Any and all updates regarding the COVID-19 will need a source provided. Please do your part in helping us to keep this thread maintainable and under control.
It is YOUR responsibility to fully read through the sources that you link, and you MUST provide a brief summary explaining what the source is about. Do not expect other people to do the work for you.
Conspiracy theories and fear mongering will absolutely not be tolerated in this thread. Expect harsh mod actions if you try to incite fear needlessly.
This is not a politics thread! You are allowed to post information regarding politics if it's related to the coronavirus, but do NOT discuss politics in here.
Added a disclaimer on page 662. Many need to post better.
On November 17 2020 09:06 GreenHorizons wrote: Bit dated now, but they did a survey of some scientists around the world to ask basically if their governments were acting on the science they all claimed to be listening to.
A survey by Frontiers, a Swiss publisher of scientific journals, asked some 25,000 researchers in May and June whether lawmakers in their country had used scientific advice to inform their covid-19 strategy.
I'm shocked that even 20% of the U.S. scientists felt that their policymakers took them seriously... I suppose they chose to mostly ignore the President and Congressional Republicans, when answering this survey question.
They might be refering to local politicians (mayors and governors) that acted correctly. It's the same story in Brazil: the central government went full denial, but that doesn't mean that states acted in disregard to scientific consensus. Frontiers didn't consider this nuance important enough to bake into the question, it seems.
There are people in the US who deny Covid while they are literally on their deathbed. Imagine how ridiculous it would be to literally be getting chemo for cancer treatment, while denying the existence of cancer. Science doesn't matter for the Cult of Trump.
On November 17 2020 09:06 GreenHorizons wrote: Bit dated now, but they did a survey of some scientists around the world to ask basically if their governments were acting on the science they all claimed to be listening to.
A survey by Frontiers, a Swiss publisher of scientific journals, asked some 25,000 researchers in May and June whether lawmakers in their country had used scientific advice to inform their covid-19 strategy.
I'm shocked that even 20% of the U.S. scientists felt that their policymakers took them seriously... I suppose they chose to mostly ignore the President and Congressional Republicans, when answering this survey question.
They might be refering to local politicians (mayors and governors) that acted correctly. It's the same story in Brazil: the central government went full denial, but that doesn't mean that states acted in disregard to scientific consensus. Frontiers didn't consider this nuance important enough to bake into the question, it seems.
There are people in the US who deny Covid while they are literally on their deathbed. Imagine how ridiculous it would be to literally be getting chemo for cancer treatment, while denying the existence of cancer. Science doesn't matter for the Cult of Trump.
First, I thought these must be single case issues, the lone wolves so to speak and wandet to write the following: How clear can the thought process of a dying person be? Lack of oxygen, fear of dying and all that.
Then I thought better of it and read the short article. And according to the statement it's something the nurse hears quite often. And yes, what the actual fuck.
On November 17 2020 09:06 GreenHorizons wrote: Bit dated now, but they did a survey of some scientists around the world to ask basically if their governments were acting on the science they all claimed to be listening to.
A survey by Frontiers, a Swiss publisher of scientific journals, asked some 25,000 researchers in May and June whether lawmakers in their country had used scientific advice to inform their covid-19 strategy.
This is interesting, but I wonder how much it is biased by (1) general trust in government, and (2) overall impact of Covid on the country. Of course, it's a bit of a chicken-egg story, as governments who follow medical advice on a medical emergency are reinforcing the fact that they are trustworthy, while governments going full Bolsonaro on this are reinforcing the fact that they are untrustworthy.
However, I find Spain quite surprising, as the federal government (state level is a bit more chaotic) appears to be following the medical advice pretty closely. I guess a lot comes down to quite a few decisions at state level, where they have really dropped the ball: Madrid being a bunch of cunts who don't care about anybody as long as "their economy" isn't touched, the various ill-fated attempts to salvage the summer tourism season, such as forcing face masks, but not really staying on-message about social distancing for a lot of the summer. Mistakes were clearly made, and I guess worst of all was right at the start, when stupid shit like the Atalanta-Valencia football match and a mass march for Women's day were allowed, but I'm not sure anybody (outside of China) really understood yet what we were dealing with. Even with all this, I still wonder why they are lower than Sweden, whose government quite explicitly flew in the face of all medical advice in a weird bid for herd immunity.
E: oh wait, I thought the article was from November, but the survey was from June? That's *before* the tourism season, so then I understand Spain's position even less. The lockdown was pretty clearly exactly what the medical advisors were saying to do.
I think one of the big problems with Sweden is how the legislation is set up. For example there is a section in the constitution that has been interpreted as forbidding the mass lockdowns many other countries have done.
Art. 8. Everyone shall be protected in their relations with the public institutions against deprivations of personal liberty. All Swedish citizens shall also in other respects be guaranteed freedom of movement within the Realm and freedom to depart the Realm.
That combined with a government that hasn't had the will/ability to push through legislation giving them more power gives a strange result. What is the best possible thing to do and what the government is allowed to do doesn't align. They have been clear with recommendations to stay at home but can't enforce it.
I don't know why the second wave surprises or shocks anyone. The prediction since the beginning was that several waves would come before the development of the first vaccine could even be finished. This is now the second/third wave and it was obviously going to be worse than the first one, because this is flu season. There may or may not come another wave before winter ends, and then the spread will go way down probably until the next winter when another wave will come (hopefully the last one that will result in a lockdown).
It's sad that apparently trust and/or communication between politicians, scientists and people is so bad that lockdowns have become a go-to, rather than smart planning.
No one in particular is to blame for this. A lot of people don't wake up to any kind of crisis until they get hit where it really hurts. I can't blame them for not understanding an invisible threat that they've never encountered in their lifetime, and nothing comparable has happened in the last few hundred years. Even the Spanish flu wasn't this bad, and that outbreak dates back over 100 years.
On November 18 2020 06:56 Magic Powers wrote: I can't blame them for not understanding an invisible threat that they've never encountered in their lifetime, and nothing comparable has happened in the last few hundred years. Even the Spanish flu wasn't this bad, and that outbreak dates back over 100 years.
Why do you think that? The Spanish flu was a monster compared to this. For comparison, the Spanish flu tripled the mortality here in Sweden. Corona has barely changed the meter so far. We're on track for the same excess mortality this year as 2015.
I mean to be fair the first outbreak of the spanish flu wasn't that bad, and maybe there's an argument that in a vacuum, covid is a 'worse virus' than what caused the initial spanish flu outbreak, but i mean.. so far covid has 1.3 mill deaths (we can even say it's significantly higher, even if we assume countries like russia are underreporting by 100k and that this is a trend for many non-western countries), let's just bring it up to 2 million to be charitable.
Then we're looking at 2 million out of 8 billion, and mostly old people. Compared to ~50 million (estimates vary greatly) out of 2 billion people, of which a huge chunk were young adults. I mean cmon.
We're a lot better at dealing with pandemics than we were during the spanish flu. There's also been no information suppression to help military efforts as we're mostly at peace (imagine if China had given no warning at all).
No idea how covid would have gone over in 1910s, but possibly even worse than it is now for a year (basically everyone would get it until herd immunity developed), hospitals would have gotten jammed and overflowed, and respirators and antibiotics did not exist. This means anyone who got a secondary infection would pretty much have just died.
% of population that was 60+ years old was significantly lower though. Even if every single person aged 20-40 got covid and received no treatment, I still don't see how we'd get close to spanish flu numbers because they're dramatically different in what age groups they primarily target. I think it's more plausible that the spanish flu today would have been less dramatic than covid is now, than that covid in 1918 would have been more dramatic than the spanish flu was then. (I think I got that right.)
On November 18 2020 06:56 Magic Powers wrote: I can't blame them for not understanding an invisible threat that they've never encountered in their lifetime, and nothing comparable has happened in the last few hundred years. Even the Spanish flu wasn't this bad, and that outbreak dates back over 100 years.
That chart is only until July in 2020. A lot has changed since then and it is misleading since it has only accounts for half of 2020, while comparing it to other full years. Sweden still did worse than its neighbors during the spring and is doing way worse now. Four times as many infected per 100.000 than Norway and the double of Denmark.
On November 18 2020 09:53 Neneu wrote: That chart is only until July in 2020. A lot has changed since then and it is misleading since it has only accounts for half of 2020, while comparing it to other full years. Sweden still did worse than its neighbors during the spring and is doing way worse now. Four times as many infected per 100.000 than Norway and the double of Denmark.
The others aren’t full years. Deaths per month is the unit being measured. If you look at the X axis you’ll see month numbers listed.
Ah did not see that. Some would still say counting only until July, that would be a bit too soon, considering that the second wave in a pandemic is often more deadly than the first. However, the point still stands. Sweden is doing a horrible job compared to its neighbors which it usually is compared to.
On November 18 2020 08:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: % of population that was 60+ years old was significantly lower though. Even if every single person aged 20-40 got covid and received no treatment, I still don't see how we'd get close to spanish flu numbers because they're dramatically different in what age groups they primarily target. I think it's more plausible that the spanish flu today would have been less dramatic than covid is now, than that covid in 1918 would have been more dramatic than the spanish flu was then. (I think I got that right.)
It's hard to make a true comparison at all because the state of medicine is so different.
People don't appreciate how drastically medicine has changed in only 60 years. The practice of medicine was positively barbaric and utterly clueless back during the early 20th century. We can't have any confidence that young people back then would've fared the way they do now vs. COVID-19.
On November 18 2020 09:59 Neneu wrote: Ah did not see that. Some would still say counting only until July, that would be a bit too soon, considering that the second wave in a pandemic is often more deadly than the first. However, the point still stands. Sweden is doing a horrible job compared to its neighbors which it usually is compared to.
From that data you can see that almost all of the deaths in Sweden happened before August and the vast majority happened before July. If anything the points you are making just strengthens the data. The fact they chose a country that is doing far more poorly than its neighbors and the months examined are the most deadly months of the pandemic just shows that the data was not cherry picked.
I'm not sure I'd call it cherry picked but there's definitely some issues with the labeling that make me distrust its underlying data (it says 1957 happens before 1869 )
On November 18 2020 08:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: % of population that was 60+ years old was significantly lower though. Even if every single person aged 20-40 got covid and received no treatment, I still don't see how we'd get close to spanish flu numbers because they're dramatically different in what age groups they primarily target. I think it's more plausible that the spanish flu today would have been less dramatic than covid is now, than that covid in 1918 would have been more dramatic than the spanish flu was then. (I think I got that right.)
It's hard to make a true comparison at all because the state of medicine is so different.
People don't appreciate how drastically medicine has changed in only 60 years. The practice of medicine was positively barbaric and utterly clueless back during the early 20th century. We can't have any confidence that young people back then would've fared the way they do now vs. COVID-19.
Yeah, people in the early 20th century also believed cigarettes were harmless even as they were hacking up blood and suffering heart attacks. Then there's the widespread damage to lungs from tuberculosis...the type of illnesses people had and how long they went untreated were just vastly different.
I mean, it's not as though "age" is really why old people die from COVID-19. Being farther from your birthday doesn't impose some cosmic alteration in the virus' function. It's just that older people have way higher prevalences of comorbidities and far less tolerance to disruptions of their bodily homeostasis. And that was true of huge swaths of younger people back in the early 20th century, even if they didn't have as much diabetes and obesity-the image of the "hearty American unspoiled by modern life" is largely a fantasy, especially at the turn of the century.
On November 18 2020 12:12 Nevuk wrote: I'm not sure I'd call it cherry picked but there's definitely some issues with the labeling that make me distrust its underlying data (it says 1957 happens before 1869 )
im not staying for the responses because I don't want to be horribly disappointed, but if even one person opens their eyes a little then great
btw if you're wondering why, the answer is obvious and we've been told a thousand times (and ive even said why on these forums) - it's for political and economic control to allow the predator class, specifically those aligned with the world economic forum, to usher in their "great reset". not opinion, not speculation, they literally tell us over and over if you know how to do research.
EPT![[image loading]](https://www.economist.com/img/b/1000/884/90/sites/default/files/20201107_WOC147_0.png)
