@Pat It’s as if COVID in 2022 is dramatically different from COVID in 2020….
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>" it stopped being more deadly when it became the democrat strain lmao"
When Trump took off his mask after barely recovering from COVID-19, the media went crazy.
Now Biden goes on a national TV talk show, takes his mask off in front of a large live audience and nobody says anything. It's even more dangerous now with the more contagous strains, and he knows better. But Biden ordered the media to stop talking about COVID-19 in February 2022 so it has nearly zero coverage now.
I agree with the politically motivated treatment of covid... more deadly, not so much. I am running a company that is in the COVID arena and we rely on sampling people with covid. We struggle to even get samples at all right now.
also, perhaps people are dying because all attempts at supplying treatment have been suppressed at all levels.
NIH own trial database shows ivermectin is quite useful. good luck getting a hospital to give it without court order.
>"it is not normal for them to become more deadly."
The COVID-19 virus has already demonstrated that it does that -- mutates to become more virulent, more deadly.
Thats false. While Omicron was, intitially, far more virulent it actually decreased significantly after its initial introduction to the population. As of February (the last good analysis I saw) omicron was in fact many orders of magnitude LESS virulant than delta was at that same time.
As for death rate, no, the death rate went down significantly not up. Partly due to it being easier to treat than other varients apparently.
To put some specific numbers on it the transmission rate (Beta) in february for omicron was ~0.06, for delta in feb it was ~0.11
My understanding is that Delta was the most virulent. So it went from wild-Alpha-Beta-Delta. That's mutating from a less lethal strain to a more lethal strain. It has demonstrated that it can mutate to a more lethal strain.
Also, I think Omicron is more virulent than Alpha (not sure), which is the lineage for Omicron strain (Omicron came from the Alpha strain, not via Delta).
Epidemiologist have warned about the posibility of COVID-19 mutating to a very deadly strain.
Re death counts: https://qoto.org/@Pat/108258209223634011
cumulative death counts really has little relevance here. We only care about the current rates,
Well how can the rate be negative unless they're fucking with numbers?
They arent negative, I linked the numbers. All positive, but each strain is becoming less deadly.
>"They arent negative..."
Yes they were. Cummuative counts went down from one day to the next because they changed the criteria.
CDC same thing. There's even a footnote at the CDC count page that says cummulative counts can go negative because of this.
The states changed their criteria. I put sources in that thread.
@Pat Oh, you are talking about something different... Preliminary numbers are preliminary for a reason. Once they discover people didnt actually die of covid (as the numbers move from preliminary to actual) they are taken off the list and the death count goes down... this is perfectly normal and to be expected and doesnt indicate manipulation.
You need to remember there are **always** two sets of numbers.. preliminary numbers which tend to be higher than the real numbers but are used to determine trends.. then there are the actual numbers which dont come out until months later where the false positives in the preliminary numbers are removed by investigating cause of death. These numbers are almost always lower and more accurate but come out with several months delay.
No it not prelim numbers. They changed the criteria earlier this year. Several states did that to make the numbers look better this year.
But that's really just nonsense compared to the major point -- a milion people are dead who didn't have to die because the CDC and others didn't tell people the most effective way to prevent infection and spred of the virus.
That's the bottom line. They intentionally withheld and blocked the distribution of information that would have saved those lives. They are still doing it today.
@Pat Even if your right and there was some evidence that respirators could have saved lives the notion that the whole population is going to go around half-dressed in hazmat is absolutely absurd. No one would do it, and no one should be expected to. There are limits to what is reasonable.
>" it comes from imperfect, non-sterilizing treatments"
This is exactly what they are doing with the COVID-19 vaccines. It's about 44-50% effective at preventing infection. It doesn't stop the spread, it just helps to keep people from dying and getting very sick.
The virus could mutate into a strain that avoids the vaccine, kills more people, but still allow people to spread it before they die.
And how would people react to a strain that was 50% lethal? All the fools would say it was just the flu and they'd die. Others stay home from work and supply chains would stop. Then Rome falls.
Actually recent strains already appear to circumvent the virus. Delta, and I think omicron, both showed viral loads in vaccinated people that was equivelant to unvaxxed. This strongly indicates it had little or no effect on stopping spread.
No otherway around, omicron is in fact the least deadly yet most virulent of the strains, making it dominant. Delta by comparison is 4.7x more deadly than omicron and all variants collectively are about 10x higher mortality rate than omicron,
Here is the quote about that from a study done earlier this year:
We estimated the lethality of the different variants by using their average death rates. For Delta, Omicron, and other variants in aggregate, these are 0.0020, , and 0.0022 in South Africa (Figures 1B, D, F), respectively. There, Delta's death rate is 2.3 times that of Omicron, whereas the death rate of the variants other than Delta and Omicron is 1.1 times and 2.5 times those of Delta and Omicron, respectively. In the United States, we found that the death rates of Delta, Omicron, and the other variants are, in order, , , and 0.0019 (Figures B2B, D, F). There, the death rate of Delta is 4.7 times that of Omicron, and the death rate of the other variants is 10.8 times that of Omicron. In Canada, the death rate of Delta is , whereas this is for Omicron and 0.0014 for the other variants (Figures B3B, D, F). Delta's death rate in Canada is higher than that of Omicron by a factor of 3.1; for the other variants, this factor is 7.4. The previously mentioned analysis shows that Delta and especially Omicron have lower death rates than previous variants.
When I say virulent, I mean more malignant, not necessarilly more contagous.
Delta was most deadly. It caused more severe illness and death per infection.
I literally just quoted you a study that said that was false and that in fact each strain is **less** deadly not more.. .your assumptions are counter factual.
Delta was more contagious **at first** but very quickly became less contagious. Overall its death rate was less than previous strains.
Death rates continually decreased throughout the pandemic because theraputics continued to improve. Delta was more deadly, but they knew how to treat it better by then.
The evidence doesnt suggest that to be true... but its also irrelevant... What matters is that the following facts are true, anything else is noise. (these are quoted from the scientific literature, specifically quoting a peer reviewed study here):
* The Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant is more transmissible and less fatal than seasonal influenza.
• The Omicron variant is 1.5 times as transmissible as 2009 H1N1 and causes 90% fewer deaths.
Long story short, the seasonal flu is a bigger risk of killing you at this point than COVID... so lets stop acting like this isnt true.
H1N1 in 2009. That was one of worse flu viruses since 1918.
It's not 2009, it's 2022.
And yes, we should be wearing our respirators during flu season... COVID-19 or not, especially those who are older or have other issues.
And you much more likely to die from not wearing a respirator in public than you are to die from not wearing your seatbelt.
The study explicitly states that COVID is less lethal than **seasonal flu** not H1N1. It just goes on to compare to H1N1 as well.
I disagree with you though, wearing resperators is beyond bonkers to me. People die.. wash your hands, take some good practices sure, but wearing hazmat, no, lol, just no. You will never find me encouraging people to wear full on respirators out in public as a constant daily thing in order to curtail diseases even if it was effective, when in fact it isnt and causes other far worse problems even if we did (namely auto-immune diseases would be rampant)
And I'm referring to the activity of the virus, not how treatment improved over time.
@icedquinn
Yes and so was the study. Thats why it was conducted in a region with poor medical facilities, to ensure the numbers dont reflect high-end medical treatment.
To quote the most relevant part of the study: "The previously mentioned analysis shows that Delta and especially Omicron have lower death rates than previous variants."
>"I disagree with you though, wearing resperators is beyond bonkers to me. People die.. wash your hands, take some good practices sure, but wearing hazmat, no, lol, just no. You will never find me encouraging people to wear full on respirators out in public..."
This is what I am talking about. People are ignorant. They don't even know a respirator is.
Here's a picture of a respirator. The study said that if just 40% of people wore these N95 respirators at the beginning of the pandemic, it would have stopped it in its tracks.
And the reason why you don't know what a respirator is (they come in all forms -- from a filtering facepiece all the way up to a SCBA), is because the CDC and others who were supposed to inform the public blocked the distribution of this life-saving information.
Why are you assuming I dont know what a respirator is? What are you on about. Of course I know what they are, who the hell doesnt?
Let me get this straight...
You think it's laughable that a million people are dead and that's ok because you think wearing an N95 or N100 mask to save all those lives is silly?
Man are your priorities fucked up.
Well for starters as I said I dont even think respirators would have prevented the deaths, in fact I suspect they would have increased the death toll as we have discussed.
But even if we assume it would have prevented a million deaths, if that is at the cost of 7 - 8 billion people needing to wear respirators, then yes, that is madness.
It gets even worse when you consider how that plays out long term.. If respirators are effective at best it puts the pandemic on pause, and the pandemic just kicks off when people stop using respirators again (especially since the vaccine is proven now not to stop transmission).
So we are talking about the whole world wearing respirators for the rest of their lives vs not wearing them and having an epidemic that lasts a year or two and then effectively goes down to being less lethal than the flu after that time... So taking that hit over 2 years is by far much more prefered than wearing respirators for the rest of our lives.
>"But even if we assume it would have prevented a million deaths, if that is at the cost of 7 - 8 billion people needing to wear respirators, then yes, that is madness."
Well, I don't know what to say to that. You're a fucking psychopath.
I'd say the same about you if you think people need to wear low-end hazmat equipment for the rest of their lives to prevent a pandemic that would be over in a year or two otherwise otherwise.
Thats not an ok trade off. By those numbers your talking about 8000 people wearing respirators for their entire life to prevent a single death.
Plus the fact that all youve done is delay the pandemic, so it would still happen, AND now youve introduced auto-immune diseases in addition over that time period.
And my statement is the same, requiring people to wear hazmat equipment in order to stay common viruses is absolutely bonkers. YEs people die, and yes its sad, but living your life as a hypocondriac to avoid that fairly low risk of death is not healthy by any measure in my mind.
if a virus grows too deadly then it kills its natural host and is punished and so the evolutionary pressure against killing the host before spreading is created.
if the hosts are protected from dying by synthetic immunity, nothing stops that strain from mutating upward and shedding.
this has already been observed in prior diseases.