Bad News Thread

dad4 said:
Experts? That was you. You keep putting words in other people's mouths, then claiming they were wrong.
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Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician who is head of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said he was “mortified and disgusted” by the Texas move, which he called “completely reckless.”
 
dad4 said:
Experts? That was you. You keep putting words in other people's mouths, then claiming they were wrong.
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The trumpy, QAnon types are busy little trolls cooking up all kinds of outrage to react to. Some people just like drama. So much so they’ll fabricate their own.
 
dad4 said:
My comment about Osterholm trying to scare people was NOT praise. His comments discredit the entire field for nothing more than a short term gain.

That said, you wouldn’t like honest leadership on this. You want to protect the vulnerable while keeping things open. The very first thing an honest leader would have done is say that he cannot do both. Within a month he’d be as popular as Walter Mondale.
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You are wrong. I have no illusions about the compromises that would have to be made. Honesty and integrity would go a long way for me. If we continue to put people in leadership positions and keep them there when they demonstrate that they lack honesty and integrity, we get what we deserve.
 
kickingandscreaming said:
8 weeks into the 6-14 week range for Osterholm's Armageddon ("OA"). Cases are rising overall - driven by the northeast and upper midwest. Hospitalizations are flat with deaths still decreasing, but showing some flattening. Not great news overall, but definitely not anything close to OA yet. We have 6 more weeks to see if he knew what he was talking about and see if he should take the advice @dad4 and realize this is biology and not physics so he should stay out of the prediction business.

“The fact is that the surge that is likely to occur with this new variant from England is going to happen in the next six to 14 weeks. And, if we see that happen, which my 45 years in the trenches tell me we will, we are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country,” Osterholm said.

NYTimes Vaccine tracker has changed and appears to exclude certain states now. CDC has a nice summary I found that I actually prefer for an overall perspective. Looks like we'll be at over 30% with at least one dose by the end of March. The US is averaging over 3 million shots/day over the last 5 days. J&J is getting into the mix more now as well. It's good to see over 72% of the population over 65 is vaccinated already.

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.
covid.cdc.gov

View attachment 10487
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Over 9 weeks in - less than 5 weeks for Osterholm's (he's a famous, well-respected epidemiologist who has given counsel to our president) prediction. Fortunately for everyone, it's not looking good for him.

1617717797445.png
 
dad4 said:
Experts? That was you. You keep putting words in other people's mouths, then claiming they were wrong.
Click to expand...
Here are a few examples of both experts, leaders and pundits all telling people to be afraid...be very afraid of TX re-opening.

So who is peddling disinformation and fear?

The very same people saying lockdowns and masks work. Hint they don't.

  • California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”
  • Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”
  • CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”
  • Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”
  • There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”
  • Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”
  • James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”
  • Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.”
  • Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”
  • Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”
  • Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”
  • Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”
  • Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”
  • Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”
  • The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”
  • Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”
  • The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”
  • @dad4 thought it was a terrible idea to open up.
 
Hüsker Dü said:
The trumpy, QAnon types are busy little trolls cooking up all kinds of outrage to react to. Some people just like drama. So much so they’ll fabricate their own.
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Actually if you look at my post above with quotes from "experts", politicians and pundits, you will see who are cooking up outrage. Are you saying those people I quoted are QAnon types? Or do we just refer to trolling from the left as the tin hat brigade? What is your rank in that brigade?
 
dad4 said:
Epidemiology is all about predictions. Osterholm made a bad one. Other people made good predictions.

The other issue is behavior. Even with the UK variant, we should be seeing declining cases. There is no good reason we should have increasing cases and a 30% vaccination rate.

That’s why I predicted that CA would hover at the red/purple boundary. Whenever cases began to get low, we’d open restaurants and our dinners would nudge cases back up. Which we did. The state is currently at 7 daily cases per 100K, and level.

Had we been willing to keep doing what we did in January/February, cases would still be dropping by 50% every 2 weeks. We’d be at about 700 cases per day statewide, and ready to think about how to play whack-a-mole like South Korea.

But, apparently we like restaurants, bars, and gyms more than we hate covid. So covid gets to hang out with us a few months more. Hope the tiramisu was good.
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Virus's have always hung out with us silly. But you smart people don't do history.
 
Desert Hound said:
I posted a long list of experts claiming this would be a disaster. Then the list had politicians saying the same thing.

You also were not happy.
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Certainly. Revoking the mask mandate changes the behavior of perhaps 10% of people, increasing transmission relative to what it would have been. That is a similar size change to a smaller percentage of vaccinations.

Desert Hound said:
Here are a few examples of both experts, leaders and pundits all telling people to be afraid...be very afraid of TX re-opening.

So who is peddling disinformation and fear?

The very same people saying lockdowns and masks work. Hint they don't.

  • California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”
  • Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”
  • CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”
  • Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”
  • There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”
  • Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”
  • James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”
  • Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.”
  • Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”
  • Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”
  • Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”
  • Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”
  • Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”
  • Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”
  • The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”
  • Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”
  • The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”
  • @dad4 thought it was a terrible idea to open up.
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And none of those comments says what you accuse them of saying: that ending the mask mandate would definitely lead to a large spike in cases.

FL and TX do have higher case rates than any of their neighbors. I don’t really see this as vindication of their policies.

What you are seeing today is more subtle: Our progress has been stalled. In February, we were seeing daily case rates cut in half every 2-4 weeks. Now, we are now seeing cases roughly flat. States with more extreme policy swings (Michigan, New York) are seeing worse.
 
dad4 said:
And none of those comments says what you accuse them of saying: that ending the mask mandate would definitely lead to a large spike in cases.
Click to expand...
Really?

Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.
or
Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”
or
The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained.

Those are just a couple.


dad4 said:
FL and TX do have higher case rates than any of their neighbors. I don’t really see this as vindication of their policies.
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Yeah you still think CA did it the right way. So of course you don't see a non rise in cases most recently or their policy over the past year as any kind of vindication.

I do.

The vast majority of kids could not attend classes in CA. TX and FL had kids in class all year. I count that as a vindication of them getting it right.

CA closed biz and hurt biz owners and employees. TX and FL kept theirs open. Biz stayed afloat and employees were able to work. In the real world that is called vindication.

And it goes on.

As usual you sit and stare at a model...don't look at real world data...and do no cost benefit analysis of what your preferred policies incur.

That is why you cannot see that TX/FL did it the right way and CA and your way of thinking was completely wrong.
 
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