Do you need to vent about things COVID-19?

[Dhyaanee]

Nooooo Luna, doncha know it takes 3 full  months for information to upload to the Akashic records?

[kiramanell]

On 4/15/2020 at 1:38 PM, Qie Niangao said:

Yesterday in the New York Times Opinion section: "The Huge Cost of Waiting to Contain the Pandemic."

It's just a projection, but you know it's gotta be something like this.

An absolute precondition of reopening anything needs to be sensitive criteria for closing back down on a moment's notice of renewed transmission.

 

An absolute precondition for reopening anything needs to be a statistically relevant number of the population being tested first. The current amount of ppl dying, means NOTHING. Instead, before you lax on any social distancing rules, you need to know how many ppl are actually infected, what hotspots exist where, etc.

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

That chart is a classic example of measuring your tools as much as measuring the actual thing, and doesn't give me much confidence in Sweden's data.

If we'd decided not to do anything in response to the data, we too might not be all that careful about sorting deaths into the coronavirus bin. Providing evidence for opponents to say "I told ya so" isn't highly incentivized.

God I hope the deep state is still functioning at CDC.

[Qie Niangao]

2 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

An absolute precondition for reopening anything needs to be a statistically relevant number of the population being tested first. The current amount of ppl dying, means NOTHING. Instead, before you lax on any social distancing rules, you need to know how many ppl are actually infected, what hotspots exist where, etc.

Yes, certainly, and ALSO there must be the ability and political will to reverse course and re-establish some or all of the rules quickly, before everything goes to hell -- and the data show the huge cost of delay the first time around.

[Qie Niangao]

First, in passing, I now think what's happening in Sweden is different from what I imagined. Despite there being little or no formally imposed constraints (at least not at national scope), I gather they've been pretty vocally encouraging citizens to act responsibly. That's kind of the opposite of the US (formal guidelines undercut nightly by the president inciting riots against governors who don't relax constraints and violate the guidelines), and in any case, US citizens aren't very "Scandinavian" in their inclination to trust and follow mere suggestions from the government. Anyway, I don't think Sweden is like Bolsonaro's Brazil, which is more how I saw it before.

Something unrelated that I've been struggling with the past couple days are some unpublished studies finding that a much larger number of people have apparently been infected by the virus than the official case count reflects. The discrepancy may be a large factor, but the findings are in populations where even this "much larger number" amounts to less than 5%. There are some clear problems to get out of the way first:

• The factions eager to send everybody back to the mills are latching on to these results: Liberate us! See, it's just like the flu, what's the big deal? etc. But the percentages of antibody-carriers in these studies is still tiny. Even if there are fewer deaths than expected based on the antibody-positive rate, it's still a monstrously worse disease than regular seasonal influenza, and these minuscule percentages are nowhere near conferring anything remotely relevant to "herd immunity." That would still involve a very large pile of corpses, and there are a lot of dead Italians, New Yorkers, and others, proof enough that the death rate can't be that small a share of cases.
• At least some of the studies are seriously flawed in sampling. One out of Stanford Medical School used Facebook volunteers -- who surely self-sampled for higher than average incidence because thinking one might have had the virus is pretty good incentive to sign-up to be tested for having had the virus. Duh. Another study with similar results, from USC, recruited from a market research firm's "proprietary database" to select a representative sample, but I don't know how that database was created and I don't think anybody knows whether there's systematic bias in who'd agree to participate when recruited, so it may or may not be better. Anyway, instead of showing how widely the virus has spread, these studies may be demonstrating that people are better than random at figuring out they may have had the disease.
• The antibody tests aren't perfect, and I don't think we really know how imperfect they are yet. There's a known small bias towards false positives in the test used by the Stanford researchers, but... I guess I'm conjecturing there may be "unknown unknowns" this early in antibody testing.
• There's also a relevant known unknown with this virus: nobody knows if the mere presence of antibodies really confers complete immunity to the disease, nor how long immunity lasts, so probably the antibody-positive results mean something about immunity, but nobody knows exactly what. One might reasonably expect such immunity to last until there's a vaccine, but it's early to bet the public's survival on that hunch.

All that said, what I've been stewing over is a different kind of bias that might apply to such data -- and epidemiological data in general. I'm no epidemiologist so this may either be old hat or completely crackpot, but I can't get it out of my head:

How much is valid to extrapolate from the first people to contract a disease, to the population at large? In the specific case of COVID-19, there's some reason to think that the less the symptoms, the more contagious the carrier: basically, the healthier you feel, the more likely you are to be active, confident, and thus expose others to the virus to which you're (still) relatively asymptomatic. But to whom will these active, confident people spread the virus? Might they disproportionately spread it to other active, confident people?

If early spread is especially prevalent among the most vigorous people, maybe early death rates will be unrealistically low until the disease spreads to the broader population.

If any of that's correct, the effect may be more general: exposure could cluster in what we might call "affinity groups" or according to "social sorting" or some such naturally occuring process of behavior-based selection. This may affect not only death rates but other disease characteristics, symptoms, recovery intervals, effective treatments, etc., so what we learn at first may become less valid as a disease spreads to affect other populations.

Anybody know: Is this obvious? or obviously wrong?

[Evah Baxton]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The antibody tests aren't perfect, and I don't think we really know how imperfect they are yet.

RT-PCR tests being used now aren't perfect for sure. The creator of the test, Dr. Kary Mullis, said the test shouldn't be used to test for infectious disease.

Almost anything could be considered COVID-19 right now.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Evah Baxton

[Qie Niangao]

Oh, this is actually important: More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study

[Evah Baxton]

25 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oh, this is actually important: More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study

Are you telling me I can stop sucking on aquarium gravel?

[Madelaine McMasters]

29 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oh, this is actually important: More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study

I search for hydroxychloroquine at least once a day to see what's hitting the news and caught that this morning. I passed the story on to a friend of mine who believes the drug is getting a bad rap, and has a personal friend who walked out of the hospital only six days after entering "because" of being administered that medication. He was unimpressed by my claim that 1% of American women claim to have given virgin births, and so his friend's story should be taken with a salt lick.

There might be an error in the article though. The Brazilian trial that was stopped after some patient deaths was reportedly for chloroquine, not hydroxychloroquine. Chloroquine is a far more toxic anti-malarial. I've no idea why the Brazilians would play with that drug, knowing that hydroxychloroquine was so much safer.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Madelaine McMasters]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

A damned tall of text, ending with...      Anybody know: Is this obvious? or obviously wrong?

Golly Qie, who knew you were a closet Tari Landar?!

First, for the last couple weeks, I've been imagining the Sweden you were not, a Sweden where people do the right thing without much pressure from their government. Though there are no stay-at-home orders, the government has asked people to behave responsibly. Though Sweden's numbers are considerably worse than neighboring locked-down countries, they're not as bad as my friends were expecting.

I too have read about some studies suggesting significant total infection rates. One of them (I didn't bookmark it) opined that herd immunity was within reach for some communities, without explaining how that was possible given it would set the mortality rate 10-100x lower than most published figures. That would require some mechanism like you've described, where the disease spreads most rapidly amongst those who are least affected by it.

One possible explanation, mentioned in another article I didn't bookmark (if I bookmarked everything, I'd never be able to find anything, so why bother?) is that the false positive rate for some antibody tests is so high that they're effectively useless. The same is apparently true for some of the virus tests, giving rise to the worry that people are becoming re-infected just weeks after recovering. Once again, the statistics might say more about the tests than the disease.

Not much is obvious to me right now, and so not much is obviously wrong either, except for this... 

That was probably a slip of the tongue. I imagine he meant "millions". Even millions is obviously wrong.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Dano Seale]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

First, in passing, I now think what's happening in Sweden is different from what I imagined. Despite there being little or no formally imposed constraints (at least not at national scope), I gather they've been pretty vocally encouraging citizens to act responsibly. That's kind of the opposite of the US (formal guidelines undercut nightly by the president inciting riots against governors who don't relax constraints and violate the guidelines), and in any case, US citizens aren't very "Scandinavian" in their inclination to trust and follow mere suggestions from the government. Anyway, I don't think Sweden is like Bolsonaro's Brazil, which is more how I saw it before.

"

Summary:

• As of April 21st, 1,765 people have died with the coronavirus in Sweden.

• Since the start of the outbreak, 1,158 people have been in intensive care, which also includes fatalities and patients who have recovered and been discharged. A total of 533 people are currently in intensive care for the virus.

• There have been 15,322 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of April 21st (up from 14,777 the day before).
   
• The Swedish government has announced that testing will be ramped up to reach 50,000-100,000 tests per week, with a focus on people in key roles such as police officers and emergency responders.

• Everyone in Sweden is urged to stay at home if they are at all sick (even a mild cough or sore throat), practice social distancing, avoid non-essential travel within the country, work from home if possible, follow good hygiene practices, and avoid non-essential visits to elderly people or hospitals.
   
• People aged over 70 or in risk groups are advised to avoid social contact as much as possible.
  https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/timeline-how-the-coronavirus-has-developed-in-sweden
  
  As someone who is classed "high risk" and currently living in Sweden, I can vouch that much of the population swung itself into action even before the Government got it's act together! However, comparing Sweden to the US is ridiculous for a multitude of reasons.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Dano Seale said:

As someone who is classed "high risk" and currently living in Sweden, I can vouch that much of the population swung itself into action even before the Government got it's act together! However, comparing Sweden to the US is ridiculous for a multitude of reasons.

No doubt. The reason it comes up is that certain US (and Canadian) factions are now holding up an imaginary version of Sweden to justify turning the taps on full and dancing in the streets with strangers. Or something like that. It really is a death cult, complete with semi-automatic long guns. Dr. Strangelove in slo-mo.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

19 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

No doubt. The reason it comes up is that certain US (and Canadian) factions are now holding up an imaginary version of Sweden to justify turning the taps on full and dancing in the streets with strangers. Or something like that. It really is a death cult, complete with semi-automatic long guns. Dr. Strangelove in slo-mo.

Well, according to Worldometers, Sweden is currently running a rate of infection per capita that is 50% higher than that in Canada, and the deaths per capita figure is more than three times here. The Swedish mortality rate -- deaths to total cases -- is at close to 12%; in Canada, the number is under 5%.

Yeah, clearly the stats are "contaminated," and simple nation-to-nation, or even region-to-region comparisons are problematic. Also, Sweden's testing regime seems to suck.

But, no thank you.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

39 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

No doubt. The reason it comes up is that certain US (and Canadian) factions are now holding up an imaginary version of Sweden to justify turning the taps on full and dancing in the streets with strangers. Or something like that. It really is a death cult, complete with semi-automatic long guns. Dr. Strangelove in slo-mo.

Now they want to emulate Sweden. I guess no one told them the key for that plan to work, they have to act like adults.

[Seicher Rae]

Meanwhile, I don't know whether to post this here or the "make me laugh" thread because... srsly? wtf?

And then, there's this which is definitely to be posted to this thread. Incompetency, thy cup runneth over.

[Seicher Rae]

And then there is THIS. POTUS has been telling states they are on their own. The Fed isn't there for states. He's famously dumping on Democratic governors. But but but... Maryland's governor is Republican. So he went out and got his state some test kits... and Trump lays into HIM for going to another government for help. The background music to this is "One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small..." because Trump being in an altered consciousness is the only explanation...

ETA: Clearly I need to close my Facebook now and go play Hellblade.

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Seicher Rae

[Seicher Rae]

Oh god. The WaPo just reported something that makes this coronavirus even worse... there seems to be a blood clotting problem connected to the disease which means this isn't "just" a respiratory illness. Reports are finally coming in world wide that are confirming this complication, with incidents in the double-digit percentages. Fvck. Meanwhile Georgia continues on its march to become THE destination death location, and boy howdy, y'all can soon bowl and get tattoos.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/22/coronavirus-blood-clots/  <--- this is scary as fvck but important to know.

[Mollymews]

i think that in Sweden there is a tiny bit of cultural arrogance in play.  Cultural in the sense of we are good and responsible people therefore we can protect ourselves in ways that other peoples cannot. The actual numbers don't bear this out. Is a bit like religionists who say things like faith and prayer will protect them

there is also a bit of callousness mixed in with arrogance emanating from their lead medical guy. Who is reported to have said that he believes that at the end of all this Sweden will have relatively no more or less deaths than its neighbouring countries overall. I think what upsets me about this is that this person is gambling that there won't be better preventative plans/treatments developed to reduce the number of deaths. His bet might pay off for him in the didn't he just know it kind of way. But is of small comfort to the families of those who have died already, unnecessarily

 

[Panteleeva]

here is 7 days till the last day of quarantine and only from yesterday i started to see police evrywhere,especially near grocery stores and Volunteer-controllers. But they only scare people that they will stop everyone without a mask or walking around streets after 14:00 and get "fines" from them. So here s a thing only about the money again.And here was some cases when person attacks grocery workers with knife to get free food. I can clearly see how families now hate each other,and this is all really scary.

Update:All the malls are starting to work again from tomorrow . 

Edited April 23, 2020 by Panteleeva

[Ceka Cianci]

I haven't heard Trumps voice in over two and a half months.. Come to think of it, I haven't even seen national news or anything about any federal government news..No blogs no social media..

Just mostly local and our Governor..

You know, I think I'm actually getting younger..

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

there is also a bit of callousness mixed in with arrogance emanating from their lead medical guy. Who is reported to have said that he believes that at the end of all this Sweden will have relatively no more or less deaths than its neighbouring countries overall. I think what upsets me about this is that this person is gambling that there won't be better preventative plans/treatments developed to reduce the number of deaths.

I've been discussing this with my friend who's wife is Swedish and living in Sweden. Because those two are fairly certain that Sweden's gonna have possibly the worst death rate on the planet, resulting in massive damage to their economy, I've taken the counter argument. That's what I do. My counter argument will miss something, I'm sure. I can't imaging taking any stance on COVID-19 that's bullet proof, there's simply so little we know.

So, here's my counter argument. First, some presumptions, all of which can be refuted. I make them anyway because they're not trivially rejectable and may be driving the thinking of those people we don't understand...

• We're not going to have a vaccine or highly effective treatment for 18 months. I don't think there's a lot of argument about this. We might discover some therapies that significantly reduce mortality, but that hasn't happened yet. Hydroxychloroquine looks to be a bust. One NYC hospital system now reports that 88% of the COVID patients put on ventilators eventually died. I have no data regarding less intensive care, such as nasal O2, or other treatments. Still, absent cures and with such horrific ventilator success, there's an argument to be made that the health care system isn't actually improving the numbers by much.
   
• We don't have (and aren't likely to get) any numbers showing relative outcomes for those who seek hospitalization vs those who tough it out at home and possibly succumb there. I've seen articles claiming that symptomatic people, uncertain they've got the virus, fear getting it if they seek hospitalization. They also fear financial ruin. We certainly aren't hospitalizing everyone who might benefit.
   
• Two antibody studies in California suggest that the total infected population there is far higher than commonly estimated. If that's even 1/10th true, COVID-19 mortality ratios are far lower than currently reported.
   
• If the total infected population is far higher than currently estimated, the onset of herd immunity will happen much sooner.
   
• Economic damage starts the moment you curtail activity. There's a level of curtailment you can't avoid, simply because most people will alter their behavior in response to falling ill, or witnessing others do so. The damage sustained by curtailing economic activity is neither linear nor immediately reversible. Reducing economic activity by 25% for four months might be worse than reducing it by 5% for 20. And we're really not going to get economic activity back to normal until there's a vaccine or long lasting herd immunity.

From those suppositions, I can make the argument that doing nothing but informing people of the dangers of socializing will produce an ultimate outcome that's comparable or better than the most draconian suppression measures. There no cure on the immediate horizon. Hospitals are not has helpful as we think. Burdening them is a potential waste of resources that could be used to treat other people, with better results. COVID-19 is not as deadly as the current numbers suggest, because far more people have already had it. Herd immunity will arrive sooner than anticipated as a result.

Let's come back in two years and revisit this argument.

 

 

[Luna Bliss]

33 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

From those suppositions, I can make the argument that doing nothing but informing people of the dangers of socializing will produce an ultimate outcome that's comparable or better than the most draconian suppression measures.

That could be true in Sweden, but I don't think it's true in the US, especially in the red states where the religious nutters live.

* not saying all religious people are nutters, just the evangelical ones who attempt to prove their faith via challenging the virus.

It has already been proven that when they ignored the government suggestions to limit the size of meetings then clusters of cases sprung up in these religious institutions, spreading Covid to the larger community. Only when they had a more draconian measure applied against them (making it illegal, imposing fines, police presence at churches) did they stop with the meetings.

In the US there are a lot of evangelicals, and this is why it's not wise to compare Sweden to the US and apply a blanket solution to all countries.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[Madelaine McMasters]

Just now, Luna Bliss said:

That could be true in Sweden

Sweden is the scope of my argument.

[Luna Bliss]

4 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

5 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

That could be true in Sweden

Sweden is the scope of my argument.

You cite info from outside Sweden though, to base your conclusions regarding Sweden.

* also, from other posts, you've revealed your bias against lockdowns, even for the US.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 minute ago, Luna Bliss said:

You cite info from outside Sweden though, to base your conclusions regarding Sweden.

Do you think Sweden's head medical guy is looking at data only from inside Sweden. That would be nuts.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters