By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
[Update: Good news: Boris Johnson is now out of intensive care. His prospects for recovery are, therefore, very greatly improved.]
Consider how fair-minded is our kind host. There are two very different policy positions on the handling of the Chinese-virus question: the passivist (let the population acquire “herd immunity” and hope that the virus is not much worse than the annual flu) and the activist (salus populi suprema lex: take whatever steps are needed, even if the economic cost is heavy, to ensure that healthcare systems are not overrun).
My good friend Willis Eschenbach is a protagonist of the passivist position, on the ground that the virus is not much more infectious and not much more fatal than the flu. I am a protagonist of the activist position whenever a new and fatal pathogen emerges, on the ground that until one knows more about the true case rate one must be guided by the growth rate in new cases, which, in the early stages of any uncontrolled pandemic with a population that has no immunity, is necessarily exponential.
It stands greatly to the credit of our kind host that both of these points of view are fairly reflected here, and the quality of the data and arguments being offered on both sides, not only in head postings (for instance Rud Istvan’s excellent medical postings) but also in the discussion between commenters is high. It is not unjustifiable to say that more, and more profound, information about the Chinese virus is being posted here, in a more fair-minded way, than anywhere else. This is how free speech ought to work.
Today’s post will be about how to resolve the dichotomy between the activist and passivist positions. First, the data. Precisely because the early stages of a pandemic necessarily show exponential growth, policymakers in responsible governments are guided, first and foremost, by the mean daily rate of growth in confirmed cases – i.e., cases the great majority of which are identified and reported because they are serious.
During the three weeks up to March 14, the date on which Mr Trump declared a national emergency, the global daily compound growth rate in total confirmed cases was almost 20%. Exponential growth that high, if it had been allowed to continue, could potentially have killed millions to hundreds of millions worldwide. That, above all, was the reason why governments decided, albeit with extreme reluctance and (in the UK and the US for instance, much later than they should have done) to interfere with transmission.
The problem with being late is that the lockdowns had to be much more severe than they would have been if the interventions had been more timely.
However, as our daily graphs here are demonstrating, the lockdowns are working. Of course, some countries – notably Sweden – have not introduced strict lockdowns, and yet the daily case growth rate is falling there too. That is one of the chief reasons why the passivists argue that if we too had not introduced lockdowns the numbers would have fallen just as fast and just as far.
Another reason, well reflected in a recent posting by Willis Eschenbach, is that official sources originally predicted ten times the deaths they are now predicting and that, if they had gotten the predictions right in the first place, no lockdowns would have been needed.
The excellent Dr Fauci, for instance, had predicted 200,000 deaths in the U.S., but Mr Eschenbach, on the basis of a model, considers the number may prove to be only 20,000.
Naturally, any model worth its salt will necessary look at the case growth rate at the time when the run begins. The daily case growth rate of 20% that had obtained before March 24, applied also to deaths (a lagging indicator), would have turned the cumulative 20,000 deaths up until then into 310,000 deaths by April 8 and 17 million deaths by the end of April.
As it is, by 8 April worldwide deaths were less than 90,000. And why? Because the mean daily case growth rate has been falling. Over the 15 days from March 24 to April 8, the daily mean growth rate in deaths was just 10.5%. If this lower growth rate were to be continue till the end of April, there would be 800,000 deaths by then and not 17 million. So of course current runs will be showing far lower estimates of the eventual death toll than earlier runs.
It is elementary calculations like these, based not on predictive models (which are useless in the early stages of a new pandemic) but on the observed exponential growth rates, that led governments to decide that the passivists, for the time being, would not be heeded.
The case growth rate continues to fall. Because lockdowns work, some of that decline is attributable to them. Here is today’s updated graph, showing that, for the world excluding China, whose data are unreliable, the daily mean case growth rate has fallen to less than 8%:
Fig. 1. Mean compound daily growth rates in confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from March 14 to April 8, 2020.
But what about deaths? Taking the world as a whole, excluding China, the daily compound growth rate in deaths has fallen to about 10.5%, while in the U.S. and U.K. it is about 16-17%. Note that the graph begins on March 23, not on March 14, and that, as with the case graph, the rates shown are weekly-smoothed rates, to iron out the often large daily fluctuations in counts.
Fig. 2. Mean compound daily growth rates in reported COVID-19 deaths for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from March 23 to April 8, 2020.
Now that we have the data before us, how can the spy’s dilemma assist us in resolving the conflict between the activists and the passivists? That is an important question at present, because the passivists are justifiably impatient to end the lockdowns, for the economic damage they cause is considerable, while the activists, with no less justification, would rather be sure the case growth rate will not return to 20% if the lockdowns are lifted.
This dichotomy between two legitimate and strongly-argued positions is the spy’s dilemma. Imagine an agent in the field. He will nearly always be investigating a subject in which he has no specialist knowledge, and he will also have incomplete and potentially inadequate or even inaccurate data. How, then, can he advise his superiors sensibly?
I once gave a lecture on the spy’s dilemma to 200 trainee James Bonds at the Intelligence School of the Army of Colombia in Bogota. Using global warming as an example, I said that, as a non-specialist in climatology I had had to try to decide between two competing scientific points of view: the passivists, who thought there was nothing much to worry about, and the activists, who thought the planet itself might be at risk of destruction unless capitalism were closed down.
How was I, as a layman, to decide between the graph of the past 1000 years’ temperatures produced by the formidable atmospheric physicist Hubert Lamb, and reproduced in IPCC’s First Assessment Report, and the hokey-stick graph produced in the frankly Communist academic environment of today by Mann, Bradley and Hughes?
I began by saying that data generated by totalitarian are generally more suspect than data produced by those with no Party Line to defend. Therefore, I said, one would instinctively prefer Hubert Lamb’s graph to the hokey-stick graph. However, though evaluation of the likely reliability of source data is always desirable, it is not on its own always definitive.
I explained how Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would have resolved the two competing positions by the use of elenchus, still the most powerful technique for reaching the objective truth ever devised.
Fig. 3. Hokey-cokey: Hubert Lamb’s reconstruction of the past 1000 years’ temperature (top panel, from IPCC, 1990), which shows the medieval warm period as warmer than the present and the little ice age as colder, was replaced in IPCC (2001) by Michael Mann’s infamous hokey-stick graph (bottom panel), followed by many me-too graphs that purport to abolish the medieval warm period and the little ice age.
The climate activists say that global warming goes chiefly into the oceans, causing sea level to rise. Therefore, alongside their statement that the hokey-stick graph is true we can place the new statement, with which we expect them to agree, that sea-level rise or fall is an indication of temperature rise or fall. We can then draw conclusions from that additional statement.
The simplest way to decide which of the two competing 1000-year temperature graphs is correct is to compare them both with an independent graph of the past 1000 years’ sea-level change. Only one of the two competing temperature graphs closely follows the sea-level graph. The other, very conspicuously, does not. Therefore, I said, even a non-specialist with an open and enquiring mind could reach a rational – and correct – discernment of the objective even when faced with two directly-competing expert positions, and even in a field in which he holds no qualifications: for that is what an intelligence agent in the field must do every day. For that lecture, I was awarded the Intelligence Medal of the Army of Colombia:
How, then, should be apply the Spy’s Dilemma to the lockdown question? See how similar it is to the climate question. There are two competing scientific positions, both of them having some sound arguments in their favor. The data are manifestly incomplete, inadequate and often downright inaccurate.
For instance, the British government, comprising an unduly high fraction of innumerates, has not yet understood the importance of keeping a very careful track of how many of its confirmed cases have recovered. The reason why this matters is that, during the early stages of a pandemic, the least inaccurate way of deriving the true case fatality rate is to study the closed cases – those who have had the infection and have either recovered or died. Globally outside China, the confirmed-case fatality rate thus derived is currently about 25%. That seems very much too high, leading to the suspicion that Britain is by no means the only country whose experts have not understood the importance of keeping an accurate count of those who have recovered.
The official figures have stated for several days that only 135 of the 60,000 confirmed cases have recovered. If that were truly the case, it would be an indictment of the National Health Service. So you can expect the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who attends all Cabinet Office Briefings on emergencies such as this, to demand that ministers get their act together and require the health service to provide a proper daily count of those who have recovered. It is known, for instance, that of the first 2249 intensive-care cases almost 400 have recovered. Inferentially, a far larger faction of the less serious confirmed cases will have recovered by now.
In tomorrow’s daily update, I shall describe some further methods of intelligence analysis that would assist governments in deciding when and how and to what extent to bring lockdowns to an end. For now, I shall point out that the pandemic will not have reached its peak until the daily compound confirmed-case growth rate becomes negative. At present, it remains strongly positive, though trending in the right direction.
Therefore, it would not be appropriate to assume that half of all cases – let alone half of all deaths – have yet occurred. We all want the lockdowns to end, but at present it is better to wait a little longer. So keep safe.
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Lord Monckton,
I don’t doubt that the lockdowns are doing “something”, but the way you are examining the data will tell you nothing about quantification of that something. The technical term in engineering is “turd-polishing”.
In almost every country, with a few exceptions, the growth rates in reported cases are a strong function of testing capacity and testing policy. In the UK for example – the worst in Europe in terms of build of testing capacity, the daily additions of cases have been determined throughout almost entirely by testing capacity and not by any underlying growth in infections. Even in countries which have managed to develop a high testing capacity fairly rapidly, mixing high density urban population samples with samples from rural communities gives a completely misleading impression of the depth of infection, as does adding statistics from outbreak areas to areas which are still relatively untouched. The cases and the deaths reported as a percentage of the population of Bergamo province in northern Italy are an order of magnitude worse than national statistics for Italy. Even then, the epidemiology unit of the University of Milan recently reported estimated minimum number of infections in Italy of 5mm people (with upside estimate of 20mm people) when the reported confirmed tested case number was just over 100,000 !
In New York, from 4th March to 16th March, the test results were mainly at 100% positive (capacity limited). After that date, as test capacity was added, the test results dropped for one day to 9% positive and then climbed to between 40 and 50% positive over the last 10 days. Case numbers are still increasing on a daily basis, but a semilog plot of cases against time shows a continuous curve – no clear evidence of constant exponential growth anywhere. So tell me, how many people are infected today in New York? What would that number be without the lockdown? I really don’t know, but I am absolutely certain that it requires a detailed granular analysis to abstract anything remotely sensible from the data available. Your semilog analysis is just far too naive to inform decisions which will save or wreck many lives.
I know it’s a subtle point, but these graphics are based on “reported cases” not actual cases. It seems to me (I could be wrong) that the reported number will never be “real-time” so might sudden bumps in the graph’s line be attributed to a bump in the number of paperwork reports? Just a thought.
So the death rates are 133 ,000 for flu this year and 95,000 for Corona. I guess flu is at its most lethal in the countries experiencing winter.
The problem is cases being attributed to Corona when they died of something else- ”
“In a world first, the Swedish government has announced that it is going to officially distinguish between deaths „by“ and deaths „with“ the coronavirus, which should lead to a reduction in reported deaths. Meanwhile, for some reason, international pressure on Sweden to abandon its liberal strategy is steadily increasing.
The Hamburg health authority now has test-positive deaths examined by forensic medicine in order to count only „real“ corona deaths. As a result, the number of deaths has already been reduced by up to 50% compared to the official figures of the Robert Koch Institute”
Given that THE virus kills nobody, it is the bodies over- reaction to it that does the deed, we can easily get the “deaths from SARS-CoV-2” down to zero in no time at all…
Yes, Mann’s primary contribution to “climate science” is the Hokey Stick, which ironically destroys his reputation as a scientists and puts him in the deserving company of charlatans and shysters! Quackery has delivered its just rewards once again!
Countries with no lock down, Sweden , South Korean and Japan saw no long term exponential growth.
Indeed Japan is sitting at 5,530 cases and 99 deaths ( that will change today) in one of the most densely packed countries in the world.
With respect to the lockdown :
– without lockdown, according to the data available for the countries which did not impose it, the epidemy is over in about a month,
– with lockdown, it takes at best some 4 to 5 weeks but those who imposed a lockdown will face soon or later a second wave.
With respect to the death ratio, most of the countries which imposed the lockdown are still facing the worst death toll. But the death toll vary a lot between countries which adopted the same strategies so the containment seems not to be significant with respect to observed death tolls.
The only actual difference is that those who imposed containment have destroyed their economy.
with lockdown we can expect another bought later in the year.
“The two Stanford professors of medicine, Dr. Eran Bendavid and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, explain in an article that the lethality of Covid19 is overestimated by several orders of magnitude and is probably even in Italy only at 0.01% to 0.06% and thus below that of influenza. The reason for this overestimation is the greatly underestimated number of people already infected (without symptoms). As an example, the fully tested Italian community of Vo is mentioned, which showed 50 to 75% symptom-free test-positive persons”
In Germany they used the region around Heinsberg as open living laboratory.
They found the death rate to be at 0.375%
Krishna,
Just for information, that is not a Case Fatality Rate (CFR). It is an estimate of the overall population mortality rate – 44 deaths out of a population of 12,000 people in a town which was hard hit by COVID-19.
And, at least, the studies there are seen as doubtful now.
The antidbody test used in this study is most likely flawed (no neurtalization steps included) and detects also harmless cold corona viruses therefore leading to a way too low calculated lethality rate. Other critiques of the study point out that it doesn’t distinguish between people of one household or unrelated ones as well as it does not give any age distribution of the people tested (yet).
and on and on it goes. It seems there are those trying to circle the wagons and prop up the myth that lock down was necessary.-
“Italy: The renowned Italian virologist Giulio Tarro argues that the mortality rate of Covid19 is below 1% even in Italy and is therefore comparable to influenza. The higher values only arise because no distinction is made between deaths with and by Covid19 and because the number of (symptom-free) infected persons is greatly underestimated”
So why are the Italian hospitals overflowing, when they weren’t before? Are you saying there’s some other disease that’s suddenly broken out?
One of the meanings for “moron”:
A layman believing to be a spy and also acting upon that believe.
The (moronic) layman dilemma on “to be or not to be a spy”… (like James Bond)
Another one:
Shoot first and ask questions later, in the face of “first do not do harm”.
Another one:
Claiming and telling others that Socrates was a layman and a spy… or kinda of a James Bond like character.
Making Socrates look like a person who would have surrendered his life and his freedom to death…
or to whomever there in the prospect of death….. hilarious. (the very antithesis of Socrates)
Or another:
Free speech consist as a tool or a platform for validation of the ciceronian expression as truth.
and the list goes on and on.
Oh another one:
Believing and strongly advising and “teaching” that a layman approach to matters in consideration of science should be by the means of a political method.
And as always a moron will fail to understand the proposition of:
“free speech is a bitch” (one we cannot do without)
A question here:
“How should one be called or addressed when and where, one keeps feverishly playing and propagating the beauty of the cold war rules from the “bible” of cold war, in the case of a real unraveling happening
“hot” global war?!”
Could this act be considered as fair or just!
cheers
cheers
Thank you for the Fig. of Grinstead 2009. Never seen it before. Very illustrative!
Concerning the “exponential growth”. Actually, it is the logistic function
0.5*(1+tanh(T/rate)).
It is exponential at the very beginning only. Then it saturates.
This is the simplest model and the most reliable one.
BTW, the Germans are now claiming, the number of detected infections saturated not because of “lockdowns”, but because the testing capacity is reached.
“For now, I shall point out that the pandemic will not have reached its peak until the daily compound confirmed-case growth rate becomes negative. At present, it remains strongly positive, though trending in the right direction.”
I respectfully disagree.
What does Farr’s Law[1] say about the matter?
I have been tracking (I know not why) figures from ArcCIS[2] since early March. (These, very conveniently, are presented as an Excel spreadsheet with daily new and cumulative cases and deaths, which I do not deal with here.) In particular I have been focussing on the cumulative figures rather than the “noisy” daily figures in order to comprehend what others are talking about. I was particularly interested in seeing how Farr’s Law worked in practice as an epidemic progressed. I dismiss as a side issue for the moment whether Farr’s bell-curve is a classical statistical exponential exp(-x²) or sech²(x) for the probability density function (PDF). Either way results, by integration (yielding erfc or tanh respectively), in a cumulative figure which is an S-shape, being asymptotic at both extremes and with a point of inflection in the middle, which I dub the “critical point”, and is the point at which the total number of cases is half the ultimate number . I chose the sech²(x) . I then focussed on trying to get the correct parameters (both the magnitude and timing of the peak of the curve) to fit Farr’s Law. As expected, I could not do this initially because the initial exponential rate of rise because obviously an exponential has no peak and had an alarming rate of doubling every 3.1 days. I awaited the point at which the actual data significantly deviated from a simple exponential. Until then one could not establish if this was going to be a high peak in the distant future or a low peak the following week. I was surprised at the remarkably good fit of the data to a smooth curve, and was delighted (and relieved) when, sure enough, the actual data began to drop below the exponential. By 1st April the “doubling period had grown to 5 days and by 8th April it was up to 10 days. This enabled me very tentatively to place the “critical point” at 5th April, which would enable a guess of the final number to be twice what it was on that date, giving a ball-park of 80,000 as the “ultimate” confirmed cases in the UK. I was greatly (and I hope not temporarily) delighted to conclude that we were already at, or even had just passed, the critical point
I seem to differ from from Christopher Monckton somewhat not in basic approach but whether we have reached “the peak”. There may be minor communication issues here: what does “the pandemic will not have reached its peak until the daily compound confirmed-case growth becomes negative” mean? I think he is referring to what I called the critical point: the point where the (smoothed) daily new case count starts going down, or, equivalently, where the (smoothed) cumulative total goes through a point of inflexion, or, again equivalently, when the second derivative of the cumulative total goes negative (“the curve bends down”). Either way, I think we in the UK have now reached peak daily new case, but he does not. However, I agree that the matters he raises about collecting statistics, different ways of counting and especially counting the number of recoveries are major issues.
Quite separately, I am not convinced that lockdown is a good idea or even that it had any significant effect on the present state of the epidemic, and that the cure is worse than the disorder, but that is for future discussion.
Finally the simple exponential model is amenable to simple interpretation. During the initial explosive exponential phase the total number of uninfected but susceptible hosts is relatively unchanged, but during the later stage (say, after half the possible number have been infected) the virus begins to run out of susceptible hosts. One does not know in advance what proportion of the total population is susceptible. Obviously, Neil Ferguson’s full-time study of this will have yielded a more sophisticated and, we hope, reliable model of how this pandemic will develop or decay, but we shall have wait until that model, code, data and test results are published before we can comment on it.
[1] William Farr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Farr (1840)
[2] Daily Confirmed Cases: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=e5fd11150d274bebaaf8fe2a7a2bda11
(2020)
suffolkboy, thank you for your very apt and lucid comment. I too am trying make as much sense out of all this as I can. The way I thought of to test whether Farr’s Law (S shaped cumulative cases function, with symmetrical curves at the two ends) applies was to look at the countries which are nearest to over the epidemic.
South Korea seems to go for a while as if it is going to be symmetrical, but instead around March 10th settles into a fairly constant linear upward trend. Presumably this is due to increased roll-out of testing? Or could it be that the virus is expanding into parts of the country it hasn’t reached before?
The Faeroe Islands gives something very close to a Farr’s Law curve. It’s such a small population that the virus seems to have gone straight through them all before anybody could do anything. They have tested 11% of their population now, so their figures are going to be as good as anyone’s. Furthermore, they haven’t had a single death yet! Iceland is on a similar path (9.5% of the population tested, 6 deaths), but the straightening-out of the cumulative cases curve isn’t clear yet. Why the death toll in Iceland and the Faeroes is so low, in comparison to other small isolated places like San Marino and Andorra, which are among the very worst, is an interesting question.
Austria is showing a good attempt at a symmetrical curve, but if you look at the new daily cases it looks as if the right tail is going to be longer than the left. Maybe twice as long? But again, perhaps that’s due to expanded testing finding cases which wouldn’t have been found before.
What I have been trying to do is use an Excel spreadsheet to try to detect the peak in each country directly. What I do is average each day’s reading with the 3 days prior and the 3 days after. This seems to smooth the data (which seems in most countries to have a persistent “wobble” in the new case count, with a period of 5-6 days) quite well. Here is what I’ve found so far:
Spain – peaked on 29th March, now down to 75% of peak.
Italy – peaked on 23rd March, now 72% of peak.
Germany – peaked on 30th March, now 82% of peak.
Switzerland – peaked on 22nd March, now 67% of peak.
Austria – peaked on 25th March, now 40% of peak. They seem to be the country to follow.
Portugal – peaked on 31st March, now 88% of peak.
Norway – peaked on 26th March, now 56% of peak. Second best after the Austrians.
Belgium and the Netherlands are currently wobbling around what seems likely to be their peak. The UK, Sweden, Ireland and Denmark are still trending upwards, but increasingly slowly. France, I haven’t even looked at, because all their data prior to 3rd April is in essence rubbish.
As to whether it is the lockdowns that are having an effect, or the virus starting to peter out naturally (which would require an earlier entry of the virus to each country, and a much higher proportion of unreported asymptomatic and mild cases, than we’re being led to expect), I’m firmly in the agnostic camp at the moment. Evidence for the lockdowns doing it is that the time lapse from lockdown to peak seems to be varying between about 6 and 15 days. But this could simply be a result of each government deciding to impose a lockdown at much the same point in the epidemic. Hopefully, Sweden will give us some conclusive data one way or another.
On the other hand, there’s evidence from the geographical distribution of cases in the Netherlands for a much higher level of immunity in the general population than many think. Most of the “hot spots” there are in rural areas, many of them way out in the south-east of the country. The densely populated Randstad is little affected. In particular, Amsterdam and Rotterdam are showing lower cases per population even than some of the more suburban areas around them. That will need some explaining.
Thank you for the quick response. Those are fascinating comparisons between different countries and “rurality”. What struck me was the similarity (rather than the exceptions) between the time of the “peak” between different countries.
You also mentioned asymmetry, which the Gompertz function allows for (giving three parameters) whereas the sigmoid functions give only two. I didn’t think I had the time or maths skills to work out how to fit Gompertz functions to raw so I stuck with a Farr-like symmetrical simpler case. I may have to revisit that, because if the numbers fit better to a Gompertz function the resulting asymmetry may yield quite different results for time of peak and value of peak. This will take some time.
I am agnostic about lockdown. I can see the logic (and political motivation) of delaying the peak and broadening the width in order to buy time and to avoid swamping resources. At the same time, the level of mortality is so low and the doubling time so short that it is beginning to appear that the expense of the lockdown vastly outweighs the benefit, and that the whole thing is “just another flu epidemic”.
Finally, I am optimistic about the speed of response in modern times. IMHO the perceived lack of a contingency “store” of ventilators, kit, medication and suchlike was less relevant to dealing with the problem. Instead we had modern ability to switch manufacturing and distribution to where it is needed so quickly that mattered, together with the organisational ability to construct field hospitals (royally opened!) in such a short space of time. Perhaps if the “second wave” comes in the autumn we shall be prepared. In the meantime we have significant economic bomb damage in need of repair.
I wonder if there is a great underreporting of deaths from corona. Many news headlines point to this. There should be some checks against the death statistics to see how the difference between 2020 and earlier years comes out. In UK the death rate follows the common trend to March 20th, then the trends differ. Deaths of the yearly flu go down on this time of the year. Ant this decrease should be stronger with the measures that are taken this year. Statistics end up with 1000 more deaths than usual after one week, March 27th. The trend goes in the opposite direction, upwards.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending27march2020#deaths-registered-by-week
There is no need to use nuclear bomb when a good howitzer will do.
During the first 5 days, the SARS-Cov-2 virus occupies your lungs without causing symptoms. How many people can you get infected for 5 days?
The real infection rate is MUCH higher than the current stats indicate….which means the death rate is much lower.
New York City hires laborers to bury dead in Hart Island potter’s field amid coronavirus surge
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-hart-island/new-york-city-hires-laborers-to-bury-dead-in-hart-island-potters-field-amid-coronavirus-surge-idUSKCN21R398
Lockdown or not is not really what drives economic fallout.
To turn the corner, the infection rate has to come down below 1.
What we try to do is to apply the pareto principle to achieve that:
-have 80% of people apply practices that prevent 80% of the contagion paths
– this basically means to convince 80% of people to maintain at least 2 meter separation from others
As for lockdown or not, that simply boils down to cultural and/or judicial traditions as to achieving the above.
The basic economic impact comes from the separation goal, not from which means is being used for achieving it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgXWqFUs8c4
“COVID-19: WHO Benefits? And Epidemiology Lesson”
Regarding lockdowns, 15 years ago I would have agreed with Willis and just let the thing work its own way out. Now, though, I am 80, have high blood pressure which is controlled by medication with a side effect of making me susceptible to pulmonary infections, and one of my kidneys doesn’t work very well. Life is good, the grandchildren are growing and I have just bought a nearly new set of racing sails. So now i have to agree with Lord Monckton and also try to stay out of the way of the virus.
In “The fear in their eyes” by Dean Koontz, published in 1981, it says that there will appear in 2020 a virus called Wuhan 400 which will die out quite quickly and then reappear in 2030.
Make of that what you will.
So you’re quite fine with policy that harms everyone to possibly preserve your privileged life for a few more years? mkay…
Make of it what you like. Dunno about the privileged bit, though, I worked bloody hard for 39 years in uniform for what i now have.
Yes and no, Oldseadog.
The 1989 edition of Dean Koontz’s “The fear in their eyes” does have a fictional virus called Wuhan 400 from a Chinese bioweapons lab (in the 1981 edition, it’s from a Russian Lab and has a different name) but it’s symptoms and behavior (incubation time is measured in hours and is 100% fatal) do not match those of the real life Wuhan virus (incubation time is measured in days, and is only 1% to 2% fatal). However, the 2020 appearance, disappearance, reappearance in 2030 is not from Dean’s book. That comes from another book, psychic Sylvia Browne’s “End of Days”.
I stand corrected, thanks. My information was from an apparently unreliable sourcs. Otherwise known as chronometric disfunction, or old age.
not sure what it normally is but flights seem fairly busy in the US-
https://www.flightradar24.com/28.65,-77.3/6
This is largely an artifact of fairly bizarre policy decision that 1) require airlines to maintain their pre-COVID flight schedules in exchange for bailout cash, and 2) require airlines to maintain gate usage metrics to avoid losing gate access in the future. Many if not most of these flights are well under capacity.
Lord Monckton,
Two days ago, you wrote about Boris Johnson, “on current data, he is more likely to die than not.”
You wrote that, presumably with good knowledge of whatever ‘current data’ regarding COVID-19, but with little or no data regarding Mr. Johnson himself or his health condition at the time. Surely a prerequisite. You, also, as far as I can tell, lack the medical training to make such a prognosis.
On that basis, why should I take the time to read anything you write now or in the future?
This question is asked in good faith, since I have, heretofore, been an admirer of your published work on climate issues.
Andy may like to read my previous head posting, which provided the data from the British intensive-care outcomes survey demonstrating that among closed intensive-care cases half had recovered and half had died. At the time when I wrote, it was known that the Prime Minister had been transferred to intensive care, but no information was available on whether he required ventilation. At the time of writing, then, the article was correct, based on the latest clinical data and on the information then available about the Prime Minister. However, the article was not posted on the day it was written and submitted (I have no control over the publication date). By the time it was posted, it had become known that the Prime Minister had not required ventilation. Now he is on the mend, thank Heavens, and that fact is recorded in the opening paragraph of today’s posting.
1. How old were the cases?
2. How many illnesses did they already have?
3. Did they they die of something else though they had corona?
you are missing out a lot of info.
At the time when I wrote, it was known that the Prime Minister had been transferred to intensive care, but no information was available on whether he required ventilation.
As far as I remember there was immediate information that PM in conscious, not on the mechanical ventilator but ‘only’ on oxygen supply and there is no sign of pneumonia. In any case great news that he’s recovering!
I reckon one of the reasons ‘activists’ argue so ferociously is they realize ‘lockdowns’ to be effective in longer run will have to stay not one, two or three weeks but much longer, possibly months. Alternatively, lockdowns may need to be re-imposed on frequent basis, depends how disease re-occurs. So sooner or later – when gloomy economic reality bites harder – we will have to face the question how we want to live with this virus and not ruin whole countries. What if whole countries go bust and will fall under Chinese domination? I’ve heard that Italian economy will shrink by 15% in one go. So yes, save lives as economy may recover but dead ones not – until the resurrection. Still in the longer go we must have sensible exit strategies, otherwise indeed ‘cure will be worse that disease’.
What was his treatment, President Trump called him I believe.
This is not to say Germany has defeated COVID-19.
Its coronavirus death rate of 1.9%, based on data collated by Reuters, is the lowest among the countries most affected and compares with 12.6% in Italy. But experts say more deaths in Germany are inevitable.
“The death rate will rise,” said Lothar Wieler, president of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
The difference between Germany and Italy is partly statistical: Germany’s rate seems so much lower because it has tested widely. Germany has carried out more than 1.3 million tests, according to the Robert Koch Institute. It is now carrying out up to 500,000 tests a week, Drosten said. Italy has conducted more than 807,000 tests since Feb. 21, according to its Civil Protection Agency. With a few local exceptions, Italy only tests people taken to hospital with clear and severe symptoms.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-defences-i/pass-the-salt-the-minute-details-that-helped-germany-build-virus-defenses-idUSKCN21R1DB
great- so they didn’t want a complete lock down-
“At the end of last week, the Prime Minister was beginning to wonder if the country was taking his advice too much to heart. He asked us to stay at home – and we have. At each daily press conference, medical and scientific advisers talk about the plunge in use of transport and how well rules are being observed. What they don’t say is that this was not quite in their original plan. Government modellers didn’t expect such obedience: the expected workers to carry on and at least a million pupils to be left in school by parents”
“In tomorrow’s daily update, I shall describe some further methods of intelligence analysis that would assist governments in deciding when and how and to what extent to bring lockdowns to an end.”
MoB.
I have been watching Korea closely (HK as well and China as I will have to return some day soon)
Korean cases have been roughly Linear. 100 cases a day, (now 50) for weeks on end.
the economy has slowed but not come to a halt.
Looked at as a process the following seems true.
1. the absolute number of cases does not matter that much as long as the health care system
can handle the load. That LOAD figure must be calculated accurately. then a safety margin
must be allowed for. Same as designing a plane. you dont design mission critical stuff
without a safety margin.
2. The cases should not overload the capacity to test and track. It is the Korean testing and tracking
that KEEPS THE GROWTH LINEAR.
3. The tracking resolution ( % of cases that can be traced to an index patient) has to be high. 80+ %
So in terms of the constraints the growth in cases over the age of 50 must be kept below the carrying
capacity of the health system. Those cases should have a separate metric
In terms of testing capacity your case growth in ALL cases must be kept below your testing capacity
In Korea for every person testing positive there are 50 people trace to test negative. You can’t
just test people with symptoms. If jane tests positive you have to test her friends, family co workers
You want to do aggressive overtesting such that your observed attack rate <5%. And if possible
test contacts etc for antibodies as well. If you can only test 1000 a day, then you cant let case
growth exceed 20 cases per day.
Epidemiolgical Resolution: 80% of cases in SK are resolved to a source. This can also be aided by
sequencing all new cases, and tracking mutations. The virus has a molecular clock. Such that
if jane tests positive you can (should be able to) identify any untraced prior infections.
so in terms of keeping the infections to linear growth at worst, you need to look at different variables
and control the process with key metrics; case growth in vulnerable classes; carrying capacity of
the local health system; trace success; novel mutation detection
I don”t agree with much that Steven Mosher writes but the New Zealand lockdown is working and as Mosh states , tracking and testing all friends ,families,and co workers of all index patients is the best policy.
New Zealand are testing and tracing and now have around 12 clusters of 10 or more people in the same location or they have been traced back to a function where they contacted the virus.
Around 1200 have tested positive, 300 recovered ,12 in hospital ,4 in intensive care and 2 deaths both elderly with underlying heath problems .
Only essential services are allowed to be undertaken during this lockdown .
Farming ,fruit and vegetable growing are still working and exports are still flowing to our ports.
Our log trade to China and Korea took a hit when the virus first appeared in China and then started moving again but has been stopped as it is not considered an essential industry .
Our tourism and restaurant sector is completely shut down and our tourism operators are in dire straits
The dilemma the government has is when do they lift the lockdown ,to soon and another wave gets away and spreads or if they hold the lockdown in place to long ,immense financial harm will result as already the costs are adding up to more than our Dairy exports $8 billion and our tourism sector earns close to that and they will be a long time getting back to that figure .
Graham
COVID-19 isn’t going away. New Zealand is essentially uninfected and has no immunity. Winter approaches. What could go wrong?
Reply to PJF fly by comment .
Our borders are closed except for returning Kiwis and all have to self isolate for 14 days .
Tracking and testing is proceeding and nearly all cases can be traced back to functions or visitors from cruise ships .
All people over 65 are encouraged to get their flue vaccine and it is free for over 65′ s .
Our long summer continues into April and I am sure that sun exposure has many health benefits despite risk of skin cancer.
All gathering of any groups are discouraged and that includes kids kicking a ball around in the park .
New case numbers are dropping each day and all contacts of positive cases are tested .
Yes some more cases will appear but New Zealand is winning the fight against the virus.
No one is allowed to travel around the country and this Easter the police are turning people back to their homes when trying to travel to the beaches .
As I wrote in the post above our tourism sector will be decimated and will take a long time to recover as our borders are CLOSED.
Graham
The German comprehensive tests and results from their ‘Wuhan’ on the borders of the Netherlands show very conclusively that the death rate is 0.37% and infection is about 15% of the population.
For some reason that is nothing whatsoever to do with ‘health’ but more to do with instilling fear into populations, the normal route for dealing with a respiratory virus was ignored. That is to quickly build up herd immunity over a four week period and let it run its course and be absorbed into the family of similar viruses that humans live with and tolerate through the ages. Of course attention should be given to protect the most vulnerable whilst this happens.
The longer a lockdown lasts the worse this will get, the more deaths will happen.
Its almost as if it was planned that a vaccine and all the attendant ‘controls’ would replace natural immunity. As usual it pays to follow the money.
Where does the money path lead?
For the money path of the study…
To Armin Laschet, prime minister of the German federal state of North Rhine Westfalia and a strong advocate of a no-lockdown policy.
Death to total cases ratio of both Germany and South Korea are around 2%. Could be a coincidence and Germans around Gangelt are just more resilient than all other people in the world…
Bill Gates
meiggs April 10, 2020 at 4:52 am
Quote Where does the money path lead? Quote.
Not to Hydroxychloroquine that`s for sure.
Thank you again for your analysis, Lord Monckton.
I feel you present rather too binary a picture of the difference between the ‘activists’ and the ‘passivists.’ The choice is not between full lockdown and doing very little. As others have commented, a real and far less damaging alternative is to lift the lockdown but focus restrictions and protection on the vulnerable, with the main universal requirement being the wearing of facemasks in public places to limit the transmission of the virus by infected individuals.
Also, the primary purpose of the lockdown is to protect healthcare capacity from being overwhelmed. There is much disagreement and misinformation around about the actual load on hospitals with plenty of contradictory anecdotal accounts about both empty hospitals and overwhelmed facilities. I speak to healthcare professionals who have been saying for a couple of weeks that they are expecting the surge ‘next week.’ It’s alway ‘next week.’ I hope I’m not being overly cynical.
Unfortunately, political reputations have now become intimately entwined with the progression of the pandemic, which means that information gathering and publication may be subject to a strict political agenda. I suspect we will never know the true state of affairs.
The really massive risk is to the economy – not some abstract financial superstructure, but the survival of people’s jobs and livelihoods in the private enterprise sector. There is a massive ignorance amongst many, especially those in the public sector and with independent means, of the importance of the private sector as a source of prosperity, as well as the only external source of funding for tax revenues. If the private sector fails massively, the state will be forced to step in to control and distribute incomes and the dream of Extinction Rebellion will be realised – a society in which we can only do what we are told, rather than a free enterprise society in which we can do anything unless it is expressly forbidden. I hope I’m wrong but there is a concerted attempt by XR, supported by many in the public sector, for a departure from free enterprise in favour of state control. State control always starts optimistically but ends badly as we saw in the 20th century.
For people who want to question doomsday projections by the CDC and WHO
I recommend this essay
NOTE this essay was written prior to the current epidemic
https://inference-review.com/article/an-outbreak-of-epidemiological-hysteria
More ammunition for the “passivists”
by fumento
For folks who want relatively good arguments, I would look at what he says.
Please note, he doesn’t resort to crazy claims about the disease to make his claims.
I dont agree with everything he says, but he at least avoids crazy stupid arguments.
A good debate focuses on the best arguments of both sides
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sweden-scandinavia-michael-fumento-coronavirus/
he’s wrong here, the USA is not following the china model.
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2020/04/statist-responses-to-covid-19-an-interview-with-michael-fumento/
he’s wrong here, Korea did not follow Farrs law.
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/04/01/coronavirus_death_predictions_bring_new_meaning_to_hysteria_487977.html
Typo:
“How, then, should be apply the Spy’s Dilemma …”