All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (19 Viewers)

Good thread about actual modeling about the benefits of wearing masks when out in public. If we did wear masks, use good hand hygiene and stay distant from others we can get rid of this virus. But we have people actively working to make sure that doesn’t happen, even though it would allow everything to open up. Why would these people do that? It’s like people arguing against victory gardens or claiming that victory gardens took away their rights.

If we can get below an R0 of 1, and sustain it, the virus would be gone in weeks.

Surviving Saint said:

Quit listening to that bullshirt about flattening curves and second waves. They are heavily in our favor.

The more people get tested the more we'll see the mortality rate is alot less than what people are being led to believe. My parents are in their 70s and they aren't wearing masks and gloves because they saw through the bullshirt.

Click to expand...

Good luck to your parents.

I am so glad they take the word of fox and the right winged media over professionals that have made their life's work studying this exact type of thing.

They were studying while fox was selling you all kinds of crap like the wall, China pays tariffs, and on and on.

Doctors care about the science and not a party. It is that simple.

MT15 said:

Good thread about actual modeling about the benefits of wearing masks when out in public. If we did wear masks, use good hand hygiene and stay distant from others we can get rid of this virus. But we have people actively working to make sure that doesn’t happen, even though it would allow everything to open up. Why would these people do that? It’s like people arguing against victory gardens or claiming that victory gardens took away their rights.

If we can get below an R0 of 1, and sustain it, the virus would be gone in weeks.

Click to expand...

It is a lot of supposition at this point.

There is some reason to believe that the R0 level has been below 1 in 48 states for several weeks. https://rt.live/

Beach Friends said:

Just looked at some numbers, and I don't think an unreasonable guesstimate to say that 10% of the entire nation's deaths came from New York nursing homes. I think the most recent number is something like 7,500 but I don't think that captures all whos transferred to a hospital with Covid. IDK, but the real number could be significantly higher.

Click to expand...

Well then ten percent would be 9k but that is just a few thousand dead grandparents so what is the difference.

They are obviously the lambs in this sacrifice.

JimEverett said:

It is a lot of supposition at this point.

There is some reason to believe that the R0 level has been below 1 in 48 states for several weeks. https://rt.live/

Click to expand...

not true at our current level of testing. We are only still testing people who are symptomatic. We are missing plenty, so the supposition is that cases are actually going down.

MT15 said:

not true at our current level of testing. We are only still testing people who are symptomatic. We are missing plenty, so the supposition is that cases are actually going down.

Click to expand...

What is not true? What, particularly is your problem with the info in the link I posted?

The past 7 days the total number of new cases in the US was 155,861

The 7 days before that the number was 172,116

The 7 days before that - 194,497

The idea, at least implicit in your article, was that we are not at an R0 level below 1 and that we need more people to wear masks to achieve it. I am saying that is supposition in large part because there is good evidence that the country as a whole has an R0 level below 1 and that all but 2 states do as well.

The moose said:

Well then ten percent would be 9k but that is just a few thousand dead grandparents so what is the difference.

They are obviously the lambs in this sacrifice.

Click to expand...

Governor Coumo, is that you?

If so, can you please explain why you issued an order that said that no nursing home shall refuse admittance to a patient based on Covid status?

Can you please explain why you told those same nursing homes that since they are private it is not up to the state to ensure that they have the proper PPE needed to treat those Covid positive patients?

Beach Friends said:

Governor Coumo, is that you?

If so, can you please explain why you issued an order that said that no nursing home shall refuse admittance to a patient based on Covid status?

Can you please explain why you told those same nursing homes that since they are private it is not up to the state to ensure that they have the proper PPE needed to treat those Covid positive patients?

Click to expand...

Can you please explain how the deaths of grandparents is the answer to not testing tracing or giving our healthcare providers minimum PPE?

Nice try and dodge the question.

Still here asking you again why is that acceptable?

Surviving Saint, I don’t mean to pick on you but you were just the last one to make statements that are incongruent with the scientific world.

What is your degree in? I am not trying to be a jerk but you speak in an awful lot of absolutes; so I would assume you are in the virological or epidemiological fields? Or economics or engineering; so you are used to analyzing large data sets?

Again, not trying to be a jerk. But you might want to post an article, research paper or a credential or two if you are going to declare that the science of ANYTHING is bunk. Especially with the voracity with which you communicate. As an engineer and scientist I find people’s flippant use of math and science, not only discouraging but also, in this instance, incredibly dangerous.

So I ask again. What is it your that allows you to make such confident statements without a modicum of supporting evidence? Because if you have this supporting evidence, please provide it for scrutiny. I would really take pleasure in reading a sound paper written from the Open’er Up camp. I just can’t seem to find one that isn’t immediately discerned as trash due to either methodological or environmental inaccuracies or biases that fly off the page. And please understand the folks screaming the end is nigh are producing garbage studies too. People have been way too injected into the equation for most studies not to be unverifiable- there are 7 billion discrete variables for jeebus sakes- how you organize these is the difference between an actual study or someone just doing fancy math.

You see, we don’t get to feel about science. the hypothesis and results are either proven through rigorous, controlled testing of said hypothesis, results peer reviewed and findings ratified; or your hypothesis is wrong. It is that simple. What happens all too often is anecdotal evidence is being communicated as sound hypothesis that has been tested or even scientific fact.

The moose said:

Can you please explain how the deaths of grandparents is the answer to not testing tracing or giving our healthcare providers minimum PPE?

Nice try and dodge the question.

Still here asking you again why is that acceptable?

Click to expand...

I think that 10% of the nation's deaths coming out of the nursing home in one state is a conservative estimate.

I am not saying that is a good thing. Protecting our most vulnerable population should have been a top priority.

Instead, we saw the state that was hit the hardest mandate a policy that was the equivalent of dropping matches into dried brush pile during a no burn notice.

It was an insane policy, especially when combined with that state's position that since nursing homes were private they were on their own to find PPE necessary to treat the patients that they were forced to take.

Everyone should be able to agree on the above.

Beach Friends said:

I think it 10% of the nation's deaths coming out of the nursing home in one state is a conservative estimate.

I am not saying that is a good thing. Protecting our most vulnerable population should have been a top priority.

Instead, we saw the state that was hit the hardest mandate a policy that was the equivalent of dropping matches into dried brush pile during a no burn notice.

It was an insane policy, especially when combined with that state's position that since nursing homes were private they were on their own to find PPE necessary to treat the patients that they were forced to take.

Everyone should be able to agree on the above.

Click to expand...

I am glad you see that insane policy in just blue states that pay all of your states bills actually.

I think the talk about the lack of leadership at the top had much more to do with states decisions. Without using the defense production act states were on their own to make decisions on everything. Without real direction from the top the nation was a rudderless ship.

That is a lack of leadership at the top plain and simple. If Trump and his leadership would have set a national policy then they would had a national model to follow. Rather than fighting for all PPE and supplies and setting their own policy.


But then again it is a total lack of balls at the top is the real problem. Not using the playbook because someone else wrote it was just idiotic.

MT15 said:

not true at our current level of testing. We are only still testing people who are symptomatic. We are missing plenty, so the supposition is that cases are actually going down.

Click to expand...

If we are missing plenty, how can anyone suppose rate of exposure is going down?

SystemShock said:

If we are missing plenty, how can anyone suppose rate of exposure is going down?

Click to expand...

Maybe because of the lock down ?

Let me show you something



The blue line represent the lock down time of DK. As you can see the number of cases kept rising for almost 2 weeks after that.
The green line represent the beginning of the opening phase. As you can see there is a small increase during the last few days.

We're still below an R0 0,7 but you must remember that there is up to a two week delay between actions taken and the actual numbers...

Surviving Saint said:

Quit listening to that bullshirt about flattening curves and second waves. They are heavily in our favor.

The more people get tested the more we'll see the mortality rate is alot less than what people are being led to believe. My parents are in their 70s and they aren't wearing masks and gloves because they saw through the bullshirt.

Click to expand...

Is this enough for some of you to see the delusion?

Simple biology is a hoax. Climate change is a hoax. Evolution is a lie. All news that isn't positive of Trump is 'fake'. One of the most renowned doctors of immunology in this country is 'full of it'. It's all a big conspiracy to take our rights away. The list could quite literally go on and on and on...

This is very troubling. Everyone here should be able to admit that. Republicans, Democrats and those in between can fight over certain issues -- but what about issues where the science is clear? It shouldn't be made political.

It varies on the continuum from undermining the seriousness of the virus here and there and questioning if masks are a 'threat to our democracy' to full blow assaulting reporters and threatening riots and civil violence if restaurants can't open up when they want (see just the other day the guy who threatened to kill the MI governor).

Sure, you can reason with a few folks supportive of Trump here and there on certain issues. But simply put, if it comes down to it-- they'll support measures that will endanger citizens of this country with their increasingly dangerous anti-science rhetoric and they'll do it every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

With that being said..Trump and this administration are a threat in the very least by proxy to the American people and more dangerous than the alternative, and it isn't close.

Anything else is just playing politics.

SS, we don’t know that the rate of exposure is going down because we aren’t doing testing correctly to know that.

Jim, you are drawing conclusions with data that is not meant to be used to extrapolate the R0. We don’t yet know if the infection rate is going down. We are diagnosing fewer cases, but that doesn’t equal fewer infections if we are only testing people who get so severely ill that they go to the doctor and/or become hospitalized. We can not be sure just yet, although the trend is promising, if you assume that the proportion of people who seek medical care is constant. (It’s not).

We need to do serial epidemiological studies to truly see what the rate of infection is and whether that rate is going down or up or staying about the same.

I know everyone and their brother thinks they understand epidemiology at this point, and I am far from an expert, but the amount of conclusions being jumped to is just staggering.

We won’t really know with any certainty what is happening until we get serious about testing and tracing. It doesn’t seem like this is on the agenda for the federal government. My state has established a baseline rate of infection, but I don’t think very many have done even that. And we still don’t know whether our infection rate is going up, down or staying the same.

We’re pretty sure it’s not going up in the sort of exponential curve we saw on the East Coast, but beyond that it’s impossible to be sure.

Heathen said:

Simple biology is a hoax. Climate change is a hoax. Evolution is a lie. All news that isn't positive of Trump is 'fake'. One of the most renowned doctors of immunology in this country is 'full of it'. It's all a big conspiracy to take our rights away.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Trump shall free me.

Click to expand...

Colorado is now making an effort to distinguish people who died with Covid from those who died of Covid. This article is brought to you by The Blaze, which I am sure many of you already enjoy reading. I am are there are arguments that deaths were underreported, especially early on. Nonetheless, this is a step in the right direction toward gaining public confidence as well as understanding the virus better.

State officials are now distinguishing between people who died "with COVID-19" and those who died "due to COVID-19." Previously, officials lumped all the deaths together, meaning people who had COVID-19, yet did not die directly from the virus, were included in the state's official death count.

The change resulted in nearly 300 fewer COVID-19 deaths in Colorado, KDVR-TV reported.

On Friday afternoon, the Colorado Department of Health reported 1,150 COVID-19 deaths. But after the change, that count dropped to 878.

Click to expand...

Frustration over COVID-19 death classification boiled over in Colorado this week after state officials included the death of 35-year-old Sebastian Yellow as a COVID-19 death.

However, Colorado's Montezuma County coroner, George Deavers, determined that Yellow had died from alcohol poisoning, having a blood alcohol content of .55 at the time of his death, which is over the lethal limit.

"It wasn't COVID, it was alcohol toxicity," Deavers said. "Yes, he did have COVID, but that is not what took his life."

Click to expand...

He's still yer Prez-e-dent!