greg1647545532

UA just announced its plan, tied to the health advisory levels as expected. Levels 1/2 is business as usual except they'll throw some bottles of hand sanitizer around, level 3 is split 50/50, level 4 is full time distance learning. There's also going to be an opt-in online academy.

By tail effects I assume you mean rate of hospitalizations and deaths, in which case yes, in a sense, but we're gonna get as many of those as we're gonna get regardless of our testing rate. Any disease capable of overwhelming our health care system is bad, so from a public health perspective a "better" rate of hospitalizations doesn't mean much, better to have an accurate picture of who's infected so they can limit the spread. But from an individual perspective for those personally concerned, anything that tells us the personal risk is lower than previously thought is good news. But I'm guessing anyone buying into a conspiracy theory that cases are overstated because of whatever hijinks are going on at testing centers is NOT taking away a message that, as you suggest, overcounting cases means the disease is actually more deadly/dangerous than we thought. I'm guessing that's not the case at all. Nobody is saying "my friend was reported as positive even though she never took the test, I'd better put on a mask stat because those tail effects must be wicked!" Also this person is from Boston apparently.

I think if people are showing up to get tested and then leaving because the lines are too long, the takeaway shouldn't be that cases are being OVER counted. That's a symptom of a serious deficiency in our testing infrastructure and the obvious implication is that cases are being UNDER counted. But I'm taking all of these second hand anecdotes with all the seriousness they demand.

Cool story.

Yeah but those are Arabic numerals so you can't trust them.

Crossing my fingers over here for you.

I wonder if those vacationers weren't even hurt and they just went to the hospital because the media.

Greg "oh shit maybe I should start listening to the scientists" Abbott today: For reference, in late May Texas was seeing about 1000 new cases a day. It's now 10 times that, and I'm already seeing reports that hospitals are turning away patients. Same with Phoenix and parts of Florida. August and September are going to make April and May look like the good ol' days

I mean who are you gonna trust, the mainstream liberal gun review media or this goddamn patriot who loves the Constitution. Have you even read the Constitution? Rock flag and eagle, man. Rock flag and eagle.

I donated blood on Monday, for a limited time the Red Cross is doing free antibody testing on all blood donations. Mine came back negative. I understand the current limitations of antibody testing and I'm not surprised by the result given I was sick in late January, but it's a data point a least.

Does anyone plan on removing the plates from their DDs? I've never had a front plate on the Miata but my Sedona and CMax I can't see bothering with removing them and plugging the holes.

Some information about how treatments have improved over the last 4 months, which goes a long way to explain why the surge of cases is not associated with a surge in deaths.

You should get your recommendations from public health experts, not journalists.

It's just another one of the dumbest things to have become politicized. "What if the science is wrong and I end up wearing this mask for nothing!" has now become "Regardless of the science, if I wear this mask my friends will call me a libtard cuck!" I mean, *I* can certainly handle being call a libtard cuck, but I understand peer pressure is a bitch. I just don't know why people feel the need to call people erring on the side of the CDC being correct libtard cucks... probably the media's fault (<-- that's a joke).

Like Reagan said, "Trust, but verify."

Hey, I get it, there's a lot of hucksters and con-men out there. It's a confusing space to navigate. You'll notice that in the last few pages, my sources have been: A direct link to CDC guidance A direct link to a hospital group's own data on ICU capacity An analysis by myself of testing data pulled directly from the Texas department of of health The direct congressional testimony of Dr. Fauci, the nation's premier expert on communicable diseases, which I also watched live. Other than the last one being hosted by the Beeb, there is 0 "media" involved in any of that. I go out of my way to view and link direct, primary sources when available. In any case, there are very few restrictions left in this country, so "the politicians" have basically relegated themselves to supporting their public health systems. That's why when you say, "I think the politicians are listening to the media," I don't think it's too much to ask, Which politicians? Which actions do you think are driven by the media? I think a bunch of politicians lifted restrictions prematurely due to public demand, but that was hardly the media -- people were literally protesting with guns. Trump was literally tweeting "liberate <states>". My thought, and I don't mean to be accusatory, is that this is what Stephen Colbert used to call "truthiness" -- you may not have any actual examples of politicians listening to the media, you just have this general notion that "the media" guides public policy, because the media is bad, and it *feels* true to you, even though you can't articulate any actual examples. But maybe I'm looking at the world wrong, maybe it's because I don't listen to talk radio or listen to pundits blither endlessly.

Humor me, I don't get out much.

Examples?

That's all well and good until you have appendicitis and can't get into a hospital because it's overrun with covid patients.

Dr. Fauci is not a politician. If he says this surge of infections is concerning, I see no reason not to take that at face value. You wanna call Fauci and tell him maybe it's not disturbing because he didn't think to check if the surge is just the result of increased testing? He'd probably be happy to get such expert advice.

This happened all the time at the base hobby shops. Snap a bolt on your suspension while installing coilovers and you end up getting raped on storage fees while you wait to have another chance to work on it. I just wanna know why everything is in Delaware. Might as well be a different time zone.

10k at the start was when testing was extremely limited, I don't think you need to go back that far to get a good baseline. Cases were pretty steady at 20-25k tests per day, they've increased to *maybe* 30k tests per day and daily cases have more than doubled. See my above post -- sure, maybe there are other factors, but what's more likely -- that the experts have neglected to take these things that you've said into account, or that they're right? I mean, Ohio seems to be doing much better, so I'd say if they stopped just being dumbasses they might be fine.

I think more to the point... <climbs up on high horse> People who study communicable diseases are experts in examining these sorts of numbers. They're looking at the numbers and saying, "Hey, there's a spike in cases, the disease is spreading again." Now, there's a null hypothesis here -- maybe there aren't any more sick people than there were before, maybe we're just finding them because we're testing more! But this is such an *obvious* possibility that *of course* the experts who have looked at communicable diseases for years or decades have considered it. And if they're saying that's not the reason for the spike, to doubt them is to call them incompetent. This is the sort of head smacking moment I just don't understand. It's like when I was a kid and I couldn't figure out auto racing -- "If some of the cars are going faster than others, then why don't the slower cars just push down the gas pedal more!?" I seriously thought that, because all I knew was that speed was tied directly to gas pedals. Why didn't these professional auto racers consider this bone-headedly simple solution to their problems!? People (cough *Trump* cough) are so desperate to be *right*, though, that when presented with contrary data they MUST find an alternate explanation -- either the experts ARE incompetent, or worse, they're on the take! It's all a conspiracy! Sometimes an expert opinion is just, you know, the correct answer. So it boggles my mind that so much hay is being made about "well it's just because we're testing more!" as if nobody has thought to check that. <climbs down off high horse>

I'm not going to bother graphing this but here's daily test numbers (averaged over 7 for smoothing) for the last 30 days in Texas, from the Texas dept of state health services website: 27583 26152 28329 27374 27080 27573 26265 26734 26800 24862 27001 26422 25963 23452 26058 27495 26396 28289 27883 27883 31999 29707 30411 31484 30235 29542 31212 35311 35904 38384 There's a small increase in the last week or so but it certainly doesn't account for the exponential spike in cases. Keep in mind that testing is still limited, nobody is going around testing random people without symptoms -- tests are reserved for hospital workers, first responders, congregate living facilities and people presenting symptoms in hospitals. The increase in testing over the last week is probably caused by more people presenting with COVID symptoms are being exposed to other COVID positive people -- in other words, the increase in testing is caused by the spike in infections, not the other way around.