I agree, what you post is "all just opinion", but your opinion is nonsensical.

That you are throwing up your hands and asserting abject ignorance as your motto does not chnage reality, there are things that are accurate/correct and things that are objectively inaccurate/wrong.

You happen to opine about 90% on the inaccurate/wrong side.

btw, your post should be removed because it is 100% off topic in this thread or forum

holy **** this is a really dangerous way to think, especially because so many people feel the same way

that sounds like a rape fetish

I'm no fan of Trump, but I've come round to the idea that his swift banning of travellers from Wuhan on Jan 30th might have been the single greatest (indeed only) thing he's done to protect the American people during his time in office, although the health of the nation might not have been his overriding motive. At the end of January, the WHO itself was saying that they did not recommend international travel bans. Indeed their (flawed?) pandemic models suggested such an extreme measure would be a mistake.
Naturally, Nassim Taleb's models indicated that immediate international travel bans are absolutely the best way to contain a potential pandemic. #TalebKnows

If nothing else, the early travel bans bought some valuable time for the US (and other countries that implemented them). It's debatable whether Trump used that time well (I'd say a firm "no"), but this thread isn't the right place for that debate.

No country has performed a study testing for CoV-2 in a sampling of the general population. And that's data needed to know how deadly the disease is. When testing is only done on people who are experiencing moderate to severe symptoms of the disease, the mortality rate in that group is going to be artificially high, since few if any individuals who only experience mild symptoms are counted. The real mortality rate of those infected is almost certainly below 1%, and may be well below that figure (as low as 0.1%).

And no country has tested the same people sequentially over time, which is how the contagiousness of the virus can be determined rather than wildly guessed as it has so far. You don't get this information from testing and then determining the mortality rate only those who are already hospitalized or showing moderate to severe symptoms.

Being quarantined comes with costs: economic, social, and to mental health. With extensive testing, only those people most likely to be contagious and at high risk of spreading the disease can be selected for it. And there'd be better compliance with quarantine - cases that are contagious but only experience milder cold-like symptoms aren't the most motivated to self-isolate when they don't know they have the COVID disease. In other words, extensive testing coupled with testing a sampling of the general population IS part of taking best measures to prevent the spread.

This **** better not happen in the US.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanf...to-coronavirus

Basically what namisgr said.


Mod Edit: The actual piece by the Stanford professor would probably be more useful:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/...reliable-data/

A lot of what he says about the death rate makes sense to me. However, he doesn't really talk about the capacity of health systems, and how that causes overwhelmed countries (see: Italy) to have very high death rates - thus, the drive to "flatten the curve".

Also, isn't this:

an absurdly low infection rate?

With 40 million people going into lockdown in California, and unemployment figures across the country about to hit an all-time high (worse than the 1930s), I'm not sure if there's gonna be enough internet bandwidth to even read this forum, let alone watch Netflix in UHD 4K. :/

Yeah, can't argue with that. My point is that you made testing and preventative measures to sound like mutually exclusive actions.

Thanks for putting up the original article, I should have researched it myself. Mea culpa.

And yes, this number seems pretty low. Most estimates are way, way too high though. All strains of influenza combined infect roughly 1 billion people worldwide per year, that's roughly 15%. The Spanish flu, during World War 1, only infected 25% of the populations, and that was without handwashing, desinfectants, social distancing (quite the opposite) and with.. questionable hygiene standards.

In short: If you read 50%+ anywhere, this person clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.

Why do you post ignorant misleading crap like this? Please can you explain your calculations and thinking behind your idiotic statement, "The real mortality rate of those infected is almost certainly below 1%, and may be well below that figure (as low as 0.1%)."

As Italy shows, once patients are put on ventilators they have to stay on them to carry on living which means once the ventilators are all in use new arrivals will be unable to access ventilators, and will die. Once that happens, the death rates will soar, but they are already above the 1 death per thousand infections you think is possible.

In Bravo, only 3 games in US, at Thunder Valley including a 4/8 Omaha game

Dude, why are you promoting this crackpot?

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Wolfgang Wodarg's "Public Appearance in the 2020 COVID-19 Crisis" (emphasis mine):

"In the public discussion of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in early 2020, Wodarg gained notoriety as an interviewee in video clips typically published on rightwing video channels. There he presented his thesis that SARS-CoV-2 was only one of many similar viruses which usually go undetected as part of an ordinary seasonal period of respiratory infections (casually called flu or cold), and that the worldwide activities to stop the pandemic were only a "hype" caused basically by selective perception of researchers.[4] He detailed his thesis in publications on his personal website.[5] His comments on the COVID 19 pandemic caused criticism from German scientists. Various German media examined Wodarg's claims for accuracy and concluded that his statements would largely contradict the verifiable facts, some statements were neither refutable nor verifiable, but on closer examination proved to be misleading.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]"

What he has to say is not scientifically authoritative. You should not be listening to it, and you should certainly not be passing it along to others.

Oh man, and here I thought the air there was nasty without a pandemic.

Are you for real? THIS is your concern, the quality of your Netflix. GFY.

-BD

Why do you think it’s not possible for a virus to be more contagious than the ones you mentioned? Also, we have vaccines that reduce infection rates of the flu, and we don’t for this yet.

What basis do you have for stating that all the experts listed in this article clearly don’t know what they’re talking about? Do you think they’re unaware of the basic stats you mentioned? Please provide your credentials that show you know what you’re talking about more than people who make their living in the field.

In 2015, the National Infrastructure Advisory Council produced a report, PANDEMIC IMPACTS TO LIFELINE CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, predicting the national impact of a pandemic, specific an outbreak of a pandemic influenza virus. It's an interesting read. The impact of the current pandemic looks to be far worse than the predictions in this report, probably because it assumes the pandemic is a variation of the flu virus, which can see development of a vaccine in a much shorter time span.

Sorry friend, but it's you who are ignorant.

The mortality rate in confirmed cases in the United States is currently about 1.5% (source: Johns Hopkins School of Medicine COVID Resource). Recognizing that 'confirmation' in our country requires molecular testing and the tests are restricted to those showing moderate to severe symptoms (unless you're an NBA player, heh), coupled with the current estimates that roughly 10% of cases are moderate to severe, the mortality rate for those contracting the virus is on the order of 0.15%.

The numbers have a substantial range of uncertainty, owing to the fact that not a single country has performed testing to determine definitively what proportion of cases are below the severity required to meet current strict criteria to qualify for testing. The proportion of cases of COVID-19 that are mild and "unconfirmed" (and so not yet counted in any determination of the mortality rate) could be 85%, 95%, or even higher.

I hope this simplification helps you understand better what is widely recognized about the information gaps in the epidemiology of COVID-19. The link posted earlier that was published in Stat and written by a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Stanford School of Medicine lays out many of these issues in greater detail, if you're interested.

I really don't want to derail here. And I am against right wing fake news and am overall absolutely liberal and lefty. Nor do I want to spread false information. That is the least I want to do. Because I understand this is serious. And it wouldn't cross my mind to say this if he wasn't right before with the last pandemic. (H1N1)


So I think to put this guy in this corner of right wing conspiracy nuts is completely wrong.
Here is a video (unfortunately only in german)
This is coming from a Very reputable news outlet (frontal21) and shows that he is not alone with his opinion. There are 2 peers who argue the same way.
https://www.zdf.de/politik/frontal-2...demie-100.html

They are saying treat this just as a normal virus circulation with caution and you will be fine.

This panic is maybe doing more harm than good.
All these 3 doctors are saying treat this like a normal virus with common sense. Hold distance to people, wash hands, caugh in elbow etc.


Look all I know the markets are going upside down, a lot of people are suffering and some people lose a lot of money, others are making money.
Plus with all major events, wars (Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Syria etc etc. Pandemics , H1N1, MERS, Banking, Pharma- people are making money and often feed you lies there is no way around it.

/ end derail

Stay safe and healthy

Money makes the world go round

No. Just no.

While I enjoy a good conspiracy theory and the mantra "follow the money", in this particular instance the threat is real and severe.

In South Korea, anyone and everyone can get tested. Total tests so far are close to 300K, including everyone with symptoms and anyone who has had close contact with a confirmed case. Everyone there is voluntarily practicing social distancing, good hygiene, self-isolation when warranted, etc. (and everyone who does self-isolation, whether testing positive or not, receives a monthly stipend from the govt to cover basic needs).

They have gotten their daily new cases down to under two digits. This is a pretty good indication that nearly everyone who has been infected has already been counted as a confirmed case - a total of 8,652 to date. The total deaths to date are 94 (with 6,325 still active cases, including 59 serious/critical). Assuming no more deaths, the mortality rate is just over 1% - ten times the mortality rate of the seasonal flu.

While this one set of statistics does not give a definitive or scientifically-derived mortality rate, I think it's a pretty good indicator that this disease is far worse than the flu. Keep in mind that South Korea has universal health care, was highly prepared for an epidemic outbreak and quickly mobilized to provide care to all those that needed it.

The spread and statistics in other places look to be much, much worse. This will be especially true in places where the health system gets overwhelmed, as is happening now in Italy and will soon happen in France, Spain, England and the U.S. at the least.

SARS-CoV-2 is highly contagious and infectious. One encounter with any droplets of the virus more likely than not will cause you to be infected.

Here is a dispassionate description of how one gets infected and the progress of the disease in the body:
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/ne...ms/5009057002/

Here is a tangible description of how one gets infected and the progress of the disease in the body - don't read it if you are squeamish:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...infection.html

Numbers of infected in London, of seriously ill and of dying are unfortunately about to spike up a lot in my opinion.

Less than usual, but still a significant number of people sitting in groups chatting together in Starbucks, people still eating breakfast in fry-up joints, food shop workers and customers not wearing gloves. Sainsburys a major food retailer still selling shop baked bakery products that are open air displayed in wicker baskets, and shoppers still buying them!!

Only ~5% of people are wearing masks (yes, masks may not help), but it is a sign of complacency.

Groups of people still booking nights out this week end/next week end in nightclubs for someone's 21s birthday etc. Have been told this by a nightclub I do business with.

London tube trains quieter but people still sitting next each other with no gloves or masks and freely using hand rails to manoeuvre themselves.

A general feeling of complacency everywhere in London is what I have observed and I highly doubt that thorough and frequent hand washing is taking place among men in particular, who are naturally very unhygienic, only about 50% wash their hands after using public toilets, so a lot of this group won't be hand washers now IMO.

Yes there are a lot of people who are being careful and who are working from home or taking sensible safety measures, but there are a lot, perhaps 25% of Londoners who are not.

I fear a big spike, followed by an enforced virtual lockdown (at the least a very strongly encouraged virtual lockdown), followed by a massive shopping panic. At the moment there is just a mild shopping panic done in a kind of polite or semi-polite British way.

In a short time we might witness some of the true deep-down genetically passed down British imperialism characteristics of many British people if the real panic sets in. It could turn quite ugly.

I wish good health and safety to everyone, everywhere but unfortunately this invisible enemy thing is not sinking in yet for a lot of the masses.

I agree this is a real threat. And everyone should do what they can to prevent more spreading.
Alone in regards of the capacities of the hospitals.
As I went through all the material I wanted to get an objective view on things. Maybe I went to far.

From what I read the peak is over in china and also in Italy. So it is not exponential as some assumed. Yes we might and probably see more spreads jn the future but it will be way less numbers in china and Italy.
Not for the USA, they are in the early stage. It spikes up very fast reaches its peak and then goes down.

If you like graphs like I do here is an interesting one.
It shows and this is soothing to me that we are not off any numbers from previous years.

http://www.euromomo.eu/index.html