Corona Virus - How is that working for you?

..I thought most of the deaths are elderly ...just like the flu ?..most people recover from it ...4 out of 5 have barely noticeable symptoms

The Other Side of COVID-19: Milder Cases, Recovery

 

Until a vaccine is created we are all in a state of limbo, adjusting lifestyle and work practices to reduce infection rates will be difficult. Some people simply fail to engage commonsense and responsibility, a minority but what they thoughtlessly fail to do scuppers everything thing for all of us. (We see in Uk and Ireland people who believe "sure what I do will not matter that much", reality fails to bite and on the opposite end of the spectrum some people are prone to being almost hysterical).
It will in time, bring other problems down the line - psychological and psychiatric.
Trying to reduce and spread the load will hopefully allow us collectively to cope, won't cure it but will buy time for existing services, knowledge and research to be gained based on this.
The speculative hunches which have been postulated are no more than wasteful red herrings.
All governments have made mistakes and been caught wrong-footed by this microscopic little bastard, few have got it "right".
A lack of knowledge, an evolving understanding based on evolving knowledge and no first-hand experience of the virus, when you look at the calls which have had to be made - all very far-reaching and costly.
The ability of its spread certainly has proved alarming, its potential to kill not only those living with comorbidities but also the health shows it to be much more than a "mild flu".
The resources needed to treat people in terms of PPE, equipment, the high-grade nursing, and medical skills have been hard-pressed compounded by the increasing numbers of people smitten by Covid19 speak for itself.
Trying to look after people in all ways possible whilst fiscally damaging has to be done, "herd immunity" will be limited but what would the cost be in lives lost.
It is really a time for collective national efforts and for international cooperation between all nations- this wee virus is "the great leveler" it does not really take any prisoners so responsible leadership and the ability of elected administrations to step up to the mark has never been more important, some administrations have demonstrated this ability, some have not.

Beyond the realm of reality, the realm of stupidity never fails to confound - the conspiracy theory gurus have put out such a volume and range of rubbish, dangerous irresponsible misinformation.
One wonders what planet they have been on eg. David Icke says the virus does not actually exist and blames "5G" for people becoming ill whilst indulging his "World Domination and Control" fantasies reminding his listeners that he has been saying this for years "in me books". This simply makes me extremely disappointed, angry and in no small part disgusted.

Some months ago I was pondering that my generation and subsequent ones had been faced with some major challenges, environmental, terrorist, political challenges, warfare which brought so many movements in populations but Covid19 ( next to climate change) the big one.

 

Hoefully, this time the ball will not be dropped a third time, as it was with SARS & MERS. Both were Coronaviruses, and both were deadly, but not as communicable and COVID-19. However, the development of vaccines was dropped when both viruses quickly faded.

 

I watched a smart epidemiologist from Stanford yesterday on TV, that postulates that the virus is LESS lethal than seasonal Flu. He thinks the mortality rate is closer to 3 people per thousand than the current estimates of 3, 4, 5 per hundred. He went right back to that "number of cases" statistic. He thinks about 1% of people infected ever get tested, so using that as a baseline for the mortality (number of cases divided by number of deaths) throws the stats completely off the charts. This goes right back to the lack of testing capabilities, but also because the majority of people contracting the virus don't get sick enough to see a doctor, much less get so sick the health care provider will use their rationed testing ability on that patient.

I don't know if he's right on the mortality rate that he estimates, but I'm sure he's right that the rate is far lower than we fear.

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There are two virology labs in Wuhan where they search for viruses in bats. One of those is 280 yards from the "wet market" the Chinese blame for the start of the epidemic. The other lab is a few miles away. Our NIH has been partially funding these labs and just a few months ago they inspected and then warned that the containment procedures were woefully inadequate. The virus, in the opinion of a lot of people, infected one of these people in the lab and spread from there.

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Most deaths are the elderly. This is a good thing? Good for the GDP I guess.

If I died in battle, I wouldn't care who fired the mortar. The odds of dying from Corona is greater than the odds of getting murdered by a stranger in your house. For white people.

So many known unknowns.

 

WHO continues to estimate the mortality rate at 3.4% (last I saw). I also think that is a bit high. I originally thought the mortality rate was going to prove to be around 1% (1 death per hundred infected). I now suspect it is a bit worse. Even at 1% mortality, that rate would be about 10x more lethal than typical flu. Current 'mortality rates' based on positive tests and resultant deaths are all over the map: from 0.2% to 20% depending on the country and reported data.

However, at 0.2%, Covid would still be twice as lethal as flu.

True, we don't have a good handle on the denominator (# infected vs # positive tests). Germany has been aggressive in their testing program and has only test around 1.6% of their population. So the total number of actual infections (and real prevalence) is a bit of a mystery at the moment.

However, in the USA and England, despite some serious interventions. e.g. 'lockdowns', SARS-CoV-2 has killed as many people this year as Influenza-like Illnesses (ILI's or 'flu') thas for the whole 2019-2020 flu season.

While we aren't done with either Covid-19 or ILI's, Covid-19 is clearly killing people at a faster rate as the 'flu'.

CDC data for deaths from Covid and ILI's (Flu) for 2/1/2020 to 4/11/2020:


So, in the same period of time, CDC is reporting twice as many Covid-19 deaths as Flu deaths. If you add in the deaths from Pnumonia + Covid-19 (a significant risk factor for pneumonia), Covid is killing nearly three times as many people as flu. (I've rounded the numbers a bit.) Keep in mind, for both these illness the denominator (true number of cases) is NOT known. This data is relevant in that it compares identified causes of death for the same population at the same time.

In Spain, France, and Italy, Covid-19 has killed (roughly) twice as many people as compared to the fairly severe flu season of 2017. And they are still battling the bug.

Moreover, not since 1918 has an influenza virus created such a sudden and abrupt demand for hospital services. Did any of you hear hospitals say they didn't have enough PPE or ventilators last year? I can't remember the medical system being this stressed in my lifetime. To be fair, this stress on healthcare systems is due to the combination of flu & Covid-19....& pneumonia. Covid-19 would appear to be the disease that pushed maxed-out health care systems outside the typical performance envelope.

In a normal flu season, thousands of people die over the course of several months (and are still dying of flu); however, Covid-19 has done the same thing in just a couple of months here in the USA. And it is killing more people than flu does in many (not all) countries.

Seems to me that SARS-CoV-2 is clearly more virulent and lethal than garden-variety flu....despite some radical interventions to limit it.

 

This graph makes my point about the rapidity of deaths (above) a bit more clearly than I did:

 

Remember, when comparing flu vs this new virus most people are vaccinated against flu (when CDC guesses right on the strain for that year). So, even though everyone doesn't get a flu shot, you still have that check on the spread since most people are immune (in most years). Even when CDC guesses wrong and another strain spreads, you still have partial immunity since the strains will be similar enough that the vaccine will help, if not prevent. This virus has no vaccine so of course it is spreading much, much faster, but the mortality rate still has to be compared to flu cases of people NOT vaccinated in an average year.
So, the comparison this Stanford guy is making is with that qualifier - the mortality RATE of people with either illness is about the same, but deaths per million will be much higher because of the lack of a vaccine.
We are only testing the very sickest people, and that skews the data beyond recognition. I hope that is clearer.

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Hmmmm....I've done a bit more reading since shooting my mouth off 15 minutes ago (above).

Some epidemiologists are modeling numbers that suggest we've only detected 1-7 of 100 actual cases. If that's so, then our mortality rate will prove to be much lower than 1% (less than 0.5% mortality, possibly 0.1% mortality).

 

True. Also true for pneumonia and ILI cases, too, though.

"CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 39 million flu illnesses, 410,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths from flu."

Is it possible that despite some radical interventions by governments and individuals we've had 39 million Covid cases? I don't think so. Even at a 10% detection rate, we'd have 6 million cases.

And we've recorded 25,000 deaths from Covid-19.

Some of the 'flu' deaths referenced above are likely to be Covid-19 deaths as well.

 

Not "a few months ago"...But, 2 years ago.

According to the two unclassified State Department cables.

 

Keep in mind, 80% of US tests have come back negative.

We've tested 3 million people in the USA. Only 600K have been positive.

If the detection rate were really only 1% or 10%, how do we account for a 20% positive rate of testing administered?

It doesn't add up.

If the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 were 10x or 100x higher than we have seen, I think our negative test rate would be lower than 80%, especially when we are testing those who have some exposure or symptoms, not testing randomly.

 

The problem with any numbers today is that they are still known unknowns.

Testing is still an unreliable unknown.

Scientists have bad news about coronavirus antibody tests - CNN

 

We'll never get perfect data or numbers. For anything.

 

True that. I'd bet they didn't have good KIA/WIA/MIA stats on D Day +1. The MR's were done, sent to HQ and they kept counting.

Cuomo made a smart decision today IMO. He made wearing a mask in public groups mandatory. A step toward opening up. I'd bet money someone in the NFL and MLB is working on logo mask licences.

 

Right, but the early test kits were completely FUBAR, and the new ones so scarce they can only test the very sickest people. Think about that. If you're only testing the people at the gravest end of the spectrum our mortality stats are wildly inflated. Then factor in that most people with the virus don't even get sick enough to look to a doctor.
We won't know enough for a valid estimate of how widespread it is/was until the antibody tests are online and they can test a whole lot of random people to see who had it and didn't know it. We *might* have a clue six or twelve months from now, but right now we got nuttin' except media talking heads. Anecdotally, a lot of people on those cruise ships (think of them as control groups) have come back positive, but never really got sick while somebody two cabins down was near death.

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The cruise ship data I saw was interesting: I think only 30% of those who tested positive stayed asymptomatic. (That belief may be stale now.)

The Diamond Princess data is interesting because it does provide a 'controlled experiment', albeit unfortunate and unintentional.




So, even in a closed system (a ship), the end prevalence was only 20%.

And, with close monitoring, the fatality rate was still over 1% (1.69%).

These observations are obviously limited by the small numbers. And the group selection process means that there is a significant selection bias. I'm not sure that anything really meaningful can be derived from that. However, that fatality rate should raise an eyebrow. It's not 4%, but it isn't 0.1% either.