re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

Uh....check out Larry Brilliant’s Wikipedia page. I have no doubt he’s educated in the field of epidemiology, and is factually knowledgeable.

But, at a minimum he’s governed by a single constraint (obtain 0 infections), at most he’s a political activist with an agenda and the proper education to put the right words to it.

This is a pandemic, and it’s true that many people will die in 2020 and 2021 that likely would not have died...for a few more years.

However, this is clearly not the Spanish Flu N
nor Bubonic Plague. The risk profile of this disease is an amplification of risk profiles we already live with, and should be evaluated accordingly and in context.

Reality has many constraints, and completely absent of this pandemic all of the following is true:

The USA is a highly risk tolerant, diverse, country where individual autonomy is held in high regard. “Give me liberty, or give me death” is literally in our folklore. “Live free or die” is printed on every New Hampshire license plate. At the population level, we will sacrifice lives for livelihood even if politicians lack the ability to voice it directly in the Twitter age.

Found this yesterday floating around the nets and it encapsulates my thoughts on the current situation well. Its 20 pages of analysis, but worth the read.

I'm sure some will criticize because the authors are not epidemiologists, but they are statisticians AND this group has actual skin in the game.

LINK

Copying and pasting from a PDF to here is painful because of line breaks. There is too much to summarize, it is too good to ignore. I will give small quips.

Basically says you have to go to Europe to get unbiased information due to politics here.

Say choice between herd immunity and vaccine is a false choice. The virus could have a "saturation" at 15%-20% threshold that lowers it enough. Cites Spanish Flu as evidence that needing to hit the R0 percentage for herd immunity is more theoretical than reality.

Brings up multiple issues with "lockdown theory", one that I found interesting was this: An outbreak of common cold at an Antarctic base after seventeen weeks of complete isolation < Coronavirus (OC43) is suspected to be the virus that appeared in isolation, but scientists at the time were unable to confirm.

Catalogs the collosal failures of epidemiologists at even being in the same ballpark as reality.

They have faith that the hospitals here can handle the surge, believe government will continue stimulus (Trump and Powell have both endorsed Modern Monetary Theory, and that Americans will start ignoring lockdown orders in the future.

Have we discussed Moderna's initial reports on their vaccine? Some notes.

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Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine led patients to produce antibodies that can neutralize the novel coronavirus that causes the disease, though it caused minor side effects in many patients, according to the first published data from an early-stage trial of the experimental shot.

The results were published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Moderna had previously released some results in a press release, but many experts said they were not sufficient to draw many conclusions. Even now, many are withholding judgment.

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The study enrolled 45 healthy volunteers ages 18 to 55, testing three dose levels of Moderna’s vaccine. The trial participants were split roughly 50-50 between men and women. The population was 89% white, 13% Hispanic, 4% Black, 2% Asian, and 2% Native American. More results are expected to be reported later for older patients, who often mount a weaker immune response.

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Volunteers got a shot in the arm on day 1 followed by a booster shot four weeks later. At the 100-microgram dose, the one Moderna is advancing into larger trials, all 15 patients experienced side effects, including fatigue, chills, headache, muscle pain, and pain at the site of injection. All side effects were considered mild or moderate.

A higher, 250-microgram dose led to more serious reactions and has been set aside. Although no side effects were severe — meaning that they required hospitalization — they were unpleasant, as was made clear when one volunteer in the study, Ian Haydon, went public with his experience taking the 250-microgram dose.

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At the 100-microgram dose, patients had neutralizing antibody levels, measured in what are called geometric mean titers, of 231.8 at day 57, compared to 109.2 in patients who recovered from Covid-19.

Experts said that given the multiple types of tests, it is impossible to compare vaccines based on laboratory results between different vaccines. For its vaccine, Pfizer had said that neutralizing antibody levels were 267 at 28 days, but they were 94 (a lower level than Moderna reported) in recovered patients, apparently using a different test. Pfizer has not disclosed data beyond 28 days.

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LINK

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I was only curious since we have seen the disease affect so many different organs

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This is also true of very severe flu cases. Some of these things may be true but they aren’t necessarily unique to this virus and they aren’t going to come out and tell you that because that doesn’t increase panic.

Staph aureus can kill you very quickly. It can cause multi organ failure. If we started swabbing every surface we would find resistant staph everywhere.

The problem isn’t reporting what the virus can do in extreme circumstances. It’s reporting that as if it’s common and with no comparison to other pathogens that are out there every day that we encounter.

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Swine flu
Ebola
Zika

Now this

OT loves to get riled up about the next "plague"

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This post has not stood up to the judgment of time. Understandable at the time (after the media overstated the risk from those mentioned) but this has become a once in a century outbreak.

I am also beginning to do what they don't want us to do with COVID...use my brain. I don't think its a coincidence that a pandemic comes out of China & wreaks havoc on the US economy in an election year. The Chinese government doesn't give a shite about their residents so its completely reasonable to believe that those dead near the Wuhan lab were just collateral damage for the Commies.

Between hacking computer networks and releasing a highly contagious virus this is a convert war being fought. It makes the Russian bullshite look insignificant. It's too bad the MSM is too busy sucking off China and the DNC instead of reporting the actual news. Just look at the bullshite with the NBA and China/Hong Kong which we wouldn't know about unless the people's President DJT called attention to it.

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Everything has been so politicized in my opinion it’s hard to tell. I haven’t seen any convincing evidence. It’s sad for me to witness this politicization of science.

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I've enjoyed your posts since the beginning of this thread. Always thoughtful and knowledgable. I agree that it is almost impossible to have any kind of educated discussion on this topic since there is no baseline of agreed upon facts. Every piece of data has to be scrutinized for bias.

This is what really annoys me about the "I believe in science crowd". I believe in science too, but I've lost faith in scientists as there is always an agenda.

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Its sad politics has infected the medical profession

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Politics and money. No one, and I mean no one trust any paper they read these days. Academic medicine has an absolutely worthless reputation at this point.

Covid-19 has exposed the embarrassment that is modern medicine at every level.

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Have we discussed Moderna's initial reports on their vaccine? Some notes.

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Half joking here, but does anyone else think that they are probably just rebranding MMR or something close to it? Just seems too obvious.

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This. I have people in my life that are huge Trump people that haven't left their houses in months (so no political angle). They are just so preprogrammed to want to be more prepared and know more about what is going on than others. Just desperate for that I told you so moment. It is the saddest part of modern society to me.

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Wait a second. We might be friends. This is me.