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It’s essentially the flu with media buzz
@CourtJester
"It’s essentially the flu with media buzz"
It was made very clear very early in the pandemic that although covid19 may have some flu-like symptoms, it is most definitely NOT the flu.
We have been told for example, that 50% of Covid 10 cases asymtomatic. . (That's why I don't believe government stats.)
The international death toll passed ONE MILLION in April.
I'm 72 with some medical issues. If I contract covid19 I could die. If I contract the annual flu, I'll feel pretty ghastly for a while but should recover.
So no, covid19 is not the flu,and is not 'like the flu'
Below is a link to an article put out by John Hopkins
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavir...
What is the death rate for COVID-19?
The problem with any conclusion based on the data that the data is from biased samples. The US CDC was only allowing testing to be done on select individuals who met a number of criteria.
If it's so contagious, how could the CDC claim "no community transmission" of COVID-19 all the way through April? Even in major international metropolitans with high Chinese population, it was declared absent. It was the "don't test, don't tell" policy.
Unbiased sampling would give a better picture of the spread. We don't have that.
@ CourtJester
Here is a reputable source describing the differences between Covid and the flu.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavir...
The mortality rate for Covid19 in the USA is 2.8% (based on New York) while the mortality rate for the flu is 0.1%. Even if my numbers are skewed, every reputable expert agrees that it is at least twice as lethal as the flu.
CourtJester, where do you get your numbers from?
Nice bike, I used to road race them a long time ago. Is that VIR?
Experts agree? Wow! More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.
Bad data and fear for bad policy.
@Garrett Smith
"Experts agree? Wow! More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."
Ladies and gentlemen, we have someone who knows more than John Hopkins.
Seriously Garrett, I posted what numbers I could extract from sources. You disagree. So what are your sources?
What's the logic, douche? That your bullshit data is good because I don't have any? Get fucked, loser :-)
Don't you think that your approach to debate, is a little, if not a lot, defeatist?
Well, it certainly caused him defeat on other sites as is evidenced by his eviction from them. ;)
@ Garrett Smith
So you don't need evidence to form an opinion? How very theistic of you.
He is also asserting that evidence is not valid just because he can't demonstrate any evidence for his denial of it. There are too many double negatives for me to be sure, but perhaps we can get Dworkin to take a look at it.
The potty mouth seems to be something he enjoys, perhaps he learned Japanese because he finally ran out of English vituperations?
That is a textbook poisoning of the well fallacy. I'd love to see you even attempt to evidence your rather bizarre claim as well.
Japan's population is about one-third that of the US, yet it's COVID-19 infection and fatality totals are about 100th of the US figures. Japan has a much higher population density, more crowded public transport, and a higher percentage of 60+ people. When COVID-19 first started to spread, there were thousands of Chinese tourists in Japan, and many Japanese were traveling to China. Cruise ships were also calling.
The Japanese government has been just as disorganized, hesitant, and denial-prone as the White House, and the countermeasures introduced have been weak. People have been "asked" to say home rather than ordered to.
The factors often cited to explain the low infection rate are the habit of wearing gauze masks, removing shoes when entering houses, and a cultural/religious obsession with cleanliness. Some Japanese foods, such as natto (fermented beans) are thought to boost immunity. People bow instead of shaking hands and tend to keep their distance when talking. There's also a custom among Japanese women to cover their mouths with their hands when laughing.
But the latest theory I've heard has to do with language. Spoken Japanese appears to emit less aerosol particles compared with many other languages, especially English, possible because Japanese uses fewer plosive consonants.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227699
"Japan's population is about one-third that of the US, yet it's COVID-19 infection and fatality totals are about 100th of the US figures."
Adequate data to support that assertion is absent. We don't know the infection rates in the US, as there has not been adequate, unbiased testing. Test samples must be taken uniformly and in an unbiased fashion. Are they?
Likewise, no conclusion can be made about this social distancing experiment because sufficient data has not be taken. We've flattened out and gotten herd immunity, just like with SARS and MERS. No thanks to any lousy governors who seem bent on destroying the economy and possibly the entire financial system.
The number of plosives Japanese is irrelevant has plenty of plosives and they appear frequently, also with small tsu, to emphasize them. I speak Japanese. It's an interesting hypothesis but I think it's way off.
KA KE KI KO KU
PA PI PE PO PU
BA BE BI BO BU
TA TE CHI TO TSU
DA DE DI DO DU (DZU)
The Japanese are very clean. Well, aside from their porn, which is more in-tune with reality than American porn.
@Garrett Smith: Adequate data to support that assertion is absent.
I don't think any country has adequate testing yet, but we can compare the "official" figures on an "all else being equal" basis. Judging from what I hear in the Japanese media (I watch NHK news daily), they still have issues with the availability and reliability of testing. Do you think the US testing regime is 100 times less efficient than Japan's?
As I said, the plosives idea is still just a theory. But I would disagree with you about the frequency of plosives, especially the Pa and Ba rows. And Japanese plosives are not necessarily the same as English ones. Hold your hand in front your mouth and compare the amount of breath produced by each language.
The small tsu represents a glottal stop rather than emphasis and is usually represented (inaccurately) in English by doubling the following consonant.
In any event, the linguistic factor is worth investigating. We need to know everything possible about this disease and how it's spread.
I'm sure Americans and Australians, etc., are also very clean. But the Japanese have specific cleanliness traditions that may be relevant in relation to COVID-19, such as gargling and washing the hands when getting home from school or work, taking shoes off at the door, and taking very hot baths.
Japanese porn? Reality's not a word I'd use in the same sentence with that.
` but we can compare the "official" figures on an "all else being equal" basis.`
One set of official figures gathered with one set of official sampling bias is equivalent to another set of official figures gathered with one set of official sampling bias?
You're calling a hypothesis about plosives a theory. It's a hypothesis.
Japanese cleanliness is another hypothesis. I find this hypothesis much more plausible.
@Garrett Smith: You're calling a hypothesis about plosives a theory. It's a hypothesis.
Yes. You're right. It's a hypothesis. It's still worth considering.
Japan's low infection rate is a mystery that needs to be explained and learned from. The Japanese and US governments were equally inept. The Trump White House was focused on the election and the Japanese cabinet on the Olympics. Neither applied the draconian lockdown measures that seem to have halted COVID-19 in New Zealand and Australia. So why has the US got 100 times more infections/deaths than Japan?
Garrett Smith, you wrote, “Adequate data to support that assertion is absent.” You also wrote, “We've flattened out and gotten herd immunity, just like with SARS and MERS,” and “No thanks to any lousy governors who seem bent on destroying the economy and possibly the entire financial system.”
Interesting. With the first of what I quoted, you chide what Algebe suggested in his post as not substantiated. Yet, you go on to make a couple a assertions of your own as evidenced by the latter two quotes.
All I heard by this is, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
@Garrett Smith
Off Topic:
You speak Japanese? How fantastic!
Where did you learn? Have you spent much time in Japan?
I ask because I have loved things Japanese all of my adult life. Even had a pair of shoji screens made to cover a large patio door. Authentic plan, but used white board instead of rice paper. Also an interest in 19th century woodblock prints and Zen gardens, among other things.
Have only manged to visit Japan once, in 1979. It was autumn and I loved it.
Some years ago, I began communicating by email with a married Japanese woman I met on a forum. I became enmeshed in Japanese reciprocity because I sent some small things for her children. Took me a year and several hundred dollars to extricate myself.
Sadly, I know only a few Japanese words and phrases. I envy you your skill in the language. Do you know your way around the mine field of Japanese culture? They seemed to me to be very forgiving of ignorant gaijin.
@Cranky47 They seemed to me to be very forgiving of ignorant gaijin.
The Japanese love foreigners who are ignorant of their culture and speak their language badly. They are the world's worst flatterers and will compliment you profusely on your fluency just for saying "konnichi-wa" But if you learn the language and customs and start to follow Japanese customs, you become a "henna gaijin" (weird foreigner). That's because you are breaking down a sense of security based on stereotypes.
The Japanese have long had a myth that their language is impossible for foreigners to learn, which it isn't. Spoken Japanese is actually quite easy--up to a point. The biggest barrier is the writing.
@Algebe
"The Japanese have long had a myth that their language is impossible for foreigners to learn, which it isn't. Spoken Japanese is actually quite easy--up to a point. "
Yair,would seem so.Because unlike say Mandarin., Vietnamese and Thai, Japanese isn't tonal . I would think learning the different scripts would be a nightmare. Isn't there a simplified script for keyboards?
I tried learning Vietnamese. The written language is relatively simple, because it uses Roman lettering. That system was developed by a Jesuit missionary about 200 years ago . It replaced their existing system which was similar to Chinese. Made things a lot easier; for the fucking Europeans. Fucking cheek. .
My attempts at learning to speak Vietnamese had limited success. By 'limited" I mean I could write down some words and phrases quite well. However, when I tried to speak the words ,my Vietnamese colleagues would just about roll on the floor laughing at the unintended often very coarse language.
I didn't pursue Japanese because I would seldom if ever use it. I can speak a little bit of French, Malay and Italian . Last time I kind of used French and Italian was in 1990. Malay, in 2000.
@cranky47: Isn't there a simplified script for keyboards?
You can type Japanese using a standard English keyboard since about Windows 98. You just type in the phonetic sound of the word alphabetically and options pop up on the screen. When you find the right one, you hit the space bar to select it. I say options because Japanese has an awful lot of homonyms, which will all be listed for the word you typed. For example, depending on how you write it, "seiko" could be steel manufacturing, success, the name of a watch company, or sexual intercourse. To make it worse, Chinese characters (Kanji) used in Japanese can be read several different ways depending on context. The character for "god" can be pronounced as "shin" in "Shinto" and "kami" as in "kamikaze". The character for "gold" can be kin, kane, kana or Kim (as in the god-kings of North Korea). And people complain about English spelling.
I know what you mean about making people laugh with fractured pronunciation. The very first time I tried to use Japanese for shopping was in a greengrocers. What I wanted to say was "I want some carrots." What I actually said was something like "Please make me pregnant." My second most embarrassing moment in Japan.
I have some French, Latin, and German, and a little bit of Russian, but Japanese is the love of my life. It's the most expressive, versatile, and adaptable language I know.
So you wanna learn Japanese, huh?
Get yourself signed up on HelloTalk. Most of the Japanese people appreciate it when you can make clear and understandable corrections to their English. If you can do that, you can find a language partner.
Same for any language.
Memrise for anki cards.
YouTube has Misa and other channels.
Much better than driving to a college, taking attendance, paying textbook monopoly prices, etc. You can learn sipping a tea on your porch or whatever. You can find other languages, too.
Nah, I just watch Pokemon and Babymetal videos and any movies with Toshiro Mifune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKqgE4BwAY
I learned Australian by watching Kevin Wilson and AC/DC videos.
@Algebe
It's also possible that Japanese people are traditionally more inclined to do what they're told, so social distancing guidelines might be obeyed more rigidly and by more people. How do most US residents take to being told to give up freedoms by their federal government?
It's just a subjective observation mind, the inference I'm drawing is purely anecdotal of course.
@ Garrett Smith
"No thanks to any lousy governors who seem bent on destroying the economy and possibly the entire financial system."
Perhaps Covid is a wake up call to those who love to live in a cruel, dog eat dog economy rather than a society. But then looking at your post I think the substitution of "economy" for "society" is so far ingrained we will find that Covids "boomer remover" and "Ethnic minority cleanser" will be cheered on by the libertarians and "economists" at large .
When will we all realise that an "economy"as you have presented it, like christianity, is based on a series of lies?
The word "economy" is not on my list of words to be used in this time. I prefer to think only of the people, their suffering.
I never use economics as a metric for the people of a nation, I prefer to first reference the Happiness Report.
Money does not buy happiness, it just allows you to pay your bills without any stress, buy what you desire, and rent more bodyguards. And as even economists know, at the cost of other human beings.
@Old Man Shouts: When will we all realise that an "economy"as you have presented it, like christianity, is based on a series of lies?
The biggest lie is that there are experts with enough knowledge and understanding about an economy to predict how it will behave or how it can be influenced to move in one direction or another. Weather forecasting, palmistry, tea leaf reading have all got better records than economists. An economy is the sum of the needs, actions, skills, knowledge, expectations, etc., of millions of the most complex creatures on Earth. And yet there are economists and politicians so stuffed with their own hubris that they think they can fix everybody's problems by raising or lowering taxes or spending dingdongdilllions to carry out public works or prop up "too big to fail" corporate dinosaurs. They lead us into recessions and depressions and then expect to be thanked for half-way cleaning up the messes they make.
I think I actually trust priests more than economists.
@ Algebe
" I think I actually trust priests more than economists."
Agreed, and I trust priests far more than economic neo cons and libertarians who are just as likely as priests to abuse children and the elderly(excepting that the neo cons and libertarians would rather they mined coal and become "economically sustainable units" rather than use them sexually)
So you don't trust economists, huh? Well, better not study anything about economics…
This market interference is bad for a lot of people and bad for the dollar.
It's driven unemployment to 15%, impacted multiple industries including dental, hospitals, restaurant, gym, and others, and consequential effects on Real Estate and other industries. That'll help tank GDP and decrease monetary velocity. So the government and central banks then collaborate for stimulus, which is basically increasing the monetary supply. That might help increase GDP, but when people cannot work, how? They'll have to change industries. I don't understand the plan.
It's not my area of expertise but what they're doing sounds like a sure way to cause price inflation and devalue the dollar.
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