bearlyamazing said:

---

Did you read the source of the chart at the bottom?

If the CDC and NY Times are actually incorrect, you're going to blame me for that? And what proof do you have they were wrong?

---

Did you bother to check the so-called source article?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-deaths.html

Now please explain to me how do the three numbers in your lazy chart come from?

That article not only underscores that any deaths where covid-19 was a factor, even with other medical circumstances involved are being called covid deaths but it also says that NY decided to add "more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it."

bearlyamazing said:

---

That article not only underscores that any deaths where covid-19 was a factor, even with other medical circumstances involved are being called covid deaths but it also says that NY decided to add "more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it."

---

Now please explain to me how do the three numbers in your lazy chart come from?

Eastern Oregon Bear said:

---

smh said:

---

..finally noticed, more than a week late, GoOskie's candid scribbling above won BearInsider's official Post Of The Day, congrats GO. highlit by a undersized blue boxed POTD icon, sort of hidden away / out of sight in handle profiles?

https://bearinsider.com/account/profile/4928

can't remember hearing about the category before, wondering who else might already be a winner.

---

I haven't paid too much attention to the POTD icon, but I remembered seeing one in my profile. I went through my old posts and was shocked to see that I'd won it 5 times going back to March 2018. That's nice but I thought only a couple were at all memorable. The last one in February got a bunch of stars but I had to partially apologize about what I said a few weeks later.

I see I have an All Star icon on my profile. I wonder what that means. It sounds good though.

---

^^^ yeppers, a good thing indeed, well done Eastern OB.

kinda forgot about the POTD puzzle, then woke with an answer, just guessing..

the clever creator of our boards (who?!) tucked in an automated check for which post gets the most Likes each day, rewarding the creator with a Blue Star.

[a step further.. cumulative winner of most stars, prize tbd?]

another lost thing is the name of cybears' behind-the-curtain programmer, bless'm.

ps: awarding stars is like an imaginary super-power; few cybers do.
# Bluto in Animal House: "grab a brew. don't cost 'nuthin"

BI libs have a vested interest in being right about more people dying and getting sick. True compassion.

BearChemist said:

---

bearlyamazing said:

---

That article not only underscores that any deaths where covid-19 was a factor, even with other medical circumstances involved are being called covid deaths but it also says that NY decided to add "more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it."

---

Now please explain to me how do the three numbers in your lazy chart come from?

---

He can't and he won't because he's a fraud. The New York Times has had a number of articles about this issue and none of them support what he is claiming.

He lifted his fake news chart from some right wing conspiracy theory purveyor and has no idea what the truth is. Nor does he care to find out that the reality is that New York is experiencing many multiples of their typical death rate due to COViD and that the non-COVID death total is higher than ever.

bearlyamazing said:

---

That article not only underscores that any deaths where covid-19 was a factor, even with other medical circumstances involved are being called covid deaths but it also says that NY decided to add "more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it."

---

Just to underscore the bad faith with which you are engaging here, I want to break down the idiotic train of thought you've gone on. I'm going to ignore for the moment the fact that this thread was started by you to advance unverified information that you found that fit your chosen narrative and that you have since abandoned because the right wing conspiracists have now moved on to bigger and better cons.

You started this slap fight when you produced a chart of unknown origin which has clearly been falsified. You present it as truth because it "cited" the CDC and New York Times. The actual article cited does not support the right wing conspiracy theory advanced by the chart which is that overall deaths have barely gone up because most of the people who died by COVID were going to die of something else anyway. That's literally why you posted it.

When called out on the fact that it was obviously fake, you went on to malign the CDC and NYT claiming that if the chart was false it was obviously because the CDC and NYT had bad data, even though in the reality the rest of us inhabit the truth is because the chart did not show information from the NYT/CDC. If they did you would be able to point us to quotes but have been unable to do so after multiple requests.

Then your third and final act of sell-ownage was to now cite an entirely different string of thought from the cited NYT article which is that NY believes many more people are dying of COVID than have been previously tested positive. Many right wingers, some of them not even full-blown conspiracists, have made this claim. So let's talk about what's really going on.

Here's a recent NYT article on this topic. According to the article: "More than 27,000 New Yorkers have died since March 11 20,900 more than would be expected over this period and thousands more than have been captured by official coronavirus death statistics." Note this is an actual quote, not something I made up and attributed to the NYT.

Here's an actual chart from the article (not one I made up with falsified information):



Here's another quote from the article: "As of Sunday, the city had attributed 16,673 deaths to coronavirus, either because people had tested positive for the virus, or because the circumstances of their death meant that city health officials believed the virus to be the most likely cause of death.

But there remains a large gap between the 16,673 figure and the total deaths above typical levels in the last six and a half weeks: more than 4,200 people whose deaths are not captured by the official coronavirus toll."

So unlike your obviously fake chart which shows that fewer people are dying of non-COVID causes than normal, it's actually quite the opposite, and this is AFTER New York attributed presumed COVID deaths that you earlier claimed about in your extended Gish Gallop of lies.

You don't have a leg to stand on. Stop posting disinformation.

Scary stuff: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/false-dawn-recovery-haunts-virus-survivors-who-fall-sick-again/ar-BB13uojj

bearlyamazing said:

---

Scary stuff: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/false-dawn-recovery-haunts-virus-survivors-who-fall-sick-again/ar-BB13uojj

---

Just going to pretend like you didn't post a fake chart with unhinged analysis yesterday? Why would anyone take anything you say seriously when you are so easily duped by fake news?

This seems more up your alley.

Last month, NPR and other left leaning outlets cast dire warnings about a physician and nursing home who prescribed HQL, zpac and zine for a big breakout of Covid-19 in a Texas nursing home:

COVID-19 Patients Given Unproven Drug In Texas Nursing Home In 'Disconcerting' Move
April 10, 20206:16 PM ET

Concern is mounting after a doctor at a Texas nursing home started giving the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to dozens of elderly patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and tracking the outcomes in what he's calling an "observational study."

Use of the drug to treat coronavirus infections has set up a heated debate between the Trump administration and leading health experts over its efficacy against COVID-19.

President Trump has been an enthusiastic champion of hydroxychloroquine, calling it a "game-changer." But some of the nation's most respected health officials have said there is insufficient evidence showing that the 80-year-old drug, which is typically used to stave off malaria or treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, is a viable treatment in battling the new virus.

The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug for the treatment of COVID-19. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is currently tracking clinical trials of the drug. Additionally, the University of Minnesota is undertaking a trial and Columbia University is as well. Results are not expected for weeks or months.

The controversial decision to administer hydroxychloroquine at The Resort at Texas City over the last few days was made by Robin Armstrong, a physician and medical director of the nursing home.

"It's actually going well. People are getting better," Armstrong told NPR, adding that after just a handful of days, some of the 39 patients on the medication are showing signs of improvement.

But scientists argue that relying on observational, uncontrolled evidence can be misleading and that the only way to truly prove a drug is working is through carefully controlled clinical trials. And, contrary to Armstrong's assertion that hydroxychloroquine "has virtually no side effects," it is known to have serious negative health impacts. That is why so many in the medical community worry about prescribing it without such proof.

Among them is Katherine Seley-Radtke, who is a medicinal chemist at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She specializes in antiviral drug research, including coronaviruses.

"This is really disconcerting," Seley-Radtke told NPR.

Armstrong admits it is difficult to quantify how much of his elderly patients' improvement is due to the malaria drug or how they would have fared without it. Nor can he explain why other patients are not responding to the tablet doses, though he notes many are only halfway through the five-day cycle.

"To be clear, no one is worse than when they started," he said emphatically. "From my perspective, it's irresponsible to sit back and do nothing. The alternative would have been much much worse."

In total, 87 people at The Resort tested positive 56 of 135 residents as well as 31 staffers. One patient has since died.

"We know how it happened," Armstrong said, explaining that after one staffer tested positive for COVID-19, Galveston County officials tested all other people at the facility on April 2. What they uncovered was one of the largest outbreaks in the Houston region.

"One staffer spread it to other staffers ... and each of them could work with 20 to 30 patients a day," Armstrong said.

Armstrong said he was alarmed by the test results last week and immediately began making calls to track down a source for the medicine, which is in short supply.

That's when his political connections proved useful.

Armstrong, who is a prominent GOP activist, called Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. He says Patrick reached out to Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, also a Republican, who knew someone on the board of the New Jersey-based company Amneal Pharmaceuticals. The company, which makes and distributes the drug, has donated more than a million tablets nationwide, including to the states of Texas and Louisiana.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/10/830348837/covid-19-patients-given-unproven-drug-in-texas-nursing-home-garnering-criticism

There's virtually no examples of patients taking small doses similar to doses for malaria prevention being a health hazard, only extremely high doses, unless I've missed some reports to the contrary.

Why was "concern mounting?" And why was the story framed that way?

I wouldn't hesitate to try small doses personally or for my elderly parents or family to take it. The drug's been around and safely used for well over 50 years.

And here's a recent update:

FOX 26 gets unprecedented access to Texas' 1st nursing home to treat COVID-19 with Hydroxychloroquine

TEXAS CITY, Texas - "This is an experience of a lifetime," said Dr. Robin Armstrong. "This is something we will probably never experience again."

Dr. Armstrong and others at the Resort at Texas City Nursing home knew time wasn't on their side.

"Two of our residents had symptoms and that's when we tested everybody," said nursing home Executive Director Jan Piveral.

56 residents and 33 staff members were COVID-19 positive.

"Our Goal was to make sure we could shelter them in place so we don't spread it to other people," Armstrong said. "Then also at the same time treat them so they would get better."

Armstrong says he knew residents who ended up in the hospital had a higher mortality rate.
"Our goal was to keep them here and treat them with the medications we had available," he said.

When Armstrong began administering Hydroxychloroquine to it was controversial but appeared promising.

"If we didn't make the decision quickly then we could potentially lose 15 to 20% of the residents which was not an option," said the Doctor.

Armstrong's approach was to begin administering Hydroxychloroquine a Zpac and Zinc just as soon as a resident first started showing symptoms.

The patients were being monitored daily.

"We did EKGs on each of these patients to make sure they didn't have the cardiac side effects that everyone talks about," Armstrong said. "None of our patients did."

Armstrong doesn't call the Hydroxychloroquine a cure and is aware of all the recent reports that say the drug shouldn't be used to treat COVID-19.

But he points out only one of the nursing homes COVID-19 patients has died.

"Everyone who got on treatment who started on treatment is actually doing really well," he said.

"I'm so glad that I've got the paper that I'm not positive anymore," said Helen Parrish one of the residents who took the Hydroxychloroquine.

When COVID-19 was creating havoc at the nursing homeowner John Griffin says only two people quit.
"99 percent of the staff stayed we had 34 employees that contracted Coronavirus all lived and 98% are back at work right now," Griffin said.

Whether it was God's will or Hydroxychloroquine Dr. Armstrong can't say exactly what it was that kept so many residents alive through this pandemic.

He says all he know is he had to make a decision fast and he has no regrets.

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/fox-26-gets-unprecedented-access-to-texas-1st-nursing-home-to-treat-covid-19-with-hydroxychloroquine

"It was a situation set up to end very badly," Armstrong said. "I thought we didn't have any other options."

Unit2Sucks said:

---

bearlyamazing said:

---

Scary stuff: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/false-dawn-recovery-haunts-virus-survivors-who-fall-sick-again/ar-BB13uojj

---

Just going to pretend like you didn't post a fake chart with unhinged analysis yesterday? Why would anyone take anything you say seriously when you are so easily duped by fake news?

This seems more up your alley.

---

Did Cal88 make this plot for faux news?

bearlyamazing said:

---

Gee, what a coincidence! Deaths from heart disease, flu, cancer, stroke, Altheimers, accidents and homicide plunge from 13,000 to 4,400 in NY in the same 1 month timeframe last year vs this year. Of course there are less accidents and homicides with SIP but not even remotely close enough to bridge this giant chasm.



Does't reflect well on the doom and gloom narrative here about covid. Deadly disease but not nearly as rampant and deadly as many here would have you believe, with any death from anyone who has the virus being labeled a covid death, even if they die due to any number of other principal reasons and underlying medical conditions.

---

So are you going to explain this post or not?

I didn't create the graph. And I didn't make up that NY decided to add over 3k deaths as covid deaths, even without positive tests. It was in the story, with quotes. Figured since CDC and NYT were cited as the source, it was safe. Spent about an hour after people freaked out about the graph looking for overall death counts and causes during the period cited in the graph and eventually gave up.

Do you have accurate numbers? All I could find is that the average deaths in the state are usually @13k a month from national stats.

And the most recent CDC data I could find sucks: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

It shows U.S. covid deaths at just 37k as of 5/1, which actually seems to be through 4/25, so I don't know why they say as of 5/1. They do have a footnote saying numbers lag because of how long it takes to get death certs, etc. But if their numbers lag, where are the other much higher numbers being thrown around by worldometers and others coming from?

bearlyamazing said:

---

I didn't create the graph. And I didn't make up that NY decided to add over 3k deaths as covid deaths, even without positive tests. It was in the story, with quotes. Figured since CDC and NYT were cited as the source, it was safe. Spent about an hour after people freaked out about the graph looking for overall death counts and causes during the period cited in the graph and eventually gave up.

Do you have accurate numbers? All I could find is that the average deaths in the state are usually @13k a month from national stats.

And the most recent CDC data I could find sucks: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

It shows U.S. covid deaths at just 37k as of 5/1, which actually seems to be through 4/25, so I don't know why they say as of 5/1. They do have a footnote saying numbers lag because of how long it takes to get death certs, etc. But if their numbers lag, where are the other much higher numbers being thrown around by worldometers and others coming from?

---

This is an extremely weak defense. You took a baseless graph from the Citizen Free Press and used that to craft a false narrative to justify a bizarre conspiracy theory that despite the fact that the president has said body bags are piling up at hospitals, COVID isn't really lethal at all.

I'm going to reiterate your post here (without the obviously fake graph that anyone without your obvious bias was able to quickly identify as fake) to highlight what you actually said:

Quote:

---

Gee, what a coincidence! Deaths from heart disease, flu, cancer, stroke, Altheimers, accidents and homicide plunge from 13,000 to 4,400 in NY in the same 1 month timeframe last year vs this year. Of course there are less accidents and homicides with SIP but not even remotely close enough to bridge this giant chasm.

Does't reflect well on the doom and gloom narrative here about covid. Deadly disease but not nearly as rampant and deadly as many here would have you believe, with any death from anyone who has the virus being labeled a covid death, even if they die due to any number of other principal reasons and underlying medical conditions.

---

According to the NYTimes, which apparently you believe is a good news source, NY and NJ have an additional 6k+ deaths just from 3/8 to 4/11 above normal which aren't reflected in the additional COVID deaths that have been added back. It's still far too early to know what has actually transpired in the last few months, but to believe that the number of COVID deaths is drastically over-counted would basically require you to ignore far too much evidence from around the country and around the world.

So tell us again how it isn't "nearly as rampant and deadly" as people would have you believe.

bearlyamazing said:

---

And here's a recent update:

FOX 26 gets unprecedented access to Texas' 1st nursing home to treat COVID-19 with Hydroxychloroquine

TEXAS CITY, Texas - "This is an experience of a lifetime," said Dr. Robin Armstrong. "This is something we will probably never experience again."

Dr. Armstrong and others at the Resort at Texas City Nursing home knew time wasn't on their side.

"Two of our residents had symptoms and that's when we tested everybody," said nursing home Executive Director Jan Piveral.

56 residents and 33 staff members were COVID-19 positive.

"Our Goal was to make sure we could shelter them in place so we don't spread it to other people," Armstrong said. "Then also at the same time treat them so they would get better."

Armstrong says he knew residents who ended up in the hospital had a higher mortality rate.
"Our goal was to keep them here and treat them with the medications we had available," he said.

When Armstrong began administering Hydroxychloroquine to it was controversial but appeared promising.

"If we didn't make the decision quickly then we could potentially lose 15 to 20% of the residents which was not an option," said the Doctor.

Armstrong's approach was to begin administering Hydroxychloroquine a Zpac and Zinc just as soon as a resident first started showing symptoms.

The patients were being monitored daily.

"We did EKGs on each of these patients to make sure they didn't have the cardiac side effects that everyone talks about," Armstrong said. "None of our patients did."

Armstrong doesn't call the Hydroxychloroquine a cure and is aware of all the recent reports that say the drug shouldn't be used to treat COVID-19.

But he points out only one of the nursing homes COVID-19 patients has died.

"Everyone who got on treatment who started on treatment is actually doing really well," he said.

"I'm so glad that I've got the paper that I'm not positive anymore," said Helen Parrish one of the residents who took the Hydroxychloroquine.

When COVID-19 was creating havoc at the nursing homeowner John Griffin says only two people quit.
"99 percent of the staff stayed we had 34 employees that contracted Coronavirus all lived and 98% are back at work right now," Griffin said.

Whether it was God's will or Hydroxychloroquine Dr. Armstrong can't say exactly what it was that kept so many residents alive through this pandemic.

He says all he know is he had to make a decision fast and he has no regrets.

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/fox-26-gets-unprecedented-access-to-texas-1st-nursing-home-to-treat-covid-19-with-hydroxychloroquine

"It was a situation set up to end very badly," Armstrong said. "I thought we didn't have any other options."

---

Hey bearlyamazing - you haven't checked back in on this in a while. How are all those folks doing in Texas City?

Turns out, that as of mid-May there were subsequent reports and things weren't quite as rosy as you painted it. 11 patients died and there is a lot of controversy around Armstrong's claims. I am curious as to whether you have updated your thinking on this topic.