Covid-19 News

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Coronavirus: Germany's R number rockets again - from 1.79 to 2.88



    https://news.sky.com/story/cor…-from-179-to-288-12012143


    Horrible news, alas not surprising.


    Virus transmission dynamics don't change just because we have been locked down, and to suppress R=4 down to 1 while people are unlocked is pretty difficult.


    Having said that - do I believe these numbers? This is a four day rolling average and the quantisation here is such that you will get blips whenever a spreader is detected. 3 significant figures is stupid accuracy for something that will have +100% - 50% accuracy or worse.


    Sensationalist headlines hit again. Better reporting:

    https://www.thejournal.ie/germany-r-number-5129124-Jun2020/


    THH

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Coronavirus: Germany's R number rockets again - from 1.79 to 2.88


    Over 1000 confirmed cases in a single mass meat "slavery worker" company. You get what you pay...


    But no larger R-value for the rest for Germany!


    We ( whole Switzerland) have between 11 and 35 (yesterday new cases a day (today 18). Only a dilettante will calculate an R value with such a low amount of cases!

    South Korea says it is battling 'second wave' of coronavirus

    https://www.reuters.com/articl…-southkorea-idUSKBN23T10M

    Jun 22, 2020 · As of midnight Sunday, South Korea reported 17 new coronavirus cases, the first time in nearly a month that daily new cases had dropped below 20


    What the heck?:rolleyes:


    This kind of reporting is so frustrating and damaging! It is getting to where one cannot believe any news agency. They seem to have to always "out disaster" one another.


    I know of many people who simply do not believe in the seriousness of the Covid19 pandemic because of the "crying wolf" or proverbial "Chicken Little" effect of the news media.... yes, almost all news media... main stream or not! They simply do not believe what is being reported because so much bias or sensationalism is now the norm!


    17 new cases is hardly "battling second wave"!


    It is getting simply insane.


    The LA Times states the term "looting" is racist! :rolleyes:

    https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3854619/posts


    The AP will not use the term "illegal immigrant"! What the heck. If they are foreign, they are an immigrant, If they are here without proper legal papers, they are here illegally...... they are indeed an "illegal immigrant". It is not racist, it is not derogatory... it is simply the truth. :/


    However, that does not seem to matter much in today's ultra political driven news media. It is not the truth that matters, it is the agenda and the means to obtain it.


    It is a shame in that today's media is causing so much damage and harm and not just to the Covid19 message... but to almost every possible issue!


    A MAJOR problem for our society!

    Quote from Bob#2

    South Korea says it is battling 'second wave' of coronavirus

    https://www.reuters.com/articl…-southkorea-idUSKBN23T10M

    Jun 22, 2020 · As of midnight Sunday, South Korea reported 17 new coronavirus cases, the first time in nearly a month that daily new cases had dropped below 20


    What the heck?


    Read what the Health Min. people said and this will more sense. They refer to a small uptick in cases after weeks of practically no cases and no deaths. The 7-day rolling average was around 9 for a month, and now it is up to 46. Here are the Worldmeter graphs for S. Korea:




    You can see the trend more clearly in the Active Cases graph (the second graph, when you expand this figure).


    This is a statistically significant uptick in cases. It is cause for concern. They are taking steps to stomp on it, as they should.


    The same thing was happening in Japan for a few weeks, but I think they have stomped on it now.


    I think most of these cases in both countries were coming from a few hot spots. Mainly night clubs and bars in Japan. The patients have not been cooperating with the case trackers, reportedly because they are mostly men who do not want their wives and girlfriends to know they have been in bars.


    Korea reports 46 cases today. Japan has 32, including 3 caught at the airport coming into the country, which is no danger to anyone. Neither has had any deaths in several days. The U.S. has ~25,000 cases a day, about 700 times more. Obviously, the steps we would have to take to control this would be thousands of times more expensive and difficult, so from our point of view, going from 9 cases total per day to 46 is not even a noise level change. It would not even be measurable! The number of deaths that are overlooked in Atlanta alone sometimes exceeds this, nevermind cases. (The numbers are periodically updated to include some of the missing deaths.)


    I say "we would have to take" because I do not think we will take any steps. Apparently, the U.S. public and the leaders are now resigned to seeing several million more people get sick, hundreds of thousands damaged for life, and perhaps 300,000 killed. We could reduce the number of cases to the levels in Korea and Japan. This would cost trillions of dollars less than letting the disease rampage, destroying lives, businesses and the economy. We could stop it, but we have decided not to. Why, I cannot say. It seems like the most stupid thing we have done in U.S. history, other than the Civil War. It is a drastic failure of will, and of imagination.


    As I said, this is like killing 9 million young men by ordering them to march across no-man's land into machine gun fire in World War I. Even at the time, many soldiers and people such as Winston Churchill said that was an insane thing to do, and they pointed out better ways to fight a war. They were ignored. The slaughter went on, killing 6,000 men a day. Our situation is not so different. The numbers are not far off. U.S. leader are killing 1,000 people a day for no reason, and our public apparently supports this, the way Europeans supported WWI even as the pointless slaughter continued.



    Quote from Bob#2

    17 new cases is hardly "battling second wave"!


    It is getting simply insane.


    It is battling a second wave from the Korean or Japanese point of view. The Japanese mass media has described the recent increase as "a second wave." They have emphasized that if it does not subside, the night clubs and bars may have to close at 9:00 again instead of 2 am. Sacrifices must be made! Cases fell to a low point of 30 per day rolling average on May 27, then increased slowly to 59 per day on June 18. That's a second wave. Sort of. It is not "insane" for the authorities in Japan to call it that. As you see, it seems to be subsiding:


    https://covid19japan.com/


    You have to understand, these people really are battling the pandemic. As in: doing something about it. When cases peaked in Japan at 741 per day, they were taking drastic steps such as telling everyone to say home (pretty please -- no mandate). And paying anyone who asked 80% of their salary to stay home. They had more case trackers at work with 741 cases than we have with 25,000. They probably still do have more trackers standing by. Obviously not working, with only 32 cases. They just finished rolling out a nationally available phone app. They are doing much more to keep 32 cases a day under control than we are doing to deal with 25,000 cases a day. (Bear in mind that the population is about 36% of ours.)

    In sweden, Stockholm 1000 deaths/year because of polluted air is acceptable but one time event of 2500 deaths in corona is massively frown appon and the 1000/year from pollution is just sneezed at. Oh well I guess it's too abstract.


    We now have around 10 cases a day to intensive care and 75% survives which translates to 2.5 deaths per day in average. Currently the death rate is around 40 a day in Sweden and have been on the level for some time. I think it's because of our lousy elderly care but maybe I miss something. Since the starting of test and tracking restarted in sweden the number of people going to ir has decreased from around 15/day to 10/day previously it has been stabilized on around 15/day for some time.

    Quote from stefan

    In sweden, Stockholm 1000 deaths/year because of polluted air is acceptable but one time event of 2500 deaths in corona is massively frown appon


    There are several problems with this comparison.


    1. It is not 2,500 deaths. 5,000 people have died in Sweden in 10 weeks. That's ~25,000 a year, assuming a vaccine becomes available in a year.


    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/


    2. The number of cases is not declining. It is increasing. The number of deaths is declining, but if cases keep increasing, deaths will also increase.


    3. Many steps have been taken to reduce polluted air. More is being done, such as using electric cars, and eventually banning the use of gasoline. If other ways to reduce pollution are discovered, they will be implemented. In other words, the authorities, industry and experts are doing all they can to reduce pollution. They are not doing all they can to reduce COVID-19. If they were, there would be only a few cases a day, and no deaths. Like in New Zealand, Korea or Japan.


    4. There are no benefits whatever to letting the coronavirus go on infecting people, whereas pollution is the unwanted side-effect of essential economic activity, such as manufacturing and transportation. Pollution is the price you pay for driving and making things; coronavirus is the price you pay for stupidity.


    Quote from stefan

    Since the starting of test and tracking restarted in sweden the number of people going to ir has decreased from around 15/day to 10/day previously it has been stabilized on around 15/day for some time.


    When did tracking start?


    The number of cases is 935 per day, rolling average. I suppose they all go to the doctor or clinic, or the Health Dept. would not know about them, and would not count them. The number of people dying is ~26 per day rolling average. It was 108 at the peak. So that is a big improvement.

    Quote from stefan

    In sweden, Stockholm 1000 deaths/year because of polluted air is acceptable but one time event of 2500 deaths in corona is massively frown appon and the 1000/year from pollution is just sneezed at. Oh well I guess it's too abstract.


    We now have around 10 cases a day to intensive care and 75% survives which translates to 2.5 deaths per day in average. Currently the death rate is around 40 a day in Sweden and have been on the level for some time. I think it's because of our lousy elderly care but maybe I miss something. Since the starting of test and tracking restarted in sweden the number of people going to ir has decreased from around 15/day to 10/day previously it has been stabilized on around 15/day for some time.


    People are very variable in how they rate deaths.


    35,000 deaths per year in the UK are directly attributable to obesity - and yet selling people obesogenic food with psychological tricks calculated to increase consumption is legal and even accepted as perfectly normal.


    We have specific ideas about direct causality, and deaths due to long-term risk increase don't figure, whereas a virus that strikes people suddenly, and is caught quickly from others, does.


    It is not rational: but then people are not rational.


    Well noted. But the data was for Stockholm 1/10 of the population from sweden, and there it is around 2500 deaths. We just started to test and track more, hence more cases, the number of ir cases are going down steadily though.

    Quote from stefan

    We just started to test and track more


    Just started when? A significant increase began on May 27. Deaths have not increased as much.


    In the U.S. as a whole, deaths have been declining fairly steadily since around April 30:


    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/


    That's good news. That has been happening even as total cases remained high. Several reasons have been suggested. I don't have enough statistical information to hazard a guess which is correct. Maybe it is a combination of factors? Maybe they vary from local to another? The main ones I have read include:


    1. More testing being done, which reveals more cases. That may be the case in Georgia. It is hard to say. Health officials in Florida and elsewhere say that is not the case, because they are finding more cases per test. It has risen from 8 to 14% percent positive in recent weeks as Florida cases have spiked.


    2. Better treatments, so more patients survive. I hope so!


    3. More young people getting sick. They survive better. But that is still bad news. See:

    Young people in the US South and West are increasingly getting coronavirus

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22…navirus-monday/index.html


    I think that main cause of a lower death rate is that more younger people are testing positive. Perhaps more Doctors are using Dexamethasone or Remdesivir and that is causing more people to survive. It would be interesting to know that.


    I saw a story on Florida (which is becoming a major hotspot) where they said the rate of postivity is Increasing. That is a bad sign. If they increased testing dramatically and the rate of positives remained steady, then the positivity rate should actually decrease. It is just one state though, so who knows if that's true elsewhere.


    Also, the average age of infection has dipped down into the late 30's. I believe the average age was in the 50's or 60's just a few weeks ago. This may be a major factor in the lower death rate. More young people testing positive and not dying from Covid. The key thing will be to see if these younger adults somehow manage to infect older adults (parents, family members etc.), or if there is some distancing taking place, so that doesn't happen.

    Yes you see it in the data. Possibly the tracking was ramped up after that. I know that they mentioned they used tracking two weeks ago, But not much is said about the tracking. All has been about testing where there is a heated debate going on, like Minister: we test 50000 a week, the opposition: but you said 100 000 a week, minister: turned out that 50 000 was the limit (we test all people working and going to hospital and the elderly care). As pointing out testing without tracking is not good, and the lack of interest on the tracking by the opposition and media is worrying. I have no clue how good we are at tracking, just that we do.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    35,000 deaths per year in the UK are directly attributable to obesity - and yet selling people obesogenic food with psychological tricks calculated to increase consumption is legal and even accepted as perfectly normal.


    That's complicated, isn't it? You have free will, political freedom, addiction, cost versus benefit . . . There must be some benefit to eating yourself to death, because so many people do it. For some personality types, a short, fat life is preferable to a long one getting hungry at 5 pm every evening. It seems a little off to call this an "addiction" because you have to eat food, whereas you don't have to drink alcohol or take drugs. The people selling fattening foods are to blame to some extent, but the people eating the food should know perfectly well it is hazardous. The education system in the UK is better than the US, and I am pretty sure the public schools teach that. They teach it in Atlanta public schools, but not in many rural districts, or in West Virginia, which has some of the worst obesity in the country.


    The problem in the U.S. caused by personal irresponsibility and by bad public health and by corporate greed. A combination of factors.


    Here is another complicated stat:


    https://www.gov.uk/government/…tes-year-ending-june-2018


    Statistics on reported road casualties in Great Britain for the year ending June 2018 show there were:

    • 1,770 reported road deaths
    • 26,610 people killed or seriously injured
    • 165,100 casualties of all severities, a decrease of 6%

    Is it worth it? Sort of. People have to drive. Modern civilization would collapse overnight without automobiles. But, is it worth going 60 mph in the UK, which is smaller than the U.S. You could go 55 mph and save many lives. Is it ever worth drunken driving? Of course not!


    Here's the thing. You can fix the automobile accidents. You can greatly reduce them with self-driving cars. I hope we will do that in the coming decades. No one is in favor of killing 1,770 people in car accidents. It does not benefit the automobile companies, whereas people eating themselves to death does benefit the Coca Cola Company and others, so there is a death lobby for food, just as there is for cigarettes.


    Even though no one benefits from automobile accidents, when self-driving cars are introduced, I expect some people will claim they have a God-given right to drive manual cars on the public roads. When cars came in and horses went out, some people claimed the right to ride horses in towns and on highways. That happened well into the 1930s, when my father almost ran into horse and farm wagon near Ithaca, NY. Eventually, the horse owners died off and the issue went away. 50 years from now, no one will say they a right to drive manual cars on public roads. There won't even be many manual cars. Most people will never ride in one. Most people will not know how to drive one, any more than I know how to ride a horse.

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    Oxford investigator on virus drug that offers hope


    (16 Jun 2020) A British trial organised at Oxford University has discovered a drug called Dexamethasone reduces fatalities among severely ill coronavirus patients.
    Peter Horby, the co-chief investigator of the Recovery Trial - Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy - said about 75% of patients in hospital will receive a mortality benefit from using the drug.
    Over three months, the university enrolled over 11,000 patients, Horby says making it "by far the biggest clinical trial in the world".
    Trialing 6 different types of drugs, in the last week it was discovered steroid drug Dexamethasone had a "significant effect" on patients with breathing difficulties. In ventilated patients with COVID-19, the drug reduced risk of death by about 35%.
    In patients needing oxygen treatment, it reduced risk of death by about 20%.
    Horby said the drug itself is stocked in "every pharmacy", it is available throughout the world and is "extremely cheap".

    Quote from Deleo

    I saw a story on Florida (which is becoming a major hotspot) where they said the rate of postivity is Increasing. That is a bad sign. If they increased testing dramatically and the rate of positives remained steady, then the positivity rate should actually decrease. It is just one state though, so who knows if that's true elsewhere.


    Yup. That's what they say in Florida.


    Who knows what's true elsewhere, especially in Georgia. We are a black hole of public health information. The nursing homes have not only been hiding data and lying to the public, they were hiding actual dead bodies in at least one case. The rural districts are hardest hit, often because of meatpacking plants and prisons where cases are concentrated. They don't want to talk about it. Hospitals don't want to talk about it. However, they are happy to accept donations to fight COVID-19. Emory Hospital keeps asking me for money. I should ask them what their mortality rate is.


    The Atlanta journal has done a public service ferreting out some of the numbers, and publishing these graphs and maps, and publishing stories about the shenanigans in the Health Dept., hospitals and nursing homes.


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


    To give credit where it is due, Emory University has published useful information:


    https://covid19.emory.edu/


    That is affiliated with the hospital. Right at this moment the hospital is trying to arrange to have me take a COVID-19 test, for complicated reasons. They have a clinic that offers on-demand COVID-19 testing a mile away from my house. They have a gigantic hospital 3 miles away. But they want me to drive to Dawsonville, GA, 47 miles and 1 hour away. That's the American health care system for you!

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