Bad News Thread

I should clarify, I'm not sure the virus itself is becoming less deadly, but I think we are way better at treating it.
If I understand it correctly, IFR is estimated. The denominator is the number of infections - estimated somehow from actual tested infections and some other method to estimate untested infections. Ignoring changes due to different estimates of untested infections, some of the drop could be due to a smaller proportion of the high risk people catching it due to efforts to protect them and those in lower risk groups doing little to protect themselves. As you say, better treatment definitely appears to be improving IFR as well. Some of it could also be that our behavior and/or “seasonality” lowered the initial viral load obtained by those infected. There is evidence that the initial load is directly related to the severity of the illness. If that’s the case, we may see IFR go up this winter - or, not drop as much as it would if we were in our summer.
 
Close but not quite. Read the article I posted. Who is out of their league again?
Your article is a great description of what natural selection means in a viral context.

You'll have to find one of my many other mistakes if you want to call me out of my league.
 
It appears that you can't help yourself.

BTW, in the future, all lawyer jokes will be illustrated with the picture of Rudy with his hair dye running down his face.

I’m fairly sure it was mascara, used as hair dye to touch up the grey, but either way... funny.
 
Your article is a great description of what natural selection means in a viral context.

You'll have to find one of my many other mistakes if you want to call me out of my league.

as usual you have only a partial understanding. You got right that the mechanism in action is natural selection in a viral context. You didn’t describe the mechanism correctly. And no I’m not going to fall for another one of your transparent rhetorical tricks and get into interpreting what the author meant or annotating the author. Folks can read the article and decide themselves.
 
It appears that you can't help yourself.

BTW, in the future, all lawyer jokes will be illustrated with the picture of Rudy with his hair dye running down his face.

Can we substitute images of politicians, who seem to be disproportionately attorneys... just like Rudy?
 
If I understand it correctly, IFR is estimated. The denominator is the number of infections - estimated somehow from actual tested infections and some other method to estimate untested infections. Ignoring changes due to different estimates of untested infections, some of the drop could be due to a smaller proportion of the high risk people catching it due to efforts to protect them and those in lower risk groups doing little to protect themselves. As you say, better treatment definitely appears to be improving IFR as well. Some of it could also be that our behavior and/or “seasonality” lowered the initial viral load obtained by those infected. There is evidence that the initial load is directly related to the severity of the illness. If that’s the case, we may see IFR go up this winter - or, not drop as much as it would if we were in our summer.

you are right. It might go up. We don’t know. But if it does it probably won’t be by much and it might also just stop falling or slow it’s fall. One way the check is to see what happened in Switzerland. Don’t have those figures but they are pretty much on the downslope and without massive government intervention...would be a possible approximate or comp of the worst case...what happened there?
 
The mechanism is natural selection. Viruses compete with each other, too.

Just posting words doesn't explain the mechanism very well. Read the article Grace posted -- it has a more thorough explanation and also points out that there is currently no evidence that it is happening.

If I were looking for a rosy picture along the "natural selection" line, I would wish for a variety of the virus that doesn't make very many people very sick, but still spreads rapidly because many people are resistant to following simple protocols, and -- here's the kicker -- establishes immunity to the killer strains. In the history of vaccinations, Jenner noted that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox (a mild disease in both cows and humans that is usually manifested only in a few runnin sores that heal quickly) were generally immune to smallpox. He then deliberately injected the pus from cowpox sores into willing subjects and almost none of them caught smallpox.
 
Someone should have thought about this logo a bit more.

On the other hand if dance studios use it, maybe they can open up based on the science.

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And then you have this. More science.

"On multiple occasions during a Thursday press conference announcing the framework for impending stay-at-home orders across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom mostly ducked a series of questions from reporters about whether state officials have hard evidence that new business closures will actually slow the spread of the coronavirus, which is surging in the state."


"After not citing any data or speaking to whether state officials would share new data going forward, Newsom turned it over to Ghaly, who echoed Newsom on restricting mixing before addressing the industry-specific concerns, albeit without any hard data on specific industries such as hair salons."

 
So this what you get when you have guys like @dad4 running the show. In this case the mayor of LA.

At some point enough is enough.

Takeout should be good enough right @dad4?

The dynamics of this are that the film and television studios threatened to move all their production to Florida. Disney in particular has been upset because of the closure of Disneyland and still has facilities that could be turn keyed in Florida. The state let them resume production because they agreed to test crew weekly. Also they figured people would be upset if they have to stay home and the studios were unable to finish things like crown or mandalorian (and if they allow post it’s hard to draw a line around production) and people had nothing new to watch for months. The union contracts require that you feed crew on set. So, as usually happens, through a series of unintended consequences the so-called experts failed to foresee you get this situation. It’s going to happen again with the vaccine— California has placed production crews and actors in a higher vaccination tier than regular folks (my sons godfather, who is a PD, has already been told it will be mandated by his company). His wife is a teacher. They were arguing the other night that he will get the vaccine before she but I don’t know if that’s in fact true.

And then you have this. More science.

"On multiple occasions during a Thursday press conference announcing the framework for impending stay-at-home orders across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom mostly ducked a series of questions from reporters about whether state officials have hard evidence that new business closures will actually slow the spread of the coronavirus, which is surging in the state."


"After not citing any data or speaking to whether state officials would share new data going forward, Newsom turned it over to Ghaly, who echoed Newsom on restricting mixing before addressing the industry-specific concerns, albeit without any hard data on specific industries such as hair salons."


There’s a lawsuit, I think but not sure out of Kentucky, alleging the state has no scientific basis to close the schools. The state is arguing the test in non religious cases fir these restrictions under state constitutions, most of which guarantee a right to free in person education, should be whether the state has a rational basis to restrict education. The plaintiffs argue since the science at least with respect to elementary schools is clear and therefore there is no rational basis. Iihc the Supreme Court of the us slated to hear the case which might clarify how far states can go in non first amendment circumstances and what they need to do to justify the policy.
 
Kentucky case is a religious schools case. It is apparently arguing both: state cannot restrict religious instruction and no rational basis for religious schools. In California newsom already signed a settlement with religious schools but some counties (notably la) are keeping them shut anyway
 
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