ahhh my bad then. Whatever waves we were between original (start 2020) and Fall/winter 2020 when most hit in that first wave, got a good amount of relief.

Its hard to parse graphs of the first few waves because omicron makes them look so tiny its hard to comprehend they were much more significant.

Its just so scary what will happen if it picks up just a bit of nastyness.

Im not sure what happened in Canada but just off the cuff its hard to think should have had burn through when it crushes burn through USA on every metric on all waves.

I get your point, but we simply can't ignore some of the biggest points of interest where infections were happening and also ignore contact tracing data.


If we take the contact tracing data and eliminate "household social gatherings / healthcare delivery / universities / schools" like the cell phone study did, then we arrive at restaurants at the top of the list, but only at 1.4% of total infections.

If 55% of people know where they got covid from, we have a pretty good idea where its coming from, and it also matches all anecdotal public reports of super spreader events.



I don't think I am consumed by it. I haven't talked about covid to anyone in about 6 months.

I like the old avatar too although I was too lazy to change back to it. It will make a comeback.


BTW I love yours. One of my favorite Nick Cage movies.

We knew definitely by april 2020 that 50 year olds and younger were mostly fine. But there wasn't the political courage to immediately re-open the economy in early April to the 0-50 year old age group.

All western countries half heartedly tried the covid-0 approach between March 2020 and May / June 2020 which didn't end up working and gave us the worst path possible. Which was a completely devastated economy that needed trillions in bailout funds, and a covid disease which went on to continue killing over a million americans.

Yup.

Considering Tien knows the pressures in the 1st wave in the Quebec hospital systems and how dire things got, the 'let it rip ... let them die' push was extremely cold considering we had no clue it if seasonally it would slow post May across Canada, like it did. It could have just as easily continued to rise to Omicron like levels back then, as far as we knew.

And without our understanding of therapeutics at that point, resulting in so many additional prolonged, more serious hospitalizations and deaths, it would have been folly for the Health Authorities to gamble with any re-opening.

Can you post some data and claims by experts saying that as it seems very unlikely to me.

Vancouver BC and NYS and Cali were only just starting to get started in March 2020. I was still flying all over including BC then.

So you are saying based on Chinese and Italian data primarily that this conclusion was not only known but accepted science? Again i am strongly skeptical but will stand to be corrected if you have data or reports.

They wouldn't be correct to do so unless you think 15% inflation, a few more trillion $ thrown out the window, more economic instability is the "correct" path to go down.

The superior option is to lock the 60 year olds and over at home, and let it burn through the entire population in 3-4 months. You have stressed hospital and health services during this time, but you save yourself having to print trillions again.

BC was first and hardest hit in Canada in March 2020, due to large Chinese population and travel, with Ont and Quebec following after.

By mid May it had peeked in BC and was coming down rapidly in terms of spread and hospitalizations. There was talk/hope of getting it right down to zero and ending the wave still. We spent most of that summer with near zero covid spread and yet our harshest shutdowns with almost nothing but essential services open. We then went into a tough Fall/Winter.

I see no argument against a hindsight one, that evening out the infection and spread, by allowing some of the more willing to catch it and get some immunity in that summer , would not have helped alleviate, even if nominally, the tough fall/winter we experienced.

And even if one was to argue the overall difference would be so small and thus not worth considering, that should not take away from those who may prefer exposure risk in the summer, when hospital care is abundant being able to take that risk then and get that care then, then locking them down and forcing them into the Fall/Winter pool when health care was far more challenging to get.

Rickroll

You happy now with my avatar? Took me 5 mins to do this. Bastard.



Cuepee and I have long ago stop insulting each other so I feel an avatar change is necessary. He can continue to insult me if he wants over covid arguments, but I am pretty much over it a long time ago.


If he calls me one is his beloved "Derps", I'll take it as term of endearment.

Mid April 2020 for hospitalizations.

Death data was similar trajectory





https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019.../04242020.html

That is an utterly crap graph because if you separate 18-29 from 29-49 you will see a big difference between those age ranges.

Sort by 18-49 year olds is dumb.

Someone aged 30-39 is four times likely to die from covid than 18-29 and twice as likely to end up in hospital.

Someone aged 40-49 is TEN times more likely to die from covid and twice as likely to end up in hospital.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...th-by-age.html

It doesn't matter since aggregate death rates under 54 years old is very low.

This data came from March 2020 so we knew then it wasn't deadly to young people. Only the elderly.




This is data a year later in 2021:



https://www.businessinsider.com/most...hose-over-85-4


So yes, 40-49 year olds are many more times as likely to die as the young, but their chances of dying are very low anyway.

Yea I think we are talking past each other a bit, I did not realise lockdowns in Canada were so harsh.

I would not call the alternative to what Canada did burnthrough, I would just call it not locking down when cases/hospitalisations are low which is what happened for the most part in Europe.

I guess I just think about burnthrough in the context of the old thread were USA was contrasted very much against Europe as in USA had BT but Europe did not = lol Europe Trump was right, I see no upward trend etc.

In the context of Europe v Canada it for the most part it did.

So if you are advocating not locking down when cases etc are low then yea, that seems impossible to argue against.

0.5% CFR is still very significant for people aged 45.

Then we can assume a larger number for how many get put in hospital, which is just as important.

Also what is your cut off point for lock up the olds?

We achieve the best balance if we do a harsh lockdown for those 55 years and older. Although you could probably achieve similar results if we capped it at 62/63.

Use deficit spending to supplement their incomes on a sliding scale. Meaning poorer elderly get bigger piece of the income supplementation as well as food services.

Nobody except essential workers are allowed to visit them inside their homes.


It allows the economy to continue functioning properly, while not having to print massive trillions keeping everyone at home.

Those data sets are so out of date I looked for something more recent.

Total numbers are revealing.

110,312 thousand people under the age of 50 have died from C19 in USA.

That is more than the its just the flu bros were predicting for the entire pandemic.

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisiona...-Age/9bhg-hcku

love it

Tien when do you think preliminary data becomes conclusive? Conclusive enough that a clear course of action is present????

What you are showing was very early and thin data sets. Do you agree? Do you agree that by Mar 2020, the only real data sets were those coming out of China and Italy and there was still a lot of question marks or do you think we were certain both CHina and Italy had it solved, in terms of data?

The CDC and Canadian medical officials certainly did not have robust data by that point coming from their own populace. Agreed?

Again, I state for health authorities they will always err on the side of caution, or less deaths and at that point they just were not sure if this was just early data, in which the more vulnerable were dying first (always expected) and mass death would follow in other groups later (as often happens) or if this data was robust and complete.

If you believe the CDC and Canada Health viewed it as robust and complete what is that based upon? Quebec had not even begin wave 1, in any meaningful way by the potin you say you were 'calling it'.

The problem with lockdowns for people over 60+ or 65+ or especially 55+ is that there are a lot of multi-generational families living together. The younger family members will lock themselves down. This is true also for people with family in the same area. And if they don't, for whatever reasons, a lot more people would die.

My children did not go out because they lived in the same house as me and my wife. Well until my daughter became an EMT and was basically in contact with Covid infected people every day. She basically isolated herself in the house (like my wife and I did when we caught Covid this year) and was served food by her parents. At school my son (who I drove every day) wore a mask and then in November of 2020 decided to just Zoom school from home until he could get vaccinated in mid-2021.

I don't think there is an effective way to separate young and old in a pandemic. And even if there was, many younger people would choose to lock down anyway. Yes not a lot of people under 45 died from Covid but the long term affects were extremely brutal and not rare.

and the older and more at risk they are, the more they need hospitals, care services etc. Effective isolation is impossible if the virus is rampant among the caring staff, on the buses etc etc

The issue now for the old and vulnerable, as relayed to me by my mom, about a friend of hers, is as follows.

The main service for seniors getting to appointment used to low cost or volunteer programs where seniors drove other seniors for discount rates thru these non profits

Those services have all but closed during covid as the seniors who would drive are now not willing. My moms friend (in her mid 80's) had to go to a specialist appointment for her cancer treatment to a hospital an hours away and had to pay $500 return with a normal car service (airport type private car) for a trip that would typically cost her $70. The driver arrived with a mask but took the mask off in the front seat, 20 minutes into the drive.

She did not want to fight with the driver so she just sat quietly hoping he was not asymptomatic spreader.

I just find it funny those that advocate that covid wasn’t dangerous and take the numbers we have today and say see , no problem ….

Disregarding the fact that yeah , those numbers are low because restriction were taken at a very deep level .

Claiming number wouldn’t have go up with no restriction is not serious .
Many people did got their lives save because they were able to go to hospital because it wasn’t flood , due to restrictions .



And imho tien downgrade significantly the danger of mutation .
If u would of let the covid virus spread throughout hundreds of millions of people just because they were less at risk , u have 0 guarantee no worst mutation would occurred
Absolutely 0 .

As u increase the number of infection , u increase the chance a virus mutate .


https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/07/19/andre...elta-variants/

Is it possible to prevent a virus from mutating?

Well, you can't prevent the virus from mutating, but what you can do is limit the virus's spread, and in that way you reduce the chances that a mutation can emerge that is going to help the virus infect humans better.
Say, for example, it's a one in a million chance that a mutation will be advantageous to the virus. If you let the virus replicate itself 900,000 times, odds are that the advantageous mutation will occur. But if you limit the overall replication of the virus to 1,000 times, then it's much less likely that the random advantageous mutation is going to occur. And that's where public health interventions really help us a lot during this pandemic—by reducing the total amount of virus replication and therefore reducing the chances that the virus can improve or adapt.

What happened to that asian character avatar? I think it was from some old movie but I can't put a name to it. What makes you choose this one?


I think the data coming out from China was 4 months old at that point, and about 75 days from Italy. By mid April we had a really good idea about this virus. I agree that health officials will always err on the side of caution, that's why they recommended shut downs continually from mid March -> early June. Those 3 months of recommendations were enough to nuke the economy sideways, force massive stimilus printing.


The main premise and argument here is:

OAK saying that if we ran the cards again with the same conditions, many countries would do the same exact playbook as the March 2020 playbook and they would be "correct" to do so.

I completely disagree wholeheartedly with the fact that it would be "correct" to run it back again.


We can't shut the economy down for 3 months again. We can't print trillions and throw it at the masses. The ramifications of what we are dealing with now is much much worse than having to deal with an overwhelmed hospital sector for 3-4 months.

Shutting down "your" economy hoping the mutation won't happen in your own country is a fool's gamble.

We knew early on that every single country would eventually catch covid. So that mutations would happen globally no matter what you do internally. There's a few billion people in Africa / South America / India where you knew for a fact they would not shut their economies down.

Covid strain 1 -> China
Covid strain 2 -> South Africa
Covid strain 3 -> England
Covid strain 4 -> India
Covid strain 5 -> South Africa


The only countries that were able to be successful at harsh lockdowns were:

1) island countries where ports of travel were easily controlled: Japan, south korea, australia, singapore, new zealand.
2) dictatorships like Vietnam / China / North Korea that had gestapo levels of public control.

Western countries were none of the above.