A reminder why we can't risk exposure to Covid 19

[+ GregM]

That may be true, but 100,000 deaths is 100,000 deaths. Within the space of a few weeks, anyone would agree that that is a singular event.

 

100,000 compared to the population that is nothing. And many deaths were recorded as the chinese flu when that was not the cause of death. So ?‍♂️ But run and hide chicken little.

[Rudynate]

100,000 compared to the population that is nothing. And many deaths were recorded as the chinese flu when that was not the cause of death. So ?‍♂️ But run and hide chicken little.

 

 

 

I will. I'm reminded of a book title- "Survival of the Wisest."

[+ GregM]

I will. I'm reminded of a book title- "Survival of the Wisest."

 

Bless your little heart. I'll say a prayer for you.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Over 99% get over this and don't die.

 

Fun facts:

 

99.999 % of people who died in the US in 2019 were alive 10 minutes before they died. The 0.001 % is a rounding error.

 

Meanwhile, 99.74 % of the global population in the 1940's was not annihilated in The Holocaust.

 

Other than showing we like intellectual masturbation, which I obviously love, I'm not sure what the point is.

 

The Most Important COVID-19 Statistic: 43% Of U.S. Deaths Are From 0.6% Of The Population

 

This is out of Forbes. The first chart shows the percentage of all COVID-19 deaths in each state that were nursing home deaths. New York is actually one of the lowest in the country. By this standard - percentage of deaths in nursing homes - New York did a particularly good job.

 

 

When you look at the actual number of deaths it gives you an entirely different picture.

 

 

So in New York, a small percentage of all COVID-19 deaths still works out to be a lot of people. New York is in the ballpark of 5000 dead seniors in nursing homes. In Oregon, 60 % of all dead works out to be about 100 actual dead seniors in nursing homes. Almost 1 in 10 residents of long-term care facilities in New Jersey died of COVID-19. That's four times higher than New York state as a whole.

 

This could be where @purplekow adds that New Jersey is the densest state in the US. I think density matters in the sense that if you have a dense place, and if it spreads everywhere, you have now turned every nursing home in a dense state into a death camp. But BOTH conditions have to be present. You can't just have density. You have to have mass spread - either unintentionally, through the silent seeding of a pandemic; or willfully, through planned herd immunity.

 

The five states with the lowest infection rates are Montana, Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and West Virginia. They have 500 to 1000 diagnosed COVID-19 cases per million. The five states with the highest infection rates are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and DC. Does anyone see a pattern between higher state infection rates and how nursing homes tend to turn into death camps?

 

Two of the densest cities, Hong Kong and Taipei, are actually two of the safest places on the planet right now. A story in the Times about how California's economy is fucked reported this:

Adrian Ma, a student at the University of California, Riverside, left for his home in Hong Kong in mid-April, when the number of new cases were rising sharply in California. “I definitely would not come back to the U.S. right now,” Mr. Ma said. “I am currently in the safest place on earth, why would I want to go back to a high-risk place like America?”

 

I think that makes an important point. The government lock down was a government ratification of a market lockdown. And the market lockdown continues. So it doesn't matter whether U of C is open. Adrian ain't gonna play. You can take your fancy schools and your fancy economy and shove it up your ass.

 

Adrian is probably not 85 and co-morbid. He's probably young and healthy. He's the kind of guy who is supposed to kickbox this wimpy ass COVID-19 piece of shit right into a corner.

 

 

Yet for some strange reason, Adrian is staying put in Hong Kong it appears. Can somebody please tell me where Bruce Lee is when we need him?

 

This is true all across the US economy, as that Times article talks about. California makes a fortune on tourism. As awesome a guy as he is, I'm guessing @mike carey isn't in a rush to share the California COVID experience. Bringing tourism back to life in California means killing COVID, not seniors.

 

Whether governments ratify market lockdowns or not has little to do with the market lockdown itself. So when Open Table tells us that by March 13th about half the restaurant industry in Seattle was crushed in a computer click by consumers, there's a problem. Of course, what did we expect from a place like Seattle? They breed these nerdy science geeks like Bill Gates. Gates is a case of your cure being worse than the disease.

 

So now we see the consequences of this stupidity exercised by these science dipshits. There's one dead senior in a nursing home in Washington for every 40 dead seniors in nursing homes in New Jersey. What the fuck were people in Washington thinking? What the fuck was Bill Gates thinking? Can I please just have Bruce Lee, so we can all go kick some viral ass?

 

A smart publication like Forbes should get that large economies are dynamic and fluid. And yet, they say this:

 

Americans are vigorously debating the merits of continuing to lock down the U.S. economy to prevent the spread of COVID-19. A single statistic may hold the key to resolving this debate: the astounding share of deaths occurring in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. 2.1 million Americans, representing 0.62% of the U.S. population, reside in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

 

Again, Forbes is supposed to understand market economies. Somebody might want to send them the memo about how 2 in 3 consumers said "Hasta la vista, baby" to dining out and shopping before any government said anything. And polls show that American consumers are pretty much saying the same thing about their intentions today. That reflects what's happening - or not happening - in economies that have reopened, from Germany to Georgia.

 

Who'd a thunk? We dodged the Bernie socialism bullet. And now capitalism is doing us in!

 

There is good news. While we all wait for Super Fauci to fly in with the vaccine, at least we have Mickey and Minnie

 

Disney World plans to reopen in July

 

This is actually good news. I'm serious. Corporations have been the missing player. Obviously because they had to shut down. (Remember now. Consumers did it. Not the government.) Beyond that, Disney has no interest in rebranding their amusement parks as death camps. And they have way more resources than nursing homes. Finally, they understand the difference between a government regulation, and a market economy. Disney can not afford having consumers who view them like rats spreading a virus. Which is where Mickey and Minnie come in. And remember now. They're mice. Not rats.

 

I like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx a lot. But let's face it. Mickie and Minnie have a certain charm Tony and Deborah don't. Who better to rebrand the rules of hugging, kissing, and social distancing?

 

 

The company is implementing a slew of safety precautions for the soon-to-be-opening Disney World. All visitors will undergo temperature checks and be required to wear face masks. The parks will provide masks for those who don't have one, according to USA Today.

 

The polls suggest to me probably 9 in 10 Americans have gotten the memo. But it can't hurt to have Mickey and Minnie reinforcing it daily. As far as the Liberate The Virus crowd goes, maybe we could pay Disney to be creative. How about we open up Virus World, and let the no-mask crowd enter for free? We just have to make sure they build two new hospitals for every hotel. It'll be good for the economy, right?

 

Disney aside, every meat packing plant, call center, and car making factory in America now has the same problem. That will settle the herd immunity question quick. Every CEO in America is wondering how to test, trace, and treat COVID-19 out of existence. At least among their workforce.

 

Which brings us full circle to why Forbes is wrong. You can't just build an economic wall around nursing homes. Seniors in homes don't go to Disney World. But the young Moms who care for them do. If they catch COVID-19 at Disney World and bring it to work, your nice little economic wall just crumbled. The lockdowns were designed to stop community spread. States like New Jersey with the most community spread ended up with the most dead seniors.

 

Germany banned large gatherings, and amusement parks, through Summer at least. Their priority is factories, small businesses, shops, making it safe for people to shop and eat out. That makes sense to me.

 

If a worker or consumer gets sick with the virus, you can contact trace COVID-19 back to factories and stores. But if a nursing home aide from New Jersey gets COVID-19 at Disney World, forget contact tracing. So reopening Disney World could be a problem for nursing homes - even in New Jersey.

 

Mostly I think corporate America will help get this right. But this is an example where not having a clear plan and message like Germany could undermine the broader economy.

Edited May 28, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[Guest]

It can run as long as the virus can find hosts to infect. There are more than a few professionals who think this will be an "event" several years in duration.

 

You just said upthread that the pandemic is likely to be recurring. And you're in good company. Many public health professionals think so too.

Two things:

1) flattening the curve by definition prolongs the event

2) what I said was that the economic repercussions, like the virus, would come in waves. But like waves, the virus will only have so much energy and cannot perpetuate itself once is loses uninfected hosts. But, the economy is more like a machine that requires motion to stay lubricated. Once it stops, it is hard to restart.

[mike carey]

I'm guessing @mike carey isn't in a rush to share the California COVID experience.

Not in a hurry at all. I'm not sure yet what metric I'll use for travel to California or elsewhere in the US, and the answer may be different for different places. Not that I'll have any say in that any time soon. I'll be interested to see whether we will have differential quarantine requirements for arrivals from different countries or regions.

[Ajac]

I often wonder what the results of this pandemic would have been like if we had competent leadership. Where our leaders worked together for one common goal. Where aide was not doled out based on a states ass kissing skills. Where a horrible situation wasn't manipulated for election results. Where all the people in our country mattered equally. where the economics and human life were an equal concern. Animals in national parks are thriving the air and water are at cleaner levels than they have been in years Mother Nature has been working hard to regain her composure. While our president plans to remove FDA restrictions to corporations to stimulate the economy, at what cost. There are no easy answers obviously, but it is nice to dream of a country where we were less divided. Perhaps a country where armed thugs and swastikas were not becoming normalized. Sigh... may we all get through all of this and reevaluate what is truly important in our lives.

[+ bigjoey]

WOW! Steven’s post #72 is a great example of one of his word dumps. A slight-of-hand trick buried in a word salad that shows his obsession with declaring the deaths of seniors like the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

 

The slight-of-hand trick is to attack @Epigonos in his post #69 and my agreement in post #70. Both short posts specifically were about nursing home deaths in NY caused by the NY mandate that placed people with Covid19 in nursing homes. I agreed with @Epigonos by pointing out very specifically that the nursing home death rate in NY was greater than states without such a mandate and that such a mandate was a huge blunder. Very clearly, both posts were about Covid19 nursing home death rates.

 

Now while Steven is correct that the latest figures are hard to come by (and continually changing), he switches away from talking about the “death rate in nursing homes due to Covid19“ caused in a great part by the NY mandate. He switches to talking about the percentage of senior deaths to the total deaths as well as absolute numbers. He turns the discussion into one of nursing homes being like Nazi death camps. WHAT HE DOES NOT DO is talk about the NY mandate that placed people with Covid19 in nursing homes. WHAT HE DOES NOT DO is talk about the death rates of seniors living in nursing homes.

 

In fact, the Covid19 death rate of seniors living in nursing homes in NY is more than twice that of Florida’s rate of Covid19 deaths of seniors living in nursing homes.

 

While most reader’s eyes most likely glazed over due to the voluminous post that is repetitive from past posts, Steven’s personal attack at @Epigonos and my posts did not go unnoticed by me. The purposeful deception with his slight-of-hand change of subject was clear. Typical of his bullying others to make himself seem to be THE authority on a subject. He builds himself up by wrongly tearing others down.

 

Neither @Epigonos nor I doubt that this virus is very deadly for seniors. Neither @Epigonos nor I are against test, trace and isolate (there really is no “treat” beyond supportive therapy). Our sin seems to be in believing that the NY mandate made things in nursing homes more deadly for seniors.

 

The FACT is clear: the Covid19 death rate of seniors living in nursing homes is higher in NY with its mandate that placed people with Covid19 in nursing homes than in states like Florida without such a mandate. The exact death rates will not be known until historians write the history of the pandemic. NY has now dropped the mandate so the time period can be bracketed (allowing for a slight death lag) to compare Covid19 death rates.

[Rudynate]

Two things:

1) flattening the curve by definition prolongs the event

2) what I said was that the economic repercussions, like the virus, would come in waves. But like waves, the virus will only have so much energy and cannot perpetuate itself once is loses uninfected hosts. But, the economy is more like a machine that requires motion to stay lubricated. Once it stops, it is hard to restart.

 

 

Agreed. But it should be restarted in a smart way, without gangs of armed militia, fudging or suppression of public health data, and full recognition of the fact that coronavirus is a profoundly infectious agent and that being stupid about things will only put the nation back into lockdown.

[Epigonos]

Very interesting article in today's (05/28) issue of the Wall Street Journal. It is located on page A17 in the opinion section. The article is entitled "When Covid "Science" Is a Smokescreen" and is written by Todd Myers. Mr. Myers is environmental director of the Seattle-based Washington Policy Center and author of "Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment." Sorry I don't know how to cut the article from the WSJ and post it here.

[+ WilliamM]

Very interesting article in today's (05/28) issue of the Wall Street Journal. It is located on page A17 in the opinion section. The article is entitled "When Covid "Science" Is a Smokescreen" and is written by Todd Myers. Mr. Myers is environmental director of the Seattle-based Washington Policy Center and author of "Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment." Sorry I don't know how to cut the article from the WSJ and post it here.

 

Is The Wall Street journal still using a pay wall. If so, one has to have a subscription to the Journal to read that article? I might try to cut and paste it, but not a subscriber.

[+ Charlie]

Over 99% get over this and don't die.

By "get over this" I assume you mean "survive." But it is not like getting over the common cold. We are already learning that many COVID "survivors" have serious medical after effects that may be lifelong disabilities. People who survive heart attacks and strokes and lung cancer, etc., may be alive, but they don't usually go back to the same level of health they experienced before their illness. For those sick enough to be hospitalized, COVID-19 is not just a minor inconvenience. Death isn't the only thing worth avoiding.

[+ bigjoey]

Very interesting article in today's (05/28) issue of the Wall Street Journal. It is located on page A17 in the opinion section. The article is entitled "When Covid "Science" Is a Smokescreen" and is written by Todd Myers. Mr. Myers is environmental director of the Seattle-based Washington Policy Center and author of "Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment." Sorry I don't know how to cut the article from the WSJ and post it here.

 

I have a Journal subscription so I was able to read the article. A good fact-based article how “science” can be used in the name of political advancement. Unfortunately, “science” is often used for political ends and manipulated accordingly.

 

Unfortunately, I do not know how to cut and paste it. While I have many skills, I am lacking in high tech abilities?.

[xyz48B]

A lot of this is argumentum ad extremum...

 

It’s serious. Very serious. No one except lunatics are saying it’s not. But people are asking questions that are trying to put things into perspective. Unless I’m wrong, trying to look at things in perspective is a sign or intelligence and critical thinking. That critical thinking is a problem when trying to manipulate people, for whatever ends, so we try to quash it.

 

There are any number of things out there that, in perspective, can affect people in extreme ways – not just COVID. That’s true and pointing it out doesn’t make you somehow heartless, blind, or unwilling to admit the severity of the disease. The characterization of folks who identify fear as a major factor in this discussion and our response as unconcerned for others who suffer or out of touch is callous and frankly intellectually lazy.

[xyz48B]

@bigjoey – I don’t bother reading Steven’s posts.

[+ WilliamM]

@bigjoey – I don’t bother reading Steven’s posts.

I believe that is a mistake. Certainly, not every post is worth reading, and they are often much too long. Still.

[+ WilliamM]

I have a Journal subscription so I was able to read the article. A good fact-based article how “science” can be used in the name of political advancement. Unfortunately, “science” is often used for political ends and manipulated accordingly.

 

Unfortunately, I do not know how to cut and paste it. While I have many skills, I am lacking in high tech abilities?.

 

Save the article by highlighting and post it here. Also applies in the Times and the Washington Post articles.

[Rudynate]

I have a Journal subscription so I was able to read the article. A good fact-based article how “science” can be used in the name of political advancement. Unfortunately, “science” is often used for political ends and manipulated accordingly.

 

Unfortunately, I do not know how to cut and paste it. While I have many skills, I am lacking in high tech abilities?.

 

 

Huh, funny . . . pseudoscience is often used that way too.

[Rudynate]

I often wonder what the results of this pandemic would have been like if we had competent leadership. Where our leaders worked together for one common goal. Where aide was not doled out based on a states ass kissing skills. Where a horrible situation wasn't manipulated for election results. Where all the people in our country mattered equally. where the economics and human life were an equal concern. Animals in national parks are thriving the air and water are at cleaner levels than they have been in years Mother Nature has been working hard to regain her composure. While our president plans to remove FDA restrictions to corporations to stimulate the economy, at what cost. There are no easy answers obviously, but it is nice to dream of a country where we were less divided. Perhaps a country where armed thugs and swastikas were not becoming normalized. Sigh... may we all get through all of this and reevaluate what is truly important in our lives.

 

 

We have an idea. The statisticians tell us that if lockdown had started one week earlier, there would have been 36000 fewer deaths. If lockdown had started two weeks earlier, there would have been 85000 fewer deaths.

[wklukas]

Save the article by highlighting and post it here. Also applies in the Times and the Washington Post articles.

 

here’s the WSJ opinion piece.....reprinted from a different source —-

 

https://247sports.com/college/texas-tech/board/102960/Contents/when-covid-science-is-a-smokescreen-147561694/

[+ WilliamM]

here’s the WSJ opinion piece.....reprinted from a different source —-

 

https://247sports.com/college/texas-tech/board/102960/Contents/when-covid-science-is-a-smokescreen-147561694/

 

The article is about the governor of the state of Washington, but calls other States guilty too of using the word science for politcal gain.

 

Without providing evidence except for the Governor of Washington.

 

Thank you very much for posting the article, @wklukas

[+ WilliamM]

I have a Journal subscription so I was able to read the article. A good fact-based article how “science” can be used in the name of political advancement. Unfortunately, “science” is often used for political ends and manipulated accordingly.

 

Unfortunately, I do not know how to cut and paste it. While I have many skills, I am lacking in high tech abilities?.

 

Have you never posted a photo or a cartoon?

 

Essentially the same process.

[orville]

Seriously? if you’re holding your breathe waiting for a vaccine, you will die of asphyxiation.

Got it, oops it mutated

Silly to be putting out false hope that a vaccine is the solution too!!

While the current situation could make some pessimistic, let's remember the diseases caused by a virus that have a vaccine:

Diphteria, Measles, Mumps, Polio, Yellow Fever, Smallpox, Hepatitis A and B, Papilloma, Rabies, Varicella, Shingles, Rubella, Rotavirus.

You can find more info about them here.

[RealAvalon]

Just wait. In mid-March, Alabamans were pretty smug about their numbers and the fact that what was good for large urban centers lie NYC wasn't applicable to Alabamans. Now, Alabama is a hot spot.

I've been keeping an eye on Alabama cases/deaths, just because it has the same population as British Columbia (5.1 million). BC is more of an international destination (Vancouver) with very strong ties to East Asian countries, and has had a longer exposure to the virus. Yesterday, one death and nine new cases in BC, day before yesterday, zero deaths and nine new cases.

 

Deaths in BC: 162

Deaths in Alabama: 590

 

Cases in BC: 2,550

Cases in Alabama: 16,101

[Rudynate]

I've been keeping an eye on Alabama cases/deaths, just because it has the same population as British Columbia (5.1 million). BC is more of an international destination (Vancouver) with very strong ties to East Asian countries, and has had a longer exposure to the virus. Yesterday, one death and nine new cases in BC, day before yesterday, zero deaths and nine new cases.

 

Deaths in BC: 162

Deaths in Alabama: 590

 

Cases in BC: 2,550

Cases in Alabama: 16,101

 

 

Not surprising. Canadians can think. And they still have a functioning government.