The Covid scam

.44 Associate

Active member
You can’t really debate facts

You certainly can debate what constitutes facts, though, and that is a significant issue in the Covid discussion. And again, an issue which has been so severely impacted by politics that no one really knows what the facts are.
 

Ed Ames

Member
This is part of the issue. Nobody has that info, absolutely nobody. Reason being that nobody knows how many asymptomatic cases there has been. What if half the people who had it not only had no symptoms but have not been test/will not get tested. We know how many have tested positive and how many they say have died as a result (kind of/ maybe or maybe not) but thats not taking into account the many people who won't be counted so I would conclude whatever number they tell us must be exaggerated as compared to the real number infected which drives the percentage of fatalities down even further.

We have a fair amount of info. Yes, it’s science, and science is always revising itself as more info is collected, but refining this info has been a world priority for months and many nations have dedicated resources to figuring out what’s going on.

There have been enough cruise ship/wedding party scenarios at this point where a group of people were exposed to the virus at the same time, and were known, isolatable, and testable, that we don’t really need to look at questionably reliable metrics like antibody tests, but the fact that antibody test based studies find similar results does boost our confidence in the figures. That doesn’t mean they won’t change a bit as we learn more, but we can’t credibly pretend to know nothing.

Things like this make great study subjects https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-outbreak-wedding-kills-groom-infects-over-100-guests-1514757


Like I mentioned before, my wife is a nurse and we live in Chicagoland. The only people she's seen die from covid were very old /already sick or very out of shape and generally unhealthy. If I saw a young healthy person I know die from it, it would have my attention but it just isn't happening around here.

My sister in law is an ICU a nurse in a hotspot city and she hasn’t had a single patient die. The detail that she’s a NICU nurse, so her patients are typically somewhere between minutes and weeks old, might be relevant. Not to take anything away from your wife, but nurses only see their slice of a hospital. Where I live (another hotspot) you can talk to 5 nurses and one of them will say “I’m furloughed so no patients at all”, three of them will say, “no I don’t see much impact,”, and one of them will say, “oh shit oh shit the last ICU bed at our hospital filled up a week ago and we’re losing patients because we can’t provide care!!!!” My cousin is has had both patients and a coworker die, and she isn’t in a hotspot city.

I’m in a state that has had to roll back reopening and has hospital capacity issues in multiple cities now, and I’ve personally known people who have taken lasting health damage from COVID, so that probably shapes my point of view that people aren’t taking this seriously enough.
 
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George P

Well-known member
You can’t really debate facts. You can misrepresent them and hope your audience is too gullible to do their own research, but that only works if you have chosen fools for your audience.

Sadly, the US public education system was taken over almost instantly by people who saw (still see) an advantage in a society of fools. Few ever manage to break free of that handicap, but it can be done.
Except there are no hard and fast "facts"; way too many deaths were labeled Covid, because Covid got more Fed dollars than pneumonia, heart disease, diabetes, etc. Death rates are at or less than the annual flu %-wise, and most are still in nursing homes
 

Ed Ames

Member
Except there are no hard and fast "facts"; way too many deaths were labeled Covid, because Covid got more Fed dollars than pneumonia, heart disease, diabetes, etc. Death rates are at or less than the annual flu %-wise, and most are still in nursing homes

I’m healthy paranoia’s biggest fan, but that makes no sense. Why would India, Brazil, Italy, China, Russia, Venezuela, the Koreas, The UK, Spain, Iran, France....hell, we’ll just say, “pretty much every country on the planet”, be getting, “Fed dollars?” You do realize that those aren’t US states, right? How were these payments made? Why aren’t the citizens of those countries complaining about roughly 400,000 of their fellow citizens dying just for some rapidly devaluing US currency? Seems like a shitty deal.

Ever hear the phrase, “canary in a coal mine”? Know where it comes from? Canaries are what we’d call a vulnerable population. They sicken and die in conditions that a healthy human can live with. So if you and your canary are going into a place where the air might be iffy, like a coal mine, and the canary croaks, that’s a really good sign that the air quality is getting bad.

What are we supposed to do when the canaries die? Say a hearty, “Everything’s fine, the air quality wouldn’t be bad if we hadn’t brought the canary, and the canary’s dead now so problem solved! Keep digging!”

No. If we’re sane we take the hint and change course. The most vulnerable are already dying, and if we keep going there’s a really good chance we’ll be next. There is a relevant parallel here.

And your statement regarding death rates compared to the annual flu is simply wrong. The facts are out there. Go find a source that isn’t political propaganda.
 

George P

Well-known member
What the hell are you talking about with other countries? Are you just trolling or what?
I can see you have no semblance of sense or intelligence; I'll leave you to your piss-poor preconceived agenda with made up facts.
 

theotherwaldo

Well-known member
Well, I'm "working from home" because there has been a major spike in cases in my county, including some of the immediate family of a couple of my co-workers.
I appreciate being allowed to stay home since I am a diabetic 63-year-old with a damaged heart who is recovering from surgery.
Some of my co-workers are in similar conditions.
You all may debate about your politics and statistics.
I plan to play it safe.
 

Ed Ames

Member
What the hell are you talking about with other countries? Are you just trolling or what?
I can see you have no semblance of sense or intelligence; I'll leave you to your piss-poor preconceived agenda with made up facts.

Your insinuation was that the covid statistics are biased by states inflating covid fatality rates to get “Fed dollars.”

I was pointing out that Covid isn’t a US problem. A lot of our data on covid, including infection fatality rates, comes from other countries. Those countries don’t get “Fed dollars” for a positive COVID diagnosis. Most of them have some sort of nationalized healthcare so they don’t really care why someone is dying - it all comes from the same budget no matter what the cause. It’s not political to them, it’s just a healthcare issue. The info gathered from other countries is aggregated together to paint a global picture of what the disease does. The US may have the single worst problem with covid, but the majority of cases and fatalities are still outside the US so even if “Fed dollars” are biasing some fraction of the US numbers that is going to be drowned out by the rest of the data.

Therefore, your theory that “Fed dollars” are causing inflated numbers makes no sense.
 

.44 Associate

Active member
Overseas numbers are all over the place. The reasons for that are multiple, complex, and possibly not thoroughly understood by anyone. In the U.S., that probably is just as true. We do know for a fact, however, that "fed dollars" play a part.
 
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Ed Ames

Member
Overseas numbers are all over the place. The reasons for that a multiple, complex, and possibly not thoroughly understood by anyone. In th U.S., that probably is just as true. We do know for a fact, however, that "fed dollars" play a part.

We know for a fact that “Fed dollars” play a part? OK, I’ll play.

By that same standard I can say that we know the recent solar eclipse plays a part too. I mean, we know that there was an eclipse during the pandemic so the eclipse must have contributed in some sense. Maybe someone took a plane ride to see the eclipse and got sick.

So, first point: that’s not a fact, that’s a theory. It’s several steps short of a fact. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but truth and fact are not the same.

Second point. The observation that something plays “a part” is meaningless unless you can quantify how big a part. That’s where facts separate themselves from truths. It’s true that a butterfly flapping its wings in China may lead to a hurricane developing in Florida, but it’s not a fact. To get a fact you theorize that the dollars result in X change, you develop a hypothesis that can be proved or disproved, you collect information to test your hypothesis, and the fact is the result of that process. It looks something like “over counting covid cases due to federal spending resulted in a 0.000001% increase in reported cases with a p-value of 0.22” (or whatever it is).

Now, I’ll present you a countering fact: all-cause mortality so far this year is significantly higher than last year, despite a drop in motor vehicle and other common types of death. From 3/1 to 5/30 the US had an extra 122,000 deaths compared to previous years, which is 28% higher than reported covid deaths.

So, if Fed dollars are causing an overcount, that overcount seems to be smaller than factors causing undercounting (e.g. lack of tests or immediate cremation leading to undiscovered covid deaths).

As for overseas numbers: I think you would have been right had you said that two months ago. People have not stood still and we have a better handle on things than we did.
 

.44 Associate

Active member
We know for a fact that “Fed dollars” play a part? OK, I’ll play.

By that same standard I can say that we know the recent solar eclipse plays a part too. I mean, we know that there was an eclipse during the pandemic so the eclipse must have contributed in some sense.

I'm just going to let that one sit there and gather flies.
 

Ed Ames

Member
Translation: I don’t actually have facts to back up my claims so I’m going to try to imply that someone pointing out the absurdity of my argument is actually making an absurd argument.
 

Ed Ames

Member
Lol, that’s just silly. I have no reason to believe you are a racist, and anyway I don’t call individuals things like that. If they aren’t, it destroys any possibility of civil conversation, and if they are they take it as a compliment. I find it far more effective to address my arguments to the idea rather than the person expressing the idea.

But you seem to be really reaching for reasons to avoid responding to the substance of my argument.
 

Ed Ames

Member
Lol. Here’s substance:


You claim there is significant over reporting due to “Fed dollars”, but the facts indicate significant under reporting. I am not disagreeing that some reporting may take be taking place in where someone died with covid and it was reported as death from Covid, but the facts indicate that that is overwhelmed by deaths which are very likely from covid (or they wouldn’t have increased year over year) but are not being counted as covid related at all.

This undercount is significant (around 27,000 People from march through May) but I am not saying it is in any sense nefarious or a plot of any sort. It is what happens when limited testing capacity must be dedicated to living people whose care depends on accurate information, and deaths happening outside of medical care are categorized as “natural causes” without testing. The bodies are cremated, and it’s impossible to go back and verify whether covid was a factor.

It’s not that you are wrong as such, but what you are right about is unimportant in the big picture.
 

Ed Ames

Member
No, I didn't. And I'm still not interested in playing your games.

Why call out that “Fed dollars play a part” if it’s not significant?

It’s not a game to me. People - real people - are dying, and folks buying into political interpretations instead of accepting reality is increasing the number of deaths. Focusing on the trivial as a way of dismissing the significant is one example of politics being put above reality. It’s a cynical attempt to divert attention from the real issues and focus instead on a political problem that may or may not exist in any significant sense.
 

George P

Well-known member
The Coronavirus Lockdowns are Over...And These Studies Really Deliver a Death Blow

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It’s become quite clear that the medical class, who excused the non-social distancing rioting over Floyd, is more concerned with their progressive bias and hatred towards the president than actually doling out credible advice. In short, the medical experts are now no better than the clowns we see daily on CNN and MSNBC bashing Trump.
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University of California, Berkeley carefully evaluated empirical data on social distancing, shelter-in-place orders, and lives saved. To measure the impact of social distancing, they gathered data from cellphones on travel patterns, foot traffic in nonessential businesses, and personal interactions.
Their findings? Social-distancing measures reduced person-to-person contact by about 50%, while harsher shelter-in-place rules reduced contact by only an additional 5%. Then, using data on Covid-19 infection and mortality, they estimated that these measures saved 74,000 lives. Finally, after using demographic data to adjust the VSL—which is lower for older people, who have fewer years to live—the study found that the gross benefit of social distancing has been a mere $250 billion.
That finding casts major doubt on the value of lockdowns and even social distancing as a method of reducing the spread of Covid-19
. While we can’t yet estimate a specific figure, the economic cost of social distancing and lockdowns will likely be more than $1 trillion.
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Ed Ames

Member
Yeah, the lockdowns were dumb. Unfortunately, the American people have demonstrated that they have no middle ground.

Japan didn’t have a lockdown. No movement restrictions, no business closures. It worked fine. But at the same time they had basically universal adoption of reasonable precautions.

In the US, well, we’ve seen what people do: they throw parties to deliberately try to get each other infected, they go out and cough on each other, they frame not protecting their fellow citizens from a potentially deadly infection as a political stand, or makeup phony medical reasons why they shouldn’t do it.

Texas, Florida, etc. thought that they could trust American the people to do the right thing. It failed, big time. The governor of Texas bent over backwards to say “we’re not forcing you, we’re asking you nicely, please do the right thing” and the people immediately crowded the bars and did everything short of taking up doorknob licking as a hobby (through to be realistic I bet more than a few doorknobs were licked by people who thought it would somehow send a message to a virus). I live in Texas and I saw first hand just how people acted.

It’s absolutely fine to say “We’re responsible adults we should not be forced”, but if you say that, you need to live it. Act responsibly. It’s not expensive, or hard, or harmful to you in any way. It’s just a little bit inconvenient and uncomfortable, but nothing compared to what our grandparents who lived through WWII had to put up with.They could deal with the deprivations of a world war, rationing, family dying, etc - to help a bunch of Europeans fight a war that had little or nothing to do with us, truth be told (we could have wiped out japan and ignored Europe altogether and we’d have been fine with 1:10th the casualties) and people today act like their world is ending because they are asked nicely to take some very basic steps to help keep everyone healthy. It’s pathetic.
 

WrongHanded

Well-known member
I have long believed that the Government exists to protect me from the doorknob lickers.

But it doesn't seem to matter how many new laws the government comes up with, some idiots are gonna keep licking doorknobs.
 
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