How to Judge Pandemic Policies

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by thinwater

Most sailors on this forum have a feeling for the concept of doing the job right. We didn't do this right. Not even close.



It has been said, and the science and practice in hospitals supports this, that if we have choked down with 100% (not 90%) mask wear and proper hygiene for 2 weeks at any point, an epidemic can be choked out. But we couldn't do it because that's "too restrictive." Yet if I tell people they will wear hardhats and respirators in a work setting all day, they will (or they will leave... and some will be fired).



People don't listen unless the guidance is crystal clear. No mincing words. And then some percentage won't listen anyway, at least not out of the public eye.



And what's with noses sticking out? You might as well wear a pointed hat on your head, because it says "I'm stupid." And what about masks that don't fit? You only had months and months to fix that. Either you didn't care or didn't think, and neither is forgivable in audults.


[Now you know how I feel ]

It was not done because there were not enough masks, then China exported tons of useless masks because everyone relies on same day orders these days instead of stock piles as of yore, Fauci and others round the world said they were ineffective and not needed.. before a votle-face..
Anyway.. like testing, effectiveness is still unproven.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

If I do does that then mean all my forum comments move up to "expert" status and allow me to quote and counter others?

I never I never of should never have even looked at this "boating" thread

Well, it's up to you. You were the one who came into this thread. You are very welcome to participate. No one has "expert" status; we are just a bunch of cruisers chewing the fat.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by boatman61

It was not done because there were not enough masks, then China exported tons of useless masks because everyone relies on same day orders these days instead of stock piles as of yore, Fauci and others round the world said they were ineffective and not needed.. before a votle-face..
Anyway.. like testing, effectiveness is still unproven.

Why oh why is this misinformation still circulating?

The initial fear was over shortage of N95 masks, which were needed by health-care providers and other people on the front lines.

Authorities later moved to recommend the wearing of plain old disposable or cloth masks because they would greatly reduce the amount of virus-containing moisture spewed forth by asymptomatic and presymptomatic infected wearers. And since such people don't know they're infected, you need to ask EVERYONE to wear one when around other people.

Effectiveness? Try blowing out a candle with one. If you can't, or it's harder, you've just shown it would be effective at the above purpose.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by thinwater

. . . People don't listen unless the guidance is crystal clear. No mincing words. And then some percentage won't listen anyway, at least not out of the public eye.

Agreed. And to be fair -- the public were lied to about masks at first (by the CDC and even by the good Dr. F.!) because the authorities feared a run on supplies when they were needed for medical professionals. This kind of manipulation really erodes public trust.

Then to make matters worse, the science on the value of ordinary medical masks was not clear, and I think is still not entirely clear.

So it's a mess. I think next time around we need:

1. Adequate stockpiles of real N95 respirators WITHOUT VALVES . And we wear those, not hospital masks.

2. CLEAR instructions and policies, prepared ahead of time and not made up on the spot and then waffled on.

Originally Posted by thinwater

And what's with noses sticking out? You might as well wear a pointed hat on your head, because it says "I'm stupid."

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Thanks for the shout-out DH.

To me the only no-brainer that has become clearer is that most countries should have hit the pandemic early and hard. But there is also lots of learning about what did and didn't work later on, which is good. Maybe the WHO or similar could take all this in and formulate some future pandemic "prescriptions" that incorporate all this learning.

To regroup a little bit - I don't think we're completely done yet, but we can see the end of the tunnel (vaccination). As well, we are much better at treatment and most countries are no longer experiencing as much stress on their healthcare system. So, with the pandemic itself mostly in-hand, NOW is the time to start addressing the predicted collateral harms that have not yet been realized.

• a concerted effort to help school-age kids catch up and maintain their educational path
• enhanced efforts to get young people's careers back on track - more apprenticeships and internships, more help with tuition, some money to support them while retraining. I believe/hope that some companies will themselves step up, but if necessary there should be government inducements - eg any government aid to business (tax breaks, loan guarantees, etc) should carry an obligation to provide more entry level positions and apprenticeships
• something (eg low-interest or forgivable loans) to help small businesses get up and running again (with added rewards for hiring)
• help healthcare deal quickly with backlogs of delayed care.

I also believe in the resilience of most people, especially if they feel optimistic about the future and that society isn't just going to leave them to flail about.

Nothing to disagree with in the proposed measures.

Believe in resilience of people, but believe also in the immense harm which has been done to people whose experiences and situations are very different from ours and which may be hard for us to imagine.

We need to do better next time. We need to have a comprehensive and really well worked out plan to deal with anything like this which happens in the future, which avoids unnecessary damage of this type.

[RaymondR]

My prediction is that there will be no conclusive results from any of these studies.

Each of the proponents will hire their own experts to provide them with the results most supportive of their responses and the controversies will proliferate.

[DumnMad]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

My prediction is that there will be no conclusive results from any of these studies.

Each of the proponents will hire their own experts to provide them with the results most supportive of their responses and the controversies will proliferate.

Agree. They mostly talk of policies that slow down the spread and much of the population shows no symptoms and is untested. No way to have an effective study. Death rates/ million population tell us something but even then most died due to their underlying condition.

I think a country's annual "all-cause death rates" might show a few lumps that can only be explained by covids but even then not very significant compared to heart disease and and other obesity related sickness.

[Azul]

The Event 201 scenario: (excerpted from October 2020, sponsored by the WEF Davos crowd who must be psychic)

Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms. Sound familiar???

UN Agenda 21- signed by 193 countries in 1992, its objectives have been greatly aided by the covid response


Bill Gates to Xi 2015: I hope the world doesn't have a pandemic with coronavirus in the future. We will work together to get China out of poverty by 2020. You can hear the words come out of this hairless-cat psychopath for yourself. Along with "I believe there should only be 500 million people on the planet." Educate yourself about this so called "kindly philanthropist" that is a big believer in eugenics.

Fauci circa 2017: I hope the Trump administration doesn't have to deal with a pandemic

mRNA virus- changes your DNA, does not prevent transmission or infection, previous attempts on animals killed all the animals due to antibody dependent enhancement upon reexposure to native coronavirus

Thousands of patents since 2003 on coronavirus, literally every imaginable way to make money on the virus. Even though in the US it is illegal to patent natural viruses and germ warfare to change viruses in the lab. Somehow the CDC and WHO got exemptions...

Practically all speech about vaccines, the overblown reaction to the virus, possible effective treatments for the virus (look up budesonide for, one year ago a doctor was scathingly attacked for recommending it but Oxford just declared this $3 treatment would have prevented 95% of deaths in their randomized trial) has been censored

The US just approved another $1.9 trillion in "stimulus" or about $6000 for every man, woman and child but is giving out $1400 to people that filed a recent tax return

40% of all the currency ever printed by the US government was printed in 2020

This will be shown to be the biggest crime ever committed in the history of the world, planned in advance to create the biggest transfer of wealth in history by the elites using the WHO, WEF, CDC, and politicians as puppets, and perhaps to create a diversion for another ending cycle of fiat currency

Quarantines for healthy people? Really? The average age of death from covid is 83, or more precisely died with covid

The all causes death rate in the US for most of the year was better than any year since 2009. Influenza, pneumonia, influenza-like illness almost disappeared.

The PCR test was never intended to be used on patients, and even Klaus Schwab of the WEF has publicly bragged that by altering the cycle threshold the results can be twisted to show that social distancing and masks help, or that the infection is getting worse. Local hospitals are running the test at 42 cycle thresholds when anything over 30ish leads to dramatic false positives

A mask has been traditionally used as a sign to mark slaves

As a scientist, biologist, and professional that treated at least 100,000 more patients than Fauci I am calling ******** on the vast majority of what my government has told me in the last year. Covid is about controlling us. Since there is a script for what is going on that you can actually read on the Johns Hopkins University website, this goldrush is planned to go on until 2025 at which time they plan to start the new pandemic "Spars"

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Why oh why is this misinformation still circulating?

The initial fear was over shortage of N95 masks, which were needed by health-care providers and other people on the front lines.

Authorities later moved to recommend the wearing of plain old disposable or cloth masks because they would greatly reduce the amount of virus-containing moisture spewed forth by asymptomatic and presymptomatic infected wearers. And since such people don't know they're infected, you need to ask EVERYONE to wear one when around other people.

Effectiveness? Try blowing out a candle with one. If you can't, or it's harder, you've just shown it would be effective at the above purpose.

I think DH's already answered this satisfactorily already I'll leave it at that..

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by boatman61

I think DH's already answered this satisfactorily already I'll leave it at that..

Well, DH might be mistaken about that as well. But you can judge for yourself.

Here are some of the other mask myths, dissected.


Anyway it's all a hoax. But we made you all wear masks for almost a year and everyone looked really silly. LOL.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Well, DH might be mistaken about that as well. But you can judge for yourself.

Here are some of the other mask myths, dissected.


Anyway it's all a hoax. But we made you all wear masks for almost a year and everyone looked really silly. LOL.

Outside your bubble so you may not be aware..

https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/china-...er-past-month/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52092395

https://nationalfile.com/china-gave-...ral-countries/

Here in Portugal it was September before 'Safe' masks were available at our pharmacy here in Portugal

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Outside your bubble so you may not be aware..

https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/china-...er-past-month/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52092395

https://nationalfile.com/china-gave-...ral-countries/

Here in Portugal it was September before 'Safe' masks were available at our pharmacy here in Portugal

If the primary goal of mask wear by the public was to prevent unknowingly infected people from spreading the virus when they were out in public (... and it was) ... then any old cloth or disposable mask works. Same as when your Gran asked you to use your hanky when you sneezed.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

If the primary goal of mask wear by the public was to prevent unknowingly infected people from spreading the virus when they were out in public (... and it was) ... then any old cloth or disposable mask works. Same as when your Gran asked you to use your hanky when you sneezed.

I always carry tissues just for that purpose.. along with for the gf when there's no toilet paper in the ladies..

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23...es-like-covid/

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/co...k-do-they-work

[GordMay]

Africa experienced 30% rise in COVID cases during 2nd wave
Writing in The Lancet medical journal [1], researchers said the loosening of public health measures, such as distancing and intermittent lockdowns, probably contributed to higher death tolls, during the second wave, last year.

The study [1] looked at COVID-19 case, death, recovery and test data, carried out across all 55 African Union member states, between February 14 and December 31 2020.
Daily new cases during the first wave numbered 18,273. During the second wave this figure stood at 27,790 – a 30-percent rise.
Among the 38 nations, that experienced a pronounced second wave, and for which control measures were available, the study found that almost half had fewer measures in place, compared with the first.
The researchers said it was highly likely new variants had contributed to higher caseloads, across the continent’s second wave.
The highest incidences of cases per 100,000 population were recorded in Cape Verde (1,973), South Africa (1,819), Libya (1,526), Morocco (1,200), and Tunisia (1,191)
Of the 53 countries that reported more than 100 virus cases, one-third had case-fatality ratios higher than the global average of 2.2 percent.

[1] “The first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa: a cross-sectional study” ~ by Stephanie J Salyer, DACVPM et al
➥ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...632-2/fulltext

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by DumnMad

Hard to compare one country with another.
Some where the virus was late arriving were able to lock the borders and keep the virus out. e.g. NZ and Australia.
Au & NZ were in the Summer when it arrived. Europe were coming out of winter and in the Flu season.

Others like USA, UK, France, Italy etc already had many thousands spread through the country before anybody knew of its severity. New York as headquarters of international organisations didn't have a show.

On a deaths per million basis the US rate is not extreme and less than UK, Italy, Hungary, Portugal.

I started to underline what I thought was particularly good in this post and realized I would have to underline it all.


This is all absolutely true and extremely important. It is really quite silly trying to rank different countries' outcomes like a football league. The outcomes in different countries are the result of a huge mass of different factors, besides the government's pandemic response. Outcome does not equate to "performance".



The truest thing you can get from comparing different countries is what is proven negatively -- country X didn't do Y and had a good outcome -- that does prove that not doing Y does not make disaster inevitable in all cases. That's about as much as you can say.


Scientists of Stanford University did the most complex analysis of the various pandemic policies which I think has been done so far. They did it by mathetmatically modelling the response of the infection curves to various implemented measures. See here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1111/eci.13484


They found about what I would have expected -- different measures are somewhat effective; none of them is a killer app. There is no magic bullet and no magic formula of policies which will "solve" the pandemic, which can only be solved really with vaccination.