Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[sir drinks-a-lot]

The death and infection rates in China, Japan and South Korea are all very low. Is this all because of actions taken or can there be an hereditary factor.

I don't know, but some other possibilities:

- Reporting methods
- Diet
- Climate
- Difference in cultural habits (mask culture is only a small subset)
- Medical Care

Interesting that Germany is also so low.

 

[crescent]

The death and infection rates in China, Japan and South Korea are all very low. Is this all because of actions taken or can there be an hereditary factor.

The initial death and infection rate in China was very high. Disastrously so.

They stopped it by locking down movement and gathering, by isolating people. South Korea engaged in very rigorous testing coupled also with containment and isolation of people who might be infected.

Please don't tell me that you are using China and South Korea's successes with containment, isolation, and tracking as a justification for why we should not need to do the same.


ETA: Germany is also low. People in Germany followed suggestions to maintain social distancing. They didn't engage in the American style "I do what I want" thing, or go to crowded places solely because they were told not to, they didn't reject science just because their political rivals supported it.

America is in a hole right now, and it is getting deeper. We dug that hole ourselves.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

Professor John Oxford of Queen Mary University London, one of the world’s leading virologists and influenza specialists, comes to the following*conclusion regarding Covid19: „Personally, I would say the best advice is to spend less time watching TV news which is sensational and not very good. Personally, I view this Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over 65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic!“

https://novuscomms.com/2020/03/31/a...orphan-orph-laboratory-professor-john-oxford/

Note that he is, however, still in favor of social distancing measures.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

I don't understand the relevance of that.

It's well known that before the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused COVID-19 popped up recently, there were a handful of human coronaviruses that commonly cause respiratory illness.

So a minority of influenza cases are actually caused by these other coronaviruses and have been misdiagnosed as influenza. COVID-19 belongs to the same family of viruses as some previously known viruses that can sometimes be mistaken for influenza.

Ok.

How is this relevant to the discussion at hand? How does this help your case?

It's not important. I'm just saying the combined total will be no worse than a flu season.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

The 2019-2020 flu season is already virtually over. Don't you mean the total 2020 deaths?

Either way, I don't think the numbers will be much different calculated by year or calculated by flu season. Let's go with flu season so that we don't have to wait until the end of 2020. Flu season can extend into May.

 

[Doghouse Reilly]

Duplicate post

 

[JeanTate]

Spain has a population of 46 million and has so far recorded 10,000 deaths from COVID-19. That would make a fatality rate of 0.02% if everyone in Spain had the infection.

New York City has a population of 8 million and has so far recorded 1300 deaths. That would make for a fatality rate of 0.016% if everyone in New York City had the infection.

Given the rate at which the death tolls are rising daily in Italy, Spain and New York, how can anyone suggest with a straight face that the fatality rate might be as low as 0.01% given that those places already have had more than 0.01% of their entire population die from COVID-19 so far and those numbers are growing all the time?

Am I missing something here?

Is that New York city (population ~8 million)?

Or New York state (population ~19 million)?

 

[Andy_Ross]

569 people died in the UK yesterday bringing the total to 2921.

1000 of these in the last two days.

 

[JeanTate]

Thanks.

You shouldn't have an apostrophe after "years" in that sentence.



You spelled "familiarity" wrong.

I would certainly not get a job as a copy editor today, and not just because my spelling ability has declined markedly these past few years (AARP tells me that ageism is rife in the US )

 

[Andy_Ross]

Details of the woman who died in our village on Sunday have been published.

Caroline Saunby died in hospital on Sunday, March 29, after showing symptoms just days earlier.
It is believed the 48-year-old, who had no prior health problems, fell ill on Thursday with suspected tonsillitis.
However her symptoms worsened over the weekend and she found herself battling sickness and struggling to breathe.
After collapsing at her home New Marske she was taken to Middlesbrough's James Cook University Hospital by air ambulance, where she tragically died a short time later.

She was put on a ventilator by the Paramedics who arrived at the house and they called for the Air Ambulance.

Her husband and children who live at the same address have not yet been offered tests to see if the are infected.

 

[JesseCuster]

It's not important. I'm just saying the combined total will be no worse than a flu season.

It's not the first time you've mentioned that 7-15% of influenzas are caused by a coronavirus.

Why repeat it if it's not important or relevant?

 

[Olmstead]

The funny thing is that this is exactly how governments across the world responded to the virus at first:

First cases show up: "Right, so it's like a bad case of the flu or something. We'll be fine. Introduce some simple measures."

A few days later: "Crap, it's not like the flu at all. Emergency stop! Emergency stop!"

 

[Planigale]

Nonsense. Where on Earth did you get that "well known" notion? It's quite the opposite.

In the early days China was overwhelmed and didn't even test all the hospitalized people. But only positive tests were reported.

This is similar to a county in California that was recommending, until just weeks ago, that tests not be done on suspected, but previously untested, COVID-19 cases unless it would affect their course of treatment. That's what you do when you have more patients lined up in the hallway than tests.

On Feb. 12, China included all the people that had the symptoms of COVID-19 along with CAT scans. This backlog caused a large (12k) bump on that day in new cases reported to WHO. They subsequently reverted to reporting only PCR test confirmed cases as they had done previously when their testing capability was ramped up and have been testing contacts as well. Their daily reports have been PCR test based for a considerable time now.

Arcade22 is wrong in thinking it is well known, but is correct in that China has not been counting asymptomatic covid positive people as cases in terms of statistics.

China has regarded asymptomatic patients as a low risk and not included them in their tally of confirmed cases

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-says-a-quarter-of-cases-may-have-no-symptoms

 

[Planigale]

Details of the woman who died in our village on Sunday have been published.



She was put on a ventilator by the Paramedics who arrived at the house and they called for the Air Ambulance.

Her husband and children who live at the same address have not yet been offered tests to see if the are infected.

What action would be taken dependant on the result? If they are early in the infection they could test negative and still fall ill. If positive they could have mild illness. Tests are a limited resource at present, they should be used when a decision is dependant on the result. A negative result might be falsely reassuring leading people to think they don't need to self isolate for 14 days and spread the infection. Approximately 30% of people with covid-19 will test negative on nose / throat swabs.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Arcade22 is wrong in thinking it is well known,

Depending on your definitions of "incorrect" and "well known" of course. People here and in our media had been saying from the beginning and as the news came out recently to confirm it it has been repeated ad naseum

 

[JeanTate]

Thanks.

It's the equivalent of putting out thousands of sandbags and using that as proof that there are going to be big storms this year.

I don't understand this part.

May I ask, can you explain it in more detail please?

I think he is saying that preparing for a disaster isn't evidence of a disaster.

For example, if we all took up arms for the zombie apocalypse that wouldn't be evidence that it was coming.

It seems fairly simple to me:

Putting out thousands of sandbags would not prove that there will be big storms this year. Agreed?

Then building tent hospitals in Central Park does not prove that Covid-19 will be worse than [insert other disease here].

A variant of the pink elephant gambit* then.

That occurred to me, but I dismissed it as exceedingly unlikely.

After all, DR, in one post or another, acknowledges the existence of covid-19, accepts that it can cause deaths, and that death and/or infection rates have been rising exponentially.

IOW, we know there are already storms, big or not (unlike zombies or pink elephants).

Perhaps an analogy? Like all analogies it has its strengths and weaknesses.

Astronomers detect an in-coming asteroid and estimate that without counter-measures it will wipe out Beijing (or the Big Apple, or whatever city you choose). Counter-measures, however, are largely untested and uncertain. As a precaution, Beijing is evacuated.

Counter-measures are deployed, Beijing is spared, but Tunguska is wiped out.

In this case, it turns out there was no need for sandbags, but there was a big storm.

*The version I remember goes something like this:
A (standing at a corner, naked, screaming in an obscure language, Hittite say)
B Why are you doing that?
A To prevent pink elephants
B But there are no pink elephants
A Exactly! Proves I'm doing it right!

 

[William Parcher]

No, why? I'm not a conservative, if that's what you're implying.

We don't talk politics in this thread.

He is a radio talk show host who has eccentric interpretations and declarations of science topics. Your theory that, "this is not a pandemic and it's just the same as normal flu", is the same sort of thing he would say to his millions of listeners.

 

[Pixel42]

Either way, I don't think the numbers will be much different calculated by year or calculated by flu season. Let's go with flu season so that we don't have to wait until the end of 2020. Flu season can extend into May.

The whole point of the lockdown measures is to "flatten the curve" to spread the expected cases out over the next few months instead of getting them all in the next few weeks. So for a fair comparison with past years we do have to wait until the end of 2020. If it turns out those who catch it aren't immune to catching it again we may need to wait even longer to find out just how big a problem Covid-19 is/was.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Details of the woman who died in our village on Sunday have been published.
Caroline Saunby died in hospital on Sunday, March 29, after showing symptoms just days earlier.

It is believed the 48-year-old, who had no prior health problems, fell ill on Thursday with suspected tonsillitis.
However her symptoms worsened over the weekend and she found herself battling sickness and struggling to breathe.
After collapsing at her home New Marske she was taken to Middlesbrough's James Cook University Hospital by air ambulance, where she tragically died a short time later.

She was put on a ventilator by the Paramedics who arrived at the house and they called for the Air Ambulance.

Her husband and children who live at the same address have not yet been offered tests to see if the are infected.

I think it's important to add " no diagnosed health problem " ..

There are a lot of people walking around with un-diagnosed cardiovascular disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes , as well as any number of immune system deficiencies.

 

[dudalb]

The US death toll increased by 25% just yesterday. Wow.

But the numbers are down...Doghous Reilly just told us that.