Wizards Board COVID-19 Thread

[Zonkerbl]

Anyway the article also says this: "The percentage of the US adult population known to have 2 or more underlying medical conditions ranges from approximately 38% to 64% by state" so I don't think saying "only people with co morbidities die" is the slam dunk you think it is.

[nate33]

Anyway the article also says this: "The percentage of the US adult population known to have 2 or more underlying medical conditions ranges from approximately 38% to 64% by state" so I don't think saying "only people with co morbidities die" is the slam dunk you think it is.

Yeah, it pretty much is a slam dunk.

Only 14% of people over 55-64 have 3+ comorbidities
23% of people over 65 have 3+ comorbidities

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/health_policy/adult_chronic_conditions.htm

[nate33]

Here's what the article Nate posted actually says:
According to Table 1 on page 9:

79k people died.

50,000 of which had 6 co-morbidities or more (64%).

29k of the deaths had 5 co-morbidities or less (36%). Of these 32.3% had 2-5 co-morbidities.

There's no way to read this as saying "75% of deaths are from people with 4 co-morbidities." You can't rule it out mathematically I guess. But this article flatly does not say what Nate claims it says. Four pinocchios!

Try reading the article next time Nate!

Good points. I inadvertently was using hospitalization statistics rather than death statistics. The death statistics actually make my point even more.

99.1% of deaths had 1 or more comorbidities
97.4% of deaths had 2 or more comorbidities
64.2% of deaths had 6 or more comorbidities

Sure, it's an interpolation to assume that 75% of deaths involved 4 comorbidities, but it's a very reasonable interpolation given the data. To call it a lie is just absurd when we are dealing with approximations. The CDC director didn't quote exact numbers either.

[dckingsfan]

What is interesting is that 45% of U.S. adults have at least one of three diagnosed or undiagnosed conditions of just hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, or diabetes. Up the age group to over thirty and it becomes even larger. Then add the other comorbidities in - and you have a very large number. Also, Covid has the ability to add comorbidities.

Note, comorbidities are usually only found during diagnostics during a hospital stay. It often surprises the patient.

So, when looking at public policy in the US - if you are focused only on comorbidities - you will get it wrong.

[Zonkerbl]

Anyway the article also says this: "The percentage of the US adult population known to have 2 or more underlying medical conditions ranges from approximately 38% to 64% by state" so I don't think saying "only people with co morbidities die" is the slam dunk you think it is.

Yeah, it pretty much is a slam dunk.

Only 14% of people over 55-64 have 3+ comorbidities
23% of people over 65 have 3+ comorbidities

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/health_policy/adult_chronic_conditions.htm

So one out of 4 people over 65 are at risk of dying from COVID. That's a lot of people Nate. What is the point you are trying to make? It's a deadly disease that kills people. Are you saying people who don't have those comorbidities should just pretend it doesn't exist, spread COVID to at risk people, and therefore murder lots of senior citizens as a result? Please clarify your position here.

The whole point of the co-morbidity research is to identify people who are at greatest risk so their doctors can take the appropriate action. The conclusion that you should absolutely not take away from this research is that if you don't have the comorbidities you don't need the vaccine. COVID weakens your heart. It will therefore take years off your life. Yes if you have comorbidities it will kill you *faster*. But make no mistake - if you get COVID, you will die many years earlier. Why don't you care? What is wrong with you? Why does your brain work this way?

My wife is reminding me that I have a bad habit of trying to understand crazy people. So I'm tapping out of this discussion. If you have any questions you want me to google for you I will. Otherwise I'm out.

[nate33]

Anyway the article also says this: "The percentage of the US adult population known to have 2 or more underlying medical conditions ranges from approximately 38% to 64% by state" so I don't think saying "only people with co morbidities die" is the slam dunk you think it is.

Yeah, it pretty much is a slam dunk.

Only 14% of people over 55-64 have 3+ comorbidities
23% of people over 65 have 3+ comorbidities

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/health_policy/adult_chronic_conditions.htm

So one out of 4 people over 65 are at risk of dying from COVID. That's a lot of people Nate. What is the point you are trying to make? It's a deadly disease that kills people. Are you saying people who don't have those comorbidities should just pretend it doesn't exist, spread COVID to at risk people, and therefore murder lots of senior citizens as a result? Please clarify your position here.

The whole point of the co-morbidity research is to identify people who are at greatest risk so their doctors can take the appropriate action. The conclusion that you should absolutely not take away from this research is that if you don't have the comorbidities you don't need the vaccine. COVID weakens your heart. It will therefore take years off your life. Yes if you have comorbidities it will kill you *faster*. But make no mistake - if you get COVID, you will die many years earlier. Why don't you care? What is wrong with you? Why does your brain work this way?

My wife is reminding me that I have a bad habit of trying to understand crazy people. So I'm tapping out of this discussion. If you have any questions you want me to google for you I will. Otherwise I'm out.

I have clarified my position, many times. It's you who don't seem to want to grasp it in your eagerness to assume I'm some type of monster who wants people dead.

My position is that the Covid risk is concentrated in a very small group of people - the roughly 22 million people who are over 55 with 3+ comorbidities. They account for approximately 75% of all Covid deaths - or 660,000 deaths in total. Therefore, they have roughly 1 in 30 chance of dying of Covid. Vaccines are unquestionably a no-brainer for this group and we should be doing everything possible to make sure that they have them

At the other end of the spectrum, there have been only about 20,000 deaths among the 200 million who are under 55 with 2 or fewer comorbidities, which amounts to about 10,000 Covid deaths per year. Their annual odds of dying of Covid are 1 in 200,000. That's less than the flu for that age group. That's about 1 third the risk of dying of a car accident, and 1 seventh the risk of dying of suicide/drug overdose. There is no reason to implement mandatory vaccination for a population with a risk that low. There's no reason to be doing all of the insane things we have been doing, particularly for kids and young, healthy athletes. We did not need to close down the economy, close down schools and wipe out the wealth of millions of middle class Americans - at least not once the vaccine became available to the vulnerable.

Heck, the lockdown measures caused drug overdoses and suicides to increase by 20,000 over the prior year. The misery of the lockdowns may have killed more healthy people under 55 than Covid did.

[dckingsfan]

Anecdotal but under the heading of the mandates are working: The C.E.O. of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, said that while 3,000 employees recently tested positive for the virus, zero vaccinated employees were hospitalized. That’s a big change. Before the company enacted a vaccine mandate, an average of more than one United employee each week was dying from Covid.)

No vaccinated employees are hospitalized, and the hospitalization rate among United employees since the mandate went into effect in the fall has been far lower than that of the general population, he said. Before the requirement, more than one United employee died each week from the virus, on average. The airline has gone eight weeks without a single virus-related death among vaccinated employees, Mr. Kirby noted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/business/omicron-united-airlines-flights-canceled.html

[nate33]

Anecdotal but under the heading of the mandates are working: The C.E.O. of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, said that while 3,000 employees recently tested positive for the virus, zero vaccinated employees were hospitalized. That’s a big change. Before the company enacted a vaccine mandate, an average of more than one United employee each week was dying from Covid.)

No vaccinated employees are hospitalized, and the hospitalization rate among United employees since the mandate went into effect in the fall has been far lower than that of the general population, he said. Before the requirement, more than one United employee died each week from the virus, on average. The airline has gone eight weeks without a single virus-related death among vaccinated employees, Mr. Kirby noted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/business/omicron-united-airlines-flights-canceled.html

Is it the mandates? Or is it the mildness of Omicron?

[nate33]

I mentioned this in the past, but it bears repeating. The Covid shots actually weaken your immune system for a couple of weeks after it is administered. But if you contract Covid in those first 14 days, it gets counted as "unvaccinated". This policy results in the vaccines appearing more effective than they actual are, and the unvaccinated looking more at risk than they actually are. It turns out, Alberta is tracking this phenomenon. Here are hospitalizations and deaths that take place in the days following the actual date of jab (rather than starting the clock 14 days after the jab).



https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes

Again, this isn't to argue that vaccinations are bad for all people. But it's just another example of the never-ending propaganda where they use half-truths, lies of omission, or outright lies to steer the population into a one-size-fits-all vaccination campaign. The effectiveness of the vaccines are always overstated. The danger of Covid to healthy people is always overstated. The extreme age stratification is downplayed. Natural immunity is ignored. And alternative mitigation measures, such as losing weight and taking vitamin D, zinc and fluvoxamine are ignored, downplayed, our outright lied about.

[Kanyewest]

I mentioned this in the past, but it bears repeating. The Covid shots actually weaken your immune system for a couple of weeks after it is administered. But if you contract Covid in those first 14 days, it gets counted as "unvaccinated". This policy results in the vaccines appearing more effective than they actual are, and the unvaccinated looking more at risk than they actually are. It turns out, Alberta is tracking this phenomenon. Here are hospitalizations and deaths that take place in the days following the actual date of jab (rather than starting the clock 14 days after the jab).



https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes

Again, this isn't to argue that vaccinations are bad for all people. But it's just another example of the never-ending propaganda where they use half-truths, lies of omission, or outright lies to steer the population into a one-size-fits-all vaccination campaign. The effectiveness of the vaccines are always overstated. The danger of Covid to healthy people is always overstated. The extreme age stratification is downplayed. Natural immunity is ignored. And alternative mitigation measures, such as losing weight and taking vitamin D, zinc and fluvoxamine are ignored, downplayed, our outright lied about.

There could also be some dumb people who are getting vaccinated after getting the virus.

[Kanyewest]

Correction table 6 is still where one has to look- Among vaccinated 169 per 100,000 between the ages of 70-79. It is 6926 per 1000000 within that same age group. Also looks like they have a table for partially vaccinated people.

https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes

[dckingsfan]

Anecdotal but under the heading of the mandates are working: The C.E.O. of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, said that while 3,000 employees recently tested positive for the virus, zero vaccinated employees were hospitalized. That’s a big change. Before the company enacted a vaccine mandate, an average of more than one United employee each week was dying from Covid.)

No vaccinated employees are hospitalized, and the hospitalization rate among United employees since the mandate went into effect in the fall has been far lower than that of the general population, he said. Before the requirement, more than one United employee died each week from the virus, on average. The airline has gone eight weeks without a single virus-related death among vaccinated employees, Mr. Kirby noted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/business/omicron-united-airlines-flights-canceled.html

Is it the mandates? Or is it the mildness of Omicron?

This spanned into Delta days.

[FAH1223]

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[Zonkerbl]

Nate, I hear the latest miracle cure for COVID is cannabis, have you tried it?

Read on Twitter

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[dckingsfan]

Spoiler:

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Count me in on not liking the Biden Covid strategy - but this isn't one of the reasons.

Given how transmissible Omicron is - we could never have produced enough tests. And any of this now needs to go through Congress where it will not pass. If the Administration does it - it will be challenged - go to SCOTUS and slapped down.

Do we think we are going to repair our healthcare system? I would say that weighs even larger than testing. I would give that a zero percent chance of happening.

The Build Back Better Act that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2021 includes funding to help nursing schools across the country recruit and retain diverse nursing faculty and enroll and retain nursing students. The act is now before the U.S. Senate.

https://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing/2684-the-us-doesn%E2%80%99t-have-enough-faculty-to-train-the-next-generation-of-nurses.html

[Zonkerbl]

The frustrating thing for me is that Delta developed outside the US. You can't blame Republican anti-vaxx propaganda for anything. So what, non compliance is 37% instead of 25%. It's not why Delta happened, it's not why Delta swept through the US and then mutated to Omicron which is sweeping through the US again. *Hopefully* the old COVID vaccines help.

I think the Biden admin and CDC have a tough job. If they describe things in simple enough terms for everyone to understand and make decisions about complying with their recommendations, they have to gloss over nuance that they get gotcha'd for later. And for some insane reason the whole thing has become super politicized so you have bad faith actors on the other side who are only interested in sewing confusion and ignorance, the result being every time CDC opens their mouth the country understands what's going on less.

But maybe arguing over nuanced COVID facts is how we get back to being a country that bases its policies on facts rather than hatred and fear. This whole episode is a great learning experience for all of us on where to look for the truth and how to interpret confusing statistical results. How do we test hypotheses, how do we torture the data to reveal nuance. I think it's ok for half of our country to hate the other half as long as we resolve our arguments with facts and science. I strongly encourage Nate to keep picking apart official CDC data publications. This is good.

For example, myocarditis is trending on twitter today because of something Joe Rogan said.

Read on Twitter

?s=20

He says he's confused because of this paper:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study

The issue is that there is clear evidence that the COVID vaccines cause mild but treatable cases of myocarditis in young men. As long as the doctors of these young men catch it, everything's fine. But you are introducing a risk factor - are you in fact preventing enough damage (from catching COVID) to justify recommending young men get vaccinated? The online discussion on the right focuses on the risks for the young men themselves, although of course the government should take everybody's interest into account in order to maximize social welfare. It may be the case that taking the vaccine mildly increases myocarditis risk for young men, on net, but helps prevent the spread of the disease to vulnerable populations, in which case it would still make sense (economically, anyway) for the government to mandate the vaccine.

I don't trust bad faith actors on the right to interpret the data for me. I think it wouldn't hurt for the CDC to study this issue carefully and put out a public report on it so we can all look at the facts. It would be good policy to do so - it's demand driven, it's a legit issue that the public is interested in, it's something where having government workers who can't be fired for arriving at the wrong political answer are in the best position to do the research. If I were in charge I would have them calculate the risk for the young men taking the vaccine separately from the risk factors for the country at large, I would be explicit about the related but separate goals of reducing damage to individuals and reducing the risk of spreading COVID to vulnerable populations more widely. And they should market it appropriately, have a press conference - "Hey you guys asked us to look at this question so we did, here is our report", have an independent audit to show that there was no undue political pressure applied, and not just have this be one of millions of technical papers that gets lost in the flood of information CDC is putting out. Shoot, let Republicans have a big congressional hearing about it where they ask CDC scientists lots of tough fact-oriented questions. Grill the crap out of them. Let's get back to scoring political points by knowing more facts than your opponent.

That's the one thing the Biden admin could be doing better - when the right stumbles across a legitimate fact-focused question, be responsive to it. Reward fact-oriented behavior with attention. Even if it's bad news politically.

[Ruzious]

Nate, I hear the latest miracle cure for COVID is cannabis, have you tried it?

Read on Twitter

?s=20

If that's the case, I expect some here are very immune.

[Zonkerbl]

I would just add that focusing your COVID vaccine policy exclusively on the net benefit to the individuals who take it, and ignoring the overall benefits to society at large, is not only bad economics, but if I understand correctly, Satanism. Isn't "look out for number one!" Satan's first commandment?

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

I mentioned this in the past, but it bears repeating. The Covid shots actually weaken your immune system for a couple of weeks after it is administered. But if you contract Covid in those first 14 days, it gets counted as "unvaccinated". This policy results in the vaccines appearing more effective than they actual are, and the unvaccinated looking more at risk than they actually are. It turns out, Alberta is tracking this phenomenon. Here are hospitalizations and deaths that take place in the days following the actual date of jab (rather than starting the clock 14 days after the jab).



https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes

Again, this isn't to argue that vaccinations are bad for all people. But it's just another example of the never-ending propaganda where they use half-truths, lies of omission, or outright lies to steer the population into a one-size-fits-all vaccination campaign. The effectiveness of the vaccines are always overstated. The danger of Covid to healthy people is always overstated. The extreme age stratification is downplayed. Natural immunity is ignored. And alternative mitigation measures, such as losing weight and taking vitamin D, zinc and fluvoxamine are ignored, downplayed, our outright lied about.

Hank Aaron was vaccinated but I do believe he died from Covid. I could be wrong on that but I think he took the shot and died very shortly thereafter.

Your post made me think of that Nate

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

The frustrating thing for me is that Delta developed outside the US. You can't blame Republican anti-vaxx propaganda for anything. So what, non compliance is 37% instead of 25%. It's not why Delta happened, it's not why Delta swept through the US and then mutated to Omicron which is sweeping through the US again. *Hopefully* the old COVID vaccines help.

I think the Biden admin and CDC have a tough job. If they describe things in simple enough terms for everyone to understand and make decisions about complying with their recommendations, they have to gloss over nuance that they get gotcha'd for later. And for some insane reason the whole thing has become super politicized so you have bad faith actors on the other side who are only interested in sewing confusion and ignorance, the result being every time CDC opens their mouth the country understands what's going on less.

But maybe arguing over nuanced COVID facts is how we get back to being a country that bases its policies on facts rather than hatred and fear. This whole episode is a great learning experience for all of us on where to look for the truth and how to interpret confusing statistical results. How do we test hypotheses, how do we torture the data to reveal nuance. I think it's ok for half of our country to hate the other half as long as we resolve our arguments with facts and science. I strongly encourage Nate to keep picking apart official CDC data publications. This is good.

For example, myocarditis is trending on twitter today because of something Joe Rogan said.

Read on Twitter

?s=20

He says he's confused because of this paper:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study

The issue is that there is clear evidence that the COVID vaccines cause mild but treatable cases of myocarditis in young men. As long as the doctors of these young men catch it, everything's fine. But you are introducing a risk factor - are you in fact preventing enough damage (from catching COVID) to justify recommending young men get vaccinated? The online discussion on the right focuses on the risks for the young men themselves, although of course the government should take everybody's interest into account in order to maximize social welfare. It may be the case that taking the vaccine mildly increases myocarditis risk for young men, on net, but helps prevent the spread of the disease to vulnerable populations, in which case it would still make sense (economically, anyway) for the government to mandate the vaccine.

I don't trust bad faith actors on the right to interpret the data for me. I think it wouldn't hurt for the CDC to study this issue carefully and put out a public report on it so we can all look at the facts. It would be good policy to do so - it's demand driven, it's a legit issue that the public is interested in, it's something where having government workers who can't be fired for arriving at the wrong political answer are in the best position to do the research. If I were in charge I would have them calculate the risk for the young men taking the vaccine separately from the risk factors for the country at large, I would be explicit about the related but separate goals of reducing damage to individuals and reducing the risk of spreading COVID to vulnerable populations more widely. And they should market it appropriately, have a press conference - "Hey you guys asked us to look at this question so we did, here is our report", have an independent audit to show that there was no undue political pressure applied, and not just have this be one of millions of technical papers that gets lost in the flood of information CDC is putting out. Shoot, let Republicans have a big congressional hearing about it where they ask CDC scientists lots of tough fact-oriented questions. Grill the crap out of them. Let's get back to scoring political points by knowing more facts than your opponent.

That's the one thing the Biden admin could be doing better - when the right stumbles across a legitimate fact-focused question, be responsive to it. Reward fact-oriented behavior with attention. Even if it's bad news politically.

Let me Interject with something completely out of the blue:

This Omicron variant Could just be a precursor of another strain that will be just as contagious, but, unfortunately, will be as deadly or more so than the Delta variant. I truly believe there’s going to be something that kills millions of people. (Dare I say hundreds of millions or maybe 1 billion or more).

I’m not sure it wasn’t mixed up in a lab. I feel like it’s already out there. My faith tells me that God may/will allow it to happen even if a man Thinks he’s the engineer.

What I don’t know and I’m curious about is if the Center for Disease Control (or other nationalities equivalent) can track with specificity who dies from the virus. This could be genetically engineered genocide. People have said the same thing about HIV, so I might be totally off base and it might just be that the coronavirus has always been around; and, it just so happens that it decided to rear it’s ugly head three years ago.

If you watched the cartoon Wacky Racers There was a character who used to say, “We’ll never make it!”. All I am saying is enjoy every day and get right with your maker while you can.