The Next Pandemic: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19

[Magox]

1 hour ago, Dante said:

Carlin nails it. What the hell happened? No one in this country is storming the beaches of Normandy thats for sure. Not when the flu re marketed backs you down

 

 

 

I posted that on my FB page a few days ago.  Awesome awesome clip.  Super hilarious 

[BillStime]

The greatest “showman” 

 

Trump allies lining up doctors to prescribe rapid reopening

 

Republican political operatives are recruiting “extremely pro-Trump” doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

 

[billsfan1959]

2 minutes ago, Justice said:

With what? lol. It’s highly recommended to not touch your mask. 

 

[SectionC3]

41 minutes ago, Justice said:

With what? lol. It’s highly recommended to not touch your mask. 

 

Your bottle of prophylactic hydroxychloroquine, of course. 

25 minutes ago, BillStime said:

The greatest “showman” 

 

Trump allies lining up doctors to prescribe rapid reopening

 

Republican political operatives are recruiting “extremely pro-Trump” doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

 

 

And yet about 38% of the country will lap up whatever nonsense these people come up with.  You can fool some of the people all of the time. 

[BillStime]

12 minutes ago, SectionC3 said:

 

And yet about 38% of the country will lap up whatever nonsense these people come up with.  You can fool some of the people all of the time. 

[Chef Jim]

18 minutes ago, BillStime said:

Hysterical much?  ?

[meazza]

27 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

Hysterical much?  ?

90% of all content on the internet is now basically bots. 
 

He is one of them.

[keepthefaith]

9 hours ago, Magox said:

 

 

Hospitalization and death rates are more lagging indicators, death being the one that lags the most.  Death's on average don't occur until after about 15-35 days after the infection occurs. 

 

Hospitalization doesn't occur until after about a couple weeks.  So it's not forward looking.

 

With that said, positive test rate isn't a perfect metric, and it certainly isn't an infallible metric but it's the best one we have available to us at this time.  

 

Let me try to explain why.   Let's say you have a community that has a high prevalency rate where the number of people who are infected are very high.  The way the testing system largely works is that they are going to first test the ones who are showing symptoms.  The most severe ones first, then it goes down in a tiered fashion.   Do you Remember how bad it was in New York a few weeks ago?

 

 

 

Look at the chart.  Back in late March and all the way to Mid April you had these extremely high rates of positive tests.  They went as high as 60% and stayed up around 50% all the way until Mid April.     That indicated a very strong community prevalency rate.  Think about that for a second, over half the people who were taking the tests were testing positive.  Just imagine how many truly infected people were getting the virus at that time.

 

   Keep in mind that the number of asymptomatic carriers are thought to be anywhere from 10 X as high to possibly 30 X as high as the actual infected count.  Even According to New York's (the city) serology tests they estimate around 25% of the population has been infected, which is around a X18 rate  (I think it's higher). 

 

As testing increased, they were able to begin testing the next tier of people, which to begin with were the most symptomatic carriers, then it went to the next level of people showing milder symptoms, then the next and so on and so on.  Now New York is saying that they have too many tests and that they need to test more people.  Clearly, they could use the tests for surveillance purposes but that's another matter.

 

The point is that, as the testing increases, less and less people are not testing positive, and that's not due to some rate of attrition because of higher testing.  That's because less people have the virus in that community.

 

There is a reason why state/local governments, guys like Avik Roy, Gottlieb, Silver  and other respected statisticians are citing this number so often.  They are citing it because as of right now at this moment, there is no better forward looking metric to gauge community prevalency.

 

Good info and I have no doubt that the numbers of people currently infected has been dropping.  This data though for sure is very skewed as we've gone from testing only those who doctors have a very strong suspicion of having the virus to a broader sample of people who may or may not be sick. 

 

For sure though we know a lot more now than we did 3 months ago and IMO there's enough positive data out there that states should be able to lift business restrictions under some health practice guidelines while encouraging those that are high risk to continue to lay low. 

[Magox]

40 minutes ago, keepthefaith said:

 

Good info and I have no doubt that the numbers of people currently infected has been dropping.  This data though for sure is very skewed as we've gone from testing only those who doctors have a very strong suspicion of having the virus to a broader sample of people who may or may not be sick. 

 

For sure though we know a lot more now than we did 3 months ago and IMO there's enough positive data out there that states should be able to lift business restrictions under some health practice guidelines while encouraging those that are high risk to continue to lay low. 

 

Kinda.  But it still captures the most symptomatic, the second tier then next tier and so on and so on.   Meaning that you no longer have so many symptomatics and in fact many multiples lower which is precisely why you see a lower positive test rate.   
 

Keep in mind even the other tests that aren’t testing the symptomatics are a form of surveillance or precautionary sort of testing.   Higher testing capacity theoretically will not only test those that Possibly suspect having the virus but in the areas most at risk as well.  And if you have a low % test positive  rate that would be a very good sign.   Not like those super high positive test rates back in late March to mid April.

 

But yes, as the testing increases from these levels it will dilute the %’s some as you alluded to  and there is a sort of diminishing returns element to it even though the additional testing that is conducting the precautionary and surveillance element of it (the excess testing) does serve an important purpose as it would capture some positive tests in potentially critical areas.

 

The R rate is another gauge but the way that is calculated is basically guess work as well as it is dependent on inputs that aren’t conclusive either.
  

The good news is that most places are trending down.

[Chef Jim]

6 hours ago, RochesterRob said:

  If there were a national day of prayer would you pray?

Of course. He’d pray for the pandemic (you know the BEST ONE EVER!!) to continue through to the first Tuesday in November. Hello 

[SoCal Deek]

It’s been reported here in so many different ways but looking at the figures updated from yesterday it looks like we have about 1 million people currently infected (1 out of 300) with close to 50% of those still in the area around metro NYC metro. Of those active cases they’re reporting only 1 out of 1,000 dying from it. And we all know that the vast majority of the deaths are really old people. So....this tells you that unless you’re a New Yorker in your seventies plus, you have almost ZERO chance at all of dying from Covid 19.  Time to go outside people! We’ve got a free society to save! 

[BillStime]

The number of billionaires pushing for everyone to go back to work early proves one thing and one thing only. 

 

They don't make their money.

 

You do.

 

Florida scientist fired for refusing to 'manipulate' coronavirus data, report

[BuffaloHokie13]

6 minutes ago, BillStime said:

The number of billionaires pushing for everyone to go back to work early proves one thing and one thing only. 

 

They don't make their money.

 

You do.

 

Florida scientist fired for refusing to 'manipulate' coronavirus data, report

Generally speaking, by the time you're at $1B your money is making your money. And your debunked headline doesn't help your cause.

[SoCal Deek]

11 minutes ago, BillStime said:

The number of billionaires pushing for everyone to go back to work early proves one thing and one thing only. 

 

They don't make their money.

 

You do.

And this is surprising to you? By the way, you didn’t ‘make’ that keyboard or iPhone you’re banging away at. Someone else did. And it was probably someone who thinks of YOU as a billionaire! Get over yourself. 

[Reality Check]

1 hour ago, BillStime said:

The number of billionaires pushing for everyone to go back to work early proves one thing and one thing only. 

 

They don't make their money.

 

You do.

 

Florida scientist fired for refusing to 'manipulate' coronavirus data, report

 

[shoshin]

Adding to the peer-reviewed 27 papers cited in the other article on how well masks work to reduce transmission, here's an interesting new study on Covid-19 specifically. 

 

Sorry to some of you for the source. 

 

Quote

 

In one scenario the mask barriers were placed only on cages with the infected subjects, another saw the masks covering the healthy subjects, and the third saw with no mask barriers at all. For all of the scenarios, a fan was placed between the cages to allow for the transmission of respiratory droplets.

They found that when the mask was placed over the infected cage the infection rate dropped to just over 15 percent.

 

That infection rate went up to 33 percent when the mask barrier was only used to cover the healthy hamsters’ cage.

 

 

With no mask barriers at all, roughly two-thirds of the healthy hamsters were infected with the virus within a week, the study found.

 

 

Pretty neat way to experiment using live subjects without giving humans Covid!

Edited May 20, 2020 by shoshin

[Reality Check]

 

[BillStime]

41 minutes ago, BuffaloHokie13 said:

Generally speaking, by the time you're at $1B your money is making your money. And your debunked headline doesn't help your cause.

Bottom line?  None of these pigs can be trusted not to manipulate their data for a preferred narrative.

 

9 minutes ago, Reality Check said:

 

your response reflect more on you than me - but keep spinning!  You’re winning!

 

#MAGgots

[Reality Check]

2 minutes ago, BillStime said:

Bottom line?  None of these pigs can be trusted not to manipulate their data for a preferred narrative.

 

 

[meazza]

11 minutes ago, shoshin said:

Adding to the peer-reviewed 27 papers cited in the other article on how well masks work to reduce transmission, here's an interesting new study on Covid-19 specifically. 

 

Sorry to some of you for the source. 

 

 

Pretty neat way to experiment using live subjects without giving humans Covid!

Those poor hamsters.