Coronavirus (non political)

[sdskinsfan2001]

Originally Posted by SunnySide

Payroll tax cut -- takes directly away from Social Security. As a 41 year old who has worked his entire working eligible life and paid into the system ... dont continue to rob me. This would only help people already employed, the more you make the more it helps you.

if they cut the payroll tax by 2% and I make just over 100k a year, that benefits me (who doesnt need it) much more than someone who makes 43k.

Stimulus checks - sounds like it will go to people making less than 40K or so a year. Id rather just continue raising the debt and go with stimulus checks vs taking away from Soc Sec even though that would benefit me

Defund or reduce testing - i dont understand this. Dont we want and need rapid testing as a first step towards opening schools back up, being able to contact trace? I think they increase funding for testing not reduce or defund.

I'm 37, I've lived my whole working life under the assumption that I'll never collect social security. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I do. But won't plan it as part of my retirement.

That being said, I think direct cash into taxpayers hands is the better option than a payroll tax cut.

I don't understand defunding testing either. I would need to read more about his reasoning for this. Seems like you could only fund testing less if there was a vaccine readily available.

[SolidSnake84]

Originally Posted by sdskinsfan2001

I'm 37, I've lived my whole working life under the assumption that I'll never collect social security. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I do. But won't plan it as part of my retirement.

That being said, I think direct cash into taxpayers hands is the better option than a payroll tax cut.

I don't understand defunding testing either. I would need to read more about his reasoning for this. Seems like you could only fund testing less if there was a vaccine readily available.

We are roughly the same age. I will turn 36 in September. I am like you, i think there is no way that i / we will ever be able to collect the money. The system will be bankrupt / gone / USA will have collapsed / whatever by then.

I wish there was a way that i could stop paying into it now, with the stipulation that i am waiving any right to any future payouts when i get old. Otherwise, i feel robbed, like most people do i'm sure when we go to retire and it isn't there.

I suppose part of the defunding testing talk might be based under the belief that most likely, and hopefully, one, or ALL of the vaccines currently in phase 3 trials will be approved by the end of the year, and with production able to supply billions of doses in 2021, testing would logically be scaled down as the pandemic subsides. America won't be the only country in that boat. Probably within the next couple of months many other major countries will have their vaccines readied / finalized. And i do believe, no matter how tough they talk, whichever country successfully produces it first has an ethical responsibility to share it with the world. Even Donald Trump wouldn't pass up the opportunity to gloat to the world that his administration produced the world's first approved vaccine and because of the goodness of the USA or whatever crap, we are sharing it with the world.

[SunnySide]

too much testing --- with all due respect, that sounds like a twitter or internet talking point that is not based in reality. I think rapid testing is vital and I dont think we have that or reliable enough testing. Ive read there are some areas that have excess tests vs hot spots that dont have enough.

But this is about getting better quicker tests and more of them.

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But the US testing program can’t be considered “best in the world.” The US has run 83.24 tests per thousand individuals, according to numbers from Our World in Data. By comparison, Russia, which is also being hit hard by the virus, has run 120.07 tests per thousand people.

And the US is currently testing about 500,000 people per day, far behind the 5-million-a-day mark that Trump said the country was closing in on in late April. That is not necessarily because it can’t test more people: the country’s testing capacity has significantly improved since the pandemic began. Still, a Washington Post survey of about 20 states last month found the country was running at least 235,000 fewer tests a day than it could have run. While places with spikes in infections—like Arizona—are facing shortages, large swaths of the country are actually reporting underutilized availability.

https://www.technologyreview.com/202...ble-reopening/

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Funding for better quicker and patient friendlier tests are 100% absolutely needed imo.

Being against funding for testing is absurd to me. Testing is needed for schools to reopen.

[MTK]

Social Security will be there. Source: I work there.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[sdskinsfan2001]

Originally Posted by MTK

Social Security will be there. Source: I work there.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Won't change my planning. But I have no qualms with having extra money upon retiring.

[MTK]

Originally Posted by sdskinsfan2001

Won't change my planning. But I have no qualms with having extra money upon retiring.

Yeah that’s the thing, Social Security should only be a part of your long term planning, not the focus.

[MTK]

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social...ty-trust-funds

[Chico23231]

Like to get folks thoughts on if we will have a vaccine announcement by end of year? Or Vaccine being administered by end of year? Or longer ways off than most think?

I feel we will have an announcement around November and vaccinations probably within 60 days. I feel progress has yielded better than expected results from what I read.

[SolidSnake84]

Originally Posted by Chico23231

Like to get folks thoughts on if we will have a vaccine announcement by end of year? Or Vaccine being administered by end of year? Or longer ways off than most think?

I feel we will have an announcement around November and vaccinations probably within 60 days. I feel progress has yielded better than expected results from what I read.

Everything i am hearing also says that we will have a vaccine before the end of the year, but it will only receive emergency authorization from the FDA, and the first round of doses will only be for the most at risk people, first responders, etc..... Everyone else & "normal" people will be able to begin getting vaccinated in the 1st quarter of 2021. With the help of the US Military setting up vaccination sites, i'm sure it will take the rest of 2021, but we should have close to everyone or as many people as possible vaccinated by this time next year...

[MTK]

By the end of the year seems optimistic. If I had to bet I’d say a vaccine may be available sometime in the 2nd quarter of 2021.

[SunnySide]

Vaccines - im getting worried there will not be a magical vaccine.

Will the vaccine prevent all mutation strains of Covid?

Will the vaccine only protect for 2-3 months then the antibodies die off?

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A new mutation of Covid-19 is now the most dominant strand of the virus globally and forming clusters quicker in the UK than the original virus from Wuhan, an expert has warned. Professor Nick Loman of the University of Birmingham, who is part of the Covid-19 Genomics Consortium, said the mutation, known as D614G, has an observable impact on cases in humans. While it is not thought the new form of the virus causes a greater risk of death, or lengthier hospital stays, it is helping outbreaks spread more rapidly across the world. Prof Loman also said he suspected the new mutation would not impact the process of finding a vaccine for Covid-19, particularly given its prevalence globally. So how far away is a vaccine? Here is the latest on the UK and US trials.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ion-spreading/

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A doctor at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer tested positive again for the novel coronavirus three months after initially recovering from the disease.
The doctor “tested positive again because she has remnants of her first virus still floating around in her body,” a hospital spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
The doctor suffered from fever, cough and muscle pain when she tested positive for the virus in April, but she recovered and tested negative in May and June.
Earlier this month, she came in contact with a confirmed patient and subsequently tested positive for the virus.
The cases are the latest in a series of incidents of suspected reinfection that have raised questions concerning how long immunity against the virus lasts.
In May, a 45-year-old woman from Jisr e-Zarka tested positive for coronavirus after being readmitted to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, suffering from fever and chest pains. This came a month after she was discharged after recovering from the virus and testing negative twice.
Several studies are attempting to figure out how long protection provided by antibodies will last, Dr. Maria van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 technical lead, said last week, adding that some initial studies have found they “may wane after a couple of months.”
With coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS, people had some form of immunity for about a year or even longer, but with other human coronaviruses that circulate regularly, the immunity period is much shorter, Kerkhove said. This is “early data,” and more studies are needed, she said.
Preliminary studies in China, Germany, the UK and elsewhere have found patients infected with the novel coronavirus make protective antibodies as part of their immune system’s defenses, but these appear to last only a few months.
That raises big problems for developers of potential COVID-19 vaccines, experts say, and for public health authorities seeking to deploy them to protect populations from future waves of the pandemic.
To be truly effective, COVID-19 vaccines “will either need to generate stronger and longer-lasting protection... or they may need to be given regularly,” said Stephen Griffin, a Leeds University associate professor of medicine. “And those things are not trivial.”
https://www.jpost.com/health-science...overing-635550

[Chico23231]

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23...age-race-14863

Open this up and look at the data

[Giantone]

Originally Posted by Chico23231

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23...age-race-14863

Open this up and look at the data

the ones 85 and older what underlying issues did they have and would they have passed anyway?

[Chico23231]

Originally Posted by Giantone

the ones 85 and older what underlying issues did they have and would they have passed anyway?

I don’t know g1 but that’s the official cdc stats

But the deaths are small enough under 55 year old where you should be able to parse the data to find out if each death had an underlying medical issue.

My guess is, I would say at a minimum a third had underlying issues or high risk. 1/3 would be extremely conservative estimate based on other data

[SunnySide]

73.6 million minors in the US as of 2016

0.0016 infection mortality rate for 5-9 year olds

117,760 minor deaths (assumes entire minor population gets infected, which it wont)

That only looks at deaths .. not hospitalizations, long term health consequences etc

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I understand the importance of mortality rates to be included as part of the discussion but I dont understand the motivation to downplay the virus by tunnel visioning on just the mortality rate and ignoring all other considerations.

Thankfully the mortality rate is not higher .. but when you put those small percents to huge infection rates = huge death totals.

if 50k kids die because all schools open .. that is not a win.