Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[The Atheist]

Lets see if I can use small words: We need to make a prediction of how the epidemic will effect the mass population based on a cohort of the mass population. Not a bunch of elderly folks sequestered on a cruise liner, nor one of several cohorts of patients showing signs. The staff at the Life Care Center in Kirkland is the closest we have.

You won't use a ship of 3500 people but will use a rest home with 50 infections?

Call me sceptical of that level of evidence.

South Korea & Germany provide all the evidence we need, but some people won't accept that.

Those two countries have tested the hell out of the population and have taken fairly extreme measures. If you can't use them as pretty solid evidence, I'd be very inclined to think you were only interested in evidence that supports your pre-determined conclusion. South Korea has undertaken over 400,000 tests.

Lets get REAL risk rates.

Quite.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I see the same thing that's happened before, only ramped up because of panic. Tents, hospitals at 300% capacity, etc. What is different? So far, the numbers aren't different.

Israel 2015

https://www.timesofisrael.com/influx-of-patients-crowds-hospitals-across-country/

Intensive care unit at Tel Hashomer Hospital reaches 350% occupancy rate; some wait up to 10 hours before receiving treatment...

On Monday morning, the intensive care unit at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem reported occupancy rates of more than 200 percent, while levels at internal medicine departments reached 140% occupancy. ...

The high levels of patients at the hospitals, characteristic of the months of January and February, was attributed to large numbers of elderly citizens catching seasonal viruses such as the flu.

Doctors and health officials have, for years, demanded more funding from the government in order to expand emergency rooms and internal departments.

“We’ve been crying out for the entire year,” Ari Shamis, the head of Tel Hashomer, said Monday, according to Ynet. “The overflow is all the time, all year round.”

So Israeli hospitals are chronically inadequate.

Boston 2013:

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/1823425

Coast to coast, cities report packed hospital emergency rooms as the severe flu season sickens thousands

"ICU" and "Ventilator" not found on the page.

Across the US, 2017:

https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/?amp=true

...setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits and canceling elective surgeries, to name a few....

“More and more patients are needing mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure from the flu and other rampant upper respiratory infections.”

Not one word about overflowing ICUs or a shortage of ventilators.


The difference is striking.

 

[pipelineaudio]

What exactly is Korea doing to have such a crazy low crit and death rate? I have heard from Koreans that many are given the nono word prophylactically. I have not really been able to confirm that. I'm hoping hatred for trump isn't keeping people from seeing something important here, if indeed that is what they are doing. Does anyone know what else they may be doing for the patients besides just sending them home?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That's a good point, at least on the surface.

You aren't going to be persuaded except by incontrovertible evidence. It would be very nice if it turned out you were right.

It wasn't a good point. See my reply.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Is there any way to tell if other countries are also seeing that 80% mild, 20% need the hospital thing? The worldmeters site makes it look drastically different between countries, but medcram makes it sound like its universal

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Depending on the source, annual US flu deaths are anywhere between high 30k to high 60k. So far we haven't even seen thst death toll GLOBALLY from this coronavirus. And again, yes, I understand exponential growth. Perhaps you will be proven right. Perhaps I will. The difference is, if I'm proven right, everyone will say I really wasn't, and it was just all of the heroic measures that were taken that saved us all. Kind of unfair, how you get to be right either way.

Of course not! It's not even half-way over.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Kind of, except maybe not...if you watch the 10 minute vid of the German pulmonologist, he says that 7-15% of flu cases ARE coronaviruses and are included in the statistics. And that now ALL flu where this coronavirus is detected are being counted as "coronavirus".

And some pneumonia deaths are actually untested COVID.

There is some overlap, probably both ways but more than likely more COVID is being missed than over-diagnosed.

Your speculation isn't consistent with what we know about COVID and testing.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I wasn't nuanced enough. Coronaviruses are included in flu statistics, 7-15% of "flus" are actually coronaviruses. It is entirely possible for a coronavirus to cause a "flu" epidemic.

No, just no. Where are you getting this from? Is this supposed to be in the US?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Fair enough, I wasn't clear. What I meant by "the same thing" is an annual phenomenon of respiratory illness attributed to viruses of one kind or another, this year being heavily attributed to the newly discovered Covid 19 virus, but not appreciably different in terms of case rates, spread, and fatalities but with the illusion of being so because of extreme levels of testing and reporting and media hysteria and the attendant societal hysteria.

Where are you getting this from? No offense but this is far-fetched thinking. Definitely not evidence based. We aren't calling flu, COVID. We are calling it COVID because it tests positive for COVID.

Unidentified deaths OTOH, almost certainly contain COVID deaths.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Not exactly. Each year a vaccine is produced which represents the best guess as to which varieties will be the most prevalent in the coming season. Many years a new mutant crops up which renders the vaccine mostly moot.

First, it's not a guess. Flu vaccine is based on circulating strains every 6 months, once for the southern and once for the northern hemisphere.

Yes, the strains can mutate in between vaccine decisions and vaccine production. The vaccine efficacy varies but sometimes lessens the illness if not preventing it.

It's off topic and a very complicated subject. There have been few years (if any) the vaccine had no effect at all.

 

[EHocking]

Is there any way to tell if other countries are also seeing that 80% mild, 20% need the hospital thing? The worldmeters site makes it look drastically different between countries, but medcram makes it sound like its universal

It depends entirely on their sources.

Worldometer uses many and varied - mostly mass media - as sources and only occasionally updates from country/state health department sources.
As I've said in a previous post, Australia Health Dept does not have mild/serious breakdowns in any of its alerts on its website, so i don't know where Worldometer is getting its breakdown for Australia.

I don't Twit, so don't know what medcram is or where it gets its figures.

I would just keep treating these numbers as being fluid and not accurate.

I have no idea what the error margins may be and I don't think anyone else does either. It seems pointless to get into too detailed an argument on numbers, rates, percentages - cos no one knows the accuracy of any of their sources. Or indeed if different sources class infections in a different manner.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ireland USA Denmark Sweden and UK are all moving about equally in the main stats, there is far too much focus on absolute numbers in the media.
Cases per million is far more illuminating.
It is a real failure of the most basic kind.

Sweden is worth watching with lax rules compared to UK for example

The UK will add some interesting stats given they've decided 7 days after onset is the time to leave isolation. No idea if that includes a post disease test.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Lets see if I can use small words: We need to make a prediction of how the epidemic will effect the mass population based on a cohort of the mass population. Not a bunch of elderly folks sequestered on a cruise liner, nor one of several cohorts of patients showing signs. The staff at the Life Care Center in Kirkland is the closest we have. No samples needed, time since exposure has already shown to the subjects just how their own response to the exposure has been. Simply gathering that data will teach us more than a bazillion "experts" on the news. If that cohort is too small, combine it with the cohorts if the choir and the govt meeting, since those also consisted of healthy individuals freely going about their lives. You know, like you and I want to be. Lets get REAL risk rates.

Show me the straw.

No one anywhere except in your mind is claiming the high fatality rate in the elderly has anything to do with the population at large death rate. You seem to think you can extrapolate something from the very small sample size of employees. Why? How is that indicative of any general population, let alone how is it a large enough sample size?

 

[casebro]

You won't use a ship of 3500 people but will use a rest home with 50 infections?

Call me sceptical of that level of evidence.

South Korea & Germany provide all the evidence we need, but some people won't accept that.

Those two countries have tested the hell out of the population and have taken fairly extreme measures. If you can't use them as pretty solid evidence, I'd be very inclined to think you were only interested in evidence that supports your pre-determined conclusion. South Korea has undertaken over 400,000 tests.

Quite.

I hadn't heard of a cruise ship of 3500. Did they follow up on all 3500 to give us infection/death/asymtpmatic/immune rates? I'd love to see that data.

SK only tested subjects self-selected with symptoms, so no population wide data there. I don't know how they chose who got tested in Germany.

We get many sets of Xmany tests, Y many positives, Z many hospialization A many deaths, but no "B many negatives out of C many people. We just have not gotten any data sets the we can use to extrapolate to XYZ per 100,000 without pulling numbers out of someobdy's dark region. That is why the XZYs are all over the map.

 

[Sherkeu]

SK only tested subjects self-selected with symptoms, so no population wide data there.

Anyone can test in SK, at least since enough private tests were available which has been a while now. Also anyone coming into the country automatically gets tested. You don't need symptoms.

However, if you aren't a traveler, have no symptoms, and you just want a test, you'd need to pay about $150 for a private test. If it comes back positive, the gov't will reimburse you and cover any care you need.

 

[Roboramma]

I am simply saying so far the numbers are no greater than what we've seen in a normal flu year.

What do you think is implied by that?

 

[Roboramma]

Except flu numbers are down as coronavirus numbers are up. Making me think they're the same thing. So far, the numbers do not prove otherwise.

Hold on. Can you be more clear about this? Are you saying you think diagnosis of coronavirus has all been a misdiagnosis of the flu? That's how that reads to me, but I may be misunderstanding you.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I don't Twit, so don't know what medcram is or where it gets its figures.

I don't twit either, not sure if its the same thing

 

[Dr.Sid]

Japan is again above 10% daily increase. New cases are mainly in Tokyo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Japan

Also while South Korea is safely behind the bump, and their active cases are decreasing, they still detect new cases at steady rate, showing there are far from crowd immunity phase. 100 cases per day is of course basically nothing. But not exactly nothing.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/

Btw. the wiki page shows numbers of people tested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_South_Korea

on 31st it was 10k tests. With 100 positive that's 1%.

 

[dudalb]

I second take the Covid denial crop in this thread to the Conspiracy section where it belongs.