The Coronavirus Thread

[Scot Dutchy]

Yes you can, when you don't rely on any data.

You dont mean anything TB as you never think.

[Scot Dutchy]

Lockdowns dont work.

Do you think that Covid-19 mortality figures would have been higher, lower, or about the same without lockdowns?

We cant say as it was not tried. There was also no null measurement. It was the dictators in charge. We will never know.

Then you can't say that lockdowns don't work

You cant by the same token say that no lockdowns would not work as it has never been tried. We have never had a full lock down.

[Sean Hayden]

The concept seems bulletproof. But I guess if we assume the usual from people then yeah, lockdowns are unlikely to be the end of it. Still, it's hard to believe they do so little as to make them worthless.

[Scot Dutchy]

The concept seems bulletproof. But I guess if we assume the usual from people then yeah, lockdowns are unlikely to be the end of it. Still, it's hard to believe they do so little as to make them worthless.

We dont know that is the point. The dictators said there was only one way and most governments chose it without question.

[Sean Hayden]

Kids are now COVID-19 ‘collateral damage’

We are at a crossroads with respect to COVID-19 and its impact on children. Over the first year of the pandemic in the U.S., fewer than 6 percent of cases occurred among children, and most produced only minor symptoms. Unfortunately, the new delta variant appears to be a game changer. Having practiced and done research in pediatric infectious diseases for more than 35 years, traveling the world studying and treating HIV/AIDS and many other epidemic infectious diseases, I am worried.

Infectious disease experts and epidemiologists have had nightmares for decades about a virus like the delta variant. Never in our lifetime have Americans encountered an epidemic virus that is both as contagious and virulent. We are witnessing its early effects now, but the worst is yet to come. Already, delta accounts for well over 80 percent of all new U.S. COVID-19 cases. The national seven-day moving average daily case count has increased from about 10,000 to more than 60,000 in just six weeks, and hospitalizations have increased by 33 percent to more than 35,000 over the past seven days alone.


Across the South, many children’s health care facilities currently are observing an increased number of children with serious illness caused by COVID-19. In Louisiana, according to its department of health, the delta variant accounts for about 90 percent of new COVID-19 infections, and only about 37 percent of those eligible are fully vaccinated. Over the past several weeks, Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where I am physician-in-chief, has experienced a surge of pediatric cases unlike anything observed previously. The daily census of children admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 has been as high as 20, with as many as five of those children in our intensive care units at any given time. Ranging in age from infancy to adolescence, a number of children have been seriously or critically ill, requiring mechanical ventilation or extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation, a last-ditch procedure to support a failing heart and lungs that involves circulating and oxygenating blood outside the body. One child has died during the current surge.

Don’t assume that a healthy child is not at risk. About half of the children we had in the hospital last week had no underlying issues. Others had common issues such as asthma or obesity.

https://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive ... &mode=text#

[Brian Peacock]

Lockdowns dont work.

Do you think that Covid-19 mortality figures would have been higher, lower, or about the same without lockdowns?

We cant say as it was not tried. There was also no null measurement. It was the dictators in charge. We will never know.

Then you can't say that lockdowns don't work

You cant by the same token say that no lockdowns would not work as it has never been tried. We have never had a full lock down.

And yet you did by the same token claim that lockdowns do not work. So what are we to take from this? That the claims you make about lockdowns are of a special type or kind supported by special evidence - that evidence apparently being your own opinion about lockdowns not working?

Tell me, how did the virus get from Wuhan to Amsterdam? Did it just blow in on the breeze? How did the variant first detected in India end up in Louisiana? Was it carried on the back of a dolphin or on the tires of a jumbo jet? Perhaps it's in the water, or the food we eat eh, or maybe it's transmitted from those 5G masts that are popping up all over the place?

[Scot Dutchy]

Brian once again I did not say lockdowns dont work. I am saying an alternative was never tried.
We dont know. What I do know is that the dictators had control and anything said by anyone else was laughed at. We have never had lockdowns for flu yet the numbers would almost require it. Why? We are used to having flu every year well now we have another winter illness or are we going to have Covid lockdowns every year.

[Seabass]

Florida school district reverses mask mandate after DeSantis' funding threat
https://www.axios.com/desantis-florida- ... df363.html

Florida's second-largest school district on Monday said it will no longer impose a mask mandate after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) threatened to withhold funding from districts that require face coverings.

[...]

Florida is experiencing a surge of new COVID cases, largely driven by the Delta variant.

[...]

More than 110,400 cases were reported over the seven-day period ending July 29, up from just over 73,000 the week before.

[Seabass]

Arkansas Gov. regrets signing law banning local mask mandates as COVID surges

[laklak]

On the plus side, our herd immunity has passed 80%. It's shit or get off the pot time, COVID, at this rate we'll hit 90% in a couple of weeks, if the number don't drop precipitously then we are well and truly fucked, because herd immunity isn't working. If herd immunity doesn't work then there's no real option, it's Black Death Time once again, campers. Can't stay locked down forever, we're just going to have to dig mass graves. Time to invest in Caterpillar (Buy American!), we'll need lot of heavy digging equipment.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavi ... story.html

I told y'all a year ago that Florida was going to be the guinea pig.

[Seabass]

Texas GOP Official Mocked COVID Five Days Before He Died of Virus


A GOP official from Texas who regularly espoused anti-vaccine and anti-mask views online has died from COVID-19, five days after posting a meme on Facebook questioning the wisdom of getting inoculated against COVID.

Dickinson City Council member and State Republican Executive Committee member H. Scott Apley, 45, died in a local hospital around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, according to a GoFundMe page set up to help Apley’s family with expenses. He was admitted to the facility in Galveston on Sunday with “pneumonia-like symptoms,” and was hooked up to a ventilator as his condition worsened. His wife was also infected, the family said.

“He leaves behind his wife, Melissa, who is COVID positive, as well as their infant son Reid,” according to the fundraiser, which has so far raised almost $15,000 of its $30,000 goal. “Your donations are greatly appreciated and will help the family as they get through this difficult period.”

“My heart is beyond broken for his family,” Dickinson Mayor Sean Skipworth wrote in a Facebook post. “Scott was a new father and that makes this loss especially tragic.”

Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi said in a statement, “Please join me in lifting the Apley family up in prayer. We will miss Scott deeply but find comfort knowing he is at peace in the arms of our Savior.” The announcement did not mention the fact that Apley’s death was COVID-related.

Apley is a staunch conservative and devout Christian. But based on his social media activity, Apley didn’t believe COVID was going to affect him or his family.

In May, Apley posted an invitation for a “mask burning” being held at a bar in Cincinnati, commenting, “I wish I lived in the area!” A couple of weeks earlier, he posted a news article about giveaways and incentives meant to encourage people to get vaccinated, writing, “Disgusting.” Apley also railed against so-called vaccine passports, which restrict high-risk activities, such as indoor dining, to the fully vaccinated. Recently, he suggested that mask mandates in Germany were akin to Nazism. And when former Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen celebrated good news this spring about the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy, a seemingly outraged Apley called her “an absolute enemy of a free people.”

In one of numerous Facebook posts on the subject, Apley wrote, “Question: If businesses start allowing customers and employees go mask free only with VOLUNTARILY providing their vaccination record (presumably not a HIPPA [sic] violation), wouldn't that basically INVOLUNTARILY identify people who have chosen not to get vaccinated (Which might be indirectly creating a HIPPA [sic] violation)?”

HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and prohibits healthcare providers from improperly divulging a person’s private medical information without their consent. It does not apply to private businesses—a bartender asking if a customer is vaccinated, for example, does not constitute a HIPAA violation.

On July 30, less than a week before his death, Apley reposted a meme on his Facebook page that said: “In 6 months, we’ve gone from the vax ending the pandemic—to you can still get covid even if vaxxed—to you can pass covid onto others even if vaxxed—to you can still die of covid even if vaxxed—to the unvaxxed are killing the vaxxed.”In an interview Wednesday with the Galveston County Daily News, Mayor Sean Skipworth said he didn’t know if Apley had been vaccinated against COVID.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/h-scott-a ... d-of-virus

Thoughts and prayers...

[pErvinalia]

Brian once again I did not say lockdowns dont work.

What? Yes you did:

Lockdowns dont work.

I am saying an alternative was never tried.
We dont know. What I do know is that the dictators had control and anything said by anyone else was laughed at. We have never had lockdowns for flu yet the numbers would almost require it. Why? We are used to having flu every year well now we have another winter illness or are we going to have Covid lockdowns every year.

We have an alternative tested - the flu. Flu cases have been massively down during covid thanks to lockdowns, social distancing and masks. And remember, you don't think masks work either.

[Brian Peacock]

Brian once again I did not say lockdowns dont work.

Hmmm.

Lockdowns dont work.

... I am saying an alternative was never tried.

The alternative was tried in every country and region before a lockdown was introduced. The alternative was tried in Wuhan until January 2020, in Italy until February 2020, in the UK until March 2020, in Albania until April 2020. Many European nations eased their restrictions in the middle of 2020 only to reimpose them shortly thereafter - they tried the alternative and it wasn't working.

... We dont know. ...

Speak for yourself.

... What I do know is that the dictators had control and anything said by anyone else was laughed at. We have never had lockdowns for flu yet the numbers would almost require it. Why? We are used to having flu every year well now we have another winter illness or are we going to have Covid lockdowns every year.

Lockdowns are part of a public health response to a pandemic. A pandemic is an epidemic (an infection or disease) which encompasses a wide geographic area and affects a large proportion of the population. Lockdown decisions were taken (often reluctantly and/or belatedly by politicians) on the advice of epidemiologists and virologists in response to variable factors such as overall case numbers, hospitalisation and mortality rates, and health service capacity etc. I know of no country where epidemiologists or virologists have the ability to impose lockdowns. If dictators told us to stay in our homes then it was the dictators we voted for - either that or actual, real dictators.

Covid-19 is not the flu, though both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 are contagious respiratory illnesses transmitted by human-human contact via droplets, aerosols, or surface contact. The expression of both illnesses in a population can range from mild to severe, and in some cases can be fatal, and in individuals is compounded by a number of risk factors such as age, general health (comorbidities), and genetics. However, the range of symptoms differ between the flu and Covid-19, with Covid-19 symptoms having an additional neurological component in some cases (anosmia, ageusia) and expressions which impact heart/lung, liver, kidney, and cerebral function along with the respiratory expression. Unlike the flu, In some cases Covid-19 symptoms persist well after the infection has run its course (so-called 'long Covid'). As an infection Covid-19 is more transmissible than the flu and more lethal, with the Delta variant being more transmissible and lethal again than the initial Alpha variant.

Nonetheless, the flu can teach us at least one thing about the pandemic: the near total absence of European flu cases and a deaths over the winter of 2020/21 demonstrates that lockdowns, and other measures like social distancing and masks, significantly limit the expression of viral contagions in a population. Or to put it another way: lockdowns actually can work.

[Seabass]

Fairy reasoning!

[Hermit]

Lockdown decisions were taken (often reluctantly and/or belatedly by politicians)...

...or half-heartedly, which makes them ineffective. This is what's happening in New South Wales right now. Its premier, Gladys Berejiklian, is trying to lock bits of Sydney ("eight local government areas of concern") down because she wants to keep the economy going as usual everywhere else. It's not working. The daily rate keeps creeping up. 3000 new cases in the past two weeks. There were 1388 new cases in the preceding four weeks and 78 in the four weeks before that.

05 Aug 21		10,063	 	268
04 Aug 21		9,795	 	234
03 Aug 21	202	9,561	 	201
02 Aug 21	209	9,360	 	207
01 Aug 21	241	9,153	 	239
31 Jul 21	212	8,914	 	211
30 Jul 21		8,703	 	172
29 Jul 21	240	8,531	 	238
28 Jul 21	177	8,293	 	176
27 Jul 21		8,117	 	175
26 Jul 21	151	7,942	 	150
25 Jul 21		7,792	 	141
24 Jul 21	164	7,651	 	159
23 Jul 21	141	7,492	 	135
22 Jul 21		7,357	 	124
21 Jul 21		7,233	 	112
20 Jul 21		7,121	 	79