I pretty much don't care what people do - AS LONG AS THEY AREN'T AFFECTING ME. It's probably why I blog finance stuff so much now, because I'm the one who actually pays for shit while everyone else is all - YOLO!
I feel the same about this virus. I don't give a fuuuuuck if you go back to work or the beach or anywhere else. I want to do those things too. Who knew not going anywhere would be so exhausting!
Having said that - the virus deniers are real assholes.
I don't think quarantines really work. People will evade them. Humans are fight or flight animals. And when you try to lock them down they try to flee! But to see people repeating stuff that is not true is irritating. For instance - the Swedish study of immunity. Everyone keeps reporting the same story without updating to the most recent data because it fits their narrative.
No, Sweden Isn’t a Miracle Coronavirus Model.
"The country’s lockdown model is being lauded by the WHO, but it’s a unique case whose death rate is much worse than those of its neighbors."
OH! Also the story on ZeroHedge today that talked about the how nothing was shut down during the Spanish flu. Which is a ridiculous comparison. In 1918 the US had about 100 million people.
Today we have about 300 million. I think people didn't really have to "social distance" in 1918. If you are okay with 200 thousand people dying in 1918, multiply that by 3 for the population adjusted number.
And finally the shutdown is killing more people than the virus. Depression kills. It does. Full stop. Even I am not immune. But if depression were killing more than two thousand people a day - like the frakenvirus - there would be tons of stories on Google. And there just aren't.
What we are going through is heartbreaking. It's not even creative destruction - it's just destruction.
We went into our favorite ramen place this weekend to lift our spirits, and they were having a full garage sale in their store. When we opened the bag to eat our food in the truck we noticed they have left a card thanking us for supporting them. Now you may think they were doing this for everyone, but the card was made directly to Mr S. I guess they knew his name because you have to sign in. Or maybe they got it from the credit card. We've been trying to prop them up so they survive. But I'm not sure they will. Those people will probably lose everything though no fault of their own. At least if the restaurant sucked and they failed you could say - be better. This is not even a case like that.
And the virus deniers can't even sacrifice by putting a mask on? WTF? We all hate wearing them, but we also all hate being trapped in our houses because you assholes don't believe the virus is a big deal.
I'm at the stage that I feel this is a self resolving issue. If you want to cluster together - be my guest. I'm fairly certain you will become less annoying quicker that way. I say let's fully embrace the Swedish model. Of course 12% of cases will die. But if you don't care - why should I?
I wondered if Sweden really was having a bigger death rate than it's neighbors, I figured that was simple math to find out.
ReplyDelete(They do not in case you want to stop here)
I'll have to trust the official numbers of the dead, I used the total population of each country.
I divided the number of dead by the number of people in the country and that gave me a number I could compare.
(If I did something wrong someone will tell me :-)
Sweden has 2854 death from the virus, divided by it's 10,099,265 people the Sweden virus death rate comes to .000282
What neighbors should we look at?
Italy has 29,315 deaths from the virus, divided by it's 60,461,826 people the Italian virus death rate comes to .000484
France has 25,537 deaths from the virus, divided by it's 65,273,511 people the French virus death rate comes to .000391
UK has 29,501 deaths from the virus, divided by it's 67,886,011 people UK's virus death rate comes to .000434
USA has 71,078 deaths from the virus, divided by it's 331,002,651 people America's virus death rate comes to .000214
Here is where I got the numbers of dead.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
I just did a search for the 2020 population of the countries.
Nope, Sweden does NOT have a bigger death rate (yet).
Your numbers are assuming a 100% infection rate. You are using total population when not everyone is infected. When you do the numbers with the actual infection rate of 23,000 and 2,700 deaths the death rate is more like 11.7%. But don't believe me - believe Sweden. The head of Sweden's no-lockdown coronavirus plan said the country's heavy death toll 'came as a surprise'
ReplyDelete"As of Tuesday, Sweden reported more than 2,700 COVID-19 deaths and more than 23,000 infections. That death toll is far higher than its Nordic neighbors' and many other countries that locked down."
As I said previously - I think the lockdowns have a limited affect. We should have the choice to stay sheltered or not. Let those who think this is overblown out. And let those who have seen what this disease does to people stay in. Then we get to see who's right. Maybe they are right.
This is why it's a good thing that States are all choosing their own timetable. Let's see what works.
Their death rate got slightly worse over night at 12.3%ish.
ReplyDeleteInfection numbers don't matter, you can't trust the infection numbers. They really won't until everyone has been tested.
ReplyDeleteWe do know the number of dead from the virus and we know how many people are in that country.
The number I came up with is the percent dead (by the virus) of the TOTAL population.
You get as close to honest numbers as you're going to find in this mess.
Yah, until they get seriously wide spread testing going you can't use "total infected" as your base. They've already proved that a huge percentage of the infected people never show serious symptoms and will therefore most likely not be counted unless they antibody test everyone.
ReplyDeletere idiots and humanity:
you're ALWAYS going to have a percentage of the population who refuses to do what they're told. ALWAYS. Period end of story. Legislating harder doesn't fix the problem and infact often makes it worse. Some things have to be legislated anyway, but attempting to legislate to deal with stupid only makes things worse (if only because politicians are often part of the stupid).
The problem is made worse by the fact that no one has accurate numbers as to whats really going on with this, and its really really easy to see that.
Plus the media hyped panic plus panic plus freak the fuck out because this is going to kill us all. Except that more and more people are starting to see through the media's constantly induced panic, to the point where it doesn't matter how big the grain of truth may or may not have been, they cried wolf way to many times.
The .GOV couldn't have picked a better method to trigger pushback from the masses if they'd tried to. They basically walked right into every conspiracy theorists nightmare, and whether it was the right or wrong response doesn't matter now. If they'd actually been able to fix things with a 2 week shut down they might have pulled it off. If they'd just gone with forcing people to reduce crowds and major event crowding and reduced building capacities they might have been able to pull it off. Instead they tried to shut down everything, they shut down parks, they shut down garden seed sales, they arrested people for going for walks. They took this chance to try to force a hold over everything and by doing so they pretty much forced this.
And I'll note, I'm saying this as an "essential worker" who's been stuck dealing with the asshole general public even before this whole mess. I'm saying this as a retail employee who's been dealing with general public meltdowns. Who's seen the media reports of people killing retail employees because they were told they needed to wear a mask or back up.
I'm pretty much pissed off by every side of this. NO ONE is making this better at this point. The .GOV fucked over the country because PANIC. People who couldn't handle basic courtesy before have lost it even harder because PANIC (on both sides of the equation). Everyone insisting we have to shut down harder because PANIC is driving both sides worse. Everyone insisting it was all PANIC is driving both sides worse.
Quarentines don't work unless you want to go to China levels of enforcement (and even then, yah, no). By the same standards this attempt to shut down everything was going to have the same failure rate. And insisting that we have to shut down harder just makes it worse. The USA, by its nature, has a HUGE percentage of FIGHT instinct responses.
Btw, my wholesaler can't get in any of the less expensive beef cuts. And they don't know when they'll be getting any. Steaks, expensive cuts sure. None of the cheaper roasts. Good thing I was just planning on topping off my freezers.
ReplyDelete"Yah, until they get seriously wide spread testing going you can't use "total infected" as your base. They've already proved that a huge percentage of the infected people never show serious symptoms and will therefore most likely not be counted unless they antibody test everyone. "
ReplyDeleteThis is becoming pointless because people don't even accept positive deaths as COVID deaths. Now people say they are just claiming everything as COVID. So apparently the death numbers are not even a valid metric. So what the fuck can we use?
Honestly the most frustrating thing is everyone has their own way of counting. I don't care which way. Just pick one and be consistent with the numbers. It's seriously like common core math for viruses. I don't agree with "presumptive cases" unless they can be verified eventually. It's all just complete bullshit.
But ultimately I don't care if people kill themselves. I will even watch the video. I mostly don't want them to kill me yet. So I sort of feel like - let's get this party started. I'm always up for an experiment.
I agree that some States have done some breathlessly crazy stuff. But I also acknowledge that people in cities by the beaches bitched enough to have them closed. If your city was flooded with weekend tourist traffic you would freak out too. Everybody would. I could have jail breaked for the beach - but I understand those communities have rights too. My right to go to the beach doesn't supersede their right to feel safe in the city they pay taxes in. I think everyone is being a bit of an asshole right now.
I actually know a couple of people who had the antibody test and they were all negative. One person was absolutely convinced that he'd gotten it in February. He had NO antibodies. Even the Mission in Sf started testing everyone because it's a "vulnerable" community. Translation -drug infested poor shithole, and even they are only recording a 2% infection rate. Not front loading it with people who were exposed.