mattb65

This thread has gone off the rails, there no real point in arguing about the failed federal response, at least there was finally some communication from the CDC and task force. It's baby steps in the right direction. Also people resoundingly rejected Trump and hopefully the political transition will start soon. Battling the partisan battles on here just leads to name calling and people turning against each other.

The actual data is actually a bit murky on whether or not suicides are up because of lockdowns. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352 This study from Australia where they're have been aggressive lockdowns shows no rise in suicides compared with the baseline rate from the start of the pandemic to 3 days ago https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-03662030435-1/fulltext What seems to be an important protective factor is a robust safety net and access to resources for people who need help. Australia has a strong safety net plus a robust national plan to keep covid contained. All of the people wringing their hands over how lockdowns are going to lead to all these suicides generally tend to be anti lockdown, but they are directing their concern in the wrong direction. The viral spread will decide whether lockdowns are needed. We can't function as a society with overwhelmed hospitals. If you really want to prevent suicides then you should be advocating for a better safety net to treat the despair caused by loss of employment and other risk factors for suicide.

I would think it should be pretty obvious that case numbers are a leading indicator to hospitalizations and deaths. My observation has been that policy changes have primarily been in response to hospitalization and healthcare worker capacity issues however the two are intricately linked.

The nationwide positive test rate is up to 10% but still rising. I tend to agree that it'll be hard to go over 200k until test numbers get up closer to 2 million. I think it's too early to say whether the nationwide trajectory is slowing down. Illinois does look promising that they are hopefully leveling off though.

Thankfully we have the best and brightest putting together a well organized, well coordinated distribution plan with strong coordination between the outgoing and incoming teams responsible /s... In all seriousness I genuinely hope whomever in the Trump admin is responsible for this has a good plan and will eventually be able to provide continuity with the Biden admin. It's a huge, complex effort.

Sample size is 30,000 - one to one ratio between vaccine and placebo. No doubt that 90 vs 5 is very highly statistically significant.

90 new infections in the placebo side of the study, 5 in the vaccine side. 11 severe illnesses in the placebo side, none in the vaccine side. No serious adverse events in placebo or vaccine but limited follow up data. This is in their press release. Which part is fabricated? Saying you "deal with scientists weekly" means what exactly? Do you have some vested interest in there not being an effective vaccine against this virus. If the data holds, this will be an incredible tool and proof of concept to use against this pandemic or future novel viruses. It could also be used as a platform in cancer treatments. The profit is certainly there for the company but it's not like there's no cost to fabricating data. If they roll out the vaccine and it's not nearly as effective as advertised, it would be pretty obvious really quickly. Same with adverse effects, if there's major safety problems that'll be pretty obvious quickly with millions getting vaccinated.

Look at my response to his posts, I may not be able to convince him to provide any evidence to support his baseless claims but I can provide useful links from reputable sources to hopefully allow others to read and make their own judgements. As a medical provider the widespread misinformation is very frustrating and draining, I entered the profession to help people and prevent disability and death whenever possible but I also don't want to go around calling people names because they are misinformed. There's only so much you can do, but I do agree it's very frustrating at times.

@Angrysummons Didn't you recently disparage Pfizer's vaccine but say moderna's vaccine is okay? You do know they are both RNA vaccines? This isn't new, it's been in the works waiting for this sort of scenario. We do need the data from the trial, press releases aren't science. Since you claim to have an inside scoop on some safety issues, you need to back that claim up. Screenshots, links, anything... Here's a good in depth discussion of the technology from 2015. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/rna-vaccines-a-novel-technology-to-prevent-and-treat-disease/ Another, pre covid more in depth discussion about RNA based vaccines. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5906799/ From the article re: safety.. "The use of mRNA has several beneficial features over subunit, killed and live attenuated virus, as well as DNA-based vaccines. First, safety: as mRNA is a non-infectious, non-integrating platform, there is no potential risk of infection or insertional mutagenesis."

I am not sure, I think they will keep retail stores open because going to retail stores whether they are big box stores or small businesses doesn't seem to be a big factor in rising cases so I think the harm in closing them outweighs any modest benefits. Other things like bars, night clubs, indoor restaurants are a different story. Here's the tiered plan in place in Oahu - https://www.oneoahu.org/reopening-strategy I could see something like this put in place in some of the hard hit areas.

It's disingenuous to blame the surge on all the Trump super spreading events just like it's disingenuous to blame the people celebrating the election last weekend. I agree with OSU, it's just widespread sustained exponential growth from innumerable small and large get togethers increasingly happening indoors due to the weather with increased natural reproductive rate potential due to the environmental conditions of lower temperatures and lower relative humidity. That's been the biology of the virus since the start and it's why scientists like Dr. Redfield and Dr. Fauci predicted this massive wave of the pandemic back in the spring.

It's very frustrating. The European surge in cases has slowed down and reversed direction in Spain, leveled off in the UK and appears to be slowing down in Italy and Germany. All clearly appear to be directly in response to policy actions implemented by their country leadership. We aren't helpless against this virus.... Except maybe we are. Hawaii has acted like Europe and responded with policy to keep things contained, we also have the benefit of a tropical climate and border control.

Yikes, 12 states over 5,000 cases yesterday, 39 over 1,000. I am not sure what the exit strategy is for this wave. I believe we will hit the break glass moment in the next month in terms of widespread overflow of local healthcare bed and staffing capacity. So far it seems like the strategy is to beg people to change behavior or to issue "soft" stay at home restrictions. Not sure what level it will take for the lame duck leaders to even acknowledge the suffering happening.

I can understand the various perspectives from those in favor of lockdowns and those vehemently opposed. It does seem that the calculus changes a bit with the news of an effective vaccine. There is now a tangible end point, back in the spring the end point was highly uncertain with most seeming to assume no vaccine would be developed for years. With a tangible end point now with much less uncertainty, a rational accounting of the costs in terms of lives, economic impact, etc can realistically be calculated at this point. We also have already seen that once the brakes are taken off, the economy does seem to rebound pretty effectively. If the restrictions are taken off and the virus is no longer a threat, I believe there will be a realease of a lot of pent up demand for travel, entertainment, and all the other industries most affected by the virus. I would also categorically disagree that we are a country of people that would lose their motivation to go out and work hard to move up the economic ladder if they were given government support for a month or two especially since the support would end. It's an interesting thought experiment, in the end I just hope everyone here doesn't lose someone they love to this virus and doesn't lose their livelihood or mental well being. This virus has taken a heavy toll on all of us.

If the 90%+ efficacy holds up in full analysis then it will be much easier to reach heard immunity compared with what had been expected ~60% efficacy. The full efficacy data and safety data need to come out plus longer term data on duration of immunity before popping the champagne but there's no way to spin this as anything but great news. It also gives hope that done of the other late stage vaccines like moderns which also is using mRNA will also be effective. If proven effective and safe, I believe this vaccine will end up being mandated by schools, employers military, etc just add many other vaccines have been rolled out.

These websites that you link to are full of misinformation with small poorly designed studies using garbage methodology to show clinically meaningless endpoints. Here's a better source. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine/

Why would hospitals prescribe medications that have repeatedly failed to show any benefit in RCTs? Those medications were given liberally during the first surge in NYC and those patients did terrible.

It's going to be 100k+ on worldometers today, 87k with 3 more hours and none reported yet in California and only a small fraction of Texas counted.

Kinda in a pickle when the antibody treatments appear to show benefit in the prehospitalization setting. It's going to take some logistical creativity to pick which pre hospitalization patients will receive these sort of treatments. These treatments will probably help eventually but definitely are not poised to put a dent in the morbidity and mortality of this fall/winter wave, unfortunately.

This is not supported by the data. An estimated 2.5 million life years lost in the United States so far and counting. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/health/coronavirus-statistics-deaths.html

This "impossible position" has been among the top 3 national security threats for years. Our national security experts were on it and provided accurate actionable intelligence to the White House decision makers very early - we know it got through, we heard Trump in his own words to Woodward. This has been predicted and there was a playbook for steps to take when this crisis hit. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285 This administration fumbled the ball on the kickoff and has been running with their tails between their legs ever since. I think a lot of this is because they were thinking re-election instead of governance. It is definitely the worst modern era disaster and among the top disasters in our country's history. It was going to be hard to handle this pandemic even if it were run effectively. Since it was run the way it was run it's so terrible it is beyond words. How anyone can look at the last 9 months and think this is an effective response to a disaster and to choose to continue with this path blows my mind.

Just another variation of taking no responsibility for the harm caused by the virus while at the same time trying to take credit for any breakthrough from the scientific community that they have denigrated during this administration's term in office. "It is what it is" Surprising for them to state their position so plainly right in the home stretch of the election. I guess with the numbers rising to record heights it's their only defense at this point.

The numbers today are extremely bad, +10k already from last Saturday. No sign of this surge showing down at all, actually looks like it may be accelerating.

Hawaii had it's first big wave of the virus in early August and we had a local "lockdown" which was really just a watered down stay at home order with most non essential businesses temporarily closed just like back in April. There were big differences though, the changes were applied to the island/county of Oahu only. We've passed the first threshold and started on the path toward reduced restrictions. The state has also simultaneously started a pretesting program for visitors to take a covid test and not require a 14 day quarantine. So technically you could say we went back to "lockdown" but it was on a local level rather than a state level. And it was more of a stay at home type deal. We're also unique for obvious reasons being a bunch of islands with controlled gates of entry so I don't think the way this state handles things can be applied more broadly to how other states will respond. I do think Wisconsin is the state with the most significant ongoing outbreak in terms of potential overrunning healthcare capacity and a need for more broad mitigating measures although the Dakota's aren't too far behind. I doubt there will be something like a stay at home in the Dakota's and Wisconsin has some challenges that are well publicized between the governor vs the legislature and judicial branch. Hard to say what the best strategy is to respond to these outbreaks and surges that are stressing local hospital capacity. The stay at home worked here in Oahu, our numbers are way down and tourism has resumed which should help the economy so hopefully it'll end up being a win-win, time will tell.

418,000 Americans died in WW2 over the course of roughly 6 years of combat. Over 215,000 Americans have died so far in less than a year of Covid with studies on excess death indicating the deaths from the direct and indirect effects of the virus exceed this number. Meme all you want. It's pretty heartless.