Covid 19 virus

[Cerebus]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavirus-china.html

Predictive epidemiological models based on data from China are garbage. People’s Republic has been manipulating its Covid-19 statistics.

Of course the source of this is impeccable. After all, the CIA have never been known to distort the truth or mislead people for their own political ends. Glad we're finally getting data from such an honest, reliable, trustworthy source that has never been implicated in murder, torture, or commercial drug smuggling to illicitly fund a revolution in another country, let alone misinformation campaigns. Glad we've got that straight.

Why would you think I was being sarcastic? A bunch of spies and manipulators are the obvious choice to turn to for epidemiological data. There's no possibility that they might be trying to sew some kind of story that puts a country that they regard as political enemies in a bad light.

I got it. In your opinion NYT are either not trustworthy or are not able to check facts. Presumably, because you think NYT was implicated in murder and torture...

Who are credible then? Xinhua or Russia Today?

Why because I distrust reporting based on statements by your country's bunch of bastards do you assume that I'm going to advocate some other country's reporting of their bunch of bastards as trustworthy? Some of us haven't bought into this whole partisan thing.

It's got nothing to do with the NYT, they are just reporting what has been said by another.  Its not an editorial, it's reportage. Just because the report is in the NYT doesn't lend the contents of what they are reporting on the imprimatur of truth. The reporting may be as accurate as you like while the matter reported is completely flawed.

[paulca]

In other more important news.  The logarithmic graphs are showing a downward deflection.  Inflection point?

... or lack of tests?

[hwj-d]

...
It's got nothing to do with the NYT, they are just reporting what has been said by another.  Its not an editorial, it's reportage. Just because the report is in the NYT doesn't lend the contents of what they are reporting on the imprimatur of truth. The reporting may be as accurate as you like while the matter reported is completely flawed.

    

[Cerebus]

...
It's got nothing to do with the NYT, they are just reporting what has been said by another.  Its not an editorial, it's reportage. Just because the report is in the NYT doesn't lend the contents of what they are reporting on the imprimatur of truth. The reporting may be as accurate as you like while the matter reported is completely flawed.

    

Says the man who regards YouTube fringe conspiracists as a reliable source.

[Simon]

In other more important news.  The logarithmic graphs are showing a downward deflection.  Inflection point?

... or lack of tests?

Not really, it almost looks like a testing/reporting bottleneck. We stay the same for 3 days then jump.... again. Bearing in mind that the definition of someone who has it in the UK seems to be that it's so bad that they end up in hospital. The people that just feel a bit off and could have been infectious for up to 2 weeks are told to stay home and not inform anyone of their condition. It's almost like they don't what to know the real numbers and are hoping to be able to report less to justify their suicidal approach at the start.

[2N3055]

They’re working on it here. Not much point until you have antibody testing in place though. As for fakes I imagine they will be verifiable in some way. Possibly to present with ID.

In Croatia  they have central registry. All that are confirmed cases, and those in self isolation are known. If they catch those in self isolation, they get escorted home and fined... Those with confirmed infection are in quarantine. They verify it in real time...
Travel permits are issued online, directly in registry... So no fakes..

That's worryingly difficult to differentiate from a police state. Understandable at the moment, but it does give one pause for thought.

UK has WHOLE country covered with 10s of millions of cameras. We are all living in full blown police states that are currently not abusing it on large scale..

That political chip on your shoulder is preventing you from reading my comment as what it was, a neutral statement, into some imagined attack on your state and implicit support for my state, which it wasn't.

I don't have political chip on my shoulder, bu you might have, being sensitive to my comment. I wasn't counterattacking but merely stated that we all live in countries that have all infrastructure (technical, military, police, intelligence services) of a full blown Orwellian state. It is just that our countries usually don't abuse it...  That is actually great. They choose to do the right thing..

[Simon]

They’re working on it here. Not much point until you have antibody testing in place though. As for fakes I imagine they will be verifiable in some way. Possibly to present with ID.

In Croatia  they have central registry. All that are confirmed cases, and those in self isolation are known. If they catch those in self isolation, they get escorted home and fined... Those with confirmed infection are in quarantine. They verify it in real time...
Travel permits are issued online, directly in registry... So no fakes..

That's worryingly difficult to differentiate from a police state. Understandable at the moment, but it does give one pause for thought.

stupid people need stupid measures. If it's not too much to ask I'd rather have a bed in a hospital if I were to get this despite all precautions I am taking and not have it taken away from me by the multitudes of pricks that think they know better. The problem is that the vast majority of the population do not have the intellect to grasp that the figures we see today were set in motion 1-2 weeks ago and that if today it's a bit shit then in 2 weeks we will properly screwed!

[not1xor1]

There are some vaccines being trialled. What is a concern is there will be less testing to get the vaccine out more quickly. There may be long term side effects we did not anticipate . Remember thalidomide.

Are you legend ? 

[paulca]

In other more important news.  The logarithmic graphs are showing a downward deflection.  Inflection point?

... or lack of tests?

Not really, it almost looks like a testing/reporting bottleneck. We stay the same for 3 days then jump.... again. Bearing in mind that the definition of someone who has it in the UK seems to be that it's so bad that they end up in hospital. The people that just feel a bit off and could have been infectious for up to 2 weeks are told to stay home and not inform anyone of their condition. It's almost like they don't what to know the real numbers and are hoping to be able to report less to justify their suicidal approach at the start.

All of the logarithmics on JH are showing downward deflection globally over a 1-2 week period.  Obviously this means we are only fucked slightly less quickly, but mathematically a good candidate for an inflection point.

[Cerebus]

UK has WHOLE country covered with 10s of millions of cameras. We are all living in full blown police states that are currently not abusing it on large scale..

That political chip on your shoulder is preventing you from reading my comment as what it was, a neutral statement, into some imagined attack on your state and implicit support for my state, which it wasn't.

I don't have political chip on my shoulder, bu you might have, being sensitive to my comment. I wasn't counterattacking but merely stated that we all live in countries that have all infrastructure (technical, military, police, intelligence services) of a full blown Orwellian state. It is just that our countries usually don't abuse it...  That is actually great. They choose to do the right thing..

I think it was a reasonable assumption on my behalf given you started "UK...".

I wasn't counterattacking but merely stated that we all live in ...

Except you didn't "merely state..." i.e. state without any extraneous remarks. If you had I wouldn't have taken it as I did. If you don't want people to take what you say as nationalistic, the best approach would be to not prefix it with a remark that prima facia appears to be nationalistic.

[not1xor1]

What about let the "virus party" idiots be beta testers of the vaccine in exchange for getting permission to party? (Note that it is voluntary - they have the option to not get the vaccine and discontinue partying.) While we're at it, let's use prisoners as alpha testers in exchange for time off their sentences.

Medical experiments on prisoners who can't freely give informed consent? Not exactly a morally sound idea. I think somebody needs to read a history book or two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment

[Siwastaja]

https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/


This way of presenting the statistics helps visualize the deflection point.

(With that, countries can't be compared at the relative point where the deflection happens, because the axes show absolute cases, not cases per population, so small countries appear to more left than larger countries. Yet, you can easily visualize the deflection point, and also see the changes in testing procedures (sudden jump downward, then back to the original slope.)

[not1xor1]

Sadly, when we created a functional society we turned our backs on natural selection and the idiots get to reproduce!

Well, perhaps god in her infinite wisdom has sent us a virus designed to wipe out whole families that don't believe in it as a spot of supernatural selection. 

and god created a virus out of its image and likeness   

[Cerebus]

That's worryingly difficult to differentiate from a police state. Understandable at the moment, but it does give one pause for thought.

stupid people need stupid measures....

Indeed they do. Just as long as when the emergency is over 'wise' men don't decide to hang onto the apparatus of mass control to deal with all the 'stupid' people who disagree with them about something.

A guy I know who does security research at Cambridge has a good phrase "social hygiene" meaning that society shouldn't leave anything lying around that could 'go bad' and poison society e.g. wholesale surveillance mechanisms that are legitimately needed to cope with some genuine emergency ought to be conspicuously dismantled once the emergency is over, not merely mothballed and left lying around waiting for some proto-despot to abuse them. There's a historical record of apparently innocuous stuff that has become poison in the wrong hands (e.g. Holland's records of citizens' religion, which took on a totally different flavour in light of the Nazi invasion of May 1940). In the same vein there's the well observed 'ratchet effect' where regulations for emergencies don't disappear after the emergency (e.g. Britain's pub opening hours restrictions and the Official Secrets Act were both 'temporary' WWI measures that are still with us over 100 years later.).

[2N3055]

If you don't want people to take what you say as nationalistic, the best approach would be to not prefix it with a remark that prima facia appears to be nationalistic.

Fair enough! But still, you reacted a bit sensitive.. I'm sorry you read it that way, it't wasn't my intention to counterattack.
I personally very much dislike nationalism, being firsthand witness of all the suffering it creates....
All the best..

[not1xor1]

Been thinking about this for weeks (I am sure I was not alone) and am now reading it in Mass Media. How long before we see immunity certificates? Don't know, maybe 6 weeks in the US. I think that we will see fakes a few minutes later, or maybe well before.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/health/immunity-passport-coronavirus-lockdown-intl/index.html

there are 2 problems
1) we are not yet sure (there are still some doubts) once you got past the disease you're immune
2) how good are those tests? Even 0.1% of false positives may get infected and start a new wave of pandemic

probably those certified people should also be regularly (even group test) tested for virus activity to reduce any further risks

[Cerebus]

https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/


This way of presenting the statistics helps visualize the deflection point.

(With that, countries can't be compared at the relative point where the deflection happens, because the axes show absolute cases, not cases per population, so small countries appear to more left than larger countries. Yet, you can easily visualize the deflection point, and also see the changes in testing procedures (sudden jump downward, then back to the original slope.)

We've got to be a bit careful of scaling by population, as that can distort or misrepresent the situation in other ways.

One example. Consider two populations identical except that, one has 10,000 people, one has 1,000,000 people, both being infected with a disease with the characteristics of Covid-19 by a single 'patient zero'. For the first few days and weeks they will have identical numbers of infected, dead, recovered etc. Once the 10,000 person country has reached a point where effects show of 'proportion of population affected' show up, only then are the characteristics of the small and large population infection statistics going to diverge. The small population will show slowing while the large population will continue to grow at an unencumbered rate until it too hits the point where 'proportion of population' effects begin to show.

Instinct suggests to me that scaling by log_n population (n to be determined) might be a better way of doing it as the other processes involved are exponential ones BUT I have not thought it through in detail so I may be talking out of my arse.

[not1xor1]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavirus-china.html

Predictive epidemiological models based on data from China are garbage. People’s Republic has been manipulating its Covid-19 statistics.

Of course the source of this is impeccable. After all, the CIA have never been known to distort the truth or mislead people for their own political ends. Glad we're finally getting data from such an honest, reliable, trustworthy source that has never been implicated in murder, torture, or commercial drug smuggling to illicitly fund a revolution in another country, let alone misinformation campaigns. Glad we've got that straight.

Why would you think I was being sarcastic? A bunch of spies and manipulators are the obvious choice to turn to for epidemiological data. There's no possibility that they might be trying to sew some kind of story that puts a country that they regard as political enemies in a bad light.

the truth is that you can trust neither of them
probably we will have to wait a few years for more reliable data

[Cerebus]

there are 2 problems
1) we are not yet sure (there are still some doubts) once you got past the disease you're immune

That is so outside the normal patterns of disease and immunity that very strong evidence would be required to support that idea. Absent that very strong evidence this out to be treated as highly, highly, highly improbable.

[Kilrah]

I think I’ve had it and am recovering still. It’s fucking horrible.

I've problably had it but in a very mild form, basically a bad cold but not quite as bad as normal flu.

Reason I expect it was that is that a friend got hit pretty hard (2 trips to hospital) and we had met a few days before.

[Mr. Scram]

Hopefully he can check efficacy of sodium thiopental first.

You say that but I'm sure it stops all ill effects of a Covid infection. No fever and no difficulty to breathe and very little chance of infecting anyone else.

[bd139]

Hopefully he can check efficacy of sodium thiopental first.

You say that but I'm sure it stops all ill effects of a Covid infection. No fever and no difficulty to breathe and very little chance of infecting anyone else.

True. However where did I say I was trying to cure him of Covid-19

[Electro Detective]

<snipped>

I've always been wondering what substance are you constantly on.

BS Awareness Supplements 

Still available in stores,
Fear Flu panic shoppers have been too busy hoarding dunny paper to notice it   

 

 

[Rick Law]

Can we agree that if Trump promotes a drug or vaccine as to showing "he did a good job" and "he is fucking great at everything, wait and see"... he tries it on himself first.  ?

Hopefully he can check efficacy of sodium thiopental first.

I hope the two drugs he was calling attention to will work.  They are both "proven safe" for other illnesses by the FDA for a long time, so harm is limited apart from the yet-unknown potential negatives for one already infected with the Wuhan Virus.

Two of the scientists on the task force and almost always by Trump's side on the daily update, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci are good scientists.  The forces at play is "doing good science" vs "real condition on the ground".  Until a double-blind study is done, no scientist would say it works.  But then condition on the ground is hundreds of people are dying a day.  No doctor want to use a drug that is not yet proven to work - but waiting = more dead.

NY (State, not just NYC) is now using the drug(s) while also running test along side to verify effectiveness.  I hope scientific tests that is running along side can confirm effectiveness soon.

(ps: I am ignoring the two deaths in Arizona was caused by the drug as some news outlet has reported.  The couple did not take the drug - they took fish-tank cleaner which contains similar active ingredient.  Come-on, spoonful of fish tank cleaner with pop-drink?  That I consider Darwin at work.)

[VK3DRB]

Criminal negligence, lies and a massive cover-up by the government...

https://www.theage.com.au/national/nsw-health-allowed-cruise-ship-passengers-to-disembark-despite-test-results-pending-20200403-p54gze.html