[ExI] covid data

[BillK]

On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 at 18:01, spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Ok well… the signal is clear enough now, and not surprising.  We saw the covid cases go way up with the start of flu season.  It looked like it peaked and was heading back down in November, but… the festival of Thanksgiving, family gatherings indoors, back up it went.
>
> Peaked once again in the third week of December as the Thanksgiving peak ran its course, was heading back down, reaching a local minumum on 29 December, when new cases from Christmas family gatherings kicked in.
>
> New Years celebrations contributed perhaps, but new covid cases in the USA peaked on 11 Jan 2021 at 255k.  Today they dropped below 70k for 7 day rolling average, so less than third of what it was  six weeks ago and dropping.
>
> Vaccinations might have been part of it, but with 20% vaccinated, it isn’t the driver.
>
> Theory: it is indoor gatherings doing this, always has been, just as indoor gatherings spread the regular flu since always.  This data isn’t hard to read.  It’s hard to mis-read.
>
> spike
> _______________________________________________


The good news, of course, is that Covid has eliminated the usual
winter flu. No more flu - Amazing!

The other good news is that on Dec 14, 2020 the WHO issued guidance to
correct the way that PCR tests were done because they were giving too
many false detections of Covid.
The WHO document is titled, “WHO Information Notice for IVD
Users/Nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies that use real-time
polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for detection of SARS-CoV-2.”

One commentator translated this document as:
“We’re changing the way we’re doing PCR tests. We were running them
with a high number of cycles and getting millions of false positives,
and those numbers were deployed to justify the lockdowns—but NOW we’re
moving to a lower number of cycles. This change, all on its own, will
result in fewer positive results, fewer case numbers, making the
vaccine look VERY GOOD.”
-----------------------

I find it difficult to believe much of what passes for "news" these days.


BillK