Wuhan Coronavirus

[PedOncoDoc]

Originally Posted by 1stindoor

2. "Half the doctors practicing medicine graduated in the lower 50% of their class in med school."

This would be true if there was a higher level of attrition in the docs who performed better in med school.

[cbtengr]

Personally I am glad to see things opening up and I am especially glad to see all those people asshole to elbow flocking enmasse to their favorite watering holes. This should tell us in two weeks if all these talking heads have just been blowing smoke up our collective you know what's or that we should brace ourselves for the second wave. I would also like to see the stats regarding all the kiddies that showed up for Spring Break when all this hit the fan, was it reported that they all died and I just missed it?

[Swoop]

Originally Posted by 1stindoor

I have two favorite sayings about statistics:
1. "63% of all statistics are made up on the spot." (Statistics professor in my college about 30+ years ago). He would change the number occasionally to see if we were paying attention.
2. "Half the doctors practicing medicine graduated in the lower 50% of their class in med school."

3. “Liars figure and figures lie”!

[1stindoor]

Originally Posted by Swoop

3. “Liars figure and figures lie”!

That's a good one. I also heard this once, "Statistics don't mean a thing until you are one."

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by 1stindoor

That's a good one. I also heard this once, "Statistics don't mean a thing until you are one."

I actually told that once to a former BigMachineDem governor we had while he visited my wife's county office. (I waited till he was leaving in the parking lot so as not to embarass HH6.) He had objected to passage of a shall-issue carry law based on "statistically Wisconsin is one of the safest states in the nation." I advised him & his handlers of your quote and that, if it was happening to you, it's a very binary thing. Can't remember where I heard it either, but it came in handy.

[Pete]

No Coronavirus Spike in States That Lifted Lockdowns Early, ABC Reports

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politic...eports-n443293

"...Yet according to ABC News reporter Ariel Mitropoulos, states that lifted the lockdowns early did not experience a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations, deaths, or the percentage of people testing positive.

“JUST IN: [ABC News] looked at 21 states that eased restrictions May 4 or earlier & found no major increase in hospitalizations, deaths or % of people testing positive in any of them. [SC, MT, GA, MS, SD, AR, CO, ID, IA, ND, OK, TN, TX, UT, WY, KS, FL, IN, MO, NE, OH] via [Ariel Mitropoulos],” ABC News lead medical reporter Eric Strauss tweeted...."

So ABC does a study, a reporter tweets about it and ABC buries the study. It should be good news - but we have to keep the panic going.

[Swoop]

Originally Posted by Pete

So ABC does a study, a reporter tweets about it and ABC buries the study. It should be good news - but we have to keep the panic going.

“No good news is good news for these main stream idiots!”

Freaking bunch of morons.

[abc_123]

Wasn't me!

[Airbornelawyer]

Whenever anyone has tried to do a cost-benefit analysis of the Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing, the usual suspects denounce him for valuing jobs over lives, for killing grandma. "If even one life is saved," the destruction of the economy is justified, or so it goes.

It is a specious ad hominem disguising as an argument, but it is par for the course for the Left. Recall that criticism of the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act means you want to poison children, opposition to Obamacare means you want to throw grandma off a cliff, skepticism about global warming and the Left's proposed "solutions" like the Green New Deal means you want to kill the planet, etc.

But I am concerned not just about the social and economic costs, but the cost in lives. As has been noted by a number of observers even very early in this crisis, and has become more apparent as time goes by, the costs are not just jobs vs. lives, but lives vs. lives. Below is a list of observations on this topic. I would appreciate if any of you, especially those with far superior knowledge of biology or medicine than I, could correct any errors or make any additions.

1. The coronavirus response itself. The lockdowns were initially justified under the "flattening of the curve" argument, which meant slowing (not stopping) the spread of the virus to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. As we have seen, either the "flattening of the curve" was way more successful than anyone expected, or the projections underlying the argument were wrong, but not only were hospitals not close to being threatened, many were significantly under capacity, and many temporary ones were never even used.

However, one consequence of the curve-flattening response apparently not only did not improve the situation, but rather made it worse. This was the decision by several states, notably New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, to force nursing homes to take recovering but still contagious patients. It was a callous decision, justified as freeing up hospital resources (or more sinisterly, as not wasting resources on old people who were likely to die anyway, which also seems to have occurred in Italy, Spain and elsewhere), and it has cost untold thousands of lives. Untold, because we simply do not know exactly how many of those infected in nursing homes were infected by returned patients, and also because several states including New York seem to be deliberately fudging their statistics. The preliminary numbers we do have, though, are staggering: in Connecticut, at least 70% of Covid-19 deaths are in long-term care facilities, in Massachusetts at least 62%, in Rhode Island 76%, in Pennsylvania 68%. In New Jersey, it is officially "only" 52%, but reportedly the numbers are worse. New York claims only 25% of its Covid-19 deaths are in LTCs, but other sources claim it is closer to half, possibly 10,000 in New York City alone.

This is not new "news". The Spanish Army was reporting finding abandoned nursing homes full of dead bodies in March. Also in March, it was widely reported that Italian doctors were triaging elderly patients as not worth the effort to save. Trucks full of decomposing bodies outside nursing homes in Brooklyn were reported in April. But as more attention to the nursing home issue has been paid of late, politicians and bureaucrats appear to have circled their wagons.

We've known since February with the case of Diamond Princess that this particular coronavirus is far more lethal to the elderly, so many of these deaths were likely unavoidable. But it is clear, especially when compared to the nursing home response in several other states, that many of these deaths were avoidable, and were caused by the nature of the response.

2. Suicide. There is both anecdotal and statistical evidence that the lockdowns have led to increased suicides. There is a widely reported study on the correlation between an increase in the unemployment rate and an increase in suicides, but you do not need scientific studies to understand that an increase in despair and a loss of hope will lead to more suicides.

Furthermore, beyond actual suicides, as Tony Manero noted in Saturday Night Fever, "there's ways of killing yourself without killing yourself." People who have lost hope, lost their livelihoods due to lockdowns, been declared "non-essential", found themselves "socially distanced" from support networks or even basic human contact, will often resort to passive or active higher-risk behavior which could lead to death. Passive behaviors include not bothering with basic hygiene, drinking too much, and taking drugs, leading to greater risk of accidents or infections. I am not as sure about correlating lockdown-related anxiety and depression with active high-risk behaviors, but I have noted that the Cannonball Run record has been broken multiple times and police have reported a large increase in over-100mph speeding tickets. Some drivers may just be taking advantage of a situation, but some may just not care about the consequences. And how many of these rioters don't really care about BLM, but are just enjoying an excuse to get outdoors and act up?

3. Cancer and other diseases and conditions. Either because of fear of contracting Covid-19 if they go to a hospital, or because they think they are being socially conscious and doing their part, many people have cancelled or put off medical treatments, deeming them non-essential or whatever. Biopsies are not getting done, people are cancelling chemotherapy appointments, etc. The potential death toll here could be high, and again many deaths would be avoidable but for the lockdown/social distancing.

4. Stress- and anxiety related deaths. Among the potentially fatal conditions which I understand can be made worse by stress and anxiety are "heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide" (source: American Psychological Association). So besides suicides and cancer deaths, we can likely expect more deaths from other conditions as the stress of lockdowns, loss of jobs and businesses, and destruction of people's livelihoods takes its toll.

5. Pools and parks. This may seem like a minor one, and I genuinely have no idea what the scope of the risks are, but in walking around my neighborhood I have noticed a lot of closed-down pools, water-parks, and ponds and lakes in public parks have become overgrown and fetid due to lack of ongoing maintenance. That seems like a breeding ground for mosquitoes, ticks and other disease-carriers.

6. Masks. The fetishization of mask-wearing is bewildering to me. Even many of those that know better seem to be pushing mask-wearing as a symbolic act. My issue is not just that the typical masks being worn are not effective against viruses, but that they are counterproductive and may cause more harm than good. As even Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned, people are constantly fidgeting with their masks, spreading germs from hands to face that might not otherwise be spread. Furthermore, the vast majority of masks I see are not disposable (though I have seen a marked increase in disposable masks littering the highways and walkways), and are likely being used and reused without adequate cleaning, so they are yet another potential disease vector. They are like the reusable shopping bags that the trendy use to avoid paper or plastic, but which don't get washed and become germ-ridden, except now you are sticking them on your face.

Also, medical professionals please correct me if I am wrong, but I understood one of several reasons the cold and flu season correlates with winter, even though viruses don't thrive in extreme weather, is that people are using things like gloves, scarves, winter coats, quilts and shawls that do not get routinely washed, and these articles become disease-vectors in and of themselves. Your cool cloth mask seems like another one of these.

7. Herd immunity. Again, this is an area of science where I am woefully ignorant. I am not even sure I had ever heard the term "herd immunity", like "flattening the curve" or "case fatality rate", before a few months ago when we all became experts on epidemiology with our degrees from Wikipedia University. But the concept I am familiar with. Having grown up poor in sometimes not the most hygienic conditions, I have noticed for years that I would be less susceptible to various infections than some middle- and upper-middle class contemporaries. Not immune, just less susceptible. I assumed that this was because some low-level exposure to pathogens helped build up your immune responses, and unless you genuinely have a compromised immune system, trying to live in a virtual plastic bubble is not only impossible but counterproductive, and will weaken your immune responses.

I have seen a lot of discussion in news articles and discussion threads about herd immunity, but it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff and the good information from the bad. So my question is, since the politicians and bureaucrats have moved well beyond "flattening the curve" to any of a number of excuses to maintain the lockdowns and various restrictions on human interaction (the social distancing and masks even after lifting lockdowns for example) for an indeterminate amount of time, at what point, if at all, is it an issue that people are weakening their immune systems? And what potential costs are there to this?

8. Domestic violence. I have not seen any reliable data, but it seems highly likely that the lockdowns may have led to some such incidents, potentially fatal ones. There have been joking memes about spouses killing each other after being cooped up for an extended period, but behind those jokes there may be some tragic realities.

[Airbornelawyer]

9. Other killers. Again, these are a few examples of the human cost that have occurred to me or which I have seen finally being discussed more widely. Are there others that I may have missed?

Thanks in advance for tolerating my rather long-winded discussion of these issues. This may be just my way of staving off cabin fever, but I do hope I've addressed some valid concerns.

[Penn]

ABN Lawyer, thank you for taking the time to process this period and comment on your observation. That said, your post requires several readings just to align the ducks, what a perfect analysis of our current malable situation.

[Old Dog New Trick]

AirBorneLawyer - your analysis seems to be pretty spot on. The media will not cover the effects of the lockdown or job losses regarding suicides and it would appear by all accounts that what we are seeing in the news re: George Floyd’s death at the hands of MSPPD is that people have too much time on their hands and not much to live for.

If anyone ever said, “may you live in interesting times”, this is it. The will of the people shall be postponed until the “OrangeManBad” is removed from office and the “DC Swamp” can return to (corrupt) life as usual. Only if Joe Biden wins will the wrongs be righted and the plutocracy return to what was once counted on for individual gain at the expense of the AMErican peoples.

I’ve suspected this is more politically motivated (by the Chinese the Democrats and the liberal media) than the second coming of Christ but what do I know? I’m just a simple servant with at least a dangerous level of inside knowledge.

Of course JMHO.

[Box]

Say what you want about riots, impeachment, global warning, pandemics, receding hairlines and premature ejaculation...
Any one of those would have buried a "Main stream" republican by now.

Not only would any of these hardships BURIED the republicans we have become accustomed to - they would have apologized for being the cause of whatever problem was blamed on them in the media.

Democrats can incite riots, tell people they ain't black, deny medical science while lambasting anyone that would even question climate science, rail on about bipartisan efforts to push partisan agendas, the glorified use of drugs as a recreational right of passage. and the general mismanagement of the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Pandemia"...
...and they WILL get a free pass in the media.


Clearly the response to the Chinese Wuhan Virus from China was partisan hype, or the democrats would be scrambling to prevent protests like they did when we couldn't breath too close to one another...
...because your first amendment right were LITERALLY described as non-essential when we were worried about people catching the flu.

Set peoples automobiles and private property on fire because a dirty cop abused his authority while arresting a criminal (yes, the guy was a criminal and criminals have rights too) and it's OK to protest but not when innocent people are being forced into their homes - driving up suicide rates, domestic violence rates, and mental behavioral health problems. Innocent protests that didnt result is widespread violence and destruction.

Now we are all gonna get Chinese Wuhan Flu from China - again - because of racism.

[Trapper John]

Airbornelawyer- Penn captured my thoughts re your post, Finest Kind! But I have some additional thoughts on this whole CF. So please forgive me, I just can't help myself:

1. China intentionally sent SARSCoV-2 infected people throughout the civilized world while restricting internal travel to contain the infection inside China. IIRC that is not only an act of war, the means is biological warfare that is specifically outlawed by international law?

2. IHME put forth a model for propagation and effect of disease in the U.S. that projected more than 1.2 million deaths nationwide, overwhelming the healthcare systems in hot spots like NY.

3. The advisors to POTUS bought into the falacious IHME model hook, line, and sinker falling into the group think trap and taking a politically safe position rather than applying independent thinking.

4. The effect of #3 was to validate a false premise to be exploited.

5. The Neo-Fascists, not letting a good crisis go to waste, stand upon the now valid false premise and have put forth legislation disguised as economic recovery. Of course the HoR cannot convene due to the need to prevent virus transmission. So what do they do? Change the rules in the House of Representatives to allow proxy voting of course. How responsible and politically correct! This is the most dangerous piece of legislation of my life-time.

6. And of course the media is providing the propaganda outlet to ensure a compliant public.

[Old Dog New Trick]

TJ, you missed 3(a) use an apocalyptic end of times 8th grader (yes, a 14 y/o) computer algorithm for “social distancing” and total lockdown guaranteed to destroy the economy and lead to anarchy and complete breakdown of law and order.

Those same ‘scientists’ laughed and told her it was unfathomable and would result in total failure of society as we know (knew) it.

I guess they got that one right...except they said we should use that model to prevent the spread of a disease they knew absolutely nothing about at the time.

Good F-ing job everyone, pat yourselves on the back.




(Everyone is not you TJ)