By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
As the mean daily compound growth rates both in total confirmed cases and in total deaths continue to drop in most countries in the direction of levels at which it might become safe to end the lockdowns (in those countries that have them), one question continues to be difficult to answer. What is the true case fatality rate? In other words, what fraction of those who become infected will die?
During the early stages of a pandemic, the least unreliable way to get a handle on the case fatality rate is to look at the closed cases – those who have been infected and have either recovered or died. However, innumerate governments, not realizing that for this reason counting those who have recovered is no less important than counting those who have died, have been negligent in keeping proper track of recoveries. Indeed, Britain has proven so incompetent at keep track of those who have been discharged from the centrally-managed hospitals in the Government’s care that yesterday it abandoned the publication of daily recovery counts altogether. In consequence of such mismanagement, ten days ago the ratio of deaths to closed cases in the world excluding China and occupied Tibet was 27%.
The World Health Organization, which has not covered itself in glory in handling this pandemic, originally estimated a case fatality rate of 2% and then revised it to 3.4%. But it had originally estimated that the SARS case fatality rate was 2%, and it came out at 10%.
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 13, 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 13, 2020.
The study by Imperial College, London, that led Boris Johnson to decide that he could no longer safely heed the “herd immunity” crowd predicted that, in the absence of control measures, some 7 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion people would become infected this year, and that 40 million of these would die, an implicit case fatality rate of 0.6%.
By casting deaths backward by three weeks and calling them confirmed cases, cumulating those and then casting them forward at the case growth rate then prevailing, my own calculations suggest a case fatality rate of somewhere between 0.1% and 1%: one cannot narrow it beyond that at present because the data are inadequate, and different countries have different methods of counting cases, recoveries and deaths, and even change their methods from week to week.
The useless World Health Organization ought to have developed a standard reporting protocol by now, but if there is such a thing there seems to be little evidence that it is being followed.
However, if 7 billion become infected and the case fatality rate is 0.1%, 7 million people would die of the Chinese virus if no treatment or cure were found. If the case fatality rate is 1%, make that 70 million. These numbers are large enough to matter, so the random serological trials now being conducted are important. The first results should be available in a week.
For comparison, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920 killed 50-100 million (though the global population was less than a quarter of today’s). And HIV has killed 30-50 million, but has taken the best part of half a century to do so.
Ø High-quality .pptx images of the two graphs are linked here.
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Those who mix climate with epidemics should know that the long winter in the northern hemisphere is very good for the virus.
“Far, far below average temperatures across much of the central and eastern United States”
Latest UK mortality from all causes numbers to 03 April 2020: 164,444
Same period 2018: 175,419
So, with the London Nightingale hospital hosting just 19 patients over the weekend, it must now be dawning on a growing number of long suffering British voters that the ‘panic’, for that is all it has been (again!), is over.
Those who have lost jobs, livelihoods, businesses, will not be in a forgiving mood.
As well as palliative and remedial economic efforts, the minimum that will be expected of a UK Government is a swingeing package of reforms to set up a fully independent health authority, as in Sweden, and a fully resourced contingency plan for future pandemics (because if we panic about the common cold, as, effectively, we just have, then it is now pandemics every year!).
There is a long list of other necessary reforms, beginning with state broadcasting, which should have set so much better an example, but this is not the time or place………
Once again-
“A study by ETH Zurich found that the infection rate in Switzerland fell to a stable value of 1 several days before the „lockdown“, presumably due to general hygiene and everyday measures. If this result is correct, it would fundamentally question the sense of a „lockdown“.
In Italy you have to add on- “Strongly increased death rates, as in northern Italy, can be influenced by additional risk factors such as very high air pollution and microbial contamination as well as a collapse in the care of the elderly and sick due to mass panic and lockdown measures”
If you are waiting for a vaccine.
Flu vaccines do not work well for the elderly. It is mostly the elderly that die from Corona.
“Former Microsoft owner and billionaire globalist, Bill Gates admits vaccines are less effective for older people and the planned international roll out of his COVID19 vaccine will likely kill or maim about 700.000 people. All said with that indifferent smile of his”
or rather , Gates, says “up to 700,000 people who could suffer from the side effects” Be careful of a vaccine.
Typical side effect of a vaccine is soreness in the arm for a day or two.
Some people might get a slight fever.
Some people will surely feel sick or get a cold or something after getting a vaccine, purely by coincidence, and some of those people would typically report such as a side effect of the vaccine.
Besides he is not saying there will be that many, he was giving a for instance.
He said “If we have one in ten thousand have side effects, then yada yada yada.
There is no vaccine.
No one can tell you a side effect profile of something that does not exist.
He was speaking from the point of view of how many side effects would be tolerable in clinical trials and still get approved…if one is found to work at all.
One in ten thousand people getting a sore arm would be amazingly low amount of that side effect.
Usually I think most people will get a sore arm from an injection of an antigen into their muscle.
The low grade fever that is common is because that is what happens when your imune system turns on in response to a pathogen, and that is how vaccines work…they cause the immune system to behave as if an infectious organism has gotten into your body, and so an immune response to generate antibodies occurs.
So of course you heard that and said that he “admits that his vaccine will likely kill or maim 600,000…”
Why should anyone pay attention to you?
Are you in grade school?
There is no planned roll out. There is no vaccine.
He was speaking about generalities.
do flu vaccines work well in the elderly?
https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2019/10/04/flu-vaccination-the-main-things-to-know-about-the-2019-programme/
https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/news/adjuvanted-flu-vaccine-for-over-65s-effective-in-more-than-60-of-cases-this-winter-says-phe/20206618.article?firstPass=false
How about in 80+ which is where most deaths are happening?
Britain has demonstrated, of course, that, given the resources, contingency plans can be made and implemented, swiftly and effectively. Those plans now exist, no doubt already existed, and must be allocated contingency resources, every year, to be drawn down as required, so obviating (excepting real, existential, national medical emergencies) crazy lockdowns in the future.
It is entirely possible (of course it is!) that hospitals in Britain might have been overwhelmed this year. With UK hospital intensive care units every year routinely operating at 90% of capacity, that happens, at some time or another, most winters, and certainly happened as recently as 2018.
That can in no way justify this lockdown, but goes some way to explaining it.
Worse, trying to implement a lockdown in future will have been made immeasurably more difficult as the truth dawns that this one, simply because contingency plans had been made, but not resourced, could and should have been avoided.
Tim, even worse is that the Government had plenty of warning, at least 3 years what would happen if we were hit by a pandemic.
They chose to spend the cash elsewhere.
What amuses me is the fact that some people whine and attack Lord Monckton and say he shouldn’t be allowed to post here. But when I look at the number of the comments, I see that people are drawn here in large numbers. More people are reading and posting on Lord Monckton articles than on any of the others, with few exceptions. It is only a handful though, who are rude, and the majority, including myself, are genuinely interested. In fact, I’ve now started to check in every morning just to read another Monckton post.
He still confuses Case Fatality Ratio with Infection Fatality Ratio. In his first paragraph. Even though there have been numerous posts telling him and even directing him to web pages that explain in deep detail the difference.
Which means on this subject, he is highly lacking not only the natural reasoning to come to reasonable conclusions, but also the lack of interest in learning the rules that allow you to come to reasonable conclusions.
His entire speil is basically appeal to authority and a complete abandonment of challenging authority. Basically, I think the only reason he is allowed to push his shut down hysteria here is because he is an authority here that is respected by many. So, his posts are an appeal to authority by an authority with local appeal. My view is that he is in the process of burning his local appeal by pushing tyranny as a reasonable response to a disease.
Those who give up liberty for temporary false security deserve neither.
And Dread Lord Monckton, my name is Allen Stoner II, that is where a stoner ii comes from.
Yep, feels like he is just pushing the government line.
I think they should be concerned. A lot of info coming out now illustrating the lock down was not a good strategy or indeed needed.
Could I ask a question about vaccines? This might be rather naive, but in the 1958/59 flu pandemic vaccines were available very quickly after the virus was identified. From Wiki : “Maurice Hilleman…obtained samples of the virus from a United States Navy doctor in Japan. The Public Health Service released the virus cultures to vaccine manufacturers on 12 May 1957, and a vaccine entered trials at Fort Ord on 26 July and Lowry Air Force Base on 29 July.[9] The vaccine was available from October 1957 in the United Kingdom”.
Both the 1958 and 1968 flu pandemics killed at least 1 million people globally but were reasonably quickly contained. Why is Covid19 so different, and why will it take so long to develop a vaccine? Thanks.
Both the 1958 and 1968 flu pandemics killed at least 1 million people globally but were reasonably quickly contained. Why is Covid19 so different, and why will it take so long to develop a vaccine?
Because seasonal flus belong to the same families of viruses so each year a new model of vaccine is developed in advance and even with low uptake of vaccines (about 45%) a substantial measure of immunity is conferred on the population. The is no resistance to COVID-19. The other aspect of COVID-19 is that the proportion of the effected population that develop extreme symptoms require substantial treatment in hospital and the length of time treatment is needed (about three times seasonal flu). Proportionately higher impact on the health services.
Phil
Something to consider is that there are two approaches to reducing the severity of a pandemic; 1) early vaccination, 2) societal lock-downs. Clearly, the vaccine is the preferred approach, but when there is no vaccine, the lock-downs may be equally efficacious. I say “may,” because coincidentally, the seasonal flu probably started earlier, but apparently peaked about the time COVID-19 hit the US. COVID-19 now appears to be peaking. It may have a seasonal behavior, if for no other reason than that people start to get more vitamin D production in the Spring.
What could be devastating is that now that it is established in the world population, it may start early next year. If there is no vaccine, or highly effective treatment, it could be much worse next season and we have already done serious damage to the world economy for what appears to be no worse than a bad seasonal-flu year in the first wave.
COVID -19 is caused by a corona virus. There are no vaccines against corona viruses that cause disease in humans.
But we do have vaccines for human influenza type A, the one that is most prevalent of the four genera of influenza viruses that are known, and the cause of all pandemics.
Regarding type A:
When a new strain of flu circulates, what varies from one strain to another are two surface proteins.
These are called hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, H and N.
There are numerous known configurations of these two proteins, and more subtle variations with each configuration.
These various configurations are given a number.
Currently we know of something like 18 H protein types, and 11 N protein types, which includes a couple of recent additions.
In circulation right now are only a few of them.
A few others have emerged occasionally.
Small changes in the structure of these two proteins can cause a huge change in the virulence of the disease that they cause in humans.
But since we have a library of these basic forms, we can quickly create a vaccine for a particular strain by using our library of stored proteins to find one that comes close to matching the new strain.
And since we know a lot about how to identify new variations, and also know how alter the basic vaccine to match the particular H and N proteins of any particular strain that pops up, it is possible to grow a new vaccine in quantity in a relatively short amount of time.
Thanks Nicholas and Phil. So what’s your considered opinion on whether we will manage to get a successful vaccine for COVID19?
No way to say.
I am hopeful, and waiting for results, which unfortunately will be a long time coming, in comparison to the pace of recent events.
If I see favorable data in early phases of vaccine trials, I would considered enrolling as a volunteer to take one of them, if at such a time it looks like a safe bet, I am not yet exposed, and they are enrolling subjects in my area.
Most drug trials for untested drugs fail, but this virus has already something like 60 vaccine candidate drugs in early testing or preparing for testing, IIRC.
There are no vaccines for human corona viruses, which is not a good track record.
But there are gonna be a lot of chances for one to work, which improves the odds.
All we can do is remain hopeful and wait.
Oh, and try to not get infected.
I would also recommend finding out where is the nearest place from where one lives that clinical trials are being offered, and make some sort of contingency plan for where you would rather be if you get infected, and what you would prefer to try out of the list of experimental drugs being tested.
Also, there are ongoing programs to monitor the reservoirs for strains of influenza carried by birds and pigs that harbor them.
It is known that there are some very worrisome ones in some birds in various parts of the world, and there are stockpiles of vaccine in various countries for the ones which some researchers suppose are the most cause for concern should they enter humans and spread from person to person.
At present, the worst of the bird flu strains of virus are widely carried by birds, which occasionally pass them to people, but so far none of them have been able to spread from one person to another when this occurs.
But that is expected to change at some point, and cause a pandemic.
In fact, this has been the possibility deemed most likely to cause a awful pandemic, and was the one most public health authorities have been prepared to deal with, or so we are told.
A strain of bird flu called H5N1 infects a lot of birds in Asia, and when it gets into people, it is very deadly…some 60% of people who get a case of avian H5N1 are killed by it.
If a humanized version of this strain emerges, it is expected to be real big trouble.
Bad.
There is one in pigs called H1N1, which is the designation that was believed to have caused the 1919 pandemic. This is another one that is deemed to be quite worrisome.
Of course, it may wind up being the case that the one we never see coming will be the one that is the most dangerous.
Right now there are a lot of people in the world, and a lot of viruses. All of them would be happy to get into people and spread right across the entire planet, and they do not seem to care who dies when they manage to find a way to do it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/swedish-virus-deaths-top-1000-fueling-criticism-over-strategy/ar-BB12C1xU
Mosher
Your linked article says, “it’s far worse than in any of the Nordic countries with which Sweden usually compares itself. The Swedish mortality rate is almost 10 times higher than in Finland, more than four times higher than in Norway, and twice Denmark’s.”
That is not totally unexpected because Sweden is not trying as hard to flatten the curve as other countries. Therefore, one would expect Sweden to peak sooner. What remains to be seen is what the total deaths are once the peaks are seen. If the other Nordic have a longer tail-off, then things could equalize. Time will tell.
how is it worse if Sweden has less cases than Norway and Denmark combined and a population the same as both countries combined?
Sweden 132/million
All 3 others combined 97/million
Denmark – 55/m
Norway – 28/m
Finland – 14/m
Wrong again richard.
The lockdown in the UK(where I am) and possibly the US was the only effective option or choice due to our countries lack of preparedness with vital resources.
Yes, the South Korean model would have been good, but we did not have:
Sufficient test capability;
Masks, gloves, gowns;
Beds;
Ventilators.
As the number of hospital admissions rose, we discovered that all or most of our disposable PPE was made off shore and the global shutdown caused severe problems in ordering huge volumes of supplies.
All advanced countries need to make changes to how procurement takes place in the future.
1) All vital supplies to be ordered from both your own country and also the cheapest supplier, perhaps a 50 50 split. This would give each advanced country an industry making masks etc that can go into overdrive in an emergency. Yes this would be slightly more expensive than buying 100% of your PPE from a low cost country, but you will keep alive the basic infrastructure in your own country.
2) All items that go to make up vital supplies not to be single sourced. This means that your chemicals that make reagents, come, by law, from a number of different supplies. Slightly more expensive but increases the reliability of your own supply chain. There is little point bringing drug manufacturing back to the home country if you require chemicals from abroad!
3) The military supply chain have been doing this for decades.
History tells us what will happen next. The 1918 spanish flu governments imposed “lockdown” of a few weeks. Governments came under pressure from interest groups and allowed openings of churches, schools, meeting houses, then pubs and clubs.
The 2nd wave was more deadly than the first.
The 3rd wave fizzled out due to herd immunity.
At least one of Britain’s overflow hospitals is now not even going to open.
This is, of course, a cause for celebration but also wonderfully British….’Carry on Matron!’…. comedy gold…….
With thousands of cases in Care Homes not being given medical care at all.
As the number come in we can see what we shut the world down for-
“In Italy, it has been established that only around 12% of the people listed as having died of the coronavirus were killed by it. The other 88% almost certainly died of something else. (The Italian Government’s scientific advisor reported that anyone who dies in Italy and who has the coronavirus will be listed as having died of the coronavirus. The National Institute of Health revaluated the death certificates and concluded that only 12% showed a direct causality from the coronavirus. )”
so 2520 died of Corona in Italy.
“And in the UK, Imperial College (which originally forecast that the coronavirus would kill 500,000 people) has admitted that two thirds of the people who have been listed as having died of the coronavirus would have died anyway – of something else’
The word you are missing is “eventually”.
To compare statistics, you need to compare the number of deaths due to respiratory failure in the first quarter of 2020 with previous years in individual countries. Only such statistics can be reliable.
Bolty starts asking the hard question relevant to Oz-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/authorities-enjoy-extraordinary-pandemic-powers-far-too-much/ar-BB12EKBy
Meanwhile the rush to plug the gaps in PPE strikes the usual red tape and you suspect by the time the public circus gets a round tuit the crisis will all be over-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/hurdle-faced-by-nsw-businesses-helping-with-medical-supplies-shortage/ar-BB12ETHD
Bloody good question. What goal do we have to achieve before we can leave the Gulag and go about our lives again brains trust? Aw s#*t we hadn’t thought of that!
Yes Virginia there is a father Xmas. He’s the poor schmuck paying off the plastic in Jan, Feb, Mar….
I should add that South Australia like the Northern Territory before it is experiencing no new Covid infections so now he health authorities are asking anyone with the mildest flu like symptoms to seek testing. Presumably they now want to detect any asymptomatic cases and they’re confident they have the capacity for comprehensive sniffle testing. Just that if you are tested you’ll have to self quarantine for up to 48 hours until your test results come back all clear. With no international or interstate travel without quarantine why shouldn’t SA and NT join forces and lift their lockdowns now?
“The German Network for Evidence-Based Medicine reports that the lethality of a severe seasonal influenza (flu) such as 2017/2018 is estimated by the German Robert Koch Institute to be 0.4% to 0.5%, and not only 0.1% as previously assumed. This would mean that the lethality of Covid19 could even be lower than that of a strong seasonal influenza, even though it may spread faster’
Goldman reports we are heading into a gloom that is 4 times worse than the 2008 financial crisis.
It is quite possible that is optimistic.
Too little attention is being directed at the destruction underway.
Instead we are getting nonstop verbose lessons on how dire the COVID is. As if we haven’t got the message?
Presumably the continuous lectures are meant to justify the reckless overreaction.
There is one thing I can think which will affect the number of people who eventually die of this virus that may not have been considered so far and that is all flu and cold viruses that attack respiratory function are in evolutionary competition with each other. It is possible that this virus will lose out to the common cold and just die out, if this virus is going to kill as many as the Spanish flu then it has a long way to yet.
donald
Are you assuming that a person can’t be infected with more than one virus at a time? Do you have any support for such an assumption?
I have no proof for assuming that, it is just a suggestion. Why does everyone assume that this pandemic will be as deadly as the “Spanish flu pandemic” when that was caused by a different virus.
“The Luxembourger Tageblatt reports that Sweden’s „relaxed strategy on Covid19 seems to work“. Despite minimal measures, the situation seems to be „clearly calming down at the moment“. A huge field hospital that was set up near Stockholm remains closed due to lack of demand. The number of patients in intensive care units remains constant at a low level or is even slightly declining. „There are many vacancies in intensive care units in all Stockholm hospitals. We are approaching the flattening of the illness curve,“ explained a senior physician at the Karolinska Klinik. So far there have been about 900 deaths with Covid19 in Sweden’
“Professor Dan Yamin, director of the Epidemiology Research Laboratory at Tel Aviv University, explains in an interview that the new corona virus is „hardly dangerous“ for a large part of the population and that rapid natural immunity must be the goal. The money is better spent on extending a clinic than on paying for damages due to the lockdown, he said’
On the 29th of March Sweden and Czechia were 19th & 20th on the worldometers list.
Sweden – 253 cases, Czechia – 85 cases
Sweden is now 21st with 12540 cases, an increase of 3.4 times and Czechia is 34th with 6359 cases, an increase of 2.3 times.
Still think Sweden are doing well?
“The president of the Israeli National Research Council, Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, argues that according to current findings, the corona epidemic is over in most countries after about 8 weeks, regardless of the measures taken. He therefore recommends to lift the „lockdown“ immediately’
“The British statistics professor David Spiegelhalter shows that the risk of death from Covid19 corresponds roughly to normal mortality and is visibly increased only for the age group between approx. 70 and 80 years”
“A Swiss biophysicist has for the first time graphically depicted the rate of positive Covid19 tests in Switzerland since early March. The result shows that the positive rate oscillates between about 10% and 25% and that the „lockdown“ has had no significant influence (see graph below). Interestingly, Swiss authorities and media have never shown this graph’
https://nypost.com/2020/04/09/usns-comfort-and-javits-center-mostly-empty-amid-coronavirus/
“A US study comes to the conclusion that the new corona virus has already spread much further than originally assumed, but causes no or only mild symptoms in most people, so that the lethality rate could be as low as 0.1%, which is roughly equivalent to seasonal flu. However, due to the fact that the disease is more easily transmitted, the cases of the disease in New York, for example, occurred in a shorter time than usual’
“In a new document on the treatment of Covid19 patients, the chief of pneumology and intensive care at Eastern Virginia Medical School states: „It is important to recognize that COVID-19 does not cause your “typical ARDS” (lung failure) … this disease must be treated differently and it is likely we are exacerbating this situation by causing ventilator induced lung injury.“
https://townhall.com/columnists/marinamedvin/2020/04/15/israeli-professor-shows-virus-follows-fixed-pattern-n2566915
the paper cited is a joke. Go read it if you know Hebrew or have good translation tools.
this is a joke as well – not even peer reviewed. But I believe , Mr Mosher , you are a supporter of Michael Mann’s non peer reviewed maths on his hockey stick graph.
“Several researchers have apparently asked to see Imperial’s calculations, but Prof. Neil Ferguson, the man leading the team, has said that the computer code is 13 years old and thousands of lines of it “undocumented,” making it hard for anyone to work with, let alone take it apart to identify potential errors. He has promised that it will be published in a week or so, but in the meantime reasonable people might wonder whether something made with 13-year-old, undocumented computer code should be used to justify shutting down the economy. Meanwhile, the authors of the Oxford model have promised that their code will be published “as soon as possible.”
“The Spectator magazine has reported Matt Hancock saying that the NHS has 2,295 empty intensive care beds. The average number of empty intensive care beds before the coronavirus `crisis’ was 800. So, the NHS has 1,495 more empty intensive care beds during the coronavirus `crisis’ than it had before the so-called `crisis’ began. The Financial Times has apparently reported that almost half the beds in some English hospitals are lying empty. It is clearly not true that the NHS is overrun. Hancock, the Health Secretary, should resign’
They built new ones and contracted all the Private Health beds.
You are truly clueless.
What is missing from the analysis Lord Monckton is the present value of future years of life expectancy lost to COVID-19 complications. A pandemic that kills children requires a much sterner reaction than one that kills 70 year old diabetics.
I was a baby during the 1957 epidemic of flu and my mother was treated for pneumonia I think it is true that babies never catch the virus infections that adults are prone to.