-
-
Maybe Fireman Ed will still be at the game?Comment
-
all I can think is children have less ACE-2 receptors. it's hormones or something. if they haven't reached puberty it's less for the virus to infect. it's why men are dying more than women, and bald men more than men with hair. presumably if someone has a lower viral load they will be less contagious. so children would be less transmissible.
i'd rather have school classes held outside if possible. fuck school being inside. better off being out in a soccer, baseball or football field. plant some chairs and put up a chalkboard. or appropriate nearby buildings from any bankrupt businesses. lol. heck use any sports stadiums not being used for sports. they have a lot of chairs.Comment
-
It looks like we are finally getting to the point where we have enough data to get a rough sense of how deadly the virus is, and it seems to confirm earlier estimates that I bought into:
That research—examining deaths out of the total number of infections, which includes unreported cases—suggests that Covid-19 kills from around 0.3% to 1.5% of people infected. Most studies put the rate between 0.5% and 1.0%, meaning that for every 1,000 people who get infected, from five to 10 would die on average.
Of course, earlier they were guessimates based on less data, but it was clear early that there were far more cases than being tested for, so I always thought the mortality rate was lower than the math showed based on reported cases--.5-1% is still 5-10 times higher than the flu, though, and I still do not know if these studies are taking into account the full range of deaths the pandemic is causing, including those wary of seeking or not getting medical treatment for other conditions because of the pandemic.
Still, this thing could have been far worse. COVID-19 is incredibly infectious, and we are fortunate that it is not also more deadly. Infectious disease experts have warned of a pandemic like this for decades. I am hopeful this is not treated like a once in a lifetime thing, because while it may turn out to be that, it still is something we absolutely need to be better prepared for in the future. All told, this thing is going to kill over 2 million people globally, and I still think it might end up killing as many at half a million people in the US alone. Despite how poorly prepared the US was, we are racing toward a vaccine at a blistering pace, and we will end up far better off than the world was in 1918 because of that. But it won't be the best we could have done, not by a long shot. The next virus could be 10x worse. I hope we are better prepared for it than we were for this one.Comment
-
It is amazing how fast this thing can spread, even in a society that is aware of it and taking precautions. If you would have told me that California would pass NY by the end of July just a month ago, I'd have thought you crazy. I didn't think any state could pass the massive lead in cases NY had in such a shot time, especially given what we should have learned by now given what happened in NY. But now it looks like Cali will pass us tomorrow, and Florida and Texas won't be far behind. Less than 3 months ago, NY represented over 40% of all cases in the US. Now it is down to 10%. It is both heartening and depressing. NY shows everyone else they can pull out of this, eventually. But it is a damn shame it came to this even after what everyone saw happened here.Comment
-
A bit of good news for a change:
Never heard of interferon beta before.Comment
-
Saw a post from one of my trumper acquaintances on facebook over the weekend. It was from a month ago (I have the dude on ignore and was looking to see if he was still completely onboard the trump train (he is)). It was titled Tale of Two States and had side by side comparisons of Florida and NY. stats for population, income tax(?), state budget(?), covid cases, and covid deaths with pictures of the governors and a tag line that read "For some reason the media thinks the guy on the right (Cuomo) is doing a good job!"
I just replied, "Wow, that didn't age well."
My comment was deleted.I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert...Comment
-
Note that the flu mortality rate doesn't include asymptomatic cases either, so we are comparing apples and oranges in those mortality rates. If we want to compare the two, we should compare only confirmed cases since that is the known number in each case. Which puts it more like 40x the mortality rate of the flu.Comment
-
Asymptomatic cases are hard to track, but I know the CDC, for instance, does not just report confirmed cases; they estimate flu cases and flu deaths based on extrapolating data and do adjust for what their models indicate are under-reporting of the flu and flu deaths to try to get as accurate a count as possible. I do not know if the same methods are used for COVID, though: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden...-estimates.htm
How CDC estimates Influenza-Associated Deaths in the U.S.
What methods are used to estimate the number of influenza-associated deaths in the U.S.?
The methods to estimate the annual number of influenza-associated deaths have been described in detail elsewhere (1-2). The model uses a ratio of deaths-to-hospitalizations in order to estimate the total influenza-associated deaths from the estimated number of influenza-associated hospitalizations.
We first look at how many in-hospital deaths were observed in FluSurv-NET. The in-hospital deaths are adjusted for under-detection of influenza using methods similar to those described above for hospitalizations using data on the frequency and sensitivity of influenza testing. Second, because not all deaths related to influenza occur in the hospital, we use death certificate data to estimate how likely deaths are to occur outside the hospital. We look at death certificates that have pneumonia or influenza causes (P&I), other respiratory and circulatory causes (R&C), or other non-respiratory, non-circulatory causes of death, because deaths related to influenza may not have influenza listed as a cause of death. We use information on the causes of death from FluSurv-NET to determine the mixture of P&I, R&C, and other coded deaths to include in our investigation of death certificate data. Finally, once we estimate the proportion of influenza-associated deaths that occurred outside of the hospital, we can estimate the deaths-to-hospitalization ratio.
Data needed to estimate influenza-associated deaths may lag for up to two years after the season ends. When this is not yet available for the season being estimated, we adjust based on values observed in prior seasons (e.g., the 2010-2011 season through the 2016-2017 season) and update the estimates when more current data become available.
Why doesn’t CDC base its seasonal flu mortality estimates only on death certificates that specifically list influenza?
Seasonal influenza may lead to death from other causes, such as pneumonia, congestive heart failure, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It has been recognized for many years that influenza is underreported on death certificates. There may be several reasons for underreporting, including that patients aren’t always tested for seasonal influenza virus infection, particularly older adults who are at greatest risk of seasonal influenza complications and death. Even if a patient is tested for influenza, influenza virus infection may not be identified because the influenza virus is only detectable for a limited number of days after infection and many people don’t seek medical care in this interval. Additionally, some deaths – particularly among those 65 years and older – are associated with secondary complications of influenza (including bacterial pneumonias). For these and other reasons, modeling strategies are commonly used to estimate flu-associated deaths. Only counting deaths where influenza was recorded on a death certificate would be a gross underestimation of influenza’s true impact.Comment
-
Yeah, there was a guy I went to high school with who was in full on "End of the World" hysteria with Harold Camping back in 2011. He then would more or less post Bible verses and was harmless, but then he started in about the evils of gay marriage and whatnot. So I picked a fight and then he started deleting some of my comments, including one where I said "sorry dude, you're wrong about this one, just like you were wrong about the end of the world."Comment
-
“There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it.” – Doc Holliday
"It doesn't matter what you think" - The Rock
"I borked the entry." - Some dude on the Internet
Have I told you about otters being the only marine animal that can lift rocks?Comment
Tweet
Comment