Ryan754326

14 hours ago, Jiggo said:

Do you know what happened in Sihanoukville, over run by Chinese and no employment advantages for the Cambodians, just trashed that was a nice friendly hideaway.  

... And then the whole place crashed when the Chinese government demanded that Cambodia outlaw online gambling due to concerns over capital flight. Now they are left with a mess of unfinished buildings all over the city, and a few have already collapsed. 

Anyone who actually believes that allowing the girly bars to open will make the difference between containing Covid and a full scale second wave must not be in Pattaya to see what’s really been going on since the lockdown started. The girls haven’t stopped working; the only difference now is that nobody is paying for lady drinks or bar fines. 
Take a walk down a certain Soi after dark, and tell me that bar closures and social distancing is what has lead to the low number of cases in Pattaya. 

 

18 hours ago, BritManToo said:

I went 4x last year, when I was on a trip in Ninh Binh I met up with a young medical professional from Saigon, and a Viet couple. The medical chap had really good English and had saved up for 3 years to afford his week in the North. When we were on a boat being rowed around the sights, none of them wanted to tip the lady rowing us (3 hours in the sun).

 

Can't really see foreigners being replaced by Viets and anyone being able to make a go of it.

They just don't have the discretionary spending.

My experience in Vietnam has been that they will only tip people who they want to impress. The doorman at a prestigious Karaoke, or attractive waitresses at a fancy restaurant, for example. 
My former Vietnamese girlfriend would nag at me if I tipped a taxi driver or the old lady serving us soup at the market, but called me Cheap Charlie if I objected to tipping the guy in a tuxedo at the nightclub, every time he topped up my beer.

I noticed a lot more “show of status” in Vietnamese culture, but it might just be that I’ve spent a lot more time hanging out with Vietnamese people than Thai or Khmer. These weren’t rich Vietnamese I was hanging out with either. 

4 hours ago, Fex Bluse said:

I hope not but I expect there will be many old farang with health issues (heart, weight, blood pressure) dropping dead from unexplained causes if they think it's safe to start visiting bars. 

 

Young healthy people are not at much risk. 

 

A 60+ year old who is obese and has a heart condition is at severe risk 

The thing that nobody seems to acknowledge, is that the old, fat Farangs haven’t stopped meeting bar girls. They just have to meet on the street, or online instead of in bars now. 
None of the old expats or working girls that I know have been sick, or know anyone who has been sick. If this virus was as contagious and deadly as they say, we should see expats and hookers dropping like flies here in Pattaya, but we don’t. 

2 hours ago, Langsuan Man said:

Seems that you and Trump are in agreement   

 

No use in letting everyone know exactly how bad it is, better to keep their heads in the sand , until they or one of their family members get's infected

 

Then there will be a chorus or why didn't anyone tell me that this meat packing plant across the street from me has a 70% positive rate 

The meat packing plants are a perfect example: Test those who are confirmed to have been in close contact with infected people.
What’s the sense in wasting the limited test kits on people who have no symptoms? They can test negative one day and be infected the next. Do we test everyone, every day?

Only people who show up to a hospital with symptoms, and those who are known to have been in close contact with them, really need to be tested (this is the procedure in a lot of countries). The general population should be getting random antibody tests to determine what proportion of the population has been infected already, and who might be immune. 
Random mass testing is just creating more noise. The antibody studies have already shown us that way more people than we realized have gotten over this virus without showing any symptoms.

2 hours ago, robblok said:

As for comparing periods then the regular seasonal flue is already included. Because it was in last years deaths. So lets say in april 2019 there were 100.000 deaths (flue and all included) and in april 2020 there were 110.000 then it can be said we have 10.000 extra deaths. Unless of course 2019 is not a good comparative year for some reason.

 

Its not an opinion its a fact that in statistics per capita tests are far better en just the number of tests otherwise you can never compare countries with different population sizes. So not an opinion a fact. Trump might be right in absolute numbers but that is not how it should be measured. So its a half truth or a lie depending how you look at it. On par with Trump his normal dealings.

 

As for comparing south Korea and US i would say any country that has more tests per capita is better so the US would be better then them. However its of course simplistic to say that only per capita numbers tell intelligent testing can be better then blanket testing depending how its done. But I have no opinion if the US or Korea did more intelligent testing.  In basic i say that more test per capita means better (if its done smartly). That is my opinion not a fact like that per capita stats gives a better insight then absolute numbers.

There is no question that we’ve seen an increase in excess deaths in 2020 over previous years, however, those excess deaths have overwhelmingly been within the demographic of people 65+ with multiple pre-existing conditions. This is not an argument that it’s okay when old people die. It’s just an observation that I think is relevant when governments are coming up with their ongoing lockdown strategies. 
 

I agree with you that Trump is cherry picking the measurement that makes him look best, but at the same time, most people are also choosing to focus on the measurement that makes him look worst, while at the same time, doing their best to ignore the statistics that show the USA is not doing any worse, in terms of deaths, than most developed Western countries are. In fact, they are doing better than many. 
 

Personally, I don’t see much point in mass testing and confirmation of cases anyway. We are already treating everyone as if they are infected, and it is strongly evident that many millions of people have already been infected, and never showed symptoms.
The important number is deaths, which should be much easier to keep track of than cases, and it should be expected that a country as large as the United States will have many more total deaths than smaller ones, such as Germany, S Korea, or Thailand.

1 hour ago, robblok said:

The correct way is to say that the US is lagging behind in testing but is doing it better in death rate. 

But how can the US have a correct death rate if its lagging in testing. 

 

Probably more deaths not attributed to corvid then in European countries with higher testing. That is only logical. 

 

I think its hard to compare countries but Trump stating that the US is doing the most test is simply misleading and on PAR with his lies.

 

I recently saw someone come up with a good way. Just take how many deaths the country had last year in this period compare it with this year. Then countries can't hide the increase and its the same for everyone. Seems a far better way to get to the bottom of this if you really want to get good numbers.

Many people are claiming that deaths could actually be much higher than reported, and this may prove to be true, but when I see that they are attributing probable deaths to Covid without testing, I have my doubts. 

New York’s number of deaths went up 30% overnight when these deaths were added to the official count. What’s to say that these deaths were not the result of regular seasonal flu, pre-existing respiratory conditions, or anything else?

Taking these numbers into consideration for research purposes is one thing, but adding them to the official count, and reporting them as a sudden spike in deaths seems suspicious to me.

You state that Donald Trump’s assertion that the USA leads in testing is a lie, based on your opinion that per-capita is a more appropriate measurement. 
what countries do you believe are doing a better job at testing? 
Would you argue that Australia, for example, with 39,000 tests per-million and a little over 1 million total tests is ahead of the USA with 33,000 per-million, and 11 million total tests?

South Korea, who is held up as the model of a successful testing program now sits at 14,457 tests per-million, with 741,145 total tests; half of the USA’s per-capita numbers, and less than 10% of their total tests. For perspective, if S Korea had tested the total number of people that the USA has, they would now be sitting at more than 200,000 tests per-million, and would be leading the world, in that metric, by a large margin.

On 5/12/2020 at 10:59 AM, RR2020 said:

 

All found to be false positives.  Nobody has as yet caught Covid-19 twice, meaning as normal with an RNA virus, once you had it once you get immunity.

If dead virus fragments are causing false-positive test results, then isn’t it possible that many of the people who have tested positive while being asymptomatic, have actually already recovered, and are now immune?

9 hours ago, robblok said:

Of course its per capita and so should deaths per capita.

 

Only a mental midget like Trump would choose an other thing to measure.

 

I agree that stating the high number of deaths in USA is stupid as it should be per capita. How else can you compare.

I’m not necessarily arguing for one measurement or another. They both have their uses depending on the context.
All I’m looking for is consistency. If people Want to argue that the United States is lagging behind in testing, because smaller countries have tested a larger proportion of their population, then they should also be noting that four of the five largest European nations have significantly more deaths as a proportion, as well.

It shouldn’t be treated as a competition, but an awful lot of people seem to like pointing out how badly the USA has botched their response to Covid 19.
I hear a lot of sympathy for Europe, but very little criticism of how their governments have handled it. 
 

10 hours ago, ramr said:

I just automatically discount the tiny countries as outliers when I look at the per-capita tables, so I get what you mean.  I think you explained it better just now than in the previous long-ass paragraph, that's all.   However, that "unfair" (?) advantage should be expected diminish over time--as more and more people get tested--which is why I mentioned that a couple months had already elapsed.  And the more time goes on, the less your "advantage" argument will hold water.

 

It's not the *only* one we should use, and we need to make adjustments and look at data intelligently, but it's a better starting point than total number of tests.

I would have no problem if Trump were to mention both statistics, along with the pros and cons of each statistic, as we have done here.

What I mainly object to are the big <deleted> "Winning!  #1!  USA!!" banners and photo op nonsense when the data is--and I'm being charitable here-- ambiguous at best.

How can you not feel like your intelligence is being insulted when you see something like this?

 

I won’t disagree with you that Trump’s banner was unnecessary, but it was factually correct. That’s all I was trying to point out. 
 

Per-capita testing numbers should not be ignored, but the way I look at it, a smaller country boasting that they are ahead of a larger country in per-capita testing, is like someone claiming they won a race when they only had to run half as far. 
This is only my opinion, and I can’t argue if you disagree with my analogy. 

6 hours ago, ramr said:

News flash: you don't know what is.  And your first paragraph is nonsense.

 

The large, diverse population of the US and the federal/state logistics are a handicap for testing in the US, and should be considered in addition to its per capita testing numbers.  But per capita testing numbers are where the conversation should begin.  And it's not like we haven't had time already; if we had been testing at anything approaching the rate of a S. Korea, we would have tested far, far more total in the past couple MONTHS.

 

Our testing performance can be up for debate, but it clearly doesn't merit printing up a Charlie Sheen-style "Winning!" banner and hanging it up at a presidential press conference.

How is my first paragraph nonsense? I have clearly shown that any country with a small population has an automatic advantage if one is only considering per-capita testing numbers. The United States has the third largest population in the world. 
 

If per-capita is the measurement we should use, then why is everyone so focused on the United States’ higher total death numbers, when per-capita, they have less deaths than four of the five largest European countries?

The slow response of Trump and his administration is a different argument. Currently, the USA leads the world in total tests. In order for them to take the per-capita lead away from Faroe Islands, they would need to have tested almost 60 million people; more than the top 20 countries’ total tests combined. 
 

Do you see why per-capita tests is not a fair measurement?

6 hours ago, RJRS1301 said:

Test per million is how it is recorded for data for the world stats.

Choosing to record outside of others recording is not a level playing field

 

 

Faroe Islands leads the world in per-capita testing with 175,061 per-million inhabitants. They have performed 8554 total tests so far, out of a population of slightly under 50,000 people.
By definition, any country who tests their entire population, would have tested one million people per-million, even if their population was only 100 people. 
The USA has 330 million people to potentially be tested. No country in Europe, besides Russia, has more than 100 million. 
Does this metric seem like an honest way of measuring who “leads” the world in testing? 
 

The fact stands that the USA has tested almost twice as many people as Russia, and more than three times as many as Germany, who hold second and third place. If that’s not leading the world in testing, then I don’t know what is.

4 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

The USS Theodore Roosevelt gives a good idea of what would have happened. 

 

On this ship lived in close quarters more than 2,000 sailors, out of which more than 1,000 tested positive for the coronavirus. 

 

Yet, only 7 of them were hospitalized, and only 1 died. 

The Diamond Princess, and other infected ships have shown similar population/case/death ratios, yet the experts seem to be disregarding these real-life Petri dishes in favor of computer models, that have been shown, time and time again, to be far off from reality.

It might be an apples/oranges comparison, but I have said that if another country were threatening our economies and way of life the way this virus has, our governments would be drafting the young and healthy, and telling them it’s their duty to die for the cause. 
 

We now have plenty of evidence to show that for the large majority of people, this virus is not deadly. All I ask is for a more measured approach, where we isolate the most vulnerable and let the rest get back to work, in order to keep the system that pays for our healthcare up and running. 
We are slowly getting there, with some businesses being allowed to open, but if we go back into panic mode every time we see a slight uptick in cases, we will never come out of this. 
Nobody ever said that lockdowns would make the virus completely disappear. As long as the health system can cope with the number of people experiencing severe symptoms, there is no reason to keep everyone inside anymore.

TOTAL TESTS:

USA-9,935,720

Russia-5,805,404

Germany-2,755,770

etc. etc.

How is the USA not leading the world in testing? 
 

Everyone keeps pointing to TOTAL DEATHS when they want to show how poorly the USA has responded to Covid 19, while conveniently leaving out that they have significantly less deaths PER-CAPITA than the major European countries. 
Now, when it suits the narrative, we choose to focus on tests per-capita; forgetting that it takes time and effort to perform each individual test (with a finite number of tests kits available), and that the USA has a much larger population to test than the countries who are leading them in the per-capita metric.

What’s that quote about “lies, damn lies, and statistics” ?

4 minutes ago, chessman said:

Fair enough,

there are very difficult questions around this and I think the next few months will all be about finding the correct balance between opening up economies and keeping people safe.

I agree

23 hours ago, chessman said:

a few, but the number of Covid deaths not being classified as Covid deaths will be much much more.

 

Look at excess deaths: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/us/coronavirus-death-toll-total.html

 

 

I can’t argue that there hasn’t been excess deaths, but when I see statistics indicating that a very high percentage of those excess deaths were people over 70 with at least one pre-existing condition it makes me confident that this won’t be the end of the world for most of us.

What we’re seeing is a lot of excess deaths that would have happened anyway squeezed into a shorter timeframe.
 

4 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

that's his opinion based on past history with other diseases -- not any documented human experience or research with COVID.

 

Something being "the general rule" doesn't make it true for COVID.

 

If it turns out that this virus is completely unlike the rest of the corona virus family, and humans are unable to build up natural  immunity for any length of time, then a vaccine would be hopeless anyway.

What will we do, re-vaccinate the entire world’s population every month, until the end of time, to keep it under control?

14 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Yes, and those flu cases will probably still die around the world, so most of the coronavirus deaths will be in addition to those.

 

But in the U.S. specifically, the official/undercounted CV death toll is heading toward 70,000 and beyond, just in the past couple months -- whereas the total U.S. deaths attributed to the annual flu for 2018-19 was 34,000+.

 

Thus the U.S. CV death toll is already going to double the annual U.S. flu deaths, and is nowhere yet near its end point. So if there's anything there that you think somehow ameliorates the CV problem, I don't see it.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

 

 

How many flu deaths do you think have been counted as Covid19? New York’s death count went up by 30% overnight when they started counting “probable” deaths, without a positive test, based simply on the patient having Covid-like symptoms.

11 minutes ago, chessman said:

You really think so? If you saw someone driving in the style that that opening post is written in, wouldn't you keep your distance?

I wasn’t talking about his writing style. When I said solid numbers, I was referring to the charts he posted. Are they wrong, or from a source you consider to be dubious? 

3 hours ago, Swimfan said:

Yes you are right in one thing. You don't have a clue.

Can you elaborate? Looks like solid numbers to me.

On 5/2/2020 at 11:35 PM, teatime101 said:

They're different. The USA has a shockingly high rate of deaths from covid19. The comparison is a way of dramatising that. Comparing covid deaths to road deaths in Thailand serves no useful purpose, except to highlight how shocking those numbers are, which we already know.

The rate of death in the USA is not that shockingly high when you compare the deaths, as a proportion of the population, to many European countries. A lot of American states are doing far better than whole countries who have similar sized populations. Canada vs California, for example. 
You are right though, that the comparison between Covid19 and the Vietnam war is a way of dramatizing it. There have been many years in which more Americans have died from the seasonal flu than were killed in Vietnam, but I’ve never heard that statistic mentioned in the news before.

In my mind, the useful purpose of comparing traffic deaths to Covid19 is that it gives an opposing perspective to comparing with something like the Vietnam war; that there are many other things which we choose to do every day that are more likely to kill us. That’s just my opinion though, and I’ve resigned to the fact that I will not convince those who think this virus would have killed tens of millions by now without the lockdowns, no matter how wrong those projections have been shown to be. 

5 hours ago, Mavideol said:

and unfortunately they keep comparing apples and oranges, the virus it's an infectious disease it can and will infect anybody and everybody, as off now has no cure, the road deaths are not a disease, not infectious, they caused, unfortunately,  by many different reasons, including but not exclusively drunk driving, over speeding/poor driving skills, bad road conditions, bad weather conditions, tired/lack of rest/lack of sleep and mainly due to Brake Failure....it could somehow be reduced (not completely cured) if the police did their job by enforcing traffic laws

Traffic accidents might not be contagious, but everyone who drives is at risk of getting into one, and we know that this risk could be significantly mitigated by outlawing private vehicles, especially motorcycles, and making everyone ride a bus instead. We don’t do this because we know that the world would cease to function properly if we did. 
 

The big headline I keep seeing lately is that Covid19 has now killed more Americans than the Vietnam war. Why is that a fair comparison, but traffic deaths is not?