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  • Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
    From the CDC:

    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm

    High SARS-CoV-2 Attack Rate Following Exposure at a Choir Practice — Skagit County, Washington, March 2020

    Following a 2.5-hour choir practice attended by 61 persons, including a symptomatic index patient, 32 confirmed and 20 probable secondary COVID-19 cases occurred (attack rate = 53.3% to 86.7%); three patients were hospitalized, and two died. Transmission was likely facilitated by close proximity (within 6 feet) during practice and augmented by the act of singing.



    I won't be surprised if more incidents like this play out as places like churches re-open. This incident occurred in a town of 31,000 people (Mount Vernon, WA), in the middle of an otherwise rural/low density part of Skagit County, WA.
    I am not surprised it was a choir. What does a choir do? Expresses itself at full volume, mouth wide open expelling saliva and other ejecta at the maximum weight and rate. Is it really surprising,

    I have been to the Hong Kong, and Busan in the past week. Had my temp taken at the hotels wore a mask avoided the bars. Ate in restaurants. Only quarantine was in Alaska. That was 2 days and back home to the Bay Area. I try to isolate make only necessary trips always wear the mask and gloves as not to share any disease.. Instead of picking sides and trying to solve our problem with one simple solution, maybe we could let the people who know the issues come up with some best practices. A degree in journalism, holding an elective office or even success in business does not give you expertise in a field you know nothing about.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Dazed View Post
      Instead of picking sides and trying to solve our problem with one simple solution, maybe we could let the people who know the issues come up with some best practices.
      Problem: when even the experts disagree with each other. CDC thought that they had containement and argued against Fauci and Blix's mitigation. Obviously they were wrong ... but then it was too late.

      It is also very obvious that the WHO made a whole bunch of errors, chief of which they didn't isolate China right away. Nothing to do with expertise but the lack of balls to stand up to China. Expertize ain't the end-all/be-all of decision making, not when you're too chickenshit to stand up to a big boy.
      Chimo

      Comment


      • Originally posted by astralis View Post
        actually, i'd say it's 74-75%.

        if one is "undecided" if Bill Gates will use a COVID-19 vaccination to implant location-tracking microchips, that person is STILL a TFI.
        Why would Bill Gates spend the resources and time to implant location-tracking microchips in everyone when every single person has a GPS microchip in their phone?

        Comment


        • Originally posted by statquo View Post
          Why would Bill Gates spend the resources and time to implant location-tracking microchips in everyone when every single person has a GPS microchip in their phone?
          Bigfoot?
          Trust me?
          I'm an economist!

          Comment


          • Trump’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’: No way it happens, says infectious disease expert

            As pharmaceutical companies rush to find a vaccine for coronavirus, President Trump announced a new plan, “Operation Warp Speed” to ensure that a vaccine would be created and distributed by the end of the year.

            According to the plan, “the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and AstraZeneca are collaborating to make available at least 300 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine called AZD1222, with the first doses delivered as early as October 2020.”

            But one infectious disease expert says that is unlikely to happen.

            “I don't see any way that happens,” said Dr. Michael Saag, Associate Dean for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Only if we are “really lucky,” he said, could we see data on the efficacy of a vaccine by the 1st of January, 2021.

            Even then, he told Yahoo Finance, a vaccine would have to be “scaled up” for as many as 600 million doses.

            “That doesn't happen by just wishing it so. We need to be logical here. We need to be thinking about the realities, and not just lured into some magical thinking,” he said.

            The existence of 10 candidate vaccines so soon is “impressive,” Saag said. “Great start, but it's like the beginning of the Kentucky Derby, and we haven't even passed the mile one-mile marker. So we've got a long way to go.”

            The need for a vaccine has grown, as all states have decided to reopen, sparking fears over a “second wave” of coronavirus cases.

            Some areas see spikes

            Over Memorial Day weekend, Americans were seen visiting beaches, restaurants and bars — many without face masks.

            Health officials in Missouri have asked partygoers to self quarantine after footage of crowded bars and beaches were released from Lake of the Ozarks over the weekend. And across the country, states have started to see spikes in coronavirus cases as businesses reopen.

            “I’m kind of nervous, to be honest with you,” Saag told Yahoo Finance, about the way states are handling the reopening.

            “The virus is still readily in our community. And a lot of people are susceptible. So what I see happening, and that's what worries me, people throwing caution to the wind, saying, we're over this. It's done.”

            “It's not done,” he said.

            In his home state of Alabama, he said, positive case numbers “have more than doubled.”

            According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, the state has nearly 16,000 positive cases. By Tuesday, May 26, the daily case count had leapt to over 600, up from 344 just two weeks prior.

            Projections of the death toll have continued to creep upward as people go back to work and start revisiting businesses again. But not all states have been as aggressive in their lockdown and reopening protocols as others. According to a Yahoo Finance analysis, the greatest increases of COVID-19 related deaths are projected in Republican-led states.

            “I think New York has done great,” Saag said. “And that's why the U.S. numbers are more flat than continuing to go up, because New York was dominating the numbers in April.”

            But in the rest of the country, he said, people haven’t been as cautious.

            “I'm very worried,” he said.

            “We may see is a rise, a little bit of a plateau, and then a second rise,” he said. “That's what I think we're going to see in Alabama and a lot of other rural states — Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee. Those are the states that we're going to start seeing this second increase.”
            __________________

            “That doesn't happen by just wishing it so. We need to be logical here. We need to be thinking about the realities, and not just lured into some magical thinking,”

            Welp, that pretty much destroys any "plan" that Trump can come up with....assuming he's even still paying attention to COVID-19 and the 100,000 dead Americans that he never cared about in the first place.
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • Fauci: Hydroxychloroquine Not Effective Against Coronavirus

              National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci on Wednesday became the first Trump administration official to say definitively that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for the coronavirus, based on the available data.

              "The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy," Fauci — the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert — said on CNN.

              But he stopped short of calling for an outright ban of the drug, which President Trump said he was taking last week as a preventative measure after a top White House aide was diagnosed with the coronavirus.

              Fauci's comments come days after the Lancet published a 96,000-patient observational study that concluded that hydroxychloroquine had no effect on Covid-19 and may have even caused some harm.

              France decided this week to ban the use of hydroxychloroquine, even in clinical trials, and the WHO has paused its clinical trials of the drug.

              There is no data yet from randomized, controlled clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine — the gold standard for evaluating potential treatments. But Fauci was unequivocal on Wednesday, saying that "the data are clear right now."
              __________________

              Odds on Fauci keeping his job? Having his character and credentials publicly eviscerated? Being hung in effigy by Trump's sycophantic base?

              Place your bets ladies and gentlemen, place your bets....
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                Trump’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’: No way it happens, says infectious disease expert

                As pharmaceutical companies rush to find a vaccine for coronavirus, President Trump announced a new plan, “Operation Warp Speed” to ensure that a vaccine would be created and distributed by the end of the year.

                According to the plan, “the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and AstraZeneca are collaborating to make available at least 300 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine called AZD1222, with the first doses delivered as early as October 2020.”

                But one infectious disease expert says that is unlikely to happen.

                “I don't see any way that happens,” said Dr. Michael Saag, Associate Dean for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Only if we are “really lucky,” he said, could we see data on the efficacy of a vaccine by the 1st of January, 2021.

                Even then, he told Yahoo Finance, a vaccine would have to be “scaled up” for as many as 600 million doses.

                “That doesn't happen by just wishing it so. We need to be logical here. We need to be thinking about the realities, and not just lured into some magical thinking,” he said.

                The existence of 10 candidate vaccines so soon is “impressive,” Saag said. “Great start, but it's like the beginning of the Kentucky Derby, and we haven't even passed the mile one-mile marker. So we've got a long way to go.”.

                And the logistics of making that many vaccines are staggering. Meanwhile what vaccines AREN'T being made?

                There can and will be 2nd & 3rd order effects.
                “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                Mark Twain

                Comment


                • Ramping up production won't be an issue as labs are gearing up for it. What's harder to figure out is future side effects and this only gives ammo to the anti-vaxxers.

                  https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/co...-syndrome.html

                  In 1976, there was a small increased risk of GBS after swine flu vaccination, which was a special flu vaccine for a potential pandemic strain of flu virus.

                  The National Academy of Medicine, formerly known as Institute of Medicine, conducted a scientific review of this issue in 2003 and found that people who received the 1976 swine flu vaccine had an increased risk for developing GBS.

                  The increased risk was approximately one additional case of GBS for every 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine. Scientists have several theories about the cause, but the exact reason for this link remains unknown.
                  Increased risk of GBS was one side effect that occurred as a result of a swine flu vaccine made in '76. Rare but possible.

                  To have herd immunity at least 60% would need to be vaccinated.

                  How many want to take the vaccine ?
                  Last edited by Double Edge; 28 May 20,, 18:44.

                  Comment


                  • Does anyone, but Trump, think this is a good idea?

                    https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/polit...ion/index.html

                    (CNN)President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization, a move he has threatened throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

                    "Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent global public health needs," Trump said.

                    The President said that the "world needs answers from China on the virus. We must have transparency."

                    At the same event on Friday, Trump launched a blistering attack on China, including a slew of retaliatory measures that will plunge US-China relations deeper into crisis.
                    Earlier in his remarks, Trump said that China had not properly reported information it had about the coronavirus to the World Health Organization and said China had pressured the WHO to "mislead the world."
                    "Chinese officials ignored their reporting obligations to the World Health Organization and pressured the World Health Organization to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities," Trump said. "Countless lives have been taken and profound economic hardship has been inflicted all around the globe."

                    The President had previously announced a temporary halt of funding to the WHO and sent a letter to the agency earlier in May saying that the US would permanently pull funding if the WHO did not "commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days."

                    In that letter, Trump included a false description of when information about the virus was published in The Lancet, prompting the prestigious medical journal to publicly dispute his claims.
                    Trump's decision to permanently terminate the US relationship with the WHO follows a years-long pattern of skepticism of world organizations, with the President claiming in nearly every circumstance that the US was being taken advantage of.

                    The President has questioned US funding to the United Nations and the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization, withdrawn from the Paris climate accords and repeatedly criticized the World Trade Organization.
                    He's also blamed China for taking advantage of the US, pointing the finger at the nation for taking US jobs and, now, failing to stop the spread of coronavirus into the US.

                    Meanwhile, Trump has mostly given himself and his administration rave reviews for its handling of the pandemic, despite Covid-19 testing fumbles and a national stockpile short on supplies when they were needed most.
                    The WHO has been criticized for relying on official Chinese government figures relating to the virus, numbers which many officials doubt are accurate. It also received criticism for a January 14 tweet noting that preliminary investigation by Chinese authorities had found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus.

                    Critics have also questioned whether the WHO is independent enough, given China's rising wealth and power. They point to the WHO's effusive praise of China's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Organization officials have defended their early actions when it came to fighting the coronavirus, noting that much was unknown about the virus back in January.

                    The President has also said that if the WHO had acted appropriately, he could have instituted a travel ban on people coming from China sooner.
                    But health experts and world leaders have expressed concern over defunding the organization amid a pandemic.

                    In April, more than 1,000 organizations and individuals including charities, medical experts and health care companies from around the world signed a letter urging the Trump administration to reverse course and maintain funding.
                    And when Trump issued his letter in May, European leaders -- including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen -- delivered messages of support for the WHO while speaking at the World Health Assembly.
                    "This pandemic has highlighted our vulnerability and made it clear that we need one another," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said. "That's why more than ever we must be united."

                    Comment


                    • dumb, dumb, dumb.

                      the WHO has its issues, god knows, but ceding the field to China, -during a pandemic-, is beyond stupid.
                      There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                        Fauci: Hydroxychloroquine Not Effective Against Coronavirus

                        National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci on Wednesday became the first Trump administration official to say definitively that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for the coronavirus, based on the available data.

                        "The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy," Fauci — the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert — said on CNN.

                        But he stopped short of calling for an outright ban of the drug, which President Trump said he was taking last week as a preventative measure after a top White House aide was diagnosed with the coronavirus.

                        Fauci's comments come days after the Lancet published a 96,000-patient observational study that concluded that hydroxychloroquine had no effect on Covid-19 and may have even caused some harm.

                        France decided this week to ban the use of hydroxychloroquine, even in clinical trials, and the WHO has paused its clinical trials of the drug.

                        There is no data yet from randomized, controlled clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine — the gold standard for evaluating potential treatments. But Fauci was unequivocal on Wednesday, saying that "the data are clear right now."
                        __________________

                        Odds on Fauci keeping his job? Having his character and credentials publicly eviscerated? Being hung in effigy by Trump's sycophantic base?

                        Place your bets ladies and gentlemen, place your bets....
                        The thing that has always surprised me is people saying this could help with treatment. Until recently India wasn't using it for treatment.

                        I've always heard it being recommended as a prophylactic. For health care workers to reduce their chances of contracting the disease.

                        What's the score on that ?

                        Trump saying he's taking it is in line with this idea. In any case we've provided it to 130 countries already.

                        That's a lot of punters taking a chance on something that isn't proven.

                        Earlier I said recently because until two weeks ago India was only using HCQ as a prophylactic. Now i hear they are using HCQ for treatment in India.
                        Last edited by Double Edge; 30 May 20,, 11:31.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Gun Grape View Post
                          Does anyone, but Trump, think this is a good idea?

                          https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/polit...ion/index.html
                          What good were they for the US ? what did that annual $400m get you. And what did China get for its paltry contribution.

                          The effects of this withdrawal will be felt more in developing countries where a lot of health programs will be cut. That's the bad news. So diseases will spread more. As we've found if one country gets it then it isn't long before it spreads further.

                          We think of the WHO as this superhero that swoops in and rescues us from disease. But its just another toothless tiger in the UN zoo.

                          It's primary objective is to detect & prevent spread of disease. It failed that mission with C19 and arguably with Ebola as well.

                          On Jan 30 they sounded their highest alarm. PHEIC. Public health emergency of international concern.

                          What did the world do ? nothing. Then on Mar 11 they say pandemic and we see countries instituting lockdowns soon after.

                          How did this communcations gap occur ? Pandemic is not a warning of any kind. PHEIC was it.

                          Yet the world only responded to pandemic but not PHEIC

                          This is what Tedros said, that they gave the world enough time.

                          In Feb the WHO sends some reps to China and they come back with a glowing report. China is doing well in containing this disease and the world should learn from China.

                          If China did so well at containing this disease then how did the world catch it ? no answers to that question from the WHO

                          If we want to ensure this does not happen again, the WHO is going to require intrusive powers the IAEA has. The problem is how do you get the world to agree to that.

                          In its present configuration it cannot stop the next pandemic. If this withdrawal stimulates thinking towards a more effective mechanism then its a good thing. Because if anything this pandemic has shown we need early warning systems for the future.
                          Last edited by Double Edge; 29 May 20,, 23:40.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by astralis View Post
                            dumb, dumb, dumb.

                            the WHO has its issues, god knows, but ceding the field to China, -during a pandemic-, is beyond stupid.
                            Don't underestimate beyond stupid since when it comes to that Trump has moved way past that stage

                            Comment


                            • UK is still testing HCQ, Their trial is called RECOVERY

                              Oxford University continues HCQ trial | IE | May 28 2020

                              The RECOVERY trial is currently the largest randomised controlled trial of HCQ for Covid-19.

                              Prof Peter Horby, professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Health in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, said in a statement, “The WHO decision to temporarily suspend hydroxychloroquine in their trial is based on data from a study that has looked at routinely collected data from hospitalised patients, and which reports an increased risk of death in patients who were given hydroxychloroquine.

                              However, these types of studies are difficult to interpret because the decision to give the drug will be based on the severity of disease in the patient.

                              It’s a bit like giving diabetic drugs to diabetics: the drug doesn’t cause the disease, you are given the drug because of the disease. The authors have tried to control for this “indication bias” in the study but it is very hard to do it fully.”

                              Horby added: “In response to that paper we looked very carefully at our data over the weekend, to make sure we are not putting patients at risk.

                              Since RECOVERY patients are randomised, our data are much less vulnerable to the biases that plague studies that use routine health care data.

                              An independent committee has looked at our data and did not see any safety concerns.

                              We discussed our findings with Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority, who have agreed with our interpretation that the data provide reassurance that continued enrolment into the hydroxychloroquine arm is safe and that we should press ahead with getting a reliable answer on hydroxychloroquine through the RECOVERY trial.”
                              Last edited by Double Edge; 30 May 20,, 11:29.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                                What good were they for the US ? what did that annual $400m get you. And what did China get for its paltry contribution.
                                .
                                Look up the number of pandemics prevented by the work of the WHO (pro tip: if it was prevented, you won't find a record of it), and the number of children inoculated, and the decline in natal mortality, and the reduction in early childhood deaths, and then I will explain to you in small words the value of the WHO.
                                Trust me?
                                I'm an economist!

                                Comment

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