US COVID-19 Infection Rate Still not Peaked

[Ricky C]

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 6:06:42 AM UTC-4, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in news:r83k1j$75o$1@dont-
email.me:

Not good, but not nearly as bad.

Located a nice plot over time for many diseases, so folks can get an
idea of just how bad this one is and is going to be yet. And with the
timeline of growth shown, it should be clear to anyone with an IQ over
20 that we need to remain distant and out of closed space gatherings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnQcbAKWkPE

Not a bad video. One point that is not clear to me is that the distribution is for mapping the blue line (actual dates of infection) to the orange line (reported dates of infection). He applies it in reverse. It seems to give good results for the one test case, but this is not really a reciprocal relationship. For example, if the blue curve were in reality an impulse function the orange curve would be the binomial distribution he is using. But applying his method to that orange curve would not produce the original blue curve of a single peak.

In reality it is just a coincidence that the nature of the spread of the disease produces a blue curve that "sort of" can be regenerated from the orange curve.

The US CDC does have date of infection data available which I was collecting and plotting to see how the shape of the curve changes with time. A factor that he didn't take into account was reporting delays which we seem to have an excess of in the US. This hugely distorts the data and creates significant waves and peaks in the orange curve (reported dates). The most notable is probably due to weekend effects. There is a pretty clear pattern in reduced numbers Sunday through Tuesday.

I collect the daily data from worldometers.info for the US but do not do the smoothing he does. The last few days have seen a sharp (relatively speaking) uptick in the daily new infection numbers so that the linear regression on data in April is now trending upward again. It had reached a down slope of -150 (about) per day. Now it is up 34 per day.

That does seem to validate the new infection rate of approximately 1.0 he came up with. I suppose that's a DUH since he's using the same raw data.

But it just underlines the fact that in the US we are not doing enough to stem the infection rate and will not be rid of this disease for a long time to come.

This truly is one of those times when a national leader who knows how to influence people and behavior rather than making "deals" would be so much more effective. I mean, Jesus!, he was having verbal brawls with Governors through daily press meetings and encouraging the states to fend for themselves all the while working against them by hording PPE and other goods needed to fight this disease.

Imagine how much more encouraged people would have been had nearly any President been in charge other than the orange baby! GHW Bush would have been very inspirational I think. Anyone else from the last 50 years would have at least not encouraged us to compete and fight.

Ok, end of rant. The message should be that we all need to take this seriously so we can get through it and out the other side.

--

Rick C.

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

 

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
news:ip6bafltajptgmakqc35nf90l6ko9bgcbc@4ax.com:

Places that are severely hit, such as London and New York, have at
least twice as many people dying as usual. Without a lockdown,
that would be the case in /every/ city.

I don't understand that reasoning.

Airborne transimission mode.

Damn you are thick, boy.

 

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
news:ip6bafltajptgmakqc35nf90l6ko9bgcbc@4ax.com:

It's fundamental, hardly another topic when the world is being
shaken
by public policy decisions. What do the lockdowns really cost, in
dollars and lives?

You have to be a goddamned idiot to have grown up, and gotten an
education, and then get to this point where you jump right on to the
Dr. Phil total fucking retard bandwagon.

Donald John Trump made this pandemic hit the US harder than any
other nation. It is a gargantuan failure, and lives are being lost.

Far more than his crafted "I saved billions of lives" horseshit.

He COULD HAVE saved thousands of lives, but instead chose to be
divisive in a public broadcast at a podium, no less. and then went
golfing. His inept incompetence in the first 50 days of this is what
caused our numbers to be such a drastic indicator of what doing this
the wrong way does.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnQcbAKWkPE>

 

[Ricky C]

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 10:45:13 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 13:34:46 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 25/04/2020 00:49, John Larkin wrote:


I wonder how many deaths have resulted from the lockdowns. People
aren't getting cancer or kidney or heart surgeries or tests. Kids
aren't getting vaccinated. People are in desperate financial shape,
drinking and fighting and maybe suicide.

Such extra deaths are also caused by Covid-19 - they are a result of the
pandemic, even if they were not infected. (And if there were no
lockdowns, the deaths due to Covid-19 infections would more than cover
that difference - and you'd /still/ have the financial disasters and
limits on other medical care because people would be sick or dead.)


Some economists should have figured this out in advance. Why do we
have economists?


Good question, but that's another topic.

It's fundamental, hardly another topic when the world is being shaken
by public policy decisions. What do the lockdowns really cost, in
dollars and lives?

Don't know as yet, we'll likely never know the true cost because of the many effects including not just the people out of work but the added government expenditures and the money they are giving to taxpayers and businesses.

Cancer kills about 50K people a month in the USA.


Places that are severely hit, such as London and New York, have at least
twice as many people dying as usual. Without a lockdown, that would be
the case in /every/ city.

I don't understand that reasoning.

Those are likely the most significant words you will utter in the entire COVID-19 discussion.

All of your reasoning and view of the numbers seems to be based on the assumption that nothing we have done has any impact on the course of the infection. You appear to completely disregard that we are fighting the spread of this disease and it would be so hugely worse already had we allowed it to run unchecked.

The most bizarre thing is that you talk about the success of a handful of countries isolating citizens and reversing the course of this disease as a "natural" progression as if COVID-19 had a "season" and they are headed out of it independent on the efforts at fighting it. You seem to believe that we are headed out of it in the same manner when all the numbers say we are NOT headed out of the disease yet at all.

Do you understand the basic concept of "cause and effect"?

I understand how hard it is to quantify it, especially with very bad
data. And how hard it is to be fooled if you want to be fooled.

One could imagine that subways caused coronavirus infections, in NYC
and London. That one is probably true. There aren't many subways in
Wyoming.

And yet in nearly every county in the US there are still rising numbers of infections. It is few counties where the rate of new infections is dropping rather than just remaining stable.

You seem to
think that because there is relatively little Corona in some places,
lockdown is not necessary there - in reality, it is because there are
lockdowns that there is relatively little Corona in those places.

Places with low population density are already, naturally locked down.
North Dakota is not much like New York City.

And yet Mountrail county in ND has the same new infection rate per capita as NYC. Grand Forks and Cass county (Fargo) are in the same range. We ignore them because the populations are so low. The disease don't really know the difference.

Voluntary measures would be effective in most places, and wouldn't
destroy the economy or shut down empty hospitals. People are plenty
scared.

The mandatory measures aren't reducing the infection rate enough to rid us of this disease. Why do you think making the restrictions voluntary would improve things???

I think people are the opposite of "scared". My friend told me his parents wanted to visit the grandchildren. Because they aren't isolating as much as he is they didn't get in the house. He is not "scared", he is being serious about protecting his family. The grandparents are the ones who are not as "scared" as they should be.

Fear is what keeps us alive. If we lose all fear the R0 of humanity might drop below 1.0.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Ricky C]

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 10:45:13 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 13:34:46 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 25/04/2020 00:49, John Larkin wrote:


I wonder how many deaths have resulted from the lockdowns. People
aren't getting cancer or kidney or heart surgeries or tests. Kids
aren't getting vaccinated. People are in desperate financial shape,
drinking and fighting and maybe suicide.

Such extra deaths are also caused by Covid-19 - they are a result of the
pandemic, even if they were not infected. (And if there were no
lockdowns, the deaths due to Covid-19 infections would more than cover
that difference - and you'd /still/ have the financial disasters and
limits on other medical care because people would be sick or dead.)


Some economists should have figured this out in advance. Why do we
have economists?


Good question, but that's another topic.

It's fundamental, hardly another topic when the world is being shaken
by public policy decisions. What do the lockdowns really cost, in
dollars and lives?


Cancer kills about 50K people a month in the USA.


Places that are severely hit, such as London and New York, have at least
twice as many people dying as usual. Without a lockdown, that would be
the case in /every/ city.

I don't understand that reasoning.


Do you understand the basic concept of "cause and effect"?

I understand how hard it is to quantify it, especially with very bad
data. And how hard it is to be fooled if you want to be fooled.

One could imagine that subways caused coronavirus infections, in NYC
and London. That one is probably true. There aren't many subways in
Wyoming.


You seem to
think that because there is relatively little Corona in some places,
lockdown is not necessary there - in reality, it is because there are
lockdowns that there is relatively little Corona in those places.

Places with low population density are already, naturally locked down.
North Dakota is not much like New York City.

Voluntary measures would be effective in most places, and wouldn't
destroy the economy or shut down empty hospitals. People are plenty
scared.

This is what happens when you filter the data you look at or consider to be credible based on what it says rather than the substance behind it.

There is tons of data showing Larkin's basic premises to be wrong, but he seems to ignore it. Instead he chooses to see data that says the infection rate is improving significantly in a small number of places as a sign that the infection is well on it's way to being over by natural causes.

He can't understand there actually is no reason to think social distancing has not done some good virtually everywhere. Instead he chooses to think that most places won't be impacted significantly by the infection simply because they have fewer people per square mile. The fact remains that most people live in cities or towns and if they continued their lives as if nothing was wrong, they would have infections rates like NYC.

In fact, I have found a number of areas with high infection rates relative to population in sparsely populated areas. So clearly low population density is not adequate to prevent the spread of the virus.

You can see it if you simply look at the data.

--

Rick C.

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

 

On Friday, April 24, 2020 at 6:49:46 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

I wonder how many deaths have resulted from the lockdowns. People
aren't getting cancer or kidney or heart surgeries or tests. Kids
aren't getting vaccinated. People are in desperate financial shape,
drinking and fighting and maybe suicide.

Suicide is a leading cause of death (47k annually), particularly among
men, and in my area, it has skyrocketed.

I know someone in agonizing pain, but unable to see a doctor.
(All the doctors' practices are closed, or teleconference-only.)

If you need tests or diagnoses, if you happen to fall ill right now,
if you've found a lump and need it looked into, you're screwed.

Cheers,
James

 

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 7:34:51 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 25/04/2020 00:49, John Larkin wrote:


I wonder how many deaths have resulted from the lockdowns. People
aren't getting cancer or kidney or heart surgeries or tests. Kids
aren't getting vaccinated. People are in desperate financial shape,
drinking and fighting and maybe suicide.

Such extra deaths are also caused by Covid-19 - they are a result of the
pandemic, even if they were not infected.

Not they aren't. Those deaths are caused by policy decisions, not a
tiny string of deep-fried RNA.

(And if there were no
lockdowns, the deaths due to Covid-19 infections would more than cover
that difference

There's no evidence to support that claim, and plenty to refute it.

- and you'd /still/ have the financial disasters and
limits on other medical care because people would be sick or dead.)

That's not correct. In one case a certain number of people die from
the Wuhan Scourge, plus ten thousand times as many are impoverished.
If hungry enough, we'll have civil unrest, even revolutions. Elderly
and infirm will die at higher rates, because we'll be unable to protect
them for that long.

In the other scenario substantially the same number of people die
from the Scourge, but the survivors are productively employed, not
impoverished, nor reduced to Stone Age conditions.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:

On 23/4/20 1:38 am, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 3:49:17 AM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 22/4/20 4:24 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.
Because (a) we expect to recover from it and (b) we expect to get
intensive care if we do get it badly and (c) we have a vaccine if we're
still worried enough about it.
I don't think those are the real reasons, mostly. Maybe c), for
fearful people.
It's still being quantified, but I see every empirical reason to
believe that (a) and (b) apply to WuFlu, roughly equally

There is a problem with (a) and (b) applying to this disease...

We need to know why 20% of hospital cases progress to the
intensive-care, and others just get better.

I agree that the main reason we're panicked over Chinese Red Death,
ISTM, is that up until Monday's USC report, it was largely unquantified
and unknown. Excessive caution was reasonable.


The problem is that unlike almost any other disease, it progresses
through most of the body without causing symptoms, but after that when
it goes to the lungs, it either dies out there and you recover, or
triggers a cytokine storm that kills you slowly. That's an *immune*
dysfunction, which is also what kills in ebola. You simply don't get
that with the flu. There is a particular inflammatory marker that
indicates it's more likely...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a dread condition, no question.
I have seen people in acute respiratory failure, I have spent months
caring for them, I've been the one who hit the 'code blue' button,
I've seen O2 saturation levels plummet, and I've dashed out of an
isolation room into the ICU to gather a crash team.

SARS, which I have thankfully not witnessed, is unquestionably
horrible beyond words.

It is also, thankfully, quite rare, even with COVID.

Intensive care can keep you alive for typically 10 days or so, compared
to the median IC stay of 3.5 days - so it absorbs IC beds.

Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe.

I posted a graphic from your Dept. of Health that, I believe, demonstrates
that nearly everyone is safe. Nearly everyone can handle SARS-CoV2 if
they get it, and with decent hygiene, nearly every one can avoid it if
they choose, while living a basically (normal life) + (washing their
hands and not touching their faces).

If you're on the edge, the Chinese Red Death will push you off. But
otherwise, it's overwhelmingly a disease of the superannuated and infirm.
So, we protect those people, diligently. That's important. But locking
up healthy people doesn't accomplish that.

> The thing about "only the aged" is simply wrong.

"Only the aged" isn't literally true, but it's damn close.
https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-infographic_22.pdf

The very young are pretty safe because their immune systems are
still developing, but any adult is vulnerable. Let it run, and it will
kill a lot of people, and deny IC for many others who'll also die...
while also killing many health workers.

But you and I part on a critical assumption -- that quarantining healthy
people stops the illness. It doesn't. When the non-exposed healthy
people come out of quarantine, they're still susceptible, they'll still
get sick, and just as many will die.

In America we were told from the start that shutting down doesn't reduce
the number who get sick. It doesn't reduce the number who die. When you
come out, the virus is still there, waiting. Shutting down was to keep
us from overloading the hospitals, from becoming Italy.

The hospitals are not overloaded. It worked.

I'm simply gob-smacked that all the terrified people don't understand
whole nations *can not* hunker down week after week, and still magically
expect food, machines, energy, etc. No amount of debt, or paper-printing
prevents that, or fixes the truly dire destruction. It's madness.

Well it's funny, but with a few adjustments, and the loss of almost all
non-essential jobs (musicians, baristas, etc) our society is still
largely functioning. If only non-essential services are affected, then
we are still by definition producing everything that our society
actually needs, i.e. we are still "prospering". If that is the case, we
can afford to redirect the cash that would have been spent on
non-essential services to pay those folk to stay home, and no-one is
really much worse off.

I understand the dry intellectual appeal of that. But I find it
dreadfully cavalier.

To wit, I heard a piano-tuner on local radio, very upset the Vogons
(who've deemed themselves 'essential') had deemed his job 'non-essential.'

He was in an awful way. Hurt. Offended. His job, he explained, was
essential to _him_, it was essential to providing for his family,
paying his mortgage, and putting food on the table for his kids.

Do you see my logic here? It's pretty rough-and-ready - but society is
making a worthwhile adjustment, back to where we were when a much higher
percentage of society was working in jobs that are essential, before
automation freed so many people to occupy unnecessary roles.

CH

I do see your logic, but I don't think you're including the human
cost. I don't think you're considering the social ramifications
of forcibly quarantining the healthy. I don't think you're weighing
the implications for a free society of entrusting bureaucrats with
the power, at their discretion, to command healthy people's
confinement, to deny the governed their means of earning a living,
and the implications of granting bureaucrats the power to require
that certain people bear the burden of raising others' children, etc.

But also, mechanically, quarantining healthy people doesn't work.
Because the virus persists, when healthy people emerge, they get
infected. Quarantining /healthy/ people -- which AFAICT has never
been done in the history of the world, -- doesn't reduce infections,
doesn't prevent illness or death. It only slows the inevitable spread,
placing vulnerables who need to hunker down at greater risk playing
a daily game of COVID-roulette, for a much longer time.

My mom's been hunkered for two and a half months. She doesn't have
BatFlu, but she's going batty all the same. All her social interaction
is cancelled. If she broke a tooth, no dentist would see her (they're
all closed). And she has unmet needs that I'll not detail. All of
this, with no end in sight.

I'm also somewhat skeptical that hunkering actually protects us from
encountering SARS-CoV2. I've heard the virus stays viable for
extended periods on plastic, such as the plastic bags on all those
things you had delivered to your quarantine campsite. Are all those
items you bought at the supermarket, masked, but touched by so many
others, safe? Are the mailman, the deliveryman, safe? Or would your
items swab positive for a virus that has a 25% prevalence in NYC?
I suspect the latter. And then it's off to the races anyhow, right?

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 12:45:13 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 13:34:46 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 25/04/2020 00:49, John Larkin wrote:

<snip>

Places that are severely hit, such as London and New York, have at least
twice as many people dying as usual. Without a lockdown, that would be
the case in /every/ city.

I don't understand that reasoning.

When the hospitals have more patients than they can deal with, the people with Covid-19 who need serious hospital care are roughly twice as likely to die as they are when the hospitals aren't overloaded.

Do you understand the basic concept of "cause and effect"?

I understand how hard it is to quantify it, especially with very bad
data. And how hard it is to be fooled if you want to be fooled.

John Larkin doesn't so much understand it as exhibit it.

The data available isn't in any sense bad. It's just early - the epidemic is still going on. John Larkin doesn't like the data -- he wants Covid-19 to be just another seasonal flu that doesn't happen to kill a lot more people than any "seasonal" flu since the Spanish flu in 1918.

One could imagine that subways caused coronavirus infections, in NYC
and London. That one is probably true. There aren't many subways in
Wyoming.

Subways don't cause covid-19 infections. It takes the virus to do that. Subways may provide an environment that facilitates the transfer of the virus from an infected person to a new victim.

You seem to
think that because there is relatively little Corona in some places,
lockdown is not necessary there - in reality, it is because there are
lockdowns that there is relatively little Corona in those places.

Places with low population density are already, naturally locked down.
North Dakota is not much like New York City.

If people drive for hours to go to parties, it's enough like New York City to sustain an epidemic.

Lock down isn't necessary to stop an epidemic - frequent testing, contact tracing of anybody found to be infected, and a 14-day isolation period from contact for anybody whom they might have infected seems to be nough, if it is done right.

I've just downloaded the Australian government's CovidSafe app for my mobile phone which would automate the contact tracing.

Voluntary measures would be effective in most places, and wouldn't
destroy the economy or shut down empty hospitals. People are plenty
scared.

But clearly not scared enough - or perhaps not well-informed enough about what they need to do - to stop the epidemic in in the US.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 13:58:11 +1000, Clifford Heath
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 27/4/20 1:13 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
The problem is that unlike almost any other disease, it progresses
through most of the body without causing symptoms, but after that when
it goes to the lungs, it either dies out there and you recover, or
triggers a cytokine storm that kills you slowly. That's an *immune*
dysfunction, which is also what kills in ebola. You simply don't get
that with the flu.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a dread condition, no question.
Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe.

I posted a graphic from your Dept. of Health that, I believe, demonstrates
that nearly everyone is safe. Nearly everyone can handle SARS-CoV2 if
they get it, and with decent hygiene, nearly every one can avoid it if
they choose, while living a basically (normal life) + (washing their
hands and not touching their faces).

If you're on the edge, the Chinese Red Death will push you off. But
otherwise, it's overwhelmingly a disease of the superannuated and infirm.
So, we protect those people, diligently. That's important. But locking
up healthy people doesn't accomplish that.

Well, that's almost certainly true now in the USA, because of a lack of
leadership and common sense.

Here in Australia (and other places like NZ, that put the right
restrictions in place quickly enough) we can eradicate the disease
entirely. We are already considering how to start opening up a little
after only a month shut down.

What will happen then?

There will be local pockets of active viruses that have been passed
around over multiple incubation periods. There will be international
travel. Since most infections are symptomless, you'll have to test the
entire population for active viruses every week to spot another seed.

Australia could become the only country without herd immunity to this
one. The only place to get whacked by the second wave.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 27/4/20 1:13 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
The problem is that unlike almost any other disease, it progresses
through most of the body without causing symptoms, but after that when
it goes to the lungs, it either dies out there and you recover, or
triggers a cytokine storm that kills you slowly. That's an *immune*
dysfunction, which is also what kills in ebola. You simply don't get
that with the flu.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a dread condition, no question.
Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe.

I posted a graphic from your Dept. of Health that, I believe, demonstrates
that nearly everyone is safe. Nearly everyone can handle SARS-CoV2 if
they get it, and with decent hygiene, nearly every one can avoid it if
they choose, while living a basically (normal life) + (washing their
hands and not touching their faces).

If you're on the edge, the Chinese Red Death will push you off. But
otherwise, it's overwhelmingly a disease of the superannuated and infirm.
So, we protect those people, diligently. That's important. But locking
up healthy people doesn't accomplish that.

Well, that's almost certainly true now in the USA, because of a lack of
leadership and common sense.

Here in Australia (and other places like NZ, that put the right
restrictions in place quickly enough) we can eradicate the disease
entirely. We are already considering how to start opening up a little
after only a month shut down.

I expect that we will have free travel to NZ at least before the end of
the year. And that next year we will again resume the flood of foreign
(mostly Chinese) students - albeit with a mandatory quarantine period on
arrival. Living expenses for foreign students constitutes our 3rd latest
export - and the bigger exports haven't stopped (mining, gas).

But you and I part on a critical assumption -- that quarantining healthy
people stops the illness. It doesn't.

It has done so here, unquestionably. The USA just didn't do it anywhere
near soon enough. 40,000 travellers from China *after* the supposed
travel bans...

When the non-exposed healthy
people come out of quarantine, they're still susceptible, they'll still
get sick, and just as many will die.

Only if there's someone to catch it from, and that's not gonna be the case.

In America we were told from the start that shutting down doesn't reduce
the number who get sick. It doesn't reduce the number who die. When you
come out, the virus is still there, waiting

No, it won't be. Not here anyhow.

If it does take off again - a distinct possibility - the new tracing
apps will enable us to shut it down much more quickly than before. The
difficulty of tracing is the only reason this thing has been hard to
stop - and the main reason why we needed the shutdowns. Just that many
fewer contacts to trace, and fewer infections to require it...

Well it's funny, but with a few adjustments, and the loss of almost all
non-essential jobs (musicians, baristas, etc) our society is still
largely functioning. If only non-essential services are affected, then
we are still by definition producing everything that our society
actually needs, i.e. we are still "prospering". If that is the case, we
can afford to redirect the cash that would have been spent on
non-essential services to pay those folk to stay home, and no-one is
really much worse off.

I understand the dry intellectual appeal of that. But I find it
dreadfully cavalier.

It is, and I freely admit that. Many of my sons' friends work in music
and related non-essential careers, and there was initial displeasure at
my comment, until I pointed out that no-one ever recovered from a viral
disease by going to see live music. I'm not saying it's not an important
part of modern life, but it isn't essential to life itself.

To wit, I heard a piano-tuner on local radio, very upset the Vogons
(who've deemed themselves 'essential') had deemed his job 'non-essential.'

He was in an awful way. Hurt. Offended. His job, he explained, was
essential to _him_, it was essential to providing for his family,
paying his mortgage, and putting food on the table for his kids.

Right. But if those who paid for his services still have their incomes,
they can by definition still afford to pay, for a while even without
receiving his services. No-one will die of a badly-tuned piano, or of
paying to support those who will again provide those services. Social
welfare to keep the economy running, so full service can be resumed quicker.

I do see your logic, but I don't think you're including the human
cost. I don't think you're considering the social ramifications
of forcibly quarantining the healthy.

Here, I can already see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, there
are social ramifications. But the USA will be seen to have made its
tunnel years long, whereas ours will only last a couple of months.

I don't think you're weighing
the implications for a free society of entrusting bureaucrats with
the power, at their discretion, to command healthy people's
confinement, to deny the governed their means of earning a living,
and the implications of granting bureaucrats the power to require
that certain people bear the burden of raising others' children, etc.

And there it is. You want to keep "what's yours" from being used to pay
for people who create less value than you. I get it. The trouble is
this: in every society, there are people who create no value. If you
support them, they don't have to steal (i.e. create negative value) and
in principle their children can have a better future than they themselves.

Society has come a long way since rule by the strong, at the expense of
the weak. The change is what has made the modern world modern.
Personally, I prefer this world to the one of Charles Dickens, even
though I have to pay taxes for things that don't directly benefit me.

I'm also somewhat skeptical that hunkering actually protects us from
encountering SARS-CoV2. I've heard the virus stays viable for
extended periods on plastic, such as the plastic bags on all those
things you had delivered to your quarantine campsite. Are all those
items you bought at the supermarket, masked, but touched by so many
others, safe? Are the mailman, the deliveryman, safe? Or would your
items swab positive for a virus that has a 25% prevalence in NYC?
I suspect the latter. And then it's off to the races anyhow, right?

There is testing for that. The evidence here is that the risk is very
low. But then we avoided having a 25% prevalence in the first place.

As the USA could have done, if you hadn't elected a chimpanzee to rule.

CH

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 1:13:18 PM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 23/4/20 1:38 am, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 3:49:17 AM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 22/4/20 4:24 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.
Because (a) we expect to recover from it and (b) we expect to get
intensive care if we do get it badly and (c) we have a vaccine if we're
still worried enough about it.
I don't think those are the real reasons, mostly. Maybe c), for
fearful people.
It's still being quantified, but I see every empirical reason to
believe that (a) and (b) apply to WuFlu, roughly equally

There is a problem with (a) and (b) applying to this disease...

We need to know why 20% of hospital cases progress to the
intensive-care, and others just get better.

I agree that the main reason we're panicked over Chinese Red Death,
ISTM, is that up until Monday's USC report, it was largely unquantified
and unknown. Excessive caution was reasonable.


The problem is that unlike almost any other disease, it progresses
through most of the body without causing symptoms, but after that when
it goes to the lungs, it either dies out there and you recover, or
triggers a cytokine storm that kills you slowly. That's an *immune*
dysfunction, which is also what kills in ebola. You simply don't get
that with the flu. There is a particular inflammatory marker that
indicates it's more likely...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a dread condition, no question.
I have seen people in acute respiratory failure, I have spent months
caring for them, I've been the one who hit the 'code blue' button,
I've seen O2 saturation levels plummet, and I've dashed out of an
isolation room into the ICU to gather a crash team.

SARS, which I have thankfully not witnessed, is unquestionably
horrible beyond words.

It is also, thankfully, quite rare, even with COVID.

Intensive care can keep you alive for typically 10 days or so, compared
to the median IC stay of 3.5 days - so it absorbs IC beds.

Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe.

I posted a graphic from your Dept. of Health that, I believe, demonstrates
that nearly everyone is safe.

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-infographic_22.pdf

It doesn't. "Deaths by age group and sex" at the bottom of the page show that is is not true.

Nearly everyone can handle SARS-CoV2 if
they get it,

Australia has had 263 cases per million inhabitants, and three deaths per million so far. Mostly in older people, as the graphic shows, but not exclusively. It kills a much higher proportion of the people it infects than seasonal flu.

and with decent hygiene, nearly every one can avoid it if
they choose,

while living a basically (normal life) + (washing their
hands and not touching their faces).

And not going to parties and other social gathering, or a crowded office or face to face meetings.

If you're on the edge, Covid-19 will push you off. But
otherwise, it's overwhelmingly a disease of the superannuated and infirm.

Not all that overwhemingly. See the graphic.

So, we protect those people, diligently. That's important. But locking
up healthy people doesn't accomplish that.

The thing about "only the aged" is simply wrong.

"Only the aged" isn't literally true, but it's damn close.
https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-infographic_22.pdf

The very young are pretty safe because their immune systems are
still developing, but any adult is vulnerable. Let it run, and it will
kill a lot of people, and deny IC for many others who'll also die...
while also killing many health workers.

But you and I part on a critical assumption -- that quarantining healthy
people stops the illness. It doesn't.

If done right, it does. You can get to the point where there are no infected people in the general population. China seems to have got there and Australia is very close.

> When the non-exposed healthy people come out of quarantine, they're still susceptible, they'll still get sick, and just as many will die.

Only is there is somebody around to infect them. Keep testing, and you will catch that one new infectious person before they can infect many others, and if you trace and isolate all their contacts for 14 days from contact, they won't start a new epidemic.

I've just downloaded the Australian CovidSafe app which automates the process of tracing all those potential contacts.

In America we were told from the start that shutting down doesn't reduce
the number who get sick. It doesn't reduce the number who die.

They lied to you. It clearly can.

> When you come out, the virus is still there, waiting.

Not if you have done it right.

Shutting down was to keep
us from overloading the hospitals, from becoming Italy.

That was the immediate goal. You could do better - South Korea did. China did and Australia seems to be most of the way there.

> The hospitals are not overloaded. It worked.

New York seems to have been a rather close run thing. A rather more immediate response could have saved a lot of lives.

I'm simply gob-smacked that all the terrified people don't understand
whole nations *can not* hunker down week after week, and still magically
expect food, machines, energy, etc. No amount of debt, or paper-printing
prevents that, or fixes the truly dire destruction. It's madness.

The madness is all yours. An effective level of shut-down isn't incompatible with keeping essential services running - food and power are still being produced in Australia. And if you do it right you don;t need more than about six weeks of shutdown.

Well it's funny, but with a few adjustments, and the loss of almost all
non-essential jobs (musicians, baristas, etc) our society is still
largely functioning. If only non-essential services are affected, then
we are still by definition producing everything that our society
actually needs, i.e. we are still "prospering". If that is the case, we
can afford to redirect the cash that would have been spent on
non-essential services to pay those folk to stay home, and no-one is
really much worse off.

I understand the dry intellectual appeal of that. But I find it
dreadfully cavalier.

Of course you do. You are happy to see loads of round-heads ending up dead if it means that dividends keep on flowing to your and the rest of the cavaliers.

To wit, I heard a piano-tuner on local radio, very upset the Vogons
(who've deemed themselves 'essential') had deemed his job 'non-essential.'

He was in an awful way. Hurt. Offended. His job, he explained, was
essential to _him_, it was essential to providing for his family,
paying his mortgage, and putting food on the table for his kids.

In Australia he'd do fine with what welfare - doubled for the duration of the lock down - would pay him.

Do you see my logic here? It's pretty rough-and-ready - but society is
making a worthwhile adjustment, back to where we were when a much higher
percentage of society was working in jobs that are essential, before
automation freed so many people to occupy unnecessary roles.

I do see your logic, but I don't think you're including the human
cost. I don't think you're considering the social ramifications
of forcibly quarantining the healthy. I don't think you're weighing
the implications for a free society of entrusting bureaucrats with
the power, at their discretion, to command healthy people's
confinement, to deny the governed their means of earning a living,
and the implications of granting bureaucrats the power to require
that certain people bear the burden of raising others' children, etc.

Of course not. He isn't wearing your political blinkers, which make ideological purity much more important than human lives.

> But also, mechanically, quarantining healthy people doesn't work.

Clearly it does. You don't like the political stance that makes it acceptable, so you deny the existence of the examples that show that it does work.

Because the virus persists, when healthy people emerge, they get
infected.

Only if there is some infected and infectious person around to infect them.

Quarantining /healthy/ people -- which AFAICT has never
been done in the history of the world, -- doesn't reduce infections,
doesn't prevent illness or death.

This is obviously untrue. Quarantine originates form the practice of locking up ships crews (and passengers) for long enough that if they were infected they'd show symptoms of the disease feared. By definition, most the people quarantined were healthy. This goes back at least six hundred years now.

It only slows the inevitable spread,
placing vulnerables who need to hunker down at greater risk playing
a daily game of COVID-roulette, for a much longer time.

Not if you do it right.

My mom's been hunkered for two and a half months. She doesn't have
BatFlu, but she's going batty all the same. All her social interaction
is cancelled. If she broke a tooth, no dentist would see her (they're
all closed). And she has unmet needs that I'll not detail. All of
this, with no end in sight.

Because the miserable excuse for a government that the US is stuck with didn't anticipate the need to stop Covid-19 getting any toe-hold in the US in the first place. They took a certain amount of action, but nowhere near enough.

I'm also somewhat skeptical that hunkering actually protects us from
encountering SARS-CoV2. I've heard the virus stays viable for
extended periods on plastic, such as the plastic bags on all those
things you had delivered to your quarantine campsite. Are all those
items you bought at the supermarket, masked, but touched by so many
others, safe? Are the mailman, the deliveryman, safe? Or would your
items swab positive for a virus that has a 25% prevalence in NYC?
I suspect the latter. And then it's off to the races anyhow, right?

The serological evidence that purports to show that 25% of the New York population has got antibodies to Covid-19 is extremely dubious. Mostly likely it is detecting antibodies to other corona viruses - not that I care why it's wrong.

Australia is demonstrating that lock down - backed up by vigorous contact tracing and the isolation of anybody who might have got infected - does work..

All the US results are demonstrating is that the US can't do epidemic control. As I seem to have pointed out to you before, the whole point of a health system is to recognise epidemic infections as soon as possible after they break out, and stop infected people from propagating the epidemic.

The US health care system wasn't designed with that in mind - if it can be said to have been designed at all - and it is proving to be totally inept when comes to dealing with an epidemic.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 2:24:48 PM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 13:58:11 +1000, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 27/4/20 1:13 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
The problem is that unlike almost any other disease, it progresses
through most of the body without causing symptoms, but after that when
it goes to the lungs, it either dies out there and you recover, or
triggers a cytokine storm that kills you slowly. That's an *immune*
dysfunction, which is also what kills in ebola. You simply don't get
that with the flu.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a dread condition, no question.
Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe.

I posted a graphic from your Dept. of Health that, I believe, demonstrates
that nearly everyone is safe. Nearly everyone can handle SARS-CoV2 if
they get it, and with decent hygiene, nearly every one can avoid it if
they choose, while living a basically (normal life) + (washing their
hands and not touching their faces).

If you're on the edge, the Chinese Red Death will push you off. But
otherwise, it's overwhelmingly a disease of the superannuated and infirm.
So, we protect those people, diligently. That's important. But locking
up healthy people doesn't accomplish that.

Well, that's almost certainly true now in the USA, because of a lack of
leadership and common sense.

Here in Australia (and other places like NZ, that put the right
restrictions in place quickly enough) we can eradicate the disease
entirely. We are already considering how to start opening up a little
after only a month shut down.

What will happen then?

There will be local pockets of active viruses that have been passed
around over multiple incubation periods.

What makes you think that? Contact tracing in Australia show that two thirds of infections can be traced back to people who are known to have had the disease.

As soon as you get an infection - and show symptoms - you are well on the way to identifying whoever it was that gave it to you. When the new contact tracing app gets into enough mobile phones, it's going to be a whole lot easier.

> There will be international travel.

Who will get quarantined for 14 days and tested at least once.

Since most infections are symptomless, you'll have to test the
entire population for active viruses every week to spot another seed.

The claim that most infections are symptomless depends on a couple of very dubious antibody detection stiudies, none of which has even got through peer review yet.

The Australian contact tracing data makes it clear that you can't have more than one symptomless infector for every two people who got the disease badly enough to get tested, and that's a upper limit. When the Australian contact tracing app - CovidSafe - gets onto enough mobile phones, the whole process will be automated.

Australia could become the only country without herd immunity to this
one.

Bar South Korea, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Singapore (if you are a migrant worker crammed into a dormitory).

>The only place to get whacked by the second wave.

We are going to be watching out for a second wave, and probably won't have to lock-down to deal with it. South Korea didn't bother to lock down to deal with the first wave.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 4:00:00 PM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 11:58:18 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 27/4/20 1:13 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:

<snip>

But you and I part on a critical assumption -- that quarantining healthy
people stops the illness. It doesn't.

It has done so here, unquestionably.

You've delayed disease, sure. But it's still there.

Still where? If it's overseas, we quarantine for 14 days before we let anybody in.

If there's a isolated case in the population we jump on it as soon as we find it, contact trace it comprehensively - probably using our new toy, the CovidSafe app and quarantine anybody who might have got infected for fourteen days after the contact.

You don't really seem to understand that you can only get infected by an individual who the disease, and if you make them rare enough you can stop them from starting another epidemic.

I'm hoping you whip it, personally, but I just don't understand where
you think the virus will disappear to. For Pete's sake, HIV is much
harder to catch, less prevalent, easier to track, yet here it is,
forty years on.

Harder to detect. You've got to be tested for it to be detected. Australia's contact tracing data to date demonstrates that at least two third of the people who get infected get sick enough for somebody to notice so they get tested.

This isn't what your very early antibody testing results are telling you, but what they are telling you doesn't seem to be right, even if you like the message.

This study indicates you hadn't whipped the Covid19
virus as of two weeks ago--
quote
In the current work, SARS-CoV-2 RNA was concentrated from
wastewater in a catchment in Australia and viral RNA copies
were enumerated using reverse transcriptase quantitative
polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) ... the model estimated
a median range of 171 to 1090 infected persons in the catchment...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-paris-sewage-points-early-warning-system
/quote

It also says "He and his colleagues sampled wastewater in Brisbane representing 600,000 people, in March and April. In contrast to the study in Paris, they found a peak of viral shedding that corresponded to the peak detected through direct human testing. The difference might be explained by more prevalent human testing in Australia, he says."

That is, Australia already knew how many infected people there were in the Brisbane catchment, and the sewage sampling confirmed it.

We are still getting 21 new cases per day, which is a factor of twenty down from the peak, but we haven't quite got it whipped yet.

The USA just didn't do it anywhere near soon enough.

The USA limited travel on Jan. 31st. Same as you, IIRC. At which time
the United States had seven known cases, all quarantined, prompting
NIH's Dr. Fauci to advise us that we need not be concerned.

40,000 travellers from China *after* the supposed
travel bans...

That's huge reduction, a lot better than the over one million who
came here whilst China was still denying that their Special Gift
was contagious. And these were directed through screening locations,
etc.

But not remotely huge enough. Congratulating yourselves on doing something, when it clearly wasn't enough, put you in the Donald Trump class.

When the non-exposed healthy
people come out of quarantine, they're still susceptible, they'll still
get sick, and just as many will die.

Only if there's someone to catch it from, and that's not gonna be the case.

In America we were told from the start that shutting down doesn't reduce
the number who get sick. It doesn't reduce the number who die. When you
come out, the virus is still there, waiting

No, it won't be. Not here anyhow.

<snip>

And there it is. You want to keep "what's yours" from being used to pay
for people who create less value than you. I get it.

That's crass.

But accurate.

You've offered a cure -- quarantining the healthy. You've zero evidence
quarantining the healthy has ever eradicated a disease, and you've not
proven that the danger is anything close to what you say.

Quarantining has always meant quarantining the not visibly for long enough that if they were sick the disease would show.

That's exactly what the Typhoid Mary story was about. It works, and has been known to work for a very long time.

<snip>

There is testing for that.

You're not a terribly populous country, and sparsely populated, so you
might pull it off. Best of luck to you.

Your population density is tenth of that of Europe, and ten times that of Australia. It's not really a relevant factor. the fact taht we haven't got Donald Trump in charge might be more to the point.

The evidence here is that the risk is very
low. But then we avoided having a 25% prevalence in the first place.

We're delighted Australians had the good sense to have their pandemic
in the middle of summer, and the good luck not to have Andrew Cuomo in
charge of their mass-virus-distribution systems.

As the USA could have done, if you hadn't elected a chimpanzee to rule.

He is an orangutan, not a chimpanzee.

Ah, the Orange Man did it. In a country of 330 million, the Orange
Man is the one man who could possibly have stopped Covid-19.
But when all his advisors, all the states, Nancy Pelosi, and all his
critics, were all doing their darndest to impeach^H^H^H^H^Hwarn America,
the bad Orange Man stopped them. And the Orange Man /made/ New York city's
excellent, God-fearing, kitten-loving mayor hold 15 days of Chinese Lunar
New Year festivals, etc.

He's not the only half-wit your preposterous excuse for a political system Peter-Principled into a job he wasn't up to, but he is the one at the top.

> Well then -- that explains Europe, too.

There's no end of self-satisfied complacency around. Australia's prime minister wasn't all that quick to get the message either, but he seems to have got it fast enough to organise an adequate response.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 8:13:18 PM UTC-7, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:

Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe.

I posted a graphic from your Dept. of Health that, I believe, demonstrates
that nearly everyone is safe. Nearly everyone can handle SARS-CoV2 if
they get it...

You mean, safe :== 'recovery is more likely than not'? But Russian roulette only kills
one in six... sixteen, ir twenty-six, aren't "safe", either.

It's insane to play a game with that kind of odds. If you can afford to dodge
the bullet, do so.

The 'Dept. of Health' has a pretty good idea that a fast spreading disease
can overwhelm the localr facilities, , did you find a graphic on that, too?

 

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 11:58:18 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:

On 27/4/20 1:13 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
The problem is that unlike almost any other disease, it progresses
through most of the body without causing symptoms, but after that when
it goes to the lungs, it either dies out there and you recover, or
triggers a cytokine storm that kills you slowly. That's an *immune*
dysfunction, which is also what kills in ebola. You simply don't get
that with the flu.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a dread condition, no question.
Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe.

I posted a graphic from your Dept. of Health that, I believe, demonstrates
that nearly everyone is safe. Nearly everyone can handle SARS-CoV2 if
they get it, and with decent hygiene, nearly every one can avoid it if
they choose, while living a basically (normal life) + (washing their
hands and not touching their faces).

If you're on the edge, the Chinese Red Death will push you off. But
otherwise, it's overwhelmingly a disease of the superannuated and infirm.
So, we protect those people, diligently. That's important. But locking
up healthy people doesn't accomplish that.

Well, that's almost certainly true now in the USA, because of a lack of
leadership and common sense.

Here in Australia (and other places like NZ, that put the right
restrictions in place quickly enough) we can eradicate the disease
entirely. We are already considering how to start opening up a little
after only a month shut down.

I expect that we will have free travel to NZ at least before the end of
the year. And that next year we will again resume the flood of foreign
(mostly Chinese) students - albeit with a mandatory quarantine period on
arrival. Living expenses for foreign students constitutes our 3rd latest
export - and the bigger exports haven't stopped (mining, gas).

But you and I part on a critical assumption -- that quarantining healthy
people stops the illness. It doesn't.

It has done so here, unquestionably.

You've delayed disease, sure. But it's still there.

I'm hoping you whip it, personally, but I just don't understand where
you think the virus will disappear to. For Pete's sake, HIV is much
harder to catch, less prevalent, easier to track, yet here it is,
forty years on.

This study indicates you hadn't whipped the Democratic Communist
virus as of two weeks ago--
<quote>
In the current work, SARS-CoV-2 RNA was concentrated from
wastewater in a catchment in Australia and viral RNA copies
were enumerated using reverse transcriptase quantitative
polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) ... the model estimated
a median range of 171 to 1090 infected persons in the catchment...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-paris-sewage-points-early-warning-system
</quote>

> The USA just didn't do it anywhere near soon enough.

The USA limited travel on Jan. 31st. Same as you, IIRC. At which time
the United States had seven known cases, all quarantined, prompting
NIH's Dr. Fauci to advise us that we need not be concerned.

40,000 travellers from China *after* the supposed
travel bans...

That's huge reduction, a lot better than the over one million who
came here whilst China was still denying that their Special Gift
was contagious. And these were directed through screening locations,
etc.

When the non-exposed healthy
people come out of quarantine, they're still susceptible, they'll still
get sick, and just as many will die.

Only if there's someone to catch it from, and that's not gonna be the case.

In America we were told from the start that shutting down doesn't reduce
the number who get sick. It doesn't reduce the number who die. When you
come out, the virus is still there, waiting

No, it won't be. Not here anyhow.

If it does take off again - a distinct possibility - the new tracing
apps will enable us to shut it down much more quickly than before. The
difficulty of tracing is the only reason this thing has been hard to
stop - and the main reason why we needed the shutdowns. Just that many
fewer contacts to trace, and fewer infections to require it...

Well it's funny, but with a few adjustments, and the loss of almost all
non-essential jobs (musicians, baristas, etc) our society is still
largely functioning. If only non-essential services are affected, then
we are still by definition producing everything that our society
actually needs, i.e. we are still "prospering". If that is the case, we
can afford to redirect the cash that would have been spent on
non-essential services to pay those folk to stay home, and no-one is
really much worse off.

I understand the dry intellectual appeal of that. But I find it
dreadfully cavalier.

It is, and I freely admit that. Many of my sons' friends work in music
and related non-essential careers, and there was initial displeasure at
my comment, until I pointed out that no-one ever recovered from a viral
disease by going to see live music. I'm not saying it's not an important
part of modern life, but it isn't essential to life itself.

To wit, I heard a piano-tuner on local radio, very upset the Vogons
(who've deemed themselves 'essential') had deemed his job 'non-essential.'

He was in an awful way. Hurt. Offended. His job, he explained, was
essential to _him_, it was essential to providing for his family,
paying his mortgage, and putting food on the table for his kids.

Right. But if those who paid for his services still have their incomes,
they can by definition still afford to pay, for a while even without
receiving his services. No-one will die of a badly-tuned piano, or of
paying to support those who will again provide those services. Social
welfare to keep the economy running, so full service can be resumed quicker.

I do see your logic, but I don't think you're including the human
cost. I don't think you're considering the social ramifications
of forcibly quarantining the healthy.

Here, I can already see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, there
are social ramifications. But the USA will be seen to have made its
tunnel years long, whereas ours will only last a couple of months.

I don't think you're weighing
the implications for a free society of entrusting bureaucrats with
the power, at their discretion, to command healthy people's
confinement, to deny the governed their means of earning a living,
and the implications of granting bureaucrats the power to require
that certain people bear the burden of raising others' children, etc.

And there it is. You want to keep "what's yours" from being used to pay
for people who create less value than you. I get it.

That's crass. No you don't get it. I'd profit handsomely from a lockdown.
I'll do fine, regardless. I'm looking at history, the stability of this
society, and how societies eventually fall prey to totalitarians. I'm
concerned that we don't permanently destabilize the world over one
weensy virus.

I could, equally cynically, posit you're fine sacrificing everyone
else's wealth and well-being because you're hoping it improves your
position in society, you're germophobic, fearful, don't mind if a few
extra elderly people die, don't care much about throwing poor people
on the dole, are personally fond of totalitarianism, and maybe you
like the idea of reducing your non-essential countrymen to boot-licking
your personal boots.

See how that cynical-thing works?

But that's not my knee-jerk assumption, not at all. I think you're just
assuming things without evidence, speculating, going with the herd,
not anticipating, naive, envisioning utopia from communal practices
that have never produced anything other than misery, and generally not
making sense. But I'd be glad if it works out well for you, and no,
I don't think you're a monster.

You've offered a cure -- quarantining the healthy. You've zero evidence
quarantining the healthy has ever eradicated a disease, and you've not
proven that the danger is anything close to what you say.

The trouble is
this: in every society, there are people who create no value. If you
support them, they don't have to steal (i.e. create negative value) and
in principle their children can have a better future than they themselves.

Society has come a long way since rule by the strong, at the expense of
the weak. The change is what has made the modern world modern.
Personally, I prefer this world to the one of Charles Dickens, even
though I have to pay taxes for things that don't directly benefit me.

I'm also somewhat skeptical that hunkering actually protects us from
encountering SARS-CoV2. I've heard the virus stays viable for
extended periods on plastic, such as the plastic bags on all those
things you had delivered to your quarantine campsite. Are all those
items you bought at the supermarket, masked, but touched by so many
others, safe? Are the mailman, the deliveryman, safe? Or would your
items swab positive for a virus that has a 25% prevalence in NYC?
I suspect the latter. And then it's off to the races anyhow, right?

There is testing for that.

You're not a terribly populous country, and sparsely populated, so you
might pull it off. Best of luck to you.

The evidence here is that the risk is very
low. But then we avoided having a 25% prevalence in the first place.

We're delighted Australians had the good sense to have their pandemic
in the middle of summer, and the good luck not to have Andrew Cuomo in
charge of their mass-virus-distribution systems.

As the USA could have done, if you hadn't elected a chimpanzee to rule.

CH

Ah, the Orange Man did it. In a country of 330 million, the Orange
Man is the one man who could possibly have stopped the Wuhan Devil.
But when all his advisors, all the states, Nancy Pelosi, and all his
critics, were all doing their darndest to impeach^H^H^H^H^Hwarn America,
the bad Orange Man stopped them. And the Orange Man /made/ New York city's
excellent, God-fearing, kitten-loving mayor hold 15 days of Chinese Lunar
New Year festivals, etc.

Well then -- that explains Europe, too.

Grins,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 4:00:00 PM UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 11:58:18 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 27/4/20 1:13 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:27:13 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:

<snip>

But you and I part on a critical assumption -- that quarantining healthy
people stops the illness. It doesn't.

It has done so here, unquestionably.

You've delayed disease, sure. But it's still there.

Still where? If it's overseas, we quarantine for 14 days before we let anybody in.

If there's a isolated case in the population we jump on it as soon as we find it, contact trace it comprehensively - probably using our new toy, the CovidSafe app and quarantine anybody who might have got infected for fourteen days after the contact.

You don't really seem to understand that you can only get infected by an individual who the disease, and if you make them rare enough you can stop them from starting another epidemic.

I'm hoping you whip it, personally, but I just don't understand where
you think the virus will disappear to. For Pete's sake, HIV is much
harder to catch, less prevalent, easier to track, yet here it is,
forty years on.

Harder to detect. You've got to be tested for it to be detected. Australia's contact tracing data to date demonstrates that at least two third of the people who get infected get sick enough for somebody to notice so they get tested.

This isn't what your very early antibody testing results are telling you, but what they are telling you doesn't seem to be right, even if you like the message.

This study indicates you hadn't whipped the Covid19
virus as of two weeks ago--
quote
In the current work, SARS-CoV-2 RNA was concentrated from
wastewater in a catchment in Australia and viral RNA copies
were enumerated using reverse transcriptase quantitative
polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) ... the model estimated
a median range of 171 to 1090 infected persons in the catchment...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-paris-sewage-points-early-warning-system
/quote

It also says "He and his colleagues sampled wastewater in Brisbane representing 600,000 people, in March and April. In contrast to the study in Paris, they found a peak of viral shedding that corresponded to the peak detected through direct human testing. The difference might be explained by more prevalent human testing in Australia, he says."

That is, Australia already knew how many infected people there were in the Brisbane catchment, and the sewage sampling confirmed it.

We are still getting 21 new cases per day, which is a factor of twenty down from the peak, but we haven't quite got it whipped yet.

The USA just didn't do it anywhere near soon enough.

The USA limited travel on Jan. 31st. Same as you, IIRC. At which time
the United States had seven known cases, all quarantined, prompting
NIH's Dr. Fauci to advise us that we need not be concerned.

40,000 travellers from China *after* the supposed
travel bans...

That's huge reduction, a lot better than the over one million who
came here whilst China was still denying that their Special Gift
was contagious. And these were directed through screening locations,
etc.

But not remotely huge enough. Congratulating yourselves on doing something, when it clearly wasn't enough, put you in the Donald Trump class.

When the non-exposed healthy
people come out of quarantine, they're still susceptible, they'll still
get sick, and just as many will die.

Only if there's someone to catch it from, and that's not gonna be the case.

In America we were told from the start that shutting down doesn't reduce
the number who get sick. It doesn't reduce the number who die. When you
come out, the virus is still there, waiting

No, it won't be. Not here anyhow.

<snip>

And there it is. You want to keep "what's yours" from being used to pay
for people who create less value than you. I get it.

That's crass.

But accurate.

You've offered a cure -- quarantining the healthy. You've zero evidence
quarantining the healthy has ever eradicated a disease, and you've not
proven that the danger is anything close to what you say.

Quarantining has always meant quarantining the not visibly for long enough that if they were sick the disease would show.

That's exactly what the Typhoid Mary story was about. It works, and has been known to work for a very long time.

<snip>

There is testing for that.

You're not a terribly populous country, and sparsely populated, so you
might pull it off. Best of luck to you.

Your population density is tenth of that of Europe, and ten times that of Australia. It's not really a relevant factor. the fact taht we haven't got Donald Trump in charge might be more to the point.

The evidence here is that the risk is very
low. But then we avoided having a 25% prevalence in the first place.

We're delighted Australians had the good sense to have their pandemic
in the middle of summer, and the good luck not to have Andrew Cuomo in
charge of their mass-virus-distribution systems.

As the USA could have done, if you hadn't elected a chimpanzee to rule.

He is an orangutan, not a chimpanzee.

Ah, the Orange Man did it. In a country of 330 million, the Orange
Man is the one man who could possibly have stopped Covid-19.
But when all his advisors, all the states, Nancy Pelosi, and all his
critics, were all doing their darndest to impeach^H^H^H^H^Hwarn America,
the bad Orange Man stopped them. And the Orange Man /made/ New York city's
excellent, God-fearing, kitten-loving mayor hold 15 days of Chinese Lunar
New Year festivals, etc.

He's not the only half-wit your preposterous excuse for a political system Peter-Principled into a job he wasn't up to, but he is the one at the top.

> Well then -- that explains Europe, too.

There's no end of self-satisfied complacency around. Australia's prime minister wasn't all that quick to get the message either, but he seems to have got it fast enough to organise an adequate response.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 27/04/20 04:21, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Friday, April 24, 2020 at 6:49:46 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

I wonder how many deaths have resulted from the lockdowns. People
aren't getting cancer or kidney or heart surgeries or tests. Kids
aren't getting vaccinated. People are in desperate financial shape,
drinking and fighting and maybe suicide.

Suicide is a leading cause of death (47k annually), particularly among
men, and in my area, it has skyrocketed.

I know someone in agonizing pain, but unable to see a doctor.
(All the doctors' practices are closed, or teleconference-only.)

If you need tests or diagnoses, if you happen to fall ill right now,
if you've found a lump and need it looked into, you're screwed.

So do I: my mother yesterday.

Doctor said she should go to A&E, and within an hour
she was there.

The A&E waiting room was sparsely packed.

She's home now; I hope she hasn't picked up something
and if so won't pass it on to me. I'll go round and
check soon.

 

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote in news:3e6be5f0-72d4-4445-9592-
584f9f5eb313@googlegroups.com:

> the Wuhan Scourge,

I hope you die from the retarded brain death being a Trumpanzee
retard has caused you.

That motherfucker is the scourge, and his followers will undoubtedly
prove themselves to be the same as he is.

 

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote in
news:825178a8-14b3-4de4-a403-4f15feb6470d@googlegroups.com:

On Friday, April 24, 2020 at 6:49:46 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

I wonder how many deaths have resulted from the lockdowns. People
aren't getting cancer or kidney or heart surgeries or tests. Kids
aren't getting vaccinated. People are in desperate financial
shape, drinking and fighting and maybe suicide.

Suicide is a leading cause of death (47k annually), particularly
among men, and in my area, it has skyrocketed.

Bullshit. You are a fucking idiot.

I know someone in agonizing pain, but unable to see a doctor.
(All the doctors' practices are closed, or teleconference-only.)

Gonna run out and kill themselves? Pretty stupid. You one of them?

If you need tests or diagnoses, if you happen to fall ill right
now, if you've found a lump and need it looked into, you're
screwed.

It took a while for the lump to appear. A few more months won't
change much.

BTW, we are screwed anyway. There are way too many idiots like you
running around for the intelligent among us to keep our hair. But
your removal would mean that we have to lower ourselves to the
TrumpTardŠ response level. Given the chance, that retarded bastard
would blow up all of us up.

If their were a-bombs dropped and there was a nuclear cloud flowing
around the planet killing people, idiots like you would still deny it
and want to run out and play in it.

Hell, you would probably want to "watch" one go off. We could fix
that.

One ring to rule them all. The RING RING RING of a neutron bomb
ignition.

One bomb to eradicate you all!

I am all for gathering all of you idiots in one place so you can do
just that. One Neutron bomb FOR YOU ALL, to FREE US from the
TrumpTardedŠ stupidity currently flowing around in some of your
stupid skull cavities.