Rational CoViD-19 Discussion Thread: Science vs. Politics

[babe]

Philosophy needs to follow the science. Not the other way around. Live in the numbers, direct towards the management.

You seem to think fringe philosophy is where you start. This is not normal, or reasonable.

Any professional in whatever specialization, is trained towards "normalized" solutions or actions. That is what being a professional is actually all about.

Standardization of reason and the implementation of reasoned actions.

But there is always room for critics who wish to scrutinize management somehow. The real test is whether we can find, and apply good reason in doing that.

 

[babe]

So, today I have a little time, and have landed in my roost with my internet connections. Probably, anyone who has occasionally perused my ruminations( a word I prefer for it's connection with bovine dining), probably knows I generally do fairly good at "social distancing". Well, having no human living within my horizonal limits, is pretty good "social distancing". I can even just disregard wearing my N95 mask if I like, when I am that far "out there".

But I also routinely go to places like Berkeley or Pasadena....shall I say Hollywood?...… as well. About three weeks ago, I took a trip around the loop... and had some radiator issues on I-5. I did little three minute "runs" to get into a town with an O'Reilly's..... an agricultural center I believe, to get a radiator cap, some coolant, and some advice. I was taken in.... I could say "conned" but that would be the worst possible attitude I could take on the facts.... by some probably immigrant counter help, and sent to a friend who does after-hours repairs on his driveway.

I was able to coordinate paying him via Paypal just having my daughter and his daughter on their phones, and he was able to secure a new radiator from his friends at the store, and he did the job inside of two hours even with me watching

He even listened to me telling him all I imagine I know about Covid. I offered him the hope that he would be able to return to his regular job in a few weeks.

The rest of my trip I had my air conditioner on, and no further difficulties. I am practically planning to drive some of my older cars around that loop in hopes of getting them fixed along the way, now that I know some good mechanical help is out there.

 

[babe]

So, before looking up news articles or stat sites, here are my random thoughts on the "Pandemic". I have been hearing news on the radio about some antibody testing in places like San Jose, Bakersfield, and LA. Positive tests..... allegedly showing a person has developed specific Covid-19 antibodies, if not immunity to Covid…. are running pretty much at 10% of the general population, or higher, though I doubt chidden are being tested in scientifically valid proportions, and I'm pretty sure adults going to doctors are over-represented. But, since this is what we have to speculate about, I can just register my astonishment.

A few posts above I was questioning the stats doubting whether even 1% of our general population had actually experienced the virus yet.

I'm also hearing about LA getting "hot" for Covid now, even while NY is cooling off. And about how some minorities are being pretty much disproportionately affected. I think that might mean Bakersfield …..

But the news about NY city and state is that even more of us are potentially immune, and the stats we have look more like it's a factor of maybe 40 for asymptomatic Covid versus those who are getting attention for having symptoms...… Which if true is pretty compelling for the claim of very high transmission factors for this virus.

It looks like we will wind down this "Pandemic" with about 1% of our population medically affected, and about 40% of our population potentially "immune", having acquired specific antibodies. A figure which if true, mitigates quite strongly against serious outbreaks in the near future.

And with our preparations for giving needed care, it looks like our mortality rate will end up being on the order of 0.2%..... about the same as annual flu seasons.

All that, in my mind, works toward a belief that, had we not sone the travel restrictions and guidelines, our medical care providers would have been swamped, and care would have suffered, and I think perhaps 5X as many people would have died, if not more.

The question now is how to rebuild our economy.....

 

[babe]

Wow.

Rhode Island is leading the testing, having about 65k tests per million population, followed by New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Utah. Hardly any Covid in ND, or Utah..... or RI. I mean as in no outbreak event.

Average antigen testing now about 2%.

Total cases now just under 1.1 M in the USA to April 30. averaging under 25k new cases per day. The PanicMeter site, as I have begun terming Worldometer, still has the linear cumulative sketch which masks the downward drift of the daily case count we are marking while accelerating general testing. Almost 2.5M tests in the past 4 days. About 100X the "new case count, which is surely biased in favor of walk-in symptomatic folks asking for the test. Our death count is going

Online resources are clearly biased toward suppressing available information that is inconsistent with "Panic", and promoting "Panic" reporting.

So I turn to the Panic Promoting Sites for my information, which still shows less than 1% of our population being tested is testing positive for the antigen, far less than 1%, while more than 10% of our population has immunity now. This disproportionate positive antibody result appears to be holding even in rural areas having no outbreak event, which means our population has significant immunity to the supposed "novel" or "new" virus, which is a splice of existing viruses we have already had some experience with.

The stats still show a disproportion mortality well above ordinary flu, which even my speculative counting anomaly suspicions probably can't just diss, which sustains the lethality of the Sars-Corona Virus we call Covid.

Kids with their flu shots up to date might have some co-immunity to Covid????

 

[babe]

Well, nobody is out there with any reports I haven't already discussed in here on the antibody testing, which is I believe being done now by the thousands every day. But here is perhaps an good source to begin with, which explains pretty well "why" scientists are not so much jumping up on soapboxes shouting "Eureka!!!!!" over results......

some serious non-correlatable differences between various antibody tests and no good way to compile results.

Again, the reports of much higher antibody-positive results do not answer some fundamental issues..... no way to get quick answers to some questions. How much "herd immunity" exists, and how that might be the reason why we are getting surprisingly high positive results to Covid-19.

The stats do show some trends towards lower numbers of "serious" cases, and towards a lower than we feared mortality rate among Covid patients.


And a lot of people especially in the hinterlands outside the "hot spots" are really just going back to work, whatever the orders given may be. A lot of businesses have found ways to go on doing business with some kind of precautions in place.....lots of plexiglass shields at counters, lots of masked encounters, and a whole lot of distancing being implemented in work places.

There was one report claiming actual detrimental effects of HCQ, but other than being announced in the Press, the authors appear to be unwilling to publish it.....maybe something wrong with the science.....

I'll be looking for it.

 

[babe]

Here's an article on HCQ, just two weeks old...

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/hydroxychloroquine-for-covid-19-what-do-the-clinical-trials-tell-us/


While I have skimmed through it, it needs some detailed and thoughtful review, but amazingly, my bias is already triggered. It looks like a report that says "No really good studies have been done yet" and "Nobody really knows anything" and "Everybody is screwing up their studies".

Meanwhile, there are still no reports in the hopper evaluating the questions of why a billion people in India on a massive public health program designed to eradicate malaria just aren't getting Covid-19.

 

[babe]

in summary, a rational discusson of covid using worldometer or even CDC stats is impossible, especially in a propaganda mill.

the virus is real enough. the stats are being worked hard.

 

[babe]

Major issues:

Falsified positive reports incentivised with cash gov bribes to caregivers/hospitals.

official policies that force inclusion of non-covid symtoms/deaths due to other stuff,

Looks like the Panic was a flop. Lets get back to work,

 

[One Brow]

Major issues:

Falsified positive reports incentivised with cash gov bribes to caregivers/hospitals.

Evidence?

officiaacial policies that force inclusion of non-covid symtoms/deaths due to other stuff,

How is this different from the reports of annual flu deaths?

 

[babe]

you imagine I'm a government investigative authority like William Barr. What I am is a more like a shipwrecked sailor on a desert island listening to a radio, but who has not actually gone insane like the rest of humanity and still capable of rational thought and correct deductive correlation of what I hear.

when I looked at the CDC stats and graphs of this season's flu, asserted to be compiled on the results of testing for strains and such, I saw an unnatural distribution/incidence graph that rationally could only have been produced if the authorities/doctors had just simply stopped running the dam tests for some reason, which lined up chronologically with an almost perfect amount of new covid cases being classifiec as such without requiring actual diagnostic testing.

no rational human could just believe those cases were really covid, without proof.

 

[One Brow]

you imagine I'm a government investigative authority like William Barr. What I am is a more like a shipwrecked sailor on a desert island listening to a radio, but who has not actually gone insane like the rest of humanity and still capable of rational thought and correct deductive correlation of what I hear.

when I looked at the CDC stats and graphs of this season's flu, asserted to be compiled on the results of testing for strains and such, I saw an unnatural distribution/incidence graph that rationally could only have been produced if the authorities/doctors had just simply stopped running the dam tests for some reason, which lined up chronologically with an almost perfect amount of new covid cases being classifiec as such without requiring actual diagnostic testing.

no rational human could just believe those cases were really covid, without proof.

Could you think to this unnatural graph? How about any evidence the testing was not being done?

 

[babe]

Could you think to this unnatural graph? How about any evidence the testing was not being done?

I think you meant to ask me for the link, I posted the link in this thread in early April. It doesn't Google anymore, plus there's a factcheck denial link saying, without substantiating evidence, that the claim is false...… of course after substantially miss-stating the thesis.

The question is if there have been policies or persons motivated to turn in reports of Covid that actually were not Covid, for perhaps a variety of reasons. The financial incentive for a hospital or caregiver is the Fed reimbursement under current law/policy.

The other thing I mentioned was the sharp decline in flu cases during late Fed/Mar which I Think is compiled from testing patient samples sent in for testing, They study the known flu strain incidence. This decline kicked in before social distancing was going on, which may have helped end the flu as well as covid outbreak.

I have been grousing about the presumptive Covid reports which are sometimes based on flu symptoms, with no testing.