Semi-OT: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[nymets1]

Florida seems to be coming out of their state sickness. DeSantis says in his press conference today (still live as I make this post) that the last four days of testing in the state have yielded positive test rates of 6%, 5%, 4.5% and 6%. He says this about five minutes into this presentation:

Watch on YouTube

To put those numbers into context, Florida has a cumulative (up through yesterday) positive test percentage rate of 9.1%. The USA rate through yesterday was 17.8%. And NYC today (per De Blasio press conference) was at 29%.

Hopefully these Florida trends will continue. Also, while the state as a whole seems to be getting less sick, the lower three counties in South Florida (especially Miami-Dade) still seem to be having a considerable amount of sickness from the virus.


REFERENCES
https://covidtracking.com/data/state/florida#historical
https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429

Just wait til we get into May when in Florida, everyday is 90+ degrees with 100+ humidity from May through September. Even hotter than that in Miami/ South Florida.

[michaelm]

Why exactly was she convincing to you? Are you aware of the research she is well known for and the papers she published? Do you also believe the narrative that China has basically contained the virus and their are very few, mostly imported cases there, as reported by China and corroborated by most of the mainstream press? The Epoch Times has reported that the virus was never really contained in China and there are continued outbreaks throughout the country. It will be interesting to see who eventually ends up being correct about that. Given the fact that China's leadership tried to open the economy and send everyone back to work after a few weeks, I find it very hard to believe that the virus has been controlled their and most of the cases are imported.

She is a scientist of international repute who had worked co-operatively with international scientists and what she said made sense to me basically. One thing I do agree with you about is that it would be nice to be confident about what has really happened in Wuhan and whether it is safe including for tourists 3 months later. I am not inclined to make the assumption that because there is a virology lab in Wuhan that a viral outbreak there must be due to that lab, and almost wonder whether the American origin counter theory, which is basically virology lab shutdown for safety reasons in the USA, subsequent Wuhan military games attended by American soldiers, therefore it is an American virus, was with some ironic intent to counterpoint that the evidence for the Wuhan laboratory accident origin is also circumstantial. However I am also not the only person in the world who believes the Chinese numbers for Wuhan. I guess if Wuhan is fully re-opened including for tourism it will be hard to hide a significant death rate and it should be obvious at least for tourists whether the disease can still be contracted there.

You are a doctor so you have your expertise. I've been a human rights advocate on issues related to China for 2 decades so I have my expertise about the way the Chinese government lies. I'm not saying that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan, but I am saying that it is by far the most likely explanation and I, of course, would not believe anything that the Chinese propaganda press is propagating. I could also show you pretty convincing evidence that the Chinese numbers are false by several magnitudes and that there are current outbreaks in several places in China, especially in Harbin but perhaps you are not interested in looking at that.

I'm sure she's a fantastic scientist but she is also part of the Chinese regime and she would not necessarily be allowed to say the truth even if she wanted to.

This is what the Chinese scientist said, as quoted:

Shi was subjected to savage attacks on social media as the 'mother of the devil' and responded with a furious denial on her WeChat social media account, saying the new virus was 'nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living habits'.

'I swear with my life – [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab,' she declared, telling those spreading false rumours to 'shut their stinking mouths.'

She is exactly to whom I was referring, and the statement you quote is the one I found compelling. Whatever pressures she was under I find her narrative plausible and probably even the most likely explanation, and not an explanation that would please the Chinese government either as I have said.

Apropos of all this the Chinese government is currently unhappy about an Australian politician calling for an inquiry into the origins of the virus, and the Chinese ambassador has made some not even very veiled threats of economic consequences for Australia in terms of tourism and exports. The Australian politician concerned is an absolute moron imo and somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, and I have absolutely no doubt was entirely politically motivated so they were correct in that respect, and possibly even that he was echoing Trump as they claimed. He is btw the guy who tested positive himself on returning to Australia after high level meetings in Washington, but didn’t transmit it to any US politicians or bureaucrats afaik, and presumably contracted the infection in the USA.

Interestingly the ambassador’s narrative was straight out that while the virus was first detected in Wuhan there was no proof it originated there, pretty much saying it didn’t. If this is their contention one presumes they are adhering to the US origin counter conspiracy theory involving the US virology lab shutdown by the CDC, quite significantly further out there than the Wuhan laboratory origin theory even imo, and hard to classify as irony.

I place the Wuhan virology lab origin theory down the list of possibilities in comparison with you, but even to me everything points to an origin from a Chinese bat somewhere in China. As I have discussed though zoonoses due to bat viruses can occur and have occurred without any laboratory involvement, cf SARS, and just because they are bad bastards in your estimation with which most westerners including me would at least partially concur doesn’t mean absolutely any accusation leveled at them is automatically true.

I absolutely agree their numbers are not at all believable btw, and am sure no-one in the world outside China does believe them, which is what I tried to say in the previous post you cite but in retrospect phrased it poorly. It is also totally implausible as you say that the virus spread to the rest of the world from Wuhan but not to other parts of China.

[nymets1]

Last night's numbers as of 9pm from bing.com/covid

USA- 985,027 confirmed cases(+21,916 increase), Recoveries- 109,212(+7184 increase), Deaths- 55,383(+1641 increase)
New York- 288,045 confirmed cases(+5902 increase)
New Jersey- 109,038 confirmed cases(+3515 increase)
Mass- 53,348 confirmed cases
Illinois- 43,903 confirmed cases(+2126 increase)
California- 41,338 confirmed cases
Penn- 41,165 confirmed cases(+1116 increase)
Michigan- 37,778 confirmed cases(+575 increase)
Florida- 31,528 confirmed cases(+689 increase)
Louisana- 26,773 confirmed cases(+261 increase)
Connecticut- 25,269 confirmed cases(+687 increase)
Texas- 24,631 confirmed cases(+81 increase)
Georgia- 23,481 confirmed cases(+265 increase)
Maryland- 18,581 confirmed cases(+815 increase)
Washington- 13,398 confirmed cases(+79 increase)

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

USA- 987,160 confirmed cases, Recoveries- 118,781, Deaths- 55,413
New York- 293,991 confirmed cases
New Jersey- 109,038 confirmed cases
Mass- 54,938 confirmed cases
Illinois- 43,903 confirmed cases
California- 43,541 confirmed cases
Penn- 42,708 confirmed cases
Michigan- 37,778 confirmed cases
Florida- 31,528 confirmed cases
Louisana- 26,773 confirmed cases
Connecticut- 25,269 confirmed cases
Texas- 24,981 confirmed cases
Georgia- 23,481 confirmed cases
Maryland- 18,581 confirmed cases
Washington- 13,521 confirmed cases


1. New York is approaching 300,000 confirmed cases either Monday or Tuesday
2. Louisana is over 14 straight days of low increase in new confirmed cases each day
3. Washington has had a small increase in new confirmed cases over 2 full weeks now
4. Texas is over 14 straight days of low increase in new confirmed cases each day
5. Georgia only increased by 265 new cases today as they opened up their hair cut/barber shops, beauty salons, etc
6. My state Florida only had 689 new cases today, The last 7 of 9 days Florida has kept their new cases per day under 1000.
7. Michigan only increased by 575 new cases today, Michigan has 2 straight days of new cases under 1000 per day
8. Bing is not showing an increase of new cases today for Mass and California
9. I tried to get the increase in new cases on worldometer from the new cases column but it's been blank everytime I check, Monday it should back to normal
10. Some states did really well with their low increase in new cases on Saturday and Sunday(Georgia, Florida, Michigan, etc). But it was the weekend where's there's speculation of less testing and less workers. So we need to see how Monday and Tuesday go for new cases increase per state. Any state that had good numbers on the weekend and than shoot up Monday and/or Tuesday than those numbers on the weekend didn't mean anything.

Today's numbers as of 8:30 pm from bing.com/covid

USA- 1,008,571 confirmed cases(+19,376 increase), Recoveries- 113,380(+4168 increase), Deaths- 56,521(+1138 increase)
New York- 291,996 confirmed cases(+3951 increase)
New Jersey- 111,188 confirmed cases(+2150 increase)
Mass- 56,462 confirmed cases(+3114 increase)
Illinois- 45,883 confirmed cases(+1980 increase)
Penn- 42,050 confirmed cases(+885 increase)
California- 44,792 confirmed cases(+3454 increase)
Michigan- 38,210 confirmed cases(+432 increase)
Florida- 32,138 confirmed cases(+610 increase)
Georgia- 24,225 confirmed cases(+744 increase)
Maryland- 19,487 confirmed cases(+751 increase)
Indiana- 15,961 confirmed cases(+949 increase)


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

USA- 1,008,043 confirmed cases, Recoveries- 137,739, Deaths- 56,649
New York- 297,224(+3223 increase)
New Jersey- 111,188(+2150 increase)
Mass- 56,462 (+1524 increase)
Illinois- 45,883 (+1980 increase)
California- 44,949 (+1408 increase)
Penn- 43,155 (+447 increase)
Michigan- 38,210 (+432 increase)
Florida- 32,138 (+610 increase)
Georgia- 24,225 (+744 increase)
Maryland- 19,487 (+751 increase)
Indiana- 15,961 (+949 increase)

1. New York is approaching 300,000 confirmed cases either Tuesday or Wednesday
2. Washington, Texas and Lousiana have over 14+ straight days of low increase in confirmed cases per day
3. Florida has stayed under 1000 new confirmed cases per day the last 8 of 10 days
4. Worldometers is showing USA recoveries 137,739 but BING only shows USA with 113,380 recoveries but both sites are about the same with confirmed cases and deaths.
5. The 3 big states New York, New Jersey and Mass had a better day today with lower increase in new confirmed cases but all 3 states were still over 1000+ per state. Each state get a day under 1000 new confirmed cases in a day and than we are talking
6. Penn and Michigan had a really good today each in the 400 new confirmed cases, They never been that low
7. Indiana had almost 1000 new cases today

[zimpy27]

One last thing on "probable" deaths and the final death toll. There is no exact figure that will ever exist for this kind of thing, as can be seen when looking at stuff like flu deaths in a season or deaths from Swine Flu. You instead get a range and an estimated "total death toll" count.


1. Flu deaths for 2018-19 in the USA
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Range: 26,339 to 52,664
Guess: 34,157


2. Swine Flu deaths for USA
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html

Range: 8,868 to 18,306
Guess: 12,469

The simplest guess of total impact will be comparing year-end total deaths to the usual yearly average.

You would know better than me, but it is complicated because there seem to be less deaths from some of the usual causes, with I gather a lower overall death rate in the USA very early on before Coronavirus deaths started to catch up with Coronavirus cases; you would think deaths from car accidents and complications of elective surgery would be down for a start.

Yes, that is correct, far fewer deaths because of car accidents, other communicable diseases and work stress in countries that went full lockdown. By "total impact" I mean a number the estimates considering all aspects.

If you want to get more detailed information then you could get average yearly deaths from every country, and city for that matter, and compare them to model the impact of demographics, pop density, lockdown measures taken, etc. After doing that then we'd be able to make an estimation on the virus impact variable on those factors.

It'd be interesting to see what proportion of people that died were likely to die in te year anyway and this infection sped it up.

[HotRocks34]

It'd be interesting to see what proportion of people that died were likely to die in te year anyway and this infection sped it up.

Exactly.

It will be interesting to see those year-end totals. I agree with your take that this is likely the best measurement that there is. I didn't think of it (year-end total of excess mortality), but when you mentioned it then it made a lot of sense for the reason quoted above.

[Rich Rane]

If you haven't received your stimulus check, the IRS says it has upgraded its app.
https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment

[Clyde Frazier]

Read on Twitter

[dhsilv2]

The simplest guess of total impact will be comparing year-end total deaths to the usual yearly average.

You would know better than me, but it is complicated because there seem to be less deaths from some of the usual causes, with I gather a lower overall death rate in the USA very early on before Coronavirus deaths started to catch up with Coronavirus cases; you would think deaths from car accidents and complications of elective surgery would be down for a start.

Yes, that is correct, far fewer deaths because of car accidents, other communicable diseases and work stress in countries that went full lockdown. By "total impact" I mean a number the estimates considering all aspects.

If you want to get more detailed information then you could get average yearly deaths from every country, and city for that matter, and compare them to model the impact of demographics, pop density, lockdown measures taken, etc. After doing that then we'd be able to make an estimation on the virus impact variable on those factors.

It'd be interesting to see what proportion of people that died were likely to die in te year anyway and this infection sped it up.

Why would work stress be down? Those work, the majority of people, are likely seeing their work stress go up. Those not working, I'd argue their lack of money or stability should still go under work stress. I'd argue a recession more than doubles work stress for at least a plurality of workers.

[Liminy]

She is a scientist of international repute who had worked co-operatively with international scientists and what she said made sense to me basically. One thing I do agree with you about is that it would be nice to be confident about what has really happened in Wuhan and whether it is safe including for tourists 3 months later. I am not inclined to make the assumption that because there is a virology lab in Wuhan that a viral outbreak there must be due to that lab, and almost wonder whether the American origin counter theory, which is basically virology lab shutdown for safety reasons in the USA, subsequent Wuhan military games attended by American soldiers, therefore it is an American virus, was with some ironic intent to counterpoint that the evidence for the Wuhan laboratory accident origin is also circumstantial. However I am also not the only person in the world who believes the Chinese numbers for Wuhan. I guess if Wuhan is fully re-opened including for tourism it will be hard to hide a significant death rate and it should be obvious at least for tourists whether the disease can still be contracted there.

You are a doctor so you have your expertise. I've been a human rights advocate on issues related to China for 2 decades so I have my expertise about the way the Chinese government lies. I'm not saying that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan, but I am saying that it is by far the most likely explanation and I, of course, would not believe anything that the Chinese propaganda press is propagating. I could also show you pretty convincing evidence that the Chinese numbers are false by several magnitudes and that there are current outbreaks in several places in China, especially in Harbin but perhaps you are not interested in looking at that.

I'm sure she's a fantastic scientist but she is also part of the Chinese regime and she would not necessarily be allowed to say the truth even if she wanted to.

This is what the Chinese scientist said, as quoted:

Shi was subjected to savage attacks on social media as the 'mother of the devil' and responded with a furious denial on her WeChat social media account, saying the new virus was 'nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living habits'.

'I swear with my life – [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab,' she declared, telling those spreading false rumours to 'shut their stinking mouths.'

She is exactly to whom I was referring, and the statement you quote is the one I found compelling. Whatever pressures she was under I find her narrative plausible and probably even the most likely explanation, and not an explanation that would please the Chinese government either as I have said.

Apropos of all this the Chinese government is currently unhappy about an Australian politician calling for an inquiry into the origins of the virus, and the Chinese ambassador has made some not even very veiled threats of economic consequences for Australia in terms of tourism and exports. The Australian politician concerned is an absolute moron imo and somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, and I have absolutely no doubt was entirely politically motivated so they were correct in that respect, and possibly even that he was echoing Trump as they claimed. He is btw the guy who tested positive himself on returning to Australia after high level meetings in Washington, but didn’t transmit it to any US politicians or bureaucrats afaik, and presumably contracted the infection in the USA.

Interestingly the ambassador’s narrative was straight out that while the virus was first detected in Wuhan there was no proof it originated there, pretty much saying it didn’t. If this is their contention one presumes they are adhering to the US origin counter conspiracy theory involving the US virology lab shutdown by the CDC, quite significantly further out there than the Wuhan laboratory origin theory even imo, and hard to classify as irony.

I place the Wuhan virology lab origin theory down the list of possibilities in comparison with you, but even to me everything points to an origin from a Chinese bat somewhere in China. As I have discussed though zoonoses due to bat viruses can occur and have occurred without any laboratory involvement, cf SARS, and just because they are bad bastards in your estimation with which most westerners including me would at least partially concur doesn’t mean absolutely any accusation leveled at them is automatically true.

I absolutely agree their numbers are not at all believable btw, and am sure no-one in the world outside China does believe them, which is what I tried to say in the previous post you cite but in retrospect phrased it poorly. It is also totally implausible as you say that the virus spread to the rest of the world from Wuhan but not to other parts of China.

I basically agree with everything you said, except, that if you look a little more closely into the response of the Chinese Government early in the process it makes the lab origin scenario more likely. For example, they immediately started controlling information coming out of the lab, they denied human to human transmission, even when their was very clear evidence that it was happening and tried to pretend that all of the infections where related to the seafood market when their was very clear evidence that that was not the case and cleaned up the seafood market instead of trying to test animals their etc. The bats that carry the related corona viruses are located hundreds of miles from Wuhan, which the scientist mentions herself and then you look at the type of research they are doing at the lab, specifically on corona viruses and studying how to make them more transmittable across species, which is why the US stopped joint funding, and you do have quite a bit of circumstantial evidence.

[MotownMadness]

Read on Twitter

Damn, thats awful

[michaelm]

You are a doctor so you have your expertise. I've been a human rights advocate on issues related to China for 2 decades so I have my expertise about the way the Chinese government lies. I'm not saying that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan, but I am saying that it is by far the most likely explanation and I, of course, would not believe anything that the Chinese propaganda press is propagating. I could also show you pretty convincing evidence that the Chinese numbers are false by several magnitudes and that there are current outbreaks in several places in China, especially in Harbin but perhaps you are not interested in looking at that.

I'm sure she's a fantastic scientist but she is also part of the Chinese regime and she would not necessarily be allowed to say the truth even if she wanted to.

This is what the Chinese scientist said, as quoted:

Shi was subjected to savage attacks on social media as the 'mother of the devil' and responded with a furious denial on her WeChat social media account, saying the new virus was 'nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living habits'.

'I swear with my life – [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab,' she declared, telling those spreading false rumours to 'shut their stinking mouths.'

She is exactly to whom I was referring, and the statement you quote is the one I found compelling. Whatever pressures she was under I find her narrative plausible and probably even the most likely explanation, and not an explanation that would please the Chinese government either as I have said.

Apropos of all this the Chinese government is currently unhappy about an Australian politician calling for an inquiry into the origins of the virus, and the Chinese ambassador has made some not even very veiled threats of economic consequences for Australia in terms of tourism and exports. The Australian politician concerned is an absolute moron imo and somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, and I have absolutely no doubt was entirely politically motivated so they were correct in that respect, and possibly even that he was echoing Trump as they claimed. He is btw the guy who tested positive himself on returning to Australia after high level meetings in Washington, but didn’t transmit it to any US politicians or bureaucrats afaik, and presumably contracted the infection in the USA.

Interestingly the ambassador’s narrative was straight out that while the virus was first detected in Wuhan there was no proof it originated there, pretty much saying it didn’t. If this is their contention one presumes they are adhering to the US origin counter conspiracy theory involving the US virology lab shutdown by the CDC, quite significantly further out there than the Wuhan laboratory origin theory even imo, and hard to classify as irony.

I place the Wuhan virology lab origin theory down the list of possibilities in comparison with you, but even to me everything points to an origin from a Chinese bat somewhere in China. As I have discussed though zoonoses due to bat viruses can occur and have occurred without any laboratory involvement, cf SARS, and just because they are bad bastards in your estimation with which most westerners including me would at least partially concur doesn’t mean absolutely any accusation leveled at them is automatically true.

I absolutely agree their numbers are not at all believable btw, and am sure no-one in the world outside China does believe them, which is what I tried to say in the previous post you cite but in retrospect phrased it poorly. It is also totally implausible as you say that the virus spread to the rest of the world from Wuhan but not to other parts of China.

I basically agree with everything you said, except, that if you look a little more closely into the response of the Chinese Government early in the process it makes the lab origin scenario more likely. For example, they immediately started controlling information coming out of the lab, they denied human to human transmission, even when their was very clear evidence that it was happening and tried to pretend that all of the infections where related to the seafood market when their was very clear evidence that that was not the case and cleaned up the seafood market instead of trying to test animals their etc. The bats that carry the related corona viruses are located hundreds of miles from Wuhan, which the scientist mentions herself and then you look at the type of research they are doing at the lab, specifically on corona viruses and studying how to make them more transmittable across species, which is why the US stopped joint funding, and you do have quite a bit of circumstantial evidence.

If you have evidence that they were researching how to make bat coronaviruses more transmissible across species then that totally changes things; if so however the US should have shouted out about same to the world rather than just stopping funding, and the US government particularly Trump should have been more prepared and should not have dismissed the virus in the early days as not much of a problem as pretty much every country where it has gotten a significant hold did, with the addition of being under an authoritarian regime and having a cultural tradition of saving face in China’s case.

I have not seen anything anywhere about experimentation to make viruses more transmissible myself however, and was operating on what I could find in the scientific literature, with everything I have seen in the western scientific literature, which I doubt China can completely suborn, indicating it is not a manufactured virus, a claim from which even Fox has receded. The Chinese themselves have been saying for at least 6 weeks to my knowledge btw that while the virus spread from the Wuhan wet market this did not mean it originated there, which is actually integral to the US origin counter theory, and what the Chinese ambassador to whom I referred said for that matter. It was in fact the Chinese who said that a number of the early cases in Wuhan had no association with the wet market, and there was also a contention that the Wuhan wet market virus was a slightly different strain than the original cases.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

Florida seems to be coming out of their state sickness. DeSantis says in his press conference today (still live as I make this post) that the last four days of testing in the state have yielded positive test rates of 6%, 5%, 4.5% and 6%. He says this about five minutes into this presentation:

Watch on YouTube

To put those numbers into context, Florida has a cumulative (up through yesterday) positive test percentage rate of 9.1%. The USA rate through yesterday was 17.8%. And NYC today (per De Blasio press conference) was at 29%.

Hopefully these Florida trends will continue. Also, while the state as a whole seems to be getting less sick, the lower three counties in South Florida (especially Miami-Dade) still seem to be having a considerable amount of sickness from the virus.


REFERENCES
https://covidtracking.com/data/state/florida#historical
https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429

Just wait til we get into May when in Florida, everyday is 90+ degrees with 100+ humidity from May through September. Even hotter than that in Miami/ South Florida.

It's spreading in countries with high temps and high humidity.


Also reports show that AC helps spread it over long distances and helps it linger in the air longer.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

People need to stop looking for reasons to have false sense of security, instead continue to social distance, practice heightened hygiene and wear a mask. Don't rely on the hope that weather will slow it down.

[HotRocks34]

Just wait til we get into May when in Florida, everyday is 90+ degrees with 100+ humidity from May through September. Even hotter than that in Miami/ South Florida.

Yeah. Based on early research from the Department of Homeland Security, that high temperature and high humidity could potentially help slow the spread. The research is preliminary, but promising. We need every advantage and edge we can get against the virus.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/top-dhs-scientists-says-heat-humidity-slow-coronavirus/

“Increasing the temperature and humidity … is generally less favorable to the virus,” said William Bryan, head of science and technology at DHS, said during the daily Coronavirus Task Force daily briefing at the White House.

...

“If you look as the temperature increases, as the humidity increases, no sun involved, you can see how drastically the half-life goes down on the virus. So it’s dying in a much more rapid pace [with] just exposure to higher temperatures and to humidity,” Bryan continued.

The remarks from William Bryan of DHS can be seen in this video starting at around 20:00:

Watch on YouTube

Still plenty to learn, but every bit of scientific research on the topic helps.

Here is one relevant quote from the official during the briefing:

https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/04/23/killing-coronavirus-summer-sun-and-heat-may-have-powerful-effect-says-dhs-official/

"We know that summer-like conditions are going to create an environment where the transmission can be decreased, and that’s an opportunity for us to get ahead"

Good to hear. Let's hope this research holds up as they continue to go over it.

[HotRocks34]

Governor of Missouri put this out a few hours ago:

Read on Twitter

[DowJones]

This is great news. Remdesivir is a possible treatment that many have had their eye on. This is not a vaccine, but if it proves to be a good treatment then it would go a very long way in us getting things back to normal in this country. One step at a time.

Read on Twitter

[michaelm]

This is great news. Remdesivir is a possible treatment that many have had their eye on. This is not a vaccine, but if it proves to be a good treatment then it would go a very long way in us getting things back to normal in this country. One step at a time.

Read on Twitter

Would be great, already an approved drug as I understand it.

[Tiny ball]

She is a scientist of international repute who had worked co-operatively with international scientists and what she said made sense to me basically. One thing I do agree with you about is that it would be nice to be confident about what has really happened in Wuhan and whether it is safe including for tourists 3 months later. I am not inclined to make the assumption that because there is a virology lab in Wuhan that a viral outbreak there must be due to that lab, and almost wonder whether the American origin counter theory, which is basically virology lab shutdown for safety reasons in the USA, subsequent Wuhan military games attended by American soldiers, therefore it is an American virus, was with some ironic intent to counterpoint that the evidence for the Wuhan laboratory accident origin is also circumstantial. However I am also not the only person in the world who believes the Chinese numbers for Wuhan. I guess if Wuhan is fully re-opened including for tourism it will be hard to hide a significant death rate and it should be obvious at least for tourists whether the disease can still be contracted there.

You are a doctor so you have your expertise. I've been a human rights advocate on issues related to China for 2 decades so I have my expertise about the way the Chinese government lies. I'm not saying that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan, but I am saying that it is by far the most likely explanation and I, of course, would not believe anything that the Chinese propaganda press is propagating. I could also show you pretty convincing evidence that the Chinese numbers are false by several magnitudes and that there are current outbreaks in several places in China, especially in Harbin but perhaps you are not interested in looking at that.

I'm sure she's a fantastic scientist but she is also part of the Chinese regime and she would not necessarily be allowed to say the truth even if she wanted to.

This is what the Chinese scientist said, as quoted:

Shi was subjected to savage attacks on social media as the 'mother of the devil' and responded with a furious denial on her WeChat social media account, saying the new virus was 'nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living habits'.

'I swear with my life – [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab,' she declared, telling those spreading false rumours to 'shut their stinking mouths.'

She is exactly to whom I was referring, and the statement you quote is the one I found compelling. Whatever pressures she was under I find her narrative plausible and probably even the most likely explanation, and not an explanation that would please the Chinese government either as I have said.

Apropos of all this the Chinese government is currently unhappy about an Australian politician calling for an inquiry into the origins of the virus, and the Chinese ambassador has made some not even very veiled threats of economic consequences for Australia in terms of tourism and exports. The Australian politician concerned is an absolute moron imo and somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, and I have absolutely no doubt was entirely politically motivated so they were correct in that respect, and possibly even that he was echoing Trump as they claimed. He is btw the guy who tested positive himself on returning to Australia after high level meetings in Washington, but didn’t transmit it to any US politicians or bureaucrats afaik, and presumably contracted the infection in the USA.

Interestingly the ambassador’s narrative was straight out that while the virus was first detected in Wuhan there was no proof it originated there, pretty much saying it didn’t. If this is their contention one presumes they are adhering to the US origin counter conspiracy theory involving the US virology lab shutdown by the CDC, quite significantly further out there than the Wuhan laboratory origin theory even imo, and hard to classify as irony.

I place the Wuhan virology lab origin theory down the list of possibilities in comparison with you, but even to me everything points to an origin from a Chinese bat somewhere in China. As I have discussed though zoonoses due to bat viruses can occur and have occurred without any laboratory involvement, cf SARS, and just because they are bad bastards in your estimation with which most westerners including me would at least partially concur doesn’t mean absolutely any accusation leveled at them is automatically true.

I absolutely agree their numbers are not at all believable btw, and am sure no-one in the world outside China does believe them, which is what I tried to say in the previous post you cite but in retrospect phrased it poorly. It is also totally implausible as you say that the virus spread to the rest of the world from Wuhan but not to other parts of China.

[Tiny ball]

She is a scientist of international repute who had worked co-operatively with international scientists and what she said made sense to me basically. One thing I do agree with you about is that it would be nice to be confident about what has really happened in Wuhan and whether it is safe including for tourists 3 months later. I am not inclined to make the assumption that because there is a virology lab in Wuhan that a viral outbreak there must be due to that lab, and almost wonder whether the American origin counter theory, which is basically virology lab shutdown for safety reasons in the USA, subsequent Wuhan military games attended by American soldiers, therefore it is an American virus, was with some ironic intent to counterpoint that the evidence for the Wuhan laboratory accident origin is also circumstantial. However I am also not the only person in the world who believes the Chinese numbers for Wuhan. I guess if Wuhan is fully re-opened including for tourism it will be hard to hide a significant death rate and it should be obvious at least for tourists whether the disease can still be contracted there.

You are a doctor so you have your expertise. I've been a human rights advocate on issues related to China for 2 decades so I have my expertise about the way the Chinese government lies. I'm not saying that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan, but I am saying that it is by far the most likely explanation and I, of course, would not believe anything that the Chinese propaganda press is propagating. I could also show you pretty convincing evidence that the Chinese numbers are false by several magnitudes and that there are current outbreaks in several places in China, especially in Harbin but perhaps you are not interested in looking at that.

I'm sure she's a fantastic scientist but she is also part of the Chinese regime and she would not necessarily be allowed to say the truth even if she wanted to.

This is what the Chinese scientist said, as quoted:

Shi was subjected to savage attacks on social media as the 'mother of the devil' and responded with a furious denial on her WeChat social media account, saying the new virus was 'nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living habits'.

'I swear with my life – [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab,' she declared, telling those spreading false rumours to 'shut their stinking mouths.'

She is exactly to whom I was referring, and the statement you quote is the one I found compelling. Whatever pressures she was under I find her narrative plausible and probably even the most likely explanation, and not an explanation that would please the Chinese government either as I have said.

Apropos of all this the Chinese government is currently unhappy about an Australian politician calling for an inquiry into the origins of the virus, and the Chinese ambassador has made some not even very veiled threats of economic consequences for Australia in terms of tourism and exports. The Australian politician concerned is an absolute moron imo and somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, and I have absolutely no doubt was entirely politically motivated so they were correct in that respect, and possibly even that he was echoing Trump as they claimed. He is btw the guy who tested positive himself on returning to Australia after high level meetings in Washington, but didn’t transmit it to any US politicians or bureaucrats afaik, and presumably contracted the infection in the USA.

Interestingly the ambassador’s narrative was straight out that while the virus was first detected in Wuhan there was no proof it originated there, pretty much saying it didn’t. If this is their contention one presumes they are adhering to the US origin counter conspiracy theory involving the US virology lab shutdown by the CDC, quite significantly further out there than the Wuhan laboratory origin theory even imo, and hard to classify as irony.

I place the Wuhan virology lab origin theory down the list of possibilities in comparison with you, but even to me everything points to an origin from a Chinese bat somewhere in China. As I have discussed though zoonoses due to bat viruses can occur and have occurred without any laboratory involvement, cf SARS, and just because they are bad bastards in your estimation with which most westerners including me would at least partially concur doesn’t mean absolutely any accusation leveled at them is automatically true.

I absolutely agree their numbers are not at all believable btw, and am sure no-one in the world outside China does believe them, which is what I tried to say in the previous post you cite but in retrospect phrased it poorly. It is also totally implausible as you say that the virus spread to the rest of the world from Wuhan but not to other parts of China.

Tanzania tested their imported tests for this virus. They used fruit goats etc.. They used human names sent the test to lab. Well goat a fruit and a quail all came back positive. Google it. This whole thing was planned decades ago. They even did a performance about this sniffles cold virus at the Olympics in 2012.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/JdCcYOuZDRdU/

[inquisitive]

If you haven't received your stimulus check, the IRS says it has upgraded its app.
https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment

I didn't do direct deposit thus the delay. I can wait. What i don't understand is why my elderly father didn't get his check. he is on ssi.

[inquisitive]

what the nba can do is just resume the season in 2021 if a vaccine is found by then or some significant development that can curb the virus. continue where the season was left off. this will be fair and also have some safety measure, thus appeasing teams like the lakers , clippers who won't feel the season was lost and also teams that feel it is unsafe to continue.