Coronavirus COVID-19

[AshevilleApp]

9000+!

[AZGrizFan]

And as if on que, here’s your horrid football analogy.

Here’s the REAL data: 100,000 people walk into a football stadium. 10,000 of them are going to die (10% of our population dies EVERY year). With the virus, assuming EVERY death is an excess death and isn’t someone who would have died anyway (which is a HUGE assumption given the age group most affected by the virus) Now, instead of 10,000 dying, 10,082 people are going to die. THAT is what we’ve shut down the country for. That is what we’ve destroyed our economy for. THAT is what we’re cowering in our homes for.

10% of the population does not die every year. It is less than 1%. See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm. Also, for the latest year for which data are available (2018), the death rate per 100,000 population for people in the 55 through 64 year old range was 887 per 100,000 population. See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/datab ... )%2C%20and. That is 0.9%.

As of a few weeks ago (lag with provisional data), we were at about 82 deaths per 100,000 population among the 55-64 year age group from COVID-19 alone. Getting close to 10% of the total deaths we would expect in that age group from all causes.

I don't know why some people find it necessary to try to downplay the significance of this thing. It's just not rational.

Nor is it rational to cower in fear from something with a 99.75% survival rate. But here we are.

Edit: and thanks for making my point: Because if it’s 100,000 15 year olds, Maaaaaaybe ONE would die of COVID. so go ahead and try and wordsmith your way out of this one, but your football stadium analogy is borderline retarded.

[Gil Dobie]

10% of the population does not die every year. It is less than 1%. See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm. Also, for the latest year for which data are available (2018), the death rate per 100,000 population for people in the 55 through 64 year old range was 887 per 100,000 population. See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/datab ... )%2C%20and. That is 0.9%.

As of a few weeks ago (lag with provisional data), we were at about 82 deaths per 100,000 population among the 55-64 year age group from COVID-19 alone. Getting close to 10% of the total deaths we would expect in that age group from all causes.

I don't know why some people find it necessary to try to downplay the significance of this thing. It's just not rational.

Nor is it rational to cower in fear from something with a 99.75% survival rate. But here we are.

Edit: and thanks for making my point: Because if it’s 100,000 15 year olds, Maaaaaaybe ONE would die of COVID. so go ahead and try and wordsmith your way out of this one, but your football stadium analogy is borderline retarded.

How many 15 year olds have season tickets to a sports team, compared to 50 and older?

[kalm]

Nor is it rational to cower in fear from something with a 99.75% survival rate. But here we are.

Edit: and thanks for making my point: Because if it’s 100,000 15 year olds, Maaaaaaybe ONE would die of COVID. so go ahead and try and wordsmith your way out of this one, but your football stadium analogy is borderline retarded.

How many 15 year olds have season tickets to a sports team, compared to 50 and older?

50 year olds staying locked up won’t hurt the economy.

[AZGrizFan]

A little over 33,000 between the ages of 55-64 have died of COVID. Almost 300,000 in that SAME age group have died of other causes.
59,000 between the ages of 65-74 have died. 435,000 OTHERS in that group have also died this year of something else.

That means almost 750,000 OTHERS in that age group have died from something else. 750,000 OTHER funerals that people weren’t able to attend. 750,000 other people who weren’t able to be visited in their last hours in the hospital or hospice.

The vast majority of those 92,000 COVID deaths occurring between 55-74 had multiple co-morbidities or other risk factors (diabetes, obesity, HBP, etc., etc).

If you’re a reasonably healthy person below the age of 75, you have about a 99.5% chance of beating COVID, even on the off chance you actually catch it.

BTW: Weekly flu #’s over the past several years?

Week # 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
47........28...31...14....22....48....31....50....27
48........33...46...22....34....83....38....66....17
49........42...83...20....33...118....56..100....14
50........68..169...26....46...165....51..111.....2
51.......107.312...15....92...359....88..129
52.......207.512...31...157...671...141.203

Draw your own conclusions

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyar ... Data50.csv

[AZGrizFan]

How many 15 year olds have season tickets to a sports team, compared to 50 and older?

50 year olds staying locked up won’t hurt the economy.

Survival rate for 50-64 year olds is between 99.75% and 99.997% according to CDC.

[CAA Flagship]

Draw your own conclusions

[SeattleGriz]

A new variant or mutation is showing up in the UK and South Africa.

So much still to learn.

Some variants become more common in a population simply by luck, not because the changes somehow supercharge the virus. But as it becomes more difficult for the pathogen to survive — because of vaccinations and growing immunity in human populations — researchers also expect the virus to gain useful mutations enabling it to spread more easily or to escape detection by the immune system.

“It’s a real warning that we need to pay closer attention,” said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “Certainly these mutations are going to spread, and, definitely, the scientific community — we need to monitor these mutations and we need to characterize which ones have effects.”

The British variant has about 20 mutations, including several that affect how the virus locks onto human cells and infects them. These mutations may allow the variant to replicate and transmit more efficiently, said Muge Cevik, an infectious disease expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a scientific adviser to the British government.

But the estimate of greater transmissibility — British officials said the variant was as much as 70 percent more transmissible — is based on modeling and has not been confirmed in lab experiments, Dr. Cevik added.
“Over all, I think we need to have a little bit more experimental data,” she said. “We can’t entirely rule out the fact that some of this transmissibility data might be related to human behavior.”

In South Africa, too, scientists were quick to note that human behavior was driving the epidemic, not necessarily new mutations whose effect on transmissibility had yet to be quantified.

The British announcement also prompted concern that the virus might evolve to become resistant to the vaccines just now rolling out. The worries are focused on a pair of alterations in the viral genetic code that may make it less vulnerable to certain antibodies.

But several experts urged caution, saying it would take years — not months — for the virus to evolve enough to render the current vaccines impotent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/heal ... GC9374SHVg

Been following this and STILL no proof of their claims of a 70% more transmissible variant. Guess who is doing the modeling? The Imperial College! Can't make this shit up if I tried.

[kalm]

50 year olds staying locked up won’t hurt the economy.

Survival rate for 50-64 year olds is between 99.75% and 99.997% according to CDC.

The CDC page I looked at was 55-64 and while the death rate is still below 1, it is double that of 45-54 year olds.

Regardless, it still kills a ton of people. Like I’ve said before...Covid makes it hay off of transmissibility. It’s a bulk shopper. Open everything up right now does not guarantee a swifter economic recovery. There is historical evidence and modeling that suggests the opposite.

[kalm]

A new variant or mutation is showing up in the UK and South Africa.

So much still to learn.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/heal ... GC9374SHVg

Been following this and STILL no proof of their claims of a 70% more transmissible variant. Guess who is doing the modeling? The Imperial College! Can't make this shit up if I tried.

Of course there’s no hard proof. This variant is only weeks old and we’re still learning about the one China sent us last December.

Here are some numbers from a mathematician for the new strain. Careful though, he’s from that awful London School of Hygiene and tropical medicine and only has experience with global disease outbreaks...

Why a SARS-CoV-2 variant that's 50% more transmissible would in general be a much bigger problem than a variant that's 50% more deadly. A short thread...

1/
As an example, suppose current R=1.1, infection fatality risk is 0.8%, generation time is 6 days, and 10k people infected (plausible for many European cities recently). So we'd expect 10000 x 1.1^5 x 0.8% = 129 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread...

2/
What happens if fatality risk increases by 50%? By above, we'd expect 10000 x 1.1^5 x (0.8% x 1.5) = 193 new fatalities.

3/
Now suppose transmissibility increases by 50%. By above, we'd expect 10000 x (1.1 x 1.5)^5 x 0.8% = 978 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread.

4/
The above is just an illustrative example, but the key message: an increase in something that grows exponentially (i.e. transmission) can have far more effect than the same proportional increase in something that just scales an outcome (i.e. severity).

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1343 ... KHk49chAJ0

[SeattleGriz]

Been following this and STILL no proof of their claims of a 70% more transmissible variant. Guess who is doing the modeling? The Imperial College! Can't make this shit up if I tried.

Of course there’s no hard proof. This variant is only weeks old and we’re still learning about the one China sent us last December.

Here are some numbers from a mathematician for the new strain. Careful though, he’s from that awful London School of Hygiene and tropical medicine and only has experience with global disease outbreaks...

Why a SARS-CoV-2 variant that's 50% more transmissible would in general be a much bigger problem than a variant that's 50% more deadly. A short thread...

1/
As an example, suppose current R=1.1, infection fatality risk is 0.8%, generation time is 6 days, and 10k people infected (plausible for many European cities recently). So we'd expect 10000 x 1.1^5 x 0.8% = 129 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread...

2/
What happens if fatality risk increases by 50%? By above, we'd expect 10000 x 1.1^5 x (0.8% x 1.5) = 193 new fatalities.

3/
Now suppose transmissibility increases by 50%. By above, we'd expect 10000 x (1.1 x 1.5)^5 x 0.8% = 978 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread.

4/
The above is just an illustrative example, but the key message: an increase in something that grows exponentially (i.e. transmission) can have far more effect than the same proportional increase in something that just scales an outcome (i.e. severity).

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1343 ... KHk49chAJ0

Your first claim is unfounded and that is why the "model" that predicted this variant needs to produce some proof. They keep talking about it, but still no proof.

Secondly, you do know we used to study SARS 2 here under Fauci for years, until he sent it over to Wuhan, China for further gain of function testing? So we are hardly "inexperienced" in this virus. Not to mention all our years of experience in virology and epidemiology.

Lastly, you're throwing up claims of how bad a hypothetical, at this point, virus would be? So in your first part, we don't know enough about COVID to hold anyone accountable, but in your second part, we're supposed to buy numbers of a variant no one can even prove exists at this point? Good one.

[kalm]

Of course there’s no hard proof. This variant is only weeks old and we’re still learning about the one China sent us last December.

Here are some numbers from a mathematician for the new strain. Careful though, he’s from that awful London School of Hygiene and tropical medicine and only has experience with global disease outbreaks...



https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1343 ... KHk49chAJ0

Two quick points. Your first claim is unfounded and that is why the "model" that predicted this variant needs to produce some proof. They keep talking about it, but still no proof.

Secondly, you do know we used to study SARS 2 here under Fauci for years, until he sent it over to Wuhan, China for further gain of function testing? So we are hardly "inexperienced" in this virus. Not to mention all our years of experience in virology and epidemiology.

Yet here you deniers are, everyday day, being proven wrong.

Which model did they use that predicted the variant and what’s it wrong about? Be specific and post links.

Thanks!

[SeattleGriz]

Two quick points. Your first claim is unfounded and that is why the "model" that predicted this variant needs to produce some proof. They keep talking about it, but still no proof.

Secondly, you do know we used to study SARS 2 here under Fauci for years, until he sent it over to Wuhan, China for further gain of function testing? So we are hardly "inexperienced" in this virus. Not to mention all our years of experience in virology and epidemiology.

Yet here you deniers are, everyday day, being proven wrong.

Which model did they use that predicted the variant and what’s it wrong about? Be specific and post links.

Thanks!

If you know so little about how the information came about, how are you defending it?

But to help you out. Here is a link. Imperial College if you don't remember were the ones that predicted 2+million deaths. They are also the one where Neal Ferguson was caught visiting his mistress in direct violation of his COVID recommendations.

https://www.nationnews.com/2020/12/21/w ... rly-stage/

It was first detected in September. In November around a quarter of cases in London were the new variant. This reached nearly two-thirds of cases in mid-December.

You can see how the variant has come to dominate the results of testing in some centres such as the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Laboratory.

Mathematicians have been running the numbers on the spread of different variants in an attempt to calculate how much of an edge this one might have.

But teasing apart what is due to people’s behaviour and what is due to the virus is hard.

The figure mentioned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson was that the variant may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible. He said this may be increasing the R number – which indicates if an epidemic is growing or shrinking – by 0.4.

That 70 per cent number appeared in a presentation by Dr Erik Volz, from Imperial College London, on Friday.

Quote from a different article:

In a presentation last week as part of the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, Volz explained how he was in the “early stages” of his thought process on the new mutation, and has admitted that his information, which was transmitted to the world by Boris Johnson, is not particularly useful.

“We’re still basically in the very early stages. We basically have one month of growth,” Volz stated, adding that “the growth rate” in cases of the new variant “does appear to be quite a bit larger,” before again sowing more doubt about his analysis.

Volz continued, warning that “trends you see early on don’t always pan out.”

“It’s really too early to tell, but this is the current state of our knowledge,” Volz adds, in revealing the 70% number of projected increased transmissibility over a compared variant.

You can see what is going on here can't you? They don't have proof of a 70% more transmissible variant, but are using it to impose strict rules. In fairness, Volz probably just wanted his shit out there in the medical community so others could find chinks to help his model and never expected his 70% to go "viral". But nonetheless, this is not how science works.

Like I said above. Look at you. Already posting scare mongering information about a virus they can't even prove yet exists!

[Ibanez]

Saw an old neighbor yesterday. We got to talking and he’s doing well. He became a nurse in 2016, right before we left. He’s now a traveling nurse making $7k/week working in ICUs in Southern California because there aren’t enough healthy nurses in the area. He was there for 5 months. He’s about to go to Fresno for a few months.


$7k/week. Damn.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SeattleGriz]

[AZGrizFan]

Saw an old neighbor yesterday. We got to talking and he’s doing well. He became a nurse in 2016, right before we left. He’s now a traveling nurse making $7k/week working in ICUs in Southern California because there aren’t enough healthy nurses in the area. He was there for 5 months. He’s about to go to Fresno for a few months.


$7k/week. Damn.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Meanwhile, there are 100,000 less medical workers NOW than there were 10 months ago. Because they’ve been laid off. Yet we’re supposed to believe that the hospitals are overrun. While LA hospitals have the EXACT SAME % occupancy they did 12 months ago.

This entire thing is a fucking scam-Demic.

[SDHornet]

Saw an old neighbor yesterday. We got to talking and he’s doing well. He became a nurse in 2016, right before we left. He’s now a traveling nurse making $7k/week working in ICUs in Southern California because there aren’t enough healthy nurses in the area. He was there for 5 months. He’s about to go to Fresno for a few months.


$7k/week. Damn.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Travelling nurses make serious coin.

[SDHornet]

Saw an old neighbor yesterday. We got to talking and he’s doing well. He became a nurse in 2016, right before we left. He’s now a traveling nurse making $7k/week working in ICUs in Southern California because there aren’t enough healthy nurses in the area. He was there for 5 months. He’s about to go to Fresno for a few months.


$7k/week. Damn.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Meanwhile, there are 100,000 less medical workers NOW than there were 10 months ago. Because they’ve been laid off. Yet we’re supposed to believe that the hospitals are overrun. While LA hospitals have the EXACT SAME % occupancy they did 12 months ago.

This entire thing is a fucking scam-Demic.

The news has been claiming "zero" ICU vacancy for the last week or so. I haven't bothered to try to check it because I don't care. CA ramped up with temp facilities in the spring when the first wave hit, they could (or have) do it again to meet the needs of this wave so not sure what the big deal is.

Edit: Another ironic point is that the lockdowns were supposed to ease the demand on the healthcare facilities, since we are at "zero" ICU vacancy, why are we still locked down?

[SDHornet]

One state locked down, the other didn't. I wonder how much herd immunity played into the difference. Another interesting note is that FL is loaded with retirement age folks so you would think they would have been one of the hardest hit states in all of the great USofA. Go figure.

[Gil Dobie]

Really, the only 3 people to die from covid, are the 3 people I know.

[kalm]

One state locked down, the other didn't. I wonder how much herd immunity played into the difference. Another interesting note is that FL is loaded with retirement age folks so you would think they would have been one of the hardest hit states in all of the great USofA. Go figure.

The Covid Tracking Project’s own graphs on their website look different than this one which is sourced to them.

But assuming the above graph is true, things like testing (Florida testing 1/5 of California) voluntary social distancing among older populations, etc could help explain much of that difference.

[kalm]

Yet here you deniers are, everyday day, being proven wrong.

Which model did they use that predicted the variant and what’s it wrong about? Be specific and post links.

Thanks!

If you know so little about how the information came about, how are you defending it?

But to help you out. Here is a link. Imperial College if you don't remember were the ones that predicted 2+million deaths. They are also the one where Neal Ferguson was caught visiting his mistress in direct violation of his COVID recommendations.

https://www.nationnews.com/2020/12/21/w ... rly-stage/

It was first detected in September. In November around a quarter of cases in London were the new variant. This reached nearly two-thirds of cases in mid-December.

You can see how the variant has come to dominate the results of testing in some centres such as the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Laboratory.

Mathematicians have been running the numbers on the spread of different variants in an attempt to calculate how much of an edge this one might have.

But teasing apart what is due to people’s behaviour and what is due to the virus is hard.

The figure mentioned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson was that the variant may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible. He said this may be increasing the R number – which indicates if an epidemic is growing or shrinking – by 0.4.

That 70 per cent number appeared in a presentation by Dr Erik Volz, from Imperial College London, on Friday.

Quote from a different article:

In a presentation last week as part of the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, Volz explained how he was in the “early stages” of his thought process on the new mutation, and has admitted that his information, which was transmitted to the world by Boris Johnson, is not particularly useful.

“We’re still basically in the very early stages. We basically have one month of growth,” Volz stated, adding that “the growth rate” in cases of the new variant “does appear to be quite a bit larger,” before again sowing more doubt about his analysis.

Volz continued, warning that “trends you see early on don’t always pan out.”

“It’s really too early to tell, but this is the current state of our knowledge,” Volz adds, in revealing the 70% number of projected increased transmissibility over a compared variant.

You can see what is going on here can't you? They don't have proof of a 70% more transmissible variant, but are using it to impose strict rules. In fairness, Volz probably just wanted his shit out there in the medical community so others could find chinks to help his model and never expected his 70% to go "viral". But nonetheless, this is not how science works.

Like I said above. Look at you. Already posting scare mongering information about a virus they can't even prove yet exists!

I didn’t scaremonger. I just posted news about the possibilities involved with a new strain followed up by a post with some math assuming a 50% increase in transmissibility leads to more deaths than 50% more lethal strain.

If you’re scared by possibilities and things already predicted that came true, that’s on you.

I don’t know as much about how the numbers are speculated at because my sources have been accurate almost without exception, I’m not wasting my time with tin foil hat-like focus searching for confirmation bias, and useless minutiae bores me.

I’ll let you continue to do the work and who knows...maybe one of your theories will eventually strike its mark.

I’m rootin’ for ya as that might mean the situation is less dire.

[kalm]

[SeattleGriz]

If you know so little about how the information came about, how are you defending it?

But to help you out. Here is a link. Imperial College if you don't remember were the ones that predicted 2+million deaths. They are also the one where Neal Ferguson was caught visiting his mistress in direct violation of his COVID recommendations.

https://www.nationnews.com/2020/12/21/w ... rly-stage/



Quote from a different article:



You can see what is going on here can't you? They don't have proof of a 70% more transmissible variant, but are using it to impose strict rules. In fairness, Volz probably just wanted his shit out there in the medical community so others could find chinks to help his model and never expected his 70% to go "viral". But nonetheless, this is not how science works.

Like I said above. Look at you. Already posting scare mongering information about a virus they can't even prove yet exists!

I didn’t scaremonger. I just posted news about the possibilities involved with a new strain followed up by a post with some math assuming a 50% increase in transmissibility leads to more deaths than 50% more lethal strain.

If you’re scared by possibilities and things already predicted that came true, that’s on you.

I don’t know as much about how the numbers are speculated at because my sources have been accurate almost without exception, I’m not wasting my time with tin foil hat-like focus searching for confirmation bias, and useless minutiae bores me.

I’ll let you continue to do the work and who knows...maybe one of your theories will eventually strike its mark.

I’m rootin’ for ya as that might mean the situation is less dire.

A 30 year old who is in the beginning of his initial model, who admits he's uncomfortable with his results and that gets passed off as fact? I had no clue until I went looking for more information on it.

That's the point here. We're making judgements based on admitted guesses.

As to being scared by possibilities? Hardly. I'm watching a new strain of the cold virus do its thing. Similar to all the other new endemic strains we have dealt with in the past.

[SDHornet]

Dude was in Navy Intel. That was an obvious troll.