Wu Flu

[Fat Cat]

We're completely fucked and will be for years. No easy way to say it.

[Turdacious]

We're completely fucked and will be for years. No easy way to say it.

What's the local sentiment on the impact of the COVID crisis and the response? I can't imagine the foreign tourism forecast is good.

My area: higher income workers probably better off (gotten comfortable with reducing spending, easier commute, more opportunities to work from home, income on same trajectory, increased opportunities to move to lower cost areas because of remote work opportunities); lower income workers fucked (restaurant and bar jobs either gone or very limited after winter, retail sector hurting, public transit probably going to cut back hard next year, employers will probably realize that there are a lot more workers than vacancies which will kill wages)

[Bennyonesix1]

No shit really yellow hat?

Really?

No shit?

[Luke]

We're completely fucked and will be for years. No easy way to say it.

Bugger.

Are the people being looked after or do you think it will get ugly? I think about some of those suburbs in the outlying areas of Waikiki.

[Fat Cat]

We're completely fucked and will be for years. No easy way to say it.

Bugger.

Are the people being looked after or do you think it will get ugly? I think about some of those suburbs in the outlying areas of Waikiki.

I'm not exactly sure which neighborhood(s) you're referring to, but yes, it will get ugly. We already have a terrible homeless problem and this has caused mass unemployment, stress, etc. The sooner we open the better but, as you've noted, who's going to come? Hawaiian vacations are a luxury most people can't afford right now. I'm blessed (and armed to the teeth) but it's a trying time for my community. I hope things are better for Australians, you're good people.

[Sangoma]

We're completely fucked and will be for years. No easy way to say it.

Couple of weeks ago I went to the 4WD store to buy some stuff for the upcoming camping trip. The store is located in shopping centre in one of the industrials areas of Sydney, Alexandria. As soon as you enter the shopping centre it hits you: two large stores (one upmarket furniture store, Natuzzi, another - Harvey Norman, one of these places where you buy everything from a battery to furniture, to electronics etc.) are closed. Eerie. Many other shopping malls are way quieter than they used to be.

On the other note, covid has been a gift for the incompetent. In June I had to go to the local bank branch. The local manager couldn't solve my issue and told me to call some number. He himself could not do it because waiting time was expected to be over an hour. In response to my raised eyebrows he said: "You don't understand, this is an extraordinary situation!" Mind you that particular bank made $6 billion in profits the year before. SIX BILLION DOLLARS, and they could not find the means to hire and train locals (who are losing jobs) to answer the phone. I reckon every government in the world is going to ride the covid excuse.

[nafod]

Whoa

Heard that the mortality rate for a mid-70s male with Covid is about 10%.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Whoa

Heard that the mortality rate for a mid-70s male with Covid is about 10%.

His risk is higher than that at this point. The steroid can have you hopping around for a while but the real test will be the next two days or so.

[nafod]

Don Jr. was seen renting "Weekend at Bernie's"

[Bennyonesix1]

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588

Ken Rice, professor of computational astrophysics, Ben Wynne, postdoctoral researcher, Victoria Martin, professor of collider physics, Graeme J Ackland, professor of computer simulation
Author affiliations
Correspondence to: G J Ackland [email protected]
Accepted 15 September 2020
Abstract

Objective

To replicate and analyse the information available to UK policymakers when the lockdown decision was taken in March 2020 in the United Kingdom.

Design

Independent calculations using the CovidSim code, which implements Imperial College London’s individual based model, with data available in March 2020 applied to the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) epidemic.

Setting

Simulations considering the spread of covid-19 in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Population

About 70 million simulated people matched as closely as possible to actual UK demographics, geography, and social behaviours.

Main outcome measures

Replication of summary data on the covid-19 epidemic reported to the UK government Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), and a detailed study of unpublished results, especially the effect of school closures.

Results

The CovidSim model would have produced a good forecast of the subsequent data if initialised with a reproduction number of about 3.5 for covid-19. The model predicted that school closures and isolation of younger people would increase the total number of deaths, albeit postponed to a second and subsequent waves. The findings of this study suggest that prompt interventions were shown to be highly effective at reducing peak demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds but also prolong the epidemic, in some cases resulting in more deaths long term. This happens because covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200 000.

Conclusions

It was predicted in March 2020 that in response to covid-19 a broad lockdown, as opposed to a focus on shielding the most vulnerable members of society, would reduce immediate demand for ICU beds at the cost of more deaths long term. The optimal strategy for saving lives in a covid-19 epidemic is different from that anticipated for an influenza epidemic with a different mortality age profile.

[Fat Cat]

https://nypost.com/2020/10/11/who-warns ... ic-damage/

WHO warns against COVID-19 lockdowns due to economic damage

The World Health Organization has warned leaders against relying on COVID-19 lockdowns to tackle outbreaks — after previously saying countries should be careful how quickly they re-open.

WHO envoy Dr. David Nabarro said that such restrictive measures should only be treated as a last resort, the British magazine The Spectator reported in a video interview.

“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Nabarro said.

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Nabarro said that there’s significant harm caused by tight restrictions, particularly on the global economy.

“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said.

He added that lockdowns have severely impacted countries that rely on tourism.

“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays,” Nabarro told the outlet.

“Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”

The UN agency previously warned countries against lifting lockdowns too soon during the first wave of the virus.

“The last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses, only to be forced to close them again because of a resurgence,” said Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

But Tedros had urged countries to bolster other measures, including widespread testing and contact tracing, so they could safely reopen and avoid future lockdowns.

“We need to reach a sustainable situation where we have adequate control of this virus without shutting down our lives entirely, or lurching from lockdown to lockdown — which has a hugely detrimental impact on societies,” he said.

[Bennyonesix1]

I thought talking about economics was murder?

[Fat Cat]

I thought talking about economics was murder?

Only when it comes from the right.

[Bennyonesix1]

Fascinating paper. Crucial reading. Takeaways: 1) second much smaller wave coming in Europe 2) a 77% effective vaccine can still help if delivered very soon (but 77% is lmao no way) and 3) lockdowns kill many more ppl and we need corona parties among the healthy.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20210146v1

[Bennyonesix1]

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_fir ... 265892.pdf

Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data
John P A Ioannidisa
a Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University, 1265 Welch Road, Stanford, California 94305, United States of America.
Correspondence to John P A Ioannidis (email: [email protected]).
(Submitted: 13 May 2020 – Revised version received: 13 September 2020 – Accepted: 15 September 2020 – Published online: 14 October 2020)
Abstract
Objective To estimate the infection fatality rate of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)from seroprevalence data.

The median infection fatality rate across all 51 locations was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%). Most data came from locations with high death tolls from COVID-19 and 32 of the locations had a population mortality rate (COVID-19 deaths per million population) higher than the global average (118 deaths from COVID-19 per million as of 12 September 2020;79 Fig. 3). Uncorrected estimates of the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 ranged from 0.01% to 0.67% (median 0.10%) across the 19 locations with a population mortality rate for COVID-19 lower than the global average, from 0.07% to 0.73% (median 0.20%) across 17 locations with population mortality rate higher than the global average but lower than 500 COVID-19 deaths per million, and from 0.20% to 1.63% (median 0.71%) across 15 locations with more than 500 COVID-19 deaths per million. The corrected estimates of the median infection fatality rate were 0.09%, 0.20% and 0.57%, respectively, for the three location groups.
For people < 70 years old, the infection fatality rate of COVId-19 across 40 locations with available data ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% (median 0.05%); the corrected values were similar.

Acknowledging these limitations, based on the currently available data, one may project that over half a billion people have been infected as of 12 September, 2020, far more than the approximately 29 million documented laboratory-confirmed cases. Most locations probably have an infection fatality rate less than 0.20% and with appropriate, precise non-pharmacological measures that selectively try to protect high-risk vulnerable populations and settings, the infection fatality rate may be brought even lower.

[Bennyonesix1]

Just to be clear the above means it's the flu absent catastrophic policy decisions made by Italy and the Cuomo coalition in the North East.

[Fat Cat]

A systematic review published 12/3/20 by the Oxford U has confirmed that cov2 rtPCR testing patient sample cycle thresholds >30 are associated with NEGATIVE viral cultures. What does that mean? It means that roughly 80% of all "positives" being reported in your state/region are likely non-infectious and clinically meaningless. If health authoritarians changed the testing standard by lowering the cycle threshold (CT) cutoff to less than "30", cases would magically drop 80+ percent.

Excerpt from the study:

..."Complete live viruses are necessary for transmission, not the fragments identified by PCR. Those with high cycle threshold are unlikely to have infectious potential"...

As the truth surrounding PCR testing continues to surface, more people will begin to understand just how local Government and the CDC have ignored the real science, and have continued to use sweeping, high cycle PCR testing as means to justify lockdowns and restrictions.


https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-ar ... 64/6018217

[Grandpa's Spells]

The dead people are going to feel so much better about this.

[Fat Cat]

The dead people are going to feel so much better about this.

I thought you "believed the science". You had better go straighten those clowns at Oxford out.

Also, you have completely missed the corollary that many of the people who's deaths were attributed to COVID-19 due to false positives died due to other causes.

[nafod]

If health authoritarians changed the testing standard by lowering the cycle threshold (CT) cutoff to less than "30", cases would magically drop 80+ percent.

So what?

The gold standard for this clusterf*** is hospitalizations. They are exploding, and no other pandemics are currently occurring.

[Grandpa's Spells]

The dead people are going to feel so much better about this.

I thought you "believed the science". You had better go straighten those clowns at Oxford out.

The number of times I've read an article about a study only to ask someone in the industry who says, "The data in the study didn't support the article's conclusion" is rather high. If people would wear their masks and cut down on superspreader events we wouldn't have so many dead Americans. If there's something that contradicts that, I guess I'm interested, but I don't think that's likely.

ICUs are getting fucked again. 1/1000 N Dakotans now dead of COVID. Letting freedom and stupid ring.

It is frustrating to see the US acting like a shitty country compared to so many other developed ones, and I've more or less switched to PPE at this point given how often I encounter people who won't take basic steps to protect their fellow citizens.

[Fat Cat]

The number of times I've read an article about a study only to ask someone in the industry who says, "The data in the study didn't support the article's conclusion" is rather high. If people would wear their masks and cut down on superspreader events we wouldn't have so many dead Americans. If there's something that contradicts that, I guess I'm interested, but I don't think that's likely.

I understand, that heady mix of fear and the feeling of being part of something important is intoxicating for you. But, every now and then in a quiet moment, do you ever ask yourself, "am I a complete fucking dupe?" I did not post an article, I posted the study itself. Here's the takeaway friend:

Complete live viruses are necessary for transmission, not the fragments identified by PCR. Prospective routine testing of reference and culture specimens and their relationship to symptoms, signs and patient co-factors should be used to define the reliability of PCR for assessing infectious potential. Those with high cycle threshold are unlikely to have infectious potential.

I.e., your "cases" don't mean shit. People die all the time, and many people's deaths are being mis-attributed to COVID-19. I'm sure you look cool in your gas mask tho.

[kreator]

It is frustrating to see the US acting like a shitty country compared to so many other developed ones

Can you expand on this? US leads with absolute numbers, but adjusted per capita there are a number of developed countries that have higher deaths and confirmed cases.

[nafod]

There are a bunch that are far, far FAR better than we are. Not many that are worse.

Taiwan, NZ, Australia, Vietnam, Japan, Norway, Finland, etc. are orders of magnitude better than we are.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/he ... and-cases/

[Grandpa's Spells]

It is frustrating to see the US acting like a shitty country compared to so many other developed ones

Can you expand on this? US leads with absolute numbers, but adjusted per capita there are a number of developed countries that have higher deaths and confirmed cases.

As you point out, there are difficulties comparing us with places like New Zealand and Taiwan, which are smaller and more easily controlled. However, Canada represents a similar geography and arguably more disadvantaged climate, and they're doing far, far better. EU as a whole has also done better.

Our World in Data will let you plot pretty much whatever, so here are some developed non-Asian countries. Even looking at relatively similar countries that took different approaches (Norway vs. Sweden and Canada vs US) the differences are pretty striking. Our trend-line is spectacularly bad.


A few weeks ago somebody did EU and US "states," and found the rankings for worse death rates were N Dakota, Czech Republic and South Dakota. N Dakota has been the least compliant US state in getting their shit together.