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Coronavirus: How dangerous a threat?

Page 102 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
The EU doesn't need to test as much because they have largely controlled the virus. That doesn't mean that it can't come back in the fall, but as of now, the demand for testing is low. This is not a hard concept. The USA is testing more, but the rate of positivity is also increasing. That is a huge red flag that the outbreak is growing. The idea that hospitals are falsifying data to get money is equally laughable. Why does this only seem to be happening in states with increasing caseloads like Texas and Arizona and Florida? The inability to see what is plain in front of your face is a feature of 2020 America.

ETA. The November NYC marathon is canceled already. Finally a bit of realism from people making decisions. The magical thinking that things will return to normal if we wish hard enough has been nauseating.

As I have stated before, you can't fix the country without dealing with the virus threat. More Proof of that here. View: https://twitter.com/Austan_Goolsbee/status/1275570919965147141
 
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Off topic but okay.

I’ve been reading all things cycling on this site since it was Bill’s in the 1990’s. I read a bunch of stuff in the clinic but have zero to add there. I read non-clinic too. If I have something to add, I will.

Feel free to show me where I’m shoving my political views on to the stage In this thread. And feel free to point out where “all you do is post stuff here, which is nonsensical” and trolling.

Probably best to DM but it’s up to you.

Okay, let's leave it at this. :)
 
The USA is testing more, but the rate of positivity is also increasing.

Fluctuating slightly in certain regions according to CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/pdf/covidview-06-19-2020.pdf

The idea that hospitals are falsifying data to get money is equally laughable.

Laughable?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ore-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

View: https://youtu.be/H5FdnrRR2iY


"By creating a massive federal program that links goosed Medicare payments to COVID-19 treatments, the feds incentivized hospitals to add COVID-19 to diagnostic lists and death certificates. It also incentivized hospitals to get patients on ventilators, which may have done more harm than good, as hospitals have reported unusually high fatality rates for COVID-19 patients on ventilators. "

Kaleida Health provided this statement:
“Kaleida Health did receive reimbursement from the Federal Provider Relief Fund, also known as hot spot funding. This was based on COVID-19 inpatient counts, not deaths. These much-needed dollars will help us begin to rebuild the financial health of our organization which has been battered these past few months. We have lost nearly $90 million year to date due to the coronavirus and we are projecting substantial losses moving forward.”
Catholic Health said in a statement:
“Determining whether a patient has COVID-19 is not a judgement call. It is based solely on the results of a laboratory test. Catholic Health have been testing all suspected COVID-19 patients in our facilities and those arriving at our Emergency Departments with symptoms since early March. Patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19, and subsequently die, may have other contributing health conditions, which are all noted in the patient’s medical record. Positive COVID-19 test results are documented, as are all other tests that are performed. Cause of death does not determine hospital reimbursement. Definitive COVID-19 is ONLY in the medical record if a patient tests positive.”

“I think a lot of clinicians are putting that condition (COVID-19) on death certificates when it might not be accurate because they died with coronavirus and not of coronavirus,” said Macomb County Chief Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz. “Are they entirely accurate? No. Are people dying of it? Absolutely. Are people dying of other things and coronavirus is maybe getting credit? Yeah, probably.”

In Macomb County, Chief Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz had a recent case in which an individual died by suicide.

Because they had a family member in the hospital suffering from COVID-19, Spitz had a postmortem test done and found that the individual who died at home was positive for COVID-19. The virus wasn’t their cause of death, but the individual is counted as a COVID-19 death.

Similar cases of “death with coronavirus” have likely been included in the state’s count. In Oakland County, every individual who has died while infected with COVID-19 has counted as a coronavirus death, according to Dr. Ljubisa J. Gragovic, the county’s chief medical examiner.

“We are testing all the people who are deceased who are brought in, whether they sustained injuries or were in a hospital setting or their place of work or home, whether they’re victims of violence or unexpected sudden death, we’re testing them," Dragovic said.


This goes on and on and on.
 
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"For the week ending on June 13th". Have you seriously not been looking at the headlines since then?

View: https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1275545662969589760


But infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told House lawmakers Tuesday that in states where there is an increase in the percentage of people testing positive, it is a clear "indication that there are additional infections that are responsible for those increases."

Contrast that with the Maryland data. An increase in testing over time, showing a decrease in positive rate, a decrease in total positives, and a decrease in hospitalizations. What did we do? We kept bans on gatherings and required masks in all businesses around mid April. Since late May, there has been a slow, careful reopening without a rebound in the virus.

https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/

Do you know how many people would have to keep that policy a secret for that level of fraud to occur? That is a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory plain and simple until you can show proof. The all cause mortality increase is in line with the death stats, probably even suggesting the death toll is an underestimate. Doctors are not hooking people up to ventilators so their hospitals can get more money. Laughable.

ETA. The latest from Florida. Another new record with 5500 cases, beating the previous record of 4000. Look at the percent positives after June 13, doubling from around 5% to 10%. In Miami/ Dade, it went from around 5% to near 20%.

https://www.local10.com/news/local/...um=social&utm_campaign=snd&utm_content=wplg10
 
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Well, ok.

"Countries that do very few tests per confirmed case are unlikely to be testing widely enough to find all cases. The WHO has suggested around 10 – 30 tests per confirmed case as a general benchmark of adequate testing. "

The US has a positive result for about every 20 tests. It's fluctuated between 18.81 on June 1 to 22.09 on June 16. The latest data was June 22 and the number was 19.20.

Latest data on selected EU Countries:

Spain: 89.28 tests for every positive, June 18
France: 66.29, June 13
Belgium: 97.3, June 20
Germany: 139.74, June 14
Netherlands: 60, June 18
Italy: 241.4, June 22
Norway: 185.2, June 22
Finland 205.93, June 21

Sweden: 8.5, June 14
Portugal: 33.8, June 17
Croatia: 31.33, June 23

Testing less will produce the result you see on that graph.
 
Do you know how many people would have to keep that policy a secret for that level of fraud to occur? That is a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory plain and simple until you can show proof. The all cause mortality increase is in line with the death stats, probably even suggesting the death toll is an underestimate. Doctors are not hooking people up to ventilators so their hospitals can get more money. Laughable.

Sure. Continue to discount what doctors and administrators in the field are telling you except for those parts of the story you want to believe (willful ignorance).

Really, nobody cares - least of all you. If the EU wants to ban travel from the US then they can certainly do that. They can also shape their reasons anyway they choose.

The planet is spun up to the point that no matter what, things will never go back to the way they were, vaccine or no vaccine. So of that is good, some not so much. I'm sure the EU will survive without as many US tourism dollars and vice-versa.
 
You do realize that this says that all those European countries, with the exception of Sweden, test way more than 'the benchmark of adequate testing'? Way more, proportional to the infection rate, than the US? Germany could test 6 times less, and still be better than the US.

That's not what this says.

10 - 30 tests per positive test. That means when Germany is nearly 140 tests per positive they are not testing enough, according to WHO.

Germany is testing at a rate .55 per 1000 Germans. They are showing 1 positive for every 140 tests. That's significantly less than what WHO considers "adequate."


Feel free to argue all day long with WHO guidelines. I didn't write them, I'm simply looking at the data.

I am perfectly happy to be wrong... so show me.
 
That's not what this says.

10 - 30 tests per positive test. That means when Germany is nearly 140 tests per positive they are not testing enough, according to WHO.

Germany is testing at a rate .55 per 1000 Germans. They are showing 1 positive for every 140 tests. That's significantly less than what WHO considers "adequate."


Feel free to argue all day long with WHO guidelines. I didn't write them, I'm simply looking at the data.

I am perfectly happy to be wrong... so show me.
Alright:
"Countries that do very few tests per confirmed case are unlikely to be testing widely enough to find all cases. The WHO has suggested around 10 – 30 tests per confirmed case as a general benchmark of adequate testing. "

USA: around 20 tests per confirmed case. Or, the inverse of 5% test positives. If you get higher for the positives rate, you get lower numbers of tests per positive case. In the extreme: every test is a positive case --> 1 test per confirmed case. Lower = worse, higher = better.

So the informative list you show, means that European countries are (not surprisingly given the stage of the epidemic there) testing more than they should to still have 'adequate' testing numbers according to WHO. Italy could test 10x less than they are doing, and still have 'more adequate' testing numbers (proportionate to infections) than the US.
 
The NY tristate area has just put a 14 day quarantine on any visitor from a state with >10% positivity based on a rolling 7 day average. That list includes Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Washington, Utah and Texas. We really need these types of policies to encourage more testing at the state level.
 
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Well, ok.

"Countries that do very few tests per confirmed case are unlikely to be testing widely enough to find all cases. The WHO has suggested around 10 – 30 tests per confirmed case as a general benchmark of adequate testing. "

The US has a positive result for about every 20 tests. It's fluctuated between 18.81 on June 1 to 22.09 on June 16. The latest data was June 22 and the number was 19.20.

Latest data on selected EU Countries:

Spain: 89.28 tests for every positive, June 18
France: 66.29, June 13
Belgium: 97.3, June 20
Germany: 139.74, June 14
Netherlands: 60, June 18
Italy: 241.4, June 22
Norway: 185.2, June 22
Finland 205.93, June 21

Sweden: 8.5, June 14
Portugal: 33.8, June 17
Croatia: 31.33, June 23

Testing less will produce the result you see on that graph.
It looks to me like they are surpassing the bench mark (not Sweeden) for tests.
 
Try and comment neither positive or negative wrt politicos. That’s my point.

Politics by definition is not neutral. There was nothing inherently negative about my post that Trump advocated less testing. I was just reporting information. But you--and most other people--interpreted that as negative (and I'd be lying if I said I didn't mean it that way). Similarly, there was nothing inherently positive or negative about your post that Newsom is going to increase testing, but most people (including you) took that as a positive.

Politics is never neutral, because ANYTHING a politician does or proposes to do will have effects, good and bad, on other people. The only way you can discuss a politician in neutral terms is by describing something completely independent of his political life. But even that's difficult, because what a politician does in his personal life--e.g., Trump golfing--still has political implications. You could say that Trump wore a particular suit today, and that wouldn't necessarily have positive or negative connotations, but for just that reason, it wouldn't be a political comment, either. It becomes political when it has positive or negative implications for other people.

It’s called sarcasm. You are absolutely correct.

Except that Trump himself, when asked about it later, replied, "I don't kid." That doesn't sound like sarcasm to me.

Posted in California today:

6/23/2020 - A large amount of data was entered into the database as a result of a backlog of cases over the past several days. This caused a spike in the number of new cases.

That's worth keeping in mind as a possibility whenever there's a spike. Remember that during the peak of the pandemic in China, there was a spike going from something like 50K to 60k cases, though immediately preceding that, there were only as I recall about 1-2K per day. That turned out to be the result of reporting that had missed earlier cases, I think because of using a different set of criteria. About a month ago, Michigan reported a spike of well over 5000 cases; at the time, before and since, it was averaging less than 1000 cases a day. You can't even. see that spike in MI's C19 record now, because the new cases were allotted to earlier days.

By the way, when some states began opening up, in the beginning of May, I cited Michigan vs. Georgia as states to compare, because they have very similar population sizes, and because MI was trying to maintain restrictive policies, while GA was one of the first and loosest states to open up. At the time, MI had nearly 20,000 cases more than GA. Now GA has just passed MI, and that's despite those extra 5000 cases that really dated to before the opening. For the month of June, GA has had 67% more deaths than MI.

An interesting article tracing the notion of using vaccines to other viruses as protection vs. the coronavirus to two Moscow researchers in the 1950s. One of their children, who received polio vaccine as an experiment, is one of the scientists who collaborated with Gallo on the recent Science article on the subject.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/...action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
 
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Politics by definition is not neutral. There was nothing inherently negative about my post that Trump advocated less testing. I was just reporting information. But you--and most other people--interpreted that as negative (and I'd be lying if I said I didn't mean it that way). Similarly, there was nothing inherently positive or negative about your post that Newsom is going to increase testing, but most people (including you) took that as a positive.

Politics is never neutral, because ANYTHING a politician does or proposes to do will have effects, good and bad, on other people. The only way you can discuss a politician in neutral terms is by describing something completely independent of his political life. But even that's difficult, because what a politician does in his personal life--e.g., Trump golfing--still has political implications. You could say that Trump wore a particular suit today, and that wouldn't necessarily have positive or negative connotations, but for just that reason, it wouldn't be a political comment, either. It becomes political when it has positive or negative implications for other people.



Except that Trump himself, when asked about it later, replied, "I don't kid." That doesn't sound like sarcasm to me.



That's worth keeping in mind as a possibility whenever there's a spike. Remember that during the peak of the pandemic in China, there was a spike going from something like 50K to 60k cases, though immediately preceding that, there were only as I recall about 1-2K per day. That turned out to be the result of reporting that had missed earlier cases, I think because of using a different set of criteria. About a month ago, Michigan reported a spike of well over 5000 cases; at the time, before and since, it was averaging less than 1000 cases a day. You can't even. see that spike in MI's C19 record now, because the new cases were allotted to earlier days.

By the way, when some states began opening up, in the beginning of May, I cited Michigan vs. Georgia as states to compare, because they have very similar population sizes, and because MI was trying to maintain restrictive policies, while GA was one of the first and loosest states to open up. At the time, MI had nearly 20,000 cases more than GA. Now GA has just passed MI, and that's despite those extra 5000 cases that really dated to before the opening. For the month of June, GA has had 67% more deaths than MI.

An interesting article tracing the notion of using vaccines to other viruses as protection vs. the coronavirus to two Moscow researchers in the 1950s. One of their children, who received polio vaccine as an experiment, is one of the scientists who collaborated with Gallo on the recent Science article on the subject.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/...action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Fair enough. You post what you like re: politics and I shall not mention it ever again. I really don't care - as you are probably aware - and if this site‘s admins don’t care then there’s no reason I should.

If testing falls in the US then you’ll know if the comments were serious. Concentrate on actions not words.

I would say the balance between the near total destruction of the American economy and covid rate of infection will tip towards fewer infections. It’s only a guess, but when this is over there will be destruction on a scale far worse than your worst possible virus assumptions. And it will last for generations... unlike the virus itself.

Good news to many I’d guess.
 
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"Breakthrough Drug for Covid-19 May Be Risky for Mild Cases
"That study about dexamethasone has arrived with a big asterisk: While it appears to help severely ill patients, it harms others."
 
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Germany is testing around 1 in 2,000 people. France is a little less. Most of Scandanavia is about the same.

Sweden is testing about 1.7 for every 2,000 in population. Italy is about the same, Portugal is a little higher.
You're shifting from one thing to the other. That isn't compared to a benchmark. The WHO benchmark you poster earlier takes into account how many infections there are. Basically, you need to find 5% or less positive cases in your tests, or you should test more. Most European countries are around 1% positives, so they are good. Some American states are significantly above 5% positives, so they should do more tests, regardless of the number of tests per capita. It's about the number of tests per positive cases. Which makes total sense.
 
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"Breakthrough Drug for Covid-19 May Be Risky for Mild Cases
"That study about dexamethasone has arrived with a big asterisk: While it appears to help severely ill patients, it harms others."

Well, it still is useful as it helps severely ill. It appears that we need to ensure it isn't used on those with mild to moderate cases. Thing is, with this virus the more things we have even if they only help certain people the better.
 
That is the inherent risk in trying to suppress the immune system during COVID-19. You only want to do it when the immune response is overactive and causing tissue damage. For mild or moderate cases, the immune response is what is protecting you. Ideally, you would want to pair Dex with a separate drug/ treatment that targets the virus and an antibiotic to prevent opportunistic bacterial infections.
 
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Some interesting trends. Local outbreaks in countries with low numbers will distort R-numbers of course. Also, not all data seem fully correct. The latest value for Belgium is over 200 new cases, but that's not right, it's below 100. The national center now doesn't report every day anymore, so perhaps that led to aggregation of several days.

I'd personally be worried about airconditioned halls and venues. Look at Saudi-Arabia for instance, or the meat processing plants. I'm quite happy airconditioning is still rather rare here, even though more and more people have it installed because the summers are getting hotter and hotter.

 
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Sobering thread about states that are having issues outside the big four (AZ, FL, TX, CA.) The most egregious part is that some places are still using hospitalizations to dictate decision making. For the reasons mentioned below, that is just not going to work. The proverbial horses are already out of the barn by then. The next 10-14 days are going to be painful. Saw a tweet that college admins are beginning to get cold feet about the NCAA Football season. There is soooooo much money involved, but I just don't see how they can do training camps in 4-6 weeks. Still very skeptical of that happening.

View: https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1275988103740751874
 

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