RichardGibbons

Hold on there just a minute. You make accusations of cherry picking the data then you do exactly that. Instead of comparing population density of the U.S., you use NYC. And you do that because the comparison between the two countries doesn’t support your argument. NZ population density: 15 people /sqK US population density: 36 people /sqK NOT 38,424 / sqK Pretty dishonest trying to compare the country to NYC. How about sticking to the facts for a change. Your right, my fault. The US is extremely homogeneous and no way the population density of NYC contributed in a negative fashion to death counts, GDP loss, and the spread of the virus through out the country. Thanks!!! This is a hilarious interaction. Orthopa: "I'll spin some numbers while simultaneously accusing someone else of spinning!" <Gregmal predictably validates the approach by accusing some nebulous left of spin> Orthopa: "Haha! I'm brilliant! Nobody realizes what I did!" cwericb: "Umm, dude, you know you're basically comparing a country to a city? Can you at least pretend to honestly analyse the situation?" Orthopa: "Darn.... Umm, can't admit fault, gotta go on the offence! Well, um, New York City has lots of people which is bad in a pandemic, and that's completely the point that I was trying to make in my other post! And you're just stupid for not seeing it, and deserve lots of abuse!"

The part that I find interesting with this is the comment that the virus was mostly hitting blue states, and that if the federal government didn't act (thereby allowing lots of people to die) they could blame it on the Democratic governors to gain a political advantage. And that's exactly how it shook out here on CoBaF. Propaganda's been around for centuries, and pretty well everyone knows what it is. But even so, control of a propaganda network has transformed otherwise sensible people into amplifiers of fascist spin. It's remarkable.

He says it has an impact, and he's also aware of your zinc claims: Dr Fauci:I think it really relates to the importance of vitamin D in host defense against infection. There’s no doubt that if you are vitamin D deficient, you might have a poor outcome or a greater chance of getting into trouble with an infection. Most people in the developed world are not vitamin D deficient, so adding additional vitamin D may not actually have a substantial clinical effect. That doesn’t lessen the importance of a normal level of vitamin D. In some of the developing countries, there have been studies with tuberculosis and other diseases. Those who are vitamin deficient, including vitamin D and vitamin A, they do worse.

The ironic thing is Trump's pandemic response could have been a huge win for him--a war triumph that would've solidified his presidency. But the problem is that he doesn't actually know how to lead or govern, and doesn't care enough about anyone else to even try to do the right thing.

The odds of a third party being elected in the USA is quite remote. There's basically zero chance of radical regime change.

I'm going to go with this one, rather than finding random permutations of doses of Hydroxychloroquine and other substances. "Oh, what about Hydroxychloroquine and Vitamin C? What about with Vitamin D? And water? And potatoes? And fire ants! Nobody's tried fire ants yet! Why can't you show me a study with fire ants!"

Sure, I can help you with that. The IV drug might provide some benefit, while random trials of the generic drug indicate it provides no benefit.

Well, it's far from a cure, but the numbers I've been seeing say a 35% reduction in deaths in patients who require a breathing machine, and 20% in patients who require supplemental oxygen. So, if you assume that almost everyone who dies from COVID-19 is in one of these two categories, and that, say, 100K people were "slated" to die from the latest explosion in cases in the USA, that might mean 25K lives saved. I agree it's not a breakthrough. It's an incremental improvement, learning which existing drugs help. But I still think it's noteworthy as a significant improvement, even if it isn't a breakthrough. (Like, if we had 4 more incremental improvements of comparable levels--and they didn't overlap on the patients they helped--COVID-19 wouldn't be a life-threatening disease in western countries.) I'm delighted to have incremental improvements because I think it's very unrealistic to hope for a breakthrough "cure-like" treatment from a novel drug in a few months. When I was thinking about flattening the curve to give time for treatment options to improve, I wasn't thinking that based on the hope for a vaccine or a breakthrough drug, but rather for incremental improvements in treatments that lead to large increases in survival rates.

Well, to be fair, it's because certain people on the thread literally never blame Trump. They literally don't acknowledge it when he's the person most responsible for America's mess. Like, he's the dude where the buck is supposed to stop. If you're looking for politicians who have the most leverage to fight the disease, this is the guy who has it, by far. But some people seem to be trying to desperately deflect responsibility from him for some bizarre reason, pretending that he and the outbreak are in two completely different universes, never actually interacting with each other at all. And they also seem to believe that the Governor of the 20th smallest state is actually the most important leader in the entire country. I guess maybe people skipped their civics class to go smoke outside? I dunno. I find it quite peculiar. But to get back on topic, while we wait on the deaths arising from the current surge of infections, it's worth noting that we ought to get fewer deaths per capita infected not simply because of the age of infected people, but because treatment has improved in a very real, significant way. This was one of the key goals of flattening the curve and doing the lockdowns, and it's starting to be achieved. We've delayed infections long enough that some people who would have died if they had been infected three months ago will now live if they get infected today. I speculate that the number of saved lives in the USA alone will be in the tens of thousands. I think that's a marvellous thing.

I'd be surprised if Liberty has it just because it's a chart from a third-party. That said, it's pretty easy to visualize because the EU has about the population of the USA, plus a third. So, keep the same line from the EU, and move the USA line up a third. That said, I agree with your underlying point--the chart is a bit deceptive because, compared to the EU, USA has actually done even worse than you'd think just by looking at the chart.

Ha, ha, ha! Nope. Even if you believe it was an error (it wasn't), in this pandemic that wouldn't be the greatest unforced error. The greatest unforced error was Trump politicizing the use of masks. If he hadn't done that, USA would be able to give everyone masks, open its economy, and not worry about too many COVID-19 deaths. USA could've had it's cake and eat it too, but Trump has eliminated that as a possibility. It's an insanely huge unforced error, costing both lives and the economy.

Curious. We've studied a novel disease for a few months, and during that time understanding has changed. And you take that, and equate it with something that we've studied for 3 or 4 decades, scientists almost entirely agree on, and say that's the same thing? Huh. IMO, the primary value of your comment isn't actually the critique of how we view science, but rather in providing insight into the things you care about. Current economic interests are very important to you, but the long-term future isn't.

This one's been obvious for a while, but it's nice to hear someone state it plainly. https://globalnews.ca/news/7075024/mask-wearing-fewer-coronavirus-deaths/ A two orders of magnitude effect is a lot.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/06/19/national/japan-contact-tracing-app-launched/#.Xu-DNndFwls

I think you need to add contact tracing too. Largely, the places that have done well have done that.

Yeah, let's just ignore the potential for millions of deaths on the other side of the scale.

I also would include Investor20's point about nursing homes. I think it is a real thing and shouldn't be ignored simply because Investor20's focus seems to be on scoring political points rather than understanding the disease. Implementing best practices in nursing homes (as opposed to the previous worst practices of bringing in Covid-19 patients) can make a real difference in deaths. A big chunk of early deaths in Canada were because of nursing home infections, but there are far fewer cases now. And it seems clear by now that a randomly-selected infected person in a nursing home is on average going to have a much higher chance of death than a randomly-selected infected person who isn't in a nursing home. (Maybe you consider that part of your #2, but I'd include it as a separate item because improved infection avoidance of vulnerable people seems different than improved treatment.)

Yeah, this is so true. The world would be a much easier place to live in if everything were black and white, no shades of grey. It totally sucks that existence is so complicated. Its actually not complicated at all. Its defined by the constitution. Good point. I don't think anybody's every argued about the meaning of anything in the U.S. Constitution. Certainly no shades of grey there!

Yeah, this is so true. The world would be a much easier place to live in if everything were black and white, no shades of grey. It totally sucks that existence is so complicated.

You know, there's a very easy way around this problem of saying something today that doesn't agree with the stuff you said in the past. All you have to do is say something like, "Back when I said that, I thought the Swedish approach was working, but now it seems like it might not be. Today, the Japanese approach seems to be working and has had minimal impact on the economy, so I think that's a good approach. At all times, I try to support best-practices based on the information I have, so that's why my view has changed somewhat." When you just take your current view and pretend that you've always had that view--despite evidence that everyone can read--it just makes you seem stubborn and silly for no good reason. Seriously, there's nothing wrong with changing your opinions when new evidence arises.

Don't be ridiculous--the obvious solution is to listen to the President, and not test at all. Then there won't be any cases.

OK, I was assuming when on April 24, when you said, "Take Sweden with low mitigation efforts. They had 213 deaths/million or 72000 deaths for 340 million (US population)…. The 500K deaths prediction by Dr. Fauci is off with Sweden by 7 fold, let alone Japan by 500 fold, both countries with low mitigation efforts", it meant that you thought the Swedish approach was a good one. I guess maybe you threw it in there as random trivia, not to imply that their low mitigation approach was effective. Perhaps, though you were referencing Sweden and Japan in parallel ways in the same sentence, you simply just didn't get around to saying that the Swedish low mitigation approach would eventually prove a bad idea, while the Japan approach was actually the path that you preferred.... (I actually think the main reason for Japan's success relative to most other places is the culture.) Yeah, I think you have a different definition of "conservative approach" than me. I don't dispute that the costs of a lockdown are pretty high. However, I think that, when it becomes apparent that the worst pandemic in 100 years is hitting, I don't think the conservative approach is to ignore the people who have spent decades of their lives studying how it mitigate the problem, just to go with the same strategy that is used for diseases that aren't "once in a century" pandemics. Rather, I think that's the "gamble with other people's lives" approach.

Yeah, my argument isn't at all about where morality comes from, because, while I could speculate about it, it's out of scope. I'm also not claiming that morality is short-term rational. I'm claiming that believing a higher morality has to come from a deity is silly. I think I've show that with a simple argument, and that you don't have a good counterargument for that, because if you did, you'd probably have written that counterargument rather writing a bunch of stuff unrelated to the original claim. (OK, I'm done polluting the thread with this argument now. Sorry, everyone.)

Ah, I see. You want to very narrowly define where morality might come from, then beat down that straw man, and claim therefore morality is impossible. Morality is basically treating others how you'd want to be treated. One can nitpick at the details--as I'm sure you will--but the core of it is very simple, and doesn't require a God. Without such a basic agreement in place, society breaks, and the world sucks for pretty well everyone.

Yeah, the problem is that this sort of reasoning is basically, "find the country whose outcome supports my thesis, then say that the outcome in that country was somewhat predictable in the early days", when that's not true at all. I mean, there's a reason that the "we shouldn't lockdown" people were talking about Sweden, and now they aren't. Basically, if you put your life savings on Red 17 on a roulette wheel, and it turns out that Red 17 comes up, that doesn't imply that it was a good decision to put your life savings on Red 17. During a pandemic, before you have knowledge, you should take the conservative approach because a non-conservative approach can potentially lead to massive numbers of deaths. Then, as you better understand the situation, you should revise your approach.)