Coronavirus 3: The Resurgence

[El_Machinae]

Anyway, I would restate my position as: if X did Y to prevent the objectively negative outcome of Z, then I would be willing to hear the reasoning and the cost-effectiveness thereof.

Your position is reasonable, I think. Government propaganda except in times of extreme need is going to be something we don't tolerate. I'm actually 99% sure it was you, back in your rms***e days here introduced me to this photo, and I'm eternally grateful. The mask guidance was quite clear thoughout, no evidence that PPE really protected laypeople, it was necessary for frontline staff, and putting it on spreaders was important.

British Columbia caught some of their infection from traveling Americans shortly after the "we've got it contained" statement from the US advisor, so I keep thinking of that Iraqi officer.

 

[Kaitzilla]

FAKE NEWS!
Its a shame that only 8 of Trumps staff had cornavirus, I'd imagine if the number had been reasonably high a large number it would have sent shockwaves through their thick skulls that many would abandoned Trump rather then risk lives and those around them with potential infection. Those POS Trump staffers removed the do not sit stickers placed on every second seat to distance supporters from each other.

Obviously large gatherings like Trump's rally spread Covid-19.
Herman Cain was hospitalized 2 weeks after attending.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/h...avirus-after-attending-trump-rally-2020-07-02

If only it was a social justice protest.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/public-health-experts-are-not-hypocrites/612853/

On June 4, more than 1,200 public-health experts signed a letter saying the protests were “vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of black people in the United States.” Conservative commentators and a few liberal academics accused the experts of making a sudden U-turn in their messaging. The people who are calling public-health experts inconsistent believe that supporting the anti-racism protests in May, but condemning the anti-lockdown ones in April, reflects ideology rather than science, and could lead to a loss of credibility for public health as a field.

Supporting one kind of protest but not another may seem confusing at first, but the decision reflects what public-health experts have always tried to do: maximize the health of the population across all aspects of life. And health is about more than simply remaining free of coronavirus infection.

Health is about more than simply remaining free of coronavirus infection!

Thanks health officials and journalists, I never considered that.

Anthony Fauci admitted lying about the efficacy of masks so we'd leave enough for the medical community

Here he is talking about his decision.
https://gizmodo.com/dr-fauci-made-the-coronavirus-pandemic-worse-by-lying-1844050358

Fauci was asked yesterday by financial news outlet The Street why the U.S. government didn’t promote masks early on during the pandemic. Fauci, who sits on the Trump regime’s zombie-like coronavirus task force, hinted that he knew masks worked, he just wanted any available masks to be saved for health care workers.

“Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N-95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci said. “And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.”

Fauci didn’t just fail to promote masks early on, he actively discouraged the use of masks, saying they didn’t work. Americans are now paying the price because too many people think masks are useless to combat the coronavirus. In reality, masks have been shown to help prevent the spread of covid-19, as the CDC now admits.

All we need to do is look at the things that Fauci was saying back in February—a time before most Americans were taking the threat of covid-19 seriously and people like Donald Trump were assuming it was just a problem for the Chinese government.

“There is no reason for anyone right now in the United States, with regard to coronavirus, to wear a mask,” Fauci told Spectrum News DC on February 14.

It was something that Fauci would say repeatedly whenever he gave interviews in February, as the pandemic spread to countries like Germany, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. And Fauci may not have known it yet, but coronavirus was also spreading quickly in the U.S. By the end of February, over 20 countries had identified the coronavirus within their borders.

The video so people can be absolutely clear:

 

[Kaitzilla]

Picking through past errors, here are 2 more.

China and the WHO
https://freebeacon.com/national-sec...-of-coronavirus-to-world-health-organization/

Contrary to claims from both Chinese officials and the World Health Organization, China did not report the existence of the coronavirus in late 2019, according to a WHO timeline tracking the spread of the virus. Rather, international health officials discovered the virus through information posted to a U.S. website.

The quiet admission from the international health organization, which posted an "updated" timeline to its website this week, flies in the face of claims from some of its top officials, including WHO director general Tedros Adhanom, who maintained for months that China had informed his organization about the emerging sickness.

I'm not sure how accurate this article is.

China clearly told the WHO about the virus after the WHO read about it on the internet and asked them about it.
Does the temporal order really matter?


Next is that famous Lancet study from early May about hydroxychloroquine.
Including 96,000 patients, it had to be retracted 1 month 13 days later because the source data was unable to be verified.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...litics-distrust-to-coronavirus-science-304006

The prestigious medical journal the Lancet on Thursday pulled the high-impact study on hydroxychloroquine because of questions around the data underpinning the analysis.

The original, stark results — that hydroxychloroquine isn’t just useless against the virus, it can be harmful to Covid-19 patients — prompted multiple countries to ban the use of the drug for coronavirus. Now, the whiplash is leading right-wing political figures to demand satisfaction.

It is really interesting why the source data was questionable.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine

The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known US healthcare analytics company, also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.

A Guardian investigation can reveal the US-based company Surgisphere, whose handful of employees appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult-content model, has provided data for multiple studies on Covid-19 co-authored by its chief executive, but has so far failed to adequately explain its data or methodology.

Nothing wrong with being a sci-fi writer.

Americans keep causing problems!
First for the world, then for the British royal family members. Where will it stop?

NPR has the most accurate read on it I think.
https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...oxychloroquine-study-citing-concern-over-data

So the Lancet launched an independent review and asked Surgisphere to transfer their complete database for evaluation. Surgisphere agreed to the review, but the third party reviewers told the Lancet that they were not able to access all the data, because the company said this would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements.

It was this failure to independently audit the data that prompted three of the study's authors to retract the paper, saying they "can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources."

 

[El_Machinae]

Can't have been a month before that article was retracted ...

Edit: Yeah, May 22 I was reading about it and June 04 I was reading about the retraction.
Sheesh, my self-doubt regarding sanity exploded thinking it had been a full month.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Dont worry TRUMP is cutting off Federal funding for testing /s
This is bad, I think the US is going to reach 100K cases per day at the rate it is going. Half of the entire country are going hell for broke for herd immunity and dam the casualties.

Ya, Trump wanted to cut funding for Covid testing 2 weeks ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ing-sites-federal-support-cut-officials-alarm

Trump also wants to cut funding for schools that don't reopen. (can he do that?)
https://www.businessinsider.com/president-trump-threatens-to-cut-off-school-funding-2020-7

Trump also wants to deny visas to foreign college students to be in the US if their colleges are online-only.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/sto...nts-attend-in-person-classes-or-leave-country

“The U.S. Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the United States.” The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement announcing the rule. “Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.”

What is with this guy?
Open up the country or else?
It should be the governors' decision on a state by state basis!

I hope the online-only colleges have 1 class per day with 1 professor and 1 student in person to get around this stupid visa thing.

Can't have been a month before that article was retracted ...

Edit: Yeah, May 22 I was reading about it and June 04 I was reading about the retraction.
Sheesh, my self-doubt regarding sanity exploded thinking it had been a full month.

Woops, I will change it to 13 days.
Thanks for correcting me.

 

[amadeus]

Not reassuring news here:

FNN Prime Online:

東京都で新たに224人が新型コロナに感染　都内の感染者数としては過去最多
224 confirmed cases in Tokyo Prefecture today, highest single-day total

東京都で新たに9日、224人が新型コロナウイルスに感染していることが分かった。 都内の1日あたりの感染者数としては過去最多となる。 都内の感染者は今月2日から100人以上の感染者が続いていたが、きのうは75人だった。
Tokyo Prefecture reported 224 coronavirus infections on the 9th. This is the highest single-day total for the prefecture. Infections in Tokyo had been continuing at a rate of over 100 per day since July 2nd, however yesterday was 75.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'll happily welcome Americans to come spend their money in my country for a nominal fee of $10k to pay for their testing and 14-day managed quarantine.

All you would need would be interesting things to see and do.

 

[red_elk]

There is an exciting new trend where I live: Shaming and harassing people who choose to wear masks in public.

Remember kids, this is how grownups act.... Like morons.

We had the opposite, there was a video with crazy grandmother who didn't let mother with a kid enter the apartment building.
"We have mask regime here! You shall not pass!"

 

[amadeus]

Jiji Press Agency:

政府、緊急事態再発令を否定　イベント制限さらに緩和へ
Government: no to state of emergency redeclaration, event restrictions to be relaxed

菅義偉官房長官は9日の記者会見で、東京都の1日当たりの新型コロナウイルス感染確認が過去最多を記録したことを受け、「直ちに再び緊急事態宣言を発出する状況に該当するとは考えていない」との認識を示した。 　10日からのイベント開催制限の緩和についても「予定通り行う考え方に変わりはない」と述べた。
At a press conference on the 9th, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga indicated “[we] do not think there are the immediate conditions to re-issue a state of emergency” upon receiving reports of Tokyo’s highest daily recorded coronavirus infection numbers. Concerning the relaxation of event restrictions, “there has been no change in thought from the present scheduled [relaxations].”

 

[Commodore]

Trump also wants to cut funding for schools that don't reopen. (can he do that?)

Yes he can do that. Schools are not funded by the federal government, they are funded by the states. Money from the federal government is just additional aid that can be cut off for a variety of reasons.

Trump also wants to deny visas to foreign college students to be in the US if their colleges are online-only.

I'm not seeing the problem here. If their college is online only, then what reason would the student have to enter the US? And if there is no reason to enter the US, then you don't get a visa. Is that really such an outrageous policy?

I hope the online-only colleges have 1 class per day with 1 professor and 1 student in person to get around this stupid visa thing

It's likely this will apply on a per-student basis. Meaning if the particular student in question is only taking online classes, then they will have their visa revoked or they will not be issued a visa if they apply for one. Again, this does not strike me as a super outrageous policy and is something they should be doing regardless of any pandemic.

In other news: There's been a, in my opinion, quite hilarious development in the mandatory mask order. So I said in another thread that the police were refusing to enforce the order due to the city government's support of BLM. They said it would be up to the Health Department to enforce the order because being the "mask police" isn't the job of law enforcement. Well the Health Department issued a statement saying they aren't the "mask police" either and also will not be enforcing the order.

What I like about this is that this shows just how powerless our elected officials can be when no one goes along with their bullcrap. If no one is willing to enforce or comply with their "laws" and "orders" then those laws and orders are just meaningless words. These elected officials get so full of themselves and get so power drunk sometimes that it's nice to see them get humiliated and made to feel powerless from time to time.

 

[FriendlyFire]

If only it was a social justice protest.]

Indeed
now imagine refusal to wear masks and being packed together tightly inside a confined area for half a day.

 

[Samson]

I'm not seeing the problem here. If their college is online only, then what reason would the student have to enter the US? And if there is no reason to enter the US, then you don't get a visa. Is that really such an outrageous policy?

Have you been to university? For me the lectures were a subset of the academic program, let alone the whole package.

What I like about this is that this shows just how powerless our elected officials can be when no one goes along with their bullcrap. If no one is willing to enforce or comply with their "laws" and "orders" then those laws and orders are just meaningless words. These elected officials get so full of themselves and get so power drunk sometimes that it's nice to see them get humiliated and made to feel powerless from time to time.

This really goes to show how responsible individual police officers are for the negative consequences of state policy. If the police showed as much pushback to the drug war as they do to mask wearing it would not be the problem it is today.

 

[Gorbles]

I'm not seeing the problem here. If their college is online only, then what reason would the student have to enter the US? And if there is no reason to enter the US, then you don't get a visa. Is that really such an outrageous policy?

It is because you're putting student logistics r.e. where they're actually living based on a university decision to go online-only (due to Covid). So it's a decision that harms a wide variety of currently-valid visa-based students in the US for no real gain other than "foreigners bad". It is arguably also harmful to the economy in a time when it needs any boosts it can get.

If this was something that was affecting potential students not-yet-moved to the US, sure, more reasonable. But it isn't, it turns current students into a group that can be forcibly deported. That's basically discrimination.

 

[The_J]

I'm not seeing the problem here. If their college is online only, then what reason would the student have to enter the US? And if there is no reason to enter the US, then you don't get a visa. Is that really such an outrageous policy?

Another problem, besides what @Samson says, is that it's not clear how this applies to graduate students/PhD students.
They are often not enrolled in any courses, but performing research. They might or might also be affected, this is currently unclear.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I'm not seeing the problem here. If their college is online only, then what reason would the student have to enter the US? And if there is no reason to enter the US, then you don't get a visa. Is that really such an outrageous policy?

A lot of countries lack the kind of internet infrastructure required, especially for live video streaming. Also, a looooooooooot of US college materials, e-books, videos, electronic homework, etc., are blocked when accessed by countries outside the US. Unless every single college and private company changes this (lol) there will be a lot of foreign students who can't even access most of the stuff they need. I brought my laptop to Toronto once to do some homework this past January, and every single video the university required us to watch for that week's homework was blocked to me because I wasn't in the US.

 

[El_Machinae]

There is a constitutional provision against cruel and unusual punishments, though.

Not just that. It's the State arbitrarily increasing the severity of a punishment greater than what the judge ordered.

There might be local common law allowing harsher punishment for emergency reasons, but that has to be written ahead of time. States usually cannot retroactively increase the severity of a punishment after conviction. They're allowed to soften them, of course.

 

[Commodore]

A lot of countries lack the kind of internet infrastructure required, especially for live video streaming. Also, a looooooooooot of US college materials, e-books, videos, electronic homework, etc., are blocked when accessed by countries outside the US. Unless every single college and private company changes this (lol) there will be a lot of foreign students who can't even access most of the stuff they need. I brought my laptop to Toronto once to do some homework this past January, and every single video the university required us to watch for that week's homework was blocked to me because I wasn't in the US.

Then perhaps it would be easier for them to enroll in a university in their own country. Foreigners are not entitled to access to our universities just as I, as an American, am not entitled to access to, say, French universities.

If this was something that was affecting potential students not-yet-moved to the US, sure, more reasonable. But it isn't, it turns current students into a group that can be forcibly deported. That's basically discrimination

But it's legal discrimination. Non-citizens do not have an inherent right to be here. They are here because our government gives them permission to be here and that permission can be revoked at any time. This is something that really shouldn't be controversial since, as I said earlier, non-citizens do not have any inherent right to be here.

It's like if you came to stay at my house for a few days. Initially I may grant you permission to stay in my home, but I, as the legal resident of that home, reserve the right to tell you to leave whenever I want. This concept isn't controversial at that scale, but somehow becomes controversial when applied at the national level.

 

[Farm Boy]

I hope the online-only colleges have 1 class per day with 1 professor and 1 student in person to get around this stupid visa thing.

There's a lot of data entry to be done, but yes. Reclassifying everything Online to Hybrid Online and In Person is being done as necessary. I think the official stance after officially reserving a room for the course is to hold one optional meeting at the start, probably with a sign that indicates it's outside along with an email to the class in advance that attendance is optional.

Students are not amused. The ones that wanted online courses already were taking online courses. Those that wanted to be at a university and benefit from that acculturation don't want to be online. Now the curiosity is how bad the damage is going to be to the universities and entire college towns. I think it's going to be be pretty bad. Two rounds of cuts have scythed through around here. Wave of the future, locally, seems to be planting warehouses. So dead and ugly. But hey, probably don't need the university for that.

 

[Gorbles]

But it's legal discrimination. Non-citizens do not have an inherent right to be here. They are here because our government gives them permission to be here and that permission can be revoked at any time. This is something that really shouldn't be controversial since, as I said earlier, non-citizens do not have any inherent right to be here.

It's like if you came to stay at my house for a few days. Initially I may grant you permission to stay in my home, but I, as the legal resident of that home, reserve the right to tell you to leave whenever I want. This concept isn't controversial at that scale, but somehow becomes controversial when applied at the national level.

So, completely ignoring the negative consequences that I listed (and anything else that differs from your contrived example of a random person in your house), your position is one of defending the state for - in your own words - "legal discrimination".

If that's what you're choosing to defend, then I guess there isn't an argument that will make you see how damaging this is. That's the problem with these "but its legal" arguments, moreso when it comes from someone who is inherently against government overreach. Why is something related to immigration suddenly cause to abandon your general principles?

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Then perhaps it would be easier for them to enroll in a university in their own country. Foreigners are not entitled to access to our universities just as I, as an American, am not entitled to access to, say, French universities.

So you are against America being a leading source of medical, technological, and other ground breaking developments, economic growth, and the world's best university system? Gotcha.