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The Irrational Covid

babe

Well-Known Member
I tried once to discuss the subject rationally, but then the science got crazy.

No, don't even. Don't even try to suppress this thread. Whatever your politics, this is going to be the path forward.

If anyone looks at this like some hoax or conspiracy, it's just too damn big to fit.

If anyone looks at this like a political agenda tool, it just crumbled in your hands.


I intend to bring out stuff that fits in any possible path forward, the stuff that will be the narrative that anyone will have ringing in their ears by next year.

I say it's irrational because of the political abuse. The political abuse of the subject will be like Kryptonite in any super hero who tries to make political hay from it.

Here's the list:

1. Masks failed.
reasons: 1. bad mask hygiene resulted in masks becoming more of a transport and exposure avenue for the virus than a protection for the user. You wear it too long, and don't dispose of it
safely. 2. bad masks design makes masks just symbolic gestures but not effective. 3. Mask use emboldens risk-takers.

AP

2. Quarantine failed.
reasons: 1. Orders didn't follow the science. Some governors actually ordered specific carriers to be located in vulnerable populations. Didn't use the hospitals and ships just sent carriers off to nursing homes. A lot of other equally stupid orders. Some orders partially cut public transport and forced passengers into closer quarters. Fewer trains and planes and buses without social distancing needed. 2. Stay at home failed because homes proved to be more effective spreader sites than public buildings or businesses. People at home didn't set up protection, didn't clean their air, etc. Homes became virus aggregator sites. I could go on.....
3. Treatment failed.
reasons: 1) political abuse of doctors and patients willing to try various remedies, effectively denying available efforts. Political abuse of "science" to militate against various treatments. For heaven's sake, if you have nothinjg reliable, being willing to try anything is not a crime.
2) ventilators used were literal death sentences for patients put on them. Survival stats are better for pigs in a slaughterhouse. Nobody knows how to use them, nobody knows when to begin them or stop them.

4. Stats failed. The medical reporting system was corrupted beyond any plausible defense. PCR testing was run at 40-45 cycles which generates very high rates of false positive results. Elisa tests were also run beyond the acceptable correlation limits. Orders were given that forced doctors to report non-proven cases or cases that were incidental but not primary complaints or causes. Hospitals and providers were incentivized to exaggerate case stats. Political corruption of medical practice here big-time.

5. Vaccine failed. This is a prediction, not proven yet. But here is why I think it fails. We stopped all possible real vaccine investigations based on producing either attenuated live virus or virus fragments in favor of messenger RNA productions. The problem here is that these are monoclonal preparations that will not give permanent immune defense. The messenger RNA will not persist in the human, and the protection given is extremely limited in effect. An immune response to one antigen produced in a human hosst. The virus will mutate. The human-produced antigen will soon be "seen" as a non-invasive substance.

I appreciate the idea of trying to get a "clean" vaccine without a shipload of associated foreign materials, but this is not the way to do it.

Neither Trumpsters nor Dumpsters will be crowing about our public health triumphs in the next voting cycles. We just did everything wrong.

6. Pandemic failed.

Turns out that the pandemic wasn't a real pandemic. The virus is not so deadly. 90% of people will not be seriously affected by it. We just didn't know anything, really. It is plenty serious for those who got the virus in their alveoli, where it causes holes and bleeding, and then spreads to other vital organs and provokes deadly cytokine storms. But then, that is all the reason Florida's handling of it, directed and focused on known vulnerable persons makes such a contrast with New York and several other states where clueless politicians did exactly the opposite. They all had the same information. Some chose to keep their elderly people, some chose to dispose of them.
PS. As a runner in a family of runners, I noticed a number of serious cases involving runners. People who exercise to that level of breathing are just as vulnerable as oldsters with health issues or compromised immune systems. The virus can make it to the alveolit just as if there is no defense at all.


Without those egregious errors and the false testing and false stats, this would not measure up as a pandemic.

We should not have shut down. We should have done more for vulnerable people. We should have used more questioned treatments, some of which are now know to help.

None of it makes sense to anyone. None of it is going to make any political hay. We are all just losers.
 
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I do feel they need to keep working on a more comprehensive vaccine format. But I feel we have done ok on the containment front. Not great. Sometimes not good. But ok. It could have been far worse.

Frankly we are just lucky it hasn't mutated in a much more fatal way. Imagine if it developed a hemorrhagic component or something. Ugh.

But this is absolutely a pandemic, no doubt. Fits the definition perfectly.

Definition of pandemic

(Entry 1 of 2)
1: occurring over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affecting a significant proportion of the populationpandemic malariaThe 1918 flu was pandemic and claimed millions of lives.
2: characterized by very widespread growth or extent : EPIDEMIC entry 1 sense 3a problem of pandemic proportions
 
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I am re-starting my old medical research technology company. I will be applying for funds to conduct development of a vaccine that will work.
 
I do feel they need to keep working on a more comprehensive vaccine format. But I feel we have done ok on the containment front. Not great. Sometimes not good. But ok. It could have been far worse.

Frankly we are just lucky it hasn't mutated in a much more fatal way. Imagine if it developed a hemorrhagic component or something. Ugh.

But this is absolutely a pandemic, no doubt. Fits the definition perfectly.

My whole case for trying to say it isn't a pandemic is in the stats department. Not sure the numbers are really there, but with questionable stats I can't prove it isn't, either.. so you are welcome to this position you take.

I believe a large number of cases are unreported, mild cases. I think I got it, and all my family. In November of 2019. It has come out that Covid was involved in US cases as early as August 2019. We were all exposed in November 2020 and nobody was affected in the least.

I rest my whole claim on it not being an epidemic on what I thought was an official definition by the CDC. I'll look that up.

(edit) I went to the CDC to see what it says. Pandemic in their terms can be anything new that emerges from any source, that occurs in three different countries. No threshold level in stats is required.

In common understanding, there is some notion of infectivity, which Covid has, and severity, which is what I questioned, on the notion that having an effect on 10% of people infected, involving noticeable symptoms. I don't think Covid does that. As I said, many people seem unaffected. But we have no reliable stats here. A death rate of 0.1% might not pass the public's common idea of a pandemic No one would even care to talk about 0.0000000001%. In fact that's one case in ten
billion, so likely not even ever known about. In my mind, a death rate of 1% of infected persons is significant, and a pandemic if it is infectious enough to get around to even 30% of the population in a year.. But these are only my own notions.

Antibody testing for Covid is still considered unreliable by doctors. Antigen testing is also known to be unreliable, still. During the Trump administration, the PCR cutoff was set at 40 cycles, one report said 45. With the Biden administration, the bureaucrats changed their minds and reduced it to 30 cycles.

As a practical matter, the higher cutoff is known and can be rationally expected to produce higher stats for covid due to false positive results. But it is known as well that even this cutoff does have significant problems with false negatives as well. Go figure.

At a cutoff of 30 cycles I don't think we can rationally explain the false negatives, but they do occur. Operator error?? who knows. Switched samples? Can happen. But the false positive results are reduced significantly.

A 45 cycle cutoff will produce a positive for an occasional fragment of the virus well below any other test we have. Viral loads at this level might be found within a minute of a person becoming infected, though

So anyway, Log is well-founded and backed up by almost all ideas of what a pandemic is, and my notion is pretty much worthless in a public discussion forum, even irrelevant. An outlier idea useful only in some logical discussion involving very technical lines of differentiation. Otherwise considered, by everyone but a few extremely argumentative scruplers, to be nonsense..
 
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The Covid Panicmeter folks now have stats claiming a 3% death rate with 100 million closed cases. The current active case load is 22 million with 88k serious.

 
Looking at the US stats, testing has exceeded total population because I'm sure many people have been required to test multiple times. The cases claimed so far are over 30 million, nearing 10% of the population. Deaths claimed is 547k, a number I don't accept. OK so don't count people with morrtal gunshot wounds who test positive, and I'll take you seriously. Maybe we can argue about cancer patients dying with a postive covid test. But if covid is not actually the primary admitting complaint, God only knows whether that patient would have lived if treated for covid.

Looking at my argument here, I'm saying we have a lot of false positive tests, and a lot of people called dead by covid for questionable reasons. The diagnostic test used most is the PCR with a cutoff set too high. I think, God only knows, that the false positive cases and deaths might be 20% or so. But likely we have nearly 50% of our adult population tested now, and if we have found 24k real cases and 400k real deaths it's bad enough. Vaccinations, though I question the long term efficacy, are going forward. with 20% having at least one vaccination. I consider people who have the history of a case to be immune for years to come, plus say about as many to maybe twice as many who had the virus and fought it off quickly, with resulting immunity perhaps. Putting all that up there, we are nearly 50% of total population having some resistance now. We will reach 75% in about a month. The stats generally don't reflect any vulnerability assessment and we know younger folks have some natural resistance and inability to carry.

If this were a rational covid discussion, and there were no politics involved....... we'd all be wide open now, and getting our vaccinations. And being careful about it.
 
1. Masks failed.
reasons: 1. bad mask hygiene resulted in masks becoming more of a transport and exposure avenue for the virus than a protection for the user. You wear it too long, and don't dispose of it
safely. 2. bad masks design makes masks just symbolic gestures but not effective. 3. Mask use emboldens risk-takers.
All of those factors diminished the effectiveness of masks, but that doesn't mean they failed. Mask effectiveness is one reason we are having a historic low in flu incidence.

2. Quarantine failed.
Individual quarantines succeeded, but I'm not aware of any US city on full quarantine over the last year (among other things, that would mean closing the grocery stores).
3. Treatment failed.
reasons: 1) political abuse of doctors and patients willing to try various remedies, effectively denying available efforts. Political abuse of "science" to militate against various treatments. For heaven's sake, if you have nothinjg reliable, being willing to try anything is not a crime.
2) ventilators used were literal death sentences for patients put on them. Survival stats are better for pigs in a slaughterhouse. Nobody knows how to use them, nobody knows when to begin them or stop them.
It's true that proper ventilator use was different for covid19 than for similar conditions, and this took a while to discover. There were no effective treatments that were denied.

4. Stats failed.
Yes, we all know the covid19 numbers were under-reported.

5. Vaccine failed. This is a prediction, not proven yet. But here is why I think it fails. We stopped all possible real vaccine investigations based on producing either attenuated live virus or virus fragments in favor of messenger RNA productions.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is made from inactivated adenovirus. Get that one if you feel it is best.


6. Pandemic failed.

Turns out that the pandemic wasn't a real pandemic. The virus is not so deadly. 90% of people will not be seriously affected by it.
Affecting 10% of people seriously, and killing over 1%, is hugely deadly.
 
Masks didn't "fail" because they never had a chance to succeed. The CDC finished their study and the number was 1.5% reduction.


We should still wear one, but covids damage was always going to be big here short of a Chinese level lock you in your home shutdown. I said this 9 months ago.
As for the historic low flu, I would attribute that more to complete shutdown of massive public gatherings (basketball, football, concerts).
The UK is reporting zero flu cases to date, that's almost unbelievable.
 
All of those factors diminished the effectiveness of masks, but that doesn't mean they failed. Mask effectiveness is one reason we are having a historic low in flu incidence.


Individual quarantines succeeded, but I'm not aware of any US city on full quarantine over the last year (among other things, that would mean closing the grocery stores).

It's true that proper ventilator use was different for covid19 than for similar conditions, and this took a while to discover. There were no effective treatments that were denied.


Yes, we all know the covid19 numbers were under-reported.


The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is made from inactivated adenovirus. Get that one if you feel it is best.



Affecting 10% of people seriously, and killing over 1%, is hugely deadly.
You are always so much fun.

Pretty hard to dispute your facts, but I do try.

Mostly our different conclusions derive from personal willingness to entertain ideas, in patterns that differ. I look for every opportunity to bash the peer group.

I did not know the J&J vaccine is attenuated virus. Such preparations give a much broader base for immunity (all surface protein formations as they present, probably not all altered or much altered, than a monoclonal. Therefore, much less susceptible to pathogen changes.

My idea of "how to do" the mRNA preparation is actually let the mRNA produce antigens in vitro. Sure not exactly as proteins produced by a virus in vivo, but better than having the human cell produce the antigen protein. Probably some smart young scientist working for a big Pharma company trying to sell that idea to management right now.....
 
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7. The human condition failed

I’ve never seen a time where people have ignored their largely Christian roots and only ask what’s in it for them then their flock. Give us your tired, your weak and your poor, but only if they look right and from the right places.

Humans will always be a fractured species, but one can only wonder if the pandemic would have lasted a month or two if we could have lived within ourselves and the good of others instead of our own self-righteousness.
 
I tried once to discuss the subject rationally, but then the science got crazy.

No, don't even. Don't even try to suppress this thread. Whatever your politics, this is going to be the path forward.

If anyone looks at this like some hoax or conspiracy, it's just too damn big to fit.

If anyone looks at this like a political agenda tool, it just crumbled in your hands.


I intend to bring out stuff that fits in any possible path forward, the stuff that will be the narrative that anyone will have ringing in their ears by next year.

I say it's irrational because of the political abuse. The political abuse of the subject will be like Kryptonite in any super hero who tries to make political hay from it.

Here's the list:

1. Masks failed.
reasons: 1. bad mask hygiene resulted in masks becoming more of a transport and exposure avenue for the virus than a protection for the user. You wear it too long, and don't dispose of it
safely. 2. bad masks design makes masks just symbolic gestures but not effective. 3. Mask use emboldens risk-takers.

AP

2. Quarantine failed.
reasons: 1. Orders didn't follow the science. Some governors actually ordered specific carriers to be located in vulnerable populations. Didn't use the hospitals and ships just sent carriers off to nursing homes. A lot of other equally stupid orders. Some orders partially cut public transport and forced passengers into closer quarters. Fewer trains and planes and buses without social distancing needed. 2. Stay at home failed because homes proved to be more effective spreader sites than public buildings or businesses. People at home didn't set up protection, didn't clean their air, etc. Homes became virus aggregator sites. I could go on.....
3. Treatment failed.
reasons: 1) political abuse of doctors and patients willing to try various remedies, effectively denying available efforts. Political abuse of "science" to militate against various treatments. For heaven's sake, if you have nothinjg reliable, being willing to try anything is not a crime.
2) ventilators used were literal death sentences for patients put on them. Survival stats are better for pigs in a slaughterhouse. Nobody knows how to use them, nobody knows when to begin them or stop them.

4. Stats failed. The medical reporting system was corrupted beyond any plausible defense. PCR testing was run at 40-45 cycles which generates very high rates of false positive results. Elisa tests were also run beyond the acceptable correlation limits. Orders were given that forced doctors to report non-proven cases or cases that were incidental but not primary complaints or causes. Hospitals and providers were incentivized to exaggerate case stats. Political corruption of medical practice here big-time.

5. Vaccine failed. This is a prediction, not proven yet. But here is why I think it fails. We stopped all possible real vaccine investigations based on producing either attenuated live virus or virus fragments in favor of messenger RNA productions. The problem here is that these are monoclonal preparations that will not give permanent immune defense. The messenger RNA will not persist in the human, and the protection given is extremely limited in effect. An immune response to one antigen produced in a human hosst. The virus will mutate. The human-produced antigen will soon be "seen" as a non-invasive substance.

I appreciate the idea of trying to get a "clean" vaccine without a shipload of associated foreign materials, but this is not the way to do it.

Neither Trumpsters nor Dumpsters will be crowing about our public health triumphs in the next voting cycles. We just did everything wrong.

6. Pandemic failed.

Turns out that the pandemic wasn't a real pandemic. The virus is not so deadly. 90% of people will not be seriously affected by it. We just didn't know anything, really. It is plenty serious for those who got the virus in their alveoli, where it causes holes and bleeding, and then spreads to other vital organs and provokes deadly cytokine storms. But then, that is all the reason Florida's handling of it, directed and focused on known vulnerable persons makes such a contrast with New York and several other states where clueless politicians did exactly the opposite. They all had the same information. Some chose to keep their elderly people, some chose to dispose of them.
PS. As a runner in a family of runners, I noticed a number of serious cases involving runners. People who exercise to that level of breathing are just as vulnerable as oldsters with health issues or compromised immune systems. The virus can make it to the alveolit just as if there is no defense at all.


Without those egregious errors and the false testing and false stats, this would not measure up as a pandemic.

We should not have shut down. We should have done more for vulnerable people. We should have used more questioned treatments, some of which are now know to help.

None of it makes sense to anyone. None of it is going to make any political hay. We are all just losers.

I bet you run in gray cotton sweatpants.
 
the leaps of logic by babe never cease to amaze me.

by all accounts, we saved millions upon millions of lives the world over, and this guy is sitting here saying we failed. sure, we could have done better, but we have done a pretty damn good job, considering how divided the rhetoric and actions have been.
 
Masks didn't "fail" because they never had a chance to succeed. The CDC finished their study and the number was 1.5% reduction.


We should still wear one, but covids damage was always going to be big here short of a Chinese level lock you in your home shutdown. I said this 9 months ago.
As for the historic low flu, I would attribute that more to complete shutdown of massive public gatherings (basketball, football, concerts).
The UK is reporting zero flu cases to date, that's almost unbelievable.
Why would you link to that garbage article when you could take 2 seconds and click on the actual study with good unbiased information in it? That poor news/opinion article does not represent the study well at all. If this is the type of "news" you read I would highly suggest finding a better source, there are many.

China only did a home shut you in lockdown in Wuhan where it was obviously really bad. I have been in China the entire time and have not had any home lockdown quarantine, nor have the vast majority of people. The most extreme was one city I was in closed indoor dining and gatherings, although a lot of cities never did that like Beijing, they only suggested it. When I moved back to Beijing they asked me to do a quarantine at home. I was allowed to walk around outside in the block the complex was in and order food and other things. After that I was given a pass that got me into the apartment complex and near by restaurants and businesses. The reason China stopped the spread is because they closed the borders and travel within China where outbreaks were. I would have to do a 3 week quarantine if I left the country and returned. If I went to a high risk area in China then I would have to do a hotel quarantine for 2 weeks. People also wore their masks here. They also did very good contact tracing. Businesses were asked to track their customers. When I went to a restaurant the asked for my phone number and name in case anyone there had an outbreak, those people who were in close contact were asked to do a hotel quarantine for 2 weeks and take multiple tests. Ive said it before, China handled the outbreak very poorly early by not releasing information and actively suppressing information about the outbreak in Wuhan. A lot of that was local leaders trying to save face, but I am sure the central government wanted to know more before telling people, which is wrong. But since then they have done the correct steps to stop the spread that more countries should and many have.

I think like the studies show, masks definitely help but they aren't going to stop the outbreak. They are very cheap and very easy to wear with no bad effects, so why not wear one in public indoors near people? But the biggest factor is restricted travel and quarantine people who have. To date USA has not closed the border except to China, which is pretty sad since that is based on risk prevention but politics. Also no USA citizens were ever required to quarantine on return from high risks areas, that was a bad decision and probably still is. Look at what Australia has done.
 
Linking to articles from Oann is a non-starter. I mean, journalism has bias, but Oann so overtly swims in it that they could tell me the sky is blue and I wouldn’t believe them.
 
Masks didn't "fail" because they never had a chance to succeed. The CDC finished their study and the number was 1.5% reduction.


We should still wear one, but covids damage was always going to be big here short of a Chinese level lock you in your home shutdown. I said this 9 months ago.
As for the historic low flu, I would attribute that more to complete shutdown of massive public gatherings (basketball, football, concerts).
The UK is reporting zero flu cases to date, that's almost unbelievable.

I trust the CDC to say what it means, rather than rely on the highly biased, cherry-picked results of OANN.

What's unbelievable is the notion that two diseases are spread the same way, yet one has been severely hampered and the other untouched by the same preventative measures. Try to think more critically.
 
Yeah 100 bucks per gram is pretty cheap round here...

I trust the CDC to say what it means, rather than rely on the highly biased, cherry-picked results of OANN.
The CDC recommends not to use NIOSH approved N95 masks, saying they are needed by front line health care workers.

I’m sure they are, but one year ago, after deciding the pandemic might worsen considerably in the Winter of 2020-2021, I ordered a box of CDC approved, genuine, N95 masks. I wanted the best mask available when I entered places like the super market. I have both age and 3 comorbidities going against me, so it seemed like a good idea.

It took 3 months for the masks to arrive, NY manufacturer. I put them aside and stayed with the surgical masks until the surge in RI was among the worst in the nation. Then I began wearing one inside any and all public establishments.

I pretty much went back to using the common blue surgical mask, after my first Moderna shot. And since the CDC emphasized saving N95 masks for front line health care workers, I decided not to wear an N95 to a doctor’s office, as I would feel like I was rubbing it in, if they are that hard to get. They were not cheap, but I may donate them to my local hospital once I’m fully vaccinated.
 
Masks didn't "fail" because they never had a chance to succeed. The CDC finished their study and the number was 1.5% reduction.


We should still wear one, but covids damage was always going to be big here short of a Chinese level lock you in your home shutdown. I said this 9 months ago.
As for the historic low flu, I would attribute that more to complete shutdown of massive public gatherings (basketball, football, concerts).
The UK is reporting zero flu cases to date, that's almost unbelievable.
I've heard this, too. Important to have this on the table.
7. The human condition failed

I’ve never seen a time where people have ignored their largely Christian roots and only ask what’s in it for them then their flock. Give us your tired, your weak and your poor, but only if they look right and from the right places.

Humans will always be a fractured species, but one can only wonder if the pandemic would have lasted a month or two if we could have lived within ourselves and the good of others instead of our own self-righteousness.
I suppose the progressive movement historically has been in some respects both eugenicist( racist actually() and intolerant of humanity (fascist or elitist) in some respects, but it is really great to have your post here admitting the human condition and more or less realizing we will always somehow find ways to be human or imperfect in regard to any ideals we can put to paper.
Christianity per the reported teachings of Jesus places the possibility and responsibility for human perfection beyond practical reach but then claims the grace of God and the atonement of Jesus can bring us "home" to some perfect end, and states that on our own we will fail. Not only fail, but be greatly persecuted for believing or trying to follow Jesus. Some say believers are "sheep for the slaughter all the day long, until the end comes with Jesus' return.

being from a Mormon root, it seems to me that Mormonism is actually a brand of socialism with an ideal of communal perfection under the guidance of a benevolent authority claiming direction from God. But in practice, Mormonism signed on to the progressive movement over a hundred years ago, and is actually supportive of it.

But Mormons today are still all over the map in terms of political thinking. Some undoubtedly are Marxists, too.

But your statement here stands true writ large. And it's not just politicians or medical providers that fail. It is indeed everyone.

Here's to the effort to cut us some slack and love us all anyway.
 

I trust the CDC to say what it means, rather than rely on the highly biased, cherry-picked results of OANN.

What's unbelievable is the notion that two diseases are spread the same way, yet one has been severely hampered and the other untouched by the same preventative measures. Try to think more critically.
I agree with the analysis of the OANN link. I don't go to that source for anything. There have always been a portion of the conservatives who are just too stupid for words...... well some portions of every political faction, let's say.

I agree that masks can be effective, in any design or material, to some extent, and should be worn in all close encounters human to human or in closed spaces with poor HVAC design. But they fail because we fail to properly clean them, replace them, dispose of them in a timely manner. Coming home from a spreader event, and taking them off and putting them on the kitchen table, we go wash our hands and face and sit down to eat. and transfer to load of virus from the table to our face in unthinking comfort. That sort of thing. And then the mandates that require us to stay indoors and not walk alone around the block in the sunshine at all, or use a mask to do so, puts us in a sort of trance of unthinking habit that leads to exposures we could avoid if we were thoughtful about the circumstances.

Still no way to save us from our own stupidity at times.

The human condition will always involve human inconsistency, human weakness, human corruption, human ignorance, human weariness, human bias, human lunacy, human credulity....... well, an infinity of imperfections or deplorable characters.

But it's not just republicans who are human.
 
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