SirBillybob

A true death or mortality rate is per 100, as no additional calculation is required to obtain a standard percentage, if you are comfortable with some percentages being sub-one fractions. Otherwise, it is essentially ‘dealer’s choice’ and the denominator’s number of zeros is usually chosen to allow the best depiction on a graph or other measurement system where different subgroups are often compared. It is just common sense to adjust the metrics on each axis to enable easier reading and limit the merging of several graph lines. The usual best single denominator will hinge on the range of possible numerator values that are also the easiest to read, usually at least 1.0, and generally easiest to calculate a meaningful percentage.

IMO, the paranoid camp includes those believing vaccines have microchips that will be switched on by 5G cellular technology to establish the Gates/Soros world domination, that the vaccine for COVID exists, that COVID was created as part of the world domination conspiracy, and that Gates is merely delaying the release of the vaccine to align with 5G.
 
I first heard this theory from a massage provider 4+ months ago, and more recently on an NPR report on conspiracy theories. I expect there are members of the Forum that believe some or all of that.
 
The data, the information, and the knowledge about COVID are not perfect. No arguments about that. We may not know the best ways to treat and to prevent. This is new territory. We are making it up as we go. My health care provider (Hoag) initially told me not to wear a mask. Now a mask is required before entering their facility. We can sit in the corner and pout about that. We can ignore government health warnings and just carry on with a "fuck it" attitude. Or we can try to follow steps to mitigate risk.
 
If you choose to ignore news that the virus is not diminishing, that's your business. But to me it seems critical.
 
https://www.thegrowthop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/GettyImages-1025365534-e1535728685755.jpg
 
Please keep politics out of the Lounge.

I have been physically present in The Village but as a rule I don’t go indoors unless (most) occupants wear a mask as I do or I must buy essential goods. Very few are wearing masks in grocery stores in Montreal or indoors in The Village.
 
I have ascertained that the private dance areas in the clubs are operational, masks not mandatory, in keeping with guidelines that measures are but recommended. Only public transit is pushing masks as essential, but it is difficult to enforce. I don’t know details about the private dance choreography but I do not think it is substantially different from pre-pandemic. Staff, understandably, gravitate more to the ‘party line’ of public health when you inquire. Some dancers allude to no restrictions imposed.
 
Most people on the strip are sitting outdoors, but certainly less volume than previous summers, and indoor spaces are very anaemic. I think that Saloon and Club Le Date are recovering the best. Street performers are notably absent.

I have been physically present in The Village but as a rule I don’t go indoors unless (most) occupants wear a mask as I do or I must buy essential goods. Very few are wearing masks in grocery stores in Montreal or indoors in The Village.
 
I have ascertained that the private dance areas in the clubs are operational, masks not mandatory, in keeping with guidelines that measures are but recommended. Only public transit is pushing masks as essential, but it is difficult to enforce. I don’t know details about the private dance choreography but I do not think it is substantially different from pre-pandemic. Staff, understandably, gravitate more to the ‘party line’ of public health when you inquire. Some dancers allude to no restrictions imposed.
 
Most people on the strip are sitting outdoors, but certainly less volume than previous summers, and indoor spaces are very anaemic. I think that Saloon and Club Le Date are recovering the best. Street performers are notably absent.

Up here in Canada we don’t have a circus clown & associates proclaiming that testing creates cases that in turn promotes havoc and unnecessary imposition of phases higher in the confinement hierarchy than warranted.
 
I understand curiosity about adding some factor related to testing to the denominator, a denominator that otherwise seems quite fixed on population (ie, per capita). However, it is difficult to combine population surveillance testing, along with confirmatory testing for symptoms or known exposure risk, into a denominator. Moreover, the likelihood that undercounting lowers visible
prevalence rates poses a greater ascertainment bias than the skew posed by less than precise tracking of surveillance versus diagnosis in context of more probable infection.
 
Rhode Island has tested the most, 28% of population, and has a separate case positive tally of 1.7% of population in total, while Colorado has tested the least, 7% percent of pop with a separate tally of 0.7% of population reported to have or have had the disease. Now then, this might lead to the conclusion that increased testing yields increased case prevalence. However, there are other checks and balances. Rhode Island has had 3 times the number of pop-adjusted CoV19 deaths as Colorado. In other words, testing rates are irrelevant in this example because the argument that testing inflates case tally is nullified by the reality that testing cannot possibly be proportional to fatality ... increased surveillance testing would simply raise the count of cases that would be under the radar if not detected, and certainly not lethal.
 
I think that the best anyone as an individual can do is to try to drill down and understand the numbers within their own little corner of the world. Personally, I am behaving no differently now that Montreal is really low in prevalence compared to when a few months ago the province of Quebec was among the most affected areas on the planet.

I think I have a bit of an advantage because among my graduate degrees is a Master’s in Medical Science Research Methods, my thesis and much of subsequent ongoing research in the realm of Infectious Diseases, in fact. I also worked in a SARS hotspot in 2003. It is certainly frustrating to witness lack of understanding as well as lackadaisical attitude in relation to this disease. I get CNN up here but I cannot tune in to what is pretty much a train wreck. We have had some derailments but now better on track, for now.

Up here in Canada we don’t have a circus clown & associates proclaiming that testing creates cases that in turn promotes havoc and unnecessary imposition of phases higher in the confinement hierarchy than warranted.
 
I understand curiosity about adding some factor related to testing to the denominator, a denominator that otherwise seems quite fixed on population (ie, per capita). However, it is difficult to combine population surveillance testing, along with confirmatory testing for symptoms or known exposure risk, into a denominator. Moreover, the likelihood that undercounting lowers visible
prevalence rates poses a greater ascertainment bias than the skew posed by less than precise tracking of surveillance versus diagnosis in context of more probable infection.
 
Rhode Island has tested the most, 28% of population, and has a separate case positive tally of 1.7% of population in total, while Colorado has tested the least, 7% percent of pop with a separate tally of 0.7% of population reported to have or have had the disease. Now then, this might lead to the conclusion that increased testing yields increased case prevalence. However, there are other checks and balances. Rhode Island has had 3 times the number of pop-adjusted CoV19 deaths as Colorado. In other words, testing rates are irrelevant in this example because the argument that testing inflates case tally is nullified by the reality that testing cannot possibly be proportional to fatality ... increased surveillance testing would simply raise the count of cases that would be under the radar if not detected, and certainly not lethal.
 
I think that the best anyone as an individual can do is to try to drill down and understand the numbers within their own little corner of the world. Personally, I am behaving no differently now that Montreal is really low in prevalence compared to when a few months ago the province of Quebec was among the most affected areas on the planet.

Precaution, caution, reaction, etc, are fluid terms and our individual subjectivity cannot be dictated or aligned collectively. The metrics, purist epidemiological terms, and colloquial terms/expressions all get thrown into the mix and can be difficult to interpret.
 
I personally dislike the metric of ‘total cases’ to date because it tends to be milestone-oriented (eg, just hit 10,000! blah blah, and now we have surpassed X disease and Y natural disaster for casualties! blah blah.) It is also usually nation-centric and described out of context of a population-size denominator. Total count may be useful for corollary considerations but not so much for describing the attack rate of a disease as you are trying to keep up and manage it.
 
I also sometimes look at the logarithmic curve for total cases to detect a visual of exponential-ity. This takes a little bit more experience because this visual should be cross-referenced to the daily case histogram bar depicted with rolling average line. A tilt of the logarithmic line (typically base10 format; 0, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000, etc where for example 1 million is ‘log 6’) away from 90 degrees horizontal and towards 0 degrees north/top on the graph suggests a, well, ‘surge’ in case incidence progression. This can be seen in the USA total case curve, ever so slight because log curves maintain greater stability at high counts in the millions, but it is bad news for sure.
 
Total cases also misrepresents the count of active cases. For what it is worth in terms of this disease (ie, what is truly the future of morbidity for some that survived), recovered cases in many countries exceeds the current count of active cases even when daily incidence rates continue to climb.
 
I am mostly interested in the tally of active cases and in the trend of daily new cases. What I would consider worrisome for a disease that has a fairly high mortality rate considering the duration from infection to death, and also considering the resources needed to prevent death among a percentage of cases with severe morbidity, is that the number of recoveries does not keep pace with the number of active cases at a point in time when the needed resources for offsetting a death that could be prevented are depleted or diluted in comparison to a point in time earlier in the pandemic when ‘all the stops can be pulled out’ for the most part at point of critical care.
 
Hyperbolic terms are likely to be pulled out for use in headlines at any point in these cycles but especially when resources are progressively pushed to the limit.
 
To put the USA as a whole in perspective, active cases, as I said above an important metric for some prediction of resource allocation, numbered 181,600 Mar 31st, 868,500 April 30th, and today the tally is 1,760,000 ... that is alarming even if case severity proportion lowers for some reason.
 
Getting back to measurement terms, I look at the new daily cases and their daily rolling averages at a global level. The doubling effect, that is the duration of time for global daily new case incidence to double its respective previous measurement has been quite variable. It was merely 6 days towards the end of March, then it took 2 months to double again, and just doubled again 6 weeks following the previous date at the end of May. That last doubling point, to me, being of shorter duration yet at a much higher case volume, also suggests somewhat of a ‘surge’.
 
So there are a lot of ways to look at the data. They cannot be easily packaged for general consumption.

I have been physically present in The Village but as a rule I don’t go indoors unless (most) occupants wear a mask as I do or I must buy essential goods. Very few are wearing masks in grocery stores in Montreal or indoors in The Village.
 
I have ascertained that the private dance areas in the clubs are operational, masks not mandatory, in keeping with guidelines that measures are but recommended. Only public transit is pushing masks as essential, but it is difficult to enforce. I don’t know details about the private dance choreography but I do not think it is substantially different from pre-pandemic. Staff, understandably, gravitate more to the ‘party line’ of public health when you inquire. Some dancers allude to no restrictions imposed.
 
Most people on the strip are sitting outdoors, but certainly less volume than previous summers, and indoor spaces are very anaemic. I think that Saloon and Club Le Date are recovering the best. Street performers are notably absent.

I have been physically present in The Village but as a rule I don’t go indoors unless (most) occupants wear a mask as I do or I must buy essential goods. Very few are wearing masks in grocery stores in Montreal or indoors in The Village.
 
I have ascertained that the private dance areas in the clubs are operational, masks not mandatory, in keeping with guidelines that measures are but recommended. Only public transit is pushing masks as essential, but it is difficult to enforce. I don’t know details about the private dance choreography but I do not think it is substantially different from pre-pandemic. Staff, understandably, gravitate more to the ‘party line’ of public health when you inquire. Some dancers allude to no restrictions imposed.
 
Most people on the strip are sitting outdoors, but certainly less volume than previous summers, and indoor spaces are very anaemic. I think that Saloon and Club Le Date are recovering the best. Street performers are notably absent.

The entry restrictions will likely be very gradually and gingerly eased over the next 12 months, with basic tourism the lowest priority and essential business & supply chain continuity the highest priority. Some in-between areas in the hierarchy, for example, broadening the criteria for family relations, or American owns property in Canada.
 
All with a watchful eye on infection rates.
 
There isn’t much in the way of Canadian tourism experience that cannot be accessed to a similar degree south of the border, for the broader American public anyway, and considering that outdoor emphasis is promoted. Canadians would endure no less deprivation, especially seeing as winter access to warmer American weather is not off the table, since we are not restricted from entering the USA by air, but likely influenced by reluctance especially among the ‘silver set’.
 
Each group putting money into respective in-country local resources offsets the troubled tourist economy woes with similar net effect.

I don’t see how he can enter the country due to foreign national restrictions and required quarantine even for Canadians arriving back home.

I didn't attend in person but I did watch the first two hours of the show on the website feed. I saw no dancers wearing masks. Employees seemed to have face shields on. Quite a few dancers in attendance including Zack, Adrian, Vinny, Jay, Ronny, Marco, Kyle, Fabio, Calvin, and a few others. I couldn't tell how many customers were in attendance. I'm hope someone who actually attended in person will chirp in soon.

The gay bathhouses are opening this weekend, presumably no restriction on cabin use.

This morning it has been announced that at least four of the pro tennis players in that Adria Tournament that I have referenced in previous posts in this thread have tested positive, including world #1 Novak Djokovic and his wife. They not only played the tournament with crowded stands of spectators and no CoVid restrictions at all on court, they also socialized in public in Belgrade and Zadar. It makes the very strict conditions that the USTA is demanding that players and their entourages adhere to at the US Open in NYC look more reasonable.
 
Croatia depends on tourism for almost a quarter of its economy, and they thought that holding the tournament in Zadar, a beautiful seacoast city, and televising it, showcasing the lack of CoVid restrictions, would encourage foreign tourists to return this summer. Bad idea.

A factor that could possibly mitigate the severity of the disease is Vitamin D levels. People in the South are far less likely to be Vitamin D deficient, and there's a correlation between Vitamin D level and response to respiratory infection in general. So Florida could wind up with a lower death rate not because of anything they did.

One could cherry-pick weather and validate weather as a factor in the Americas outside of other contextual variables. Take Ontario/Quebec versus Chile, contenders for the two most seasonally polarized and temporally opposite by season. I isolate the 2 provinces as they hold the majority of Canadian cases, the pop-adjusted totals approach Chile’s the most, and the larger the pop proportion infected the more meaningful substantial changes in new case trend. The population differential is merely about 10% and north-south latitude differentials are not terrible discrepant.
 
Pandemic commenced at respective Equinox for each. Canada curve starts to drop following peak about May 6th (Equinox-Solstice midpoint) and Chile curve precipitously rises at that point. Ont\Qc doing its best ever at Solstice and Chile skyrocketing at theirs, even controlling for their large retroactive data-dump mid-June. That spike anomaly simply reinforces the notion that Chile and the 2 Canadian provinces were more neck-and-neck than otherwise appears over the dates prior to greater weather polarization (not to be confused with Geo-polar).
 
BUT HERE IS THE KICKER:
 
If it relates to weather, Canada could surge at the midpoint next to August, in other words early November. If mirror-imaged against Chile’s trend, by our holiday season this translates to 8 times Ontario’s peak seen in May and 4 times Quebec’s at that time.
 
All I want for Christmas is a hazmat suit.
 
——-
 
Does Argentina corroborate the pattern? Yes, to a degree. Was low for a long time but steadily though less steeply increasing since the early May seasonal mid-point, and now criss-crossed above overall Canada new case rates.

I think it’s called schadenfreude, the reward of something, usually humour or smug satisfaction, at someone’s expense. You might laugh accompanied by compassion ... think a friend spilling something but not injured ... so it may be reflexive. Ironically, we may overthink it if the mishap occurs to somebody we view with contempt, slapstick flavour or not. In other words, the less compassion the more potential guilt.
 
Hope your pooch appreciates your risks.

Interestingly, 3 of the top 8 states surging out of all states&territories are in the top 4 for dry weather by full year. The flu (the SARS-CoV-2 comparator being most used) may like low humidity at any temperature and relatively but moderate higher temperature irrespective of humidity, all confounded by whether the weather regionally has a true polarized seasonality. (But I think it is a coincidence for this pandemic and population compliance with science is the overriding factor.)
 
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/the-reason-for-the-season-why-flu-strikes-in-winter/

Arizona is startling in its recent new case trend normalized by population. It is two to three times greater than states placed 2nd to 9th. At one point, my province Quebec, similar population, was trending at levels now evident in the 8 states placing behind it, but Arizona now has 30 times the Quebec rate and is matching Louisiana’s skyrocketing in the early days. If Arizona were a nation it would currently be 2nd only to Chile.

I thought natural immunity occurred from non-deliberate exposure to a pathogen, and degree of symptoms is irrelevant. Therefore, everybody exposed to the flu, sick or not, acquires natural immunity. You don’t not get the particular flu that leads to immunity to it. Strain relatives may have conferred natural immunity but that applies to all of us and, as I understand it, new exposure prompts new antibody development added to the immunological soup.
 
In contrast, the vaccine creates artificial immunity.
 
Therefore, the original question would more accurately be: I am not immune to flu in general but I am not susceptible to flu symptoms, so is new uptake of vaccination a liability? Answer: no. It can help prevent an index case of a new strain finding an escape route around your apparently very uniquely strong defensive system and causing sickness and/or complications, as others here suggest.
 
Why immunological imprinting varies among us is a different complex question.
 
In my limited layperson view, annual vaccination since 1976 gave me many inactivated strains that I might have otherwise acquired in their natural state, immunization thereby additively providing greater protection going forward.

I would see it more as a reinforcement to your "natural" shield. With age our defences decrease against microbes, including flu. Discuss options with your doctor but also trust him.

I agree with @big-n-tall (although as I'm not a doctor, seek your own professional advice), every exposure to a pathogen adds to the library of them that your immune system is programmed to recognise and combat. Every time you had a cold or the flu it added a bit to the range of those diseases that your immune system recognises, but they both mutate so there's always a chance that a new version will get through your defences. The flu vaccine gives you a chance to develop immunity to any new variations of flu without contracting the disease.