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I just received this from an anonymous healthcare worker. Might help explain some of the "spike". This is also why I'm very cautious and even skeptical of some the doomsday stats being pushed out. Sadly, it's hard to trust anything anymore. And perhaps this is why someone's "facts" don't necessarily change minds...
I wanted to share some insight into Covid numbers in Georgia many seem not to know. Pruitt Health which has a very large presence in nursing homes and rehab facilities in the state, is testing all of their patients every single week. Their patients who test positive for two, three or even four weeks are all being reported as positive cases multiple times. A single patient can be reported as a positive four or five times. There is a facility near my work which has far more reported cases than actual patients in the facility. This isn't the fault of Pruitt, but rather the reporting system for Georgia. Pruitt itself is reporting correct numbers via their website. It would be interesting to see if other facilities are doing similar reporting. The Pruitt companies alone could be accounting for hundreds of positive cases every week that are not new cases.
It's mostly his interpretations. He also calculates death percentages by calculating deaths per day/total population. Easiest way to spot someone who either doesn't know what they are talking about or has an ulterior motive is when they use a flawed calculation like that to produce a number that looks good but doesn't accurately reflect what's happening. He also cites a pre-print study about hospital stays from Singapore saying some non-vulnerable people only have to be hospitalized for 2 days while neglecting to mention the average stay was 9 days. Guess it must have slipped his mind to put the actual average in while only including outlier cases? Or maybe he was trying to hand wave away the 1.7% hospitalization rate for younger people? At one point he concedes there may be a delay between deaths and cases, but goes on to ignore that in the rest of the article.
"And before Judge Hidalgo emails me accusing me of callousness, I would simply ask where that same level of concern has been for annual opioid deaths (42k). Suicides (49k). Auto fatalities (37k)."
The ole "why don't you care about other people dying! COVID-19 must be a political tool!" strategy. I work on developing alternative pain therapies for opioids. There is a ton of money being put towards that. There are several suicide advocacy groups and the CDC even puts out policy proposals for addressing suicides. We have tons of traffic laws and we prosecute people who break those laws and hurt other people as a result. People care about those other things, but COVID-19 is just a much more immediate and pressing danger which causes more people to focus on it.
@YaleDawg makes some fair points here. The author did show some bias in at least those few instances. I'm not being snarky, really asking: what would your reopening strategy and criteria be? How would you determine the success of that strategy and potential need to shut things down again?
Fauci has already explained his position on masks throughout the pandemic. You're going to have to link to Neil's mortality rate because I can't find a number for it.
I'm not standing up for the article. Your comment seemed more generalized than targeted at that article or the poster who linked it. That's why I was calling you out. There are a lot of us genuinely looking for good information and commentary on the status of the virus. There are some who have clearly made up their minds, on both sides, about a situation that is fluid and full of unknowns. Everyone has had their bias about this virus. Some have been better than others about looking beyond that bias and considering alternate viewpoints and inconvenient facts. I will discount any opinion that is spouted as fact. Especially those of scientists who like the camera. However, I am clearly more biased against the doomsdayers. I am not ashamed of my natural tendency toward optimism. As fool hardy as it can be, recognition of that bias is much more powerful than denial of it.
You are very good at poking holes in arguments from the other side. Do you apply the same scrutiny to your arguments? It doesn't come across that way if you do.
Fauci was scared there would be a run on masks leaving first responders without the proper tools. It makes sense, but don't LIE about it. Regarding Ferguson's model... Google and Yahoo search engines have taken it down, because it was so wrong and he became a controversial figure, because his Swine Flu models were also way off target.
Yale, you're taking a micro analysis view, when you should be looking at the big picture. There are basic key measurements in any pandemic, including # of infections (measures how quickly it's spreading), recovery rate, mortality rate and those requiring hospitalization (determine hospital's ability to deal with the sick - do they have enough beds). If you're trying to understand how deadly a pandemic is and how policy should be considered and implemented then you have to look at the mortality rate. Policy was largely made by looking at the infection rate. The spread between the Covid infection rate and mortality rate is large, far bigger than the Spanish Flu.
Again, as a percentage of the total population, both the infection and mortality rates are low. When you break it down demographically, it's even lower. This required a scalpel policy approach, not a BLANKET one. Outside of China, the Japanese initially were hit the hardest. They took a targeted approach to getting the infection rate under control and were very successful.
I try to hold myself to that same standard. For example, there was a large study (in a prestigious journal) that concluded giving COVID-19 patients HCQ had no benefit and actually increased risk of dying. I've been very vocal about being careful in pushing HCQ as a treatment, so this study supported my position and my initial bias. However, many scientists began pointing out problems with where their data came from. It was from some small company no one had heard of that just so happened to have the most comprehensive data set on COVID patients and treatment outcomes. That is odd. An independent audit was performed at the authors' request but the company refused to turn over the data. At this point I started disregarding the paper as evidence for my position against HCQ because I had no confidence in the data. The study ended up being retracted too.
Ok, that's all well and good, but how does what you just said deal with the larger problem, which is perception versus reality? The perception is the Covid infection rate is still high and or spiking, therefore we must continue to keep the country in lockdown or close businesses that re-opened. The reality and true measure of the lethality of this pandemic is being ignored. The mortality rate is low, as is patients requiring hospitalization and ventilators. Those curves have flattened. So we find ourselves once again in a media driven goal post change. First it was flatten the curve, now it's no business shall open or no college football game should take place if a single risk of death persists... (slight exaggeration, but you get the point).
Now, back to the data. Yes, we are seeing spikes, as the article I posted accurately shows. It also points out that nursing home patients are being tested every week, when they retest positive that's being counted as a net new infection, which leads to inaccurate data. Moreover, as more tests are available more people who are asymptomatic are testing positive. They're positive, but have no signs of the virus - in other words they're not sick. But again, look over here (high infection number), not over here low death rate.
Bringing this around full circle to something relative to the purpose of this sport site. When people see the media saying Clemson has X number of Covid positive football players and Bama has Y and oh BTW, we've filed a Freedom Of Information petition to UGA, what people are not hearing is how many of those football players are asymptomatic, recovered, seriously ill etc. We're just given a total infection number. That is highly IRRESPONSIBLE reporting.
Today marked the second day cases in Florida are lower than the peak days of 6/27 and 6/28 BUT
It appears that cases are not declining as rapidly as testing capacity.
@YaleDawg hopefully you know when I ask you.... or anyone else who has a different view than mine......a question......it's a sincere question that I'm genuinely interested in your answer.
In your opinion....What is acceptable collateral damage from this disease? Both in terms of fatalities and economic hardship?
And.....since the end of January till today.....do you feel the data supports that this virus is as bad as you first thought .....or not as bad?
No one on Dawgnation wants to see anyone die from this horrible disease. No one.
But it comes down to.......are you afraid of dying or are you afraid of not living? I'm afraid of not living.
My parents are 73 yrs old and in good health. But I don't know how long they'll be on this planet. Its limited for sure. They don't want to be locked up for 3 moths, 6 months, 9 months or whatever......they want to live life. And thank the lord they are doing so. I pray they don't catch this illness and die from it.....but if they do.....it's worth it. I realize that sounds horrible to some of you...I love my parents more than I can express.....but I never want to see them locked away in fear.
My daughter will be a senior this year. A great student, talented artist and bad a.s.s softball player. She gets 4 years to enjoy that. She just lost one of those years of spring softball and art shows and everything else high school students enjoy. It's not worth another year of this crap.
My son is the same way......but most .....if not all of Dawgnation have similar stories. It isn't worth it. Hopefully my kids don't get this awful disease.......but if they do.....I like the 99.9% odds they'll be just fine.
A young couple across the street from me have basically locked themselves...and their two kids .... up for the last 4 months. They have literally done nothing from fear of this disease. She is a 29 year old successful orthodontist who will probably lose her practice because she is so afraid of Covid 19. On Monday she found out she has stage 3 breast cancer......I bet she wishes she lived a little more the past 4 months.
Again, I'm not down playing the seriousness of Covid......but is it worth it...... shutting down.
I choose to live life......and I have zero fear of dying. I won't take unusual risks because I do want to live and be there for my wife and kids. But wanting to continue to live life through this pandemic.....simply isn't high risk.
I'm sorry if I sound callous......I don't mean to. But I believe everything and everyone needs to get back to normal. Jobs, entertainment, school, sports.... everything. Those that want to live can.... those that are afraid of dying.....can stay shut in......but suffer the financial and emotional ramifications.
Hopefully scientists will continue to work hard on a vaccine that helps eradicate this disease ....but in the mean time.... I pray everyone starts living life again. The odds of actually dying from this are just too ridiculously low to not enjoy life.
Denman....i think everyone can appreciate the time and effort you spend on the numbers and statistics.
But can you explain to me how these numbers benefit anyone..... especially how it benefits you?
Are they supposed to help us decide what decisions we want to make day to day?
I know why certain media outlets continually share the numbers. It's all about fear.
This really isn't about what numbers we should or shouldn't believe.....or what information is accurate or not.
Eventually it comes down to two types of people......plain and simple.
Those that choose to live in fear of this disease....and those that choose to live.
And those that hope something or someone will be there to help support them while they live in fear......and those that choose to pull up their boots and take care of themselves.
For those of you who seem to like pressing the DV button every time you dislike a post.....may I suggest you take a deep breath and then have mature dialogue. Maybe I can learn something.
Don't disagree with you, Tex, but don't understand why you would have a problem with him posting numbers. It's informaton. Nothing more. Do with it as you please. Ignore if you please.
I welcome his numbers. For me it’s a nice offset BC we seem to have quite a few people that think this is not that big a deal.
should we continue to live in fear and shut everything down? I don’t think so. I think we can smartly open some things up so we can get back to work a little and live life
should we continue to play politics with this? Show off like we’ve done something when there is still work to do? I also don’t think so.
take masks for example...some people want to politicize it, bring up old news about Fauci, try to be correct rather than right. Wear a mask. Take the GD new information and wear your mask. If you don’t have to go out, then don’t. But if you do/want to and are around strangers...wear it.
know what you saw during many of those protests? People in masks. So don’t worry about whether you wear a red tie or a blue tie or whether or not some person from the CDC said something three months ago. Wear it.
and quit whining about it. I hate wearing one too, but it won’t kill you. Like I said before, you aren’t storming the beaches of Normandy or anything. Thousands of those young men probably would’ve worn a mask in desert summer for a year if it would stop Nazism.
stop being a snowflake and wear a mask
I do wear a mask. My wife makes me.
As i stated......I enjoy dialogue and enjoying learning.
@pocoyo and @Kasey make good points.
And I should apologize to @Denmen185 . You bring a lot to the board Denmen and I shouldn't have criticized you for it. Sincerely sorry.
Tex you’re a good dude. One of the few open to hearing another side of the story and it is appreciated.
edit: and I didn’t mean you specifically. I meant everyone should wear a mask
@texdawg I try to live life and at 70 years old am not afraid of dying. Having said that I am not going to take unacceptable risks. I think that the only way to make an informed risk/benefit decision is to be informed of the risk and whether that risk is increasing or decreasing. Often that requires looking at 2nd and 3rd level data to identify true values and trends. A prime example of this is that 3 weeks ago my wife and I planned to go to Tampa this past weekend to go to the casino for a mini-break. At that time the cases in Hillsborough county in the 100 per day range with a positivity rate at 4%. The middle of last week the cases were climbing such that by Saturday they had 1,100 cases and the rate was approaching 15-20%. During last week seeing the trend we cancelled our trip given the increased risk of contracting the virus and given my medical history (even though I am currently healthy) my personal mortality rate would be in the 15-20% range. That is why the I believe that the only way the economy will improve is to get control of the virus. The only tool in the tool shed at the moment to do this is by everyone wearing masks. I obviously don't go to bars or restaurants where they cannot be worn and likely will not go to the movies for the same reason. I would however like to be able to go to the store (which I have done only about 4 times in over 3 months), get a haircut and other things (visit my family #`1) without getting the virus from someone who chooses to visit high risk establishments.
In your post BTW the collateral damage of a totally (old) normal life would be the death of 2-5 million people in the US.
If I chose to go to the store without clothes I would be arrested as that would offend others but if I don't wear a mask that is okay even though it could kill others!
Edit @texdawg Posted before I saw your follow-up post. I still think it may help to explain why I feel strongly about this virus. Reversed DV as a peace offering 😂
Dang government overreach. 😂😂😂
Call me crazy, but every time you post about this topic I feel a bullseye on my back.
You said it, not him