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

[Bill Bauer]

The JP Morgan study looks forward 7 days, for a virus that can have an undetectable transmissible period of almost twice that; that's the primary issue I have seen called out about it.

Now I see what JP Morgan study is. I guess to figure out who is actually right, we just need to wait one more week.

These statistics on counted deaths suggest that the number of COVID-19 deaths for the week ending April 21 was 9.5-fold to 44.1-fold greater than the peak week of counted influenza deaths during the past 7 influenza seasons in the US, with a 20.5-fold mean increase (95% CI, 16.3-27.7).5,6

The information above doesn't seem to match the graph below (which covers the week of April 21 too)

Europe reported 159,000 excess deaths.
https://www.euromomo.eu/

Given the toll that the flu takes each year, this is more consistent with the a bad flu season with double the usual mortality rate, than with JAMA's paper's 9.5 to 44.1 times the death rate. But like I said, it can probably explained by Cuomo basically doing what he could to deliberately infect nursing home patients.

 

[Bill Bauer]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ovid-19-vaccine-trial-has-50-per-cent-chance/

 

[Bill Bauer]

 

[Bill Bauer]

 

[linearb]

View attachment 39026

unsure what the source of this is, but I think that looking at numbers from areas which have been badly infected is also instructive, because of a couple things:

* overall deaths in the US in an average week are around 35,000 - 40,000, so even an 8,000 person difference is only a ~20% boost
* the spike for 2020 in your graph (probably corresponding to NYC getting decimated) is notably higher than any other year, including the wretched 2018 flu season
* with large amounts of the country still in lockdown, traffic fatalities and a number of other very common death vectors have been reduced (ex: https://qz.com/1840736/coronavirus-reduces-california-traffic-accidents-by-half/)

NYC is in a special situation in terms of overall population, but I don't see any reason to think that, barring continuing behavioral changes, we're not going to see problems in other cities.

De Blasio and Cuomo did a ton of terrible things, but, as awful as sending people to nursing homes was those numbers are not where the majority of NYC mortality came from, and various other officials seem to me to be doing things just as obtuse.

Watching all this from the center of the woods in a situation where my life has not changed that much, and won't even if we keep this up into next spring, I'm mostly bemused by the myriad of mostly terrible responses, complete and instant politicization of every bit of data that comes out about this, and ongoing balkanization of the US.

If one part of the aftermath of all this is a somewhat weakened Federal apparatus, and strengthened economic blocs along the stratified lines we're already seeing, I have a strong suspicion that this will play out a lot better for people in places like New England, than in large swaths of the south.

 

[Bill Bauer]

as awful as sending people to nursing homes was those numbers are not where the majority of NYC mortality came from

How do you know?!????

I guess the subway and all of the elevators might have also played a role, but then again the most vulnerable people (and the majority of deaths) are at the nursing homes, and those people weren't taking the subway or riding the elevators.

On the graphs you posted, the leaders are New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. All of them had (have?) been sending corona patients to nursing homes...

ongoing balkanization of the US

Controlled demolition.

 

[linearb]

On the graphs you posted, the leaders are New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. All of them had (have?) been sending corona patients to nursing homes...

You are right about that; these places also have higher case counts across the board. I was basing my statement on something I read about deaths in NH facilities vs hospitals vs others, will try to dig it up.

Controlled demolition.

I don't think there's much controlled about what's going on, but it amuses me that one upshot of it is blue state governors at least attempting to cuck the POTUS in the national press. By itself that's not a new trend but it's getting a lot more traction now.

Unfortunately, it's also caused people to retcon Andrew Cuomo's storied career as a terrible person and awful leader, so that's the bad side of the funny coin.

I feel pretty good about the next 15-20 years in my immediate locale; there are large swaths of the US I would definitely be looking to get out of right now if I lived there. Focus on places with: good local infrastructure, food production, water, above sea level, can tolerate changes of 10 degrees in either direction to average temperature.

When I was mapping out the whole country, looking for spots like this and figuring out where we wanted to move -- nearly all such places seem to have local / regional / state taxes above the national norm. I don't think that's a coincidence. NH appears at a glance to be an exception but if you look at how they fund their roads and what the actual cost of living there is, not so much. I picked VT over NH because we're more VT people and it's closer to our families. MA isn't awful either. NYS is okay, I might pick it over NH but behind the rest of the RAC states.

California is absolutely insane, and might as well be its own country. I am glad it exists, but I don't enjoy visiting it (which says a lot because you know how I feel about weed and Cali is supposed to be Weed Paradise... but that's a lie, too, it's Weed Banana Republic Dystopia where you literally have to step around homeless people and corpses and feces to get into a dispensary).

edit: also @Bill Bauer the India numbers are a total lie; I have a friend there who managed to get out of Dehli before the government locked it down because his family is rich, but what he described sounds as bad as Wuhan, and if their numbers look good it's because they are burning bodies faster than they can count them :-/

on the other hand, sub-saharan africa is doing far better than anyone expected which is leading to speculation that people there may have routine zoonotic coronavirus exposure that affords protection, and this is an interesting research vector

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857293/

 

[Bill Bauer]

food production

Doesn't this requirement automatically remove all of Canada and all of the northern US states like Vermont and New Hampshire from the running?

 

[linearb]

Doesn't this requirement automatically remove all of Canada and all of the northern US states like Vermont and New Hampshire from the running?

I don't know anything at all about Canada's food infrastructure, but in the case of Vermont, no, we have excellent local production. Essentially all of the meat, cheese, milk, alcohol, and several other staples we consume are made end to end here, and most of the bread we get is produced locally. We eat a lot of local fruits and vegetables; if we had to do so exclusively then of course that would limit options a lot, especially in winter, but it would be completely doable. In fact, even though it would be a tremendous pain in the ass, we could produce all the food we need for a year right here on our own property, it has pastures set up to do that. I don't see myself ever trying because I find farming to be difficult, tedious work, but it's vaguely reassuring to think we could.

Check this out, it's from the Union of Concerned Scientists rankings of states by food (https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/50-state-food-system-scorecard) -- I'm just gonna give the couple states you mentioned and then a couple "breadbasket" states as examples:

These two so-called "breadbasket" states are inferior to us on food production... and every other metric here.

That #1 rating for "food infrastructure" seems to matter right now because I hear about meat shortages other places, but I can buy anything from a live cow all the way down to any cut of it any day of the week, and have been able to throughout basically the whole COVID period. NH looks shitty in this regard on this report card; I am not sure why that is, but NH is politically even more of a minefield than VT, and has some very strange quirks to it.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Essentially all of the meat, cheese, milk, alcohol, and several other staples we consume are made end to end here, and most of the bread we get is produced locally. We eat a lot of local fruits and vegetables

My diet is mostly vegetables, and I completely forgot about eating meat. I doubt there will be enough meat to feed everyone for years to come... The local fruits and vegetables are available only during 3-5 months of the year, right?

 

[Bill Bauer]

My plan for societal collapse scenario is to buy a scuba diving regulator and a tank of nitrogen gas, if you know what I mean. I'll be doing that next month. When the looting begins, I will attempt to be the first one to loot the local vet clinic(s) - there is a chance that I will be able to locate pentobarbital, there...

 

[linearb]

My diet is mostly vegetables, and I completely forgot about eating meat. I doubt there will be enough meat to feed everyone for years to come... The local fruits and vegetables are available only during 3-5 months of the year, right?

You get a spring season and a summer/fall season, and you can live off preserved goods of one kind or another the rest of the year. People have subsisted off agriculture here since before this was a state.

 

[linearb]

My plan for societal collapse scenario is to buy a scuba diving regulator and a tank of nitrogen gas, if you know what I mean. I'll be doing that next month. When the looting begins, I will attempt to be the first one to loot the local vet clinic(s) - there is a chance that I will be able to locate pentobarbital, there...

I'm not remotely worried about any of this from C19, but I'm generally inclined to believe most people should have considered and possess means for a humane exit plan for themselves / their families, barring people with certain kinds of problems. Also I think martial law and the insane might of the US police and armed forces makes that level of unrest impossible, sort of a near-extinction level event.

That said, if we did get there, I believe that by the time the roving hordes of displaced city folk made it this far out, they would be meeting focused resistance from various militias along the way; at that point I'm put 50/50 odds on my charisma and confidence either having gotten me killed, or made me a cult leader.

 

[Autumnly]

Clinical Implications of Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine Ototoxicity for COVID-19 Treatment: A Mini-Review
Pattarawadee Prayuenyong, Anand V. Kasbekar and David M. Baguley

 

[linearb]

CDC is now projecting 123,000 dead by June 20, which just keeps us on track with the 1000/day we've been seeing lately. The big question is whether things start to trail off after that, or if we start to spike again. (That is my prediction, based on the fact that various reopenings are and will continue to happen, but in fact nothing has changed about the situation on the ground: the virus is still out there, we still have more active cases today that we ever have before, and you'll continue to be able to say that for at least another month).

 

[linearb]

Clinical Implications of Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine Ototoxicity for COVID-19 Treatment: A Mini-Review
Pattarawadee Prayuenyong, Anand V. Kasbekar and David M. Baguley

The evidence that this stuff messes up your ears, is a lot more conclusive than the muddled evidence about what it does for C19 outcomes, that's for sure.

Of course, we've known these drugs are ototoxic for a long time; quinine manipulation is what let to the fluroquinolone antibiotics like Cipro, which are known to cause or exacerbate tinnitus and all sorts of other problems.

 

[linearb]

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-n...-coronavirus-disinformation-facebook-n1218376

Heh.

One of the largest publishers of coronavirus disinformation on Facebook has been banned from the platform for using content farms from North Macedonia and the Philippines, Facebook said on Friday.

The publisher, Natural News, was one of the most prolific pushers of the viral "Plandemic" conspiracy video, which falsely claimed that the coronavirus is part of an elaborate government plot to control the populace through vaccines, and erroneously claimed that wearing a mask increases the risk of catching the coronavirus.


Facebook said that it had found foreign trolls repeatedly posted content from Natural News, an anti-vaccination news site that frequently posts false coronavirus conspiracy theories about 5G towers and Bill Gates. They also posted content from Natural News' sister websites, NewsTarget and Brighteon, in an effort to artificially inflate their reach.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Funny February 2018 headline: "Killer flu outbreak is to blame for a 42% spike in deaths in January after 64,000 people died - the highest number since records began"
No talk of shutdowns, no masks, many not even aware of "the problem" back then (I know I wasn't aware of it)...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...iller-flu-outbreak-blame-42-spike-deaths.html

 

[all to gain]

Russian now has 405, 843 cases but only 4693 deaths according to official figures.

It must be a miracle or good old censorship of the real figures.

I wonder what the average person in Russia thinks about the figures? I was talking to one man
who considered the figures in the UK and US to be inflated as a means of making money and that the figures in Russia are probably more accurate.

 

[all to gain]

Things have got real here. I now personally know a person who has coronavirus, but she is 400 miles away.

In addition, in our very apartment building there is a person with coronavirus... and we have to share the lift with people sometimes. I reckon the virus will spread like wildfire through such a building.

 

[GregCA]

Sweden just overtook France when looking at "death per million" since the beginning - it is now 7th in the world.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

They took a gamble that doesn't seem to be paying off, unfortunately : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ry-highest-coronavirus-death-rate-per-capita/

 

[Stu1983]

@linearb
Hey bro I hope you and your loved ones are doing well. Will a P95 cartridge/Filter for a respirator work the same as a N95 cartridge/Filter against COVID-19?

Love and respect
Stu

 

[aot]

Apparently Remdesivir helps COVID patients a little. Any word on if this is ototoxic or not?

 

[linearb]

@linearb
Hey bro I hope you and your loved ones are doing well. Will a P95 cartridge/Filter for a respirator work the same as a N95 cartridge/Filter against COVID-19?

Love and respect
Stu

P95 is the Chinese standard? I've read some questionable things about some of the cheap ones, but the bottom line is that even plain cloth masks are "fine" as long as 80% of people are using them, and the best N100s you can buy won't do a ton if you're the only person wearing one. Masks are much more about protecting other people from you spreading the disease when you don't know you have it, than the other way around.

In any case I am just using a mix of disposable paper masks and reusable N95s now -- but I'm not going out very much. Thanks for the well wishes, things are good up here in the mountains, I hope you are doing well, too!

This thread is worth reading if you're wondering about Florida:

Florida, Arizona and North Carolina appear to be headed for Very Bad Things.

 

[linearb]

Also interesting: 511 disease experts were surveyed about when they personally expect to resume various activities, and the majority expect to be wearing face coveringsv and avoiding concerts and plays for more than a year.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

 

[Watasha]

Things have got real here. I now personally know a person who has coronavirus, but she is 400 miles away.

In addition, in our very apartment building there is a person with coronavirus... and we have to share the lift with people sometimes. I reckon the virus will spread like wildfire through such a building.

Saw a week in the countryside did you some good, that's great news. Where did you go? How loud is your tinnitus usually?

 

[all to gain]

Saw a week in the countryside did you some good, that's great news. Where did you go? How loud is your tinnitus usually?

I went to a place you have never heard of lol I went there because I thought it may help me with my tinnitus and because of COVID-19 taking hold in the neighbourhood where I live where many people aren't taking it seriously.. The village is a very small village of about 150 people with only two streets and no proper roads, ie dirt tracks. It is surrounded by open countryside, and there were constant natural sounds of birds, frogs, a light wind and other things. In addition, I did lots of physical work outside.

For the first time since getting tinnitus a year ago I was able to forget about it for periods of time. I would define my tinnitus as severe, with the main annoyance not coming from the pure sound level but from the sheer shrillness of it.

I will be going back to the village on Monday for a much longer period of time, ie maybe 2 months.

 

[Nobody19]

This coronavirus is absolutely awful but working from home has been such a relief for my ears.

 

[Juan]

What do you guys think? Is this COVID-19 crisis going to be temporary or to turn into a long term recession hitting employment and the economy in general?

 

[Stu1983]

@linearb

Hi linearb
Sorry for the late response as I'm not on here much. I appreciate your response and info in this issue and in general. Because you understand philosophy your answers are well thought out and supported by reasons. I don't believe this is a Chinese made mask though I think the Chinese made masks are called KN95 masks. Here is a pic of my respiratory please let me know what you think at your earliest convenience.