One of the videos you posted shows that while some people are born followers and become demoncrats, or whatever their countries version of a demoncrat is, others all across this globe would rather die on their own terms than live under someone elses. Another video straight up tells you that even after a 6 week lockdown, infection rates are climbing and 75% of those newly infected followed lockdown procedures.
Pandemic threat? Anyone else concerned?
- Thread starter erkme73
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Q™
IPCT Contributor
You already live under someone else's terms dimwit: the constitution of the United States of America which guarantees Americans the right to overthrow the government every two years (in addition to the federal laws of the United States and State of Oklahoma). Rather then wasting time posting your bullshit here get out and work to elect the candidates which best reflect your politics. Either way, you're going to have accept the outcome, election fraud on a massive scale and all.
Lol I live in Oklahoma dimwit: take a look at our politicians vs my political stance and decide for yourself if I've done my part to elect the candidates that best reflect my politics. The candidates don't line up with my views perfectly by any means, and I get plenty mad at them, but they are better than half the elected officials out there. Personally, I voted for Rand Paul in the last primaries and would again.
It's funny, I remember Killary thinking everything was going to go the other way and Trump would win the popular vote but she'd get the electoral college. I also remember her saying people were going to have to accept the outcome because that's the way this country is set up. When it went the other way, liberal tears flowed through the streets and still keep the ground wet to this day. TDS was developed and the crazy became the insane. Good times.
mat200
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- Jan 17, 2017
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Thanks @tigerwillow1
That was an excellent video. One which imho all should watch and follow the logic.
imho someone should have started a good test on HCQ from the start of this...
The key is the risk management logic.
I believe we should apply this logic to other aspects of combating the Pandemic.
We can apply masks to this equation also.
Cost to requiring people to wear masks in public places indoors = low when compared to cost of hospitalization
We can also apply this to vitamin-D and other potential supplements
A bottle of vitamin-D is about $10 ... super affordable.
Looking at this chart, While it's easy to see the Americas has the highest infection rate, it's also interesting to me to see that the spikes and drops seem to follow the exact same pattern regardless of continent. Until you get down to Africa, the number of infected directly correlates to the population. It's interesting that the 2 shown with the lowest rates, also have the highest populations. My guess is a difference in how reporting is done may be a major contributing factor, although I'm sure there are others. One thing this chart screams to me, is that no matter what measures the United States has or hasn't taken, the spikes and lows of the entire continent seems to still follow suit with the rest of the world.
Frankenscript
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Hi guys. It's been a long day with a Costco trip, replacing a defunct RO water system, a hardware store run for bits and pieces, and some good old fashioned grilling on the barbecue. It's not "all TDS all the time" for me.
The question posed about justification is a good one. Let's dig into it. I've been interested in Sweden since the beginning. FOR THE RECORD: I think it's important that different countries try different strategies because that way we can compare notes later and figure out what worked best. So I'm glad that Sweden tried something different, but of course I'm sad that the results were so poor.
It's easy to look at the juxtaposed graphs and come to a conclusion that "no lockdown" is a better strategy than "lockdown," particularly given our curve is going up and Sweden's is going down. And as you say, if we scale Sweden's results up to our population level, you only get a 20% increase over our own death rate/numbers.
So, why do I say we would have so many more deaths than that if we didn't lock down?
The answer (part 1) is that Sweden is nothing like the United States. Baked into their death rate is essentially their way of life which is different from ours in lots of ways. For example, their population density is very low when you factor the "inhabited" areas of the country. They spread out much more than we do. They have many nice cities but only one has more than a million people living there. Here's from Wikipedia a list of their 10 biggest cities showing populations, showing only three cities with more than 200k people:
So, a major point is that because their way of life is very spread out, in this way the virus has a bit harder time spreading. Makes sense, right? Now, that's not to say that Swedes don't group together: for example, they are much more likely than a lot of Americans to take public transportation, particular in their "big cities."
You could also look at obesity rates (here) since obesity is a major contributor to death susceptibility with COVID-19. The US is much fatter than Sweden. Funny side note: I'm eating a brownie for dessert as I write this message about us being fat. Maybe not so funny, because while I have flirted with weight issues for the last 15 years, the "quarantine 15" is a real thing for me. I've started cutting back and exercising more. But damn these are good brownies.
@mat200 somwhere also remarked on other cultural differences about Nordic folks, that they aren't very "kissy" I think he said.
So, a better comparison is between Sweden and its Nordic neighbors Finland and Norway, as they all share a similar way of life. Click here to read my post from Friday, in which I compared these three countries.
TL/DR: Sweden, by "not locking down" subjected its citizenry to a per-capita death rate 10X its neighbors that locked down pretty tightly.
The answer (part 2) is that Sweden did lock down, sort of, eventually. Now, what's with all these quotes I'm doing around "not locking down." The answer is that while Sweden started off pretty blase about the whole pandemic thing, they eventually realized they were headed for disaster and reversed course.
Click here to read a post from 7/21 where I gave references about the things Sweden implemented and when. Really, they did quite a lot and locked down much travel, reduced density indoors at places like bars and restaurants, and asked their citizenry to restrict interactions. They got a late start, which is why they had a huge (per capita) spike, but they worked at it and citizens complied pretty well, and they are out of the woods more or less now.
So, Sweden's "no lockdown" strategy evolved into a "lockdown guidance, with some compulsory bits" strategy. Again I reinforce that their citizens generally respect the government and generally comply with reasonable requests in a time of crisis. Like, if the government says to wear a mask, they wear a mask during the pandemic and argue about it later, right? They don't go around talking about how it's a violation of their civil rights, with pretty few exceptions. Masking isn't political for the most part there, like it became here. Anyway, they took increasingly strong measures, turned the tide against coronavirus, and now things are looking good and they are relaxing some of the stricter parts of their strategy while watching for hot spots.
The answer (part 3) is that in the US, we were heading for a collapse of the health system, and only the lock down averted a complete disaster. Stick with me here, I know this sounds like some liberal exaggeration, so let me back it up with some facts.
The first fact is a very important one: even before lock downs were implemented, the R value for the virus was dropping. People were scared and listening to authorities to take precautions to some extent, so the "doubling every 2.5 days" of cases had dropped, but in much of the country (not just New York and Michigan!) it was still doubling every 4-6 days. You can get R values over time from several places but the reality is that most places still had a mushrooming number of infections/day until after the lock downs started. Many places, including Indiana where I live, were very close to exceeding their ICU capacity. Indiana was on average days to a week away from having to turn people away from the hospitals. We maxed out with room for around 2x as many COVID-19 patients as we had. That's basically one doubling, for us probably 5-6 days. And because of the lag between "infections" becoming "cases" becoming "hospital admissions" we would have been over the redline of infections before we knew we were cooked. This was happening in a lot of cities around the country, some more than others, and not so much in the rural areas (with exceptions like meat packing plant locations).
So, (second fact) we didn't have good testing then (we still have systemic testing problems: my wife's first test took 13 days to give a result, in JULY!!!) so we didn't really know how much infection there was, nor did we understand at what rate it would convert into hospitalizations. Locking down was the answer because we weren't doing enough to slow the spread and get to a less-than-1.0-R-value which is needed to shrink infections. It would have gotten worse and worse, and the hospitals would have been unable to accommodate all the sick and dying, and we would have had much more death in April and May than we saw.
And (third fact) the deaths would have been in part due to Corona, in part due to other health conditions like heart attacks and pregnancy complications and all sorts of other things usually treated well (or at least adequately) by our health system.
Next (fourth fact) infectious diseases don't infect everybody. 70% is a typical figure tossed about. Not 330M would get the virus. But maybe 200M might get it.
If it got really bad, there would have been mass riots about the poor response and the $hit might have hit the fan, for real. That's on the outside edge for sure. Might not have happened. But it might have. In this case it could add millions more as the government tried to reassert control.
So, if the thing kept spreading we would have had a worst case scenario with something like 200M infections (most of which would be sub-clinical), 20M "cases" needing clinical care, all in a couple months. Our case fatality rate started out around 6-7%; now it's around 4% last time I looked, but given the strain on our system by such a surge as we would have seen, I'm sticking with 6% deaths. This gives us 1.2M deaths. There would also have been a lot of collateral death, due to the things I mentioned above. So, probably closer to 2M deaths. Keep in mind, people "don't die a lot" due to interventions by our health system. If it got overwhelmed by COVID-19, there would have been a huge surge of people dying for stupid reasons.
That's my reasoning. The numbers are estimates open to interpretation. Keep in mind in the US we generally don't comply so well. Here in Indiana, before the recent mask mandate, if I went to the grocery store I would see MAYBE 75% masked and maybe 60% properly masked (no nose sticking out). Today I went to several stores and there was 100% mask compliance and nearly nobody poking their nose out.
So, for us at least, we need strong direction to do things for our own good. Sad, but true.I'm curious to hear your thoughts. You asked a good question and I hope I gave a good answer.
A good answer, absolutely yes! But is it the correct answer? I'm almost totally in information gathering mode and not judging that. With regard to masks and lockdowns I'm highly skeptical that anybody besides a prophet or lucky guesser can foretell the highly complicated big picture. Even if the covid case and fatality data wasn't lousy, the effects of lockdowns, distancing, accelerated destruction of the economy, and destruction of many small businesses is going to ripple for years. It's not like these variables can be plugged into a spreadsheet to optimize the final outcome. We argue over what the science says while most of the big decisions are made based on corporate power and politics.
My game plan is to question everything and try like heck to protect myself and family from this blasted thing.
Frankenscript
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Hey! We've got a lot in common! I think I agree with everything you said!
Frankenscript
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The chart is interesting as far as it goes, but since it blurs many countries into each regional grouping, and each of those countries had a different approach or timing of actions, it's impractical to use it for any purpose digging into country-specific actions. For example Americas is driven almost entirely by US and Brazil, probably.
Still, it's always interesting to see a high level view of things.
Parley
Known around here
DHS Counts 54 More COVID-19 Deaths in Milwaukee County Than County Officials (WI)
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) claims Milwaukee County had 438 COVID-19 deaths as of July 31st, but the county said it only had 384 – a discrepancy of 54.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office told MacIver News that they only count deaths that occur in Milwaukee County. Staff believed the state was counting everyone with a Milwaukee home of record in the DHS total.
However, DHS says that it relies on figures provided by the county in its totals.
“Deaths must be reported by health care providers, medical examiners/coroners, and recorded by local health departments in order to be counted,” according to DHS’s COVID-19 website.
The MacIver Institute further checked the COVID-19 death totals for all the counties that surround Milwaukee County and for the counties surrounding those counties. MacIver checked both local and state data. Afterwards, the state death total was still 49 deaths higher than the combined local totals.
If DHS’ death totals are truly off by 49, that means the official state death count is off by 5 percent.
There is a note on DHS’ website that the death totals for the last two weeks are still “preliminary.” However, that still doesn’t explain where DHS got the inaccurate Milwaukee numbers in the first place. Also, as of two weeks ago DHS claimed Milwaukee County had 404 deaths, while the county only counted 366. That overcount apparently was never corrected and has only grown since then.
www.maciverinstitute.com
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) claims Milwaukee County had 438 COVID-19 deaths as of July 31st, but the county said it only had 384 – a discrepancy of 54.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office told MacIver News that they only count deaths that occur in Milwaukee County. Staff believed the state was counting everyone with a Milwaukee home of record in the DHS total.
However, DHS says that it relies on figures provided by the county in its totals.
“Deaths must be reported by health care providers, medical examiners/coroners, and recorded by local health departments in order to be counted,” according to DHS’s COVID-19 website.
The MacIver Institute further checked the COVID-19 death totals for all the counties that surround Milwaukee County and for the counties surrounding those counties. MacIver checked both local and state data. Afterwards, the state death total was still 49 deaths higher than the combined local totals.
If DHS’ death totals are truly off by 49, that means the official state death count is off by 5 percent.
There is a note on DHS’ website that the death totals for the last two weeks are still “preliminary.” However, that still doesn’t explain where DHS got the inaccurate Milwaukee numbers in the first place. Also, as of two weeks ago DHS claimed Milwaukee County had 404 deaths, while the county only counted 366. That overcount apparently was never corrected and has only grown since then.
DHS Counts 54 More COVID-19 Deaths in Milwaukee County Than County Officials | MacIver Institute
Oceanslider
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Frankenscript
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For months it has been known that COVID-19 deaths have been undercounted, but here is a good article that digs into it a bit. This is a follow on to essentially the same story a month ago in the popular press following the original stats coming out I think July 1, but this gets into more nitty gritty than most other articles I've seen. A good read.
www.statnews.com
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Measuring excess mortality gives a clearer picture of the pandemic's true burden
Weekly reports of excess mortality — broken out by age group, sex, location, and by race where appropriate — provides important information for those making policy and decisions about the #coronavirus pandemic.
www.statnews.com
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Frankenscript
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Busy work day today, but here's an article explaining why Jared's national COVID-19 testing plan never materialized:
www.vanityfair.com
This is a well-researched and in-depth piece of journalism. The right wing press will try to punch holes in it for sure. But it lines up with public facts nicely and explains things I've seen that are less public.
How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”
This spring, a team working under the president’s son-in-law produced a plan for an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control. So why did the White House spike it in favor of a shambolic 50-state response?
This is a well-researched and in-depth piece of journalism. The right wing press will try to punch holes in it for sure. But it lines up with public facts nicely and explains things I've seen that are less public.
Jessie.slimer
BIT Beta Team
Remember when this guy opposed a travel ban on China in late Jan, calling it fear mongering xenophobia? Man, glad we didn't listen to that guy, right?
He is Biden' (bidding) for something more catastrophic, and that's the presidential position One Freudian Slip and it is Game Over.
One Freudian Slip and it is Game Over.
Jessie.slimer
BIT Beta Team
And this one too. Great advice, Nancy. Glad none of these people were listened to.
She just wanted something Hot & Spicy; but she got what she wanted; more cases; more democratic influence = higher chances for democrats to win the election.
This whole pandemic was politicized, not just in the USA, but in other countries as well, especially China and India.
Its unfathomable to see when political stake takes precedence before lives.
This whole pandemic was politicized, not just in the USA, but in other countries as well, especially China and India.
Its unfathomable to see when political stake takes precedence before lives.
Frankenscript
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I agree that Biden was off the mark on the China travel ban (frame this post!). As to Pelosi's remarks, relating to come on down to China Town, it would have been better for her to clarify that one needn't be more concerned about going to Chinatown than say little Italy or any other specific community, but that maybe staying home would be better...
Ah, the power of hindsight.
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