Coronavirus General Discussion

[whatchamacallit]

This is a large thread to get lost in but something I have wondered since the beginning of outsized deaths occurring.

We now have the baby boomers becoming senior citizens. There will of course be more total deaths than previous years.

Am I thinking of this too simply?

We've had Baby Boomers becoming senior citizens since 2000, 20 years ago. Why 20 years later would we now have this huge spike upwards?

Vinny

I guess I mean 70s in particular. Us life average expectancy is 76 to 78. I am sure a big chunk of that average is in early 70s.

[dualstow]

At the same time, life expectancy has generally been increasing. (Not for white males, who have seen a drop from heroin, binge drinking, suicides, etc). Maybe we should also look at rate of death for just senior citizens.

[Cortopassi]

Whether you believe excess deaths are from Corona, or effects from Corona or because the population is getting older, the excess deaths continue to track above "normal" yearly averages, at least above the past few years.

I leave it to you guys to make your own determination of why.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covi ... deaths.htm

[WiseOne]

Don't forget, Corto, that excess deaths in the COVID era are not all from COVID. They include deaths from suicide (the rate has skyrocketed due to lockdowns and economic devastation), violence (ditto), untreated serious conditions such as heart disease and cancer (e.g. Maddy's friend), and people dying at home from heart attacks and strokes because they were afraid to go to the ER.

In fact, one of Ivor Cummins' videos analyzed this very question and concluded that nearly all excess deaths in the UK were from the above, not from COVID.

Tortoise's post was spot on. You can't compare flu deaths to COVID deaths for two reasons. First, the flu test is MUCH less sensitive than the COVID test (i.e. very high rate of false negatives). By the time someone is hospitalized from flu, they've been sick for several days and are likely dealing with a superimposed bacterial infection. By then, the flu test is almost always going to be negative. A more accurate comparison would be to deaths from acute respiratory illness - that's harder to find but it's much higher than the number attributed specifically to flu. (I found a number: 4 million annually worldwide, translating to 240,000 in the US assuming same rate throughout the world and the US is 6% of the world population.)

Second, every hospitalized patient is currently being tested for COVID regardless of their presenting complaint. If it comes up positive and the patient dies, that's a COVID death even if they came in for an unrelated surgical procedure (e.g. a transplant or cancer resection) and died from complications. We don't know how many of that 300K are due to COVID, i.e. would not have died if they hadn't been exposed to COVID. That's a judgment call that you can't get from hospital reporting, because there isn't a way to code for it in discharge or death summaries.

Another related question: what percentage of the asymptomatic population in high risk groups are COVID positive? Too bad that's never been studied, because it's a key piece of information for judging the rate of positive COVID tests in the hospitalized population. If they're the same, then you can't assume any excess hospital deaths are due to COVID. Presumably it's higher in the hospitalized group, but you'd then have to use the endemic COVID positivity rate to eliminate incident COVID as a confound. Too bad no one wants to do this either - because probably the result would be a drastic reduction in the impact of COVID.

So yeah I agree with SomeDude. Stop testing unless it would change treatment. That's how medicine is supposed to work anyway. This new thing about testing everyone including asymptomatic people is completely unprecedented. In future years I'm sure there will be lots of articles written about what a bad idea it was, and how testing should properly be used in the management of an epidemic.

[dualstow]

I appreciate the insight, WiseOne.

From my son (also a dentist). Comments?

hope the guy is right about each subsequent reinfection being weaker. Interesting indeed.

[Cortopassi]

Stop testing unless it would change treatment. That's how medicine is supposed to work anyway. This new thing about testing everyone including asymptomatic people is completely unprecedented. In future years I'm sure there will be lots of articles written about what a bad idea it was, and how testing should properly be used in the management of an epidemic.

I hope you are right, and I don't disagree.

I was watching TV a couple days ago and there was a Nyquil commercial on, with a person with a bright red nose, sneezing, coughing, etc. I turned to my wife and said, currently, there's no way that guy just takes Nyquil and goes to bed. He's going to find some facility and get himself tested for Covid.

it is insane. No one in my family has had a cold or illness in >10 months. What the hell are we going to do when my daughter catches a cold which she has been prone to do? Do we need to run out and get tested? AARGHHH!!!

[WiseOne]

So I was thinking once again I should cancel my WSJ subscription, but then I read this article:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gov-andrew ... 95?tesla=y

"The Democratic governor released statewide contact-tracing data showing that about 74% of new Covid-19 cases between September and November came from household and social gatherings. Nearly 8% came from health-care delivery, and 2.02% were college students, state data showed. Bars and restaurants accounted for 1.43% of the cases."

And as always remember: these are positive tests, not cases. And I bet the ones who are seriously ill are not the same population that goes to restaurants, as not a lot of nursing home and dialysis patients do that kind of thing.

I'm puzzled as to why the headline wasn't "NYC Restaurants ordered to close despite data showing minimal COVID spread", but at least they reported some facts that you are guaranteed not to find anywhere else. Let's see if the Epoch Times picks this up.

This stuff just makes me angry.

[stuper1]

Does anyone else here listen to the Tom Woods Show daily podcast? He's been doing some great reporting on why the Covid lockdown is such a bad idea. This week he interviewed a health scientist from Stanford. One point the guy made was that Fauci is a respected immunologist, but he's done a terrible job of giving advice on Covid, which he backed up with a bunch of reasons.

[boglerdude]

The virus has to ride a droplet out of your head and into someone else's. No asymptomatic spread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/commen ... eening_in/

edit, good article: https://mises.org/wire/theres-still-no- ... e-changers

[Kriegsspiel]

Gov. Wolf is doing the same thing in PA, but he's not stopping at indoor dining. He's back to ordering no indoor gatherings of 10+ people, no outdoor gatherings of 50+, 50% capacity at businesses, all gyms closed, all indoor entertainment, school extracurriculars, all school sports (except college and NFL, of course).

What a piece of shit.

[vnatale]

Gov. Wolf is doing the same thing in PA, but he's not stopping at indoor dining. He's back to ordering no indoor gatherings of 10+ people, no outdoor gatherings of 50+, 50% capacity at businesses, all gyms closed, all indoor entertainment, school extracurriculars, all school sports (except college and NFL, of course).

What a piece of shit.

Massachusetts is allowing high school hockey and basketball and other sports. The body that rules high school sports has come up with a whole list of new rules for various aspects of basketball so as to mitigate the risk of the virus spreading from one person to another. It is up to each school district to decide whether or not they want to participate in any of the sports. I believe my town has elected to play in all of them (related to my town having the highest rate of gun ownership in the state?).

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/11/20/ ... -covid-19/

http://www.miaa.net/gen/miaa_generated_ ... r_2020.pdf

Vinny

[dualstow]

An older relative of mine has come down with covid, and he already has alzheimer’s and host of possibly Agent Orange related ailments if i remember right. I haven’t seen him in a very long time but eesh, I bad for the guy.

[WiseOne]

Dualstow, I hate to say this but....

My brother and I talked at length about his getting on a plane in order to visit my mom next week. We considered the risk of my mother getting COVID vs. effect of not having her family around her for the holidays for the first time in her life.

I told my brother I regarded COVID as something of an exit strategy for her. My mother was (is?) a fiercely independent person with a powerful, unfortunately minimally-used, intellect, boundless energy, and an incredible work ethic. If she were a young adult today I would take bets on her becoming a neurosurgeon. Having her intellect and personality taken away piece by piece has been agonizing for everyone, not least for her. Losing her independence is her worst nightmare.

Mother Nature has ways of fixing problems like this. Of course, COVID is just one of the many respiratory viruses out there. As an infectious disease doctor told me during my internship, "pneumonia is the friend of the elderly." It was not a joke.

[dualstow]

I hear you, WiseOne. Longevity has to come with some quality of life.

I don't want to put our elderly on an ice floe when they hit a certain age nor, like certain jungle tribes, take an axe to them when they can't keep up with the party. If the quality of life is good, may they live to see 100 and beyond. If not, well, death is natural.

It sounds like she is your mom and not your mom right now. I'm sorry that you're going through it. I liked the relative mentioned above, but I'm not remotely close to him, not close enough to feel anything. Maybe that's also my stubborn reaction to my dad being perpetually sad. Life has to go on for the rest of us.

Meanwhile, I may have to get on a plane early next month and while I'm not nervous, I hate that I might catch the bug and even spread it. The worst part is going to be the line at the airport.

[WiseOne]

I hear you, WiseOne. Longevity has to come with some quality of life.

I don't want to put our elderly on an ice floe when they hit a certain age nor, like certain jungle tribes, take an axe to them when they can't keep up with the party. If the quality of life is good, may they live to see 100 and beyond. If not, well, death is natural.

It sounds like she is your mom and not your mom right now. I'm sorry that you're going through it. I liked the relative mentioned above, but I'm not remotely close to him, not close enough to feel anything. Maybe that's also my stubborn reaction to my dad being perpetually sad. Life has to go on for the rest of us.

Meanwhile, I may have to get on a plane early next month and while I'm not nervous, I hate that I might catch the bug and even spread it. The worst part is going to be the line at the airport.

Definitely I'm not advocating euthanasia by COVID. It's just that I'm suggesting the risk should be put into perspective. My brother is doing what he can to mitigate the risk, by getting tested before & after the flight. He's also going to wear an N95 and face shield on the flight.

Will let you guys know what my brother's airport experience is. The airports are not as crowded as usual during the holidays, so maybe not so much with the long lines.

[dualstow]

Perspective of risk, exactly.
I’m not expecting a long line so much as a long wait in line. Extra precautions and procedures.

[Hal]

My brother and I talked at length about his getting on a plane in order to visit my mom next week. We considered the risk of my mother getting COVID vs. effect of not having her family around her for the holidays for the first time in her life.

WiseOne, is it possible to get on a small regional airline to get to your mother? In Australia they are usually turbo prop planes, and not like the sardine can jet services. Maybe 1/2 to 3/4 full..... Safer perhaps? The airport queues are much shorter obviously.

[WiseOne]

My brother and I talked at length about his getting on a plane in order to visit my mom next week. We considered the risk of my mother getting COVID vs. effect of not having her family around her for the holidays for the first time in her life.

WiseOne, is it possible to get on a small regional airline to get to your mother? In Australia they are usually turbo prop planes, and not like the sardine can jet services. Maybe 1/2 to 3/4 full..... Safer perhaps? The airport queues are much shorter obviously.

My brother is coming from California to NJ, so....no such options.

[dualstow]

Lest you guys think I'm not living on the edge, I do eat raw cookie dough.

[Xan]

Lest you guys think I'm not living on the edge, I do eat raw cookie dough.

The "Chef!" episode where Chef is on a quest to get real, unpasteurized Stilton is an absolute gem. It includes this:

We have to cater for the wild element in our society, you know, people who eat soft-boiled eggs, people who drink tap water, people who spread butter on white bread. You know, the reckless ones; the daredevils!

[I Shrugged]

In a shocking development, the AMA has rescinded its ban on using hydroxychloroquine for Covid.
Nothing to see here, move along.

[I Shrugged]

...

[I Shrugged]

[quote=MangoMan post_id=216266 time=1608056886


[/quote]

I don’t think that is evidence of anything actionable.

[Cortopassi]

pug:

See here:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covi ... deaths.htm

**I took the data from this spreadsheet, and the numbers DO NOT jive with the graph. The data shows 2020 as nothing special.



However, when I download the actual graph data, the results are this:
2017 -- 2.568M
2018 -- 2.577M
2019 -- 2.852M
2020 -- 3.432M (Through end of Nov and their disclaimer that not all deaths have likely been reported yet)

So, the Excel data at the link does not match the graph. I do not know why. Maybe there's a reason, or it is an error.

[Cortopassi]

Corto, if you click the link under the tweet I posted, the guy who originally posted that chart lists 10 publications from the CDC as the source. They are all clickable links.

And even if 3.5M is more accurate, that's not outrageous enough to justify destruction of the economy.

I know. That's what I am saying. The 2020 data on one sheet does not match the excess graph data downloaded. I do not know why.