The Coronavirus Thread

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:55 pm

Masks help some, it's a cold hard fact. A lot. The droplets. They stop the droplets from spreading out in the room and keep them close to the sick coughing person. They're worn to protect others from your droplets. They stop some aerosols too.

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by JimC » Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:00 pm

Those who deride their use miss the point that they are a component of a statistical, population-based response that does its job by changing the percentages of the population that infect or become infected. No silver bullet, just one of the ways to reduce transmission levels.
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by NineBerry » Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:56 pm

Image

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Hermit » Sun Apr 18, 2021 1:28 am

NineBerry wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:56 pm
Image
Good metaphor. :tup:
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by pErvinalia » Sun Apr 18, 2021 1:50 am

Fairy cheese!
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by JimC » Sun Apr 18, 2021 2:44 am

Dairy cheese?
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Sun Apr 18, 2021 2:57 am

Cheesus Christ :drool:

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Brian Peacock » Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:07 am

Fletch F. Fletch wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:55 pm
Masks help some, it's a cold hard fact. A lot. The droplets. They stop the droplets from spreading out in the room and keep them close to the sick coughing person. They're worn to protect others from your droplets. They stop some aerosols too.
Indeed. It's a numbers game. Even if mask-use only stopped 5% of the population becoming infected, in a country like the US with a population of c.350m that's still c.1.4m people who don't become infected. With an infection mortality rate of c.1.2% that's around a possible 16,000 lives saved.

Some might argue that that's an insignificant number when compared to, say, the 30,000+ people who die on the roads in the US each year - perhaps saying that limiting personal autonomy and freedom of choice to save 30,000 road deaths a year would be unacceptable so it's almost twice as unacceptable to limit personal autonomy and freedom of choice to save the lives of only half that number of people. They might have a point here, to some extent, in terms of ethics and policy which deal with those numbers alone. However, there a couple of important ways in which road deaths and Covid deaths are not so directly comparable beyond the headline stats.

Firstly, there are already limits on personal autonomy and freedom of choice when it comes to driving: you can't drive wherever you like at whatever speed you like whenever you like. Virtually all traffic regulations are an attempt to mitigate the potential harms to individual drives, the drivers around them, passengers, and the public at large. Most people think this is not only quite reasonable, but necessary - because the alternative would be carnage.

Secondly, one of those road deaths doesn't carry the possibility of involving up to 3 more unrelated people in a potentially fatal road incident in the way that Covid infections would if measures (that are essentially no different to traffic regulations) were not put in place to try and limit it's spread. With a natural R₀ of between 1.5 and 3.5 (depending on who you ask) Covid has the potential to involve virtually everyone in society in a relatively short space of time, as we've seen. Now imagine if everyone in society was equally likely to be involved in a fatal road traffic accident over the same relatively short time frame, say a year, with the possibility of involving up to 3 times as many people in another potentially fatal traffic incident as who died in the incident itself.

On an adjacent point: when people are caught transgressing traffic regulations, whether in a relatively minor way like doing 5mph over the speed limit, or a relatively major way like driving at 50mph though a shopping mall, they invariably become subject to the law. This is because even if nobody is injured during such a transgression we recognise that the potential for harm was increased. We call this careless, reckless, or negligent driving etc depending on the circumstances, and not simply because transgressing traffic regs increased the risks for the driver but also for their passengers, the drivers and passengers around them, and that troupe of girl guides at the bus stop. Similarly, when Covid measures, like masks or social distancing or even vaccination programs etc are put in place for basically the same reasons as we have traffic regs, albeit temporarily (hopefully, at least), shouldn't those who transgress the regs be considered careless, reckless or negligent too, for the same kind of reasons, and thus also subject to the law?

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Scot Dutchy » Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:51 am

Of course it is a numbers game. How many people are killed world wide on the roads as a result of a traffic accident?
Unknown. Almost every country records road deaths differently just like Covid. Not all deaths mean the same in each country. To say there are 30,000 road deaths in the US is false. It is not even a state problem it goes down to county level. I experienced this when collecting data for the Dutch government. It was pointless.
Like talking about Covid. But that is a discussion we had from the beginning; what is a Covid death? What is a Covid case? Je pays je money. It is all guestimates.
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Scot Dutchy » Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:43 am

For the nerds amongst us:

The obscure maths theorem that governs the reliability of Covid testing
There’s been much debate about lateral flow tests – their accuracy depends on context and the theories of a 18th-century cleric

Maths quiz. If you take a Covid test that only gives a false positive one time in every 1,000, what’s the chance that you’ve actually got Covid? Surely it’s 99.9%, right?

No! The correct answer is: you have no idea. You don’t have enough information to make the judgment.

This is important to know when thinking about “lateral flow tests” (LFTs), the rapid Covid tests that the government has made available to everyone in England, free, up to twice a week. The idea is that in time they could be used to give people permission to go into crowded social spaces – pubs, theatres – and be more confident that they do not have, and so will not spread, the disease. They’ve been used in secondary schools for some time now.

There are concerns over LFTs. One is whether they’ll miss a large number of cases, because they’re less sensitive than the slower but more precise polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. Those concerns are understandable, although defenders of the test say that PCR testing is too sensitive, able to detect viral material in people who had the disease weeks ago, while LFTs should, in theory, only detect people who are infectious.

But another concern is that they will tell people that they do have the disease when in fact they don’t – that they will return false positives.
Nevermind definitions.
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Tero » Sun Apr 18, 2021 12:55 pm

It's like that global warming thing: It's not warming cause they got the statistics wrong. Or "we need all the factors" not just the human..or "it can't be calculated."
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Sun Apr 18, 2021 3:11 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:07 am
Fletch F. Fletch wrote:
Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:55 pm
Masks help some, it's a cold hard fact. A lot. The droplets. They stop the droplets from spreading out in the room and keep them close to the sick coughing person. They're worn to protect others from your droplets. They stop some aerosols too.
Indeed. It's a numbers game. Even if mask-use only stopped 5% of the population becoming infected, in a country like the US with a population of c.350m that's still c.1.4m people who don't become infected. With an infection mortality rate of c.1.2% that's around a possible 16,000 lives saved.

Some might argue that that's an insignificant number when compared to, say, the 30,000+ people who die on the roads in the US each year - perhaps saying that limiting personal autonomy and freedom of choice to save 30,000 road deaths a year would be unacceptable so it's almost twice as unacceptable to limit personal autonomy and freedom of choice to save the lives of only half that number of people. They might have a point here, to some extent, in terms of ethics and policy which deal with those numbers alone. However, there a couple of important ways in which road deaths and Covid deaths are not so directly comparable beyond the headline stats.

Firstly, there are already limits on personal autonomy and freedom of choice when it comes to driving: you can't drive wherever you like at whatever speed you like whenever you like. Virtually all traffic regulations are an attempt to mitigate the potential harms to individual drives, the drivers around them, passengers, and the public at large. Most people think this is not only quite reasonable, but necessary - because the alternative would be carnage.

Secondly, one of those road deaths doesn't carry the possibility of involving up to 3 more unrelated people in a potentially fatal road incident in the way that Covid infections would if measures (that are essentially no different to traffic regulations) were not put in place to try and limit it's spread. With a natural R₀ of between 1.5 and 3.5 (depending on who you ask) Covid has the potential to involve virtually everyone in society in a relatively short space of time, as we've seen. Now imagine if everyone in society was equally likely to be involved in a fatal road traffic accident over the same relatively short time frame, say a year, with the possibility of involving up to 3 times as many people in another potentially fatal traffic incident as who died in the incident itself.

On an adjacent point: when people are caught transgressing traffic regulations, whether in a relatively minor way like doing 5mph over the speed limit, or a relatively major way like driving at 50mph though a shopping mall, they invariably become subject to the law. This is because even if nobody is injured during such a transgression we recognise that the potential for harm was increased. We call this careless, reckless, or negligent driving etc depending on the circumstances, and not simply because transgressing traffic regs increased the risks for the driver but also for their passengers, the drivers and passengers around them, and that troupe of girl guides at the bus stop. Similarly, when Covid measures, like masks or social distancing or even vaccination programs etc are put in place for basically the same reasons as we have traffic regs, albeit temporarily (hopefully, at least), shouldn't those who transgress the regs be considered careless, reckless or negligent too, for the same kind of reasons, and thus also subject to the law?

Asking for a friend. :tea:
I agree, they should be. Good post, the only thing I want to question is the 5% number of prevented cases. It must be much higher than that when masks and social distancing are used. I'll bet it's closer to 10x that number.

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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Tero » Sun Apr 18, 2021 3:26 pm

Well, the masks were a sort of signal: "we should do something" and "I'm not a libertarian." We juat needed a secret wink to confirm that. Two blinks with the left eye?
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Brian Peacock » Sun Apr 18, 2021 4:01 pm

Scot Dutchy wrote:
Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:51 am
Of course it is a numbers game. How many people are killed world wide on the roads as a result of a traffic accident?
Unknown. Almost every country records road deaths differently just like Covid. Not all deaths mean the same in each country. To say there are 30,000 road deaths in the US is false. It is not even a state problem it goes down to county level. I experienced this when collecting data for the Dutch government. It was pointless.
Like talking about Covid. But that is a discussion we had from the beginning; what is a Covid death? What is a Covid case? Je pays je money. It is all guestimates.
The WHO defines a Covid death thus:
A death due to COVID-19 is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness,in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case,unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery from COVID-19 between illness and death.

A death due to COVID-19 may not be attributed to another disease (e.g. cancer) and should be counted independently of preexisting conditions that are suspected of triggering a severe course of COVID-19.
The EU and the UK have adopted the policy of counting a Covid death when someone dies within 28 days of receiving a positive test and where the cause of death matches the conditions above.

Figures on US RTA deaths are collated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The last year for which figures are available (2019) can be download from this link...
There were 33,244 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2019 in which 36,096 deaths occurred. This resulted in 11.0 deaths per 100,000 people and 1.11 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. The fatality rate per 100,000 people ranged from 3.3 in the District of Columbia to 25.4 in Wyoming. The death rate per 100 million miles traveled ranged from 0.51 in Massachusetts to 1.73 in South Carolina.
Now, we can discuss the absolute accuracy of these figures and talk about edge-cases and error margins. We can also discuss how the WHO definition of a Covid death might be flawed and suggest ways in which it could be better defined to more accurately accounted for the fatalities. But to say that nobody knows or can say anything meaningful about the numbers is, frankly, quite ridiculous.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The Coronavirus Thread

Post by Scot Dutchy » Sun Apr 18, 2021 5:29 pm

Who uses the WHO definitions?
As I asked: "What is your definition of a one sided accident?" * to many state administrators. I did work many evenings and nights to collect the data. Some did not even bother about them as many sheriffs did not even report them. The same is probably true of Covid. Collecting data is a very exact business but humans are humans.

* A one sided accident involves only one vehicle but for many when a tree, gate or other street furniture is involved it is not one sided. The tree jumps in front of the vehicle? Lunacy.
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