Coronavirus

Originally posted by Robtard
Wear a mask, especially if you're high risk of getting it. While not guaranteed to protect 100% (and few things are), it's still a layer of protection. Worse thing that will come of it, you wear a mask and they can be slightly uncomfortable at times. It's a logical trade off.

Well yeah, that's the thing. Even if there's a 0.000001% chance that a mask will actually do something, it's still the safer option. It's not going to hurt me to wear a mask for a few hours.

If only Ireland would stop letting ****ing tourists coming in. Thanks UK/USA.

But it's going to have a much higher chance of potentially stopping droplets and such than that.

Build a wall? 😛

Originally posted by jaden_2.0
I was thinking more along the lines of cannibalism.

I only consider it cannibalism is you start eating them while they’re still alive.

Originally posted by -Pr-
Well yeah, that's the thing. Even if there's a 0.000001% chance that a mask will actually do something, it's still the safer option. It's not going to hurt me to wear a mask for a few hours.

If only Ireland would stop letting ****ing tourists coming in. Thanks UK/USA.

Which makes the mask flip flopping all the more puzzling.

Originally posted by -Pr-
Well yeah, that's the thing. Even if there's a 0.000001% chance that a mask will actually do something, it's still the safer option. It's not going to hurt me to wear a mask for a few hours.

If only Ireland would stop letting ****ing tourists coming in. Thanks UK/USA.

Now you know how the "racists" on the right feel about our broken open door immigration policies. 😛

I only consider it cannibalism is you start eating them while they’re still alive

Spoken like a true Klingon warrior.

Well, there are the stories about mafioso grinding people up and putting them in salami.

So if you've ever had pepperoni pizza, you just might transform into The Wendigo.

Originally posted by BackFire
I only consider it cannibalism is you start eating them while they’re still alive.

Dude, you're actually pretty close to correct.

Eating dead human bodies is a specific form of cannibalism called "necro-cannibalism." Killing someone and then eating them is "homicidal cannibalism."

And eating part of someone who you fully intend to live (willingly or not) is a fetish or mania and it has a name. I forget. Vorarephilia (vore)? Cannibalistic Sadism? I can't remember. It has a name.

DDM:

I had left a couple of these behind so I'll address them now.

Originally posted by dadudemon
And here is the latest testing data by state where you can see massive amounts of testing increases but positive tests are not keeping pace with "positives per test" meaning actual positive cases are going down per test, not increasing, like all the news outlets are reporting:

Concerning this particular claim?

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states
^ The source above points to an initial deep dip and then? Since mid to late June, a steady upwards increase in positive cases per test.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/tracker/overview

This source contains each individual state and some are increasing, some are decreasing. In aggregate, this seemingly manifests as growth in positives cases per test.

Originally posted by dadudemon
If you look at the real story, here are the weekly deaths by state which includes only 4 states where it has gone up. Notice how almost all are sharply declining and only 4 have an increase

If you take a peek at the second link right above, it seems there are quite a few more than just four states who've seen positive cases per test go up. Where I'd agree? Increases/decreases lies at the feet of state and federal authorities but it seemingly also has quite a good deal to do with the generalized culture and social proclivities of each state's population.

Moving on, what I am about to address I did address partially earlier, and specifically highlighted how a collection of epidemiological studies supported the usage of mask due to rates of infectivity pre-and-post masking wearing (then stated the WHO and the CDC supported it and asked if you thought they were bullshitting), but would like to add further comment specifically concerning RCTs.

Originally posted by dadudemon
any studies that do support mask wearing are not real world studies that use RCTs

Now, there are some RCTs but they're not quite the perfect sort of RCT that we would really desire (I'm not sure if such an RCT would pass an IRB). I go off of the summary of proof within this particular piece: https://web.archive.org/web/20200619074339/https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/

It seemingly indicates that there is higher quality evidence in favor of mask-wearing than against. For example, it's likely good to don masks within indoor locations that are crowded where you'll be there for an extended period of time. That being said, no one reasonable thinks masks are a cure all. However, they're useful in mitigating within high-risk circumstances/situations.

Concerning HCQ/CQ, I don't think we have an RCT for those either, no? With respect to COVID-19, specifically.

Originally posted by Surtur
Which makes the mask flip flopping all the more puzzling.

People should be consistent.

Originally posted by cdtm
Now you know how the "racists" on the right feel about our broken open door immigration policies. 😛

I don't support open immigration, though I don't know how the situation with it is in America.

Originally posted by Gehenna
DDM:

I had left a couple of these behind so I'll address them now.

Concerning this particular claim?

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states
^ The source above points to an initial deep dip and then? Since mid to late June, a steady upwards increase in positive cases per test.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/tracker/overview

This source contains each individual state and some are increasing, some are decreasing. In aggregate, this seemingly manifests as growth in positives cases per test.

If you take a peek at the second link right above, it seems there are quite a few more than just four states who've seen positive cases per test go up. Where I'd agree? Increases/decreases lies at the feet of state and federal authorities but it seemingly also has quite a good deal to do with the generalized culture and social proclivities of each state's population.

Moving on, what I am about to address I did address partially earlier, and specifically highlighted how a collection of epidemiological studies supported the usage of mask due to rates of infectivity pre-and-post masking wearing (then stated the WHO and the CDC supported it and asked if you thought they were bullshitting), but would like to add further comment specifically concerning RCTs.

Now, there are some RCTs but they're not quite the perfect sort of RCT that we would really desire (I'm not sure if such an RCT would pass an IRB). I go off of the summary of proof within this particular piece: https://web.archive.org/web/20200619074339/https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/

It seemingly indicates that there is higher quality evidence in favor of mask-wearing than against. For example, it's likely good to don masks within indoor locations that are crowded where you'll be there for an extended period of time. That being said, no one reasonable thinks masks are a cure all. However, they're useful in mitigating within high-risk circumstances/situations.

Concerning HCQ/CQ, I don't think we have an RCT for those either, no? With respect to COVID-19, specifically.

Surely he understands the ethical issues with an RCT and a highly infectious disease? Surely?

Originally posted by Gehenna
DDM:

I had left a couple of these behind so I'll address them now.

Concerning this particular claim?

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states
^ The source above points to an initial deep dip and then? Since mid to late June, a steady upwards increase in positive cases per test.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/tracker/overview

This source contains each individual state and some are increasing, some are decreasing. In aggregate, this seemingly manifests as growth in positives cases per test.

There's nothing we can discuss that has not already been discussed, in my opinion, because the data speaks for itself. Any thing we'd state would just be restating what is in the data and the graphs already exist for that - so we could just use those. We state anything contradictory to the data, we'd just be wrong. This is why I say let the data speak for itself.

Biggest thing that sticks out to me is there are now 11 states with increased deaths, 2 of which have not seen spikes greater than prior numbers.

July-16:

My original screen shots from June 28:

https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/USA-TRENDS/dgkvlgkrkpb/

Originally posted by Gehenna
If you take a peek at the second link right above, it seems there are quite a few more than just four states who've seen positive cases per test go up.

If you take a look at the screenshots in time, when they were taken, it was just 4 states who saw deaths increase which is the reference to 4 states. I did not misrepresent the data.

Originally posted by Gehenna
Moving on, what I am about to address I did address partially earlier, and specifically highlighted how a collection of epidemiological studies supported the usage of mask due to rates of infectivity pre-and-post masking wearing (then stated the WHO and the CDC supported it and asked if you thought they were bullshitting), but would like to add further comment specifically concerning RCTs.

Now, there are some RCTs but they're not quite the perfect sort of RCT that we would really desire (I'm not sure if such an RCT would pass an IRB). I go off of the summary of proof within this particular piece: https://web.archive.org/web/20200619074339/https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/

It seemingly indicates that there is higher quality evidence in favor of mask-wearing than against. For example, it's likely good to don masks within indoor locations that are crowded where you'll be there for an extended period of time. That being said, no one reasonable thinks masks are a cure all. However, they're useful in mitigating within high-risk circumstances/situations.

Concerning HCQ/CQ, I don't think we have an RCT for those either, no? With respect to COVID-19, specifically.

In this next section, I've addressed all of this already. Including the content that you linked from the Web Archive (why did that site take down that article?).

I've even gone through 2 different meta-analyses which covered almost only quality RCTs (and they have a few study overlaps).

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=17229240#post17229240

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=17229241#post17229241

And this was my conclusion from all of it:

...respirators (N95s) worn continuously during healthcare shifts may, not guarantee, offer some protection against COVID-19.

Because some quality research found that even the N95s did not offer additional protection.

And all of this specifically applies to HCWs.

What happened with the RCTs on households, they found no benefit because people simply interact with each other too much and the virus gets everywhere:

Influenza transmission was not reduced by interventions to promote hand washing and face mask use. This may be attributable to transmission that occurred before the intervention, poor facemask compliance, little difference in hand-washing frequency between study groups, and shared sleeping arrangements. A prospective study design and a careful analysis of sociocultural factors could improve future NPI studies.

And to your last point, yes, we don't have any quality RCTs for COVID-19 for the general public because there's no way to control who wears and who does not wear a mask - the best you can do is a retrospective study and it cannot be an RCT or even highly quality due to the self-reporting nature.

You could potentially do an RCT based on people who guarantee they will not wear masks and still follow up with with verifications of masks (like in the Thai study) and only use lab-positive results (because multiple studies found that mask wearing creates a placebo effect and measuring that against lab results showed no benefit).

Florida Department of Health says some labs have not reported negative COVID-19 results

Intriguing.

Originally posted by dadudemon
There's nothing we can discuss that has not already been discussed, in my opinion, because the data speaks for itself. Any thing we'd state would just be restating what is in the data and the graphs already exist for that - so we could just use those. We state anything contradictory to the data, we'd just be wrong. This is why I say let the data speak for itself.

Biggest thing that sticks out to me is there are now 11 states with increased deaths, 2 of which have not seen spikes greater than prior numbers.

July-16:

My original screen shots from June 28:

https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/USA-TRENDS/dgkvlgkrkpb/

If you take a look at the screenshots in time, when they were taken, it was just 4 states who saw deaths increase which is the reference to 4 states. I did not misrepresent the data.

In this next section, I've addressed all of this already. Including the content that you linked from the Web Archive (why did that site take down that article?).

I've even gone through 2 different meta-analyses which covered almost only quality RCTs (and they have a few study overlaps).

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=17229240#post17229240

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=17229241#post17229241

And this was my conclusion from all of it:

Because some quality research found that even the N95s did not offer additional protection.

And all of this specifically applies to HCWs.

What happened with the RCTs on households, they found no benefit because people simply interact with each other too much and the virus gets everywhere:

And to your last point, yes, we don't have any quality RCTs for COVID-19 for the general public because there's no way to control who wears and who does not wear a mask - the best you can do is a retrospective study and it cannot be an RCT or even highly quality due to the self-reporting nature.

You could potentially do an RCT based on people who guarantee they will not wear masks and still follow up with with verifications of masks (like in the Thai study) and only use lab-positive results (because multiple studies found that mask wearing creates a placebo effect and measuring that against lab results showed no benefit).

Dude you are pathetic

Originally posted by Robtard

I disagree with Trump here, how about you?

Originally posted by dadudemon
Biggest thing that sticks out to me is there are now 11 states with increased deaths, 2 of which have not seen spikes greater than prior numbers.

This appears to be a different argument than what I initially responded to, which was:

Originally posted by dadudemon
And here is the latest testing data by state where you can see massive amounts of testing increases but positive tests are not keeping pace with "positives per test" meaning actual positive cases are going down per test, not increasing, like all the news outlets are reporting

It appears that positive cases are increasing per test. I'd agree that the fourteen day growth in deaths reported is localized to certain states, that's borne out in all of the data I've observed where several, particularly within the South, are now peaking when it comes to caseload.

Originally posted by dadudemon
What happened with the RCTs on households, they found no benefit because people simply interact with each other too much and the virus gets everywhere

So, it's really not the point of the masks to wear them in your household. They're more relevant for when you go outside, on public transportation, to your job, etc.

I would agree that if you live with somebody and that person gets it, you'll all get it pretty hastily in most given situations. I don't think the advice has been to wear masks around your family. This is when pooled testing is most useful.

Originally posted by dadudemon
And to your last point, yes, we don't have any quality RCTs for COVID-19 for the general public because there's no way to control who wears and who does not wear a mask - the best you can do is a retrospective study and it cannot be an RCT or even highly quality due to the self-reporting nature.

You could potentially do an RCT based on people who guarantee they will not wear masks and still follow up with with verifications of masks (like in the Thai study) and only use lab-positive results (because multiple studies found that mask wearing creates a placebo effect and measuring that against lab results showed no benefit).

Well, I was asking about RCTs concerning HCQ and CQ, not concerning masks in this instance. I'd agree it will be arduous to assess the effects of mask usage in retrospect, but I cannot wait to check out what type of clever proxies people use to achieve higher faithfulness than self-reporting, or if there are solid arguments in favor of self-reporting. With that being said, there are good arguments to believe mask-wearing is prudent in the contexts detailed by the SSC article.

Addendum: Concerning the web archive you inquired about, what happened was the NYT was going to write a story about that particular blog. Initially? Things seemed fine, but then the NYT said they were going to report the author's full name. That particular author works as a psychiatrist and doesn't want that level of publicity attached to his blog since he feels it could affect his job ngeatively. The NYT said that it was unfortunately policy, and so in response to that, he proceeded to delete his blog. It is likely temporary, but we'll see.

More info: https://slatestarcodex.com/

Originally posted by Surtur
I disagree with Trump here, how about you?

I disagree with Trump here too.

The more pertinent question would be Does Trump disagree with Trump here?

Originally posted by jaden_2.0
I disagree with Trump here too.

The more pertinent question would be Does Trump disagree with Trump here?

Bingo