BiochemAg97 said:

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tysker said:

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Old RV Ag said:

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Aggies2009 said:

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Old RV Ag said:

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DeBoss said:

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Can you help me understand how masks are working if deaths are spiking?

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You're assuming everyone is wearing a mask. Kind of like a condom - having it stay in your wallet doesn't do any good.

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Considering stores don't let people in without them, they're being enforced pretty hard.

Yet cases didn't drop.

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But going to a party or gathering after without one. Kind of like wearing a condom with one girl and not wearing one with another and wondering why girl two is pregnant (or you've got an STD) - but I wore a condom!

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There is no "safe" sex just like there is no covid risk-free "safe" interaction. Condoms are 99% effective only when used correctly. I've read that in realworld applications condoms are about 85-90% effective. Just like condoms, masks are a tool not a solution. The only real solution far stopping transmission is abstinence from in person interactions.

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Abstinence only sex Ed leads to higher teen pregnancy rate. We as a society are very bad at abstinence.

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Exactly. Abstinence, prohibition and mandates typically do not work and often lead to worse results than directed and educated allowance.

beerad12man said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Did y'all read the article?

This model is an automated model that is constantly changing projections based on data it pulls. On July 27th there was a reporting error in its source data that listed 1202 deaths, compared with 88 the day before and 223 the day after.

That erroneous spike caused the model to have such a high projection.

The author of the article is just using the number, which the creators of the model acknowledge is faulty, as click bait.

"At the beginning of August, the model actually had a more modest projected death toll of 7,176, compared to the real-world total of 7,471."

Any model/projection is only as good as the data that goes into it, and the data is constantly changing.

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Sure, but why publicize it with that anomaly in it? Fear mongering is the only reason I can think of. Will another article come out in a few days that shows how the data normalized and now it's predicting 12-14k deaths like everywhere else? I have my doubts,

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All the earlier posts appeared to go after the model and those creating it, not after the media for publicizing it. I don't think the the model creators were trying to draw attention to it, and in fact cautioned people from reading too much into it after it was published because they knew it had incorrect data feeding into it.

The media is a different beast. It has become very apparent that honest headlines and non-sensational reporters don't bring in the money like the doom and gloom ones do.

beerad12man said:

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bigtruckguy3500 said:

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Did y'all read the article?

This model is an automated model that is constantly changing projections based on data it pulls. On July 27th there was a reporting error in its source data that listed 1202 deaths, compared with 88 the day before and 223 the day after.

That erroneous spike caused the model to have such a high projection.

The author of the article is just using the number, which the creators of the model acknowledge is faulty, as click bait.

"At the beginning of August, the model actually had a more modest projected death toll of 7,176, compared to the real-world total of 7,471."

Any model/projection is only as good as the data that goes into it, and the data is constantly changing.

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Sure, but why publicize it with that anomaly in it? Fear mongering is the only reason I can think of. Will another article come out in a few days that shows how the data normalized and now it's predicting 12-14k deaths like everywhere else? I have my doubts,

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Looks like this is going to be the correct range just as you predicted. I guess you have your Phd too.

beerad12man said:

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Just following those that do

Looks like they updated it to say the new projected range is between 12,601-28,963 deaths by Sept. 8, with a current estimate of 15,790.

Still higher than any other graph, and to even throw out 28,963 is absurd. That would only happen if the entire state got together for an orgy tonight. That's 857 deaths per day for 21 straight days. Again, absurd to even have that upper range right now. We will see.

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Two more weeks.

If they keep pushing a prediction out a few weeks at a time (end of Aug to Sept 8 this time), eventually they might get to the 23,000 this all started the media storm with,

So when does CNN (or John Hopkins, worldometers etc for that matter) reset their death and case counter? December/January when the first deaths were reported? Never - keep the number growing? Imagine if we did that for other seasonal diseases.

DeBoss said:

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Can you help me understand how masks are working if deaths are spiking?

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Wearing masks at the HEBs and the Walmarts =/= wearing masks at your 2 year old niece's birthday pachanga or in your 3 generational household in Matamoros and coming across to the hospital in Brownsville.

tysker said:

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Old RV Ag said:

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Aggies2009 said:

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Old RV Ag said:

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DeBoss said:

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Can you help me understand how masks are working if deaths are spiking?

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You're assuming everyone is wearing a mask. Kind of like a condom - having it stay in your wallet doesn't do any good.

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Considering stores don't let people in without them, they're being enforced pretty hard.

Yet cases didn't drop.

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But going to a party or gathering after without one. Kind of like wearing a condom with one girl and not wearing one with another and wondering why girl two is pregnant (or you've got an STD) - but I wore a condom!

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There is no "safe" sex just like there is no covid risk-free "safe" interaction. Condoms are 99% effective only when used correctly. I've read that in realworld applications condoms are about 85-90% effective. Just like condoms, masks are a tool not a solution. The only real solution far stopping transmission is abstinence from in person interactions.

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I'm just here for the conversation related to tools, solutions, and condoms.

Keegan provides studies and information from the studies, what you do with them is up to you. Case positives is a useless metric to determine the danger of a virus that is very dangerous to a very small amount of the population. Now that the CDC says only get tested if you have symptoms and with viruses mutating weaker testing positive is just that. If people are not getting hospitalized or dying then it is not worth shutting down the large sections of the economy. There is evidence of herd immunity that slows down cases so that means we need to focus mostly on deaths and ICU hospitalizations.

Several counties have changed their opening up metric several times, Harris county is a good example. Deaths, total cases, ICU capacity, hospitalization, and now case positive. Going by new CDC guidelines you would expect case positive cases to go up if they do not suggest people to get tested. I believe their positive rate before opening up is 5%, unless you have a bunch of jobs that require testing (like my company when in contact with someone) than you will likely have a higher positive rate with only people being truly sick getting tested.

Swing and a miss

Positivity rate seems to be flawed in that it always hinges on the number of tests given and changes daily. Days with small test numbers usually have high positivity rate, implying only people with symptoms were getting tested that day. Of course that will skew the rate high.

Since there is such a wide range of symptoms and immune responses, people have looked to deaths and hospitalizations as the way leaders should be making decisions.

Positivity rate is also hindered by delays in reporting. The statewide figure has been effectively useless for all of August as the state has worked through a background of over a million tests.

Correct. If there were no backlogs and sites were testing the exact same amount of people every day since April, then it'd be a good metric. But neither of those things are happening.

astros4545 said:

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Swing and a miss

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More like swings and misses. They are both countless at this point.

Keegan99 said:

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Positivity rate is also hindered by delays in reporting. The statewide figure has been effectively useless for all of August as the state has worked through a background of over a million tests.

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So health officials that use positivity rates to inform decisions are idiots?

rojo_ag said:

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Keegan99 said:

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Positivity rate is also hindered by delays in reporting. The statewide figure has been effectively useless for all of August as the state has worked through a background of over a million tests.

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So health officials that use positivity rates to inform decisions are idiots?

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Some are, some aren't but they all know it's not a perfect measure. It's just another stat and stats can be misleading if they are not properly developed and contextualized. Surely you understand this don't you?

And why do you think "health officials" are so much smarter than anyone else or incapable of making poor decisions? Every profession or trade has people that make mistakes in spite of their education, experience or wisdom.

Rubble said:

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Anyone ever see a case study on % positive asymptomatic flu cases? Of course not, because people don't get tested for the flu just for the hell of it. They get tested when they have symptoms.

Do you ask your doctor to test you for strep because you were around someone who had it? Nope.

CDC finally woke up and is suggesting to stop getting tested if you don't have symptoms. There are far too many false positives that are the reason our world is falling apart.

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They had it right when this first started and would only test people with actual symptoms. Then the hypochondriacs autistic screeching about Drumpf's "lack of testing" furthered by the media came in and all hell broke loose.

I wouldnt be surprised if the false positive rating was higher than 30% for actual COVID-19 and people were really testing positive for seasonal cold viruses.

Now they are giving away free yankees merch for randos to walk in from anywhere and get tested, symptoms or no to keep driving the case counts higher:

rojo_ag said:

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AggieBiker said:

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rojo_ag said:

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Keegan99 said:

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Positivity rate is also hindered by delays in reporting. The statewide figure has been effectively useless for all of August as the state has worked through a background of over a million tests.

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So health officials that use positivity rates to inform decisions are idiots?

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Some are, some aren't but they all know it's not a perfect measure. It's just another stat and stats can be misleading if they are not properly developed and contextualized. Surely you understand this don't you?

And why do you think "health officials" are so much smarter than anyone else or incapable of making poor decisions? Every profession or trade has people that make mistakes in spite of their education, experience or wisdom.

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If that is the case, there are an awful lot of county health officials who are bad at their job. Maybe as a society we need to find out why these incapable and ineffective people are getting such influential positions. Hard to believe so many idiots have so much authority. And the governors too. The ones who are using positivity rates to make important decisions about people's livelihood..

I'm no doctor. I stay in my lane. A lot of super smart people on this board with all of the answers. Wish people would wake up and start listening to the infinite wisdom of TexAgs. We might be done with this **** sandwich already.

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Maybe that is something we need to do. Maybe we should start with the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases and determine why he was in position in March to say we didn't need to wear a mask to help stop the spread of an airborne virus that infects primarily through the respiratory system and now says we need to wear them around others because they may be sick or you may be sick. Let's start there and work our way down to those county health officials since they probably just follow the leadership above them anyway.

You seem to be an intelligent individual, so do I really need to explain to you why Fauci and the WHO initially discouraged us not to wear masks? I know you know why.

Given we appear to be at half of that these next 5 days are starting to look pretty grim.