8 weeks later, have you changed your mind about the covid-19 pandemic?

Good morning, folks. I hope you are healthy and hale wherever you are from.

I have been asking for quite some time now about what people think about the covid-19 outbreak. I started 7 weeks ago, when the deaths were about 2500 people in the US, and have been reasking with updated information every two weeks ever since. link to last thread[1] with all the rest contained therein.

I am seeking to know what people think. I want to know if your mind has changed. Why it has or has not. I am also providing updated information with links. I want to reemphasize the main stream media has been spinning this since day one. This has been done on all sides. Disinformation has been horrible and people have received a grave disservice as a result. All of them - and I *DO* mean *ALL* - have been more concerned about their political team rather than the people who are being sickened and killed by covid-19.

Let's update some information here before proceeding.

As of the time of posting this morning, a total of 1,675,880 cases of Covid-19 have been announced by the various states and counties in the US. A total of 14,446,617 tests have been conducted. There have been a total of 99,003 deaths since the outbreak has reached American shores[2]. For confirmed cases, the US currently has 30+% of the total reported[3].

We know China has under reported their cases. We also know Russia has been doing the same. Other nations have been accused of claiming other health issues were the cause of death. Here in the US, some states have been accused of manipulating their data as well[4]. For that matter, each state seems to have different reporting standards making accurate information hard to tell. As I stated before, the data on who is recovered from the virus and who is an active case is wildly wonky from state to state.

Since the first case in the US, we have had a 'covid season' of 125 days. This means on average, we have had over 792 deaths per day since the first case was reported. In contrast, since everyone likes to compare to the flu, on the high end for the estimates for deaths has been 62,000 this year[5] with an average of 337 deaths per day. Flu season only lasted 187 this year. It was rather short. It has been reported the reason is the lockdowns and social distancing actually caused the flu to be stopped in its tracks[6]. Since I first asked, there has been almost 97,000 deaths in the last two months.

The science associated with covid has been advancing as well. There have been disappointing and exciting developments.

Sorrento, the biopharma company, is reporting in a lab setting they have an artificial antibody that 100% blocks the covid virus[7]. This is the very first step with developing a new drug. Animal and human trials are still down the road. Lots of things die along the way in development, so don't be surprised if this does, too. it is also NOT a vaccine and will not grant immunity. It might be treatment and 'cure.'

Secondly - referring back to the original media manipulation thread - the largest study[8] ever on hydroxychloroquine with 96,000 patients. 15,000 were given hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine and the other 81,000 were not. Those given hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine were far more likely to die than those who were not: 18% died who received hydroxychloroquine; 16.4% for those who took chloroquine; and 9% for those who took nothing in the control group. The study is here[9] and supports the results in the previously published work in the New England Journal of Medicine[10]. In some ways, that should not be a surprise: hydroxychloroquine's primary use is as a immunosupressant. This means it trashes your immune system on purpose? Why would anyone take this, you might ask? Well, it is useful against autimmune diseases, ones where your own immune system has gone hyperactive and attacks the person's own body. These are ones like lupus. It is also used for treating malaria as it kills the parasite. That parasite is NOT a virus though and functions and infects the body rather differently.

Thirdly - and this is old, but not mentioned here - the covid strains that infected NYC actually came from Europe, not China[11]. To be sure, the virus did start in China. However, the virus spread from there to Europe and from Europe to NYC. They can tell this based on the mutations in the virus and then compare them[12].

And speaking of mutations, in a preprint, a not yet peer reviewed paper, Los Alamos National Laboratory (yes, that one) in collaboration with others found the dominant strain of covid has mutated to become more infectious than the original[13]. This is not unexpected, if unwelcome. You could easily compare it to the longer legs in Cane Toads[14].

Finally, there appears to be a reason why men are dying so much more than women from covid[15]. Men apparently have higher levels of an enzyme in their blood stream that allows the virus to penetrate the cell membrane and infect the cells.

As we are about to end the lock down and venture forth, have you, oh ATSer - wise, foolish or sophomoric - changed your mind?



1. www.abovetopsecret.com...
2. www.worldometers.info...
3. www.worldometers.info...
4. www.floridatoday.com...
5. www.cdc.gov...
6. www.nature.com...
7. techcrunch.com...
8. www.bbc.com...
9. www.thelancet.com...(20)31180-6/fulltext
10. www.nejm.org...
11. www.mountsinai.org... rces-pr
12. www.pnas.org...
13. www.biorxiv.org...
14. www.nature.com...

a reply to: anzha

My mind hasn't changed. Its a super cold. people with immune systems that are too strong, or too weak will suffer. Some people will have a natural immunity to it, while others will get wiped out by it. As of right now, less than 1% of the population will die from it, just as less than 1% will die from the flu. We do not need to shut the economy down for it. We should take preventative measures to protect ourselves and others. We should not be forced to take those measures. We should have a robust federal and state response to helping the sick, we should have a local effort to protect, support, and prevent it. Police and the military should only have limited involvement. Nobody should be fined, jailed, or hurt in any form from not following executive orders. People will get sick. People will die. Life will go on however. We can not think this is the end, nor the start of a more restrictive state. We should not allow that.

Immune suppressants are good for those whose immune systems over respond, causing them person to crash. It is not good for the weakened immune systems which don't have the strength to fight it off. There is no One answer to all solution. Some people will respond well the immune suppressant, others will not.

Corona will spread, it will mutate, their will be different variations, and chances are good, you will be infected with one or more variations in your lifetime, just as chances are good you will be infected by variations of the flu in your lifetime.

We should all respect the rights, liberties, and beliefs of others. Put short, don't be a prick. If you feel more restrictive measures should be taken, then take those measures. If you feel that they shouldn't respect those that do, just as they should respect you. Nobody should die over your personal opinion. Businesses are private property, you have to abide by there rules to do business there.

Camain

Since Day One, the words of James Carville have been ringing in my ears:

“The economy, stupid.”

Only now they are the clanging chimes of Doom.

And that's speaking as an eternal optimist. Or at least I used to be one. But with a UK financial crisis the likes of which we have not seen since the 18th century, it's difficult to raise a flag of hope at the moment.

a reply to: anzha
I am a visual type. Since the beginning of all this, I watched graphics and trends and one particular rate, daily:

Currently:
Count of total ICU beds: 32.325
Count of free ICU beds: 20.006
Count of COVID-19 related ICU beds: 919
The last number was around 2.200 in April. It is falling fast.


- I am not freaked out by this but I know it is not just a normal flu, but also know the death rate is 0.4 - 1%.
- I am disappointed at my government for the disinformation they spread in the beginning.
- I am slightly outraged about the distortion of goals. First it was about flatten the curve, now it seems it is all about not getting it at all, under no circumstances.

From the very beginning, this overreaction felt like a test run. With that, I am not saying COVID-19 is manmade or was spread intentional. More like, they over-blew it by intention to get results on group behavior.

Never waste a crisis, right?

No.

It's still just a virus most will either have mildly, or never notice having. An extreme minority will still die, can't do jack about that outcome with ANY bug targeting a minority to literal death.

I'm still staunch on the lockdown being wrong to do. The old an/or vulnerable should have been offered paid luxury isolation, it'd have been far fricking cheaper than crashing the country down into the mantle.

Was Trump right to say way back that we should start to reopen the country somewhere around May? This was back when so many were saying lock it down for the rest of the year.

Yes
This bullsh!t has affected me to the point of walking out of my job today and I am considering resigning.
I work for the post office and we are so bombarded with work, I can’t take it anymore.
My wife's father just passed away on the 9th and she is not in a good place mentally with it and I have been trying to help her the best I can but they are trying to basically work us around the clock with no time off.
I just can’t do it anymore.
Today was the last straw....5000 packages for 32 separate package routes with only 12 carriers.
No end in sight with this either.

a reply to: anzha

No, I'm still of the opinion that it's Gods wrath on evil. Sort of a high tech Sodom and Gomorrah.

Oh, I know that sounds silly but everything about this pandemic seems silly.

My lysol injections, seem to be working great in tandem with a UV light bath twice a day.

a reply to: anzha

Secondly, hydroxychloroquine cost .37 cents a pill. After over 50 years on the market and complications far exceeding a fraction of 1%, it is suddenly going to give you a heart attack. It has to be given early, not when you are in the ICU already. Other nations know this and have been using it effectively (See South Korea).

Problem is, we NEED a patented treatment from big Pharma that they can charge thousands for. This generic 30 cent crap is not acceptable.


If you have seen the "quasi-studies" it is clear that they have cherry picked that information by giving the drug to people who were already on their deathbed.


Hydroxychloroquine Has about 90 Percent Chance of Helping COVID-19 Patients, States Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

finance.yahoo.com...

To date, the total number of reported patients treated with HCQ, with or without zinc and the widely used antibiotic azithromycin, is 2,333, writes AAPS, in observational data from China, France, South Korea, Algeria, and the U.S. Of these, 2,137 or 91.6 percent improved clinically. There were 63 deaths, all but 11 in a single retrospective report from the Veterans Administration where the patients were severely ill.

The antiviral properties of these drugs have been studied since 2003. Particularly when combined with zinc, they hinder viral entry into cells and inhibit replication.

Treatment Response to Hydroxychloroquine, Lopinavir/Ritonavir, and Antibiotics for Moderate COVID 19: A First Report on the Pharmacological Outcomes from South Korea

www.medrxiv.org...

The mean duration to viral clearance and clinical improvements were displayed as bar-plots to visualize treatment responses. Results: Ninety-seven moderate COVID 19 patients were managed with hydroxychloroquine (HQ) plus antibiotics (n = 22), lopinavir/ritonavir (Lop/R) plus antibiotics (n = 35), or conservative treatment (n = 40). Time to viral clearance, as signified by negative conversion on PCR, after initiation of treatment was significantly shorter with HQ plus antibiotics compared to Lop/R plus antibiotics (hazard ratio [HR], 0.49; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 0.28 to 0.87) or conservative treatments (HR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.25 to 0.78).

Hospital stay duration after treatment was also shortest for patients treated with HQ plus antibiotics compared to other treatment groups. Subgroup analysis revealed that mean duration to viral clearance was significantly reduced with adjunctive use of antibiotics compared to monotherapy(HR 0.81, 95% CI, 0.70 to 0.93). While both HQ and Lop/R showed side effects including nausea, vomiting, and elevation of liver transaminases, none were serious.

Conclusion: This first report on pharmacological management of COVID 19 from South Korea revealed that HQ with antibiotics was associated with better clinical outcomes in terms of viral clearance, hospital stay, and cough symptom resolution compared to Lop/R with antibiotics or conservative treatment.

It is a damn shame Trump mentioned it. As soon as he did, every damned political & MSM organization did everything possible to prove him wrong.

No, my views on the corona19 virus have not changed.

This is how I have seen it all along.

The numbers are wrong in many different ways and many reasons and cannot be relied on in any reasonable way. They tell you what they want the numbers to tell you.

The governments have got most of it wrong at times and have been forced to correct themselves. The reason for this is they are ether misinformed, stupid, or some plan is in the works. It is some of all three, I think. They are caught and forced to correct their actions. Politics should not figure into the response to the virus but to most it does.

The virus is real but we don’t know much about it. Now, it is like a really bad flu season. Our knowledge is increasing but not to the point to be much useful yet. This will take more time. The bad numbers and bad information have hindered this very much. The deaths are no where near the predictions.

Doctors are human and only know the information they are given until they have some experience in this situation. They make mistakes but are learning.

The ones still on the job all though this, the ones deemed necessary, are being worked beyond reasonable expectations. Many are getting to the breaking point. The shippers, the postal workers, the grocery store stockers, the food delivery people, etc., they have all been stretched to the limit and something is going to give soon.

The msm is lying as much as they are allowed to get away with.

Some people believe the msm.

I am not as scared of the virus as much as I am concerned about the msm believers. If things go really bad, they will be the problem. They have been the cause of most of the shortages. They have been at a low simmer panic for too long.

Manmade or not doesn’t matter. If it is manmade, they lost control of it long ago. Politian’s are trying to use it to their advantage. We are going to have to live with this probably forever. The lock down will be seen as worse than the virus.

a reply to: anzha

No.. My view is the same.
China lied.

a reply to: anzha

Sorry but the guidelines changing and the goal posts moving so many
times it seems I've lost my mind. Even after deciding initially not to
modify anything I do in accordance to any guidelines. Haven't changed
my mind in the least!

Just can't seem to find it.

Initially, we knew nothing and I was willing to stay home and treat it with caution, but now it's obvious this has been way blown out of proportion and continues to be. It's time to let us go.

We need to be protecting our most vulnerable with special conditions, but that's about it. Of course protecting our most vulnerable seems to have been the last thing some of our elected officials did.

Just cannot wait to vote for Trump in November, I will laugh and laugh as I do so as well.

stressed to the point its effecting my sleep over the economic ramifications of the terrible decisions world wide based off the inaccurate data given by china.

This makes twice they fooled us... shame on me time.

in the beginning of COVID19 there was lots of bogus information from the Chinese funded WHO, such as a 3.4% mortality rate & hospitals being overwhelmed. Now we know that the mortality rate is less than @ 1% & more like .3% for people under 50 years old. We also know that most hospitals are not overwhelmed. I believe the globalists new the economy was about to crash & are using COVID19 as an excuse to prick the bubble to advance thier tyrannical socialist agendas like 'UN Agenda 2030'. This is why people like Bill Gates & Greta Thunberg are in the spotlight by MSM. This is basically a sneak peak of socialism.

For the first month I urged tactical patience.

Now I urge outright rebellion.

I was skeptical at first seeing how yet another in a long line of Democrat hoaxes had just come to an end. I couldn't help but feel the Chinese virus was the Democrats newest attempt to subvert the will of the people and their duly elected President.

About a month in, it became painfully obvious that COVID-1984 is a complete and total hoax.

At this point I'm surprised armed mobs haven't taken out some Democrat politicians.

at first i was scared. now? i'm 54 years old. at best i have 20 years or so more. i will not live those years under tyrannical oppressive restrictions. i'll fight back and die sooner before that happens. i draw a line in the sand soon. i will # the system up. there will be a new revolution.

As many of you know, I had a terrible bout of this earlier in the year. As my sickness grew I decide it was best for me to travel from the UK to Michigan where I could be with my family and like minded folk who knew this was nothing more than a mild cold. On arrival I was relieved to be welcomed like any other healthy citizen - unlike the leper I had been made to feel in my home country. To boost moral I took to the local Lockdown protests where we had a wonderful day picnicking in the park and making our voices known in support of our great president. Two days later my illness unfortunately worsened and I spent two weeks in ICU but I feel much better now. Thank you to my American brothers and sisters who have supported me through this time. I am looking forward to the next protest where we can be together again.