About democracy

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed a number of flaws in our democratic systems of government, by bringing the economy to a standstill. ' Hardship builds character, and what does not kill you makes you stronger'. Every crisis is an 'opportunity for improvement'.
 
I am talking about the outcome of the registered cases.
64% recovered or discharged (= might still die)
36% died.
Check the website.
Only 15% of the 830000 cases (to date) had an outcome.
If none of the still active 700000+ cases died, it would be 5% dead.
Not very likely.
Please explain where/if I am wrong..

Wrong in the sense that your subset ("registered cases" as you call them) possibly reflects a selected group of infected people who may have a certain parameter to their being included in the statistic. Just like I explained above, if 80% of the people who are infected have almost no symptoms, and a research statistics only involves those infected people who needed medical treatment at a hospital, then the research statistics ignores 80% of the population who are infected who did not seek treatment.

Which would mean that the statistics don't reflect the death rate for the entire infected population, just those who became "registered cases". Without a parameter for that term, I wouldn't assume it to translate to mean "the total population" or "the total population of those infected"

Think about what it sounds like you are saying here. 36% of the people who "become registered cases" with the virus die... Are you saying that 36% of those who get the virus die? Because the CDC says 80% of them have almost no symptoms. If I had to guess, I'd say that your "become registered cases" qualifier might be selecting those people who became infected and needed serious medical attention at a hospital to survive, but I'm not a mind reader, so I don't know what your qualifying term means. I just know it doesn't fit with what I read on the CDC website, nor do I hear anyone saying the projected death rate for the all those infected is 36%...
 
OonortonoO:
" registred" = people who tested positive.
Now over 850 000 .
I suppose not all of them are hospitalised?
Some of them are likely people with mild symptoms.
As I see it, those 850000 infected have only 2 options:
recover or die. ( bar indefinite life support..)
The death ratio is now 36% for the 132000 ' closed cases'
Why would that rate be any different for the 720000 still open cases'?
You still haven't explained that.
Anyway, we will know soon enough.
This pandemic is only in its early stages.
I'm pretty sure the prediction your president ( around 65000 ) is way too optimistic.

I hope I am wrong though..
 
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When coronavirus has killed as many as it can, we will have herd immunity. After that happens, we can revert to being ourselves with all the old social inequities. ' The more things change, the more they stay the same' ?
 
OonortonoO:
" registred" = people who tested positive.
Now over 850 000 .
I suppose not all of them are hospitalised?
Some of them are likely people with mild symptoms.
As I see it, those 850000 infected have only 2 options:
recover or die. ( bar indefinite life support..)

I've read a lot of your posts over the time I've been here and you come across as an intelligent person. WTBS, I shall try to be clear. Since testing isn't either random testing which extrapolates data to larger populations, or complete population testing which is an actual count, what we have is what you have called "registered cases". Without knowing who gets tested and how they qualify for testing, there's a chance that the facts that qualify a person for testing is related to how serious their symptoms are.....

SO,... If testing is done in Germany the same way it's being done here, then there's a bias in the choice of tested subjects. The CDC doesn't even want you to be tested unless you have severe symtoms, BECAUSE they feel that healthcare facilities are too busy treating people with severe symptoms to be testing every person who has a fever. Therefore, If testing data comes from medical facilities, it stands to reason that since they are mostly testing those people who have the most severe symptoms, the death rates and other measures of symptom severity is going to reflect an abnormally high number.

The death ratio is now 36% for the 132000 ' closed cases'
Why would that rate be any different for the 720000 still open cases'?
You still haven't explained that.
Anyway, we will know soon enough.
This pandemic is only in its early stages.

As far as "Closed cases" go, I don't have a clue what means. Irregardless, if you believe the 36% mortality rate extrapolates to the world's population in general then your prediction is that 2,808,000,000 will die from the Covid 19 virus. That's almost 3 billion people...
If that's not what you mean with your 36% number, then I don't see what it means and why you are using it.

Everyone is going to be exposed,... everyone. Containment may have been possible, but as I said earlier in this thread, the nature of the infection (the mild symptoms of some infected people, plus the length of time it can be present in a person before it presents symptoms) makes containment nearly impossible. As I said previously, if everyone who was infected got reasonably ill, containment might be possible, but people are asymptomatic and infectious at the same time so they aren't recognizing that they are contageous.

I'm pretty sure the prediction your president ( around 65000 ) is way too optimistic.

I hope I am wrong though..

Nope, I agree. If you read what I wrote about avalanche danger risk on the prior page, I think there is a faction who want to take the risks and open up our country because they feel there will never be ZERO risk from Covid 19, and to destroy the entire lives of of a good portion of our population while we wait for the risk to approach ZERO will cause as much loss of life as any virus. So there's calculations to be made, as to how much risk is worth taking to begin getting back to normal. As you said, An Optimist is willing to tolerate much more risk than the pessimist. Both of whom have vested interests in taking or not taking risk, beyond the just the welfare of the people.

I hope you are wrong too, but I think you are right about optimists minimizing the estimated death toll, and in the end I don't believe it's going to be the 2 million americans dead, like it was first predicted, nor will it be the adjusted 200,000, but I bet it will be well over 100,000 dead. I think that because as you said, the optimist projections will be low, and the pessimists will be high. It makes sense that the real number will land in the middle. At 15,000,000 dead, in the USA, that translates to about 4.57% which is a long way from 36%, but that's my guess for the mortality rate of those infected.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense to you... I was trying to be clear and respectful.

Edited to add,... I fixed my mistaken math. 4.57% death rate turns out to be 15 million dead given the entire USA population can be considered as "infected". That's a huge number.

The USA has tested about 1% of the population. As I said previously, we can only hope that their testing focused so heavily on those people who are in danger of dieing that their published mortality rates are extremely high and many magnitudes greater than the mortality rate for the entire population. If the mortality rate does become 36% for all those infected, there's not going to be a housing crisis in america, nor any social security insolvency. 36% mortality rate in america will be 120 million dead.
 
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As far as "Closed cases" go, I don't have a clue what means. Irregardless, if you believe the 36% mortality rate extrapolates to the world's population in general then your prediction is that 2,808,000,000 will die from the Covid 19 virus. That's almost 3 billion people...
If that's not what you mean with your 36% number, then I don't see what it means and why you are using it.

I use the terminology of this website:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
And asking what will be the outcome for the 880000 (and counting..)
Not the world's population.
 
Not sure this answers the precise questions posed regarding various statistics, but this is an excellent video, fast forward to about 4 minutes when he starts talking about the US, and in particular New York State, where he explains the latest data show the Case Fatality Rate is probably at 0.72%...

 
There are not many things of which I am afraid. But the size of America scares me.
 
Your genial president have a solution how to minimize Covid-19 mortality. If you drink or inject a poison, you'll die from that, not from the virus.
 
Our leaders are often not much of a recommendation for democracy as a system, but I don't like being told what I may or may not do. Trump can only give an opinion and make a decision when asked. Some people have a need to be fully directed by an authority because they cannot think for themselves. Dictators make them feel comfortable because there is more certainty.
 
You don't miss this?

About democracy

A very intelligent friend of mine postulated over two years ago that the Trump era is the zombie apocalypse- millions of otherwise normal, honest, hardworking folks have gone brain-dead.

There was a book I read in college called "The True Believer" These people who believe something DESPITE science and reality's best efforts to convince them of FACTS, are just like those zombies stumbling around in "The Walking Dead" As Ashley related about his ancient uncle, that plague has been spreading since 2016.
 
Essentially, you're wrong statistically, and here's why... The CDC website in america instructs people NOT to get tested unless they have life threatening symptoms (to flatten the curve), so there's not way to know the denominator of the equation you propose in the USA in any of the math.

So, if we have 2 people infected and 1 dies. The mortality rate is 50%. If we actually have 2,000 people infected and 1 dies, the rate is .05% There's no way to do the math without having an accurate accounting of who is infected. Without completely testing everyone or extrapolating the ratio's through "random" testing, or you get no accurate statistics. In cases where you test only those people who are in medical distress, you get hugely inflated numbers on all measures of infection and severity of symptoms. I'd suggest do some reading and find out the bigger picture, rather than rattle off misleading statistics. Both the media and the governmental entities focus too much on "body count" rather than educating the public to the details of what we are faced with.

Given the fact that I live in a hotspot area, and was sick 3 weeks ago, I went to the CDC website to figure out what to do and collected some of the less publicized, yet crucial information listed below:

-It's estimated that 80% of the people who are infected have mild symptoms to almost no symptoms, and yet the virus absolutely kills some people. This diversity in the degree of illness causes those who are not ill, yet are infected to dismiss the possibility of being infectious in many cases. If it made every infected person quite ill, the human behavioral response would be better.

-An infected person can be infectious and not display any symptoms for anywhere from 4 to as long as 14 days. This is what the CDC said 3 weeks ago. This fact may have changed as research has been changing facts as it is done.

These 2 facts are the reason that the medical community knows that without an inoculation for the virus, all they can do is "flatten the curve". Meaning, slow the infection rate so they can save as many people as possible who's symptoms are life threatening. The wide symptomatic expression of this virus is part of what makes it so contagious. People are walking around who are asymptomatic, yet they are still infectious without a clue.

When I was sick, the CDC website interactive quiz told me that I may indeed have the virus, but NOT to be tested unless I have more serious symptoms because medical facilities are already overwhelmed testing, and caring for the seriously ill people who are infected. The CDC recommend that I have no contact with other people for at least 2 weeks, which I have done and am pretty much still doing.

What the CDC, Dr's Fauci and Birx don't make clear enough is there are only 2 possibilities. Either almost the entire population gets exposed to the virus, so there's herd immunity developed (which means some who have severe symptoms may die) OR, there's a vaccine developed in time before the entire population is eventually exposed. There is no working plan where "flattening the curve" keeps most of the population from being exposed. "Flattening the curve" is just to spread out the medical resources so facilities are not overwhelmed with people who all need treatment at the same time. Social distancing is NOT an attempt at containment. It's about flattening the curve.... (read above)

Some time ago, someone here was projecting at least 2 million will die from this because of the poor governmental response to the epidemic. Then the number was 200,000 dead, and more recently the numbers are under 100,000. This is because of poor statistical collection practices. Testing can give valid statistics, but not by only testing people who are in distress. (that's what the CDC is recommending here in america to "flatten the blah blah blah")

Basically, I'm sick of hearing the "Don't kid yourself" or the "You get the drift" baloney... If you ever wrote an essay for some professional journal and started your essay with the former quote and finished it with the later, you should give your diploma back to your school... Don't let the media hype you to embrace paranoia, or dismiss common sense. There is no "drift" to get, or dire warning needed if you do your own research on the CDC website.

I'm a Backcountry skier. Many Backcountry skiers die in avalanches. That's a fact of life. Snow science researchers who are experts in snowpack structure are also occasionally killed in the backcountry. The reason is because humans are fallible. Experts are wrong sometimes. I have a saying for backcountry traveling that expresses the situation of the inherent dangers of backcountry travel.

"The risk is never zero. Even when it's low risk, there's still a possibility of being caught in a triggered release. At some point if you are going to travel in the backcountry, you must accept some amount of risk."

And that's where we are with the Covid19 situation. At some point we have to go back to functional living because the risk will never be ZERO, or even near zero. That's the critical judgement that looms. When is the risk low enough to resume normal life?

It's pretty obvious, one political faction wants to accept more risk by restarting normal life because the strong economy would be a significant factor in their re-election. It's also obvious that there's a mirror opposite who hope that their narrative of accepting too much risk too quickly will cause greatly increased death rates which proves that it's their turn to run the government. Both of these seem true to me.

Then there's the idiots on both extremes who make claims that aren't worth repeating, yet some want to claim that their ideological opposite's main stream core values are extreme. It's sad that the founders of the constitution knew that the media and freedom of speech was an important check on the corruption of powerful entities within our nation. I wonder if they ever thought that the institution of free press and free speech would become a combatant rather than the impartial referee.

One political faction wants YOU to accept the risk of restarting the economy. And their zombie-like minions believe the crap that pours out of their pie holes.

Media political weaponization was brought into recent vogue by Roger Ailes, the pussy-grabbing founder of Fox News, to counter what right-wing believers say is the bias of the majority of journalism that media have been reporting as facts that do not agree with their political beliefs. But it's nothing new. Flat-earthers, science deniers and other snake handlers have always existed. They just were never given the creedence they seem to enjoy now. We have a President that stands up and tells bald-faced lies, half-truths, self-serving vanity-fueled misstatements on top of a lot of crap that reveals what a moron our "stable genius" really is. His advisers who have not been fired or quit for disagreeing with his childish idiocy are whining for early release from the country club prisons they're siting in. And a large porting of the population believe every word he says and ignore the truth when it's inconvenient, which is most of the time.

In "The Sand Pebbles" Steve McQueen's character teaches a lowly coolie the operations of a ship's mechanical power plant. But the poor guy still believes that ghosts have something to do with engineering. Just like Trumpers believe he has something to do with leadership.
 
Danno, You should seek professional help for your mental illness. You can never agree or disagree, and then state your reasons why. Most every post you make is an unhinged diatribe about trump or "right wingers". I suppose that's your "style" for lack of a better word.

Nothing I said, which you quoted is a "flat earth", "science deniers", or "snake handler" comment. Anyone who bothers to read my comment who isn't deranged over Trump's election can see that.

I don't feel the need to respond to your vitriol. I think Jerry has signaled the "Trump derangement crowd" that he's had enough of their bullshit...
 
First, as Ive said before, when the previous president was in duly elected office there were about the same things said about him that are said about the current one but but the other half of the population.
And just like then, if you are in the unhappy half, you get to pull the lever against him twice in eight years. In less time
than it seems you will get to go for that lever again.
Not much of a choice I suppose but there you are the world as it is.
Me? Ill be voting against the virus. :)
 
Even if we get a vaccine, the virus is likely to mutate and defeat it. So we need to learn to live differently. I think the years of wealth inequality and massive tourism are over. In future there will probably be places from which 'clean' countries will not accept travellers. With trickle-down economics, wealth often trickles down offshore under normal circumstances. Perhaps some domestic economies will benefit when their wealthy people stay home and spend ?
 
Yes ! ... I am much more concerned with the Pandemic than I am with who is in charge in the USA , I have no dog in that fight , but will say I personally have not suffered from anything the last half dozen USA leaders have done .... it not the politics that get under my skin , it the personal attacks on here between fellow Norton owners that do share the common bond of ownership of these interesting and lovable bikes from our yout .... that does upset me , let’s just try and keep it civil , while respecting others opinions ....
 
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Yeah well I never did trust those MkIII guys with their electric legs. It isnt fair...:)
 
There will always be differences of opinion. Actually, is a good thing, that is how opinions, and beliefs evolve over time.

For whatever reason, the Internet age has massively undermined our understanding of this. There is far too little use of ‘live and let live’ or even worse ‘agreeing to disagree’.

The latter is what this forum (and others) needs more of.

If I’ve presented my argument, and you’ve done the same, and we still disagree THAT IS FINE... We’ve reached a point whereby we both understand, but disagree with each other... We’ve reached a point whereby there is NO possibility of either side changing the beliefs of the other... We’ve reached a point where we must agree to disagree.

Banging on endlessly after this point is reached brings no good whatsoever.

Ok, that’s my 5 minutes on the soap box... NEXT...
 
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