Claim That Covid-19 Came From Lab In China Completely Unfoun

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 18:41:49 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 3:23:49 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 14:27:41 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

Nonsense. Shooting down ideas is a professional skill of scientists, and
doing so is criticism, which is a form of professional assistance. Accept it
and say 'thank you', and don't fantasize about nonexistent insults.

Good grief, most of your posts are frank insults. And you never
discuss, especially on topic.

Untrue; when you suggested doing a 1000-person random sample
looking for antibodies, I gave a numeric analysis of its expected signal and noise.
Totally on topic discussion, no insults.

That's exactly what people are doing in 1000-sorts of antibody studies
now, and the results are startling. Like infection rates found to be
80x the previous official counts. James has referenced some, and there
will be more and bigger soon.

A sample of a thousand (I suggested thousands per sample, repeated
weekly) can contain a lot of data. You said they would be useless.

I certainly DID insult you, at least once, after you causeless claims got to be irritating.
It was fun, I'll repeat it some day.

Be careful to be right next time.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 15:17:32 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
<ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:31:41 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:40:05 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:20:03 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Most people, especially here, are hostile to ideas. They shoot down
concepts instead of playing with them.

Scientists are better at shooting down ideas than John Larkin will ever
be. This is a *.sci forum, so the professionals post their thoughts occasionally.

Whenever you are challenged to think, you switch to insults. I suppose
insults are your prime skill set. It sure ain't electronics or system
dynamics.

Nonsense. Shooting down ideas is a professional skill of scientists, and
doing so is criticism, which is a form of professional assistance. Accept it
and say 'thank you', and don't fantasize about nonexistent insults.

whit3rd, you seem like a smart guy. Smarter than me anyway.
Why are you so hostile to JL? Playing with ideas is much more
fun than shooting them down. Shooting down crazy ideas is easy.

George H.

Even bizarre ideas lead to great ideas and great products. Especially
bizarre ideas. Shoot-on-sight is not a good way to discover things,
unless of course you know everything already.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 2:15:16 PM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:48:54 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

C19 will burn out, and its descendents will hit us in the future. Some
day we may understand this ongoing dance between viruses and people.

Some brush fires 'burn out', COVID-19 isn't going to (or it would have lapsed while it was still in bats).

Covid-19 isn't "in bats". It's likely ancestor does seem to have come from them.

We understood the important parts of this infection last year. John Larkin is in denial.

Working hypothesis <> denial.

John Larkin isn't so much in denial as pig-ignorant.

John thinks it'll burn out eventually. Rick thinks it'll vanish if we
hide. I'm sure that it won't burn out.

Viruses don't burn out. They frequently evolve new variations that human immune systems don't recognise, but what John Larkin describes as burning out is actually the population developing herd immunity.

> I expect it'll persist in the population cloaked, like manifold other pestilences.

Such as smallpox. Viruses don't cloak themselves - they aren't that clever. RNA viruses do mutate quite rapidly, so eventually evade herd immunity.

> But I accept there's a small possibility that I'm wrong.

In reality there's a high probablity that you are wrong, and know it.

I haven't said that anything here is for sure. I haven't denied
anything except being afraid. The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on. I have suggested some dynamics
that I think could be true, and given the uncertainty, I think that
none are impossible. Even considering possibilities sets some people
ballistic.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own. If we consider their mutations to have returned and thus
contradict the burnout concept, they took decades to do it.

They didn't burn out. We developed herd immunity. Some people died in the process - quite a few in 1918.

I think we agree that this is a bad cold with a lot of PR, and
shutting down the world economy has no exit strategy.

James Arthur and John Larkin may think this - or pretend to - but Covid-19 is a lot more lethal than a bad cold, or seasonal flu. Heaps of dead bodies does influence public perception - that is a kind of public relations exercise, but it's hard to get the heaps of dead bodies without a dangerous disease.

> Colds are seasonal and go away and some other cold pops up next year. Some years are worse than others.

But Covid-19 is a whole lot worse than a cold, and much more likely to kill you.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:48:54 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

C19 will burn out, and its descendents will hit us in the future. Some
day we may understand this ongoing dance between viruses and people.

Some brush fires 'burn out', COVID-19 isn't going to (or it would have
lapsed while it was still in bats).
We understood the important parts of this infection last year. John Larkin
is in denial.

Working hypothesis <> denial.

John thinks it'll burn out eventually. Rick thinks it'll vanish if we
hide. I'm sure that it won't burn out. I expect it'll persist in the population cloaked, like manifold other pestilences. But I accept
there's a small possibility that I'm wrong.

Cheers,
James Arthur

I haven't said that anything here is for sure. I haven't denied
anything except being afraid. The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on. I have suggested some dynamics
that I think could be true, and given the uncertainty, I think that
none are impossible. Even considering possibilities sets some people
ballistic.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own. If we consider their mutations to have returned and thus
contradict the burnout concept, they took decades to do it.

I think we agree that this is a bad cold with a lot of PR, and
shutting down the world economy has no exit strategy. Colds are
seasonal and go away and some other cold pops up next year. Some years
are worse than others.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[whit3rd]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 9:15:16 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

...The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on.

Alas, decisions have been (and must be) made. Find a way to
ignore hysteria (whatever that means).

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own.

Because the only one comparable (1918) predates modern
medicine.

> I think we agree that this is a bad cold

Evidence suggests that we do not agree on that. I've explicitly rejected that.

 

[whit3rd]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 9:24:10 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 18:41:49 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:


...you suggested doing a 1000-person random sample
looking for antibodies, I gave a numeric analysis of its expected signal and noise.

That's exactly what people are doing in 1000-sorts of antibody studies
now, and the results are startling. Like infection rates found to be
80x the previous official counts. James has referenced some, and there
will be more and bigger soon.

Well, yes, but startling results was how COVID-19 was found not to be influenza,
back in 2019. Startling results was how the first round of CDC test kits was found
to be faulty. And startling results might mean another test kit issue now.
The reports are just fragments, I'll wait to see the peer review.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 2:18:22 PM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 15:17:32 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
ggherold@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 5:27:47 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:31:41 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:40:05 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:20:03 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Most people, especially here, are hostile to ideas. They shoot down
concepts instead of playing with them.

Scientists are better at shooting down ideas than John Larkin will ever
be. This is a *.sci forum, so the professionals post their thoughts occasionally.

Whenever you are challenged to think, you switch to insults. I suppose
insults are your prime skill set. It sure ain't electronics or system
dynamics.

Nonsense. Shooting down ideas is a professional skill of scientists, and
doing so is criticism, which is a form of professional assistance. Accept it
and say 'thank you', and don't fantasize about nonexistent insults.

whit3rd, you seem like a smart guy. Smarter than me anyway.
Why are you so hostile to JL? Playing with ideas is much more
fun than shooting them down. Shooting down crazy ideas is easy.

Even bizarre ideas lead to great ideas and great products. Especially
bizarre ideas. Shoot-on-sight is not a good way to discover things,
unless of course you know everything already.

Bizarre is one thing. Ignorant re-discovery of the wheel is something else.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 2:24:10 PM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 18:41:49 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 3:23:49 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 14:27:41 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

Nonsense. Shooting down ideas is a professional skill of scientists, and

doing so is criticism, which is a form of professional assistance. Accept it
and say 'thank you', and don't fantasize about nonexistent insults.

Good grief, most of your posts are frank insults. And you never
discuss, especially on topic.

Untrue; when you suggested doing a 1000-person random sample
looking for antibodies, I gave a numeric analysis of its expected signal and noise.Totally on topic discussion, no insults.

That's exactly what people are doing in 1000-sorts of antibody studies
now, and the results are startling.

The pre-print of the results of the study - which haven't made it through peer-review yet - are indeed startling to the point of being decidedly implausible.

The certainly don't line up with the Australian contact tracing results, which trace about two-thirds of new cases back to a known confirmed case, and only one third are left with no known source.

The chance that there are eighty times more undetected cases in the Australian community than detected cases seems to be negligible.

The chance that the Californian antibody test is picking up antibodies to corona viruses other than Covid-19 may not be.

Like infection rates found to be
80x the previous official counts. James has referenced some, and there
will be more and bigger soon.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/germany-covid-19-antibody-testing-nationwide-2020-4?r=US&IR=T

As long as the antibody tests are dubious, the results will be too.

"Science surrounding antibody testing is still developing, too, and concerns have emerged around the tests being inaccurate, rushed, and improperly marketed. More than 100 organisations are selling such tests in the US, but the US Food and Drug Administration has only approved a few."

A sample of a thousand (I suggested thousands per sample, repeated
weekly) can contain a lot of data. You said they would be useless.

Not as useful as a more reliable test for people who have actually got the virus. The US isn't doing anything like enough of them yet, and they should have priority.

I certainly DID insult you, at least once, after you causeless claims got to be irritating.It was fun, I'll repeat it some day.

Be careful to be right next time.

As if he wasn't right. John Larkin is really good at not realising when he has been busted - he seems to stop reading when the flattery level drops below his threshold.

Anything that doesn't include "John Larkin's brilliant insights" within the first few lines isn't going to hack it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Ricky C]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 12:15:16 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

I think we agree that this is a bad cold with a lot of PR, and
shutting down the world economy has no exit strategy. Colds are
seasonal and go away and some other cold pops up next year. Some years
are worse than others.

Yes, you are almost certainly right and those disease experts who have spent decades studying viruses, how they spread and how they kill and how to prevent them from killing have no where near as much insight to the problem as John Larkin.

Yup, it is very unreasonable to try to explain to you why you are full of BS.

People have explained to you in excruciating detail and yet you refuse to even acknowledge their points.

You remind me of Gareth Evans, a well respected troll of the first order. In fact, you could give him lessons. Well, maybe it's more like you two could offer a seminar together.

--

Rick C.

+-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Martin Brown]

On 22/04/2020 17:48, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

C19 will burn out, and its descendents will hit us in the future. Some
day we may understand this ongoing dance between viruses and people.

Some brush fires 'burn out', COVID-19 isn't going to (or it would have
lapsed while it was still in bats).
We understood the important parts of this infection last year. John Larkin
is in denial.

Working hypothesis <> denial.

John thinks it'll burn out eventually.

I'm sort of with John on this. It will burn out eventually but if we do
not have a vaccine then it will have killed somewhere between 1 and 5%
of the worlds population by the time it does.

The uncertainty being largely due to the varying quality of medical care
in the developing world and the risk of overwhelming the medical
capabilities of the developed world (as happened in Italy).

There is a risk that it will mutate just enough year on year to make
itself a nuisance essentially forever (much like seasonal flu). Once you
have opened Pandora's box it is very hard to put the lid back on.

Rick thinks it'll vanish if we
hide.

I think it is too late for that. We might have been able to lock it down
at an earlier stage when contact tracing was still viable. Unfortunately
it is now present in the general population at far too high a level.

That is how Ebola, MERS and SARS have previously been brought under
control before they became global pandemics.

I'm sure that it won't burn out. I expect it'll persist in the population cloaked, like manifold other pestilences. But I accept
there's a small possibility that I'm wrong.

I don't think it will be very cloaked. It will continue to kill a few
percent of all those it infects unless and until we are able to make an
effective vaccine in sufficient quantity to create herd immunity.

At the present burn rate it will take around 2 years to work through the
entire population. UK infections are presently reckoned to be a shade
under 2%. They are doing a community testing programme of 20k random
households to find out the true figure and how it evolves right now.

Even then it may still be unstable enough to continue to be a nuisance
long into the future. There is no pressure on it to become milder.

There is an outside chance that one of the drugs under test can
ameliorate the severity of the infection in susceptible individuals.

The only other hope would be a genetic test for susceptibility to the
devastating side effects of the infection. If we knew which 80% can
catch it and live to tell the tale then it might be possible to obtain
herd immunity that way. That was the original UK herd immunity plan. The
Dutch and Swedes are still following a variation on that theme.

One thing that was interesting on the BBC R4 programme tonight was a US
medic saying that the Covid-19 has a curiously damaging effect that in
the unfortunate susceptible patients crashes their blood oxygen levels
very rapidly and in a way that induces hypoxia and impaired judgement.

This could go a long way towards explaining why the German testing
regime which identifies more infections early and keeps an eye on them
has a much lower mortality rate. The countries that do a spot blood
oxygenation check and if it looks not too bad say go home, take a
paracetamol and come back if it gets worse are losing some people who
could have been saved by prompt intervention before they go critical.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 23/04/2020 05:15, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:48:54 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

C19 will burn out, and its descendents will hit us in the future. Some
day we may understand this ongoing dance between viruses and people.

Some brush fires 'burn out', COVID-19 isn't going to (or it would have
lapsed while it was still in bats).
We understood the important parts of this infection last year. John Larkin
is in denial.

Working hypothesis <> denial.

John thinks it'll burn out eventually. Rick thinks it'll vanish if we
hide. I'm sure that it won't burn out. I expect it'll persist in the population cloaked, like manifold other pestilences. But I accept
there's a small possibility that I'm wrong.

Cheers,
James Arthur

I haven't said that anything here is for sure. I haven't denied
anything except being afraid. The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on. I have suggested some dynamics
that I think could be true, and given the uncertainty, I think that
none are impossible. Even considering possibilities sets some people
ballistic.

The data are already pretty clear. This pandemic roughly compresses your
annual risk of dying into a week spent with the infection. The effect of
Covid-19 on individuals almost exactly mirrors their annual risk of
dying as a function of age and of other health risk factors. See:

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196

The only feature that isn't reflected in the Covid-19 stats are the
higher number of young men who die early in car crashes.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own. If we consider their mutations to have returned and thus
contradict the burnout concept, they took decades to do it.

It will burn out eventually but only after it has infected enough people
to be halted by herd immunity. That will kill something like 3% of the
global population (even more if health systems collapse and less if we
can find even one effective treatment that isn't pure snake oil & hype).

I think we agree that this is a bad cold with a lot of PR, and
shutting down the world economy has no exit strategy. Colds are
seasonal and go away and some other cold pops up next year. Some years
are worse than others.

If you are over 70 and/or have serious health conditions the risk is
like Russian roulette with one live round in a 6 chambered gun.

Being male counts against you so its more like 4 chambers for old men
and 8 chambers for old women (but the average is still about 6).

If you are an individual of unspecified age it is a 30 chambered gun and
if you are fit and healthy under 40 something like a 500 chambered gun.

You have to ask yourself "are you feeling lucky punk?"

The general public isn't used to being face to face with the risk of
immediate death so it isn't at all surprising that they are frightened.
I think the invisible killer aspect being played up heightens the fear.

Anecdata that I do have from my friends and family contacts who have had
coronavirus symptoms are so far:

3 Home - recovered
1 Hospitalised - active
1 Hospitalised - recovered (lung function seriously compromised)

The latter was a skier and was middle aged fit and active. It will be
six months before it is clear whether she will regain fitness again.

Only the hospitalised ones count in the Covid-19 statistics - you don't
get tested for it in the UK unless you are admitted to hospital.


--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 6:22:33 PM UTC+10, Martin Brown wrote:

On 23/04/2020 05:15, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:48:54 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

<snip>

It will burn out eventually but only after it has infected enough people
to be halted by herd immunity.

Not necessarily. Lock-downs and rigorous contact tracing can shut it down within well organised communities long before it can infect enough people to produce herd immunity,

We are going to have to be vigilant until we get a vaccine - and the Australian vaccine has now be shown to work for ferrets and is moving into human trials - but we should be be able to keep the death toll a lot lower than that required to develop herd immunity.

The US doesn't seem to be a well-organised community in this sense, but enough deaths may eventually get their attention - or at least the attention of peole with more sense than John Larkin and James Arthur.

<snipped useful stuff>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Ricky C]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 3:31:12 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 22/04/2020 17:48, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

C19 will burn out, and its descendents will hit us in the future. Some
day we may understand this ongoing dance between viruses and people.

Some brush fires 'burn out', COVID-19 isn't going to (or it would have
lapsed while it was still in bats).
We understood the important parts of this infection last year. John Larkin
is in denial.

Working hypothesis <> denial.

John thinks it'll burn out eventually.

I'm sort of with John on this. It will burn out eventually but if we do
not have a vaccine then it will have killed somewhere between 1 and 5%
of the worlds population by the time it does.

What exactly is the mechanism to "burning out" a virus? Is this something we do??? Or does the virus do it by itself?

Does it burn out just as fast if we quarantine or do we need to actively infect much of the population to "burn out" the virus?

Can we wait until next winter to "burn out" the virus and use it to heat our homes?

The uncertainty being largely due to the varying quality of medical care
in the developing world and the risk of overwhelming the medical
capabilities of the developed world (as happened in Italy).

There is a risk that it will mutate just enough year on year to make
itself a nuisance essentially forever (much like seasonal flu). Once you
have opened Pandora's box it is very hard to put the lid back on.

Rick thinks it'll vanish if we
hide.

I think it is too late for that. We might have been able to lock it down
at an earlier stage when contact tracing was still viable. Unfortunately
it is now present in the general population at far too high a level.

Turns out the virus is very, very tiny, so locking it down is actually not so hard if we get a whole lot of really tiny locks.

Easy peasy!

Your analysis is pretty much nonsense. If the infection rate is high, to get rid of it we need to lower that infection rate. We don't actually lock down the virus. That was a joke. We "lock down" the people, keeping them separate so they don't transmit the virus.

Not complicated. Enough isolation to reduce R0 below 1 and the virus dies off, all of it.

The question is not how widely are we infected now. Reduce R0 low enough and it will exponentially decay just as it exponentially increased. The problem is we will need to shoot a few people to enforce the lock down. I'm mostly ok with that. I mean, a few people to illustrate the point. Start with the ones who show up at anti-American, anti-Country, anti-lock down protests and in particular the ones who show up with guns. Get them first or they may shoot back. When I was looking at the photos of the guys with assault rifles at the protest I realized they were standing up high where they could see well, but also be very easy to pick off. Make sure you use a very loud gun so everyone knows exactly what happened and take photos of people pointing to the grassy knoll.

That is how Ebola, MERS and SARS have previously been brought under
control before they became global pandemics.

What, by letting them "burn out"??? No, exactly wrong. We sent experts to isolate, treat victims and in the case of Ebola proper disposal of the body. Ebola is not actually all that contagious unless you come into contact with body fluids. Victims' families would handle the body and get infected.. Once we got them to listen to us and stop their contagious practices the epidemic ended. But just like lock down in the US, this was not well received and the medical teams were not respected or paid attention to.

I'm sure that it won't burn out. I expect it'll persist in the population cloaked, like manifold other pestilences. But I accept
there's a small possibility that I'm wrong.

I don't think it will be very cloaked. It will continue to kill a few
percent of all those it infects unless and until we are able to make an
effective vaccine in sufficient quantity to create herd immunity.

At the present burn rate it will take around 2 years to work through the
entire population. UK infections are presently reckoned to be a shade
under 2%. They are doing a community testing programme of 20k random
households to find out the true figure and how it evolves right now.

Even then it may still be unstable enough to continue to be a nuisance
long into the future. There is no pressure on it to become milder.

Sure there is. People who can convey the disease without feeling or displaying symptoms are more likely to spread the disease, lock down or not. It's that simple. You don't have to cough or sneeze. We all touch our faces to get germs on our hands which are conveyed to others who in turn touch their faces and contract the disease. If we are displaying symptoms we will seek treatment or at least our appearance will warn others to avoid us.

There is an outside chance that one of the drugs under test can
ameliorate the severity of the infection in susceptible individuals.

The only other hope would be a genetic test for susceptibility to the
devastating side effects of the infection. If we knew which 80% can
catch it and live to tell the tale then it might be possible to obtain
herd immunity that way. That was the original UK herd immunity plan. The
Dutch and Swedes are still following a variation on that theme.

Trouble is the cost in lives in reaching that herd immunity level may be huge. Even if we know (mostly) which people can not be significantly impacted by the disease, getting most of them infected will assuredly infect many of the other 20%.

One thing that was interesting on the BBC R4 programme tonight was a US
medic saying that the Covid-19 has a curiously damaging effect that in
the unfortunate susceptible patients crashes their blood oxygen levels
very rapidly and in a way that induces hypoxia and impaired judgement.

That's a great impact.

This could go a long way towards explaining why the German testing
regime which identifies more infections early and keeps an eye on them
has a much lower mortality rate. The countries that do a spot blood
oxygenation check and if it looks not too bad say go home, take a
paracetamol and come back if it gets worse are losing some people who
could have been saved by prompt intervention before they go critical.

It's a mess no matter how you look at it.

If we set aside the horror of having so many people ill and dead, it would be interesting to see how the countries would respond to a second wave later this summer or in the fall. I know it would make Trump freak. I think he knows the worse the virus is the less his chances are for reelection.

Initially I blamed Trump for not getting us on the right foot early enough. Now I think I see in the US we just aren't willing to go without haircuts or parties for long enough to get rid of this thing. So likely it didn't matter what Trump did or didn't do. He could shoot the first CV patient in Times square... wait, that's not really the point.

--

Rick C.

+-++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 22:12:03 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 9:15:16 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

...The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on.

Alas, decisions have been (and must be) made. Find a way to
ignore hysteria (whatever that means).

That's hard, to supress your emotions and make rational decisions. It
really can't be done. One can try a feed-forward correction, like a
baseball pitcher who keeps throwing a foot to the right, so
deliberately aims a foot left.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own.

Because the only one comparable (1918) predates modern
medicine.

There have been big flu epidemics for at least recorded history. Like
the one in 6000 BC. I think humanity survived that one.

Modern medicine isn't helping much with this one so far. Read Barry's
book. They knew about vaccines and used antibody treatments for many
diseases in those days, but weren't successful in treating the flu, as
we are not yet successful in treating this virus.

We do have more theory, but so far it's not helping.

I think we agree that this is a bad cold

Evidence suggests that we do not agree on that. I've explicitly rejected that.

That was directed at James. I expect you to reject all sorts of ideas.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, April 24, 2020 at 12:26:35 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 22:12:03 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 9:15:16 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

...The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on.

Alas, decisions have been (and must be) made. Find a way to
ignore hysteria (whatever that means).

That's hard, to supress your emotions and make rational decisions.

Most grown-ups can manage it.

> It really can't be done.

Speak for yourself.

One can try a feed-forward correction, like a
baseball pitcher who keeps throwing a foot to the right, so
deliberately aims a foot left.

It isn't that kind of problem.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own.

Because the only one comparable (1918) predates modern
medicine.

There have been big flu epidemics for at least recorded history. Like
the one in 6000 BC. I think humanity survived that one.

Modern medicine isn't helping much with this one so far.

It's not helping much with the treatment, but medical measurement technique are helping no end. Finger oximeters are proving very handy in picking out the people who need oxygen and may end up needing time on a ventilator.

They weren't around in 1918.

And the collated medical statistics are giving us a much faster and clearer picture of what's going on thn anybody had in 1918, to those who understand them. Your bizarre claims that the US is past the peak of the epidemic, when the number of active cases is still rising steadily

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

does suggest that you aren't one of them

Read Barry's book. They knew about vaccines and used antibody treatments for many diseases in those days, but weren't successful in treating the flu, as we are not yet successful in treating this virus.

We do have more theory, but so far it's not helping.

It doesn't seem to be helping the US much but other countries have managed to keep the proportion of the population infected much lower, and pretty much stop it from rising any more.

I think we agree that this is a bad cold

Evidence suggests that we do not agree on that. I've explicitly rejected that.

That was directed at James. I expect you to reject all sorts of ideas.

Most people reject really stupid and obviously false propositions like that one.

The fact that you and James don't doesn't say much for your grasp of reality.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 23/04/2020 15:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 22:12:03 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 9:15:16 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

...The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on.

Alas, decisions have been (and must be) made. Find a way to
ignore hysteria (whatever that means).

That's hard, to supress your emotions and make rational decisions.

No it isn't you just have to crunch all the numbers.

The balance that has to be struck is between minimising short term
fatalities and also in the medium to long term due to economic damage.
The overall outcome a few years down the road is what really matters.

It is all too easy for politicians to go for short term gains just to be
popular (especially in a US election year).

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own.

Because the only one comparable (1918) predates modern
medicine.

There have been big flu epidemics for at least recorded history. Like
the one in 6000 BC. I think humanity survived that one.

Probably since we domesticated wild fowl but perhaps even before that
but back then the population density was so low it would self limit.

Humanity survived the Black Death (a bacterial infection Yersinia
pestis) too but society was changed by the experience and an acute
shortage of labour afterwards significantly altered how work was valued.

WWI/1918 pandemic took things another step further. Prior to that there
were a lot of people in service but afterwards there was a big manpower
shortage driving wages of the survivors up and eventually bankrupting
some of the landed gentry (the Great Depression didn't help).

Modern medicine isn't helping much with this one so far. Read Barry's
book. They knew about vaccines and used antibody treatments for many
diseases in those days, but weren't successful in treating the flu, as
we are not yet successful in treating this virus.

There hasn't been all that much progress against any virus that doesn't
involve vaccination. A cocktail of drugs was eventually found that
controls HIV but it took quite a while to develop. Most anti-viral drugs
are pretty ineffective when compared to antibiotics against bacteria.

> We do have more theory, but so far it's not helping.

We also have vastly more chemical libraries and computing power.
Covid-19 poses unique challenges because it is so novel.

I think we agree that this is a bad cold

Evidence suggests that we do not agree on that. I've explicitly rejected that.

That was directed at James. I expect you to reject all sorts of ideas.

It is nothing like a bad cold. The symptoms are different and this
specific "bad cold" kills a proportion of those that it infects.
Cytokine storms are not something to be taken lightly.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

On Thu, 23 Apr 2020 09:22:28 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 23/04/2020 05:15, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:48:54 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

C19 will burn out, and its descendents will hit us in the future. Some
day we may understand this ongoing dance between viruses and people.

Some brush fires 'burn out', COVID-19 isn't going to (or it would have
lapsed while it was still in bats).
We understood the important parts of this infection last year. John Larkin
is in denial.

Working hypothesis <> denial.

John thinks it'll burn out eventually. Rick thinks it'll vanish if we
hide. I'm sure that it won't burn out. I expect it'll persist in the population cloaked, like manifold other pestilences. But I accept
there's a small possibility that I'm wrong.

Cheers,
James Arthur

I haven't said that anything here is for sure. I haven't denied
anything except being afraid. The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on. I have suggested some dynamics
that I think could be true, and given the uncertainty, I think that
none are impossible. Even considering possibilities sets some people
ballistic.

The data are already pretty clear. This pandemic roughly compresses your
annual risk of dying into a week spent with the infection. The effect of
Covid-19 on individuals almost exactly mirrors their annual risk of
dying as a function of age and of other health risk factors. See:

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196

The only feature that isn't reflected in the Covid-19 stats are the
higher number of young men who die early in car crashes.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own. If we consider their mutations to have returned and thus
contradict the burnout concept, they took decades to do it.

It will burn out eventually but only after it has infected enough people
to be halted by herd immunity. That will kill something like 3% of the
global population (even more if health systems collapse and less if we
can find even one effective treatment that isn't pure snake oil & hype).

Most of europe has peaked. Some countries are down to almost zero new
cases, despite having lots of tests available now. The natural
progression in a compact community or a small country seems to be a
gaussian-looking blip about a month FWHM. But it varies wildly. The
peak is very sharp on, say, a ship. It has a long tail in some places.

It hasn't killed anything like 3% in any situation.

Look at the numbers and curves for the places where it started
earliest:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

I think we agree that this is a bad cold with a lot of PR, and
shutting down the world economy has no exit strategy. Colds are
seasonal and go away and some other cold pops up next year. Some years
are worse than others.

If you are over 70 and/or have serious health conditions the risk is
like Russian roulette with one live round in a 6 chambered gun.

There are 50 million Americans over 65. The US has so far 47K deaths
assigned to C19. That is nothing like a ratio of 6.

Being male counts against you so its more like 4 chambers for old men
and 8 chambers for old women (but the average is still about 6).

That's absurd.

If you are an individual of unspecified age it is a 30 chambered gun and
if you are fit and healthy under 40 something like a 500 chambered gun.

You have to ask yourself "are you feeling lucky punk?"

OK, you get the group award for inventing crazy numbers.

The general public isn't used to being face to face with the risk of
immediate death so it isn't at all surprising that they are frightened.
I think the invisible killer aspect being played up heightens the fear.

NPR announced that there would be a special program about the
coronavirus? What? That's all they talk about already.

Anecdata that I do have from my friends and family contacts who have had
coronavirus symptoms are so far:

3 Home - recovered
1 Hospitalised - active
1 Hospitalised - recovered (lung function seriously compromised)

The latter was a skier and was middle aged fit and active. It will be
six months before it is clear whether she will regain fitness again.

Only the hospitalised ones count in the Covid-19 statistics - you don't
get tested for it in the UK unless you are admitted to hospital.

That does affect the statistics.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Thu, 23 Apr 2020 15:49:11 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 23/04/2020 15:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 22:12:03 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 9:15:16 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

...The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on.

Alas, decisions have been (and must be) made. Find a way to
ignore hysteria (whatever that means).

That's hard, to supress your emotions and make rational decisions.

No it isn't you just have to crunch all the numbers.

A recent antibody changed a case count by a factor of 80. Sometimes
you don't have the numbers.

The balance that has to be struck is between minimising short term
fatalities and also in the medium to long term due to economic damage.
The overall outcome a few years down the road is what really matters.

Yes. I expect the economic damage to outlast the virus. California is
considering allowing cancer surgeries to resume at some uncertain
date.

It is all too easy for politicians to go for short term gains just to be
popular (especially in a US election year).

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own.

Because the only one comparable (1918) predates modern
medicine.

There have been big flu epidemics for at least recorded history. Like
the one in 6000 BC. I think humanity survived that one.

Probably since we domesticated wild fowl but perhaps even before that
but back then the population density was so low it would self limit.

Humanity survived the Black Death (a bacterial infection Yersinia
pestis) too but society was changed by the experience and an acute
shortage of labour afterwards significantly altered how work was valued.

WWI/1918 pandemic took things another step further. Prior to that there
were a lot of people in service but afterwards there was a big manpower
shortage driving wages of the survivors up and eventually bankrupting
some of the landed gentry (the Great Depression didn't help).

Modern medicine isn't helping much with this one so far. Read Barry's
book. They knew about vaccines and used antibody treatments for many
diseases in those days, but weren't successful in treating the flu, as
we are not yet successful in treating this virus.

There hasn't been all that much progress against any virus that doesn't
involve vaccination. A cocktail of drugs was eventually found that
controls HIV but it took quite a while to develop. Most anti-viral drugs
are pretty ineffective when compared to antibiotics against bacteria.

We do have more theory, but so far it's not helping.

We also have vastly more chemical libraries and computing power.
Covid-19 poses unique challenges because it is so novel.

I think we agree that this is a bad cold

Evidence suggests that we do not agree on that. I've explicitly rejected that.

That was directed at James. I expect you to reject all sorts of ideas.

It is nothing like a bad cold. The symptoms are different and this
specific "bad cold" kills a proportion of those that it infects.
Cytokine storms are not something to be taken lightly.

For most people, it's not even a bad cold. It seems very selective
about who it will harm.

In 1918, huge numbers of healthy young men got sick and died in days,
spewing blood from multiple orifices. This one is not so bad.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 12:15:16 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 09:48:54 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:26:04 PM UTC-4, whit3rd wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 4:13:34 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

C19 will burn out, and its descendents will hit us in the future. Some
day we may understand this ongoing dance between viruses and people.

Some brush fires 'burn out', COVID-19 isn't going to (or it would have
lapsed while it was still in bats).
We understood the important parts of this infection last year. John Larkin
is in denial.

Working hypothesis <> denial.

John thinks it'll burn out eventually. Rick thinks it'll vanish if we
hide. I'm sure that it won't burn out. I expect it'll persist in the population cloaked, like manifold other pestilences. But I accept
there's a small possibility that I'm wrong.

Cheers,
James Arthur

I haven't said that anything here is for sure. I haven't denied
anything except being afraid. The data is too bad and the hysteria too
intense to decide now what's going on. I have suggested some dynamics
that I think could be true, and given the uncertainty, I think that
none are impossible. Even considering possibilities sets some people
ballistic.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own. If we consider their mutations to have returned and thus
contradict the burnout concept, they took decades to do it.

I think we agree that this is a bad cold with a lot of PR, and
shutting down the world economy has no exit strategy. Colds are
seasonal and go away and some other cold pops up next year. Some years
are worse than others.

o America is now at Great Depression job-loss levels.
o Cuomo has just announced that 16.7% of Long Island, 21.2% of NYC, 11.7% of Westchester/Rockland have tested serologically positive for Wu-Ping cough / Communist Red Death antibodies. 13.9%, state-wide.

There's only one thing to do -- BUY (MORE) TOILET PAPER.

(I bought some 6W solar panels for battery-charging
yesterday, instead.)

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 7:26:35 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 22:12:03 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:


Alas, decisions have been (and must be) made. Find a way to
ignore hysteria (whatever that means).

That's hard, to supress your emotions and make rational decisions.

How would you know? Logic, mathematical models, and
other tools are available, but there's no sign you're making use of them.

The big influenza pandemics of the past - 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968, and
a zillion smaller flus and rhinos and coronas, all burned out on their
own.

Because the only one comparable (1918) predates modern
medicine.

There have been big flu epidemics for at least recorded history.

And recording t hem into history is only one of the many responses we've
made during them all. Our response this time is still in progress.

Modern medicine isn't helping much with this one so far.

China reports otherwise; there have been no deaths recorded for the last
week in a nation of 1.4 billion.

> We do have more theory, but so far it's not helping.

Having a few theories helps the thinkers, but the help for sufferers is
indirect. Patience

I think we agree that this is a bad cold

Evidence suggests that we do not agree on that. I've explicitly rejected that.

That was directed at James. I expect you to reject all sorts of ideas.

Rejection of that idea was the first viable theory on this disease, and
it happened in China in 2019. You've adpoted a pet theory which is not viable.

If your pet theory needs the protection of repeated falsehoods,
science offers a solution: euthanize that pet.