COVID-19

[7Wannabe5]

@Ego:

My BF is a card carrying Trump voting Boomer Age Republican. His Facebook circle full of people he actually knows is burning up with Covid denial rhetoric. I am not getting my information from the media.

[classical_Liberal]

What I think you are missing is that it is very often the front line employees in high infection rate zones like mine, who are exposed to customer after customer, who are urging their employers and the government to take more precautions.

I'm not missing that point at all, I brought it up here, and in another COVID thread, many pages ago. IOW low paid workers being asked to bear the brunt of COVID risk, while their white collar counterparts hang out at home and keep getting paid.

Anyway, I'm just being a bit too argumentative today and it's not overly productive. So, apologies to you and @chenda whose comments have taken the brunt of it. I think at this point I'm going to check out of the COVID chat, at least for awhile, because it's mostly become circular and argumentative. Although I do appreciate all the insight to this point from all the very intelligent commentary.

[thrifty++]

Zero new cases in NZ for the second day in a row.

1302 people have recovered. 184 active remaining cases.

Hopefully these sorts of results continue so that we can come out of the level 3 semi-lockdown to the level 2 alert in one weeks' time which will be much less restrictive.

[George the original one]

George, did you just say that you're in favor of lifting the lockdown? Also FYI, that lady is infecting everyone, her precautions are useless. Enclosed spaces are the enemy right now, surgical masks do practically nothing. From a practical standpoint both haircutters you cited are doing the same thing.

That was the short version of an article about her. In the long version, she explains all procedures she goes through and they are as tight as you're going to get in the hospitals right now. I couldn't find the long version when I got around to posting.

Did I say I was in favor? No I did not. What I did say is if you're going to go about it, at least make the concession to make your customers feel as secure as possible. Adapt, because we know it's not business as usual. The guy in Snohomish? You're just as likely to get infected waiting in his line as none of his customers appear to care about social distance.

[Peanut]

@Ego: Thanks for the Levitt link back to Unherd. Fascinating take
@steveo: You should definitely check it out

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize- ... ponential/

"I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers. And they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn’t practise too much lockdown and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity. I see the standout losers as countries like Austria, Australia and Israel that had very strict lockdown but didn’t have many cases. They have damaged their economies, caused massive social damage, damaged the educational year of their children, but not obtained any herd immunity.

There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor."

Other points of interest:
-Cautions that use of R0 number is faulty without the time infectious alongside
-Like Giesecke, Levitt critiques the Neil Ferguson preprint out of Imperial College that was so influential and even suggests his paper will be retracted
-Expects final numbers to be around 200k deaths in Europe, or one month (not one year as some epidemiologists predict) of excess deaths
-Points out flu fatally effects 2 to 3 times more people under 65 as a portion of flu deaths than coronavirus
-Cancer fatalities, which will rise due to coronavirus lockdowns, effect a younger age group as well

-Concludes the interview by calling for young people to revolt against hard lockdowns and demand some payback from boomers

[7Wannabe5]

I also watched the Leavitt video. I will attempt to explain why I find it unconvincing.

The main gist of his argument is that he has observed a great deal of similarity in the course of the first curve through various communities, but he does not believe that social distancing was uniformly practiced across these varying communities, so there must be some other limiting factor at play. Perhaps, great deal of asymptomatic spread or proportion of human population innately immune or some combination of these factors.

My First Point: I think he would agree that if social distancing alone has been responsible for relatively rapid reduction from exponential, then this behavioral adaptation must be quite effective indeed. Therefore, the odds that the variations in social distancing behavior across cultures converge on a good enough solution are increased. For instance, initial studies indicated that transmission was distinctly more likely at the level of family or other very close subway smush type intimacy, so reasonable achievement of breaking overlapping chains of intimacy at that that level of intimacy might suffice.

This would also prove to be more true in outbreaks in relatively large populations where varying individual behaviors might average out. Therefore, one way to examine the validity of this theory would be to look at initial spread curves in small populations with known consistent variation from ability to engage in average social distancing behavior. For instance, prisons, nursing homes, and cruise ships from which passengers are not free to debark.

Second point: I already spoke to this somewhere upthread. You can’t magically grant a population a great deal of “silent” asymptomatic spread without also conceding that the disease must be more contagious than initially supposed. The pattern of the non-“silent” spread (serious illness and death) will be indicative of both R0 and time contagious/average time to infect next person, but these factors are not freely adjustable or substitutable. This will be a rough analogy, but it’s kind of like if you are trying to solve for how many kids you will have next year and you think how often you have sex is as important a factor as how many women you have sex with.

Third point: I do not have a mathematical argument in opposition to the notion that maybe some proportion of the human population is innately immune to Covid. I think I read that 10% of humans are innately immune to the plague because so many humans have been killed by it in the past. It’s actually one of the very few reasonably recent alterations to the human genome (we haven’t changed much last 40,000 years) like lactose tolerance. Even though Covid 19 is novel, there is not necessarily an infinite number of infection mechanisms, so perhaps some other killer disease in the past resembled it enough to have influenced some of us towards genetic immunity.

However, I would note that this is a theory that could readily be supported or blown to bits with just a bit of simple data analysis, because married couples are usually in quite intimate contact but they are also fairly randomly genetically assorted. Therefore, for instance, if 50% of the human population is genetically immune to Covid 19, one would expect to see a very different level of transmission between married partners than if nobody was genetically immune to Covid 19.

As always, if somebody would like to blow up my arguments on the basis of science/math feel free. OTOH, if you just want to hunt down another video (tedious to have to watch rather than read) featuring somebody with more letters after their name than me then I guess that’s okay too. I have dated so many intermittently idiotic or just plain wrongheaded men with advanced degrees (one even believed in UFOs!), I am thoroughly vaccinated against it.

[Bankai]

US family 'murdered shop guard for enforcing mask policy'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-can ... Y664_BHVUg

[steveo73]

@Peanut- I watched that and it was fantastic.

I'm not stating that I agree with his conclusions. I don't believe the herd immunity theory is proven yet and we shouldn't be stating it is. He is thinking correctly though in that it's countries like Australia and New Zealand who are the success stories now but if herd immunity is correct then maybe these countries are screwed. We need to be careful here though because maybe this herd immunity idea is BS. I'm not stating the theory isn't correct. I'm stating that in the case of this virus herd immunity may not be a factor in how the virus progresses. We need to see how this plays out over the next couple of years.

Geez we have learnt a lot though and I suspect that there will be plenty more to learn. I think this will change our models of the world including human interaction with the environment. Personally I don't have high hopes that we will become more rational in our decision making but I'd love to see that happen.

I'm also not sure how this will turn out. Maybe the virus simply doesn't conform to an exponential growth pattern and then you just have to manage an outbreak until you calm it down. Maybe there will be infections after infections. Maybe countries like Australia and New Zealand will come out of this better off but it's just luck.

It's hard because it's so intense right now but I think we need to accept that we don't have the answers. I keep coming back to the idea of decisions being made based on good risk management principles. We're in this situation now because we didn't have systems in place to handle events like this.

[steveo73]

US family 'murdered shop guard for enforcing mask policy'

This is shocking.

[7Wannabe5]

The guy who wiped his face on the clerk’s shirt has been arrested and charged with assault. The father and son of the shooter family are still at large and to be considered armed and dangerous.

[Alphaville]

This is shocking.

I’m actually not surprised.I’ve learned to expect the worst from people.

[jennypenny]

That may be the funniest one yet.

[Alphaville]

i hadn’t seen the shirt video until now. just look at it... just look at it.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation- ... 88131.html

[C40]

@jenny, the search terms that actually have increased like that are less funny and more scary.



another term with huge growth is "stimulus".. Folks would be pretty scared when they can see that there will be both an economic disaster, (fear of) many deaths, and it having to do with China.

("Stimulus" is also a big search term... and "Virus" is went up 3-4x more than the others)

[Alphaville]

Since this thread was supposed to be about health questions...

I’m wondering of it’s best for mental health to just turn of some of the news. It’s good to be informed, but seeing pictures of people invading states houses armed to the teeth, dead security guards, deranged geezers wiping their boogers on a girl’s shirt... I’m not sure this shit helps me be informed or sane or what.

There is always going to be a percentage of people acting like psychopaths, and the fact that some of this is now Covid-related is not enough to differentiate oit from the evening rape and murder news on tv, which does nothing to inform me of anything useful, but just makes me sick.

[C40]

I've pretty much stopped reading news (and I only skim this thread every now and then). I do have a set of about 10 bookmarks that I open all at once each morning, and it takes me about 10 minutes to read them/look through. (about half are just charts)

Early on, there were more unknowns and I found it useful to read more and listen to some long podcasts with experts.. but now there isn't much changing in understanding of the virus. Just updates on fallout, politics, etc.

[Alphaville]

I've pretty much stopped reading news (and I only skim this thread every now and then). I do have a set of about 10 bookmarks that I open all at once each morning, and it takes me about 10 minutes to read them/look through. (about half are just charts)

Early on, there were more unknowns and I found it useful to read more and listen to some long podcasts with experts.. but now there isn't much changing in understanding of the virus. Just updates on fallout, politics, etc.

Yep. I’m still unsure of where to draw the line.

It's about mental health now. I don't know about you, but I am extra nice to people outside right now. People are suffering, a lot. I don't want to get shot for looking at someone the wrong way who is having a really bad month. People have lost their socialization, their jobs, their routines, etc. Sometimes they've also lost family members, gotten divorced, and are about to lose their homes, they're probably even worried if they'll have money for food. Oh and they might die too.

I'm seeing a lot more bad behavior in general, and mistakes. Driving too fast, not paying attention, etc.

Yeah, my wife has already lost a family member, plus more are seriously sick but not dead. None of them old btw. All of them failed at taking precautions or were infected by someone who didn’t, and the rest of the family is PISSED at the culprits.

She and I are thankfully doing fine, we’ve actually thrived in confinement, but hearing about people’s bad behaviors is what destroys morale. Unfortunately that is visible at every level now.

[Jason]

US family 'murdered shop guard for enforcing mask policy'

Unfortunately, this goes directly into the "it was just a matter of time" category. Explaining the virus in scientific/health terms is similar to the prosecution trying to educate the the OJ Simpson jury in DNA. They can point at their charts for months, but when it comes down to it, most people make their decisions on whether the bloody glove fits.

[7Wannabe5]

@Augustus:

Believing in the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe is one thing, being the keynote speaker on the topic of Swamp Gas UFOs in Michigan is another.

@Alphaville:

There is still a lot to learn. For instance, why the strikingly uniform across age groups gender disparity in outcomes? In the great video Crazylemon uploaded,there is a graph showing how greatly Covid varies from other respiratory illnesses in this regard. Why?

[Ego]

It wouldn't take much convincing to make me believe this is all one big alien practical joke. Wait for it.