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Yeah what Marxist Artist said. Really hoping that things work out ok for you Andrew1975. I know a few people in your predicament and my heart really goes out to all you small business owners.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I’m starting to think about all the self employed and small businesses. I’ve a few friends in the restaurant business, and we’ve got some fantastic places around here that I would be genuinely absolutely gutted to see this virus kill them off.

Now's the time to, if you've got cash to spare, to get gift cards in place of going out.

Stay home, but if you were planning to go out sometime during the week or weekend, get a giftcard to your favorite places.

In a weird twist to this, it's the opposite where I'm at. We're a shore town and everything's spun down for the winter and early spring. But we've got people coming from all over to stay at their shore homes. So we don't have the capacity to handle them, especially our single, small hospital.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
You’ve mentioned a lot of things. That doesn’t mean we’re listening to you over what’s going on in the entire world around us. Look, you’ve studied google. You’ve read Wikipedia. We got it. That doesn’t make you an expert. Say whatever you want, but most of us are smart enough to ignore you and listen to the real experts. Scientists, doctors, the CDC, and even the governments who are working on shutting down the world. You’re welcome to spew whatever you want on here. Just don’t expect any of us to say anything more than “that’s nice”...

Believe whatever you want to believe. I'm not trying to pass myself off as an "expert", but there is a very big gulf between an informed opinion and an ignorant one. I've backed up everything I've said with either links, or enough stats and information that you could easily fact check any story or claim that I've shared. If you want to counter ANYTHING I've said, you have the ammunition.

But you aren't addressing anything I've said. You just try to sweep my posts under the rug because they are inconvenient to you. You aren't saying what I'm wrong about or why. You are just claiming that I am wrong because I am not an expert. And if you want to defer to expert opinions, absolutely do so. But I've seen a lot of people misquote the WHO and escalate the perceived danger surrounding this virus well beyond what even the WHO is saying. Suggesting that you will listen to authority and then misquoting and misrepresenting it doesn't reflect poorly on MY position.

And for the record, I'm not (generally) just posting the top google result as my evidence. In early 2018, my family went through a series of medical "adventures" that left me with a seriously skeptical and cynical opinion of modern medicine. Since then, I've read dozens of books, watched hundreds of presentations and talks, and read who knows how many actual studies as I followed up on what I've read. A lot of the stories and facts that I have brought up have been verified through multiple different sources, and I have a rather sizeable list of resources to draw on when making posts. Making these long posts filled with facts and figures is easy for me because I'm not just discovering all this stuff for the first time.

If anything, of all the people that have posted in this thread, my posts have been considerably ahead of the curve in actual details, quotes, and links. By all means, dispute them! I'd love a different (informed) opinion to strengthen my research against. It gives me a direction to research even more, and helps me further learn and educate myself about this subject. But "har har, you use google" is hardly the fitting defense of a reasonable mind.

 Sqorgar wrote:
Precautions, sure. Absolutely. But reasonable ones. Not draconian ones.

For reasonable precautions to work, the population must respond reasonably.

Instead, humanity insists on remaining human and responding UNreasonably. Thus, we get responses everywhere from hording TP and locking oneself in the bathroom for months on end to people completely ignoring the problem and spreading the virus in a completely uncontrolled and irresponsible manner.

Sometimes draconian is the only way to get the results you need. Why? Consider how stupid the average person can be, and then realize that half the people are actually stupider than that!

 Sqorgar wrote:


It is important to note that the WHO has been wrong every single time they have predicted a doomsday epidemic, by a LOT. And in the past, this has only cost taxpayers millions or even just billions or dollars. But the effect of this panic will be so, so much worse - it has already cost trillions and we are just getting started - and the WHO's track record on being right about worldwide epidemics is pretty much 0%.

I would rather lose a few hundred million dollars than be wrong and lose a few hundred million lives.

Also note that because we've had health scares before that never came to anything for the majority of people; many people don't see the "need" for special measures. Especially as its a disease likened to "a bad cold/flu". If it was spewing blood from your eyeballs and screaming in pain and almost guaranteed death people would react differently.

But its not.

Sometimes draconian measures are needed to make people wake up and take things seriously.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
Precautions, sure. Absolutely. But reasonable ones. Not draconian ones.

For reasonable precautions to work, the population must respond reasonably.

Instead, humanity insists on remaining human and responding UNreasonably. Thus, we get responses everywhere from hording TP and locking oneself in the bathroom for months on end to people completely ignoring the problem and spreading the virus in a completely uncontrolled and irresponsible manner.

Sometimes draconian is the only way to get the results you need. Why? Consider how stupid the average person can be, and then realize that half the people are actually stupider than that!

Here is a good one for you. Myself and my cooworkers *might* have been exposed. However, our superiors are "waiting" for test results to come in before declaring we cannot work and must go home. It will be two days before we know for sure if the possible exposure is COVID-19 or something else like Influenza A/B. So, here I am, sitting at work twiddling my thumbs and mehing away.

I will just add that Medical services for profit are a something our civilization needs to overcome.
Greece: 400 active cases, still only 5 dead, villages in lockdown, emergency sms sent to all by the Government to "stay at home".
Concurrent to other EU states a series of measures to alleviate the business and workers have been announced.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
My parents are in their late 80's live on their own (they are not feeble, can still drive and go to the store and such) and are very lonely right now, they also have no idea when they can see their children or grandchildren again......and essentially until there is a vaccine (which looks pretty far off) they will have to stay secluded. If i had contracted the coronavirus at least I could visit them in a few weeks after I recovered and was not a carrier anymore.

The coronavirus should naturally drop off as it gets warmer. Coronaviruses, in general, are extremely seasonal, with the highest rates during the first three months of the year, then dropping sharply afterwards to basically nothing during the summer. By the end of April, or even earlier, seclusion will probably not be necessary. The need of a vaccine is in case this virus returns next year.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
You’ve mentioned a lot of things. That doesn’t mean we’re listening to you over what’s going on in the entire world around us. Look, you’ve studied google. You’ve read Wikipedia. We got it. That doesn’t make you an expert. Say whatever you want, but most of us are smart enough to ignore you and listen to the real experts. Scientists, doctors, the CDC, and even the governments who are working on shutting down the world. You’re welcome to spew whatever you want on here. Just don’t expect any of us to say anything more than “that’s nice”...

Believe whatever you want to believe. I'm not trying to pass myself off as an "expert", but there is a very big gulf between an informed opinion and an ignorant one. I've backed up everything I've said with either links, or enough stats and information that you could easily fact check any story or claim that I've shared. If you want to counter ANYTHING I've said, you have the ammunition.

But you aren't addressing anything I've said. You just try to sweep my posts under the rug because they are inconvenient to you. You aren't saying what I'm wrong about or why. You are just claiming that I am wrong because I am not an expert. And if you want to defer to expert opinions, absolutely do so. But I've seen a lot of people misquote the WHO and escalate the perceived danger surrounding this virus well beyond what even the WHO is saying. Suggesting that you will listen to authority and then misquoting and misrepresenting it doesn't reflect poorly on MY position.

And for the record, I'm not (generally) just posting the top google result as my evidence. In early 2018, my family went through a series of medical "adventures" that left me with a seriously skeptical and cynical opinion of modern medicine. Since then, I've read dozens of books, watched hundreds of presentations and talks, and read who knows how many actual studies as I followed up on what I've read. A lot of the stories and facts that I have brought up have been verified through multiple different sources, and I have a rather sizeable list of resources to draw on when making posts. Making these long posts filled with facts and figures is easy for me because I'm not just discovering all this stuff for the first time.

If anything, of all the people that have posted in this thread, my posts have been considerably ahead of the curve in actual details, quotes, and links. By all means, dispute them! I'd love a different (informed) opinion to strengthen my research against. It gives me a direction to research even more, and helps me further learn and educate myself about this subject. But "har har, you use google" is hardly the fitting defense of a reasonable mind.

Except you keep saying that actual experts are wrong and you're right, every time someone's come up with numbers that disprove yours you ignore them, because of a personal anecdotal experience and "I've read stuff".
Yeah, sorry, no one's gonna take that seriously.

 Togusa wrote:
I would rather lose a few hundred million dollars than be wrong and lose a few hundred million lives.

Where are you getting a few hundred million lives from? Even the Gates Foundation has only predicted 65 million lives lost in their simulations. The actual death toll will likely be measured in thousands, not millions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Except you keep saying that actual experts are wrong and you're right, every time someone's come up with numbers that disprove yours you ignore them, because of a personal anecdotal experience and "I've read stuff".
Yeah, sorry, no one's gonna take that seriously.

I've said their PREDICTIONS were wrong, and I've explained why (not enough testing has led to an extremely biased sample size, simulations and models don't factor in actual real world conditions that could affect the spread of the virus, and their predictions have been hilariously wrong in the past - remember the bird flu pandemic that only killed 150 people?)

It's like this. Scientists predicted that by the year 2020, global temperatures will have risen 6 degrees, 8 million people will have died due to global warming, and the earth will have used up its supply of oil. It's 2020 now, the temperatures have risen by 1 degree and nowhere near 8 million people have died, and gas is still readily available. Does that mean I disagree with man made global warming? Absolutely not. I think it is a serious problem and that working towards sustainable energy is probably the most important thing we could be doing as a species. But the predictions are wrong. They are always wrong. Because they are just predictions that are built on incomplete or overly simplistic models. We should not act on behalf of their urgency and truthiness without something more substantial to go on.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
I would rather lose a few hundred million dollars than be wrong and lose a few hundred million lives.

Where are you getting a few hundred million lives from? Even the Gates Foundation has only predicted 65 million lives lost in their simulations.

Only 65 million phew that's ok then good bye France and Luxembourg.

 ScarletRose wrote:
You mean... governments prepare for things before they actually happen? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

Which reminds me... Taiwan reacted to CoVid early January, and has only *one* CoVid-related death. It's an island, but everyone's been tested, etc. etc. Of course, you could could say they *weren't* prepared for SARS back in 2003.
Second article discusses how China has successfully shut out Taiwan from global health discussions, including membership in WHO.

https://news.yahoo.com/taiwan-only-47-coronavirus-cases-164918101.html
https://news.yahoo.com/taiwan-shut-global-health-discussions-154910685.html

*****

Anyone have more info on this one?

Possible 17-year old South Korean death from CoVid. : "A 17-year-old boy who was showing signs of pneumonia died, and health officials entered a post-corona19 sample. ... There were no underlying diseases. ... Group A was confirmed to have undergone X-ray examination of various parts of the lungs that turned white. ... Group A was transferred to Yeungnam University Hospital and conducted genetic tests four times, but it showed a negative response, but one gene test showed positive results. : Korean site: https://www.nocutnews.co.kr/news/5311057

The article doesn't mention causes of death for a patient who seems healthy. The only one I've read about is the cytokine storm, in which the body overreacts with its immunology system. : "Critically important studies emerging from China suggest that for many patients who die of Covid-19, it may be their own immune system, rather than the virus itself, that deals the fatal blow. This is called a cytokine storm." https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176783/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-china-treatment-cytokine-storm-syndrome

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Andrew1975 wrote:
My parents are in their late 80's live on their own (they are not feeble, can still drive and go to the store and such) and are very lonely right now, they also have no idea when they can see their children or grandchildren again......and essentially until there is a vaccine (which looks pretty far off) they will have to stay secluded. If i had contracted the coronavirus at least I could visit them in a few weeks after I recovered and was not a carrier anymore.

The coronavirus should naturally drop off as it gets warmer. Coronaviruses, in general, are extremely seasonal, with the highest rates during the first three months of the year, then dropping sharply afterwards to basically nothing during the summer. By the end of April, or even earlier, seclusion will probably not be necessary. The need of a vaccine is in case this virus returns next year.

There is Zero evidence of that happening.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
I would rather lose a few hundred million dollars than be wrong and lose a few hundred million lives.

Where are you getting a few hundred million lives from? Even the Gates Foundation has only predicted 65 million lives lost in their simulations. The actual death toll will likely be measured in thousands, not millions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Except you keep saying that actual experts are wrong and you're right, every time someone's come up with numbers that disprove yours you ignore them, because of a personal anecdotal experience and "I've read stuff".
Yeah, sorry, no one's gonna take that seriously.

I've said their PREDICTIONS were wrong, and I've explained why (not enough testing has led to an extremely biased sample size, simulations and models don't factor in actual real world conditions that could affect the spread of the virus, and their predictions have been hilariously wrong in the past - remember the bird flu pandemic that only killed 150 people?)

It's like this. Scientists predicted that by the year 2020, global temperatures will have risen 6 degrees, 8 million people will have died due to global warming, and the earth will have used up its supply of oil. It's 2020 now, the temperatures have risen by 1 degree and nowhere near 8 million people have died, and gas is still readily available. Does that mean I disagree with man made global warming? Absolutely not. I think it is a serious problem and that working towards sustainable energy is probably the most important thing we could be doing as a species. But the predictions are wrong. They are always wrong. Because they are just predictions that are built on incomplete or overly simplistic models. We should not act on behalf of their urgency and truthiness without something more substantial to go on.

You're nitpicking, and you know it. 100 million or 1 million, doesn't matter. I'd rather lose the money than lives.

Somehow people got it stuck in their heads that younger adults are borderline immune because most of the fatalities were from the elderly in China. And it does seem that the risk is lower, but some ARE getting seriously ill, and many others may be spreading it.

Even our former denier-in-chief is warning younger adults to fething play ball now.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/young-people-coronavirus-caution-white-house/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw

Worth a watch.

 Togusa wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw

Worth a watch.

I second this and glad someone else is posting.
Think whatever you want about JR but the guy he is interviewing is legit. You can read up on his credentials.

All in all resonable advice and certainly not a doomsday prophecy for covid but a good reality check.

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

"The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions."

"More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease."

"The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions."

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gorgon wrote:
Somehow people got it stuck in their heads that younger adults are borderline immune because most of the fatalities were from the elderly in China. And it does seem that the risk is lower, but some ARE getting seriously ill, and many others may be spreading it.

Even our former denier-in-chief is warning younger adults to fething play ball now.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/young-people-coronavirus-caution-white-house/index.html

Yeah. Just focusing on elderly ignoring the younger people dying and hospitalizing. Yeah just half the hospitalized are non elderly. No problem whatsoever. Especially when once health service capacity runs over those hospitalized younger people are going to be in trouble.

 Sqorgar wrote:
99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

"The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions."

"More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease."

"The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions."

Edit: My intent was not to ask this person to stop posting all together. I apologize and am removing my post. My only hope is that we can stop things from escalating into further arguing and eventual thread lock.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I’m starting to think about all the self employed and small businesses. I’ve a few friends in the restaurant business, and we’ve got some fantastic places around here that I would be genuinely absolutely gutted to see this virus kill them off.

Do you think they or another service do delivery for these local places? We have a few places on our end that use a third-party delivery service to get orders to self-isolating families. From what I understand, the deliveries are a regular thing to help compensate for the lack of people on regular working days. It's keeping business moving to some extent while folks are in self-isolation. A local bookstore on our end is doing delivery as well, albeit without using the third-party service.

Edit:

IronWarLeg is a standup chap.

 Scrabb wrote:

IronWarLeg wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

"The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions."

"More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease."

"The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions."

Look, we get it. You think its blown out of proportion and not a big deal and everyone is over reacting. We get it.

You are not going to convince anyone here that you are right any more than they are going to convince you.

Please stop before you get the thread locked, shouldn't be too much to ask. We know your feelings on the subject.

This is utterly bizarre to me. The man is posting results of study. You picked the wrong post to attempt to bully him out of the thread.

I mean, really? Good news is good news and "no, 100 million deaths isn't guaranteed" is good for people to hear. Not bad.

Snip.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Anyone have information about the actual pandemic to share, or are we stuck on faux-politics?

I heard on Radio 4, which is nearly the voice of God for seriously minded British people, that China is estimated to have saved 30,000 deaths by switching off their factories. So with 8,000 dead of Covid-19, they are actually gaining.

Of course it ignores the economic impact.

This thread really highlights now there can and are many people who simply not particularly well versed in the philosophy of science, the nature of statistical analysis, the limits of inductive reasoning, among numerous other things, like scale effects, second-order effects and so on. And granted, all of that stuff is not easy, not intuitive, and not something there is really much of a point of many people to learn. That being said, even some people in the medical, or scientific fields might not have the best grasp on them either, but they are likely to be at least marginally better informed about them, on average.

But all that is partly built in the manner in which we practice science. It is not perfect. It does not ever grant certainty. But, if you think that common sense, intuition or extremely limited research grants one the same confidence interval as large data sets, cleverly applied, well, you are really not likely to have much of a case, in general. To take a stance that something is a binary, as in, either is certain, or is totally unknown, is just a false dichotomy. Which is why, to think that since no one can be certain of the exact numbers at any given moment, that a common sense, under-informed (because every single person in the thread is under-informed, me certainly included) is just as useful as the stance of those who have access to more data, more robust manners of interpretation and knowledge to apply to that data, is, frankly, pretty brazen and likely to do far more harm than good.

Now, unfortunately, I am not the person well informed enough to explain to you the philosophy of science, or the entire nature of inductive reasoning. But now is really not the time to be playing around with overly skeptical stances and claims when people's lives are very much at risk because action must be taken now, before it is too late, not once we have something like "perfect information" and it would, in fact, be far to late to actually do anything...

But let me get off my soapbox,

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Anyone have information about the actual pandemic to share, or are we stuck on faux-politics?

I heard on Radio 4, which is nearly the voice of God for seriously minded British people, that China is estimated to have saved 30,000 deaths by switching off their factories. So with 8,000 dead of Covid-19, they are actually gaining.

Of course it ignores the economic impact.

I was blown away when they showed the images of the CO2 emission reduction after the factories had closed.

On a similar note, the pictures of the canals in Venice now that they aren't being used is pretty amazing as well. They are clear and have fishes and swans now.

For a feel good video, check out the penguins from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, they are freaking adorable and appear to be full of wonder lol

Yeah, I read the build up. That's why I was shocked you waited until he retreated to quoting the experts and the facts and the latest information and literally nothing else to tell him to stop.

Because you absolutely told him to stop. Apparently he not only is not allowed to post skepticism or criticism, but even data from the health officials. Since, again, that is literally all he did when you told him to stop.

 Togusa wrote:
I would rather lose a few hundred million dollars than be wrong and lose a few hundred million lives.

Yes. Regardless of the specifics on the numbers, the economy will recover, and usually pretty fast.

Losing a great deal of lives (with a great many more living with the fallout, such as scarred lungs) isn't going to be as easy to spring back from.

 Scrabb wrote:
You picked the wrong post to attempt to bully him out of the thread.

I have pretty abjectly disagreed with him, but I do agree we should not be attempting to suppress his opinion. For all we know, he's going to turn out to be totally right in 3 months. I mean, I hope he is! The alternatives are horrifying.

IronWarLeg wrote:
For a feel good video, check out the penguins from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, they are freaking adorable and appear to be full of wonder lol

My favorite so far was the penguins going down the stairs on the way to explore (not the Shedd, but similar).

 Sqorgar wrote:
99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

"The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions."

"More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease."

"The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions."

The issue here being that a huge number of people have such conditions, it seems that people in perfect health are relatively robust, but almost any pre-existing condition appears to monstrously magnify the mortality rate out of all proportion to more common seasonal viruses. Italy just saw its highest single day death count of almost 500 people, increasing their total Covid19 deaths by 1/6th in a day.

Sporogar seems to ignore the fact that even though the 2018 flu season was ‘way worse’, countries weren’t devastating their own economies and shutting their borders because of it, and yet, here we are.

Yeah. That 2018 flu was way worse. As was SARS. Or MERS. Or any previous illness that has spread. I’m being sarcastic.
At this point, if anyone doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation, they never will.

Stay safe. And don’t hoard the TP.