COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[Dick Allen]

14 minutes ago, poppysox said:

"Quarantine is when you restrict the movement of sick people.  Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy one."  Author unknown.  This quote is being heavily used in Michigan by people protesting the Governor Whitmer use of  heavy handed restrictions.

Actually many people sick with this virus don’t know it, but are still sick and make others sick. The fact is we have no idea who is sick and who is not. And testing 1 out of 100 at this point, won’t help.

Edited April 19, 2020 by Dick Allen

[default]

9 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Actually many people sick with this virus don’t know it, but are still sick and make others sick. The fact is we have no idea who is sick and who is not. And testing 1 out of 100 at this point, won’t help.

Couldn’t agree more.  We need more testing.  I understand the frustration of those who want to get back to normal.  Not everyone’s circumstances are the same as our own and for some, this is causing more hardship than others.  What we could do is acknowledge the feelings of others so that they know they’re being heard and that their feelings matter.  This is called empathy, which is exclusive of agreement.

Edited April 19, 2020 by default

[Balta1701]

On 4/17/2020 at 6:15 PM, caulfield12 said:

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/antibody-research-indicates-coronavirus-may-far-more-widespread-155200568.html
Santa Clara (CA) antibody test results suggest real rate of infection is 50-80X higher than officially published numbers.  Fwiw...

 

On 4/17/2020 at 7:34 PM, almagest said:

Yup. That was me. There is some concern about how accurate antibody tests are (pointed out by @Balta1701), so I'd take all these results with a grain of salt, but we do seem to be converging on a large disparity between known infections and actual infections. Hopefully that holds because it means this is A) less deadly than we thought and B) we may be closer to herd immunity than we realize.

For those who are curious, here’s a detailed look at the methods in that paper by an epidemiologist and as I suggested, the false positive rate of the test in that statistically 0 positive tests is within the margin of error. In other words, it’s statistically unknown whether 0 of their 3300 candidates actually were positive or whether 50 were. Furthermore, there’s reason to believe they might have selectively recruited people who thought they might have had it in previous weeks. Overall that study makes a strong case that the real incidence is well under 1% in that area.

 

https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody-seroprevalence-in-santa-clara-county-california-1f6382258c25 

[southsider2k5]

1 hour ago, default said:

Ahhh.. newest SS2k5 tactic:  Gaslighting.  Unfortunately for both you and me, a decade ago I was still thumbing through WSI; Soxtalk wasn't even a glint in my eye.

Have you read your own work lately? 

Though my favorite part of the "new" you is where you reach back into history for insults  but pretend to be new.

But it's different,  just like it's always been.

[default]

2 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Have you read your own work lately? 

Though my favorite part of the "new" you is where you reach back into history for insults  but pretend to be new.

But it's different,  just like it's always been.

Again, the things you see as a “new” me are nothing more than your own perceptions filtered through a lens disdain because you’ve decided that you don’t like me.   You’ve let it be known, and because of this you’ll desperately tear me down to protect this new part of your identity as a person who dislikes me.  And I know this because I’ve read plenty of your work. 

[southsider2k5]

11 minutes ago, default said:

Again, the things you see as a “new” me are nothing more than your own perceptions filtered through a lens disdain because you’ve decided that you don’t like me.   You’ve let it be known, and because of this you’ll desperately tear me down to protect this new part of your identity as a person who dislikes me.  And I know this because I’ve read plenty of your work. 

lmao.  Keep digging. 

[default]

4 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

lmao.  Keep digging. 

And you keep taking everything at face value.

[Quin]

Let's get back on topic of the Coronavirus pandemic.

[bmags]

Rinse repeat. 1200 new cases. Slightly down day of testing to 6k. Feels like we’ve been in same spot for 1.5 weeks

[Dick Allen]

Deaths are up to 41k. The hope that it could top out at 60k is looking pretty unlikely. Especially if you see how many people are out and about in the nicer weather, and really very few taking precautions. I would say maybe 1 in 5 wearing masks. Social distancing isn’t what it was. We have to finish the job or all our suffering will be for naught.

[caulfield12]

Chicago Covid-19 death toll passes city’s 2019 homicide numbers in a span of weeks...286/1290 statewide related to nursing homes.

 

 

More than 100,000 people defied Bangladesh's lockdown order on Saturday to attend the funeral of a senior leader of the Islamist party in the district of Brahmanbaria, according to the prime minister's special assistant, Shah Ali Farhad, and the Brahmanbaria police spokesperson Imtiaz Ahmed. 

The funeral for Maulana Zubayer Ahmad Ansari, an Islamic teacher, broke the country's ban of no more than five people attending prayers at one time, sparking fears of a new coronavirus outbreak emerging from the event. 
 

cnn.com

[southsider2k5]

14 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Deaths are up to 41k. The hope that it could top out at 60k is looking pretty unlikely. Especially if you see how many people are out and about in the nicer weather, and really very few taking precautions. I would say maybe 1 in 5 wearing masks. Social distancing isn’t what it was. We have to finish the job or all our suffering will be for naught.

Considering new cases have plateaued in the upper 20k per day range, I don't see a convincing case for deaths to drop off in the next couple of weeks for sure.  I would imagine us staying around 2k deaths per day for the foreseeable future, which puts us to 60k in a week and a half.

[caulfield12]

19 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Deaths are up to 41k. The hope that it could top out at 60k is looking pretty unlikely. Especially if you see how many people are out and about in the nicer weather, and really very few taking precautions. I would say maybe 1 in 5 wearing masks. Social distancing isn’t what it was. We have to finish the job or all our suffering will be for naught.

Pretty soon the argument will be there shouldn’t have ever been a shutdown at all.

Of course, Trump’s #1 indicator is the stock market and no deaths/cases/testing.  Can’t imagine his reaction if the DJIA was down in the 15-18,000 range.

But it’s just incredible to me that these same people arguing that hundreds of thousands if not millions died here in China...that it was unintentionally or purposefully released from the Wuhan virology lab to take the focus off Hong Kong protests and Xinjiang concentration camps or take market share away from the US...yet they still think it’s perfectly okay to completely ignore social distancing.

This is after just one full month of social distancing...compared to three full months here.

 

Now reports that 12,000+ Covid tests in Washington state are contaminated...

Whatever happened to that Abbott device that President Trump displayed upside down (yet is perhaps the most popular innovation so far)...is Abbott struggling to bring it up to scale, or too many of them are going to private labs for higher profit margins?

Whatever happened to hydroxychloroquinine?

 

Edited April 19, 2020 by caulfield12

[The Beast]

44 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Deaths are up to 41k. The hope that it could top out at 60k is looking pretty unlikely. Especially if you see how many people are out and about in the nicer weather, and really very few taking precautions. I would say maybe 1 in 5 wearing masks. Social distancing isn’t what it was. We have to finish the job or all our suffering will be for naught.

Not a lot of people are wearing masks to stores either. And I heard that some people think 5G is causing the Coronavirus. Oh brother. 
 

Complete rubbish: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/52168096https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/52168096

Edited April 19, 2020 by The Beast

[caulfield12]

16 minutes ago, The Beast said:

Not a lot of people are wearing masks to stores either. And I heard that some people think 5G is causing the Coronavirus. Oh brother. 
 

Complete rubbish: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/52168096https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/52168096

Sounds like something Nigel Farage came up with just to block Huawei 5G partial rollout in the UK...especially after Boris Johnson got so sick.

The sad point is that this business would likely go to Ericsson or Nokia, as the US is not competitive (Cisco and Oracle get a small chunk). 
 

 

Current # of contact tracers:  2000

Total amount needed in the US:  100-250,000

Edited April 19, 2020 by caulfield12

[pcq]

Just now, default said:

Couldn’t agree more.  We need more testing.  I understand the frustration of those who want to get back to normal.  Not everyone’s circumstances are the same as our own and for some, this is causing more hardship than others.  What we could do is acknowledge the feelings of others so that they know they’re being heard and that their feelings matter.  This is called empathy, which is exclusive of agreement.

For some reason the Feds are snarfing up and even intercepting supplies and then saying it's a state problem. I don't understand this. We need masks and tests to survive this. 

[default]

2 minutes ago, pcq said:

For some reason the Feds are snarfing up and even intercepting supplies and then saying it's a state problem. I don't understand this. We need masks and tests to survive this. 

Yeah the lack of transparency is frustrating.  And when Trump is actually willing to answer a question, it’s laced with hyperbolic nonsense.  

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

Whatever happened to hydroxychloroquinine?

 

Multiple studies, not controlled but out there, have tested it now. One came out in China a few days ago - basically showing 0 effect on viral load in people where it was tested.. While there's still no control group, it did not look promising.

Also, several studies, including ones in Brazil and France, have been shut down because half of the people given the drugs at high doses died of heart conditions.

Meanwhile, people are still receiving it, there's just very little positive impact and if people are dying because of it, they're dying. 

[tray]

9 hours ago, Dick Allen said:

The dog whistle with the LIBERATE, his now calling social distancing politically correct.

I am glad you called that out as a dog whistle.  I was shaking my head in disbelief as I watched a video of protestors in Michigan protesting and holding Gadsen flags and a Confederate flag. I thought, what are they liberating themselves from? Common sense ?  Decency ?  Humanity ?

I would like to see Trump boil his Pressers down to one day a week for a half hour max...perhaps on Thursday at noon.  Then perhaps bi-weekly status meeting conducted by Fauci without Trump and his cabal looking over his shoulder.   ALL of us are anxious to have the facts and none of us want to be manipulated with baloney, not with a potential  life and death matter like this.

 

 

[Jerksticks]

8 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

Yes, for trace and contain. Right now we're totally in reaction mode, with hundreds of thousands of cases. In order to safely open anything, we need to be able to throw tens of thousands of tests out every time there's a case. 

This has been bugging me specifically since my state is one of the ones that wants to reopen stuff, so let's take the example of Texas state parks. A couple things we know - people are commonly contagious for several days before they show symptoms, the virus can survive on surfaces, and whether it's the situation or biology or something else single infected people have in some cases infected dozens, if not hundreds (the entire South Korean peak apparently can be traced to 1 individual breaking quarantine).

So, a family of 4 goes to a Texas state park and camps for the weekend. Earlier that Friday, one of the parents is exposed and contracts it. They become contagious at some point that weekend while they're still using the toilets, maybe shopping at the store there, whatever. How many people are at the state park on a weekend? For normal business, several hundred, all could be exposed. They won't all come down with it, but chances are good that some people will. Everyone leaves on Sunday, going back to their local places of work for Monday and Tuesday. It is Wednesday of that week before the first person in the chain starts showing symptoms. It then takes 24 hours to get results back on the test, which comes back positive. Meanwhile, anyone who picked it up at the state park is already contagious, most likely without showing any symptoms yet for several days. 

How many people need to be tested from this chain? Everyone in the state park has to be tracked down, everyone they work with, their families, everyone at stores they visited. If any of them ran into someone who works at a nursing home, this chain could kill dozens  of people shortly. How many people need to be tested to shut down this one chain? Potentially ten thousand. Any one of that chain could be a "Super-spreader" and you don't know which person it is, so you have to track them all down. Furthermore, you don't know how the chain started, so you still have to figure out where the first person got it at. Singapore had enough cases that one person got into a packed facility for migrant workers, and now they have thousands of new cases. 

Until we have that little transmission that we can overwhelm every single case with tests, then we're in no position to relax this stuff. 

But...hasn’t that one person been everywhere the last 4 months?  Doesn’t that one person go everywhere every day?  Doesn’t that one person live in every apartment building in NYC?  Doesn’t he touch the door handle every day? Didn’t he fly on planes all through December and January and February and March?  Doesn’t he work at every hospital now?  Doesn’t he go to the grocery store every day?  Based on your state park model...didn’t he turn into hundreds and then thousands and then millions from December through March?
 

Now that we’re social distancing... doesn’t he still go shopping?  Doesn’t he still open doors?  People are using bandanas, nobody can buy sanitizer and grocery stores are packed every day...for a month now.  Isn’t he still everywhere?
 

Don’t you get it yet man?  You just laid out a scenario of mass infection from an outdoor state park. So what in all the F has been going on the last few months?!  You think the US clamped down on that guy by social distancing?  Lol.  Which is it?  Either we’re all completely quarantined or that guy is still everywhere every day, even now.   Is it super infectious or not?  
 

Didn’t the one guy show up to the protests in Michigan and Ohio?  Didn’t all those people bring it home?  Aren’t they bringing it to the grocery store as we speak?  Aren’t the people at the grocery store now bringing it home?  Based on your model, why is that only going to happen now and why hasn’t it been happening the whole time?  We didn’t quarantine shit in this country and you want to start that months into this...because we distanced...kinda...some better than others.  

[caulfield12]

47 minutes ago, Jerksticks said:

But...hasn’t that one person been everywhere the last 4 months?  Doesn’t that one person go everywhere every day?  Doesn’t that one person live in every apartment building in NYC?  Doesn’t he touch the door handle every day? Didn’t he fly on planes all through December and January and February and March?  Doesn’t he work at every hospital now?  Doesn’t he go to the grocery store every day?  Based on your state park model...didn’t he turn into hundreds and then thousands and then millions from December through March?
 

Now that we’re social distancing... doesn’t he still go shopping?  Doesn’t he still open doors?  People are using bandanas, nobody can buy sanitizer and grocery stores are packed every day...for a month now.  Isn’t he still everywhere?
 

Don’t you get it yet man?  You just laid out a scenario of mass infection from an outdoor state park. So what in all the F has been going on the last few months?!  You think the US clamped down on that guy by social distancing?  Lol.  Which is it?  Either we’re all completely quarantined or that guy is still everywhere every day, even now.   Is it super infectious or not?  
 

Didn’t the one guy show up to the protests in Michigan and Ohio?  Didn’t all those people bring it home?  Aren’t they bringing it to the grocery store as we speak?  Aren’t the people at the grocery store now bringing it home?  Based on your model, why is that only going to happen now and why hasn’t it been happening the whole time?  We didn’t quarantine shit in this country and you want to start that months into this...because we distanced...kinda...some better than others.  

What do you propose?

Just throw out the entire last month’s shared national sacrifice and roll the dice?

If we do it state by state, every single border is going to be blocked off from ones that are wide open.

Why should those who are sacrificing pay the consequences for 5-10% who refuse to follow the guidelines?   Why should those who foolishly went to Spring Break and are already recovered get the benefit of going back to work the earliest if they theoretically pass Covid or antibody tests?

Why should the nursing home residents in Florida be exposed to illness because of the Six Degrees of Separation from beachgoers this weekend...likely passing it on to one of their caregivers inadvertently?

If we had cell phone GPS tracking, this would be simple.   People would be warned they wouldn’t receive any financial support from their insurance company or the government if it was determined they got sick from going to a location they couldn’t explain away as essential...other than the grocery story or required reporting to work (by government order.)

Of course, hard to prove where it came from without contract tracing.  They would just argue it was from the grocery store or drug store/pharmacy, right? 

Back to that solution which means surrendering privacy rights and giving up personal data to corporations and the government...to track everywhere you go, and you would have to explain all trips away from the house and justify your behavior in order to be treated in the hospital.

So that would be fair...right?    Of course all those people out protesting would protest THAT as well, right?
 

If they do elect to take those risks, why should others have to pay the consequences for following guidelines?   It’s no different than those idiots who try to cut to the front when there’s a merge due to highway construction with signs pointing this out miles ahead.

 

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, tray said:

I am glad you called that out as a dog whistle.  I was shaking my head in disbelief as I watched a video of protestors in Michigan protesting and holding Gadsen flags and a Confederate flag. I thought, what are they liberating themselves from? Common sense ?  Decency ?  Humanity ?

I would like to see Trump boil his Pressers down to one day a week for a half hour max...perhaps on Thursday at noon.  Then perhaps bi-weekly status meeting conducted by Fauci without Trump and his cabal looking over his shoulder.   ALL of us are anxious to have the facts and none of us want to be manipulated with baloney, not with a potential  life and death matter like this.

 

 

Someone in the press corps brought up Nazi flags as well.

Saying “we’re not even going to have a country left” because Joe Biden will bow down or cave in to China, North Korea, Iran, Mexico and Canada hardly seems relevant to a health care-related briefing.

 

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, Jerksticks said:

But...hasn’t that one person been everywhere the last 4 months?  Doesn’t that one person go everywhere every day?  Doesn’t that one person live in every apartment building in NYC?  Doesn’t he touch the door handle every day? Didn’t he fly on planes all through December and January and February and March?  Doesn’t he work at every hospital now?  Doesn’t he go to the grocery store every day?  Based on your state park model...didn’t he turn into hundreds and then thousands and then millions from December through March?
 

Now that we’re social distancing... doesn’t he still go shopping?  Doesn’t he still open doors?  People are using bandanas, nobody can buy sanitizer and grocery stores are packed every day...for a month now.  Isn’t he still everywhere?
 

Don’t you get it yet man?  You just laid out a scenario of mass infection from an outdoor state park. So what in all the F has been going on the last few months?!  You think the US clamped down on that guy by social distancing?  Lol.  Which is it?  Either we’re all completely quarantined or that guy is still everywhere every day, even now.   Is it super infectious or not?  
 

Didn’t the one guy show up to the protests in Michigan and Ohio?  Didn’t all those people bring it home?  Aren’t they bringing it to the grocery store as we speak?  Aren’t the people at the grocery store now bringing it home?  Based on your model, why is that only going to happen now and why hasn’t it been happening the whole time?  We didn’t quarantine shit in this country and you want to start that months into this...because we distanced...kinda...some better than others.  

Well first of all no, it didn't arrive in the US until mid-January. 

And second...not every case turns into an explosion. But some do. And as I said...you don't know which ones will. You don't know in advance which person infects 50 at a conference, or 500 at a meatpacking plant in South Dakota, or 1000 at a facility for migrant workers in Singapore...or triggers the explosion in New York.. 

Yes, the US has limited these by Social Distancing. If you are not bringing together large groups of people, if you have the parks closed,  you avoid this  Maybe instead of 50 people, they infect 5. Did one of those people show up at the protests this week? We'll know in a couple weeks. 

I've pulled the trigger on this revolver 4 times. I therefore know with confidence that I can pull the trigger 2 more times, right? Don't you get it man, I pulled the trigger 4 times, what the F went on those 4 times? It's safe as can be. 

[caulfield12]

Charlottesville Part Deux

Trump responded: “I’ve seen the people. I’ve seen interviews of the people. These are great people.” He added that they have cabin fever and they want their lives back. 

“Their life was taken away from them,” he said. “These people love our country, they want to get back to work.”

CNN.com

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/us-coronavirus-outbreak-out-control-test-positivity-rate/610132/

A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat

Few figures tell you anything useful about how the coronavirus has spread through the U.S. Here’s one that does.

The test-positivity rate, then, is a decent (if unusual) proxy for the severity of an outbreak in an area. And it shows clearly that the U.S. still lags far behind other countries in the course of fighting its outbreak. South Korea—which discovered its first coronavirus case on the same day as the U.S.—has tested more than half a million people, or about 1 percent of its population, and discovered about 10,500 cases. The U.S. has now tested 3.2 million people, which is also about 1 percent of its population, but it has found more than 630,000 cases. So while the U.S. has a 20 percent positivity rate, South Korea’s is only about 2 percent—a full order of magnitude smaller.

South Korea is not alone in bringing its positivity rate down: America’s figure dwarfs that of almost every other developed country. Canada, Germany and Denmark have positivity rates from 6 to 8 percent. Australia and New Zealand have 2 percent positivity rates. Even Italy—which faced one of the world’s most ravaging outbreaks—has a 15 percent rate. It has found nearly 160,000 cases and conducted more than a million tests. Virtually the only wealthy country with a larger positivity rate than the U.S. is the United Kingdom, where more than 30 percent of people tested for the virus have been positive.

Edited April 20, 2020 by caulfield12

[Jerksticks]

2 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

Well first of all no, it didn't arrive in the US until mid-January. 

And second...not every case turns into an explosion. But some do. And as I said...you don't know which ones will. You don't know in advance which person infects 50 at a conference, or 500 at a meatpacking plant in South Dakota, or 1000 at a facility for migrant workers in Singapore...or triggers the explosion in New York.. 

Yes, the US has limited these by Social Distancing. If you are not bringing together large groups of people, if you have the parks closed,  you avoid this  Maybe instead of 50 people, they infect 5. Did one of those people show up at the protests this week? We'll know in a couple weeks. 

I've pulled the trigger on this revolver 4 times. I therefore know with confidence that I can pull the trigger 2 more times, right? Don't you get it man, I pulled the trigger 4 times, what the F went on those 4 times? It's safe as can be. 

How about this:

You’re a scientist right?  You are obviously trained not to jump to conclusions.  What data specifically leads you to your conclusions?  Like of all the data points available out there, which ones do you lean the heaviest on right now?  

Reported cases, deaths per million, etc.  Which ones scare the shit out of you the most and make you say, “Yes.  This piece of data has to be super close to 100% true and scares the crap out of me.  Others need to look at this right here.”  

Which one or ones?