By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Some commenters responding to this daily series providing some information about the Chinese virus have repeated what seems to have become something of a mantra among libertarians who, understandably, dislike the idea of widespread lockdowns, with the loss of freedom and the economic damage that they entail. That mantra is that the Chinese virus is no more infections or no more fatal than flu, and that if we had allowed everyone to acquire immunity by catching the infection and throwing it off all would be well.
Look at today’s graph. Though the downtrend in the daily compound growth rate in total confirmed cases now appears well established, that growth rate is still very high, averaging around 8% globally outside China and occupied Tibet, where the numbers are unreliable.
The red curve shows the case growth rate for the world excluding China. If the 8% daily growth rate were to continue, yesterday’s 1,430,919 confirmed cases (many of which tend to be those serious enough to have come to the authorities’ attention, since testing is still occurring on a tiny scale in most countries) would have risen to nearly 8 million by the end of April, and more than 80 million by the end of May.
It is important, therefore, to ensure that the now well established downtrend is maintained. That is why, for the time being, governments will be keeping lockdowns in place. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.
Of course, one might legitimately argue that, if the Chinese virus were really no worse than flu, the crippling social and economic cost of lockdowns would be unjustifiable.
But governments cannot afford to make policy on the assumption, perhaps a little too carelessly made by some commenters here, that the virus is no more dangerous and no more infectious than flu.
Here, then, to help us to begin to answer that important question, are some tolerably reliable, real-world data. I am grateful to the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Center in London for having made details from its Case Mix Programme Database available. The Case Mix Programme is the national clinical audit of patient outcomes from adult critical care.
The Center has recently issued a report on all confirmed UK cases reported to it up to midday on 3 April, just a few days ago. Critical care units notify the Center as soon as they have admitted any patient with confirmed Chinese virus, together with demographics, initial physiological state, organ support and eventual outcome.
The report concerns 2249 patients, whose mean age at admission was 60 years, compared with 58 years for 4759 patients with non-COVID-19 viral pneumonia, most of them caused by flu, over the three complete years 2017-2019.
Of the 2249 patients, 346 (15%) have died, 344 (15%) have been discharged alive, and 1559 (69%) are still in critical care. The case fatality rate, as a fraction of all closed cases admitted to intensive care, is thus a little over 50%, compared with only 22% for the non-COVID viral pneumonias of the past three years. In each age-group (under 50, 50-69 and 70+), the percentage of patients admitted to critical care with the Chinese virus and subsequently dying in hospital is at least twice the percentage of critical-care patients with other viral pneumonias over the previous three years.
Among those requiring ventilation, two-thirds die by the end of their critical care and only one-third survive. Therefore, the case fatality rate for closed cases where ventilation was required is more than 67%, compared with only 16% for non-COVID viral pneumonia cases requiring ventilation.
Worse, advanced respiratory support for Chinese-virus cases is typically maintained for between 4 and 9 days (average 6 days), while it is not needed at all in non-COVID-19 viral-pneumonia cases, which require only basic respiratory support, and require it only for 2-4 days (average 3 days). The data are similar for cardiovascular support, and for renal support. The Chinese-virus cases tend to require advanced rather than basic support, and to require it for twice as long. And yet, even after all that extra care, the case fatality rate is many times higher than for non-COVID viral pneumonias.
On the assumption that about half of all this year’s critical cases of seasonal viral pneumonia would have occurred by now, and making no allowance for any further exponential growth in Chinese-virus cases in intensive care, and assuming that the summer will stop the virus causing critical cases (an assumption that the authorities, rightly, do not regard themselves as being in any position to make yet), there are approximately three times as many serious Chinese-virus cases than all other viral pneumonias combined, including those caused by flu, in a typical year, and at least twice as many of these will die than with other serious viral pneumonia cases.
Thus, the Chinese virus is six times more fatal than pre-existing viral pneumonias, including those caused by flu.
In the past three years, some 46% of viral-pneumonia cases were female and 54% male. With the Chinese virus, however, only 27% are female and 63% are male.
The report also considers ethnicity. About four-fifths of the UK population is White, but only two-thirds of the critical cases to date are Whites. Blacks, in particular, are three times over-represented in intensive care: they represent one case in seven, but are only one in 20 of the population.
Body mass index was also studied, but the number of cases in the below-normal, normal, overweight, obese and morbidly obese categories is not far out of line with the general population, two-thirds of whom are overweight or obese. Some 72% of intensive-care Chinese-virus cases are overweight or obese.
Interestingly, the number of cases with cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, hepatic, cancerous or immunocompromised comorbidities was quite small. In all these categories, it was less than for the usual viral pneumonias over the past three years.
In the past three years, non-COVID viral pneumonias have put 43% of patients on to ventilators within the first 24 hours. The Chinese virus, however, is worse: it puts 63% on to ventilators within the first 24 hours. Therefore, governments planning hospital capacity for Chinese-virus cases must make extra allowance for the greater demands, both in advanced rather than basic care and in days of treatment, than other viral-pneumonia cases.
The doctor through whom I came upon these figures, who has himself suffered with the Chinese virus and has recovered, is very angry that for political reasons those who understandably dislike lockdowns have been maintaining, contrary to the evidence, that the Chinese virus is “no worse than flu”.
Be in no doubt. This disease is a lot worse than flu. It puts more people into intensive care, where they require costlier and more advanced treatment, where they will be in intensive care for twice the time required by other viral pneumonia-patients, and where they are more than twice as likely to die as those other patients.
So don’t dismiss it lightly. Not any more. Wash hands often. Wear full-face masks when out of doors or away from home. Take Vitamin D3 daily. Be safe.
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I see this as a situation of acceptable risk. Not to downplay the relative lethality of this virus, it appears as though the usual demographics are most vulnerable. Therefore, shutting down entire economies; ordering all non-county residents to leave or face heavy fines and imprisonment; fining surfers and stand-up paddlers who are maintaining not just feet, but yards if not hundreds of yards, of social distancing; jailing backcountry skiers, and fining anybody who is caught outside without a facemask; seems to me to be massive overreaction, not to mention police state-like. Taking reasonable precautions, shopping for the elderly and infirm, exercising, and taking commonsense steps to minimize your exposure or unintentionally transmitting the virus to others, seems to me like the best steps to take. Living with a degree of acceptable risk which, honestly, is the way we all live anyway, seems a lot smarter for everybody than shuttering entire countries or imposing draconian edicts on large populations. And not taking into account the regional diversity, as in Wyoming versus Manhattan, when deciding who can and can’t do what, is in my opinion insane.
Yes, I agree.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR1s3NEQO5nRAG1XENahY8HRJRfbBsToKHnHWU954Tj2uJqvM0RL4gBJJuU
And of course, no “study” would be complete without injecting the race card into it.
“The report also considers ethnicity. About four-fifths of the UK population is White, but only two-thirds of the critical cases to date are Whites. Blacks, in particular, are three times over-represented in intensive care: they represent one case in seven, but are only one in 20 of the population.
Body mass index was also studied, but the number of cases in the below-normal, normal, overweight, obese and morbidly obese categories is not far out of line with the general population, two-thirds of whom are overweight or obese. Some 72% of intensive-care Chinese-virus cases are overweight or obese.”
Which raises the question of multicollinearity….for example, in the U.S. Blacks have a considerably higher obesity rate. So in a true color blind world, the race card wouldn’t be played…..but the obesity rate would.
But you can bet that the media in the western world will be ringing the “racist” bell for all its worth.
“Which raises the question of multicollinearity….for example, in the U.S. Blacks have a considerably higher obesity rate. So in a true color blind world, the race card wouldn’t be played…..but the obesity rate would.
But you can bet that the media in the western world will be ringing the “racist” bell for all its worth.”
Yes, some elitist NYT columnist (sorry for the redundancy) posted (then retracted) a map that showed when people stopped travelling more than 2 miles.
Someone else quickly laid over map of “food deserts”, i.e., where you have to go further afield for better food, and access to private cars.
Yeah…pretty much the same maps.
Austria, Norway, Denmark, the Czech Republic Announce Plans to Reopen at Least Parts of Their Economy — Sweden Remains Open — USA looks to reopen on May 1….if the statistics are accurate, locking down economies did not make a difference as Sweden’s rates are just as good as the others. Did we destroy the world’s economy for NOTHING?
Yes, but not only economy. The measures killed People. Primum nocere.
Wow! Fox news is no longer transmitting Cuomos rantings and is beginning to realize that HERD IMMUNITY a phenomenom that occurs EVERY year in cold countries may be the cause of declining hospitalizations. I think you will see Fausci et al dissappear soon as Trump will replace the current coronavirus task force. So from 2000000 deaths we are now predicting 50000 USA less than the flu. We see the warmistas coronavistas conveniently dont mention Belarus, Sweden ect with no lockdown and similar incidence and mortality. Willis is correct Monckton is wrong. We shall however, confirm this in the next week or so. A lot of heads will roll if I am correct, otherwise I will have to eat my straw hat cheers!
An ER Doc’s description of how it differs from serious flu:
The more patients I treat, the more I hate this virus. It is brutal, it is capricious and unpredictable, a patient is fine one minute than trying to die the next. Pulmonary and hemodynamic pathophysiology truisms seem not to apply.
Another clinical vignette
Healthy 47-year-old man suffering at home for 7 days, was improving, took a turn or the worse. Came in by ambulance with very low oxygen levels (72%, normal > 92%) and obvious respiratory distress and needed to be put on a ventilator. Picture the most out of breath you have ever been X 3 gasping like a gold fish out of the water. Getting a patient on a vent is something every emergency doctor has done myriad times and most can do it blindfolded. COVID is way different though because intubating (putting in the breathing tube) can cause the virus to become an aerosol making the whole room filled with COVID 19 mist. So, the patient sits in the stretcher goldfishing as we prepare ourselves and our equipment. Maybe 10 minutes but 10 minutes is a long time to be awake, gasping thinking you are going to die. Total body PPE; space suit, bring in the equipment, get ready. Normally, we would want to get the patients oxygen level as high as possible before doing this because the process requires making him unconscious and paralyzed to put the tube it. During that time, he can’t breathe. Normally, if anything goes wrong for any reason after we have paralyzed the patient, we can breathe for them with a mask before the tube goes it. Not here because of the aerosol. After the tube goes in, you also use a bag but not here because of the deadly aerosol. We begin. Low oxygen level, medicines take a few minutes to work, oxygen level goes lower and lower, open the patients mouth to clear his airway. Normally a little spit or mucous, maybe some blood. Something about COVID. The mucous looks like Elmer’s glue, is hard to suction, stringy, almost gooey. Oxygen level is near zero, heart rate begins to slow down, tube goes in, lots of Elmer’s glue funneling out, hook him up to one of the precious ventilators and oxygen level begins to very slowly come up, heart rate comes up. Then down. The Elmer’s glue. Change the setting on the precious ventilator so the more pressure stays in the lungs and pushes the glue and finally, his oxygen level increases. Now we take off the PPE very carefully so that 1. We don’t infect ourselves with COVID and 2. We need to reuse it because PPE is just as precious.
I finished training 25 years ago, I have intubated thousands of patients, this is different
You do not want this. Young healthy people get this and die. We need time to figure this out and only you can give us time. Social distancing, stay at home, wash your hands. Do your part.
“I finished training 25 years ago, I have intubated thousands of patients, this is different”
What a nightmare!
Our medical people really do deserve combat pay.
I see where the charitable foundation TunnelsToTowers is starting a fund to help pay the mortgage and help the family of any healthcare worker who dies from the Wuhan virus because of their profession, and because they are standing there defending all of us with their own lives.
Tunnels to Towers has an excellent idea.
The CDC budget for infectious disease prevention, foreign disease prevention, and other factors associated with a pandemic response is roughly 4 Billion Dollars a year. Additionally, each state carries a similar budget item. Worldwide, who knows how much has been spent on pandemic preparedness over the last 10 years. I will call it 1/2 Trillion dollars as a rough estimate. I don’t know, I’m just throwing a number out. Given that expense, the world seems completely unprepared for COVID-19. So, throw that cost out the window.
We should be demanding some response for this. What has the CDC been doing with that money, and why weren’t they “ready”? What were they working on, instead, and how do they justify their diversion of the money to (apparently) the entirely wrong thing?
Reports vary on NYC, for example, the State didn’t buy replacement Respirators, did buy them, then auctioned them, or used the money for other purchases. This reminds me of everybody “suddenly” learning that NOLA had not been maintaining their dykes, but had been wasting the money on God knows what, instead. Once again, there is no responsibility for these failures, which should be ringing the alarm bell in all our heads.
So lots and lots of losses/costs worldwide. The benefit is that maybe a lot of lives were saved. Those lives saved are in the majority non-producers based upon the data of who is dying from COVID-19. If a proper pandemic response was in place in the majority of places, perhaps a full shutdown might have been avoided. Perhaps.
It does seem likely that a focused approach would have been better for the majority. A report from MIT today shows that hundreds of thousands of people in Mass. may be shedding the virus, compared to the 400+ cases they have in hospitals (this is a study of sewage, https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/04/08/massachusetts-sewage-suggests-more-than-100k-coronavirus-cases-in-state-mit-lab/), in which case, to me, says that most of us have had it, and don’t even know. Yes, bad for those we may have infected, if they were sensitive, but it also means the herd is nearly immune, and many of us can go back to work, school, etc. after an overactive disruption.
This I hope will never happen like this again. We all individually should be better prepared and the governments in charge of this area of preparedness should be held accountable, perhaps with an annual report on readiness. Perhaps businesses should have disaster plans in place to transition to a pandemic response economy. I don’t know, just my opinion.
I think we also need to examine a number of bureaucratic roadblocks that have impeded our responses, FDA, CDC and other groups seem to have mined the road to quick response, but when days count, weeks of delay are a crime in themselves. A quick board should convene, to go through studies and tests from RELIABLE health groups in other countries (1st world countries, like S. Korea, France, and others) to see what is working for them, and hopefully, why. Chloroquine is a premium example, plenty of other countries had success treating with it, but the CDC and/or FDA dragged their feet on it. Our approval system is slow as hell, and I’m not personally convinced that it’s for our safety, I’m sure there are more than a few payoffs in the system, we need to root that out. The crap CDC test was another example, and now they’ve admitted that a 20 year old testing system can identify the virus in a patient in about 45 minutes. Really? Why weren’t they looking at that system (as I say, 20 years old, and previously used for HIV, SARS, MERS and other viral infections) first? The sensible world wonders.
Total cases: 395,011….oh, and BTW, 86% of New Yorkers Who Died With Chi-Com Virus Had Other Illnesses, Conditions
Total deaths: 12,754
Jurisdictions reporting cases: 55 (50 states, District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands)
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
OPEN UP THE COUNTRY!!!
14,909 in less than a month not enough for you then?
What would your target be?
Much like asking those who complain about “over” population what the population SHOULD be, or climate scolds what the temperature SHOULD be, I think the answer will be either silence, or muddled logic, or some combination.
Coronavirus in New York came mainly from Europe, studies show.
Sir, i am indeed a liberartian, and i think no government should have the power to put on house arrest entire nations whatever the reason, but this is completely beside the point.
the reasoning i hear from the curfew supporters goes as follows: without lockdown there would have been hundreds of thousands of deaths.
this is not demonstrated at all and it has not happened even where lockdowns have not been imposed.
as you should and do know, correlation is not causation, and available data does not show that the curfew work. data shows that at some random time after curfews, new cases start to decrease.
but there is no proof that the decrease in cases is due to the collective house arrest and not to other reasons. like for example that the virus has ran out of usable targets (people with weak immune systems), or that testing policies have been changed (and we still have no denominator).
no effort whatsoever has been done to understand the vast differences between finland and UK, or new zealand and italy. all just repeat the mantra, stay home.
i also find peculiar the stubborn refusal to introduce serological tests. maybe afraid of the results (lots of people is already immune, and that is the reason for the decrease in cases, not the curfew)
in my opinion the curfew has the sole purpose of covering up the gross inadequacies of government run healthcare systems, filled to the brim with bureacrats awarding themselves rich salaries.
i read that UK has less than 1000 ICU beds.
http://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom
switzerland has as many, with a 8.6 mln population. “protect the NHS”, indeed.
but lets assume the lockdown folks are correct. house arresting entire populations stops contagion. then what? keep everybody (except government agents of course, those are immune to virus thanks to magic uniforms) at home until a vaccine is available on a large scale?
because you cant have it both ways. if curfew works, then contagion will restart as soon as it is lifted.
or maybe governments know curfew doesnt work and do it because, well, they can, and it is functional to their fixations with power and to show they are doing something.
the collective cost of these lockdowns will be enormous and long lasting, the reward minuscule, in the order of 2-3 hours of life saved per capita.
“no effort whatsoever has been done to understand the vast differences between finland and UK, or new zealand and italy”
Of course there has been.
Population Density of Finland 18 people per square Km.
New Zealand 18 people per square Km & terrific Quarantine, track & trace.
275 people per square Km for the UK and 206 for Italy.
Downing Street said Mr Johnson was continuing with “standard oxygen treatment”. His spokesman has previously confirmed the prime minister has not been on a ventilator.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52232747
And is now out of intensive care but still under obsevation
Christopher
You comment:
Obviously, an 8% daily growth rate is undesirably high. However, all the countries (except South Korea) are tracking similarly, (3% – 13%). Clearly, lockdowns have widely varying results. But, what you haven’t addressed is that Sweden has an 8% rate, right in the middle of the pack! That is, they are doing no worse than half of the countries using lockdowns! Now if Sweden were an outlier at 20 or 30% (where everyone started) then I would say the evidence was compelling that lockdowns were effective. However, that isn’t the case. To be convincing that lockdowns actually work better than just social distancing, you have to explain Sweden.
Clyde, population density, first case date all make a major difference.
Let’s see where Sweden are in 3 weeks, but before then they will also be in lockdown.
Compare Sweden to Czechia where they where face masks, Sweden spread is 50% higher than Czechia.
Check out Stockholm’s rates where the density is comparable.
You cannot compare population density in a country like Sweden with UK. In Sweden 65%of the territory is forrest and 60% of the territory is in the north region where there is hardly anybody, 10% of the population.
Stockholm with 10% of the population has a density of more than 5.000 inhabitants/ km²
Great Stockholm is at 350 inhabitants/km²
Goteborg is 1200 inh./km² and great Goteborg is at 240…
I am wondering how they are actually behaving, vs how people in other places are behaving?
If everyone else has restricted travel, at least that part is moot for them. No one can leave there or come from somewhere else…if I understand correctly.
Have all countries banned travel between countries?
IDK…to much to keep up with.
If in some places some percentage of people, say 50%, have isolated themselves except for going to get groceries now and then, then it seem to me the pool of people that might pass it around is now half as big.
If people stop close talking, hugging, shaking hands, etc, and just in general act like everyone else might have something on them that they do not want to get themselves, that would seem pretty likely to me to slow down the spread.
Are they still going to movies, having concerts, ballgames, parties, crowding onto buses and trains, etc?
If not, they may not be calling it a lock down, but people are basically doing the same stuff as anyplace else.
And…I find it impossible to believe that there are not just about as many people who have decided they do not want to get this virus and are simply staying home all the time as much as possible.
But I do not know.
What matters is how people are behaving that is different, not what they call it or whether it is an official policy.
You can read about their controls here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Sweden
They have a good roundup for every country.
This explains a bit:
https://twitter.com/pauld198/status/1243322026166636545
Well, that does seem to well explain at least the pattern of most intense infection.
Number of routes is likely closely correlated with the number of people travelling between those locations. (OK, yeah…that was a Captain Obvious thought)
In response to Clyde Spencer, in several postings I have fairly pointed out the Swedish anomaly. I am about to do some calculations to see whether there has been increased under-reporting of cases in Sweden, whose public-health authorities are coming under increasing pressure to introduce a lockdown.
In any event, each country had to decide for itself whether it had sufficient hospital capacity to allow the virus to continue to spread at the daily 20% compound rate that prevailed in the three weeks to March 14. In Britain, we did not have anything like enough capacity, so the do-nothing brigade were overruled and a lockdown was introduced. As a result, we bought ourselves time to increase intensive-care capacity.
The alternative would have been mass deaths, a complete breakdown of the healthcare system and social disorder.
People in Sweden are very likely doing more than the no lock down and business as usual assertion for that country that I have seen in media reports.
The wikipedia page just above from A C Osborn describes people working from home, being advised to take precautions, etc.
There may not be all that much difference in how people are actually behaving.
As you have noted elsewhere, the general public appears to have a good deal of common sense after all, at least regarding such matters as personal survival when danger is perceived.
Lord Monckton, if you ride your bike a lot you probably inhale so much garbage that you’re immune to everything.
at any rate, they must be throwing huge parties at the CCP
first they managed to cover up for weeks the leak of a deadly virus, with the complicity of WHO
then they come up with the lockdown idea, and start a propaganda campaign to show that it brings down the contagion rate to ZERO. sure. the magic of total control over communication.
then they manage to successfully export the lockdown model to the whole world, killing the entire occidental industry without one single shot.
then they pose as the saviours of the planet, delivering millions of masks and tests and thousands of ventilators that they have magically produced during a massive epidemic with total lockdown of entire regions. they must be real industrial geniuses to have different regions completely indipendent from each other for industrial production.
what can i say. a stroke of genius like very few in history. who needs cannons and bombers, when you have governments so efficient in destroying their own countries?
“4759 patients with non-COVID-19 viral pneumonia, most of them caused by flu, over the three complete years 2017-2019.”
You cannot know that these patients had non-COVID-19 pneumonia – SARS-CoV-2 tests did not exist in 2017-2019.
The results given in this article, from the data provided by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre in London, seem to reinforce conclusions already drawn in the paper below:
‘Rhinovirus infection in the adults was associated with significantly higher mortality and longer hospitalization when compared with influenza virus infection.’
‘More patients in the rhinovirus group developed pneumonia complications (p = 0.03), required oxygen therapy, and had a longer hospitalization period (p < 0.001), whereas more patients in the influenza virus group presented with fever (p < 0.001) and upper respiratory tract symptoms of cough and sore throat (p < 0.001), and developed cardiovascular complications (p < 0.001).'
'Unexpectedly Higher Morbidity and Mortality of Hospitalized Elderly Patients Associated with Rhinovirus Compared with Influenza Virus Respiratory Tract Infection'
International Journal of Molecular Sciences Feb 2017
But, without any idea of what other prior health problems the various most unfortunate patients in the respective groups may have suffered from, it seems difficult to draw any other conclusions than those given in International Journal of Molecular Sciences Feb 2017, as above, which doesn't really move us forward.
COVID-19 in Proportion?
By the end of this week in England and Wales, around 5,893 people have died “with” COVID-19. If 2020 follows the pattern of 2018, a bad year for flu, then in the same time period…
around 33,630 people will have died from Flu/Pneumonia
COVID-19 will be linked to around 3% of total deaths which number 187,720data updated 2020-04-09
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/878916/Weekly_all_cause_mortality_surveillance_week_15_2020_report.pdf
Something is killing us. These figures go up to last Friday. The spike might be 2.5 times as big next week.
I live in a state which was “locked down” by our Governor two weeks ago. My state will remain locked down for at least another two weeks.
Why?
Because to date 103 mostly old/infirm individuals have died from/with Covid-19.
In other words, our Governor locked down our state for a month — causing untold economic and psychological harm to virtually all state citizens — because to date .00177% of the state’s population has died of this “scourge.”
Am I the only one in the room that sees the absurdity of the situation?
Like I said: we have nothing
but we can ……?
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2020/04/01/i-have-nothing/
Have a blessed Easter!
Hayward, CA … 6 dead, 59 cases of ChiCom-19 Virus at ONE Nursing Home!!
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/08/covid19-six-dead-at-hayward-nursing-home-cases-there-jump-to-59/
Why is NOBODY asking WHY? … WHY? … there have been so many outbreaks of The WuHan virus at Nursing Homes? Is it because all Answers are “ugly”? That it is all traceable to Chinese National Doctors, Nurses, and staff? And that Elder Care homes are notoriously FILTHY places? Yeah, yeah call me a “racist” … and put up a WALL of Political correctness to examining the TRUE cause. Is this a systemic case of Elder-abuse?
We all know this is not an isolated incident, but rather a systemic problem with Elderly care homes ACROSS America (and the world). Yes, old people should be DYING at a higher rate … but why the elevated infection rate? For all intents and purposes these Elder care nursing homes are ALREADY socially distanced from most of the public. They are visited and operated by a small subset of the general population. Why aren’t we curious about this, and looking for solutions?
My reading would be that these infections are iatrogenic. It’s the doctors who visit the care homes who carried the infection into them.
bad form … major strawman … nobody is claiming that it is less infectious than the flu …
and you know it …
There are some people saying that, and other sorts of things that are clearly untrue.
It is inappropriate to use seasonal flu as a metric as here in the UK the most vulnerable have the option of inoculation, as do NHS staff, and hence the mortality rate is somewhat reduced (these are the very same groups who are susceptible to CoViD19); it is comparing apples and oranges.
More significant is probably the mortality rate of sepsis.
134000 people across the world die each day from sepsis. (20% of all deaths)
53000 die each year in the UK from sepsis more than bowel and breast cancer combined.
1,700,000 people contract sepsis each year in the USA with a mortality of 270,000
https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/sepsis.aspx
https://www.dw.com/en/sepsis-a-common-cause-of-death-from-coronavirus/a-52758193
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6970225/
Another comparison would be TB:
In 2018 there were almost 1.5 million deaths cross the world
London has the highest rate of pulmonary TB in the UK
The UK mortality rate for TB is 5 times higher than the USA and is second highest in Western Europe
and in parts of East London it is comparable with India
The UK rate in 2012 was 12 per 100,000 in 2018 this was 8 per 100000, whilst the US in 2018 had 3 per 100,000.
https://statistics.blf.org.uk/tb
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6911a3.htm
UK TB, courtesy of Immigration.
in parts of E. London you’d think you were in India.
You have to make tough decisions when the cure is worse than the disease. Poverty is said to indirectly kill more people than anything except old age. Avoiding #19 will not make it go away. Only antibody/herd immunity and yet to be developed vaccine will spare individuals unless they are self vigilant or lucky. I think it should be left up to the individual how much precaution they want to take in their own defense of the virus. It has already been proven that being locked up in an aged care environment …. seemingly a safe place with minimal social contact …. is most deadly. At the sake of being pedantic, being more deadly doesn’t preclude #19 from being another flu.
read this
https://news.mb.com.ph/2020/04/09/one-hundred-italian-doctors-have-died-of-virus-medics/
then read the comments