Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Edge-]

https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-da...rning-to-work/

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed coronavirus testing in Orlando Friday, where he criticized businesses, especially restaurants, for demanding negative test results from their employees before allowing them to return to work.

“The problem with demanding a negative test is these PCR tests will pick up just particles, so it could be dead virus,” he said, “and the CDC has seen people test positive for up to 12 weeks. Obviously, you only carry live virus for a very short period of time.”

His comments come after the Florida Department of Health reported another 7,686 new COVID-19 cases statewide, marking nearly a week with under 8,000 daily reported cases.

Again, Governor Ron DeSantis is doing his utmost to be the leading cause of death in the state of Florida for the year 2020.

[PhaelixWW]

World's 7-day average has peaked at 260083 daily cases on July 30th and is trending down. Single-day record is 2 weeks old.

You're stretching HARD to try and make the situation fit your view, and it shows. For the 7-day average, July 31st was two cases less than July 30th, so it would be disingenuous to not mark July 30th and July 31st together as the "peak" while we're still so close to it. Also, your "trending down" is notably less than a 2% daily change, a difference of about 5k. Not so coincidentally: Florida, which was been pumping out 9-10k new cases a day for a while now, closed many of their testing facilities down while Hurricane Iaias was rolling through, and for the last week or so has been only reporting around 6k a day.

As for the single-day record, you're again cherry-picking around admitting that the "record" on July 24th was a grand total of 12 cases higher than the total a week later on July 31st, so "two weeks old" should really, if you're being the slightest bit honest, be "one week old". And again, that's a drop of 2% in a week.

I'll also point out that for the top sources for new cases in the world: India, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, and Mexico are still on the rise, Brazil is holding steady, and only the US and South Africa are really falling, and I for one am not going to trust that the US numbers aren't going to jump back up once kids go back to school and more people go back to work.

Even Spain and France, which had devastating first rounds, are seeing significant increases in their daily cases.

It could be just a local peak, hence "it seems". But most likely it will stay that way.

Based on what, your "feels"? Not a single credible scientist agrees, you know.

I'll tell you how science works. You take measurements, and then try to come up with explanations why the measurements are how they are. If your explanation is correct, you will be able to predict other measurements that will be taken in the future.

Now, my explanation is not a full-fledged theory, just a quick empirical rule of thumb. But still I could successfully predict more than a month ago what is true today, so my explanation is correct.

You never even bothered to come up with an explanation; you simply said "3% soft cap?" without giving any putative explanation as to why you thought that would even be a thing (aside from some strange misconceived notion about "herd immunity").

What's your explanation, why only Qatar could exceed 3% cases and still no other country can, even after all this time?

Asked and answered, friend:

Because somewhere before 20-40% infected (which is what a 3% confirmed cases rate is likely to translate to in actual cases) occurs, people decided to take those measures seriously enough to lower the R value below 1 in those areas.

But there's nothing that forces it to be that way other than changes in human activity.

And what's more, your "3% soft cap" theory holds absolutely no water because there are no countries at 3%. If there was such a soft cap, you'd see evidence of it by seeing many countries clustered together around that 3% mark. Here's the data from worldometers showing the number of cases per 1m population:




Notice that there are no countries clustered around 30k (3% of 1m)? The closest above is all the way at 4% and there are only three countries between 2-3%, with two of those being tiny countries where one hotspot can make a huge difference.

But here, I'll do one better and graph the countries with at least 1 million population so you can see it better:




Here you can easily see that there is no correlation between 3% and any kind of clustering of countries.

Your hypothesis is objectively wrong.

[Orange Joe]

snip

Weren't you one of the people claiming it was nothing and that it was almost over 3 months ago?

[Edge-]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/250000...torcycle-rally

At least they're outdoors for the rally, bikers from all over the country, including coronavirus hot spots, are converging in South Dakota for a motorcycle rally. And apparently nobody is masking.

Rod Florquest of Wyoming was among the thousands who had arrived early.

“You really have to look to see someone wearing a mask,” he reported, as though this was a good thing.

[Cynep]

I dislike doing the microsnippet hairsplitting routine, but because I'm replying to a post already structured that way, I have no choice...

You're stretching HARD to try and make the situation fit your view, and it shows.

I truly don't want to offend you, but the rest of your post consists mostly of "stretching HARD". Let's see.

For the 7-day average, July 31st was two cases less than July 30th

Please do tell, which is bigger, 260083 or 260081? I want everyone to see your answer.

, so it would be disingenuous to not mark July 30th and July 31st together as the "peak" while we're still so close to it.

You're proving my point. Okay, have it your way, cases peaked on July 30 & 31. So according to you, the world has peaked. In July.

Also, your "trending down" is notably less than a 2% daily change, a difference of about 5k.

If something is going down 2%, it's going down instead of growing. This is pretty much the definition of "has peaked".

Not so coincidentally: Florida,

I said world as a whole, not Florida. Sorry, go on

Florida, which was been pumping out 9-10k new cases a day for a while now, closed many of their testing facilities down while Hurricane Iaias was rolling through, and for the last week or so has been only reporting around 6k a day.

So, Florida is underreporting 3k a day, that's why the world is now 6k/day lower than the peak value? You'll also have to somehow prove that no one was underreporting until the end of July but is reporting correct numbers now, counterbalancing Florida's fluctuation. Burden of proof is on you since it's your statement that the whole world peaked because of Florida.

As for the single-day record, you're again cherry-picking around admitting that the "record" on July 24th was a grand total of 12 cases higher than the total a week later on July 31st, so "two weeks old" should really, if you're being the slightest bit honest, be "one week old". And again, that's a drop of 2% in a week.

Once again, tell the class, which is bigger, 289648 or 289632? Two weeks ago is the record, one week ago is the first loser.

I'll also point out that for the top sources for new cases in the world: India, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, and Mexico are still on the rise, Brazil is holding steady, and only the US and South Africa are really falling, and I for one am not going to trust that the US numbers aren't going to jump back up once kids go back to school and more people go back to work.

Even Spain and France, which had devastating first rounds, are seeing significant increases in their daily cases.

Yes, some countries are one the rise, some on the fall, some are flat. The world as a whole is flat / declining slightly.

Based on what, your "feels"? Not a single credible scientist agrees, you know.

Appeal to authority fallacy. Dismissed.

You never even bothered to come up with an explanation; you simply said "3% soft cap?" without giving any putative explanation as to why you thought that would even be a thing (aside from some strange misconceived notion about "herd immunity").

I said several times: "I have this empirical observation: before a country (or even a hotspot like NYC) reaches 3% confirmed cases mark, daily cases peak and start declining." I'm not an epidemiologist, probably no one in this thread is; I was presenting my observation about documented facts in hopes that someone competent can explain why the peak is so low. Check my posts, you'll find me saying "what do you guys think, why is that?". Saying that countries don't peak under 3% is equivalent to saying Earth doesn't go around Sun: sorry but facts contradict your beliefs.

Because somewhere before 20-40% infected (which is what a 3% confirmed cases rate is likely to translate to in actual cases) occurs, people decided to take those measures seriously enough to lower the R value below 1 in those areas.

But there's nothing that forces it to be that way other than changes in human activity.

... and that is why we see measurements show countries peaking before they reach 3%. Which is exactly what I'm saying: there are some factors leading to these factual results, let's discuss what those factors are.

And what's more, your "3% soft cap" theory holds absolutely no water because there are no countries at 3%. If there was such a soft cap, you'd see evidence of it by seeing many countries clustered together around that 3% mark. Here's the data from worldometers showing the number of cases per 1m population:

Notice that there are no countries clustered around 30k (3% of 1m)? The closest above is all the way at 4% and there are only three countries between 2-3%, with two of those being tiny countries where one hotspot can make a huge difference.

Soft cap means diminishing returns kick in and make it gradually harder and harder for the value to increase. I'm saying something is causing these diminishing returns somewhere under 3%, that's why only exceptions can approach or exceed 3%. Obviously, as months pass and countries test more and more, this soft cap will slowly move towards 4%, I'm sure I said that months ago. Herd immunity threshold for Covid can't be so low as 3% or 4%.

But here, I'll do one better and graph the countries with at least 1 million population so you can see it better:

Here you can easily see that there is no correlation between 3% and any kind of clustering of countries.

Your hypothesis is objectively wrong.

I never said countries would cluster at 3% (that would be a hard cap), I said countries have trouble even reaching 3%, and depending on how good their anti-Covid measures are, they're fizzling out somewhere under 3%.

Are you saying that this soft cap we're discussing is much lower, at 2.5% or even 1.5%? Because that would make Covid even less dangerous

- - - Updated - - -

Weren't you one of the people claiming it was nothing and that it was almost over 3 months ago?

I was one of the people claiming that governments should avoid destroying lives.

[Morgarw]

Other countries that locked down are seeing a second wave, while here in Sweden we are seeing a decline in both new cases and deaths. I truly believe we did the right thing back in march, not closing down, and this is exactly what I predicted. We would have more cases early on, but countries that shut themselves down would reach a second wave when they opened up.

Yeah, hard to do that in Sweden a country with a density population shitons of times lower than France, Spain, Italy, etc.. The reality is that you failed hard, and you are only luck that Sweden has the population of a single region of the countries listed above.

[PhaelixWW]

Please do tell, which is bigger, 260083 or 260081? I want everyone to see your answer.

With a statistically insignificant difference? They're the same.

You're proving my point. Okay, have it your way, cases peaked on July 30 & 31. So according to you, the world has peaked. In July.

No, sorry. You're ignoring the quotes around the word "peak". I was saying it was disingenuous of you to label the 30th as a "peak". That does not mean that I, personally, would refer to the 30th or even the 30th and 31st together, as a "peak". Otherwise, you might as well say that August 4th was a "peak", May 25th was a "peak", May 12th was a "peak", May 9th, April 30th, April 25th... etc.

If something is going down 2%, it's going down instead of growing. This is pretty much the definition of "has peaked".

Not really, no. On a timeline measuring over a half of a year, a 2.3% drop over 8 days is not statistically demonstrative... yet.

I said world as a whole, not Florida. Sorry, go on

So, Florida is underreporting 3k a day, that's why the world is now 6k/day lower than the peak value? You'll also have to somehow prove that no one was underreporting until the end of July but is reporting correct numbers now, counterbalancing Florida's fluctuation. Burden of proof is on you since it's your statement that the whole world peaked because of Florida.

Again, no, I'm not the one stating that the whole world has peaked at all.

But let's put this into perspective, shall we? What you're trying to say is that the world peaked a week ago because we've dropped 6k cases a day since then. But the US has dropped almost 14k/day cases from the recent spike's height two weeks ago, and almost 10k/day from the end of July one week ago.

So if we look at the daily cases worldwide:




...and then the daily cases in the US:




...then you'd probably notice that, well, I'll just graph the last two months for you:




So it would be "more accurate" to say that the US has peaked, but the rest of the world is still on its upward trend, as I outlined before and you so studiously ignored. And yet I still don't think that's terribly accurate at all, because I sincerely doubt that the US has peaked, do you?

Yes, some countries are one the rise, some on the fall, some are flat. The world as a whole is flat / declining slightly.

No. One country representing 4% of the world's population has had a more precipitous rise and subsequent partial correction, but the remaining 96% of the world has been steadily increasing. Or is it your goal to suggest that the world is, in fact, incredibly USA-centric?

Appeal to authority fallacy. Dismissed.

Lulz. You clearly have absolutely no idea what the argument from authority fallacy actually entails. Because you're suggesting that the collective scientific opinion of the world's experts on the matter are automatically meaningless. Hilarious!

I said several times: "I have this empirical observation: before a country (or even a hotspot like NYC) reaches 3% confirmed cases mark, daily cases peak and start declining." I'm not an epidemiologist, probably no one in this thread is; I was presenting my observation about documented facts in hopes that someone competent can explain why the peak is so low.

And it was explained to you.

What you call a "peak" occurs once the new case rate starts to go down. The new case rate starts to go down because the Re value of the virus in an area is below 1. The Re value goes down when people do the proper shit to protect themselves and others, like closing things down, keeping socially distant, wearing a mask when they have to be closer. People start doing these things when they see the reality of death happening around them. At some point before an area hits 3% confirmed cases, enough people have gotten sick and started dying to scare the remaining people into action.

It's not fucking rocket science. And it has absolutely shit-all to do with a specific confirmed case percentage. And it doesn't mean that those areas have peaked for good, merely that the cases will continue to go down as long as they keep the Re value below 1 by using proper protective measures. But people are people, and those measures are restrictive, so you're seeing areas relaxing those measures. That can and will drive the Re back up over 1 and cases will start to rise again. And then more places will be over 3%.

Because 3% is not some "soft cap".

... and that is why we see measurements show countries peaking before they reach 3%. Which is exactly what I'm saying: there are some factors leading to these factual results, let's discuss what those factors are.

The only factor is human attitude shift and subsequent reaction. And it has nothing to do with a specific percentage.

I'm saying something is causing these diminishing returns somewhere under 3%, that's why only exceptions can approach or exceed 3%.

And you're wrong, because you're presupposing that this pandemic is over already. You steadfastly refuse to believe that case counts can and will go up again if people relax their measures... all while saying that countries should relax measures or risk being a "nation of paupers". It's such a myopic viewpoint that I'm surprised you don't walk into walls all the time.

I never said countries would cluster at 3% (that would be a hard cap)

No. Countries stopping at 3% would be a hard cap. Countries moving up to 3% with some going over but not getting very far over because of diminishing returns, thereby eventually causing a clustering of countries at or just above 3%... that would be a soft cap.

I said countries have trouble even reaching 3%, and depending on how good their anti-Covid measures are, they're fizzling out somewhere under 3%.

Yes, and clearly you don't understand the nature of a soft cap because a soft cap at 3% has nothing to do with anything happening at 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 2.5%, etc.

[Einsz]

It seems the world as a whole has peaked. My earlier point about 3% cases soft cap remains true, Qatar is still the only country to go past it, and for understandable reasons. I expect some US states go past 3% ("because they test more" :| ), but whether any other state-level entity besides Qatar will break 4% cases within 2020, remains to be seen. I guess they'd have to increase testing for that.

I don't understand this trend of people making their own random projections/theories. Health minister of my country said something about our country peaking 2 weeks ago also and guess what, we have seen huge increase in cases recently compared to previous "peak". It's too early to tell still, not to mention your 3% soft cap doesnt make any sense at all, you are making assumptions using flawed data, which makes your random projection (with barely anything to support it) flawed by default.

[Forogil]

I don't understand this "discussion" about the soft cap at 3%, as everyone seems to looking at it from the wrong perspective - if there is a soft "cap" it's not for the cases themselves.

Many countries, do a decent amount of tests, but still miss a large number of mild cases, so it's possible that the reported cases reaching 2% of population (in a hot-spot) correspond to 20-40% actual cases, and that may in itself be enough to cause the spread to decline (people also change their behaviour) - even though it's not enough to reach herd immunity (not even in the hot-spot).

Correspondingly the real number of cases in the world is likely a lot more than the almost 20 million reported, possibly a few hundred millions - or more.

Countries that test (almost) every possible case, as S. Korea, normally also get the epidemic under control long it reaches even 0.1% of the population.

And in case a country tries to test every case and the epidemic still gets out of control the likely outcome is that the testing capacity is either directly overwhelmed, or indirectly as resources are diverted to handling the critical cases, and thus any cap would more likely correspond to a cap on the testing capacity (in terms of laboratories, PPE, staff, etc) than a cap on the pandemic. That cap on testing capacity will be even more relevant in the future as it is spreading in poorer countries, but it will also slightly increase with time (especially in richer countries). Thus we might see a decrease in reported cases in the future, even if the pandemics accelerates a bit.

Obviously there might also be additional factors at play - e.g., there are theories about cross-immunity slightly decreasing the susceptible population and there might be additional factors that we haven't understood.

[Slant]

why does the size of the country matter? people aren't evenly spread out... most of the population don't live like some people in the north does where you can have several km to closest neighbour...

Yes, ask where Swedes are these weeks. They're not in the cities, I can tell you that much.

[Forogil]

Yes, ask where Swedes are these weeks. They're not in the cities, I can tell you that much.

Hmm...
That seems very specific, are you a German visiting Swedish cities for summer holidays and finding them empty?

[Cynep]

And you're wrong, because you're presupposing that this pandemic is over already. You steadfastly refuse to believe that case counts can and will go up again if people relax their measures... all while saying that countries should relax measures or risk being a "nation of paupers". It's such a myopic viewpoint that I'm surprised you don't walk into walls all the time.

I wanted to make a longer post praising some points you made earlier, but decided against it after reading this part... next time read posts you're replying to, before setting your pants on fire, OK?

And you're wrong, because you're presupposing that this pandemic is over already

I expect some US states go past 3% ("because they test more" :| ), but whether any other state-level entity besides Qatar will break 4% cases within 2020, remains to be seen.

Obviously, as months pass and countries test more and more, this soft cap will slowly move towards 4%, I'm sure I said that months ago. Herd immunity threshold for Covid can't be so low as 3% or 4%.

...

You steadfastly refuse to believe that case counts can and will go up again

I expect some US states go past 3% ("because they test more" :| ), but whether any other state-level entity besides Qatar will break 4% cases within 2020, remains to be seen.

Obviously, as months pass and countries test more and more, this soft cap will slowly move towards 4%, I'm sure I said that months ago. Herd immunity threshold for Covid can't be so low as 3% or 4%.

...

====

No. Countries stopping at 3% would be a hard cap. Countries moving up to 3% with some going over but not getting very far over because of diminishing returns, thereby eventually causing a clustering of countries at or just above 3%... that would be a soft cap.

Yes, and clearly you don't understand the nature of a soft cap because a soft cap at 3% has nothing to do with anything happening at 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 2.5%, etc.

As I said, 3% is not some magic-silver-bullet set in stone number, it's a ballpark unreachable-for-now (even for hotspots) number. Diminishing returns kick in below 3% and prevent countries from reaching it. That's why they're not clustering at 3% - they can't reach 3%. However, as I also said,

Obviously, as months pass and countries test more and more, this soft cap will slowly move towards 4%, I'm sure I said that months ago. Herd immunity threshold for Covid can't be so low as 3% or 4%.

But I'll rephrase for you:

There is a soft cap somewhere well below 3%, probably around 1.5%. After ~9 months of Covid, and 5 months of official pandemic status, cases still don't really go above 1.5% in most countries, even 1% cases is high for functioning states. BTW, this 1% fact makes fearmongers look foolish and the pandemic overhyped. (it is bad, but not nearly as bad as some people say)

- - - Updated - - -

I don't understand this "discussion" about the soft cap at 3%, as everyone seems to looking at it from the wrong perspective - if there is a soft "cap" it's not for the cases themselves.

Many countries, do a decent amount of tests, but still miss a large number of mild cases, so it's possible that the reported cases reaching 2% of population (in a hot-spot) correspond to 20-40% actual cases, and that may in itself be enough to cause the spread to decline (people also change their behaviour) - even though it's not enough to reach herd immunity (not even in the hot-spot).

Correspondingly the real number of cases in the world is likely a lot more than the almost 20 million reported, possibly a few hundred millions - or more.

Countries that test (almost) every possible case, as S. Korea, normally also get the epidemic under control long it reaches even 0.1% of the population.

And in case a country tries to test every case and the epidemic still gets out of control the likely outcome is that the testing capacity is either directly overwhelmed, or indirectly as resources are diverted to handling the critical cases, and thus any cap would more likely correspond to a cap on the testing capacity (in terms of laboratories, PPE, staff, etc) than a cap on the pandemic. That cap on testing capacity will be even more relevant in the future as it is spreading in poorer countries, but it will also slightly increase with time (especially in richer countries). Thus we might see a decrease in reported cases in the future, even if the pandemics accelerates a bit.

Obviously there might also be additional factors at play - e.g., there are theories about cross-immunity slightly decreasing the susceptible population and there might be additional factors that we haven't understood.

Thanks for a useful answer.
It's not that some arbitrary number like 3% or 1.5% has some deep meaning, instead it looks like a strange observed phenomenon to me (like say retrograde motion of planets in astronomy) - everyone's saying herd immunity is unreachable within reasonable timeframe, it's over 70%, but everywhere, even in places run by deniers, cases decline before reaching 1/20 or often even 1/70 of that threshold. Of course there are many times more unregistered infections than registered cases, but I wanted to discuss what other factors are at play, and how we can interpret and maybe use these observations.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, ask where Swedes are these weeks. They're not in the cities, I can tell you that much.

It's too early to judge the Swedish approach yet. If in the winter the second wave comes to northern Europe and countries will have to lock down, taking a second hit, and if Swedes will be able to live normally unlike their neighbours, then Sweden will win their long game. Before that, it's too early to tell.

[Fantomen]

Yeah, hard to do that in Sweden a country with a density population shitons of times lower than France, Spain, Italy, etc...

and most of north Sweden is uninhabited, Stockholm have a population density of 366/km² but Sweden as a whole have a population density of 24/km².......

[Orange Joe]

I was one of the people claiming that governments should avoid destroying lives.

Yeah.... no...

Visibly Declining means good news, people aren't dying in large quantities anymore. It also means doomsayers are busted.

I mean without measures the curve would've had a steep front and a long fat flat tail with lots of deaths in it. With the measures, the tail is thinning noticeably. That's what I meant by "finally kicking in" - it's not just flat, it's visibly declining.

To be honest, deaths are declining slightly faster than I expected, I thought the tail of the curve would be "fatter" than it appears to become. At least one of the following must be true:

1. The scare is over, fearmongers and doomsayers will have to find something new.
2. This is the result of the measures finally kicking in.

[Cynep]

Yeah.... no...

You're proving yourself wrong here.

• I said that deaths declining in UK faster than I expected is a good thing, not that it's nothing and the pandemic is over.
• I said there will be a long tail, not that it's nothing and the pandemic is over.
• I said that the scare is over, not that it's nothing and the pandemic is over.

Deaths have declined in UK, as you can see. And that's good. Doesn't mean mean that it's nothing and the pandemic is over. It just means it's not doom and gloom like the doomsayers want us to believe.

[Edge-]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/us/ba...-19/index.html

A school district in Georgia has decided to start the school year with virtual learning, after more than 90 staff members were forced to quarantine due to a confirmed or suspected case of Covid-19, or due to being exposed to someone who did.

"If today was the first day of school, we would have been hard-pressed to have sufficient staff available to open our schools," Barrow County Schools Superintendent Chris McMichael said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Barrow County School System, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, planned to start with both in-person and remote instruction August 17. Now, only virtual learning will be available after dozens of county staff had to quarantine "due to a confirmed case of Covid-19, a suspected case, or direct contact with a confirmed case," the district's statement said.

Fuck Georgia, they're playing around with the lives of kids and faculty and making things hell for the poor staff that have to deal with this bullshit. If only Brian Kemp, who is a monumental fucking retard that was months late to learning that asymptomatic people can still infect others, gave a shit about his residents and the children that are being sent back to roll the dice with their health.

[PhaelixWW]

I wanted to make a longer post praising some points you made earlier...

Welp, thanks for finally admitting (tacitly, if not explicitly) that you were wrong about the world having peaked.

next time read posts you're replying to, before setting your pants on fire, OK?

Or maybe you just need to work on your comprehension? Let's take these quotes and I'll explain your mistakes:

And you're wrong, because you're presupposing that this pandemic is over already

A pandemic like this doesn't just stop overnight (...duh...) so "over already" in this context means fully peaked and declining. It's just plain stupid to assume that someone saying "over already" in this context means literally 100% done, since that's objectively and obviously false.

You steadfastly refuse to believe that case counts can and will go up again

The case counts I'm talking about here are the daily new case counts, not the total cumulative case counts, which should be obvious to anyone with any kind of common sense, as total case counts can't possibly go down. Your repeated assertions, however, suggest that daily case counts will continue to go down, even if the total case counts might someday get up to 4%.

And that assertion is just ridiculous.

As I said, 3% is not some magic-silver-bullet set in stone number, it's a ballpark unreachable-for-now (even for hotspots) number. Diminishing returns kick in below 3% and prevent countries from reaching it. That's why they're not clustering at 3% - they can't reach 3%.

There is a soft cap somewhere well below 3%, probably around 1.5%. After ~9 months of Covid, and 5 months of official pandemic status, cases still don't really go above 1.5% in most countries, even 1% cases is high for functioning states.

You know, it's really telling that despite the, what... 4 or 5 times? that I've explained this to you, you haven't once addressed my explanation, despite repeatedly asking for it, because then you'd have to admit that it's not just the logical explanation, but the obvious one, and that would just destroy your absurd "hypothesis".

But here, I'll lay down some more of what should be obvious logic.

1) Things slowed down because people started dying in large numbers, and because people don't like dying. The spread of a virus is conditional upon human action, so therefore human action is capable of slowing the spread once people are brought to the point of caring enough to do so. That will typically happen at a low percentage, yes, under 3% generally, because...

2) 3% is a fucking huge number. You keep implying that it's surprising to you to see a slowdown occur below 3% because it seems to you that 3% is a low number. But 3% of a fucking huge number is... a fucking huge number. 3% of Donetsk People's Republic is 70,000 people. 3% of the US is 10,000,000 people. 3% of the world is 234,000,000 people. And that leads me to the next point, which is...

3) Time is a huge fucking factor. You keep suggesting that it's a surprise that nobody is over 3% (Qatar excluded) by now. The implication is that it's been a long time since the start of the pandemic (which it has), and that we should have seen cases pass 3% a while ago if there wasn't some "mysterious force" soft cap slowing things down. But per point #2, 3% is fucking huge, and per point #3, time is a huge fucking factor.

Recently, you made a big point about the world's largest 7-day average for new cases per day being 260,083. Do you have any idea how long it would take the world to go from 0% to 3% case counts even if every single day matched that record? Two and a half fucking years. If you consider that to be too broad an example, then how about the UK? The UK was hit hard by COVID, but they came down from their worst point back in April and have remained fairly low since. So they should be a perfect case for your theory, right? And yet... their highest new cases per day average was 4,999. At that rate, it would take 408 days to reach 3%. Even at 1.5%, that's still 204 days... at max rate... and it's only been 163 days since their 7-day average was at zero. And that brings up another point...

4) None of your putative "soft cap" percentages correlate. The UK hit their record 7-day average at 0.13%. The US at 1.3%. Belgium at 0.29%. Qatar at 2.21%. South Korea at 0.012%. Chile at 1.13%. Peru is at 1.40% and still rising.

BTW, this 1% fact makes fearmongers look foolish and the pandemic overhyped.

And yet it doesn't, because what you're trying so desperately to convince people is a fact is not actually a fact. Which means that the person looking repetitively foolish here... is you.

[silveth]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/us/ba...-19/index.html



Fuck Georgia, they're playing around with the lives of kids and faculty and making things hell for the poor staff that have to deal with this bullshit. If only Brian Kemp, who is a monumental fucking retard that was months late to learning that asymptomatic people can still infect others, gave a shit about his residents and the children that are being sent back to roll the dice with their health.

Just want to point out that the transmittion from asymptomatic and even presymptomatic people is not fully known. There are a bunch of lab run tests that show they do not transmit. There are also tests showing that might transmit in some cases. But it is not a definitive.

Most tests have shown that a cough or sneeze is needed to put enough of the virus in the area to transmit or to put it on a surface.

I am not saying it can't happen, I was just pointing out that it isn't proven one way or the the other yet.

[ParanoiD84]

There is now also the bubonic plague popping up in china and mongolia, not that much so far though but still.

Last time it killed of 200 million of our 500 million world population but that was back in the days say the 14th Century it did kill some 12 million back in the 1900's too.

These days it can easily be treated by antibiotics.

[Granyala]

Most tests have shown that a cough or sneeze is needed to put enough of the virus in the area to transmit or to put it on a surface.

As a healthy person, I cough and sneeze quite a few times each day. I'm sure you do too.
So the pre-/asymptomatic person spreads the virus as soon as sth tickles their nostrils.

That's actually the whole point of the entire mass mask wearing shabang.