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

[shoshin]

13 minutes ago, Magox said:

 

Just stop it.

 

You keep trying to find arguments with me and I keep posting things that show you are wrong over and over and over.

 

 

 

I am correcting your incomplete math. Like yesterday when you compared an entire flu season's hospitalization to the covid hospitalization that started in February and rose from 0 cases. I gave you a more accurate comparison, though even mine can't account for Covid starting from 0 cases, but it still showed a lot more Covid hospitalizations.  

 

Regarding the above, do you understand that percent positive as an indicator loses its relevance as testing increases? An example helps. 

 

Day 20. 100 tests. 50 positive. 50% positive rate. (Uh oh, we are missing cases.)

 

Day 50. 1000 tests. 300 positive. 30% positive rate. (Still missing cases because we don't have adequate testing but at least fewer people are testing positive so % positive is a good indicator through a bit of a messy one).

 

Day 100. 10,000 tests. 4000 positive. 40% positive rate. (adequate testing is in place and we feel confident that we are catching most cases...% positive rate doesn't matter anymore because see day 130)

 

Day 130: 100,000 tests. 8,000 positive. 8% positive rate. ->Your view: This is good news...we went from 40% to 8%. ->Reality: % positive doesn't give useful data any more. Cases doubled. 

[Warren Zevon]

1 hour ago, plenzmd1 said:

how do you know why she was fired? Please point me to where it states that in the article. She writes an email to her colleagues saying that was the case, , but then refuses comment to the paper. What if she was fired for cause, let's say failing a drug test or embezzlement or a myriad of other reasons, and just wanted to save face.

 

I said that "You see, You can't trust De Santis, their numbers are off, Stay Home!  People are going to die!" would unfortunately become the narrative. Nowhere did I say that's why or why she wasn't fired. I don't have that information.

[BillStime]

1 hour ago, B-Man said:

 

 

The Coronavirus Timeline Liberals Don't Want You To See

 

 

 

 

.

 

The US had intelligence as early as November. Nice try.

[BillStime]

27 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

 

They NEED you to be terrified and irrational. Don't give it to them. 

 

Hard for me not believe that governors on BOTH sides are manipulating data for their preferred narrative.

 

Just like you and me cherry pick our favorite tweets and articles to continue hammering a specific theme.

 

It's just one big game and at the end of the day - no one wins except the 1%.

 

 

[Magox]

7 minutes ago, shoshin said:

 

I am correcting your incomplete math. Like yesterday when you compared an entire flu season's hospitalization to the covid hospitalization that started in February and rose from 0 cases. I gave you a more accurate comparison, though even mine can't account for Covid starting from 0 cases, but it still showed a lot more Covid hospitalizations.  

 

Regarding the above, do you understand that percent positive as an indicator loses its relevance as testing increases? An example helps. 

 

Day 20. 100 tests. 50 positive. 50% positive rate. (Uh oh, we are missing cases.)

 

Day 50. 1000 tests. 300 positive. 30% positive rate. (Still missing cases because we don't have adequate testing but at least fewer people are testing positive so % positive is a good indicator through a bit of a messy one).

 

Day 100. 10,000 tests. 4000 positive. 40% positive rate. (adequate testing is in place and we feel confident that we are catching most cases...% positive rate doesn't matter anymore because see day 130)

 

Day 130: 100,000 tests. 8,000 positive. 8% positive rate. ->Your view: This is good news...we went from 40% to 8%. ->Reality: % positive doesn't give useful data any more. Cases doubled. 

 

 

You are not correcting anyone...You are just making a fool out of yourself.  I enjoy substantive debate but what you are doing is not engaging in anything that approaches that.  For whatever weird reason, you have this desire to try to correct me and then I have to continuously demonstrate that you are wrong with verifiable data and I think pretty much everyone on this board that is paying attention sees that.

 

If you wish to continue to go down this path where I just keep correcting you, then that's on you.. However, if you wish to discuss these things in a constructive manner without coming off as smug, then all the better.

[B-Man]

11 minutes ago, BillStime said:

 

The US had intelligence as early as November. Nice try.

 

Someone didn't read the article before commenting (again)

 

 

or perhaps it is just a comprehension issue.

[BillStime]

1 minute ago, B-Man said:

 

Someone didn't read the article before commenting (again)

 

 

or perhaps it is just a comprehension issue.

 

The timeline didn't start on December 31st but keep spinning bruh

[keepthefaith]

1 hour ago, Magox said:

 

The best metric there is to gauge Virus infection prevalency within a community is the positive test rate.   Hospitalization is an important metric to gauge whether or the hospital systems are stressed.   Two different metrics that point to two different conclusions.   The positive test rate is the best leading indicator.

 

I know you're posted a lot of data and very good info in this thread and I haven't seen it all and forgive me if I'm 10 steps behind on this but I don't think that positivity rate is all that meaningful for a couple reasons.

 

1.  Here in Illinois in the Chicago area, testing up until latter April was confined to people who had significant Covid-19 symptoms AND were at higher risk.  If you were an average Joe and thought you might have the virus and weren't terribly sick, you couldn't get tested.  The tests were reserved for other more serious cases.

2.  More recently testing has become much more available so even people who aren't sick or had been sick are getting tested because they now can. 

 

For these reasons we should expect the positivity rate to be coming down as the sample of people being tested now is a very different from that of a couple months ago in this area at least. 

 

Hospitalization and death rates to me seem like the best indicators of the proliferation of the virus in a given area.

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by keepthefaith

[Magox]

1 minute ago, keepthefaith said:

 

I know you're posted a lot of data and very good info in this thread and I haven't seen it all and forgive me if I'm 10 steps behind on this but I don't think that positivity rate is all that meaningful for a couple reasons.

 

1.  Here in Illinois in the Chicago area, testing up until latter April was confined to people who had significant Covid-19 symptoms AND were at higher risk.  If you were an average Joe and thought you might have the virus and weren't terribly sick, you couldn't get tested.  The tests were reserved for other more serious cases.

2.  More recently testing has become much more available so even people who aren't sick or had been sick are getting tested because they now can. 

 

For these reasons we should expect the positivity rate to be coming down as the sample of people being tested now is a very different from that of a couple months ago in this area at least. 

 

Hospitalization and death rates to me seem like the best indicators of the proliferation of the virus in a given area. 

 

 

 

 

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.

[Deranged Rhino]

 

[shoshin]

1 hour ago, Magox said:

 

 

You are not correcting anyone...You are just making a fool out of yourself.  I enjoy substantive debate but what you are doing is not engaging in anything that approaches that.  For whatever weird reason, you have this desire to try to correct me and then I have to continuously demonstrate that you are wrong with verifiable data and I think pretty much everyone on this board that is paying attention sees that.

 

If you wish to continue to go down this path where I just keep correcting you, then that's on you.. However, if you wish to discuss these things in a constructive manner without coming off as smug, then all the better.

 

You didn't substantively respond yesterday when I corrected your numbers on hospitalizations, and you also didn't respond to the numbers point I made today, which didn't point out that you're wrong like yesterday but noted that your confidence in % positive should be waning with more testing. I used to think that was a good data point too, but it's less so now.

 

But you did get defensive and name call. So you got me there. 

 

I'm not sure you'll read more evidence but here is an article on using % positive early in a pandemic vs later and how it becomes less relevant as testing increases. And here's the same author's model based on the fact that % positive becomes decreasingly relevant as an indicator as tests increase as applied to Texas. 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by shoshin

[Deranged Rhino]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korean-research-boosts-theory-that-retesting-positive-for-covid-19-is-fluke-not-relapse-11589883871

[shoshin]

4 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korean-research-boosts-theory-that-retesting-positive-for-covid-19-is-fluke-not-relapse-11589883871

 

Only the most panic-stricken thought it was recurring. That would be a crazy thing indeed for a virus to just keep coming back right after the body somehow developed antibodies. 

[Magox]

58 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

 

I think that's the correct manner.  And I like what Colorado did, which was slightly different than this.  Colorado made determinations that some of the people who died even though they had COVID, died not because of COVID but their other underlying issues.  

 

I honestly believe that this is something that is not being discussed enough.  The reason being is because it's a sensitive topic and it's difficult talking about this in a public manner without appearing callous. This is guidance from the CDC by the way, and I honestly believe THIS IS A HUGE SOURCE OF TENSION between Dr. Birx and the CDC.    

 

The problem is that there is a financial incentive to list the death as COVID from the Cares Act, and that I do believe serves as a motivator for hospital systems to consider them COVID deaths as opposed to other underlying medical reasons.  It's easy to say "Well, he had COVID, so let's just say COVID".    I mean, who is going to argue that aside from some people on the internet?  But if you do deeper inspection and you see that over 40% of these deaths are people in Nursing homes and hospice centers, then it's only logical to assume that a decent % of these people were in their last weeks, considering that the average time of stay in a nursing home is 4 1/2 months (vast majority of them never leave the nursing home).  

 

I hope that what Colorado and New Jersey have done begins a trend.

[ALF]

55 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

 Are the other countries in the world over counting 323K deaths so far ?  I guess everyone could count like China does and get back to normal again.

[Magox]

Also, more potentially good news.  On a subject matter that was brought up weeks ago.

 

Quote

 

Dr Rosalind Eggo, an infectious disease modeller at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said she had seen some indications from research that children may not spread the novel coronavirus as much as adults.

“There are hints that children are less infectious but it is not certain,” Eggo, who sits on a panel that advises the British government about transmission of COVID-19 among children and within schools, told the science committee of the House of Lords, the second chamber of Britain’s parliament.

 

 

 

Not conclusive but there have been quite a few studies that back this assertion up.

[Deranged Rhino]

21 minutes ago, ALF said:

 Are the other countries in the world over counting 323K deaths so far ?  I guess everyone could count like China does and get back to normal again.

 

The game is fear, ALF. The bigger the numbers, the more fear they can manifest. The data across the board has been shown to be suspect, especially early on. Does that mean it's not real? No. Does it mean people aren't dying from it? No. Does it mean that it's not as deadly as we've been programmed to think? Possibly. Not definitely, possibly. 

 

 

[ALF]

3 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

The game is fear, ALF. The bigger the numbers, the more fear they can manifest. The data across the board has been shown to be suspect, especially early on. Does that mean it's not real? No. Does it mean people aren't dying from it? No. Does it mean that it's not as deadly as we've been programmed to think? Possibly. Not definitely, possibly. 

 

 

 

Why would countries want to destroy there economies on purpose ?

[B-Man]

3 minutes ago, ALF said:

 

Why would countries want to destroy there economies on purpose ?

 

 

 

 

[Deranged Rhino]

2 minutes ago, ALF said:

Why would countries want to destroy there economies on purpose ?

 

"Countries" -- or subsets of bad actors working without a flag on their arm? 

 

Who benefits the most from these continued lock downs, and forcing people to become more reliant on the state? Those in government, especially those who are pushing socialism/fascism as the alternative to "capitalism". That doesn't even touch on the benefits to a large portion of the establishment who want to see 2020 go one way, and who have shown they'll do anything to keep the truth about Russia/2016 from coming to light.

 

This is about CONTROL. 

 

Nothing controls the population easier than FEAR.