doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT: At the risk of stepping in it....

Here in the Texas Panhandle the cases continue to increase. We have several meat packing plants that are a magnet for the virus. Currently the death rate is 1.3% but climbing. Now that the state has partially opened for business I see a large number of people going about life as though nothing has happened. Few masks, less social distancing, and larger groups together. IMO the infection rate is going to increase rapidly now. On the flip side we must reopen the economy ASAP or will find ourselves in a financial hole we can never climb out of. Damned if you do, damned if you don�t!

I know this, at my age of 78 and with mild heart disease we are going to continue with our limited self quarantining. Let the youngsters build the herd immunity.....at their own peril but respect our need to avoid contact.

Well said Joe.
There is a big difference in the "numbers' for upper age groups. And it is one thing each can affect.

It�s easy to find credible information that suggests the infection rate is understated and the death rate is overstated. Very easy.

When it�s all said and done we will have a death rate under .5% and the vast majority will be over 60 with pre existing conditions.

Just as it was for the pandemic of 1958 and the pandemic of 1968 when over a million people died each time.

The big difference today is two fold. We start with a virus that spreads faster that our medical experts are used to, so they are unusually alarmed. And we have a pervasive, alarmist media who have been pounding the table for 40 years that nothing is too great a sacrifice if it saves just one life.

What follows is a clusterf**k of misinformation and misrepresentation. Hidden in all the crap is the real info but it�s hard to discern.

Once you plant your flag, it�s hard to climb down the hill.

NYT published CDC numbers that said just the opposite for the 4 weeks from mid March to mid April.

Numbers have to be quantified. "Death rate" can be stated as being number of deaths per number tested as positive, or it can be stated as number of deaths per total population. Obviously, BrentD is talking about the former, not the latter, as there are estimated to be over 330,149,000 people in the USA. Death rate in our total population would be 82,000 divided by 330,149,000, or .000248.

Watch the scales on the graphs they show. Bar graphs can be manipulated to be misleading, if you don't look closely at the scales.

SRH

I can only give the U.K. perspective here but will come in anyway. Seasonal influenza annually accounts for around 10,000 deaths here per year. That is despite the fact that flu vaccine is free to anyone over 65 or who have certain illnesses such as diabetes and also to children as they are considered as 'super spreaders' (snotty nosed little beggars in other words). Anyone else can have the injection for around �10. Currently Covid deaths are around 32,000 here so only about three times as high with no vaccine yet available.

Dark skinned minority groups are significantly more vulnerable; and we have a high population that fall into this category. Now, I have a theory; well a couple really. Dark skin is a product of evolving in lower latitudes to prevent over exposure to Ultra Violet light. UV light is necessary in order for the body to produce Vitamin D which boosts the immune system. Hence higher latitude people have lighter skins in order to be able to assimilate the UV light to make Vitamin D. Not good for dark skin therefore in high latitudes.

Theory two. Northern Europeans interbred with the Neanderthal races that had happily evolved there for some considerable time. Northern Europeans have; I believe, something like 2 to 4 per cent Neanderthal DNA. This might just give an edge. Interesting the comment about the vulnerability of Native Americans as of course they never encountered Neanderthals.

Well, you read it here first folks! Not exactly scientific as I am just a simple country lad but I would be very interested if these two factors are not further examined. Lagopus�..

There are 22 residents of a local nursing home that have tested positive. None are seriously ill, and these are supposed to be the most vulnerable of our population. Facts like this just don't add up to the numbers of deaths reported to be a direct result of CV19.

If it smells bad, and flies are buzzing 'round it, it probably is.

SRH

I place 100% of the blame in NY on the governor�s door step. Few know he made an executive order early in this out break that forced nursing homes to accept Civid19 positive patients as they were discharged from hospitals. In effect he was forcing nursing homes to accept some of the sickest people and integrate them into a population that was at the highest risk without regard to their ability to isolate them from the general population. This was a direct cause of thousands of deaths. Thousands. If Trump had ordered this the outrage from the press would be devastating. But there is none in the MSM. Go figure.

By the way if you wonder where I got my information from it is directly from my sister in law who is a Dr at a hospital in NYC. She watched hundreds of patients being discharged and sent to four different area nursing homes. Not surprising all four were hot spots. Hundreds died. The Governor thought was to keep beds open in Hospitals even if his actions opened up beds even in nursing homes because of deaths in them. He just rescinded his directive this week.

Canvasback: I don't know if it's that easy to arrive at your conclusion (because of the bewildering amounts of conflicting data being spewed by the political pundits and their sycophantic media), but it does seem to me that many more people have already had this infection and gotten over it without much inconvenience. Current testing result trends seem to confirm this. Without more hard data that is difficult to prove, however. "Testing and tracing!" seems to be the war-cry of the folks on the left these days and they seem to use it in order to justify the continuing shut-down of the economy. I suspect their motives....

We (the United States) clearly had to close our borders (at first for flights from China, and then later from Europe) and shut-down our country because we simply didn't know what we were up against (thank the ChiComs for that one!). We clearly didn't want to become the tragedy that was Italy in February/March. We seem to know a lot more about the infection now and it also seems clear (at least to me) that we must get on with it here or we'll do irreparable damage to our country. I have been told that the median age for fatalities from this infection is eighty (80), I have also heard (from a credible source) that almost half of the recorded deaths have come from nursing homes. Given that, I know that I'm more than willing to climb back on a plane and go back to work, (even though I'm now at an age were I am at some increased risk). I don't mind being asked to wear a mask and to be socially distant, and I will comply...but I deeply resent being told to do so by petty tyrants. How this will all play out is hard to predict.

Lloyd3, It sounds as if you're willing to observe reasonable precautions if a Republican leader asked you to. Otherwise it would be an unacceptable order from a petty tyrant. The general sense I get now is that premature opening is asking for another big hit. I agree, of course, that economic damage can be as deadly in the long run.