Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[angrysoba]

Also, if there are lots of aerosol-borne virus particles about that are infecting people we'd be seeing much faster spread than we are.

Or, again, we can flip that around and say, wouldn't we be seeing a slower spread if it wasn't aerosol-borne? I mean, again, armchair reasoning can lead us to any almost conclusion that we want.

I think it has been mentioned often enough by now that we still don't really have an accurate count of the number of infections.

At this point, I don't think it is wise to either strongly support the idea of aerosolized spread, nor to strongly deny it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Thank you, I don't completely understand your argument. If fewer weak and elderly people were victims of flu, wouldn't more of them be around to die of this virus? I still don't understand why that wouldn't be the case. It's probably a deficiency in my own comprehension rather than your presentation. I'll try to figure it out but if you could further clarify I would appreciate it.

There's little to no evidence it would have a significant impact on COVID deaths.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

A lot more then 8000 Marines were on Guam in 1944..and a few thousand Japanese also....
Island did not flip over.

I want to know how do these idiots get elected?

 

[Roboramma]

That's right, you did mention that. But is that 100k total (USA deaths) between flu and coronavirus, or 100k from just coronavirus? If it were, for example, 99k from just coronavirus, I would definitely consider that a very real and serious pandemic. If it were from flu/coronavirus combined I would say my suspicions were vindicated.

If it were 100k total from flu and coronavirus would you consider your suspicions vindicatied? That would be odd, to consider yourself vindicated if your prediction turned out false.

Anyway, you don't see a way out of this predicament, but I see one: would you be willing to take a bet?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Yes, thank you, you make very good points and I can see how it is faulty reasoning. That's why I'm on this board. I am a big believer in good evidence and good reasoning. The reason I'm skeptical of this pandemic is because so far I haven't found the evidence persuasive that one exists. I think we will see total combined deaths between flu and coronavirus in the US for the 2019-2020 season of 65,000-80,000, clearly a heavy flu/respiratory illness season, but not the disaster predicted. And then, as I said before, all the people who were wrong will still say I was the one who was wrong because all of the lockdowns are what caused the low number of deaths. I don't see a way out of this conundrum.

IMO, of course, I see you closing your eyes to a ton of evidence while setting up some arbitrary endpoint you say you don't see.

This is nothing like seasonal flu and it surpasses all the worst flu seasons except the 1918 pandemic. Gawd help us if it gets that bad. I think modern science will save the world from that fate.

But we are in unknown territory as to how the poor people on the planet are going to take it when they start seeing treatments and vaccines being used that are not yet available to them.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

If it were 100k total from flu and coronavirus would you consider your suspicions vindicatied? That would be odd, to consider yourself vindicated if your prediction turned out false.

Anyway, you don't see a way out of this predicament, but I see one: would you be willing to take a bet?

Yes, I'd like to hear your proposal. Why would it be odd that I'd consider myself vindicated? 100k would be a very, very bad flu year but far, far from the disaster being predicted. It would mean probably 40-65k coronavirus deaths in the US.
But what I actually believe is we'll see a combined total of 65k-80k deaths between flu and coronavirus.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Good news from Washington, in an MSNBC interview Dow Constantine, Executive of King County, says they are not seeing the exponential growth that epidemiologists predict so far. Hopefully that persists. I do very dearly want to be proven correct in my pandemic denialism, not least because it means millions won't die, but admittedly also because it would just be nice to be right.

https://youtu.be/NQKu48vZPb4

Because Inslee saw the problem and acted quickly, despite the failed federal response, we are indeed doing much better in this state. It's going to go down in history as how a response should be done.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You don't know that and the researchers don't know that either though they say they are working on answers. ...

My exact thought. ^

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

IMO, of course, I see you closing your eyes to a ton of evidence while setting up some arbitrary endpoint you say you don't see.

This is nothing like seasonal flu and it surpasses all the worst flu seasons except the 1918 pandemic. Gawd help us if it gets that bad. I think modern science will save the world from that fate.

But we are in unknown territory as to how the poor people on the planet are going to take it when they start seeing treatments and vaccines being used that are not yet available to them.

Imperial College predicts a global death toll of 20 million, while the latest estimate on the Spanish flu is a global toll of 17 million. So why do you think the 1918 epidemic surpasses this?

Abstract
Mortality estimates of the 1918 influenza pandemic vary considerably, and recent estimates have
suggested that there were 50-100 million deaths worldwide. We investigated the global mortality
burden using an indirect estimation approach and two publically available datasets: the Human
Mortality Database (13 countries) and data extracted from the records of the Statistical Abstract for
British India. The all-cause Human Mortality Database allowed us to estimate mortality annually in
1916-1921 for detailed age groups. Three different calculation methods were applied to the data
(low, medium and high scenarios) and we used a multilevel regression model to control for distorting
factors (e.g. war and the underlying time trend in mortality). We found that total pandemic mortality
was an estimated 15 million deaths worldwide in 1918 (2.5 million in 1919), after including the rates
for British India and controlling for wars and the underlying mortality trend. Our validity analysis
showed that simulations of total mortality above 25 million are not realistic based on the underlying
mortality rates included in Human Mortality Database and in British India. Our results suggest that
the global mortality impact of the 1918 pandemic was important (17.4 million) but not as severe as
most frequently cited estimates.

It's a very good paper.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/12/2561/5092383

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Yes, it would be interesting to know, but I'm using norovirus as a bottom line, which is infectious as low as ten viral particles. Colds are about 100, so you'd expect Covid to be somewhere between those two.

Also, if there are lots of aerosol-borne virus particles about that are infecting people we'd be seeing much faster spread than we are.

Hep B, could take as few as a single virus to cause infection. Hep C, takes a large dose of inoculum, most needle sticks in health care do not spread hep C.

You can't just arbitrarily pick a viral pathogen and declare it to be a good model.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think part of the response was how could a completely self-contained vessel at sea get any CoV-SARS-2 virus particles on it to cause an infection? Which raises the question of how did the virus get on to the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

Obviously shore leave was involved.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Imperial College predicts a global death toll of 20 million, while the latest estimate on the Spanish flu is a global toll of 17 million. So why do you think the 1918 epidemic surpasses this?

It's a very good paper.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/12/2561/5092383

Doesn't it say, this would be the death count if no action were taken?

We have more tools to respond than existed in 1918.

And you need to compare per capita deaths since there are more people on the planet now.

And which countries does that 17 million include?

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

Doesn't it say, this would be the death count if no action were taken?

We have more tools to respond than existed in 1918.

And you need to compare per capita deaths since there are more people on the planet now.

And which countries does that 17 million include?

No, the 20 million is the estimate if action is taken. It was 40 million-100 million if no action were taken.

The paper included all countries for which data existed.

 

[casebro]

Yes, I'd like to hear your proposal. Why would it be odd that I'd consider myself vindicated? 100k would be a very, very bad flu year but far, far from the disaster being predicted. It would mean probably 40-65k coronavirus deaths in the US.
But what I actually believe is we'll see a combined total of 65k-80k deaths between flu and coronavirus.

Well, last couple years right around 2.8m people died, total.

My own prediction for 2020, about 2.9m. I think most of the victims of Covid are in the group that would not have made it through the year. They will die this spring instead of this fall. The difference is a couple months and a difference c.o.d. on the death certificate.

 

[rjh01]

So some evangelical Christian charity builds a makeshift hospital IN ANTICIPATION of it being needed. Get back to me when it's needed. This is more of the same "sandbags being proof of an impending flood".

How often does this happen in NY? Well, how often do we have mass hysteria and panic like this? Pretty much never. It's evidence of nothing except belief.

At this point I'm pretty much done arguing about it. The numbers will prove me right. We're already seeing that the supposed apocalyptic exponential growth is not happening, so it will all be clear soon enough.

You wanted to see exponential growth? See this page https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Scroll down to the Total Coronavirus Cases in the United States heading and click on logarithmic scale. The graph is a straight line. This means that the number of cases in the USA goes up by a factor of 10 every 9 days. There are over 200,000 cases now, on around 10 April that will be 2,000,000 cases. On March 1 there were 100 cases. But do not worry. By the end of April it will be slowing down as most people would either have [had] the virus or be in lockdown mode.

Edit. Just looked at your death toll. Currently 5,100. Will be 510,000 by the end of April. And probably 5 million by the end of May. How does that compare with flu?

 

[Roboramma]

Yes, I'd like to hear your proposal.

How's this: I'll bet you that by Jan 1st 2021, the total number of deaths attributed to Covid19 in the USA by John's Hopkins on this website: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html will be greater than 75,000.

That 75,000 is based on your high estimate of how many deaths might occur, plus a bit. But I'd be willing to consider other terms.

As for stakes, people around here often do avatar bets, but I'd be willing to consider other stakes as well.

Why would it be odd that I'd consider myself vindicated? 100k would be a very, very bad flu year but far, far from the disaster being predicted. It would mean probably 40-65k coronavirus deaths in the US.
But what I actually believe is we'll see a combined total of 65k-80k deaths between flu and coronavirus.

It's not odd based on the number, it's odd based on the fact that you are saying if your prediction was false that would vindicate you. It might mean that others were wrong too, but it would clearly show that your thinking was wrong. Maybe you'd like to make a more probabilistic prediction that could take in to account some of the uncertainties in the numbers, though.

Further, I'd predict that all the measures being put in place, the lock-downs, the social distancing practiced throughout society, are having a serious effect. Given that all that's happening, wouldn't you expect a particularly mild flu year? If what you're saying is correct we should expect to see very few deaths between both flu and Covid19 combined. Given the measures being put in place, this isn't a normal year, so if the numbers turned out similar to other years that would be strong evidence that this year was particularly bad.

As an analogy, imagine a village of farmers who keep a supply of food in case of drought and hard times. One year a drought happens and they eat through that food supply. Someone comes along and says: "the same number of people died of starvation this year as every other year, clearly there was no problem". But the fact that the same number died while the stocks of food were exhausted demonstrates the problem.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Unless they have SPAM, I wouldn't bother.

BTW, has there been any violence in Hawaii yet over this essential food?

TONS!

Hobrahs being what they are, its total "WOT,like scrap?" for em

And then at a Foodland just down the street there are palettes full of them! Its crazy. Finally they are figuring out that "Haoles hate spam", so just go to the foodland or safeway in Kailua and, "get plenny spam!"

 

[casebro]

Denying the seriousness of the situation is also COVID denial, and unlike "we are all going to die" the seriousness of COVID is being argued in this thread.

You do see your internal contradiction don't you? "Denying the seriousness ... is also COVID denial,... (and then) ...the seriousness of COVID is being argued in this thread. "

How can I participate without being accused of being a denialist?

I'm already a member of JREFugees. Go ahead, push me.

 

[xjx388]

I think it should be obvious that Covid is a more serious illness than the flu. But even if they were exactly the same, I don’t see how it should bring us any relief if we have a second disease that’s “only as bad” as the flu.

And it should be remembered that flu doesn’t cause ventilator shortages (and TP shortages! ). Sure, some of (a lot of?) that is due to the lack of immunity from Covid; but, the clinical course of Covid, from what I’ve read, seems very different. Had we not implemented lockdowns just imagine how bad it would be by now.

 

[ProBonoShill]

Anecdotal, but I've heard a Toronto are ICU physician say that 2/3 of the people who end up in their ICU from COVID die from it.

This is nonsense.

How many patients in his hospital have been in in ICU? How many died?

Name of hospital please.

Toronto has 25+ hospitals and Ontario has 37 deaths total as I type this (vast majority from retirement/nursing homes). Canada as a country- 109 deaths.

Let's use conservative numbers and say every Toronto hospital only has 10 critical cases, that's 250 ICU patients, which based on your hearsay means 165 people have died in Toronto alone, not even close to being true.

Hopefully your imaginary ICU physician is better at treating respiratory illness than he is at math.