Then explain why there are...

tents of overflowing sick people outside several major hospitals, refrigerated trucks in NYC hospital parking lots to hold dead bodies because the morgues are full, and (why) one NYC hospital just reported their first death due to care rationing (i.e., a ventilator could have saved the patient but they were all in use.)

I'm all eyes.

What if this had been a biological attack on major metropolitan areas and transportation hubs instead of a natural occurrence? No difference. Everyone knows the Feds can't get relief into place fast enough from experience with previous disasters. It comes down to local and individual preparedness. Both usually drop the ball and neither change their ways afterwards. This has been covered in the Cellar before:

You can lead a horse to water; but, you can't make it drink... not unless you give it a rap in the throat. - Rodney Dangerfield

Municipalities that are suffering can consider this their rap in the throat.

I don't think Johns Hopkins would lie, but I seriously doubt they or anyone else can get accurate numbers at this point. I just read this afternoon several people in China claim the government undercounted deaths by at least 40,000. Seems a lot of governments are doing that to make themselves look better. :(

I don't think Johns Hopkins would lie, but I seriously doubt they or anyone else can get accurate numbers at this point.

The JH folks would probably agree.

Note the word approximately...

Infections

COVID-19: Approximately 1,026,974 cases worldwide; 245,573 cases in the U.S. as of Apr. 3, 2020.

Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.

Deaths

COVID-19: Approximately 53,975 deaths reported worldwide; 6,058 deaths in the U.S., as of Apr. 3, 2020.

Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.


I just read this afternoon several people in China claim the government undercounted deaths by at least 40,000. Seems a lot of governments are doing that to make themselves look better.

I have no doubt the commies in china are deflatin' the death count just as I have no doubt some of the commies (er, I mean socialists oops, I mean progressives) here, in the U.S., are inflatin' death counts.

Looking at the CDC numbers they're still only estimates for the '17-'18 season and nothing on the '18-'19 season.
What are they doing waiting to see if they stay dead?

Attachment 70177

As I understand it there is a shitload of flu types out there and each year they predict which ones they have to cover with the vaccine du jour... er, du year?
Some years it works well and some years not so well, '17-'18 not so good and '14-'15 really bad.
With the death toll ranging from 12,000 to 61,000 for the last 10 years.

Of course there's no vaccine for the corvid-19, there isn't even enough tests kits.

I also saw this...

Attachment 70178

Bastards are picking on me, elder abuse I say. :haha:

I'm not sure you have a clear picture of the emotional state of folks who are being careful, we're very calm here. I could imagine your terror of expert advice and government, but I hope that isn't your state. I have employees for exactly this situation, so that they can advise me about things I lack expertise in. I am hopeful that due to social distancing the death count will be low enough so that you can continue to make your claims.

I'm not sure you have a clear picture of the emotional state of folks who are being careful

Sure I do. My urgin' isn't for folks like you & me. All the items on my list...

Wash your hands, don't touch your pretty face, don't be so touchy-feely, consult your doc if you're worried, don't look to employees for solutions, don't listen to talkin' heads, and calm down.

...are commonsensical things I was doin' before commie flu. I imagine most of you were doin' the same ('cept for the gov lovers/apologists).


I could imagine your terror of expert advice and government

Terror? No, annoyance.


but I hope that isn't your state.

I assume you're talkin' about Louisiana and not of mind.

In the tri-parish area things are calm, local elected folks do their job (advise & caution). Insofar as I can tell, this is mostly the case throughout the state (with the exception of Orleans [three hours to the east of me] where the bulk of Louisiana Fu Manflu infection is happenin').

On the state level there's a thinly disguised hysteria at play, evidenced by willingness on the Governor's part to treat the whole state as a hot spot.


I have employees for exactly this situation, so that they can advise me about things I lack expertise in.

I consulted my doc, I do my own readin', keep my own counsel. I mind the elected folks only to navigate 'em.


I am hopeful that due to social distancing the death count will be low enough so that you can continue to make your claims.

Me too. As for my claims: I'm just lookin' at global , national, regional, state, and local numbers (mostly I use John Hopkins).

It must be tough for Fauci to stand next to Pence and Pennywise and listen to their prevarications.
You can see his pain sometimes, but he realizes the country needs someone sane near the helm.

These people can do what they want as long as they stay away from me.

That's a pretty big germ circle.

Sure, it's a germ-in-nation.

They're playin' outside in a severe thunderstorm (not the imaginary hurricane bein' foisted up as real by the gregariousists).

severe thunderstorm, not a hurricane
 

From George Avery, PhD. MPA


Dr. Avery has a PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and has conducted significant research in the area of public health emergency preparedness, including five journal articles and two book chapters on the topic. He has served on several CDC advisory boards, including a panel on preparedness and emergency response centers, and consulted for the Defense Department on Medical Civic Action program doctrine. He has edited a special issue of the research journal Bioterrorism and Biodefense and served as a reviewer for the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management as well as Disaster Medicine and Public Health. He is a health services researcher with a medical analytics firm in the Midwest, and has formerly been a professor with the public health program at Purdue and worked from 1990-2000 with the Arkansas Department of Health’s Division of Public Health Laboratories.



We are seeing a panic reaction towards the newly emerged SARS-COVID-2 [Wuhan] epidemic, marked by panic buying of items including the much-joked about toilet paper, drastic action by political figures that often impinges on basic civil rights, and potentially devastating lasting economic impact. Much of this has been fueled by naïve and sensationalist reporting of fatality rates, such as a March 10, 2020 report by the Bloomberg news service that implies that 3.4-3.5% of infected individuals die (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...n-virus-update ). This has caused comparisons to the 1919 Influenza A:H1N1 pandemic and its 2.5% case fatality rate, which would qualify as a level 5 event on the CDC’s Pandemic Severity Index (PSI) and has led to a panicked overreaction worldwide. This case fatality rate, however, to a trained epidemiologist is obviously a significant overestimation of the actual fatality rate from the disease.

Ascertainment bias is a systematic error in statistical estimation of a population parameter resulting from errors in measurement - usually, in undermeasurement of a parameter. In this case, we are underestimating the actual number of cases in the population, which is the denominator in the calculation of the estimated case fatality rate. We are accurately estimating deaths, but to get the case fatality rate, we divide deaths by our estimate of the number of cases. Because that it too low due to measurement error, the estimate of the case fatality rate is too high.

For example, for a hypothetical disease if we have three deaths and observed ten cases, then the case fatality rate is 30% (3/10=0.3 or 30%). If, however, there were actually 300 cases, and only 10 were observed and reported, ascertainment bias has led us to underestimate the cases and overestimate the case fatality rate, which is actually 1% (3/300=0.01 or 1%).

In this case, in the absence of population-based screening to more actually estimate the total number of cases, we are only counting cases who are sick enough to seek health care -- almost all disease reports are made by healthcare professionals. We are missing people who have no more than a cold or who are infected but show no symptoms, individuals who almost certainly make up the overwhelming majority of actual cases. Thus, as in my hypothetical example, we are overestimating the case fatality rate for the disease.

There is, however, data available on SARS-COVID-2 [Wuhan] that allows us to get a better grasp on the actual case fatality rates for the virus.

One case is that of the cruise ship Diamond Princess, which achieved some notoriety from the well-publicized outbreak among its 3711 passengers and crew in January and February of 2006. Held aboard in constricted quarters, the population was subject to 3068 polymerase chain reaction (pcr) tests, which identified 634 individuals (17%) as infected, with over half of these infections (328 ) producing no symptoms. Seven infected passengers died, all of them over the age of 70. Adjusting the data for age, researchers at the London Institute of Tropical Medicine have estimated a fatality rate per infection (IFR) for the epidemic in China of 0.5% (95% CI: 0.2-1.2%) during the same period. This is far below the earlier estimates of 3.4% or greater that were promoting panic over the epidemic. See Russell et al, Estimating the infection and case fatality ratio for COVID-19 using age-adjusted data from the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, MedRXIV 2020 at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...773v2.full.pdf.

South Korea has also implemented far wider population-based screening than the US, expanding their screening past suspected cases to voluntary population screening in geographies frequented by identified cases. As of March 15, as Stanford University economist Richard Epstein has noted, they performed over 235,000 tests and identified 8, 162 infections with 75 deaths (CFR=0.91%). Again, only about 10% of the deaths were in the population under the age of 60. See https://www.hoover.org/research/coro...-isnt-pandemic . While their population screening efforts were far better than that of the United States, this was still not a broad-based screening effort (such as was used on the Diamond Princess), being biased because while it looked at a broader population, it still was enriched with cases by looking only at a segment of the population with a higher risk. Still, the case fatality rate is significantly below the 3.4% rate that caused the public panic.

What we are likely seeing, in my estimation, is an epidemic with a real case fatality rate between 0.2 and 0.5%, which is similar to the 1957 Asian Influenza A:H2N2 or 1968 Hong Kong Influenza A:H3N2 pandemics, which were also essentially virgin field respiratory epidemics. These pandemics rate, not as PSI5 events, but as PSI2 events on the CDC scale. They are certainly atypical and more severe than a PSI1 event (such as a routine seasonal flu epidemic), but not a shattering event like the 1919 influenza A:H1N1 pandemic. These earlier pandemics essentially tripled the number of deaths due to influenza experienced annually, and were posed little long-term economic or other damage to the population despite being handled without the extreme measures that are currently being adopted or proposed by political figures. Like those pandemic events, SARS-COVID-2 [Wuhan] has its most significant impact on elderly or otherwise compromised individuals, with few fatalities observed in the population under the age of 60. From what we have observed, half of those infected show no symptoms, 40% show mild symptoms such as a cold, and only about 2% advance to serious or critical illness. What is needed now is for politicians and the population to pause, take a deep breath, and address the epidemic with rational measures, such as social distancing of the older population, ring screening around identified cases, quarantine of identified infected individuals, and adequate hospital triage systems to protect other patients and health care staff rom infection in order to preserve our ability to treat the most severe cases. This is a strategy identified by myself and colleagues at Purdue in 2007 to ensure adequate capacity to deal with another true influenza pandemic, and it applies to this one as well.

He lost me on his first point about panic buying of toilet paper. He’s wrong about toilet paper. There is a shortage of toilet paper not because of panic buying, but because people are not shitting at work and using the industrial grade commercial toilet paper. My own toilet paper consumption has increased 250% and yet I am not shitting more.

My daughter is home from college, and she is using our toilet paper exclusively.

Our household consumption of toilet paper has probably doubled or maybe tripled.

If you multiply that out for all households, you wind up with a shortage of toilet paper. It’s simple math.

My employers building likely has a glut of toilet paper, and there are pallets of commercial grade toilet paper sitting in warehouses somewhere while the consumer grade shelves are empty.

It’s the same thing with food. Not panic buying. People are eating at home when they used to eat out. The restaurant supply houses have lots of food that they can’t sell, and the supermarkets are empty.

again, John Hopkins
 

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases as of 4-4-20

Total Confirmed: 1,196,553

Total Deaths: 64,549

Total Recovered: 246,152

-----

World population: 8 billion

Numbers: pay attention.

He lost me on his first point about panic buying of toilet paper.

Yeah, decline the meal cuz you dislike the garnish.

Surely the panic buying was what started emptying the shelves; if they're still empty that would make sense though

Was it really panic buying; or, just small-time investors planning on making a killing in resale profits?

Here's one for you henry.

Using the people on the Diamond Princess may be the best case study we have but I doubt it's a representative population for the country. It may even be overpopulated with a more vulnerable tilt toward elderly. There is always going to be a coulda, shoulda, woulda, factor in the end.

By the way that Navy ship in NY isn't much help, same shit with that ship on the west coast.
The rules from the Navy are no Covid-19 allowed on the ship, no crew leave the ship for the duration. It's supposed to relieve the hospitals by taking the auto accident, heart attack, or other non Covid cases. Since elective surgery is history almost all cases are emergency. The fly in the ointment is before they are brought onboard they have to be tested at a hospital. First responders will tell you, ain't nobody got time for that.

The Comfort's admission rules have changed.

Do they realize they're being recorded? Oh well, down the memory hole..

A good read:

It goes on to cover historical and geopolitical reasons why Finland is in a good position; also, why the others are not.

"Go to the movies."

:mad2:

Doc Drew...

Is he a doctor of medicine? Or a doctor of English? He preaches like an English Nazi.

No he's a politician

MD, he's an internist, "addiction medicine specialist", whatever the fuck that is.

So he was a guy who was pushing opioids. Because extremists believed we should have a right to any medication we deem necessary (desirable). And that responsibility is secondary to what we want.

That sounds like a neurologist.

Probably not; my first thought was psychiatry, and this seems to support that:

He was a rehab doctor.

Another Dr Phil?

Politician

Dr Phil was a psychology PhD, but no longer has a license.

Drew produces about 4 hours of content every day

I listened to him on Mar 18 and reported on it and his advice/information was sensible in context IMO

Without watching the video I suspect somebody has a politically-driven cancel culture agenda item to fulfill

Perhaps hence it was posted in this particular thread

People have extra spare time now, but to go through a month worth of 4 hours/day content in order to selectively edit takes either wild motivation, or a salary

It's just a straightforward video of a person saying things.

It's not deceptively edited or spliced together, it's just a compilation of a person haphazardly wielding their influence to be tragically, emphatically wrong on a subject that has/had real-world consequences.

Is being recorded speaking for four hours a day an excuse for being repeatedly, spectacularly wrong on an important subject? Just weigh the pros and cons-- 1) pros: talking man feels bigly important, 2) cons: talking man disseminates harmful information

Not to get in the way of your pet theory, but the video covers what you reported on, and what he later said about what he said then, and what he later said about that, among other things.

I watched him in context, but whatevs!

It's political, it's a dunk video, have fun with your dunking and whatnot

I think the video has a serious use. It's the same as warning people not to put crystals in your vagina because Gwyneth Paltrow, to please ignore Jenny McCarthy about vaccines, and David Avacado Wolfe about everything.

Saying a person said a thing isn't a dunk, it's accountability.

My feeling is, when you watch any edited video, you are getting two points of view

1. The person speaking

2. The editor

I watched it again because you keep mentioning editing. It's somewhat chopped, I note upon review.

I still weigh more heavily that it's impossible in any interpretation that he didn't repeatedly make harmful statements, even accounting for a reverse-Nostradomus effect, where he was repeatedly wrong within a large body of work. And.. since he acknowledged it himself-- that p r o v e s that he actually said and meant it? Right?? Video editing is rendered moot-- he conceded the point ?!

If I had to guess, I would say the backlash to Drew's statements in particular (because plenty of people outside the Fox universe said similar things and aren't getting vilified) have to do with the everpresent condescension in his voice. It wasn't "Don't worry, it's no worse than the flu," it was "no, you fucking morons, it's not dangerous, and you're morally repugnant for ignoring the real danger of the flu." People who get dunked on feel compelled to dunk back.

And to be honest, anyone who had to deal with addicts all day, and then LoveLine callers, and then internet trolls for decades on end... It's easy to understand how the frustration could rot him from within, to the point that that's just his normal way of speaking. Still not a good look, but I guess it's a better job hazard than black lung.

Also, he makes the statements while calling himself "a doctor" ?

How does one defend against cancel culture? Your own instinct is, now we shall X him off the list and never listen to him again!! Radio Doctor BAD!! Literally Paltrow!! How does one defend against that? Not with reasoning!

Meanwhile I report back having listened to the entire hour in the middle of it, wrote up a post about it, and found nothing outrageous... but my post bears no weight whatsoever.

Undertoad BAD!! I guess? Did I fuck up in the past, am I X'd off your list?

If the only people we trust are people who never got anything wrong, we will actually be putting our trust into people who avoided saying anything controversial. Well, fuck that particular kind of shit. I think it will screw us in the end. I think it already has.

you're the only one saying any of those things, that's your hang-up. start a thread

I think the acknowledgement of fault has to play a role, though, as well. We have to be allowed to make mistakes, yes, but we also have to be humble when they happen. I haven't seen any mea culpas from Drew, but maybe he did and they're not getting airtime. I do know that threatening to sue people for copyright infringement for posting freely-available clips of yoir own words is a great way to fan the flames.

Oh yeah I hadn't seen that, that is a horrible look

Looks like some healthcare workers are saying enough is enough and the best thing they can do for patients is put their employer out of business.

Yet Doctors and Nurses are being laid off or getting pay cuts all across the country. :facepalm:

Tribalism is literally going to kill us:

Political Beliefs affect Compliance with COVID-19 Social Distancing Orders

True words man. Each of us has to do our part. I personally need to step back and admit I don't understand other people's motivations. Assuming I do cheapens their lives and breaks down our unity as a people. E Plurbus Unum.

I dunno, UT. This sounds like a disclaimer...

The term robust in statistics means accurate. It seems robust to means accuracy is dependent on controlling for other factors; but, doesn't say whether they did or didn't. If they did, how well could they have factored them in? I'm not going to read the study to find out.

It doesn't seem that political affiliation would be a major factor. IMHO, a better argument could be made for religious affiliation posing a significant tribal detriment to safety.

Keep in mind; though, that we've been using adversarial systems for many things for a long time. It may not be the best in all circumstances; but, it keeps whole herds of humanity from running off the edge of a cliff at one time.
.
.

John Hopkins 4-10-20
 

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases

Confirmed (approximate): 1,631,310

Deaths (approximate): 98,401

Recovered (approximate): 365,722

-----

Infections

COVID-19: Approximately 1,612,646 cases worldwide; approximately 466,299 cases in the U.S. as of Apr. 10, 2020.

Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.

Deaths

COVID-19: Approximately 96,787 deaths reported worldwide; approximately 16,686 deaths in the U.S., as of Apr. 10, 2020.

Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.

-----

World Population (approximate): 8,000,000,000

-----

A courageous moment of self-correction...

It's Johns Hopkins, not John Hopkins.

Interesting story at the link (excerpt here):

[BOLD MINE]

You can holler all you like that it's not a thing.

It's still a thing.

The Authority is Total
 

But don't worry, they're going to "write up papers" on this.

Trump supporters don't care. he's an authoritarian dictator, but he's their authoritarian dictator.

Not to worry, this is why we have a 2nd Amendment. :rolleyes:

It was only a month ago that everybody* demanded that if he didn't manage everything** he was incompetent

We used this down time to read the Constitution, good for us!



*for various definitions of everybody
**for various definitions of everything

Cuomo addressed that today actually.