Posted on 04/14/2020 8:21:31 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The theory behind curve-flattening is not that the virus will mysteriously disappear while we are all hunkered down, and we will emerge when it is safe to come out. That won’t happen. The point of curve-flattening is to prolong the epidemic, making it last longer than it otherwise would, as you can see in the curve-flattening diagrams. That way, more or less the same number will get sick and the same percentage will die, with one exception: our hospitals will not be overwhelmed by a crush of COVID-19 cases, and so ICU rooms and so on will be available for those who need them. That was the point of the shutdowns–to flatten the curve by stretching out the epidemic.
We know now, the COVID-19 virus was grossly overestimated, at least with respect to the demand its victims would place on hospitals. Weirdly, it is not easy to find a definitive figure for the number of hospitalizations to date. The Centers for Disease Control estimates, if you do the arithmetic, that as of April 4 around 41,250 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19, which seems too low. The COVID Tracking Project pegs it at 62,673 as of April 13. Does that sound like a lot of hospitalizations? As usual, the numbers need a context.
During last year’s flu season, according to the CDC, 490,561 people in the U.S. were hospitalized due to the seasonal flu virus. The prior year, it was 810,000 flu hospitalizations. This explains why, as we noted here, America’s hospitals have not been overwhelmed by the number of Wuhan flu sufferers, not even in New York City.
Once again, government officials are making decisions with catastrophic effects on many millions of lives, on the basis of models that have proved to be wrong. The shutdowns should end tomorrow.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
Yet the author claimed that the same number of people would have died without the intervention as will die with it and showed the graph, I can only assume to support his claim. The graph does not.
The article is 100% correct and sounds like it could’ve been cut and pasted from my posts on FR over the past few weeks based on my extensive reading and research on the COVID-19 phenomenon. We WERE told the shutdown needed to happen to avoid “overwhelming” the hospitals. At least at first, then the rationale and goalposts kept moving to find any reason to keep the shutdown going.
As he says, the goal was NOT to reduce overall deaths because this is scientifically impossible. When people do not develop immunity, they will catch the virus once the shutdown ends, just at a different time and place.
Places that have not been shutdown as much or at all are not seeing massive surges in the virus compared to those that are shut down.
The insane models of millions of deaths that were put out were ludicrous to anyone with a basic knowledge of historical pandemics and mathematics from the beginning. They have proven in this pandemic to be absolute hysterical exaggerations as well.
Shutdowns as they are being used right now are junk science. They are not proven to accomplish anything. Public officials seem to constantly change the reasons they think shutdowns are necessary. But the original reason about avoiding hospital crowding had little relevance in the beginning and absolutely no relevance now that hospital capacity has been greatly expanded and the virus’s lethality has come in far under the early dire predictions.
Vaccines against bacteria (pneumococcal pneumonia is caused by a pneumococcus bacteria) do not build lasting immunity. That's also why you should get a tetanus booster every 5 years or so.
We have to re-vaccinate against flu because the flu virus is constantly mutating and has many different strains. Vaccine manufacturers and the CDC pick the 3 or 4 strains they think most likely to circulate every year, and vaccinate against those. But sometimes their educated guess is wrong, and sometimes there are strains in circulation that haven't been used in a vaccine at all.
Well then stay locked in your closet for another year or so while the rest of us get back to living.
Correct. The contention that the danger was non existent because the outcome was overstated makes no sense. But then again it is the same guy who consistently is not very logical.
#OUAN Open up America Now!!
Assuming that health care actually helps people, not overwhelming the health care system should reduce overall deaths. The argument can be made that it doesn't reduce overall cases, though. To do that, you need a working vaccine.
The theory of “flattening the curve” has never been about ...
... reducing the total number of infected,
... or reducing the total number of hospitalizations,
... or reducing the total number of deaths.
The theory has always been about spreading those total numbers out over time.
“We are stupid. We pick the dumbest, most corrupt among us, to lead us.
Then we wonder why they make bad decisions.”
************************************************************
If only we had the great and wise 0bama to save us.
Brilliant!!!
Zero...no, I’m not Catholic. :-)
So whose chart is correct?
Yours, or Birx’ showing the curve is turning?
Well we do not know what percentage requires medical attention on an ongoing basis. But there were systems being overloaded with cases. But that is still what the curve flattening was really all about. It was to prevent people from getting it, just slowing the occurrences to manageable numbers.
We didn’t know.
Fair predictions were made. People were dying from a fast moving disease which clearly wasn’t “just the flu”. China was freaking out; lying (of course) about what was happening, but actions spoke loudly.
Shutdowns did slow it enough to figure out the hydroxychloronique cocktail which saved many lives.
Italy did suffer overloaded hospitals.
Lethal pandemics do happen.
1 in 100 dead wasn’t an unreasonable prediction.
Lots of people were going to self-isolate anyway, to an economy-damaging degree.
The response wasn’t going to be ideal.
Question is: which kind of wrong would you rather be?
No, he was right about this point. Flattening the curve meant reducing the peak by slowing the spread, which extends the time. All the curve flattening charts showed this, which is what he said.
Where he and others making this argument are wrong is that they are assuming success in flattening the curve means somehow that we never needed to do it, and that regional success now translates to long term national or global success.
That's not necessarily true. Recall, there was a point when most of the cases were in China and it wasn't yet widespread in the rest of the world. And after the numbers in China were under control the cases started to fall off. But then it reached the rest of the world and we're way beyond those numbers now. The same thing could happen here. NYC and a few urban centers have been heaviest hit. When those numbers get under control it's going to make the national numbers look good. But a lot of the country hasn't had that experience, yet. If it does the numbers can shoot right back up.
This was a “lose/lose” situation. To curve or not to curve....?
It is likely that nearly same number of people will become infected.
It is likely that fewer people will die from it because of lowering the curve and spreading out the infections over a longer period of time.
This lowering, bought us very much needed TIME! Time to ramp up production, procurement, testing of medical supplies. Come up with and testing new treatments. Get a jump on creating vaccines. Educate and train the public about ways to avoid infecting others. Learn valuable lessons on dealing with future diseases by incorporating systems and management techniques/procedures now that will be at the ready for the next attack.
It (lowering the curve) was NOT for “nothing”. It just wasn’t the magic pill everyone thought it could be, it NEVER was supposed to be.
People are under the general impression that “we can fix ANYTHING”, we CAN’T!
The global warming/climate change people embrace this canard. Even IF it were true, THERE IS ***NOTHING*** WE COULD DO ABOUT IT. NOTHING! The Erff is a YUGE place. We meager humans (a pimple on an elephants ass) have not the capacity to make that kind of change. We just DON’T.
Turning off the economy was a political choice. Going with the “herd immunity” option, which was technically the better option from many perspectives, was NEVER politically viable. MILLIONS or HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of DEAD was NEVER an option. It would have been “political suicide” for decision makers.
So, for all the nipping at our heels over “we should have done this”, “we should have done that”, “we should have done this SOONER”, “we should have done that SOONER”, “we should have never done this/that” are wasting our time.
IT DOESN’T MATTER ONE BIT! Society doesn’t have the balls for implementing “herd immunity” PERIOD!
IT WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN! GET OVER IT!
The metric that matters is whether hospitals are being overwhelmed.
Check out what the situation is like in some hospitals in New York in this article.
The percent needing medical attention is tiny compared to those TESTING positive. Open up the economy NOW!!!
Do we really know that our hospitals would have been overwhelmed without the social distancing, closures, and lock-ins? What is the experience of other countries where the restrictions were fewer? How about past epidemics involving similar viruses? It’s troubling that there are so many Freepers who take it as given that this virus spreads much faster than others.
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