March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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lake_wrangler
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by lake_wrangler »

AnotherFairportfan wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 4:33 am
lake_wrangler wrote: Mon Oct 19, 2020 11:22 pm
AnotherFairportfan wrote: Mon Oct 19, 2020 10:14 pm I also notice they're on OAN...
And what difference exactly would that make? Does the fact that they are said to be a far-right outfit, according to Wikipedia, make the statements of the various doctors on the video less factual?
No - but, for instance, when OAN talks about climate change their scientist guests all somehow seem to be from the minority - a small minority - of scientists who are on the "it's not real" side, so my assumption is that anything they present has been carefully curated to support their pre-determined conclusion.

Note that i refrained from putting scare quotes on the word "scientists".

==========================
The flipside of that statement, about things being curated to support their pre-determined conclusion would be that many times, such news outfits are probably the only way available for dissenters to make their voices heard...


AnotherFairportfan wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 4:33 am I also note that the video has been removed for violating YouTube's ToS...
Case in point...
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by lake_wrangler »

lake_wrangler wrote: Fri Oct 23, 2020 7:31 pm
AnotherFairportfan wrote: Tue Oct 20, 2020 4:33 am I also note that the video has been removed for violating YouTube's ToS...
Case in point...
They have a website: https://www.americasfrontlinedoctors.com/ (But unless people hear about them elsewhere - like FB or YT - how will they know to go to the specific website...)

Ironically, even on their own website, some videos (hosted on Vimeo) are missing... But some are still available...
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by jwhouk »

Your weekly reminder.

The city of Phoenix has a ZIP code (85009, South Central Phoenix) that has a case rate of over 10% of the population (10.503%; 5,516 cases of a population of about 52,520). That is the highest of any ZIP code in the state.

The ZIP code in which I live still has the highest number of cases within the city of Mesa at 2,566 (4.215% of the population). The highest percentage of cases is in 85256, the Salt River/Pima/Maricopa Indian Reservation - at 8.886% (442 cases, 4,974 population).

Pima County, home to the University of Arizona and the city of Tucson, currently has a 2.479% case rate (26,781 to 1,047,279 population). By comparison, Okanogan County, Washington, has a higher case rate (2.649%, 1,119 to 42,243 population).
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by Atomic »

This situation has moved from the worrisome to the ridiculous, especially because of the politics involved. To paraphrase Mark Steyn: Adding dog dirt to vanilla ice cream does not give you a new taste sensation, it give you contaminated ice cream. Such is adding politics to anything.

For all the media shrieking about body counts, case numbers, rates, changes, and whatnot, it's been done primarily in a vacuum. People contract and die from the flu, traffic accidents, house fires, bathtub falls, and snake bites. How does this latest plague upon us compare? Not discussed. Further, it ain't going away, and neither has the common cold.

It's time to adapt and accept that it's out there, like bee stings, and poison ivy. and hiding in a hole is not the way you deal with those. I've yet to see anything discussing the end of the Spanish Flu which was the touchstone for this epidemic when it started. What did the end of that look like?
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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Atomic wrote: Sat Oct 24, 2020 9:44 pm People contract and die from the flu, traffic accidents, house fires, bathtub falls, and snake bites. How does this latest plague upon us compare? Not discussed.
The numbers are out there. They are not hard to find.

https://usafacts.org/articles/top-cause ... -covid-19/

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr ... 09-508.pdf

Currently it looks as if it's working up to be the third most common cause of death in the United States this year, behind heart disease and cancer.

CDC numbers at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm say about 170k unintentional-accident deaths per year from all causes... about 40,000 of those from auto accidents. So, based on today's numbers, COVID-19 is at least five times more deadly than traffic accidents. The end-of-year numbers will be even worse.

COVID-19 has already caused more deaths this year than all accidental deaths combined in a normal year. At the current rate of deaths, COVID-19 could end up passing 350k deaths by the end of the year, killing twice as many people as die in accidents.

Flu? Seasonal flu seems to be in the range of 30k (most years) to 60k (2017-2018, a bad year). So, at current rates, COVID-19 is looking to cause roughly 10x as many deaths as a typical flu year, and 5x as many as a bad flu year (and that's with all the lockdowns and curve-flattening and social distancing that has been done in some areas, and resisted in others).

And, none of these figures yet reflect the long-term effects of COVID-19 infection (e.g. inflammation and possible damage to the heart, even in those who were only mildly ill or who had no obvious symptoms of infection)

The hell out it is, that much of this death toll is preventable at low cost. Wear face coverings when you're out in public... the best evidence is that they do help limit the spread of this disease. Wash your hands regularly. Limit social gatherings. Hang in there a while longer, until vaccines are widely available.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by Typeminer »

I'm sure everyone has seen by now that new infection rates in the U.S. are at a new peak, with >85,000 new cases reported on Friday. Low-population areas like the Dakotas are being slammed with their first wave now. NYT reported on Friday that North Dakota now has the highest rate of infection in the country (cases/10^5 population). And of course they don't have the infrastructure to deal with it.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by Warrl »

The nursing home my mother-in-law is in has been isolating the residents, screening the staff, and cutting off in-person family visits, requiring staff to wear protective gear, and testing regularly for months, and in the last week the number of covid cases has more than doubled to roughly a third of the residents (I don't have a clue how many staff there are, but the staff cases have doubled too).
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by Atomic »

Dave, thank you for posting that. My poorly worded point was the media are concentrating on the Eeek! factor and not providing much context -- at least that I've seen. Journalism used to include the occasional "Here's How It Stacks Up" type articles.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by Typeminer »

Atomic, the New York Times posts a lot of ongoing aggregated statistics for the entire United States, county by county. My brother subscribes to the online Washington Post, and I believe they do, too. NYT also posts the results of a whole lot of polls daily, with notes about who's conducting them and how reliable they tend to be. All of this is available to subscribers.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by lake_wrangler »

Caught one supervisor giving contradictory directives, today: for the last month, we have had to wear surgical masks at work (in the garage and offices, but not on the bus while driving), except if we can be sure of maintaining a 2 meter distance between us (such as when eating in the main room). Today, as I was standing in line to go find out which bus I would take for a spin, a supervisor told us that even if we're wearing masks, we should still try to keep two meters apart... So I asked him: "Are you saying that the masks are useless?" He rapidly went on about how it's what the Ministry of public health has said, while walking away...

But really, it's a logical question, no? If they tell us to wear masks if we can't be two meters apart, then if follows that if we have our masks on, we are not obligated to be two meters apart, since that's why we are wearing the masks to begin with (to protect us and the others) But if you tell us that in spite of having masks on, we still need to remain two meters apart, then why are we even wearing the masks? Either they protect us (or the others), and it's safe to be less than two meters apart, or they don't do bugall, and there's no reason to wear them!

But I guess the supervisor didn't want to take the time to address the logical contradiction he had just created... Must maintain the facade of unity, right? Must not question the narrative...
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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lake_wrangler wrote: Mon Oct 26, 2020 10:35 pm But really, it's a logical question, no? If they tell us to wear masks if we can't be two meters apart, then if follows that if we have our masks on, we are not obligated to be two meters apart, since that's why we are wearing the masks to begin with (to protect us and the others) But if you tell us that in spite of having masks on, we still need to remain two meters apart, then why are we even wearing the masks? Either they protect us (or the others), and it's safe to be less than two meters apart, or they don't do bugall, and there's no reason to wear them!
And there, sir, you have committed one of the classic logical fallacies... "the fallacy of the excluded middle." Basically, you're claiming that it must be one thing (e.g. perfect) or its exact opposite (e.g. useless), with nothing else in the middle being possible. This is the sort of thing they warn about in debate and philosophy and logic classes. :) It's an easy and common mistake, and lots of people make it (and lots of politicians use this fallacy deliberately, as a rhetorical technique) but it's still a mistake.

"It's all this, or all the opposite of this" is usually not the case - not in most situations, and certainly not for masks, and not for the COVID virus. The world doesn't consist of strict either/or situations.

The actual situation (as I understand it from reading and research) is more complex than that:
  • Masks of the sort you're referring to are not perfect. They are not 100% effective at protecting the wearer from virus particles exhaled by other people. Nor are they 100% effective at preventing an infected person from exhaling infectious particles.
  • They are, however, partially effective at both of these jobs. Worn properly, they're actually quite good at blocking exhaled droplets carrying infectious viruses - these droplets are relatively large (as such things go) and the masks trap 'em pretty well. That's the most important reason (for society as a whole) to wear masks - to protect other people.
  • They seem to be at least somewhat effective in protecting the wearer against other peoples' exhalations - they'll trap some droplets (from recent exhalations) and may block some smaller aerosol particles as well (aerosols drifting around in the air, mostly indoors).
  • So, they're not useless - not at all. Inperfect, yes (like all tools in this world) but definitely better than nothing.
  • The "stay six feet away" rule of thumb is just that - it's a rule of thumb. Virus droplets don't flow straight out for six feet and then suddenly (like Wile E Coyote stepping off of a cliff) plunge to the ground and die. The closer you are to someone who is infected, the more droplets you'll be exposed to; the further away you stay, the less. This is another situation in which the "excluded middle" argument doesn't work.
So, wearing a mask has a benefit for you (partial protection from other peoples' infections) and a benefit for everybody else (partial, but greater infection from yours, if you're sick and don't realize it yet). Both of these protections add to the protections you get by keeping a safe distance, having a flow of fresh air, and so forth.

It's all a matter of probabilities, and those probabilities are almost never either 0% or 100%.

It's just like wearing a seat belt. Doing so doeesn't guarantee that you'll survive a crash, but it raises the odds quite a lot... and wearing a seat belt doesn't mean that it's safe to drive straight into a brick wall at 90 MPH. It's all a matter of probabilities.

By wearing a mask, you're improving the odds on the bet you make when you walk out the door in the morning... the bet that you'll survive. Keeping-your-distance improves the odds. Washing your hands regularly improves the odds. The improvements add up,

There's another reason (related to the above) to wear a mask to protect yourself. Getting sick with COVID-19 isn't a 0%-or-100% thing, either... the degree of sickness varies quite a lot, as we know. And, there's apparently significant evidence to suggest that how sick you get depends partially on how much virus you're exposed to at the time you're initially infected. The more virus particles you inhale, the sicker you're likely to become and the higher your risk of dying. A large initial virus dose lets the virus attack multiple sites in the lungs simultaneously, getting ahead of your immune system's reaction. If you only inhale a minimal dose, your immune system may have a better chance to react and start creating effective antibodies, before the infection becomes too severe.

Wearing a mask could make the difference between a "puts you in intensive care for a month" case, and a "sick at home with a fever for a week" case. I'd rather have the latter, thank you very much, if I had to have one or the other.

It's not an absolute thing, and it's only one factor - but it appears that it is a factor. This may be why doctors and nurses have been hit so hard by COVID-19 - they're working around multiple sick patients who have high viral loads, and so they're at greater risk of being heavily exposed.

So, let's say that by keeping a safe social distance from other people, you're cutting your risk of being infected (at all) by 50%, and cutting your risk of becoming seriously ill and dying by a bit more than that (say, 60% or 70%).

Then, by wearing a mask, you're cutting your risk of getting sick by 30% more, and your risk of dying by 50% more.

Is that not worth doing? Yeah, masks are bothersome and uncomfortable. I doubt I like wearing them any more than you do.

I do it because I know that doing so has real benefits, for me and for everybody else, above and beyond the benefits of social distancing. The benefits add up.

Your supervisor was not giving you contradictory advice. Your supervisor was giving you good rational advice (based on the realities of how this triple-damned virus actually spreads) and is trying to help you protect your life.

I encourage you to take your supervisor's advice, in this case.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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Latest word, from an on-going study in the UK, is that the antibodies don't last - 6% of the people tested June showed antibodies, but the latest tests show only 3.4% {i think that's the umber - something on that close order.

This suggests that "herd immunity" may be not a thing that's gonna happen.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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AnotherFairportfan wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:52 am Latest word, from an on-going study in the UK, is that the antibodies don't last - 6% of the people tested June showed antibodies, but the latest tests show only 3.4% {i think that's the umber - something on that close order.

This suggests that "herd immunity" may be not a thing that's gonna happen.
Yeah. Unfortunately, this is consistent with what's been seen in other human coronaviruses. One study I read recently looked at one coronavirus that's been circulating in the human population for quite a while. They tracked a test population for several years, and detected quite a few cases of repeated infection spaced a year or more apart. IIRC one subject was found to have been reinfected at least twice. The study never showed evidence that the human population ever developed an effective herd immunity against that particular coronavirus.

It's an open question as to whether T-cell (non-antibody) immunity will develop enough to provide long-term resistance to COVID-19. I haven't heard whether there's any way to evaluate that, other than to wait and see whether those who have recovered from a first infection, have long-term resistance or not.

I haven't seen anything which suggests that humans can develop a "sterilizing immunity" to COVID-19 (such as typically happens for measles).
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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AnotherFairportfan wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:52 am Latest word, from an on-going study in the UK, is that the antibodies don't last - 6% of the people tested June showed antibodies, but the latest tests show only 3.4% {i think that's the umber - something on that close order.

This suggests that "herd immunity" may be not a thing that's gonna happen.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by Typeminer »

Dave wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:39 pm
AnotherFairportfan wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:52 am Latest word, from an on-going study in the UK, is that the antibodies don't last - 6% of the people tested June showed antibodies, but the latest tests show only 3.4% {i think that's the umber - something on that close order.

This suggests that "herd immunity" may be not a thing that's gonna happen.
Yeah. Unfortunately, this is consistent with what's been seen in other human coronaviruses. One study I read recently looked at one coronavirus that's been circulating in the human population for quite a while. They tracked a test population for several years, and detected quite a few cases of repeated infection spaced a year or more apart. IIRC one subject was found to have been reinfected at least twice. The study never showed evidence that the human population ever developed an effective herd immunity against that particular coronavirus.

It's an open question as to whether T-cell (non-antibody) immunity will develop enough to provide long-term resistance to COVID-19. I haven't heard whether there's any way to evaluate that, other than to wait and see whether those who have recovered from a first infection, have long-term resistance or not.

I haven't seen anything which suggests that humans can develop a "sterilizing immunity" to COVID-19 (such as typically happens for measles).
My understanding is that the world is full of coronaviruses--they cause a lot of colds and similar mild unpleasant illness--but this is only the third one known to have played this kind of hell in humans. And the second, MERS, was at least as nasty, but European health response lucked out and by acting quickly, contained it to extinguishment when it had spread to only a few dozen cases.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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Typeminer wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 12:53 pm My understanding is that the world is full of coronaviruses--they cause a lot of colds and similar mild unpleasant illness--but this is only the third one known to have played this kind of hell in humans. And the second, MERS, was at least as nasty, but European health response lucked out and by acting quickly, contained it to extinguishment when it had spread to only a few dozen cases.
Yes, that's pretty much what I've read.

In one sense, the fact that both MERS and the original SARS were so deadly, worked in our favor. As I recall, none of them tended to spread via asymptomatic infections the way the new one does... if you were infected by either, you tended to become very sick, very quickly. This had two advantages, world-health-wise: it was a lot easier to identify those infected quickly (and thus shut down the chain of infection), and people took them somewhat more seriously (a 50% death rate is, dare I say it, nothing to sneeze at). Wide-scale "community acquired infections" never happened with those two coronaviruses.
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by lake_wrangler »

Dave wrote:[Lesson on logical fallacies...]
Grumble, grumble...

Be that as it may, it was still amusing to see said supervisor hurry out of sight, while repeating the mantra "it's what public health said, it's what public health said", as if he was afraid to even think of addressing the apparent logical contradiction... :P
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

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Meanwhile...

Apparently, some people are waking up to the growing bias that exists among the mainstream media...


It may not stay at the top long, but the first comment I read after watching the video was this:
4 days ago, Tea Ezra wrote:I’d tell you a COVID joke, but there is a 99.98% chance you won’t get it...
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by lake_wrangler »

And this! This! My hat is off to this former police officer, whose conscience would not let him go on with the tasks he was asked to do, enforcing lockdowns because of how "critical" the situation was, when in reality, he did not see that on the ground level...

(I apologize in advance for his atrocious accent... )
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Re: March 12, 2020 (aka COVID-19 thread)

Post by Atomic »

More than 80 per cent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients had vitamin D deficiency: study

From the Study:
Vitamin D deficiency was found in 82.2% of COVID-19 cases and 47.2% of population-based controls (p<0.0001).
N Value: 216 COVID-19 patients and 197 population-based controls.
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