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OT: COVID-19 thread #3

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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#761 » by dougthonus » Sat Oct 3, 2020 6:21 pm

Dresden wrote:All the more reason why giving a new, relatively unproven treatment to the POTUS might be a bit stress inducing. If the odds are extremely high he'll get better anyway, why try something cutting edge on him?


Wasn't advocating for any particular treatment. Just guessing the doctors aren't panicked about treating him.

And by the way, for people over 80, the odds of dying are around 20% (or were at one time, that might have come down some).
I know Trump is only 74, but he's also obese and has who knows what other preconditions.


Data is all sliced up differently depending on your sources.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/declining-covid-19-case-fatality-rates-across-all-ages-analysis-of-german-data/

3% from 60-79
11% for 80+

https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age

This one breaks it by country, but 70-79 is 4.3-12% depending on country (US isn't one of the listed ones though).

Numbers are probably generally all overstated because they ignore the 1/3rd of people whom are asymptomatic and don't show up on the other side of the equation also the worst country is italy, and a huge portion of their deaths were prior to any treatment being used.

I'd guess the actual risk is 5% or less. Granted, that's a huge risk, I wouldn't want to bet my life on the roll of a 20 sided die, but it's not like it will be a miracle if he's fine or anything. Odds are pretty likely that will be the outcome.

And he is the POTUS, so God forbid he should have a bad outcome, a lot of questions would be asked about how he was treated and why.


Of course.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#762 » by Dresden » Sat Oct 3, 2020 6:47 pm

Jimako10 wrote:
Dresden wrote:
dougthonus wrote:
:dontknow:

Its acting like COVID is stage 4 cancer to think this way a bit though. Odds are extremely high that if you literally picked any treatment or even no treatment at all that he'll be fine regardless. COVID is bad for how fast it spreads, but the vast majority of people, even elderly people, whom get it are fine. It's just that it spreads so fast that even a relatively small serious side effect rate is pretty disastrous.


All the more reason why giving a new, relatively unproven treatment to the POTUS might be a bit stress inducing. If the odds are extremely high he'll get better anyway, why try something cutting edge on him? And by the way, for people over 80, the odds of dying are around 20% (or were at one time, that might have come down some). I know Trump is only 74, but he's also obese and has who knows what other preconditions. And he is the POTUS, so God forbid he should have a bad outcome, a lot of questions would be asked about how he was treated and why.


In this case, antibody treatment is pretty safe. At worst, you get an allergic reaction to it within a few hours, but that clearly has passed in Trump's case. The only question with antibody treatment really is in its effectiveness.


I see. Do they actually inject you with antibodies from someone else who has already had it? Or from antibodies cells that have been cloned in a lab?
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#763 » by coldfish » Sat Oct 3, 2020 7:24 pm

dougthonus wrote:
coldfish wrote:The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Far left socialism has been tried, with the best of intentions, many times. It invariably works out the same. First there is a nice surge as society consumes its savings and stored capital. Then productivity falls, the people in charge run things into the ground and then the middle class gets crushed. In Venezuela its called the Maduro diet.

Society has proven over and over that the right economic system is a free market capitalist one with appropriate regulation and a reasonable social safety net. We can debate all day as to what amount of regulation is appropriate, how big the social safety net should be and what exactly constitutes a "free market" but that has to be the basis of an economy.

When you get into the far left, there are people who actively want to tear down the whole thing. They hate the very concept of profit, economic choice, etc. Those people are just as dangerous as the far right. Hell, probably more so because their sales pitch is much more alluring to the common man.


I think most people are for a meritocracy where hard work and talent pay off. Our society has steadily moved away from meritocracy that rewards talent/work and towards one where the only merit is already possessing wealth. Wealth generates more wealth dramatically easier than labor generates wealth, our tax code even taxes labor twice as hard as capital when you get towards high levels of earnings.

I don't know what the good solution is, but if AI pans out (and there's no reason to think it won't in the next 30 years) then we're on the cusp of unprecedented problems with our economic system. The distribution of wealth in our country never recovered from the fall out of the physical labor market as automation took away all the good paying blue collar jobs. When AI comes and takes all the white collar jobs (or enough of them to push the value of the remaining ones down to near minimum wage levels just like blue collar jobs exist still but no longer pay much) then what will be left?

The world is also paved with historical examples of things that worked right until they didn't because technology made them obsolete. Our economic system is one of those things. Might sort of kind of make it in tact through the end of my work career, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it to survive my daughters. If we don't find a way to stop making the wealthy wealthier and the poor poorer then I think it will be an overall massive failure in our society.


The current wealth distribution is distorted by a number of things:
- Global rules making it advantageous to live in the US if you have a company but manufacture in low cost countries.
- Monetary policies that have inflated stocks and other holdings.
- Social safety nets have the interesting side effect of driving down savings rates among the working class. Its really easy to have a massive ratio when the denominator is near zero.

Regardless, I don't really have an answer for your question but I would point out that real standard of living is determined by income as you note. AI doesn't take a salary. Robots don't take a salary. The only things that get paid are people. Rich people / wealth owners usually take small salaries and don't hold cash. In the scenario where robots and AI are doing all of the work, where does the cash go?

Have I ever done the nailgun analogy here? 70 years ago, houses and other construction was put up by people with hammers and screwdrivers. It took a large amount of people a large amount of time to put up a small house. At some point, we invented drills and nailguns. The difference in productivity is unbelievable if you have ever watched someone put on a roof versus the old way. Did all of the workers get fired? Nope. Prices on houses came down and then consumers used the saving to . .. build much bigger houses. Everyone got employed at a higher net standard of living.

The cash flow in the system remained constant and the higher productivity turned into a higher standard of living. As long as there is competition to drive the benefits of productivity into the public, I don't see why that wouldn't play out in the future.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#764 » by dougthonus » Sat Oct 3, 2020 7:53 pm

coldfish wrote:The current wealth distribution is distorted by a number of things:
- Global rules making it advantageous to live in the US if you have a company but manufacture in low cost countries.
- Monetary policies that have inflated stocks and other holdings.
- Social safety nets have the interesting side effect of driving down savings rates among the working class. Its really easy to have a massive ratio when the denominator is near zero.

Regardless, I don't really have an answer for your question but I would point out that real standard of living is determined by income as you note. AI doesn't take a salary. Robots don't take a salary. The only things that get paid are people. Rich people / wealth owners usually take small salaries and don't hold cash. In the scenario where robots and AI are doing all of the work, where does the cash go?

Have I ever done the nailgun analogy here? 70 years ago, houses and other construction was put up by people with hammers and screwdrivers. It took a large amount of people a large amount of time to put up a small house. At some point, we invented drills and nailguns. The difference in productivity is unbelievable if you have ever watched someone put on a roof versus the old way. Did all of the workers get fired? Nope. Prices on houses came down and then consumers used the saving to . .. build much bigger houses. Everyone got employed at a higher net standard of living.

The cash flow in the system remained constant and the higher productivity turned into a higher standard of living. As long as there is competition to drive the benefits of productivity into the public, I don't see why that wouldn't play out in the future.


As the physical labor market died, the intellectual labor market exploded. The people whom were unable to transition from one to the other are considerably worse off now than they were before the physical labor market died.

For the same analogy to work, you have to figure out where people will go when the intellectual market dies. Now it is possible that there will be some new market that opens up. Many people had the same concerns I'm stating as the physical labor market fell apart (and people saw this happening in advance just like we can see AI collapsing the intellectual market in advance) and didn't anticipate the intellectual market opening up so much. When physical and intellectual markets are both owned by computers / robots / automation then I don't know what is left. I'm open to hearing ideas though.

As for where cash goes, who knows. There are lots of possibilities, the wealthy could hoard it all which more or less seems like the path we're on now. It could become devalued all together if there is just 'enough' for everyone and it no longer requires labor to make things.

Getting back to my other topic, we don't live in a meritocracy unless you view possessing wealth as a merit. We reward having wealth more than we reward working and we are continually increasing the amount we reward possessing wealth vs working. If we assume the labor markets continue to exist, then this is still a big problem towards creating the meritocracy that many people believe capitalism is symbolic of. Our meritocracy has been under attack for a long time in this regard.

As I said, I don't know how to solve the problem, but labor is continually getting devalued, class mobility is shrinking, wealth is concentrating, these are all bad trends IMO. I'm not sure what to do about any of those.

That said, I think trying to imagine what the world will be like in 20 years is almost impossible. We're on the cusp of a lot of absolutely world altering innovations, and the pace at which we're able to create those world altering things is rapidly increasing.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#765 » by Jimako10 » Sat Oct 3, 2020 8:29 pm

Dresden wrote:
Jimako10 wrote:
Dresden wrote:
All the more reason why giving a new, relatively unproven treatment to the POTUS might be a bit stress inducing. If the odds are extremely high he'll get better anyway, why try something cutting edge on him? And by the way, for people over 80, the odds of dying are around 20% (or were at one time, that might have come down some). I know Trump is only 74, but he's also obese and has who knows what other preconditions. And he is the POTUS, so God forbid he should have a bad outcome, a lot of questions would be asked about how he was treated and why.


In this case, antibody treatment is pretty safe. At worst, you get an allergic reaction to it within a few hours, but that clearly has passed in Trump's case. The only question with antibody treatment really is in its effectiveness.


I see. Do they actually inject you with antibodies from someone else who has already had it? Or from antibodies cells that have been cloned in a lab?


With convalescent plasma, you get transfused from donors who have already had and recovered from Covid, though its effectiveness is still somewhat questionable.

With Regeneron's cocktail, just reading from their press release, they combine antibodies from recovered covid donors AND antibodies from genetically modified mice that produce fully human antibodies. Pretty interesting stuff if you're into immunotherapies.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#766 » by coldfish » Sat Oct 3, 2020 8:44 pm

dougthonus wrote:
coldfish wrote:The current wealth distribution is distorted by a number of things:
- Global rules making it advantageous to live in the US if you have a company but manufacture in low cost countries.
- Monetary policies that have inflated stocks and other holdings.
- Social safety nets have the interesting side effect of driving down savings rates among the working class. Its really easy to have a massive ratio when the denominator is near zero.

Regardless, I don't really have an answer for your question but I would point out that real standard of living is determined by income as you note. AI doesn't take a salary. Robots don't take a salary. The only things that get paid are people. Rich people / wealth owners usually take small salaries and don't hold cash. In the scenario where robots and AI are doing all of the work, where does the cash go?

Have I ever done the nailgun analogy here? 70 years ago, houses and other construction was put up by people with hammers and screwdrivers. It took a large amount of people a large amount of time to put up a small house. At some point, we invented drills and nailguns. The difference in productivity is unbelievable if you have ever watched someone put on a roof versus the old way. Did all of the workers get fired? Nope. Prices on houses came down and then consumers used the saving to . .. build much bigger houses. Everyone got employed at a higher net standard of living.

The cash flow in the system remained constant and the higher productivity turned into a higher standard of living. As long as there is competition to drive the benefits of productivity into the public, I don't see why that wouldn't play out in the future.


As the physical labor market died, the intellectual labor market exploded. The people whom were unable to transition from one to the other are considerably worse off now than they were before the physical labor market died.

For the same analogy to work, you have to figure out where people will go when the intellectual market dies. Now it is possible that there will be some new market that opens up. Many people had the same concerns I'm stating as the physical labor market fell apart (and people saw this happening in advance just like we can see AI collapsing the intellectual market in advance) and didn't anticipate the intellectual market opening up so much. When physical and intellectual markets are both owned by computers / robots / automation then I don't know what is left. I'm open to hearing ideas though.


I'm not nearly as negative as you are about AI and intellectual jobs. I used to do some industrial automation programming and I'm getting back into it. While the software can certainly do more, its actually harder . . . because it can do more. Robots can do countless more things than they used to, so we ask them to and it takes more people to manage them. But going with your question, I'll go with service jobs. When the labor pool is free to do whatever and there is a mountain of cash sitting around, people will come up with new things to ask those people to do.

As for where cash goes, who knows. There are lots of possibilities, the wealthy could hoard it all which more or less seems like the path we're on now. It could become devalued all together if there is just 'enough' for everyone and it no longer requires labor to make things.


I think this is an important point. You are a big investor. Do you *ever* have cash? Even when your holdings are in liquid assets, its really being held by a bank or something and they are loaning it out to someone who wants to buy something. If a company like apple starts making a ton of money, they hand it out in stock buy backs, dividends and give it to countries so they can hold short term debt instruments. No one holds cash and because it has to go somewhere, individuals can make money off it.
Getting back to my other topic, we don't live in a meritocracy unless you view possessing wealth as a merit. We reward having wealth more than we reward working and we are continually increasing the amount we reward possessing wealth vs working. If we assume the labor markets continue to exist, then this is still a big problem towards creating the meritocracy that many people believe capitalism is symbolic of. Our meritocracy has been under attack for a long time in this regard.


The Ivanka Trumps of the world certainly screw with things but purely from an income standpoint for the other 99.9% of us, there is a very strong correlation between IQ versus income. The meritocracy isn't dead.

As I said, I don't know how to solve the problem, but labor is continually getting devalued, class mobility is shrinking, wealth is concentrating, these are all bad trends IMO. I'm not sure what to do about any of those.


If we have to, we tax wealth. If every apple share is throwing off $50k in dividends per year due to stock buy backs and incredible profits, we just take some of them and hand them out. We leave the same market based system in place and continually redistribute wealth through the tax code. There are downsides to this but if put in a corner we can.

That said, I think trying to imagine what the world will be like in 20 years is almost impossible. We're on the cusp of a lot of absolutely world altering innovations, and the pace at which we're able to create those world altering things is rapidly increasing.

My kids are in high school and going towards college. I'm strongly pushing them towards high end computer science. If the robots are the masters, then control the robots. Outside of that, its anyone's guess. The big difference between the two of us is that I probably imagine a far rosier picture than you.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#767 » by dougthonus » Sat Oct 3, 2020 9:32 pm

coldfish wrote:I'm not nearly as negative as you are about AI and intellectual jobs. I used to do some industrial automation programming and I'm getting back into it. While the software can certainly do more, its actually harder . . . because it can do more. Robots can do countless more things than they used to, so we ask them to and it takes more people to manage them.


You're thinking of AI today and not what AI will be like in the future. AI in the future will be smarter than human intelligence. Anything you can train a person to do, an AI will do better, faster, and 24/7 at 100% productivity. The things which are intellectual will be done at better speeds, the things which require movement (clicking a mouse etc) will be handled instantly. Most white collar jobs that exist today will simply go away.

But going with your question, I'll go with service jobs. When the labor pool is free to do whatever and there is a mountain of cash sitting around, people will come up with new things to ask those people to do.


Besides the fact that there will probably be machines that replace most aspects of the service industry, the service industry is already fairly saturated and makes very low income. The creative industry is one thing that might take hold, but there's a high chance that AI rules that too.

I think this is an important point. You are a big investor. Do you *ever* have cash? Even when your holdings are in liquid assets, its really being held by a bank or something and they are loaning it out to someone who wants to buy something. If a company like apple starts making a ton of money, they hand it out in stock buy backs, dividends and give it to countries so they can hold short term debt instruments. No one holds cash and because it has to go somewhere, individuals can make money off it.


Sure, I generally agree with this, but where it will go is into financial instruments that will be held by fewer and fewer people.

The Ivanka Trumps of the world certainly screw with things but purely from an income standpoint for the other 99.9% of us, there is a very strong correlation between IQ versus income. The meritocracy isn't dead.


There's an even stronger correlation to having wealth and generating more wealth. Wealth is getting concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and it is done so at a systemic level where our laws are designed to benefit the wealthy.

If we have to, we tax wealth. If every apple share is throwing off $50k in dividends per year due to stock buy backs and incredible profits, we just take some of them and hand them out. We leave the same market based system in place and continually redistribute wealth through the tax code. There are downsides to this but if put in a corner we can.


But we won't ever do that, because the wealthy are the ones making the laws. We have done the exact opposite of this for 50 years, lowering repeatedly the amount of tax that the wealthy hold. The wealthy pay lower tax rates than the middle class because virtually 100% of their income is taxed at capital gains and we've shown that they have enough money that they can spend a relatively small portion to avoid taxes largely all together through a combination of means (many of which likely have questionable legality).

If we could get beyond the societal problem that we simply won't do this because it relies on the wealthy actually voting against their own interest and for the interest of the masses and the fact that people have found ways to work around the tax code fairly trivially as soon as the cost of doing so results in them saving more money, then you are still left with the fact that the uber wealthy (which we are creating) will simply become global citizens rather than US citizens.

I do agree that this IS the answer though, you have to find a way to box the wealthy into a corner and redistribute a portion of their wealth, but boy is it hard to see that ever happening in our country due to a wide variety of problems.

My kids are in high school and going towards college. I'm strongly pushing them towards high end computer science. If the robots are the masters, then control the robots. Outside of that, its anyone's guess. The big difference between the two of us is that I probably imagine a far rosier picture than you.


I think within the next 100 years we will have one of few basic outcomes:
1: Humanity will reach something as close to nirvana as it reasonably can. There will no longer be a need for anyone to work and almost everything will be provided for us. It may even be the case that this ends up largely just being like the matrix where we plug in and become part computer but experience whatever we feel like. It may be that we become partially digital and effectively immortal in this way as well. Even ignoring the VR / Cyborg part of this, there's a fair chance that we'll just be able to create 'enough' through automation of everything.

2: Humanity will annihilate itself (or cause something apocalyptical that ends up being close). Between nuclear power, climate change, the super AI threat, bio weapons, and resource constraint, there are more and more threats to our existence. If you go back to the 1970s, we effectively couldn't destroy the world, but over hte next 100 years the methods by which we might do that will ever increase, and eventually its possible that one of them will happen.

3: Humanity will basically align itself as gods/peasants, where the society in option 1 exists but only for a few, and everyone else has effectively nothing.

No matter what, I think society as we know it will be unrecognizable by today's standards. I think there is a reasonable chance that those alive today will live through the absolute peak of human existence.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#768 » by Dresden » Sat Oct 3, 2020 9:57 pm

Jimako10 wrote:
Dresden wrote:
Jimako10 wrote:
In this case, antibody treatment is pretty safe. At worst, you get an allergic reaction to it within a few hours, but that clearly has passed in Trump's case. The only question with antibody treatment really is in its effectiveness.


I see. Do they actually inject you with antibodies from someone else who has already had it? Or from antibodies cells that have been cloned in a lab?


With convalescent plasma, you get transfused from donors who have already had and recovered from Covid, though its effectiveness is still somewhat questionable.

With Regeneron's cocktail, just reading from their press release, they combine antibodies from recovered covid donors AND antibodies from genetically modified mice that produce fully human antibodies. Pretty interesting stuff if you're into immunotherapies.


So if you did a DNA test on Trump now, you might find he's part mouse?
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#769 » by Dresden » Sat Oct 3, 2020 10:04 pm

From today's NYT:

As is the case with all Covid-19 patients, Mr. Trump’s overall health will make a difference in how he fares. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that about 64.7 percent of Covid-19 patients with underlying health conditions in his age group have required hospitalization, and 31.7 percent have died.

“It’s really important to say there is no way to predict what any one individual patient will experience,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “We can say generally, for example, older males have a twofold risk of life-threatening disease or dying over others, and obesity adds more.”

But, Dr. Osterholm said, many people in the same category of risk as Mr. Trump have completely recovered.

Mr. Trump’s persistent refusal to wear a mask may also change the course of his illness; if he became infected while his face was uncovered, he may have been exposed to a greater concentration of virus, which also raises his risk for severe disease, according to experts who have not examined him but were able to speak generally about patients like him.

“My big fear is that he probably had a greater exposure,” said one such expert, Dr. David A. Nace, a geriatrician and director of medical affairs at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s network of 35 nursing facilities. “Right now he’s doing fine, but we’re early in this and we really have to watch him in the next two weeks.”
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#770 » by Dresden » Sat Oct 3, 2020 10:04 pm

those numbers are quite alarming. 31.7% have died??? Can't believe that is true.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#771 » by dice » Sat Oct 3, 2020 11:53 pm

coldfish wrote:there is a very strong correlation between IQ versus income. The meritocracy isn't dead.

someone with a 130 IQ (top 2%) only earns $12K more per year on average than someone w/ average intelligence. but i think the broader point is that someone who works for a living is generally considered more meritorious than someone who has their money work for them, but the latter individual has been increasingly rewarded for decades

If we have to, we tax wealth

the wealth tax makes no sense to me. why would we penalize someone who buys a 2nd car and not someone who eats out for the same amount? not to mention the ridiculous invasiveness of having an auditor comb through everyone's homes to value their possessions on an annual basis

My kids are in high school and going towards college. I'm strongly pushing them towards high end computer science.

that's probably wise. the issue is that few people have that aptitude
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#772 » by dougthonus » Sun Oct 4, 2020 1:06 pm

Dresden wrote:those numbers are quite alarming. 31.7% have died??? Can't believe that is true.


Depends on what you mean by "underlying condition" I would gather. Usually I hear this term to mean something like Diabetes, congestive heart failure, cancer. There's really no reason to think Trump has an underlying condition that I'm aware of. I don't think mild obesity counts as an underlying condition which is the only thing Trump has going against him that we're aware of.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#773 » by dougthonus » Sun Oct 4, 2020 1:12 pm

dice wrote:the wealth tax makes no sense to me. why would we penalize someone who buys a 2nd car and not someone who eats out for the same amount? not to mention the ridiculous invasiveness of having an auditor comb through everyone's homes to value their possessions on an annual basis


I think you would only tax assets that appreciate in value in this case. Investment portfolio, real estate, equity stakes. You wouldn't want to tax depreciating assets that people purchase because those things aren't hoarding wealth.

that's probably wise. the issue is that few people have that aptitude


If everyone did have the aptitude, and we could churn out 50 million computer programmers then the pay for computer programmers would just fall to minimum wage anyway.

Fundamentally, the way we reward labor vs capital is the problem, there are absolutely pockets where you can do very well working in labor, there just aren't enough of them to satisfy the number of laborers out there even if we could magically assign each individual whatever skills we want.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#774 » by Dresden » Sun Oct 4, 2020 3:00 pm

dougthonus wrote:
Dresden wrote:those numbers are quite alarming. 31.7% have died??? Can't believe that is true.


Depends on what you mean by "underlying condition" I would gather. Usually I hear this term to mean something like Diabetes, congestive heart failure, cancer. There's really no reason to think Trump has an underlying condition that I'm aware of. I don't think mild obesity counts as an underlying condition which is the only thing Trump has going against him that we're aware of.


I think obesity actually is considered an underlying condition. And today, it's being said by his chief of staff that his symptoms are "very concerning". The next few days will be critical for him.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#775 » by dougthonus » Sun Oct 4, 2020 3:16 pm

Dresden wrote:I think obesity actually is considered an underlying condition. And today, it's being said by his chief of staff that his symptoms are "very concerning". The next few days will be critical for him.


I think obesity is a risk factor, like age is a risk factor, but not an underlying condition. However, when you see articles quoting stats, there clearly is semantic differences between one source and the next and who knows how granular the data anyone is using is that makes these stats.

It's hard to truly trust anything. When I hear 31% mortality rate for underlying conditions, I doubt very much that obesity is in that group, it just makes no sense based on how many people are obese and what the death rate is.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#776 » by Dresden » Sun Oct 4, 2020 3:48 pm

Press conference just now by his doctors- it sounds like he'd responding to treatment, improving, and could be discharged tomorrow or the next day. They did have to administer oxygen, and he's taking remsidivir. But his symptoms are improving and he's up and walking around now.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#777 » by Dresden » Sun Oct 4, 2020 3:51 pm

“He’s at serious risk; this is not a joke,” says Yahoo Life Medical Contributor Dr. Dara Kass. The CDC notes that obesity can triple the risk of hospitalization for those with COVID-19. But more recent research has painted an even more grim picture. A study published in the journal Wiley in late August found that people with obesity are 113 percent more likely to be hospitalized, 74 percent more likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit and 48 percent more likely to die.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, says that those with obesity are less equipped to fight off disease. “Obesity itself is a metabolic condition where you have derangements in your metabolism and less physiological reserve,” says Adalja. “You have less lung capacity and in many cohort studies of individuals with COVID-19, those two factors have prominently been displayed as markers for risk for severe illness.”

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/president-trump-weight-age-serious-risk-covid19-163157795.html
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#778 » by dougthonus » Sun Oct 4, 2020 4:16 pm

Dresden wrote:“He’s at serious risk; this is not a joke,” says Yahoo Life Medical Contributor Dr. Dara Kass. The CDC notes that obesity can triple the risk of hospitalization for those with COVID-19. But more recent research has painted an even more grim picture. A study published in the journal Wiley in late August found that people with obesity are 113 percent more likely to be hospitalized, 74 percent more likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit and 48 percent more likely to die.


These numbers sound scarier than they are. It's like if my risk of dying by lightning strike increased by 100,000% then it'd still be extraordinarily low and not something to worry about.

When people use percentage increases around things that are low percentage odds of happening, it is often done to make fear monger and make things sound a lot worse than they are.

Either way, its a scary situation for Trump I'm sure, but compared to your quote where 31% of people die, that's clearly not talking about obesity and the reference above makes that pretty obvious. 48% more likely to die means going from about 1% to 1.5% for the general population, maybe 5% to 8% for someone in Trumps age bracket.

It's still obviously not a good thing, but its good to put numbers behind it and realize that increasing a small number by 48% still leaves you with a small number, and people sometimes use this because the 48% sounds really big and scary and people think 48% chance of death.

Either way, the news so far seems pretty positive about him, which as I said at the beginning was far and away the most likely outcome and shouldn't be viewed as a surprise by any stretch. Clearly, this is a bigger risk to him than we are used to seeing someone have, like even if his odds of dying were 10% that's a bigger risk than we've seen in a long time.

What is unfortunate about this, is that his best political move from this is to downplay COVID, say it is no big deal, and encourage people to continue to take stupid risks. Based on his history, I'd say that's absolutely what he will do and rally as many people as he can to continue to perform high risk behaviors. The silver lining is that at this point, we may be close enough to a vaccine that it won't be so relevant anyway.
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#779 » by TeamMan » Sun Oct 4, 2020 10:58 pm

Dresden wrote:Press conference just now by his doctors- it sounds like he'd responding to treatment, improving, and could be discharged tomorrow or the next day. They did have to administer oxygen, and he's taking remsidivir. But his symptoms are improving and he's up and walking around now.

Actually, I haven't posted on these threads since my one post in #1.

I just decided to check back now to see if this topic was under discussion.

My feeling about Trump is that you're looking at a situation where he has a "team" of doctors working on his specific case.

Another benefit is that Trump and the people around him are tested on virtually a daily basis, and as with any deadly disease, early detection can be the difference between life and death.

These are benefits that very few people get who are infected. So, IMO all of the stats from other people who are infected can be tossed out the window. And there are probably no stats available that cover other people who have Trump's benefits.

Finally, there is one critical benefit that cannot be overemphasized, the availability of treatment/drugs that other people can't get because they haven't been approved for release to the general public.

My understanding is that Trump was given two such treatment/drugs within days (if not hours) of the time that the (already early) detection of his infection was discovered.

Over the years I've invested in some drug company stock, and there is a very long and tedious testing and approval process (taking months or even years) that a candidate has to go through before it can be released to the general public.

However, during the process, there are different stages that a candidate passes through (during which) it is classified as "effective" but there are still questions about whether or not it is safe (if may have side effects that are actually worse than the original problem).

These are that types of treatments/drugs that Trump's team of doctors knew about and could get on short notice.

So, also IMO there was never any significant risk that Trump would dip into a state where he might lose his life. The real questions were how soon would he recover, and when will he be allowed to have social contact again?
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Re: OT: COVID-19 thread #3 

Post#780 » by ImSlower » Sun Oct 4, 2020 11:12 pm

Read on Twitter


Read on Twitter


Social contact like his relationship with the SS guys driving the hermetically sealed truck that he just drove around in so he could feel good seeing some hicks clap at him? Imagine being one of those guys in the car with him.

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