New Data Suggest the Coronavirus Isn’t as Deadly as We Thought

[Gypsy65]

When you respond to an unreasonable person, you give them victory. How do you manage unreasonable people? You dismiss them. Like shadows

True

 

[PrairieGirl]

Read this today and really thought it hit the nail on the head......

We are not in the same boat
Something to think about... WE ARE NOT IN THE SAME BOAT ... I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it's not like that. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat. Your ship could be shipwrecked and mine might not be. Or vice versa.

For some, quarantine is optimal. A moment of reflection, of re-connection, easy in flip flops, with a cocktail or coffee. For others, this is a desperate financial & family crisis. For some that live alone they're facing endless loneliness. While for others it is peace, rest & time with their mother, father, sons & daughters.

With the $600 weekly increase in unemployment some are bringing in more money to their households than they were working. Others are working more hours for less money due to pay cuts or loss in sales.

Some families of 4 just received $3400 from the stimulus while other families of 4 saw $0. Some were concerned about getting a certain candy for Easter while others were concerned if there would be enough bread, milk and eggs for the weekend.

Some want to go back to work because they don't qualify for unemployment and are running out of money. Others want to kill those who break the quarantine.

Some are home spending 2-3 hours/day helping their child with online schooling while others are spending 2-3 hours/day to educate their children on top of a 10-12 hour workday.

Some have experienced the near death of the virus, some have already lost someone from it and some are not sure if their loved ones are going to make it. Others don't believe this is a big deal.

Some have faith in God and expect miracles during this 2020. Others say the worst is yet to come.

So, friends, we are not in the same boat. We are going through a time when our perceptions and needs are completely different. Each of us will emerge, in our own way, from this storm. It is very important to see beyond what is seen at first glance. Not just looking, actually seeing. We are all on different ships during this storm experiencing a very different journey.

Unknown author #DontJudgeOthers

 

[Panina]

Read this today and really thought it hit the nail on the head......

We are not in the same boat
Something to think about... WE ARE NOT IN THE SAME BOAT ... I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it's not like that. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat. Your ship could be shipwrecked and mine might not be. Or vice versa.

For some, quarantine is optimal. A moment of reflection, of re-connection, easy in flip flops, with a cocktail or coffee. For others, this is a desperate financial & family crisis. For some that live alone they're facing endless loneliness. While for others it is peace, rest & time with their mother, father, sons & daughters.

With the $600 weekly increase in unemployment some are bringing in more money to their households than they were working. Others are working more hours for less money due to pay cuts or loss in sales.

Some families of 4 just received $3400 from the stimulus while other families of 4 saw $0. Some were concerned about getting a certain candy for Easter while others were concerned if there would be enough bread, milk and eggs for the weekend.

Some want to go back to work because they don't qualify for unemployment and are running out of money. Others want to kill those who break the quarantine.

Some are home spending 2-3 hours/day helping their child with online schooling while others are spending 2-3 hours/day to educate their children on top of a 10-12 hour workday.

Some have experienced the near death of the virus, some have already lost someone from it and some are not sure if their loved ones are going to make it. Others don't believe this is a big deal.

Some have faith in God and expect miracles during this 2020. Others say the worst is yet to come.

So, friends, we are not in the same boat. We are going through a time when our perceptions and needs are completely different. Each of us will emerge, in our own way, from this storm. It is very important to see beyond what is seen at first glance. Not just looking, actually seeing. We are all on different ships during this storm experiencing a very different journey.

Unknown author #DontJudgeOthers

True but one ship can crash into another and both sink and then others ships come along and don’t see debris in the water and sink too. No easy answered. No matter which choices are made, it will be good for some but not others. Choices need to be made what is best for most. Others will suffer no matter what choices are made.

 

[Big Matt]

I don't think we're in the same storm. I think some places are being deluged while others have a few rain drops. This is why the one size fits all model at the State level is a loser.

 

[Rolltydr]

Yes, Named 'Desperation' . .

I was actually thinking of a person. One you probably see a lot on TV.

 

[geekette]

I don't think we're in the same storm. I think some places are being deluged while others have a few rain drops. This is why the one size fits all model at the State level is a loser.

Yes, but, it's not like you can close county borders. Our small towns thought they were safe and now are finding the virus is there, too.

 

[capjak]

I am glad the Army Corp of Engineers and military are on our side. They are impressive. They delivered what they were asked to do.

But far from a home run which is getting this country SAFELY out of SIP.

Yes a good start. The ventilators already existed in the stockpile but many didn't work because the service contracts were cut last August Many N95s in the the stockpile were expired. At best a base hit from a bunt. These were already on hand so not a herculean effort to distribute. 39.4 million is nowhere near what is needed. California alone needs almost 200 million a month.

There is progress on ventilators with automotive but let's see results. They cannot even get enough swabs manufactured to run tests!

The much heralded "small business stimulus" - PPP and EIDL programs are out of money and money went to big restaurant and hotel chain via a loop hole so Joe's local restaurant is SOL. Many small businesses haven't gotten money yet. What a mess!

Anyone who has been in business knows that if an executive brought these kind of results, with lots of excuses and blame game, you know what would happen...

Let's hope they can turn this around.

I was pointing out what had been done per your request.

Also just to clarify some of your statements:

"The ventilators already existed in the stockpile but many didn't work because the service contracts were cut last August "

The service contract expired in August and a new contract with a different company was authorized. The contract with the expired contract was disputed by the legacy company delaying implementation of new contract (pre cover-19). The new company started maintaining the ventilators in January. Of the 14,000 ventilators the new company stated app 2,000 had yet to be maintained, they did not state that they do not work as a result. So 10,000 ventilators still remain, if needed due to another surge, many are being shifted from state to state as needed.

Of the ventilators delivered, 170 delivered to california needed to be fixed. They did not know why they did not work (may have been lack of service but I could not find any confirmation, only speculation.
"Many N95s in the the stockpile were expired. At best a base hit from a bunt. These were already on hand so not a herculean effort to distribute."
I do not know how many were expired or had rot, the reports I found indicated a small percent. I do not know why they sat in the stockpile from 2009 until 2020 and were not replaced. Of the 39 Million N95s most have been recently manufactured or were obtained from inventories at 3M/Honeywell etc..

I worked in biotech industry developing medical devices (infectious disease diagnostics) as well as pharmaceuticals. The stockpile of masks, gowns etc were used during the H1N1 swine flu crisis in 2009 some were used in that crisis, what was left stayed in storage for future use. N95 masked have been manufactured recently to replenish and use during this crisis.

They cannot even get enough swabs manufactured to run tests!

As a Microbiologist having worked in diagnostics for 25 years, there are I believe only 2 or so suppliers of swabs qualified to be used for testing in the world, one is in the US. These are not Qtip Swabs, and they are used in many health critical tests not just Covid-19. It is quite amazing that there have been 30 Million Tests (Swabs) used over the last 8 weeks that had not been needed prior to this health crisis and still there are millions being manufactured to support testing.
There are new tests common on line that use saliva so that will help. Also the antibody test will use blood not a swab.

The much heralded "small business stimulus" - PPP and EIDL programs are out of money and money went to big restaurant and hotel chain via a loop hole so Joe's local restaurant is SOL. Many small businesses haven't gotten money yet. What a mess!

There is a separate loan program for small business (1 to 500 employees) 377 Billion, and Large Business (>500 employees) 500 Billion. In addition "express loans" were required to be issued within 36 hours of application approval. Thus far all 350 Billion has been either issued or approved to small business and more has been requested. However congress must approve the additional taxpayer funds.

I believe the steps/programs financial and safety wise executed by fed/state/local/healthcare private-non profit/first responders and just the general population as a whole has never been so widespread and I feel grateful. Thank God and I wish you the best during this stressful time!

 

[am1]

Will the US pass Europe in the number of reported cases? It looked that way until Russia started reporting more. Thankfully it has mostly stated out of Africa and south east Asia or the results would be a disaster.

 

[am1]

Yes, but, it's not like you can close county borders. Our small towns thought they were safe and now are finding the virus is there, too.

Why not? Have police checkpoints and if you are not in your correct area impound the car of give a ticket?

 

[WVBaker]

Why not? Have police checkpoints and if you are not in your correct area impound the car of give a ticket?

Some areas are doing just that and it does raise some constitutional issues.

 

[TravelTime]

Read this today and really thought it hit the nail on the head......

We are not in the same boat
Something to think about... WE ARE NOT IN THE SAME BOAT ... I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it's not like that. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat. Your ship could be shipwrecked and mine might not be. Or vice versa.

For some, quarantine is optimal. A moment of reflection, of re-connection, easy in flip flops, with a cocktail or coffee. For others, this is a desperate financial & family crisis. For some that live alone they're facing endless loneliness. While for others it is peace, rest & time with their mother, father, sons & daughters.

With the $600 weekly increase in unemployment some are bringing in more money to their households than they were working. Others are working more hours for less money due to pay cuts or loss in sales.

Some families of 4 just received $3400 from the stimulus while other families of 4 saw $0. Some were concerned about getting a certain candy for Easter while others were concerned if there would be enough bread, milk and eggs for the weekend.

Some want to go back to work because they don't qualify for unemployment and are running out of money. Others want to kill those who break the quarantine.

Some are home spending 2-3 hours/day helping their child with online schooling while others are spending 2-3 hours/day to educate their children on top of a 10-12 hour workday.

Some have experienced the near death of the virus, some have already lost someone from it and some are not sure if their loved ones are going to make it. Others don't believe this is a big deal.

Some have faith in God and expect miracles during this 2020. Others say the worst is yet to come.

So, friends, we are not in the same boat. We are going through a time when our perceptions and needs are completely different. Each of us will emerge, in our own way, from this storm. It is very important to see beyond what is seen at first glance. Not just looking, actually seeing. We are all on different ships during this storm experiencing a very different journey.

Unknown author #DontJudgeOthers

This is really good. It is very empathic and demonstrates how people are suffering in different ways. We need to care for others no matter how Covid-19 is affecting them. We do not know what other people are going through.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

posted on wrong thread

 

[TravelTime]

I find this chart helpful when evaluating a source. I like how it separates opinion from news arms of major media.

Similar to a survey sample, I remove the outliers on both the left and right side. And then consider the middle columns knowing which way they bend and factoring that into my analysis. I have found excellent, factual articles on both Fox and CNN and WSJ and NYT, but disregards articles whenever it feels like it is in support of a political narrative on either side.

View attachment 19365

I generally agree with this chart. For the ones in the center, I would say NPR and Christian Science Monitor lean a bit left. Wall Street Journal definitely leans right, even their news group. I am an avid reader of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post (where I have direct subscriptions). I read a lot of the others too through my Apple News subscription.

 

[caribbeanqueen]

@Monykalyn When we cruised it was over Christmas and barely anything was known back then. So no testing, quarantines, nothing was going on and when I went to the hospital with my symptoms and had a negative flu and strep the doctor said it was "some type of virus." It wasn't known back then! Know how many people probably had this and had no idea? Many, many thousands.

We have two businesses. One we lease the building, one we own. The one we lease we may not reopen. Our governor is talking about months till we can open and paying rent and electric along with other bills just does not seem feasible. We will have a better idea in the next two weeks I think. Our numbers are still climbing unfortunately.

 

[TravelTime]

This is an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. It is interesting and offers another unpopular but possible outcome. BTW, if the Covid death rate is lower than originally estimated, this is good news!

-----------------

The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News
Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.

Defenders of coronavirus lockdown mandates keep talking about science. “We are going to do the right thing, not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science,” California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defended an order that, among other things, banned the sale of paint and vegetable seeds but not liquor or lottery tickets. “Each action has been informed by the best science and epidemiology counsel there is,” she wrote in an op-ed.

But scientists are almost never unanimous, and many appeals to “science” are transparently political or ideological. Consider the story of John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford’s School of Medicine. His expertise is wide-ranging—he juggles appointments in statistics, biomedical data, prevention research and health research and policy. Google Scholar ranks him among the world’s 100 most-cited scientists. He has published more than 1,000 papers, many of them meta-analyses—reviews of other studies. Yet he’s now found himself pilloried because he dissents from the theories behind the lockdowns—because he’s looked at the data and found good news.

In a March article for Stat News, Dr. Ioannidis argued that Covid-19 is far less deadly than modelers were assuming. He considered the experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined Feb. 4 in Japan. Nine of 700 infected passengers and crew died. Based on the demographics of the ship’s population, Dr. Ioannidis estimated that the U.S. fatality rate could be as low as 0.025% to 0.625% and put the upper bound at 0.05% to 1%—comparable to that of seasonal flu.

“If that is the true rate,” he wrote, “locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.”.........

......Yet most criticism of the Stanford study has been aimed at defending the lockdown mandates against the implication that they’re an overreaction. “There’s some sort of mob mentality here operating that they just insist that this has to be the end of the world, and it has to be that the sky is falling. It’s attacking studies with data based on speculation and science fiction,” he says. “But dismissing real data in favor of mathematical speculation is mind-boggling.”

In part he blames the media: “We have some evidence that bad news, negative news [stories], are more attractive than positive news—they lead to more clicks, they lead to people being more engaged. And of course we know that fake news travels faster than true news. So in the current environment, unfortunately, we have generated a very heavily panic-driven, horror-driven, death-reality-show type of situation.”

The news is filled with stories of healthy young people who die of coronavirus. But Dr. Ioannidis recently published a paper with his wife, Despina Contopoulos-Ioannidis, an infectious-disease specialist at Stanford, that showed this to be a classic man-bites-dog story. The couple found that people under 65 without underlying conditions accounted for only 0.7% of coronavirus deaths in Italy and 1.8% in New York City.......

Opinion | The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News

Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.

www.wsj.com

 

[Monykalyn]

I went to the hospital with my symptoms and had a negative flu and strep the doctor said it was "some type of virus."

Ah thanks for the reply! Glad you are ok too! I had a weird "viral" illness in December - neg for flu, strep etc, but couldn't breathe or stop coughing, and couldn't taste anything. My doc said my immune system was in "overdrive" and gave me steroids to slow it down. Definitely helped with the coughing but I think I slept an average 3-4 hours a night for over a month. Just looked up serology testing near me and there is a lab that will do it-for $169.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defended an order that, among other things, banned the sale of paint and vegetable seeds but not liquor or lottery tickets. “Each action has been informed by the best science and epidemiology counsel there is,” she wrote in an op-ed

and Gov Whitmer has loosened many of those restrictions - while extending the stay at home order-but now you can at least buy seeds. This as the number of confirmed case keep going up-so just what "science" is she following?? Of course testing is ramping up as well, but isn't the media focus on "science" and "spikes in number of cases" without also mentioning increased testing?

In part he blames the media:

Media amplifies everything. Social media is worse. So many idiots celebrities on twitter were really into social shaming and "stay inside". Not "stay home whenever possible" but literally "stay inside" like breathing air in your back yard was an instant death sentence.
I read his Op-Ed awhile ago and he raised interesting points, we still don't know enough to say if this is an "over reaction" or not. Problem is we went into a lockdown as a "one size fits all" -which is OK when we don't know- but as more data becomes available then the sledgehammer needs to become a scalpel. For instance-one of the hospitals in my town built a "covid unit" to handle the surge. Not only is it sitting empty-the hospitals are no where near overwhelmed. And less than 50% of people (rough estimation on the few times I've been out) wear masks. $1million (or more) to build something that is becoming more likely to not be used...meanwhile car lines for food grow ever longer...we've clearly flattened the curve-why are things not allowed to ease up?

I like what @PrairieGirl posted: we are NOT in the same boat. And it is important to remember some have better boats to weather the storm than others, and some have a much worse storm to survive. It's as good an analogy as any.

 

[davidvel]

This is an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. It is interesting and offers another unpopular but possible outcome. BTW, if the Covid death rate is lower than originally estimated, this is good news!

-----------------

The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News
Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.

Defenders of coronavirus lockdown mandates keep talking about science. “We are going to do the right thing, not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science,” California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defended an order that, among other things, banned the sale of paint and vegetable seeds but not liquor or lottery tickets. “Each action has been informed by the best science and epidemiology counsel there is,” she wrote in an op-ed.

But scientists are almost never unanimous, and many appeals to “science” are transparently political or ideological. Consider the story of John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford’s School of Medicine. His expertise is wide-ranging—he juggles appointments in statistics, biomedical data, prevention research and health research and policy. Google Scholar ranks him among the world’s 100 most-cited scientists. He has published more than 1,000 papers, many of them meta-analyses—reviews of other studies. Yet he’s now found himself pilloried because he dissents from the theories behind the lockdowns—because he’s looked at the data and found good news.

In a March article for Stat News, Dr. Ioannidis argued that Covid-19 is far less deadly than modelers were assuming. He considered the experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined Feb. 4 in Japan. Nine of 700 infected passengers and crew died. Based on the demographics of the ship’s population, Dr. Ioannidis estimated that the U.S. fatality rate could be as low as 0.025% to 0.625% and put the upper bound at 0.05% to 1%—comparable to that of seasonal flu.

“If that is the true rate,” he wrote, “locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.”.........

......Yet most criticism of the Stanford study has been aimed at defending the lockdown mandates against the implication that they’re an overreaction. “There’s some sort of mob mentality here operating that they just insist that this has to be the end of the world, and it has to be that the sky is falling. It’s attacking studies with data based on speculation and science fiction,” he says. “But dismissing real data in favor of mathematical speculation is mind-boggling.”

In part he blames the media: “We have some evidence that bad news, negative news [stories], are more attractive than positive news—they lead to more clicks, they lead to people being more engaged. And of course we know that fake news travels faster than true news. So in the current environment, unfortunately, we have generated a very heavily panic-driven, horror-driven, death-reality-show type of situation.”

The news is filled with stories of healthy young people who die of coronavirus. But Dr. Ioannidis recently published a paper with his wife, Despina Contopoulos-Ioannidis, an infectious-disease specialist at Stanford, that showed this to be a classic man-bites-dog story. The couple found that people under 65 without underlying conditions accounted for only 0.7% of coronavirus deaths in Italy and 1.8% in New York City.......

Opinion | The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News

Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.

www.wsj.com

Careful, you'll be mocked as a fool and deny-er for even posting an alternative thought.

 

[Monykalyn]

Careful, you'll be mocked as a fool and deny-er for even posting an alternative thought.

Always good to provoke a discussion though

 

[easyrider]

This article is good news! Why are people so upset about good news?

It is very good news but........ many people have politicized and supressed this news because the models of infection were so wrong and the backlash makes the experts look like they are wrong.

It's also odd that the news reported that some one said to disinfect blood and have it reported as using Lysol instead of a FDA approve blood disinfectant like formaldehyde.

Bill

 

[Brett]

Careful, you'll be mocked as a fool and deny-er for even posting an alternative thought.

It is very good news but........ many people have politicized and supressed this news because the models of infection were so wrong and the backlash makes the experts look like they are wrong.
It's also odd that the news reported that some one said to disinfect blood and have it reported as using Lysol instead of a FDA approve blood disinfectant like formaldehyde.

Bill

the WSJ "good news" article was marked

plenty of opinions in these pandemic times
(including using disinfectants)

 

[bluehende]

It is very good news but........ many people have politicized and supressed this news because the models of infection were so wrong and the backlash makes the experts look like they are wrong.

It's also odd that the news reported that some one said to disinfect blood and have it reported as using Lysol instead of a FDA approve blood disinfectant like formaldehyde.

Bill

Suppressed most would say maybe over hyped as I hear about this study 10 times a day. People here saw the flaws discussed here at once.

Certainly with the testing we are doing the infection rate is certainly higher than tests show. However to say herd immunity is close due to this study is equally as silly. More study is certainly needed.

quoted from Science one of the most distinguished periodicals,



A California serology study of 3300 people released last week in a preprint also drew strong criticisms. The lead authors of the study, Jay Bhattacharya and Eran Bendavid, who study health policy at Stanford University, worked with colleagues to recruit the residents of Santa Clara county through ads on Facebook. Fifty antibody tests were positive—about 1.5%. But after adjusting the statistics to better reflect the county’s demographics, the researchers concluded that between 2.49% and 4.16% of the county’s residents had likely been infected. That suggests, they say, that the real number of infections was as many as 80,000. That’s more than 50 times as many as viral gene tests had confirmed and implies a low fatality rate—a reason to consider whether strict lockdowns are worthwhile, argue Bendavid and co-author John Ioannidis, who studies public health at Stanford.
On the day the preprint posted, co-author Andrew Bogan—a biotech investor with a biophysics Ph.D.—published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal asking, “If policy makers were aware from the outset that the Covid-19 death toll would be closer to that of seasonal flu … would they have risked tens of millions of jobs and livelihoods?” The op-ed did not initially disclose his role in the study.
Yet Twitter threads and blog posts outlined a litany of apparent problems with the Santa Clara study. Recruiting through Facebook likely attracted people with COVID-19–like symptoms who wanted to be tested, boosting the apparent positive rate. Because the absolute numbers of positive tests were so small, false positives may have been nearly as common as real infections. The study also had relatively few participants from low-income and minority populations, meaning the statistical adjustments the researchers made could be way off. “I think the authors of the paper owe us all an apology,” wrote Columbia University statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman in an online commentary. The numbers “were essentially the product of a statistical error.”

 

[DannyTS]

Suppressed most would say maybe over hyped as I hear about this study 10 times a day. People here saw the flaws discussed here at once.

Certainly with the testing we are doing the infection rate is certainly higher than tests show. However to say herd immunity is close due to this study is equally as silly. More study is certainly needed.

quoted from Science one of the most distinguished periodicals,



A California serology study of 3300 people released last week in a preprint also drew strong criticisms. The lead authors of the study, Jay Bhattacharya and Eran Bendavid, who study health policy at Stanford University, worked with colleagues to recruit the residents of Santa Clara county through ads on Facebook. Fifty antibody tests were positive—about 1.5%. But after adjusting the statistics to better reflect the county’s demographics, the researchers concluded that between 2.49% and 4.16% of the county’s residents had likely been infected. That suggests, they say, that the real number of infections was as many as 80,000. That’s more than 50 times as many as viral gene tests had confirmed and implies a low fatality rate—a reason to consider whether strict lockdowns are worthwhile, argue Bendavid and co-author John Ioannidis, who studies public health at Stanford.
On the day the preprint posted, co-author Andrew Bogan—a biotech investor with a biophysics Ph.D.—published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal asking, “If policy makers were aware from the outset that the Covid-19 death toll would be closer to that of seasonal flu … would they have risked tens of millions of jobs and livelihoods?” The op-ed did not initially disclose his role in the study.
Yet Twitter threads and blog posts outlined a litany of apparent problems with the Santa Clara study. Recruiting through Facebook likely attracted people with COVID-19–like symptoms who wanted to be tested, boosting the apparent positive rate. Because the absolute numbers of positive tests were so small, false positives may have been nearly as common as real infections. The study also had relatively few participants from low-income and minority populations, meaning the statistical adjustments the researchers made could be way off. “I think the authors of the paper owe us all an apology,” wrote Columbia University statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman in an online commentary. The numbers “were essentially the product of a statistical error.”

It is not just California, similar studies have similar results with very high infection rates in Germany, New York, Sweden.

Sweden estimates that 20% of the population was infected, they expect to reach herd immunity in few weeks. Sweden has a population of 11,000,000 if you apply a 3% mortality rate (initially presumed) they should have had 66,000 deaths from Covid but they had 40 times less deaths associated with the virus. Four studies point to the same conclusion, the virus is a lot less deadly. Why should we hang on to the "data" that came from China in February and March instead of listening to the new scientific research in the United States, Germany and Sweden?

Sweden queries basis of lockdowns as Germany keeps its guard up

Looser regime means Sweden is better placed to face second wave, says chief epidemiologist

www.theguardian.com

 

[Rolltydr]

the WSJ "good news" article was marked View attachment 19633

plenty of opinions in these pandemic times
(including using disinfectants)

It seems we have reached the point in this country where many people think an opinion that agrees with them is a fact while a fact that agrees with others is an opinion.

 

[Quilter]

Yes it is. It is absolutely terrifying, concentrating on each breath, hoping he next one is easier. I’m asthmatic. Just today- getting plants for my garden, doin the distance thing, being careful etc. some lady lights up a cigarette right on other side of plants cart. Smoke is a sure trigger for me to have a bad attack. Luckily I heard the click of lighter and got the heck outta there. Risk for me is EVERYWHERE. I just have to live with it. Very glad you are are on road to recovery!

DD was born in 1987. Was diagnosed with asthma about 3 yo. We would use a nebulizer when she got a cold. We called it "The Cloud". I had her in a Ladies Room at a restaurant when I heard someone light a cigarette in the next stall. So glad cigarette smoking has been banned in restaurants.

 

["Roger"]

It seems we have reached the point in this country where many people think an opinion that agrees with them is a fact while a fact that agrees with others is an opinion.

Basically what you are describing is confirmation bias. People (everyone) tends to pay more attention to things that agree with their own views and less attention to anything contradictory. (T_R_Ogladyte posted about this on another thread.) A sister of confirmation bias is the fact that people can have very good critical thinking skills when examining an opinion that they disagree with, but give their own views a complete pass. (Conspiracy theorists are a particularly good example of this.)

With regard to the role that facts play. There have been some very discouraging studies that indicate with regard to such things as religious or political views, when presented with facts (and I do mean outright facts) that contradict their views, that only makes them believe what they believe even more.

The only thing that you can do about confirmation bias (and we are all guilty of it) is be aware that it exists, read all sorts of things on both sides of an issue, and be willing to critically examine one's own views.