Covid is overblown

townhall.com

This news does not surprise me at all. But to be fair. Compare that 94% to the population as a whole. How many Americans have these underlying conditions ? Not trying to refute anything. But I am curious.

“Exclusively” being the key word there. It doesn’t say it’s not a contributing factor. How many of those people with 2-3 serious health issues would still be alive today had they not contracted COVID? I’m guessing most of them.

They might still be around but they’ve reached an age when any health trigger could be fatal. For example, if they have COPD, a simple respiratory virus can be fatal. In a case like that, I don’t think you say their cause of death was flu.

dang. i’m living on the edge.

I've heard that some people went to get tested, got frustrated with how long it was taking and so left. Then the result came back positive because they couldn't confirm it as a negative test. Not sure if it is true. Have heard from several "friends of friends" that this happened to them (granted mostly on websites and I can't verify). Don't know anyone personally that it happened to, but don't doubt it considering AZ had a day with negative one deaths reported. Definitely some shady stats going on at the very least. Supposedly it was double counted the day before and then it was corrected on a day with no deaths reported.

It’s been 2,000 years since the last negative death.

The main point is that CoVid is less damaging than indicated by the top line numbers. Headlines say 150,000 have died from CoVid. Actually, 10,000 have died from CoVid while 140,000 have died from a combination of CoVid plus other bad health problems. Putting it starkly, CoVid didn’t deprive those 140,000 of another 50 years of vital life. Their prospects were much more limited.

Was it worth shutting down the economy if it saved 1,000,000 lives ? Sure. Did it make sense if we saved 10,000 lives ? That’s a tougher call. The lives lost because patients were unable to get screening or treatment probably exceeds 10,000.

What is going to happen is a bunch of extra people die this year . Then we will actually have a reduction in deaths in the next year or so. Covid is moving peoples' deaths forward.

This entire thread is based on an QAnon supporter's conspiracy theory which was re-tweeted by Trump:

wpsdlocal6.com

Twitter removed the false claim. All of you should know by now that @Mark93 lives in a nutty world of conspiracy theories and pseudo-science.

Randumb repeats the only trick lefties have. He can’t argue the facts since everything I wrote is factual and logical. So, he slanders the source. I used a QAnon conspiracy theory ( I actually relied on a CDC stat ). I relied on pseudo-science ( whatever he means by that ). Twitter blocked the claim and, in Randumb’s opinion, that’s the best source for unbiased science.

It’s more circular logic. All the left leaning sources agree on something, so the science is settled. Anyone who doubts the left leaning sources doesn’t believe in science.

covid 19 is simply speeding up the death process in most cases. the weak and infirm primarily. (of which i’m one.) death going to get everyone eventually. I don’t agree with how the government and the medical people have been handling it. I can understand wearing a mask in crowded conditions. But shutting down some of the fucking economy just does not make sense to me. kick open the doors of all businesses and let us individually make the decision whether or not to participate. The government (of most levels) and health officials are way abusing their governing privilege.

there’s been pandemics before.

I think Covid got overblown because the death tolls and articles that came out when Italy was tracking the disease. When people started seeing 300 deaths, 400, 600, 900, 1000 deaths a day the whole world started to panic. It's kinda scary to be looking at the televison and seeing 1000 deaths a day constantly on top of that your own governor telling you if your over the age of 60 you won't be allow to go to the hospital, deal with it on your own. That send all the country's to find solutions to avoid coming to that conclusion. Hopefully everyone stays safe and healthy. Stay protected mask up and don't bite your finger nails.

"Actually, 10,000 have died from CoVid while 140,000 have died from a combination of CoVid plus other bad health problems. " @Mark94 Your logic is seriously flawed. You're assuming because 6% had an exclusive covid 19 diagnosis on their death certificates, the other 94% had pre-existing comorbidity. Look at table 3 in the CDC notice referenced. cdc.gov Now an argument could be made for hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. However, SARS-COV 2 is the direct cause for ARDS, pneumonia, respiratory arrest/ failure diagnoses. If lying in a hospital bed for 30-90 days in a hypoxic state causes organ failure, then renal failure, heart failure, and cardiac arrest diagnoses on death certificates are appropriate and directly related to COVID 19. To say COVID only killed 10k and the rest would have died anyway is absurd.

Covid was overblown because the Democratic base, especially the young base, are wicked fucking pussies and afraid of everything in the real world. You don't get covid playing fortnite and posting videos of how pathetic they are on Tik Tok and end up as a mature, fearless adult. Strip clubbing Thursday; Dinner out Friday; Poker in the garage Saturday and golf Sunday. Ah to be old and a lifelong hard worker and not a Democrat.

“To say COVID only killed 10k and the rest would have died anyway is absurd”

I never said that.

What I said was

“Actually, 10,000 have died from CoVid while 140,000 have died from a combination of CoVid plus other bad health problems. Putting it starkly, CoVid didn’t deprive those 140,000 of another 50 years of vital life. Their prospects were much more limited.”

I continue to stand by that statement.

I’m also saying that no one ever looked at the health downside of a lengthy shut down before we shut down. For months, people were deprived of preventive medicine and health screenings.

As just one example, biopsies were delayed for months. And, Heart stress tests were delayed. People were afraid to go to the ER when they had chest pains. Dialysis was delayed. Hypertension wasn’t diagnosed.

How many thousands of people died this year from cancer and heart attacks that could have been saved in a non-shutdown year ? I’ve seen different estimates, but no one has put together an overall assessment. That will come later, but it’s certainly in the thousands. Probably the tens of thousands. Maybe the hundreds of thousands.

Why wasn’t this part of the analysis before we decided to shut down ? We had all those scary models and graphs explaining how many CoVid deaths we could expect. No one considered the impact of other causes of death before shutting down.

Someone should have decided whether A was greater than B. Instead, the argument was “A is a big number, so we need to shut down”.

There are plenty of articles now that document this idiotic topic:

"Twitter Removes Claim About CDC And Covid-19 Coronavirus Deaths That Trump Retweeted" forbes.com

Trump Promotes the Outlandish Claim That COVID-19 Has Killed a 'Minuscule' Number of Americans reason.com

In the NYT, too.

It's not as if Mark93 has anything original to say about the topic. It started on QAnon, made it's way to a right-wing rag called "Gateway Pundit" and was retweeted by Trump himself. Twitter removed the post as propaganda and misinformation.

We've known since February that chronic illnesses increase the risk of dying from Covid. There's absolutely nothing new here; just another example of how bullshit and misinformation turns into "news."

Congrats on making a fool of yourself again, @Mark.

I don’t know anything about QAnon. I don’t know if that’s a person, a website, or whatever.

The thing that got me thinking about this subject was a lengthy interview with Dr. Scott Atlas, a recent member of Trump’s CoVid task force. I borrowed his thoughts and folded in the 6% study from the CDC.

Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a member of Hoover's Working Group on Health Care Policy.

Here’s the interview that first got me thinking about this subject

youtu.be

Sorry if I paraphrased you. "Actually, 10,000 have died from CoVid while 140,000 have died from a combination of CoVid plus other bad health problems." That statement is still seriously flawed if COVID caused the "other bad health problems". That is analogous to saying the death certificate stated gunshot wound and injury to the thoracic aorta, so it wasn't solely due to the bullet. Gun shot wounds are overblown!

“COVID caused the "other bad health problems”

That’s not what I said or implied. In fact, the opposite is obviously true. The underlying health conditions like diabetes, cancer, hypertension existed before CoVid entered the patient.

“COVID caused the "other bad health problems” I know you didn't say that or imply that. I am saying it emphatically. if you look at the actual table on the CDC website, you will see most of the secondary diagnoses were directly caused by SARS-Cov 2.

Okay, I looked at Table 3. You are right, the most common comorbidity involves other respiratory conditions. But, on average, there were 2.6 comorbidities associated with each CoVid death. Hypertension and Heart disease were also pretty high on the list. And, we know a majority of CoVid deaths are age 70+.

I don’t think this changes my contention that CoVid contributed to death in 140,000 cases but was not the sole cause.

" How many of those people with 2-3 serious health issues would still be alive today had they not contracted COVID? I’m guessing most of them"

You can't play that game unless you have actual data to support it. Otherwise it's just conjecture. The data we do have indicates that the very young are fairly resistant to the effects of coronavirus. That's very different from an infection like influenza which infants are at high risk of developing serious complications if they contract influenza.

That suggests that in most cases COVID-19 practically requires those other factors present, while influenza less so. For the older population, anyone with preexisting lung and heart issues is susceptible to germs. Even the common cold.

^ If there was a tinfoil shortage I’d check Mark’s storage locker

Fear of Covid is ruining my life. Other than strip clubbing Thursday night; Golf Friday; Strip clubbing Saturday night before the Poker Tourney and Cash game and dinner out Sunday night I haven't done a goddam thing.

The CDC has sent a letter to Governors telling them to be prepared to distribute a vaccine by Nov 1. It’s estimated that 2 million doses will be available by the end of October ( also known as “ next month”) and another 10 million doses by the end of November. Priority will be given to health care workers and those most at risk ( the old and infirm).

I see I already got a down vote on the news that a vaccine is coming. It would be fascinating to learn why news that could save lives and reopen the economy, including strip clubs, earned a thumbs down.

If you're reading this, @Mark, I didn't downvote your post and I'm not using that feature.

However, I can guess why you were downvoted: we can't trust scientists from our government agencies, anymore. We just had the FDA granting emergency use for convalescent plasma without clinical trials and scant evidence that it works. It's effectiveness in preventing death was grossly exaggerated by the FDA. We have new guidance from the CDC and they no longer recommend asymptomatic testing for Covid (which doesn't make any sense unless it's political).

So now we're seeing political pressure from the FDA to approve the vaccine you're talking about right before the election. Without clinical trials, I have no confidence that the vaccine is safe and I'm hardly alone. You seem to trust your cult leader -- so be my guest and you can be one of the early guinea pigs.

I should say, there's political pressure on the FDA to approve the caccine.

vaccine

Without clinical trials ? There are three separate Stage 3 clinical trials, each involving 30,000 volunteers, going on right now. Pfizer has announced their stage 3 will be completed in October. The results have been impressive in terms of anti bodies and safety. The FDA is monitoring the trials closely.

If Obama accomplished the same thing, he’d already have a Nobel Prize for medicine and his face on Mount Rushmore. But, Orange Man bad.

msn.com

^ Spin as they might, the facts are that 94% of deaths counted as CoVid deaths had other contributing factors. That’s not in dispute.

Despite the melodious background music, the above video doesn’t contradict this fact.

It's really upsetting this administration is politicizing the CDC.

The entire world objectively agrees America's covid response sucked. Facts are facts. Trump goofed by listening to kushner.

Sounds like we are looking at mid November for a potential vaccine approval. If I had to bet I imagine it's on par with the flu vaccine for efficacy. So better than nothing and should eventually slow the spread but not a silver bullet.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

In Arizona, daily cases have dropped from nearly 5,000 to 500. Deaths are way down too. We might see a resurgence now that ASU and UofA are back. But, it’s feeling hopeful.

A vaccine won’t eliminate the virus, but it should slow the spread considerably.

How much containment is needed before we get back to ( the new ) normal ? I think we’re getting close.

@Mark94 - we cracked 1,000 cases today - first time in a while. I think that bars re-opening may be playing a role.

But this is just a single data point. I need to see more data to confirm my suspicions.

Bars in AZ opened less than a week ago at this point. Way too early to point positive tests on that based on delay in onset and delay in testing. Some days they just batch a bunch of backed up tests.

If it keeps going up for the next week maybe you have a point. People can stay home and the economy can be closed forever. This stuff will just wait out the closures. It ain't going to go away no matter how long you kill the economy.

They opened on Thursday of last week. So today is the 8th day that they are open.

The low end of the time frame from exposure to symptoms is 5 days.

Like I said, this is a single data point (there were 1,091 positives today). But it is worth paying attention to.

Especially a week or so after Labor Day.

I pay more attention to the death tally. As long as that stays low, I don’t care if the bug is bouncing around the healthy population.

Ultimately what is important is what Doug Ducey and Cara Crist pay attention to.

As I have said before, I gave up predicting what Ducey will do a long time ago.

If I had to pick a culprit for higher tests coming back at this point it would be colleges opening up. The testing is massive and some students come from many places in the country.

I just don't think the government and testing is efficient enough to point to bars opening as a cause of higher positive tests at this point. Maybe a week from now but not now.

My opinion (one way or the other) will become more solid and more sound with more data.

The reason I mention bars is that when the state re-opened, we went from real moderate levels of infections to a nightmare over the course of a couple weeks. It wasn't a sudden jump, it was gradual.

When they shut down bars, gyms, water parks and movie theaters at the end of June, the decline was noticeable exactly 2 weeks after the closed those businesses down.

(I don't think water parks were large spreaders, and I don't think any movie theaters re-opened after the initial shut down. That leaves bars and gyms as the likely culprits.)

Again, this is a single data point. We are just finishing the 8th day of re-opening of bars. But I did notice it this morning. (To put things in perspective, we had less than 200 new cases on Monday. Just over 500 cases on Tuesday and Wednesday. And 1091 today.) It is early, but I think it is worth paying attention to.

Today's numbers: US & Sweden, at #10 & #11, with both reporting 577 deaths per million persons.

Sweden never went into full lockdown. They just protected the old.

Our “2 weeks to flatten the curve” became 5 months of lockdown. Why ?

"US & Sweden, at #10 & #11,"

Minor point, but @Mark is leaving out that US & Sweden are the #10 & #11 WORST in the world, per capita. And Sweden did not escape economic collapse.

lol!

nytimes.com

President Trump’s vaccine chief sees a ‘very, very low chance’ of a vaccine by Election Day.

Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for the White House vaccine program, said on Thursday that it was “extremely unlikely but not impossible” that a vaccine could be available by the end of October.

It is unlikely the vaccine will be available in quantity in October. It is however likely that the phase 3 testing will be complete. It is also possible that the FDA will green light at least one vaccine by the end of October. Manufacturing is already under way, thanks to government funding.