure some authorities are not just okay with it, but positively recognise a citizen's right to protest. Equally, some authorities much prefer that they didn't even have the right to public protest, never mind execising that right during a pandemic.
> 
> So, there's the issue of the right to protest - some won't be "okay" with it, they just know that they have little choice - and then there's the pragmatic decisions being taken about when to intervene (if at all). Again, an apparent decision not to intervene should not also be taken as a sign that the authorities are _okay _with permitting protest.


Protests fall under the freedom of assembly under the First Amendment. Free practice of religion is also covered by that amendment, and yet they have had no problem arresting religious leaders for holding services. That is what I was referring to. The state of California just won a case in the Supreme Court saying that they could limit religious gatherings. I don't see how you can continue to restrict those gatherings - maybe a few hundred at most- while not attempting to stop protest rallies of thousands of people.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Protests fall under the freedom of assembly under the First Amendment. Free practice of religion is also covered by that amendment, and yet they have had no problem arresting religious leaders for holding services. That is what I was referring to. The state of California just won a case in the Supreme Court saying that they could limit religious gatherings. I don't see how you can continue to restrict those gatherings - maybe a few hundred at most- while not attempting to stop protest rallies of thousands of people.


Like I said, there is a line of argument that says the pragmatic approach is, in this instance, to permit the protests. The issue of permitting religious services - especially if the court has already ruled on it - seems like whataboutery.


----------



## science

Looking for news on that hagwon outbreak, I found this from about a month ago. It's good for some comic relief:

Expats suffer workplace discrimination amid Itaewon Outbreak



> By Kim Se-jeong
> 
> Foreigners working in Korea are grappling with the fallout from the recent massive coronavirus outbreak linked to five clubs in Itaewon, and along with certain sexual minorities, are facing discrimination and harassment, especially in their workplaces, according to three interviews Wednesday.
> 
> Some members of the foreign community here have expressed concerns that this will further escalate over time, saying it is unfair for them to be treated as possible spreaders of the coronavirus under the preconceptions that all non-Koreans here often visit the multicultural entertainment district in Seoul.
> 
> PJ, who is an English hagwon teacher in Suwon, south of Seoul, said she may be about to lose her job because of the Itaewon outbreak. She had been to Itaewon, May 2, and has since tested negative but is currently under self-quarantine.
> 
> "My boss asked all my coworkers if we had been there. I told her truthfully I was in Itaewon around May 2 and 3… She said she'd fire me or have me tender my resignation," she wrote in an email sent to The Korea Times. She refused to disclose her full name because of the sensitive nature of the issue.
> 
> "She told me to add to my resignation letter about how she asked us to social distance and if we violated or infringed that 'behavior guidance,' then we're liable and responsible for any negative and commercial impacts to our school."
> 
> Also, the boss attempted to impose a sense of guilt on her. One early morning, she was woken by a call from her boss to hear the words, "How can you sleep without feeling guilty?"
> 
> Growing tired of all the stress, PJ offered to quit but then the boss changed her mind and wouldn't let her go. "Then she said 'if you don't stay, then you have 15 days to leave (the country)." For hagwon teachers, they have to have a document proving termination of contract from employers to get another job. Otherwise, they are obliged to leave the country within the grace period following the termination of their visa.
> 
> "After this incident, I want to leave. It was never clear to me what they wanted. Sometimes it sounded like they were going to fire me, then other times they tried to butter me up to stay. Yet, it's very clear to me they care more about the business rather than the foreign employees and maybe the kids as well."
> 
> She still doesn't know where she stands even if she leaves her current employment. "I am worried about the boss leaking out the fact that I was in Itaewon despite not having been in the area since; other schools may not look at that favorably. I really want to continue to live and work in Korea."
> 
> Those who have actually been to Itaewon, a multicultural district in Seoul popular among foreign tourists and residents, are among those who say they are suffering the most, but those who've not been to Itaewon said they were also feeling the pressure at work.
> 
> Another foreign resident who wishes to be identified as Edward said he hasn't visited Itaewon for weeks but has received questions about his whereabouts from his colleagues at an education company he works at.
> 
> "I told them that I hadn't been there and the only place I had gone to was Haebangchon (HBC) for an hour in the afternoon around the start of May," he said.
> 
> Later that day, he noticed a Korean language work chat group was quite active with people talking about him, seemingly assuming he didn't understand comments such as, "Isn't his house in Itaewon?" and "He actually has a gay-vibe… can we trust him?" The next day, he was forced to get himself tested and told by a superior to stay home until the situation subsides.
> 
> Often referred to as a "homogeneous society," Koreans have been notorious for their hostility to non-Koreans, and the COVID-19 case linked to the Itaewon clubs is further testing the nation's attitudes toward minorities.
> 
> "To be honest, I am beginning to feel a bit scared now because I feel like everyone is focusing on me even though I haven't even been there, not even close," Jennifer who teaches English in Seoul said.


I'll be sure to let y'all know if South Koreans start treating white people the way American white people have been treating East Asians during this outbreak.

So far, however, my white privilege appears to be working as well as it ever has here -- and it works here even better than it does in the USA.

The anti-gay sentiment is all too real though, and is actually causing a problem because one of the recent clusters comes from a gay bar in Itaewon (which is why the comment in that chat thread was made) and many people who were there don't want to admit they were there. Proving once again that any form of bigotry is eventually going to turn into some kind of problem in a postmodern society.

But to South Koreans' credit they have been changing remarkably quickly on this issue. When I came here in 2002 many Koreans believed that there were no gay people in Korea, but now most people under 45 or so and even some people older than that are completely indifferent to each other's sexual orientations.


----------



## Mandryka

science said:


> After Reopening Schools, Israel Orders Them To Shut If COVID-19 Cases Are Discovered
> 
> That's NPR so it's somewhat pro-establishment but the info is interesting:
> 
> My wife tells me that Afek's 411 on South Korea is not exactly correct. The recent spike in cases in South Korea has happened at the same time that the schools have opened back up, but so far no cases have been known to have been spread through schools. (Some were spread through a hagwon, but that is not the same as a school.) I'd suspect that's only a matter of time but as I've said before, hopefully the immunologists here know what they're doing better than I do!
> 
> As for the spike in cases in South Korea -- it's bad but only in a way that makes the USA seem terrifying. After having gotten as low as 681 active cases on May 26, they're back up to 857 now. It is enough to suggest that there could be 10,000 cases in two weeks (as happened in late February and early March) and maybe containing it would prove impossible this time. OTOH, only ten US states have fewer active cases than Korea, only two have fewer cases per capita, and no state has less than double the deaths per capita. I mean, whew. Interesting times, as the saying goes.


This is a surprise because the discussion on French media at least is that younger children are at very minimum risk of developing serious symptoms, that they aren't significant vectors to adults, and that they may not even be particularly susceptible to catch the disease at all. Yet I notice that Israel decided to close some kindergartens.


----------



## erki

For me it all illustrates how bad is the idea to shut down the society and think that the threat just evaporates.
Personally I feel that to be able to protest against government wrongdoings outweighs the right to participate in religious meetings tenfold. Luckily the sweet possibility to deny free speech with the excuse of the pandemic hasn't realised yet.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Protests fall under the freedom of assembly under the First Amendment. Free practice of religion is also covered by that amendment, and yet they have had no problem arresting religious leaders for holding services. That is what I was referring to. The state of California just won a case in the Supreme Court saying that they could limit religious gatherings. I don't see how you can continue to restrict those gatherings - maybe a few hundred at most- while not attempting to stop protest rallies of thousands of people.


I'm not religious, and I don't take part in street protests. I understand the idea that religious gatherings and protests should both be temporarily banned (on the basis of an overriding health emergency) or should both be allowed (subject to the normal rules, on the basis that the emergency is deemed to have declined in terms of risk).

What I'm uncomfortable with, as a general point, is the idea that the thing which matters to me should be allowed to occur (even if it conflicts with the current legal position), but the thing which doesn't matter to me should continue to be banned. Restricting the right of people to gather on the basis of whether or not I support the reason for the gathering is problematic, because it leaves me with no in principle reason to complain if the powers that be take the opposite position from my own. I am just left with an assertion of my own position, and a denial of the right of someone else to assert theirs, thus taking away any ethical basis for me to justify complaining if they have power and can get their way.


----------



## Eclectic Al

This is not a good news story, but I had to laugh.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ogged-fatbergs-medical-equipment-coronavirus/

It's yet another example of how complicated the world is, and the way in which changing one thing affects all sorts of other things in a crazy outward spiral.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Eclectic Al said:


> I'm not religious, and I don't take part in street protests. I understand the idea that religious gatherings and protests should both be temporarily banned (on the basis of an overriding health emergency) or should both be allowed (subject to the normal rules, on the basis that the emergency is deemed to have declined in terms of risk).
> 
> What I'm uncomfortable with, as a general point, is the idea that the thing which matters to me should be allowed to occur (even if it conflicts with the current legal position), but the thing which doesn't matter to me should continue to be banned. Restricting the right of people to gather on the basis of whether or not I support the reason for the gathering is problematic, because it leaves me with no in principle reason to complain if the powers that be take the opposite position from my own. I am just left with an assertion of my own position, and a denial of the right of someone else to assert theirs, thus taking away any ethical basis for me to justify complaining if they have power and can get their way.


But that is my point. You either ban both or you ban neither.

The problem is mainly from the perspective of the people. They have already seen isolated incidents of the politicians telling them to stay home, then going and violating those same principles - shutdown for thee, but not for me. Now they have the juxtaposition of a group of thousands of Orthodox Jews being broken up and several issued summons for gathering for the funeral of a rabbi on one side, and thousands of people protesting for several days on the other with police only there to prevent violence. So the next time some religious group decides they want to come together - maybe only a hundred - are the police really going to come and break it up?

That strategy isn't sustainable, not unless they want new protests. And would they then break up a protest about religious freedom, but not a protest about civil rights? What makes one allowable and the other not? Both are constitutionally protected. So the Supreme Court, confusingly, ruled the way they did about religious gatherings. But would it be different if, rather than simply congregating for a religious service, the people were protesting the inability to attend a religious service? Or if it were a group of black churchgoers protesting not being able to go to church as opposed to Orthodox Jews attending a funeral?

Someone claimed it is just "whataboutery." No. It is about equal protection under the law.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> But that is my point. You either ban both or you ban neither.


Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was agreeing with you.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> This is not a good news story, but I had to laugh.
> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ogged-fatbergs-medical-equipment-coronavirus/
> 
> It's yet another example of how complicated the world is, and the way in which changing one thing affects all sorts of other things in a crazy outward spiral.


My dad used to work in sewage treatment, and from my POV it was the worst job a dad could have. Some days he just couldn't wash the stench all the way off. He told me once that his goal for me was to have a job where I had to wash my hands _after_ I used the restroom and shower _before_ I went to work.

Fortunately (especially for nearby neighborhoods), there've been some nice advances in sewage treatment in the past 30 years, but I don't know whether it's any better for the blue collar boys doing the work. Hopefully so. Anyway, whatever we flush that we shouldn't flush could lead to some poor schmuck having to get himself horribly dirty for us.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> Looking for news on that hagwon outbreak, I found this from about a month ago. It's good for some comic relief:
> 
> Expats suffer workplace discrimination amid Itaewon Outbreak
> 
> I'll be sure to let y'all know if South Koreans start treating white people the way American white people have been treating East Asians during this outbreak.
> 
> So far, however, my white privilege appears to be working as well as it ever has here -- and it works here even better than it does in the USA.
> 
> The anti-gay sentiment is all too real though, and is actually causing a problem because one of the recent clusters comes from a gay bar in Itaewon (which is why the comment in that chat thread was made) and many people who were there don't want to admit they were there. Proving once again that any form of bigotry is eventually going to turn into some kind of problem in a postmodern society.
> 
> But to South Koreans' credit they have been changing remarkably quickly on this issue. When I came here in 2002 many Koreans believed that there were no gay people in Korea, but now most people under 45 or so and even some people older than that are completely indifferent to each other's sexual orientations.


How exactly have we been treating East Asians during this outbreak? I know there was all kinds of fearmongering that Trump's travel ban would lead to widespread attacks on Asians - where were they? Did I miss them? The only widespread attacks on Asians I have seen are coming from Ivy League universities that handicap their ability to get in.

My brother is an English teacher near Seoul. He constantly gets harassed by employers because of his weight. My cousin married a Japanese woman, and their kids are mixed race - when they go to Japan to visit grandparents, they are discriminated against, to the point that his younger son refuses to go.


----------



## Jacck

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> But that is my point. You either ban both or you ban neither.
> The problem is mainly from the perspective of the people. They have already seen isolated incidents of the politicians telling them to stay home, then going and violating those same principles - shutdown for thee, but not for me. Now they have the juxtaposition of a group of thousands of Orthodox Jews being broken up and several issued summons for gathering for the funeral of a rabbi on one side, and thousands of people protesting for several days on the other with police only there to prevent violence. So the next time some religious group decides they want to come together - maybe only a hundred - are the police really going to come and break it up?
> That strategy isn't sustainable, not unless they want new protests. And would they then break up a protest about religious freedom, but not a protest about civil rights? What makes one allowable and the other not? Both are constitutionally protected. So the Supreme Court, confusingly, ruled the way they did about religious gatherings. But would it be different if, rather than simply congregating for a religious service, the people were protesting the inability to attend a religious service? Or if it were a group of black churchgoers protesting not being able to go to church as opposed to Orthodox Jews attending a funeral?
> Someone claimed it is just "whataboutery." No. It is about equal protection under the law.


1) normal people understand that it is in the interest of the public good to limit public gatherings during a pandemic. All these preachers who wanted to hold religous gatherings (though they are not necessary) were hazarding with the lives of their believers.

2) any other president except Trump would try to unite instead of divide. After the police murder, he would appologize and promise that they would investigate it and punish the police man, and would generally try to calm down the situation. But Trump writes about nazis that they are "very nice people" and generally encourages hate and division within society. Instead of pouring water on the fire, he pours gasoline. He just reaps what he has sown.


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> But that is my point. You either ban both or you ban neither.


There is a _realpolitik_ element to this too. We all know that any limits on church attendance better be temporary -- or else. But we don't see millions of aggrieved Evangelicals in the streets yet. OTOH, the only way to stop these protests is to use exactly the same kind of lethal, overwhelming force that would be needed if the Evangelicals took to the streets over the church attendance. How bloodthirsty do we want our government to be? But using that kind of force is a major gamble. Governments immediately fall when it doesn't work. So to the extent that you are in power, bro, think hard before advocating it.

Edit: Let me flesh this out a bit.

We may be mere minutes away from Trump ordering the military to shoot American citizens and the military flatly refusing. (In fact, for all we know, something like this has happened behind the scenes.)

Let's say, though, that Trump gives such an order and stands by it and makes a stink out of it and the Joint Chiefs of Staff walk over to the White House and tell the Cabinet that it's 25th Amendment time.

Or, let's say that the order to shoot at the civilians is given but at least some soldiers and some officers refuse to follow it. Let's say they start arguing among themselves...

I know that there are some among us all hyped up for "the boogaloo" but they'd better think real hard and in very, very, very practical terms about what that would entail for themselves and their families -- and for that matter, if they care, for the world.

If we pull up short of that at any point, then the question is simply ideological: who will have won the PR battle? Whoever wins will have relatively more power at the end than they had at the beginning. Especially in the era of video, you usually don't win PR battles by shooting civilians or by giving orders to do so.

Just ask the Minneapolis PD.

So if you're a state governor looking at this, you're thinking something like this: if the coronavirus gets too bad, I'm probably losing power, and the Evangelicals aren't threatening me quite that seriously for the moment, and even if I lose power without alienating too many people I'll still have a nice cushy landing on the other side of the revolving door; if the coronavirus gets too bad, I'm probably losing power, but (unless we simply overthrow democracy) shooting protestors in the streets is going to ensure that I lose power and I might not even get that cushy landing on the other side of the revolving door.

_Realpolitik_.

Nobody in power is doing anything because it's right or it's Constitutional or anything. They're aiming to kill precisely as many people as they need to kill to maximize their own power, not one less or one more -- and of course they're persuaded that doing so is right and Constitutional and everything. (Fortunately for us, that number right now is very small.) It's a very delicate balancing act for them but we can be sure they're getting the best information they can get and weighing their options very carefully, and if they haven't already ordered the civilians shot, it's because they don't think it's their best option at this time.

Kieran Healy explains it better than I did, and in terms that are less likely to offend people who aren't as cynical as I am.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Someone claimed it is just "whataboutery." No. It is about equal protection under the law.


If you like. The NYT article I read seemed to report the judges making a reasonable case for their 5-4 verdict.


----------



## Room2201974

Covid cases spiking in Florida.

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local...ida-as-state-death-toll-reaches-2607/2243901/

To helll with grandma and grandpa, I need a haircut!

The state is opening up amid an uptick in cases. What could go wrong?


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Jacck said:


> 1) normal people understand that it is in the interest of the public good to limit public gatherings during a pandemic. All these preachers who wanted to hold religous gatherings (though they are not necessary) were hazarding with the lives of their believers.
> 
> 2) any other president except Trump would try to unite instead of divide. After the police murder, he would appologize and promise that they would investigate it and punish the police man, and would generally try to calm down the situation. But Trump writes about nazis that they are "very nice people" and generally encourages hate and division within society. Instead of pouring water on the fire, he pours gasoline. He just reaps what he has sown.


Trump spoke against the cop. Most of the country agrees this ex-cop needs to be in jail. And you are perpetuating a lie about what Trump said with the very nice people quote.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> There is a _realpolitik_ element to this too. We all know that any limits on church attendance better be temporary -- or else. But we don't see millions of aggrieved Evangelicals in the streets yet. OTOH, the only way to stop these protests is to use exactly the same kind of lethal, overwhelming force that would be needed if the Evangelicals took to the streets over the church attendance. How bloodthirsty do we want our government to be? But using that kind of force is a major gamble. Governments immediately fall when it doesn't work. So to the extent that you are in power, bro, think hard before advocating it.


Where are the large Evangelical riots and protests? How many businesses have been burned and looted by rioting Evangelicals? Do you actually have evidence to back up that claim about Evangelicals, or is it just your bias projecting?


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Where are the large Evangelical riots and protests? How many businesses have been burned and looted by rioting Evangelicals? Do you actually have evidence to back up that claim about Evangelicals, or is it just your bias projecting?


Calm down and read more carefully, my friend. "... would be needed if the Evangelicals took to the street" is clearly a second conditional construction.

And "we don't see millions of aggrieved Evangelicals in the streets yet" is, if possible, even more clear.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Room2201974 said:


> Covid cases spiking in Florida.
> 
> https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local...ida-as-state-death-toll-reaches-2607/2243901/
> 
> To helll with grandma and grandpa, I need a haircut!
> 
> The state is opening up amid an uptick in cases. What could go wrong?


How many grandparents will die in NYC because of the protests? Or other major cities? But right. Opening beaches is the real killer.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> Calm down and read more carefully, my friend. "... would be needed if they Evangelicals took to the street" is clearly a second conditional construction.


Your counterfactual doesn't work, because, in fact, Evangelicals have been on lockdown now, for months. And only a tiny minority have not gone along. Your scenario has no actual basis in reality.


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Your counterfactual doesn't work, because, in fact, Evangelicals have been on lockdown now, for months. And only a tiny minority have not gone along. Your scenario has no actual basis in reality.


It really doesn't seem to me that you're reacting to what I've actually written. You've apparently taken it as an insult or an accusation, whereas I only meant to explain why the government would be dealing with the two aspects of the First Amendment differently at this particular moment. The fact that Evangelicals are *not* currently in the street is the reason that their First Amendment grievance can be dealt with differently than the grievances of the people who *are* currently in the street.

I'm not even arguing that it's right to deal with them differently. Just explaining why they *can* (or maybe even must) be dealt with differently at this time.


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> How exactly have we been treating East Asians during this outbreak?


I guess you already know as much about that as you're willing to know.



Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> My brother is an English teacher near Seoul. He constantly gets harassed by employers because of his weight.


I'm fat here too so I know exactly to what extent he's "harassed" (although it certainly bothers some people more than it bothers me) but that's really not the point at this time, right?

It's not like I'm saying that South Korea is better in every way than the USA.

Edit: BTW, how does your brother like it here? I've lived here basically since 2002 so I can probably help with something if he has any trouble. And if you ever come to visit him, I hope you'll let me take you both out for some of the finest mandu Seoul has to offer. I also know my way around Korean alcoholic beverages (I even make my own makgeolli) if that's your sort of thing.


----------



## EdwardBast

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Trump spoke against the cop. Most of the country agrees this ex-cop needs to be in jail. *And you are perpetuating a lie about what Trump said with the very nice people quote.*


The statement was: "very fine people on both sides," not very nice people. Obviously, there is a huge difference in meaning and intent between "fine people" and nice people.


----------



## science

Room2201974 said:


> Covid cases spiking in Florida.
> 
> https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local...ida-as-state-death-toll-reaches-2607/2243901/
> 
> To helll with grandma and grandpa, I need a haircut!
> 
> The state is opening up amid an uptick in cases. What could go wrong?


For the moment it looks like deaths are still trending downward, but the range in projections is certainly staggering.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

EdwardBast said:


> The statement was: "very fine people on both sides," not very nice people. Obviously, there is a huge difference in meaning and intent between "fine people" and nice people.


Yes, most people who misrepresent this only quote that tiny snippet. Why don't you read the entire exchange? Here you go:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/

He clearly distinguishes that there were bad people on both sides, and there were good people on both sides - that it wasn't merely a bunch of racist thugs. Here is the specific full paragraph, but if you want to actually be fair, and not just cherry pick for cheap political points, you should read the whole interview.



> Excuse me, excuse me. They didn't put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.


----------



## Room2201974

I'm all for opening the churches 100%. In fact, the junior senator from Ky should introduce Covid legislation called The National Natural Exit Strategy Act. This will be followed by his Church Steeple Lightning Rod Recycle Act!


----------



## mmsbls

Some recent posts are purely political (i.e. not related to the virus but to political issues). Please remember to stay on topic with anything remotely political.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

science said:


> I guess you already know as much about that as you're willing to know.
> 
> I'm fat here too so I know exactly to what extent he's "harassed" (although it certainly bothers some people more than it bothers me) but that's really not the point at this time, right?
> 
> It's not like I'm saying that South Korea is better in every way than the USA.
> 
> Edit: BTW, how does your brother like it here? I've lived here basically since 2002 so I can probably help with something if he has any trouble. And if you ever come to visit him, I hope you'll let me take you both out for some of the finest mandu Seoul has to offer. I also know my way around Korean alcoholic beverages (I even make my own makgeolli) if that's your sort of thing.


He's been there a couple of years longer than you. He likes it, but it gets to him at times. The requirements of credentialing make it harder, though, to return to the U.S. without having to go through more school to get a similar job in his line of work. He finally seems to have found a job where they treat him with some form of respect, so he is happy for now. He initially worked for LG, and contacted me one time because some lower level exec was coming to Ohio, and he wanted me to take him to dinner. Most miserable thing I've ever done. He had an American with him, translating. He would barely speak to us, no matter how much we tried to initiate small talk, forced the young American to order everything for him, then, to the best we could figure out, spent most of the time berating his translator, for his poor choice of food, likely also for the choice of restaurant (we were a young couple, and did not have the financial means to go to some extravagant restaurant, and were only told he wanted an authentic American eating experience). Most miserable dinner ever.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Room2201974 said:


> I'm all for opening the churches 100%. In fact, the junior senator from Ky should introduce Covid legislation called The National Natural Exit Strategy Act. This will be followed by his Church Steeple Lightning Rod Recycle Act!


Oh, how clever.


----------



## science

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> He's been there a couple of years longer than you. He likes it, but it gets to him at times. The requirements of credentialing make it harder, though, to return to the U.S. without having to go through more school to get a similar job in his line of work. He finally seems to have found a job where they treat him with some form of respect, so he is happy for now. He initially worked for LG, and contacted me one time because some lower level exec was coming to Ohio, and he wanted me to take him to dinner. Most miserable thing I've ever done. He had an American with him, translating. He would barely speak to us, no matter how much we tried to initiate small talk, forced the young American to order everything for him, then, to the best we could figure out, spent most of the time berating his translator, for his poor choice of food, likely also for the choice of restaurant (we were a young couple, and did not have the financial means to go to some extravagant restaurant, and were only told he wanted an authentic American eating experience). Most miserable dinner ever.


Sorry to hear all of that except that he basically likes it. Every expat has "bad Korea days" or whatever depending on what country they're in.

If he's been here a long time, he probably knows by now that they probably respect him more than he feels like they respect him, but the forms of respect just don't communicate well cross-culturally.

Anyway, you've got to have fun if you're here. When I first came here, apparently all Korean women believed I looked like Robin Williams. They all said that. So one day I was having dinner with about six of them (all two or three decades older than me) and they were telling me how much I looked like Robin Williams. So I told them that I thought it was strange that they thought so because in America all the women tell me I look like George Clooney or Tom Cruise. That those two do not look alike was part of the fun, but the main thing was that at the time most Korean women said that Clooney and Cruise were the best-looking American actors. Anyway, all the women stopped eating and looked at their plates for about ten seconds until one of them worked up the courage to whisper, "I don't think so." It was so fun that I did it dozens more times.

Another funny (to me at least) story is that when the taxi drivers would ask me why I came to Korea, but I couldn't yet speak Korean well enough to tell the truth, I made up a story that I could tell them with the Korean ability I had at that time. I'd say that I went to Thailand, and found out that the food was good but the women weren't pretty, so I went to Vietnam and found out that the women were pretty but the food wasn't good, so I came to Korea and found out that the women were pretty and the food was good. Besides not being able to tell the truth, I just wanted to see how they'd react, and to my surprise the universal reaction was enthusiastically "That's right, that's right" (in Korean of course).

Korean is a devil of a language to learn though. If your brother's done it, you should respect him for that regardless of anything else he's done.

BTW, speaking of credentials, Sookmyung Women's University has a free (for expats) TESOL master's program that he could possibly take. I'm doing it now myself, and I'd have no interest in it if it weren't free. But free is a special price.

I wonder if the Korean guest was trying to show how important he was by berating his translator, or if he was having a bad day or what. Some situations are like that I guess, but usually Koreans love Americans. White people in general, but especially Americans. When they talk about us (in Korean) they use very respectful forms even when they think we can't understand. Which, curiously, is what matters in Korea more than anything else. People work damn hard to get promoted even when they won't get paid more just to get a title that will require people to address them more respectfully.

I remember a case where a Canadian friend of mine was offered the "head teacher" position at his hagwon, and when my friend asked how much his raise would be the answer was none at all. He was like, well there's no way I'm doing the extra work just for free, and they were like, but you'll be "head teacher." Neither side could understand the other. He thought they were trying to take advantage of him, and they thought he was being greedy and unreasonable. It went on for several days and almost ended his employment there before someone figured out what was going on and made peace. So of course they offered the position to a Korean who was happy to do the work to get the title. Very different culture, for sure.


----------



## Flamme

KenOC said:


> Old joke. Q: Why don't violists get the coronavirus? A: Even viruses have their standards.


Im surpsrised they havent attacked u here because of *Q *lol
As 4 pandemic 2day I wore mask almost all the way from work and it helped, because now the air is kinda filling with all the fumes and scents we happily lived w/o in times of ''blockade''...Also pollen from all sorts of trees, flowers and weeds is flying around and I sneeze all the time so mask gets in the way...My coleague who has even gr8er problem with flying thingies recommended me an application taht shows the concentration of them 4 every day and sometimes it is frightening when u see the ''red clouds'' covering the whole cities and regions...Heard some old ppl in bus commenting, ''the old ppl may as well die, being on their lifes ends (but not from corona, one added)! But the general spirit is one of defiance, how well it will pan out, we will see.


----------



## KenOC

*Data again casts doubt on Russia's coronavirus death figures*

Regardless of the fact that the headline writer doesn't know "data" is plural, this ABC article is quite interesting and may be a good explanation for Russia's rather odd Covid-19 numbers.

"New mortality data from Saint Petersburg, Russia, has renewed questions about whether Russia's real death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is significantly higher than authorities' official count."


----------



## Guest

Hydroxychloroquine does not cure Covid-19Major study of thousands of patients led by University of Oxford shows drug is ineffective

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-does-not-cure-covid-19-say-drug-trial-chiefs


----------



## Flamme

What about that french doc who started the whole thing??? HQ (Q again lol) supporters think its a magic cure 4 almost everything but its been kept secret by ''BIG PHARMA'' who wants 2 sell their own expensive vaccines...


----------



## Eclectic Al

So Hydroxychloroquine is out, but hope turns to Pepcid (famotidine).
This link interested me (- no clue about reliability) because it speculated that the famotidine effect related to the virus itself, as opposed to an anti-inflammatory effect on the infected patient.
https://medtruth.com/articles/research-and-findings/pepcid-shows-promise-against-covid-19/


----------



## Flamme

Room2201974 said:


> Covid cases spiking in Florida.
> 
> https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local...ida-as-state-death-toll-reaches-2607/2243901/
> 
> To helll with grandma and grandpa, I need a haircut!
> 
> The state is opening up amid an uptick in cases. What could go wrong?


2bh I dont really trust mass media when it comes 2 ''number of cases''...I dont know y but my instinct tells me 2 fact check everything.


----------



## DaveM

Flamme said:


> What about that french doc who started the whole thing??? HQ (Q again lol) supporters think its a magic cure 4 almost everything but its been kept secret by ''BIG PHARMA'' who wants 2 sell their own expensive vaccines...


You do know that that does not make any sense. Do you have some kind of proof or is that just off the top of your head?



Flamme said:


> ...I dont know y but my instinct tells me 2 fact check everything.


Apparently not.


----------



## Flamme

Cmon bro u give my words meaning they dont actually have...I said ''supporters of this cure think that...'' Not me. I find it exaggareted at least. I never heard of this miraculous medicine b4 the covid started but it seems it is used in treating some illnesses so it is a ''cure'' of some kind...


----------



## DaveM

Flamme said:


> Cmon bro u give my words meaning they dont actually have...I said ''supporters of this cure think that...'' Not me. I find it exaggareted at least.


Well then say so in the first place because otherwise it infers that you agree with what 'the supporters' say.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> So Hydroxychloroquine is out, but hope turns to Pepcid (famotidine).
> This link interested me (- no clue about reliability) because it speculated that the famotidine effect related to the virus itself, as opposed to an anti-inflammatory effect on the infected patient.
> https://medtruth.com/articles/research-and-findings/pepcid-shows-promise-against-covid-19/


That article is remarkably out of date and the author has just cut and pasted from articles from several weeks ago. I've been posting on the subject here every few days. Most recent: #1646, 1304, 522. Note particularly post #1304.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> That article is remarkably out of date and the author has just just cut and pasted from articles from several weeks ago. I've been posting on the subject here every few days. Most recent: #1646, 1304, 522. Note particularly post #1304.


That may be true.

However, Pepcid is going up the media agenda here as other points go up and down. I just observe the traffic.


----------



## KenOC

Updated data from my county: The fatality rate from diagnosed Covid-19 by age group. Note that there have still been no deaths under 25 years of age, despite having quite a few cases.


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Updated data from my county: The fatality rate from diagnosed Covid-19 by age group. Note that there have still been no deaths under 25 years of age, despite having quite a few cases.


Is this good data?

Where did you get it?

How does this virus compare to others every year?


----------



## science

The WHO has officially changed its guidance on masks so that excuse is gone.


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> Is this good data?
> 
> Where did you get it?
> 
> How does this virus compare to others every year?


These data are from my County Health Dep't, which updates case and death counts daily. I also have county population breakdown by the same age groups which yields other interesting information when combined with the disease data.

I assume many or most health departments post the same data.


----------



## mrdoc

KenOC said:


> Updated data from my county: The fatality rate from diagnosed Covid-19 by age group. Note that there have still been no deaths under 25 years of age, despite having quite a few cases.


*I bet that graph would apply to many ailments: broken Pelvis, ordinary Flu, falling off a 2 metre structure etc. just saying that's all. *


----------



## science

I guess the point is that it's not such a big deal, at least in the USA. Only 111k officially recognized deaths, and maybe 40k or so more. Only about 50 times as many people died as on 911, or about two and a half Vietnam Wars. And now that it's over, we can all stop wearing masks and start shaking hands again.


----------



## science

It seems to be getting a bit worse in Texas. In the past four days, they've had 1944, 1464, 1769, and 2080 new officially known cases. Three of those are among the top five worst days -- on May 21 they had 1856 and on May 12 they had 2012. The 3-day and 7-day moving averages are at the highest they've been. 

Texas's death numbers still don't look so bad though.


----------



## science

Things continue to get worse in South Korea as well, with 51 new cases so far today. The death numbers still don't look too bad though, with only 19 deaths in the past month.


----------



## KenOC

mrdoc said:


> *I bet that graph would apply to many ailments: broken Pelvis, ordinary Flu, falling off a 2 metre structure etc. just saying that's all. *


That occurred to me long since. Although I haven't seen a similar analysis for the annual flu, from what I've read the distributions of death are not far different. Thus my perception that Covid-19, absent the media hysteria, would have been seen as a "particularly nasty flu season" in years past. The US deaths are still within an easy order of magnitude of normal flu deaths...


----------



## Guest

Flamme said:


> 2bh I dont really trust mass media when it comes 2 ''number of cases''...I dont know y but my instinct tells me 2 fact check everything.


And how do you do that? For example, the BBC (part of the mass media?) reports figures from the NHS, Public Health England and the Office for National Statistics. Where do you get your 'facts' from if you don't like their sources?


----------



## KenOC

True death rate? See *this analysis* from Worldometer that puts New York City deaths at about twice the "official" number.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> True death rate? See *this analysis* from Worldometer that puts New York City deaths at about twice the "official" number.


As far as the UK is concerned, Worldometer publishes the same data they get from the UK official sources.


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> As far as the UK is concerned, Worldometer publishes the same data they get from the UK official sources.


Ditto the US. This is a separate analysis from those official numbers. Worth a look.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Ditto the US. This is a separate analysis from those official numbers. Worth a look.


Yes, I looked. It's the same kind of analysis that the ONS does that runs alongside the 'official' stats here. In one sense, all it tells us is that the numbers are different depending on who's counting, what you're counting and how. It doesn't lend any weight to any of the more veiled theories about what the 'real' impact of the virus is (whether better or worse). It does show that the UK government has had to shift the way it has been reporting at its daily briefings (no longer any world comparisons, funnily enough), and that governments will put a spin on things, even if they're not actually hiding something.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mrdoc said:


> *I bet that graph would apply to many ailments: broken Pelvis, ordinary Flu, falling off a 2 metre structure etc. just saying that's all. *


The other interesting thing about this would be to have two columns for each age range: one for those with risk-disposing co-morbidities, and the other for those without.
The proportion of people with risk-disposing co-morbidities will also be rising sharply in very much the same way. The interesting question therefore is how much of the age-related increase is driven by that.
As someone in the 55-64 box, but without any known health problem I cannot really judge my own risk without an answer to that question. Has anyone seen any attempts to estimate this?


----------



## Eclectic Al

By the way, a little vignette from home about Mrs Al's attitude to coronarisk:

Me: "Suppose there was strong evidence that having a corona-cold would protect you against Covid-19, just like a vaccine: would you want to be given the cold?"
Mrs Al: "Oh no. I don't like colds. It's the runny nose. At least with Covid-19 you don't seem to get a runny nose."

Well, I would be willing to volunteer for a corona-cold. In fact I think I'd be willing to do so on the slim evidence to date that it might help. But then I suffer from hay fever, so my nose is runny quite a lot of the time.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Here is London today:








And here is Manchester:








The BBC estimates 15,000 protesters in Manchester and doubtless there are more in London.

Hysterically, the BBC notes that "majority are wearing face coverings and many are wearing gloves".

A couple more images, showing that face coverings are frequent but nowhere close to universal.














In other contexts the BBC would doubtless be pointing to the lack of face coverings rather than their presence.

At the same time as there is concern that black people may be more susceptible to Covid-19 than some other ethnic groups.

You couldn't make it up.


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> These data are from my County Health Dep't, which updates case and death counts daily. I also have county population breakdown by the same age groups which yields other interesting information when combined with the disease data.
> 
> I assume many or most health departments post the same data.


I was broadsided by your post because I was tired and I guessed that you were talking to TC members from other countries -- and I read it as "_Updated data from my country". I need to get more sleep.._


----------



## Luchesi

Eclectic Al said:


> Here is London today:
> View attachment 137406
> 
> 
> And here is Manchester:
> View attachment 137407
> 
> 
> The BBC estimates 15,000 protesters in Manchester and doubtless there are more in London.
> 
> Hysterically, the BBC notes that "majority are wearing face coverings and many are wearing gloves".
> 
> A couple more images, showing that face coverings are frequent but nowhere close to universal.
> View attachment 137408
> 
> View attachment 137409
> 
> In other contexts the BBC would doubtless be pointing to the lack of face coverings rather than their presence.
> 
> At the same time as there is concern that black people may be more susceptible to Covid-19 than some other ethnic groups.
> 
> You couldn't make it up.


The virus is one three hundredth the size of bacteria. Exertion and spending hours sucking through cloth (which collects and concentrates everything). Are they being warned?


----------



## Eclectic Al

There is plenty of warning stuff out there.

Personally I'm a bit of a sceptic about how easily the virus spreads and how dangerous it is if you are in good health and young, but I wouldn't be standing in a crowd of people and shuffling along with them for ages.


----------



## eljr

Eclectic Al said:


> Personally I'm a bit of a sceptic about how easily the virus spreads.


I am not sure how you can question this. All one needs to do is look at what happened in NYC.


----------



## Art Rock

Or several examples where many infections could be ascribed to a single gathering, like a church service, a wedding, or a choir practice. Or superspreaders* whose profession makes them contact many people.

*ETA: in a nearby village many deaths could be traced back to their general practitioner having returned from a skiing holiday in Italy and carrying the virus unknowingly.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Luchesi said:


> The virus is one three hundredth the size of bacteria. Exertion and spending hours sucking through cloth (which collects and concentrates everything). Are they being warned?


Here's Leicester:








And here's Watford (with Anthony Joshua):








To be honest I wonder if associated with the worldwide protests about George Floyd there is also a degree of nihilism in these gatherings. After months of lockdown, maybe there's an element of "we've had enough; bring it on; we don't care" about Covid-19.

It is certainly showing that the lockdown is in reality over (and I've read the odd columnist noting this,). It was always the case that if enough people simply ignored it then the authorities would be powerless to enforce it, and we have now seen that demonstrated in a fairly undeniable fashion.


----------



## Eclectic Al

eljr said:


> I am not sure how you can question this. All one needs to do is look at what happened in NYC.


I'm obviously not questioning that it spreads. I'm just noting that it is a numbers game. In different situations there are different probabilities of spread (and no one understands these probabilities with any degree of certainty).

The point I was making in my post was that even as relative sceptic about how easily the virus might spread in an outdoor setting (say), I would not be going anywhere near a setting like the ones in the pictures.

Hence, I am agreeing with you about the dangers of spreading the virus in mass gatherings like these.

As I said before: you couldn't make it up.


----------



## Open Book

KenOC said:


> That occurred to me long since. Although I haven't seen a similar analysis for the annual flu, from what I've read the distributions of death are not far different. Thus my perception that Covid-19, absent the media hysteria, would have been seen as a "particularly nasty flu season" in years past. The US deaths are still within an easy order of magnitude of normal flu deaths...


In what flu season was the death rate from flu ever close to 1 in 100 stricken people?


----------



## eljr

KenOC said:


> That occurred to me long since. Although I haven't seen a similar analysis for the annual flu, from what I've read the distributions of death are not far different. Thus my perception that Covid-19, absent the media hysteria, would have been seen as a "particularly nasty flu season" in years past. The US deaths are still within an easy order of magnitude of normal flu deaths...


Really?

What Flu season did we lose 110,000 people in it's first 3 months WHILE being in a total country shutdown?

Honest, your posts are nothing more than trolling.

My bad, I need to not read this thread anymore because every ******' page you say the same thing and it;s always just as ridiculous.

and WHAT media hysteria, I have seen NONE. How did I miss teh hysteria?


----------



## eljr

Open Book said:


> In what flu season was the death rate from flu ever close to 1 in 100 stricken people?


It's nonsense. It's every page.


----------



## Luchesi

Eclectic Al said:


> Here's Leicester:
> View attachment 137411
> 
> 
> And here's Watford (with Anthony Joshua):
> View attachment 137412
> 
> 
> To be honest I wonder if associated with the worldwide protests about George Floyd there is also a degree of nihilism in these gatherings. After months of lockdown, maybe there's an element of "we've had enough; bring it on; we don't care" about Covid-19.
> 
> It is certainly showing that the lockdown is in reality over (and I've read the odd columnist noting this,). It was always the case that if enough people simply ignored it then the authorities would be powerless to enforce it, and we have now seen that demonstrated in a fairly undeniable fashion.


Yes. Young-minded people naturally want to be around like-minded people, after all this time. Whether it's police atrocities or govmint rules about isolation or anti-Trump or FEMA protests or WallStreet. That Brando movie, "what are you rebelling against? What have you got??"

For a hundred thousand years young people have separated themselves from the tribe and started their own tribe, so to speak. This 'instinct' has resulted in a slightly higher survival rate, apparently.


----------



## science

eljr said:


> Really?
> 
> What Flu season did we lose 110,000 people in it's first 3 months WHILE being in a total country shutdown?
> 
> Honest, your posts are nothing more than trolling.
> 
> My bad, I need to not read this thread anymore because every ******' page you say the same thing and it;s always just as ridiculous.
> 
> and WHAT media hysteria, I have seen NONE. How did I miss teh hysteria?


I think his basic idea (not at all unique to him) is that we'll be ok (at least in the USA) without the people that coronavirus kills, especially since everyone who dies of this was going to die someday anyway, and the years between dying now and dying then aren't worth much. Therefore we should let it run its course without trying to slow it down in any way that hurts the economy.

Considering that we're looking at perhaps 200k deaths with the measures he opposes, and probably a few times more than that without them, it's a pretty grim thesis. But (and this is not meant to refer to KenOC but to people in general) for a person who feels the economic pinch, or even merely the inconveniences of not being able to go to bars and restaurants and parties, _while also feeling fairly safe from the virus_, what are 400k deaths? 800k? A million? Anyone over forty or so from a developed country has at some point sat back and watched a million people die without doing much more than wishing things weren't so bad. (Like, what have any of us done for AIDS in Africa?) Almost every human being has to be able to imagine something happening to their own family to actually care about it enough to inconvenience themselves.


----------



## Open Book

eljr said:


> Really?
> 
> What Flu season did we lose 110,000 people in it's first 3 months WHILE being in a total country shutdown?
> 
> Honest, your posts are nothing more than trolling.
> 
> My bad, I need to not read this thread anymore because every ******' page you say the same thing and it;s always just as ridiculous.
> 
> and WHAT media hysteria, I have seen NONE. How did I miss teh hysteria?


It's important that we get back to dining out in restaurants.

I agree about labeling media reports hysteria. I don't think we've seen hysteria from any quarter. Government response has been either just right or lax.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Open Book said:


> In what flu season was the death rate from flu ever close to 1 in 100 stricken people?


I don't have a particular view on this, but here's an interesting link:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/

This analyses studies of case fatality rate for H1N1 influenza. It finds that estimates ranged from 1 in 100,000 to in excess of 10,000 in 100,000. That is, from too small to be readily distinguishable from zero to more than 10%. The point the authors are making is that early in an epidemic it is very difficult indeed to estimate case fatality rate.

I don't post this to express any view about Covid-19 versus flu, but just to note that studies published in the early phases of an epidemic struggle to produce reliable estimates. I just don't think we have much of a clue yet about the case fatality rate of Covid-19, and even less of how this varies according to co-morbidities and other factors.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> Here is London today:


Might as well go the full hog and open the pubs. As I said before, we had this protests in Dublin, which was a non sequitur on a grand scale. Luckily, nobody did their "Christmas shopping" with a brick instead of a credit card, but really, when groups are meeting like this, it cancels the lockdown and it's now every man for himself...


----------



## elgar's ghost

I'm trying to imagine pubs with some sort of social distancing - it will be like being in an Edward Hopper painting.

I have nothing against any of the George Lloyd-based demos in the UK but if there is a sudden rise in Covid-19 cases where they have been taking place, what then?


----------



## mountmccabe

Eclectic Al said:


> Here's Leicester:
> View attachment 137411
> 
> 
> And here's Watford (with Anthony Joshua):
> View attachment 137412
> 
> 
> To be honest I wonder if associated with the worldwide protests about George Floyd there is also a degree of nihilism in these gatherings. After months of lockdown, maybe there's an element of "we've had enough; bring it on; we don't care" about Covid-19.
> 
> It is certainly showing that the lockdown is in reality over (and I've read the odd columnist noting this,). It was always the case that if enough people simply ignored it then the authorities would be powerless to enforce it, and we have now seen that demonstrated in a fairly undeniable fashion.


Low wages tied to a job one can't miss certainly has a way of keeping people in line. The old "40 acres and a mule" was land enough for subsistence without being enough to get ahead. The high unemployment rates the USA has chosen to have is probably having an effect. But I don't see it as nihilism. That would be staying disconnected from people, not trying to perpetuate change. It's not a decision that COVID-19 isn't dangerous, but that it is merely one danger in life.

It's one thing to risk COVID-19 to get back to a low wage job to provide services to people who are better off; it's quite different to risk COVID-19 to try and effect change to a system designed to be against you.

The discussion about "why are they allowing protests when churches are banned" is missing several points.

For one; I haven't seen many church leaders arrested for holding in-person services. There was one guy in Florida who turned himself in, which reads to me as more of a publicity stunt so I won't name him. There are several church leaders that have been hospitalized and/or died from COVID-19 after holding services in protest, but that is about biology, not the government. The biggest example I can think of arrests from banned religious gatherings are from some large Jewish funerals in Brooklyn in late April; the only thing I can say about that is that it's not surprising that the biggest crackdowns have been against non-Christian religions.

But also I've seen some examples of churches holding outdoor services, such as this one in Laurel, Montana, which started in late April. (They're now back to holding socially distanced services indoors, in addition to online services).

And that's my second point; a large part of those funeral gatherings were outside, like the current protests. We know far more about how how SARS-CoV-2 specifically is transmitted. Early lockdowns were a blunt instrument, based mostly on other viruses. But now have a better idea of risk and mitigation factors for this virus. Outdoor activities have less risk than ones in enclosed spaces. Distant or brief contact has less risk than prolonged close contact. Small group sizes are safer than large group sizes (in part because the larger the group, the more likely someone is infected). Masks help reduce risk, and vocalizing increases it (especially yelling and singing).

A protest may have a large group size and there may be yelling or chanting, but they're outside and as long as the crowd is mobile there's little prolonged contact. And yes, many are wearing masks, trying to stay distant. But there are also exacerbating factors from the police, such as tear gas, obstructing movement, and detention (even beyond specific violence).

And that is my third point. Governments are not simply allowing these protests to happen; the problem is they're having a hard time stopping them effectively, and without providing new examples of/amplifying their anti-state violence message. Curfews have been implemented. Was there ever any danger of churches being tear gassed? Or the Tesla plant, when it opened early?

I don't understand spinning a story of "if protests are happening, why do I have to do things to stay safe?" It's not far from saying "why do those doctors and nurses get to go work when I can't."


----------



## Eclectic Al

I read post #1733, but I must confess I didn't understand it. It certainly didn't seem to have much to do with Watford.


----------



## DaveM

If I was a small business owner who was in the process of likely losing the business because of the overall ‘shutdown’, I would have a major problem watching these massive -essentially government sanctioned- demonstrations of often unmasked people at close quarters. IMO there isn’t an easy answer to what, as a small business owner, I would see as an unfairness. On the one hand, the lockdown was necessary. On the other hand, the government can hardly prevent these demonstrations. It is what it is.


----------



## KenOC

eljr said:


> Really?
> 
> What Flu season did we lose 110,000 people in it's first 3 months WHILE being in a total country shutdown?
> 
> Honest, your posts are nothing more than trolling.
> 
> My bad, I need to not read this thread anymore because every ******' page you say the same thing and it;s always just as ridiculous.
> 
> and WHAT media hysteria, I have seen NONE. How did I miss teh hysteria?


Ah, my posts offend you once again! I have already told you how to avoid this. The solution is open to you at any time.


----------



## Bulldog

I don't know about media hysteria, but I have noticed that Fox News tries to make the virus look as benign as possible while MSNBC talks up a "gloom and doom" scenario. As usual, the truth is somewhere in-between.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> If I was a small business owner who was in the process of likely losing the business because of the overall 'shutdown', I would have a major problem watching these massive -essentially government sanctioned- demonstrations of often unmasked people at close quarters. IMO there isn't an easy answer to what, as a small business owner, I would see as an unfairness. On the one hand, the lockdown was necessary. On the other hand, the government can hardly prevent these demonstrations. It is what it is.


Indeed. The estimable Science posted on this: it is just realpolitik. You can enforce a lockdown on people who will not resist violently. When a lot of people want to do something, and will fight back if you try and stop them then ...... reality bites.


----------



## Room2201974

Interesting philosophy.....opening up in the face of an uptick in cases is a very pro-choice position. It's my choice that your grams kick off to Covid because I need a burger and fries at Dennys. Oh, and a diet coke too, I'm watching my weight for health purposes.


----------



## Iota

elgars ghost said:


> I'm trying to imagine pubs with some sort of social distancing - it will be like being in an Edward Hopper painting.


:lol: An excellent analogy!


----------



## KenOC

... here's a BBC story today: *How Bill Gates became the voodoo doll of Covid conspiracies
*


----------



## pianozach

Currently on break conducting virtual auditions via Zoom for a Streaming Youth production of The Pirates of Penzance.

New for all of us.


----------



## mmsbls

Please remain on topic - the coronavirus.


----------



## Bigbang

Well, I guess my days are numbered on this site, as I tried to put in some positive way to view Bill Gates and his wealth but it disappeared into the ether. Hmm. Well not exactly coronovirus topic but so is much else.


----------



## KenOC

Another stat from my county, numbers as of yesterday:

If you're 65 or over, you're 1.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19 than the average for the under-65 group.

If diagnosed, you're 13.4 times as likely to die of it than the average for the younger group.

Overall, your chances of being diagnosed and then dying are 20.6 times those of the youngsters.

Numbers are sometimes cruel to the old.


----------



## Guest

I think the lockdown is definitely over, judging by the thousands demonstrating on the streets. Certainly in the USA, Australia and the UK. Nobody should be trying to kid somebody else. Go about your business now; the genii is out of the bottle.


----------



## KenOC

*Alex Berenson's coronavirus booklet hits top spot on Amazon after online retailer initially rejected it*

Evidently objections from Elon Musk and others convinced Amazon to publish this booklet, which seems to hold that "there were panicky predictions of doom in the beginning, but the data indicate that total mortality due to c19 will be a blip to the overall population" (from one review.)

The Amazon listing, with reviews, is *here*.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> I think the lockdown is definitely over, judging by the thousands demonstrating on the streets


Does that mean it's no longer against the law to drink and drive, just because there are people who do it?

I guess the lockdown will be over when the various governments remove all the measures that put it in place. That hasn't happened yet in the UK.


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> Does that mean it's no longer against the law to drink and drive, just because there are people who do it?
> 
> I guess the lockdown will be over when the various governments remove all the measures that put it in place. That hasn't happened yet in the UK.


I'd say that the lockdown is over when the authorities no longer have the courage or will to enforce it.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Perhaps we could get back to the Covid-19 topic?


----------



## Guest

Let's try and drag away from politics, I'm only interested in the virus and the idea that some people might take their cue for how to behave wrt Covid-19 from simply watching what other people are doing ("Look! Look! They're not social distancing, so I don't need to now either!").

I think that is a mistake.


----------



## Jacck

MacLeod said:


> Let's try and drag away from politics, I'm only interested in the virus and the idea that some people might take their cue for how to behave wrt Covid-19 from simply watching what other people are doing ("Look! Look! They're not social distancing, so I don't need to now either!").
> I think that is a mistake.


The virus topic has exhausted itself. And obviously the virus has social and political implications. The reponse of various countries to the virus is political, not medical.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> The virus topic has exhausted itself. And obviously the virus has social and political implications. The reponse of various countries to the virus is political, not medical.


I do not think it has. As each country's response changes according to the changes in the pandemic, there may be more to discuss.

And while there is of course a political dimension to each jurisdiction's policy choices, that doesn't mean we have to slip into making overtly political statements about democracy, left and right, authoritarianism etc.

It's really not that hard.


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> I do not think it has. As each country's response changes according to the changes in the pandemic, there may be more to discuss.
> 
> And while there is of course a political dimension to each jurisdiction's policy choices, that doesn't mean we have to slip into making overtly political statements about democracy, left and right, authoritarianism etc.
> 
> It's really not that hard.


Indeed. I entirely agree. Because different countries have different policies then there may be much to learn (although there are obviously also other factors at play - such as which strain is most prevalent in a country, what is its age/health profile, differences in reporting standards, etc - which mean that a country with apparently poorer outcomes may actually have "better" policies than one with apparently better outcomes). Equally, it may be that the policies which are sensible for one country are inappropriate for another, etc.

I just find it disappointing that a lot of this potential learning is not possible because all emerging observations get sucked into their usefulness for criticising the political tribe or policy style someone doesn't like, or (less often) congratulating the tribe or policy one does.

To give an interesting example, the Swedish epidemiologist who is generally cited as most responsible for their early policy choices recently gave an interesting, measured set of comments about what Sweden may have got wrong and where he was comfortable with their choices. This was immediately reported in banner headlines as an acknowledgement that Sweden got it wrong. Well of course Sweden got it wrong: all countries doubtless got it wrong against some hindsight-based standard of perfection. Equally, his comments may well contain some self-protective biases, given his role in Sweden's choices - that's to be expected.

If people are not able to acknowledge what now seem to be mistakes (although who knows whether they will ultimately be seen that way) without paying a high price in terms of negative knee-jerk responses then we will learn less and more people will die.


----------



## science

On paper Arizona doesn't have a particularly bad coronavirus situation (about 3500 cases per million people, officially fewer than about 29 other states) but for some reason they've already run out of ECMO -- extracorporeal membrane oxygenation -- machines already, which are needed for people whose lungs no longer function. They still do have unused beds and ventilators.


----------



## science

It's another bad day in South Korea with 57 new cases so far. The upward trend in active cases is now very clear: the second wave has definitely begun.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> total mortality due to c19 will be a blip to the overall population"


About one out of every 2500 Americans has died so far.


----------



## science

Meanwhile it's starting to get pretty bad in Brazil too. Bolsonaro admonished his people to die like men ("Confront it like a man, not a boy") and they're beginning to do so. Their official per capita case count is over 3k / million -- among countries with a comparable population size, only the USA and Russia are even nearly as high -- and still rising fast. (Just in case we need some sobering reflections, it's likely that all three of those countries are undercounting both cases and deaths. And Brazil's temper tantrum is even more endearing than most: they're not going to publish cumulative numbers any more! So there!)

Brazil is not a particularly old country demographically, which might be why their death count is still relatively low compared to their case count.

Edit: Oh, well, never mind...: In Brazil, COVID-19 hitting young people harder.



> More young people are dying of COVID-19 in Brazil than other countries, a trend driven partly by demographics ― the overall population is younger ― but also by poverty and the need to work. ...
> 
> A closer look at the data raises questions about the widely held idea that COVID-19 is mainly dangerous for the elderly.
> 
> Of Brazil's victims, 69 percent were aged 60 or older, compared with 95 percent in Spain and Italy, according to official statistics.
> 
> The disparity is partly driven by the age of the overall populace: Just 13.6 percent of Brazil's population is 60 or older, compared to 25 percent in Spain and 28 percent in Italy.
> 
> But demographics do not tell the whole story.
> 
> "Since Brazil has a younger population, it's normal for the number of cases to be higher among under-60s. But it's also because young adults are observing stay-at-home measures less," said Mauro Sanchez, an epidemiologist at the University of Brasilia.
> 
> "Young (Brazilians) aren't responding to the virus differently. It's because they're more exposed," he told AFP.
> 
> "What's perverse is that a lot of the people who are exposing themselves to the virus are doing it because they don't have a choice." ...
> 
> Brazil's official statistics do not break down coronavirus infections by age, and experts say under-testing means the real number of cases is probably far higher than the health ministry's figures.
> 
> A group of researchers called COVID-19 Brasil estimates the country has more than 3.6 million infected people ― more than 10 times higher than the official figure.
> 
> It estimates the age groups with the most infections are 20 to 29 and 30 to 39 years old, with more than 580,000 infections each ― twice as many as those aged 60 to 69. ...
> 
> In a country where 20 percent of the population lives on less than $5.50 a day, many Brazilians are forced to choose between staying home and putting food on the table.
> 
> The poorest tend to work in the informal sector ― things like cleaning, cooking, childcare and other jobs that can only be done by leaving the house.
> 
> The government has allocated emergency payments of 600 reals (about $110) a month to help such workers get by.
> 
> But many have had trouble registering. In a case of social distancing policy gone awry, crowds have thronged branches of state bank Caixa as people wait hours to sign up for the benefit.
> 
> The poor also tend to have a higher risk of underlying conditions that can make COVID-19 more severe.
> 
> "The low-income population often has major risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. Many don't have access to a nutritious diet," said infectious disease specialist Julio Croda.
> 
> ...


More at the link, but probably best not to quote anything too implicitly relevant to US politics.

I can't resist observing, however, that this makes the "confront it like a man, not a boy" admonition somewhat ironic...


----------



## Art Rock

science said:


> Brazil is not a particularly old country demographically, which might be why their death count is still relatively low compared to their case count.


Possible. Or the relevant (local) authorities have been persuaded not to ascribe too many deaths to the virus.


----------



## science

Art Rock said:


> Possible. Or the relevant (local) authorities have been persuaded not to ascribe too many deaths to the virus.


There is definitely a lot of room for fudging numbers and some motivation to do it.


----------



## Jacck

Coronavirus in Sweden: Anguished foreigners call it quits
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-in-sweden-anguished-foreigners-call-it-quits/a-53658265


----------



## science

Jacck said:


> Coronavirus in Sweden: Anguished foreigners call it quits
> https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-in-sweden-anguished-foreigners-call-it-quits/a-53658265


"Actions have consequences" even for states.


----------



## eljr

science said:


> "Actions have consequences" even for states.


and let's realize, inaction is an action.


----------



## science

eljr said:


> and let's realize, inaction is an action.


Sweden deaths per 1000k: 462 
Denmark deaths per 1000k: 102 
Norway: deaths per 1000k: 44


----------



## mmsbls

We've had many times where members post purely political comments even though we've repeatedly asked people not to do so. We're considering shutting this thread down even though many clearly view the thread as interesting and important. I would once again ask that people consider their fellow members' desire to keep this thread free of pure politics before they post.


----------



## science

mmsbls said:


> We've had many times where members post purely political comments even though we've repeatedly asked people not to do so. We're considering shutting this thread down even though many clearly view the thread as interesting and important. I would once again ask that people consider their fellow members' desire to keep this thread free of pure politics before they post.


I am among those most at fault because I find it very hard not to take the bait.

There's a lot of frustration ... to put it euphemistically....

I'll feel better when I feel that my own family is safe. Probably we all will. I hope that's what happens.


----------



## Jacck

OK, I will stop posting any political content in this thread, but from now on, I will flag every post by KenOC or Christabel and others, that I feel is more political than having anything to do with the virus


----------



## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> OK, I will stop posting any political content in this thread, but from now on, I will flag every post by KenOC or Christabel and others, that I feel is more political than having anything to do with the virus


I think KenOC genuinely wants to inform and apprise people with his posts.


----------



## mmsbls

There is a smooth continuum between posts that touch on political issues relevant to Covid-19 (e.g. government policies), posts that critique government action related to Covid-19, and posts that diverge into pure politics. It's difficult to draw a clear line, and members have been unable to keep themselves from posting purely political comments. I have assumed that no one is purposely posting purely political comments, but rather people slowly diverge as in normal conversations.

I guess I would wish that each member read their post before clicking on Submit to ensure that the content is not purely political. If they have any uncertainty whatsoever about the appropriateness of a post, I think they should not post it _even if others are posting similar content_. I realize that's not how people interact on forums, but maybe if people realized how unpleasant pure politics is to many members here, they could manage to refrain from much of the pure politics.

Incidentally, the Groups area does allow pure politics. If you do really wish to discuss Covid-19 with more politics, there is a thread already in progress there. Also if you wish to post pure politics with no relation to Covid, you are welcome to do so there.


----------



## Mandryka

science said:


> "Actions have consequences" even for states.





eljr said:


> and let's realize, inaction is an action.





science said:


> Sweden deaths per 1000k: 462
> Denmark deaths per 1000k: 102
> Norway: deaths per 1000k: 44


Can we assume that the differences in death rates come from government interventions rather than from the nature of the populations' vulnerability through demographics, some resistance to the effects of infection in the populations, or even geographical factors?


----------



## Jacck

Mandryka said:


> Can we assume that the difference in death rates come from government interventions rather than from the nature of the populations' vulnerability through demographics, some resistance to the effects of infection in the populations, or even geographical factors?


we cannot be sure, but it is very likely.


----------



## Luchesi

mmsbls said:


> There is a smooth continuum between posts that touch on political issues relevant to Covid-19 (e.g. government policies), posts that critique government action related to Covid-19, and posts that diverge into pure politics. It's difficult to draw a clear line, and members have been unable to keep themselves from posting purely political comments. I have assumed that no one is purposely posting purely political comments, but rather people slowly diverge as in normal conversations.
> 
> I guess I would wish that each member read their post before clicking on Submit to ensure that the content is not purely political. If they have any uncertainty whatsoever about the appropriateness of a post, I think they should not post it _even if others are posting similar content_. I realize that's not how people interact on forums, but maybe if people realized how unpleasant pure politics is to many members here, they could manage to refrain from much of the pure politics.
> 
> Incidentally, the Groups area does allow pure politics. If you do really wish to discuss Covid-19 with more politics, there is a thread already in progress there. Also if you wish to post pure politics with no relation to Covid, you are welcome to do so there.


Posting politically is an emotional activity. Can this emotion be fixed?


----------



## Art Rock

Mandryka said:


> Can we assume that the differences in death rates come from government interventions rather than from the nature of the populations' vulnerability through demographics, some resistance to the effects of infection in the populations, or even geographical factors?


The countries have similar life standards, most likely similar demographics, similar distribution of people over a few bigger cities and lots of smaller villages, they are all interconnected, and even geographically they are similar (especially Sweden and Norway). So yes, it's a safe bet that differences in performance are because of the differences in the anti-virus policies.


----------



## science

Mandryka said:


> Can we assume that the difference in death rates come from government interventions rather than from the nature of the populations' vulnerability through demographics, some resistance to the effects of infection in the populations, or even geographical factors?


Definitely not entirely. There must be a lot of factors, including differences in how the stats are compiled and reported.

But I didn't create that contrast. Sweden's response to the virus was for a long time held up by many Americans as the ideal response, and Denmark's and Norway's excoriated as (among) the worst, and they celebrated the comparison between these countries when the numbers were close.

It's worth thinking, though, that these are three countries with excellent social safety nets, excellent healthcare systems, and fairly similar cultures. We're not exactly comparing Sweden to West Virginia. It's a natural comparison.

I assume we'll soon hear all kinds of other explanations for Sweden's tragic results, and we might as well look forward to that.


----------



## Guest

'It feels endless': four women struggling to recover from Covid-19Seems that there are more symptoms than we were originally told.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...to-recover-from-covid-19-coronavirus-symptoms


----------



## science

TalkingHead said:


> 'It feels endless': four women struggling to recover from Covid-19Seems that there are more symptoms than we were originally told.
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...to-recover-from-covid-19-coronavirus-symptoms


From that article:



> It appears coronavirus may be a chronic condition. How long it persists for is unknown. The symptoms can be serious and wide-ranging, affecting the lungs, heart, brain, kidneys, stomach and nervous system. Headaches, shortness of breath, sore throat and feeling exhausted are common. So is recovery followed by frequent relapses.


Man, this virus does not stop, does it?

I need to get some sleep. The world is falling apart, and almost everything is either horrifying or infuriating, but it's 3 AM where I am.

And I'm one of the relatively lucky ones.

Good luck out there y'all. Take care of yourselves and your families.


----------



## Flamme

2bh I have so many worries rn I cant afford 2 think about corona...Its not that Im endangered by ''outside'' forces atm, but it is worries, memories and grief that tear my soul apart.


----------



## Luchesi

Has anyone gotten sick with this and can give us a personal account? I haven't seen anything posted. I did have feverish feelings a few weeks ago, but I don't know.. Anybody else?


----------



## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> Has anyone gotten sick with this and can give us a personal account? I haven't seen anything posted. I did have feverish feelings a few weeks ago, but I don't know.. Anybody else?


I suspect most of us have not been infected (to our knowledge) and many do not know anybody who has. In much of the US, for instance, the prevalence of infection is far lower than in more active places like New York.

In my own county, which is a large one with a population exceeding 3 million, just one in 1,400 people has been diagnosed with Covid-19. And just one in 58,000 has died from it.

That can change of course, and raises a worry. What if our lockdown, which was ordered early on, succeeded not only in flattening the curve but in elongating it as well? Now, when the pent-up demand for opening is actually forcing the government to reopen our economy, our case numbers continue their steady rise from 50 a day to 100, then 150 and then 200… We may just be a New York in slow motion.


----------



## Flamme

I think some1 wrote he had a disease few weeks ago...Hard 2 tell, it was lost quickly under the avalanche of posts...I suspect teh contrary that many of us GOT INFECTED but surviverd it because our bodies were strong enough...


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> In my own county, which is a large one with a population exceeding 3 million, just one in 1,400 people has been diagnosed with Covid-19. And just one in 58,000 has died from it.


Across the US it's closer to 1 in 2500 people have died. Officially it's 1 in 2950 but we all know that's not right.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess

science said:


> Across the US it's closer to 1 in 2500 people have died. Officially it's 1 in 2950 but we all know that's not right.


We may never know the true number of deaths. My county has close to 350,000 with 5 deaths and less than 500 confirmed cases. Should my county lockdown forever?


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I'd say that the lockdown is over when the authorities no longer have the courage or will to enforce it.


You are correct. And the Australian people don't like hypocrisy. At the moment the inmates are running the asylum. But stopping people from thinking and talking - de-platforming, publicly humiliating and sacking them - is merely going to drive resentments and criticism underground.

Open everything for business. Right now.


----------



## Bigbang

mmsbls said:


> We've had many times where members post purely political comments even though we've repeatedly asked people not to do so. We're considering shutting this thread down even though many clearly view the thread as interesting and important. I would once again ask that people consider their fellow members' desire to keep this thread free of pure politics before they post.


I posted my personal opinions on Bill Gates in support of him against the conspiracy side of the virus/vaccine used against him and to me, fair game. Not exactly political and lots of posters post conspiracy theories here. I do not get into pasting and ranting on and on just simple analysis to the point. Yet, was not posted. Hmm.


----------



## science

Christabel said:


> inmates


Very clever today.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> I am among those most at fault because I find it very hard not to take the bait.
> 
> There's a lot of frustration ... to put it euphemistically....
> 
> I'll feel better when I feel that my own family is safe. Probably we all will. I hope that's what happens.


Sorry to have to say this; it's people from the Left who are always the first to rush to censorship and we see this alive and well here on TC. At the moment this entire thread is absolutely pointless because the discussion isn't allowed to be properly had.

Keep it shallow; keep it snappy; make sure you don't disagree with ME. What you really should say here as moderators is, "any discussion is permitted on our site but we won't tolerate offensive language and personal abuse". But, instead, all contradictory ideas have to vanish. What is it the Left is afraid to argue or to hear? (Not a rhetorical question.)


----------



## Flamme

DaveM said:


> Apparently not.


LOL brah so we apparently can have only 1 opinion and everything else is considered heretical and ''nogood''...I dont think either u or me have enuff data 2 either confirm nor deny some ''rumours'' that are swirling around...Sometimes where there is smoke, there is fire...


----------



## science

Christabel said:


> Sorry to have to say this; it's people from the Left who are always the first to rush to censorship and we see this alive and well here on TC. At the moment this entire thread is absolutely pointless because the discussion isn't allowed to be properly had.
> 
> Keep it shallow; keep it snappy; make sure you don't disagree with ME. What you really should say here as moderators is, "any discussion is permitted on our site but we won't tolerate offensive language and personal abuse". But, instead, all contradictory ideas have to vanish. What is it the Left is afraid to argue or to hear? (Not a rhetorical question.)


I'm not afraid of anything you or anyone else can tell me, but this discussion can only be had in the groups. Take it there and stop trying to get this thread locked.


----------



## DaveM

Flamme said:


> LOL brah so we apparently can have only 1 opinion and everything else is considered heretical and ''nogood''...I dont think either u or me have enuff data 2 either confirm nor deny some ''rumours'' that are swirling around...Sometimes where there is smoke, there is fire...


Given that you quoted 2 words of mine with no context and since it's taken from a post long scrolled away nobody will have a clue what you're talking about so I'll leave it at that. Btw, I'm not your 'buddy', 'bro' or 'brah'.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Luchesi said:


> Has anyone gotten sick with this and can give us a personal account? I haven't seen anything posted. I did have feverish feelings a few weeks ago, but I don't know.. Anybody else?


I know a few people who are confident they had it. I don't know of anyone who tested positive, even among those. I don't personally know anyone who has been seriously ill or died.

The people I know who think they may have had it felt quite lacking in energy for a few days. Some were tested, and came back negative; others were not tested.


----------



## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> Open everything for business. Right now.


Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?
Can I buy another cheap Picasso fake?


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?
> Can I buy another cheap Picasso fake?


Don't give up your day job.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> I'm not afraid of anything you or anyone else can tell me, but this discussion can only be had in the groups. Take it there and stop trying to get this thread locked.


(Clicks heels) "yes sir". Have you any more orders for me?


----------



## DaveM

There are several drugs undergoing testing for prophylactic prevention of Covid-19. Hydroxychloroquine is one of them, but the researcher says she is having trouble recruiting people given the history of HCQ. Another drug is nitazoxanide, a drug used for traveler’s diarrhea, but which has been tested for use with respiratory viruses. Finally, of all things, an iodine spray is being tested for use as a nasal spray and oral gargle.


----------



## Mandryka

Can someone help me understand something on this interview?






It's with Sunetra Gupta, who's a Prof of epidemiology at Oxford University. In her response to the question posed at 8' 50'' she says:



> In almost every context we've seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away - almost like clockwork. Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we've observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour which is highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity. I think that's a more parsimonious explanation than one which requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no lockdown) to have had the same effect.


I just don't follow the argument.


----------



## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> Don't give up your day job.


Sorry, I mistook you for an Aussie who might know the cultural reference. Carry on and also open the churches 100% to Covid!  Let's not have businesses hog all the grim reapers efforts.

This is what happens when you open up:

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/corona...0200607-6vjjtxdeffc3djtcgxsdy7ywhq-story.html


----------



## Eclectic Al

Mandryka said:


> Can someone help me understand something on this interview?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's with Sunetra Gupta, who's a Prof of epidemiology at Oxford University. In her response to the question posed at 8' 50'' she says:
> 
> I just don't follow the argument.


I believe the suggestion may be that there is a substantial proportion of the population which is not susceptible to the Covid-19 virus. That may be because of previous exposure to other coronaviruses giving rise to cross-immunity, or to other factors meaning that there is innate resistance. If so then herd immunity (that dreaded phrase) may be reached with relatively low numbers seen to be resistant by reference to antibody tests.

I make no judgement about the rights and wrongs of this, but I think that is what is behind her remarks.


----------



## mmsbls

I went through and deleted many more posts. Perhaps some here don't know why we have a policy against political posts on the main forum.

Awhile ago political posts were allowed in the Community Forum. Such threads generally started off fine and gradually became more and more contentious with off-topic political garbage, name calling, insults, chiding, and sometimes people leaving the forum. People are people so this pattern continued with a large number of political threads. The threads were shut down, PMs were sent, and infractions were issued, These events happened so often that moderators decided to keep all purely political (and religious) threads off the main forum and developed a policy only allowing such threads and discussions in the Groups.

Another problem with such discussions is that other members found the off-topic political garbage distracting, obtrusive, and infuriating. They wanted to discuss the issue - not political garbage. The same is true of many threads that are not about politics such as this one. People wish to talk about Covid-19 and not about politics.

So, please, if you wish to talk politics, do so in the Groups. If you wish to discuss Covid-19, you may do so here.


----------



## mmsbls

Luchesi said:


> Posting politically is an emotional activity. Can this emotion be fixed?


No and no one would wish to fix it. We're simply asking people to refrain from purely or excessively political comments. As I've said before, if you are not sure whether a comment is excessively/purely political, then don't post it.


----------



## Jacck

Mandryka said:


> Can someone help me understand something on this interview?
> It's with Sunetra Gupta, who's a Prof of epidemiology at Oxford University. In her response to the question posed at 8' 50'' she says:
> I just don't follow the argument.


I didn't watch it, but I guess she might be referencing the theories of the Isreali professor Yitzhak Ben, who claimed in April, that the virus follows a pattern and will disappear after 70 days in each country irrespective of any lockdown measures taken
https://townhall.com/columnists/mar...or-shows-virus-follows-fixed-pattern-n2566915


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Sorry, I mistook you for an Aussie who might know the cultural reference. Carry on and also open the churches 100% to Covid!  Let's not have businesses hog all the grim reapers efforts.
> 
> This is what happens when you open up:
> 
> https://www.sun-sentinel.com/corona...0200607-6vjjtxdeffc3djtcgxsdy7ywhq-story.html
> 
> So pro lifers are now pro deathers!


Don't be so afraid. Remember, on 6 June 76 years ago thousands of 'privileged white men' stormed the beaches of France to liberate Europe from totalitarianism. It was hideous and they must have known, while they were in those amphibious craft, that they had but seconds to live. Be brave about Covid-19.


----------



## mmsbls

Christabel said:


> Sorry to have to say this; it's people from the Left who are always the first to rush to censorship and we see this alive and well here on TC. At the moment this entire thread is absolutely pointless because the discussion isn't allowed to be properly had.


We are trying to allow a discussion about Covid-19 without digressions into politics. The thread seems far from pointless to me unless one is more interested in discussing politics than Covid-19. There seems to be a lot of information about the disease and serious discussions about the best policies to combat it.



Christabel said:


> Keep it shallow; keep it snappy; make sure you don't disagree with ME. What you really should say here as moderators is, "any discussion is permitted on our site but we won't tolerate offensive language and personal abuse". But, instead, all contradictory ideas have to vanish. What is it the Left is afraid to argue or to hear? (Not a rhetorical question.)


Perhaps you haven't read many threads on TC or much of this thread. It's true that many on TC do like to keep it shallow and snappy. Many of your posts are that way, and there's nothing at all wrong with that. Yet, there are many threads on TC including this one that have long, sometimes detailed discussions where members have strongly opposing opinions. Those discussions can be interesting, informative, and useful in shaping one's own opinions. We certainly have no problem with those discussions (including the ones on this thread). What we do not wish to see are chiding, insults, or worse. Purely political and religious threads have a long history of evolving in such a manner. So we choose to exclude them on the main forum.

Let's please get back to discussing Covid-19.


----------



## DaveM

Mandryka said:


> _
> Quote from Professor Sunetra Gupta:
> 'In almost every context we've seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away - almost like clockwork. Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we've observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour which is highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity. I think that's a more parsimonious explanation than one which requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no lockdown) to have had the same effect.'
> _
> I just don't follow the argument.


The statement '_ To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity.'_ infers that any given population center would have built up herd immunity secondary to people having contracted clinical or sub-clinical (symptomless) disease making various levels of lockdown unnecessary. I find it to be a rather thin, presumptuous, hindsight theory. In other words, easy for her to say.


----------



## Mandryka

Eclectic Al said:


> I believe the suggestion may be that there is a substantial proportion of the population which is not susceptible to the Covid-19 virus. That may be because of previous exposure to other coronaviruses giving rise to cross-immunity, or to other factors meaning that there is innate resistance. If so then herd immunity (that dreaded phrase) may be reached with relatively low numbers seen to be resistant by reference to antibody tests.
> 
> .


Yes I understand that bit, what I don't understand is her claim that that the way the epidemic has grown in all countries, no matter what their approach to lockdown was, somehow corroborates that idea.


----------



## Mandryka

DaveM said:


> The statement '_ To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity.'_ infers that any given population center would have built up herd immunity secondary to people having contracted clinical or sub-clinical (symptomless) disease making various levels of lockdown unnecessary. I find it to be a rather thin, presumptuous, hindsight theory. In other words, easy for her to say.


See above.

Amxnwkxjnwxk)nsxkjnwxk


----------



## Luchesi

DaveM said:


> The statement '_ To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity.'_ infers that any given population center would have built up herd immunity secondary to people having contracted clinical or sub-clinical (symptomless) disease making various levels of lockdown unnecessary. I find it to be a rather thin, presumptuous, hindsight theory. In other words, easy for her to say.


Public people will say things in public for the good of the public.


----------



## Mandryka

Jacck said:


> I didn't watch it, but I guess she might be referencing the theories of the Isreali professor Yitzhak Ben, who claimed in April, that the virus follows a pattern and will disappear after 70 days in each country irrespective of any lockdown measures taken
> https://townhall.com/columnists/mar...or-shows-virus-follows-fixed-pattern-n2566915


Yes, maybe.

Kbjbjhbj(kjhbjhb


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## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> Don't be so afraid. Remember, on 6 June 76 years ago thousands of 'privileged white men' stormed the beaches of France to liberate Europe from totalitarianism. It was hideous and they must have known, while they were in those amphibious craft, that they had but seconds to live. Be brave about Covid-19.


I find this post, comparing my option to participate in being exposed to a lethal virus vs. the fight against fascism a dishonor to those brave men who fought.

What would I be fighting for? Someone's right to make a profit? That's a pretty sicko comparison.

BTW, if you are an Aussie, may I point out my father put his life on the line protecting your country!


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> Don't be so afraid. Remember, on 6 June 76 years ago thousands of 'privileged white men' stormed the beaches of France to liberate Europe from totalitarianism. It was hideous and they must have known, while they were in those amphibious craft, that they had but seconds to live. Be brave about Covid-19.


That's an unsettling analogy. Do you consider your 'brave' attitude toward your risk of contracting Covid-19 as on the level of storming Omaha Beach on 06\06\1944?


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> Sorry to have to say this; it's people from the Left who are always the first to rush to censorship and we see this alive and well here on TC. At the moment this entire thread is absolutely pointless because the discussion isn't allowed to be properly had.
> 
> Keep it shallow; keep it snappy; make sure you don't disagree with ME. What you really should say here as moderators is, "any discussion is permitted on our site but we won't tolerate offensive language and personal abuse". But, instead, all contradictory ideas have to vanish. What is it the Left is afraid to argue or to hear? (Not a rhetorical question.)


? ?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Mandryka said:


> Yes I understand that bit, what I don't understand is her claim that that the way the epidemic has grown in all countries, no matter what their approach to lockdown was, somehow corroborates that idea.


I get what you're saying. The point I was referring to is that it seems to cap out regardless of policy.
You are then asking why it grows to that point regardless of policy. It may be that behind her thinking is (and I think that is consistent with some earlier remarks I know she made) the idea that the virus was spreading earlier than people are assuming. If there was a good degree of asymptomatic (or unnoticed, because believed to be flu) spread prior to the recognition that his was a new pathogen then the lockdowns may well have come too late anyway and had little effect.

I don't know (no expert and no privileged data) but I have seen various articles to the effect that peak transmission rates were reached (and decline had started) prior to lockdowns being implemented, which might be consistent with the above.

Anyway, as I have noted in many posts on this thread, I don't think anyone knows, and it is claiming to have certainty which is unreasonable to my mind. Her thinking is what it is, and she is eminent; contrary views are what they are, and those propounding them may be equally eminent. Make of it what you will.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> I get what you're saying. The point I was referring to is that it seems to cap out regardless of policy.
> You are then asking why it grows to that point regardless of policy. It may be that behind her thinking is (and I think that is consistent with some earlier remarks I know she made) the idea that the virus was spreading earlier than people are assuming. If there was a good degree of asymptomatic (or unnoticed, because believed to be flu) spread prior to the recognition that his was a new pathogen then the lockdowns may well have come too late anyway and had little effect.
> 
> I don't know (no expert and no privileged data) but I have seen various articles to the effect that peak transmission rates were reached (and decline had started) prior to lockdowns being implemented, which might be consistent with the above.
> 
> Anyway, as I have noted in many posts on this thread, I don't think anyone knows, and it is claiming to have certainty which is unreasonable to my mind. Her thinking is what it is, and she is eminent; contrary views are what they are, and those propounding them may be equally eminent. Make of it what you will.


her main assumptions are this
• Many of the antibody tests are "extremely unreliable"
• They do not indicate the true level of exposure or level of immunity
• "Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we've observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour"
• "Much of the driving force was due to the build-up of immunity"

unless she can provide actual evidence for all these assumptions, she is just providing a theory based on faith. I would not base my policies on her faith.


----------



## mountmccabe

science said:


> On paper Arizona doesn't have a particularly bad coronavirus situation (about 3500 cases per million people, officially fewer than about 29 other states) but for some reason they've already run out of ECMO -- extracorporeal membrane oxygenation -- machines already, which are needed for people whose lungs no longer function. They still do have unused beds and ventilators.


Things are getting significantly worse, though. Governor Ducey's stay-at-home order expired May 15. As of that point, the peak in new daily confirmed cases was 581 on May 8. Starting May 29, two weeks after the stay-at-home was allowed to expire, a new peak was reached.

May 29: 702
May 30: 790
May 31: 681
June 1: 187
June 2: 1127
June 3: 973
June 4: 530
June 5: 1579
June 6: 1119

They have increased their testing rates, but the positivity rate is increasing, too. And they're continuing to relax restrictions, not bring them back. These are, again, merely confirmed cases. But there seems to be a real change happening.

(I lived in Arizona for 25 years and have a lot of family and friends still there, so I've been following the situation).


----------



## Bigbang

Christabel said:


> Don't be so afraid. Remember, on 6 June 76 years ago thousands of 'privileged white men' stormed the beaches of France to liberate Europe from totalitarianism. It was hideous and they must have known, while they were in those amphibious craft, that they had but seconds to live. Be brave about Covid-19.


Right on be brave! Remember too that young scared black men served their country (USA) even though they did not yet have basic rights as 'privileged white men.'


----------



## Bigbang

mmsbls said:


> No and no one would wish to fix it. We're simply asking people to refrain from purely or excessively political comments. As I've said before, if you are not sure whether a comment is excessively/purely political, then don't post it.


I think also it is important to distinguish between whether you are adding to the conversation from a detach perspective vs the desire to be heard. I feel the boards are dominated by discussions rooted in the desire to be heard. I get that we want feel connected but if the virus topic is not clicking or tapping any hot buttons then that might be a clue that other forums might be appropriate.


----------



## Guest

Bigbang said:


> Right on be brave! Remember too that young scared black men served their country (USA) even though they did not yet have basic rights as 'privileged white men.'


One group who died had 'privilege' and the other didn't - yet they both met *exactly the same fate*. So much for the 'privilege'. The Germans were not calling out, "over there to the right boys, if you've got 'privilege' and over there to the Left you guys who don't have it'. That would have been discrimination. And ironic!

Be not afraid of a virus when there are far worse fates to be met in this world.


----------



## Bigbang

Christabel said:


> One group who died had 'privilege' and the other didn't - yet they both met *exactly the same fate*. So much for the 'privilege'. The Germans were not calling out, "over there to the right boys, if you've got 'privilege' and over there to the Left you guys who don't have it'. That would have been discrimination. And ironic!
> 
> Be not afraid of a virus when there are far worse fates to be met in this world.


I am not getting this "scared" of the virus thing. You brought it up before in another context. People have different attitudes about the virus and may discuss it in a way that shows concern but not be deathly afraid of it. I am not at all scared about this virus but I know enough that getting it and getting over it can be a battle for some people. There are people complaining that their life is not back to normal and things are not quite right. Okay.


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## Room2201974

I'm scared of being asymptomatic and spreading the disease to someone who could die because of my actions. Sorry if being a caring human being troubles some!

Choosing to be in the experimental group carries with it a moral responsibility that outweighs a need to eat Cracker Barrel biscuits.


----------



## science

I want to thank mmsbls and any other mods who were involved in the clean-up of this thread. It's a better place now for the coronavirus discussion.


----------



## Open Book

mmsbls said:


> They wanted to discuss the issue - not political garbage. The same is true of many threads that are not about politics such as this one. People wish to talk about Covid-19 and not about politics.
> 
> So, please, if you wish to talk politics, do so in the Groups. If you wish to discuss Covid-19, you may do so here.


It's hard for this thread to not get political since fighting the virus involves public policy.

Is there a thread on coronavirus in the political groups section? I looked and didn't see one, unless it just isn't bumped much. Can somebody post the link if there is.


----------



## science

Open Book said:


> It's hard for this thread to not get political since fighting the virus involves public policy.
> 
> Is there a thread on coronavirus in the political groups section? I looked and didn't see one, unless it just isn't bumped much. Can somebody post the link if there is.


I've made one. Here it is!


----------



## Open Book

Room2201974 said:


> I'm scared of being asymptomatic and spreading the disease to someone who could die because of my actions. Sorry if being a caring human being troubles some!
> 
> Choosing to be in the experimental group carries with it a moral responsibility that outweighs a need to eat Cracker Barrel biscuits.


I'm wondering why anybody would want to study medicine anymore if it would mean a long fight against dangerous infectious diseases is in our future. How can doctors and nurses have families and not constantly worry about spreading something to them? Unless they are a medical prodigy from a TV show most doctors are not under 30. They are of the age when recovering from the virus themselves is not a guarantee.


----------



## mmsbls

Open Book said:


> It's hard for this thread to not get political since fighting the virus involves public policy.
> 
> Is there a thread on coronavirus in the political groups section? I looked and didn't see one, unless it just isn't bumped much. Can somebody post the link if there is.


Just to be clear: public policy is not politics. Talk about policy all you wish here. Should we shelter in place? For how long? What is the effect of sheltering on economic output, jobs, infections? Should travel be restricted? Can some states or countries shelter effectively without all others sheltering as well? What is the tradeoff between lockdowns/sheltering in place versus opening up completely? What metrics help us understand those tradeoffs? Should all countries have remained open? How will we know when to lift lockdowns or the sheltering in place restrictions?

There could be 100s of pages discussing policies without ever discussing politics.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> Just to be clear: public policy is not politics. Talk about policy all you wish here. Should we shelter in place? For how long? What is the effect of sheltering on economic output, jobs, infections? Should travel be restricted? Can some states or countries shelter effectively without all others sheltering as well? What is the tradeoff between lockdowns/sheltering in place versus opening up completely? What metrics help us understand those tradeoffs? Should all countries have remained open? How will we know when to lift lockdowns or the sheltering in place restrictions?
> 
> There could be 100s of pages discussing policies without ever discussing politics.


I don't understand this. Public policy is 100% about politics and vice versa. We vote every election on candidates that represent published "platforms," which are nothing more than public policy positions.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> I don't understand this. Public policy is 100% about politics and vice versa. We vote every election on candidates that represent published "platforms," which are nothing more than public policy positions.


Must we really define what is meant by 'politics' in the context of what is undesirable on these forums? I'm quite sure you know.

The last post I made was a simple querying of what was obviously a 'political' post (#1784) that, IMO, is exactly what can easily be avoided (and should have been 'moderated'). Disagreement about what is the impact of policy can be undertaken without engaging in factionalism.



Room2201974 said:


> I'm scared of being asymptomatic and spreading the disease to someone who could die because of my actions. Sorry if being a caring human being troubles some!


Exactly so.

But I am also 'scared' of catching the virus myself. Guess I'm just selfish that way. I don't mean I'm a quivering wreck, scared to go anywhere or do anything. But I'm sometimes not sleeping properly, and I do fret that the car salesman I met with last week who struggled to keep his distance might have given me more than just the car I'm buying.

In the longer term, I worry how, when I next meet my sons or in-laws or siblings I can be sure that I haven't just given it to them, or they given it to me. And how long it will take for such an anxiety to diminish?


----------



## pianozach

mmsbls said:


> Just to be clear: public policy is not politics. Talk about policy all you wish here. Should we shelter in place? For how long? What is the effect of sheltering on economic output, jobs, infections? Should travel be restricted? Can some states or countries shelter effectively without all others sheltering as well? What is the tradeoff between lockdowns/sheltering in place versus opening up completely? What metrics help us understand those tradeoffs? Should all countries have remained open? How will we know when to lift lockdowns or the sheltering in place restrictions?
> 
> There could be 100s of pages discussing policies without ever discussing politics.


Oh now that's just plain silly.

Yeah public policy is not politics, but politics clearly influences public policy.

Guns and deaths caused by bullets are also two different things, yet somehow I'm pretty sure they're related.


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## Guest

Are we underestimating how many people are resistant to Covid-19?Very interesting article from The Guardian. It also touches on the post made above about Dr Gupta's position.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...does-it-exist-coronavirus-population-immunity


----------



## Eclectic Al

The fluid boundary between public policy and politics is interesting in relation to Covid-19.

A particularly good example relates to the recent protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. The argument is advanced that the issue here is so important that it justifies public protest even though that is contrary to the Covid-19 restrictions that have been implemented in line with the public policy response. Whether you agree with that is likely to relate to your own politics - eg in relation to the importance or otherwise of public protest.

People might advance the general argument in the following form: (i) there are rules designed to counter the threat from Covid-19, (ii) I support the rules generally, (iii) some issues are more important than these rules, (iv) I support breaching the rules when the issue is more important.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the above position and many (most?) people might agree that there are situations where a law should be broken because it serves a greater purpose to do so.

The issue clearly is that the question of what is "more important" is open. In the case of Covid-19 and public protest this leads to politics. "I reserve the right to disobey the public policy derived rules if my own personal politics justify that - in this case relating to the right to public protest." Now from that position how do you criticise someone who breaks the rules for reasons derived from their own personal politics? Either you simply assert the primacy of your own views ("I am right, so I can; they are wrong, so they can't") or you are being hypocritical ("I said it was wrong yesterday, but today I am saying it is OK, and tomorrow I may say it is wrong again - because it suits me to do so").

I think this is why the argument that the lockdown is over now has a lot of strength to it. The response from the leading politicians about the protests has been either support, silence or gentle chiding. No active steps have been taken to stop the protests. This signals a lack of political will. As has been suggested earlier, that might be because of realpolitik ("In this case the rule breakers may fight back, so we will let them break the rules.") Whatever, it removes any real legitimacy from future attempts to ban gatherings, because how do the politicians answer the challenge: "You let them do it, so why not us?". Politicians won't want to say that it is because those protesters might have fought back, as they then look weak. They could say it is OK to break their rules for the "right" cause, but that gets them into a complete mess. The alternative is hypocrisy, which stinks and people have a nose for that. I can see why many politicians are trying to keep as quiet as possible on this.

Expect to see a relaxation from rules to guidance quite quickly, as the politicians need an exit strategy from this mess.


----------



## science

I guess a good rule of thumb is that if I can't tell whether something is plainly "policy" rather than "politics," I'll discuss it in the groups. 

This isn't censorship. There are places, including the groups here, where political discussion is welcome. 

I guess another thing is that if you disagree with TC's policies -- I suppose all of us probably have our own idea of how something like this ought to be run -- you might get a hearing in "Area 51." In the very worst case, you have to vote with your feet. You wouldn't be the first or the last and I admit to having considered that myself as recently as last night. 

But as long as we're here, we're going to be subject to TC's rules... whether we like it or not.


----------



## science

Eclectic Al said:


> The fluid boundary between public policy and politics is interesting in relation to Covid-19.
> 
> A particularly good example relates to the recent protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. The argument is advanced that the issue here is so important that it justifies public protest even though that is contrary to the Covid-19 restrictions that have been implemented in line with the public policy response. Whether you agree with that is likely to relate to your own politics - eg in relation to the importance or otherwise of public protest.
> 
> People might advance the general argument in the following form: (i) there are rules designed to counter the threat from Covid-19, (ii) I support the rules generally, (iii) some issues are more important than these rules, (iv) I support breaching the rules when the issue is more important.
> 
> There is nothing inherently wrong with the above position and many (most?) people might agree that there are situations where a law should be broken because it serves a greater purpose to do so.
> 
> The issue clearly is that the question of what is "more important" is open. In the case of Covid-19 and public protest this leads to politics. "I reserve the right to disobey the public policy derived rules if my own personal politics justify that - in this case relating to the right to public protest." Now from that position how do you criticise someone who breaks the rules for reasons derived from their own personal politics? Either you simply assert the primacy of your own views ("I am right, so I can; they are wrong, so they can't") or you are being hypocritical ("I said it was wrong yesterday, but today I am saying it is OK, and tomorrow I may say it is wrong again - because it suits me to do so").
> 
> I think this is why the argument that the lockdown is over now has a lot of strength to it. The response from the leading politicians about the protests has been either support, silence or gentle chiding. No active steps have been taken to stop the protests. This signals a lack of political will. As has been suggested earlier, that might be because of realpolitik ("In this case the rule breakers may fight back, so we will let them break the rules.") Whatever, it removes any real legitimacy from future attempts to ban gatherings, because how do the politicians answer the challenge: "You let them do it, so why not us?". Politicians won't want to say that it is because those protesters might have fought back, as they then look weak. They could say it is OK to break their rules for the "right" cause, but that gets them into a complete mess. The alternative is hypocrisy, which stinks and people have a nose for that. I can see why many politicians are trying to keep as quiet as possible on this.
> 
> Expect to see a relaxation from rules to guidance quite quickly, as the politicians need an exit strategy from this mess.


I think all of this is right.

The protests are going to have consequences. I saw a story about 70 people who stayed in one home overnight to get away from the police, and if one person in that 70 was contagious, it's very possible that every one of those people will leave the house with the virus.

Whether that's worth the risk is a value judgment. Which side we come down on depends on how we feel about the risk of another (say) 100k deaths versus, well, what the protestors perceive as another generation of unchecked police brutality against certain people, and what the other people perceive as a rejection of "law and order" (or "the social contract" or the Constitution or whatever). Some people think the police should use force up to and maybe (depending on the individual) including lethal force to stop the protests regardless of the virus; there _might_ even be someone who would ordinarily support the protestors' right to protest but think that the covid-19 pandemic is not the right time. Which side is right is a discussion for the groups rather than here, but what is clear is that the protestors think it's worth the risk.

Other people -- it seems like about 40% of the USA, and maybe similar numbers in other countries though that probably varies fairly widely depending on factors like how homogenous the country is and how hard it's been hit -- think it's worth the risk of spreading the virus simply to eat out or go to a movie. That's also a value judgement. Which side we come down on depends on how we feel about the risk of another (say) 100k deaths versus having to eat at home or watch Netflix yet again. These guys are winning because even states where cases are rising are opening up.

(People can say it's about keeping small businesses in business, but I have chosen to address that in the groups just in case it is too political for here.)

Either way there's a certainty that out of all the people doing these things, _some_ of them will be spreading the virus leading to either their own or someone else's suffering and even deaths. There's also a certainty that some people are going to continue working from home and observing social distancing and wearing masks and so on as long as they can, and those people will prevent some suffering and save some lives. Whether this or that is worth the risk is on the individual's conscience.

We just basically have to wait and see now. At this point everyone knows what the consequences of their actions could be. The question is what we care about and which of us will (for whatever reason) happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> It's hard for this thread to not get political since fighting the virus involves public policy.


I'm thinking you'd have to smart enough to understand that in the first place.


----------



## Kieran

I think the “politics” being referred is tribal jabs, digs and agendas. Policy can be discussed with a fair and neutral mind. My feeling is that most politicians are trying their best based upon the science and scientists available to them.

I read that Iran is experiencing a second spike. I’m still unsure on whether this virus is decisively seasonal or not. South Korea, is it winter or summer there now? Meanwhile, New Zealand day they’re corona free, which is good news. 

In Ireland - summer and sunny today (this afternoon might see winter) - we’re moving quicker on our phases, so instead of having five, the last two phases are reduced to one. Today we hit phase two, which allows us to move freely anywhere, but only within our county. For me, that doesn’t mean much, since the nearest big town, Dublin, is in the next county, but regardless of whatever phase we’re in, Bob Dylan’s new record is out on Friday week. I’ll go to Dublin to buy it. If the cops ask why I’m out of my county, I’ll say I’m heading to a protest, that should be fine...


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> Just to be clear: public policy is not politics. Talk about policy all you wish here. Should we shelter in place? For how long? What is the effect of sheltering on economic output, jobs, infections? Should travel be restricted? Can some states or countries shelter effectively without all others sheltering as well? What is the tradeoff between lockdowns/sheltering in place versus opening up completely? What metrics help us understand those tradeoffs? Should all countries have remained open? How will we know when to lift lockdowns or the sheltering in place restrictions?
> 
> There could be 100s of pages discussing policies without ever discussing politics.


*Public policy is very definitely politics*. One of my children works for our Australian PM *at the very highest level* and he grapples with this fact daily. Conservatives want business up and running and to save the economy and jobs; those on the Left want a long shutdown with the taxpayer footing the bill for the economic and social damage - no matter how mild or extreme the cases of Covid-19 and in what demographic. Our government has said we are looking down the barrel of a 30 years payback for these loans; a 'gift' which will be inherited by two generations. This is the crucible of politics AND public policy and I hasten to add that not all of our states (in our Federation) agree about this public policy either.

My argument has always been that the opportunity cost of saving the lives of the mostly-elderly is just too onerous on everybody else. By all means isolate the vulnerable and try and protect them but if this ball keeps rolling what next? What else are we expected to 'save' the people from, or 'protect' them in the normal course of the act of living in a globalized, shrinking world of disease and economic turbulence.


----------



## Jacck

Christabel said:


> *Public policy is very definitely politics*. One of my children works for our Australian PM *at the very highest level* and he grapples with this fact daily. Conservatives want business up and running and to save the economy and jobs; those on the Left want a long shutdown with the taxpayer footing the bill for the economic and social damage - no matter how mild or extreme the cases of Covid-19 and in what demographic. Our government has said we are looking down the barrel of a 30 years payback for these loans; a 'gift' which will be inherited by two generations. This is the crucible of politics AND public policy and I hasten to add that not all of our states (in our Federation) agree about this public policy either.
> 
> My argument has always been that the opportunity cost of saving the lives of the mostly-elderly is just too onerous on everybody else. By all means isolate the vulnerable and try and protect them but if this ball keeps rolling what next? What else are we expected to 'save' the people from, or 'protect' them in the normal course of the act of living in a globalized, shrinking world of disease and economic turbulence.


It has been explained here many times, that the dilemma between economy vs lives is a false one. Sweden did not lock down and its economy suffers too. And don't worry about debt, Australia will be unlivable in a generation or two thanks to climate change. Mad Max is the future.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> I think the "politics" being referred is tribal jabs, digs and agendas. Policy can be discussed with a fair and neutral mind. My feeling is that most politicians are trying their best based upon the science and scientists available to them.
> 
> I read that Iran is experiencing a second spike. I'm still unsure on whether this virus is decisively seasonal or not. South Korea, is it winter or summer there now? Meanwhile, New Zealand day they're corona free, which is good news.
> 
> In Ireland - summer and sunny today (this afternoon might see winter) - we're moving quicker on our phases, so instead of having five, the last two phases are reduced to one. Today we hit phase two, which allows us to move freely anywhere, but only within our county. For me, that doesn't mean much, since the nearest big town, Dublin, is in the next county, but regardless of whatever phase we're in, Bob Dylan's new record is out on Friday week. I'll go to Dublin to buy it. If the cops ask why I'm out of my county, I'll say I'm heading to a protest, that should be fine...


A couple of comments. Another issue, apart from the seasonal one, is that there are different strains of the virus. The experience in Europe and on the East Coast of the USA seems worse than that in Asia, Australasia and on the West Coast of the USA. A combination of different policies, different seasons and different viral strains may all be playing a part.

On your point about saying you're heading to a protest, it does of course raise a serious point. If there was some tacit (or open) approval for protests as acceptable, but more mundane activities not, then people who just wanted to organise gatherings would obviously start carrying banners.

One of the reasons to consider that protests may go on for longer than normal in the current situation is that there are more people now with nothing else to do (- rise in unemployment and those on furlough). "Why not go on a protest march? After all, I've nothing else to do."


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> A couple of comments. Another issue, apart from the seasonal one, is that there are different strains of the virus. The experience in Europe and on the East Coast of the USA seems worse than that in Asia, Australasia and on the West Coast of the USA. A combination of different policies, different seasons and different viral strains may all be playing a part.
> 
> One of the reasons to consider that protests may go on for longer than normal in the current situation is that there are more people now with nothing else to do (- rise in unemployment and those on furlough). "Why not go on a protest march? After all, I've nothing else to do."


Well, I'll be just buying a CD, but I'll pretend I'm a looter. But I agree with your point, and I think these fashionable "protests" should be banned, but we live to see the day when the Irish Parliament held a minutes silence for George Floyd. The point of me saying this isn't just "politics" but to show that a policy that's in place to protect the health system and the vulnerable has proven to be negotiable, and this happens when the body politics is spineless.

I haven't lived in fear of the virus so I too will ignore the policy in favour of doing something far more important to me, which is buying the CD.

As for the seasonality and the virus, that's interesting, thanks! My sense of it hear in Ireland is that the threat is greatly reduced. I see that in Italy and Spain, bars and caffs are open. Normality - the old normal - is inching back. Let's hope it stays a while..


----------



## science

The USA had a really, really good day yesterday. 

373 (officially known) deaths is the fewest since March 26, while 18,905 cases is the fewest since May 11. 

Of course numbers go up and down, and there might be some sad explanation for these numbers, but every good day is a good day.


----------



## science

Kieran said:


> South Korea, is it winter or summer there now?


Very hot summer here. Highs in the 90s F (30s C) most of this week until rain on Saturday.

The second wave continues to rise here, too. Still not bad from an international POV, with 951 active cases and no known deaths since June 3 (and only 4 since May 26), but no one is relaxing. I went to the hospital today to meet my father-in-law who's in town for his chemo treatment, and l think every single person I saw on the streets and in the hospital was wearing a mask. They had a person at the doors of the hospital to make sure everyone coming in was wearing a mask and cleaned their hands with sanitizer.

Strangely, though, my university has even stricter standards! You have to pass through a temperature detector thing to get on campus (even though no classes are meeting there).

We'll see. It seems to me that South Korea is a few weeks ahead of other countries -- they peaked sooner, so they reached the trough between the waves sooner, and now their second wave is starting sooner. Hopefully some countries (like Ireland and Germany so far) won't even have a second wave, but if they do South Korea might be a sign of what to expect, so I guess we all have to hope they manage to keep it down here.

Also, in terms of policy discussion, it is worth repeating that South Korea never locked down or shut down their economy. They did, however, pass expensive legislation to help small businesses and people who couldn't go to work because they'd been exposed to the virus. Of course the culture here helped in the sense that everyone was willing to wear masks, there's not as much physical contact between people (no handshaking or cheek-kissing), and there are no huge social divisions between the people most likely to get sick and the people who have influence over the government. (Class, of course, as everywhere, but not race or religion or language or anything like that.) Maybe other countries had to shut down their economies ...

I really don't know. It'll be interesting to read, two or three years from now, educated guesses about what could and should have been done.


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> Very hot summer here. Highs in the 90s F (30s C) most of this week until rain on Saturday.
> 
> The second wave continues to rise here, too. Still not bad from an international POV, with 951 active cases and no known deaths since June 3 (and only 4 since May 26), but no one is relaxing. I went to the hospital today to meet my father-in-law who's in town for his chemo treatment, and l think every single person I saw on the streets and in the hospital was wearing a mask. They had a person at the doors of the hospital to make sure everyone coming in was wearing a mask and cleaned their hands with sanitizer.
> 
> Strangely, though, my university has even stricter standards! You have to pass through a temperature detector thing to get on campus (even though no classes are meeting there).
> 
> We'll see. It seems to me that South Korea is a few weeks ahead of other countries -- they peaked sooner, so they reached the trough between the waves sooner, and now their second wave is starting sooner. Hopefully some countries (like Ireland and Germany so far) won't even have a second wave, but if they do South Korea might be a sign of what to expect, so I guess we all have to hope they manage to keep it down here.
> 
> Also, in terms of policy discussion, it is worth repeating that South Korea never locked down or shut down their economy. They did, however, pass expensive legislation to help small businesses and people who couldn't go to work because they'd been exposed to the virus. Of course the culture here helped in the sense that everyone was willing to wear masks, there's not as much physical contact between people (no handshaking or cheek-kissing), and there are no huge social divisions between the people most likely to get sick and the people who have influence over the government. (Class, of course, as everywhere, but not race or religion or language or anything like that.) Maybe other countries had to shut down their economies ...
> 
> I really don't know. It'll be interesting to read, two or three years from now, educated guesses about what could and should have been done.


I definitely agree with this, that it'll take a few years before we know fully what should have been done, and as I say, I feel most countries are muddling by with their best intentions. With regards to wearing masks, I think if it's obligatory, nobody should have a problem wearing a mask, and observing any other social distancing measures, for a while. Greetings can become elbow taps, foot taps, it'll build camaraderie to be able to do our bit to annihilate the plague.

South Korea seems to have model in place that I'm sure governments everywhere are analysing, and seeing how they can apply it for the future. I think culturally, people are different, Scandinavians are different to Latins, and living in different conditions, but it isn't difficult to see different peoples adapting to future waves in similar ways, which have proven to be successful...


----------



## aleazk

*So how deadly is covid 19?*

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/so-how-deadly-is-covid-19/


----------



## EdwardBast

science said:


> The USA had a really, really good day yesterday.
> 
> 373 (officially known) deaths is the fewest since March 26, while 18,905 cases is the fewest since May 11.
> 
> Of course numbers go up and down, and *there might be some sad explanation for these numbers, but every good day is a good day*.


Not a sad explanation, but perhaps a mundane one: Every good day is on a weekend. Work schedule related? But yes, the general trend is down and that is certainly good.


----------



## Guest

aleazk said:


> *So how deadly is covid 19?*
> 
> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/so-how-deadly-is-covid-19/


Excellent article - clear and far easier to understand than some of the verbiage posted by our resident bean counter(s) on this thread.


----------



## Art Rock

That was a good read. Especially the end is a sobering read for those who still claim it's just a flu. The piece is written by an emergency physician.



> Experienced physicians know that this is nothing like the flu.
> 
> We know enough to understand the dangerous potential that this virus still holds. We know that the coronavirus spreads twice as fast as flu, or faster, and that if left unchecked it has the potential to race through populations like wildfire. We know that viral "dose" likely influences illness severity, which masks and social distancing can mitigate. We know that a large majority of people likely remain unexposed and susceptible. If infected, we know some of these people will die.
> 
> Wherever the mortality rates may settle, we have enough information to act responsibly, with carefully phased reopenings and robust testing and contact tracing.
> 
> We know enough to know that this virus is deadly serious.


----------



## Flamme

DaveM said:


> Given that you quoted 2 words of mine with no context and since it's taken from a post long scrolled away nobody will have a clue what you're talking about so I'll leave it at that. Btw, I'm not your 'buddy', 'bro' or 'brah'.


U know your way with words buddy but its still pretty hollow and 1trackminded...


----------



## science

Flamme said:


> U know your way with words buddy but its still pretty hollow and 1trackminded...


Just to clarify, you're insulting DaveM for being "1trackminded" for not believing an idea from the Q conspiracy theory people?


----------



## Flamme

Insulting lol He was verbally aggressive 1st...I just pointed his flaws...It is much more complicated than that...World is not black and white, even if its peddled by mass media...Im not certain only ''q ppl'' are pushing the HQ idea...That would be like I said ''only leftist liberals'' peddle the ''vaccine project''...


----------



## DaveM

Flamme said:


> Insulting lol He was verbally aggressive 1st...I just pointed his flaws...It is much more complicated than that...World is not black and white, even if its peddled by mass media...Im not certain only ''q ppl'' are pushing the HQ idea...That would be like I said ''only leftist liberals'' peddle the ''vaccine project''...


'Verbally aggressive? You put up a post that referenced an inflammatory issue and I responded to it in kind. If you can't handle responses to posts that have controversial subject matter as if someone tried to hurt your feelings, then best you not post here. Btw, you aren't pointing out any flaws. You're just complaining. Why not contribute with something constructive.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> I don't understand this. Public policy is 100% about politics and vice versa. We vote every election on candidates that represent published "platforms," which are nothing more than public policy positions.





pianozach said:


> Oh now that's just plain silly.
> 
> Yeah public policy is not politics, but politics clearly influences public policy.


OK, sorry. I realize that people look at the term, policy, in differing ways. Perhaps many view policy as the thing that politicians do. I look at policy as a potential method to reach a specified goal. I work very closely with policy analysts. My work informs and evaluates potential policies, and I think most people would view my work as technical analysis rather than politics. Basically policy analysis asks what will be the effect of various policies and which policies including specified parameters will enable certain goals.

So yes, policy informs politics, and politicians decide which policies to push or enact. But policies themselves can be evaluated without politics. More importantly, policies _can be discussed without reference to politics_.

Christabel has helped with a nice example of a comment both provocative and political:



Christabel said:


> *Conservatives want business up and running and to save the economy and jobs; those on the Left want a long shutdown with the taxpayer footing the bill for the economic and social damage - no matter how mild or extreme the cases of Covid-19 and in what demographic.
> *


*

Discussions of policies related to Covid-19 that do not explicitly invoke politics could, for example:

- talk about studies of the economic effects of Sweden's polices relative to Norway's and Denmark's.

- discuss the likelihood of future infections or deaths after lifting the non-pharmaceutical interventions like sheltering-in-place (NPIs)

- discuss the effect of NPIs on job loss

- discuss variations of NPIs including ones that would be less invasive

We are simply asking that people discuss Covid-19 and related policies without explicitly trying to include politics.*


----------



## Flamme

DaveM said:


> 'Verbally aggressive? You put up a post that referenced an inflammatory issue and I responded to it in kind. If you can't handle responses to posts that have controversial subject matter as if someone tried to hurt your feelings, then best you not post here. Btw, you aren't pointing out any flaws. You're just complaining. Why not contribute with something constructive.


I think u have shown being ''2 soft'' by taking my words 2 heart...I can handle anything...Im complaining? Its like a total projection...I pointed out HQ is a known cure but said it is uncertain it can or cant be used 2 cure covid 23 some extent...Now that u see everything that is slight of ''orthodoxy'' as ''hostile'' is YOUR prob not mine...


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> We are simply asking that people discuss Covid-19 and related policies without explicitly trying to include politics.


One of the most interesting things about this thread has been the certainty people evidence about which are the best policies.

Decision-makers need to choose a policy, and they do that on the basis of imperfect knowledge. However, on this thread there is so much certainty regarding the motivations of the decision-makers and also whether their decisions are correct or not.

The one thing I am confident about is that any number of papers in social psychology will get published looking at the current period, investigating a myriad of areas in which people's behaviour has gone a bit odd, to say the least.

What I'm less confident about is any idea of what is the best policy to pursue. I have a fair idea of how I might land if I was in the unfortunate position of having to implement policy in this area, but I would do so in the knowledge that I was just guessing about whether it was the best choice.


----------



## science

Flamme said:


> Insulting lol He was verbally aggressive 1st...I just pointed his flaws...It is much more complicated than that...World is not black and white, even if its peddled by mass media...Im not certain only ''q ppl'' are pushing the HQ idea...That would be like I said ''only leftist liberals'' peddle the ''vaccine project''...


I just don't understand this.



Flamme said:


> I think u have shown being ''2 soft'' by taking my words 2 heart...I can handle anything...Im complaining? Its like a total projection...I pointed out HQ is a known cure but said it is uncertain it can or cant be used 2 cure covid 23 some extent...Now that u see everything that is slight of ''orthodoxy'' as ''hostile'' is YOUR prob not mine...


Or this.

Can you explain more plainly what you mean to be arguing?


----------



## DaveM

aleazk said:


> *So how deadly is covid 19?*
> 
> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/so-how-deadly-is-covid-19/


As someone else said: excellent article. A must read especially for those who still think that this is just equivalent to a bad flu. It also gives a broad perspective which IMO serves as presenting good reasons why those in countries or areas within countries where the virus hasn't hit as hard should be careful about coming to broad conclusions about whether lockdowns were necessary.


----------



## mmsbls

Eclectic Al said:


> One of the most interesting things about this thread has been the certainty people evidence about which are the best policies.
> 
> Decision-makers need to choose a policy, and they do that on the basis of imperfect knowledge. However, on this thread there is so much certainty regarding the motivations of the decision-makers and also whether their decisions are correct or not.


Yes, I've been a bit surprised that opinions are so certain. The issue is enormously complicated with significant uncertainties.



Eclectic Al said:


> What I'm less confident about is any idea of what is the best policy to pursue. I have a fair idea of how I might land if I was in the unfortunate position of having to implement policy in this area, but I would do so in the knowledge that I was just guessing about whether it was the best choice.


I know what I would have done in the unfortunate situation of having to choose, but I also know I would have been somewhat surprised at the result. I'm not sure how I would proceed now. I hope decision makers have access to much more information than we have.


----------



## Flamme

I dont really watch the news but I caught on some deomestic tv that officials informed the public that 1st cases appeared in dorms and that the number of cases in general is on the rise...


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> Yes, I've been a bit surprised that opinions are so certain. The issue is enormously complicated with significant uncertainties.


Opinions (around here anyway) are often quite certain, even when the facts are unclear. 

Anyway, once we start contesting "good" vs "bad" public policy, for instance regarding lockdown rules, we're clearly talking politics. To that extent, it can't be avoided.


----------



## Flamme

Im actually a bit surprised that gov allows such info 2 get into public because we are scheduled 2 have elections on 21 of june and the ruling party does everything it can to maintain the picture of ''normality'' 4 them 2 go ahead...Who knows, maybe a different agenda is on table now...


----------



## Open Book

DaveM said:


> As someone else said: excellent article. A must read especially for those who still think that this is just equivalent to a bad flu. It also gives a broad perspective which IMO serves as presenting good reasons why those in countries or areas within countries where the virus hasn't hit as hard should be careful about coming to broad conclusions about whether lockdowns were necessary.


Some people who think this is a bad flu are going to think so regardless of what they read. It says more about them than the evidence. It's a mental state that isn't swayed by evidence.

Of course a lot still isn't certain about the virus. Sometimes there is conflicting evidence from different quarters. It's still early.


----------



## Open Book

Christabel said:


> *Public policy is very definitely politics*. One of my children works for our Australian PM *at the very highest level* and he grapples with this fact daily. Conservatives want business up and running and to save the economy and jobs; those on the Left want a long shutdown with the taxpayer footing the bill for the economic and social damage - no matter how mild or extreme the cases of Covid-19 and in what demographic. Our government has said we are looking down the barrel of a 30 years payback for these loans; a 'gift' which will be inherited by two generations. This is the crucible of politics AND public policy and I hasten to add that not all of our states (in our Federation) agree about this public policy either.
> 
> My argument has always been that the opportunity cost of saving the lives of the mostly-elderly is just too onerous on everybody else. By all means isolate the vulnerable and try and protect them but if this ball keeps rolling what next? What else are we expected to 'save' the people from, or 'protect' them in the normal course of the act of living in a globalized, shrinking world of disease and economic turbulence.


Christabel, do you believe in opening up to the extent as things were before, in normal times? Or do you accept opening up with social distancing practices, which will cut into businesses' profits since they will not be able to service as many people and may have to spend more to enforce social distancing?

If the former is done locally to you, will you yourself be going out and dining in restaurants and attending live entertainment to stimulate the economy?

No one talks much about these policies and I haven't been able to get a straight answer from you as to whether you plan to stay sheltered or "get out there".


----------



## Kieran

Open Book said:


> Christabel, do you believe in opening up to the extent as things were before, in normal times? Or do you accept opening up with social distancing practices, which will cut into businesses' profits since they will not be able to service as many people and may have to spend more to enforce social distancing?
> 
> If the former is done locally to you, will you yourself be going out and dining in restaurants and attending live entertainment to stimulate the economy?
> 
> No one talks much about these policies and I haven't been able to get a straight answer from you has to whether you plan to stay sheltered or "get out there".


If I may answer this myself, I will be going to caffs and bars and adhering to social distancing, rather than avoiding them. I like caffs and bars, and I'm looking forward to socialising again. Now, there's an interesting thing here - people have fears that are reasonable and unreasonable in their every days lives. I have certain situations I fear - I fear physical violence, for example. I'm a coward if it comes to certain types of confrontation, I prefer to discuss than to argue. and I'm certainly not into brawling.

But I haven't been afraid of Covid. This isn't bravado, it's just it hasn't struck fear in me the way it has in others. I'm not reckless, I don't go looking for it, but I have a good immune system, I'm never sick (touch wood) and I haven't had any anxious episodes with regards to the virus - even when I was in Italy just before they locked everybody down, I went about my business more or less as normal, with a few precautions. And I'll do the same when they reopen, trusting that restaurants and pubs have put into place a system that can cope with customers...


----------



## Luchesi

Kieran said:


> If I may answer this myself, I will be going to caffs and bars and adhering to social distancing, rather than avoiding them. I like caffs and bars, and I'm looking forward to socialising again. Now, there's an interesting thing here - people have fears that are reasonable and unreasonable in their every days lives. I have certain situations I fear - I fear physical violence, for example. I'm a coward if it comes to certain types of confrontation, I prefer to discuss than to argue. and I'm certainly not into brawling.
> 
> But I haven't been afraid of Covid. This isn't bravado, it's just it hasn't struck fear in me the way it has in others. I'm not reckless, I don't go looking for it, but I have a good immune system, I'm never sick (touch wood) and I haven't had any anxious episodes with regards to the virus - even when I was in Italy just before they locked everybody down, I went about my business more or less as normal, with a few precautions. And I'll do the same when they reopen, trusting that restaurants and pubs have put into place a system that can cope with customers...


"But I haven't been afraid of Covid. This isn't bravado, it's just it hasn't struck fear in me the way it has in others. I'm not reckless, I don't go looking for it, but I have a good immune system, I'm never sick (touch wood)..."

Read some of the descriptions and testimonials by MDs and psychiatrists (in their 30s) who have come down with the disease and are still suffering, unable to work months later. It's scary.


----------



## Flamme

I hear the treatment with ventilatros and other stuff can be such a strain on lungs and body in general...


----------



## Kieran

Luchesi said:


> "But I haven't been afraid of Covid. This isn't bravado, it's just it hasn't struck fear in me the way it has in others. I'm not reckless, I don't go looking for it, but I have a good immune system, I'm never sick (touch wood)..."
> 
> Read some of the descriptions and testimonials by MDs and psychiatrists (in their 30s) who have come down with the disease and are still suffering months later. It's scary.


I've read them, I've read testimonials, and even today I was chatting to the kid at the till in the supermarket and he was telling me about the horrible time his uncle had of it. Believe me, I'm not looking to catch this, and I'm not being in any way reckless, but I don't fear it, and so when they say the bars are open, and there are guidelines for cafes to follow, etc, I won't stay away, I'll go where I want to go...


----------



## Flamme

Meanwhile in ''Mother Russia''... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52875568


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> I've read them, I've read testimonials, and even today I was chatting to the kid at the till in the supermarket and he was telling me about the horrible time his uncle had of it. Believe me, I'm not looking to catch this, and I'm not being in any way reckless, but I don't fear it, and so when they say the bars are open, and there are guidelines for cafes to follow, etc, I won't stay away, I'll go where I want to go...


Indeed, I agree entirely. I'm aware that if I came down with Covid-19 I might be unlucky, and it could go very badly. Equally, tomorrow I could notice a symptom of something which turns out to be cancer or MS or lupus or whatever, and that would be horrible too. I can't live my life by focusing on the worst possible outcomes. Clearly the probabilities vary, but that is all that they are: probabilities. I operate on the basis that I should not magnify my risks (or those of others), so I wash my hands a lot and don't touch things unnecessarily and don't go into congested spaces unless it is necessary, but I have to get on with my life at the same time, or what's the point of living?

I see this current crisis as a problem for those running governments and for public health professionals, but not particularly for me. I just have to live my life in the world as I find it, and accept the outcomes that arise.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> Indeed, I agree entirely. I'm aware that if I came down with Covid-19 I might be unlucky, and it could go very badly. Equally, tomorrow I could notice a symptom of something which turns out to be cancer or MS or lupus or whatever, and that would be horrible too. I can't live my life by focusing on the worst possible outcomes. Clearly the probabilities vary, but that is all that they are: probabilities. I operate on the basis that I should not magnify my risks (or those of others), so I wash my hands a lot and don't touch things unnecessarily and don't go into congested spaces unless it is necessary, but I have to get on with my life at the same time, or what's the point of living?
> 
> I see this current crisis as a problem for those running governments and for public health professionals, but not particularly for me. I just have to live my life in the world as I find it, and accept the outcomes that arise.


Exactly. And I respect people who have fears around this, because the virus is real, and it can be nasty. But I haven't caught the bug of fear that surrounds it. Everybody is different. I booked a trip to Rome today, for July. I'll go if there are no quarantine issues either end. If there are, no matter, I won't go. And for the record, I supported the lockdown for the purpose it had, which was to stop our hospitals being overrun. Now that they're more or less under control, I support the easing of the lockdown, and the opening of businesses, bookshops, retail in general - and pubs and caffs...


----------



## DaveM

Kieran said:


> I've read them, I've read testimonials, and even today I was chatting to the kid at the till in the supermarket and he was telling me about the horrible time his uncle had of it. Believe me, I'm not looking to catch this, and I'm not being in any way reckless, but I don't fear it, and so when they say the bars are open, and there are guidelines for cafes to follow, etc, I won't stay away, I'll go where I want to go...


That's a rather mixed message. Mainly, I find a conflict in terms between 'I don't fear it', 'I'm not reckless' and 'I'll go where I want to go.' Personally, I start with the premise that I fear it which means that I have a lot of respect for what can happen if I get it given that there's no treatment for it. I feel like I have as effective an immune system as the average person, but I know from all the experience we have with the virus after 4 months that even if it doesn't kill you, there is the chance that you'll have chronic complications which we still don't know whether they are temporary or permanent. Yes, if I get it , I might have minimal or no symptoms, but that is Russian roulette. I don't like playing Russian roulette. 

On the other hand, I don't fear the flu because I know that if I get the vaccine annually, make sure I've had the pneumococcal vaccine(s) and make sure I have one of the 3 available antivirals for it if I do get it, I'll more than likely be okay. I have none of those alternatives with Clovid-19.

I'm particularly surprised that you're ready to go to bars or pubs so quickly. How does one social distance at a pub or bar? And since they are all about the social experience, I can't say I would enjoy wearing a mask there.


----------



## Art Rock

Breaking news in a Dutch newspaper: Researchers at the Imperial College London have run model studies based on actual data, which suggest that without the lockdowns in Europe alone over three million people more would have died than actually did.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Kieran said:


> Exactly. And I respect people who have fears around this, because the virus is real, and it can be nasty. But I haven't caught the bug of fear that surrounds it. Everybody is different. I booked a trip to Rome today, for July. I'll go if there are no quarantine issues either end. If there are, no matter, I won't go. And for the record, I supported the lockdown for the purpose it had, which was to stop our hospitals being overrun. Now that they're more or less under control, I support the easing of the lockdown, and the opening of businesses, bookshops, retail in general - and pubs and caffs...


Sorry if this seems like a bit of a mutual adoration society!  However, the argument advanced in the UK for the original lockdown was identical: "protect the NHS", and as a result save lives. Since then the capacity to cope within the NHS has been magnified massively, and there is no reasonable prospect that we will run out of healthcare capacity. Nevertheless the message has drifted into a broader one suggesting that every death from Covid-19 is avoidable somehow. Well (i) they're not, and (ii) if we focus solely on those then there is the risk that other causes of death will be downplayed and the overall consequence of the policy position will be negative.

I have a flight to Tenerife booked in August (having had a trip there in March, and one to Budapest in May, cancelled). I will be staggered, and very disappointed, if I can't get to the Canaries in a couple of months' time. I genuinely wish to support the economy in Tenerife (where I go frequently), and I hope they want me to do so. They need my spending, and I need their culture and weather.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> Sorry if this seems like a bit of a mutual adoration society!  However, the argument advanced in the UK for the original lockdown was identical: "protect the NHS", and as a result save lives. Since then the capacity to cope within the NHS has been magnified massively, and there is no reasonable prospect that we will run out of healthcare capacity. Nevertheless the message has drifted into a broader one suggesting that every death from Covid-19 is avoidable somehow. Well (i) they're not, and (ii) if we focus solely on those then there is the risk that other causes of death will be downplayed and the overall consequence of the policy position will be negative...


If the NHS is up to speed now why should treating the virus vs. appropriately managing other 'causes of death' be mutually exclusive?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Art Rock said:


> Breaking news in a Dutch newspaper: Researchers at the Imperial College London have run model studies based on actual data, which suggest that without the lockdowns in Europe alone over three million people more would have died than actually did.


Well. I don't have access to their detailed modelling, but somehow I am not surprised that ICL supports that line; who would be surprised by that? If they didn't support it then how would their senior academic staff protect their reputations in academic journals?

As background, I spent my working life in the commercial world, but am now drifting into retirement by pursuing a PhD. I have never seen anything like the world of academia in terms of nothing mattering apart from protecting one's own reputation. I can't say I'm particularly surprised by that, but it does make me take anything coming out of universities with a pinch of salt, unless it is embarrassing for the people publishing it.


----------



## Kieran

DaveM said:


> That's a rather mixed message. Mainly, I find a conflict in terms between 'I don't fear it', 'I'm not reckless' and 'I'll go where I want to go.' Personally, I start with the premise that I fear it which means that I have a lot of respect for what can happen if I get it given that there's no treatment for it. I feel like I have as effective an immune system as the average person, but I know from all the experience we have with the virus after 4 months that even if it doesn't kill you, there is the chance that you'll have chronic complications which we still don't know whether they are temporary or permanent. Yes, if I get it , I might have minimal or no symptoms, but that is Russian roulette. I don't like playing Russian roulette.
> 
> On the other hand, I don't fear the flu because I know that if I get the vaccine annually, make sure I've had the pneumococcal vaccine(s) and make sure I have one of the 3 available antivirals for it if I do get it, I'll more than likely be okay. I have none of those alternatives with Clovid-19.
> 
> I'm particularly surprised that you're ready to go to bars or pubs so quickly. How does one social distance at a pub or bar? And since they are all about the social experience, I can't say I would enjoy wearing a mask there.


There's no conflict between saying I respect something and saying I don't fear it. If I take precautions, they're sensible and wise ones, taken with a practical view that I don't want to catch Covid. But, I don't fear it, and I can't explain that in any clearer way than to state it. I fear other things that people who face the worst of them don't fear. But this one hasn't made me jittery. Do I become reckless in the face of it? Not at all. I keep my distance, I wash my hands. I trust the guidelines, and I also accept that I may still catch it. But I can't pretend a fear I don't have, and I can't live as though every minute is my last. I know people who are using alcoholic wipes on their groceries when they get home. I don't disagree with them, and if they have to do that, they have to do that. And when bars and cafes open, they'll open under conditions and so I'll be happy to go there. In fact, I look forward to it. I thought our local caff would open yesterday but the owner called and said she's waiting for a plumber. That's okay, I'll go when they're ready...


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> If the NHS is up to speed now why should treating the virus vs. appropriately managing other 'causes of death' be mutually exclusive?


What they have done is prioritised Covid-19 over everything else. No surprise there. Just before lockdown I had a social meal with a university friend who is a senior kidney consultant in London. His major concern was that his patients would suffer massively, because of challenges in them getting their dialysis or delays in transplants, etc. Since then we have seen many stories of delays in cancer screening, heart interventions, etc. Now I have no way of knowing whether trading deferral of one type of intervention for prioritising other matters is a good call or not - but it has certainly happened. Maybe it is the correct call, but it is not a call without losers.


----------



## Flamme

Hospitals in my country were terribly understaffed even b4 virus but now its complete chaois...World cannot live like this...With a threat hagning over like a sword over our heads...For a long time.


----------



## Kieran

Eclectic Al said:


> I have a flight to Tenerife booked in August (having had a trip there in March, and one to Budapest in May, cancelled). I will be staggered, and very disappointed, if I can't get to the Canaries in a couple of months' time. I genuinely wish to support the economy in Tenerife (where I go frequently), and I hope they want me to do so. They need my spending, and I need their culture and weather.


I agree with all your post, but this part here I agree with, and wish to comment on. because I've seen a lot of Irish people chant the mantra that we should all stay at home for holidays this year, support the local economy, etc. I sympathise with some of this, in principle, but of course, I think it's unfair to tell people what they should or shouldn't do for their holidays. I've had my holidays in Sicily booked since February, and I'm hoping to go, and partly for the same reason you state, which is I want to support the economy and people there - it'll be my 7th visit to the same town in 5 years, and I'd have gone another time this summer but for Covid. I've made friends there and we keep in touch the year round. Likewise, in Rome.

Also, Ireland isn't a cheap holiday. I've heard horror stories from pals who'd book a cottage in Donegal for themselves and the kids for a week, it piddled rain the whole time - and they could have gone to Spain or Italy for TWO weeks at half the price. I'm not into being ripped off, and I love the heat, so I'll travel foreign again, if quarantine isn't an issue...


----------



## Kieran

A fairly dramatic intervention by 1000 scientists in Ireland, questioning the relaxing of the lockdown, and suggesting that if we just persevere for a few more weeks, we'll "eliminate the virus" from the island.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hea...WMFHj0Ddwp7iDCVVnVOfsz---w-pS4eeoO1cHXSJalaZI

I suppose the article highlights not only the division within the science community on how best to advise the governments, but also the difficulties governments face in trying to keep the populace safe, while also looking to move on from this...


----------



## DaveM

Kieran said:


> A fairly dramatic intervention by 1000 scientists in Ireland, questioning the relaxing of the lockdown, and suggesting that if we just persevere for a few more weeks, we'll "eliminate the virus" from the island.
> 
> https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hea...WMFHj0Ddwp7iDCVVnVOfsz---w-pS4eeoO1cHXSJalaZI
> 
> I suppose the article highlights not only the division within the science community on how best to advise the governments, but also the difficulties governments face in trying to keep the populace safe, while also looking to move on from this...


Has there been any difference between the way the governments of Northern Ireland (local or regional government that is) and Ireland have handled this? Has there been major cooperation between them?


----------



## KenOC

Says Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit:

“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual. It’s very rare.”


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

The WHO is now saying that asymptomatic spreading of the coronavirus is "very rare."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-patients-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Great minds read alike.


----------



## Kieran

DaveM said:


> Has there been any difference between the way the governments of Northern Ireland (local government that is) and Ireland have handled this? Has there been major cooperation between them?


They have to a large extent, but of course, our government have our own timetable on lockdowns, and when they should ease, and but the Northern Ireland Assembly (their devolved govt within the UK) are more or less mirroring this, since the experience is also similar. So their lockdown eases from today also, and retail will be back on Friday, I think.

By the way, they have their second day in a row without deaths:

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0608/1146068-northern-ireland-covid19-coronavirus/


----------



## EdwardBast

Kieran said:


> I've read them, I've read testimonials, and even today I was chatting to the kid at the till in the supermarket and he was telling me about the horrible time his uncle had of it. Believe me, I'm not looking to catch this, and I'm not being in any way reckless, but I don't fear it, and so *when they say the bars are open, and there are guidelines for cafes to follow, etc, I won't stay away, I'll go where I want to go...*


That's fine, but if there is outdoor seating and the weather is good, that is always going to be safer.


----------



## Kieran

Kieran said:


> A fairly dramatic intervention by 1000 scientists in Ireland, questioning the relaxing of the lockdown, and suggesting that if we just persevere for a few more weeks, we'll "eliminate the virus" from the island.
> 
> https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hea...WMFHj0Ddwp7iDCVVnVOfsz---w-pS4eeoO1cHXSJalaZI
> 
> I suppose the article highlights not only the division within the science community on how best to advise the governments, but also the difficulties governments face in trying to keep the populace safe, while also looking to move on from this...


Now, having looked closer at the link supplied within this article, I see that the "1000 scientists" who signed the letter maybe an exaggeration. Among the list of signatories are several teachers, a pensions portfolio manager, some bloke who works in retail fashion, a wine and food expert, some students, and so on. There are scientists and doctors listed too, perhaps there are over 1000 signatures but in expertise, not all carry the same levity as an expert in retail fashion, when it comes to advising the government on Covid.

http://crushthecurve.ie/


----------



## Kieran

EdwardBast said:


> That's fine, but if there is outdoor seating and the weather is good, that is always going to be safer.


Absolutely, that would be the preferable, and I agree with DaveM when he asks how they can open a pub and keep it safe. In Ireland, there are a lot of snugs and cozy spaces in pubs, tight areas which are generally not a problem, but they'll face a task in reducing numbers to make sure it's safe.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> It has been explained here many times, that the dilemma between economy vs lives is a false one. Sweden did not lock down and its economy suffers too. And don't worry about debt, Australia will be unlivable in a generation or two thanks to climate change. Mad Max is the future.


I'm betting you don't have a business, capital at risk or are responsible for the economic security of employees. Talk is so cheap. And as for this country being unlivable; why are so many thousands desperate to emigrate here? I thought politics wasn't allowed here, yet you get a free pass to make an incoherent swipe about 'climate change'. This is my point, and it's been my point all along. OK for some, but not for free thinkers and economic progressives. That won't help you win anything because the people who have the money are still going to be calling the shots. Without them the private sector doesn't function, governments don't get tax and services and welfare are drastically cut. The long term consequences of debt are in evidence every day in the USA; the loss of the middle class. The loss of cultural and economic hegemony. Do some reading, man. Start with Economics 101.

In Australia our suicide rate has climbed dramatically since the lockdown and attendant business failures. So, it's far from a false 'dilemma'. You'd have to have skin in the game to understand any of it and I'm betting you don't. In attempting to solve one problem (Coronavirus) twenty more have been created. Those sheltered on the public purse (for now, since governments will be forced to slash and burn without revenue) won't understand a scintilla of it.

Talking about this or that percentage of Covid-19 sufferers and the likelihood of herd immunity and how many days and how many weeks and how many people; it's deckchair arrangement on the 'Titanic'. As is a vaccine at this time. Get the people back to work. NOW. Especially when mass gatherings in the public square are possible but people returning to work is not!!

Are you not in the least concerned about what is happening to the classical music scene?


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> OK, sorry. I realize that people look at the term, policy, in differing ways. Perhaps many view policy as the thing that politicians do. I look at policy as a potential method to reach a specified goal. I work very closely with policy analysts. My work informs and evaluates potential policies, and I think most people would view my work as technical analysis rather than politics. Basically policy analysis asks what will be the effect of various policies and which policies including specified parameters will enable certain goals.
> 
> So yes, policy informs politics, and politicians decide which policies to push or enact. But policies themselves can be evaluated without politics. More importantly, policies _can be discussed without reference to politics_.
> 
> Christabel has helped with a nice example of a comment both provocative and political:
> 
> Discussions of policies related to Covid-19 that do not explicitly invoke politics could, for example:
> 
> - talk about studies of the economic effects of Sweden's polices relative to Norway's and Denmark's.
> 
> - discuss the likelihood of future infections or deaths after lifting the non-pharmaceutical interventions like sheltering-in-place (NPIs)
> 
> - discuss the effect of NPIs on job loss
> 
> - discuss variations of NPIs including ones that would be less invasive
> 
> We are simply asking that people discuss Covid-19 and related policies without explicitly trying to include politics.


Oh, these are very very specific descriptions of what can be said - chapter and verse. I've deviated from that. Well, we definitely don't want people bringing in new ideas or going off piste.


----------



## elgar's ghost

EdwardBast said:


> That's fine, but if there is outdoor seating and the weather is good, that is always going to be safer.


Agreed - but that probably won't appeal much to the more ardent non-smokers, though.


----------



## Guest

@mmsbls:

My child in politics deals with policy analysts every day but in the political party and within the public service, primarily. The balancing act is deciding what to discard and what to keep: what opportunity cost is bearable and which not? And, like politicians, policy analysts often get it wrong. Finally, what is politically tenable and what is not may have nothing to do with policy analysis but everything to do with the restive attitude of the people. We discussed this only yesterday over lunch; the dance of the state to the tune of noisy vested interest groups. When politicians respond to the noise they're ridiculed; when they ignore the noise they're ridiculed. 

Meantime, people are really suffering right now having lost businesses they've invested in over many years of hard graft. And they're angry about it - and I don't blame them!! It brings despair and depression and the ripple affect of this on society and families is yet to be realized. It just cannot simply be just about Covid-19 since an economy, like a fragile ecosystem, is very interconnected to the society at large. I'm betting the Chinese understand this, big time.

Parliament resumes in Australia for the first time since March; my child is in the air headed to Canberra as I write this. We fully expect this week a vigorous discussion about debt and deficit, welfare and trade. All of these things heightened on steroids because of Covid-19.


----------



## Open Book

Eclectic Al said:


> Indeed, I agree entirely. I'm aware that if I came down with Covid-19 I might be unlucky, and it could go very badly. Equally, tomorrow I could notice a symptom of something which turns out to be cancer or MS or lupus or whatever, and that would be horrible too. I can't live my life by focusing on the worst possible outcomes.


Yeah, but cancer and lupus are not preventable. Sure, cancer could be caused by contributing factors you maybe could have prevented, but it takes years of certain conditions to develop; it's not something you can get from one unlucky trip to the pub.

I keep asking myself what is something worth to me. I'd love to go to certain places I'm avoiding. I'm tempted to go to the supermarket and get the food I've been craving that isn't available online. But is that one stupid trip worth it if it's the one that causes me to catch the virus and maybe spread it to my loved ones?


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> ...I keep asking myself what is something worth to me. I'd love to go to certain places I'm avoiding. I'm tempted to go to the supermarket and get the food I've been craving that isn't available online. But is that one stupid trip worth it if it's the one that causes me to catch the virus and maybe spread it to my loved ones?


It's a numbers game. Do you avoid that trip to the market because a careless driver may run into your car and kill you?


----------



## Open Book

KenOC said:


> It's a numbers game. Do you avoid that trip to the market because a careless driver may run into your can and kill you?


It is indeed a numbers game. And I don't believe auto accidents are entirely preventable. Sometimes you're just unlucky while in a car no matter what you do.

Unlike with an auto accident, the added thing about spreading the disease to others is what gives me extra incentive to avoid catching it. That's what this whole thing is about. It's not just about me. It's doing my part to prevent its spread. If I lived alone I would take more chances.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> It's a numbers game. Do you avoid that trip to the market because a careless driver may run into your car and kill you?


You are suggesting a comparison that may work for you living where you do, but everyone isn't so lucky. In New York State there are circa 1100 annual deaths from traffic accidents. On the other hand, there are presently 600-800 deaths a day from Covid-19 and 2000 new cases per day.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> It's a numbers game. Do you avoid that trip to the market because a careless driver may run into your car and kill you?


It's just awful living in fear. What was it FDR once said?


----------



## Open Book

Christabel said:


> It's just awful living in fear. What was it FDR once said?


When are you going to quit dodging my question? Or are you living in fear of it?

Are you sheltering or are you going out to eat, shop, and be entertained?


----------



## Open Book

DaveM said:


> You are suggesting a comparison that may work for you living where you do, but everyone isn't so lucky. In New York State there are circa 1100 annual deaths from traffic accidents. On the other hand, there are presently 600-800 deaths a day from Covid-19 and 2000 new cases per day.


Actually, that's not what the New York Times is showing for New York. Have you seen their numbers lately? Under 2000 cases in the last few weeks and trending downward. Under 200 deaths daily for the last three weeks. Or do you have another source?

But it's a testament to the effectiveness of whatever they've been doing there to get the numbers down because they were terrible.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronavirus-cases.html


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> When are you going to quit dodging my question? Or are you living in fear of it?
> 
> Are you sheltering or are you going out to eat, shop, and be entertained?


I didn't see your question; it's business as usual for us and we've eaten out yesterday. Waiting for the borders to Western Australia to be open in order to fly over there and see our family in Perth.

Australia has low rates of Covid-19 and our people are furious that the borders remain closed and billions of dollars of airline hardware remains stranded in remote Australia. Catastrophic. We'll have no economy at all if we don't get cracking soon. Virgin Australia has gone to the wall already and circa 3,500 people have lost their jobs already. For a death toll of 105/24.5 million.

New Zealand has ZERO cases now (they never really had many to start with) and they've already said Air New Zealand will be irrevocably altered (see below). The country is still closed; we were told this was about 'flattening the curve' and now it's morphed into 'zero cases'. This in today's "Australian" newspaper: headline "Air New Zealand Facing New Cuts". (This is a country of 5 million people, much of its revenue derived from tourism!!)

_Air New Zealand has set a goal of reducing its wages bill by another $NZ150m ($140m) as part of an 800-day plan to return to profit by 2022.

CEO Greg Foran has outlined to the New Zealand Securities Exchange his vision for the airline, following his first 100 days at the helm which he quipped "had not gone entirely as expected".

He said by the time annual results were delivered in late August 2022, he hoped to report a return to healthy profits even though Air New Zealand may be 70 per cent of its pre-COVID size.

"We can see an Air New Zealand of 2022 that is flying about 13 million customers annually versus almost 18 million pre-COVID-19," Mr Foran said.

"We will be highly efficient and operate fewer wide body aircraft. The good news is that Air New Zealand could be more profitable in the future than before, allowing us to start reinvesting in our customer experience."

Further job cuts seemed likely on top of the 4000 redundancies already announced, with Mr Foran launching a plan to remove an additional $140m from the airline's wages bill._

(I don't see permanent job losses as any kind of win; merely symptomatic of a war of attrition.)


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> Actually, that's not what the New York Times is showing for New York. Have you seen their numbers lately? Under 2000 cases in the last few weeks and trending downward. Under daily 200 deaths for the last three weeks. Or do you have another source?
> 
> But it's a testament to the effectiveness of whatever they've been doing there to get the numbers down because they were terrible.
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronavirus-cases.html


3-month graphs of daily new cases and deaths in New York can be seen *here*, near the bottom of the page. Deaths are lately running at well under 100 a day.


----------



## DaveM

My New York numbers were inaccurate for the present (they were valid not long ago). My apologies. The worldometer site for New York State says, as of today, circa 1024 new cases and an average of about 70 deaths/day over the last 5 days. Those numbers are not as dramatic as my previous inaccurate ones, but the annual deaths from traffic accidents in New York State still pale in comparison to the deaths from the virus occurring even at present so I stand by my original point that one has to be careful about generalizing comparisons of mortality from Covid-19 with other things that can kill us.

Edited to give more accurate average daily deaths.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> ... so I stand by my original point that one has to be careful about generalizing comparisons of mortality from Covid-19 with other things that can kill us.


Generalizations are, indeed, odious. And sometimes the numbers themselves turn into politically contentious issues. I understand that Brazilian President Bolsonaro has ordered that cumulative coronavirus counts *no longer be reported*. His stance (if I may paraphrase) is, "Stand up, like a man, and take it!"


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

KenOC said:


> Generalizations are, indeed, odious. And sometimes the numbers themselves turn into politically contentious issues. I understand that Brazilian President Bolsonaro has ordered that cumulative coronavirus counts *no longer be reported*. His stance (if I may paraphrase) is, "Stand up, like a man, and take it!"


I prefer, "Stand it like a man, and give some back."


----------



## science

The logic of criticisms of the lockdown seems to be that since the lockdowns have reduced deaths (as in NYC), they're useless because the deaths went down. 

Okay.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Generalizations are, indeed, odious. And sometimes the numbers themselves turn into politically contentious issues. I understand that Brazilian President Bolsonaro has ordered that cumulative coronavirus counts *no longer be reported*. His stance (if I may paraphrase) is, "Stand up, like a man, and take it!"


I wouldn't say odious because you can generalize and say 'most Australian people are happy'. That isn't odious; it might be misguided or even untrue, or even true, but odious it is not. In recent time generalizations have been a huge part of the political mix; identity politics, the lot.

"Stand it like a man?". Hey, that's SEXIST!!


----------



## Guest

science said:


> The logic of criticisms of the lockdown seems to be that since the lockdowns have reduced deaths (as in NYC), they're useless because the deaths went down.
> 
> Okay.


That's straight casuistry. The lockdowns have worked and now they're useless because they're killing something else; the economy.


----------



## science

Christabel said:


> That's straight casuistry. The lockdowns have worked and now they're useless because they're killing something else; the economy.


So you were previously supportive? And now you support ... what? Just going back to regular life and whoever dies, dies?


----------



## Open Book

KenOC said:


> 3-month graphs of daily new cases and deaths in New York can be seen *here*, near the bottom of the page. Deaths are lately running at well under 100 a day.


You know what's weird, though? Using just the Worldometer data the daily cases and daily deaths curves peaked two months ago. Since then, except for a couple of stray spikes, these numbers have been coming way down.

Why then hasn't the number of active cases in New York dropped much? This number is what you want to see dropping. It's finally reaching something like a plateau but I would have expected this to happen much sooner.

Are people typically sick for almost two months with this disease?


----------



## Open Book

Christabel said:


> I didn't see your question; it's business as usual for us and we've eaten out yesterday. Waiting for the borders to Western Australia to be open in order to fly over there and see our family in Perth.
> 
> Australia has low rates of Covid-19 and our people are furious that the borders remain closed and billions of dollars of airline hardware remains stranded in remote Australia. Catastrophic. We'll have no economy at all if we don't get cracking soon. Virgin Australia has gone to the wall already and circa 3,500 people have lost their jobs already. For a death toll of 105/24.5 million.
> 
> New Zealand has ZERO cases now (they never really had many to start with) and they've already said Air New Zealand will be irrevocably altered (see below). The country is still closed; we were told this was about 'flattening the curve' and now it's morphed into 'zero cases'. This in today's "Australian" newspaper: headline "Air New Zealand Facing New Cuts". (This is a country of 5 million people, much of its revenue derived from tourism!!)
> 
> _Air New Zealand has set a goal of reducing its wages bill by another $NZ150m ($140m) as part of an 800-day plan to return to profit by 2022.
> 
> CEO Greg Foran has outlined to the New Zealand Securities Exchange his vision for the airline, following his first 100 days at the helm which he quipped "had not gone entirely as expected".
> 
> He said by the time annual results were delivered in late August 2022, he hoped to report a return to healthy profits even though Air New Zealand may be 70 per cent of its pre-COVID size.
> 
> "We can see an Air New Zealand of 2022 that is flying about 13 million customers annually versus almost 18 million pre-COVID-19," Mr Foran said.
> 
> "We will be highly efficient and operate fewer wide body aircraft. The good news is that Air New Zealand could be more profitable in the future than before, allowing us to start reinvesting in our customer experience."
> 
> Further job cuts seemed likely on top of the 4000 redundancies already announced, with Mr Foran launching a plan to remove an additional $140m from the airline's wages bill._
> 
> (I don't see permanent job losses as any kind of win; merely symptomatic of a war of attrition.)


I thought you were ignoring me because I asked about three times and once you answered questions by others around me but not me. It is easy to miss replies here, though, and I miss things myself.

Australia has a much smaller problem than New York state, which is of comparable population. Maybe I can see how you feel the way you do. The problem must seem so distant to you. At least for now. What's appropriate for the U.S. may not be appropriate for Australia.

Don't knock zero deaths. Any nation that achieves that can at least potentially keep it that way, but probably not a country that depends on tourism like New Zealand.


----------



## DaveM

Christabel said:


> That's straight casuistry..


Such a big word. Too bad it's inappropriately applied.

And btw, the 'generalizations' KenOC was talking about were in relation to my post that he was replying to. You, of course, decided to use the term on a totally unrelated subject as if you hadn't bothered to read my post where the term first came from.


----------



## KenOC

Open Book said:


> You know what's weird, though? Using just the Worldometer data the daily cases and daily deaths curves peaked two months ago. Since then, except for a couple of stray spikes, these numbers have been coming way down.
> 
> Why then hasn't the number of active cases in New York dropped much? This number is what you want to see dropping. It's finally reaching something like a plateau but I would have expected this to happen much sooner.
> 
> Are people typically sick for almost two months with this disease?


This seems true pretty much across the board. I have been assuming that there is no effective mechanism for clearing cases (aside from deaths) and so the "active case" counts remain elevated.

In my county, on its Covid-19 site, the number of hospitalizations tracks pretty well with new cases, so I assume that people are being regularly discharged. But I don't know how or whether those discharges are being reported to sites that aggregate the data.


----------



## mrdoc

Open Book said:


> Don't knock zero deaths. Any nation that achieves that can at least potentially keep it that way, but probably not a country that depends on tourism like New Zealand.


NZ has had deaths but we have just gone 17 days without a new case of covid19 so we are down to level1 where the only restrictions are on any people people wanting to come in we can only wait and see what happens.


----------



## Mandryka

science said:


> The logic of criticisms of the lockdown seems to be that since the lockdowns have reduced deaths (as in NYC), they're useless because the deaths went down.
> 
> Okay.


What's happening in places where the lockdown has been eased, like in France. Are we seeing an increase in deaths? If the lockdown was effective, would we expect to see an increase of deaths?

Clearly if you lock down then you're going to reduce the risk of vulnerable people catching the disease. But who can say who's vulnerable and who isn't? Yes, elderly people should be cautious and so should those with some preexisting conditions. But behind this, is there any reason to confine?


----------



## Guest

Mandryka said:


> What's happening in places where the lockdown has been eased, like in France. Are we seeing an increase in deaths? If the lockdown was effective, would we expect to see an increase of deaths?
> 
> Clearly if you lock down then you're going to reduce the risk of vulnerable people catching the disease. But who can say who's vulnerable and who isn't? Yes, elderly people should be cautious and so should those with some preexisting conditions. But behind this, is there any reason to confine?


The main purpose of the lockdowns was to halt the rapid spread, which threatened to overwhelm the health care system. If lockdown is released with social distancing precautions and intense public awareness that they have to isolate themselves if there is any hint they are sick, etc, the disease can proceed as a slow burn, rather than an explosion. Everyone will get it eventually, but not all at once. Maybe in a few years there will be a vaccine, but I don't count on it.


----------



## Art Rock

Baron Scarpia said:


> Everyone will get it eventually, but not all at once.


There's also the factor that experts think there's a relationship between the amount of the virus you ingest and how sick you get (not surprisingly). Social distancing and preventing larger gatherings may not eliminate the chance that you get the virus, but it will help reduce the amount of virus you get and hence the consequences.


----------



## Guest

It the U.S., it seems that states that "reopen" experience an increase in the number of new cases appearing. Texas current is at the highest level of new cases per day it has seen. Maybe there is some hope that the new case number, though high, will not increase exponentially as it was before the shutdowns. We will see.


----------



## science

Open Book said:


> The problem must seem so distant to you. At least for now.


That's what everything seems to come down to.


----------



## science

Baron Scarpia said:


> It the U.S., it seems that states that "reopen" experience an increase in the number of new cases appearing. Texas current is at the highest level of new cases per day it has seen. Maybe there is some hope that the new case number, though high, will not increase exponentially as it was before the shutdowns. We will see.


The one factor that is a little bit of a reason for hope is that a lot of people are still voluntarily doing things like wearing masks, working from home, and so on. What we'll be seeing is if there are enough responsible people to counteract the ones pushing us all toward the cliff.


----------



## mmsbls

Christabel said:


> @mmsbls:
> 
> My child in politics deals with policy analysts every day but in the political party and within the public service, primarily. The balancing act is deciding what to discard and what to keep: what opportunity cost is bearable and which not? And, like politicians, policy analysts often get it wrong. Finally, what is politically tenable and what is not may have nothing to do with policy analysis but everything to do with the restive attitude of the people. We discussed this only yesterday over lunch; the dance of the state to the tune of noisy vested interest groups. When politicians respond to the noise they're ridiculed; when they ignore the noise they're ridiculed.


This situation is extraordinarily complex and difficult to assess. The group I work in has been asked by automakers and energy companies to help them understand the effect of Covid on transportation. We have ideas, but no one really has a good sense. Transportation is much easier to assess than health and economics so I'm sure there will be mistaken analyses. I agree that being a politician is hard, and being one during Covid is close to impossible.



Christabel said:


> Meantime, people are really suffering right now having lost businesses they've invested in over many years of hard graft. And they're angry about it - and I don't blame them!! It brings despair and depression and the ripple affect of this on society and families is yet to be realized. It just cannot simply be just about Covid-19 since an economy, like a fragile ecosystem, is very interconnected to the society at large. I'm betting the Chinese understand this, big time.
> 
> Parliament resumes in Australia for the first time since March; my child is in the air headed to Canberra as I write this. We fully expect this week a vigorous discussion about debt and deficit, welfare and trade. All of these things heightened on steroids because of Covid-19.


People worry about the economy and about their own or their loved ones' lives. There seem to be no good solutions - only ones that have fewer negative consequences. Most people seem to focus either on the disease or the economic consequences, but I agree, and have posted, that in theory society must try to assess both the economic and mortality/morbidity outcomes from potential policies to understand which ones have the best overall outcomes.

Your post was addressed to me, but it seemed fairly general. Was there some reason in particular you mentioned me?


----------



## mmsbls

There is a new study that assesses the effect of anti-contagion policies enacted in 6 countries. They conclude that such policies reduced 60 million infections in the US and 530 million infections total in the 6 countries (China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the US) compared to never enacting anti-contagion policies. They do not attempt to estimate the number of deaths reduced and state that assessing such outcomes may require additional modeling approaches. The period of analysis ends at March 6 in CHina and early April for most of the other countries.


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> There is a new study that assesses the effect of anti-contagion policies enacted in 6 countries. They conclude that such policies reduced 60 million infections in the US and 530 million infections total in the 6 countries (China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the US) compared to never enacting anti-contagion policies. They do not attempt to estimate the number of deaths reduced and state that assessing such outcomes may require additional modeling approaches. The period of analysis ends at March 6 in CHina and early April for most of the other countries.


A separate study in Nature estimates circa 3 million deaths prevented in 11 European countries, about 1/2 million of those in the U.K., as a result of the various lockdowns & anti-contagion policies.


----------



## science

Millions of lives saved. In a way, it's inspiring, actually.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> This situation is extraordinarily complex and difficult to assess. The group I work in has been asked by automakers and energy companies to help them understand the effect of Covid on transportation. We have ideas, but no one really has a good sense. Transportation is much easier to assess than health and economics so I'm sure there will be mistaken analyses. I agree that being a politician is hard, and being one during Covid is close to impossible.
> 
> People worry about the economy and about their own or their loved ones' lives. There seem to be no good solutions - only ones that have fewer negative consequences. Most people seem to focus either on the disease or the economic consequences, but I agree, and have posted, that in theory society must try to assess both the economic and mortality/morbidity outcomes from potential policies to understand which ones have the best overall outcomes.
> 
> Your post was addressed to me, but it seemed fairly general. Was there some reason in particular you mentioned me?


I was just picking up on a comment you'd made in an earlier posting. In terms of the disease I see the glass half full; huge strides being made since the Spanish Flu after WW1 and countless lives saved. The natives are growing restless in Australia to get back to work. We want planes flying, people operating restaurants and hotels and at least a functioning international airport. Our stock market has recovered 35% since March lows but I feel this is just part of the giddying cycle of instability which will be a feature of the ensuing months. Even our parliament has only had 2 or 3 sitting days with half the members in the chambers since March. The bear pit has resumed this week but we want our PM to tell the States to 'open up them pearly gates'!!

I don't see 'fewer negative consequences' as outcomes on closed economy, particularly with our present suicide rates. There already has been a spike owing to the nationwide drought of the last years; men are 4 times more likely to kill themselves and they're doing just that. So much of what men do for a living actually defines who they are, unlike women who have other means of self-definition. Ergo, take away the business and the success and they slide into despair. This is an unacceptable outcome and cannot continue. I have very personal reasons for having this concern but won't say any more about this.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> There is a new study that assesses the effect of anti-contagion policies enacted in 6 countries. They conclude that such policies reduced 60 million infections in the US and 530 million infections total in the 6 countries (China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the US) compared to never enacting anti-contagion policies. They do not attempt to estimate the number of deaths reduced and state that assessing such outcomes may require additional modeling approaches. The period of analysis ends at March 6 in CHina and early April for most of the other countries.


I scanned this, and had some concerns about the approach, but thought there may be some interesting nuggets.

The bit of the methodology which worried me particularly is "Intuitively, each administrative unit observed just prior to a policy deployment serves as the "control" for the same unit in the days after it receives a policy "treatment"." The authors recognise, of course, the blatant howler in this approach and say "A necessary condition for this association to be interpreted as the plausibly causal effect of these policies is that the timing of policy deployment is independent of infection growth rates. This assumption is supported by established epidemiological theory and evidence which indicate that infections in the absence of policy will grow exponentially early in the epidemic, implying that pre-policy infection growth rates should be constant over time and therefore uncorrelated with the timing of policy deployment. Further, scientific guidance to decision-makers early in the current epidemic explicitly projected constant growth rates in the absence of anti-contagion measures, limiting the possibility that anticipated changes in natural growth rates affected decision-making. In practice, policies tended to be deployed in response to high total numbers of cases (e.g. in France), in response to outbreaks in other regions (e.g. in China, South Korea, and Iran), after delays due to political constraints (e.g. in the US and Italy), and often with timing that coincided with arbitrary events, like weekends or holidays."

Essentially the problem is that the researchers want to justify the idea that changes in outcomes after a policy action will be primarily due to the policy action, whereas it is not impossible (unlikely?) that other matters cause policy actions to tend to come in at a time when change in outcomes was likely to occur anyway because of the detailed nature of the contagion or because of spontaneous behavioural changes in response to the situation. To be fair to the authors, I think they only want to achieve this because otherwise their modelling is not really worth doing and they have no paper, not because they are seeking to manipulate the findings (- they just want to have some findings!), and they also acknowledge that the extent of behavioural change not driven by the policies is a challenge to their findings: "It is also possible that changing public knowledge during the period of our study affects our results. If individuals alter behaviour in response to new information unrelated to anti-contagion policies, such as seeking out online resources, this could alter the growth rate of infections and thus affect our estimates. If increasing availability of information reduces infection growth rates, it would cause us to overstate the effectiveness of anti-contagion policies." I know that well in advance of lockdown in the UK my own behaviour and that of others that I encountered had already changed markedly: this is a major issue with their approach.

Now I would not seek to challenge the general thesis that the policy actions are likely to have reduced infection rates (which is what the authors are modelling). However, I don't think that is particularly interesting, because it beggars belief that there wouldn't be such an effect, especially with their methodology.

What is more interesting is any assistance the paper provides in judging which may have been the most effective policy actions. China seems a bit different (and I can't be bothered to unravel what are described as Emergency Declarations), but the main actions in terms of effectiveness might appear to be bans on gatherings and rules of social distancing. Travel bans might achieve something, but that seemed perhaps to make less difference if other factors were also at play. It is difficult to separate some actions though because different policies often get introduced simultaneously.

So perhaps where we end up is don't have large gatherings and keep your distance.


----------



## Jacck

mmsbls said:


> There is a new study that assesses the effect of anti-contagion policies enacted in 6 countries. They conclude that such policies reduced 60 million infections in the US and 530 million infections total in the 6 countries (China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the US) compared to never enacting anti-contagion policies. They do not attempt to estimate the number of deaths reduced and state that assessing such outcomes may require additional modeling approaches. The period of analysis ends at March 6 in CHina and early April for most of the other countries.


Personally, I don't have much trust in such papers. Generally, to prove something like that, we would need 50 states with measures and 50 states without measures, and control for all confounding factors etc, to have a really sound reliable result. In analyses like this, there are too many assumptions. Personally I do believe that the measures do work, but I am sceptical it can be quantified, because no one actually knows the alternate history. It is the same problem with the global warming studies - too many assumptions, which makes the papers not much more than educated guesses.


----------



## Room2201974

My brother in law works at an "elderly care facility." I sent him an email that said, "You have nothing to fear but fear itself." He sent me back a picture of him giving me the middle finger. Ah, inlaws - social distancing for decades now!


----------



## Mandryka

mmsbls said:


> There is a new study that assesses the effect of anti-contagion policies enacted in 6 countries. They conclude that such policies reduced 60 million infections in the US and 530 million infections total in the 6 countries (China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the US) compared to never enacting anti-contagion policies. They do not attempt to estimate the number of deaths reduced and state that assessing such outcomes may require additional modeling approaches. The period of analysis ends at March 6 in CHina and early April for most of the other countries.


Forgive me if this is a silly question, but are they assuming that the infections would have continued to grow exponentially had there been no government interventions? Rather than have run out of fuel?


----------



## mmsbls

Mandryka said:


> Forgive me if this is a silly question, but are they assuming that the infections would have continued to grow exponentially had there been no government interventions? Rather than have run out of fuel?


No. If you look at Figure 4 in the paper, you can see that the red curves, which represent infections without policy interventions, all turn over and are far from exponential.


----------



## pianozach

Speculation.

Love it.


----------



## mmsbls

Eclectic Al said:


> The bit of the methodology which worried me particularly is "Intuitively, each administrative unit observed just prior to a policy deployment serves as the "control" for the same unit in the days after it receives a policy "treatment"." The authors recognise, of course, the blatant howler in this approach ...


I would have said the authors recognize the potential uncertainty in this approach. The suggestion that this is a blatant howler goes against everything I know about scientific research and peer review.



Eclectic Al said:


> Essentially the problem is that the researchers want to justify the idea that changes in outcomes after a policy action will be primarily due to the policy action, whereas it is not impossible (unlikely?) that other matters cause policy actions to tend to come in at a time when change in outcomes was likely to occur anyway because of the detailed nature of the contagion or because of spontaneous behavioural changes in response to the situation.


Well, it's not that researchers "want" to justify their methodology. Suspect methodologies generally are rejected by reviewers. I'm not an epidemiologist, but I've often been surprised when talking to researchers in other fields by how much they know about issues that appear very uncertain to me.



Eclectic Al said:


> ...they also acknowledge that the extent of behavioural change not driven by the policies is a challenge to their findings: "It is also possible that changing public knowledge during the period of our study affects our results. If individuals alter behaviour in response to new information unrelated to anti-contagion policies, such as seeking out online resources, this could alter the growth rate of infections and thus affect our estimates. If increasing availability of information reduces infection growth rates, it would cause us to overstate the effectiveness of anti-contagion policies." I know that well in advance of lockdown in the UK my own behaviour and that of others that I encountered had already changed markedly: this is a major issue with their approach.


I agree that changes in public actions independent of policy adds uncertainty. I am not qualified to assess whether it is a major issue. You changed your actions, but I'd be rather surprised if an appreciable number of people would have significantly changed their actions without governmental policies before the effects modeled in the paper were already essentially locked in.



Eclectic Al said:


> What is more interesting is any assistance the paper provides in judging which may have been the most effective policy actions.


It's possible their assessment of specific policies is the most valuable aspect of the paper.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> No. If you look at Figure 4 in the paper, you can see that the red curves, which represent infections without policy interventions, all turn over and are far from exponential.


That's another doubt I had about this modelling because in one sense they seem to be trying to downplay any sense that they have any a priori epidemiological view about the progression of the disease (with or without policy interventions), whereas in order to project forwards what might have happened without the actual interventions (or indeed with any different interventions) they need at least some minimal modelling assumptions. There seems to be a little more theory and a little less pure empiricism in their paper than they wish to indicate.

As I noted in my earlier post, though, it did seem like an interesting paper, and maybe it is providing some pointers to which might be the more effective interventions. I was less convinced that they were convincing in claiming to be able to quantify actual policy impacts.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> I would have said the authors recognize the potential uncertainty in this approach. The suggestion that this is a blatant howler goes against everything I know about scientific research and peer review.
> 
> .


Sorry, you missed my point. I was saying that there would have been a howler except that they picked up on the assumption which they were making. I even quoted at length the passage where they addressed the issue. Even the quote you make of my remarks states that the authors recognise the howler - that is the whole point of their following remarks (which I quoted).

I thought my remarks were very fair to the authors. They acknowledged that their calculations depended on their assumption about independence, and also that behavioural change which might have occurred without the policy change was an issue that their approach could not readily separate out from the policy change itself. The reviewers must have judged that the paper had merit nevertheless, and I would agree with them. It is only if the authors had not acknowledged this issue that I would have been critical.


----------



## DaveM

Regarding the paper mmsbls referenced: of course, any model on this subject would have potential sources of inaccuracies. For all we know, the authors may have grossly underestimated the benefits of the lockdowns and anti-contagion measures.


----------



## mmsbls

Jacck said:


> Personally, I don't have much trust in such papers. Generally, to prove something like that, we would need 50 states with measures and 50 states without measures, and control for all confounding factors etc, to have a really sound reliable result. In analyses like this, there are too many assumptions. Personally I do believe that the measures do work, but I am sceptical it can be quantified, because no one actually knows the alternate history. It is the same problem with the global warming studies - too many assumptions, which makes the papers not much more than educated guesses.


I have more trust than you. I think you mean that with more active samples and more controls the uncertainty would be smaller. I agree. Even with a million perfect samples, nothing would be proven, but the uncertainty would be reduced (assuming a proper methodology and data collection). Of course it can be quantified within uncertainties. That quantification can be wrong. Models can be enormously useful tools, but their effectiveness depends on how well they describe reality. Usually modelers take care to calibrate and verify their models to some degree (sometimes incredibly precisely). I believe that climate change and epidemiology models are vastly different from educated guesses.


----------



## mmsbls

Eclectic Al said:


> That's another doubt I had about this modelling because in one sense they seem to be trying to downplay any sense that they have any a priori epidemiological view about the progression of the disease (with or without policy interventions), whereas in order to project forwards what might have happened without the actual interventions (or indeed with any different interventions) they need at least some minimal modelling assumptions. There seems to be a little more theory and a little less pure empiricism in their paper than they wish to indicate.
> 
> As I noted in my earlier post, though, it did seem like an interesting paper, and maybe it is providing some pointers to which might be the more effective interventions. I was less convinced that they were convincing in claiming to be able to quantify actual policy impacts.


I assume that essentially all epidemiological theory is empirically based like every other science I know. Epidemiologists have studied infectious diseases for a very long time and presumably have an enormous amount of data to inform their models. The models have parameters that must be measured in particular cases, and I assume the authors used the best measurements of those parameters that they could get. Obviously there are uncertainties. I have relatively little idea how the uncertainties in basic model structure or input parameters will effect results.


----------



## EdwardBast

Open Book said:


> You know what's weird, though? Using just the Worldometer data the daily cases and daily deaths curves peaked two months ago. Since then, except for a couple of stray spikes, these numbers have been coming way down.


I'm looking at the same graphs and seeing it differently. In fact the new case and death rates were virtually level until a month ago. Those "stray spikes," as you call them, balanced the low points below the plateau level.


----------



## mmsbls

Eclectic Al said:


> Sorry, you missed my point. I was saying that there would have been a howler except that they picked up on the assumption which they were making. I even quoted at length the passage where they addressed the issue. Even the quote you make of my remarks states that the authors recognise the howler - that is the whole point of their following remarks (which I quoted).


OK, I thought, by howler, you meant a stupid, glaring mistake. Whether the authors picked up on it or not, would not effect whether it was a stupid mistake. I understand that you are using howler to mean something like an assumption that is not verified.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> .. but I'd be rather surprised if an appreciable number of people would have significantly changed their actions without governmental policies before the effects modeled in the paper were already essentially locked in.


This is the one point where I do disagree with you.

February: I was on holiday in Tenerife and people were already clearing hand sanitiser off supermarket shelves and wearing masks. We had a meeting with someone, in connection with building work, and he came into the house only after asking if we wanted him to wear a mask. He also asked if we were willing to shake hands. In general we were maintaining our distance. We returned on 1 March. No rules had been imposed there at this stage, nor in the UK.
March: On the 19th we went for a short trip to Lancashire. We asked the people running the self-catering site if they were still accepting visitors, because we thought they might not be. People were distancing themselves very clearly. We did not go to any pub or restaurant - I can't recall if any were open at that stage - I think they may already have mainly closed); we self-catered entirely. It was already recommended that we only took essential journeys, and we had asked ourselves whether ours was. For a number of reasons we thought it was - for example, we brought a child of a friend back from university (having discussed the issue with his parents), and we thought long and hard about whether to do so, because that meant having him in the car. I put some of his luggage in the car, and sanitised my hands afterwards. I also had something to collect up there, and there was sanitiser in the waiting room, and material distancing in place. The supermarkets were also similar. We stocked up on various items, and indeed stockpiling was already an issue with shortages of toilet rolls, limitation of purchases of essential items, etc, etc. When we drove back home the motorway was very quiet indeed - quickest journey ever! I then went to shops to stock up on things, and they were again very conscious of distancing. We returned on the 22nd.

This was all before Boris' speech on March 23 and the formal lockdown that followed. The government had given guidance on 16 March, and that had been enough to make massive changes in behaviour prior to the implementation of formal controls. Everyone we knew was behaving in a similar fashion.


----------



## Flamme

Most ppl I talk with dont really disinfect everything like they did during the lockdowns...I still do, with 75 % alcohol when I get back from the ''Ourtside''...These protests in western world are a MAJOR breach of quarantine measures yet I hear only crickets when it comes 2 them and silly statements like ''tear gas spreads covid19''...I mean cmon...


----------



## EdwardBast

Room2201974 said:


> My brother in law works at an "elderly care facility." I sent him an email that said, "You have nothing to fear but fear itself." He sent me back a picture of him giving me the middle finger. Ah, inlaws - social distancing for decades now!


Knowing people who work in such facilities, I'm with your brother in law. In addition to any fears the rest of us might face, the nurses I know live with the fear that any carelessness on their part might result in someones mother or father dying alone and in misery.


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> I believe that climate change and epidemiology models are vastly different from educated guesses.


I find myself, somewhat unusually, more in Jacck's camp on this one.

Topics like climate change and the modelling of epidemics are ones where modelling is especially difficult. They are seeking to model chaotic systems with substantial feedback features and non-linearities, and where in addition much of the background science is not well understood at a detailed level.

If you then associate that with the lack of any possibility to repeat the experiment (as you cannot rerun the world) all you have is a model which can be calibrated as best you can and then run. This will give rise to outputs, in the form of a collection of simulations. So you have thousands of possible futures, and you can attempt to compare these with .... what exactly? Even if you attempted to apply your model to data which is 5 years old, and used it to predict the situation now, and even if you found that your simulations were centred around the actual situation now, you would still have little reason to believe that what it says about the situation 5 years in the future has any great meaning.

OK, perhaps I'm being a little harsh. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just less negative about using educated guesses to guide actions. I happen to think they are all we have, but we still have to base our actions on something, so maybe it makes little difference in the end whether your relative confidence or my relative doubt are more soundly based.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> This is the one point where I do disagree with you.
> 
> February: I was on holiday in Tenerife and people were already clearing hand sanitiser off supermarket shelves and wearing masks. We had a meeting with someone, in connection with building work, and he came into the house only after asking if we wanted him to wear a mask. He also asked if we were willing to shake hands. In general we were maintaining our distance. We returned on 1 March. No rules had been imposed there at this stage, nor in the UK.
> 
> [etc]


Yes, the same where I was. On 26 Feb, I played a quiz league tie and startled the opposition - and my own team too I think - by offering to shake hands at the end.

Checking my WhatsApp chats for late Feb and early March, we were full of handwashing, stockpiling, government advice. We live in the west and travelled to the east coast for house hunting - roads quieter, motorway service station on the evening of our return was empty, people already trying to avoid close contact. Sons working from home or on furlough by 20 March.


----------



## mmsbls

Eclectic Al said:


> I find myself, somewhat unusually, more in Jacck's camp on this one.
> 
> Topics like climate change and the modelling of epidemics are ones where modelling is especially difficult. They are seeking to model chaotic systems with substantial feedback features and non-linearities, and where in addition much of the background science is not well understood at a detailed level.
> 
> If you then associate that with the lack of any possibility to repeat the experiment (as you cannot rerun the world) all you have is a model which can be calibrated as best you can and then run. This will give rise to outputs, in the form of a collection of simulations. So you have thousands of possible futures, and you can attempt to compare these with .... what exactly? Even if you attempted to apply your model to data which is 5 years old, and used it to predict the situation now, and even if you found that your simulations were centred around the actual situation now, you would still have little reason to believe that what it says about the situation 5 years in the future has any great meaning.
> 
> OK, perhaps I'm being a little harsh. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just less negative about using educated guesses to guide actions. I happen to think they are all we have, but we still have to base our actions on something, so maybe it makes little difference in the end whether your relative confidence or my relative doubt are more soundly based.


First, neither of us are experts on epidemiological models so we're fairly ignorant of the uncertainties associated with these models. I can't definitively argue that the uncertainties are small enough to have high confidence in the results.

I would say that the background science for both is reasonably well understood (possibly more for climate change but maybe I just know more about that than epidemiology). Further, in an important sense one can "rerun the world". Climate change modelers take great pains to look at past warming and cooling periods to calibrate and verify their models. I assume that epidemiologists look at past pandemics and outbreaks to collect data and check models. Again, I know more about climate change and how they check models, and possibly epidemiologists can't get the same level of data from past infection outbreaks.

As I mentioned, I have always been surprised at how scientists in other fields can obtain information relevant to their field when it seems very hard to do. Still, all of this is outside my area of expertise so I can't speak with much confidence.


----------



## science

They missed the opportunity to title this article "Say It Don't Spray It" but it's somehow interesting anyway.

Vice: Does Speaking Japanese Lower The Risk of Spreading Coronavirus?


----------



## Eclectic Al

mmsbls said:


> First, neither of us are experts on epidemiological models so we're fairly ignorant of the uncertainties associated with these models. I can't definitively argue that the uncertainties are small enough to have high confidence in the results.
> 
> I would say that the background science for both is reasonably well understood (possibly more for climate change but maybe I just know more about that than epidemiology). Further, in an important sense one can "rerun the world". Climate change modelers take great pains to look at past warming and cooling periods to calibrate and verify their models. I assume that epidemiologists look at past pandemics and outbreaks to collect data and check models. Again, I know more about climate change and how they check models, and possibly epidemiologists can't get the same level of data from past infection outbreaks.
> 
> As I mentioned, I have always been surprised at how scientists in other fields can obtain information relevant to their field when it seems very hard to do. Still, all of this is outside my area of expertise so I can't speak with much confidence.


You see I have the opposite experience. Whenever I have encountered people who might be expected to have a sound basis for their projections I am surprised by how little substance there seems to be.

I take no confidence from back testing of things like climate change or pandemic models, because the systems being modelled are too chaotic and little understood to provide any confidence that the key drivers are being captured. The likely non-linearities and feedback characteristics of such models mean that getting the inputs "about right" does not imply that the outputs will be "about right", but you will never do a better job than getting the inputs "about right", if that.

In the example of climate change, for example, that might be encouraging on the basis that negative feedback will damp down variations in underlying input parameters, or scary in that positive feedback might mean that a small change has massive consequences for the outcomes. What it does imply, though, is that the models are largely meaningless. The argument for taking actions to limit climate change does not derive from thinking we know what will happen if we don't control the apparently important inputs; it derives from the idea that we kind of like the way things are now, so lets try not to rock the boat too much. That's about it. We're a bit off topic now though. :lol:


----------



## Guest

science said:


> They missed the opportunity to title this article "Say It Don't Spray It" but it's somehow interesting anyway.
> 
> Vice: Does Speaking Japanese Lower The Risk of Spreading Coronavirus?


What a fascinating article, thank you for posting that.
There was one phrase in the article that made me smile: that singing is "a kind of loud, prolonged talking". I'll be mentioning that to the singers in my harmony classes when (if) we next meet up in September.


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## Room2201974

EdwardBast said:


> Knowing people who work in such facilities, I'm with your brother in law. In addition to any fears the rest of us might face, the nurses I know live with the fear that any carelessness on their part might result in someones mother or father dying alone and in misery.


And now the W.H.O. is walking back yesterday faster than a DeLorean with a flux capacitor. 

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/who...s-disease-experts-not-accurate-193933330.html


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

Room2201974 said:


> And now the W.H.O. is walking back yesterday faster than a DeLorean with a flux capacitor.
> 
> https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/who...s-disease-experts-not-accurate-193933330.html


I think the largest, most glaring fatality of this pandemic is the credibility of the WHO. Exactly why should we give a rat's *** about anything they say? If the current batch of people were in charge decades ago, we'd still be seeing smallpox outbreaks.


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## mmsbls

Room2201974 said:


> And now the W.H.O. is walking back yesterday faster than a DeLorean with a flux capacitor.
> 
> https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/who...s-disease-experts-not-accurate-193933330.html


As usual, these type of issues are complicated. Dr. Kerkhove described results from a couple of studies that followed asymptomatic individuals to see if they transmit the disease. She stated that asymptomatic individuals rarely transmit the disease. Others pushed back saying asymptomatic individuals can, in fact, transmit. The problem is that there are three specific groups lumped together as asymptomatic - true asymptomatics (never develop symptoms), presymptomatics (presently don't have symptoms but will later develop them), and paucisymptomatics (have atypical or very mild symptoms).

The latter two are known to be able to transmit, but data from studies not addressed by Dr. Kerkhove (in Taiwan and the first European transmission chain in Germany) also suggest that true asymptomatics do not transmit. She clarified that she was discussing results from those two studies which may have followed true asymptomatics.

She probably should have been clearer in her original discussion especially since most people will take a statement from the WHO as truth rather than a description of a pair of studies, but as far as I can tell, she may not have said anything incorrect.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> I think the largest, most glaring fatality of this pandemic is the credibility of the WHO. Exactly why should we give a rat's *** about anything they say? If the current batch of people were in charge decades ago, we'd still be seeing smallpox outbreaks.


These international, unaccountable, boondoggles (WHO, UN) have well exceeded their use-by date. They've been looking the other way for too long at both, but the WHO is so blinded by Chinese patronage that they serve little useful purpose. Bloated officials in sinecures.


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> My brother in law works at an "elderly care facility." I sent him an email that said, "You have nothing to fear but fear itself." He sent me back a picture of him giving me the middle finger. Ah, inlaws - social distancing for decades now!


That's right; hardly anybody ever visits these unfortunate people in these care homes. Last time I had to visit one (palliative care for my father) the sad folks sat around the rooms like wallflowers at a dance; only this was a sullen dance of family abandonment. But we need to preserve their lives so they can continue to be miserable (because somebody young and healthy says so).


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

mmsbls said:


> As usual, these type of issues are complicated. Dr. Kerkhove described results from a couple of studies that followed asymptomatic individuals to see if they transmit the disease. She stated that asymptomatic individuals rarely transmit the disease. Others pushed back saying asymptomatic individuals can, in fact, transmit. The problem is that there are three specific groups lumped together as asymptomatic - true asymptomatics (never develop symptoms), presymptomatics (presently don't have symptoms but will later develop them), and paucisymptomatics (have atypical or very mild symptoms).
> 
> The latter two are known to be able to transmit, but data from studies not addressed by Dr. Kerkhove (in Taiwan and the first European transmission chain in Germany) also suggest that true asymptomatics do not transmit. She clarified that she was discussing results from those two studies which may have followed true asymptomatics.
> 
> She probably should have been clearer in her original discussion especially since most people will take a statement from the WHO as truth rather than a description of a pair of studies, but as far as I can tell, she may not have said anything incorrect.


That may all be true - but then it makes this all that much more inexcusable. They claim the title of World Health Organization. When presidents don't heed their words, they are criticized. They are supposed to be the global experts. For an organization with that much power, and that levies as much criticism against foreign leaders as they do*, more is expected of them. How many times do we have to have explained to us how they misspoke, or didn't mean to say it the way they did, or whatever other ex post facto explanation they have to issue, before they just lose all credibility? People lose confidence in organizations when organizations repeatedly demonstrate that they aren't quite the experts that they want us all to believe they are.

*with the exception of China.


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## mmsbls

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> That may all be true - but then it makes this all that much more inexcusable. They claim the title of World Health Organization. When presidents don't heed their words, they are criticized. They are supposed to be the global experts. For an organization with that much power, and that levies as much criticism against foreign leaders as they do*, more is expected of them. How many times do we have to have explained to us how they misspoke, or didn't mean to say it the way they did, or whatever other ex post facto explanation they have to issue, before they just lose all credibility? People lose confidence in organizations when organizations repeatedly demonstrate that they aren't quite the experts that they want us all to believe they are.
> 
> *with the exception of China.


I don't know much about the WHO's actions both positive or negative. Have they often shown that they are not expert in their field? I guess the question then would be whom should the world believe?


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

mmsbls said:


> I don't know much about the WHO's actions both positive or negative. Have they often shown that they are not expert in their field? I guess the question then would be whom should the world believe?


Aye, there's the rub. I would say we should weigh all of the information in the balance - and quit trashing anybody that dares not bow to the expertise of any one of these organizations. The truth is likely to be only where multiple organizations overlap in their assessment. Sadly, I don't think we should trust the WHO as an over-arching authority. Or the CDC.

This whole pandemic has not clothed the WHO in glory. Going back to their parroting talking points fed them by the Chinese government that there was no evidence of person-to-person spread, to their ignoring Taiwan and their early warnings (and even their failure to recognize Taiwan - at the behest of the Chinese government - did you not see the video of the WHO official dodging questions from a Taiwanese reporter, and refusing to even say "Taiwan?"). Their criticism of Trump's restrictions on travel from China? They only recently (how many months into the pandemic are we?) recommended the use of masks.


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## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> That's right; hardly anybody ever visits these unfortunate people in these care homes. Last time I had to visit one (palliative care for my father) the sad folks sat around the rooms like wallflowers at a dance; only this was a sullen dance of family abandonment. But we need to preserve their lives so they can continue to be miserable (because somebody young and healthy says so).


Too bad your first album, _Empathy Is For Sissies_ didn't sell well, but then again I could have told you that "Youth In Asia" wasn't a good name for a rock band. Maybe you could tour Australian nursing homes and spread some Covid to put those folks out of their misery. There are still a few living members of 7th Division left to be lowered into the ground.


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## mmsbls

My understanding was that the WHO and CDC were the most authoritative organizations. If we don't trust them, who do we trust? It's fine to say that they've made some political mistakes and some substantive mistakes, but are there other groups with similar expertise that could substitute for the important tasks that the WHO and CDC do?


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> My understanding was that the WHO and CDC were the most authoritative organizations. If we don't trust them, who do we trust? It's fine to say that they've made some political mistakes and some substantive mistakes, but are there other groups with similar expertise that could substitute for the important tasks that the WHO and CDC do?


That would be up to individual nations *and the trust that exists between them in DEMOCRACIES*. Those supranational organizations are not accountable to any government or other authority. The level of mistrust of them is extremely high. And this is why the people of the UK gave the heave-ho to the EU. Precisely for this reason. Australia is tired of being dictated to by the UN and won't listen to much of it; this same organization which wanted Saudi Arabia on it's womens' rights committee!! Next they'll be organizing grants for driving schools for Saudi Arabian women!!


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## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Too bad your first album, _Empathy Is For Sissies_ didn't sell well, but then again I could have told you that "Youth In Asia" wasn't a good name for a rock band. Maybe you could tour Australian nursing homes and spread some Covid to put those folks out of their misery. There are still a few living members of 7th Division left to be lowered into the ground.


Take the rest of the week off!!!!


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## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> Take the rest of the week off!!!!


Aye, aye Captain, but I must limit it to a day:


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## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> My understanding was that the WHO and CDC were the most authoritative organizations. If we don't trust them, who do we trust? It's fine to say that they've made some political mistakes and some substantive mistakes, but are there other groups with similar expertise that could substitute for the important tasks that the WHO and CDC do?


There's no doubt that the WHO made mistakes and the CDC bungled the initial testing, but I'm troubled by the extreme to which they are judged. I don't believe the WHO intended to be a shill of China. More likely it's sin was naivety in not understanding that the physicians and scientists there may have had figurative guns to their heads when making statements that might reflect negatively on the country.

Likewise, while the CDC screwed up on the initial testing, I think that, overall, they do good work. There are physicians and scientists there that could make a lot more money in the private sector and they don't have a political agenda.

I would also add that it seems that, overall, on all things having to do with this pandemic, people are far more interested in criticizing than giving the benefit of the doubt regardless of their education on the subject.


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## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Aye, aye Captain, but I must limit it to a day:


Nurse: he's out of bed again!!!


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

DaveM said:


> There's no doubt that the WHO made mistakes and the CDC bungled the initial testing, but I'm troubled by the extreme to which they are judged. I don't believe the WHO intended to be a shill of China. More likely it's sin was naivety in not understanding that the physicians and scientists there may have had figurative guns to their heads when making statements that might reflect negatively on the country.
> 
> Likewise, while the CDC screwed up on the initial testing, I think that, overall, they do good work. There are physicians and scientists there that could make a lot more money in the private sector and they don't have a political agenda.
> 
> I would also add that it seems that, overall, on all things having to do with this pandemic, people are far more interested in criticizing than giving the benefit of the doubt regardless of their education on the subject.


The defense of the WHO and their relationship with China is . . , Maybe they didn't know that the authoritarian country that sends Muslim minorities to reeducation camps might act in an authoritarian way? It doesn't have anything to do that the director general's home country, Ethiopia, gets a lot of money from China? And for all their mistakes, they don't hold back leveling criticism against others. And is their major concern health or politics - I'm not sure how denying the existence of Taiwan furthers world health, particularly in this case, when they ignored Taiwanese attempts to warn them that the info they were getting from China was wrong.


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## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> Nurse: he's out of bed again!!!


I detect a note of Kiwi Jealousy here, but I can understand why. They have no Covid cases currently and better songwriters! :guitar:


----------



## DaveM

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> The defense of the WHO and their relationship with China is . . , Maybe they didn't know that the authoritarian country that sends Muslim minorities to reeducation camps might act in an authoritarian way? It doesn't have anything to do that the director general's home country, Ethiopia, gets a lot of money from China?..


I don't think it's that simple. China has some excellent scientists and laboratories and there has been beneficial cooperation between them and western scientists for several years. I don't think the issue of Muslim minorities or any other of the atrocities that might be occurring in China was on the minds of the medical, epidemiological personnel of the WHO any more than it is on the minds of people from the west doing major business over there.

There has been nothing like this pandemic in the past that required trusting the medical/scientific community in China. There was no precedence for knowing that they would lie about something so important. My guess is that this was a teaching moment for a number of people at the WHO and they won't be making that mistake again.


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## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> I detect a note of Kiwi Jealousy here, but I can understand why. They have no Covid cases currently and better songwriters! :guitar:


Oh, I didn't know they had them in 'the facilities'!! Good one. Now go and have a nice rest.

As far as songwriters go, it's hard to beat this one:


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## Guest

DaveM said:


> I don't think it's that simple. China has some excellent scientists and laboratories and there has been beneficial cooperation between them and western scientists for several years. I don't think the issue of Muslim minorities or any other of the atrocities that might be occurring in China was on the minds of the medical, epidemiological personnel of the WHO any more than it is on the minds of people from the west doing major business over there.
> 
> There has been nothing like this pandemic in the past that required trusting the medical/scientific community in China. There was no precedence for knowing that they would lie about something so important. My guess is that this was a teaching moment for a number of people at the WHO and they won't be making that mistake again.


And China is actively bullying Australia because they called for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, told their students not to come to Australia to visit or study because of dangerous racism and they've put tariffs on our barley and meat products. Classic bullies of the type you expect with authoritarianism. The WHO gave them a get-out-of-jail-free card and refused to expect them to be accountable. This is why the WHO's reputation is in tatters. More transparency needed, but you only get that with democracy - or some semblance of it, at least.

The Chinese think they can treat the rest of the world like their own people. Well, thinking doesn't make it so. We need tough leadership to stare them, and international bullies in general, right down.


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## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> Oh, I didn't know they had them in 'the facilities'!! Good one. Now go and have a nice rest.
> 
> As far as songwriters go, it's hard to beat this one:


Not an Aussie!!!!!! Unlike my Kiwi example he kicked off due to syphilis. But hey, I wouldn't expect any empathy for ole Franz from you for his lack of social distancing. He could have just as well died of Covid. BTW, at what age do old people become the untermensch in Australia?


----------



## tortkis

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Aye, there's the rub. I would say we should weigh all of the information in the balance - and quit trashing anybody that dares not bow to the expertise of any one of these organizations. The truth is likely to be only where multiple organizations overlap in their assessment. Sadly, I don't think we should trust the WHO as an over-arching authority. Or the CDC.
> 
> This whole pandemic has not clothed the WHO in glory. Going back to their parroting talking points fed them by the Chinese government that there was no evidence of person-to-person spread, to their ignoring Taiwan and their early warnings (and even their failure to recognize Taiwan - at the behest of the Chinese government - did you not see the video of the WHO official dodging questions from a Taiwanese reporter, and refusing to even say "Taiwan?"). Their criticism of Trump's restrictions on travel from China? They only recently (how many months into the pandemic are we?) recommended the use of masks.


I agree that the WHO is untrustworthy. (I am not sure about the CDC.) Although Chinese doctors and Taiwan were warning human-to-human transmission of unknown disease as early as December 2019, the WHO didn't admit it until CCP confirmed human-to-human transmission cases and announced a quarantine of Wuhan late January. And this is what Tedros said on February 4th: "We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."



mmsbls said:


> My understanding was that the WHO and CDC were the most authoritative organizations. If we don't trust them, who do we trust? It's fine to say that they've made some political mistakes and some substantive mistakes, but are there other groups with similar expertise that could substitute for the important tasks that the WHO and CDC do?


Each country should collect information, investigate, consult with trustworthy countries, hear experts in the nation, and make decisions. Philip Lo, deputy director-general at the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, said "if we had followed guidance from the WHO, we would have fallen behind. We wanted to be on top of the virus's development right from the beginning."


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## KenOC

tortkis said:


> I agree that the WHO is untrustworthy. (I am not sure about the CDC.) Although Chinese doctors and Taiwan were warning human-to-human transmission of unknown disease as early as December 2019, the WHO didn't admit it until CCP confirmed human-to-human transmission cases and announced a quarantine of Wuhan late January...


Are you sure about this? To my memory, the disease was first noticed in Wuhan as a true cluster of cases about Dec. 30, seemingly closely associated with a specific wet market. There was an assumption that the disease was caught at the market, and a Chinese internal study published on or before Jan. 13 "found no evidence" of person-to-person transmission. The WHO reported on the study's findings about Jan. 14 and at the time had no evidence to the contrary. So they merely reported the findings of the Chinese study without endorsing those findings.

Even some time after that, Taiwan would have had little to offer because it had no direct experience with the disease. Its first case was noted on Jan. 21.

Aside from ham-handed efforts by local authorities to silence doctors such as Li Wenliang in early January, easily laid to the usual culprits of bureaucracy and incompetence, I remember nothing at that time to suggest more malign motives on the part of either China or the WHO.

I'm sure some here have noticed that the US has launched a full-scale cold war against China and unleashed a flood of virulent propaganda. I'm old enough to remember an issue of Time magazine in the mid-1950's dedicated solely to China, including stories about how the Chinese were grinding up their old folks as fertilizer on their communes. Will the good times roll again? And will we, again, believe all of it?


----------



## EdwardBast

________________________________


----------



## EdwardBast

DaveM said:


> There has been nothing like this pandemic in the past that required trusting the medical/scientific community in China. There was no precedence for knowing that they would lie about something so important. My guess is that this was a teaching moment for a number of people at the WHO and they won't be making that mistake again.


The CDC had a significant research presence in China, doctors and scientists cooperating on epidemiological issues (47 persons I believe) but in 2017 U.S. involvement was curtailed and the force cut down to 14. I wonder: Would having more trained ears on the ground there have meant less relying on trust and more verification? In any case, I can't imagine withdrawing from a project like that was in the national interest. That's where the pandemics have been starting after all.


----------



## DaveM

Now add an additional risk to having Covid-19: A recent study indicated that those patients who had the virus within 7 days before or 30 days after an elective or emergency had average mortality rates of 24%, rising to 38% if the patient had pulmonary complications.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> My understanding was that the WHO and CDC were the most authoritative organizations. If we don't trust them, who do we trust? It's fine to say that they've made some political mistakes and some substantive mistakes, but are there other groups with similar expertise that could substitute for the important tasks that the WHO and CDC do?


Surely the Grand Interweb of All Factual Knowledge is the most authoritative source? (FB, TC, Insta, Huff, Fox etc etc...)

Or, My Uncle Who Has A Niece Who Once Worked In A Pharmacy In China?

It's all very well criticising the WHO for not Telling Us What To Do sooner - but there's something to be said about the people to say it to Who Must Listen.

In other words, with the folks running the show (on whom these organisations depend for funding) having such a low opinion of anyone's expertise and authority but their own, getting them to take notice until American deaths were occurring on home soil was an unlikely prospect.

In the UK, remember, we'd just celebrated kicking out another supranational body because we wanted to Take Back Control. We were not going to listen to anyone else until the horrible truth started to leak out behind Johnson's vacuous administration.


----------



## Guest

Room2201974 said:


> Not an Aussie!!!!!! Unlike my Kiwi example he kicked off due to syphilis. But hey, I wouldn't expect any empathy for ole Franz from you for his lack of social distancing. He could have just as well died of Covid. BTW, at what age do old people become the untermensch in Australia?


Nurse!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> Surely the Grand Interweb of All Factual Knowledge is the most authoritative source? (FB, TC, Insta, Huff, Fox etc etc...)
> 
> Or, My Uncle Who Has A Niece Who Once Worked In A Pharmacy In China?
> 
> It's all very well criticising the WHO for not Telling Us What To Do sooner - but there's something to be said about the people to say it to Who Must Listen.
> 
> In other words, with the folks running the show (on whom these organisations depend for funding) having such a low opinion of anyone's expertise and authority but their own, getting them to take notice until American deaths were occurring on home soil was an unlikely prospect.
> 
> In the UK, remember, we'd just celebrated kicking out another supranational body because we wanted to Take Back Control. We were not going to listen to anyone else until the horrible truth started to leak out behind Johnson's vacuous administration.


This reminds of the man who had a next door neighbour who had a relative who worked for a butcher who sold meat for Hitler's poodle!!


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Are you sure about this? To my memory, the disease was first noticed in Wuhan as a true cluster of cases about Dec. 30, seemingly closely associated with a specific wet market. There was an assumption that the disease was caught at the market, and a Chinese internal study published on or before Jan. 13 "found no evidence" of person-to-person transmission. The WHO reported on the study's findings about Jan. 14 and at the time had no evidence to the contrary. So they merely reported the findings of the Chinese study without endorsing those findings.
> 
> Even some time after that, Taiwan would have had little to offer because it had no direct experience with the disease. Its first case was noted on Jan. 21.
> 
> Aside from ham-handed efforts by local authorities to silence doctors such as Li Wenliang in early January, easily laid to the usual culprits of bureaucracy and incompetence, I remember nothing at that time to suggest more malign motives on the part of either China or the WHO.
> 
> I'm sure some here have noticed that the US has launched a full-scale cold war against China and unleashed a flood of virulent propaganda. I'm old enough to remember an issue of Time magazine in the mid-1950's dedicated solely to China, including stories about how the Chinese were grinding up their old folks as fertilizer on their communes. Will the good times roll again? And will we, again, believe all of it?


I think they've replaced these practices with dog, bats, snakes, lizard and other delectable wildlife. Something like the bill of fare in Siberia? Not much disease will thrive in that climate:


----------



## tortkis

KenOC said:


> Are you sure about this? To my memory, the disease was first noticed in Wuhan as a true cluster of cases about Dec. 30, seemingly closely associated with a specific wet market. There was an assumption that the disease was caught at the market, and a Chinese internal study published on or before Jan. 13 "found no evidence" of person-to-person transmission. The WHO reported on the study's findings about Jan. 14 and at the time had no evidence to the contrary. So they merely reported the findings of the Chinese study without endorsing those findings.
> 
> Even some time after that, Taiwan would have had little to offer because it had no direct experience with the disease. Its first case was noted on Jan. 21.
> 
> Aside from ham-handed efforts by local authorities to silence doctors such as Li Wenliang in early January, easily laid to the usual culprits of bureaucracy and incompetence, I remember nothing at that time to suggest more malign motives on the part of either China or the WHO.
> 
> I'm sure some here have noticed that the US has launched a full-scale cold war against China and unleashed a flood of virulent propaganda. I'm old enough to remember an issue of Time magazine in the mid-1950's dedicated solely to China, including stories about how the Chinese were grinding up their old folks as fertilizer on their communes. Will the good times roll again? And will we, again, believe all of it?


December 1: The first coronavirus case now recognized by Chinese authorities is recorded in a Wuhan hospital.

December 6: The first suspected human-to-human transmission is recorded by Wuhan doctors. A patient is observed to have the virus but denies ever visiting the seafood market.

December 21: Wuhan doctors begin to notice a "cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause."

December 25: Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan are suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and are quarantined. This is additional strong evidence of human-to-human transmission.

December 31: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declares, "The investigation so far has not found any obvious human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infection."

December 31: Taiwanese public health officials warn the World Health Organization (WHO) that the virus is spreading between humans. The WHO never publicizes the warning.

January 11: The Wuhan City Health Commission issues an update declaring, ... no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found.

January 14: The World Health Organization echoes China's assessment: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China."

January 20: the head of China's national health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China's Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected.

January 23: Chinese authorities announce their first steps for a quarantine of Wuhan.

January 23: WHO: Human-to-human transmission is occurring


----------



## science

There had been some celebration of Elon Musk forcing the state to allow his factory to keep operating despite coronavirus. 

Act II opens with coronavirus cases discovered in his factory. 

In second wave news: I believe South Korea will have over 1000 active cases by the end of the day, for the first time since May 13th. They also had another death today, ending a 6-day streak with no deaths.


----------



## KenOC

"China and Russia were blamed for spewing out false and misleading online information about Covid-19 in a European Union report that seeks to stem the 'unprecedented' spread of fake news amid the pandemic."

Unfortunately there seems to be only one specific in this article: "The EU's findings on China and Russia are based on a separate study by the commission's foreign and diplomatic wing, which said it had evidence of a 'coordinated push' by official Chinese sources to deflect blame for the coronavirus pandemic and promote its response to the virus."

Well, that's hardly surprising. And the second part of the "push" is hard to argue with given China's Covid-19 case rates.

The Bloomberg article is *here*.


----------



## pianozach

tortkis said:


> December 1: The first coronavirus case now recognized by Chinese authorities is recorded in a Wuhan hospital.
> 
> December 6: The first suspected human-to-human transmission is recorded by Wuhan doctors. A patient is observed to have the virus but denies ever visiting the seafood market.
> 
> December 21: Wuhan doctors begin to notice a "cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause."
> 
> December 25: Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan are suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and are quarantined. This is additional strong evidence of human-to-human transmission.
> 
> December 31: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declares, "The investigation so far has not found any obvious human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infection."
> 
> December 31: Taiwanese public health officials warn the World Health Organization (WHO) that the virus is spreading between humans. The WHO never publicizes the warning.
> 
> January 11: The Wuhan City Health Commission issues an update declaring, ... no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found.
> 
> January 14: The World Health Organization echoes China's assessment: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China."
> 
> January 20: the head of China's national health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China's Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected.
> 
> January 23: Chinese authorities announce their first steps for a quarantine of Wuhan.
> 
> January 23: WHO: Human-to-human transmission is occurring


Yes.

It was the beginning of December, not the end of December when the Chinese first "noticed" it.

Near the end of December they noticed they had "a problem".


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## pianozach

KenOC said:


> "China and Russia were blamed for spewing out false and misleading online information about Covid-19 in a European Union report that seeks to stem the 'unprecedented' spread of fake news amid the pandemic."
> 
> Unfortunately there seems to be only one specific in this article: "The EU's findings on China and Russia are based on a separate study by the commission's foreign and diplomatic wing, which said it had evidence of a 'coordinated push' by official Chinese sources to deflect blame for the coronavirus pandemic and promote its response to the virus."
> 
> Well, that's hardly surprising. And the second part of the "push" is hard to argue with given China's Covid-19 case rates.
> 
> The Bloomberg article is *here*.


I don't even need to read the Bloomberg article to convince me that data from Russia and China may have been misleading or even incorrect.

Even the data from the US has, ahem, "flaws", especially considering our feetdragging response. Nationally our response was wildly eccentric, which caused the individual states to develop their own methods of tracking and dealing with the pandemic. Instead of data from ONE country, we had a crazy quilt of 50 nation-states tracking and reporting, each with their own interpretations and biases of what was needed.


----------



## Eclectic Al

pianozach said:


> I don't even need to read the Bloomberg article to convince me that data from Russia and China may have been misleading or even incorrect.
> 
> Even the data from the US has, ahem, "flaws", especially considering our feetdragging response. Nationally our response was wildly eccentric, which caused the individual states to develop their own methods of tracking and dealing with the pandemic. Instead of data from ONE country, we had a crazy quilt of 50 nation-states tracking and reporting, each with their own interpretations and biases of what was needed.


Indeed. It seems like it has taken Covid-19 to remind people that countries just play the great game. It's all about the interests (as they see it) of their own country (and, to some extent, their most reliable friends): if you have essential equipment you keep it (or sell it high); if someone needs a loan you reject that or demand a high price; if an international body (eg WHO) can be manipulated in your interests, you try, etc, etc. I'm not disappointed by this. It is just how the world is, and is bound to be.

It's not just governments: can you exploit the situation to advance your own agenda (environmentalism or whatever)? If so, then do. There's no mass loss of life that can't be turned to national or political advantage.


----------



## KenOC

tortkis said:


> December 1: The first coronavirus case now recognized by Chinese authorities is recorded in a Wuhan hospital.
> 
> December 6: The first suspected human-to-human transmission is recorded by Wuhan doctors. A patient is observed to have the virus but denies ever visiting the seafood market.
> 
> December 21: Wuhan doctors begin to notice a "cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause."
> 
> December 25: Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan are suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and are quarantined. This is additional strong evidence of human-to-human transmission.


Much of this seems simply after-the-fact sleuthery and "they shoulda known" analysis, and some I simply can't verify. In fact, there seems to have been little idea in China prior to the last week in December that something unusual was afoot in Wuhan. From Wiki:
-----------------------------------------------------------
On 24 December, Wuhan Central Hospital sent a bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) sample from an unresolved clinical case to sequencing company Vision Medicals. On 27 and 28 December, Vision Medicals informed the Wuhan Central Hospital and the Chinese CDC of the results of the test, showing a new coronavirus. A pneumonia cluster of unknown cause was observed on 26 December and treated by the doctor Zhang Jixian in Hubei Provincial Hospital, who informed the Wuhan Jianghan CDC on 27 December. On 30 December, a test report addressed to Wuhan Central Hospital, from company CapitalBio Medlab, stated an erroneous positive result for SARS, causing a group of doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital to alert their colleagues and relevant hospital authorities of the result. That evening, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a notice to various medical institutions on "the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause."

On 31 December 2019, health authorities in China reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) a cluster of viral pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan.


----------



## pianozach

pianozach said:


> I don't even need to read the Bloomberg article to convince me that data from Russia and China may have been misleading or even incorrect.
> 
> Even the data from the US has, ahem, "flaws", especially considering our feetdragging response. Nationally our response was wildly eccentric, which caused the individual states to develop their own methods of tracking and dealing with the pandemic. Instead of data from ONE country, we had a crazy quilt of 50 nation-states tracking and reporting, each with their own interpretations and biases of what was needed.


*More than half of states may be undercounting coronavirus cases by not following CDC guidelines
*

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/heal...KKWGg3yp8jWjJ5i7S5B7OadVs&bt_ts=1591785146658

_"At least 28 states are not following US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on reporting new Covid-19 cases -- half of which saw the trend of new cases increasing in the last week.

"Those states are not reporting probable cases, according to the daily case count listed on the CDC's website. Probable cases include those that show evidence of an infection without the confirmation of a lab test and cases where coronavirus was listed as a cause or contributing cause of death but are not confirmed with a lab test. . . .

. . .

". . . . Though coronavirus reporting guidelines are voluntary, states not reporting probable cases likely undercount the number of people infected and make it difficult for officials to get the true picture of where the nation stands in the midst of a pandemic that has rocked almost every aspect of life."_


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Much of this seems simply after-the-fact sleuthery and "they shoulda known" analysis, and some I simply can't verify. In fact, there seems to have been little idea in China prior to the last week in December that something unusual was afoot in Wuhan. From Wiki:
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> On 24 December, Wuhan Central Hospital sent a bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) sample from an unresolved clinical case to sequencing company Vision Medicals. On 27 and 28 December, Vision Medicals informed the Wuhan Central Hospital and the Chinese CDC of the results of the test, showing a new coronavirus. A pneumonia cluster of unknown cause was observed on 26 December and treated by the doctor Zhang Jixian in Hubei Provincial Hospital, who informed the Wuhan Jianghan CDC on 27 December. On 30 December, a test report addressed to Wuhan Central Hospital, from company CapitalBio Medlab, stated an erroneous positive result for SARS, causing a group of doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital to alert their colleagues and relevant hospital authorities of the result. That evening, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a notice to various medical institutions on "the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause."
> 
> On 31 December 2019, health authorities in China reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) a cluster of viral pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan.


Your timeline fits with everything I've been able to find. In general, during the period around the last week of December 2019, some in the medical community became certain about the presence of a highly contagious, likely coronavirus, respiratory disease. Wuhan health and other local authorities tried to squelch the information and 2 doctors and several individuals were reprimanded and/or told to stifle themselves.

Then over about the first 2-3 weeks of 2020, it became obvious to higher level Chinese officials that this couldn't be kept under wraps and lied about any longer although a level of deception continued for a period of time. It is that period of 2 of 3 weeks of January that China screwed the rest of the world out of important warnings and information, the notification of the WHO on 12/31/19 notwithstanding.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> ...Then over about the first 2-3 weeks of 2021, it became obvious to higher level Chinese officials that this couldn't be kept under wraps and lied about any longer although a level of deception continued for a period of time. It is that period of 2 of 3 weeks of January that China screwed the rest of the world out of important warnings and information, the notification of the WHO on 12/31/19 notwithstanding.


I remember reading that some important political shindig was scheduled for Wuhan shortly. Also, Wuhan probably makes plenty of money during Chinese New Year, coming up in a week or two, due to its status as a major stop on a lot of people's travel. And during the New Year season, just about _everybody _travels to see other family members.

So the reaction of the Wuhan authorities to the virus may have been a lot like the mayor's efforts in _Jaws _to convince everybody that the big fish down at the beach was not a major deal. :lol:


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## Ekim the Insubordinate

It will be curious to see whether we see a spike in coronavirus cases in ~2 weeks from now. To compound that problem, it looks like as many as 70 testing locations were destroyed in the course of protests, according to Dr. Birx.


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## Open Book

With people no longer staying home, I would be surprised if the downward trends continue in my state. I think it's just theoretical as to whether masks and distance can protect people from each other indoors when they return to work.


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## Guest

We've just had a breaking news story in Australia that one of the (mass) protesters supporting BLM last weekend has Covid-19 and likely caught it there. The result? Remaining lockdowns for Australia and further business closures and unemployment. They have got what they wanted.


----------



## tortkis

KenOC said:


> Much of this seems simply after-the-fact sleuthery and "they shoulda known" analysis, and some I simply can't verify. In fact, there seems to have been little idea in China prior to the last week in December that something unusual was afoot in Wuhan.


December 1: The first coronavirus case, December 6: The first suspected human-to-human transmission
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

December 21: Wuhan doctors begin to notice a "cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause."
http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/a3907201-f64f-4154-a19e-4253b453d10c

December 25: Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan are suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and are quarantined.
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/IzzCnz4Yr2jEIYZePiu_ow

And even if they only knew it around the end of December, since then, the WHO was telling virus does not spread between people (Jan 9), no evidence of human-to-human transmission (Jan 14), not public emergency (Jan 22), criticized the traven ban (Feb 1), not to restrict travel (Feb 4), ...


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> It is that period of 2 of 3 weeks of January that China screwed the rest of the world out of important warnings and information, the notification of the WHO on 12/31/19 notwithstanding.


And this is where the business of our depending on member countries for honesty comes in. Those who wish to blame the WHO should remember that like the UN, it only has the teeth that its members are prepared to show. The WHO does not have some super power, or independent funding, nor, presumably, limitless resources or permissions to send people at will to verify. If China (or any other country, including the USA) wishes to be difficult, the WHO can't simply march in and take over. It may have powers to, for example,



> adopt regulations
> concerning:
> (a) sanitary and quarantine requirements and other procedures designed to
> prevent the international spread of disease;
> (b) nomenclatures with respect to diseases, causes of death and public health
> practices;
> (c) standards with respect to diagnostic procedures for international use;


But if a Member wants to be difficult and not follow regulations, I don't see that the WHO has an enforcement arm.

Article 23



> The Health Assembly shall have authority _to make recommendations _to Members with respect to any matter within the competence of the Organization.


https://apps.who.int/gb/bd/


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> But if a Member wants to be difficult and not follow regulations, I don't see that the WHO has an enforcement arm.


And thankfully not. That would be scary.


----------



## Jacck

tortkis said:


> And even if they only knew it around the end of December, since then, the WHO was telling virus does not spread between people (Jan 9), no evidence of human-to-human transmission (Jan 14), not public emergency (Jan 22), criticized the traven ban (Feb 1), not to restrict travel (Feb 4), ...


scapegoating of the WHO by certain politicians to deflect the blame for their own mishandling of the pandemic. I can imagine the pressures put on the WHO officials at the beginning of the pandemic. If they acted too strictly, they would be blamed for "fostering hysteria" and killing the economy. If they acted too little, they would be blamed for covering up the pandemic.


----------



## Jacck

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a crisis in the UK universities
https://voxeu.org/article/covid-19-pandemic-causing-crisis-uk-universities


----------



## science

South Korea is making some interesting choices now. The "second wave" has definitely begun, and so far it's not exactly out of control -- 45 new cases today, just over 1000 active cases at the moment, 2 deaths yesterday which is the most since May 26 -- but at the same time people are starting to relax. Since February I've only met a student in person 3-4 times, but starting tomorrow I'll have a regular (for me) teaching schedule, meaning 11 classes a week, in person, in little rooms without great ventilation.... I guess that stuff is going on all over the country. 

OTOH, they do still have great testing and tracking going on here, and everyone wears masks. I think I will even wear one as I teach since projecting my voice means I might be more likely to spread it if I were to get it. 

I don't know what the people who run the country are thinking but it seems like they're choosing to take more and more risks and see how it goes. After all, at this point covid-19 is surely not among the leading causes of death here. The GDP has shrunk 1.2%, more because demand for their exports has shrunk thank because of local economic contractions, but I'm sure the government is as eager as any other to get people back to normal life ASAP. 

In related news, the pollution is back! I was out a couple days ago and the Seoul sky was solidly gray again.


----------



## Room2201974

Christabel said:


> We've just had a breaking news story in Australia that one of the (mass) protesters supporting BLM last weekend has Covid-19 and likely caught it there. The result? Remaining lockdowns for Australia and further business closures and unemployment. They have got what they wanted.


That's a super country you got there in Australia. You guys don't even have to go through the incubation period of two weeks that everyone else has to. That must mean that Australians are MORE susceptible to the disease than the rest of the world. So what if Australians get Covid easier, for after all, "we (don't) need to preserve their lives so they can continue to be miserable."

And of course, EVERYONE knows that the main objective of the protesters was to shut down Australia and not to protest for basic human rights. We all got the skinny on this through our secret George Soros decoder rings.


----------



## DaveM

tortkis said:


> December 1: The first coronavirus case, December 6: The first suspected human-to-human transmission
> https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext
> 
> December 21: Wuhan doctors begin to notice a "cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause."
> http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/a3907201-f64f-4154-a19e-4253b453d10c
> 
> December 25: Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan are suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and are quarantined.
> https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/IzzCnz4Yr2jEIYZePiu_ow
> 
> And even if they only knew it around the end of December, since then, the WHO was telling virus does not spread between people (Jan 9), no evidence of human-to-human transmission (Jan 14), not public emergency (Jan 22), criticized the traven ban (Feb 1), not to restrict travel (Feb 4), ...


I don't think it's quite as certain as that. The information below is from the study you reference above. You are highlighting the early cases starting with Dec 1, 2019 as if they infer early knowledge of Covid-19 as of those dates, but the information on those early cases was only determined later and the highlighted areas below indicate that they had no idea what the pathogen was until very late in December or very early in January. It's also important to note that the suspicion of the first suspected patient-to-patient transfer as occurring on December 6 was not -and could not be- hypothesized until much later when the pathogen was isolated.

That doesn't absolve the WHO for dragging its feet later in January and beyond as you indicate -particularly after mid January, but it does give a different perspective as to when people at the WHO should have known exactly what was happening and it wasn't on Dec 1, 6, 21 or even 25.

From the Lancet study report:_
Following the pneumonia cases of unknown cause reported in Wuhan and considering the shared history of exposure to Huanan seafood market across the patients,* an epidemiological alert was released by the local health authority on Dec 31, 2019*, and the market was shut down on Jan 1, 2020. *Meanwhile, 59 suspected cases with fever and dry cough were transferred to a designated hospital starting from Dec 31, 2019. An expert team of physicians, epidemiologists, virologists, and government officials was soon formed after the alert. Since the cause was unknown at the onset of these emerging infections, the diagnosis of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan was based on clinical characteristics, chest imaging, and the ruling out of common bacterial and viral pathogens that cause pneumonia.*

*Local centres for disease control and prevention collected respiratory, blood, and faeces specimens, then shipped them to designated authoritative laboratories to detect the pathogen. A novel coronavirus, which was named 2019-nCoV, was isolated then from lower respiratory tract specimen and a diagnostic test for this virus was developed soon after that. Of 59 suspected cases, 41 patients were confirmed to be infected with 2019-nCoV. *_


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

MacLeod said:


> And this is where the business of our depending on member countries for honesty comes in. Those who wish to blame the WHO should remember that like the UN, it only has the teeth that its members are prepared to show. The WHO does not have some super power, or independent funding, nor, presumably, limitless resources or permissions to send people at will to verify. If China (or any other country, including the USA) wishes to be difficult, the WHO can't simply march in and take over. It may have powers to, for example,
> 
> But if a Member wants to be difficult and not follow regulations, I don't see that the WHO has an enforcement arm.
> 
> Article 23
> 
> https://apps.who.int/gb/bd/


Fair enough. But the criticism here is not so much that the WHO was unable to enforce anything, so much that they were parroting the talking points of China, and ignoring the very existence of Taiwan. That has nothing to do with enforcement. If they believed that China was being difficult or dishonest, they certainly could have not been so supportive of them against international criticism.


----------



## Guest

I won't say that the WHO didn't make mistakes, mainly in the form of delaying the alarm until well after they had enough information to act. However when the alarm was given the U.S. in particular did nothing for months, while the virus spread under the radar. The President insisted that the virus threat was a "hoax" invented by his opponents to make him look bad, months after China locked down an entire province and confined people to their homes. I was reading about that in the newspaper, how can anyone claim that the severity of the disease was hidden at that point, basically the end of January. China published the sequence of the virus on January 9, and a test could have been designed on January 10. Things could have been much better for the U.S. if there was a concerted federal effort to get industry cooperation to develop and distribute a test in large number before the outbreak here got out of control and test-and-trace would still have been possible.


----------



## Guest

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Fair enough. But the criticism here is not so much that the WHO was unable to enforce anything, so much that they were parroting the talking points of China, and ignoring the very existence of Taiwan. That has nothing to do with enforcement. If they believed that China was being difficult or dishonest, they certainly could have not been so supportive of them against international criticism.


Did the WHO have their own people in the country dealing with it? If not, all they could do was to report what the Chinese authorities were saying.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

MacLeod said:


> Did the WHO have their own people in the country dealing with it? If not, all they could do was to report what the Chinese authorities were saying.


But if they thought China was being recalcitrant, why report globally what the Chinese were saying if they couldn't confirm it? That is not an enforcement issue. That is poor judgment in what they chose to send out globally under the auspices of the WHO.


----------



## KenOC

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> But if they thought China was being recalcitrant, why report globally what the Chinese were saying if they couldn't confirm it? That is not an enforcement issue. That is poor judgment in what they chose to send out globally under the auspices of the WHO.


Did the WHO think China was being recalcitrant? Was there past evidence of this? Did they have reason to think the Chinese study that "found no evidence" of person-to-person contagion was defective? If not, why _wouldn't_ they report the results of the Chinese study, which was prepared by responsible professionals in one of the WHO's own member countries?

I'm really not sure why people are so anxious to find somebody to blame for all this.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

Because if you go back to 2002 to the original SARS outbreak, you also see a pattern of bad behavior by the Chinese government in hiding information and not being up front and honest.


----------



## Open Book

Observations of Covid-19 sufferers have turned up a couple of risk factors for who will suffer most from the virus.

Blood type affects risk. People with *type A blood* are being infected more and are more likely to progress to severe respiratory symptoms. Type O is seen as the most protective blood type.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/06/10/the-role-of-blood-type-in-covid-19-infection-and-respiratory-failure/#4290de4b307e

Interestingly, for all the talk about American minorities suffering more from the virus, type A blood is most prevalent among Caucasians.

https://www.livescience.com/36559-common-blood-type-donation.html

Another risk factor is *baldness* in men. It was already known that men are more likely to have severe symptoms but now it appears that balding men are even more likely. Male hormones are to blame. Balding women are at higher risk than other women if their hair loss is male hormone related.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/bald-men-higher-risk-severe-case-covid-19-research-finds/


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Did the WHO think China was being recalcitrant? Was there past evidence of this? Did they have reason to think the Chinese study that "found no evidence" of person-to-person contagion was defective? If not, why _wouldn't_ they report the results of the Chinese study, which was prepared by responsible professionals in one of the WHO's own member countries?
> 
> I'm really not sure why people are so anxious to find somebody to blame for all this.


I don't know if you saw my post #1991. I think there was some relative incompetence on the part of the WHO -particularly what they said and/or how they said it- during the early part of the pandemic, but I also think it's been taken to an extreme.

It's somewhat like the recent statement from one of the officials at the WHO that was taken to mean that asymptomatic Covid-19 patients likely can't or are unlikely to transmit the virus. It turns out that she was referring to 2 small studies that indicated that possibility, but didn't prove anything definitely. The problem seemed to be more the way she transmitted the information.


----------



## Art Rock

Open Book said:


> Blood type affects risk. People with type A blood are being infected more and are more likely to progress to severe respiratory symptoms.


Check. 



> Another risk factor is baldness in men. It was already known that men are more likely to have severe symptoms but now it appears that balding men are even more likely. Male hormones are to blame.


----------



## Flamme




----------



## Open Book

Art Rock said:


> Check.


Is that a double check? Better stay home.


----------



## Flamme

Art Rock said:


> Check.


Good Im a B. Take care.


----------



## Art Rock

Open Book said:


> Is that a double check? Better stay home.


Triple actually. I also have a heart condition.


----------



## DaveM

Famotidine (Pepcid) for Covid-19 update:

Apparently, a research group had found in 2017 that a combination of the H2 blocker antacid famotidine (Pepcid) and the allergy antihistamine cetirizine (Zyrtec) has a significant effect in IBS-D (irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea) patients (see at the end below from the patent application).

It is theorized that the same inflammatory process that causes diarrhea in IBS patients' colons may be at work in Covid-19 and so, the same group is initiating a study using a combination of famotidine and cetirizine in early-diagnosed coronavirus patients. Incidentally, both of these over-the-counter drugs are relatively safe and inexpensive.
_
'It had previously been discovered that an H1 receptor antagonist and an H2 receptor antagonist, in combination, succeeded in treating diarrhea of various types. The combination of 10 mg of cetirizine and 20 mg of famotidine, administered to patients with diarrhea, resulted in 85-90% positive responders. A positive responder is identified as having a 50% or more reduction in the number of stools per day or a change in stool formation from liquid to solid. No adverse reactions or events were reported. A control group was treated with standard doses of fiber (Metamucil®) and an anticholinergic (Bentyl®); positive responders in the control group were less than 25%.'_


----------



## DaveM

Flamme said:


>


This Russian drug, Avifavir, while said to have been developed and tested in Russia is actually a knock-off of the Japanese anti-flu drug Favipiravir which has been used in both Japan and Italy as a Covid-19 treatment. The latter drug appears to clear the virus fairly quickly, but there are, so far, no double-blind studies confirming its clinical benefits in Covid-19. Likewise, there are no controlled studies available on the Russian drug Avifavir. That doesn't mean it might not end up being useful, but I don't know how much we can trust medical information that comes out of Russia.


----------



## KenOC

Contentioous developments here. Our County Health Officer, who had made masks mandatory for anybody in public, resigned after receiving threats at public meetings and online. And she was getting significant pushback from some County Supervisors and the County Chairwoman.

The newly-appointed Interim Public Health Office announced a new policy today. “While specifics are still unfolding, the wearing masks outside when social distancing is possible will no longer be mandatory. Mask wearing inside stores, while shopping, and for essential workers, will still be recommended.”


----------



## tortkis

DaveM said:


> I don't think it's quite as certain as that. The information below is from the study you reference above. You are highlighting the early cases starting with Dec 1, 2019 as if they infer early knowledge of Covid-19 as of those dates, but the information on those early cases was only determined later and the highlighted areas below indicate that they had no idea what the pathogen was until very late in December or very early in January. It's also important to note that the suspicion of the first suspected patient-to-patient transfer as occurring on December 6 was not -and could not be- hypothesized until much later when the pathogen was isolated.
> 
> That doesn't absolve the WHO for dragging its feet later in January and beyond as you indicate -particularly after mid January, but it does give a different perspective as to when people at the WHO should have known exactly what was happening and it wasn't on Dec 1, 6, 21 or even 25.


I was just showing the sources of Dec 1-25 events only because KenOC wrote that he couldn't verify some of them. I was not highlighting them, or blaming the WHO for not knowing the Dec 1-25 events or not taking immediate actions during that period.

My point was that, at least they knew something was happening by the end of December, but the WHO had not provided useful messages for a long time since then. The WHO is regarded as an authority of world health and its statements are received with certain weight. If the WHO tells that there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, it is different from a some random person saying he has no idea whether it exists or not.


----------



## DaveM

Across the U.S. 27,000 new cases and 1000 deaths on Wednesday. Those who thought we could re-open in the name of saving the economy are getting an idea what this will look like. Of course, the timing indicates the possibility that this uptick is partly due to the demonstrations, but still, there’s every reason to believe that this is going to get worse before it gets better, especially since it looks like too many people are not ready to return to a lockdown as before.


----------



## DaveM

tortkis said:


> I was just showing the sources of Dec 1-25 events only because KenOC wrote that he couldn't verify some of them. I was not highlighting them, or blaming the WHO for not knowing the Dec 1-25 events or not taking immediate actions during that period.
> 
> My point was that, at least they knew something was happening by the end of December, but the WHO had not provided useful messages for a long time since then. The WHO is regarded as an authority of world health and its statements are received with certain weight. If the WHO tells that there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, it is different from a some random person saying he has no idea whether it exists or not.


Point taken....


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

DaveM said:


> Across the U.S. 27,000 new cases and 1000 deaths on Wednesday. Those who thought we could re-open in the name of saving the economy are getting an idea what this will look like. Of course, the timing indicates the possibility that this uptick is partly due to the demonstrations, but still, there's every reason to believe that this is going to get worse before it gets better, especially since it looks like too many people are not ready to return to a lockdown as before.


That ship has sailed. What business owner is now going to listen to some politician say they have to shut down their business again, even if they were using masks and social distancing, right after those same politicians are perfectly fine with mass demonstrations where thousands of people were in close proximity, and not always with masks.


----------



## EdwardBast

DaveM said:


> Across the U.S. 27,000 new cases and 1000 deaths on Wednesday. Those who thought we could re-open in the name of saving the economy are getting an idea what this will look like. Of course, *the timing indicates the possibility that this uptick is partly due to the demonstrations*, but still, there's every reason to believe that this is going to get worse before it gets better, especially since it looks like too many people are not ready to return to a lockdown as before.


Along with Memorial Day weekend and the partial opening of businesses in a number of states.


----------



## KenOC

This puzzles me. There's nothing unusual about the new case counts, just a minor spike among many in a gradually decreasing trend. New deaths continue their decline. Things can of course move any way in the future, but I see no cause for alarm in the *latest counts*.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> This puzzles me. There's nothing unusual about the new case counts, just a minor spike among many in a gradually decreasing trend. New deaths continue their decline. Things can of course move any way in the future, but I see no cause for alarm in the *latest counts*.


The problem with US counts is that New York and New Jersey contributed a very high percentage to the increasing infections and deaths. Those two states have vastly decreased their infections and deaths so the overall numbers indicate a decrease as well. I saw counts with New York and New Jersey removed from the US numbers a week or two ago, and the remainder of states showed increases. I'm not sure if the same trend is present, but if so, then the remainder of the US could be getting worse.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> The problem with US counts is that New York and New Jersey contributed a very high percentage to the increasing infections and deaths. Those two states have vastly decreased their infections and deaths so the overall numbers indicate a decrease as well. I saw counts with New York and New Jersey removed from the US numbers a week or two ago, and the remainder of states showed increases. I'm not sure if the same trend is present, but if so, then the remainder of the US could be getting worse.


Very possibly true. In my county, new cases have been increasing, gradually, for three months. But they are still low, and there's no sign that the gradual opening up is having any impact. But I have to add, of course, "yet."


----------



## Guest

tortkis said:


> the WHO was telling virus does not spread between people (Jan 9)


What the 10 Jan statement on the WHO website says is,



> According to Chinese authorities, the virus in question can cause severe illness in some patients and does not transmit readily between people.


https://www.who.int/thailand/news/detail/10-01-2020-novel-coronavirus-in-wuhan-china

So, not quite the same as 'does not spread', and the WHO were citing the Chinese authorities, not making their own report based on their own investigative work. It illustrates how the WHO is dependent on Members to do the first hand work.



tortkis said:


> The WHO is regarded as an authority of world health and its statements are received with certain weight.


As they should be. But the context of their work (including not just what their role is, but how inevitably politics plays a role behind the scenes) and the statements they make should be better understood.

[add]Further searching the internet shows the increasing dependence on, and unreliability of, Twitter and other social media. The kind of nuanced statements being made by the WHO were not being reported properly or retransmitted accurately - their fault and ours, of course. For example, a WHO official is reported to have said that



> "Right from the start, from the first notification we received on the 31st of December, given that this was a cluster of pneumonia - I'm a MERS specialist, so my background is in coronaviruses and influenza - so immediately thought, given that this is a respiratory pathogen, that of course there may be human-to-human transmission,"


This was reduced to "we knew for months that there was human to human transmission"

The WHO's own Tweet on Jan 14 was



> Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China


Again, not quite the same as a definitive statement by the WHO that there is no human-to-human transmission.

The statement released by their emergency committee gave plenty of advice what to do, whether an Emergency was declared or not. Rather than quote selectively from it, I'll just give the source, so interested readers can read it for themselves.

https://www.who.int/news-room/detai...-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)


----------



## Eclectic Al

Sweet story in a way:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-53009542
Sad to watch too.


----------



## Jacck

Prosecutors question Italy's Conte over slow virus lockdowns
https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...on-italys-conte-slow-virus-lockdowns-71214516


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> Prosecutors question Italy's Conte over slow virus lockdowns
> https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...on-italys-conte-slow-virus-lockdowns-71214516


On a related point we have a civil action in the UK:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-53012565

Who would be a politician?


----------



## Flamme

Ekim the Insubordinate said:


> Because if you go back to 2002 to the original SARS outbreak, you also see a pattern of bad behavior by the Chinese government in hiding information and not being up front and honest.


I wonder how that disease was so small in scale, compared 2 this??? Its a same type of virus aint...Almost makes u think this ''new thing'' is a coctail of some kind...


----------



## Jacck

The Looming Bank Collapse
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/

some more good news....


----------



## Flamme

Well, experts did warn about the Fallout of World curfew...


----------



## Flamme

I find it very ironic that my country wasnt so much affected by whole breakdown of financial system because of RIGID austerity measures our government conducted in last couple of years...Long b4 any kind of signs of pandemic they started taking lots of money from ppls paychecks and created, in that way a surplus in budget, that was was pretty painful and artificial, but creating in a long run a ''stash'' of money from where they can now give financial help 2 companies and ppl...Im actually pretty much against the current ''regime'' but got 2 give them that...


----------



## DaveM

Jacck said:


> The Looming Bank Collapse
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/some more good news....


Interesting article and the author is raising a legitimate concern, but IMO, a bank collapse is unlikely. In the 2008 bank 'collapse', a major bank was allowed to fail and others were absorbed by other banks. But, in addition, the banks were infused with 245 billion which was said to have been eventually paid back with interest.

Fast forward to the present where after all the many years of quantitative easing to the tune of up to 80 billion a month using printed money and the latest 2.5 trillion of printed money paid into the banks presumably for lending to businesses, the government and Fed have learned that they can create/print a sizable amount of money with, so far, relatively few consequences. Conclusion: banks would not be allowed to fail.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> Conclusion: banks would not be allowed to fail.


I agree with this. My guess, though, is that the most likely stress would be in a country which is not in control of its own currency. Hence, the banks in the weaker European countries in the Eurozone may be more vulnerable than others.
The option of allowing Italy (say) to save a major Italian bank by supplying it with capital may not appeal to the ECB and its political masters (depending on how the stronger economies such as Germany and The Netherlands feel), and the alternative of saving an Italian bank by a takeover by a German or Dutch bank (say) would go down like a lead balloon in Italy, and put the whole Eurozone if not the EU in jeopardy.

There's a world of realpolitik sitting behind the scenes here: what price would the dominant players in the EU insist on to bail out weaker members? On the other hand, if they seek too high a price then the whole thing might explode.


----------



## Flamme

And then the ''2econd'' wave...


----------



## science

DaveM said:


> with, *so far*, relatively few consequences


The implications of this are... _somewhat concerning_.


----------



## mountmccabe

MacLeod said:


> The WHO's own Tweet on Jan 14 was
> 
> Again, not quite the same as a definitive statement by the WHO that there is no human-to-human transmission.


I see it as nearly the opposite. There were a lot of qualifying statements in that tweet.

"No clear evidence" does not mean that there is no evidence, and contextually it suggests that there is evidence.
"Preliminary investigations" means that these are only first looks, so keep paying attention.
Also it notes that those investigations were "conducted by Chinese authorities" and one may read that as a note to watch the source.

That also wasn't the only Tweet by WHO on that day. There was also this Tweet, discussing a confirmed case in Thailand.



WHO Tweet said:


> Additional investigation on the novel #coronavirus (2019-nC0V) is needed to ascertain:
> * the presence of human-to-human transmission
> * modes of transmission
> * common source of exposure
> * the presence of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases that are undetected


Neither tweet should have been taken to suggest that they weren't looking for human-to-human transmission.


----------



## mountmccabe

There has been human-to-human transmission of MERS, but it is rare and only from very sick people. How they put it in one Tweet in 2015 was this:



> Based on current data & WHO's risk assessment, there is no evidence to suggest sustained human-to-human #MERS transmission outside hospitals


Human-to-human transmission is rare enough, outside people caring for very those very sick with MERS, that it really doesn't drive spread of that virus. MERS hasn't spread widely because most transmission is camel-to-human. So outside of a healthcare environment, the most important factor at stopping the spread of MERS is avoiding infected camels.

So with the novel coronavirus found in 2019, the question was never is human-to-human transmission _possible_, but it is a vector for spread that would sustain itself. The answer, of course, turned out to be yes, but figuring that out wasn't as simple as finding one instance that could be human-to-human transmission. It was about finding clear evidence.


----------



## Ekim the Insubordinate

mmsbls said:


> The problem with US counts is that New York and New Jersey contributed a very high percentage to the increasing infections and deaths. Those two states have vastly decreased their infections and deaths so the overall numbers indicate a decrease as well. I saw counts with New York and New Jersey removed from the US numbers a week or two ago, and the remainder of states showed increases. I'm not sure if the same trend is present, but if so, then the remainder of the US could be getting worse.


I think it was always going to be obvious, regardless of when we reopened, that we would see an uptick. The virus has not been eradicated, and there are no vaccines as of yet, so how could there not be an uptick? But we need to go back to the questions we were asking when the rationale for the shutdowns were initially explained - we wanted to keep the number of cases at a manageable level, so that healthcare wasn't overwhelmed. Until we have a vaccine, this may just have to be a fact of life, that this virus is out there and there is a chance of catching it. Hopefully the initial wildfire spread is over - and there is some evidence that it is - and now we have settled into a lower endemic rate, still troubling, but not overwhelming to hospitals and healthcare workers.

We are also testing much more than before, so it could be that the uptick coinciding with some reopening is coincidental with the higher level of testing.

I went to eat in a restaurant this last weekend for the first time since early March. We put our names in, waited in our car until we got a phone call that our table was ready, the restaurant had at least one empty table between all occupied tables, the servers, waiters, and busboys all wore masks and gloves. People seem willing to work with this kind of a setting. Everybody was patient.


----------



## pianozach

Flamme said:


> And then the ''2econd'' wave...


#secondwave

We're all so unfamiliar the who concept of quarantine, lockdown and pandemics. Last REALLY serious one was Spanish Flu a hundred years ago.

The last time we had to sacrifice our comfy lifestyles was during WWII, when they rationed gas, and my mom had to draw a line up the back of her leg to simulate the wearing of nylons. My dad says people would drive 25 mph not only to save on gas, but to make their tires last as long as possible.

But WWII was 75 years ago, and collectively Americans seem to be a historically forgetful bunch.

So we can't even be bothered to wear facemasks. (Back during the Spanish Flu they actually had Anti-Mask Leagues, and we seem to have those with similar sentiments now).

So early on we had people complaining about not being able to get haircuts, or get their nails done, and now we've had certain groups of people defying recommendations to wear masks and practice social distancing (I'm looking at YOU, churches). Now people piled on top of each other for Memorial Day, then we've been out demonstrating for BLM, and next up are the Trump rallies.

Second Wave indeed.


----------



## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> This puzzles me. There's nothing unusual about the new case counts, just a minor spike among many in a gradually decreasing trend. New deaths continue their decline. *Things can of course move any way in the future, but I see no cause for alarm in the **latest counts*.


I do. Rounding today's new cases to the nearest hundred:

CA - 3,600
TX - 2,200
FL - 1,900
NC - 1,800
AZ -1,700
AL - 900
GA - 800

These figures seem like more than a minor spike to me.

Death counts lag by a couple of weeks and these high counts of new cases are relatively recent. These numbers also assume accurate reporting and inclusion of elder care facilities and prisons, about which I wouldn't be too sure.


----------



## KenOC

EdwardBast said:


> I do. Rounding today's new cases to the nearest hundred:
> 
> CA - 3,600
> TX - 2,200
> FL - 1,900
> NC - 1,800
> AZ -1,700
> AL - 900
> GA - 800
> 
> These figures seem like more than a minor spike to me.
> 
> Death counts lag by a couple of weeks and these high counts of new cases are relatively recent. These numbers also assume accurate reporting and inclusion of elder care facilities and prisons, about which I wouldn't be too sure.


The US new case rate has been peaking regularly every Friday. Today's new cases were fewer than 2,000 more than last Friday's (about 7% more) and well below the new case rates of late April and early May.

The new death count is down for the fourth day in a row and is about a third of earlier levels.

I checked my state, CA, and found today's new case count almost identical to the last peak a week ago. Death rates, as in the national numbers, are very low at 47 for today.

I see no evidence of new "peaks" although the new case rates don't seem to be dropping. Whether that is due to more cases or to wider availability of testing I have no idea but hope it's the latter.

I would expect expanded testing to elevate the new case rate but not the death rate, so maybe that's what's happening. Or, as also seems reasonable, new cases will increase due to increased contagion associated with "opening up" and death rates will increase after a lag. I guess we'll find out!

Added: California's new cases have been trending up since March and the gradual increase shows no signs of abating. The recent numbers show nothing new in that regard.


----------



## DaveM

Regardless of the new case rates, it’s possible that death rates may be dropping relative to new case rates due to improved treatment. Physicians have been learning new and better ways to handle the pulmonary complications including better approaches to ventilation and some drug combinations (not including hydroxychloroquine) may be limiting some of the inflammation that leads to morbidity and mortality.


----------



## Guest

pianozach said:


> But WWII was 75 years ago, and collectively Americans seem to be a historically forgetful bunch.


There is barely anyone left alive with a personal, _adult _recollection of WWII. History isn't just a matter of what gets learned in school, but what the most influential part of the community agrees to tell about it. Even if the hardships are retold, there is often a romanticising about them (in the UK, the idea that the East End of London were a cheery bunch who just drank tea and shook a smiling fist while Hitler bombed them to death in 1940, for example).

Together with an increasingly obvious self-centredness among the younger generation of leaders and opinion-formers, anything the older generation might have to offer in wisdom is heard less and less.

(Do I sound like a grouch? Probably!)


----------



## pianozach

MacLeod said:


> . . .
> 
> Together with an increasingly obvious self-centredness among the younger generation of leaders and opinion-formers, anything the older generation might have to offer in wisdom is heard less and less.
> 
> (Do I sound like a grouch? Probably!)


I'm of the opinion that we're all collectively _*gullible*_.


----------



## Flamme

pianozach said:


> *#secondwave*
> 
> We're all so unfamiliar the who concept of quarantine, lockdown and pandemics. Last REALLY serious one was Spanish Flu a hundred years ago.
> 
> The last time we had to sacrifice our comfy lifestyles was during WWII, when they rationed gas, and my mom had to draw a line up the back of her leg to simulate the wearing of nylons. My dad says people would drive 25 mph not only to save on gas, but to make their tires last as long as possible.
> 
> But WWII was 75 years ago, and collectively Americans seem to be a historically forgetful bunch.
> 
> So we can't even be bothered to wear facemasks. (Back during the Spanish Flu they actually had Anti-Mask Leagues, and we seem to have those with similar sentiments now).
> 
> So early on we had people complaining about not being able to get haircuts, or get their nails done, and now we've had certain groups of people defying recommendations to wear masks and practice social distancing (I'm looking at YOU, churches). Now people piled on top of each other for Memorial Day, then we've been out demonstrating for BLM, and next up are the Trump rallies.
> 
> Second Wave indeed.


I would never thougt u a grammah nazi:lol:...I know this, just playing with words...Thats what i do, sometimers. I dont think that world can withstand so many ''cycles'' of closing down, opening up...


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> There is barely anyone left alive with a personal, _adult _recollection of WWII. History isn't just a matter of what gets learned in school, but what the most influential part of the community agrees to tell about it. Even if the hardships are retold, there is often a romanticising about them (in the UK, the idea that the East End of London were a cheery bunch who just drank tea and shook a smiling fist while Hitler bombed them to death in 1940, for example).
> 
> Together with an increasingly obvious self-centredness among the younger generation of leaders and opinion-formers, anything the older generation might have to offer in wisdom is heard less and less.
> 
> (Do I sound like a grouch? Probably!)


But there is a vast amount of documentary evidence in the form of film and radio and in writing the like of which the world would never have seen before. We don't need people who were there to 'tell' about it because there is so much available for study and analysis. And private letters in their millions. And history is ALWAYS contested, not what the majority thinks. Who are the 'influential' people? Those who suffered or starved, ivory-towered academics, film-makers. generals, politicians?


----------



## mrdoc

MacLeod said:


> There is barely anyone left alive with a personal, _adult _recollection of WWII. History isn't just a matter of what gets learned in school, but what the most influential part of the community agrees to tell about it.


I remember bits of it we were on the receiving end, but there are still some old codgers alive that served in the war. I remember being thrown to the ground by my mother as airplanes flew low overhead. 
And History always favors the teller.


----------



## Guest

pianozach said:


> I'm of the opinion that we're all collectively _*gullible*_.


Could you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand.



Christabel said:


> We don't need people who were there to 'tell' about it


It's not about 'need'. It's about the fact that there is more than one history when you take into account who is telling it and how. It's much easier to tell a coherent tale when the majority of those telling and listening can draw on shared personal experiences, such as WWII, even though the stories told by Churchill, an East End dock worker, a soldier in the 8th Army and a young woman working in a munitions factory will have seen things from different perspectives. As the people who carry those experiences age and die, what is left is a distillation of official records and personal recollections, and becomes more fragmented. Eventually, there remains no one who can authoritatively challenge that record's 'accuracy' (assuming we can talk about 'accuracy' at all). I'm reminded of the beginning of The Lord of the Rings...



> "And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth."


This is what has happened already to various long past historical events, what is happening to the recent past, and what will happen to the present. Looking forward, even something as simple as recording the date when the Covid-19 pandemic started will provoke dispute (in the same way that there is dispute about when WWII started).

What we lose by not having a shared sense of history is the ability to learn from it. Only the historians (not the influential) would point out that in 1940, the nature of government in the UK changed to try to ensure a national consensus. There has been no momentum for it here, partly because the opinion-formers (eg politicians, press, social media) have no direct recollection of the previous experience. My father-in-law is 91. No-one wants to know what he has to say about 1940 any longer (except close family) and in any case, he was only 12 at the time. He relies on the history books as much as we do!



mrdoc said:


> I remember bits of it we were on the receiving end, but there are still some old codgers alive that served in the war. I remember being thrown to the ground by my mother as airplanes flew low overhead.
> And History always favors the teller.


Unless the teller is a 'nobody'.


----------



## science

One of many ways I'm lucky is that when I was in high school I worked at a little local hardware store with a WWII vet who was in his 70s at the time. It was usually a quiet little store so we had a lot of time to stand around chatting with customers, and I got to hear a lot of stories about the Depression and WWII. My coworker had arrived at Normandy on the 2nd day, stepping over bodies on his way up the beach, and partied with the Russians outside of Berlin. The story I remember best was a navy guy describing when his ship got hit by a kamikaze and he had to put out the fire while men around him were dying. These guys had lived with that stuff for fifty years when they were telling me the stories. Of course I also had lots of family members in WWII but they never told me their stories in any detail. Basically just stuff like, "We were in Burma. The insects were terrible." If they were ever able to tell anyone what they'd seen and done, it wasn't me. 

Anyway, we in the US have definitely stumbled in this particular crisis, shutting down things just enough to hurt the economy and then opening them back up just in time to enable the virus to start spreading again, while many of us simply refused to follow reasonable precautions (like wearing masks). It seems to me that the basic problem is that we, as an entire society, couldn't decide whether we cared enough about the people who will die from this disease to do the kinds of things we needed to do to save them. Some people did, some people didn't, and we got almost the worst of both worlds. There's still some hope that enough people are taking enough precautions to slow the spread of the virus down enough to keep hospitals able to cope, but it's now basically a matter of hope rather than policy.


----------



## DaveM

Flamme said:


> I would never thougt u a grammah nazi:lol:...I know this, just playing with words...Thats what i do, sometimers. I dont think that world can withstand so many ''cycles'' of closing down, opening up...


Since you brought the subject up, twitter-speak (plugging in numbers to replace sequences of letters) may work with casual communication with friends, but with serious subjects here, I find it too distracting. I'm sure I'll miss reading some of your good posts because of it.


----------



## KenOC

*AstraZeneca* has signed a deal to supply several European governments with 400 million doses of a vaccine. At this point, though, nobody knows if the vaccine works!

The vaccine is one developed at Oxford and now being tested. It does look promising, as described in *this story*.


----------



## science

Bolsonaro once said there were 100,000 people he'd like to kill. I'm not sure which 100k they were, but as of today over 40k have died of covid-19 in Brazil. 

Back in South Korea, several of my summer classes have now been moved online, anecdotally suggesting that people are moving back toward a little more caution as the numbers here continue to rise.


----------



## KenOC

Yesterday I was wondering if the stubbornly high case rate in the US was due to a continued high infection rate or simply more testing taking place, catching cases that would otherwise go unnoticed. In my county, it looks like the infection rate is, indeed, continuing its slow and very real increase, as reflected in actual hospitalization rates. The entire bar is the total number in hospital with Covid-19, and the blue portion is the number in ICU. Both continue to increase.


----------



## Open Book

Been watching tennis on the sports channel. The big tournaments canceled or delayed by months. No Wimbledon for the first time in 75 years.

There have been some sad-looking tournaments tournaments in the U.S. like one on a small private court in Florida, no audience and not even any ball boys, to prevent spread of coronavirus.

Yet right now there is a tournament in Belgrade, Serbia where a packed audience is sitting elbow to elbow. Maybe 2% have masks but 90% of those have lowered their masks so they can drink beer.

Such a different response in different parts of the world.


----------



## science

Coronavirus survival comes with a $1.1 million, 181-page price tag



> Remember Michael Flor, the longest-hospitalized COVID-19 patient who, when he unexpectedly did not die, was jokingly dubbed "the miracle child?"
> 
> Now they can also call him the million-dollar baby.
> 
> Flor, 70, who came so close to death in the spring that a night-shift nurse held a phone to his ear while his wife and kids said their final goodbyes, is recovering nicely these days at his home in West Seattle. But he says his heart almost failed a second time when he got the bill from his health care odyssey the other day.
> 
> "I opened it and said 'holy [bleep]!' " Flor says.
> 
> The total tab for his bout with the coronavirus: $1.1 million. $1,122,501.04, to be exact. All in one bill that's more like a book because it runs to 181 pages.
> 
> The bill is technically an explanation of charges, and because Flor has insurance including Medicare, he won't have to pay the vast majority of it. In fact because he had COVID-19, and not a different disease, he might not have to pay anything - a quirk of this situation I'll get to in a minute.
> 
> But for now it's got him and his family and friends marveling at the extreme expense, and bizarre economics, of American health care.
> 
> ...
> 
> Going through it all, Flor said he was surprised at his own reaction. Which was guilt.
> 
> "I feel guilty about surviving," he says. "There's a sense of 'why me?' Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor's guilt."
> 
> There also are special financial rules that apply only to COVID-19. Congress set aside more than $100 billion to help hospitals and insurance companies defray the costs of the pandemic, in part to encourage people to seek testing and treatment (including those with no insurance). As a result, Flor *probably* won't have to pay even his Medicare Advantage policy's out-of-pocket charges, which could have amounted to $6,000.
> 
> ...
> 
> It's like we're doing an experiment for what universal health coverage might be like, but confining it to only this one illness.
> 
> "Suffering from the novel coronavirus as opposed to cancer shouldn't make a difference in terms of your financial burden," Lat wrote, in Slate. "What you pay as a patient shouldn't depend, in essence, on whether your disease has a good publicist."
> 
> Flor said he's hyper-aware that somebody is paying his million-dollar bill - taxpayers, other insurance customers and so on. "Fears of socialism" have always stopped us from guaranteeing full health care for everyone, he said. But there's also the gold-plated costs here, twice as expensive per capita as anywhere else in the world.
> 
> "It was a million bucks to save my life, and of course I'd say that's money well-spent," he says. "But I also know I might be the only one saying that."


----------



## Flamme

DaveM said:


> Since you brought the subject up, twitter-speak (plugging in numbers to replace sequences of letters) may work with casual communication with friends, but with serious subjects here, I find it too distracting. I'm sure I'll miss reading some of your good posts because of it.


Idk buddy its usually used when the Other has no other argument 2 offer
Back 2 topic, There are rumours here that the Second wave is real and ppl fear autumn...What a crazy year...


----------



## Kieran

science said:


> Bolsonaro once said there were 100,000 people he'd like to kill. I'm not sure which 100k they were, but as of today over 40k have died of covid-19 in Brazil.
> 
> Back in South Korea, several of my summer classes have now been moved online, anecdotally suggesting that people are moving back toward a little more caution as the numbers here continue to rise.


It's gonna be a thing, isn't it, online learning? Webinars, Zoom classes, I even heard of first aid classes on zoom, where the instructor leans into the monitor to see you kissing-of-life with enough riguour. Working from home makes sense, if you can do it. A lot of companies might like to see you're actually busy, by watching you at your computer screen for the full 8. But this will become more normalised. But not for everyone, of course. Covid has created a class system, those who are condemned to having no work, and economic fear for their future, and those who can stay at home, drink booze, log in when it suits, work in bursts, get full pay, while they're bingeing on netflix.

These things can't be helped. Darwinism showed who's really essential, the insouciant kids whizzing about the supermarket aisles, without a corona care in the world...


----------



## Room2201974

Flamme said:


> Idk buddy its usually used when the Other has no other argument 2 offer
> Back 2 topic, There are rumours here that the Second wave is real and ppl fear autumn...What a crazy year...


2nd wave? Don't know about that but here in the States it's like the first wave is just getting to the parts of the country that thought they were invulnerable. We are setting records every day in my State for new cases. Yes, we are testing more, but when are the numbers supposed to go down? I'd like to be able to tell you what our hospitalization numbers are, but my State has deemed that is info they no longer wish to share. Why bother?

"Whenever two or more of you are gathered in his name, there is Covid." ~ _ 1st Book of Pandemic Lamentations._


----------



## science

I'm always nervous that people will be offended if I post something that we've probably all already seen, but this seems relevant enough to take the risk...


----------



## DaveM

It may be my imagination, but it seems like the voices proclaiming that an overreaction to the virus has _unnecessarily_ damaged the economy seem to be much quieter these days. It's becoming apparent as some businesses reopen that many of the businesses that were most affected by Covid-19 will likely not be truly viable until the pandemic is largely over. People are not going to feel comfortable going to restaurants, movies, various forms of public entertainment and sports in the sort of numbers necessary to sustain these events for a long time.

Ironically, or perhaps not, there is one exception: Trump's rallies due to start in a week. There are likely to be thousands of people elbow-to-elbow there with many not wearing masks. It will be interesting to see what the consequences are.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> It may be my imagination, but it seems like the voices proclaiming that an overreaction to the virus has _unnecessarily_ damaged the economy seem to be much quieter these days.


I don't know generally, but I would guess that is quite country specific. My guess is that in the UK at the moment the balance has shifted a little towards concern over getting the economy going again. Quite a lot of people will still be in their original tribe, but I sense that the balance has recently shifted a little towards things like "we really must get the schools open" or "we have to reduce the 2m distancing rule to a lower value, because otherwise restaurants can't be solvent".

As I say, it may be completely different in other parts of the world. And doubtless many in the UK would disagree with the sense that I expressed above, but that's how it feels to me.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> I don't know generally, but I would guess that is quite country specific..


Probably true. I was thinking particularly of the U.S. when I wrote it.


----------



## KenOC

DaveM said:


> Probably true. I was thinking particularly of the U.S. when I wrote it.


I'm surprised that there haven't been more polls (or any at all?) asking people whether we should generally tighten up, open up, stick with the current course, etc.


----------



## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> I'm surprised that there haven't been more polls (or any at all?) asking people whether we should generally tighten up, open up, stick with the current course, etc.


That's a really interesting point. I haven't seen anything either: all you get on our media is reports emanating from noisy people. There's nothing I've seen on how many are in one broad camp or another.


----------



## DaveM

KenOC said:


> I'm surprised that there haven't been more polls (or any at all?) asking people whether we should generally tighten up, open up, stick with the current course, etc.


Referring to the U.S.:
In general, I think people are ambivalent. There is so much conflicting information and messages no matter how much one tries to educate oneself. I miss doing a lot of things that I was doing just 3 months ago, but even if they become available in the near future I don't think I'll be comfortable doing them. I usually start preparing for Fantasy Football season around now, but I don't see how (American) football can start in September.

From what I'm seeing, if a poll was taken, those under 30 would tend to be in favor of opening everything up, those 30-65 would be somewhere in the middle and those over 65 would vote to stay shutdown although they might be in favor of limited opening up where true social-distancing and masks were possible. Just a guess though.


----------



## Guest

If you Google there are polls, though none in the UK near the top of search results


----------



## Roger Knox

DaveM said:


> Referring to the U.S.:
> In general, I think people are ambivalent. There is so much conflicting information and messages no matter how much one tries to educate oneself. I miss doing a lot of things that I was doing just 3 months ago, but even if they become available in the near future I don't think I'll be comfortable doing them. I usually start preparing for Fantasy Football season around now, but I don't see how (American) football can start in September.
> 
> From what I'm seeing, if a poll was taken, those under 30 would tend to be in favor of opening everything up, those 30-65 would be somewhere in the middle and those over 65 would vote to stay shutdown although they might be in favor of limited opening up where true social-distancing and masks were possible. Just a guess though.


I'm in the last of those three categories, I am in favour of the limited opening option as you have stated it. Opening of any sort must be done with great caution indeed.


----------



## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> I'm surprised that there haven't been more polls (or any at all?) asking people whether we should generally tighten up, open up, stick with the current course, etc.


That would be interesting for sure. In the long run, however, they'll be voting with their feet - and the feet don't lie.


----------



## Mandryka

DaveM said:


> Referring to the U.S.:
> In general, I think people are ambivalent. There is so much conflicting information and messages no matter how much one tries to educate oneself. I miss doing a lot of things that I was doing just 3 months ago, but even if they become available in the near future I don't think I'll be comfortable doing them. I usually start preparing for Fantasy Football season around now, but I don't see how (American) football can start in September.
> 
> From what I'm seeing, if a poll was taken, those under 30 would tend to be in favor of opening everything up, those 30-65 would be somewhere in the middle and those over 65 would vote to stay shutdown although they might be in favor of limited opening up where true social-distancing and masks were possible. Just a guess though.


I have seen polls done in the UK which indicate the opposite, the younger cohorts are more reluctant to open up, the older ones more prone to do it. I'll try to find the details tomorrow if anyone wants - it's getting late here.

The consensus view in Europe seems to be open up if the disease is under control (low incidence, low reinfection rate) AND you have a functioning track and trace system. If you can suppress flair ups locally, why use the damaging sledge hammer of national scale confinement? But without track and trace, you're buggered.

Are there functioning track and trade systems in place in the USA yet?


----------



## KenOC

A recent study from Harvard suggests that the new coronavirus may have been infecting people in Wuhan as early as August last year. Here's a *BBC article* that shows the study's methodology as pretty flimsy and does a convincing job of debunking it.


----------



## DaveM

Mandryka said:


> I have seen polls done in the UK which indicate the opposite, the younger cohorts are more reluctant to open up, the older ones more prone to do it. I'll try to find the details tomorrow if anyone wants - it's getting late here.
> 
> The consensus view in Europe seems to be open up if the disease is under control (low incidence, low reinfection rate) AND you have a functioning track and trace system. If you can suppress flair ups locally, why use the damaging sledge hammer of national scale confinement? But without track and trace, you're buggered.
> 
> Are there functioning track and trade systems in place in the USA yet?


(Called 'contact tracing' here.) In some states. New York State has been implementing it perhaps more than any other state. The Federal government not so much. It supports the idea, but 'our great leader' has lost interest in the whole thing (the pandemic) and is leaving it up to the states.


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## KenOC

Up-and-comers -- Countries with the most new cases in the day just ended:

1 - USA
2 - Brazil
3 - India
4 - Russia
5 - Chile
6 - Pakistan
7 - Peru
8 - South Africa
9 - Saudi Arabia
10 - Mexico


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## KenOC

New York Times story: *She Survived the Coronavirus. Then She Got a $400,000 Medical Bill.*

The usual sensationalism. As the story explains, she owes nothing. But wasn't it a great headline?


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> New York Times story: *She Survived the Coronavirus. Then She Got a $400,000 Medical Bill.*
> 
> The usual sensationalism. As the story explains, she owes nothing. But wasn't it a great headline?


All too typical of this somewhat discredited masthead, sadly. Activists, all of them.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> New York Times story: *She Survived the Coronavirus. Then She Got a $400,000 Medical Bill.*
> 
> The usual sensationalism. As the story explains, she owes nothing. But wasn't it a great headline?


I didn't see the story as sensationalism, and the bottom line seems to be that, "Ms. Mendez has submitted the bill to Cigna, her new insurer, and said that she was led to believe her share of it will be under $10,000." I thought that people in the US were supposed to have all their medical bills for Covid-19 illnesses paid by their insurance or the government, but this story suggests that is not true. I thought the information was actually quite useful.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> I didn't see the story as sensationalism, and the bottom line seems to be that, "Ms. Mendez has submitted the bill to Cigna, her new insurer, and said that she was led to believe her share of it will be under $10,000." I thought that people in the US were supposed to have all their medical bills for Covid-19 illnesses paid by their insurance or the government, but this story suggests that is not true. I thought the information was actually quite useful.


This portion seems to be "out of hospital" charges, and it evidently gets complicated. Do "hospital charges" include bills from physicians not employed at that hospital but who pay for the privilege of using their facilities to see patients? I have tangled with this myself in the past. The US healthcare system is somewhat impenetrable.


----------



## Jacck

KenOC said:


> New York Times story: *She Survived the Coronavirus. Then She Got a $400,000 Medical Bill.*
> 
> The usual sensationalism. As the story explains, she owes nothing. But wasn't it a great headline?


$400,000? I would relly like to see the individual items of that price. How much of it goes to the hospital administrators, to the lawyers, for the overpriced drugs etc. I am sure the cost would be 10 times less in other coutries for basically the same kind of treatment.


----------



## KenOC

Jacck said:


> $400,000? I would relly like to see the individual items of that price. How much of it goes to the hospital administrators, to the lawyers, for the overpriced drugs etc. I am sure the cost would be 10 times less in other coutries for basically the same kind of treatment.


"Bandage for cut finger: $68.57."

The overhead at US hospitals is huge, and is spread across over all services provided. I read of one hospital who employed one billing clerk for every bed. Imagine the cost of that!


----------



## science

To be clear, if I have to spend three weeks on a ventilator here in South Korea, my bill would be something like $100 even if the government had not decided to cover the full cost for this particular disease. As an analogy, when my father-in-law gets his chemo treatment, the bill is around $6. 

I don't believe we can discuss the reason for the difference without venturing too far into politics....


----------



## Eclectic Al

science said:


> I don't believe we can discuss the reason for the difference without venturing too far into politics....


Indeed, I agree. However, it's a pity because, bringing this back to Covid-19, the inability to discuss how healthcare is provided without immediate descent into name-calling and tribal shouting is directly unhelpful in handling the current crisis and in learning lessons.

To give an example, the German experience is so far held up as a good example among European countries in terms of handling Covid-19. Some writers suggest this relates to the strength of public/private connections in the German system (which is funded via a mixed state/private insurance model), and the fact that some control of the system is at the level of the Länder rather than at the level of the federal state. They then contrast this with the system in the UK, and suggest that (for example) a desire by Public Health England only to permit testing in their own labs was a factor in what is seen as inadequate testing in the UK early in the outbreak, and see this sort of failing as characteristic of an overly-centralised and monopolistic healthcare system.

Whether the above paragraph is remotely reasonable is not my point. My point is that in the UK you cannot have that sort of discussion without it immediately becoming tribally political. How you can hope to learn lessons without it being possible to discuss past experience outside a childish game of point-scoring escapes me.


----------



## eljr

mmsbls said:


> I didn't see the story as sensationalism, .


These posters are looking to find fault. This was a perfectly fine headline and story.

That one "side" looks for conspiracies is the real problem that we have uncovered.


----------



## Guest

You are quite right, in your final paragraph, Eclectic Al. However, I suspect any such conversation is impossible in most countries and not just in the UK. This is where politicians have to frame an argument and make it to the people, honestly and simply. If they won't do it somebody else will and that may just become a shouting match. In Australia there are not so many such arguments because we have a nationally funded Medicare system; everybody agrees it is the most desirable policy. The cost of Covid-19 to the medical system hasn't really been discussed; well, we haven't had so many cases but we sure have plenty of spare ventilators.

We have a similar public/private nexus that you speak about with regard to Germany. I had cancer surgery in a private hospital and would have waited much longer for the public system to become available. The public system has been fantastic with regard to Radiotherapy and Medical Oncology - and physiotherapy. All 'free' and first class. But not really 'free'; 1.5% extra on top of income tax, which *49%* of Australians do not pay!!! What I mean by that is 49% get more in government welfare than they pay in income tax - which includes childcare subsidies etc. etc.

So, I got the cancer diagnosis on a Thursday and by Tuesday 9pm I was out of the operating theatre. The surgeon said, "which day suits you best; I have Tuesday or Thursday". Done.

My husband has to have surgery to a couple of fingers which are riddled with arthritis. His physician's husband is a plastic surgeon and said he can do it in the public system. We figured it would save our healthcare provider if we did it this way and agreed. So far 2 years and still waiting. I'd give this the, er, thumbs down!!


----------



## Open Book

Christabel said:


> All 'free' and first class. But not really 'free'; 1.5% extra on top of income tax, which *49%* of Australians do not pay!!! What I mean by that is 49% get more in government welfare than they pay in income tax - which includes childcare subsidies etc. etc.


So the middle class foots the bill for universal health care.



Christabel said:


> So, I got the cancer diagnosis on a Thursday and by Tuesday 9pm I was out of the operating theatre. The surgeon said, "which day suits you best; I have Tuesday or Thursday". Done.
> 
> My husband has to have surgery to a couple of fingers which are riddled with arthritis. His physician's husband is a plastic surgeon and said he can do it in the public system. We figured it would save our healthcare provider if we did it this way and agreed. So far 2 years and still waiting. I'd give this the, er, thumbs down!!


What's the reason for the long wait times? Is there a shortage of everything including doctors and staff?


----------



## KenOC

As discussed a while back, major insurers in the US are covering all Covid-19 treatment costs without copays. And the government is paying all the hospital bills of the uninsured for treatment and for testing as well. Few in the US should see any virus-related financial hardship from medical expenses in this pandemic. Of course, lost jobs and livelihoods will still have major economic impacts on people.


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## Luchesi

Young people who are opposed to universal healthcare (because they're young) are not taking into account the damage done to a family's assets by a large hospital bill their parents or grandparents will incur (one or more of them will inevitably get sick). It's devastating to their future.


----------



## Guest

Open Book said:


> So the middle class foots the bill for universal health care.
> 
> What's the reason for the long wait times? Is there a shortage of everything including doctors and staff?


Good questions and comment. Firstly, yes the middle class pays - through the nose. Two of my sons are salaried staff and pay *more than 50% of their wage straight to government*, which includes a 'debt levy' for the government borrowings of the last financial crisis 2007/8. They also pay consumption taxes! God only knows what it will be like after the horrendous debt thanks to Covid-19. It's a massive incentive-sapper. Naturally it's extremely debilitating for them to want to pay extra for private health insurance. One of these children of mine actually works for our PM and I've told him, "you've got to reform the tax system, urgently". We are self-funded retirees and pay $A6,300 per annum for private health insurance. Don't know what that would be in American dollars, but it is always going up. Covid-19 cases are sent straight to the public hospitals system, of course, because they are the only sector equipped FOR ANYTHING. The only benefit of private insurance is you go to the head of the queue in serious cases, as the one I told you about before.

The public sector has HUGE waiting lists for 'elective' surgery and even cancer cases. I think this is a worldwide problem, to be honest. The frightful increases in costs of technology, doctors, nurses, ancillaries is crippling and 1.5% on top of highest marginal tax rate (49%) just isn't adequate to cover these costs. The aging population of people on an Aged Pension (not us) and the welfare I wrote about earlier is weighing heavily on our country. (And people can claim but few taxation deductions in this country when salaried and middle class.) Despite all the money in the world thrown at the health sector - and administered by our states - there just is never enough. Where I live a 6 storey brand new public hospital is being erected and will come online in January, 2022. Even then, if we're still alive (!) we will keep our private insurance because we get to choose our own doctor. In some cases they'll come in the middle of the night to see you in Accident and Emergency if you ask for them. Not so in the public sector. You take what you're given - and that can be mixed. But our system is very good overall, especially if you have an emergency which includes first class paramedics, ambulances and specialist teams. You see this too on "24 Hours in Emergency" from UK TV. Ours is much the same. I just cannot speak highly enough of this team of professionals.

My third son and his wife were in the USA two years ago and she got shocking food poisoning and ended up in a NY hospital. First class treatment and their travel insurance picked up the (considerable) tab. But they were both hugely impressed. It all costs, though. For every person who doesn't or can't pay there are those like my sons who do. And they get no overtime; for the privilege of my son in politics working virtually 7 days a week, often with very long hours, he gets to hand more than half his income back to the tax man.

What to do with the health system? That is THE question of our times. The shrinking base of taxpayers is causing the people to become restive about universal health care.

Nobody wants to think about it - until they themselves develop serious illness.


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> income tax, which *49%* of Australians do not pay!!! What I mean by that is 49% get more in government welfare than they pay in income tax - which includes childcare subsidies etc. etc.


Before inferring anything about what this figure means, it's probably a good idea to read around the subject of taxation.

https://www.austaxpolicy.com/worried-zero-net-taxpayers/


----------



## Jacck

Steroid drug hailed as 'breakthrough' in COVID-19 as trial shows it saves lives
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...9-as-trial-shows-it-saves-lives-idUSKBN23N1VP
this is not that surprising. At least some of the damage comes from the immune system, so dampening it is saving lives.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> Steroid drug hailed as 'breakthrough' in COVID-19 as trial shows it saves lives
> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...9-as-trial-shows-it-saves-lives-idUSKBN23N1VP
> this is not that surprising. At least some of the damage comes from the immune system, so dampening it is saving lives.


I think this the best we can hope for in the near and medium term, improvements in treatment that can incrementally chip away at the mortality rate, even though they are not a 'cure' _per se_.

A vaccine would be lovely, but not obvious when or if an effective vaccine will be found.


----------



## DaveM

It will be interesting to see the full report on the use of Dexamethasone (Decadron). It is one of the most potent steroids. In the past, there were major risks to the use of steroids in the treatment of other coronaviruses (SARS, MERS). It was known that if steroids were used, timing was most important. That’s likely the case here. Apparently, steroids have not provided any benefit during earlier stages of Covid-19.


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## KenOC

Seattle man spends six weeks in the ICU with Covid-19. He survives, but his *181-page hospital bill* totals over $1.1 million.

"The good news is that Flor recovered and is back at home. And he's probably off the hook for that $1.1 million, because his insurance is footing the bill for most of his medical costs. And his remaining $6,000 out-of-pocket expenses will probably be picked up by the more than $100 billion that Congress has earmarked to help hospitals and insurance companies cover the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic."

The article has interesting info on who's picking up the tab during the pandemic.


----------



## pianozach

KenOC said:


> Seattle man spends six weeks in the ICU with Covid-19. He survives, but his *181-page hospital bill* totals over $1.1 million.
> 
> "The good news is that Flor recovered and is back at home. And he's probably off the hook for that $1.1 million, because his insurance is footing the bill for most of his medical costs. And his remaining $6,000 out-of-pocket expenses will *probably* be picked up by the more than $100 billion that Congress has earmarked to help hospitals and insurance companies cover the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic."
> 
> The article has interesting info on who's picking up the tab during the pandemic.


"probably"

As with everything else, we just don't know from day to day what sort of future we are looking at.


----------



## Eclectic Al

Apologies if this is a bit parochial, but the question must arise about who is "having a good war" in connection with Covid-19.
Well in the UK university sector my alma mater Oxford is clearly winning hands down: there are 3 universities that matter in science in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London (ICL)). ICL has messed up on modelling and Ferguson's sexual habits (and its vaccine is late), and Cambridge is virtually - not quite - silent, but Oxford is winning the PR game, with a leading vaccine trial, the recent steroid trial and plenty of other stuff.
Broadening this out WHO has had a bad Covid, as has the EU. Covid seems to have exposed the nonsense of these multi-national institutions when the **** hits the fan.
Trump seems to be doubling down on his support base, which may prove a good approach or not for the upcoming elections (against an opponent with senile dementia), but as an outsider it does seem that this crisis is suggesting that his strengths are in culture wars set against a generally tolerable background, and not in dealing with a major problem.
China - trying to make he most of the situation, but surely a loser in the longer term?
Russia - fascinating. What game is Putin playing? Never bet against him. He's keeping his cards close to his chest, and that seems sensible.
North Korea v South Korea. Getting worrying. Is there a hidden crisis in NK? How is Kim Jong Un, as his sister becomes more prominent?
Lots of people dying. Ignore that. They're just cannon fodder in the great game.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> Apologies if this is a bit parochial, but the question must arise about who is "having a good war" in connection with Covid-19.
> Well in the UK university sector my alma mater Oxford is clearly winning hands down: there are 3 universities that matter in science in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London (ICL)). ICL has messed up on modelling and Ferguson's sexual habits (and its vaccine is late), and Cambridge is virtually - not quite - silent, but Oxford is winning the PR game, with a leading vaccine trial, the recent steroid trial and plenty of other stuff.
> Broadening this out WHO has had a bad Covid, as has the EU. Covid seems to have exposed the nonsense of these multi-national institutions when the **** hits the fan.
> Trump seems to be doubling down on his support base, which may prove a good approach or not for the upcoming elections* (against an opponent with senile dementia*)..


And you know this how?


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> And you know this how?


Just look at the guy.
I don't want to get in US politics, though - as I'm not personally involved. Reagan, of course, suffered in his second term from problems deriving from his age. I'm not sure I'd want to elect a president at Biden's age at the start of his term, but then I'm not sure I'd want to elect Trump at any age.
Not my problem, though. Sort it out yourselves in the US.


----------



## DaveM

Eclectic Al said:


> Just look at the guy.
> I don't want to get in US politics, though - as I'm not personally involved. Reagan, of course, suffered in his second term from problems deriving from his age. I'm not sure I'd want to elect a president at Biden's age at the start of his term, but then I'm not sure I want to elect Trump at any age.
> Not my problem, though. Sort it out yourselves in the US.


We will. And meanwhile, unless you've just received an accreditation in neurology, keep your diagnosis to yourself.


----------



## Eclectic Al

DaveM said:


> We will. And meanwhile, unless you've just received an accreditation in neurology, keep your UK diagnosis to yourself.


Whoo! Touched a nerve?


----------



## Eclectic Al

Anyway.....
After the recent entertaining detour into US politics, the point of my post was that Covid-19 has now become the norm, in that the story is now about who is managing it best to personal advantage, rather than whether it represents an existential crisis. The narrative is now about winners and losers politically. That's certainly the media situation over here. I might regret that personally, but does anyone really disagree? It could be a national phenomenon.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> China - trying to make he most of the situation, but surely a loser in the longer term?
> Russia - fascinating. What game is Putin playing? Never bet against him. He's keeping his cards close to his chest, and that seems sensible.
> North Korea v South Korea. Getting worrying. Is there a hidden crisis in NK? How is Kim Jong Un, as his sister becomes more prominent?
> Lots of people dying. Ignore that. They're just cannon fodder in the great game.


Putin's game is pretty clear and was outlined here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content
though it is becoming clear that he is losing. His biggest trump was Trump and brexit. And he has already played his hand. Now he has nothing but trouble
https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/putin-says-russia-exiting-pandemic-with.html


----------



## pianozach

Breadline


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> Putin's game is pretty clear and was outlined here
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content
> though it is becoming clear that he is losing. His biggest trump was Trump and brexit. And he has already played his hand. Now he has nothing but trouble
> https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/putin-says-russia-exiting-pandemic-with.html


Interesting links. We're a bit off-Corona, but I have always regretted that Russia (a great major country) has been somewhat semi-detached from the wider world in my lifetime. Your first link reads like a fantasy for those who think Russia should dominate in an implausible way. However, as a culture the virtual absence of Russia from the international "community" other than as an irritant is regrettable. This is a classical music forum, so think Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, etc. Then there's literature: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, etc, etc. I'm off topic, but what a shame. You won't agree, but I blame Marx, Lenin et al for separating Russia from its major place in world culture.


----------



## Eclectic Al

pianozach said:


> Just had the final foot drop personally.
> 
> The school district, for which I've worked as a "specialist" for the last three years, sends out "expectation" letters in April, letting employees know whether or not there is a reasonable expectation that they will have you continue on for the next school year. To my relief, in these times, I was notified that, yes, I can expect to still have my job in September.
> 
> But . . .
> 
> I just received the *"this letter supersedes the prior letter"* form letter, which informs that *"we have had to make a painful decision" *that there will be no *"guarantee of employment past June 30"*. They close that it's *"not a reflection on you or the quality of your services, but is necessitated by the financial and operational uncertainty of school services for the upcoming school year."
> *
> 
> The letter, dated June 4, is postmarked June 9.
> 
> I talked to one of the choir teacher with whom I work, and he seemed rather upset that he has found out THIS way, and that the district didn't bother telling the teachers, even though they've known for at least 12 days.
> 
> My stomach hurts.


Sorry to hear this. It's all rippling through. Ultimately Covid-19 is just a fact - some will die earlier than otherwise and many will be poorer. There's no opposition between health losers and economic losers from this: both are losers. Meanwhile, the realpolitik is that those who can will try to be winners. That's the world.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> Before inferring anything about what this figure means, it's probably a good idea to read around the subject of taxation.
> 
> https://www.austaxpolicy.com/worried-zero-net-taxpayers/


This is wrong; revenues are falling because of the huge numbers of people on some kind of welfare or government assistance and *the high rate of non-taxable income thresholds*. Fact. Put that together with an aging population, huge numbers of whom are on the Aged Pension and making inroads to the medical system. It is bottom-heavy. Any left wing organization can make an argument to the contrary, but that would be wrong. "Lies, damned lies and statistics".

I won't bother spoiling the politics behind this article (coming from a blog in a university) with further facts and my own personal experience with taxation. The universities have a strong ideological position to promote and the fact that they've referenced the Grattan Institute...!! That is priceless. This is one and the same organization which proudly proclaimed about 3 or 4 years ago that a retiree couple could live "comfortably" with $300K in funds. What a laugh that raised right around the country: most people know that amount would last about 5 years. In fact, our Labor Party went to the last election promising to rob those same retirees, probably on the basis of what the Grattan Institute had to say about how wealthy they all are. Labor has had 1 majority win in 27 years; one term of government and one hung parliament.

Having run a business for 25 years and now our own superannuation fund I think I know something about the subject of Australian taxation.

I see New Zealand has 2 cases of Covid-19 after two people arrived from London via Doha and were allowed _to drive from Auckland to Wellington_ (8 hour trip) to visit a dying relative.


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Interesting links. We're a bit off-Corona, but I have always regretted that Russia (a great major country) has been somewhat semi-detached from the wider world in my lifetime. Your first link reads like a fantasy for those who think Russia should dominate in an implausible way. However, as a culture the virtual absence of Russia from the international "community" other than as an irritant is regrettable. This is a classical music forum, so think Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, etc. Then there's literature: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, etc, etc. I'm off topic, but what a shame. You won't agree, but I blame Marx, Lenin et al for separating Russia from its major place in world culture.


the bolshevik revolution was definitely a huge a tragedy for the Russian nation (I recommend reading the Gulag Archipelago). Though Russians themselves still do not fully grasp the scale of that tragedy and in some polls, elect Stalin as the greatest Russian. They still have not come to terms with their own past and until they do, they cannot become a full member of the international community
and Lenin was a actually a German agent
https://www.dw.com/en/how-germany-got-the-russian-revolution-off-the-ground/a-41195312


----------



## Guest

Christabel said:


> This is wrong; revenues are falling because of the huge numbers of people on some kind of welfare or government assistance and the high rate of non-taxable income thresholds. Fact. Put that together with an aging population, huge numbers of whom are on the Aged Pension and making inroads to the medical system. It is bottom-heavy. Any left wing organization can make an argument to the contrary, but that would be wrong. "Lies, damned lies and statistics".
> 
> I won't bother spoiling the politics behind this article (coming from a blog in a university) with further facts and my own personal experience with taxation. The universities have a strong ideological position to promote and the fact that they've referenced the Grattan Institute...!! That is priceless. This is one and the same organization which proudly proclaimed about 3 or 4 years ago that a retiree couple could live "comfortably" with $300K in funds. What a laugh that raised right around the country. In fact, our Labor Party went to the last election promising to rob those same retirees, probably on the basis of what the Grattan Institute had to say about how wealthy they all are. Labor has had 1 majority win in 27 years; one term of government and one hung parliament.
> 
> Having run a business for 25 years and now our own superannuation fund I think I know something about the subject of Australian taxation.


If you like...


----------



## Guest

Some very simple facts:

The tax-free threshold in Australia is currently $18,200. Multiply that by 2 people (retirees, if you liked) and that makes $*36,400* per annum *completely tax free* and on top of this concession cards for pharmaceuticals and other benefits (free transport, discounts on dental, electricity etc.) Those 'concession's are all nett costs to the taxpayer. On current returns on investments a retiree couple would have to have OVER $1M invested in superannuation to get that kind of a return. Then the Grattan Institute would label them "wealthy" and urge government to punish them with higher taxes and charges (when we already pay consumption taxes like everybody else).

I like to use the musical metaphor; the smallest distance between tones in western music is the half-step. Well, fiscally there are smaller steps than 'half steps' and many shades in between. But ideologues will only see the half-steps and what is convenient to be argued.

The Australian middle class salary and wage earner is paying most of the tax; it was ever thus, but this is growing exponentially in unfairness. We are actually at a tipping point where the value of money earned from actual work is often unviable.


----------



## science

The news out of UK about the steroid could get us a good deal towards being out of the woods.


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> The news out of UK about the steroid could get us a good deal towards being out of the woods.


This drug looks helpful but I don't see any startling results in the BBC story:


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> This drug looks helpful but I don't see any startling results in the BBC story:


I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers, but this is the way the preliminary results have been described:
_*
Dexamethasone reduced deaths by one-third in ventilated patients* (rate ratio 0.65 [95% confidence interval 0.48 to 0.88]; p=0.0003) *and by one fifth in other patients receiving oxygen only* (0.80 [0.67 to 0.96]; p=0.0021)._


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers, but this is the way the preliminary results have been described:
> _*
> Dexamethasone reduced deaths by one-third in ventilated patients* (rate ratio 0.65 [95% confidence interval 0.48 to 0.88]; p=0.0003) *and by one fifth in other patients receiving oxygen only* (0.80 [0.67 to 0.96]; p=0.0021)._


The figures and graphic are from the *BBC story* on this drug. I don't know why the results in that graphic seem so modest compared with your recital of the numerical trial results.


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## KenOC

*A view from the right*:
-------------------------------------
Hoover Institution research fellow David Henderson told "The Ingraham Angle" Tuesday that the data he's seen shows that the lockdowns imposed in many U.S. states due to the coronavirus pandemic may have had a more negative impact than the virus itself.

"The best study so far, believe it or not, is from [University of California] Berkeley. And they found social distancing measures plus harsh shelter-in-place measures saved about 74,000 lives," Henderson told host Laura Ingraham. "And even that's an exaggeration for two reasons.

"First, we've had a major increase in suicides because it's very hard for people to live this way. And second, there's a study in Germany that says ... a lot of these deaths aren't so much prevented as delayed, because unless the vaccine comes along miraculously in the next month or two, which no one expects, then people are going to die later."


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> And second, there's a study in Germany that says ... a lot of these deaths aren't so much prevented as delayed, because unless the vaccine comes along miraculously in the next month or two, which no one expects, then people are going to die later."


We don't need a study in Germany to tell us that social distancing delays deaths as well as avoids them.. It's been dinned into us from the beginning that this has been about avoiding a peak of cases that would overwhelm health services, not so much about reducing actual numbers.

There is never going to be an analysis that will be able to tell us exactly how many people have died of C-19 that wouldn't otherwise have died at that time; death may be as certain as taxes, but the timing and manner are not. I'm sure there will be many informed guesses.

I don't suppose I should ask what this chap said next - what we should do as a result of this insight that people will die later anyway. "Bring it on!" perhaps?


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## Guest

A lot of media noise was created around the 'wet' market in Wuhan and its suspected link to Covid-19.
Here's an article from *The Guardian* that comes at this issue from another angle:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jun/17/food-live-animal-markets-new-york-coronavirus


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> *A view from the right*:
> -------------------------------------
> Hoover Institution research fellow David Henderson told "The Ingraham Angle" Tuesday that the data he's seen shows that the lockdowns imposed in many U.S. states due to the coronavirus pandemic may have had a more negative impact than the virus itself.
> 
> "The best study so far, believe it or not, is from [University of California] Berkeley. And they found social distancing measures plus harsh shelter-in-place measures saved about 74,000 lives," Henderson told host Laura Ingraham. "And even that's an exaggeration for two reasons.
> 
> "First, we've had a major increase in suicides because it's very hard for people to live this way. And second, there's a study in Germany that says ... a lot of these deaths aren't so much prevented as delayed, because unless the vaccine comes along miraculously in the next month or two, which no one expects, then people are going to die later."


Well, surprisingly, the view from the right is wrong.  First, it would be hard to believe that the number of suicides would rise to numbers enough to diminish the benefit of the numbers saved by the lockdown etc. I notice that no (alleged) Covid-19 related suicide numbers are given and how could they be.

As to lives saved now as being only a temporary benefit because many of these people will die later until a vaccine is found. That conveniently ignores the improvement in lowering mortality as we speak due to improved understanding of how to ventilate patients and use of new drug combinations (perhaps dexamethasone being one of them).

(P.S. I understand this is from Foxy Laura's guest and not you, In this case the *Hoover* Institute sucks. )


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## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> The figures and graphic are from the *BBC story* on this drug. I don't know why the results in that graphic seem so modest compared with your recital of the numerical trial results.


It looks to me like, as usual, the BBC is trying to spin the story into the least positive presentation possible. Hence, they do a ratio of deaths saved among those on ventilators to those going on ventilators (1/8) or deaths saved among those on oxygen to those going on oxygen (1/25). This enables them to show a low number as their chosen measure of effectiveness. By contrast, the presentation from the study was deaths among those on ventilators with the treatment /deaths among those on ventilators without the treatment (65%) and similar regarding oxygen (80%).

If you connect the two sets of figures then consistent with the above you have the picture that 36 out of 100 ventilated patients will die without the treatment and 23 out of 100 ventilated patients will die with the treatment. The corresponding values for those on oxygen are 20 and 16. These figures are consistent with the BBC presentation and the scientists' presentation.

A reduction from 36% deaths to 23% among those on ventilators by use of a cheap treatment is hugely significant, especially in poor countries. Among those on oxygen a reduction from 20% deaths to 16% deaths is worthwhile, but not so dramatic (- although it could save more lives if more than 3x as many people are in the "need oxygen" group as opposed to the "need ventilation" group).

As to why the BBC may wish to slant its coverage in particular ways then it is always worth thinking about the political background, but that's another story.


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## Eclectic Al

KenOC said:


> *A view from the right*:
> -------------------------------------
> Hoover Institution research fellow David Henderson told "The Ingraham Angle" Tuesday that the data he's seen shows that the lockdowns imposed in many U.S. states due to the coronavirus pandemic may have had a more negative impact than the virus itself.
> 
> "The best study so far, believe it or not, is from [University of California] Berkeley. And they found social distancing measures plus harsh shelter-in-place measures saved about 74,000 lives," Henderson told host Laura Ingraham. "And even that's an exaggeration for two reasons.
> 
> "First, we've had a major increase in suicides because it's very hard for people to live this way. And second, there's a study in Germany that says ... a lot of these deaths aren't so much prevented as delayed, because unless the vaccine comes along miraculously in the next month or two, which no one expects, then people are going to die later."


I don't know the politics of the Professor quoted in this article:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/keeping-r-number-below-one-4220447

It looks likes his expertise relates to the relationships between economic success and healthcare/mortality outcomes.

I haven't a clue whether what he says is correct or not, but an interesting point is perhaps that if what people like him are saying has any validity then it is likely that the adverse outcomes they worry about from lockdown will be concentrated among the already poor. To put it as starkly as possible (doubtless overstating it) he is implying that at the moment we are trading a short delay in deaths among those who happen to be particularly susceptible to Covid-19 for a much larger absolute increase in deaths among the poor.

That doesn't sound like a view from the right in his case.


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## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> as usual, the BBC is trying to spin the story into the least positive presentation possible. [...]
> 
> As to why the BBC may wish to slant its coverage in particular ways then it is always worth thinking about the political background, but that's another story.


You and I read completely different articles. Please point to where in the article there is any underplaying of the possibilities of this treatment. I can only see positives. For example:



> The first drug proven to cut deaths from Covid-19 is not some new, expensive medicine but an old, cheap-as-chips steroid.
> 
> That is something to celebrate because it means patients across the world could benefit immediately.
> 
> And that is why the top-line results of this trial have been rushed out - because the implications are so huge globally


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> You and I read completely different articles. Please point to where in the article there is any underplaying of the possibilities of this treatment. I can only see positives. For example:


The point I was referring to was simply the construction of a graphic which illustrated the impact of the treatment by reference to the smallest fraction they could come up with. For many readers the graphic will be the thing they take away, not the words of the article.

You can see that there is some merit in my point from the fact that the confusion in numbers became an issue on this thread.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> The figures and graphic are from the *BBC story* on this drug. I don't know why the results in that graphic seem so modest compared with your recital of the numerical trial results.


I think the facts are the same, but the data is being presented differently. Sorry, my maths isn't up to it.

Reducing deaths of patients on ventilators from 40% to 28% (as the BBC reports) is a reduction of roughly a third, isn't it?


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## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> The point I was referring to was simply the construction of a graphic which illustrated the impact of the treatment by reference to the smallest fraction they could come up with. For many readers the graphic will be the thing they take away, not the words of the article.


So, show me that the graphic is wrong, and that this was a deliberate act by the BBC to downplay the significance, and I might give your analysis some consideration.

Note that the graphic is based on what was reported to the BBC:



> Lead researcher Prof Martin Landray said the findings suggested one life could be saved for:
> 
> 
> every eight patients on a ventilator
> every 20-25 treated with oxygen





Eclectic Al said:


> You can see that there is some merit in my point from the fact that the confusion in numbers became an issue on this thread.


Which point? That the BBC "as usual" etc...? No, I can't see any merit in it whatsoever.

What I _can _see is that perhaps they overestimate the average Joe's ability with maths.


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## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> So, show me that the graphic is wrong, and that this was a deliberate act by the BBC to downplay the significance, and I might give your analysis some consideration.
> 
> Note that the graphic is based on what was reported to the BBC:


I never said the graphic was wrong, and in my earlier post I reconciled the two sets of numbers. They are indeed not inherently inconsistent. My point was that the way they presented the data was odd (and caused confusion on this thread). I then put in a little hint that it might be worth considering the BBC's editorial line when looking at anything they publish. Clearly, I cannot know what the BBC is up to: I can only speculate, although I didn't in fact offer any particular speculation.

Here's another example which amused me a few days ago. The BBC news site had a headline which said that Spain was opening up to EU countries as Covid-19 declined. If you didn't click on the link that was it. If you clicked then you got a story which said: 1st paragraph - repeat of the headline; 2nd paragraph - mention that Portugal was not included; 3rd paragraph - reference to the fact that the UK was included.
I thought this was hilarious: classic BBC. They know many will just see the headline, so they have created an impression that something good has happened to do with the EU, which carries the implication that the UK has suffered from not being in the EU any more. Then those who can be bothered to click will see that the headline is not the full story, and it was not to do with the EU at all, and the UK is included, although you have to be bothered to get to para 3 to see this. Their headline was not technically incorrect (in that Spain was opening up to EU countries - just not all of them, and not only them - which made the headline completely misleading while arguably just sitting on the right side of truth).

As I said above, I don't know what the BBC journalists are up to. But here's a suggestion: let's ask Emily Maitliss - she might know.


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## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I never said the graphic was wrong, and in my earlier post I reconciled the two sets of numbers. They are indeed not inherently inconsistent. My point was that the way they presented the data was odd (and caused confusion on this thread). I then put in a little hint that it might be worth considering the BBC's editorial line when looking at anything they publish. Clearly, I cannot know what the BBC is up to: I can only speculate, although I didn't in fact offer any particular speculation.
> 
> Here's another example which amused me a few days ago. The BBC news site had a headline which said that Spain was opening up to EU countries as Covid-19 declined. If you didn't click on the link that was it. If you clicked then you got a story which said: 1st paragraph - repeat of the headline; 2nd paragraph - mention that Portugal was not included; 3rd paragraph - reference to the fact that the UK was included.
> I thought this was hilarious: classic BBC. They know many will just see the headline, so they have created an impression that something good has happened to do with the EU, which carries the implication that the UK has suffered from not being in the EU any more. Then those who can be bothered to click will see that the headline is not the full story, and it was not to do with the EU at all, and the UK is included, although you have to be bothered to get to para 3 to see this. Their headline was not technically incorrect (in that Spain was opening up to EU countries - just not all of them, and not only them - which made the headline completely misleading while just sitting on the right side of truth).
> 
> As I said above, I don't know what the BBC journalists are up to. But here's a suggestion: let's ask Emily Maitliss - she might know.


You're spinning where there is nothing to spin. I am not uncritical of the BBC. But on this occasion, I don't believe there is anything in what you insinuated here.



Eclectic Al said:


> It looks to me like, *as usual, the BBC is trying to spin* the story into the least positive presentation possible.[...]
> 
> As to why *the BBC may wish to slant its coverage *in particular ways...


----------



## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> You're spinning where there is nothing to spin. I am not uncritical of the BBC. But on this occasion, I don't believe there is anything in what you insinuated here.


I will admit that I am critical about almost everything to do with the BBC, and am automatically inclined to put the worst possible interpretation on everything they do. Take anything I post in that light. 
Perhaps the thing that annoys me about them most is that I find I am compelled to visit their news site so often, because it has such breadth of coverage. However, the reason for that is that it uses its possession of a guaranteed income stream via the licence fee to support a dominant position in online news within the UK. So that annoys me too.


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## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> I will admit that I am critical about almost everything to do with the BBC, and am automatically inclined to put the worst possible interpretation on everything they do. Take anything I post in that light.
> Perhaps the thing that annoys me about them most is that I find I am compelled to visit their news site so often, because it has such breadth of coverage. However, the reason for that is that it uses its possession of a guaranteed income stream via the licence fee to support a dominant position in online news within the UK. So that annoys me too.


You've certainly got that right!! The BBC is like most of the mainstream media; active participants and political activists. The public trust in this media is right about zero at this time. The fake news is just unbelievable and those organizations think the people are so stupid they don't see through this stuff. Read widely; lots of sources and those you can trust whom you know are reliable and HONEST. That last word is key as there are so few of them around these days. The best information and discussion these days comes from independent blogs and U-Tube shows.

This thread insists that it's a Covid19 discussion without politics. This is not possible since the media politicizes the pandemic for its own ends. And if you don't know what I'm talking about you either don't want to, or you should. Make haste to try and find the truth. We're living in dark times in terms of thought control and groupthink. And the Woke Taliban.


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## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> it has such breadth of coverage. However, the reason for that is that it uses its possession of a guaranteed income stream via the licence fee to support a dominant position in online news within the UK. So that annoys me too.


If a publicly-funded media organisation _didn't _have a dominant position, but occupied a niche market, with a specialist, rather than comprehensive coverage, you'd be really steaming!


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## Guest

MacLeod said:


> If a publicly-funded media organisation _didn't _have a dominant position, but occupied a niche market, with a specialist, rather than comprehensive coverage, you'd be really steaming!


All the taxpayers are asking is for fair and balanced reporting. What they do is the opposite. If you want to push an agenda pay for it yourself and don't have the hide to ask the people to stump up for it. The ABC is the same in Australia; I worked there in the 1970s and I experienced all of it. Nothing has changed since then. You were bullied if you didn't toe the political line and I most certainly did not. It stings when the camera crew ignores you because you're a conservative and then shouts obscenities at every other opportunity!! 45 years later you'll still see these same people on Twitter spewing their undergraduate bile.

"Comprehensive coverage" is anathema to these media cave-dwellers. Honestly, I don't think they have the smarts. Today it is all about who can shout the loudest. The Covid crisis has divided the people along health and economic lines too. Just what we needed!!

All praise to the Australian federal government for saving Australia from the depredations of the pandemic (to date) but time to open again for business!! Two or three states have opened for business and the Premiers of those state (like governors in the US) are all arguing with each other about which state deserves to get all the tourists!!


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## Eclectic Al

MacLeod said:


> If a publicly-funded media organisation _didn't _have a dominant position, but occupied a niche market, with a specialist, rather than comprehensive coverage, you'd be really steaming!


Ah, but now you're tempting me to continue with the BBC bashing. :devil:

Suffice it to say that it is perverse that the BBC receives a guaranteed income stream (derived from an outdated legal obligation to have a licence in order to own equipment capable of receiving broadcast signals), and uses that to try to create a dominant position for itself in online news.

Why the licence fee continues is a mystery, when most of what the BBC does is the same stuff as organisations without such funding do perfectly well (sport, popular drama, etc). Even in news and current affairs, ITV and Sky do pretty well (- I exclude Channel 4, as that is also publicly owned, although funded differently).

If the BBC wanted to justify the licence fee it should precisely focus on niche areas that might not survive well in the private sphere (eg classical music coverage?) and argue that that is appropriate using some sort of Reithian argument about culture. I would have some sympathy with that argument, but the BBC does the opposite and chases viewing figures, just like a commercial operator. So let it compete on a level playing field then - rather than keep the fee and use a lot of it to squeeze out alternative online news sources.

I also have recent personal experience of how vicious they are (or their outsourced enforcers are) in pursuing the licence fee. My daughter was at Bristol uni for 1 year and because there was a television on the wall in her student apartment she technically needed a TV licence (even if she never watched it). Being good citizens we paid for one. At the end of the year she left, and moved into a shared house. The TV Licensing people noticed that the licence had not been renewed, and the campaign began: I have a whole history of increasingly threatening communications, all based on incorrect assumptions which then resulted in factual errors such as statements that she was breaking the law. Our response when they announced that there would be an enforcement visit was that they could go round to the property if they wanted, but given that she didn't live there it was perhaps something they should take up with the owners of the property. I think their main objective was to make sure that her name and address stayed on their database so that they could pursue her for a licence there (which she did not need), and that was what we were not going to do (- ie let them have her new address). I suspect putting her new address on their database would actually have been a breach of the data protection laws, as they had no need for that information. However, they've probably got an exemption of some sort from that too. The whole licence fee system is a scandal (- and I haven't even got onto the fact that about 1 in 8 of all magistrates court cases relate to non-payment of licence fee, and these disproportionately relate to women on low incomes). Rant over.

I've drifted a bit off Covid-19 there - apologies.


----------



## Guest

Eclectic Al said:


> Ah, but now you're tempting me to continue with the BBC bashing. :devil:
> 
> [...]
> 
> I've drifted a bit off Covid-19 there - apologies.


Quite .


----------



## Jacck

Eclectic Al said:


> Ah, but now you're tempting me to continue with the BBC bashing. :devil:
> Suffice it to say that it is perverse that the BBC receives a guaranteed income stream (derived from an outdated legal obligation to have a licence in order to own equipment capable of receiving broadcast signals), and uses that to try to create a dominant position for itself in online news.
> Why the licence fee continues is a mystery, when most of what the BBC does is the same stuff as organisations without such funding do perfectly well (sport, popular drama, etc).


BBC is certainly an important part of Brittish influence in the world, since it is very international and people all over the world read it, know its documentaries etc. Without public broadcasting (which is under public control and can thus be changed through elections), you would have various private media owned by oligarchs (such as Koch brothers etc) who all have certain agenda and are not under any control. Especially if you read the Brittish right-wing media, you can see how delusional they are regarding brexit and other topics. They dream about some "Singapore on Thames" and other postimperial fantasies. Be glad for BBC, they are relatively restrained.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...g-in-europe-and-theyre-probably-a6860911.html


----------



## Eclectic Al

Jacck said:


> BBC is certainly an important part of Brittish influence in the world, since it is very international and people all over the world read it, know its documentaries etc. Without public broadcasting (which is under public control and can thus be changed through elections), you would have various private media owned by oligarchs (such as Koch brothers etc) who all have certain agenda and are not under any control. Especially if you read the Brittish right-wing media, you can see how delusional they are regarding brexit and other topics. They dream about some "Singapore on Thames" and other postimperial fantasies. Be glad for BBC, they are relatively restrained.
> https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...g-in-europe-and-theyre-probably-a6860911.html


You might guess that I don't agree. However, I'm not going to continue on this particular topic, as we're not really on Covid-19 by this stage.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> You're spinning where there is nothing to spin. I am not uncritical of the BBC. But on this occasion, I don't believe there is anything in what you insinuated here.


Bean counters and Spin Doctors, to the guillotine with all of 'em!


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> BBC is certainly an important part of Brittish influence in the world, since it is very international and people all over the world read it, know its documentaries etc. Without public broadcasting (which is under public control and can thus be changed through elections), you would have various private media owned by oligarchs (such as Koch brothers etc) who all have certain agenda and are not under any control. Especially if you read the Brittish right-wing media, you can see how delusional they are regarding brexit and other topics. They dream about some "Singapore on Thames" and other postimperial fantasies. Be glad for BBC, they are relatively restrained.
> https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...g-in-europe-and-theyre-probably-a6860911.html


Undergraduate conspiracies here.

The issue of the day is Covid-19 and Johnson has his work more than cut out for him - not just stopping the Woke Taliban and their tyranny. Who in the world would want to be a Prime Minister, having to deal with all this stress? And for his trouble he actually ended up in hospital with Covid-19, as you will recall.

I wondered about the impact of stress in lowering the immune system and making a person more susceptible to Coronavirus. We are finding out more about the disease as time goes on and that, for example, it was suggested recently that a certain blood type can make people less susceptible. (I think it was Type O, from memory.) As with AIDS, medical research will more than likely provide a treatment regime for Covid-19 rather than a cure.


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## pianozach

KenOC said:


> *A view from the right*:
> -------------------------------------
> Hoover Institution research fellow David Henderson told "The Ingraham Angle" Tuesday that the data he's seen shows that the lockdowns imposed in many U.S. states due to the coronavirus pandemic may have had a more negative impact than the virus itself.
> 
> "The best study so far, believe it or not, is from [University of California] Berkeley. And they found social distancing measures plus harsh shelter-in-place measures saved about 74,000 lives," Henderson told host Laura Ingraham. "And even that's an exaggeration for two reasons.
> 
> "First, we've had a major increase in suicides because it's very hard for people to live this way. And second, there's a study in Germany that says ... *a lot of these deaths aren't so much prevented as delayed*, because unless the vaccine comes along miraculously in the next month or two, which no one expects, then people are going to die later."


Up until the end of this I was at least following along, and then I threw up in my throat a little.

Taking this line of reasoning a step further, Henderson seem to be suggesting that we should have skipped the lockdowns and just had people hurry up and die; just get it over with, so to speak. "They're going to die anyway." He's suggesting it would have been better to have had more deaths.

Yeah, I cannot get on board with that sort of thinking.


----------



## Guest

pianozach said:


> Up until the end of this I was at least following along, and then I threw up in my throat a little.
> 
> Taking this line of reasoning a step further, Henderson seem to be suggesting that we should have skipped the lockdowns and just had people hurry up and die; just get it over with, so to speak. "They're going to die anyway." He's suggesting it would have been better to have had more deaths.
> 
> Yeah, I cannot get on board with that sort of thinking.


"Deaths aren't prevented but delayed". Yep, everybody is going to die. It's the kind of thing Oscar Wilde would have said!! I didn't interpret that as a *desire for more deaths*, merely an axiom about the human condition. When you took this line of reasoning a step further you were providing your own thoughts, which you cannot attribute to anybody else.


----------



## Jacck

pianozach said:


> Up until the end of this I was at least following along, and then I threw up in my throat a little.
> 
> Taking this line of reasoning a step further, Henderson seem to be suggesting that we should have skipped the lockdowns and just had people hurry up and die; just get it over with, so to speak. "They're going to die anyway." He's suggesting it would have been better to have had more deaths.
> 
> Yeah, I cannot get on board with that sort of thinking.


the whole article is dishonest and one-sided. I don't know what this Henderson is researching, but if the Hoover Institute is one of those ideological think-tanks, then it is likely useless


----------



## science

People are going to die later. 

Yes, we all will. And so will everyone we know, and their brother. Hopefully much, much later. 

But we are being told that delaying our own deaths isn't important. 

When people tell you who they are, believe them.


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## DaveM

Christabel said:


> You've certainly got that right!! The BBC is like most of the mainstream media; active participants and political activists. The public trust in this media is right about zero at this time. The fake news is just unbelievable and those organizations think the people are so stupid they don't see through this stuff. Read widely; lots of sources and those you can trust whom you know are reliable and HONEST. That last word is key as there are so few of them around these days. *The best information and discussion these days comes from independent blogs and U-Tube shows*.


Well that's in the realm of a self-fulfilling prophecy. When people rely on particular blogs and YouTube shows, they are likely cherry-picking. Are you really listening to objective sources that may tell you some things you don't want to hear? I doubt it.


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## mmsbls

This thread is now, unfortunately, closed. We've tried to keep it open through repeated warnings about purely political comments, but the discussions seems destined for such talk.


----------

