PLAYPEN: Covid-19 Everything Political

[Craig Lamson]

I think, Trudeau got into face painting at around the same time when Trump was into pussy grabbing.

I think Trump was grabbing all that pussy getting thrown at him for a long time.  Lots of woman looking to get near wealthy and attractive young men. 

[Craig Lamson]

So no effort to reduce deaths or stop the economy slide...just his selfish drive to get re-elected. Another example of a poor leader...coward.

Yea, no effort at all..nothing.  Are you sure you want to go with that one?  Could you find a broader brush?

[Craig Lamson]

It’s those bone spurs.

Curious James, were you old enough to be in the draft for Vietnam?  If you were did you get a deferment?

[James Clark]

Curious James, were you old enough to be in the draft for Vietnam?  If you were did you get a deferment?

I was born in 72, so no. I have numerous friends that served in Iraq 1, and my wife is in the 9/11 survivors medical support program.

[BernardLanguillier]

Bernard, You've been complaining every chance you get that Trump shut everything down too late

Yes!

and that we should wait wait wait before re-opening.  Now you're starting to change your tune because the train is leaving the station and you don't want to look foolish.  I'll let others decide if I got this right.

I never said he should "wait wait" before reopening. I said he should reopen when the criteria he defined for reopening are met.

What's unreasonable about trying to meet your own criteria?

What is your view about those criteria? Do you understand why they were proposed? Do you agree that the White house should propose criteria in the first place?

Cheers,
Bernard

[LesPalenik]

Actually, Trudeau is handling the coronavirus crisis rather well. Now wearing a stylish gray beard.

He isn't wasting his time for empty speeches and rallies, he is not confusing Canadians with inconsistent messages, and he plays well with all province premiers.
By the way, a month ago his wife was sick with the corona virus, and he went into self-imposed quarantine, so he knows something about the illness.

[Alan Klein]

Yes!

I never said he should "wait wait" before reopening. I said he should reopen when the criteria he defined for reopening are met.

What's unreasonable about trying to meet your own criteria?

What is your view about those criteria? Do you understand why they were proposed? Do you agree that the White house should propose criteria in the first place?

Cheers,
Bernard

But the governors are not listening to the federal government.  They run their states the way they want to. 

Do you understand what the Federal Republic of the United States of America means?  That's who we are.  We're not the State of Japan. We're 50 united states, each state is sovereign within their own sphere of control and influence.  They each have their own laws, their own constitution, their own legislature, their own governor, their own national guard and army, their own, hunting and fishing laws, their own drinking regulations, their own court systems, their own medical setups, their own medical supplies and PPEs, their own police forces.  They each do everything Japan does except print money, make treaties, go to war, control immigration, and a few other things that Washington DC does for the whole nation.

That's why Trump has so little to say about opening and closing bars, restaurants, train stations, theaters, and other stuff.  It's under state control. 

[LesPalenik]

For people who can watch CBC, there is a good discussion on TVO about the hospital backlog and challenges how to clear it. 75,000 surgeries postponed just in Ontario, 12,000 new postponents added each week. It is a very serious and complex problem, people are dying because they can't get the treatment and hospital staff is getting burned out. While most of the beds reserved for the virus patients are unoccupied. The table below show that only 10% of the reserved beds are presently in use and operating rooms run on half-capacity. No doubt, most beds are empty due to the early lockdown, but OTOH that's also a tremendous waste. Clearing the backlog may take a year or longer.

https://www.tvo.org/video/getting-ontario-to-the-post-covid-hospital
 

[Alan Klein]

Actually, Trudeau is handling the coronavirus crisis rather well. Now wearing a stylish gray beard.

He isn't wasting his time for empty speeches and rallies, he is not confusing Canadians with inconsistent messages, and he plays well with all province premiers.
By the way, a month ago his wife was sick with the corona virus, and he went into self-imposed quarantine, so he knows something about the illness.

Well, Trump is running for re-election.  So he's out there taking chances.  His timid opponent is napping at home hiding behind his mask.  I hope Mrs Trudeau is doing better.

[Alan Klein]

For people who can watch CBC, there is a good discussion on TVO about the hospital backlog and challenges how to clear it. 75,000 surgeries postponed just in Ontario, 12,000 new postponents added each week. It is a very serious and complex problem, people are dying because they can't get the treatment and hospital staff is getting burned out. While most of the beds reserved for the virus patients are unoccupied. The table below show that only 10% of the reserved beds are presently in use and operating rooms run on half-capacity. No doubt, most beds are empty due to the early lockdown, but OTOH that's also a tremendous waste. Clearing the backlog may take a year or longer.

https://www.tvo.org/video/getting-ontario-to-the-post-covid-hospital
 

I was watching TV today.  It seems that heart attacks have gone down 40% since the virus.  An astounding number.  However, they're seeing let's say 200 more deaths at home than the usual 35.  So they're thinking that people are dying of heart attacks at home rather than calling EMT and going to the hospital to get saved.  Maybe they're afraid of getting the coronavirus at the hospital.  So they stay home. 

[Alan Klein]

I was watching TV today.  It seems that heart attacks have gone down 40% since the virus.  An astounding number.  However, they're seeing let's say 200 more deaths at home than the usual 35.  So they're thinking that people are dying of heart attacks at home rather than calling EMT and going to the hospital to get saved.  Maybe they're afraid of getting the coronavirus at the hospital.  So they stay home. 

That's 200 a day and I think it was just in NYC.   If so, that could account for the raise in claimed coronavirus deaths the mayor made.  It could be those cases were not the virus but just people dying of natural heart attacks because they didn't go to the hospital. 

[LesPalenik]

I was watching TV today.  It seems that heart attacks have gone down 40% since the virus.  An astounding number.  However, they're seeing let's say 200 more deaths at home than the usual 35. So they're thinking that people are dying of heart attacks at home rather than calling EMT and going to the hospital to get saved.  Maybe they're afraid of getting the coronavirus at the hospital.  So they stay home.

I heard it too, most probably this is happening not only in New York, but everywhere else. Not only heart attacks, but also other causes, such as various untreated illnesses, i.e. cancers, bad joints that cause falls, alcohol damaged livers, etc. You mentioned that you lost weight and that's great, but I suspect many people staying at home and bingeing on pizza, ice cream, and sweets have gained weight what would lead also to an earlier death. Number of suicides may rise, too. Not to mention some women who feel compelled to kill their husbands.

[Paulo Bizarro]

What does a country do if the trend starts going back up?

Correction:

X-axis is number of days after 100th case.

If it goes back up steadily for days, in Portugal we revert to lockdown. Most countries in Europe are ready to do so. Germany, for example, says that if they have 50 new daily case per 100,000 people, will lockdown again.

Depending on the region where the infection rate goes up again, another possibility is to isolate only said region, city, or municipality.

Two plots from yesterday:

Top: number of deaths versus days after 10th death. Portugal is in black. USA still at top.

Bottom: 7 days average of number of cases versus number of days after 100th case. Portugal yesterday went up slightly, we had 480 new cases.

[JoeKitchen]

I heard it too, most probably this is happening not only in New York, but everywhere else. Not only heart attacks, but also other causes, such as various untreated illnesses, i.e. cancers, bad joints that cause falls, alcohol damaged livers, etc. You mentioned that you lost weight and that's great, but I suspect many people staying at home and bingeing on pizza, ice cream, and sweets have gained weight what would lead also to an earlier death. Number of suicides may rise, too. Not to mention some women who feel compelled to kill their husbands.

All stuff I was talking about a month ago. 

[William Walker]

Remember this guy? 

Coronavirus: Prof Neil Ferguson quits government role after 'undermining' lockdown

This is the guy that lead the Imperial College model that said as much as 2.2M, but at least 1.1M, Americans would die from C-19, which has been seriously debunked BTW.  As it turns out, I guess not even he sees much of a reason for this lock down anymore.  After testing positive for C-19, he decided it was okay to engage in a study session with his married lover. 

Real classy act, screwing over the world while screwing over a marriage.

It's ok if she is a porn star...that's allowed.

[JoeKitchen]

It's ok if she is a porn star...that's allowed.

That would make her a professional, so ...

[JoeKitchen]

Good read on the current state of affairs. 

Newt Gingrich: Coronavirus modeling – how our hysterical culture led to this reaction to pandemic

In essence, our current media culture of always looking for hysteria to push combined with way too much coddling of the younger generation and bad science (namely developing models without correct assumptions) created the biggest self inflicted economic wound in history that was largely not necessary. 

In past pandemics, we did not shut down the world and still allowed our economy to move forward even with greater loss of life. 

On top of that, Ferguson at Imperial College used the assumption that no human activity would change, which is something that is not supported by history.  Essentially, even though in past pandemics the government did not force us to do anything, we naturally adjusted our habits.  This was already happening here, which is supported by the fact that restaurant revenue dropped in the weeks prior to the NYC lockdown.  So this was a false assumption.  Additionally, Ferguson assumed 80% of the population would catch this.  Although we likely will never know what would have happened, only 28% of the population caught the Spanish Flu in 1918 before it died out.  Bare in mind there was a war going on with most people much more concerned about winning then "flattening the curve" leading to little social distancing. 

With only 28% of the world catching the Spanish Flu before it ultimately died out, maybe heard immunity here is much lower then the 60% figure that keeps on getting thrown around.

But the biggest damning part of the article is that Ferguson is commonly referred to by his colleagues as 'The Master of Disaster.’  This is because his models have always been wildly off on every single event he has looked at by orders of magnitude.  He should have been ignored just due to his past insanely erroneous predictions.   

[Craig Lamson]

It's ok if she is a porn star...that's allowed.

Given the women Trump has seen I just don't see him with  a skanky old porn star.  I would be very suprised if anything she said was true.

[BernardLanguillier]

On top of that, Ferguson at Imperial College used the assumption that no human activity would change, which is something that is not supported by history.  Essentially, even though in past pandemics the government did not force us to do anything, we naturally adjusted our habits.  This was already happening here, which is supported by the fact that restaurant revenue dropped in the weeks prior to the NYC lockdown.  So this was a false assumption.  Additionally, Ferguson assumed 80% of the population would catch this.  Although we likely will never know what would have happened, ...

I believe it's pretty certain that his forecast was very close.

We are today at 250,000 official fatalities, which most studies assess is underestimated by 50%, so closer to 500,000 and odds are that at least one third more is still to come. So it is going to end not that far from 1 million.

That is with a pretty strict lock down that studies indicate decreased the number of fatalities by a factor of 5 meaning up to 5 million would have died without a lock down.

His forecast was probably conservative.

Regards,
Bernard

[Craig Lamson]

I was born in 72, so no. I have numerous friends that served in Iraq 1, and my wife is in the 9/11 survivors medical support program.

Finding a way out of 'Nam was a very big thing for Americna youth at the time.  Unlike today with an all volunteer military,  once you turned 18 you were fair game for the govenment, as you know.

I turned 18 in 1970.  I can remember sitting with a group of my friends listening to the radio while they called out the draft lottery numbers.  I got a high number, 322, so I was safe but a few of my friends were not so lucky.  Some got deferments and one guy went.  The war was winding down at that point but it was still deadly.

I'm not saying the ways to get a deferment were always fair or honest.  Lots of people were looking for a way out of a war that was just shameful, and deadly.  People did what they did.  Sadly some had no way out but to serve.  It was not the finest hour for America on many fronts. 

Having lived it, I'll not fault anyone who did what they did to try and avoid going to that war.