A heads up from those peeps without agendas

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Historically speaking, most pandemics such as the Spanish Flu, out breaks of plague etc, were never eradicated initially and reappeared fairly quickly in what we are now terming a “second wave”. Who knows what will happen now, given our abilities in vaccine technology and the like.

We are opening up in a controlled fashion, and the expected second wave of infections hasn’t so far materialised. Within our city, despite increased testing, we have had no new infections for ten days in a row now and only twelve recent diagnosis in all of Andalucia.

That said, we still have a ban on inter provincial travel, so the situation may change once free movement is allowed. We are not reopening next Monday as we are able to, but waiting a further couple of weeks to see how things go.

I honestly don’t recall see the projected death toll in the U.S. as ever being as high as that. The one that sticks in my mind was 60,000, and that was some time before Fauci was quoted in the press. But then again, I don’t really follow the U.S. press.

JF

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I think @doughpat may have accidentally added a zero. The original Televised news conference prediction was 100,000 to 240,000.

The article listed by @JohnF Accurately refers to it in the first Paragraph.

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No extra zero added. This was the Imperial College London report – and I can’t believe you don’t remember it. In case you never saw it: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

Also remember when “scientists” were telling people not to use face masks? (Lying to the public is OK as long as its for their own good, apparently).

Its not anti-science to question science.

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About a 2nd wave…
I’m in South Carolina which started reopening about 3 weeks ago (maybe 4)

6/2/2020 Becker’s Hospital Review has an article “covid-19 activity by region: where cases rising, falling” (USA based)

“Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing…the state (South Carolina) confirmed more than 300 cases daily between 5/29-31, representing the largest single day increases…”

SC is a little behind other states implementing the more widespread testing so the numbers are going to increase.

I shared this info with some friends who were not wearing masks. Their immediate response was that it was due to increased testing. No,no it is not. SC will be implementing the increased testing soon.

Science doesn’t matter. People will believe what they choose.

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Thank you for sharing. No I didn’t see it.

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What I recall is every credible report saying how many could die if we did nothing. Along with the dire predictions were the explanations that if the lockdowns worked people would say exactly what you are saying. So you are not making the point you think you are. You are doing what the experts said you would do.

@doughpat I’m genuinely glad your area is unaffected since you opened up. I hope it remains that way as I’m itching to travel again. But scientists did predict what has happened so I’ll trust them again now and stay home.

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In order to remember it, I would have to have been aware of it in the first place.

Other than being concerned for the folks I know in the U.S., I generally don’t pay a lot of attention to what’s happening there, it’s press and politics aren’t generally on my radar.

It’s only recently I’ve taken an interest after I realised that you’ve now got a president with the same surname as polite and genteel English folks use to describe a fart.

JF

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Wait, huh? I’m not saying that the lockdowns didn’t work. It is impossible to know what would have happened had we not locked down. There is no control group with which to compare. It’d be great if there was an alternate universe where we could have tested various degrees of lockdown, but of course the best thing we can do is attempt to compare regions which handled the crisis differently. That, however, is fraught with a million uncontrolled variables and any ‘conclusions’ drawn are unreliable.

Its easy to for ‘experts’ to say that those dumb anti-sciencers aren’t going to understand that the reason for the wildly overhyped predictions was because of government intervention. Its a great claim because there is no way to disprove it (see alternate universe issue above) “We only had a 5% of the Imperial College prediction – it must be because of the lockdown! Go Science!”

Or…perhaaaaaaps…they were just wrong. Perhaps extreme voices are the ones that get listened to/get air-time.

(Nevermind that suicide/domestic violence/undiagnosed illnesses/untreated illnesses are never given a number to apply agains the “saved” lives).

It’s coming to the point where people need to make their own choices about their own risk tolerance. Want to avoid exposure? Live from home. Its actually quite possible these days. The rest of us would like the ability to make risk assessments for themselves.

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But when people go out unmasked it is not only about them anymore

RR

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It’s impossible to know what point you are trying to make when you mix up your facts and points. Here you combine a complaint about “doomsayer killer second waves” with figures for the total death toll which is for a period ending in the future:

It’s too early to know about the second wave. The experts are in consensus that this is still the first wave, with spikes in it. Second wave is due to be months from now.

I can’t believe you’ve forgotten what the UK report you referenced above actually said. Let’s review.

On page 6 we find the prediction of 2.2 million deaths “[I]n the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour,”

At that time 16 March the UK and the US didn’t have widespread lockdown measures in place. This prediction was so grim that even Mr. “we have it totally under control” Trump was shaken.

About timing of lifting of interventions:
“In this scenario, interventions can limit transmission to the extent that little herd immunity is acquired –leading to the possibility that a second wave of infection is seen once interventions are lifted”

If one reads the report they will see repeated statements of uncertainty. The projections are based on a combination of interventions.

Later in the report they project that “even if all patients were able to be treated, we
predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US.”

Also, there isn’t a time limit on this, they didn’t say 2 million would die this spring, it’s a total until there is vaccine (they mention an 18 month window) or herd immunity.

LOL. Lying to the public is done all the time. “It’s one case.” “We have it totally under control.” No one lies more than Trump and it didn’t start with Covid. Yes, they did tell us not to use face masks and we know why. There was a shortage for health care professionals and they didn’t want them to be hoarded even more than they were. There was an understanding of masks not blocking the size of the virus but not as much understanding about the transmission in droplets and the dangers from close talking, singing, yelling and so on.

Surely you’ve see the articles about excess deaths? Yes, the toll of covid is higher than reported if one counts the total “cost.”

There is so much information out there about why this isn’t completely possible. If you choose not to believe my rights to safety are more important than your rights of freedom, so be it. Thing is, if you want to do what you want to do when you want to do it, then go live on a island by yourself or with others of like mind. If you want to live in a society with the benefits of society such as mass transport, highways, stores, entertainment, you have a responsibility to the common good.

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A reminder: a prediction is based on the evidence and outlook at the time. Science continually changes its details since as new information comes, then these predictions must change. If they did not, I would consider the prediction suspect.

Science is not a moral issue.

If you individually make a decision based on an ‘opinion’ or ‘hunch’ or ‘many people say’ or ‘in this magic book it says’ then I doubt you will have a good result in your life. And moreover, your firm focus on non-scientific data imperils us all. When folks walk amongst us with no care for others, say, not wearing a mask to keep spread down, it is up to all of us to inform them.

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It’s so sad that there are millions who can’t be convinced other than by them or someone close to them getting desperately ill or dying. People should be free to choose that for themselves but they shouldn’t get to impose it on others.

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We will know in about 3-4 weeks just how ugly it can get.

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This study indicates that Covid may damage testicles permanently. Now we know why the US and UK started taking the virus seriously; it wasn’t the Imperial College report. Once this news is more widespread I expect mask wearing to increase. OTOH, we don’t really need people to continue reproducing for the near term.

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What don’t you understand about the fact that this is a novel virus, meaning scientists and medical personnel have had to be learning about it on the run? They first said masks didn’t help because of the size of the virus and also because masks were needed for hospitals and caregivers. More research proved they did significantly reduce the distance that droplets carried when people coughed or sneezed or even spoke. Mask wearing is to protect others- it’s something you do for the good of all.
Information is changing not because the experts are lying to us, but because they are ongoingly researching, and new things are coming to light.
For instance, they have been saying this is a respiratory virus, but now there are reports saying that it seems to be a virus which attacks the blood vessels, which explains a lot of the diverse and strange symptoms they have been seeing that aren’t explained by a purely respiratory virus. Blood clots, “Covid toes”, the inflammatory disease seen in children, etc.
They are ongoingly learning about what is a NEW virus.

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I’d like to add about the masks…

The smartest person I personally know is a US born PhD scientist who lives in New Zealand but until about 1.8 years ago had been living in Suzhou, China for 5 years. I spent most of the month of Feb in New Zealand and while I was there she was getting unfiltered reports from scientists she knows in China 2-3x weekly. She is not convinced that masks (of the type the general public are wearing now in the US) are very effective as a scientific principle. In other words, when scientists said in March that you didn’t need a mask it wasn’t exactly a lie. They are being advocated now as one technique among others in a nation trying to open parts of the economy. If the mask helps even a few people not get it by protecting their face from being touched, then good. If a few people spew their virus load a few less feet that’s fewer cases and that’s good. NZ didn’t go through the mask phase we are because they had much stricter limits sooner than we did. My friend was not particularly complimentary of the government and the current PM until their handling of the pandemic. If she thinks they did a good job it’s high praise. I don’t know of any US jurisdiction that had as strict a plan as NZ.

It’s science but it’s not that hard to understand. Those who oppose limiting themselves for the good of society have ulterior motives that I don’t understand. I always told my students if they didn’t know the answer to a social studies question their first guess should be to think about money.

(funny to me story…I once asked in class who knew who the Vice President of the US was and a boy loudly blurted out, “money!” It was Dick Cheney so he wasn’t wrong. )

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The smartest person I know on this virus is Dr. Mitchell Tsai, a retired epidemiologist educated at Harvard. He wears a mask. He stayed home for Memorial Day. I have not messaged him for a week, but I will wait a couple more to see how the protests affected the U S count. I am dreading it.

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OMG, I was watching all those protests and thinking how the virus is just going to explode. Masks are only good to a small extent- it has to used with distancing and all these people were cheek to jowl for days.

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It will be an interesting thing to see. If it doesn’t “explode” that will really put the thumb on the scale of “avoid enclosed places.”

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There are 100,000 people dead

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