Asked my MD about the bottom line with Covid 19 from his perspective today-his reply

Repeater wrote:

Im just going to bring this up in case it’s been forgotten:

COVID-19 is a highly contagious virus.

2% of 300 Million is 6 Million

Everyone has known for months now that 2% is ridiculously overstated and the fact that you would post that shows how out of date you are with the science. Plus anywhere from 25-40%, some suggest up to 50%, of us cannot get COVID due to T-cells developed from exposure to the flu.

The reason we cannot return to normal is people continue to restate this false information like this in an effort to drive fear and hysteria.

Spanish flu first emerged much like COVID 19. It was primarily a killer for older people. When it reemerged in the fall of 1918, it had mutated and was worse in young people.

Coronaviruses should be more stable than the flu virus because they go through gene proofreading when they replicate. But who knows what we will find this fall.

At this point, there appears to be little evidence that this virus will ever be a danger to young people. Could it mutate to something that is, anything is possible. But if there were to be a virus that is extremely dangerous to young people it is far more likely to come from another virus already circulating mutating, or a new novel virus appearing. People get irrational about kids and focus on really bad outcomes that have an extremely low probability. Pneumonia has killed almost twice as many people under the age of 25, over 4 times as many kids under 15, than COVID this year and parents aren't freaking out about that.

Sweden does not have herd immunity. The science on t-cell immunity is not even close to being where Tengell wants it to be. The big problem with the t-cell theory is that no one knows whether the t-cell immunity is a response to catching COVID or is actually pre-existing immunity from encountering a non-COVID 19 coronavirus. And a lot of what people are looking at and calling "herd immunity" (i.e. Sweden) is more than likely just evidence of heterogeneity in t-cell immunity a/k/a cross-reactive t-cells. Also, t-cells do not stop infections. That is what anti-bodies do. T-cells are the second line of defense and help fight the virus once infected.

T-cell have been the latest right wing butchering of science to support their dear leader. The theory is that the virus will disappear if we just let it spread because the way more people have been exposed than we know and they all now have t-cell immunity. But that is a dangerous assumption that is not proving itself in real life. If Sweden has herd immunity, so should Spain. They have nearly identical positive rates per million (Sweden is slightly higher primarily due to very aggressive testing). So, where is Spain's herd immunity? And what about Brazil? And Peru, where the virus just continues to surge after being at very high levels since May. Their positives per million is almost double Sweden's, yet the virus rages unabated. Where is their herd immunity?

What is really happening is that Sweden has an exemplary health system that has outperformed other countries. Sweden implemented restrictions very early on, much like S. Korea. Sweden has excellent testing and tracing programs. Swedes do not have to go to work sick and have been very good at addressing workplace hygiene to prevent spread. The same is true for Germany. They kept deaths down because they had superior health interventions compared to other countries. Germans were hospitalized sooner and received much better care and monitoring over the course of the virus. The quality of the health system, testing and early response are the reasons for Sweden's current situation, not herd immunity. Once it gets cold and the days grow short in Sweden, you will see the virus come right back.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

just the facts, ma'am wrote:

Let me know when you have even a little bit of evidence that suicide, violence, heart attack/stroke and drug abuse deaths are up over the last 5 months to account for the excess mortality.

I never said all excess deaths were accounted for by non-Covid causes, just a portion. Some of the excess deaths are COVID. But saying that COVID is underestimated because there are more excess deaths than the total number of COVID deaths is wrong because there has been a documented increase in the deaths from other causes. You can find documented support for this at the link below.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm#dashboard

That's not what that link says. It says

"Finally, the estimates of excess deaths reported here may not be due to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. The pandemic may have changed mortality patterns for other causes of death. Upward trends in other causes of death (e.g., suicide, drug overdose, heart disease) may contribute to excess deaths in some jurisdictions. Future analyses of cause-specific excess mortality may provide additional information about these patterns."

"May" is far from definitive. It's a suggestion. Just like your comment was a suggestion. No data exist to support your claim. We can't say definitively that these people died at home drowning in their own sputum before they could call a doctor either. But it seems just as likely as old people dying of "excess stress" to me, considering we're dealing with a pandemic here.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

Repeater wrote:

Im just going to bring this up in case it’s been forgotten:

COVID-19 is a highly contagious virus.

2% of 300 Million is 6 Million

Everyone has known for months now that 2% is ridiculously overstated and the fact that you would post that shows how out of date you are with the science. Plus anywhere from 25-40%, some suggest up to 50%, of us cannot get COVID due to T-cells developed from exposure to the flu.

The reason we cannot return to normal is people continue to restate this false information like this in an effort to drive fear and hysteria.

0.2% of 300 Million is 600.000

They look quite similar in both parameters:

https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-microbescope-infectious-diseases-in-context/

When Republicans say the Democrats are using this to damage Trumps the Dems say look at other countries, their shutting down has nothing to do with Trump. But when other countries starting about T-cells it becomes some alt-right agenda to protect Trump? Clearly that makes sense.

Clearly the top medical scientists from the only country in the world that handled this correctly and had the results expected has no idea what he's talking about. South Korea like measures, what a joke, Swede's didn't even wear masks. Their death curve is pretty clear that they have steadily been reaching herd immunity. Sweden's deaths per million will be amongst the lowest in the world due to them being healthier in general. The death curve for Sweden did not drop so precipitously because of some magic bullet in the health care system that no other country discovered. The simple answer is usually the best, its herd immunity.

bob888 wrote:

FYI- I went and saw my doctor today in Illinois for my annual check up. I asked him point blank, "How serious is Covid from what you have seen with patients and read?"

I'm not sure the point of this thread. Evidence by anecdote? It's one of the worst problems in this country for several reasons.

#1 - it provides a very narrow view of reality. The example I always use for this is Lasik surgery. Back in it's infancy, lots of people were getting it, and they would say, "I talked to a friend that got it and they had no problems." Well, there were only complications in about 5% of cases. So, you would have to talk to a lot of people before it would be likely that you would encounter someone that had problems. The anecdote is worth than worthless. It's misleading.

#2 - It generalizes and implies consensus. There are over a million doctors in the US. If you want to know what the consensus thinks or leans towards, you'd have to do a massive survey. This would be comparable to having one conversation with one African American, and then coming out of that conversation thinking you understand the black community as a whole. Again, this is worth than worthless. It attempts to extrapolate assumptions about a large group from a single experience.

So, quit doing it. Not just on the topic of Covid. Everything. Quit using anecdotes to provide justification for your beliefs.

Over the years, I've had friends that thought the following would make them faster: compression socks, nasal strips, barefoot running, phiten necklaces, various nutritional supplements. These were almost universally based on anecdotes that someone had tried them and swore they worked. You know how I knew none of those things worked? Because the people setting world records didn't use them. Now, you see what does work. New shoe technology. How do you know it works? World records are being broken with them repeatedly.

Anecdotal evidence makes you look like a gullible fool.