It looks like the Fall Surge is coming

I think they are slowing it down just like the fires in California. They are not slowing it down. It will go at its own pace as pretty much every other virus in history.

This is about fear-mongering and making money, nothing more.

 

I agree with this, our biggest slowdown (people moving about) was from April to May, but there was still a tremendous amount of activity at grocery stores, wally world, and especially home improvement stores but general traffic was noticeably lighter, it still feels like its about 10% lower than normal but that's hard to gauge. When restaurants, beaches and bars were shut down or very limited we saw noticeable reductions in traffic but past that a good chunk of people were out every single day doing other stuff. I was in Houston in May and the traffic was still pretty nuts.

Maybe i've missed the news items, but it seems odd that with 5 million tests in Florida for example (and for a stretch 20% positive was common) they don't want to extrapolate to the general population and talk about it immunity. Its also confusing on the reporting process because for example a friend who caught it along with his wife an son, mom was in hospital for a week but dad/son had minor symptoms and stayed home, collectively they took a total of 11-12 tests before testing negative, so did those 3 people account for 8 positives or 3?

 

not going to argue except that perhaps it could be argued that they are slowing it down somewhat, just a question of how much, is it 5%, 10%?

Its a virus, it spreads, that's just how it works. Every state is getting their turn at it, its just a matter of time.

 

And the topic never discussed about all that on TV is that slowly and inevitably the herd immunity develops, as it has for ages.

They must keep the masses in fear so that they can sell vaccines for profit. Life goes on.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/10...irus-pandemic-so-how-about-a-dose-of-reality/

Interesting reading.

 

Your "below average intelligent people" led to the southern spikes? Perhaps. The timing was about right, so the theory of "avoidability" is a possibility. The other theory that this virus will seep into every population sooner or later, do its thing, and the die down. Lesson learned? Who knows?

 

The worldwide spread of the virus was planned by the WHO in collaboration with China. Yes, it is all about politics, money, and global control over all of our lives.

 

That is interesting, as is this corollary article. The globalists are almost at "check mate" in winning their game of Global Monopoly.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/09...n-chaos-and-nationwide-riots-as-distractions/

Good quote at the beginning of the article:

 

Lew Rockwell is a nut, and you are the victim of robber barons...

If you don't believe, try a Nobel economist:

https://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequa...id=1601564786&sprefix=stiglitz,aps,162&sr=8-2

 

When the debate is lost, slander the author!

 

The debate is definitely lost.

But you've got it bass ackwards...

 

Rockwell's website produces more facts and knowledge in one morning than Fauci & Friends do in 9 months. The latter produce only propaganda and misinformation, but the "more brilliant" amongst us cannot quite perceive that.

 

Still a nut.

 

Stiglitz, though he appears to be a liberal, could find many points of agreement with Lew Rockwell I suspect.

They could start with their agreement on the failure of globalism.

The synopsis of Stiglitz's book (thanks for the link):

"The top 1 percent of Americans control some 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. But as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in this best-selling critique of the economic status quo, this level of inequality is not inevitable. Rather, in recent years well-heeled interests have compounded their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism and making America no longer the land of opportunity that it once was. They have made America the most unequal advanced industrial country while crippling growth, distorting key policy debates, and fomenting a divided society. Stiglitz not only shows how and why America’s inequality is bad for our economy but also exposes the effects of inequality on our democracy and on our system of justice while examining how monetary policy, budgetary policy, and globalization have contributed to its growth. With characteristic insight, he diagnoses our weakened state while offering a vision for a more just and prosperous future."

From this video featuring Stiglitz: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/globalizations-discontents




There is actually a lot of room for agreement between the left and right. They can argue about wealth taxes and other intricacies to solve the issue.

...or you can continue to see the "other side" as the enemy and keep demonizing "them", rather than recognize the real enemy which both Stiglitz and Rockwell agree upon.

 

"Bad Lew Rockwell." LOL

No wonder the globalists are taking over and are about to enslave us all.

 

I've seen a lot of Stiglitz videos, and while there are places they agree, you found one of the areas where they differ. Sciences can run hot and cold, and the inequality guys are red hot. Stiglitz, Pikkety, Brad Delong, etc.

Sigh, the thing with the Vienna School is that, at heart, it's 1950s anti-commie hysteria. The commies are gone, but....
Science doesn't often care about why you do what you do, just the results. That's why they always teach Mendel, but the kids never get the point. He cheated, nobody cared because he was right.

Anyway, it started out as poli sci, but it wasn't real poli sci, they then used it as an economic thing, but it wasn't really economic science. (Some of them did good work as economists,but that's mostly science history now.)

It's a fake poli sci pretending to be economics.

I know, it's a confusing mess.

 

I don't mind your "rant" (it actually isn't one), it's well reasoned, well written, and civil. I'm known to authoring long posts too and I don't mind reading long ones. You make some good points but sorry, I can't agree with everything you are saying. I do agree for example that it is a grave mistake to make of this issue a political one. It is a matter of Public Health, Virology, and Epidemiology, and while there is always some inherent political aspect to anything that is public and results in policy, it shouldn't be so over-politicized with two camps basically opposing everything the other camp says, instead of us Americans being united to defeat a common enemy, the virus. The way it is, it seems like the enemies are Trump and Biden and their respective followers instead of the enemy being the virus.

I don't agree that we don't know much about this virus. Actually the huge effort of the international medico-scientific community is paying off, and if you follow the scientific literature you'll see the enormous progress made in record time. For a novel disease that hasn't yet completed one year of existence, it's truly remarkable. Sure, some of the science may appear - especially to lay people - contradictory but that's the nature of the scientific process. New information comes up, theories evolve. That's why we do meta-analyses congregating a large number of studies in one analysis; then it's easier to see the what theories more solidly prevail.

We know a whole lot more about this virus now than earlier on. (Next, I'll get technical so if you have no appetite for that you can just skip this paragraph). For example: we know that it isn't a typical ARDS but rather a pathogen that has a predilection for endothelial lesions and for causing severe cytokine storms. The kind of lung lesion it causes is very different from the one caused by its cousins SARS and MERS therefore invasive ventilation is often a mistake (unlike for these other two ARDS-causing diseases) and should be a last resource measure; better to use high flow oxygen and place the patient in a prone position. We know now that a number of agents can be of relative help in inhibiting replication but once the cytokine storm starts, they aren't helpful (some can turn dangerous) and we need to focus of dampening the storm with steroids. We learned that hyper-coagulation is a big problem so now we do early anticoagulation. We know that remdesivir helps, and dexamethasone or methylprednisolone help a whole lot, as well as enoxaparin. We know now that hydroxychloroquine doesn't help, can get dangerous for Covid-19 patients due to their tendency to develop myocarditis (thus enhancing HCQ's cardiotoxicity), and we know now that its possibly helpful action is likely to be linked to its zinc ionophore properties but we've found a better inophore that reaches level in pulmonary tissue much faster (quercetin). We know that zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C, quercetin, and famotidine seem to inhibit the virus to some degree; possibly also ivermectin. Interferon cocktails look promising; convalescent plasma, not as much.

Anyway, based on the above, we now have treatment protocols that have had a dramatic impact on mortality, which has dropped by as much as 97% in hospitals that have fully adopted a treatment protocol based on the above (it's called the MATH+ protocol).

Also, we have developed vaccines that seem to have a surprisingly high efficacy, with seroconversion and production of neutralizing antibodies that are as high as 97% to 100% in vaccinated volunteers. One of the 9 vaccines currently in phase 3 (last) of clinical trials had two scary severe reactions and the trial was put on hold in the US (it resumed in some other countries after a brief hold) but the other 8 so far haven't shown problems so the vaccine front looks very promising.

Anyway, so, science is not clueless...

But let's get back at some items in your thinking. You're puzzled because Florida is opening up and the virus doesn't seem to be as aggressive there.

First, I'd like you to be a bit prudent, because we've seen apparent victories turning into fast defeat, over and over. Currently for example Spain is dealing with another huge surge after several weeks of zero to 3 deaths per day. Don't yell "victory" yet because this virus has a way of waxing and waning, and coming back with a vengeance. The UK is now having peaks higher than the one they had in the spring, although it's probably a bit artificial due to shortage of testing in the spring. But anyway they do seem to be experiencing another peak even if we account for their higher number of tests, now.

Second, the issue of these bursts of activity versus calm, is explained by the concept of susceptible population and heterogeneity of the population. So the R0 or reproduction number of the virus (how many people get infected by one carrier) varies a lot with a huge number of factors. For example, it's been proposed that people with blood type O are less susceptible. People with high levels of vitamin D are less susceptible (one thinks that with all the beaches in Florida some segments of the population there are likely to have high vitamin D levels as it forms in the skin under sun light. Sun light itself with its UVA rays is known to kill the virus. Degree of humidity influences it (more transmission by dry weather). Outdoors v. indoors behaviors according to the temperature outside greatly influences transmission. Density of population, size of human gatherings, are maybe the most important factor. There are other factors but let's keep it relatively brief.

So, what can happen is that the virus reaches a location, and it spreads like wildfire through the more susceptible segments of the population (R0 number gets high). Then it faces roadblocks (gets to more people who have high vitamin D levels and type O blood, etc..), and fizzles a bit (R0 number gets low). The virus got the easy pickings, the low hanging fruit first, then struggles to continue to spread the same way. And then sometimes the very population that has been careless and has been out and about, catches a large number of asymptomatic cases, develop antibodies, and are taken out of the roster of susceptible populations. Then the virus struggles more.

But what can also happen and has happened over and over, is that the reprieve is temporary. As things calm down, and due to cabin fever and fatigue, people get less careful, they drop some precautions, get out more... and suddenly the virus has another large chunk of susceptible population to attack, and things flare up again. Also, the virus gets to the outskirts of another location... and the whole thing repeats, resulting in the virus migrating from one hot spot to the next.

So, again, we'll see what happens in Florida. The important notion is, this is not over yet. Don't let a calm stretch fool you. With the winter coming, plus the large gatherings of Thanksgiving, the elections, and Christmas, it is very likely that things will flare up again. We're seeing surges in many countries of the Northern Hemisphere, and I suspect that we'll see it here, too. Fingers crossed that it doesn't happen, but I'd just like to tell you, don't drop your guard, for now. Be prudent and wait for the vaccine.

Now, what you are seeing about deaths, is the concept of "excess deaths." See, this *is* happening. We don't even need to wait for the end of 2020. The CDC publishes weekly data. The database is huge and hard to consult as it has literally several hundred rows as it goes by county and you have to painfully click "next, next, next" with no way to query the database in a simpler manner. But what is shown is that the "excess deaths" pretty much match the 205,000 number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 you've been seeing in the news.

I once authored three posts explaining how death certificate are written. If you "advance search" my posting history using my username and "death certificate" you'll find those posts. They clarify the issue of dying with Covid-19 versus dying from Covid-19. No, the deaths are not over-counted and not falsely attributed to the virus, in people who would have died anyway. That's NOT how we write death certificates.

In summary, the immediate cause of death needs to be the end of a sequence initiated by the SARS-CoV-2 infection, and needs to be something that WOULDN'T have happened if the person hadn't contracted the virus, regardless of underlying conditions.

Death certificates have Part I and Part II. Part I is written as above. Part II lists contributing factors such as underlying conditions. I gave some clear examples there to make it understood. But the bottom line is, someone has hypertension or cancer. They get a serious case of Covid-19, resulting in a cytokine storm, intravascular coagulation, multiple organ failure, and death. Or someone gets viral pneumonia, respiratory failure, and death. Well, neither hypertension nor cancer can cause respiratory failure or multiple organ failure. These came from the virus and its sequence of pathological events. The cancer and the hypertension helped the virus to result in a severe case of Covid-19 as opposed to mild or moderate, but they aren't what killed the person. The virus did. If that same person had not contracted the virus, the hypertension guy might have lived 20 more years until a heart attack, or the cancer patient might have lived another 5 years until the cancer spread all over and killed him.

So, no, these ARE Covid-19 deaths. The SEVERITY of the illness got "helped" by underlying conditions, but these people wouldn't have died right now if they hadn't acquired the infection. That's precisely why the "excess deaths" or "deaths by all causes" jumped up so sharply during the pandemic. Sorry, the pandemic is real, and sorry, it does kill people who otherwise wouldn't have died right now.

I hope the above is helpful. Cheers.

 

The whole idea of Ignoring the fact that protests have led to a surge in cases is pretty ridiculous IMO.

I just had a relative in Wisconsin blaming their case rise on republicans not wearing masks or not staying home, which is opinion not fact. It was comical that the whole protest thing or the kids returning to college doesn't seem to exist in her eyes, its like they don't have news up there.

 

"Not completely open" and locked down are two vastly different things. People are engaged in huge hyperboles here, all for a political take on it. Most states are fairly open already. There isn't all this lock down that people rage about. North Carolina for example is getting phase 3 tomorrow, and almost everything including bars are reopening although still with capacity limitations.

These are not lockdowns. These are some sensible regulations to prevent a huge spike in cases while permitting economic activity.

Again, you dodged my question: what states are in a lockdown?

 

Interesting. While you see a lot of maskless people there, you see a lot of masked people too. If you look at a picture of a Trump rally, it's almost everybody maskless.

This is not to say that the above is right. It's wrong, too. It's imprudent, even for the masked people. But two wrongs don't make a right. Both these protests, and boneheaded events like the Sturgis motorbike event, and political rallies, are highly imprudent in the middle of a freaking pandemic.

 

What this overlooks is that NY had a lot more infection than Florida. Thus the percentage of deaths is a much more accurate representation of the problem.

From the link in your link:
However flawed New York’s count, Cuomo has not been shy about comparing it to tallies in other states.

Nearly every time Cuomo is questioned about New York’s nursing home death toll, he brushes off criticism as politically motivated and notes that his state’s percentage of nursing home deaths out of its overall COVID-19 death toll is around 20%, far less than Pennsylvania’s 68%, Massachusetts’ 64% and New Jersey’s 44%.

“Look at the basic facts where New York is versus other states,” Cuomo said during a briefing Monday. “You look at where New York is as a percentage of nursing home deaths, it’s all the way at the bottom of the list.”

In another briefing last month, he touted New York’s percentage ranking as 35th in the nation. “Go talk to 34 other states first. Go talk to the Republican states now — Florida, Texas, Arizona — ask them what is happening in nursing homes. It’s all politics.”

 

Not really. First, the CDC does publish weekly Excess Deaths or Death by All Causes data, it's just not fully tallied yet but the data exist. Second, while there's been some "collateral damage" due to delay in care of other diseases going untreated, we never truly surpassed hospital capacity so those numbers weren't horrible. I can guarantee that contrary to what certain political segments of the population want to believe, 99% of the deaths attributed to Covid-19 are indeed deaths caused by Covid-19. I can guarantee that, because I'm part of this process and I know how it's done.

People who still doubt this are out of their minds.

"Probable Covid" is a perfectly good clinical judgment in the vast majority of cases that are so characterized. Say, you have a shortage of tests. You get an elderly gentleman whose grand-child got a confirmed mild case of Covid-19. Grandpa imprudently hugs the child and talks closely to him, maskless. Then 2 days later grandpa feels a bit of malaise and body aches. 2 more days pass and granpa loses the sense of smell and develops a fever of 102 degrees. In the next 4 days this gets worse and worse and grandpa has trouble breathing and gets bluish. He is rushed to a hospital. Oops, due to testing shortage they never get to test him. They do have a flu test so they test him for the flu and it's not it. Then he develops radiological findings of a severe pneumonia and his pulse ox keeps dropping despite high flow oxygen. Then his D-dimmer test spikes up and he starts developing blood clots. His heart has EKG and lab signs of myocarditis. Then he progresses to a full-blown cytokine storm with disseminated intravascular coagulation, multiple organ failure, and he dies. Without a Covid-19 test result, but based on everything else that happened in a VERY typical manner, the doctor writes in his death certificate that he probably died of Covid-19.

Pray tell, what exactly would be the mysterious illness that killed him, and mimicked so PERFECTLY the expected disease course of Covid-19 but wasn't it in your opinion, including, having a confirmed source (the grandchild), in the middle of a freaking pandemic of... Covid-19???

If the doctor writing the death certificate wrote anything different than "Probable Covid-19" the doctor would be a moron that should be told to go back to medical school.

Do you suppose that the majority of deaths in other circumstances and by other diseases, are always confirmed by testing and autopsy? Think again. A very small percentage of deaths get to autopsies - mostly the ones where foul play is suspected, or if the family requests one with their sights on a juicy malpractice lawsuit. The vast majority of deaths are certified based on CLINICAL JUDGMENT of the sequence of events, and they are perfectly fine. It's no different for Covid-19. Well, it is different in the sense that thanks to the huge attention the pandemic has caused, most of these deaths did indeed get tested. But the ones that didn't for some circumstance (testing shortage, poor access to care, rural area with a case evolving rapidly before getting to a tertiary hospital resulting in a death at home, etc.) are still deaths by Covid-19.

The idea that we're overcounting Covid-19 deaths is frankly laughable. If anything we're undercounting them due to early cases that have died already before we had enough testing and before we understood the syndrome a lot better.

Sure, maybe a few death certificates were poorly written, by mistake or incompetence. But that's not the rule, it's the exception.

And the idea that doctors write Covid-19 falsely in order to have access to some sort of funding is also profoundly laughable. Medicare did allocate some funds to hospitals as part of the CARES act to compensate hospitals for treating uninsured Covid-19 patients. There is NO INDICATION that these sparse funds have been fraudulently over-utilized. A doctor falsifying a diagnosis of Covid-19 to access such funds would be committing a federal felony, and would be arrested, thrown in a federal prison, and would have his/her license suspended or cancelled. NOBODY is crazy enough to engage in such fraud for pennies, including due to the whistle blower incentives, audits, and the hospital's own Risk Department and internal monitoring and death review process.

People who think that doctors do such things (beyond some very very very rare bad apples who typically get caught) just don't understand the process and all the layers of scrutiny that prevent this from happening.

Sorry, I know it's a pity, but the 205,000 deaths by Covid-19 and counting are VERY VERY real, and nobody would be doubting them if this pandemic hadn't resulted in such a huge political circus.

 

Seems like we have been here before.
If the protests were responsible the New England states would have seen a similar wave.

 

We report *cases* to the Health Department, not merely test results. In my hospital we do serial testing of our patients to gauge when they are no longer infectious and can be moved to a non-Covid-19 unit. We report them as ONE case to the Health Department. The official stats you see from State agencies talk about "daily new cases", not "daily positive tests."

 

thats good to know, but what about in that example, the wife gets several tests, it gets labled only once, but the husband/son get several outside of the hostpital, do the testing agencies cross reference every positive test, I have no idea if he had the tests done at the same lab every time or where he went to be honest, but he had to keep getting tested to begin the waiting period before returning to work.

Do all those different outside agencies/labs cross reference to see if subject X has been tested before?

 

Mistakes probably happen here and there, but overall the system works, especially because even though the reports originate from multiple sources, they end up being directed to the same agency, the County Health Department for the county in which the patient resides, and they do follow-up on the reports, so it's hard to think of a person who would so easily figure twice as a new case due to testing positive in two different labs. Not to forget, then the County departments ultimately report to the State health department of which there is only one per state.

In any massive effort like this one you'll see some fringe inconsistencies and some clerical recording and documentation mistakes but they aren't statistically dominant. The vast majority of new cases are indeed unique individuals.

MUCH more likely is that we miss cases that have tested false negative, given that it's around the 8th day that PCR swab tests are most positive and you can easily miss the window of opportunity to catch it; let alone the mild or asymptomatic cases that never get tested to start with.

Again, it's much more likely that we are undercounting cases, than it is that we are overcounting them (as right wingers like to suggest). Not only cases, but also deaths, like I've explained in post #271.