Covid-19 News

Quote from Wyttenbach

The rate is far to high for older people with preconditions only. They must stay home - isolated.

How the hell do you expect them to do that?!? Most older people have to work, including most with preconditions. They have to go to the store to buy food. Wealthy or retired old people can stay isolated at home, but in the U.S. most old people live paycheck to paycheck. If they do not soon get back to work, they will be evicted from their houses, so they will not have a home to stay in. We must greatly reduce the infection rate so there is room in the hospitals and so that people can back to work. See:

Social Distancing Is a Privilege

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…us-social-distancing.html

Quote from Mark U

Went to watch it, but the link provided above is to an unrelated video.

The Wittkowski video is here:

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And if you give up after 10 seconds thanks to his ponderous cadence, the transcript is here:

https://freebirth.ca/blogs/fre…professor-knut-wittkowski

Its fairly interesting, he doesn't really toe the government line.

Quote from Roseland67

Only “IF” they are no longer infectious.

I don’t think anyone anywhere knows this yet.

Once your body is infected, fights off the infection and produces antibodies:

1. Can you be reinfected? Don’t know

2. Can you pass on the infection? Don’t know

Display More

Sure we already know. The Chinese CDC is discharging from confinement/quarantine all subjects who tested positive to immunoglobulin IgG, this from February already. With success.

Quote from JedRothwell

How the hell do you expect them to do that?!? Most older people have to work, including most with preconditions.

Older means retired age > 65 but also people with severe preconditions should isolate home. (one protected exit each day allowed!)

Why does this work in north Italy and you cannot even think about this ??

Is the USA that such a low level culture that it cannot afford to support the vulnerable???

Quote

however information can be true or false, not "stupid"!

The serious question is: have we reliable data and statistic?

As an example the point 1 (10X more deadly) is probably overestimated, considering that we do not know the real number of total people affected by COV19.

coronadaten.wordpress.com/2020/04/05/covid19-epidemic-update-04-04-20-mortality-numbers-useless-infection-rate-suffers-reporting-epidemic-doubtful/

"How deadly is the virus. Actually it is the general procedure, to estimate the mortality number from the ratio between deaths and positive tests. This is, following the conclusion made in the chapter in before, absolutely useless. The real number of people infested by SARS-CoV-2 is most likely orders of magnitude higher than the official estimates. Further, the real mortality can be only determined, when the infected finally recover from the disease. "Therefore in general, the numbers will be inflated due to the far too low number of infections presumed, and can drop due to increasing test numbers or increase due to progressing time."

The "COVID is overblown" link contained facts (true) and conclusions (false, and not in any way argued). Propagandists on the web are good at this. You select facts, and state conclusions which appear consonant with the stated facts.

In this case:

The facts (true) were 60K deaths from COVID on some recent day, and 300M-700M deaths from flu in a year. All deaths global.

The conclusion (false) was that therefore COVID is no worse than flu, the 160K approx estimates of total US deaths obviously wrong, and therefore the response to it is some attempt to destroy the word's economy based on exaggeration.

I'm happy to argue further with you why that conclusion is rubbish. I won't argue with you whether maybe 2M US deaths (estimates given no action) are worth it to keep the economy in better shape. That is a complex ethical argument and both sides have merit. I'm arguing that that web page provides unwarranted and incorrect statements.

Your next point is that we do not know the lethality, because we do not know the number of asymptomatic cases. true, there is some uncertainty, but we have examples where a finite number of people have all been exposed, and a given fraction died. That cruise ship, a given Italian village (where everyone was tested) South Korea, with very extensive in community testing, etc. From these examples we get a pretty good estimate, now, of the overal lethality.

Here is a recent attempt to do that showing an IFR (lethality) of 0.66% for Chinese population (it depends a lot on population age profile when extrapolating to other countries) - but with +100% - 50% uncertainty. It uses info from outside China to estimate the number of infections not counted as cases. Note that as everyone said from the start, when this figure could not be estimates, it is much lower than the oft quoted CFR, and about what people were previously guessing. The death projections for US are based in any case on US figures of deaths and cases.

Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019

The death rate from seasonal flue is often quoted as 0.1% (sorry - more difficult to get info from this than COVID). Your link shows, at 300K-700K, the number of deaths globally per year from a population of 7000M. That is 0.05% - 0.1% of global population. But of course not everyone gets infected with a new flu strain each year.

So being more precise I'd agree my ballpark X10 figure could go down to X5, but the virulence of COVID means that with no measures to prevent spread, and no immunity, 60% or so of the world's population would get it. So we can find a more useful total comparison for deaths as:

0.6 * 0.0066 * 7000M versus 500K or

28M vs 500K

That means 50X more deaths overall than from flu.

Your link was sort of implying it was the other way round by comparing 60K COVID seaths with 500K flu deaths.

Now, those figures are all now well evidenced, and clearly show the link to be inaccurate by a factor of 500 in the conclusions it was trying to draw.

In the UK every winter flu deaths saturate our hospitals to capacity - we sometimes need to suspend routine treatments to cope. 50X normal?

The US is maybe better off in terms of peak capacity, but only by a factor of 3 or so at most.

When you look at the figures, COVID is not that lethal. Nothing like SARS. But it is a lot more lethal than flu, and it is also more easy to spread than flue, will hit a larger proportion of the population. Because it is completely new nobody (well almost nobody) has immunity. I'm sure there are some exceptions, as always in medicine.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Older means retired age > 65 but also people with severe preconditions should isolate home. (one protected exit each day allowed!)

Why does this work in north Italy and you cannot even think about this ??

Is the USA that such a low level culture that it cannot afford to support the vulnerable???

I don’t think leaders at the top telling people to go to work or not is really the driving force behind our current economic meltdown here in the U.S. A lot of it is just free market economics. Just think of a few activities:

Traveling to a wedding where your fly on a plane and stay at a hotel

Going to a theme park, a concert, the movies, a restaurant, or a sporting event

Going out and buying a car

Even if a Governor or the President said to go out and enjoy life again tomorrow and let’s just hope the virus fades away, I think the vast majority of people would not do that because they don’t want to risk getting sick. People know that this is highly contagious even from people who are asymptomatic.

We can talk about mortality rates among different ages, but I just think that the majority of people don’t want to do anything that would create a risk of testing positive for COVID-19, regardless of what that means. And they will likely stay away from public places until it instinctively feels safe to go back out. So the economy and society are at the whim of that.

Quote from Toffoli

coronadaten.wordpress.com/2020/04/05/covid19-epidemic-update-04-04-20-mortality-numbers-useless-infection-rate-suffers-reporting-epidemic-doubtful/

"How deadly is the virus. Actually it is the general procedure, to estimate the mortality number from the ratio between deaths and positive tests. This is, following the conclusion made in the chapter in before, absolutely useless. The real number of people infested by SARS-CoV-2 is most likely orders of magnitude higher than the official estimates. Further, the real mortality can be only determined, when the infected finally recover from the disease. "Therefore in general, the numbers will be inflated due to the far too low number of infections presumed, and can drop due to increasing test numbers or increase due to progressing time."

I'd like to thank toffoli for posting these dangerous false links: it allows us to reflect on them and rebut their propaganda and false conclusions.

My previous post dealt with the first (rubbish) link.

The second link quoted above is better written, more substantial, and equally badly misleading.

Basically it has two arguments:

(1) Test rates are not consistent therefore infection rate cannot be got from case numbers (true)

(2) Hospitalisation rates (versus positive tests) are variable (true)

It then argues from these two things that the evidence for an epidemic (exponential increase) is poor. (false).

To rebut (1) look at NY death rate. Death rates are a lagging indicator but much the most reliable estimate of number of infections. You can see (if you were following worldometer values) that this was increasing exponentially in NY until the last few days, when severe lockdown has started to change this. Daeth rates for the US as a whole are not so simple because although every individual locality shows exponential increase until lockdown the aggregate of different places, all at a different place on the curve, is more complex. That is however the way that epidemics work.

To rebut (2) note that this variability is small, so whatever effect there is it does not alter the main conclusions that we have a serious exponentially increasing (in any locality without lockdown or herd immunity) epidemic, with exponential increase showing in localities all over the US.

THH

Quote from Shane D.

In the article you link to: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…us-social-distancing.html the Opinion Columnist is arguing against the "priviliged" expecting "black and brown people" to have to abide by the social distancing laws. He means *now*, and not after the infection rate is low enough "so that people can get back to work".

That is not how I read it. I think he means that people need help if we expect them to abide by social distancing laws. They need financial support. As I said here before, the government needs to pay nearly everyone to stay home, the way it paid everyone to make weapons during WWII.

When the infection rate is low enough, we can all get back to work. This authoritative projection shows that happening around June 1, if we all abide by "full social distancing:"

https://covid19.healthdata.org/

If we do not abide by social distancing, the crisis will drag on indefinitely.

This projection was updated on April 5, with actual data to April 5.

curiosity, anyone have the statistics of regular flu outbreak..tested- infected,recovered,deaths to compare all this.

RE: Professor Knut Wittkowski

Quote

. On the other hand, children do very well with these diseases: they are evolutionarily designed to be exposed to all kinds of viruses in their lifetime, and they should keep going to school and infecting each other. That contributes to herd immunity, which means after about four weeks at the most, the elderly people could start joining their families because then the virus would have been extinguished.

When I read complete bullshit like this, I don't need to read further (and I didn't). This author is not thinking clearly, regardless of his training and credentials. Maybe he is past his prime. Maybe he thinks in an "alternative reality." Has he even heard about vaccines and antivirals? It sure doesn't seem so.

Children and young people are indeed vulnerable to getting extremely ill COVID-19, sustaining organ damage including brain damage from febrile seizures or direct brain infection (viral encephalitis), and they also die, albeit at a reduced rate. It is absurd to expose them needlessly. Screw school and work for a few months. Within a year, there should be a vaccine and some effective treatments for those who acquire the infection. Then, you can let people out. Then, herd immunity makes sense after the majority of people have been vaccinated. I have no patience for fools like Wittkowski who don't live in the real world. So, I admit I did not read all of it. I am guessing it would make me puke.

The above reasoning applies for sure to the developed world. I don't know what happens in underdeveloped countries. I have almost no idea at all what happens in Africa, India and Pakistan. The possibilities are terrifying barring massive aid from countries that can provide it, if any will be able to.

Leaving brains at the door when writing won't help it. That's for sure.

(sorry if typos-- not proof read)

Quote from Wyttenbach

Older means retired age > 65 but also people with severe preconditions should isolate home. (one protected exit each day allowed!)

Older means having a greater age than your doctor.

@Toffoli

Of course alternative views are welcome as long as you don't mind getting some sharp critiques. But could you please post transcript links where possible when you post a video or appreciable length. Or briefly summarize the main points inside your post in words. I am speaking for myself but I think there are many other readers who don't want to slog through a 35 minute video without knowing the main theme of it.

@sot agreed Professor Knutcase! Sorry, couldn't resist!

For what it's worth:

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/p…oquine-update-for-april-6

And , oh boy: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.31.018556v1

"Fatal toxicity of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine with metformin in mice"

Of course, people, for the most part, aren't mice. Or we would worry even more about cats.

Seriously, we really need to be cautious about using HCQ+Azi until definitive adequate studies have been completed and reported in appropriate places.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Older means having a greater age than your doctor.

My private doctor just retired at 73. My acupuncture doctor wanted to work until 80. But there is an age limit where the standard medical insurance will stop to pay for your visit.

I think age 65 for people with one precondition is a good age to self isolate for the next few months. My uncle 88.5 years old - no preconditions - wants to lives alone, on his own and his comment is simple: I had my live! Of course he goes to shops when no or just few people are inside. Unluckily almost nobody is wearing mask here in Switzerland we always are outsiders...

Quote from seven_of_twenty

"Fatal toxicity of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine with metformin in mice"

Many older people that do self medication take metformin a neglected medicament with many benefits (some believe it has the same power as HCQ). Just to warn you once more: Do not challenge for the Darwin award...

@sot Are these people on the mouse metformin testing just plain stupid or is this politically motivated anti Trump garbage? The dose they are testing is six times 60 mg/Kg the maximum dose ever used for malaria treatment 10 mg/Kg and double the fatal dose for humans 30 mg/Kg. Gosh it kills nice too! Metformin therapy could be reduced or insulin doses raised in diabetics to compensate so these people seem to be inventing problems where there are none. Politics to be sure - better if Trump had not been involved in this issue.

Here is a very sensible article by an epidemiologist and dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong:

Lockdown Can’t Last Forever. Here’s How to Lift It.

We need to hit and release the brakes on physical distancing, again and again, until we safely get to immunity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…nd-social-distancing.html

Quote from THHuxleynew

Link please.

This is from a fellow Phd student that worked on it at my ETH time ( 30 years ago) . He moved his whole family to a remote place in Switzerland. A typical panic reaction as at that time, only sparsely, GSM was implemented.

You will certainly be able to find a lot of papers dealing with the subject. For me it's a no issue as we have no choice today.