***NON-POLITICAL COVID-19 Discussion Thread***

[JakeF]

A couple of reminders...

Originally Posted by Bwana

Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.

Originally Posted by Dartgod

People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.

We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.

Thanks!

Click here for the original OP:

Spoiler!

Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.

California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”

Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.

The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.

The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.

A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.

Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.

“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”

It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.

“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”

On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”

According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.

More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.

“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”

CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.

Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.

“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”

[Lzen]

https://mailchi.mp/tomwoods/distancing?e=06bc172bc3

I find it hard to believe myself.

But on Twitter I saw what the data looks like graphically, and, well, it's not what they're telling us on TV.

We have Google mobility data now, so we can see if people's mobility levels have any connection to COVID deaths per million.

So why not plot these numbers for all 50 states and look at them?



Do you see a relationship between mobility (social contact score) and deaths per million in that chart? Are the dots not rather all over the place?

Let's look now at the shelter-in-place policy. Does increased time at home correlate with fewer deaths per million?



If anything, this chart shows the opposite.

We all know that correlation doesn't prove causation. But is it plausible to have causation without correlation?

Now could it be a case of harder-hit places having more extreme social-distancing responses? The person who plotted the numbers considered this:

"Many have posited that this inverse relationship is driven by worse outbreaks driving stronger distancing reactions. I suspected this, too. so I tested it. I ran US state case counts to see if higher counts drove stricter policy.

"Nope."

"This result," he adds, "holds all over the world and in every component data series there as well."

If we had to choose a date, social distancing can be said to have begun in earnest on March 15, when the "social interaction score" went negative for the first time.

Two weeks later, March 29, was when peak distancing response was reached, and it continued fairly consistently at that level for about four weeks.

Average the social-distancing response on March 29 for the states that got worse and the states that got better, and....

...the result is exactly the same. You have to go down to four decimal places to detect any difference at all.

The CDC itself admitted earlier that "the effectiveness of pandemic mitigation strategies will erode rapidly as the cumulative illness rate prior to implementation climbs above 1 percent of the population in an affected area."

Since we were surely past that level of disease prevalence in major American cities by then, could this all have been a huge exercise in political theater, accomplishing nothing?

If we had real reporters asking real questions, maybe we'd be getting somewhere.

What we most certainly do have, however, are a bunch of smart, genial people who can discuss important topics without accusing anyone of being a grandma murderer.

Be honest with yourself: that sounds like paradise right about now, does it not?

It's the Tom Woods Show Elite, and I look forward to welcoming you there via this link:


http://www.SupportingListeners.com


Tom Woods

[POND_OF_RED]

It’s very dangerous to say that social distancing has done nothing when all of data looks like it was more about the shelter in place orders. It’s also very vague data to make such a claim. Is he tracking how close people are getting to each other? I mean it’s not really relevant research.

Social distancing guidelines are still very good to follow. Places where people didn’t have restrictive shelter in place orders also have much easier times following the social distancing guidelines. It’s common sense. That’s what’s missing from all of this data people get so focused on to fit whatever narrative they feel most comfortable with.

It’s disheartening for the majority of us that just want all the facts laid out so we can make informed decisions. The government playing as little part as possible in the tough decisions that people are having to make is usually for the best.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by Ebolapox

see, this is the problem I have with anti-intellectualism.


I have a phd in genetics and did a TON of undergrad and early grad school work on infectious diseases. it's the reason I have a hard science phd.

hamas has a phd and goddamn if he's not the smartest mother****er on this site.

science teaches you very early on that bias is inherent. there are LITERALLY means in science and the scientific method that try to account for bias.

will we ever kill bias? no. it's human nature. when you're doing an experiment you try your best to DISPROVE your hypothesis. that's literally baked into the scientific method. null hypothesis.

but we think about bias all the time... do you? do you deep dive news channels and sources of information that disagree with you? because I see one side of the argument quoting people with a ton of education. I see the other side of the argument spamming fox news and right leaning sources.

look, here's the basic fact of life. neil degrasse tyson is a douche but he's correct: "That's the good thing about science: It's true whether or not you believe in it. That's why it works" (not the whole quote but directly in context). science is a process. yes there is bias inherent in human nature. but one side chooses to study an issue more and try to come up with a solution... the other not so much.

like the phone you're typing on possibly, or your pc? science helped that. have a health problem? yeah, science helped you. there are 7.8ish billion people on this planet and for the life of me I won't understand how like 100 million people in this country and more worldwide are anti-science because it doesn't fit their agenda.

science has one agenda. facts. if you don't like facts, that's ok. but please don't just throw science out the window because you don't like the conclusions it leads us to.

See, this was a good post until you started calling out right-leaning sources as if they don't ever use science. Look, I love Neil Degrass Tyson. I don't agree with some of his takes that lean political but I do love his science. You people on the left act as if anyone on the right is not using their brains nor believing in science and that is simply not true.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

The other part is that you have to be right 100% of the time and they have to be right once. It's kind of like terrorism in that sense.

The CDC and the WHO issue misguided statements about wearing masks to prevent hoarding (which should not have been done), and then everything from every scientific expert is automatically bunk.

Meanwhile, they can post Plandemic videos, conspiracies about 5G towers, promote UV light treatment inside the body when it can't even reach viral reservoirs, and attribute test tube studies on non-human cells as definitive prove of clinical efficacy in vivo. Every single claim is flatly wrong and easily debunked, but it doesn't matter, because the scientists are the only ones held to standards.

"Rules for thee, not for me."

Do you trust the WHO completely? Do you believe they are politically unbiased? Or do they have a slant? I believe they are extremely biased in favor of China and therefore cannot be completley trusted.

[tyecopeland]

Originally Posted by Gravedigger

My wife had a miscarriage around Christmas with our first expected child since we got married last July. Now, four months later, we're lucky to be expecting again but hopeful for a different result. I saw how it affected her, so if I can do anything in my power to not have that happen for her, or myself, again, I will do it

Good luck to your growing family. My wife had a miscarriage on what would have been our first. Since then we have had two healthy babies.

[ghak99]

Originally Posted by Fish

Not everyone is capable of that though, and they don't even realize they're incapable. Many are taking factual information and straight up calling it bullshit for no other reason than it came from a scientist and they distrust science in general for whatever moronic reason. That's quite evident here and on Facebook, etc. There's responses ranging from complete hoax, to Bill Gates trying to murder half the world's population with forced vaccines, to everybody should stay in their own homes wearing masks for the next 2 years.

It's simply too complex of a subject, and our understanding of it is changing too quickly, for the majority to understand and make their own smart decisions from. It would be different if those decisions couldn't result in harm to others. But there are some situations where the best option is to shut the **** up and listen to the experts. When you're on a commercial airline, you don't get a say in how the plane is flown. You have to trust the pilot and accept your position.

Non political was obviously thrown out on this thread long ago so...

You're a gun owner. Change a few words in your post to apply. Way to lube up that slippery slope.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by Lzen

See, this was a good post until you started calling out right-leaning sources as if they don't ever use science. Look, I love Neil Degrass Tyson. I don't agree with some of his takes that lean political but I do love his science. You people on the left act as if anyone on the right is not using their brains nor believing in science and that is simply not true.

I don't think all right/conservatives are anti science, just the same as I don't think all left slanted people don't own guns or are atheists. We have these absolutes that people talk in because of what is perceived. I don't think every person that is right leaning is an uneducated redneck idiot.

Anti science is linked with being very pro religion so that is where that comes from for the right.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by Mecca

I have no idea if wearing a mask helps or not, that's me being honest, the odds are it probably at worst helps a little bit. But at the same token I don't want the rona nor do I want to give it to anyone else so I'll wear one when I'm around people because I have no idea what they do. So I'll error on the side of caution with it.

I mean we wear seatbelts when we drive even though there are plenty of people that survived wrecks cause they didn't have one on.

I am with you on the masks. Strange thing I've noticed in the past few days, though, is that less than half of the people are wearing masks in the stores I've been to. Had to stop in Walmart the other day. I'd say probably 25% or less were wearing masks. Went to Lowes yesterday, again probably slightly more than Walmart but not by much. Maybe 25-35%. Went into Goodyear store today and not a single person, worker or customer (about 5 sitting waiting on their vehicle and 1 at the counter), was wearing a mask. WTF?

When this thing first started and when I first had to go get groceries, at least half of the people in there were wearing masks. I distinctly remember that because it was a very surreal feeling for me at that time. Went to that same grocery place (well, the other location in town) and probably one quarter to one third at most were wearing a mask. Strange.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by Lzen

I am with you on the masks. Strange thing I've noticed in the past few days, though, is that less than half of the people are wearing masks in the stores I've been to. Had to stop in Walmart the other day. I'd say probably 25% or less were wearing masks. Went to Lowes yesterday, again probably slightly more than Walmart but not by much. Maybe 25-35%. Went into Goodyear store today and not a single person, worker or customer (about 5 sitting waiting on their vehicle and 1 at the counter), was wearing a mask. WTF?

Yea I've seen that.......this will sound great I'm sure but my experience has been that places that either attract a lot of poor people or places that are associated with being a badass man have far less mask usage.

Hardware stores people never have them on, I was at Nebraska Furniture mart the other day and it was mixed, but there was a epic butt ton of people so I wasn't surprised by that. Also wearing a mask is now seen as a political thing.

[jdubya]

Originally Posted by Lzen

I am with you on the masks. Strange thing I've noticed in the past few days, though, is that less than half of the people are wearing masks in the stores I've been to. Had to stop in Walmart the other day. I'd say probably 25% or less were wearing masks. Went to Lowes yesterday, again probably slightly more than Walmart but not by much. Maybe 25-35%. Went into Goodyear store today and not a single person, worker or customer (about 5 sitting waiting on their vehicle and 1 at the counter), was wearing a mask. WTF?

When this thing first started and when I first had to go get groceries, at least half of the people in there were wearing masks. Went to that same grocery place (well, the other location in town) and probably one quarter to one third at most were wearing a mask. Strange.

Here in the SF Bay Area it is nearly 100% mask compliance inside of stores. Heck, some even bark at those not wearing masks outside of the stores. Personally I take my mask off outdoors but I can understand them indoors

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by Mecca

I don't think all right/conservatives are anti science, just the same as I don't think all left slanted people don't own guns or are atheists. We have these absolutes that people talk in because of what is perceived. I don't think every person that is right leaning is an uneducated redneck idiot.

Anti science is linked with being very pro religion so that is where that comes from for the right.

Mecca, even though I don't agree with some of the things you have said in this thread, I believe you are one of the more rational people here.

[sedated]

Originally Posted by Mecca

I don't think all right/conservatives are anti science, just the same as I don't think all left slanted people don't own guns or are atheists. We have these absolutes that people talk in because of what is perceived. I don't think every person that is right leaning is an uneducated redneck idiot.

Uh uh, we are on the blue team and they are on the red team, so they are ALL a bunch of lying scumbags.


"You people on the left think..." from someone trying not to be stereotyped as an ignorant right-ist illustrates this issue in perfect irony.

[jdubya]

Originally Posted by sedated

Uh uh, we are on the blue team and they are on the red team, so they are ALL a bunch of lying scumbags.


"You people on the left think..." from someone trying not to be stereotyped as an ignorant right-ist illustrates this issue in perfect irony.

I still love the meme that says, "One side is armed and the other doesnt know which bathroom to use". Now come on, thats funny right there

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by sedated

Uh uh, we are on the blue team and they are on the red team, so they are ALL a bunch of lying scumbags.


"You people on the left think..." from someone trying not to be stereotyped as an ignorant right-ist illustrates this issue in perfect irony.

I'm not on anybody's team in this deal, that view has ****ed all of this up. I just try to call a spade a spade, I think Donald Trump is a moron, I think Joe Biden is an old ****ing idiot, and I will willingly say that about both of them.

I don't care what team anyone wants to be on, how hard is it to admit that even if you voted for the guy, he says things he shouldn't say pretty frequently, that isn't an attack it's being honest lol.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by Gravedigger

My wife had a miscarriage around Christmas with our first expected child since we got married last July. Now, four months later, we're lucky to be expecting again but hopeful for a different result. I saw how it affected her, so if I can do anything in my power to not have that happen for her, or myself, again, I will do it.

Do I know that Corona will affect us negatively? No, there's a chance it could pass through easily on both of us. However it could have the exact opposite effect, and that risk is too much for me to take at this time. But I have to get out, we have to go to the grocery store, we have to eat, eventually we have to get haircuts, we have to have some social interaction with our friends to remind us that we aren't alone in the world and that there is an end to the tunnel. I get both sides, I apologize if anyone feels attacked by my comments in this or other threads, but for me there's no question why I do what I do. Rather safe than sorry is the name of the game for me, but I get why there was a massive party at Lake of the Ozarks on one of the only nice weather days of that weekend. I wouldn't do it, but I get why others would. Try not to shame others for what they do, but respect my choice to wear a mask and take risk averse actions to keep my family as safe as possible. Everyone you see out there has a reason to believe what they believe in this pandemic, but don't think you have the right to tell someone to believe something different then what they know is the right situation for them.