Covid-19 News

Here, I use onion + potatoes for the soup... with a little butter, cheese, pepper and chicken bouillon.

Quote from oldguy

chicken bouillon.

Aldi sells chicken bouillon cubes

they need a fresh onion soup maker IMHO.. to go with the brot

Quote from Shane D.

That must have been before they learned how to put curry on everything.

.. the UK is a lot more diverse after forty five years

nutritionally definitely

" diversity will save the planet" according to Sabine

Sabine Hazan is running trials HCQ +Zn +Vit D+Vit C .. prevention ant treatment for Covid

"

27.44

and I'm talking about hydroxychloroquine because that's

the best example right now that we have

that's been so dramatized and so over-the-top

so as a doctor you're scared of giving hydroxychloroquine and

and then you're not scared and you want

to save your patient and you go in and you risk your license and

and you go out and do it

so it's it's a difficult position to put the physicians in

and I think it's wrong it's wrong to do that

because we need our doctors to be warriors

we cannot have our doctors be victimized or be afraid

Quote from Shane D.

Well, well. What timing. This article comparing NY to Sweden just popped up. Lesson being that people living in glass houses, should not throw stones.

https://www.outkick.com/sweden…new-york-and-did-nothing/

People tend to think that political action controls everything. It does not. However popular action (social distancing etc) and popular living and work conditions control transmission. The one big thing politicians can do is affect popular sentiment about social distancing.

For Coronavirus there are lots of things we don't know. We cannot even rule out that varying T-cell response formed by other viral encounters shapes non-antibody immunity, as many here think, and that such shaping varies across countries. We cannot rule out that subtle genotypic differences between populations affect immunity signiifcantly.

However we can be sure that the death rate in different countries is affected by the overall infection rate - since nowhere has the virus "burnt out". We can also be sure that transmission depends on living conditions, working conditions, and the compliance of populations with social distancing measures. NY is a large city, known or its cramped accomodation, with its fair share of deprived population.

Sweden (outside Stockholm) is not a city, and Sweden as a whole has a more satisfied population (see OECD better life index), much more compliant with the need for rules to benefit society, and with a much more cohesive and therefore fit-for-this-purpose health system.

Many many many people does a poor job comparing countries just compare the death counts and do no more analysis - it's frustrating. To properly do it we first note that most countries had an eye on corona cases and when they started to climb they essentially locked down the country by different means. Now in the initial phase we have an exponential phase and then the lockdown has effect. So exponential increase means the the number of infected essentially is C0 exp(kT0) (actually one have to take the deca into acount but then the coonstant C0 is also infront of the whole shabong). That's the feature of it (look at Indias case curve for example to see a perfect exponential curve). So when we compare number of deaths we need to consider, C0 The initial number of infected and k, e.g. related to R0 and T0 the time to lockdown. T0 is essentially the same. We may also need to consider more complex models with clusters to do this properly as we can have either one big cluster with many cases (maybe Norway) or many clusters with few cases (probably Sweden) when people start to drop in to the hospitals. Sweden has much denser regions than Norway and Finland but one need to do a careful study if it is significant. So assume k is the same. T0 is the same countries essentially implemented the lock down rules when things started to climb with a lag of 2-3 weeks in output cases. C0 is interesting, 10% of the Swedish population was travelling abroad during the critical weeks essentially week 9 (for stockholm so it is less than 10% as some others counties did it the safe week 8). Norway Finland and Denmark had their winter brake week 8 when numbers indicate there was less spread in the airports. Also Norway skied mostly at their home country and did not travel much and Denmark does not ski much and travel much less then Swedes and Norwegians. So there is very likely an initial higher C0 in Sweden then other nordic countries. Then at the 9th of march we had an super spreader event which gathered 15000 people from all Sweden and this was a time when not many infected showed up in the stats and authority had thought they had control on it (although they had some cases which the could not track the 7th of March). Having the event was a mistake, and I think it has to do with the slowness of our authorities and a bit a bad timing. The scientists that control and put out recommendation monitored all available numbers and then they discussed the numbers a couple of days and then a reaction comes out. So trying to figure out what happens next before anything is visual is not that common. Anyhow if you look at Europe other countries has about the same timings with cases starts coming in around 12th of March. Interestingly we see other regions in Sweden which had vacation around week 8, started to get cases around 20th of march which indicates that they got the spread via the super spreader event (I know of people in Umeå, nothern part of Sweden that got it from this final in the Swedish eurovision song contest). In all it is explainable that Sweden got hit harder then the nordic countries and is not proven that it is because of bad implemention of the lock down like open schools (here the teachers has better statistics then other professions) Personally I can equate my actions as essentially the same as some friends USA with their shelter in place. I spend my time at home, did not visit my loved ones, was careful if I started to cough a little, just went out for walks or to do grocery shoping. washed my hands, My son went to school and that's about the only thing that differs so I'm on Trumps side on this, it is safe to start the schools. Finally we can see that the decay is different in different countries. But I know that Norway have more case trackers than Sweden and also with a smaller out-brake with fewer clusters I suspect that They was able to reduce R0 to have a faster decay response. This is much much more difficult when the number of cases is large. For the future, I think that we will only see smaller outbrakes in autumn that can more easilly be attacked with case tracking, so I'm optimistic that we will do not see surges of cases in autumn.

Quote from Shane D.

Well, well. What timing. This article comparing NY to Sweden just popped up. Lesson being that people living in glass houses, should not throw stones.

https://www.outkick.com/sweden…new-york-and-did-nothing/

A few comments,

* New York has a tremendous amount of visitors with extremely busy airports. Means a high initial C0.

* Maybe slow response in New York, I do not know how fast the lock down was.

* 50% of pop of New York state is city of New York. In Sweden Stockholm is 10%, hence higher R0

* Obesity, could be a factor

* A lot of poor people living in crowded flats, we have had problems here as well but the fraction of those is probably much fewer.

* It looks like the elderly care was hit similarly in Stockholm and New York, e.g not something either could brag about.

* I assume sick people tend to go to work more in USA than in Sweden if the conditions are mild.

Quote from Shane D.

Yes, there are usually reasons why one area, or country does better than another. Not all having to do with age, health, and policies. In the case of New York, they also had unique circumstances, in addition to those you list. One is that they have a large population of dual Chinese/US residents, and there were direct flights from Wuhan to NY.

When the outbreak started in China, the communist government shut off domestic flights from Wuhan, but international continued. In essence, they knowingly allowed the virus to spread to NY, and elsewhere (northern Italy for instance), where it found fertile ground in the tightly packed Chinese communities. The "China Town" area of Queens, NY eventually became designated "ground zero", from where it spread throughout the region. From there it traveled to southern Florida, and other parts of the US before air travel was shut down.

So I do not blame NY, nor anyone for how severe their outbreak was. Lately though, the left wing media has been holding out NY as an example of "how it should be done". In contrast, they compare NY to the Swedes, who they claim "did it all wrong". The reason Sweden is being singled out this way, is all due to politics, and tribalism. They opted for the Herd Immunity approach, which has become identified with conservatives...so they must be made an example of, and shamed.

In response, there has been some push-back going on from what little conservative media there is, pointing out how NY is in no position to be used as the poster boy to be emulated by others.

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Thanks for the context! One point though. It's kind of interesting that Corona has been so heavily associated with left right politics (and hence a pissing context). For me corona management is science and here, in Sweden, politicians do not touch the management of it, it just make sure laws are implemented so that the recommendations from FHM, run by specialists, have the proper law backup. Another topic that is not a left right thing in Sweden is Man Made Climate Change, here all parties accepts man made warming. The discussion is about how to tackle it and judge the severity and how to counter it differently. I'm actually leaning slightly to the right and I take a lot of offense by smuckheads that claims it is a left conspiracy. And I take offence from the lefties in US that claim schools should be closed and opening is a trumpian conservative thingie. Finally herd immunity is claimed by some professionals as a consequence of the Swedish strategy, but it never was a goal by FHM, the goal was to be able to sustain a suitable well measured lockdown for a very long time and also make sure not to overwhelm hospitals and keep the spread reaching the vulnerable. A needed background is that in order to force people into lockdown measures we need a change of the fundamental laws. That is impossible so we are left with recomendations and some laws that can force non compliant restaurants to close. Today we have less then 10 people dying per day, and 250 new cases found with extensive testing and we still do not open, as it is not considered safe, as we can stand the constraints we have. It was actually the perfect measures to take that they took considering the large outbreak we got. Looking at US I more and more get more thankful for how FHM has handled the outbreak. It's a real pity that all those scientists get is bad flak from lefties in US and neighbour 'experts' and countrymen. I tend to return more often than not to this, 'Det är synd om mäniskan'.

Quote from Shane D.

Not all having to do with age, health, and policies. In the case of New York,

I think it might be the NYC has more elevators, hand rails, subway poles...….

Quote from Shane D.

About Sweden: Yes, their mortality is high, but there were some early extenuating circumstances.

From an Interview of Swiss state TV with a daughter of killed grand parent living in a care home:

After testing positive the leader of the care home allegedly just called a doctor and then decide to switch to palliative car only...

Or simply said: They gave her morphine instead of medicaments - or even more simply said they killed her to save the therapy costs.

In this care home halve of the elderly died. This is what happens if you allow private profit oriented companies to run social institutions.

Quote from Shane D.

One is that they have a large population of dual Chinese/US residents, and there were direct flights from Wuhan to NY.

That was not the source of the infection. I read that nearly all New York City COVID-19 DNA was the Italian strain.

Quote from oldguy

I think it might be the NYC has more elevators, hand rails, subway poles...….

Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo have more handrails, subway poles and more crowded subways but very low infection rates. Perhaps it is because Asian populations wear masks, although that would not stop hand-to-hand infections.

There is no doubt there are more infections in crowded urban areas. Rural districts in Japan and upstate New York have very few infections.

Quote from oldguy

But the problem is they [CNN], like most news outlet, do not broadcast a full range of "experts" but instead select them based on some editor chief's desires.

Why is that a problem? You can see from their editorial content which side of various debates they support. So, if you want read experts with a different point of view, read some other news source as well. To counter the New York Times you can read The Wall Street Journal. There are no newspapers or other news media with no bias.