Coronavirus 2020

[MV/Liberace!]

We'll have to scrutinise him closely when he comes out, he might be a ringer!

heh heh

[Dr. MD MD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azcoaFKjAtQ

[Dr. MD MD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnD1rtY_VqA

[K_Dubb]

We go from millions will die in the US to tens of thousands will die.   And now social distancing will be hailed as the reason for the decline instead of the badly flawed models.  I suspect the models basically have someone type in a number and print it back out.

Someone needs to point out that hospital capacity was the original purpose of social distancing.  It was, specifically, "flattening the curve", not reducing overall fatalities, i. e. the area under the curve remains the same, just stretched out.

Meanwhile one of our biggest hospitals (Virginia Mason) is furloughing staff.  Hospital business has gone down dramatically as people, fearing infection, stay away.

[Dr. MD MD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yrVoxNB9gQ

[Dr. MD MD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-U2BIwelkM
From China

I love Australia! They’ve got nothing but a boot to the bum for China now. Heh heh!

[GravitySucks]

Someone needs to point out that hospital capacity was the original purpose of social distancing.  It was, specifically, "flattening the curve", not reducing overall fatalities, i. e. the area under the curve remains the same, just stretched out.

Meanwhile one of our biggest hospitals (Virginia Mason) is furloughing staff.  Hospital business has gone down dramatically as people, fearing infection, stay away.

That is definitely going to be the problem in getting the people out of their homes. People started concentrating on the number of deaths instead of the number of open beds left to deal with the pandemic.

And the ridiculous models that show zero deaths in any state after mid June. 

[Asuka Langley]

Gas prices here are .95 cents a gallon and i have officially stopped any and all forms of social distancing. Paul Cottrell and Dr Fauci can officially eat my ass i am all out of fucks.

[Dr. MD MD]

Gas prices here are .95 cents a gallon and i have officially stopped any and all forms of social distancing. Paul Cottrell and Dr Fauci can officially eat my ass i am all out of fucks.

Also, what cop is going to pull you over and ask for your icky, germ infested license these days? Might as well live a little.

[WOTR]

,

Failing that, a minimum wage illegal immigrant could sit on their chest and jam a pair of bellows down their throat. Cost-effective and stimulates the economy, if not the patient.

I would think that in order to properly stimulate the patient, they should probably situate the illegal immigrant a little lower...

[WOTR]

Someone needs to point out that hospital capacity was the original purpose of social distancing.  It was, specifically, "flattening the curve", not reducing overall fatalities, i. e. the area under the curve remains the same, just stretched out.

Meanwhile one of our biggest hospitals (Virginia Mason) is furloughing staff.  Hospital business has gone down dramatically as people, fearing infection, stay away.

Yeah. But the narrative has shifted. Remind me again why Iraq was invaded? 

The ministry of truth has been working overtime the last few weeks.

[WOTR]

Meanwhile one of our biggest hospitals (Virginia Mason) is furloughing staff.  Hospital business has gone down dramatically as people, fearing infection, stay away.

***What the fuck? furloughing staff? The Alberta health authority is asking their employees who do the hiring to work Sunday at triple pay to fast track new hires. (I know somebody who is doing it- I doubt you will find it in the news)... I guess that is the difference between for profit and public health? You can hire as many staff as you can get away with and have them twiddle their thumbs if you don't have to show a profit...

We go from millions will die in the US to tens of thousands will die.   And now social distancing will be hailed as the reason for the decline instead of the badly flawed models.  I suspect the models basically have someone type in a number and print it back out.

I suspect that there are a lot of "scientific models" that have been using that protocol lately.

[GravitySucks]

***What the fuck? furloughing staff? The Alberta health authority is asking their employees who do the hiring to work Sunday at triple pay to fast track new hires. (I know somebody who is doing it- I doubt you will find it in the news)... I guess that is the difference between for profit and public health? You can hire as many staff as you can get away with and have them twiddle their thumbs if you don't have to show a profit...

I suspect that there are a lot of "scientific models" that have been using that protocol lately.

I’ve seen reports of layoffs in hospitals all across the country. And even more layoffs in clinics that are strictly outpatient in nature. Most states have stopped all “elective” surgeries. Primarily to not use up more PPE.

I read an article about a chain of day surgery clinics in NYC. They weren’t allowed to be open but had 600 rooms with over 200 doctors and all of the PPE. They tried to make these available on a volunteer basis to NYC or the state and could not get anyone to return their phone calls. Supposedly the drawback was their license did not allow them to keep patients over night.

In Texas we are in pretty good shape. Some hospitals are closing down whole departments but I haven’t heard of layoffs at hospitals yet.  Rural hospitals are going to be the hardest hit. They don’t have many Covid cases but can’t schedule normal surgeries like knees and hips.

Here are today’s resource numbers for our hospitals. We have just over 20,000 detected cases.

[SredniVashtar]

We go from millions will die in the US to tens of thousands will die.   And now social distancing will be hailed as the reason for the decline instead of the badly flawed models.  I suspect the models basically have someone type in a number and print it back out.

Science is about using the best available data to make predictions about the future. If the data changes then so does the model. It's about probability rather than certainty. If social-distancing is the best way to reduce the rate of infections then revising the numbers down illustrates its effectiveness not the weakness of the modelling. People are terrible at understanding probability.

[Walks_At_Night]

Gates on the BBC.   The interview is meh but the comments are a hoot.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie6lRKAdvuY

[Walks_At_Night]

This would wipe out whole apartment complexes/neighborhoods here if it actually happened.

Indian H1B Visa Holders Fear Deportation as Unemployed Workers Must Leave US within 60 Days

https://www.dqindia.com/indian-h1b-visa-holders-fear-deportation-unemployed-workers-must-leave-us-within-60-days/

[Walks_At_Night]

Johnson is discharged from the hospital.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52262012

[whoozit]

Science is about using the best available data to make predictions about the future. If the data changes then so does the model. It's about probability rather than certainty. If social-distancing is the best way to reduce the rate of infections then revising the numbers down illustrates its effectiveness not the weakness of the modelling. People are terrible at understanding probability.

My point is that computer models are not science, they are guesses.  Someone takes a guess at the assumptions and generates a result. I find nothing wrong with varying estimates during a crisis.  What I find frightening is our reliance on computer models.  They are crap.  I also find conflicting information or possible lies a problem.  Not long ago we were being told not to wear masks because they don’t work and furthermore the healthcare professionals need them.  Please explain to me why healthcare workers need something that is ineffective.  I still think the coming world depression due to crippling  all economies is going to kill far more than this pandemic.

[GravitySucks]

Science is about using the best available data to make predictions about the future. If the data changes then so does the model. It's about probability rather than certainty. If social-distancing is the best way to reduce the rate of infections then revising the numbers down illustrates its effectiveness not the weakness of the modelling. People are terrible at understanding probability.

Yeah. Except they can still be terrible models. They claim the IHME models were set to account for total lockdown of all states through May 30th and the range of deaths were a range based on the amount of compliance.  They were still high even though not all states were in a lockdown. 

I totally understand models and I totally understand probability. And I totally understand manipulation. 

The models were used to show the need for “flattening the curve” and I believe skewed to instill fear, if not panic.  Also skewed to manipulate or force the executive branch into a box. One only has to look at the disparity in the predictions of deaths (which even though high, were only high by a factor of 2-4) versus the the predicted number of hospital beds (which were high by an order of magnitude). Then you have the assumption of being in a lockdown state through the end of May.  Why didn’t they show the model with an end date of the lockdown as April 30th, which is the current quideline?   The worst internals of the model result in the predictions that each and every state drop down to zero deaths somewhere between the end of May and mid-June.  This puts the administration in a box as far as lifting the guidelines for the “quarantine”. If they stick with the guidelines for the end of April, every death which exceeds the predictions that have been lowered with the real data will be blamed on Trump for not going with the recommendation for a May 31 lockdown.  Yet if they go with the recommendation for the end of May, every death after that will just be written off as yet another error in the models.

I wonder what is going to happen when ventilators start showing up from the 10 or so companies that have been mobilized to produce new ones because it doesn’t look like we are going to have full utilization of the ones we have already had in hospitals or distributed from the stockpile.

As has been stated, these guidelines and total shutdown of the economy were sold based on the need to flatten the curve and keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed in the near term. Around the time the IHME models were adopted as gospel, the narrative switched to reaching an unrealistic goal of zero deaths by mid June.  How could they be relatively close on the predictions for morbidity and so off scale on all the other factors such as number of beds, number of ICU beds and number of ventilators? 

There was definitely an agenda into the design of the models.

[GravitySucks]

This would wipe out whole apartment complexes/neighborhoods here if it actually happened.

Indian H1B Visa Holders Fear Deportation as Unemployed Workers Must Leave US within 60 Days

https://www.dqindia.com/indian-h1b-visa-holders-fear-deportation-unemployed-workers-must-leave-us-within-60-days/

#winning

[K_Dubb]

The models were used to show the need for “flattening the curve” and I believe skewed to instill fear, if not panic.  Also skewed to manipulate or force the executive branch into a box.

Which is more or less admitted in the UW numbers I saw yesterday, which is why I posted it:  “Those types of models do serve purposes, such as moving policymakers into action,” said Tung.

[GravitySucks]

Which is more or less admitted in the UW numbers I saw yesterday, which is why I posted it:  “Those types of models do serve purposes, such as moving policymakers into action,” said Tung.

I read yesterday that Pelosi is refusing to call the house back into session until Mid May at the earliest. I wonder if the state of emergency allows Trump to dispatch US Marshalls to round up all these slackers to continue to pass emergency legislation.

[pate]

Science is about using the best available data to make predictions about the future. If the data changes then so does the model. It's about probability rather than certainty. If social-distancing is the best way to reduce the rate of infections then revising the numbers down illustrates its effectiveness not the weakness of the modelling. People are terrible at understanding probability.

That sounds like a really sloppy description of the application of the Scientific Method.

Bad initial data to construct a bad "working hypthesis" with more bad data in the observation phase to support or disprove the hypothesis.

I find your thesis that "social distancing" alone has mitigated the spread & lethality of this virus a bit suspect.

Where are the "control" experiments, ie all things being equal except the strict application of "social distancing?"  Medical care available, population densities, initial cases & their behavior, were these cases symptomatic or asymptomatic &c.

As for the "data" how reliable is the test for the virus?  False positives/negatives?  How widespread is the testing?

Was the "social distancing" adopted in various locations at a point in time to actually have an effect?  Late/early adoption locally based on when the first case arrived locally could skew world-wide data on this to the point of it being virtually unusable.  Hell it could have made things worse in some cases.

The shit-show world response to this thing is not something I would point to as the model demonstration of the Scientific Method.  But that's just my opinion...

I suppose we should "stay the course" and continue this world shut-down for another TWO YEARS as some "experts" suggest, that seems reasonable and prudent, after all it is clearly working...

-p

[paladin1991]

Gas prices here are .95 cents a gallon and i have officially stopped any and all forms of social distancing. Paul Cottrell and Dr Fauci can officially eat my ass i am all out of fucks.

95 cents?  I've got 1.69.

[K_Dubb]

I read yesterday that Pelosi is refusing to call the house back into session until Mid May at the earliest. I wonder if the state of emergency allows Trump to dispatch US Marshalls to round up all these slackers to continue to pass emergency legislation.

Haha no the king doesn't summon a parliament in this country.  They are free to bleed this for all it's worth.

[Kidnostad3]

I read yesterday that Pelosi is refusing to call the house back into session until Mid May at the earliest. I wonder if the state of emergency allows Trump to dispatch US Marshalls to round up all these slackers to continue to pass emergency legislation.

Trump could use Senate shutdown to make recess appointments of judges and other federal officials that the Dems would be likely to oppose.  Might be seen as cynical advantage-taking but so is everything else Trump doesâ€"fuck em.  Could get  malingering Senators back on the job at an earlier date. 

[GravitySucks]

Trump could use Senate shutdown to make recess appointments of judges and other federal officials that the Dems would be likely to oppose.  Might be seen as cynical advantage-taking but so is everything else Trump doesâ€"fuck em.

That would be counterproductive in the case of judges.  They can already get any judge appointed just using their majority. There may be cabinet positions and lower level appointments like the contested Inspector General appointments made but McConnell has been holding sessions as needed.  The house has been on recess until 4/20 but supposedly Pelosi said she is not coming back then.

[Kidnostad3]

Haha no the king doesn't summon a parliament in this country.  They are free to bleed this for all it's worth.

No, but the President could call a Special Session of both houses to end their hiatus.  Been done before.

[Kidnostad3]

That would be counterproductive in the case of judges.  They can already get any judge appointed just using their majority. There may be cabinet positions and lower level appointments like the contested Inspector General appointments made but McConnell has been holding sessions as needed.  The house has been on recess until 4/20 but supposedly Pelosi said she is not coming back then.

True.   Since Harry Reed used the nuclear option a vote of cloture to end a filibuster which requires 60 votes is no longer a factor.

[Walks_At_Night]

Gas prices here are .95 cents a gallon and i have officially stopped any and all forms of social distancing. Paul Cottrell and Dr Fauci can officially eat my ass i am all out of fucks.

While I can sympathize and even respect that decision, I am sorry to learn of it.  One of the little understood benefits of creating an account on bellgab.com (it is buried deep in the fine print) is the burial benefit.   There are four hombres on retainer - here they are burying White Crow with high honors after his demise.

https://twitter.com/HomerWatching/status/1245417778099761153