This pandemic has been educational, both in the sense of life lessons and armchair virology. We all had to learn things about epidemiology that frankly I think most would have preferred to go without...personally I don't think I had ever read a medical white paper before March 2020.
A score later and the big takeaway for me is that medicine is about building a body of evidence and making inferences, versus specific knowledge. Lots of studies out there are contraindicative - in part because it's a messy world & data are imperfect. Flip side is people, as a whole, don't understand nuance and public policy has to speak to the lowest common denominator.
So, with that all said, a policy review article written by a Chinese post-doctoral student in Hong Kong who compiled the bottom-line findings of other studies, some of which report small sample size and lack of adherence to protocols, and which found hand washing to be statistically insignificant at preventing disease is perfectly fine as a read-through, but others might beg to differ. Not sure it would qualify as CDC-endorsed, but educational read all the same.
Yeah, they'll learn some lessons and receive zero consequences for the ****ty decisions they made.
The CDC has recommended not to eat raw cookie dough. If those introverted science nerds want to not take any risks or enjoyment in life, fine, millions of Americans have ignored that advice and been ok. It's too paternalistic.
I do question my medical providers. A lot of doctors have the same elitist attitude you have.
When you ask questions, they are forced to have to think and can at the very least refer you to another expert or doctor.
This has happened to me a few times in my life. A dr. Told me something "was just stress related" and the specialist told me it was just inflammation - something physical and not mental. The Dr. just gave me some BS prescription and that was it.
If I never "pushed" the doctor and questioned him, I would've never seen the specialist.
I simply don't understand why CDC is being discredited
The CDC discredited themselves every chance they got. Open your eyes and try some critical thinking. It's at the point that if the CDC announced the sky was blue I would look up just to make sure.
Therein lies the issue - every state did their own thing.
When the pandemic ends and the analysis has concluded years from now, it'll be interesting to see what truly worked to help inform public health guidance and messaging for the next pandemic. Like I said in an earlier reply, I hope there isn't another one. And if there is, I hope it's detected and contained at the outset.
None of the "mitigation" worked.
Los Angeles wasn't hit early like New York. They had time to implement policies. LA tried every trick in the book, including one of the longest, strictest mask mandates and one of the highest rates of compliance in the country. This is what happened:
If you lived your life based on every single doctor or scientists recommendation, you'd cease to live. At some point you need to take information at hand, and do what you feel is best. And let others do the same even if they make different decisions with that same information
For example. Wearing a mask at all times in public doesn't make too much sense to me. Me wearing a mask in areas like heb, or for 22 seconds at a restaurant. For people that avoid elderly and can decently social distance, this is entirely useless and not worth the drastic cultural change we are undergoing. I can understand why so many do it at the height of the pandemic. But as people are getting vaccinated and numbers are going down? It doesn't seem as necessary, because again, 95% of the way the public used them is completely useless, meanwhile that 12 person house party, or family gathering is where the real spread happens
If anything I have to wonder if the mask mandates coincided with more people not wanting to go out, be it out of fear, not wanting to wear masks, whatever. Or just more aware of how serious they are. All those can be factors.
Now. If I'm visiting my grandmother or someone else's grandmother in an enclosed setting for an extended period of time? I'd absolutely wear a fitted n95 mask and even inquire about any face shield in the area for further protection . But having to wear one at a restaurant for a few second when everyone going there has assumed the risk? Nah. That s*** needed to go away 6 months ago
I simply don't understand why CDC is being discredited . Before we entered a polarizing climate, CDC had always been regarded as global premier institution. In fact, it still is. There are career scientists there who are at the top of their fields who are devoted to their research to ultimately improve outcomes and save lives.
If there was an outbreak of Ebola or some other public health issue, the global medical and scientific community looked to the CDC. Even among many people here in the US, the CDC is considered a crown jewel.
So I don't get the continual berating and questioning of their experts as if they had some ulterior motive.
I wouldn't question the findings of let's say, a civil engineering society, on how to best build homes to withstand hurricane winds along the Texas coast. Sure I'd probably have some questions. But I'm not going to constantly look for information that refutes the engineering society's guidance.
When the CDC director testifies that masks are more effective than a vaccine and presents that as fact, that strains credulity past the breaking point.
The CDC quote was from September and clearly states "if I didn't illicit an immune response, a mask would be more effective." This was said before we had vaccine results and assumed the best we'd see was a ~50% effective vaccine.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Using that study to "prove" masks don't work is disingenuous at best. One of the authors of the paper has said as such.
Most health experts agree widespread masking, hygiene, distance helps slow the spread. Is it 100% effective, of course not.
This forum is exhausting.
And you're right, this forum is exhausting. COVIDians just can't grasp how others are able to see the constant moving of the goal posts by "experts" who continue to be proven wrong, how states with strict lockdowns haven't been any better than states with no mandates, and how the narrative on COVID changed the moment Biden was sworn in.
The biggest issue you guys have is the inability to understand how people have moved on from March 2020 mindset to March 2021 mindset and just aren't afraid of it like you are. We want to live our lives and understand this will be with us forever, we can't remove all risk in life, and death will never be cured. If you want to strap on a face condom before checking your mail, by all means, do it. But don't expect others to have the same irrational fear you do. 2 weeks to flatten the curve turned into a year to prevent a single positive test. Eff that noise.
As for saying I hope we are better prepared to contain it at the onset again?
It's hard when you've cried wolf so much with this one. It's going to be even harder to get that same portion of the population on board with locking down the way it would take to do such a thing, and to do it indefinitely not knowing is this going to be 2 weeks? Or a year and a half.
I mean they can have the media scare you about a new flu, or new coronavirus circulating. But to what extent? Are we talking giving up another year of our life to contain it so save 20k lives? 500k? Is it the Spanish flu of 1918 all over again, or just another year where 40-80k die? As sad as it is, you just can't have 330 million give up life as they know it for anything other than the Black Plague again.
It's going to be really really difficult to contain a pandemic in the US, unless that pandemic shows to be killing 20% of the population at random. Ie, Enough to scare everyone.
Therein lies the issue - every state did their own thing.
When the pandemic ends and the analysis has concluded years from now, it'll be interesting to see what truly worked to help inform public health guidance and messaging for the next pandemic. Like I said in an earlier reply, I hope there isn't another one. And if there is, I hope it's detected and contained at the outset.
If one state's actions led to the destruction of thousands of small businesses, increases in drug use, suicide and unemployment, and an unmeasurable negative impact on children who have been pointlessly held out of school for a year, and another state took none of those actions but had virtually the same results, who in their right mind would even consider the first option? And more importantly, why, other than political grandstanding, does the first option even still exist? There is no debate anymore, or at least there shouldn't be.
As some of you question experts, I have to wonder if you constantly question and challenge the medical opinion of your healthcare providers.
Example - you're at risk of heart disease. You're 40. It runs in your family. The healthcare provider run labs and detects elevated LDL cholesterol. Provider tells you given your family history of heart disease and your high cholesterol, you're advised to eat healthy, cut back on alcohol etc.
Do you constantly question them about it? Are you asking for the studies that show 40-somethings are having heart attacks? Are you going to another healthcare provider for a second opinion?
Or are you simply, "Thanks doc. But life is too short. I'm going to eat what I want and if I have a heart attack, so be it?
I do not blindly accept what is recommended without at least understanding from a lay perspective what the benefits and risks are. Getting second opinions is very important, as there are typically multiple courses of treatment, especially for serious illness.
I have a friend who didn't push back enough when her daughter who had a heart defect was treated by one physician with the wrong set of drugs. Her daughter died.
Look no further than Doc Rev's thread pinned at the top - many docs weren't recommending what he did to treat covid. Stop at the first doc or get a second opinion? Doctors are as fallible as other humans.
What medical care needs ( and please, it's "medical" care. My healthcare is a thousand decisions I make every day. Medical care is something I occasionally need to purchase.) is for the patients to get off their knees and the providers to come down off their pedestal.
Diana has SMA which is a rare disease. Unless we are seeing a specialist in that one disease, we always know a ton more about it than any medical care provider does. Always ask, always question, and when appropriate - doubt.
Trust is the smallest and least important component.
As some of you question experts, I have to wonder if you constantly question and challenge the medical opinion of your healthcare providers.
Example - you're at risk of heart disease. You're 40. It runs in your family. The healthcare provider run labs and detects elevated LDL cholesterol. Provider tells you given your family history of heart disease and your high cholesterol, you're advised to eat healthy, cut back on alcohol etc.
Do you constantly question them about it? Are you asking for the studies that show 40-somethings are having heart attacks? Are you going to another healthcare provider for a second opinion?
Or are you simply, "Thanks doc. But life is too short. I'm going to eat what I want and if I have a heart attack, so be it?
My wife is a doc. I've learned not to question her. What i'm questioning her are the models some of the administrators were using showing hospitals at 4000% capacity (exaggerating) at the beginning of this. Those models were based on faulty data and run by PhD's (not MDs) and were accepted as fact by politicians. And frankly they caused a lot of this panic. That's what I'm most angry about. No one challenged those.
I think the physicians in the field have done amazing work with this. Save for the few that have an obvious agenda.
As some of you question experts, I have to wonder if you constantly question and challenge the medical opinion of your healthcare providers.
Example - you're at risk of heart disease. You're 40. It runs in your family. The healthcare provider run labs and detects elevated LDL cholesterol. Provider tells you given your family history of heart disease and your high cholesterol, you're advised to eat healthy, cut back on alcohol etc.
Do you constantly question them about it? Are you asking for the studies that show 40-somethings are having heart attacks? Are you going to another healthcare provider for a second opinion?
Or are you simply, "Thanks doc. But life is too short. I'm going to eat what I want and if I have a heart attack, so be it?
I work in Network Security for schools. I make hundreds upon hundreds recommendations to schools on things they should be locking down.
Some schools ignore me because they're lazy. Some ignore me because they don't want the hassle of making the changes and then fighting their administration over more strict security practices.
Some schools need certain apps open and things hosted in the cloud that make their lives more enjoyable and easier.
I'm an expert in the field, but plenty of schools that your kids attend take some of my advice and ignore some of it. They have to make a balance of what works best to still have a functional network that balances security, speed, and accessibility of the web and its applications.
My professional opinion is to just not have internet at schools. But that's ridiculous. So is listening to an expert that is only focused on a single thing and saying we have to apply their advice to all facets of life.
As some of you question experts, I have to wonder if you constantly question and challenge the medical opinion of your healthcare providers.
Example - you're at risk of heart disease. You're 40. It runs in your family. The healthcare provider run labs and detects elevated LDL cholesterol. Provider tells you given your family history of heart disease and your high cholesterol, you're advised to eat healthy, cut back on alcohol etc.
Do you constantly question them about it? Are you asking for the studies that show 40-somethings are having heart attacks? Are you going to another healthcare provider for a second opinion?
Or are you simply, "Thanks doc. But life is too short. I'm going to eat what I want and if I have a heart attack, so be it?
My wife is a doc. I've learned not to question her. What i'm questioning her are the models some of the administrators were using showing hospitals at 4000% capacity (exaggerating) at the beginning of this. Those models were based on faulty data and run by PhD's (not MDs) and were accepted as fact by politicians. And frankly they caused a lot of this panic. That's what I'm most angry about. No one challenged those.
I think the physicians in the field have done amazing work with this. Save for the few that have an obvious agenda.
Well said. Always challenge statisticians. It's a not negative thing, they always have to work with variables and make assumptions. Challenging those to better understand goes a long way into understanding what decision to make. I work with them everyday and what they do is helpful.
But at the same time I don't always go with what they predict as they may have faulty assumptions or just frankly they themselves don't have a high degree of confidence. That's called heathy dialogue, which we have seem as a society forgotten.
As some of you question experts, I have to wonder if you constantly question and challenge the medical opinion of your healthcare providers.
Example - you're at risk of heart disease. You're 40. It runs in your family. The healthcare provider run labs and detects elevated LDL cholesterol. Provider tells you given your family history of heart disease and your high cholesterol, you're advised to eat healthy, cut back on alcohol etc.
Do you constantly question them about it? Are you asking for the studies that show 40-somethings are having heart attacks? Are you going to another healthcare provider for a second opinion?
Or are you simply, "Thanks doc. But life is too short. I'm going to eat what I want and if I have a heart attack, so be it?
It's called a 2nd opinion. People get them all the time. Plus, being an avid barbell strength trainer, doctors misinform their patients all the time about "dangers" of squats and deadlifts and to just not do them when we in the industry see all the time the actual benefits of just doing the exercise correctly. It become a rampant issue of blaming the exercise and not the actual person who did the exercise incorrectly which was the actual problem and further, true exerts know that in the majority of cases of back issues, properly administered squats and deadlifts, prescribed progressively over time to at times very heavy weight by the patient, rehabilitates the person better than anything else. Honestly, if I had a question about pain, injury or some other issue, I'd avoid asking my doctor and instead ask a very experienced weight lifting coach. 9.9 times out of 10 the issue is something that can be easily worked around and fixed while the trainee continues to train yet a doctor will tell them to stop and rest until the pain goes away. So there's an example that should show you that "experts" aren't always that and they can be and many times are wrong.
And of course they should show evidence on something that will become or is a policy mandated by government. Once it goes to that level it becomes something that needs to have evidence and be checked. It's part of the principles we founded our nation on. Ever heard of "checks and balances". It's there to protect us all. Damn right they need to show us and even in their own profession, they must site and give evidence of studies. Scientists don't just write a paper proposing a theory and the rest of the scientific community just says, hey "Bob is an expert, so let's believe him". That not how it works.
What an incredibly stupid and honestly, irresponsible argument! First, the vaccine is not 75% but for almost everyone 95% effective against a mild illness and just under 100% effective against severe illness and death. 75%? Wow. 2nd, who cares about 18-25 year olds? They are not going to hospitals very often b/c of Covid.
I have only listened to this one clip and didn't here his whole testimony. For that I give him the benefit of the doubt. But from this alone, he seems more concerned with just limiting the spread and not whether that spread would at all threaten to overrun hospitals. For the record, I am not for a mandate just to limit spread. If that were the case than we might as well keep masking and social distancing forever. B/c, you know, germs. I am only in favor of limits and mandates IF there were a serious threat to hospitals, nothing more. As we all should be in regards to policy we all have to live with. Hey, individuals are totally allowed to do what they want but if it is a policy effecting how all of us have to live our lives and there is no threat to the hospital system, I cannot support that. So which is it Director?
He needs to at least hammer home the point that masks are not forever. Instead, they do not and just keep stretching this out. That is just plain stupid.
I apologize if you already know this, but that was from last year when vaccines were still in clinical trials and efficacy was completely unknown. That was Dr Redfield, he is not the CDC director anymore, as he was replaced by Dr Walensky.
I simply don't understand why CDC is being discredited . Before we entered a polarizing climate, CDC had always been regarded as global premier institution. In fact, it still is. There are career scientists there who are at the top of their fields who are devoted to their research to ultimately improve outcomes and save lives.
If there was an outbreak of Ebola or some other public health issue, the global medical and scientific community looked to the CDC. Even among many people here in the US, the CDC is considered a crown jewel.
So I don't get the continual berating and questioning of their experts as if they had some ulterior motive.
I wouldn't question the findings of let's say, a civil engineering society, on how to best build homes to withstand hurricane winds along the Texas coast. Sure I'd probably have some questions. But I'm not going to constantly look for information that refutes the engineering society's guidance.
When the CDC director testifies that masks are more effective than a vaccine and presents that as fact, that strains credulity past the breaking point.
The CDC quote was from September and clearly states "if I didn't illicit an immune response, a mask would be more effective." This was said before we had vaccine results and assumed the best we'd see was a ~50% effective vaccine.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Using that study to "prove" masks don't work is disingenuous at best. One of the authors of the paper has said as such.
Most health experts agree widespread masking, hygiene, distance helps slow the spread. Is it 100% effective, of course not.
This forum is exhausting.
And you're right, this forum is exhausting. COVIDians just can't grasp how others are able to see the constant moving of the goal posts by "experts" who continue to be proven wrong, how states with strict lockdowns haven't been any better than states with no mandates, and how the narrative on COVID changed the moment Biden was sworn in.
The biggest issue you guys have is the inability to understand how people have moved on from March 2020 mindset to March 2021 mindset and just aren't afraid of it like you are. We want to live our lives and understand this will be with us forever, we can't remove all risk in life, and death will never be cured. If you want to strap on a face condom before checking your mail, by all means, do it. But don't expect others to have the same irrational fear you do. 2 weeks to flatten the curve turned into a year to prevent a single positive test. Eff that noise.
To be fair the goal post is being moved by the non covidians as well. Remember when it was all going to go away after the election? Or it was no worse than the flu? I think that group has now settled on "it's here to stay so we need to just live with it."
Actually the election did change things. Feb 14 NYC reopened to indoor dining. Two days after the election Cuomo ranted that they had to get reopened.
The "respect it, don't fear it" people I know have always asserted that lockdowns and masks largely don't alter the trajectory of the virus, and the data from around the world seems to support that, even before considering suicide rates, depression, ruined businesses and the abject immorality of dividing humans into "essential" and "non-essential".
Chicago succeeded in completely underwhelming their emergency rooms for the duration of the pandemic. At no point during the pandemic have they been busier than before.
And all the restrictions were to prevent the hospitals from being overrun!
I simply don't understand why CDC is being discredited . Before we entered a polarizing climate, CDC had always been regarded as global premier institution. In fact, it still is. There are career scientists there who are at the top of their fields who are devoted to their research to ultimately improve outcomes and save lives.
If there was an outbreak of Ebola or some other public health issue, the global medical and scientific community looked to the CDC. Even among many people here in the US, the CDC is considered a crown jewel.
So I don't get the continual berating and questioning of their experts as if they had some ulterior motive.
I wouldn't question the findings of let's say, a civil engineering society, on how to best build homes to withstand hurricane winds along the Texas coast. Sure I'd probably have some questions. But I'm not going to constantly look for information that refutes the engineering society's guidance.
When the CDC director testifies that masks are more effective than a vaccine and presents that as fact, that strains credulity past the breaking point.
The CDC quote was from September and clearly states "if I didn't illicit an immune response, a mask would be more effective." This was said before we had vaccine results and assumed the best we'd see was a ~50% effective vaccine.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Using that study to "prove" masks don't work is disingenuous at best. One of the authors of the paper has said as such.
Most health experts agree widespread masking, hygiene, distance helps slow the spread. Is it 100% effective, of course not.
This forum is exhausting.
And you're right, this forum is exhausting. COVIDians just can't grasp how others are able to see the constant moving of the goal posts by "experts" who continue to be proven wrong, how states with strict lockdowns haven't been any better than states with no mandates, and how the narrative on COVID changed the moment Biden was sworn in.
The biggest issue you guys have is the inability to understand how people have moved on from March 2020 mindset to March 2021 mindset and just aren't afraid of it like you are. We want to live our lives and understand this will be with us forever, we can't remove all risk in life, and death will never be cured. If you want to strap on a face condom before checking your mail, by all means, do it. But don't expect others to have the same irrational fear you do. 2 weeks to flatten the curve turned into a year to prevent a single positive test. Eff that noise.
To be fair the goal post is being moved by the non covidians as well. Remember when it was all going to go away after the election? Or it was no worse than the flu? I think that group has now settled on "it's here to stay so we need to just live with it."
It is going away. If you were paying attention, you saw the narrative change around inauguration day. Can't open things up too soon or declare it "cured" without some time under Biden so they can say he is the one that did it. But now that the dems own it 100%, they're not going to keep things locked down for too long because they see what's happening in California and Florida, and know people aren't going to stay locked up much longer.
Things we saw in the few says before and after inauguration: - Cuomo stating lockdowns hurting the economy - Chicago mayor telling teachers to get back into the classrooms or not get paid - Newsweek saying lockdowns haven't worked - WHO stating positive PCR test with no symptoms =/= positive - NPR stating COVID surge has peaked
As far as being worse than the flu...it isn't worse than the flu for a large majority of people. Oh, the flu has been cured? Right. Zero chance those flu cases have been classified as COVID, right? I mean, some dude who died in a motorcycle crash was a COVID death, so there's no way that will happen.
I'm one of the ones who has been saying since this whole thing started that it's not going away. There's still variants of the Spanish Flu around. We do need to live with it, but Branch COVIDians can't understand this and are buying the media's fear porn 100%. They want us to stay shut down and masked up forever, and it's not going to happen. Hell, in Harris County, we fell below the threshold they set on positivity rate, yet Dora was still "MURDER DEATH RED" and Turner took off for a weekend with his intern, neither changed anything once that metric was met. To anyone who is paying attention, that tells us they will never give up their power willingly.
And I'll add this, 500,000 deaths is specious. When the number of total deaths in the USA for 2020 is released, that's total humans that died for any reason or circumstance, the number isn't gonna be 500,000 more than 2019. Not even close. I'd bet money it's closer to 50,000, where a 20k increase per year would have been more normal. And when you look at the demographics of those deaths, as sad as any death is on a human basis, the societal impact will be negligible compared to the societal impacts of the "solution".
What is the timeline for this release? And, what is the reliable source of this data?
It looks like there will be 350,000 more deaths in 2020 than 2019. But as has been pointed out in this thread, 2-3 additional years will need to pass to really know. If someone was going to die in the next 2-3 years anyway, but Covid took them first, it will result in lower than expected deaths in subsequent years.
As to reliability, this would seem to be a difficult number to fudge. People either die or they don't in a given year.
It looks like there will be 350,000 more deaths in 2020 than 2019. But as has been pointed out in this thread, 2-3 additional years will need to pass to really know. If someone was going to die in the next 2-3 years anyway, but Covid took them first, it will result in lower than expected deaths in subsequent years.
As to reliability, this would seem to be a difficult number to fudge. People either die or they don't in a given year.
This. Deaths are going to be up (and are), but what will be interesting to see is the death numbers the next couple years. My somewhat educated guess (not willing to go into what I do) is that death rates will plunge the next two years as we have had a greater than normal part of the vulnerable population taken from this. That trend will reverse itself in the next couple years for obvious reasons.
We will see deaths for cancer increase by a noticeable amount. We missed a TON of otherwise "treatable if caught early" cancers due to the panic.
I will say that ER docs are getting burned out. No one is going to their primary care physicians for ANYTHING. They aren't seeing patients really. Every minor complaint is going to the ER....because COVID. This thing has broken the already broken system we have.
Today's announcement from the CDC just makes it more clear that states can't wait for them to be reasonable. Glad I live in Texas
Absolutely.
I live in Central Texas(Bell Co.). Since really last summer my day to day life has been relatively normal with the exception of wearing masks into corporate owned stores. But my kids have been in person school since Sep 8. Our school district is not contact tracing so with one exception at one school we have not had any school closures. I eat at the same restaurants. Kids sports are at full speed. The bar at the end of the neighborhood is serving drinks. Work has picked back up more or less.
After 16 years in retail operations I wore masks into Academy, Home Depot, etc. out of respect for the stores and their policies. But I stopped a couple of months ago.
I did not attend an A&M football or basketball game and that was my decisions. Fortunately Texas allowed us to decide one way or another.
I read these articles about opening up in other States, especially in States I used to reside, and could not be happier to be back home in Texas.
I think behavioral driven by fear. A high school friend died of kidney issues last may. She'd know since Feb she had problems, but just refused to go to a doctor.
Chicago succeeded in completely underwhelming their emergency rooms for the duration of the pandemic. At no point during the pandemic have they been busier than before.
And all the restrictions were to prevent the hospitals from being overrun!
We will look back on 2020 and realize how disgusting and politically driven the response to this pandemic was. Media causing unnecessary and over-the-top fear, epidemiologists waffling at every corner to get the most of their 15 minutes of fame, and politicians dragging this out to influence elections and drive their policies.
