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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Useful European mortality data.
Google “European mortality monitor”.
Note that rates are dropping everywhere apart from Italy…
You expect them to drop, fewer people driving cars and having accidents at work … they are in lockdown 🙂
In seeing how Covid-19 spreads in urban areas it’s hard to believe the numbers from China. Only after we knew how bad it was did their numbers level off suddenly.
I got the Kong Flu and was flat out for 5 days. Wasn’t nice. Couldn’t shave. Day six I looked in the mirror and noticed I was sporting a handsome Flu Manchu.
A big THANK YOU to Willis Eisenbach’s post the other day. He gave a link someone had given him about news we are not hearing from other media. The group, the Swiss Propaganda Research institute is doing a fine job and I recommend everyone to take a peek. It is updated daily with March 14th at the top and latest news at the bottom of the page. The page is entitled “A Swiss doctor on COVID-19.” Though one can easily glean a bias (non-political bias, by the way) we can all make our own determination regarding the news we are being fed and the news this doctor delivers.
Here is the link Willis had posted: https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
As we all have, I have been listening to the news (radio only as we don’t do TV: it’s a strange Vermont phenomenon!) often. Since Willis gave this link and I looked at it it has caused me to listen a little more closely to the wording I am hearing: sometimes I hear the words “died with” and sometimes “died from.” Note the difference.
I have a pharmacist friend, 60 years old, who got the virus and he said it wasn’t fun; but then again, he had not had a flu since 2000. Stay well everyone.
AK in VT
p.s. Our 8+ inches of “global warming” snowfall from earlier in the week is all gone now.
Dr. Fauci in NEJM: Coronavirus less severe than the flu
Dr. Fauci writes in the New England Journal of Medicine that Coronavirus is less severe than the flu.
Chief medical advisor to the Trump administration, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent findings have just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s leading medical journal.
Published continuously for over 200 years, NEJM delivers high-quality, peer-reviewed research and interactive clinical content to physicians, educators, and the global medical community.
“In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity, If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to sSARS or MERS, which had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36% respectively.”
Read the whole thing here. Fauci_NEJM_COVID
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?query=featured_secondary
They say in NYC 28 pct of covid tests result in positive. There must be some way to use this data to give a rough estimate of what pct population of NYC have had covid.
There is evidence that people have been exposed to the virus since about September 2019 without being infected by it. The estimates are around 80% of the entire population are naturally immune to the virus and will experience only slight symptoms or no symptoms at all. All virus infections eventually “burn out” after a while, and it does not matter if measures are taken against it or not. This virus will eventually die out even if nothing is done to stop it. That is the fate of every virus of this sort, no matter what the hysterical media tells you.
This picture sums the situation up perfectly.
https://www.americanthinker.com/cartoons/2020/03/3_26_2020_2_5.html
Regards
Climate Heretic
The figures out of Europe are skewed by triage decisions in hospitals unable to cope. Young people without pre-existing conditions get priority over age and pre-existing condition. Even to the point of taking an older person off a ventilator to give a younger person a ventilator. This is known to be the case in Italy. It is already the plan in New York hospitals.
There are now teenagers dying in Europe because they cannot get proper care.
This site is suffering from dingbatitisis; promoting the view to isolate the vulnerable. EVERYONE IS VULNERABLE. EVERYONE NEEDS TO ISOLATE.
USA is an unfolding disaster. Deaths are doubling every 2 days. New York hospitals are overwhelmed and it has just started.
This is the situation at a hospital in Queens:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/27/new-york-coronavirus-elmhurst-hospital
Triage decisions are less likely to skew statistics in US because some people are not making into the hospital before they die. Lots of people unable to access emergency funds so need to keep working.
This is not sensationalist reporting. It is what is happening.
The case that the press needs to answer is why didn’t they look behind the fatality statistics to understand the triage decisions necessary in the war setting that CV19 creates. They have promoted a view that only aged and informed are vulnerable – that is a crime against the young.
China has exploded a biological bomb on the world and anyone underestimating the consequences is a dingbat.
The class system in the health and welfare system in the US makes it uniquely vulnerable in the developed world.
That hospital is in an area that is home to 20,000 immigrants from 112 different countries. They need to test those patients for TB because a large number of immigrants have latent TB. They need to be careful because CV and active TB both have the same symptoms, and if you treat a person with active TB for viral pneumonia it could be fatal.
What’s obvious to me about that hospital is that panic is driving the workload. If doesn’t sound like there’s more sick people, but more panicked people showing up to get tested.
That I can agree with. Add the near-ubiquitous availability of guns, and you really have a problem…
I guess we in the US could do what the rest of the world has done and disarm the law abiding so that the lawbreakers could work more safely.
What do guns and a pandemic have to do with one and the other. If the US has such a poor health care system why was I allowed to walk around the halls of the Mayo clinic where world class health care is and the world elite come to it and yet I an my wife are lowly peons. Funny my health insurance was just as good as the uber rich’s money at the mayo clinic.
As opposed to the rest of the world where the rich go to special hospitals while everyone else goes to run down and underfunded hospitals.
OK, Doomer.
The rate of doubling is closer to every 3 days for deaths.
Not for the US we had 339 deaths on the 24th, on the 27th it was 416 yes it is an increase but not near doubling.
Not a fair portrayal of ‘politicians’ in Josh’s cartoon.
Anyone with an ounze of common sense knows that a continued shut down of the economy/society will result in more deaths than Covid-19.
No it doesn’t it has been well studied on various recessions and depression. There is a spike in the obvious ones but you get decreases in other ones like road deaths. It stays about the same or slight decrease.
You are welcome to argue that the few people that will die aren’t worth trashing the economy but that particular argument won’t fly.
Dodgey Geezer pointed out above there is the European mortality monitor.
It is already showing the effect because a lot of people die from those work/driving activities.
I’ve always been fascinated how so many people can declare their peculiar delusions to be just common sense.
Well, let’s look at the bright side. The cartoon has the northern hemisphere in spring/summer and we will soon have the Sun on our backs. This phase will pass and it will indeed be sad and hard. I suppose one of the laws of large numbers and this just might be a new type off normal that we either have to learn how to live with or learn how to fix. We had best learn some lessons from this, starting very soon at many different levels.
But can you imagine, it’s 1692, the end of October and the freezing has already begun and everyone is sick and starting to succumb to the illness. There is nothing much to eat anyway. This is where we are headed again if we don’t get a grip. I think President Trump is right and we need to get ourselves back to work smartly and not allow the forces of darkness to be a hindrance to a quick recovery.
Can you wrap around your head that from 1492 to 1692 95% of all the humans living in North America died, now that a pandemic.
A piercing cartoon, reflecting recent US politics…… Enjoy!
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2020/03/the-pelosi-doesnt-care-act-a-f-branco-cartoon/
The “Covid Act now” graph, apparently used by policy makers in USA, postulates three scenarios: no action, social distancing for three months and shelter in place for three months.
But what happens at T plus 3 months with shelter in place? Another explosion in cases because until the area under the infections curve is pretty much equal to the curve with no actions case counts will again expand until the host population has achieved herd immunity.
In fact you can see this effect just creeping out of the right hand side of the chart half way down the page at this link. https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus-models-are-panicking-officials-into-ill-advised-lockdowns/
So policy makers a question. How long do you have to shelter in place until you keep the entire area under the curve of infections below the line of hospital capacity? It is certainly not just three months. More to the point is that even achievable.
The cartoon shows deaths from the CV vs the economy. It’s not that simple. It leaves out deaths from a shattered economy. People with no money, no job and no hope fall into despair and commit suicide, take drugs, riot, etc. The $2 trillion financial aide package is a stop-gap measure. Virus or not the country has to go back to work sooner than later. Trump knows that and it’s the reason he started talking about it, just not in the terms I laid out. If the shut down continues very long things could get ugly.
There is another study using hydroxychloroquine that was published today from the same French doctor, who publicized one earlier this week, and in this study, the doctor had 83 patients who had all been hospitalized, of various ages, and conditions, and 10 of them were on ventilators.
One 86-year old with underlying health conditions died. The rest all recovered. The doctor said after the medicine was administered, it took about three days to get them off the ventilaor.
Another large treatment of Wuhan virus patients was mentioned tonight whre over 600 patients had been treated and all of them recovered.
I think Trump may have the formula for getting the U.S. and the world back to work.
This study was just published today. I would love to see Rud do an analysis of it.
With a death rate of 1% or less and only 83 patients, you would expect 0 to 2 people to die even with standard treatment. 0 is more likely than 2.
Studies in China have shown ZERO effect of hydroxychloroquine
As long as there is no vaccine, the only real remedy is plasma from a person who has antibodies. The virus is not transmitted through blood. Otherwise, the lives of around 20% of those infected are at risk.
The Mount Sinai Health System this week plans to initiate a procedure known as plasmapheresis, where the antibodies from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 will be transferred into critically ill patients with the disease, with the expectation that the antibodies will neutralize it.
The process of using antibody-rich plasma from COVID-19 patients to help others was used successfully in China, according to a state-owned organization, which reported that some patients improved within 24 hours, with reduced inflammation and viral loads, and better oxygen levels in the blood.
Mount Sinai is collaborating with the New York Blood Center and the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center laboratory in Albany, with guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and expects to begin implementing the treatment later this week.
“We are hoping to identify patients who can provide the antibodies,” says Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “We are at the front lines in fighting this pandemic and making discoveries that will help our patients.”
Late last week, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine, in collaboration with scientists in Australia and Finland, were among the first to create an antibody test that detects the disease’s antibodies in a person’s blood. Development of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was led by Florian Krammer, PhD, Professor of Microbiology, in collaboration with Viviana A. Simon, MD, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Medicine (Infectious Diseases). Dr. Krammer, a renowned influenza researcher, recently made this so-called recipe available to other laboratories around the world so they can replicate it during the pandemic. In January, his lab was quickly retooled to begin studying COVID-19.
In addition to its widespread use in plasmapheresis, the antibody test will provide experts with an accurate infection rate so they can track the trajectory of the disease. The test will help identify health care workers who are already immune to the disease, who can work directly with infectious patients, and it can also help scientists understand how the human immune system reacts to the virus.
The new assay uses recombinant or manufactured antigens from the spike protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That protein helps the virus enter cells, and it is a key target in the immune reaction against the virus, as the body creates antibodies that recognize the protein and seek to destroy the virus. The researchers also isolated the short piece of the spike protein called the receptor-binding domain (RBD), which the virus uses to attach to cells it tries to invade. The scientists then used cell lines to produce large quantities of the altered spike proteins and RBDs.
According to Dr. Krammer and his co-authors, the assay is “sensitive and specific,” and allows for the screening and identification of COVID-19 in human plasma/serum as soon as three days after the onset of symptoms. The antibodies were derived from three patients who had the disease. The study’s control participants—who did not have COVID-19 but had other viruses, including the common cold—ranged in age from 20 to 70.
Dr. Krammer says his preliminary findings also show that humans have no natural immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which would help explain why it spreads so quickly. But once the antibody sets in humans do become protected. He also says that at this early stage in the research, there is no evidence that people can lose their immunity and become re-infected.
Read more stories about Mount Sinai and COVID-19
https://inside.mountsinai.org/blog/mount-sinai-to-begin-the-transfer-of-covid-19-antibodies-into-critically-ill-patients/
Thanks for that info, ren. This new test will be a game-changer, allowing us to see exactly what the virus is doing in the population, which will allow us to focus our efforts much better..
NYC tests return 28% positive.
Does it mean 28% of NYC population is infectedv (I don ot believe)?
Or are the tests 28% faulty?
Does it mean then “asymptomatic” were simply false positive?
How do you get a false positive genetic analysis?
I think it’s impossible; the virus is there and the biological test is sound.
Of course, it doesn’t mean the person had it in the first place.
Binary choices are for politicians that cannot count past two.
Real physical economics, today, starts with the deliberate take-down of Bretton-Woods in 1973, unleashing the current breakdown in the face of a pandemic.
That is why does Pres. Trump have to invoke the Defense Production Act (of Korean War fame) to rescue the physical economy and produce much needed respiratators. His $1.3 Trillion credit has some needed stuff, but the $450 billion WallStreet bailout is real bad news – Mnuchin is trying to, again, rescue the post Bretton-Woods casino.
So quarantine WallStreet and the City of London with Glas-Steagall, as FDR did in 1934, and issue massive credit to the real physical economy.
40 NY Hospitals that were deliberately shut when Sir mini-Mike Bloomberg was mayor should be a stark warning of the culture of death such casino operators represent.
Triage WallStreet , not Grandma!
You are absolutely determined to ride that old hobby horse, no matter how dead it may be.
The death toll in Asia (excluding China and Iran) is remarkably low. Only a few hundred deaths. That’s out of an estimated population of approximately 2B. Why ? Did they react more quickly ? Did they test more people ? Did they shut down their borders faster ? Did they quarantine more people ? Does the fact most are hot and humid climates slow the spread and perhaps reduce the severity of the disease ? Do they not have accurate measurements of cases and deaths ? Do they purposely hide the real data to avoid a panic and keep their economies functioning ? I’m guessing this seeming anomaly in deaths will spur research for years to come.
Perhaps their much higher use of face masks is partly responsible for the lower transmission rates in much of Asia. Perhaps not so much for protecting one from contacting the Wuhan Coronavirus, but to stop people who have the virus and are asymptomatic and unwittingly virus spreaders when they cough and sneeze out airborne droplets. A lot of my friends in SE Asia have been wearing masks regularly for years, especially if they are out and about in heavily polluted air from excess traffic just on the busy streets. They keep a stock of these masks, just as they try and keep as few extra bags of rice and noodles on hand. And they clean and recycle them the best they can, and sometimes now even wear a bandana over their face mask along with riding glasses/goggles.
What I was amazed at just a few weeks back here in NA, (and even still in some cases) infectious disease doctors were downplaying the effectiveness of wearing face masks. Some would grudgingly admit that maybe it would assist in asymptomatic people with the virus to not spread it as widely if they were wearing a mask. This was probably said when there was a general shortage of masks for the medical community, to stop any run and hoarding of face masks. But if everyone out and about was wearing a properly fitted N95 face mask, along with general proper hygiene, I would bet that the transmission rate would decline dramatically. How hard would it be to make up a few hundred million masks and distribute them?
I live in Vietnam. You are not allowed to go anywhere in Hanoi without a mask. My wife and I started wearing them in mid January as news of the virus become more widespread. It does appear to offer some level of protection.
Here in Canada the official government message, enunciated categorically by the Chief Health Officer , Dr. Tam, is that non-health professionals should ONLY wear a face mask if they are on their way to be tested for COVID-19. She said yesterday on a national government announcement, that wearing a mask is dangerous for everyone but health professionals (and presumably other authorized public officials, like police and fire fighters, etc.) because “they don’t know how to use them”.
Apparently the populations of China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan are either better trained or more intelligent than Canadians, in the opinion of the Government of Canada. I haven’t seen any contrary position from any of the provincial health officers, nor any Canadian politician. Medical critics of the government’s instructions and plans have been either converted to orthodoxy or bannished from the broadcast media here in Canada.