Coronavirus

[dfwatt]

The dismissal of CFR buys me the fact that it is a bullshit number that doesn’t accurately tell you how deadly a disease is and is causing more harm than good to even bother mentioning as it is so absurdly different than the actual meaningful IFR that people should actually care about and be focusing on.

Please see the second half of my message. That was edited on about 30 seconds after you responded to the first paragraph. I think you're missing important issues.

 

[SageBrush]

Well except that it has a long history in epidemiology and where people understand that there is a variable relationship between cases that enter the Health Care system and actual infections. So I'm not sure what the dismissal of case fatality rate buys you. Like Daniel already pointed out everyone understands there's a difference so you're knocking down a straw man.

And CFR most certainly doesn't just mean dick for the Healthcare System. That case fatality rate and the slightly higher Critical Care case right determine what you can tolerate in terms of infection ramps and the general population. Once you exceed those capacities your case fatality actually goes up significantly because everyone that requires Critical Care dies and your health care system can no longer service any other issue so that adds also a significant bolus of unnecessary dying into the Society.

So for all those reasons your dismissal of the case fatality rate statistic is misinformed. I'm not entirely sure what motivates it in this case but I suspect it's because you are rebelling against any form of mitigation. If that's what you're protesting I would protest our testing failure because that determines our inability to open up safely. If we had testing at scale plus contact tracing and isolation capabilities commensurate with the level of infection, we could open up safely.

This is the best argument I have seen so far against social distancing. It has caused so much suffering in trumpers by mucking up the IFR and CFR relationships.

 

[AZRI11]

You ignore the fact that locking down has reduced regular flue deaths, traffic deaths, work deaths, and who knows how many other causes of death.

Depression. Suicides and rate of death from cardiovascular diseases and cancers go way up amongst people who suffer. All choices were bad, governments did the best with the info available. Retrospective studies will show that they chose poorly through no fault of their own.

 

[Norbert]

The dismissal of CFR buys me the fact that it is a bullshit number that doesn’t accurately tell you how deadly a disease is and is causing more harm than good to even bother mentioning as it is so absurdly different than the actual meaningful IFR that people should actually care about and be focusing on.

The CFR would be much less important if we knew exactly and for sure what the number for IFR is. However it is in the nature of things that IFR is usually an estimate, whereas CFR tells us the ratio in the "real" numbers. By the way, I mentioned the CFR in that message because the message that I responded was referring to CFR. Or in other words, you should know what you are talking about. And if you had read my previous posts, you would know all that already.

 

[GFernandes]

agree IFR is extremely unlikely to be as low as .27%.

Between all points of data we have, the average IFR should be somewhere between 0,3-0,5%. There will be outliers. There will be cities with 1%. There will be cities with 0,1%. We've had 2 seasons in Italy at 0,6-0,7%: Investigating the impact of influenza on excess mortality in all ages in Italy during recent seasons (2013/14–2016/17 seasons) - ScienceDirect (table 2 and table 4 )

2014-2015 was particularly deadly in Europe, as table 2 here shows: European all-cause excess and influenza-attributable mortality in the 2017/18 season: should the burden of influenza B be reconsidered? - ScienceDirect

Per comparison this 43.6/100.000 population from week 40-week 20 compares to 2019/2020 week 40-week20 of 52.39 and week 8-week 20 ( COVID only period ) of 43.2 excess deaths.

The hard part will be to distinguish Lockdown related deaths from the 2019/2020 numbers, only later in the year we *might* have some answers on that. Im particularly worried about lack of medical care for cardiovascular and cancer detection. 2 main killers, without any possible comparison to respiratory virus. For 2 full months these diseases were not taken care properly

 

[defc0n]

Please see the second half of my message. That was edited on about 30 seconds after you responded to the first paragraph. I think you're missing important issues.

I’ve heard of a hospitalization rate, which is way more meaningful than a CFR for the purposes you’re mentioning.

 

[Norbert]

This is the best argument I have seen so far against social distancing. It has caused so much suffering in trumpers by mucking up the IFR and CFR relationships.

I don't understand either sentence.

 

[AZRI11]

Ahem . . . HOT OFF THE PRESSES

https://www.thelancet.com/lancet/article/s0140673620311806
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/22/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-study/
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/86642
Antimalarial drug touted by Trump linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says

96,000 patients from 671 hospitals. 15,000 treated with HCQ/CQ +/- an antibiotic (azithro)

8% on HCQ developed a heart arrythmia (compared to 0.3% of the control group)

Chance of death on HCQ - twice that of the control study.

There is your massively statistically-significant study with proper control groups.

The one study (NYU) that used zinc with hydroxychloroquine showed good results. Zinc-hydroxychloroquine found effective in some COVID-19 patients: study

 

[SageBrush]

@defc0n, your dismissal of the CFR made me snicker.

Imagine if hospitals refused to release outcome information for Covid because the data does not include those with the illness who were not hospitalized.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I tend to be suspicious whether media gets the story and facts correct, and I am reading a Google translation instead of the original. Your link says
Do they mean that 7.3% of the Stockholm samples collected in late April - Early May were seropositive, OR

Do they mean that the study collected samples over 8 weeks ending May 3rd, and 7.3% of the Stockholm samples were positive ?

Good question, they do quote Tegnell (the chief epidemiologist):

"We aren't at seven percent [infection rate in Stockholm] now. It was seven percent around week 15, so that is quite a long time ago. These people were immune in week 18 [the week ending May 3rd], that means they fell ill at some point in week 14 or 15. We are somewhere around 20 percent plus in Stockholm now," Tegnell told journalists at the press conference.

I don't think his 20 percent number makes any sense from the hospitalization rates. His numbers for the lag time to produce antibodies are too long (those might be the numbers to achieve 98% sensitivity but many people will test positive a couple weeks earlier). And the spread has clearly slowed in Sweden. A month ago Tegnell claimed they were already at 20% so I don't view him as particularly credible.
They really should use a test with higher specificity. It will be interesting to see the numbers in a month. I predict he will be very wrong again.

 

[SageBrush]

I don't understand either sentence.

Don't let it bother you -- it was humor

 

[dfwatt]

Depression. Suicides and rate of death from cardiovascular diseases and cancers go way up amongst people who suffer. All choices were bad, governments did the best with the info available. Retrospective studies will show that they chose poorly through no fault of their own.

That's an amazing whitewash of the staggering track record of incompetence and denial at least in relationship to the United States.

Admittedly, all of the western democracies have struggled to contain covid-19, perhaps because of their better protection of civil liberties and their reluctance to infringe on them in a heavy-handed fashion. But none the less the US response was characterized by massive denial and misinformation, the CDC's disastrous decision to develop their own proprietary gold standard PCR test instead of accepting what was out there, and we have been playing ball from way behind ever since.

Anyone who says that six figures worth of death in the United States was unavoidable even given the best science and best epidemiology and public health practice simply doesn't know what they're talking about. I posted this before but it's worth looking at again the 15 countries that have beaten this thing with far less in the way of resources and many of these countries particularly Luxembourg and Iceland (who had serious outbreaks) did not have the two months of warning in advance that we had. Their success stories all have common and relatively transparent elements. For folks who believed that this was inevitable, I think you're trying to protect the vested interests of the incompetents in Power.

 

[SageBrush]

Good question, they do quote Tengell (the chief epidemiologist):

"We aren't at seven percent [infection rate in Stockholm] now. It was seven percent around week 15, so that is quite a long time ago. These people were immune in week 18 [the week ending May 3rd], that means they fell ill at some point in week 14 or 15. We are somewhere around 20 percent plus in Stockholm now," Tegnell told journalists at the press conference.

I don't think his 20 percent number makes any sense from the hospitalization rates. His numbers for the lag time to produce antibodies are too long (those might be the numbers to achieve 98% sensitivity but many people will test positive a couple weeks earlier). And the spread has clearly slowed in Sweden. A month ago Tegnell claimed they were already at 20% so I don't view him as particularly credible.
They really should use a test with higher specificity. It will be interesting to see the numbers in a month. I predict he will be very wrong again.

This is even worse. Are the percentages seropositivity or PCR positivity ?

 

[Daniel in SD]

This is even worse. Are the percentages seropositivity or PCR positivity ?

Seropositivity.

 

[AZRI11]

That's an amazing whitewash of the staggering track record of incompetence and denial at least in relationship to the United States.

Admittedly, all of the western democracies have struggled to contain covid-19, perhaps because of their better protection of civil liberties and their reluctance to infringe on them in a heavy-handed fashion. But none the less the US response was characterized by massive denial and misinformation, the CDC's disastrous decision to develop their own proprietary gold standard PCR test instead of accepting what was out there, and we have been playing ball from way behind ever since.

Anyone who says that six figures worth of death in the United States was unavoidable even given the best science and best epidemiology and public health practice simply doesn't know what they're talking about. I posted this before but it's worth looking at again the 15 countries that have beaten this thing with far less in the way of resources and many of these countries particularly Luxembourg and Iceland (who had serious outbreaks) did not have the two months of warning in advance that we had. Their success stories all have common and relatively transparent elements. For folks who believed that this was inevitable, I think you're trying to protect the vested interests of the incompetents in Power.

View attachment 543931

I despise Trump. The president passed this to the Governor's because he and his political party don't believe in governing. Poverty and depression are increasing due to coronavirus lockdown. All choices were bad. My state (R.I.)was hit bad and were opening. 28 deaths yesterday 1 million total population. Rate is far higher than California. A big block party was held by Providence college students last week and police did nothing, just watched them (made sure that they were using plastic cups) power to the people

 

[Scooby24]

I don't know what you're on about, but your sarcasm meter is completely broken and you're making absolutely asinine assumptions.

I hadn't stepped foot in my Grandmother's nursing home before today. We've been talking on the phone since this all occurred.

I was sarcastically pointing out that the staff there didn't seem to be taking the measures seriously given the messaging her nurse provided suggesting these folks would have done better if they'd been allowed to leave the nursing home. She even went so far as to suggest I sneak her out on the false pretenses that I was taking her to a doctor's appointment.

I am in healthcare and know exactly what you're talking about with the PPE which is why I asked if they had any as a matter of exception for those who were wanting to spend final moments with their loved ones.

And it wasn't a 7% infection rate, it was a 7% DEATH rate. They've LOST 7, about to be 8. In the future I'd suggest giving folks the benefit of the doubt first, or at least double checking what you think you read.

Oh yes, and that gold mint nurse of hers hadn't been in to check on her for so long that she was laying in a depends saturated with urine that hadn't been checked in so long that it had soaked her mattress. We asked where the nurse was to get that addressed. She was out having a smoke break. The old discarded PPE was also overflowing the wastebasket OUTSIDE of her room. COVID infected disposable garments just sitting out overflowing a wastebasket. Not even contained in her room.

Closing the circle here. My Grandmother passed away Wednesday. We ended up having to pull her from the nursing home Saturday morning after my Mom checked on her and found her laying on the floor by the door. She'd fallen out of the bed sometime through the night and attempted to crawl to the door to alert someone. No one checked on her.

We brought her to my parents house where we all cared for her. We knew the risk and how to best avoid it and determined we couldn't let her last days be at that place.

They have now had 15 deaths. As it turns out a COVID positive staff member was ill, showing signs and still allowed to work there. I cannot believe that with the state we're in where we are shutting down the country, we could have Nursing homes who are working with the most vulnerable population have such disregard and relaxed standards. Completely unacceptable.

There are multiple lawsuits being brought against them. It won't bring her back, but we can be sure no one has to be subjected to this there again.

Report: Prairie Village nursing home put residents in ‘Immediate Jeopardy’ from COVID

https://www.kansascity.com/news/cor...Kl1zUgPwOlVCiUzLdcJZD7ZrrgEGDXBM-10djI974AuuU

 

[Daniel in SD]

Poverty and depression are increasing due to coronavirus lockdown.

Source?
Right now many people are getting more money from unemployment insurance than they did when they were employed.
As far as I can tell California doesn't have a lockdown. I left my house and went on a three night backpack trip just this week. I have to say it was way better for my mental health than this thread. haha.

 

[AZRI11]

Source?
Right now many people are getting more money from unemployment insurance than they did when they were employed.
As far as I can tell California doesn't have a lockdown. I left my house and went on a three night backpack trip just this week. I have to say it was way better for my mental health than this thread. haha.

Big Pharma will do well after this pandemic What COVID-19 Is Doing to Our Mental Health

 

[dfwatt]

I despise Trump. The president passed this to the Governor's because he and his political party don't believe in governing. Poverty and depression are increasing due to coronavirus lockdown. All choices were bad. My state (R.I.)was hit bad and were opening. 28 deaths yesterday 1 million total population. Rate is far higher than California. A big block party was held by Providence college students last week and police did nothing, just watched them (made sure that they were using plastic cups) power to the people

It's good epidemiology that actually minimizes the economic and other psychological damage associated with shutdowns by enabling the shutdown process to be shorter - or in some cases - to not happen at all. I think what you mean when you say that "all choices are bad" is that we end up being caught between a rock and a hard place once infection gets going and is widespread and transmission chains have been exponential for a while. Yes at that point all choices are bad (have serious downsides). However, there was a period of time before that when widespread testing and contact tracing would have been possible, as was practiced in the 15 societies that have basically beaten this thing. Good choices early obviate the need to be in a no-win situation later. Unfortunately that boat has sailed for us but if we could still do testing at scale, contact tracing and isolation of new cases in order to keep infection rates down, we could at least begin in some areas to open up more safely and without danger of another ramp.

 

[N5329K]

I'm sorry but that's wrong information. The deceased has to file a tax return for the year of death if he/she meets the filing requirements (mostly based on income). After the year of death no personal tax return ever has to be filed again regardless of the status of the estate.

Perhaps you are thinking of the Estate tax return (Form 1041) which has to be filed as long as it meets the filing requirements, which again are mostly based on income. Generally once it is settled the estate no longer has income and files a final return (Form 1041). It's rare for an estate to have to file more than 1 or 2 yrs of tax returns. You confused it with a trust (also files Form 1041) that can file for decades providing payments to beneficiaries.

Yes, likely. In my case the estate must keep filing tax returns so long as there are funds and assets still to parcel out. Which will be for quite a while. Just finished up with this last week, and I apologize for mixing one thing ( the deceased) for another (the estate). It is the estate that must act as intermediary between the dead and the IRS.
Alas, no stimulus check was kited across the Styx!
Robin