New Covid-19 Thread

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

I agree huge privacy concerns, and citizens should be watching the politicians so that they don't use these new technologies to oppress there populations.

But you are using a computer the amount of information that can be mined from this habit means you have lost your privacy already.....to any interested parties.

Privacy has been an illusion in the West for a long time, Credit Agencies (private companies by the way) have a huge influence on your life, not with-standing the Equifax breach.,
The Amazons, and the Google have great power of what you buy and even can influence how you think again private companies.

Yet your type harps on about being tracked by a smartphone APP, Nutz.

I'm not harping about a smartphone app. I'm "harping," if you will (talk about using loaded words to influence thinking) about government REQUIRING me to carry this app in order to go into a grocery store to buy food. I'm talking about government using this app to lock YOU up in your home, repeatedly, even though you are healthy and have done nothing wrong to "deserve" imprisonment. I'm talking about government requiring you to allow them inside your home via camera to see your living arrangements. Are you too obtuse to see the difference here?

Whenever the subject arises about government encroaching on freedom, you either respond by defending the encroachment or resigning yourself to it as being inevitable.

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

WE just had the stats in from the NHS here in Blighty:-

Normally we do a round 300,000 operations a month, we down to less than 40,000 !

Mike

[shiny!]

Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

It's a Brave New World where only "authorities" decide how we get to exercise our UNALIENABLE rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. As the Mayor of Orland Park so eloquently states, there is no scientific basis whatsoever for these Covid-19 restrictions. The hypocracy is breathtaking:

[jk]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

[Chris Coles]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

It's a Brave New World where only "authorities" decide how we get to exercise our UNALIENABLE rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. As the Mayor of Orland Park so eloquently states, there is no scientific basis whatsoever for these Covid-19 restrictions. The hypocracy is breathtaking:

Then add this to the debate, though apologies for being the top rated comment on the web page and take account of the some 70 pages of comments that follow. https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/06/18/social-impact-of-coronavirus-fear.aspx?ShowAllComments=true#10073

You will need to scroll back to the beginning.

[jk]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

It's a Brave New World where only "authorities" decide how we get to exercise our UNALIENABLE rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. As the Mayor of Orland Park so eloquently states, there is no scientific basis whatsoever for these Covid-19 restrictions. The hypocracy is breathtaking:

otoh,

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

I don't care, jk. Charts like that are meaningless for two reasons:

1. They don't provide information about the ages and medical history of the people who died. Probably 90% of those deaths were people who were very old or already sick with pre-existing co-morbid diseases. In other words, people who were already likely to die soon anyway. I know that sounds terribly insensitive, but the lockdown/economic shutdown response to Covid-19 is killing far more people than Covid-19 itself.

2. You must also factor in the staggering rise in deaths caused by the Covid-19 response itself from domestic violence and child abuse, delayed medical testing and treatments, unemployment and poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, depression and suicide. Unless you give these numbers side-by-side with the Covid-19 death statistics, you're only giving half of the equation. These "side effect" deaths are going to massively dwarf the deaths from Covid-19.

If someday somebody runs the numbers of all deaths from all causes under current Covid-19 policy against a computer simulation showing all deaths from all causes had we let the disease rage on without shutting the economy down (even taking into account overwhelmed ERs and hospitals had we not "flattened the curve")... if they compare the overall deaths of these two paths now and project ahead one year, five years, ten years... I think it will show that the chosen response ultimately killed more people and permanently damaged more lives than if we had done nothing.

For every 1% rise in the unemployment rate, 37,000 people die.
"According to one study [the one by Bluestone et al.] a 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths [including 20,000 heart attacks], 920 suicides, 650 homicides, 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions."

A year's worth of suicide attempts in four weeks.

[jk]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

i'm sure there's a lot of noise embedded in those charts, but the performance of the u.s. sure looks a lot worse than that of the e.u. could be different methods of counting. or not. but on the whole it seems to me that the u.s. is doing a pretty poor job in general. not quite as bad as brazil but pretty bad. who knows about counting cases? but it's pretty easy to count hospitalizations. that's a number without ambiguities. also it's a symptom of our lunacy that we've turned wearing masks into a political issue.

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

i'm sure there's a lot of noise embedded in those charts, but the performance of the u.s. sure looks a lot worse than that of the e.u. could be different methods of counting. or not. but on the whole it seems to me that the u.s. is doing a pretty poor job in general. not quite as bad as brazil but pretty bad. who knows about counting cases? but it's pretty easy to count hospitalizations. that's a number without ambiguities. also it's a symptom of our lunacy that we've turned wearing masks into a political issue.

Totally agree with you about the masks. Seems to be the divisiveness of the times that everything can be turned into a polarized political issue. Look at what's happened to J.K. Rowling for heaven's sake.

The spike in Arizona is almost entirely in the 20-44 age group with fewer than 5% needing hospitalization. If it's possible for herd immunity to be acquired for this disease, and if after having had it the person developes antibodies (both unknowns at this point) this is exactly the age group that you'd want to get it (if such a thing is possible as wanting someone to get it). Working age people, they get it, they get over it, they get on with their lives.

[jk]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

here's a link to state by state data, including use of various hospital resources. it also allows you to look at other countries, as well show projected values with degrees of uncertainty. be careful to pay attention to the scale of the y axis- it's very different for more or less populous countries/states

https://covid19.healthdata.org/unite...merica/arizona

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

Thanks for the charts. Local news just reported that while cases spiked during the last week, ICU bed usage remains the same at 84%. The next few months will be interesting.

It's much worse up on the Navajo nation.

Addendum: the governer just did a reversal and announced that mayors can set mask policies for their own cities. Looks like everybody's masking up. Scottsdale's policy went into effect a few minutes ago. Phoenix begins tomorrow:

List of cities with face mask policies: https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/li...k-requirements

[jk]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

apple announced [today?] that they are re-closing stores in fla, no car, so car, and arizona because of rising case rates.

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19 rules make NO sense!

apple announced [today?] that they are re-closing stores in fla, no car, so car, and arizona because of rising case rates.

Yes. A lot of their closings are in the malls in and around Phoenix.

[shiny!]

Covid-19 more infectious, less lethal than reported

A new study from Penn St. suggests that initial COVID-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported, meaning it's far less lethal than believed:

https://news.psu.edu/story/623797/20...lJ9264.twitter

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Many epidemiologists believe that the initial COVID-19 infection rate was undercounted due to testing issues, asymptomatic and alternatively symptomatic individuals, and a failure to identify early cases.


Now, a new study from Penn State estimates that the number of early COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may have been more than 80 times greater and doubled nearly twice as fast as originally believed.


In a paper published today (June 22) in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers estimated the detection rate of symptomatic COVID-19 cases using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s influenza-like illnesses (ILI) surveillance data over a three week period in March 2020.


“We analyzed each state’s ILI cases to estimate the number that could not be attributed to influenza and were in excess of seasonal baseline levels,” said Justin Silverman, assistant professor in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology and Department of Medicine. “When you subtract these out, you’re left with what we're calling excess ILI – cases that can't be explained by either influenza or the typical seasonal variation of respiratory pathogens.”


The researchers found that the excess ILI showed a nearly perfect correlation with the spread of COVID-19 around the country.


Said Silverman, “This suggests that ILI data is capturing COVID cases, and there appears to be a much greater undiagnosed population than originally thought.”
Remarkably, the size of the observed surge of excess ILI corresponds to more than 8.7 million new cases during the last three weeks of March, compared to the roughly 100,000 cases that were officially reported during the same time period.


“At first, I couldn’t believe our estimates were correct,” said Silverman. “But we realized that deaths across the U.S. had been doubling every three days and that our estimate of the infection rate was consistent with three-day doubling since the first observed case was reported in Washington state on Jan. 15.”


The researchers also used this process to estimate infection rates for each state, noting that states showing higher per capita rates of infection also had higher per capita rates of a surge in excess ILI. Their estimates showed rates much higher than initially reported but closer to those found once states began completing antibody testing.


In New York, for example, the researchers’ model suggested that at least 9% of the state’s entire population was infected by the end of March. After the state conducted antibody testing on 3,000 residents, they found a 13.9% infection rate, or 2.7 million New Yorkers.


Excess ILI appears to have peaked in mid-March as, the researchers suggest, fewer patients with mild symptoms sought care and states implemented interventions which led to lower transmission rates. Nearly half of the states in the country were under stay-at-home orders by March 28.


The findings suggest an alternative way of thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our results suggest that the overwhelming effects of COVID-19 may have less to do with the virus’ lethality and more to do with how quickly it was able to spread through communities initially,” Silverman explained. “A lower fatality rate coupled with a higher prevalence of disease and rapid growth of regional epidemics provides an alternative explanation to the large number of deaths and overcrowding of hospitals we have seen in certain areas of the world.”

[jk]

Re: Covid-19 more infectious, less lethal than reported

this year's flu vaccine was noted to be less effective than usual. only about 35% and the strain of flu that appeared was different than what was expected, also it was h1n3 - ?not sure about this label, but it was a strain with which the vaccines are known to be less effective. thus we would expect more flu cases than baseline. it may also be that the vaccine gave people partial immunity, so that many got sick but didnt get the full flu syndrome. they'd be counted as "influenza-like." i had a pretty severe respiratory infection in feb but never developed fever, though i had a few [unusual] sweaty nights. first i thought it was an attenuated case of the flu, then i thought it was covid-19, since i caught it from a friend who'd had a visitor from hubei province right before my friend got sick. but my friend has had 2 negative antibody tests, so i'm back to the attenuated flu theory.

antibody testing is detecting a very low percentage of people, but now there is also evidence that mild or asymptomatic infections may not induce the production of antibodies. but would those people be resistant to a second round of the same disease? we don't know.

bottom line- we don't really know anything about this illness. it is a new illness in the world, and for all the scientists studying it, there hasn't been that much time to learn about it.

my bottom line is to assume we know nothing. that's why i have a combined cringe and chuckle when people talk about "herd immunity." there's some evidence that there's some immunity after having the infection, because post-infection plasma seems to help people who are ill with the disease. but we have no clue as to how long that immunity lasts and how variable that immunity is. i shake my head when people talk about having a vaccine next year- how good a vaccine, how potent, how long would it last, how often would you need boosters or re-immunization, how dangerous would the vaccine be. bottom line- try to think about how long it's going to take to get answers to those questions.

this is not a sprint. it's a marathon.