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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[josh]

For Kid - his favorite kind of science: anecdotal:

(I am a pulmonary and critical care doctor in central Massachusetts.)

I need to write a more thoughtful and respectful post about this, but I'm too busy taking care of sick people.

Here's the deal:

Ventilators are not killing people. (Our ICU has saved more people on ventilators than we've lost, thank you very much.)

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are not panaceas that are saving people.

All of the news you've seen about some great new idea that might change the way we treat COVID-19, it is all speculation.

I'm receiving increasing requests for my opinion on news articles for stuff like this. Increasing to a fever pitch. "Hey, Dr. Martin, what do you think of this?"

Every time I look into it it's like this. Somebody reads a bench-science article from China, that a computer model suggested that SARS-CoV-2 binds the hemoglobin molecule. Someone finds a questionable statistic that 80% of New York City residents put on ventilators died. Some doctor starts flooding YouTube with videos that everybody is doing it wrong and we could save everybody if only we listened to him. Someone claims that he saved 1,600 people with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and whatever else. He doesn't have to prove it. He just has to say it's true on TV.

This is not helpful scientific data. It is breathless media pulp.

The fact that so much of this is politically spun, to say that somebody is right and somebody else is wrong about policy, just makes it more toxic. It is not a coincidence that all of these theories just happen to relate to things that President Trump and Governor Cuomo are arguing about.

Science seems to have gotten a bad rap with a lot of people, maybe due to a climate change policy debate that I don't want to get into. Nevertheless. The scientific method is neither liberal nor conservative, and it doesn't care what you want to be true. If you can save people by doing something, the scientific studies will prove it, given time.

This is not, as many seem to think of science, ivory-tower navel-gazing speculation by self-designated experts about what might happen in the future. Medical science is rigorously comparing a treatment to placebo. If you know someone whose life was saved by a stent, or a bypass surgery, or chemotherapy, or radiation, or cutting out their tumor, or operating on their carotid artery, you are probably grateful for the extra quality and quantity of life they got. Doctors do all of those things, and we have stopped doing thousands of other things, because we scientifically studied them. Having done so, we know what actually works and what doesn't.

Insisting that HCQ is saving people and ventilators are killing them, or whatever else, THAT'S speculation. It's based on individual claims that are anecdotal, biased, possibly even just lies, and only popular because they sell media. It's taking apricot pits or shark cartilage for cancer, on a grand scale.

Believe me, we are trying hydroxychloroquine, and tocilizumab, and not intubating people unless we absolutely have to. We are giving people vitamin D and zinc. We are not stupid, not monsters, and not deluded slaves to some imagined "liberal agenda." We are doing all of these things, even though there is no solid evidence base for any of them, because we don't want our patients to die. And while we are using these medicines as "Hail Mary" passes, we are also doing studies on the medicines. Every other idea you've heard on the news, somebody is studying it somewhere.

Nobody knows whether these treatments work yet. Nobody. Anyone who says they are sure, is deluded. The graveyard of medical science is full of treatments, that were promised to cure everybody to loud tribute, and are now considered quackery. We found that out, because they were scientifically studied.

People are desperate to hear about something that is going to make this horrible pandemic less bad. I want it to be less bad too. I get it.

The fact of the matter is, antimalarials are only such a popular idea because: someone did a study that showed they decrease markers of inflammation. Everybody wants to believe that decreased inflammation will stop a virus from killing you.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news. In my own career I have seen many things, that decreased markers of inflammation, that later were scientifically proven not to save anybody. Or even to hurt them. For example, steroids appear, in studies, to make people with influenza pneumonia more likely to die.

Now, some other people are claiming that maybe the same antimalarial medicines protect your hemoglobin molecules from the virus. Well look, maybe that's true. Maybe a lot of things are true.

You just don't know until you do the scientific studies.

My posts get shared, and some of the people who read this are going to hate it, because it directly challenges what they're hearing in the news, and what they want to believe. I've already been accused of having a political agenda, because I won't believe the happy crap in the news about how hydroxychloroquine is saving everybody (or would, if only "the liberals" weren't stopping the supposed good guys). I've already been accused of, "only being willing to look at science that is approved by liberals."

Well, guess what. I haven't counted myself with either liberals or conservatives for twenty years. I've agreed with one group on some issues, and the other on others. My whole life, I have put the facts first. I studied science at Harvard, and I have tried to practice medicine as intelligently and compassionately as possible, for my entire adult life. Go ask the people I work with how I'm doing.

If you dislike my insistence on being scientifically objective, and trying to figure out the facts of what does and does not work for COVID-19 -- if you want to consider that approach "liberal" because it doesn't match some sweet-smelling tripe that was sold to you, by a media or political authority wearing a conservative hat --

Then go believe your salesman of the story that makes you happy. Leave me alone. I, with a legion of caring healthcare workers and medical scientists, will go back to actually trying to save everybody we can with this virus. Hopefully all the blockades you throw in our way -- because you prefer false hope to the truth -- because you want your tribe to win --

Hopefully those blockades don't stop us from saving too many people.

This is the doctor who wrote that:
https://health.usnews.com/doctors/kevin-martin-564797

[barton]

I would like to link to that post at my science website.  Is there a URL for that?   

[josh]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html

"Peaks Taking Longer Than Expected"

Longer than expected by them, at least. I still don't understand why they thought that model was accurate. (OTOH, it is equally clear that my model was not accurate, either. The peak will come earlier than I expected it to, almost certainly now.)

[josh]

I would like to link to that post at my science website.  Is there a URL for that?

PMed you.

[josh]

Wuhan revised their coronavirus death toll upwards by 50%.

[josh]

British death figures from the government apparently are excluding those who die in what they call care homes.

17% of Italian elder care homes of the first 600 to be inspected have failed to follow the official guidelines.

And half of the deaths in Canada are from their elder care facilities. Ontario has outbreaks at 100 of them!

New Hampshire's got new outbreaks in 3 of them.

NH also reported previously that it had obtained 15 rapid testing machines, but that the federal government didn't include necessary testing cartridges. Health Commissioner Lori Shibinette told reporters they have now received enough to use one of the machines. ONE of 15 can be used?! No, the federal government is still not functioning.

[josh]

There is, of course, other news - and having this kicked off the front pages is problematic:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/health/drought-southwest-north-america-study-trnd/index.html

The past two decades have marked the driest years in southwestern North America since the 1500s, a new study finds, and it could get even worse.

The megadrought that began in 2000 led to the driest 19-year span since the late 1500s, according to the study published this week in the journal "Science," and the second driest period since the year 800. Before that, the region had seen its wettest period in 1,200 years, with increased precipitation from 1980 to 1998, the study says.

The transition from such wet conditions to such dry conditions "was hastened by the background drying forced from anthropogenic warming," the study says.

In other words: Blame the human-caused climate crisis.

And that's not the worst part. The megadroughts could get worse.

The image at the top of this page tells the story:
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

[Hairy Lime]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/04/16/dr-oz-misspoke-covid-19-school-opening-trade-off-comments/5150267002/

Yes, he did not mean appetizing! He meant delicious! No, wait, Mouth Watering! That is what he meant!

[LarryBnDC]

These are the same motherfuckers who said Black Lives Matter protestors should be run over for blocking traffic. BLM was protesting police killing unarmed black people with regular. These assholes are bitching about not going to their second homes or getting their roots touched up at the salon.


The protests in Michigan started in cars but participants soon got out and began chants of  “lock her up” and “we will not comply.” In the process, they blocked traffic, including an ambulance. They proudly named their ambulance-blocking protest “Operation Gridlock.” Here’s a free tip: Good guys don’t block ambulances or expose their children to a virus that’s killed over 33,000 people.





https://claytoonz.com/2020/04/17/covid-darwin-winners/

[LarryBnDC]

Wyoming.

Not one Covid19 Party, but TWO Covidiots parties.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/17/wyoming-coronavirus-parties/

[bodiddley]

Someone linked the other day to the Christian Science Monitor.
Which I haven't read in a long time, and apparently their site is blocked in China.  Got me wondering what the CS stance is towards the virus.  Probably staying at home is okay with them, but otherwise I guess it'd just be prayers as your lungs fill up with fluid.

[josh]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/04/16/dr-oz-misspoke-covid-19-school-opening-trade-off-comments/5150267002/

Yes, he did not mean appetizing! He meant delicious! No, wait, Mouth Watering! That is what he meant!

He's "looking for solutions to beat this virus" the same way I am - reading available material.

The problem is not with his looking, but with his interpretation of what he finds, coupled with his utter lack of awareness of the impact of his words.

Or, as the article points out, while he indicating he did not mean "appetizing," he did not explain what he did mean.

What he meant was not to hurt his sizable following and income.

[josh]

Someone linked the other day to the Christian Science Monitor.
Which I haven't read in a long time, and apparently their site is blocked in China.  Got me wondering what the CS stance is towards the virus.  Probably staying at home is okay with them, but otherwise I guess it'd just be prayers as your lungs fill up with fluid.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/how-do-christ

[LarryBnDC]

Someone linked the other day to the Christian Science Monitor.
Which I haven't read in a long time, and apparently their site is blocked in China.  Got me wondering what the CS stance is towards the virus.  Probably staying at home is okay with them, but otherwise I guess it'd just be prayers as your lungs fill up with fluid.

I posted a story from 2009 about Susan Collins insisting $850million in pandemic response funding be stripped out of the stimulus bill. Story also reinforced why I think Schumer would be a bad choice for majority leader. Story was smacking Collins as the Swine Flu was making noise.

[Yankguy1]

Despite being founded by M.B. Eddy I don't think the Monitor was ever a "religious" newspaper, nor did it ever really promote Christian Science doctrine.