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Coronavirus (Stay on Topic)

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Rain Cold said:
One thing I've noticed about this virus is that the people who think we need to lock down more hardly ever see people social distancing and wearing masks. And people who think we need to open up see people with masks everywhere.

Another thing I've noticed is that places where the lockdowns and mandates are the strictest seem to do little better than places where restrictions are less. And there is always a different excuse for this.
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I also notice lines drawn along people who have really close personal experience and those who dont.

Wuhan went through 70ish days of true lockdown and they are back to partying in night clubs without masks. They test millions of people when they have an outbreak of 10 to 15 cases.

We discouraged testing for months in the beginning. People refuse to wear masks still around here and most restaurants are packed nightly.

No surprise we saw 8500 cases today.

I think Onslpw county had a 37% positivity rate.......that's no bueno
 
Shaggy said:
I also notice lines drawn along people who have really close personal experience and those who dont.

Wuhan went through 70ish days of true lockdown and they are back to partying in night clubs without masks. They test millions of people when they have an outbreak of 10 to 15 cases.

We discouraged testing for months in the beginning. People refuse to wear masks still around here and most restaurants are packed nightly.

No surprise we saw 8500 cases today.

I think Onslpw county had a 37% positivity rate.......that's no bueno
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How anyone believes anything that comes out of Wuhan is beyond me. And the word initially was that we didn't have nearly enough tests for wide testing. Also, the word was initially that masks don't help. Honestly, I'm not sure how we believe stuff coming out of the west either sometimes. We seem to be making it up as we go along, the whole way.
 
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I don't subscribe to every point the author makes in this article, but the point about the flu has merit. This virus is unique and deadly to some. It's a serious issue. But it is incredibly politicized, and that goes back to what I was saying yesterday about trust in the so called "facts" surrounding it.

If these images from the CDC are accurate, then there is no way what we're seeing related to the flu is truth. And if that statement is correct, then that contaminates the data around Covid, which would be consistent with the politicization that we're seeing.

The Great 2020 Seasonal Flu/Influenza Disappearing Act | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

2019.jpg

2020.jpg
 
Rain Cold said:
I don't subscribe to every point the author makes in this article, but the point about the flu has merit. This virus is unique and deadly to some. It's a serious issue. But it is incredibly politicized, and that goes back to what I was saying yesterday about trust in the so called "facts" surrounding it.

If these images from the CDC are accurate, then there is no way what we're seeing related to the flu is truth. And if that statement is correct, then that contaminates the data around Covid, which would be consistent with the politicization that we're seeing.

The Great 2020 Seasonal Flu/Influenza Disappearing Act | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

View attachment 61301

View attachment 61302
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well I can say I'm sick. It started very slowly yesterday and by the time I got back to North Carolina I had no energy.. and I was in Alabama so that makes sense. I have not lost my sense of taste and smell I just have no energy.
 
superjames1992 said:
It’s plausible that social distancing measures, masks, etc. have largely stamped out the flu season this year. But there may be influenza being misclassified as Covid, too.
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I've thought about that too. But I don't buy the fact that if social distancing has virtually eradicated the flu then non-social distancing is responsible for the surging cases of Covid, as has been opined here and many other places. Either people are masking and social-distancing, and that should be driving down cases of both Covid and the flu, or they are not, in which case both should be surging.

Covid has a higher R0 than the flu, allegedly, so it seems like the case count there would be higher. But both viruses should be circulating widely, if people are not social distancing and locking down and mask wearing appropriately. If they are, then we should see far less Covid cases than we do, especially if those techniques really work as efficiently as we are supposed to believe.
 
Bham 99 said:
well I can say I'm sick. It started very slowly yesterday and by the time I got back to North Carolina I had no energy.. and I was in Alabama so that makes sense. I have not lost my sense of taste and smell I just have no energy.
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I hope you feel better man!
 
Rain Cold said:
I don't subscribe to every point the author makes in this article, but the point about the flu has merit. This virus is unique and deadly to some. It's a serious issue. But it is incredibly politicized, and that goes back to what I was saying yesterday about trust in the so called "facts" surrounding it.

If these images from the CDC are accurate, then there is no way what we're seeing related to the flu is truth. And if that statement is correct, then that contaminates the data around Covid, which would be consistent with the politicization that we're seeing.

The Great 2020 Seasonal Flu/Influenza Disappearing Act | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

View attachment 61301

View attachment 61302
Click to expand...
The southern hemisphere had an extremely mild flu season. It comes here after there. We're not going to see much of it here in the US this year either most likely. It's the truth whether you choose to believe it or not.
 
Rain Cold said:
I've thought about that too. But I don't buy the fact that if social distancing has virtually eradicated the flu then non-social distancing is responsible for the surging cases of Covid, as has been opined here and many other places. Either people are masking and social-distancing, and that should be driving down cases of both Covid and the flu, or they are not, in which case both should be surging.

Covid has a higher R0 than the flu, allegedly, so it seems like the case count there would be higher. But both viruses should be circulating widely, if people are not social distancing and locking down and mask wearing appropriately. If they are, then we should see far less Covid cases than we do, especially if those techniques really work as efficiently as we are supposed to believe.
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I could be wrong but could it be related to a virus already existing in a % population vs not really?
 
SD said:
I could be wrong but could it be related to a virus already existing in a % population vs not really?
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Maybe, but I still have a hard time getting around the fact that covid should be a lot more under control if people were masking/distancing, since that is supposed to be our best defense against it. If they're not, and that is why we're seeing Covid cases rise, we should expect the flu to take hold and begin to spread, which we're not seeing. And I really don't buy that this year, the flu randomly decided to just take a vacation. Granted nobody here is saying that, that I'm aware of.
 
Rain Cold said:
I've thought about that too. But I don't buy the fact that if social distancing has virtually eradicated the flu then non-social distancing is responsible for the surging cases of Covid, as has been opined here and many other places. Either people are masking and social-distancing, and that should be driving down cases of both Covid and the flu, or they are not, in which case both should be surging.

Covid has a higher R0 than the flu, allegedly, so it seems like the case count there would be higher. But both viruses should be circulating widely, if people are not social distancing and locking down and mask wearing appropriately. If they are, then we should see far less Covid cases than we do, especially if those techniques really work as efficiently as we are supposed to believe.
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You mention R0- policies like social distancing/mask wearing/lockdowns should be thought of as reducing the R0 coefficient to a new, effective level. If social distancing can reduce the R0 coefficient to be less than 1, then spread will become contained/cases will go down over time. If the baseline R0 of COVID is higher than this year's flu strain, then it's possible that the current level of adherence to social distancing/mask-wearing could be enough to lower the flu's coefficient below 1, but not be enough to lower COVID's. To put numbers to it, say that the flu has an R0 of 1.5, COVID of 2.0, and social distancing has a constant effect of -0.75 (it's probably a bit more complicated than a flat rate; I'm not an epidimiologist). Then the flu would go to 0.75 (contained), but COVID would stay at 1.25 (still spreading).

There are other factors to influence R0. Personally, I think the colder weather has a lot to do with the winter spike we've seen. Human behavior/social distancing practices did not change significantly from September when things were improving to November when cases were spiking. A colder average temperature could make the disease more infectious (plenty of precedent for it), such that a previously low R0 of COVID could rise to above 1 again. Which isn't to say social distancing is not valuable. Without social distancing the R0 would still be higher and the disease would spread faster, have resulted in more cases (over a shorter timeperiod), and could've potentially lead to an overflow in hospitals.
 
RVD said:
You mention R0- policies like social distancing/mask wearing/lockdowns should be thought of as reducing the R0 coefficient to a new, effective level. If social distancing can reduce the R0 coefficient to be less than 1, then spread will become contained/cases will go down over time. If the baseline R0 of COVID is higher than this year's flu strain, then it's possible that the current level of adherence to social distancing/mask-wearing could be enough to lower the flu's coefficient below 1, but not be enough to lower COVID's. To put numbers to it, say that the flu has an R0 of 1.5, COVID of 2.0, and social distancing has a constant effect of -0.75 (it's probably a bit more complicated than a flat rate; I'm not an epidimiologist). Then the flu would go to 0.75 (contained), but COVID would stay at 1.25 (still spreading).

There are other factors to influence R0. Personally, I think the colder weather has a lot to do with the winter spike we've seen. Human behavior/social distancing practices did not change significantly from September when things were improving to November when cases were spiking. A colder average temperature could make the disease more infectious (plenty of precedent for it), such that a previously low R0 of COVID could rise to above 1 again. Which isn't to say social distancing is not valuable. Without social distancing the R0 would still be higher and the disease would spread faster, have resulted in more cases (over a shorter timeperiod), and could've potentially lead to an overflow in hospitals.
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I hear you and I agree about the technical properties of the R0 and the altering of behavior in order to manipulate it in a positive direction. That said, you would still think that places where you have opposing social policies would see differences in case numbers for both viruses.

You would expect to see places with heavy restrictions see less flu and less Covid cases. And you would expect to see places with far less restrictions show higher flu and higher Covid cases. But we're not really seeing that here.

And I don't know if colds are being tracked anywhere, but anecdotally, I know a lot of people who have had colds over the past several months (myself included, twice), but I don't know of a single person who has been diagnosed with the flu, outside of a message board. Maybe colds have a much higher R0 than the flu. I do know several who have also had Covid.
 
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