The P&R Plague Thread (Covid-19)

[mrandyk]

14 hours ago, jaws said:

 

I don't know, I think enrollment numbers are important to schools but things like retention rate is just as important. A strong majority of students and faculty/staff want in person learning. If schools switch to remote learning, they will have a dip in retention. Also, at most brick and mortar schools, it is not really any cheaper for the university to go online only. There are still expenses that need to be paid and sometimes even more expenses to educate students. That is why it is hard to refund any money for switching to online only. If you want to have a discussion on why higher education cost so much to begin with, I think that could be discussed in another thread. 

The cost of higher education is its own topic entirely. States need to return to funding this common good. Just as a child-less individual pays taxes to educate the children of their community, states should be willing to do the same for their public universities. Education is a common good that benefits us all. We are all much better off with an educated workforce.

 

I've worked in college admissions at the first-time, transfer, and graduate levels, and no one ever talks about retention. I'd wager that controllable retention is very specific to each department and so it isn't a big point of discussion. I think it's also worth pointing out that public universities are state-run entities that are horribly inefficient. It all trickles down from a lack of leadership running your state.

 

The higher education strategy across the nation this Fall was to drag in as much tuition money as they possibly could, pandemic be damned because there are bills to be paid. This meant telling everyone that things are fine and normal and that school would go on as planned. Obviously things are not normal and now thousands of Covid breeding grounds have been created across the nation, from which students will inevitably be sent home to spread the disease in their own communities. This wouldn't have happened with any sort of leadership from above. State/federal aid to responsible universities who went remote from the start would have saved many lives.

[Moiraine]

7 minutes ago, mrandyk said:

Education is a common good that benefits us all. We are all much better off with an educated workforce.

Unless you're Trump.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[admo]

 

In other words,  "our numbers have been wrong, because we have been testing it wrong, ooof "

 

 

 

"All these months into the pandemic, we may have been testing the wrong way"

 

“It’s just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T. values from all these tests — that they’re just returning a positive or a negative,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York.

“It would be useful information to know if somebody’s positive, whether they have a high viral load or a low viral load,” she added.

Officials at the Wadsworth Center, New York’s state lab, have access to C.T. values from tests they have processed, and analyzed their numbers at The Times’s request. In July, the lab identified 794 positive tests, based on a threshold of 40 cycles.

With a cutoff of 35, about half of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 70 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30.

In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. “I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one,” he said.

Other experts informed of these numbers were stunned.

“I’m really shocked that it could be that high — the proportion of people with high C.T. value results,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “Boy, does it really change the way we need to be thinking about testing.”

[admo]

So basically teh next call in the playbook will be... "There is a likely chance you may get the virus.  And it's no walk-in-the-park if you do. So it is strongly  recommended that if you are 55 and over, to wear a mask.  If you have a pre existing condition, you must wear a mask.  And also, if you are 14 or under, it is also recommended to wear a mask".  Beyond that, it's business as usual.

 

Probably should have been this way months ago.  Or maybe I'm just goofy and tired of wearing a mask since mid April.

[BigRedBuster]

5 hours ago, admo said:

So basically teh next call in the playbook will be... "There is a likely chance you may get the virus.  And it's no walk-in-the-park if you do. So it is strongly  recommended that if you are 55 and over, to wear a mask.  If you have a pre existing condition, you must wear a mask.  And also, if you are 14 or under, it is also recommended to wear a mask".  Beyond that, it's business as usual.

 

Probably should have been this way months ago.  Or maybe I'm just goofy and tired of wearing a mask since mid April.

You really don’t understand mask wearing do you?

 

you don’t wear a mask to protect yourself. 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[Danny Bateman]

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

Every f#&%ing reply to this tweet makes me want to bang my head into a brick wall repeatedly.

[Danny Bateman]

Twitter account of guy who died of COVID tweets out COVID isn't as deadly as we're led to believe.

 

You can't make this stuff up.

 

 

[TGHusker]

tRUMP admin pandemic adviser states we need to flip over to the 'herd immunity' model - like Sweden's .   

 

The bold is very concerning and the bold, underlined, italicized, red, large print is  both crazy   and shameful but even more so it

is both murderous and leaves me speechless - beyond what words can express.   Vote this admin out of office.  Our nation's life literally is dependent on doing so as trump places yes men around him.   This is how dictators rule.

 

https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/New-Trump-pandemic-adviser-pushes-controversial-15526711.php

 

Quote

 

One of President Donald Trump's top medical advisers is urging the White House to embrace a controversial "herd immunity" strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, while taking steps to protect those in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations, according to five people familiar with the discussions.

The administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, according to current and former officials as well as experts, particularly with regard to testing.

The approach's chief proponent is Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist from Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution, who joined the White House earlier this month as a pandemic adviser. He has advocated that the United States adopt the model Sweden has used to respond to the virus outbreak, according to these officials, which relies on lifting restrictions so the healthy can build up immunity to the disease rather than limiting social and business interactions to prevent the virus from spreading.

 

Sweden's handling of the pandemic has been heavily criticized by public health officials and infectious-disease experts as reckless - the country has among the highest infection and death rates in the world. It also hasn't escaped the deep economic problems resulting from the pandemic.

 

But Sweden's approach has gained support among some conservatives who argue that social distancing restrictions are crushing the economy and infringing on people's liberties.

 

That this approach is even being discussed inside the White House is drawing concern from experts inside and outside the government who note that a herd immunity strategy could lead to the country suffering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lost lives.

"The administration faces some pretty serious hurdles in making this argument. One is a lot of people will die, even if you can protect people in nursing homes," said Paul Romer, a professor at New York University who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2018. "Once it's out in the community, we've seen over and over again, it ends up spreading everywhere."

Atlas, who does not have a background in infectious diseases or epidemiology, has expanded his influence inside the White House by advocating policies that appeal to Trump's desire to move past the pandemic and get the economy going, distressing health officials on the White House coronavirus task force and throughout the administration who worry that their advice is being followed less and less.

 

 

[Undone]

16 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

People don't have the autonomy to decide when they want to leave their houses and congregate? I would disagree with that.

 

Not sure if this has been posted here yet or not - Latest CDC report shows that out of the roughly 150,000ish COVID-related deaths, only 6% of those had no other co-morbidities. An average of 2.6 co-morbidities were listed along with COVID-19. The co-morbidities existed alongside things like cancer, diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, renal failure, poisoning, intentional harm to self, cardiovascular disease...the list goes on and on.

 

This information does not mean that "COVID-19 isn't a big deal." So don't slam me with that accusation, my fellow posters. But the more information that comes out, in my personal opinion the overall perceived risk continues to go down.

[BigRedBuster]

11 minutes ago, Undone said:

 

People don't have the autonomy to decide when they want to leave their houses and congregate? I would disagree with that.

 

Not sure if this has been posted here yet or not - Latest CDC report shows that out of the roughly 150,000ish COVID-related deaths, only 6% of those had no other co-morbidities. An average of 2.6 co-morbidities were listed along with COVID-19. The co-morbidities existed alongside things like cancer, diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, renal failure, poisoning, intentional harm to self, cardiovascular disease...the list goes on and on.

 

This information does not mean that "COVID-19 isn't a big deal." So don't slam me with that accusation, my fellow posters. But the more information that comes out, in my personal opinion the overall perceived risk continues to go down.

Seriously????  Will people stop promoting that 6% myth?  
 

it’s a total misinterpretation of what is being said. 

[Undone]

13 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Seriously????  Will people stop promoting that 6% myth?  
 

it’s a total misinterpretation of what is being said. 

 

I can absolutely guarantee you that I do not misunderstand that CDC post. I've read through the language carefully.

 

You probably think that I think that this data means "only 6% of people dies from COVID." I do not think that and as I said, I understand how to interpret this report.

 

I stand by everything in that post.

[BigRedBuster]

1 minute ago, Undone said:

 

I can absolutely guarantee you that I do not misunderstand that CDC post. I've read through the language carefully.

 

You probably think that I think that this data means "only 6% of people dies from COVID." I do not think that and as I said, I understand how to interpret this report.

 

I stand by everything in that post.

You obviously don’t if you’re promoting the 6% myth. 

[Undone]

4 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

You obviously don’t if you’re promoting the 6% myth. 

 

Explain in detail what you think I'm promoting. I'm reading verbatim from the CDC website. I explained (concisely) what this new data means.