Covid-19 News

    I was having trouble finding good current data on the cases in Georgia (USA, not the country Georgia). And then I found this:

    https://www.ajc.com/news/coron…d/IjORDGLckdP3RI9hJU5CWO/


    It will be interesting to follow it, especially if enough people are dumb enough to do what the governor is allowing starting tomorrow. JedRothwell : better plan to duck. Big time.


    Mark U

    Quote

    So ... given that the result is that children are generally immune from covid19 and produce little or no antibody, grade schools should reopen. (In Sweden they never closed.)

    Kids should be allowed to play together. It's the post pubescent folks who should keep practicing social distance

    No. That's completely wrong. Deaths in children are comparatively rare but they are especially tragic and they most emphatically do occur. And infected children bring the virus back home to infect parents and grandparents. So open schools are a bad idea pending vaccination. Sweden is nuts and the rising curve of cases proves it.

    Quote from Navid

    If you die from cancer, and the government tallies every person who has a shred of DNA that signals a PCR-test positive, you are not a Covid death. A person who dies of what looks like respiratory failure due to covid while having cancer, now that would be a Covid death.

    Usually, doctors can determine the cause of death, whether from cancer or COVID-19, even if the patient has both. Cancer and chemotherapy seem to make COVID-10 easier to catch and/or more probable to die from. In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that respiratory failure is far from the only cause of death in COVID-19. More and more consideration is being given to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). And both heart attacks (MI's) and strokes (CVA's) are also caused by COVID-19 and may be the only evidence of the disease. So no. It's way more complicated than that and much is as yet unknown.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    No. That's completely wrong. Deaths in children are comparatively rare but they are especially tragic and they most emphatically do occur. And infected children bring the virus back home to infect parents and grandparents. So open schools are a bad idea pending vaccination. Sweden is nuts and the rising curve of cases proves it.


    Children with influenza are infectious. This appears not to be the case with covid19. Teachers in Sweden aren't getting infected from students as far as I'm aware. (I heard that information from video interview with a senior Swedish epidemiologist. ) If 30 kids they aren't infecting their teachers then probably a single child isn't infecting his parents.


    Sweden's cumulative case curve is just about linear. This would mean there is hardly an increase in daily cases on average. It cycles quite a bit, probably because they've had periodic outbreaks in their large senior care homes. Almost half the mortalities are from those homes. It's vulnerable seniors who we should be safeguarding, not children.

    Quote from seven_of_twenty

    No. That's completely wrong. Deaths in children are comparatively rare but they are especially tragic and they most emphatically do occur. And infected children bring the virus back home to infect parents and grandparents.

    You seem to be very sure of you. Please provide a single study that shows that the chain of infection between children and adults, and not the other way around, is important. After I will do the opposite and provide multiple articles that show that it is NOT the case.

    Quote

    Sweden is nuts and the rising curve of cases proves it.

    Most deaths in Sweden happened in care homes from adult to adult transmission. Mark U is right that transmission from children to adults is limited. And look at Taiwan: best management of Covid-19 of all countries with very low level of cases and deaths with, guess what, all schools that remained open even during the peak of the pandemic.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    [...] 2.7 million is plausible.

    We have now significant evidence that 0.5 to 0.7% IFR is plausible (NY state, Lombardy in Italy, Iceland).

    The US population being at 330 million, and assuming herd immunity is reached when 70% is immune, I world rather say 1.1 to 1.5 million. This is a number that could be reached asymptotically unless an effective cure and vaccine arrive. We can only slow it down.

    Quote from Toffoli

    "irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way"


    Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern

    https://townhall.com/columnist…ws-fixed-pattern-n2566915


    This guy is weird.


    “Is the coronavirus expansion exponential? The answer by the numbers is simple: no. Expansion begins exponentially but fades quickly after about eight weeks,” Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel concluded. The reason why coronavirus follows a fixed pattern is yet unknown. "I have no explanation,” he told Mako, “There are is kinds of speculation: maybe it's climate-related, maybe the virus has its own life cycle.”

    But what about Italy and their staggering 12% mortality rate? “The health system in Italy has its own problems. It has nothing to do with coronavirus. In 2017 it also collapsed because of the flu,” Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel told the news agency. Indeed, Italy’s exceptionally high coronavirus mortality rate is eerily reminiscent of their unusually high flu mortality rates. Supportive of this theory, Germany, has low flu infection and mortality rates and similarly low coronavirus rates.


    The idea that a virus has a country-dependent life cycles that causes it to quit exponential growth after 8 weeks is unevidenced and no mechanism has been proposed.


    People speculating on basis of patterns in data is fine, but without a mechanism you are lost.


    In this case exponential increase in all countries without controls continues till a significant proportion of the population are infected, or severe controls are put on the country. That has been true everywhere. The 8 weeks phenomenon is probablyu becayse after 8 weeks it becomes clear to even the dumbest government that something must be done.


    Sweden


    Sweden is an interesting case. The country divides into Stockholm and suburbs, with a high infection rate and population density, and the rest, with a very low pop density and infection rate. Think of it as two countries. Policy is regional.


    https://www.thelocal.se/202003…eople-for-the-coronavirus


    The rest of the country seems (they hope) controllable through track and trace, and exhortations to public to do social distancing. Note that works better in Sweden, where the vast majority of people are middle class, have decent low density housing and living standards, is capable of social distancing, and will believe scientists and be motivated to do it.


    Stockholm has been "letting the virus go to get herd immunity, flattening the curve with social distancing" but with aggressive measures to shield those most at risk. Again, Sweden seems to have better resources to do this (larger welfare system etc) than most countries. They are getting a higher death rate in Stockholm than most, but it seems their health service can cope.


    They are now (they think) approaching herd immunity in Stockholm. They (hope?) that informal social distancing measures together with lots of local track and trace will keep the virus their under control at very low rates in the rest of the country.


    It is not clear whether this strategy will work: but it will be interesting. Both strategies: let virus rip to get herd immunity, and keep at v low levels, use informal social distancing, track and trace, are tenable if conditions allow. For informal social distancing you need combination of good compliance and low population density. For letting the virus rip you need very good shielding and good enough health service.


    There is a lot we do not know yet about what will work. It is fascinating. The job of discovering things is not made easier by people like this Prof with idee fixee that they superimpose on the data. Usually such outliers have political views that align with their interpretation of the evidence. But you don't need to consider that, the lack of coherent argument here is telling.


    COVID is a virus that exposes countries with poor living standards. Those in substandard housing cause hot-spots because social distancing is impossible. Those with poor health (correlated, Shane, strongly with poverty, although obesity affects some of the rich as well) are more vulnerable.

    Quote from Navid

    If you die from cancer, and the government tallies every person who has a shred of DNA that signals a PCR-test positive, you are not a Covid death. A person who dies of what looks like respiratory failure due to covid while having cancer, now that would be a Covid death.


    The collectivizing of death into covid death -> we in fact call that fraud. Mass fraud is normal - > aluminum bodies can't penetrate thick steel beams.


    A test does not determine the cause of death, the doctor does. If you really investigate the PCR test isnt' even testing for the disease accurately, but that is another matter. To this there is no debate. A PCR test is not a bullet to the head I hope we can agree on this.

    With the desperate shortage of test reagents, what makes you think a test would be wasted on a dead cancer patient unless he showed Covid-19 symptoms leading to his death?


    The argument by Wyttenbach that statistics should not include people with a residual life expectancy of 3 months is a very personal viewpoint. Maybe valid in estimating impact on the yearly mortality. It is flawed if you look at weekly or monthly mortality. You can extract what you wish from data but hiding data and cherry picking are both unethical.

    Quote from Jack Cole

    He didn't say anything about bleach in the video. People are likely to try injecting bleach after misleading press reports of what he said.


    "And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?

    "So it'd be interesting to check that."

    Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what."


    disinfectant / bleach - the terms are used similarly in common parlance. Are you saying the quote above (BBC) is misleading?


    THH

    Consider this:


    The biassed media (influenced by China) want the US to stay in lockdown. A simple cure like injecting disinfectant - now proven to work against the virus by US scientists in only 1 minute - is being rubbished by the Democrats and other communist-sympathisers. Trump has good you-know-what and his hunches are usually right. If you were a Trump supporter, believing all this, would you take your ultra-cautious possibly Democrat-voting doctor's advice or go with Trump?


    caution: this post is not advice to self-medicate without first checking with your doctor.

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