What's your chance of hospitalization if infected with COVID?

[Some Schmo]

[Gunnar]

I had a black patient yesterday who lost several months of work and wages because the stupid PCR test kept coming back positive even though he as well was completely asymptomatic.

You do realize that being asymptomatic means that you can spread it to others, and that's the concern. If you could be symptomatic but not contagious, then nobody would care if you chose to work while you were sick. Are you sure you went to medical school?

The scam was the home foreclosures, exhausted savings, lost wages, and repossessed vehicles due to a virus that had a 99.96% survival rate

Consider joining us in the real world for a moment. The virus doesn't have a 99.96% survival rate. But seriously, Ajax, listen to yourself. Do you really think the political agenda of the Democratic party is to foreclose homes, exhaust savings, and take away cars?

we're going to have more viruses arise and the globalists oligarchs will use them to their advantage once again

You're right that we'll have more viruses. That's been known for years. For years, people who aren't complete morons have been trying to do something about it. Probably not enough -- but something:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05 ... c-response

Complete morons beginning with your president, and continuing down the chain to include you, don't want to listen, and don't want to spend tax payer money to solve the problem. You want to ignore the problem and pretend it isn't happening. Do you really think that creating a program to stop a problem before it leads to things like shutdowns is "oligarchs using the virus to their advantage?"

Are cops using speeders to their advantage every time they issue a ticket?

Is every General using a war to his advantage?

Are you using eye infections to your advantage?

Are city workers using the need for a bridge to their advantage?

Recall how much you hate and distrust China. Your president, as I've told you before, gutted the program that was in part built because we know we can't trust China, and we know that high populations and human-animal interactions makes for a pandemic creation machine. Do you really think that Bill and Warren are so far gone, that they wake up grinning at the prospect of guaranteed pandemics from worldwide chicken farming? "Warren, are you as excited as I am about this?! The world is going to need my foundation!"

Anytime a solution is created for a problem, somebody by default is benefiting from the problem in some way. How could it be any other way?
The personal benefit to Obama or Bill Gates, or whoever, for having a system in place to protect us from viruses so that we can avoid shutdowns is pretty minimal when compared to other things they can benefit from.

If you want to ensure shutdowns and a ruined economy, then do it your way. Don't spend tax money on a pandemic response system and let the free market take care of it. Translation: as wave after wave of pandemics hit, each with unique viruses that require unique antibodies, do nothing. Let our immune systems and vitamin D from the sun cure us. After the first 2% of us are taken out, Covid will have adapted to take out even more, and it's anybody's guess where that will end. But, as you point out, while the next wave of Covid strains are pushing to 3 and 4%, then another pandemic with an unrelated virus could explode and take out even more. Shutdowns are unavoidable. Places that didn't want to shutdown, have had to shutdown of their own accord because so many of their employees got sick. But by golly, don't create a task force to deal with the problem, that will cost tax payer dollars! And worse, the leaders of the task force will get paid, and thereby benefit from the problem.

Thanks for your masterful demolition of Ajax's arguments! I am in awe!

And the importance of that Vanity Fair article you linked to cannot be overemphasized!

[Gunnar]

That describes to a T how Trumpist Republican conservatives are behaving. It is hardly even hyperbolic! As I have remarked before, willingness to double and triple down on lies and baseless conspiracy theories has now become the primary litmus test for determining loyalty to the Republican party!

[DrW]

Thanks, SS.
This isn't so much a cartoon as it is (sadly) 21st century history.

[Gunnar]

Thanks, SS.
This isn't so much a cartoon as it is (sadly) 21st century history.

Yup!

[Brack]

I Googled COVID survival rate and came away with this.

We’ve written before about how European estimates (i.e. estimates in countries with similar age profiles and healthcare quality as the UK) put the fatality rate at somewhere between 0.5% and 1%, meaning the “survival rate” could be somewhere between 99% and 99.5%, but not as high as 99.8%.

https://fullfact.org/online/covid-19-su ... -less-998/

I would assume it is about the same for the U.S. here.

[ajax18]

I Googled COVID survival rate and came away with this.

We’ve written before about how European estimates (i.e. estimates in countries with similar age profiles and healthcare quality as the UK) put the fatality rate at somewhere between 0.5% and 1%, meaning the “survival rate” could be somewhere between 99% and 99.5%, but not as high as 99.8%.

https://fullfact.org/online/covid-19-su ... -less-998/

I would assume it is about the same for the U.S. here.

What percentage of people have been left permanently disabled and unable to hold a job because of it? And I'm not referring to the enormous number of people who game the disability system by working for pay under the table so they can still collect their SSI check.

[Gunnar]

I Googled COVID survival rate and came away with this.

https://fullfact.org/online/covid-19-su ... -less-998/

I would assume it is about the same for the U.S. here.

What percentage of people have been left permanently disabled and unable to hold a job because of it? And I'm not referring to the enormous number of people who game the disability system by working for pay under the table so they can still collect their SSI check.

The important point is that the existence of people left permanently impaired by Covid is well documented, whatever the actual percentage is. Our mutual friend Chap, for example, knows this first hand because of one of his close relatives so afflicted that he told us about.