The Coronavirus thread

[urbanlover568]

25 minutes ago, Dale said:

I believe it was Mark Twain who said it’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled. What if testing is the disease ? Cue to: “D’uh, people are dying.” 
 

https://rationalground.com/visualizing-pcr-amplification/

My g-grandfather was sent home, from WWI Europe, with the Spanish Flu. Based on my research, Americans were KEENLY aware that the flu was afoot. KEY DIFFERENCE: in 1918, no one was debating about whether there was a deadly pandemic. Everybody knew someone who’d died. Family members were dying. People were literally dying in the streets. Of course there were disruptions and restrictions. But for the most part, Americans soldiered on.

You are basically saying my uncle was collateral damage. Can't believe what I am reading. 

[Nick2]

10 minutes ago, urbanlover568 said:

You are basically saying my uncle was collateral damage. Can't believe what I am reading. 

Unfortunately a lot of people view other people's lives as a number or statistic rather than seeing them as individuals who are the same as you or me or our family members, friends, or favorite co-worker. 

[Dale]

1 hour ago, urbanlover568 said:

You are basically saying my uncle was collateral damage. Can't believe what I am reading. 

I reserved comment, on your personal loss, because I got the strong impression that I would not be allowed to say something like, “Sorry for your loss, but I believe our Reaction to Covid (RTC), has been deadlier than any virus.” Or put another way: we’ll be calculating the collateral damage, for years, due to RTC.

[Nick2]

1 hour ago, Dale said:

I reserved comment, on your personal loss, because I got the strong impression that I would not be allowed to say something like, “Sorry for your loss, but I believe our Reaction to Covid (RTC), has been deadlier than any virus.” Or put another way: we’ll be calculating the collateral damage, for years, due to RTC.

I'm curious, what reaction to covid has killed more than 490,000 people?

Yeah I get that we've lost billions if not trillions of dollars due to trying to mitigate the effects of covid. How many dollars is a life worth to you if you're referencing the economic damage?

Edited February 18, 2021 by Nick2

[Dale]

16 hours ago, Nick2 said:

I'm curious, what reaction to covid has killed more than 490,000 people?

Yeah I get that we've lost billions if not trillions of dollars due to trying to mitigate the effects of covid. How many dollars is a life worth to you if you're referencing the economic damage?

I’m currently trying to determine whether 490k is significantly or wildly exaggerated. Presently, I’m leaning towards the latter, for reasons I’m happy to discuss. Hypothesis on 2020 I believe stands up best: Per CDC, Covid was in the US in Dec 2019 if not earlier. Nothing happened, until March, when that ominous declaration, from the WHO. Panic and chaos turned hospitals and nursing homes into killing fields. Deaths of despair followed. Add deaths due to vital treatments deferred and foregone. My surmise is that, had Covid not been ‘discovered’, we’d likely be looking at a normal all-cause deaths year. Prior to the WHO declaration, the US was coming out of consecutive mild winter burdens of death.

 

[joenc]

" Deaths of despair followed"

Is that true? I've read the suicide rate is actually down.

Edit: looks like that was for 2019, we don't know what the numbers are yet.

Edited February 19, 2021 by joenc

[urbanlover568]

3 minutes ago, Dale said:

I’m currently trying to determine whether 490k is significantly or wildly exaggerated. Presently, I’m leaning towards the latter, for reasons I’m happy to discuss. Hypothesis on 2020 I believe stands up best: Per CDC, Covid was in the US in Dec 2019 if not earlier. Nothing happened, until March, when that ominous declaration, from the WHO. Panic and chaos turned hospitals and nursing homes into killing fields. Deaths of despair followed. Add deaths due to vital treatments deferred and foregone. My surmise is that, had Covid not been ‘discovered’, we’d likely be looking at a normal all-cause deaths year. Prior to the WHO declaration, the US was coming out of consecutive mild winter burdens of death.

 

You are manufacturing a conspiracy theory that the Democrats/WHO inflated death numbers. If that's true, why did Cuomo and Desantis deflate covid deaths?  

[Dale]

47 minutes ago, joenc said:

" Deaths of despair followed"

Is that true? I've read the suicide rate is actually down.

Edit: looks like that was for 2019, we don't know what the numbers are yet.

I’ve heard both. Surprisingly, auto fatalities were up! Homicides were certainly up. Perhaps most striking: at-home deaths spiked across all age groups. It is astonishing that no one, at least no one with any influence, had the temerity to ask whether the economy had an on-off switch and what would happen if we turned it off. Turns out “lives vs jobs” was a brain dead meme.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/23/covid-pandemic-rise-suicides/

Edited February 19, 2021 by Dale

[Dale]

8 minutes ago, urbanlover568 said:

You are manufacturing a conspiracy theory that the Democrats/WHO inflated death numbers. If that's true, why did Cuomo and Desantis deflate covid deaths?  

For the purposes of discussion, it matters not, to me, who decided how to count. We know - and I posted an article on this - that the PCR test is unreliable. No reliable test, no reliable numbers. Setting Cuomo aside, an independent review, of FL, suggests deaths inflated by at least 40%. My favorite was the 35 year old roofer. Struck by lightening while on roof. Thrown to ground. Many broken bones. Severed spine. Brain dead. Died of Covid: https://rationalground.com/florida-death-certificate-review-raises-questions-about-official-number-of-covid-19-deaths/

I’m arguing that Covid as killer plague so uniquely pernicious as to insist on wholesale panic is the real conspiracy theory. This is what you folks should be angry about.

[elrodvt]

@Dale You don't find it significant that 2020 was the largest lifespan drop in usa history since ww2? 

Questioning authority I get. You're over the top though. Usually the obvious answer is correct. Occam's razor and all...

However..., At least your last couple posts have been more logical and less tin foil hat, I'll give you that. Making it worth replying for once. Take that to heart please.

[Dale]

8 minutes ago, elrodvt said:

@Dale You don't find it significant that 2020 was the largest lifespan drop in usa history since ww2? 

Questioning authority I get. You're over the top though. Usually the obvious answer is correct. Occam's razor and all...

However..., At least your last couple posts have been more logical and less tin foil hat, I'll give you that. Making it worth replying for once. Take that to heart please.

This is getting a bit tiresome. I’m not arguing that people aren’t dying. Mortality ‘returned’ to 2003 levels ...

https://medium.com/illumination-curated/a-year-of-coronavirus-how-deadly-was-2020-compared-to-other-years-3e51c0a42841

Based on the months gap between presence (in US 12/19 if not sooner) and the precipitous, anomalous - and synchronous with WHO declaration of March 11 - we witnessed panic like we’ve never seen. The Asian Flu of 1957 killed a population/age-adjusted 400k. No wholesale panic. No lockdowns. No finger-pointing. Back to 2020: that vast numbers died, in certain jurisdictions, points to something those jurisdictions were doing to people, moreso than what the virus was doing to people. There’s your Occam’s Razor.

[urbanlover568]

wow....

 

[Dale]

24 minutes ago, urbanlover568 said:

wow....

 

Ironically, this yahoo pretty much epitomizes tone-deaf government. In the early going, the politicians who were busily destroying livelihoods, via draconian Covid restrictions, were bleating things like: “Well, get a job at a grocery store!”

[videtur quam contuor]

I came from a family and social group in my time where international travel was rare to non-existent. There were occasional individuals such as church members, second language teachers in school, mission families who did so. They described obtaining inoculations for diseases that may be encountered in the regions to which they were traveling which included even southern Europe at that time. Yellow Fever, Hepatitis, smallpox (if not inoculated before) tetanus, and others. A Yellow Card was provided to show proof of inoculation.

This is still in practice today. For those health care workers who must travel to risk areas they must maintain and display their yellow card. It is still yellow, according to a family member who does medical relief in international programs. This may also be necessary in the US when floods or hurricanes make air and insect borne diseases more likely. This Yellow Card may be our future for travelers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certificate_of_Vaccination_or_Prophylaxis

[Dale]

#ResistNewNormal

[urbanlover568]

18 minutes ago, Dale said:

#ResistNewNormal

The narcissism in your posts continues to reach new heights with every post. 

[Dale]

4 minutes ago, urbanlover568 said:

The narcissism in your posts continues to reach new heights with every post. 

I can’t imagine how agitated you’d be if there was one more dissenter on this thread.

[urbanlover568]

26 minutes ago, Dale said:

I can’t imagine how agitated you’d be if there was one more dissenter on this thread.

Bless your heart

[elrodvt]

I really hate that saying

[urbanlover568]

.

Edited February 20, 2021 by urbanlover568

[Dale]

20 minutes ago, elrodvt said:

I really hate that saying

Yeah, true Southerners know what it really means.

[urbanlover568]

13 minutes ago, Dale said:

Yeah, true Southerners know what it really means.

yea, it's short for eff you. Again "Bless your heart". 

[Dale]

5 minutes ago, urbanlover568 said:

yea, it's short for eff you. Again "Bless your heart". 

I get it. It’s been a short run for you.

[urbanlover568]

Russia reports first human cases of H5N8 bird flu

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2021/02/russia-first-human-cases-of-h5n8-bird-flu/

Guinea declares Ebola epidemic after three deaths

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/14/guinea-sees-first-ebola-deaths-since-2016

[elrodvt]

This is cross posted from Biking thread (it's slightly germane there) plus i am like a moth drawn to a flame in this thread. ;-)

@Dale has talked/ranted about "real deaths"  FL Covid death numbers being 40% too inflated. I don't suspect it is true.  Especially in FL given the uproar over Desantos suppressing information. But I haven't felt like doing my own reading.  I hope I have your argument summarized correctly there @Dale. I get a bit lost following what exactly you're trying to say at times. Maybe not your fault as I so strongly disagree and you've been so obnoxious at times that i am biased to not believe a single thing you say.  In any case, I would like to present a small bit of anecdotal evidence to make the opposite case.  

After I was nearly pronounced dead last April (family called in to say bye and their voices evidently triggered a miraculous, never before seen, type recovery sending the nurses running to get the 8! surgeons back) and spending 3 months of last 12 in hospitals.  That, and another case I saw, clearly were impacted by covid and that would have been partly due to covid. 

An aside comment are the hospital bills to insurance of well over $1.5M. which contributes to covid's economic impact and would be less if shutdown was earlier. Thank goodness for the Affordable Care Act or I would never get affordable insurance again I bet.  Glad to know both my senators and my congressman oppose that act with no ideas presented by them on how to replace it. I really,really wish them a similar journey!!! And idiot libertarians or idiot people who have the $ but don't want to buy insurance causing others to pay their way.

Here's a pro hint  and my main point - do not go to Pineville Atrium ER during the epidemic with a serious condition because then CMC main will not take you very quickly and their ED physicians & the surgery team are not up for major trauma or at least weren't that fateful night. No or bad triage, I had to sit nearly crying and in pain in ED waiting room for ~4 hours. Then they realize - oh crap... There was one elderly cancerous looking guy who was actually crying and laid on the floor. No reaction except to tell him to sit in a char. Poor dude he looked really bad off. Basically, I lost like 12H making my 8 operations and resultant living especially miraculous.  That cancer guy did too. Plus who knows what drives the uprisings in the ER below. It can't be excellent care and quite likely is due to covid driven resource limitations! 

While in the hospital later in Pineville a couple times for complications they had an event at least 1 time a day announced on the PA system putting the ED under security alert (avoid area) due to someone breaking into to the actual ED and/or raising a huge fuss in the waiting area.  Wonder why? Although not sure what they can do about it.  They're simply slammed. When people like @Dale rale against shutdowns in the coronavirus thread because the numbers are wrong  (I <think> that is his point) I wonder how many are wrong the other way with the ED being overrun being partially responsible for non-covid deaths.

Does this result in unrecorded "Covid" deaths? I believe it does. It would make a great research paper once this is over. Although, as an analytics/data warehouse guy, I'm well aware that medical records are notoriously difficult to harvest data from if they're not recorded with some kind of death partly due to ED wait time. 

I want to note I'm not complaining as I have no idea what else they were already dealing with and at least I wasn't put on a gurney in a hallway or something.  Plus, in the end we pulled out a miracle 8 surgeries. 

Edited February 21, 2021 by elrodvt