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Coronavirus

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Harry Marks
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Re: Coronavirus

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ant wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Looking for the current advice, the Surgeon General now says "Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice- but if more wear them, we’ll have MORE freedom to go out. Face coverings lead to less asymptomatic viral spread, leading to more places open, and sooner! Exercise and promote your freedom by choosing to wear a face covering!"
Science didn't magically advance with updated facts about the effectiveness of masks. They've been worn by medical professionals for decades to help stave off infection. That much is undeniable.


And here is a pretty recent result, which if read carefully, supports the efficacy of masks.
https://www.livescience.com/are-face-ma ... pread.html
They are not a panacea, by any means, and if they give a false sense of security they could actually damage public health. But that is not how people seem to use them.
ant wrote:Personally speaking, I am not against the wearing of a mask and have consistently done so whenever I have gone out in public. If anything, a mask in this case acts as a good placebo.
Don't know if that placebo will boost your immune response. I will wait for more careful investigators. But like you, I wear one when I go out in public. A pain, sometimes, but if nothing else it reminds me to be careful in other ways.
ant wrote:Has this entire pandemic been politicized? Of course it has.
Humankind can and does politicize everything at some point.
I see the point, but I don't think it is a good thing. I would like to see less politicization, especially of factual issues. The country should take seriously some accountability for people in the press. A scorecard does not have to be considered censorship. I am fairly confident CNN would score higher than Fox, but both have huge room for improvement.
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ant

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Re: Coronavirus

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Harry wrote:
And here is a pretty recent result, which if read carefully, supports the efficacy of masks.
You are closer to understanding my point than Robert who is more fixed on demonizing than truth finding.

It isn't contested what the Surgeon General initially stated DESPITE the science of mask wearing being contentious for many years BUT THE PREFERENCE being "safe than sorry" or "it does help a little bit"

The SG was intentionally deceiving, not certain of the science, or chose not to error on the side of caution from the very beginning. Same for the CDC.

The smart thing to say at the beginning of all this should have been "you should wear a face mask, even if it is a makeshift mask from home." That's what I thought despite their initial discouragement of wearing one.
Did he say that? If he did, show me where.. I might have missed it.

Fauci also said at the start mask wearing was not effective.

Were they speaking before knowing the facts? That's alarming.
Perhaps you could have helped them if you had googled the question for them.

Ps

You can all stop sharing links about the latest findings. i've googled it all myself.
And again, that's not the point I am making here.

I am not lying about what the SG and Fauci said themselves. it is on record. I did't just forget what was said with a tone of certainty at the very beginning. i am not senile - yet.
Last edited by ant on Fri Jul 03, 2020 5:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Coronavirus

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ant wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:
ant wrote:The US Surgeon General disagrees
...The Surgeon General entirely agrees with my comment...
...Which is why I said the waffling has been real and has been bad. You missed that part because you were in such a hurry to pigeonhole me to keep your fallacious THIS OR THAT B&W world safe. It is monstrously disingenuous to whitewash the words...
You missed my point ant. You stated the SG "disagrees". That is present tense, suggesting you are quoting his current view. Yet you fully knew he has changed his early wrong view. For your own political reasons, you chose to lie in order to pretend the health officials are continuing to misinform the public.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/surge ... nst-masks/
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geo

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Re: Coronavirus

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ant wrote:. . . Not only was it blatantly wrong to initially instruct the public masks do nothing to help prevent the spread of COVID19 it is downright criminal.
I think you are misinterpreting this situation, Ant. There were a lot of unknowns when the coronavirus first hit our shores. It's not very surprising that the agencies in charge of public safety waffled a bit. We had shortages of N-95 masks at hospitals and in nursing homes where they were desperately needed. The effectiveness of other types of face coverings was not well understood and still isn't really. More importantly it was not believed initially that people could transmit the virus without showing symptoms. The CDC eventually revised its advice based on new evidence, which is exactly what you would expect them to do.

We are seeing now some people on the right alleging that the CDC is changing its position on facemasks for nefarious political reasons, but of course this is just the usual paranoid right-wing nonsense.

The combination of social distancing (six feet) and wearing facemasks has proven to be very effective in stopping the spread of the coronoavirus. Just look at the data state by state and you'll see that states that encouraged facemasks and social distancing early on did much better at flattening the curve than those states that did not. Even Texas has finally come around to recommending wearing facemasks. What's downright criminal is the political resistance to recommendations by qualified health officials.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... -heres-why
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Re: Coronavirus

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In late January, Anthony Fauci told the media that coronavirus was nothing the U.S. public needed to worry about--right then, that is. Fauci said the situation could change. Then, On Jan. 31, Trump placed the ban on travel from China. At that point, one could say that Trump was ahead of his top infectious disease advisor. What happened to derail the president from an initial strong response? There seems to be no question that strong federal government actions during February and March would have resulted in fewer victims of the disease. Was Trump resting on the laurels of one of his only decisive acst against the virus? Or did he simply fall prey to magical thinking?

I think geo is right that the ability to change one's position based on evidence coming in is essential. To be wrong in January is perhaps understandable given the unknowns. To persist in wrongness through the next two months shows that other factors are getting in the way of clear thinking.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200429 ... aboutrsquo
Last edited by DWill on Sat Jul 04, 2020 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DB Roy
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Re: Coronavirus

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DWill wrote:In late January, Anthony Fauci told the media that coronavirus was nothing the U.S. public needed to worry about--right then, that is. Fauci said the situation could change. Then, On Jan. 31, Trump placed the ban on travel from China. At that point, one could say that Trump was ahead of his top infectious disease advisor. What happened to derail the president from an initial strong response? There seems to be no question that strong federal government actions during February and March would have resulted in fewer victims of the disease. Was Trump resting on the laurels of one of his only decisive acst against the virus? Or did he simply fall prey to magical thinking?

I think geo is right that the ability to change one's position based on evidence coming in is essential. To be wrong in January is perhaps understandable given the unknowns. To persist in wrongness through the next two months shows that other factors are getting in the way of clear thinking.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200429 ... aboutrsquo
???
https://apnews.com/0dc271ad7f7917374a5a0cfb49273783
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DWill

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Re: Coronavirus

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I wasn't arguing for the effectiveness of the move, just that it was his strongest attempt to take the reins. Why did he drop them? That's a striking fact. What was going through his head in those early days?
KindaSkolarly

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Re: Coronavirus

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You shouldn't call names, Tulip. You're pushing the most destructive lie ever foisted on mankind. Your belief system is so corrosive that it's driving children to suicide. So don't call names, Carbon Boy, unless you want me to do the same.

A review:

1) The Feds said that anyone who dies after testing positive for the Wuhan virus will be declared a death from the virus. This includes cancer patients, kidney patients, and so on. 95% of the deaths have been in people with other serious health conditions, and they would have died of those conditions soon, but now they're listed as Covid deaths.

2) The CDC said that since the Wuhan virus and the common cold are both coronaviruses, they will both give positive results for the Covid test. So if you've ever had a cold, you'll test positive for Covid.

3) Using "contact tracing," anybody a Covid positive case comes in contact with is also listed as Covid positive, without testing.

I have never seen numbers so grossly stacked to predetermine an outcome. The medical/scientific community should be ashamed of itself for shoving the lie of Covid at us. the death rate from Covid is about the same as the flu, yet it's being used to destroy the world economy.

The only true indicator of what's going on with Covid is the body count:

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Robert Tulip

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Re: Coronavirus

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KindaSkolarly wrote:You shouldn't call names, Tulip. You're pushing the most destructive lie ever foisted on mankind.
If you call the physics of the greenhouse effect a lie you demonstrate a gross ignorance equal to young earth creationism or flat earth theory. The question of how to relate the physics of the greenhouse effect to public policy is an immensely complex problem that is not assisted by Trumpian insanity.
KindaSkolarly wrote: Your belief system is so corrosive that it's driving children to suicide. So don't call names, Carbon Boy, unless you want me to do the same.
I don’t believe, KindaSkolarly, that you have the faintest idea of what my belief system is. I think you have a fair point that much of the popular rhetoric on climate change lacks a practical theory of change and therefore damages mental health, but it is far too simplistic and wrong for you to blithely associate my views with such effects.
KindaSkolarly wrote:
A review:

1) The Feds said that anyone who dies after testing positive for the Wuhan virus will be declared a death from the virus. This includes cancer patients, kidney patients, and so on. 95% of the deaths have been in people with other serious health conditions, and they would have died of those conditions soon, but now they're listed as Covid deaths.
The reality is that pandemic deaths are more likely to be under reported than over reported. An excellent article on this is at https://ourworldindata.org/covid-excess-mortality - A pandemic primer on excess mortality statistics and their comparability across countries, published June 29, 2020.

However, given the track record of KindaSkolarly in preferring political lies over objective analysis, we can’t expect him to show any serious interest in such facts.
KindaSkolarly wrote: 2) The CDC said that since the Wuhan virus and the common cold are both coronaviruses, they will both give positive results for the Covid test. So if you've ever had a cold, you'll test positive for Covid.
Such dangerous fantasy produces complacency and hostility to engagement that actually does contribute materially to public harm, which makes me wonder why Booktalk allows such comments which would be immediately removed by responsible sites like youtube, as we have seen from links KS has shared before.
KindaSkolarly wrote: 3) Using "contact tracing," anybody a Covid positive case comes in contact with is also listed as Covid positive, without testing.
The incontestable point made in the linked article I shared above is that death rates around the world have risen dramatically due to the pandemic, whether directly due to covid infection or indirectly due to strained medical systems, suicide or other causes. So all this deflection from KS about the difficulty of collecting accurate statistics can be ignored by a focus on the end result statistics, which should be truly terrifying to everyone, and especially to people in vulnerable groups.
KindaSkolarly wrote:I have never seen numbers so grossly stacked to predetermine an outcome. The medical/scientific community should be ashamed of itself for shoving the lie of Covid at us. the death rate from Covid is about the same as the flu, yet it's being used to destroy the world economy.
And of course, it is also a massive secretive science conspiracy that man landed on the moon and that the earth is round (sarcasm). How could the death rate from Covid be the same as the flu if the overall US death rate has jumped in 2020 by 132,000 due to COVID? https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html shows the average annual USA flu death toll over the last decade is 37,000, a quarter of the Covid toll from four months.
KindaSkolarly wrote:
The only true indicator of what's going on with Covid is the body count: https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inli ... k=hCuH9cOV
Zero Hedge is not a reliable site, having been banned for various periods by Twitter, Facebook and Google. However, that chart comes from CDC, at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covi ... /index.htm

My reading is that the reasons for the decline after the big April death spike are likely to be a combination of late reporting and the shift of the pandemic from old to younger demographics. The implication that the recent low figures are “the only true indicator” is ridiculous, since those numbers are incomplete.
KindaSkolarly

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Re: Coronavirus

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You're not capable of objective analysis, Tulip; you're a fascist. A true believer in Al Gore's carbon banking system, and now it seems you've taken up the cause of Bill Gates' vaccine kill-off. I'll never understand your kind of cult thinking, but I'll defend to the death your right to gibber. It's a shame though what you've done to the children. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

At any rate, for the third or fourth time now, here's the CDC saying that positive Wuhan tests could be on account of the common cold:

"A positive test result shows you may have antibodies from an infection with the virus that causes COVID-19. However, there is a chance a positive result means that you have antibodies from an infection with a virus from the same family of viruses (called coronaviruses), such as the one that causes the common cold."

cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/s ... rview.html

Deny it again, Science Boy.

Once again The Powers That Be are dividing the world up into warring camps. Before long there will be those who test positive for Covid, and those who don't. And those who don't will demand a vaccine. They will be terrified of people who've had the common cold.
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