I'll pass that along. I don't think they realized that. — frank

If you're going to appeal to authority, you're going to have to cite to the authority, which are the actual studies. Simply suggesting that they must know where the studies are and they must be relying upon them because they are too sophisticated to have done otherwise isn't a proper appeal to authority. It's just a blind trust in the system.

Overall, about 20% of Covid-19 patients treated at Northwell Health died, and 88% of those placed on ventilators died

Right, and this can mean all sorts of things, including ventilators do nothing, ventilators kill, or that ventilators increase your chance of survival by some negligible amount. It's certainly not sufficient scientific evidence that ventilation is a statistically likely way to improve one's chances to survive.

Receiving hospitalization or mechanical ventilation? — frank

Either. What scientifically valid study shows that ventilation or hospitalization is an effective treatment for covid 19? If you're going to treat an illness in any way, by ventilation, by offering oxygen, giving an IV, or petting them on the head, you're going to have to show statistically that those things make any sort of difference.

It's not greater acces but earlier access and your article doesn't prove the opposite at all because it doesn't go into when people are admitted into the hospital and the severity of their symptoms at the time. — Benkei

What they say is:
“When I have an early diagnosis and can treat patients early — for example put them on a ventilator before they deteriorate — the chance of survival is much higher,” Professor Kräusslich said.

First of all, this isn't science. This is a clinician giving his general assessment based upon what it feels like on the ground. Second, it's entirely possible he's treating patients who were never going to deteriorate anyway, so he's providing unneeded treatment. What standard does he have to show that a particular patient was one of the rare ones who was going to exhibit serious symptoms and so he therefore ventilated prior to their being critical? Has the protocol of random testing in order to obtain early diagnosis and then immediate hospitalization with ventilation been tested against another protocol?
And has any of this analysis been tested against a better cross-section of people other than the German population so that we can screen for populations that happen not to be in their 40s and in generally good health?

This outcry for ventilators is as absurd as the outcry for choloroquine, but for some reason we accept that ventilators are appropriate treatment because it's just the norm, and then we pass all sorts of policy to assure there are plenty of ventilators for everyone.

You must have missed that. To answer this: — Benkei

You have missed this:

There was a sentence in the article that stated that greater access to hospitalization was another reason for their low death rate, but there were no supporting facts for that. That statement is common sense, but it's contradicted by the article I cited where they showed those receiving hospitalization in New York had a very low rate of survival. — Hanover

I obviously don't mean the latter. — Michael

Then your advice might make him more accurate, but it will be at the expense of his being accurate but not being the President. He would then be relegated to our ranks, where he could be complicated and nuanced, but his opinions would be like ours, nothing more than hundreds of thousands of largely ignored computer characters floating about the internet.

That article offered a variety of reasons for Germany's death rate being lower. The two that stood out the most were (1) the average age of the infected person was in their 40s and in good health and (2) Germany tests more asymptomatic people, resulting in the collection of data that other countries don't have access to. That is, it's far from clear that their death rate is in fact any different than any other country when we're comparing them to symptomatic older people in other countries.

There was a sentence in the article that stated that greater access to hospitalization was another reason for their low death rate, but there were no supporting facts for that. That statement is common sense, but it's contradicted by the article I cited where they showed those receiving hospitalization in New York had a very low rate of survival.

It might seem that chloroquine benefits those infected with the coronavirus, but, as you've noted, it's irresponsible and unreasonable to declare it does until you've actually tested for that. In fact, you really want to be sure it doesn't hasten death before you start openly prescribing it.

Why doesn't the same hold true for offering ventilators? At this point, all we know is that ventilators offer palliative care for some who weren't going to recover anyway, but they well could be killing people who are placed on them too early. And this brings up the policy question of leveling the curve so there'll be enough ventilators. Are we just trying to be sure we have enough in order to offer palliative care, or are we offering them on the unsupported belief that we think we're saving lives? I think it's clear it's the latter, which means we're going to heroic lengths to assure ourselves there is adequate healthcare for those infected when there is no such thing as adequate healthcare for those infected.

He should really just let some medical professional and speech-writer work together to write a script for him to read. — Michael

Depends on what you mean by "should." If you mean so he could be more accurate, sure. If you mean so that he can get re-elected, I'm not sure. He has mastered the politucs and secured the world's most competitive seat, so he doesn't need advice in what he should be doing. He's got that figured out.

Ventilators are used so you don't suffocate or feel like they are going to suffocate, it doesn't treat the virus. You get problems with breathing when the infection gets serious so the likelihood of dying also increases. — Benkei

I get it. It's supposed to treat a symptom so that that symptom doesn't kill you. My point is that there's no evidence it effectively treats that symptom, and they're not even sure it doesn't hasten death.

My question is what would the death rate from the virus alone be in a country with no hospitals? If we can't point to any proven treatment that sustains a person until the virus has passed, the death rate will not increase due to an overwhelmed healthcare system (except to the extent patients unnecessarily are occupying hospital beds others with other illnesses would benefit from). The objective of social distancing was to assure us of a slow infection rate so we'd have plenty of hospital bed space so we could treat the patients. If the hospital doesn't help people, why send them there?

Again, if we premise the need for social distancing on the need to pace the infections so that we have sufficient medical care to tend to the sick, you have to have supporting data that medical care is helpful for those infected.

Where is that data?

It's no stupider for Trump to proclaim the malaria drug treats the virus than it is to say hospitalization and ventilation treat the virus if neither have supporting data.

The evidence shows otherwise: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/health/coronavirus-ventilator-patients-die/index.html

Why do we need double blind studies to test drugs but we allow doctors to do all sorts of random procedures without studying then first?

Yiddish gibberish doesn't make it more profound. Sorry. — Benkei

I accept your apology.

It's not about optimism or pessimism. — Benkei

You think that only because you don't take seriously my mystical claim that thoughts literally affect outcomes. Tracht gut, vet zein gut. Sure, it's ridiculous, but it opens such possibilities, it's impossible not to embrace.

Your writing is aesthetically pleasing though, I should add. — praxis

I aim to please.

If the COVID 19 broke out in Arizona instead of New York, would the desicision to shut the country down have been the same? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

You guys aren't the red headed stepchildren, so I don't know why you think we'd all turn a blind eye to Arizonian death. I do think you've got nothing to worry about come June. No virus can survive those brutal 8000 degree Martian summers of yours.

While on that subject, so you know, I grew up in the deep south, and it gets crazy hot and humid in the summer, but I've never experienced anything more unbearable than the 113 degrees day I did in Phoenix one time. It was a burning fiery nightmare. To make it worse, I went to the In and Out Burger or some such thing that everyone raved about, and you had to dart up to the counter when your number was called or some homeless person would grab your food. Am I correct that neighboring states unload prison buses in Phoenix just to let the prisoners scrounge for food while slowly burning in hell?

Hopefully, the Pope won't condemn the lockdown protestors or the godfearing right will completely disown him. — praxis

The Pope's time would be better spent on removing the pedophile rapists from the ranks of his club. As to what he said regarding the earth, I don't know. He's not on my radar.

I read that 88% of the people placed on ventilators die. What evidence do we have that our hospitals are doing anything meaningful to save lives? Unless we can show the survival rate is statistically higher upon receipt of treatment, there is no basis for prolonging the inevitable infection of the majority of the population. Do I really care if there are sufficient hospital beds to die in?

You come up with some mad shit sometimes.

Congratulations and thank you for your contribution. :flower: — Baden

I do try to teeter on that fine edge between being profound and being absurd.

But these sick people keep showing up in front of me. Don't suffering people present themselves to you asking for help? — frank

Your path crossed theirs for the purpose of elevating you.
That's the purpose for everything. It would be hubris to assume you offered more to them than them to you when your journey intersected theirs. So yes, engage them, and thank them for their gift to you.

And that darkness you walked through, did you face it all alone? Or did somebody reach out their hand to you? — frank

The concept of alone is meaningless except to the godless.

But, to your more concrete question, their were fewer helpful people than I wished, but even the best surgeon can only push on this and push on that. All healing happens internally.

Here's a hero for ya: — Baden

There is a certain heroism in everyone who faces the day fighting whatever demons come their way. That encompasses the health worker as much as the hair stylist who stands well within six feet of her customer in order to keep her lights on.

Only as an exposition of how to conflate responsible behavior with timidness and stupidity with heroism. I think you know that though because unlike your governor, you're not a complete shit-for-brains. Feel free to save that. :kiss: — Baden

Had Sir Kemp (I knighted him) based his decision on godly inspired rhetoric like my own, I'd have been awestruck and fully supportive. As it stands, I think his decision was extracted from a much lower place, deep inside his shithole.

But I was born wanting to save the world. — frank

A laudable but impossible goal, so therefore less laudable than living out the full potential of your own creation, as that you are fully in control of and that is of equally infinite worth.

I am really inspirational today.

As expected: Chloroquine doesn't work — Benkei

That you expected it just means you're a pessimist. I blame you for its failure because you thought evil into existence. Just what kind of monster are you?

I'm the opposite by nature. — frank

Sounds boring. If you're stuck in the spinning swirling crashing death spin, you might as well enjoy the ride. Do you want your last breaths to be spent trembling and clinging to whatever you can hold onto until it too fractures into a million pieces?

It's the response of the unscarred soul that has never experienced true devastation, so it lives with the illusion that there really is stability to lose. True optimism is forged in trauma, so the most fearful are those who haven't ever felt walked in sufficient darkness, so they live their lives trying to avoid it, which only leads them to something worse. It's that frigid timid place of worry and fret where you hold onto whatever makes you feel stable, despite you're not realizing that whatever it is you hold onto is infinitely more fragile than the divinity impregnated in you. If you'd only step away and stand on your solid feet, you'd realize that is the only thing that won't falter.

Sort of an interesting post I think?

es. If the UT model is right, Georgia's health system should be ok if they start easing off restrictions. If things explode after a couple of days, local governments will take over and close back down as needed. They will cue off hospital administrators. That's how a lot of the US went on lockdown originally: at the request of hospitals. — frank

The truth is that there's a whole lot of speculating going on and no one knows with any real sense of likelihood what the hell is going to happen. Human behavior is variable enough that we just don't know. We can all take out our calculators and push a bunch of buttons and declare we've got it figured out, but we wouldn't.

So, it might well be that Kemp is going to be right about this and the Georgia economy will thrive. It's also possible it won't. The question then is one of prudence, as in, do you think putting your life savings on red is the prudent thing to do? There is something I like about optimistic recklessness, and this whole thing is way outside my control, so all I can do is watch the wheel spin and wait with excitement to find out.

Since you're asking about characters in a book, why not read the book to find out? Because any departure from that is a discussion on the level of whether Aquaman can beat Spiderman. — tim wood

I think we all understood the method by which the OP should be answered, which is to reference the book referenced. The question is why you haven't.

Be you a Christian or not, could I have your overall thoughts and judgement of Yahweh/Jesus based on if you see him living by the Golden Rule? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Yahweh and Jesus were different characters, so I don't see why they should be considered the same Defendant in this trial you've proposed. It could be that Jesus did live by the golden rule, but not Yahweh (or vice versa).

Anyhow, I think the general argument among believers is that Yahweh (assuming you are referring to the god of the Old Testament, although there is some textual support that El and Yahweh were different gods that later merged into one) is necessarily all good, so whatever he did that you might think was crazy, it's just due to your limited understanding of what good he was bringing about.

"1" has the superficial grammar of a noun, but this is misleading. — Banno

"One" is a noun (or, more precisely, a pronoun) in the sentence, "I'll have one," where "one" is whatever you were referring to.

In the sentence, "I have one dog," "one" is an adjective and there is no referent to the adjective other than it being a descriptor of the dog. You reach a similar result with other adjectives, as in, "I have a happy dog." Happy is not a thing.

So, give me some examples of where "one" is superficially a noun where you're just not identifying "one" being used in the adjective case.

Yeah, my life has been turned upside down, I used to spend all day inside working on my computer and only going out to exercise, and now I spend all day inside working on my computer and only go out to exercise within 2km of my home. :lol: — Baden

That is a saddness that will unfortunately outlast this virus.

And, in fairness, you said yourself your Governor was an idiot, so what are the chances of this working out well for you down there? Seriously? — Baden

Oh, make no mistake about it. He's got shit for brains. But something you got to respect for having that level of defiance. Here's hoping for the best. And I'll do my hoping eating a cheese burger at the fine in, not like you, all cooped up like a scared ass chicken.

Please enlighten me, Coronayoda... — Baden

We're just plain tired of being cooped up like chickens. Time to go out and see what the good Lord has in store. Sometimes you just gotta say what the fuck. It's only as complicated as you wanna make it. How many other ways can I say it to make you understand?

And how anyone can look at 2,700 deaths in one day and say, "Time to open everything up!" is just utterly beyond me. — Baden

Don't criticize what you can't understand.

Nope.

Georgia 3.7 million.
Ireland 4.9 million.

All the Irish are about to leave COVID country anyway. They may be thick, but they're not stupid. — Baden

I'm from the state of Georgia in the US, not the irrelevant country Georgia. Our population is 10.62 million. Theirs is 3.7 million.

There's actually a Dublin in Georgia. I think you guys named your city after ours. It was the home of the now defunct Redneck Games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck_Games

Georgia already has more cases than the whole of Ireland btw. But, I'm sure everything will be fine. :meh: — Baden

Georgia has a larger population than Ireland. Might even have more Irish than Ireland

We are willing to follow the guidelines and ultimately it is going to come down to trust which is what it has always been. Do we trust the people who are cooking our food? Do we trust the Priest who is preaching? Do we trust the Doctors who are treating us? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Georgia has declared the war is over as have Tennessee and now South Carolina. Restaurants open on Monday for dine in. You can go into lock down in the northeast or come down here for some Southern hospitality. I'm not saying this whole thing was total bullshit, but plenty of it smelled that way.

Whereas, in the US there are lot's of policies that increase deaths so that some corporations can make more money (such as having no effective public transportation, no cautionary principle to chemicals, anti union laws, few worker protections etc.), so coronavirus is revealing the hypocrisy of politicians and institutions that normally don't care about people's lives, but are forced to in this situation due to the first point above. — boethius

I was following you up to this point. Europe has public transportation because it had to because it had major population centers prior to the popularity of cars. In Atlanta, where I live, our population was fairly small through the 60s and 70s and it's been growing steadily sense. We do have a subway, but it's limited because it's pretty hard to retrofit a subway onto a pre-existing city, and heavy car ownership led to sprawl, which makes laying subway tracks after the fact all the more difficult. The trade off to sprawl is larger and more affordable homes, things you would never see in Europe or older cities in the US, like New York. Expansion of public transportation is not blocked by corporations, but it's blocked by suburbanites voting in referendums to keep the city folks out of their neighborhoods. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it has nothing to do with capitalism or corporatism, but more so with democratic will.

With regard to federal regulations over dangerous chemicals and worker safety requirements, the FDA and OSHA are fairly tight regulators, and, I don't know if you've been in the US, but we are an incredibly safe society due to the threat of litigation being around every corner. There is nothing more harrowing for an American than to drive on European roads. They are narrow, have few guardrails, they twist and turn, and don't give you that comforting 5 foot + shoulder for a little error.

Countries that don't have such a hypocritical political and bureaucratic class don't encounter these analytical problems: they've already done a lot of work reducing car accident deaths (I believe Sweden achieved their goal of 0 child car deaths a year recently) and no one's really forced to drive anyways: in other words, these countries don't already have plenty of "money in exchange for some lives" policies so coronavirus does not reveal a inconsistent governing ideology of the ruling class, where "suddenly they care about poor people". — boethius

My occupation makes me very aware of highway safety figures and death rates. Automobile deaths have been falling steadily every year fairly dramatically. Volvos (if still Swedish?) have been a leader in vehicle safety, and most manufacturers have caught up with them. At any rate, there can be an inverse relationship between road safety and vehicle related death because as road safety increases, so does one's comfort level at increasing their speed, and that then leads to a higher death rate. If you're in a third world country, for example, with one lane roads that scale the sides of cliffs, you're unlikely to die because you'll drive very safely and slowly. US highways were built to be driven safely at 80 miles per hour, and they feel much safer than the autobahn, for example.

Anyway, this whole "the right doesn't care about life" is just a failure to appreciate (or just a fun way to misstate) the right's belief in what the proper role of government is. That I don't believe I have a right to mandate what my neighbor ought to do doesn't mean I don't care about my neighbor.

If a vaccine eliminated the coranavirus tomorrow, shouldn't we keep the economy closed down indefinitely, considering we'll see a predictable spike in death from car accidents and other communicable diseases if we don't, or is our objective only to eliminate coronavirus deaths specifically? I wasn't sure how we are to compute the importance of human life versus making money. Maybe it's just we hate the coronavirus so much we want to kill it regardless of the cost.

As a matter of conceptual evaluation, emotions are not simply reactions to stimuli, but involve a degree of intentionality which cannot be reduced to causality. This is why emotions are a skill - a matter of learning. — StreetlightX

Maybe I've misunderstood what you're getting at, but these are my thoughts from what you've presented:

The baby emerging from the womb cries, I suppose because it's a new environment. Maybe it's cold, maybe it's scary. I really don't know. I do know he wasn't taught to cry and he never learned to cry. I also think there must be a moment in everyone's life when they experience a new emotion they hadn't previously felt. There is the feeling of love, of heartbreak, of loss, of disappointment that occur in our lives as new. When were they learned? What of the emotions of physical pleasure, like those from sex, from drugs, from an adrenaline rush, none of which are learned, but which simply occur under a specific set of external stimuli?

Animals have emotion as well, so I can't think that my dog decides to be angry at the person walking by my house, but he just is. He can be taught not to act on his impulse and to actually attack the neighbor, but the emotion itself seems very reactive.

What you say is contrary also to the way we think of intentionality. The idea of the "cold blooded" killer, being the one who acts not in the heated rage of emotion, but is calm and collected and decides to murder, is the one who receives the greater punishment.

I have trouble getting beyond the idea that emotions are primary They are what motivate us to act. Without emotion, we would all just stand still, not wanting anything and having no motivation at all. In fact, emotion means literally to move (as does motive, motivate, to be moved to action, etc.). If emotions are not primary, then what is making me want to want so that I am motivated to want? How can they therefore be a skill?

Next time you go, determine the cost of the visit against time spent with the man (or woman). — tim wood

Or better yet, try to figure out the cost before you go so that you can price shop. It's nearly impossible. You're going to have to get a doctor's fee, a facility fee, an anesthesiologist fee, a pathology fee, and who knows what else fee. Some can lock down a price, other's won't get back with you. Others have varying fees, depending upon whether you have insurance. I was quoted a much higher price if I used my insurance (although it didn't approach my deductible) than if I said I was uninsured. It would seem the cost should be the cost regardless of my affiliation.

It would seem that if the US is committed to this privatized model, transparency in pricing is a necessary component. How can competition exist if no one knows the price?

The capitalist fix to price gouging is having a competitor charge less (as opposed to government regulation). It would seem someone really committed to making the capitalistic model needs to work on transparency in pricing.

This is just to say there is something in between public healthcare and whatever it is we have now that we ought to give a try, but if the left keeps fighting for public healthcare and the right keeps saying no to everything, so we're just stuck in a pretty ridiculous status quo.

The availability of private insurance for those who don't get it through their employer has been at a crisis stage for a long while, even for those who are in the middle class. It needs to be addressed, and I'd listen to either side that has an idea that could actually get passed.

"That guy" (Joe Biden) will "run the country" 1000 times more effectively than the classless incompetent now attempting to do so. — Frank Apisa

Biden had no idea where he was. Isn't that cause for some concern, even if Trump is classless and incompetent? Why should either get a pass?

I'm not sure I'd trust this guy to watch my cat when I'm away, much less run the country.