COVID-19 News

[florduh]

These articles paint a very chilling picture of what our healthcare professionals are going through right now. Maybe they can help convince your dumbest relatives that this isn't a "hoax".

'I’m just so, so tired'
COVID taking emotional, physical toll on Houston health care workers

As a nurse, LaTonya Rafe has developed a sense of knowing when death is closing in. She felt it the moment she walked into the room of one of her favorite COVID-19 patients, the one she was sure would beat the virus overtaking her small Houston hospital.

Not him, too, she thought. The team at United Memorial Medical Center rushed in to try to save the Hispanic man in his 60s as his blood pressure dropped. Their hospital is ground zero in Acres Homes, one of the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods. Rafe speaks no Spanish, her patient spoke no English. She worried he would be frightened, so she scrolled through her phone to find Spanish-language ballads on YouTube to calm him. She stroked his hand because no family was there.

“Friend,” she said, “I brought you as far as I can take you. It’s OK to let go.”

This doctor just endured the deadliest week of his career

Varon has been outspoken about the Covid-19 threat and the importance of wearing masks. That hasn’t sat well with everyone.

“People are calling my office and leaving threats because of all the media I’ve been doing, because they don’t believe that what we're doing is real,” he said.

Varon wants people to see: This is not a hoax. This is a real thing. People are dying.

 

[macbill]

CDC predicting 180,000 US deaths from coronavirus by August 22

An internal document by the federal government reportedly predicts the novel coronavirus death toll in the U.S. could hit 182,000 by the end of August.

 

[jbm]

CDC predicting 180,000 US deaths from coronavirus by August 22
An internal document by the federal government reportedly predicts the novel coronavirus death toll in the U.S. could hit 182,000 by the end of August.

Yes, but at least you don’t have to suffer the tyranny of wearing a mask. JFC

 

[EmDeemo]

We are likely going to lose a lot of people come the winter. The hardship of wearing a mask, people are pathetic.

Coronavirus: Thousands protest in Germany against restrictions

The marchers say face masks and other measures violate their rights

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[macbill]

Woman's leg breaks after she's thrown to ground in mask fight at Hackensack Staples, police say

A liver transplant recipient suffered a fractured left tibia after she was thrown to the ground on Wednesday by a woman at Staples after asking her to put her face mask on, police said.

note to self: don't engage maskless people

 

[EmDeemo]

These maskless freedom fighters are absolutely the most pathetic people I've ever seen.

 

[macbill]

Slatington man charged with attempted murder in mask dispute and gunfire at Cigars International in Bethlehem Township

[O]n Friday, a simple request that a patron wear a mask while inside the Bethlehem Township store erupted in gunfire, leaving its staff rattled and police searching for an armed suspect.

 

[EmDeemo]

Slatington man charged with attempted murder in mask dispute and gunfire at Cigars International in Bethlehem Township

[O]n Friday, a simple request that a patron wear a mask while inside the Bethlehem Township store erupted in gunfire, leaving its staff rattled and police searching for an armed suspect.

So this is likely going to happen properly at some point, huh?

Putin must be laughing his ass off right now.

 

[Vitolo]

 

[Tranquility]

The argument gets pretty technical so make sure you know what all the "index"ing and "insured" unemployment rates means, but:
Longer Lockdowns Associated with Much Worse Economic Outcomes

...What I take away from these graphs is three-fold:

1. States relatively dependent on the service sector were hit hard, particularly if they also had lengthy lockdowns. Nevada, Hawaii and Florida depend on tourism for a large chunk of their GDP, and Florida has done well relative to Nevada and Hawaii, which are both more than 10 percentage points worse in terms of their insured unemployment rates. Florida’s lockdown was 32 days while Nevada’s was 44 days and Hawaii’s was 67 days.
2. Within-category comparison of states with very different coronavirus severity is telling. New York was locked down for 56 days and Louisiana for 53 days, but New York’s virus spread was much more severe during the first lockdown than in Louisiana. Yet, they have similar insured unemployment rates relative to March 1. Similarly, Massachusetts and New Hampshire both had lockdowns of 65 days but were very different in terms of virus spread, with the coronavirus hitting Massachusetts much harder than New Hampshire. Yet, both have relatively similar insured unemployment rates relative to March 1.
3. Second lockdowns, such as those in California and Texas, will be further telling in terms of their individuated effect on the economy. I expect to write yet another of these articles a month or two from now, using new data that can help us suss out the effects of voluntary versus involuntary reduction in consumption and production even more precisely.

------------------------
Edit:
Holland's going to kill us all!
The land with no face masks: Holland's top scientists say there's no solid evidence coverings work and warn they could even damage the fight against Covid-19

The real question is, are we going to restrict their travel or are we going to invade? (Wearing masks, of course.) It's not like Covid respect borders.

Edit, edit:
Well, we won't have the Germans if we invade:
'Masks Make Us Slaves': Massive Anti-Lockdown Protest in Berlin

 

[macbill]

 

[Tranquility]

Should the FDA get out of the way or not?
Out of the Way, FDA
In the course of my scientific activities, I have met a lot of interesting people. One of the most outstanding is the very eminent biologist Steve Benner. I know Benner because of his involvement in the space program, but he is also the founder and president of Firebird Diagnostics, a company that has developed and marketed rapid-turnaround tests for mosquito- and tick-borne viruses, giving results in 15 or 20 minutes. He has now developed one for Covid-19.

Benner’s coronavirus test is currently being used in India, a country that, despite having four times America’s population and much more unfavorable living conditions, has one quarter of our coronavirus death toll. But it is not being used in the U.S.A.

I lead a small aerospace research-and-development company. I would like to improve the safety of my employees. So when I heard about Firebird’s test, I contacted Benner. Would it be practical to use his technology to test my whole work force, say once a week? It wouldn’t be foolproof protection; someone might get infected the day after they were tested. But if we had a procedure in place that might catch asymptomatic cases and send them home before they spread the virus to anyone else, that, added to our masks and social-distancing practices, could only serve to make everyone safer. Would it be doable?...
-----------------

Living with the risk
Learning to Live With Coronavirus Risk

Scared That Covid-19 Immunity Won’t Last? Don’t Be

 

[ClearBlueLou]

So this is likely going to happen properly at some point, huh?

Putin must be laughing his ass off right now.

Just remember, every gun owner is a *law-abiding* gun owner until they start shooting (at) people...

 

[Tranquility]

Just remember, every gun owner is a *law-abiding* gun owner until they start shooting (at) people...

And, sometimes, even then.

 

[Gunky]

Read the Atlantic Article - How the Pandemic Defeated America A very thorough exploration of what went wrong by someone who accurately predicted a lot of what has happened in the USA.

In the first half of 2020, SARS‑CoV‑2—the new coronavirus behind the disease COVID‑19—infected 10 million people around the world and killed about half a million. But few countries have been as severely hit as the United States, which has just 4 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of its confirmed COVID‑19 cases and deaths. These numbers are estimates. The actual toll, though undoubtedly higher, is unknown, because the richest country in the world still lacks sufficient testing to accurately count its sick citizens.


Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer. “The U.S. fundamentally failed in ways that were worse than I ever could have imagined,” Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, told me.

Since the pandemic began, I have spoken with more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. I’ve learned that almost everything that went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic was predictable and preventable. A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19. The decades-long process of shredding the nation’s social safety net forced millions of essential workers in low-paying jobs to risk their life for their livelihood. The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.

 

[Tranquility]

Read the Atlantic Article - How the Pandemic Defeated America A very thorough exploration of what went wrong by someone who accurately predicted a lot of what has happened in the USA.

Lot of good facts in between the political rants. I know deadlines are far before an article comes out, but there are a lot of facts in the Atlantic article that are no longer true--especially on how different countries handled things and the results of the actions they took. It is also interesting the work they put in to claim Trump was the cause of the shutdowns. Clearly, they can't claim he ordered them (Because we were all there and he didn't.), but they claim he was responsible for them. If he'd only have shut down the country to travel earlier, they wouldn't have been necessary so it's his fault we had to shut down at all.

The rewriting of history begins.

 

[florduh]

Read the Atlantic Article - How the Pandemic Defeated America A very thorough exploration of what went wrong by someone who accurately predicted a lot of what has happened in the USA.

I read it earlier today. The print addition will be entitled “Anatomy of an American Failure.” Many of these failures are decades in the making. Some I didn't even think of. The push for energy efficient buildings lead to a lack of fresh air circulating inside, making it far easier to spread an airborne plague.

Clearly, they can't claim he ordered them (Because we were all there and he didn't.)

No, but he absolutely supported them. Before he didn't.

If he'd only have shut down the country to travel earlier, they wouldn't have been necessary so it's his fault we had to shut down at all.

This would be a strawman (actually it's just a complete misrepresentation of what the author said). From the article:

Travel bans may sometimes work for remote island nations, but in general they can only delay the spread of an epidemic—not stop it. And they can create a harmful false confidence, so countries “rely on bans to the exclusion of the things they actually need to do—testing, tracing, building up the health system,” says Thomas Bollyky, a global-health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That sounds an awful lot like what happened in the U.S.”

especially on how different countries handled things and the results of the actions they took

None of those countries are seeing the kind of resurgence we are.

The rewriting of history begins.

I don't know. It sounds more like you're rewriting the Atlantic article.

 

[Gunky]

One of the things that is so irritating about the whole Trump cult is the style of argumentation (if this can even be termed argumentation, which is a serious question). Trump disdains expertise. Hence he knows more about everything than every kind of expert. Instead of actual knowledge or evidence and reasoned discourse, Trump prefers to "flood the zone". This is a sort of rhetorical squid ink where he throws everything incl kitchen sink at the issue, most of it lies created out of whole cloth. Asked a question, he simply pivots to some other shiny object and proceeds to lie about that. So this, what passes for discourse among trumpites, is insincere and done in bad faith. The difficulty is once you realize somebody is not working from the same universe of logic, evidence, reason, etc but rather is in recital mode, faithfully reproducing all the flood-the-zone bogus "arguments" (really articles of faith) that other trumpites are reciting in unision like a catechism, or regurgitating like some sort of propaganda, what can you do? It's more like arguing with a religious fanatic, such as a Moonie, than a normal political conversation. After you fire up all the logical and rhetorical stuff you've got and have asked him point blank if he doesn't consider trying to change others to conform to some rigid orthodoxy to be a kind of violence, he just says "but won't you come to our dinner?" The audience is not susceptible of evidence or logic or consistency or any regard for actual expert knowledge. Critical thought is neither desired nor allowed. Anything that doesn't agree with the Dear Leader is "fake" or a "hoax".

Take for example hydroxychloroquine. Virtually all health experts are saying it doesn't help the virus. Period, full stop. There is no real scientific evidence that it helps covid patients. Nothing but bullshit. In fact it is a somewhat dangerous drug that causes heart arrhythmia. And yet people are still insisting it's a miracle cure. Why? Because you know who touted it. You even get this Orwellian language such as "how many have died because of the irrational resistance to hydroxychloroquine." This is bullshit wrapped in a turd and smothered in road-apple sauce.

 

[EmDeemo]

I love the double speak... We wont go back into lockdown, but we may have lockdown like conditions.

So, lockdown then Twats

EDIT: Relevant? Irrelevant elephant?

 

[Tranquility]

Take for example hydroxychloroquine. Virtually all health experts are saying it doesn't help the virus. Period, full stop. There is no real scientific evidence that it helps covid patients. Nothing but bullshit. In fact it is a somewhat dangerous drug that causes heart arrhythmia. And yet people are still insisting it's a miracle cure. Why? Because you know who touted it. You even get this Orwellian language such as "how many have died because of the irrational resistance to hydroxychloroquine." This is bullshit wrapped in a turd and smothered in road-apple sauce.

That is simply not true. We've shown strong study and reporting links here previously. The best one is:
Treatment with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and combination in patients hospitalized with COVID-19
And, even THAT is not the best combination that adds zinc. To look at the studies that use the drug alone when there is a specific mechanism that requires all three, seems almost intentionally designed to fail. India, in reporting, has had some enormous successes they give credit to the combination to and those links are supra. While it might not be the best someday in first world countries, in countries where daily wages are pennies, it is going to be a goto treatment in the years to come.

Yes the emergency approval was rescinded. Weird the main study that was the motivator for that removal used datasets so bad they (and other such studies) had to withdraw their papers.
Massive coronavirus study that said hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work has been retracted

Covid-19: Lancet retracts paper that halted hydroxychloroquine trials

'Truly sorry': Scientists pull panned Lancet study of Trump-touted drug

But, hey, why have a fairly safe and similarly effective drug combination be available for cheap when we can get a treatment for about a thousand times more cost? That's right, we have to prove Trump bad for some reason. By the way, it seems ironic to have ad hominem be considered the height of rational argument. My understanding that was fallacious reasoning. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'll have to check.

 

[Planck]

In his own words.

 

[Tranquility]

In his own words.

It would be more fair if the context of the quotes were given, but understand how boring that would be. At LEAST the tape gives actual quotes on the matter rather than a summary of what a reporter thinks he could have meant.


Guy's rich, writes essays, I think this one's good and relevant to the conversation here. It seems a bit like Myers-Briggs, at first you think it's nothing, then you see interesting things. (Even though it's just a thought model and not reality.)
The Four Quadrants of Conformism

One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism. Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system whose horizontal axis runs from conventional-minded on the left to independent-minded on the right, and whose vertical axis runs from passive at the bottom to aggressive at the top. The resulting four quadrants define four types of people. Starting in the upper left and going counter-clockwise: aggressively conventional-minded, passively conventional-minded, passively independent-minded, and aggressively independent-minded.

I think that you'll find all four types in most societies, and that which quadrant people fall into depends more on their own personality than the beliefs prevalent in their society. [1]

Young children offer some of the best evidence for both points. Anyone who's been to primary school has seen the four types, and the fact that school rules are so arbitrary is strong evidence that the quadrant people fall into depends more on them than the rules.

The kids in the upper left quadrant, the aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales. They believe not only that rules must be obeyed, but that those who disobey them must be punished.

The kids in the lower left quadrant, the passively conventional-minded, are the sheep. They're careful to obey the rules, but when other kids break them, their impulse is to worry that those kids will be punished, not to ensure that they will.

The kids in the lower right quadrant, the passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones. They don't care much about rules and probably aren't 100% sure what the rules even are.

And the kids in the upper right quadrant, the aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones. When they see a rule, their first impulse is to question it. Merely being told what to do makes them inclined to do the opposite.

When measuring conformism, of course, you have to say with respect to what, and this changes as kids get older. For younger kids it's the rules set by adults. But as kids get older, the source of rules becomes their peers. So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite.

In adulthood we can recognize the four types by their distinctive...

 

[macbill]

America First!

 

[florduh]

America First!

No, no. This is Fake News. You have to include Australia as well. Their numbers prove the US is doing well.

Yesterday, Australia reported 350 new cases. Therefore America's doing a good job. Nevermind that Kansas reported 700 cases on the same day.

 

[EmDeemo]

Humans are such easy (jet) prey...

EasyJet increases flights to cope with holidaymaker demand

EasyJet increases flights to cope with holidaymaker demand

The airline adds more flights to cope with increasing demand from holidaymakers.

www.bbc.co.uk

Global report: France 'could lose control of Covid-19 at any time'

Global report: France 'could lose control of Covid-19 at any time'

Experts say Germany is already in second wave as UN warns of global education catastrophe

www.theguardian.com

Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

Donald Trump flounders in interview over US Covid-19 death toll

President again says he is doing ‘incredible job’ fighting pandemic and casts doubt on Jeffrey Epstein’s cause of death

www.theguardian.com