Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Yunru]

Masks are not a perfect defense against the virus. You also need to wear glasses to prevent a sneeze getting in your eyes and with it the virus.

[Granyala]

And guess what I see, people are still debating mask wearing here. :|

Yup, gotta debate something, it might as well be overkill blanket orders. :P

[JohnBrown1917]

And you know what to do right? All countries in the world got this problem but we got our savior right here...

Somehow New Zealand, Vietnam and Cuba do have it figured out.. somehow LA, the US and Europe are doing far worse than than east asia.

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Masks are not a perfect defense against the virus. You also need to wear glasses to prevent a sneeze getting in your eyes and with it the virus.

If all people where masks the infection rate goes down by more than 98%.

[Forogil]

Somehow New Zealand, Vietnam and Cuba do have it figured out.. somehow LA, the US and Europe are doing far worse than than east asia.

You somehow "forgot" S. Korea, Singapore and Taiwan in that list.

Of them, I would say that Vietnam and Singapore are the most interesting cases to study, as the other countries almost lack land borders, which makes it easier to contain the situation.

Note that other countries in the region like Indonesia and Malaysia seem to struggle.

If all people where masks the infection rate goes down by more than 98%.

I don't see anything supporting that number, and unless you provide reliable evidence you are spreading dangerous dis-information.

The reason is that it creates exactly the false safety that WHO warns against - if you think you are almost safe while wearing a mask you are likely to not physically distancing (even when possible) which increases the rate of infection, possibly a lot more than the mask in itself possibly lowered it.

[PhaelixWW]

Yeah. Much pointless noise over a small simple statement. Back when daily cases looked like in the picture below, I said "it seems the world as a whole has peaked".



Surely looks like a peak to me, how about you? As later events showed, it wasn't the peak, but it's undeniable that it's a peak. I was a bit surprised when PhaelixWW vehemently attacked my little harmless post - at that point I still believed PhaelixWW was an honest poster, so instead of dismissing him outright like I would with a more obvious troll, I gave several honest replies to him and other posters...

Let's roll the tape, shall we?

It seems the world as a whole has peaked.

The world as a whole has not peaked.

My, my, my. Well, that hardly seems to be the "vehement attack" you were characterizing, does it?

I mean, it's hilarious that you're talking about honesty when you're afraid to show the full picture:



There is indeed a person with an honesty issue in this discussion, and it ain't me.

Also, for bonus points, here's what the person you quoted in your last post said about your "little harmless post":

It seems the world as a whole has peaked.

Stop talking shit dude. You come here every couple of weeks with these wishy washy nonsensical statements. The briefest look at any statistics will tell you its far from peaked. Are you trying to fool yourself or others with this bullshit?

Just because someone is tired of the two of us going back and forth on such a ridiculous debate doesn't mean they think your position had merit.

...data showed that instead of an actual peak we had Twin Peaks, and instead of a decline we had a generally flat, somewhat fluctuating period.

In order for something to be referred to as "twin peaks", it must be either the peaks of two separate mountains/hills (ie, waves in an infection graph), or two summits on the same mountain at the relatively same height separated by a saddle. The term does not apply to anything other than summits. You can't have a peak, let alone twin peaks, on the sloping side of a mountain. This should be obvious to everyone simply based upon the definition of the word "peak".

I said all that in August. Now that enough time has passed, everyone with a brain can see my assessment was largely correct (I didn't expect the ongoing rise to dwarf the summer peaks that much though).

Does anyone reading this, anyone at all, think that Cynep's assessment was largely correct?

But PhaelixWW just had to prove me wrong, and since all I said was a few simple undeniable facts while PhaelixWW's attacks originated from some fictional universe in which there's only one peak, TV show "Twin Peaks" never existed, expressions "next peak", "smaller peak" and "final peak" don't exist, you get my idea...

Your statement was eminently deniable, it wasn't a fact, and yes, I will call out things when they're wrong and back it up with proof if need be. Also, "twin peaks" was addressed above, and "next", "smaller", and "final" can absolutely be used to describe different peaks of different mountains, just like they can describe aspects of different waves of an infection graph.

Strawman harder.

... so we had 1.5 months of PhaelixWW inventing irrelevant things and claiming I said something I didn't say and me calling PhaelixWW a liar for that. What a joke indeed.

Your refusal to simply own up to the wildly wrong statement is the only joke here; I'm not sure anyone's really laughing, though.

[cspropertyservices]

I try not to worry much when thinking of COVID-19, but one fear always creeps in.

[Granyala]

Just because someone is tired of the two of us going back and forth on such a ridiculous debate doesn't mean they think your position had merit.

I still think you two need to get a room and duke this out.

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Does anyone reading this, anyone at all, think that Cynep's assessment was largely correct?

It was a momentary peak.
I never saw the point of taking note of it, when < 10% of the population had been infected at the time, the numbers could only go one way anyway: UP.

*shrug*
The debate between you two had some entertainment value but to be honest at some point, you need to acknowledge that the other party won't budge and give it a rest. The facts had been stated, the numbers spoke/speak for themselves, whether one or more parties acknowledge their mistake won't make any difference to the situation at hand.

[Cynep]

Before I proceed with the actual reply, I want to disclose that my entire 3-generational household had Covid-19, so much for being alarmist BTW, didn't protect us. Women and children had it easy, my father and I had it worse, I still have a lasting cough in the upper lungs. Now I'm claiming an extra bragging point as a Covid survivor, one of those less-than-3% that had it and now are suffering for those who hadn't. My perspective didn't change at all, I'm still a moderate alarmist, "save lives without destroying lives". The sky won't fall.

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Let's roll the tape, shall we?

My, my, my. Well, that hardly seems to be the "vehement attack" you were characterizing, does it?

I mean, it's hilarious that you're talking about honesty when you're afraid to show the full picture:



There is indeed a person with an honesty issue in this discussion, and it ain't me.

See, anything truthful you say is proving my point
1. You're only showing your initial reply, which was the reason I responded to you - it was sane. Soon after that you descended into "peak = over", "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope", post-splitting, gaslighing and such. Vehement. Care to roll the tape on those?
2. Back in time, when the graph existed only up to your red arrow, said graph looked like on my picture, which is an obvious subset of yours. Confirm/deny?
3. Back in time, when (2) was true, I said what was true at the time, but 2 weeks later, when new data arrived, I slightly amended my initial statement. Feel free to dig up exact quotes, I used words like "flat", "fluctuation" and "plateau". Now look at your own picture. Your red arrow points at a flat-ish fluctuating plateau between two rising slopes, proving my point. Confirm/deny?
4. Instead of mentioning actually existing weaknesses in my statement before I started openly discussing them myself, you were instead busy claiming that I said the pandemic was over and and other stuff I didn't say. Confirm/deny?

You can't have a peak, let alone twin peaks, on the sloping side of a mountain.

We had this discussion before - Mount Ararat is a peak on a planet with Himalayas, remember? To further illustrate your delusions, according to your interpretation, Sinister Peak not far from you is not a peak because Dome Peak is right next to it while Mount Rainier is dwarfing them both. Someone call the government, PhaelixWW said they need to rename Sinister Peak to Sinister Slope! xD

Your statement was eminently deniable, it wasn't a fact, and yes, I will call out things when they're wrong

A statement is by definition not a fact. However my statements we're currently discussing enumerated a few facts, which is why non-delusional people don't attack them - facts are undeniable.

Go ahead and deny the facts again: after a period of stable growth, there was a peak in the end of July, exceeded by a couple percent by another peak in mid-August; and also deny that August was generally flat, unlike most of June and July and most of October which weren't. Do that. Just don't invent new things I didn't say, that's boring.

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I still think you two need to get a room and duke this out.

While it is funny, that would only prove who is stronger, not who has better argument ;(

[Zan15]

And you know what to do right? All countries in the world got this problem but we got our savior right here...

Somehow New Zealand, Vietnam and Cuba do have it figured out.. somehow LA, the US and Europe are doing far worse than than east asia.

If all people where masks the infection rate goes down by more than 98%.

@tromage2, strange no response on the multiple countries that have "got this problem" but somehow managed to figure it out....

How about another

https://www.health.gov.au/news/healt...d-case-numbers

192 active cases
10 cases in the last 24 hours after 41k test.


https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/covid-2020-10-30
New U.S. coronavirus cases top 99,300, a record daily high, as the pandemic extends its reach throughout the country.

[Frozenbeef]

Uk prime minister apparently going to announce UK going in lockdown again tonight :/

[Zan15]

lol... 2 of these countries are not landlocked and 2 of them are very authoritarian...

so, excuses?

Our problem in the US has nothing to do with "landlocked" or "authoritarian" because the things that were implemented in the other countries would be perfectly legal to do for the most part in the Us.


Like to expound on it further so I understand?

[Forogil]

so, excuses?

Our problem in the US has nothing to do with "landlocked" or "authoritarian" because the things that were implemented in the other countries would be perfectly legal to do for the most part in the Us.

The point is that almost all countries are failing to various levels (exactly how much is unknown since a lot of countries, US included, don't have fully reliable statistics).

The US is certainly not doing great - but it's not that much worse than other countries with similar age structure, regardless of the government response (or lack thereof).

Most exceptions that seem to have handled it well lack land border like New Zealand, Cuba, and Taiwan - and it's known that islands can close their borders more efficiently than countries with land borders and thus often can manage pandemics better (at least for a time).
Japan has also managed it fairly well, despite their government response that was generally perceived as bad.

Whereas other exceptions like Vietnam and Singapore have both been ruled by one party for quite some time, which makes authoritarian measures easier to implement. (China also falls somewhat in this category; after the initial problems.)

[Zan15]

The point is that almost all countries are failing to various levels (exactly how much is unknown since a lot of countries, US included, don't have fully reliable statistics).

The US is certainly not doing great - but it's not that much worse than other countries with similar age structure, regardless of the government response (or lack thereof).

Most exceptions that seem to have handled it well lack land border like New Zealand, Cuba, and Taiwan - and it's known that islands can close their borders more efficiently than countries with land borders and thus often can manage pandemics better (at least for a time).
Japan has also managed it fairly well, despite their government response that was generally perceived as bad.

Whereas other exceptions like Vietnam and Singapore have both been ruled by one party for quite some time, which makes authoritarian measures easier to implement. (China also falls somewhat in this category; after the initial problems.)

So basically this country is failing at managing the response, got ya. And when compared to other first world countries, its doing a horrific job vs some of the best that have already shown how you can do it.


In looking at what Australia is doing it does not seem so unrealistic that the united states could not implement many of the same responses.

We have many states are are populated like Australia in #'s/how spread out its people are and really don't have that much travel coming into the state that are doing worse than the whole country of Australia.

of course they don't have to deal with the level of greed and our election.

[Ripster42]

The US is certainly not doing great - but it's not that much worse than other countries with similar age structure, regardless of the government response (or lack thereof).

Our infection rate is twice or thrice our neighbors (depending on which one you wish to compare us to), who have a similar problem with land borders. One caveat: they're located next to the most heavily infected country in the world according to available statistics. Compare that to the US: we're not located next to the most heavily infected country in the world.

[Ripster42]

you can place entire towns in quarantine in the us because of 1 case? i don't think you can...

We have provisions for martial law. In this case, the justification would be for when people refused to follow quarantine orders which would be labelled 'rebellion' and would be in the 'interests of public safety.' So yes, we can. Is it likely? No.

That being said, if you'd actually bothered to comprehend what that poster wrote, you'd have seen this tidbit:

perfectly legal to do for the most part in the Us.

so your quibbling is pointless.

[Ripster42]

lol... good luck with that...

Not my fault you didn't bother understanding what the poster wrote.

[Forogil]

Our infection rate is twice or thrice our neighbors (depending on which one you wish to compare us to)

I find that statement unlikely to be true, and I also compared the US with other parts of the world like Europe. The problem is that you missed the important part that all current statistics suffers from various errors at the moment.

The US does have more than four times the number of confirmed cases per capita compared to Canada; it's likely that the reality is that the US have an even higher number since Canada currently averages a positivity rate of 2% and the US 6%.

However, the US has only three times the number of confirmed cases per capita compared to Mexico - but here the situation is reversed and it's likely that Mexico actually has higher number of actual cases than the US; as the positivity rate in Mexico is 32% - and was above 50% during the summer. The high number of cases in Mexico is consistent with high sero-prevalence - https://www.news-medical.net/news/20...uz-Mexico.aspx

Mexico also has similar number of confirmed deaths per capita as the US (around 0.07% of population). However, both countries seem to have been under-reporting deaths https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...ross-countries
So, the actual deaths in Mexico is likely 0.17% of population compared to perhaps 0.09% in the US.


And to be clear: once the pandemic have gotten a foothold (as it has in most countries) the borders are irrelevant; so any travel ban is currently meaningless - except for the few countries that have so far avoided the pandemic.
Some of them banned travel, others have used testing, quarantine, etc without banning travel and still kept the pandemic under control.

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So basically this country is failing at managing the response, got ya. And when compared to other first world countries, its doing a horrific job vs some of the best that have already shown how you can do it.

No, the US is doing a fairly bad job - but seems to be doing better than some first world countries: Belgium and Spain.

[Acidbaron]

Belgium going back under partial lockdown as of Monday for a minimum of 6 weeks.

This is what happens when you have 3 governments and a Brussels minister of health who mocked the cries of hospitals to start enforcing stricter measures, denouncing them as "hysteria from flemish hospitals".

The virus sadly does not stop at the language barrier and this is the result. We'll have it under control again. I have to say that when comparing Flanders to the Netherlands as i work in the later, The Flemish government is far more strict on enforcing it all. So yes i am putting this mostly on the incompetence and arrogance francophone from Brussels.

FYI if you want to compare Belgium to other nations you have to compare our landmass and population, you'll figure out why such comparison won't hold we are fairly densely populated compared to elsewhere in Europe. We aren't doing poorly in overall measures the problem is the fractured political landscape into three independent governments. A New federal government is making quick work of it but i do find that overall region independence has to take a back seat when it comes to crisis management and this is coming from a flemish nationalist.

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Uk prime minister apparently going to announce UK going in lockdown again tonight :/

It's going to happen every where eventually, the optimism politicians got during the summer to reopen things quickly again and to hand wave expert opinions to beware of the winter months is going to come back and bite them and all of us.

Not a lot of people are saying it out loud yet, but if things go in lockdown now we may see a return to a more normal life again mid January across Europe, i am burying any plans i had for Christmas and New years Eve.

[Yunru]

Well at least i wont have to stand on grave this year. Some good news at least.

Oh this may sound interesting, but if you get CCP virus, you can get it again as immunity doesnt last long enogh (so sweden failed pretty hard here).

2 dumbasses here got infected again and got it.

[Ripster42]

I find that statement unlikely to be true, and I also compared the US with other parts of the world like Europe. .

I'll concede mexico, as it's not like they've had an effective gov't for the past 20+ years. But, yeah, compare us to canada. They've had to share a border with us. They're doing far better than us, while having to deal with a worse situation on their border than any other country: a giant land border with the most infected country in the world.

As to your "foothold" point: if this is your stance, stop mentioning land borders period. It's had a foothold in every first world country. There's been community transmission in every first world country. Some bothered to address it. We barely even attempted to, and at the federal level, have completely given up. When we sent a plane to china to repatriate some people, people greeted them upon landing with zero precautions taken. The current position of our executive branch is that there's not going to be any preventing the spread of covid. The president mocks people who take basic precautions against covid like wearing a mask. There isn't really any way that our response to covid could be worse except for more government bodies preventing the implementation of mask ordinances or the CDC backing the president's bleach injections.