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Reacher

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19 minutes ago, mrflynn03 said:

Been following Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University.

Here is a recent interview from him article

I'm not trying to change anybody's mind, just provide and alternate viewpoint.  But I think extreme approaches like lockdowns or doing nothing are more harmful than good.  There has to be a reasonable response somewhere in the middle. 

Fair enough. And i'm not advocating that we blindly have the government shutdown everything when there is a slight rise in cases either. 

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5 hours ago, Reacher said:

Did you even read the letter? The guy seems to have pretty good credentials. That you don't want to believe him is on you. @mrflynn03happened to post the hospital levels as I was typing my post. There are all sorts of charts showing fatalities continuing to decrease despite the rise in cases. From the outside, it looks like TX is doing a good job testing more people, uncovering milder cases, which will help in ultimately slowing the spread. Just my opinion, take it FWIW. 

Come on you have spin here all over the place and then add the absurd comment if I don’t want to believe it it’s on me. I’m not going to waste my time pointing you to the multiple reports of significantly increased hospitalizations, increased deaths, increases severity of cases etc in Texas, you know, where I live, because for reasons that elude me you repeatedly try to spin what’s really going on into a lack of significance. Luckily health officials do not follow this ridiculousness 

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16 minutes ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

Come on you have spin here all over the place and then add the absurd comment if I don’t want to believe it it’s on me. I’m not going to waste my time pointing you to the multiple reports of significantly increased hospitalizations, increased deaths, increases severity of cases etc in Texas, you know, where I live, because for reasons that elude me you repeatedly try to spin what’s really going on into a lack of significance. Luckily health officials do not follow this ridiculousness 

Just so happens I live in Texas too...

This is what I'm seeing...

The death rate peaked May 26th and has been in decline since

There's optimism that hospital capacities are manageable

Is there a spike? Yes, certainly...probably many reasons for it...bars opened, Memorial Day gatherings, the protests downtown to name a few...

I don't think anyone is trying to put a "positive spin" on anything...just offering different viewpoints. Unless that's verboten here too...

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6 hours ago, 5fouls said:

Over time, I've come to the belief that the numbers are only meaningful when looking at trends.  7 day average, or a week to week comparison based on a day of the week.  I don't believe the numbers are accurate in and of themselves.  I think total cases are probably undercounted due to so many people being asymptomatic.  Meanwhile, I think deaths are probably overstated due to people dying of a multitude of other reasons who happened to also test positive for the virus.  That said, as long as the reports are CONSISTENT, then trends can still be meaningful.  Things go haywire when inconsistencies start to happen.  For instance, New Jersey added thousands of people to their death toll last week on a single day because they changed the way they reported deaths.  That blew all of their positive trending out of the water even though most of those cases were from April and early May.

Even with trending, number of deaths is infinitely more meaningful to me than number of cases.  Whether the death is 'by' Covid or 'with' Covid is almost irrelevant at this point as long as the target does not move as it did in New Jersey.  The number of cases has skyrocketed in some states.  But, that is not as important to me as deaths for a couple of reasons.  One, is that testing has increased, so how do we know that Texas, Florida, and Arizona didn't have the same number of cases in April as they do now?  

What is meaningful to me is how many people are dying.  Are the same number of people dying each day?  Isn't 1,000 deaths compared against 50,000 cases better than 1,000 deaths compared against 12,000 cases?  The math says it is.  Now, if deaths actually go down while cases increase, that's even better.  Maybe the virus is losing a little steam as it mutates.  Or, maybe, while it can be deadly, it's deadly in a rate that is more in proportion to what we see with other diseases.  

The big caveat to all of this is we likely will not know whether the spike in cases results in more deaths for a few more weeks.  So, for the time being, we need to be concerned about the spike.  If it turns out deaths do not go up despite the massive spike in positive cases, then we learn something and can use that to make educated decisions on how to proceed going forward.    

This first article is old news but here is the key excerpt from the second-

"The report also criticized the C.D.C.’s counting of coronavirus tests, which combines tests for an active infection and those that detect antibodies. This practice inflates the percentage of Americans that appear to have been tested and gives an unreliable picture of the way the virus is spreading around the country, according to the new report. After the C.D.C. was criticized last month for combining the two types of tests in its reports, the agency promised to separate them. But as of June 9, it had still not resolved the issue, the office reported.

The C.D.C. reported “incomplete and inconsistent data” from health departments, “making it more difficult to track and know the number of infections, mitigate their effects, and inform decisions on reopening communities,” according to the report."

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/health/coronavirus-cdc-testing.html

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3 hours ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

Come on you have spin here all over the place and then add the absurd comment if I don’t want to believe it it’s on me. I’m not going to waste my time pointing you to the multiple reports of significantly increased hospitalizations, increased deaths, increases severity of cases etc in Texas, you know, where I live, because for reasons that elude me you repeatedly try to spin what’s really going on into a lack of significance. Luckily health officials do not follow this ridiculousness 

And you conveniently ignore the director of a TX healthcare system has logical explanations for all of that.  Rebut the facts, not the messenger. Yes, cases and hospitalizations are up. He specifically points out why . Call him to discuss it if you would like. I'm sure he'd take your call.

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5 hours ago, mrflynn03 said:

Been following Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University.

Here is a recent interview from him article

I'm not trying to change anybody's mind, just provide and alternate viewpoint.  But I think extreme approaches like lockdowns or doing nothing are more harmful than good.  There has to be a reasonable response somewhere in the middle. 

I hadn't seen the risk for starvation mentioned before-

"Globally, the lockdown measures have increased the number of people at risk of starvation to 1.1 billion, and they are putting at risk millions of lives, with the potential resurgence of tuberculosis, childhood diseases like measles where vaccination programs are disrupted, and malaria. I hope that policymakers look at the big picture of all the potential problems and not only on the very important, but relatively thin slice of evidence that is COVID-19."

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8 hours ago, IUFLA said:

Just so happens I live in Texas too...

This is what I'm seeing...

The death rate peaked May 26th and has been in decline since

There's optimism that hospital capacities are manageable

Is there a spike? Yes, certainly...probably many reasons for it...bars opened, Memorial Day gatherings, the protests downtown to name a few...

I don't think anyone is trying to put a "positive spin" on anything...just offering different viewpoints. Unless that's verboten here too...

I think it's gotten to the point where pointing things out is counter-productive, people see what they want to see,  and it's annoying to those who see things differently. 

So I'm not going to keep going with the back and forth, I'll leave it here.

You live here -- so you're well aware of how bad it's gotten in Houston, and you cite the Business Journal article saying this is what you see -- that the death rate peaked on May 26.

But that's all you point out -- from the very same article -- unlike some others posted here an actual good source of actual news:

"Texas has been hit particularly hard by Covid-19.

Doctors say the numbers are moving in the wrong direction – except when it comes to deaths." That is, the death rate is literally the only positive. 

And on that: "Dr. Sharma says the numbers are promising, but require context."

Immediately after that, that context is explained in a linked fuller article: https://www.khou.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/texas-covid-19-updates-texas-covid-19-death-rate-declining/285-edffc65c-2c14-4d9a-82e7-bcca8925a234

 

"Deaths are a lagging indicator in the spread of an epidemic. Cases increase first, like we saw in Texas in late May. Hospitalizations tend to increase about two weeks later. She says it takes three to four weeks to see a change in death rate.

“Just right after July 4 is when we will likely see the impact of the surge,” said Sharma."

And:

"“Texas is currently experiencing a rise in confirmed Covid-19 cases. In the last two weeks, daily new cases, the overall positivity rate, and hospitalizations in Texas have all increased,” they wrote. “Now is not the time to end a program that is working and successfully increasing testing capacity—especially for underserved communities in the state.”

So you say you see the death rate decline, and ignore the article itself and the explanation of why that death rate is currently where it is. The story you linked gives the full picture, as in the actual picture.

You don't want to see things as bad, I get that, and having this discussion seems pointless, because you will just disagree. So we're wasting our time here -- I'd bet we agree on that.

 

 

 

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University of Illinois professor predicts players will die of Covid if there is a college football season.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/coronavirus-in-college-football-hospitalizations-deaths-projected-by-data-analysts-if-fbs-plays-in/

If that were to happen, to even a couple of players, it would dwarf everything that's happened up to this point.  The fallout would be devastating.

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8 hours ago, 5fouls said:

University of Illinois professor predicts players will die of Covid if there is a college football season.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/coronavirus-in-college-football-hospitalizations-deaths-projected-by-data-analysts-if-fbs-plays-in/

If that were to happen, to even a couple of players, it would dwarf everything that's happened up to this point.  The fallout would be devastating.

Armageddon of sports?

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9 hours ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

I think it's gotten to the point where pointing things out is counter-productive, people see what they want to see,  and it's annoying to those who see things differently. 

So I'm not going to keep going with the back and forth, I'll leave it here.

You live here -- so you're well aware of how bad it's gotten in Houston, and you cite the Business Journal article saying this is what you see -- that the death rate peaked on May 26.

But that's all you point out -- from the very same article -- unlike some others posted here an actual good source of actual news:

"Texas has been hit particularly hard by Covid-19.

Doctors say the numbers are moving in the wrong direction – except when it comes to deaths." That is, the death rate is literally the only positive. 

And on that: "Dr. Sharma says the numbers are promising, but require context."

Immediately after that, that context is explained in a linked fuller article: https://www.khou.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/texas-covid-19-updates-texas-covid-19-death-rate-declining/285-edffc65c-2c14-4d9a-82e7-bcca8925a234

 

"Deaths are a lagging indicator in the spread of an epidemic. Cases increase first, like we saw in Texas in late May. Hospitalizations tend to increase about two weeks later. She says it takes three to four weeks to see a change in death rate.

“Just right after July 4 is when we will likely see the impact of the surge,” said Sharma."

And:

"“Texas is currently experiencing a rise in confirmed Covid-19 cases. In the last two weeks, daily new cases, the overall positivity rate, and hospitalizations in Texas have all increased,” they wrote. “Now is not the time to end a program that is working and successfully increasing testing capacity—especially for underserved communities in the state.”

So you say you see the death rate decline, and ignore the article itself and the explanation of why that death rate is currently where it is. The story you linked gives the full picture, as in the actual picture.

You don't want to see things as bad, I get that, and having this discussion seems pointless, because you will just disagree. So we're wasting our time here -- I'd bet we agree on that.

 

 

 

You forgot this part from the second link (KHOU) you posted...

"What are the factors keeping the COVID-19 death rate low?

She says there are may be other factors keeping the death rate relatively low as well.

First, hospitals in the Texas Medical Center offer the best treatment options available. Second, only the sickest got tested early on. Now, people with minor symptoms are finding out if they have the virus, which drives down the overall death rate.

“That’s a good thing. You want to expand testing, because you want to see a true prevalence of the disease in the community,” she said.

The third possible factor is the virus is currently spreading most among young people who are more likely to survive."

people see what they want to see,  and it's annoying to those who see things differently"

Not annoying to me at all. I welcome other points of view. How else to draw a rational opinion?

What I don't care for is people being scorned or ridiculed for bringing an article over. There's nothing wrong with presenting alternate opinions. It's how we learn and grow.

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16 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

You forgot this part from the second link (KHOU) you posted...

"What are the factors keeping the COVID-19 death rate low?

She says there are may be other factors keeping the death rate relatively low as well.

First, hospitals in the Texas Medical Center offer the best treatment options available. Second, only the sickest got tested early on. Now, people with minor symptoms are finding out if they have the virus, which drives down the overall death rate.

“That’s a good thing. You want to expand testing, because you want to see a true prevalence of the disease in the community,” she said.

The third possible factor is the virus is currently spreading most among young people who are more likely to survive."

people see what they want to see,  and it's annoying to those who see things differently"

Not annoying to me at all. I welcome other points of view. How else to draw a rational opinion?

What I don't care for is people being scorned or ridiculed for bringing an article over. There's nothing wrong with presenting alternate opinions. It's how we learn and grow.

Said I don’t want to continue the back and forth because it’s not actual discussion, it’s just people promoting a message, that’s extremely clear now. 
 

Instead of acknowledging what the article says, directly — that the context of a current lower death rate includes the lag — that the other numbers ate moving in the opposite direction, Covid infections, including both daily new cases and the overall positivity rate, and hospitalization rates, which as repeatedly reported and obvious followed the way business,bars etc RE-opened, and that, stating the obvious, Texas has been hit particularly hard by Covid, you instead, to try to prove a point, pointedly and repeatedly ignore all of that, and instead come back with hey look here’s another factor on death rate.

That’s not a “discussion.” That’s just message driven argument without the ability to acknowledge the facts. All of the points I have made on the virus, as reflected in your own cited article, are accurate, and you know it, but you won’t acknowledge that. Nice discussion 

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19 hours ago, Hoosierhoopster said:

I’m not going to waste my time pointing you to the multiple reports of significantly increased hospitalizations, increased deaths, increases severity of cases etc in Texas, you know, where I live, because for reasons that elude me you repeatedly try to spin what’s really going on into a lack of significance. Luckily health officials do not follow this ridiculousness 

You said this...is this one of the "facts" you speak of? If so, the article I linked directly refutes that.

Dr Sharma's is of the "opinion" that "Just right after July 4 is when we will likely see the impact of the surge."

You seem to be banking on her "opinion" to support your "facts." 

You also cited hospital capacity levels. I linked a " factual" article that stated Houston officials are confident they have capacity, even with the spike, covered.

I don't think I'm the one who ignores "facts" when they don't support my position. In fact, I really don't have a position here. I've made my opinion on the whole pandemic abundantly clear...I wear a mask. I limit my trips out of the house...I social distance...

But, Mother Nature is going to be Mother Nature...

 

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2 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

You said this...is this one of the "facts" you speak of? If so, the article I linked directly refutes that.

Dr Sharma's is of the "opinion" that "Just right after July 4 is when we will likely see the impact of the surge."

You seem to be banking on her "opinion" to support your "facts." 

You also cited hospital capacity levels. I linked a " factual" article that stated Houston officials are confident they have capacity, even with the spike, covered.

I don't think I'm the one who ignores "facts" when they don't support my position. In fact, I really don't have a position here. I've made my opinion on the whole pandemic abundantly clear...I wear a mask. I limit my trips out of the house...I social distance...

But, Mother Nature is going to be Mother Nature...

 

In case you didnt see it posted earlier, since you mentioned hospital capacity.

From the Texas Medical Center. 

k-Overview-Of-TMC-Bed-Status-6-30-2020-768x432.png

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1 minute ago, mrflynn03 said:

In case you didnt see it posted earlier, since you mentioned hospital capacity.

From the Texas Medical Center. 

k-Overview-Of-TMC-Bed-Status-6-30-2020-768x432.png

I did see that. Thanks...

I'll be the first to say, Texas probably opened prematurely. And as I said, the mass protests downtown probably didn't help matters. But, I'm a 1st amendment guy. 

 

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12 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

You said this...is this one of the "facts" you speak of? If so, the article I linked directly refutes that.

Dr Sharma's is of the "opinion" that "Just right after July 4 is when we will likely see the impact of the surge."

You seem to be banking on her "opinion" to support your "facts." 

You also cited hospital capacity levels. I linked a " factual" article that stated Houston officials are confident they have capacity, even with the spike, covered.

I don't think I'm the one who ignores "facts" when they don't support my position. In fact, I really don't have a position here. I've made my opinion on the whole pandemic abundantly clear...I wear a mask. I limit my trips out of the house...I social distance...

But, Mother Nature is going to be Mother Nature...

 

Like you, I really don't have a position here. I wear a mask. I limit my trips out of the house...I social distance...

I thought we have been abundantly clear in acknowledging that TX, and Houston, do have a problem with increased cases.  For some reason, anything explaining possible reasons is attacked. There is no reason for that. History will be the judge here and there is nothing wrong with bringing information to to the table. Everyone can judge for themselves the veracity of what they read. We'll know soon enough if there are new myths to be added to this list- https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus-myths.

Either deaths will spike or they won't. I'm certainly not rooting for the former. Either way, that has nothing to do with people showing up at the ER because their employer wants them tested.  My son got sent home from work one day because the thermometer showed his temp 1 degree high. He was one of those people sent for a test (it was negative). Some of these young healthy kids will be shown to have the virus and, IMO, that is a good thing because then they won't be spreading it as much. The mortality for people under 40 with the virus is approaching 0. Just like we hear about the occasional college athlete dying from a heart attack, It's likely some college or pro athlete will die from COVID and it will be national news. Doesn't mean we have to shut down schools, sports, businesses and create many more multiples of sickness and deaths. 

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21 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

I did see that. Thanks...

I'll be the first to say, Texas probably opened prematurely. And as I said, the mass protests downtown probably didn't help matters. But, I'm a 1st amendment guy. 

 

Interestingly, a month ago, protests were going to cause a rise in the virus (which we are now seeing). These links are all from 1 month ago.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/the-protests-will-spread-the-coronavirus/ar-BB14S026

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/06/protests-pandemic/612460/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/us-coronavirus-protests/index.html

Now these same sites are saying protests did not spread the virus. I can't see how that can even be possible. Either way, we were misled a month ago or are being now. 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/us/coronavirus-cases-protests-black-lives-matter-trnd/index.html

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2 hours ago, IUFLA said:

You said this...is this one of the "facts" you speak of? If so, the article I linked directly refutes that.

Dr Sharma's is of the "opinion" that "Just right after July 4 is when we will likely see the impact of the surge."

You seem to be banking on her "opinion" to support your "facts." 

You also cited hospital capacity levels. I linked a " factual" article that stated Houston officials are confident they have capacity, even with the spike, covered.

I don't think I'm the one who ignores "facts" when they don't support my position. In fact, I really don't have a position here. I've made my opinion on the whole pandemic abundantly clear...I wear a mask. I limit my trips out of the house...I social distance...

But, Mother Nature is going to be Mother Nature...

 

OK, there you go looking only for argument to promote your view while ignoring and refusing to acknowledge all the clearly accurate facts. This isn't discussion, it's just message driven argument. I don't understand why it is that you are unable to acknowledge the facts of increased hospitalization, increased spread, and that Houston has been hard hit by it. Why is that hard for you to do? And you instead try to spin what I said? I referenced increased hospitalization rates -- whether they can be handled is debatable and depends on what hospital chain/group you're talking about -- but isn't it pretty obvious, seriously, that if the spike is allowed to continue then regardless who you're talking to beds fill up / ICU units fill up, and then you can't handle the increased hospitalization rates? Isn't that obvious?

So again, the "facts" are daily record level increases in covid infections, overall increased infections, and resulting increased hospitalization rates.  I just don't understand why that is ignored. Covid is here, it's increasing for multiple reasons, the posts that ignore that are misleading, and disingenuous.  

Since we can't seem to have an actual discussion on that, let's redirect to what I would think can be discussed.

1. Do you think that, generally, when you have, as we do, increased hospitalization rates on a daily and overall rate, following increased infections, as we have, that increased death rates usually would follow? I think that's fairly obvious  Will it happen here, again? Don't know, and hope not -- I'm sure we agree on that. I hope that we are now at a point where the majority of those new infections are those with a better ability to handle the virus, and that our treatments have improved to better handle the virus -- that seems to be being borne out in part. But we don't know, aren't we in a wait and see on this? 

2. Do you think that we'll be able to achieve a robust return to pre-Covid economic conditions without getting a real handle on this virus, as in stopping the repeat spikes and renewed growth of the virus? I don't know, I'm not an economist, but I think that's also probably the case. The rush back to work / re-opening bars, etc., without requiring businesses to implement mask-wearing and social distancing was at least in part to blame for the renewed spread and increased hospitalizations, etc. I want everyone back in school and work, everyone is suffering, financially, but, I believe, we need to keep forcing business owners in particular to comply with mask/social distancing protocol to help curb the renewed spread/infection rates. I'm not sure why some argue against that, to me, that's just foolish. I stop in a restaurant where it's posted masks are required. People walk in wearing masks, then take them off, and the restaurant carries on business as usual. Stupid, to me.

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As of right now, Worldometer is reporting approximately 2.8 million cases in the U.S.  The total population of the U.S. is about 331 million.

That calculates out to be approximately 1 in every 118 residents in the U.S. has, at some point, tested positive for the disease.

ABC News quoted the Los Angeles Mayor stating that it is estimated that 1 in 140 in the city have been infected.

In Los Angeles County, 1 in 140 people are estimated to be infected, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday.

If both numbers are accurate, then L.A. is doing better than the nation as a whole.

 

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