Freedom or Covid: You pick, North/South Dakota

When the numbers referenced are grossly inaccurate and manipulated, what does it matter how current it is?

 

Too late, they already voted for Biden. You know why? Because Trump didn't tell them to wear a mask.

 

Hospitals are going to start failing. Nurses will find jobs that don't leave them on the edge of a nervous breakdown, the death rate in early 2021 could get even worse.

And more.

There is a real world out there, you may have no idea what it is, or where it is, but take my word... it's real even if you're not.

 

Last I heard Democrats had it locked up.

 

That's less than nothing.

 

Ah, so thats it! You don't trust the accuracy of the tests.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769322

Here's a link to a recent fairly large scale review of PCR accuracy. If you can be bothered reading it. In summery? The sub-group of the sample who had previously tested positive to COVID (from March 2020 onward) via PCR testing when re-tested using a different serology (anti-body) test revealed a 93.5% accuracy rate. In other words of if they were positive using PCR only 6.5 % came up negative via serology later.

Likewise of those that had previously tested negative using PCR 90% were still negative. And of course having a single follow up PCR test will reduce the error rate significantly (i.e 93% of that 6.5% who got a false negative would be found positive on receiving a 2nd test).

So you were saying 'utterly useless' I believe? And there's a 'conspiracy' keeping the public unaware of the truth? Do tell.

As for my bias - well what you call 'bias' is simply my tendency to rely on 'facts' not internet rumors for health advice. I also live in a country that followed the best medical advice available, implemented anti-COVID public health measures, including free public PCR testing and lock downs (as and when required) with 98% + buy in/co-operation from its citizenry. And look at the results compared to other jurisdictions that didn't. Again FACT.

Or don't you believe in facts if they threaten your preexisting worldview/prejudices. No wait, you've already answered that question. No need to reply.

 

LoneStar, I finally got round to reviewing the video. Thanks for sharing BTW. I have to say though the Doctors message is re; assigning COVID as cause of death if associated with underlying comorbidities is sought of a '6 of one/half dozen of the other' response. In other words those morbidities might or might not have killed the patients concerned because the virus put their systems under stress but those patients have to be under significant viral induced tress (be the most ill from it) to begin with. In other words the vast majority of the ones dying are those receiving medical attention, usually in intensive care for COVID to begin with. Not the average Joe who has heart disease and is walking around the street with a mild case of COVID that's asymptomatic. People like that might slip into the COVID stats but not in numbers enough to outweigh the first group.

So it just seems to be a addressing points raised earlier i.e there is a margin for error in the results (something I've conceded many times BTW) but that margin is not going to be enough to knock more than a few % points of the death toll.

 

Could be off by 50,000 or 150,000 or any number. It's a grab bag. The numbers are junk.

 

I must say the real disaster for the world is that covid-19 isn't another Spanish Flu (death toll: 20 million in 2 years, no doubt about it....in comparative population terms today, 140 million dead in two years....).

Because if it was, the present neoliberal capitalist system would have finally collapsed, with no chance of going back to business as usual, as governments were forced to print money to keep citizens alive in strictly locked-down economies.

And then we could get about closing the fossil fuel based economy and creating the urgently required global economy based on solar/wind backed by pumped-hydro and battery storage, in order to move away from the unsustainable junk consumer economy that is destroying global ecological and human health.

140 million dead......a necessary sacrifice to force a change to the present evil neoliberal monetarist orthodoxy, in order to save the planet and all life from destruction?

Just sayin'.....

 

From your 'article' :- 'The new study, which is small and has not yet been peer reviewed or published by a journal'

If your going to even pretend to debate 'science' can you please at least bother to quote science i.e. something that has been peer reviewed, and published in a recognized journal. You know, like I did when you criticized PCR tests. And unlike what you've just quoted now - an article from your favorite right wing on-line 'news' blurb with no science included. What the article is reporting is a hypothesis. As yet untested and undocumented.

But somehow I think you'd struggle with that.

 

FYI I've re gigged my post 132 by way of clarification. But regardless, if the current US Death toll attributed to COVID is aprox 23000 or there about ( I haven't checked recently) there's no way yur going to end up anywhere near the number of false positive COVID deaths you seem to think is likely. An error rate yes, for reasons I've noted previously, but that large? No. Again for reasons I've explained. As I said I'd estimate a small percentage (probably <5% as possible for the reasons I've outlined.

There could certainly and probably was a much higher error rate earlier on in the pandemic when cases were far fewer 10% + ??? but as the death toll increases that error rate washes out anyway. At the same time the Health System has been on a steep learning curve and they've now familiarized themselves with the morphology of severe infections.

Put simply we now know a lot more about what impacts a severe COVID infection has on the human body and we know what the physiological impacts are in such cases (first and foremost immune cascade effects). We also know what traces it leaves postmortem - as distinct from mild cases where those those effects and traces aren't felt or left.

So for those reasons I think the numbers you are quoting (50 to 150K) there are at best wishful thinking. (Unless deaths get into the millions which extremely unkindly - at which point your low end might be possible. .

 

Pretty amazing pol!

 

Your post is unpersuasive to say the least.

Many experts have spoken out opposing the claims made in your post. Elon Musk just demonstrated a week ago that the tests are no different than a coin toss.

Even the CDC is on the record than any test with more than 25 cycles is unreliable.

Kary Mullis, the inventor of the tests, though now deceased, is on record saying it was not designed for diagnostic purposes.

On the anecdotal level, there are many many stories here in my area of people who were never even tested receiving positive results from the lab. It's a joke.

 

LOL, make it all about politics and personalities, nobody else has.

 

Your linked study was not designed to determine false negative rates of RT-PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2. As the link states, only individuals who were symptomatic or fairly certain to have been exposed were PCR tested. Why? Because PCR testing before symptom onset and several days after symptom onset is pretty pointless. This information has not been widely shared with the public. That’s what bothers myself and @Eleuthera. RT-PCR has severe limitations for contact tracing because of it’s inherent limitations to detect infections in pre and asymptomatic individuals.

Now, when we’ve actually analyzed heterogeneous studies designed to determine false negative rates, we come up with this pull quote from the following link.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1495

So, at optimal testing time, PCR still returns 20% false negatives. That’s pretty abysmal if we are counting on PCR tests for contact tracing purposes especially in mass testing scenarios where very few subjects are symptomatic.

I don’t know what “conspiracy” means anymore it’s bandied about so. But the public is not aware of the facts about PCR testing limitations. We are learning now that many positive PCR tests returning positives around ten days and further past symptom presentation are already resolved cases in which no virus can be cultured.

I can’t speak to your bias, I don’t know you that well. I’m glad your country is doing well. But the success of your country has no bearing on the fact PCR tests are not good at what we’ve asked them to do and no bearing on the fact the overwhelming majority of people think when experts refer to PCR as the “gold standard” it means PCR has few limitations.

 

Identify the experts and importantly the context of their objections and you may well have a point. Till then I'm afraid you don't because its just as easy to claim 'many experts' (which is true), especially experts in epidemiology etc who do think they're worth doing.

As for Elon? Which test, You seem to think ALL PCR tests are identical (there not). Nor is one test be relied on alone. One positive test - you get tested again (Here - even more often) Even if the 1st test is only 80% accurate (false positive) leaving a 20 % chance of error the next nest in 80% of that 20% and so on.

As for the CDC? Here' a link to information about their current PCR test. So they have no problem using it.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/testing.html

That's bureaucratic error, not a medical or scientific and therefore irrelevant. The question is whether the tests work well enough to be used used for mass screenings, not how often they get lost in the mail.

 

No I made it about science. You questioned the accuracy of a particular medical test - and then as proof of your contention you referenced a news article from right wing e-news. BTW If you had posted one from a left wing source I would say the same thing. And here's the key point the link you posted had no valid scientific value. It was referenced nothing but a possible, unverified theory.

I however posted a peer reviewed journal based on a reasonably sized sample group. Now the paper and my interpretation of it can be criticized and 557 (above) has.I have to read his link and put an argument together before replying but I will do so.

Point is if we were debating history the references should be historic sources/research etc. And Politics? - well obviously political sources. Now there's lots of politics in how well COVID has been handled in the US and elsewhere (there shouldn't be, IMO its a public health issue and needs to be handled as such but what can you do?). But - if you want to criticize a specific aspect of the science/medicine involved in COVID then that criticism should reference medical or scientific evidence not something else.

Or does the above seem unreasonable?

 

I could mention Judy Mikovits, I could mention Luc Montagnier, I could mention Dr. Annie Bukacek and many more, but for those in denial as you are, they would be rejected like water off a duck's back. That's what humans in denial do, deny reality.

True believers in The Church will not hear heresy and apostasy. They are true believers, faith above reality.

 

"Science" as portrayed by career bureaucrats, mercenary scientists and talking heads on TV known to be career propagandists.

 

Err... no science as portrayed by qualified scientists. What makes you think otherwise?

 

Yes, you could mention them. But I also asked for context . As in 'Identify the experts and importantly the context of their objections.' So probably better not to.

 

Thanks, finally got round to reading the article. I would note the following as a result.

Yes testing in the aprox five days prior to symptoms arising has a low (zero day 1) probability of detecting the virus. But I also note that the a high % of persons infected with COVID (varies according to the date/location of the study are asymptomatic but still infectious. I've seen estimates ranging fro 5-80% but they seem to be settling down around the 20-50% (excluding those with underlying conditions or the elderly).

So from a public screening perspective health authorities have a dilemma. You have a test that won't detect the virus in early onset cases (before symptoms can become apparent) and a virus that in a large % of the population may not generate symptoms anyway! Don't test you find no cases. Do test you and you have a high failure (false negative) rate.

So the methodology employed (here at least) is for free multiple community screenings combined with local lock downs. The system also encourages people living in suburbs where positive cases to come forward more than once for testing which based on both reports (yours and mine) vastly ups the accuracy of testing. Effective contact tracing (and testing/quarantining of those contacts then follows).

We also test sewerage outflows to detect virus bi-product excreted in waste. This also has a high false positive rate BTW (because people can apparently excrete traces of the virus long after they have recovered and are not infectious apparently) but it does lets us 'surge' testing resources into those suburbs and increase public messaging about coming forward for testing as needed.

Long story short, the methodology - testing, contact tracing, quarantining and messaging works (we've proven it). But the tests have to be done and above all there have to be a lock downs and they have to be done early and hard - which means they can also be short and effective.

Looking at US and European figures now? I think its too late for lock downs to work though. Best I can see Binden doing is locking down (quarantining) the 2% or so of the population most likely to suffer from the disease by keeping them at home/in care with State support until vaccines are rolled out early next year. So your poor your resources into retirement communities and nursing homes etc. But that's me just speculating.

Cheers.

 

This is the single best comment I've ever read on a message board! Holy ****!

 

I consider businesses, peoples' livelihoods, and the ability to actually do things with my life instead of sit home because of a chest cold to be "things of value."

 

Vaccines rushed into use have a fairly bad track record. (Anthrax, swine flu)