April Banter 2020

[George BM]

What's your go to IPA during this time AND have your kids tried to get some of that good stuff?...

Go!

[yoda]

Big earthquake earlier this evening in ID... 2nd biggest on record I believe in that state... 6.5 magnitude

[yoda]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5100853002

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us70008jr5/executive

[H2O]

the yellowstone freakout over the quake was lol

[PDIII]

5 hours ago, yoda said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5100853002

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us70008jr5/executive

Oh wow thats a big one!

[PDIII]

1 minute ago, H2O said:

the yellowstone freakout over the quake was lol

I wonder if Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were right all along...

[PDIII]

I feel like Bill Gates is just toying with people now...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/31/bill-gates-how-covid-19-pandemic-can-help-world-solve-climate-change.html

[H2O]

you need to log off and talk with your therapist

[nw baltimore wx]

There are a couple of wandering prophets that I see from time to time around Bmore when I’m running errands, and generally, when I see them, the best thing for me to do is to simply ignore them and don’t get engaged.

Time to put that to practice here.

[PDIII]

49 minutes ago, nw baltimore wx said:

There are a couple of wandering prophets that I see from time to time around Bmore when I’m running errands, and generally, when I see them, the best thing for me to do is to simply ignore them and don’t get engaged.

Time to put that to practice here.

This is an eye opening news story: 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical-measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/

Lets take this excerpt for instance:

"Outside, drones hovered above streets, yelling at people to get inside and scolding them for not wearing face masks, while elsewhere in China facial-recognition software, linked to a mandatory phone app that color-coded people based on their contagion risk, decided who could enter shopping malls, subways, cafes and other public spaces. "

Does that mean that Subways and Malls were open?

Seems to me that china didnt even close their malls...

[showmethesnow]

For those that continue to use the information from China in the discussion or even the studies that incorporate this data I probably wouldn't. To put it bluntly they are basically worthless IMO. Keep in mind that everything is filtered through the CPC (Communist Party of China) with the sole intent of looking good in the world's eyes. Any and all detractors from the CPC script within the communities and professional services were stomped on and hard. Despite the CPC's efforts much has leaked out that paints a very bleak picture of what actually occurred. We are also seeing much in the way of peripheral sources (raw data on services within the communities, source allocations, containment strategies, etc...) that collaborates the witness accounts. That said it isn't a stretch whatsoever to piece together a somewhat more accurate idea of what the ground truth was. And that is one that if you increase the numbers by a multitude of 8-10 times you are probably going to get a much more accurate read of the ground truth.

Now keep in mind, the above is mostly in reference to Wuhan the epicenter of the original outbreak where the international communities focus was keyed on. But what I question is what we actually saw in other portions of China. Where the information has been sparse and filtered through the CPC filter and there has been very little questioning in that regards from the rest of the world. So what did we actually see? Now I suppose that it is possible that China was able to pretty much contain the virus within the Wuhan region and mitigate the spread elsewhere. But I think there are things arguing against this. First and foremost, Wuhan is the hub of industry and commerce within central China. Many in China travel through the city on their way to other portions of China as it is also a focal point of travel from north to south China as well as East to west. Now consider, cases of the virus in Wuhan started popping up in early December (there are now reports coming out of China of possible cases even earlier, as early as mid-November but let's wait to see what comes of that). But we in fact didn't see Wuhan shut down until Jan 23.  So we are pretty much talking a time frame of a month to a month and a half that this virus was able to spread to other portions of China (this doesn't even consider international travel out of Wuhan but that is another story). Now if that wasn't bad enough, what we saw just prior to the shutdown was that upwards of 5 million people left to beat the quarantine. Need I mention how many vectors of this virus this implies that were spread throughout China? The above facts alone argue strongly that China was hit even harder in other regions then they are letting on to especially considering what we are seeing in regards to it's spread in other countries. Now was it a factor of 8 to 10 times what I feel we possibly saw in Wuhan? That I have no idea. All I am pretty certain of is it was worse, possibly much worse then what China is letting on to. 

Now I am sort of scratching the surface on the above. There is much more out there that implies that China was hit much harder then they care to admit. Unfortunately I don't believe we will ever truly know how badly considering these facts will never be released by the CPC and that doesn't even consider that China may never know themselves as some of the practices they were employing were purposely done to down play the extent of the virus' impacts. For all we know we just saw a very significant humanity crisis in China and yet China will neither admit nor seek help, for fear of looking bad in the eye's of the world.

[PDIII]

2 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

For those that continue to use the information from China in the discussion or even the studies that incorporate this data I probably wouldn't. To put it bluntly they are basically worthless IMO. Keep in mind that everything is filtered through the CPC (Communist Party of China) with the sole intent of looking good in the world's eyes. Any and all detractors from the CPC script within the communities and professional services were stomped on and hard. Despite the CPC's efforts much has leaked out that paints a very bleak picture of what actually occurred. We are also seeing much in the way of peripheral sources (raw data on services within the communities, source allocations, containment strategies, etc...) that collaborates the witness accounts. That said it isn't a stretch whatsoever to piece together a somewhat more accurate idea of what the ground truth was. And that is one that if you increase the numbers by a multitude of 8-10 times you are probably going to get a much more accurate read of the ground truth.

Now keep in mind, the above is mostly in reference to Wuhan the epicenter of the original outbreak where the international communities focus was keyed on. But what I question is what we actually saw in other portions of China. Where the information has been sparse and filtered through the CPC filter and there has been very little questioning in that regards from the rest of the world. So what did we actually see? Now I suppose that it is possible that China was able to pretty much contain the virus within the Wuhan region. But I think there are things arguing against this. First and foremost, Wuhan is the hub of industry and commerce within central China. Many in China travel through the city on their way to other portions of China as it is also a focal point of travel from north to south China as well as East to west. Now consider, cases of the virus in Wuhan started popping up in early December (there are now reports coming out of China of possible cases even earlier, as early as mid-November but let's wait to see what comes of that). But we in fact didn't see Wuhan shut down until Jan 23.  So we are pretty much talking a time frame of a month to a month and a half that this virus was able to spread to other portions of China (this doesn't even consider international travel out of Wuhan but that is another story). Now if that wasn't bad enough, what we saw just prior to the shutdown was that upwards of 5 million people left to beat the quarantine. Need I mention how many vectors of this virus this implies that were spread throughout China? The above facts alone argue strongly that China was hit even harder in other regions then they are letting on to especially considering what we are seeing in regards to it's spread in other countries. Now was it a factor of 8 to 10 times what I feel we possibly saw in Wuhan? That I have no idea. All I am pretty certain of is it was worse, possibly much worse then what China is letting on to. 

Now I am sort of scratching the surface on the above. There is much more out there that implies that China was hit much harder then they care to admit. Unfortunately I don't believe we will ever truly know how badly considering these facts will never be released by the CPC and that doesn't even consider that China may never know themselves as some of the practices they were employing were purposely done to down play the extent of the virus' impacts. For all we know we just saw a very significant humanity crisis in China and yet China will neither admit nor seek help, for fear of looking bad in the eye's of the world.

Mass death is a very hard thing to cover up.. my guess is that when all is said and done.. most major metropolitan areas in China (and elsewhere) will have Wuhan like numbers.. even in Italy where they did postmortems and attributed deaths to Corona where there were clearly other causes for death.. or people were gonna die anyway.. they could only find like 15,000 deaths.. which really isnt a lot.  

Again.. if this was the big one... it would have been more apparent from the onset.

 

[H2O]

Take a break PD3

[Eskimo Joe]

Italian Ministry of Health last night announced on NHK World News (The Japanese version of PBS, a reliable source) that deaths reported so far have almost exclusively been from hospitals.  Nursing homes and deaths at home, etc. largely have not been counted because the system is back up so much.  It would not surprised me to see something like a 15% mortality rate in Italy when all is said and done.

[showmethesnow]

2 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Italian Health Ministry last night announced on NHK World News (The Japanese version of PBS, a reliable source) that deaths reported so far have almost exclusively been from hospitals.  Nursing homes and deaths at home, etc. largely have not been counted because the system is back up so much.  It would not surprised me to see something like a 15% mortality rate in Italy when all is said and done.

So you seriously see 9+ million deaths in Italy? I know they were hit hard but nothing I see remotely suggests such numbers. 

[Eskimo Joe]

Just now, showmethesnow said:

So you seriously see 9+ million deaths in Italy? I know they were hit hard but nothing I see remotely suggests such numbers. 

I never said that. 15% mortality of the number of infected cases. 

[nj2va]

I completely support the Diocese call to stop all masses a few weeks ago but I'm disappointed I won't be able to attend live mass for Palm Sunday this weekend & Easter Sunday the following weekend -- its the holiest time of the year for Christians and I always look forward to the music and rejoice at Easter Sunday mass.  I do find myself spending more time on Sundays reflecting and praying for our nation while I set aside time to watch the livestream of mass on my iPad.  

 

[showmethesnow]

Just now, Eskimo Joe said:

I never said that. 15% mortality of the number of infected cases. 

My bad. Thinking stupid on my part. I still question a 15% mortality rate as I think it will be much lower but we probably will never know the true number as more then likely many cases of infection will go undetected. Best way of getting a read on that is probably to try to figure out the total infection rate for the country through modeling and base it off that.

[Eskimo Joe]

Just now, nj2va said:

I completely support the Diocese call to stop all masses a few weeks ago but I'm disappointed I won't be able to attend live mass for Palm Sunday this weekend & Easter Sunday the following weekend -- its the holiest time of the year for Christians and I always look forward to the music and rejoice at Easter Sunday mass.  I do find myself spending more time on Sundays reflecting and praying for our nation while I set aside time to watch the livestream of mass on my iPad.  

 

Philly has Catholic mass on 6 ABC and broadcasts services from St. Peter & Paul Basilica on the radio.  I'm not sure why other cities don't do this.  Oklahoma is broadcasting services and Texas, somehow, decided to keep all their churches open.  

[Eskimo Joe]

Just now, showmethesnow said:

My bad. Thinking stupid on my part. I still question a 15% mortality rate as I think it will be much lower but we probably will never know the true number as more then likely many cases of infection will go undetected. Best way of getting a read on that is probably to try to figure out the total infection rate for the country through modeling and base it off that.

Yea, it should be noted that Italy is going to be the far outlier, maybe Spain breaks the double digit mortality rate too, but we should fare somewhat better in the US if the public takes this seriously.  It's entirely possible, and this is just my opinion here, that we see things return to normal in time for Memorial Day. 

[PDIII]

1 minute ago, showmethesnow said:

My bad. Thinking stupid on my part. I still question a 15% mortality rate as I think it will be much lower but we probably will never know the true number as more then likely many cases of infection will go undetected. Best way of getting a read on that is probably to try to figure out the total infection rate for the country through modeling and base it off that.

We should stop speculating about the death rate and leave it to post analysis: 

https://www.livescience.com/death-rate-lower-than-estimates.html

[mappy]

in other news

 

[Eskimo Joe]

1 minute ago, mappy said:

in other news

 

Good.  Now let's get cracking on that third span.

[showmethesnow]

1 minute ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Yea, it should be noted that Italy is going to be the far outlier, maybe Spain breaks the double digit mortality rate too, but we should fare somewhat better in the US if the public takes this seriously.  It's entirely possible, and this is just my opinion here, that we see things return to normal in time for Memorial Day. 

I know this is an outlier opinion from many on these boards but I have felt for a couple of weeks now that we were probably talking a .75-1.25 % mortality rate in the States (With true infection rate and not just tested) as long as we did not allow our healthcare system to become substantially overwhelmed. Other wise we probably double that, 1.5- 2.5%. The next couple of weeks will be key in that regard.

[Baltimorewx]

At least during home confinement it’s acceptable to be in the bar at 9 in the morningJust drinking coffee instead of beer for now

[showmethesnow]

38 minutes ago, PDIII said:

Mass death is a very hard thing to cover up.. my guess is that when all is said and done.. most major metropolitan areas in China (and elsewhere) will have Wuhan like numbers.. even in Italy where they did postmortems and attributed deaths to Corona where there were clearly other causes for death.. or people were gonna die anyway.. they could only find like 15,000 deaths.. which really isnt a lot.  

Again.. if this was the big one... it would have been more apparent from the onset.

 

I really don't understand your need to underplay this. Is it the big one where we see mortality rates of 25 even 50+% as we saw in times past in Europe and elsewhere? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But none the less it is still a very serious situation in both the number of deaths and the impact to the worlds economies. And when all is said and told I would not be surprised to see the far bigger impact may actually be in the aftermath of the virus as we probably see a general restructuring of certain aspects of society, governments and the general world order to fit the new reality. So you dismissing this for the most part defies logic. 

*** I wish you would quit dismissing corana virus deaths because the victims had underlying health issues. The Corona virus was the initiating reason for these people dying and without them contracting it these people would still be alive. So they count. END OF STORY.

[mappy]

hey guys, can you stop adding fuel to PD3s fire? 

[psuhoffman]

@showmethesnow given how much more we know about virus transmission now and medical advances hopefully we never see another pandemic that wipes out majorities of the population in places. It’s possible but it’s also likely we could at least mitigate the impact some compared to pandemics that predated modern medicine.   This doesn’t have the mortality rate to be that kind of outbreak anyways but people taking the minimalist extreme position also aren’t accounting for what the mortality would look like if we didn’t take these measures. Somewhere in between is the likely answer but a level we would regret considering the crash to the healthcare system it would cause and how that would impact millions of other people.  

[psuhoffman]

I wonder why the initial dismissal of masks as a part of the containment strategy. Even if it’s minimally effective at preventing people from contracting it seemed to me that it would help with the transmission from the asymptotic carriers. And even minimally effective could lower transmission some. Maybe they knew we simply didn’t have the supply and didn’t want to cause a panic or rush on supplies?

ETA: just read that some experts feared masks would create a false sense of security and cause people not to practice social distancing thus mitigating the benefits. I could see how that “could” be a problem but then better messaging was needed. That seems to be a “people are too stupid to handle the truth” attitude. And while that may be true you have to at least attempt imo. 

[Maestrobjwa]

3 hours ago, showmethesnow said:

My bad. Thinking stupid on my part. I still question a 15% mortality rate as I think it will be much lower but we probably will never know the true number as more then likely many cases of infection will go undetected. Best way of getting a read on that is probably to try to figure out the total infection rate for the country through modeling and base it off that.

Now I thought it would be around that percentage over there because of their overall older population?