iamjohngalt

That's why so many politicians love everyone wearing masks. Anyone else remember when only the bad guys wore masks?

Since the death numbers are quite different from the JHU data, could you post a link? I'd like to read it and see the footnotes. (Example, JHU reported 2,624 deaths from COVID-19 in NY city as of 4 April.)

Interesting video describing what happens to the lungs with COVID-19 including similarities and differences from what doctors expected. Start at about 1 minute to skip the daily COVID count map. There is also a free live internet event mentioned to take place tonight Sunday 12 April at 8pm EST.

More commentary from the medical analyst: "You can't claim that someone who is sick right now is sick due to sars2 absent a test. Someone with fever, cough, and difficulty breathing is far more likely to have a flu than to have sars2. In fact, given what we know about the differences we should be emphasizing flu tests for people with these symptoms. Why? Narrowing the scope. The reason it matters is the difference in breathing issues between the two. In "standard" pneumonia and breathing issue cases the problem is blockage in the lungs. You treat that by clearing the lungs and providing anti-virals (ZPAC and steroids commonly). However, sars2 works differently. Like the malaria virus, sars2 binds to the red blood cells in a way that prevents them from absorbing oxygen. This has to be treated specifically - no amount of steroids or forced ventilation will help. This is the likely reason so many elderly and seriously ill have died due to it. Those cohorts are already at risk of O2 deprivation or have lower absorption volume to begin with. Treating covid-19 by trying to get more O2 into the lungs doesn't really work. In non-risk exposed people (i.e general population), testing for flu is the better first route - though perhaps ideally in combination because it lowers pressure on covid-19 stocks and also identifies likely treatment plans. However, there is a more expedient method in a clinical setting: 0) measure blood oxygen levels 1) administer steroids via inhalation and in more intense cases injection. 2) measure blood oxygen levels If this process leads to normalized serum O2 levels the chance it is covid-19 drop dramatically. Knowing the above you can see why: of the blood is capable of taking in the oxygen when the lungs temporarily clear (that is what the steroids do) it is unlikely to be sars-cov-2 infecting the blood cells and preventing the O intake. If that sequence does not result in a high enough improvement, test for COVID-19. In that scenario I would expect those tests to have a much higher positive rate, likely well over 50%. You wouldn't be able to say the same for a flu test in the case of the O2 levels coming up because there are multiple physical causes for that scenario. The above is imperfect, but it is a damned sight better in terms of triage and diagnosis. As a side note: quite a bit of research into oxygenation was done in Soviet Russia decades ago - stuff you couldn't do in the west I'd add. It showed a rather high correlation, and some causation (ie. the experiments you couldn't do here) between effectiveness of oxygen intake and death in a surprising set of conditions. I would suspect that research would support the reasons covid-19 is so brutal to the elderly. To give you an idea of how extensive and surprising it was: if you're over 60 years of age, sleeping in a head-elevated bed dramatically lowers your risk of dying while sleeping - especially around 2-4am. It would also explain why so many can get it and it be mild enough to not even notice: those people have a "surplus" oxygen intake capacity. It would also explain why people with Asthma are at no increase in risk of serious illness to covid-19. People w/chronic Asthma actually develop more efficient and effective O2 absorption, thus are "better prepared" bioochemically."

Mainstream media says medical pros disagree with the chiropractor on quinine and zinc. Can tonic water and zinc help prevent coronavirus? Doctors say no. A chiropractor’s video recommending viewers drink tonic water and take zinc is racking up millions of views, but medical doctors caution it's likely ineffective. https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/tonic-water-zinc-coronavirus-theory-ineffective/63-7a5c74fd-10d6-4995-adf0-9fdfa9330c52 In an interview the chiropractor claims he didn't say it would be effective against coronavirus.

In reply to a question about how testing is being done, an analysis from a medical treatment analyst: "First lets consider the two main strategies for testing and the differences between the strategies themselves. First up: testing sick people who may have it. This is the strategy currently being used in most places. Fundamentally you want to minimize the testing and reduce the scope to people who are sick. The reasons for this are 1) to identify an infection for precise treatment 2) to identify and control spread. Within this strategy and conditions you can be doing this because of supply, need for data, or because you need or have specific quarantine and/or treatment. In the second main testing strategy you test to minimize the broader risk by testing those who are at the highest risk of spreading it. You would prioritize first responders, transport drivers, frequent travelers, and people that you encounter often such as grocery store clerks and home delivery people. Here you are testing not to identify who has the virus, but who does not have it so they can continue operating. Because of the fundamentally different purposes behind those strategies what the results mean are likewise different. In the former case not having a high positive rate means, primarily, one or ore of the following: 1) The infection rates are not as high as you think 2) Something is wrong w/the test (timing, type, accuracy, etc.) 3) The severity of the infection is lower than expected In the second strategy, a lack of results is kind of what you want to have as that lets you keep the locomotive running, so to speak. However, a low positive rate could mean either of the first two above as well as "testing the wrong cohort". FInally, depending on the local frequency a low rate could be explained by repeatedly testing the same people - which you would have to do. Now as to how testing is being (mis)used today for covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 and what the rate of positives might mean in that context. First, we are generally going with the first presented strategy. In this scenario we've see then assumption of a massive crackdown on movement and a general not giving a shit about the infrastructure and people's economy. This rules out the second strategy entirely. So, given that, lets look at the "whys" of our current low rate, after getting some perspective by using data on something we simply accept: seasonal influenza. If you took the reaction to covid19 and applied it to the same data on the beginning of flu season we would be doing this crap every winter. Presently we're sitting at around 12-14k deaths in ~3 months attributed to covid19 in the U.S.. The flu season started in the first full week of October (week 40 of the year), and had killed more by this point in its progression, but more critically for this context had infected far more. This trend has, of course, continued and the seasonal flu has killed, a minimum of more than 2x the amount of covid19 with some estimates up n the 5x range. The infection numbers for the seasonal flu are over 30m so far (estimated). Compare that to the relatively small numbers for covid19: 12-14-k dead and under half a million infected. Quick sidenote on that last sentence: Most people seem to be relying on the Johns Hopkins site for their counts. However, those counts are inflated. As they note in the fine print frame: "Confirmed cases include presumptive positive cases." and further that it is based on a combination of state resources and news reports which also means multiple countings of the same cases. This will also be different from the CDC results which generally exclude non-lab validated cases and go from state and provider reporting. Personally I consider this an abuse of people's trust and wildly irresponsible. If we treated seasonal influenza the same way the death toll would be about ten times higher for it. That would mean that at this stage in the flue season we'd have been looking at death reports due to flu of around quarter million in the U.S. - almost three times higher than the global count for covid-19. Anyway, now that we have the perspective, what is the positive test rate for covid/sars2? It varies widely. In NYC, for example, the rate is around 28-30%. In Texas it is around 7-8%. As such there is no proper broad answer. NYC also has 1/3rd of the total deaths. You don't need a multivariate analysis to see that a key factor in NYC vs Texas (and/or Texas cities) is population density which then means a lack of social distance. It has been widely reported on for decades about how NYers don't really have personal space but those of us out west - even in CA - retain some sense of keeping distance. But I digress a bit. Anyway, the positive test rate for the flu has been higher than for covid19. The reasons for the low positive testing rate include: 1) The actual rate of infection is lower than the PPs (press/politicians) claim 2) Relatedly: the criteria for transmission are smaller than reported 3) The chance of getting sars2 vs the flu are much higher When you look at lab confirmed cases outside of the outliers such as NYC and King County, WA nursing homes, the vast majority of cases are people who traveled to certain regions and the people they live with at home. In TX, for example (I use TX because that is where I am and thus track the closest) almost 3/4ths of test-confirmed cases are from travel and their household. This is due to the means of transmission requiring close contact and the low rate of reproduction. Despite media's breathless fear merchandizing, a covid19 case will infect, on average, 1.4 other people. This is lower than for the seasonal flu (which also has a range, so using the median of each range here) which is in the 2+ range. Thus compared to the flu covid/sars2 has a lower infection rate AND a lower exposure rate. Now keep in mind that the "models" the media used when they were ready to fear monger (remember, the first downplayed it and toed the China line on it) said we should have 10-20m cases in the U.S. by now and have 1-2 million deaths, already assumed drastic shutdowns and quarantine. This means you can't claim that we avoided it because of those actions. That is how wrong they have been. What they really did was to take a 1% (which they claimed was low) mortality rate, then assumed infection levels of the flu. It took me a bit to hammer that out; the week a given article/report came out showed a "projected' infection level that aligns with that week's current estimated flu infection level. Yet the actual data was saying it would not spread the same. This bears emphasizing: The infection rate of covid19, with no vaccine, is more than an order of magnitude lower than the same for seasonal flu which has a vaccine with a 40-65% prevention rate. Let that sink in. What I'd recommend for people who have "symptoms like COVID-19" is to ask for flu test. It is far more likely to be flu, and there are likely no additional restrictions on flu testing. In terms of risk, the flu is still worse. The testing strategy is a valid one, and we've used basically the same for influenza for years. The problem is the reporting, or lack thereof, of the testing and what the results mean. In TX we test based on three official "symptoms": difficulty breathing, fever, and runny nose. However, we've also identified that a runny nose is uncommon in positive tests. We've done more flu testing and those results are clearly showing flu is more prevalent than previous data indicated."

And very successful dipping sheep in Australia without side effects. An interesting theory on COVID-19 from an anonymous source https://archive.is/ONUmi#selection-211.0-272.0 Excerpt: "The past 48 hours or so have seen a huge revelation: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing o2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia. All the damage to the lungs you see in CT scans are from the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, this overwhelms the natural defenses against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes that nice, always-bilateral ground glass opacity in the lungs. Patients returning for re-hospitalization days or weeks after recovery suffering from apparent delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy strengthen the notion COVID-19 patients are suffering from hypoxia despite no signs of respiratory ‘tire out’ or fatigue."

Now if they'd de-integrate invasion of privacy.

Sounds great .... except for the 45 million people. I enjoyed living in CA in the mid-to-late '80s. Yes, traffic was bad even then, but I enjoyed the experience as a relatively young man. I visited for 4 months in Burbank, 3 years ago (for physical therapy.) I wouldn't want to live there today. Like Aj and others, I also was a nomad for years, living in hotels, eating in restaurants, and enjoyed it immensely. Even today I long to go to Australia again and camp my way from coast to coast, and winery to winery. The weather and scenery of CA without the crowds.

On the lighter side, a bit of Aussie humor:

So maybe those monthly trips to the doctors office that were required just to get a prescription for pain meds (that have been in use for years) should be replaced with an automatic re-issue of the prescription and no federal investigation into the doctors' action.

I agree. Nail in the coffin of commercial real estate. Could be worse than in '09.

Maybe Cuomo should have bought respirators instead of COVID test kits. Instead he blames Trump for everything including Cuomo's errors, something that Democrats have been doing every day since election day, November 2016. Looting scum. I didn't vote for Trump and I think he's an insulting boor who is apparently addicted to public attention, but the Democrats should be ashamed for their attempts to reverse the result of the election. If Republicans had tried to do that to Obama, the biased media would have insisted on impeaching every GOP member of con-gress. The recent Democrat actions to add unrelated spending to the relief bill is equally disgusting and revealing. The best thing to add to the bill would be single term limits for con-gress. I predict that the COVID-19 surge is just beginning and every big US city will suddenly be a "hot spot" as they test more people. BTW, if anyone really thinks that the virus has been controlled in China, think again. https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/19/5-reasons-to-doubt-chinas-claim-it-has-stopped-seeing-coronavirus-cases/ https://www.theepochtimes.com/after-wuhan-closes-all-makeshift-hospitals-a-patient-is-still-sick-and-refused-further-treatment_3273084.html

NY has done 30% of all the testing done in the entire USA. NY has done 7 times the testing of other locations compared to its population. Of course NY has more confirmed cases than other places! This is not a coincidence. https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-state-coronavirus-testing-compared-to-other-countries-2020-3 I think this is being done to purposely increase the COVID19 stats in NY so NY will get more federal funding than other states. If the same testing was being done uniformly across the US, imo, the rate of COVID19 would also be uniformly high in all large cities. I think its too late to stop the spread in big cities, and the mayor and governor of NY are testing as fast as possible only to get greater federal funding. It has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with political power. Never let a crisis go to waste and always make every crisis appear worse.