Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[Pixel42]

DR, this offer is still on the table, by the way.

I find it odd that you didn't even response, considering you said you were interested in my proposal.

If you aren't confident that the number will be below 75k, I'd be happy to make the bet based on the 100k number that you've mentioned a few times in the thread.

He seems to now be saying that his prediction is that Covid-19 will produce fewer deaths than flu in the current notional US flu season, so a timescale of the whole of 2020 doesn't suit him. As the first case of Covid-19 in the US wasn't recorded until well past the flu season's mid point, and the number of deaths may not even have peaked when it ends, it's an obviously unfair way to assess the relative severity of the two diseases. Even so, I'm afraid the prediction will be proved wrong.

 

[Roboramma]

He seems to now be saying that his prediction is that Covid-19 will produce fewer deaths than flu in the current notional US flu season, so a timescale of the whole of 2020 doesn't suit him. As the first case of Covid-19 in the US wasn't recorded until well past the flu season's mid point, and the number of deaths may not even have peaked when it ends, it's an obviously unfair way to assess the relative severity of the two diseases. Even so, I'm afraid the prediction will be proved wrong.

Well, if he wants to give a date and a number, I'd be happy to consider that too. He asked for my proposal (then ignored it), but I'm flexible.

 

[Capsid]

I have seen some suggestions that if you look at IgM in SARS it is positive at time of onset of symptoms, so an IgM test might be diagnostic for symptomatic patients. I accept that PCR is probably a better earlier test but involves dealing with infective material, and it is not the most enjoyable or non-worrying experience doing throat and nose swabs on someone who has a potentially life threatening infection, I'd far rather do a pin prick blood test.
ETA
See here.
It looks like at 3 days after onset of symptoms IgM may be more reliable than PCR.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa310/5810754
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa344/5812996

IgM can work, I've heard that it appears after 5 days.

 

[quadraginta]

Mebbe it was the flu.

I have seen flu; I have seen people die of flu. This is not flu. Take my word. The people coming in have a new illness. They catastrophically deteriorate from seemingly well to needing to go on a ventilator in an hour, this does not happen with flu. Now just stop with the 'it might be flu' nonsense.

Ummm.

Cool yer jets there, Cap'n.

The post was not meant seriously. It was, in fact, quite facetious. I thought that would have been obvious considering the nature of the exchange which had preceded it, but in an abundance of caution I added the smiley to be certain it was.

That, apparently, was insufficient.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

That was addressed earlier:

From the linked post:

The list of doctors killed was not legitimate in terms of demonstrating risk of medical practitioners because it consisted heavily of very old/retired doctors who had nothing to do with the epidemic, some even in their 90s. When this was pointed out, their ages were conveniently removed from the website. I won't claim any nefarious intent was at play, but it certainly was interesting.

Edit: I found a source that still lists their dates of birth. You can see that most were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, most of whom were exposed to coronavirus through nothing to do with practice in the medical field.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200328...a-di-covid-19/

However, looking at the archived list, out of 50 doctors listed, about 40 would appear to have direct exposure to patients, and only 3 of 50 were retired. So your argument is not exactly persuasive.

 

[Dr.Sid]

From the linked post:



However, looking at the archived list, out of 50 doctors listed, about 40 would appear to have direct exposure to patients, and only 3 of 50 were retired. So your argument is not exactly persuasive.

Actually many retired doctors went back to work.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Actually many retired doctors went back to work.

Then, at the time of their death (and presumably at the time of their exposure) they were not retired.

I fail to see the point/difference.

 

[angrysoba]

Ummm.

Cool yer jets there, Cap'n.

The post was not meant seriously. It was, in fact, quite facetious. I thought that would have been obvious considering the nature of the exchange which had preceded it, but in an abundance of caution I added the smiley to be certain it was.

That, apparently, was insufficient.

FWIW, I understood the fact that it was a reference to some posters here (around three of them) who are, for some reasons I can't understand, wanting to minimize this as much as possible.

However, Planigale is currently on the frontline of this and has been working in the COVID wards, from what I can understand. She might be skimming this thread and not keeping a mental note of who says what as she has other priorities.

 

[Planigale]

FWIW, I understood the fact that it was a reference to some posters here (around three of them) who are, for some reasons I can't understand, wanting to minimize this as much as possible.

However, Planigale is currently on the frontline of this and has been working in the COVID wards, from what I can understand. She might be skimming this thread and not keeping a mental note of who says what as she has other priorities.

skimming is fair, sleep deprived having worked nights is accurate, sleep is difficult.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

I see what you did there ...

Me, too, and thankful for at least a tiny grin in times such as there.

 

[lomiller]

By the end of tomorrow's count, New York state will account for 10% of all cases confirmed in the world.

I note the logarithmic deaths chart for USA shows no sign of flattening so far.

The US accounts for 1/3 of all the active cases in the world, at least the official ones. Some of that is skewed by poor testing though. IMO there are > 1 million people infected in Italy alone and probably another 1 million in Spain.

I also expect at some point Russia will be hit very hard. They may not be at a point where hospitals can’t cope, but there is no way their numbers are as low as they are reporting. Living in denial is a recipe for disaster.

 

[lomiller]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/politics/cia-coronavirus-china.html

China's authoritarian bureaucratic nightmare is not a reliable and credible source of information. Shocking? Not really.

What’s with the fixation on China? Even if they are underreporting, there is no reason to think their infection and death rates are radically different from Japan or Hong Kong, which still makes them a relatively minor part of the picture right now. It could be a problem if they were ignoring the virus, but we already know they are willing to go much farther to contain outbreaks than western countries would accept, so accurate numbers or not they seem to be doing their part in terms of containing the virus.

IMO the “frustration” with China’s is on the part of people more interested in looking for things to accuse China of then actually dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic.

 

[JeanTate]

And specifically because we have a free and open press this was widely reported, and there was a public outcry amongst HK citizens which went global. It then became one of many reasons that the Chinese government rightly became so distrusted under Xi, and the main contributing factor to the anti-extradition protests that started last year, and are still ongoing.

However, Hong Kong is NOT the same as China, and we have much greater freedom and Government transparency, an independent judiciary based on British Common Law and a free press. It is completely ignorant to claim otherwise.

The medical establishment here are not CCP toadies, they are professionals. There is no way the Hong Kong numbers are being under reported.

From what you can see there, how good would you say the relevant health (etc) agencies (etc) in Macau are (compared with those in Hong Kong)? With regard to covid-19.

From what I've read, they seem to have done some impressive work, and their contributions to policy - re travellers, social distancing, etc - have helped lead to such low numbers of reported convid-19 infections and deaths in Macau.

 

[JeanTate]

DR, this offer is still on the table, by the way.



I find it odd that you didn't even response, considering you said you were interested in my proposal.

If you aren't confident that the number will be below 75k, I'd be happy to make the bet based on the 100k number that you've mentioned a few times in the thread.

I'll bet that you'll need to get agreement from Doghouse Reilly very soon.

Likely within days it'll become very clear that (US) experts' estimates of the US death toll from covid-19, in 2020, will be well north of 100k.

 

[angrysoba]

skimming is fair, sleep deprived having worked nights is accurate, sleep is difficult.

Thank you for everything you are doing.

 

[JeanTate]

Speaking of FiveThirtyEight, they seem to have a weekly project, a report on a survey of experts.

Here's how it's described in the first article: "For the past five weeks, infectious disease researchers from institutions around the United States have been taking a survey that gathers their thoughts on the trajectory of the COVID-19 virus. The researchers come from academia, government and industry and are experts in modeling the spread of viruses like this one. The survey asks about things like how many people will eventually get COVID-19 and how many Americans will die." (link below).

The two so far are:
Infectious Disease Experts Don’t Know How Bad The Coronavirus Is Going To Get, Either (20 March, 2020)
Experts Say The Coronavirus Outlook Has Worsened, But The Trajectory Is Still Unclear (27 March, 2020)

Yeah, its scope is just the US. I wonder what the results of similar surveys in other countries (with large, diverse populations) would be (if they exist)?

The third one is up: Best-Case And Worst-Case Coronavirus Forecasts Are Very Far Apart

Some snippets:

"[...] experts expect an average of 263,000 COVID-19-related deaths in 2020, but anywhere between 71,000 and 1.7 million deaths is a reasonable estimate. The researchers believe that only about 12 percent of all COVID-19 infections in the U.S. have been reported, and they don’t expect that the daily number of reported cases in New York state — which was most recently 7,917 — will drop below 1,000 until around the end of April."

"In the three weeks we’ve been tracking the survey, the number of forecasted deaths has increased from 200,000 to 263,000."

"This week, the survey also asked each expert to report the proportion of their responses that comes from experience and intuition rather than from hard models built by themselves or other researchers. On average, 68 percent of each expert’s responses are coming from experience and intuition, with the other 32 percent coming from models."

 

[Dr.Sid]

I'll bet that you'll need to get agreement from Doghouse Reilly very soon.

Likely within days it'll become very clear that (US) experts' estimates of the US death toll from covid-19, in 2020, will be well north of 100k.

They already estimated 200k ..

https://www.kff.org/news-summary/u-...d-responses-remain-disjointed-across-country/

 

[JeanTate]

Thank you for everything you are doing.

Thanks from me too. Hope you can keep it up in the weeks and months ahead.

 

[ServiceSoon]

That’s not what I said. You can get some level of resistance to a virus from having contracted a similar virus or a virus that functions in a similar way. The theory I referred to is that people a previous H1N1 strain had circulated that was similar enough to the 2009 version that they had some resistance built in, while younger people were reliant of their immune systems response to a completely new virus. This would explain why the abnormally high ratio of young healthy adults that died in 2009.

My guess (and it’s no more than a guess) is that the rapid spread of COVID 19 is in part due to no one having been afforded any immunity from a similar enough virus so everyone's immune system is starting at square 1 fighting COVID 19.

Your claim is that the rapid spreading of COVID may be attributed to lack of immunity. I italicized that statement in your last communication.

I do not automatically accept your claim that immunity is associated/correlated to the rapid spread of a disease so I set out to the www.

The spreadability of a disease is assigned an R0 value. I found this resource from the CDC: R0 cannot be modified through vaccination campaigns. Further reading from that same reference declares that the use of a different metric is required to calculate the impact immunization could have on subsequent infections.

That metric is R Rate (Effective Reproduction Number). The article then states when using this new R Rate metric, "vaccination could potentially end an epidemic, if R can be reduced to a value <1." Potentially..potentially..holy nuances batman! I think part of the difficulty is that people whom are immune can still spread the infection? However, those that are immune may not possess a high enough viral load to successfully spread a specific disease.

For the purposes of answering whether immunity is associated/correlated to the rapid spread of a disease, would you accept that the terms immunity and vaccination similar enough that they would not impact the answer to the question I set out to answer? Any thoughts?

 

[ServiceSoon]

They already estimated 200k ..

https://www.kff.org/news-summary/u-...d-responses-remain-disjointed-across-country/

The most recent estimate for deaths in the US from the government health authority Fauci was between 100 to 200k in one calendar year.

The model Fauci is referencing to make that statement was from the CDC and it estimates that 160 to 240 million people could become infected in one calendar year. Combining Fauci's statement about the total number of deaths and that same models assumption on how many could become infected:

If 100k die and 160 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.125%.
If 200k die and 160 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.25%.

If 100k die and 240 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.042%.
If 200k die and 240 million were infected, the mortality rate would be 0.083%.

This same model has been used to predict a higher amount of deaths, however, that higher amount of deaths has been dismissed as less likely since social distancing has become more normal. Although, social distancing is not being utilized equally across the entire US, the extent of these social distancing changes are difficult to quantify as precisely as we would hope.