It Happened - No Church!

[Islander]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

You do not understand how pandemics work. Of course the deaths are low now. The first death in the US was only two weeks ago. It is going to increase. Look at Italy. The first death in Italy was on February 22nd. Less then a month later their daily death count was 368 and there is no reason to believe that is going to slow. Iran reported 145 total deaths on March 7 and is reporting 853 total deaths today and they are probably downplaying the numbers.

It is interesting that you are not able to refute the arguments posited but took the liberty to state that I do not understand how pandemics work. That is a totally baseless assertion and I thought pertinent to point out that you have absolutely no idea of who I am or what my field of practice is in order to make such statement. So, you could not argue in a cogent way about the information presented thus take on a tangent of editorial comments. Talk about changing the subject. That's the "don't confuse me with the facts I already made up my mind" card. Not a parting shot. It's just that we have arrived at the point of diminishing returns. We have just beat this one to death, I think. 

Edited March 16, 2020 by Islander

[The Nehor]

40 minutes ago, Islander said:

It is interesting that you are not able to refute the arguments posited but took the liberty to state that I do not understand how pandemics work. That is a totally baseless assertion and I thought pertinent to point out that you have absolutely no idea of who I am or what my field of practice is in order to make such statement. So, you could not argue in a cogent way about the information presented thus take on a tangent of editorial comments. Talk about changing the subject. That's the "don't confuse me with the facts I already made up my mind" card. Not a parting shot. It's just that we have arrived at the point of diminishing returns. We have just beat this one to death, I think. 

I showed the current progression to show that your stats are meaningless but you ignored them. The deaths from Spanish flu were once less than those from other strains of influenza too. It did not prove that it would be minor nor does the low number of deaths in the US a few weeks in show that this will be small.

Saying you do not know how pandemics work is not a baseless assertion. You proved it with that ridiculous Fox News talking point about influenza.

[pogi]

20 hours ago, Islander said:

Notice that the media is fanning the flames and have nothing else to report. They seem invested is stoking the public into a panic and sink the economy and the country with it. I received an elite education in the former communist block and my paranoid credentials are impeccable. This media agitation is politically motivated. End of the story. Until the end of January there was absolutely nothing in the news cycles but the impeachment. Now Corona Virus. You would have thought that people were dropping like flies on the streets. All I see is a lot of agitation but very little factual information. 

What benefit would the media gain from "sinking the economy and the country with it"?   You say that this coverage is all politically motivated, but what political party would wants to sink the economy and country?  The President of the US just advised against any gathering over 10 people.  Are you going to accuse the republicans of stoking panic too?  In case you haven't noticed, all political parties are taking this very seriously.  It is not just the media.   How do you not report on a pandemic that is shutting down the entire world - not just our country? 

[Tacenda]

3 hours ago, Tacenda said:

Saw this report today, this gives me hope! I say this because I see the US is taking it more serious now. Hopefully we'll do as well as Singapore soon to keep it at bay like they did.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/12/814522489/singapore-wins-praise-for-its-covid-19-strategy-the-u-s-does-not?fbclid=IwAR1YBCP6OH2Ayn1VKhR90PmAKSUBtQ4ePVdKnlb050UmOwtKz0JZXoIc75s

Not sure how accurate this report is. 

[webbles]

4 hours ago, Islander said:

Second, let's not argue as to my qualifications in the medical field to render a measured opinion on the current situation. It will surprise you who I am and what I do but I will resist the temptation. The fact remains that using contagion and mortality rates across continents is faulty methodology. There are 100 other countries with higher mortality rates for influenza than the US year after year. Using Italy as a point of comparison would lead you to a flawed result. There are issues relating to population density, mode of transportation, vaccination rates, access to prophylactics and generalized use of universal precautions that influence the outcome of epidemics. Speculating or theorizing is a poor substitute for real science and statistical reality. Again 70,000 people have recovered already from COVID-19 in the US. Really assessing  how lethal this virus will turn out to be requires a bit more time. So far, there is no real evidence that it is more so than previously known strains of influenza based on the current (preliminary) mortality rates. Most of the data we have comes from China and its reliability is suspect. They are notorious for manipulating such data (e.g the avian flue and swine flue outbreaks in years past). 

Here is a short, fairly informative and clear summary of the subject by a researcher that hopefully enlightens a few people. And would be my last post on the subject.

https://now.tufts.edu/articles/how-does-covid-19-compare-flu

I'm not sure how that article is supposed to help your statements.  In that article, he says things like:

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This situation is still very unpredictable. We don’t know enough about the virus itself or how it spreads.

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I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re dealing with this virus for quite a while.

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The coronavirus is from an entirely different family of viruses, so it very well could behave differently.

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our lack of prior exposure to this virus means none of us have had the chance to develop an immune response to protect against COVID-19. That’s the kind of situation we worry about as well with pandemic flus, which typically occur when one of the strains circulating in birds or in other animals makes the jump into people.

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But if COVID-19 becomes widespread in the U.S. and other parts of the world, that will still add up to many people getting exposed to the virus and a large number of people developing severe disease. And the same holds true for an expectation of a large number of people dying from infection.

It would seem that he would agree that covid-19 is different from the flu and that it might be worse than the flu.  That was published on March 12.  On that day, the US had 663 cases, 52 deaths, and 12 recoveries.  Today, the US has 4632 cases, 85 deaths, and 17 recoveries. (see https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19).  The number of cases is almost 7 times the amount it was 4 days ago.

P.S. I noticed that my other post said that we are doubling every 4 days but the above shows a much faster growth.  I'm not exactly sure which of the two data sources are more accurate.  The other post is definitely off as the CDC shows more cases than what Our World in Data is showing.  But John Hopkins shows even more cases than the CDC.  I'm assuming this might be because the CDC doesn't report everything that local health officials report and John Hopkins is aggregating that data (see the asterisked note at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html).

[pogi]

28 minutes ago, webbles said:

The number of cases is almost 7 times the amount it was 4 days ago.

And that is before widespread access to testing has started.  Just wait until more tests are distributed and more comprehensive testing gets under way!  There is going to be an explosion of reported cases.