The Coronavirus

[dialamah]

13 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

I admire that feisty attitude. But you did not read my link about the masks that I posted the other day. Well you didn't comment on it anyway. You did comment on the fearmongerer's one right away though.

At least, so it seems madam....

Do you mean the link about Sweden's lack of masks mandates, where you called everyone (who disagrees with you) rabbits?  

[OftenWrong]

8 hours ago, dialamah said:

Do you mean the link about Sweden's lack of masks mandates, where you called everyone (who disagrees with you) rabbits?  

No, not that one.

You know I heard this a few weeks ago, I don't think anybody's said this here. People who are deaf but can read lips can still lead a remarkably normal life. They can work in many regular jobs.

Not any more.

 

[dialamah]

1 hour ago, OftenWrong said:

No, not that one.

You know I heard this a few weeks ago, I don't think anybody's said this here. People who are deaf but can read lips can still lead a remarkably normal life. They can work in many regular jobs.

Not any more.

 

Something of an exaggeration, don't you think?  In our office, we can have no more than 40% of our staff in at any one time,  including the profoundly hearing-impaired guy.  Because we are very well spaced apart and take distancing rules seriously, we don't need to wear masks, as a rule, so the deaf guy can read our lips.   And, interestingly enough, he wears a mask when he goes over to the mall - so I don't think he has much of a problem with other people wearing masks.

Whether a deaf person can continue to work depends on the accommodation and care his or her employer and co-workers will make;  blaming mask-wearing and assuming that suddenly deaf people everywhere are out of work is a failed argument.  

Your better argument was that deaf people, while out and about, would have difficulty communicating with store employees or restaurant servers or others who were masked.  That at least had some slight validity - until you think about deaf people who don't read lips.   They have to shop (and work) even when nobody's wearing a mask.  Were you concerned about how they were getting by 6 or 8 months ago?   

[OftenWrong]

17 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Were you concerned about how they were getting by 6 or 8 months ago?   

No I wasn't concerned about their life being difficult due to masks 6-8 months ago. But I am the type of person who does have concern for others. I disagree with your abrupt dismissal of these things as a problem. But at least I get people to think about more than just how well they are doing, thank you.

[dialamah]

11 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

No I wasn't concerned about their life being difficult due to masks 6-8 months ago. But I am the type of person who does have concern for others. I disagree with your abrupt dismissal of these things as a problem. But at least I get people to think about more than just how well they are doing, thank you.

Is that what you think?   From here, it looks like you are dismissive of the health of the community, because you think you know better than experts, and calling people who are considering the wider community scared and "rabbits".  

[OftenWrong]

3 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Is that what you think?   From here, it looks like you are dismissive of the health of the community, because you think you know better than experts, and calling people who are considering the wider community scared and "rabbits".  

I quote the experts and gave links, and I've warned you before not to direct your focus on me. Otherwise, no more talky. Got that?

[dialamah]

7 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

I quote the experts and gave links,

I've provided links, as have others.  Why this assumption that your single link from someone who later admitted masks are useful proves anything, compared to the plurality of links recommending the use of masks?

Quote

and I've warned you before

You've "warned" me?   Sorry, I totally missed that.  

Quote

not to direct your focus on me.  Otherwise, no more talky. Got that?

Feeling overwhelmed by how easily your arguments are demolished, are you, so you're resorting to "threats" in the hopes nobody will notice.  

[OftenWrong]

Just now, dialamah said:

I've provided links, as have others.  Why this assumption that your single link from someone who later admitted masks are useful proves anything, compared to the plurality of links recommending the use of masks?

You've "warned" me?   Sorry, I totally missed that.  

Feeling overwhelmed by how easily your arguments are demolished, are you, so you're resorting to "threats" in the hopes nobody will notice.  

I've been keeping this thread going for months, dear. Not sure why you think there is a single link involved in this. Many examples given on the problems raised by the covid virus shutdown.

Not that I need to brag but I called out the old age homes and problems with mental health shutdown and how it affects people who are alcohol and drug addicted, almost right away when this started. Before the stories came out in the media.

Keep in mind, many of my posts were ignored by no response, or I was compared to nazism by one member, and who got approval for that comment by others here. I don't remember if you did, but probably.

That is why I have the right to call all you out now as frightened and ignorant rabbits. Yes, that's the best description. Fearful ones with big teeth.

[OftenWrong]

The virus has changed its demographic as we go outside. Take your first cautious steps and try it. Try it no mask, I have done it this way all along. Right in there, old school, bareback style.

Now we can see what might happen if the virus runs wild and free. Answer not much. At the lowest level of infection in early June the rate went down to about 200 per day. The number of deaths steadily decreased toward zero. This was when all rabbits were in their holes.

Now that they've come out a little, it goes up as rabbits themselves start getting it. Now averaging around 500 per day. Just a little over double the background, what was achievable during maximum hiding. That's not much benefit, really.

Even more remarkable after several weeks being more open and seeing infection rates go back to late-May levels, deaths continue to fall. The infection rate went up by a factor of two and the deaths went down by a factor of four or more.

Very simple and crude assessment: 500 infections per day, 2-5 deaths per day. If you get the virus, on average you have 99% or better chance of recovering. The virus is no more of a threat than any other that's out there. Time to accept reality and stop being so scared.

 

Edited August 22, 2020 by OftenWrong

[OftenWrong]

  

2 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

People on here advocated for the herd immunity idea, I think.

well since you mentioned that, I thought I heard some news on that frontier as well. why should that be wrong to discuss?

Quote

"So that's the flattening of the peak. You can't stop it, so that you should end up with a broader peak, during which time you would anticipate that more people will get immunity to this and that in itself then becomes a protective part of this process."

He said previous epidemics had shown that measures to strongly suppress the virus risked it bouncing back when they were ended.

...

"We want people to be infected with Covid-19," the notes say. "The best way of managing it is herd immunity and protect the vulnerable." Mr Enright was clear where the idea had come from, according to the notes. It was on the "direct advice" of the chief medical adviser and chief scientific adviser.

...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53433824

Top expert opinions should not be so easily dismissed.

Here is something more recent:

Quote

It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes—a population the lockdown was designed to protect. Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK's experience with that of other European countries.

There is very little we can do to prevent this spread: a lockdown might delay severe cases for a while, but once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear. I expect that when we count the number of deaths from COVID-19 in each country in 1 year from now, the figures will be similar, regardless of measures taken.

Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe cases into the future —it will not prevent them.

Lancet

[Michael Hardner]

3 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

why should that be wrong to discuss?

Why would you ask that ?  I was discussing it just now.

[Cannucklehead]

7 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

  

well since you mentioned that, I thought I heard some news on that frontier as well. why should that be wrong to discuss?

Top expert opinions should not be so easily dismissed.

Here is something more recent:

Lancet

Discuss it to your hearts content. 

Be sure to discuss how hospitals are supposed to cope with a massive influx of patients, jobs filled when people are lying in a hospital bed and kids left unattended, or even worse as orphans.  

[OftenWrong]

1 minute ago, Michael Hardner said:

Why would you ask that ?  I was discussing it just now.

You were off topic in a thread about BC Orwell. More to the point, you dismiss the concept as purely political.

[OftenWrong]

5 minutes ago, Cannucklehead said:

Discuss it to your hearts content. 

Be sure to discuss how hospitals are supposed to cope with a massive influx of patients, jobs filled when people are lying in a hospital bed and kids left unattended, or even worse as orphans.  

I already have. massive influx never even came close.

No need to make conjecture. We can look at real world history and events. There is enough data to do that with some certainty now.

unlike the completely BS conjecture that has kept you people in a tizzy thus far.

[Cannucklehead]

13 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

I already have. massive influx never even came close.

No need to make conjecture. We can look at real world history and events. There is enough data to do that with some certainty now.

unlike the completely BS conjecture that has kept you people in a tizzy thus far.

Yes, thankfully a massive influx never came close thanks to our lockdown and precautions.  But that was so draconian of them.  

[OftenWrong]

12 hours ago, Cannucklehead said:

Yes, thankfully a massive influx never came close thanks to our lockdown and precautions.  But that was so draconian of them.  

You are speculating. We can look around the world at different countries now and get a picture of what really happened, and what could have happened if we didn't totally lock down.

Quote

Sweden took a different approach. Instead of lockdowns, it imposed only modest restrictions to keep cases at levels its hospitals could handle.

Sweden has suffered more deaths per capita than neighboring Denmark but fewer than Britain, and it has paid less of an economic price than either, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Sweden’s current infection and death rates are as low as the rest of Europe.

New thinking on COVID lockdowns

This is good evidence, not conjecture speculation or emotion.

[OftenWrong]

On 8/20/2020 at 8:49 PM, dialamah said:

 it looks like you are dismissive of the health of the community, because you think you know better than experts

It is actually you who are dismissive of the experts. But you shouldn't be blamed for that. We didn't get to hear the experts voice that much until now, above the din of shrieking and howling fear that the angel of death is among us.

Now that the virus is nearly run its course, the truth can be told. Experts can be better heard. But those of you who know only little about pandemic disease management are still feeling scared and don't know what to do. Listen to the experts, not your own fear that comes out of ignorance.

It's time to go back to normal life.
 

Quote

“Very few, if any, children or teenagers will come to long-term harm from COVID-19 due solely to attending school,’’ the medical officers said. ”This has to be set against a certainty of long-term harm to many children and young people from not attending school.’’

Professor Chris Whitty, who is the U.K. and English chief medical officer, told the BBC that there was "overwhelmingly clear evidence that the chances of children dying from COVID are incredibly small" — while warning that the "chances of many children being damaged by not going to school are incredibly clear."

The UK has the very finest and best medical universities. They have the top immunologists in the world teaching and working there, doing research. This message is consistent with what I have said, too, and that comes from a lifetime of experience.

Trust us...
 

[dialamah]

@OftenWrong hoping you are right, but still have doubts.  Its just been confirmed that people can be reinfected with Covid, which may or may not make the virus more lethal depending on the strain, but of course we won't know based on one patient, regardless of whether he lives or dies. 

There are still many unknowns about long term health impacts, even with those who get mild cases, and those who get very sick, despite being young and with no pre-existing conditions.  Oh, but wait - you choose to disregard those reports, preferring instead to call people names.

I'll continue to exercise caution with social distancing, staying home, wearing a mask in stores and public transit (and alone in my car as I travel between stores).   Though I'm starting to think a face shield a better option, since it'll protect me better than a mask and since people here don't think masking (or physical distancing apparently) is particularly important, why should I bother protecting them.

You do what you like, and in a year or two, we'll probably have some definitive answers.  May we both survive to know which experts were correct today.

Edited August 25, 2020 by dialamah

[Cannucklehead]

5 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

 

 

https://khn.org/morning-breakout/attempts-at-herd-immunity-not-working-in-sweden-evidence-shows/

 

Experts.  You can have one expert say a and one expert say b, another says x, yadda yadda.  At the end of the day Sweden has a death rate per population far higher than Canada.  

Look at what happened in the u.s.  

[Boges]

As people try to spike the football that the US caseload has dropped, as if 40,000 daily cases is an accomplishment, it's worthy to note the per capita death toll. 

The only First world/Developed nations that have a worse per capita death toll to the US is Italy, Spain, Belgium, Sweden and the UK. 

Note:

- The last time Belgium had a daily death toll of more than 100 people was May 8th. 
- Spain has had two bad days this month where they had over 100 deaths and around 70 deaths. Before that the last time they had a 100 death day was mid may. 
- The UK is a little worse. The last 100+ day they had was in mid-June. 
- Sweden has a very low population. So their only 100 death days came in April. The high per capita death toll comes as a result of the refusal to shut down. Which is very debatable whether that was a good move or not. 
- Italy, which was the epicentre of the virus in March, hasn't seen a day with 100 deaths since the end of May. 

The point is, that all these countries that have per higher per capita death tolls saw a vast majority of their deaths in March and April. All the while, the US continues with high daily death tolls. The lowest day they've had since the start of the pandemic was on June 5th. They have weekly two-day lulls due to the weekend, but every week the daily death toll jumps back to north of a thousand deaths. 

The US surpassed 180,000 deaths yesterday with 1,200 recorded COVID-19 deaths. It seems inevitable that they'll surpass 200,000 COVID-19 deaths before the election. I also predict they'll surpass Italy for per capita deaths by then. 

There's no objective standard where this is an successful response to the pandemic by Developed nation standards. 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2020 by Boges

[dialamah]

27 minutes ago, Boges said:

There's no objective standard where this is an successful response to the pandemic by Developed nation standards. 

Yubbut it would have been so much worse if Trump hadn't implemented a partial travel ban 5 days before the next NA country (Canada) implemented a much more extensive travel ban.

Right?

 

[OftenWrong]

Sometimes you have to dig deep in these articles to find a little gem of information.

"The shocking reality of Covid-19 is that the superrich have gotten fantastically richer, unimaginably so, during the pandemic. The soaring stock market alongside Great Depression unemployment is just what it seems: the most dramatic redistribution of income from the poor to the rich in US history. With tech stocks soaring, for example, Jeffrey Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk have seen their combined net worth rise by $197 billion since the start of the year while, tens of millions of Americans have been thrown into financial desperation and hunger."

Jerry Seinfeld is right

[OftenWrong]

On 8/26/2020 at 10:20 AM, Boges said:

As people try to spike the football that the US caseload has dropped, as if 40,000 daily cases is an accomplishment, it's worthy to note the per capita death toll. 

The only First world/Developed nations that have a worse per capita death toll to the US is Italy, Spain, Belgium, Sweden and the UK. 

Note:

You are obsessed with the numbers game but it's already been demonstrated how politicized the virus numbers game is. Technically speaking there are many factors in these numbers as well, so that it is all-too-easy to end up making wrong comparisons. It's a huge problem for statistics pertaining to social sciences.

The US has the top medical experts, top labs, top medical universities, and all these people are working cooperatively to try and control the virus. Their level of competency in virology and emergency management certainly exceeds ours. If I were to assume anything about numbers it is that Canada has probably way undercounted the number of infections compared to US.

Politicizing information about the virus is a foul action indeed.

[OftenWrong]

On 8/25/2020 at 4:29 PM, Cannucklehead said:

At the end of the day Sweden has a death rate per population far higher than Canada.  

Apples and cow pies. 

[OftenWrong]

On 8/20/2020 at 10:10 AM, dialamah said:

Do you mean the link about Sweden's lack of masks mandates, where you called everyone (who disagrees with you) rabbits?  

Maybe this news will cheer you up.

Coronavirus: Reassuring study of children's 'tiny' risk
Aug 28 2020
 

The children will live on. Let them have their normal lives back as much as possible. They should not have to wear masks. In my opinion, it is better to mandate they are not to wear them at all in schools. Schools should not be saying they encourage it at all, because it makes the fear-stricken parents load the kid up like he is Neil Armstrong about to take one giant leap for mankind.