Open transparent ' "Covid" process ' in NZ based on " eggspert" opinion plus data.

Less drama than in the USA. but on a 'pathway to heavenhaving a gold standard'.

Infections down to 9 per day.. possible lockdown unlock on Wednesday..

Quote from Shane D.

HCQ may be like LENR. It works great as long as you don't do an independent test on it.

Yes and excess heat in LENR recalls homeopathy.

I have doubts about the discussions on CFR's. 0.1%, 1%.... numbers tested, number of "hidden cases"....

My problem is, I don't quite accept that there are not significant differences in the various strains at different locations. I have yet to see any real data on death rates vs. strains. All these projections seem on shaky ground.

example: https://www.nationalheraldindi…op-indian-microbiologists

US, Italy strain more virulent than one in India: Top Indian microbiologists

Top Indian microbiologists have discovered that strain found in India, matches with the sequence of new coronavirus found in Wuhan, and is less virulent

The strain of new coronavirus in India is not as virulent as the ones which are devastating Italy, Spain and the US. In depth genomic analysis of rapidly revolving SARS-CoV-2(COVID-19) viruses, top Indian microbiologist Rup Lal, and his team of 16 scientists have discovered that strain found in India, matches with the sequence of new coronavirus found in Wuhan, and is less virulent.

Herd immunity.. Boris has passed muster..

Brazil's Bolsonaro has not been tested by the virus ... yet..

But he is encouraging testing for the whole population

https://theintercept.com/2020/…ister-brazil-coronavirus/

Quote from Shane D.

But if still valid, there is even less hope a vaccine will save us.

Coronavirus vaccine may never be developed, warns expert - but it could burn out

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ne…-developed-warns-21890093

“Coronavirus doesn’t get into you, it stays on the surface cells in your lungs," he added. "All these flu viruses get into you, so the body can fight and makes T cells"

Quote from Shane D.

Good to see more members on the forum finally acknowledging that there are lives being put in peril from the lockdowns, or the "cure" as some would say. But what are those numbers (in lives) though? Hard to find, but one that stuck in my mind for the US, is that for every 1% increase in unemployment, there is a corresponding 1% increase in drug overdose deaths, and a 3% increase in suicides. That is only 2 of the statistics, with many more yet to be defined.

But this is not all about the US, or developed countries. As mentioned before...the world economic GDP is $100 trillion. For every 1 T GDP decrease, 10 million people in undeveloped countries slip into poverty. As we all know, poverty in those countries carries a very high cost of deaths via conflict, starvation, disease, diminished quality of life, etc.

This could all be true. But letting the virus run unchecked will make things even more horrible for the entire world. You do understand exponential increase in cases and deaths, do you not? Well, that is what will happen. We aren't doing so great *with* the shutdowns. It's hard to even imagine what it would be like without it. Well maybe not so hard. It would be like 1918. And even then, some control measures were tried.

" The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. " That is *deaths* - not cases. And the COVID-19 virus's behavior is at least as bad as the H1N1 influenza and probable worse. Not to mention those permanently crippled and injured permanently. And the world population was much much less dense then. You can not let a pandemic proceed unchecked without getting horrific results.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandem…s/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html <- reference for deaths in 1918.

We are now at 750,000 known cases and almost 40,000 deaths and the climb is unchecked. You really want to relax control measures? You really don't know what will happen. Well thanks to the whack jobs marching around with rifles protesting and the ignorant and incompetent imbeciles at the top of our government, we may find out what happens when you relax controls without enough testing and lacking a vaccine or effective treatment.

Talking about our government (USA),

Quote

"Nearly a century after the Spanish flu struck in 1918–1920, health organizations moved away from naming epidemics after geographical places.[16][17] More modern terms for this virus include the "1918 influenza pandemic," the "1918 flu pandemic," or variations of those [Wikipedia]

Except, of course, for a certain "very stable genius." (if not familiar, maybe Google it)

Quote from Shane D.

We now have a number of "in situ", real life lab settings such as the cruise ship Diamond Princess, US Aircraft Carrier Roosevelt, a small German town .... In each example, all occupants had repeated, intimate physical contact with each other...

Under these perfect conditions, the virus infected only 8-17%.

You have a vivid imagination Shane. What is it about ships and small German towns?

I don't mean to be flip but oopsie... there goes relaxed restrictions Sweden:

https://e-markets.nordea.com/#…leration-in-sweden-and-uk

I suspect the Swedes might be a bit better at changing their policies effectively than Italy. They'd better hope so or they are looking at a disaster. Is this sort of curve what we want here (USA)? Unfortunately, to quote a character in Vonnegut's creepy novel "Cat's Cradle," "Death was never easier to come by..."

Shane D.

Quote

Under these perfect conditions, the virus infected only 8-17%

I don't know how "perfect" those conditions were. I am not sure all ships did this but, when they realized that passengers or crew had coronavirus, most confined sick individuals in their rooms and quarantined infected crew members. If they had not done that and given enough time, it's probable virtually everyone on board would have been infected. There is little or no immunity to this, it being a novel virus. And how were the percentages determined? As you know, many infections have mild or no symptoms. That statistic smells. I don't think it means anything with respect to large populated land area.

Latest speculation

There is an awful lot of COVID myth and uncertainty posted here recently. The key issue is that what is quoted is always Case Fatality Rate, which we can see in official figures, and is easy to measure. The definition of "case" varies enormously by country, and by time over epidemic. Therefore although deaths are (fairly) definite, case numbers are very variable. Even deaths in some countries are badly defined, with underestimation (like the +50% found in China and not unexpected) or overestimation, where everyone who dies or pneumonia is counted as a COVID death when the health systems are overwhelmed.

So: CFRs everywhere are very very difficult to interpret.

What we all need to know is IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) which depends on how many asymptomatic (or symptoms so little they are ignored) people there are in a population.

We cannot be sure that IFR stays the same through the world because there are different strains of the virus. These have been very well mapped. The sequencing guys seem to think that these differences don't matter, since they do not alter the spike proteins (this is highly conserved) and do not alter expression of the key virus reproduction proteins. I'd say we should be 80% sure, based on this, that the virus stays roughly equally lethal everywhere. There is maybe 20% not sure because this is all new and people can be wrong. Here is an estimate of lethality differences. It uses differences in country CFR (which we know mean almost nothing) to estimate virus lethality so is worth very little.

We cannot be sure IFR stays the same round the world because there are consistent genetic population differences in ACE receptor encoding sequences, however it seems unlikely these are very significant (read the whole thing, not just little bits) but that can't be ruled out. I can't put an estimate on this because I've not read much about it but maybe experts could.

We can be pretty sure that IFR will vary consistently with population according to age profile, with older populations hit worst. This means that developing countries with higher population mortality rates from other causes will be hit much less hard, even though they have less (usually no) medical resources to deal with the disease. The UK is hit maybe 30% harder than the US. Italy is hit much harder.

We can speculate that very high initial doses (for example health workers or intimate carers of high shedding individuals without protection) - we don't know how much. We can speculate that low doses decrease IFR. This is a likely effect. It is very difficult to get any data to know how significant it is.

We cannot be sure what IFR is anywhere unless we have accurate data, which has been difficult to get: it needs well samples population-wide serological testing with accurate enough tests. they are only just coming on stream and still a bit flaky in most cases.

We can be sure that:

• In Wuhan
• In New York
• In multiple European countries

The disease propagated exponentially with no sign of saturating until lockdown. The peak levels (before lockdown) were very uncomfortably high. We can be sure IFR higher enough for the increase to go on a while without lockdown, and overwhelm health systems. That puts a lower limit on IFR, which is uncomfortably high.

Do we know the IFR?

The California results are interesting, and it would be so great if they were real. I think that unlikely. Caveats, the false positive rate from the test has to be low enough for these figures to hold up, because they are measuring a very small percentage of positive individuals. It turns out the statistics here are tricky, and reading between the lines I don't have much faith in this. From a comment (which I understand and agree with):

The positive rate in the raw data is 50/3330=1.5%. The test’s false positive rate is estimated at 2/301=.5%, but with a 95% confidence interval extending upward to 1.9%. This means we cannot reject the hypothesis of zero prevalence. Note (this will become important): Because the binomial distribution is not well approximated by a normal here, the CI must be constructed as exact binomial, not by normal approximation. The authors do this and correctly report 1.9%. If they had mistakenly used a normal approximation combined with the sample variance, their CI would have extended only to 1.2% and zero prevalence would have been spuriously rejected.

Based on this, it is puzzling that the “headline” CI’s for prevalence do not include 0. Indeed, the authors state in their statistical appendix (bottom of page 2) that they need the positive rate to exceed 1-sensitivity. But then they move on to reject 0 anyway, in apparent violation of their own CI for sensitivity! What gives?

I conjecture that the problem is their subsequent use of the delta-method to analyze error propagation. This implicitly applies a normal approximation to all random variables under study. Indeed, the analysis culminates in providing standard errors, and these are only interpretable in the context of normal approximation. But recall that the normal approximation is inappropriate for the validation sample and furthermore that incorrectly using it would have yielded spurious rejection of zero prevalence. I conjecture that this is implicitly committed in the later part of the analysis. The earlier conclusion that 0 cannot be rejected seems appropriate to me.

Again, I’d be happy to stand corrected and also appreciate that the paper was put together under insane pressure.

Basically, this study, in a mostly uninfected population, has large noise. It is unfortunate (or maybe just typical amplification of something possibly different from expected) that it comes out first. Much better to look at serological studies in places hit hard, like New York, which will yield better data. But we have to wait for this.

So: judging this study:

(1) its statistics are broken; and mean results may easily be due to test errors.

(2) it is in a place that has high serological noise, because low case rate. The one you'd not want to look at to get good results

(3) it shows eye-popping possible results (and hence would be rushed to print).

Rate it low confidence, but watch this spot carefully for better data!

Other results are rolling in fast, and serological tests are being better characterised (and getting more accurate). This question is going to be solved soon.

Putting it all together

We can still hope that IFR is in the West typically < 0.5%. I don't think < 0.1% is at all likely. I don't think > 1% is likely.

• At 0.1%, for UK, we have 56,000 deaths for herd immunity. We are on target to have 20,000 deaths anyway. Getting another 36,000 would happen keeping death rates at current level (very unpleasant, but not overwhelming NHS) for another 45 days. Relaxing lockdown now would do that.
• At 1% for UK we need 560,000 deaths for herd immunity. That is now 540 days lockdown at current levels or close to keep things not overwhelming health system.
• At 0.3% for UK (maybe a decent estimate?) we have 168,000 deaths for herd immunity. Needing another 200 days at current levels.

Who can blame the guys here for not knowing how we get out of lockdown?

In comparison with Flu, it has IFR 0.01%, but also rarely affects more than 20% of population, because of existing partial immunity. Even if IFR of COVID is low at 0.1% there is no way it is comparable with Flu in its effect on health systems.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Those who want to open up the US now and are protesting in the streets for it are fond of rationalization like reaching herd immunity and supposedly much lower than quoted real death rate. That's about mortality. The medical profession also considers another important parameter and that is "serious morbidity" which is just a trade term for nasty sickness. Coronavirus, in addition to killing, cripples and maims and permanently damages internal organs leading to disability and horrific death. Far as I know, the statistics on serious complications are not available. Yet that issue has to be considered when making policy.

Just one example from today's news: https://www.yahoo.com/entertai…nda-kloots-212954036.html

Yes, and factor in that in a few months time both deaths and serious morbidity should be significantly reduced by better treatment regimes. COVID is very different in its effects from other viruses we have known, and we have always managed over time to do much better in care than initially.

... "The gamble is on the real mortality figures [post lock-down in Italy - quality matters]"

There was no lock down in Russia until the end of March and all the stats show a smooth exponential rise without any linear phase as in US, UK stats, and gradual plateau in Italy. So the effect of social distancing is having the desired effect. If we relax the lock down JR is right we'll just go to back to exponential increase in cases and deaths. Wait and see what happens next in Germany with Avigen mass distribution and India with same for hydroxychloroquine. This has already been trialled in Indonesia with a rising number of cases but a plateauing in the number of deaths suggesting the treatment is working since end of March maybe. This population already had mefloquine on tap for malaria which I believe may account for the low 2 deaths per million population reported (compared to 228 here UK).

Note added in proof - just compare the stats of Russia with Indonesia - both have 2 deaths per million population (a measure of similar virus exposure) but the rise in Russian deaths is exponential whilst Indonesian deaths have nearly peaked. The anti virus treatment seems to be effective......but wait for India & Germany data.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I don't mean to be flip but oopsie... there goes relaxed restrictions Sweden:

https://e-markets.nordea.com/#…leration-in-sweden-and-uk

I suspect the Swedes might be a bit better at changing their policies effectively than Italy. They'd better hope so or they are looking at a disaster. Is this sort of curve what we want here (USA)? Unfortunately, to quote a character in Vonnegut's creepy novel "Cat's Cradle," "Death was never easier to come by..."

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Thsi is reflecting that we have an epedimy in our nureries which is run as cheap as possible in a privateisation (lowest bidder get to run it) in sweden

and seam to have incompetnent management. If you look at the numbers in intensive care they have been stable for over a week and seam to delcline

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I don't mean to be flip but oopsie... there goes relaxed restrictions Sweden:

https://e-markets.nordea.com/#…leration-in-sweden-and-uk

I suspect the Swedes might be a bit better at changing their policies effectively than Italy. They'd better hope so or they are looking at a disaster.

That article is two weeks out of date, and no, they haven't changed their policies in the mean time.

(ie infant schools, bars, and restaurants are open, social distancing is 'suggested').

The guy in charge of their response basically claims the genie is out of the bottle now, and that the UK had the right idea, but chickened out of seeing it through.

They claim the number of new cases is starting to decline, the health service isn't swamped, and in the long run, greater herd immunity lowers their risk of seeing a reoccurrence in the future.

Fox news is apparently a big fan, for the first time in their history.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne…tious-diseases-chief.html

https://www.theguardian.com/wo…s-death-toll-reaches-1000

https://www.vanityfair.com/new…lockdown-sweden-is-trying