tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post256431523661293056..comments2024-03-28T11:58:42.109-07:00Comments on Raconteur Report: Coronatardation Bad News: Still A Thing, By The Metric F**ktonAesophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-59159966595996338352020-05-22T18:06:59.138-07:002020-05-22T18:06:59.138-07:00I let you have both whacks at that tree, because a...I let you have both whacks at that tree, because apparently the first one wasn't enough.<br /><br />1) Not "locked up". The word you're avoiding is "quarantined".<br />Test negative? You're sprung. Problem solved. L.A. is offering the tests at drive-thrus now.<br />If you're arguing against a medical concept as old as time, and against locking up the infectious, you've departed sanity.<br />If you can't show you're not infected, upon what basis do you claim the right to be treated as healthy, in a pandemic with a yuuuuuge cohort of asymptomatic carriers?<br />Your entire argument is "That's too hard".<br />Boo. Frickin'. Hoo.<br />It's also too hard to dig millions of graves needlessly because people can't wrap their heads around common sense.<br />And even stupider to throw gasoline on the fire by ignoring all the asymptomatic carriers you'd cheerfully turn loose in society.<br />Yet again: <i>How'd that clever approach work out in NYFC?</i><br /><br />2)Consult a map. Orange County is not "bordered by" Mexico.<br /><br />3) You're chipping around some sort of point best known to yourself with the rest of that paragraph. Spit it out, man.<br />Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-74117123014946546982020-05-22T17:14:46.759-07:002020-05-22T17:14:46.759-07:00you're part of the problem children that wants...<i> you're part of the problem children that wants infected people running around free, so you can use everyone else as your human shield.</i><br /><br />No. You are the one who insists that anyone who cannot PROVE he is virus-free be locked up. In a world with no accurate testing with a virus that appears to have a huge asymptomatic cohort.<br /><br />WuFlu. Stasi.<br /><br />Those of us who will be circling the drain if we get the Wuhan Gurgling Death refuse to sell our children's futures down the drain for a fantasy covid-prison camp scenario which <i>cannot work to stop us getting sick</i> but CAN and will be used to create a police state.<br /><br />Or more of one. That may be inevitable too. Hmmm...Is that your calculation? <br /><br />Sure, on an optimistic day, I could back you on this <i> DGAF [if] no one locked down because <b>they're infectious </b>is receiving a paycheck. </i><br /><br />If you're known sick with an incurable infectious disease you should be locked down... Okay. Key word is "known". Sou, just "suspected". And remember, kiddos! Selective enforcement might be the norm pre corona-chan, but maybe, this time it will be different?<br /><br />Please wake up and smell the coffee. Do your own math on the CCP Herpes hospitalization and kill rates between San Diego County and Orange County. Both have about the same population size. Both are bordered by Mexico. But *something is different*. I wonder what?<br /><br />And if that special something which also gave you the difference in pre-Winnie the Flu Hep C and Typhoid infection rates couldn't be stopped to save lives THEN why do you imagine any draconian Gestapo-camp testing-and-control policies will work outside of Orange County? It's not even a felony to deliberately infect someone with AIDs, but this time, it'll work?<br /><br />The cohort of law-abiding, pro-civic individuals is probably less than one third of the people living between Mexico and Canada.<br /><br />Any plan that does not take into account the U.S.A. equivalent of Les Zones Urbaines Sensibles (look it up) is just more gaslighting. <br /><br />So wash your hands. Stay home if you're sick, keep your distance, wear masks when you can't and go live your lives. Build a future. If (more likely when) I get sick and die you have my blessing.<br /><br />Better to go down fighting.<br /><br />OvergrownHobbithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15683596916721077471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-83203155820899954032020-05-22T16:35:20.319-07:002020-05-22T16:35:20.319-07:00you're part of the problem children that wants...<i> you're part of the problem children that wants infected people running around free, so you can use everyone else as your human shield.</i><br /><br />No. You are the one who insists that anyone who cannot PROVE he is virus-free be locked up. In a world with no accurate testing with a virus that appears to have a huge asymptomatic cohort.<br /><br />WuFlu. Stasi.<br /><br />Those of us who will be circling the drain if we get the Wuhan Gurgling Death refuse to sell our children's futures down the drain for a fantasy covid-prison camp scenario which <i>cannot work to stop us getting zick</i> but CAN and will be used to lock down our country forever...<br /><br />You don't get to use our risk, and when it comes, out deaths to sell that brand of snake oil.<br /><br /><br />Please wake up and smell the coffee. Do your own math on the CCP Herpes hospitalization and kill rates between San Diego County and Orange County. Both have about the same population size. Both are bordered by Mexico. But *something is different*. I wonder what?<br /><br />And if that special something which also gave you the difference in pre-Winnie the Flu Hep C and Typhoid infection rates couldn't be stopped to save lives THEN why do you imagine your draconian Gestapo-camp policies will work outside of Orange County?<br /><br />The cohort of individuals on which such a plan MIGHT work is probably less than one third of the people living between Mexico and Canada.<br /><br />Any plan that does not take into account the U.S.A. equivalent of Les Zones Urbaines Sensibles (look it up) is just more gaslighting. <br /><br /><br /><br />OvergrownHobbithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15683596916721077471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-7114188216540129212020-05-22T11:48:02.435-07:002020-05-22T11:48:02.435-07:00I have no such bias against vaccines.
1) The chanc...I have no such bias against vaccines.<br />1) The chance of one this year for COVID is 0%.<br />That means for any planning purposes, it's the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.<br />What a lot of people do <i>now</i> changes not a whit.<br /><br />2) The chances for one <i>someday</i> improves down the road.<br /><br />3) You're pulling the "apocalypse" scenario wholly out of your own ass.<br />I'm working in the COVID pit at work every week, now, and have been for three months. My experience with this bitch is thus not theoretical.<br />Masks, gloves, and handwashing work. Continuing to shutter people at home waiting on a vaccine <i>which may very well <b>never</b> arrive</i>, is thus sheer lunacy, well beyond mere mental retardation.<br /><br />4) That makes a vaccine "nice to have", some unknown distance down the road, if ever, but functionally inconsequential to what people should be doing before there is one. It has no bearing on anything between now and next spring, and it may not have any bearing on anything anyone does until well beyond that.<br /><br />5) If and when we get one; and it works; and it has few, if any, serious side effects; and it's widely available in 330M dose quantities, <i>then</i> we can talk about what that means for day-to-day behavior.<br />Right now, it's a campfire ghost story, and as relevant to any discussion as the finer points of Vogon poetry. <br />And we can no more safely speed that timeline up inside of a year than we can grow carrots faster by pulling on the stems.<br />So bring it up in 12 months, and let's see where that discussion stands.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-41009894988368135532020-05-22T06:25:01.856-07:002020-05-22T06:25:01.856-07:00Get off your high horse, calm the fuck down, and s...<i>Get off your high horse, calm the fuck down, and switch to decaf.</i><br /><br />No inclined to when your <i>extraordinary</i> bias against vaccines, to the point of claiming the prospects for COVID-19 are effectively nil, necessarily color everything you advocate for in responding to the disease. If we have a reasonable prospect for one in 12-18 months (really, subtract a few since development started January 11th, when a lab at the Shanghai Public Health Clinic Center deliberately broke the CCP’s embargo on publishing genomes and got permanently shut down the next day for "rectification"), and we're going full Manhattan Project in manufacturing in case we can, what a lot of people should do significantly changes. <br /><br />Whereas the hellscape you paint of no vaccine, even throwing shade on the prospects of immunity (which, I grant you, is not <i>proven</i>, but again is mostly based on your own personal experience), results in a much more apocalyptic forecast, including being prepared to or actually completely withdrawing from society on your own homestead. Which will never be the right solution for some fraction of your audience, some of us can not survive very long without modern medicines for example.<br /><br />But you've got your unyielding position, which this being your blog I'll respect going forwards.ThatWouldBeTellinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16910231314995266781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-25413544090425278392020-05-21T20:46:47.985-07:002020-05-21T20:46:47.985-07:00WRT opening back up, whatever that really means, w...WRT opening back up, whatever that really means, we have plenty of evidence of what will likely happen.<br /><br />Everywhere we let people continue working together, we get large numbers of cases in those groups. Healthcare, police, meatpackers, churches, hair stylists, grocery workers, amazon warehouses, etc. Right now that is only happening in the 1 in 20* workplaces that continue to be workplaces.<br /><br />If everyone tries to go back to work tomorrow, we'll very likely see the same thing we see in subway drivers, and all the rest-- they get sick. In groups and in large numbers in those groups.<br /><br />Right now we're coping with the number of sick people, by and large. Add 15% of the other 19 of 20* businesses, and we're no longer coping.<br /><br />And THAT is the issue, and why trying to go back to the way it was all at once is folly.<br /><br />nick<br /><br />*or whatever the actual numbers are, 1 in 30? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? It's late, the internet is big, and if you want to know the number start by looking at current unemployed filings vs total employment figures, do some math about the percentages of SMB vs Large businesses and how many each average as employees, and get back to me. If "everybody" is laid off, then when "everybody" goes back, that 15% or 20% or 17% of each workplace will start getting sick, all at the same general time. And that will suck.Nick Flandreyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13019834912388638989noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-39145208328296614942020-05-21T19:19:44.378-07:002020-05-21T19:19:44.378-07:00FTR, here's a website list of 22 or so disease...FTR, here's a website list of 22 or so diseases for which a vaccine exists:<br />https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation<br /><br />STDs encompasses a couple of more under one heading, mostly bacterial, and Ebola could reasonably be added to the list with the development of rVSV-ZEBOV.<br /><br />So maybe 25, total. <br />A total of 13 exist for viruses.<br />The average period for trials and approval is 6-15 years, assuming it works.<br />Even allowing for accelerated interest and effort with COVID, 12-18 months is the probable minimum, <i>if</i> anyone of the 95 currently under development is successful.<br />Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-63540633374390079172020-05-21T18:56:53.813-07:002020-05-21T18:56:53.813-07:00Get off your high horse, calm the fuck down, and s...Get off your high horse, calm the fuck down, and switch to decaf.<br /><br />I have no such "inability to distinguish", smartass, I merely point out for the record that not every vaccine performs as advertised. Whether it's for a bacteria or a virus is wholly immaterial to the central question. To deny something that obvious is asinine in the extreme.<br /><br />The odds of creating a vaccine for something that's probably been genetically altered, and is hitherto unknown to research scientists at large, and per multiple reports including spliced-in genetic material from multiple other viruses, including one notably impossible to create a vaccine for to date for <i>decades</i>, despite spending billion$ of dollar$ in the attempt, is absolutely germane and on point.<br /><br />Given all the successful vaccines we've developed ignores two things: the time it took to get any one of them, usually measured in <i>years</i>, and the serial failures, both with the ones we have a vaccine for, and the vastly greater number for which we still do not.<br /><br />We <i>may</i> be able to develop a vaccine for this that's safe and effective.<br /><i>Someday.</i><br />We <i>will not</i> have one anytime soon enough to prevent the complete collapse of civilization if we sit around wishing and hoping for it.<br /><br />As I said, in a year, or five, <i>if ever</i>, when we get a functional vaccine, I'll be properly ecstatic.<br />I'm simply not holding my breath, because we're nowhere close, timewise, to any such thing, and there's no guarantee whatsoever that we ever will be, and it's absolutely certain that we won't have one this year.<br /><br />As to the Roche test specifically, it turns out it was not part of the report I referenced, but those that were included were found to be wrong with false negatives 10% of the time, and false positives somewhere between 5-16% of the time.<br /><br />https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/coronavirus-antibody-tests.html<br />https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.25.20074856v1.full.pdf<br /><br />That's probably actually worse for Roche, since the only validation on their test is internal and self-generated. Call me when they or anyone else has a test that's independently validated as accurate, let alone to <1%. At this point, all we have in support of that is their sales brochure.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-73321061262456444182020-05-21T18:15:00.754-07:002020-05-21T18:15:00.754-07:00Sigh. The comment on Roche is bogus in nature and...Sigh. The comment on Roche is bogus in nature <i>and</i> wrong on the facts, and your inability to distinguish between an anti-bacterial vaccine which is almost entirely unneeded outside of a biological war context, and vaccines against viruses that would otherwise infect zillions shows you just aren't able to think clearly about this.<br /><br />I mean, surely you know you need a TDaP booster every 10 years, 5 if someone shows up in your ER with a penetrating wound (that's for the toxin produced by tetanus, plus the bacteria which cause diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough)), vs. none for viruses except for shingles, a unique situation where you've got nerve cells with the virus hiding out in them if you had chicken pox long ago, and probably other weirdnesses from it being a herpes virus?<br /><br />Given all the successful vaccines we've developed, you're doing your audience a disservice by insisting the odds of developing one are "a longshot", statistically only slightly better than winning the lotto with one ticket. I say it's the way to bet, <i>probably</i> better than 50/50, <i>without</i> assuming or depending on it actually happening, we won't know for some time.ThatWouldBeTellinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16910231314995266781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-83079252617316839202020-05-21T17:21:33.725-07:002020-05-21T17:21:33.725-07:00@5stonegames,
Agree on all points.@5stonegames,<br /><br />Agree on all points.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-88166394138518228062020-05-21T17:19:38.061-07:002020-05-21T17:19:38.061-07:00@TWBT,
Re: Roche. Uh huh. Aren't they the one...@TWBT,<br /><br />Re: Roche. Uh huh. Aren't they the ones where someone just independently rated their test 20% inaccurate?<br /><br />I have no personal beef with vaccination, <i>per se</i>. I just know, far better than Joe Average grasps, what a Powerball Lotto winning ticket moonshot that is, not to mention the timeline for it. Let's don't take my word for that: There's a couple of hundred thousand former military types who can tell you how well that "experimental" anthrax shot worked before GWI. People who say otherwise are usually PR reps for Big Pharma companies, but the clinical doctors tend to hedge and weasel-word at 300wpm when you try to pin them down. Like they should. it's a longshot, and anything but certain <i>if</i>, let alone <i>when</i>, we <i>might</i> get one. If it happens, I'll be properly ecstatic. Just like if I win the lotto. the only thing that makes a vaccine a slightly better statistical prospect is that I only have one lotto ticket, but there are dozens of researchers trying to come up with a vaccine. That only guarantees that most of them will fail, but not necessarily all of them.<br /><br />As noted, doing nothing is bad, doing bad things is worse, and NYFS did both.<br />Califrutopia, not so much. QED. Gabbin' Nuisance's latest stupidity is eclipsing his earlier success at finding an acorn with a blind hog. It appears that was a one-off, surprising absolutely no one in CA.<br /><br />Now, if only Orangeman will cut off the tax-and-squander states, and watch their leftist frutopias (not a typo) crash and burn, we could flip several battleground states for decades, and cripple the former blue hive powerhouses for some good time as well. A broke NY, CA, and IL, is a powerless set of political roadkill waiting to happen to the DemoCommunist Party.<br /><br />Be still, my beating heart.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-87805808776773856392020-05-21T17:03:01.842-07:002020-05-21T17:03:01.842-07:00@Survivorman99,
Yes, seriously.
There are no &quo...@Survivorman99,<br /><br />Yes, seriously.<br />There are no "acceptable" losses in a pandemic. There are inevitable ones, but you don't just write people off unless you have no other choices. We're a civilization that sends 1000 people out looking for one lost guy. That doesn't go out the window because we're not feeling it today.<br /><br />Traffic deaths aren't a pandemic; and for reference, just the vehicle code in my state is about three inches thick, in fine print, and weighs about 4 pounds. Multiply that times 50 for the country. That's before we talk about driver's ed, state testing, federal regulations, local municipal codes, metric fucktons of traffic lights, painted lines, and signage, and thousands upon thousands of people who do nothing but enforcement and prosecution of traffic offenses. In short, if COVID infection was regulated the way driving is and has been every day you've been alive, you'd all have shit fits and blow a head gasket. Maybe you want to suggest another example.<br /><br />I'm applying the healthcare axiom "First, do no harm."<br />That's a global proscription, for all the areas it affects in a patient's life, not just a physical one. But the physical takes pre-eminence, logically and necessarily, because if you kill your patient, their other problems tend to rapidly diminish in importance. (Don't believe me; check your appointment calendar a week after your dead, and tell what your most pressing business is, at that point.)<br /><br />As to the CDC, and collateral geniusii like Fauci, I started out figuring they were idiots; I have not been disappointed. But people throwing out the baby with the bathwater are why the next round of this will probably improve on Round 1. That's the Gilligan Effect. I can suggest we avoid that approach until I'm blue in the face, but I cannot outvote the multitude of Gilligans.<br /><br />And I agree we need to re-open, but yet again, there are smart ways to do that, and quick and stupid ones. (Movie production wisdom: "<i>Fast, cheap, and good; you can pick any <b>two</b>.</i>") The country seems to have settled on going for quick and stupid, because reasons. That will pay obvious and domino-stacked consequences, and only one of them will be paid for at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. At that point, "I Told You So" will be cold comfort, but we're all along for the ride, whether we want to be or not.<br /><br />What troubles me is both the absolute number, and the ideological fervency, of the drooling mouth-breathers salivating for the stupid approach. C.S. Lewis' quote cuts both ways:<br /><br />"<i>The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, <b>for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.</b></i>"Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-65183361073536763442020-05-21T11:58:04.991-07:002020-05-21T11:58:04.991-07:00I'll apologize on the 2 weeks since the incuba...I'll apologize on the 2 weeks since the incubation period is 21 days and I bungled the math like a politician. <br /><br />Still politically we'd have been better served with a semi fixed quarantine. This virus has a 21 day incubation and science says X says will suffice with an option to extend a couple of weeks for medical reasons.<br /><br />Better communication and preparation for the inevitable economic Armageddon the shutdown would also have been nice but so would millions of dollars and a panacea for aging and all disease. <br /><br />Its one of the reasons why I suspect this lockdown keeps dragging on. So long as the lock down is on, they can ignore the economics and that states aren't broke and liberal style spending is not DOA. <br /><br />Lastly, it amazes me anyone could possibly in good faith think the virus is natural. I have only a basic knowledge of biology but one look at that thing and its characteristics and a consideration of where its from. it screams man made. <br /><br /> 5stonegameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10694550968360550229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-15668092602945134672020-05-21T11:55:11.199-07:002020-05-21T11:55:11.199-07:00We can't make steel. chemicals for medicine (o...<i>We can't make steel. chemicals for medicine (or most medicines) precursors for ammo (no ammo for you gweilo) , tritium for nukes (in 15 years no H Bomb) and have an increasingly brittle food distribution system</i><br /><br />Actually, we can do all of the above, our masters have just decided we won't do a lot of them, or very much. For example, we're in full production of tritium using one government TVA nuclear power reactor (somehow that's better than a 100% civilian reactor to the non-proliferation types who worry about "dual use"), some of its rods are filled with lithium-6, and after a refueling they're sent to the Savannah River Complex to extract the tritium. Which is also where the British designed and built warheads get their tritium replenished. The issue is that we need to get another power plant doing this, and that of course is mired in endless friction.<br /><br />I see no evidence we "have an increasingly brittle food distribution system," and live in the farming heartland. We've got logistics issues we're working out, which wouldn't be the case if it was "brittle." But maybe other parts of the country this is getting worse? I just see my local Walmart system doing better and better after things got dicey for a while.<br /><br />Don't know if or how much primary steel we make, but we do reprocess a lot of scrap steel, which isn't always good for all uses. We certainly can start making more medicines and precursors for them ... or maybe you're right. With the Greens calling the shots, the CCP/PRC willing to undercut others to gain control over 90% of the world's pharmaceutical supply chain, right now we <i>can't</i> do this. And likely won't unless and until we experience shortages that kill a lot of people.<br /><br />Precursors for ammo? Come again, we don't make nitric acid, sulfuric acid, cotton of the right sort, glycerin, or the ingredients that go into primers? Copper and zinc for brass? Lead? Maybe so, but I'd like some citations.<br /><br />On the other hand, we have a stunning example right now of how we can make cargo rockets better than anyone else in the world, we're in the set of countries that make jet engines better than Russia, and a <i>lot</i> better than the PRC, etc. We manufacture a <i>lot</i> stuff, a fair amount well. Just don't go flying in any recently build Boeing jet liner....ThatWouldBeTellinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16910231314995266781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-71502375155421170012020-05-21T11:40:31.847-07:002020-05-21T11:40:31.847-07:00Dumb question here, but does any kind of herd immu...<i>Dumb question here, but does any kind of herd immunity even apply here, (a) new zoonotic natural virus and (b)new un-natural" bioengineered gain-of-function? Those are the questions that bother me and go unanswered. Haven't read or heard anything even remotely definitive.</i><br /><br />It's too early to get anything "even remotely definitive," but the <i>assumption</i>, with all that implies, is that these details won't matter, or might even be good for gaining immunity (it's <i>not</i> well adapted to humans (yet)), and that people who's antibody titers are high enough will have immunity; see the mentioned South Korean research for example. For how long, we <i>can't</i> know, novel virus is novel, and not enough time has elapsed.<br /><br />Note I'm assuming this is a generic gain of function experiment accidentally released, vs. a deliberate bioweapon development. Although they're pretty hard to distinguish, but this appears to have come from a nominally civilian lab now officially under military control, from people who publish their very dangerous research, not something biological warfare are known for doing. And the PRC/CCP does have real bioweapons labs, and is believed to have accidentally released pathogens from them in times past.ThatWouldBeTellinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16910231314995266781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-47669883635668512692020-05-21T11:38:05.980-07:002020-05-21T11:38:05.980-07:00and the antibody tests (which AFAIK no one has rel...<i>and the antibody tests (which AFAIK no one has reliably demonstrated yet are specific to COVID-19, as opposed to all coronaviruses, like the common cold) throw out false positives, like a drunk spilling pocket change staggering down the street.</i><br /><br />Abbott, and a guy at Roche praising their first antibody test, and no others, think they have an amazingly specific test. They tried it on > 1,000 samples of blood taken prior to SARS-CoV-2 roaming the earth, and got one (false) positive.<br /><br />That's a lot better than the claimed floor of 4% for these types of tests, and as implied by the above, the Roche guy trashed all the other antibody tests at the time.<br /><br />Although perhaps a bigger problem is that almost all the ones I know about are doing a horrible job of testing a random population.<br /><br /><i>And if you're hypoxic (too little oxygen in your blood stream) on room air, or worse, even on supplemental oxygen, like a nasal canula, or a face mask, you're pretty f**ked.</i><br /><br />Another weird thing? This, maybe not in patients quite as bad as that X-ray, has been seen with people being able to get rid of the CO2, what triggers the breathing process. This is absolutely not a "normal" pneumonia.<br /><br /><i>some of you were too smart to pay attention to what worked, because "muh paycheck!"</i><br /><br />I see a lot more people talking about how they're free, live in a free country, etc. A Nation of Gilligans wouldn't have so many stone cold genocidal socipaths.<br /><br /><i>If [immunity doesn't happen], like the common cold, chicken pox, herpes, and AIDS, this sh*t is forever. And like Granny's leftovers, it just keeps coming back.</i><br /><br />"The common cold" is forever first and foremost because there's over 200 virus strains that produce it. There are reports that the coronavirus subset of it doesn't infer immunity, we've got to learn if that's correct (it's generic biomedical research, i.e. at least 1/2 chance it's <i>wrong</i>), and if SARS-CoV-2 follows that pattern. And the Nth order effects of the PRC gifting the world with an eternal lethal virus ... won't be good.<br /><br />We have a perfectly fine live virus vaccine for the chicken pox, and a 4X dose of that for shingles if you're 60 or older, and I just read there's a recombinant vaccine for those over 50. Why it and other herpes viruses can hang out in the body is well understood, and beyond the complexity and age of SARS-CoV-2. AIDS is eternal because it's a retrovirus, it literally inserts it's DNA into your's, and deals with the immune system in several ways, like hiding out behind a coat of sugars.<br /><br />Your personal beef with vaccination doesn't mean they're are bogus, or that we won't be able to make one for SARS-CoV-2. As a matter of policy, for now we'd best assume we can, to preserve lives if so.<br /><br /><i>Lockdowns work in the short term, exactly as intended. CA has 1/10th the casualty count of NY, despite being 3000 mi. closer to Wuhan.</i><br /><br />No city in the US has the close contact that counts for COVID-19 transmission like NYC. CA also quietly withdrew their order to put positive patients back in nursing homes after a couple of days of outrage.<br /><br /><i>Frankly, given how the Left is using this pandemic for their own ends, I'm surprised [Blue States are] not leading the charge to push everyone back to work faster, to kill off as many working-class productive people as possible, and leave the stay-at-home welfare queens the bulk of all votes, in 50 states, in perpetuity.<br /><br />But when they realize that....</i><br /><br />Or that they're running out of tax "revenues", and Trump may not bail them out.ThatWouldBeTellinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16910231314995266781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-49847144506036761122020-05-21T11:08:27.429-07:002020-05-21T11:08:27.429-07:00Aesop,
"There are no 'acceptable losses&...Aesop,<br /><br />"There are no 'acceptable losses' in a pandemic. Citizens are not pawns to be sacrificed. Period. Paragraph." Seriously? Why should pandemics be treated any differently than other issues in society. If we wanted to end traffic deaths, we would set a 25 mph speed limit nationally. We don't do something like that because people have to conduct business, to live their lives, and to get things done. The powers that be know this and apply the "acceptable loss" concept. I will give the PTB the benefit of the doubt and assume that when a speed limit is set for 70 mph they know that some people will die, but that they expect that the greater good for society is to allow that to happen if it does.<br /><br />This concept can be applied to several other parts of society where we accept the fact that we are not absolutely safe because of economics and social efficiency. <br /><br />Once again, you have used a straw man argument when you said, "It was your suggestion that old people won't live forever, and had a good run, as fatalistically acknowledging that COVID should be forgiven for taking them all." Just when did I say that COVID should be forgiven for taking them all? You add an extreme issue or absurdity to my argument and then knock it down so as to give the impression that you've "won."<br /><br />You come from a healthcare background and I fully understand your attitude. I certainly don't mean that you are a "kid," but I am reminded of the expression, "Give a kid a hammer and everything looks like a nail." With your healthcare background, you are, understandably, applying a healthcare approach to the problem (although some others with a healthcare background strongly disagree with you). The pandemic, however, is not just a healthcare problem, and it should also be viewed as an economic, educational, law enforcement, and supply chain, etc., problem affecting the very core of society.<br /><br />Once again, I don't know how this opening up of America is going to turn out. We can't sit idly by and continue to allow the economy to be strangled. People have generally lost faith in the so-called experts. As a result, a great many people have arrived at a place where they believe that "the experts be damned," and that the country has to open up again. So much crap has come out of the CDC and the WHO that little from these organizations can be, or should be, believed. <br /><br />Of course, if a half-million people die between now and the end of the year, you can take a victory lap at the "I Told You So International Speedway." Fewer people will be arguing that the lockdown was a mistake, but then we'll all be screwed at that point when we're forced to hunker down for an indeterminate period of time while waiting for a vaccine or a cure to appear, if it ever does. <br /><br />The reality is that it doesn't really matter what I think or what you think about the issue. The "Open Up Movement" is powerful enough to ensure that the country is going to move toward normalcy, and we'll just have to wait two or three months to see what the results are.Survivormann99https://www.blogger.com/profile/07446145435315604776noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-61019449080281731822020-05-21T07:11:28.965-07:002020-05-21T07:11:28.965-07:00Reactive isn't necessarily protective.
I work ...<i>Reactive</i> isn't necessarily <i>protective</i>.<br />I work with people who have a positive reaction to TB tests, and have to get a chest Xray every year, <i>but have never had TB</i>. I suspect a similar reaction is taking place with COVID, and explains the antibody titers they're observing, albeit in mortally and tragically flawed testing models.<br />Studying this bitch is going to take <i>years</i> of focused research.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-5133540064464879122020-05-21T06:46:00.680-07:002020-05-21T06:46:00.680-07:00@Aesop, not only is the CDC content to have multip...@Aesop, not only is the CDC content to have multiple lousy tests on the market, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/" rel="nofollow">it's diddling with the way it reports the results, too:</a><br /><br />"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests, distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic. We’ve learned that the CDC is making, at best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The upshot is that the government’s disease-fighting agency is overstating the country’s ability to test people who are sick with COVID-19. The agency confirmed to The Atlantic on Wednesday that it is mixing the results of viral and antibody tests, even though the two tests reveal different information and are used for different reasons.<br /><br />"This is not merely a technical error. States have set quantitative guidelines for reopening their economies based on these flawed data points.<br /><br />"Several states—including Pennsylvania, the site of one of the country’s largest outbreaks, as well as Texas, Georgia, and Vermont—are blending the data in the same way. Virginia likewise mixed viral and antibody test results until last week, but it reversed course and the governor apologized for the practice after it was covered by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Atlantic. Maine similarly separated its data on Wednesday; Vermont authorities claimed they didn’t even know they were doing this. <br /><br />"The widespread use of the practice means that it remains difficult to know exactly how much the country’s ability to test people who are actively sick with COVID-19 has improved.<br /><br />“'You’ve got to be kidding me,' Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told us when we described what the CDC was doing. 'How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.'"<br /><br />Evidence is beginning to accumulate that yes, an antibody response consistent with immunity can result from exposure to the virus... and also that many <i>unexposed</i> people have antibodies that react to the virus, probably because of cross-reaction from prior coronavirus infections that weren't SARS-CoV-2. We don't yet know what this actually means.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/15/good-news-on-the-human-immune-response-to-the-coronavirus" rel="nofollow"> Big Pharma drug development scientist Derek Lowe's excellent In the Pipeline blog</a> discusses a recent paper; to get to the point where it makes some sense he also provides as clear an introduction to the underlying immunology as I've seen:<br /><br />"...in the unexposed patients, 40 to 60% had CD4+ cells that already respond to the new coronavirus. This doesn’t mean that people have already been exposed to it per se, of course – immune crossreactivity is very much a thing, and it would appear that many people have already raised a response to other antigens that could be partially protective against this new virus. What antigens those are, how protective this response is, and whether it helps to account for the different severity of the disease in various patients (and populations) are important questions that a lot of effort will be spent answering. As the paper notes, such cross-reactivity seems to have been a big factor in making the H1N1 flu epidemic less severe than had been initially feared – the population already had more of an immunological head start than thought.<br /><br />"So overall, this paper makes the prospects for a vaccine look good: there is indeed a robust response by the adaptive immune system, to several coronavirus proteins."Peter Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15122781534685443942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-17831142302204038422020-05-21T06:25:09.925-07:002020-05-21T06:25:09.925-07:00@ Survivorman99,
It was your suggestion that old ...@ Survivorman99,<br /><br />It was your suggestion that old people won't live forever, and had a good run, as fatalistically acknowledging that COVID should be forgiven for taking them all.<br />Pointing out such fatalism isn't any such straw man argument, when in reality we've done everything in our power to foist it onto them, short of having them lick the handrails at the subway stations in NYFC. And the "few deranged individuals" happen to be governors of several of the most populous states, and their exact health care minions.<br />That's like saying Auschwitz was the work of "just a few deranged individuals" too, without noting that those individuals were Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Borman, Heydrich, Eichmann, <i>et al</i>.<br />That's men, in <i>both</i> cases, and no straw anywhere to be found.<br /><br />I'M NOT ARGUING FOR MAINTAINING A PERPETUAL LOCKDOWN.<br />Nor any 57 other things that have been done stupidly during it.<br />What we're doing now is moving on to 57 Stupid Ways To End That Lockdown.<br />The body count is liable to be commensurately higher than it has so far, <i>precisely because of that stupidity.</i><br /><br />I feel like Malcolm in <i>Jurassic Park</i>:<br />John Hammond: "<i>Yes, yes, but we've solved all those problems.</i>"<br />Malcolm: "<i><b>Right, John. Now you've moved on to creating new ones.</b></i>"<br /><br />IDGAF is no one locked down <i>because they're infectious</i> is receiving a paycheck. I care that they're locked down, either at home, or in prison. Dealer's choice. If anyone can't live within those guidelines, society should be happy to provide them three hots and a cot, for a year, minimum, and a handy felony conviction as a parting gift.<br /><br />There are no "acceptable losses" in a pandemic. Citizens are not pawns to be sacrificed. Period. Paragraph.<br /><br />That error is the exact slippery slope that has seen the greatest slaughters of the 20th century, <i>by governments</i>, and yet people who would claim to recoil if it were done with gas chambers are salivating at letting a pandemic accomplish the same thing. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.<br /><br />The first duty of legitimate government is to protect the lives of its citizens.<br />Without those lives, there's no liberty, and no pursuit of happiness.<br />We have many morons that can't grasp that obvious fact, or else who would willingly grease the machinery of society with the entrails of some good number of their neighbors, so they can pay their credit card bills and go to Disneyland.<br />It's all fun and games for them until they and their family is being put in the grease bucket, and they act shocked that anyone would suggest such was ever possible, or likely, when in fact it becomes inevitable, once you first start down that pathway.<br /><br />Anyone expressing that sentiment aloud needs a punch in the dick.<br />Anyone actually carrying it out needs shot in the face.<br /><br />People want to look at the wrong things.<br />They want to understand how WWII started.<br />Or our own Civil War.<br /><br />This isn't that.<br />It's Germany in 1932, and France the day before they stormed the Bastille.<br /><br />Tread carefully.<br />You're about to get a doctoral dissertation lesson in the madness of crowds.<br /><br /><br />It doesn't end well.<br />But there will be blood. And no end of tears.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-19913036561408071992020-05-21T06:14:56.680-07:002020-05-21T06:14:56.680-07:00Common sense is called common sense because when t...Common sense is called common sense because when the phrase was coined EVERYBODY had that much sense. If they didn't they culled themselves out of the gene pull via hostile indigenous peoples, food poisoning, serious injury and/or infection.<br />I was raised to wash my hands frequently and to habitually address hygiene in my environment. Nowadays, restaurants have to put signs up instructing employees to wash their hands. That's a sad commentary on the intelligence and hygiene of our country. And it's partially why we have rampant spreadof infectious diseases! Dirty people get sicker with more frequency than clean people. Generally speaking about being clean...<br />Common sense also dictates that you spend less than you earn and save/invest some so that you've got some resources when life goes sideways. Like now...<br />Common sense also tells me that nefarious individuals (some are politicians and LEOs) will try to use COVID 19 to deprive me of something. <br />Gotta throw it all into the equation for EVERY decision for the foreseeable future. Stay at home and starve? No, gotta generate revenue. Not a lot but some. Shake everybody's hand every day??? HELL NO! Take a lunch from home to avoid the public restaurant risk. Carry soap in my truck to wash my hands before I carry disease home. <br />You can't avoid all risk. Just manage it. Stay away from elderly people you care about. Be clean. Don't be so greedy that you infect people for a few measly dollars. Etc. And be ready to modify your plans and behaviors when something worse comes along. Lots nasty diseases out there just waiting for an opportunity. It might be an African virus next time.FredLewershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02221076803807309775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-54087653406054648792020-05-21T05:58:03.622-07:002020-05-21T05:58:03.622-07:00@5stonegames,
1) Get tests that work.
2) Masks wo...@5stonegames,<br /><br />1) Get tests that work.<br />2) Masks work. Always have. Stop listening to reporters using their 3rd-grade understanding of science to "simplify" a five minute lecture down to a bullet point, and .Gov PIO press flacks doing the same thing, and start reading scientific reports and listening to actual experts explain it to you for the4 full 5 minutes (like the Surgeon general did, before CNN runcated his briefing to "SG says masks don't work".) Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.<br />A surgical mask stops 60-80% of incoming, and about 95% of outgoing virus. You wear those for other people more than yourself.<br />An N95, worn properly, stops 95% of incoming virus. That's actual protection.<br />Handwashing, correctly, is foolproof since Lister in the mid 1800s.<br />Don't touch your face.<br />Problem solved, QED.<br />3) The r-naught on this is documented in blistering clarity. It's 5-8, BTW.<br />That means every one person infects 5-8 others. When you get to about 50 infected, people start dying, with statistical precision, and it goes up from there.<br />4) I want to give government no such draconian powers. I just want people to be sensible and responsible, which is altogether different, and about ten times more unlikely than government showing any sense. The only thing stupider than government, is the people who voted it into being. They revert to the lowest common denominator, they do not rise to the peaks. Always.<br />5) A 20 y.o. with COVID is not an anomaly. It's how a pandemic works.<br />6) Gilligan has been driving the pandemic bus every time it happens since Adam & Eve were kicked out of the Garden, or <i>australopithecus</i> formed his first tribe, depending on your worldview.<br />Exactly like the three non-negotiable components of the Fire Triangle, there are two components to every disaster in human history, whether individual, or international:<br />1) Intractable Forces of Nature<br />2) Gross Human Stupidity<br />Both Gilligans and Government can - and frequently do - provide the latter.<br />Watch any episode of <i>Rescue 911</i>, and see for yourself.<br />Remove either one, and you have no tragedy.<br /><br /><i>Some</i> of government is <i>always</i> incompetent.<br />All government is not <i>always</i> incompetent.<br />Otherwise we wouldn't send firemen and helicopters to pluck people out of raging rapids or burning buildings, nor send cops to bank robberies.<br /><br />If you thought you were going to beat a virus with a known incubation period of up to 21 days, with a two-week stay-at-home, you're not as bright as you think you are.<br />A lockdown has to last XX days <i>after the last case</i>, or else you're just feeding your leg to the crocodile an inch at a time.<br />If no one explained this reality to you explicitly before now, I'm sorry to break it to you, but there it is.<br /><i><b>That approach is EXACTLY, PRECISELY what's being done now.</b></i><br />As I said, you won't get what you like, nor like what you'll get, but the crocodile will dine on you all, by and by.<br />Own that.<br /><br />And yes, the economy must be fed, as well as the crocodile, because doing it the smart way was too hard for the Nation Of Gilligans. Consequently, YOYO. The exact measures I and you noted are now the only things that will protect you from both the Gilligans, and the Government. Any failure to abide by them are likely to make a paltry 92K dead (i.e. double a bad flu year) just a fond memory of happier times, before year's end.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-85134199916814383712020-05-21T05:32:31.259-07:002020-05-21T05:32:31.259-07:00@To Whom It May Concern,
Go back up and read the t...@To Whom It May Concern,<br />Go back up and read the title of the post. Then look in the mirror.<br /><br />@OH,<br />So you're part of the problem children that wants infected people running around free, so you can use <i>everyone else</i> as your human shield.<br />Noted. So, how'd that work out in NYFC?<br />But you'll get your wish. Reap the consequences.<br /><br />Alternatively, you can explain how testing you out of lockdown, once, is using you as a human shield, which beggars all logic.<br /><br />@Dan,<br />You're barking at dog whistles again.<br />Coronavirus in the wild enjoys a 1-5% CFR, since ever, and long before this pandemic was even a thing. I suggested 3% as the mean <i>arguendo</i> 3 months ago, and AFAIK, it hasn't sunk below 1%, nor risen above 3%. QED.<br /><br />And the incubation period is 2-21 days. Death is 1-21 days after that. What the breakdown is for that 3-42 day bell curve I leave to science historians. It's a matter of complete indifference for planning purposes. Numbers today aren't final, but they are working estimates, and they fall within the noted 1-3%.<br />All of which places this 10-30X as bad as annual flu, ever, anywhere.<br />That's how it works.<br />You want rock-solid 100% accurate numbers, you'll have to be promoted to omniscience. Society cannot wait until someone achieves such lofty perfection.<br /><br />@Termite,<br />The unaltered virus is a bat virus. Scientists in multiple places experimented to achieve a gain of function.<br />That is suddenly exploded within the very Chinese city with two biowar labs isn't happenstance, nor coincidence, and multiple reports noted finding the additional gene sequences within the samples tested.<br />It's a frankenvirus. <br />The ChiComs are thus the most dangerous scientists, in the tradition of Frankenstein and <i>Jurassic Park</i>: they knew how to <i>make</i> something this dangerous, but not how to <i>control it</i> and keep it in the lab.<br />The closest admission to that was a speech by Xi in January, for internal consumption, when he mentioned that China needed to "ensure better security for our research laboratories". And then we had videos of Chinese people dropping like flies in the street, entire apartment buildings having the doors welded shut by PLA soldiers, then China shut their Internet down, and in the interim, crematoriums in Hubei Province were running 24/7 to get rid of the human toll evidence. The last so that no one down the road can go uncover mass bulldozed graves and pin this on them. Meanwhile, they left the barn door wide open, and their asymptomatic carrier expats took it around the world, to Bergamo, Iran, NYFC, and Hongkouver, along with everywhere else, because unlike West Africans with Ebola, Chinese can afford a plane ticket out.Aesophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07834464741531503378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-54258983003605220752020-05-21T01:59:38.690-07:002020-05-21T01:59:38.690-07:004) Reducing your exposure puts all the onus on you...<i>4) Reducing your exposure puts all the onus on you. That's bassackwards.<br />You're infected? You reduce your exposure by staying your ass at home.<br />We catch you outside without proof of being virus-free? The term for that lockdown is prison.<br />Let's start at 1 year the first offense, and double for each subsequent one. I could give a fuck about anyone feeding their kids or running their business as an excuse. Gang bangers have kids and businesses too; we still run their asses into prison.</i><br /><br />I am not your human shield Mr. Aesop. Nor are my parents.<br /><br />You want to be the Head Gestapo of the Covid Prison Camps that's on ypu.<br /><br />I do NOT consent.OvergrownHobbithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15683596916721077471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-714028479313834812.post-86269992739849467212020-05-20T20:11:20.679-07:002020-05-20T20:11:20.679-07:00...on television news this evening; as Vegas gets ......on television news this evening; as Vegas gets ready to start to open up. "We have the latest forehead temperature scanners at the hotels, casinos, as well as at the airport..." Yep. Geniuses. And, coming later, is one of the reasons behind this - mail in voting. <br />And I fought three combat tours for this horseshit. So proud...Grandpahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09158483728431605373noreply@blogger.com