COVID-19

FeelingLeftOutGal said...



Ugh...yah, that dang CDC...they screwed up the tests so we got off to a slow start. I also recall that Fauci & co told us not to wear masks for a while, and discouraged shut downs. They were also against Trump's travel ban, which ended up being the right move. I remember governor Cuomo sending a bunch of infected old timers to nursing homes too and killing thousands. Pretty big mistake. And they do seem to be encouraging large groups of social gatherings for protests. You're right, US has really screwed this one up.

Meanwhile, to Tuffy's point, 10s of millions of Americans have lost their livelihoods. But these people dont matter, it's a cut and dry solution, Lapis and his big brain can copy and paste studies and make it all better....

you are just listing things to complain about

I am asking you what should we do exactly? Contact tracing works, absolutely. But we are not doing it at all. Should we do more conact tracing?

Should we just open up totally and completely and not worry about things?

Instead of taking swipes at Fauci from 6 months ago, tell me what you think we should be doing right now.

It seems like NY has the right model, which is exactly what I said from the beginning would be the right model. You open up outdoor dining, healthcare and essentials. You keep pubs and indoor dining and concerts closed. You enforce masks. Eventually people figure out how to social distance. And the numbers drop. NY had the first outbreak, so they figured it out first. Florida is starting to come to terms. Contact tracing works....for AIDs and Tuburculosis. Slow spreading diseases. You're not going to convince me its going to dent an outbreak of 15,000 cases/day like in CA, where you'd need to be on the phone w/ 150,000 people/day, most of whom will ignore it...but maybe it will have an impact on states that are already under control, to keep it that way.

As I've pointed out before, Trump doesnt have the executive authority to shut down the states. Its up to the states to do this, and each has taken a different approach. It *seems* like NY has the right approach, but we did NOT know this apriori, and you can argue it's debatable. For every life saved, how many businesses go under? How many divorces? Suicides? Domestic assaults? How many lives irreparably ruined? There is a real cost to shutdowns, one that you seem to ignore. And I've seen no studies comparing the social cost to the lives lost, and even then how do you weight it? Are 10 divorces worth a death? 5? 3? How about livelihoods? Lost income? Formative years of education? Depression? Increase in debt?

Small business owners aren't on TV complaining that we need to open up for fun, a lot of them really are suffering. And they get mocked and derided for being "anti-science". And this is where I take issue. So when I see snark, which I sense in every one of your posts, as if it's so glaringly obvious that a guy who wants to go to work shouldnt be allowed to, I take issue. I can sense you're a liberal, which means you're probably well off, and may not understand where these people come from.

And yes, I get it, there are thousands of idiots flouting the rules. Throwing house parties and packing beaches. I get it, it irritates me too. But these people are ignorant. And it seems to me there's a double standard where if a person is uneducated and I dont know, gets caught selling drugs in Baltimore, the defense is he grew up poor, its not his fault. But if its some dude in rural west-virginia who grew up poor and has no other identity than to cling to his guns and "freedom" does some stupid stuff like not wearing a mask, he's allowed no such consideration. If we're going to use post-modernism to obfuscate and allow one group a pass, we might as well just hold no one accountable to anything anymore.

Post Edited (FeelingLeftOutGal) : 8/20/2020 11:59:10 AM (GMT-6)

FLOG: Everyone cares about the societal problems you've mentioned. When we fail at containing the virus, those problems all get worse. I think this is why the focus is usually more on how to contain the virus, than on the seemingly harmful effects of actions taken to contain it.

I don't think NY could be as open as they are now without the more strict shutdown they initiated earlier. If the state that includes NYC had done anything less back then, who knows how bad everything would've gotten.

"And it seems to me there's a double standard where if a person is uneducated and I dont know, gets caught selling drugs in Baltimore, the defense is he grew up poor, its not his fault. But if its some dude in rural west-virginia who grew up poor and has no other identity than to cling to his guns and "freedom" does some stupid stuff like not wearing a mask, he's allowed no such consideration. "

Why keep including these strawman arguments in your posts? You're now interacting with real people who probably don't fit the mold of the typical "liberal" that you've learned about... Anyway I'll give my thoughts:
Selling drugs and not wearing masks are both bad. The poor Baltimore kid might be just trying to make a living though.. maybe not, who knows. The WV kid, if he/she's not just irresponsible, is probably more ideologically driven. When it's an ideology, then opposing ideologies will want to confront it.

Post Edited (potsnpans) : 8/20/2020 1:29:11 PM (GMT-6)

Lapis_29 said...
Oh we did know it before hand.

Pandemics are nothing new. We have over 100 years of hard data on how to control them. Obama actually did an amazing job with the ebola outbreak and he left a pandemic team with a game plan on how to approach this issue. That team got disbanded and the game plan was destroyed.

Contact tracing has decades of scientific studies showing it works. S Korea got covid deaths down to about zero using contact tracing

Volume 26, Number 10—October 2020

Contact Tracing during Coronavirus Disease Outbreak, South Korea, 2020


Abstract

We analyzed reports for 59,073 contacts of 5,706 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) index patients reported in South Korea during January 20–March 27, 2020. Of 10,592 household contacts, 11.8% had COVID-19. Of 48,481 nonhousehold contacts, 1.9% had COVID-19. Use of personal protective measures and social distancing reduces the likelihood of transmission.

Effective contact tracing is critical to controlling the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) (1). South Korea adopted a rigorous contact-tracing program comprising traditional shoe-leather epidemiology and new methods to track contacts by linking large databases (global positioning system, credit card transactions, and closed-circuit television). We describe a nationwide COVID-19 contact tracing program in South Korea to guide evidence-based policy to mitigate the pandemic (2).

LOL, Ebola. Spread by bodily fluids, extremely slowly. Completely different animal.

Most south east asian countries had teams in place already because they had dealt with SARS and MERS before. It's no coincidence that South Korea had a contact tracing team in place. And again, you're talking about 5000 cases, 50,000 contacts. Easily manageable. You're monday morning quarterbacking.

If it was all so known from the beginning, I just wonder why there was so much initial back and forth about the correct measures with your precious Fauci and the experts at the CDC.

skinny_joe said...
There are actual forums to "debate" whatever it is folks are trying to debate in this thread. Im surprised the Admin has not shut this thread down.

The Admin doesn’t read all the posts on all the forums on Healingwell.

If people can discuss the subject without it getting out of hand - it will stay.

Girlie said...
Didn’t China have the tightest lockdown - ie - military enforced?

They said there were no new cases and declared the pandemic to be over. Anyone who dared to say otherwise was arrested and jailed.

ChristianWithLyme said...
potsnpans, the only way I know of to eradicate a virus is to reach herd immunity either naturally or via an effective vaccine. It appears that China must have somehow reached herd immunity either before, during, or after the shut down or a combination of all three. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't see how you can shut down and think the virus will be gone when you open up.

The USA Today article says this about China:

"The spread of the disease has been all but eradicated in China, though isolated outbreaks pop up sporadically."

So no, it's not completely gone there and at this stage, lockdowns won't completely eradicate the virus from the planet. All efforts now should be understood as measures to contain the virus, including efforts towards herd immunity. I recall earlier in this thread we established that even with a vaccine herd immunity probably won't eradicate the virus, and that in the end the virus will most likely mutate into a less deadly form, becoming just another permanent, seasonal nuisance.

ChristianWithLyme said...
Just heard a small business owner (salon) say that if things in NJ don't open up more soon, multiple friends of hers will probably be out of business. She thinks government should just let the people decide.

Salons in NJ opened up sometime in mid June. I guess many people are still choosing not to go as often. You often point out "lockdowns cause deaths" to rationalize a higher covid death rate, but you don't seem to acknowledge that without lockdowns, there would still be economic damage.. in the long term that damage could outweigh the damage done by a short and effective lockdown.

ChristianWithLyme said...
The Swedes are living their lives largely normally and w/o masks now.

Sounds like they're living much like other countries/states that now have lower infection rates.. maybe less mask usage than some countries yes, but masks are hardly a burden, and I believe Swedish authorities still recommend them when social distancing is not an option (on the subway for instance).

Sweden didn't shutdown, but compare it to states in the US with similar population densities and I think you will find that the Swedish citizens are more responsible, taking it upon themselves to socially distance, avoid large gatherings, etc.(not to mention Swedes are generally healthier than citizens of probably all US states and better able to cope with illness). I'm sure bars and restaurants still lost a lot of revenue, however with a few tweaks, maybe Sweden's strategy was right for them.. with more restrictions/better protections for nursing homes, maybe they could've reduced or eliminated the outbreaks in those places (last I'd heard they account for nearly 50% of all their covid deaths). Sweden's export economy is still suffering greatly though, with trading partners having been shut down and/or slowed down by the virus. We could obviously use a few tweaks to our strategy in the US as well.. but any strategy a country chooses will work best if it's citizens are united around it.

ChristianWithLyme said...
It is said that NY and Sweden have similar antibody levels

I'm curious about this.. can you provide a link?

ChristianWithLyme said...
Regarding current US Covid deaths, some are saying that the hospitalization numbers (going down) are not matching up to the death numbers. They think the CDC could be adding past 'probable' Covid deaths to the death count and keeping the numbers high

Who are these people? Link?

ChristianWithLyme said...
potsnpans, the only way I know of to eradicate a virus is to reach herd immunity either naturally or via an effective vaccine. It appears that China must have somehow reached herd immunity either before, during, or after the shut down or a combination of all three. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't see how you can shut down and think the virus will be gone when you open up. We need to remember that Wuhan is where it is said the virus originated.

Is this truly what you believe? You can hate China I get it I don't like them much either. But they are a highly efficient militarized state. People listen or they disappear. Their lockdowns were exactly that you weren't allowed to leave. And people didn't. Pandemics didnt come about until towns and communal living came about. If something was transmitted to a ancient tribe it died out because the chain of infection was broken. As the case was in Wuhan the chain of infection was broken and it went away.

Stephen Buhner has updated his Covid-19 protocol:

https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/covid-19-2.update.txt.pdf

...it now includes additional treatments "post-coronavirus syndrome"

I'll concede that shutdowns MIGHT slow the spread of the virus.

I shouldn't have used the "eradicate a virus" wording. I should have said that the only way I know of to get through this Covid pandemic is via herd immunity either naturally or with an effective vaccine. If China is telling the truth, it looks like they've basically gotten over the pandemic. Notice that people were packed in like sardines and w/o masks at that pool party. Propaganda? Not sure. It's hard to discuss China because we don't know a lot about what goes on there.

Somehow there was enough virus spread in China for it to spread around the world. President Xi Jinping was upset with Trump for cutting off travel from China at the same time China was isolating Wuhan from the rest of the country.

I don't like the Chinese government and can't imagine the abuses that no doubt transpired while they were trying to contain the virus, but I don't hate China. We do need to be truthful and keep things in the proper perspective.

potsnpans, some of my info you asked about came from the following:

https://twitter.com/yinonw/status/1295152579941249024

https://twitter.com/ethicalskeptic/status/1296287545333030912

This article praises China for their virus measures while bashing the US response, but I wouldn't doubt that many Chinese would have rather lived through the pandemic in the US instead of in China.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/thousands-attend-pool-party-wuhan-141449923.html

Post Edited (ChristianWithLyme) : 8/21/2020 3:29:12 PM (GMT-6)

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769871

looking like Remdesivir is a dud

My state:

https://www.wric.com/health-2/virginia-commissioner-of-health-plans-to-mandate-coronavirus-vaccinations-once-available-to-public/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co

Maybe Dr. Jensen was right regarding the death certificates. Not that they do this everywhere, but it sure is being done in one county. Start listening at 39:20.

-If you have Covid-19 listed anywhere on your death certificate, you are counted as a Covid death.
-Even if not listed on death certificate, anyone who has a Covid positive test within a certain time from when they die, they are counted as Covid death.
-If someone dies at home, and it's not known why they died, if there's any suspicion that there was any respiratory illness at all, someone from medical examiner is sent out and Covid test is done post-mortem to make sure they are being included in the death counts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk72ayybttc&feature=youtu.be&t=2398

Post Edited (ChristianWithLyme) : 8/22/2020 7:35:26 AM (GMT-6)