Cont: The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 2

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Someone who was involved with the Trump campaign is shown to be probably lying to score political points ?

I'm shocked I tell you, shocked :rolleyes:
 
slyjoe said:
Of course not. No, you isolate them from others and provide the care you CAN provide.

Only spread to their homes? And what about the people that may have contact with them in their homes?
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That way they can die lonely away from their loved ones.

Other people in the home should quarantine themselves.
I don’t claim to know the right answer though. But an acquaintance went into the hospital a couple of months ago died in two weeks never seeing his kids or other family again. In his case everyone but one in the household had the virus anyway.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
We officially passed 4 million confirmed cases.

From first confirmed case in America to 1 million cases took 99 days. From 1 million to 2 million cases took 43 days. From 2 million to 3 million cases took 28 days. And from 3 million to 4 million cases took 15 days. We'll probably hit 5 million in about a week.

Well we flatten the curve. We just flattened it on the Y axis by mistake.
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Do you think the actual number of cases (including untested) is growing faster now than a few months ago.
 
Belz... said:
In the US, that seems a given.
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That's a good assumption, not least because the proportion of people testing positive is even rising in places. If the number of new cases was dropping significantly then we'd expect to see the proportion of people testing positive fall rapidly.
 
eeyore1954 said:
Do you think the actual number of cases (including untested) is growing faster now than a few months ago.
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No I think the Liburl controlled Lamestream Media is making the numbers up to hide the fact that it's all a Bill Gates / George Soros plot to microchip real Americans with the Mark of the Beast to distract us all from Hillary's Secret Pizza Parlor Sex Dungeon.

Yes the goddamn cases are growing faster. That's what bigger numbers mean.
 
JoeMorgue said:
No I think the Liburl controlled Lamestream Media is making the numbers up to hide the fact that it's all a Bill Gates / George Soros plot to microchip real Americans with the Mark of the Beast to distract us all from Hillary's Secret Pizza Parlor Sex Dungeon.

Yes the goddamn cases are growing faster. That's what bigger numbers mean.
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Maybe they are growing faster than in April.
But the bigger numbers for confirmed cases alone do not mean more actual cases.
We don't know because most cases were unreported then.
You do not have to believe in conspiracy theories to reasonably believe they were more cases and they were growing faster a few months ago.
 
eeyore1954 said:
Maybe they are growing faster than in April.
But the bigger numbers for confirmed cases alone do not mean more actual cases.
We don't know because most cases were unreported then.
You do not have to believe in conspiracy theories to reasonably believe they were more cases and they were growing faster a few months ago.
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That's only true if there's a lot more testing now. I'm not sure that's the case.
 
The Don said:
That's a good assumption, not least because the proportion of people testing positive is even rising in places. If the number of new cases was dropping significantly then we'd expect to see the proportion of people testing positive fall rapidly.
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Where is a reliable source for that data?
What was percentage in March/April vs now?
 
Belz... said:
That's only true if there's a lot more testing now. I'm not sure that's the case.
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I assumed it was the case but could be wrong. Anecdotally I know that I hear of people at work being tested more. Could be because if someone is sick they are now required to get a test to work in the office.
 
eeyore1954 said:
Maybe they are growing faster than in April.
But the bigger numbers for confirmed cases alone do not mean more actual cases.
We don't know because most cases were unreported then.
You do not have to believe in conspiracy theories to reasonably believe they were more cases and they were growing faster a few months ago.
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I think it comes down to the hospitalization numbers, doesn't it?

Death numbers are a little bit easier to count, but could be misleading, because treatments are at least a little bit better, so fewer people are dying, but I think the number of hospitalizations would be a pretty good indicator of the current state of the pandemic.
 
eeyore1954 said:
Where is a reliable source for that data?
What was percentage in March/April vs now?
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Johns Hopkins has great data and graphs. [coronavirus.jhu.edu]

The positivity rate for the whole USA is about 1/3 of what it was in April, but it is on a much higher level of testing, and it's increasing like crazy. Note that in April we were doing 100,000 tests per day, and now it's 800,000 per day.

  • So we are testing 8 times as many people.
  • And we are getting 1/3 the positivity rate (not 1/8)
  • Make sense?

Worth noting that April was completely driven by the Northeast US, and now it's all spread out in the South and West. The positive % is double or triple that of April in the states that are having a problem now - AZ, GA, FL, TX, etc.

I'm not going to post the graphs here, they are very easy to find at the link. Just change the drop-down from US to AZ or CA or whatever.
 
Meadmaker said:
I think it comes down to the hospitalization numbers, doesn't it?

Death numbers are a little bit easier to count, but could be misleading, because treatments are at least a little bit better, so fewer people are dying, but I think the number of hospitalizations would be a pretty good indicator of the current state of the pandemic.
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Sure. Again, keep in mind that the early peak was all New York / New Jersey, and now it's spreading more widely.

Hospitalizations at record levels. [vox.com]

On July 22, 59,628 people across the United States were in the hospital after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, according to data reported as of July 23 by the Covid Tracking Project; a peak of 59,539 was reached on April 15, when the New York City area was the epicenter of the US outbreak. (As the Covid Tracking Project notes, the national and state hospital data are erratic and incomplete at the moment, and reported totals may continue to shift.)

What’s clear is that Covid-19 has migrated across the country to many more regions in the three months since. In the spring, hospitalizations were overwhelmingly concentrated in the Northeast, but now more than half of hospitalized Covid-19 patients are in the South. The West has also seen the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients double since April, while the Northeast now accounts for fewer than 5,000 of the nearly 60,000 current hospitalizations.

The current total is likely an undercount. Two states, Kansas and Hawaii, do not report current hospitalization data, and some states may temporarily not be reporting full hospitalization numbers because of a recent change in the reporting system ordered by the Trump administration.

“The hospitalization number is the best indicator of where we are,” Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told Vox. “We’re going to go to new heights in the pandemic that we haven’t seen before. Not that what we saw before wasn’t horrifying enough.”
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Bob001 said:
Should vaccine candidates be tested in "challenge trials," which would expose volunteers to the virus deliberately, if it would speed the adoption of a safe, effective vaccine? Discuss.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...1f5274-cac8-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html
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Would it really be necessary?

We have several groups of "essential workers" who have been very hard-hit by the pandemic... people working in the meat processing industry, health care workers, etc. Seems to me like they would be ideal test subjects, and with the past spread of the disease in those groups, it would seem fairly obvious whether a vaccine worked for them.
 
Segnosaur said:
Would it really be necessary?

We have several groups of "essential workers" who have been very hard-hit by the pandemic... people working in the meat processing industry, health care workers, etc. Seems to me like they would be ideal test subjects, and with the past spread of the disease in those groups, it would seem fairly obvious whether a vaccine worked for them.
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The argument is that if people apply mask and social distance standards, there will be fewer cases of natural spread and testing a vaccine will take longer, ultimately leaving more people sick and dead. There are a lot of circumstances where people can ethically be allowed to take risks as long as they are fully informed about them. The writer compares it to someone choosing to donate a kidney after full disclosure of the risks.
 
Bob001 said:
The argument is that if people apply mask and social distance standards, there will be fewer cases of natural spread and testing a vaccine will take longer, ultimately leaving more people sick and dead. There are a lot of circumstances where people can ethically be allowed to take risks as long as they are fully informed about them. The writer compares it to someone choosing to donate a kidney after full disclosure of the risks.
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If only there were other, safer, more accurate ways to test vaccine efficacy. Oh yeah, there are.

It's fortunate that the Washington Post Editorial Board isn't in charge of testing vaccines.
 
Ironically The Post editorial board is actually supporting -- not suggesting -- "consideration" of a strategy first proposed by the U.S Department of Health's National Institutes of Health back on March 31st. With the epidemic gaining speed in the U.S. the idea is being looked at again. NIH says:
Controlled human challenge trials of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates could accelerate the testing and potential rollout of efficacious vaccines. By replacing conventional phase 3 testing of vaccine candidates, such trials may subtract many months from the licensure process, making efficacious vaccines available more quickly...Volunteers for human challenge studies would be drawn from previously uninfected individuals at relatively low risk of complications or mortality from SARS-CoV-2 infection (eg, young adults, without chronic health conditions, and not otherwise sick) and who are at substantial risk of natural exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (eg, resident in areas with high transmission rates). National Institutes of Health link
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From the Post editorial:
It's possible that a vaccine in late testing stages will prove effective, in which case, any gains in speed from using challenge trials may not be worth the risks. However, vaccine trials have high failure rates — in a nightmare scenario, an effective vaccine could still be years away. The risks of deploying challenge trials may well end up outweighing the benefits, but with so much uncertainty — and the devastation that will persist until a vaccine arrives — it makes sense to build the regulatory, medical and ethical infrastructure to support challenge trials now, regardless of whether we feel confident we will use them. Link via my public library account; unable to copy
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My opinion? I don't have enough medical knowledge to be able to offer a well-informed opinion. I see both sides. It's a tough call and I'm glad I don't have to make it.
 
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