By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
In Italy and Spain, two of Europe’s hardest-hit nations, the compound daily growth rates in cumulative cases of Chinese-virus infection have fallen to 2.8% and 3.4% respectively. The lockdowns in these two countries are, for the first time, being eased.
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 28 to April 12, 2020. A link to the high-definition PowerPoint slides is at the end of this posting.
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 April 4 to April 12, 2020.
The United States (7.5% daily growth) and the United Kingdom (8.4%) still have some way to go before it is prudent for them to end lockdowns.
South Korea and Sweden got away without lockdowns. South Korea had contained the pandemic with a very early, very vigorous and very thorough campaign of testing, isolating all carriers and following up and testing all their contacts, banning large gatherings and encouraging people to keep their distance from one another and to wear masks and, if possible, eye protection in public. That is the gold standard. Do that and there is no need for a lockdown. South Korea’s growth rate in cumulative cases is now down to just 0.4% per day.
Sweden, having failed to act as fast or as thoroughly as South Korean, nevertheless decided not to lock the country down completely, though some restrictions were imposed. Its daily growth rate in cumulative cases is 6.3%.
Two further factors are worth bearing in mind. First, Sweden has a low population density. There are two prime determinants of the rate at which a new pathogen will spread during the early stages of a pandemic. The first is its infectivity: how readily it is transmitted between people in close proximity to one another. The second is the mean person-to-person contact rate. This will be much lower where population density is lower.
Central Stockholm, for instance, has a population density about one-fifth that of central London. It could get away without a lockdown where London simply could not.
Stephen Mosher has supplied some interesting figures showing that both in South Korea and in Sweden the usage of public transport has fallen by some 60%. Once the people have become educated in the need to take precautions for themselves, many of them will have the common sense to do so, even if there is no lockdown in place.
Contrast that sensible behavior with the UK, where as recently as March 13, the day before Mr Trump announced a state of emergency in the United States, the last day of the four-day Cheltenham Racing Festival went ahead just as usual, with huge crowds attending. That was silly.
And it was not until almost two weeks after Mr Trump that Mr Johnson finally realized that, unlike Sweden, Britain was too densely-packed into huge urban centers to allow him to get away without a lockdown. By heeding the “herd-immunity” merchants at Oxford University and leaving it far, far too late, Mr Johnson guaranteed that Britain would have a worse experience with the pandemic than any other country in Europe.
Eventually, however, the hard-headed “Save the hospitals from utter collapse” team at Imperial College, London, prevailed and the lockdown happened. At least it was just in time to prevent the total collapse of the health service: but, as things stand today, all surgical interventions other than Chinese-virus cases and emergencies have been canceled for many weeks, and will continue to be canceled until further notice. Losses of life from these cancelations are not included in the death figures, and Britain is bending the numbers still further by not counting deaths at home or deaths in nursing-homes in the daily death counts.
By now, in Italy and Spain the populations are sufficiently well educated that their governments consider that a gradual dismantling of the lockdowns is now possible.
On the data, then, the first lesson the world needs to learn from this pandemic is that the sooner determined action is taken to test, isolate and contact-trace the more likely it is that no lockdown will be needed; that the chief reason for lockdowns is to ensure that the hospital system is not overrun; and that if for that reason a lockdown is needed it should be introduced as soon as possible. Later lockdowns are longer and more costly lockdowns, as Britain is learning the hard way.
Meanwhile the climate Communists, desperate to try to regain the world’s attention, are saying that the Chinese-virus pandemic has taught climate “deniers” the value of believing the “experts”. Well, it has done no such thing, for the “experts” are no more agreed among themselves about how to deal with this pandemic than they are about whether capitalism should be destroyed so as to “Save The Planet” from mildly warmer worldwide weather.
However, lockdowns and the consequent decline in economic activity do provide us with a very interesting test of whether CO2 concentration will detectably fall and whether, even if it does, the gentle warming of recent decades will slow. Watch this space: the earliest indications are that the climate Communists are in for something of a shock.
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Looking at your earlier graphs, which went back further than those above, it appears the UK lockdown was so successful that it took effect before it began on March 23rd. The indicated compound daily growth rate was already headed downward since March 18th.
This could be due to the graph not accurately indicating anything real, or due to the real compound daily growth rate heading downward for a reason other than the lockdown.
The graphs for daily hospital admissions versus time all show very similar shapes: a bell curve which is rather close to a normal distribution about some key date with a standard deviation of about ten days. Correspondingly, the cumulative distribution (the integral of the daily) is a sigmoid curve with a point of inflection at the key date, and the “compounded daily growth rate” (the finite differential of the daily) goes negative just after the daily (give or take the one week delay/averaging) . The key dates differ between countries. I haven’t yet met any analysis or opportunistic experiment that shows that lockdown had any effect. Is the different procedure in Sweden a possible way of testing the various hypotheses? These are roughly that (i) social distancing (ii) lockdown (iii) quarantining the vulnerable while allowing social contact might influence the progress of the epidemic. The data from China[1], who have gone through the complete one-month epidemic of C19 in February, might prove useful as well.
And what did we learn from the similar events two years ago, when Aussie Flu was going round[2]?
[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.19.20025148v1.full.pdf
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5305099/Aussie-flu-leads-highest-weekly-death-toll-3-years.html
PJF is perhaps unaware that some restrictions were introduced in the UK some weeks before the full lockdown, and that sensible people had locked themselves down without having to be told.
Thanks. So it’s the latter: it’s due to the real compound daily growth rate heading downward for a reason other than the lockdown (or “full lockdown” as you now describe it).
Since the established downward trend is consistent (if anything it slackens), there is no indication in your graph that the UK lockdown had any effect beyond the measures already taken.
Government imposed lockdowns are unnecessary. With adequate, accurate information prudent people will protect themselves.
Nature ends the flu season every single year, and then restarts it every single year.
Oh look, right in line with the typical end of flu season, the Chinese Kung Flu is starting wane. Unbelievable, it must have been the lock downs that accomplished the mission.
But if there are still cases out there, more wide spread across the world and transmitted through silent carriers while we are nowhere near herd immunity, if that is even possible!,won’t the Chinese kung Flu reemerge stronger and more deadly than before?
Nonsense, we’ll be rich, the laws of physics won’t apply to us.
OK everyone, my model says that if you are outside tonight, the sun will not rise in the morning! So, everyone is on lockdown. Is everyone locked down? OK good.
See, I told you, if you only listened to me that the sun would rise again. Good job listening to me, your better.
This chart re:NYC deaths clearly shows flu peak followed by COVID-19 peak.
Astonerii is, as usual, ignoring the obvious. In the UK, to take one example, following the lockdown the mean person-to-person contact rate has fallen by 85-95%, based on studying anonymized cellphone movement records. Since the contact rate is one of the two determinants of the rate of transmission of a pathogen in the early stages of a pandemic, the other being the infectivity of the pathogen itself, that degree of interference with transmission will have had a significant effect on what would otherwise have been a much higher rate of transmission. All of this is elementary epidemiology, and it is astonishing that some commenters here are refusing to face the blindingly obvious.
“person-to-person contact rate has fallen by 85-95%, based on studying anonymized cellphone movement records”
That’s inane BS, but OK… that’s on par with your OTHER pro lockdown BS.
I’ve read about some cities closing their bus (stop) shelters. This seems a bit excessive to me, as many people still require public transit and just about everyone is doing the “social distance dance”. It’s not unusual to see an elderly individual waiting for a bus in a shelter out of the elements, while another (younger) individual waits outside. The older folks have enough to deal with. I understand why the municipalities want to do this, but it seems to have been a rushed decision.
I’ve read about some cities closing their barbers and nail salons. This seems a bit excessive to me, as many people still require their jobs in the hair/nail styling industry.
I’ve read about some cities closing their restaurants. This seems a bit excessive to me, as many people still require their jobs in the food services industry.
Look, either you want to shut down this virus via draconian lockdown efforts or you don’t. You cannot social distance in a bus. Even if you can run that bus with less than 10 people, such that everyone can stay 6 feet from one another, unless you are going to disinfect the bus every 10 miles, you are creating a mechanism for transmission.
If you are going to allow for public transportation, then you might as well allow for modified services for hair, nail, food services.
“I’ve read about some cities closing their barbers and nail salons. This seems a bit excessive to me, as many people still require their jobs in the hair/nail styling industry.
I’ve read about some cities closing their restaurants. This seems a bit excessive to me, as many people still require their jobs in the food services industry.
Look, either you want to shut down this virus via draconian lockdown efforts or you don’t. You cannot social distance in a bus. Even if you can run that bus with less than 10 people, such that everyone can stay 6 feet from one another, unless you are going to disinfect the bus every 10 miles, you are creating a mechanism for transmission.
If you are going to allow for public transportation, then you might as well allow for modified services for hair, nail, food services.”
1. there is NO CALCULUS on every profession.
2. health officials are responding and stomping out fires, arson investigation come later.
3. Public transit is deemed essential because cops and medical workers have to get to work.
For Nail salons. I believe it was HK that did that. The way it works is they trace a case to
a nail salon, see that this nail salon infected 10 people. Then they take the pre caution.
Same for restaurants.
here is a thought, when HK first HEARD about the virus in late December they started restricting
access to hospitals.
When Korea had its first hospital cases and nursing home cases, they controlled access there.
wack a mole
it will always be wack mole because there isn’t a science that says
nail shops are safe and grocery stores are not. There is no science that says
“your infections will slow by 53.87 % if you close churches” or 23.7 %
if you close bars, or 15% if you wear a mask.
If you MISS the early opportunity to test and trace, then you are STUCK.
you are stuck with “lockdowns” of various varieties.
None tested. we have no data on various “levels” of lockdown.
you are stuck playing wack a mole.
Spreading n churches? christ shut them down.
Now spreading in shopping malls, christ go shut them.
wack a mole.
when you FAIL to move early and the exponential growth gets ahead of you, you get to
do a lockdown. You get to apply the hammer and damage your economy more than you
had to. And when you slow the spread, then you will get a second chance and play
the game of wack a mole.
You can’t conclude anything of the sort. Apart from anything else, you are still using reported cases as your key data, which has been utterly discredited because it depends so heavily on how many are tested and who is tested.
The death toll in the UK is coming out around the same as a bad flu epidemic. That is what those opposed to lockdown also predicted so you can’t from that assume lockdown has been effective. If you look at the cumulative death curve you can see the death rate increase begins to slow before lockdown so there’s no proof there. It is an interesting question why some countries are affected worse than others but you need to prove the timing and severity of lockdown made the difference not assume it.
Besides which, lockdown is supposed to flatten the curve not reduce the overall number of deaths, unless the health service is overrun, which it wasn’t in this case. So claiming that a late lockdown made things worse as though they then got more deaths misses the point: as long as the health service was never overrun (which it wasn’t) the timing of the lockdown to flatten the curve should make no difference to the overall number of deaths.
Given what is at stake here full proper analysis needs to be done, not back of an envelope stuff, and on solid data, not discredited reported case numbers.
In response to Mr Jones, it is far too early in the pandemic to say that the death rate in the UK or anywhere else will be no worse than for flu. The UK’s first intensive-care case analysis, published here some days ago, shows very clearly that the fatality rate for the Chinese virus is worse than for flu.
And, even if the Chinese virus does no more than to add as many deaths as flu has added to the total death toll, that outcome will have followed – and may to some extent have been influenced by, the fact that a lockdown has been in place.
It’s not too early. The government’s advisers themselves are projecting around 20,000 deaths with Covid-19. A number of antibody studies have confirmed a dearth rate of similar to flu, most recently in Denmark. You are still claiming lockdown will reduce the overall number of deaths when, save where there has been health service overload, which there hasn’t in the UK, it is only envisaged to flatten the curve ie spread them out.
Health Service overload hasn’t happened in the UK?
Surely you jest?
They had to allocate all the Private health care to the NHS because it was overloaded.
It is still at overload with Lockdown in place for a month.
That is why they insist we stay at home with COVID19 until we are really ill, by which time it makes their job that much harder to save us.
It is also why the ONS mortality statistics are 6000 worse than normal for this period, it is not just COVID that people are dying from.
The government’s advisers themselves are projecting around 20,000 deaths with Covid-19 WITH lockdown in place.
With regard to the current ‘shutdowns’ measures, I find I am getting just a bit ‘exercised’ myself, about the presumption we see in many quarters that current shutdown or ‘semi-lockdown’ provisions in most Western countries are somehow sure to be saving lives. If saving lives, then the indisputably high cost of shutting down businesses etc., is therefore sure to be worth it — but no effort is ever being made to estimate collateral deaths from the economic impact of it all! Also, the ‘saving lives’ thing is not really corroborated, with Sweden’s more relaxed ‘no lockdowns’ policy being a significant counterexample currently.
As an example of the negative bias that I see regarding Sweden’s success on this, see for instance the video aired by the Global News network here in Canada:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6cdZbISRTM ,
Mostly this video report talks about the difference in attitudes between Sweden and neighboring Denmark, but there is also an extremely biased effort at ‘science’ in the report. There is, for instance, a presentation by one of the announcers to the effect that the CoVid deaths situation in Sweden is so much worse?
To see what I mean, take a good look at the video above, where they display a graph of *total* deaths per country, for Sweden, Denmark and Canada at the 1:30 minutes mark. Aficionados of actual science will note that listing total death numbers provides little interpretive meaning in itself (when you consider, say, that Sweden has a substantially larger population). At least they might have made the effort to do a per capita graph! However, the failure to do ‘per capita’ only begins do describe the problems with such a quick and superficial graph.
Without trying to graph anything here, let’s just take a look a a few numbers, from
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
If I go to the above Worldometer page and list 10 European countries that happen to interest me for the sake of comparing things at the moment, and taking a look according to the “deaths per million” column (and marking Sweden and Denmark with an asterisk), I get the following:
Norway: 25 (1208)
Denmark*: 49 (1091)
Ireland: 74 (2156)
Sweden*: 91 (1084)
Switzerland: 131 (2968)
Netherlands: 165 (1550)
U.K.: 167 (1305)
Belgium: 337 (2639)
Italy: 338 (2638)
Spain: 374 (3625)
In the above, the first number is the deaths per million to date; the second number (in brackets) is the current number of cases of CoVID identified to date (Apr 13th, 2020).
Going by those per capita deaths numbers, you might think that Sweden is surely worse off, as compared to Denmark! Notice however, that the ‘total deaths per capita’ numbers from country to country are actually all over the place from one country to another (looking across all ten countries), so it is not so easy to interpret the significance of that deaths per million number!
Another point to notice is that the larger, probably somewhat more statistically significant number, the’ cases per million population’ in each country, is *also* all over the place from country to country. *That* particular statistic just happens to be matching almost *exactly* between Denmark and Sweden right now, the number being ‘1090’ or so. So where is the honesty in the Global News, Canada video, I’ve mentioned, along with any other media reports you might find that exhibit a similar bias?
I don’t suppose I need to go on further about the numbers at the moment. I just think this is a crucial point to get straight! In the Western world, the lockdown/semilockdown “nightmare” is far from over. In the next few weeks, even if some jurisdictions relinquish extreme, arbitrary measures, many countries or states are apt to continue with them for a very long time? I hope I’m wrong on that point, I really do, but once media figures and bureaucrats decide that some policy is good, at what point to they relinquish it?
Also of course, there is the little matter of what is the “good” thing to do next fall, if there is a second wave of CoVID, or the issue of whether is is automatically good to tank the economy in similar situations in future years.
So, not to get too ‘exercised’, but I worry about what our great scientific and political decision makers have in store for us, I really do.
I suspect that the real number of cases in Sweden is much larger than the current 11,000 or so.
They have tested at less than half the rate in Denmark
The real number of cases is far greater in ALL countries, including Denmark.
Hack journos always seem to have an axe to grind these days and rarely make any fair and pertinent arguments. They just chose an ignorant position then grab a few stats to support their bias.
For some reason the marching orders include sacking Sweden for taking a very smart choice for their own situation and making it work. It also involves systematic trashing of Pr Raoult’s proposed protocol and forever harping on about an initial test done on 22 patients like the 2500 he has treated since is unknown and that 60% of MDs in Spain reported having prescribed it.
Spain has the best cure rate in Europe. Maybe they should report that and ask whether there may be a link.
Sadly Trump said it may be hopeful and TDS kicked so they all have to try to destroy a promising treatment to ensure that Trump was not shown to be correct.
The main assertion of this article, that lockdowns “work” (i.e., their benefit is worth their high cost) remains, after all the author’s admirably earnest remarks and thoughtful replies:
Unproven.
The argument in support, so far, remains only:
1) post hoc ergo propter hoc
and
2) “we know”
[i.e., asserted, but, not proven — no data proving causation is cited — moreover, the death certificate data skewing such as that happening in the U.S. per the CDC’s “presumptive” and “assume” guideline has not been dealt with]
that, but for COVID19, a significant number (enough to justify a major lockdown) of excess deaths would not have happened (i.e., the deaths were not caused by complications from regular flu or pneumonia or the like or directly from a significant, existing, co-morbidity)
AND
“we know” [i.e., not proven] that the life span of those who died from COVID19 due to no lockdown (assuming ad arguendo that a lockdown would have been effective to a significant degree) was going to be long enough to make the cost of the lockdown worth the benefit of gaining that extra time to live on the earth.
*********************
Perhaps, it is because I am a believer in Jesus that I not all that concerned about making extra sure that at GREAT cost people get to live a few more months or years on earth. I am eagerly looking forward to going Home. Delaying that homegoing is not worth crushing the liberty and happiness of millions of people. The key (for someone like me; I realize many WUWTers will sneer at this) is making sure people hear the gospel so they can believe and know that they are going to heaven when they die. Months or years more of life are no guarantee that they will ever believe. This correlates with my belief that the death penalty is a moral and just punishment, for, life in prison is no guarantee that an unbeliever will ever accept Christ as his or her Savior. Telling them the “good news” about Jesus with a meaningful chance to repent and believe before they are executed is the key.
In summary:
Lockdowns, so far as any reliable data show, are just not worth it. When the data prove otherwise (e.g., lockdowns proven to have saved the lives of hundreds of otherwise healthy people who were highly unlikely to die from another cause within a few years or less), I will readily admit I was mistaken.
************************
Note re: The Precautionary Fallacy/Principle
Life has risks. Only when the data indicate that a given cost is going to substantially and meaningfully remove a risk of injury AND the cost is significantly outweighed by the value of the injury avoided is the cost to be incurred.
The higher the cost, the greater must be the avoided injury.
Where there is great uncertainty about the benefit (as is the case here), the cost must be fairly low to make it worth trying.
With the COVID19 lockdown (in the U.S., over $2 TRILLION plus the costs of such things as losing a business and of dashed hopes) THE COST IS NOT JUSTIFIED by the unproven-at-best benefit.
**********************
**********************
Why Am I Taking the Time to Go On So LONG About All This?
LIBERTY. Defending this lockdown sets us up for ANOTHER lockdown…. and another…. . A perpetual quasi-police state. Not okay with this American.
In a free society, We the People get to choose what costs we will bear to deal with risks. Machiavellian tyranny is for countries like…… hm…… where in the world…. oh, yes, communist nations like China.
Agree 100%. Maybe its time to not allow Mockton to Publish here except for climate related stuff for the mean time anyway altghough I agree with the statement that I may not like what the man says but i will defend his right to say what he wants 100% but these are special times and his attitude and that of those pushing the lockdowns could be causing more death long term than necessary as Swedish data is showing cheers
Eliza displays not merely a lamentable ignorance of elementary epidemiology but also a culpable ignorance of the United States Constitution, which, whether she likes it or not, was amended to permit freedom of speech.
If she will get someone to read these head postings to her, she will find that the Swedish lack of a lockdown has been faithfully reported here from the start, as a counterexample. If she will get someone to explain to her the difference between the population density of central Stockholm, on the one hand, or of London or New York, on the other, and if she will get someone to read to her any elementary textbook of epidemiology on the question of the link between population density and the transmissibility of a pathogen in the early stages of a pandemic, she will begin to understand why lockdowns, though always undesirable, are sometimes necessary.
And if she will get someone to read to her the earlier pieces in this series, she will realize that one of its stated purposes was to show the extent to which the mean daily compound rate of growth in the infection was falling in various countries, so as to hold out hope that the lockdowns could be brought to an end at the earliest possible moment.
Surely she does not actually wish the lockdowns to be persisted with?
Eliza
I do think Monckton should be allowed to publish and argue his case here, but he can surely do so without being so rude about the people he disagrees with. His second paragraph in reply to you should give him pause for thought that you don’t change people’s opinions by insulting them and being so contemptuous.
Tonyb
Janice,
I agree with your thoughts and position in general.
I don’t have religious belief.
Religion is a fascinating subject to debate, and one that has been going on for as long as humanity had the time to think about such things.
The human ability to be rational and logical, while at the same time have complete belief in something, that is not provable this side of eternity, is something I do not understand.
Thankfully, there are many things, I do not understand, yet I am able to function reasonably successfully.
Clearly absolute knowledge, like absolute certainty is not a prerequisite for success.
Thank you for your well considered thoughts.
Janice Moore appears unaware of the elementary epidemiology of pathogenic transmission during the early stages of a pandemic.
The two factors that govern the rate of transmission are the infectivity of the pathogen and the mean person-to-person contact rate. Any standard textbook of epidemiology will explain this to her.
Since the infectivity of the pathogen is inherent to the pathogen and cannot be influenced by governments until a prophylactic, palliative or curative mechanism is discovered, the only way that governments can influence the transmission rate during the early stages of a pandemic is by reducing the person-to-person contact rate.
There are numerous ways of demonstrating that the contact rate has in fact been reduced. In the UK, anonymized cellphone records demonstrate that the contact rate has diminished by 85-95%. In fact, it had already begun to fall even before the lockdown, because a) the government had already introduced some restrictions, notably on large gatherings and on movement of vulnerable people, and b) those who were more alert than most had already begun to take extra care to avoid person-to-person contact outside their own households.
And I have repeatedly made it plain here that lockdowns are not the optimal strategy. The optimal strategy – widespread testing, contact-tracing and isolation of carriers – was adopted by South Korea. However, countries with high urban population densities, such as Britain, having not implemented the South Korean method, were in danger of suffering very large casualties in the absence of a lockdown, leading to the overwhelming of the hospital service, preventing the advanced, prolonged intensive-care treatment without which serious cases would have very little chance of survival.
Frankly, it is futile to try to maintain that lockdowns do not work. They do. They buy vital time to enable the hospital services to gear themselves up to cope. But they ought not to have been necessary, if all nations had been as well prepared as South Korea was.
I would like to know what sort of evidence it would take to convince the author that the lockdowns have not been as effective as is presumed.
Because what I have seen for almost a month is:
If the death/case rate increase, it’s because people are not following lockdowns.
If the death/case rate decrease, it’s because the lockdowns are working.
I am not accusing the author of begging the question (though I do accuse MANY people of doing that), but I would like to know what it would take to demonstrate that the conclusion “the lockdowns were not a significant cause in ending the pandemic”.
Mr Postema appears not to have read any of the head postings here, and he cannot even have looked at the pictures.
At no point have I said that if the death rate or case rate are increasing the lockdowns are not working. That is for the good and sufficient reason that, as the graphs very clearly illustrate, in just about all the countries I am following, the case growth rate and the growth rate in deaths are falling, not increasing.
Nor have I said that if the death rate or case rate are falling the lockdowns are working. I have fairly pointed out, throughout, that in Sweden, for instance, the death rate and case rate are falling even though there is no strict lockdown, though some control measures are in place.
However, I have said – and correctly – that elementary epidemiology dictates that if in the early stages of a pandemic one has not acted as South Korea has to control the pandemic without a lockdown, a lockdown may become necessary in those countries with a high urban population density. And I have said – again correctly – that, therefore, if it can be demonstrated that the mean person-to-person contact rate has fallen in any country under study, and if the fall is significant enough, it is not only legitimate but necessary to deduce that the fall in the contact rate has prevented a much larger case-growth and death-growth rate.
In Britain, the cellphone data show that the person-to-person contact rate has fallen by some 85-95%. Go figure.
I would (still) like to know what sort of evidence it would take to convince the author that the lockdowns have not been as effective as is presumed.
I’m afraid the closest I will get is that “elementary epidemiology dictates that if in the early stages of a pandemic one has not acted as South Korea has to control the pandemic without a lockdown, a lockdown may become necessary in those countries with a high urban population density”.
Which is to say that efficacy of lockdowns for this virus is one of the presumptions, and not a conclusion based on the unfolding evidence.
The lockdown is and was completely unjustified for the purpose of limiting the rate of serious infection to match the limited availablity of intensive care ventilators.
Ventilators do not help SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) COVID victims because the virus stops the ability of red corpuscles to absorb and transport oxygen. Therefor pumping more oxygen into the lungs is pointless, as the oxygen has nowhere to go,
In fact forcing oxygen into unreceptive lungs at high pressure ultimately damages the lungs.
The best route to cure SARS COVID is to stop the virus changing the nature of the red corpuscles, and that appears to be by quinine type medicine.
This SARS COVID is only different from the previous SARS by 1500 bases. That difference of 1500 is made up of items that have been cut and pasted using the CRISPR DNA editing tool. The changes are entirely man made.
The public is being prevented from knowing:
Who started the spread.
How many people have already have had SARS COVID.
What the cure actually is.
What the purpose of the deliberate spread is.
On the best information, this SARS COVID was created in state military laboritories, spread via the World Military Games at Wuhan in October 2019 via known US soldiers and related people. The Wuhan connection to Milan is that the clothing for the games was made by Chinese workers in Milan.
Look up George Webb’s videos starting with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdMt8bHfQKM
WUWT readers might now be so very super duper excited to know that George Webb thinks he might have even found a patient zero! Anyone reading care to guess who he thinks it/they could be – anyone … Bueller?
If you guessed the “Zionist Agent” Maatje Benassi an armed State Dept. diplomatic security officer possibly for China & then Ben Benassi perhaps for Italy you don’t need to see Webb’s March 26th video. That Webb sure has the inside track on some deep secrets & I know that because – well, if I told you I’d have to ….\
lol
Well, well. Someone comes straight in and tries to muddy the waters with a smear. I’ve watched a lot of George Webb videos and he’s never mentioned anything about Zionist agents. I notice you don’t address the substance of the post.
“… obesity substantially higher odds … than … cardiovascular or pulmonary disease …” is what has the “… strongest association with critical illness …” from Wuhan Virus. This according to team Petrilli of NYU’s review investigating 4,103 NYC Wuhan Virus cases recently released (As per “Factors associated with hospitalization and critical illness among 4,103 ….”
Those with COPD, most forms of heart disease & even those who smoke qstatistically were at less risk requiring hospitalization than those with heart failure, chronic kidney disease, old age or obesity.
It is interesting to me to compare Sweden to the WuFlu experience in Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands. There is a range of political/social responses as well as an apparent difference in results — so far. This isn’t over, by any means, and any analysis done now will have to change.
Also, we seem to forget that the Hong Kong protests had an effect on reducing the potential vectors in a lot of the Western Pacific reason, and specifically in South Korea. The measures taken by the Korean government as mentioned by Monckton had a leg up with a late fall restriction on Chinese travel added to the small amount of tourism from that country. While the population is very dense, they’ve had a single government with an extensive civil defense and integrated emergency management establishment for more than 60 years.
Amazing number of comments despite almost no new facts. When we have a properly designed statistical survey of antibody testing, then we will know whose speculation came closest to the mark. We were told this evening by Dr Fauci that we may be just days away from approval of an antibody test in the US.
If the lockdown worked as intended, antibody testing will show low penetration of the virus into the general public. If lockdown was a prudent but ultimately ineffective intervention, then antibody testing will reveal a high percentage of the population has already obtained immunity.
Those of us who only hope for the best should hope that the lockdowns were highly ineffective. Of course those whose political aspirations or professional reputations are now linked to the certainty that lockdowns worked well may be an impediment to learning the truth. We may need to analyze through a lot of spin.
I’m inclined to think that we will learn that the lockdowns had a significant impact, which will mean we still have a hard road ahead. But I hope to be wrong. I also hope we learn soon that HCQ-Zn is effective and can mitigate the situation if we still are far from herd immunity.
But either way, to paraphrase St. John, “You will know the data, and the data will set you free”.
lol…In God We Trust, all others bring Data.
There is no doubt that the lockdowns have had a significant impact. What needs to be determined is if those impacts were positive or negative.
In response to CptTrips, the lockdowns have had both a positive and a negative impact. The positive impact was in slowing the transmission rate sufficiently to prevent hospital systems from being overrun, and thus to save lives. The negative impact is economic, which is why all governments that have introduced lockdowns are keeping them under review and will begin to dismantle them as soon as it is reasonably safe to do so.
Monckton of Brenchley
April 14, 2020 at 12:27 am
Yes, true, but the only thing there for real, evidently so, indisputably by evidence there is the size of negative impacts. Too huge.
Positives thus far, simply still argumentative, no substance there, no any actual support any where there unless considering deception and criminal activity as positive.
There is no mending or reparation in that one, unless accepting crime and awarding of crime as positive… and it, the crime being the new normal, as per consideration of fairness and justice where crime and reward for crime happens to be fair and just and the new way forward for civility and civilization.
Good luck with that one my friend.
cheers
cheers
+100
In response to Mr Davis, we already know that lockdowns work, because we know from cellphone data that the mean person-to-person contact rate in the UK has fallen by 85-95%. One would have to be mightily perverse to imagine that so large a reduction in the contact rate would have no effect on transmission in the early stages of a pandemic.
In the UK, the lockdown has bought us just enough time to ensure that the hospital service was not swamped.
Yes, my lord, mightily perverse I am indeed, to have stated that you are probably correct, and yet to hope that I may be wrong in the assessment because that would mean that we are close to herd immunity. Such a perverse hope!
And how impertinent to characterize the lockdown policy as prudent yet potentially ineffective. Such an extreme position! Why, if governments had listened to that sort of dangerous talk, they might have done precisely what they did but without being quite so cocksure of themselves.
Surely you acknowledge that the truth will be known when we establish the extent of immunity in the general population?
What would be the psychological, emotional and statistical results of introducing testing (either for the virus, for antigens or for antibodies) which had a significant number of false positives? Would there be a risk of generating a phoney panic? Suppose the entire population of 70,000,000 were tested for something, and there was a 1% false positive on each test? That would be 700,000 false positives. Furthermore, if the rate of roll-out of testing were exponential in the early stages, we would see an exponential rise in “cases” and more hysteria and tunnel-vision. And if the people tested were informed of their own results, would there not be a significant proportion of the 700,000 who react highly irrationally in response to the (mis)information. Perhaps at least one of these would kill themselves and perhaps their family, in the mistaken belief that they have an incurable, serious and painful disease. Then the media, as always, would focus on how “the virus caused the death of an entire family”. Pure epidemiology is a start and a useful contribution, as is fitting exponential curves all day long, but there are wider issues that need to be taken into consideration. I have little expectation that the UK cabinet meeting this month will do anything other than the “media safe” decision to continue the lockdown indefinitely, even if the daily hospital intake figures have halved by Thursday 24th
False positives in an antibody test could lull people into a false sense of security with more people being assumed to be immune than really are safe.
Some people might be surprised that Macron announced that France will stay in lockdown for another four weeks.
I am not. Given the numbers that is the reasonable thing to do. The curve of active cases is not bending and far away from going down. Same is true for the UK. Italy and Spain are on a better way in this regard.
Germany, Switzerland and Austria are actually going down in the number of active cases so it might be possible to loosen the restrictions carefully in the next weeks. But this will be risky. On mistake and cases will explode again. People will need strict guidelines what to do and what should be avoided as much as possible.
Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands will be bad surprises in terms of deaths/million. Bad combination of importing the virus by skiing tourists, local mass spreading events and too late/not sufficient lockdown policies.
Especially Belgium is as bad as Italy and Spain.
Undisputable fact is that I live in the US – central Alabama.
Little squishier fact is that I’ve seen the Bill & Melinda Gates funded Covid-19 website swing our mortality rate through August 1 (with full social distancing for every day between a couple weeks ago and then) from approximately 5500 deaths to today’s 400 or so. Thought early on, since they showed it sweeping through unchecked over a period of a few weeks, that they figured we were still sleeping 8 to a corn crib, snuggled up to sisters and cousins. Then, decided they just didn’t waste much time or many electrons calculating exactly what they claimed would be a bunch of unrepentant redneck’s fate.
Then, I decided they’re just going off the last few days of data, to predict the future of the Chi-Com-19 flu, as it sweeps through the West.
Now, given there isn’t any clear break in these ad-hoc data sermons preaching the beneficial effects of pushing us towards a Depression, I’m starting to suspect the curve bending is due to:
– Low lying fruit (older and sick enough their lives have been extended by the medications Chi-Com-19 seems to resent, being whacked to the point there are fewer susceptible.
– There’s a percentage of the population that is going to present, as to symptoms. Some of the rest have had it or are going to get it, but aren’t being counted.
– Hand-washing and hygiene has and will play as large or larger part as “social-distancing”. Gotta love that term, because it’s the absolute antithesis of what the good, woke liberal professes to be their doctrine… no proof, just an absolute certainty that the person you may walk by is contagious and infectious to you. Treating everyone, absolutely every one, exactly like an Evangelical Christian.
Seems God does provide ironic humor, even in the bad times.
“Two further factors are worth bearing in mind. First, Sweden has a low population density. There are two prime determinants of the rate at which a new pathogen will spread during the early stages of a pandemic. The first is its infectivity: how readily it is transmitted between people in close proximity to one another. The second is the mean person-to-person contact rate. This will be much lower where population density is lower.”
Listening to Gov. Cumo the other night it was interesting to hear that the explosion of cases there started with 2 individuals who attended group gatherings and apparently infected a large number of people.
One issue I see is people assuming a virus has a unique R0 as an INHERENT property. In some sense it does. I mean in the end you are able to calculate R0. And, at any point in an outbreak you can “calculate” one.
And that R0 is what drives the modelling of the disease spread. There’s no other choice
but to assume some “global” R0 based on the data at hand. Whatever number you pick will be wrong.
Imagine having THAT as a job. your job as epidemic modeller is to pick a number you know will be wrong.
Your R0 will be wrong because of 1 case, 1 single case of a nutjob
who refused to be tested led to 1000s of cases, read that again, 1000s of cases in Korea. 1 person whose “personal” R0 is off the scale created vast destruction and death. calculate the R0 with her case and without her case and you get crazily different numbers. Now, make that number the heart of your modelling.’
say hello to a “no win” situation.
As Mob points out there are two determinants in R0, basic biology of the virus and “contact rate” of people.
Yes, density can drive contact rate, but so can social dynamics. For example, if you have a low population
density, but every Sunday all the residents meet in one place to shake hands, hug, kiss and meet in close quarters for long periods, then Boom. Low density, high contact rate.
why is this important? Because the uncertainty in R0 that drives models the FRONT side, the estimates of R0 that will lead to grossly over estimating or grossly underestimating the growth, will ALSO bedevil any analysis of “do lockdowns work” . And it will complicate all policy post lockdown.One nutjob can ruin your whole effort. And on the other hand
it is also the case that some lockdowns will go overboard. That’s part of the response to uncertainty.
There is no engineering this. There is very little data, limited ways of collecting more data, no way of calibrating which control measures work. We know one thing from the case of China that welding cities shut
works. Beyond that we have guesswork on individual policies.
what about school closings? anyone have a controlled experiment of that? where lets say we close
half the schools and see the differential effect? nope.
what about church closings? what’s the differential effect? you don’t know. And nobody
wants to do the experiment.
what’s the effect of closing just the evangelical churches?
what about restaurant closing? or restaurants with outdoor versus in door seating?
what about sports events? night clubs? mass transit, grcoercy shopping?
what are the differential effects of each of these?
The list goes on. We mingle in many diverse ways, and there are no controlled studies on the
differential contribution of each of these. No side in the lockdown debate, no side in the methods
of releasing controls gradually or rapidly has any experimental data on what we can expect as a result
of lifting or imposing a control. And it’s probably unethical to do the controlled studies you need
to inform policy.
What that means is the people demanding a release from the lockdown are providing advice based
on hunches, not on controlled experiments. And those demanding an extended lockdowns are likewise
making recommendations based on hunches. There is no science on which policies result in
X cases prevented or X additional cases created. There is no science on the differential economic effects.
someone will have to make policy decisions with unknown health effects and unknown economic effects.
every decision will be wrong and the wrong decision can and will lead to more death than was predicted, or less death, and more economic destruction or less economic destruction than was predicted. Imagine being Governor and deciding to lift a ban and watching cases skyrocket 2 weeks later? and deaths 2 weeks after that?
Imagine being the governor who refuses to lift a ban and watching the economy crumble.
Imagine being a democratically elected official in a situation where you know your decision will
be wrong for someone, wrong for some class of voters.
There was a funny exchange in Gov Cuomo’s daily briefing that demonstrated this. The question of
Drive in Movies was raised. Drive in Movies. One side implied that since people were in their cars
risk of infection was low. The other side held that the drive -in employees would be exposed to each other.
so the question was “are drive in employees essential workers” As Cuomo made clear Someone will have to make that decision.
well,can they go back to work? The person making that decision will not be driven by science because
there is no study and will never be a study showing the differential impact of drive in employees on
the local R0. One side has their hunches and anecdotes as does the other side.
Someone will have to make the decision, can restaurants re open? well, what’s the calculus?
Chances are whoever makes that decision will get it wrong. In one case it will be ok, because the staff
are all super hygenic, and in other case one server will infect a whole raft of customers.
there is no right decision. there no optimizing strategy. R0 is nasty metric that depends on actual
human behavior. What did China do? well restaurants could reopen with rules about customer density.
say 25% full. There was no science here. Businesses could re open BUT employees had to work
shifts. Starting Feb 15th, for example, 50% worked from home, 50% returned to the office. 3 days on,
two days off. Spacing at the office strictly controlled. there was no science showing 50% to be the optimal
number, maybe 62.3% is? you dont know. you’ll never know. You can be sure that exactly 50% is the
wrong number. You hope its less wrong than other wrong choices.
people who work in professions that reward being precisely correct ( engineers, accountants, you know who you are) should probably remain silent in these discussions.
Decisions will be made. And the data will be noisy, suspect, incomplete, and debatable.
It’s not a fun job being forced to make decision that you know will harm someone.
( google trolley problem)
With all that said, I will share some data about the end game.
in Korea, 98 % of the deaths are people over 50. 92% over 60.
76% of the cases are under 60. Those dang youngsters mingling
76% of the cases 8% of the deaths.
24% of the cases are 60 or over, and a huge portion of those are older people in nursing homes.
24% of the cases 92% of the deaths.
You can draw your own conclusions, personally I’m avoiding any May /December interactions
want to know something more stark?
over 80s are 5% of the cases and 50% of the deaths.
How should that inform policy?
Nobody wants to be a democratically elected official making a decision based on that.
Good post.
Yet again I am grateful to Mr Mosher for bringing some hard data from Korea. As one might expect, this virus is chiefly transmitted by young people and is chiefly fatal to old people. Results of this kind from China persuaded HM Government, at quite an early stage, to advise the elderly and infirm to isolate themselves as far as possible. Unfortunately, the very elderly and infirm in care homes could not isolate themselves from each other, nor from the staff or visitors, so the death toll in care homes has been substantial. HM Government does not even count deaths in care homes as part of the daily death counts that it publishes.
Monckton of Brenchley: “HM Government does not even count deaths in care homes as part of the daily death counts that it publishes.”
WR: The same for the Netherlands. For week 14 (March 30 – April 5) there were 5098 deaths in the Netherlands (CBS numbers), compared to a ‘normal’ number of deaths of 2700 – 3000. For that week only some 900 Corona deaths were officially recorded by the national count by RIVM: some 1200 to 1500 of the extra deaths are missing.
Yesterday it was announced* that adding the ‘supposed Corona deaths’ (according to available patient information) from nurseries and ‘home deaths’ will happen soon, also for the past period.
WR: Probably the number for official Dutch Corona deaths for the past and future periods soon will be doubled or even more than doubled.
Before the first of April at least 40% of our nursery homes registered the presence of Corona infections.** Since March 19 no visits to nurseries were permitted.
* (in Dutch): https://nos.nl/artikel/2330364-huisartsen-gaan-verborgen-coronadoden-registreren.html
** (in Dutch): https://nos.nl/artikel/2329803-van-dissel-corona-in-minstens-40-procent-van-de-verpleeghuizen.html
“Yet again I am grateful to Mr Mosher for bringing some hard data from Korea. As one might expect, this virus is chiefly transmitted by young people and is chiefly fatal to old people. Results of this kind from China persuaded HM Government, at quite an early stage, to advise the elderly and infirm to isolate themselves as far as possible. Unfortunately, the very elderly and infirm in care homes could not isolate themselves from each other, nor from the staff or visitors, so the death toll in care homes has been substantial. ”
yes what a horrible choice our public officials have to make. Nobody wants that job.
more nutjobs
https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/virginia-pastor-who-held-packed-church-service-dies-of-coronavirus/
Proving, God moves in mysterious ways…
He doesn’t look to have been in the high risk category, other than possibly his age?
From the link, “Their daughter, Mar-Gerie Crawley, told WTVR that her father initially dismissed his symptoms because he has a condition that often leads to fevers and infections.”
I cannot help thinking that we humans are quite arrogant to believe that it is we who initiated the downturn in COVID-19 deaths. How do we know that we did not intervene at the precise moment that the downturn was coming about on its own, and that it is we who delayed this by our attempts to assert our sense of control over what we could not understand in the broader context?
It’s the same sort of arrogance that causes so many people to believe that our human industrial CO2 is the key to the climate, and by attempting to control this, we bolster our anthro-ego.
I touched my face many times today, and I’m not worried. I also washed my hands many times, as has been my habit, even before this insanity started.
“How do we know that we did not intervene at the precise moment that the downturn was coming about on its own, and that it is we who delayed this by our attempts to assert our sense of control over what we could not understand in the broader context?”
how do we know we are not a brain in a vat?
Maybe it is a combination of us actively fighting the virus along with the virus gradually losing new vectors to move to. We see that it targets groups of people with weakened systems from other medical issues. Who knows what the true numbers are of people who had this and never knew they had it.
In response to goldminor, Occam’s Razor dictates that where the mean daily person-to-person contact rate has been reduced by 85-95%, as it has as a result of the UK lockdown, no small part of the reduction in the mean daily compound case-growth and death-growth rates is attributable to that reduction in the contact rate.
By casting back deaths three weeks, one can calculate that about 15-20% of the population has been infected so far – about 100 times the number of reported cases. But that still leaves most of the population uninfected and, therefore, susceptible. It is only when the susceptible population is reduced to about 50% that the rate of transmission will slow markedly in the absence of deliberate interventions to reduce the mean person-to-person contact rate.
Mr Kernodle has not, perhaps, looked at the data. The lockdown in the UK, according to one of the Government’s daily press conferences, has had the effect of reducing the mean person-to-person contact rate by some 85-95%, according to anonymized cellphone data. In the early stages of a pandemic, before enough people have acquired immunity to begin pushing the curve away from strict exponentiality and towards the logistic curve, the only method of reducing the rate of transmission is to reduce the mean person-to-person contact rate. That contact rate had begun to fall even before the UK lockdown, because. a) the Government had introduced some control measures, such as banning mass meetings and advising the elderly and infirm to isolate themselves, and b) the people had begun to be more cautious. Sure enough, the mean daily compound case growth rate began to fall even before the lockdown was introduced. The rate has, of course, fallen still further since then, as the daily graphs demonstrate.
May be due to cautious people being careful and avoiding exposure. Can you provide evidence that a lockdown is the only or most significant cause? Above you admit that many Brits avoided exposure before the lockdown.
The whole world has become a running experiment with different initial and boundary conditions. It is a many parameter system, and models at best are approximate. Governments have been taking decisions of lock downs to preserve the health system and minimize the number of running deaths.
What I have not seen considered and answered in the controversy between “herd immunity” and “flattening the rise” in the dilemma between “saving lives” versus “saving the economy” is : whether a western economy can survive a complete break down of the health system of a country. Can an economy work with no health services in the country?
If the answer is “no, an economy comes to a stop if the health system collapses”, there is no dilemma .
But what of the opposite question: can a health system survive a complete collapse of the economy?
Of the two questions I would answer that an economy slows but does not stop if the health system collapses, but the health system cannot survive if the economy ceases. The reason for this is obvious. The health system develops after the economy develops, not the other way around.
Like any other natural disaster, it is the size and strength of your economy that dictates how you recover from it. A strong economy can rebuild a collapsed health system. No health system in action on Earth can heal a destroyed economic engine.
The stock markets do not agree with CptTrips. They have fallen somewhat, to take account of the damage to the economy that lockdowns cause, but – at present, at any rate – a complete economic collapse is not envisaged.
Besides, the point of the head posting was to discuss the decision by Spain and Italy, two of Europe’s worst-affected countries, to begin dismantling their lockdowns. They are able to do this because they have reduced their mean daily case-growth rates to around 3%, at least in part thanks to strict lockdowns.
But no one wants to keep a lockdown in place for a single moment longer than is absolutely necessary.
“But what of the opposite question: can a health system survive a complete collapse of the economy?”
That is not a question that is being asked now and decided upon by the governments. I am asking the real dilemma facing decision makers. Of course with no economy there is no health system.
They estimate that the lock downs will harm the economy by 20% , nobody says 100%. What happened in Lombardy’s health system was going to 100% destruction of the health system, once health personnel started dying, until the trend stopped by the lockdown.
Anna V asks an important question: what would happen if a government allowed its healthcare system to be overrun, so that even those who needed urgent, life-saving treatment, whether for the Chinese virus or for any other disease, were unable to obtain it?
HM Government took the view that allowing the health service to be overrun was not an option. That view is widely supported by the public, who would not otherwise have tolerated the quite strict lockdown that has been imposed. Indeed, so strict a lockdown would be impossible to enforce unless most people were persuaded that it is, for the time being, necessary.
I just volunteered for the NIH SARS-CoV-2 antibody test. 10,000 volunteers, so getting picked will be like winning the 5 out 6 lotto I guess. I so want to be tested! Here is their webpage on the test
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-begins-study-quantify-undetected-cases-coronavirus-infection
thank you
estimated date the study will report results
March 31, 2022
not sure if they will release anything earlier
By having people volunteer it is not a random sample. The is one downfall of such tests.
For example people that are hermits will not volunteer, because they are hermits, and hermits are less likely to have had covid, because they are hermits.
SteveM, thanks for the irony. But, I can dream – if you don’t play the lotto you’ll never win. If I’m picked I can look ahead to finding out in two years! (if I’m still alive). I would hope they let positives know ASAP.
SteveK, I really doubt it will be random. It will be 90% walk ins I bet. So they are sampling Maryland?
In my little corner of the world I think we got hit by the mystery Dec/Jan “Not the Flu” as hard as anywhere. Personally, I can’t quite reconcile that event with the growth statistics of CV19 shown by testing. But, I’m a layman when it comes to analysis. If CV19 swept through California earlier, then this is a convolution, right? The increase of testing convolved with the onset of herd immunity.
Just came across this bit of news while searching for current info. If this true, then it totally changes the picture, … https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3079678/coronavirus-mutation-threatens-race-develop-vaccine
In response to goldminor, at least three distinct strains of the Chinese virus are in circulation. The genome is short, which tends to suggest that the pathogen may well mutate rapidly.
One of the difficulties in developing both antibody tests and vaccines is to ensure that they will be able to target any mutations.
8 strains
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global
10 clade now
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?c=clade_membership&dmax=2020-04-05&l=radial
London’s population density is compared to Stockholm’s in order to explain why Sweden’s lax policies haven’t resulted in worse outcomes than the UK, but what is overlooked is that Tokyo is denser than London yet Japan doesn’t have near the problems with the coronavirus as the UK despite also going without draconian containment measures. So population density is not as key as it’s made out to be.
Thanks for that. I have been making a similar argument by pointing to the low numbers in India. India has done quite a good job tracking the points of entry and then trace contacting the paths across their nation. However, it seems to me that there has to be more to it why a nation with a lot of poor people (1,300 million total pop) has managed to get this far with only 10+ K total cases. India had its first confirmed case on Jan 30th.
Not just India, but the African countries as well, appear to have a low number of countries. I say “appear”. Who knows?
India were controlling it quite well, I suggest you look at their Total Cases and New Cases charts now.
They are both taking off well above exponential based on their data up to Marth 31st.
That is an inflection point and cases started increasing at a much faster rate.
This suggests that the asymptomatic cases spread it faster than they could trace victims.
@ur momisugly A C … responding to this “That is an inflection point and cases started increasing at a much faster rate. ..”. I do not see cases in India increasing at a faster rate though. I have been watching the changing numbers for the last month daily. Typically, the nations which suffer the worst problem see new case numbers around 10% of the previous days total, or higher. The numbers in India have yet to do that.
For example, Russia has 2,774 new cases for a total of 21,102. That is typical for nations which are highly stressed by the virus that the new cases initially ramp up at a rate of 10% or greater per day early on, and that is a very consistent observation over the entire time of observing the numbers. Then when the numbers in a nation/state increase to higher levels the daily rate is still at least 5% of total cases per day. India was 488 for 11,000 total today. Ireland has 832 new cases for a total of 11,479. I would think that if the virus was about to rage in India that those numbers would be different. Overall, this has been educational and sadly interesting watching how all of this unfolds.
One more set, New Jersey has 4,240 new cases for a total of 68,824. That is a bad sign. New York for example only had 6,553 new cases today, and 362 deaths. Big numbers for the smaller state.
Mr Delisio is right to point out that Japan has smaller case and death rates than the UK even though it does not have a strict lockdown and even though the population density of central Tokyo is a little higher than that of central London.
But he is wrong to draw the conclusion that population density is not important.
Japan implemented measures not dissimilar to those of South Korea at a very early stage. Such measures, particularly when adopted early, are far more effective than any lockdown.
Also, Japanese culture, with its emphasis on scrupulous hygiene, has a beneficial effect in inhibiting transmission.
Lockdown was necessary in the UK because it did not act quickly or decisively enough to follow the South Korean protocol. But it will be lifted just as soon as it is safe to do so.
Some strict lock down-
“in the downtown Shibuya district, business was almost as usual. Rush hour trains were still crowded and commuters were heading to work”
https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan%27s-state-of-emergency-is-no-lock-down.-what%27s-in-it
what are you arguing against richard with your “Some strict lock down” comment? Lord M said “Japan has smaller case and death rates than the UK even though it does not have a strict lockdown” and he pointed out some of the reasons why Japan managed to avoid going the strict lockdown route. so clearly you can’t be arguing against what Lord M said.
” Japanese culture, with its emphasis on scrupulous hygiene, has a beneficial effect in inhibiting transmission’
one sneeze, one cough- yea right! the trains are packed!!
The trains are packed and everyone is wearing a mask. And again, what does “Some strict lock down-” have to do with it when MoB did not claim there was a strict lockdown, and indeed agreed that there wasn’t?
“The Swiss chief physician of Infectiology, Professor Pietro Vernazza, has published four new articles on studies concerning Covid19.
The first article is about the fact that there has never been medical evidence for the efficacy of school closures, as children in general do not develop the Covid disease nor are they among the vectors of the virus (unlike with influenza).
The second article is about the fact that respiratory masks generally have no detectable effect, with one exception: sick people with symptoms (notably coughing) can reduce the spread of the virus. Otherwise the masks are rather symbolic or a „media hype“. Are you saying they are sick and on the trains?
There probably are asymptomatic carriers, yes. Wearing masks is to help prevent the mask wearing from spreading germs to others (Japan, unlike the west, is well know for having a thinking of others mindset in that regard) not to prevent the wearer from catching someone else’s germs. If everyone is wearing masks, then that is obviously going to help as everyone is working to stop the spread to everyone else.
But again, you are dancing around the question, so for the third time: what does “Some strict lock down-” have to do with it when MoB did not claim there was a strict lockdown, and indeed agreed that there wasn’t?
Interesting Update
http://www.healthdata.org/covid/updates
“Social distancing covariate for Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway. Since our April 10 release, we received feedback from several collaborators in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) network on how social distancing policies were being implemented – and having effects on population-level movement – in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway.
Based on Google mobility data, policies on gathering restrictions and closing certain groups of non-essential businesses without instituting stricter or more sweeping non-essential business closure mandates appear to also have substantial effects on reducing mobility (i.e., a likely indicator of how much contact people are having with each other and thus potential virus exposure).
To account for this new evidence in our current COVID-19 death modeling framework, we have adjusted covariate values on social distancing for Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway. As indicated in our April 10 estimation update, IHME’s development team continues testing the inclusion of mobility-based covariates into the social distancing covariates and ensemble models. We hope to release the updated model on Wednesday, April 15.”
Some history for chloroquine fans
http://www.back2stonewall.com/2020/03/lgbt-history-march24-actup.html
Come to Wall Street in front of Trinity Church at 7AM Tuesday March 24 for a
MASSIVE AIDS DEMONSTRATION
To demand the following
1. Immediate release by the Federal Food & Drug Administration of drugs that might help save our lives.
These drugs include: Ribavirin (ICN Pharmaceuticals); Ampligen (HMR Research Co.); Glucan (Tulane University School of Medicine); DTC (Merieux); DDC (Hoffman-LaRoche); AS 101 (National Patent Development Corp.); MTP-PE (Ciba-Geigy); AL 721 (Praxis Pharmaceuticals).
2. Immediate abolishment of cruel double-blind studies wherein some get the new drugs and some don’t.
3. Immediate release of these drugs to everyone with AIDS or ARC.
4. Immediate availability of these drugs at affordable prices. Curb your greed!
Two points:
1. How many of those drugs were on the market in 1987 and for how long? The answer is one, Ribavirin, approved for use in 1986. Everything else on the list was experimental in 1987 and had not been approved for any medical condition.
2. What percentage of the population, having been infected with HIV, died within 4 weeks of infection date from the effects of the virus? That would be 0%.
While both cases are of those of people asking to use drugs that have not been definitively shown to treat the condition, one was for experimental unproven pharmaceuticals (some of which have never been approved for use) to treat a disease spread by fluid transfer that killed in the range of months to years, and the other case is for a drug that has been used to treat various medical conditions for 50+ years to treat a disease spread through inhalation that kills the patient in weeks. That seems like an apples to zebras comparison.
Many have lived (rather died), to regret that. Some of those drugs ended up ki!lling them. AZT was one of the primary treatments, and it would ki!ll the healthiest person alive.
Here is a study done in Italy which claims that Italy under reported total deaths. Meaning that the total is likely in the upper twenty thousand range, instead of the current 20+K. … https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/covid-19-and-italys-case-fatality-rate-whats-catch-25586
NZ with hard and early lock down is 2 per million.
So how do you get of that mess? Carry on hiding for the next two years until Bill Gates creates a vaccine an “accidentally ” slips a sterilising compound in there too?
You don’t need to do anything other than stop people with COVID19 from coming in to New Zealand without Quarantine them.
What don’t you understand about good old fashioned quarantine?
In groups at risk, plasma from those who have recovered can be used. It’s mainly about people whose immune system doesn’t respond to the new virus.