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

[Meadmaker]

Guess what, my fellow citizens of the USA! Looks like herd immunity is officially being pushed again by people in power! Not really a surprise, of course, given the Trump Administration, but...

The horrible thing about America today is that a lot of people would read the quote (the part from your last part, but not included above because it was in quote tags) is some sort of opinion, and someone else says it isn't true.

It is conceivable that the 1-2 million deaths is wrong. It's not realistic, but it's not absurd to suggest that that's an overestimate of the death toll.

But the minimum number of infections to achieve herd immunity is not difficult to understand, and it's not debatable. You can't get herd immunity by infecting 10% of the herd. But depending on which media outlet you read, that will be delivered as....

"Experts say......" or
"Some doctors say..." or
"Democrats say ......" or
"Nancy Pelosi says "

 

[jeremyp]

"The Left was being dramatic, tanked the economy, and 90% of the people would have just died anyway" is the message they have to get across.

100% of the people will die anyway. I guarantee it.

Any fatal disease just bings the death forwards and therein lies the flaw in pretty much all the ways of counting COVID19 deaths. We should really be counting the lost months or years of life which are considerable.

 

[Armitage72]

It's actually worse than that. When those supposed "underlying conditions" are very frequently things like respiratory distress (almost certainly directly caused by COVID) and the like, the claim shows itself to be really stupid, really fast.

I saw someone on another forum joke that just because a death certificate lists "Blood Loss" as the cause of death, you can't dismiss the shark attack as unimportant.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I saw someone on another forum joke that just because a death certificate lists "Blood Loss" as the cause of death, you can't dismiss the shark attack as unimportant.

Hey guns don't kill people, trauma and blood loss do.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I saw someone on another forum joke that just because a death certificate lists "Blood Loss" as the cause of death, you can't dismiss the shark attack as unimportant.

Again the Trumpers all understand this 100%. Don't act as if their "LOL but they didn't die of the virus" argument is genuine or honest.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

A critical part of the "herd immunity" plan is the underlying assumption that "your" group will be less affected than the "other".
It fits in nicely with Evangelicals who don't think God would let them die if they pray and tithe enough, and Supremacists who think that non-whites get more sick because they are bad at hygiene.

Herd Immunity is more of an election than a health strategy.

 

[Armitage72]

Now the CDC is getting involved in things that aren't their area of authority and they know nothing about, in the name of COVID-19.

I work for a company that makes cleaning products and disinfectants. As you can imagine, we've been a little busy lately. An employee from a city agency in New York City contacted me because someone from the CDC told him that the Safety Data Sheet for one of our disinfectants didn't have the correct hazards and needed to be updated. The CDC has issued guidance on what hazards a disinfectant should have, based on the active ingredients. It says it's being done by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), but they would know better.

Two problems:
-The CDC has no authority to regulate Safety Data Sheets. They're controlled by OSHA under specific federal regulations.
-The hazard data on the linked page is for 100% pure chemicals, not finished products containing those chemicals. A product might contain 98% water and 2% didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride, and they're apparently telling people it should display the hazards of 100% ddac.

 

[carlitos]

Thanks for sharing that discouraging story. Did you sell the product TO New York City or at a store / distribution center IN New York City? If it was directly to the city, I could see them getting caught up in bureaucratic CYA junk like this. If the CDC is telling a city agency to just go around and call disinfectant sellers / manufacturers about their SDS, that would be a real mess.

 

[Armitage72]

Thanks for sharing that discouraging story. Did you sell the product TO New York City or at a store / distribution center IN New York City? If it was directly to the city, I could see them getting caught up in bureaucratic CYA junk like this. If the CDC is telling a city agency to just go around and call disinfectant sellers / manufacturers about their SDS, that would be a real mess.

I'm not seeing any sales to any city agency in the last two years, so we probably sold it to a janitorial supply company, which then sold it to the city. We're the manufacturer, so our name and contact information is on the SDS and label.
We have another product that's 0.051% thymol (thyme oil, which is a disinfectant). Based on the CDC site, they would probably expect the SDS to say "Harmful if swallowed. Causes severe skin burns and eye damage." Fortunately, the ingredient isn't listed on the SDS at all, since it's not classified as hazardous at that concentration.

It really reminds me of when a customer's food processing plant was being audited by the USDA, and the auditor threw a fit because the paperwork for one of our food contact surface sanitizers referred to it as a pesticide. "You can't apply pesticides to food contact surfaces!!" Learn the regulatory terminology relevant to your job. Bacteria and viruses are classified as "pests", so anything that destroys them is classified as a "pesticide".

 

[thaiboxerken]

I know for a fact that anyone who hasn't died of covid will die of some other cause at some point.

 

[lomiller]

But the minimum number of infections to achieve herd immunity is not difficult to understand, and it's not debatable. You can't get herd immunity by infecting 10% of the herd. But depending on which media outlet you read, that will be delivered as....

It actually can, but it doesn’t mean what Trumpanista’s want it to mean. In a well mixed population where all contacts are equally likely this is (1-1/R0)*100%. This means that if R0 is 1.1 herd immunity is achieved when 10% of the population is infected.

Wrt Covid-19, if you can reduce R0 from 2.5 to 1.1 then 10% is sufficient for herd immunity. How do reduce the R0 for a virus? Social distancing, masks, hand washing, and though the process of testing > contact tracing > contact isolation. All the things these people are trying to avoid…

 

[jimbob]

I suspect that people who believe in one crazy CT tend to believe in more than one.

Exactly - it's one reason why Putin trolls promote conspiracy theories, and why Nazis promote antivax theories.

If you buy into one conspiracy theory, there will be a huge slew of evidence against it, which you have to dismiss as part of the conspiracy.

You then have, I don't know, "THE MSM" or the "Pre$$titutes" (to imagine a really stupid phrase that might appeal to conspiracy theory idiots) who are obviously lying about your pet theory, so are probably nefariously lying about other things.

Conspiracy theories are gateway drugs to other conspiracy theories and extremist politics.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The US will not join the WHO-linked global effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, WaPo reports

The White House confirmed that it will not join a global effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, The Washington Post reports, in part because the World Health Organization's involvement. President Trump has criticized the organization over what he calls a "China-centric" approach to the pandemic.

 

[Andy_Ross]

More than 170 countries are in talks to participate in the Covid19 Vaccines Global Access Facility to speed vaccine development and secure doses for all countries and distribute them to the most high-risk segment of each population

 

[Bob001]

More than 170 countries are in talks to participate in the Covid19 Vaccines Global Access Facility to speed vaccine development and secure doses for all countries and distribute them to the most high-risk segment of each population

I hope WHO responds by developing a safe, effective vaccine and making sure it can't be shipped to the U.S.

 

[Bob001]

Again the Trumpers all understand this 100%. Don't act as if their "LOL but they didn't die of the virus" argument is genuine or honest.

Let's note again that in some ways the death count is a distraction. Suppose for the sake of argument that covid was no more deadly than flu (rather than much more so). The fact is that a substantial percentage of covid patients require hospitalization, and many suffer severe, long-term, possibly permanent damage to hearts, lungs, brains and circulatory systems. Should we take it any less seriously if fewer people were dying?

Because Covid-19 is a new disease, there are no studies about its long-term trajectory for those with more severe symptoms; even the earliest patients to recover in China were only infected a few months ago. But doctors say the novel coronavirus can attach to human cells in many parts of the body and penetrate many major organs, including the heart, kidneys, brain, and even blood vessels.

“The difficulty is sorting out long-term consequences,” says Joseph Brennan, a cardiologist at the Yale School of Medicine. While some patients may fully recover, he and other experts worry others will suffer long-term damage, including lung scarring, heart damage, and neurological and mental health effects.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21251899/coronavirus-long-term-effects-symptoms

As for long-haulers, she said “it’s not really clear just yet who is most at risk of having these lingering symptoms, but it does seem to impact those considered to be high-risk and those with more severe symptoms.”

These symptoms, which include cardiac, neurological and other issues, can be challenging, frustrating, debilitating and life-altering. HuffPost spoke with medical experts and long-haulers to give a full picture of what it’s really like to deal with long-COVID, according to their own experience.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/long-term-effects-covid-19_l_5f3bf79bc5b6f9e1e10a8f0f

 

[Giordano]

Today former director of NIH and Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Harold Varmus, went on record in NY Times Op Ed that cities, states, etc. will now just have to ignore new, senseless CDC recommendations and apply their own, fact based knowledge to control the covid-19 epidemic.

Apparently as all else Trump has touched, he has destroyed the CDC, our key Federal agency responsible for disease control.

 

[jnelso99]

So I guess based on past behavior we can expect that when the US develops a vaccine, the Trump administration will either buy it all up (like the cheap COVID tests) or steal it from the states (like the PPE shipments).

 

[Stacyhs]

Today former director of NIH and Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Harold Varmus, went on record in NY Times Op Ed that cities, states, etc. will now just have to ignore new, senseless CDC recommendations and apply their own, fact based knowledge to control the covid-19 epidemic.

Apparently as all else Trump has touched, he has destroyed the CDC, our key Federal agency responsible for disease control.

Trump reminds me of the virus in the series "The Rain"; whatever he touches, he destroys.

 

[Craig4]

I am shocked!! Shocked!! Well, not that shocked.

The original "9000 deaths" Tweet has been deleted for being false information.

I really like how Twitter is responding to Trump's attempt to censor social media. Facebook is being all timid and careful and Twitter's strategy seems to be, "I've got your executive order right here bitch."