Coronavirus: Discussion and Information

[Blythe]

The original thread on the Coronavirus was closed because tempers were starting to run too hot too frequently, and a trend of personal attacks was leading us off topic. Its an emotional topic and an important one. People have lost loved ones, jobs, safety nets, and sense of normalcy.

We need to remember that our own opinions are not the only opinions. We aren't going to change minds by too-aggressively pushing others into agreeing. As such, this thread is going to have a few guidelines. Please read these carefully before posting:

1) As a reminder, Elliquiy's civility rules apply whether or not you agree with another poster here. If you can't engage civilly, leave the thread. If you see something report-worthy, report it. Don't keep replying to someone you have reported. It only escalates things for the worse.

2) Be prepared to back up assertions with sources. Be prepared for sources to be fact-checked and examined for bias.

3) Be a good citizen of the forum. Be kind and remember the humans behind the screen--particularly that your lived experiences may not match someone else's. Don't come in here solely to panic-monger. Staff feels the correct direction for discussing covid-19 needs to be calm, factual, and reasoned.

Anyways, with that, this thread is now open. Keep the above in mind, and post here to discuss ongoing news and information about covid-19.

[Caela]

Just wanted to throw out a friendly reminder to please continue to be vigilant in protecting yourself. My family all does a good job in making, limiting where we go in public and social distancing and while we didn't have a large holiday gathering, we thought having just the immediate family together would be safe enough...we were wrong. Myself, my parents, and my SiL have all tested positive, my brother hadn't gotten his test results back yet but it's likely he'll be positive like his wife.

I know we're all tired of our lives being disrupted and want some semblance of a return to normalcy and hopefully (with vaccines rolling out, though not fast enough for anyone's liking I don't think) we'll be able to get there in a few months time. Until then, remain vigilant and compassionate and protect yourself and others.

[Haibane]

This is a development that should cause concerns over transparency:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/team-investigating-pandemic-origins-prevented-entering-china/

[Mechelle]

In Britain, we are now using the Oxford Zeneca vaccine as well as the Pfizer vaccine, with the former having an advantage in that it can stored at ordinary fridge temperatures. We have made a pretty good start with 1.5 million people vaccinated so far (most of those having received only the first dose) and Boris Johnson said today that his aim is to have the vaccine offered to  13.9 million people  (over 70's, people in care homes, frontline health workers and social care workers, and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals) by February 15th. There have been some difficulties in distribution, but he was confident they would be sorted out.

A few people have asked which vaccine you would prefer. I had assumed this was just a bit of fun, and everybody would just have whichever was offered first,  but, according to Dr Paul Williams, a former Labour MP, some people, who will be in the most vulnerable groups at this stage, have refused the Pfizer vaccine, preferring to wait for the proper English one. The politics of nationalism again...

I had mentioned there were some problems with distribution of the vaccine. Health Secretary Matt Hancock visited a doctors' surgery in London today to promote the new Oxford  Zeneca vaccine. Unfortunately, it had not been delivered, and he had to show someone been injected with the Pfizer vaccine!

Boris Johnson also said that people who protest outside hospitals and take pictures of empty corridors late at night, saying Covid-19 is  a hoax, should "grow up." Indeed, although I might put it a bit stronger as hospitals, especially in London and the South East - though admissions are going up elsewhere - are struggling to cope with the number of patients.

[Caela]

In Britain, we are now using the Oxford Zeneca vaccine as well as the Pfizer vaccine, with the former having an advantage in that it can stored at ordinary fridge temperatures. We have made a pretty good start with 1.5 million people vaccinated so far (most of those having received only the first dose) and Boris Johnson said today that his aim is to have the vaccine offered to  13.9 million people  (over 70's, people in care homes, frontline health workers and social care workers, and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals) by February 15th. There have been some difficulties in distribution, but he was confident they would be sorted out.

A few people have asked which vaccine you would prefer. I had assumed this was just a bit of fun, and everybody would just have whichever was offered first,  but, according to Dr Paul Williams, a former Labour MP, some people, who will be in the most vulnerable groups at this stage, have refused the Pfizer vaccine, preferring to wait for the proper English one. The politics of nationalism again...

I had mentioned there were some problems with distribution of the vaccine. Health Secretary Matt Hancock visited a doctors' surgery in London today to promote the new Oxford  Zeneca vaccine. Unfortunately, it had not been delivered, and he had to show someone been injected with the Pfizer vaccine!

Boris Johnson also said that people who protest outside hospitals and take pictures of empty corridors late at night, saying Covid-19 is  a hoax, should "grow up." Indeed, although I might put it a bit stronger as hospitals, especially in London and the South East - though admissions are going up elsewhere - are struggling to cope with the number of patients.

Are they refusing it for the "proper English one" or because they're leery of the new technology and how quickly it was pushed through channels? My understanding (which I admit is limited) of the Oxford vaccine is that it's a more standard vaccine that uses uses actual dead virus particles instead of the newer Pfizer or Moderna vaccines that use mRNA that codes for the protein spike.

[Mechelle]

Are they refusing it for the "proper English one" or because they're leery of the new technology and how quickly it was pushed through channels? My understanding (which I admit is limited) of the Oxford vaccine is that it's a more standard vaccine that uses uses actual dead virus particles instead of the newer Pfizer or Moderna vaccines that use mRNA that codes for the protein spike.

I put the word "proper" in, so the actual quote was that they wanted the "English one". However, I am pretty confident that the people who rejected it didn't do so as a result of scientific doubts. Richard Kemp, the leader of the Liberal Democrats on Liverpool City Council, has said that he will wait for the Oxford vaccine, too, but on the grounds that it is less expensive for the country. It's a good job  I double checked this, as I assumed it was Richard Kemp,  a right-wing outspoken former soldier who had said this, when it's actually somebody quite different!

Meanwhile, the UK has hit the highest number of deaths reported on a single day today, 1325 is higher than any number reported in the spring, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has declared a "major incident" there with hospitals struggling to cope and firefighters drafted in to drive ambulances.

The Moderna vaccine has now been approved too, although it won't be available until spring

[Haibane]

Makes me so angry that British people are loonies as well. We can and must do better than this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55601600

The USA-inspired "common law" argument is being touted here now. Just... anarchy, stupidity and lack of education; well, probably more like lack of paying attention when they were in school.

[TheGlyphstone]

Is that your version of the 'sovereign citizen' idiocy?

[stormwyrm]

Is that your version of the 'sovereign citizen' idiocy?

I think they're called "Freemen on the Land":

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman_on_the_land

[Haibane]

Yes, this is the "sovereign law" BS. I have no clue why this person would insist he exists under "common law" and not "maritime law", whatever the heck "maritime law" is. There was a hair salon closed down recently and the owner insisted she operated her business under the rules of "free trading as set out in Magna Carta". 

[stormwyrm]

I have no clue why this person would insist he exists under "common law" and not "maritime law", whatever the heck "maritime law" is. There was a hair salon closed down recently and the owner insisted she operated her business under the rules of "free trading as set out in Magna Carta". 

That's the kind of talk you hear from a Freeman on the Land. They're a bunch of weird kooks who think that they've got some kind of cheat codes that allow them to evade the usual power of the law by claiming to be able to somehow opt out of government jurisdiction because of some bizarre convoluted readings of legal theory. They think that what normal people think of as "laws" are a form of "contract" that can only apply if you consent to it, and the only law that applies to them is "common law", which they take to mean their own interpretation of natural law. All else is "admiralty law" or "maritime law" and apply only if you legally consent to it, and the government is supposedly always trying to trick you into doing so. Of course, you don't need a solicitor to tell you that this is all bollocks, but some people actually believe it. The RationalWiki link I posted explains it in more detail, and the contortions they make must be seen to be believed.

[Azuresun]

Makes me so angry that British people are loonies as well. We can and must do better than this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55601600

The USA-inspired "common law" argument is being touted here now. Just... anarchy, stupidity and lack of education; well, probably more like lack of paying attention when they were in school.

Oh, were you around when people were citing Magna Carta as a reason not to obey lockdown orders? It was technically possible, provided you were a Baron. And lived in the 13th century.

Right now, it's interesting to watch the anti-vaxxer arguments evolve and....well, mutate ("Oh no, the new virus doesn't use RNA, so we can't scare them with that! Quick, spam links to the nurse who "died"!). It's getting to the point where on a typical Facebook thread I now recognise most of the pseudoscience and scare stories and can virtually copy-paste in the required debunking.

[Humble Scribe]

Oh, were you around when people were citing Magna Carta as a reason not to obey lockdown orders? It was technically possible, provided you were a Baron. And lived in the 13th century.

Not even then. They like to cite Clause 61 of Magna Carta (meaning the June 1215 version - there were four seperate reissues of Magna Carta over the next 80 years, all of them different). Clause 61 was a dispute resolution mechanism in case King John and the Barons disagreed about the implementation of Magna Carta, so it allowed for this unelected Junta of 25 barons to pass judgement on the King. The fact that John signed up to it might have been a big clue to the barons that he had no intention of abiding by it, as it would have been an unthinkable erosion of Royal authority for the early 13th century.
As a result, he pleaded that he only sealed Magna Carta under duress, and just two months later (and bear in mind it takes a long time to get from London to Rome on horseback) the Pope released King John from his vow to obey Magna Carta, and declared it "null, and void of all validity for ever" (except in Latin).

Civil war ensued, John caught dysentary and died (or, depending on who you believe, was poisoned, but probably not). The rebels tried to make the King of France's son King of England. The remaining loyalist barons, led by Regent William Marshal (he was in charge because John's son, Henry III, was only 9 years old), said; "let's talk."

They offered a reissue of Magna Carta, but with the most contentious bits pruned out. Needless to say, Clause 61 was one of said contentious bits, and duly vanished from history. By 1217 Marshal had defeated the French at Lincoln and Sandwich, and the Barons finally caved in. Magna Carta ended up being reissued twice more, and finally became law of the Land in 1297, but all of the stuff that these loonies are arguing about had never been in force since August 24th 1215.

I think they get confused because three clauses of 1297 Magna Carta are still British law, but they are:

- Clause 1, a framing clause, which just says that the Charter confirms the other liberties below (most of which have since been removed).

- Clause 9, which confirms that the City of London and the Cinque Ports still retain all of the Royal rights granted to them prior to the Charter.

- Clause 29, which rolls together two Clauses (39 and 40) of the old 1215 Magna Carta into the most important statement of English liberties ever made. This is the remaining radical core of the old 1215 charter, and it's worth restating in full:
"No Free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right."

Good stuff. But note that it says "judgement of his peers OR by the Law of the Land." Parliament alone makes the law of the land, and has done since 1688, so wear your fucking mask, close your beauty salon, and stop protesting.

[Mechelle]

I remember saying in the past that you are well acquainted with the Law, Humble Scribe.

I would also add, that, at this time, King John had recently accepted Pope Innocent as his liege lord, so the Pope was defending his subject. John was in a desperate way to agree to this loss of sovereignty following a papal interdict, let alone agree to the Magna Carta. The former seems a worse humiliation, but it did grant him some protection. and security.

I remember my history teacher, trying to be controversial, asking if we thought John really was a Bad King, or if it was just down to reputation. I think he was pretty bad, to say the least, in retrospect.

Getting back on the subject, I can't see how it gives any reason to deny Covid restrictions in the current circumstances, so I will also use your argument from your final sentence.

[Haibane]

Thanks Humble, if I may, I will quote you in any future social media debates with these fools.

[Humble Scribe]

I remember saying in the past that you are well acquainted with the Law, Humble Scribe.

The only law I ever learned was about libel, but I did do a Medieval History MA specialising in the reign of King John.

I would also add, that, at this time, King John had recently accepted Pope Innocent as his liege lord, so the Pope was defending his subject. John was in a desperate way to agree to this loss of sovereignty following a papal interdict, let alone agree to the Magna Carta. The former seems a worse humiliation, but it did grant him some protection. and security.

Indeed. England carried on paying 1,000 marks a year tribute to the Pope as its sovereign liege lord until 1333.

I remember my history teacher, trying to be controversial, asking if we thought John really was a Bad King, or if it was just down to reputation. I think he was pretty bad, to say the least, in retrospect.

This probably warrants its own non-topical topic, as it's a complex subject. John goes in and out of fashion. The Church hated him, especially Matthew Paris, and they wrote the histories. His memory was damned until Tudor times, when the fact that he had taken a strong stand against the Pope made him popular again. Shakespeare works hard to make him weak and easily led rather than cruel and evil, and turned Pandulf, the Papal Legate into the machiavellian villain. Then in the 19th century Walter Scott arbitrarily bolted Robin Hood onto things, and he became a pantomime villain until the 1960s, when revisionist historians like WL Warren tried to rescue him as a competent administrator and diplomatic schemer with some character flaws. Now there's a modern revision of the revisionists led by historians like Marc Morris who argue that no, he really was a giant paranoid murdering philandering douchebag and everyone hated him, and while he may have been good at extracting money, he never achieved anything with it.
Personally I'm somewhere in between, though leaning towards the 'he was a git' side. I think he's more able than he's given credit for, and nearly rescued everything in 1213 with his coalition against the French - if the Battle of Bouvines had gone the other way, he'd be 'flawed but competent' rather than evil. But clearly on a personal level he was no good with people and definitely paranoid and cruel. On a Game of Thrones scale, I'd place him as more Stannis Baratheon than Ramsay Bolton or Joffrey.

Thanks Humble, if I may, I will quote you in any future social media debates with these fools.

Be my guest!

[Maethaneos]

Earlier in the previous thread:

I have particular views on this subject that would make me weary for tentative approval to the forum or perhaps prospective disapproval to the forum.

Not that I'd be disrespectful at any rate - which I would hope would preclude me from any recourse - but at any rate I don't care to trawl through 80 some pages of opinions to see if someone shares my unorthodox views. That said, I hope to have a healthy discussion in the near future!

And I was asked about it. So...

It's complicated, weedy, and controversial however that's kind of my MO with most viewpoints; I do my best to keep personal experience as the largest weighing factor. I am an experience over belief kind of person.

My own experience with this fiasco is that my whole house had it. My brother's mother in law died from it, my sister in law took it pretty hard as well, my father was miserable but didn't need hospital admission, my brother was pretty mild, I...am not very sure.

By all rights I should have contracted it with the rest of the house. We didn't really quarantine in our rooms and my father and I have face-to-face conversations every day. His room is small, too, so it was closer than spitting range. He coughed a lot too. Yet I don't think I got it at that point. Only a couple months later did I get a head-cold and end up losing my sense of smell for about a month. I've never lost my smell before in my life and that is supposedly a big indicator of having Covid----so, color me confused at some rate. No one else in the house got sick with me at that point too. Now what about that "viral load" theory that had been going around? Was it debunked or otherwise? In either case, though, the head cold was absolutely bog standard for me. Nothing worse than the typical two times I get it on a normal year.

What's more interesting is that it affected all of my house in a pretty logical way. I suppose not unlike how a flu might do. It was basically a spectrum of the more chronically ill someone was, the more the virus acutely impacted them. I'm a bonafide health nut bordering on orthorexia and the virus was nothing to me. My brother's MIL, though, was a morbidly obese late 60s diabetic. This is rather perfectly in line with the CDC's own numbers that almost no one outside of the elderly population dies from this virus without a comorbidity.

My personal experience and statistics/science from on high combine here and just kind of make me ask a question...

To what lengths must a society inhibit its normal function in order to protect the weakest of its demographic?

[TheGlyphstone]

So the problem with that CDC information you're basing your belief on (6% of deaths had no comorbidities), is that while it from the CDC, it's been widely misquoted and often misinterpreted in news and social media by people who are intentionally trying to downplay the lethality of COVID-19, as well as those who simply misunderstand the nature of medical statistics. Overlapping with a co-morbidity doesn't mean Covid didn't kill the person, but that it aggravated an otherwise survivable condition to lethal complications. Sometimes that co-morbidity was even caused by the infection. Essentially, it's like shooting a person then arguing that they actually died of low blood pressure.

Experts explain it in more detail in these links below, but if you're basing that on what other people have told you, you've been drastically misinformed. Remember that anecdotes do not equal data - that your personal situation happened to overlap with your beliefs is a statistical anomaly possibly increasing your confirmation bias. No one is 100% safe from Covid regardless of their age or health - you just got lucky.

https://www.futurity.org/cdc-covid-19-comorbidities-2436032-2/
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-94-percent-covid-among-caus/fact-check-94-of-individuals-with-additional-causes-of-death-still-had-covid-19-idUSKBN25U2IO

[Maethaneos]

I know how co-morbidity actually works but the ideas of what actually killed the person, I think, have the wrong framing in this particular scenario. Every scenario needs the proper frame and context to it.

Nothing in this world happens in a vacuum. Everything is connected in some sense or another. Your shooting victim example isn't quite as absurd as you might think, if only because it seems to me that you've accidentally strawmanned your own perspective here in a way. You've misrepresented the very example you thought up because there's a whole lot more than the gun, the bullet, and the body needing blood. Those factors are only the precipice in the chain of events that have transpired in order to cause the result: death via exsanguination. But of course no one in a casual conversation is going to say a gunshot victim died because their blood pressure was too low, absolutely, but let it be known that being shot wasn't an actual cause of death. It was only the most significant part of the precipice.

I've gone over this framework of sorts because I see no reason why it doesn't apply to any event, a Covid-19 death considered.

Let's look at that number on the CDC chart and think of them as an actual person and not just a statistic. Let's look at my brother's MIL for example. She was, as said, an obese diabetic in her late 60s. What was the "precipice" here that saw her life brought to an end and considered a Covid death? I don't think it's Covid. Covid, here, is only the equivalent of death via blood loss. Being sick is a problem and losing blood is a problem but neither of these things alone are enough to kill someone. The immune-system successfully fights off a virus and a body successfully coagulates a wound.

The real precipice here for her is that she was actually sick for years. She had no inherent problems. She just wouldn't do the things that would make her body healthy. Ironic, too, because she was a retired nurse. Physician, heal thyself. This precipice, as it seems, was pretty level and hardly even looked like an elevation. The metaphors here might not hold up, maybe, until you remember it's a chain of events and one link can be broken to alter the course from thereon. The most significant link in her chain of events leading up to a "Covid" death was not contracting the virus; it was choosing to be unhealthy.

More thoughts along these lines but I don't want to make you read whole blog posts at a time about this.

[TheGlyphstone]

So I think you drastically missed my point there. This isn't about your MIL, it's about the 400,000+ other deaths in this country alone. Your assertion that we are shutting down the normal functions of society to protect its weakest demographic is misleading, because everyone is vulnerable and at risk of death, not simply the old and sick.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I personally know of five people who have died from C19.  Two were over 65, two were in their twenties and on was 42.  I also know of about 50 people who were diagnosed positive for C19.  More than half of them are 35 and younger while only 15 were 65 or older.

I personally have 6 doctors and after talking to them I know I am at risk even though I am only 41 but according to them it doesn't really matter what your age is as to whether you have a fatal infection or not.  My cardiologist had his father and a younger cousin both test positive.  The father is recovering while the cousin didn't.

[Maethaneos]

So I think you drastically missed my point there. This isn't about your MIL, it's about the 400,000+ other deaths in this country alone. Your assertion that we are shutting down the normal functions of society to protect its weakest demographic is misleading, because everyone is vulnerable and at risk of death, not simply the old and sick.

Is my MIL not included in the death count for some particular reason? Well - I hated her so I don't much care about her except using her as an example. Potentially a too in depth example which made my point hard to find, because I'm pretty sure I got your point just fine.

What I'm saying is that the virus' purported lethality didn't just fall from the sky. There are reasons why it has such an impact. I contend that the virus itself is hardly lethal but the factors surrounding it can make it relatively dangerous, perhaps even very dangerous. Moreover, I contend that these factors are relatively easy to control and could render a nation shuttering pandemic into little more than the common cold in terms of severity.

These factors are nutrition and exercise. I cannot overstate the importance of these two things, not least because it builds and maintains a proper immune system. An immune system (and other related faculties) that by my estimates can deal with Covid-19 pretty adequately. This is a big problem because the average public perception of proper health is way off the mark. This is why I just frankly don't believe articles claiming that a perfectly healthy young person has died of Covid. It would take a head to toe medical screening for me to believe it. Someone can be very good looking and go about their life fine and still be very sick without knowing it.

Now, I did say that my views on the topic are far out in the weeds. Towards this end -- if you'd like to know fun things like how McDonald's partly caused this pandemic -- I'm going to make a thread on general health stuff. If you inquire how I find nutrition so connected to the pandemic, ask me in there. I'll have to touch on so many different things that it just makes sense to be there instead.

[Haibane]

I contend that the virus itself is hardly lethal but the factors surrounding it can make it relatively dangerous, perhaps even very dangerous. Moreover, I contend that these factors are relatively easy to control and could render a nation shuttering pandemic into little more than the common cold in terms of severity.

These factors are nutrition and exercise. I cannot overstate the importance of these two things, not least because it builds and maintains a proper immune system.

Data indicates that C-19 is between 2.5x to 10x more lethal than influenza. I regret I don't have a reference from a medical journal at hand but these links may help.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201218/covid-19-is-far-more-lethal-damaging-than-flu-data-shows#1

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-covid-19-isnt-the-flu#Many-unknowns-about-COVID-19

The best response appears to have been correct state wide recognition and timely action such as lockdowns and other standard precautions. The events in New Zealand, Australia and S. Korea indicate how best to tackle a pandemic at the national level. It must be done from the federal level and the problem the USA has struggled with is a weakness in Federal authority. The political structure of the USA is perhaps one of the worst conceivable structures to combat a pandemic due to a large number of state authorities each making rules alone and with no overall guidance.

While you make the correct point that diet and exercise are excellent ways to boost your immune system these are factors only able to be controlled many years if not many decades in advance. I think the USA and the UK are both suffering higher numbers of fatalities because of poor diet, obesity, heart illnesses, respiratory illnesses, etc. What nations all now recognise is needed is a pandemic planning team in place with access to funds, PPE stockpiles and authority to impose the necessary regulations. Tragically Trump spent a lot of time over the last 4 years dismantling the US' ability to plan and prepare for this. Teams were in place prior to 2016 but they were downstaffed at what turned out to be a tragically critical time.

Disinformation via the internet is also a factor, I am seeing this especially in the UK where it is deeply troubling with arson attacks on supposed 5G masts (they are not) and idiotic theories that C-19 is either fake or linked to 5G, and so on and so on ad nauseam. How these falsehoods have spread and affected public attitudes is I hope another aspect of the C-19 pandemic that governments will study and learn lessons from.

Successfully combating an airborne pandemic such as C-19 is really about winning over the minds of your citizens; educating them to the risks and consequences and dealing with disinformation early or even in advance so that people are more readily equipped to accept the situation as both true and dangerous and this encourages them to act in safer more appropriate ways. These approaches though are always difficult in western societies where freedoms of the individual are prized above much else.

[TheGlyphstone]

It's certainly an interesting hypothesis, I'd definitely be curious and interested in seeing if there is data to support it. And the horrifyingly practical side of a worldwide pandemic is that you get a massive quantity of statistical data points to work with. In my mind, if diet+exercise are the principal contributors to mortality rates of a virus, you will see a visible or notable difference in the number of deaths vs. infections between different countries with varying levels of exercise and diets/healthy foods. Obviously this co-conflates with stuff like access to health care, but just looking at a dozen non-USA countries or so and seeing how their mortality % compares could prove a potentially supporting line of data to the idea.


But even then, Haibane made an excellent relevant point. I'd love to see everyone exercise more, eat better, and generally be healthier. It's a solution to all number of health problems and issues, not simply COVID. But that is an answer to the next pandemic, not the current one. You can't put a country, let alone a planet, on any sort of diet/exercise plan that will bear fruit rapidly enough to stop the spread of a highly infectious virus.

[Haibane]

 

Healthcare staff arrange for elderly couple with C-19 to be together one last time.