Global Pandemic Part II: Sequel Escalation

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The head of the CDC says a second wave this winter would likely be even worse.

WHO representatives are saying the same thing. There's no scientific modeling behind what they're saying though, just references to the Spanish flu being worse on the second go-around 100 years ago. I'm guessing it's less a projection than a strategy to get people to take things seriously. That's fair enough, I suppose, considering how the public has been acting lately.
 
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WHO representatives are saying the same thing. There's no scientific modeling behind what they're saying though, just references to the Spanish flu being worse on the second go-around 100 years ago. I'm guessing it's less a projection than a strategy to get people to take things seriously. That's fair enough, I suppose, considering how the public has been acting lately.

If there's no scientific modeling behind it then it's just speculation. I'm all for facing the reality of the current situation, I just don't see how statements like his are helpful. Unless like you say it can get some people to take things seriously.

I've heard the term "panic porn" used and it does apply in some instances. Of course CNN reported his comments as breaking news. CNN is panic porn these days.
 
If there's no scientific modeling behind it then it's just speculation. I'm all for facing the reality of the current situation, I just don't see how statements like his are helpful. Unless like you say it can get some people to take things seriously.

I've heard the term "panic porn" used and it does apply in some instances. Of course CNN reported his comments as breaking news. CNN is panic porn these days.
As someone who resorted to calling the suicide hotline last month because the "reality of the situation" appeared so overwhelmingly bleak, I do think the experts we should place our trust in have an obligation to be objective and limit idle speculation.

If you're in a position of authority, maybe avoid saying "life could be 100 times worse in a few months, but then again it might not, it all depends," as if blissfully unaware that only the first ten words of the sentence will be reported.
 
If there's no scientific modeling behind it then it's just speculation. I'm all for facing the reality of the current situation, I just don't see how statements like his are helpful. Unless like you say it can get some people to take things seriously..

The only thing that I have heard is this persistent weather speculation, which probably does have some merit, but to what extent, we don't know. The pandemic didn't really get bad in Europe until late Feb/early March and in North America closer to mid-March. Realistically speaking, seasonal respiratory viruses, including influenza last roughly from December to end of April. Meaning that IF this virus is similar in seasonality to the flu, we got very lucky that it hit us at the tail end of the season. Realistically, only about 6 weeks were left. So that would mean that this fall we're susceptible to potentially 5 months of a full season and it's easy enough to see how it could quickly get worse. But we still don't know what the full impact of weather is in any event.

The other thing that is not really scientific is the compliance rate with a second, third, fourth lockdown. You are seeing these morons all around America who can't handle a few weeks without getting a haircut, now imagine if you are locking them down again, then opening, then again...eventually people will take the view that this is ridiculous and they will refuse to comply. And that's when you could see numbers pop.
 
The only thing that I have heard is this persistent weather speculation, which probably does have some merit, but to what extent, we don't know. The pandemic didn't really get bad in Europe until late Feb/early March and in North America closer to mid-March. Realistically speaking, seasonal respiratory viruses, including influenza last roughly from December to end of April. Meaning that IF this virus is similar in seasonality to the flu, we got very lucky that it hit us at the tail end of the season. Realistically, only about 6 weeks were left. So that would mean that this fall we're susceptible to potentially 5 months of a full season and it's easy enough to see how it could quickly get worse. But we still don't know what the full impact of weather is in any event.



The other thing that is not really scientific is the compliance rate with a second, third, fourth lockdown. You are seeing these morons all around America who can't handle a few weeks without getting a haircut, now imagine if you are locking them down again, then opening, then again...eventually people will take the view that this is ridiculous and they will refuse to comply. And that's when you could see numbers pop.



Your latter point is why a race to a treatment beating out a vaccine is the only endgame here.
 
The only thing that I have heard is this persistent weather speculation, which probably does have some merit, but to what extent, we don't know. The pandemic didn't really get bad in Europe until late Feb/early March and in North America closer to mid-March. Realistically speaking, seasonal respiratory viruses, including influenza last roughly from December to end of April. Meaning that IF this virus is similar in seasonality to the flu, we got very lucky that it hit us at the tail end of the season. Realistically, only about 6 weeks were left. So that would mean that this fall we're susceptible to potentially 5 months of a full season and it's easy enough to see how it could quickly get worse. But we still don't know what the full impact of weather is in any event.



The other thing that is not really scientific is the compliance rate with a second, third, fourth lockdown. You are seeing these morons all around America who can't handle a few weeks without getting a haircut, now imagine if you are locking them down again, then opening, then again...eventually people will take the view that this is ridiculous and they will refuse to comply. And that's when you could see numbers pop.
I don't agree with the people who are out protesting in any way - but I'd caution against being so callous with your description of them. People are out of work with no foreseeable way out - and for those in more rural or exurban settings - aka the Trump base - they aren't seeing the kind of debilitating illness that those in urban centers are.

It's not cause they can't get a hair cut.

And yes, I know one stupid protester had a sign saying she wants a haircut.
 
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As someone who resorted to calling the suicide hotline last month because the "reality of the situation" appeared so overwhelmingly bleak, I do think the experts we should place our trust in have an obligation to be objective and limit idle speculation.

If you're in a position of authority, maybe avoid saying "life could be 100 times worse in a few months, but then again it might not, it all depends," as if blissfully unaware that only the first ten words of the sentence will be reported.

Just want to tell you that I've called it many times. Please try not to think of it as resorting, you're doing a very good thing by knowing when you need some help and seeking it out. And I don't understand your specific troubles because they are yours, but believe me I do understand what it's like in general . Please reach out here if you feel comfortable doing that. I know you said you live with anxiety, I do too and I have for a long time now.
 
It's not cause they can't get a hair cut.

And yes, I know one stupid protester had a sign saying she wants a haircut.

I think the people protesting are exactly the haircut types. Not a single one of the ones portrayed or interviewed in the protests seemed like a thoughtful person who was concerned about feeding their families or making their mortgage payments. They were basically lunatics.

The people who are thoughtfully concerned are not the ones at protests.
 
As someone who resorted to calling the suicide hotline last month because the "reality of the situation" appeared so overwhelmingly bleak, I do think the experts we should place our trust in have an obligation to be objective and limit idle speculation.

If you're in a position of authority, maybe avoid saying "life could be 100 times worse in a few months, but then again it might not, it all depends," as if blissfully unaware that only the first ten words of the sentence will be reported.

Just want to tell you that I've called it many times. Please try not to think of it as resorting, you're doing a very good thing by knowing when you need some help and seeking it out. And I don't understand your specific troubles because they are yours, but believe me I do understand what it's like in general . Please reach out here if you feel comfortable doing that. I know you said you live with anxiety, I do too and I have for a long time now.

you guys are both awesome :hug:
 
I think the people protesting are exactly the haircut types. Not a single one of the ones portrayed or interviewed in the protests seemed like a thoughtful person who was concerned about feeding their families or making their mortgage payments. They were basically lunatics.



The people who are thoughtfully concerned are not the ones at protests.

I wasn't aware that losing one's income required you to be "thoughtful."
 
I wasn't aware that losing one's income required you to be "thoughtful."

Oh give me a break, it's as if you're being purposely obstinate.

Many people - millions, in fact - have lost income or are worried about losing their income this week or next month. Not just in the US but the rest of the world.

Many of them work in industries that frankly will either not come back for a very long time or may never come back the same way. I know of several - an uncle who is a commercial pilot, a friend who is a procurement manager with a huge airline, a number of people in the oil and gas industry - from field workers who have already been laid off due to project suspensions to corporate types.

These are not the people who are driving around with "Jesus is my vaccine" on their trucks, braying about haircuts, Bill Gates and insane 5G theories and what have you.

Read up on who is organizing these protests and who is attending them (spoiler alert: we've seen this before).

I have no issue with the bulk of humanity discussing how concerned we all are about everything from our health, to our kids' educations to our jobs to our pensions and so on. When I say "thoughtful" - that's what I mean. Not the lunatic fringe who is at the protests. Those people are there for political and other reasons.
 
:up:

Okay.

The protests can, at the same time, be unnecessary, bat shit crazy, political, dangerous... and not being because they want to get their fucking hair cut.



We shouldn’t overestimate the Flu Klux Klan.

Their numbers are small, and they are funded by the DeVos folks. The news media’s real bias is for drama.

Polling on this issue shows overwhelming support for continuing lockdowns and public safety in general.

But as of right now, that doesn’t appear to be true at all. Instead, Americans still seem onboard with social distancing and much more fearful about the health risks of opening up the country too soon than the economic risk of a continued shutdown. The costs of both have been awful — 31,000 dead and counting, 22 million jobs lost — but the public is first and foremost preoccupied with the public health crisis.

The Pew Research Center asked the question directly in a nearly 5,000-person survey conducted from April 7 to 12: Are you more worried about your state government lifting its restrictions on public activities too quickly or not quickly enough? By a 2-to-1 margin, Americans said that they were more worried about rapidly ramping down social distancing.

https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-cov...virus-us-polls-lockdown-social-distancing-end



And this is too good not to share:

IMG_1833.JPG
 
I don't want to sound like I'm defending the protests or the protesters one bit. I also don't want to see us go down the basket of deplorables road once more.



Her biggest mistake was apologizing.

Anyways. Tired of national polls. 60 percent of Americans means 100% of California plus New York City plus DC/Boston/Chicago/Philadelphia. Those protestors are not a small force.
 
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Singapore was ready to come out of the lockdown and has now extended it by another month with massive outbreaks in their worker camps. They are now posting higher daily infection numbers than in their first wave - a great example of what happens when you are readying to reopen and get large crowds together again.

A lesson many US states are about to learn.

Hopefully it will also be a wake up call to economies that are building their metropolises on cheap imported labour: You can't just ignore their presence.
It seems Singapore did everything to contain the virus within their population, while these workers were commuting from their crowded places of shelter to construction sites etc. and back, without anyone taking into consideration what might happen if one person were to carry the virus into these communities.

If there's no scientific modeling behind it then it's just speculation. I'm all for facing the reality of the current situation, I just don't see how statements like his are helpful. Unless like you say it can get some people to take things seriously.

I've heard the term "panic porn" used and it does apply in some instances. Of course CNN reported his comments as breaking news. CNN is panic porn these days.

Since this is new, there's naturally a lot of uncertainty behind any prognosis about future implications of the disease. Of course this involves assumptions to be made, based upon what's known so far about the actual disease, and supported by what's known by other similar diseases. While it bears the possibility of being completely wrong, I'd think there's a greater probability of it not being entirely off the mark.

Not only in the US, but also e.g. here in Germany we seem to have entered the stage where there's a great yearning for a loosening of restrictions. In this phase I think it is responsible to remark that we are not off the hook, and with all that's known e.g. from the Spanish flu, where the virus got more evenly distributed during the summer months and then came back with deadly force in the fall, there's reason for caution.

So I'd rather call it an educated guess than speculation. And after all, scientific modelling is just that. You take what you know, add in assumptions you can make, and plot all these variables in a multitude of constellations to create different scenarios for the next few months.
 
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Just want to tell you that I've called it many times. Please try not to think of it as resorting, you're doing a very good thing by knowing when you need some help and seeking it out. And I don't understand your specific troubles because they are yours, but believe me I do understand what it's like in general . Please reach out here if you feel comfortable doing that. I know you said you live with anxiety, I do too and I have for a long time now.

you guys are both awesome :hug:

Agreed, and many of us here are happy to lend an ear if ever needed.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you all for your kind words and support. As bleak as things seemed last month, it's the knowledge that there were people out there who really cared that allowed me to hang in there. Family, friends here in California, this site and others; they all kept me from feeling alone. Loneliness and depression are a powerful team and thankfully I only have to deal with one of them.
 
Have you guys seen this story about the oral polio vaccine being used to offer 2-3 month boosts to innate immunity?



It's very interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing what they find out in their double blind Baltimore/Mount Sinai study, but watch people run to their GPs begging for polio on a sugar cube once Trump sees this.

It works very, very similarly to that TB shot they were talking about using a few weeks ago as a booster. It's not permanent by any means, but even a couple months could be life saving if a treatment like remdesivir is passing through the FDA.

Most likely, we won't be able to use this tactic until next flu season, but it could be helpful for a lot people because these vaccines are cheap and there's a lot of them already manufactured.

Like I always say with proposals like this, don't expect anything, but hope for the best. I think it's really cool.

Here is a separate article in USA Today regarding innate immunity that Dr. Gallo, one of the researchers who discovered HIV as the infectious agent behind AIDS, collaborated on:

Could an old vaccine be a godsend for new coronavirus?

Ultimate control over COVID-19 will be possible only after a large part of the world population becomes immune. This can happen either after a large fraction of the world population gets infected or by prophylactic vaccination. Efforts are underway to accelerate the development of safe and effective vaccines. However, vaccines can be used for mass immunization only if they prove to be safe and effective by thorough clinical evaluation. Given the time this requires, vaccines specific to COVID-19 are likely to remain unavailable for mass immunization during the current pandemic.

In the meantime, we propose an approach to mitigate the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic through the use of existing attenuated live viral vaccines. In particular, oral polio vaccine has been documented to induce protection against a number of viral and bacterial infections. OPV, developed by Albert Sabin, consists of attenuated (weakened) poliovirus and has been used with great success in worldwide efforts to eradicate poliomyelitis.

The importance of innate immunity

In addition to protecting against polio by inducing antibodies that kill the virus, OPV activates other protective mechanisms, including an innate immune system, thus making people resistant to infections caused by other viruses and bacteria. For example, in large scale multicenter clinical trials conducted in the 1970s during outbreaks of seasonal influenza, OPV protected more people from influenza than most flu vaccines do. Furthermore, observational studies in many countries suggested that the hospitalization rate and the overall mortality among children immunized with OPV were consistently lower compared with unimmunized children, even in the absence of poliovirus in communities.

Related studies revealed that similar nonspecific protection can be induced by immunizing people with measles vaccine, tuberculosis vaccine (BCG) and some other live attenuated vaccines. These observations suggest that the nonspecific protective effects are a result of boosting innate immunity that is our body’s front-line defense against infectious agents. This protection would last for a period of several weeks or months preventing or reducing the severity of disease in immunized individuals and slowing down the spread of COVID-19.

Lower incidence of COVID-19 in countries using BCG could suggest that the nonspecific protective effects could last much longer. Involvement of innate immunity could be particularly important because there is an indication that it is suppressed by SARS-CoV-2, while immunization with live vaccines is expected to stimulate it.

OPV is a proven safe and inexpensive vaccine routinely used orally in young infants and even newborn babies around the world. Focused analysis and experimentation will be required to ascertain how best to deploy a vaccine conferring high immunity but for a limited duration.

In summary, we propose here that trials to test the potential of vaccination with OPV should be quickly explored as a tool to mitigate the pandemic until vaccines specific to SARS-CoV-2 become available. If the outcome of trials proves positive, this approach could be used to control this pandemic as well as subsequent waves of COVID-19, if they occur.

The demonstrated ability of OPV to activate nonspecific immune responses provides a unique opportunity to reset the course of the pandemic. Researchers are testing multiple drugs licensed for other indications to ascertain whether they are effective against SARS-CoV-2. Since strong science already points to the broad nonspecific protective effects of live attenuated vaccines, trials of OPV should now join the drug trails in the quest for effective tools against COVID-19.
 
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One last thing: keep a close eye on Ivermectin. Early results on it are incredible, and it's already widely available, but as with any number of candidate treatments it's a long way from being approved for COVID-19, if it even works in the human body as proposed.

https://www.thepharmaletter.com/art...within-48-hours-monash-university-study-finds

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ar...asitic-drug-kill-off-sars-cov-2-within-2-days

Early trials are being funded by Bill and Melinda Gates:

https://www.thailandmedical.news/ne...rial-on-ivermectin-to-treat-covid-19-underway
 
I know the articles mention they have yet to be tested on humans as you yourself have also pointed out...but it is really important to remember you see lots of drugs that are amazing in vitro but you get to humans many are not as successful.

I know people are really keen to hear about possibilities that offer hope, but I would remain sceptical until we have good human trial evidence.
 
Just wanted to share what I found for anyone having issues with masks. The masks I bought from Etsy don't fit me perfectly. And with my overgrown hair and wearing while out walking...they weren't staying on properly.

And as health care people know they hurt your ears. So people are also selling ear savers, s hooks (those are the search terms) for masks. I'm hoping I can get some delivered quickly and it will solve my problem.

If you use a scarf or bandana it should be 100 % cotton, and as thick as you can make it.

They don't all look like this, you can get some that are more subtle. If anyone here knows the best kind to get please let me know.

il_794xN.2311768843_9psp.jpg
 
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