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


swordfish

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25 minutes ago, Bobref said:

 

[crickets]🦗

Sorry Bob. I’ve been studying game film on how to be a better referee. I’ll get back with you. 

26 minutes ago, Bobref said:

 

[crickets]🦗

My body. My choice. If they choose to be vaccinated, great. Then I don’t pose a risk to them. 

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7 minutes ago, DannEllenwood said:

Sorry Bob. I’ve been studying game film on how to be a better referee. I’ll get back with you. 

My body. My choice. If they choose to be vaccinated, great. Then I don’t pose a risk to them. 

Good for you. I wish all officials would be studying game film in June.

i look forward to hearing how you reconcile mandatory vaccinations with “my body, my choice.”

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1 minute ago, Bobref said:

Good for you. I wish all officials would be studying game film in June.

i look forward to hearing how you reconcile mandatory vaccinations with “my body, my choice.”

Thanks. 

1 minute ago, Bobref said:

Good for you. I wish all officials would be studying game film in June.

i look forward to hearing how you reconcile mandatory vaccinations with “my body, my choice.”

Religion 

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4 hours ago, TrojanDad said:

N95 are great masks...much more effective.  You are fortunate to get your hands on that mask.  They have been a challenge to obtain.  KN95's are starting to be more plentiful.

My wife is a pediatric nurse practitioner at a hospital in Chicago. 

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Here's more on Dr. Fauci backing controversial Wuhan Lab with million of U.S. dollars for risky coronavirus research.

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.

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5 minutes ago, Howe said:
 
 

Here's more on Dr. Fauci backing controversial Wuhan Lab with million of U.S. dollars for risky coronavirus research.

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.

Lots of “risky“ research going on, whether you’re talking about chemicals, viruses, nuclear materials, etc. That’s sort of the nature of scientific research, depending on the focus of the research. And $7.4 million for research over 11 years is chump change. I don’t see what the big deal is.

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Dr. Fauci has attained cult like status among Democrats. They love confirmed liars. Fauci has been attempting to develop a vaccine from the SARS coronavirus since 2003 yet no vaccine exists today. Fauci's research of "gain of function" and "accelerated evolution" resulted in the COVID-19 virus.

Fauci informed America there is nothing to worry about for the first seven weeks after the virus was confirmed in Washington and told everyone there is no need to wear masks for months. He pretended to be a novice on the COVID-19 virus yet actually knew exactly what we were deailng with. Fauci's job is to ensure America is prepared for a pandemic. He did nothing to prepare our nation for the pandemic he caused. I can't wait for November 04 when Trump fires his sorry ass.

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27 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Lots of “risky“ research going on, whether you’re talking about chemicals, viruses, nuclear materials, etc. That’s sort of the nature of scientific research, depending on the focus of the research. And $7.4 million for research over 11 years is chump change. I don’t see what the big deal is.

The 7.4 million awarded to the Wuhan lab has been since 2014. Fauci's research has been going on in America since 2003. I'm confident the American taxpayers have spent far more than 7.4 million for Fauci to develop the COVID-19 virus.

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11 minutes ago, Howe said:

The 7.4 million awarded to the Wuhan lab has been since 2014. Fauci's research has been going on in America since 2003. I'm confident the American taxpayers have spent far more than 7.4 million for Fauci to develop the COVID-19 virus.

Check your math. According to your post “In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work.” That’s $3.7 million from 2019-2025.

“The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019.” That’s 2 programs, $7.4 million, from 2014 to 2025. 11 years. As I said, chump change.

And neither Dr. Fauci nor anyone else “developed” the corona virus. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-not-human-made-in-lab.html.

 

The coronavirus was not engineered in a lab. Here's how we know.

By Jeanna Bryner - Live Science Editor-in-Chief March 21, 2020

The persistent myth can be put to bed.

Editor's note: On April 16, news came out that the U.S. government said it was investigating the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have somehow escaped from a lab, though experts still think the possibility that it was engineered is unlikely. This Live Science report explores the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

As the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 spreads across the globe, with cases surpassing 284,000 worldwide today (March 20), misinformation is spreading almost as fast.

One persistent myth is that this virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was made by scientists and escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.

A new analysis of SARS-CoV-2 may finally put that latter idea to bed. A group of researchers compared the genome of this novel coronavirus with the seven other coronaviruses known to infect humans: SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2, which can cause severe disease; along with HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E, which typically cause just mild symptoms, the researchers wrote March 17 in the journal Nature Medicine.

"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," they write in the journal article. 

Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, and his colleagues looked at the genetic template for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus. The coronavirus uses these spikes to grab the outer walls of its host's cells and then enter those cells. They specifically looked at the gene sequences responsible for two key features of these spike proteins: the grabber, called the receptor-binding domain, that hooks onto host cells; and the so-called cleavage site that allows the virus to open and enter those cells. 

That analysis showed that the "hook" part of the spike had evolved to target a receptor on the outside of human cells called ACE2, which is involved in blood pressure regulation. It is so effective at attaching to human cells that the researchers said the spike proteins were the result of natural selection and not genetic engineering.

Here's why: SARS-CoV-2 is very closely related to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which fanned across the globe nearly 20 years ago. Scientists have studied how SARS-CoV differs from SARS-CoV-2 — with several key letter changes in the genetic code. Yet in computer simulations, the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 don't seem to work very well at helping the virus bind to human cells. If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work. But it turns out, nature is smarter than scientists, and the novel coronavirus found a way to mutate that was better — and completely different— from anything scientists could have created, the study found. 

Another nail in the "escaped from evil lab" theory?  The overall molecular structure of this virus is distinct from the known coronaviruses and instead most closely resembles viruses found in bats and pangolins that had been little studied and never known to cause humans any harm. 

"If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness," according to a statement from Scripps

Where did the virus come from? The research group came up with two possible scenarios for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. One scenario follows the origin stories for a few other recent coronaviruses that have wreaked havoc in human populations. In that scenario, we contracted the virus directly from an animal — civets in the case of SARS and camels in the case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers suggest that animal was a bat, which transmitted the virus to another intermediate animal (possibly a pangolin, some scientists have said) that brought the virus to humans.

In that possible scenario, the genetic features that make the new coronavirus so effective at infecting human cells (its pathogenic powers) would have been in place before hopping to humans.

In the other scenario, those pathogenic features would have evolved only after the virus jumped from its animal host to humans. Some coronaviruses that originated in pangolins have a "hook structure" (that receptor binding domain) similar to that of SARS-CoV-2. In that way, a pangolin either directly or indirectly passed its virus onto a human host. Then, once inside a human host, the virus could have evolved to have its other stealth feature — the cleavage site that lets it easily break into human cells. Once it developed that capacity, the researchers said, the coronavirus would be even more capable of spreading between people.

All of this technical detail could help scientists forecast the future of this pandemic. If the virus did enter human cells in a pathogenic form, that raises the probability of future outbreaks. The virus could still be circulating in the animal population and might again jump to humans, ready to cause an outbreak. But the chances of such future outbreaks are lower if the virus must first enter the human population and then evolve the pathogenic properties, the researchers said.

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22 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Check your math. According to your post “In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work.” That’s $3.7 million from 2019-2025.

“The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019.” That’s 2 programs, $7.4 million, from 2014 to 2025. 11 years. As I said, chump change.

And neither Dr. Fauci nor anyone else “developed” the corona virus. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-not-human-made-in-lab.html.

 

The coronavirus was not engineered in a lab. Here's how we know.

By Jeanna Bryner - Live Science Editor-in-Chief March 21, 2020

The persistent myth can be put to bed.

Editor's note: On April 16, news came out that the U.S. government said it was investigating the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have somehow escaped from a lab, though experts still think the possibility that it was engineered is unlikely. This Live Science report explores the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

As the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 spreads across the globe, with cases surpassing 284,000 worldwide today (March 20), misinformation is spreading almost as fast.

One persistent myth is that this virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was made by scientists and escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.

A new analysis of SARS-CoV-2 may finally put that latter idea to bed. A group of researchers compared the genome of this novel coronavirus with the seven other coronaviruses known to infect humans: SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2, which can cause severe disease; along with HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E, which typically cause just mild symptoms, the researchers wrote March 17 in the journal Nature Medicine.

"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," they write in the journal article. 

Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, and his colleagues looked at the genetic template for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus. The coronavirus uses these spikes to grab the outer walls of its host's cells and then enter those cells. They specifically looked at the gene sequences responsible for two key features of these spike proteins: the grabber, called the receptor-binding domain, that hooks onto host cells; and the so-called cleavage site that allows the virus to open and enter those cells. 

That analysis showed that the "hook" part of the spike had evolved to target a receptor on the outside of human cells called ACE2, which is involved in blood pressure regulation. It is so effective at attaching to human cells that the researchers said the spike proteins were the result of natural selection and not genetic engineering.

Here's why: SARS-CoV-2 is very closely related to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which fanned across the globe nearly 20 years ago. Scientists have studied how SARS-CoV differs from SARS-CoV-2 — with several key letter changes in the genetic code. Yet in computer simulations, the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 don't seem to work very well at helping the virus bind to human cells. If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work. But it turns out, nature is smarter than scientists, and the novel coronavirus found a way to mutate that was better — and completely different— from anything scientists could have created, the study found. 

Another nail in the "escaped from evil lab" theory?  The overall molecular structure of this virus is distinct from the known coronaviruses and instead most closely resembles viruses found in bats and pangolins that had been little studied and never known to cause humans any harm. 

"If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness," according to a statement from Scripps

Where did the virus come from? The research group came up with two possible scenarios for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. One scenario follows the origin stories for a few other recent coronaviruses that have wreaked havoc in human populations. In that scenario, we contracted the virus directly from an animal — civets in the case of SARS and camels in the case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers suggest that animal was a bat, which transmitted the virus to another intermediate animal (possibly a pangolin, some scientists have said) that brought the virus to humans.

In that possible scenario, the genetic features that make the new coronavirus so effective at infecting human cells (its pathogenic powers) would have been in place before hopping to humans.

In the other scenario, those pathogenic features would have evolved only after the virus jumped from its animal host to humans. Some coronaviruses that originated in pangolins have a "hook structure" (that receptor binding domain) similar to that of SARS-CoV-2. In that way, a pangolin either directly or indirectly passed its virus onto a human host. Then, once inside a human host, the virus could have evolved to have its other stealth feature — the cleavage site that lets it easily break into human cells. Once it developed that capacity, the researchers said, the coronavirus would be even more capable of spreading between people.

All of this technical detail could help scientists forecast the future of this pandemic. If the virus did enter human cells in a pathogenic form, that raises the probability of future outbreaks. The virus could still be circulating in the animal population and might again jump to humans, ready to cause an outbreak. But the chances of such future outbreaks are lower if the virus must first enter the human population and then evolve the pathogenic properties, the researchers said.

Interesting analysis from a "group of researchers".  Perhaps the same researchers used in the hydroxychloroquine study retracted and withdrawn.

The FDA claimed a "contaminant" in the manufacturing process caused Zantac to break down into NDMA when stored for long periods. The pharmacy who discovered NDMA at a level 3,000 times higher than the FDA limit in every batch tested from every manufacturer said "Our finding is the ranitidine molecule falls apart into NDMA" and "The foundation of these concerns has been around for decades".

The FDA has had 9 months now to inform the manufacturers of Zantac of their discovery. Zantac should be back in production and on the market any day now. 😅

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37 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Check your math. According to your post “In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work.” That’s $3.7 million from 2019-2025.

“The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019.” That’s 2 programs, $7.4 million, from 2014 to 2025. 11 years. As I said, chump change.

And neither Dr. Fauci nor anyone else “developed” the corona virus. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-not-human-made-in-lab.html.

 

The coronavirus was not engineered in a lab. Here's how we know.

By Jeanna Bryner - Live Science Editor-in-Chief March 21, 2020

The persistent myth can be put to bed.

Editor's note: On April 16, news came out that the U.S. government said it was investigating the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have somehow escaped from a lab, though experts still think the possibility that it was engineered is unlikely. This Live Science report explores the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

As the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 spreads across the globe, with cases surpassing 284,000 worldwide today (March 20), misinformation is spreading almost as fast.

One persistent myth is that this virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was made by scientists and escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.

A new analysis of SARS-CoV-2 may finally put that latter idea to bed. A group of researchers compared the genome of this novel coronavirus with the seven other coronaviruses known to infect humans: SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2, which can cause severe disease; along with HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E, which typically cause just mild symptoms, the researchers wrote March 17 in the journal Nature Medicine.

"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," they write in the journal article. 

Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, and his colleagues looked at the genetic template for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus. The coronavirus uses these spikes to grab the outer walls of its host's cells and then enter those cells. They specifically looked at the gene sequences responsible for two key features of these spike proteins: the grabber, called the receptor-binding domain, that hooks onto host cells; and the so-called cleavage site that allows the virus to open and enter those cells. 

That analysis showed that the "hook" part of the spike had evolved to target a receptor on the outside of human cells called ACE2, which is involved in blood pressure regulation. It is so effective at attaching to human cells that the researchers said the spike proteins were the result of natural selection and not genetic engineering.

Here's why: SARS-CoV-2 is very closely related to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which fanned across the globe nearly 20 years ago. Scientists have studied how SARS-CoV differs from SARS-CoV-2 — with several key letter changes in the genetic code. Yet in computer simulations, the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 don't seem to work very well at helping the virus bind to human cells. If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work. But it turns out, nature is smarter than scientists, and the novel coronavirus found a way to mutate that was better — and completely different— from anything scientists could have created, the study found. 

Another nail in the "escaped from evil lab" theory?  The overall molecular structure of this virus is distinct from the known coronaviruses and instead most closely resembles viruses found in bats and pangolins that had been little studied and never known to cause humans any harm. 

"If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness," according to a statement from Scripps

Where did the virus come from? The research group came up with two possible scenarios for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. One scenario follows the origin stories for a few other recent coronaviruses that have wreaked havoc in human populations. In that scenario, we contracted the virus directly from an animal — civets in the case of SARS and camels in the case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers suggest that animal was a bat, which transmitted the virus to another intermediate animal (possibly a pangolin, some scientists have said) that brought the virus to humans.

In that possible scenario, the genetic features that make the new coronavirus so effective at infecting human cells (its pathogenic powers) would have been in place before hopping to humans.

In the other scenario, those pathogenic features would have evolved only after the virus jumped from its animal host to humans. Some coronaviruses that originated in pangolins have a "hook structure" (that receptor binding domain) similar to that of SARS-CoV-2. In that way, a pangolin either directly or indirectly passed its virus onto a human host. Then, once inside a human host, the virus could have evolved to have its other stealth feature — the cleavage site that lets it easily break into human cells. Once it developed that capacity, the researchers said, the coronavirus would be even more capable of spreading between people.

All of this technical detail could help scientists forecast the future of this pandemic. If the virus did enter human cells in a pathogenic form, that raises the probability of future outbreaks. The virus could still be circulating in the animal population and might again jump to humans, ready to cause an outbreak. But the chances of such future outbreaks are lower if the virus must first enter the human population and then evolve the pathogenic properties, the researchers said.

I can see why you are a lawyer lol

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On 6/27/2020 at 3:00 PM, Bobref said:

@Howe and @DannEllenwood, still maintain that there’s no science behind the concept of universal masking? You need to travel outside the boundaries of the State of Denial. This study was published yesterday. If it’s too complicated for you, let me know and I’ll dumb it down.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1422

...

TL;DR   

Please dumb it down for us dummies.  A sentence of two will suffice.

Thank you.

 

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On 6/27/2020 at 11:07 PM, Bobref said:

You couldn’t be more wrong, and your analogy to abortion could not be farther off the mark.

So as a hypothetical let's say you, Mr. Bobref, are using the urinal in a public restroom.  You are wearing a mask and are currently alone in the public restroom.   Mr. Ellenwood enters the public restroom, walks up to the urinal directly to the left of yours, and relieves himself.  He is not wearing a mask.    

Approximately 14 days later you develop systems of covid-19, and are subsequently hospitalized.  You pull through,  but your lungs are now damaged by the virus.  You know that Mr. Ellenwood was the only individual not wearing a mask in public that you came in close contact with during the approx. 14 days before developing symptoms.   Mr. Ellenwood is tested for the virus and is revealed to be asymptomatic.   

Do you have any legal recourse for Mr. Ellenwood obviously transmitting the virus to you?  

 

On 6/28/2020 at 7:01 AM, Bobref said:

Let’s see if your “analysis” can stand up to a little cross-examination, just for the heck of it. Do you have any kids attending public schools?

Did you know that a public school student in Indiana, by the time he hits the 6th grade, is required to show proof of multiple vaccinations against diseases like pertussis, polio, measles, varicella (chicken pox), mumps, rubella, Hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, tetanus, etc.? That’s a lot of needle sticks. Your body, your choice. How do you feel about that?

How does wearing a mask equate with being stuck with a needle multiple times?

 

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30 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So as a hypothetical let's say you, Mr. Bobref, are using the urinal in a public restroom.  You are wearing a mask and are currently alone in the public restroom.   Mr. Ellenwood enters the public restroom, walks up to the urinal directly to the left of yours, and relieves himself.  He is not wearing a mask.    

Approximately 14 days later you develop systems of covid-19, and are subsequently hospitalized.  You pull through,  but your lungs are now damaged by the virus.  You know that Mr. Ellenwood was the only individual not wearing a mask in public that you came in close contact with during the approx. 14 days before developing symptoms.   Mr. Ellenwood is tested for the virus and is revealed to be asymptomatic.   

Do you have any legal recourse for Mr. Ellenwood obviously transmitting the virus to you?  

As a practical matter, probably note. Masking is effective, but not 100%. Also, virus particles can live on hard surfaces for quite awhile. And we’d have to do contact tracing on pretty much everyone I came in contact with during those 14 days. As a strictly theoretical proposition, you do have legal recourse against someone who intentionally or negligently causes one to develop an infection. But there are, in your example, insurmountable barriers to proving it.

How does wearing a mask equate with being stuck with a needle multiple times?

You’re asking me to give away my cross-examination strategy. I’m still waiting for @DannEllenwoodto respond to my mandatory vaccination question. But let me ask you this: what would you consider more intrusive, being told to wear a mask in public, or multiple needle sticks which introduced foreign materials to your body?

 

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27 minutes ago, Bobref said:

But let me ask you this: what would you consider more intrusive, being told to wear a mask in public, or multiple needle sticks which introduced foreign materials to your body?

When you say "being told to wear a mask in public"  a) who exactly is doing the telling, and b) what are the social and/or legal ramifications for not complying?

 

 

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CDC Antibody Studies Confirm Huge Gap Between COVID-19 Infections and Known Cases

https://reason.com/2020/06/28/cdc-antibody-studies-confirm-huge-gap-between-covid-19-infections-and-known-cases/

Quote

Newly published antibody test results from half a dozen parts of the country confirm that COVID-19 infections in the United States far outnumber confirmed cases. The ratio of estimated infections to known cases in these studies, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Friday, range from 6 to 1 in Connecticut as of early May to 24 to 1 in Missouri as of late April.

These results confirm something we already knew: The COVID-19 infection fatality rate—deaths as a share of all infections—is much lower than the crude case fatality rate—deaths as a share of known cases. That is bound to be true when testing is limited and a virus typically produces mild or no symptoms. At the same time, the CDC's antibody studies imply that efforts to control the epidemic through testing, isolation, quarantine, and contact tracing will not be very effective, since they reach only a small percentage of virus carriers.

The CDC analyzed blood samples drawn for routine tests unrelated to COVID-19 from patients in New York City, Connecticut, South Florida, Missouri, Utah, and western Washington state. Although these samples may not be representative of the general population, they provide a clearer picture of virus prevalence than screening limited to people who sought virus tests because they had symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or because they were in close contact with known carriers.

...

What do these findings imply about the infection fatality rate (IFR) in these places? New York City had recorded 2,580 COVID-19 deaths as of April 1, when the CDC estimates 641,800 residents had been infected, which implies an IFR of 0.4 percent. (The IFR implied by the state health department's study, by contrast, was around 0.6 percent.) The COVID-19 death toll in Connecticut was 2,495 as of May 3, when the CDC estimates the state had 176,700 infections. That implies a much higher IFR: 1.4 percent.

Utah had recorded 57 COVID-19 deaths as of May 3, when the CDC estimates the state had 47,400 infections, implying an IFR of just 0.1 percent. Missouri's death toll was 388 as of April 26, when the state had an estimated 161,900 infections. That implies an IFR of about 0.2 percent.

These are just snapshots, and the IFRs in Utah and Missouri may have risen as the epidemic progressed in those states, especially if people infected in May were more vulnerable to the disease. But even now, there is a striking gap between the crude case fatality rates in New York City and Connecticut (8.4 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively) and the crude CFRs in Utah and Missouri (0.8 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively). That suggests COVID-19 patients have fared worse in New York City and Connecticut than they have in Utah and Missouri, for reasons that may include the prevalence of preexisting medical conditions, the stress that the epidemic put on local health care systems, and policies regarding high-risk people such as nursing home residents.

 

It is plausible that the IFR for COVID-19, as well as the crude CFR, would vary from one part of the country to another, depending on local conditions. Based on the CDC's "best estimates" of the death rate among all Americans who develop COVID-19 symptoms (whether or not they are tested for the virus) and the percentage of infections that are asymptomatic, the nationwide IFR is something like 0.26 percent.

Virus testing in the United States has expanded considerably since early May, which helps explain why the nationwide crude CFR has been falling, from more than 6 percent on May 16 to less than 5 percent today. As more people with mild or no symptoms get tested, the denominator includes more low-risk cases, driving down the apparent death rate. The gap between confirmed cases and total infections also could shrink as testing is expanded, but that depends on the pace of new infections, which have been rising at a fast clip in several states.

In Texas, where newly confirmed cases rose 10-fold between May 26 and June 25 before falling slightly, the share of virus tests that were positive rose from 4.3 percent on May 26 to 13.2 percent on June 26, which indicates that expanded testing is not keeping pace with rising infections. It looks like the gap between confirmed cases and infections is growing in places like Texas, while it is shrinking in places like New York City, where the test positivity rate (based on a three-day average) plummeted from 70 percent on March 30 to 2 percent on June 25.

When the ratio of infections to confirmed cases is high, there is little hope of containing transmission by identifying and quarantining carriers and their contacts, even if a state has the capacity to do contact tracing. The CDC's antibody research "underscores that there are probably a lot of people infected without knowing it, likely because they have mild or asymptomatic infection," CDC scientist Fiona Havers told The New York Times. "But those people could still spread it to others."

The light gray lining of this dark cloud is that newly infected people in states such as Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California are substantially younger now than they were earlier in the epidemic, which means the death rate in those places should be falling. The seven-day average of newly reported COVID-19 deaths in Texas fell from 58 on April 30, when the statewide lockdown was lifted, to 20 on June 13. It has since risen to 29 and probably will climb more as recently contracted cases progress. But the outcome would be far worse if new COVID-19 patients in Texas were older.

Since neither contact tracing nor a vaccine is likely to save high-risk Texans, the ultimate death toll will depend largely on precautions aimed at protecting them. Gov. Greg Abbott has responded to the new wave of infections, which he says is driven largely by young people who have been getting together for drinks in close proximity, by closing bars. But if young Texans are increasingly disinclined to follow social distancing rules, that step may not accomplish much. They can still get together in private, and their risk of exposure will in any case be higher as they return to work. Nor can those people, whose own risk of dying from COVID-19 is very low, necessarily be counted on to avoid contact with Texans who are much more vulnerable to the disease.

The onus for preventing contact between potential carriers and high-risk individuals seems to be shifting, fairly or not, from the first group to the second. Minimizing COVID-19 deaths will require adapting to that reality.

 

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1 hour ago, Irishman said:

So we are just completely ignoring the OBVIOUS major faux pas in the restroom urinal rules???? 

I'm finding out new things about these people every day.  Creepy.

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2 hours ago, Irishman said:

So we are just completely ignoring the OBVIOUS major faux pas in the restroom urinal rules???? 

What if there are only two urinals in the public restroom along with one stall, and one urinal and the stall are both occupied?  Are you going to just stand there like a rube waiting for either one to open up?

 

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7 hours ago, Muda69 said:

When you say "being told to wear a mask in public"  a) who exactly is doing the telling, and b) what are the social and/or legal ramifications for not complying?

Gov. Pritzker in Illinois issued an order making masking mandatory. Police were empowered to arrest for non-compliance, and charge offenders with a misdemeanor, although I don’t think anyone actually got arrested.

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19 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Gov. Pritzker in Illinois issued an order making masking mandatory. Police were empowered to arrest for non-compliance, and charge offenders with a misdemeanor, although I don’t think anyone actually got arrested.

So your hypothetical takes place in the state of Illinois?

Ok. I would ignore such an order, depending on the situation at hand.  If I'm walking down an empty public sidewalk in say, Greenfield Illinois, I will not be wearing a mask.  However if my favorite watering hole has a "no masks, no service" sign on the door I may decide to wear one in order to give the proprietor my business.

 

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