Official Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[Fairview4Life]

I don’t have an issue with the data on its own. The issue is with the comparisons you are making and the conclusions you are drawing from the data. You aren’t comparing the same numbers, just at it’s basic level. Like really simple ****.

[Zookz]

I don’t have an issue with the data on its own. The issue is with the comparisons you are making and the conclusions you are drawing from the data. You aren’t comparing the same numbers, just at it’s basic level. Like really simple ****.

Lol, stop feeding him. If hes really as smart as he claims hes just been trolling this topic for a week or so now...

My only question regarding him making claims about the initial numbers not warranting a lockdown is how are the experts supposed to know what the correct response is when we haven't had anything like this with worldwide travel happening non stop across the globe?

There was no point of reference for them to cite, and they made the best educated guess, which I think was a little delayed initially...

This topic has been like a slow car wreck that I cant stop checking. Suddenly like 70% of people think they are experts in micro biology and feel like referencing a couple charts supports thier agenda.

Finally, if all this was just some massive bs conspiracy what would the purpose be? I cant think of a way that killing the economy and keeping people at home would be beneficial (I dont claim to be the smartest, maybe I'm missing something)...

[Kevin Willis]

I don’t have an issue with the data on its own. The issue is with the comparisons you are making and the conclusions you are drawing from the data. You aren’t comparing the same numbers, just at it’s basic level. Like really simple ****.

Lol, stop feeding him. If hes really as smart as he claims hes just been trolling this topic for a week or so now...

My only question regarding him making claims about the initial numbers not warranting a lockdown is how are the experts supposed to know what the correct response is when we haven't had anything like this with worldwide travel happening non stop across the globe?

There was no point of reference for them to cite, and they made the best educated guess, which I think was a little delayed initially...

This topic has been like a slow car wreck that I cant stop checking. Suddenly like 70% of people think they are experts in micro biology and feel like referencing a couple charts supports thier agenda.

Finally, if all this was just some massive bs conspiracy what would the purpose be? I cant think of a way that killing the economy and keeping people at home would be beneficial (I dont claim to be the smartest, maybe I'm missing something)...

I agree with you. The fact that we're at home and the economy was shut down logically means it's different from the perennial flu. That should require 2 min of thought. The fact that every country, even the successful one, had to engage in some form of lockdown suggests that this is serious. In this thread there has been a lot of spinning of data, comparing apples with oranges and some interesting extrapolations. The kicker is most of this data is incomplete and fluctuating. China has 2 additional cases yesterday yet they shut down Harbin. The data is off. Russia went from being hardly hit to being top 10 in the world in a matter of weeks. Give it some months until the data is more complete.

The only people who stand for a net gain are those who want a culling and then acted on releasing this virus. Since there is no proof that happened its a conspiracy. If experts are struggling to get their mind around this virus, it's probably best to observe and not second guess unless its the WHO, second guess them with medical experts.

[Lord_Zedd]

Former NHL player Georges Laraque tested psotive for covid-19 and is currently hospitalized trying to fight it.

https://montrealgazette.com/sports/hockey/nhl/hockey-inside-out/it-really-hurts-georges-laraque-battling-covid-19-in-longueuil-hospital/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1588514262

The 43-year-old Montrealer started his Facebook video by thanking the staff at Charles-Lemoyne hospital.

“You’re putting your health at risk just to help me,” he said. “It’s unbelievable what you do.”

Laraque said he may have been infected while helping vulnerable Montrealers.

“I was doing errands for people, deliveries for the elderly, getting lots of groceries and then suddenly this happened,” he explained.

The veteran of 13 NHL seasons with the Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Arizona Coyotes urged the public to take COVID-19 seriously.

“People who think this is a government conspiracy, I can confirm to you that it isn’t,” he said. “It really hurts.”

And months later, we still have people here who believes "it's just a flu bro".

[bballsparkin]

I'm not getting into this debate. I'm not good at debating. Don't know statistics or biology. But I got to laugh at who could possibly benefit? All good conspiracy theories got to involve the banking systems. And there have been massive bailouts. Also, tracking and monitoring of citizens. Enhanced powers leading towards more police states. Consolidated power by those on top. Really I could probably think of many more. And I am not saying that this is the goal. Only stating there could be a motive. It also could be a by product as well. Also you can't forgot the good ole one world government theory!

Anyway it's a beautiful day. Gonna get some rays while social distancing.

[mrsocko]

2209 cases in Quebec today. Double the next highest days amount. Schools open tomorrow. Hope the kids have their hasmat suits.

[NinjaBro]

What's going on in Quebec? Numbers should be stabilizer by now but their cases are out of control. Weren't strict measures put in place weeks ago to prevent new outbreaks?

[Lord_Zedd]

2209 cases in Quebec today. Double the next highest days amount. Schools open tomorrow. Hope the kids have their hasmat suits.

What's going on in Quebec? Numbers should be stabilizer by now but their cases are out of control. Weren't strict measures put in place weeks ago to prevent new outbreaks?

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/confirmed-covid-19-cases-in-quebec-near-32-000-after-missing-april-data-found-1.4922826

Turns out they added missing cases from last month to today.

[EH15]

Is Quebec the first North American school system to re-open this semester after closing? Will be interesting to see attendance data.

[Fairview4Life]

Read on Twitter

Earlier sciam article making the same point.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/

[mrsocko]

2209 cases in Quebec today. Double the next highest days amount. Schools open tomorrow. Hope the kids have their hasmat suits.

What's going on in Quebec? Numbers should be stabilizer by now but their cases are out of control. Weren't strict measures put in place weeks ago to prevent new outbreaks?

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/confirmed-covid-19-cases-in-quebec-near-32-000-after-missing-april-data-found-1.4922826

Turns out they added missing cases from last month to today.

Yah, I saw that after I posted it. Still last 4 days are 940 1104 1040 892. Looks to be the peak. Compare that to Italy by a factor of 7. The case numbers and deaths are comparable. I think the outbreak in nursing homes is really bad in the Belle Province.

[dohboy_24]

Straight from the CDC....

"The overall cumulative COVID-19 associated hospitalization rate is 40.4 per 100,000, with the highest rates in people 65 years and older (131.6 per 100,000) and 50-64 years (63.7 per 100,000).

Hospitalization rates for COVID-19 in adults (18-64 years) are higher than hospitalization rates for influenza at comparable time points* during the past 5 influenza seasons.

For people 65 years and older, current COVID-19 hospitalization rates are similar to those observed during comparable time points* during recent high severity influenza seasons.

For children (0-17 years), COVID-19 hospitalization rates are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons."

SOURCE: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

Those of you complaining about making such comparisons can send them a message to let them know it's not an apt comparison to make. You may do so here: https://www.cdc.gov/cdc-info/index.html

[dohboy_24]

I agree with you. The fact that we're at home and the economy was shut down logically means it's different from the perennial flu. That should require 2 min of thought. The fact that every country, even the successful one, had to engage in some form of lockdown suggests that this is serious.

The recommendations were made based on projections and models that have since been reduced by many factors. If more accurate data was available, or if we had waited to collect more data before moving into lockdown and social distancing measures that have never been taken in the past, who knows what we'd have experienced.

In this thread there has been a lot of spinning of data, comparing apples with oranges and some interesting extrapolations. The kicker is most of this data is incomplete and fluctuating. China has 2 additional cases yesterday yet they shut down Harbin. The data is off. Russia went from being hardly hit to being top 10 in the world in a matter of weeks. Give it some months until the data is more complete.

Exactly. More time, more data = improved likelihood of accurate predictions and projections. As time has moved forward and more data has been gathered, the initial response appears to be blown out of proportion and the waters have been muddied enough to not allow for a meaningful conclusion to the question of whether a lockdown response is favorable compared to other options.

The only people who stand for a net gain are those who want a culling and then acted on releasing this virus. Since there is no proof that happened its a conspiracy. If experts are struggling to get their mind around this virus, it's probably best to observe and not second guess unless its the WHO, second guess them with medical experts.

Doesn't have to be a conspiracy for one to see there are lots of people who stand to gain financially from these deaths, as well as the lockdown and social distancing being implemented.

Let's take the hospitals in the US for example...

"Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000."

"Snopes investigated the claim, finding it's plausible Medicare pays in the range Jensen mentions but doesn't have a "one-size-fits-all" payment to hospitals for COVID-19 patients.

As explained by nurse Elizabeth Davis in her piece for verywellhealth.com, each hospital has a base payment rate assigned by Medicare. It takes into account nationwide and regional trends, including labor costs and varying health care resources in each market.

Then, each diagnosis-related group, which classifies various diagnoses into groups and subgroups, is assigned a weight based on the average amount of resources it takes to care for a patient. Those figures are multiplied to determine the payment from Medicare. A hospital in one city and state may be paid more or less for treating a patient than a hospital in another.

PolitiFact reporter Tom Kertscher wrote, "The dollar amounts Jensen cited are roughly what we found in an analysis published April 7 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading source of health information."

"We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.

Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it's considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases.

This higher allocation of funds has been made possible under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act through a Medicare 20% add-on to its regular payment for COVID-19 patients, as verified by USA TODAY through the American Hospital Association Special Bulletin on the topic."

SOURCE: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

[Kevin Willis]

Straight from the CDC....

"The overall cumulative COVID-19 associated hospitalization rate is 40.4 per 100,000, with the highest rates in people 65 years and older (131.6 per 100,000) and 50-64 years (63.7 per 100,000).

Hospitalization rates for COVID-19 in adults (18-64 years) are higher than hospitalization rates for influenza at comparable time points* during the past 5 influenza seasons.

For people 65 years and older, current COVID-19 hospitalization rates are similar to those observed during comparable time points* during recent high severity influenza seasons.

For children (0-17 years), COVID-19 hospitalization rates are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons."

SOURCE: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

Those of you complaining about making such comparisons can send them a message to let them know it's not an apt comparison to make. You may do so here: https://www.cdc.gov/cdc-info/index.html

Come on now, this was exactly what I was talking about. We all know that this is a disease that attacks the elderly so bringing up children is pointless. Also many with COVID-19 are asymptomatic carriers. If you get the flu, you know it. The only way to get a better assessment on true numbers is testing for antibodies on a national level which won't happen for awhile. Statistically there is too high of a possible deviation to be considered reliable. You have to wait...

[dohboy_24]

Lol, stop feeding him. If hes really as smart as he claims hes just been trolling this topic for a week or so now...

I don't make any claims with regards to how smart I am, just wanted to give some context to my background in statistics since the predictions and projections were made using forecasting models and the use of statistics is common when calculating the growth rate of something like say cancer.

My only question regarding him making claims about the initial numbers not warranting a lockdown is how are the experts supposed to know what the correct response is when we haven't had anything like this with worldwide travel happening non stop across the globe? There was no point of reference for them to cite, and they made the best educated guess, which I think was a little delayed initially...

In many cases, the same experts would have already lived through numerous pandemic outbreaks (SARS, MERS, H1N1, etc.), none of which were treated in the manner we're treating covid-19.

These lockdown and social distancing measures have never been taken before and yet the majority consensus believes they're the most effective measures to take, wiithout any prior historical evidence to support those claims.

This topic has been like a slow car wreck that I cant stop checking. Suddenly like 70% of people think they are experts in micro biology and feel like referencing a couple charts supports thier agenda.

Finally, if all this was just some massive bs conspiracy what would the purpose be?

Doesn't have to be any conspiracy. No matter how many initials they might have behind their name or how much of a public figure head they might be, scientists, medical professionals, the media, and the elected government officials are prone to making mistakes just the same as anyone else.

I cant think of a way that killing the economy and keeping people at home would be beneficial (I dont claim to be the smartest, maybe I'm missing something)...

I gave one example earlier, but there are many other benefits - bailouts for banks, airlines, and other big industry corporations being one of them.

As small business owners continue to shut their doors forever, big corporations and industries are getting bailed out again, just the same as they were most recently in 2008.

[dohboy_24]

Come on now, this was exactly what I was talking about. We all know that this is a disease that attacks the elderly so bringing up children is pointless.

Tell that to the CDC, they are the ones making those statements and presenting the data, not me.

Also many with COVID-19 are asymptomatic carriers.

Asymptomatic carriers = healthy people.

If you get the flu, you know it. The only way to get a better assessment on true numbers is testing for antibodies on a national level which won't happen for awhile.

Are you sure that's the only way?

Statistically there is too high of a possible deviation to be considered reliable. You have to wait...

Which confidence level are you using when making those predictions? 95% or 99%?

[TorontoRapsFan]

Some of you are doing a lot of hard work here, but what does it matter when you can easily find out that this virus has proven itself to be much more contagious than any flu strain, survive outside the body for much longer, kill at a higher rate (yes this includes dividing the current death rate as representative of a population that is only reported around 10%) AND ITS BRAND NEW. Meaning completely unlike the flu and its umpteen variations we have all been exposed to all of our lives. So yes, lets just forget all of that and say that numbers were wrong, and people didn't die enough so we should have all been going about our business just like usual. You know why you don't hear the professionals say "it's stupid contagious and deadly and we can't have people following your behinds spraying the path of viruses you leave every day... so stay home idiots"? because people would talk about how they can't trust people who don't do it based on projections and models and whatever else they can think of.

[dohboy_24]

I don’t have an issue with the data on its own. The issue is with the comparisons you are making and the conclusions you are drawing from the data. You aren’t comparing the same numbers, just at it’s basic level. Like really simple ****.

I'm not solely making the comparisons on my own. As evidenced, even the CDC itself is comparing the two when reporting their data, their findings, and the key points they're deriving from them.

Which conclusions am I drawing from this data?

If it's so basic and simple to refute, why do you continually fail to support your statements or provide contradictory data?

You've had multiple opportunities to oppose what I've shared, but continually fail to do anything more than question my motives, capabilities or anything other than refute their merit with facts which support your statements.

[Kevin Willis]

Maybe someone can help, I am trying to find documents that show Canadian banks \ big industry (oustide oil) were bailed out for COVID-19. In England they bailed out airlines but all I'm finding is citizen, creditor and small business bailouts. Please post the link.

[Vaclac]

Come on now, this was exactly what I was talking about. We all know that this is a disease that attacks the elderly so bringing up children is pointless. Also many with COVID-19 are asymptomatic carriers. If you get the flu, you know it. The only way to get a better assessment on true numbers is testing for antibodies on a national level which won't happen for awhile. Statistically there is too high of a possible deviation to be considered reliable. You have to wait...

The risk to children is relevant in some ways, such as regarding decisions about what we should do with our children... And we're still being told that children need to be forced to stay home, for their safety, which is idiotic. But if you call out politicians who are repeatedly saying that because they apparently think it sells better and makes it seem like they care deeply about children, you are called "obtuse". I am well aware of the somewhat better reason to keep kids home - that they might be carriers and then get more parents sick if they went to school. That is theoretically plausible, but turns out not to be the case in the many studies around the world that have looked at how those they were able to trace the source got Covid, and these studies were done before those places closed schools. But no one cares about actual evidence, people are scared and so just demanding more restrictions without regard to efficacy and anyone who wants to restrict less is assumed to just want to see people die - basically the moral equivalent of a murderer. For the record, but not that I think it actually changes anyone's opinion, I don't believe it's some kind of conspiracy theory and do accept that in aggregate it is significantly more serious than the flu, and, unrestrained, spreads much more quickly.
I do think that we have collectively gotten so scared that we have lost the ability to take rational proportionate responses. It's gotten to the point that if any leader opens things up and there are infections that follow, it's considered that leader's fault that those Covid patients died, but all the horrible consequences affecting everyone else from excessively harsh and long lockdowns can never be blamed on leaders who over do it. If this is the standard, it will never be 100% safe to open, and so we don't so unless there's another change in the overall narrative.
As to antibody testing, that would be helpful if our goal was the originally stated one of trying to make sure we had sufficient hospital capacity when people got sick. The advantage of antibody testing is that it could give you a better idea of how high the ultimate peak could be if you didn't try to hold it back and therefore plan hospital capacity increases accordingly. But since our narrative has shifted completely from making sure hospital capacity isn't exceeded to attempting to prevent infections from ever occurring, I really don't see the relevance of antibody testing anymore. I don't think the discovery that 25% of people in NYC have antibodies has changed a thing in terms of their response.