COVID-19 / Coronavirus Discussion

[KvHulk]

It's a LEGO site! let's lock the thread! Hooray!!!!

[jeff_14]

5 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

I am done listening to your drivel and anti-US rhetoric.  This is an American site and you are a guest here, so tread lightly.  As for the Czech Republic, you should thank the USA.  You would be speaking Russian without us.  

On that basis you should thank the French. You would be speaking proper English without them. 

[Bold-Arrow]

working hard to meet the demand 

 

[Ed Mack]

9 minutes ago, jeff_14 said:

On that basis you should thank the French. You would be speaking proper English without them. 

Yep...you are right and we returned the favor in WWII.  

[Alpinemaps]

Interesting that Fox is the one reporting that. 

That’s the first MSM source I’ve seen. But this angle has been talked to death in conspiracy forums for months.

[jeff_14]

Just now, Alpinemaps said:

That’s the first MSM source I’ve seen. But this angle has been talked to death in conspiracy forums for months.

About 3 years after the rest of the Allies got started, just like WW1. Everyone loves the latecomer. And you can thank the Soviets for making it easier on you for killing and suffering far more losses. 

[$20 on joe vs dan]

3 minutes ago, Alpinemaps said:

That’s the first MSM source I’ve seen. But this angle has been talked to death in conspiracy forums for months.

Does it really matter if the CV came from a wet market or a wet lab in China?

It's not like the world can hold the Chinese government liable....barely accountable as it is.

China has the world by the short and curlies because they manufacture almost everything...I definitely see lessons learned from all this leading to some future international trade trends that may not favor China...but practically speaking no one is going to sue the Chinese government and no one will be able to get a communist regime to be accountable in any real way.

[NIevo]

8 minutes ago, jeff_14 said:

About 3 years after the rest of the Allies got started, just like WW1. Everyone loves the latecomer. And you can thank the Soviets for making it easier on you for killing and suffering far more losses. 

Wow, you can't even quote the right comment.

There will be no thanking the Soviet's.  We could have just given Germany the can of sunshine treatment at that point but wasn't needed.  Not like we were fighting 2 fronts or anything.

 

3 minutes ago, $20 on joe vs dan said:

Does it really matter if the CV came from a wet market or a wet lab in China?

It's not like the world can hold the Chinese government liable....barely accountable as it is.

China has the world by the short and curlies because they manufacture almost everything...I definitely see lessons learned from all this leading to some future international trade trends that may not favor China...but practically speaking no one is going to sue the Chinese government and no one will be able to get a communist regime to be accountable in any real way.

I think this will open a lot of people's eyes to just how dependent we all are on the Chinese up to this point.  Almost like the most loved/hated man in America was saying about the importance of bringing jobs back here.

Edited April 8, 2020 by NIevo

[Ed Mack]

4 minutes ago, jeff_14 said:

About 3 years after the rest of the Allies got started, just like WW1. Everyone loves the latecomer. And you can thank the Soviets for making it easier on you for killing and suffering far more losses. 

What I can tell you about losses my friend is that we have a street named after my family in our hometown because we lost my father's two uncles in WWII being shot down in France when we got in the action late as you say.  Just leave this one alone.   

[NIevo]

[Darth_Raichu]

15 minutes ago, Alpinemaps said:

That’s the first MSM source I’ve seen. But this angle has been talked to death in conspiracy forums for months.

Which one is more conspiratorial?  The one where all death of people tested positive for Covid counted as Covid19 death or death count that ignores Covid19 as contributor to death?

[NIevo]

6 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

Which one is more conspiratorial?  The one where all death of people tested positive for Covid counted as Covid19 death or death count that ignores Covid19 as contributor to death?

Even before this report I had been reading from numerous people that worked in morgues and were being told regardless of what the person actually died from they were to list it as a Covid-19 death if they were positive.  So even if they had stage 4 cancer and were in a coma in hospice if they somehow got CV while there that would be the cause of death.

[Alpinemaps]

Which one is more conspiratorial?  The one where all death of people tested positive for Covid counted as Covid19 death or death count that ignores Covid19 as contributor to death?

Oops. Just realized I mixed up the “COVID-19 is from a lab” and “COVID-19 is the cause of every death” topics.

The former has been talked about for months.

The latter has also been discussed on conspiracy forums the last couple of weeks.

The general belief is any person that has COVID-19, and passes away is listed as a COVID-19 death, even if they passed away from old age, pneumonia, etc. So death counts for COVID-19 are higher than they should be.

Even before this report I had been reading from numerous people that worked in morgues and were being told regardless of what the person actually died from they were to list it as a Covid-19 death if they were positive.  So even if they had stage 4 cancer and were in a coma in hospice if they somehow got CV while there that would be the cause of death.

Yeah what he said (better than me)

[elmaslıefendi]

Just permanently lock this damn thread already, it's obviously cursed. Some people just can't stop attacking countries & insulting other members. Go build some LEGO or even spam your political views on Twitter, this is neithee a science thread, nor an election thread. 

[Darth_Raichu]

12 minutes ago, NIevo said:

Even before this report I had been reading from numerous people that worked in morgues and were being told regardless of what the person actually died from they were to list it as a Covid-19 death if they were positive.  So even if they had stage 4 cancer and were in a coma in hospice if they somehow got CV while there that would be the cause of death.

 

10 minutes ago, Alpinemaps said:

Oops. Just realized I mixed up the “COVID-19 is from a lab” and “COVID-19 is the cause of every death” topics.

The former has been talked about for months.

The latter has also been discussed on conspiracy forums the last couple of weeks.

The general belief is any person that has COVID-19, and passes away is listed as a COVID-19 death, even if they passed away from old age, pneumonia, etc. So death counts for COVID-19 are higher than they should be.

But if nothing else, that has been consistent with how CDC count death rate of Influenza A.  Most of those deaths were due to complication with Pneumonia, ie. they were not purely caused by flu.  I guess the question is who would benefit from inflated count?

[NIevo]

2 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

 

But if nothing else, that has been consistent with how CDC count death rate of Influenza A.  Most of those deaths were due to complication with Pneumonia, ie. they were not purely caused by flu.  I guess the question is who would benefit from inflated count?

Those trying to push the doom and gloom narrative, mainly the media. Creates a lot more clicks and sells a lot more articles when the death rates are many times more then they should be.

[HappyHawkeye]

3 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

 

But if nothing else, that has been consistent with how CDC count death rate of Influenza A.  Most of those deaths were due to complication with Pneumonia, ie. they were not purely caused by flu.  I guess the question is who would benefit from inflated count?

Agreed, just read a good response to this from JD Vance:

 

"There’s a way in which this claim is sort of interesting as an academic argument: effectively, how do we track deaths in an accelerating pandemic, where it isn’t possible to test everyone who’s dying?

A lot of folks have picked up on CDC guidelines that don’t require a test to confirm a case of COVID. Others have focused on the “with/or” question—just because someone dies *with* COVID doesn’t mean that’s the cause of mortality. A few responses.

First, people are right to say the situation is fluid and it’s tough to record every death accurately. But importantly, 1) this is true for every disease (do you think every flu death has a confirmed flu test? No, just check the CDC guidelines) and 2) miscounting goes both ways.

There’s a lot of reason to think we’re undercounting deaths. First, it has happened in nearly every major European country. NYC public health officials have argued that where normally 20-25 people die per day at home, that number has been higher than 200 as the crisis has peaked.

But the truth is that we won’t know until we can look at the all cause mortality numbers, and see how they’ve spiked or not in response to COVID. (To be clear, I have some qualms with how useful the all cause numbers will be here, but they’re probably the best we’ll have.)

Many have argued that all cause mortality numbers are dropping lately (can’t find the tweets). This is wrong: CDC usually takes months to fully tabulate the data. There’s been a lot of misinformation here—a suggestion that pneumonia deaths are dropping because health officials are overstating COVID numbers, for instance, is widespread on twitter. All of this stems from the fact that our mortality numbers don’t fully come in for months.  One exception here is NYC, which usually reports vital statistics rapidly (and has done so for many years).

Finally, I think the “with/or” debate misunderstands something pretty fundamental about comorbidity. Most people who die of a respiratory illness (including, yes, the flu) aren’t totally healthy people. If a dude with a heart condition gets the flu and dies, but would have lived another 10 months absent influenza, did he die of the flu? This **** is complicated, but that doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy to inflate COVID deaths."

[NIevo]

7 minutes ago, elmaslıefendi said:

Just permanently lock this damn thread already, it's obviously cursed. Some people just can't stop attacking countries & insulting other members. Go build some LEGO or even spam your political views on Twitter, this is neithee a science thread, nor an election thread. 

Then why do you keep clicking on it to read?  Funny how the only ones here attacking other countries/leaders are the members from foreign countries.

[NIevo]

Sorry, this is very long but has some very very interesting data points and observations.  Article can be found here:

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

Northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe, which has already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past and is likely an additional risk factor in the current epidemic.

South Korea, for instance, has experienced a much milder course than Italy and has already passed the peak of the epidemic. In South Korea, only about 70 deaths with a positive test result have been reported so far. As in Italy, those affected were mostly high-risk patients.

.....

According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS, the average age of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased are over 70 years old.

80% of the deceased had suffered from two or more chronic diseases. 50% of the deceased had suffered from three or more chronic diseases. The chronic diseases include in particular cardiovascular problems, diabetes, respiratory problems and cancer.

.....

Furthermore, according to a first Chinese study, the internationally used virus test kits may give a false positive result in some cases. In these cases, the persons may not have contracted the new coronavirus, but presumably one of the many existing human coronaviruses that are part of the annual (and currently ongoing) common cold and flu epidemics. (1)

.....

Important reference values include the number of annual flu deaths, which is up to 8,000 in Italy and up to 60,000 in the US; normal overall mortality, which in Italy is up to 2,000 deaths per day; and the average number of pneumonia cases per year, which in Italy is over 120,000.

Current all-cause mortality in Europe and in Italy is still normal or even below-average. Any excess mortality due to Covid-19 should become visible in the European monitoring charts.

.....

The younger test-positive deceased almost always had severe pre-existing conditions. For example, a 21-year-old Spanish soccer coach had died test-positive, making international headlines. However, the doctors diagnosed an unrecognized leukemia, whose typical complications include severe pneumonia.

.....

In Switzerland, some emergency units are already overloaded simply because of the large number of people who want to be tested. This points to an additional psychological and logistical component of the current situation.

.....

Italian immunology professor Sergio Romagnani from the University of Florence comes to the conclusion in a study on 3000 people that 50 to 75% of the test-positive people of all ages remain completely symptom-free – significantly more than previously assumed.

The occupancy rate of the North Italian ICUs in the winter months is typically already 85 to 90%. Some or many of these existing patients could also be test-positive by now. However, the number of additional unexpected pneumonia cases is not yet known.

A hospital doctor in the Spanish city of Malaga writes on Twitter that people are currently more likely to die from panic and systemic collapse than from the virus. The hospital is being overrun by people with colds, flu and possibly Covid19 and doctors have lost control.

.....

A new epidemiological study (preprint) concludes that the fatality of Covid19 even in the Chinese city of Wuhan was only 0.04% to 0.12% and thus rather lower than that of seasonal flu, which has a mortality rate of about 0.1%. As a reason for the overestimated fatality of Covid19, the researchers suspect that initially only a small number of cases were recorded in Wuhan, as the disease was probably asymptomatic or mild in many people.

Chinese researchers argue that extreme winter smog in the city of Wuhan may have played a causal role in the outbreak of pneumonia. In the summer of 2019, public protests were already taking place in Wuhan because of the poor air quality.

New satellite images show how Northern Italy has the highest levels of air pollution in Europe, and how this air pollution has been greatly reduced by the quarantine.

.....

A report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera points out that Italian intensive care units already collapsed under the marked flu wave in 2017/2018. They had to postpone operations, call nurses back from holiday and ran out of blood donations.

German virologist Hendrik Streeck argues that Covid19 is unlikely to increase total mortality in Germany, which normally is around 2500 people per day. Streeck mentions the case of a 78-year-old man with preconditions who died of heart failure, subsequently tested positive for Covid19 and thus was included in the statistics of Covid19 deaths.

According to Stanford Professor John Ioannidis, the new coronavirus may be no more dangerous than some of the common coronaviruses, even in older people. Ioannidis argues that there is no reliable medical data backing the measures currently decided upon.

.....

According to the latest German statistics, the median age of test-positive deaths is about 83 years, most with pre-existing health conditions that might be a possible cause of death.

According to Italian news reports, 90% of test-positive deceased in the Lombardy region have died outside of intensive care units, mostly at home or in general care sections. Their cause of death and the possible role of quarantine measures in their deaths remain unclear. Only 260 out of 2168 test-positive persons have died in ICUs.

.....

The Japan Times asks: Japan was expecting a coronavirus explosion. Where is it? Despite being one of the first countries getting positive test results and having imposed no lockdown, Japan is one of the least-affected nations. Quote: "Even if Japan may not be counting all those infected, hospitals aren’t being stretched thin and there has been no spike in pneumonia cases."

Italian researchers argue that the extreme smog in Northern Italy, the worst in Europe, may be playing a causative role in the current pneumonia outbreak there, as in Wuhan before.

In a new interview, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is "wrong“ and "dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as "grotesque“, "useless“, "self-destructive“ and a "collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society.

.....

As Professors Ioannidis and Bhakdi have shown, countries like South Korea and Japan that introduced no lockdown measures have experienced near-zero excess mortality in connection with Covid-19, while the Diamond Princess cruise ship experienced an extra­polated mortality figure in the per mille range, i.e. at or below the level of the seasonal flu.

.....

According to press reports, oxygen bottles may become scarce. The reason, however, is not a currently higher usage, but rather hoarding due to fear of future shortages.

.....

According to Italian Professor Walter Ricciardi, "only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus“, whereas in public reports "all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus“. This means that Italian death figures reported by the media have to be reduced by at least a factor of 8 to obtain actual deaths caused by the virus. Thus one ends up with at most a few dozen deaths per day, compared to an overall daily mortality of 1800 deaths and up to 20,000 flu deaths per year.

.....

An Italian study of August 2019 found that flu deaths in Italy were between 7,000 and 25,000 in recent years. This value is higher than in most other European countries due to the large elderly population in Italy, and much higher than anything attributed to Covid-19 so far.

In a new fact sheet, the World Health Organization WHO reports that Covid-19 is in fact spreading slower, not faster, than influenza by a factor of about 50%. Moreover, pre-symptomatic transmission appears to be much lower with Covid-19 than with influenza.

A leading Italian doctor reports that "strange cases of pneumonia“ were seen in the Lombardy region already in November 2019, raising again the question if they were caused by the new virus (which officially only appeared in Italy in February 2020), or by other factors, such as the dangerously high smog levels in Northern Italy.

Danish researcher Peter Gøtzsche, founder of the renowned Cochrane Medical Collaboration, writes that Corona is "an epidemic of mass panic“ and "logic was one of the first victims.“

Former Israeli Health Minister, Professor Yoram Lass, says that the new coronavirus is "less dangerous than the flu“ and lockdown measures "will kill more people than the virus“. He adds that "the numbers do not match the panic“ and "psychology is prevailing over science“. He also notes that "Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country.“

Pietro Vernazza, a Swiss infectious disease specialist, argues that many of the imposed measures are not based on science and should be reversed. According to Vernazza, mass testing makes no sense because 90% of the population will see no symptoms, and lockdowns and closing schools are even "counterproductive“. He recommends protecting only risk groups while keeping the economy and society at large undisturbed.

The President of the World Doctors Federation, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, argues that lockdown measures as in Italy are "unreasonable“ and "counterproductive“ and should be reversed.

Switzerland: Despite media panic, excess mortality still at or near zero: the latest testpositive "victims“ were a 96yo in palliative care and a 97yo with pre-existing conditions.

[Ed Mack]

10 minutes ago, elmaslıefendi said:

Just permanently lock this damn thread already, it's obviously cursed. Some people just can't stop attacking countries & insulting other members. Go build some LEGO or even spam your political views on Twitter, this is neithee a science thread, nor an election thread. 

I've listened to the negativity and US bashing for weeks now.  Enough.  

[Darth_Raichu]

6 minutes ago, NIevo said:

Those trying to push the doom and gloom narrative, mainly the media. Creates a lot more clicks and sells a lot more articles when the death rates are many times more then they should be.

MSM do benefit from bad news, but they are mostly reactionary. ie. I do not think they are smart enough to coordinate morgues etc to report higher numbers.  Plus in January most of them accused Trump a racist for limiting travel from/to China etc.

I just do not see the conspiracy angle here

 

[Darth_Raichu]

7 minutes ago, NIevo said:

Sorry, this is very long but has some very very interesting data points and observations.  Article can be found here:

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

Northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe, which has already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past and is likely an additional risk factor in the current epidemic.

South Korea, for instance, has experienced a much milder course than Italy and has already passed the peak of the epidemic. In South Korea, only about 70 deaths with a positive test result have been reported so far. As in Italy, those affected were mostly high-risk patients.

.....

According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS, the average age of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased are over 70 years old.

80% of the deceased had suffered from two or more chronic diseases. 50% of the deceased had suffered from three or more chronic diseases. The chronic diseases include in particular cardiovascular problems, diabetes, respiratory problems and cancer.

.....

Furthermore, according to a first Chinese study, the internationally used virus test kits may give a false positive result in some cases. In these cases, the persons may not have contracted the new coronavirus, but presumably one of the many existing human coronaviruses that are part of the annual (and currently ongoing) common cold and flu epidemics. (1)

.....

Important reference values include the number of annual flu deaths, which is up to 8,000 in Italy and up to 60,000 in the US; normal overall mortality, which in Italy is up to 2,000 deaths per day; and the average number of pneumonia cases per year, which in Italy is over 120,000.

Current all-cause mortality in Europe and in Italy is still normal or even below-average. Any excess mortality due to Covid-19 should become visible in the European monitoring charts.

.....

The younger test-positive deceased almost always had severe pre-existing conditions. For example, a 21-year-old Spanish soccer coach had died test-positive, making international headlines. However, the doctors diagnosed an unrecognized leukemia, whose typical complications include severe pneumonia.

.....

In Switzerland, some emergency units are already overloaded simply because of the large number of people who want to be tested. This points to an additional psychological and logistical component of the current situation.

.....

Italian immunology professor Sergio Romagnani from the University of Florence comes to the conclusion in a study on 3000 people that 50 to 75% of the test-positive people of all ages remain completely symptom-free – significantly more than previously assumed.

The occupancy rate of the North Italian ICUs in the winter months is typically already 85 to 90%. Some or many of these existing patients could also be test-positive by now. However, the number of additional unexpected pneumonia cases is not yet known.

A hospital doctor in the Spanish city of Malaga writes on Twitter that people are currently more likely to die from panic and systemic collapse than from the virus. The hospital is being overrun by people with colds, flu and possibly Covid19 and doctors have lost control.

.....

A new epidemiological study (preprint) concludes that the fatality of Covid19 even in the Chinese city of Wuhan was only 0.04% to 0.12% and thus rather lower than that of seasonal flu, which has a mortality rate of about 0.1%. As a reason for the overestimated fatality of Covid19, the researchers suspect that initially only a small number of cases were recorded in Wuhan, as the disease was probably asymptomatic or mild in many people.

Chinese researchers argue that extreme winter smog in the city of Wuhan may have played a causal role in the outbreak of pneumonia. In the summer of 2019, public protests were already taking place in Wuhan because of the poor air quality.

New satellite images show how Northern Italy has the highest levels of air pollution in Europe, and how this air pollution has been greatly reduced by the quarantine.

.....

A report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera points out that Italian intensive care units already collapsed under the marked flu wave in 2017/2018. They had to postpone operations, call nurses back from holiday and ran out of blood donations.

German virologist Hendrik Streeck argues that Covid19 is unlikely to increase total mortality in Germany, which normally is around 2500 people per day. Streeck mentions the case of a 78-year-old man with preconditions who died of heart failure, subsequently tested positive for Covid19 and thus was included in the statistics of Covid19 deaths.

According to Stanford Professor John Ioannidis, the new coronavirus may be no more dangerous than some of the common coronaviruses, even in older people. Ioannidis argues that there is no reliable medical data backing the measures currently decided upon.

.....

According to the latest German statistics, the median age of test-positive deaths is about 83 years, most with pre-existing health conditions that might be a possible cause of death.

According to Italian news reports, 90% of test-positive deceased in the Lombardy region have died outside of intensive care units, mostly at home or in general care sections. Their cause of death and the possible role of quarantine measures in their deaths remain unclear. Only 260 out of 2168 test-positive persons have died in ICUs.

.....

The Japan Times asks: Japan was expecting a coronavirus explosion. Where is it? Despite being one of the first countries getting positive test results and having imposed no lockdown, Japan is one of the least-affected nations. Quote: "Even if Japan may not be counting all those infected, hospitals aren’t being stretched thin and there has been no spike in pneumonia cases."

Italian researchers argue that the extreme smog in Northern Italy, the worst in Europe, may be playing a causative role in the current pneumonia outbreak there, as in Wuhan before.

In a new interview, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is "wrong“ and "dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as "grotesque“, "useless“, "self-destructive“ and a "collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society.

.....

As Professors Ioannidis and Bhakdi have shown, countries like South Korea and Japan that introduced no lockdown measures have experienced near-zero excess mortality in connection with Covid-19, while the Diamond Princess cruise ship experienced an extra­polated mortality figure in the per mille range, i.e. at or below the level of the seasonal flu.

.....

According to press reports, oxygen bottles may become scarce. The reason, however, is not a currently higher usage, but rather hoarding due to fear of future shortages.

.....

According to Italian Professor Walter Ricciardi, "only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus“, whereas in public reports "all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus“. This means that Italian death figures reported by the media have to be reduced by at least a factor of 8 to obtain actual deaths caused by the virus. Thus one ends up with at most a few dozen deaths per day, compared to an overall daily mortality of 1800 deaths and up to 20,000 flu deaths per year.

.....

An Italian study of August 2019 found that flu deaths in Italy were between 7,000 and 25,000 in recent years. This value is higher than in most other European countries due to the large elderly population in Italy, and much higher than anything attributed to Covid-19 so far.

In a new fact sheet, the World Health Organization WHO reports that Covid-19 is in fact spreading slower, not faster, than influenza by a factor of about 50%. Moreover, pre-symptomatic transmission appears to be much lower with Covid-19 than with influenza.

A leading Italian doctor reports that "strange cases of pneumonia“ were seen in the Lombardy region already in November 2019, raising again the question if they were caused by the new virus (which officially only appeared in Italy in February 2020), or by other factors, such as the dangerously high smog levels in Northern Italy.

Danish researcher Peter Gøtzsche, founder of the renowned Cochrane Medical Collaboration, writes that Corona is "an epidemic of mass panic“ and "logic was one of the first victims.“

Former Israeli Health Minister, Professor Yoram Lass, says that the new coronavirus is "less dangerous than the flu“ and lockdown measures "will kill more people than the virus“. He adds that "the numbers do not match the panic“ and "psychology is prevailing over science“. He also notes that "Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country.“

Pietro Vernazza, a Swiss infectious disease specialist, argues that many of the imposed measures are not based on science and should be reversed. According to Vernazza, mass testing makes no sense because 90% of the population will see no symptoms, and lockdowns and closing schools are even "counterproductive“. He recommends protecting only risk groups while keeping the economy and society at large undisturbed.

The President of the World Doctors Federation, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, argues that lockdown measures as in Italy are "unreasonable“ and "counterproductive“ and should be reversed.

Switzerland: Despite media panic, excess mortality still at or near zero: the latest testpositive "victims“ were a 96yo in palliative care and a 97yo with pre-existing conditions.

How did they explain the high rate of Covid19 in Iran?  I would not think they have high concentration of smog there and most likely they were not in lockdown either

[HappyHawkeye]

18 minutes ago, Darth_Raichu said:

MSM do benefit from bad news, but they are mostly reactionary. ie. I do not think they are smart enough to coordinate morgues etc to report higher numbers.  Plus in January most of them accused Trump a racist for limiting travel from/to China etc.

I just do not see the conspiracy angle here

 

Nor do I. A media conspiracy presupposes there's such a thing as "the media", as in a single monolithic and sentient entity that can uniformly dictate how information is gathered and disseminated. It also assumes that "the media" has somehow convinced not only the current administration, but president himself to  go along for the ride.

I think the more likely conspiracy here is that folks that were naysayers from the beginning are still looking for ways to downplay the seriousness of the virus rather than acknowledge not only the ever increasing death tolls, but the extreme efforts required to keep those numbers as low as they are.

[spener90]

1 hour ago, KvHulk said:

It's a LEGO site! let's lock the thread! Hooray!!!!

 

[Ed Mack]

https://twitter.com/DomJMoore/status/1247863605795717120?s=20