What don’t you understand?morrobay said:Now Bloomberg television is showing the Boston Pops 4 July celebration. Indoors with people without masks singing loudly standing next to others on and off stage. This I cannot fathom.
Kaiser Health News reports "Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations"bob012345 said:I disagree. I don't think it's wise to just dismiss a large study done by medical professionals.
https://khn.org/morning-breakout/study-finds-positive-results-for-hydroxychloroquine/
However, those with certain heart conditions or heart disease are more susceptible to COVID-19, cannot be treated with Hydroxychloroquine, since it is potentially fatal. The study is contradicted by other studies that show no effectiveness, or adverse effects. Dosage is critical factor.In a large-scale retrospective analysis of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals, the study found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4% not treated with hydroxychloroquine. None of the patients had documented serious heart abnormalities; however, patients were monitored for a heart condition routinely pointed to as a reason to avoid the drug as a treatment for COVID-19.
It's funny. Doctors have been routinely prescribing HCQ for what 70 years now to people without bothering to screen them for heart conditions. HCQ was always considered a safe alternative to CQ. Now, all of a sudden its highly dangerous. I'm skeptical. I think that's because different kinds of doctors are involved now and the legalities are far more scary with endless lawsuits.Astronuc said:Kaiser Health News reports "Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations"
From the Henry Ford Health Systems - Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine Cut Death Rate Significantly in COVID-19 Patients, Henry Ford Health System Study Shows
https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
However, those with certain heart conditions or heart disease are more susceptible to COVID-19, cannot be treated with Hydroxychloroquine, since it is potentially fatal. The study is contradicted by other studies that show no effectiveness, or adverse effects. Dosage is critical factor.
Many deaths from COVID-19 also involve one or more comorbidities, including cardio-pulmonary disease.
Also from Henry Ford Health Systems - DETROIT – "Researchers at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit say early diagnosis of a life-threatening blood clot in the lungs led to swifter treatment intervention in COVID-19 patients. "
https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/06/pulmonary-embolism-study
However, this requires folks to have symptoms and get tested. Pulmonary embolism is a concern throughout the circulatory system. Blood clots in capillaries starve tissue from blood flow, which leads to hypoxia leading to anoxia, which leads to tissue damage or necrosis, and nerve or organ damage.
Please provide the evidence that demonstrates this claim.bob012345 said:Doctors have been routinely prescribing HCQ for what 70 years now to people without bothering to screen them for heart conditions.
https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-6986/plaquenil-oral/detailsSide Effects
Nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, diarrhea, dizziness, or headache may occur. If any of these effects last or get worse, tell your doctor or pharmacist promptly.
Remember that your doctor has prescribed this medication because he or she has judged that the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects. Many people using this medication do not have serious side effects.
Tell your doctor right away if you have any serious side effects, including: slow heartbeat, symptoms of heart failure (such as shortness of breath, swelling ankles/feet, unusual tiredness, unusual/sudden weight gain), mental/mood changes (such as anxiety, depression, rare thoughts of suicide, hallucinations), hearing changes (such as ringing in the ears, hearing loss), easy bruising/bleeding, signs of infection (such as sore throat that doesn't go away, fever), signs of liver disease (such as severe stomach/abdominal pain, yellowing eyes/skin, dark urine), muscle weakness, unwanted/uncontrolled movements (including tongue/face twitching), hair loss, hair/skin color changes.
https://www.rheumatology.org/I-Am-A/Patient-Caregiver/Treatments/Hydroxychloroquine-Plaquenil (Side Effects)Additional rare reports of changes in the heart rhythm have been reported with the use of hydroxychloroquine, particularly in combination with other medications. While monitoring for this risk is not typical in the office setting, it has been indicated in hospitalized and critically ill patients to evaluate for interactions with other medications.
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/009768s037s045s047lbl.pdfA baseline ocular examination is recommended within the first year of starting PLAQUENIL. The baseline exam should include: best corrected distance visual acuity (BCVA), an automated threshold visual field (VF) of the central 10 degrees (with retesting if an abnormality is noted), and spectral domain ocular coherence tomography (SD-OCT). For individuals with significant risk factors (daily dose of hydroxychloroquine sulfate greater than 5.0 mg/kg base of actual body weight, subnormal glomerular filtration, use of tamoxifen citrate or concurrent macular disease) monitoring should include annual examinations which include BCVA, VF and SD-OCT. For individuals without significant risk factors, annual exams can usually be deferred until five years of treatment. In individuals of Asian descent, retinal toxicity may first be noticed outside the macula. In patients of Asian descent, it is recommended that visual field testing be performed in the central 24 degrees instead of the central 10 degrees. It is recommended that hydroxychloroquine be discontinued if ocular toxicity is suspected and the patient should be closely observed given that retinal changes (and visual disturbances) may progress even after cessation of therapy. Cardiac Effects, including Cardiomyopathy and QT prolongation: Postmarketing cases of life-threatening and fatal cardiomyopathy have been reported with use of PLAQUENIL as well as with use of chloroquine. Patients may present with atrioventricular block, pulmonary hypertension, sick sinus syndrome or with cardiac complications. ECG findings may include atrioventricular, right or left bundle branch block. Signs or symptoms of cardiac compromise have appeared during acute and chronic treatment. Clinical monitoring for signs and symptoms of cardiomyopathy is advised, including use of appropriate diagnostic tools such as ECG to monitor patients for cardiomyopathy during PLAQUENIL therapy. Chronic toxicity should be considered when conduction disorders (bundle branch block/atrio-ventricular heart block) or biventricular hypertrophy are diagnosed. If cardiotoxicity is suspected, prompt discontinuation of PLAQUENIL may prevent life-threatening complications.
No, not all of sudden, based on cited studies going back to the 1980s and FDA warnings, and no one has claimed "highly dangerous". However, it has been recognized over at least 30-40 years, that there can be adverse cardiotoxicity in some persons. Dosage is a key factor.bob012345 said:Now, all of a sudden its highly dangerous.
It's not my claim, I heard doctors discussing it on TV a couple of months ago. I listened to what they said. They were aghast at the attitude of 'new' doctors without the extensive experience they had with the drug.Astronuc said:Please provide the evidence that demonstrates this claim.
bob012345 said:HCQ was always considered a safe alternative to CQ.
Not acceptable. You need a refereed paper or at least a case study. These kinds of 'I saw/read/heard something somewhere somewhen' do not fly on PF. And if HCQ and CQ were not politicized, we would probably not be 'debating' them like this. They are fine anti-malarial drugs and have an off label history for some auto-immune problems. They do have serious side effect and interactions.@bob012345
It's not my claim, I heard doctors discussing it on TV a couple of months ago. I listened to what they said. They were aghast at the attitude of 'new' doctors without the extensive experience they had with the drug.
My comments may have been too strong but they were based on what I heard. And I am not saying there are never any side effects. I can try and dig up the video comments if that's acceptable but since you correctly pointed out that opinions on this drug have been politicized, perhaps we just should not discuss it here. Thanks.jim mcnamara said:Not acceptable. You need a refereed paper or at least a case study. These kinds of 'I saw/read/heard something somewhere somewhen' do not fly on PF. And if HCQ and CQ were not politicized, we would probably not be 'debating' them like this. They are fine anti-malarial drugs and have an off label history for some auto-immune problems. They do have serious side effect and interactions.
This is what is accepted, content reviewed by MD's:
https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-5482/hydroxychloroquine-oral/details
Your question. The past reruns of the Boston Pops 4 July show that I assumed to be a live broadcast showed very risky behavior.chemisttree said:What don’t you understand?
morrobay said:Your question. The past reruns of the Boston Pops 4 July show that I assumed to be a live broadcast showed very risky behavior.
I'm not "just" dismissing it, I'm dismissing it because of a ridiculously flawed protocol used by the study, one you can easily verify yourself. This study might have some use in some aspects, but the conclusion "HCQ is useful" (which is heavily implied by the paper, and blindly reported by people using this study as last straw to save their blind belief in the drug) cannot be drawn from it, because the groups they use do not allow such a comparison.bob012345 said:I disagree. I don't think it's wise to just dismiss a large study done by medical professionals.
mfb said:I can't say I am surprised. This is what I wrote early April:
I see! If you moved past that first minute of the show (I often do) it’s easy to make that mistake.morrobay said:Your question. The past reruns of the Boston Pops 4 July show that I assumed to be a live broadcast showed very risky behavior.
bob012345 said:My comments may have been too strong but they were based on what I heard.
I agree with your point, but you're misrepresenting the study by exaggerating so severely.mfb said:If you give 60 year old patients red socks and 30 year old patients yellow socks, will you come to the conclusion that yellow socks are a valid treatment for COVID-19? Yeah, me neither. But if you use HCQ instead of sock colors it's good enough to be cited, apparently.
The chance to die increased by a factor 2-4 for every 10 years. The "none of these drugs" group is 5 years older. Using the lower estimate, we would expect a factor sqrt(2) for the difference between "none of these drugs" and the other groups, using the upper estimate we would expect a factor 2. The larger standard deviation in the "no drug" range would increase that difference even further as the curve is convex. That range covers the observed differences.Jarvis323 said:So you can see the age groups are not that different.
That article provide a terrible analysis and is way too heavy on spin to be of value. Saying Sweden's unemployment rate "jumped" from 7.1 to 9% whereas Denmark's "edged up" from 4.1 to 5.6% is just an eye-rolling level of spin and that sort of clearly agenda-driven analysis drives me crazy. An increase in unemployment of 1.9% (percentage points) in the midst of what for many countries is the worst recession since the Great Depression is spectacularly good at face value. I'd be more concerned about why their unemployment was 7.1% in March, because that's pretty high. But if that's a structural feature of their Scandinavian Economy, then their increase was actually less significant than Denmark's. Conversely, Denmark's small increase seems impossibly low for a country that shut down, unless closed businesses were still somehow able to keep their employees (more on that below...).mfb said:Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale
Shorter version: Sweden 'literally gained nothing' from staying open during COVID-19, including 'no economic gains'
Key aspects they find:
There is also this interesting comparison to the US:
- Sweden's soft approach killed more people
- Their economy is as damaged as the economy of the neighbors
- Sweden's rules are now stricter than the (relaxed) rules of its neighbors. Norway in particular is expected to have a faster economic recovery
I can't say I am surprised. This is what I wrote early April:
Look at the numbers not at the words if you don't like authors avoiding repetitions of words.russ_watters said:Saying Sweden's unemployment rate "jumped" from 7.1 to 9% whereas Denmark's "edged up" from 4.1 to 5.6% is just an eye-rolling level of spin and that sort of clearly agenda-driven analysis drives me crazy.
Is it? Germany's unemployment rate increased from 5.1% to 6.1% in the same time frame (and 6.2% in June). In France it increased from 7.6% to 8.1%.russ_watters said:An increase in unemployment of 1.9% (percentage points) in the midst of what for many countries is the worst recession since the Great Depression is spectacularly good at face value.
Oh, come on. That's not just a literary aesthetic of trying to avoid repetition. The meanings conveyed by those words are vastly different. And yeah, I do look at the numbers, but the words matter because they tell me the author's position, which influences what numbers to include and what numbers to exclude. The wording tells me I shouldn't trust this author due to his strong bias.mfb said:Look at the numbers not at the words if you don't like authors avoiding repetitions of words.
Is what what? The worst recession since the Great Depression? Yes, almost certainly - we're still in the front half of the pandemic, so it's still a projection, but it's looking like it.Is it?
As I said, the bigger problem isn't the country-by-country differences in method/characterization, it's that the numbers themselves aren't real due to the type of economic stimulus given. If someone is at home and not working, but still being paid by their employer, they are "employed" even though they are not working and are not producing any output for the company. As far as I know, that's a type of stimulus that has never happened before, so unless those people can be accounted for, you can't even compare one country's numbers today vs the same country for the 2008-10 recession.[various unemployment rates]
The US' increase from 4.4% to 13.3% (down to 11.1% in June) is the outlier here...
Different countries have different criteria for what counts as unemployed, so absolute comparisons between countries rarely work.
Yep, by definition, the debt is a bill you pay later, and you don't even see the full tally until the initial recession is over. I remember from discussions during the 2008-10 recession where people said about stimulus, 'we can't worry about the debt right now, we have to save the economy'. But then came The European Sovereign Debt Crisis. When this is over we're likely to see both a worse recession and a worse debt.I guess we'll need to wait another year until we get data about new debt.
russ_watters said:Oh, come on. That's not just a literary aesthetic of trying to avoid repetition. The meanings conveyed by those words are vastly different. And yeah, I do look at the numbers, but the words matter because they tell me the author's position, which influences what numbers to include and what numbers to exclude. The wording tells me I shouldn't trust this author due to his strong bias.
Is what what? The worst recession since the Great Depression? Yes, almost certainly - we're still in the front half of the pandemic, so it's still a projection, but it's looking like it.
As I said, the bigger problem isn't the country-by-country differences in method/characterization, it's that the numbers themselves aren't real due to the type of economic stimulus given. If someone is at home and not working, but still being paid by their employer, they are "employed" even though they are not working and are not producing any output for the company. As far as I know, that's a type of stimulus that has never happened before, so unless those people can be accounted for, you can't even compare one country's numbers today vs the same country for the 2008-10 recession.
Yep, by definition, the debt is a bill you pay later, and you don't even see the full tally until the initial recession is over. I remember from discussions during the 2008-10 recession where people said about stimulus, 'we can't worry about the debt right now, we have to save the economy'. But then came The European Sovereign Debt Crisis. When this is over we're likely to see both a worse recession and a worse debt.
[edit]
Discussion of this issue is quite thin, but here's an article from April about an IMF analysis of the problem:
https://www.ft.com/content/6f9932d4-5bf0-425d-b536-135d834ad20c
mfb said:The chance to die increased by a factor 2-4 for every 10 years. The "none of these drugs" group is 5 years older. Using the lower estimate, we would expect a factor sqrt(2) for the difference between "none of these drugs" and the other groups, using the upper estimate we would expect a factor 2. The larger standard deviation in the "no drug" range would increase that difference even further as the curve is convex. That range covers the observed differences.
In addition there is a big difference in the use of steroids between the groups. Who knows what their effect was?
It's possible to correct for that. Give the patients weights based on their age to make the comparison fair. It's still not randomized but it's better than nothing. Did they do that? No. Why not? I can't see any explanation that is not fraud or utter incompetence.
Multivariable Cox regression models and Kaplan-Meier survival curves were used to compare survival among treatment groups while controlling for demographics (e.g., age, gender), preexisting medical conditions (e.g. CVD, lung disease) and clinical disease severity (mSOFA, O2 saturation). Bivariate comparisons of the 4 medication groups were made using analysis of variance or Kruskal-Wallis tests for continuous variables, and chi-square tests or Fisher exact tests for categorical variables. Additional analysis was performed using propensity score matching to compare outcomes in mortality across treatment groups. A propensity score was created for each patient based on the set of patient characteristics used in the Cox regression model. Subsequently, 1 to 1 matchups of patients given hydroxychloroquine (either hydroxychloroquine alone or in combination with azithromycin) and patients not given hydroxychloroquine based on the exact propensity score were observed. The resulting matched group status was placed into its own Cox regression model as a mortality predictor with a Kaplan-Meier plot summarizing the survival curves of the two matched groups. P values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Additionally, median survival times by treatment strata were calculated to approximate prognosis. No imputations were made for missing data.
Further, a total of 190 hydroxychloroquine patients exactly matched up with 190 corresponding non-hydroxychloroquine treated patients based on the exact underlying propensity score. Table 3contains a descriptive summarization of these patients within both the unmatched and propensity matched settings, confirming that the propensity matched groups have identical underlying patient characteristics. The Cox regression result for the two propensity matched groups (Table 4) indicates that treatment with hydroxychloroquine resulted in a mortality hazard ratio decrease of 51% (p = 0.009). The resulting Kaplan-Meier survival curves within the propensity matched setting displayed significantly better survival in the hydroxychloroquine treated group, with the enhanced survival persisting all the way out to 28 days from admission (Fig. 2).
On second thought, I don't think I will let that go.russ_watters said:...and I'm setting aside the previously discussed oddity of strictly limiting the comparison of the health impacts to Scandinavian countries (or, oddly, the US).
By all accounts, Sweden's high rate of Coronavirus deaths was evidence that the country had made a horrendous error. Sweden — which did not impose a strict lockdown — suffered 543 deaths per million of its population, compared to just 105 in neighboring Denmark. The Swedish death toll has been roughly 11 times worse than Norway's, on a per capita basis.
Yet Coronavirus deaths in Sweden have fallen dramatically in recent days, and are now approaching zero. Between June 30 and July 6,
There were also some bright spots in the analysis, however.
“Our study shows that individually driven infection-control measures can have a substantial effect on national outcomes, and we see Sweden as a good example of this case,” said co-auth0r Peter Kasson from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Uppsala University. “Higher levels of individual action would further suppress the infection, while a complete lack of individual action would likely have led to runaway infection, which, fortunately, hasn’t happened.”
The analysis finds that nearly a third of Swedish residents voluntarily self-isolated.
The result of the unique approach was less catastrophic than many predicted, despite the increased death rate. The country had three times as many deaths per capita compared to Denmark, Finland and Norway as of May 15, but it fared better than the United Kingdom and Spain while also lessening the economic impact of the pandemic.
Is an increase by only 1.9% spectacularly good as you said? It's much larger than the average of the Eurozone. It's only good if you compare it to the US or Canada, but that's telling us more about the US and Canada than Sweden.russ_watters said:Is what what?
By comparing Sweden to similar countries they see that keeping things open longer didn't seem to help the economy. It's a cautionary tale that "we keep things open to help the economy" doesn't have to help the economy, and that tale you can apply worldwide.russ_watters said:But the title of the article is "Sweden has Become the World's Cautionary Tale". That has a lot more punch than saying "Scandinavia's Cautionary Tale", but no, I won't accept that literary flair makes the difference acceptable. The article repeatedly applies the thesis globally while providing no economic data for anywhere else but Scandinavia. That's not harmless literary flair, that's flawed analysis.
mfb said:By comparing Sweden to similar countries they see that keeping things open longer didn't seem to help the economy. It's a cautionary tale that "we keep things open to help the economy" doesn't have to help the economy, and that tale you can apply worldwide.
Nonsense. We were frequently told, often with visible aggression/anger, in these threads and in the public sphere, that it was immoral to even consider the economic impacts of the shutdowns, in the face of death.StatGuy2000 said:@russ_watters no one is suggesting that debt does not matter.
No, that's a straw man premise because by definition, debt is always a "later" problem unless the current debt level is so high that nobody will lend you money (which isn't happening today). So what you are saying is that it is sometimes acceptable to not consider the long-term impacts of one's decisions. I disagree with the premise, so the question is moot. Or if you'd prefer the direct answer: No, in my opinion it is never acceptable to say debt doesn't matter right now.1. Does debt matter right now?
#1 is a straw man argument -- the question is if one does nothing, then the pandemic itself will cause greater economic damage.
You said "question" and then made a statement. Are you asking or claiming that/if the pandemic itself will cause greater economic damage?the question is if one does nothing, then the pandemic itself will cause greater economic damage. So it is pick your poison -- get into debt to mitigate economic damage now, or do nothing and watch your economy tank (in addition to causing untold damage to the health of your population).
That's fundamentally impossible, and it's the reason why countries take on debt in the face of recessions. The permanent loss is exactly what they are trying to prevent. If someone gets laid-off and loses 3 months of income, that's money they are not getting back, ever. It's 3 months of work experience they will never have, 3 months delay to their next promotion, etc. It's unreasonable to expect that being laid-off will cause a person's future income to increase to make up for it; it's the opposite of what the physical damage tells us should happen. Employees lose the 3 months of income and their future careers are damaged as well. This phenomena was studied and quantified following the Great Recession.2. To what extent will it matter once the worst of the pandemic has peaked?
#2 will greatly depend on the degree to which nations around the world will work to stimulate the economy through fiscal and monetary policy, and the degree to which there will be pent-up demand for goods and services that are currently shut down (to varying degrees) due to the pandemic. I (unlike yourself) am actually quite optimistic that once the pandemic passes that the there will be enough robust economic growth to essentially wipe out the past damage and reduce or eliminate the debt accumulated during the pandemic.
russ_watters said:Nonsense. We were frequently told, often with visible aggression/anger, in these threads and in the public sphere, that it was immoral to even consider the economic impacts of the shutdowns, in the face of death.
But for the article specifically, I can only interpret what is there and speculate about why something wasn't there. At the very least it must be said that the author of that article did not consider debt to be a relevant/important enough economic impact to be worthy of consideration/mention in the analysis.
No, that's a straw man premise because by definition, debt is always a "later" problem unless the current debt level is so high that nobody will lend you money (which isn't happening today). So what you are saying is that it is sometimes acceptable to not consider the long-term impacts of one's decisions. I disagree with the premise, so the question is moot. Or if you'd prefer the direct answer: No, in my opinion it is never acceptable to say debt doesn't matter right now.
You said "question" and then made a statement. Are you asking or claiming that/if the pandemic itself will cause greater economic damage?
It seems self-evident to me that shutdowns cause more economic harm than an un-checked pandemic would, but it appears to me that you are saying you believe the opposite.
That's fundamentally impossible, and it's the reason why countries take on debt in the face of recessions. The permanent loss is exactly what they are trying to prevent. If someone gets laid-off and loses 3 months of income, that's money they are not getting back, ever. It's 3 months of work experience they will never have, 3 months delay to their next promotion, etc. It's unreasonable to expect that being laid-off will cause a person's future income to increase to make up for it; it's the opposite of what the physical damage tells us should happen. Employees lose the 3 months of income and their future careers are damaged as well. This phenomena was studied and quantified following the Great Recession.
For products, "pent-up demand" also never fully recovers for companies. It's reasonable to say that if we can fully recover, everyone who delayed buying a car in the past 3 months will do so. But that's 3 months of aging of their cars that they aren't getting back. It is unreasonable to expect that people are then going to discard their next new car sooner to compensate.
Short term consumables and services are easier to see: Cancelled vacations are lost, and aren't coming back. Restaurant meals that were canceled and converted to cheaper at-home meals aren't coming back. Etc.
The effects you describe are opposite what the cause is pushing toward.
mfb said:@Jarvis323: That's not what you can find in the abstract or the conclusions, and it disagrees with well-known statistics. And it still doesn't explain why they didn't randomize the groups, and why steroid use is so vastly different but doesn't get mentioned in abstract or conclusions. Well, there is one option that explains all these open questions together neatly: Deliberate manipulation - fraud. It's not the only option, but it does look likely to me.
Conclusions and Relevance
In this multi-hospital assessment, when controlling for COVID-19 risk factors, treatment with hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality. Prospective trials are needed to examine this impact.
Well, fair enough. Looking at long-term data on Sweden, it only went to just under 10% during the Great Recession and shows seasonal variation which makes it even harder to interpret (which we edit-out in the US):mfb said:Is an increase by only 1.9% spectacularly good as you said? It's much larger than the average of the Eurozone. It's only good if you compare it to the US or Canada, but that's telling us more about the US and Canada than Sweden.
It has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-time_working. It would be interesting to compare countries which did this during the financial crisis 2007-2008 with countries which didn't. There are quite a few confounders, though, which may be difficult to disentangle.russ_watters said:As I said, the bigger problem isn't the country-by-country differences in method/characterization, it's that the numbers themselves aren't real due to the type of economic stimulus given. If someone is at home and not working, but still being paid by their employer, they are "employed" even though they are not working and are not producing any output for the company. As far as I know, that's a type of stimulus that has never happened before [...]
The previously unreported jump in people dying at home is the latest indicator of a mounting crisis in a region beset by one of the nation’s worst and fastest-growing Coronavirus outbreaks. On Tuesday, a record 3,851 people were hospitalized for the Coronavirus in the Houston region, exceeding normal intensive care capacity and sending some hospitals scrambling to find additional staff and space.
Many people who die at home are not tested for COVID-19, said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. In New York City, for example, only 16 percent of the 11,475 at-home deaths between February and June have been attributed to COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
You realize that's exactly how scientific studies are done?PeroK said:In other words:
1) Compare Scandanavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland).
2) Under no circumstances look at data from any other countries. Even the Netherlands and Belgium are considered fundamentally different countries, beyond any comparison with Scandanavia.
3) Apply the conclusions worldwide!
GDP projections were in the article as well.russ_watters said:But remember: I didn't pick unemployment, you and the author did. In my opinion, income, GDP and debt are much better health indicators for the current situation (and usually overall) and especially given the fact that current policies have broken the unemployment statistics.
mfb said:You realize that's exactly how scientific studies are done?