Originally Posted by 260Remguy
Originally Posted by antelope_sniper
Originally Posted by 260Remguy
Originally Posted by antelope_sniper
Originally Posted by 260Remguy
Originally Posted by antelope_sniper
Originally Posted by 260Remguy
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Has anyone ever seen a death cert which says "Suspected heart failure, don't know for sure", "Suspected drug overdose, but not positive", "Possible blunt force trauma when the head hit the pavement after jumping from a ten story building. But not really sure. Might have been a heart attack on the way down."


The few death certificates that I've seen listed a previously diagnosed illness and/or an underlying condition as the cause of death, unless the death was from an obvious acute incident, a fall or vehicle accident or suicide or gunshot wound or etc.

My Father's death certificate listed old age, he was 91, and Leukemia. An underlying condition, old age, and a previously diagnosed illness, Leukemia.

If a person dies and hasn't been positively diagnosed with COVID-19, how accurate is it to cite the cause of death as being from COVID-19? Might have been COVID-19, but how can anyone know without the person testing positive? It seems like a binary, black or white, situation. You either test positive or your don't, no maybes.


It's called DATA. More specifically multi-variate analysis. I was working with a data set last week and we could predict with over 95% certainty if a person had heart disease without a diagnosis.

Like wise, there are ways to determine if a person has COVID-19 with a high degree of certainty, without the DNA test,through other methods such as chest x-rays, lung ultra-sounds and symptom correlation. Under some conditions, some of these methods are actually MORE accurate then the currently available test, and are being used to identify "false negatives", i.e. when the DNA test says a person doesn't have Covid when they do.


So, are you saying that the currently accepted method for testing for COVID-19 doesn't work? If so, how often, and where are you getting your information?

You have more faith in the depth of physician knowledge as it pertains to COVID-19 than I do. I am also suspect of data being used with regard to COVID-19, particularly any data coming out of the NYC metro area. Garbage in, garbage out.


I'm saying that in the real world, those tests, especially the early one's, that you are holding out as the gold standard are no where near as good as you think they are.

The biggest problem they have is with "false negatives". About 30% of the time they will come back negative when someone actually has the condition.

Let me put this a different way. If your only diagnostic tool is "the test", in order to be 99% certain someone does NOT have the disease, you need 3 consecutive negative results.

Now let that sink in a bit, then ask yourself if we should only look at "the test", or consider all relevant data.


If "the test" is the only way to determine is a person has, or doesn't have, COVID-19 and it fails 30% of the time, anyone who tests negative should be retested two more times, at least until improved tests are available.

Can you cite the source of your 30% failure rate for "the test"?

The other "relevant" data seems more anecdotal than scientific. Anecdotal data corrupts the data pool.

I think that we should reboot the country and trust that herd immunity will allow 99.7% of us to get back to living.


Here's one:

https://www.healthline.com/health-n...9-tests-symptoms-assume-you-have-illness

There's 100 more if you took 30 seconds to look.

You must not have ever done any real work in your life, or at least none in a crisis with limited resources because you seem to have no idea how the real work functions under adverse conditions.

There's a shortage of test kits, not a surplus.
The initial costs were $1000.00 to $1500.00 each.

If you got a little sick would you spend $4500.00 of your own money for the 99% certainty, or just get the one, quarantine for 14 days, watch for additional symptoms and indicators, and escalate treatment and testing as conditions warranted?

What about lab space? Do you think labs are inhabited by pixies that just sprinkle a little dust on the swap in order to get a result?

Have you ever heard of an Opportunity cost?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

In case that's too complex for you, here's a simpler explination:

https://kids.kiddle.co/Opportunity_cost

Overall, you reasoning suffers from a heavy dose of the Nirvana Fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

Well, Nirvana is not for this world. We live in a world of limited resources and imperfect solutions. Often, especially in adverse conditions, the choices are not among the "best solutions", but among the "least bad" solutions. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good or the better.

In conditions like these, it often means drawing the most reasonable conclusion possible, as quick as possible, using the minimum resources possible, so you can develop and begin execution of a "C" plan today, instead of waiting until you have the perfect "A" plan three weeks from now when either the patients already dead, or has infected another 20 people.



I try to approach things from a pragmatic perspective, as I believe that people generally make sub-optimal choices when they let themselves get emotionally attached.

From what I can glean from the available information, the great majority of people who become infected are going to be asymptomatic and they are going to live. Some relatively small portion of the herd will get sick and some relatively small portion of the sick will die.

The last really hard work that I did as a civilian was as a mason's tender when over 50 years ago. I was an officer and as any enlisted person will tell you, officers don't work, they sit around thinking of ways to make easy jobs harder than necessary. I prefer to work smart and outsource the hard work to someone who specializes in hard work.



Then I suggest you approach this problem less like a mason, and more like an officer. But not like an officer spending an unlimited amount of tax payer money, but his own money.

This will lead toward more viable solutions.

Last edited by antelope_sniper; 04/17/20.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.

You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell