State your opinion on COVID-19

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling by
some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone" allusions.
Things get obscured.

So I'd like to get a direct answer, especially from Tom and from Andrew.

Tom: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an ordinary seasonal flu?

Andrew: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an ordinary
seasonal flu?

Of course, this is a discussion group. Others are very welcome to give
their opinion too.

BTW, our bike club now has its first member in intensive care on a
ventilator. I consider him a really good friend, one of the guys who
(almost) always came on my night rides. He's much younger than me and
has been a hell of a rider, a daily commuter, fast and high mileage.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:01:47 UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:
As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling by
some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone" allusions.
Things get obscured.

So I'd like to get a direct answer, especially from Tom and from Andrew.

Tom: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an ordinary seasonal flu?

Andrew: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an ordinary
seasonal flu?

Of course, this is a discussion group. Others are very welcome to give
their opinion too.

BTW, our bike club now has its first member in intensive care on a
ventilator. I consider him a really good friend, one of the guys who
(almost) always came on my night rides. He's much younger than me and
has been a hell of a rider, a daily commuter, fast and high mileage.

--
- Frank Krygowski

I think that this COVID-19 virus is a lot more serious than governments are letting on. I also think that the various governments have really dropped the ball by allow people to come back into the country and then relying on those people to self quarantine for 14 days. We've seen how well that's worked with people already in the country going out and about as if everything is normal even though they should be in quarantine.

I remember reading many years ago that experts in diseases were saying that the next pandemic was only an airplane flight away. Well folks, looks like they were right and that the pandemic is here.

Look after yourselves and the best of luck in avoiding becoming a bad statistic.

Cheers

On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:45:07 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:

On Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:01:47 UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:
As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling by
some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone" allusions.
Things get obscured.

So I'd like to get a direct answer, especially from Tom and from Andrew.

Tom: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an ordinary seasonal flu?

Andrew: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an ordinary
seasonal flu?

Of course, this is a discussion group. Others are very welcome to give
their opinion too.

BTW, our bike club now has its first member in intensive care on a
ventilator. I consider him a really good friend, one of the guys who
(almost) always came on my night rides. He's much younger than me and
has been a hell of a rider, a daily commuter, fast and high mileage.

--
- Frank Krygowski

I think that this COVID-19 virus is a lot more serious than governments are letting on. I also think that the various governments have really dropped the ball by allow people to come back into the country and then relying on those people to self quarantine for 14 days. We've seen how well that's worked with people already in the country going out and about as if everything is normal even though they should be in quarantine.

I remember reading many years ago that experts in diseases were saying that the next pandemic was only an airplane flight away. Well folks, looks like they were right and that the pandemic is here.

Look after yourselves and the best of luck in avoiding becoming a bad statistic.

Cheers

Thailand has imposed some pretty draconian regulations to fight the
virus and while I'm not sure whether it is a viable calculation their
new cases number is 8% of total cases. The U.S. with apparently fewer
restrictions has a new case total of about 14% of the total cases. At
this rate the U.S. will exceed 200,000 cases in about 4 more days :-(
--
cheers,

John B.

with John B wrote:
On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:45:07 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:
On Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:01:47 UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling
by some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone"
allusions. Things get obscured.
*SKIP*
Thailand has imposed some pretty draconian regulations to fight the
virus and while I'm not sure whether it is a viable calculation their
new cases number is 8% of total cases. The U.S. with apparently fewer
restrictions has a new case total of about 14% of the total cases. At
this rate the U.S. will exceed 200,000 cases in about 4 more days :-(

For kernel's sake, can we start to think in ratios, plz? Let me reframe
this.

X -- grand total cases (not mentioned in the post by "John B"; I'm
not going to figure out at how many it is/was (at time of
posting by "John B"))
x_t -- cases in Thailand (0.08X)
x_u -- cases in USA (0.14X)
p_t -- population in Thailland (694 of 100K people, estimate 2018)
p_u -- population in USA (3087 of 100K people, estimate 2019)

Now, r_t would be ( x_t X / p_t ) or ( 1.15e-4 X ), and r_u would be
( x_u X / p_u ) or ( 4.54e-5 X ).

Now, it looks like USA is going 2.54 better then Thailand. But
important question is -- at what timespan?

plz fill in blanks and/or correct me if I'm wrong.

--
Torvalds' goal for Linux is very simple: World Domination
Stallman's goal for GNU is even simpler: Freedom

On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 19:01:53 +0300, Eric Pozharski
wrote:

with John B wrote:
On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:45:07 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:
On Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:01:47 UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling
by some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone"
allusions. Things get obscured.
*SKIP*
Thailand has imposed some pretty draconian regulations to fight the
virus and while I'm not sure whether it is a viable calculation their
new cases number is 8% of total cases. The U.S. with apparently fewer
restrictions has a new case total of about 14% of the total cases. At
this rate the U.S. will exceed 200,000 cases in about 4 more days :-(

For kernel's sake, can we start to think in ratios, plz? Let me reframe
this.

X -- grand total cases (not mentioned in the post by "John B"; I'm
not going to figure out at how many it is/was (at time of
posting by "John B"))
x_t -- cases in Thailand (0.08X)
x_u -- cases in USA (0.14X)
p_t -- population in Thailland (694 of 100K people, estimate 2018)
p_u -- population in USA (3087 of 100K people, estimate 2019)

Now, r_t would be ( x_t X / p_t ) or ( 1.15e-4 X ), and r_u would be
( x_u X / p_u ) or ( 4.54e-5 X ).

Now, it looks like USA is going 2.54 better then Thailand. But
important question is -- at what timespan?

plz fill in blanks and/or correct me if I'm wrong.

You don't have to do all that fancy figuring. Just look at
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
The U.S. has 426 cases per 1,000,000 population and Thailand has 20
cases per 1,000,000 population. The U.S. has had 7 deaths/1 million
and Thailand 0.1/1 million.
Oh Yes, "time span" The U.S. reported their first virus case on 10
January and Thailand on 12 January. The U.S. reported 7,412 new cases
as of March 29, 2020, 22:34 GMT and Thailand reported 143 ( that is
22.47/1 million and 2.0). If daily the difference is so great than 2
days is negligible :-)
--
cheers,

John B.

On 3/29/2020 7:57 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 19:01:53 +0300, Eric Pozharski
wrote:

with John B wrote:
On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:45:07 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:
On Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:01:47 UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling
by some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone"
allusions. Things get obscured.
*SKIP*
Thailand has imposed some pretty draconian regulations to fight the
virus and while I'm not sure whether it is a viable calculation their
new cases number is 8% of total cases. The U.S. with apparently fewer
restrictions has a new case total of about 14% of the total cases. At
this rate the U.S. will exceed 200,000 cases in about 4 more days :-(

For kernel's sake, can we start to think in ratios, plz? Let me reframe
this.

X -- grand total cases (not mentioned in the post by "John B"; I'm
not going to figure out at how many it is/was (at time of
posting by "John B"))
x_t -- cases in Thailand (0.08X)
x_u -- cases in USA (0.14X)
p_t -- population in Thailland (694 of 100K people, estimate 2018)
p_u -- population in USA (3087 of 100K people, estimate 2019)

Now, r_t would be ( x_t X / p_t ) or ( 1.15e-4 X ), and r_u would be
( x_u X / p_u ) or ( 4.54e-5 X ).

Now, it looks like USA is going 2.54 better then Thailand. But
important question is -- at what timespan?

plz fill in blanks and/or correct me if I'm wrong.

You don't have to do all that fancy figuring. Just look at
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
The U.S. has 426 cases per 1,000,000 population and Thailand has 20
cases per 1,000,000 population. The U.S. has had 7 deaths/1 million
and Thailand 0.1/1 million.
Oh Yes, "time span" The U.S. reported their first virus case on 10
January and Thailand on 12 January. The U.S. reported 7,412 new cases
as of March 29, 2020, 22:34 GMT and Thailand reported 143 ( that is
22.47/1 million and 2.0). If daily the difference is so great than 2
days is negligible :-)
--
cheers,

John B.


As yet there's no way to know how many people are/ were
infected, asymptomatic carriers, recovered without result or
report, and so on. These are preliminary figures and as is
often said, in war the first three reports are wrong.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 3/29/2020 8:57 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 19:01:53 +0300, Eric Pozharski
wrote:

with John B wrote:
On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:45:07 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:
On Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:01:47 UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling
by some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone"
allusions. Things get obscured.
*SKIP*
Thailand has imposed some pretty draconian regulations to fight the
virus and while I'm not sure whether it is a viable calculation their
new cases number is 8% of total cases. The U.S. with apparently fewer
restrictions has a new case total of about 14% of the total cases. At
this rate the U.S. will exceed 200,000 cases in about 4 more days :-(

For kernel's sake, can we start to think in ratios, plz? Let me reframe
this.

X -- grand total cases (not mentioned in the post by "John B"; I'm
not going to figure out at how many it is/was (at time of
posting by "John B"))
x_t -- cases in Thailand (0.08X)
x_u -- cases in USA (0.14X)
p_t -- population in Thailland (694 of 100K people, estimate 2018)
p_u -- population in USA (3087 of 100K people, estimate 2019)

Now, r_t would be ( x_t X / p_t ) or ( 1.15e-4 X ), and r_u would be
( x_u X / p_u ) or ( 4.54e-5 X ).

Now, it looks like USA is going 2.54 better then Thailand. But
important question is -- at what timespan?

plz fill in blanks and/or correct me if I'm wrong.

You don't have to do all that fancy figuring. Just look at
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
The U.S. has 426 cases per 1,000,000 population and Thailand has 20
cases per 1,000,000 population. The U.S. has had 7 deaths/1 million
and Thailand 0.1/1 million.
Oh Yes, "time span" The U.S. reported their first virus case on 10
January and Thailand on 12 January. The U.S. reported 7,412 new cases
as of March 29, 2020, 22:34 GMT and Thailand reported 143 ( that is
22.47/1 million and 2.0). If daily the difference is so great than 2
days is negligible :-)

Regarding Thailand and the U.S., it's notable that Thailand's population
density is more than triple that of the U.S. I think it's highly likely
that density makes transmission easier.

And in fact, the COVID problem in the U.S. is largely confined to dense
cities. Cattle ranchers in Wyoming don't have to worry much. I think if
you adjusted the denominators to exclude the vast, isolated areas of the
U.S., our data would look much worse by comparison.

But I assume our political systems and cultures are very different.
Strategies that work in Thailand may be impractical or impossible here.

--
- Frank Krygowski

Am 30.03.2020 um 02:57 schrieb John B.:
On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 19:01:53 +0300, Eric Pozharski
wrote:

with John B wrote:
On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:45:07 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:
On Saturday, 28 March 2020 12:01:47 UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name calling
by some, demeaning published facts and data, quick political jabs,
defensive changes of subjet, and "I know better than anyone"
allusions. Things get obscured.
*SKIP*
Thailand has imposed some pretty draconian regulations to fight the
virus and while I'm not sure whether it is a viable calculation their
new cases number is 8% of total cases. The U.S. with apparently fewer
restrictions has a new case total of about 14% of the total cases. At
this rate the U.S. will exceed 200,000 cases in about 4 more days :-(

For kernel's sake, can we start to think in ratios, plz? Let me reframe
this.

X -- grand total cases (not mentioned in the post by "John B"; I'm
not going to figure out at how many it is/was (at time of
posting by "John B"))
x_t -- cases in Thailand (0.08X)
x_u -- cases in USA (0.14X)
p_t -- population in Thailland (694 of 100K people, estimate 2018)
p_u -- population in USA (3087 of 100K people, estimate 2019)

Now, r_t would be ( x_t X / p_t ) or ( 1.15e-4 X ), and r_u would be
( x_u X / p_u ) or ( 4.54e-5 X ).

Now, it looks like USA is going 2.54 better then Thailand. But
important question is -- at what timespan?

plz fill in blanks and/or correct me if I'm wrong.

You don't have to do all that fancy figuring. Just look at
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
The U.S. has 426 cases per 1,000,000 population and Thailand has 20
cases per 1,000,000 population. The U.S. has had 7 deaths/1 million
and Thailand 0.1/1 million.
Oh Yes, "time span" The U.S. reported their first virus case on 10
January and Thailand on 12 January. The U.S. reported 7,412 new cases
as of March 29, 2020, 22:34 GMT and Thailand reported 143 ( that is
22.47/1 million and 2.0). If daily the difference is so great than 2
days is negligible :-)

Some graphical comparisons are here
http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#covid-world-seasia including
Thailand vs USA on graph 27.

On 3/28/2020 11:01 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name
calling by some, demeaning published facts and data, quick
political jabs, defensive changes of subjet, and "I know
better than anyone" allusions. Things get obscured.

So I'd like to get a direct answer, especially from Tom and
from Andrew.

Tom: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an
ordinary seasonal flu?

Andrew: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an
ordinary seasonal flu?

Of course, this is a discussion group. Others are very
welcome to give their opinion too.

BTW, our bike club now has its first member in intensive
care on a ventilator. I consider him a really good friend,
one of the guys who (almost) always came on my night rides.
He's much younger than me and has been a hell of a rider, a
daily commuter, fast and high mileage.


Up to here, yes. Death is not trivial to the fatality
himself, but the numbers haven't supported panic so far.

I will change my opinion when/if the numbers change but
having known people who died of pneumonia from influenza, my
point was merely that it's the same death (and an unpleasant
one at that) to fewer people.

see also:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/images/about...nza-burden.png

If influenza were unknown until this year, people would
freak out at forty million infected and 50,000 Americans dead.

If you want to do something useful and patriotic, do
something about the even larger number of Americans who die
annually by _hospital acquired infection_. That number is
not getting smaller year over year- it's growing.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 3/28/2020 10:09 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/28/2020 11:01 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

As usual, discussions here have devolved into childish name
calling by some, demeaning published facts and data, quick
political jabs, defensive changes of subjet, and "I know
better than anyone" allusions. Things get obscured.

So I'd like to get a direct answer, especially from Tom and
from Andrew.

Tom: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an
ordinary seasonal flu?

Andrew: Do you really think COVID-19 is no worse than an
ordinary seasonal flu?

Of course, this is a discussion group. Others are very
welcome to give their opinion too.

BTW, our bike club now has its first member in intensive
care on a ventilator. I consider him a really good friend,
one of the guys who (almost) always came on my night rides.
He's much younger than me and has been a hell of a rider, a
daily commuter, fast and high mileage.


Up to here, yes. Death is not trivial to the fatality himself, but the
numbers haven't supported panic so far.

I will change my opinion when/if the numbers change [...]

Sadly, give it a week or two. Cases are roughly quadrupling each week
in the US [based on CDC reports]. Exponential growth doesn't catch the
public eye when the absolute numbers are low, but those low numbers
don't last long.

We are solidly on track to eclipse the "regular-flu" numbers.

Mark J.


but having known
people who died of pneumonia from influenza, my point was merely that
it's the same death (and an unpleasant one at that) to fewer people.

see also:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/images/about...nza-burden.png


If influenza were unknown until this year, people would freak out at
forty million infected and 50,000 Americans dead.

If you want to do something useful and patriotic, do something about the
even larger number of Americans who die annually by _hospital acquired
infection_.Â* That number is not getting smaller year over year- it's
growing.