Hot mic at White House Covid press briefing. "Everybody here's been vaccinated anyway."

[0R0 + 6,251]

3 hours ago, Ernst Reim said:

4. Vaccination? Ignore this, that's just some lame joke. The only way "everybody could be vaccinated" would be if:

 

If they are not joking, and well they may be, it is a reference to Moderna's RNA vaccine, that was made out of the genetic sequence publlished by the first Chinese team to sequence it, for the S spike protein. It is in clinical trial and I am sure people with good connections would be able to get vaccinated if Moderna's people don't think it is dangerous and would blow back at them. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Interesting take on things...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5_CovnEdZEE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

[0R0 + 6,251]

8 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Interesting take on things...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5_CovnEdZEE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Yes, people who died of anything while having CV19 positive results are counted. I tried to get the comorbidity factors broken out but didn't get far as so many people who died had so many options of items they could have died from as to cover more than the number of dead. They distinctly don't use the cause of death line from the reports. They should not really use that as the actual top line number, but only if CV19 was the actual cause of death via causing the failure that was death. But that really isn't recorded directly. The check box does not contain the text of cause of death - e.g. congestive heart failure checked box "as a result of CV 19" in text comments.

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-antibodies-widespread-in-santa-clara.html

Prevalence testing in Santa Clara mentioned by the video blogger 3000 sample in antibody test.

Shows prevalence at 2.5%-4.2% or about 3.3% 

Another Stanford study in the article got a 1.5% via facebook volunteers. Due to a bias towards upper class white women in the sample. Vs. working class minority representative of the confirmed cases in Santa Clara.

Using their data, the team estimated that the true "infection fatality rate" of coronavirus — or the number of infected people who die from the disease — is between 0.12% and 0.2%, 

Also 

"I think if they'd had an ethnically representative sample in this study as they'd hoped, they may have found an even higher proportion of people with antibodies, based on current reports that minorities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19," Johnson told Live Science in an email. "This would mean that even the informative conclusions here are still a conservative estimate of the likely number of infected people in Santa Clara County and throughout the U.S."

By the simple % positives estimate, California would have 12% and up to 20%. Not that I am actually expecting that many to have it, but that would be the upper range. 

Here is another article with panic driving medical critics trying to throw water on the testing. FDA is also holding up approval of an antibody test - as one would expect given our experience of the agency as a panic monger and saboteur of advancements in treatment and testing.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-suggesting-vast-undercount-coronavirus-infections-may-be-unreliable

For Boston

A small study in the Boston suburb of Chelsea has found the highest prevalence of antibodies so far. Prompted by the striking number of COVID-19 patients from Chelsea colleagues had seen, Massachusetts General Hospital pathologists John Iafrate and Vivek Naranbhai quickly organized a local serology survey. Within 2 days, they collected blood samples from 200 passersby on a street corner. That evening, they processed the samples—and shared the results with a reporter from The Boston Globe. Sixty-three were positive—31.5%. The result carries several large caveats. The team used a test whose maker, BioMedomics, says it has a specificity of only about 90%, though Iafrate says MGH’s own validation tests found a specificity of higher than 99.5%. And pedestrians on a single corner “aren’t a representative sample” of the town, Naranbhai acknowledges.

This is still a likely low figure, as testing in Mass is 23%, being the lower bound, and 39% is the upper bound - for the state, meaning about 50% would be expected for the City of Boston and its public transport riders. It is just as likely that the street corner sample is under-representing the number of infected. 

The insistence of the medical community on horribly expensive crushing social distancing measures for this disease even where it has already infected 1/3 of the population is indicative of a programatic indoctrination. 

I really liked this one from the New York Times

For example, Britain recently said the millions of rapid tests it had ordered from China were not sensitive enough to detect antibodies except in people who were severely ill. In Spain, the testing push turned into a fiasco last month after the initial batch of kits it received had an accuracy of 30 percent, rather than the advertised 80 percent. In Italy, local officials have begun testing even before national authorities have validated the tests.

 

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

This is encouraging if the claims are true.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-uk-vaccine-to-be-trialled-on-patients-from-thursday-says-matt-hancock-11976681

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

12 minutes ago, Rob Plant said:

This is encouraging if the claims are true.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-uk-vaccine-to-be-trialled-on-patients-from-thursday-says-matt-hancock-11976681

At first glance, my mind's eye saw this (sorry Turkey):

Coronavirus: UK vaccine to be trialled on people from Turkey

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

9 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

At first glance, my mind's eye saw this (sorry Turkey):

Coronavirus: UK vaccine to be trialled on people from Turkey

We aint that bad Dan!

[0R0 + 6,251]

19 minutes ago, Rob Plant said:

This is encouraging if the claims are true.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-uk-vaccine-to-be-trialled-on-patients-from-thursday-says-matt-hancock-11976681

Very good news.

I like the vaccine team's confidence. Really hope they don't fall on their face. 

Another piece of garbage research to point to irrelevance of medical trial and analysis to rational thought. Again looking at VA hospital records of late stage disease CV19, they found high death rates among those given HCQ/Z without regard to the severity of the disease. Hospitalized patients are in late stages of the disease. The HCQ/z is not capable of eliminating the virus quickly enough, as it takes 5-10 days. If you are late stage, you have only a few days to go. Why would anyone expect a positive result? Also, the doctors treating with HCQ alone should not have expected any significant results, it is too slow to kill off the virus. Only partnered with azythromax and preferably with extra zinc will it provide good results. 

Particularly as the treatment was being used as a last ditch effort for end stage disease. Which they did not distinguish in comparing to the general population of CV 19 patients.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hydroxychloroquine-treatment-for-covid-19-shows-no-benefit-and-more-deaths-in-va-study-2020-04-21?mod=article_inline

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

15 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

Yes, he could bully the states.  Classy.

You guys sound like you are interpreters for trumps manipulation tactics and disregard for other democratically elected leaders. 

How about we take what he says as something remotely close to the direct truth on occasion...

I'm pretty sure federal politics consists entirely of bullying, manipulation tactics, and disregard for the political opposition - their democratic election notwithstanding.

At least, I've seen no evidence to the contrary.  There exists the possibility you're correct, but I find your hypothesis unlikely. 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

1 hour ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

I'm pretty sure federal politics consists entirely of bullying, manipulation tactics, and disregard for the political opposition - their democratic election notwithstanding.

At least, I've seen no evidence to the contrary.  There exists the possibility you're correct, but I find your hypothesis unlikely. 

Quite right.  Only the best of the best political manipulators rise to the National level, and only the very best rise to hold the Presidency.  If they are truly elite, they hold office for a second term; no small feat in American politics.  Call it what you will, it takes incredible intelligence and savvy (I love pirate movies, so shoot me!) to make it to the Presidency and even more to achieve reelection.  Okay, there is luck and timing, but most of the time.  Some fight impeachment, some oil embargo, some (most) scandal of various varieties (read "I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman". But sir, the blue dress?  Ahem.), civil war, inherited unpopular and costly wars, economic collapse, and others.  Some are assasinated.

In the words of Andrew Shephard (Michael Douglas, as the President, in the movie "The American President"):

[TooSteep + 142]

On 4/21/2020 at 9:05 AM, Danlxyz said:

So what explains all those bodies all over the world? 

.2%, or .8% is still greater than zero. And the most critical thing, by far, is that the deaths happen all at once! In SIR epidemiology modelling (old and a bit blunt) when S is 100% and R0 is high, you see that it is not unreasonable for the entire infected population, to be infected together simultaneously!  Which means, for all intents and purposes, if left unchecked in a crowded place like NYC, everybody dies at once from the virus.

Humans hate it when everyone dies at once. We are, as a group, scared of flying. Even though flying is much, much safer than car travel. But when thing go pear-shaped in the air, everybody dies at the same time, and we just cannot cope with that idea. Same with nuclear reactor accidents. 

Collectively, we are far less likely to panic if 1 person dies every other day for the next year, than if 30 people were to die tonight. We always emotionally prefer the path where we spread out the deaths over time ... regardless of the final numbers. Consider how worked up everyone gets about mass shootings, and how little they care about constant day-to-day individual shootings. Mass shootings account for a tiny percentage of the 40,000 annual gun deaths in the US, yet they are the only ones you hear much about. We chronically worry about things that are instantaneous tragedies.

And by the way, the CDC now believes the R0 of SARS-CoV-2 is 5.7.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article

 

It's why nobody cares about seasonal flu - S isn't too high (lots of people have immunity), and the R0 ranges from 0.9 to 2.1, depending on the severity. Which means the deaths are spread out over a 6-8 month window. And many of them happen in seniors home, so hospitals are rarely stressed. 3 months ago, most of us had no idea how many flu deaths there were each year.

[TooSteep + 142]

Gerry: Do you believe that everyone who is going to die from COVID-19, will die from it at some point over the next 18 months, regardless of lockdown measures? Put another way, is the lockdown just delaying the inevitable? Or is the lockdown going to actually prevent total COVID-19 deaths over time, even with an R0 of 5.7 and immunity starting from 0?

 

 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

1 hour ago, Dan Warnick said:

Quite right.  Only the best of the best political manipulators rise to the National level, and only the very best rise to hold the Presidency.  If they are truly elite, they hold office for a second term; no small feat in American politics.  Call it what you will, it takes incredible intelligence and savvy (I love pirate movies, so shoot me!) to make it to the Presidency and even more to achieve reelection.  Okay, there is luck and timing, but most of the time.  Some fight impeachment, some oil embargo, some (most) scandal of various varieties (read "I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman". But sir, the blue dress?  Ahem.), civil war, inherited unpopular and costly wars, economic collapse, and others.  Some are assasinated.

In the words of Andrew Shephard (Michael Douglas, as the President, in the movie "The American President"):

Ever watch House of Cards? 

I hope the backroom dealings and manipulations are not that criminal, but I wouldn't count it out.

Amusing fiction - check it out.

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Enthalpic

[Ernst Reim + 33]

The two studies are new data. Important data, but do not take them as irrefutable truth. One of them suffers from selection bias: they asked for volunteers via Facebook. That means of course that everybody who had a cough in the last two weeks would run and sign up. But the numbers are similar in the two studies, thus this is most likely not a major problem.

A bigger one is that people who know way more than me are concerned that these antibody tests are known to have a very high false-positive rate. If the false positive rate is higher than your actual value, your results can fast become meaningless. It would be interesting to run the same study in a region significantly less or more affected than LA. If you get the same percentage of infected people there, you are measuring the error of your test, not actual numbers.

With the claimed fatality rate around 0.1-0.2%, all of New York City and 1/3 of Italy need to have been infected for weeks to account for the deaths already observed. This just does not fit with the development of case numbers.

And **should** the latter be true (which I personally do not believe, but I do not have a crystal ball either), we should cry for even stricter measures: If a virus can infect 100% of an 8-million town in a few weeks... this is scary. It would be irresponsible to let this spread unchecked before you really, really know how deadly it is. And you **cannot** know, before all is over and the death are counted.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

The god Emperor speaks again

Sorry Doug he's all our president now 😂

Commies...your helicopter ride awaits

 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

15 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

The god Emperor speaks again

Sorry Doug he's all our president now 😂

Commies...your helicopter ride awaits

 

He's got a point.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

Oopsie...was she about to mention the Bill Gates foundation?

Edited April 23, 2020 by El Nikko

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

14 hours ago, Ernst Reim said:

If a virus can infect 100% of an 8-million town in a few weeks... this is scary. It would be irresponsible to let this spread unchecked before you really, really know how deadly it is. And you **cannot** know, before all is over and the death are counted.

Clearly, this virus in nowhere near as deadly as the early predictions / models claimed it would likely be.

So far, it seems closer to between 1%  to  1/10 of 1%  fatality in the general population.

Actual deaths are nowhere near the initial projection of 2.2 million dead in the U.S. 

Now that ordinary people are no longer buying the original panic hyped by "authorities", cue the next wave of media - hyped panic that the coming "second wave" of infections will be "huge" and far bigger than the first wave.

That third wave though will clearly kill us all.  PANIC ! !

Don't get me started on the dreaded fourth wave.

 

 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

2 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Clearly, this virus in nowhere near as deadly as the early predictions / models claimed it would likely be.

So far, it seems closer to between 1%  to  1/10 of 1%  fatality in the general population.

Actual deaths are nowhere near the initial projection of 2.2 million dead in the U.S. 

Now that ordinary people are no longer buying the original panic hyped by "authorities", cue the next wave of media - hyped panic that the coming "second wave" of infections will be "huge" and far bigger than the first wave.

That third wave though will clearly kill us all.  PANIC ! !

Don't get me started on the dreaded fourth wave.

 

 

I'm spreading rumours here that England is back to business and normality in hope the Welsh feel like they're missing out.

Hopefully this will end the lockdown sooner rather than later 😂

Edited April 23, 2020 by El Nikko

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Guy, I can’t view the clip on the app, therefore no scything reply. Sorry! 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

39 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Guy, I can’t view the clip on the app, therefore no scything reply. Sorry! 

He ripped Harvard a new one for taking money from the payment protection plan, money which should have gone to small businesses but a lot of which seems to have been taken by corporations. He said Harvard has an endowment of 40 billion dollars, is one of the richest institutions in the world and that they should give the money back, " and if they don't that then we wont do something else".

Meanwhile Boris is tucked up in bed with the sniffles...sigh

 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

1 hour ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Guy, I can’t view the clip on the app, therefore no scything reply. Sorry! 

Try this one for amusement

https://mobile.twitter.com/som3thingwicked

 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

24 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

He ripped Harvard a new one for taking money from the payment protection plan, money which should have gone to small businesses but a lot of which seems to have been taken by corporations. He said Harvard has an endowment of 40 billion dollars, is one of the richest institutions in the world and that they should give the money back, " and if they don't that then we wont do something else".

Meanwhile Boris is tucked up in bed with the sniffles...sigh

 

Harvard released a press statement announcing that they are indeed giving the money back.

After Trump’s Criticism, Harvard Turns Down Federal Relief Money

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

19 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Try this one for amusement

https://mobile.twitter.com/som3thingwicked

 

There are some really funny clips on that site.  Thanks.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

3 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Clearly, this virus in nowhere near as deadly as the early predictions / models claimed it would likely be.

 

Is that evidence for or against the social distancing?  Taking action saved lives.

 

Secondly, there is still a lot more of the world yet to be hit; don't total up your death count and say this was overblown when we are still in shutdown.

 

[Ernst Reim + 33]

4 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Clearly, this virus in nowhere near as deadly as the early predictions / models claimed it would likely be.

So far, it seems closer to between 1%  to  1/10 of 1%  fatality in the general population.

Actual deaths are nowhere near the initial projection of 2.2 million dead in the U.S.

Of course, actual deaths are not at the initial projection for the final number of an uncontrolled spread. With infectious diseases you have to look at the epicenters.

NY city has currently 11 000 COVID 19 deaths, that's 0.14% of its population. That would be  450 000 deaths in the US as a whole if you assume that you would end up with a similar infection rate when it spreads unchecked. And it is not over in NY city. Whether the decline is there, because is dying down anyway and the measures are ineffective or whether it will flare up again, since the measures are effective, nobody knows right now.

Of course, it might very well turn out that we overreacted. But... what's your point? That happens when you make decisions based on predictions from a very, very small sample of the population. Of course they might be wrong. One cannot even predict how bad next year's flu season is going to be and there are decades on experience and research on these. The **only** way to be sure is to wait, count the dead and say "yup, we should have done something."

This is like complaining about police brutality because they shot a guy pulling a gun on them when it turns out later that the gun was not loaded.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Ernst Reim