Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Giles on Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:12 pm

I think it's great that this study was conducted. (Science !!! :) ) The result is certainly interesting but it's still just one study under particular conditions (see below). If further well-designed and reviewed studies replicate the same or similar results, calling the effectiveness of mask-wearing fundamentally into question, then I would give the results more credit as a basis for general conclusions and decisions.
Above all, there's one major factor that, for me at least, doesn't make it 'generally applicable'. Apart from other caveats, the participants were already socially distancing. If you can generally avoid situations where you are up close to (many) other people for significant periods, especially in less-ventilated spaces and with lots of strangers, then I can better imagine that mask-wearing doesn't make a significant difference, although I still find it surprising (but the findings are what they are). However, one kind of scenario that is quite different is public transport: in the buses and in the subway or overland transit trains of Berlin, for instance, you find yourself in enclosed spaces with moderate or little ventilation and lots of other people; in peak periods you have other passengers pretty much literally 'in your face'. And all around you. This is the kind of situation I would like to see researched in the same way as the existing study. Until then, I'll continue to wear a mask in situations like these and I'm thankful that 99% of our fellow passengers do the same. Members of my family have to travel to school/work and back every day under these conditions.

This Forbes article seems pretty balanced to me:
"A Covid-19 study conducted in Denmark and published in Annals of Internal Medicine created a heated discourse on social media as some claimed that the study showed masks were ineffective at preventing Covid-19 transmission, while health experts--including the lead researcher behind the study--disagreed."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/11/18/lead-researcher-behind-controversial-danish-study-says-you-should-still-wear-a-mask/

PS. If I'm doing tuishou or similar with a partner, then only if we both wear masks (and only outside or in extremely well-ventilated spaces). Did that all through summer. Not that this happens much at the moment, of course.
Last edited by Giles on Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Bao on Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:47 pm

wiesiek wrote:...everyone cares and cooperate together to do things right...

hmm, everyone?, really?


Yes, everyone. There are exceptions to every rule of course.

If you go to Japan or Hong Kong, test what happens speak loudly or try to eat something when you take a bus ride or travel by the Metro. People will look angry at you and tell you to behave.

In most of these countries, at least if you look at middle class people living in the cities, people are raised to take social behaviour and rules of the society very strict. I would also suggest that they are less selfish and are better when it comes to act as groups. Much of it has probably to do with the general confucian heritage in East-Asian countries.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby roger hao on Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:58 pm

Can you be infected twice?

Is it true that from more then 50,000,000 cases of covid
that only......................................4 have been infected twice?
This is in the last 11 months?
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Peacedog on Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:59 pm

Very good news if effective, particularly for urban dwellers.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-11- ... umans.html
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Peacedog on Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:05 am

An article displaying the uselessness of lockdowns.

The main take away is that an aerosol based virus becomes endemic after 70 days in any given population. So, a quarantine implemented at the very beginning might slow things down a little. But rolling quarantines don’t do anything.

https://www.aier.org/article/even-a-mil ... dcSd6xuQfA
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby David Boxen on Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:57 am

What you state is the "main take away" from the article has nothing to do with the study it references. Read the study:https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717

"Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine. Multiple, independent virus strain transmission clusters were identified. Shared rooms and shared platoon membership were risk factors for transmission. Most study participants with positive qPCR tests were asymptomatic, and all cases among participants and nonparticipants were identified as the result of scheduled testing rather than clinical qPCR testing performed as a result of daily screening."
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Steve James on Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:05 am

The main take away is that an aerosol based virus becomes endemic after 70 days in any given population. So, a quarantine implemented at the very beginning might slow things down a little. But rolling quarantines don’t do anything.


Which emphasizes the point that taking the virus seriously at the beginning and instituting "lockdowns" would have been useful in preventing the virus from becoming "endemic." Of course, if it's argued that the administration acted early, it certainly wasn't early "enough" to prevent the current situation, and in fact the administration never promoted locking down anything at any point.

Apart from that, I've only been in two states since the pandemic began. I've not been required to stay inside in either one. I think that "lockdown" is too generic a term for me to say I'm for or against it. I know that in some places people have been required to stay inside. I would be against that. Otoh, I'm in favor of restricting large indoor gatherings of people. That might mean closing down venues, but it is what it is.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Steve James on Sat Nov 21, 2020 1:56 pm

I can't say that the CDC is the most trustworthy source. However, afa masks.
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday found that counties in Kansas that adopted a mask mandate saw a decrease in COVID-19 transmission compared to counties that did not, which saw an increase in the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, on July 3 issued a statewide mask mandate, but counties were able to individually opt-out from her order. Around 90 counties opted out of her according to a July 8 report from the Wichita Eagle.

According to the CDC report, following the issuing of the opt-out mandate, COVID-19 incidence decreased in 24 counties with mask mandates but increased in 81 counties that opted out of the order. Researchers with the CDC and the Kansas Department of Health found COVID-19 incidence decreased by 6% in counties with a mandate compared to an increase of 100% in counties where masks were not mandated.

The findings back up similar declines seen in 15 states and in Washington DC, which mandated masks, compared to states that did not have mask mandates, the CDC noted.


The report https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6947e2.htm
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Peacedog on Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:51 pm

And yet, the most convincing reason to know this is vastly overblown.

When these ass-hats begin to take their own advice seriously, everyone else might as well.

https://nypost.com/2020/11/20/our-hypoc ... -19-rules/
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Steve James on Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:36 pm

Puhleez. Someone being an asshat is not a reason to be one. The issue was the result of comparing populations which tended to obey mask mandates and those which did not. It is always assumed that there will be assholes and non-compliers.

Afa as hypocrisy, I think that's a term better applied to many of today's religious "leaders." I.o.w., I don't look to the Cuomos as role models; I don't wear a mask because they say so, and I wouldn't stop because they didn't recommend it. Not to mention that more than one prominent Republican who was originally against mask wearing caught the disease and are now promoting mask wearing.

Otoh, there are those who say they're immune now that they've had it. Different strokes. Either way, at 1000 folks dying every day (actually, the past few days, it's been closer to 2K), the Cuomos are far from a problem. But, if their asshattery inspires people to mask up, all the better.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Peacedog on Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:55 pm

Again it’s less than 2000 deaths per day in country of 335 million. Covid-19 won’t be in the top three causes of death this year in the US.

335 million people is such an incredibly large number human beings literally have no method to even visualize what that means.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Steve James on Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:30 pm

Well, that's simply more minimization. Sure, it's useful as an argument against masks or lockdowns, and probably social distancing and hand washing as well.

The same minimization argued when there are 250K deaths was used when there are 250. If/when there are a million deaths, the percentage will still be only 1/333 or 0.003. Great? Except that each of those dead people needed nurses, doctors, funeral directors, etc, and didn't go to work in the economy. Also, let's not forget that deaths represent a small portion of hospitalized and sick people.
Anyway, anyone who'll accept a thousand deaths will accept a hundred thousand just as easily. Was it Stalin who said that one death is a tragedy and a million is just a statistic.

Btw,
COVID-19 now No. 3 cause of death in US, according to former CDC director

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/covid-19-no ... c-director

Heart disease was number one (so, I guess they didn't count heart problems with the covid figures), and cancer was number two. The article has the specific figures.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Peacedog on Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:38 pm

The third leading cause of death is medical mistakes/treatment errors.

As this cannot be categorized as a specific item CDC does not account for it. It’s in the area of 500k deaths per year depending on how the mistakes are categorized.

And the numbers do matter. Numbers justify courses of action. Numbers account for cost/benefit analysis. Numbers run everything. If that is not taken into consideration then people are just reacting from a place of hysteria and that benefits no one. Which has precisely been the whole issue with Covid-19 response worldwide since the beginning.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Steve James on Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:07 pm

The third leading cause of death is medical mistakes/treatment errors.
As this cannot be categorized as a specific item CDC does not account for it


So, fairly useless to bring up where the coronavirus stands in the first place, and at best relegates the coronavirus to number four.

No. The numbers aren't important. The people's lives are important. And, please, it's kind of silly for you to criticize the whole world's response to the virus. There are places that are doing much better than we and Europe are. Some countries have not recorded cases in weeks.

There is absolutely nothing happening with regard to the virus in the US that was not specifically predicted in this thread months ago. If the virus wasn't serious, then all the arguments about what works or doesn't would be moot. It would have "gone away" by Easter, or died out in the warm weather, or solved by the election.

It was also predicted that there was no chance to have a national strategy of any kind because the administration contradicted the people who were in charge of the science. Meh. We may be getting into the worst ever period, and the only fortunate thing is that the survival rate is only improving --but there may be an even greater hospital capacity issue.

Oh, btw, Ben Carson has recovered from a serious case of covid. He thanks Trump for giving him permission to use the same cocktail the prez got. He says it was like a miracle. The Dems are not preventing the release of the drug. Rather, the prez's friends get it, and the next 250K people won't. They'll have to wait for the vaccine. Hmm, why don't people get the gold standard? I dunno, but I'll bet it's expensive.
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Re: Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

Postby Steve James on Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:10 pm

I don't get it. Why is this happening?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho604OCrCFo

I feel sorry for the nurses who have to watch people die.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7ptcu_7sbY
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