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Covid-19 #14 - Are We Done Yet?


Fragile Bird

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4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

What do you think that means, beyond you, personally, don't give a damn, Scarlett, Darling.

 

That there's not a lot to be concerned about regarding the notion that undercounts are solely due to states trying to cheat or mislead people, or even that states are just ineffective at keeping track? Thought it was pretty clear in context.

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Moving back across the Atlantic I see https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps have updated with the latest week's data which shows 'excess deaths' across the European countries they are tracking was negative in the last week meaning fewer died than would normally be expected.

Looking at individual countries Scotland and Belgium have now returned to normal ranges in the last week leaving only England and Sweden as having excess deaths.

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And nonetheless lockdown restrictions are being relaxed in the UK. And the Cummings debacle appears to be making people take them less seriously anyway.

Sadly it now looks very likely that there is going to be a second and worse wave of the pandemic here. We would advise anyone who can to keep up their social distancing for a while longer at least.

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3 hours ago, Ran said:

That there's not a lot to be concerned about regarding the notion that undercounts are solely due to states trying to cheat or mislead people, or even that states are just ineffective at keeping track? Thought it was pretty clear in context.

I mean, it seems pretty clear that some states in the U.S. are deliberately misrepresenting coronavirus data.

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9 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I mean, it seems pretty clear that some states in the U.S. are deliberately misrepresenting coronavirus data.

In some of those cases you can see that what's going on is not deliberate misrepresentation, but rather attempting to grapple with the difficulties of how it does and doesn't spread and what this says for policy recommendations. DC's "community spread" metric makes sense, for example, but it's highlighted as being "scrutinized" because it omits hopefully-thoroughly-isolated clusters (nursing homes, correctional facilities) which one normally doesn't think of when you think about communities at large and their normal interactions.

But in any case, the main point is that everyone undercounts and the vast majority do it because it's the nature of the beast and not because there's a conspiracy. 

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2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Donald Trump had the graduating class from West Point brought back from across the country so he could give them a speech. Now at least 15 cadets have tested positive for Covid-19.

We did it for freedumb!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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On 5/30/2020 at 3:42 PM, Ran said:

That there's not a lot to be concerned about regarding the notion that undercounts are solely due to states trying to cheat or mislead people, or even that states are just ineffective at keeping track? Thought it was pretty clear in context.

Okay, what happens to this maxim in the event that states were deliberately undercounting? It seems a tad tautological to me.

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18 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Okay, what happens to this maxim in the event that states were deliberately undercounting? It seems a tad tautological to me.

The "maxim" is that undercounting is normal and is not in itself evidence of corrupt intent. You need more than just the existence of an undercount. Magnitude of undercount may be one metric to look at, especially in relation to comparable states, and no doubt there are others. But the existence of undercounts that are lagging the real excess mortality is entirely normal because the actual medical and bureaucratic process genuinely takes time.

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5 hours ago, Ran said:

The "maxim" is that undercounting is normal and is not in itself evidence of corrupt intent. You need more than just the existence of an undercount. Magnitude of undercount may be one metric to look at, especially in relation to comparable states, and no doubt there are others. But the existence of undercounts that are lagging the real excess mortality is entirely normal because the actual medical and bureaucratic process genuinely takes time.

I don't disagree with this, but I think what is getting missed is that, in addition to the undercounting you'd expect due to a delay in results, reporting, etc., some states appear to be actively trying to ensure the data that is being presented is as opaque as possible.

My state just announced that it was going to stop releasing any data regarding COVID-19 other than cases and deaths per county. It won't be releasing any granular data on infections in nursing homes, etc. 

This is notable because the state made a big deal at the end of April that it was going to test every single patient in every LTC facility in the state, and that the results would be released in late May. Instead, the information was never reported, and now the state is saying it doesn't have the authority to release this kind of data.

That's on top of the fact that the numbers being reported here are statistically improbable to say the least, considering that every neighboring state to us has nearly double or more of our official count. And this isn't unique to my state. Florida fired the person in charge of its COVID-19 dashboard for "insubordination", or states and the CDC lumping in results from antigen tests with results of diagnostic tests.

It's not just that undercounting is occurring, but the undercounting happening in conjunction with motivated reasoning and deliberate opacity in reporting of information that some states do have.

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Once again, I will state the obvious, the US looks worse than China in terms of cover-ups. I could say ‘just as bad’, but the US is a democracy and knows better. And, of course, has attacked China for hiding the true state of affairs.

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I think good science is always a casualty when it comes to accelerated timelines and decisions made in haste (nations and other bodies had to act fast). Many publications take 6 months to publish at least (including my own) because of the numerous rounds of review etc., and this whole COVID thing, hard as it may be to fathom, has only been around for the same time frame.

At this point, I wouldnt be surprised if the data treated as gospel regarding how long the novel coronavirus (SARS-COV2?) survives on surfaces may undergo some changes as more studies become available. Right now there is only one paper out looking at cardboard, plastic, metal etc.

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Just now, IheartIheartTesla said:

I think good science is always a casualty when it comes to accelerated timelines and decisions made in haste (nations and other bodies had to act fast). Many publications take 6 months to publish at least (including my own) because of the numerous rounds of review etc., and this whole COVID thing, hard as it may be to fathom, has only been around for the same time frame.

At this point, I wouldnt be surprised if the data treated as gospel regarding how long the novel coronavirus (SARS-COV2?) survives on surfaces may undergo some changes as more studies become available. Right now there is only one paper out looking at cardboard, plastic, metal etc.

Unfortunately at least in regards to Hydroxychloroquine, I don’t think that’s the only thing in play here.

The two biggest mysteries for me through this whole madness, is the run on toilet paper and why a fairly common and beforehand uncontroversial drug became wrapped up in our idiotic “culture war”.  

Trump played doctor on tv rambling about stuff he knows next to nothing about, and the media in a mad rush to make Trump look bad (I don’t know why they try so hard when he does such a good job of it by himself) start running hysterical headlines calling hydroxychloroquine “snake oil”, overemphasizing negative side effects, and only running stories on negative observational studies while ignoring positive ones.

In the meantime there is a real world effect as a number of clinicians complained about unable to find enough people to conduct clinical studies because they’ve been scared off of the drug from what they’ve heard in the media.

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1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

Unfortunately at least in regards to Hydroxychloroquine, I don’t think that’s the only thing in play here.

The two biggest mysteries for me through this whole madness, is the run on toilet paper and why a fairly common and beforehand uncontroversial drug became wrapped up in our idiotic “culture war”.  

Trump played doctor on tv rambling about stuff he knows next to nothing about, and the media in a mad rush to make Trump look bad (I don’t know why they try so hard when he does such a good job of it by himself) start running hysterical headlines calling hydroxychloroquine “snake oil”, overemphasizing negative side effects, and only running stories on negative observational studies while ignoring positive ones.

In the meantime there is a real world effect as a number of clinicians complained about unable to find enough people to conduct clinical studies because they’ve been scared off of the drug from what they’ve heard in the media.

I don't understand this line of argument. For example, I've posted here how I've taken HCQ before. While the medication is considered to be "safe", it still comes with a black box warning from the FDA, which means it is still an effective treatment, but that it has severe and dangerous side effects.

At the time Trump started talking about HCQ, there was apparently only one, small study that had numerous problems with it, but Trump went all-in on selling that drug as a miracle cure. Besides advocating that sick people should take a possibly dangerous medication, his promotion of the drug had the knock-on effect of causing shortages for people who rely on taking HCQ for the on-brand therapeutics it offers.

I think the media has a duty to warn people that they shouldn't take the advice of a President who knows nothing about virology or medicine, but who is instead grasping for any quick fix possible.

It's like when he asked Dr. Birx about injecting disinfectant. That's not a culture-war thing, that's the President giving half-baked and dangerous medical advice.

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Scientist behind Sweden's response says that if he had a do-over, he'd do things a bit more strict:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man-behind-sweden-s-virus-strategy-says-he-got-some-things-wrong?fbclid=IwAR1h1z-GZgNppnHHE5J3KFqo6lmyPGb8WZNX9wEag4eBJQ2JmGkdjjn91iU

Quote

 

Sweden’s top epidemiologist has admitted his strategy to fight Covid-19 resulted in too many deaths, after persuading his country to avoid a strict lockdown.

“If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with Swedish Radio.

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

How many people in the US would take a vaccine?

Survey says...

38% say yes they would definitely

16% say maybe

21% say definitely not.

11% say maybe not.

Honestly those are better numbers than I'd have expected.  Absolutely terrified for my friends and family who are in higher risk groups for getting a serious cases of Covid.  

Between hearing accounts in this board, and from some other international friends on social media, it's insane how much less seriously the US has taken this pandemic.  100k+ dead and counting.  

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

How many people in the US would take a vaccine?

Survey says...

I suspect a lot of people answering this are taking into the account the idea of being essentially guinea pigs for rushed-through-trials novel vaccine for a novel virus. I'd expect similar numbers in Sweden, or perhaps even worse numbers, because of the swine flu vaccine that caused incurable narcolepsy in hundreds of young people has left a great deal of skepticism towards the idea of trying new vaccines before they have been thoroughly proven safe.

 

 

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