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The Coronavirus - a virus from eating bats, an accident or something sinister gone wrong?


swordfish

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9 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

As it should be........Your not supposed to do that Mr. Burr......

BUT Coronavirus - 99.95% of the US  won't be dead because of it......

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14 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

find where I posted stats about contracting COVID

I never said you did.

 

14 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

I work on a COVID team and have stated that before. 

I don't care. Do you wear a mask?

Edited by gonzoron
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Just now, Muda69 said:

Mr. Holcomb shut Indiana down, not Mr. Trump.

You need to learn about federalism.

 

You need to learn to read. I've never said trump shut the country down. Try again.

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Greta Thunberg Isn't a Coronavirus Expert

https://reason.com/2020/05/13/greta-thunberg-isnt-a-coronavirus-expert/

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Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been invited by CNN to be an "expert panelist" on a Thursday night event about the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you are a bit confused by this choice, that's fair. Thunberg not really an expert in the field for which she is most well known, and that field is not virology or epidemiology or economics. I don't mean that as a slight against her angry performance at the United Nations last year. Honestly, more teenagers should snarl derisively at the elected and appointed leaders ruining the world.

Still, it was a performance and she is a performer, not an expert in pandemics or economics. Her inclusion on a panel that CNN is promoting as "Coronavirus: Facts and Fears" seems like a poor use of airtime. Sweden has taken a unique and interesting approach to COVID-19 that may prove useful for informing American policy. If the network wanted to share that experience with American news consumers in a way that could inform them, it might've been better to book a Swedish epidemiologist rather than a Swedish 17-year-old the internet loves to fight over.

Is this more evidence for the so-called "death of expertise"? That idea, most memorably expressed in a book of the same name by anti-Trump conservative radio host Tom Nichols, says that Americans have rejected expertise in policymaking (and other fields) in favor of misinformed hucksterism and conspiracy theorizing. The best piece of evidence for this trend is the election of President Donald Trump. Yet if public polling is to be believed, Americans trust the experts more than they trust Trump on the coronavirus.

Thunberg's inclusion does say something pretty dreadful, however, about institutional media. People who talk about a decline in institutions usually mean public entities like the Justice Department or the presidency, or civic organizations like the Lion's Club. But the media is an institution too, and it has been weakened not by the death of expertise (we have plenty of experts!) but by the cancer of cynicism.

Trump embodies that cynicism and so does media coverage of his behavior. His campaign rallies feature racist attacks on immigrants, but look at how many people showed up! His coronavirus press briefings are a word salad of half-truths and random speculation, but look at the ratings!

Inviting Thunberg to this panel was a deeply cynical decision by CNN. They knew it would be a big deal on Twitter, that it would raise the profile of the event even as it caused people who weren't going to tune in anyway to get Mad Online. CNN knew they could get publications like Reason to write articles like this one providing free publicity beforehand, and that many publications—CNN.com included—will write recaps afterward, likely with a CNN video embedded. People who would not otherwise watch the panel if it included exclusively public health experts and economists will watch it because Thunberg is on it.

Electing celebrities won't fix what's wrong with American politics, and encouraging their performative antics won't either.

CNN's producers can, of course, invite whomever they want to their events. But when a news network makes a choice like this one—to provide a global platform on an issue of global importance to a teenager with no expertise—those of us who find that decision disconcerting should demand better. Media institutions like CNN are not victims of celebrity pseudo-expertise, they are the driving force behind it.

Yep.

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The Clenched COVID Fist of Government

https://mises.org/wire/clenched-covid-fist-government

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Years ago, Leonard Read came up with a fine analogy for understanding what citizens want government to do for them. Now, it also provides insight into the current COVID circus.

Read’s analogy arises from the fact that since government has no resources that it does not extract from its citizenry, it can only benefit all citizens when it can make more efficient use of resources than they can. Consequently, we must ask where government has a comparative advantage over voluntary organizations.

The answer is coercion. In our mutually agreed arrangements, we cannot coerce others. That is why some define government as the entity generally agreed to have a monopoly over coercion.

Then the question becomes, When does government’s ability to coerce improve the well-being of its citizens? One way is using that power to ensure that people live up to their voluntary contracts. That is an example of what Hayek once termed “planning for competition,” which enables voluntary market arrangements to work more effectively (by creating a more efficient legal system), in contrast to the “planning against competition” known as central planning.

However, beyond enabling competition to work better, we must ask when government’s coercive power improves citizens’ well-being. Experience tells us the answer is seldom. Would you be better off if someone else could dictate to you how to dress, what to eat, where to live, what employment to choose, how long to work at that employment, and almost innumerable other things? Did you answer yes to any of those applications of coercion? I doubt it. Of course, if you plan to be the one choosing for others, your answer may differ.

Leonard Read asked us to think about this question in terms of a clenched fist: “Symbolize this physical force by the clenched fist. Find out what the fist can and cannot do and you will know what government should and should not do.

What can you do more effectively by making your hands into fists? Not much. Mainly you lose the ability to do productive things. With your hands in fists, you cannot use your computer or smartphone effectively, type your magnum opus, perform your music, paint your Mona Lisa, manufacture something (maybe even something considered essential), safely drive a vehicle, play most sports (although boxing and soccer get exemptions), shake hands, give a blessing, sign contracts, and much more. Keeping your hands in fists undermines all these capabilities. But making fists can enforce your decisions on those who would choose differently. 

As mentioned above, enforcing contracts is a positive aspect of this, because the better agreements are lived up to, the better social coordination via markets works. More generally, Read argued that the answer to “What should the government fist restrain and penalize?” was “fraud, violence, misrepresentations, stealing, predations, killing—that is, all destructive activities.” But we must remember that “the fist, this physical force…cannot create.”

We all gain from the government’s fist restraining destructive acts. But that fist does not create the ideas and innovations that improve people’s lives. So as government expands beyond restraining destructive acts, it increasingly contracts its citizens’ sphere of creative action. Fewer useful new ideas will be imagined and implemented. And in the process, liberty—both a means to valuable ends and itself an extremely valuable end—is contracted, as well.

The application of the fist analogy to the COVID crisis is instructive. Did governments throughout the country use their coercive power solely to restrain destructive acts? No. They used their fists to close down whole areas of the economy that they decided, often with little convincing reasons, were nonessential. They closed whole coastlines, jailed hairdressers and others who were noncompliant with their orders, and imposed virtual house arrest on vast numbers. It frequently seemed that brandishing fists was all politicians could think of to stave off criticism that they were indecisive or weak, not that it effectively addressed citizens’ circumstances.

And now that pressure is rising to relax governments’ clenched fists, how eager are those in control to comply? Eagerness is frequently an antonym for what we see. And how much evidence is there that the phased-in unclenching plans proposed are the most effective way of parceling freedoms taken away back out to the people? I don’t see it. But that is because to those in charge of government, clenching fists and forcing compliance is often the easiest-to-think-up “solution” to their political problems in a crisis, even when it worsens citizens’ problems. In contrast, figuring out how to best undo their coercive “solutions” is much harder. And a comparative advantage in coercing does not imply a comparative advantage in knowing how best to reduce coercion. There are policy complexities faced now, but they are primarily the result of earlier interventions. However, we should remember that restoring freedom only requires government to stop denying it to those whom they supposedly serve.

As one of the comments to the excellent commentary states:

 

"Looks like the 5th Amendment succumbed to the corornavirus:

"No person shall ...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

To add insult to injury, goverment officials at all levels take an oath to defend the Constitution. So much for their word."

Edited by Muda69
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52 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

Yes I do....at work and in public areas.  Don't want to be asymtomatic and inadvertently spread the virus to others.

Did you wear one during the H1N1 pandemic?

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40 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

.....GonzMoron 

 

 

On 5/13/2020 at 10:21 AM, TrojanDad said:

Dumba$$ GonzMoron..

 

On 5/13/2020 at 1:46 PM, Irishman said:

It has been a while since I have read this particular page. I have to say I am not a fan of seeing it descend into personal insults and name calling. There is a lot of good/interesting info on both sides of this that is posted here. It gets old reading through all the shit though guys. Could we keep it more civil? I get that there may be a negative impact that the shut down has had on all of us, but we are all better than this.....aren't we? Yeah, I know, I am far from perfect. 

I don't think @TrojanDad got the memo @Irishman

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Coronavirus Has Infected 2.8 Percent of Hoosiers, Says New Study

https://reason.com/2020/05/14/coronavirus-has-infected-2-8-percent-of-hoosiers-says-new-study/#comments

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Between April 25 and May 1, more than 4,600 Indiana residents were tested for viral infections and antibodies for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 by a team of researchers associated with Indiana University. The participants in the study included more than 3,600 randomly selected people along with 900 volunteers recruited from the African American and Hispanic communities to more accurately represent state demographics.

A news release from the university reports that through random-sample testing the researchers found that during the last week of April, 1.7 percent of participants tested positive for the virus and 1.1 percent tested positive for antibodies. These percentages mean that about 78 participants were currently infected and 51 had developed antibodies against the virus.

Combined figures brought, according to the researchers, the estimated population prevalence of the virus in the state to 2.8 percent, or approximately 186,000 Hoosiers who were actively or previously infected as of May 1. Since 1,067 residents had cumulatively died of the disease by May 1, the researchers calculated the "infection-fatality rate for the novel coronavirus in Indiana to be 0.58 percent, making it nearly six times more deadly than the seasonal flu."

The infection-fatality rate is the percentage of all of the people who become infected by the virus (including those whose cases are asymptomatic or mild and therefore go undetected by medical surveillance) who die of the disease. This is distinct from the case-fatality rate, which reports the percentage of diagnosed cases who die of the disease. The current U.S. case-fatality rate is just shy of 6 percent.

At that time confirmed cases in Indiana numbered about 17,000, which suggests that only about one out of every 11 true infections had been identified through testing symptomatic or high-risk people. The researchers also found that about 45 percent of people who tested positive for active viral infection reported no symptoms at all.

Interestingly, an earlier controversial study by researchers associated with Stanford University and the University of Southern California using only antibody tests sought to estimate how many residents of Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) California had already been infected by the virus in early April. The researchers conducted a similar study in Los Angeles County. Based on their population screening antibody tests, the researchers estimated that 2.49 to 4.16 percent of the residents of Santa Clara County and 2.8 to 5.6 percent of the residents of Los Angeles County had already been infected in early to mid-April.

Based on these estimates, the California researchers concluded that would mean that by early April between 48,000 and 81,000 people had been infected in Santa Clara County, which is 50 to 85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases at that time. The results of the Los Angeles County study imply that approximately 221,000 to 442,000 adults in the county already had the infection. That estimate is 28 to 55 times higher than confirmed cases at that time in that jurisdiction. Based on these calculations the infection-fatality rates in these studies—somewhere between 0.12 and 0.2 percent in Santa Clara County and between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent in Los Angeles County—are significantly lower than that reported by the Indiana research team.

In response to the criticisms of their first report, the Santa Clara study researchers re-crunched their data, changing their early April infection prevalence to between 25,000 to 91,000 with a central estimate of 54,000. In other words, the California researchers are still suggesting that undetected coronavirus infections are still 25- to 91-fold greater than confirmed diagnoses. This would concomitantly mean that their infection-fatality rate is also quite low.

Another April study testing some 1,800 randomly selected residents for coronavirus antibodies in Miami-Dade County calculated that about 165,000 residents were infected by the virus. That was more than 16 times the number of confirmed cases at that time. Based on the current Miami-Dade death toll, those results suggested an infection-fatality rate of about 0.2 percent. These results are clearly in line with those reported by the two California studies.

On the other hand, a New York State antibody test study in late April involving 3,000 participants suggests that the rate of mild and symptomless coronavirus infections is only about 10 to elevenfold greater than the number of confirmed cases in those jurisdictions. The New York study calculated that about 2.7 million New Yorkers have been infected, which in turn implies a statewide infection fatality rate (IFR) of around 0.6 percent. These results obviously are more in accord with the findings of the Indiana research team. Assuming the New York blood test data and the Indiana infection and blood test data are reasonably accurate, these studies would suggest that the California studies are overestimating undetected infection rates three to eightfold.

The researchers behind these studies should be applauded for undertaking these complicated studies during the chaos of the unfolding pandemic. So while it is frustrating, it is therefore not surprising that researchers have not yet nailed down just how deadly COVID-19 is. It is, however, sad that the disparate preliminary results of these studies are being selectively used by today's culture war factions to confirm their already existing biases.

Caveat: Other than the Santa Clara study and its update, none of these studies have been published either as preprints or in peer-reviewed journals and so have not been subject to deeper scrutiny by other researchers. 

We are all going to die?

 

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Restaurants, salons institute coronavirus surcharges, causing social media backlash

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/missouri-restaurants-coronavirus-surcharge-causes-social-media-backlash

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A $2.19 coronavirus "surcharge" spotted in a receipt at a restaurant in Missouri started a backlash earlier this month.

“Scuse me … what? A covid surcharge…?” a Twitter user wrote in a post  showing a Kiko Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Lounge patron's receipt that included a “covid 19 surcharge.”

The tweet quickly went viral with people upset by the extra charge, the New York Post reported.

"If I ever see this on a bill I wld not pay it," one user wrote. "I’m tryin to recoup too. Who am I suppose to bill ??? Is this evn legal ?"

But the West Plains restaurant isn’t the only establishment adding a little to the bill. As restaurants struggle to keep their doors open amid stay-at-home orders, some feel it’s a necessary addition.

In San Diego, a Mexican restaurant announced it was charging $1 extra for carne asada due to a meat shortage and in Michigan, a burger place is adding another dollar to each meal because of foot traffic they've lost, according to FOX 17 in Grand Rapids and KFMB-TV in San Diego.

....

 

 

And it’s not just restaurants. A dentist’s office in Jacksonville, Fla., reportedly started charging a $10 per appointment fee for personal protective equipment, and in Texas some hair salons have started adding a $3 sanitation charge, according to KTRK-TV in Houston.

Kiko’s Steakhouse posted a message on Facebook defending the charge and stressing it would only be temporary.

“We are not trying to hide this surcharge, we choose this option rather than changing our prices on our menu, this way we can adjust the surcharge weekly," the restaurant wrote. "We’ve been putting flyers in front of our restaurant & put the surcharge on your receipt, today we put more signage. Please understand we cant control the rising cost of meat, seafood, poultry & produce prices.”

The restaurant's owner, Billy Yuzar, told Fox News that the surcharge is advertised online, on the restaurant’s front door, and at the register, so customers are well aware of it.

“We have been transparent about it. Right when you walk into our restaurant, it’s there,” he said.

Yuzar told Fox News the Twitter user who posted the photo wasn't the patron given the receipt.

He said he's now worried for his employees — and his restaurant’s reputation, which he believes is being tarnished with negative reviews from people in Canada and Texas, who had never even visited the location, but merely saw the viral photo on Twitter.

“They don’t have the facts, but are responding to this [picture on social media],” he said.

At least one recently re-opened restaurant in Frankfort has done this.  They have a handwritten sign at the entrance stating they have increased the price of almost every item on their menu by 75 cents due to increased prices and overhead they have had to incur to be open during this public health scare.

I have no issue with this.  If you don't want to pay the surcharge go somewhere else.  Nobody is forcing you to eat at this restaurant, are they?

 

 

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17 hours ago, TrojanDad said:

I get you don't care.

 

Yes I do....at work and in public areas.  Don't want to be asymtomatic and inadvertently spread the virus to others.

*asymptomatic*

 

cdc-tin-foil-mask.jpg

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19 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

I can spell symptom.

You can now. You're welcome. I'm always glad to help out when there's a definite need.

29 minutes ago, swordfish said:

EVERYONE - except for 99.95% of us........according to math......

.05% of us are immortal?

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4 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

.05% of us are immortal?

Atta Boy!!

So now you recognize that figure and it makes sense to you?

EVERYONE - except for 99.95% of us........according to math......WILL DIE FROM SOMETHING OTHER THAN CORONAVIRUS!!  (FIFY)

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The lockdown for 15 days the "flatten the curve" so our hospitals are not overwhelmed has become "we must lockdown until a vaccine is available".

I am looking forward to November 04 when Trump fires this quack.

 

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