Which numbers are “bullshit”?
Most of them?
We're on page 152, but I'll go back and quote some posts here with links. so this may take a bit.
Admittedly I’m looking at this from a personal standpoint, but I have an aunt who is a terminal cancer patient in an uncle who is a cardiac patient, both were in needs of beds this weekend and could not get into the hospital because they were overflowed with Covid patients.
To me those numbers are not “bullshit”.
When it comes to this disease, the people who have the highest chance of infection are those with two or more co-morbidities and that is also the cohort that has the highest mortality rate. However, with great care many more people who've been treated for this virus two or more co-morbidities have recovered.
Why in the hell is anyone paying attention to the models? ANY of them? They've been proven time and time again to be bullshit and yet we continue to hang our hopes and fears on "the models" as if those garbage numbers will save us. We're reading tea leaves, but with math and scientists instead of a pseudo-gypsy circus sideshow with cards or a magic eight ball. These dumb ass models belong in the dot thread and should be taken as seriously as a new member who will die before he quits in his quest to be a Tier 1 operator.
How can y'all sit there with straight faces and make arguments around CV-19 projections?
As I've said before, the data is bullshit. We're making decisions based upon bad numbers without acknowledging those numbers are flawed.
Not that anyone here has stated the numbers are bullshit...
You're in the thick of it and seeing some of the worst possible. I will not under any circumstances discount your experience. I also will not trust the offical numbers even if they fit with your experience, because as you know the world is a much larger sample size.
I won't say we've been lied to (though I have my suspicions), but as a layman I think the data is too incomplete to make the decisions we have made.
I hope to live long enough to know which side was right.
To piggyback off of what
@Florida173 said, my brother in law and his fiance just drove up from the Tampa area to visit this past week and reported similar things happening (people never being tested and reports coming back positive) to people he and his fiance knew. On top of that, false-positives are also a real thing.
"Connecticut’s State Public Health Laboratory has uncovered a flaw in one of the testing systems it uses to test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The flaw, which has been reported to both the manufacturer and the federal Food and Drug Administration, led to
90 of 144 people tested during June 15–July 17, 2020 receiving a false positive COVID test report." *Bolded for emphasis* -
source
Fear is an incredibly powerful motivator and can drive otherwise rational people to extreme ends. Mild example: toilet paper. Extreme example: burning "witches" in New England.
My wife's friend that is an RN, I think I mentioned how she had the 'Rona. Anyway, her 14 days are up and she's back at work.
- There's growing skepticism among the doctors and nurses that the numbers they are reporting are the same being reported to the CDC. Like the motorcyclist who crashed and died but was reported as a CV-19 fatality, the books are being cooked somewhere.
- Their hospital sent off test swabs that were never used...and they tested positive for the 'Rona. This has happened on multple occasions.
- The hospital is quietly practicing herd immunity on its staff. They are rotating staff through the CV-19 ward/ area whatever you call it until they get it, then once recovered they go off to do their old jobs.
I can't say it enough, the numbers are bullshit. The disease is bad, I won't shit on that, but the statistics being thrown around are pure trash.
If the stats are bullshit...what else is questionable? If you can't trust simple numbers like x have the diesase, y died from the disease...how do you trust the rest of the story? Oh, the stats are wrong, but the research data is right? Yeah, hard pass from me.
Even the truth is lies because how do you trust the rest?
Were they actually positive? Did they actually have the disease? As I posted earlier, an RN friend of ours, at her hospital some of the docs sent off blank swabs that came back CV-19 positive. They did this twice. There are 6+ "positive" cases on the books for tests that were never taken.
Without cross referencing anitbody tests with "known" positive cases, we'll never know. We destroyed a global economy over one of the most haphazard and broken testing programs in medical history.
This anecdote from
@AWP isn't just an anecdote, I know this has happened in multiple places, but folks aren't talking about it or they get shouted down or worse.
This page alone, page 136 of the thread, is enough reason to disbelieve every possible figure, statistic, belief, hypothesis, and wild ass dream about CV-19.
Sharks, reinfection, mask viability, mutation, and China...on one page alone.
The numbers are bullshit. However bad the virus is, or not, you're trusting a lie, you're buying into a story. Maybe you believe the right story, maybe not, that's for historians to decide.
I trust a cat more than I trust CV-19 "data".
Elon Musk isn't my favorite person but a lot of people listen to him and he's crying foul on Covid tests:
This was a PCR test, the vast majority of testing has moved to PCR testing. So if testing accuracy of PCR samples is 50%? And you don't know which 50% is accurate, you're fucked on making any kind of projections. But he's not the only one with questions. For example,
Nick Saban tested positive one day, then took five tests in the three days following and all were negative. The PAC-12 is also dealing with False Positives amongst their athletes and it's crippling the schedule.
Let's beat this horse again. Say it loud, say it proud.
The numbers are bullshit.
The second and third order effects will kill millions and destroy tens of millions of lives
When it comes to testing accuracy, I honestly am only falling back to serology studies which show that the infection rates are 10-15x higher than being reported from regular testing, because regular testing in at best inaccurate.
Article originally appeared in the NYT, but I found it outside of the paywall thanks to yahoo.
What if 'Herd Immunity' is Closer Than Scientists Thought?
Something that I've suspected, we're pretty much already there with Herd immunity given serology testing of anti-bodies. This is the second major article that I've read discussing the Herd immunity threshold being much lower that the touted numbers of 50-70%. Remember, vaccines are not 100%. This is also a viral disease, so that means you will just catch by doing normal bodily sustaining functions like breathing.
Is it serious? Certainly, but so is the flu.
The CDC is currently reporting almost 11 Million cases. But if Serology testing in specific high density cities shows a much higher rate than what is being reported and it's actually on the higher end of some of the studies which is closer to 18-20x, then we're basically at Herd Immunity now.
Never been a better time to look in the mirror (I did this morning) and work on your health.
That's fair.
@Ooh-Rah it truly is unfortunate, but if the need for space is still there, why aren't we running field hospitals or covid treatment centers? We're coming up on a year of covid and there was an expectation many months ago for a fall flare up. Why are we still behind? State governments told Trump early on they were in charge then blamed him for their failures. Local governments are also culpable. Why are they still hunting for space with all the resources at their disposal?
Most states have reverted to normal capacity early in the summer as ED and ICU bed capacities became stable. People were shouting about the capacity in Florida...but when you compared the ED and ICU bed capacity rates to the previous summers in the past two years the numbers were normal which is why DeSantis basically went on a war footing against certain media agencies who were being fear mongers.
Arizona has a lot of surge capacity that was designed going back to the 80s and we've kept up with that as the population has grown, but we've reverted to standard capacity as there is limited need for that surge capacity. The vast majority of people testing positive here are asymptomatic.
