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 Vaktathi wrote:
This is a hell of a goalpost move, as now you're talking about an individual's past, not the organization or its present actions or utility. Lots of international organizations get eyebrow raising appointees, it's the nature of the game and it's fair to call them out when it happens, but that's not the same thing as the organization itself. That's not to say WHO is perfect or beyond criticism, but you're going way off the deep end here.

Saying that I feel comfortable calling the WHO a terrorist organization because they are run by a literal terrorist and is used to support literal terrorists is not a goal post move. But sure, let's just ignore that hanging chad for a moment. I said that the purpose of the WHO was to use fear to increase the UN's control over world governments, as per Agenda 2030. Did you see where the UN wants control of 10% of the WORLD'S GDP to fight COVID-19? The UN only wants about $100 billion for themselves, but they want a fund - that they control - of multiple trillions of dollars in order to fight the economic devastation brought on by.... the WHO's recommended policies for fighting COVID-19... and look, they even reference Agenda 2030 as their justification. Who exactly elected the UN to control that much money? Hopefully not the guys who vetted Tedros for head of WHO.

Um...you do realize that this was entirely a domestic political decision made to deflect blame by a dude who literally said he took responsibility for nothing while simultaneously claiming absolute power and authority that the US constitution clearly did not grant, and who is at least as corrupt as anyone you're referring to? The same dude who actively promoted a quack cure, and thought that injecting disinfectant and shining bright lights inside the body were things being actively medically investigated? Literally nobody buys that the US stopped funding WHO for any of these reason, there's a reason nobody else on the entire planet has followed suit.

I'm no Trump fan, but I'm absolutely in favor of his decision to stop funding the WHO. It was probably this decision, ill advised as you seem to think it is, which stopped the UN's plan for usurping control from world governments under the pretense of a worldwide crisis that doesn't exist. Personally, I think WHO is more in the pockets of Big Pharma than China, but I'll take a win where I can get it.

Just about everything I said back at the beginning of this thread is being born out by study after study, and while people are still scared of this thing, they are much, much less scared, leading to news articles that are starting to admit that the IFR is not 3%-6%

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#country-by-country-data-on-the-pandemic

World case fatality rate with data available as of today is ~7% and ~6% in the US.

Yeah, see, the IFR (infection fatality rate) is different than CFR (or case fatality rate). The case fatality rate is amount of death per confirmed cases - but there are many, many more infections out there than we have tested for. From antibody tests done in various places around the world, we can see that there are potentially millions of people who have had COVID-19 already that are not included in the CFR. Here's a NYT article about the antibody tests done in NY that showed about 21% of people had COVID-19 antibodies. They estimate a potential 2.7 million people have successfully had the virus in NY alone, which would increase the number of world cases by about 67%. And that's just one state.

There's also evidence that COVID-19 has been around since before they said it started. They've gone back and tested blood samples of people who were sick in January and February, which tested positive for the virus. I'm not sure which test they used, but there is evidence that we've been fighting this thing for a while.

The PCR tests, which they've been using up until now to test for the coronavirus are kind of gak tests. Even the creator of the test says it shouldn't be used to isolate individual viruses. See, what they do is that they take the genetic material and run it through a process kind of like an amplifier. And then they do it again. And again. About 40 times (which is the upper limit for what the test considers usable data). But if you amplify something repeatedly like that, you end up amplifying the noise too. Ever amplified music too loud and you start to get buzzing? Same principle. The PCR tests are essentially picking up insubstantial noise and using that to test for the presence of... well, not even the virus. The PCR tests are actually looking for genetic material that is shed by your cells when infected. But other things can also cause the cells to shed this material (like stress), so you can't even say that you've found the virus itself. Long story short, the PCR tests are essentially worthless. One African country said that a fruit and a goat tested positive for COVID-19. Not sure how reliable they are, but I've also heard that pets and even tigers have also tested positive. The antibody tests are more reliable, and they say the infection is WAY more widespread than we already knew - and that's a good thing.

There's also the problem that the way we are treating this thing may actually be increasing the death rate. People who go on ventilators have about an 80% chance of dying. They are actually really bad for you, as a general rule, and many doctors won't use them. But it turns out that ventilators are even needed since even though the blood oxygen levels are low on patients, they are still about to talk and do activities - the problem isn't that their lungs can't breathe, but that the oxygen isn't bonding to the hemoglobin very well. So rather than using ventilators, they are now suggesting that patients just be given oxygen and rested horizontally on their stomachs. Ventilators may have been more dangerous than the virus.

Factoring all this stuff in, I've seen some (world renowned) epidemiologists suggest the IFR could be as low as 0.02%.

So, separately from a lot of the above discussion - I was surprised there hasn't been more coverage of the fact that France went back and tested samples that came up negative for pneumonia in December, and one of them came up positive for COVID-19:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/coronavirus-french-doctors-find-man-who-may-be-europe-s-n1202701

As the article says, that's a month before their first official case, and 2 1/2 months before they went into lockdown.

It's possible that a lot more people have had the virus than we have any idea of. I don't think this changes all that much in that social distancing (imo) should continue regardless, even while we open up the economy as much as can be safely done.

But it does mean that the world had very little chance of responding correctly to this outbreak, when it was publicly spreading so long before it had even been acknowledged as a threat. I am wondering if other countries will also find they had much earlier community spread than originally thought, and this would also explain why it was in such a crisis state so suddenly - the curve was already ramping up exponentially before anyone knew what was happening.

I expect some British users will be familiar with BBC Click, it's a tech show that airs on the BBC news channel and then occasionally hops over on to BBC1 by dint of the fact that the BBC uses their 24 hour news channel to pad out their overnight schedule.

Anyway, the current episode features an interview with an Icelandic geneticist that had some interesting things to say, Iceland having a very unique record of their population's ancestry means they also have an unusually high insight into the genetic profile.

A couple of things stand out.
- They're increasingly certain that "asymptomatic" is incorrect, and believe that anyone who contracts it will develop some symptoms at some point.
- They can actually track the virus because of its own DNA, meaning it's possible to diagnose where in the world a particular person's disease originated.
- As a result of this, they were able to determine that while the West Coast of the US was first to develop cases, directly from Wuhan/China, the New York strain is the dominant one, likely because the travel habits of the population result in a lot more traffic through the East Coast.
- The "New York Strain" does, in fact, appear to be derived from the UK, as do many of the other European strains, making it possible to argue that the UK, London even, is the true epicentre of the outbreak, even if other countries have recorded higher deaths earlier.
- Viruses only commonly mutate successfully if they become more transmissible and less deadly, as that serves the virus better in terms of allowing it to reproduce. Covid19 currently is quite lethal and highly transmittable, so we are unlikely to see it develop into a more deadly strain, but neither is there any real pressure on it to mutate into a less lethal one.

I think I've got that mostly right, I expect iPlayer has it if anyone wishes to fact check.

Saying that I feel comfortable calling the WHO a terrorist organization because they are run by a literal terrorist and is used to support literal terrorists is not a goal post move. But sure, let's just ignore that hanging chad for a moment. I said that the purpose of the WHO was to use fear to increase the UN's control over world governments, as per Agenda 2030. Did you see where the UN wants control of 10% of the WORLD'S GDP to fight COVID-19? The UN only wants about $100 billion for themselves, but they want a fund - that they control - of multiple trillions of dollars in order to fight the economic devastation brought on by.... the WHO's recommended policies for fighting COVID-19... and look, they even reference Agenda 2030 as their justification. Who exactly elected the UN to control that much money? Hopefully not the guys who vetted Tedros for head of WHO.

how about the countries of this planet?
Also, you complaining about a voting process as an US citizen?
Or the legitimacy of a institution on the basis of a voting system?

 Gitzbitah wrote:

The USA, has a death per million rate of 233.17, and has been on some measure of restriction or shutdown for over a month.

Sweden, if we're using it as our litmus test of doing nothing, has a death per million rate of 297.16. This was calculated from the reported overall deaths by coronavirus of 3175, and the population of Sweden which was given as 10.23 million.

You can't treat the USA as a single monolithic entity. Our country is large enough to hold the entire population the of the world, several times over, and still have room to spare. We've got mountains, forests, deserts, swamps, plains, and so on. We've got places with one person per square mile, and places with a thousand people per square mile. And we don't generally have a lot of interaction across the country - people on the east coast don't really spend a lot of time interacting with people on the west coast, a three or four day drive away. The fact is, a full third of the deaths happening in the US come from one single state, NY. You can't look at the US data as a whole and then try to draw conclusions using simple math - that kind of crap is why the Imperial College estimated that this thing would kill millions.

Similarly, Sweden is following the same curve as everybody else, but it is at a different point on it. You are comparing a country in an early stage of infection to a country in a later stage.

By that factor, the social distancing measures the United States put in place have already saved 21,001.518 lives.

If you believe nothing else, you need to believe that there is literally no way this virus could kill 21 million people.

What data do you have that supports the idea that social distancing and lockdown has done nothing, Sqorgar?

I've read multiple articles on it, like this one - one of the first ones that come up when I search for "evidence lockdowns work". Comparing places with lockdowns to places without lockdowns, it's quite obvious that lockdowns are not making an appreciable difference. Even in NYC, the majority of new cases are coming from people who are abiding by the lockdown and not leaving their house. According to contract tracing, the most common places the virus spreads between people is in homes, not when they are out and about. And not going outside and getting enough sun could be causing a vitimin D deficiency, which has been found in 100% of the most serious COVID-19 infections.

But at the end of the day, why is it my responsibility to prove that lockdowns don't work rather than that the people who want to put the world on house arrest proving that they do? Shouldn't the burden of proof being on the imposer, not the imposed? There is no proof, at all, that lockdowns work.

Of even more interests is all of the data coming from Denmark and Sweden, because in every environmental way they're as identical as we're likely to get- but their response to the Coronavirus has been on both sides of the spectrum.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/coronavirus-deaths-sweden-denmark

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-sweden-and-denmark-represent-opposite-scandinavian-covid-19-responses

Again, these places are at different points in the curve, but they are both following the same curve. You can't just look at any three week period and assume you are comparing apples to apples. As an example, one of those articles mentions comparing the excess mortality rate for the first three weeks in April. While I agree that we should absolutely look at excess mortality rates, lockdowns are going to affect that even if COVID does not. When lockdowns are going on, there's less people on the road and thus less traffic accidents (and less traffic fatalities). So this means that the overall excess fatalities could be down - way down - while the actual deaths from COVID remain relatively the same and make it look like fewer people are dying from the later rather than the former. Also, these two countries did not start their curves at the same time, so comparing the same three week period rather than the same periods during the curve would lead to warped expectation. Remember, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

But the real measure will be what the countries look like in a few months. The point of the lockdowns was never to stop the infections, but to spread them out to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed. Remember "flatten the curve"? At some point, society has to begin again, and whatever effects you got from lockdowns would eventually be rubbed out as the people who should've gotten it earlier will still get it later. There's no vaccine. We can't save everyone. Lockdowns were never intended to be a long term solution. It was only supposed to be for a few weeks to "flatten the curve". That's what they were sold to us on, but now we're being told lockdowns need to go until October or later - when the next flu season starts?

Well, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. The curve is flattened. Why the hell are there still lockdowns?

 Sqorgar wrote:

Well, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. The curve is flattened. Why the hell are there still lockdowns?

If its accepted that the curve of infection is flatter in most countries because of lockdowns then surely that explains why the lockdowns are continuing. If your infection rate is flatlining with lockdowns then one would assume without the lockdowns the curve will resume rising. So if you just flatline and then end lockdowns the curve will increase and go beyond the threshold for the medical services.

Instead the curve has to reduce significantly to restore the buffer before your hit the medical capacity for the country. Only then should lockdowns start to end in a big way and even then it might only be for a short period before they have to be imposed again to stabilise the infection curve once more.

Not Online!!! wrote:
how about the countries of this planet?

You mean have them vote on who controls 10% of the world GDP? Do they get a bigger vote if they contribute more money to it? Does this mean that this new part of the UN would basically just be America or China running it? And if they don't get more votes based on their contribution, why would they contribute? What's in it for the US to give billions - even trillions - of dollars so that countries that put in pocket change gets to tell them how to spend it? It'd never work. The reason why the UN never became the world government is because nobody wants a world government run by anybody but themselves.

Also, you complaining about a voting process as an US citizen?
Or the legitimacy of a institution on the basis of a voting system?

While I think voting is rife for corruption (or at least it is in the US), I still have a problem with someone governing others who doesn't have to answer to anybody. Yes, Minister is one of my favorite tv programs, and when the term "deep state" was first described to me, I was like, "oh, you mean civil servants like Sir Humphrey Appleby?" No matter how corrupt voting gets, having to answer to voters is one of the few checks we have that keep the Applebys of the world from running roughshod over it. It's an odd limit that keeps things from getting too comfortable in its corruption.

Heh. Now that I think about it, isn't BIll Gates basically just Sir Humphrey Appleby? Tedros became the head of the WHO largely on the recommendation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on behalf of their work together in Ethiopia. Tedros basically proved himself to be a willing and useful pawn, so they put him in charge of the WHO (despite complaints from many other members). The WHO has screwed up and Tedros is taking the blame, but the very people who put him there in the first place are still there and running things behind the scenes.


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 Overread wrote:

If its accepted that the curve of infection is flatter in most countries because of lockdowns then surely that explains why the lockdowns are continuing. If your infection rate is flatlining with lockdowns then one would assume without the lockdowns the curve will resume rising. So if you just flatline and then end lockdowns the curve will increase and go beyond the threshold for the medical services.

We aren't just not overwhelming hospitals, we are closing them down! Multiple hospitals have closed down and dozens, if not hundreds, or thousands of doctors, nurses, and administrators have been furloughed or outright let go. Surely, at the point in which the hospitals are letting people go because there aren't enough patients, we can relax the restrictions to get that curve a little higher, right?

More to the point, why are places with relatively few deaths locked down in the first place? California has something like 67 deaths per million people and they closed down beachs last week. California is one of the most draconian about lockdowns, and one of the ones where it is least necessary. Alaska has had 10 deaths TOTAL, and parts of it are locked down. You think those 10 deaths are overwhelming their medical services?

Georgia opened up a few weeks ago, and guess what? The curve is not increasing. Florida opened up on Monday and we're gonna get salons and gyms open on Monday. Hell, by the standards of other states, Florida barely locked down at all in the first place. As we enjoy our freedom burgers and having jobs, the rest of you can just look on in jealousy as you wonder why the hell you still can't leave your house until July.

Instead the curve has to reduce significantly to restore the buffer before your hit the medical capacity for the country. Only then should lockdowns start to end in a big way and even then it might only be for a short period before they have to be imposed again to stabilise the infection curve once more.

The lockdowns are going to end because places like Texas, Georgia, and Florida show that it is a bunch of stupid bs. They are going to end because people can only stay terrified for so long before they give up. They are going to end because people are going to protest their abusive house arrests until somebody listens. They are going to end because of the numerous lawsuits being made against the governors for overstepping their constitutional bounds. But California, Michigan, and New York are never going to end their lockdown because they are run by donkey-caves.

I am absolutely delighted to have been wrong about the morbidity rate of the coronavirus. You were correct, it was not as fatal as the initial data showed.

You picked Sweden to be the exemplar for no lockdown, not me. The article you posted was interesting- but it's data has not aged well.

The crux of it's counter of the Sweden and Denmark was "Again, there is very little evidence that Sweden has become an unlivable Covid-19 hotbed. As of 17 April, Sweden’s Covid-19 statistics were: 13,216 total cases, 1,400 total deaths, 1,309 cases per million and 139 deaths per million. In terms of cases per million residents, Sweden ranks slightly ahead of its close neighbours, Denmark (1,221) and Norway (1,274). But in Europe as a whole, Sweden ranks 23rd in terms of cases per million and 10th in terms of deaths per million."

Leaving aside the hyperbole, the situation has changed . Sweden's case rate total is 25,000. Norway is at 8,070, and Denmark is at 8,093. Death rates followed accordingly- Sweden 32220, Norway 218, and Denmark 526. Adjusting for population(10 million for Sweden, about 5 million for Norway and Denmark), Sweden should only have 2x the deaths and cases of Norway and Denmark.

To find out where they are on the curve- first case for the countries were Sweden February 15th, Norway February 26th, and Denmark February 27th. Daily new cases for Sweden is presently at 642. For Norway, 26. For Denmark, 135. I wonder if your article plugged in those numbers for the states as well.

The numbers do not support the theory that lockdowns and social isolation are ineffective. Quite the opposite.

We are in agreement that lockdowns need to be ended as swiftly as possible- this is not sustainable. But doing so before you have control of the situation dramatically increases the number of cases your country has to deal with, as well as the number of deaths.

All my numbers for this post came from worldmeters.info, and were curent as of May 9th.

 RiTides wrote:
So, separately from a lot of the above discussion - I was surprised there hasn't been more coverage of the fact that France went back and tested samples that came up negative for pneumonia in December, and one of them came up positive for COVID-19:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/coronavirus-french-doctors-find-man-who-may-be-europe-s-n1202701

As the article says, that's a month before their first official case, and 2 1/2 months before they went into lockdown.

It's possible that a lot more people have had the virus than we have any idea of. I don't think this changes all that much in that social distancing (imo) should continue regardless, even while we open up the economy as much as can be safely done.

But it does mean that the world had very little chance of responding correctly to this outbreak, when it was publicly spreading so long before it had even been acknowledged as a threat. I am wondering if other countries will also find they had much earlier community spread than originally thought, and this would also explain why it was in such a crisis state so suddenly - the curve was already ramping up exponentially before anyone knew what was happening.

This. china found out in december? january? they traced their earliest case back to november time? so if you add in a fudge factor of 2 weeks or so, you're talking about a potential spread from october last year.think about how many people couldve been moving around the world after coming into contact with infected in wuhan.

This^ i just wonder how many peeps over winter were misdiagnosed as the flu when it was corvid, and remembrr whuhan is an international travel and distribution area. So if this was around oct/nov 2019 in the general population it would have spread without anyone even knowing it.

Eh, frustration is understandable. There's really on so much denial, disinformation and outright conspiracy nuttery one can really stand.

I'm just wondering how long until we have a straight faced post about how Covid-19 doesn't really exist and all those deaths were faked becuz NWO etc etc.

EDIT: oops not faster than the mods cleaning up it seems.

Had to remove a few posts (sorry it looks like you were replying to one Scarlet).

Disagreeing strongly is fine... using personal insults and swearing at another user is not, here or anywhere on the site.

 Sqorgar wrote:


Well, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. The curve is flattened. Why the hell are there still lockdowns?

Duh. Lockdowns doing what they were supposed to do. Even kindergarden kid can understand so surely you can too.

If you remove lockdown guess what? Cases spike again and hospitals overwhelmed.

If lockdowns wouldn't be people would complain goverment didn't do anything when hundreds of thousands in world dies. If they are people complain as they don't see problem because problems were solved. Always same pattern.

tneva82 wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:


Well, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. The curve is flattened. Why the hell are there still lockdowns?

Duh. Lockdowns doing what they were supposed to do. Even kindergarden kid can understand so surely you can too.

If you remove lockdown guess what? Cases spike again and hospitals overwhelmed.

If lockdowns wouldn't be people would complain goverment didn't do anything when hundreds of thousands in world dies. If they are people complain as they don't see problem because problems were solved. Always same pattern.

This seems appropriate, pretty sure it has been posted before in this thread already.

tneva82 wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:


Well, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. The curve is flattened. Why the hell are there still lockdowns?

Duh. Lockdowns doing what they were supposed to do. Even kindergarden kid can understand so surely you can too.

I don't usually make fun of someone's spelling, but if you are going to be dismissive of others, you might want to note that kindergarten is spelled with a 't'.

There's no evidence the lockdowns have done anything at all. Not flatten the curve. Not prevent deaths. Nothing. Science is built on the concept of falsifiability - the idea that for an assertion to be proven correct, there must be a condition under which it is proven wrong. In this case, the hospitals are not overrun, thus you assert that it must be because the lockdowns are working. So, for that assertion to be considered worth our time, there must be a condition under which the lockdowns can be said to not be working.

The obvious one is, if there is no lockdown, then hospitals will be overrun. So, all we need to do is fine a country, state, or provence which did not lock down and which has hospitals that are overrun. Hmm, that's weird. There's many places with different lockdowns, including no lockdowns at all, and their hospitals are not overrun.

If you remove lockdown guess what? Cases spike again and hospitals overwhelmed.

Hmm, let's try a different falsifiable hypothesis. If the lockdown is lifted, there will be a spike in cases. All we need to do is find someplace that has lifted the lockdown about two weeks ago and look for spikes. Let's try Georgia. Hmm. No spike. Wonder why that is?

Well, the obvious answer is that lockdowns are irrelevant to the curve of the disease. This could be because the disease was around before we were testing for it, and a large percentage of our population already had it (and didn't die) and spread it. It could be because the tests we've been using to test for COVID-19 have been flawed (which also explains the otherwise complicated situation of people who already recovered from COVID-19 testing positive again, and also tigers, goats, and fruit). It could be because the virus kills off the low hanging fruit first, with the volume of deaths being overwhelmingly weighted towards the beginning of the outbreak. There's a lot of reasons why it could happen. There's not going to be a second wave. There's not going to be a spike. There's no reason to be in a lockdown, except that a bunch of politicians want to look like they are taking action and are too chicken to roll back the lockdown on the off chance that there is a second wave.

If lockdowns wouldn't be people would complain goverment didn't do anything when hundreds of thousands in world dies. If they are people complain as they don't see problem because problems were solved. Always same pattern.

This is a manufactured crisis in the first place. The only reason you think it is as dangerous as you do is because of media reports coming out of China, and stuff like the Imperial College model predicting that millions could die from this thing. In early days, when the data wasn't there, it is understandable (though not GOOD) that people may expect for and plan for the worst out of paranoia. But the data is coming in steadily now, and if you are still scared, it's because you are listening to news sources trying to scare you.

Let's take the Imperial College model. That is singlehandedly responsible for the UK going into lockdown. If I remember correctly, the UK was going for herd immunity, the Imperial College model comes out predicting 500,000 deaths, and days later, the UK goes into full lockdown mode. This model is also one of the reasons that people believed that this virus was as deadly as it was, and that enforcing a lockdown was the only way to prevent this apocalyptic event.

So how was this model calculated? Well, you can go read the code yourself. If you aren't a programmer, here's one (of many) takes on its quality. Now, I'm not an epidemiologist, but I am a programmer (one of my many hats). This code, which has been cleaned up over the past month by Microsoft from its original single 15,000 line C file, is unmaintainable. It is filled with bugs. It has been continually added to over the past 15 years without any regard for readability or correctness. In fact, because it is non-deterministic, they can't even test if it is running correctly because the numbers it spits out differ every time you run it based on whether you run it single threaded or in multiple threads, what kind of machine you run it on, and even how many times it runs.

The model itself appears to be a crappy version of SimCity. It only models a few things. Cities, airports, hotels. It does multiple sweeps over them using some formula to predict the spread of the disease among populations and the travel between these populations. It basically models almost nothing that is actually relevant to the spread of the virus (or any virus) at all, which is why this program has been predicting absurdly exaggerated numbers for over a decade (remember when it predicted millions dead from the bird flu, and about 150 people died total? Yup, this program). This thing is an embarrassment. No policy should ever be based on this thing, ever. And it has repeatedly proven that over the years, and yet, here we are.

If you are from the UK, the reason you are in a lockdown right now is not because it was scientifically proven to work. You are in a lockdown right now because somebody's buggy self made version of SimCity decided it would work. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't plan my city with SimCity, and it's a way better simulation than what Imperial College made.

Ladies and gentlemen, the personification of why so many people think the US is sleepwalking into a disaster.

But I guess you're in a win/win situation aren't you? Because if it isn't Armageddon you'll bleat about how the social distancing did nothing and if it is you'll bleat about how social distancing did nothing.

Sqorqar wrote:I don't usually make fun of someone's spelling, but if you are going to be dismissive of others, you might want to note that kindergarten is spelled with a 't'.

Maybe make fun of other people's command of the english language in a thread where you haven't just misread 21 thousand as 21 million?

Sqorgar wrote:

Well, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. The curve is flattened. Why the hell are there still lockdowns?

I've been driving for a while. I'm not dead. Why the hell am I still wearing a seatbelt?

Sqorgar wrote:[qThis is a manufactured crisis in the first place. The only reason you think it is as dangerous as you do is because of media reports coming out of China, and stuff like the Imperial College model predicting that millions could die from this thing. .

No, the reason people think it is dangerous is because almost 300,000 people are dead, 4 million people have contracted it, and doctors still don't know what long term effects will be suffered by those who have recovered.

'Manufactured crisis'... this is an absolutely adsurd claim, that flies in the face of evidence and common sense.

Thank the Omnissiah for the ignore button. JHC. This isn’t 4chan or a similar gakhole. Although the one world government stuff has that vintage Usenet aroma, with vanilla notes and hints of blackberry.

 insaniak wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:

Well, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. The curve is flattened. Why the hell are there still lockdowns?

I've been driving for a while. I'm not dead. Why the hell am I still wearing a seatbelt?

I agree somewhat. I don't believe that enforced lockdowns are what's causing the progression of cases the way it is, and this is backed up by the unherd interview I posted with the German scientist a few days ago. Saying the reason it's going down is because of the lockdown is 'post hoc ergo Procter hoc' that happens to benefit lockdown supporters massively, because it can't effectively be disproven, as the lockdown are already implemented, so any drop in case numbers and the supporter can say well that's because of lockdown.

There's increasing evidence that this is mainly spread indoors, at large attendance events. Super spreading events if you will. Then, it's at least partly nosocomial. People pick it up at hospitals and medical centres. Those are the drivers.

Casual encounters(not the good sort) outdoors, people on the street, this is not spreading the virus. Keeping people inside is not solving this.

Social distancing is an appropriate measure, but more so inside, or on public transport (God knows how they're going to solve that). You're not going to catch this wandering past people in the street, unless they grab you and cough in your face. But we're too far gone for that now, you can't walk down the road without people jumping into traffic to avoid you, it's insanity.

I wouldn't go so far as to say there won't be a second wave. Previous epidemics show that we can't bank on that, but we are prepared. The overwhelming of the NHS that was predicted failed to materialise. The extra capacity is there.


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tneva82 wrote:


If you remove lockdown guess what? Cases spike again and hospitals overwhelmed.

Ah yes, more of that conjecture you failed to back up a few pages ago...

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I agree. I don't believe that enforced lockdowns are what's causing the progression of cases the way it is, and this is backed up by the unherd interview I posted with the German scientist a few days ago. Saying the reason it's going down is because of the lockdown is 'post hoc ergo Procter hoc' that happens to benefit lockdown supporters massively, because it can't effectively be disproven because its been implemented. There's increasing evidence that this is mainly spread indoors, at large attendance events. Super spreading events if you will. Then, it's at least partly nosocomial. People pick it up at hospitals and medical centres. Those are the drivers.

Casual encounters(not the good sort) outdoors, people on the street, this is not spreading the virus. Keeping people inside is not solving this.

Social distancing is an appropriate measure, but more so inside, or on public transport (God knows how they're going to solve that). You're not going to catch this wandering past people in the street, unless they grab you and cough in your face. But we're too far gone for that now, you can't walk down the road without people jumping into traffic to avoid you, it's insanity.

You'd have a point if it weren't for the football Match in Northern italy.
Or sweden which has as allready braucht up seemingly catched up.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


This seems appropriate, pretty sure it has been posted before in this thread already.

Spoiler:

That's called a false equivalence. We know that the parachutist will fall if he cuts his chute. It's proven, gravity, etc etc. This situation is different. There is no proof that lockdown is the cause of the downturn in cases.


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Not Online!!! wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:


You'd have a point if it weren't for the football Match in Northern italy.
Or sweden which has as allready braucht up seemingly catched up.

Football match? I'm not familiar with that one, can you explain?

And Sweden are following the same pattern as everyone else. Their problem seems to be in care homes, where they failed to stop it catching, which they have admitted.

The first confirmed case of this disease in my state, a school custodian, spent two months in the hospital as a result, just being released this week, and he was neither immuno-compromised nor elderly. Anyone calling this a manufactured crisis has literally zero idea what they're talking about.

There is no proof that lockdown is the cause of the downturn in cases.

Other than the epidemiologists predicted the effect and timing on new cases of lockdown, and that's what happened, more or less exactly?

I mean, that's not technically proof, but if, in the absence of any possibility of foreknowledge, I declare X is going to happen if Y takes place, and I'm right, what's a more plausible explanation than sound reasoning?

The super Infection Event in Northern italy was a football match.
In Milano. Funnily enough

Is it now in regards of sweden...

Well a football event is understandable. Even if its outside, you're still is close proximity and there's a lot of shouting, singing, chants etc, there's probably a lot of aerosolised saliva particles floating around there.

I did see a study that suggested outdoor sports events were not usually super spreader events (this study was for flu) but it didn't seem to make sense to me. I'd have to dig it up.

 Sqorgar wrote:

We aren't just not overwhelming hospitals, we are closing them down! Multiple hospitals have closed down and dozens, if not hundreds, or thousands of doctors, nurses, and administrators have been furloughed or outright let go. Surely, at the point in which the hospitals are letting people go because there aren't enough patients, we can relax the restrictions to get that curve a little higher, right?

More to the point, why are places with relatively few deaths locked down in the first place? California has something like 67 deaths per million people and they closed down beachs last week. California is one of the most draconian about lockdowns, and one of the ones where it is least necessary. Alaska has had 10 deaths TOTAL, and parts of it are locked down. You think those 10 deaths are overwhelming their medical services?.

The answer to the first paragraph is pretty easy to find with just a tiny amount of searching. The medical staff being furloughed are basically a result of the way healthcare is funded in the USA. Because everything is privately funded hospitals are currently losing money because all those juicy, profitable elective and non-emergency surgeries and procedures aren't going ahead because of the pandemic. Therefore many of theses hospitals are furloughing staff because they can't afford to pay them. It's like a cosmetic surgeon furloughing staff because their business isn't doing so well right now. I initially saw this explanation on the BBC but the Guardian also has an article explaining it. I know, conspiracy theories are less fun when you have to do even a small amount of research:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/14/healthcare-job-cuts-coronavirus-worker-layoffs

The second paragraph is just showing lockdowns working. I'm sure if cases were running rampant there despite lockdown you'd be pointing out how ineffective lockdowns are for that reason too. It's a lose/lose for those in favour of lockdowns because either way you've got a ready-made excuse for why they don't work. As a practical example, my wife is from a small village in rural Russia. Up until about two weeks ago they had no cases in their village, now they've got an outbreak and the local hospital is overwhelmed. That was without social distancing and lockdowns being followed. I assume up until their outbreak there were plenty of people in that village who figured all these lockdown measures were pointless.

Ah but there you go.. Social distancing and lockdowns.. You've got 2 variables there. They are not one and the same. You can socially distance without lockdown.
Iift the lockdown in the UK right now and you'd see exactly what Im talking about.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Ah but there you go.. Social distancing and lockdowns.. You've got 2 variables there. They are not one and the same. You can socially distance without lockdown.
Iift the lockdown in the UK right now and you'd see exactly what Im talking about.

Except the lockdown was in part a response to peoples inability, or refusal, to socially distance. Ending the lockdown will not fix that issue.

Socially distancing without lockdown is so much harder. Ever travelled on a tube at rush hour?