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Coronavirus Is Fake News


Vmedvil2

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Them attorneys running for cover is what is causing me some stress just now. I need to close a contract, and due to the perceived high risk of the corona virus, ie one ****ing case from a tourist. They have all shut up shop indefinitely. **** **** **** **** ****

Look at the bright side. It will shortly be a great time to invest in stocks when they are all down. If you invest in the right ones you could make quite a chunk of cash when they go back up.

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While I agree that we are all going to be infected at some time or other, I don't agree with your statement that there is a 3% mortality rate average over the entire population. There is no way that anyone can possibly know that.

 

The 3% mortality rate is only among confirmed cases and most of those confirmed cases are people who have severe symptoms that require medical attention, and so have been tested for the virus.

 

The actual number of people who have been infected, but who have Not become ill enough to seek medical help and who have not been tested, is much higher. When you use that total number of people as your denominator, the real mortality rate drops down to something much lower than 3%; perhaps as low as other flu-type infections such as H1N1 which killed about 13,000 in the US and some 250,000 around the world.

 

I am not going so far as to call COVID-19 fake news, as it is killing a lot of people, but the fact is these are mostly elderly people who have other pre-existing conditions. I don't understand the extreme measures being taken that, in my opinion, just cause mass panic and do more harm than good.

 

I think people have been fixating on too many walking-dead-type Hollywood scenarios and are not thinking logically about this.

 

 

Hmmm looks like somebody has been reading my posts

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The gardenia in front of the house where I live has been affected by a tremendous plague of lice. What would gardenia lack to be so sick? I put vegetable ash, ferrous sulfate and generic fertilizer in the base soil and watered it. Some time later the leaves of the gardenia became brighter and the plague disappeared ...

Edited by Crasto
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The gardenia in front of the house where I live has been affected by a tremendous plague of lice. What would gardenia lack to be so sick? I put vegetable ash, ferrous sulfate and generic fertilizer in the base soil and watered it. Some time later the leaves of the gardenia became brighter and the plague disappeared ...

 

Good point. Very much like the lice killing off an unhealthy garden, this covid-19 pandemic seems to be killing primarily people who are vulnerable due to other pre-existing health problems. That includes the frail elderly people who have already been given a death sentence by being sent to nursing homes.

 

People with heart disease, diabetes, obesity etc who are also somewhat older, but not elderly, are not strong enough to fight off a flu-like infection, are also more vulnerable to fall victim to this illness. I can’t find a single documented case of covid-19 killing anybody under the age of 30 who was in otherwise good health.

 

Did you know that malaria kills about 1.2 million people every year and TB about the same amount? And these are people who are both young and old, and otherwise healthy. But here we are in an absolute panic about a disease that has so far killed about 100 Americans, many of whom were in nursing homes already on their death beds! WTF is going on?

 

The more I am learning about this pandemic, the less I fear it and the more I fear the government taking away freedoms that may not ever be given back. What is happening to our freedoms now is exactly what socialists like “Bernie” Sanders have been scheming for.

 

Before you say “what about Italy”, “what about China”, I believe you will find in Italy the dead are mainly old people with pre-existing conditions. It is a shame to see so many go all at once but sometimes that is the way Nature works. In China it was mostly older people and males who were smokers. There is a also high incidence of TB in China and I suspect, without evidence to support me, that many of the corona victims also had TB. That is the type of co-morbidity that does not exist in the US and I predict the deaths here will be much, much less although the government will no doubt claim that is due to the draconian measures being enacted.

 

People who don’t take care of their own health, by not exercising and not eating properly, resulting in their increased vulnerability to an otherwise non-fatal illness, should not expect the rest of us to submit to martial law and remain prisoners in our own homes just to protect them.

 

Here is a hard fact for everyone: Old people dying is perfectly natural; nobody lives forever.

By all means encourage people to follow basic common-sense practices like washing their hands but don’t take away our freedoms under the guise of protecting us from a bad cold.

 

 

I know this is an alternative view from what you all have been seeing in the media. Only time will tell which view is correct.

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Good point. Very much like the lice killing off an unhealthy garden, this covid-19 pandemic seems to be killing primarily people who are vulnerable due to other pre-existing health problems. That includes the frail elderly people who have already been given a death sentence by being sent to nursing homes.

 

People with heart disease, diabetes, obesity etc who are also somewhat older, but not elderly, are not strong enough to fight off a flu-like infection, are also more vulnerable to fall victim to this illness. I can’t find a single documented case of covid-19 killing anybody under the age of 30 who was in otherwise good health.

 

Did you know that malaria kills about 1.2 million people every year and TB about the same amount? And these are people who are both young and old, and otherwise healthy. But here we are in an absolute panic about a disease that has so far killed about 100 Americans, many of whom were in nursing homes already on their death beds! WTF is going on?

 

The more I am learning about this pandemic, the less I fear it and the more I fear the government taking away freedoms that may not ever be given back. What is happening to our freedoms now is exactly what socialists like “Bernie” Sanders have been scheming for.

 

Before you say “what about Italy”, “what about China”, I believe you will find in Italy the dead are mainly old people with pre-existing conditions. It is a shame to see so many go all at once but sometimes that is the way Nature works. In China it was mostly older people and males who were smokers. There is a also high incidence of TB in China and I suspect, without evidence to support me, that many of the corona victims also had TB. That is the type of co-morbidity that does not exist in the US and I predict the deaths here will be much, much less although the government will no doubt claim that is due to the draconian measures being enacted.

 

People who don’t take care of their own health, by not exercising and not eating properly, resulting in their increased vulnerability to an otherwise non-fatal illness, should not expect the rest of us to submit to martial law and remain prisoners in our own homes just to protect them.

 

Here is a hard fact for everyone: Old people dying is perfectly natural; nobody lives forever.

By all means encourage people to follow basic common-sense practices like washing their hands but don’t take away our freedoms under the guise of protecting us from a bad cold.

 

 

I know this is an alternative view from what you all have been seeing in the media. Only time will tell which view is correct.

Very well said. And the way it is looking and the media is promoting so much fear. I feel this has all been planned. Like you said so they can take more of our freedoms away and also crash the economy. This is another way for them to make us all go digital also. Because they can say handheld money is to dangerous and spreads viruses. I am with you brother. And what you say is very true. When the media is promoting something like this it send red flags up that something more planned and sinister is going on and that something is behind it and it is a manufactured crisis.

 

And even if they didn't manufacture it totally and it accidently got out the Wuhan Lab you know what they say is "never let a good crisis go to waste."

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You dont think I havent already noticed this little opportunity. :)

 

 

 

every cloud has a silver lining 

The question is what to invest in? I would like to invest in something also. Also I don't know about you but where I am at gas price have dropped significantly. Maybe stock up on cheap gas. :lol:

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You are not the only one thinking that. 

I do believe because of this situation many many more people are gong to wake up to what was really going on under their noses for a very long time. This 2020 maybe the big split in timelines. Some will rise above and remember who they really are and some will slip deeper in to matter into transhumanism.

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From somewhere on the net:


In case you are wondering what all the Corona Virus precautions are for, here is some facts and math.

The last time something like this happened that I could find was the H1N1 virus from 2009/2010. It was a new strain of flu with no vaccine. It spread to 20% of the world population. In the US that was over 60 million people who caught it. Luckily it had a fatality rate of 0.02%. But that was still over 12000 people dead in the US alone from H1N1.

Estimates for the fatality rate of Corona is between 0.5% and 3%. If it spreads to a similar 60 million people that is a low estimate of 300,000 dead and a high estimate of 1.6 million. That is the US alone.

That is why we are taking these precautions. The more this spreads, the more who will die. And that does not count those who survive but require extended hospitalization.



That is one of the reasons I am not against the measures.
The other is just to have enough hospital beds at any moment, so social distancing to slow spread does make sense.
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From somewhere on the net:

 

That is one of the reasons I am not against the measures.

The other is just to have enough hospital beds at any moment, so social distancing to slow spread does make sense.

 

 

 

I'm not against some of the measures. I agree with social distancing and other common-sense measures including increasing the available number of hospital beds and ventilators, respirators, masks etc.

I don't see the point of bringing the entire country to a standstill; that is insane.

 

Here is an excellent article by someone who is very well qualified to write on this issue.

 

He has one estimate that the case fatality ratio in the general US population may be as low as 0.05% which

is not much different than the seasonal flu. I would be interested in knowing what you think of his article.

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I'm not against some of the measures. I agree with social distancing and other common-sense measures including increasing the available number of hospital beds and ventilators, respirators, masks etc.

I don't see the point of bringing the entire country to a standstill; that is insane.

 

Here is an excellent article by someone who is very well qualified to write on this issue.

 

He has one estimate that the case fatality ratio in the general US population may be as low as 0.05% which

is not much different than the seasonal flu. I would be interested in knowing what you think of his article.

Very good and thought-provoking article on the science, I agree. He makes a good case for some kind of properly controlled testing of a sample population, to get at the real numbers.

 

Unfortunately, however, given the lack of this data, policymakers have to make policy, under intense public pressure and with extremely tight deadlines for action, without it. No democratic leader in the modern world can go to his electorate and say: "We've decided to accept an unknown but significant elderly death toll, because of the economic damage if we try to stop it.". (Even the brutal Chinese did not go that route, interestingly. But then Asian societies do tend to respect the elderly, so perhaps that's why.) 

 

The image of the elephant jumping off a cliff is dramatic but merely emotional. He is referring there to the scale of economic and social damage resulting from the current measures. We can all agree it will be vast, but he has no data to quantify his worries, nor does he have expertise in economics, so his guess is only as good as that of the man in the pub (who is no longer in the pub, as of yesterday).  

 

I think his article would have more power if he had concluded with a firm proposal for the kind of data gathering he points out we need, with an estimate of timeline and resources, and what he thinks policymakers should do,  while they wait for this data to come in.  

Edited by exchemist
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Taking a look at the events related to the flu, common pneumonia and low seasonal temperatures in Portugal, there seems to be no particular aggressiveness attributable to coronavirus-19. What is obvious is the collective pressure for drastic measures to be taken at the political and social level . (Is this crisis a must?)

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The typical death rate from the published figures is approx 3% of those who are confirmed to have been infected. Not everyone will be infected, so this is not 3% of the over all population. The overall number of the population being infected will depend on containment measures implemented, and will differ from country to country and region to region in those countries due to geography, climate, population density and demographics etc. People living and working in the country, are less likely to be exposed than those living a city, doing a commute on mass transit systems every day.

 

Isolation, appears to be the best protection. Whisky does not work, and city dwellers jumping into their camper vans and heading for the country does not help contain the virus. 

Yes. In London, the number of confirmed case is only ~2000, yet quite a number of people I know either have it or their friends or relations have. (I have got it myself by the way, mildly). So I think the real incidence of infection must be > 100 x the "confirmed" number. As the writer of the linked article says, we have no reliable data yet on which to base a proper mortality rate.

 

I see also see that the average age of victims in Italy is 79, lending qualitative support to his thesis that we may be seeing the very old picked off by this instead of the customary range of diseases that do that in normal times.  Against that, however, there is no doubt at all from the Italy data, that this virus is cutting an exceptional swathe through these elderly citizens. If the obituaries page of the Bergamo newspaper has gone from a page and half to ten pages, people are not just dying at the normal rate, but of this instead of something else. It is taking them all at once, which means many are being taken earlier than they would otherwise have been. 

Edited by exchemist
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Very good and thought-provoking article on the science, I agree. He makes a good case for some kind of properly controlled testing of a sample population, to get at the real numbers.

 

Unfortunately, however, given the lack of this data, policymakers have to make policy, under intense public pressure and with extremely tight deadlines for action, without it. No democratic leader in the modern world can go to his electorate and say: "We've decided to accept an unknown but significant elderly death toll, because of the economic damage if we try to stop it.". (Even the brutal Chinese did not go that route, interestingly. But then Asian societies do tend to respect the elderly, so perhaps that's why.) 

 

The image of the elephant jumping off a cliff is dramatic but merely emotional. He is referring there to the scale of economic and social damage resulting from the current measures. We can all agree it will be vast, but he has no data to quantify his worries, nor does he have expertise in economics, so his guess is only as good as that of the man in the pub (who is no longer in the pub, as of yesterday).  

 

I think his article would have more power if he had concluded with a firm proposal for the kind of data gathering he points out we need, with an estimate of timeline and resources, and what he thinks policymakers should do,  while they wait for this data to come in.  

 

Thanks for that feedback.

 

My attention was drawn in particular to the following paragraphs:

 

"In an autopsy series that tested for respiratory viruses in specimens from 57 elderly persons who died during the 2016 to 2017 influenza season, influenza viruses were detected in 18% of the specimens, while any kind of respiratory virus was found in 47%. In some people who die from viral respiratory pathogens, more than one virus is found upon autopsy and bacteria are often superimposed. A positive test for coronavirus does not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise"

 

"If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams"

 

"Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, trauma, bleeding, and the like that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity"

 

So, it seems to me the main thing we need to do is not overwhelm the health care system. We can do that by staying home when we feel sick and not running to the hospital, taking a bed away from someone who really needs it. Social distancing is important, as well as tried-and-true common-sense hygiene. Confining people to their homes may do more harm than good and people can only take so much government pushing them around. If riots break out, and that is a possibility, we are all in big trouble.

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I had to read the article to see if it was by Donald Trump :) It isnt, but sounds like the author is in denial the same as Trump has been for the last few weeks. 

 

Whilst the measures here in the Azores are intended to stop the spread of the Corona virus from Europe and the Americas. They have virtually shut down all businesses, IF the virus can be contained to the couple of cases we have, and none of the 259 people who are in 2 week quarantine(last arrivals from america and europe before they shut the airports) dont develop the disease, the azores will be clear in two weeks time, until they reopen! the ports. Failing that if the quarantine works, we might have another couple of weeks. Failing the quarantine working the Azores does not have enough respirators here to deal with the weak and elderley.

 

No new cases reported in China for 3 days other than those arriving from abroad, given 2 weeks of people in quarantine, they might consider them selves clear especially if they closed the airports. The azores has stopped all in coming flights, so with no new cases for the next couple of weeks they have nipped it in the bud for the time being.

 

An alternative way to dealing with the corona virus rather than letting it run its course, or quarantine, might be to deliberately infect, bands/groups of people who need to work and keep them in quarantine whilst they get over the disease, before allowing them to go back to work. This would create resistant groups, of people surrounding those who might be vulnerable. 

 

It should I think be emphasized that not all the elderly will need hospital treatment to get over it, and not all the young will breeze through the disease with minor symptoms. 

 

Edit Trumps timeline on the corona virus https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/20/how-donald-trump-responded-coronavirus-pandemic/

 

Trump write that? No, Trump is a buffoon, totally incapable of thinking on that level. The article was written by a professor of medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics. That is why I give it considerable credibility; well, that and the fact it agrees with my own thinking!

 

Thanks for the response, but I have to tell you I don’t believe anything posted on politifact.

 

From the time WHO first notified the world of the outbreak in china, on Jan 20, Trump needed only 10 days to take the drastic step of blocking travel from China on Jan 30. Of course, the virus had spread by that time via ships and planes and it was just a matter of time before it was everywhere.

 

I’m not defending Tump, but I think he is fairly blameless in all of this; this is just a case of sh1t happens. I think he and his team are doing a reasonable job with the mess that came their way from China.

 

So far, around 270 Americans have died, about as many that die in one plane crash. Of those 270, most were elderly and/or had other serious morbidity 36 of them died in one nursing home where many mistakes were made. But, as harsh as this may seem, who goes into a nursing home and ever comes out alive?  I do hope their deaths were not too traumatic on them or on their families.

 

Over 20,000 people die each day in the US, about 50% of them are elderly. Leading causes of non-accidental death among the elderly are cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes, cancers and neurological disorders (which include diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia). If any of these people test positive for covid-19, it is a lot easier to write that on the death certificate than do an autopsy to find another cause.

 

Yes, I am suggesting the number of deaths being reported as due to covid-19 are very probably inflated, as many of them could fit into the other categories. (more on that follows regarding Italy)

 

I also still maintain that as more and more people test positive, who have little of no symptoms, the death ratio: Number of Deaths/Number of positive cases, will drop dramatically. The total number of people who die from this in one year will be down in the noise compared to the total number of people who die every year from other respiratory illness including the seasonal flu.

 

Alarmist “estimates” of millions dying are irresponsible and probably politically motivated.

 

As I said before, we will soon know the truth but if China and South Korea are examples to go by, the truth is already out there; this can and will be contained.

 

Now, Italy is a tough one. There are so many elderly people scattered around in many small villages, that containment is very difficult. But even there, they are taking a more accurate accounting now of the deaths that can be attributed to the coronavirus, as opposed to other causes. Take this news release as an example:

 

"Italy: in the city of Bergamo, there were 108 more deaths in the first 15 days of March this year compared to 2019 (164 deaths in 2020 vs. 56 deaths in 2019) according to the mayor of the city Giorgio Gori. During this period, 31 deaths were attributed to the coronavirus (less than 30% of the additional deaths this year)"

 

You don't see that sort of honesty often! The dishonest news media would rather report that all 108 additional deaths were from coronavirus! That old saw “there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics” is alive and well in 2020.

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Statistical blips! People have to die at some stage in their lives. Most people dont want to be one of the reasons for the statistical blip.

 

Its mainly the elderly dying, would you have the same opinion if it was the young, or those at the peak of their careers dying. 

 

A Delay in actions of 10 days with this virus can see it spread alarming, as we are witnessing now in America. Trumps closing down flights might have been a bit slow, and more of a knee jerk against the Chinese or the Europeans, who he sees as a threat apparently for various reasons. 

 

Is Trump fit to lead America in this crisis? :innocent:  or would some else be more suitable to lead America through this crisis :sherlock:  Will martial law ever be imposed in America?  :edevil:

I still think all this is stupid for a virus with a R0 of 3.8, it would be like shutting down everything for a Earthquake that has a magnitude of like 6, at its current rate it is only going to infect like ‭1,600,000‬ people in a year. The flu infects 45 million people every year.

Edited by VictorMedvil
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