Coronavirus

[stitches]

I don't think you're quite understanding what I'm saying.

I'm not saying, everybody back, just like before! I'm talking about a slow re-opening.

And yes, it is about the death rate. We were ordered, forced, to shut down to prevent people from dying. To prevent the overflow of hospitals. And now? Hospitals are practically empty. We've found out it's not as lethal as we thought. Almost every model has been exponentially wrong. And yet we sit, and wait. And wait. And wait.

It is not any less lethal than we thought. Every model will by definition be 'wrong'. The question is whether they were useful and just how wrong they will be. For the most part IMO the models did their job and were predicting great general precision what will be happening if no measures are taken. THIS IS WHY YOU LOOK AT THE MODELS AND TAKE THE MEASURES!! To break the path that would have lead the world to situations like that in Italy. And the measures did their job to a large degree everywhere. Now the question is, can we relax some of them and still be able to handle a somewhat constant inflow of new patients without huge spikes? It's probably possible but you will need responsible behavior from the population and clear understanding that until we have a vaccine you cannot get back to how things used to be. You will have to still have some measure of social distancing, you will still have to have increased testing and contact tracing capacity, you will still need masks in the store or other public spaces, you will probably still need to limit huge congregations of people, etc.

I would assume they are, but truthfully, I don't know.

Depends on what they are trying to measure and what conclusions you want to come to. The problem with the blood tests is that they give about 4-5% false positive results and when the % of people who have had the virus in the population is relatively low that false positive number overwhelms the people who have really had it.

Example, if only 1% of the population has had the virus, the blood test will return that 6% have had it(the 1% that had it and 5% false positives that have not had it). This means it overestimates by 5-6 times how many people have had it.

It becomes more useful if more people have had it in the population but that's probably true only for NY and not as much for most other places.

 

[Beer]

It is not any less lethal than we thought. Every model will by definition be 'wrong'. The question is whether they were useful and just how wrong they will be. For the most part IMO the models did their job and were predicting great general precision what will be happening if no measures are taken. THIS IS WHY YOU LOOK AT THE MODELS AND TAKE THE MEASURES!! To break the path that would have lead the world to situations like that in Italy. And the measures did their job to a large degree everywhere. Now the question is, can we relax some of them and still be able to handle a somewhat constant inflow of new patients without huge spikes? It's probably possible but you will need responsible behavior from the population and clear understanding that until we have a vaccine you cannot get back to how things used to be. You will have to still have some measure of social distancing, you will still have to have increased testing and contact tracing capacity, you will still need masks in the store or other public spaces, you will probably still need to limit huge congregations of people, etc.



Depends on what they are trying to measure and what conclusions you want to come to. The problem with the blood tests is that they give about 4-5% false positive results and when the % of people who have had the virus in the population is relatively low that false positive number overwhelms the people who have really had it.

Example, if only 1% of the population has had the virus, the blood test will return that 6% have had it(the 1% that had it and 5% false positives that have not had it). This means it overestimates by 5-6 times how many people have had it.

It becomes more useful if more people have had it in the population but that's probably true only for NY and not as much for most other places.

The models were and are wrong because they are based off of complete bull **** data. They are borderline worthless.

 

[Political Jazz Fan]

 

[stitches]

The models were and are wrong because they are based off of complete bull **** data. They are borderline worthless.

What the hell are you talking about? No they were/are NOT! The very early data might have been unreliable(China) and outlier'ish(Italy), but pretty much the whole world that followed was following very similar curves until they took measures. How the **** can you call them worthless? This is preposterous. They had problems and the input was not great initially, because we had never gone through anything like this in modern history, but IMO a lot of the models were quite useful and instrumental in actually limiting the spread.

Now I would like to see the new models and analysis after this whole thing is over and all the data is in. I want to see some serious analysis on the measures.

What measure accounts for how large of a portion of the decrease in transmission? Were some of the measures an overkill? Were some of them underestimated? I want to see what strategies for combating future epidemics will arise from this.

 

[Beer]

What the hell are you talking about? No they were/are NOT! The very early data might have been unreliable(China) and outlier'ish(Italy), but pretty much the whole world that followed was following very similar curves until they took measures. How the **** can you call them worthless? This is preposterous. They had problems and the input was not great initially, because we had never gone through anything like this in modern history, but IMO a lot of the models were quite useful and instrumental in actually limiting the spread.

Now I would like to see the new models and analysis after this whole thing is over and all the data is in. I want to see some serious analysis on the measures.

What measure accounts for how large of a portion of the decrease in transmission? Were some of the measures an overkill? Were some of them underestimated? I want to see what strategies for combating future epidemics will arise from this.

Even now it is completely unreliable. Faulty data is being put in. I'm not sure how you are supposed to trust models with wildly inaccurate data being used to build it out. The rash decisions made off of fictional numbers at the beginning of this will be known as one of the biggest blunders of modern times.

Yes, the measures were absolute overkill. It should have been sick and old stay home and stay away from everyone as much as possible, everyone else focus on being sanitary and wearing masks as much as possible. But now we've got an unemployment **** show to deal with for the next 5 years.

 

[stitches]

Even now it is completely unreliable. Faulty data is being put in. I'm not sure how you are supposed to trust models with wildly inaccurate data being used to build it out. The rash decisions made off of fictional numbers at the beginning of this will be known as one of the biggest blunders of modern times.

What are the fictional numbers at the beginning? Are you doubting the numbers coming from Italy? France? Germany? Spain? Most of Europe? The US, Canada? South Korea? Singapore? What is the data that is wildly inaccurate that you are referring to? FICTIONAL?

If anything the problem with the initial Chinese data was that it UNDERESTIMATED and underreported the problem, not that it overestimated the gravity of the situation.

 

[Political Jazz Fan]

 

[Keefe]

It’s been twelve days, not three weeks since Georgia re-opened, moron.

 

[Keefe]

I don't think you're quite understanding what I'm saying.

I'm not saying, everybody back, just like before! I'm talking about a slow re-opening.

And yes, it is about the death rate. We were ordered, forced, to shut down to prevent people from dying. To prevent the overflow of hospitals. And now? Hospitals are practically empty. We've found out it's not as lethal as we thought. Almost every model has been exponentially wrong. And yet we sit, and wait. And wait. And wait.

Exponentially wrong? What in the holy hell are you talking about? We’re at 84,000+ deaths. We’re at 900+ on the day with 25 states, 3 territories and other entities still to report. Over 11,000 new cases today with all those states still to report. Numbers are going down. In NY. They’re basically going up in the rest of the country. Trump himself last week said to expect 3,000 deaths a day by June 1.

And all this despite restrictions over the last seven to eight weeks. But yes, hospitals are empty. Like wtf are you even talking about?

And give it another 10-15 days. All those states who opened up. Forget about it. The numbers should be worse there than they are today.

It’s not like, “Hey! Only 84,000 deaths, not one or two million like that moron Fauci said.” The game’s not over yet. Hell, the first quarter might not be over yet.

 

[stitches]

It’s been twelve days, not three weeks since Georgia re-opened, moron.

It also doesn't take into account what part of the state has actually "reopened". You can open and huge portions of the population act as if nothing is open. I'd like to see some data about traffic and economic activity. For example, take a look at the traffic and mobility data for Sweden vs Norway or other countries in the region. It shows that even though there are no official restrictions in Sweden, people act a lot like there are restrictions.

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

The mobily report for Georgia looks incredibly similar to mobility report for most states that still have restrictions. This means... the people are really not all out and about right now and the state is really not back up for business.

 

[Keefe]

True.

 

[candrew]

Texas had 1000+ new cases 5 days in a row.

And per capita, they do about the least amount of testing in the country.

 

[Avery]

It also doesn't take into account what part of the state has actually "reopened". You can open and huge portions of the population act as if nothing is open. I'd like to see some data about traffic and economic activity. For example, take a look at the traffic and mobility data for Sweden vs Norway or other countries in the region. It shows that even though there are no official restrictions in Sweden, people act a lot like there are restrictions.

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

The mobily report for Georgia looks incredibly similar to mobility report for most states that still have restrictions. This means... the people are really not all out and about right now and the state is really not back up for business.

It's also not going to be a complete 180 when two weeks is suddenly up. Any spikes will take longer to materialize as it surfaces and spreads. Realistically, we won't get a true bearing on how GA is doing until June.

I hope there are no spikes - nobody wins the longer this pandemic goes on.

 

[Jeditiger]

If only there were ways to make the pandemic end sooner.... I dunno, things like social distancing and wearing a face mask when around others. If these twits who are protesting the guidelines would adhere to them then this could all be over sooner! But thanks to their own dumbassery all they're doing is extending it. But no, they want their "convenience" back. Let there be deaths and to hell with the rest of us. By gawd they want to eat their Big Mouth Burgers and guzzle their Presidente Margaritas AT Chili's dammit!

 

[Red]

Here is the opening statement that Dr. Rick Bright will deliver to the House Committee Thursday morning.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics/read-rick-bright-house-opening-statement/index.html

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/05/13/politics/rick-bright-testimony-congress/index.html

(CNN)Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of a key federal office charged with developing medical countermeasures, will testify before Congress on Thursday that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and warn that the the US will face "unprecedented illness and fatalities" without additional preparations.

"Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities," Bright is expected to say Thursday, according to his prepared testimony obtained by CNN. "Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history."

 

[JazzGal]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/may/12/kareem-abdul-jabbar-covid-19-donald-trump

Kareem, still dominating.

Oh, if only.

This might have a little validity if Trump was newly installed as president. But he has had three years in which he did not prepare for a pandemic and update stockpiles either. And he made decisions which made it more difficult to handle the pandemic. At some point, when is it on him and not the previous administration? His term is nearly over. Shouldn't he start blaming himself for the administration's failures? Oh right, that's never gonna happen.

 

[The Thriller]

A few people I work with were talking on facebook and one said something like "If we were able to survive the Obama Presidency I'm sure we'll be able to survive the Trump Presidency."

I'm thinking back like what major issues did Obama cause? When did he look incompetent (tan suit notwithstanding)? What did he do to damage our relationships with our allies? What did he do to embolden our adversaries?

Yeah the media was way soft on him. There were issues that didn't get a lot of attention, like the aggressive deportations that were happening. But even looking back with a more critical eye it was a relatively uneventful Presidency.

So first of all, I don't believe the media was soft on him for the most part. Was he new and exciting? Absolutely. Did he benefit by Hillary being unpopular? Yes. Did he benefit by going up against McCain after 8 years of disappointing Republican governing? Absolutely. Did he also benefit by being the first African American president? Sure. But after the initial honeymoon, the media was not soft on him. And the right wing media never even gave him a honeymoon. Glenn Beck was already touting on Fox News in March 2009 about taking the country back with his 9/12 Project rallies. Again, March 2009, Obama hadn't even been in office for 3 full months.

Secondly, our country is in the middle of a reshuffling. I think there were a lot of things happening in 2008. The changing economy was/is an issue we have yet to fully deal with. This has led to the country becoming de facto segregated with liberals moving to states and neighborhoods with fellow liberals while conservatives are moving into states and neighborhoods with fellow conservatives. This decreases the desire to work in a bipartisan manner as large groups of like-minded communities demand an ever-purer candidate. Pollster David Wasserman has this piece on communities that have more whole foods stores generally swing left while communities that have Cracker Barrel restaurants swing right. This polarization is only increasing. Read this article when you have a chance. It's not long but it gives a lot to think about. How do you encourage bipartisanship when communities are living in different realities?

Thirdly, the role of racism. It's undeniable and I don't intend to go into depth over this.

Lastly, I think a lot can be attributed to the implosion of the Bush presidency. Bush actually did well among minority groups in 2000. McCain did decent, but not well enough to win. Trump did the worst of the 3, yet won. Here's what the electorate makeup looked like in 2000:
Gore Bush (winner)
White 42% 55%
African American 90% 9%
Hispanic 62% 35%
Asian 55% 41%

Now notice the changes to the 2008 electorate:
Obama (winner) McCain
White 43% 55%
African American 95% 4%
Hispanic 67% 31%
Asian 62% 35%

Now look at how the 2016 electorate changed:
Clinton Trump (winner)
White 37% 57%
African American 89% 8%
Hispanic 66% 28%
Asian 65% 27%

I think a lot of this can be pinned onto the failure of Bush to succeed with his "compassionate conservativism." Had that succeeded, I think it would have kept the populism that we've seen (at least from the right) under control. Who knows what would've happened to the left had they lost for 12 or 16 straight years. However, since his presidency was seen as a terrible disaster (Bush's approval ratings sank to the mid 20s in late 2008). This led to insurgent anger which fed the populism of the tea party and Trump. As the establishment weakened it led the party into a complete identity search. They found it early in the Obama years with being a white grievance party and they've only solidified it since.

At some point Democrats will need to figure out their left flank (their coalition is almost too broad and large to mobilize) and I think the GOP will need to readjust. Either it'll continue to devolve into a marginalized old white non-college educated rural party and a new mainstream conservative party will take its place or it'll shed the populists and white supremacists who control it and allow for establishment mainstream politicians to exert control so it can compete nationally.

The electorate in some parts of the country just has zero incentive to work in a bipartisan manner. I mean, seriously, just look at Utah. Mike Lee has zero incentive to work with Democrats. Chris Stewart, whose district takes parts of North Salt Lake and St. George has even less incentive than Lee to work with Democrats. Likewise, Democrats in blue urban areas have little to no incentive to work with Republicans (especially when they've become so extreme as we're seeing today). How do you fix this? Not sure. Getting rid of gerrymandering would help. Making it easier to vote so that minority populations' voices are actually heard would help too. I also believe having a moderate Republican party that isn't alienating large parts of the country, especially minority populations and the college educated, would do a lot. It would force Democrats to have to compete in rural areas and force Republicans to have to compete in urban areas. The party of Reagan could compete in blue areas that the party of Trump could only dream of. But the GOP loses any incentive to change if they win again in 2020. A devastating loss in 2020 could be the catalyst for big changes. We'll see.

 

[infection]

Here is the opening statement that Dr. Rick Bright will deliver to the House Committee Thursday morning.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics/read-rick-bright-house-opening-statement/index.html

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/05/13/politics/rick-bright-testimony-congress/index.html

(CNN)Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of a key federal office charged with developing medical countermeasures, will testify before Congress on Thursday that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and warn that the the US will face "unprecedented illness and fatalities" without additional preparations.

"Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities," Bright is expected to say Thursday, according to his prepared testimony obtained by CNN. "Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history."

For about a month, I’ve been meaning to post my view on this but haven’t gotten around to doing so because it requires adding a lot of context. The tl;dr form of this is that my suspicion is that our debate regarding how and when to open up is going to get us through the next 6-8 weeks. We’ll endlessly debate what effect this is having on infection rates and ultimately my suspicion is that these stay relatively unchanged, if not continue to decrease. If there’s a bump, I don’t see this being something massive, and there are a whole host of reasons that I’ll have to elaborate on later, but I’ll have to settle for just laying out the bare bones with that. We will debate what we’re seeing. If rates don’t spike, we will favor more palatable narratives of how we’ve opened up slower, people are being more cautious, and how we’re still not testing sufficiently (I’m not saying any of these are untrue, just stating what how we’ll be qualifying what we’re seeing). Ultimately, we’re going to arrive in August/September and a different narrative will really heat up: the summer suppression of the virus. Currently, this is an argument castigated as ignorant and wishful (but is and will change). This will become more accepted because the argument will be highlighted as more nuanced: that it wasn’t the summer and the heat killing the virus (as all those ignorant rubes believed), but because the summer facilitated social gathering in ways that were more consistent with social distancing — that people congregated more outside and away from each other. This will allow a few things to come out. One is that it will reinforce the idea of social distancing helping curtail the virus, rather than ‘magic’ or anything implemented by the administration, but it will also reassure and provide a level of vindication for the initial doomsday models of millions dead. After all, those represent one side of the simplistic dichotomy of ‘science and facts’ vs. ‘ignorance and greed,’ and how palatable is vindication that the original models weren’t wrong, just mistimed? Our discussion will shift to the fact that COVID started at the very end of winter, and we had massive casualties. True, it did not reach the millions projected (‘because we acted’), but the summer has provided false hope for all those who deny science, and they’ve prematurely spiked the football in their ignorance and arrogance, but now [end of summer] we’re headed into a full winter where the death toll will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. Lots of talk of “we’re ****ed” and “we have no idea what’s about to hit us.”

That’s the tl;dr. I’ll have to actually clarify most of this, but not now. Maybe this weekend. I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of truth in some of this, but this narrative is and will be coalescing over the coming months.

 

[The Thriller]

Ummmm



so it’s safe for workers to get their asses back to work but not safe for judges to meet? Interesting.

 

[Gameface]

Ummmm



so it’s safe for workers to get their asses back to work but not safe for judges to meet? Interesting.

I don't think supreme court justices make decisions about what is safe or unsafe. I think they make decisions about what is legal or not for the government to do or not do.