Covid-19 (Coronavirus) - Please stay safe, y'all

[FBnil]

I'd rather depend it on the infection rate, which btw is higher for Covid19 than either of AIDS and ebola.

But those are not airborne (although I have my doubts with Ebola)

 

[Robert Taylor]

Here is a good reason not to believe experts:

"Fauci is a Fraud and a Liar" - Kary Mullis, Inventor of the PT-PCR Test, Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry

"Fauci is a Fraud and a Liar"

lbry.tv

That was filmed many years ago, it isn't related to any recent events. This stuff is percolating up now for obvious reasons, but it presents an important cautionary point.

 

[levi]

Did Fauci ever say you can put a blood sample in an electron microscope and search for viruses and diagnose them there and then? If not then that's a straw man attack.

 

[Robert Taylor]

Well, people say trust the experts. Here is a true expert calling your experts frauds.

This isn't a schoolgirl confessional. This is a Nobel Prize winner, top of the top expert calling out Fauci for what he is and more broadly commenting on the chasm between experts and normies.

People think doctors, lawyers and scientists are some monolith of impeccable skills and ethics. It just isn't true.

Being able to judge which is which though, as Dr. Mulis points out, is impossible for non experts. I posted a link to Bret Weinstein saying the same thing. It's a common understanding in all expert professions.

 

[ible]

do you think maybe your website is biased if it straight out calls someone a weasel? "Kary Mullis offered to debate the little weasel but he refused..."

i feel like if you have objective facts on someone, you shouldn't need to resort to name calling.

 

[Robert Taylor]

EDIT: Chopping this out!

My favourite target is sjw language, it was too difficult to resist. But, you should have the freedom to just be you and not have me bitch and complain.



My apologies.

 

[Robert Taylor]

In the interest of arguing the other side:

America's Covid-19 Deaths Likely to Exceed 9/11's Death Toll Every Day, For Two Months - Slashdot

Just today in America there were 223,365 new Covid-19 cases. The Hill notes that's "the worst it has ever been." Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat also highlights this quote from Robert Redfield, the director of America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "We are in the...

science.slashdot.org

and

America's Covid-19 Hospitalizations Hit a Record High For the 7th Straight Day - Slashdot

CNN reports: U.S. Covid-19 hospitalizations hit a record high for the seventh day in a row Saturday with 108,487 patients in hospitals around the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project. And the number of Covid-19 cases reported in the United States reached more than 16 million...

news.slashdot.org

Some posts suggests an overage of deaths. My cdc post doesn't show the total number of deaths moving at all, but, obviously something is wrong here, including possibly me.

 

[JDTAY]

Not sure what to think of the new curfew in North Carolina. New cases were at their second highest level ever today, but hospitalizations went down for the first time since December 1st.

I'm reminded that new hospitalization numbers are preliminary though, since they even revised yesterday's hospitalizations downward.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Don't rely on tests, there's many false positives. Up to 40% from what I've heard (don't have sources for those claims, so don't take this percentage as reliable).
What happens in hospitals is the real deal.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

So according to what I've heard, it's up to 40% false positive in France, where PCR tests are more sensitive than Germany and Italy.
Tests are free of charge in France (through the social security), so there's tons of idiots who take this test even if they have no symptom and never met a really sick person.
In Mexico, it costs $100, so I let you imagine the jackpot for the involved pharmaceutical companies.

 

[JDTAY]

I'm still wondering how soon they'll ask me to get a vaccine. I've mentioned before that I might qualify as long-term care, which is part of Group 1a in North Carolina's vaccination plan.

NCDHHS releases list of hospitals getting first round of COVID-19 vaccines

This article says that although my hospital isn't one of the eleven receiving early shipments, it is one of the 53 receiving first week shipments. Depending on my classification and how few people want this thing, I might get it by Christmas.

 

[pyrat]

In the interest of arguing the other side:

America's Covid-19 Deaths Likely to Exceed 9/11's Death Toll Every Day, For Two Months - Slashdot

Just today in America there were 223,365 new Covid-19 cases. The Hill notes that's "the worst it has ever been." Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat also highlights this quote from Robert Redfield, the director of America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "We are in the...

science.slashdot.org

Oh. I saw that one and doubted if I should post it here or it was too demagogic. It's probably ok. The comparison is quite striking and well written.
It's just that when you cherry pick examples you can make your numbers say almost anything.
In any case I think the message is true: COVID-19 kills a lot of people precisely because it spreads very easy AND it keeps many spreaders alive (and asymptomatic or long presymptomatic so more likely to spread).
If you should compare that to 9/11, Pearl Harbour, The Spanish Flu, contamination caused deaths, gender violence, high school shootings or traffic accidents is beyond me.
Unfortunately the progression of contagion is always exponential. Restrictions can at least reduce the basis of the exponentation. But the USA in particular seems to be heading into a disaster, and it seemed so for long now.
I have no idea whether the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine works, or how soon we'll have one that works, but even in the best case it's going to get much worse before it gets better.
And the only tool to slow it and save lives are draconian lockdowns (and, longer term, research, of course). They're also cheaper that not having them (however expensive they are).
Losing customers for some months is shit, but when they die you lose them forever, so it is worse.

and

America's Covid-19 Hospitalizations Hit a Record High For the 7th Straight Day - Slashdot

CNN reports: U.S. Covid-19 hospitalizations hit a record high for the seventh day in a row Saturday with 108,487 patients in hospitals around the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project. And the number of Covid-19 cases reported in the United States reached more than 16 million...

news.slashdot.org

Some posts suggests an overage of deaths. My cdc post doesn't show the total number of deaths moving at all, but, obviously something is wrong here, including possibly me.

I hadn't seen this one. But I read somewhere (here?) that hospitals in some cities (in the USA, I think?) were sending people home in cases they would hospitalize them
if they weren't overwhelmed with COVID-19. They want to reserve beds for COVID-19. And eventually they'll have to decide who to let die because they can't handle them all.

"An overage of deaths" means that the older people die more than they used too, right ? Or that the proportion of old people dead / all deaths is higher than it used to be.
I can't tell you what happens with the CDC numbers. I don't know the USA or CDC well enough. I know there are governments who hide deaths.
You know the North Korea government says they haven't had any COVID-19 there. Maybe somebody wants to believe them. I read somewhere that the North Korea
government simply gave another excuse when they had to order lockdowns, so it wasn't officially because of COVID-19.

I've also read than in Italy and Spain the number of deaths reported were fewer than reality. But that was mostly when one reports deaths caused by COVID-19.
That's debatable, because some deaths are not tested (testing a living person may save a life, but testing a dead person is too academic to care in an emergency).
It's also debatable how many deaths for other reasons are indirectly attributable to COVID-19. At the beginning of the 1st COVID-19 wave I fell downstairs carrying luggage and
my back hurt for some weeks, but it wasn't serious enough to visit a doctor. If it wasn't for COVID-19 I might have gone, but the healthcare was overburdened and
also a potential contagion risk, so I didn't go. In my case that doesn't matter, but in some cases that was a heart attack, a symptom of something more serious that
the patient didn't guess or even if they went the capacity was not there to focus on non-urgent care that still could have prevented later deaths, so some of non COVID-19 deaths where
really caused by the healthcare stress caused by COVID-19. Then there's also the fact that if you die of COVID-19 you can't die of something else after that, so it's hard
to know how many people who died of COVID-19 would have died of something else if there wasn't COVID-19.
During lockdowns there are also fewer traffic deaths or workplace accidents and I think less delinquency in general.

But I think you didn't talk of COVID-19 caused deaths, just the total number of deaths, which should be easier to define and count. I don't know in the USA, but in other countries,
they had clearly more deaths in 2020 than previous years. I used to think governments don't lie so much on that. I mean, they can be creative on GDP or inflation, but on how many citizens died?
But I'm no longer sure. I still would recommend to somehow check for different sources and crosscheck, both for 2020 and years before COVID-19
(there's also the question of when is that, because the virus has been retrospectively found before december 2019, but I guess 2018 should be safe).
I don't know if someone has studied that for the USA. I don't know, checking numbers from a healthcare oriented service and an statistics or tax oriented service,
or from cities and states and federal agencies... I wouldn't know how to do it. It might also happen than when the federal administration changes, the new government finds
the old administration data wasn't quite precise, I don't know.

 

[Robert Taylor]

The cdc figures were for usa, so indeed, numbers elsewhere might be different. My original thought was that if the death numbers were about the same then what was happening ws normal deaths are being re-classified as the chinese virus because they died with that co-morbidity.

 

[pyrat]

The cdc figures were for usa, so indeed, numbers elsewhere might be different. My original thought was that if the death numbers were about the same then what was happening ws normal deaths are being re-classified as the chinese virus because they died with that co-morbidity.

I see. I'm almost sure that is happening, but I think it's too few cases where it happens. And then the opposite should also happen. I know of a case (outside the USA) where an old man (not so old, he should have retired but he kept working and looked healthy and happy last time I saw him) was a couple of weeks in hospital, a few days in intensive care and while in hospital he was tested as COVID-19 positive. But when he died in intensive care the cause in the death certificate was pneumony, nothing about COVID19. I can't tell you how that case was accounted for in the statistics, but both I and his family are convinced that this man died of COVID-19. He hadn't a pneumony before. I don't doubt he had a pneumony when he died, but that was a consequence of COVID-19. I don't know, maybe that's how it should be and the statistics reflect that correctly, but we think he's not part of the official COVID-19 deaths. Even if so, one anecdote wouldn't change anything, but hmm...

Anyway, your reasoning seems correct that if the 2020 USA deaths for any cause aren't so high compared with other years, then COVID-19 shouldn't be such a huge problem. But since I know the virus must be the same in the USA than elsewhere, the USA has the largest number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the world, and one of the largest per capita, and a lot of positives for COVID-19, and few lockdowns, restrictions or containment measures, I just can't believe that COVID-19 is less lethal in the USA than elsewhere. Therefore I end up doubting not your reasoning but your premise. It's hard for me to believe that the USA had so many deaths in 2020 as other years. I don't know where the error is, but something just doesn't match.

 

[Robert Taylor]

Amid fears of overwhelmed medical systems, data shows ample hospital capacity nationwide

The country is "managing pretty well," says major hospital network official.

justthenews.com

 

[levi]

I see. I'm almost sure that is happening, but I think it's too few cases where it happens. And then the opposite should also happen. I know of a case (outside the USA) where an old man (not so old, he should have retired but he kept working and looked healthy and happy last time I saw him) was a couple of weeks in hospital, a few days in intensive care and while in hospital he was tested as COVID-19 positive. But when he died in intensive care the cause in the death certificate was pneumony, nothing about COVID19. I can't tell you how that case was accounted for in the statistics, but both I and his family are convinced that this man died of COVID-19. He hadn't a pneumony before. I don't doubt he had a pneumony when he died, but that was a consequence of COVID-19. I don't know, maybe that's how it should be and the statistics reflect that correctly, but we think he's not part of the official COVID-19 deaths. Even if so, one anecdote wouldn't change anything, but hmm...

Assuming you mean pneumonia, that was the initial identified symptom of the disease, when it was discovered by the Chinese. If a positive test followed by pneumonia doesn't count as a death due to covid I'd be very surprised, but to be fair I don't know where you live and indeed what qualifications they use.

 

[pyrat]

Assuming you mean pneumonia, that was the initial identified symptom of the disease, when it was discovered by the Chinese. If a positive test followed by pneumonia doesn't count as a death due to covid I'd be very surprised, but to be fair I don't know where you live and indeed what qualifications they use.

Yes, sorry, pneumonia.
The case was in the EU. I don't remember if late March 2020 or early April 2020. But I don't want to insist in an anecdote. What I really meant was that if someone dies and has more than one disease, in some cases a death may be attributed to COVID-19 when it would have happened a little later of another disease. But it's just as likely that other deaths of people with more than one disease are attributed to a different disease when the patient also had COVID-19 and maybe wouldn't have died yet without COVID-19. I'm no doctor, and I don't know how more complicated life (and death) is than statistics. Besides any factual errors that may be, it might be that there's just not a single way to proceed to have 100% correct statistics, because statistics are intrinsically simplifications.

 

[levi]

Here (which is the UK) they always state that the death figures are people who've died within 28 days of a positive test. That's regardless of whether they were hit by a bus or whatever, and likelywise the cut off of 28 days is somewhat arbitrary, but they're clear that that's what they're doing. As a line in the sand that doesn't move, I think it's fair enough as an indicator, even if it doesn't catch everyone and sometimes catches people who've died for other reasons.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

28 days

Haven't watched that one in a while.

 

[JDTAY]

According to a poll cited by FiveThirtyEight, women are less likely to say they'll get the vaccine than men are. This contradicts what they know about women's health habits, that women generally take care of their health more than men do.

One possible explanation put forward is that women view the vaccine as a risk, but I don't think it goes far enough. I've already seen stories shared on social media claiming that the vaccine affects female fertility.

Edit: Here, have a link.

Why A Big Bloc of Americans Is Wary Of The COVID-19 Vaccine — Even As Experts Hope To See Widespread Immunization

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. Poll(s) of the week Most Americans say they will take one of the vaccines to immunize themselves from COVID…

fivethirtyeight.com