COVID-19 ... how we cope :)

[Sid Belzberg]

Let's add some fuel to the micron fire:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...es/5343537002/

The Gold standard n medicine for settling debates in medicine is Randomized Control Trials. Not interviews with various experts by USA today. Here is a peer reviewed paper in pubmed re the efficacy of n95 masks with healthcare workers using N95 masks compared those that did not. Conclusion-No significant difference..

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31479137/

Here is the conclusion for cloth masks vs medical masks that most people use

Conclusions: This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/

[Bob Gillanders]

These are number that are comparable to the Flu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvF...ature=emb_logo

No they aren't. 1,151 x 365 = 420,000 deaths per year.
Normal flu deaths in USA is around 35,000 to 50,000.
So this is about 10 times the flu.

I am familiar with Ivor Cummins. He makes some good points. But i don't need to sit thru his 37 minute video to know he doesn't support your conclusions.

Besides, if these were typical flu numbers for US and Canada,
USA 420,000
Canada 5 x 365 = 1,825
then you are saying Americans die from the flu at a rate approx. 28 times that of Canadians.
Yes, our health care system is better, but really.........

[Lucas Davies]

i say thanks for nothing- Lucas Davies quoted -Dr. Fauci "asymptomatic spread has never been the driver of outbreaks." "and then Lucas Davies said he has since "strongly said the exact opposite"

Where and when did Dr. Fauci "strongly say the exact opposite" and if he did what what data did Dr. Fauci base this on? Given Dr Fauci the CDC's and Redfiled's continual backpedaling we need to hear what new data they base their statements on.

The key question is Why is there fear over meaningless “cases”? Up to 90% Coivd19 "cases" are false positives high PCR cycle thresholds on people who are not infectious. Even among the small % of actual true positives: it is good news because COVID ICU admins and deaths are at all-time lows. These healthy people are contributing to herd immunity.

We need to reevaluate the data based on this and decide if we really need lock downs and masks for a problem that is no more lethal than a normal flu re (fatalitiy rate is est at .10% to.26% compared to early estimates of 3.5%) and is in fact an easily treatable virus pre hospitalization for early COVID high risk patients. The whole policy of sending high risk patients home untreated and waiting until it is too late when they are in the hospital is a disaster and is and has been criminal.

Here is what I said: "So no, according to your OWN SOURCE, he didn't say what you claimed, and has since strongly said the exact opposite." I never said that he said opposite of that quote; I said that he has since said the opposite of what you claimed he said.

The bottom line is that you simply don't actually care about the evidence. You'll cite and misquote people so long as they agree with you, and as soon as they don't, you'll start talking about how it's because China's controlling them or that they're "inconsistent," as though you'd for some reason expect people to forever keep the exact same opinion on a new virus that they had at its onset. I've posted three meta-analyses that provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of masks; you tried to discredit them because they say the same thing in the discussion that most research papers will say, and after I explained this, you just ignored them and moved on to the next individual person who agrees with you.

Here are some studies looking at asymptomatic infection:

A review from September suggesting that asymptomatic infection is a "significant factor in the rapid progression of the COVID-19 pandemic": https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-3012

A meta-analysis from September saying that "asymptomatic patients are a primary source for the geographic spread of COVID-19": https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...01971220304872

An analysis from June of published data that concludes that "there is substantial potential for pre-symptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in a range of different contexts": https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....08.20094870v2

A meta-analysis from July estimating asymptomatic infection to be 15.6%: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1002/jmv.26326

These were just some of the first studies that I clicked on. I didn't have to go searching for people that agreed with me; every study that I looked at supports the idea that asymptomatic spread is an extremely dangerous threat to people's lives. It always amazes me the arrogance of people who can see with their own eyes that there is a strong consensus among experts in a field, and will simply say, "No, you're wrong. I know better than all of you."

[Sid Belzberg]

No they aren't. 1,151 x 365 = 420,000 deaths per year.
Normal flu deaths in USA is around 35,000 to 50,000.
So this is about 10 times the flu.

I am familiar with Ivor Cummins. He makes some good points. But i don't need to sit thru his 37 minute video to know he doesn't support your conclusions.

Besides, if these were typical flu numbers for US and Canada,
USA 420,000
Canada 5 x 365 = 1,825
then you are saying Americans die from the flu at a rate approx. 28 times that of Canadians.
Yes, our health care system is better, but really.........

The US death numbers you are quoting were grossly inflated by the CDC to include many non COVID deaths that were counted as COVID, Do you agree that in Canada
the numbers are comparable to influenza?

[Sid Belzberg]

Here is what I said: "So no, according to your OWN SOURCE, he didn't say what you claimed, and has since strongly said the exact opposite." I never said that he said opposite of that quote; I said that he has since said the opposite of what you claimed he said.

The bottom line is that you simply don't actually care about the evidence. You'll cite and misquote people so long as they agree with you, and as soon as they don't, you'll start talking about how it's because China's controlling them or that they're "inconsistent," as though you'd for some reason expect people to forever keep the exact same opinion on a new virus that they had at its onset. I've posted three meta-analyses that provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of masks; you tried to discredit them because they say the same thing in the discussion that most research papers will say, and after I explained this, you just ignored them and moved on to the next individual person who agrees with you.

Here are some studies looking at asymptomatic infection:

A review from September suggesting that asymptomatic infection is a "significant factor in the rapid progression of the COVID-19 pandemic": https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-3012

A meta-analysis from September saying that "asymptomatic patients are a primary source for the geographic spread of COVID-19": https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...01971220304872

An analysis from June of published data that concludes that "there is substantial potential for pre-symptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in a range of different contexts": https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....08.20094870v2

A meta-analysis from July estimating asymptomatic infection to be 15.6%: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1002/jmv.26326

These were just some of the first studies that I clicked on. I didn't have to go searching for people that agreed with me; every study that I looked at supports the idea that asymptomatic spread is an extremely dangerous threat to people's lives. It always amazes me the arrogance of people who can see with their own eyes that there is a strong consensus among experts in a field, and will simply say, "No, you're wrong. I know better than all of you."

You mindlessly copy and paste articles without reading them and then arrogantly proclaim that you have the refutation! The very first article has problems Important comment on the bottom.As you said you are not a virologist and I am not going to waste time going through one paper after another that you have not even read. Educate yourself before posting,. When and where did Dr. Fauci say the opposite of his original statement re asymptomatic infection as you claim????


The only other evidence cited by Oran and Topal for the role of asymptomatic transmission is from one of the other 16 cohort studies they reviewed, regarding which they conclude: “More than half of [infected nursing facility] residents…were ASYMPTOMATIC at the time of testing and MOST LIKELY contributed to transmission.” In fact, the cited 3) NEJM paper explains that “7 days after their positive test, 24 of 27 asymptomatic residents (89%) had onset of symptoms and were RECATEGORIZED as presymptomatic.” Apparently Oran and Topal have confused here the very same issue (asymptomatic vs presymptomatic transmission) that they attempt to clarify at the onset of their own paper, re “To be clear, the asymptomatic individual…will NEVER develop symptoms.” I petition the journal editors to retract this paper, or at least to request that the authors modify their (perhaps unintentional but clearly misleading) conclusion regarding the contagiousness of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers. Surely any objective expert or meticulous reader would also wonder whether the paper’s conclusion, that asymptomatic carriers in point of fact are significant drivers of COVID-19 at the population level, is sufficiently substantiated by the "data" cited by the authors (i.e., that two or three persons in Italy reporting having had contact with asymptomatic carriers MAY thereby have become infected). This article and in particular its unsubstantiated conclusion has already been widely cited and therefore requires immediate correction.

The main problem with article 2 is much of their data they based their study on was not peer reviewed.

Article 2 issues.
"Several limitations of our study should be considered. First, the number of studies included in our meta-analysis was relatively low (13 case reports and four case-series), although we also reviewed articles with asymptomatic patients that did not report CT or laboratory findings. Second, laboratory findings in many studies were reported only as means and standard deviation, especially in case-series. Thus, we were unable to identify the proportion of patients with a lower or higher-than-normal range of laboratory tests. Our findings should be interpreted carefully, considering that the representation of clinical characteristics in the summarised report may have been incomplete. Third, the article search was performed in PubMed® and Google®, since a vast majority of relevant publications had been deposited in preprint servers at the time of our literature search."

Article 3
This artice is not peer reviewed and can't be relied upon. Secondly "pre-symptomatic" transmission is different than asymptomatic transmission. We are talking about Asymptomatic carriers are carriers of typically trace amounts of virlal RNA who may have fought off the virus with natural Tcell immunity but had no symptoms and never will have symptoms.

Article 4
like article 3 suggests that they may be dealing with presymptomatic patients, not asymptomatic patients
"This may lead to some presymptomatic cases to be mistaken for asymptomatic patients"

[Lucas Davies]

You mindlessly copy and paste articles without reading them and then arrogantly proclaim that you have the refutation! The very first article has problems Important comment on the bottom.As you said you are not a virologist and I am not going to waste time going through one paper after another that you have not even read. Educate yourself before posting,. When and where did Dr. Fauci say the opposite of his original statement re asymptomatic infection as you claim????


The only other evidence cited by Oran and Topal for the role of asymptomatic transmission is from one of the other 16 cohort studies they reviewed, regarding which they conclude: “More than half of [infected nursing facility] residents…were ASYMPTOMATIC at the time of testing and MOST LIKELY contributed to transmission.” In fact, the cited 3) NEJM paper explains that “7 days after their positive test, 24 of 27 asymptomatic residents (89%) had onset of symptoms and were RECATEGORIZED as presymptomatic.” Apparently Oran and Topal have confused here the very same issue (asymptomatic vs presymptomatic transmission) that they attempt to clarify at the onset of their own paper, re “To be clear, the asymptomatic individual…will NEVER develop symptoms.” I petition the journal editors to retract this paper, or at least to request that the authors modify their (perhaps unintentional but clearly misleading) conclusion regarding the contagiousness of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers. Surely any objective expert or meticulous reader would also wonder whether the paper’s conclusion, that asymptomatic carriers in point of fact are significant drivers of COVID-19 at the population level, is sufficiently substantiated by the "data" cited by the authors (i.e., that two or three persons in Italy reporting having had contact with asymptomatic carriers MAY thereby have become infected). This article and in particular its unsubstantiated conclusion has already been widely cited and therefore requires immediate correction.

I've repeatedly stated that he said the opposite of what YOU CLAIMED HE SAID: "Asymptomatic carriers of viral RNA do not spread COVID as per Dr. Fauci himself." He didn't actually say this according to your own source. In August, he did say, "We’ve learned that asymptomatic persons are likely key drivers of transmission events, when we thought months ago that they did not play an important role in transmission."

Fortunately for you, the authors responded to the comment that you read. It's literally right above it:

In our view, Halperin does not fairly characterize the evidence of asymptomatic transmission presented by Lavezzo et al. concerning their research in Vo', Italy. The authors state, "The presence of a significant number of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections raises questions about their ability to transmit the virus. To address this issue, we conducted an extensive contact tracing analysis of the 8 new infections."Then, after describing the various contacts of the infected individuals, the authors conclude, "These results suggest that asymptomatic infections may play a key role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2."

This is the complete sentence in the final paragraph of our review from which Halperin quotes: "The early data that we have assembled on the prevalence of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection suggest that this is a significant factor in the rapid progression of the COVID-19 pandemic."From our perspective, it appears that Halperin has inferred a far more extreme interpretation than our actual words are meant to convey. We stress that the data are early, not definitive. We describe them as suggestive, not conclusive.

We believe that our review accurately portrays the source material that we have collected. Our review is a beginning, though, not an end. In the months and years to come, we expect that far more will be learned about asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. We are eager to see what research teams around the world will contribute to this important area.

I know that you're not going to spend your time going through each paper. Because they disagree with you. At best, you'll look for a small problem and try to use it to discredit everything else, even though the consensus among experts clearly disagrees with you.

[Steve Douglas]

Hi Sid:

The Gold standard n medicine for settling debates in medicine is Randomized Control Trials. Not interviews with various experts by USA today. Here is a peer reviewed paper in pubmed re the efficacy of n95 masks with healthcare workers using N95 masks compared those that did not. Conclusion-No significant difference..

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31479137/

The first trial you cite was not about those "using N95 masks compared with those who did not". It was about those using N95 masks compared with those wearing a medical (i.e. surgical) mask. So it is invalid to conclude from that trial that wearing a mask (N95 or medical) is ineffective. The conclusion is that there is inconsequential difference between the use of either of those masks.

Here is the conclusion for cloth masks vs medical masks that most people use

Conclusions: This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/

The trial shows that health care workers who wear a cloth mask are at much greater risk of contracting Influenza Like Illness than who wear a medical mask (which per the first trial is about the same effectiveness as an N95 mask).

But you still can't draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of wearing a cloth mask versus wearing nothing. To draw the conclusions you're trying to make you would have to additionally have trials where neither the patient or Health Care Worker (HCW) wear a mask; where the patient wears a mask and the HCW wears nothing; and where both the patient and HCW wear masks. And to do those trials for all mask types.

If you think I have mis-read the studies or my logic is flawed, have at it and I will retract/modify my statements.

Right now the recommendations are to social distance, and if you can't do that *both* parties should wear a mask.

Steve

P.S. IIRC it was reported a few weeks ago that Florida's ICU's were near capacity because of the surge in Covid-19 cases. That's from memory and I may be off as to the time-frame and I cannot recall whether I saw it in more than one source. However, if true, I don't think the sudden influx of people into the ICU was the result of false positives.

[Sid Belzberg]

"We’ve learned that asymptomatic persons are likely key drivers of transmission events, when we thought months ago that they did not play an important role in transmission."
Ok, that is interesting, although he couches this new statement with "likely". So far we have no known examples of someone with trace amounts of viral RNA as per the current PCR standard that transmitted the disease.
The thesis that we will suddenly have an outbreak from people with trace viral loads transmitting the infection is incorrect. An asymptomatic carrier with a significant viral load is very different than a carrier of trace amounts of dead viral load fought off with TCell immunity. Most of the PCR tests today are detecting people wit trace viral loads. In short the pandemic is over and lockdowns and masks at this point are not based on science.

[Aris Marghetis]

The US is still seeing upwards of 1000 deaths a day. In Canada deaths are low, but if we suddenly opened up borders and nightclubs, it could start going in the wrong direction.

It's not about scaring people, it's about making smart decisions within a risk vs. benefit framework. Wearing a mask, zero risk, some benefit, good idea. Opening schools, some risk, but large benefit, probably the right move. Allowing 10 000 people at a hockey game, high risk, not much benefit, probably not a good idea.

Well said Patrick! It would be great if more of us could demonstrate such ability to make reasonable orders-of-magnitude judgements. Do I like masks? Who cares. For the slight annoyance of wearing one, if I can save lives, why not?! I'm blown away by intelligent people who keep fixating on tangential narratives to support basically political positions. Like any virus cares about that lol

Also, why do some people keep comparing this situation to things like the flu, and pretend they're ignorant of the concept of Excess Deaths?!
The last time such a pandemic happened (all numbers estimates), the Spanish Flu infected 500,000,000 (a third of the world's population then)
But note that initial estimates of deaths were 20,000,000; but since revised historically to be 50,000,000 - our human costs will be felt for decades

Anyway, thanks for your post Patrick, your clear thinking perked me up!

[Sid Belzberg]

I've repeatedly stated that he said the opposite of what YOU CLAIMED HE SAID: "Asymptomatic carriers of viral RNA do not spread COVID as per Dr. Fauci himself." He didn't actually say this according to your own source. In August, he did say, "We’ve learned that asymptomatic persons are likely key drivers of transmission events, when we thought months ago that they did not play an important role in transmission."

Fortunately for you, the authors responded to the comment that you read. It's literally right above it:



I know that you're not going to spend your time going through each paper. Because they disagree with you. At best, you'll look for a small problem and try to use it to discredit everything else, even though the consensus among experts clearly disagrees with you.

I actually did go through the other papers and edited my reply. However, I did come across this interesting adversarial reply to a study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7219423/ that supported that asymptomatic carries do not transmit the disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7280093/. The key part of the letter said this,

"First, at the time of testing, the patient may have been only carrying inactive viral particles. It is well known that a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) only indicates the presence of viral RNA and not necessarily viable virus [³]. In this case, the patient was tested on hospital day 26. Furthermore, her respiratory symptoms were present for one month prior to admission. Therefore, the patient was tested almost 56 days after her initial symptom onset. Given that the patient had a month of symptoms prior to admission, she could well have had SARS-CoV2 initially and cleared the infection by the time of admission. Thus, the positive test could well have detected non-viable viral particles only."

This is the type of asymptomatics we are detecting today and pose no transmission threat at all.

[Bob Gillanders]

The US death numbers you are quoting were grossly inflated by the CDC to include many non COVID deaths that were counted as COVID, Do you agree that in Canada
the numbers are comparable to influenza?

If you are now conveniently changing your argument that the US death numbers are overstated, no sale. I am familiar with the comorbidity argument, not buying it.
USA has one of the absolute worst records fighting the virus, Trump and the whole gang have no credibility.

[Sid Belzberg]

If you are now conveniently changing your argument that the US death numbers are overstated, no sale. I am familiar with the comorbidity argument, not buying it.
USA has one of the absolute worst records fighting the virus, Trump and the whole gang have no credibility.

My question is about Canada, please answer it. As far as the CDC is concerned, they are the ones that stated they have received data that grossly overstates deaths caused by COVID. if you have an issue with that take it up with the CDC. In 2018 in Canada we had 8510 flu related deaths. mostly with elderly people and those with comorbidities just like with COVID.
So if the numbers are to be trusted in Canada (unlike the US they have not reported issues with received data) then indeed it is comparable to the flu. and the lockdowns are uncalled for. As for masks that should be up to the individual as it always has been. Stating that people who test positive with trace viral RNA from dead viruses poses any type of transmission threat is ridiculous.

[Pargat Perrer]

........ In short the pandemic is over and lockdowns and masks at this point are not based on science.

Sid I can understand the questioning of lockdowns, because let's face it, if an entire winter of lockdowns is coming, the world is looking at something worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. So I think what you are contributing here has some value in the question of lockdowns. We do need to ask about cases and how relevant they may or may not be at this stage.

What i dont' get is the questioning of the use of masks. Why even go into that? I do believe that in a lot of Asian countries, masks are worn by the masses during their daily outings, shopping etc. and that is even before covid came onto the scene. Because of their population density in their big cities, such as Tokyo and Seoul, they have simply decided masks are worth the inconvenience. We in North America need to follow their lead, in my opinion. So why fight that? As Patrick Kirby wrote, it is low-risk and at least some benefit, and maybe masks need to become as necessary at all times as... regular clothes in public.

[Peter McKillop]

My question is about Canada, please answer it. ....

My questions ask for clarification of your numbers. Please answer them.

Sid, I'd like to better understand your position on certain matters. The following paragraph was copied a few minutes ago from Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center:

The first case of COVID-19 in US was reported238 days ago on 21/01/2020. Since then, the country has reported 6,630,051 cases, and 196,763 deaths.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases

Now, are you saying that you consider 6,630,051 x 90% = 5,967,046 cases to be false positives? And does that, in turn, mean that you think data providers like JHU shoud be reporting accumulated US covid cases as 663,005? If that is the case, then how would you calculate the covid mortality rate?

[Sid Belzberg]

My questions ask for clarification of your numbers. Please answer them.

Peter the accepted way of establisihng a COVID CASE is to use a PCR amplification of 30. A PCR rate of 47 will mix false positives with true positives. If for example at an amplification rate of 30 I detect RNA on an asymptomatic patient because I was able to detect at a lower amplification rate I know that we are dealing with an asymptomatic that has a high likelihood of subsequently showing symptoms hence becomng a presymptomatic.
On the other hand if we do a PCR amplification rate of 47 we are going to catch a huge swath of people carrying dead non viable viral particles that will not pass on the disease. At the height of the pandemic you probably detected a much higher percentage of true positives. At the tail end of the pandemic which has now been for at least 6 weeks you are going to get mostly false positives.

So at this stage it is estimated that 90% are false positives at the early stages likely the opposite is true. Unfortunately setting the PCR amp rate at 47 is a major blunder as we are deprived of reliable data. Better would have been to do both an amplification of 30 and 47 so that you could distinguish the true positives with possible false positives and then repeat the process on the patient a few days later to see if the viral load increased ie detectable at lower amplification rates.

So as far as the math goes we do not have the data to know when the shift occurred from mostly true to mostly false positives. We do know in Canada by virtue of much lower hospitalizations and deaths with an increasing number of positives we are likely detecting people with dead viral particles typical of the tail end of a pandemic.

At the risk of being repetitive this is an excellent video explaining on the mathematics of pandemics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...ature=emb_logo