^^^^^^^^^^^

"Ballot harvesting" is believed to have turned Orange County, CA and San Diego blue during the last two elections.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
No viral pandemic in known history has resulted in the exponential growth curve that every would be statistician who couldn't pass algebra is now predicting. They ALWAYS taper off long before the doom sayers predictions are reached.

Why?

Because sick people come out of "circulation" and stop infecting others.
Because some people are immune or not very susceptible.
Because absent confounding factors the mortality is much lower than first presented.

Yet the same mantra is preached every time.

"This will exponentially infect half of the population in two months!"
"Millions may die!"

How often have they been right? How about, never?

Despite vaccination rates hovering around 40%, in a typical year around 10% of the population of the United States (~30 million people) gets the flu.

quote:

How many of us on SigForum can say we know someone affected by COVID-19?

John LaPlante. He died yesterday. He's from Chicago. He was prominent with the city of Chicago and took the fall in the great Chicago River flood of 1992. After that he went to work in the private sector at a company where we worked together for 11 years before I switched companies. He was 80. He was a really nice man.

I'm gonna have myself such a good laugh sometime in the next few months.

We shall see what we shall see, gents. Just wait.

In time of crisis, people don't want want to hear predictions of the worst. Yes, the worst can happen, but I wonder if some of you are considering the affect, the negative impact, that your dire predictions are having on some members of this forum.

I once woke up in a strange bathtub in Chinatown and found that (gasp) my ballots had been harvested.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:

quote:

Originally posted by VBVAGUY:
I find it very interesting that 2 countries that border China, which are India and Russia are not even in the top 10. India has a population close to China and I believe most of the population lives in more closer together and poverty level than China. Russia has a population of approx. 150 million. Just my observations. God Bless

Given the extreme overcrowding and poor living conditions in many of India's cities, either COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire (and just not being tested for) and a hell of a lot of people in India are going to die soon or there's something fundamental that we don't understand about the disease that we really need to.

My company has basically evacuated all offices in Noida, Hyderabad and Manila. We have sent more than 25,000 employees there home to work. This was hugely expensive and required thousands of laptops to be shipped to India and the Philippines. Something is up over there.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...patients-11584899438

These Drugs Are Helping Our Coronavirus Patients

A flash of potential good news from the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic: A treatment is showing promise. Doctors in France, South Korea and the U.S. are using an antimalarial drug known as hydroxychloroquine with success. We are physicians treating patients with Covid-19, and the therapy appears to be making a difference. It isn’t a silver bullet, but if deployed quickly and strategically the drug could potentially help bend the pandemic’s “hockey stick” curve.

Hydroxychloroquine is a common generic drug used to treat lupus, arthritis and malaria. The medication, whose brand name is Plaquenil, is relatively safe, with the main side effect being stomach irritation, though it can cause echocardiogram and vision changes. In 2005, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that chloroquine, an analogue, could block a virus from penetrating a cell if administered before exposure. If tissue had already been infected, the drug inhibited the virus.

On March 9 a team of researchers in China published results showing hydroxychloroquine was effective against the 2019 coronavirus in a test tube. The authors suggested a five-day, 12-pill treatment for Covid-19: two 200-milligram tablets twice a day on the first day followed by one tablet twice a day for four more days.

A more recent French study used the drug in combination with azithromycin. Most Americans know azithromycin as the brand name Zithromax Z-Pak, prescribed for upper respiratory infections. The Z-Pak alone doesn’t appear to help fight Covid-19, and the findings of combination treatment are preliminary.

But researchers in France treated a small number of patients with both hydroxychloroquine and a Z-Pak, and 100% of them were cured by day six of treatment. Compare that with 57.1% of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone, and 12.5% of patients who received neither.

What’s more, most patients cleared the virus in three to six days rather than the 20 days observed in China. That reduces the time a patient can spread the virus to others. One lesson that should inform the U.S. approach: Use this treatment cocktail early, and don’t wait until a patient is on a ventilator in the intensive-care unit.

A couple of careful studies of hydroxychloroquine are in progress, but the results may take weeks or longer. Infectious-disease experts are already using hydroxychloroquine clinically with some success. With our colleague Dr. Joe Brewer in Kansas City, Mo., we are using hydroxychloroquine in two ways: to treat patients and as prophylaxis to protect health-care workers from infection.

We had been using the protocol outlined in the research from China, but we’ve switched to the combination prescribed in the French study. Our patients appear to be showing fewer symptoms.

Our experience suggests that hydroxychloroquine, with or without a Z-Pak, should be a first-line treatment. Unfortunately, there is already a shortage of hydroxychloroquine. The federal government should immediately contract with generic manufacturers to ramp up production. Any stockpiles should be released.

As a matter of clinical practice, hydroxychloroquine should be given early to patients who test positive, and perhaps if Covid-19 is presumed—in the case of ill household contacts, for instance. It may be especially useful to treat mild cases and young patients, which would significantly decrease viral transmission and, as they say, “flatten the curve.”

Emergency rooms run the risk of one patient exposing a dozen nurses and doctors. Instead of exposed health workers getting placed on 14-day quarantine, they could receive hydroxychloroquine for five days, then test for the virus. That would allow health-care workers to return to work sooner if they test negative.

President Trump touted hydroxychloroquine in his Thursday press conference as a potential treatment, which is a welcome move. And this isn’t only about treatment. Rapid and strategic use of these drugs could help arrest the spread of the disease.

We have decades of experience in treating infectious diseases and dealing with epidemics, and we believe in safety and efficacy. We don’t want to peddle false hope; we have seen promising drugs turn out to be duds.

But the public expects an answer, and we don’t have the luxury of time. We have a drug with an excellent safety profile but limited clinical outcomes—and no better alternatives until long after this disaster peaks. We can use this treatment to help save lives and prevent others from becoming infected. Or we can wait several weeks and risk discovering we didn’t do everything we could to end this pandemic as quickly as possible.

Dr. Colyer is a practicing physician and chairman of the National Advisory Commission on Rural Health. He served as governor of Kansas, 2018-19. Dr. Hinthorn is director of the Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
In time of crisis, people don't want want to hear predictions of the worst.

No, they want to hear hope.

One of the most irritating things from reporters last week was when they were accusing Trump of giving false hope. Just frickin ridiculous. Trump wasn't touting a drug that he knew had no hope. When I was a teenager, I was in a hospital waiting room while my friend's mother was dying. There was this other guy in there whose family member was also dying. He said the doctor could say that his mom, or whoever, had a 1% chance to live and that would be enough for him to have hope. I didn't get that then because I was caught up in the math, but when I got older and had to deal with my own personal losses I understood the human element.

Wasn't Chloroquine the subject of a M*A*S*H episode many moons ago??? And it turned out to be a problem for people of Black and Mediterranean descent? If memory serves, Klinger had a bad reaction to it, or something.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Pelosi trying to jam some of the worst DEM policy into the next stimulus bill.

Just one example:

https://www.breitbart.com/2020...g-without-any-limit/

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s new stimulus bill would mandate nationwide “ballot harvesting,” allowing party operatives to return other people’s ballots to polling places without “any limit” on the number of ballots.

“Ballot harvesting” was legalized in California in 2016, and first used in the 2018 midterm elections. It allows anyone to drop off someone else’s mail-in ballot at a polling station. There is no process for vetting or verifying those delivering the ballots — no background checks or identification requirements. Democrats dropped hundreds of thousands of ballots off at polling stations in 2018, helping Democrats as they flipped seven Republican seats.

The practice is illegal in most other states, largely because it is susceptible to fraud and intimidation.

Pelosi wants to take that system nationwide.

Her bill, released Monday afternoon, provides that every state:

A) shall permit a voter to designate any person to return a voted and sealed absentee ballot to the post office, a ballot drop-off location, tribally designated building, or election office so long as the person designated to return the ballot does not receive any form of compensation based on the number of ballots that the person has returned and no individual, group, or organization provides compensation on this basis; and (B) may not put any limit on how many voted and sealed absentee ballots any designated person can return to the post office, a ballot drop off location, tribally designated building, or election office.

I'm not sure how she could do this. I recall a bill being passed in 2010 that prevented riders that are not directly connected with the content of the bill. There were other provisions of that which significantly complicated a situation I was working on for my company at the time. I had met with a congressional aid who explained it very clearly.

But I'd never put it past them to try and pull and end run somehow.

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
I once woke up in a strange bathtub in Chinatown and found that (gasp) my ballots had been harvested.

Very same thing happened to me in Las Vegas. Did they get your Rolex, too?

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
Wasn't Chloroquine the subject of a M*A*S*H episode many moons ago??? And it turned out to be a problem for people of Black and Mediterranean descent? If memory serves, Klinger had a bad reaction to it, or something.

sounds familiar. I took Aralen for a couple years to deter malaria. I stopped taking it because it gave me crazy dreams (klinger flying to excape dreams)

https://www.medicinenet.com/ch..._mechanism_of_action

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Trump needs to get ahold of the this ^^^^ and read it out loud at a press conference and shame them all!

Hell yes! Stick it in and twist it as only he can.

And then we have this jewel...

”House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) worked to scupper the phase-three coronavirus relief package on Sunday after Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) told caucus members last week that the bill was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”

Link: https://www.nationalreview.com...s-to-fit-our-vision/

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sig Marine,

Posts come so fast I haven't kept up with every line and every one but I'm curious. If this was discussed, point me to the page and move on.

From what I know for most people, you'll get it and not know it, barely know it, or get sick 4-6 days and move on. Once done you have an immunity.

Why don't we quarantine the most vulnerable (over 60, immune or respiratory compromised, etc) and let everyone else get it, recover and become immune thus preventing spread. Wouldn't that stop it in the same amount of time without wrecking the economy?

^Because of the increased need of assistance to breathe. Compounded by the fact that citizens are not that healthy (co-mobidity can trump age). Imagine soar throat on friday, fever on Saturday, cough on Sunday, and pneumonia on Monday, and ventilator on Tuesday.
Herd immunity too risky without vaccines.

quote:

Originally posted by SigSentry:
^Because of the increased need of assistance to breathe. Compounded by the fact that citizens are not that healthy (co-mobidity can trump age). Imagine soar throat on friday, fever on Saturday, cough on Sunday, and pneumonia on Monday, and ventilator on Tuesday.
Herd immunity too risky without vaccines.

And at the rate it spreads. It is how easily it spreads.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Posts come so fast I haven't kept up with every line and every one but I'm curious. If this was discussed, point me to the page and move on.

From what I know for most people, you'll get it and not know it, barely know it, or get sick 4-6 days and move on. Once done you have an immunity.

Why don't we quarantine the most vulnerable (over 60, immune or respiratory compromised, etc) and let everyone else get it, recover and become immune thus preventing spread. Wouldn't that stop it in the same amount of time without wrecking the economy?

That was essentially how Boris Johnson described the UK's plan at the end of the week before last, before everyone else in his government jumped up and said "no, no, that's not the plan."

https://www.theatlantic.com/he...oris-johnson/608065/

The question is, first, whether it is even possible to protect the vulnerable populations, and second, whether even just letting healthy, under-60 people get sick would overload hospitals.

There are some reports that even though the mortality rate is low for that group, a significant number of them still require lengthy hospitalization not to die.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Posts come so fast I haven't kept up with every line and every one but I'm curious. If this was discussed, point me to the page and move on.

From what I know for most people, you'll get it and not know it, barely know it, or get sick 4-6 days and move on. Once done you have an immunity.

Why don't we quarantine the most vulnerable (over 60, immune or respiratory compromised, etc) and let everyone else get it, recover and become immune thus preventing spread. Wouldn't that stop it in the same amount of time without wrecking the economy?

Because logic is in short supply.