Evidence over hysteria — COVID-19

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Evidence over hysteria — COVID-19​

Aaron Ginn

After watching the outbreak of COVID-19 for the past two months, I’ve followed the pace of the infection, its severity, and how our world is tackling the virus. While we should be concerned and diligent, the situation has dramatically elevated to a mob-like fear spreading faster than COVID-19 itself. When 13% of Americans believe they are currently infected with COVID-19 (mathematically impossible), full-on panic is blocking our ability to think clearly and determine how to deploy our resources to stop this virus. Over three-fourths of Americans are scared of what we are doing to our society through law and hysteria, not of infection or spreading COVID-19 to those most vulnerable.

The following article is a systematic overview of COVID-19 driven by data from medical professionals and academic articles that will help you understand what is going on (sources include CDC, WHO, NIH, NHS, University of Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, NEJM, JAMA, and several others). . . .

. . . So what should we do?

The first rule of medicine is to do no harm.

Local governments and politicians are inflicting massive harm and disruption with little evidence to support their draconian edicts. Every local government is in a mimetic race to one-up each other in authoritarian city ordinances to show us who has more “abundance of caution”. Politicians are competing, not on more evidence or more COVID-19 cures but more caution. As unemployment rises and families feel unbearably burdened already, they feel pressure to “fix” the situation they created with even more radical and “creative” policy solutions. This only creates more problems and an even larger snowball effect. The first place to start is to stop killing the patient and focus on what works. . . .

. . . Don’t let them forget it and vote

These days are precarious as Governors float the idea of martial law for not following “social distancing”, as well as they liked while they violate those same rules on national TV. Remember this tone is for a virus that has impacted 0.004% of our population . Imagine if this was a truly existential threat to our Republic.

The COVID-19 hysteria is pushing aside our protections as individual citizens and permanently harming our free, tolerant, open civil society. Data is data. Facts are facts. We should be focused on resolving COVID-19 with continued testing, measuring, and be vigilant about protecting those with underlying conditions and the elderly from exposure. We are blessed in one way, there is an election in November. Never forget what happened and vote. . . .
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https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/evidence-over-hysteria-covid-19-1b767def5894
 
Another hack who doesn’t understand exponential spread?

With just a 1% infection rate, given that 5% of COVID-19 patients end up in the ICU, you will need 175,000 ICU beds. You might want to Google how many ICU beds there are in the US. Hint: it’s well under 175k.

Ask the Italians what happens when their ICU capacity is exceeded. Hint: if you’re over 60, you are left to die.
 
OraLabora . . . .
Ask the Italians what happens when their ICU capacity is exceeded.
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Yes but I don’t think the message of his article, denies this.

I think he is focused on minimizing the hysteria, and gives good reasons for it.

Not that there are not concerns, big-time concerns.

People are dying. More people will.
And we want to prevent as much of this as possible.

About 61 million Americans got infected with the 2009 swine flu pandemic and around 12,000 people died in America alone.

These are times for vigilance, caution, and care.

Not sky-is-falling hysteria.

By the way. There are also concerns with martial law too (which is almost certainly feeding into the people’s concerns).
 
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What would you like hospitals to do, Catholic, when they’re out of hospital beds and ICU beds? Please answer. And more patients just keep coming in?
It’s not just about the numbers of deaths. It’s also about how our healthcare system is going to function.
 
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Jen95 . . .
What would you like hospitals to do, Catholic, when they’re out of hospital beds and ICU beds? Please answer. And more patients just keep coming in?
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There is only one thing you can do (just like Italy).

Triage the patients and take extra care not to let your medical people like the nurses go down. Because if they do, even less patients will be cared for.

I don’t know what I would personally do Jen.
But I hope I would not magnify problems by panic.

Martial law will not resolve this issue.
 
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What’s your definition of panic? People stocking up on toilet paper?
People working from home? People being extremely cautious for a few months?
 
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I have not seen a lot of hysteria in regard to the pandemic.

When faced with a sometimes-fatal disease for which there is no cure I would prefer to err on the side of caution. In this regard I know there is real economic and emotional suffering going on. Saving lives is paramount.
 
Cathoholic said:
About 61 million Americans got infected with the 2009 swine flu pandemic and around 12,000 people died.

These are times for vigilance, caution, and care.

Not sky-is-falling hysteria.
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On EWTN today during his homily, Fr. Joseph mentioned that Saints Jacinta and Francisco both died from the Spanish flu in 1918. I never realized that such a serious pandemic was so near to our times. Here is the Wikipedia version, in part:
The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. Lasting from January 1918 through December 1920, it infected 500 million people—about a quarter of the world’s population. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.
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I guess we can use a little less panic, since we are a more advanced society with authorities keeping a finger on the pulse.
 
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Not at all, Jen. I was trying to bring the horrors of a previous pandemic to the fore so that others could realize we’ve been through this before in our world, and much worse. It is not an automatic death sentence, but will pass, as did other very serious pandemics. We’ve just never lived through anything so traumatic before. As old as I am, this is absolutely the worst I have encountered. It helps to keep a trusting heart.

Here is a novena I began praying, since some of these 14 saints have lived through it and may be able to pray for us.
 
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I posted this in another thread over in Catholic Living, but it goes just as well here.
Recall incoming flights from China were suspended on January 31.

As of yesterday, total known Covid-19 cases in:
British Columbia: 348
Washington state: 1524
Oregon: 137
California: 1224
Las Vegas: 126

This data is from government department of health websites and is current as of yesterday.

Total population 57m. Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, LA and Las Vegas were major incoming Chinese transit points.

Incoming flights from Europe were not stopped until this past week.

As of yesterday, total known Covid-19 cases:
New York state: 10377 as of today
New York city: 5683 as of yesterday

JFK airport is by far the largest US transit point for incoming flights from Europe. The panic drove people back here in the last few weeks and no doubt a fair number brought the virus with them.

Further: if I go back to the southern California tri-county area that I grew up in, let’s drill down a little bit:

At one time, the LA County Public Health Department was monitoring well over 10,000 contacts for possible Covid-19 transmission. As of yesterday, just 292 confirmed cases in all of LA County. Out of 10.1 million population. 19 for Ventura County, 65 for Orange County. Given the time to become symptomatic from infection, I would guess that the crisis is past for a substantial part of those 10000. My relatives in that area don’t mind the social distancing, the hygiene measures and the caution around seniors and senior facilities. But they think the local lockdown is a bit overdone and I tend to agree with them.

So with increased testing, we will get more cases in all of these west coast regions, but remember positive test results will still be a vast minority of all cases of respiratory symptoms. As it is in places that did extensive testing such as South Korea.

I am in no way, shape or form saying don’t be concerned, do not put those words in my mouth. But I am saying let’s set aside the mass media generated hysteria and look at the existing numbers with sober eyes. We got local hotspots, NYC in particular … but the entire country has yet to become one giant hotspot.
 
Yes, well the point is for the country to avoid becoming a giant hotspot?
 
Jen95 said:
Yes, well the point is for the country to avoid becoming a giant hotspot?
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Sure.

But I don’t see the need to lock down every last town in every last county in every last state. That is not warranted by the data and will only succeed wildly in killing the rest of our economy. Economic damage that will take far longer to repair than recovery from the disease effects for survivors. This is what I mean by data over hysteria.
 
For instance, we need the food to keep getting delivered to the cities. But the hysteria has caused the closure of many truck stops on our highways, hence making the truck drivers’ jobs a lot more difficult and stressful than it has to be. What happens when food deliveries decline enough? I shudder to think of the implications of that. Far worse than Covid-19, that is for sure. But sure ok, let the hysteria run …
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
Recall incoming flights
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If you are suggesting that the case load in this country primarily involves people who contracted the disease abroad, you are wrong :the number of new cases in the US today is 4,723. How many of them go the disease broad? The assumption that the key to flattening the curve is restrict travel into this country is a dangerous one if it distracts from effective things that we could be doing.
Jen95 said:
Yes, well the point is for the country to avoid becoming a giant hotspot?
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Precisely. Some countries have been very effective in doing that, others are not so much.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
At one time, the LA County Public Health Department was monitoring well over 10,000 contacts for possible Covid-19 transmission. As of yesterday, just 292 confirmed cases in all of LA County.
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The problem with citing low numbers in countries with poor testing regimes is that it significantly, perhaps massively, undercounts the reality.

For example, Los Angeles county has a “crush of patients” likely to have conoravirus, but not enough tests to give them, so they’ve officially given up trying to test them:

www.latimes.com

L.A. County gives up on containing coronavirus, tells doctors to skip testing of some patients

A decision by L.A. County's public health system not to test patients with coronavirus symptoms could make it difficult to know how many are infected.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com

In my state, where we have a massive shortage of tests, we’ve confirmed 137 cases, but the state estimates we actually have more like 1,000-10,000 infected:

www.twincities.com

Minnesota could have 10X to 100X more coronavirus cases than tests show, officials say. Because few are being tested.

Presumably a large portion have mild or even nonexistent symptoms, but could still be spreading the virus.
www.twincities.com www.twincities.com

In Italy, dozens or maybe hundreds of elderly people are likely dying from the virus and will never get counted in the statistics because they couldn’t test them:


Only in a country like South Korea, with an effective and massive testing regime, can these kinds of infected vs. total population observations be made.
 
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