quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
If you’re medically fragile and/or old, stay the fuck home and/or take precautions. Everybody else should go about their normal business.

This right here. And my not so humble opinion? All a face mask is at this point is a Mind Control Device (saw a great meme for that on Fakebook, but don't know how to post it here). So...if Karen thinks a face mask, to include an N95 mask, is stopping that virus from entering her body, I have some swamp land to sell Karen.

As Paul Harvey would say, "Good day".

No need to go Full Karen...

And some of you guys aren't getting this.....

Why didn't this country go through ANY OF THIS SHIT in 2009/2010 when 60,800,000 cases of Swine Flu ravaged through this country like a Hitler blitzkrieg on Poland? Why???

Source CDC..."From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus."

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandem...9-h1n1-pandemic.html

That's ON AVERAGE 166,575 cases PER DAY!! Y'all don't think there was a fear of "overwhelming the healthcare system" then??? I have asked that question a number of times in this thread and in other boards and conversations; it has been met with bullshit answers EVERY. TIME.

I got shouted down a couple of months ago when I brought this up. No longer. From this point forward, I will continue to post this question as the need arises.

quote:

Originally posted by zipriderson:
If you are not 100% for business as usual, you are part of the problem. There is no middle ground.

If you wanna talk "business as usual", then I can give you my "business as usual" flight record when working the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009/2010. I can abso-freacking-lutely tell you it WAS "business as usual". Didn't miss a gd beat and flew PACKED planes with THOUSANDS of passengers for THOUSANDS of miles.

quote:

Originally posted by zipriderson:

quote:

So if we discuss a record number of hospitalizations, it's panic?

Yes. Any call for reasonableness and caution will be labelled panic by some. If you are not 100% for business as usual, you are part of the problem. There is no middle ground.

Ok then, I'm out of this thread for good then. Sorry to kick the nest.

Some information about the disease itself that may be of possible interest to many here. From the science journal Nature:

===================================

Mounting clues suggest the coronavirus might trigger diabetes

Evidence from tissue studies and some people with COVID-19 shows that the virus damages insulin-producing cells.

In mid-April, Finn Gnadt, an 18-year-old student from Kiel, Germany, learnt that he had been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus despite feeling well. Gnadt’s parents had fallen ill after a river cruise in Austria, so his family was tested for virus antibodies, which are produced in response to infection.

Gnadt thought he had endured the infection unscathed, but days later, he started to feel worn out and exceedingly thirsty. In early May, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and his physician, Tim Hollstein at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, suggested that the sudden onset might be linked to the viral infection.

In most people with type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune cells start destroying β-cells — which are responsible for producing the hormone insulin — in the pancreas, often suddenly. In Gnadt’s case, Hollstein suspected that the virus had destroyed his β-cells, because his blood didn’t contain the types of immune cells that typically damage the pancreatic islets where the β-cells live.

Diabetes is already known to be a key risk factor for developing severe COVID-191 and people with the condition are more likely to die. “Diabetes is dynamite if you get COVID-19,” says Paul Zimmet, who studies the metabolic disease at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Now Zimmet is among a growing number of researchers who think that diabetes doesn’t just make people more vulnerable to the coronavirus, but that the virus might also trigger diabetes in some. “Diabetes itself is a pandemic just like the COVID-19 pandemic. The two pandemics could be clashing,” he says.

Their hunch is based on a handful of people such as Gnadt, who have spontaneously developed diabetes after being infected with SARS-CoV-2, and on evidence from dozens more people with COVID-19 who have arrived in hospital with extremely high levels of blood sugar and ketones, which are produced from fatty deposits in the liver. When the body doesn’t make enough insulin to break down sugar, it uses ketones as an alternative source of fuel. “In science, sometimes you have to start off with very small evidence to chase a hypothesis,” says Zimmet.

Researchers cite other evidence, too. Various viruses, including the one that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), have been linked with autoimmune conditions such as type 1 diabetes6. And many organs involved in controlling blood sugar are rich in a protein called ACE2, which SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells.

The latest clue comes from an experimental study in miniature lab-grown pancreases published last week suggests that the virus might trigger diabetes by damaging the cells that control blood sugar.

But other researchers are cautious about such suggestions. “We need to keep an eye on diabetes rates in those with prior COVID-19, and determine if rates go up over and above expected levels,” says Naveed Sattar, a metabolic-disease researcher at the University of Glasgow, UK.

To establish a link, researchers need more robust evidence, says Abd Tahrani, a clinician–scientist at the University of Birmingham, UK. “Well-constructed epidemiological cohort studies and mechanistic and experimental studies are needed,” he says.

One initiative is now under way. Earlier this month, an international group of scientists, including Zimmet, established a global database to collect information on people with COVID-19 and high blood-sugar levels who do not have a history of diabetes or problems controlling their blood sugar.

Cases are beginning to trickle in, says Stefan Bornstein, a physician at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, who also helped to establish the registry. The researchers hope to use the cases to understand whether SARS-CoV-2 can induce type 1 diabetes or a new form of the disease. And they want to investigate whether the sudden-onset diabetes becomes permanent in people who’ve had COVID-19. They also want to know whether the virus can tip people who were already on their way to developing type 2 diabetes into a diabetic state.

The study in pancreatic organoids shows how SARS-CoV-2 could be damaging the organ8. Shuibing Chen, a stem-cell biologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and her colleagues showed that the virus can infect the organoid’s α- and β-cells, some of which then die. Whereas β-cells produce insulin to decrease blood-sugar levels, α-cells produce the hormone glucagon, which increases blood sugar. The virus can also induce the production of proteins known as chemokines and cytokines, which can trigger an immune response that might also kill the cells, according to the study published in Cell Stem Cell on 19 June.

Chen says the experiments suggest that the virus can disrupt the function of key cells involved in diabetes — either by directly killing them or by triggering an immune response that attacks them.

The virus also attacked pancreatic organoids that had been transplanted into mice, and cells in liver organoids. The liver is important for storing and releasing sugar into the blood stream when it senses insulin.

The organoid study adds strength to the argument that SARS-CoV-2 might cause or worsen diabetes, but the paper itself is not enough to prove the link, says Tahrani.

There could be more going on than some scientists suggest, says Shane Grey, an immunologist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia. The virus could trigger an extreme inflammatory state, which would impair the ability of the pancreas to sense glucose and release insulin, and dampen the ability of the liver and muscles to detect the hormone, he says. This could trigger diabetes.

Fatigue and muscle loss caused by severe infection can also push people at risk of the condition into a pre-diabetic state, says Sattar. Only long-term studies will reveal what’s really going on, he says.

LINK

zipriderson, cut it out. Stop with the grandstanding victim bullshit. I don't want an explanation, an argument, or even so much as an 'OK'. I want you to stop making these remarks which some members don't realize are sarcasm. You're confusing matters and cluttering up the thread, all because your feelings are hurt. You are welcome to participate in this thread, but from this point on, stow the inscrutable, snarky remarks. Stop playing the victim. Don't tell me that you'll do so or that you don't think that you yaddayadda. Don't even say 'OK'. Just do as I ask. You are on the verge of really pissing me off with this unnecessary stuff.

Confirmed cases are increasing... but not dramatically.
It's mostly happening in areas of California, Texas (Houston) and Florida (Miami) ...
and deaths remain on a downtrend.

This was to be expected as things open up.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Confirmed cases are increasing... but not dramatically.
.
.
.
[snip]

I hope everyone realizes there is a VAST difference between number of infections (cases) and the infection rate, correct?? Yes...NEW cases may have increased lately due to the increased testing of XXXX more people. So the question is, to obtain those 35,023 new cases, how many people were tested? 35,023? 350,230? 3,502,300? 35,023,000?

See how these numbers can be manipulated when we're not talking apples to apples?? I'm not concerned in the LEAST about total number of cases. I'm VERY interested in the total INFECTION RATE. As to what I continue to harp on and compare to...the 60,800,000 cases of Swine Flu...we're barely scratching the surface.

The number of cases is absolutely USELESS if we don't know the total number of people tested. Am I making sense at all??

Edit:
Found my numbers.....
Total Tests - 29,339,757
Total Cases - 2,848,081
Infection Rate of tested - 9.71%
Infection Rate of U.S.* - 0.868%

In contrast.....
Infection Rate of U.S.* (H1N1) - 19.66%

* Based on 2019 estimated population of 328,200,000
** I could not find any numbers to substantiate an estimated Infection Rate of H1N1

So NOW some of you may start to understand exactly WHY I post the "EVERYBODY PANIC" gif when we start talking numbers.

EDITED POST: In 2010, the population of the U.S. was only 309,300,000. Therefore, the infection rate of H1N1 was miscalculated and NOT 18.53% as originally stated.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: erj_pilot,

quote:

The number of cases is absolutely USELESS if we don't know the total number of people tested. Am I making sense at all??

Yes, you are. But...
I understand it is only one metric, and it gives us incomplete information because not ALL people are tested.
By that logic ALL people must be tested EVERYDAY or the information is absolutely USELESS.
I just don't think that's true. We can get useful information about where this virus is most prevalent without testing everyone.

Here is the information showing both the number of tests as well as positivity rate. Tests are going up as well as the percentage of positive tests. There is a silver lining there though. While both testing and positives are increasing, the daily averages of positives are not jumping as dramatically as they would have you believe.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states

A friend of mine died today from Coronavirus. She was diagnosed on May 25 and had to be intubated on May 27. She was overall a healthy, active person and not high risk except for being 51 years old.

I'm sorry to hear that Suppressed, so far I have only lost one family member, but she was over 90. 51 and healthy is a real shame.

I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend, Suppressed.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Are we really going to panic every single time the broken media lies to us about this pathogen? It's asinine. If the hospitals are being overwhelmed, we wasted trillions of dollars hiding in our holes and we should probably suck it up and take the medicine this time around.

This bears repeating. If our efforts so far haven’t done enough then too bad. I’m sorry to say but we’ve done everything that we reasonably can do at this point. The damage done from closures is too great. If people are going to die then they are going to die. I don’t mean to be harsh and I say this having lost a 39 year old friend to COVID-19, but the cost of saving the people that might possibly be saved is going to be greater than the cost of letting people, even a lot of people die. The mental toll that all of this has taken upon our society is incalculable. We need to move on.

^^^^^
What you say is very sobering, Lt., but it's correct. At some point this country has to abandon the notion of "Not One More Death"; that's preposterous thinking. Spock axiom anyone? "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few...or the one". Sounds harsh, but sometimes that's just the way life is.

As of today, the CDC is reporting 121,117 deaths from COVID. I don't believe that mortality number for one single second. Sorry...I'm just not buying the accuracy of the data when it has been overtly stated that those with unrelated illnesses (yes...even end-stage illnesses) that contracted COVID would be recorded as COVID deaths. So an end-stage Pancreatic Cancer patient contracts COVID because Chemo has shot their immune system to hell and back. Cause of death? It won't be listed as Pancreatic Cancer. I have a YUUUUGE problem with that.

The 1957-1958 Influenza outbreak caused 116,000 deaths in this country. I asked my mother if she even remembered anything about it and she said it was a blip on the radar. Granted...different times.

p.s. My condolences for your loss as well, Lt.

The E.U. Today had 4000 new cases of Covid with a total population of 440 million . Florida today announced 5500 new COVID cases today. The % of Covid tests that are positive in Florida is around 15%.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
General Mattis COVID19 PSA

Gen Mattis can eat a bag of dicks as far as I care. Shuffle off to retirement old man.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

The number of cases is absolutely USELESS if we don't know the total number of people tested. Am I making sense at all??

Yes, you are. But...
I understand it is only one metric, and it gives us incomplete information because not ALL people are tested.
By that logic ALL people must be tested EVERYDAY or the information is absolutely USELESS.
I just don't think that's true. We can get useful information about where this virus is most prevalent without testing everyone.

My SIL was saying that they had a big surge, 130 cases, in their county the other day. I asked if the testing rate had increased. She said no, that my brother was keeping a spreadsheet and that the positive rate in their county had gone from one point something percent to eight point something percent. Okay. I didn’t dig into their numbers, they could be FOS, but the idea of looking at the number of positives and the percentage of tests that are positive at least sounds like it could be interesting.
The problem I have is that I am not sure that all numbers information we are getting is not just a big fat collection of lies.

Edited to fix a jillion typos, sigh.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: slosig,

quote:

Originally posted by midwest guy:
Florida today announced 5500 new COVID cases today. The % of Covid tests that are positive in Florida is around 15%.

So? How many of the 5,500 cases will turn out to be asymptomatic? Per what we've seen so far, likely a fairly large percentage. The two doctors I know indicated that both the health systems they work in are still rolling back both nurse and doctor's hours due to a lack of patients to deal with. Couple that with the downward trend of deaths in Florida due to Covid, even with our huge elderly population, and I'm not very concerned about any of this 'data'. I just wish Governor DeSantis would pull back the restraints and let everything get back to normal more quickly.