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Um, consider the source: Swiss Propaganda Research - Wikipedia
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Free registration at the forum removes this block.Um, consider the source: Swiss Propaganda Research - Wikipedia
For those that know me, I'm a part-time ER doctor turned entrepreneur. I was recently diagnosed with C0VlD-19 and wanted to help dispel any rumors about the illness, etc.
Quick background
- Middle aged, absolutely no health issues (like really. None)
- Never smoker, drink only 1-2 glasses of wine (or good whiskey!) a month. No drugs
- Workout 2x day (lift and cardio) - #75Hard routine, for those curious.
- Part time ER doctor still because I follow @Vigilante's advice to draw from the employee cup for as long as possible.
- Work in Texas and have seen literally hundreds of C0VlD-19 POSITIVE patients over the pandemic course.
[And yes, we are admitting a LOT of C0VlD-19 patients because they are sick. Recently admitted a 30 yo Paramedic who was sitting 70% on room air(!)]
- Not a Mask Karen/Nazi when not in the hospital. In fact, this is my motto outside of the hospital:
View attachment 34054
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This is an update I shared with a colleague today:
I tested POSITIVE via nasal PCR for C0VlD-19. I'm doing well now. Managed to knock out a great w/o this morning (db presses, pull-ups, curls) but it was rough for a while.
HPI: Have worked every weekend in June and first weekend in July in the ERs. At least 5-10 C0VlD-19+ pts/12 hour shift. Using PPE when in room, face mask at workstation.
- Last work shift was 7/5.
- Sx onset 7/7 as follows: Fevers, arthralgia, myalgia. Dry cough.
- Sats on 7/9 down to 92%/RA. Add'l sx incl. nausea, loose stools and abdominal pain. Tachycardia.
- Started HCQ +Azithro+Zn on 7/9.
- Significant overall improvement.
- Nasal swab test 7/10
- Result POSITIVE yesterday (7/14).
- URI sx until 7/14 + fatigue.
- Absolutely asymptomatic today. Checked QTC with an EKG back in Mar and nl s no findings.
- Still taking med regimen.
- Sats have been 97-98 since 7/10
AMA. Will respond when time allows.
Hmm, almost: 4 in 1,000 is either plain 0.004 or it's 0.4% but not 0.004%Right.
Which would put the fatality rate @ 0.004% or 4 in 1,000.
For comparison, your risk of dying from a lightning strike in your life is estimated to be 1 in 3,000.
Using Wikipedia as a source to dispute a source is silly, no?Um, consider the source: Swiss Propaganda Research - Wikipedia
Yes, we all need to evaluate the veracity & skew of the content we consume & are fed: LibGuides: Fake News, Propaganda, and Bad Information: Learning to Critically Evaluate Media Sources.: Identifying Source BiasUsing Wikipedia as a source to dispute a source is silly, no?
The first reference on that page is an article published in April 2020 by Bayerischer Rundfunk, a state-funded German public broadcaster
Another reference is a 2017 University of Zurich report that states SPR “appears pseudoscientific” with no source to back that claim.
SPR has sources for every single line on the website. You can make of those what you will, but to dismiss it entirely solely because Wikipedia said so...
Yes, we all need to evaluate the veracity & skew of the content we consume & are fed: LibGuides: Fake News, Propaganda, and Bad Information: Learning to Critically Evaluate Media Sources.: Identifying Source Bias
A quick guide to news outlets' rated on their reliability & opinion skew (see where your favorite ranks): Home - Ad Fontes Media
SPR seems sketchy--per multiple sources beyond the 30-second Wikipedia article; specific reasons listed here (e.g., lack of transparency, sources lack credibility, etc.):
Swiss Policy Research - Bias and Credibility
CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence.mediabiasfactcheck.com
I'm not trying to tear anyone down--I'm just saying it's our collective responsibility to critically review source info to determine its veracity.
Agree--that's part of the problem. So most of us--myself included--fall back on summarized content, which may or may not be accurate.Unfortunately the amount of information out there is insane.
I don't know about you, but I do not have the time to verify all this crap.
And honestly I wouldn't want to.
That is kinda the point. It's a collection of articles and evidence gathered over months and months, and it stands for proving a rock solid evidence as to why this virus is a hoax. As in, it's not the virus that's a hoax, but the agenda pushed over it.Unfortunately the amount of information out there is insane.
I don't know about you, but I do not have the time to verify all this crap.
And honestly I wouldn't want to.
Agreed. There's so much disinformation or willing blindness to information that contradicts what you want to believe. On all sides.Statistics are skewed depending on the narrative being pushed. This sadly seems like the the state of "studies" these days. You basically have to trust the funding source of these studies isn't paying for the results they publish. In a perfect world, all studies are done for the facts, but corruption is real.
If true that's horrible.The total number of US deaths being advertised is in the mid 100,000's. I also heard that total includes deaths where the patient had COVID at the time of death, but it was not caused by COVID. Some weeks ago, a board member of the San Diego county health department(?) said of the 3.3m population, there were ~112 COVID-related deaths on record and only ~6 were CAUSED by COVID.
hen I heard hospitals are paid ~$9k for each COVID case, and paid an additional ~$30k for each COVID patient that requires a ventilator. I saw multiple videos of actual doctors telling stories like this. I also heard if you're put on a ventilator for a long enough period of time, it's hard for the body to breathe on its own again. I'm sure at least some patients were put on ventilators when they didn't need to be, resulting in avoidable deaths.
Trust no one is a great place to come from. I'm telling you, just because someone is an "expert" at something, if the data sucks then your estimates are going to suck. Plus this disease is like but unlike anything we've ever seen before, so it's difficult to be an expert.So how many of the deaths are actually CAUSED by COVID, and how many were avoidable? My guess is less than half.
All of these conflicting studies and narrative pushes forced me into my stance, which is, trust nobody. The only problem is one of the narratives is making my life harder for what seems like no reason. I've seen the suits that virologists have to wear, and a bandana isn't stopping anything. We might as well not "slow the spread" and get it over with so we can get on with our lives.
Doing well. Off quarantine today and it feels good man. But watching grown men act like scared children is just.....wrong, man.Sorry, more of a rant than a question. I appreciate your non-politicized feedback on this, and I hope you're doing well.
5-7 days. If you or anyone is asymptomatic at that point, the chance of transmission to someone else is essentially zero.Hi Dr. You mentioned that if you made it thought the next 48 hours, you would be fine. How are you feeling? Hope you’re doing better.
Say that you lived with an elder family member who moved out when you became ill. This family member has all the dangerous preconditions such diabetes, heart condition and hypertension.
At what point would you feel safe for him/her to return and live with you again? In other words, at what point would you be considered noncontagious? Is it a certain time period after initial symptoms? Is it a lack of symptoms? Is it a negative test? Thank you
Agree with all of your points. Have made these exact same points on blog and FB posts. FB posts were immediately deleted.There is no real evidence masks work. I looked at the research on the CDC site. None of the studies they cite would really indicate they would. There are studies with influenza and mask wearing, that shows no statistical difference between mask and no mask. Covid in many ways is similar to flu.
I use to think masks might be useful, but after watching people wearing masks, it’s apparent that there is a general lack in people understanding hygiene. People are constantly touching their masks, adjusting them up and down, not covering their nose, etc. You don’t see this in health care workers in hospitals, because they receive training on such things.
Also, I can tell you that in a medium sized hospital here in Phoenix they have had 150 employees infected as of last Friday. And they are all wearing masks all day long. And these are people who have received training and experience n using PPE.
Even IF masks are effective in catching and filtering the virus, it just becomes a collector and concentrator of infected spit that people touch and spread all over.
Are masks more helpful or hurtful in spreading covid? The jury is out at this time, but the evidence and observation of mask hygiene behaviors I would say I’m not hopeful that masks do more good than harm.
Great question. I did some digging and came up with a very lengthy but excellent article"Agreed.
Do we know more about its origin? Does the story seem to be "a guy that ate a bat", or does it seem to be "who the f*ck didn't close the door of the laboratory this morning?!", if you know what I mean. Don't you think that the level of puzzleness the medical community is being victim of with this virus has something to do with its origin? I know it very much sounds like conspiracist stuff, but it's a genuine question : ) .
Thx for this thread and for your work.
Apart from descriptions in their publications we do not yet know exactly which viruses the WIV was experimenting with but it is certainly intriguing that numerous publications since Sars-CoV-2 first appeared have puzzled over the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds with exceptionally high affinity to the human ACE2 receptor “at least ten times more tightly” than the original SARS (Zhou et al., 2020; Wrapp et al., 2020; Wan et al., 2020; Walls et al., 2020; Letko et al., 2020).
It doesn't. But the supplemental info and reports from the researchers reportedly support the no child to adult pathway.Unless I missed it, that article has no info on transmissibility of COVID by children (full article here). Current research suggests that younger children transmit COVID at lower rates than adults, but that older children & adolescents have transmission rates similar to adults:
That said, we have little to no info on the longer-term effects of the virus--for children, adolescents, and adults who acquire it; the range of possibility is wide (from none to severe), and will take years to uncover.
- C0VlD-19 Transmission and Children: The Child Is Not to Blame
- Children rarely transmit C0VlD-19, doctors write in new commentary: Schools can reopen in fall, they say, if safety guidelines are observed and community transmission is low
- Contact Tracing during Coronavirus Disease Outbreak, South Korea, 2020
- https://www.pasteur.fr/fr/file/35404/download
If this was Ebola--about which more is known and the mortality rate is much higher--it'd be easier to make decisions about quarantines, masks, schools, workplaces, gatherings, etc. But with so much uncertainty, emerging data, and politicization, most people fall back to simplistic gut opinions, mental heuristics, & cognitive biases.
That's really weird. I have a patient who does that too. We've been troubleshooting and swapped out the pulse ox and that seemed to help. Good luck.I also picked one up. At the doc's office (I have cancer so I go regularly) I always read 97-99, and that's at 5000' altitude. Got my new fingertip reader and it's always reading 88-92 or so. WTF!? Is it defective? So today I had a doc appt and took my meter. Doc's oximeter said I was 98-99, mine said... 98. Hm.
Then I came home, popped it on my finger again, and ... 89.
Again, WTF? Do I have low oxygen in my house!??
5-7 days. If you or anyone is asymptomatic at that point, the chance of transmission to someone else is essentially zero.
Great question. The closest analog that we have so far is the Diamond Princess cruise ship situation, where a passenger was diagnosed with C0VlD-19 and the entire ship was quarantined. This link gives a nice overview of the following paper:One thing that I have not seen mentioned... What are the actual risks of contracting C0VlD-19 while flying and on an airplane? Were the risks associated with that overexaggerated?
Obviously there is no social distancing in an airplane but it seems like the early theories that it's unsafe were overblown.
Thoughts?
ng AJ, Cocks C, Green JP. C0VlD-19: in the footsteps of Ernest Shackleton. Thorax. Published Online First: 27 May. 2020
The 128 passengers and 95 crew were screened for C0VlD-19 symptoms (including body temperature) before boarding. Passengers from South East Asia were not allowed aboard.
On day 8 of the cruise (which had been aborted because of international border controls) the first case appeared and was immediately isolated. Barriers were used throughout the ship. Other cases followed among passengers and crew. On day 17 a seriously ill patient was admitted to hospital in Montevideo followed by 7 others in the following days.
All 217 passengers and crew were tested on day 20, and 128 (59%) tested positive for C0VlD-19. In ten cases two passengers sharing a cabin recorded positive and negative result, that is 20/128 (16%
Right. I've yet to see COVID pneumonia in anyone who didn't have a BMI <35 OR who didn't already have a serious underlying respiratory illness such as COPD.This is completely anecdotal, but I have read about 30 CT’s of Covid pneumonia, which is the dreaded complication of severe or critical disease. All of these patients have been significantly overweight. It makes me wonder the role that obesity has in severe illness. Of course this is just one persons personal observation but it has defiantly caught my attention.
I have known of 2 people that have died of Covid, and likewise both were significantly overweight. No statistical significance in any of this but does make you wonder if there is a strong correlation with covid complications and obesity, or maybe there are just a lot of overweight people in the US.
Ehh....okay fine. Not zero when speaking theoretically. But the infectivity rate follows the normal distribution and 7 days is also where you're going to catch vast majority of people. It's also the number where they're letting health care workers with exposure and no symptoms return to work.That's interesting. I've read this:
source: Estimated Incubation Period of C0VlD-19 - American College of Cardiology
- The median incubation period from infection with SARS-CoV-2 to onset of symptoms is approximately 5 days.
- 97.5% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will exhibit symptoms by 11.5 days.
- Monitoring people exposed to SARS-CoV-2 for 14 days for development of symptoms should be sufficient to identify 99% of cases or more.
Some other sources that also cite longer incubation periods:
Coronavirus Incubation Period (COVID-19) - Worldometer
Current estimated incubation period (how long it takes for symptoms to appear) for the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan, Chinawww.worldometers.info
This would mean that your chances of transmission are not essentially zero after 5-7 days but more likely after 14 days. What do you think about it?
Doing well. Off quarantine today and it feels good man.
Asian countries aren't completely fabricating their numbers. That is why they 'appear' to be better off than the US. I say 'appear' in quotes because they are no better off than the US, or you may consider the US is no worse off than them, unless you read flawed, bullshit data.
That is called anecdotal evidence. I have one too: I heard the chinese numbers were pretty high, that is why they had to go with such harsh measures as welding apartment complex doors in.I've been in Taiwan (and Thailand in February) since this started and the US is 100% worse off. Taiwan never went into lockdown or closed schools. The only thing they have done was to require masks to be worn on public transportation. We haven't had a local transmission in over 3 weeks and on top of that haven't had a death since May 11. No matter what you think about the true statistics, it's definitely much much worse than Asian countries.
That is called anecdotal evidence. I have one too: I heard the chinese numbers were pretty high, that is why they had to go with such harsh measures as welding apartment complex doors in.
Not sure how all those things are anecdotal when they are in fact, facts. Also, you're comparing what you heard versus what I'm experiencing in person. I've been following this situation quite closely here... and yeah China is terrible. We already know that.
I've been in Taiwan (and Thailand in February) since this started and the US is 100% worse off. Taiwan never went into lockdown or closed schools. The only thing they have done was to require masks to be worn on public transportation. We haven't had a local transmission in over 3 weeks and on top of that haven't had a death since May 11. No matter what you think about the true statistics, it's definitely much much worse than Asian countries.
"Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes: evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony."Anecdotal evidence - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
What I was trying to convey here is, you have to look at the data, and not draw conclusions from your experiences.
You totally missed me with your condescending style. Talking that way tells about you, not me.So we're supposed to listen to your opinion, in Germany, of what is happening in Taiwan?
Let me reitterate a few facts for you. Read them slowly. They're facts :
1. Taiwan never went into lockdown or closed schools.
2. The only thing they have done was to require masks to be worn on public transportation.
3. We haven't had a local transmission in over 3 weeks and on top of that haven't had a death since May 11.
Based on those three FACTS, if you have any questions regarding that post or anything to contribute beyond your own conjecture, feel free. Meanwhile, the above three FACTS sound pretty damn good compared to the hysteria in the United States.
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