Coronavirus COVID-19

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Gil Dobie
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by Gil Dobie »

houndawg wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 12:48 pm
Gil Dobie wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:06 am

I prefer my personal physicians advice over Fauci. My Doc said if I get covid, to take the Trump drug. It's the only approved drug that is affective.
don't forget to shove a UV light up your ass :coffee:
Do you even know what we are talking about? Sounds like something the ags proud boys would say.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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..peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard..
..But you have to go home now. We have to have peace…
..I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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..peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard..
..But you have to go home now. We have to have peace…
..I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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..peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard..
..But you have to go home now. We have to have peace…
..I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by JohnStOnge »

I found an article related to the idea that a viral disease has to become less deadly if it becomes more contagious. It is by a Professor of Microbial Evolution and a Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath, UK. It's at https://theconversation.com/will-corona ... dly-153817 ,

There is reference in it to the fact that we may have already had an instance of a COVID-19 variant being both more contagious and more lethal than the variants we'd seen before before the Delta variant showed up (the article was written February 1, 2021). Here a quote on that:
This comfortable chain of reasoning was rudely broken by the announcement of “a realistic possibility” that the new highly transmissible B117 variant “is associated with an increased risk of death”.

Although the evidence is still accruing, early estimates from Nervtag, the UK’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, suggest that B117 may be around 30% more deadly.
The article described a "law of declining virulence" concept that was developed during the late 1800s. But it described an alternative outlook described as the "trade-off model." And the trade-off model says we can see increased transmissibility along with increased virulence.
The trade-off model recognises that pathogen virulence will not necessarily limit the ease by which a pathogen can transmit from one host to another. It might even enhance it. Without the assumed evolutionary cost to virulence, there is no reason to believe that disease severity will decrease over time.
According to the authors:
The trade-off model is now widely accepted. It emphasises that each host-pathogen combination must be considered individually. There is no general evolutionary law for predicting how these relationships will pan out, and certainly no justification for evoking the inevitability of decreased virulence.
So, no, there is no universally accepted rule that says a virus can't become both more contagious and more deadly. That's probably not what was going on with Rand Paul anyway. He was probably referring to a flurry of references on the internet to a misinterpretation of case fatality rates. But, either way, Paul was once again making statements that were not supported by any real evidence.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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I'll go ahead and post a link to the article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... us-evolve/ as well because I came across it while looking for discussion of the idea that greater transmissibility means lower virulence.

Here is what I think is key language:
But hope that this coronavirus will attenuate over time is no guarantee that it will. We already know that coronaviruses can become much more lethal; we need look no further than SARS-CoV-1, which killed 50 percent of those aged 65 and older, and MERS, which killed one out of three infected.

So where does that leave us?

First, we must accept the harsh truth told by this virus and its variants. We can expect it to come back—potentially for years to come—and we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that when it does, it may be more lethal and even more transmissible than the variants that exist today.
The author is a former professor at Harvard Medical School where he founded two research departments on cancer and HIV/AIDS and that underlined portion clearly indicates he sees a possibility of COVID-19 becoming more contagious as well as more deadly.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by JohnStOnge »

SeattleGriz wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:15 pm
JohnStOnge wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:43 pm

See https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-011488089270. Here is a quote responding to the basic premise you are going with:



That is another example of something people within the conservative misinformation bubble just said. Then it was accepted as fact without critical examination by a whole bunch of conservatives.

Besides, the point is that the data do not suggest that this variant is less deadly. Right now we don't know about that. But CDC is suggesting that there are data indicating that it may cause more severe disease. What do you think that is likely to translate to in terms of "deadliness?"

The bottom line is that Paul made a completely unsupportable statement.
Bro. This isn't my premise. It's common knowledge in the field of Epidemiology. I could have been more clear like with Clenz by saying the majority of mutations work that way. It's why we have the word endemic.
It's not common knowledge in the field of epidemiology. It's an old hypothesis from the late 1800s.

In any case, to me, common sense should tell people that something that has a death rate like COVID-19 does can become somewhat more deadly and more contagious at the same time. According to CDC estimates at about 1 in 157 COVID-19 infections have resulted in death. If it becomes twice as deadly at 2 in 157 that's not going to mean it can't spread more if it goes from something like R-naught 2.7 to R-naught 6 as indicated by estimates referenced in the article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhas ... ed-danger/ .

Look at it this way: A virus is going to occupy a host for some weeks either way. The person may die in a few weeks or they may overcome the virus. Either way they are not spreading the virus after a few weeks. Yes, I can see that if you had a virus that killed everybody it infected within 24 hours of infection it might not spread well. But COVID-19 doesn't do that even when it kills people. People start spreading the virus before they start showing symptoms. When they do die it usually happens after they've been around for a while having opportunity to spread.

That's just me thinking but I just don't think this particular situation is one in which a person has any reason to think that the pathogen could not become both more contagious and somewhat more deadly at the same time.
Last edited by JohnStOnge on Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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JohnStOnge wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:46 pm I'll go ahead and post a link to the article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... us-evolve/ as well because I came across it while looking for discussion of the idea that greater transmissibility means lower virulence.

Here is what I think is key language:
But hope that this coronavirus will attenuate over time is no guarantee that it will. We already know that coronaviruses can become much more lethal; we need look no further than SARS-CoV-1, which killed 50 percent of those aged 65 and older, and MERS, which killed one out of three infected.

So where does that leave us?

First, we must accept the harsh truth told by this virus and its variants. We can expect it to come back—potentially for years to come—and we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that when it does, it may be more lethal and even more transmissible than the variants that exist today.
The author is a former professor at Harvard Medical School where he founded two research departments on cancer and HIV/AIDS and that underlined portion clearly indicates he sees a possibility of COVID-19 becoming more contagious as well as more deadly.
I’m sorry John, these two posts are not in tweet form and use links and stuff.

:rule:
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by JohnStOnge »

kalm wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:12 pm
JohnStOnge wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:46 pm I'll go ahead and post a link to the article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... us-evolve/ as well because I came across it while looking for discussion of the idea that greater transmissibility means lower virulence.

Here is what I think is key language:



The author is a former professor at Harvard Medical School where he founded two research departments on cancer and HIV/AIDS and that underlined portion clearly indicates he sees a possibility of COVID-19 becoming more contagious as well as more deadly.
I’m sorry John, these two posts are not in tweet form and use links and stuff.

:rule:
You hit upon a real problem of our time. Perhaps any time. You go on Facebook and you see these vacuous, memes with short, clever sounding statements. Or you see vacuous tweets on Twitter. Never mind that they are completely wrong. The problem is that we live in a complex world and you can't really form intelligent impressions based on vacuous, memes or tweets. But if someone tries to write something that does justice to the issue, most people don't have the attention span to deal with the discussion. So vacuous, wins.

It's sad.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by AZGrizFan »

JohnStOnge wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:20 pm
kalm wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:12 pm

I’m sorry John, these two posts are not in tweet form and use links and stuff.

:rule:
You hit upon a real problem of our time. Perhaps any time. You go on Facebook and you see these vacuous, memes with short, clever sounding statements. Or you see vacuous tweets on Twitter. Never mind that they are completely wrong. The problem is that we live in a complex world and you can't really form intelligent impressions based on vacuous, memes or tweets. But if someone tries to write something that does justice to the issue, most people don't have the attention span to deal with the discussion. So vacuous, wins.

It's sad.
And yet people 40 and under get 95% of their news from Twitter, FB and TicTok.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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BDKJMU wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:03 pm
I looked at the Twitter thread. People like that, who have NO clue with respect to trying to address something like this, have done tremendous damage to this country by attacking the credibility of the CDC. The CDC is the premier disease control entity in the world. It has made mistakes. There was no way for that NOT to happen during this episode. But the bottom line is that we would be a lot better off right now if everybody had listened to the CDC and followed its recommendations throughout. The epidemic would be suppressed in the United States. We'd be better off if there had never been a Trump White House Coronavirus Task Force and we had just let the system work as it was designed to work. We'd be better off if we'd just let the Center for Disease Control, which is the repository of this nation's expertise in that regard, take the lead without interference from politicians.

People like this Drew Holden idiot are not doing this country any favors by continuing to attack the credibility of the people who know what they are doing and who we need to overcome this thing.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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Thanks for the links JSO. I was one who incorrectly thought the less deadly/more contagious thing because of stuff I read, but my friend - a doctorate at the NIH who's now working with the initial research for treatments of long-Covid - said that it was completely wrong. It's a path a virus can take, but not necessarily the path it will. The delta variant hasn't taken the path of less deadly/more contagious.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
We have seen that the efficacy of public mask wearing is largely supported by epidemiological and ecological data, as well as models.
The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce Re to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained.
Of course Tucker Carlson and numerous Party-of-Stupid Congresspeople say masks don't work. So there's that.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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Well, according to WorldoMeter, 7 day rolling avg from the Jan high point to June low point to now:
CASES: Jan was over 255k a day, June 12k a day, now 75+k a day. DEATHS: Jan 3,500 a day, June 230 a day, now 320 a day.

So since June cases up close to 6 fold+, but deaths up less than 40%. I realize deaths lag cases, but sure seems like more contagious/less deadly.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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∞∞∞ wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:37 pm Thanks for the links JSO. I was one who incorrectly thought the less deadly/more contagious thing because of stuff I read, but my friend - a doctorate at the NIH who's now working with the initial research for treatments of long-Covid - said that it was completely wrong. It's a path a virus can take, but not necessarily the path it will. The delta variant hasn't taken the path of less deadly/more contagious.
Thanks. Like I said: To me commons sense should tell people that COVID could become somewhat more deadly and more contagious at the same time. It's not like going from 1 in 150 to 2 in 150 infections resulting in fatality would be expected to stop it from spreading.

I mean, those are high fatality rates when you are looking at a large population. I don't think anybody likes a 1 in 150 or a 1 in 75 risk of dying from a disease they catch. And it can translate into millions of deaths in the population. But it leaves plenty of infected individuals to spread the disease.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by JohnStOnge »

Here's an interesting blast from the past:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/uni ... tudy-says/

The headline:
Universal mask use could save 130,000 U.S. lives by the end of February, new study estimates
The article was written October 23, 2020. We can never know if the 130,000 lives saved estimate was accurate.

But another thing the modelers projected was pretty darned close. On October 23, 2020, there had been 231,416 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. The authors estimated that the death toll could rise to half a million by the end of February.

The actual death total on February 28, 2021? 531,216.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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Here is an article with an interesting interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/scie ... ersen.html .

The interview is with Kristian Andersen. He wrote an e mail to Anthony Fauci that conservative media and Republican politicians made a big deal about. Turns out it was just a preliminary observation that made him wonder. He and others looked into it and rejected the hypothesis. Here is his bottom line from the interview:
Based on detailed analyses of the virus conducted to date by researchers around the world, it is extremely unlikely that the virus was engineered. The scenario in which the virus was found in nature, brought to the lab and then accidentally release[d] is similarly unlikely, based on current evidence.

In contrast, the scientific theory about the natural emergence of SARS-CoV-2 presents a far simpler and more likely scenario. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 is very similar to that of SARS-CoV-1, including its seasonal timing, location and association with the human food chain.
Honestly I think the Senate Health Committee ought to ask this guy to testify so he could nuke Rand Paul. It would be entertaining.

Oh, in the interview he also rebuts the argument that the presence of a furin cleavage site could be a sign of human manipulation of the virus:
Furin cleavage sites are found all across the coronavirus family, including in the betacoronavirus genus that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to. There has been much speculation that patterns found in the virus’s RNA that are responsible for certain portions of the furin cleavage site represent evidence of engineering. Specifically, people are pointing to two “CGG” sequences that code for the amino acid arginine in the furin cleavage site as strong evidence that the virus was made in the lab. Such statements are factually incorrect.

While it’s true that CGG is less common than other patterns that code for arginine, the CGG codon is found elsewhere in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and the genetic sequence[s] that include the CGG codon found in SARS-CoV-2 are also found in other coronaviruses. These findings, together with many other technical features of the site, strongly suggest that it evolved naturally and there is very little chance somebody engineered it.
Last edited by JohnStOnge on Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by kalm »

JohnStOnge wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:10 pm Here's an interesting blast from the past:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/uni ... tudy-says/

The headline:
Universal mask use could save 130,000 U.S. lives by the end of February, new study estimates
The article was written October 23, 2020. We can never know if the 130,000 lives saved estimate was accurate.

But another thing the modelers projected was pretty darned close. On October 23, 2020, there had been 231,416 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. The authors estimated that the death toll could rise to half a million by the end of February.

The actual death total on February 28, 2021? 531,216.
A number of the experts have surprisingly been quite accurate in their predictions going back to Spring of 2020 as well as updates as more information came in.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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Winterborn wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 2:00 pm
kalm wrote:
Well that’s his cross to bare I guess.
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

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BDKJMU wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:11 pm
Meh. Those countries are going full on vaxx passport. We'll see what happens here. The polls are showing a big unfavourability of a vax passport so it wouldn't be politically advantageous for the Biden* admin to go that route. We'll see.

Of course if the Biden* admin was really that worried of the delta variant (or any variant for that matter), they wouldn't be letting 10's of thousands of illegals stroll across the border on a monthly basis. :coffee:
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by houndawg »

BDKJMU wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:03 pm


:roll:
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by houndawg »

houndawg wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 5:16 am
BDKJMU wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:03 pm


:roll:


Its science. If you have a friend that reads he can catch you up
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by 89Hen »

Gil Dobie wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 12:56 pm If you don't like or trust a Dr, find one that you trust. If you are concerned about their diagnosis, tell them, or get a second opinion.
So like we said. :lol:
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by SeattleGriz »

JohnStOnge wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:12 pm
SeattleGriz wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:15 pm

Bro. This isn't my premise. It's common knowledge in the field of Epidemiology. I could have been more clear like with Clenz by saying the majority of mutations work that way. It's why we have the word endemic.
It's not common knowledge in the field of epidemiology. It's an old hypothesis from the late 1800s.

In any case, to me, common sense should tell people that something that has a death rate like COVID-19 does can become somewhat more deadly and more contagious at the same time. According to CDC estimates at about 1 in 157 COVID-19 infections have resulted in death. If it becomes twice as deadly at 2 in 157 that's not going to mean it can't spread more if it goes from something like R-naught 2.7 to R-naught 6 as indicated by estimates referenced in the article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhas ... ed-danger/ .

Look at it this way: A virus is going to occupy a host for some weeks either way. The person may die in a few weeks or they may overcome the virus. Either way they are not spreading the virus after a few weeks. Yes, I can see that if you had a virus that killed everybody it infected within 24 hours of infection it might not spread well. But COVID-19 doesn't do that even when it kills people. People start spreading the virus before they start showing symptoms. When they do die it usually happens after they've been around for a while having opportunity to spread.

That's just me thinking but I just don't think this particular situation is one in which a person has any reason to think that the pathogen could not become both more contagious and somewhat more deadly at the same time.
So let me get this straight? You come upon understanding that the virus will mutate and the the fittest will survive. That's called Evolution bro and it's been around forever. The so called 1800's theory you espouse as your defense has been seen in thousands of laboratories as scientists work with both viruses and bacteria. The large percentage of mutations are usually non beneficial or neutral.

Reread what I posted and you will see that you took my post out of context. I was careful to not state in the absolute. No shit a virus can take a bad turn, but history shows us it should die down.

So now once again. Where do you think the evolutionary pressure for the virus to mutate is coming from?
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Re: Coronavirus COVID-19

Post by kalm »

SeattleGriz wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:28 am
JohnStOnge wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:12 pm

It's not common knowledge in the field of epidemiology. It's an old hypothesis from the late 1800s.

In any case, to me, common sense should tell people that something that has a death rate like COVID-19 does can become somewhat more deadly and more contagious at the same time. According to CDC estimates at about 1 in 157 COVID-19 infections have resulted in death. If it becomes twice as deadly at 2 in 157 that's not going to mean it can't spread more if it goes from something like R-naught 2.7 to R-naught 6 as indicated by estimates referenced in the article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhas ... ed-danger/ .

Look at it this way: A virus is going to occupy a host for some weeks either way. The person may die in a few weeks or they may overcome the virus. Either way they are not spreading the virus after a few weeks. Yes, I can see that if you had a virus that killed everybody it infected within 24 hours of infection it might not spread well. But COVID-19 doesn't do that even when it kills people. People start spreading the virus before they start showing symptoms. When they do die it usually happens after they've been around for a while having opportunity to spread.

That's just me thinking but I just don't think this particular situation is one in which a person has any reason to think that the pathogen could not become both more contagious and somewhat more deadly at the same time.
So let me get this straight? You come upon understanding that the virus will mutate and the the fittest will survive. That's called Evolution bro and it's been around forever. The so called 1800's theory you espouse as your defense has been seen in thousands of laboratories as scientists work with both viruses and bacteria. The large percentage of mutations are usually non beneficial or neutral.

Reread what I posted and you will see that you took my post out of context. I was careful to not state in the absolute. No shit a virus can take a bad turn, but history shows us it should die down.

So now once again. Where do you think the evolutionary pressure for the virus to mutate is coming from?
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