COVID-19 News

[vtac]

Some more on where we're at with rapid at home testing from the co-founder of a company working on the technology. Looks like it will likely be done via nasal swab, but not the deep ones. Currently at $3-$5 for the company to produce a test. Will need some government investment to ramp up manufacturing, get the price down, and aid in distrubution.

I forgot to post this last time - probably old news by now. Not much of a surprise that surgical style masks work well in doing what they were designed to do. Be mindful around people wearing bandanas or "neck fleeces".

We noticed that speaking through some masks (particularly the neck fleece) seemed to disperse the largest droplets into a multitude of smaller droplets which explains the apparent increase in droplet count relative to no mask. Considering that smaller particles are airborne longer than large droplets larger droplets sink faster), the use of such a mask might be counterproductive.

 

[Green Kiwi]

News From New Zealand: we got it BACK.
Not really a lot of what and how is yet know, but that will follow most likely soon.
Yesterday. over 6000 people(we are a small nation, only 5 mil. peeps here.)got tested and 14 so far have tested positive.All related to one family, whom unfortunately thought it was a good plan to go holidaying and traveling around the north island while having symptoms already for 5 days.
The authorities in health, are pretty curtain it stems from an isolation breach.
if you want to read about how unbelievably selfies and dump some of those coming back to New Zealand are ,after they lost their overseas jobs, and having to isolate for 14 day's: just read some older stories on our main media outlet:Stuff.Real asshole behaviour is clearly not only happening in the states.........

Hope we as a online community can continue being kind and respectful and thoughtful for all of us FC people from all around the globe, reading and following several treads give's me a truely warm feeling inside..I'm feeling supported just by being around on this forum..

 

[macbill]

Nearly 1,500 U.S. coronavirus deaths mark deadliest day of summer

The United States logged nearly 1,500 coronavirus-related fatalities on Wednesday, marking the deadliest day of the summer so far. The grim tally is the highest since mid-May, signaling that America does not have the pandemic under control despite stabilizing case numbers.

 

[Tranquility]

I don't think you guys even understood his argument. You spent more time looking up his credentials than just looking at his facts. What he posits is that Covid is a respiratory disease that is going to be transmitted in populations no matter what measures are currently taken. Some measures may delay spread, but, in the end, it will spread just as it has everywhere else.

If you look at the chart of the Philippines cases, deaths or whatever measure you feel will make your case best, they're in the early stage of the pandemic. The chart is on the upswing. Yes, mask wearing, enforced social distancing and the other measures they took, worked. It flattened the curve.

They still have more ride to go.

Maybe they'll buy Russia's vaccine as a lifeline to get out of the economic deaths to come from their policies and be guinea pigs for the rest of us. Otherwise, their numbers are going to get worse.

 

[florduh]

I don't think you guys even understood his argument. You spent more time looking up his credentials than just looking at his facts.

I understand the political blogger's "argument" just fine. It's just really dumb. The blog hosting articles with titles like "Christians in the Age of COVID Fascism" didn't do much to bolster the site's credibility though.

Some measures may delay spread, but, in the end, it will spread just as it has everywhere else.

LOL. Not everywhere else. Again, the country this guy chose to evaluate is the Philippines. They have 148,000 cases. We have 5 million cases. They have a whole lot of catching up to do. The Philippines is experiencing an upswing? Fine. But they're seeing 5,000-6,000 new daily cases. We're seeing 50,000-60,000. We don't have 10 times as many people either.

Maybe one day the Philippines will be just as ravaged as the United States. Then Horowitz won't sound like a dummy. But we're a long way off from that.

If you look at the chart of the Philippines cases, deaths or whatever measure you feel will make your case best, they're in the early stage of the pandemic. The chart is on the upswing. Yes, mask wearing, enforced social distancing and the other measures they took, worked. It flattened the curve.

They still have more ride to go.

I think desperately trying to deflect from America's utter failure to contain this pandemic by comparing us to other countries is a fool's errand. There simply isn't data available that changes the fact no other industrialized country has anything approaching the number of cases and deaths we're experiencing. Isn't there a saying about looking at the speck in your brother's eye.

 

[Tranquility]

I understand the political blogger's "argument" just fine. It's just really dumb. The blog hosting articles with titles like "Christians in the Age of COVID Fascism" didn't do much to bolster the site's credibility though.

Which part is "dumb"? You see, that's the part that keeps getting left out, the counter argument on the issue. Do you have a criticism on the other title you don't like? Let's hear it! Otherwise it's just trying to prevent talking about inconvenient facts through character assassination.

LOL. Not everywhere else. Again, the country this guy chose to evaluate is the Philippines. They have 148,000 cases. We have 5 million cases. They have a whole lot of catching up to do. The Philippines is experiencing an upswing? Fine. But they're seeing 5,000-6,000 new daily cases. We're seeing 50,000-60,000. We don't have 10 times as many people either.

Maybe one day the Philippines will be just as ravaged as the United States. Then Horowitz won't sound like a dummy. But we're a long way off from that.

We'll certainly see.

I think desperately trying to deflect from America's utter failure to contain this pandemic by comparing us to other countries is a fool's errand. There simply isn't data available that changes the fact no other industrialized country has anything approaching the number of cases and deaths we're experiencing. Isn't there a saying about looking at the speck in your brother's eye.

And some here say it's not political. An article on how a country used authoritarian tactics to stop infection in their country and failed turns up with the usual suspects deriding America's response. I was going to ask a few question in regards to definitions but, at the very least, shouldn't the proper measure be related to population?

Edit:
PPE? Luddite. The new mask will be nano...
Nasal spray could prevent people from catching the coronavirus and be more effective than wearing PPE, scientists claim

 

[florduh]

Which part is "dumb"?

Literally all of it. I don't really want to spend time picking apart every dipshit thing this political blogger said. Suffice it to say, his entire premise is stupid. Maybe the Philippines took the wrong approach. But they aren't experiencing the kind of widespread infections and deaths the United States is experiencing. It's not even close. So if the Philippines represents failure, what the fuck does Horowitz think the US is experiencing? We have 3 times as many people but EIGHTY TIMES as many dead bodies. And the Philippines is a developing country.

An article on how a country used authoritarian tactics to stop infection in their country and failed

They didn't fail to the extent America has. I posted the numbers. You claim that one day, the Philippines will fail just just as badly as America has. Maybe. Until then, Horowitz's entire argument is based on a dipshit premise.

And some here say it's not political.

You posted an article from a political blog. I'm just pointing out the author's entire premise is bullshit.

 

[Tranquility]

Saying something is bullshit is not the same as it being so. Even if you say it again and again with the same conclusory insults and attempt to bring it back to the U.S. for some reason. Wild.

In other news, China is now very concerned about food waste.
Xi calls on Chinese not to waste food as crop shortage fears grow
SHANGHAI -- Chinese President Xi Jinping is urging people not to waste food as concerns grow over crop shortages stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters.
Xi has advocated legislation and supervision to prevent food waste, calling it "shocking and distressing," state media Xinhua reported on Tuesday.
Floods in areas along the Yangtze River, the worst since 1998, destroyed 5.6 million hectares of crops in July, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management. Parts of the country remain inundated.

A video last month on Weibo, China's microblogging platform, showed a rotten corn stockpile at state-owned China Grain Reserves Group, or Sinograin. The company investigated the matter and denied that it took place at its granary in Heilongjiang Province.
The ability to feed a population of 1.4 billion is a top priority for the government, which relies on both domestic production and imports. But there are no signs yet of a stockpile shortage -- summer grain output stood at 142.8 million tons this year, up 1.21 million tons from a year earlier, official data show...

Remember kids, it's not the pandemic, it's the response to the pandemic.
The Covid-19 Crisis Has Wiped Out Nearly Half Of Black Small Businesses

Nearly half of Black small businesses had been wiped out by the end of April as the pandemic ravaged minority communities disproportionately, according to a report from the New York Fed.

Black-owned businesses were more than twice as likely to shutter as their white counterparts, the report found.

"Nationally representative data on small businesses indicate that the number of active business owners fell by 22% from February to April 2020—the largest drop on record," the report said.

"Black businesses experienced the most acute decline, with a 41% drop. Latinx business owners fell by 32% and Asian business owners dropped by 26%."

That figure has likely increased substantially as the pandemic has dragged on with a resurgence of cases this summer that has taken the country’s number of infections to a world record of over 5 million.

The number of white-owned small firms, in contrast, fell just 17%...

 

[Vitolo]

Perhaps there is an inherent antibody or immunity in the Philippine people...
... or something in their daily routine or diet, that has caused them lower numbers.

 

[florduh]

Saying something is bullshit is not the same as it being so. Even if you say it again and again with the same conclusory insults and attempt to bring it back to the U.S. for some reason. Wild.

I wrote in plain English exactly why that political blogpost is bullshit, multiple times. Not sure what your problem is.

 

[Tranquility]

You made conclusory statements

I wrote in plain English exactly why that political blogpost is bullshit, multiple times. Not sure what your problem is.

I am reminded of:

------------

Here's a report that purports to model how well states will do. Correlation is not causation but geez. There's a lot of correlation going on that looks bad for Democrats. (To be fair, the model is built on the fact the less the government spends and taxes the more their economy grows. Something that is certainly predictive but not, necessarily, causative.)
Rich States, Poor states

[For fun, I use the report and went to https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_governors to find party affiliation of governors. 24 Democrats and 26 Republicans. The comparison between party affiliation of Governor and state economic outlook was pretty correlated. There were 8 Democrats in the top 1/2 of the economic outlook and 9 Republicans in the bottom half. If we use the ranking as just a number, we'd expect that if we added up all the rankings and then divided it by the number in the party, we should get a general ranking between the parties. (Lower being better) For the data, R's totaled 504 and D's totaled 771 for an R average rank of about 19 and a D average rank of 32.]

 

[florduh]

You made conclusory statements

Nope. I explained using numbers why the author's premise in the Anti-Makser loon blog you posted is bullshit, at least twice. You can claim otherwise all you want.

There's a lot of correlation going on that looks bad for Democrats

Oh well I mean if Albert Laffer says so, it must be true. Why isn't Kansas, the state Albert helped bankrupt, in the top 10? LOL.

"Right Wing Ideologue Believes Republican States are Better than Democrat States"

That's not even news, let alone COVID News.

 

[Tranquility]

Why isn't Kansas, the state Albert helped bankrupt, in the top 10? LOL.

"Right Wing Ideologue Believes Republican States are Better than Democrat States"

That's not even news, let alone COVID News.

Funny stuff. Note the lack of any actual response other than insult. Again. But, won't argue if it fits better in the Covid changes thread.

--------------------
I wonder if the same applies to masks (emphasis mine):
Obesity and COVID-19: Blame isn't a strategy

On July 27th, 2020, the UK government released the new national strategy for tackling obesity. In big bold font, the heading of the official press release urges people to “Lose weight to beat COVID-19 and protect the NHS”.
In the first 4 months of the pandemic, England witnessed the greatest rate of excess deaths in Europe. According to a New York Times analysis, between March 14 and July 17, 2020, the UK has had 62 600 more deaths, a 31% increase, compared with the same period last year.
Obesity, along with other chronic conditions such as diabetes, is a recognised risk factor for severe clinical outcomes of COVID-19. The new obesity strategy, published alongside the ‘Better Health’ campaign, led by Public Health England, intends to restrict advertisements and promotions of unhealthy foods, improve nutritional labelling of foods and drinks in restaurants and stores, and expand weight management services.

The ambition for a healthier nation, during and beyond COVID-19, is to be praised. However, at a time where our economies are fragile, bans on food promotions and advertisements could also result in higher prices and growing inequalities, which themselves contribute to obesity and poor health outcomes. Equally troubling, by targeting almost exclusively the obesogenic environment, and only a small part of it, the new policies fail to take into account the intricacy of biological, societal, and psychological factors that underpin obesity.
The suggestion that it is necessary to lose weight to “reduce pressure on doctors and nurses in the NHS, and free up their time to treat other sick and vulnerable patients”, communicated in the policy document, is also one of the most glaring examples of health promotion strategies that draws on guilt and shame. Past Public Health history has shown that such campaigns are ineffective and even detrimental.
The COVID-19 culture has become a blame culture. The obesity rates in England are concerning, but they are not the main culprit for the nation's high COVID-19 death toll. Let's not forget that people with obesity are vulnerable patients too.

 

[Gunky]

Nope. I explained using numbers why the author's premise in the Anti-Makser loon blog you posted is bullshit, at least twice. You can claim otherwise all you want.



Oh well I mean if Albert Laffer says so, it must be true. Why isn't Kansas, the state Albert helped bankrupt, in the top 10? LOL.

"Right Wing Ideologue Believes Republican States are Better than Democrat States"

That's not even news, let alone COVID News.

After you go through the whole killer explanation of why Moonie-ism is creepy and weird, he says "but won't you come to our dinner?" Take note when someone leads you on a merry chase, all the while endlessly pointing at supposed shiny objects that turn out to be vapor. Well I guess this is a vapor forum but...

 

[florduh]

Take note when someone leads you on a merry chase, all the while endlessly pointing at supposed shiny objects that turn out to be vapor.

Good point. I have a terrible habit of assuming good faith where none exists. In the future, I'll refrain from feeling the need to point out nonsense when I see it here. I'm guessing most people reading this thread will be able to determine what's bullshit without my chiming in.

Back to reality...

Many community outbreaks of COVID traced to restaurants, bars
New data shows that many of the community outbreaks of coronavirus that have cropped up in the United States this summer have originated in restaurants and bars.

In Louisiana, roughly a quarter of the state's 2,360 cases since March that were outside of places like nursing homes and prisons had their origins in bars and restaurants, The New York Times reported. Meanwhile, 12% of new coronavirus cases in Maryland last month were traced to restaurants, while 9% of cases in Colorado have been traced to bars and restaurants, the newspaper said.

On Native American Land, Contact Tracing Is Saving Lives

The coronavirus is raging through the White Mountain Apache tribe. Spread across a large reservation in eastern Arizona, the Apaches have been infected at more than 10 times the rate of people in the state as a whole.

Yet their death rate from Covid-19 is far lower, just 1.3 percent, as compared with 2.1 percent in Arizona. Epidemiologists have a hopeful theory about what led to this startling result: Intensive contact tracing on the reservation likely enabled teams that included doctors to find and treat gravely ill people before it was too late to save them.

A crucial tool has been a simple, inexpensive medical device: an oximeter that, clipped to a finger, detected dangerously low blood oxygen levels in people who often didn’t even realize they were seriously ill.

 

[Planck]

"Coronavirus Fascism: Will We Let America Become Like Australia?" or "Christians and the Age of COVID Tyranny"

I'm still chuckling over these. Good grief one just can't make this stuff up. smh
Sad part is they could be official documents from the commander in chief.
Life in the age of COVID tyranny is surreal.

With props to Zappa, I'm moving to Australia soon, gonna be a mental health tycoon.

 

[Gunky]

Good point. I have a terrible habit of assuming good faith where none exists. In the future, I'll refrain from feeling the need to point out nonsense when I see it here. I'm guessing most people reading this thread will be able to determine what's bullshit without my chiming in.

No you've done a good job of exploring some fallacies so it's instructive. But you know. Flood the zone - it's a technique. Now we have all these American right wingers taking the correspondence course from Putin.

 

[macbill]

Death toll rivals fatality rate during 1918 flu epidemic, researchers say

“For anyone who doesn’t understand the magnitude of what we’re living through, this pandemic is comparable in its effect on mortality to what everyone agrees is the previous worst pandemic,” said Jeremy S. Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who led the team that conducted the data review.

 

[florduh]

We're doing a lot less coronavirus testing
The U.S. is cutting back on coronavirus testing. Nationally, the number of tests performed each day is about 17% lower than it was at the end of July, and testing is also declining in hard-hit states.

Why it matters: This big reduction in testing has helped clear away delays that undermined the response to the pandemic. But doing fewer tests can also undermine the response to the pandemic.

By the numbers: At the end of July, America was doing more than 800,000 tests a day. This week, it's hovered around 715,000.

 

[Tranquility]

Death toll rivals fatality rate during 1918 flu epidemic, researchers say

“For anyone who doesn’t understand the magnitude of what we’re living through, this pandemic is comparable in its effect on mortality to what everyone agrees is the previous worst pandemic,” said Jeremy S. Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who led the team that conducted the data review.

When I first read this the other day, I thought it was an amazing statistic that rang wrong somehow. When you read the article, it seems a bit of a fear-mongering headline and enough to be considered fake news. While it was stated in the article, it was not clear what they were comparing without reading very closely. The study:
Comparison of Estimated Excess Deaths in New York City During the COVID-19 and 1918 Influenza Pandemics

... In this study, excess deaths in New York City during the peak of the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic were compared with those during the initial period of the COVID-19 outbreak. ...

So, they're taking the numbers from the very localized place where the worst part of the Covid pandemic in all the world happened and compared it to the same localized place when it was as representative as any other places and found "excess deaths" to be about the same.

 

[macbill]

 

[Tranquility]

Britain’s New Record: A Recession Worse Than in Europe and North America

 

[macbill]

This Won't Help Their GDP
British holidaymakers in France told to immediately return home or face 14-day quarantine

This anxious, germophobic summer just got a bit worse for 160,000 British citizens on holiday in France. They must return home immediately — or face a 14-day quarantine upon their arrival in the United Kingdom.

 

[vapirtoo]

My sister in Texas just pointed out, that many stores have signs saying no shirt, no shoes, no service. This is for decorum not health and no one complains. Why is mask wearing so onerous?

 

[Tranquility]

My sister in Texas just pointed out, that many stores have signs saying no shirt, no shoes, no service. This is for decorum not health and no one complains. Why is mask wearing so onerous?

You should have seen the uproar when San Francisco wanted people to wear pants in restaurants.