Tooth, I hate to say it buddy but they got you on this one.. America's numbers are going to go way higher than Europe's in the coming weeks.

Not that I think theres anything wrong with that approach, I think getting the virus over with as quickly as possible is the right approach.

Why do you hate to say it?

By the way, I hate playing spoiler when such a riveting outcome is being wagered on here, but North Dakota is still doing elective procedures when they say they are at "maximum capacity". So yeh, they still got plenty of space to go..

"Ignoring science at every turn". Here's what not "ignoring science" gets you:



How do you have such a glaring "brain defect" and "sub-70 IQ" (your words) yourself that you can't look at this data and see the obvious?

European countries that "took the science seriously" and mandated masks are now experiencing terrible death tolls AND long lockdowns and overflowing hospitals, both far worse than the US far sooner than the US.

How does this not compute for you? What is wrong in your brain that it doesn't?

No offense but if you think anyone who disagrees with you on another person's personality and motivations has a "sub 70 IQ" then you probably need to get out more. Especially when 70 million people disagree with you. I can't fathom how stupid you'd have to be to not understand the other side and be so sure that you have a soul read, especially when the facts and counterpoints are so strongly against you.

I'm not attributing sainthood to Trump. If you had more than a 70 IQ or a non-defective brain (your words) you would understand that I'm talking about the consequences of his actions. And yes of course this calculus comes into it. Lockdowns are highly destructive to people's lives and the economy.

You see, the problem with awful, destructive people like yourself is that you care about appearances rather than facts and actual outcomes. If a leader loves masks and listens to the science and runs up a daily death toll 10x the USA, they get no criticism. Cuomo is a mass murderer with his horrible decisions, but he does the theater and the little cuckshow in a sober manner (while forcing infected seniors back into nursing homes), so he's a saint in the eyes of religious fools like you.

If a leader doesn't like masks and has 1/10th the deaths of the mask country, they're evil and the personal cause of the all the deaths. The claims and finger pointing of bbfg, Cuepee, you and others are precisely that, and it's ridiculous. Masks have become a religion at this point; wearing them and advocating them, religious piety. Facts and real world data be damned.

Yeah the data is clear; America is still perfectly fine for hospital capacity. The fake news is running overtime. It was pretty funny reading about "overwhelmed hospitals" in North Dakota when later in the same article they say that they're "thinking about" stopping elective procedures.

thread tldr:

Most of tooth's points are actually very good. Just not this particular one. Technically though Tooth is right still in that total deaths in Europe in later part of this year is still a lot higher even if they have imposed heavier restrictions in the summer compared to US. Im not sure that statistic will hold up though as US is going for herd immunity now, and Europe wants lockdown and the virus to keep haunting them for years to come.

One of my biggest pet peeves on this forum is people who are unable to discern between 'opinion' and 'fact' and who state is like everyone has to accept it. You seem to be in that bucket.

You CANNOT state, as if fact, that 'no overwhelming can occur'. Yes, it is within the realm of possibility it could.

You can say you do not believe it will happen. You can say you think you can defend your view it won't better than those who say it will, in your opinion. That is different than what you said.

You DO NOT know it to 'be true'. You BELIEVE it to be true based on your assessment. Big difference. Again, even if you believe you can defend and win your argument 10 of 10 times that does not make it fact.


Your type of argumentation leads to an inevitable dead end. I stop retorting with anything other than statements I claim are fact and my stating is all I need to substantiate them.

So I simply say 'no economic harm comes from shout downs' (whether I believe that or not) to counter your BS fake 'fact' statements.

There really is not much more for us to discuss if you start from such a wrong and dishonest place. I will speak past you but not to you.

Cuepee,
NY had a 25% burn through without coming close to an actual collapse.

Anywhere that's had a decent burn through, which is many US states now, it is probably impossible to collapse even if they never lock down. These states also provide excess capacity for other states. Overall the US health care system shouldn't collapse.

As I correctly predicted when Europe was far below the US:

- Winter will suck in the US
- However, they will be just fine while Europe has a disaster happening
- Some places will lock down hard but most of the US will never have to

Nothing has really changed in that prognostication. It's playing out as expected.

it is a strawman to pretend if any other area of the health system is still operating it means that the part that deals with pandemic is exaggerating the stress.

We know why hospitals desperately try to keep elective surgeries going as they are the biggest profit center for the hospitals.

That is NOT the issue that determines how close the system is to being over whelmed.

IF you can argue they have twice the amount of critical care beds in those elective units, ..they have twice the critical care equipment and thus shutting those down brings tremendous capacity to the main hospital thus the claim of being overwhelmed is BS, then fine, make that argument.

However if the elective beds being taken are a meaningless rounding error to the overall situation and when the main hospital says 'we are about to be overwhelmed, they DO NOT have to say, 'however we have a meaningless number of non critical care beds in the elective wing will be converting that change nothing'.

So Tooth and spino01 are saying nothing but spin to prop up failed arguments.

It is a very high likelihood probability event, I'll put it like that. Nothing is a fact, unless you've personally seen it happen. Everything is a probability. Its just after certain point of extremely high likelyhood, its better to think of it as a fact than a probability. But if you want to be technical, theres some very very small chance a bunch more people die from the virus as its hospitals are overwhelmed. There's also a very small chance you die in a car accident in the next week. Are you going to stop driving cars because of that sliver of a chance?

Just for some perspective:

- There are ~300K spare hospital beds in the US under normal conditions.
- Surge capacity and cancellation of electives takes that hundreds of K higher
- Lesser treatment of the less severe (just give them oxygen and monitor) takes that number even higher.

Thus there are least 500K beds.

A 5% hospitalization rate for the 60% of the population who'll get it before herd immune is 5 million people, excluding under 20s (who don't need it) and people who've already had it.

That's 5 million beds needed for about a week on average (most are a few days, the bad are 2 weeks), and there are >500K available.

Thus healthcare collapse in the US seems impossible. This is strengthened further by the partial herd immunity that already exists, making R a lot smaller (and thus the peaks far lower), and regional lockdowns, flattening the worst peaks.

So yes, it is a fact that US health care system will not overwhelm going forward, regardless of national lockdown. This isn't true for other countries, or in the first wave when care was far less efficient and R far higher because of no existing immunity.

Cuepee, I love how you're always arguing the wrong side, and doing it so passionately.

Sorry, but health care system overwhelmed means people are dying in meaningful numbers from lack of care/triage. That happened quite a bit in Europe in the first wave and it's happening now in the European mask mandate countries (all the "no mask" countries are doing just fine)

This is another hilarious backpeddle from you



Although my favorite is you calling herd immunity going forward a "Monstrous strategy" with such virulent emotion, then backpeddling at the speed of light, claiming you were talking about the first wave, when it turned out Biden was doing the same. You need a clown suit and a unicycle, at least you can make some money from your backpeddles.

?

Can I ask for your projection of deaths versus current projections with a strat of herd immunity and the work you’ve done to come to this number? Surely as someone who is vehemently projecting an unpopular view as you have done so before presenting a view that will certainly (surely we can agree with this) more people than other strategies?

Can you understand why the onus should be on you to present your work (even more so) than the views of people who are advocating a more conservative strategy

This continuous citation of Belgium as proof that mandating masks doesn't work shows a complete lack of awareness of the chaotic state of leadership and regulations in this bicultural, bilingual, and deeply divided country.

No the onus should be on you. You are claiming something happened, namely that many people died in Italy because they were turned away at the hospital and would have been saved otherwise. I am claiming that didn't happen in any significant numbers. I can't prove something doesn't exist when it doesn't exist. If you claimed you saw Bigfoot and I said Bigfoot doesn't exist, how would I prove that?

I will cite one source for you though:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/w...hospitals.html

Here is an article saying one patient, that was already in very bad shape, was taken off a ventilator to save another life. Knowing the statistics were already very bad for those put on ventilators in March (only around 20% lived), and knowing that this guy was probably in very poor health among those already on the ventilators, I would say its a virtual certainty that the guy was going to die no matter what, ventilator or not. The ventilator might have extended his life another week. The article then goes on to sensationalize this about how Italian hospitals are overloaded and doctors are being forced to make decisions they should never have to make. All without showing any facts of a significant number of people actually dying from being turned away.

Unless you're going to prove how of all that lead to people not wearing masks in Belgium when they should have, I fail to see how you have a point.

My post claimed that people in Italy were turned away from hospitals. That happened despite your propensity to selectively absorb news sources. I’m not trying to convince someone who fits this character profile of anything.

The onus is definitely not on me. You on the other hand are adamant about a point of view while being able to cite nothing and jumping on any contradictory view pleading for proof that you admittedly can’t reciprocate to any degree

It definitely happened, and yet you can't cite any sources and want me to prove that it didn't happen? Did you read anything of my previous post directed at you? How do I prove something didn't happen that didn't happen?

How do you know it happened? Were you in Italy at the time, and did a survey of Italian COVID patients in March and deduce how many were turned away and died because of it?

I suggest going on a Bigfoot forum, your poor logic might actually fly there.

And LOL at likening your side to Bigfoot not existing with how much information is available on each side of this topic

I can. I won’t.

Finding info on what I’ve said will be really easy, I promise. You can discredit the first five sources you find and you’ll easily find a dozen more that will state the same thing happened.

What I’ve asked of you on the other hand, I don’t think I’d be able to find unless I dive into some deep shitholes of the internet. I’m genuinely curious as to how someone who claims to follow logic and science has come to the conclusions that you have

If its so easy to find all these sources, why can't you quote at least one? Or are they all in your imagination? Stick to Omaha man and stay away from scientific research, it ain't your thing. In science when someone claims something, they either have evidence for it or sources for it. Apparently this basic concept was never taught to you.

There is not an inkling within me that is trying to change your mind of anything, but I am asking to know more about your perspective

My perspective is that of a medical researcher, where when someone makes any claims and writes a paper based on those claims they back those claims up with physical evidence and/or sources. They do not say in the paper, yeah my idea is good, there's many sources if you go and search the internet, but I'm not going to bother putting any in my paper. No one would take you seriously.

Now if you want me to cite the many many many sources that speak of all the economic damage the COVID shutdowns have done and will do in the future I will be glad to do so, but something tells me you already know this.

Please show as much relevant info as you’d like so as to give insight on how you have developed the stance that you currently have