Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19) and Tinnitus

[Ed209]

I'd also add that it's worth noting which of the three known strains are predominantly affecting each country.

 

[linearb]

Initially I had been strongly in favour of forcing everyone who might have been exposed to the virus to be quarantined and for isolating at-risk people. It had never occurred to me that locking down Earth is a possibility. Now I have no idea what to think. The economic cost is shaping up to be enourmous. These lock downs got implemented without finding out exactly what fraction of the population has already had it. If a large fraction already has immunity to it, it means that the death rate might actually be low.

I am also not sure what to make of all of the "number of infected" and "number of dead" data. We can't really trust this data as it depends on the number of tests that got performed and when something is counted as a death from the virus. The number of newly infected and the number of deaths is slowing down. The slowdown seems to not correspond to the time each country has implemented a lock down. Specifically in many cases the people who were dying at those decreasing rates got infected Before the lock down got implemented. Could it be that the slowdown is due to herd immunity (or the weather warming up), and not due to the implementation of a lock down?

My opinion is that the answer to your last question is a resounding no based on many opinions from experts in the field; the models we're seeing show level-ling occuring in places reliably trailing lockdown measures by the expected interval.

That said, Bill -- I do agree with you that we need to be looking at the whole cost of this situation. If we'd done nothing at all, a LOT of people would have died of COVID. Most of them would have been older, yes, but not all, and more critically -- not allowing the whole medical infrastructure to become overrun is of utmost importance. So, that's really all these measures have gotten us -- slow the burn to a rate where hospitals can triage, can let serious Corona cases die on respirators (if they wish, I would be DNI / DNR going in the door if I was over a certain age).

So as to the "whole cost". Will the lock down kill people? Yes. In places like India people have been forced to walk hundreds of kilometers home with no notice. We clearly don't have the political will or ability to just turn on $3000/mo universal base income for everyone displaced by this, so -- people will become homeless. Poor children will suffer malnutrition and permanent damage.

I am not arguing for a permanent lockdown until we have a vaccine; it doesn't seem doable and it might actually destroy society in way I can't conceive of.

However -- looking at 1918, a couple things happened there. People relaxed "too soon". It may also be that the virus in that case got more deadly as a result of mutating in battlefield conditions in WWI (war stress on the human immune system is thought to be a vector for more rapid mutation of viruses IIRC). But, basically, you had this first wave that killed some people, then after people relaxed too soon -- you had a second wave that was much more catastrophic, both in terms of human cost and economically.

After that second wave -- when things reopened -- I have read there was a long time when people simply did not want to go out. Restaurants were open, but empty.

I can see a similar scenario here. Restaurants can put in all the new glass and distanced seating and etc that they want, but, until there's a vaccine -- I'm not going, I have mild respiratory issues and a somewhat high risk kid at home.

I think I am strongly agreeing with you that we need to find a way to balance "lockdown" with "don't completely destroy the US economic engine", and I am not really sure how to do that, but there's going to be some grisley math that's more or less gonna involve putting a number on the value of a year of human life, and also probably valuing the year of a 25 year olds life differently than the year of a 65 year old's life.

I think this is a 9/11 grade event; there's not "back to the old way", there is just "find a new normal". I expect to see asian style masks and distancing that have been common since SARS become common in US urban zones.

Sometimes I even wonder if these nutters that promote the earth being flat, 5G crap, alien crap, stuff like David Icke and Alex Jones, are themselves part of a plot to make sensible scrutiny of this or that look crazy like they are.

it's a well established part of not completely unhinged conspiracy theory culture that "they" (The Powers That Be) seed the far right and far left with shills who take really extreme, insane views on things like wifi, 5g, etc, to basically "poison the well". However, there is always infighting in these communities over who is "real" and who is "a plant". For instance, Alex Jones is someone who comes up a lot as "an obvious government plant", but of course he has a huge following.

So, there's a lot of conspiracy nonsense behind that idea, but the US intelligence community specifically has a long and storied history of doing illegal / unethical things to assert social control and subvert countercultures. So, while I think it's a stretch that Alex Jones is on some gov't payroll, I do not think it's a stretch to think that much of the far right and far left online communities have been infiltrated by the US intelligence apparatus. In fact, I believe that's a part of their job, it's part of what I am paying them to do with taxes.

These numbers will inevitably change as people are put into lockdown. If we were all still roaming around, en mass, then the numbers would be way higher. There is also the two week incubation period to take into consideration.

yeah, it's nuts to me anyone is failing to take this seriously at this point. We've instituted an unprecedented national lockdown and we still are on track for two flu years worth of causalities in a 6 week timeframe. We are turning parks into temporary mass grave.

What are people even arguing? That this isn't bad? That it wouldn't have been worse without taking strong measures?

If the latter, the cool news is that a bunch of states are going to reopen way before they have this under control (lookin at you Texas), so the degree to which bodies do or don't stack up in the streets in those places will give us a whole bunch of neat epidemiological data about what measures were or weren't effective.

 

[linearb]

@Bill Bauer you might find this interesting; this is from the Economist, which I subscribe to. To read this online you would have to sign up with an email, so I am taking the liberty of just reposting the whole thing here.

So, here's your "classical liberal intelligensia debates the ethics of this" article:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2...rk-choices-between-life-death-and-the-economy

Covid-19 presents stark choices between life, death and the economy
The trade-offs required by the pandemic will get even harder

Imagine having two critically ill patients but just one ventilator. That is the choice which could confront hospital staff in New York, Paris and London in the coming weeks, just as it has in Lombardy and Madrid. Triage demands agonising decisions (see Lexington). When China shuts its borders to foreigners almost completely, it stops imported infections but it also hobbles foreign businesses. A huge effort to make and distribute covid-19 vaccines will save lives, but it may affect programmes that protect children against measles and polio.

How should you think about these trade-offs? The first principle is to be systematic. The $60,000 benefit to American households, as in all cost-of-life calculations, is not real cash but an accounting measure that helps compare very different things such as lives, jobs and contending moral and social values in a complex society. The bigger the crisis, the more important such measurements are. When one child is stuck down a well the desire to help without limits will prevail—and so it should. But in a war or a pandemic leaders cannot escape the fact that every course of action will impose vast social and economic costs. To be responsible, you have to stack each against the other.

Hard-headed is not hard-hearted
A second principle is to help those on the losing side of sensible trade-offs. Workers sacked in forced shutdowns deserve extra help; children who no longer get meals at schools need to be given food. Likewise, society must help the young after the pandemic has abated. Although the disease threatens them less severely, most of the burden will fall on them, both today and in the future, as countries pay off their extra borrowing.

A third principle is that countries must adapt. The balance of costs and benefits will change as the pandemic unfolds. Lockdowns buy time, an invaluable commodity. When they are lifted, covid-19 will spread again among people who are still susceptible. But societies can prepare in a way that they never did for the first wave, by equipping health systems with more beds, ventilators and staff. They can study new ways to treat the disease and recruit an army of testing and tracing teams to snuff out new clusters. All that lowers the cost of opening up the economy.

Perhaps, though, no new treatments will be found and test-and-trace will fail. By the summer, economies will have suffered double-digit drops in quarterly gdp. People will have endured months indoors, hurting both social cohesion and their mental health. Year-long lockdowns would cost America and the euro zone a third or so of gdp. Markets would tumble and investments be delayed. The capacity of the economy would wither as innovation stalled and skills decayed. Eventually, even if many people are dying, the cost of distancing could outweigh the benefits. That is a side to the trade-offs that nobody is yet ready to admit. ■

The bolded section in the second to last paragraph was highlighted by me. I fundamentally do not see the current US as capable of making the kind of broad, systemic changes required; hence, a second wave could well be catastrophically worse some places.

FWIW I read this article as typical Economist hand-wringing and pearl clutching, pointing out the obvious problems but failing to have anything insightful to say about solutions. (I generally like the publication, but, basically anything that challenges me to think is probably going to publish a bunch of things I disagree with or find dumb).

The small town I live in notes: the 1918 flu spared this rural community. When it came back the following fall, it swept through with a catastrophic death toll.

 

[Ed209]

My opinion is that the answer to your last question is a resounding no based on many opinions from experts in the field; the models we're seeing show level-ling occuring in places reliably trailing lockdown measures by the expected interval.

That said, Bill -- I do agree with you that we need to be looking at the whole cost of this situation. If we'd done nothing at all, a LOT of people would have died of COVID. Most of them would have been older, yes, but not all, and more critically -- not allowing the whole medical infrastructure to become overrun is of utmost importance. So, that's really all these measures have gotten us -- slow the burn to a rate where hospitals can triage, can let serious Corona cases die on respirators (if they wish, I would be DNI / DNR going in the door if I was over a certain age).

So as to the "whole cost". Will the lock down kill people? Yes. In places like India people have been forced to walk hundreds of kilometers home with no notice. We clearly don't have the political will or ability to just turn on $3000/mo universal base income for everyone displaced by this, so -- people will become homeless. Poor children will suffer malnutrition and permanent damage.

I am not arguing for a permanent lockdown until we have a vaccine; it doesn't seem doable and it might actually destroy society in way I can't conceive of.

However -- looking at 1918, a couple things happened there. People relaxed "too soon". It may also be that the virus in that case got more deadly as a result of mutating in battlefield conditions in WWI (war stress on the human immune system is thought to be a vector for more rapid mutation of viruses IIRC). But, basically, you had this first wave that killed some people, then after people relaxed too soon -- you had a second wave that was much more catastrophic, both in terms of human cost and economically.

After that second wave -- when things reopened -- I have read there was a long time when people simply did not want to go out. Restaurants were open, but empty.

I can see a similar scenario here. Restaurants can put in all the new glass and distanced seating and etc that they want, but, until there's a vaccine -- I'm not going, I have mild respiratory issues and a somewhat high risk kid at home.

I think I am strongly agreeing with you that we need to find a way to balance "lockdown" with "don't completely destroy the US economic engine", and I am not really sure how to do that, but there's going to be some grisley math that's more or less gonna involve putting a number on the value of a year of human life, and also probably valuing the year of a 25 year olds life differently than the year of a 65 year old's life.

I think this is a 9/11 grade event; there's not "back to the old way", there is just "find a new normal". I expect to see asian style masks and distancing that have been common since SARS become common in US urban zones.


it's a well established part of not completely unhinged conspiracy theory culture that "they" (The Powers That Be) seed the far right and far left with shills who take really extreme, insane views on things like wifi, 5g, etc, to basically "poison the well". However, there is always infighting in these communities over who is "real" and who is "a plant". For instance, Alex Jones is someone who comes up a lot as "an obvious government plant", but of course he has a huge following.

So, there's a lot of conspiracy nonsense behind that idea, but the US intelligence community specifically has a long and storied history of doing illegal / unethical things to assert social control and subvert countercultures. So, while I think it's a stretch that Alex Jones is on some gov't payroll, I do not think it's a stretch to think that much of the far right and far left online communities have been infiltrated by the US intelligence apparatus. In fact, I believe that's a part of their job, it's part of what I am paying them to do with taxes.



yeah, it's nuts to me anyone is failing to take this seriously at this point. We've instituted an unprecedented national lockdown and we still are on track for two flu years worth of causalities in a 6 week timeframe. We are turning parks into temporary mass grave.

What are people even arguing? That this isn't bad? That it wouldn't have been worse without taking strong measures?

If the latter, the cool news is that a bunch of states are going to reopen way before they have this under control (lookin at you Texas), so the degree to which bodies do or don't stack up in the streets in those places will give us a whole bunch of neat epidemiological data about what measures were or weren't effective.

There's an interesting study by Peter Forster, out of Cambridge University, that analysed the genetic network of the virus.

You can read it here:

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/07/2004999117

There's a synopsis of it here:

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news...nalysis-provides-snapshot-of-pandemic-origins

I find it interesting how the source of the virus is now mainly found in America rather than China. It appears that the mutated version, strain B, is the most prevalent in China. A third strain, C, which is the daughter of B, was spread from Hong Kong and Singapore and into Europe. Although, it appears that strain B has spread more rampantly and has overtaken C in most countries except for Italy.

New York, which is the worst affected area in North America, seems to be mostly from Europe. The west coast on the other hand appears to be predominantly from China.

I'll post an excerpt from an article:

Data showed England's first two cases - thought to be a University of York student and his mother at the end of January - had type A, suggesting they caught it in China.

No other samples from England, Scotland or Wales were type A, with almost 30 of the 40 viruses shown to be type B.

Dr Forster told MailOnline it was possible the UK's outbreak could be traced back to Italy but that the data was too limited to make any conclusion.

The other cases recorded across Britain were type C, which is also likely to be traced back to East Asia.

The UK's first 'super-spreader' - father-of-two Steve Walsh - was known to have went to a business conference in Singapore and infected scores of patients in Sussex.

Dr Forster told MailOnline that type A originally mutated into type B within China - but type C, the 'daughter' of B, evolved outside of the nation.

He admitted scientists are clueless as to how type B 'pushed aside' its predecessor to become more common in China - but the question will be answered 'one day'.

Type B was found to be comfortable in the immune systems of people in Wuhan and did not need to mutate to adapt.

However, outside of Wuhan and in the bodies of people from different locations, the variation mutated much more rapidly.

This indicated it was adapting to try and survive and overcome resistance among other populations, such as Westerners.

Data analysis suggests the original strain of the virus could have been circulating in China as far back as September.

And Dr Forster said the type B strain was 'alive and kicking' by Christmas Eve, their analysis revealed.

It means the virus had already mutated before China recorded any COVID-19 cases - Wuhan first described an outbreak of a mysterious virus on December 31.

He told MailOnline: 'The majority of cases in Wuhan are B type while a derived C type later emerged and spread initially via Singapore.'

And he suggested type C was not mutating - but called for caution over his finding, saying the sample was very small.

Dr Forster added that the data used was just a snapshot and did not include tens of thousands of confirmed cases recorded in each country.

For example, China's outbreak may mainly consist of type A - but the data analysed suggests that is not the case.

Type A is the closest to the one found in bats and pangolins and is considered to be the 'root' of the outbreak.

Type A has two sub-clusters and the first, labelled as the T-allele, has substantial links to East Asia as it was found in Americans that lived in Wuhan.

However, the second A type sub-cluster, called the C-allele, is slightly different due to a string of mutations.

In the study, the scientists said: 'Nearly half of the types in this subcluster, however, are found outside East Asia, mainly in the US and Australia.'

The original study had access to 93 type B genomes and 74 were in either Wuhan (22), other parts of eastern China (31) or neighbouring Asian countries (21).

A smattering were identified elsewhere, but type B had a strong affinity for Wuhan and is derived from type A via two mutations, at T8782C and C28144T.

The scientists argue that these methods could help predict future global hot spots of disease transmission and surge.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....p/There-THREE-separate-types-coronavirus.html

 

[GregCA]

Sweden continues to do well, despite not implementing a lock down. It will be interesting to see what happens there this month.

By what metric is Sweden doing well? If you normalize by population size, it is ranking 12th in the world in deaths, higher than the US (15th). Source https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

[Bill Bauer]

By what metric is Sweden doing well? If you normalize by population size, it is ranking 12th in the world in deaths, higher than the US (15th). Source https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

When I use the link above, I get that Sweden is 30th in the world, with 1038 cases per million. US is 19th in the world, with 1649 cases per million. Right?

 

[Ed209]

@Bill Bauer, I also very much agree about the financial situation regarding the shutdown of the economy, but I can understand how difficult and complex this whole scenario is. There are no easy answers.

As I previously mentioned, I earned nothing in March and I'm still not earning a lot as my only source of income right now is from the odd video lesson here and there. This has massively impacted my business and I'm not alone. I have friends and family who are also heading towards a financial crisis as well. These are clearly going to be hard times for many of us, and we have no idea when we will get back to some form of normality either. This makes planning for the future extremely difficult.

 

[Bill Bauer]

We clearly don't have the political will or ability to just turn on $3000/mo universal base income for everyone displaced by this

Why not make it $3,000,000 a month? I always wanted to be a millionaire. We could also send out medical doctor diplomas to everyone, as doctors make a lot of money.

Luckily we have the political will to not have a universal base income.

If society Really wanted to go into debt that in the future they would have to pay a pound of flesh for, they should at least do something like hiring people to improve the infrastructure.

When one child is stuck down a well the desire to help without limits will prevail—and so it should.

What this is saying is that the child should be saved at the cost of not being able to save 1000 other people...

 

[Bill Bauer]

The data is wrong. I've been saying this for ages since we caught it (when I believe there was apparently only 200 people in the country with it). The problem has been the lack of testing. Nobody was being tested at all. None of the staff from the school, who all clearly had it, were tested either. I've also been told by good sources that the death toll data is also skewed. Some people are dying from the virus, such as in care homes or at home, who are not being tested for it. The current data we have for the UK is in very broad strokes.

There is a silver lining to this. If the virus is more contagious than the modellers first thought, then it means that its death rate might be lower than initially assumed, and we might be closer to "herd immunity"...

These numbers will inevitably change as people are put into lockdown. If we were all still roaming around, en mass, then the numbers would be way higher.

I am pretty sure that those high figures (possibly not that 2 million figure) were projections for the case that lockdown is put into place. They keep revising those down.

I'm just sharing my experiences and giving an opinion.

I had been doing the same (sharing my experiences and giving my opinion on protecting one's ears) + providing links to the experiences shared by many others, and you called it fear mongering.

 

[GregCA]

By what metric is Sweden doing well? If you normalize by population size, it is ranking 12th in the world in deaths, higher than the US (15th). Source https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

When I use the link above, I get that Sweden is 30th in the world, with 1038 cases per million. US is 19th in the world, with 1649 cases per million. Right?

I was talking about the death rate, per million (re-read my post).

 

[linearb]

If society Really wanted to go into debt that in the future they would have to pay a pound of flesh for, they should at least do something like hiring people to improve the infrastructure.

It seems to me like you and I are politically opposed in our views of UBI, and yet we might both agree to some kind of "newer deal" where people were put to work rebuilding the parts of the US infrastructure which have become dangerously aged in the last 60 years? Stuff like bridges, dams, facilities relevant to national security, nuclear storage and weapons facilities, etc?

I am only asking because - if we're misaligned on UBI but aligned on this idea, and if that is indicative of some national trend, then there is a path forward here that rebuilds crucial parts of America and has bipartisan support (based on your and my different views as "partisan", which is probably dubious since I don't generally identify with either major party and doubt you do either -- my more left-leaning friends would want to crucify me for including "nuclear facilities" in this list, for instance).

There is a silver lining to this. If the virus is more contagious than the modellers first thought, then it means that its death rate might be lower than initially assumed, and we might be closer to "herd immunity"...

So far this does not appear to be borne out by the test results. However, we're also not doing systemic grid testing anywhere in the US because apparently no one in control has kept up with infectious diseases science in the last 100 years, so who knows.

I am pretty sure that those high figures (possibly not that 2 million figure) were projections for the case that lockdown is put into place. They keep revising those down.

The 60K estimate we're seeing now is based on keeping existing lockdowns in place into the summer, and more worryingly also depends on places which haven't done any significant lockdown, not having huge case counts.

I'm going to call that an optimistic model, on April 12, 2020, but we'll see. If Texas really goes ahead and goes back to life as normal before their curve has peaked, we're going to learn a lot about how much of this was an overreaction vs a very reasonable response to something that can trivially overwhelm urban HC resources.

Why not make it $3,000,000 a month? I always wanted to be a millionaire. We could also send out medical doctor diplomas to everyone, as doctors make a lot of money.

If we do, indeed, completely obliterate the service sector, then my personal starting gambit would be to compensate unemployed 2019 taxpayers an amount commiserate with their earnings, as well as setting up public funds to help people who were not taxpayers in 2019, because I think it's better to spend some amount of money providing basic care and services for everyone, including undocumented workers than it is to do nothing and allow their bodies to pile up in the streets. I know there is a death cult mentality gripping parts of America which claims to be totally fine with the second result, however, I suspect they would feel differently if the bodies were piling up on their streets.

The idea of "bodies piling up in the streets" would be pure hyperbole, except this is Plague World 2020 and we already have mass graves in fucking New York City parks, so here we are.

It's certainly not economically "good" to pay people to do nothing, in general, but it might be better to do that for a limited period of time than to try to re-ignite the economy in ways that actually burn it up.

Reopening restaurants, concerts and the likes before the general public is willing to use those services, dooms them to failure. Whatever various Federal and State authorities say, the polling is pretty clear that right now a significant majority of Americans have radically curtailed their nonessential travel and time in public places.

 

[Ed209]

I had been doing the same (sharing my experiences and giving my opinion on protecting one's ears) + providing links to the experiences shared by many others, and you called it fear mongering.

There is quite a difference between using your own experiences to form an opinion about something, and using other people's anecdotes to construe something as being fact. In my opinion, you were fear-mongering in how you went about it, but that has nothing to do with this thread. It would also be my opinion on the matter. Others may disagree.

Getting back to this topic, where did the 2 million figure come from? Was it in an article somewhere or was it mentioned on this site?

 

[Bill Bauer]

I was talking about the death rate, per million (re-read my post).

I had been looking at the infection rate, but the death rate is probably a better proxy for the total number that got infected. You are right - thank you for clarifying this (that Sweden isn't actually doing too well) for me.

 

[Lane]

There are no easy answers.

Hey @Ed209 -- I have to respectfully disagree with that assessment, and the reasons why will likely not surprise you. I would point toward one of the more iconic images from this whole pandemic, in which people are shown being tested for the virus. Health care practitioners are generally shown swabbing the nasal passages of people getting tested, with those same people often recoiling a bit when it becomes overly aggressive.

We've seen that image so often, however, we're never told anything about this procedure that could be instructive for people watching, such as: 1) The coronavirus virtually always starts replicating in the sinuses and throat, and stays there for as long as 2-3 or more before migrating to the lungs; 2) It's during this time that the virus is most vulnerable to immediate remedial actions; 3) Thoroughly sanitizing your throat and sinuses at the end of every day (especially if you've been out in public) can go a long way toward protecting yourself and your family; 4) There are a wide variety of effective remedial actions that can be taken.

Some of these actions include: 1) Get into the habit of (daily) nebulizing or misting hydrogen peroxide and/or other known compounds that kill viruses (like iodine) so that it gets deep into the sinuses and lungs; 2) Take extra amounts of Vitamin C, which the body has the capability of turning into hydrogen peroxide, which like a nebulizer, can also kill the virus; 3) Do some steam inhalation for a few minutes, which the coronavirus is susceptible to since it's kill point is 133 degrees F; 4) Buy and use an inexpensive ozone machine for under a $100, and start drinking ozonated water and/or gargling with it on a regular basis; 4) Buy a more expensive ozone machine, which can kill viruses in the blood and other parts of the body; 5) Many other things that can be done, such as getting as much fresh air and sunshine as possible to help ensure critical vitamin D levels are adequate.

When you look at this from the economic point of view, I see absolutely no reason why the economies of most areas of the world couldn't be opened up significantly in the very near future if businesses instructed their employees to follow the above listed recommendations. When combined with the current measures of physical distancing and facemasks, it would seem the overall health and economic tolls could be almost immediately be greatly mitigated very quickly.

Most people would consider this nothing but fanciful thinking. But the science says otherwise. I believe the main thing(s) that are holding this back from becoming a reality, is: 1) the ability of so called "experts" to continually influence public opinion by championing the coming drugs and vaccines; and 2) the pharmaceutical companies who literally own those "experts" to say those very things. These pharama companies are likely drooling at the prospects of pot of gold type profits from this coronavirus situation, and have virtually no interest in very inexpensive and effective remedies becoming well known that they can't profit from. Unfortunately, my best guess is that these pharama companies will end up winning that battle.

@Bill Bauer -- Something I firmly believe, and that you may agree with: The U.S. began a long, 40-year downhill journey when Ronald Reagan continually made the promise we could reduce tax rates by 30%, dramatically increase defense spending, and balance the budget all at the same time. George Bush Sr. called it voodoo economics, and it surely was. The way I see it, it created a sense entitlement with most Americans, with the accompanying belief that you can "have something for nothing". Nothing I can think of has been more insidious to the economic (and spiritual?) well being of the U.S over the past 40 years than this dynamic. The closest other insidious development I can think of is the unrelenting Republican assault on voting rights and our democracy.

 

[Ed209]

Hey @Ed209 -- I have to respectfully disagree with that assessment, and the reasons why will likely not surprise you. I would point toward one of the more iconic images from this whole pandemic, in which people are shown being tested for the virus. Health care practitioners are generally shown swabbing the nasal passages of people getting tested, with those same people often recoiling a bit when it becomes overly aggressive.

We've seen that image so often, however, we're never told anything about this procedure that could be instructive for people watching, such as: 1) The coronavirus virtually always starts replicating in the sinuses and throat, and stays there for as long as 2-3 or more before migrating to the lungs; 2) It's during this time that the virus is most vulnerable to immediate remedial actions; 3) Thoroughly sanitizing your throat and sinuses at the end of every day (especially if you've been out in public) can go a long way toward protecting yourself and your family; 4) There are a wide variety of effective remedial actions that can be taken.

Some of these actions include: 1) Get into the habit of (daily) nebulizing or misting hydrogen peroxide and/or other known compounds that kill viruses (like iodine) so that it gets deep into the sinuses and lungs; 2) Take extra amounts of Vitamin C, which the body has the capability of turning into hydrogen peroxide, which like a nebulizer, can also kill the virus; 3) Do some steam inhalation for a few minutes, which the coronavirus is susceptible to since it's kill point is 133 degrees F; 4) Buy and use an inexpensive ozone machine for under a $100, and start drinking ozonated water and/or gargling with it on a regular basis; 4) Buy a more expensive ozone machine, which can kill viruses in the blood and other parts of the body; 5) Many other things that can be done, such as getting as much fresh air and sunshine as possible to help ensure critical vitamin D levels are adequate.

When you look at this from the economic point of view, I see absolutely no reason why the economies of most areas of the world couldn't be opened up significantly in the very near future if businesses instructed their employees to follow the above listed recommendations. When combined with the current measures of physical distancing and facemasks, it would seem the overall health and economic tolls could be almost immediately be greatly mitigated very quickly.

Most people would consider this nothing but fanciful thinking. But the science says otherwise. I believe the main thing(s) that are holding this back from becoming a reality, is: 1) the ability of so called "experts" to continually influence public opinion by championing the coming drugs and vaccines; and 2) the pharmaceutical companies who literally own those "experts" to say those very things. These pharama companies are likely drooling at the prospects of pot of gold type profits from this coronavirus situation, and have virtually no interest in very inexpensive and effective remedies becoming well known that they can't profit from. Unfortunately, my best guess is that these pharama companies will end up winning that battle.

@Bill Bauer -- Something I firmly believe, and that you may agree with: The U.S. began a long, 40-year downhill journey when Ronald Reagan continually made the promise we could reduce tax rates by 30%, dramatically increase defense spending, and balance the budget all at the same time. George Bush Sr. called it voodoo economics, and it surely was. The way I see it, it created a sense entitlement with most Americans, with the accompanying belief that you can "have something for nothing". Nothing I can think of has been more insidious to the economic (and spiritual?) well being of the U.S over the past 40 years than this dynamic. The closest other insidious development I can think of is the unrelenting Republican assault on voting rights and our democracy.

It seems like wishful thinking to me, to expect the general public to follow a protocol like that. Some people can't even be bothered to brush their teeth let alone follow the plan you just laid out in your post. There is also the significant risk of people hurting themselves or even killing themselves using chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. Taking Vitamin C orally will not stop the virus, and nobody is going to be hooking themselves up for an intravenous infusion of ozone at home, and drinking ozonated water would require a medical-grade generator, surely? Are there enough generators for the entire population? There is also a cost issue to factor in.

All of this would be impossible without reliable home testing kits, as some don't even know they have the virus as many are asymptotic. The only way around this would be for people to test themselves frequently, but there are too many problems with this idea: firstly, there aren't any testing kits currently available, and even if there were, each person would need loads of them which is unrealistic. Secondly, the more complicated a plan gets, the more likely it is that people are going to fail or not bother. You would also need scientific backing that the plan would work, and be safe, which would take far too long to get approval for. There are just too many flaws to your idea, in my opinion.

Ultimately, the virus would not be contained, and the numbers would continue to spiral out of control exponentially, overrunning emergency rooms all across the globe - which is what the world is trying to avoid.

The biggest economies on the planet have shut down and this should tell us all something about the magnitude of what's going on. Some of the greatest minds on the planet are looking for a solution, if there was an obvious one that would save the economy billions, if not trillions, then it would have been implemented already.

I'm with you all the way on big pharma. They hold significant power and influence over an entire industry, but even their power doesn't outreach that of the entire economy. If there was an effective way to mitigate this spread without having to lock people away, it would have happened already.

The complexity of this issue is enormous. It's either we willingly allow a catastrophically large number of people to die around the world but keep all of the economies churning. Or, let them die, and in doing so mitigate some of the huge problems that will arise from allowing the economies of the world to crash. I believe the lockdowns will have to ease at some point because there will be a tipping point, but the timing is crucial.

 

[david c]

As things stand the UK now looks likely to be the European country worst impacted by coronavirus, mainly because our government, despite all the evidence from China and closer to home from Italy and Spain, was much too slow to take the necessary action.

Many of the UK government's early responses to coronavirus: "don't let it affect your everyday life too much"; "we mustn't over-react"; "Don't change your lifestyle" funnily had echoes of exactly the sort of things UK tinnitus sufferers are told both by some UK GPs (who often know little about tinnitus) and the UK's own tinnitus organisations such as the BTA. "Don't change your everyday routine because of tinnitus at all, even if it means continuing to expose yourself to loud noise etc.". In both cases complacency can lead to disaster. The UK's medical leaders got their tinnitus "herd immunity" strategy very badly wrong and tragically, ordinary people in the UK are paying for the consequences.

 

[Bill Bauer]

I was talking about the death rate, per million (re-read my post).

I might have been premature concluding that Sweden isn't doing well. The total number of the people who end up dying depends on the number of "patients zero" who arrived from abroad and began infecting the public. What we are interested is the speed of the spread. So what we care about is the number of new case and the number of daily deaths (that can act as a proxy for the number of new infections that happened 2-3 weeks ago). In Sweden, those numbers seem to be falling, just like they do in the UK (scroll down to daily new cases and daily deaths)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

UK's lockdown began on March 24 when they had about 8000 total cases and 400 deaths. Nineteen days later UK has a total of 84,200 cases and 10,600 deaths. Sweden reached 400 deaths on April 5 and it got 8000 cases on April 7. So we will need to wait 19 days until about April 25th, so that we can make a more appropriate comparison.

 

[Ed209]

As things stand the UK now looks likely to be the European country worst impacted by coronavirus, mainly because our government, despite all the evidence from China and closer to home from Italy and Spain, was much too slow to take the necessary action.

Many of the UK government's early responses to coronavirus: "don't let it affect your everyday life too much"; "we mustn't over-react"; "Don't change your lifestyle" funnily had echoes of exactly the sort of things UK tinnitus sufferers are told both by some UK GPs (who often know little about tinnitus) and the UK's own tinnitus organisations such as the BTA. "Don't change your everyday routine because of tinnitus at all, even if it means continuing to expose yourself to loud noise etc.". In both cases complacency can lead to disaster. The UK's medical leaders got their tinnitus "herd immunity" strategy very badly wrong and tragically, ordinary people in the UK are paying for the consequences.

This is something I was screaming from the rooftops early doors. I could see what was coming and was saying, "why aren't they locking the country down now because we'll have to at some point and delaying it only allows the virus to run rampant."

This is why an idea like lane suggested wouldn't work. People are still going out even though they've been told not to; you just cannot rely on humans to do the right thing. We should have done a full lockdown.

Don't forget, we all became ill early on and saw loads of others become ill as well. It was at that moment we knew the government numbers were laughable. I remember my cousin telling me on the phone that there were 200 cases in the, and before she could finish I said, "what, on my estate?"

I don't know anyone who got tested other than my mom and she was positive. We could all clearly see how it had spread and who caught it from who, but when we rang 111 they weren't interested. Even when the paramedics came to our house when my wife's breathing got really bad, they didn't test us. Those who we knew were infectious were still going to work. A few days later one of my friends came down with it and his boss was grilling him hard saying that he still had to go into work. My friend refused and nearly got fired. He had all the same symptoms that we had and clearly had it. In the meantime, the official number was crawling upwards. I found the lack of testing to be quite phenomenal.

 

[Ed209]

You can see by my post here when my wife was ill (4th one down):

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...-access-to-derby-telegraph.40016/#post-512861

At the time I posted that she would have been showing symptoms of the coronavirus for about 2 to 3 days. This was during the delay phase as well. When she went to her GP they didn't test her on the basis that she hadn't been to Italy or China. This seems to be a common theme. They were only testing people who had been abroad to those countries, even if they were showing symptoms of the coronavirus. Like this man who has been on TV since talking about his story. Notice how he says that because he hadn't been to China it was enough to rule him out! They also gave my wife some antibiotics.

 

[PhoenixAcademy]

https://files.catbox.moe/qk3zqg.mp4

Can I have 2019 back please?

 

[linearb]

I So we will need to wait 19 days until about April 25th, so that we can make a more appropriate comparison.

yup and then we're going to have a bunch of other hotspots we're expecting to maybe explode 2-4 weeks later

This whole thing is such a mess, the numbers coming out of EVERY country are so gamed. How can we figure out what is going on to make intelligent decisions about how to not kill a shitton of people but also not completely destroy the global economic engine?

 

[Ed209]

yup and then we're going to have a bunch of other hotspots we're expecting to maybe explode 2-4 weeks later

This whole thing is such a mess, the numbers coming out of EVERY country are so gamed. How can we figure out what is going on to make intelligent decisions about how to not kill a shitton of people but also not completely destroy the global economic engine?

That is the conundrum. I don't think anybody has figured this out.

 

[linearb]

hey fellow americans


who has and hasn't gotten their stimul$$? I don't even show a pending payment to my bank, but a couple of my friends got paid out last Friday....

only relevant to me to rebuild our savings account and consider whether a Glock 34 is something my wife should own, but, I'm curious what the rollout schedule here is.

I am also curious how a one time payment that won't even cover rent for a lot of people is gonna do much to turn the tide here

 

[FGG]

hey fellow americans

who has and hasn't gotten their stimul$$? I don't even show a pending payment to my bank, but a couple of my friends got paid out last Friday....

only relevant to me to rebuild our savings account and consider whether a Glock 34 is something my wife should own, but, I'm curious what the rollout schedule here is.

I am also curious how a one time payment that won't even cover rent for a lot of people is gonna do much to turn the tide here

I haven't gotten mine yet.

 

[Bill Bauer]

https://www.businessinsider.com/dea...ory-city-5x-less-than-national-average-2020-4

Streeck and his team are attempting to root out the sources of infection by studying residents of the northwestern region. Speaking to press on Tuesday, he said most cases of coronavirus in Heinsberg originated from people being close together for a significant period of time, and not from touching surfaces with virus particles on them.

Streeck went on to say that though the virus could "live" on various surfaces for up to seven days, he believed there was little chance that someone could become infected via surfaces, contradicting both the Center for Disease Control and National Institute of Health guidelines.

Streeck posited that in order to contract the virus via a surface like a doorknob, "it would be necessary that someone coughs into their hand, immediately touches a doorknob, and then straight after that another person grasps the handle and goes on to touches their face," Streeck told reporters.

Instead, claims Streeck, his study found that: "There is no significant risk of catching the disease when you go shopping. Severe outbreaks of the infection were always a result of people being closer together over a longer period of time."

 

[PhoenixAcademy]

hey fellow americans


who has and hasn't gotten their stimul$$? I don't even show a pending payment to my bank, but a couple of my friends got paid out last Friday....

only relevant to me to rebuild our savings account and consider whether a Glock 34 is something my wife should own, but, I'm curious what the rollout schedule here is.

I am also curious how a one time payment that won't even cover rent for a lot of people is gonna do much to turn the tide here

Get your wife a revolver with a nice stuff trigger to avoid a negligent discharge and get one with the internal hammer so she can stick it in her purse without getting caught on something. Like a S&W snub nose 38.

 

[linearb]

Get your wife a revolver with a nice stuff trigger to avoid a negligent discharge and get one with the internal hammer so she can stick it in her purse without getting caught on something. Like a S&W snub nose 38.

That would all make sense if our use cases were different then they are, but a 7" slide blowback semi is what's desired here, and while I'm aware of various gimmicky things like 9mm 1911 frames, Glock is like a Honda Civic

Poor trigger discipline is for lesser mortals :-P Glocks are fine, we've shot Glocks, they are super fine even with factory triggers and sights

This isn't really the right thread, though. I regret the detail; there's a gun and shooting and decibels thread somewhere...

 

[Lane]

It seems like wishful thinking to me, to expect the general public to follow a protocol like that. Some people can't even be bothered to brush their teeth let alone follow the plan you just laid out in your post. There is also the significant risk of people hurting themselves or even killing themselves using chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. Taking Vitamin C orally will not stop the virus, and nobody is going to be hooking themselves up for an intravenous infusion of ozone at home, and drinking ozonated water would require a medical-grade generator, surely? Are there enough generators for the entire population? There is also a cost issue to factor in.

I have to say @Ed209, your unduly pessimistic reply caught me off guard. Quite honestly, I can't really make sense out of some of your comments. Such as, you say Vitamin C orally will not stop the virus. I'm not sure where you got that from, because oral Vit. C definitely has antiviral properties, and will almost assuredly have a degree of positive effect for most people. -- I've read it's actually easier to maintain high levels of Vit. C in the body than using IV Vit. C. You did use the word "stop" the virus, so you may be technically correct, but I think a more operative word to consider is "manage". How well can anything help to manage this pandemic, and it feels like a nobrainer to me that Vitmain C (amongst other things as well) should be advocated by every health care organization around the globe.

You make a comment about people "can't even be bothered to brush their teeth". (???) What percentage of the people would you say that is? A top of my head best estimate is that percentage would be way less than 1% of the population. Perhaps similar to the less than 1% of people who believe 5g causes the coronavirus. Which would lead me to ask, "why are you placing so much emphasis on fringe people"? It truly does puzzle me, as it seems to be at the expense of putting our attention on what important factors might actually help manage this pandemic, so we can (ASAP) make people safer, and get the world economy going again.

"significant risk of people hurting themselves or even killing themselves using chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide" -- This might be one of the most perplexing things you said. It's been found that .5% hydrogen peroxide solution is all it takes to kill the coronavirus, which is about 1/6 the strength of regular 3% OTC H2O2. How people are going to injure or kill themselves with this kind of weak solution is hard for me to fathom. The irony is that 100,000-200,000 people die in the U.S every year from using prescription drugs as directed.

Regarding medical grade ozone, if a person doesn't want to do it for themselves (it's not that hard), perhaps they can go to a health care facility to have it done for them. As I posted earlier, where it's being trialed in Italy, they're already getting "sensational" results. My best understanding is that a person can make their own ozonated water at home using an inexpensive ozone bubbler (for less than $100 U.S.). My own take is that if a person can operate a cell phone, or follow a recipe in the kitchen, they can relatively easily do any of the mitigtion measures I've been advocating for.

You say you don't think people would follow a protocol similar to anything I outlined. I'd actually be surprised if they wouldn't if people in leadership positions advocated for it. People all over the world are currently practicing social distancing and wearing masks. Why would they not use other measures that would help save themselves from a serious illness or death--or, get back to work? I think you give way too little credit to what people will do for themselves if they're convinced it will help (by trustworthy authorities).

I again come back to the word "manage". At this juncture, the main thing that needs to be accomplished (IMHO), is to reopen the world economy as much as possible, while using known current coronavirus mitigating therapies that will allow that to happen. It seems to me the more promising (safe) therapies we incorporate, the better the results. Though what we cumulatively have at this time may not be perfect (such as that "perfect" drug, or "perfect" vaccine), it seems using what we have is way more preferable than enduring the human cost of continuing these calamitous shutdowns, which could very well end up costing more lives than the coronavirus itself. -- BTW, I have major doubts we'll see a reliable vaccine for many years--if ever.

 

[PhoenixAcademy]

That would all make sense if our use cases were different then they are, but a 7" slide blowback semi is what's desired here, and while I'm aware of various gimmicky things like 9mm 1911 frames, Glock is like a Honda Civic

Poor trigger discipline is for lesser mortals :-P Glocks are fine, we've shot Glocks, they are super fine even with factory triggers and sights

This isn't really the right thread, though. I regret the detail; there's a gun and shooting and decibels thread somewhere...

Ok. If you say so. If you're training your wife to be an operator then cool. Shooting at the range or the farm is different than the heat of the moment. Glocks have a hair trigger. Society isn't a Doom 2 death match. None of us need to carry more than a S&W snub nose .38 unless we are expecting a civil war to erupt at any second.

You might as well arm your wife with an AK-101 chambered for .223 and .556 with multiple 30 round magazines, pistol grip, rails, a flashlight, and red dot sights if you're that worried.

The average person doesn't need more than a .38 revolver with hollow points. Even that, just carry some good mace.

This isn't Doom, Duke Nukem, or Chicago.

 

[Bill Bauer]

unless we are expecting a civil war to erupt at any second.

Are you saying that you are not?!