Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[a_unique_person]

You seem to change your story/claim/whatever rather often.



When should we call this "moving the goalposts"?

It's a very blurry, indistinct goalpost, like the Loch Ness Monster.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Flu season is considered to extend well into May.

Did you miss the issue flu season has yet to start in the southern hemisphere?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I disagree. We shall see.

We can already see, you just aren't looking.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Why not " And it could be " ..

Do you discount the implications of the story?

The former Health Secratary said :

Sure.

 

[JeanTate]

Thanks.

Hong Kong and Macau are not independent and their leaders are beholden to the Chinese government.

Notionally these territories are supposed to have "significant autonomy" but in practice the situation has deteriorated enough for Chinese secret police to be able to kidnap people from these areas and bring them to the mainland without the local government making any effort to protect their residents legal rights or even acknowledge what happened.

That may, or may not, be so.

However, it's irrelevant.

We're talking about cases of covid-19, and covid-19 deaths (actually just the latter).

Do you know which government department(s) or agency/ies, in Hong Kong and in Macau, report(s) covid-19 deaths?

Do you have credible evidence that they deliberately mis-state such deaths?

That is not to say that the numbers are false, but since the Chinese government wants to portray the pandemic as a mainly foreign problem after they successfully limited its spread, we can assume that they would underreport the true extent of the situation in China.

Again, that may, or may not, be so.

However, again, we are talking about Hong Kong and Macau.

Curiousity question: why did you not comment on Taiwan?

To summarize: the reported numbers of covid-19 deaths in Chinese provinces (other than Hubei) are consistent with those reported in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (at least up to 15 March). Per WHO's daily situation reports.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

We have a couple of N95 masks but they're the type with an exhalation valve. Will those do any good to protect people from us? At least by directing the flow downward?

Guess I'll wear one next time out regardless. I didn't today.

People are putting filters (various types) loosely over the exhalation valve.

 

[William Parcher]

I wonder about the effect of high relative humidity on aerosols and micro-droplets. Could the virus have a more extended life in the air if the air is saturated with water vapor?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If this virus is viable in aerosols then no, it will go everywhere even if initially directed downwards.

Not in the same quantity as without a mask.

 

[Giordano]

I remember being the first to mention aerosol (exhaled water vapor) transmission as my opinion. I remember you saying Nah. I have no education or training in medicine or virology.

I don’t see the point of arguing this because if you look at my post I was, and still am, disregarding water vapor as the medium of transmission. Water vapor is a pure gas; not an aerosol or mass of droplets. I indicated that water vapor could not carry the virus itself but could preserve the humidity of the droplets or aerosol and extend the time they stayed infectious. I still believe that. Findings that breathe can spread the disease means that the very fine aerosols in a normal breathe can. Not the water vapor in it.

 

[Giordano]

I wonder about the effect of high relative humidity on aerosols and micro-droplets. Could the virus have a more extended life in the air if the air is saturated with water vapor?

That is my guess.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Sure.

At the risk of belaboring the point, it might be interesting, if and when this thing runs it's course, to correlate the per capita death rate with this data:

Adult Obesity Prevalence Maps

While the focus is on obesity, it is well to consider obesity is often accompanied by other serious health issues.

 

[William Parcher]

That is my guess.

I am not an expert on this stuff in any way. You asked the membership to not offer opinions if they are not experts. I believe that I am the first in this thread to mention humidity as it could relate to this virus.

With all due respect, I am going to continue to offer my non-expert opinions in this thread thereby going against your request.

 

[Belz...]

The death rate can't possibly be that low. How can those numbers possibly make any sense?

Who cares if they make sense, so long as they agree with our preconceived biases?

If we do not have a vaccine, then 60% of the USA will get the virus before herd immunity kicks in. If 4% of those die as a direct result of the virus that is 350 million * 60% * 4 % = 8.4 million. Then if more die due to complications such as suicides and lack of ordinary medical care the number will be higher. Will some US people starve?

The question is how long a period is this going to spread over. Social distancing can only slow it. By limiting the deaths to 200,000 every three months then that is about 10 years of slow death. Only a full draconian lock-down can stop it but even that takes about 3 months - and then it can come back and back again unless aggressive and extensive testing can result in virus free zones on an ongoing basis.

The idea is more to allow the healthcare systems to deal with the influx of patients for the time being.

 

[Belz...]

The evidence says it’s a serious issue

No. The evidence doesn't make judgments. _WE_ say it's a serious issue based on our interpretation of the evidence.

You're still correct, but I think it's an important point to make.

DG, are you familiar with the term JAQing? (Just Asking Questions)

While I'm being pedantic I might as well correct you as well: JAQing is a term refering to conspiracy theorists' tendency to make accusations in the form of questions as a deniability shield. It's not what Reilly's doing here.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ossible-second-wave-of-coronavirus-infections

This is the ultimate weakness of the "lockdown everything" strategy. For how long are they going to keep it up? Until there is a vaccine?

Impossible. I know up here they seem to be aiming for 2 month lockdown for now. They can't possibly go much longer than that or it'll wreck every small business and many governments simply won't be able to handle the load.

 

[welshdean]

Today I completed day 14 of isolation. No signs of any of the symptoms, I think it's safe to say I do not have the lurgie. I'm clean.

My mate started on the 20th March too, his missus has Crohns, so do you think it would be silly of us to meet in his garage (no one has been in the garage for a fortnite either) for a game of pool and a pint, both being clear and strictly just us?

 

[Belz...]

In any case, I think that whatever the combined total deaths are between "flu" and coronavirus for the 2019-2020 season, they will not exceed that of a particularly bad flu year (2017-2018 was ~80k, for example). I think that when the US death toll for combined flu/Covid19 is calculated for the 2019-2020 season it will be <100k.

There are already 50k+ deaths worldwide. We're far from having seen the worse of this thing.

You're just in denial.

https://novuscomms.com/2020/03/31/a...orphan-orph-laboratory-professor-john-oxford/

Note that he is, however, still in favor of social distancing measures.

Again, there are already 6000 deaths in the US. How can he possibly think it's not going to top 8000?

Stop latching to everything you believe agrees with you. In a few weeks you won't be able to deny it anymore.

 

[Giordano]

I am not an expert on this stuff in any way. You asked the membership to not offer opinions if they are not experts. I believe that I am the first in this thread to mention humidity as it could relate to this virus.

With all due respect, I am going to continue to offer my non-expert opinions in this thread thereby going against your request.

I made it very clear how so many members made themselves experts and how much I value their views. I am impressed. I’m not certain why you doubt that I respect many of your own views. You have made yourself knowledgeable. You ask good questions.

Frankly it’s one or two other posters here who are offering ignorant opinions and appear to not wish to learn.

Sorry to give you the wrong impression.

 

[Sherkeu]

I wonder about the effect of high relative humidity on aerosols and micro-droplets. Could the virus have a more extended life in the air if the air is saturated with water vapor?

It's the opposite. Droplets get heavier and fall quicker in humid conditions.
Cool and dry is the ideal.

 

[JeanTate]

What about this example: people in Florida are seen building floodbreakers with sandbags.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because a cathegory five hurricane is coming."
"I don't see any dark clouds on the horizon, so why do you think that?"
"Because they said so on the WeatherChannel".
"You shouldn't listen to scientists. They're all liberals."

Good!

Rather nicely points to something Giordano mentions in this recent post.

One would hope that most of the discussion in this (and similar) thread(s), in this Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology board would be centered on the science and medicine of covid-19.

Kinda sad, then, that so many posts here seem to pretend that epidemiology, virology, etc do not exist (even as they claim knowledge of the meaning of "exponential").

Perhaps a story about Hurricane (or Superstorm) Sandy might be pertinent, given the sandbags and big storms.

From memory (which may well be, and often is, faulty), the timing and location of "landfall" was pretty well predicted. As were the heights of the storm surges. Wind gusts and rain sorta too, but not so well, and for specific locations not so good at all.

A LOT of preparation, from mandatory evacuations to putting out thousands of sandbags. Despite that, many people died, some infrastructure was severly damaged, etc (some due to pure bone-headedness, such as storing rail cars in a flood-prone location).

Nasty storms are unusual but not unknown, that late in a hurricane season, for those parts of the US. Sandy was predicted to be considerably worse than "regular" storms, perhaps the worst (historically). So it proved to be.

Of course, given the well-understood uncertainties, the thousands of sandbags put out in some locations were not needed.

So what, then, can we say about this kind of logic?
"putting out thousands of sandbags and using that as proof that there are going to be big storms this year"

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

crap, wrong thread.