The Virus - Are You Affected?

[southernhybrid]

Nursing home is up to 90 cases. 65 residents, 25 employees.
5 deaths in the last 7 days.
My mother tested positive today.

I am sorry to hear that too. My sister constantly worries about the nursing home where our mother is now. They say they have no cases at this time. Who really knows?

 

[crazyfingers]

Nursing home is up to 90 cases. 65 residents, 25 employees.
5 deaths in the last 7 days.
My mother tested positive today.

Ugh.

 

[blastula]

Nursing home is up to 90 cases. 65 residents, 25 employees.
5 deaths in the last 7 days.
My mother tested positive today.

Sorry to hear this. It's been very scary watching those numbers go up. Horrible situation for you.

 

[Copernicus]

Caught URTI. I hope it's coronavirus variety and I get some cross-immunity.

Pretty much clear of symptoms now. But first 3 days were not great. Is there a chance of having COVID with symptoms exactly like common cold?
I mean none of the specific covid symptoms, just common cold symptoms.

I hope you stay well, and it could just be a normal cold. Is it possible for you to get tested for COVID?

 

[Derec]

Nursing home is up to 90 cases. 65 residents, 25 employees.
5 deaths in the last 7 days.
My mother tested positive today.

Very sorry to hear that Rhea. How is she doing?
Also, I wonder how big the nursing home is? 65 residents and 25 employees seems to me like a big fraction of the total, unless I am totally underestimating how big nursing homes are.

 

[Derec]

It depends on what they are doing to me. A big march down a road, tolerable. Sitting around blocking a road, not acceptable. Attacking (even by pounding) any car that wishes to pass through when you're standing around in the road, not acceptable.

I think a march down a road to say a courthouse or something is fine, if announced ahead of time and is just that one day. If people are protesting and blocking roads >100 days, as is happening in Portland, they are basically holding a big chunk of the city hostage.
Also I do not think protests that have the aim of blocking interstate highways, bridges, shipping lanes or means of public transit are never legitimate.

 

[Derec]

Aggressive use of masks and prohibiting the sorts of things that can't be done without masks unless they're essential (medical treatment) could give us herd immunity now. It's just people won't comply.

Well not exactly herd immunity, unless the speculation that masking could act as a backdoor vaccine is correct, but it would bring effective R below 1 as long as these measures are maintained. The problem with that is, of course, that the longer things go on, the more difficult it is to maintain compliance.

 

[Derec]

View attachment 29531

Bullshit. That graph reflects some substantial messing with the data. The excess mortality numbers tell a different story:

View attachment 29543

Does it? I see no bullshit here. The case numbers start going down in late July, the dea hs from your chart start going down in early August. You'd expect that kind of lag.
And we know the case numbers are an undercount because most people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic never get tested. That does not show messing with the data though. What is important is how the case curve develops over time, not the absolute numbers as such.

If you compare the official death counts with your excess deaths chart, they fit quite well together, except the chart I posted has the deaths go down later than yours. But similar shape and same numbers, i.e. peaking at ~200 deaths per day both when looking at official deaths (7 day average) and excess deaths.


So no messing with the data and no bullshit. The sky is not going to fall on our heads after all.

 

[Derec]

This isn't really super important, but actually, a vaccine can provide better immunity than a normal infection. One basic way is by simply providing higher concentrations of accessible antigens than would occur during a normal infection. Vaccines can also use immunologic adjuvants.

Not an immunologist, nor do I play one on TV, but my understanding was that most vaccines need adjuvants because most vaccines use things like viral subunits (e.g. the spike protein) that are not as strongly immunogenic as the actual whole virus.

But I concede that in some cases vaccines could work better than an infection, sure. I just don't think it's the usual case.

 

[Derec]

Yeah, exactly. The scientific consensus is even with a vaccine we'll still need to wear masks. But since some people won't, we're fucked.

Is it really? I have seen Fauci say something to that effect, but that's not the same as "scientific consensus". A lot will depend on the effectiveness of whatever the vaccine that gets approved and deployed first, but I can't see people rushing to take a vaccine that is so ineffective that we still need to wear masks everywhere. It's one thing to wear masks for a few months, or even until a vaccine is developed, quite another to tell people that we have to wear masks indefinitely. I can't see that going over too well. So we better hope whatever vaccine(s) is/are developed are more effective than you or, apparently, Fauci think.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Aggressive use of masks and prohibiting the sorts of things that can't be done without masks unless they're essential (medical treatment) could give us herd immunity now. It's just people won't comply.

Well not exactly herd immunity, unless the speculation that masking could act as a backdoor vaccine is correct, but it would bring effective R below 1 as long as these measures are maintained. The problem with that is, of course, that the longer things go on, the more difficult it is to maintain compliance.

Herd immunity is when R0 is below 1, it doesn't require any actual immunity.

 

[Derec]

Herd immunity is when R0 is below 1, it doesn't require any actual immunity.

You are wrong about herd immunity. It requires actual immunity, whether from an infection or a vaccine.

You are also wrong about R₀. R₀ is the initial (hence the naught) average number of people that each infected person infects. It is based on a population where everybody is susceptible, so herd immunity, be it from infections or vaccinations, cannot affect R₀. But masking, social distancing and such can.

So I think you have been conflating and mixing up some of the terms.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Yeah, exactly. The scientific consensus is even with a vaccine we'll still need to wear masks. But since some people won't, we're fucked.

Is it really? I have seen Fauci say something to that effect, but that's not the same as "scientific consensus". A lot will depend on the effectiveness of whatever the vaccine that gets approved and deployed first, but I can't see people rushing to take a vaccine that is so ineffective that we still need to wear masks everywhere. It's one thing to wear masks for a few months, or even until a vaccine is developed, quite another to tell people that we have to wear masks indefinitely. I can't see that going over too well. So we better hope whatever vaccine(s) is/are developed are more effective than you or, apparently, Fauci think.

It's an opinion based on the vaccine candidates that are now in phase 1 and 2. I think the only vaccine candidate that is more than partial is the Russian one. But that has only been through a very limitted phase 1. That's a long way off from hitting the market. Until that is available, if ever, we'll have to make do with the partial ones.

The idiots refusing to wear masks make it more important for others to wear masks. The idiots refusing to take any vaccine will of course make all limitting and quarantining efforts prolonged.

All the societies that had a MERS outbreak developed a culture where it became normal to wear masks even after the epidemic was defeated. Masks aren't going anywhere. They will be the new normal.

 

[TSwizzle]

California just get more and more bat shit crazy. The insufferable prick governor Newsom, in his latest diktat from high above has deemed that "health equity" (another meaningless piece of jargon, it's certainly not data or science) will be used as a metric to determine if certain counties can reopen;

State officials announced weeks ago that a new “equity” measure would be added. It was unveiled on the state’s Department of Public Health website Wednesday. Most counties have significant differences in the coronavirus positivity rate between richer and poorer neighborhoods. The prevalence of disease in one neighborhood adds to the risks for the entire county, the state said. The larger counties’ census tracts will be divided into quartiles based on the California Healthy Places index, a measure of socioeconomic opportunity that takes into account economic, social, education, housing and transportation factors. The lowest quartile of these tracts is now home to 24% of Californians but accounts for 40% of COVID-19 cases, the state said.

LATimes

So what we have here is that if your neighborhood follows the guidelines, adheres to the rules and gets the infection rate down, it will be no use because across town, the communities that do what they like, i.e. large gatherings etc. will get you punished.

 

[Politesse]

California just get more and more bat shit crazy. The insufferable prick governor Newsom, in his latest diktat from high above has deemed that "health equity" (another meaningless piece of jargon, it's certainly not data or science) will be used as a metric to determine if certain counties can reopen;

State officials announced weeks ago that a new “equity” measure would be added. It was unveiled on the state’s Department of Public Health website Wednesday. Most counties have significant differences in the coronavirus positivity rate between richer and poorer neighborhoods. The prevalence of disease in one neighborhood adds to the risks for the entire county, the state said. The larger counties’ census tracts will be divided into quartiles based on the California Healthy Places index, a measure of socioeconomic opportunity that takes into account economic, social, education, housing and transportation factors. The lowest quartile of these tracts is now home to 24% of Californians but accounts for 40% of COVID-19 cases, the state said.

LATimesSo what we have here is that if your neighborhood follows the guidelines, adheres to the rules and gets the infection rate down, it will be no use because across town, the communities that do what they like, i.e. large gatherings etc. will get you punished.

It's an infectious disease. I don't want to insult your intelligence, but do you know anything at all about science? Of course they have to take a macro-regional perspective, the virus is not going to politely stop at the census-defined edges of "neighborhoods", especially not when those neighborhooods share many public facilities in common.

If your neighborhood were to "open" tomorrow, restrictionless as per the dumbfuck states, would you promise to only go to businesses in your local neighborhood until the epidemic stops spreading? Or would you be tempted to, occasionally, drive a few blocks over to the mall that is in the next neighborhood over?

Viral containment measures are not "punishments"; people who do understand science are trying earnestly to save your life, even though you hate them for it, much like a toddler throwing a tantrum because its mother didn't want it playing in the road.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

California just get more and more bat shit crazy. The insufferable prick governor Newsom, in his latest diktat from high above has deemed that "health equity" (another meaningless piece of jargon, it's certainly not data or science) will be used as a metric to determine if certain counties can reopen;

State officials announced weeks ago that a new “equity” measure would be added. It was unveiled on the state’s Department of Public Health website Wednesday. Most counties have significant differences in the coronavirus positivity rate between richer and poorer neighborhoods. The prevalence of disease in one neighborhood adds to the risks for the entire county, the state said. The larger counties’ census tracts will be divided into quartiles based on the California Healthy Places index, a measure of socioeconomic opportunity that takes into account economic, social, education, housing and transportation factors. The lowest quartile of these tracts is now home to 24% of Californians but accounts for 40% of COVID-19 cases, the state said.

LATimes

So what we have here is that if your neighborhood follows the guidelines, adheres to the rules and gets the infection rate down, it will be no use because across town, the communities that do what they like, i.e. large gatherings etc. will get you punished.

Because you'll be sharing the markets etc with those careless people.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Herd immunity is when R0 is below 1, it doesn't require any actual immunity.

You are wrong about herd immunity. It requires actual immunity, whether from an infection or a vaccine.

You are also wrong about R₀. R₀ is the initial (hence the naught) average number of people that each infected person infects. It is based on a population where everybody is susceptible, so herd immunity, be it from infections or vaccinations, cannot affect R₀. But masking, social distancing and such can.

So I think you have been conflating and mixing up some of the terms.

https://plus.maths.org/content/maths-minute-r0-and-herd-immunity

 

[barbos]

Daily infection rate in Russia will set a new record tomorrow.
Interesting thing is that it appears to have different distribution now. Around here it is still pretty quiet.
I don't think they are lying.

 

[TSwizzle]

It's an infectious disease. I don't want to insult your intelligence, but do you know anything at all about science?

I know enough about science and the infectious disease in that in the vast, VAST majority of cases it is pretty harmless. A disease so lethal that you have to test for it to see if you have it.

Of course they have to take a macro-regional perspective, the virus is not going to politely stop at the census-defined edges of "neighborhoods", especially not when those neighborhooods share many public facilities in common.

This diktat has fuck all to do with geography (or science for that matter) and everything to do with virtue signaling nonsense. "Health equity" indeed.

Viral containment measures are not "punishments"; people who do understand science are trying earnestly to save your life, even though you hate them for it, much like a toddler throwing a tantrum because its mother didn't want it playing in the road.

They are not trying to save my life, my life is in no danger whatsoever from Covid-19.


In any event, the buffoon Newsom's office actually tweeted that people eating out at restaurants should "wear their masks between bites".

This is science is it ? This is them saving my life ? Fuck off.

 

[bilby]

I don't know how to break this to you, but glib phrases promoted by propagandists, such as "A disease so lethal you have to test for it to see if you have it" aren't science.

And there are millions of people who are (and were) very obviously and painfully aware that they or their family members or friends had this disease. You need to test corpses to determine that Covid was the cause of desth - but the need for such a test doesn't bring the dead back to life.

If you honestly believe that your life is in no danger whatsoever from Covid-19, then you are not just a stupid fool; You're a dangerously stupid fool.