State of the Pandemic

[canpakes]

The response mounted against COVID wasn’t done to eliminate any and all possibility of death from the virus. Rather, the response was intended to blunt the possibility of hospitals becoming overrun with patients.

Oh. Got it. Would have been easier then to just have people take a number and take turns going to the hospital if they were still alive.

"Not trying to keep people alive folks, that is not our intention, just trying to keep the hospitals at minimum occupancy. Thanks folks. Please take a number. Thank you folks."

Ah, another straw man.

Stating that the idea is not to “eliminate any and all possibility of death from the virus”, is not the same as saying that there will be no efforts made to keep folks alive. But, I suspect that you know that as well as I do. : D

Then, you ignored the second part of the statement, which your own reply supports. Keeping hospitals from becoming overrun means that a hospital has the resources to dispense to folks when they need it. Like, with ventilators. If, instead, a hospital was overrun with thousands of patients because no public mitigation efforts were made to slow the rate of infection within the general public, then there’s a greater chance that folks cannot get the care that they’ll need, and could die unnecessarily as a result.

One can also consider how any response would be to a pathogen that might have almost no chance of causing death directly if addressed in time, but that was significantly debilitating enough to folks infected by it to require a stay in the hospital. If such a pathogen had the ability to spread quickly through an unprotected population, then there might be consideration given to social distancing/masks/‘lockdowns’, in order to keep hospitals from being overrun … which would prevent unnecessary deaths overall.

Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?

[Res Ipsa]

One thing I'll say for Res Ipsa is that at least he's consistent with his views on the global scamdemic response. More intellectually dishonest political "scientists" like Veritas actually tried to blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown and stimulus dole.

Thanks. I appreciate the attaboy.

Whatever my political views, I’m mainly a pragmatist. It’sa feature of crises that people make mistakes. Worth the benefit of hindsight, one can find all kinds of mistakes. in my opinion, it’s important to identify those mistakes and learn what we can going forward.

Here’s an example: when the CDC designed its PCR test for COVID, it included a feature that other countries didn’t include: something that would identify other viruses with COVID-like symptoms. Nice idea on paper — if the COVID test was negative, the test could tell physicians what the virus was.

Unfortunately, although the additional feature worked in testing, it didn’t work properly. That set testing back in the US about a month. Had it worked, we’d be bragging about our superior test. In retrospect, I think there’s a lesson to be learned: If you need something done fast, stick with the KISS principle.

Although you keep using terms like lockdowns and shutdowns, we really never did either thing. The early lack of testing combined with the volume of asymptomatic cases allowed the virus to simply overrun parts of the country where it got a foothold early. It outran the ability of local public health entities to contact trace, which means we lost the ability to understand exactly how the disease was spreading. And we couldn’t contact trace fast enough to advise exposed people to quarantine before they became infected.

Not living in one of the areas that was overrun early on, I don’t think you appreciate the threat that COVID was to our healthcare system. The measures My state took to, basically, interrupt transmission of the disease by keeping people physically separated were not a mistake — it was that or mass panic when no one would have access to hospitals because they they were jammed with COVID patients.

But, again with hindsight, at the time we needed mitigation measures fast, West Virginia didn’t need to do anything other than pay attention and learn from what was happening in Washington and NYC and the other locations hit hard and early. So, the National 30 days to stop the spread campaign was a mistake. In hindsight, it gave the appearance of an overreaction in those areas where the disease was not yet a problem. Was that Trump’s fault? I doubt it, as there were lots of people involved in decision making. More importantly, I don’t care. It was a mistake to ignore differences in how the disease was affecting people in different areas in favor of a uniform national program.

What bothers me the most was the rapid politicizing of basic public health measures. Like any crisis, early on there’s a fire house of information, most of it contradictory. It’s not clear which information is important and which is not. What turned out to be not so important? Using running a fever as a screening device. What turned out to be important? Early anecdotal evidence of asymptomatic cases. But, in real time, nobody really knows which information turns out to be important.

So, cutting some slack to the people who are trying to figure out how to respond to a new, deadly disease, should be called for. But right out of the box, the disease was turned into a political weapon against China and the WHO. Several of our early mistakes were the failure to follow even the basic guidelines for respiratory viruses that WHO put out in January 2020. And that was rapidly followed by politicizing everything governments tried to do to respond to the pandemic. Just contrast the effects of our politicization of everything to how the Pandemic was approached in, say, South Korea.

So where are we now? Well, to make a healthy economy, we need producers and consumers and a reliable way to connect the two. We’ve got at least a million excess death in the US so far from COVID, and that’s a reduction of consumers. It’s easy to say “let grandma die,” until you start thinking about all the producers who depend on grandmas to consume their goods and services. And that’s just deaths. It doesn’t include the effects on producers of serious illness, including sick days and disability.

Continued circulation of COVID affects both sides of the equation, but not in a uniform manner. So, we can effect supply chain problems, shortages, and business closures if we simply accept chronic COVID. But that’s what we’re going to have as long as COVID is opportunistically used as a political cudgel instead of a public health issue.

[Binger]

Oh. Got it. Would have been easier then to just have people take a number and take turns going to the hospital if they were still alive.

"Not trying to keep people alive folks, that is not our intention, just trying to keep the hospitals at minimum occupancy. Thanks folks. Please take a number. Thank you folks."

Ah, another straw man.

Stating that the idea is not to “eliminate any and all possibility of death from the virus”, is not the same as saying that there will be no efforts made to keep folks alive. But, I suspect that you know that as well as I do. : D

Then, you ignored the second part of the statement, which your own reply supports. Keeping hospitals from becoming overrun means that a hospital has the resources to dispense to folks when they need it. Like, with ventilators. If, instead, a hospital was overrun with thousands of patients because no public mitigation efforts were made to slow the rate of infection within the general public, then there’s a greater chance that folks cannot get the care that they’ll need, and could die unnecessarily as a result.

One can also consider how any response would be to a pathogen that might have almost no chance of causing death directly if addressed in time, but that was significantly debilitating enough to folks infected by it to require a stay in the hospital. If such a pathogen had the ability to spread quickly through an unprotected population, then there might be consideration given to social distancing/masks/‘lockdowns’, in order to keep hospitals from being overrun … which would prevent unnecessary deaths overall.

Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?

Oh my gosh!

When you consider that this included masks that don't work and preventing people from using outdoor playgrounds which made no sense and closing elementary schools which made no sense and locking down people unnecessarily, well yeah no. It doesn't. Ya know what makes even less sense though? The reality that people think anyone that disagrees with them is just another 4chananon or something.

But hey. At least we have vote by mail, that makes perfect sense.

[canpakes]

Ah, another straw man.

Stating that the idea is not to “eliminate any and all possibility of death from the virus”, is not the same as saying that there will be no efforts made to keep folks alive. But, I suspect that you know that as well as I do. : D

Then, you ignored the second part of the statement, which your own reply supports. Keeping hospitals from becoming overrun means that a hospital has the resources to dispense to folks when they need it. Like, with ventilators. If, instead, a hospital was overrun with thousands of patients because no public mitigation efforts were made to slow the rate of infection within the general public, then there’s a greater chance that folks cannot get the care that they’ll need, and could die unnecessarily as a result.

One can also consider how any response would be to a pathogen that might have almost no chance of causing death directly if addressed in time, but that was significantly debilitating enough to folks infected by it to require a stay in the hospital. If such a pathogen had the ability to spread quickly through an unprotected population, then there might be consideration given to social distancing/masks/‘lockdowns’, in order to keep hospitals from being overrun … which would prevent unnecessary deaths overall.

Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?

Oh my gosh!

When you consider that this included masks that don't work and preventing people from using outdoor playgrounds which made no sense and closing elementary schools which made no sense and locking down people unnecessarily, well yeah no. It doesn't. Ya know what makes even less sense though? The reality that people think anyone that disagrees with them is just another 4chananon or something.

But hey. At least we have vote by mail, that makes perfect sense.

Good enough; you believe that there was no need to keep folks from being close enough to more easily infect each other, at a time when not a lot was known about the virus’s tendency to spread by air or otherwise. You believe there’d be no airborne threat from the virus.

Not sure why you’d push negative pressure rooms if there’s no danger from airborne transmission. : D

[Doctor Steuss]

But that 99.97% figure is likely nonsense because FOX can't tell the whole truth about anything to save their own lives.

Candace Owens said COVID had a 99.96% survival rate for people under 70. She was wrong. It was actually higher, at 99.97%.

How many people didn't eventually get infected with COVID?

I think that when looking at where things ended up overall, it's important for us to look at both where we were, and that it was a global pandemic.

In the earliest stages of the pandemic, Italy, which had the worst fatality rate as far as countries with modernized reporting and testing go, topped 14% for about 3 months. This indicated that while we weren’t looking at a MERS-CoV fun time (34% fatality), we were possibly looking at something with the potential of SARS-CoV (10% fatality). That was also showing that it had the potential to be about as fatal as untreated typhoid.

The initial fatality rate in Wuhan was over 20% (dropping to about 5% -- or, at least “reported” -- over the course of Jan/Feb).

During this same timeframe, the rate in the US was at over 4%, and peaked at over 6%.

When President Trump declared COVID a National Emergency (March 13), and instituted a travel ban, the fatality rate was around 2%. It was few days after this that President Trump urged Congress to expedite the distribution of “relief checks.” This push for the mass distribution of his welfare payouts to everyone was before any state had issued stay-at-home orders. The first state to do so was California (March 19).

I think it was also around this time that, The Lancet published a study (and a secondary commentary article) showing that “social controls” (which included lockdown measures, amongst a myriad of other things) would stall a secondary wave.

On an unrelated note (but sort of related to study on social controls:

A couple of weeks later (April 16) is when President Trump issued his guidelines to states for when they should start to reopen their economies. Amongst President Trump’s Phase One guidelines were to avoid settings of more than 10 people unless “appropriate distancing” or precautionary measures were in place. It also included encouraging “telework,” and closing common areas. People who were part of the vulnerable population should continue to “shelter in place.”

The vulnerable population shelter-in-place guideline continued throughout Phase Two. Amongst those in President Trump’s classification of people who should be sheltering in place were people with high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, and people who were overweight. So, basically, under a strict interpretation of the guidelines issued by President Trump, about 40% of America should continue to shelter-in-place until Phase Three.

To reach Phase Three, under the most perfect of scenarios, would take a state 42 days. To even move into Phase One would require at least 14 days of meeting criteria.

A few other items in President Trump’s Phase One guidelines:

- Schools that were currently closed should remain closed.
- Visits to senior living facilities and hospitals should be prohibited.
- Large venues (movie theaters, churches, sit-down dining) should only be allowed to operate if they can do so under “strict physical distancing
protocols.”
- Bars should remain closed.

Ironically, it was only one day after issuing these guidelines that President Trump began his “liberate” tweets berating states that were following the guidelines that he just issued.

[Res Ipsa]

The response mounted against COVID wasn’t done to eliminate any and all possibility of death from the virus. Rather, the response was intended to blunt the possibility of hospitals becoming overrun with patients.

Oh. Got it. Would have been easier then to just have people take a number and take turns going to the hospital if they were still alive.

"Not trying to keep people alive folks, that is not our intention, just trying to keep the hospitals at minimum occupancy. Thanks folks. Please take a number. Thank you folks."

LOL, it's hilarious to watch you yell straw man at others and then do this. No one, ever, has argued that hospitals should be kept at minimum occupancy (which would be "empty.") It's clear that you either ignored or have forgotten why mandatory mitigation measures were adopted in states.

[Res Ipsa]

I can’t recall who said that originally, but I followed both the WHO and CDC closely at the time. At the time, there was very little evidence that wearing masks would reduce transmission. It was well publicized that health care professionals lacked adequate quantities surgical masks and respirators, and there were legitimate concerns over the extent to which non fit tested respirators would protect members of the public and the risk that people would rely on masks at the expense of other mitigation measures.

Public making really became an issue when the CDC reacted to hospitals running out of respirators and surgical masks by advising health care providers to, as a last resort, use a bandana or other cloth barrier to provide at least some protection against droplet transmission. As there was no cloth or bandanna shortage, members of the public began making and using cloth masks. At the time, there was only one study that addressed cloth masks. It was during the Vietnam war in a hospital setting. And it observed that the cloth masks became a source of transmission as bacteria or virus particles collected on the surface of the fabric. So, there as a valid concern that the benefit of a cloth barrier could be outweighed by surface transmission from the mask to the hands.

I was paying close attention to all this because I’d signed up to be a census enumerator in early 2020, and I was trying to figure out the best strategy for going door to door to hundreds of stranger’s homes without becoming infected or bringing the disease home.

Based on my own review of the very sparse literature on making by the public, I initially avoided using cloth masks. But as researchers began to seriously investigate the issue, I was convinced that wearing a cloth mask would provide a net reduction in my chances of becoming infected, especially if I handled it carefully and practiced good hand hygiene.

All this is to say that the notion that the CDC flat out lied about masks dramatically oversimplifies what was actually going on. There was very little scientific evidence addressing use of masks by the general public and legitimate concerns that general masking could actually increase the overall risk of exposure. As actual research progressed, advice changed.

It would have been helpful if *any* of that nuance had been communicated to the American public in March of 2020.

Instead we had simplistic tweets from our top health leaders that were deleted once they became embarrassing in hindsight.

Did you actually pay attention to all the information that the CDC and others were putting out? Or did you just read a couple tweets?

[Binger]

Oh my gosh!

When you consider that this included masks that don't work and preventing people from using outdoor playgrounds which made no sense and closing elementary schools which made no sense and locking down people unnecessarily, well yeah no. It doesn't. Ya know what makes even less sense though? The reality that people think anyone that disagrees with them is just another 4chananon or something.

But hey. At least we have vote by mail, that makes perfect sense.

Good enough; you believe that there was no need to keep folks from being close enough to more easily infect each other, at a time when not a lot was known about the virus’s tendency to spread by air or otherwise. You believe there’d be no airborne threat from the virus.

Not sure why you’d push negative pressure rooms if there’s no danger from airborne transmission. : D

That is not what I believe.
Airborne transmission is real.

[Binger]

Oh. Got it. Would have been easier then to just have people take a number and take turns going to the hospital if they were still alive.

"Not trying to keep people alive folks, that is not our intention, just trying to keep the hospitals at minimum occupancy. Thanks folks. Please take a number. Thank you folks."

LOL, it's hilarious to watch you yell straw man at others and then do this. No one, ever, has argued that hospitals should be kept at minimum occupancy (which would be "empty.") It's clear that you either ignored or have forgotten why mandatory mitigation measures were adopted in states.

Dear Res, please report to the man behind the curtain, just a wee bit further along on that yellow brick road. Once there, you will receive your brain. Mention promo code BINGA for some humor and sarcasm.

There is a style difference and also a difference in intellectual content between a sarcastic fictional quote and an asinine assumption and accusation of what another believes, even when that belief was never stated or expressed. I know that is tough for you to understand. You seem smart though. Very smart.

[Res Ipsa]

What’s silly is your claim that the effects of ventilation on the spread of a respiratory virus were ignored. They weren’t. But the obvious problems with retrofitting schools and office buildings and restaurants and other crowded indoor spaces as hospitals are being overrun with COVID are obvious.

I gave a specific example. Dining in a tent, for example, was stupid and ignored all the basic parameters for air balancing and infection control. The same can be said about using tents for triage, registration, etc. The policies and practices of using tents without air handlers rather than buildings with air handlers was egregious and nothing but virtue signaling and inconvenient. It has nothing to do with retrofitting, but nice straw man. You crushed him.

Sure buildings have ventilation standards. But what is required in a given building to reduce COVID transmission by 50% or 80% or 90%? Show me the research, the math, and the cost. Then figure out how to pay for it.

Given the circumstances at the time, reducing the density of people in buildings was feasible. Hopefully, we can dredge up the political will to make intrastate changes that will help us out with what has become chronic, year round disease.

Look, another straw man from Res. Reducing COVID transmission by 90%, eh? The solution for that is obvious, shut down the country until all the people have OD'd on fentanyl and whiskey.

Alternative to your suggestion, consider dredging up the political will to tell the ding dongs that came up with tents and cloth masks and vaccines that don't work to pound sand. That could help us out too.

There are practical ways to proceed, and managing buildings by executive order and social justice warrioring from the CDC is not a practical way. And telling the social justice warriors to stick to CHAZ and CHOP and burning down Minneapolis and Portland while the rest of us figure out how to keep the air conditioning on and the fumehoods working is also practical. That would be cooperative both intrastate and interstate.

CHAZ and CHOP? I see we've moved on to the full-on political ranting.

So, despite all your bluster, you still can't provide evidence that masking doesn't reduce transmission of the virus but that we could have done something something something...ventilation that could feasibly have reduced transmission -- not even 50%. Not only that, have you conveniently forgotten that super spreading events occurred outdoors? That's more black and white thinking: the virus is airborne, therefore i'm safe outside.