By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Let us begin with today’s good news. The mean daily compound case-growth rates of Chinese-virus infections (Fig. 1) and of deaths (Fig. 2) continues to fall just about everywhere. It is these case-growth rates that governments chiefly use in determining how severe the control measures to manage the pandemic need to be, and how long they need to last, and whether, if they are relaxed, they can be relaxed some more or must be tightened again.
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 9, 2020. PowerPoint slides showing high-quality images are here. [Mods, please link]
It is encouraging that in all the territories studied here, the daily compound growth rate of total confirmed cases is heading downward. But the mean daily rate for the world excluding China and occupied Tibet is still 7.2%. At that rate, the 1,521,745 confirmed cases up to yesterday would become 6.5 million over the next three weeks to the end of April, and 50 million by the end of May.
It is the daily case growth rate, more than any other number, that will decide whether governments introduce, maintain, modify, end or reintroduce lockdowns. During the early phase of the pandemic, it is the crucial number that governments and epidemiologists follow, which is why the seven-day average daily case growth rates are shown in these daily graphs.
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.
Those who support ending all lockdowns, allowing the old and the sick to die in large numbers and risking the general population’s health by overloading the healthcare system are prone to overlook, and even to try to argue against, the salient fact of any pandemic: that in its early stages its growth is strictly exponential. One multiplies each day’s total cases by the observed growth factor to obtain the next day’s total.
That exponential growth factor will not diminish except in one of four circumstances:
1. Decisive public-health measures control its transmission. South Korea is the prime example: if one acts soon enough to identify all cases, trace their contacts and isolate all those infected the rate of spread can be contained for long enough to permit testing and intensive-care capacities to be increased in good time, and one can avoid strict lockdowns. Even then, caution is needed: Singapore, which followed much the same approach as South Korea and initially with success, has now introduced the world’s strictest lockdown, because a second wave of infection has appeared.
2. An environmental factor (such as warmer summer weather) temporarily reduces the growth rate of the infection. With a new pandemic, one may hope that warmer weather will help, but responsible governments must be prepared in case it does not.
3. There are no more susceptible people to infect, whereupon the population has either died or acquired general immunity. At the time of writing, there are 1.6 million reported cases worldwide. Suppose that there are in fact 100 times as many cases as those that have been reported (for the truth is that we do not yet know, and the reported cases could indeed understate the true rate of spread by two orders of magnitude). In that event, just 2% of the global population is infected, leaving 98% still susceptible. Even if only one case in 1000 has been reported, 80% remain uninfected. So responsible governments cannot act on the basis that general immunity has been achieved. It has not been.
4. A vaccine is found. Even then, testing it for safety takes a year to 18 months, and we still have no vaccine against the common cold.
Governments cannot responsibly sit and wait for items 2 to 4. In particular, they cannot take the risk that summer weather will do their job for them. It may, or it may not.
The most important step, where a new pathogen is spreading and is proving fatal to some, is that the public authorities should act determinedly and at the very earliest possible moment to hinder the exponential transmission that is characteristic of any pandemic in its early phase.
For those who find it difficult to get their head around exponential growth, here, plotted to scale by worldometers.info, are the daily cumulative total confirmed cases outside China and occupied Tibet for the three weeks to March 13, the day before Mr Trump declared a national emergency.
Fig. 3. Cases of COVID-19 from January 22 to March 13, 2020 (worldometers.info)
Now, was the near-20% daily compound growth in reported cases over that period strictly exponential? Let us provide a visual demonstration. Fig. 3, showing cases in thousands, shows the graph derived from the exponential-growth equation shown on the slide. The equation is derived from the numbers of confirmed cases on January 22 and March 13, and the daily number of cases is then obtained from the equation and plotted:
Fig. 4. Cases of COVID-19 from January 22 to March 13, 2020 (calculated)
Figs. 3 and 4 are scaled and drawn to the same aspect ratio. The blue borders of the two graphs will align neatly with the edges of 16 x 9 PowerPoint slides. Download today’s slide-set from the link in the caption to Fig. 1. Now you can use a technique originally developed by astronomers to find moving satellites or planets in successive images of a field of fixed stars: the blink comparator. PowerPoint is a superlative blink comparator. Go to display mode and flick rapidly backwards and forwards between slides 3 and 4.
You will at once see just how very close, at all points, the curve of the actual, real-world data plotted to scale in Fig. 3 is to the idealized exponential-growth curve calculated and plotted in Fig. 4.
Information presented like this that is useful when briefing public authorities to show them that, based on the data, the case growth rate during the early stages of this pandemic, like that of any pandemic, is necessarily and quite strictly exponential.
For no small part of the spy’s dilemma that I discussed yesterday – how an agent in the field with no specialist knowledge can find ways of reaching the truth so as to give sound intelligence to his superiors – involves assessing the available data, weighing its reliability, verifying it, cross-referencing it with other available data or known information, working out what it means and, no less importantly, presenting the conclusions in a form that the politicians will be able to appreciate, and on the basis of which they can take sound decisions.
Governments cannot afford to act on any assumption other than that the daily rate at which the total cases will grow is likely to continue on the exponential-growth curve for a month or two yet unless one of the reasons 1-4 discussed earlier comes into play.
Why does exponential growth occur during the early stages of a pandemic? The reason is that each infected person will, roughly speaking, pass the infection on to the same number of uninfected people, who will, roughly speaking, acquire or resist the infection to the same degree, and pass it on in their turn to approximately the same number of people each.
I shall end today’s posting by briefly considering the situation in Sweden, which has not imposed a strict lockdown and yet shows much the same case growth rate as countries that have imposed lockdowns. In fact, Sweden is currently coincident with the global mean.
It is tempting to assume that because Sweden got away without lockdowns we could have gotten away without them too. This is where the dispassionate advisor will think very carefully. Herb Mayer, the deputy director (intelligence) of the CIA, with whom I worked during my time with HM Government, used to say that 99% of the work of any intelligence officer, and of his agency, is handling, storing, assessing, cross-indexing, processing and, above all, thinking about information hard and dispassionately, regardless of one’s own opinion.
How might the Chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee (whose office was just along the corridor from mine at 10 Downing Street) advise HM Government, which would very much like to bring the current lockdown to an end, about why Sweden has (so far, at any rate) gotten away without the economically-crippling lockdowns Britain has adopted?
One clue – again using a visual aid – is the difference between the population densities of the major cities. Here is Stockholm from the air: low-rise, and low-density.
And here is London from the air: high-rise, and very high density.
The rate at which an infection transmits is the product of two vital quantities: the infectiousness of the pathogen and the average number of people an infected person can be expected to meet over a given time.
That is why those in London and New York who have modelled the spread of the Chinese virus recommended lockdowns: the populations there are dense enough to ensure a very much higher mean contact rate, and thus compound rate of transmission, than in Stockholm.
And that is why one cannot point to the lack of a lockdown in Stockholm and deduce that, therefore, no lockdowns were or are needed in cities where far larger populations are crammed in and piled high at far greater population densities.
The UN’s Agenda 2030 policy of cramming everyone into ever-more-densely-packed cities is a recipe for disaster in any pandemic. It is asking for trouble. We are going to have to make sure that the environmental extremists who have until now dominated policymaking among innumerate governments are no longer heeded in this as in many other respects.
Today’s sudden Singapore lockdown is a warning that, even when our own lockdowns end, they must be ended cautiously, or a second wave of infection will emerge. In Singapore, which resisted lockdown but has now been compelled by events to introduce it, any breach of the stay-indoors, keep-your-distance rules incur a fine of $10,000 and/or six months in prison for a first offense, and double those values for a second offense. Several thousand citizens were given police warnings on the first day of the lockdown.
I shall end today’s update with an image from the European mortality monitoring agency. It shows excess mortality in various European countries for the past week. It gives the lie to the suggestions made by some commenters here that there will be no excess mortality from the current pandemic. As ever, keep safe. On the data, it is those who take more precautions than the rest who are more likely to survive the pandemic unscathed.
Fig. 5. Excess mortality in England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands for the 14th week of 2020.
Ø So as not to make this website too coronacentric, I shall be providing the graphs of case-growth and death-growth rates daily, but shall only write these commentaries with additional information twice a week.
Link to PPTX file of diagrams.
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Am I missing something here or is this a rare serious flaw on the part of the author? There is missing information after 13th March. There is little disagreement about the way that a simple exponential curve (Fig 4) fits the data (Fig 3) first part of an epidemic (up to 13th March ). What is important is to establish at what time the data deviates from the exponential (Fig 4) and is better described with a more complete epidemic curve such as the symmetical sigmoid (or Farr, 1820) curve, or the asymmetric Gompertz curves, all of which approximate the entire lifespan (save for “second wave” “double peak” patterns, which might need to be taken separately). In the nineteenth centruy Farr approximated epidemic instantaneous figures with a symmetrical bell-curve; Gompertz added an extra factor that introduces an asymmetry , which better fits actual epidemics and sales figures for mobile phones.
In the early stage (before the “shoulder” of the bell) all these bell curves are numerically indistinguishable from each other and from a simple exponential and one cannot make any credible estimates of peak time or peak value by looking at the very early stage; one can obtain only anxiety at the high rate of increase (short doubling-time). However, by the early April, nearly all the countries had developed “bent over”cumulative curves (equivalent to bell-curves of daily cases), in the sense that the divergence of the best-fit curve from the terrifying exponential was manifest. (Mathematically, this is illustrated by the way that exp(2x) is approximately the same as 1+tanh(x) for negative values of x, but diverges dramatically around x=0 because the tanh function asympotically approaches 1 whereas the exp function diverges to infinity, and similarly for other bell-shaped curves.) The “bent-over” date varied slightly between countries. They all seem to be in the last two weeks of March, just off the edge of the Figs 3 and 4. We discussed this at length only yesterday. Even The Guardian (not renowned for showing soothing graphics), citing[1] in an infographic for the UK derived from” Public Health England and which was updated today at 6:08 BST, shows a fuzzy bell shape centred (imperfectly and noisily) around 6th April. Whatever shape best fits the daily case figures it is, it is not an exponential, and the curve above it (as always, drawn to a linear scale which looks more dramatic) would on closer inspection or after a week’ further data develop a point of inflection which is a precursor of flattening.
There is a deeper mathematical flaw, I believe in your reasoning, which I merely touch on here as I have neither fully grasped your argument nor tackled the maths. You seem to be saying that because the exponential “compound factor” is always positive, then it follows that the curve must proceed indefinitely upwards, and that we must wait for some parameter to become negative. I suspect you have fallen into a mathematical trap. A counter example would be y=tanh x, which, following your week-on-week argument, would increase without bounds, but in reality cannot exceed +1. It’s akin to Zeno’s Pardox of Achilles and the Tortoise.
I apologize if I am barking up the wrong tree here or have made and published my own blunders or have completely misunderstood the mathematical and numerical basis of your article.
[1] Guardian, 9th April 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/coronavirus-uk-how-many-confirmed-cases-are-in-your-area
Yes, the daily compound growth rate in total confirmed cases is now falling, as the series of daily graphs shows very clearly.
However, even if one assumes that only 1% of all cases of infection are recorded, 98% of the population currently remains uninfected and thus susceptible – and that is too high a percentage to cause any appreciable deviation from the exponential curve towards the sigmoid epidemic curve. That is how we know lockdowns and other control measures are working.
Governments cannot afford to act on any assumption other than that the daily rate at which the total cases will grow is likely to continue on the exponential-growth curve for a month or two yet unless one of the reasons 1-4 discussed earlier comes into play.
part of what has been learned in these past months is that the risk of death is far greater for the elderly and others with pre-existing risk factors. It probably isn’t wise to continue to treat the population as homogeneous — special attention should be paid to some, relaxed on others (who may indeed be carriers), and abandoned for people who have recovered (there are reports of re-emergence of symptoms, so that ought to be followed carefully).
Also, recent testing shows that many more people have been infected (and likely recovered) than have become sick, even with mild symptoms. It’s still more lethal than influenza, but not as lethal as it seemed even day-before-yesterday. More should be made of this fact, and of course, much testing continued.
Thank you again for a focused essay. To me, the “maybes” still dominate. As you say, a responsible govt ought not blithely assume the best.
Also, Willis Eschenbach daily plots the worldometers data on log scales, where the gradual bend away from exponential growth can be seen for some countries.
Most countries (bent away from exponential growth), and it has globally also.
Yes, there is now a marked decay from the original exponential rate of transmission: control measures are working.
Milord!
What about that (google translator):
Complete curfews as a measure to control the COVID-19 epidemic in Germany not necessary!
The German Society for Hospital Hygiene (DGKH) considers complete curfews if the compliance with proven hygiene rules as well as the consequent protection of particularly vulnerable risk groups and people of critical infrastructures are avoidable if the hygiene rules of the RKI are followed consistently and with discipline.
With the aim of reducing serious illnesses and increasing the number of deaths, all our strength must be given to the protection of particularly vulnerable risk groups and the people of critical infrastructure, in particular the nurses, the doctors in the hospitals and the nursing staff of the elderly and Nursing homes are located.
Maximum protection of the particularly vulnerable risk groups means: consistent control of the transmission risks in nursing and old people’s homes by blocking visits, access controls, employee protection and employee controls for signs of infection through symptom monitoring and virus tests.
Extension of protection to the private sphere, the families, the apartments and the social environment of the risk groups and all persons of outpatient care and other outpatient care areas. No infected person should live in quarantine in a private environment with a person from the risk groups at risk. Alternative quarantine accommodations must be found that allow for temporary removal.
Given the exponential spread of SARS-Cov-2 infections, the goal must be to consistently reduce severe infections and associated deaths. A general reduction of all infections through the complete standstill of all social life for a foreseeable period of longer than 2 months cannot be achieved. In the opinion of the DGKH, the time will come when, despite the increasing number of infections, the orders of general untargeted social standstill must be gradually withdrawn. The arguments for the withdrawal are already clear: the effects of the measures differ in the different social groups, if one chooses the decline in serious infections and deaths as a yardstick. A reopening of schools and day care centers will not lead to more serious and fatal infections if the children and adolescents consistently live at a social distance from their grandparents and other vulnerable people. The same applies to a significant proportion of otherwise healthy younger adults.
The executive board of the DGKH subsequently presents a concept with which a controllable course of the COVID-19 epidemic is to be made possible without having to resort to the instrument of curfews.
The DGKH Executive Board considers prioritization of the measures necessary in order to apply the strategies in such a targeted manner, taking into account the experience that has now been gained, on the one hand, that the infection protection of the population is guaranteed on the one hand, and on the other hand, the maintenance of public life while consistently observing the hygiene measures recommended by the RKI and justifiable Restrictions for risk situations is made possible.
The DGKH (German Society for Hospital Hygiene) is the specialist society for infection prevention and control in medical facilities with special expertise in the development and application of hygiene measures for the control of infection risks and infection outbreaks.
For the board
Martin Exner and Peter Walger
Source:
https://www.krankenhaushygiene.de/informationen/755
So it sounds like the teenagers should take care of the children. What could possibly go wrong?
Frankly I just don’t think that separating the young from the middle aged from the old is a workable program in reality. It may work in theory, but I think the reality would be that those most at risk would still be exposed by transfer from young to middle age to elderly.
It might even backfire. It might mean that the few who are left to interact with the elderly are far more infectious with much higher viral loads and subject the elderly to even greater danger.
What’s about elementary schools, kids of 6 – 12 years ? They have normally not much discipline under these circumstances.
Lockdowns will be brought to an end as soon as safe exit strategies are found. They may well include measures such as the German hygiene body recommends. Lockdown is not a permanent solution, not least because people who generally support it at present will be unlikely to do so indefinitely.
Milord,
Lockdown is not a permanent solution, not least because people who generally support it at present will be unlikely to do so indefinitely.
Indeed. Yesterday UK health secretary Matt Hancock was asked about modelling suggesting that concentrating NHS resources mainly on fight against Wuhan virus and economic impact may cause in the UK 150,000 non-covid related deaths. He said this number is not correct but the government is working on such kind of modelling suggesting that impact of lockdowns in terms of increased mortality will not be trivial. So yes, there is a tradeoff here between curbing spread of the virus and well-being of the society as a whole.
I expect a drop in the death rate for many common causes. People are driving less and auto accidents are surely lower than previous years. I expect fewer drunk driving deaths because everyone is drinking at home. Fewer people working means fewer deaths from on-the-job accidents.
We should be able to control for these and similar causes of death that are different from the lock down. I expect to find some anomalies in the data, such as the reporting drop in deaths from pneumonia. It’s interesting to note that while the CDC recognizes their guidelines are “very liberal” in attributing death due to Covid-19 (Dr. Brix), several fact checkers says that deaths are not being overcounted but are undercounted.
Technically not exponential because a new case cannot infect a previous case. So for example if first person on average infects 3 people, those 3 people on average do not infect 3 people but a number slightly less than 3 on average and so on.
Exactly! At the start, the percentage (of susceptible people) is large and so the growth is close to exponential. (One can argue finer point.) It’s only when that percentage has been significantly diminished that the infection rate slows, notably around the 50% value. Unfortunately, not knowing early on what percentage of the population is susceptible to the virus impedes projections of the trajectory. Once the curve “bends over” hindsight is 20/20.
While I don’t think population density is the only factor to consider, Stockholm has a population density of 4,800 per km2
Here are some US states, their largest cities, and the population densities of those cities:
State City Pop/km2
Alabama Birmingham 561
Alaska Anchorage 68
Arkansas Little Rock 609
Colorado Denver 1,561
Idaho Boise 1,000
Iowa Des Moines 972
Kansas Wichita 888
Maine Portland 1,194
Mississippi Jackson 598
Missouri St. Louis 1,941
Montana Billings 926
Nebraska Omaha 1,413
Nevada Las Vegas 1,689
N.Hampsh. Manchester 1,287
New Mex. Albuquerque 1,148
N. Dakota Fargo 899
Oklahoma OK City 321
Oregon Portland 1,830
S. Dakota Sioux Falls 814
Utah Salt Lake City 665
Vermont Burlington 1,594
W. Virginia Charleston 615
Wyoming Cheyenne 936
Which of these states need to be locked down like New York and London if Stockholm’s “low” population density doesn’t require lockdown?
I don’t say that Stockholm doesn’t need to be locked down. Only three days ago its rate of increase in deaths, averaged over seven days, was the highest among the countries shown in the graph, by quite some margin. Nor do I say whether individual cities in the U.S. need to be locked down. That is a matter for decision by State and municipal officials. Various factors must be taken into account in deciding whether a lockdown is necessary: one of the most important of these is whether or not there is likely to be sufficient hospital capacity to handle severe critical cases requiring more advanced treatment than most for longer than most.
What percentage of people over the age of 65 have a potentially fatal medical issue? My stab is 85%. Get the gist? Mine is a stent implant
Another stab: Most people over the age of 65 (me too) would say that the gains made from lockdowns are not worth the long-term suffering imposed on younger generations. Damn it, they are our kids and grand-kids. They need to raise families
BUT, this is all hypothetical now. The moment the virus exploded on MSM people stopped travelling. Controls over immigration topped it off. The global economic house of cards, reliant on confidence, collapsed
The phenomenon of the psychology of crowds is the factor that financiers and politicians fear most. It can’t be modeled
Maybe some other data is worth reporting e.g. what percentage of people who’s career is safe support lockdown? – and visa versa . Lets be honest now. My Lord?
My trade-off is a new NZ with space, free from the crowd madness – a bit like is used to be – against the loss of my main source of income and passion, for 2-3 yrs. That’s supposing I survive. Bring it on you little buggars
Mr Carter appears to imagine that I support lockdowns. I don’t. I recognize that in Britain and some other countries they became necessary because the optimal strategy, that of South Korea, was not followed from the outset. And once it is clear that there is enough critical-care capacity to handle the large numbers of seriously ill patients that would be expected in the absence of lockdowns, and once measures have been put in place to protect the elderly in care homes, who have been disproportionately affected and do not even appear in UK government statistics, and once other sensible precautions have been taken, then and only then the lockdowns can be brought to an end.
Responsible governments have to bear in mind more considerations than armchair self-appointed epidemiologists.
Lockdowns can be lifted when your public health infrastructure can
operate within it’s constraints.
case growth in SK in now linear. in simple terms the daily new cases are constant.
we went from a constant 200 cases a day, to 100, and now to 50.
Achieving a constant growth as opposed to exponential is a function of your ability
to test and trace.
For every person presenting with symptoms you need a testing capacity that is at least
50x that number and possibly 150x. That means for every person infected you will be
testing an additional “possible cases” from that persons friends, family and contacts.
when you aggressively hunt down the possible cases you can keep the growth linear.
The Linear growth you can live with is a function of the carrying capacity of your health system
for the serious cases. So you actually want to watch the case growth in Over 50s
Example of how contact tracing is reported
‘○ One of the cases confirmed on 8 April has been found to be linked to the bar Liquid Soul in Seocho-gu, Seoul. In total, 5 cases have been confirmed from Liquid Soul since 6 April.
○ From the wine bar UnWined in Pyeongtaek City, Gyeonggi Province, 1 additional case has been confirmed, bringing the total to 18 confirmed cases (wine bar = 14; family/acquaintances of confirmed cases = 4). Further epidemiological investigation is underway.
○ From Gyeongbuk Province, during the epidemiological investigation (and testing) on a new case, 3 family members and 1 co-worker have been found confirmed with COVID-19. Further investigation into chains of transmission and contacts is underway. (The figures on Table 2 are based on cases reported to KCDC before 0:00 of 10 April and may differ from above.)
That keeps the growth linear
The health system can handle predictable linear growth.
My dear Monckton of Brenchley,
I do not own an armchair. Is that the credential that I lack? I do endeavour to avoid the vice of envy.
Impertinently yours,
rd
German data just released April 9th: Heisenberg district’s Gantlet population tested, with results of the initial 500 people who were assayed for IgG & IgA antibodies plus tests with RT-PCR throat swabs.
14% had pre-immunity to WuhanFlu as per IgG titers ; 2% had active WuhanFlu infection as per RT-PCR test; & 15% had current or resolved infection.
Fatality was ~0.37%; thus extrapolating from Gantlet’s population of 12,529 mortality from WuhanFlu is 0.06%.
Authors state: “Adhering to stringent hygiene … average … viral dose … will be reduced … training the immune system …less severe course …”
Report Recommends 4 phases now:
1st = social distancing ; 2nd = “Begin the withdrawal of quarantine … while ensure … hygienic measures remain ….”; 3rd= “Remove the quarantine … maintain … hygienic measures .” ; 4th = “Return to public life as it was before … pandemic .”
As per German team of H. Streeck, Bonn University Clinic Institute of Virology, in “Vorlaufiges Ergebnis und Schlussfolgerungen der COVID-19 Gemeinde Gangelt (Case-Cluster-Study)”
The real effective answer to the pandemic remains protective meds – HCQ and others are reported to be effective — hopefully this will be the case.
Doctor in China at center of original outbreak cautions about malaria drugs, says there is no actual evidence they work:
https://www.ibtimes.com/chloroquine-coronavirus-cure-not-so-fast-chinese-doctors-say-2955962
Some hospitals in Sweden stop using the drugs after many serious adverse events and no evidence of efficacy:
https://www.newsweek.com/swedish-hospitals-chloroquine-covid-19-side-effects-1496368
Jury is still out, and the deliberations are dragging out. Clear results would trigger a halt to clinical trials, as it is unethical to continue a trial once a treatment is known to be superior than placebo or alternative drugs.
The original claims were malaria drugs cures 100% in less than 6 days.
They have been using them 4 times that long in many countries.
People are still dying at increasing rates.
Temper your enthusiasm and prepare to be underwhelmed is my advice.
These drugs do not sure viral infections.
Love bodies do not behave like cancer cells or green monkey kidney cells in a glass dish.
Bad math (exponential instead of logistic), missing factors (HCQ and other therapies, already existing high proportion of Immunes with antibodies), selective stats based on error-filled numbers, ignoring other stats such as the measured death rates in past years, erroneous assumptions (lockdowns work), moralistic guilt-tripping (skeptics don’t care about the aged), faith in authoritarianism (governments must act now in defiance of liberty), sneering at skeptics who are “risking the general population’s health”, massive over-reliance on the Precautionary Principle backed by junk science…
What’s left? How about a big “How Dare You!”?
Monckton has gone full Greta.
Pathetic, truly pathetic.
The same people who dismiss Didier Raoult because he rejects RCT want to impose fascistic measures whose effectiveness have never been tested in any way whatsoever.
Mr Dubrasich is entitled to his opinion, and at least he has the courage, unlike some others here, to publish it in his own name.
He is perhaps unfamiliar with the characteristics of the logistic curve. In the early stages of a pandemic, before more than a small fraction of the population has been exposed, the growth is – whether Mr Dubrasich likes it or not – quite strictly exponential. The point is evidenced in the two curves, one of the real data and one of an exponential curve, that are shown in the head posting.
Even now, getting on for a month after Mr Trump’s declaration of a state of emergency, and even if one assumes that there are 100 infected for every one reported, 98% of the population remain uninfected and susceptible, so there is no reason to imagine that the exponential growth will not continue – except, of course, that control measures, compulsory or voluntary, are now widely in place and – to the fury of several commenters here – are rather obviously working.
The central reason for lockdowns in most countries is to prevent the collapse of the hospital system, overloaded with critical-care cases requiring more advanced care, for longer, than ordinary patients. One of the tests applied by governments in deciding to bring lockdowns to an end will be whether it has been possible to build up a sufficient capacity in the hospitals to cope with demand from those very ill with the Chinese virus.
It is Mr Dubrasich, then, who is pathetic, for he is insufficiently self-critical to realize that all of his barbs have altogether missed the main point. Must try harder.
Most hospitals are NOT operating at capacity. Even in NYC the new temporary hospitals are empty, and patient releases are now exceeding new admissions. They have an excess of ventilators. To say they would have been overloaded absent the lockdowns is a counterfactual and assumes the imaginary without evidence. Other evidence you missed includes successful therapies which further reduce hospitalizations.
The success or failure of lockdowns is not proven. There is much evidence that people are violating the lockdown orders, many of which are extreme to the point of ridiculous. When is a lockdown not a lockdown? Entire countries have eschewed lockdowns with no higher case percentages than the strictest.
Assuming that 98% of the population is uninfected and susceptible is an assumption without evidence. Contrary evidence, that the virus has been here awhile and as much as 50% of some populations have contracted it unknowingly and developed antibodies, does exist. More serological testing would answer this question, and that testing is underway, but assuming the results a priori is unscientific and dare I say it, alarmist.
Destroying the economy is not a humane thing.to do. Excess and unnecessary suffering and deaths will occur. You have not factored that into your graphs.
And re my “unfamiliarity”: epidemic growth, cumulative growth, is not different from any biological growth, which is not exponential but logistic, i.e. sigmoid, has an inflection point, and is parabolic in the derivative. The inflection point is the peak of the derivative. Must I do the math for you?
+1, but not only Monckton – surprisingly many AGW skeptics, who should know better, much better.
“Singapore, which followed much the same approach as South Korea and initially with success, has now introduced the world’s strictest lockdown, because a second wave of infection has appeared.”
Singapore blocked all travel the soonest {I think- fact check me}.
So Singapore basically went to quarantine and have had little herd immunity.
Or they have a very slow growth in terms of herd immunity, one could say
they now increase the rate of getting herd immunity- and there is a lot known about the Chinese virus, now. And might do something like UK first attempted to do, and/or throttle it back at some point. If have wide open, they will quickly reach peak death and “peak” herd immunity.
But it should be kept in mind, that idea one can get immunity still seems in doubt. It could be those with antibodies could still get inflected and could still have same possibility of having serious effects or death.
Might better for Singapore to lockdown again immediately, but I hear Singapore has been doing antibody tests and they could know enough now, to allow them to not be in lockdown.
Death rate down down down, models wrong wrong wronger?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/without-mass-testing-were-flying-blind-through-this-crisis/2020/04/09/bf61e178-7a9b-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html
Someone should tell the Washington Post that models are not often accurate.
No or we’d have all been dead in December. Most of my local Sheriff’s deputies had it in October 2019.
They’ve all been tested and all show antibody.
Much of the government’s math presumes that dead people can catch it again and die again.
Had what in October 2019? The Chinese virus only appeared in China in November 2019, and spread outward from there.
From Benjamin Franklin:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
There is the answer to COVID-19, lockdowns, death, mayhem, panic, economic collapse for many. The scarf health lady (I refuse to write her name) today said we now know how we can combat the next one! Joy!
Everyone, cry out “Save me! Save me!” Guess what? They’ll be more than happy to, but it’s gonna cost.
Regards
AK
p.s. Snowing today and wild and windy. I wish global warming would happen so I don’t have to buy any more heating oil whilst I am unable to earn an income. “Brrr, it sure is cold in the house today.”
Is it really true, as Christopher Monckton, says that Stockholm Sweden, naturally has a lower rate of person to person contact (due to being more spread out than London, say, by some measure)? If rating cities and/or countries by level of interpersonal contact or proximity is really a key to understanding this, why, that really *is* getting down to some sort of situational detail analysis!
Here in the province of Saskatchewan, where I live (278 cases in the province, 3 deaths so far), the total population of the province is 1.2 million, and the biggest city has about a quarter million in the whole metropolitan area. This compares to Stockholm, say, with 2.5 million in the metropolitan area.
Now, the claim that lower population density means lower death rates is bound to be interesting to someone in my location, but gee whiz, someone just told me they heard on the news that certain officials are forecasting a total of *three thousand* deaths for my province! That’s a *thousand times* the number of deaths so far in reality — and we’ve been recording CoVid cases here since the 12th of March, with a state of emergency declared provincially on March 18th. So for the few deaths so far, it’s not that we are just at the ‘very beginning’ of the problem, as we are already far enough ‘in’ that we should be getting *some* idea about the ultimate impact.
Intuitively at least, 3000 deaths seems too high, but checking on the internet, this is apparently the provincial health authority’s “low range” estimate. As misleading as intuition can be, I’m sure it would be responsible of the health authority to plan for 3000 deaths in the province ultimately, or even more, given the “high range” estimate is around 8000 CoVid related deaths. The estimate for total cases ranges from 150,000 to 400,000, with the estimate for patients ‘in the hospital simultaneously’ ranging from about 400 up to about 4000.
Now, that, right there, is more ‘model estimates’ than I set out to mention at first. The real thing I want to report is just how easily most of the good people here accept the whole idea of social distancing, etc? People foregoing their Easter travel plans, generally accepting of shutting down all the bars, restaurants and barber shops, etc. At least for a short period of time, I suppose it may not even matter if *anything* can be corroborated scientifically. People just want to have a sense of control in response to such a widely announced hazard. Note that most of what they call “hospitality industry’, restaurants, etc., have been shut down. I consider this shut down situation to be somewhat arbitrary, a ‘semi-lockdown’ already. Will the benefits of this ever be corroborated versus the costs and social problems that I would tend to see as a reault? Suicide is a real thing, even here in the ‘quasi-utopia’ of central Western Canada, so is domestic violence, and also drug trafficking ‘private enterprise’ by otherwise idle people! So, say, benefits outweigh the costs, do they, even in terms of lives lost, who knows?
Anyway, coming back around to the point of Sweden not needing a lockdown near as much as the U.K. or New York, I suppose such reasoning would also apply to Saskatchewan as a low density province? So, the prospect is that forecasts of three thousand or eight thousand deaths here are apt to prove to be wrong, with every indication that our economic slowdown here will cause far more problems and deaths ultimately than were ever saved?
“Here in the province of Saskatchewan, where I live (278 cases in the province, 3 deaths so far), the total population of the province is 1.2 million, and the biggest city has about a quarter million in the whole metropolitan area. This compares to Stockholm, say, with 2.5 million in the metropolitan area.
Now, the claim that lower population density means lower death rates is bound to be interesting to someone in my location, but gee whiz, someone just told me they heard on the news that certain officials are forecasting a total of *three thousand* deaths for my province!”
That is not unreasonable- in terms of model.
Just as more than 100,000 death in US is not unreasonable as model.
All models are wrong.
Models are projections. Models are not predictions. No one can predict the future and there are too many variables- even if you happen to know all the variables and they were “correctly, valued variables” it’s still not possible. But in that “impossible” situation, one could give a pretty good guess.
With Chinese Virus, little is known, but in the short term, one say the death rate is less than 1 percent and it could be around .01 percent.
And .01 percent of 320 million is 32,000 dying which is number I would give if I was not a governmental official, or it’s possible {I think, because of the unknowns and other variables} that is could be about .03 percent or worst
which is about 100,000.
1.2 million times .03 percent or .0003 is 360 deaths as low end estimate one could give if not a public official. But about .1 percent is 1200 deaths, and high end of less than 1 percent, so .3 percent is 3600 death.
As public official before I knew as much as know now, I would say at least 600 to 3000.
But if I was more fearful in my bias, give 2000 to 3000 or more.
Or a purpose of graphic projection is to give confidence and to warn of
possible future danger, so the public responses to take reasonable precautions.
Or model suppose to represent the bias of scientists {and politicans informed by medical experts] that they want to communicate to the general public. And any politician who does not do enough to protect the lives of it’s voters, should be {or must be] unelected. Or generally, politicians are pretty useless, but there are bare requirements which need to be followed {don’t kill people because you are dumb}.
‘gbaikie’: — yes, so models aren’t predictions. We somehow need some sort of humility and/or balance before inferring policy consequences from models that are essentially just scenarios or ‘advanced guessing’.
Briefly extending my previous comments a bit, it does tentatively look like we are seeing a pretty ‘flat’ or unexciting rise in the number of cases right here in my little 1.2 million persons home province (Saskatchewan, Canada) — with just 285 cases listed currently, and this despite being about 4 weeks into the tracking of cases here, basically. And, as I said, only 3 deaths attributed so far. We may fairly assume that the numbers will be more ‘impressive’ than that as time goes on, but I still think it is hard to really believe in the pessimistic official ‘models’, ‘projections’, whatever you want to call them.
I also want to mention that I remain skeptical of the Christopher Monckton claim in the head posting that lower population density in Sweden would explain why they can get away with not locking down or shutting down in any real ‘business shutdown’ sense. Here in Saskatchewan our cities may be relatively small, but I am sure that houses, etc. get sited just as close to one another as they are in many places in London, or Stockholm for that matter. If we are getting away with a flatter curve here in this province, maybe that has something to do with the fact that Canada has banned direct overseas flights from coming in here?
So, not to distract, a lot of eyes are on New York City, London, maybe even Calgary, say, and other centers, where the international flights returning far flung citizens, *do* continue to come in.
“The UN’s Agenda 2030 policy of cramming everyone into ever-more-densely-packed cities is a recipe for disaster in any pandemic. It is asking for trouble.”
I think high density is good idea. I also think open borders is good idea.
But you have design cities a lot better. And open borders is not possible in our
current world.
I believe that everyone should have the human right of the choice of leaving any country.
And at the moment, it seems only certain elites have this right, so before open borders we first need this human right in all countries. And other things are needed, but this point, it’s as stupid as packing people in a city which is poorly designed.
Favoring open borders means you support low wages, human trafficking, drug smugglers, criminal gangs and pandemics.
What about the right of people to exclude others from their homes and countries?
“What about the right of people to exclude others from their homes and countries?”
I said:
“so before open borders we first need this human right in all countries. And other things are needed, but this point,”
So a rational immigration policy would one of other things.
And one of the things needed {for numerous reasons} is a US border wall with Mexico. And if Canada did something that imperils Canada/US border, then we would need border wall there, also.
Anyhow US need a rational immigration policy and it’s currently more irrational than any other country in the world, as far as I know.
US has more legal immigration than any other country- and that part not the irrational problem- that merely that US has a lot immigration is NOT what mean by highly irrational- it’s how it’s done. The laws and how laws are used. And crazy wait times and fee charges for legal immigrants, which is even more annoying considering that the US allows people to just enter US illegally {and gets paid to do so}
Everyone should have the right to leave the country of his or her birth, but only if she or he can find a country which wants to let him or her in.
The nation state is a good thing, despite all the bloody wars among them.
With a 195 countries with Corona most of the deaths are in around 12 countries so hardly world shattering.
No mention of Japan that has a high density population that also live in office blocks with no lock down and small death rate.
Sweden has the same population as Denmark and Norway with the same living conditions. It has had less cases than Norway and Denmark combined but more deaths- not sure why- older population?
Possibly the virus is progressing more quickly through Sweden and their pandemic will be over sooner.
I agree, and with the comment below. It’s a lot more complicated than simple ‘isolation’. Even without herculean measures to prevent spreading, WuFlu has quite a low infection rate and also a very low death rate. Many claims are made on incomplete and inaccurate data, since many countries only test the worst and most visibly affected. You would need to measure everybody in the population to get an accurate assessment. Nobody does that because test kits are as rare as hen’s teeth.
Cases has more to do with testing than anything else.
Sweden has done ~5,400/million ppl.
Norway has done well over 4 times as many at 22,720/million ppl.
Denmark over twice as many at 11,176.million ppl.
Now, consider this mathematical inversion of the above:
Sweden does one fourth the testing of Norway, has a death rate four times higher: 86 vs 21 per million.
Sweden does half as much testing as Denmark, has about twice the death rate: 86 vs 43 per million.
Denmark has half the testing as Norway, has twice the death rate: 21 vs 43 per million.
How about that!
Cases does not tell how many have the disease, but how many have been tested who have the disease.
So obviously a country that does not do much testing will have few cases to report.
One might think that the more people dying, the more testing a country would do, but these three countries have the opposite of that pattern. Less testing equals more deaths, and the proportionality is almost a perfect inverse relationship.
IOW…do less testing, and more people will die.
Half as much testing, twice as many die?
Is that the correct conclusion?
It seems to be for these places which, per Richard, live the same way.
out of 195 countries with corona 52 have had no deaths.
I don’t believe that Vietnam has had no deaths.
Have to say this nonsense is getting really tedious.
There have been 3,588,665 Communicable disease deaths this year- and no one cares!
Obviously there are millions of health care providers which care enough to spend life in this profession.
And lots have died recently, fighting this war.
A war largely created by Chinese ruling class and WHO.
Or the typical bunch of people who tend to cause wars- most of the time.
Have to say richard is getting really tedious. If he does not want to read these postings, he does not have to. Let him go and get a life, and stop whining. He and others here who do not care about whether healthcare systems collapse under the weight of critical-care patients have lost the argument, and governments have introduced lockdowns to protect their hospitals and, through them, their populations.
The matter has been decided, and when each government, on reviewing the evidence, decides that the time is right to end the lockdowns safely, that is what each government will do. And no amount of huffing and puffing by those who never had to take life-and-death decisions will make the slightest difference.
any comments about Japan or doesn’t fit your “cherry picked” thinking?
Richard Knight. Sir Knight to you. I feel the name makes me more grandiose.
BTW data was from here in real time:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
You are usually so good at this . You have erred in so many places. Here are your errors.
1. The biggest error is that you have tested for case growth using a CUMULATIVE graph which begins with the assumptions of an arithmetic progression. Arithmetic growth is almost indistinguishable from geometric progressions. You should be looking for geometric progression in daily case data (Best day to day Deltas) rather than cumulative data. From my eyeballing in most places case growth is now barely linear.
2. Your numbers are not adjusted for testing rates.
3. You have assumed the infection pool is limitless, its not. In any given locality the pool of persons capable of being infected is limited, this means that the infection rate will fall as people recover from the disease because the average distance between a person shedding virus and a never infected person is increasing over time. Probabilistically the probability of a never infected person meeting an infected person falls precipitously as the recovered case tally rises. In highly dense populations we will see this effect early especially with the added distance of so-called social distancing. This effect will be exaggerated depending on the asymptomatic infection rate.
4. Infectiousness is modal. There is (in my guess order of infectiousness) Microdroplet, Droplet, Contact, Surface Contamination modes. In the NH as the temperature rises into summer you will see modes extinguished one at at time. At about 15 C the most infectious mode Microdroplet fails, outdoor UV sterilisation and evaporation will extinguish most surface contamination risks as skys clear leaving just contact and Droplet transmission, with droplet mode significantly reduced especially outdoors due to evaporation and desiccation of the virus. Universal mask wearing could end the contagion at that point. This is why we’ve had a relatively easy time in warm Australia, warm, lots of UV exposure.
5. You don’t properly take into account asymptomatic (Unreported) infections. the progression of this virus is much more dependant of the WILD population than the known population because the known population is in quarantine. You are assuming the wild population is consistently related to the known population across the world. Its not, its vastly different. In NY I would not be surprised if the levelling off in infections rates is because the WILD infection pool is nearing the limits of sustainability. IE the probability of an infected person meeting a NEVER infected person is less than unity.
6 You talk about deaths in the elderly population. Nowhere in the world have governments not set additional protection measures for the elderly and vulnerable, done properly the government COULD quite cheaply put 50-100m between the elderly and any part of the infection pool. This can be done by quarantining over 60s and the compromised in their homes or moving them to low density housing, PROVIDING SAFE DELIVERY SERVICES for them and testing and clearing known infections out in surrounding houses, and/or filtering ventilation air intakes with HEPA filters. Only now in QLD Australia is this being (partly) done! But if we did isolate the vulnerable properly the death rate from this event can be reduced by 80%, much more cheaply that the current leftie led economic disaster. Your assertion therefore is non-sequitur.
For all these reasons the plague will never be as bad as you portray in your article.
Bobl accuses me of six errors. It is he who is in error, on all six counts.
1. He implies I am wrong to use cumulative cases as the basis for the graphs, and wrong again to assume an arithmetic progression. The reason why cumulative cases are used in epidemiology is that each infected person can infect others. And I do not assume an arithmetic progression. As the head posting clearly explains, I am looking at daily compound case growth rates.
2. He says my numbers are not adjusted for testing rates. But they don’t need to be, for a blindingly obvious reason that anyone dispassionate enough to think before speaking would have spotted at once. During the three weeks up to March 14, when the growth rate was exponential (another evidence that I have not been assuming arithmetic progressions), testing was on a far smaller scale than it is now. And yet the daily case growth rates are considerably less now than they were then, which is the opposite of what one would expect if additional testing were the cause. Furthermore, one does not need to do testing to see whether or not someone is dead. The death graphs are entirely free of any testing bias.
3. He says I have assumed the number of susceptibles is infinite. No, I haven’t assumed any such thing. I have pointed out, correctly and in terms, that during the early stages of a pandemic the rate of transmission is necessarily near-perfectly exponential, and have provided a very clear visual demonstration that with the present pandemic this is in fact the case. I have also explained, over and over again, that there can be no appreciable decay from the exponential to the logistic curve until a significant fraction of the population has been infected. If bobl would only do a little math before shooting his mouth off he would realize that, even if there are 100 times as many people infected as the confirmed-case counts show, 98% of the population currently remains uninfected and thus susceptible. That is why, at this stage, no allowance need be made for the depletion of the susceptible population: there has not been enough depletion, as far as we know. For one of the big unknowns in the present pandemic is how many people are infected, and without knowing that one cannot draw a convincing logistic curve anyway.
4. He says I have not taken account of the fact that warmer weather will slow transmission of the virus. But the earliest research into that question, conducted in China, demonstrated very clearly that this particular virus seems largely unaffected by ambient temperature or sunlight. Besides, no responsible government is entitled to assume that the summer will bring a lower infection rate: it may hope for that, but it must prepare for the worst. One cannot get these matters right by making stuff up and inventing assumptions from a comfortable and remote armchair. Besides, as the northern hemisphere passes into summer the southern hemisphere passes into winter.
5. He says I have made no allowance for the fact that more people are infected than the official case counts show. But I have made that point repeatedly in various head postings, and have explained that the official case counts tend, for that reason, to identify the more serious cases, which are more likely to come to the authorities’ attention. But, as previously noted, even if there are 100 times as many truly infected as the case-count shows, 98% of the population remains uninfected and therefore susceptible. And even if 1000 times as many are infected as is reported, 80% of the population remain uninfected and susceptible, leaving a great deal of room for further spread of infection and death. The fact is that in the absence of widespread antibody testing – and reliable antibody testing is not yet available at all – no one knows. I have fairly reflected this difficulty in my postings.
6. He says it would have been possible for governments to isolate the old and sick easily, and seems to hold me responsible for the fact that governments have not done this. But that was the very first step that the British government put in place. And it didn’t work. It’s all very well inventing armchair policies, but if they have already been tried and failed then the bloke in the armchair should go back to sleep and leave policymaking on matters of life and death to the grown-ups.
For all these reasons responsible governments were and still are unable to assume that the plague will be less bad than it has proven to be so far. It is likely to get a great deal worse before it gets better, and governments must act responsibly by taking the risk that it will get worse fully and fairly into account.
I am becoming tired of people here making forecasts of how few deaths or cases there will be, only to find that within days the predictions they have made have been overtopped, and yet they come back again and again and petulantly insist they were right all along.
bobl needs to raise his game. His comment was lamentably lacking in accuracy or rigor. Epidemiology is not for amateurs.
Nothing I have said is wrong though you’ve misinterpreted quite a bit, in fact mostly you argue what I’ve said is true but irrelevant. You see your way clear to insult me along the way.
1 the new case load is only exponential if the daily increase is a geometric progression. Cumulative graphs are NOT good at showing this because they are ever increasing even in linear cases. Many countries have daily case histories that are broadly linear at this point.
2 whether or not you like it new case statistics are influence by testing rates, the more testing the higher the discovery rate. Deaths you correctly point out are not affected
3 I do the math, what I was pointing out to your audience is that plague statistics will not maintain exponential growth up to the population limits, as average distance between infected and never infected increases the infection rate will slow. The total population of a country is not necessarily exposed. In Australia we have 15000 odd towns and about 3000 active cases meaning at least 12000 towns are unaffected. Those people effectively quarantined will never become infected. Yes the very early stages are exponential but most countries are now beyond that and are not in exponential growth
4 If you look at the basic chemistry it us obvious that infectiousness will change with temperature, certain transmission modes will be extinguished by solar irradiation. Evolution of the virus to survive hot climates EG UV resistance does not necessarily favour infectiousness. Ask for proof of you like but just as in global warming the physics of the situation won’t change based on who does the science. Droplets evaporate and viruses dessicate faster in hot UV soaked weather like we currently have in Australia. This is good for you, Summer is coming.
That’s not to say you can’t catch this in hot climates, indoor air conditioned environments are just about perfect for transmission.
5 So in a round about sort of way you agree with me. The ONLY point I am making here is that any assumptions about FINAL death rates needs to account for the fact that the probability of a never infected person meeting and infected person decreases as the recovery rate rises. Yes this probably requires a much higher infection level in most places than now. But we DON’ T know the wild population. The infection rate is related to the wild population and not active cases. The wild population is likely to vary greatly. I make the point that New York might be approaching the sustainability limit for the virus because the population density almost guarantees a very high wild prevalence. It might be a good case to assess the cost of a herd immunity strategy.
6. Nothing I have said here blames YOU for governments failing to properly protect the vulnerable. I am just pointing out that the death statistics that allocate 80% or more to a vulnerable cohort means that death rates could be lowered by better insulation of vulnerable people from this virus. I father point out this is not being done very well. Indeed fuel poverty caused by AGW obsession is likely to make the death rare worse even in sunny Australia
None of this is your fault, I’m just trying to point out that government should do more on this front. The measures in place now are not enough to insulate the vulnerable, there needs to be safe delivery of goods, supplied subsidised masks, air purification/sterilisation, sufficient heating and evacuation of sick people from 300m around vulnerable parties.
Taken together, a few policy changes would mean that death rates from this virus could be mitigated far below the extrapolations that are currently being aired.
Nothing I say here has any scientific or mathematical errors. I accept that you have a different opinion, as I respect yours I request you accept mine.
The answer to the question “But is the growth of the pandemic really exponential?” is an emphatic NO, at least in the UK. If that were to be a good approximation both the cumulative and daily rates would be upward curving exponential curves. In fact the cumulative shows a sigmoid shape and the daily rate shows a (surprisingly) good fit to a normal distribution centred on, coincidentally, 5th April and a standard deviation of around 11 days. This can easily be seen by plotting the vertical axis on a logarithmic scale and noticing that instead of a straight line (which would be the result of an exponential growth) the graph is concave downwards, in the form of a parabola with its vertex round about this weekend. The data fits the Farr Curve (as a normal distribution) much better than the Gompertz Curve and somewhat better than a tanh curve. The sigmoid shape is consistent with an ultimate confirmed case number in the UK of around 150,000 (that is, twice what it is to date) and with a falling off in the daily rate from now on. The other EU countries look superficially similar with peak dates which are a few days earlier. The exponential approximation was reasonable in the early stages, namely up till around 20th March (UK), because the other more curves are indistinguishable from such an exponential. However, from that date the rate of increase of the daily numbers slowed down and has become zero; the daily numbers themselves are fluctuating around the 4000 to 5000 are and can be expected to drop to about half that within two weeks. In other words, we are in a routine epidemic which we can reasonably expect will eventually result in about 150,000 confirmed cases, or about a quarter of a percent of the population.
The answer to the question “Is the pandemic exponential” is that in the weeks to March 14 it was indeed exponential, but it has ceased to be exponential more recently because various control measures have been put in place. We know it is very likely that the control measures have been the chief cause of the slowing away from the original benchmark rate of 20% compound per day because, even if one assumes that 100 times as many are infected as the confirmed-case counts show, there are still 98% uninfected and thus susceptible, so that there is not at present any good reason to imagine that the exponential curve will transition to the epidemic curve in the near future.
If the confirmed cases in the UK are indeed held down at 150,000 compared with the current 100,000, that will be chiefly thanks to the lockdown.
Well milord, the log curve of cumulative UK cases was showing a downward bend from March 4th to 12th, but then suddenly curved up again. The convex upturn lasted 4-5 days, and then avearge concavity (downwar bending) resumed, much too soon to be in response to the lockdown of March 17th. So the data do not support your thesis.
Thanks to Willis Eschenbach, who explained the Gompertz curves near the start of all this, I have been using them to good effect.
As to 98% being uninfected, where is your proof of that? A small town in Germany (thanks Len Deighton) has shown 15% infection/immunity rate. We don’t know the position in the UK, and it makes a lot of us angry that the government isn’t investing in random sampling to settle these sorts of questions.
Rich.
:Thanks to Willis Eschenbach, who explained the Gompertz curves near the start of all this, I have been using them to good effect.
EXcept they are wrong
go read the Korean one he did. reality? Not gompertz,
his predicted cases were 8000, we hit 10,
predicted deaths 100, we crossed 2000
non mechanistic approaches will fail.
there is a reason why it is not a gompertz curve, that you won’t get
Monckton wrote: “Those who support ending all lockdowns, allowing the old and the sick to die in large numbers…”
This (and other statements in this post and comments) show a strong bias toward government enforced action. Monckton has every right to have such a bias/preference, but that’s all it is, nothing more than a subjective preference.
The old and the sick die in large numbers every year whether or not there are lockdowns and whether or not there are pandemics. After all, one of the characteristics of being old is to be closer to death than those who are younger. Will fewer old and sick die because of government enforced lockdowns? Probably (but unless you have a set of alternative universes to run experiments in, not provably with 100% confidence).
But the tradeoff is not “business as usual” versus government lockdown at gunpoint. People would have modified their behavior. Many would have self isolated (especially, I would think, the old and sick who are most at risk). People would’ve figured out the mask thing eventually on their own. Government advice could still be given (and possibly mostly followed). Government could still have lessened economic blows for those who felt the need to self isolate or for business who felt the need to close their doors. Government could’ve been help instead of overbearing and oppressive. But the governments chose the latter and decided to enforce lockdowns.
But the tradeoff is horrific and in my subjective opinion not worth. Increases in depression, suicide, domestic abuse and battered women and children, lost opportunity, failing businesses, lost social interactions, hunger in poorer countries, and on and on is just not worth it in my opinion. Even ignoring all that, just giving the government more power is not worth it in my opinion. This situation has lowered the bar to future government oppressive actions in my opinion and that is a terrible tragedy that we will pay for until the end of time.
While Monckton’s preference is government wielding power, I personally would prefer to take my chances with dying with no lockdown than to continue living with this lockdown. That is my very, very strong preference. And I’m old so I would have a much higher likelihood than average of dying from the virus. Better dead than red or in this case better dead than under the governments thumb.
Mr Wallach is of course entitled to his opinion that all those tiresome, smelly old people and sick people should just be left to die, and the hospitals should be left to be overrun with critical-care cases, but responsible governments have to try to make sure that people young and old can still get access to hospital care when they need it. So, whether he likes it or not, the activists in the medico-scientific community have prevailed over the passivists, and there is absolutely no point in his trying to take his disappointment at the fact that humanity has prevailed over profit out on me.
And I do not prefer that governments should wield power: I am a libertarian. But I am a thinking libertarian, experienced at the most senior levels in government, and I am therefore reluctant to pay heed to every passing armchair epidemiologist who presumes to know, when the real epidemiologists say they do not know, that all of this coronavirus stuff is just a storm in a teacup.
Who are these “real epidemiologists”?
But the lockdowns are already leaving them to die. There’s a typo here.
“Those who support ending all lockdowns, allowing the old and the sick to die in large numbers and risking the general population’s health…”
should read
“Those who support lockdowns, forcing the old and the sick into solitary house arrest and reduced medical care, for the next 18 months if we believe the March Imperial College paper, which 18 months for many of those old and sick will be the remainder of their lives…”
Yes. You can aim for 100% of email safety: you can want to keep your email account safe, un-hacked, forever. You can aim at never having 50,000 emails hacked because you clicked on a link and submitted your email password to hackers, because the message told you you needed to change your email password, because your account was attacked by hackers (which ironically was dishonestly honest).
“For example, on or about March 19, 2016, LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators
created and sent a spearphishing email to the chairman of the Clinton Campaign.”
https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download
You can aim for 100% of avoidance of that. You can expect to avoid that if you are not stupid.
BUT you can’t want to live forever. You would be a bad shape after a while.
When you accepted mandatory MEASLES vaccine (a benign childhood disease that was the joke in TV shows some decades ago), you gave away your freedom. Don’t cry now.
Those who support ending all lockdowns, allowing the old and the sick to die in large numbers and risking the general population’s health…
That part really annoys me. I’ve heard it before as in, “If you don’t accept global warming constrictions, you must want to drown the little brown people of Bangladesh by the millions, you racist.”
And, “If you don’t want to exterminate all the cows, you must really like forest fires.”
And, “If you drive a gas-powered car, you must want the East Coast to be destroyed by hurricanes.”
This is a fallacious argument: Appeal to pity (argumentum ad misericordiam) with a tinge of Bulverism.
It is beneath you, Lord Monckton, and you know it.
Required reading
R Hatchett et al. Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918 influenza pandemic. PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0610941104 (2007)
M Bootsma and N Ferguson. The effect of public health measures on the 1918 influenza pandemic in US cities. PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0611071104 (2007)