Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[SamusAranX]

The hurricane testing site “shutdown” doesn’t affect the reported deaths though, right? As those are reported I imagine from other sources such as coroners, hospitals etc, so it’s slightly positive to see that down

 

[LukeS7]

The hurricane testing site “shutdown” doesn’t affect the reported deaths though, right? As those are reported I imagine from other sources such as coroners, hospitals etc, so it’s slightly positive to see that down

Given the huge dropoff, I'd speculate that it is impacting their reporting of deaths to some extent. I'm (unfortunately) anticipating a surge of deaths some time this week as a result of this rather than it dropping lower.

 

[Horizons '83]

The true test will be tomorrow through Friday's results. Encouraging but have a feeling the storm/weekend had to do with the lower than new normal numbers.

 

[SamusAranX]

Given the huge dropoff, I'd speculate that it is impacting their reporting of deaths to some extent. I'm (unfortunately) anticipating a surge of deaths some time this week as a result of this rather than it dropping lower.

I don’t mean to be confusing, by why would testing sites being closed affect reported deaths? I thought labs report test results, and other entities such as coroners and hospitals are reporting death counts. To be blunt, they don’t process death certificates or transfer victims to test sites

 

[LukeS7]

I don’t mean to be confusing, by why would testing sites being closed affect reported deaths? I thought labs report test results, and other entities such as coroners and hospitals are reporting death counts. To be blunt, they don’t process death certificates or transfer victims to test sites

Testing site closures would not, but hurricane preparations could cause a slowdown in operations of any business, which I'd presume coroners/hospitals wouldn't be immune from.

 

[GoofGoof]

Testing site closures would not, but hurricane preparations could cause a slowdown in operations of any business, which I'd presume coroners/hospitals wouldn't be immune from.

This is true but should be a short lived issue given the Hurricane didn’t have a major impact on FL. Things like power outages will also impact reporting but it seems like the power outages aren‘t widespread and there should be plenty of crews on hand to get the power restored quickly.

 

[LukeS7]

This is true but should be a short lived issue given the Hurricane didn’t have a major impact on FL. Things like power outages will also impact reporting but it seems like the power outages aren‘t widespread and there should be plenty of crews on hand to get the power restored quickly.

Agreed. I think we'll have to wait to see the next few days of numbers to see the exact impact.

 

[Tink242424]

Further proof that this thing unfortunately won't just go away. Look at all the various models we were talking about in March/April and look at the shape of the curves in places like Australia, or even Montana. they are the reason no one talks about models any more because nothing predicted anything remotely like what we're seeing.

Heck , even Hawaii has surged to ~4x the number of cases they had at the beginning of June. And this is in spite of still partial lockdowns and almost no travel into the state.

Why do people think this will just go away??? I'm continually astounded by what people believe - Just wear masks and you will stop the virus, social distancing of 6ft will protect you, just staying on lockdown for a few weeks would stop this virus cold. Ummm, most places have done all of these things and it will not stop the virus. The ONLY way to have halted the spread of this virus entirely would have been a true lockdown - no one in or out of their house or where they were staying for about a month. No grocery run, no going to the hospital, no going to work - NOTHING... So now the only other way out is for us to reach herd immunity. So we actually do want people to get the virus. The only thing we should be watching for is hospital capacity. As long as hospitals have capacity then we should continue to open and go about our lives as per usual while protecting the truly at risk population - Elderly and immuno-compromised people.

And I will state it again for those who don't understand. At this point we need herd immunity so we need enough people to get the disease so it stops jumping from person to person. This is the ONLY way out of this pandemic.

So the slower that everyone gets this the longer we will have to deal with masks, social distancing, etc...

 

[Andrew C]

Familiar headline in the US...

Coronavirus Cases Rise in Europe as Youth Hit Beaches and Bars

Young people are letting loose across Europe, fueling a surge in coronavirus infections that is imperiling hard-won gains against the pathogen.

www.wsj.com

 

[Tink242424]

Donors do not take part in research. Neither donors, nor universities, decide who can see data. To the contrary, universities and governments often require that raw data be made available for government funded research (again, donors are not funding research activities, they are funding football teams). As was mentioned earlier in this thread in response to (IIRC) one of your comments, it is typical that raw data is made available to the community by researchers as part of the peer review process even when governments do not require it. For example, in the previously mentioned post, I linked to the procedure for obtaining the researcher's raw data. You can do this and perform your own analysis if you find the published results inadequate.



In the aforementioned example, the main concern was that the pharmaceutical company providing hydroxychloroquine would have undue bias in favor of positive results for their products. Researchers are required to state any possible conflicts of interest for this reason, and the researchers detailed the steps they took to make sure that they were not biased by needing to work with a drug manufacturer in order to obtain the drug in question. Among those steps was that they conducted a randomized trial. RCTs are considered the "gold standard" in medical research.

Scientific research papers also undergo peer review by 2-3 independent researchers at different institutions, often in different countries, who are also experts on the same research topic. This means that not only would one research group have to be corrupt, but every research group directly involved in the process would be as well.

Beyond that, what matters is not the result of any one paper (though papers are always more credible than random internet sources), but the consensus of researchers. On important topics, there will be dozens of papers produced by hundreds of researchers. Once again, there's a basic misunderstanding of the scale of who is involved in research. There simply are too many people involved for your claims to be plausible.

I just want to point out that there really aren't many, if any, "independent researchers" anymore as most are involved financially with some corporation. So, it is not as good of a peer review process as it used to be unfortunately.

My issue with hydroxychloriquine is that doctors have the ultimate responsibility to care for their patients. If they believe it is in their best interest then they should be allowed to prescribe the medication. Doctors prescribe off-label medications all the time. The risk is up to them as it is their license. We should allow the doctors to treat their patients how they determine is appropriate as they are the ones with the most data on the situation of their patients. We have a bad habit in this country of telling everyone what to do and it really should stop.

 

[Tink242424]

One of many reasons why science education and outreach are important.

It's easier to imagine that scientists are manipulating data for personal/political ends when you don't personally know people involved in research or know the lengths that scientists take to ensure the integrity of their results. Another thing people tend not to appreciate is that scientific misconduct is very rare. Science is hard and while mistakes happen, they are far far more often both subtle and unintended.

Scientists are people too and while I agree the majority are honest there are definitely financial and other pressures that make "science" not without impunity. We should question things and research them to see if they make sense. Science is not meant to be without debate and it is okay for people to question the official narrative as science is not settled but consistently changing as we learn more.

And unfortunately there is a lot of manipulation by all sorts of groups to bolster their points of view. It happens more than you think and some of it is done by people who feel that they are doing the right thing.

 

[GoofGoof]

Why do people think this will just go away??? I'm continually astounded by what people believe - Just wear masks and you will stop the virus, social distancing of 6ft will protect you, just staying on lockdown for a few weeks would stop this virus cold. Ummm, most places have done all of these things and it will not stop the virus. The ONLY way to have halted the spread of this virus entirely would have been a true lockdown - no one in or out of their house or where they were staying for about a month. No grocery run, no going to the hospital, no going to work - NOTHING... So now the only other way out is for us to reach herd immunity. So we actually do want people to get the virus. The only thing we should be watching for is hospital capacity. As long as hospitals have capacity then we should continue to open and go about our lives as per usual while protecting the truly at risk population - Elderly and immuno-compromised people.

And I will state it again for those who don't understand. At this point we need herd immunity so we need enough people to get the disease so it stops jumping from person to person. This is the ONLY way out of this pandemic.

So the slower that everyone gets this the longer we will have to deal with masks, social distancing, etc...

The only hope for herd immunity is a vaccine. In order to achieve herd immunity naturally we would need close to 200 million Americans to be infected. Even if you believe 10X the number of people reported have been infected it would still take several years to reach herd immunity levels at the current infection rate. If you speed up the infection rate to reach it sooner you overwhelm hospitals and this doesn’t even take into account the death toll which could be in the millions. That also assumes that being infected makes you immune permanently. So far there’s no evidence to suggest that. So if immunity only lasts a year or less then some of the people infected in March/April could be infected again this winter starting the count over again. It’s unlikely that we will naturally get to herd immunity any time soon and that path is grim with lots of death and a prolonged economic depression. On the concept of protecting the at risk population, that’s a huge number of people. You are talking about locking away close to half the adult population so that the other half can go about life as usual and not feel restricted. That would be devastating for the economy.

I think the better plan is to ramp up testing and tracing, continue to follow through on masks, social distancing and attempt to limit the number of people infected until we either have better treatment options or ideally a vaccine. As far as the economy goes, we can get 90% of the economy up and running in some fashion with restrictions and the lower community spread is the more people will participate in the parts that are open. Letting the virus run rampant is very bad for the economy. Look at WDW right now. Demand is in the toilet. That’s at least partially due to the fact that FL is a huge hot spot. Less cases, less community spread and a solid plan for testing and attacking hot spots when they pop up is the best thing to make everyone comfortable to participate in the economy. At the end of the day if there are no improvements in treatment and there’s no effective vaccine developed then we will end up with the plan to let the virus rip and learn to live with it, but that should be plan B as a worse case scenario.

 

[Heppenheimer]

I just want to point out that there really aren't many, if any, "independent researchers" anymore as most are involved financially with some corporation. So, it is not as good of a peer review process as it used to be unfortunately.

My issue with hydroxychloriquine is that doctors have the ultimate responsibility to care for their patients. If they believe it is in their best interest then they should be allowed to prescribe the medication. Doctors prescribe off-label medications all the time. The risk is up to them as it is their license. We should allow the doctors to treat their patients how they determine is appropriate as they are the ones with the most data on the situation of their patients. We have a bad habit in this country of telling everyone what to do and it really should stop.

I prescribe medications off-label all the time. But do this when I've seen research to indicate it likely will produce the desired benefit with minimal or at least tolerable side-effects. Many drugs have plenty of good data for off-label use, but they simply don't have the official indication because no drug company has ever bothered to undertake the considerable expense and effort for the approval.

But with hydroxychloriquine, we have such overwhelming evidence from multicenter randomized, double-blinded studies that it does not improve the studied outcomes in COVID-19. I would seriously question the intentions (or clinical competence) of any medical provider who still hypes it. In this case, I'm trusting the openly-published and freely available outcome data on hydroxychloroquine rather than a vague suspicion that there is some kind of behind-the-scenes malfeasance.

I and probably every other medical provider would be thrilled if we were proven wrong on hydroxychloroquine if some newer, and larger studies actually showed some benefit, although we might need to make a little red-faced mea culpa. Nothing wrong with that, no medical provider is going to make perfect predictions every time. One of the things we learn in training is how to admit and grow from our mistakes.

 

[October82]

I just want to point out that there really aren't many, if any, "independent researchers" anymore as most are involved financially with some corporation. So, it is not as good of a peer review process as it used to be unfortunately.

Research has never been independent of universities, government and corporations. Researchers at government and in university laboratories are largely "independent" in the sense that their funding is not tied to the outcomes of their scientific work. Research done by corporations is largely in the commercialization of basic research, that is, turning discoveries into marketable products.

This isn't a concern around peer-review. All results in basic research are reviewed by other researchers who were not involved in the original study.

Scientists are people too and while I agree the majority are honest there are definitely financial and other pressures that make "science" not without impunity.

This is why peer-review and a host of other steps exist in the scientific method. It is not that science is perfect, it is that it is far more reliable than anything else we have.

We should question things and research them to see if they make sense. Science is not meant to be without debate and it is okay for people to question the official narrative as science is not settled but consistently changing as we learn more.

If you're a scientist with relevant expertise, absolutely. This is the most basic principle of science. But when "research" is you doing a google search or watching a youtube video, your criticisms or concerns aren't scientific ones. They're opinion and there is a difference.

And unfortunately there is a lot of manipulation by all sorts of groups to bolster their points of view. It happens more than you think and some of it is done by people who feel that they are doing the right thing.

To whatever extent this may be the case, it's not happening in the scientific literature on the use of HCQ for treating covid-19.

 

[MisterPenguin]

And unfortunately there is a lot of manipulation by all sorts of groups to bolster their points of view.

Who are the people manipulating the hydroxy information for their personal gain?

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Don't know if Epcot can even do the Holiday story-tellers since they draw a crowd.

Some are also equity. I think the best case scenario is - if an equity agreement can be made we could have the voices perform their Christmas concerts (the same ones they do in the rotunda) out on the stage.

But at this point I’m not sure if Epcot will even be open by then. A few months ago I thought the “worst” case would be the parks aren’t normal again until the holidays. Now that doesn’t even look like a possibility.

 

[GoofGoof]

But at this point I’m not sure if Epcot will even be open by then. A few months ago I thought the “worst” case would be the parks aren’t normal again until the holidays. Now that doesn’t even look like a possibility.

I still think it’s too early to say. I don’t think crowds will go back to normal by the holidays, but I think people underestimate the negative impact of the current situation in FL. If the case numbers look a lot better nationwide and especially in FL by Oct/Nov I could see a little pop in demand from people who cancelled this summer and/or people sick of being at home. Disney has done a pretty good job of marketing the parks as safe, but it’s hard to overcome the general state of things as it relates to travel overall. I personally know a half dozen people who back in April were planning a trip to WDW in either July or Aug who cancelled. None were because they didn’t think the WDW precautions were enough.

With all that being said, I think there’s still a good chance the situation on the ground won’t be great come the holidays so it’s possible EPCOT could be closed or at least down to less than 7 days a week. In that scenario they will probably do no more than basic Christmas decorations.

 

[MaximumEd]

Who are the people manipulating the hydroxy information for their personal gain?

Bill Gates and the vaccine consortium. Dude, this is 101 level stuff!

 

[LukeS7]

Bill Gates and the vaccine consortium. Dude, this is 101 level stuff!

You know it's a sad state of affairs when I'm not sure if there's an implied "/s" at the end of that post

 

[MaximumEd]

You know it's a sad state of affairs when I'm not sure if there's an implied "/s" at the end of that post

My bad. Forgot the times we are living in. May it be so implied.