By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
In recent weeks, behind the scenes, a battle royal has been raging among the epidemiologists advising governments. On one side are the activists, who argue that the Chinese virus is both more infectious and likely to prove more fatal than influenza, a deadly combination.
The activists’ strongest arguments are that in the early stages of a pandemic the daily growth rate is exponential; that in the absence of determined control measures a quarter of the global population would be infected by the end of May; and that continued exponential growth at the daily compound rate of almost 20% (entailing a doubling every 3.8 days) that prevailed until mid-March would rapidly overwhelm not only the hospitals but also the morgues, as has already happened in Spain and northern Italy.
On the other side are the passivists, who argue that after a few weeks in lockdown people will cease to observe the restrictions, introducing a second wave of infection. They hold that the best thing to do is let everyone become infected, let the old and the sick die, let the health services collapse, and leave the population to acquire what the lamentable Chief Officer of Health in London described at a press conference some weeks ago as “herd immunity”. The international outcry at this crass remark led the British government to backtrack at once.
I declare an interest. When it comes to preventing pandemics, I am an activist. The earlier one interferes with the exponential growth of a pathogen as infectious as the Chinese virus, the less the cost in lives and treasure. When HIV first emerged, I minuted the Cabinet to the effect that there should be universal testing, followed by immediate, compulsory and permanent isolation of carriers. No such action was taken, unfortunately. The result is that some 50 million have died of HIV, another 500,000 a year die of it, and the cost of treating those who are HIV-positive is heavy. Nearly all those deaths were preventable.
The Chinese virus is considerably more infectious and more fatal than HIV. Realizing this, the British Prime Minister, after weeks of listening to the internal wranglings between the activist and passivist public-health scientists, who were unable to agree among themselves, took a command decision to lock down the United Kingdom firmly, completely and for as long as might be necessary. He was persuaded by modeling from Imperial College, London, showing just how rapidly the National Health Service would be overwhelmed if things went on as the passivists wished. It was clear to the Prime Minister that patients suffering from diseases other than the Chinese virus would be placed at risk as the health system collapsed.
Mr Trump, who, like Mr Johnson (and me) was by instinct reluctant to subject the entire population to house arrest and to cause dislocation and damage to the economy, eventually came to a similar view. The situation is more complicated in the United States, where the individual states rather than the Federal administration are chiefly responsible for public-health measures. But in many states, as in many nations round the world, lockdowns of varying severity have been introduced. The activists have thus far prevailed.
But are the lockdowns working? A simple performance indicator, clear enough to show people whether or not the house arrest and related measures to which they are being subjected should be persisted in, is necessary. Remarkably, however, no such benchmark test is yet available. Therefore, I have been researching the statistics and propose the following test. The reference period for the test is the three weeks from January 22 to 14 March 2020, the date on which Mr Trump declared a national emergency. During the reference period, the mean compound daily growth rate in confirmed cases was 19.8%. Confirmed cases were thus doubling worldwide every 3.8 days.
To demonstrate the extent to which mitigation measures are or are not working, the benchmark test calculates the mean daily compound growth rate in confirmed cases of infection for successive seven-day periods ending on every day from March 14 to the present. Here is the test for the world excluding China and occupied Tibet (whose Communist regime cannot be trusted to tell the truth about case numbers, or about anything else much); for the United States, and for the two worst-affected European nations, Italy and Spain:
All four nations show an inexorable reduction in the daily rate of growth (though it remains dangerously high). The most impressive results are those for Italy, the first country in Europe to impose a strictish lockdown. During the reference period, the Italian growth rate was more than 30% per day, and cases were doubling every 2.6 days. But the lockdown is beginning to work. In the week to April 2, the daily growth rate in Italy was down to 5.2%. Even that is an alarming value: it would lead to a doubling of cases every two weeks. But the trend in the daily growth rate is firmly downward, and it will probably continue that way – provided, that is, that people can see, as they can from this test, that the lockdown is indeed working. In the world outside China, as more and more countries introduce lockdowns, the daily growth rate has declined from 19.8% in the reference period to 11% in the week to April 2. In the United States, the daily growth rate has declined a little, from 23.1% in the reference period to 16.2% in the week to April 1.
Here is the benchmark test for four more countries: three in Europe and one for South Korea. All four countries show declines in the daily growth rate of confirmed cases. But in South Korea the pandemic is almost under control:
The reason for the success in South Korea is that, following the SARS epidemic, the public health authorities fully understood the paramount importance of very widespread testing, immediate isolation of carriers and vigorous contact-tracing, including use of the cellphone network to identify where the carriers had been and whom they had met. The EU has picked up this idea, though the UK – in this as in much else – lags behind.
In particular, ever since the SARS epidemic the Korean public health authorities have maintained a very large testing capacity. They activated it as soon as they realized that the director of the World Health Organization, who has close links to the Peking regime and had as recently as January been parroting Chinese propaganda to the effect that the virus could not be transmitted from human to human, could not be relied upon.
Britain will be calling for an independent investigation of the WHO’s gross misconduct in this affair as soon as the pandemic is under control.
South Korea also adopted national lockdown. The public health authorities also recommend use of personal protective equipment (notably face-masks) not only by health professionals but also by the general public when outdoors. In this respect, too, the South Korean public health authorities disagree with the WHO, which has today announced it is reconsidering its notion that masks are valueless. The director of Korea’s public health authority bluntly says that the evidence that masks work is overwhelming.
Following his advice rather than that of the useless WHO, I wear a full-face motorcycle helmet and gauntlets whenever I leave our own grounds. Full-face protection is useful, according to the South Koreans, because the Chinese virus can enter the body not only through the nose and mouth but also through the mucous membranes of the eyes. Even wearing spectacles provides some measure of additional protection. As South Korea’s expert made clear in an excellent recent interview, it is necessary to obtain every advantage one can, because each additional barrier to transmission helps to bring the pandemic under control.
It is South Korea, then, that provides the clearest evidence that prompt, determined and vigorous control measures work, and work well.
Both Germany and France have done quite well in beginning to control the pandemic. Their mean daily growth rates were down from more than 30% in the benchmark period to around 10% in the week to April 2. The United Kingdom, however, had a daily growth rate of 16.4% in that week: a value scarcely better than the global 19.8% during the reference period from January 22 to March 14. The UK is the worst-performing of the 12 territories tracked here.
Germany and France both took advantage of the EU’s system for supplying both testing kits and personal protective equipment for health professionals. The UK, however, failed to respond to the EU’s email in time. Worse, British civil servants are so used to acting simply as passive agents for the Brussels tyranny-by-clerk that they were more or less completely unprepared for a pandemic, and the flapping-around is saddening to watch.
The former director of “Public Health England”, a grim but useless bureaucracy, was asked four times yesterday why it was that Germany had tested more than 500,000 of its citizens in all, while Britain had not yet managed to test 10,000 in any one day. He could not answer.
Here are benchmark tests for four more countries: Canada, Australia, Sweden and Ireland. Note that for Ireland the benchmark period is the two weeks to March 14 rather than three weeks, because Ireland began to report cases later than other countries.
From the point of view of the passivists, Sweden is the most interesting result. For its public health authorities are passivists: they have not introduced a lockdown. Yet their daily growth rate has fallen to 10%, among the lowest anywhere. Nevertheless, there is growing concern among health professionals in Sweden that the do-little option may yet prove fatal. It is possible, then, that Sweden will follow other European countries in imposing a strict lockdown in the near future. In the past ten days, other countries have seen a decline in the daily growth rate of confirmed cases, but Sweden, uniquely, has not.
Overall, the benchmark test show – at this early stage – that the lockdowns are beginning to work. The daily growth rate in confirmed cases is falling in those countries that have been locked down, and is tending to fall fastest in countries with the most determined control measures.
The next few weeks will be particularly interesting, because it is in the nature of exponential growth curves that, just as the growth is very rapid if control measures are not tough enough, the slowing of growth is just as rapid when the measures really begin to bite.
Over the next few weeks, the extent of the lockdowns’ success or failure will become evident. For this reason, I propose to update the benchmark tables daily until further notice.
It should be made clear that the benchmark test is not policy-prescriptive. It merely shows, in a dispassionate fashion based on the available data (warts and all) the extent to which control measures are or are not working, territory by territory and for the world excluding China.
Finally, the question arises whether the official data on which I have relied are trustworthy. The answer is that they are not, for the lack of widespread testing has entailed a very substantial understatement of the numbers infected.
Take the United States as an illustration. On average the Chinese virus takes five days to incubate and a further 16 days to kill those to whom it proves fatal. The least unreliable of the official statistics are those for deaths caused by the virus. On February 29 the United States reported its first death from the virus. The World Health Organization, which had originally estimated a death rate of 2% (as it had with SARS, whose death rate was actually 9.6%), now estimates it at 3.4%. In that event, 21 days previously, on February 8, there must have been 1 / 3.4%, or 29 cases. However, only five cases were reported. But if there were 29 cases on February 8, and if the growth rate for unreported cases is the same as for reported cases, the true number of cases by February 29 was not 5, as reported, but more than 2300.
Performing a similar calculation for each day until April 2 would lead us to conclude that there were not 26,500 cases of infection in total by that day, as reported by the U.S. administration, but 36 million. Curiously, if this were true it would not be all bad news. For the death rate would then be less than 0.02%, rather than the WHO’s 3.4%.
What is more, since only 6000 deaths have been reported in the U.S., the vast majority of those infected would have suffered symptoms little worse than those of the common cold and have recovered, in which event the “herd immunity” of which the British public health commissar spoke is being built up at a rapid rate.
If the death rate is only 1%, it is possible that 123 million people – more than one-third of the U.S. population – are already infected. If, however, it is 10%, as for SARS, then about 12 million U.S. citizens are infected.
What, then, is the true death rate? This early in the pandemic, the answer is that nobody really knows, even to within an order of magnitude. The standard method of obtaining a preliminary assessment of the death rate in the early stages of a pandemic is to consider the closed cases – those who, having been infected, have either recovered or died. Until April 2, 135,447 people outside China and occupied Tibet were reported as recovered from the infection, while 49,845 had died. Therefore, 185,252 had either recovered or died, and the deaths represented not 2% nor 3.4% but almost 27% of all these closed cases. I have not seen that figure reported anywhere, but that is the figure.
If the death rate is indeed 27%, then only 4.6 million U.S. citizens are infected, compared with the reported. However, the 27% figure should be regarded with some caution, since it takes no account of the under-reporting of cases, many of which will have been recoveries or asymptomatic. But it does suggest that of the currently-active 748,153 confirmed cases outside China more than 200,000 will be likely to die worldwide.
The Chinese virus, then, will be a biggish killer, either because far more are infected than are being reported or because the death rate is higher than the WHO imagines, or both. At this stage, we do not know: but no responsible government, seeing figures such as these, would consider itself as acting responsibly if it were to fail to ensure that energetic control measures were put in place.
In all this mishmash of competing statistics, the one certainty is the daily mean rate at which reported cases have been increasing. That is why I have chosen this measure as the basis for the benchmark test.
My hypothesis is that, thanks to the decisive measures taken by most governments, the daily growth rate of total confirmed cases will continue to fall, and that about 1-2 weeks from now the fall will become quite rapid, perhaps buying enough time for health services to increase their capacity to handle intensive-care patients on ventilators, and to perform antigen tests for the presence of the virus and, no less importantly, antibody tests to demonstrate that those who have recovered are immune.
If the daily growth rates do not fall very quickly to South Korean values, then the capacity of health services will be overwhelmed. As of yesterday, the hospital ship sent by President Trump to New York had just three patients on board. Expect the ship to be filled to capacity within days.
Keep safe. And come back here daily for the updated benchmark test.
With regards to the projection of the population infected but did not show any severe symptoms to warrant going to the doctor or hospital, an antigen test will show those cases. It would be some probabilistic estimate to project the proportion of the population that have develop antigens but did not exhibit any severe or even any symptom, those that have the antigens but only required a visit to the doctor– i.e. mild symptoms, those that required hospitalization severe symptoms
Bad News.
Cats are carriers of the virus.
15% of street cats in Wuhan are infected already.
In Italy probably the same
This means, the virus is already endemic and will go nowhere.
Lockdowns will reduce the spreading rate as already seen.
But who can lock the cats?
Alex raises an important point: this virus seems more than usually adept at species-jumping, particularly among mammals. In Britain, there is some concern that foxes and badgers will spread it.
The main point of the lockdowns at present is to prevent human-to-human transmission so that other control measures will have some chance of working without utterly swamping the hospitals and preventing the treatment of those with other diseases.
Once the case count and, three weeks thereafter, the death count have been brought under control, more attention can be given to animal vectors.
Yes, because my British cousins are well-known for keeping foxes and badgers as pets, eschewing cats, isn’t it? . I suppose that almost every one of her majesty’s subjects come into close contact with a fox or a badger daily. Think of the fox hunts dear man! Or perhaps this is a red herring?
The use of badgers (albeit as a rabbit substitute) is documented here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T2PdyxMtiYM
Apologies, this is a serious subject, but I don’t think that these speculative discussions are. I await Willis Eschenbach’s rebuttal, but dare say that one cannot measure the effect of “lockdowns” without a control group of otherwise identical subjects. As others have commented (despite weakening their arguments with anti-vax comments), every epidemic has an exponential growth phase that levels off and declines. We cannot know if the “let ’er rip” approach would have caused 1.6-2.4m deaths as Pres. Trump is claiming (I am skeptical). Equating the eventual decline in new cases or deaths as the effect of lockdown is not intellectually serious.
Having said that, I am of the view that the precautionary principle, as you and the President espouse, is at least for a limited period, the more prudent path. Once there are testing systems in place to characterize the true spread and developing immunity, and (pray God) there may be evidence of effective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, then it will be far more reasonable to take Willis’ approach.
In medio stat virtus.
Apologies again. Bad link.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T2PdyxMtiYM
There is no evidence that cats transmit COVID 19.
https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/victorian-public-coronavirus-disease-covid-19
‘While coronavirus (COVID-19) seems to have emerged from an animal source, it is now mainly spreading from person-to-person.
There is no evidence that any animals, including pets in Australia, might be a source of infection with the virus.
There have also been no reports of pets or other animals becoming sick with coronavirus in Australia.
There is also no evidence that companion animals including pets can spread coronavirus. However, since animals can spread other diseases to people, it’s always a good idea to wash your hands after being around animals.’
Its true that cats and dogs get A coronavirus, but not this one.
Were a dog or cat exposed to a human carrier the leads and collar should be washed in warm soapy water then dried.
This virus, having already jumped the species barrier, is unlikely to do so again unless massive numbers of infected people are placed in ‘wet markets’ with numerous other species of animal.
Its more likely, in the virulent form, to adeptly kill people and hopefully change to a benign form so that it may spread more easily, like the common cold, immunising us all.
Its spread is helped by cold and crowding, not household pets.
Some measure of climate warming in the northern hemisphere would be beneficial to slow its spread.
It is not necessary for cats or dogs to themselves be infected to be a source to transmit the virus. An infected person coughs on, sneezes on, or pets the cat with hands carrying the virus. Another person pets the cat and then touches their face. The same exact thing happens if an immune person picks up the virus touching a door handle that has just been touched by a person shedding the virus and subsequently shakes hands with a vulnerable person who then touches their face.
Cats allowed to go outside may very possibly interact with neighbors or get into garbage carrying the virus in their roaming. As cats continuously groom themselves, any virus picked up while scavenging will be distributed over their fur.
If cats actually can get infected, then the risks rise much higher with one person’s cat acquiring the infection from its owner and passing it along to neighbors cats while interacting outside. Then those cats interact with their owners. Whether there’s any evidence of that, I don’t know. Certainly animals that are domestic pets are far more of a risk to their owners than any wild animals.
hang on , was this year a leap , you know the ones which include the month of February?
Should be February 22, as in the three tables.
Thanks, maybe you could address some of the more serious points.
Italy seems to have passed peak COVID infection about 10 days ago. Is there any clear sign of this being due to restrictions? I’ll take a leaf out of Willis’ “spot the volcano” book, can you identify the point at which restrictions in Italy came into effect on this graph of case, fatalities and their ratio ??
simply saying the exponential is slower now that it was at the beginning is trivial and in no way justifies any conclusion about the effectiveness of economy destroying restrictions. You have not reason for that attribution.
This has not more relevance than attributing everything that changes to a “correlation” with CO2.
My rather pedestrian analysis of reported daily deaths from Italy shows a reduction in the number 14 – 16 days after the lockdown was implemented – at first in the provinces surrounding those with the outbreaks, then 2 – 3 days later nationwide.
So there is some evidence that restrictions are working. What will be their social and economic cost in the long terms no-one can say now, but it looks bleak.
RE: Actual mortality rate
First, many thanks for informing & causing so many to think.
Washington state’s covid 19 stats yield insights into mortality. Deaths as a % of confirmed cases is trending downwards. The rate has fallen from about 8% in mid March towards 2.5-3.5% in early April.
By way of background information, kung flu struck Washington state earlier (late Feb for initial deaths “with” covid 19) than elsewhere in the US (mid and late March for most states). And, on a per capita basis, the outbreak there is much worse than most other states.
The mortality rate cited above is deaths “with” covid 19 during a week divided by confirmed cases lagged 1 week (yields 3.4% early Apr rate) or by 10 days (yields 2.3%).
In response to DM, during the early stages of a pandemic the usual metric for beginning to discern the case fatality rate is the ratio of deaths to closed cases (closed cases are those that have either recovered or died, so that we know the outcome). At present, outside China and occupied Tibet, the case fatality rate based on closed cases is 27%. And no, that shouldn’t be 2.7%. It is 27%. That was one of the factors that decided Boris Johnson to introduce a lockdown when his officials couldn’t agree.
TY
Your feedback is accepted, but, regrettably, I lack the necessary data to recalculate my original comment–or the following.
Italy’s data also show a downward trend in mortality. The downward trend begins about 3 weeks after the first confirmed cases. Relative to confirmed cases, death “with” covid 19 dropped from about 30% in mid March towards 15% in early April. This is based on a 7 day lag. For a 10 day lag, the share drops from 40-45% towards 15%.
For the sake of clarity, the Washington state & Italian shares are calculated using ONLY NEW cases, rather than all cases to date.
At least two US military War Game studies have just come to light, with uncanny results.
Urban Outbreak 2019 :
Among the conclusions in the summary are two that, in the minds of the wargamers, stand out: forced mass quarantine can backfire and trigger additional disease spread–a finding that was different from the Chinese experience in Wuhan; and, the mortality rate is a better indicator of the assessment of the scale of an outbreak than the overall number of cases.
and USNORTHCOM Branch Plan 3560, explicitly Coronavirus, dated Jan 6 2017 :
In addition to anticipating the coronavirus pandemic, the military plan predicted with uncanny accuracy many of the medical supply shortages that now appear poised to cause untold deaths, author Ken Klippenstein reports. The plan states: “Competition for, and scarcity of resources will include non-pharmaceutical MCM [Medical Countermeasures] (e.g., ventilators, devices, personal protective equipment such as face masks and gloves), medical equipment, and logistical support. This will have a significant impact on the availability of the global workforce.”
So why, with two known US Military studies are we woefully unprepared?
Clearly because of of decades-long take-town of the economy, and health-care, not addressed in the above report.
Very good info, thanks.
And by what mechanism did forced quarantines backfire ? Really not likely.
In response to Bonbon, enforced universal house arrest can indeed backfire, unless the government explains very carefully why continuing the lockdown is absolutely essential. A second wave of infection can start. One of the reasons for the daily updates that I am proposing here is so as to demonstrate whether, and to what extent, the lockdowns appear to be working. So far, the signs are not unpromising, and it will reassure people to know that, even as the numbers infected and the numbers dying rise very sharply in the coming weeks, the growth rate of confirmed cases is slowing – a fact that is particularly impressive given that more widespread testing is likely to pick up more rather than fewer cases.
The mortality rate is indeed a better gauge of the true progress of an infection than the confirmed-case count, for reasons discussed at some length in the head posting. But it is a lagging indicator – lagging in the Chinese-virus case by some 21 crucial days. So it is better to discern trends using the case growth rate.
The unpreparedness of governments does indeed raise questions about the competence of public-health officials and organizations worldwide. Mr Trump, for instance, was quite right to sack the pandemic preparedness team two years ago, for if they had been up to their job the necessary stockpiles of everything from personal protective kit to testing kits would have been in the warehouses by then. As for the World Death Organization, that is no longer of use and should be scrapped and replaced with a body of unpaid professionals dedicated to doing what is right without being in China’s pocket, as the present WDO director is.
Lockdowns are not meant to control disease.
About 160000 people die EVERY DAY. These are mostly old persons with preconditions similar to those dying from coronavirus die. So far over 4 months ~50000 mostly older patients with preconditions have died. So 50000 divided by 120 days give or take gives us 300-400 deaths per day WORLWIDE. 56,000,000 die every year and about 100,000,000 are born. There are ~7,000,000,000 of us. Einstein was right were are infinitely stupid.
Fear shuts down the mind. I’m seeing it happen here with otherwise very intelligent people.
+1!
In response to Eliza, it is necessary to do the math. During the early stages of an epidemic, the disease spreads exponentially, for very well understood reasons. The exponential rate of growth in total confirmed cases in the present pandemic was 19% compound per day until March 14. At that rate, a quarter of the world’s population would have been infected by the end of May.
That is why it is futile to say that only a few people have died so far. Of course they have: death is a lagging indicator, lagging by some 21 crucial days. What then, is the true case fatality rate? Early in a pandemic, the standard method is to study what are called closed cases – those that have either recovered or died. In the world outside China and occupied Tibet, the percentage of closed cases resulting in death is higher than i have seen for any other comparable pandemic. It is 27%. Not 2.7% – 27%. It is figures like this – not widely published, but available if you look – that have led reluctant governments to impose lockdowns.
If the internet did not exist no one would have even noticed this it would have been considered a normal flu in the Northern cold places. BTW here in the SH the incidence is barely noticeable Brasil 400 deaths over 4 months with 350000000 people. In fact i would call this an Internet induced flu. Again Einstein was correct cheers! The world is self immolating over a normal viral yearly event. Thank God the Swedes and Brasil it seems are the only smartiesmaybe China which experiences this stuff every year due to their abysmal air quality.
The good Lord is too kind to the “passivists”.
Another regime that liked to use the word “herd”, signed a secret document in 1938, Aktion T4.
T4 being the address of the Health Ministry, Tiergarten 4. Those whose “lives were not worth living”, identified precisely, were to be denied health care. Why secret? Well, until the planned war started the people might object!
This infamous document opened the door the well known horrors of WWII.
Now disabled and ill people are being asked to sign Do Not Resuscitate forms.
Triage is starting, very much in line with Aktion T4.
So instead, Triage Wall Street, not Grandma!
The “Lockdown” is very likely to trigger the ultimate derivative blowout , and Mnuchin’s massive bailout fund, paraded as Main Street, will not save it.
Glass-Steagall, banking triage, saved the US economy under FDR, who then could with allies, defeat the authors of Aktion T4.
A Lockdown with banking Triage, and a real physical economic stimulus addressing the cause of the decrepit economy are needed together.
Bit off on a tangent: Biophysicist Cornelius Hunter had a deeper look into recent paper claiming that Chinese virus originated naturalistically rather than via laboratory manipulation. According to Hunter supporting argumentation is unconvincing. Firstly, in the paper Bayesian approach is nowhere mentioned, and nowhere is the particular Bayesian approach mentioned, and nowhere are any equations given, but in fact, nowhere are any probabilities given.
Secondly, the paper uses two pieces of evidence to argue against the theory that the virus arose via laboratory manipulation. The first argument boils down to this: a designer would have selected a sequence with stronger predicted binding with human cells. Yet this reasoning is fraught with unjustified assumptions about how a potential designer would have acted – they may have simply accepted range of good results, not only the ‘ideal’ binding.
The second argument is really the assumption that a designer would have used such a ‘previously used virus backbone.’ The authors assert this is probable, but without justification. The assessment of what an agent would do is notoriously difficult and prone to bias.
Neither of the two evidences is particularly compelling. This weakness is, to a certain extent, reflected in tentative language used, such as ‘most likely,’ ‘It is improbable,’ and ‘would probably.’
But all shadow of doubt is removed in the Abstract: ‘Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.’
Very simply, a negative cannot be proven, and even if the virus was not manipulated, the crisis obviously is.
Hey Scissor,
Virus could have originated via naturalistic mechanisms (from another virus strand) or may have been engineered. So in this sense is not negative cannot be proven but a choice between two valid options and arguments that support either. It does not mean that Wuhan virus was actually engineered. What it means is that claims that virus could not have been manipulated might be grossly exaggerated.
The paper abstract states claims certainly “clearly” which is not backed up by the spectulative nature of the contents. IOW it is propaganda not science.
This is then enough for media outlets to claim it is not a fabricated virus and to ridicule those who suggest otherwise. This has already happened.
It is the same “communication” game they have been playing for the last 20y with climate “science”.
The paper abstract states claims certainly “clearly” which is not backed up by the spectulative nature of the contents. IOW it is propaganda not science.
Indeed. The same paper evolves from ‘would probably’ to ‘most definitely’ and then the latter is proclaimed in the mass media. I’m surprised that the question whether the virus could have been bio-engineered is ridiculed so easily. It may seem like conspiracy theory but then you find traces of Polonium in London and Novichok in Salisbury. And the Matrix becomes real.
What is conspiratorial about suggesting major world powers are doing genetic engineering? It’s a certainty.
There is a level 4 security biolab in Wuhan less than 300m from the now world famous market. It was completed in 2015 with help from the French govt and the Pasteur Institute. The same lab published papers declaring isolation of virus which was a cross of SARS and bat coronavirus. One of their top researchers on this is now “missing” .
None of that is “conspiracy theory” it is published information.
Maybe this is REAL reason western govts have been reacting with such alarm. They know this is a man-made virus and are very scared of its potential potency.
I keep hearing that this biolab is a very short distance from the Wuhan market, but can somebody produce a map of the locations? Anybody?
Typical “who cares how freaking much a disease costs as long as no one dies”. Prevention??? Surely you joke. HIV is spread far and wide and we celebrate, Monckton. You live in a hole the ground, obviously. We now have VERY EXPENSIVE drugs so anyone can bang anyone and hopefully the prophalatic works. NEVER CHANGE BEHAVIOR for AIDS, but shut down the frigging economy for Corona???? Sure, this is crap and it always will be. THERE IS ZERO SCIENCE AND ONE HUNDRED PERCENT POLITICS IN THIS GARBAGE. WUWT that really, really declined, backing politics and pseudoscience. Not surprising……cowardice is common everywhere and skeptics fear reality as much as do believers.
(And, yes, I can skip this drivel and usually do. Of course, WUWT that can ignore the lies and deception of the AGW crowd too, but I don’t see that. Funny, skeptics are prima donas just as much as the AGW cult is. Your hypocrisy LOSES just like the AGW lies and hypocrisy do. Only in your mind are you immune.)
CALM DOWN.
This was a guest post from someone who has generally been quite vociferous on the GW issue. The fact that this very light weight “analysis” does not mean scream about lies, hypocrisy and damn the whole of WUWT.
It was a point for discussion on a very important question.
You will find a number of people have been very critical here ( if you actually read any comments before your brain exploded ).
The mantra in Canada, and probably elsewhere, is ‘flatten the curve’. The idea is to keep the medical system from becoming overwhelmed.
The poster child for what happens when the medical system becomes overwhelmed is Ecuador. I will not supply a link. The stories are gruesome you can easily find them yourself if you are so inclined.
The Ecuadorians partied hardy in spite of their government’s halfhearted lockdown. I suspect that if you asked most of them, they would regret that.
Except in northern Italy, hospitals are not being overwhelmed, except maybe in a few individual cases. Italy’s hospitals are normally near capacity every year, so it’s unwise to extrapolate their endemic under-capacity to the rest of the world. One or two hospitals in NYC may be full, but most are virtually empty, as is the US navy hospital ship docked there.
Let’s not forget that the Comfort is designated to handle non-Covid cases, especially trauma cases, in order to free up beds in hospitals. But it hasn’t yet been needed, so your point is still relevant.
Correct. The last I heard there were 20 people onboard the Comfort. Those were probably moved there as a matter of policy rather than hospital crowding.
It cannot be repeated too often that the compound case growth rates listed in the head posting are daily growth rates. At the original 19%, cases were doubling every three days. At 15%, make that five days. The reason why responsible governments are building field hospitals and prseesing hospital ships into service is not just for fun or for propaganda: it is because anyone with a scientific calculator can see how full those hospitals are going to be in just a few more weeks unless the case growth rate slows considerably.
The case growth rate is, at this early stage in the epidemic, the key number. It will give some idea of where this disease is going. And it is an unusually high daily case growth rate. That is why governments are concerned.
The purpose of the head posting is to show the extent to which lockdowns are or are not working. If the case growth rate continues to fall as at present, all well and good – though it has a long way to fall before the pandemic is under management. If the case growth rate does not continue to fall or – worse – begins to rise, then lockdowns are not working. The graph that will appear with today’s update will allow a visual indication of what progress is being made. It is a very great mistake to assume that because there are few hospitals overcrowded at present that happy situation will continue if anything like the current case growth rates continues.
Except in northern Italy, and Ecuador … link Given the apparently miserable condition of Ecuador’s infrastructure, their only hope would have been to try to keep the disease out of the country and lock down like crazy.
Part of this is because basically all elective procedures have been cancelled or postponed.
This video is out of date now also. The temporary morgues for example in NYC seem to be slowly filling for example.
What evidence is there that the portable morgues are being filled because of overcrowding in the hospital’s own morgues? They may be just moving corpses there as a matter of policy to get them out of the hospital. Or they might become eligible for federal money if they use those portable morgues.
“may”…. “might’…… Where is your evidence, to confirm your speculations?
I have been told that the hospitals are so busy with CoVid-19 patients, they are sending people home, if they are not in very serious need of medical attention.
Would somebody tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! – Please.
Mr Friis-Hansen is right to detect an element of propaganda in some of the comments here. In Britain, I can answer his question. Just about all elective surgery in the National Health Service was canceled some two weeks ago, and for the indefinite future. The reason: anyone with a pocket calculator can work out from the case growth rates, country by country, how many of those beds will be filled with sick and dying Chinese-virus patients within weeks of today.
I wonder about a different effect in the case of Italy that is a co-factor with the lockdown: Saturation. I think this happens in two ways. First, given that we think actual total cases (and thus immune people) is far more than reported cases, Italy simply approached saturation. Second, with a lot of immune people now in the population, natural separation occurs. In the simplest case, we have 3 people each rather close to each other. But the one in the middle is immune, doubling the space between the others.
In the US we have anomalies that are hard to explain by lockdowns, especially California vs. New York. Their timing of lockdown was not much different, but there are other big differences that may or may not matter: public transport vs car, high rises and thus elevators, climate, crowded city streets, other cultural habits?
More pot smoking in CA.
In reply to Earl Rodd, exhaustion of the susceptible population is not yet a significant factor in curbing the pandemic, though it will begin to matter within a month or two if anything like the current case growth rates continue. Mr Rodd may like to Google the Susceptible – Infected – Removed model of pandemic growth, and perhaps to run some simulations, to get a feel of when the saturation will begin to ease off the epidemic. By that stage, a lot of people will have died. That is what government lockdowns are attempting to prevent.
They activated it as soon as they realized that the director of the World Health Organization, who has close links to the Peking regime and had as recently as January been parroting Chinese propaganda to the effect that the virus could not be transmitted from human to human, could not be relied upon.
It was not until early March 2020, that the estimated potential extent was addressed.
On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global health emergency.
USA CDC: February 28, 2020. Situation in U.S.
WHO: 29 February 2020. COVID-19 Travel Advice
The WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic outbreak on March 11, 2020.
In response to Mr Hughes, if the WHO had declared an emergency early in January, instead of saying the virus could not be transmitted from human to human, it would have been much easier to control the pandemic without resorting to lockdowns.
Glad that it is being referred to by its correct name here – Chinese virus. China is a rogue nation killing their own citizens on a grand scale and now infecting the world with a deadly virus. This article makes a great case for isolating China completely – no planes, ships and borders sealed. The reason for this is that all it takes is for some Chinese chap to have a lizard for lunch next year and the world will be hit with yet another virus from this rogue nation. Eating reptiles, bats and other unspeakable animals, and wet markets must be banned and closed down. Only then should the nations of the world open borders with China. China’s propagandists say isolating China would be very expensive – fact is it has already cost trillions with more to come, to say nothing of the loss in human life. Isolating China could well turn out to be the cheaper option. All concerned citizens must lobby their politicians to isolate China – failure to do so will see millions die in the years ahead with uncontrolled viruses from China. Pass this message on – it could save our lives in the future.
Lockdowns? Really.
The West was inporting thousands of Chinese – each and every day – directly from China. For weeks and weeks prior to the end of January when bans were started. The US alone was had 10,000 PER DAY directly from China. Examine airline flight schedules prior to January 2020. US direct inbound daily direct non-stop jumbo jet flights to Los Angeles, New York City, London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Dubai, Singapore, Sydney. I haven’t computed how many direct flights to other major air hubs such as Seoul, Tokyo, etc.
HIV is almost 100% a contact virus. Ebola is as well. Saying that a flu/cold virus which have large airborne components are more contagious is like saying the Sun rises in the East and therefore my calculations something that’s not at all similar are correct. Really?
Nor have I computed how many regional airports (aka, feeder airports) to get a true distribution map. Nor have I applied the “highly infectious” Perhaps someone can do that? Then apply whatever infectious figure you wish. I personally like the one that claims one (1) person caused the infection of hundreds. It’s some sort of math progression (pick one); even start with just one person somewhere in Wuhan airport prior to December of November; figure in the air traffic and see how long everyone has been exposed in the West. All prior to the start of even direct flights from China travel bans.
The activists can’t have it the way described. See Eschenbach’s excellent recaps of methods and effects. And don’t use nations that are 100% not comparable to any Western nation, such as Japan and South Korea. And do use only “caused by” and not “tested positive and died” deaths. Feel free to use base models used in the global warming projects which are likely more reliable than the epidemiological “models”. Actually, just getting facts would be more helpful than all these SWAGS – such as actual death demographics including age, sex, prior conditions, etc. After all, the UK has the NHS and some sort of computers? Even the US has computerized medical records mandated by Federal law in place since 2016. So why not state the demographic facts? For example, Israel reports them on a daily basis along with recaps. Their average age at death is 79 and almost 100% of them had severe preexisting conditions enumerated.
If activists want to accomplish positive, (1) they should be marching in the streets (with social distancing, N95+ mask, hazmat uniforms, sanitized signs, enclosed in bubble (wrap?)) demanding that the old people be isolated in some way and given all treatments proven in clinics to work. (2) Demand ASAP creation and distribution of additional treatment (plasma, antibiotics) for the old people. (3) Demand ASAP creation and distribution of vaccines for the old people.
Lockdowns, et al, are like intentionally choosing to burn the barns down after all the livestock have escaped to insure they won’t escape again.
If you think it is only old people who die you are deluded, we had 2 healthy mid 30s nurses and a 14 year boy die from it his week.
The early studies that it was based on was before saturation took place and the weakest were taken first.
Even the WHO is now conceding that it is not just the old and infirm that die.
Young people also survive, but have badly damaged lungs directly caused by COVID19 who ar hardly able to walk.
Please provide more details about the “2 healthy mid 30s nurses and a 14 year boy”. Did they vape? Did the nurses smoke? Were they obese? Were they really healthy, or was that merely assumed because they looked healthy? Mortality among those age groups, though not common, is not unheard of for various reasons.
Find it yourself, why do you expect me to do so.
It was published data.
Here’s an example of a 12-year-old dying from sepsis. No coronavirus involved. Today if she had tested positive her death would be listed as COVID-19. How do you know the 14-year-old, or the 30-year-olds didn’t die from something similar? You don’t Just baseless fear-mongering.
https://www.simplemost.com/sepsis-deaths-teenagers/
Italy went through the worst. Almost no young people died.
Your anecdotes are touching yet irrelevant.
Italian Coronavirus COVID-19 Study 1
2003 deaths looked at
Average age of death 79
Under 30, NONE
30-39 5 0.2%
40-49 12 1%
50-59 56 3%
60-69 173 9%
70-79 707 35%
80-89 852 42%
90+ 198 10%
Study 2
Comorbidities of 355 deaths
All had Covid-19
Hypertension 76%
Diabetes 36%
Ischemic Heart Disease 33%
Atrial fibrillation 24%
Cancer 20%
Chronic Renal Failure 18%
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease 13%
Stroke 10%
Dementia 7%
Chronic Liver disease 3%
Multiple Comorbities from above list
No comorbitities 3 1%
1 disease 89 25%
2 diseases 91 26%
3 or more diseases 172 48%
Italy now stands at over 14,000 deaths, so an early sample of 2500 deaths doesn’t mean that much.
The Comorbities do not mean that those people would die or were dying, the top 2 of those people live with for decades.
Feel free to give me a later list of these things and more if available. Until that, this is what I look at.
Lockdown would have prevented it completely, except China did not lockdown their people.
They allowed them out of Wuhan and out of China to infect the rest of the world.
Lockdown, ie total Quarantine and testing of every Chinese or person visiting China on entering any other country would also have prevented the spread, if only the Chinese and WHO had alerted the world to the problem in the first place.
Unfortunately most countries are playing catch up after finding 100s or 1000s already infected.
Nobody believes anything from China.
For your 30 year old dying from COVID please show us the autopsy. I would like to “see” how healthy.
Thanks,
Find it yourself, why do you expect me to do so.
It was published data.
Lol….good one 😉
Quarantines work. Nearly every nation does them. Most are 100% effective. They work by isolating all incoming international travelers for from 3 to 6 months, then test them prior to release into their nations.
The travelers are dogs, cats, livestock, etc. Might work on humans?
One cannot have it both ways – modern air travel ferrying thousands and thousands of people into and out of international hubs, regional hubs, domestic hubs, etc., many with direct flights AND trying to control a highly contagious airborne respiratory virus. By the time one even discovers it you’ve got virtually thousands of carriers, likely millions exposed. Good luck on lockdowns and such. I.E., the “ready, set, detect, ban then lockdown!” is a model, like global warming models, doomed to failure.
Spot on.
Shame most countries didn’t use it, we seem to have forgotten how human quarantine works because Vaccines eradicated a lot of those very infectious deseases.
I remember many Isolation hospitals set up to Quarantine the ill and quarantine goes all the way back to Leper colonies.
The lockdown without mass testing is pointless.
A lot of us object to the lockdown for that reason.
Far more will die in the long term if the economy and therefore our society collapses.
Sweden will be the interesting case as a benchmark to measure against, was correlation actually causation.
No lockdown without Medicine is pointless, becaus just “testing” does nothing to slow or prevent spreading without the other 2 essentials of trace and quarantine.
Antibody testing, which is not yet available, another reason to slow the spread by lockdown until developed, will allow those infected and recovered and no longer infectious to resume a normal life.
In response to Dunc., the chief public-policy reason for lockdowns is that otherwise the case growth rate would continue unabated for a few more weeks, whereupon the entire hospital system would be unable to cope even with other illnesses. Lockdowns are not the optimal strategy: the South Korean strategy of intensive testing and contact-tracing and enforced isolation is far better, provided that it is implemented as soon as the very first cases become apparent. But Western countries were fatally slow to get their act together. Accordingly, lockdowns became necessary. But the way out of this, as I discuss in today’s follow-up article, is indeed to arrange for testing of the entire population. That is a logistical exercise, and it is far from impossible. It holds the key to the exit strategy.
Lord Monckton
An excellent write up
Would it be possible to include Japan in your tables?
Keep up the good work
The virus mutates rapidly we are told thus the virus swirling about you in the UK may be different that the virus swirling about me in the US. To what extent do local differences in virus makeups account for local differences in transmission and disease incidence? Perhaps South Korea is successful because they have avoided the worst of the breed? That should be testable.
In response to DHR, South Korea was successful because it was prepared. I have studied an indepth interview with the director of the country’s public health authority. It held large stocks of testing reagents, of personal protective equipment (including simple masks for the general public) and it had a policy of testing the earliest cases, following up their contacts, testing those contacts and their contacts, and isolating all carriers. Do that early enough and determinedly enough and you can stop a pandemic in its tracks, as South Korea has largely done.
In Ireland, on 12 March, the Taoiseach announced the closure of all schools, colleges and childcare facilities until 29 March. Two days later bars and public houses were ordered to close. On 27 March, the Taoiseach told everyone to stay at home till 12 April – except certain essential businesses. Next we are told to expect this to last till the end of April. If this continues will we be told at the end of April that the lockdown will continue till the end of May?
The career politicians and the medical people advising them will keep their jobs and salaries. For those average private sector workers – who generate the wealth of country – there will be lay-offs and redundancies, salary cuts and inflation and more. The longer this continues the greater the certainty this will impact a whole generation.
As Rod Evans asked: This lock down and destruction of the UK economy and indeed the Western Economies will have generational long impacts. Is it worth it?
How about a third way between passivist and activist? Perhaps we can call it realist?
A solution has been considered for “low income settings” which I think may offer pointers to limit the extent of social and economic damage caused by long term lockdowns even in developed countries.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2020/covid-19-control-low-income-settings-and-displaced-populations-what-can
Note the destruction of Irish health services after the last bailout, which did not save the parties involved.
Because of this, watch carefully for any signs of “Triage”, rationing health services to “lives worth living”.
And to be blindsided, again, by that very financial services sector that caused the last catastrophe is not “realist” but idiotic.
Triage that financial services sector immediately, a derivative blowout is guaranteed, again.
After all it is just the City of London’s cat’s paw in the EU, despite Brexit.
I find it hard to see how your cryptic comments fit together and address my comment.
Our health services are a mess for various reasons. If one goes to casualty and has to repeat your story to three or four different people this is inefficiency. Too many at casualty just need a GP examination. I happily pay my local GP but over a long weekend am forced to go to a clinic or a hospital casualty. I suspect many overuse their medical cards. There seems to be a disproportionate number of administrative staff in our hospitals but a shortage of medical workers. The government is not getting value for money for the huge sums spent on the health sector. When something like the coronavirus comes along it makes the situation even more shambolic.
Our financial services sector was not responsible before the 2009 crash and has not properly addressed various issues. They recklessly handed out loans but now impose impossible criteria on people who are frugal, budget carefully and work hard. Save carefully for a decade to cover 20% of a house you earn virtually no interest but they charge nearly 3% or a mortgage loan and much higher on car loans. Tax payers were forced to bail out high risk investors and diligent savers have had the value of their money depreciated by all the money printed by the EU Central Bank.
A realist knows that neither printing and spending money nor having taxes raised will solve the debt problem. He wants available resources used carefully. The same applies in this coronavirus crisis. That is why I suggested a realist position: neither a continuing lockdown for many who could be working and productive nor a callous pushing granny off a cliff. The current political options in Ireland are in my opinion irresponsible.
The comments from Michael in Dublin well reflect the policy dilemma facing governments at present. Both the activists and the passivists have some good arguments on their side, but, at present, the activists are prevailing in most countries because their governments legitimately fear that continuation of the current case-growth rates will render their entire healthcare systems inoperative within weeks.
In today’s follow-up article, I shall suggest an exit strategy that Michael may find helpful.
From: “Largest Statistically Significant Study by 6,200 Multi-Country Physicians on COVID-19 Uncovers Treatment Patterns and Puts Pandemic in Context”
Conducted by: https://www.sermo.com/press-releases/largest-statistically-significant-study-by-6200-multi-country-physicians-on-covid-19-uncovers-treatment-patterns-and-puts-pandemic-in-context/
And appearing in the popular US press here: https://nypost.com/2020/04/02/hydroxychloroquine-most-effective-coronavirus-treatment-poll/
We find: Of the 6,227 physicians surveyed in 30 countries, 37 percent rated hydroxychloroquine the “most effective therapy” for combating the potentially deadly illness, according to the results released Thursday. and The survey, conducted by the global health care polling company Sermo, also found that 23 percent of medical professionals had prescribed the drug in the US — far less than other countries.
We, the US, are behind again.
I’m posting this again for those who want a zinc ionophore without having to take hydroxychloroquine (with its side effects and need for prescription). Hydroxychloroquine supposedly works because it is a zinc ionophore. Quercetin and Epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG) are natural zinc ionophores, and like zinc supplements are available at Amazon.
Zinc ionophore activity of quercetin and epigallocatechin-gallate: from Hepa 1-6 cells to a liposome model
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050823
well that was a nice surprise. very good piece by monkton.
Its unfortunate that the US could not execute a model similar to Korea, Singapore, Taiwan or even Hong Kong.
Korean Lockdown does keep business open. what life is like here in Seoul.
Oh there is a national election April 15th
1. Testing.
A) if you feel ill, you call a central number and arrange for drive through testing. results in 6 hours. Free
B) if you are worried, you can just show up at the drive through and pay 140 bucks.
C) no going into a doctors office or hospital for testing. duh. China had something similar called fever clinics.
D) when you fly in you will be tested and quarantined. Home quarantine is allowed. you will be
called thrice daily to report. if you have a fever at the airport, you are admitted to a health center.
455,000 tests, 10,000 Postives: ~2%, contrast with the state of new york which is ~30% positive
in addition, there are 20,000 people who are awaiting tests, contacts, family, etc who have no
symptoms, but will be tested anyway
2. Tracing. Every case is tracked. Overall 83 percent of cases are tracked back to a known source or index
patient. Recently the average is up to 95%.
A) If you get sick, your whole church will be tested, your family and your contacts. All tested.
B) if grandma in the nursing home gets sick, all residents, all staff , all family member, all visitors.
C) if your co worker gets sick, the whole business will be tested, and a good number of people
that share your building. All your contacts will be tested, all your family will be tested.
D) if a patient in a hospital gets sick, all staff, all patients, all family, all visitors, tested
E) your cell phone data will be grabbed. to get a phone number you need an national ID.
to get mail you need a national ID, to go on the internet you need a national ID. So,
your location data will be grabbed and used and published
3. Searching out the invisible enemy
A) starting in daeugu all nursing homes are tested
B) all mental institutions are tested
C) organizations like churches can all be tested.
4. social distancing.
A) Mass assemblies are cancelled.
B) Churches are now set up for online broadcasts. Churches that refuse to comply will be fined,
and have to pay the medical bills of anyone that gets sick or is traceable to them.
C) work is open, but mass gatherings are frowned upon.
D) School is closed, online school will open soon.
5. Other behavioral changes.
A) wear a mask. about 90% compliance
b) wash your hands. hand washing was already a national sport.
C) No unnecessary trips outside the home: work and food.
6. mental health. Professionals are online waiting for your call.
7. Public information.
there are briefings twice daily from the yellow jackets. civil defense wears a yellow jacket
They present the numbers. facts. all of them. No politics.
They honor the dead.
They encourage the public
They Thank people for their efforts.
watch. see the detailed information. builds trust
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-WyK0uKuWI&t=639s
8. masks. masks are rationed, you can purchase 2 a week with your national ID
So basically the work life goes on but the vibrant social scene that Seoul was known for is on vacation.
You missed the bit saying what you thought was so “good”. But I suppose drawing a straight line through any data and jumping to concluding it is “blindingly obvious” that you were right in your initial biases before examining the data probably goes down well with a warmist.
This “analysis” is so weak even climatologist would support it.
Greg is, as so often, descending to mere yah-boo when what he should have done is thank Stephen Mosher for providing some very concise and nicely-marshaled notes on why the South Korean approach has been so effective.
Well said !!
what was good about it?
it was clear, it was open,
There are only a few ways you can illustrate whether the lockdown is working
He did a good job with a good metric. want to know why?
Anyway, I also owe him an apology.
When I saw that He wrote something I had a knee jerk reaction. I predicted he would write some nonsense . I was wrong. flat wrong. And I actually owe him an apology for misjudging him
Yup, I owe him an apology for Thinking he was going to say something stupid.
As for you. I tried to warn you guys.
I am most grateful to Mr Mosher for his kind words, and also for the excellent and beautifully-summarized account of the first-class, successful strategy that the South Koreans have followed.
What is the point of testing them all? What do they do with those that tested positive but show no symptoms?
Part of the problem in the US everything and I mean everything has become politicized.
When things are politicized, reason and logic are removed.
Our fake news is angry, sarcastic, opinion pieces. And it is popular in the US to be anti-US.
One half our politicians seem to only care about getting power and will hence attack our leader which is sort of like treason.
And you complain that we cannot work together.
And how much money have we spent on ‘climate change’.
Maybe we should have spent that money on other stuff, like masks and people that will inform the public.
Jason Oke og Carl Heneghan from Oxford University go through data to estimate infections and deaths from corona virus. «We could make a simple estimation of the IFR (infection fatality rate) as 0.26%, based on halving the lowest boundary of the CFR (case fatality rate) prediction interval.» The real estimate is probably lower than this, between 0,1% and 0,26%. Average time between infection and death is 18 days, according to a new study. One death points to 385 infections 18 days earlier as the lowest estimate. and more probably to about 400 to 1000 infections.
So, many countries may be thoroughly infected by now. Those who dies now was in average infected 17th of March, about the time when lockdown was started.
It is certainly possible to deduce that the case fatality rate will be low if one works back from the mortality figures to derive an estimate of how many of those dying on given day were infected 18-21 days previously, and then extrapolating the known compound daily case growth rate forward again. However, that is of little comfort given that the speed of events is overwhelming the healthcare system. And there is another disturbing figure. Outside China and occupied Tibet, among reported cases that are closed – i.e., those that were infected and have either recovered or died – 27% have died.
Almost always, when I first go to read these comments, my browser (Edge) is hijacked to some fake virus protection site. I close that, then try again, and it usually happens again. This site is the only one that does it. I basically cannot read the original messages, unless I direct to the comments section as I have today. THERE IS A PROBLEM ON THIS SITE!!!
re: ” … my browser (Edge) is hijacked to some fake virus protection site. … THERE IS A PROBLEM ON THIS SITE!!!”
Edge would seem to be the problem. No trouble here with several different browsers (on account nobody supports the latest browsers) on Win Xp SP3 anymore …
You might consider using Google public DNS too: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and see if that clears things up.
download chrome or firefox, both free, both more popular than edge, and do not have dodgy things happening within them.
Same happens with Safari, becomes almost unusable at times.
re: “Same happens with Safari, becomes almost unusable at times.”
Upgrade your browsers, fellas. No excuse today for your continuing use of crap.
Slimjet, Firefox and MyPal all work (as does Chrome for that matter).
these tables mean very little, unfortunately.
because tests are not done on same basis in different countries, and on average tests are done only on people with already serious symptoms.
that btw explains the 11% lethality rate of COVID19 in italy. only people with serious sympthoms is tested.
moreover, the tests have a sensitivity of 70% so when someone is tested positive, test is repeated 1 or 2 times more, this will skew any calculation where tests administered are considered.
my personal assessment is that house arrests do not work.
lets take italy. lockdown is in place since 9th march. people is tested only when severe symptoms occur. time between being infected and when symptoms occur is on average 12 days.
if lockdown worked (and italian lockdown is as draconian as feasible in any non dictatorial contry) the number of new cases should drop vertically within 12-15 days. that has not happened in italy and i bet wont happen in spain or uk.
my personal theory is that in north italy the virus is simply running out of usable targets:people with a compromised health/immune systems.
it can be said openly because of PC but this virus affects almost only people with comorbidities, overweight, very old. and of course now there is a lot of “news” claiming that the virus will kill the young and healthy; thats a lie to justify lockdowns.
in today’s press conference Daniel Kock, speaking for the Swiss government, stated that median age for COVID-19 related deaths in the Confederation is 83 years (life expectancy in Switzerland is 83.7 years) and 97% had comorbidities of some sort.
i have done some maths based on swiss data.
considering average age of virus victims, and current life expectancy, the collective loss of life is 200 minutes pro capita.
my opinion is that these collective measures have a huge collective cost, and tiny collective rewards.
solutions cant be collective.
and no government should have the power to put on house arrest the whole population, whatever the reason.
Thank you Mr. Monckton for this report. One thing I disagree with the world is that the answer to this virus is an either/or approach. I believe the best answer is somewhere in between the passivists and activists. Since this virus attacks the lung — some common colds are coronaviruses — then I believe we should quarantine those most vulnerable and the let the rest of us build up the herd immunity. Quarantine the elderly with multiple health problems and those with lung problems such as asthma or smokers. Unfortunately there will be a few exceptions of people who die because of this outside the obvious high-risk category, but that is no different than any other virus. You cannot make decisions based on exceptions.
Also, how do we know that the rates dropping are as a result of the lockdown and not as a result of the onset of warmer weather and longer days?
Finally, I want to conclude by saying something. Thomas Jefferson said “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery”. You better believe that the globalists and others who want to rule us are taking notes on how easy and quick it was for people to surrender their rights. Today it is the health Gestapo; what fear will they use next time to control us even more?
Wade makes an interesting suggestion, which was one of the things the British Government tried before it decided, with great reluctance and, alas, much too late, to opt for a lockdown. Isolating the old and sick and letting everyone else acquire population immunity is not at all a bad idea – except for one fatal consideration. Even among younger and fitter people, the hospitalization rate is very high, and it is only because of hospitalization and ventilation that the death-rate among the under-60s is not a lot higher than it is.
It was because it became undeniable that the National Health Service would be rapidly overwhelmed in the absence of firm control measures that Mr Johnson reluctantly decided to call for a lockdown.
Lord Monckton,
Thank you for your insight and analysis; it provides a good basis for discussion, and logical reasoning.
However, you are making the fundamental error that correlation implies causation. Just because the rate of increase in confirmed infection cases goes down after lockdowns are imposed, does not mean the lockdowns are the main or only reason for the reduction.
Consider this:
As testing ramps up from a very low level in some countries, they are bound to find more infections in the early weeks because they will presumably test the sickest persons first. As weeks go by, they will have tested all the sickest persons, and will be finding fewer infected persons among the less sick, and later, when testing has caught up, will only find the newly infected cases. It does not mean that the number of cases actually rose as quickly as is reported; it means they are confirming cases that have been there already.
Once testing is fully implemented, then we can start paying attention to the number of new cases each week. Of course, we should all practice good hygiene, and avoid close contact and handshaking, but are lockdowns really necessary?
In response to Mr de Boer, I thought long and hard before adopting the 7-day-smoothed mean compound daily case growth rate as the metric for the benchmark test. I do accept that there are many problems with any such attempt at a benchmark test. But the merit of the test is that it is rooted squarely in such data – however flawed and inadequate – as are available. And I have, I hope, fairly pointed out in the head posting the uncertainties attendant upon those data. I shall have more to say about those uncertainties in the coming days.
In answer to the question whether lockdowns are really necessary, the answer is No – provided that one acts with the greatest determination to implement the very sound and very successful South Korean control measures, which were centered around testing, contact-tracing, isolation of carriers, more testing and more contact-tracing. If that had been done from the outset, and if China had been honest instead of habitually dishonest and dissembling, it would have been possible for us to emulate South Korea and avoid the strict lockdowns that are now, regrettably, necessary to prevent the healthcare system from being swamped.
OMG you are still that running mean level of data processing? Why don’t you just give up your amateurish methods or at least have the humility to learn from criticisms and improve your game.
In all the time you have been posting here, I have not seen you accept a single criticism of any of your work and learn or improve from it.
Oh, humility, not a key quality of the British minor aristocracy, my mistake.
Several others of us are running our own analyses, and I’m sure we would all like whatever suggestions you have, to make the output more meaningful, rather than just tossing a vague criticism out there.
By coincidence, I also chose a 7-day period to look for a change in the rate of increase, in order to smooth out some of the expected day to day efficiency of the testing process, but at the same time, short enough, in a dataset that is barely more than a month old, to pick up any changes.
Do tell us how we could improve.
Many thanks