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  • The economic cost of all the dead people exceeds the economic damage caused by lock-down by a lot.

no. all the dead people are senior citizens in the care homes. 80-90-100 years old so in fact they only COST money.
its a win-win situation for the gov.
 
all the people dying from corona in sweden are the elderly and sick. and since taking care of these people are handled by the lowest iq folks (not very well paying jobs) its not hard to imagine how this could spread in the care homes. and this is what has happened. simple as that.

these people were doomed already by jan1.
 
all the people dying from corona in sweden are the elderly and sick. and since taking care of these people are handled by the lowest iq folks (not very well paying jobs) its not hard to imagine how this could spread in the care homes. and this is what has happened. simple as that.

these people were doomed already by jan1.

Love the concern for your fellow man...***?
 
i'm just telling you why there is so many people dying here.

there is much disinfo about why people are dying here so i thought i'd tell people why its is the way it is.

we pay the most tax or at least top 3 in the entire world. and we have the shittiest elder care too. and it has been like that for 20 years at least.

let me tell you a little story....

before the corona the some communes (sweden is divided in several hundred "communes" (kommuner)) said that they had to turn down the heat in the elder care homes, to save money. and "they can use blankets to stay warm" (not kidding).

why would they need to "save money" now again? well, because they agreed to house/feed/care for millions of immigrants. and they dont work...
so money dries up fast. but its for a "noble" cause right... for who??

this is how it works. now you can imagine how the ****** the elder care is. and its not only that. its just the tip of the iceberg. but no one wants go there right.. you know all the hundreds of annual bombings, daily shootings, stabbings and the goddamn hushed up rape epidemic (and this a 10 million people country, aaaand, its not iraq). yeah lets not go there. scary ****.

its just the tip of the ****ing iceberg i tell you.
 
no. all the dead people are senior citizens in the care homes. 80-90-100 years old so in fact they only COST money.
its a win-win situation for the gov.
Me bad. I forgot that older people are disposable and donā€™t count.

Be sure to tell that to your parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts!
 
Me bad. I forgot that older people are disposable and donā€™t count.

Be sure to tell that to your parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts!

i'm not the one deeming them disposable. way above my pay grade. you do the math.
 
Actually 20-somethings are the most expensive. Many of them will go on to get married and divorced, and that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per couple. Some culling of 20-something year-olds should do wonder for some economies :dancingchicken:
 
Actually 20-somethings are the most expensive. Many of them will go on to get married and divorced, and that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per couple. Some culling of 20-something year-olds should do wonder for some economies :dancingchicken:
And let's not forget the under legal working age demographic. All of them are lazy bums! Don't pay any taxes or go to work and expect to be fed, sheltered AND educated. :coffee2:
 
Not so much viral assault ->current understanding is that acute respiratory distress syndrome as a result of cytokine storm +/- multi organ damage.

Well, yeah, and SOME men do seem to be more susceptible to cyto storms than women because testosterone.
 
We have a pandemic that is killing people of all ages and we don't have a plan to deal with it. We have no vaccine, no miracle cure, nothing but body bags and a lot of BS. We as a nation are not dealing with the pandemic except to put our heads in a hole and hope that it goes away. That's just my optimistic view of things so not to worry.
 
We have a pandemic that is killing people of all ages and we don't have a plan to deal with it. We have no vaccine, no miracle cure, nothing but body bags and a lot of BS. We as a nation are not dealing with the pandemic except to put our heads in a hole and hope that it goes away. That's just my optimistic view of things so not to worry.

There is no "science" to fall back on...hence its a hard prblem"

You have a virus with a infection fatality rate of ~0.15%, abiout the same order of magnitude % (50% worse) than the flu (outside of institutional settings).

Indi just announced they re lifting lockdown, the correlation of "uncorrelated" what should be public health decisions is insane...people are just copying everyone else...all the lockdowns started at once, and all the lockdowns are being lifted at once...

Look at the numbers in australia or new zealand, there is no realationship between these people and anywhere else (since they are islands) but they are still debating if they should stay locked up...

Meanwhile, in the USA masssive % of deaths in a tiny % of counties...so the data don't scale ...cannot assume place x looks like place Y

"Fourteen counties in New York, Michigan, Louisiana and Washington accounted for about half of the nationā€™s coronavirus-related deaths through mid-April."
14 counties vs 435 congressional districts for scale...
There are still more than 180 counties across 25 states that have yet to report a positive case
180 vs 435 congressional disctrics = no cases
Of the 25 rural counties with the highest per capita case rates, 20 have a meatpacking plant or prison where the virus took hold and spread with abandon, then leaped into the community when workers took it home.
link>
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/24/coronavirus-rural-america-outbreaks/
These are hard problems...
 
There is no "science" to fall back on...hence its a hard prblem"

You have a virus with a infection fatality rate of ~0.15%, abiout the same order of magnitude % (50% worse) than the flu (outside of institutional settings).

Indi just announced they re lifting lockdown, the correlation of "uncorrelated" what should be public health decisions is insane...people are just copying everyone else...all the lockdowns started at once, and all the lockdowns are being lifted at once...

Look at the numbers in australia or new zealand, there is no realationship between these people and anywhere else (since they are islands) but they are still debating if they should stay locked up...

Meanwhile, in the USA masssive % of deaths in a tiny % of counties...so the data don't scale ...cannot assume place x looks like place Y


14 counties vs 435 congressional districts for scale...

180 vs 435 congressional disctrics = no cases

link>
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/24/coronavirus-rural-america-outbreaks/
These are hard problems...

With little or no testing we don't have any reported cases in some counties. How many deaths are acceptable to you 100,000 , 200,000, 300,000 or more? We have no plan and the virus is spreading slowly but surely. Dare I say it again we have no plan and the politicians are not listening to the scientists.
 
With little or no testing we don't have any reported cases in some counties. How many deaths are acceptable to you 100,000 , 200,000, 300,000 or more? We have no plan and the virus is spreading slowly but surely. Dare I say it again we have no plan and the politicians are not listening to the scientists.
I feel for you guys Jacko, i noticed California had the highest (3000) number of new case in the country yesterday. Please take care.
 
One of the problems is that even the "scientists" don't seem to have a good idea how it spreads or anything else really. It was thought that people without symptoms can spread it as easily as people with symptoms, which never made much sense, but "scientists" said so. Now, it seems that people without symptoms might spread it, but might not or they might spread it at a much lower rate. It was thought that it transmits easily outdoors, so they closed beaches and trails, now they say it might not spread easily outdoors and can't survive on surfaces as long as thought originally. We didn't see an explosion of cases when they opened beaches and everyone and their mother went to the beach while the government panicked and closed beaches again. No explosion of cases due to that which makes it seem that maybe it was a dumb idea in the first place. It is a new disease, so no wonder it is tough, but everyone who says listen to the scientists needs to realize that they don't seem to have much more clue than the rest of us, at least not yet and definitely not 2-3 month ago. Look at what the scientists are saying "it may", "it is possible", "it is thought" not very definitive at all. I get they need to cover their asses just in case, but it really is not clear what the right course of action is. Should nations that have no cases act like the nations that have a lot, probably not, what if they have land borders, who knows very hard problems for all with no clear "right" answers.
 
Remember that the scientists are behind because they dismantled the pandemic response team that was in place to deal with issues like this. Also consider that daily briefings as far back as January or even December warned that this was breaking out in China and almost a half million people came to the USA from Wuhan before we stopped it sometime in March (kinda like closing the barn door after the cows are already out). Again I have to keep coming back that we have no National Plan to deal with this disease and it is going to come back it's just a matter of when and how hard.
 
One of the problems is that even the "scientists" don't seem to have a good idea how it spreads or anything else really.

Sorry to harp on something small, but the quotes bug me here. A scientist is someone who spends their life thinking seriously about science. The accuracy of the title doesnā€™t have anything to do with whether a current best guess is correct or not. To put quotes around it indicates that the scientists are not serious professionals doing the best they can with available data. I normally wouldnā€™t bat an eye, but weā€™re living in a time when thereā€™s so much anti-expert rhetoric floating around, so Iā€™m on a bit of a hair trigger. :)

I get they need to cover their asses just in case, but it really is not clear what the right course of action is.

I donā€™t think this is about covering their asses. This is how scientists talk. If we donā€™t know something for certain, we donā€™t speak in absolutes. As a mathematician, Iā€™m perhaps an extreme example of this, since Iā€™ll never say somethingā€™s certain unless I have a complete proof that it is, even if 100,000 tests of the hypothesis seem to uphold it.

As to the general question about whether to take their advice, Iā€™d still maintain that someone who spends their life thinking about something probably has a better idea of it than someone who doesnā€™t. That doesnā€™t mean that everything they hypothesize will turn out to be true, but youā€™re still better off listening to the experts than yourself. Plus, even disregarding expertise, itā€™s so easy to rationalize irresponsible behavior in a time like this, because weā€™re so understandably desperate for freedom. Thatā€™s one reason why we need some expert direction, and why ā€œeveryone just try to figure it out for yourselfā€ isnā€™t an effective approach.
 
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One of the problems is that even the "scientists" don't seem to have a good idea how it spreads or anything else really.
I would strongly disagree with that. We have quite a good idea of how it spreads. Mostly by droplet infection between persons in close contact. Probably also to some degree by picking up the virus from surfaces that someone sneezed or coughed onto.

It appears to be well established that asymptomatic people can spread the virus, so I don't understand why you raised that point.

everyone who says listen to the scientists needs to realize that they don't seem to have much more clue than the rest of us
That statement strikes me as truly unlikely. These are people who spend their lives studying viruses, working on epidemiology, have come up with vaccines, got HIV under control, have eradicated (or nearly so) smallpox and polio, and so on. Scientists have forgotten more about their field of expertise than the rest of the population put together has ever learned. I don't understand why you would want to just sweep that under the carpet, or disregard their advice.

As @ian said, scientists don't always have all the answers, and answers are rarely absolute. Instead, scientists run experiments, observe, formulate hypotheses based on the observations, test the hypotheses and, little by little, gain a deeper understanding of whatever puzzle they are looking at. All the while subjecting their work to peer review, so other scientists can try to replicate the results, and check whether there are flaws in the reasoning or experimental setup.

This is how science works. Little by little, in the open. This is why we have cars, aeroplanes, computers, modern surgery, vaccines, cancer treatments, mobile phones, Google maps, PM steel knives, and ten million other things without which modern life would be impossible.

Last time I looked, most people were quite happy to see their doctor to get advice and treatment for whatever ailment they have. And they don't mind at all showing up at a hospital to get patched back up after a car accident or to get that chemotherapy that might save their life. People also seem quite content to use their mobile phone to navigate to a destination, or use the weather report to find out about a hurricane before it actually hits them. None of these things would be possible without some very advanced science and engineering, from microbiology, to general relativity, to rocketry and satellites.

As to what to do about the virus, scientists have indeed a very good idea of what to do: isolate. In the absence of a treatment or a vaccine, that is the next best thing we can do to stop it from spreading.

We know that this works. See Australia and New Zealand, for example. These two countries have 4 deaths per million population. For comparison, the US has 304 per million (that's 76 times more), and Sweden has 409 (over 100 times more). For countries with a sizeable population, Sweden currently has the 6th-highest death rate in the world, after Belgium, Spain, the UK, Italy, and France.

Scientists deal in facts. And wishful thinking does not change facts, not ever. I'll keep listening to the scientists, even when I sometimes don't like the answers they give. Call me old-fashioned, if you like.
 
The problem in the US is the people, not the politicians. We all know how this virus gets spread, and how bad it is, but dammit it's Memorial Day and I want to be at the beach with 110,000 of my closest friends!

DC is as bad as it because it is full of, well, DC people. Good ol' Type A, 'me first' people who come from all over the country to work on Capital Hill or to take advantage of the relatively recession-proof local economy. For some reason people seem to be of the mindset that it only really targets the african american and hispanic populations, and being white middle class makes you somehow magically immune.
 
With little or no testing we don't have any reported cases in some counties.

The ability to test out to 10% positivity on exists already in like 47/50 states...so from this perspective there really isn't a shortage of test since almost all states (excpet Maine, montana, oregone or something) can test as effectivly as "peak" outbreak new orleans which was able to manage its outbreak without catastrophic failures like new york/italy, etc.

But the bigger picture...testing is impossible to implement at scale for a variety of reasons...

To understand this, you need to learn math...the test is $100 and lasts for 24 hours...it would cost around 2-4% of GDP to test the workforce every week for a year (~1$US trillion dollars a year). To put that in perspective, the minimum NATO contribution (which none or hardly any of the EU can afford) is 2% of GDP.

So no developed western economy in the OECD will pay for testing 1-2x their military budget, and certainly nobody in the 3rd world could afford it or logistically implement it (not enough lab techs, etc)...and we've already seen it only takes ~50 cases in some place far, far away (eg wuhan, china) to seed the epi/pandemic

....so ....you're not stopping it without a cure/vaccine unfortunatley....even if you could test for free...

SO please stop whining about testing.

In any event, the test is very accurate but the sample-taking process is very problematic. The virus infects tissue througout the body (blood, organs, etc) and the swab-test only captures the respiratory tract. Its very easy to false-negative the test if the virus is not on the end of that swab, but the "scientists" don't know if the the nasal-pharageal swab is a definititive sample....in fact its most likley not.

So that 1 trillion of tests you spent all your money on...is ot fight a desiseas is <0.2% death rate, and the test is strategically flawed and technically likely to miss alot of cases because the virus appears to be able to hide in other parts of the body.

There is also the PPE issue that doing 8 billion tests/year would burn through a ton of PPE supply and remove this from availability for first responders, etc

The other math problem is that 0.1% of 1 billion populstion is still a large number...even if this was the flu (its not...way worse) you would still have 10s of millions of people dying and no way to stop it because there is no vaccine or clinical cure.

TLDR...none of this is easy and any one who believes these soundbites hasn't thought thru the problem very deeply yet.
 
But the bigger picture...testing is impossible to implement at scale for a variety of reasons...
I expect that situation to improve over time. (I do hear you on the economic and scale argument.) We'll get cheaper and more reliable tests, simply because there is a huge incentive to create them: we need those tests to keep the lid on the pandemic until we have a vaccine.

If the vaccine effort fails, we are screwed. But, even if this first round of vaccines doesn't pan out, we won't stop trying. I'm quietly confident that we'll get a vaccine eventually. Again, the incentive is huge, and the best scientists are working on it all over the world. My bet is on human ingenuity; fortunately, we are smarter than the virus.
 
I donā€™t think this is about covering their asses. This is how scientists talk. If we donā€™t know something for certain, we donā€™t speak in absolutes.

Agreed.

There is an unfortunate 'membrane' that scientific knowledge has to penetrate when it breaks out of academia and into the wild. There are often problems with how the media, general public and policy makers handle academic literature. Understanding statistics and uncertainty is not intuitive and is easy to misinterpret.

There is a subtle art to constructing statements of truth. In science data is often analysed using hypothesis tests (depending on your choice of analytic tool). Here, statements are not proven to be 'true'.... instead default positions are rejected or not. If you dont understand the framework and the context of the analysis it can be confusing and easy to misinterpret.

A relatable example is the presumption of innocence. That is; to be innocent until proven guilty. This is actually wrong.... Courts don't find the accused 'innocent', they find them 'not guilty'. There must be evidence beyond reasonable doubt, that a person committed a crime for them to be convicted. The null hypothesis here is that they are not guilty. Note that this is not the same as a statement of innocence. We know it is possible for a guilty person to be acquitted if there is insufficient evidence or prosecutor bungles the case. Given the way the law works... we should really be saying "not guilty until proven guilty"... but that does not have the same ring to it...

... the same applies to science. Scientists will prefer to avoid generalising statements outside of the modelling or data. When pushed by the media to do so, the response will always come with a lot of caveats and qualifications. This isn't about covering their asses, the scientists know they are being asked to reach outside the limits of the process.
 
I would strongly disagree with that. We have quite a good idea of how it spreads. Mostly by droplet infection between persons in close contact. Probably also to some degree by picking up the virus from surfaces that someone sneezed or coughed onto.

It appears to be well established that asymptomatic people can spread the virus, so I don't understand why you raised that point.


That statement strikes me as truly unlikely. These are people who spend their lives studying viruses, working on epidemiology, have come up with vaccines, got HIV under control, have eradicated (or nearly so) smallpox and polio, and so on. Scientists have forgotten more about their field of expertise than the rest of the population put together has ever learned. I don't understand why you would want to just sweep that under the carpet, or disregard their advice.

As @ian said, scientists don't always have all the answers, and answers are rarely absolute. Instead, scientists run experiments, observe, formulate hypotheses based on the observations, test the hypotheses and, little by little, gain a deeper understanding of whatever puzzle they are looking at. All the while subjecting their work to peer review, so other scientists can try to replicate the results, and check whether there are flaws in the reasoning or experimental setup.

This is how science works. Little by little, in the open. This is why we have cars, aeroplanes, computers, modern surgery, vaccines, cancer treatments, mobile phones, Google maps, PM steel knives, and ten million other things without which modern life would be impossible.

Last time I looked, most people were quite happy to see their doctor to get advice and treatment for whatever ailment they have. And they don't mind at all showing up at a hospital to get patched back up after a car accident or to get that chemotherapy that might save their life. People also seem quite content to use their mobile phone to navigate to a destination, or use the weather report to find out about a hurricane before it actually hits them. None of these things would be possible without some very advanced science and engineering, from microbiology, to general relativity, to rocketry and satellites.

As to what to do about the virus, scientists have indeed a very good idea of what to do: isolate. In the absence of a treatment or a vaccine, that is the next best thing we can do to stop it from spreading.

We know that this works. See Australia and New Zealand, for example. These two countries have 4 deaths per million population. For comparison, the US has 304 per million (that's 76 times more), and Sweden has 409 (over 100 times more). For countries with a sizeable population, Sweden currently has the 6th-highest death rate in the world, after Belgium, Spain, the UK, Italy, and France.

Scientists deal in facts. And wishful thinking does not change facts, not ever. I'll keep listening to the scientists, even when I sometimes don't like the answers they give. Call me old-fashioned, if you like.

it is not well established that asymptotic people can transmit the virus or rather how well they can spread it. for Example CDC changed the wording to
  • COVID-19 may be spread by people who are not showing symptoms.
it used to be more definite before, now there seem to be some doubts. I am not saying they do or donā€™t, but it is definitely not well established. Scientist will figure it out, just takes time, you are oversimplifying the issue. There is more at play than just isolate until we have a cure. It is great that Australia and New Zealand faired so well, but you keep on ignoring unique geographic attributes that these countries enjoy. Being basically islands and having relatively tiny populations and very few initial cases has a lot to do with what worked. The virus existed in the US before anyone knew it was here and we donā€™t exactly have internal borders, so isolating one county from the other is not possible. I am not dissing scientist or science, huge proponent of both. I am disagreeing with the notion of just listen to scientist, there is a lot more to it and decisions and policies should be based on listening to experts from different areas of expertise. Scientists know a lot in their areas, but often times they donā€™t realize how the world works and what the implications of their ā€perfectā€ solutions are. If you start believing in scientists blindly then it is no different from religious believes. Science requires critical thinking and challenging hypothesis otherwise it is not science at all.
 
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