be honest are you worried about corona
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Yes, having only positive cases without knowing the total tested is only partially revealing. Percentage of tests positive is potentially more revealing. Problem is the ridiculous, stupid, relaxation of the standards that has allow every testing outfit/pharma corp to dump an unproven test (PCR and Antigen) into the market. At this point I would trust the judgement of a presumptive positive diagnosis by a clinician over the highly selective but not very sensitive testing crap that is out there. The negative test results aren't worth reporting as they are likely to be false negative.
The random nature of testing is also problematic. The sample of people being tested isn't a representative sample. Well insured white people get tested. Others not so much. A coordinated, statistically valid, testing strategy (a good, sensitive, antigen test) of the population is need to establish a baseline and then that sample group needs to be repeatedly tested over time. That's been done in some states, NY and NJ, with good results. To not do this on a national level is scandalous, incompetent and just plan stupid.
Even hospitalization rates are not totally revealing. A significant percentage (~43% by one account I have seen) of deaths happen in managed care facilities. These facilities almost never move a resident to the hospital, so not counted as a hospitalization. More profitable to treat in place.
Dead is dead. Or is it? We may never know the actual death rate as many states only report the death if the person was tested before death. Too many people only seek care once they are in respiratory distress. They die before getting tested and presumptive Covid deaths are often not tallied.
At the end of the day the biggest danger right now is BS. BS is BS and you can't BS your way out of a pandemic. Are we great yet?
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Followeth The Money
By Gemma Correll
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No. I am not worried about the 'rona.
Watch it magically disappear as a problem on 2020-11-04. Wait for it.
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@Derelict LOL, what date format is that? November 4 or April 11??
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is like Hungarian
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YYYY-MM-DD. Pretty sure it's an RFC. Not sure which one.
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@Derelict
I say, Hungarian (I was born there) -
All I know is it is the only unambiguous way to represent a date. For you non-US folks that is the day after the next election of the CEO of the federal government of the United States.
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the Hungarian people - logical people
We have 14 a Nobel laureate Not to mention Neumann He was born there toohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
we fully agree with that "next election of the CEO" .......................
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@DaddyGo said in be honest are you worried about corona:
CEO
I'll miss the twitter entertainment ....
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exactly
therefore, we do not drink disinfectant with a UV lamp in our hand -
@markn6262 @jwj
I'll plead ignorance, but why is the denominator so important when the positive cases are so massive? It's not like this is some lab experiment with a control group, etc. Areas like FL, TX, AZ, CA, can barely keep up as is. People are generally getting tested because they have symptoms, it's not an end to end testing of the population. I haven't been tested, have you folks? -
@provels It's not. You're certainly not ignorant! The cases are massive and the accounting is incomplete. Particularly in the US we are approaching this with our heads stuck completely up our butts. Just try to be smart, avoid the fools. See a bunch of non mask wearing people in the bread aisle? Wait a few minutes for them to leave and then go in and get your bread.
Yes I have been tested, twice.
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@jwj
Why were you tested? Assuming you presented no symptoms?
At least the deaths/tested is falling.
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The number of deaths in my state has also plummeted as a percentage of positive cases compared to late March and very early April- even while the number of new cases has increased ("surged" to use the favorite word of this week
). It's interesting to see the number of hospitalizations decrease also (in the majority of locations) and the number of deaths decrease rather sharply (in pretty much every location). Either the virus that folks are catching now is some mutated less deadly form, or the treatments have dramatically improved. I'm thinking it is probably the latter. Learning that a cytokine storm was a big contributor to the deaths of many victims was key in my opinion. Now doctors are alert for that and can administer counteracting drugs quickly if required.I have not gone off searching for one on the web, but it would be interesting to see what ratio of the folks getting positive test results are asymptomatic. As more and more folks are getting tested due to the availability of so many free testing sites, surely some asymptomatic folks are being detected. You would also hope that blood banks and doctor's offices are screening routine blood draws for coronavirus antibodies to see what percentage of folks exist out there who have likely developed an immunity, or at least a resistance to the cornavirus.
To me there are only two paths for this virus. The best case path is a safe and effective vaccine is quickly developed and widely deployed and cornavirus joins the ranks of polio as a largely elminated threat. The other path is one where no effective vaccine is developed. If that is the case, then coronavirus will wind up being treated like all the other flu-like diseases. The falling death rate seems to indicate that the seriousness of the illness is declining for the majority of the population. You probably will still have to protect the truly vulnerable, but that's no different than before the outbreak where folks with seriously compromised immune systems kept themselves isolated (think cancer patients on chemo, for example). The rest of society operated normally.
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Remains to be seen what happens when things get a bit more back to normal and people are mixing more, but it doesn't seem to have worked out too well for FL and TX. Schools still closed and as many of the still employed as possible working remotely. Glad I'm retired and don't have to mix with the public on a regular basis. Only put 800 miles on my car since December, LOL.
Scheduled a double red blood draw at the Red Cross for next month. They are including Covid testing (assuming antibody).
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I don't want to come across as cold and uncaring, but it is likely a good thing that more people are getting the virus and recovering (the falling death rate indicates higher recovery rates). That is the process that will build the so-called herd immunity the experts talk about.
I don't think you can totally eradicate this virus with lockdowns because you can't truly lock down everything. Grocery stores have to stay open with their checkout clerks encountering every person that comes through. Other critical businesses have to stay open such as banks, and then you have critical industry such as power plants and all the factories that produce the food we eat. Then you need the truckers and railroads to haul all that stuff around and get it to the stores. So my point is there is no such thing as a total lockdown. So all that "critical infrastructure" that you must leave operating gives the virus a place to lurk. Every employee working in that critical infrastructure is a potential spreader. Then the instant you start opening things up, the virus comes out of hiding, cases go up and you are back to square one again. This is because everyone who is locked down and isolated will develop exactly zero immunity to the virus.
But if you have reached the magical herd immunity threshold, the virus is effectively knee-capped.
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@bmeeks said in be honest are you worried about corona:
But if you have reached the magical herd immunity threshold, the virus is effectively knee-capped.
Yes, I think that will end up requiring a vaccine. Then the same herd immunity that protects anti-vaxxers from polio, measles, and mumps will exist.
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@provels
Agreed. And my point about more people getting the virus and recovering is that we should not let the media histronics about rising cases terrify us into new lockdowns just yet. We just need to closely monitor the death rate and the hospitalization rate (in particular the ICU admissions as those signal serious illness as compared to just a hospitalization stay in a normal bed). If the death rate stays steady or continues to trend down, and ICU admissions stay manageable, my vote is we let the virus infection play out and that's how we finally get our herd immunity. That's not to say that in specific locations more stringent measures might be necessary for some activities, but I think the wholesale lockdowns we tried in March and April were actually not the best strategy. After all, they seem to have failed at eliminating the virus spread. And I think that no matter when a state "opened up", cases were going to go up. A highly contagious virus is going to spread until its potential victims have immunity. Hiding from it is not a good long-term strategy. You get that needed immunity either from a vaccine or from the herd immunity.Maybe a vaccine that is effective and proven safe arrives quickly. But in case one does not show up, we need that herd immunity to start kicking in. We can't wear masks and stay 6 feet or more apart from other humans for the rest of our life. What kind of life would that be anyway? We are, by nature, social animals after all.
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@provels Tested to allow multiple international trips. Occupational hazard.
