COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[GP270watch]

FDA ends emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine

[GP270watch]

 Oxford in the U.K. says that a steroid helps the sickest Covid-19 patients reduce deaths by 1/3. The steroid is safe, cheap, widely available according to them.

Coronavirus: Dexamethasone proves first life-saving drug

 Could hopefully be a key part of an effective drug cocktail if the results are replicated.

[GP270watch]

 I didn't think we'd get anywhere close to 150k deaths and 200k would be out of the question. This has really been a completely incompetent response.

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If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

This is wishcasting.

 The irony too given the screen name of this user deciding what adults live and die for the benefit of society.

 Here is an example of a healthy women in her 20s who got Covid-19 and "recovered" and the massive damage that happened to her lungs. She ended up needing a double lung transplant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/health/coronavirus-lung-transplant.html

[GP270watch]

I’ve said this from the very beginning, and it hasn’t changed:

Imagine if we tracked every dangerous illness circulating the United States - counting cases, showing ‘hotspots’, counting (erroneous) fatality rates, hyping and fear mongering media profiting off of manufactured crises - no one would go any where, ever again.

But we don’t do that.

 We do this!

 The CDC tracks every disease and does map out where they are, even ones that are not "deadly". The reason that Covid-19 is different is because it's new, people are dying from it, and we still don't even know what the disease does and what the longterm effects are.

 You guys will really just type anything without thinking.

[GP270watch]

https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1274355082402955269

I just don't know what to say.

And people think Trump can't win re-election because of the bad job he's done/doing. Look at that crowd.

[GP270watch]

also u guys do realize that if they do quarantine again, a lot more people are going to die of suicide, drug overdose, alcoholism or what have u then will probably be killed by the virus. at least I imagine so.

I am aware it has been suggested but am doubtful of the veracity. I am open to any evidence that suggests otherwise.

 We have to let people die of a pandemic because they'll just eat a shotgun anyways, is like the dumbest logic ever.

[GP270watch]

 And so much of the stimulus spending has already gone to purchase trash corporate debt instead of going into the pockets of people so they can spend money on necessities and cover bills because of the economic shutdown/fallout.

[GP270watch]

Don't worry guys this will all be over by next Easter.

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Have Republcians or conservatives in general been right about a single thing related to Covid-19, since all this started?

 They tried to attack Democrats who lead our most populous cities as being the problem, despite the fact that Trump is in charge of the federal government.

 Is it a coincidence that The United States, Brazil, and the UK have had some of the worst responses with their rightwing governments making mistake after mistake?

[GP270watch]

Have Republcians or conservatives in general been right about a single thing related to Covid-19, since all this started?

Larry Hogan and Mike DeWine, maybe.

But other than that...

 Good answer! You have to give credit where it's due.

[GP270watch]

Deaths do indeed lag (though only by weeks, not months) but hospitalizations should lag only by days.  Either the virus has become truly less virulent or (as I mostly suspect) the people getting infected/tested are far less at risk than they were in the earlier stages of the pandemic.

 This is speculation by me but it could be combo of the broader population getting it including younger people and also better preparation by medical staff and government even if we don't have a universal therapy yet.

 I don't think we have seen evidence to say the virus has mutated to be weaker. That would be awesome but there is no evidence for that. And we have to be careful of making wrong conclusions just by looking at data with no context.

 There were people saying before that California has reached herd immunity/virus had circulated because of a few studies and since the Eastcoast was dealing with a pandemic when they were not. That looks to be wrong now.

[GP270watch]

You know, if we had adopted the strict lockdown nationally for three weeks back in March or April like I had asked for, we could have already nearly defeated the virus. We could be reopen without having to go back and forth, which just screws businesses over even more.

Unless we also closed the borders to everyone, including citizens, ever since, couldn't we just be in the same situation now anyway?

 The problem is the more success you have the more callous and lax people become. If we had 3 weeks shutdown and little cases following, people would not have practiced preventative things like social distancing, face masks, health checks, travel restrictions.

 We forget that other nations like South Korea were basically playing very aggressive whack a mole with contact tracing and health/temperature checks when entering building and shopping centers. The United States has done nothing like this.

[GP270watch]

 Made my weekly shopping trips. Huge signs outside of Publix urging masks. I would say close to 100% of people were wearing masks. Even in the outdoor Mexican fruit-stand people had masks.

[GP270watch]

A doctor in Israel who used to be a top Israeli health official says new cases might really be old cases that still show up on PCR tests:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/282529

I've seen some speculation that this explains all those new cases in the southern U.S. But this seems to occur only in places with hot weather like Israel and the southern U.S.

This theory could hold water. This is a longtime health official, not some crackpot who sits around making flexagons in his basement all day.

 I read the article and he sounds like a crackpot.

[GP270watch]

https://twitter.com/AnaCabrera/status/1278002884920184834

Trump must be itching to fire him.

If you read the rightosphere Dr. Fauci has already been cast as a Clinton deep-state agent who is somehow a part of the plot to sink Trump. All it's gonna take is Trump to come across the wrong tweet or Fox/OAN new segment and he's probably gone.

[GP270watch]

 The US private healthcare system is being exposed as inadequate. The massive unemployment is also leaving many on the brink of being uninsured if they're not already.

 Time for some changes.

[GP270watch]

The US private healthcare system is being exposed as inadequate. The massive unemployment is also leaving many on the brink of being uninsured if they're not already.

 Time for some changes.

The U.S. has tested and treated more COVID patients than any other nation on earth, produced and deployed the most promising disease therapies, and is leading global development of a vaccine.

What planet are you living on?

    The one with facts. China has tested 3x the number of people for Covid, so you're wrong about that. If you look at it per capita, The United States has been surpassed by numerous countries so you're wrong about that too. Your other statement is also not true as of yet and ignores real progress made by other nations. Please speak to me with facts and not Trump cabinet talking points.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

 But that has nothing to do with my initial point anyways which is about the failings of our employer based private health system.


 

[GP270watch]

 Completely nonsense narrative. The United States taxpayer funds a lot of this research. We get the double whammy of getting taxed for drug research and then also paying the most for drug therapies with no government price controls. That's not the rest of the world taking advantage of us, that's our own government screwing us. This has been studied but again you can be an informed person or go with lazy Republican talking points.

[GP270watch]

Completely nonsense narrative. The United States taxpayer funds a lot of this research. We get the double whammy of getting taxed for drug research and then also paying the most for drug therapies with no government price controls. That's not the rest of the world taking advantage of us, that's our own government screwing us. This has been studied but again you can be an informed person or go with lazy Republican talking points.

Fooey.  The value of private research and development dwarfs the amount of grants doled out by CDC, NIH or whoever.  The U.S. market system supports hundreds of billions of dollars in private research (because only with a profit-incentivizing system can the huge overhead costs of drug development be justified).  Patients in other countries then get to import drugs that wouldn't exist if not for the American for-profit system at deeply discounted rates due to price ceilings.

That's not the U.S. government 'screwing' us, it's the reality that only a system like the U.S.' provides the necessary incentives to power the innovation needed to lengthen global life expectancy, decrease disease incidence, and improve quality of life.  

 Why has The United States life expectancy dropped for 3 years in a row when all other industrialized nations have risen?

 And I will state again the role of The United States in drug innovation has been researched and studied, feel free to do a google search and inform yourself with an unbiased view or keep spouting talking points.

[GP270watch]

So are we making progress or no? Deaths fall but fauci out here saying million new cases a day

 One clear area we made progress is protecting nursing homes and elderly care facilities with best practices.

[GP270watch]

 All pandemics eventually tail off but imagine being the President of the most powerful country on Earth and that being your game-plan.

[GP270watch]

And Independence Day is right around the corner.

Arizonans, PLEASE PLEASE take this seriously. 

They probably won't. The optics of basically demanding everyone go outside and celebrate slave emancipation day and mere weeks later declaring the 4th of july not important enough to celebrate (as Dems prematurely tweet its a racist holiday before hastily deleting that) are so apparently partisan and racialist that a lot of people aren't going to stand for being told to go inside. Im going to a cookout at my grandpa's since hes getting home hospice care now and i haven't seen him since pre-lockdown.

Taking things seriously doesn't mean staying indoors -- it's not an all-or-nothing kinda thing.  It just means just being mindful of physical contact and distances. 

 It's good for you to walk or bike outside and get sunshine. Just keep away from people, don't touch anything, and don't overdo it.

 In my area I've never seen so many of my neighbors biking and walking with their kids. It's actually been one of the few positives of the quarantine. I bike all the time and I'm usually one of a few in the hot Florida sun but that's changed since March. I see at least 20-40 bike riders everyday now around my subdivision.

[GP270watch]

 Florida is having a terrible day.

[GP270watch]

All the things you posted are related to time. That's why we were supposed to quarantine seriously to flatten the curve and buy time.