Posts by andrea.s

Quote from seven_of_twenty

The US has a population of appx 300 million. At the extremes of best case estimates, COVID-19 has a mortality rate of 0.1%. If everyone in the country acquired the disease, that would be 300,000 deaths at the extremes of a best case scenario (pro rate if you want for what you think herd immunity requires-- 80% even 60%) and it's still a pure horror sh*t show. Before comparing that to other things that kill people, remember those things will still kill people. This is added deaths.

We are already (in the US) at more than 700,000 cases and just short of 40,000 deaths. You really think 100x to 300x that number would be acceptable?

US are at 40000 deaths but not yet at the peak of the histogram of daily deaths, so it is likely that the toll will be around 100000 in a month from now. In my view lockdown must be enforced until the active cases are drastically down, then gradually released checking that the rates don't ramp up again, which implies continued social distancing and strict health and safety rules on businesses and industries that restart. Of course it is way too early for the US.

Yes it is a horror shit show.

One needs to compute without ideological bias what is the impact of prolonged lockdown, and devise the break-even point between the covid-19 casualties and the deaths caused by poverty due to the recession. I would never delegate this analysis and decision to an impulsive tycoon concerned with polls way more than with the tragedy going on.

Iceland tested 12% of their population so they cannot be underestimating the positive cases that much. Their death rate is 0.5% over the tested positive. Same rate for UAE who tested 8% of the population. Let us say that they are underestimating cases by a factor 5: you end up with 0.1% mortality. If you can slow down the contagion to a constant rate and reach herd immunity in one year, it is < 0.1% population dying in 1 year on top of the 1.2% normal rate. In Italy it would be a toll of 60000 including 22000 already dead. With the present lockdown measures, the daily covid-19 deaths (today around 500/day) will be down to 200/day by May 4 when the lockdown should be relieved. If the lockdown were to indefinitely continue, rates would further drop and the extrapolation looks like death toll would stop at 30000. Should the reopening of the economy result in freezing the death rate at around 200/day, only gradually slowing down as we approach herd immunity, it may take little less than a year. It is a sad tradeoff (30000 lives) but the breakdown of economy may do as much damage. The gamble is on the real mortality figures.

ETA: looking at the timeline, UAE data are too recent to be trusted. But Iceland with a population of 300000 roughly, is well past its peak of active cases.

stefan  seven_of_twenty

"untreated infections in the wild" certainly not but I agree with what Stefan says. All countries will release the lockdowns gradually while regulating social distancing with a feedback control to keep the rate of contagion manageable with some margin by the healthcare system. This can last up to the vaccine or up to herd immunity whichever comes first. The Covid-19 mortality is probably low enough to be acceptable if you spread it evenly over say 18 months. It is unbearable if uncontrolled because the excess deaths occur in few weeks.

Quote from Navid

Good news guys. Covid has scored another victory in science and got rid of flu.

The flu didn't go away. It simply became irrelevant starting late March. Same trend in NY State as in Italy 2 weeks earlier. Mistaking a flu death for a Covid-19 death changes nothing in the graphs below.lenr-forum.com/attachment/12008/

lenr-forum.com/attachment/12009/

Quote from Rends

What is the reason for social distancing and lock downs?

It's just about the basic reproduction number! Since there is no vaccination or highly effective medication, the number must be kept so low by other measures that it e.g. remains in Germany at R1. or better lower. At this rate just as many people become infected, get sick, or die, that the German health system can handle it (i.e. no overloading of the hospitals, dead people in hallways and triage by doctors and nurses). If you just get a rate of R1.3 the German health system is overloaded in just 3-4 weeks.

[...]

The striking difference between Mrs. Merkel and so many other leaders in understanding and explaining in simple factual words the pandemy reminds me that she holds a physics degree and PhD in quantum chemistry, all the more from the ex DDR where life was hard but schools were excellent. Prerequisites is what the world needs to set for those who wish to access places of responsibility.

Quote from Alan Smith

andrea.s

We try to keep politics out of this place, always- politics in general is hard to escape when discussing the pandemic, but naming and shaming politicians is not part of this forum's briif- even when they deserve it.

You are right Alan, I got carried away. Will refrain in the future. Let me know if I should remove the posts - though at least I did balance the picture with the last post. "Par condicio" they call it - if only they could level out a little higher.

Quote from andrea.s

Stupidity appears clearer in times of crisis.

[...]

My country Italy sure could have done better in this crisis but I saw no blatantly stupid actions once things started going rough (a list of idiotic things occurred earlier but easy to judge in the aftermath).

I was kind of rough to the Northern League and 5-Star leaders in Italy.

To be fair I will report the number one stupid action of this crisis, whose credit goes to the leader of the Democratic party that replaced the Northern league in the governing coalition, and governor of Latium, the region including Rome, and as such in charge of the region's Healthcare.

On Feb 27 he traveled from Rome to Milan to publicly celebrate in a crowded cocktail party the Mayor's decision not to lock down activities in Milan. He tweeted his vicinity to Milan, the need not to panic and commented "we must defeat the virus following science". On Feb 27 there were 650 cases and 17 deaths and a 30% daily growth of both, the vast majority in Milan's region Lombardy, and zero active cases in Rome (3 cases from abroad had recovered). One week later he was diagnosed positive in Rome.

Quote from Alan Smith

Let us hope it is no more than stupidity.

Stupidity appears clearer in times of crisis. Also, it appears clear how inadequate the leadership of too many leading countries is nowadays, which is a limit of democracy, and calls for robust Constitutions to set prerequisites of and counterpowers to Presidents and Prime Ministers. I let you guess which countries I hint to.

My country Italy sure could have done better in this crisis but I saw no blatantly stupid actions once things started going rough (a list of idiotic things occurred earlier but easy to judge in the aftermath). Out of sheer luck we have a Prime Minister who is not a politician but a University Professor, chosen a couple years ago as a compromise figure to lead the coalition between the 5-star Movement and the Northern League. His background naturally leads him by education to value expertise and take informed decisions, which is a blessing in these circumstances. He was not elected but nominated, which can only occur in a Parliamentary democracy.

I cannot even think of the disaster we would have faced with a government led by an ignorant fascist as the leader of the Northern League who has a very large electoral consensus, but luckily was stupid enough to commit political suicide by sinking his own government when he was vice-premier only to be replaced by a new coalition without him. And I cannot think of the disaster we would have faced with a government led by an ignorant amateur as the 5-Stars leader, currently Minister of Foreign Affairs, leader of a conspiration-theorist, anti-vaccine confused party of goodwill clueless people.

Quote from Navid

You are in a war with one of the most sophisticated groups in the history of the world. The conspiracy fact is that a major deep group - with front line players like Gates - is operating behind the guise of a real virus to create new business models (world wide IDs, world wide vaccination business) and enact more population control. The evidence for that is in, and I mean hundreds of thousands of datapoints.

This sounds bad. Population control.

Come to think of it however, my life and properties and data are already in the hands of a privately owned company based in Cupertino, Ca. All of my passwords can be reset at any time by any individual who accesses my Google account and easily by a Google employee with administrator rights. My medical records, my bank records, my credit card records, my internet accesses, my online purchases, my location and movements.

Is Google Inc. less evil than Microsoft or whatever business Bill Gates now runs, in your view? I doubt. I only trust that it is more profitable for them in the long term to be reliable and trustworthy.

Quote from oldguy

what are the projections for the UK resumptions?

If this can be of interest, in Italy the activities deemed essential for primary needs never stopped. Strategic industries including aerospace could restart if organized so that social distancing and PPE were proven to local authorities. It took a couple weeks (of forced holidays) to settle in my company, including negotiation with the unions, but 100% workforce is now operational either teleworking or on site working in shifts, with no overlap and disinfection in the intervals. Of course productivity is impacted by shorter working hours and no overtime but efficiency will gradually resume. It is possible that a good portion of non essential, non strategic activities restart on May 4, i.e. after less than 8 weeks of lockdown, if the number of active cases drop to the number we had prior to March 11, which is the current trend. This can only be achieved with social distancing which is the only weapon we have so far.

I read the protests of religious people complaining for the restrictions on Mass services. I am an agnostic but how can one not feel that worshiping at home has the same value in such circumstances: Pope Francis complied without a complaint to the restrictions in Italy (he had the power not to in the Vatican state) and resorted to media technology. Risking your own life as a martyr isn't your right if for the sake of your creed you spread the contagion to others.

Wyttenbach

I do agree China likely underreported its casualties, at first for lack of testing means (at some point statistics abruptly peaked to include untested cases with evident symptoms - a change occurred under the pressure of the WHO) and later by choosing not to disclose the total mortality in Wuhan to really find out the figures. Also, likely the WHO was soft in enforcing a true reporting.

But the Trump administration had the time to see the outbreak in Italy (who covered nothing) and deliberately chose to do nothing for weeks, ignoring all health experts' advice. Sorry but I find this a dreadful responsibility and hold them -and noone else - accountable for a loss of lives 5 to 10 times higher than it could have been. And the credit for not making it worse, goes elsewhere as well, partly to Fauci and partly to the inevitable impact that the growing massacre in NYC triggered in the public opinion and in Cuomo's governorship.

Quote from JulianBianchi

It is more complicated than that. Here in Switzerland we are testing at a higher frequency than Germany, we started high frequency testing in late January already, in all regions of Switzerland, our tracing system involved more trained people per capita than e.g. South Korea, and see what happened, the wave that came at the end of February was too big to be contained by just testing and tracing, and interestingly enough, the Italian speaking region of Switzerland is now showing death statistics similar to the North of Italy, the German speaking region of Switzerland similar to Germany and the French speaking similar to France. All of this with the same testing and healthcare system. This makes me think that the cultural aspects should not be underestimated, in particular the structure of the social relations such as how the elderly is mixing with the active population.

Yes Julian you do have a point. It is more complex than my explanation. And orders of magnitude more complex than blaming evil powers in China and the WHO.

Quote from Navid

I cannot speak to Italy. Nobody wants loss of life. Nobody is saying to do nothing. However, when criminals are being let out, when real crimes like rape (yes, this has happened) are waiting days to be investigated, and the police are focused on how long you've been out of the house, and when trillions of $ in bailouts are happening, when people are suffering (and dying), when people are potentially being impoverished and their diets potentially going down fast, when people are losing homes/families and more --- all of which is a major stressor that will cause disease and deaths - we must be very very careful. Bill Gates doesn't care about you. I assure you, he is the #2 funder of the WHO, he doesn't care about you.

In the US, the overcounting of anyone who dies with a suspected Covid infection (even if it is heart attack) is fraudlent. US Senator Jensen who is a physician is seriously considered about this. Why aren't you? Do you think testing positive and dying of congestive heart failure or cancer means you are a covid death? Do you even know what the test is testing and if it is a valid test for measuring whether someone has died for covid (it isnt'!)? Look into it. You will be surprised.

The fundamental flaw here is that you don't believe there is government overreach - and many believe there is.

Your intentions are good Navid, but I read in your words how political the debate has become over subjects that should be analysed with scientific objectivity first. It is absurd to question the fairness of classifying as a COVID-19 death the death of an old man with preexisting pathologies who died from pneumonia and tested positive. If a 90 year old man terminally ill with cancer dies in a car accident would you discount that from road death statistics?

This has been a debate here in Italy, mostly out of envy for the low mortality in Germany where we all thought initially that Germany was covering up deaths or discounting comorbidities. No way. Germany simply used well its time advantage and started testing intensively, roughly at the same rate as Italy and the same time as Italy (both have a 1.5% population tested now) but the difference is that it was late for us and early for them. They could identify and isolate people positive without symptoms, focusing at first on people who had traveled to China and Northern Italy, and traced their contacts to propagate the testing. In Italy tests were done in absolute emergency and prioritizing on people with symptoms which was necessary but left out a large population unknowingly infected and infecting others. Italy's total cases are largely underestimated, and it is even more the case in France, Spain and the US who tested two to three times less percent population, but not in Germany because they started early.

The effect of lockdown on the workers and the poor must be mitigated by government subsidies otherwise things can only go worse and out of control. The US healthcare system doesn't help though in these extreme cases. In Italy we pay nothing in a public hospital as public health insurance is funded by taxes. You should reflect on this. How can a temporary worker who loses his job and health insurance in the US afford to be cured? He will try to self heal to save the 10 to 20,000$ and likely get ill and involuntarily infect others out of lack of control.

As for Bill Gates, he obviously had it right from the beginning. Of course he did! his foundation has been studying pandemics for years. And it makes no difference if he invests in vaccines for greed or philanthropy. One may hate the man but he has vision. Remember: "a computer on every desk and in every home". It was 1975 [edit]. Too bad the US deliberately ignored his prophecy and advice.

[edit] Gates may be a funder of the WHO but the WHO is not evil. The WHO may have been a week slow, but they declared a world health emergency end of January and the global pandemic on March 11.

https://www.who.int/news-room/…0-who-timeline---covid-19 .

It is up to the Governments to take action. Blameshifting to the WHO or to evil China, who allegedly underreported casualties, does no good and should be looked at with suspicion, as a pathetic excuse to avoid scrutiny over a government's responsibilities.

Quote from Lou Pagnucco

Also perhaps of interest is Dr. V. Zelenko's appeal to Donald Trump -

"How to Cure Coronavirus: an Exclusive Letter From Dr. Zelenko to Donald Trump "

I wouldn't trust a Doctor appealing to Donald Trump instead of submitting his research to peer reviewing for publication

The attempt by Navid (and the US right wing) to question mortality rates as overrated is readily dismissed by official statistics of total mortality in Italy. In week 13 when the peak of daily COVID-19 deaths was reached (some 800 deaths reported daily, officially diagnosed by test as COVID-19 related) the total mortality from all causes was 80% above the expected rate based on the past 10 years. This is data freshly released this week from the National Health Institute (it takes a while and is still a projection based on a 10% sample population) . Now Italy has a typical daily mortality of 2000. It means that the excess mortality that week was close to 1600 I.e. the COVID-19 deaths may be twice higher than the ones diagnosed.

https://www.epicentro.iss.it/influenza/flunews#mortalita

I haven't been on LENR Forum for quite a while and just decided to take a look because I expected the debate on COVID-19 to be interesting here, given the mix of erudite men of science, nutty conspirationists, and laymen with intellectual curiosity. Indeed I was quite right.

As an Italian let me tell you guys in the US that I cannot thank more the national lockdown measures taken on March 4 (schools closed, travel ban) and March 11 (total lockdown). On March 4 we had 100 deaths cumulated. On March 11 we had 870 deaths cumulated. It was late for Milan and the North, and the toll is now 20,000 the vast majority in northern Italy, but it spared some 100,000 lives in the country so far and in Rome where I live.

The idea that a government can just let the pandemic go until herd immunity is reached is an idiocy. It is true that most casualties will be among the old and the poor, but even a Nazi mentality that may welcome the death of this 1 to 2% population as a positive effect on economy (less pensions and subsidies to pay) must face the unbearable impact of this death toll to occur in a matter of 2 months (as opposed to natural mortality little above 1% evenly spread over one year), with peaks of daily mortality 30 to 40 times the natural rate. Economy would be struck by this, mortality would further increase due to the healthcare collapsing, and spontaneous social distancing would occur in violent forms. Until a vaccine is available, or a massive lowcost testing kit is available for use on 100% of the population, there is no alternative to lockdown by law followed by a controlled release while enforcing continued social distancing and safety measures at work (working in shifts + teleworking to reduce the population density in industries) in order to keep the rate of contagion manageable by the health system. We have paid a dreadful price in Italy for being the first western democracy to face this crisis, which caused some hesitation to take action. And it is unforgivable for countries who had two to three weeks advantage not to have put in place actions timely. At the end of this story which may cause 60,000 to 100,000 deaths in the US, Americans should know that 80% of these are victims of mr Trump's inadequacy to rule the most powerful country in the world, and should thank Dr Fauci and the liberal press, who gave voice to the experts dismissed by the White House, for sparing a million lives.

Quote from axil

If patrons fund the works of an great artist or a composer to encourage the completion of their work, is that fraud? When Lorenzo the Great took Michelangelo into his house to train him in his great art, was Lorenzo defrauded? Is allowing the completion of an immortal work a crime? How great is the legacy of Lorenzo for his generosity and foresight. Such generosity eventually made possible the completion of a legacy of great works of art that has yet to be surpassed, the Papal Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, and the immortal decoration of the Sistine chapel.

this amazing flattery deserves a first row invitation to the next DPS in 2020.

P.s. " la gente non sta bene"

Quote from axil

Prove it...

Some of us do enjoy proving that demos are no proof - it happened for all of Rossi's demos and likely easy on these Golden Balls - nomen omen. No one in their right mind will engage in trying to prove that the Balls don't work, for the epistemological reasons repeated a thousand times.

Quote from maryyugo

@Admins I wish you had not suspended ele

Quote from andrea.s

I agree and think ele deserves at least the same leeway granted to Dewey. I won't say more for risk of being banned myself but his/her participation is most entertaining.

I take that back. We have Randombit0 again!

Quote from THHuxleynew

[...]

I would like to see Rossi stopped.

Ever since Hollywood decided in the seventies that it was no longer obligatory for the bad guy to go to jail or die, we have all become accustomed to freely take part for the most appealing character, not necessarily being honest nor gentle.

So in spite of agreeing on THH's conclusions most of the time, I am unable to have bitter feelings toward this lunatic inventor who bamboozled so many.

After all, noone of us has hard feelings against the religious leaders, in spite of them being -at best- all wrong except one (whoever it is).