OT Coronavirus: America in chaos, News and Updates. One million Americans dead and counting

See, that's just the thing. This guy appears to be reasonable credentialed. Why would he risk his status with a flippant conspiracy theory?



Roger W. Koops holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Chemistry) degree from the University of California, Riverside as well as Master and Bachelor degrees from Western Washington University. He worked in the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry for over 25 years. Before retiring in 2017, he spent 12 years as a Consultant focused on Quality Assurance/Control and issues related to Regulatory Compliance. He has authored or co-authored several papers in the areas of pharmaceutical technology and chemistry.

AIER appears to be legit

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-institute-for-economic-research/

https://greatnonprofits.org/org/american-institute-for-economic-research-inc

 

Since when did ANY kind of degree from any institution of higher education automatically confer common sense??? Talk about the Great American Myth.......

 

I think it might relate to ingrained male chauvinist Myopia........

 

It doesn't. But, again the firm the article emanated from appears to be legit. Where is THE best source to get our information from? That's what I thought. Or, do we simply homogenize our beliefs from group think? Who knows.

 

Yeah, she may very well believe that's what I am (and I'm FAR from that). If so, good call there.

 

CDC study shows COVID-19 cases may be 10 times higher than reported

As anticipated, the number of overall infections represented just a small portion of the population in each region (ranging from 1 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area to 6.9 percent in New York City), but the number of infections was far higher than expected — ranging from six to 24 times greater than what had been reported. The study bolsters earlier comments from CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, who said in late June that the infection rate could be 10 times higher than reported.

 

Good thing we do not have enough tests or the numbers would be oh so bad for our rating star in chief (or would they be better?)

Another good thing is that if it true the death rate is only 4-6 times worse than the flu rather than 40.

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...izer-coronavirus-vaccine-in-1-95-billion-deal

U.S. To Get 100 Million Doses of Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine In $1.95 Billion Deal

 

I don't know anything about this guy and I don't want to get into arguing credentials, but his statement that COVID-19 is like a normal pandemic flu is nonsense. If he's talking numbers of deaths annually, he'd be about right - so far. The World Health Organization estimates that 290,000 to 650,000 people die of flu-related causes every year worldwide. So far, COVID-19 has killed about 620,000 people worldwide, but bear in mind that it's only been going for about six months and every prediction I've seen says that this fall a second wave is going to hit that will be worse than anything we've seen so far.

There are multiple differences between flu and COVID-19. We have vaccines for flu every year. They may not be perfect, but they do reduce the number of people who get infected and can spread the disease. So far, that's not true of COVID-19. Every person out there is a target for infection. The ability of COVID-19 to be highly transmissible in asymptomatic people makes it very difficult to control because you can't isolate infectious people the way you can with flu victims who are feeling bad. COVID-19 has been estimated by epidemiologists to be about 10 x as deadly as normal seasonal flu based on deaths per infection. Then there's the issue of longterm health issues for people who get COVID-19, but don't die. Lasting damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, brain and other organs is possible after a severe case of COVID-19. Stroke from blood clotting is also a real issue.

 

Ideology. He may be educated, but lots of educated people shill for their ideology. That's why industries hire scientists to do fake studies that say what the industries want them to say, like the tobacco industry's generations of fake studies that nicotine wasn't harmful or addictive. All the scientists they hired to do those studies were also well credentialed.

 

I do understand what you are saying and "theories" come from every direction. I did preface my post with a FWIW....but this is the part that made me at least curious...

....While it has been assumed that this started in Wuhan, China, it is still not clear if that was the actual starting point or the catalyst for pandemic. Wuhan is a major metropolitan city of China and is the center for advanced technology, commerce, arts, science, and culture. It has a population of about 17 million people. Last fall, Wuhan was the site for many international events in the aforementioned areas. For example, Wuhan was the site for the World Military Games (an Olympics of sorts for military personnel) that ran for about ten days from October 18-27 with over 9,000 competitors from over 80 countries. What better opportunity for the spread of a virus?

In addition, Asia hosted many international events last fall, including the Rugby World Cup and the Women’s World Handball Championship (both Japan), the World Track and Field Championships in Dubai, and even the PGA held a tournament in China. Include the numerous technology, university, cultural, and other events and conferences that were conducted in Wuhan and you have a huge opportunity to export the virus to the world.

But, you do not even need all of that. Given the great number of flights from Asia to all parts of the world that occur (or did occur) on a daily basis, and you have people from all parts of the world as potential carriers of a virus.

By the time medical researchers in China started to take notice, it was into December. They originally reported a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown origin and they eventually traced it to a coronavirus. By this time, the pandemic was likely well underway in many countries but was going unnoticed. Why? The symptoms mimic the other URI, mainly influenza and colds, but also bacterial infections such as bronchitis or sinusitis, and were being treated as such. Remember, we are still in the B.P. (Before Panic) period.

By the time we are ending 2019 and entering 2020, people around the world are experiencing the disease. Even the U.S. CDC recently said that this virus was already in the US by early January 2020 (and quite probably before). People were still going to concerts and sporting events; kids were going to school; people socialized with other people without fear; and yes, people were getting sick.

There were probably some serious cases, just like influenza and colds, and yes, some people were dying from the disease. Remember, at that time there was still no test for this virus. People who were sick and seeking medical help were being diagnosed with symptoms and were quite likely being diagnosed for any URI like influenza, colds, bronchitis, or sinusitis.

Where was the extraordinary evidence? If this was truly an apocalyptic disease, we certainly would have seen it by that time.......

 

when you talk about flu deaths, in the US and worldwide, remember those are estimates based upon algorithm the public health agencies use to extrapolate related and excess deaths attributed to flu

so far, Covid death numbers are directly attributed and there has been no retroactive re-calculation of excess and unattributed deaths. That's especially true in the US. The number of actual attributed Covid deaths right now is likely significantly higher than the official number. It can take the CDC up to 2 years after a flu season to arrive at an official number for flu deaths in the US:

* "We first look at how many in-hospital deaths were observed in FluSurv-NET. The in-hospital deaths are adjusted for under-detection of influenza using methods similar to those described above for hospitalizations using data on the frequency and sensitivity of influenza testing. Second, because not all deaths related to influenza occur in the hospital, we use death certificate data to estimate how likely deaths are to occur outside the hospital. We look at death certificates that have pneumonia or influenza causes (P&I), other respiratory and circulatory causes (R&C), or other non-respiratory, non-circulatory causes of death, because deaths related to influenza may not have influenza listed as a cause of death. We use information on the causes of death from FluSurv-NET to determine the mixture of P&I, R&C, and other coded deaths to include in our investigation of death certificate data. Finally, once we estimate the proportion of influenza-associated deaths that occurred outside of the hospital, we can estimate the deaths-to-hospitalization ratio.

Data needed to estimate influenza-associated deaths may lag for up to two years after the season ends. When this is not yet available for the season being estimated, we adjust based on values observed in prior seasons (e.g., the 2010-2011 season through the 2016-2017 season) and update the estimates when more current data become available." *

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm#References

I've seen several public health officials and experts estimate that the total number of Covid deaths in the US right now is in the 180,000 range rather than the 140,000 range

 

Were those the same scientists who shilled for Big Sugar........asking for a diabetic friend......

 

Well, phooey on the ideologues, then.

 

one of Randy Rainbow's better efforts:

 

Even now, after all this shit, if you're still stupid enough to call this the flu, then you really need to be banned from receiving medical care after getting it.

 

This hasn't gotten truly "apocalyptic" because of the efforts to tamp down the rate of spread. What do you suppose the death rate would be if we hadn't done that and it had spread exponentially as it would in an uncontrolled environment? About 20% of cases need some form of hospitalization for treatment. The death rates we've seen so far are bad enough, but if the ERs and ICUs of every hospital were jammed full, and if medical supplies were used up treating millions of people at the same time, you'd see death rates that would look pretty apocalyptic.