Massaged Data With Dire Consequences
Georgia governor used Manipulated Data to reopen the state. The result was a Covid surge.
For six weeks, Georgia had been a model, especially for those eager to end shutdowns. Among the last U.S. states to lock down, Georgia in April was first to widely reopen, after just three weeks. Critics said the state misrepresented its data to justify the move, and they predicted disaster.
But the same week Kemp ordered the reopening, his administration began presenting data in a way that made the state appear healthier than it was, said Thomas Tsai, a professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The technique involved backdating new cases to the time of first symptoms or taking a test, instead of reporting them as they were reported to the state, like Georgia had previously done — and like most states do.
“It is deeply concerning,” Tsai said. “I cannot of course speak to the motivation.”
Kemp Gambled With People’s Lives and Lost
Timing would technically be better if done at the outset. But changing the method midstream serves one purpose.
But cases rose in late June and early july in a way that manipulations could no longer hide the facts.
The Governor gambled with people’s lives that things would improve and they didn’t.
Atlanta Mayor Battles the Governor
Kemp’s gamble is still ongoing.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms mandated masks. Governor Kemp said no.
Politico notes Georgia Governor Sues to Stop Atlanta Mask Mandate.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp sued Thursday to stop Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from mandating masks be worn in the city to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The legal actions comes after prominent Democratic mayors in the state pledged to challenge an executive order by Kemp barring local mask mandates. Bottoms defiantly declared, “I am not afraid of the city being sued.”On Wednesday, Kemp banned localities from ordering people to wear masks in public to stop the spread of coronavirus. Mayors across the state hit back at Kemp and accused him of playing politics during a pandemic.
This lawsuit is on behalf of the Atlanta business owners and their hardworking employees who are struggling to survive during these difficult times. (1/4) https://t.co/vxiOmteHaH
— Governor Brian P. Kemp (@GovKemp) July 16, 2020
One Business Owner Replied
What business owners?? I am an Atlanta business owner. By NOT doing everything to stop the virus from spreading, my business will suffer much longer. Wearing a mask will actually help businesses open, and stay open safely! Follow science! Check your ego.#WearADamnMask
— Active Living Fitness by Karen (@PFitKaren) July 16, 2020
Bottoms Replies
3104 Georgians have died and I and my family are amongst the 106k who have tested positive for COVID-19. Meanwhile, I have been sued by @GovKemp for a mask mandate. A better use of tax payer money would be to expand testing and contact tracing. #ATLStrong pic.twitter.com/z4hpTrCS1B
— Keisha Lance Bottoms (@KeishaBottoms) July 16, 2020
What About Florida?
This is what we have all feared. #Covid_19 infection will spread beyond young folks, and our elderly population will suffer. https://t.co/ASu8TB1GHi
— Dr. Chethan Sathya, MD MSCE (@drchethansathya) July 15, 2020
Also note that Florida hospitals face ICU bed shortage as state passes 300,000 COVID-19 cases.
Reverse of Wisconsin
Events in Georgia are the reverse of Wisconsin.
In Wisconsin, cities challenged the governor who mandated lockdowns. The Wisconsin State Supreme court ruled decisions were best made at the local level.
So which is it?
More importantly, is it a right of people to infect others or a right to enter a store and be reasonably safe from being infected by others.
Do we let everyone decide for themselves?
Political Comment
I do not know who will win the battle between Governor Kemp and Mayor Bottoms.
But I am positive this feud is neither good for the country nor Trump’s chances.
Kemp, following Trump’s lead, could easily cost Trump the state of Georgia.
Trump has badly mishandled Covid and so did the Southern states. For further discussion please see Trump is on the Short End of the Enthusiasm Gap
Mish
Is it true that Fauci was caught not wearing a mask in public in close proximity to others? But I thought he was just an apolitical scientist following the data? Or is it possible that he has been imperfect and playing some political games as well? “Trust the experts” will always get you less than what you thought (they are human, too).
The devastation wrought by the discovery of the notorious #Covid-19 virus makes clear that the development of a vaccine against this deadly virus is imperative. However, it also raises important questions about how the world should respond to the threat of the world’s most deadly virus. Should the world take action now or wait until the threat has subsided?
To think 28 DEATHS IN GEORIA when NY only had 17.
of Course Georgia 295 / million While NY 1672/Millon
So we are upset because KEMP is not murdering old people like Cuomo?
Wow! I’m afraid the only solution is for the all the states to go their separate ways.
July 13, 2020
Americans’ Face Mask Usage Varies Greatly by Demographics
I didn’t realize he manipulated data. How could he think this would end well? He is responsible for these additional deaths and the thousands more to come.
A little perspective (USA):
I don’t know where you got your chart but the lowest daily death count on any day since April 3rd is 263. The 7 day average for the week of July 11th was 724. A total of 5068 dead from Covid the week of July 11th.
Have to echo CA2020’s statement that these numbers are bogus. I only see the data for the last few days, but today (Saturday) had 813 deaths, yesterday had 946 deaths. Those daily totals are almost as high as your last weekly total.
You really should have fact checked this better. If the numbers seem impossibly low, there’s probably a reason for that!
I find links from twitter often don’t go through so I just copied the picture. I don’t know the source. I agree with some of the objections, but the CDC data was recently found to be including those with antibodies in new cases, and – as always – there are debates about how deaths are tallied and so were revised. The chart says it is CDC-derived data, but maybe it isn’t. I wouldn’t know how to ‘fact-check’ such stuff anyway.
The bottom line is that overall the death count is steadily declining; it is no longer a pandemic/epidemic according to standard metrics. This is an election year. The incumbent is greatly damaged by the disease continuing and the economy worsening and the press has a lousy track record in general but with this President in particular, so all figures are suspect. The President of Tanzania sent in samples from fruit and goat meat – they all came back positive. There’s a huge amount of monkey business in the mix and pandemic fear porn to boot.
But again the bottom line: we are well past the worst even if some spots are flaring up for a little while. All this reporting of the case numbers is misleading.
This data is wrong. I suggest you look at NY times or Johns Hopkins data on death trends. They did drop but are rising fast now in States where cases escalated 4 weeks ago. Deaths lag by 4 to 6 weeks.
Liar liar pants on fire!
You just love posting misinformation. If you ignore the death count from the initial spike the count is on the rise again.
Well, nearly all the information out there is misinformation. The one I pasted in said it was from CDC (and therefore almost certainly disinformation but the sort most on this board would respect, I though, but since it tells a different story, of course the CDC is suspect and/or its assumed my children (whom I don’t have now!) painted something in, not the CDC).
If you scroll down having selected USA, you can find the daily death counts graph and it does indeed show steady rises of late, but nothing like the rate of acceleration during initial lift-off, and also to be expected after re-opening but nowhere near the much higher levels in April.
Now of course you have to factor in areas. Some areas have flattened to almost nothing whereas others are lifting of, albeit far more in terms of cases and hospitalisations (most with multiple conditions, not covid alone) than in deaths. Remember for a while elective surgeries and many other hospitalisation conditions were being put off. Once re-opening started many people are back in hospitals for a wide range of ailments and many of those also test positive for covid 19 adding to the latter’s totals even though that’s not really why they are in the hospital – nor will they die from it despite being a new counted hospitalised case, although if they do die (of diabetes etc.) it will also be added to the covid totals. So even those areas reporting rises since re-opening are not comparing apples to apples since hospital admissions policies changed drastically from April-May initial pandemic mode, to latter day re-opening modes.
Simply put, there is no reason to believe that the whole nation is about to go into lift-off mode again.
First of all, it didn’t happen the first time. If you take out the old peoples’ homes in NY, NJ and CT, this entire coronavirus event was a national nothingburger and despite recent rises in places like Texas and Florida remains a national nothingburger. However, it is not being reported as such, so deaths going from 25 a day to 50 a day in a population of twenty million is being reported as a major wave emerging threatening to engulf the entire country in mass death.
It’s fear porn.
But even if you do think this was a major event, it’s largely over.
None of it matters now anyway. The political damage has been done. I give America must less than 50-50 odds that they can rescue anything like the representative Republic they have been taught to believe they have. It is now lost. Can it be recovered is the question? Given how many are obsessing about irrelevant virus data and how few to how they have lost their country, I’d say with each passing month the odds decrease. Sad business.
The country was “lost” to the majority of the population a long time ago … it’s only been the wonderful Republic(an) you seem to think it was to the elite that Stuki and others bash on a regular basis (of which you might be a member?) and to whom the deaths of those “old, useless, non-productive members of society in nursing homes” are a plus to their totally $-based view of the world.
You children colored in some lines and you submitted them as “a little perspective”? This is so funny that I can’t comment in how nonsensical this “data” is!
The simple explanation is that Trump owns Kemp. Trump was accused of violating Atlanta law for not wearing a mask at the airport, so Kemp sues Atlanta to nullify the law. Problem solved.
The western continent (Asian)
is ” living their lives” as they always do. They’ve been wearing masks since birth. They don’t protest in the streets, yipping about the virus, nor, are their numbers at a huge loss, with the same # deaths 4634, etched in my brain, per John Hopkins, @ Bloomberg, or NY times, that’s posting the daily charts. If, people would only follow suit.
Anyone know what to make of this chart? Another one of those polemic pieces.
Good news. Testing is up, confirmed cases are up. With more testing, the average age of positives is going down along with % of those likely to die. Deaths are steady.
Really, the only thing going on is media-generated hysteria in order to effect the election outcome.
Avoid people as best you can.
Texas is also at risk for Republicans. My brother in law is a doctor in south Texas and yesterday there was a code every hour at the hospital he works at. They are borrowing ventilators from the NICU for the regular ICU but they ran out. The longer the governor of Texas doesnt shut everything down the more deaths there will be in Texas.
This is a great read! Especially the sections comparing present day CV19 responses to “The Great Plague of Milan, 1629 to 1631”. Humans never change and that should be a lesson for everyone.
Technocrats Should Observe the Hippocratic Oath
Peter C. EarlePeter C. Earle
– July 18, 2020
In some states, the lockdown reopenings are being reversed. We are seeing a new round of state versus state blame-mongering and recriminations. The new benchmark for normalcy to return is January 2021. Why that date? As with many benchmarks over these months, it’s completely made up.
For all you face mask proponents:
Coronavirus
Face Masks Mandated by UK Government Specifically Say They Don’t Protect Against COVID-19
“Anything other than tight-fitting, surgical-grade masks are utterly pointless.”
15 July, 2020
link to summit.news
They do reduce viral load which may lead to better immune response which may lead to herd immunity faster. With a mask you may only get a little sick. The mask may be the thing that saves you from a trip to the hospital compared to a really bad cold. The idea is to give your immune system time to respond rather than being overwhelmed with viral load.
Say what? No one has any idea how MUCH virus particle is needed to cause an infection.
Yes they do: the answer is 1. (Which then multiplies.)
The masks – real ones – reduce those with heavy viral load spreading it to others, basically.
There is almost no evidence that asymptomatic people spread it, but there is also little evidence of how it spreads at all – they don’t really know. What does seem fairly clear is that outdoors in hot weather it is really hard to catch it from anyone else, whereas indoors in enclosed spaces (or I suspect air-conditioned/ducted) it is more likely. Cloth masks, according to many, act as a bit of a petrie dish to gradually collect a higher density of the virus increasing the likelihood of infection if one or more take root, so to speak, in the throat.
For some reason (I believe political BS), we abandoned ancient protocols: quarantine the sick; instead we switched to quarantining the healthy. Shutting down in March and remaining closed for two months and counting in many big States is almost certainly the biggest single blunder by a US President in the history of the Republic (even though of course he was tricked into it and his political enemies have been extending it deliberately – along with fomenting riots etc. – to bring him down).
Let us pray that it doesn’t prove to be the last such blunder because it will have caused the Republic to fall.
No but we know in general lower viral load prevents any virus from overwhelming the immune system. Think of a mask as maybe not 100% prevention but as a helper of herd immunity.
The point is that a smaller viral load is more likely to be dealt successfully by a person’s immune system than a massive viral load would be. Obviously there is a lot of variation among people making it impossible to say what amount of viral load might be dealt with successfully by a given individual and what amount could overwhelm that individual’s immune system.
But please, follow through on your reluctance/refusal to wear a mask when in crowded indoor spaces, especially with large numbers of other like-minded covidiots. And please keep your “only savior of the republic” Trump on the lofty pedestal upon which you’ve placed him … Trumpty Dumpty comes to mind …
I am not a Trump supporter. Wasn’t in 2016 and won’t be in 2020. Living in CA, I have the luxury of being able to vote for whomever I please as it is a given that Biden will win here.
ok ok you really want to go here link to insider.com
This is a perfect solution to the impending eviction crisis.
It’s been 6 months already and I am just amused that some people are still thinking: “American white people are so superior, we just can’t get this shit”.
No doubt, someone will say: “literally nobody says that”. Well when you dismiss the experience of other countries, you kinda are.
American’s ignorantly BLINDLY assume we do everything best. A common everyday examples prove we don’t.
1.) I lived in Canada for a bit. They have 6 digit postal codes we have 5 digit zips, and to get those more accuate we can extend them to 9 digits. Canada uses alphabetical letters in their zip codes. THAT can provide 26 choices per digit Vs only 9 per US zip codes. The 6 digit Canadian postal code has 5.2 time GREATER specificity (308mil vs 59k) in it’s code than does the US zip code. Thus we have to go to 9 digits to do what they can in only 5 digits. Clearly inferior.
Actually, minorities are tending to get the virus more than white people.
oh Fiddle-dee to all of you Lets go here! link to straight.com
All recent deaths in Viet Nam are due to athlete’s foot
Unfortunately, the truth is that we have only a rudimentary knowledge of several aspects of infection spread, including on one critical aspect of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: how THIS virus transmits
Worth reading in full:
Mish seems wedded to the covidiot view that the virus is like a faucet, which the government can turn on or off with mask mandates, resulting in a 1:1 correlation in resulting statistics. The only thing the statistics show is that are a lot of confounding variables and that epidemic dynamics are rather more difficult to understand than most people can tolerate.
Other countries have shown the virus can be brought under control by sensible policies. In fact, New York has shown that can also be achieved in the US. The problem here is our President and the sycophant GOP governors who are too scared to stand up to him. Unfortunately the red states are now reaping what they sowed. The big danger is that cases spill over and cause a resurgence in states that fought hard to get the virus under control.
New Zealand turned it off.
Sure, compare population of NZ at 5 million to the USA with population of 330 million. D’oh.
I must have missed it, where in this post, or any other, does Mish assert anything approximating the view the virus can be “turned on or off with mask mandates”?
One more bullshit post like that with zero supporting evidence and you are gone
I enjoy reading your views Webej, but no need to attack the host – the same could have been said without involving Mish. If you host a site you are going to find people who disagree, but it is not possible for a host to accept being mocked or associated with arguments that are not his. For example I don’t remember him calling people idiots over the virus. How is he going to read through and host comments that he finds personally insulting ?
People need to chill a bit I think, seems a lot are triggered or uptight these days.
All you Trump libertarians should be up in arms about this …..
“The US Attorney for the Oregon District on Friday requested an investigation into masked, camouflaged federal authorities without identification badges who are arresting protesters in Portland.”
Your silence is deafening.
I was just about to post this.
Trump’s now using Gestapo tactics. If he wins this November, everyone will be required to Hail Trump.
That’s because when they talk about ‘freedom’ they mean ‘freedom to exploit and abuse people, and hide behind the cops’.
Their Libertarianism is as devoid of liberty as their Christianity is devoid of Christ.
Ummm, what’s a “Trump Libertarian”? Libertarians support Jo Jorgensen, not Trump.
Then please explain the Libertarians for Trump Facebook page.
You can make a web page for anything, but that doesn’t mean it is true.
There is so much we do not yet know about this virus.
Western civ has only been grappling with it for four months.
Our first blunder was to think that it was just another flu. We assumed that we could fight it like the last infectious disease. We clung to that hopeful fantasy for far too long.
A corona virus vaccine has never been successful for humans. (One vaccine has good results for horses.) Yet we cling to a widespread fantasy that it will be different this time. We assume that antibodies will persist like they do for measles and many other viral pathogens, but now we have growing evidence that antibody persistence is not always the case. Is everyone who recovers going to lose antibody immunity, or just some? What is the percentage breakdown if the latter is true? We don’t yet know. (Most cases are less than four months old, so we really don’t have ANY long-term data.) Is “herd immunity” even possible?
We are now realizing that even “mild” cases can have severe and probably permanent damage to the lungs, heart and kidneys. Why do some have really bad cases and other not so much? We don’t know. Why do many folks lose their sense of taste and smell, and is that permanent? We don’t know.
What we do know: Covid 19 is highly infectious and you really don’t want to catch it no matter what age group you are in.
I agree with most of your post, but it is worth pointing out that there was a vaccine developed for SARS, which appeared to be a good prospect through Phase 1 and 2, but by the time it was ready for Phase 3, SARS was gone, so there was no reason to do the Phase 3 trial. The lack of an approved Coronavirus vaccine has more to do with the lack of a coronavirus that was a problem justifying development of a vaccine, than because it is impossible.
What is concerning is that recent evidence is that immunity wears off in a few months, like the cold coronaviruses, and unlike SARS, where immunity lasted for yeas.
Re taste and smell, my daughter, a very fit 39 professional caddy on the LPGA, contracted the disease in early May. While told she had a mild case, she was still fearful of dying a few times and did lose both taste and smell which is among the most underrated but very important symptoms of the virus. She is pretty much recovered now with taste/smell finally coming back. Separately, good friend of mine’s 10 yr old granddaughter contracted disease in Mar and all recovered EXCEPT taste and smell. Both are worried about future effects that you mention. Do not catch this effing disease if you can help it!
I bet it sticks around, like the cold virus, picking off the old and weak every year.
Ok, tinfoil hat time:
Maybe it came from bats… maybe it came from a lab run by China or the Sierra Club.
If your country were facing a demographic flood of old people that need taking care of, such a virus helps reduce that burden. Reduces competition for resources, and pollution, too.
Was it produced on purpose? Do we have the tech to engineer such a thing? Having seen how many are behaving these last few years, I have no doubt that there are people out there that would gladly make and release it. I don’t know that I would even call it a totally evil act. Young people are being rode hard and put away wet by older, richer people, and I think the recent riots reflect some anger at that.
Even if you didn’t make it, it’d be beneficial to let it spread. We have a pension and social security time bomb in the US, that would be greatly helped by reducing life expectancy. Maybe what is happening isn’t incompetence, but deliberate effort to weed out the old, the weak, and the ones too dumb to wear masks.
Is this bioengineered global eugenics?
To respond to your conspiracy theory in the spirit it was given, no, we don’t know enough to create a virus that specifically targets the old and infirm. We do know enough to improve existing viruses, and make them more contagious. We call that “gain of function” research, but they really wouldn’t know what it would do. Second, it may help the financial stability of Social Security, but it also may make it worse. How? Well, it could force people onto disability, or it could substantially increase the medical expenses of those that survive.
Glad to see somebody put that out there.
Blunder??? Fauci knew enough not to be saying not to worry at the beginning of February.
I vote with my money. I only go to businesses that require masks.
I’ve seen enough outright lies in the news about C19 and BLM to make me never trust a word of it again, which leaves me in a quandary.
The virus is real. The problem are those trying to take advantage of the situation and mold us into who the hell knows what and more than happy to spread lies. So not only are they spreading bs they are making the situation worse. Could be the plan, I don’t know. But I can tell you the Federal Reserve is going to own almost everything with digital zeros before this is over. Looking a bit suspicious to me. Just like buildings that fall down on their own.
Your Conspiracy Coloring Book has a lot of unfilled areas…
Some people weren’t even given one !
Zardoz, do you work for “them” … you seem so sure.
“them?” We’re not THEM. We’re us. YOU’RE them. This isn’t going to work at all if you can’t keep that straight.
There are two camps on this, maintain the police state and wait for the cure camp and the get it over with camp. Both are valid, depending on whether you believe there can be a treatment or vaccine in the near term. I’m less than optimistic. Every day that passes causes more social, political, psychological and economic damage. It will also be harder to disassemble the remnants of the police state that is emerging. Now there is talk of going cashless to “stop the spread” in addition to the tracking software that they want to install on every cell phone. The fact that the MSM are so involved in promoting fear as well as their idiotic reporting of BLM riots scares the living S#!T out of me. I’m for keeping the virus down enough no to overload the hospitals, but get it done.
There are more that two camps. What about the camp that says we should remain open, but wear masks in indoor public places, plus do lots of testing and contact tracing?
Exactly. Generally the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea and a better answer can be found somewhere in the middle.
I was just fuming last night reading Kemp and his flying monkey gop mates comments made around 3 months ago. Kemp was this is all BS, we only have 20,000 cases we’re reopening. Now look how many they have and he’s still at it! Can’t they countersue him for negligence among other things? One of his republican buddies said “there are more important things than living” in ref to saving the economy at the expense of middle age and old people. As if young people don’t get it. I totally don’t understand this group of bible thumping clowns.
Here in Kansas the governor is trying to delay school to after labor day(which I have no idea what a few weeks will make I think it’s a baby step to keep it shut) but she has the bible brigrade underneath her trying to block it and want schools reopened at full capacity on time. Now just how the hell are you supposed to social distance? And no mention of online learning. That’s nice, get all these young people infected which means the rest of us are going to get it for sure. Kansas is one of the 18 states recently advised to rollback reopening because of exploding cases. We’re like Georgia was a few months ago with republicans full in on reopening. Of course, being a mostly republican state many people aren’t obeying the mask laws in places especially the small towns. As if these people don’t venture to larger metro areas.
I want Trump and parts of the gov’t in a massive lawsuit over this: They shut us down, millions lost jobs, millions wont be coming back, now covid is exploding and after they handed out billions to corporations all the republican talk is no more unemployment, get your ass off the couch get a job. The outfit I worked at was decimated and made the decision to ax all shifts except 1st and I was a suprervisor on 2nd for the last 5 years! Poof. Gone. Now it’s get off your ass get a job and I haven’t found anything close to what I had before, namely because I worked my way up to in it. I want to sue these bastards straight to hell.
My grandma grew up in the great depression and she always preached when things get tough the republicans will screw you to death every single time and she was right. I’m not a huge Biden fan but no way in hell i’m voting for Trump or his cohort I dont care ill vote the looney left in for spite. They’re all pretty much jokers anyway.
COHORT???? omg, are you from Calif?? that’s right out of Gavin’s pocket dictionary!!
Really.
You’re making a f#%$ing word political? Look up the definition and use that.
It looks like a page out of what has occurred and is occuring in Spain. What you are all missing in my opinion is that in Spain it is a left wing government. That is to say that while people try to reduce it to political leaning, in fact it is more based on wider interest and approach, be it economic or popularity or even simple incompetence. Anyone can take their pick of best approach, the arguments are myriad, but clear data presentation should be demanded by all. Only transparency allows people to see through any corruption that might occur, allowing people to make informed decisions. That everyone will still argue is besides the point, at least it will be over relevant questions, so pushing for better information.
Also, Spain did a full long lockdown, and is roughly back at where it was in number of cases now just before that lockdown, and only a couple of weeks after easing restrictions, as infections increase rapidly.
Spain has a 1.4% positive, they are doing fine, they had 28% on April 20th. Georgia on the other hand has 15.5% or ten times more than Spain now. Your post is fact free.
” selective ignorance”
That appears to be the problem with your interpretation of data. Please reread my comment. Your response is just incredulous.
Was that an echo ???
The facts are number of infected found each day is at a level from which even with lockdown mass fatalities occur, judging by previous experience, in Spain.
You can tell me it is younger generation so not so dangerous, you can say they are finding more people because of expanded testing so the numbers are not comparable. You can even try to feed me a positivity ratio, but my reply to that is that without context it is not helpful. Do you know if testing is random across the country, how many who ask for tests are tested, at what point of symptoms those tested are tested. Do you have the details for those in March. You think you can compare positivity in US with Spain without examining similar details ?
In March the outbreak was in Madrid mainly, those they tested were mostly with severe symptoms, but many of those they didn’t even. If they had tested broadly across the country the numbers would have been diluted. This time it is Barcelona and Cataluña the epicentre, the rest of the country just trending up slightly, so any % number is likely heavily diluted. In Spain they tend to undercount, some places in the world they overcount, maybe in the US… but not in Georgia apparently.
So the sum is what it is for Spain, and to disprove that you are going to have to search up various studies on % of population and infected tested in March and compare it with the method they are using now, to even start to question the significance of latest numbers. I don’t mind that it turns out the current relevance is lower , and often admit that almost all the data is dubious, but one thing I won’t agree to is that current data is not of concern just because of a test ratio of infected.
I see this story has brought our covidiots out in force this morning. Denial will not make the virus go away and won’t help the Trumpster. He is headed for the dumpster.
You are the covidiot
They get embarrassed and wander back to their safe space fairly quickly. There was a brigade of kooks from zero hedge a couple months back, but they are almost all gone.
link to whatsnew2day.com
Lockdowns if anything are slowing down herd immunity, especially in the young, meaning they don’t acquire immunity that protects them as the grow older
A number of articles suggest herd immunity may be a myth due to the short duration of antibodies.
Worse, the second infection has, in most cases, been more serious than the first. No one has yet been infected three times, so we don’t know if the third time is worse yet.
Not necessarily. If enough people have cross-immunity and/or innate little susceptibility, the conditions to dampen any spread are far lower than the 1-1/R₀ thresholds used by vaccine programs (to eradicate a pathogen). Herd immunity thresholds are a vaccination concept. Real world epidemics never infect everybody, as in the simplistic theoretical SEIR models that assume counter-factual 100% homogenous susceptibility and transmission. This thing could easily transform into another low intensity background endemic disease.
Eradication was out of the question in March (when public health authorities announced we were too late for containment and moving to mitigation). This was especially reinforced by the news that Covid spreads among the stray cat population.
You are dreaming. If antibodies are short lived you will never achieve cross immunity globally so this virus is with us to stay. I grant you that there may be a sizable population that is asymptomatic but there are a hell of a lot of people that are not as witnessed by the global death toll.
Can you even read? I am saying you will never achieve eradication!
Cross immunity is always individual, not global. But it lowers transmission thresholds, very substantially depending on its prevalence and effectiveness.
Many epidemiologists have pointed out that this thing has never gone exponential from the beginning, Even before any measures were instituted, growth rates were decreasing. Mathematical modelers have said early on that the dynamics act as if 80% of the people are not in the susceptible pool, calling this epidemiological “dark matter”. Part of the explanation likely comes from more and more studies showing that the presence of gamma immunoglobulin is playing a different role than many thought. Seroconversion is not a reliable measure of exposure. There is protective immune response outside of such antibodies in many individuals.
You shouldn’t pick on those less fortunate than you in the knowledge arena. Poor infinity.
It does act like some portion of the population has immunity, but 80% is too high a number. If 80% were immune, it would not spread at all as herd immunity would have existed from the start. More plausibly, if you want to use the 80% number, 80% of the population has partial immunity, perhaps from memory T-cells trained for the cold corona virus, that permits them to get sick, and to spread the disease, but to fight it off fairly quickly with no symptoms. That would explain how it can spread, but also why more people haven’t become sick.
Keep drinking the kool aid.
If there is no lasting immunity, there will be no vaccine. There will be herd immunity or this is the end of the world as we know it. Do we live in a police state forever? Our children never return to school? No social gatherings? Economic collapse will come of this, and the government can’t plaster things over with newly printed money forever. I’m not buying what you’re selling.
Have you ever heard of therapeutics?
Even if antibodies fade, memory T-Cells are longer lasting. Thus, if a vaccine can stimulate the production of memory T-cells, it could provide longer lasting, but less complete protection. If Covid continues to be a problem, science will keep trying to find a solution until one is found.
Excellent! My first thought when people started screaming about the antibodies fading was about the T-cells, and about antibody re-production from a previous known antigen. You’re the first I’ve seen mention it anywhere.
Too bad that California, which has been under some sort of lockdown more than most states, destroys the argument calling for more of the same. And the cloth masks are absolutely worthless, so any mandate that doesn’t specify the quality of the mask, including it’s filtration specs and a proper fitting, are also just as useless. Of the other states, New York and Illinois, two bastions of the “it’s Trump’s fault crowd” are only rivaled by Louisiana in having the worst outcomes so far. Last time I checked, nobody in CA, NY or Il is going to follow anything Trump woulda/shoulda/coulda recommended.
And if Trump did everything wrong, please list what steps he should have done that actually fall within his Constitutional powers (you know, for the good of the country that you’re so desperately wanting to save). Wear a useless mask? Mandate that nursing homes accept infected virus patients like the idiot NY governor? Lock down the safer outdoor venues like beaches like the moron governor of CA?
Or just keep banning religious services but allowing protests and riots = utter stupidity.
Stopped all international flights and all domestic flights in January.
Used the defense production act to produce massive amounts of PPE including N-95 or greater respirators and distributed them to the general population.
Told the public early on to wear masks, just stop hording N-95 masks because healthcare workers needed them.
Used the defense production act to produce massive numbers of test kits and secure reagents.
DO YOU WANT MORE?
If you are going to be critical of Democratic Governor’s, how about you be critical of the HMFIC POTUS too?
I live in California, Newsom screwed up by caving to Covidiots like Jojo and yourself and opened up too fast and too early not following the guidelines for case loads and contact tracing.
Patriot my ass
You were doing good until you snarked about my patriotism, who you know nothing about. So see, you’re just like Trump!
Responding to your points:
Stopping all flights (when the majority of people either knew little about the virus or just thought it was a China thing) in January is silly. We all know how the democrat half of the country laughed at just the China ban, and held social gatherings to show how silly they thought the whole thing was.
Not sure using the act would help early on when N-95 masks might not have been made in this country fast enough for everyone. Saving them for healthcare workers is similar to saving fire-fighting equipment for fire fighters. It would seem kinda silly in that case, so you can’t say that was a mistake.
To this day there is no evidence that regular masks do a damn thing. Even in healthcare settings, the N-95’s are still considered not enough, and there is a host of plastic screens used to somehow allow intubations without face to face proximity with known covid patients.
Sounds good.
Criticize Trump: I do plenty. I think he could explicitly provide the known data that either shows what’s effective and what’s not, and he could explicitly explain what things he can do as president and what things the states have more power over. Without those things being done, everyone is firing off half-baked arguments that favor their favorite side, just like this is a high school football game.
Newsom or anyone else should follow proven data. At times we have heard that staying at home indoors is good, but then NY found that the majority of their new cases came from people who did just that.
Through all of this, you leave one key question hanging out there: what are the negative effects, including death (not just “economic,” of locking things down? If the damage and the deaths were easy to measure, that would be a no-brainer. However, each person is supposed to have the freedom to make choices about their own life. Without 100% proven facts, nobody should be screaming for wholesale lockdowns as if they are without harm.
Or you know he could just stop domestic flights now. 750,000 Covidiots flying around on the daily while we pop 75,000 new cases per day.
Of course if he takes any action now he is of course admitting that he was wrong and my god the narcissist cant have that. He has been perfect.
We will end up being right up there with fine first world countries like India, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico at the end of this thing. Proud of your POTUS still?
Just compare the US Covid stats to the rest of the world to see the ineptitude of Trump. Perhaps he should have taken his cue from how other countries handled the pandemic instead of declaring it to be a hoax, promote unproven drug treatments, suggest injecting bleach, lie about the availability of Covid testing and brow beat state governors into reopening despite stats suggesting they were not ready. Trump is a complete embarrassment to the US.
Relying on statistics to model government eptitude assumes you have a perfect understanding of the epidemic dynamics. Nobody does, and there are too many confounding variables to mention. Fact is, it was apparent in Feb that the USA would have a bad bout because of the co-morbidities (metabolic syndrome, obese, diabetic, hypertensive) and the poor (public) health system. In the end, many US states will not have CFR’s worse than European countries. In Europe there is plenty of vociferous discussion about all aspects of this epidemic (though the MSM highlights the Pharma/medical orthodoxy), but it has nowhere devolved to the right-left political idiocy that is apparent in America.
By the way, there is plenty of skepticism about masks in Europe, and there was almost no mask wearing until after the epidemic waned. Looking at people’s behavior it is impossible to believe that this is what is keeping a so-called second wave (what is that, virologically, anyways?) at bay.
So you’re in favor of hydroxychloroquine, used in many countries with success.
First, cloth masks are not useless. In a recent study, when someone coughed or sneezed, the virus particles were projected as far as 12 feet. When wearing even a simple bandana, that projection was limited to 18 inches. With the best masks, it was reduced even more, to about 8 inches. Make no mistake, even a simple bandana is far, far better than nothing. Even more significant, real world results shows that places that mandate masks have a far lower incidence than those that do not.
As for what Trump should have done, that’s simple enough. For a politician, a crisis is an opportunity to show what he can do, and the result in normally soaring popularity. W had his popularity soar to 90% after 9/11. All Trump needed to do was to declare that it was a crisis, display empathy to the afflicted, call for unity in fighting it, and form a bi-partisan committee to address how we were going to deal with it, and then stay out of the middle of it. He was handed a win-win situation that would have led to a landslide win in November. He would have won if Covid turned out to be serious, and he would have won if Covid turned out to be a big nothing. Even if the economy went into a recession, it would not have been his fault, and so long as he continued to show empathy, it would not have affected his re-election at all, unless he injected himself back into the middle with a comment such as “Brownie is doing a heck of a job”.
Instead, Trump never called for unity, and for inconceivable reasons, treated it as a partisan issue rather than a healthcare crisis. After starting well with the travel restrictions, he made a decision to treat it as a joke, saying that it would vanish on it’s own in April. He also, after appointing a committee, insisted on injecting himself into the middle. As a result of being at the center, he implicitly accepted credit if his actions turned out well, and blame if they did not. Since Covid did not vanish, and since the US has among the worst results in the world, he gets the blame, because he’s at the center of the response. He wanted the credit, if the response succeeded, so it is natural that he got the blame when it failed.
Would any response have succeeded? Other countries have done better, so I have to say yes, but even if the answer is no, Trump could have, and should have, insulated himself from the risk of failure by making the response team bi-partisan. Then we could have addressed the crisis as a united country. Besides insulating himself from the risk of failure, that would also have increased the chances that the response would be successful.
“starting well with the travel restrictions”
Just China, way to slow to restrict Europe.
I agree that later, when the problem in Italy developed, travel to Italy should have been restricted as well. By then, however, there should have been a committee in place to make that call, insulating Trump from being the one to do it.
Perhaps cloth masks may block SOME of the particles but who knows how many particles are needed to infect someone?
Additionally, our bodies are a finely tuned system. Obstructing the flow of oxygen and CO2 for very long is not a good thing for your health. Masks are meant for short-term usage in surgery situations, not for 24 X 7 wear.
Blocking SOME of the particles is critically important. The more virus particles you receive (i.e. “the inoculum”), the worse the outcome. This is true for all viruses, not just covid. Think of it this way. If you have an empty field, and plant an acorn, in time you may have a forest, but it will take a very long time. If you instead plant 1000 acorns, you will have a forest much sooner.
Since in Covid infections, it is a race to see whether the immune system can defeat Covid before Covid can deactivate the immune system, the size of the inoculum is critical. By the way, this is not new knowledge. As long ago as 1200 AD, before there was ever a smallpox vaccine, people would deliberately infect people with a tiny portion of a scab. If you got just the right size, it would be enough to infect the person, but only with a mild case, and they would have lifetime immunity.
One doesn’t ‘ban’ a riot. You should look up the word.
here is your guide for mask materials link to imgur.com
I’m lucky to live in one of the TWO counties i the state of CA that have not been told to re-close by our bleeding heart Governor Newsom. Therefore, I can go to the gym and work out and get to talk to more people about what they are seeing re: the virus.
Interestingly, with all of the people in my network (close to 200), I have heard of only ONE person (whom I did not know, a 4th degree contact) who got CV19, suffered for a couple of days and has since recovered. I and everyone I know, do not know anyone else who got sick or died of the virus!
And the mask wearing/SD in my area is maybe 50%.
Which is why I have been and remain a virus skeptic and believe that the panic and fear of CV19 is stoked by the media and all out of proportion to reality.
Jojo, facts matter. There are 58 counties in California. Newsome’ latest order has additional restriction on counties on the watch list. The watch list currently contains 31 counties. So NO you are not in one of the TWO counties that have not been told to re-close.
All counties have been ordered to close Bars, indoor restaurants, most other indoor operations. If a county is on the watch list for 3 days they must shutdown further, closing that includes gyms, hair salons, barbershops, nail salons, other personal care services, indoor malls, offices in non-critical sectors, and places of worship.
Do you really need bodies piled in your front yard to become a believer? Maybe you can get Chuck Woolery’d, too bad you would never come on here and admit it, and delete your account.
Completely agree with Jojo
And tRump too I am sure. Who needs facts whne you can just make up whatever you want and run with it.
You are correct JoJo. It is all a hoax.
That hoax killed 3 of my inlaws an has one in intensive care.
Sounds like you people have bad immunity.
Zardoz – Please accept my deepest condolences. My reply to JoJo was sarcasm. I should have labeled it as such.
Unlike Jojo, I do personally know people who have COVID-19 and I know of at least one person who has died from it. Despite that, I still believe mandatory shut-downs are a mistake, not because the virus is not potentially serious, but because government has no ability to manage what is best for each and every individual. Also, government should stop kidding itself that it is helping matters with shut-downs. Most people are required to fend for themselves when it comes to this illness, and shut-downs are making that more difficult. There are a couple reasons for this: (1) Unless someone is close to death’s door, an overloaded hospital will refuse to admit a person for care; and (2) The testing is mostly useless because the results are taking too long and the veracity is questionable. I know of more than one case where a person got tired of waiting in line and went home, but was mailed a test result even though no sample was taken! The system is broken. US governments should acknowledge this reality and adjust their plan. Restricting people’s movement and commerce has not been helpful. They should do what they can to encourage people to limit their exposure and they should help those who need medical care get access to care, and at this point that is all they should do.
JOJO takes a representative 200 sampling of tens of millions and reports the facts back to us and i’m sure he is in contact with 200 on daily basis as well. It’s this kind of stupidity that is going to get this country decimated and resorting to insane tactics before this is over. It’s coming. It’s too bad most people have the attention span of a 2 year old.
If your handle of Kansasdog means you live in KS, then no need to say anything further. [lol]
I’m not surprised that you don’t know anyone who has died of Covid. Most people don’t. With each passing day, though, the number of people that do does grow. By November most people will know someone that died.
Just one example, likely of many.
Jack Dake Didn’t Die from COVID, But the Government Says He Did
Larry O’Connor
Posted: Jul 16, 2020 12:50 PM
link to townhall.com
Show the many then. I bet you could come up with 5 if you work at it. Out of how many hundred thousand?
And more:
Jul 17, 2020
UK gov’t (finally) admits Covid statistics are inaccurate
The health secretary has apparently just realised something that’s been obvious to many of us for months
Kit Knightly
Here’s another. Keep your head buried in the ground ostrich. What you can’t see can’t hurt you.
FOX 35 INVESTIGATES: Questions raised after fatal motorcycle crash listed as COVID-19 death
July 17, 2020
Seems then that Israeli scientist and others were right in that you need a hard lockdown for at least 30 days and more like 60 days (and I’ve seen six months in one study), not 3 weeks like Georgia, for Covid-19 to go down to manageable “test-and-trace” levels. In the alternative to and in addition to lockdown, you can require mandatory masks for all people (you need masks on both infected and non-infected, since masks on just infected are not enough to stop the spread). This is what science says, but some of the ignorant folk in GA think you can outlaw the laws of physics.
Breaking news: the Georgia governor just outlawed gravity…to the moon Alice!
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”
link to nejm.org
That’s a very dated article. Two months is a lifetime in a fast moving pandemic. Since then we have seen real world data that shows masks do work, and that places that have required masks have dramatically less spread than places that haven’t.
For sure masks work, but there are a whole load of exceptions:
If people are given a false sense of security.
If they are not worn properly.
In high load environments.
Etc. etc. etc.
So you will find contradictory studies, and whether they are worth mandating “depends” on a whole load of other factors, like how society behaves or the obligation to work in frequented spaces etc.
There just is not a single answer, my view is that masks should be encouraged, that alternative to not wearing masks should be available ( simple example you have two stores, one with wearing masks obligatory, the other not). Once you start talking of work environment or public transport it gets even more difficult. However I think to train a whole population to wear masks properly all the time is just not feasible, and therefore to expect or mandate that is unreal. That reality only happens when society itself insists in person between people, if it becomes an understood nescessity that is reasonable. For now there is no verdict on that, but some flexibility both ways would go a long way. It means people have to at least be respectful to each other with regards, which can be difficult. It means accepting in some circumstances masks might need to be obligatory as only available compromise, but that that does not prove anything nor should that kind of obligation be extended anywhere that it is not strictly necessary. People are going to have to make a sense of all this that most everyone can settle with.
That’s just bullshit. Louisiana’s governor extended the hard lockdown to 5/15 (52) days and we also are experiencing the southern upswing.
Another covidiot who thinks he has science in his back pocket.
– There is no scientific evidence that lock-downs work. Not even anecdotal (e.g., Japan, no lock down; Switzerland, Sweden, no lock down, nowhere near the no-lockdown mortality predicted by Imperial College)
– There is no scientific evidence that masks work. According to the CDC, zero of 14 randomized clinical trials show any effects. Hospitals (where the people have PPE and use it properly) remain chief nodes of transmission. It even cautions on the packaging of N95 masks that they do not prevent transmission.
– Could you cite a definitive scientific study about the relative weight of all possible transmission vectors (aerosol, droplet, manual, oral/fecal)? Studies on droplets and aerosols have trouble finding virions in the air within 2m of acute patients, sampling all the air for 30 mins with lab guage equipment.
So the lockdown in China did not work? Jackass.
Uh, at this moment the Israeli gov is contemplating the revocation of the scientist’s PHDs and the expulsion of ‘out of state’ scientists among the group or to employ governor Gavin’s nomenclature, their ‘cohort’….and I am quite serious.
Masks only work in health care facilities. Can anybody explain why masks only magically work in health care facilities, and not generally?
IMO “lockdowns” are not necessary if adequate preparations—-generalized use of masks, physical distancing, testing, tracing, ample medical personnel and facilities, measures to redesign workplaces for safety and funds to subsidize (especially) small businesses and workers during the epidemic—-are organized and put in place. “Lockdowns” are often an outcome of the failure, or unwillingness, to make adequate preparations. They can also be an opportunistic bid for greater power and control over a population, there should be no doubt of that.
I looked at Georgia data about 3 months ago and could not figure it out. All of the covid tracking sites had significantly more cases than Georgia’s website was showing. I looked because they had some serious hot spots in more rural areas and it was surprising to me that they rushed to reopen. GOP Figure.
I have suspected for a while now that the red state governors have been obfuscating Covid metrics. Surprise, surprise I was right. More covidiots one and all.
The governors are trash to begin with. Nothing new there.
Much more concerning, is that non managed data is not being made available by those collecting it.
Is the American indoctrinati really so pliantly bent over by now, that doctors and nurses at a contagious disease testing facility, don’t as a matter of routine publish the result of their tests on their own websites, and make it available to aggregators asking for it? Instead of trusting the subhuman garbage known as politicians to gratuitously misrepresent that which they spend their time and effort working to obtain?