America and France Reach New All-Time Highs For COVID-19 Infections (time.com) 402
An anonymous reader quotes Time:
The United States has reached a new record high in the number of daily COVID-19 infections, surpassing the peak in mid-July during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic's domestic toll. As of Oct. 24, there was a weekly average of 23.0 infections per 100,000 residents, up from 20.5 on July 19 and ticking rapidly upward. The country also set a new single-day record on Oct. 23 with 83,757 new cases.
There have been clear signs for weeks of a third wave of the pandemic in the U.S. as the weather gets colder and the virus has migrated from metropolitan regions to more rural settings. But it was far from certain, at the beginning of October, that the resurgence would surpass that of the summer...
We know now that the third wave will be worse than the second, which was far worse than the first, when cases peaked at 9.7 per 100,000 on April 7.
Reuters reports that France has also "registered a record 52,010 new confirmed coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, following a record 45,422 on Saturday, the health ministry said in a statement on Sunday... The new cases took the total to 1,138,507, with France now ahead of Argentina and Spain to register the world's fifth highest number of cases after the United States, India, Brazil and Russia.
"In the past three days, France has registered over 139,000 new cases, which is more than the 132,000 cases registered during the two-month lockdown from mid-March to mid-May."
There have been clear signs for weeks of a third wave of the pandemic in the U.S. as the weather gets colder and the virus has migrated from metropolitan regions to more rural settings. But it was far from certain, at the beginning of October, that the resurgence would surpass that of the summer...
We know now that the third wave will be worse than the second, which was far worse than the first, when cases peaked at 9.7 per 100,000 on April 7.
Reuters reports that France has also "registered a record 52,010 new confirmed coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, following a record 45,422 on Saturday, the health ministry said in a statement on Sunday... The new cases took the total to 1,138,507, with France now ahead of Argentina and Spain to register the world's fifth highest number of cases after the United States, India, Brazil and Russia.
"In the past three days, France has registered over 139,000 new cases, which is more than the 132,000 cases registered during the two-month lockdown from mid-March to mid-May."
Infections? (Score:3)
Re:Infections? (Score:4, Informative)
10 times more deaths than in summer in France, back to September numbers in the USA.
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Well they could have https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] check the date and nothing since. They all choose not to do anything what so ever about it, no profit in it versus a new vaccine they could sell for BILLIONS. They did not just die, they were wilfully left to die by blocking what all statistics to date indicate would have reduced the death toll by a factor of ten but greed must be served first. MASS MURDER
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BCG looked potentially interesting around the same time that HCQ looked particularly interesting. Which is why the did the studies that your own video link says they were starting, back in February.
It would have been great if HCQ or BCG had worked.
Unfortunately, not everything that looks like it's worth checking out actually ends up working.
Re:FAKE NEWS! RETARDS! (Score:5, Informative)
No. The rate of infections is increasing within the testing.
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Or hospitalizations?
A lot has changed since March, or even July. Infections doesn't quite mean what it did, and it was always ever a barometer for the important metric; healthcare resource utilization. What's the utilization rate to infections? That's what we should be looking at.
Re:Infections? (Score:5, Informative)
Watch the serious/critical column at
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
Over the summer this has steadily declined to around 14000 and in past weeks has shot up to 16300. These will lead to an increase in the death rate. Already the death / million in the US tops almost every industrial nation and we are increasing.
With the Whitehouse admitting that ‘We’re not going to control the pandemic’ hang on.
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Around 8,000 people died every day in the US on average pre-Covid. What's missing are the estimates of deaths caused by the economic collapse caused by the shutdowns. Suicides, etc.
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What's missing are the estimates of deaths caused by the economic collapse caused by the shutdowns. Suicides, etc.
You should really look up those numbers before commenting next time. They aren't substantial.
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You have no sources or you would happily list them to prove me wrong.
You have no sources either, or you would happily list them to prove yourself right...
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You are ignorant, I am not.
Re:Infections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that a 10% increase in the overall death rate (COVID-19 is killing about 700-800 / day in the US right now) is to be minimized? This is a non-trivial increase in the death rate. And it could easily get a lot larger without restrictions.
There is likely a non-zero increase in deaths due to economic problems, but realize that the economic problems (and the stress that goes with it) would happen regardless of any political decisions. When deaths increase around you, you tend to get afraid and try to avoid that cause (see Iowa right now... they have minimal restrictions but people are going to bars and restaurants a lot less than they did before).
Re:Infections? (Score:4, Interesting)
Have a look at the graph here
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Now take a look at the by-age grouping (select the dashboard "Weekly number of deaths by age"). The excess deaths were about 1000 / week for 25-44 year-olds (this occurred by week 15 - so likely before any serious despair from economic problems). Realize that during this time, only a few states had serious problems. So if that is the only population you care about, you still will get a large number dying.
Imagine that there were no shutdowns, etc in March and April (in the week of April 11 there were 30% excess deaths). What do you think the number of excess deaths would be? Even if you just consider 25-44 year-olds, you get a very high death rate that more than likely far exceeds any death rate related to economic problems.
Note too that during March/April, the geographic distribution within the US was much more limited. So we see this rise in a fairly small subset of the US population. If the whole US had similar infection rates as NY did at the time, we probably would see 10x more excess deaths. I think we're going to see those this winter (I hope I am wrong!).
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These will lead to an increase in the death rate.
Perhaps the serious case count will. I've been watching the total confirmed case count and don't see a strong a correlation between that and confirmed deaths. I can think of a few reasons that might be so: testing more people with less severe or no symptoms, infections spreading to younger people, better treatments. I trust the real scientists are doing more than eyeballing a few charts.
What I also don't see is a correlation between containment policies and per-capita death rates. That's the trillion dollar
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Hospitals are at full capacity in El Paso Texas https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Infections? (Score:5, Informative)
There's two pages I check periodically.
https://covidtracking.com/data [covidtracking.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_data/United_States_medical_cases [wikipedia.org]
Unlike new cases, hospitalization rates are the best indicator IMO and the current trend is troubling.
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All the indicators are important for getting the full picture.
- Number of daily cases is useful to compare to the previous waves, and to compare with other jurisdictions that are similar demographically.
- Percentage of tests that return positive gives you an idea of the real spread. The WHO guidelines say it is a red flag if more than 5% for a country, and 2.5% in a metro area. Here in Ontario, Canada we ar
Re:Infections? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Better treatment? Oh yes, they can just airlift everybody to Walter Reed for experimental drugs.
If the experimental drugs are known to be better, then why are they still experimental?
If they are not known to be better, then you should thank Trump for bravely volunteering to be a guinea pig.
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If the experimental drugs are known to be better, then why are they still experimental?
Maybe they haven't found a method to produce them in mass quantities and cheap enough for the masses yet. Or maybe the lengthy and complex approval process hasn't finished yet. Of course, such considerations don't apply/are waived for some patients.
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Re:Infections? (Score:4, Interesting)
It takes a while to ramp up production for something like that. Also regulatory hassles with bureaucrats moving at glacial speed.
The experimental treatment really shouldn't be that controversial, it's basically 2 antibodies against covid. It's a refinement on convalescent plasma (which contains a bunch of antibodies to a bunch of things and many other things that might potentially cause a reaction).
The only real controversy is that President Orange of the Primrose Path gets this scarce treatment at the first sign of COVID while telling the rest of up it's just the sniffles and we should just tough it out.
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Better treatment? Oh yes, they can just airlift everybody to Walter Reed for experimental drugs.
What experimental drugs? You mean convalescent plasma? We don't even know if they work. And 99%+ of people recover without it.
It turns out that the best treatments for COVID-19 infections are zinc, vitamin D, steroids, antibiotics, Tylenol, bed rest, and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. All of this is available for pennies at any drug store, except maybe the chicken noodle soup. Severe cases might get ventilation, and/or Remdesivir or some other antiviral. Ventilation is readily available to anyone that
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And 99%+ of people recover without it.
99%+ of people infected with COVID-19 recover.
"Recover" meaning "didn't die", correct? Last I heard, we still don't know for sure the frequency/duration of long term health effects from contracting the virus.
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Re:Infections? (Score:5, Informative)
3) steroids - building up muscle mass - nothing to do with a virus
They probably meant corticosteorids, the anti-inflammatory drugs that reduce swelling, fluid build-up etc.
Re: Infections? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Lol. Around 25% of all North Europeans have vitamin D deficiencies. Of course we don't eat that much McD, so that might be the problem..
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Steroids - in particular dexamethasone - are the only thing that have been definitely shown to reduce Covid-19 death rates in proper, randomized clinical trials. They're cheap too. Vitamin D is probably the treatment with the best evidence after that; not only is there evidence from observational studies, I think someone has demonstrated that injecting patients with vitamin D metabolites directly improves outcomes, and vitamin D deficiency is actually really common in the western world.
Umm... no. (Score:5, Informative)
1) zinc - only help if you you want to boost your immune system - pointless if you are already sick
That's not how it works. Zinc actually helps by reducing inflammation and it blocks (in vitro) replication of viruses within cells. [wikipedia.org]
Also, even if it would "only" boost your immune system - you don't stop using your immune once you get sick.
That's when it actually needs the most boosting as it is working overtime.
2) Vitamin D - only relevant if you have a vitamin D deficit which no one has in the western world. A simple Burger from your favourite brand contains more vitamin D than you "need" in a week. Complete pointless as a "treatment".
Umm... no. Many factors, from obesity and age to lack of skin exposure to sunlight (clothes, winter, smog...) and skin color reduce the amount of vitamin D in one's organism.
Also, unless you're dipping your burgers in fish oil (basically the only unfortified food source worth mentioning when talking about vitamin D) - you're getting 0% of your daily D. [usda.gov]
And if you ask around, most people clearly don't do that. [wikipedia.org]
Again, it's used all the time by the immune system, [wikipedia.org] particularly when dealing with viruses and bacteria. [wikipedia.org]
3) steroids - building up muscle mass - nothing to do with a virus
OP probably meant corticosteroids. [wikipedia.org]
4) antibiotics - works only against (some) bacteria - nothing to do with a virus
Yes and no.
Yes, antibiotics only work on bacteria and a lot of them have become resistant to most antibiotics.
No - you're not dealing with a virus alone.
Secondary bacterial infections [wikipedia.org] are a dime a dozen when your immune system is overwhelmed, fighting on the other front.
E.g. Your intestinal bacteria [wikipedia.org] will happily wonder off and opportunistically infect your various organs when your bodily homeostasis [wikipedia.org] goes out of whack due to an immune response.
I personally had two cases of opportunistic bacterial infection of heart muscles during my life.
Once back in '95, thanks to a rather serious case of influenza - and again this spring due to sunstroke and resulting elevated temperature.
In both cases, feeling of not getting enough air despite taking deep breaths went away practically instantly after getting a shot (back in '95) or taking 2000 mg of penicillin-based antibiotics orally (this spring).
The last one didn't fix the underlying cause - broken temperature regulation due to sunstroke. That one had me running for shade days later. I would overheat and start getting dizzy after being exposed to anything above moderate sunlight for more than few minutes.
Now, one should not just take antibiotics willy-nilly.
Antibiotics should be either prescribed OR one should really pay attention what to use and when.
I've seen people treating azithromycin as if it were ampicillin, not taking the full dose, stopping use after taking only a few pills...
Which are all great ways for breeding antibiotic resistant bacteria and resulting infections.
Just ask Russians. [youtu.be]
Re:Infections? (Score:4, Interesting)
No doubt the death rate will be mitigated by care improvements, but it might take longer than you think to see any changes in death rates. It's not just that the median time from first symptoms to death (among patients who are going to die) is 14 days; once a person dies the death reporting system in the US is slower event han that.
The system is simply not designed to track a fast moving epidemic in real time. It's more geared towards comparing how we did on, say, coronary artery disease last year vs. the year before. When someone dies, there's no telling when he'll show up on national tracking data. It could be two weeks, in some case it might be as long as two months. The only reason it's not a lot faster is it has never been a priority. In retrospect it probably should have been. For an epidemic you want a real time reporting system -- that is to say one that returns data with a guaranteed maximum latency.
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That seems low.
What I've seen has been 21 days after onset of symptoms for average resolution as death or recovery. With today's testing, that means 24 days in many cases. Anyone pre-symptomatic tested as a result of contact tracing is an average of 26 days away from case resolution.
Likewise, the median time for symptoms is 5 days but it ranges from 2 days to 14 days (with another 1% under 2 days and and 1% between 14 to 28 days).
South Dakota is now having a massive outbreak from events that occurred roug
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What about deaths?
What about long-haul symptoms [washingtonpost.com]?
Re:Infections? (Score:5, Interesting)
Over the entire course of the epidemic, the US has reported 695 deaths per million residents; France 532/1M. These are *direct* COVID-19 deaths, not "excess deaths" which of course there's more of.
Again over the entire course of the pandemic, the US death rate has been 2.6% and France's about 3.0%. This difference probably doesn't tell us much about the response in each country, because the demographics are different. France has an older population than the US; over 20% of the French are senior citizens; the figure for the US is 16%.
I'm also stipulating "over the entire course" because as time goes down the case fatality rate also goes down.
Both countries are experiencing a wave of new infections. This is a second wave for France, after a small first wave and several months with very few new infections. The second wave is considerably worse. In the US we're heading toward a third peak, probably also likely to be the worst so far. To compare we're reporting about 80,000 new cases per day, which amounts to 24 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. France just reported 50,000 cases the other day, which given its smaller size works out to be almost 80 cases/100k inhabitants.
We should be careful about 1 day counts, however it's clear that the new infection rate is much higher in France than the US, and is growing at an exponential rate -- there is potential for a catastrophic situation if they do not reverse that trend. The case rate in the US is growing at more like a linear rate -- not good, but it means we may have a little more time to deal with it.
Overall there were very few COVID deaths in France between June and September, but since October it has been trending upward, which makes sense; deaths are a trailing indicator. We should expect the death rate to continue to rise even if France manages to flatten its new case curve. US deaths have been increasing pretty much linearly since May, bending slightly down in mid-June. It is important to note that not only do actual deaths trail covid infections, *reports of deaths* can trail deaths by weeks. This is particularly true in the US, where every state has its own reporting system and many of those systems are slow. It can take well over a month for a death to be reflected in US national figures.
Re:Infections? (Score:5, Informative)
With the possibility of a death sentence if you're older [fandom.com] and/or have increased risk factors, plus the longer-term heart, neurological, and lung damage if you survive.
I suspect that what's good for the humans is also good for the virus when it comes to "herd immunity". More infected people means a larger incubation pool for mutations, which means more or even cyclical chances to catch a strain you're not immune to [cbsnews.com], with the opportunity to roll the dice again with your quality of/life at stake.
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Mutations can work both ways with quite a few viruses mutating themselves to extinction over the years.
https://www.bbc.com/future/art... [bbc.com]
Re:Infections? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's some info [nature.com] on the organ damage. Not long-term, though -- it was identified from autopsies.
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225,000 deaths so far. I'd call that pretty significant. Covid is more deadly than the flu (and killed way more) and causes long term damage to critical organs https://www.mayoclinic.org/dis... [mayoclinic.org]
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225,000 deaths so far. I'd call that pretty significant.
Indeed. I don't recall anyone claiming otherwise.
Re:Infections? (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep hearing people talk about the need for herd immunity. That will only happen if people catch it and recover, or if there is a vaccine. More cases of infections only means we are that much closer to herd immunity. After that COVID-19 just becomes one of any of a number of influenza/pneumonia viruses we could get.
Will you people please get off this 'herd immunity' kick! There's lots of evidence that any immunity caused by catching Covid often disappears in a matter of months, and some people are sicker the second time around - another indicator of zero or near-zero immunity. Add in the rate at which the virus mutates, and anybody who believes herd immunity is going to save us might as well believe in the Tooth Fairy. This is NOT merely a badass version of the seasonal flu - it's a different beast, and not keeping that in mind is dangerous.
Vaccines provide a stronger and more focused immune reaction, so the immunity conferred by them may put this thing to rest if we can get enough people vaccinated fast enough and can keep far enough ahead of mutations that weaken the effect of the vaccines. But betting on infection-conferred herd immunity is likely to be a fatally foolish wager.
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Will you people please get off this 'herd immunity' kick!
No.
The only way through this is herd immunity. Vaccines can bring herd immunity in a way that brings fewer deaths, disabilities, and hospitalizations but in the end it's just another way to get the same result.
Without herd immunity then it's people constantly living with masks on their faces, avoiding social interaction, and generally living a miserable and fearful life. People cannot live like that forever. And a population that lives in a free nation will not allow the government to impose this forever
Re:Infections? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way through this is herd immunity.
To achieve herd immunity in the USA you're talking about 1-2 Million deaths, with hundreds of millions sick and millions upon millions more suffering lingering health effects that may go on for years.
The "pre-existing conditions" debate today is cute- Imagine it if tens of millions have lung issues for the rest of their lives.
There is a cost to closing schools, closing businesses, and inhibiting travel.
Yes, and if you go the "get everyone sick" route the costs to the American economy will be much, much, worse - Devastating, with millions upon millions at home sick with the economy stalled for month upon month and millions more never able to work again.
...and millions more able to work, but at home for years on welfare taking care of a loved on. Some good numbers here:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/i... [medpagetoday.com]
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Same for many kinds of cancer, we know how to treat most forms of cancer now that survival is nearly assured.
Cancer is not contagious.
After his recovery though it sounds like anyone in his age group would get the same thing. What was experimental on Trump is now common practice for all.
These drugs remain both experimental and very expensive. If the administration had a plan to make it common and affordable practice for all, I am sure they would have announced it by now. No one knows the timeline on the vaccine but they keep promising it'll be ready in weeks.
I keep hearing people talk about the need for herd immunity. That will only happen if people catch it and recover, or if there is a vaccine.
However, one of those methods is truly barbaric that will result in a significant loss of life. So I would really prefer a vaccine.
Also, it is far from clear how long catch-and-recover immunity lasts. If the i
Re:Infections? (Score:4, Informative)
The HPV is not a cancer, it is a virus that can cause cancer as a side effect in some cases.
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Even going with your numbers, Covid-19 has only been around in significant quantity for about 6 months. So for a full-year at the same rate, you would double that, making it 3rd on your list of causes of death. The rate of Covid-19 deaths is of course not a constant. Better treatments will reduce the rate of death. But more widespread disease will increase it. My bet is that by the end of a full year, that number will be more than twice what it is today as a lot more people are going to catch it this winter
November 4th (Score:5, Insightful)
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Civil liberties.
Just imagine the outrage that would have occurred had Trump forced American citizens returning in to quarantine. Just imagine if any of those returning citizens were not white and he ordered them retained. Part of the problem with spending three years falsely screaming Dictator, Racist, etc at someone, is that you politically tie their hands when it matters. He couldn't even stop foreign nationals without Joe Biden calling him out for being racist and xenophobic. Pelosi decided to go do photo ops in China Town. Rather than come together in a time of crisis and rally America together, the Democrats saw political opportunity for November and went for blood, damn the consequences.
I don't think the liberals started the policization of COVID. But I agree that it is bad and part of the problem we have now. But lets be clear, 1) Trump is racist - why else does he refuse to denounce white supremacists? Even when asked directly to do so. 2) The federal government should be organizing all of this, through the legislative branch, and working WITH governors regardless of politics to push the right initiatives across the country. This is a global issue and should be handled from a top dow
I didn't know we had a second wave. (Score:2)
I thought we were still waiting for it. :(
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Depends on who "we" are. The European second wave has started several weeks ago, the US third wave is starting just now.
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Who has the most waves now? USA?
What's the plan? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Political finger-pointing. Trying to exploit tragedy for political gain. Isn't that always the plan?
Re:What's the plan? (Score:4, Insightful)
There wont be any plan, at least not till after the election is over. We tried lock-downs once, and the infection rate is even higher now than it was then. So why aren't we locking down again? Politics, that's why. None of the people who want to be leaders want to make the hard decisions that come with the post, because people don't like "hard decisions" and take it out on the person who made them, and all these politicians are looking out for their own asses before they worry about anyone else.
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There wont be any plan, at least not till after the election is over. We tried lock-downs once, and the infection rate is even higher now than it was then.
Gaaah, we could at least do the masks and the testing.
It may not be perfect, but there is consensus that it would help. The current plan seems to be make fun of the people in masks (particularly if they are large masks).
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See that word there? 'Primary'? That has a meaning, you know. Try to think for once, instead of parotting your right-wing echo chamber.
Re:What's the plan? (Score:4, Interesting)
We tried lock-downs once, and the infection rate is even higher now than it was then. So why aren't we locking down again? Politics, that's why.
This. I'm in Europe, looking at infections numbers three times as high as the worst day in spring. Death numbers are climbing upwards and we know that they lag behind, so they'll hit new records in the next days.
And still, politicians are now betting the house on the one thing that anyone with three working brain cells knows doesn't work: People following unclear rules voluntarily in an environment of high uncertainty.
Hello? Morons? We have decades of research into how humans actually behave. We know about risk-seeking and risk-avoidance. We know about intuitive evaluation of risk and why it's utterly wrong in any situation that's not hunter-gatherer daily life. System one, system two, the psychology of the masses... I mean, you don't have to guess that people will NOT be following suggestions from a ruling class the vast majority sees as corrupt, incompetent or both, that has one of the lowest reputations among all professions, barely above prostitutes.
Politics. That's it. They over-reacted the first time and it actually worked. It might have been a bit too much and the economy suffered, but it saved thousands of lives. But this time, the lobbyists had time to play the crying game and tell them how all those beautiful companies will go out of business and all those billionaires well you can't expect them to save the companies they own with the money they've squared away, can you?
The fuckers that run our countries are not going to save us. They're quite ready to sacrifice us by the thousands to keep a fictional system of economics running that has optimised itsellf so aggressively that it can't handle a crisis not of its own making.
And that's why people flee to those conspiracy theories and anti-Corona nonsense you see flying around. They don't like the rational answer: We're fucked and there's nothing you can do. Hold on tight, secure yourself and your loved ones as good as you can, accept that that's still not very good, and hope for the storm to pass. That's a sad thing to say when you thought you're living in a 1st world country, and most people aren't ready to admit it.
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Sweden is #17 and Switzerland is #40 by "deaths per million" sorting.
Austria went into lockdown relatively early - #76
As did Poland - #71
Germany - #68
Greece - #101
I have no idea where you get the idea that Sweden and Switzerland would prove that lockdowns did almost nothing.
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Fucking germ theory, how does it work?
It's just not physically possible for lockdowns not to have an effect. Unless the virus can travel vast distances and through brick walls, you stay at home and you'll never get it.
If we all stocked up and stayed at home for 2-3 weeks, ideally individually but at most in families, it'd be over, forever. I'm not saying it's always the right approach but there's no doubt it works.
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Maybe the hard decision is to not do lockdowns because of the cost of doing so can actually be worse and longer lasting.
Economies are transient. Death is forever.
Stop testing (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh you stop testing and stop reporting numbers to the CDC. Meanwhile Mike Pence's aids and staff have tested positive and he refuses to quarantine. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/24... [cnn.com]
Canada too ... (Score:5, Informative)
This is the second wave in most of Canada, and the trend is the same: record number of infections.
Ontario, the most populous province with 14.5M people, recorded 1,042 cases today. During the first wave, the peak was 550-600 cases.
Fortunately, the rate of deaths is still low, unlike the first wave. But with hospitalizations increasing, and the virus starting to creep into retirement homes, I fear a repeat of the first wave, where ~ 70% of deaths were in these settings.
And we still have a long winter ahead of us ...
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There are reportedly several strains, with some being considerably less dangerous... It makes sense that the less dangerous strains are more likely to spread given they're less likely to kill or incapacitate the host.
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There are no reports about different strains.
Unless you mean the "common cold" - which is caused by a different corona virus strain.
Song (Score:2)
And now for a musical interlude:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Canada's not so doing so great either. (Score:2)
I'm in Canada, and it's my understanding that we've recently been put on the same list as the USA for a lot of countries with regards to allowing travel.
This is not, contrary to what a certain well known person said back in February, simply going to "disappear".
Yes, it will eventually go away... but I do not think it will simply vanish... more like it will eventually be less and less of a serious problem as we get better at treating the illness and hopefully even one day preventing it. I do not think
France's testing has increased (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in France and the one factor in the difference between now and the spring time is the rate of testing.
There are literally queues going down the street outside every blood test center (and there are blood test centers in every high street in France) now. That was not the case in the spring. They must be testing at least 10x as many people now, and most of them will be displaying no symptoms (i.e. test and trace driven) compared to the spring when the testing was limited to hospital patients.
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You probably shouldn't mention that the number of cases increases with the number of tests administered or else they'll label you a Trump supporter who deserves to die.
No you only get that honorary moron label if you ignore positivity rate when looking at case rate. France's positivity rate is much higher than it was as well very much showing that more people are infected and the numbers are not due to just testing.
The numbers will always go up, morons (Score:2, Insightful)
The numbers will always go up. Every month will bring a new high. That's what happens when you add numbers.
Jesus H Christ.
"number of daily COVID-19 infected"... (Score:3)
PUT ON YOUR GODDAMNED MASKS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Fucking HELL how hard is this shit for you morons to understand!?
What part of an exponential don't you understand? (Score:3)
Time breathlessly cries The United States has reached a new record high in the number of daily COVID-19 infections, surpassing [a shopping list of previous "peaks" and "highs"] and goes on to hype about still higher "peaks" being expected in the future. As if this were news, or the current period were somehow special.
Oh, we so scared!
What part of an exponential function don't they understand? (Or what part do they think their readers don't understand?)
So far less than 2.7% of the population has caught the bug. The "epidemiological curve" is essentially indistinguishable from an exponential until it the have-been-infected count reaches about 10% and it BEGINS to ease off.
With an exponential curve, EVERY day is worse than the day before. And every day gets MORE worse as time goes on. Record now, bigger record tomorrow, more-bigger record the day after, yadda, yadda, yadda... This continues until enough of the population is immune - either from having already had the disease or due to a successfull immunization - that a substantial fraction of those currently being exposed are no longer vulnerable.
You want to see what REALLY was happening? Check out the first graph in the worldometers' US coronavirus stats [worldometers.info].
France's PM is a Conservative (Score:2)
That said, "All Time High" is relative. And France's PM is doing lock downs to control things. It was generally understood there'd be spikes as winter hits because people are indoors more.
Meanwhile Trump's administration just admitted defeat [cnn.com]. It's very clear Trump wants to do the "Let 'er Rip" policy. FYI, that means around 10-14 million dead, mostly older folks. You know,
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Political shit like refusing to social distance due to it being a liberal conspiracy and protesting against non-existent mask policies (OK, some private stores have them here) by spitting on people does make it worse. In your country a certain politician seems to be going out of his way to encourage the bullshit.
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Funny how its not a problem in many Asian countries and New Zealand is worry free.
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This, exactly.
the difference might have The reason why it spread out of control in the USA in particular is because of a couple of factors: One, there is a large population, giving the disease plenty of potential targets, and making wide scale testing difficult to implement on any e
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Compare Europe versus US: https://www.statista.com/chart... [statista.com]
Someone is always "doing better" until they're doing worse.
Re:All Trump's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all the EU is larger. Second, since the EU has far fewer deaths this only means that the USA has far more undetected cases.
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It's not a competition.
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So why are you trying so hard to be number one? MAGA?
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In case it is not obvious, some people love deaths in the US, because orange man bad.
Even if US is below the UK, Spain and France in deaths per capita. Does not matter.
Even if regional actions and behavior are mostly affected by local and state government and mostly unaffected by the white house.
Yet, there are are billboards in NYC of all places, blaming Trump.
In the end, many people do not care about deaths or facts. Just orange man bad.
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In terms of deaths per capita cumulative, the US is at number 3 for first world countries of reasonable size behind Spain and Belgium. Even Belgium is getting into the noise as it's about half the population of the NYC metro area, and a bit smaller than LA.
You're neck and neck with us (the UK) which is in pretty shit company as our government also majorly fucked up.
Re:All Trump's fault (Score:5, Funny)
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Pandemic is a lot like Global Thermonuclear War - The only winning move is not to play.
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Pandemic is a lot like Global Thermonuclear War - The only winning move is not to play.
Uh, we humans are 100% responsible for Global Thermonuclear War. We literally created that threat from scratch.
Pandemics have been ravaging this planet and killing humans for thousands of years. Mother Nature would appreciate it if you did not relegate her to the level of stupid humans who rather enjoy killing each other for the sake of Greed.
She is far more an elegant and refined killer.
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Population of Europe is noticeably higher.
I am not sure why people who fight around coronavirus never normalize
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I am not sure why people who fight around coronavirus never normalize
Because people are more interested in political point-scoring than discerning the truth.
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Because people are more interested in political point-scoring than discerning the truth.
While they are all politicians, by "people", I think you mean "current administration". While Democrats would surely work hard to score political points if they were in control, I believe they would at least listen to the medical experts occasionally.
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How many kWHrs did your household use last month? (Score:2)
If one is not taking action, one is a denier of climate change and by extension to COVID crisis and the poor response in the US by extension as any right winger.
I guess I am also assuming you are a USian rather than part of some culture that measures energy footprint in megajoules?
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Nothing will ever be good enough for zealots.
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Is France a blue state or a red state?
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Re:Less than 2 weeks to go (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the president doing to stop this?
I think his team's plan is to wait 2 weeks and then start blaming Biden. What's left of his team anyway.
Re:I don't care even a little about "case counts" (Score:5, Informative)
Your logic is flawed. This is like saying "cavities are bullshit, I've brushed my whole life and I've only had two." You've only had two because you've brushed your whole life. Should you have not brushed? Would you then only expect that someone who didn't brush their whole lives would also only have two cavities?
The death rate for COVID-19 is lower than the projected worst case death rate because of all the work we've done to combat it. If there were no controls in place, and people were subjected to higher initial viral loads because so many more people would be sick and there was less social distancing, our hospitals would be way overwhelmed and it'd be an absolute catastrophe. Remember how bad things were in Italy? In New York City for a stretch there? That would be the case all over the world.
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And now it is your logic that is flawed, since you cannot tell me just how many deaths have been indirectly caused by excessive lockdowns and shuttering of entire industries and millions of jobs worldwide.
Not precisely, but there are numbers [usnews.com] if you care to look.
NEARLY 300,000 MORE Americans died from late January to early October than expected during an average year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in a report published Tuesday.
The majority of the excess deaths – 66% – are due to the coronavirus, the report found.
So we're talking about ~100,000 excess deaths possibly caused by the lockdown. But can we tell if they're caused by the pandemic or by the lockdown? From that same source:
"These disproportionate increases among certain racial and ethnic groups are consistent with noted disparities in COVID-19 mortality," the report said.
The report had several limitations, including the possibility that "estimates of excess deaths attributed to COVID-19 might underestimate the actual number directly attributable to COVID-19, because deaths from other causes might represent misclassified COVID-19–related deaths or deaths indirectly caused by the pandemic."
So these excess deaths may be caused by the lockdown, but they are demographically similar to what you would expect from missed diagnosis of COVID-19 as the cause.
We have managed to largely avoid that many excessive deaths, but that only lasts as long as government checks keep flowing during a pandemic.
That makes it easy then. Keep the government checks flowing - we can easily afford them - while at the same time taking m