As the Coronavirus impacts the world and most of us (including yours truly) “shelter in place” and watching with fear and trepidation at what is going on in our world, Josh has condensed it down to a binary choice – with juggling:
Essentially, politicians are “Juggling with Death”.
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https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=dren1591
This is NY in two weeks, LA in 3.
Unfortunately, Loydo, doctors have always made these sort of decisions. They always will.
You have to understand a hospital will only ever have a certain number of ICU’s and respirators based on the number of cases requiring respirators in a given year.
The term “unprecedented” is overused these days, particularly when it comes to climate change, but in this case, the pandemic could be considered to be unprecedented.
Ramping up production of respirators can’t be done overnight.
Spain has responded to the shortage of masks by delivering 500,000 masks, 20,000 medical gowns and 50,000 rapid covid-19 tests with more to follow. Most of these items are obviously being produced by industry (using fossil fuels I might add) but ordinary people are using their home sewing machines in the effort to help the Spanish health service.
Respirators are being produced using 3D printers. The public-private partnership are producing 50 – 100 respirators a day. In addition, 63 3D printers are being given free of charge by a Barcelona company (BCN3D) to allow hospitals to produce their own equipment.
Again these 3D printers made from evil fossil fuels are using evil fossil fuels to produce respirators, also made from evil fossil fuels.
So, yes it’s a shame doctors are having to make life or death decisions, but Spain is responding remarkable well to a real issue, not something that may be an issue sometime in the future if we don’t blah, blah, blah.
What you need to decide is do you want COVID-19 to kill hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, or do you want to carry on using evil fossil fuels to contain this pandemic?
World wide 86% that are intubated and put in respirators don’t make it. Seattle is reporting 70%. The key seems to be early diagnosis and treatment with the hydroxychloroquine & Azithromycin/z-pak so they never have to be put on respirators. By the time many patients get to the point where they need a respirator, liver and Kidney damage is occurring. ‘Since both drugs are somewhat toxic for the liver from what I have read, the their administration becomes problematic after liver damage starts to occur.
Very spanish temperamento!
Also (assuming my previous comment has been released from moderation), the Spanish health minister has denied the accusations, which has been fact-checked by Maldita:
https://maldita.es/malditobulo/2020/03/20/respiradores-mayores-65-70-anos-comunidad-madrid-la-paz/
So choose, Loydo, do you want to use evil fossil fuels to save lives or not?
Mods could you release my response to Loydo from captivity please, it doesn’t like self-isolation
Thanks
This China virus is the great public mass hysteria since Orson’s War of the Worlds broadcast.
On what do you base that judgement?
While it’s possible the whole thing may blow over in a few weeks but there’s no evidence of that happening yet.
Because people are acting like it’s ebola, when in reality it’s a mild illness for most people and a severe to deadly one for various risk groups. Let’s identify those risk groups and get to work instead of running around like chickens with our heads cut off.
We don’t yet know what proportion get a mild version of the illness and we certainly can’t say with any certainty that only those in high risk groups get the severe form. We’re are seeing many young fit people requiring oxygen in hospital. This problem here is the numbers. If the virus is allowed to transmit unmitigated through the population there will be people who could survive and lead long, healthy lives but won’t because of health service capacity.
Many young, fit people vape, which can land them in ICUs barely able to breathe.
Many young people who look fit, smoke, which can do the same thing when they get sick.
Some large number of of young, fit immigrants have latent TB, which if activated by this virus could conceivably land them in ICUs barely able to breathe.
Sometimes young, fit people get pneumonia for various reasons and end up in ICUs.
Sometimes young, fit people get sepsis, which can land them in ICUs.
Are any of these things being considered? Why not? Just because a person tests positive for the virus doesn’t mean the virus is causing the illness. Even the CDC admits that in their CV test Instructions for Use.
Kevin Lohse “Viruses do not react to antibiotics.” correct “Only a vaccine will treat the disease.” wrong they are a lot of antivirals, out there some may help. Otherwise AID would be a death sentence since there is no vaccine.
China has suggested that the U.S. CDC COVID-19 tests render false negatives and are therefore unreliable.
Could it be that, in an effort to completely”Shut Down” the U.S. economy as well as the global economy, the Chinese have engineered and distributed COVID test kits that render false positives?
This would cause economies of Europe and the U.S. to effectively be shut down for what would then appear to be a rapidly spreading viral infection when possibly only about half the positives are actual infection cases.
During the Spanish flu, about 29,000,000 Americans were infected, and somewhere between 500,000 and 674,000 died – a 0.54-0.64% mortality rate. However, that was pre-antibiotics — it might have been much less with modern medicine.
WITH modern medicine, this virus is up around 1.5% mortality. If only as many as caught Spanish flu catch this one, we could be looking at 4 million dead.
This is not like seasonal influenza.
Ooops, got the decimal point wrong. 39 million at 1.5% would be 435,000, not 4 million.
That number lowers as testing shows higher numbers are infected with little or no effect.
It does seem to be a bit more than influenza, but only for certain risk groups. The largest risk groups I see at the moment are smokers, people subject to chronic severe air pollution (Wuhan, China; Lombardy, Italy) and those who use ACE2 upregulating meds. Possibly ibuprofen users as well (another ACE2 upregulator).
If you read Willis’s entry on the Carnival cruise, approximately half the people who get the virus show little to no symptoms. Which means that many more people have it than we know. The real mortality rate is probably half of 1.5%.
@ur momisugly James Schrumpf – March 27, 2020 at 11:45 am
“WITH modern medicine, this virus is up around 1.5% mortality. ”
James S, …… take a deep breath and think, ……. there is no “modern medicine” being administered (pill or vaccination) to prevent infections or cure infections of Covid-19 coronavirus.
They are working fast n’ furious to “create” one, but no luck so far.
Viruses do not react to antibiotics. Only a vaccine will treat the disease.
I don’t think it entirely accurate. I’m no doctor, but I believe a vaccine will actually give you the virus and lets the body develop the antibodies necessary to kill the virus when introduced in a more natural setting. It doesn’t cure the virus, it merely enables the human body to defend itself from the virus. The distinction being that if you don’t get a vaccine and get the virus, a vaccine likely will do you no good.
Antibiotics go after infections, bacteria, and other bad stuff our body may not like (leaving open the problem of bacteria that our body does like). I believe someone has already opined that infections often result from viruses and viral infections, not be confused w/ bacterial infections.
Samuel C, …… take a big breath and think, …… modern medicine involves a lot more than just vaccines.
Yes, we don’t have a cure at present, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing that can be done to keep those who are sick alive.
And consider that antibiotics do nothing for viral infections. There are now SOME vaccines for SOME viruses, but not all! We are still looking for one for COVID-19. The anti-malarial vaccine seems to work, for SOME cases. Nothing is certain, at this point. The best we can do is follow the CDC guidelines and hope a cure is found soon.
James S
Most of them did not die from an infection. They died from their body over-reacting to the viral invasion. Many died in a few tens of hours. It was a bird flu and it is so different from what we are used to, it triggered a hyperbolic overkill of a reaction. Those who were healthier died faster. To slow it down they would have had to do what they did with SARS which is to administer steroids that suppress the immune system.
Those getting the hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin are really sick with both overloaded with virus and have an infection that seems to respond to that antibiotic. At least that is the regimen in NYC.
No, they don’t.
However a weakened body is more susceptible to a bacterial infection.
I suspect that many who died in 1918, died from bacterial infections (pneumonia?) after the virus had weakened them.
Antibiotics do not kill virusses.
“The anti-malarial vaccine seems to work”
It’s not a vaccine, it’s a drug that appears to interfere with the virus’s ability to invade cells.
@Mark W
If that is the case, then why is the infection rate in countries with Malaria very low vs countries that do not have Malaria?
From a 2005 study on chlorquine use to treat SARS-Caronavirus.
That’s right, 2005.
But what do they know?
“Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread”
Conclusion
Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-CoV antiviral compounds.
Vincent, Martin J et al. “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread.” Virology journal vol. 2 69. 22 Aug. 2005, doi:10.1186/1743-422X-2-69
—————————————————————-
Did I mention this was concluded in 2005????
Jim G
“Did I mention this was concluded in 2005????” no you did not but you are correct, yet today the little bit of knowledge was ignored by our CDC and FDA. I consider that criminal negligent yet my opinion does not matter since I am a peon.
JimG, did you read what I said?
A drug that hinders the ability of the virus to enter cells can help you from getting the disease is not a vaccine.
Vaccines work by teaching the immune system how to fight a virus.
Two completely different mechanisms.
It’s not being ignored by the CDC.
Just because a drug is effective against one virus is not proof that it is effective against all viruses.
Beyond that, even if it is effective, at what dose. Too little does no good, too much can kill the patient.
@ur momisugly MarkW – March 28, 2020 at 8:51 am
“Beyond that, even if it is effective, at what dose. Too little does no good, too much can kill the patient.”
Well now, we sure don’t want to take the chance of killing a patient that is scheduled to die shortly, …… now do we? 😊 😊
The problem is “those risk groups” could easily overwhelm our medical system of hospitals and the availability of isolation ICUs and ventilators if we can’t slow the spread through the general population. SARS-CoV-2 is apparently intrinsically adapted to aerosol transmissible , and also produces a large number of low-symptom/asymptomatic carriers to unwittingly spread it far and wide.
And if our hospitals and ICUs are crushed by coronavirus patients, they won’t be able to tend to the regular flow of patients that occurs on a regular basis from heart attacks, strokes, auto accidents, etc. In that overwhelming situation lies the basis fro trying to slow the spread.
Or they may not crush
I think America could easily set up facilities to handle the overload, if it even happens. They could set up inflatable buildings overnight. That would be more sensible and cheaper than destroying the economy.
Sensible and cogent words, Joel. Unfortunately, too many believe that new hospitals, fully equipped and staffed, can be ‘easily set up overnight to handle the over load’. Their belief in such miracle defies any understanding of supply chain management, manufacturing limitations, and reality. Still, they persist with their ‘opinions’ and ‘beliefs’….
JMac are you kidding me? The military could set up temporary hospitals in no time. Time to think outside of the box and get things done instead of whining about our limitations.
All I have to say is NY asked for 30,000 ventilators and they got 400 and they are having to reuse N95 respirators. No point setting up a field hospital if you can’t supply the medical equipment.
Thousands were found in storage in NY.
If that were true why are they having to try sharing ventilators
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/health/coronavirus-ventilator-sharing.html
The reports coming out are saying very different things to your assertion, so do you have any links to reports saying it isn’t a problem?
Setting up hospitals is easy. Finding trained people to staff them is something else entirely.
LdB why are you spreading debunked information. Even Cuomo had to admit they are 2000 respirators sitting in storage staged to be distributed to where they are needed.
You are saying it’s debunked, so show us a link by any official saying that. I accept any fact that can be verified.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-in-ny-cuomo-defends-need-for-30k-ventilators-after-trump-called-it-overblown/
If you are right then Cuomo doubling down on a lie. So if you are right MSM is really lying so provide a link and we can ask media to address it.
You are always asking for links etc. I think that it is about time you did some of your own research. Useless sod.
Something that doesn’t exist is a little hard to find … which is why I ask them to provide links 🙂
They don’t exist according to you.
LdB
Watch and learn what the NYT and Cuomo lied to you about. Right from Cuomo’s mouth after he was caught. He knew they had them but acted as if they were short already. And the NYT, as usual tried to carry the water with the shared ventilators BS.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1243947755426459649
The fatality statistics from Italy are highly skewed by triage decisions. The US figures will likely be skewed as much by insurance cover:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-teenager-death-california-health-insurance-care-emergency-room-covid-19-a9429946.html
Teenagers are now dying in Europe because of limited capacity to treat them.
It is likely the statistics from China were skewed by triage decisions as well.
The saddest aspect of reporting is that reporters are suggesting only certain people are vulnerable. Younger people are getting the message it will not impact on them. That is WRONG.
Pathogens don’t act one way in one country and different way in another country. Young people get seriously ill from a number of factors (see above). Best to consider those things first rather than rush to the conclusion that CV is causing their morbidity/mortality.
Both the stats from NYC and Italy are skewed. They are not counting people whose cause of death is confirmed to be COVID =19. They are counting those that died that had COVID-19.
According to the experience of an ER physician on the front line in New Orleans:
81% mild symptoms, 14% severe symptoms requiring hospitalization, 5% critical.”
I see a lot of this type of discussion.
There are no good data for numbers infected with Covid, and no reliable numbers for deaths FROM Covid – as opposed to deaths of people who happened to have Covid, but who weren’t killed by it.
The most useful data is the Total Mortality Count. If this is only rarely fatal, it will not show up in these figures. If this is a true epidemic, total death rates will rise.
At the moment, total death rates are FALLING rapidly. Whatever Covid is doing, it’s not killing large numbers of extra people….
Where do you find that number, it in reality the only one that matters.
Some people say that the danger is much greater when you receive a larger dose of virus (which might be counter intuitive).
As the test for this virus is the only test and the flu season involves a salad of 15–20 viruses which all are transmissible the same way, many people probably have more than one virus. The only thing the Covid-19 test determines, possibly, because the test has never been tested for accuracy, is that one has this virus. But, this virus is not necessarily the virus making a person ill. It might just happen to be there. This would explain why so very many people who test positive are asymptomatic, as quite a few corona viruses are rather mild or innocuous. The presence of Covid-19 is basically meaningless as a diagnosis..
If we simply combine the illnesses and fatalities into the flu season, it would not even be a blip in the statistics. The world loses 800k+ people every year and we are panicking over about 10k? What about the 80 times more people dying of the normal “flu”? It makes no sense.
Looking at the flu in general and the Swine flu in particular, it should be pointed out that Swine flu in 2009 hit the young fairly hard, because they were not immune, while the elderly, having been through the Hong Kong flu, were already mostly immune. The reverse seems to be true here, as this virus is a SARS virus that will add onto people with existing respiratory conditions, smoker’s lungs, or compromised immune system.
Which ever virus is the culprit, the tests we have are far from definitive as we would have to have individuals who have only Covid-19 or have tests for all the suspect viruses. That is why the Italians have a “died with Covid-19” designation rather than only “died from Covid-19.” The culprit virus adds onto the already existing burden of a patient and take them down. This, alone, indicates that whichever virus is the problem, it is relatively weak and does not take the healthy. Every year the flu season takes the elderly and infirm. Nothing new about that. The alarmists just found something to focus on, and then reported falsely alarming numbers to scare everybody, counting on the ignorance of the public.
“Looking at the flu in general and the Swine flu in particular, it should be pointed out that Swine flu in 2009 hit the young fairly hard, because they were not immune, while the elderly, having been through the Hong Kong flu, were already mostly immune.”
I belive the Swine flu was the H1N1 virus, whereas the Hong Kong flu was H3N2.
I believe I had the Hong Kong flu when it was circulating and that was the sickest I’ve ever been before or since. I read the other day that the Hong Kong flu virus is still out there in modified form, along with a lot of other viruses.
Yep, and I’m up to date on my influenza vaccinations. Influenza is an Upper Respiratory Infection – URI – that seldom kills. What kills is the opportunistic fungal / bacterial / viral Lower Respiratory Infection – LRI – A.K.A Pneumonia. My pNeumonia vaccinations are also up to date.
I believe that the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenzas HPAI are up to H9, just not yet zoonoses- all, I believe, from China.
Birmigham Airport is now reconstructed for a temporarily Morgue.
Dumb mass hysteria pandemic pandemonium, Pandora’s Box is open and we’ve no idea how to shut it.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/25/what-good-are-constitutional-rights-if-they-are-vi/
For a more accurate portrayal, the Democrat version of Josh’s cartoon would show the left arm missing (nothing to catch the Economy with)!
What we need is a better choice, that reduces risk and lets us get back to a more normal life.
This economic shutdown is dangerous.
I see over at Jo’s blog, that masks can reduce the chance of getting the virus by 75%.
In North America we do not like to wear a mask, as wearing a mask, in the past, implied that we might be sick and are still going out. This is different.
An option I heard of was to isolate older people and other vulnerable people…
… and then let the young healthy people go back to work, with extra precautions such as everyone must wear masks on a subway or on busy streets.
I would like the government to get the masks for us also.
Everyone will wear a mask if they are readily available.
This is a group problem. We need fast group actions which is what the communists are good at. Our system is not good at supplying things to everyone.
Distributed the free masks at the entrance to all food stores. Everyone in a food store should wear a mask as vulnerable people must go to food stores.
Masks are very important. The government’s excuse for not telling people to wear them is it gives people sense of over confidence so they do more risky behavior. I haven’t seen any study backing up government.
In fact, instead of spending billions of dollars propping up people unemployed because of a shut down, we could spend a few millions of dollars employing people previously unemployed to deliver supplies safely to the vulnerable people in isolation.
This has not been thoroughly thought out. I’m one of the very few not affected much by the shut down, but it appals me what it out will do to the future economy. The wealth of decades is being squandered.
I live in a place where public transportation is stupid and counter productive yet it being push on us. I hope COVID-19 reverses this trend.
The H1N1 Pandemic of 2009-2010 [Swine Flu] caused an estimated 61 million cases and 12,469 deaths in the United States
CDC LINK
It was declared a public health emergency in April 2009 and later, in October, a National emergency.
The symptoms of 2009 H1N1 flu virus in people include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose,
body aches, headache, chills and fatigue.
CDC LINK
We didn’t shut down the economy then, so why are we doing it now?
Because this disease is much easier to transmit.
The death count you are looking at occurred over several years. We are up to 1300 and it’s only been a month since the first case was officially recorded in the US.
No, MarkW, it was one flu season. My take, this Wuhan Flu will be under 20,000 deaths in the US and a 50% chance it will be under 10,000.
The difference is the FLU season didn’t bring your hospital system to collapse.
You have two hospital field ships having to be deployed today, that didn’t happen in your flu season so that should tell you something.
That might have something to do with New York’s governor and New York City’s mayor inviting people to go to a Chinese festival, a film festival, etc., in defiance of Trump… rather than locking down early, they encouraged people to go out and mingle, claiming that Trump was fear-mongering.
New York knew they were short by 16,000 ventilators, but chose not to stock up. In 2015, the state could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece, or a total of $576 million. If you 3-D print one key component (for $1), you can knock $11,000 off that price tag (the patent for that one part owned by what I can only describe as a patent troll, IMO).
The hospital ships were deployed because those same people claimed they didn’t have sufficient ventilators (because rather than prepare, they squandered the money on green energy follies)… then they found a whole warehouse full of them from a prior administration, and the chief medical officer made clear there was no shortage of ventilators in New York state.
Collapse? Really? Per Worldometer on 4/3 at 9:50 Eastern, there are 5,421 serious/critical cases in the entire United States. Not exactly crying for the 30,000 ventilators Cuomo said NY alone would need. Your world must have a very different definition of the word “collapse”.
…because destroying th economy is the ony way the Democrats have of stopping Tump’s second term! And they know if they can prevent workers from returning to work within a month, that will probably crater the economy and achieve their objective!
The Democrats are desperate to stop Trump now because:
Weaponizing the intelligence agencies didn’t work…
Launching bogus investigations by the DOJ and the House didn’t work…
Running an impeachment based on the president’s sworn duty to investigat corruption didn’t work…
Up to a dozen assassination attempts haven’t worked…
Launching multiple charges and social campaigns against him, calling him every name in the book, and persecuting his close friends with trivial litigation hasn’t worked, either!
We’re seeing Democrats and their allies in the Marxist Media, Hollywood, China, Russia, and even Iran PANIC in a way never seen before!
Without a doubt, the very future of our nation, and by projection that of the world, hangs in the balance!
The Democrats (and some Republicans, too) have so much to hide it will amaze the world when it is exposed!
The Democrats have launched a dozen assassination attempts? Do you have any evidence to support that claim?
My thoughts too
March 2016: Ohio Rally. Thomas Dimassimo rushed the stage. Featured in a Bernie Sanders 2020 fundraising ad.
June 18, 2016: Las Vegas, NV, British national Michael Steven Sandord tried to seize a pistol from an officer but was foiled when the firearm got caught in the holster. He’d been planning the assassination attempt for a year.
Nov 6, 2016: Reno, Nevada, Austin Crites rushes the stage.
August 30, 2017: A white sedan races out of a wooded area straight at Trump’s motorcade, attempting to ram it.
January 2018: Travis Luke Dominguez plot to assassinate Trump foiled in Utah.
August 11 2018: Jeffrey Boyd traveled from OK to PA in foiled assassination plot.
October 2018: Navy Veteran William Clyde Allen III sent a letter containing castor beans to Trump, but it was seized by the Secret Service before reaching the White House.
8 March 2019: Lee County, Alabama, Black SUV attempts to ram Trump motorcade.
March 27 2019: Eric Leonard Charron, driving 130 mph on I68, drove all the way from Kansas City, MO. When pulled over in WV, claimed he was “late for dinner with President Trump”. State police found a handgun, gunpowder, and 300 rounds of ammunition in the vehicle.
October 18 2019: Dallas Police Arrested Armed Man In Body Armor Outside Trump Rally
November 18 2019: 42-year-old Secret Service agent, Noel E. Remagen dies due to taste testing for Trump.
There’s more, if you care to find them.
There’s more, if you care to find them.
I looked at the last one. That was enough to suggest something might be LOL@Kooksie with your thinking. Hooray for Alex maybe?
https://www.odmp.org/officer/23729-special-agent-nole-edward-remagen
At least the first example wasn’t against Trump.
As to the others, you can’t blame Democrats as a group for the actions of lone nut cases, nor have you demonstrated that any of the nut cases are even Democrats.
I never said that there have been no assassination attempts, what I asked you to support was your claim that the Democrat party is behind them.
At the time of his passing, Nole Edward Remagen was serving in the Presidential Advance Team of the Presidential Protection Division of the Secret Service. One of his duties was the president’s ‘taste tester’ (responsible for checking all toiletries, food, etc. that would come into contact with POTUS and FLOTUS), but at the time of his falling unconscious he was filling-in on a midnight-shift protection detail for National Security Adviser John Bolton. He was 42, in fit physical condition, with the best medical care money could buy (strokes are generally a consequence of atherosclerosis or high blood pressure… neither of which he could have had if he met the requirements to be on the Presidential Advance Team)… if he’d had a condition that could lead to stroke, it likely would have been caught prior. He was running on a treadmill, as he did regularly, just the day before.
POTUS was rushed to a military hospital for testing, then was sequestered until SS could figure out the threat landscape.
So that leaves the question, what caused the stroke? He reportedly felt ill after testing the toiletries of FLOTUS, so…
Mark W wrote:
“At least the first example wasn’t against Trump.”
Thomas Dimassimo (the first example) rushed the stage at a Trump rally. It was featured in a Bernie 2020 fundraising ad.
Thomas Dimassimo was a BLM activist… definitely not a conservative, wouldn’t you say?
Austin Crites was registered Republican, but here’s the thing… he canvassed for and donated to the democrat campaign. He’s a RINO or a democrat plant.
Travis Luke Dominguez was a leftist, although there’s no indication of his voter registration, his own words betray his political leanings.
Jeffrey Boyd was a nutter who heard voices, but was a leftist.
William Clyde Allen III was, at the time of his arrest, registered democrat… he’s charged with 7 counts and faces life in prison, so it’s unlikely that he’s changed his voter registration himself, but it now shows as republican.
Eric Leonard Charron was high on meth and therefore clearly insane, but his writings reveal his leftward leaning.
So that leaves the question, what caused the stroke?
I wouldn’t want to speculate. I certainly couldn’t believe you.
I think you’d do better for yourself if you started with the basics of research, e.g., reporting the date of this officer’s death accurately. When you’re able to get first things correct, then move on to other, more complicated things. Try leaving Alex Jones alone. I think you might be one who takes him seriously.
Alex is not your friend. Rather, evidence is your friend.
Yeah, you’re right, I got the dates mixed up.
He died on 17 Jul 2018.
Alex Jones? Really? None of what I wrote came from Alex Jones… it came from SVR and SS documents, and from a prior SS agent who knew Remagen, having served on the same team.
None of what I wrote came from Alex Jones . . .
Wonderful! I’m glad to hear that.
Take care.
Maybe not or maybe yes, but what is true lately Demorats have tried to kill Republicans, i think Steve Scalise and Rand Paul could fill you in on a couple of such attempts. If paul gets dies COVID-19 I would think his neighbor could very well end up being charges with a least manslaughter.
It also implies 150 other countries around the world that have also shutdown are complicit in the conspiracy 🙂
There’s no “conspiracy” in this case, which by definition is done in secret. It’s conformist group-think done pretty much in the open, tho portrayed (spun) to suit the objectives. Now, the deep-state operation to discredit, then remove Trump that began even before he was elected, was indeed a conspiracy, and still is.
the death rate would probably be the same…maybe more….from the “regular flu”
…if we didn’t have vaccines
I would imagine that mostly older people get the vaccine…and they say this is critical to mostly older people
There will be a vaccine….people will still get critical and die….only a lot less of them
…and who was the idiot that said “let China make out meds”….and then tries to blackmail us with them because they didn’t like chinavirus
“Because this disease is much easier to transmit.
The death count you are looking at occurred over several years. We are up to 1300 and it’s only been a month since the first case was officially recorded in the US.”
Meanwhile the death count in the US from the flu this season (September onward) is around 23,000 or so out of a confirmed positive 230K+ cases, which makes that a 10% death rate if we’re comparing apples to apples here. When it’s all said and done the true death rate from COVID-19 will be well below 1%, just like the flu. That’s all infections vs deaths, not just confirmed cases vs deaths.
Um, that turns out not to be the case. From the CDC website:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
“CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 39 million flu illnesses, 400,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths from flu.”
That’s a 0.06% mortality rate. COVID-19’s is around 1.2%. That would be 468, 000 deaths from 39 million illnesses.
Someone clearly didn’t understand what I said. The death rate figures being bandied around for COVID-19 are based on deaths vs CONFIRMED cases, not estimated number of infections. Death rate figures for the flu being bandied around are based on deaths vs ESTIMATED infections, not confirmed cases. This is an apples to oranges comparison. An apples to apples comparison (ie. flu deaths vs CONFIRMED cases) puts the flu death rate at around 10%. Deaths vs confirmed cases through testing is NOT a true death rate though. The true death rate for the flu is well below 1%, and the same will be true for COVID-19.
Thank you Greg, this also is my problem with the figures bandied about by the media.
I remember reading earlier in the year, that this flu season was worse than average.
“We didn’t shut down the economy then [over the H1N1 virus], so why are we doing it now?”
Well, a doctor on tv was asked that question yesterday and he said the reason it wasn’t taken as seriously is that we are familiar with H1N! and had a vaccine for it.
I think one excuse the Obama administration/medical authorities gave for not taking drastic action was that the virus was already spread too far by the time they found out its extent.
I can’t verify any of that, but that’s what I have heard on the subject.
It seems that the H1N1 vaccine became available widely in December 2009, in the same year as the outbreak, so at least for flu it’s possible to develop and roll out a vaccine in under a year.
We’ve got hydroxychloroquine… but thus far New York and Nevada have restricted its use for Covid-19, despite the fact that there are now case studies as to its efficacy, and one doctor in New Jersey reporting that hydroxychloroquine and zinc clears the Cov19 virus in 6 days or less with no hospitalizations or intubations.
Hydroxychloroquine is based upon that old standby quinine… little known fact, Indian tonic water is bitter because it has quinine in it. It was designed for the country of India to combat malaria. Since Britain at the time was colonizing India, the Britishers there drank it, and added gin to combat the bitter taste, giving us gin and tonic.
Quinine is also effective against Covid-19, given that hydroxychloroquine is quinine with added molecules so the drug could be patented. Effective dose of tonic water is one liter per day. Gin supplementation is recommended.
“Quinine is also effective against Covid-19”
Please provide any evidence … any at all.
Let you in a little secret you are the only one who thinks that, you won’t find anyone with any medical background say that.
Really? No one?
First, we establish that chloroquine is quinine produced synthetically and altered slightly to produce a new molecule for patenting purposes. The end product in the body is still quinine. Newer molecules (such as hydroxychloroquine) decrease toxicity, allowing longer dosage schedules.
By the 1930s Dutch plantations in Java were producing 22 million pounds of cinchona bark, or 97% of the world’s quinine production. When Japan invaded Java in 1941, natural quinine supplies dried up, necessitating mass production of synthetic derivatives. [8]
Chloroquine is an amine acidotropic form of quinine that was synthesized in Germany by Bayer in 1934 and emerged approximately 70 years ago as an effective substitute for natural quinine [4].
Quinine is eliminated mainly by hepatic metabolism [1]. Seven metabolites have been identified with 3-hydroxyquinine being the major metabolite [1]. Other majority metabolites are (10R)‐10,11‐dihydroxyquinine and (10S)‐10,11‐dihydroxyquinine [2].
Quinine acts against malaria by targeting its purine nucleoside phosphorylase enzyme (PfPNP) [3], but it has other effects in the body which act against coronavirus.
Namely, it targets angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) [4], interfering with sialic acid biosynthesis [4]. SARS, MERS and Covid-19 use sialic acid moieties as receptors, so quinine (and its synthetic counterparts) prevent viral attachment to cell receptors.
Chloroquine can also act on the immune system through cell signalling and regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines. [4]
It also acts to increase zinc uptake, which has anti-viral effects. Quinine used to be sold, prior to the FDA banning it for this use, as a treatment for leg cramps. The mechanism of action is increased uptake of zinc, calcium and magnesium by reducing hepatic metabolism of zinc [10]. Now it is recommended to directly ingest zinc, calcium and magnesium for leg cramps rather than taking quinine. [9]
This may be why people infected with Covid-19 experience a loss of the sense of taste (and smell, since the two senses are intricately connected) [11][12].
As to dosage, it generally takes 4 to 5 days to completely flush quinine from the body [5]. The consumption of 10 oz. of tonic water can result in a quinine positive urine sample for a period of up to 96 hours (4 days) after intake. [5] Approximately 20% of quinine is excreted unmetabolized [6]. It has a half-life of approximately 18 hours [6].
Quinine in tonic water in the US is limited to 83 mg / liter [7].
Thus, we can make a simple linear extrapolation, assuming a half-life of 18 hours and ingestion of 83 mg / day. This means that after 24 hours, approximately 27.67% of the amount from the prior day remains in the system. Thus it accumulates until the body is excreting as much as is ingested. That occurs after approximately 5 days, when the dosage varies between 124.5 mg immediately after ingestion to 41.5 mg immediately prior to the next ingestion.
Is that enough to have a prophylactic effect?
Well, the National Institutes of Health state that chloroquine is “a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection” [13] and since SARS binds to the same cellular receptors as Covid-19, and since chloroquine is a synthetic version of quinine, it would appear that it should work.
Pretreatment with 0.1, 1, and 10 μM chloroquine reduced infectivity by 28%, 53%, and 100%, respectively. [13]
The EC90 value of chloroquine against the 2019-nCoV in Vero E6 cells was 6.90 μM, which can be clinically achievable as demonstrated in the plasma of rheumatoid arthritis patients who received 500 mg administration. [14]
Interpolating the dosage of 500 mg to 6.9 μM concentration, for a dosage of 124.5 mg daily, that should give a concentration of ~1.71 μM, reducing infectivity by ~60% per [13].
Given that no doctor is going to give you chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure, using Indian tonic water containing quinine to reduce infectivity would seem to be a prudent preventative measure.
[1] https://www.drugs.com/npp/quinine.html
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2710.2007.00788.x
[3] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/22/quinines-target
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300881
[5] https://friendslab.com/quinine-use-and-detection/
[6] https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00468
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_water
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine
[9] https://healthfully.com/287838-leg-cramps-magnesium-calcium.html
[10] https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-19765/cal-mag-zinc-ii-oral/details/list-interaction-details/dmid-455/dmtitle-aluminum-and-magnesium-antacids-quinidine-quinine/intrtype-drug
[11] https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/131/2/305/4687001
[12] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-symptoms-loss-of-smell-taste-covid-19-anosmia-hyposmia-2020-3?op=1
[13] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
[14] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0
Update to the prior text to clarify and correct:
Interpolating the dosage of 500 mg to 6.9 μM concentration, for a dosage of 124.5 mg daily (83 mg from tonic water, the remainder being that remaining in the body from prior dosages), that should give a concentration of ~1.71 μM, reducing infectivity by ~60% immediately after ingestion of 1 L of Indian tonic water, decreasing over the next 24 hours to ~.47 μM, with a reduced infectivity of ~40%, per [13].
In what part of California have you been called back to work? And in what industry? And in what job?
I’d rather not say… I’m pseudonymous for a reason, after all. Mainly because libtards are vicious little shites who wouldn’t think twice about destroying a person’s life over the slightest of perceived slights, intended or imagined.
Liberals would burn down the world if they could rule over the ashes.
That one is going straight away into my file of factoids, quotes and smart remarks.
H1N1 wasn’t a totally new disease. Most people over 60 had already had something very similar and were largely immune. The mechanism to create bulk vaccine was already in place. They fatality of the disease was very low. Milder than even the seasonal flu versions that were circulating at the time. Had it been its 1918 parent, it would have been a very different picture.
Models used in various engineering fields have been proven to be accurate and useful.
That because the variables are know, in a lot of other fields they are not, the variables a WAGS. As to engineering models, some have failed catastrophically. Mostly due to the fact someone failed to consider all the variables in those. One was the basket ball arena in Kansas City. Water pooling in a storm was not considered. Luckily it was empty at the time it failed.
I never said models were perfect, just that they are accurate and useful.
Far cry from the none ever work belief of some.
“I never said models were perfect, just that they are accurate and useful.
Far cry from the none ever work belief of some.” I did not say none work, I said model work if the variables are well known. It the well known part a lot of models that are foisted on us lack. Engineering models to the most part have well known variables, even then sometimes thing get overlooked.
Really? Models are, by necessity, simplifications, which introduce approximation errors, which can get one into trouble pretty quick.
I’m currently arguing with a kook on CFACT who insists that acceleration is a rank 1 tensor (a vector)… because he can’t wrap his brain around 4-D Lorentzian or Minkowskian space, so he’s forced to work only in 3-D Euclidean space and with Newtonian mechanics.
The problem with that is that in 3-D Euclidean space, the tangent vectors are usually set orthogonal to the basis vectors, thus there is no dual space, thus there is no transpose, thus there can be no dual vectors.
The gradient of a physical quantity and its derivative are dual (transpose) to (of) each other (ie: they’re essentially the same object, transposed). When we say we’re ‘taking the derivative’, we’re generally taking the dot product of the gradient and the derivative immediately below it, and taking the dot product of a transpose is equivalent to taking the outer product, which increases resultant tensor rank. And since tensor rank is invariant under transposition, the gradient and its dual (the derivative) have the same tensor rank.
So there is a very simple relation in 4-D Lorentzian or Minkowsian space between derivatives and tensor rank:
………/ gradient (rank 8 tensor) | (rank 8 tensor) 8th derivative (drop)
……../ gradient (rank 7 tensor) | (rank 7 tensor) 7th derivative (lock)
……./ gradient (rank 6 tensor) | (rank 6 tensor) 6th derivative (pop)
……/ gradient (rank 5 tensor) | (rank 5 tensor) 5th derivative (crackle)
…../ gradient (rank 4 tensor) | (rank 4 tensor) 4th derivative (snap)
…./ gradient (rank 3 tensor) | (rank 3 tensor) 3rd derivative (jerk)
…/ gradient (rank 2 tensor) | (rank 2 tensor) 2nd derivative (acceleration)
../ gradient (rank 1 tensor) | (rank 1 tensor) 1st derivative (velocity)
scalar (rank 0 tensor) (affine space position)
That can’t happen in 3-D Euclidean space unless the tangent vectors are not set orthogonal to the basis vectors, so 3-D Euclidean space, while it is a great model (a simplification of 4-D space-time predicated upon the weak-field approximation and the slow-motion approximation) for simple problems, is an approximation upon an approximation upon a simplification… and it doesn’t work for anything but a localized problem in which you don’t really care about tensor rank.
Yeah, pretty esoteric… it started out with the kook claiming that 2LoT violations “could happen quite readily” (a macroscopic 2LoT violation has never been empirically observed, and 2LoT is even more rigorously observed at the quantum scale (https://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3275)), which would cause catastrophic atmospheric warming.
As I proved him wrong time after time (to date, 1748 times), he backpedaled, shifted the goal posts and continued blathering about catastrophic atmospheric warming… he’s desperate to substantiate his religious belief in CAGW, but alas, he just can’t do it (mainly in the most recent case because he doesn’t even understand the basics of differential and integral calculus). So now we’re onto tensor rank. Religious beliefs die hard. LOL
I think he’s nearing the end of his rope… he’s now denying reality. Just today he claimed that the Einstein tensor and the energy-momentum tensor had nothing to do with gravity, and that acceleration and gravity were two separate things (he doesn’t know about the Equivalence Principle). He’s not smart, but he’s very persistent. LOL
Great work! I play with simple engineering models and have found them to be powerful tools for characterizing a system…but in most cases understanding the limits of the tool, interpretation and effective (profitable) use of model results depends on the savvy of the modeler. GIGO bites us all at times. In the economically competitive arena there is a step called “checking” which is often not funded and therefore skipped…usually not a problem. In the CO2 political arena I get the strong impression that results are checked (this step is funded…) to ensure the desired answer is produced. Anyway, rule number 1 of modelling: check your fly before going on stage.
So what if they are simplifications. Within their limits they work. Modern society wouldn’t be possible without products that were designed using models.
Some people want to believe that anything short of perfect is useless.
The reason the swine flu wasn’t a big deal was it would have made B.O. look bad as a president if they shut down the economy. The MSM has to inflict as much damage on this presidency as possible. It is their last chance to elect the dimentia addled Biden.
H1N1 is the most prevalent influenza striking now. It is leading to the highest mortality among viral infections and subsequent infections leading to pneumonia. Not a peep from virtually anyone. Hundreds dying from H1N1 per week, including children (unlike COVID-19), and pneumonia causing thousands of deaths per week. About 50,000 per week die in US.
When the Wuhan virus first appeared we didn’t know how infectious or deadly it would be and human society decided to take it seriously and err on the side of caution.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
Your right to bear arms had been restricted? That’s not being reported if true.
The sheriff of LA County ordered gun shops to close ruling that they were non-essential businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_uNKatrJgw
Die-versity & Inclusion?
Deadly advice, which probably made sense at the time.
Scissor has anyone looked at a rolling 12 year number of deaths by day and adjusted up/down by the population as whole getting older/younger?
Comparing last year’s average deaths on 3/27 to this year’s 3/27 average would be interesting…maybe
Thanks,
I’ve seen something like that for Italy. As I recall, it showed fewer deaths than average for 2020 up to a week or so ago. I’ll have to see if I can find it.
A problem is that there’s a lot of variability from year to year just from flu. The following paper is for Italy and is enlightening.
https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1201971219303285?token=61472CD8F07551ECFB3AE982325874A990066225B5EFF8CFB6561F89A0CD7206C55BD3780DCF2A80A0D3F92A59383EB1
Current mortality rates for 24 European countries: https://www.euromomo.eu/.
And remember, the ‘computer modellers’ whose advice governments are taking, are the same type of clowns who give us the climate catastrophe predictions.
Anthony, I corrected a typo for you, changing “imapcts” to impacts.
Regards,
Bob
PS: STAY SAFE AND HEALTHY, EVEYONE!!
Bob,
I would have corrected a typo for you, changing eveyone to everyone!
Yours,
Jerry!
Well played Disputin!
Be good
EVEYONE is Bob’s hairdresser, Disputin.
She works at Curl Up And Dye.
Thanks, leitmotif, that made me laugh.
Regards,
Bob
I am glad you have a sense of humor. Spelling and punctuation errors get me too.
Cartoons are not always meant to be comedic, more like illustrative. I could picture an addition of dims flying around in red union suits and pitchforks trying to poke holes in the “economy”.
UK Covid-19 numbers are getting progressively worse, Today’s (Friday) update here
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/UK-COVID-19.htm
Mortality of hospitalised people is at steady 5% during past seven days
Vuk
March 27, 2020 at 9:52 am
Do you think or that the seasonal flu is softer and has some different less worse progressive path in it’s wave… in UK?
Just asking.
Hi whiten
I’m not expert on any of these things, I would assume that the flu epidemic every winter follows similar but less severe bell curve, but important difference is (as far as I understand) flu is by far less infectious, usually a vaccine is available early at the outbreak and that flu mortality of hospitalised people is much smaller.
Vuk
March 27, 2020 at 10:31 am
Thanks Vuk.
I am not an expert either.
I just simply addressed the numbers you provided.
But as far as I can tell, according to WHO numbers;
Mortality of identified by testing infected people happens to be ~10% for the whole
wave duration, meaning that through the progress at some point the rate could be even higher… in the case of a season cold flu.
In consideration of vaccination for what I know.
Yes true, in consideration of a novel corona virus infection, a proper working vaccine may help, if applied responsibly, aka for people in the risk and high risk group, if such people not being infected yet…
with the care of getting the timing right.
But a plasma antibody treatment, even when does not block the infection, as a vaccine supposes to, still is better and faster in upgrading the immune system response, with far far higher safety and success than a vaccine… and it can be rolled out far earlier and quicker than a vaccine… successfully.
But rolling out a plasma antibody treatment targeting the risk and high risk group,
it means that all the people treated will not need vaccination, and should not even have one after, as there is the potential risk that the vaccine may reverse the benefit already gained, to a less efficient standard of immune response,
especially if it is administered close to an infection period…
cheers
“Do you think or”… know (missing)
sorry 🙂
What is the mortality rate of hospitalized people who were put on a hydroxychloroquine + Z-pak regimen before the 9th day after onset of symptoms?
Too late. After 9 days, pneumonia may already be developed.
No idea, but according to this it may make no difference, and this paper was a strong supporter of the president.
“EXCLUSIVE: ‘Gift from God’ coronavirus ‘cure’ touted by Donald Trump is promoted by a FAKE Stanford University ‘researcher’ who is actually a cryptocurrency-hustling Long Island lawyer whose bogus science paper was removed by Google”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8143845/Malaria-cure-coronavirus-promoter-cryptocurrency-hustler-fake-Stanford-University-claim.html
Rigano jumped on board in mid-March. His scamming in no way changes independent work that was done before and since.
From the small studies done it will work on a small set of patients. We really need to see the NY trial results which will show what the number is.
Consider upgrading to Covid-20 Pro.
We now have a ‘lifetime’ subscription at a never-before seen, and never to be repeated 50% off! Buy now while stocks last!
That won’t be released until Oct 31 last I heard…
Rumor has it that it will not run on existing hardware.
According to Heaven Times, God will be issuing firmware upgrades forthwith.
Breaking just now:
Unnamed sources say all firmware upgrades WILL be cloud based . . .
Mah!
The number of tests in the UK is too small. Sick people get to the ICU too late. Pneumonia occurs after 5-7 days.
So are you saying that people get admitted to ICUs before they get pneumonia?
He is saying something very different, read what he said again.
Yes, the peak might not have been passed yet in the U.K. , so new cases and deaths will rise at high levels, but there is divergence from the exponential trend line in the desired direction.
It’s easier to see on cumulative plots, particularly for cases.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/UK-COVID-19.htm
There is something dodgy about that graph. Why is there that dip in mortality.
Friday 13th. (13/03/2020)
A few people held on until after midnight.
An exponential function starts out small and increases quickly.
Begin the month with a penny, double it every day and by the end of the month you have a bazillion dollars.
WHO considers COVID-19 an exponential virus with cases and deaths doubling every ten days or five days or two and ending up badly.
A logarithmic function starts out quickly then slows and levels out.
COVID-19 is obviously a logarithmic virus.
After culling the herd of the too old, too sick, too vulnerable, COVID-19 withers and dies out in the 98% of cases healthy, robust and resistant enough to fight it off, e.g. Tom Hanks.
And COVID-19 would have, will and is following the logarithmic model and would have ended the same regardless of the shrill carping of the lying, fact free, fake news media and the gross over reaction of grand standing politicians.
This affair will generate decades of book deals, speaking tours and debate.
Maybe all of that should be taxed to compensate those most harmed.
The number of people who survive will in large part depend on the type of medical care they receive.
Even with the radical controls that you reject, the medical systems in many places are already being saturated.
WUHAN VIRUS
Inaccurate Virus Models Are Panicking Officials Into Ill-Advised Lockdowns
How a handful of Democratic activists created alarming, but bogus data sets to scare local and state officials into making rash, economy-killing mandates.
“Begin the month with a penny, double it every day and by the end of the month you have a bazillion dollars.”
Actually, only about 10 million dollars. Did you get confused by the spending speed of the government?
He was using government math. Everything costs a bazillion dollars.
Not even in February do you get only 10,000,000 dollars. The formula is 2^(n-1) for starting with a single dollar, where n = days in the month. For a 30-day month you get $536,870,912.
In any case, you would run out of room pretty quickly. For older coins that are mostly copper, they are actually worth quite a bit more than a penny.
Actually, I owe CG an apology. I missed that the start was a penny, not a dollar. So that takes us down to $5,368,709.12, or $10,737,418.24 for a 31-day month. Sorry, George.
This “too old” person has no intention whatsoever of being “culled”.
Mind your language, you young whippersnapper!
Cheers …
Unculled for, how dare you?
Us old people have little choice in what happens. I am 67 lived in a 55 and older community for 12 years half the people I had made friends with in the early years are death, in the community we lose on average about one a week. Just the way it is good luck. Getting old is a bitch but the alternative is worse, oh by the way if you want a lot of people at you funeral you need to die young.
There is a part of the growth that is exponential, where a plot of cases on a log scale is linear vs time. I’m not sure what to make of it, but curves of cases in China, Korea and to some extent Germany, show clear breaks from exponential to logarithmic behavior.
Cases in the U.K. aren’t showing a sharp break but the desired behavior is beginning to appear.
What makes covid19 so potent? This particular strain is very contagious while showing no symptoms for days? Everything is shut down here in Michigan, but I suppose when the restrictions are lifted the economy will roar again due to pent up demand.
“What makes covid19 so potent? ”
Twitter. Facebook. Fake news media
Exactly.
One has to wonder if this is not a trial for the ‘real’ panic-scam that ends up with total government control. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get me…
This is first social media pandemic. Swine flu was a couple years too early or it would have been the first.
For the first time ever, we could track this one almost directly from the source.
The Chinese Coronavirus is currently more potent than the regular flu, but not more potent than the regular flu was in 1918 and maybe only 2X – 3X more potent than the regular flu in 2018.
If this happened in 1994, it would have been “a very bad flu season” and buried in the newspaper would be large numbers of deaths, and we all would be immune to it by now.
Everyone who is below 65 and healthy needs to plan on getting it. It will kill way less healthy Americans than opioids will.
Can we get another version of this cartoon?
Exactly the same but instead of juggling covid-19 and the economy, it would be Climate Change and the economy.
Given the reporting of the death toll related to the COVID-19 pandemic, a similar number should be broadcast for deaths related to non-COVID-19 infections.
I’ve seen estimates that every year 250,000 people die in the US from “medical errors” – for example here.
We could cut that rate down to near zero by closing all the hospitals and medical offices.
Actually, that is almost identical in nature to the argument that we need to give up fossil fuels and rely on unreliables!
Inaccurate Virus Models Are Panicking Officials Into Ill-Advised Lockdowns
Inaccurate Virus Models Are Panicking Officials Into Ill-Advised Lockdowns
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus-models-are-panicking-officials-into-ill-advised-lockdowns/
Great statement, great article.
March 27 (GMT)
5909 new cases and 919 new deaths in Italy. Highest number of new deaths since the beginning of the epidemic in Italy. 46 doctors have died to date (with 4 additional deaths today). 6414 health workers have tested positive.
The peak in cases in Italy was on the 21st, so far, perhaps the peak in deaths has arrived.
from the comments here about how low the death rate is, I assume (am I correct) that you do not believe that the isolation measures is having an effect?
I cannot see that. Isolation (real isolation) and testing all people and tracing contacts would severely limit the spread if continued for a couple of weeks. Am I totally wrong in this belief?
is the isolation the reason the spread is not exactly following an exponential curve?
If so what proof can you provide? Are there any densely packed cities where the virus spreading has begun that is not practising isolation? Are there any cities willing to try this for science sake?
Perhaps when trump follows through on his promise of full churches at Easter we will be using the USA as a tester.
Sweden
According to the medics isolation takes up to two weeks (incubation period) to start showing results.
Mexico.
El presidente was out kissing babies a week ago.
Whatever happened to the Prime Minister of Cambodia who personally greeted quarantined cruise ship passengers with a handshake and a bouquet of roses as they disembarked in a Cambodian port? Since there’s no news about it, probably nothing.
How about hug a Chinese in Italy…that was government sponsored
Japan.
Did he really promise full churches at Easter?
No.
No, Trump didn’t promise anything, it is just his aspiration that we might be able to hold Easter services.
How would that be done safely? I suppose if you could test all the people who would attend the Sunday service (antigen test), then you could tell who was infected and who was not, and could then allow those who did not test postitive to get together for services. And I guess you could allow all the infected people to hold a service among themselves, althouth that might be a little unnerving.
If we had a safe medicine that could clear the Wuhan virus from the body in six days, then we could almost assure the safety of most everyone.
Both of those things are possibilities. I’m not sure they will be available by April 18, but who knows.
at 7minutes into this
Indonesia.
I have to admit that I was wondering the same thing. Yesterday I discovered that Indonesia had not implemented a lock down. They have a population of 260 million (staggering!) and very poor to non-existent healthcare, and great poverty.
It won’t be pretty, but it will be the largest control group in this little unintended experiment…
Yes Indonesia can’t 60% of the population lives hand to mouth, it’s higher in some parts. They would all literally starve to death unless the government was going to feed those 150M. The obvious problem is the government don’t have enough resources to even distribute food to 150M even if they had the food.
They literally have no real choice.
The number of fatalities in the UK is growing rapidly.
Read about how doctors have discovered unusual clotting of the lungs in covid patients that died. Researchers are looking at a drug called tpe that reduces clotting which can possibly help.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-clinical-care-new-repurposed-drug,-tpa-could-help-covid-19-patients-with-respiratory-distress-and-where-ventilators-are-not-availabl
There are a few reports of COVID-19 affecting heart tissue as well.
https://dnyuz.com/2020/03/27/a-heart-attack-no-it-was-the-coronavirus/
It isn’t possible to draw an analogy to the 2009 swine flu. The world saw a horrific >5% CFR in Argentina’s winter, our summer. It quite literally commandeered all flu vaccine capacity globally to crash out a vaccine for this new strain. That vaccine became available in November, halted the pandemic globally, and saved countless lives.
There is no vaccine for Wuhan virus for at least another 18 months.
The CFR based on S. Korea (who has almost halted new cases thanks to aggressive contact tracing, testing, and quarantine) fatalities/recoveries (you cannot use all cases because actives have not yet resolved, and of active cases 11% are serious/critical and about 1/3 of those will become fatal based on Korea’s data as of this morning) dropped from 3.4% yesterday to 3.3% today, in a modern health care system that is NOT overwhelmed like northern Italy, Spain, NYC , and New Orleans. A critical care pulmonologist in NO says about half the patients he puts on ventilators are dying. And they are running out of ventilators. That is real bad. The cartoon is apt.
Rud,
In a comment to an earlier post, Steve Mosher, who is living in South Korea, stated, I believe, that folks in South Korea are going to work. How does that jibe with your comment about quarantine?
Korea has tested as of two days ago over 357,000 @nd found about 9100 positives. Those are strictly quarantined In hospitals, although about half have recovered and been released. They are also generally practicing social distancing as much as possible.
Yesterday new positives were only 91, showing that the Korean contact tracing/testing system worked. So no need to shut the country down.
We dont have contact tracing, and even if we did there were not enough test kits available until this week. No way to trace New Orleans Mardi Gras or Queens.
Korea cooked up its test the minute they heard about Wuhan virus. And had their ontainment plan based on SARS experience. Interesting, Hong Kong also had a similar plan, put into immediate effect when they learned about Wuhan, and has held total cases to just 518 as of yesterday. Ditto Singapore, held cases to 732 as of yesterday despite being a travel hub.
Rud,
Even then I imagine South Korea there have to be people that have some symptoms but do not get tested for whatever reason. Some people just don’t like tests or don’t want to face reality that they have it. If they move around day to day I don’t think you could track all the people they pass it to.
They literally have testing everywhere. In most offices you can’t even enter the building without having your temperature checked and it is almost a sackable offense to turn up to work ill. You shown any flu like symptom you get stuck in a make shift hospital until you are cleared.
So there really is nothing voluntary about it and no you don’t get to move around.
Trump is adjusting strategy in response to facts on the ground, not as some believe they are, or predict they will be. He has taken bold steps with prudent precautions. Perhaps a bit too bold, but that was based on a model, specifically parameters, that was a poor match with reality. Deja vu.
340,000 coronavirus test kits sold to Spain by China defective
The goal is to improve viability, while mitigating collateral damage. Neither planned parenthood nor planned parent. That is the choice.
Most countries are a month behind Italy.
An increase in temperature and a lack of vitamins in the spring will increase the incidence of Covid-19.
Typically flu is reduced in the warmer months due to temperature rises and higher humidity, as well as possibly more vitamin D due to sunlight.
It may sound trite, but fresh air and sunshine could be beneficial in other ways as well. UV and oxygen are often not welcomed by microbes and viruses.
How do we get the economy started again?
People who have already been infected and are now immune will be a major factor in getting the economy back to work. New virus tests are coming online fast that will allow us to determine who has been infected in the past and who has not. There may be many times the number of people in our society who have already gotten over the Wuhan virus, and didn’t even know they were sick. They are now immune and can go back to work. These new faster tests will allow us to characterize the population.
If drugs like hydroxychloroquine can be shown to clear the body of Wuhan virus in six days, then we can all go back to work, whether we have immunity or not. Each person who has not been infected can take their temperature every day, and if it is 99 or higher, then they can test themselves with a personal testing kit they have on hand, and if they test positive, then drug therapy can clear their bodies of the virus in a matter of days, and then they, too, can go back to work.
We have to be able to know who is infected and who is not. We also have to have some medicine that will heal those who are infected. If we have all that, then we can go back to work.
I think Trump is counting on the hydroxychloroquine proving itself out. But he will have to go to Plan B, is they don’t because we have to get the economy moving.
I have heard nothing but positive statements about hydroxychloroquine. We will know a lot more in a couple of weeks after we see how patients in New York are responding to the drug. This is day three of their treatment with hydroxychloroquine.
Byrrh keeps it at bay and tastes good too!
“I have heard nothing but positive statements about hydroxychloroquine. ”
Then you have not listened to Dr Fauci…
I listen to Dr. Fauci every day. I have never heard him dismiss any ot the current treatments that are being tried. Dr. Fauci is a careful scientist and does not want to come out and say anything definitive until clinical trials are finished. I heard him say the other night that he would take the hydroxychloroquine if he were in a situation where he thought it was appropriate.
The only thing I’ve ever heard Dr. Fauci say about hydroxychloroquine is that it is still being tested and shouldn’t be distributed widely until more testing is done.
Tom
Did you watch the clip? He was asked if there was an evidence to suggest it might be used as a prophylaxis against covid-19. He answers “no.” I’d say “no” was negative wouldn’t you?
Yes, Simon, he did say there was no evidence it could be used as a preventative, but he didn’t say there is evidence that it won’t prevent the disease. Using hydroxychloroquine as a preventative is in clinical trials right now, so I think we can assume we haven’t heard the last word on using it as a preventative yet. Remember, Dr. Fauci is being conservative. He is not going to say hydroxychloroquine can be used as a preventative until it is proven in clinical trials. Dr. Fauci did not dismiss this possibility, all he said was what we know about it now.
Btw, it appears that numerous doctors and nurses are using hydroxychloroquine as a preventative right now. One doctor said last night he was using hydroxychloroquine, but was not using the antibiotic along with it.
Tom
I see Dr Fauci now saying between 100-200,000 deaths in the US.
There is evidence that it works to lessen symptoms. There is no evidence that it will prevent you from getting the disease in the first place.
So his statement was 100% accurate.
I was talking to friend this morning whose daughter works in an ICU that is not in NY (think SE-US). According to the daughter they are treating all of their Chicom-kung-flu patients w/ hydroxychloroquine. They must be part of the study as well.
Boston Medical Center Doctor said they treat patients with it. One thing people are missing is the second drug it is used with which is Azithromycin which is antibiotic but surprisingly has anti viral properties related to interferon.
Hydro chloroquine is also an anti Anticoagulant and reports are that these patients need ventilators because blood is clotting in their lungs.
That being said trials will tell the story. I’m not saying the combo works but there are plausible mechanisms for it to work.
If blood is clotting in the lungs, that becomes a big problem on top of everything else. I wonder if a few mg of Warfarin might not help to thin the blood a little and provide some anticoagulant properties. And maybe ensure heart and stroke maybe don’t give out so quick if things are a just a hair thinner. On the other hand, maybe that would just make the poor victim drown quicker in their own fluids. Not looking forward to getting a cold or even the flu since it always felt like I was nearly a goner every time.
Be safe until vaccine!
Mechanical ventilation in patients in the intensive care unit of a general university hospital in southern Brazil: an epidemiological study
A total of 1,115 patients admitted to the ICU needed mechanical ventilation. The mortality rate was 51%.
…
This large cohort study provides a comprehensive profile of mechanical ventilation patients in South America. The mortality rate of patients who required mechanical ventilation was higher, which may have been related to the severity of illness of the patients admitted to our ICU. Risk factors for hospital mortality included conditions present at the start of mechanical ventilation conditions that occurred during mechanical support.
Travelers arriving in Massachusetts instructed to self-quarantine for 14 days
https://www.wcvb.com/article/coronavirus-update-massachusetts-gov-charlie-baker-march-27-2020/31954042
BOSTON —
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced Friday morning that all travelers arriving in the state will be instructed to self-quarantine for 14 days as a precaution during the coronavirus emergency.
“We’re instructing all visitors arriving in Massachusetts to comply with this request.
Messages will be displayed on electronic highway signs and instructions will handed out to travelers at airports and train stations. WCVB reporter David Bienick saw the advisories being handed out at Logan Airport within 2 hours of Baker’s announcement.
Australia started with that but too many broke the rules, so now you are taken to a facility or hotel with supervision.
The cartoon is very apt
From the beginning I have been asking myself what I would do if I was head of state. I would probably protect the economy. I hope Sweden can hang in with their “hands-off” approach. We need to be able to compare results over the long term
We need to consider that many heads of state are ultimately controlled by the people. Potential for revolt is not extinct in Western democracies. Either option overdone could result in an up-welling of discontent. Too long a lockdowns will have people bursting out in mass. Already, in NZ, workers have stopped work in essential industries through concern over their safety. Overloading the health system could have the same result. Especially if fatality in staff escalates
Another factor is health system capacity. Some countries were prepared (Singapore). Others were not. I assume that Sweden is.
There is a big difference between theory and practice
Another option, to a year of isolation and economic collapse, would be the mass use of vitamin D.
Taking Vitamin D supplements has been shown to provide vaccine like protection against respiratory infection, caused by flu like viruses.
Vitamin D is naturally produced in the body, however, as we wear clothes, use sunscreen, and live at high latitudes in covered buildings….
… the entire population of almost all developed countries are Vitamin D deficient which is madness as this is the single simplest, cheapest, health problem to fix.
Vitamin D is turned into a hormone in the body and it used in 100s of micro biological processes in the body, particularly the immune system.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170216110002.htm
Vitamin D protects against colds and flu, finds major global study
Daily or weekly supplementation halved the risk of acute respiratory infection in people with the lowest baseline vitamin D levels, below 25 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L).
However, people with higher baseline vitamin D levels also benefited, although the effect was more modest (10 per cent risk reduction).
Overall, the reduction in risk of acute respiratory infection induced by vitamin D was on a par with the protective effect of injectable ‘flu vaccine against ‘flu-like illnesses.
British Medical Journal has published that vitamin D does reduce respiratory illness.
Although I tend to agree with you, here in Australia we have plenty of sunshine and a strong outdoor culture, and at still get a pretty severe flu season. I’m not certain about vitamin D, but get as much as I can. Here in the tropics I actually get a good permenant tan by lounging under an umbrella for about 6 months of the year (the rest is rainy or cold enough for me to flee tuo Europe).
I think the thing about vitamin D is that it regulates the immune response minimizing things like cytokine storms.
Doing either yoga or meditation have higher risk reductions to such things go look up the studies.
So doing meditation, yoga and taking vitamin D is surely going to make you immune 🙂
Vitamin D is incredible.
But with the Corona-virus maybe not.
“Supporting the Immune System” Can Backfire
One way to approach this that doesn’t work is to eat foods or take supplements simply because
they support our immune system.
While this seems to make sense, it has a huge potential to backfire. Viruses often hijack things
in our body that ordinarily make us healthy to find their way into our cells. The sneakiest viruses
may then undermine our immune system and stop it from working, or, worse yet, hijack it and
use it against us to make us get even sicker.
For example, the coronavirus gets into our cells by hijacking a substance known as “ACE2”
whose normal role is to keep our blood pressure from getting too high and to keep our lungs
and heart healthy. Vitamins A and D are normally incredibly important to our immune systems.
They help us make antibodies and other virus-busting weaponry. And they support our blood
pressure and the health of our lungs and heart by helping us make more ACE2. Vitamins A and
D are good for our lungs, good for our heart, and they support our immune system. Yet, by
increasing the amount of ACE2 that the coronavirus can hijack in order to get inside our cells,
supplementing with them may actually make us more vulnerable to infection.
I’ve been supplementing with 8,000iu of D3 ever since 2008, when a lab test showed that the 4,000iu I’d been taking for some years was not enough to get me into the optimal range 50-80 ng/mL
https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2012/ss/Vitamin-D-Blood-Levels/
The increased intake increased my test results above the optimal range. But I’m sorry to report that I still get colds and flu symptoms, even with annual flu shots.
One antiviral supplement I learned of recently is Quercetin. The CBC newsnet ran an interview with Montreal viral researcher Dr. Michel Chretien a couple of weeks ago, in which the latter announced that a clinical trial of an enhanced Quercetin product from Switzerland had been arranged in Wuhan and would be proceeding immediately. But not a word more has come out about this trial since. He implied the dosage used would be very large, and the interviewer said that it would “only” cost $2 per day.
I’d like to know more. Apparently Quercetin has been tested on SARS and Ebola with some promising results.
Consumer Labs has just mentioned the Chinese quercetin_COVID-19 trial I described above, adding that the company manufacturing the product is Quercegen Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland, and quotes Dr. Chretien as saying in his February interview that he “hopes to have preliminary results in the upcoming months”. And that neither the form (ie. isoquercetin or quercetin), nor the dosages to be used have been made public.
My search for this firm also led me to Switzerland, and a private firm there called Quercegen Pharma AG, as well as another firm, headquartered in Texas, but operating in Brazil, called Quercegen Pharmaceuticals. The link between the two companies is Thomas Lines, who is one of two directors on the board of each company, and is described on the latter’s website (the former has no website I could find) as the major investor in the firm distributing the quercetin product of Quercegen Pharmaceuticals, “Q-Force”, which apparently ships only within the USA.