Covid-19 News

    Quote from Shane D.

    The New York Times does not make up fake news. Not a lot, and not a little. They would be held to account if they did.


    I believe that is a bit of a stretch. IMO, it will not help your argument, and may in fact hurt it.


    Okay, give three examples of when the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post published blatant lies attributed to experts, and yet the experts did not complain and nothing was done. I do not think you can come up with even one example.


    Note carefully, I am not saying that experts never lie, or that major newspapers are never wrong. That is a different argument. Bush administration figures lied when they said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The major newspapers reported this without questioning it. They also reported the expert opinion of the U.N. weapons inspector who said there were no WMD. In no case did they ascribe to any expert a statement or an opinion that expert did not hold.

    Attached is the White House CDC coronavirus projection that was leaked to the press yesterday.


    Figure 10 shows the number of daily cases increasing from 30,000 on May 7, to 200,000 on June 1. That's about 21 days, doubling every 3.2 days. In other words, the projection is that we will return to the catastrophic rate of increase we had before the state lock-down policies were put in place. This is entirely predictable. It is inevitable. Nothing has been done to prevent it. There is still not sufficient testing of present cases or antibodies. There is still no monitoring, case checking, or warning people they have been in contact with a sick person. There is still not enough medical equipment. The administration apparently has no plans fix any of these problems. They have left them all to individual states. Without these steps, nothing prevents the rate from returning to the previous level. This estimate may be a little high because New York and other states plan to implement case checking on their own. However, there are no border restrictions in the U.S., so states cannot prevent sick people from entering or leaving, and the vast majority of the U.S. population in places like Georgia will not be tested or monitored.


    At 200,000 cases per day, hospitals will overwhelmed. I believe that most critically ill patients will be left to die at home, and the fatality rate will increase to the natural rate which is about 3.5%. The CDC estimate of 3,000 deaths per day does not reflect that.


    The projection ends on June 1, but the trend will continue. Unless something is done, cases and deaths will continue to double every 3.2 days until we reach ~60% herd immunity. In 21 more days, there will be 2 million cases per day, and 70,000 deaths per day. This is how naturally occuring epidemics play out, when no steps are taken to prevent the increase. Apparently, the administration does not plan to take any steps, given the rate of increase shown here, and given that there have been no announcements of any plan. The same is true in Georgia. The governor's spokeswoman said he would announce a plan on Friday last week, but he did not.


    The steps described for the meat and poultry industry in these slides are useless. As I said, the industry will do "everything" excluding anything that costs money or slows down production today, which means that in a few weeks, the industry will collapse. The pork producers are hardest hit, and have lost ~50% of production. All will soon be closed down.


    Experts have suggested that an "army" of 300,000 case checkers would be needed to control the epidemic. However, this number was predicated on a gradual reduction of daily cases, down to around 10,000 per day, I think. Obviously, 300,000 people plus all the computers in the world could not begin to check up, trace and warn people when there are 200,000 cases per day. Monitoring and case checking is the only strategy that can prevent millions of deaths, but when the daily cases reach 200,000 that strategy becomes impossible.


    This is a blueprint for disaster. It will destroy the health of the population, and it will destroy the economy, for years to come. This is what you get when you "open up" the "economy" without taking any steps to control the epidemic. You do not "open up" anything. You destroy the economy in a way that only a major war and invasion might do. Except that the casualty rate (injuries and death) is far higher than any war the U.S. has engaged in, other than the Civil War.


    COVID-19 CDC HHS FEMA Interagency VTC.pdf

    Quote from Navid

    The NY Times has good articles on many things. But on some important topics they are pure crafted propaganda.


    The New York Times may have crafted propaganda. Perhaps you can give us some examples of that. I think their coverage of the events leading up the Iraq war fits that description. However, they do not invent fake news, and they do not ascribe words or opinions to experts that the experts do not hold. That's what I said; I did not say the Times itself never lies or makes mistakes. The reason the Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the BBC, NHK and other large, mainstream mass media never do this is because they would be caught. They would be called out. The experts they ascribe fake quotes to would be outraged, and they would tell everyone. Everyone would know it was a lie.


    The big mass media outlets do not do this because they cannot get away with it. Not because they are inherently moral, or good people, or because they are left wing (N.Y. Times) or right wing (Wall Street Journal). Only because they are big, and people keep a close eye on what they publish.

    Quote from oldguy

    interesting oscillations.

    I look at them like a stock market chart. I notice that the peaks are going lower and the valleys are getting lower, so I say the over all "trend" is down.

    but why that oscillation?

    It's a seven day period oscillation, so they maybe ease off on some counting on the weekend and return to full capacity on the weekdays.

    Quote from Navid

    the FASB study


    Navid .. by the the FASB study.. do you mean the Veterans Affairs hospital records study preprint(Magagnoli)

    which was alleged to have shown that HCQ was ineffective?

    The media such as the Guardian have stopped trumpeting its virtues.

    Do you think that this study is ever going to see publication?

    Raoult Didier 's response to the VA report..

    "

    In the current period, it seems that passion dominates rigorous and balanced scientific analysis and
    may lead to scientific misconduct. The article by Magagnoli et al. (Magagnoli, 2020) is an absolutely
    spectacular example of this. Indeed, in this work, it is concluded, in the end, that hydroxychloroquine
    (HCQ) would double the mortality in patients with COVID with a fatality rate of 28% (versus 11% in
    the NoHCQ group), which is extraordinarily hard to believe. The analysis of the data shows two major
    biases,     which show a willingness to be convinced before starting the work :

    https://www.mediterranee-infec…Response-to-Magagnoli.pdf


    Passion= Gilead Money?


    Quote from oldguy

    interesting oscillations.

    I look at them like a stock market chart. I notice that the peaks are going lower and the valleys are getting lower, so I say the over all "trend" is down.


    but why that oscillation?


    What graph is this? For what geographical area? For France and the state of Georgia, daily cases and deaths always go down on weekends, and then rise again on Tuesday, because of delays in reporting. It is prosaic. Actual cases and deaths do not decline over the weekend.


    Also, in both France and Georgia, the government has engaged in cover-ups and data-diddling, to lower the total number of cases and deaths. For a while, they both did not record deaths in nursing homes and other facilities outside hospitals, for example. The French changed the policy and added a large one-day increase of deaths to account for them. It actually happened gradually in the weeks before. In Georgia they said they would start accounting for such deaths, but reports indicate they are still missing them, and I do not see any one-day uptick, so I suspect they never added the previous ones. But I wouldn't know. With regard to healthcare and public health, Georgia and the other southern states are at the bottom of pack, vying for last place. Basically, the old Confederacy is a Third World country.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Attached is the White House CDC coronavirus projection that was leaked to the press yesterday.


    Figure 10 shows the number of daily cases increasing from 30,000 on May 7, to 200,000 on June 1. That's about 21 days, doubling every 3.2 days. In other words, the projection is that we will return to the catastrophic rate of increase we had before the state lock-down policies were put in place. This is entirely predictable. It is inevitable. Nothing has been done to prevent it. There is still not sufficient testing of present cases or antibodies. There is still no monitoring, case checking, or warning people they have been in contact with a sick person. There is still not enough medical equipment. The administration apparently has no plans fix any of these problems. They have left them all to individual states. Without these steps, nothing prevents the rate from returning to the previous level. This estimate may be a little high because New York and other states plan to implement case checking on their own. However, there are no border restrictions in the U.S., so states cannot prevent sick people from entering or leaving, and the vast majority of the U.S. population in places like Georgia will not be tested or monitored.


    It appears that in the U.S. we are about to go from Social Distancing to Social Distancing Lite. So we are down to basic social distancing (based on my observations 20-30% of people don't do any of that at all) and prohibiting large gatherings (movie theaters, concerts, sports etc). Other activities like flying, or eating in restaurants, will be things that most people will still avoid by choice.


    There are the two sides to this argument, one being that this is a bad idea, and the other that we can tolerate Social Distancing Lite and we should give it a shot to see what happens over the next couple of months. I think this latter argument will likely win the day over the next 30 days. So Governors are going to open up in phases and people are going to go out again, and we are going to see what happens.


    I am just hoping that we all mark the date and time that this experiment starts. So when we get to mid-June we can look back over these 6 weeks to see what the affect of Social Distancing Lite was. It's a big science experiment with a good deal of risk attached to it.

    Quote from oldguy

    According to doctors with the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, over 90 percent of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine successfully recover from the coronavirus.


    Is that supposed to be a joke? Is the network reporting it actually The Onion? 98% of patients not treated with hydroxychloroquine successfully recover from the coronavirus. (Okay, somewhat successfully, except that many will have health problems the rest of their lives.)

    Pardon if this has already been posted.


    The preprint for the French group headed by Didier Raoult --


    "Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial"


    https://reader.elsevier.com/re…D5C80DE6D9AC750D804BC8D92


    Figure 1 (page 20) shows strong evidence of viral clearance with HCQ alone.

    Figure 2 (page 21) shows even more rapid viral clearance with HCQ + azithromycin.

    Just because people on this board don't want to control humanity,does not mean others don't.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    The New York Times may have crafted propaganda. Perhaps you can give us some examples of that.


    They move society along in certain dimensions. If you are serious about that there is ample journalism and scholarship on this...willing to share.

    It is easy to spot - most days the front page of the NY Times has one piece of propoganda.



    If you want to see how it is done, watch this "expert" on twitter: https://twitter.com/DrEricDing


    "They" connect real stories with "narratives" to push you along.

    Can you spot the weasel move? The entire media sector and even some "scholars" are involved in this.



    Quote from JedRothwell

    The Onion

    what is Onion?


    notice it does not say only 90% cured but a 90% chance that its effect is real.


    https://finance.yahoo.com/news…ce-helping-155637974.html


    here is a UK source for you

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/he…coronavirus-patients.html


    letter from AAPS https://aapsonline.org/aaps-le…ychloroquine-in-covid-19/


    summary of peer-reviewed evidence, indexed in PubMed,

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1545C_dJWMIAgqeLEsfo2U8Kq5WprDuARXrJl6N1aDjY/preview?pru=AAABcgo3P1Q*fRf8vTRzgZf_C1KiUNrkig


    https://drive.google.com/file/…_wYNK7m_zpQLbBVYcvVU/view

    Quote from JedRothwell

    98% of patients not treated with hydroxychloroquine successfully recover from the coronavirus.

    from study


    "Based on the current clinical information available, the success rates for a favorable
    outcome/clinical improvement are approximately 91.6% using hydroxychloroquine
    (HCQ) without or without azithromycin (AZ) and/or zinc and the death rate in this treated
    group is approximately 2.7%. 9


    In comparison, the probability of death is 0.5-0.85 or 50 to 85% when patients with
    CoVID-19 are on mechanical ventilation and the probability of death based on Johns
    Hopkins University data worldwide is 206,544/2,971,477 or 6.95% as of 4.26.20."



    You may want to read before you attack.

    Quote from Deleo

    There are the two sides to this argument, one being that this is a bad idea, and the other that we can tolerate Social Distancing Lite and we should give it a shot to see what happens over the next couple of months. I think this latter argument will likely win the day over the next 30 days.


    We don't need to take a shot at it. We know what will happen. The curve goes up sharply starting in a week. Note, that is a log-scale graph, so it is steeper than it looks. The administration and the CDC are right about that, I am sure. They plan to do nothing to control the epidemic. No case tracing, no reporting, nowhere near enough testing. We will be back where we were in mid-March, facing a catastrophic increase. The billions of dollars lost, and the lost jobs, and the sacrifices the public made in April will be squandered. Wasted. Because nothing was done in April to control the epidemic. The CDC thinks it will lead to 200,000 new cases a day and 3,000 deaths by June 1. Anyone can see that in another 21 days after that, there will be 2 million new cases and 30,000 deaths per day. That's what the CDC and the administration are predicting. That is what our government thinks will happen. Do you have reason to doubt them? I don't. Why would they predict that if they had any plans to stop it from happening?


    Set the same conditions you had before, where 98% of the population has not yet been infected, and you are certain to get the same result. Yes, it will be a little slower because of social distancing and masks, but look at Italy, or the meat-packing industry in the U.S., and you see that such steps cannot prevent catastrophe.


    So, the question is: do you consider that acceptable? Is that a "win"? Does it bother you that in a month, tens of thousands of Americans will be dying untreated, and there will be mass burials, as there were in 1918? This will not "save" the economy. It will destroy it for years to come. Restaurants and companies are not going to reopen when there are houses full of dead people and corpses littering the streets, as there were in 1918. Many businesses will never reopen. The natural death rate, 3.5%, is higher than the 1918 Spanish flu, so this is what must happen if we are not going to take any steps to prevent it. Modern medicine will not help you when you cannot get in the door, and when the doctors and nurses are dying like flies -- as they will when the protective clothing and masks run out.


    Quote from Deleo

    I am just hoping that we all mark the date and time that this experiment starts.


    It has started already, in Georgia and elsewhere. As you see in the CDC graph, the results will be dead obvious in a few weeks. With emphasis on "dead." The administration is incompetent and the CDC emasculated and defunded, but in this case I am sure they are right, because they control events. They are in charge. They decided to do nothing to slow down or stop the epidemic. (Or more likely, they couldn't decide anything, and they don't want to spend any money. That is the situation in Georgia.) They decided to let nature take its course and kill 3 to 6 million people. Unless they change their minds in a hurry, that is what must happen. Once you reach 200,000 cases a day and the hospitals are swamped, there is nothing you can do to prevent at least ~1 million more deaths. Obviously, everyone will go back into their houses, and stay there, whether there is an official lock-down or not. That's what people did in 1918, and in all previous epidemics in history. That's the only thing you can do. That will slow down the epidemic, but in the end, about the same number of people die.


    The people who said we should "open up" without any plan to monitor and control the disease were misguided. That is not a way to "save" the economy. It is a way to ensure far more damage, and a de-facto lockdown lasting months, not weeks. That's what uncontrolled epidemics do, like the black plague in 1347. The administration decided to leave us all as helpless as people were in 1347, with no better medical care than they had (because the hospitals will be swamped). This was a deliberate decision made by an elected government in the U.S. in the 21st century. This is what you get when the public turns it back on science, rationality, technology, and everything else that has made the U.S. a great nation. I blame Trump, but there is plenty more blame to go around. I blame everyone who voted for him, and the 49% who still support him, and the GOP that went along with him. In the larger sense, I blame everyone who in recent decades went along with anti-vaccination movements, the gutting of public health, and the opposition to science in general. In the larger sense, that includes the New York Times, the Scientific American and the rest of the mass media that gleefully went along with the attacks on cold fusion, and probably other new scientific discoveries. The rot began when the editors at Scientific American, the New Scientist and the APS decided that academic politics are more important than scientific discovery, and they decided to publish blatant lies about cold fusion. I see a path from that to ignoring global warming today, and to doing nothing to prevent the deaths of millions today. This is America abandoning its birthright. Hating all that is best in our culture, such as technology, science, the love of truth, and exploration. It reminds of what the Prince said in Romeo and Juliet:


    See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
    That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
    And I for winking at your discords too
    Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.

    Quote from oldguy

    You may want to read before you attack.


    I just listened to the vapid young lady saying nonsense.



    That sounds like an apples to oranges comparison. How many people does the hydroxychloroquine keep from going on to ventilators? Once they put you on a ventilator with this disease, you are 80% likely to die, as noted.


    I do not think the Johns Hopkins data, as is, can be used to establish the mortality rate. You have to estimate the number of uncounted patients, and the number of uncounted dead. I do not think there is any chance the mortality rate is 6.95%. We would have millions of people dying every day if it were.

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