O-Trap

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On May 23, 2020:

On May 22, 2020:

  • O-Trap negged a post in "MEMES, continued..." at 11:38 am
  • posted by QuakerOats

     

     

    The only funny thing about any of your memes is the names of the sites you pull them from. "Freedom Fights" sounds like a cartoon character on a first grader's lunch box. 

On May 21, 2020:

  • O-Trap replied to "Impressed by the Trump administration part II" at 04:11 pm
  • posted by Spock

    I would say the biggest argument against a lockdown is that this thing isnt as serious as we thought.  

    Eh, I'd say that the biggest one is that it's a violation of natural rights, which I don't think are justified even if some person or group arbitrarily decides that a problem is "serious" enough.

  • O-Trap replied to "Covid-19 discussion, continued..." at 04:08 pm
  • posted by gut

    I think most of that manufacturing capacity is in China.  It would be hard to tool-up for that in a few months, and it's unlikely that someone making car parts is going to change over to making masks, if it were even feasible.  Plus, simply "if you pay enough" you have to consider that process starts with someone making the tooling.  And with a shortage of that you have to go back even another tier to the people who make the tooling to make the tooling (yes, that's a real thing).  All that takes time, even if you're writing a blank check.

    A year or two from now under reasonable economics, sure.  But we're 3 months into this and we still barely have enough masks for healthcare workers.

    I actually used to do a newsletter for a company that produces tooling equipment. I hadn't really considered what all would be involved in that, so perhaps you're right.  At least in the short-term, it's probably not feasible.  Not with any kind of non-homemade masks, anyway.

    But as you said, it's not likely the kids would keep them on well anyway.

  • O-Trap replied to "Impressed by the Trump administration part II" at 04:04 pm
  • posted by gut

    0.5% will probably end-up on the high side, about 3X higher than a bad flu season.  But because of vaccines, the mortality rate for the vulnerable is much higher than the flu.  I think you'll find that's where the numbers skew.  For the vast majority of people, even 3-5X deadlier than the flu is still a negligible number.  Otherwise healthy individuals dying from this are mainly due to overreactive immune systems, same as with the flu.

    And data from Sweden recently estimates overall mortality at 0.2%.  Antibody tests suggest spread of 10-20X or more of actual diagnosed cases.  If you're trying to divide deaths by recovered to estimate the risk, you're off by a factor well over 10 as tens of millions of people have already had this and recovered from it.

    I'm merely dividing deaths by the sum total of recovered cases and deaths combined because it's more honest with the numbers than just dividing deaths by total cases when trying to evaluate the actual mortality rate of the virus itself, the majority of which don't have a final result yet.  Putting a pending result into either category would be akin to evaluating the final grades of a classroom of students at the midterms.  Sure, you'll have an idea, based on the data so far, but you wouldn't estimate a 20x shift from that data thus far.

    As for the info out of Sweden, if that's true, that's certainly encouraging, and I would hope that turns out to be the case.  I read about that study a few days ago, and it was actually showing a pretty low rate of the presence of antibodies, even the highest age demographic being under 10% of a fairly small test sample, with anyone over the age of 65 being something under maybe 3%?  I suppose that means people in that demographic have been self-quarantining, and I'd actually argue that it's a testament to what might be accomplished without legal restrictions, since Sweden really didn't enforce anything.

    Still, last I saw, that study was still pretty early.  Maybe 1,000 people tested?  I'm not sure I'm ready to extrapolate that out to tens of millions yet.

  • O-Trap replied to "Covid-19 discussion, continued..." at 02:15 pm
  • posted by gut

    Can we even produce enough masks to distribute to K-12 kids every day?

    And how stupid is it to expect a 3rd grader to wear a mask properly all day, and not touch their face all day?  Might as well just make it a guideline that people don't catch the virus....

    Depending on how much money is in it, I'm sure there would be businesses happy to fill the void.

    As for the second question, I doubt anyone actually expects that to go smoothly.  When I hear "guidelines," I hear "in a perfect world."  Just trying to get as close to the ideal as possible is, I think, the best you can do.  There certainly shouldn't be any penalties for not hitting it.

     

     

  • O-Trap replied to "Impressed by the Trump administration part II" at 02:13 pm
  • posted by gut

    In some states half the deaths are nursing homes.  Most of the rest of the deaths the average age is around 80 with multiple comorbities.  For the rest of the population, the risk is indeed on par with the flu.

    I think the worst you could say is this is like the flu with no vaccine (which often is only about 50% effective, but still helps if you get infected).

    The nursing home thing, which seems to be getting an uptick in coverage in the last few days, really doesn't surprise me.  The age is probably a factor, of course, as there is a correlation between age and the likelihood of a compromised immune system.  Just as well, though, you're likely forced into contact with health workers who, best efforts or not, are interacting with a number of people over the course of the day.

    In effect, I think the nursing home example actually demonstrates why a person having a healthy immune system and no comorbidities is only half the matter, as not everyone you would likely interact with over the normal course of a day has an equally healthy immune system without any comorbidities.  Sort of a 'Typhoid Mary' element to the whole thing.

    Also, if we use age and other conditions with regard to this virus, we'd have to do the same with the flu to make an adequate parallel.  The mortality rate for the flu is already small, without taking those elements into account.  For an apples-to-apples comparison between the two, if you give weight to the effect of age and additional health factors in the case of COVID-19, you'd have to do the same with the flu.

    Per April's metrics, in NYC (to use as a microcosm, since it's obviously the biggest US hotspot at present), about 50% of the ones who died from it were over 75, so of course, that will obviously account for the average age being weighted that way.  But if we take the number of recovered cases against the total number of finalized cases, and we completely remove that age range entirely, it's still significantly more dangerous than the flu.  Again, even if you're healthy and young, the possibility for a Typhoid Mary situation would cause problems in the normal course of events.

    I'm not suggesting, of course, that the ratio we have now will be the final one, of course.  The time it takes to get over the illness is probably longer than is useful for an illness for which we were fairly late out of the gate with testing.

    Still, this past flu season had, per the CDC, a mortality rate between about 0.04% and 0.16% (24K to 62K deaths against 39M to 56M cases).  Those are finalized numbers, given the short lifespan of the flu virus (per my doctor in January, a normal flu virus lasts about ten to fourteen days).  The current finalized numbers of COVID-19 in the US are just over 94,000 deaths against about 397,000 finalizes cases (recovered + died).  That rate is, at present, 23.7%.

    I'm not arguing that it will stay there.  I'm merely saying that even if we don't factor in any age or health-related elements to the flu (like we are with COVID-19), using the current number of total cases, we'd need the mortality rate of finalized cases to drop from 23.7% to between absolute zero (since we've already had too many deaths compared to total cases to put it on the low end of the flu mortality rate spectrum) and 0.12% from here on out to match flu numbers.

    Nearly every single relevant voice seems to suggest that it will drop, even significantly, but I'm skeptical we'll see the remaining cases end with a mortality rate that is about 0.5% of what it's been thus far seems naively optimistic.  Obviously, I hope that's not true, but I have yet to see someone explain how that's likely.

     

  • O-Trap replied to "Covid-19 discussion, continued..." at 12:57 pm
  • posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

    These CDC guidelines are "guides" not rules.  Lots of school cannot or will not adhere to all the details.  

    See?  I don't mind this as much.  If it basically comes down to the CDC saying, "This is what you should do, and we encourage you to do as much of it as you can," that's not problematic, I don't think.

  • O-Trap replied to "Impressed by the Trump administration part II" at 12:56 pm
  • posted by gut

    Am I the only one who feels like this "battle" to re-open the country is kind of imaginary?  I believe every state has loosened restrictions, some are being excessively cautious perhaps but does 2 more weeks really matter?

    It's not confined to the US, either.  Globally people are basically telling BIG GUBMT they're done with the lockdown.  The data is coming in, and if you're not in a nursing home you're risk is not that different from the flu (which also kills mostly the elderly).

    Eh, even if we restrict it to the US, where the numbers are better than the global average (about double), you're still looking at 301K confirmed recoveries and about 94K confirmed deaths.  You can complain about the numbers (ex. "Well, they were overweight/diabetic/old/etc."), but most of the cases weren't considered terminal for any of the accompanying conditions they had prior to contracting it.

    And even if you could explain away a decent percentage of the deaths as improperly labeled, I doubt it would be to the degree that it would be rendered as inconsequential as the flu, which is even less serious if you use the same litmus test (other health factors).

    Obviously, the numbers aren't actually 94/301 in terms of mortality rate.  There are untold numbers of those who haven't been recorded and have recovered.  Of course, there are almost certainly some who have died from it without it being tracked as well, but probably not at the same rate.  Still, I doubt it's going to turn out to be as trivial as the flu.  Though they're in the minority, it has indeed killed perfectly healthy people with no other life-threatening conditions.

    As for the lockdown, it was an unwarranted use of force, and some of it was absolutely overkill, or at the very least, counterproductive overall.

  • O-Trap replied to "I 92’s Baseball Trivia....Hall of Fame thread" at 12:41 pm
  • posted by Laley23

    Stuff like this makes me wish Ichiro came over 5-6 years earlier. I really think he couldve challenged the hit record.

    Agreed.  Dude was/is a special kind of player.

  • O-Trap replied to "Impressed by the Trump administration part II" at 12:15 pm
  • posted by Spock

    money well spent....or at least money spent to prevent more spending later

    Spoken like a Democrat.  They say the same thing with regard to UBI and single-payer system healthcare.
     

    posted by QuakerOats

    National defense; the nation’s one and only true priority.

    Best.

    There's no significant threat to national security.  Good luck fitting that square peg in the round hole you're trying.