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I too find this conversation incredibly interesting. I've spent a ton of time looking at the numbers behind all this, but have absolutely zero knowledge of medicine, so it's fascinating to see what's been happening on that side of things.
There are so many insane statistics of how overblown the Coronavirus panic has been, but a few of my favorites:
1) The current CDC Excess Mortality stats by "provisional counts" show the entire country at 101% out of 100%. The CDC has already counted nearly 93k of the 110k reported, so it's very likely this year ends up being under the threshold for excess deaths.
2) Many, many states, either never had any excess mortality or significantly lower levels of excess mortality than during flu season in 2018, regardless of intervention strategy.
3) Not many states actually upload consistently good Long Term Care facility data, but of the ones that do, there are 5 states where nursing homes are 70% or higher of the total reported fatalities.
4) The average age of death in Massachusetts is 82, or essentially older than the average life expectancy.
It's infuriating how bad the data reporting is too. States do focused testing on meatpacking plants or nursing homes or jails, don't publicly announce they're doing it, then everyone panics when there's a rise in cases. Well no, nothing's changed in the general population, they're just testing outbreaks. Which is fine, just say you're doing it. The data we're seeing now is a compilation of dates. I live in Los Angeles, and LA County is reporting test results every day from literally weeks ago. Deaths reported today generally occurred weeks or even months ago. The Indiana state dashboard specifies this, but most states don't. You can see this by comparing what the CDC has counted vs. what tracking sites have counted. The peak was much earlier and higher than people think, and the decline has been faster and steeper. The mask or "face covering" stupidity...the flip flopping by Fauci...the fact that politicians believed that modeling data from the horrendous failures at the IHME and Imperial College was fact, so they cleared hospital space, expecting to be overrun with patients, which of course never happened....they cleared hospital space by sending patients back to nursing homes, creating mass death...it's just all infuriating.
One of the best is Cuomo's 140,000 hospital beds claim...NY state is the hardest hit region in the world, and it peaked at 18,800 hospital beds. Only off by 90%. And of course the answer is lockdowns worked, because lockdowns work. No evidence, no proof, they just worked because they must have worked. Except all these areas that never locked down fared better, in many cases significantly better, than those that did. But lockdowns work because lockdowns work.
People panicked, politicians panicked, caved to peer and media pressure, and operated on the "doing something is better than doing nothing" philosophy. Which was absolutely wrong.
On that note, I'm not getting a new 911 yet, but my wife is getting a 2020 Macan S...so far we've been able to get 9% off on a lot car. So that's good.
Politicians run states with the Specific goal of re-election. Cost - benefit analysis is done mainly thru the lens of re-election.
Soon it will become significantly more expensive for most folks on this forum to do business and live. The trillions of stimulus by the Feds and overspending by your states will not be without cost. The “Porsche demographic” in the “blue” states will get hit the hardest, as always.
Don’t have a lot of time to talk, but think if it this way. There is a very controversial theory floating around that hypertension is really an inflammatory disease in the end. There just may be something to that, and that COVID-19 seems to be worse in people with hypertension may be saying something to us about it.
Now getting outright denials of HCQ for my patients unless they have specifically have RA or lupus. We treat several autoimmune diseases with this medication - not just lupus or RA. Without being able to use HCQ, I would be forced to use more aggressive medications that increase risk of side effects, complications and infection including COVID19.
Our government and insurance companies at work, ladies and gentlemen. Whenever a problem arises, we must find a way to make it worse.
I too find this conversation incredibly interesting. I've spent a ton of time looking at the numbers behind all this, but have absolutely zero knowledge of medicine, so it's fascinating to see what's been happening on that side of things.
There are so many insane statistics of how overblown the Coronavirus panic has been, but a few of my favorites:
1) The current CDC Excess Mortality stats by "provisional counts" show the entire country at 101% out of 100%. The CDC has already counted nearly 93k of the 110k reported, so it's very likely this year ends up being under the threshold for excess deaths.
2) Many, many states, either never had any excess mortality or significantly lower levels of excess mortality than during flu season in 2018, regardless of intervention strategy.
3) Not many states actually upload consistently good Long Term Care facility data, but of the ones that do, there are 5 states where nursing homes are 70% or higher of the total reported fatalities.
4) The average age of death in Massachusetts is 82, or essentially older than the average life expectancy.
It's infuriating how bad the data reporting is too. States do focused testing on meatpacking plants or nursing homes or jails, don't publicly announce they're doing it, then everyone panics when there's a rise in cases. Well no, nothing's changed in the general population, they're just testing outbreaks. Which is fine, just say you're doing it. The data we're seeing now is a compilation of dates. I live in Los Angeles, and LA County is reporting test results every day from literally weeks ago. Deaths reported today generally occurred weeks or even months ago. The Indiana state dashboard specifies this, but most states don't. You can see this by comparing what the CDC has counted vs. what tracking sites have counted. The peak was much earlier and higher than people think, and the decline has been faster and steeper. The mask or "face covering" stupidity...the flip flopping by Fauci...the fact that politicians believed that modeling data from the horrendous failures at the IHME and Imperial College was fact, so they cleared hospital space, expecting to be overrun with patients, which of course never happened....they cleared hospital space by sending patients back to nursing homes, creating mass death...it's just all infuriating.
One of the best is Cuomo's 140,000 hospital beds claim...NY state is the hardest hit region in the world, and it peaked at 18,800 hospital beds. Only off by 90%. And of course the answer is lockdowns worked, because lockdowns work. No evidence, no proof, they just worked because they must have worked. Except all these areas that never locked down fared better, in many cases significantly better, than those that did. But lockdowns work because lockdowns work.
People panicked, politicians panicked, caved to peer and media pressure, and operated on the "doing something is better than doing nothing" philosophy. Which was absolutely wrong.
On that note, I'm not getting a new 911 yet, but my wife is getting a 2020 Macan S...so far we've been able to get 9% off on a lot car. So that's good.
Another simple example are Scandinavian countries. Sweden did not lock down while Norway and Denmark locked. In the end Sweden ended up having 11x fatality rate of Norway and 5x of Denmark. And of course, Sweden's decision to leave much of the economy open did not help the economy as Sweden GDP is expected to slump 7% in 2020 (close to rest of the EU)
The high number of deaths in NY/NJ are explained by less fortunate zip codes, tight living spaces and public transportation. People living in those zip codes are likely to live in multiple family dwellings in tight apartments/projects and most people have essential jobs (do not have luxury of working from home). Probably grandkid getting grandasick.
I agree Covid kills mostly elderly people but you had 100,000+ deaths in just 3 months and with lock downs. Covid19 is something not to be taken lightly.
Another simple example are Scandinavian countries. Sweden did not lock down while Norway and Denmark locked. In the end Sweden ended up having 11x fatality rate of Norway and 5x of Denmark. And of course, Sweden's decision to leave much of the economy open did not help the economy as Sweden GDP is expected to slump 7% in 2020 (close to rest of the EU)
The high number of deaths in NY/NJ are explained by less fortunate zip codes, tight living spaces and public transportation. People living in those zip codes are likely to live in multiple family dwellings in tight apartments/projects and most people have essential jobs (do not have luxury of working from home). Probably grandkid getting grandasick.
I agree Covid kills mostly elderly people but you had 100,000+ deaths in just 3 months and with lock downs. Covid19 is something not to be taken lightly.
That's not true. That paper, created by the Imperial College modeling morons, does absolutely nothing right. In order to determine how many lives lockdowns saved, they simply take their modeling estimate of deaths with no interventions, and then compare how many actual deaths that country had. This assumes their modeling is factual data, when we know it's not even remotely close to factual data. It's more like finger paintings done by toddlers, but with intent to deceive. Of course, Sweden didn't implement any of their recommendations except banning gatherings of 50 people or more, so the idiots at Imperial just assumed that banning gatherings had the same impact as full tyrannical lockdowns.
There are numerous threads on twitter tearing that paper apart, because it's literally garbage. As I was saying, they assume lockdowns work because they assume lockdowns work. It's flawed circular reasoning not backed up by science.
Sweden counts deaths differently than Norway and Denmark, and politicians from both Norway and Denmark said they never should have locked down. "I probably took many of the decisions out of fear". Not science, fear. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...e-like-sweden/
Sweden's GDP grew by 0.1% in the first 3 months of 2020. So that is a tremendous win compared to the rest of the Europe, who stupidly followed the Imperial College model to their own ruin.
Your assumptions about density fall apart when considering San Francisco. San Francisco is the second densest city in the country, has mass use of public transit, communal living situations, a gigantic homeless population and unsanitary living conditions...and has had 43 deaths reported out of a city of 900,000. Now you will say lockdowns worked earlier, because you cannot imagine a world in which lockdowns didn't work, because lockdowns work. California issued its stay at home order 3 days before New York. 3 days does not account for the monstrous difference in deaths. Especially when you understand that the virus was in California in January. Locking down 2 months late is not locking down "early".
The biggest difference in outcomes is nursing homes. That's THE difference. If you did a good job keeping it out of nursing homes, you have lower death totals. San Francisco has very few nursing homes in the city, and warmer weather, therefore they got lucky. Los Angeles has tons and tons and tons of nursing homes, so we've had much higher death totals. New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Connecticut all forced nursing home residents back into their facilities, because they listened to the same criminals who wrote that monstrously stupid paper you linked above. Go look at who has the worst outcomes and those states all jump out at you. Minnesota, in 4 months of tracking, has had 249 people outside of nursing homes die with Covid. 249 in a state of 5.64 million. 0.004% of the population.
We're never going to know how many of the 100,000 deaths were actually caused by Covid...the CDC data shows that the biggest increase in cause group deaths is from Alzheimers and Dementia. This is not a disease that causes dramatic increases in death outside of the extremely old and extremely sick. Even then, it's comparable to a bad flu season (like 2018), seen below. You have to mentally believe lockdowns worked because otherwise why did we do them? But they did not work.
Another simple example are Scandinavian countries. Sweden did not lock down while Norway and Denmark locked. In the end Sweden ended up having 11x fatality rate of Norway and 5x of Denmark. And of course, Sweden's decision to leave much of the economy open did not help the economy as Sweden GDP is expected to slump 7% in 2020 (close to rest of the EU)
The high number of deaths in NY/NJ are explained by less fortunate zip codes, tight living spaces and public transportation. People living in those zip codes are likely to live in multiple family dwellings in tight apartments/projects and most people have essential jobs (do not have luxury of working from home). Probably grandkid getting grandasick.
I agree Covid kills mostly elderly people but you had 100,000+ deaths in just 3 months and with lock downs. Covid19 is something not to be taken lightly.
Spot on.
It's really easy to dismiss this event as 'just another flu' until you look at these types of outcomes. Another good example is the UK, where the government simply threw it's hands up in a 'too hard' response until it became painfully obvious that was not an option. By then it was too late and look at the situation they have now.
It's really easy to dismiss this event as 'just another flu' until you look at these types of outcomes. Another good example is the UK, where the government simply threw it's hands up in a 'too hard' response until it became painfully obvious that was not an option. By then it was too late and look at the situation they have now.
Here is R from Sweden/UK/Germany. All different strategies, almost exactly the same result. They don't work. You believe they work, because they must work. But they don't work. Japan never locked down, had almost zero outbreak. You ignore the evidence because it's inconvenient for your assumptions.
Here is R from Sweden/UK/Germany. All different strategies, almost exactly the same result. They don't work. You believe they work, because they must work. But they don't work. Japan never locked down, had almost zero outbreak. You ignore the evidence because it's inconvenient for your assumptions.
CDC provisional death counts updated for today. We are 2% above the expected deaths for this year. That's not possible unless Covid is a bad flu season, which is what it is. It's just been moved from December-February to March-May.
alas it is you who are completely wrong. People in Sweden stopped doing things despite no official government lock down. It turns out people self imposed a "I don't feel like dying" set of actions. The economy is hard hit (it grew in the first 3 months of 2020 ? is this a joke that's before they had covid. duh)
At 43 deaths per 100,000, Sweden’s mortality rate is among the highest globally and far exceeds that of neighboring Denmark and Norway, which imposed much tougher lock downs at the onset of the pandemic.
Cherry picking Sweden's Q1 won't help for rest of 2020. Also, the Danish and Norwegians still have closed borders to Sweden while borders between Denmark and Norway are open.
What’s more, there’s so far limited evidence that Sweden’s decision to leave much of its society open will support the economy. Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson recently warned that Sweden is facing itsworst economic crisis since World War II, with GDP set to slump 7% in 2020, roughly as much as the rest of the EU. Scandinavia’s biggest economy will shrink 7% this year, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Tuesday. Shortly after she spoke, the debt office revealed an historic 30-fold spike in borrowing to cover emergency spending amid record job losses. A separate survey showed 40% of businesses in Sweden’s service sector now fear bankruptcy.
Also, I can't believe you are changing goal posts saying Sweden counts Covid deaths different. Also, the Norwegian PM made that remark in context of closing schools. And I cannot find any statement where Danish PM claimed to have made an mistake by shutdown - please point in out
If you honestly think Covid is nothing worse than the flu, why don't you put your skin in the game and volunteer taking care of Covid patients with no respirators. I would love to see a real time experiment!
John W. McDaniel, 60, passed away last Wednesday in Columbus — exactly a month after reportedly firing off a series of angry messages about the contagion.
“Does anybody have the guts to say this COVID-19 is a political ploy? Asking for a friend. Prove me wrong,” he wrote on March 13, according to the Sun.
Two days later, McDaniel reportedly called “bulls–t” on Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s stay-at-home order closing bars and restaurants.
I had friends who are doctors taking care of patients at Weill Cornell and got sick despite PPE. The poor guy had to abandon his family to live in a hotel so that he doesn't get his pregnant wife or young son sick while taking care of patients. Eventually he got covid and lost 7 pounds and said it was worst thing ever. Another trader friend of mine in mid 40's got Covid 2 months ago and as of last week only 95% there.
Here is R from Sweden/UK/Germany. All different strategies, almost exactly the same result. They don't work. You believe they work, because they must work. But they don't work. Japan never locked down, had almost zero outbreak. You ignore the evidence because it's inconvenient for your assumptions.
alas it is you who are completely wrong. People in Sweden stopped doing things despite no official government lock down. It turns out people self imposed a "I don't feel like dying" set of actions. The economy is hard hit (it grew in the first 3 months of 2020 ? is this a joke that's before they had covid. duh)
Belgium fared much worse and had far less mobility. They locked down harder and had almost double the amount of deaths when adjusted for population. Sweden also doesn't regret their strategy, because they were right. They did a bad job of protecting nursing homes, but that's it.
06-09-2020, 09:14 AM
