Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

This Japanese Island Lifted Its Coronavirus Lockdown Too Soon and Became a Warning to the World

Here is a link to an article about what happened in Hokkaido. Everyone should read it.

 

In four U.S. state prisons, nearly 3,300 inmates test positive for coronavirus -- 96% without symptoms

I wish Democrats didn’t just want to keep the economy shut down to ensure Trump doesn’t get re-elected in November.

 

While I think we should take re-opening slow, without human immunity there is a certain reality that no matter when you re-open, there will likely be a second outbreak. That might be true 2 weeks from now, as well as 3 months from now. It’s going to be ugly until an anti-viral cure is found and/or a vaccine. Something that statistically knocks it down a few pegs from the scary death totals that started peaking in April.

 

The short answer is that 5% of the population would test positive, falsely, if the prevalence of the disease is low (say 1%). In this case, most of the positive results would be false positives (~5:1 ratio).

 

Since I’ve done it the last few weeks, this week’s hike. Only a few people today because it was a bad weather day, which was weird by recent standards. Bear’s Den in Bluemont.

 

Many Democrats do not want Trump elected in November (Hell, more people voted for his opponent last time). And nobody wants the unemployment, pain, and suffering that has come with this shutdown. Your premise is absurd at best, despicable at worst.

The analog would be to say "I wish Republicans didn’t just want to keep the economy shut down to ensure Trump does get re-elected in November." Sure, some politicians (and maybe even extremists) on both sides are this callous, but labelling all Republicans as such is ignorant and repugnant. Just like your post.

 

Funny, you didn’t call the post I was replying to repugnant. Shows your hypocrisy. Not surprising. I didn’t vote for trump in 2016 and won’t vote for him in 2020. But I will call out crap like I did. Your really solidified the liberal stance. Thanks

 

I feel like that’s impossible. Every virus I thought works the same. You get it. You get sick. Your body fights it off with antibodies or you die. Those left have antibodies. Of course all my medical training come from the game Operation. Hated the butterflies.

 

Funny, what I got out of it was dude sho nuff knows his stuff. RE is more complex than just Boom Boom Betty from C-21 having an open house on a FSBO down the block. Sheesh. And don't you know guys like DJT (and he is surely not the only one) feasts on that.

 

death to confirmed case held steady, dropped a little. need more of that

 

They aren't brainwashed. They don't care. Not many of them. This has been some hoax, hasn't it?

 

yes quite the hoax. It’s all made up. Just a Chinese/liberal/bill gates conspiracy.

 

The falsities do not end. They just change. And, no lessons from Hokaido.

 

If I recall, there was some dogging on Sweden earlier in this thread. Remember, it's early in the game. Anyway interesting data driven opinion piece in the WSJ.

Opinion | Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No

To normalize for an unambiguous comparison of deaths between states at the midpoint of an epidemic, we counted deaths per million population for a fixed 21-day period, measured from when the death rate first hit 1 per million—e.g.,‒three deaths in Iowa or 19 in New York state. A state’s “days to shutdown” was the time after a state crossed the 1 per million threshold until it ordered businesses shut down.

We ran a simple one-variable correlation of deaths per million and days to shutdown, which ranged from minus-10 days (some states shut down before any sign of Covid-19) to 35 days for South Dakota, one of seven states with limited or no shutdown. The correlation coefficient was 5.5%—so low that the engineers I used to employ would have summarized it as “no correlation” and moved on to find the real cause of the problem. (The trendline sloped downward—states that delayed more tended to have lower death rates—but that’s also a meaningless result due to the low correlation coefficient.)

No conclusions can be drawn about the states that sheltered quickly, because their death rates ran the full gamut, from 20 per million in Oregon to 360 in New York. This wide variation means that other variables—like population density or subway use—were more important. Our correlation coefficient for per-capita death rates vs. the population density was 44%. That suggests New York City might have benefited from its shutdown—but blindly copying New York’s policies in places with low Covid-19 death rates, such as my native Wisconsin, doesn’t make sense.

How did the Swedes do? They suffered 80 deaths per million 21 days after crossing the 1 per million threshold level. With 10 million people, Sweden’s death rate‒without a shutdown and massive unemployment‒is lower than that of the seven hardest-hit U.S. states—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey and New York—all of which, except Louisiana, shut down in three days or less. Despite stories about high death rates, Sweden’s is in the middle of the pack in Europe, comparable to France; better than Italy, Spain and the U.K.; and worse than Finland, Denmark and Norway. Older people in care homes accounted for half of Sweden’s deaths.

 

Fact check: Medicare pays hospitals more money for COVID-19 patients

Disgusting if true.

 

Pretty hard to argue with any of this. Well said.

 

Most Republicans aren't.

 

Side note: Why are so many realtors named Betty...and Barbara?

 

You are right. It’s disgusting that Laura Ingraham pushes conspiracies on everything. You charge more if a cardiac patient needs open heart surgery versus simply high blood pressure medicine as well. I’m no doctor but this sounds like a “how can we drive up some outrage?”

 

Plus the 1980's glamour shots on their business cards and on the billboards. LOL.