| Author | Message | ||||||||||||||||||
     Ratbuell |
Please read this article that was posted above: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/h ow_reliable_are_the_coronavirus_numbers.html Here are some often repeated critical comments about different widely published and discussed indicators. The real number of people with the virus is drastically higher than reported (according to some authors, by a factor of 10), because many people have the virus but were not tested (passed the sickness easily without noticing). The declining contamination effect is much more pronounced in the most affected states and the United States generally (Chart 2). By averaging data in three and six states, I tried to reflect better the "pool" from which new cases appear and minimize the random fluctuations. Indeed, they all show similar patterns. The intensity of the infections is steadily dropping, starting from the peak, which was reached on March 19–20, 2020. Most likely, social distancing began to work about a week after it was vigorously enforced. These charts show that the concept of exponential growth, which is still often pronounced, is wrong. If it were right, the indicator should grow. A reproduction number below 1 means that the pandemic is to vanish. The earlier estimates of it showed a wide interval, from 1.5 to 5.5 (quite similar to the ones on the left area on Chart 2). Those days are over. We shouldn't be overly optimistic about predictions based on that – too many other factors are in place. But the universal slowing of contamination cannot be random. At least one type of threshold is surpassed. It definitely looks as though we've passed a point of diminishing returns.} | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ourdee |
How messed up is China? China forces Italy to buy same coronavirus supplies it had donated to Beijing a few weeks ago https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-italy-coronavi rus-supplies-buy-back | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
Here are some often repeated critical comments about different widely published and discussed indicators. The real number of people with the virus is drastically higher than reported (according to some authors, by a factor of 10), because many people have the virus but were not tested (passed the sickness easily without noticing). Assuming that were true, which BTW, I've seen zero supporting evidence, we have still had exponential growth in deaths up past 10,000 as of today. All that would mean is that the virus is far more infectious than we suspect. That is most definitely not a good thing. I certainly don't understand why some cling to this notion. More than that, I don't understand why those same people seem push it as a good thing. Care to explain? | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ratbuell |
Sure. Also in that article (which I presume you have not read), they state that we have already passed our peak infection time - that today's "new" cases (i.e. people who present symptoms today) have actually had the virus for the last 14 days, and what we're seeing as a "peak" now (confirmations), is actually a 2-week-old peak of actual spread, because of the latency. As I have said - repeatedly - either the infection rate estimate is wrong...or the death rate is wrong. This virus had free run of the entire globe for four months, with zero precautions. If it had - effectively - eight end-to-end incubation periods (14 days), with zero precautions to try and stop the spread, AND it is 1:3 transmittable, AND it's so uber-deadly with your exponential growth rate? Half the globe would be dead by now. Obviously, that isn't the case. Either A) it isn't as infectious as the models suggest, B) it isn't as deadly to those who catch it as the models suggest, or C) both guesses are wrong. Why are you so hell-bent on this being an extinction-level event? | ||||||||||||||||||
| Hughlysses |
^ Tom- I just read a thread about this theory on Twitter. The thought is the virus may be far more contagious than believed, perhaps as contagious as measles, but it is overall no more deadly than flu. This would mean far more people than thought have already been infected, but the majority were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms. This theory supports the observed number of deaths, but the good thing is it would mean we are close to achieving herd immunity and therefore we will soon see a rapid fall in the number of new cases. The only way to confirm this would be to do widespread random testing for COVID-19 antibodies, | ||||||||||||||||||
| Court |
The models that have been widely touted are either wildly wrong . . . As Fauci and Brix had alluded to . . . It we’re less than 1% into the deaths. It no compute. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
Why are you so hell-bent on this being an extinction-level event? I most certainly have never suggested anything of the sort. This virus had free run of the entire globe for four months, with zero precautions. I have no idea where you got this notion. You repeat it often. I point out it's fallacy often. First case in the US wasn't even identified until January 19. He had just returned from visiting family in Wuhan China on the 14th. It hasn't even been in the US 4 months, much less with zero precautions. If it had - effectively - eight end-to-end incubation periods (14 days), with zero precautions to try and stop the spread, AND it is 1:3 transmittable, AND it's so uber-deadly with your exponential growth rate? Half the globe would be dead by now. Try doing some math. From a single case, it wouldn't have had a chance to infect half the globe yet. The spread starts very slowly. It's only after a few months that you start seeing the startling growth in numbers. It's funny to me that you argue the infection rate to be wrong (I gather you believe it to be much lower), but also argue the infection rate is far higher than stated. The higher infection rate would be necessary given your belief that there are so many people who have been infected but never showed symptoms. Let's assume for a moment that for every confirmed case, there are 100 that go un-diagnosed. World wide we have about 1.3 million confirmed cases in the world. That wold give 1.3 billion infected people in the world. Those absurd assumptions would give us about 17% of the world having already been infected. I don't thing ANYONE is claiming a 100:1 ratio of un-diagnosed to confirmed cases. You also seem to confuse the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) with an overall "death rate". That's the only explanation I can come up with for your belief that the death rate is claimed to be way too high. I don't even know who is claiming to have estimated the overall death rate. That requires knowledge of how many people get infected, but don't show symptoms. As I've pointed out, I don't think we know that with any degree of certainty. But we do know that it took months to get the first 1,000 deaths. From there, it only took days to top 10,000 deaths. Same sort of exponential curve as the infections. Would it be too much to ask for you to show some sort of support for the claims you are making in the future? | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
^ Tom- I just read a thread about this theory on Twitter. The thought is the virus may be far more contagious than believed, perhaps as contagious as measles, but it is overall no more deadly than flu. This would mean far more people than thought have already been infected, but the majority were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms. This theory supports the observed number of deaths, but the good thing is it would mean we are close to achieving herd immunity and therefore we will soon see a rapid fall in the number of new cases. The only way to confirm this would be to do widespread random testing for COVID-19 antibodies, I just replied to Ratbuell on this, doing some quick math on absurd assumptions. We are nowhere near getting herd immunity, even with the most absurd assumptions. Not only that, this idea goes strongly against the data we do have where entire populations have been tested, like in the article posted the other day about we might have 50% being asymptomatic. I did the math on that, with every assumption giving the most benefit of a doubt toward their headline, but the number still came out at only 36% being asymptomatic. Given the assumptions I made there, the real number is almost surely lower than that. This seems to be an internet theory that is based on nothing but make believe. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
The models that have been widely touted are either wildly wrong . . . As Fauci and Brix had alluded to . . . It we’re less than 1% into the deaths. It no compute. Who's claiming we are only 1% into deaths? That would give us over a million deaths in the US when it's done. I have only heard that sort of estimate based on doing nothing to mitigate the spread. You may have noticed, this has not been the case. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
New York City plans to temporarily bury coronavirus victims in a park Remember last year when they did this for the flu? | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
I have to say, this would be a nice stroke of common sense. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
Some optimistic news. Good to ignore if you wish to be willfully ignorant. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ratbuell |
I don't claim that the transmission rate is exaggerated...I believe just the opposite. I believe the transmission rate is at least as high as 1:3. But, I also believe - and that is showing up in more and more of the numbers around the globe - that it is not anywhere near as deadly as it is touted to be. Deadly among SYMPTOMATIC people? Maybe. Deadly among POPULATION? Among EVERYONE who has the disease, regardless of symptoms? No. Not even close to the models. My 4 months claim comes from China's first claim about patient zero. NOT about anyone in the USA, but the first person to "catch" this, bringing it into the human race. From there, to the first of the significant global lock-downs...is four months. That's four months the disease was allowed to run free. And bear in mind - that start date is when CHINA - who is so faithfully transparent and honest in general - admitted to the disease being in a human being, 'in the wild'. Four months of your favorite, exponential growth. 1 person. 3 people. 9 people. 27 people. 81 people. 243 people. 729 people. That's ONE WEEK, if you assume each sick person passes it to three people a day. 14 days of this? Unchecked? 1,594,323 infected. In 2 weeks. Not sixteen weeks...TWO. One more day? 4,782,969. One more day? 14,348,907. Three weeks? 10,460,353,203 people infected, if we assume a 1:3 transmission rate, per day (each patient gives it to 3 people per day). I ask again - if it's so deadly that this huge percentage of everyone who catches it, dies - where's all the bodies? Your exponential growth rate, at a 1:3 infection ratio, means 1.5 million people have the disease within 2 weeks. Even figuring a "conservative" model of 2% death rate for everyone infected, that's 31,886 dead. In 2 weeks. Nearly 210 million dead in 3 weeks. Not four months...but three WEEKS. What I say, repeatedly, is that EITHER it isn't as contagious as they say, OR it isn't as deadly as they say. If it were both...we'd have billions of bodies by now. I believe the transmission rate; I simply don't see the numbers for the supposed death rate. And until we start testing globally, 100% of the population...we'll never know. You keep saying "the first person IDENTIFIED" to have the disease. OK. Great. They're telling us to NOT get tested if we don't have symptoms. So...how many people had the disease BEFORE the first one was "identified"? We KNOW there are asymptomatics out there who simply beat the disease. How many are there? What's the percentage? Who can tell? How do we prove it, one way or the other? We don't. You seem fixated on how many people this is going to kill, almost like you're rooting for the disease, and you don't want to hear any of the optimistic reports from the real world where numbers are dropping - worldwide. Daily new cases are down, in some places from 20%+ increases per day to 3% or 4% increases per day. My fixation is, why did we shut down western civilization at large, for this? I still hold the belief that the actual problem, the actual disease, isn't worth all the panic, and all the financial and societal consequences. On those points I guess we'll have to agree to disagree - I just hope we get through this soon, with minimal damage to our world's society and economy as well as minimal loss of life. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ratbuell |
A fairly eloquent summation of my concerns with this whole situation: https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/202 0/04/06/beware-the-creeps-who-enjoy-their-new-pand emic-power-n2566370 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Tpehak |
The fact that the invented antibodies will be tested and processed by military is telling that the coronavirus is going to be weaponized or used for military strategic goals. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
Deadly among POPULATION? Among EVERYONE who has the disease, regardless of symptoms? No. Not even close to the models. I'm curious. What models are you talking about here? How would someone even model how deadly it is among all people who are infected. That's a figure we will never have. BTW, that would just be a simple statistic, not a model... but semantics. I'm pretty sure you are either misunderstanding something you've heard, or just making it up. My 4 months claim comes from China's first claim about patient zero. NOT about anyone in the USA, but the first person to "catch" this, bringing it into the human race. From there, to the first of the significant global lock-downs...is four months. That's four months the disease was allowed to run free. And bear in mind - that start date is when CHINA - who is so faithfully transparent and honest in general - admitted to the disease being in a human being, 'in the wild'. And I will point out again, China didn't just let it run free. They tried to contain it. Yes, they lied and kept the truth from the world, but they tried to snuff it out to keep it secret. The crap we are dealing with right now. Be glad you didn't live in Wuhan! You should read some of the stories that got out. Four months of your favorite, exponential growth. 1 person. 3 people. 9 people. 27 people. 81 people. 243 people. 729 people. That's ONE WEEK, if you assume each sick person passes it to three people a day. 14 days of this? Unchecked? 1,594,323 infected. In 2 weeks. Not sixteen weeks...TWO. One more day? 4,782,969. One more day? 14,348,907. You may notice, the projections I gave had it doubling in 4-5 days. Your projection has it tripling every single day. It simply can't do that. The reason it can't do that is there is an incubation period. Exactly what the mean incubation period is still being debated. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavi rus-incubation-period/ So your 729 infections in a week would be more like 2 months. That's part of the problem with exponential growth. It seems to be manageable at first. Next thing you know, you are blindsided with an out of control situation. To complicate things further, they were trying to track down infected people and do contact tracing to stop the spread. Often this is quite successful in stopping a full on outbreak. With this virus, it was complicated by the fact that there is a substantial percentage that don't show symptoms. Most likely they thought they were getting a handle on stopping it, but then cases just show up and you have nobody with symptoms to track it to. I'm sure it took some time to figure out this aspect of this virus. So your growth rate... It's hugely exaggerated. Three weeks? 10,460,353,203 people infected, if we assume a 1:3 transmission rate, per day (each patient gives it to 3 people per day). Consider this confirmation that you are wrong. It would have burned out in under 3 weeks. It didn't happen. You are wrong. I ask again - if it's so deadly that this huge percentage of everyone who catches it, dies - where's all the bodies? Your exponential growth rate, at a 1:3 infection ratio, means 1.5 million people have the disease within 2 weeks. Even figuring a "conservative" model of 2% death rate for everyone infected, that's 31,886 dead. In 2 weeks. Nearly 210 million dead in 3 weeks. Not four months...but three WEEKS. Again... What percentage of people who catch it die? We don't know that. I don't know who's claiming to know that. The other problem with your equation is the 1:3 infection ratio. That's not a value that is intrinsic to the virus. It's a combination of what's intrinsic to the virus, but it changed by what we do to prevent it's spread. The goal is to get it below a 1:1 ratio. At that point you will have negative growth and be on the backside of the bell curve. Bottom line though, infection rate is variable, largely based on actions by society. What I say, repeatedly, is that EITHER it isn't as contagious as they say, OR it isn't as deadly as they say. If it were both...we'd have billions of bodies by now. I believe the transmission rate; I simply don't see the numbers for the supposed death rate. And until we start testing globally, 100% of the population...we'll never know. I'll ask again. Who's claiming a death rate? I assume we are not talking CFR here. CFR is quite easy to ascertain. You keep saying "the first person IDENTIFIED" to have the disease. OK. Great. They're telling us to NOT get tested if we don't have symptoms. So...how many people had the disease BEFORE the first one was "identified"? We KNOW there are asymptomatics out there who simply beat the disease. How many are there? What's the percentage? Who can tell? How do we prove it, one way or the other? We don't. No we don't. But it really doesn't matter that much. I keep trying to get you to see that. It does matter as far as how long it will take to get a herd immunity built up. If we have to wait for that to happen, things are going to be really bad. This is why NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) and eventually pharmaceuticals will hopefully save millions of lives. Is it so hard to see that if it's as bad as we see it, with the interventions that are being done, that it would be much worse without the interventions. It's pretty basic stuff. If you stop people from getting close, they simply don't spread the disease. I hope we can agree on that much. You seem fixated on how many people this is going to kill, almost like you're rooting for the disease, and you don't want to hear any of the optimistic reports from the real world where numbers are dropping - worldwide. Daily new cases are down, in some places from 20%+ increases per day to 3% or 4% increases per day. My fixation is, why did we shut down western civilization at large, for this? I still hold the belief that the actual problem, the actual disease, isn't worth all the panic, and all the financial and societal consequences. On those points I guess we'll have to agree to disagree - I just hope we get through this soon, with minimal damage to our world's society and economy as well as minimal loss of life. Not rooting for the disease. Rooting for the facts. It's only once we understand the facts that we can come to grips with stopping the disease. I'll point out again, you seem to look at the impact of the disease with all of the intervention, then wonder why we did all of the intervention. If you stop people from getting close, they simply don't spread the disease. Can we agree on that much? It changes your entire perspective. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sifo |
A fairly eloquent summation of my concerns with this whole situation: https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/202 0/04/06/beware-the-creeps-who-enjoy-their-new-pand emic-power-n2566370 Believe it or not, I share those concerns. That's why, early on I was trying to get folks to do stupid things, like educate themselves on this by watching some simply videos. They talked every night about balancing 1) keeping the economy going 2) controlling the spread of the virus and 3) not letting the health care system get overrun. How many times did I point to S. Korea as getting it right? They got control of the spread early and are getting their economy back on track. We, OTOH, did it differently. FIFTYS!!! | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ourdee |
The fact that the invented antibodies will be tested and processed by military is telling that the coronavirus is going to be weaponized or used for military strategic goals. Wrong. The military has the virus to test the antibodies on. Do you want the live virus just FedExed to Joe Blow in his suite in the strip mall so he can do the testing there. The Chinese had it in a level 4 lab and let it out. It has already been weaponized and unleashed on the public. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Aesquire |
I agree with Sifo that you don't get 3×3×3×3... growth, but you do get a big surge as the people infected weeks ago get sick. I'm not going to argue about the numbers, yet. We should have a big enough sample size, eventually, hopefully later rather than sooner, if precautions against the big surge work, and that's ( at a guess )70-90% the Citizen's doing, with the government orders for precautionary measures the rest. As testing increases, the numbers will rise, even if the spread is falling off. That's important to keep in mind. Ditto the time lag. As to when the Coronavirus hit these shores, I'm increasingly thinking late October, mid November. That, if true, changes the slopes on the curves. Carry on. Play nice. I'm learning from all these posts. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Aesquire |
...military strategic goals. Ourdee's right, we sure aren't going to use Pooh's Breath as a weapon. There will be vaccines world wide in a year, so it's useless. It's also suicidal to use disease as a weapon, if you count on your Citizens to supply the war effort. Plus it's a lousy virus for the purpose. And anyone can get samples. Literally anyone. China, no matter if natural or man-made, has a ruthless ruling class that for thousands of years has considered the peasants as disposable. They HAVE been using Pooh's Breath as a weapon, both to suppress protests & economic, but seems to be opportunist taking advantage, since it's a lousy weapon. Don't worry about our military, or Russia, Egypt, etc. weaponizing the Coronavirus. I assure you, there are far "better" ways to commit planetary murder/suicide in labs, like Redacted. Read more Tom Clancy & watch less tv. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Gregtonn |
Are your neighbors dropping like flies? Are your friends and relatives coughing up a lung when you talk to them on the phone? Do you see bodies in the street when you look out your window? No? Then maybe its time to HTFU and get on with life. Just one man's opinion. G | ||||||||||||||||||
| Blake |
Tom, No mocking. Friendly discussion. Why chart mortality instead of confirmed cases? 1) That's what I'm interested in. Maybe the confirmed cases counting has finally stabilized and become reliable for statistical analyses, but it doesn't catch the effects of various treatments now making their way into the system, and I'm very interested in that being captured by the data, so mortality it is. Isn't death is the major concern, so mortality is what to chart. We cannot assume that ratio of confirmed cases to mortality will remain constant and claim to be scientific minded. 2) The mortality data is just the only reliable data going back more than two weeks. The testing was not comprehensive and timely until a few weeks ago as the backlog was cleared. 3) Across nations and continents, I just don't trust the testing and confirmed case data to remain consistent or stable. Here's the latest:  | ||||||||||||||||||
| Blake |
Some EU data, though poorly organized for comparison since data is plotted versus calendar date.  | ||||||||||||||||||
| Blake |
A comparable chart for the USA...  | ||||||||||||||||||
| Blake |
Tom, >>> ...we have still had exponential growth in deaths up past 10,000 as of today. Not according to the data. We've been well out of exponential growth for almost a week now.
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| Ducbsa |
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/364017/ | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chauly |
http://web.archive.org/web/20200405061401/https://medium.com/@agaiziunas/covid-19-had-us-all-fooled-but-now-we-might-have-finally-found-its-secret-91182386efcb (Message edited by Chauly on April 07, 2020) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chauly |
My older sister (mentioned previously) is recovering at home as of yesterday... | ||||||||||||||||||
| Aesquire |
Good news! Thanks for informing us. https://spectator.org/the-beginning-of-the-end-in- spite-of-governors-gretchen-whitmer-and-andrew-cuo mo/ | ||||||||||||||||||
| Hughlysses |
Watched Dr. Oz on Fox this morning talking about hydroxychloroquine. More evidence coming in that it is effective against COVID-19 and that it may prevent you from getting the disease if you’re on it. Apparently the Chinese claimed recently that they noticed no lupus suffers had contracted Coronavirus which is what led them to try hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. Oz is working to search data for a similar correlation in the US. He said he had talked with 2 insurance companies so far and if I heard him right, they’ve so far found 1500+ lupus patients in the US none of whom have contracted Coronavirus. He specifically asked if anyone has lupus, is on hydroxychloroquine, and has contracted Coronavirus, that they contact him through his website. He also mentioned that he had talked to several rheumatologists that prescribe hydroxychloroquine routinely who said the potential side effects from the drug are being vastly overblown by the MSM, and occur only with very long term usage (1+ years). |
