- Messages
- 4,853
Bobongo, just to be clear, my response wasn't written with you in mind. I don't read all the posts to be sure due to time constraints but there is a small but vocal minority here who mistake their opinions as truth (hence, dogma).
- Status
Bobongo, just to be clear, my response wasn't written with you in mind. I don't read all the posts to be sure due to time constraints but there is a small but vocal minority here who mistake their opinions as truth (hence, dogma).
TechPreacher
Banned
- Messages
- 258
The silence is deafening.
stech81
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 8,864
- Location
- Woodstock Georgia
Well I still believe it Santa Claus , I have my doubts on the Easter Bunny, and I know the Tooth Fairy does not exist.
armeck
Jolly Good Fellow
- Messages
- 357
Something I have wondered for a while is just what we define as a "child". Is a 10 year old a child? Probably. What a bout a 16 year old with a beard? Is that an "adult"? Obviously I am speaking biologically and not sociologically. the data is seeming to suggest that postpubescent "children" are more vulnerable than prepubescent, but maybe still slightly less than "adults".
That would explain why day cares have not be shown to be super spreader locations. But also, why we shouldn't treat middle and high schools the same as day cares and elementary schools.
- Messages
- 4,853
Gentle readers....this thread is drifting a bit. Getting a bit salty and/or political. Please do a better job self monitoring! Remember, if someone disagrees with you, you don't have to get angry! Argue with data, logic and reason. Thank you for your time and attention. Have a great day.
MWBATL
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 6,481
This story?Yes. And if you don't like the NYT, there are multiple sources. I don't have a political point to prove, so when the same story gets reported across a multitude of sites, I am pretty sure it's reliable.
30-year-old dies after attending 'Covid party' in Texas
Patient said: ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not’, according to health officialwww.theguardian.com
30-year-old dies after attending 'COVID party' thinking virus was a 'hoax'
A 30-year-old man died after attending a "COVID party," which people attended to see if the virus is real.abcnews.go.com
Doctor says 30-year-old Texas man died after attending ‘COVID party’
Before his death, a man told his nurse that he thought the coronavirus was a hoax, according to a doctor in Texas.www.fox23.com
30-Year-Old Dies After Attending 'COVID-19 Party' In San Antonio
A 30-year-old man has died from coronavirus in San Antonio after attending a “COVID-19 party." The event was intended to test the validity of the virus’s…www.tpr.org
Michael Brendan Dougherty: Did the NY Times print an urban legend?
The story has been transformed, edit by edit.
www.post-gazette.com
Last week, the Times ran a story about a 30-year-old Texas man who believed COVID-19 was a hoax and contracted the disease at a “COVID party” before dying. Every detail of the story was uncorroborated, which made it exactly the kind of urban legend that moral panics produce. Though it was viral on social media, because it confirmed all the prejudices of the Times’s energized liberal readership, the Times began to edit the story as it was criticized here in National Review and in Wired. The entire tone of the story went from credulous to skeptical, but you wouldn’t have noticed the difference if you hadn’t been paying close attention, because no editor’s notes were appended to it announcing the changes. The Times has begun “stealth editing” its stories in this manner more and more lately, effacing the traditional journalistic ethic that seeks to keep an intact record not just of the news, but of how the reporting of the news evolves.
Last edited:
Deleted member 2897
Guest
This story?
Michael Brendan Dougherty: Did the NY Times print an urban legend?
The story has been transformed, edit by edit.
Last week, the Times ran a story about a 30-year-old Texas man who believed COVID-19 was a hoax and contracted the disease at a “COVID party” before dying. Every detail of the story was uncorroborated, which made it exactly the kind of urban legend that moral panics produce. Though it was viral on social media, because it confirmed all the prejudices of the Times’s energized liberal readership, the Times began to edit the story as it was criticized here in National Review and in Wired. The entire tone of the story went from credulous to skeptical, but you wouldn’t have noticed the difference if you hadn’t been paying close attention, because no editor’s notes were appended to it announcing the changes. The Times has begun “stealth editing” its stories in this manner more and more lately, effacing the traditional journalistic ethic that seeks to keep an intact record not just of the news, but of how the reporting of the news evolves.
A story crossed my feed a few days ago about how a 13-year-old died in California and it was a suspected COVID-19 death. But when you read the story, the person tested negative. They started feeling sick, progressed very quickly, and died quickly. Many of the symptoms were not similar.
This disease is real and it’s insidious. But the media doesn’t need to lie and twist the truth. These are some of the reasons why so few people trust them anymore.
Deleted member 2897
Guest
An interesting study about another approach that significantly weakens the virus:
www.yahoo.com
Cholesterol-lowering drug could see coronavirus treated like common cold, study finds
A cholesterol-lowering drug could make coronavirus as treatable as the common cold, scientists have suggested. Researchers at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center looked at depriving the virus of nutrients which Covid-19 needs to survive. They found that fat which accumulates inside lung cells...
TechPreacher
Banned
- Messages
- 258
The government is faking the numbers, folks. People are being counted multiple times for the same cases , and the deaths are being counted even when it wasn't the cause nor a contributing factor of death. Wake up and realize that this is not about a virus. It is about controlling us. #plandemic
https://bit.ly/39b54e3
https://bit.ly/39b54e3
- Messages
- 4,853
OK ladies and gentlemen....this is your last warning.The next post that has political content or spin in this thread will cause this thread to be locked and/or deleted. There is a thread in the political forum where you can espouse your philosophies and idealogies there. This is for discussion of COVID 19 only. Quite frankly, this thread has jumped the shark a long time ago on this issue.
I know some of you believe that the two cannot be seperated. I firmly believe they can. And must if you wish to have further conversation here.
I know some of you believe that the two cannot be seperated. I firmly believe they can. And must if you wish to have further conversation here.
Deleted member 2897
Guest
Please don't lock or delete the thread and ruin it for the people who use it legitimately. Please move any content over to the political forum, or delete it, or warn/timeout the people.
armeck
Jolly Good Fellow
- Messages
- 357
I think the problem is that those who are getting political here, are banned from discussing politics over there. I hope you deal with people specifically, not entire threads.
- Messages
- 5,839
Alot of helpful information has come out over the last few days.
Let's start with the 'Governor's Reports'. I suspect these are not one time documents, I would expect they are produced on some cadence. But the one for July 14th was put in a public space. If you want to see what they are you can go to the link here.
www.documentcloud.org
This is the report that has 18 states in the red zone (which basically agrees with non-governmental sources as well). it has charts, it also has recommendations of what you should do depending upon what zone your state and locality is in. GA is one of the 18 states in the red zone according to the Federal Government. It lists 30 metro areas (CBSA's) and 94 counties in GA in a red zone and an additional 9 CBSA's and 44 counties in a yellow zone. You are welcome to look at the document itself if you want to see the recommendations for governments and the public to take when they are in a red or yellow zone.
The information in that report mirrors what is in this website which I found out about because a doctor said it was one of the sites they were going to. Right now it is missing the hospitalization data it used to have, hopefully they will be able to get that back up and running soon. But some great data in here. It currently has 19 states as of today being in an 'uncontrolled spread' state and 18 states as 'trending poorly'.
www.covidexitstrategy.org
This is still my favorite model, has been the most accurate one to this point.
Interesting notes in this model Right now it estimates roughly 90K more people are being infected each day in the US now than in late March- a 38% increase from the previous high. It also estimates that the total number of US citizens infected with the virus right now is about 1.2M more than in Late March a 34% increase from that high. it currently projects that infections will continue to rise through the end of July and the deaths will continue to rise through late August.
This study from MIT on world infection and deaths is worth looking at. It use data from 84 countries to determine infections and deaths worldwide. It suggests that infections worldwide are 11.48X higher than the official counts and deaths are 48% higher than official counts. It provides estimated infection mortality rates and seroprevalence rates for the countries (for the US that is 0.99% and 5.3%). It also says unequivically that herd immunity will not work.
mitsloan.mit.edu
If you are interested in an easy explanation of why herd immunity will not work I recommend going to MS Gov Tate Reeves Twitter page as he lays out exactly why it will not work and why we all need to work together.
There are been multiple studies released in the last week, one from Switzerland, one from South Korea that suggest kids under 10 do not transmit the virus to a large degree, but that kids 10-19 transmit the virus at basically the same rates as adults. This has obvious implications for school openings and how to proceed with them.
I think Dr. Redfield made a good statement last week, He said the majority of counties should be able to re-open schools. I think that is 100% correct. But whether he chose to leave this out purposely or not, what he did not say is that the majority of kids probably won't be able to go back to school yet. As the majority of students are concentrated in a minority of counties. For alot of kids we will likely have to wait to have them in schools until we get transmission rates down and then we can start bringing kids back, likely starting with elementary schools and then going up from there. I think the model Chicago has come up with has some promise. But we likely have to bring the transmission rate down significantly in this country before we are able to get the majority of students back in school buildings, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a letter on this topic
The head of Israel's Coronavirus Response team resigned recently, saying the government after doing a great job early on did a poor job in re-opening and that has caused a huge surge in Israel forcing them to create new restrictions. In her 8 page letter she mentions that the largest vectors in spread in Israel were caused by schools and weddings.
www.npr.org
There was a excellent article this weekend talking to epidimeologists as they continue to study and learn about this virus. One thing they are finding is that spreading is not consistent and routine like some viruses, it is very idiosyncratic. They are coming to the conclusion that the spreading is occurring primarily through a subset of 'super-emitters' that infect large numbers of people in a short period of time. The belief is that these people have much higher viral loads and are contagious for longer periods of time than others. The good news is this could be an achilles heel for the virus, the bad news is that at this point they don't have a way to identify them before the spread occurs. but as they go through contact tracing they are finding that the 'super emitters' are very similar to Typhoid Mary. In general they are finding a significant number of the 'super emitters' to be young, social and asymptomatic (or presymptomatic). That makes testing and finding asymptomatic individuals very important as they may need to be quarantined even more than those who have symptoms (who therefore tend to be more self-isolating and others can tell they are sick and avoid them). Most of the superspreader events that have been traced have been traced to events in social venues with large number of people - concerts, sports games, weddings, funerals, churches, rallies, restaurants and bars.
If we could find a way to isolate the super-emitters (or if everyone wears masks), you can largely stop the virus before it spreads.
In other COVID news. The Bahammas are going to start banning Americans on Wednesday as they start to see a rise in cases in their islands. Both Canada and Mexico are keeping the borders to the US closed to non-essential traffic through August. The countries that are allowing Americans to visit, currently about 20 worldwide, most of them require any American visitor to present a negative test result from within 48-72 hours before arrival into the country.
We are also seeing are testing processes breakdown again with long waits for results that make them useless from a diagnostic control purpose and shortages of testing supplies. This makes it more difficult to get any sort of control of the virus in the US. It looks like cases in AZ may have peaked, but that potentially also could be a function of a broken testing system where tests are not being taken and the ones that are have a long delay in reporting, we just don't know.
Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta all announced today that they are switching from their previous plans and going to a fully online fall semster.
I'll end with this, an article talking about Dr. Redfield's comments that if we all wore masks we could get this under control in 4-8 weeks.
The article mentions a couple of studies. One looks at masking policies in 194 countries. Countries that recommended wearing masks saw an 8% increase in weekly per capita mortality rates, those that did not recommend wearing masks had a 54% increase. The article also mentions the linked JAMA study on mask wearing at the largest health care system in MA and how wearing masks greatly reversed an exponential increase in infections.
www.statnews.com
jamanetwork.com
As of yesterday 7 day avg deaths in the US have increased over 50% in the last 2 weeks (491 to 749). Hospitalizations have increased 47% (38,609 to 56,928) and 7 day avg cases have increased 34% (49,412 to 66,286)
Let's start with the 'Governor's Reports'. I suspect these are not one time documents, I would expect they are produced on some cadence. But the one for July 14th was put in a public space. If you want to see what they are you can go to the link here.
DocumentCloud
www.documentcloud.org
The information in that report mirrors what is in this website which I found out about because a doctor said it was one of the sites they were going to. Right now it is missing the hospitalization data it used to have, hopefully they will be able to get that back up and running soon. But some great data in here. It currently has 19 states as of today being in an 'uncontrolled spread' state and 18 states as 'trending poorly'.
Tracking Our COVID-19 Response - covidexitstrategy.org
Each state's progress towards a new normal
This is still my favorite model, has been the most accurate one to this point.
COVID-19 Projections Using Machine Learning
We use artificial intelligence to accurately forecast infections, deaths, and recovery timelines of the COVID-19 / coronavirus pandemic in the US and globally
covid19-projections.com
This study from MIT on world infection and deaths is worth looking at. It use data from 84 countries to determine infections and deaths worldwide. It suggests that infections worldwide are 11.48X higher than the official counts and deaths are 48% higher than official counts. It provides estimated infection mortality rates and seroprevalence rates for the countries (for the US that is 0.99% and 5.3%). It also says unequivically that herd immunity will not work.
COVID-19 cases are 12 times higher than reported | MIT Sloan
Behavioral Dynamics of COVID-19: Estimating Under-Reporting, Multiple Waves, and Adherence Fatigue Across 92 Nations
Effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic require integrating behavioral factors such as risk-driven contact reduction, improved treatment, and adherence fat
papers.ssrn.com
There are been multiple studies released in the last week, one from Switzerland, one from South Korea that suggest kids under 10 do not transmit the virus to a large degree, but that kids 10-19 transmit the virus at basically the same rates as adults. This has obvious implications for school openings and how to proceed with them.
I think Dr. Redfield made a good statement last week, He said the majority of counties should be able to re-open schools. I think that is 100% correct. But whether he chose to leave this out purposely or not, what he did not say is that the majority of kids probably won't be able to go back to school yet. As the majority of students are concentrated in a minority of counties. For alot of kids we will likely have to wait to have them in schools until we get transmission rates down and then we can start bringing kids back, likely starting with elementary schools and then going up from there. I think the model Chicago has come up with has some promise. But we likely have to bring the transmission rate down significantly in this country before we are able to get the majority of students back in school buildings, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a letter on this topic
The head of Israel's Coronavirus Response team resigned recently, saying the government after doing a great job early on did a poor job in re-opening and that has caused a huge surge in Israel forcing them to create new restrictions. In her 8 page letter she mentions that the largest vectors in spread in Israel were caused by schools and weddings.
Amid New Surge In Virus Cases, Israel's Top Public Health Official Resigns
Siegal Sadetzki said Tuesday that Israeli leaders ignored her warnings and the country reopened too fast. "The compass handling the pandemic lost its direction," she said in her resignation letter.
www.npr.org
There was a excellent article this weekend talking to epidimeologists as they continue to study and learn about this virus. One thing they are finding is that spreading is not consistent and routine like some viruses, it is very idiosyncratic. They are coming to the conclusion that the spreading is occurring primarily through a subset of 'super-emitters' that infect large numbers of people in a short period of time. The belief is that these people have much higher viral loads and are contagious for longer periods of time than others. The good news is this could be an achilles heel for the virus, the bad news is that at this point they don't have a way to identify them before the spread occurs. but as they go through contact tracing they are finding that the 'super emitters' are very similar to Typhoid Mary. In general they are finding a significant number of the 'super emitters' to be young, social and asymptomatic (or presymptomatic). That makes testing and finding asymptomatic individuals very important as they may need to be quarantined even more than those who have symptoms (who therefore tend to be more self-isolating and others can tell they are sick and avoid them). Most of the superspreader events that have been traced have been traced to events in social venues with large number of people - concerts, sports games, weddings, funerals, churches, rallies, restaurants and bars.
If we could find a way to isolate the super-emitters (or if everyone wears masks), you can largely stop the virus before it spreads.
In other COVID news. The Bahammas are going to start banning Americans on Wednesday as they start to see a rise in cases in their islands. Both Canada and Mexico are keeping the borders to the US closed to non-essential traffic through August. The countries that are allowing Americans to visit, currently about 20 worldwide, most of them require any American visitor to present a negative test result from within 48-72 hours before arrival into the country.
We are also seeing are testing processes breakdown again with long waits for results that make them useless from a diagnostic control purpose and shortages of testing supplies. This makes it more difficult to get any sort of control of the virus in the US. It looks like cases in AZ may have peaked, but that potentially also could be a function of a broken testing system where tests are not being taken and the ones that are have a long delay in reporting, we just don't know.
Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta all announced today that they are switching from their previous plans and going to a fully online fall semster.
I'll end with this, an article talking about Dr. Redfield's comments that if we all wore masks we could get this under control in 4-8 weeks.
The article mentions a couple of studies. One looks at masking policies in 194 countries. Countries that recommended wearing masks saw an 8% increase in weekly per capita mortality rates, those that did not recommend wearing masks had a 54% increase. The article also mentions the linked JAMA study on mask wearing at the largest health care system in MA and how wearing masks greatly reversed an exponential increase in infections.
If everyone wore a mask, Covid-19 could be brought under control, CDC director urges
"If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really think in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control," the CDC director said.
www.statnews.com
Association Between Universal Masking and SARS-CoV-2 Positivity Among Health Care Workers
This study describes SARS-CoV-2 PCR test positivity among health care workers before, during, and after implementation of a policy requiring universal masking of all health care workers and patients in a large health care system in Massachusetts.
jamanetwork.com
As of yesterday 7 day avg deaths in the US have increased over 50% in the last 2 weeks (491 to 749). Hospitalizations have increased 47% (38,609 to 56,928) and 7 day avg cases have increased 34% (49,412 to 66,286)
Deleted member 2897
Guest
It is important to note the full context of those so-called super spreader events. Those are largely ones that have the POTENTIAL to widely spread the virus. For example, a few dozen people here or there were found to have been infected at a concert or a church or what-not. But in the scale of millions of cases, they don’t amount to even rounding error of rounding error. They have the POTENTIAL to spread the disease easily, but have not done so yet...so it’s important we are are diligent around those things. On the other end, restaurants and bars HAVE been areas where the virus has been spread to thousands and thousands and thousands of people. If you want to minimize spread, IMHO you should focus on the ways we’re currently losing the battle and not on all kinds of hypothetical things that aren’t an issue.
takethepoints
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 6,076
Or going out to a school where you can infect many other children who then carry it home. Rinse and repeat..
Mind, I'm not against opening the schools again, even before we have a vaccine. But opening them in the middle of a surge like we are now experiencing is, imho, down right crazy. Get the thing back under control, be strict on masks and social distancing, get the schools the money they need to adjust, and allow hybrid/online alternatives to parents who are uncomfortable, then ok. But now and with present states of funding for schools to do what's necessary? Nah. Keep the kids at home and give them an extra year when the population is sufficiently vaccinated, if that turns out to be necessary. We hold back kids all the time anyway.
FredJacket
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 6,231
- Location
- Fredericksburg, Virginia
There seems to be an elephant in the room regarding how we "continue" (from last year) on-line education. It was a stretch to get the 'check in the block' that last year ended with an adequate level of education to most students. To me... the notion you can cover the material adequately for even a few weeks on-line is just crazy. Most school districts around me are now committed to on-line only for 1st 9 weeks of the upcoming school year.
I see this as similar to saying we are no longer providing transportation to school (busing); but everyone must get to school everyday on time. That's not an option. But we're setting up to educate everyone without a teacher physically present to interact with the students. The number of students with the appropriate level of support at home (at least 1 stay-at-home parent) to facilitate the learning is low. Most kids are going to be left behind. I get the pandemic means having children in school may be impossible until things get more under control. However... I see the options as binary. School like it has always been or no school at all. ...OR/UNLESS, you simply do not care about a minimum standard of learning over what will be close to 0.5 years of class (combining end of last year with 9 weeks upcoming).
GCdaJuiceMan
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 1,966
Relative to last Monday, today's numbers are an improvement in GA. 6000 less tests than last Monday but still 1% less in positive/total tests. Praying this becomes a trend in the following days.
- Messages
- 5,839
Bwelbo, I certainly agree with you and I don't think the health experts disagree with you.
The recommendations of the Task Force for states in red include closing bars, indoor dining, gyms and reducing events to no more than 10 people.
Bars and restaurants are among the first things they mentioned in terms of super-spreader events. The restaurant/bar in MI was mentioned as an example where so far they have traced 187 cases to 2 people. It had 250 people in an indoor/outdoor space that has a capacity of 900.
The recommendations of the Task Force for states in red include closing bars, indoor dining, gyms and reducing events to no more than 10 people.
Bars and restaurants are among the first things they mentioned in terms of super-spreader events. The restaurant/bar in MI was mentioned as an example where so far they have traced 187 cases to 2 people. It had 250 people in an indoor/outdoor space that has a capacity of 900.
- Messages
- 5,839
Best day since July 12th. Hopefully we will start to see a crest. Next couple of weeks should tell us alot. This is the week I was sort of expecting things to plateau if people started to change behavior based on the surges that started to be noticeable publicly in late June. Then next week is probably when we would start to see some negative effects from July 4th (possibly running into the 1st week of Aug) if that is going to happen.
If we can start to get things to plateau and move downward in the next 2 weeks that would be a good sign.
Mondays tend to be light reporting days, but that 13.7 is still a nice number compared with the 14.8 last week. Long way to go though to get back below the 5% mark.
LibertyTurns
Banned
- Messages
- 6,216
I’m glad Florida appears to have peaked. Gotta watch those Miami Dade folks though because they’re trying to kill us all.
- Status