The Virus - Are You Affected?

[Elixir]

I'm very lucky that I've been doing my job from home since 2008. I didn't have to/could not have made my annual trip to Japan this month so I have been doing a not of late night webinars for clients in Japan. My company has essentially banned business travel and have said that no one will be asked to do any travel for the long foreseeable future.

As it is, not a whole lot has changed for me. I left the property about once a week to go shopping prior to the pandemic. I go once a week now.

It's mainly my 2 teenagers who are still home whose life has changed a lot. And my wife no longer goes to 3 different grocery stores in one day buying only sale items.

We behave as if we we're still in the height of lockdown and it's ok so far. Except to get my oldest son to actually do something useful around the house. His gap year between HS and college has had it's plans wrecked.

Brainwashed anti-ratlicker lemming! Get NORMAL for crissakes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The insufferable prick Gavin Newsom, governor of California, has steadfastly refused to allow Disneyland and other theme park venues to open. Citing "science" and "data" as the reason but never giving the specifics. This is his mantra, "science" and "data", invoked like a religious incantation. Newsom's office has failed to produce the necessary guidelines that would allow California theme parks to open. Is the "science" and "data" for theme parks oh so different from that which allows Tesla, Costco, Amazon, Lowe's and many other sectors of commerce to operate ? Is it so different from other places where theme parks are operating ? Disney in California has laid off 28,000 employees. That is just Disney, there are numerous other theme parks in California being held hostage to this insufferable prick. Newson is incompetent, a petty control freak and dictator.

28,000 unemployed is a lot better than the deaths that would result from it's being open.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Agree completely with you on this. That is why my former church and I parted ways....not so amicably.

I assume you would not visit a theme park either. Nothing wrong with that, stay home if you are so afraid of catching a virus where the vast, VAST majority of people recover unscathed. In fact, most people never even knew they had it. But your irrational fears should not prevent regular people living their lives, going to school, earning a living, you know, important stuff.

It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that this claim has nothing to do with reality. You never even address it, just keep preaching the party line.

Opening Disney wouldn't kill all that many kids--but it would kill a lot of parents and grandparents.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is nothing dangerous about visiting a theme park. Keep nana in the nursing home away from people (ratlickers?) that go to church and theme parks would be my suggestion. (or the barbers, or the supermarket or has a job etc, etc, etc.)

It's been a long time since I've been in a theme park. My memories of them are spelled super-spreader, though.

Nana was in the nursing home--it's the people from the church and the theme parks that brought it to them. Nursing homes have staff!

I don't even need to do math to understand that the vast, VAST majority of people who catch this virus recover unscathed. Something that is never disputed but simply brushed aside as if that is of no consequence or shouldn't be considered.

The only reason not to do math is because you're taking it on faith.

Bullshit. I've been banging on for months about the scandal that more than 50% of deaths in California have occurred in long time care facilities due to incompetent supervisors and officials who put infected people (ratlickers as you call them) into the general community.

And what are the supervisors supposed to do about it? They have no control over what their employees do in their off hours, nor can they even hope to prevent their employees catching it from encountering the ratlickers.

Meanwhile, you're trying to encourage ratlicking.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There you go again with you "vast, VAST majority of people" like it's supposed to have some significance. I guess you picked it up from Fox. It sounds like their style of exaggerated hype. What it glosses over is that so far only

... 7,908,000 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 216,000 have died ...

Do the math my friend. So far 2.25% of the US population has been infected. 216,000 of those have died. The ICU's are filling up again and peak season for contagious diseases is just starting. How many VAST's do I need to add to that before you think we need to be more concerned? How many lives should we sacrifice this winter because you refuse to see the big picture? The vast, VAST, VAST majority of people who die from the coronavirus are infected by people who never show symptoms. I find it to be very strange that you find that in any way comforting.

From looking at excess deaths the real number is more like 300,000--and that's an undercount because the lockdown should have reduced the death rate.

 

[bilby]

Agree completely with you on this. That is why my former church and I parted ways....not so amicably.

I assume you would not visit a theme park either. Nothing wrong with that, stay home if you are so afraid of catching a virus where the vast, VAST majority of people recover unscathed. In fact, most people never even knew they had it. But your irrational fears should not prevent regular people living their lives.

Well, TSwizzle, the elderly people in the nursing home TRIED to stay home. But the asshole ratlickers from the church insisted on leaving their Sunday infection party and going to restaurants, grocery stores, schools, a local jail AND visiting their dear parents, who are now fucking dead, along with a score of others. Do you honestly think the ratlickers who will go to amusement parks will behave any less dangerously?

I don't get why this is such a difficult concept for you. You seem like a smart person who can do math. But you are completely blind to the effect of the ratlickers once they leave their infection zones and mingle with all the people who were trying to stay safe.

The fact that you have consistently ignored the deaths caused from these exact people, not a single word of empathy from you, just continued whining and prancing your privilege around, is a strong statement about you.

I hear California is plagued with insufferable pricks.

 

[DrZoidberg]

My doctor friends in Stockholm is saying that the infection numbers have taken a sharp turn upward the last weeks. Buckle down your hatches. People are going to start dropping like flies again

 

[barbos]

My doctor friends in Stockholm is saying that the infection numbers have taken a sharp turn upward the last weeks. Buckle down your hatches. People are going to start dropping like flies again

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Does not seem to support your doctor friends.
To be fair, dead/infected ratio compared to Finland and Norway suggests that Sweden under-counting infected or kill them at much higher rate than Finland/Norway.

 

[DrZoidberg]

My doctor friends in Stockholm is saying that the infection numbers have taken a sharp turn upward the last weeks. Buckle down your hatches. People are going to start dropping like flies again

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Does not seem to support your doctor friends.
To be fair, dead/infected ratio compared to Finland and Norway suggests that Sweden under-counting infected or kill them at much higher rate than Finland/Norway.

Sweden is barely testing people. That's been a strategy right from the start. As far as I know Sweden still doesn't test people who are recovered (unless they are health professionals). So we have no idea of how long time it takes for Swedes to clear the virus. Getting tested in Sweden is not simple.

It's odd. I assume it has to do with money. Sweden's government has gutted the health care sector for 20 years and it was already on it's knees before this started happening. I think they can't afford it. I suspect that's the reason behind all of Sweden's choices during this pandemic. The current government doesn't want to run a budget deficit.

Sweden has taken an economic hit due to taking in Syrian refugees in 2015, having idiotic expensive policies surrounding that, and is still trying to balance the books.

 

[TSwizzle]

My doctor friends in Stockholm is saying that the infection numbers have taken a sharp turn upward the last weeks. Buckle down your hatches. People are going to start dropping like flies again

Nonsense. People were not "dropping like flies" in the first place. Cases are going up everywhere, deaths are going down or are at least flat. It is still true that the vast, VAST majority of people who catch this virus recover unscathed.

 

[Patooka]

Nonsense. People were not "dropping like flies" in the first place. Cases are going up everywhere, deaths are going down or are at least flat.

Big surprise, you're dead fucking wrong
About 75,000 more Americans died from COVID-19 pandemic than reported in spring and summer, study finds

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond found nearly 75,000 more people may have died from the pandemic than what was recorded in March to July, according to the report published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA.
...
“There have been some conspiracy theories that the number of deaths from COVID-19 have been exaggerated,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “The opposite is the case. We’re actually experiencing more death than we thought we were.”

So the US smashed past over a quarter of a million deaths and nobody actually noticed at the time. Depressing, but unsurprising.

 

[TSwizzle]

I don't think you even read that piece of nonsense. It doesn't actually say what you would like it to say.

 

[southernhybrid]

A casual friend of mine just lost her sister in law to COVID-19. She's a TRump supporter and a White evangelical who is skeptical of Dr. Fauci. I don't know how an RN can deny the science, or still support Trump after losing someone very close to her from this dreadful virus, but as Trump would say, it is what it is.....

I was getting ready to send her two scientific articles about how masks work and how if we all wore them, we'd be protecting each other quite effectively from the virus. The effectiveness is believed to be around 80%, possibly more. But, I didn't want to bother her as she is grieving the loss of her loved one.

Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Social distance if you care about your fellow citizens!

Cases have just shot up quite a bit in my county after being rather stagnant for the past two months. Nobody really knows how this infection will impact them. A lot of it has to do with viral load, as well as age, and under lying conditions. A 19 year old student died in NC about 2 weeks ago. That seemed to get the attention of other students who weren't taking this seriously.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My doctor friends in Stockholm is saying that the infection numbers have taken a sharp turn upward the last weeks. Buckle down your hatches. People are going to start dropping like flies again

Nonsense. People were not "dropping like flies" in the first place. Cases are going up everywhere, deaths are going down or are at least flat. It is still true that the vast, VAST majority of people who catch this virus recover unscathed.

Playing Gobbels doesn't make it true.

https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/themedreview/living-with-covid19/

A team from Italy, one of the earliest affected countries, reported that 87% of people discharged from a Rome hospital were still experiencing at least one symptom 60 days after the onset on Covid19 and 55% had three or more symptoms including fatigue (53%), difficulty in breathing (43%), joint pain (27%), and chest pain (22%) with 40% saying it had reduced the quality of their life.

13% doesn't sound like a vast, vast majority to me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't think you even read that piece of nonsense. It doesn't actually say what you would like it to say.

I think you didn't understand the article. It's talking about the excess deaths. The official death toll going up isn't going to change those excess deaths, so we can assume the true death toll is still at least 75,000 above the official death toll.

While some places have gone back and figured out some of the missing deaths (there's a big one-day spike in the China data from this) the US certainly isn't going to do that at present.

Instead--the greeting message from a local large healthcare provider says they are only doing Covid testing on those who show symptoms and you need a doctor's order to get the test.

 

[DrZoidberg]

My doctor friends in Stockholm is saying that the infection numbers have taken a sharp turn upward the last weeks. Buckle down your hatches. People are going to start dropping like flies again

Nonsense. People were not "dropping like flies" in the first place. Cases are going up everywhere, deaths are going down or are at least flat. It is still true that the vast, VAST majority of people who catch this virus recover unscathed.

What the fuck are you smoking? About 60% get serious long term complications lasting up to three months. Since immunity only lasts a couple of months it means that a person in a region that isn't shutting down can be locked in a cycle of a worsening condition and never getting better. The hope was that later infections would be less serious. But it seems now that later infections are more serious than the original infection.

How about your pull your head out of your ass? This is not just a regular flu. This is much more serious.

 

[barbos]

My doctor friends in Stockholm is saying that the infection numbers have taken a sharp turn upward the last weeks. Buckle down your hatches. People are going to start dropping like flies again

Nonsense. People were not "dropping like flies" in the first place. Cases are going up everywhere, deaths are going down or are at least flat. It is still true that the vast, VAST majority of people who catch this virus recover unscathed.

What the fuck are you smoking? About 60% get serious long term complications lasting up to three months. Since immunity only lasts a couple of months it means that a person in a region that isn't shutting down can be locked in a cycle of a worsening condition and never getting better. The hope was that later infections would be less serious. But it seems now that later infections are more serious than the original infection.

How about your pull your head out of your ass? This is not just a regular flu. This is much more serious.

It's probably worse than that. They can't exclude permanent (!!!) brain damage even for asymptomatic people.
Alzheimer and Parkinson later in life.

 

[Jokodo]

I don't think you even read that piece of nonsense. It doesn't actually say what you would like it to say.

I think you didn't understand the article. It's talking about the excess deaths. The official death toll going up isn't going to change those excess deaths, so we can assume the true death toll is still at least 75,000 above the official death toll.

While some places have gone back and figured out some of the missing deaths (there's a big one-day spike in the China data from this) the US certainly isn't going to do that at present.

There actually was a big one day spike in New York with something like 3700 additional deaths from the previous weeks entering the statistics.

Instead--the greeting message from a local large healthcare provider says they are only doing Covid testing on those who show symptoms and you need a doctor's order to get the test.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What the fuck are you smoking? About 60% get serious long term complications lasting up to three months. Since immunity only lasts a couple of months it means that a person in a region that isn't shutting down can be locked in a cycle of a worsening condition and never getting better. The hope was that later infections would be less serious. But it seems now that later infections are more serious than the original infection.

How about your pull your head out of your ass? This is not just a regular flu. This is much more serious.

It's probably worse than that. They can't exclude permanent (!!!) brain damage even for asymptomatic people.
Alzheimer and Parkinson later in life.

That means absolutely nothing. They can't exclude that after two years those infected won't turn into a pink elephant either. Stop reading tabloid press news articles on it!!!

 

[barbos]

What the fuck are you smoking? About 60% get serious long term complications lasting up to three months. Since immunity only lasts a couple of months it means that a person in a region that isn't shutting down can be locked in a cycle of a worsening condition and never getting better. The hope was that later infections would be less serious. But it seems now that later infections are more serious than the original infection.

How about your pull your head out of your ass? This is not just a regular flu. This is much more serious.

It's probably worse than that. They can't exclude permanent (!!!) brain damage even for asymptomatic people.
Alzheimer and Parkinson later in life.

That means absolutely nothing. They can't exclude that after two years those infected won't turn into a pink elephant either. Stop reading tabloid press news articles on it!!!

Well, in the case of ordinary flu they CAN exclude brain damage.
In this case they found that "asymptomatic" people still have damage in brain cells which play a role in Alzheimer and Parkinson.
Just because you don't experience the symptoms does not mean you are not royally screwed.
At this moment there are probably more than 100 million people infected. Imagine if they start getting Alzheimer/Parkinson within next 10 years. And chances are, we will have billions infected.