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OT: COVID-19 thread #4

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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#21 » by Ice Man » Sun Nov 22, 2020 4:18 pm

coldfish wrote:From what I have seen both online and from politicians is that there is an automatic pushback on everything surrounding him. People are actively siding with China as an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" type scenario and that's just wrong.


Hmmm, I haven't seen that. But sure, if anybody is defending China, that's a mistake. This topic shouldn't have anything to do with friends and enemies. The issue is how to save lives and avoid future such catastrophes.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#22 » by Dresden » Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:10 pm

Chicago-Bull-E wrote:
coldfish wrote:The origins issue with covid is interesting. It used to be relatively common to name diseases based on their origin. Spanish Flu (which was probably from Kansas and mutated to be deadly in troop depots in England), Russian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, etc. Calling this Wuhan Flu would be following precedent. Unfortunately people have used this as an excuse to attack asians when they had absolutely nothing to do with the origins. That's not even marginally OK.

OTOH, the rush to discount origin stories has clouded over how this emerged. I'm not sure if its been covered here but there is evidence of community spread of covid all over the world in December which shouldn't be possible based on China's official story. Harvard did an analysis and found significant evidence that covid was raging in Wuhan months before China admitted it existed. Beyond that, there are lots of stories of the Chinese communist party covering up data, punishing whistleblowers, etc. China's handling of this has crushed the entire planet.

Because we can't talk about this due to concerns about racism, I think we are doomed to repeat this whole thing. We aren't going to put fixes in place to stop this kind of situation from recurring and spreading globally.


Well said. I think the term has been used by racists, which is 100% not ok, but not holding the parties responsible for the outbreak and virus creation is a disastrous approach too.

Some world leaders have condemned China for the outbreak, but not enough weight has been put on their shoulders IMO.

How will everyone feel when this happens again in 3 years? And we have to take out another 1-2 year chunk from our lives and quarantine?


I think you do have to take steps to make sure nations are more forthcoming in the future. However, I also think you have to consider if the Trump administration would have acted any differently if this thing had broken out in the US? Probably not, given how keen they have been to downplay the severity of the pandemic from the very start. And in actuality, if we had acted promptly on the information we did have about the virus back in January, we could have significantly reduced the harm that has been done.

And that goes not just for the federal response, but local decision making as well. I remember Andrew Cuomo saying he would never consider shutting down NYC, only to have to take that step a few weeks later. The same thing goes for other nations, Europe in particular, where people in many places did not take this seriously enough at first.

I'm not saying China couldn't have saved everyone a huge world of hurt by alerting the world about this back in December when they first became aware of it, but let's not use China as a scapegoat to excuse our own inadequate response.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#23 » by coldfish » Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:21 pm

Dresden wrote:
Chicago-Bull-E wrote:
coldfish wrote:The origins issue with covid is interesting. It used to be relatively common to name diseases based on their origin. Spanish Flu (which was probably from Kansas and mutated to be deadly in troop depots in England), Russian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, etc. Calling this Wuhan Flu would be following precedent. Unfortunately people have used this as an excuse to attack asians when they had absolutely nothing to do with the origins. That's not even marginally OK.

OTOH, the rush to discount origin stories has clouded over how this emerged. I'm not sure if its been covered here but there is evidence of community spread of covid all over the world in December which shouldn't be possible based on China's official story. Harvard did an analysis and found significant evidence that covid was raging in Wuhan months before China admitted it existed. Beyond that, there are lots of stories of the Chinese communist party covering up data, punishing whistleblowers, etc. China's handling of this has crushed the entire planet.

Because we can't talk about this due to concerns about racism, I think we are doomed to repeat this whole thing. We aren't going to put fixes in place to stop this kind of situation from recurring and spreading globally.


Well said. I think the term has been used by racists, which is 100% not ok, but not holding the parties responsible for the outbreak and virus creation is a disastrous approach too.

Some world leaders have condemned China for the outbreak, but not enough weight has been put on their shoulders IMO.

How will everyone feel when this happens again in 3 years? And we have to take out another 1-2 year chunk from our lives and quarantine?


I think you do have to take steps to make sure nations are more forthcoming in the future. However, I also think you have to consider if the Trump administration would have acted any differently if this thing had broken out in the US? Probably not, given how keen they have been to downplay the severity of the pandemic from the very start. And in actuality, if we had acted promptly on the information we did have about the virus back in January, we could have significantly reduced the harm that has been done.

And that goes not just for the federal response, but local decision making as well. I remember Andrew Cuomo saying he would never consider shutting down NYC, only to have to take that step a few weeks later. The same thing goes for other nations, Europe in particular, where people in many places did not take this seriously enough at first.

I'm not saying China couldn't have saved everyone a huge world of hurt by alerting the world about this back in December when they first became aware of it, but let's not use China as a scapegoat to excuse our own inadequate response.


I think the two issues need to be kept completely separate. China is not an excuse for Trump's failures and Trump's failures don't make China's problems acceptable.

Let's back this up a little. Here is the study saying there is significant evidence covid was in Wuhan in August:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/09/coronavirus-may-have-been-spreading-in-china-in-august-harvard-study.html

Here is the study showing that there was enough community spread of Covid in LA in December to statistically significant:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/09/10/study-coronavirus-may-have-hit-los-angeles-in-december-before-wuhan-outbreak-was-reported/?sh=ccb627f6b1f7

There are similar reports in Italy, NY, Washington, etc.

More likely than not, China was covering up the existence of covid for months. Even once it was out, they manipulated the WHO to give out bad information.
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This type of stuff should be common knowledge but the rush to go after Trump has glossed this over. As awful as Trump was, he is going to be gone in a matter of months. The CCP? They are still there and its now twice they have triggered a global health crisis. We really can't let them off the hook and we can't let claims of racism or whataboutisms about Trump distract from that.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#24 » by Dresden » Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:05 pm

[quote="coldfish"]

Let's back this up a little. Here is the study saying there is significant evidence covid was in Wuhan in August:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/09/coronavirus-may-have-been-spreading-in-china-in-august-harvard-study.html

Ok, this is one study, not peer reviewed, based on symptom searches on the internet, and traffic patterns in hospital parking lots. The researches themselves admit this sort of evidence is not exactly foolproof. And even if it does indicate the virus was present at those times, I wonder how long it takes between the time people start getting sick, and the causes of those illnesses is identified as a novel virus that could be a global threat? I don't know how those things work.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#25 » by Dresden » Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:10 pm

coldfish wrote:
Here is the study showing that there was enough community spread of Covid in LA in December to statistically significant:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/09/10/study-coronavirus-may-have-hit-los-angeles-in-december-before-wuhan-outbreak-was-reported/?sh=ccb627f6b1f7.


This is again speculative. As one of the critics of this conclusion points out in the article: " Less persuaded is Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor in the University of Iowa’s departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Pediatrics, who called the findings “very speculative and potentially inflammatory.” “There is no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in this study,” he told Forbes. “It is based entirely on people in the ER with coughs and in numbers of cases with respiratory disease admitted to the hospital. These data do not support the conclusion, in my opinion.”

But even if it were true, what does that mean? That Covid was spreading around the globe as early as December, before China announced the outbreak to the WHO. Does that necessarily mean China was covering anything up? Or just that they themselves weren't aware of the outbreak, or the severity of it, until sometime in December, when it had already left China? That's not necessarily anything you can blame China for.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#26 » by Dresden » Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:21 pm

I'm not defending China here. I just think that perhaps some of the blame they are receiving is a bit overblown, not based on solid evidence but more on speculation, or studies that may or may not be accurate. And yes, it is very hard to get accurate information from a country as controlling and secretive as China is, which is a problem.

Hopefully, public health officials as well as politicians can work on this problem, to try to find ways to encourage countries to be more forthcoming about future outbreaks. But I don't think excessively blaming or scapegoating nations without solid evidence is going to help in that regard.

The US has done plenty of covering their ass too when it comes to public health hazards that they were responsible for. You can look at the coverup of the nuclear testing they conducted in the South Pacific islands, the Union Carbide disaster in India, the depleted uranium hazard in Iraq, Agent Orange in SE Asia, and most significantly, the effect of American tobacco marketing in pushing tobacco use around the globe.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#27 » by coldfish » Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:14 pm

Dresden wrote:I'm not defending China here. I just think that perhaps some of the blame they are receiving is a bit overblown, not based on solid evidence but more on speculation, or studies that may or may not be accurate. And yes, it is very hard to get accurate information from a country as controlling and secretive as China is, which is a problem.

Hopefully, public health officials as well as politicians can work on this problem, to try to find ways to encourage countries to be more forthcoming about future outbreaks. But I don't think excessively blaming or scapegoating nations without solid evidence is going to help in that regard.


https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-virus-italy-december.html

There is a case where sewers in Italy were testing positive for covid in December. They, like the LA study, had a statistically significant increase in pneumonia cases before the new year. I can point to countless data points like this. One you can dismiss but when you look at the totality of them, its pretty obvious that this was spreading far and wide around the world in 2019.

You have kept up on covid and are fully aware of just how bad it is. Now, apply your knowledge here. Would it be possible for a city to have completely unchecked community spread for months without noticing it? If the answer is no (which it obviously is), the Chinese were lying and covering up. Unless we do something, they are going to do it again. There was only 18 years between SARS-1 and covid19. We will be due for our next global meltdown in 2038 unless we take extraordinary steps here.

If we had a different leader and did everything right, we would be Germany . . . who has spent most of 2020 in lockdown and lost 14k lives (and they are 1/4th our size). I really don't ever want to have this happen again and accomplishing that is going to require us shutting it down at the source.

The US has done plenty of covering their ass too when it comes to public health hazards that they were responsible for. You can look at the coverup of the nuclear testing they conducted in the South Pacific islands, the Union Carbide disaster in India, the depleted uranium hazard in Iraq, Agent Orange in SE Asia, and most significantly, the effect of American tobacco marketing in pushing tobacco use around the globe.


This is pure whataboutism. We are talking about trying to prevent another global pandemic that kills millions of people.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#28 » by Bullbleep » Mon Nov 23, 2020 2:05 am

coldfish wrote:https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-virus-italy-december.html

There is a case where sewers in Italy were testing positive for covid in December. They, like the LA study, had a statistically significant increase in pneumonia cases before the new year. I can point to countless data points like this. One you can dismiss but when you look at the totality of them, its pretty obvious that this was spreading far and wide around the world in 2019.

You have kept up on covid and are fully aware of just how bad it is. Now, apply your knowledge here. Would it be possible for a city to have completely unchecked community spread for months without noticing it? If the answer is no (which it obviously is), the Chinese were lying and covering up.

You realize that the article you’re citing points out precisely what you’re arguing against, right? No, probably not. I’ll help out here. It apparently took Milan &Turin two months to realize they had a new virus problem. Note that the WHO issued its initial ‘new virus’ alert on Jan 5th, so they shouldn’t have been unaware something new was on the loose. China didn’t have that luxury. The virus was new and unknown to them, a bad combination...

This China-bashing stuff borders on QANONland. It’s a novel virus that jumped species. Those always take time to decipher/detect...
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#29 » by coldfish » Mon Nov 23, 2020 2:34 am

Bullbleep wrote:
coldfish wrote:https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-virus-italy-december.html

There is a case where sewers in Italy were testing positive for covid in December. They, like the LA study, had a statistically significant increase in pneumonia cases before the new year. I can point to countless data points like this. One you can dismiss but when you look at the totality of them, its pretty obvious that this was spreading far and wide around the world in 2019.

You have kept up on covid and are fully aware of just how bad it is. Now, apply your knowledge here. Would it be possible for a city to have completely unchecked community spread for months without noticing it? If the answer is no (which it obviously is), the Chinese were lying and covering up.

You realize that the article you’re citing points out precisely what you’re arguing against, right? No, probably not. I’ll help out here. It apparently took Milan &Turin two months to realize they had a new virus problem. Note that the WHO issued its initial ‘new virus’ alert on Jan 5th, so they shouldn’t have been unaware something new was on the loose. China didn’t have that luxury. The virus was new and unknown to them, a bad combination...

This China-bashing stuff borders on QANONland. It’s a novel virus that jumped species. Those always take time to decipher/detect...


Awesome!!! Those doubting the existence of a China defense squad get to see it in action.

OK, let's quickly pull apart your points. You are conceding that the Italian study is actually evidence that covid was there months beforehand. Now, logically, that rules out the fact that covid just appeared in China in December. Of course, we now know that it takes months for covid to build up to the point where it is filling up hospitals so that wasn't really in question. At least, it shouldn't have been.

But, let's go with your train of thought. So, covid was in Wuhan for months before it spiked. Your point is that its hard to notice that at first. Fair enough. However, once people go back and look at things in hindsight, the pattern becomes really obvious. That's something we have seen throughout the world.

If, once China and associated authorities realized that it was there, they would have been able to go back and see a typical viral spread pattern with a slow buildup up and then an explosion. Basic epidemiology. Once they saw that, if they had relayed that to the world, then medical authorities around the globe would have been thinking "OMG, its existed for a while. It might be here already." They would have been investigating and finding cases locally instead of telling their own doctors to ignore the cases they were seeing. End result would have been earlier shutdowns and countless (hundreds of thousands) of lives saved.

Instead, we got "no evidence of human to human transmission" and "it just showed up in December". That lulled the world to sleep during a critical time.

These were lies and cover ups.

I love how discussing this is QANON type stuff. Gotta discredit, right? Let's turn that around. The idea that the first cases in Wuhan were in December and then a few weeks later they had to build hospitals to house the sick and shut down the entire province is a complete fantasy. The world doesn't work like that. Its a fairy tale being told by an autocratic government to cover its own tracks.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#30 » by Chi town » Mon Nov 23, 2020 3:04 am

coldfish wrote:
Bullbleep wrote:
coldfish wrote:https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-virus-italy-december.html

There is a case where sewers in Italy were testing positive for covid in December. They, like the LA study, had a statistically significant increase in pneumonia cases before the new year. I can point to countless data points like this. One you can dismiss but when you look at the totality of them, its pretty obvious that this was spreading far and wide around the world in 2019.

You have kept up on covid and are fully aware of just how bad it is. Now, apply your knowledge here. Would it be possible for a city to have completely unchecked community spread for months without noticing it? If the answer is no (which it obviously is), the Chinese were lying and covering up.

You realize that the article you’re citing points out precisely what you’re arguing against, right? No, probably not. I’ll help out here. It apparently took Milan &Turin two months to realize they had a new virus problem. Note that the WHO issued its initial ‘new virus’ alert on Jan 5th, so they shouldn’t have been unaware something new was on the loose. China didn’t have that luxury. The virus was new and unknown to them, a bad combination...

This China-bashing stuff borders on QANONland. It’s a novel virus that jumped species. Those always take time to decipher/detect...


Awesome!!! Those doubting the existence of a China defense squad get to see it in action.

OK, let's quickly pull apart your points. You are conceding that the Italian study is actually evidence that covid was there months beforehand. Now, logically, that rules out the fact that covid just appeared in China in December. Of course, we now know that it takes months for covid to build up to the point where it is filling up hospitals so that wasn't really in question. At least, it shouldn't have been.

But, let's go with your train of thought. So, covid was in Wuhan for months before it spiked. Your point is that its hard to notice that at first. Fair enough. However, once people go back and look at things in hindsight, the pattern becomes really obvious. That's something we have seen throughout the world.

If, once China and associated authorities realized that it was there, they would have been able to go back and see a typical viral spread pattern with a slow buildup up and then an explosion. Basic epidemiology. Once they saw that, if they had relayed that to the world, then medical authorities around the globe would have been thinking "OMG, its existed for a while. It might be here already." They would have been investigating and finding cases locally instead of telling their own doctors to ignore the cases they were seeing. End result would have been earlier shutdowns and countless (hundreds of thousands) of lives saved.

Instead, we got "no evidence of human to human transmission" and "it just showed up in December". That lulled the world to sleep during a critical time.

These were lies and cover ups.

I love how discussing this is QANON type stuff. Gotta discredit, right? Let's turn that around. The idea that the first cases in Wuhan were in December and then a few weeks later they had to build hospitals to house the sick and shut down the entire province is a complete fantasy. The world doesn't work like that. Its a fairy tale being told by an autocratic government to cover its own tracks.


But Fish you are a racist and a nut job for thinking this let alone writing it. Full on QANON.

This ridiculous narrative of everything that a certain side disagrees with means you’re a racist... it’s so old.

If you don’t believe that China has covered up and underreported the virus... you are choosing too. The information and evidence is so obviously out there.

What I want to know is how will China be held accountable? Everyone is saying this but no politician is saying how.

How do we prevent this in the future? How do we prepare?
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#31 » by coldfish » Mon Nov 23, 2020 3:12 am

Chi town wrote:
But Fish you are a racist and a nut job for thinking this let alone writing it. Full on QANON.

This ridiculous narrative of everything that a certain side disagrees with means you’re a racist... it’s so old.

If you don’t believe that China has covered up and underreported the virus... you are choosing too. The information and evidence is so obviously out there.

What I want to know is how will China be held accountable? Everyone is saying this but no politician is saying how.

How do we prevent this in the future? How do we prepare?


That's honestly a great question. The next time this happens it might not be China either. It could be India or Indonesia . . . or Kansas. Exactly what kind of global system can we put in place to catch this kind of thing early, shut down transportation and start quarantining as fast as possible? I'm not sure TBH. Even once we come up with that system, how do we get everyone to buy into it? Not sure on that one either but it probably starts by tying transportation and trade to it.

Regardless, I want to circle back to my original point. This is happening with some regularity. I really don't want to go through this ever again in my life. While the US certainly could have done a much, much better job handling this the only way to prevent it is at the source. We as a global community need to come together on that.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#32 » by dice » Mon Nov 23, 2020 3:16 am

1) how could china have possibly hoped to keep the origin of the virus under wraps? assuming that they knew this was impossible, why even attempt to cover it up? how does that benefit them? it's not like this couldn't have happened in any disgusting wet market across the globe (of which there are many right here in the USA)

2) when did news reports of a novel coronavirus begin to proliferate? before china reported it to the WHO? if not, then do we really have any evidence that they were covering it up for nefarious purposes? chinese authorities confirmed on dec. 31 that dozens in wuhan were being treated for "pneumonia from an unknown source" tied to a wet market. was there any public reporting anywhere in the world prior to that date?
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#33 » by dice » Mon Nov 23, 2020 3:27 am

coldfish wrote:
Chi town wrote:
But Fish you are a racist and a nut job for thinking this let alone writing it. Full on QANON.

This ridiculous narrative of everything that a certain side disagrees with means you’re a racist... it’s so old.

If you don’t believe that China has covered up and underreported the virus... you are choosing too. The information and evidence is so obviously out there.

What I want to know is how will China be held accountable? Everyone is saying this but no politician is saying how.

How do we prevent this in the future? How do we prepare?


That's honestly a great question. The next time this happens it might not be China either. It could be India or Indonesia . . . or Kansas. Exactly what kind of global system can we put in place to catch this kind of thing early, shut down transportation and start quarantining as fast as possible? I'm not sure TBH. Even once we come up with that system, how do we get everyone to buy into it? Not sure on that one either but it probably starts by tying transportation and trade to it.

Regardless, I want to circle back to my original point. This is happening with some regularity. I really don't want to go through this ever again in my life. While the US certainly could have done a much, much better job handling this the only way to prevent it is at the source. We as a global community need to come together on that.

shutting down ****ing wet markets is a good start. then maybe we can proceed to treating all animals humanely

any time something like this originates in a city with regular international flights (like wuhan), it's likely gonna spread across the globe. it's just a matter of mitigation at that point
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#34 » by coldfish » Mon Nov 23, 2020 11:53 am

dice wrote:1) how could china have possibly hoped to keep the origin of the virus under wraps? assuming that they knew this was impossible, why even attempt to cover it up? how does that benefit them? it's not like this couldn't have happened in any disgusting wet market across the globe (of which there are many right here in the USA)

2) when did news reports of a novel coronavirus begin to proliferate? before china reported it to the WHO? if not, then do we really have any evidence that they were covering it up for nefarious purposes? chinese authorities confirmed on dec. 31 that dozens in wuhan were being treated for "pneumonia from an unknown source" tied to a wet market. was there any public reporting anywhere in the world prior to that date?


The cover ups I have read about were:
1. Local doctors in Wuhan were noting that there was a lot of unexplainable pneumonia cases. One went public with it and was arrested. He wasn't the only one bringing it up and the local authorities were trying to cover it up.
2. Once it did go public, national Chinese authorities were not cooperative with international representatives and gave them a false picture. That's where the "no evidence of human to human transmission" tweet from January comes from. Transparency and honesty would have given them a much clearer picture and likely triggered earlier action globally.

There was a post on the Bulls board from March where a person from Chicago was in Italy and did a blog. He and his girlfriend got deathly sick with a covid like illness in January. The local doctor told them "yeah, some weird illness is going around". IMO, if the world community knew how long covid existed, they would have been putting 2 and 2 together. Based on the models I have read, shutting down just a week or two earlier would have saved a ridiculous number of lives.

In general, we are going to need a global system where any statistical evidence of abnormal illness triggers investigation and sequencing of the infectious material really quickly. If we find a new virus, we need to shut down global transportation as much as possible, IMO.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#35 » by jmajew » Mon Nov 23, 2020 3:45 pm

More good news...

LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca said on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine could be around 90% effective, giving the world’s fight against the global pandemic a new weapon, cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to scale-up than rivals.

The British drugmaker said it will have as many as 200 million doses by the end of 2020, around four times as many as U.S. competitor Pfizer.

Seven hundred million doses could be ready globally as soon as the end of the first quarter of 2021.


This vaccine is much cheaper and easier to distribute than the Pfizer and Moderna ones.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca/astrazeneca-says-covid-19-vaccine-for-the-world-can-be-90-effective-idUSKBN2830HC
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#36 » by dougthonus » Mon Nov 23, 2020 4:15 pm

coldfish wrote:You have kept up on covid and are fully aware of just how bad it is. Now, apply your knowledge here. Would it be possible for a city to have completely unchecked community spread for months without noticing it? If the answer is no (which it obviously is), the Chinese were lying and covering up. Unless we do something, they are going to do it again. There was only 18 years between SARS-1 and covid19. We will be due for our next global meltdown in 2038 unless we take extraordinary steps here.

If we had a different leader and did everything right, we would be Germany . . . who has spent most of 2020 in lockdown and lost 14k lives (and they are 1/4th our size). I really don't ever want to have this happen again and accomplishing that is going to require us shutting it down at the source.

---

This is pure whataboutism. We are talking about trying to prevent another global pandemic that kills millions of people.


It's been 100 years (Spanish flu) since we had something like COVID. SARS was more deadly but never spread that quickly and didn't cause widespread havoc around the world like COVID or the Spanish Flu did.

This isn't to say we have 100 years until the next one. We might have 1 year, we might have 10, we might have 50, but comparing things like H1N1 or SARS or whatever other stuff we've had recently to COVID isn't really an accurate portrayal.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#37 » by coldfish » Mon Nov 23, 2020 4:42 pm

dougthonus wrote:
coldfish wrote:You have kept up on covid and are fully aware of just how bad it is. Now, apply your knowledge here. Would it be possible for a city to have completely unchecked community spread for months without noticing it? If the answer is no (which it obviously is), the Chinese were lying and covering up. Unless we do something, they are going to do it again. There was only 18 years between SARS-1 and covid19. We will be due for our next global meltdown in 2038 unless we take extraordinary steps here.

If we had a different leader and did everything right, we would be Germany . . . who has spent most of 2020 in lockdown and lost 14k lives (and they are 1/4th our size). I really don't ever want to have this happen again and accomplishing that is going to require us shutting it down at the source.

---

This is pure whataboutism. We are talking about trying to prevent another global pandemic that kills millions of people.


It's been 100 years (Spanish flu) since we had something like COVID. SARS was more deadly but never spread that quickly and didn't cause widespread havoc around the world like COVID or the Spanish Flu did.

This isn't to say we have 100 years until the next one. We might have 1 year, we might have 10, we might have 50, but comparing things like H1N1 or SARS or whatever other stuff we've had recently to COVID isn't really an accurate portrayal.


If you want to get specific, our fatality and infection rate is closer to the H3N2 pandemic in the 60's than the 1918 pandemic. The Spanish Flu was actually much worse than what we are dealing with. So, 52 years. Given that we have a much larger, more interconnected population its reasonable to project that this stuff is going to happen more, not less often.

Beyond that, people now have the idea of shutdowns in their mind. If a SARS epidemic happened again in 5 years, would we have global shutdowns? Some people would say yes. Going forward, I think we are going to be trigger happy and as such are going to be dealing with this a lot.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#38 » by dougthonus » Mon Nov 23, 2020 5:39 pm

coldfish wrote:If you want to get specific, our fatality and infection rate is closer to the H3N2 pandemic in the 60's than the 1918 pandemic. The Spanish Flu was actually much worse than what we are dealing with. So, 52 years.


Fair enough, I'm definitely not an infectious disease expert at all.

Given that we have a much larger, more interconnected population its reasonable to project that this stuff is going to happen more, not less often.


To the extent things can get out from one country and get to another country, yes absolutely. In terms of their being viruses that are deadly, spread quickly, etc, I'm not sure that is true.

Beyond that, people now have the idea of shutdowns in their mind. If a SARS epidemic happened again in 5 years, would we have global shutdowns? Some people would say yes. Going forward, I think we are going to be trigger happy and as such are going to be dealing with this a lot.


Will be interesting to see how this goes. I hope we don't get trigger happy here in the future though.

Certainly there is a risk that we will continue to have big problems unless we get better at dealing with medical challenges, infrastructure around how to deal with it etc...
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#39 » by MrSparkle » Mon Nov 23, 2020 5:54 pm

US and EU were due for a wake-up call and it was a good opportunity to come together. Still is a good opportunity to mend fences, once Qanon and at least half of the global cult order come to their senses.

As the ice caps continue melting, it's probable that more strange viral phenomenas come into play (not to mention famine due to excessive heat). I'm an optimist; I hope people stop bickering about like we're in the mid-20th century and start considering plans for the future. This might've greatly accelerated that motion, atleast for the 51% of rational thinkers. There need to be economic, medical/hospital and edu/tech emergency plans in place for large-scale disruptions.

For one thing, it is mind-boggling that in the midst of our great technological state, the US can't figure out an effective virtual curriculum as a backup. Betsy Devoes could've spear-headed something with her billions of dollars of advisors and government funds, heeded advised from actual intellectuals and educators instead of fighting an ideological battle to pack kids into schools and create super-spreader events, while also supporting more privatization and Christian curriculum. Really? Is it that hard to commission a few high-end learning tools that public and private schools can implement for 1-2 month stretches during lockdowns, both on the internet and TV? Is that difficult a task? Answer is it's not, but we have a dinosaur WH and Senate.

It's sad how poor our infrastructure is, both at the street level and on the internet. The internet is way worse than it was 20 years ago. It will be a sad day when/if they retire these 90s BBCode/Forums. There is nothing communal about Facebook and Twitter; it's like having the whole planet try to bake a salad in a small kitchen. People get into random fights with people they don't know. You look at a forum like RealGM, people posting for 20+ years; civilized discussions, folks stay in their lanes, you get banned or suspended if you're a jack-ass, you can leave and find another forum if the moderators anger you, that said the moderators are vetted and diverse posters so it's probably you more than them.

Just really funny to me that all the tools were there in 1995, and they've just gotten worse since then. It's crazy that the one great website with vetted, encyclopedic knowledge (Wikipedia) needs to beg for donations to remain ad & think-tank free. This whole COVID side-show is actually as much an internet problem as it is a medical issue. Consider how much misinformation and conspiracy theories culminated in the main-stream this year? I also joked about reptilians from the weird Geocities and Truefire crack-pot pages you ran into in 2000. Now, we have atleast 1 elected congressional politician who believes there is a reptile race trying to steal elections, inject vaccinations with nano 5G chips for mind-control, and thousands at the state-level who think that Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero.

Problem-solving with technology, education and medicine has been humanity's best trait. "Problem-solving" with death, war, truth-suppression, and unsubstantiated accusations have been humanity's greatest downfalls. When that dip* of a Lt Gov. in TX claimed that people should be ready to die for the economy, a rich ****er with the best health care and enough money to fortify himself and his family in an isolated mansion for 100 years, a giant red flag should've been waved for the working/middle class. Instead the cult grew.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #4 

Post#40 » by coldfish » Mon Nov 23, 2020 6:18 pm

dougthonus wrote:
coldfish wrote:If you want to get specific, our fatality and infection rate is closer to the H3N2 pandemic in the 60's than the 1918 pandemic. The Spanish Flu was actually much worse than what we are dealing with. So, 52 years.


Fair enough, I'm definitely not an infectious disease expert at all.

Given that we have a much larger, more interconnected population its reasonable to project that this stuff is going to happen more, not less often.


To the extent things can get out from one country and get to another country, yes absolutely. In terms of their being viruses that are deadly, spread quickly, etc, I'm not sure that is true.

Beyond that, people now have the idea of shutdowns in their mind. If a SARS epidemic happened again in 5 years, would we have global shutdowns? Some people would say yes. Going forward, I think we are going to be trigger happy and as such are going to be dealing with this a lot.


Will be interesting to see how this goes. I hope we don't get trigger happy here in the future though.

Certainly there is a risk that we will continue to have big problems unless we get better at dealing with medical challenges, infrastructure around how to deal with it etc...


Forgive the long rant here. I'm certainly no medical expert but I've read a wee bit about this.

There are a small handful of circulating coronaviruses. Each of them cause the common cold and full sterilizing immunity to them only last months. They circulate the globe in waves, taking turns with immunity to one conferring partial immunity to others. Scientists have tracked possibly all of them down to global pandemics. The last was OC43 which likely caused the Russian Flu pandemic of 1890. Symptoms from that are extremely similar to covid19.

Without a vaccine, the likely route for this pandemic is that everyone gets it a few times to the point where our adaptive immune system fights it off before it gets into our lungs or blood stream leaving it as a cold. Even with a vaccine, its very likely we never get rid of covid19. The short sterilizing immune time means this thing will always be able to bounce to new hosts until a large section of the population is susceptible.

I bring this up because coronaviruses live in bats and have evolved to be nasty due to bats' hyper aggressive immune system. There are over 200 separate coronaviruses in bats. Only 4 or 5 have jumped to humans . . . so far. dice brought up the wet markets above. We really need to globally cut down on bat handling. We are just asking for this kind of thing to happen regularly. covid19 is a goldilocks zone virus in that it infects easily, barely harms many but kills others. Who knows how many of those other coronaviruses would work the same.

Influenza is a completely different animal. There is a massive animal reservoir of it out there and it mutates quickly. Both birds and pigs can harbor. The huge concern is an antigenic shift where a pig or something gets infected with two separate influenza viruses at the same time and they cross merge forming a completely new virus. Again, animal handling is a big risk.

Regardless, I would not underestimate just how much risk we are in. There is some evidence that these jumps happen regularly but die out because it happens in isolated areas. As we become more connected, our risk goes up exponentially.

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