Pandemic threat? Anyone else concerned?

[Frankenscript]

I find this state reopening thing total BS. If you want to contain the virus, it needs to be done as a nation (as a whole). Its totally counterproductive when states undergo Phase 3 reopening while other states are barely making it past Phase 1, and other states not previously affected by the virus are now seeing a significant surge in the number of cases. Again, this is counterproductive. Everyone so concerned about the Economy. Guess what? You won't have an economy if virtually everyone gets infected by this virus. We're not at the level of total automation just yet!

People from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maine probably can't take it anymore. So...what do they do? They venture out to scenic byways, stop over for some coffee at a rest area, and voila, Vermont suffers by a surge in COVID-19 cases

Tracking the coronavirus around the U.S.: See how your state is doing

View NPR's maps and graphics to see where COVID-19 is hitting hardest in the U.S., which state outbreaks are under control and where cases are still spreading.

www.npr.org

Also surprised to see this. Was not expecting the return to normalcy so soon.

View attachment 63578

Apparently this picture was pulled down not long after it was posted. A lot of flak for:
-Number of people gathered was clearly more than allowed in that location at one time per health regs
-Not a mask in sight
-The one black guy in the room happens to be in the very front row, sort of looks exploitive but probably just a coincidence.

 

[Frankenscript]

Don't be so dismissive. From a logical, non emotional standpoint he makes tremendous sense. There is a very large silent (for now) majority that agrees wholeheartedly with his perspective, myself included.

There are a few on here that see "Foxnews" and their TDS kicks in. There will be a cure for Covid-19 before there is one for TDS.

If I have time tonight I'd like to explore this further. It's hard for me to grapple with a news host who compares measures in a wide open state like Wyoming with a jam-packed state like New York and suggests that what worked for Wyoming would have worked in New York (or NC, or TX, or...). We have HARD DATA that show the replication rates in those states and that the lockdowns had a very clear effect. It's not a liberal or conservative thing... and our data lines up perfectly with that from other countries. The lockdowns and distancing not only worked as planned but had they not been implemented, most places (fine, maybe not Wyoming) would have had their health system collapse. Here in Indiana, it was a near thing even as it stood. Sheesh!

I will say that I think huge groups posting is foolhardy and will lead to increased sickness and deaths.

 

[Parley]

Headline: Prof Karol Sikora: Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded

Story: oncologist says medics can too easily put Covid on death certificates

...

The Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded because many victims of the pandemic would have died soon anyway, one of Britain's leading medics has said.

Professor Karol Sikora, a senior oncologist who has built a huge Twitter following for his positive takes on the virus crisis, said doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates.

...

This was in contrast to Germany, where a death can only be recorded as being caused by Covid-19 when the clinical team involved in the end-of-life care certifies

Source: Prof Karol Sikora: Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded

 

[Sybertiger]

Garbage. His primary point about states that didn't lock down doing as well as states that did seems to make an assumption that you can compare Wyoming or Utah with New York, Pennsylvania, or Texas as having the same needs.

Rabble rousing fake analysis at its worst

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LOL, you unknowingly just agreed with him. You can't compare NYC, Philly and other highly populated cities with the vast open areas that exist in those states. So why lock down rural areas? Therefore YOUR analysis is not well thought out (fake).

 

[Sybertiger]

If I have time tonight I'd like to explore this further. It's hard for me to grapple with a news host who compares measures in a wide open state like Wyoming with a jam-packed state like New York and suggests that what worked for Wyoming would have worked in New York (or NC, or TX, or...). We have HARD DATA that show the replication rates in those states and that the lockdowns had a very clear effect. It's not a liberal or conservative thing... and our data lines up perfectly with that from other countries. The lockdowns and distancing not only worked as planned but had they not been implemented, most places (fine, maybe not Wyoming) would have had their health system collapse. Here in Indiana, it was a near thing even as it stood. Sheesh!

I will say that I think huge groups posting is foolhardy and will lead to increased sickness and deaths.

New York state is jammed pack? LOL, my memory of a good chunk of NY and Pennsylvania is boondocks. You do realize that Manhatten and Philly are cities within very large states or maybe you've never been there.

 

[Frankenscript]

Wrong way to celebrate lockdown's end:

Woman falls to death while posing for cliffside photo to celebrate end of lockdown

A Kazakhstan woman reportedly was killed Sunday after plummeting more than 100 feet off a cliff in Turkey while posing for a photo to commemorate the end of the local coronavirus lockdown. Olesia S…

nypost.com

 

[Frankenscript]

New York state is jammed pack? LOL, my memory of a good chunk of NY and Pennsylvania is boondocks. You do realize that Manhatten and Philly are cities within very large states or maybe you've never been there.

Yes, I've actually been to such exotic places like NY state and Pennsylvania, and believe it or not also Wyoming on a few occasions.

NY State (population almost 20 million) is jam-packed compared to Wyoming, population ~560k. Even if you subtract out NYC, NY State is much more densely populated on average than Wyoming. I know you enjoy baiting the forum's pet libtard, but sheesh! And yes, places in PA and NYS are boondocks. But none of those boondocky places are more than an hour or so away from actual cities or at minimum sizeable towns. Point being, it's more practical for Wyoming to be pretty thoroughly open at this point than NYS or PA.

For clarity: In March, ALL STATES should have shut down. Not just most of them. Because at the time we didn't know how far in the population it had spread, and we didn't understand the relationship between infections, clinical cases, hospital resource utilization, and deaths.
Now, we have excellent data from all over to point to how these inter-relate and we can make good data base decisions about how far to open, or not, based on our understanding of the spread of the virus and current and projected ICU space in the hospital. Indiana is doing this pretty well so far.

Of course we can also ignore that evidence as many states are doing, which explains why Arizona has activated its hospital emergency plan. Having opened up less than a month ago, they now face these challenges:

• Ventilated Covid-19 patients in Arizona have increased by 400% since reopening, according to Banner Health, Arizona’s largest medical network, who warned its ICU facilities are approaching capacity.
• 76% of the state’s ICU beds were occupied as of Monday, according to CNN.
• The state health director instructed hospitals on June 6 to “fully activate” their emergency plans, meaning they should increase ICU capacity by 50%, suspend elective surgeries and staff medical volunteers, among other things.
• A former state health chief warned the state may need to implement new social distancing measures or build field hospitals, according to Reuters.

It's not just AZ. Georgia is having a huge spike. A doctor I know there who is part of the Army pandemic response team (he's Republican, by the way) said this today on another forum I frequent:
"Today, we had another peak. 993 infection in GA - the highest number since Mid April. ? Protest related? ? End of home isolation order? I think it is like the prior or just the increase in public presence. . "
He also said this, on Tuesday: "Most states are probably undercounting." (He also said, and I agree: "The WHO is completely biased. ")

And Florida, but come on... we ALL KNEW this was coming:

Florida Breaks Record For New Coronavirus Cases

Five of the eight highest days for new cases in Florida have come in June.

www.forbes.com

 

[Frankenscript]

Did they become symptomatic? I have asked everyone I come in contact with in my local 3-county area if anyone knows of someone with it. I've yet to find a single one. I get the occasional "Someone I know of said they knew someone" but nothing first-hand. I ask those around me (retail employees, primarily) and their answers are always complimented with a cynical eye-roll - and comments to the effect they think it isn't real - or is grossly overplayed.

My wife's hospital has treated over 70 patients from a local nursing home in Plant City, FL - some of which were pretty sick. She said she can now look at a patient and pretty much tell they have COVID. I have to walk a very thin line, being careful not to come across as critical. She's quite sensitive to any hint that things aren't deadly serious. She sees questioning the narrative as a personal attack on her integrity.

In any case, I asked her to describe the symptoms of those who are so obviously infected. The list she provided, at least to the untrained laymen, sounded very much like someone with the flu or pneumonia. "Yes, but it's different", she says. That seems quite subjective. Add to that, that any of the lab tests they do in house or send out are simply taken at face value. Positive test results are simply accepted. When a negative comes back, they test again. It just seems to me someone nefarious could bamboozle even the most educated and intelligent HCWs.

Every person involved in the diagnostics and treatment of (rule-out) COVID patients is involved at such a micro level, that they would not be able to detect deception on a larger scale.

I am sure that the virus is real. I'm sure that for certain people it is serious. But I'll be damned if I believe for a moment that it is as dangerous or widespread as the MSM is proclaiming. Too many political ulterior motives at play. Especially when you can see how MSM unanimously vilified lockdown protesters (especially conservatives with firearms), but praise protesters when it suits their political narrative.

Hi @erkme73 , thanks for writing this. I bolded a section that I have thought about over and over since reading it yesterday. This is the best articulation I have seen that details the thoughts you --AND MANY OTHERS-- are having about the progress of COVID-19. Many of my friends, people I work with or people I went to college with, are doctors or other health care workers, and on my Facebook feed (less than 20 people plus a few hobby groups, but it is the definition of liberal bubble) all through the worst of the late March and into April peak times, a common thread was that people were PISSED OFF because other people that didn't work in the hospitals didn't get how unusual and serious COVID-19 is and said it was made up or that the crisis was being inflated. But you put your finger on it... the symptoms don't sound too unusual, to a layperson. And your description of your wife's statement, "Yes, but it's different." is very similar to what my friends have been saying. The reality is when they look at the lungs of the people who die, they are finding massively messed up tissue that looks as much like liver as it does lung, due to the destruction and blood clotting and other things. And the cytokine storms of inflammation responses that contribute to death... this is hard for laypeople (including me) to connect to.

Your suspicion of conspiracy isn't something I can alleviate, but I do understand it. I'll tell you that the basic swab test that is a PCR test for the virus is unlikely to give a false positive, but it definitely happens that you get false negatives in large part due to sampling error, hence the retests in some cases where there is a negative. Interestingly the new antibody tests for retrospective analysis to see if there was a prior infection use different methodology and are more likely to give a false positive.

Suggesting a large scale deception around COVID-19 testing and deaths is sort of like suggesting Apollo 11 was faked: there are too many people involved, and too many different organizations involved, for there to be some tweaking of the results to suit a narrative. Sure, Governors have adjusted the reporting rules (in most cases, this under-reported COVID deaths), juggled the data, moved goalposts at their individual reporting level, but keep in mind our testing and progress through the pandemic matches pretty much other countries, with adjustment for population density and cultural habits. There's no way for us to way-over-report the deaths and have it not stick out like a sore thumb. And the testing is done by many organizations, different companies and agencies... it's not one source of data that could be faked or biased. I work for one of the companies that is doing much of the testing (I won't say which one), and while I am not actively involved in the testing, I know people who are and there's no way they are doing anything squirrelly.

So, while I disagree with your conspiracy theory, it was really helpful for me to walk through your logic step by step. I really try to understand why people think the way to do and your post was super clear and helpful.

 

[mat200]

Recent data:

Uncontrolled diabetes is 13 times more likely to die
Well-controlled diabetes, 4.65

ref
:

 

[Arjun]

Well, this is odd. PGA Golf Tournaments have resumed and in that sound bite, no one, and I mean no one, is wearing a mask. Remember, you can be asymptomatic for up to several days before actually showing symptoms.

 

[Arjun]

People are seriously overreacting. COVID-19 will only stay with us if we let it stay with us. Stop talking and start doing something proactively about it. If people follow lockdowns and restrict their travels temporarily, there can be significant improvement.

Just think about how much money and resources are wasted towards temporary make-shifts (go to your local grocery store; all of those plexi-glass shields have to come down at some point). This virus was really an attempt to instill PTSD in everybody. Its like 9/11 but at a whole other level.

Study: 100% face mask use could crush 2nd, 3rd COVID wave

We've all heard it many times: Wear a face covering — indoors, outdoors, on trains and...

www.sfgate.com

 

[Sybertiger]

Say it ain't so Floriduh....

Florida, South Carolina coronavirus figures are the states' highest yet for a single day

New cases of the novel coronavirus broke single-day records in Florida and South Carolina on Thursday, according to health officials.

www.foxnews.com

 

[Frankenscript]

I thought it had disappeared, you know, like a miracle down there...

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[Parley]

US Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow: Health Experts Say There Is No 'Second Wave' of COVID-19

Addressing concerns about the dramatic drop in the stock market this week, director of the United States Economic Council Larry Kudlow said that, despite concern on Wall Street, there was no rising second wave of COVID-19.

Reports of increased hospitalizations in various parts of the country have popped up this week, leading some to believe that a throttling in the stock market was due to fear of another economic shutdown. Kudlow put those fears to rest, saying that the market's fall was likely due to a combination of needless worry and opportunistic trading by some after a dramatic increase in numbers due to a recovering economy.

"I’m not the health expert, but on the so-called spike, I spoke to our health experts at some length last evening," Kudlow said during a Friday morning appearance on Fox News. "They’re saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that: there is no second spike."

Kudlow acknowledged that reports of some increase in cases of the Wuhan coronavirus were known to the White House and health advisers, but that fact would not stop them from going forward with an open economy. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Thursday that the country would not shut down the economy again, even if there was a second spike of COVID-19. Kudlow agreed with that sentiment.

"We are not going to shut down the economy," Kudlow said, saying specific zones with increases in confirmed cases were being expertly handled by task forces and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Certain spots are seeing a little bit of a jump up," he said of the reports, but also gave a reminder that things are vastly different now than they were at the onset of the pandemic. "We have much better equipment, much more experience, much more testing." Kudlow said that White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx may address some concerns later in the day, but he wanted to alleviate fears of further economic hardship and disease right away.

Kudlow asked America to look at the bigger picture of the unprecedented progress made by the nation in the fight against COVID-19, rather than fret over localized spikes in hospitalizations.

"The important point is the rate of increase of new cases is between zero and one percent," Kudlow said. "It's really flattened out. And with respect to fatalities... it’s actually lower than that, it’s like zero to half a percent."

r. Birx expressed concern this week that widespread protests across the country have put several inner city testing sites in peril, saying the weeks or civil unrest "had already resulted in an appreciable drop in testing rates" in 70 locations.

"All of the governors are going to have to scramble to make sure there is testing available in those urban areas," Dr. Birx said in a Monday conference call, according to a transcript acquired by the Daily Beast. But while concerns over the rate of infection among protesters and inside cities is prevalent among experts, Kudlow offered a strong reassurance that no repeat of a devastating economic freeze would come to pass.

"There is no emergency, there is no second wave," Kudlow said. "I don't know where that got started on Wall Street."

Kudlow: Health Experts Say There Is No 'Second Wave' of COVID-19

townhall.com

 

[Parley]

Open for business: Missouri moves to fully reopen

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — As of June 16, Missouri will be “fully open for business” even though the coronavirus “is still out there,” Gov. Mike Parson announced Thursday. The second phase of Parson’s reopening plan means there will be no statewide health order — albeit, local officials will be able to enact more stringent rules or policies, as was the practice under the initial stage. The governor said all four “pillars” to reopening — expended testing, securing personal protective equipment (PPE), hospital capacity, and Missouri data — had been met during the extended initial phase.

'Open for business': Missouri moves to 'fully reopen' while COVID-19 is 'still out there'

The second phase of Gov. Mike Parson’s Missouri reopening plan means there will be no statewide health order, he said Thursday.

themissouritimes.com

 

[Parley]

Now this is just too rich. Apparently Melinda wants the Black people to be the guinea pigs for this new vaccine.

"Melinda Gates has said in an interview that when a COVID-19 is developed, it should be given to black people first, right after health workers.Between 2018 and 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which she founded with her Microsoft co-founder husband, gave more money to the World Health Organization (WHO) than any other entity except the U.S. government. "

Neon Nettle - Breaking news and fearless journalism from the world's leading independent media source

Neon Nettle - Independent news and information magazine and online media source

neonnettle.com

 

[Oceanslider]

Anyone know the California recovery rates? Why is Bing and John Hopkins not showing the recoveries in California. You would think that California health officials would be able to provide these numbers. What is California's reason for not providing these figures?

https://bing.com/covid/local/california_unitedstates

 

[Frankenscript]

Now this is just too rich. Apparently Melinda wants the Black people to be the guinea pigs for this new vaccine.

"Melinda Gates has said in an interview that when a COVID-19 is developed, it should be given to black people first, right after health workers.Between 2018 and 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which she founded with her Microsoft co-founder husband, gave more money to the World Health Organization (WHO) than any other entity except the U.S. government. "

Neon Nettle - Breaking news and fearless journalism from the world's leading independent media source

Neon Nettle - Independent news and information magazine and online media source

neonnettle.com

Black people are being hit harder than white people by COVID-19. Not because of the color of their skin but because they are more likely to be in high risk situations and thus are more exposed.

Her comment was poorly phrased but intentionally admirable. However, given the history of the Tuskegee experiment and other times minorities were used as lab rats, no racial preferences should be suggested.

I don't have the Picard Infinite Facepalm gif on my phone but if I did I would put it here...

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[Frankenscript]

Fact based risk assessments for different activities. And no, protesting racism is not listed.

From hair salons to gyms, experts rank 36 activities by coronavirus risk level

Which activities are riskiest for spreading COVID-19?

www.mlive.com

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[mat200]

Black people are being hit harder than white people by COVID-19. Not because of the color of their skin but because they are more likely to be in high risk situations and thus are more exposed.

Her comment was poorly phrased but intentionally admirable. However, given the history of the Tuskegee experiment and other times minorities were used as lab rats, no racial preferences should be suggested.

I don't have the Picard Infinite Facepalm gif on my phone but if I did I would put it here...

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FYI - it could be also due to the color of their skin - some MDs believe vitamin D plays an important role in a strong immune system. Darker skin = slower vitamin-D product in the sunlight.