I don’t see why we can’t take a different viewpoint on the economic matter. The gap between the wealthy and everybody else is huge. Yet, the central banks are pumping trillions of dollars into wall street and corporations and just making the wealthy more wealthy. Yet all we hear is that we have to put people back to work … risking spread of the virus and putting lives and quality of life at stake…
Why not stop the “back to work” mantra and transfer some of that wealth into the hands of people who need it by narrowing the wealth gap? Isn’t this the time to give back some of those trillions of dollars that have been siphoned off of the backs of the working class?
With the wealthy chanting “back to work,” while they sit protected in their “homesteads” hoarding their riches … civil unrest will just increase from those who have nothing else left to lose.
I suspect, as the curtain continues to be pulled back and the lies revealed, we are in for some difficult times ahead.
Stat I saw:
For each 1,000 unemployed people, it results in 1 suicide, 2-3 drug overdoses, and 35-40 divorces. No stats on alcohol abuse relapses, or domestic violence incidents. I’m guessing they aren’t a small number - maybe on the order of “divorces”, although there’s probably some overlap there.
We got 20.79 million unemployed from the lockdowns. Just do the math. How many deaths from suicide & overdoses is that? Say 80k? And 727k families broken up?
And I’m also just guessing that these protests are a consequence of locking everyone away too.
But of course, no realtime stats on this, so nobody pays attention. Unless it is your friend who relapses, ODs, commits suicide, or gets divorced. And then you might just think its bad luck. “We focus on what we measure.”
Lots of things are bad to get…I don’t think anyone can argue differently.
I have not seen anyone articulate that the goal is zero infections as that would be highly improbable in non-closed off society (New Zealand has a natural advantage being an island…and having a fairly monolithic society). There are many reasons the U.S. has completely failed in regards to CV-19, and blame can be can be thrown in many directions. Where to start??? The government has given so mixed messages from the beginning from the president to CDC, Dr. Fauci, very different approaches by different states seemingly based more on politics than science, etc. Instead of hitting this hard from the get go there’s been more of a wait and see attitude while there was exponential spread going relatively undetected because of inexplicable under testing and minimal travel restrictions. Additionally, the White House was biased in not wanting an (inevitable) impairment in the economy because the economy and associated metrics such as the stock market are the main God Trump prays to. The conflicting messages has led to a tremendous amount of lack of trust in TPTB. There is little credibility left. Credibility takes a lot of time to cultivate, can be lost in a millisecond, and can sometimes take generations to restore. The American people also have plenty of blame. Yes, there have been shutdowns but CV-19 medical progress has been greatly impeded & counteracted by self-centered people who care more about their “rights” to not wear a mask, not follow social distancing guidelines, not cooperate with contact tracing (unfuckingbelievable!), and absolutely crazy stuff like college kids having CV-19 parties with the goal of seeing who can get infected the quickest (well beyond unfuckingbelievable). Then there’s the issue of the BLM protests. I’m all for people being able to have peaceful free speech, but having very few medical professionals and almost all of the MSM not make any mention of lack of CV-19 precautions at the protests is inexcusable. If folks would simply behave in regards to CV-19, especially from the get go not unlike New Zealand, then CV-19 would be immensely less problematic and the economy could be much more open and people would have so much more freedom… which is what many people have been demanding in the first place. It’s not difficult; with rights come responsibilities. My parents taught me this from when I was a child. American culture has been in decline for decades. The sense of community has given way to the sense of selfishness and self-centeredness. Americans have much, much more in common than the differences that the MSM propaganda tries its best to maximize 24/7/365.
Few (sane) people would argue lockdowns don’t have any ill effects because they absolutely do. Lockdowns are incredibly detrimental in so many ways…too many to list now. The main problem is that lockdowns require much discipline at all levels which is severely lacking in the U.S. The goal of a lockdown should be hit it hard & fast for a short period of time. Lingering, stuttering lockdowns while the many segments of populace are directly counteracting the lockdowns give lockdowns undeserved bad names. If done right, lockdowns can be very effective. Done wrong, you get the worst of both worlds…in an exponential fashion.
Everytime I read things where people are very much slanted on one side or the other I am quickly tipped off that not much can be garnered from their writings. CV-19, the economy, energy issues, etc. are complicated issues (and predicaments as Chris M. would say) that have to be managed as they are not going away anytime soon. That means for the best outcome there has to be trade offs. Few issues are clearly black and white. Instead, most issues are many layers of nuanced shades of gray…especially our current predicaments. There’s enough hyperbole in the MSM.
We have all known that his condition is grave. Losing a leg, over 65lbs more thna 3 mos in the hospital. Still not stable, etc. It was announced today that he will need a double lung transplant. And someone asks “why are we not answering the question why this does this to some and nothing to others?” and why no one is trying to answer this question. Its not the later question that scares me; its the fact that the assumption is wrong, there is damage in all victims… and many with mild cases are going to suffer life-long. The question is why is this not more well known?
I am glad to see we are quoting stats from Brad Pitt in the movie the Big Short.
https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/docs/Literature_Review_FSTP_Unemployment_FINAL_508_8-19-2019.pdf
And someone asks "why are we not answering the question why this does this to some and nothing to others?"I believe this answer is obvious - some people are healthy (good diet, good immune system), but many are not. IOW, if you haven't had the flu in a decade and never get sick, plus are fit/lift weights/exercise daily, the odds of having C19 issues (at any age) is simply minute. I can't believe something like C19 hasn't shown up yet - a disease that preys almost overweight/unhealthy/very old people. Why? It's historically unnatural for humans to live so long while so unhealthy (as we do today). In prior times, people mostly stayed thin and fairly healthy while alive (check out photos from the 1950s - everyone is thin). Also, check out percentage of C19 victims who are fat and obese. Bluntly, C19 wouldn't make much of a dent 50 years ago. Everyone seems to think we will all live forever. But there is a real price to pay for trying to avoid any possible risk. So the C19 debate today is not some "scientific argument", it's just what price are we willing to pay for what risk. As for myself, I would have done nothing at all and just accepted the higher C19 death rate, like we silently accept the pain of driving or the common cold or flu or Ebola or AIDS, and just let everyone decide for themselves. When things get bad enough, trust me, people will mask up and hide on their own (check out how people respond to Ebola).
India’s numbers are spiking. I left there in mid Feb. There were a handful of cases then.
Kerala is a small state on the SW coast. It is primarily Hindu with large Muslim and Christian minorities. It has universal health care and universal literacy.
Kerala is doing a fantastic job thus far with SC2. The following article is quite illuminating if one compares their approach with the US. It kind of casts a great deal of doubt on Amerikaan exceptionalism.
https://aurumproject.org.au/kerala-health-policy-covid/?fbclid=IwAR3eQ8vMxU2V5hskOW4l6kq2S7o9RPJnQAZfLWv0qRIjvAjk9VssOc60h34
I have always been skeptical of homeopathy, to say the least, and yet all of the articles on the subject of Kerala mention it;
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/indian-authorities-propose-use-of-homeopathy-to-prevent-coronavirus-67075
I lean toward the questioning view;
https://edzardernst.com/2020/06/another-remarkable-demonstration-of-homeopathys-effectiveness-in-covid-19-only-19-deaths-out-of-35-million-in-kerala-india/
Ah but we know that India overall embraced HCQ early and continued to embrace it and not be cowed by WHO’s false warnings;
https://www.magzter.com/article/Newspaper/The-New-Indian-Express-Chennai/Ktaka-Kerala-Continue-To-Use-Hydroxychloroquine
Kerala’s success in fighting Covid-19 mortality is fascinating and hopefully we can understand all of the factors behind it as time goes on.
Chris’s videos clearly changed from flatten the curve back in Feb and March, to flat isn’t good enough now. Then there is his belief that masks will solve everything. This isn’t true. Masks aren’t enough to stop the spread in crowded cities. There are too many people too close together. According to Unacast the human encounter density for someone in Brooklyn is, right now, around 1,000 times higher than it is for someone in the rural Midwest.
Then he ridicules rural areas that don’t mask even though their unmasked infection risk is lower than a masked New Yorker’s. As if farmers don’t understand how diseases work. I wasn’t kidding about the showering in and out. You are also not allowed to wear the same clothes or shoes at work that you came in wearing. And the guy delivering feed wears a tyvek suit that covers his shoes, and disinfects the wheels of his truck before approaching the buildings.
Then he goes on to say hospitals are being overwhelmed with young people. Not so fast. California’s tracking website shows 23% of ICU beds are available in Riverside County, not 1%. Siskiyou County California has 38% available with zero Covid patients in the ICU. 38% vs 23%, not exactly seeing the emergency here.
The emergency is Houston is more hype too. As one hospital CEO said “We actually still think we have plenty of capacity to meet the demand for Covid, as well as non-Covid patients” Callender said “We’re always busy in the summertime, and what we’re seeing now is a typical summer for us.” The lie is that the news reports are comparing ICU patients today vs the number of beds before the pandemic. FYI, there are more ICU beds now.
The last questionable statement is that deaths will increase three weeks after cases spike. Not so fast. Cases in Sweden have held steady for 10 weeks while deaths have fallen by 85%. In the US, since late April, deaths have fallen by 75% as cases fell by around 25%. Even a doubling of cases won’t be enough to overcome the downtrend in deaths.
I started listening to Chris back in February when he was right about pretty much everything. I still respect his opinion and listen to every podcast, but our some of our views have diverged lately.
It’s disappointing that there can’t be differences of opinion on here without being accused of not listening, or of not rationally understanding the situation.
Lies, damn lies, and statisics. I’m gettin’ a headache from all this conflicting info, and it’s not from re-breathing my own exhaust. But as Chris has always said: Trust yourself. Which leaves me exactly…where? Aloha, Steve.
Then there’s the G. Maxwell deal. LOOK, a squirrel!
Passing on hearsay is a derivative of hearsay. Knowing how many patients are in ICUs, and how many patients who really need to be in ICUs but are being managed elsewhere in the hospital because of the lack of ICU beds can be difficult to determine from the outside looking in. What’s reported in the “news” is oftentimes off the mark, and sometimes purposefully misleading for various reasons. The fact is some big hospitals are clearly on ICU diversion, and some are not. These new ever increasing infections are a big deal. Go ask the nurses and doctors in Arizona, Texas, Florida, or California if you have any doubts. Data is great & oftentimes needed, but sometimes stories from boots on the ground can be much more informative…as long as the stories are relatively congruent.
For some reason people get fixated on the number of deaths. Most certainly death rates are coming down which is mainly from better treatment protocols & more infections among the young. What very few people talk about and what receives very little media attention is the persisting medical sequela of those who “recovered”. I personally have a couple of risk factors being 53yo but death is not my biggest personal concern it’s the potential for life long medical sequela from CV-19 greatly impairing my quality of life going forward and decreasing my life expectancy. Steroids & blood thinners only help certain aspects of the infection.
I’ve never heard Chris M. mention that masks should be worn all the time. When there are not other people around then why would anyone wear a mask? No, masks and all other preventative measures are not meant to cause zero transmission of disease. All of these efforts are meant to decrease the chances incrementally to absolutely minimize transmission. Even small improvements in spread can give outstanding improvements overall with a disease that is highly contagious with potential of huge exponential increases in very short periods of time.
I continue to be extremely pleased with PP’s CV-19 coverage. It’s quite evident Chris, Adam, and the supporting cast are busting their butts with top notch coverage. PP has always thrived on diversity of thought. I’m sure Chris M. would not want people to fully accept what he says as being 100% gospel. He likes critical thinking. I’m sure if someone draws exception to a point he has made he would like to hear the opposing view with supporting data & logic. I’ve always known him to be a 100% truth seeker and I’ve never seen an instance where his ego got in the way of this pursuit. He readily corrects things or admits his mistakes, and moves on. Holding PP to the standard of perfection is not reasonable.
We are all trying to muddle through this the best we can. The waters remain quite murky. So many people & entities have hidden (or not so hidden) agendas and sorting through it all every day can be quite draining…at least for me anyway.
Hope everyone got some good vitamin D today working outside.
Until we clean out the cesspool that is the house and senate, we will continue to have “representatives” that don’t represent the will of the people, and that don’t hold the best interest of our country. Should we continue to give a pass to the graft and corruption that is our government? Should we resign ourselves to the premise that we can’t affect change? If we resign ourselves to the status quo, that’s what we’ll have. If pitchforks, tar and feather would work I’d be all for it.
FAUCI MISLEADS PUBLIC; COMPLAINS ABOUT DISTRUST In March, Dr. Tony Fauci told Americans that masks won’t stop the spread of COVID-19. Recently he admitted that public health officials were misleading on purpose, to stop the public from buying up all of the masks. In the same breath he complains a large portion of the public are ‘anti-science’ and they ‘don’t believe authority.’
https://youtu.be/fqk_vnqKvBA
I agree, I’m 55 and the thought of being a pulmonary cripple, not able to walk 100 feet without exhaustion or do basic tasks without rest, is every bit the horror of death.
The one value to death numbers is you can roughly back out how many have the disease. If 20% of the population will eventually be hospitalized, half of this go into IC units, and 2% to 5% die, then at least 2% of 300 million people will have died before we approach the end. So six million 15 million lost souls.
Grim, but can anyone challenge my logic?
C. Stone
DaveF posted his analysis of the new herd immunity threshold (HIT) paper accounting for the VARIABILITY in susceptibility among people. This has really started my noggin’ spinning seeking new ways to look at this.
Above, in today’s Daily Digest, Base12, post a link to JB Handley’s excellent paper on Lockdown Lunacy 2.0 which continues this way of looking at things. Many references are included in Handley’s article and he summarizes the opposition to new lockdowns articulated by several thinkers.
A couple of basic points seem correct to me. (Let me know if other’s know differently)
- NPIs aimed at “flattening the curve” are only aimed at slowing the rate of spread of infection in the population. They don’t change the area under the curve nor the total eventual number of people ultimately infected. Lockdowns do not offer immunity nor ultimate protection from the virus.
- It seems that humans have some T-Cell based immunity against the general family of coronaviruses (one of the common cold viruses) that is different from the antibodies against SC2. Some in the general population have partial immunity even without exposure to SC2 or having measurable antibodies to SC2.
- The rate of spread of infections for any single individual is not “average” and the population is not “well mixed,” (both basic assumptions of the simplified assessment about HIT). For example, a nurse who lives in NYC and travels to work by subway with multiple personal risk factors and low vitamin D levels may be a “super-spreader” with a personal R of 15, while an accountant who works from a semi-rural home, only travels by private car, and is in excellent health may have a personal R of only 0.2.
- So herd immunity happens early in the pockets of super-susceptible, super-exposed super-spreaders.
- The numbers of cases metric is a function of several factors, including:
1) number of infected people, 2) number of tests being offered, and 3) number of people seeking testing.So numbers of cases is not a great metric for showing the briskness of infection spreading. Deaths, hospitalizations and ICU admissions for COVID are probably better. (And these are geographically patchy making them harder to interpret.) Example: Daily Deaths from COVID in Italy (From Handley)
6. The uptick in cases following the protests is mostly in young adults where little increase in deaths are likely. They are developing HIT, something that will benefit the rest of us.
7. Several specific indicators that HIT is roughly around 20% for Stockholm, and may be of this order of magnitude for big cities.
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So, I'm exploring a new "box."
Rule 308
When Marxist mayors order their police to stand down, So that Antifa thugs can beat old men to the ground, Don’t think they’ve surrendered, or been run out of town. . Politicians should consider, and media bosses beware: When Amendment One is abridged, the Second’s still there, Just watching and waiting, like a rattlesnake in its lair. . When justice is perverted, and Marxist judges legislate, When free speech is censored, then banished as hate, Then the only rule standing will be Rule 308.
The version of rule 308 in the last post is for practice only. For real enforcement the following version (or equivalent) of rule 308 is suggested;
I understand what you are saying @mpup and I don’t disagree, yet
"representatives" that don't represent the will of the peopleget re-elected again and again. I am not resigned. Facts changed my beliefs and still do. I have changed and I find myself changing again. Those around me are changing too. It isn't just "representatives" either. Dr. Anthony Fauci for example has been the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.
I’m an engineer and my math mind tells me the best approximation of how many have developed herd is death rate and the relative proportions of mild, acute and death reported from various sources. This would at least book end the range of herd. Short of a really large random test program to extrapolate to the whole population, death rate makes math sense to figure out where we are with herd. Even with testing, the politicians will likely mangle the results to meaningless information to keep pitchforks and torches at bay.
We probably are not very far along.
I just joined the tribe today. PP has been invaluable to me over the past three months and I thought I owed CM some cash for his effort.
I also have a little Native American DNA so I’m not in anyway demeaning NAs.
C. Stone
How long does immunity last?