Just curious, anyone have a plan, or preps for global pandemic?

[mccoy]

 

 

 

 

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On 5/25/2020 at 9:30 PM, macaroni said:

Basically, all I am saying is this. You can use sample data to make statistical inferences about the original population from which you sampled the data, but you cannot make such inferences about a different population.

In your example of smoking and lung cancer, you could say that someone who smokes likely has lung cancer. But if you consider only those individuals whose astrological sign is Aries or only those whose blood type is A then your previous observations alone dont give you any reason to say how likely it is that one of those individuals who smokes also has lung cancer. To do that you also need judgement.

Point # 1, clear enough and I agree, although extrapolation is used at times, with all its pros and cons.

Point # 2, is less clear. In the smoking example, there is an association of cigarette smoking and lung cancer. It is not correct to say that someone who smokes likely has lung cancer. What we can infer from the association is that in smokers the probability of developing lung cancer is higher than in those who are not smokers, adjusting for other factors. The association suggests a causation for various reasons: the hazard ratio is much higher in smokers, the toxicity of nicotine and other compounds of cigarette smoke has been ascertained by other studies, the biological mechanisms have been investigated by other studies. 

Your examples on astrological sign and blood type are maybe ill-expressed. If astrological sign has no influence on lung cancer, no correlation, as it is likely, then a subset of the population with a given astrological sign should exhibit the same hazard ratio of the whole sample. Of course, there is lesser numerosity, so the confidence interval will be wider, but the average HR will be about the same. Maybe you wanted to say something like, exposure to car exhausts. That's another variable which is correlated to lung cancer, so the effect of this variable must be excluded from the analysis. This is done by 'adjusting' for other factors which are known to increase lung cancer hazard.

But at the end of it, I don't see how that correlates to the original discussion on mortality excess. 

[macaroni]

@mccoy, #2 was just supposed to be an illustration of #1, nothing more.

The relevance is that excess mortality cannot be ascribed to the concurrent pandemic based on the meer temporal association of the two, as you seemed to be saying.

 

[Ron Put]

6 hours ago, AlPater said:

Did you look at the data, Ron?  What was the COVID-19/flu ratio in the US?  75,283/6,259 deaths.  And, all the physical distancing, hand washing, business shutdowns, and so on would have a drastic effect on flu and other similarly infectious disease deaths, as well as fewer traffic deaths, deaths from stress at work, etc.

Hahha, Al, "deaths from stress at work?!!"  Do you really suppose those are less than the deaths from the lock-down and all the fear and economic stress it has caused,?  Or, the stress to come from the economic meltdown and the potential for geopolitical upheaval, which may bring wars to places we think safe?

Yes, I looked at the data.  But did you guys actually look at the data and actually think about what it is and what it may mean?  Plus, none of this (including the Michael Moore non-sequitur) address the main point of the argument.

But let's look at the data.  First, despite what that shill paper Sibiriak posted, most US states do not report flu deaths, period.  NY doesn't, other than for confirmed infant cases, and CA doesn't except for confirmed and similarly selective cases.  Which is why the CDC takes a while before they have an official number.  But now everyone is counting Covid-19 with bated breath, lumping in "probables" in a race to justify the lock-downs.  Thus, in fact it is comparing the very small numbers of flu cases reported by states like NY and CA, to the almost certainly inflated Covid-19 death numbers, at least in NY, is grossly misleading.  And even so, the  CDC P&I number for 2017-2018 is 10.9, while the states provided P&I for Covid-19 is 15.8, including all all the "probables" and whatever else is in there.  This is significant, but by no means the plague.  And far, far lower than the estimates for 1969 and 1957.

But where did all the heart attacks go?  Or the strokes?  I posted earlier that those are at levels close to 50% of normal for this time of year, in many places.  What about deaths due to deferred healthcare maintenance, including  stuff like cancer biopsies and treatments, which were considered elective?  Where did all the normal flu deaths go?  And what about the fact that NY and CA both required that nursing homes accept Covid-19 cases, which most likely contributed to the very high death toll in NY's nursing homes.  At the end,  the CDC will have to sort it all out and come up with an "official" death toll, which will hopefully not be politically influenced.

More on that data.  Is there a particular reason to think that lock-downs did anything to reduce mortality?  The Swedish Covid-19 death rate is roughly what their annual flu death rate is.  Yes, it is smaller than Denmark's, but then Stockholm, where the vast majority of deaths occured, is a real city, while Copenhagen is a nice town.  Sweden has large nursing facilities, while Denmark and Norway have a much more dispersed elderly population.  And then there is the randomness of small samples. Or take Belarus -- I can't wait to hear how the Belorussians are much better citizens and more "civil" than the Brits, the Americans, or the French....

I am still puzzled by the refusal to admit that the CDC estimates for the flu deaths in 1969 and 1957 are bad, but somehow the state-provided Covid-19 numbers, including all the "probables," whatever that means, are to be trusted?  To me, it just bias confirmation, where those who believed in the models predicting 750,000 deaths in the UK and 2 million deaths in NY, have a really hard time accepting that they were wrong.  Very wrong.

Which leads me to the whole point some are missing, while desperately scrambling on defending that Covid-19 "is not the flu."  Was the shut down of the Western world warranted, based on the evidence?  Clearly, anyone sane can see that the unprecedented crash of the economy, the likely global upheavals and the general fear instilled in society, were not justified by this coronavirus, which is at worst a bit worse than the 2018 flu death toll, and only in some locales, like NY.

Chers.





 

[Sibiriak]

33 minutes ago, Ron Put said:

...but somehow the state-provided Covid-19 numbers, including all the "probables," whatever that means, are to be trusted?  To me, it just bias confirmation,

Sure Ron.   And yet YOU are the one making direct comparisons like this:

Quote

[Ron Put:]  Now let's look at lock-down effects among similar Eastern European countries:

DEATHS PER MILLION UNDER LOCK-DOWN:
Romania:             48
Estonia:                42
Hungary:              41

DEATHS PER MILLION WITHOUT LOCK-DOWN:
Belarus:                13

 

It's great you are so trusting of the statistics coming out of the Lukashenko regime in Belarus.    Confirmation bias?

Of course, if the state-provided Covid-19 statistics are actually all "garbage in,  garbage out",   then what's the point of your making such comparisons and all the similar ones you keep making using  those kind of statistics?

Apparently,  it's "garbage in, garbage out"  only when it suits your ideology-driven argument.    Again,   not very scientific.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Sibiriak

[Sibiriak]

44 minutes ago, Ron Put said:

the unprecedented crash of the economy, the likely global upheavals and the general fear instilled in society, were not justified by this coronavirus

Who in this forum has claimed otherwise?      Not me,  certainly.   I'm just curious who you  think you are arguing with here on that point.  

[Ron Put]

1 hour ago, Sibiriak said:

Who in this forum has claimed otherwise?      Not me,  certainly.   I'm just curious who you  think you are arguing with here on that point.  

LOL on Lukashenko, but I think you might have missed the jest....

As to who has claimed otherwise, you seem to want to have your cake and eat it, too.  In other words, you cheer the nonsense used to justify the lock-downs, while opining strategically that you are not for the lock-downs.  And peppered in between are references to the more grotesque American or Western European reactions, or mocking poor Lukashenko, who is now right up with Soros on Putin's hate list.

But yeah, a few people certainly seem grateful for the lockdowns, some even on this page. They have forgotten that the main justification for following China's model was that "Covid-19 is NOT as contagious as the flu"  and can thus be contained.  Of course, if WHO's Tedros and the lockdown brigade were correct, Italy and NY would be Covid-19 free....

[Ron Put]

And for good measure:

 

How Fear, Groupthink Drove Unnecessary Global Lockdowns
 

Reliance on Faulty Models

In the face of a novel virus threat, China clamped down on its citizens. Academics used faulty information to build faulty models. Leaders relied on these faulty models. Dissenting views were suppressed. The media flamed fears and the world panicked.

That is the story of what may eventually be known as one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time. The collective failure of every Western nation, except one, to question groupthink will surely be studied by economists, doctors, and psychologists for decades to come. ...

Yet we put billions of young healthy people under house arrest, stopped cancer screenings, and sunk ourselves into the worst level of unemployment since the Great Depression. This from a virus that bears a survival rate of 99.99% if you are a healthy individual under 50 years old (1, 2).

New York City reached over a 25% infection rate and yet 99.98% of all people in the city under 45 survived, making it comparable to death rates by normal accidents.

But of course the whole linchpin of the lockdown argument is that it would have been even worse without such a step. Sweden never closed down borders, primary schools, restaurants, or businesses, and never mandated masks, yet 99.998% of all their people under 60 have survived and their hospitals were never overburdened. 

Why did we lock down the majority of the population who were never at significant risk? ...

China concealed the extent of the viral outbreak, which, if you believed its data, led many scientists to believe that 2% to 5% of all infected patients would die. This turned out to be off by a factor of 10, but academic epidemiologists have a history of wildly-off-the-mark doomsday predictions....

 

The March 16 report by Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson is credited (or blamed) with causing the U.K. to lock down and contributing to the domino effect of global lockdowns. The model has since come under intense criticism for being “totally unreliable and a buggy mess.” 

This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2005 predicted 200 million could die from the bird flu. Total deaths over the last 15 years turned out to be 455. This is the same Neil Ferguson who in 2009 predicted that 65,000 people could die in the U.K. from the swine flu. The final number ended up around 392. Now, in 2020, he predicted that 500,000 British would die from coronavirus. 

His  deeply flawed model led the United States to fear over 2 million deaths and was used to justify locking down nearly the entire nation. Dr. Ferguson is a character of Shakespearean drama and tragedy. His March 17 presentation to British elites on the dire need to take action ironically may have infected Boris Johnson and other top British officials, as Mr. Ferguson himself tested positive for COVID-19 two days later. Then in May he resigned in disgrace after he broke his own quarantine rules to meet clandestinely with a married woman.

But I don’t place most of the blame on people like Ferguson. If you are a hammer everything looks like a nail. I blame government leaders for failing to surround themselves with diverse viewpoints and to think critically for themselves....

Politicians claim lockdowns were the cause of fewer deaths

It would be highly embarrassing to force citizens to quarantine themselves only to later admit it was all a colossal blunder, so it is easier for politicians and modelers to claim the lower death rates were based on the lockdowns themselves. It was a success! ...

Political leaders ignored early evidence when it conflicted with their models

There are those who say that we couldn’t have known these outcomes early on, so even if lockdowns were unjustified later they were still necessary early due to lack of information. That is plainly false. Italy’s alarming number of deaths fanned many of the early fears across the world, but by March 17 it was clear that the median age of Italian deaths was over 80 and that not a single person under 30 had died in that country. Furthermore, it was known that 99% of those who died had other existing illnesses.

A much more rational strategy would have been to lock down nursing homes and let young healthy people out to build immunity. Instead we did the opposite, we forced nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients and locked down young people. ...

[BrianA]

Homozygous carriers of the Apo E4 ("Alzheimer's gene") variant have double the risk of severe Covid-19

 

Dementia gene raises risk of severe COVID-19

https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_797679_en.html

[mccoy]

9 hours ago, macaroni said:

The relevance is that excess mortality cannot be ascribed to the concurrent pandemic based on the meer temporal association of the two, as you seemed to be saying.

 

Ah OK, but it is not a mere temporal association, since it comes together with the known diffusion of a novel virus whose mortality in certain age groups is notoriously significant, in relative terms. By now, that's a certain aspect. Besides, we cannot explain such an association with other causes. In the areas where the mortality spikes occurred, there have not been other illnesses, disasters, mass intoxications in the specific age groups which may have caused the excess deaths. So, it makes perfect logical sense to make the leap from association to causation in this instance, given the evidence.

Unless we find alternative associations with the same or greater explanatory power, we cannot defuse the hypothesis of excess mortality spikes in elders caused by the Covid19 infection.

I don't know if you have other associations in mind, I can think about none.

[Matt]

Quote

The final number ended up around 392. Now, in 2020, he predicted that 500,000 British would die from coronavirus. 

And based on the current IFR in the UK (1.45%, based on antibody testing) that number doesn't seem far-fetched at all considering over 30,000 deaths outside of London and ONLY 5% of the population having caught COVID-19.

1 in 12 people with the infection end up in the hospital. And hospitals were not overwhelmed due to the lock down.

He predicted 500,000 if NOTHING were done and we took minimal action against the spread of the virus. The whole country has been on lock down and 2 million at high risk people have been shielded and not left their house at all for many weeks.

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Matt

[Dean Pomerleau]

Troubling survey about Americans' willingness to get the coronavirus vaccine if/when it becomes available:

Twenty percent of Americans anticipate that a COVID-19 vaccine will be available to the public before the end of the year, while 61% expect it during 2021 and only 17% think it will take longer than that.  

If a vaccine against coronavirus becomes available to the public, 49% say they plan to get vaccinated, and 20% say they will not. Another 31% are not sure.  

A 2019 survey conducted for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases   found a similar number, 52%, planned to get vaccinated against the flu that season.1   

Some graphs from the poll:

--Dean

[TomBAvoider]

"Which of the following reasons you would not get a coronavirus vaccine"

Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers. I hate sh|t like this, where the polls ask biased and improperly formulated questions and then with big fanfare announce idiotic results.

Example:

"I don't think vaccines work very well"

Moronic way to formulate this option. What of someone like me - and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one - who looks at specific vaccines effectiveness before making up my mind? If I find that a given vaccine is 99%, or 90% or 80% or thereabouts, then I think that vaccine works pretty well. And if it's something I'm concerned with, I am happy and grateful to take that vaccine. Meanwhile, I generally don't bother with the flu vaccine, because there are many years where the vaccine has abysmal rates of effectiveness - generally between 40%-60% according to the CDC. Some years it's even worse - at which point I do not bother with a vaccine - it seems to me if you can't get a vaccine at least to over 50%, you should re-think how you make vaccines. Why would I not take a 23% effective vaccine? Because the disease is not serious enough where I'm motivated by 23%.

What are the downsides? I happen to think that challenging your immune system too often, constantly asking it to make antibodies puts a stress on the system that's somewhat deleterious. So I prefer to take vaccines only if they are effective, I need them, or the threat is huge - the flu does not qualify for me at 40% or below. Which brushes against another imprecise option:

"I would be concerned about the side effects of the vaccine." Well, yes and no. I'm not concerned about a specific side effect of f.ex. the flu vaccine (or the CV-19, assuming of course there isn't anything that makes one think there's an issue) - what I'm concerned is with a side effect of too many vaccines. Are you concerned with the side effects of a shot of vodka? Yes and no. One shot? No. Too many shots? Yes. Dumb effing question. Again - badly formulated.

Now, given the dangers of the CV-19, it would qualify for me to take the vaccine, even at an abysmal 40% effectiveness, because unlike the flu, the threat is big enough so that even a measly 40% is worth it.

But if you have a different threat assessement, and you don't think the vaccine is going to be any more effective than the flu vaccine, I can see someone not taking it due to it "not working very well". Unfortunately the way the statement is formulated, it may seem as if you think vaccines in general don't work very well, which is of course not the case - but you still think the CV-19 will be no better than the flu vaccine and so you are not going to take it on the grounds of effectiveness. 

The lack of precision in polls like this make me sceptical of the value of these surveys and consequently I think there's not enough info to say these responses are "troubling" - what's troubling is how cr@p the survey is. Anybody can read anything they want to into these silly surveys depending on how silly the survey construction is. GIGA - garbage in, garbage out.

[Todd Allen]

41 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

"Which of the following reasons you would not get a coronavirus vaccine"

Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers. I hate sh|t like this, where the polls ask biased and improperly formulated questions and then with big fanfare announce idiotic results.

They didn't ask about the reason I would most likely skip the vaccine.  It comes too late.  If I've already had the virus I'm not getting vaccinated.  After too many others have had the virus there will also come a point when I lose interest in getting vaccinated.

[TomBAvoider]

Agreed, Todd Allen - I didn't even get into the stupidity of a poll that doesn't take into account other more likely reasons people decide to get/not get vaccinated. They cherry pick questions, design them badly and then think they've divined the public's mind. Disgusting and useless - worse than useless because policymakers often use such polls to craft policy that also subsequently becomes GIGA. 

[Saul]

46 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

What are the downsides? I happen to think that challenging your immune system too often, constantly asking it to make antibodies puts a stress on the system that's somewhat deleterious.

I think exactly the opposite:  "Challenging" your immune system builds your immune system.  An analogy:  Aerobic exercise improves your health.  And strengthening exercise builds your muscles.

  --  Saul

[Mike41]

2 hours ago, Dean Pomerleau said:

Troubling survey about Americans' willingness to get the coronavirus vaccine if/when it becomes available:

Twenty percent of Americans anticipate that a COVID-19 vaccine will be available to the public before the end of the year, while 61% expect it during 2021 and only 17% think it will take longer than that.  

If a vaccine against coronavirus becomes available to the public, 49% say they plan to get vaccinated, and 20% say they will not. Another 31% are not sure.  

A 2019 survey conducted for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases   found a similar number, 52%, planned to get vaccinated against the flu that season.1   

Some graphs from the poll:

--Dean

Ok Dean my ? For you. If one came out in say October or November would you be one of the first in line?

[Dean Pomerleau]

Tom,

I get your rational reticence about taking a less-than-totally effective vaccine. I too sometimes skip the flu vaccine for a similar reason but would definitely take a less-than-perfect cv vaccine. In part I would take it to protect myself since I agree cv is worse than the flu, at least for people over 50. But more importantly, I'd take it because I want to avoid being an asymptomatic/presymptomatic carrier who infects someone who might die from the virus. I also consider it almost a civic duty to contribute in some small way to getting society to herd immunity by getting the vaccine.

I think you are overthinking the thought process that goes into the average person's response to the survey. They aren't nearly as sophisticated as you are. More likely they have a knee jerk reaction against vaccines due to the anti-vax movement ("side-effects") and conspiracy theories about Bill Gates etc. Or perhaps it is as you suggest - they are thinking only about their personal cost/benefit analysis (e.g. "I'm at low risk of a bad outcome from covid-19 so I'm not going to bother to get the vaccine"). 

But regardless of the reason behind the reticence of the survey participants to get the vaccine, the "troubling" I was referring to in my original post was concern over the fact that for a vaccine to really help the most vulnerable in society (for whom direct vaccine are often pretty ineffective) is to have enough other people get the vaccine to reach herd immunity. If a significant fraction of the country declines to get the vaccine, herd immunity won't happen, which would be bad.

--Dean

[Dean Pomerleau]

12 minutes ago, Mike41 said:

Ok Dean my ? For you. If one came out in say October or November would you be one of the first in line?

I will take the vaccine once it has been tested for safety and (reasonable, i.e. > 50%) effectiveness, for reasons I outlined in my last post. But a vaccine that came out in Oct/Nov as you suggest wouldn't have been thoroughly tested. So I probably wouldn't take it in that time frame unless it was part of a clinical trial. In fact, I'd go further. I would volunteer for a clinical trial on safety and effectiveness of a vaccine candidate, or even a challenge trial (as I said before), if it would help accelerate getting the world to a safe and effective vaccine.

--Dean

[Dean Pomerleau]

To my reading this new preprint [1] from Rockefeller University seems less than reassuring about the immunity conferred by a previous infection. From the University's press release on the study:

The majority of the samples they have studied showed poor to modest “neutralizing activity,” indicating a weak antibody response. However, a closer look revealed everyone’s immune system is capable of generating effective antibodies—just not necessarily enough of them. Even when neutralizing antibodies were not present in an individual’s serum in large quantities, researchers could find some rare immune cells that make them.

The good news seems to be that nearly anyone can make neutralizing antibodies, at least in small amounts - so the researchers suggest a vaccine that could trigger the production of a large number of this type of antibody could be effective.

But at the same time these results (i.e. "most convalescent plasmas obtained from individuals who recover from COVID-19 do not contain high levels of neutralizing activity") would seem to call into question how effective the antibodies created as a result of a previous infection would be at preventing a future infection, or for how long such protection might last.

Maybe having just a few memory B cells with the right antibody would be enough to combat the disease upon another infection, once those b cells have multiplied. I'm not sure. And of course it's just a pre-print so should be taken with a grain of salt.

--Dean

---------

[1] Convergent Antibody Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Convalescent Individuals

Davide F. Robbiani, Christian Gaebler, Frauke Muecksch, Julio C. C. Lorenzi, Zijun Wang, Alice Cho, Marianna Agudelo, Christopher O. Barnes, Anna Gazumyan, Shlomo Finkin, Thomas Hagglof, Thiago Y. Oliveira, Charlotte Viant, Arlene Hurley, Hans-Heinrich Hoffmann, Katrina G. Millard, Rhonda G. Kost, Melissa Cipolla, Kristie Gordon, Filippo Bianchini, Spencer T. Chen, Victor Ramos, Roshni Patel, Juan Dizon, Irina Shimeliovich, Pilar Mendoza, Harald Hartweger, Lilian Nogueira, Maggi Pack, Jill Horowitz, Fabian Schmidt, Yiska Weisblum, Eleftherios Michailidis, Alison W. Ashbrook, Eric Waltari, John E. Pak, Kathryn E. Huey-Tubman, Nicholas Koranda, Pauline R. Hoffman, Anthony P. West Jr., Charles M. Rice, Theodora Hatziioannou, Pamela J. Bjorkman, Paul D. Bieniasz, Marina Caskey, Michel C. Nussenzweig

Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 infected millions of people and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Virus entry into cells depends on the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S). Although there is no vaccine, it is likely that antibodies will be essential for protection. However, little is known about the human antibody response to SARS-CoV-21–5. Here we report on 149 COVID-19 convalescent individuals. Plasmas collected an average of 39 days after the onset of symptoms had variable half-maximal neutralizing titers ranging from undetectable in 33% to below 1:1000 in 79%, while only 1% showed titers >1:5000. Antibody cloning revealed expanded clones of RBD-specific memory B cells expressing closely related antibodies in different individuals. Despite low plasma titers, antibodies to three distinct epitopes on RBD neutralized at half-maximal inhibitory concentrations (IC50s) as low as single digit ng/mL. Thus, most convalescent plasmas obtained from individuals who recover from COVID-19 do not contain high levels of neutralizing activity. Nevertheless, rare but recurring RBD-specific antibodies with potent antiviral activity were found in all individuals tested, suggesting that a vaccine designed to elicit such antibodies could be broadly effective.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.092619

[Gordo]

Some interesting video tonight, looks like people are ready to riot in the streets, is it really just about police abuse?  wonder if this escalates from here? : George Floyd Protests Spread: 1000s Block LA Freeway, Minneapolis Ablaze Amid Looting

"Minneapolis Is Burning" - Buildings Torched, Stores Looted, Protests Over George Floyd Intensify

A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau finds

Edited May 28, 2020 by Gordo

[Ron Put]

23 hours ago, Dean Pomerleau said:

Tom,

I get your rational reticence about taking a less-than-totally effective vaccine. I too sometimes skip the flu vaccine for a similar reason but would definitely take a less-than-perfect cv vaccine. ...

Part of the reason why the 2017-2018 flu season was relatively deadly is that the vaccine was considerably less effective than usual.  Still, if I remember, the vast majority of flu deaths are among people who are not vaccinated.

I have missed a flu shot here and there, but I think these are important and it's just stupid not to do them.  They are important both to save individual lives and to nudge the population toward herd immunity. 

I travel, so I get vaccines for everything I can, including TB, yellow fever and Hepatitis A when I first went to Russia :)  Speaking of TB, it is entirely plausible that the lower deaths pattern some are seeing in countries with mandatory TB vaccination holds true.

 

On the other hand, a rushed vaccine which kills even a few would be a PR and legal disaster, and it will feed the anti-vaccination movement (I believe Italy is one of the least vaccinated countries).

Edited May 28, 2020 by Ron Put

[Ron Put]

Miscalculating Risk: Confusing Scary With Dangerous

"... The benefits gained through this fear-based shutdown (if there really are any) have massively increased dangers in the both the short term and the long term. Every day that businesses are shuttered, and people remain unemployed or underemployed, the economic wounds grow more deadly. The loss of wealth is immense, and this will undermine the ability of nations around the world to deal with true dangers for decades to come, maybe forever. We have altered the course of economic growth.

Shutting down the private sector (which is where all wealth is created) is truly dangerous even though many of our leaders suggest we shouldn’t be scared of it. Another round of stimulus is not what we need. Like a Band-Aid on a massive laceration, it may stop a tiny bit of the bleeding, but the wound continues to worsen, feeding greater and more elaborate intervention. Moreover, we are putting huge financial burdens on future generations because we are scared about something that the data reveal as far less dangerous than many other things in life.

A shutdown may slow the spread of a virus, but it can’t stop it. A vaccine may cure us. But in the meantime, we have entered a new era, one in which fear trumps danger and near-term risk creates long-term problems. It appears many people have come to this realization as the data builds. Hopefully, this will go down in history as a mistake that we will never repeat. ..." 

[Mike41]

17 hours ago, Gordo said:

Some interesting video tonight, looks like people are ready to riot in the streets, is it really just about police abuse?  wonder if this escalates from here? : George Floyd Protests Spread: 1000s Block LA Freeway, Minneapolis Ablaze Amid Looting

"Minneapolis Is Burning" - Buildings Torched, Stores Looted, Protests Over George Floyd Intensify

A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau finds

What’s this got to do with this thread??

[TomBAvoider]

1 hour ago, Mike41 said:

What’s this got to do with this thread??

The way I understood Gordo's post, is from this part:

Some interesting video tonight, looks like people are ready to riot in the streets, is it really just about police abuse?

Implying that perhaps the reason for those events are not that they're protests against police abuse but driven by people being in lockdown too long and stir-crazy. Therefore the connection to this thread is that COVID-19---------->LOCKDOWN----------->Lockdown causes stir-crazy riots.

Personally, I don't think this is a factor, it seems to me, it really is about police brutality, given how graphic and in-your-face that police-caused death was. At some point, people's outrage boils over - we've had many such and never needed the lockdown to be a factor... I lived through the LA riots of 1992, no lockdown was needed to get those going. Recently we had the 2014 Ferguson riots and no lockdown. What all these had in common was a very graphic situtation and the feeling that the LEOs involved faced no consequences. When people feel like there is no recourse in the law and the example is particularly blatant and galling, well, they tend to riot, no lockdown needed as a factor. YMMV, just my opinion.

[Ron Put]

3 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

... When people feel like there is no recourse in the law ...

Actually, in a liberal democracy like the US, there is recourse in the law, with not only the local police force investigating, but also the Feds.  Which is how the law works in all normal countries.

The actively promoted tribalism in the US results in social and regular media hysteria waves, with opportunists ("Leaders") jumping in, all screaming for instant
'justice" in the public forum, more often than not based on scant information.  It's the social media equivalent to lynching.

We have entered a new era of populism and these are historically dangerous.  The media hysteria that drove Covid-19 drives other causes, too.  With no school, no jobs and real or perceived grievances exploding in social media bubbles and the mainstream media acting as an extension of Twitter and amplifying the most clickbait worthy and inflaming tidbits, we are in for an interesting summer.  And there is a really contentious election coming in the US, with no real middle left.