All things Chinese CoronaVirus

[old salt]

Distinguishing the NYC Metro Outbreak from the Rest of the Country

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/di ... he-country

From the beginning of the COVID19 epidemic in the United States the epidemic has been dominated by an outbreak in the New York City metropolitan area. That outbreak is distinct from the progression of the disease in the rest of the country. It has its own intensity, timeline, arc. The New York City metro is an integrated economic, transportation and population reality – and thus a distinct epidemiological reality – even though it is spread over three different states. So to understand the NYC metro outbreak and the progression in the rest of the country it is helpful to separate them out visually.

For point of comparison, here is the nation as a whole.

The uptick in testing which starts in the last week of April broadly lines up with the rise in cases. A closer look at individual states and the percentage of tests coming back positive suggests the growing number of cases is a mix of actual epidemic growth and the growth in testing. There’s no simple way to disaggregate these two realities.

I included the last quote to note that number of tests keep rising, so you have a difficulty knowing whether the increased number of tests are responsible for detecting cases previously not seen due to lack of testing, or actual case numbers rising.

Again the logical fallacy of using total new cases as the metric. The more you test, the more positives you discover.
Testing resources were directed to NY earlier, the rest of the country is now catching up.
The metric should be the % of new subjects tested who are positive, not the total new positives.
MSNBC, TPM, Larry Summers & other partisans are selectively choosing the metrics.

No. Look at the deaths. They are still going up for the non NY metroplex. Completely unrelated to testing issues.

The red line in the 2nd chart has plateaued since 4/22. It should be expected that the non-NYC metro area will plateau & decline later than NYC metro area (the primary entry portal & largest hot spot), as is happening.

[youthathletics]

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/ ... ion-237612

Maybe they are learning that they have been played, and want to get out before its too late.

[old salt]

Where was the President on this?

https://mobile.twitter.com/ArdenFarhi/s ... 6774096896

Where was Fauci, The CDC, NIH, Pelosi, House and Senate Intelligence committees on that very thing.

This virus has yet to peak in some places.

Your insistence something could have been done earlier only suggests we should have hibernated a couple weeks earlier than we did.

I am only insisting that the President, who receives (or has available to him, anyway) the President's Daily Brief and has immediate access to all manner of intelligence reports from our own intelligence services and friendly intelligence services who might still be willing to share information and insight with this Administration, be held accountable for his specific conduct.

Your suggestion -- that certain relevant agencies, the Speaker of the House (but not the Senate Majority Leader?), and House and Senate intelligence committees should have acted somehow and some way on their own, without Executive Branch legal authorization, planning, and coordination -- is among the most fatuous and hypocritical of your statements on these boards over the many years you have screeched like a little girl about Obama's reckless action without the consent and cooperation of the Congress and the three years you have given this incompetent, incurious, feckless toad your blind devotion. Sorry, Button Buster, this is the spot where the buck stops with Trump and Jared...and you.

And if we had hibernated earlier (two weeks) the current death toll would be less than a fifth what it is now. And we probably would be opening up in more places...

This is what I have been saying. Our government officials were slow to react. It was a choice. Now we are paying the price...... and to make it worse, we were two months behind the world, but we are "opening" up early based on a hope, prayer and dumb luck. I would rather open two weeks too late. We will potentially save more in the long run (people and economically).

Spain, Italy & Germany are opening up. Ask your friends in Lyon if France is yet.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Where was the President on this?

https://mobile.twitter.com/ArdenFarhi/s ... 6774096896

Where was Fauci, The CDC, NIH, Pelosi, House and Senate Intelligence committees on that very thing.

This virus has yet to peak in some places.

Your insistence something could have been done earlier only suggests we should have hibernated a couple weeks earlier than we did.

I am only insisting that the President, who receives (or has available to him, anyway) the President's Daily Brief and has immediate access to all manner of intelligence reports from our own intelligence services and friendly intelligence services who might still be willing to share information and insight with this Administration, be held accountable for his specific conduct.

Your suggestion -- that certain relevant agencies, the Speaker of the House (but not the Senate Majority Leader?), and House and Senate intelligence committees should have acted somehow and some way on their own, without Executive Branch legal authorization, planning, and coordination -- is among the most fatuous and hypocritical of your statements on these boards over the many years you have screeched like a little girl about Obama's reckless action without the consent and cooperation of the Congress and the three years you have given this incompetent, incurious, feckless toad your blind devotion. Sorry, Button Buster, this is the spot where the buck stops with Trump and Jared...and you.

And if we had hibernated earlier (two weeks) the current death toll would be less than a fifth what it is now. And we probably would be opening up in more places...

This is what I have been saying. Our government officials were slow to react. It was a choice. Now we are paying the price...... and to make it worse, we were two months behind the world, but we are "opening" up early based on a hope, prayer and dumb luck. I would rather open two weeks too late. We will potentially save more in the long run (people and economically).

Spain, Italy & Germany are opening up. Ask your friends in Lyon if France is yet.

They were supposed to open up on the 6th. I will ask....actually it was the 11th. I sent a WhatsApp

[ardilla secreta]

“Walla Walla County health officials are receiving reports of COVID-19 parties occurring in our community, where noninfected people mingle with an infected person in an effort to catch the virus. As COVID-19 cases in Walla Walla County continue to rise, health officials strongly recommend you remain vigilant with physical distancing to limit community transmission of the virus.”
https://www.co.walla-walla.wa.us/COVID- ... -04-20.pdf

[kramerica.inc]

So what she is spouting is not telling anyone to do anything. It isn’t espousing any answers, but It is a different perspective, that questions the voracity of what WHO and CDC are saying and questions a lot of what the mainstream media is saying.

Why does it keep getting axed? Across many platforms? That is also the troubling part.

[Typical Lax Dad]

“Walla Walla County health officials are receiving reports of COVID-19 parties occurring in our community, where noninfected people mingle with an infected person in an effort to catch the virus. As COVID-19 cases in Walla Walla County continue to rise, health officials strongly recommend you remain vigilant with physical distancing to limit community transmission of the virus.”
https://www.co.walla-walla.wa.us/COVID- ... -04-20.pdf

https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2020/may/s ... lrich.html

[kramerica.inc]

So what she is spouting is not telling anyone to do anything. It isn’t espousing any answers, but It is a different perspective, that questions the voracity of what WHO and CDC are saying and questions a lot of what the mainstream media is saying.

Why does it keep getting axed? Across many platforms? That is also the troubling part.

[RedFromMI]

So take it for what it's worth.

Been deleted from Youtube a few times now.

For whatever reason. This is what truth OR disinformation looks like:

There is a comment I made in the Facegram/Instabook thread about this video. She is a crackpot who was fired after ethical lapse led to a withdrawal of a paper in Science (premier science journal in US). Arrest was related to her reportedly taking proprietary information from the employer who fired her. Charges were later dropped.

Absolute disinformation from an antivaxxer.

Not defending the video, Did not watch it all?. She said she was not anti-vax when asked.

She claims vaccines are often contaminated - so it a sense she is. But her employment and publication history, with at least one huge ethical lapse - she will never get real employment in the sciences again. And no one will trust her work.

And her ideas are quite fringe - that is why you see videos like this aimed at people who might bite on them instead of hearing her as a consultant in pretty much any media.

When you have some more reputable scientists who actually start doing research that backs up her wild claims I'll take a different look. But given her past history I would not trust her information.

[seacoaster]

Opinion article from Lawrence Summers in the Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Similarly, investments in contact tracers for those who identified with covid-19 would have an extraordinarily high return. Suppose the total cost of a contact tracer is $400 daily, and that 300,000 tracers are needed to follow up on all newly discovered positive cases. The cost would only be $600 million a week, less than 1 percent of the cost of the Cares Act.

The same kinds of calculations make the case for much more spending on masks, on potential therapies and on pursuing production of plausible but still unproven vaccine candidates.

Amounts of money that are small compared to the economic losses we are suffering are immense relative to battling the virus. They should be the first priority going forward."

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?
To earn that pay, they could serve as members of the contact tracer force.
I'm sure the teachers unions would enthusiastically support this initiative.

Just curious: are you opposed to contact tracing?

[RedFromMI]

So what she is spouting is not telling anyone to do anything. It isn’t espousing any answers, but It is a different perspective, that questions the voracity of what WHO and CDC are saying and questions a lot of what the mainstream media is saying.

Why does it keep getting axed? Across many platforms? That is also the troubling part.

A wrong perspective. And people point that out, and someone takes it down, and then it pops up again.

Science does not work when it is just a forum for ideas. You have to be able to come up with falsifiable explanations - that are then tested, generally by multiple research groups. If not falsified, and you have the simplest explanation, your idea grows in value (there are other criteria in terms of things like usefulness, breadth of application, etc. as well). If falsified - you drop the idea or fix what is wrong with it.

She is not working within these bounds anymore. As I said - crackpot at this point. It (to a scientist) is much less troubling than you find it.

[old salt]

Opinion article from Lawrence Summers in the Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Similarly, investments in contact tracers for those who identified with covid-19 would have an extraordinarily high return. Suppose the total cost of a contact tracer is $400 daily, and that 300,000 tracers are needed to follow up on all newly discovered positive cases. The cost would only be $600 million a week, less than 1 percent of the cost of the Cares Act.

The same kinds of calculations make the case for much more spending on masks, on potential therapies and on pursuing production of plausible but still unproven vaccine candidates.

Amounts of money that are small compared to the economic losses we are suffering are immense relative to battling the virus. They should be the first priority going forward."

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?
To earn that pay, they could serve as members of the contact tracer force.
I'm sure the teachers unions would enthusiastically support this initiative.

Just curious: are you opposed to contact tracing?

Not at all. To the contrary. I'm looking for ways to get it going asap.
Idled teachers are an untapped resource, perfectly suited for this.

[RedFromMI]

Opinion article from Lawrence Summers in the Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Similarly, investments in contact tracers for those who identified with covid-19 would have an extraordinarily high return. Suppose the total cost of a contact tracer is $400 daily, and that 300,000 tracers are needed to follow up on all newly discovered positive cases. The cost would only be $600 million a week, less than 1 percent of the cost of the Cares Act.

The same kinds of calculations make the case for much more spending on masks, on potential therapies and on pursuing production of plausible but still unproven vaccine candidates.

Amounts of money that are small compared to the economic losses we are suffering are immense relative to battling the virus. They should be the first priority going forward."

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?
To earn that pay, they could serve as members of the contact tracer force.
I'm sure the teachers unions would enthusiastically support this initiative.

Just curious: are you opposed to contact tracing?

And who says the teachers are not currently working? I mean I am done since grades were due last Sunday, but the schoolchildren I know are still working on school, even though in my state no kids will be returning to the brick and mortar schools for class this semester (and school is still in session until roughly the beginning of June here).

[kramerica.inc]

So take it for what it's worth.

Been deleted from Youtube a few times now.

For whatever reason. This is what truth OR disinformation looks like:

There is a comment I made in the Facegram/Instabook thread about this video. She is a crackpot who was fired after ethical lapse led to a withdrawal of a paper in Science (premier science journal in US). Arrest was related to her reportedly taking proprietary information from the employer who fired her. Charges were later dropped.

Absolute disinformation from an antivaxxer.

Not defending the video, Did not watch it all?. She said she was not anti-vax when asked.

She claims vaccines are often contaminated - so it a sense she is. But her employment and publication history, with at least one huge ethical lapse - she will never get real employment in the sciences again. And no one will trust her work.

And her ideas are quite fringe - that is why you see videos like this aimed at people who might bite on them instead of hearing her as a consultant in pretty much any media.

When you have some more reputable scientists who actually start doing research that backs up her wild claims I'll take a different look. But given her past history I would not trust her information.

Im not asking people to trust her. I’m asking for a second opinion, and wondering why her voice is being silenced. If she is a crack pot, it should come to light pretty easily by investigating her claims.

Does Fauci hold patents to vacs? Which ones? If he does, that certainly raises red flags and is a conflict of interest in the opposite direction too.

Will any new vaccine rolled out have double blinds?

She could certainly be a whack job, but why silence another perspective? Nothing she says is directly dangerous. And it’s a lot to unpack- so probably not appealing to the mass public.

[old salt]

Opinion article from Lawrence Summers in the Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Similarly, investments in contact tracers for those who identified with covid-19 would have an extraordinarily high return. Suppose the total cost of a contact tracer is $400 daily, and that 300,000 tracers are needed to follow up on all newly discovered positive cases. The cost would only be $600 million a week, less than 1 percent of the cost of the Cares Act.

The same kinds of calculations make the case for much more spending on masks, on potential therapies and on pursuing production of plausible but still unproven vaccine candidates.

Amounts of money that are small compared to the economic losses we are suffering are immense relative to battling the virus. They should be the first priority going forward."

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?
To earn that pay, they could serve as members of the contact tracer force.
I'm sure the teachers unions would enthusiastically support this initiative.

Just curious: are you opposed to contact tracing?

And who says the teachers are not currently working? I mean I am done since grades were due last Sunday, but the schoolchildren I know are still working on school, even though in my state no kids will be returning to the brick and mortar schools for class this semester (and school is still in session until roughly the beginning of June here).

.. ...so are you available for contract tracing duty or not ?
How 'bout if awarded continuing education credits toward that requirement ?

[RedFromMI]

Opinion article from Lawrence Summers in the Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Similarly, investments in contact tracers for those who identified with covid-19 would have an extraordinarily high return. Suppose the total cost of a contact tracer is $400 daily, and that 300,000 tracers are needed to follow up on all newly discovered positive cases. The cost would only be $600 million a week, less than 1 percent of the cost of the Cares Act.

The same kinds of calculations make the case for much more spending on masks, on potential therapies and on pursuing production of plausible but still unproven vaccine candidates.

Amounts of money that are small compared to the economic losses we are suffering are immense relative to battling the virus. They should be the first priority going forward."

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?
To earn that pay, they could serve as members of the contact tracer force.
I'm sure the teachers unions would enthusiastically support this initiative.

Just curious: are you opposed to contact tracing?

And who says the teachers are not currently working? I mean I am done since grades were due last Sunday, but the schoolchildren I know are still working on school, even though in my state no kids will be returning to the brick and mortar schools for class this semester (and school is still in session until roughly the beginning of June here).

.. ...so are you available for contract tracing duty or not ?
How 'bout if awarded continuing education credits toward that requirement ?

Not available. And continuing ed credits meaningless to me. (College professor, not high school).

[CU77]

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?

The vast majority of teachers are still teaching remotely.

[CU77]

Testing resources can be directed where needed.

Not across state lines, unless the governors agree.

And nobody is doing the nationwide meta calculations to find out just "where needed" actually is.

We're flying blind, with your Dear Leader in the captain's chair.

#MAGA

[old salt]

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?
To earn that pay, they could serve as members of the contact tracer force.
I'm sure the teachers unions would enthusiastically support this initiative.

Just curious: are you opposed to contact tracing?

And who says the teachers are not currently working? I mean I am done since grades were due last Sunday, but the schoolchildren I know are still working on school, even though in my state no kids will be returning to the brick and mortar schools for class this semester (and school is still in session until roughly the beginning of June here).

.. ...so are you available for contract tracing duty or not ?
How 'bout if awarded continuing education credits toward that requirement ?

Not available. And continuing ed credits meaningless to me. (College professor, not high school).

That's what I thought. I specified public school teachers (& their unions). Are they still working ?
Will the normal sources for mandatory continuing education credits be available this summer...
...like a group trip to S France to do tracings ? That was my wife's favorite.

[RedFromMI]

Public schools are out of session & likely closed for this school year. Are teachers still being paid ?
To earn that pay, they could serve as members of the contact tracer force.
I'm sure the teachers unions would enthusiastically support this initiative.

Just curious: are you opposed to contact tracing?

And who says the teachers are not currently working? I mean I am done since grades were due last Sunday, but the schoolchildren I know are still working on school, even though in my state no kids will be returning to the brick and mortar schools for class this semester (and school is still in session until roughly the beginning of June here).

.. ...so are you available for contract tracing duty or not ?
How 'bout if awarded continuing education credits toward that requirement ?

Not available. And continuing ed credits meaningless to me. (College professor, not high school).

That's what I thought. I specified public school teachers (& their unions). Are they still working ?
Will the normal sources for mandatory continuing education credits be available this summer...
...like a group trip to S France to do tracings ? That was my wife's favorite.

Generally they are still working until early/mid June. BTW, in the South - pretty much no teacher unions - or much in the way of any unions.