Coronavirus General Discussion

[Kriegsspiel]

A Maryland man has been sentenced to one year in jail after he hosted two parties against the governor's COVID-19 large gathering orders, prosecutors said.
link

This is some ridiculous PATRIOT Act level bullshit right here.

[I Shrugged]

A Maryland man has been sentenced to one year in jail after he hosted two parties against the governor's COVID-19 large gathering orders, prosecutors said.
link

This is some ridiculous PATRIOT Act level bullshit right here.

That's bad. Yeah, the worst case for a defendant is to be in a situation where he/she is prime for being made an example of.

[Tortoise]

A Maryland man has been sentenced to one year in jail after he hosted two parties against the governor's COVID-19 large gathering orders, prosecutors said.
link

This is some ridiculous PATRIOT Act level bullshit right here.

That's bad. Yeah, the worst case for a defendant is to be in a situation where he/she is prime for being made an example of.

I don't know if that guy has this option, but if he does, he should appeal in a federal court. Hopefully the feds would be unwilling to uphold Maryland's unconstitutional lower-level tyrannical ruling.

[Tortoise]

NYC Principals Union Unanimously Votes ‘No Confidence’ In De Blasio

Days ahead of New York City schools reopening, the city's principals union passed a vote of "no confidence" in Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools chancellor Richard Carranza over their handling of Covid-19 and asked the state department of education to take over the reopening process...
[...]
The principals union lashed out at Carranza and his team for demonstrating "a complete lack of respect" by not properly informing and advising NYC principals of the planned agreement, which they say will lead to additional challenges amid an already significant staff shortage (The staffing crisis forced de Blasio to delay the start of in-person classes for a second time last week.)

LOL

[yankees60]

Tonight I read some recommendations for watching these videos (for those video watchers out there):

https://www.youtube.com/c/PeakProsperity/videos

(Latest video: Fauci Places Politics Over Science (and your health))

For those of you who ask why should you listen to this buy, what are his credentials? He says: "I’m a trained scientist, having completed both a PhD and a post-doctoral program at Duke University, where I specialized in neurotoxicology."

Next, you may, like I, ask, what is: neurotoxicology? It is: the science that deals with the effects of poisons on the nervous system.

I'll leave it so WiseOne to tell us if that means we should put any faith in anything he has to say regarding this virus!

Vinny

[dualstow]

Fauci’s new post-surgery voice is smooth, isn’t it, Vinny.

[Hal]

And it looks like the Uncyclopedia guys have been busy
https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Daniel_Andrews

[Kriegsspiel]

And it looks like the Uncyclopedia guys have been busy
https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Daniel_Andrews

[Mark Leavy]

I've been walking the beach twice a day lately, and the sands are filled with families. Kids of every age. Every day. Can't blame them, it is glorious.

Beach School is Best School.

[Maddy]

Straight from the Lancet:

As the world approaches 1 million deaths from COVID-19, we must confront the fact that we are taking a far too narrow approach to managing this outbreak of a new coronavirus. We have viewed the cause of this crisis as an infectious disease. All of our interventions have focused on cutting lines of viral transmission, thereby controlling the spread of the pathogen. The “science” that has guided governments has been driven mostly by epidemic modellers and infectious disease specialists, who understandably frame the present health emergency in centuries-old terms of plague. But what we have learned so far tells us that the story of COVID-19 is not so simple. Two categories of disease are interacting within specific populations—infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and an array of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These conditions are clustering within social groups according to patterns of inequality deeply embedded in our societies. The aggregation of these diseases on a background of social and economic disparity exacerbates the adverse effects of each separate disease. COVID-19 is not a pandemic. It is a syndemic. . .

A syndemic is not merely a comorbidity. Syndemics are characterised by biological and social interactions between conditions and states, interactions that increase a person's susceptibility to harm or worsen their health outcomes. In the case of COVID-19, attacking NCDs will be a prerequisite for successful containment. As our recently published NCD Countdown 2030 showed, although premature mortality from NCDs is falling, the pace of change is too slow. The total number of people living with chronic diseases is growing. Addressing COVID-19 means addressing hypertension, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, and cancer.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 6/fulltext

In other words, Covid-19 is just another consequence of being fat, diabetic, hypertensive, and otherwise chronically diseased.

[Kriegsspiel]

You forgot being unequal, which I believe the authors are using as a synonym for poor. And as everyone knows, being poor makes you obese and sickly. So we should include all poor people in the group of Vulnerables with nursing home patients and bar them from leaving their homes until we have this virus under control. We need to flatten curves of all kinds.

[WiseOne]

You forgot being unequal, which I believe the authors are using as a synonym for poor. And as everyone knows, being poor makes you obese and sickly. So we should include all poor people in the group of Vulnerables with nursing home patients and bar them from leaving their homes until we have this virus under control. We need to flatten curves of all kinds.

I stick to my theory that poor = on food stamps, and when you're on food stamps you're steered toward a high carbohydrate, high-sugar, low-fat diet. That is the cheapest possible way to feed yourself. It also happens to be a nearly perfect prescription for metabolic syndrome and its associated constellation of conditions: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, and all the rest.

[Libertarian666]

You forgot being unequal, which I believe the authors are using as a synonym for poor. And as everyone knows, being poor makes you obese and sickly. So we should include all poor people in the group of Vulnerables with nursing home patients and bar them from leaving their homes until we have this virus under control. We need to flatten curves of all kinds.

I stick to my theory that poor = on food stamps, and when you're on food stamps you're steered toward a high carbohydrate, high-sugar, low-fat diet. That is the cheapest possible way to feed yourself. It also happens to be a nearly perfect prescription for metabolic syndrome and its associated constellation of conditions: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, and all the rest.

Yes, but of course it's RAYCISS!! to point that out.

[yankees60]

How a focus on cleaning surfaces can distract from actual virus spread


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a ... rus-spread

Vinny

[yankees60]

Capture.JPG (64.65 KiB) Viewed 5362 times

[Kriegsspiel]

[WiseOne]

NYC MAYOR: Non-Essential Businesses, Public and Private Schools, Indoor Dining to Close Wednesday in 9 Zip Codes if Approved by State - WNBC
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/ ... 5843456007

Yup heard about that. New York Lockdown City. I wonder if DeBlasio and Cuomo are planning to open their own restaurant chains after they've put all the existing ones out of business.

Have they AT ALL considered the same facts that various European countries did, when they all independently decided not to lock down? If the "science" is so clear, why are all these highly disparate decisions being made? I would think that before you make a decision that will surely infringe on civil liberties and directly harm a lot of people, you'd damn well better have good justification.

Also it will do nothing to stop the spread. The outbreak is in the ultra Orthodox Jewish population. They are highly insular, congregate in their homes, and don't go to restaurants as almost none of them would be sufficiently kosher. Did Deblasio even think this through for one minute??

It's so discouraging to read all the articles in the press harping on Trump for "dismissing" coronavirus - when what he's mainly done is raise the very legitimate question of whether the lockdowns are truly worth the cost. Also, all the photos of people not wearing masks at the White House event are quite disingeneous. On the way in they all were masked and stayed that way until cleared by a rapid COVID test. That test has a 91% sensitivity rate which the press is quick to point out, leaving you 9% vulnerable to a true-positive in the group. If chance of a true-positive is 3% (based on NYC and Congress infection #s for the entire pandemic and probably a huge overestimate) that's a total risk of 0.27%. I would bet almost anything that masks afford far less protection than 91%. Let's see the news articles quote some numbers for that, if they want to claim that the White House was reckless for relying on tests and risking the 0.27% chance of infection.

[WiseOne]

Here's a very comprehensive meta analysis from WHO in 2019 on various (including personal) protective measures designed to limit community spread of influenza. It is probably very applicable to coronavirus as the two appear to have similar patterns of spread and seasonal vulnerability.

It's long, so the tl;dr: face masks show either insignificant or small effect depending on the study - best was a 22% reduction in transmission, most studies showed no effect at all. Ditto for handwashing and surface/object cleaning.

Quarantining/isolating sick individuals and avoiding large crowds were found to be effective.

Social distancing, contact tracing, school and work closures had limited effectiveness - in the case of school and work closures, effectiveness was limited to delaying the peak by one week and thus "flattening the curve" by a bit.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-bQve- ... Hz1_p/view

So that's the "science" guys. What do you think.

[Xan]

Thanks, WiseOne, for finding this and giving a useful summary.

"Isolating the sick": is that a major difference between Covid and the flu? It seems that asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is what throws a wrench in things. Or is that overblown compared to flu?

[jalanlong]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/j ... story.html

Unfortunately for anyone (like my Republican family here in Texas) who thinks this hysteria is slowing down and about to end, If Biden wins he will render local regulations obsolete as he will nationalize mask wearing, distancing and shutdowns in an effort to have "one voice" and one strategy. He admits that he will mostly defer to scientists on most of those decisions.

[WiseOne]

Thanks, WiseOne, for finding this and giving a useful summary.

"Isolating the sick": is that a major difference between Covid and the flu? It seems that asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is what throws a wrench in things. Or is that overblown compared to flu?

Presymptomatic spread is a fact of life with virtually every virus. Not limited to COVID. It's true with flu as well. No one knows how much of a factor it really is though. You're most likely to be transmitting virus when you're symptomatic.

The CDC should have been studying this question back in February and March. It's important, but it's probably the one point that we know least about. I'm increasingly annoyed at how they've flubbed this on virtually every level. Why, for example, didn't they put out a set of recommendations on how to handle government or other important functions involving large-ish groups, given their access to testing as well as the usual tools? The White House gathering was well under the limit currently in effect in some states.

[jalanlong]

Very early Saturday morning, I went to a large grocery store here. A store that still has one way directional markers on each aisle. It was so early that there were probably only 2-3 people in the entire store that is the size of a football field and a half. I saw a customer push her cart down an aisle. take a few steps in, then look down on the ground and notice that she was going opposite of the directional arrows. So with nobody within 10 aisles of her, she quickly backed her cart up, went down the next aisle (the "correct" direction) and walked all the way down that aisle to do a uturn and then go the "correct" way down her original aisle. All of this in a virtually empty store.

Is there any hope for this to end? People have been trained to do what they are told even if there is nobody around and what they are being told is extremely questionable to start with.

[doodle]

Thanks, WiseOne, for finding this and giving a useful summary.

"Isolating the sick": is that a major difference between Covid and the flu? It seems that asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is what throws a wrench in things. Or is that overblown compared to flu?

Presymptomatic spread is a fact of life with virtually every virus. Not limited to COVID. It's true with flu as well. No one knows how much of a factor it really is though. You're most likely to be transmitting virus when you're symptomatic.

The CDC should have been studying this question back in February and March. It's important, but it's probably the one point that we know least about. I'm increasingly annoyed at how they've flubbed this on virtually every level. Why, for example, didn't they put out a set of recommendations on how to handle government or other important functions involving large-ish groups, given their access to testing as well as the usual tools? The White House gathering was well under the limit currently in effect in some states.

Are you joking? The recommendations of the CDC have been ignored from the get go. They did make recommendations. Your intrepid leader dismissed them and marginalized their leadership. He sewed seeds of doubt about everything. That is why response has been so haphazard and confused. What kind of a crazy revisionist history you writing here?

[Mountaineer]

Thanks, WiseOne, for finding this and giving a useful summary.

"Isolating the sick": is that a major difference between Covid and the flu? It seems that asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is what throws a wrench in things. Or is that overblown compared to flu?

Presymptomatic spread is a fact of life with virtually every virus. Not limited to COVID. It's true with flu as well. No one knows how much of a factor it really is though. You're most likely to be transmitting virus when you're symptomatic.

The CDC should have been studying this question back in February and March. It's important, but it's probably the one point that we know least about. I'm increasingly annoyed at how they've flubbed this on virtually every level. Why, for example, didn't they put out a set of recommendations on how to handle government or other important functions involving large-ish groups, given their access to testing as well as the usual tools? The White House gathering was well under the limit currently in effect in some states.

Are you joking? The recommendations of the CDC have been ignored from the get go. They did make recommendations. Your intrepid leader dismissed them and marginalized their leadership. He sewed seeds of doubt about everything. That is why response has been so haphazard and confused. What kind of a crazy revisionist history you writing here?

Sorry to inform you of this, but he President Trump is also your leader - unless you are not a citizen of the United States of America.

[WiseOne]

Thanks, WiseOne, for finding this and giving a useful summary.

"Isolating the sick": is that a major difference between Covid and the flu? It seems that asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread is what throws a wrench in things. Or is that overblown compared to flu?

Presymptomatic spread is a fact of life with virtually every virus. Not limited to COVID. It's true with flu as well. No one knows how much of a factor it really is though. You're most likely to be transmitting virus when you're symptomatic.

The CDC should have been studying this question back in February and March. It's important, but it's probably the one point that we know least about. I'm increasingly annoyed at how they've flubbed this on virtually every level. Why, for example, didn't they put out a set of recommendations on how to handle government or other important functions involving large-ish groups, given their access to testing as well as the usual tools? The White House gathering was well under the limit currently in effect in some states.

Are you joking? The recommendations of the CDC have been ignored from the get go. They did make recommendations. Your intrepid leader dismissed them and marginalized their leadership. He sewed seeds of doubt about everything. That is why response has been so haphazard and confused. What kind of a crazy revisionist history you writing here?

If the CDC made recommendations regarding large government/official functions that included specific guidelines on use of testing protocols, please link to that? I would be very interested to see it.

Otherwise, please refrain from making inaccurate statements such as the above.