At the WuHuFlu Task Force presentation today, they said some States with dropping cases and low numbers could start the Phase One of reopening “tomorrow”.
So with every State having new cases yesterday: How’s that going to work without resurgence?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Sorted lowest to highest new cases:
State Cases New Deaths New Active C/M Dead/M Tests Tests/M Alaska 300 +7 9 181 406 12 8,735 11,828 Vermont 768 +9 35 +5 733 1,229 56 11,507 18,412 Hawaii 541 +11 9 158 380 6 21,985 15,460 Montana 415 +11 7 190 398 7 9,936 9,538 Arkansas 1,620 +21 37 +3 1,035 542 12 22,675 7,582 West Virginia 739 +21 13 +1 579 404 7 18,306 10,008 Idaho 1,609 +22 41 1,544 953 24 15,398 9,123 Maine 796 +26 27 +3 436 597 20 14,872 11,158 North Dakota 393 +28 9 221 522 12 11,704 15,560 Delaware 2,075 +61 52 +6 1,645 2,185 55 13,350 14,060 New Hampshire 1,211 +72 34 +2 812 901 25 12,166 9,055 Oregon 1,736 +73 64 +6 1,672 425 16 33,351 8,170 Oklahoma 2,357 +94 131 +8 1,071 602 33 30,795 7,860 Minnesota 1,912 +103 94 +7 798 346 17 41,675 7,540 Kansas 1,603 +109 80 +4 1,283 551 28 16,122 5,543 Nevada 3,321 +110 142 +6 2,010 1,136 49 34,504 11,805 New Mexico 1,597 +113 44 +8 1,258 763 21 34,488 16,482 Wyoming 401 +113 2 223 689 3 6,129 10,534 Nebraska 1,066 +114 24 +3 1,020 560 13 13,173 6,916 Washington 11,034 +124 581 +14 8,738 1,513 80 122,854 16,842 Kentucky 2,429 +138 129 +7 1,994 547 29 29,747 6,699 Utah 2,683 +141 21 +1 2,444 881 7 49,678 16,313 South Dakota 1,311 +143 7 +1 931 1,517 8 9,859 11,407 Iowa 2,141 +146 60 +7 1,340 683 19 20,675 6,600 Dist Columbia 2,350 +153 81 +9 1,717 3,433 118 12,150 17,750 Wisconsin 3,875 +154 197 +15 3,591 671 34 44,849 7,761 Alabama 4,404 +163 137 +14 4,247 905 28 36,363 7,475 Tennessee 6,262 +183 141 +6 3,925 941 21 85,049 12,787 North Carolina 5,608 +227 148 +16 4,577 552 15 70,917 6,983 Mississippi 3,624 +264 129 +7 3,495 1,213 43 37,733 12,625 Arizona 4,234 +272 150 +8 4,014 609 22 47,398 6,823 South Carolina 3,931 +275 109 +2 3,822 793 22 36,284 7,321 Missouri 5,178 +283 168 +9 4,826 850 28 50,432 8,281 Rhode Island 3,838 +309 105 +18 3,723 3,632 99 28,064 26,560 Virginia 6,889 +389 208 +13 5,730 819 25 46,444 5,520 Colorado 8,675 +395 374 +17 7,803 1,568 68 41,830 7,563 Louisiana 22,532 +581 1,156 +53 21,326 4,831 248 126,586 27,143 Indiana 9,542 +587 477 +41 9,051 1,438 72 51,115 7,701 Ohio 8,414 +623 389 +28 7,905 723 33 74,840 6,429 Texas 16,638 +629 404 +29 12,557 597 14 158,547 5,686 Maryland 10,784 +752 392 +43 9,656 1,796 65 58,843 9,802 California 27,634 +796 951 +87 25,333 706 24 227,600 5,814 Florida 23,340 +821 668 +54 22,028 1,133 32 220,892 10,724 Pennsylvania 27,735 +982 837 +58 26,248 2,168 65 141,470 11,060 Georgia 16,368 +1,108 617 +41 15,720 1,590 60 67,939 6,598 Connecticut 15,884 +1,129 971 +103 14,848 4,435 271 53,122 14,832 Illinois 25,733 +1,140 1,072 +124 24,611 2,007 84 122,589 9,561 Michigan 29,263 +1,204 2,093 +172 26,727 2,939 210 97,093 9,751 Massachusetts 32,181 +2,263 1,245 +137 22,818 4,712 182 140,773 20,610 New Jersey 75,317 +4,287 3,518 +362 70,528 8,480 396 154,010 17,340 New York 226,198 +7,636 16,106 +606 186,205 11,530 821 550,579 28,064 USA Total 677,570 +29,567 34,617 +2,174 585,445 2,047 105 3,398,140 10,266
Musings from the Chiefio 
Location, Location, Location. Spoke and hub. Stack’em and Pack’em.
That’s all I gotta say about that.
How’s it going to work with resurgence? It’s not. The whole shutdown thing was about flattening the curve so hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed. They weren’t. We now seem to be prepared for a resurgence.
It was never about preventing everyone from getting the Chinese Virus, That horse left the barn in probably November of 2019.
Wow. Interesting figures
NY has 1.6% deaths. ? Most in hospital?
If 10% of hospital cases go on to die it means 16% of people end up in hospital.
If 50% show no symptoms it means about 32% of NY people have been exposed. Herd immunity will be good
” . . . Herd immunity will be good ”
Among the poor and ill-housed.
Question. Over the next 2 years, will there be a death deficit in the sections hard hit by the virus?
An Israeli professor has, apparently, crunched the figures and shown that it makes no difference how you handle the situation, because the virus follows a fixed pattern: the number of infections peaks after about 6 weeks, and is ‘rapidly subsiding’ by 8. If he’s right, there are a lot of political asses around the world in need of a good kicking.
https://principia-scientific.org/shock-israeli-study-reveals-covid19-lockdown-was-pointless/
Steve, the ” it makes no difference” assumption is, IMV, absurd.
One need look no further then the Diamond Princess. As soon as the passengers were removed to a true quarrantine, the spread stopped.
Also one congregation of a church of just over 1000 members practiced zero defensive protocols. In very short order 80 percent were infected.
The defensive protocols work. Exactly how well they work for how long, and the economic harm they cause, is all worthy of discussion. Even Sweden is not practicing business as usual.
The left is politicising this issue big time. The recent unclear change in case reporting is confusing and makes judging the affect of defensive protocols difficult.
How and when and where to begin to reopen is worthy of discussion as well. Both the left and the right are often seeing this through political eyes. I am very concerned on how this will play out.
It is my good fortune to be retired. It’s my bad fortune to be in a high risk category for a bad outcome (death maybe) from the Chinese Flu.
I thought the phasing was good. As A. McClintock points out above, a much higher percentage of people have been exposed, developed the milder effects of the Wuhan Flu, and should be “Free to move about the country” than you will find in any reports from any government agency.
I’m high risk, but can self-isolate to whatever social distance I think is prudent. What’s missing are the tests. Few individuals know their exposure and possible infection-in-the-rearview-mirror status.
Some don’t care. Their constitutional rights are more important to them than their safety, and I have no problem whatsoever with that, but there are a lot of things they can do voluntarily that will protect others as they preserve their rights.
Back to tests. I resent and would resist any government effort to curtail my freedoms and rights. “Papers, please. Ve must zee your papers before ve can allow you to do zat.” Totally wrong. Some officious officials will be ventilated and die of lead poisoning over that.
But voluntarily, I’d like to know my status. I’d stand in line 4 hours, 6 feet apart of course ;o) to get tested so I would know.
Also, I’ve mentioned that part of my semi-annual visit with my doctor was discussing viral load. She thinks the Wuhan Flu will hit almost everyone at some point, but her opinion is that, unless you gear up in CDC, positive bunny suits, any PPE below that will just lower the viral load of your exposure according to how good, say a mask, the PPE is that you are using. The smaller the viral load, the better the chance of a mild case and a merely annoying outcome.
I’m going to wear a mask to protect myself from the inconsiderate yayhoos that don’t. When I get exposed, and I believe I will, I expect a satisfactory outcome with low exposure and the promising preventatives and treatments available now, let alone the better treatments that may come along.
I have no problem with any business insisting on masks of some sort, even a bandanna mask, before entering. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service has been upheld as the business owner’s right to protect his employees and his other customers. So no mask? Go down the street to a similar business that doesn’t care. You are free to go about without a mask, but I am free to protect myself.
And how about testing? I think most people would like to know their status on their own volition. And I think business owners do have the right and obligation to protect their employees. What boss wouldn’t want to know the status of their employees? It’s like pre-employment drug testing. You’re free to refuse, but then the employer is free to skip hiring you.
The key point is that there is no government interfering with your rights. It’s all a matter of individuals using their rights to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement and accepting the consequences of their actions.
Tests, tests, and more tests, easily available and cheap will be the best thing we can do to really get the economy back on track. They should be like mints on the register at the diner’s cashier.
Then let individuals learn how to use and then use the test results to their advantage.
Status Report From South Australia – Just to give folks here a comparison : We’d had closed internal & external borders for a month now. And a semi shut down of all service industries. Folks stay 1.5 meter apart. but no masks.
Today just 2 people were diagnosed with this Chinese Flu with a total of 425 people diagnosed since this all began. Seven people have died. But the restrictions are continuing.
The state government has now embarked on a program of open testing for two weeks : any resident can get a test for free.. This is to find any asymptomatic carriers and establish their extent.
If that gives us an all clear, we will start ending the local shut down with the border controls maintained to those other states which still have this pandemic continuing.
The state & national goal is complete destruction of this virus in Australia so that we have our normal lives back. And folks coming to Australia will be tested for fever and probably for infection before being allowed to enter Australia.
https://www.covid19data.com.au/transmission-sources-states
PS : An Interesting side effect : Normal flu season has commenced with the cold weather we are having. but the level of infection has dropped to about 20% of last year.
Early cold Winter here already ! If anyone see the Global Warming Goddess tell her she’s needed in Southern Australia & Tasmania ! )
David, I’m sorry, but I simply can’t agree. The prof wasn’t calculating from small scale instances like the Princess or a church, he was using whole-country figures from countries as different in their approaches as us in the UK and Sweden. He found the results above: whatever the pollies do, the infection peaks in 6 weeks and is well down after 8. I can’t see how to interpret this if not that, effectively, the degree of intervention is irrelevant. Yes, isolating an individual will obviously reduce that person’s chance of infection, but it will not affect his or her country’s figures.
Even if it weren’t so, we know that the virus is, statistically, of only medium infectivity and lower lethality than standard flu, as an increasing number of medical and epidemiological studies have shown over the last month. It is no big deal.
Closing your economy down with lockdown, on the other hand, is a huge deal. That is going to wipe out smaller and medium sized businesses and impoverish countless people. That has been my opinion for 3-4 weeks now (since before the UK’s lockdown) that lockdown was an insane over-reaction, and an increasing body of evidence suggests that that is right.
I don’t know about “the left” politicising the issue (any more than anybody else ;-), as it was almost certainly pure politics from day one – I assume you’re familiar with “Event 201”. IMO this puny virus was just another of Mencken’s hobgoblins, one which happens to have caught the globalists’ eye at “the right time”. No more.
I am also paying attention to my own experience as somebody who has, all his life, been *very* prone to anything and everything that goes for the respiratory system. This season I have had zero infections with anything. Zero. I have to be out & about exercising every day, and generally take in the middle of town just to take a look. I do not wear a facemask. I do not avoid touching things, nor subsequently touching my face (my specs tend to slip down my nose, so get pushed back up many times per day.) I do not wash my hands any more than I used to, and while out frequently pop an extra-strong mint into my mouth with them, even (shock!) after touching things like handrails. If this terrifying virus wants a very easy victim, where is it? I am also concerned about how this will play out, but exactly none of my concern is medical.
H.R. says: 17 April 2020 at 10:41 am
The problem is that without an accurate antibody test and testing 100s of thousands we don’t really know who has and who hasn’t had it.
Each city and area is going to have completely different rates of infection, so at the moment they are just guessing about how many have had it.
20% of those tested in the USA have tested positive, but I would imagine the majority of those are in NYC.
As has been said many times, these things follow a logistic or Gompert’s curve. The differences generally are in the details, which in the mathematical formulas are the *true* values of the parameters. That’s why the Israeli mathematician was able to do what was done.
Given that we are all mortal men doomed to die, increased dying of cause A must mean dying of causes B-Z declined. P(A) + P(B) + … = 1. I would not be surprised to see, in hindsight, that many deaths from trauma dropped to the extent that deaths from infectious diseases increased or that the deaths from the diseases of long life were minimally affected. I would not be surprised to see deaths from trauma increase later and that the end of the year deaths end up being near the .9% of total population figure that we typically see.
Reminder, *no* medical test is without flaw. Even if it or the battery have 100% true positive and true negative rates, the predictive power is still a function of the *true* prevalence rate; which we will never know beyond a range. Medical diagnoses are *best guesses* and will nearly always just be guesses. Only rarely will we get valid knowledge and then in hindsight. There is way more variation among humans than is generally recognized and often more within groups than between groups.
Finally, any study that uses p values or Bayes factors should be viewed skeptically until more evidence has been gathered and even then a group of positives will be found to exist with a group of negatives.
@A C – yup. Lack of cheap, fast, accurate tests are a problem.
They are making good progress on that, though. The numbers Alexander M. came up with above, indicate 32% in NYC have been exposed.
I think it’s higher than that. And the number exposed is either being fudged lower, so there can be a larger number to wave in our faces as a fear tactic for a second wave, which I do believe will happen. What I don’t believe is that in NYC, with all the close quarters, 68% are still at risk in a second wave.
It’s just my ignorant yahoo anonymous internet poster’s (IYAIP) opinion that NYCs numbers are closer to being the reverse for political reasons; a) get Trump by any means necessary and this is a weapon at hand ii) the more hospitalized cases you have, the more federal money you get, and all the Blue States need money because they’ve blown all their State monies on frivolous SJW, PC programs to buy votes and take their rake from tax receipts.
My IYAIP is that the death tallies are garbage because so many deaths, even in hospitals, have been recorded as “Covid-19” and a fair percent of those people weren’t even tested. Then there are those that died at home, were turned away at a hospital because they didn’t show enough of the “right” symptoms. Then there’s the recent change in reporting rules and the financial incentive to report every death as a Covid-19 death.
We are in agreement that there hasn’t been enough tests to really inform… well, much of anything.
We need more tests as readily available as peanuts at the bar.
.
.
.A brief note – I called my pre-retirement protégé at work to see how he was holding up under house arrest. To my surprise, the manufacturing company I retired from has never shut down. He was at work, and not at home as I expected.
We had much to catch up on so, sorry, I clean forgot to ask how many cases of the Wuhan Flu they knew of or suspected in the plant. I also forgot to ask why they escaped shutdown orders; were they not covered or were they just ignoring them?
@cdq re test results. I demand accuracy, but I also realize that a result of a test or measure is always plus/minus something. The range of plus/minus is dependent on various factors you discussed and others for other types of tests. In some cases, plus/minus so small that the answer is exact for all practical purposes.
Some tests are for a binary condition; is vs is not, such as the presence of this virus. The correct diagnosis is accurate, absolutely. But then there’s the accuracy of the measuring technique itself, and as you point out, it can be very difficult in this case.
Oh, there are trivial cases particularly in a manufacturing environment where, for example, you are testing for an attribute with a go/no gage and a part is either good to use or not good to use as a result of the test. Yes, there are plus/minuses in the gages themselves, but they can be rendered moot for answering the fit for use question by proper gage design.
Steve C
I liked your comment “Even if it weren’t so, we know that the virus is, statistically, of only medium infectivity and lower lethality than standard flu,”
It reminds me of a risk rating system which includes occurrence, detection, and severity.
Tests of wastewater for viral load in Massachusetts have indicated that there were many more infected than the State figures for the area tested would indicate. There are many many stories of people with a ‘nasty flu that went to their chest’ in December and January before the political panic.
All of the models assume, incorrectly, that nobody has any natural immunity because of previous encounters with corona virus infections. Yet they are 30% of the viruses causing the ‘common cold’ and the vaccine manufacturers have stated that the viral coat and spikes have almost no mutation.
The serological antibody tests could have shown how many people had been infected which is what was required for the denominator of the Case Fatality Rate. These tests as statistical tests do not have to be extremely accurate and could have been done very rapidly. However, instead, statistically challenged medics used the number of positive tests for current infection – tests only given to those that would already have been diagnosed as infected – and then only to those that had severe symptoms. This approach reduces the denominator to such an extent that it should never have been used in the calculation of Case Fatality Rate.
So the modellers were working with badly skewed figures may have calculated the number that could be infected the denominator but then used the case fatality rate that was grossly inflated by the skewed testing. This produced the huge potential fatality numbers that scared most politicians and which never occurred even in those countries and states that did not lock down.
That is not to say that in some cases like New York with high population density where apartment dwellers share the same small elevators, crowded subways, and were encouraged to take part in Chinese New Year and carry on as normal, did not get a startling infection rate – but even NYC followed the same curve. It is probable that everyone in NYC who can get infected has been infected.
The postmortem of this pandemic will be very interesting and form the basis of many PhD theses. But one lesson that MUST be relearned by medics and modelers – is garbage in garbage out. If you are doing stats and modeling using large numbers errors can rapidly multiply up so you have to really understand what the data means when it is collected – if it is meaningless don’t provide it to modelers who don’t understand its limitations.
I also think that there should be some professional accountability on modelers if they want to be believed. Imperial College has a LOT of egg on its face and cannot just sidle off into the shadows.
How do they know what the viral load per COVID19 patient in their waste is?
It is cerianly possible to become infected by it.
Steve C says: 17 April 2020 at 11:28 am
“Even if it weren’t so, we know that the virus is, statistically, of only medium infectivity and lower lethality than standard flu”
Yes every year with the standard flu we get 140,000 deaths per Month don’t we?
Like we have had over the last 30 days with COVID19.
Understand here, H. R., that accuracy is *positive predictive value* with the appropriate error analysis and propagation done on it. That is your go/no go gauge.
About medics relearning GIGO, no, they don’t if properly trained in the first place. An issue here is the heavily top-down government dominated system we have; whether overtly so in “universal” systems or covertly so in hybrid systems like the USA’s. Nor should we forget that innovation must be allowed to happen and factor in the true R&D costs, which must cover the failures as well as the successes.
A C says
“20% of those tested in the USA have tested positive”
Until random tests are wide spread there is no reason to pay attention to such information.
In the State of Washington, only those with obvious symptoms, and those in the front lines (medical, first responders, police, …) can get tested, or maybe I should write have been tested. This may be changing.
Thus, cases – positive or negative – do not tell us much.
Deaths do.
In the small population county where we live there have been a few positive cases. The only death (don’t stop reading) was an older woman that had a double lung replacement about 10 years ago. She had lived in the county for a number of years, but had moved to the Puget Sound area recently and was receiving treatment, for what they haven’t said. This was first recorded as a death from our county. I think they have now re-located that to the county where she more recently was living.
Cruise ships and aircraft carriers. Both partially isolated; comings and goings are limited.
One has a mostly older, unfit population, another has a younger, fit population.
Both types have had outbreaks of “it’s just a flu”. The latest one is French.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-france-navy/france-defends-handling-of-aircraft-carrier-coronavirus-outbreak-idUKKBN21Z1QE
“Of the 2,300 sailors in the carrier group, 1,081 had so far tested positive with about 300 results still to be finalised. Twenty-four crew were in hospital, including one in intensive care, and 545 showing COVID-19 symptoms were being monitored.”
No mention of herd immunity.
As it happens a nursing technician at Roseland Community Hospital has been testing 400-600 people a day in the parking lot of the hospital. NOTE how easy this testing is to do – then ask why it has not been done by those tasked with pandemic metrics.
“At a hospital in Chicago, a non-randomized sample found that 30-50% of patients tested for COVID-19 have antibodies in their system, suggesting they already had the virus and have potential immunity.
“A phlebotomist working at Roseland Community Hospital said Thursday that 30% to 50% of patients tested for the coronavirus have antibodies while only around 10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus,” Chicago City Wire reported Thursday.
“Sumaya Owaynat, a phlebotomy technician, said she tests between 400 and 600 patients on an average day in the parking lot at Roseland Community Hospital. Drive-thru testing is from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. each day. However, the hospital has a limited number of tests they can give per day,” the report detailed. “Owaynat said the number of patients coming through the testing center who appear to have already had coronavirus and gotten over it is far greater than those who currently have the disease.”
“A lot of people have high antibodies, which means they had the coronavirus but they don’t have it anymore, and their bodies built the antibodies,” Owaynat told Chicago City Wire.
The antibody testing will better inform public health and government officials about how widespread the virus is already, and in turn, how effective their lockdown measures will actually be.
Additionally, with some 16 million-plus Americans losing their jobs as a result of lockdown policy, the vital testing will be used, according to Dr. Fauci, to help turn on at least some areas of the economy again. If you are found to have antibodies and thus are likely immune, for example, it would make little sense for you to be totally shielded from society.
As noted by Chicago City Wire, the testing shows that it’s possible “the spread of the virus may have been underway in the Roseland community – and the state and country as a whole – prior to the issuance of stay at home orders and widespread business closures in mid-March which have crippled the national economy.”
It’s unclear how widespread COVID-19 is in the nation, and where, but, according to a New York Times report, it has been estimated that 25% of all carriers are asymptomatic, meaning they carry the disease and have no symptoms to show for it. Of course, the more widespread it is could mean the virus is more contagious than initially thought, and less deadly.
An antibody test study is reportedly underway in California by researchers at Stanford University.
“Researchers at Stanford Medicine are working to find out what proportion of Californians have already had COVID-19. The new study could help policymakers make more informed decisions during the coronavirus pandemic,” KSBW 8 News reported. “The team tested 3,200 people at three Bay Area locations on Saturday using an antibody test for COVID-19 and expect to release results in the coming weeks.””
https://www.dailywire.com/news/early-antibody-testing-in-chicago-30-50-of-those-tested-for-covid-19-already-have-antibodies-report-says
I think that herd immunity is already here and the delay in serological testing for antibodies appears to be to keep people locked down. Note the baying of the masses (or bots) when Jacksonville FL mayor said that the beaches would be reopened for exercise.
Here is a piece of positive news.
I was talking with my brother (North of Seattle… 4 miles from the Nursing Home hotspot) who mentioned the great results that local hospitals are having with breathing-challenged COVID-19 ICU patients, those that have low blood oxygenation. It turns out that rotating a patient onto their stomach, so that the breathing motion of the abdomen is freed, improves blood O2 by 10%, which can make a huge difference, and does so immediately, even if the patient is unconscious.
Word is spreading amongst institutions on this, and its appeared in some publications this week as well.
A C, – Re comparison figures, yes, I recall that a couple of winters ago the UK had a very warm winter (2017/18?). The winter excess deaths *that* winter were about 50,000, while covid is up to 14,576 (Daily Mail headline, as I type). That, of course, assumes that all deaths with covid were due to it, and that the tests are 100% accurate for this one virus, neither of which is likely and both of which overestimate.
I was encouraged, though, to read somewhere that my smoking is probably helping my cause: in that survey, IIRC, 14% of the population smoked, but only 1.4% of corona deaths had been smokers. (I usually hand roll, with my dangerously contaminated hands, then [shudder] put the thing in my mouth. No-one can say I’m not giving the virus the chance.) I’m normally a placid enough bloke, but TBH after three weeks of lockdown my mental attitude to the thing is that of the England football yob at his unwholesome best: “Yeah? Come on then, if yer think yer ‘ard enuff!”
– I’m 69 in a month, I’ve got three “comorbidities” (What a brilliant coinage that is! Ooh, “morbidities”! Love it! :-), I get everything like this as standard yet … nothing. One of my regular walks, for Heaven’s sake, takes me past one corner of the hospital where 300+ of our local citizens are, apparently, sick enough with it to need treatment. Dozens have died. The wind has blown in my face from the direction of the hospital enough times lately for the virus, it only takes one, to escape if it’s going to and land on a really tasty target who is breathing well. Weeks later, nothing.
And with talk of proposed laws imposing a 6pm curfew, or having us only allowed to walk on the right-hand side of the road, quite apart from all the current impositions, yes, TBH I am a lot more concerned with the political goings-on than with stories about some killer virus that can’t find a big, soft target like me. It ain’t ‘ard enuff. Get the show back on the road before we (or *they*) wreck any more of it.
“Coronavirus antibody testing finds Bay Area infections may be 85 times higher than reported: researchers. Earlier this month, Stanford University-led researchers tested 3,330 adults and children in Santa Clara County, who were recruited using Facebook ads, for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and found that the population prevalence of COVID-19 in Santa Clara ranged from 2.49 percent to 4.16 percent”.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-antibody-testing-finds-bay-area-infections-85-times-higher-reported-researchers
This thing may be over before the politicians figure it out!…pg
“#coronavirus New paper suggests it is more 75 times more widespread but less symptomatic”
Beat-up under the microscope
Link at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/04/17/your-moral-and-intellectual-superiors-186/
I saw Cuomo on TV today whining that the Fed isn’t giving him money to do this and that to open up NY. Maybe he should talk to his legislators and divert money from the lefty unicorn programs they have up there. He never misses an opportunity to fleece the rest of us.
Oh, and Cuomo urged us to – in the moment of pause – to think about what we could do different – like … well … fight climate change. He is a serious-looking moron.
@pg, I posted about this in the Chloroquine thread.
PG, most of the antibody test kits tested in the UK were found to be useless at actually doing so.
jim2
Re Cuomo and climate change – seems like he got the order
“More Than 400 News Outlets Partner With A Project Seeking Media To Beef Up Climate Coverage Amid Pandemic”
Just sayin, anybody see it too? Covivi? ;-)
One big issue still in the early “problem admiration” phase:
Very low symptom folks beat the virus using strong innate immunity. Many (% unknown) make no antibodies as the disease didn’t progress to that point.
This matters in several ways:
Their plasma is unsuited for therapy in others.
They may not have permanent immunity (unknown long term).
Antibody testing will miss them.
Reinfection could be much worse.
It is the older folks with antibody production that tend to crash as the HIV like spike protein looks like it allows the virus to destroy white blood cells and take down the immune systrm. ADE Antibody Dependant Enhancement of infection may well be a big thing. That, then, if it happens, would make a vaccine more harm than help (as in SARS type one) and mean that a reinfection could be more lethal than the first exposure.
In cases of ADE when antibodies are low enough the virus is not cleared by the immune system before it can shut down the white blood cells. The virus docks with the antibody, that docks with a WBC then instead of destroying the virus, the virus infects and kills the WBC. You are in a race condition between virus doubling and your WBC production. If you lose you die.
In covid-19 cases there are drops of WBC counts in severe cases, so this isn’t entirely hypothetical.
So while lots of folks with antibodies is most likely a good thing, it has the potential to mean a very bad 2nd wave of infections. This is part of why I’ve posted about things that raise your innate immunity, like lots of Vitamins A C D E and such.
@SteveC:
Statistical games can be extremely misleading. For example:
My interpretation of similar pattern is just that near zero control of asymptomatic spreading has been effectivly done, especially early on. Then, when things get bad enough, harder and harder lock downs are done. Places with low initial cases control them without extreme measures. Places with worse starting positions (more influx ftom China or North Italy, poorer health status /vit-D levels) proceed more rapidly with stong responses.
What similarity In outcomes shows is just that politicians only act in response to the pain, and proportionately. Similarity in timing just measures politician response times.
That does NOT show that letting things run wild would be the same.
I can speak directly to Santa Clara County and California. We were consistently exponential to about 800 cases in S.C., then the County isolation rules had effect and we shifted to linear, in low hundreds range / week. At the same time, Los Angeles was running later, was exponential to the mid thousands, then the Governor instituted State wide rules. Now it is linear.
Given that this week was the first time we have had significant numbers of folks using masks & gloves and limited numbers in the grocery store at one time, only NOW are we effectively addressing asymptomatic spreaders.
A couple of weeks ago, we still had the “Grocery Store Germ Exchange”. Four (4) clerks at grocery stores in LA were tested positive while people doing weekly shopping were nose to nose with them. This Friday, folks were spaced 6 feet apart at the entry, carts sprayed with disinfectant and number in store limited. The clerk was behind a plastic divider. Almost all customers with mask & gloves. All store staff masked & gloved. I expect this will end our residual linear growth of cases.
In comparison, New York took a lot longer to implement controls and has been a disaster. New Orleans continued Mardi Gras and got burned. Etc. Note right next to Louisiana are States that didn’t host germ exchanges that are not in the soup nearly as much.
Today, Zero 0, new infected people in South Australia.
ZERO
37 for Australia as a whole.
But we have two flights of OS Aussies flying into Adelaide from India & Singapore & Indonesia on Monday with ~ 800 people. All going straight into 14 days quarantine/lock down with police supervision. Almost certain to have more corona 19’s among them
@Bill, In Oz:
Similar things in our Westrrn States. Very few cases, fewer new cases, and likely to be effectively cleared and reopened soon.
E M Can I quote your comment above on Jo Nova’s blog. It’s an important insight !
More info on the Wuhan Flu situation here in South Australia
Total infected 435.
79% have recovered with only 89 people having active COVID-19.
Seven people are hospital with two in intensive care. One – a 68-year-old man – is listed as critical.
There remain four cases with no known link to another known infected person..
Over 4000 people were tested for coronavirus on Thursday and Friday following the launch of a two-week “testing blitz” across the state. The blitz will continue for 2 weeks.
All better news than many places I know. But stay home folks, ( & wear masks ) You can destroy this disease. Just by not providing more victims to infect.
@Bill In Oz:
You can quote any comment I make at Jo’s place.
Restart the farming industry?
Ice Age Farmer has some comment on some of the emerging problem — “Smithfield warns of meat shortages after closing their Sioux Falls plant indefinitely, offlining 5% of USA hog production capacity.” But that is just the beginning chickens, egg production, dairy and beef are also in trouble. More at http://www.iceagefarmer.com/2020/04/13/no-more-meat-plants-close-indefinitely/
@Tom0Msson:
Same topic, 2 threads? Same response:
@TomOMason:
Went grocery shopping today. Smart & Final are back to having weekly discount prices on selected chicken parts. 99 ¢ / pound instead of 79 ¢ but plenty of supply. One different brand from before. Regular price up near $1.30 – $1.50 / pound.
The USA is very large with lots of packers. Outages need to be in % to say anything about prices.
Smithfield are owned by China, so likely high contact. Plus export a lot of pork to China now. This is likely a bigger issue for China exports than USA dinner.
OTOH:
This is why I canned a bunch of Chicken at 79 ¢ and filled a shelf with canned hams & SPAM. Oh, and a few pounds of bacon in the freezer. So likely not going to be an issue for me anyway ;-)
Trump ‘fomenting domestic rebellion,’ Dem governor Inslee says
…
Cuomo tirade
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched a lengthy tirade against the president in a news conference, demanding more federal dollars for his state, which leads the nation in both coronavirus infections and fatalities.
“First of all, if he’s sitting home watching TV, maybe he should get up and go to work, right?” Cuomo said at one point, referring to the president.
“Don’t ask the states to do this without the funding,” Cuomo added later, asserting that the president’s placing of the onus on the states without the funding necessary to have a successful reopening was “the opposite of the buck stops here.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-fomenting-domestic-rebellion-dem-governor-inslee-says
Feds charge doctor who cited Trump to push hydroxychloroquine ‘miracle cure’
…
During the recorded phone call with an FBI agent posing as a customer, Staley indicated the drug hydroxychloroquine “cures the disease” associated with coronavirus, according to the complaint.
Staley also told the agent he had received a tank of hydroxychloroquine that had been smuggled out of China. He said he was able to trick US Customs and Border Protection by listing the material as sweet potato extract, according to the complaint.
At one point, the undercover agent asked Staley, “If I’m hearing you right, if I buy these kits from you, then that’s going to pretty much guarantee that neither my kids, my dad, my wife — any of us — get sick. And if we are, it’s going to cure us, right?”
“Guaranteed,” Staley replied, according to the complaint.
In a follow-up call, the doctor allegedly told the undercover FBI agent he would also sell him Viagra and Xanax, a Category IV controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act. A package containing the medication was received by the FBI on April 9.
…
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/us/doctor-charged-hydroxychloroquine-trump/
New York budget 2nd, behind only California:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets
So looks to me like they have the bucks…
New York politicians are just whining complaining chislers who want the rest of us to pay for their mistakes.
Lubos Motl makes an observation that I had never heard expressed before, and then says it is trivially obvious (but not in those words).
https://motls.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-doubling-time-always-gets-longer.html
We talk about this number R0 as if it is a real thing, but it is not. The R value depends on the virus and population of victims and the spreaders and the networks of contacts in the populations. It is an emergent value. The best you can say is that it is an average. And it is not fixed; it varies with time and place.
Lubos points out that some spreaders of the disease are highly socially interactive and that others are on the scale between that and hermit. Some super-spreaders will have high R and others will have a lesser R value.
His point is that in the early stages of the pandemic, the super-spreaders the fastest with the mostest. The pandemic will start with a high R0. But as the pandemic evolves, the super-spreaders have done their bit and leave the spreading to the less social and the R value goes down. The population becomes less naive and starts to take precautions, but R goes down regardless.
============
“Model calibration, nowcasting, and operational prediction of the COVID-19 pandemic”
Click to access operational.pdf
They say (edited quote):
A simple operational nowcasting/forecasting scheme uses the time series of reported daily death numbers in a simple SEIR model and generates estimates of the current reproductive rate, Rt, together with predictions of future daily deaths. It outperforms a number of alternative forecasting systems that have been presented recently.
“It seems extremely remiss that such simple calibration is not performed routinely, and it may well have played a significant röle in the tardy and complacent response of the UK government in the early stages of the epidemic.”
Dr. John Campbell has some interesting observations and math:
3% in the Netherlands have antibodies. From testing blood donations. 10,000 of them.
Implies about 17 TIMES more cases than officially recorded and a CFR closer to 0.66%.
Evidence from yet another source for lots of asymptomatic cases and / or lots of rapid immunity.
EM,
Sorry about the double post I thought that was a different video (the one from http://www.iceagefarmer.com/2020/04/08/food-shutdown-farmers-told-to-quit-farming/ ). That’s what happens when I’m decaff’ed.
Yes I get the idea that it will take a lot to crush the food industry but to have Smithfields shut-up shop leaving their pig farmers without access to the market seems a bit extreme. OK, Smithfields only represents only 4-5% of US pork production. Tyson has also cut back as the market has shrunk.
Ice Age Farmer is quite apocalyptic in his reporting — which annoys me (and probably you) — I try to look at actual the reports he highlights, from the farmers and the rapid changes they’re having to endure — the market change with closure of schools, restaurants, etc. It sure looks like some small farmers are being set-up to be later nickel and dimed out of the industry. A very similar thing appears to be happening all across Europe.
A more upbeat report here https://www.agriculture.com/markets/analysis/will-perception-about-coronavirus-impacts-become-reality-grain-analyst-asks , and as they say “The “invisible hand,” a theory introduced by Adam Smith (noted historical economist), will steer supply and demand.” Even if the future of the market is a lot different from the past.
IMO farming more than most industries, will not be the same when they fully reopen after this shutdown.
Chemo therapy is a game of chicken, You are trying to kill the cancer before the treatment kills the patient. So is shutting down the economy. What good does it do to shut down the economy for the sake of that “one last cancer cell”, when that is killing the patient.
It is time. Shutting down the economy was never about reducing the number of infected, just the timing of when they get infected. HR is correct. Many more are going to die from shutting down the economy if we keep it shut down.
I will make the point again that governors who declare blanket stay at home orders punishable by fines and or imprisonment, which is house arrest for all practical affect, are declaring martial law for all practical affect.
This policy is a clear violation of the constitution which is very specific on when martial law may be imposed. The blanket suspense of citizens constitutional rights can only be sustained if martial law is declared.
Please refer to the legal history of the federal internment of US citizens of Japanese descent in WWII for background.
There are a number of other constitutional articles that can also be cited as being violated by these policies.
Expediency is NOT a sufficient reason for denying constitutional rights.
Well, all I can say is I hope the time we bought by distancing/lockdowns was enough to find a few good drugs that can be used immediately. To me, that would be the main benefit of the shutdown. So, let’s get things going again and if it starts to spread, then we should have some cures for it. In that case, it won’t be so bad.
But since I haven’t seen official word that something like hydroxychloroquine is effective at preventing death, I wouldn’t trust a hospital to take care of me.
WOW – 1/3 of people in Massachusetts tested positive for antibodies linked with corona virus. Later it reports the test hasn’t been approved by the FDA, but Mass. General approved the device for use.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/third-blood-samples-massachusetts-study-coronavirus
Do we think it is that high for the majority of the country? I sure hope so.
Question #1: What is the death rate?
Right now we don’t know nearly enough about the virus to answer this question. Events in Santa Clara yesterday illustrate the uncertainties. Let’s start with a CBS newscast:
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/04/17/coronavirus-update-santa-clara-county-cases-approach-1900-73-deaths-reported/
Public health officials say that Santa Clara has 1870 cases and 73 deaths for a death rate of 3.9%. Imagine what that would mean if COVID-19 infects 60 million Americans as the 2009 H1N1 pandemic did……..2,340,000 deaths!
We already know that COVID-19 is more lethal than the 2009 pandemic since it has killed 50% more people in one third of the time. Here is a link to a study published yesterday by Stanford university:
https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/04/17/stanford-study-more-than-48000-santa-clara-county-residents-have-likely-been-infected-by-coronavirus
According to the study (not peer reviewed) the number of infected individuals in Santa Clara is between 48,000 to 81,000. Even taking the lower number that implies a death rate of 0.15%. While that is a ten times higher rate than the 2009 H1N1 ‘flu it would imply ~90,000 deaths from 60 million infections. To bring this into context 61,000 people died of ‘flu during the 2017/2018 season according to the CDC.
Martin C: “1/3 of people in Massachusetts tested positive”
No, 30% of the people of the 200 in that study tested positive, and that was done in Chelsea, which they called the epicenter of the crisis in Massachusetts. We don’t know what the number is for all of Massachusetts, but it is probably smaller. How much smaller? It’s time for many more tests like this around the country.
Iceland doing lots of testing instead of a total lockdown.
https://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-coronavirus-pandemic-approach-could-help-other-countries-2020-4
“Instead of testing selectively, the country is allowing everyone to be tested and isolating people quickly if they test positive.”
A paper about Iceland’s testing approach
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100
Testing has been done in phases. First, of the symptomatic and high risk, then by open invitation, and finally screening the whole population.
You can compare this paper with the one about Santa Clara.
https://grapevine.is/news/2020/04/16/covid-19-antibody-tests-may-reveal-likelihood-of-second-wave-in-iceland/
The interesting sentence in this paper is
“Thus far two distinct antibodies have been found in the blood of the majority of people who have recovered from the virus.”
hmmmm…..
@ jim2 re: “But since I haven’t seen official word that something like hydroxychloroquine is effective at preventing death, I wouldn’t trust a hospital to take care of me.”
Personally, I have wondered if going to the hospital and getting put on a ventilator wasn’t what was killing so many. It’s classic “the cure is worse than the disease.”
I hear NY is trying to palm off their many excess ventilators on other states, so I reckon they bought a clue by now.
With regard to “reopening” the economy at least five states don’t have to reopen since they never closed.
In most of these states (Iowa, Arkansas, Nebraska and North Dakota) the rate of increase in the number of cases is similar to “Crackdown” states such as New York and California.
Only one of these states showed a steepening in the last week and that was South Dakota:
w/e 3/13………5
w/e 3/20…….14 (2.8x previous week)
w/e 3/27……..58 (4.1x previous week)
w/e 4/03……187 (3.2x previous week)
w/e 4/10……447 (2.4x previous week)
w/e 4/17…1,411 (3.2x previous week)
Governor Kristi Noem does not strike me as someone prone to panic so I doubt if 1,000 new infections in a week will cause her to abandon her decision to keep South Dakota open for business.
May I whine for a bit? Then I have a question to present to this august company.
The “safer at home” order for my state never really turned into the severe martial law like in other states. However, in my office 8 out of (roughly) 10 have stayed home. I don’t know how much work they’re actually getting done. I can’t do diddly from home because almost none of the tools I use are web-based, so I have been going to work as usual. And working essentially double shifts because priorities keep shifting, everything’s Extremely Urgent, and my usual workload can’t just be abandoned because it is foundational for some of the new daily reports. So I’m working until bedtime or even the wee hours.
I stayed home one morning to see how well it worked to participate in a virtual meeting from home. It felt like a huge waste of time–more huge than normally! The first time I entered the meeting of the day, 2 other people were already on and we chatted while we waited for the rest to appear. Eventually, word came down that they had entered some other meeting (it turned out to be the meeting for the day before) and we were supposed to go to that older meeting.
Well, I spent over an hour trying to get things to work on that old meeting, even though my kit had worked fine on the proper day’s meeting. I had to try every browser I had, even downloaded the app for the product we use. The various times I got in, (1) I had no live action video and no audio, (2) I had live action video but no audio, (3) several times I couldn’t get in, (4) I could see live action video but no audio but they said they could hear me typing in the chat, and (5) restarted a couple of times. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Besides that, even when I am able to participate in one of these meetings without snafus, they tend to run for 2 hours. Personally, I think 20 minutes would be sufficient, considering what beneficial information finally gets shared/clarified. Or even an email would work.
The last two days at work, I was told the highest priority was a census report that different people kept sending different directions for. So the last two days I’ve devoted tons of time and energy to that project. Then late yesterday, they said we just received word that, due to Covid-19, the deadline had been pushed to June 1. In a way, that’s fine because I can continue tweaking the program. There was still data missing for about 50 out of 5800+ records, and I could enter that by hand (if we even have it somewhere), but I don’t want to resort to that until/unless the automatic technique has done all I can make it do. I’ve come up with cool tricks on this project, but procedural ineptness has reared its ugly head…. I will stop there. I get tired of hearing my complaints.
ON THE OTHER HAND, I helped my offspring with their first tax return. It went quick well, actually, and both federal and state returns have been submitted.
Oh, and we (I) discovered that Offspring’s W-2 form has an incorrect address on it. So I advised checking the “change of address” box, which triggered the program to proffer a form to be submitted by snail mail to get it officially corrected. That’s done. I even found an envelope and “forever” stamp. All that’s left is to get it into the mail.
I felt that getting the address fixed was especially important because I had reported that Offspring was my dependent, and Offspring’s form also reported being a dependent. I figured if we didn’t report the same address, that might raise red flags.
If anyone here has had experience with something like this address snafu, I would appreciate hearing how you handled it, and how it turned out.
@Jim2, you said:
“But since I haven’t seen official word that something like hydroxychloroquine is effective at preventing death, I wouldn’t trust a hospital to take care of me.”
As luck would have it my annual physical was on Thursday so I asked my doctor whether she would prescribe HCQ if I get WuFlu. She told me that she is operating under North Carolina protocols that only permit prescribing this drug in hospitals.
So what happens to someone like me who insists on dying at home? No, problem says my doctor given that I can show up in a hospital to get treated with HCQ. The treatment will continue even if I were to discharge myself from the hospital against medical advice.
That sounds like a “Work Around” to me.
I still point to the WOM site and at least is has something tangable, kinda.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
21% still so far on CFR globally., good thing 4% on some othe important metrics.
They 2 shall change.
@PowerGrab:
IIRC, when in college I filed as dependant of my parents but with my college address and nobody cared.
gallopingcamel says:
19 April 2020 at 1:00 am
Question #1: What is the death rate?”
Please consider that you cannot get the correct death rate except by using completed cases, either fatal or cured. The US has been running in the ballpark of 30,000 cases a day for about 10 days. That is 300,000 cases that have not had time to mature to death. ( Yes, some very vulnerable die sooner, and some die much later as well).
So it is a mathematical certainty that, hypothetically, when the last person to become infected occurs, the death rate can only increase from there. 55 people from the Diamond Princess are still sick, seven are in the serious critical category. (About two months later)
Sick Building Syndrome. Staying inside can be unhealthy. Especially in hospitals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23372182
from 2013 (flu)
Some patients emitted 32 times more virus than the others.
“HCPs within 1.829 m of patients with influenza could be exposed to infectious doses of influenza virus, primarily in small-particle aerosols. This finding questions the current paradigm of localized droplet transmission during non-aerosol-generating procedures.”
============ different article ==========
[question: how can I give a link like the following and NOT have it embed the document?]
Click to access sick_building_factsheet.pdf
@YMMV:
To include an active clickable link, just post it in unadorned.
To have an inactive link, but readable, put it in quotes without any white space between quote mark and URL.
Some things, no known list exists, the URL gets followed and the object directly displayed. These SEEM to include some image types (.jpg, .png, etc), some but not all Amazon product links, and some document types. Others get downloaded or just an active link. Again, quote marks touching the URL seem to confuse WordPress into not doing the auto display
. More on coding stuff here:
Per Sick Building Syndrome:
I ran into this as Director of Facilities for a 120k sq ft building. New carpet and added 50 cubicles of furniture were outgassing formaldehyde and other fumes.
HVAC was sets to only 10% makeup air. I had to argue with my HVAC vendor to get it cranked open to 25%. That helped a lot.
Then, one weekend with the building empty, cranked the heat to high, about 90 F, as a “bake out” to drive fumes out of materials. Almost done.
One area, about 1500 sq.ft. needed a bit more. I gave it a 20 minute “soak”: in vinegar vapors, then aired out and 20 minutes of ammonia fumes. Then aired out. That neutralizes any stray acid or alkaline reactive residuals. Just about everything reacts with one or the other.
End result was a fresh and invigorating work space, several folks headaches gone, my eye itch and nose issues gone, and fewer sick days all around, along with happier people and more productivity.
Oh, and higher HVAC power bills. But since I was the guy who had to approve them, I just decided it was worth it.
re: the Netherlands,
Just realize that those figures mean every percentage point of herd immunity in this country comes at a cost of 1000 dead people. The health and environmental agency has been talking about 60% infection in the first year. So, 60,000 deaths in a country where the normal death rate is about 150,000.
The dutch bureau of statistics is fairly certain that the number of corona death is double the registered number. For the past two weeks there’ve been about a thousand corona registered deaths per week but about two thousend excess deaths and according to them there’s nothing much else going on that could explain this.
What I want to know is if public transit – subways, trains, and buses – will practice social distancing when they restart. That would cut ridership by a yuge! amount. Liberal unicorn fantasy – up in smoke!
Basically every Globalist Goal increases the severity of contagion or health risk.
Pack everyone in cities. Check.
Live in apartment blocks, shared facilities. Check.
Public transit. Check.
Work in major corporations – cubicals, assembly lines. Check.
Meals in cafeterias, fast food places. Check.
Reusable shopping bags. Check.
Child care centers. Check.
Public schooling in mass facilities. Check.
Government run big health care clinics. Semi-check. It trys not to, but….
Rack em, pack em, and stack em is not good for children and other living things.
I am popping a copy of this over on Jo Nova as well EM
This has been in my head for a while as well.
Bill
@David A,
You missed the point I was trying to make.
In the USA we try to record deaths accurately but there can be errors owing to deaths being attributed to WuFlu when the patient may have died from something else. IMHO that is a minor source of error.
The real problem is that ‘flu is not a reportable disease thus the 60 million cases reported for the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was probably underestimated. Like millions of others I was infected but self medicated. I was not part of the statistics since I survived.
In the case of WuFlu there is mounting evidence that the under counting of cases is of epic proportions. There may be 50 times more cases than the 700,000 reported.
For a good discussion of the Chelsea, Massachusetts and the Santa Clara, California prevalence studies, and why they are not what the headlines claim, see the first half of the new MedCram video
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO4xgcIaPeA”
“Coronavirus Pandemic Update 58: Testing; Causes of Hypoxemia in COVID-19 (V/Q vs Shunt vs Diffusion)”
His live diagrams are always good. Sometimes they remind me of football play strategies.
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61388
Looks like Chinese Wuhan Covid can cause stroke. 1/3 of folks have some kind of neurological involvement with some having stokes. Average age of Covid Stoke 10 years younger than others.
Latest Pointman
Intravascular coagulation will do that. In heart arteries, you get myocardial infarctions. (You do *not* have to have pre-existing disease for this.) In brain arteries, you get strokes. In kidneys, you get renal failure and/or renal renin-angiotensin system induced high blood pressure. Diffuse intravascular coagulation may result in whole body organ failure.
@ EM re “IIRC, when in college I filed as dependant of my parents but with my college address and nobody cared.”
Thanks for the reply. I can see they would not worry about it if you were a college student.
Census is different from tax returns, of course, but I understand that with the census this year, they want the “alternate address” for college students, even though they might spend 9 months or more of the year at their college address.
So that says to me that they’re going to make an effort to eliminate duplicate census submissions for college students who happen to end up in the count more than once. I wonder if they’ve done that before….
Blood clotting does look like a big deal. “Some Actor” (I was watching Los Angeles News and they said his name but I wasn’t caring about the name…) was on a ventilator but getting blood clots. On thinners he started internal bleeds… they had to stop the thinners, but then the leg lost blood flow. So he’s one leg short now. But still alive.
Dang! Some actor will now forever be typecast as “Long John Silver.”
(Okay. That was a bit mean. I hope he makes it OK, but Hollywood is meaner than I could ever contemplate being.)
@EM, why was he intubated? Could he not use his lung muscles on his own? Just sayin, when do you get intubated? Coma, physical trauma to the working parts? You are not awake when intubated. Just sayin…..
BTW, those drugs used to induce medically made comma’s, inhibit oxygen absorption. Think of morphine used by Hospice.
The actor is Nick Cordero, 41
“has spent 18 days being sedated in the intensive care unit of the hospital and has received assistance with his breathing through extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO”
““We got some difficult news yesterday,” Kloots said via Instagram. “We’ve had issues with his right leg, with clotting and getting blood down to his toes, and it isn’t happening.” Treatment of blood thinners was causing internal bleeding and blood pressure, she wrote.”
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-04-18/broadway-star-nick-cordero-to-have-leg-amputated-in-covid-19-complication
“He is hooked up to a ventilator, dialysis machine and ecmo while doctors are having trouble getting blood flow to his leg, and even waking him up. If he does wake up, he may never walk again. ”
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-amanda-kloots-nick-cordero-amp-elvis
Not just another flu.
Galloping camel, “problem is that ‘flu is not a reportable disease thus the 60 million cases reported for the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was probably underestimated. Like millions of others I was infected but self medicated. I was not part of the statistics since I survived.”
Thanks for the response. ? Was that tested? I thought that was an estimate, as most flu statistics are.
FYI . . .
https://pjmedia.com/trending/heres-how-much-downstate-new-york-is-skewing-the-united-states-coronavirus-numbers/
David A, you are correct.
look at CDC or WHO flu statistics and the first thing it says is “estimated” and the error bands are huge.
Just take this from the CDC
“According to new estimates published today, between 291,000 and 646,000 people worldwide die from seasonal influenza-related respiratory illnesses each year, higher than a previous estimate of 250,000 to 500,000 and based on a robust, multinational survey.”
so an estimate with a variation of 350,000 or 250,000.
Incredible.
https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/?symbol=@CL.1
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-outside-air-is-safe-and-park.html
“Why Outside Air is Safe and Park Closures Should End”
“After searching through the literature and talking to a number of doctors and researchers, I could not find a single paper suggesting significant outdoor transmission of COVID-19 or any coronavirus. But there is a huge literature and long historical experience suggesting that outside air is immensely safer than indoor air within constrained spaces.”
Too many lockdown-nazis. Or as someone else said, too many lockdown-puritans.
H.L. Mencken: “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
“Californian antibody test finds only 1.5% of self selecting group in highest risk county actually had coronavirus”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/californian-antibody-test-finds-only-1-5-of-self-selecting-group-in-highest-risk-county-actually-had-coronavirus/#more-70610
BUT!
A C Osborn replied 20 April 2020 at 1:10 pm [GMT]:
[…] look at CDC or WHO flu statistics and the first thing it says is “estimated” and the error bands are huge. Just take this from the CDC
Whoa! An error range: 355,000 that’s 22% greater than the lower bound on the estimate!? I was, ummm, not even close to being an exemplary student in my statistics courses, but what the hey-ell?
Is (the) CDC meekly trying to avoid publicizing the major problem posed by whatever numberic fantasies the CCP claims, then quietly using wild-ass guesses (WAGs) to compensate for those fantasies, making the result also a WAG?
Compu Gator replied 20 April 2020 at 9:30 pm [GMT]:
Whoa! An error range: 355,000 that’s 22% greater than the lower bound on the estimate!?
Sigh. Before I get clobbered by stats-savvy participants following this blog, I suppose I should just treat the CDC estimate as 468,500 +/-177,500. Without conceding that I ought to really believe it.
I think the oil market is in trouble
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Oil-Sold-for-050-per-Barrel-A-Negative-Price.html
@EM, that link I put up earlier was an active link. WTI, traded at -$40 (negative) a barrel at one point today as the contracts expire. I believe it closed at -$37. The oil has no home as there is no room to physically store it due to a lockdown glut.
Supplemental.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/20/the-oil-industry-has-never-been-in-a-crisis-quite-like-this-and-many-producers-will-not-survive.html
I think it is a “reverse” short squeeze in the futures market. The real price of oil is positive. If you are long futures in oil, you have to take physical delivery. The May contract is about to expire and there’s nowhere to store crude. It’s still not a good thing if you are an oil producer.
From the article:
On Monday, traders with long positions scrambled to get out amid a fear that it would be difficult to find a place to park physical oil amid a rising glut of crude. So in a way, Monday’s price action, while certainly bearish, was also something peculiar to the futures market, with the action in the May contract not necessarily an accurate reflection of supply and demand fundamentals.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-oil-market-just-crashed-below-0-a-barrel-4-things-investors-need-to-know-2020-04-20
Regarding global flu deaths, I am certain getting global estimates is very difficult. For instance, what would one believe from China alone.
The pot stirred
“The Roth resolution and the Chinese virus”
Courtesy of Willis.
https://peterattiamd.com/covid-19-whats-wrong-with-the-models/
That article starts with “Do we continue the “lockdowns” in hard-hit parts of the country, to halt the further spread of the disease? Or do we begin to open up parts of the population (and economy), and inch back towards something resembling “normal?””
Phrased as either one or the other but not both. Not exploring the range of possibilities in lockdowns or in opening up. A rhetorical question, not a serious one. And not one discussed further. Too bad.
The conclusion is “We failed to scale up testing and gather the essential information outlined here that would have helped us create better, more nuanced and hopefully more accurate models, rather than having to essentially guess at our data inputs (and hence at the outcomes).”
There are a lot of things we failed to do, but not all of them were possible at the time. Some have developed better models, with better inputs. No model in this crisis is a prediction of what will happen, only of what could happen, based on what we know so far. It is a what-if thing and constantly changing.
“But we shouldn’t look at models to give us the “answers.” How many people will be hospitalized, how many people will die, and so on. That’s our natural, lazy inclination. Instead we should look to the models to show us how to change the answers.’
We do need to plan for hospitals. The part about changing the answers, he got that right. And although he does not like it, the first models with huge deaths were useful in getting the problem taken seriously, by some if not all. That’s good. On the other side, they induced panic. Not good. Complacency or panic, what to do? What would Greta do? /sarc.
Opinions are divided. Strongly. Too much focus on models. What we really need is facts about how this contagion spreads and what needs to be done to avoid it.
Was/is the lockdown overkill? Was/is there a better way to get the required distancing?
News – and something to think about
“Common Sense and Human Interface – Georgia Governor Brian Kemp Announces Phased Reopening of Business Starting This Week…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/20/common-sense-and-human-interface-georgia-governor-brian-kemp-announces-phased-reopening-of-business-starting-this-week/
More stirrings
“German editor scathing: Demands €149 Billion In Damages for China’s greatest Export — Coronavirus”
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/german-editor-scathing-demands-e149-billion-in-damages-for-chinas-greatest-export-coronavirus/
Over at WUWT Nick Stokes is defending the CCP handling of the COVID19 outbreak.
Unbelievable.
Well, SOMEBODY must be using hydrochloroquine …
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday cited “extreme urgency” in clearing U.S. pharmaceutical distributors from legal hurdles in order to provide the controversial anti-malaria drug to coronavirus patients.
The Justice Department penned a response letter Monday notifying one of the country’s largest wholesale drug distribution companies, AmerisourceBergen, that antitrust hurdles have been removed as part of an “expedited, temporary review procedure.” The DOJ letter dated April 20 says the drug corporation is now set to work with federal government agencies and health care providers to distribute hydroxychloroquine to patients with coronavirus symptoms. The anti-malaria drug has been controversially touted by President Donald Trump as a “treatment” for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, despite reports from organizations including the American Heart Association that the medication exacerbates fatal heart problems and has not faced U.S. clinical trials.
https://www.newsweek.com/doj-clears-us-drug-companies-distribute-hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-patients-1499002
Something else to chew on: https://sccm.org/Blog/March-2020/United-States-Resource-Availability-for-COVID-19. NB published March of this year.
“The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday cited “extreme urgency” in clearing U.S. pharmaceutical distributors from legal hurdles in order to provide the controversial anti-malaria drug to coronavirus patients.”
Not bad only took the Bureaucrats 4 months to OK the use of an actual treatment solution for the WuHuFlu. ICUs can be unloaded. The only logical need for this lock down was to prevent overload of ICU facilities. Time put America back to work before the damage gets to be far worse then that caused by the disease..
@Ossqss:
Yes. In fact it was your link on futures that sent me off looking at actusls.
@Jimw2:
A severe contango in a physical delivery furures market. That, then, sent me off looking at the physical market. There for a very sour crude, it was negative by a tiny. So not just a futures thing.
Then you have the Dimocrats blocking Trump from buying oil for essentially free to fill the strategic petroleum reserve. You must work at it to be so foul and stupid, but then again. Pelosi IS leading it….
Well when all is said and done the figures will be, in hind sight, calculable. My guess is that Covid will have shortened life ,on average, by 3 weeks.
However what a wonderful time to be a lawyer. The sueing is going to carry the economy for years and years.
Ten years ago the average life expectancy was 77.333 years it is now 77.310 years Oh dear.
@CDQuarles:
Does put the USA critucal care quantity in perspective.
@PG:
Yeah, an amazing display of organizational sloth. Thanks to the heads up from Larry Ledwick, we were, collectively, months ahead of just about everyone, and certainly all of government.
I was in lockdown well before the County, that was ahead of the State. I’ve identified several important preventative steps (like vit-D ) along with 2 different classes of probable medications (quinie / zink and derivatives, Ivermectin) and have a “couple of person” iventory of each. Plus gave family and friends a heads up on prepping & food stores.
I did miss on the Great TP Runs… but did inventoy “engough” in time.
All before Government started to display a bit of clue….
My only big regret is waiting a month before calling BS on the CDC & W.H.O.
Should have read Now 77.410 years.Finger trouble.
@FundMe:
For the folks who die, life expectancy is zero.
For those who suffer through a bad case, 20%, the damage can persist for the rest of their lives. Brain damage, sterility, poor lung function limiting mobility, amputation, damaged heart muscle, kidney damage and dialysis, and much more.
Belittling this disease is a mistake.
It seems to me that the covid virus has a kill switch. Must be a minor mutation. Almost as if there is a limit to the iterations it can forego before becoming benign. I have seen the math supplied by the math guy in Telavive however he offered no explanation for his findings. Hope to be alive in a few months so that I can approximate the truth. Just Curious you know.
Of the nearly 1.7 million active cases as of today, 97% now show as mild condition and 3% as severe or critical. The closed case CFR is still at 21% of the nearly 850,000 closed cases referenced. That is a large gap and I suspect it to close in the near term. The question will be, did we see the worst of this already?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
@P.G.:
On ending lockdown:
IMHO, the lockdown was needed at the start to buy time for prepping. Then Government, at all levels and globally, was way too slow, tepid, and dumb in what they did. But that is past.
Americans are quite happy to make for themselves the masks government was hoarding for medical staff. (A PSA on making and using for the publuc would have limited the spread, and thus the need for need for medical use far more…)
Americans are quite able to shop with physical distance of 2 meters and surface wipes (now doing it in Santa Clara).
Americans can make and use any equipment needed to limit contagion (look at Silly Con Valley and wide spread bunny suits in semiconductor clean rooms )
Americans are also good with the “experimental” drug treatments for prophylaxis or recovery, and those do reduce severity, duration, and ICU loads.
Season with studies showing much more low / no symptom cases. Top with the young 1/2 of the population who can get to Herd Immunity at nearly no risk, especially if we tell people to up their vitamin C & D intake.
Then a pretty clear snd not too damaging path out pops up.
County by county, end the “in place” orders in counties with few active cases and declining cases. Sentinel monitoring at places prone to outbreaks. (Nursing homes, prisons, ) let rural America get back to life and work as usual.
In urban areas “with issues”, go slower. Shelter in place for retired folks. Physical distancing rules in shops and workplaces. Surface cleaning in shops, gas stations, etc. Encourage private cars, discourage mass transit. Mandatory mask & gloves in mass transit (provided at entry). Offer prophylactic drugs to at risk populations and responders (along with providing vit-D & zink).
As a county gets to zero new cases in 2 weeks, start dropping rules.
The other question would be, how may multiples of total identified cases are the true total cases out there. Some studies have shown 50x up to 85x. Those numbers would look much different if we counted everybody correctly.
EM I am sorry that you took my comment to mean that I was diminishing the suffering of the people who die from this Virus. It is not so. I was merely saying that the stats give us 78 years of life. The stats might, after all is said and done, give us 77.49 years of life. The stats cant and shouldnt go into the suffering entailed.
5 of the 6 people in my immediate family are working 2 are working from home 2 are working in health and one runs a supermarket. The person with the greatest need for complaint is the supermarket worker. She has to supervise staff and go on the floor to deal with irate shouting blustering spit talking customers sans PPE….my heart goes out. She does not only wash hands she washes her face ten times a day. She can feel the spit hit her face when some shithole customer shouts or talks loudly. My sister God bless her.
Here is the latest from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm. NB they use 2018 estimated population. The population grows by about 1% a year (births – deaths + net immigration), so the population figure is about 6 million too small (current census is underway).
My mothers lists at the local Hospital.
1) Orthopedic ..curtailed except for emergency
2) Obstetrics…only emergency…not even elective epidural. or C section
3) Psychiatric ..electroconvulsive treatment…(still happens nurse ratchet still reigns) not happening. (this is only done under complete anaesthesia)
BTW she practices in Ireland.
Even the highly trained docs are under employed. Go figure. My old lady is self employed and her earnings are way down. Not looking for sympathy just trying to explain the state of things.
forgot to mention that all intubation requires an aneathatist, the aneathatist has to access the patient. It is not up to the MD it is up to the aneathatist to decide weather the patient can withstand the pipes going into their lungs. In our country there is no money to be made by prolonging life uneccessararly
29 days on a ventilator and then death. f… that. better no ventilator. better DNR notice, better go to sleep on a high comfortably.
[Reply: F-bombs send a comment straight to the trash bucket. Sometimes I find them and fix it. Best to avoid them. -EMS ]
Fund Me
See the bit on supermarkets in the link at
Another Ian says:
21 April 2020 at 6:57 am
Breitbart dot com has a story up that YouTube exec says they are taking down items that they feel are inaccurate, and Vitamin C is mentioned as one of those.
“We also talk about removing information that is problematic. Of course, anything that is medically unsubstantiated … so, people saying like, ‘take Vitamin C!, take tumeric!’ like ‘those will cure you.’”
“Those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy. Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy. So ‘remove’ is another really important part of our policy.”
“So you’re not just putting the truth next to the lie,” said Stelter. “You’re taking the lie down. That’s a pretty aggressive approach.”
another Ian… linkey not workey.
Terry Jackson…..it is truly a good time to be a lawyer….because of the violation of the law it will breed a million law suits …all justified,,,not all winnable, but have a go. I will. I am fortunatly in a positipn to get Pro Bono things going and I will. The government has stolen my money and I want it back, simple as.
I was in my youth a commie, from there I progressed to an anarchist, realising that would not work I became a libaterian. Having no one to vote for I became a conservative….what a journey …hey my friends,
@EMSmith, We have been most fortunate to have this blog to share and compare information. Those here have had valuable information many weeks before it became available to others. Larry fed us information from China even before their government had a chance to erase it. His contributions will be sorely missed.
I think your point that Vitamin “D” is the key to minimizing the effects of this virus infection is right on target. The likely hood of exposure and infection is very high, so We are planning on survival rather then total avoidance. Vitamin “D”, “C&E” and zinc.are good insurance against any viral infection as well as helpful in maintaining good health. We are in our mid 70s and healthy, so we shall see what life brings us.
FundMe points out that market employees are at most risk of anyone that has to deal with the public. THAT is for sure! They should get Hazardous duty pay for their extensive risk. ..pg
You guys have Constitutionall law, we have shit, only common law,, however how are we going to get our money back.
We, and I include myself. are going to have to stand up.at some time for sure.. Fight Back.
Interestingly enough, I have talked with several nurses and paramedics and other hospital staff, and it appears they have been going through a series of furloughs over the last couple months. Why? Because people want to avoid hospitals and elective surgeries have been stopped. They are not needed due to the situation at hand. Similar unexpected responses to needing thousands of those ventilators that are now not being used or necessary to begin with.
There is no hospital bed shortage in Florida or anywhere else that I am aware of.
The models have done us wrong across the board. One of the bad things that policy has actually done is keep people in lockdown. Studies are now exposing that family home containment and mass transit seem to be the largest contributers to transfer of infection.
Go friggin figure.
FundMe, you have made a brave journey it seems around the world of societal variation. Congratulations!
Re FundMe says:
21 April 2020 at 9:33 pm
My bad – too early in the morning
“Common Sense and Human Interface – Georgia Governor Brian Kemp Announces Phased Reopening of Business Starting This Week…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/20/common-sense-and-human-interface-georgia-governor-brian-kemp-announces-phased-reopening-of-business-starting-this-week/
And the proverbial might be in the fan
“Wuhan Flu: WHO Emails Leaked?”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/04/21/wuhan-flu-who-emails-leaked/
when President Trump was talking about shithole countries he was not wrong. I have been in a few. Angola, Congo etc everything is trying to kill you. The people the bugs, man if you just so much as get a knick in your skin you are f…ed because soon enough a festering sore progresses. Brassaville, Kinshasa, Point Noir the shit hole bulls eye
The minute you look at someone sideways an AK comes out.
Roamed that area sweating and festering for years. climbing trees trying to get the dipole working.Running listening services
Just that. in those places everything is trying to kill you. That is why I might seem a little blase’ about Covid.
Did I mention Bot Flies the worst of the worst.
Keep Well Brethren
[REPLY: F-bombs send a comment straight to trash. Best avoided. Sometimes I find and restore them, but often days later. -EMS ]
Ossqss
Thank you for your kind words if I can take them as such, however what we need now is solidarity we need to stand up. I am. as of tomorrow defying the orders because I live with two people that go to work every day. What the f is the point. F them someone is pulling my piss. I Have two People coming into my house everyday that could be infected,? NO no more this is just stupid….I am now organising…..we need all of us to organise….stop the stupidity. I organised in South Africa no matter I will work out how to do it here
@ FundMe:
LOL! There is something refreshing about hearing you tell of your journey to conservatism.
FundMe, certainly, you can take my words as intended in a positive manner. We all have journeys we learn from. That is living. A good thing.
I did find CDQ’s link above quite interesting for many reasons (Thank You CDQ). Dig those out for yourselves.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
I found distraction with this video that popped into the quarantine head :-) I will lessen the load on the blog with an ~ ahead of the link.
“There’s more to the picture, than meets the eye”
~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_hoW6qmeOo
Could add a few more
https://scontent-msp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/94124117_1382535011931356_2763408655763111936_n.png?_nc_cat=104&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_oc=AQmuYapCV2y5IXhXNrjobVuJnGT8FVqUnbpAW1T7RG7_QP_Tymvh6hGpweUYYH7tm_Y&_nc_ht=scontent-msp1-1.xx&oh=37c469de363a3434ee249bdc58d7e47c&oe=5EC66F09
And in the furniture line
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/127871-new-joke-thread-30/page/107/?tab=comments#comment-1417754
And on home schooling
https://scontent-msp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p843x403/91910579_10158118902744512_4225227390869045248_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&_nc_sid=825194&_nc_oc=AQlVvsAITbmpz3wb5EoHoq0iG8fPnGGBYIMPRbrFt-bV6S6YJMHTGrAm0bvrP_m-vok&_nc_ht=scontent-msp1-1.xx&_nc_tp=6&oh=774c116dd1360489984247a236208add&oe=5EC657D2
Ossqss @ 12:36
“The models have done us wrong across the board.”
My thought is that elected folks – mostly governors – panicked.
Panic 2020
Governors are mostly career politicians and mostly focused on having that career continue.
Math and science are not part of the curriculum for a winning politician.
When a person works with a financial planner the information provided by the person, often guesses, but also many hard numbers – current investable money $$, age, and so on – can all get tossed into a “Monte Carlo” simulation (plural) or model. A range of outcomes is produced giving probabilities of your money outliving you, or you outliving your money.
From the range of possibilities, the person (you) has to make decisions, such as putting all your money in Bank Certificates of Deposit (CDs), or putting all of it in a not-too-bright nephew’s startup.
A common person (me) with some math and science background would not take either of the extremes.
Our politicians, looking at the models of the virus, focused on the worst of the scenarios produced by the models (simulations). With their future political campaigns guiding their choices – they panicked.
Thus, we have all the problems of lockdown.
Examples: hospitals are going bankrupt;
folks are washing masks with Chlorine bleach;
washing produce with hand sanitizer;
and being arrested for common and benign behavior.
Panic 2020
Interesting read with applicable citations.
https://southfront.org/sars-cov-2-mortality-is-distorted/
@PG:
Thanks for thst! Yes, I’m pretty sure a cocktail of added vitamins and some sun time will keep me in the sniffles not pneumonia group.
@Terry Jackson:
And that’s the trouble with Truthy Checkers. They can NEVER know as much as the collective minds. So M.D.s have had success with I.V. vit-C AND it is known to help with other viruses. When sick, it is consumed in the immune response so need goes up. Taking vit-C is a proven aid in virus treatment. But someone only schooled in thruthyness can only hold the rule “vit-C=quackery”.
FWIW as a long time sufferer from a viral cold sore, I figured out about 40 years ago how to end it pronto. Usually they would take a week, sometimes 2 to begin healing. If fully involved, this stings a bunch, but if in the early red, hot, starting first blister spot stage, doesn’t hurt. In all cases, healing begins immediately and is noticeable the next day:
Wet a vit-C tablet face to make a bit of paste (spit works or water, avoid coated tablets).
Smear on cold sore.
Repeat a few times a day.
The high vit-C locally just nukes the virus. I started doing this after finding 5 grams vit-C orally helped speed healing a lot and knew 10 G was an upper bound but wanted to go higher…
BY DEFINITION all new discoveries wiil fail the orthodoxy aporoved Truthy Test.
@Glee on Opening & Georgia:
It will be good to get the data on effect on case growth. It will be bad when it comes at the expense of deaths. I’m happy to not be there. Atlanta will be an interesting test case.
Note that USA cases and deaths continue to rise. This isn’t over. It is only in the early stages. I’m continuing personal protective actions until herd immunity is shown. Note that the most recent Peak Prosperity posting references professional divers who had “mild” cases failing their lung capacity part of their physical exams, so off to a new career with lung damage. Professional divers are generally in very good health, btw.
One hopes folks continue masks, gloves, distance during this experiment in the new normal. If not, the exponential returns and we go back into the soup like Italy.
Since the wood has fallen off…
https://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/3149825-wikileaks-has-dumped-all-their-files.html
@fund Me via Power Grab
I concur with her prognosis, and congratulate you on re-asserting your rights! The true 2nd American Revolution is coming, We are demanding our rights. and no, government will not grant them, they will be forced to recognize them.
For the timid who cower in fear of a bug that “decimates” 1 in 1000, it is time to reclaim your god given rights! Or forever live s a subject, not a citizen
@Nancy & John
Panic in the year 0. I wish Chiefio had likes.
Pingback: Wikileaks Dump | Musings from the Chiefio
This story was on the Bing crawler today. It’s what one couple did with their $1,200 stimulus check.
My wife and I had similar plans, though we plan to spread it around a bit.
https://www.thestuffnews.com/2020/04/24/arkansas-steakhouse-stimulus-tip/
Excellent analysis (both by Tracy and the 2 doctors). These guys have huge brass b**** to do this given the potential liability.
@Ilanfar, thanks for the link, too bad we couldn’t get rid of that annoying woman that can’t shut-up. Every time I try to follow she breaks in to confuse things
Here is the version without the annoying narrator.
@Ossqss; Oh wow! that is much better. and it actually runs on my machine smoothly. without constant stopping to buffer ever 30 seconds. Thank you very much…pg
So if you stay indoors, isolated from everything, your immune system declines slowly. That would be one more reason why the elderly in the care homes are hit so hard. Maybe not just the elderly who are in care homes. And especially when the elderly don’t have the vitamins and diet and exercise that would help protect them.
Ossqss says: 24 April 2020 at 6:29 pm
Here is the version without the annoying narrator.
The first Doctor going through the stats for New York State appears to make a mistake.
He divides the number of Dead by the total numebr in the State, instead of by those that might be Infected.
Based on the Tests to date 37% have been infected.
37% of 20Million is 7.4 million.
21,291/7.4million is 0.29% not 0.1%.
The other mistake he makes is that he takes Current tests and Cases when we know that there is a 1 to 3 week lag in the Deaths, which cover practically the whole of the increase in death rates, so you are actually talking teice as many deaths.
On top of that the State still has 224,936 active cases, the outcome of which we have little idea uless we apply the current US statistic for recovered v dead which is 32%.
Sorry I am not going to waste an hour listening to them with such a bad start to the Statistics and Science.
Please check my thinking and arithmetic.
@ACO; you really should listen to the whole thing, specially the last 12 minuets. As to their statistical math. No one has enough good data to make any solid judgments yet, only “Educated guesses”
The official sources seem to be following the script laid out in the Bill Gates sponsored “Corona Pandemic War Game” conducted in October 2019. Very convenient that International and American agencies had a dry run a month before the Chinese unleashed this Corona Covoid-19 virus on the world. It appears to me that the UN, WHO, CDC and MSM and others are trying hard to push official actions into following that script. The end result is to put all control over Human activities under UN bureaucratic control. …pg
@A C Osborn, “Please check my thinking and arithmetic.”
I think he was making a different point. But first, one of the YouTube comments: “Always remember it is easier to fool someone rather than trying to convince them they have been fooled. Its just that simple.” The two doctors were very patient with all the questions from the non-believer reporters. They kept to their own data and their own expertise and refused to get drawn into the politics. Top marks for that. As we’ve seen from Climate Science, not many can resist that.
They say “Why do you quarantine the healthy?”. That’s new. Before we always quarantined the sick.
The twist here is we do not know who is sick in time. Their answer to that is that when the crisis first presented, the drastic response was correct (or too late), given the facts known at the time and the risks. But now we know more and we have to reevaluate our actions. Can we really prevent everyone from getting the virus or do we go for the second best option, which is let everyone get a mild form and go on with their lives? The curve needed to be flattened enough that the hospitals could cope. Now we have empty hospitals, just in case. For them, it did not come and it is not coming. So why aren’t hospitals doing their regular procedures again?
“That means you have a 0.03% chance of dying from Covid-19 in the state of California. Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work?” “96% of people who get Covid in California recover […] with no significant continuing medical problems.”
The more you test, the more positives you find, but the deaths stay the same, so the death rate gets smaller and smaller. The number infected is a nebulous number; we are only beginning to have an idea of what that is, and it looks like most of those infected will have severity of symptoms from none to mild. In which case, what matters most to each of us is not ‘will I get it?’, but ‘will I die?’.
They also discuss the pressure to mark each death as due to Covid.
In short, I rate the two doctors as very good. The audio of the video is left channel only except for when there are questions. That’s just weird. They make very good points. Whether you agree with them or not, they need to be taken seriously. The numbers they throw out are just to illustrate their points. Don’t get hung up on the numbers and miss their point. If you don’t want to spend an hour, use the YouTube controls and speed up the playback. It helps to turn on subtitles, then you can listen even faster.
I completely understand their reasoning for California, when you use the correct statistics it comes out at 0.04% and that represents only 13,000 deaths for the whole population.
I also completely understand about Quarantine the western world has forgotten how to do it for epidemics, like the flu, they just let it spread and the people die.
This has come about due to vaxinations lulling us into a false sense of security.
I have never been in favour of Lockdowns but once the virus becomes widespread quarantine, track & trace become totally impractical, so there is no other alternative.
However the Blanket lockdown does not seem to be the correct method, the “one size fits all” never works very well.
In California the logical thing to do was a proper lockdown of Los Angelese area because that is where the majority of cases are, what you don’t want is the people in LA travelling around the state or country infecting others.
But have Social Distancing with Masks, Glasses and Gloves for the rest of the state.
If any other real hotspots appear then lock them down as well.
What was scandalous was New York City allowing residents to fly all over the country and world,
I know Trump tried it but was met with very stiff resistance.
I would add that the data discussed in the video were documented cases. If we recall from other studies, California (Santa Clara I think) being one, they extimated a 50x to 85x larger population of infected who showed no, or mild, sysmptoms and did not seek medical assistance or testing. If we use the lower 50x number with respect to the 1 million confirmed cases in the US, we have 50 million who have been infected already. I suspect there are far more frankly due to the number of non-flu positive respiratory illnesses observed the last quarter of last year through the beginning of this year prior to Coved test availability. I believe it went through our home also as my son was sick in January and did not test positive for flu. He had the exact symptoms for 2 weeks. It lasted for a couple days for my wife and a day for myself. Perhaps my nicotine consumption through fake (vaping) smoking helped, as we are seeing data come out on that juxtaposition this last week remarkably. JMHO
@A C Osborn, “This has come about due to vaxinations lulling us into a false sense of security.”
The doctors comment in the video that there is a vaccine for the flu and they say the take up is not overwhelming. BTW, the point of the vaccine is to reduce severity, not to prevent getting it.
It’s not the false sense of security; it’s the sense of normal. The knowns, from car to smoking to flu deaths are all accepted as normal. We fear the unknowns. We don’t fear the knowns as much as we should. ‘The usual’ doesn’t make the news.
“I have never been in favour of Lockdowns but once the virus becomes widespread quarantine, track & trace become totally impractical, so there is no other alternative.”
The virus is pretty widespread, from regions to countries. Track & trace isn’t totally impractical everywhere; there are still localities which could do it. If those places could be walled off. Even with lockdowns, we see that we still cannot keep the virus from spreading, from within or from without. Permanent lockdowns are not an option, so we should hope there is another alternative.
There should be runs on Vit-D etc instead of TP. The PSAs should be about how to keep a healthy immune system instead of how we need to give up the lives we once had.
But instead of that, the MSM tells us that Vit-D has no effect, leaving out the fine print that it doesn’t benefit if you already have good Vit-D levels — which we know is not the usual case.
There is a lot of misinformation “going viral”. Even after it has been shown to be wrong. That part never goes viral if the politics aren’t right.
Just my opinion:
But now that gloves are by the crate in the grocery store and an army of crafts folks are sewing comfortable pretty masks… that cuts contagion by about 98%.
We no longer need the lock down. We need people to use masks & gloves and teach how to do it right to folks doing it badly.
The retired age group needs to isolate for about 4 weeks longer, using PPE when going out, while the kids and young families get over the modest cases and reach herd immunity. And everyone needs to get some sun or take their vitamins.
It is time to restart businesses. Starting in counties with low case counts and good control. Starting with businesses that can do distancing, then adding things like hotels and eventually restaurants. As herd immunity is reached, the PPE can be phased out.
Doesn’t need “testing” (though I’d like to know if I’m already done…). Doesn’t need a year for a maybe vaccine. Just masks, gloves, practice, and nature. Protect the vulnerable. Raise vitamin status of the exposed. Apply known mitigating treatments EARLY to reduce damage in symptomatic folks. Reach herd immunity in the under 60 at a moderated pace.
E.M.: “Doesn’t need “testing” (though I’d like to know if I’m already done…). “
Oh I think testing should continue, but not to determine a path forward. It should be used to fill in the blanks about who, what, when, where, and how. We’re catching up, but there has been no well designed testing plan to give some statistically valid results.
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So…. you’re another one of us that want’s to know how well your precautions worked.
The bad news is if the test says you had it and barely knew it, the gin and tonic worked and you’ll have to find another excuse to continue self medication ;o)
EM, I totally agree, but what hasn’t happened yet in either the UK or the US is to get the COVID-19 cases out of the general hospitals, ie quarantine them properly and then get the general hospitals back to doing business as normal with higher PPE protocols.
Keep current Lockdown on the hot spot cities for a bit longer to ensure no overwhelming of the hospitals and use your system for the rest.
They could also introduce some disinfectant spraying of streets and buildings as well.
Use those Far UV Lights in high traffiic areas as well.
“The bad news is if the test says you had it and barely knew it, the gin and tonic worked and you’ll have to find another excuse to continue self medication ;o)”
Love it, he will be devistated.
@ACO
Exactly right; and a lesson from the pre-antibiotic TB era. Very hot water, pasteurized milk (yes, TB is commonly found on cow’s udders), and put the affected folk in the asylum and away from the rest. Similar to leprosy in the past. But, but, but, stigma. Pshaw. I don’t have the right to give you an untreatable illness and you don’t have the right to give me one either; when we know such is going around. After treatments get developed, sure, let people go then thoroughly clean the building so it can be used for the next set of folk. On the other hand, power-mad folk will abuse it. Just another trade-off in real-ville.
Here ya go. Everybody gets their own wand! ;-)
https://uvcleanhealth.com/products/uv-handheld-wand
The temperature in Phoenix will be at or above 100 for the coming week, with low humidity and mostly clear skies. A bit cooler here in the NW corner of Arizona, but plenty of sun and plenty of warm. There are no reported cases in our Zip Code, which covers from the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead to the Utah border. Population density is in square miles per person. Most mornings I go for coffee on the back patio of the golf club, open air and sunshine and a light breeze and maybe only 5′ separation around a large, square table.
Didn’t Linus Pauling advocate for massive doses of Vitamin C 50 or 60 years ago, and wasn’t he a bit ridiculed in the press for it? Today the social scolds are deleting references to vitamins as unscientific. I don’t think they know the difference between science and sciency, but actively prefer the latter.
The TV graphics say people are worried the openings are too soon and will result in a huge outbreak. This leads me to think the hair dresser/barber will be swamped but limited to one or two appointments per hour, so a hair cut could still take another 6 weeks. The restaurant industry is pretty much toast. Try eating a sit down meal with a mask on. Amazon will ship your salty snack in a week, but your book order will be delayed. Costco offers home delivery of groceries at no extra charge for orders of $75 or more, provided they have any. They even do same day for perishables in the Metro areas. She hits the grocer about weekly for produce and frozen, no delivery of them in the wilderness. But she also joins friends in the morning for a few miles on trail or at a park in nearby Mesquite, NV, more sunshine and light breezes. We are committing prison time offences in many jurisdictions, but a few weeks back folks would look at it as normal. The trust is busted and getting it back will take a long time, on many levels.
This whole thing is upside down. Spend as much time as possible outside in the light breeze and the sunshine, and remember you can get a wicked sunburn on a cloudy day.
But what do we know, they have deemed us deplorable bitter clingers for years. Carry on.
It is becoming more and more obvious we are experiencing a global policy experiment (thank the internet and the UN agenda’s).
Just sayin, enhanced population control through global fear is “in the house”.
When have we ever quarantined the un-sick in history?
Never!
Yeah, bla bla bla on how contagious things are, but really, how manipulative has this been from a global societal standpoint. Think about it. People die everyday. 30 years ago we had 100k die every day to infectious disease, Today, 40k on average every day. Sure, pick your dated timelines and it will vary, but it is what it is.
We are quickly turning into herded Sheeple. Write that down, and remember it.
This is exactly what the global establishment pukes have been striving for over many decades.
Now, the connected and controlled/censored society has finally put it in their laps.
You can say what you want, but you too should see what is happening, no matter your position.
End result, it doesn’t care about you in the end, just another box on the PERT chart.
@ llanfar re:
“Excellent analysis (both by Tracy and the 2 doctors). These guys have huge brass b**** to do this given the potential liability.”
I watched both of their videos today. If you stay with it to the end of the second one, you will hear them speaking a shade less diplomatically about their opinions. Heh-heh.
I was annoyed the most by the questioners who didn’t always have a mic. I have very little patience for videos where the speakers cannot be heard clearly. These two doctors did a very good job, IMHO.
Did you all catch Dr. Buttar’s interview? He is the first one I’ve heard who made the point that the 6 foot separation was due to the inadequacy of surveillance techniques to distinguish separate cell phone signals if they are separated by only 5 feet or less. I had been wondering about that angle, myself. That’s why they keep saying they want people to learn that the new normal is keeping away from others by at least 6 feet or more. I’ve even seen a video that showed (from maybe a drone-level height) a city block where random people were walking along, juxtaposed with the view from a monitor system that shows the people as moving dots, and the dots turn red if they come closer than 6 feet, then stop being shown in red after they separate farther than 6 feet apart.
While I’m spilling my guts and speaking frankly here, I have to say that even though I usually tie a bandanna around my face, then pull it down, before I go shopping, and only pull it up again if I see someone is looking anxious about being in the presence of a bare-faced individual…my reason is not that I am afraid of the germ, but I am afraid of people-who-are-afraid-of-the-germ. Several of my favorite sources make the point that fear causes several of the symptoms we’re told to watch for. If I can reduce the fear of another by covering my face, I will pull up my bandanna.
Oh, today I found a package of masks in my possession that say they are approved as if they were N95 masks. Who knew? My first thought is to treat them as a secret treasure.
Dr. John Campbell has a look at co-morbitities and from US studies hypertension appears to be of greatest concern. see …
‘Today most natural treatment to relieve high blood pressure symptoms will almost certainly contain the herb hawthorn along with magnesium, coenzyme Q-10, and vitamin E.’ says Thor Sturluson at https://www.herbal-supplement-resource.com/herbs-high-blood-pressure.html
Many other herbal vendors appear to agree with this idea.
I’m frustrated that I’ve yet to see anyone offer a credible plan for reöpening previously successful local brewpubs a.k.a taprooms, so that their brewing and social merits could allow them to earn back their previous financial health. The popular ones operate with so much ambient noise that I’m puzzled about how the decreed 6-ft. social separation could accomodate the congeniality necessary for regulars and new-comers to the establishment. It requires more-or-less an empty stool space between each customer.
My stake in this is only social: A neighborhood brewpub of which I’ve become quite fond since it opened in February 2019. The mom of 1 of the 4 founders was in my class in the near-by Central-Florida high school (the dad was, I think, in the class that was a year ahead of me). Did I mention that I really like their brews, and their relatively small capacity allows them to frequently rotate what they have on tap.
Gator, it will not make a difference with respect to the social distancing thing an any bar or eatery.
It is physics in the end on unintended sharing, let alone the HVAC system. We just need to get over it and get back to normal, or we won’t.
I Herd that.
BTW, I would point to a prior post I placed that asked how do you have a beer and or eat with a mask on anywhere?
I can’t find it, but it involved a helmet, tubing and beer :-)
I predict a market for masks with built in straw proboscis….
@Compugator:
Brewpubs will social distance at bars and tables, and sell a LOT of growlers…
E.M.Smith replied 27 April 2020 at 5:20 am GMT:
Brewpubs will […] sell a LOT of growlers.
I disagree. I doubt that growler sales will keep many in business for long, unless they’ve accumulated a sizable cash reserve. Buying 64-oz. (1.89 l.) growler fills for take-out is great as an option, but inferior as one’s only possibility. It can’t replace the social appeal of sitting at the bar and varying one’s orders from pint to pint as the mood strikes, a conversation lengthens, or as discretionary cash dwindles. Then there’s the price: Each 16 oz. (0.47l.) of growler fill is priced the same as 16 oz. at the bar, so each 64 oz. fill costs $20–$26. Sure, they can offer discounts during the shutdown, but the total seems much more hefty when the buyer must face it all at once. Yes, one can also buy fills of 16-oz. crowlers. Whereas the usual price nowadays for a 6-pack of beer (72 oz., 2.13 l.) from a craft brewery (broadly including Anchor’s Steam) in groceries &c. is $11. Biiig difference.
Without knowing anything about the finances of the brewpub near me, it seemed quite successful before the shutdown, enough so that expansion into space they already own might’ve soon been justifiable for business reasons. So I hope that they had already accumulated substantial cash reserves to pay for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growler_(jug)
Uh, huh..
I suppose the Otto Bros. might’ve been first with that application for such bottles, but they most llikely did not invent them. I’ve yet to see evidence that there’s any difference between the amber-glass growlers with the 1-finger ring-handle near the screw-cap, and the light-restricting jugs that I used back in my teens & early adulthood for storing photographic chemicals, esp. developer (whether mixed from powders, or diluted from liquid concentrate). Back then, vinegar could be bought in the corresponding clear bottles, and when emptied & washed, used to store fixer, which was not light-sensitive. I bought the amber bottles at photo shops and what now would be called “old-fashioned drug stores.
I’m not at all opposed to growlers; I own 2 of the stainless-steel double-walled screw-cap kind. The putative drawback of growlers is that the fresh-drawn carbonation lasts only until the 1st opening by the consumer, so he should be prepared to finish it off in 1 sitting. However, back when a brother threw an annual party featuring 1 or more kegs, on the next day, I would return with bags of ice and a big cooler to help empty those kegs: We filled numerous clear-plastic bottles (emptied & cleaned, and hoarded in anticipation). And days later, we were happy to have them, even with the reduced carbonation from the containers that had previously been opened. The left-over beer was in the industrially megabrewed kegs, and 1 thing those megabrewers do quite well is sanitation. Unlike a microbrewed ale, there’s very little flavor or hop aroma in a megabrewed “American lager”, esp. those marketed as “Lite”, to hide any lapses in sanitation.
@Compugator:
Not the same but will keep them running. I expect to hit a brewpub for about 1/2 my usual pints, then get a growler to go of my favorite. I’ll also enjoy a quieter atmosphere where I need not shout to be heard 1 foot away…
Sigh. I wish I’d realized soon enough that my long 9:18 pm [GMT] reply above would’ve been significantly improved by breaking it into 2 replies, right before my quote from the previously cited Wikipedia.
Some observations, facts, and thoughts from an ER Doc in the Bronx, NY.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/ive-worked-the-coronavirus-front-line-and-i-say-its-time-to-start-opening-up/
In my county, we have been averaging 3.7 new cases per day since charting began on March 18th.
We have a lot of days with zero or one new case. The high was nine cases. The ones and zeros are balanced by threes, fours, and fives. So our chart of new cases is pretty much a straight line varying narrowly around the average of 3.7 cases.
We have had 3 deaths. The first came 12 days after the count began on 3/18/20. Then it was 10 days to the next death and 14 days to the third death. No more since then, though I suspect there will be one or two more deaths somewhere down the road. Hard to say.
I don’t think much testing has been done in our county, thus the low count. I also think the hospitals, to their credit, are not cheating by calling every death a Wuhan Flu death. What I don’t know is the age of those that died.
We are an affluent county and a lot of people have the money and do travel. I think the number of people who would test positive for Xi’s Disease would be fairly high if anyone bothered to conduct a blitz of testing.
We have a lot of assisted living facilities in the county, but only a few nursing homes. All those facilities locked down very early even before there were any shut-downs of *ahem* non-essential businesses. I don’t know where the senior care facilities got their heads-up from, but it seems they did get tipped off early. Maybe it was just that they paid attention to the Oregon case.
We should be good to go to open up for business. Seniors like the Mrs. and me should continue to protect ourselves; lot’s of vitamin D, zinc, masks & gloves to reduce viral load. Now that good weather is upon us, I would go out to dinner at places with patio seating to dilute any aerosols and lots of sunshine to keep the virus down on patio tables and furniture.
The numbers I’m seeing indicate that anyone younger and in good health should not be too concerned.
Let’s get rolling.
@H.R.:
We’re already started. Several States are starting the “re-opening” process now.
I find it odd that the Democrat Governors are foot dragging and bleating the whole way while the Republican Governors are leading the process. Not sure why (other than a vague feeling that Democrats like a good Disaster….)
Wyoming, Georgia, and Florida seem to be moving fastest. New York, New Jersey and California in the slow lane.
The next week ought to show a jump in cases in the early States if this is going to go pear shaped, or continued declines if it’s almost over anyway.
Even in Silicon Valley where we were one of the early hot spots, there’s a lot of folks out and about now. Yes, there’s a line to get in to Target, but the Target stores ARE Open. Similarly Home Depot & Lowe’s. It’s most places with crowds that are still closed. Restaurants are open for take-out, but movies, sports events that kind of thing still closed.
One other Canary In The Mine case will be meat packers. Trump has used Federal powers to mandate they stay operational, but a bunch of them where shut down as workers got sick. IMHO partly they were just playing for liability relief.
So they are making the operations a little more worker friendly ( PPE upgrades, plastic panels between workers, spreading out workers a bit more, etc.). IMHO that’s a good thing in any case. But the “stay open” order will be a shot across the bow to any industry in the food chain. “Get back to work or have a Fed visit” kind of thing.
By many measures, there are places with 30% to 50% of folks showing antibodies. IMHO it is highly likely we’ve sorted out a low symptom strain that’s in the general population (as we hauled all the high symptom folks “out of the pool” and into hospitals). To the extent that is true, having the asymptomatic strain spread about is a good thing in that it is essentially a natural vaccine against the high symptom strain. We know there were S & L strains already, so not at al odd to think the low symptom version (S IIRC) further evolved into an asymptomatic (largely) form.
While it would be best to antibody test a place prior to a restart, it would likely be just as effective to simply re-start by age tranche. Have the “Under 40” group turned loose to go to work, school, and events. Wait 2 weeks. Add the 40 to 50. Wait 2 weeks. Add the 50 to 60. Hold for a few weeks to stabilize. By that time you ought to be very close to herd immunity with minimal high symptom cases.
I am in an area that has not been hit hard. Out of some 80,000 people, we have had *58* confirmed cases and 2 deaths. Since the reporting rules were changed, we will not know if these two were from, with, or a combination. There have been no new deaths in about a week, if I am remembering correctly. I’d guess the two deaths were in long term care facilities (I do know that this has happened elsewhere). The apparent risk to myself and others seems to be small, that is, the same order of magnitude seen for auto wrecks (there have been fewer), and certainly the all cause mortality is probably within the weekly range.
We can open up cautiously. See this: https://yellowhammernews.com/ivey-announces-initial-phase-of-plan-to-reopen-alabamas-economy/, and this: https://yellowhammernews.com/fox-news-brit-hume-says-lockdown-measures-have-made-uab-a-hospital-in-distress/, which hits a nerve because I have worked there and I have a daughter that works there now. NB that this one *is* the largest teaching hospital in the state, similar to the Mayo Clinic or St. Jude’s.
@CDQuarles:
While I agree with you, and I do know hospitals can’t keep running without elective / minor workload cases:
I find it a bit of a stretch to have all these M.D. types, hauling down Big Bucks well into 6 figures or more, complaining that they are “going broke”. I mean, really. They can, typically, afford a few houses and a couple of boats and a fleet of cars and a portfolio to die for…(so to speak ;-) but they can’t take a 1 month forced vacation?
I’m sorry, but it’s just a bridge too far for me to have “sympathy” for the “poor doctors” out of work for a month…
That said:
IMHO any region with hospital underutilization ought to start picking facilities that are declared “Covid” and others “Non-Covid”. Tell the public “If you have Covid symptoms, go to County General, non-Covid care head to State Teaching or Big Corp Plush hospitals”. There is NO need for an all or nothing switch on all hospitals. Get the elective stuff rolling again and shunt the covid casis to dedicated sites. Adjust the balance between them as things evolve.
Here, I’m a Kaiser member. 2 of them are about 10 miles apart, and there’s a couple of more commercial operations in between them! So why not just “pick one” to be Covid Central and let the others get back to regular operations (plus testing any emergency / walk in cases for Covid to protect the staff…)? The County Hospital is in between the 2 Kaiser facilities and it would be a good candidate for Covid.
What many don’t realize is that hospitals often are thin margin operations and like all other businesses, cash flow dependent. Also, unlike years past, many MDs are salaried and live paycheck to paycheck like many others; and here I’m talking about the young ones, who may not have boats, fleets of cars or even more than one house yet have large personal insurance bills and million + student loans from going to medical school. Many old sole proprietorship doctor’s offices do not exist anymore, for the proprietors died/sold out to folks like Kaiser or other chains.
That said, I agree that we should be bringing back, properly designed and operated insane asylums and contagious disease asylums. That would do much for the ‘homeless’ and help limit disease outbreaks.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/27/nyc-hospital-system-quietly-testing-over-the-counter-heartburn-drug-pepcid-against-coronavirus/
@llanfar, MedCram just talked about that.
“Coronavirus Pandemic Update 62: Treatment with Famotidine (Pepcid)?”
I just got back from the store. had to stock up the mother-in-law.
I was scrounging the clearance shelves and found a bottle of 90 Pepcid AC tablets for $11.99. I was headed over to Health and Beauty to get Oil of Olay for the MIL and thought I’d see if I could score some house brand Famotidine. Nope. Totally wiped out. There were only a few bottles of the brand name Pepcid left and they were $26.00 per bottle! I’m guessing those will be gone tomorrow.
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We don’t have a current thread on ground reports of grocery store shortages, so I’ll dump this here.
The next shortages will be in meats, not due to a lack of critters on the hoof, but because the processors are all bollixed up.
The Mrs. asked how we were on meats. I said we were OK, but I’ll stock up while there is still a selection of things we like. We do have a small freezer in the basement, but it was a bit thin as I used up most things in it before leaving for Florida… just in case of a power outage.
I was looking for a few steaks for the grill. Bone in ribeye $11.49/lb. Boneless ribeye $14.99/lb. Strop steaks $12.something/lb.
SCORE! Whole beef tenderloins $7.99/lb !!
The best sale price I can recall in the last couple of years was $9.99/lb and I think that was two years back. Mostly they run $12.something on sale for whole tenderloins and regular price whole is $16.99. Cut filets are $18.99 or $19.99/lb.
So I picked up the smallest one, a 5.5 pounder and was out the door for under $45.00.
Got home, told the Mrs., and then kicked myself for not scoring some lobster to go with it. Dang!
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Hamburger was expensive; $4.49/lb for 80/20 glopped in a tray not particularly Angus or anything.
I figure the wholesalers were sitting on a pile of filets that aren’t selling much with people off work and hamburger is in short supply due to processing issues as well as high demand for the cheapest beef. So, prices are up.
Heck! I shoulda just had half cut into filet mignon rounds and the other half ground into hamburger. ;o)
Re Pepcid and others of this class: recall that they are histamine blockers that indirectly modulate the proton pump/hydrochloric acid production and excretion into the stomach. Very interesting and maybe the others in this class may work as well.
Interesting chart here and NB it is about two weeks in the past: https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1255401551990075392.
This chart shows the relative deaths compared to last year for the catch-all pneumonia and influenza with and without covid-19.
E.M.Smith replied 28 April 2020 at 1:30 am GMT [*]:
Similarly, knowing sunshine kills it and Vit-D boosts immunity, closing outdoor parks is dumb. They have started reopening.
Florida Gov. DeSantis yesterday (Apr. 29) announced “Phase 1” of the state’s plan for reöpening, as advised by his state-reöpening committee. To their credit, it includes allowing outdoor seating for restaurants, but requires reducing the indoor seating of the same to 25% of preshutdown capacity, satisfaction of both being conditional on providing the 6-ft. “social distancing“, presumably between tables, not between the chairs. I’m sure it frustrates the owners of at least 1 brew-pub that’s already equipped with comparable outdoor seating that “bars” are specifically excluded from being allowed to reöpen, even if they would satisfy the “restaurant” conditions. There’s another brew-pub under construction nearby, e.g., whose business plan reportedly places the vast majority of their seating outdoors [☉]. I didn’t hear anything one way or t’other about coffee shops, but fairness & logical ought to include them under the rules announced for “bars”; I guess we’ll find out how much selfish clout Starbucks can bring to bear in a tourist intensive economy where far bigger fish swim. Gyms and personal-grooming shops (e.g., barbers, hair-dressers, and presumably nail-painting) will also not be allowed to reöpen.
More broadly, the “Phase 1” revised rules were denied to the entirety of the contiguous hot-spot formed by 3 S.E. counties, i.e., (Miami-)Dade, Broward, and Palm Bch.
DeSantis insisted in his press conference that he hasn’t actually issued emergency orders that “closed businesses”, but it’s not clear to me where one could find the practical difference.
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Note *: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/china-imported-masks-before-pandemic-usa-prisons-asymptomatic/#comment-128978. I’ve posted my reply in the “reöpening” topic, where it’s a better fit.
Note ☉: The example brew-pub that’s under construction is closer to me than my favorite brew-pub, so it might be an excellent test case for outdoor seating at “bars“. It’s part of wholesale reconstruction of a strip mall, so I’m overdue to drop by the property to see what arrangements have been made to shade their outdoor tables. Maybe they have decades-old oaks, but if their landscape architects plant juvenile trees expecting them to grow into useful shaders several years from now, or worse, if the landscaping features palm trees, I question whether the new business would survive until our de facto summer breaks in late October. The daily thunderstorms of summer could be really unkind to such a business plan, esp. if they rely on lightning-friendly aluminum-shafted café-style umbrellas (I don’t know their cost relative to fiberglass or plastic shafts, but they need to be robust enough to resist lots of torque from accompanying winds).
@Compugator:
Really Big canvas awnigs, building attached. Stowed during extreme storms.
Or: under roof with those fold up walls on 3 sides to make it “outdoors” as desired.
Podcast of Watts and Spencer on modeling, also posted on WUWT.
https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/podcasts/model-madness—parallels-between-failed-climate-models-and-failed-coronavirus-models-guest-roy-spencer
Well, it appears we are trending in the right direction statistically. WOM, still shows a drop in the CFR for closed cases (18% globally) and the US CRF on the same has dropped to 30%. Both down many points over the last few weeks. All metrics are moving in the right direction. It is still amazing that 97% of the active documented cases are mild or less symptom levels. If we extrapolate the limited data we have on active cases, the low end of total infections would be at 50 million in the US based on the Cali study and a few others. That in itself changes the entire perception dynamic associated with the limited confirmed case data we have. If I do the math right based upon that extrapolation, the overall CFR would be .001%. Is that right based on the current count of about 63k bad endings out of 50 million?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Correction, as of this morning, WOM active case rate is now at 98% mild or no symptoms.
BTW, here is one of several initial studies that references prevalence via antibody testing. I know, I know, peer review not done yet bla bla bla.
.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v2