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Re: Covid 19
Ever see Outer Banks or Florida board up with plywood & shut down for a hurricane?? Guess they shouldn't do that then, huh?
BOOM! Weather analogy. Ruined.
LOL...good try buddy! This is exactly what chumps do when they have nothing. Game over, I'm done with you too.
Re: Covid 19
PaSnow wrote:Ever see Outer Banks or Florida board up with plywood & shut down for a hurricane?? Guess they shouldn't do that then, huh?
BOOM! Weather analogy. Ruined.
LOL...good try buddy! This is exactly what chumps do when they have nothing. Game over, I'm done with you too.
I'll start by defending the idea of flattening the curve. It is designed to do exactly what you say it does: spread out the number of cases over a longer period of time. This is so the healthcare system doesn't get overwhelmed, and we can give people that fall ill the care they need to survive. This lowers the number of death in the long run. Until there is a truly effective cure or vaccine, this is unfortunately our only way of mitigating the impact of this pandemic. You can argue over the breadth and duration of the measures we need to take, but it's hard to argue against the general principle I think.
Personally, I believe that we as a society owe it ourselves to prioritize our health over the economy, given that the latter is only a societal construct anyway. I believe that even having to endure an extended lockdown will not "destroy" our economy beyond the point of repair. The basic human needs and desires that fuel our economy have not gone away, they've just taken a backseat to more pressing matters. Once this whole thing is over, priorities will shift again and business will return to normal. Sure, some companies will go belly up, but new ones will rise from their ashes as demand for the goods and services they provided returns, creating new jobs along the way. The economy will bounce back, there's no bouncing back from death.
As a final remark Buzz, as I was catching up with the forum while my significant other was having a Skype party with her girlfriends I was struck by your vitriolic and hostile tone. Sure, there's one or two posts that are genuinely worth reading and considering, but the bulk of it is you spewing venom at those not willing to accept your truth. If you want to engage in a discussion, the onus is on you to convey your message in a way that resonates with your peers. If you don't succeed at that, it is your responsibility to solve it (which is rarely achieved by calling people idiots, chumps or retards) or to simply bow out and take your discussion somewhere more open to your way of thinking. You cannot demand others to "go away".
Re: Covid 19
buzzsaw wrote:PaSnow wrote:Ever see Outer Banks or Florida board up with plywood & shut down for a hurricane?? Guess they shouldn't do that then, huh?
BOOM! Weather analogy. Ruined.
LOL...good try buddy! This is exactly what chumps do when they have nothing. Game over, I'm done with you too.
I'll start by defending the idea of flattening the curve. It is designed to do exactly what you say it does: spread out the number of cases over a longer period of time. This is so the healthcare system doesn't get overwhelmed, and we can give people that fall ill the care they need to survive. This lowers the number of death in the long run. Until there is a truly effective cure or vaccine, this is unfortunately our only way of mitigating the impact of this pandemic. You can argue over the breadth and duration of the measures we need to take, but it's hard to argue against the general principle I think.
Personally, I believe that we as a society owe it ourselves to prioritize our health over the economy, given that the latter is only a societal construct anyway. I believe that even having to endure an extended lockdown will not "destroy" our economy beyond the point of repair. The basic human needs and desires that fuel our economy have not gone away, they've just taken a backseat to more pressing matters. Once this whole thing is over, priorities will shift again and business will return to normal. Sure, some companies will go belly up, but new ones will rise from their ashes as demand for the goods and services they provided returns, creating new jobs along the way. The economy will bounce back, there's no bouncing back from death.
As a final remark Buzz, as I was catching up with the forum while my significant other was having a Skype party with her girlfriends I was struck by your vitriolic and hostile tone. Sure, there's one or two posts that are genuinely worth reading and considering, but the bulk of it is you spewing venom at those not willing to accept your truth. If you want to engage in a discussion, the onus is on you to convey your message in a way that resonates with your peers. If you don't succeed at that, it is your responsibility to solve it (which is rarely achieved by calling people idiots, chumps or retards) or to simply bow out and take your discussion somewhere more open to your way of thinking. You cannot demand others to "go away".
Sucks when people get treated the way they treat others, huh?
No, I don't care that they aren't smart enough to see beyond their noses...they've proved that in the political thread. What is troubling is they aren't even willing to consider the possibility that they could be wrong. From the beginning I've said nobody knows and to this day that's still the truth, yet they insist that they know everything based on a snippet they saw on a biased media site when those same people are saying they don't have all the answers. It's pure ignorance and it's spreading misinformation. They are the problem and I intend to continue to be the voice of reality.
Re: Covid 19
TheMole wrote:buzzsaw wrote:LOL...good try buddy! This is exactly what chumps do when they have nothing. Game over, I'm done with you too.
I'll start by defending the idea of flattening the curve. It is designed to do exactly what you say it does: spread out the number of cases over a longer period of time. This is so the healthcare system doesn't get overwhelmed, and we can give people that fall ill the care they need to survive. This lowers the number of death in the long run. Until there is a truly effective cure or vaccine, this is unfortunately our only way of mitigating the impact of this pandemic. You can argue over the breadth and duration of the measures we need to take, but it's hard to argue against the general principle I think.
Personally, I believe that we as a society owe it ourselves to prioritize our health over the economy, given that the latter is only a societal construct anyway. I believe that even having to endure an extended lockdown will not "destroy" our economy beyond the point of repair. The basic human needs and desires that fuel our economy have not gone away, they've just taken a backseat to more pressing matters. Once this whole thing is over, priorities will shift again and business will return to normal. Sure, some companies will go belly up, but new ones will rise from their ashes as demand for the goods and services they provided returns, creating new jobs along the way. The economy will bounce back, there's no bouncing back from death.
As a final remark Buzz, as I was catching up with the forum while my significant other was having a Skype party with her girlfriends I was struck by your vitriolic and hostile tone. Sure, there's one or two posts that are genuinely worth reading and considering, but the bulk of it is you spewing venom at those not willing to accept your truth. If you want to engage in a discussion, the onus is on you to convey your message in a way that resonates with your peers. If you don't succeed at that, it is your responsibility to solve it (which is rarely achieved by calling people idiots, chumps or retards) or to simply bow out and take your discussion somewhere more open to your way of thinking. You cannot demand others to "go away".
Sucks when people get treated the way they treat others, huh?
No, I don't care that they aren't smart enough to see beyond their noses...they've proved that in the political thread. What is troubling is they aren't even willing to consider the possibility that they could be wrong. From the beginning I've said nobody knows and to this day that's still the truth, yet they insist that they know everything based on a snippet they saw on a biased media site when those same people are saying they don't have all the answers. It's pure ignorance and it's spreading misinformation. They are the problem and I intend to continue to be the voice of reality.
Pretty sure you just described yourself here.
It’s no ones fault but your own that you take an extreme and reckless position on this.
Re: Covid 19
buzzsaw wrote:TheMole wrote:I'll start by defending the idea of flattening the curve. It is designed to do exactly what you say it does: spread out the number of cases over a longer period of time. This is so the healthcare system doesn't get overwhelmed, and we can give people that fall ill the care they need to survive. This lowers the number of death in the long run. Until there is a truly effective cure or vaccine, this is unfortunately our only way of mitigating the impact of this pandemic. You can argue over the breadth and duration of the measures we need to take, but it's hard to argue against the general principle I think.
Personally, I believe that we as a society owe it ourselves to prioritize our health over the economy, given that the latter is only a societal construct anyway. I believe that even having to endure an extended lockdown will not "destroy" our economy beyond the point of repair. The basic human needs and desires that fuel our economy have not gone away, they've just taken a backseat to more pressing matters. Once this whole thing is over, priorities will shift again and business will return to normal. Sure, some companies will go belly up, but new ones will rise from their ashes as demand for the goods and services they provided returns, creating new jobs along the way. The economy will bounce back, there's no bouncing back from death.
As a final remark Buzz, as I was catching up with the forum while my significant other was having a Skype party with her girlfriends I was struck by your vitriolic and hostile tone. Sure, there's one or two posts that are genuinely worth reading and considering, but the bulk of it is you spewing venom at those not willing to accept your truth. If you want to engage in a discussion, the onus is on you to convey your message in a way that resonates with your peers. If you don't succeed at that, it is your responsibility to solve it (which is rarely achieved by calling people idiots, chumps or retards) or to simply bow out and take your discussion somewhere more open to your way of thinking. You cannot demand others to "go away".
Sucks when people get treated the way they treat others, huh?
No, I don't care that they aren't smart enough to see beyond their noses...they've proved that in the political thread. What is troubling is they aren't even willing to consider the possibility that they could be wrong. From the beginning I've said nobody knows and to this day that's still the truth, yet they insist that they know everything based on a snippet they saw on a biased media site when those same people are saying they don't have all the answers. It's pure ignorance and it's spreading misinformation. They are the problem and I intend to continue to be the voice of reality.
Pretty sure you just described yourself here.
It’s no ones fault but your own that you take an extreme and reckless position on this.
Sadly bro you're so used to being on one side you have no idea what a centrist is. I'm far far FAR more in the middle than any of you here. Reckless is willfully ruining the economy with nothing but guesses to back it up. Reckless is being sick and purposely putting others in danger. I'm in favor of neither. So there's that...
Re: Covid 19
Maybe an expert from Stanford can open some eyes...probably not, but I'm going to post it anyway...you know, science! Let me know if you find this guy's credentials unacceptable...
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“If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR [virus] tests, the number of total deaths due to ‘influenza-like illness’ would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average.”
This was not written by some right-wing crank claiming coronavirus is a conspiracy to deny President Trump a second term, or an excuse to bring down capitalism.
It’s from a sobering and illuminating essay by Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis, co-director of its Meta-Research Innovation Center, published in the life sciences news site STAT.
The coronavirus-driven crackdowns on public life by state and local political leaders are being made in a data vacuum, Ioannidis warns, and extreme government measures to prevent infections may actually lead to more deaths.
“The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic,” he says. “But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco,” with policymakers relying on “meaningless” statistics based on unreliable samples:
Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population. …
Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.
The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.
The general ignorance of journalists when it comes to reporting scientific research is making the response worse.
Consider the complicating factors when trying to project that one cruise ship’s mortality rate “onto the age structure of the U.S. population”: It’s based on seven deaths, in a population (tourists) that “may have different frequencies of chronic diseases” than the general population.
The “reasonable estimates” for the general population range from 0.05 percent to 1 percent (the elderly tourist cruise line death rate), Ioannidis writes:
A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.
The Stanford scientist notes that “mild” coronaviruses (not COVID-19) have much higher case fatality rates when infecting “elderly people in nursing homes” (the main cluster of cases in the Seattle area), and account for up to a tenth of respiratory hospitalizations.
Ioannidis further notes the difficulty of nailing down what might have killed a person with multiple infections, citing an autopsy series of elderly victims of respiratory viruses: “A positive test for coronavirus does not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise.”
His own “mid-range guess” for the COVID-19 mortality rate – 0.3 percent of the general population – would produce 10,000 deaths, but that would not even register a blip “within the noise” of estimated deaths from “influenza-like illness.”
Without better data (and yes, the Trump administration irredeemably botched the testing), policymakers are using “prepare-for-the-worst reasoning” to impose “extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns”:
Unfortunately, we do not know if these measures work. School closures, for example, may reduce transmission rates. But they may also backfire if children socialize anyhow, if school closure leads children to spend more time with susceptible elderly family members, if children at home disrupt their parents ability to work, and more. School closures may also diminish the chances of developing herd immunity in an age group that is spared serious disease.
The conventional wisdom to “flatten the curve” – managing the load on the health system through social distancing – could even backfire, Ioannidis writes:
Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, trauma, bleeding, and the like that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.
He warns policymakers to consider the consequences of “lockdowns of months, if not years, [where] life largely stops.”
If we’re going to risk the “financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric” caused by such extreme measures, “we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.”
Many pixels have been spilled mocking the Trump administration for its indifference to rigorous science, with some criticisms more fair than others.
But Ioannidis’s analysis should be taken the most seriously by state and local leaders, who actually have the power to destroy their economies and civic life, and the scientifically ignorant media who feed them doomsday coverage.
Re: Covid 19
From the same site:
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Why are we ignoring all the contrarian scholars on COVID-19?
A few months into the coronavirus panic here in this country, and one thing is clear: People love bad news. Headlines obsessively chart each new case and each new death; medical doctors are constantly on television and in news media warning us that “the worst is yet to come,” that “the fight is just beginning,” that this is the “new normal” and that we won’t be able to resume typical social conventions “for a long time.”
You might think it’s a universal consensus that this disease is both world-ending and here to stay. Yet many scholars—a growing amount of them, more and more every day—are sounding the alarm on what they’re calling a major overreaction to this disease: epidemiologists, public health officials, preventative medicine experts, professors and numerous other academics have all been raising red flags regarding the draconian, ongoing response to the coronavirus outbreak here, namely by pointing out that lockdowns are ineffective, unwise and destructive policy that will put millions out of work while doing little to halt the spread of the disease.
Why is nobody paying attention to them? Are they less credentialed, more inexperienced, less trustworthy? None of those things are true. There are, rather, likely two elements here: In the first place, much of the media are largely invested in terrifying, scary headlines and news stories meant to shock and frighten readers with seemingly grim and dire predictions: Readers, for whatever reason, will often keep returning to news sources that scare the living daylights out of them. We’re a strange species.
Government officials, too, are very much invested in promoting doomsayer scenarios, simply because that’s what they’ve been doing all along: We’ve been told from the beginning that this is a once-in-a-century pandemic that could result in literally millions of deaths if major, disruptive, open-ended government measures are not taken to combat it. It would be humiliating, and in some cases politically suicidal, if they were to entertain the less-panicky models and projections, let alone endorse them. Better to just keep heralding the end of the world even as the data get better on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.
There are differing, dissenting opinions on this pandemic from scholars and academics who can be trusted. They’re worth listening to. Don’t be afraid to seek them out.
Re: Covid 19
From the same site:
____________________________________________________________________________________
Why are we ignoring all the contrarian scholars on COVID-19?A few months into the coronavirus panic here in this country, and one thing is clear: People love bad news. Headlines obsessively chart each new case and each new death; medical doctors are constantly on television and in news media warning us that “the worst is yet to come,” that “the fight is just beginning,” that this is the “new normal” and that we won’t be able to resume typical social conventions “for a long time.”
You might think it’s a universal consensus that this disease is both world-ending and here to stay. Yet many scholars—a growing amount of them, more and more every day—are sounding the alarm on what they’re calling a major overreaction to this disease: epidemiologists, public health officials, preventative medicine experts, professors and numerous other academics have all been raising red flags regarding the draconian, ongoing response to the coronavirus outbreak here, namely by pointing out that lockdowns are ineffective, unwise and destructive policy that will put millions out of work while doing little to halt the spread of the disease.
Why is nobody paying attention to them? Are they less credentialed, more inexperienced, less trustworthy? None of those things are true. There are, rather, likely two elements here: In the first place, much of the media are largely invested in terrifying, scary headlines and news stories meant to shock and frighten readers with seemingly grim and dire predictions: Readers, for whatever reason, will often keep returning to news sources that scare the living daylights out of them. We’re a strange species.
Government officials, too, are very much invested in promoting doomsayer scenarios, simply because that’s what they’ve been doing all along: We’ve been told from the beginning that this is a once-in-a-century pandemic that could result in literally millions of deaths if major, disruptive, open-ended government measures are not taken to combat it. It would be humiliating, and in some cases politically suicidal, if they were to entertain the less-panicky models and projections, let alone endorse them. Better to just keep heralding the end of the world even as the data get better on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.
There are differing, dissenting opinions on this pandemic from scholars and academics who can be trusted. They’re worth listening to. Don’t be afraid to seek them out.
Those people are in the minority...the very small minority. It’s likely these people don’t give a shit about anything other than the economy in the first place.
