Coronavirus

[TespaceX]

I have a feeling this country will go back to shelter in place before the end of the year.
Even Newsom in CA can’t fight back the population demanding to open the state back up. Just a few weeks ago, he was still saying there is no timeline on when restrictions can be eased, and the priority condition to doing so would be widely available testing and contact tracing. Then last week he says we are weeks away, not months. Now, CA is getting ready to open up into phase 2 (chart below) tomorrow without the test/trace condition that Newsom was very hard about.

Besides schools, large sporting events, theaters, beauty businesses, and sitting down at a restaurant, I actually don’t know how the average daily life may be that much different for a typical white collar worker. Seems like my family can do most everything now that we used to do before.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I have a feeling this country will go back to shelter in place before the end of the year.
Even Newsom in CA can’t fight back the population demanding to open the state back up. Just a few weeks ago, he was still saying there is no timeline on when restrictions can be eased, and the priority condition to doing so would be widely available testing and contact tracing. Then last week he says we are weeks away, not months. Now, CA is getting ready to open up into phase 2 (chart below) tomorrow without the test/trace condition that Newsom was very hard about.
View attachment 539655

Besides schools, large sporting events, theaters, beauty businesses, and sitting down at a restaurant, I actually don’t know how the average daily life may be that much different for a typical white collar worker. Seems like my family can do most everything now that we used to do before.

I wouldn't be too pessimistic. As I've said before, I think we'll have some huge screwups in a few states. But I think the media narrative has gone too negative.

First, the media is NOT emphasizing the point that the positivity rate matters. They're just talking about the case counts. An increasing or plateauing number of cases isn't a problem necessarily in the presence of increased testing! The media is not talking about this enough, and Trump is starting to wise up to this and will be able to use the lack of focus on the truth to his advantage. (He keeps on talking about how the case counts are so high because of all the tests we are doing, compared to the rest of the world. Which is dumb (though partly true, technically).)

We WANT to have more cases! Not fewer cases! (Assuming positivity is going down significantly as well.)

If the media started saying that we want to see the case counts go WAY up (I'd love to see 50-100k cases a day ASAP), and the positivity go down (I'd love to see less than 3%), and start hassling the government about that, we might get somewhere - rapidly. Every positive case means a transmission chain halted (usually), so the more you find the better.

It's not an awesome picture for the country, but it's not dismal either. Positivity in all regions of the country is trending downwards.

Cases outside of NY/NJ/CT have gone up by about 25% since April 20th, but positivity has gone down by about 30% (about 12% to 8%)! (Rough numbers, about 230-250k tests outside of NY/NJ/Ct now, vs. maybe 120-140k before - that's maybe 70-80% more tests, and we're only finding 25% more cases.)

If we keep increasing testing, and we don't screw up phased reopening too badly, I think some states will have success.

This is from COVID Tracking. I would have liked them to overlay the number of tests as well, though they have positivity so that tells you.
There were 320k tests today (driven in part by a few lumps of back dated tests from some states):

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Elon likes it, I guess! I sure hope they can keep that factory clean.

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[PeterJA]

You're posting links to people claiming that the pandemic was planned in order to force Mass vaccination on people? Is that the kind of crap you want to be associated with? Have you completely lost your mind? Do you believe that there's a shred of evidence that that's true? Because if you do you have really exposed yourself. Vaccinations and the associated Improvement in hygiene and the subsequent reduction of chronic pathogen infection is responsible for the greatest fraction of longevity and healthspan improvements of any single Factor. If you don't know that, you don't know anything.

PS YouTube removed this because unlike Facebook they will not support psychotic anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. It has nothing to do with their support for the medical industrial complex. If you don't understand these things then you really are a member of the Earth is flat Club.

This reminds me of something I read recently:

Your behavior and the level of your anger is part of the problem.... I think you need to take a break, cool down, and come back and discuss things preferably without this much hypersensitivity and manifest irritation.

If you weren't so angry, maybe you could comprehend what I wrote and you quoted:

I'm not endorsing [this video], because I don't know enough to judge the likelihood of her claims.

If I hadn't posted the video, then @TEG would not have linked a purported debunking, which I will calmly read and consider before forming an opinion.

On the vaccination debate, I know enough to have the opinion that the angry irrationality is mostly on the pro-vax side, since the sneering I've seen falsely dismisses any criticism of any aspect of vaccination as anti-science, flat-Earther rejection of all vaccination. Your post sounds like that, so I won't try to debate questions such as why do newborn babies need six vaccinations before their immune systems are even capable of responding normally, and why did Congress set up a special vaccination court so pharmaceutical companies can't be sued in ordinary courts.

Call me wary of "unwarranted influence" (Eisenhower's words) of one of the most powerful industries in the world.

YouTube removed this because unlike Facebook they will not support psychotic anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. It has nothing to do with their support for the medical industrial complex.

And you know this how, exactly?

 

[Daniel in SD]

Elon likes it, I guess! I sure hope they can keep that factory clean.

Elon Musk on Twitter

Here's the guidance for manufacturing: https://covid19.ca.gov/pdf/guidance-manufacturing.pdf
It seems like the most difficult thing is optimizing the HVAC system. I wonder if that's even possible.
Maybe they should replace the AC with giant fans sucking air out the roof.

 

[renim]

The study hydroxychloroquine 'fans' are waiting for is '
Post-exposure Prophylaxis / Preemptive Therapy for SARS-Coronavirus-2 (COVID-19 PEP)' Post-exposure Prophylaxis / Preemptive Therapy for SARS-Coronavirus-2 - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov

It is however hcd only, not a cocktail with azithromycin and/or zinc.

 

[renim]

The study hydroxychloroquine 'fans' are waiting for is '
Post-exposure Prophylaxis / Preemptive Therapy for SARS-Coronavirus-2 (COVID-19 PEP)' Post-exposure Prophylaxis / Preemptive Therapy for SARS-Coronavirus-2 - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov

It is however hcd only, not a cocktail with azithromycin and/or zinc.

Note well the exclusions
Exclusion Criteria:

• Current hospitalization
• Allergy to hydroxychloroquine
• Retinal eye disease
• Known glucose-6 phosphate dehydrogenase (G-6-PD) deficiency
• Known chronic kidney disease, stage 4 or 5 or receiving dialysis
• Structural or ischemic heart disease
• Personal or Family History of Prolonged QT syndrome
• Weight < 40 kg
• Known Porphyria
• Current use of: hydroxychloroquine or cardiac medicines of: flecainide, Tambocor; amiodarone, Cordarone, Pacerone; digoxin or Digox, Digitek, Lanoxin; procainamide or Procan, Procanbid, propafenone, Rythmal, sotalol;
• Current use of medicines which prolong the QT interval including:
  
  • Antimicrobials: levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, moxifloxacin, azithromycin, clarithromycin, erythromycin, ketoconazole, itraconazole, or mefloquine
  • Antidepressants: amitriptyline, citalopram, desipramine, escitalopram, imipramine, doxepin, fluoxetine, wellbutrin, or venlafaxine
  • Antipsychotic or mood stabilizers: haloperidol, droperidol, lithium, quetiapine, thioridazine, ziprasidone
  • Methadone
  • Sumatriptan, zolmitriptan

 

[PeterJA]

So how are things over there in Trollville?

So this is your substitute for facts, logic, or credible evidence?

 

[MXLRplus]

Our Sheriff said he will refuse Governor Newsom's orders to punish businesses who reopen.
The State is now considering other options to punish offenders, possibly revoking state licenses.

On paper at least, they could shut down any business with an air compressor since those are taxed and licensed by the state.

 

[Norbert]

Huge study out of the UK looking at risk factors for death from COVID-19. They actually correct for prevalence in the population and correlations between all these factors.
Age is by far the biggest risk factor. Being male is also really bad.
Most surprising finding is that, even after correcting for all other (known) factors, all non-white ethnicities are at significantly higher risk (I would note that this may or may not be true in the US since the genetics of "white" people and "black" people are different than in the UK).
Simply being poor is a large factor as well, not sure why this would be.
Current smokers are at slightly lower risk (might take up smoking to calm my nerves!).
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1.full.pdf
View attachment 539608

Aside from dfwatt's explanation, I would think that being poor might mean health issues not taken care of very well, not properly treated. So more or stronger comorbidities. That's just an expectation, don't know if it is true.

 

[TEG]

Looked up the movie link, that's probably the video YouTube censored. Not sure what to make of it
Plandemic Movie

I have to confess it concerns me that you are kind of normalizing what is really a crazy point of view. The anti-vaccination movement is at its core anti-science, conspiratorial, and frankly rabid to the point of psychotic. To take Anthony Fauci's statement as potential evidence of a deep state conspiracy is also crazy. If you don't call out those kinds of inferences as such you are in a sense implicitly validating the paranoid logic of that 'movement'. Are you sure you want to go there?

Hey, they made a stew of lots of "ideas" (most of which seem outrageous) but that doesn't mean they are all wrong.
I try to keep an open mind and pick through the mess to see if there is any "there there".
Also, saying no one should be allowed to see or watch it fuels those who think it is some sort of cover-up.

It is sort of a slippery slope to say that some ideas are too dangerous for the public to see, so they need to be removed.
I honestly don't know what "terms of service" Youtube/Facebook/Twitter use that means they will remove things associated with "anti-vaxxers."

Personally I get my yearly flu shot, and all my expected vaccinations are up to date, but I don't mind that some people keep questioning the possible downsides.

Well, maybe the next step is to remove all videos that show people in public without masks? We know that masks are very helpful. We know that some people don't understand that. Some people make posts bragging about not wearing, or saying we need to stand up against masks. Should we ask social media services to delete those posts too? Shut down the "anti-masker" movement?

 

[Norbert]

@AlanSubie4Life your claim the reddit poster supports your convoluted and misleading argument re the Geneva study is completely wrong.

In fact your entire argument is completely wrong.

That poster went out of his way to clarify that he wasn't calculating IFR. He even said he would not use his estimate to calculate an IFR.

Instead, he was trying to estimate how much IFR would change if more older people were infected:

"I would not put too much stock in that estimate/use it to inform an IFR estimate ... I just wanted to do some crude calculations on how much population-level IFR can change if younger people are being disproportionately infected compared to if infections occur evenly across the population regardless of age." Repeated seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies in a population-based sample from Geneva, Switzerland : COVID19
​

IFR is the fatality rate in an infected population. It can be lower or higher depending on whether more vulnerable populations are disproportionately affected. You know that, so stop confusing the issue.

Your interpretation is misleading.

The post made an adjustment to the study's IFR result in order to make it more generalizable from the specific sample and/or the specific situation in which it was was taken.

It tries to answer the question of what general IFR does the local result correspond to?

His caveat is that his calculation is too crude to be sufficient for that purpose.
But, as I would add, a worthwhile step in that direction.

Thus, I'd say, the number 1.29% for a general IFR is, for us, more meaningful than the other numbers, 0.49% or 0.83%, which reflect a local situation.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Aside from dfwatt's explanation, I would think that being poor might mean health issues not taken care of very well, not properly treated. So more or stronger comorbidities. That's just an expectation, don't know if it is true.

Of course, but they corrected for many health issues. What's not clear to me is if they can correct for a higher attack rate combined with poor and minority patients being hospitalized with more severe symptoms (due to discrimination, reluctance to seek medical care, etc.). Such a scenario would make it look like poor and minority patients have worse outcomes when in fact they just have a higher infection rate.
It should be noted that only 11% of deaths were from non-white ethnicities and 26% had missing ethnicity data.

EDIT: Ok. I was misinterpreting the scope of the study. They do not correct for attack rate at all. Their data could be entirely explained by a higher attack rate among poorer and minority populations, which of course makes sense.

Commentators and researchers have reasonably speculated that this might be due to higher prevalence of medical problems such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes among BME people, or higher deprivation. Our findings, based on more detailed data, show that this is only a small part of the excess risk. Other possible explanations for increased risk among BME groups relate to higher infection risk, including over-representation in ‘front-line” professions with higher exposure to infection, or higher household density. Addressing these questions will likely entail bespoke data collection on, for example, occupation among cases and controls.

 

[Norbert]

Of course, but they corrected for many health issues. What's not clear to me is if they can correct for a higher attack rate combined with poor and minority patients being hospitalized with more severe symptoms (due to discrimination, reluctance to seek medical care, etc.). Such a scenario would make it look like poor and minority patients have worse outcomes when in fact they just have a higher infection rate.
It should be noted that only 11% of deaths were from non-white ethnicities and 26% had missing ethnicity data.

It is not clear to me what corrections they made. I didn't read the whole study. I would have expected that also the by-age numbers are independent of any known comorbidities.

EDIT: I see Daniel now found that a higher infection level is sufficient to explain the difference.

 

[JRP3]

Looks like Covid can be detected in semen. Bet that test is more comfortable than the nasal swab.

You think a penis swab would be better?

 

[KG M3]

facts, logic, or credible evidence

Thank you for your significant change in focus. I look forward to posts that now focus on these.

 

[Norbert]

Cases outside of NY/NJ/CT have gone up by about 25% since April 20th, but positivity has gone down by about 30% (about 12% to 8%)! (Rough numbers, about 230-250k tests outside of NY/NJ/Ct now, vs. maybe 120-140k before - that's maybe 70-80% more tests, and we're only finding 25% more cases.)

On the other hand, you would expect positivity to go down even if actual cases increase a bit, since severe symptoms are likely a better indicator than modest symptoms, and severe symptoms were tested already.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

On the other hand, you would expect positivity to go down even if actual cases increase a bit, since severe symptoms are likely a better indicator than modest symptoms, and severe symptoms were tested already.

Yeah, it's a bit hard to say exactly what will be good and what will be bad (which is probably why the media doesn't talk about it, I suppose, sadly). You kind of have to see the data and evaluate it.

I am just saying: 1) You want as much testing of people as possible, particularly of those who are high risk. 2) Increasing testing of these high risk people may well increase the total number of cases you find (we know we are missing at least ~80% of cases!) 3) You want as low a positivity rate as possible when testing the highest risk population. This should trend downwards over time.

The key thing is that more cases in the presence of greatly increased targeted testing is likely a very good thing, as long as the positivity rate is not increasing over time!

So we want to see a lot of cases! Let's shoot for 100k per day!

 

[dfwatt]

@dfwatt - you patent that stupid spray yet?

I need to order a few truck loads.

We are back-ordered months worth! The sheer volume of total idiocy has overwhelmed our modest production line capacity. Plus every time we upgrade our product (like going from our basic Idiot Spray to our higher strength Moron Spray, we find a new population that is completely refractory. Like all the people looking for Clorox Chewables!

But I'll see if we can cook up an extra batch for you.

 

[bkp_duke]

We are back-ordered months worth! The sheer volume of total idiocy has overwhelmed our modest production line capacity. Plus every time we upgrade our product (like going from our basic Idiot Spray to our higher strength Moron Spray, we find a new population that is completely refractory. Like all the people looking for Clorox Chewables!

But I'll see if we can cook up an extra batch for you.


I think at this point it's best that I ignore your posts, and you should do the same. You've declared yourself part of a lunatic fringe. You may consider yourself the moral center of the universe on this forum but I just think you're out in far right field.

Damn man. You gotta scale up production. I'm awash in a sea of idiots!

Mutual assured destruction with the mutual ignore, eh? Might work in the short term.