By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The ineptitude of Western governments when keeping crucial statistics about the Chinese virus is becoming culpable. For a start, they are not even counting deaths either consistently or competently. In Britain, for instance, total reported deaths to April 17, 2020, were 14,576. However, a report issued April 16 by the Office for National Statistics points out that deaths are registered up to five days after they occur, and that the numbers given in HM Government’s daily briefings carefully exclude all deaths that do not occur in hospitals.
Correcting for these two serious errors indicates that the true number of deaths is about 50% greater than the Government’s cited figures, implying that in the UK the deaths from this dangerous pathogen are already approaching 22,000.
The regime in China has finally bowed a little before the gale of international criticism of its failure to provide the correct daily case-counts and death-counts required by its obligations at international law in terms of the World Health Organization treaty. After having reported only a tiny handful of deaths each day over recent weeks, it has suddenly admitted to more than 1000 hitherto-undisclosed deaths in Wuhan. Even now, it is very doubtful whether this admission represents anything more than a tiny fraction of the true count.
In China’s north-easternmost province, there have been very long lines outside the district hospital. Unconfirmed reports suggest an outbreak no less severe than that in Wuhan.
Not only are deaths not being recorded or reported correctly or timeously: recovered cases are also not being properly kept. The United Kingdom, whose civil service has become so used to everything being done for it by the European tyranny-by-clerk, has proven wholly unable to keep a tally of those who, having shown symptoms of the infection, have recovered from it. HM Government has altogether abandoned its daily reporting of recovered cases.
During the early stages of any pandemic, it is essential to keep a careful tally both of deaths and of recoveries, since the ratio of deaths to closed cases (i.e., to deaths plus those who have recovered) is a not unreliable indicator of the true case-fatality rate.
As the pandemic enters its middle stages – which is about where we are now – it is still more important to know how many have recovered, since the crucial number which tells governments whether they need to tighten or loosen control measures is the mean daily compound growth rate in currently-active cases, for those who have either recovered or died are no longer capable of transmitting the infection.
But it is impossible to calculate the number of currently-active cases, because governments are not correctly counting those who have recovered. Nor, for that matter, are they yet able to form a mature view of what fraction of the population have contracted the infection but are either asymptomatic or are showing such mild symptoms that they do not – for now, at any rate – require hospitalization.
Frankly, the record-keeping has been abysmal. Yet another lesson to be learned from South Korea is that proper, careful, up-to-date, case-by-case records absolutely must be maintained. Without them, governments are simply guessing what they should do.
Fig. 1. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 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 16, 2020.
Fig. 2. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative 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 16, 2020.
In the meantime, the case-growth and death-growth graphs, based on such woefully inadequate data as are published, show very clearly that those who have tried to maintain that this pandemic is no worse than the seasonal flu are flat wrong.
In Ireland, growth in cumulative cases remains dangerously high at 13% compound every day. In the United States, though, that growth is now about 5.5% compound every day.
In Canada, growth in cumulative deaths is 13% compound every day; in the United States, 11%. Mr Cuomo, at his press conference in New York, says that the growth rate in new cases is now negative. However, it is not just the new cases but the active cases – those that are currently infections – that will determine the rate of growth in future. It is good that the number of new cases is declining, but one cannot say the worst is over until one knows that the number of active cases is declining. And one cannot know that if one does not count not only deaths but also recovered cases properly.
High-resolution images of the two graphs are here.
learn from Asia
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/04/17/how-uv-roomba-robots-could-accelerate-the-opening-of-mass-transit-systems/#2786190a1f7f
John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was all about the Chinese Communist manifesto. Imagine that!
like in Japan? Do nothing and still have low numbers?
Or maybe it is because Tokyo has such a low population density and no mass transportation…
low population density and no mass transportation…Spot on LOL.
I have to congratulate CofB on finally making a coherent and valid point.
Since this whole lockdown shitstorm is supposed to be about keeping the load on health services within manageable bounds, it is a matter of culpable incompetence and mismanagement that the primary metric of this : number of active cases, is not even being measured.
Even if this was not readily available initially we are now about 2 months into the health crisis, having already had an extra two month prior warning from events in China. We apparently wasted that lead time sitting back, pointing and laughing a Red communist China and their draconian Maoist control methods. In the two months we have had our own problem we were not able or not motivated to organise a count of active cases in UK.
Without even an approximate metric of core condition you are allegedly trying to control the country is like a ship at sea without a compass, with no record of where you are where you’ve been and where you are going.
In addition we have willfully ripped the main sails off the economic mast and shredded it to make face masks.
Clearly the UK has the most incompetent govt. outside of China where this release of this genetically manipulated virus occurred and was then covered up.
Both US and Ireland have been flat for well over a week ( slight neg. slope in USA ) in terms of new daily cases.
If CofB is still getting a firm exponential growth for total cases in US and ” dangerously high at 13% compound every day” in Ireland he probably needs to re-examine his method.
Everything surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been a lie except for the fact that just like the seasonal flu it kills the elderly and people who have serious underlying medical problems.
Just like the the seasonal flu? The virus has killed 0.8% of the population of New York state and 0.4% of the population of Belgium in the last 2 months. What the *&^% are you talking about?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Oops. I think you will find its 0.08% of New Yorkers.
Your link says that 873 per million of population is the current death toll. That comes out to 0.000873 ( 0.0873%), a factor of almost ten less than your number. There are also numerous miscounts that seem to be inflating the death numbers while deflating the total cases. All the numbers are suspect at this point, so the convesation is moot. I still don’t know anyone who knows anyone who has positively had it, though I now believe I had it around Christmas.
Aaron
You off by a factor of 10 at least.
I keep bring this up but India infection rate is very low and of all countries in the world you would think it would run wild there. It’s not testing because they have test nearly 1/2 a million and still have very low rates.
Whoops.
Still with lockdowns in place for the last weeks we are still approaching the total deaths for the year for the seasonal flu with no special measures after only 2 months.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm
And that is comparing a statistical estimate to an almost certain gross undercount.
“Just like the the seasonal flu? The virus has killed 0.8% of the population of New York state and 0.4% of the population of Belgium in the last 2 months. What the *&^% are you talking about?”
Did you read what OWG actually typed?
The seasonal flu kills TENS of THOUSANDS of Americans every year! Are you under the delusion that THAT isn’t a ‘serious’ threat? ALL flu’s are dangerous, especially to the elderly!
In Australia if you are under the age of 50 you are statistically more likely to die from shark attack.
Also in Australia a person dies every three and half minutes from all causes. Of these ’causes’ 19 of the top 20 can loosely be referred to as ‘old people diseases’ with median ages in the 80s. The other is Intentional Self Harm which is – from memory – 12th on the list and has a median age of 44.
Death toll linked to Wuhan Virus in Australia was just under 70 last time I check.
What has this got to do with NYC and Belgium?
Well for a start it demonstrates that while this may be a ‘global’ problem, it does not have consistent affects. Death rates NYC do not match death rates Australia. Why? Very open question, possibly connected to temperature, population density, general health levels, age demographics. Open question.
However it is very clear that trying to use the figures from one region in order to obtain a definitive prediction for another area is high risk and probably should be completely avoided.
You say NYC! What the *&^% are you talking about? I say Australia, and get over yourself. Both are, within the limits of reporting methods, ‘correct’, but neither are helpful in relation to the other without deeper analysis.
Anyway, I am under 50, and in the interest of my health and wellbeing shall be watching very carefully for sharks.
New York novel coronavirus reported deaths, scaled to 10M population, is nearly 8000 as of yesterday.
Average monthly mortality, from all causes, for New York is 6500.
The coronavirus deaths are neither a lie nor are repackaged “normal” mortality.
I’ve looked at other data sets as well: England also shows this spike: Week 14 for 2020 had over 16000 deaths from all causes; weeks 1-14 in 2018 and 2019, and weeks 1-13 in 2020 – none of them have more than 15500 deaths. For all 3 years, the mortality falls from January to April but not in 2020 (big spike in week 14/April 3).
Lastly: the novel coronavirus doesn’t just kill the elderly and sick. It kills young people too – at a frequency roughly comparable to old/sick people dying from regular flu.
I understand and agree with the frustration over lockdowns – but nCOV isn’t a lie and is a real thing.
Aaron Watters
Yearly Influenza deaths as CDC reported are wildly exaggerated. 50 to 60k deaths. The actual tested influenza deaths are about 10% of the stated numbers. The exaggerated death toll is in fact interesting because if the vaccine is working year over year you might expect a lower death rate to maybe 0???
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/no_author/flu-misinformation-and-coronavirus-fears-my-letter-to-dr-sanjay-gupta/
who lied?
Who ignored warnings given by WHO
December 21st 2019
Chinese epidemiologists with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention published an article on 20th January 2020 stating that the first cluster of patients with ‘pneumonia of an unknown cause’ had been identified on 21st December 2019
You cannot act on this – it is a sort of pneumonia with unknown transmission. It was published therefore no secret
December 31st 2019
Chinese authorities confirmed they were treating dozens of cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause. Days laters researchers in China identified a new virus that had infected dozens of people. There was no evidence that the virus was spread by humans.
China contacts the WHO and informs them of ‘cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology’ detected in Wuhan
no evidence for human to human spread and who informed
1 January 2020
WHO had set up the IMST (Incident Management Support Team) across the three levels of the organization: headquarters, regional headquarters and country level, putting the organization on an emergency footing for dealing with the outbreak.
January 2nd 2020
Central Hospital of Wuhan banned its staff from discussing the disease publicly or recording them using text or image that can be used as evidence
Chinese damage limitation not called for
4 January 2020
WHO reported on social media that there was a cluster of pneumonia cases – with no deaths – in Wuhan, Hubei province.
5 January 2020
WHO published our first Disease Outbreak News on the new virus. This is a flagship technical publication to the scientific and public health community as well as global media. It contained a risk assessment and advice, and reported on what China had told the organization about the status of patients and the public health response on the cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan.
January 8th 2020
The Chinese government agrees to accept a WHO scientific team to assist their own researchers
WHO goes to China now they cannot hide problems
10 January 2020
Developed with reference to other coronaviruses, such as SARS and MERS, WHO issued a tool for countries to check their ability to detect and respond to a novel coronavirus. This information is to help with identifying main gaps, assessing risks and planning for additional investigations, response and control actions.
January 11th 2020
Chinese state media reported the first known death from an illness caused by the virus. It was a 61-year old man who was a regular customer of the market in Wuhan where the virus is believed to have originated, and had previously been found to have abdominal tumors and chronic liver disease.
first death many co-morbidities – so was this the virus?
12 January 2020
China shares the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus, which will be very important for other countries as they develop specific diagnostic kits.
First case of novel coronavirus outside of China confirmed
13 January 2020
Officials confirmed a case of the novel coronavirus in Thailand. It was not unexpected that cases of the novel coronavirus would emerge outside of China and reinforces why WHO calls for active monitoring and preparedness in other countries.
WHO makes field visit to Wuhan, China
January 14th 2020
Reporters from Hong Kong taken to police station after trying to film the situation within Wuhan hospital
Chinese damage limitation
14 January 2020
WHO’s technical lead for the response noted in a press briefing there may have been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus (in the 41 confirmed cases), mainly through family members, and that there was a risk of a possible wider outbreak. The lead also said that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given our experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens.
January 20th 2020
The first confirmed cases outside mainland China occurred in Japan, South Korea and Thailand, according to the WHO.
January 21st 2020
The first confirmed case of the virus in the US in Washington State, where a man in his 30s developed symptoms after returning from a trip to Wuhan.
US now knows
21 January 2020
The delegation observed and discussed active surveillance processes, temperature screening at Wuhan Tianhe airport, laboratory facilities, infection prevention and control measures at Zhongnan hospital and its associated fever clinics, and the deployment of a test kit to detect the virus.
The delegation also discussed public communication efforts and China’s plan to expand the case definition for the novel coronavirus, which will build a clearer picture of the spectrum of severity of the virus. At the end of the visit, the Chinese Government released the primers and probes used in the test kit for the novel coronavirus to help other countries detect it. Chinese experts also shared a range of protocols that will be used in developing international guidelines, including case definitions, clinical management protocols and infection control.
Public Health Emergency of International Concern declared
January 22nd 2020
Public Health England announces it is moving the risk level to the British public from ‘very low’ to ‘low’.
uk knows – us and uk not taking action – why?
22 January 2020
WHO mission to China issued a statement saying that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan but more investigation was needed to understand the full extent of transmission.
22- 23 January 2020
The WHO Director- General convened an Emergency Committee (EC) under the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) to assess whether the outbreak constituted a public health emergency of international concern. The independent members from around the world could not reach a consensus based on the evidence available at the time. They asked to be reconvened within 10 days after receiving more information.
January 23rd 2020
Wuhan (population over 11 million) is cut off by the Chinese authorities. Planes and trains leaving the city are cancelled, and buses, subways and ferries within the city are suspended. 17 people had died at this point and 570 infected in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and the US.
Figures compiled by the Chinese Railway Administration showed that approximately 100,000 people had already departed from Wuhan Train Station by the deadline.
Construction begins in Wuhan for a specialist emergency hospital which opened on 3rd February
lock down – us uk no action why?
Trump::Jan 24
China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!
January 26th 2020
China extends the ‘Spring Festival’ holiday in order to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Schools in Beijing to stay closed until further notice
Trump:: Jan 27
We are in very close communication with China concerning the virus. Very few cases reported in USA, but strongly on watch. We have offered China and President Xi any help that is necessary. Our experts are extraordinary!
28 January 2020
A senior WHO delegation led by the Director-General travelled to Beijing to meet China’s leadership, learn more about China’s response, and to offer any technical assistance.
While in Beijing, Dr. Tedros agreed with Chinese government leaders that an international team of leading scientists would travel to China on a mission to better understand the context, the overall response, and exchange information and experience.
January 29th 2020
The UK’s first two patients test positive for Coronavirus after two Chinese nationals from the same family staying at a hotel in York fall ill.
A plane evacuating Britons from Wuhan arrives at RAF Brize Norton. Passengers go into a 14 day quarantine at a specialist hospital on Merseyside.
still no uk/us action
January 30th 2020
WHO declares a global health emergency amid thousands of new cases in China.
who declares emergency – there is a definite problem – us/uk no action
30 January 2020
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the 2019-nCoV outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, following a second meeting of the Emergency Committee convened under the International Health Regulations.
Acknowledging that cases have been reported in five WHO regions in one month, the Committee noted that early detection, isolating and treating cases, contact tracing and social distancing measures – in line with the level of risk – can all work to interrupt virus spread.
Trump::jan 30
Working closely with China and others on Coronavirus outbreak. Only 5 people in U.S., all in good recovery.
Trump::Jan 30
Just received a briefing on the Coronavirus in China from all of our GREAT agencies, who are also working closely with China. We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!
January 31st 2020
The US suspends entry into the country by any foreign nationals who had travelled to China in the past 14 days, excluding the immediate family members of US citizens or permanent residents.
213 people had died and 9,800 infected worldwide.
us action on flights (should have happened earlier to be effective virus is already rampant in us) us/uk no lock down why?
February 1st 2020
Spain confirms its first case of the coronavirus on La Gomera in the Canary Islands
February 2nd 2020
The first death of coronavirus is reported outside China, as a 44-year-old man in the Philippines dies after being infected.
3 February 2020
WHO releases the international community’s Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan to help protect states with weaker health systems
February 4th 2020
The UK directs its citizens to leave China if possible
spread it further???
February 5th 2020
A cruise ship in Japan quarantines 3600 people after a two-week trip to Southeast Asia. 218 people onboard the ship tested positive for the virus.
February 7th 2020
The Chinese doctor Dr. Li Wenliang, who tried to ring early alarms that a cluster of infections could spin out of control, dies after contracting the virus. He was reprimanded by authorities in early January and he was forced to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.
Trump:: Feb 7
Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
Trump::Feb. 10: “I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine.”
February 11th 2020
The disease is named ‘Covid-19’, an acronym that stands for coronavirus disease 2019. 1113 people in China have died with 44,653 cases, and 393 cases outside of China.
11-12 February 2020
WHO convened a Research and Innovation Forum on COVID-19, attended by more than 400 experts and funders from around the world, which included presentations by George Gao, Director General of China CDC, and Zunyou Wu, China CDC’s chief epidemiologist.
February 14th 2020
France announces the first coronavirus death in Europe – an 80-year-old Chinese tourist. The fourth death from the virus outside mainland China.
Egypt confirms its first case, the first on the African continent.
Trump::Feb. 14: “We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”
February 17th 2020
China said it was reviewing its trade and consumption of wildlife, which has been identified as a probable source of the outbreak
February 19th 2020
443 passengers leave the Diamond Princess cruises ship. A total of 621 people aboard the ship were infected.
Trump::Feb. 19: “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine.”
February 21st 2020
The virus appears in Iran from an unknown source. Iran announced the two cases then hours later said that both patients had died. Two days later, Iran announced two additional deaths.
The South Korean government shuts down thousands of kindergartens, nursing homes and community centres, following a surge in infections linked to the secretive church the Shincheonji Church of Jesus.
south korean lock down bypassed by religious sect worship
February 23rd 2020
Italy sees a major surge in coronavirus cases – up to 150. Officials locked down 10 towns in Lombardy after a cluster of cases suddenly emerged in Codogno, southeast of Milan. Schools closed and sporting and cultural events were canceled.
Italy introduces strict measures which place almost 50,000 people in lockdown in an attempt to control the virus
italy lock down too late
February 24th 2020
The Trump administration asks Congress for $1.25 billion for coronavirus response – the US had 35 confirmed cases and no deaths.
Iran emerges as a second focus point of the virus, with 61 cases and 12 deaths. It is a cause for worry as a place of pilgrimage.
Iran problems made worse by sanctions
Trump::Feb. 24 (tweet): “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Trump::Feb. 25: “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are … getting better. They’re all getting better. … As far as what we’re doing with the new virus, I think that we’re doing a great job.”
Feb. 25: “Now they have it, they have studied it, they know very much, in fact, we’re very close to a vaccine,”
February 26th 2020
Latin America reports its first coronavirus case, as Brazilian health officials said that a 61-year-old Sao Paulo man, returning from Italy, tested positive for the virus.
Trump::Feb. 26: “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. … When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
February 28th 2020
800 people are now infected in Italy, and cases in 14 other European countries remain an area of concern
Sub-Saharan Africa records its first infection.
The first British victim dies of coronavirus onboard the Diamond Princess.
UK authorities confirm the first case of the illness to be passed on inside the country.
The worst week for the global stock markets since the 2008 financial crash.
The WHO raises the coronavirus alert to the highest level.
no action from us/uk re lockdown. Whatever the WHO says at this point is irrelevant – the dangers are self evident
Trump::Feb. 28: “I think it’s really going well. … We’re prepared for the worst, but we think we’re going to be very fortunate.”
Feb. 28: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Feb. 28: “This is their new hoax.”
February 29th 2020
The US records its first coronavirus death and announces travel restrictions of ‘do not travel’ warnings for areas in Italy and South Korea. It also bans all travel to Iran and bars entry to any foreign citizen who had visited Iran in the previous 14 days.
the virus is loose in the us restrictions not really relevant at this point
March 4th 2020
Cases of Covid-19 surge in the UK, as officials announce the biggest one-day increase so far as 34 cases bring the total to 87
Italy announces it is shutting schools and universities.
Trump::March 4: “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.”
March 4: Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it is very mild… So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better and then, when you do have a death like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York, you know, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4 percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1 percent.
Trump::March 9 (tweet): “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”
March 10th 2020
Nadine Dorries, a junior health minister, becomes the first MP to test positive for coronavirus.
6 people in the UK have now died of the illness, with 373 testing positive
Trump::March 10: “And it hit the world. And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
March 11th 2020
The US blocks travel from European countries other than the UK for 30 days, as the WHO declares the virus a pandemic and stock markets plunge.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces a £12bn package of emergency support to help the UK cope with the expected onslaught from coronavirus
11 March 2020
Deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction, WHO made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
Trump::March 11: “I think we’re going to get through it very well.”
Trump::March 12: “It’s going to go away. … The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point … when you look at the kind of numbers that you’re seeing coming out of other countries, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it.”
March 13th 2020
The US declares a national emergency and makes $50 billion in federal funds available to tackle the coronavirus.
A host of UK sporting events announce their postponement including the London Marathon. Premier League fixtures are suspended.
Trump::March 15: “This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”
March 16th 2020
Latin America imposes restrictions on their citizens to slow the spread of the virus. Venezuela announces a nationwide quarantine to begin on March 17th. Ecuador and Peru implement countrywide lockdowns, and Colombia and Costa Rica close their borders. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro encourages mass demonstrations by his supporters against his opponents in congress.
Boris Johnson begins daily press briefings, urging everybody in the UK to work from home and avoid pubs and restaurants to give the NHS time to cope with the pandemic.
The UK’s death toll rises to 55, with 1,543 confirmed cases, though it is believed 10,000 people have already been infected.
March 17th 2020
France imposes a nationwide lockdown, prohibiting all gatherings and only allowing people to go out for fresh air. France had more than 6,500 infections with more than 140 deaths
The EU bars most travellers from outside the bloc for 30 days.
Rishi Sunak unleashes the biggest package of emergency state support for business since the 2008 financial crash, unveiling £330bn-worth of government-backed loans and more than £20bn in tax cuts and grants for companies threatened with collapse.
Trump::march 17: “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”
March 18th 2020
The UK government announces most schools across England will be shut down from Friday until further notice. Wales and Scotland announce they will also close schools.
uk lockdown begins
18 March 2020
WHO and partners launch the Solidarity Trial, an international clinical trial that aims to generate robust data from around the world to find the most effective treatments for COVID-19.
March 19th 2020
For the first time, China reports zero local infections, a milestone in the fight against the pandemic. Experts said the country would need to see at least 14 consecutive days without new infections for the outbreak to be considered over. 34 new cases were confirmed among people who had arrived in China from elsewhere.
March 20th 2020
The UK government orders all pubs, restaurants, gyms and other social venues across the country to close
The chancellor announces the government will pay up to 80% of wages for workers at risk of being laid off
uk lockdown tightens
March 23rd 2020
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in a televised address to the nation, says that Britons should only go outside to buy food, to exercise once a day, or to go to work if they absolutely cannot work from home. Citizens will face police fines for failure to comply with these new measures.
Worldwide figures stand at more than 270,000 cases and 11,000 deaths.
March 24th 2020
Tokyo Olympics likely to be postponed – according to a member of the International Olympic Committee, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics – set to begin in August – will be postponed. Australia and Canada have already announced that their athletes will not compete
Trump::March 24: “We’re going to be opening relatively soon… I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” He added in a subsequent interview: “Easter is a very special day for me… and you’ll have packed churches all over our country.”
March 25th 2020
Prince Charles tests positive for the coronavirus.
In the US, negotiators strike a deal on a $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package intended to assist businesses and millions of Americans amid the halt in the US economy. The bill includes $1,200 for individuals earning up to $75,000, $100 billion for health care providers, and $58 billion for the US airline industry. It would also include $2,400 per month for up to four months to the unemployed. $500 billion goes to industry loans that corporations, cities, and states can apply for.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown of the country’s 1.3 billion residents. India has only recorded 536 cases of COVID-19 so far.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rails against coronavirus measures being taken in his country, as local officials take preparedness into their own hands.
March 26th 2020
G20 world leaders meet virtually to discuss the coronavirus crisis. King Salman of Saudi Arabia calls on the world’s richest economies to ‘extend a helping hand to developing countries’.
Brits across the UK clap, cheer, and ring bells at 8pm to thank the NHS workers for their service in tackling the pandemic.
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveils a package of measures to help self-employed workers during the economic downturn, giving those earning less than £50,000 a taxable grant equal to 80 percent of their average profits.
March 27th 2020
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock test positive for the coronavirus
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says that the coronavirus crisis has exposed the EU’s ‘weaknesses’.
March 28th 2020
European COmmission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU ‘looked into the abyss’ in the early days of the crisis but now it has the chance to reinvent itself.
French President Emmanuel Macron issues a plea for European solidarity to fight the coronavirus crisis, saying ‘I don’t want a selfish and divided Europe’
Belgium extend confinement measures until 19th April
UK Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, announces he is self-isolating after experiencing symptoms of the coronavirus
March 29th 2020
The European Commission announces that it will revise its proposal for the EU’s next seven-year budget
US announces social distancing measures to continue until 30th April, as the US records the highest number of coronavirus infections in the world, at more than 139,700 cases.
March 30th 2020
Hungarian Parliament passes a bill that gives PM Viktor Orban power to rule by decree, impose a state of emergency without a time limit, and suspend parliament.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announces the government is to spend £75 million on charter flights and airline tickets to repatriate up to 300,000 Britons stranded abroad as countries have closed their borders to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
March 31st 2020
Spain joins the US and Italy as one of the few countries to surpass China’s coronavirus case total, reporting 85,195 cases and 8,189 deaths.
Ethiopia announces it has postponed its parliamentary and presidential elections, originally scheduled for August. The elections were to be a big test for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s reformist measures.
The White House projects 100,000 to 240,000 deaths from COVID-19 in 2020, if current social distancing trends hold.
April 1st 2020
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announces that the Commission will present an unemployment reinsurance scheme to ensure workers keep their jobs during the coronavirus crisis.
Italy announces it will extend lockdown measures until 13th April. Health Minister Roberto Speranza says ‘data shows that we are on the right path and that the drastic decisions are bearing fruit’.
The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) summit, due to be held in Glasgow in November, is postponed until 2021.
April 2nd 2020
The number of worldwide coronavirus cases passes one million.
ghalfrunt
April 18, 2020 at 12:58 pm
What actions not taken you are talking about?!
What actions that could have stopped the infection and the disease are you talking about?!
Have you not got yet the memo from the komisariat that such “not taken actions” that you imply, or believe wold have stopped the infection and the disease do not exist, not actually in reality!
What are you talking about?
Really.
ghalfrunt is still upset that as the situation and information changed over time, Trump changed what he was saying.
In ghalfrunt’s “mind”, the proper way to handle changing data is the way his climate scientists do. Change the data so that you can maintain a consistent story.
The UK’s Covid-19 latest update:
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/UK-COVID-19.htm
Updated with Saturday’s data
30th March, 6 th ,13th April. Odd that less people die on Mondays. Maybe less doctors on Sunday. “Clap for me now! ” 🙁
Greg, it’s more to do with worse data handling over weekends.
Can you point to any evidence for that claim?
If one waits until the undertaker is called, it’s generally too late, but doctors do more than their fair share of damage.
Less people at work weekends….large amounts of admin do not work weekends; those that do, don’t want to. Last weekend was complicated by it having two public holidays, Friday and Monday. Some will have already booked holiday (last year) for the week after the holiday Monday. Look at the days after weekends, there are always lower numbers on Mondays announced figures.
Scissor
April 18, 2020 at 12:21 pm
In consideration of poor countries, the draconian measures were simply to avoid the overloading of the undertakers…as no any prospect of hospitals overloading in this case, as these countries have no any real hospital service there for such as, to start with.
These countries seem to have done a brilliant job at that, with bearing fruits.
Those who fully embraced lock downs, pretty much got to really give away now whatever self governing sovereignty they had left, if any… for food and economical survival.
cheers
So according to those figures the “Hospitalised Infections” d days after 11th April 2020 is approximately 80000×(1+erf(d/15.7)) . The daily rate of such infections is about 5000 × exp(-(d/15.7)²). If Farr’s Law continues like this then the ultimate number of hospitalised infections would be about 160000 and the daily rate of new hospitalisations would drop below 100 per day around 12th May. Rejoice!
Learn from Jacksonville, FL. Hopefully they’re all practicing socialist distancing.
https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1251260796476305409
Learn from Italy.
With the longest period of shut down in Europe we now have 4 weekly cycles since new cases broke away from the typical evolution of an epidemic. I’ve plotted the mean between peaks and troughs to get maximum number of points indicating the new trajectory from this data.
We can see that big gains are over and that there remains a fairly small continued change of only about -120 new cases per day in figures around 3500 new daily cases. This is the down side of flattening the curve. They ki11ed the growth but they have deferred the peak. This 3500 new daily cases is the new normal for some time to come.
Even while remaining in confinement this could well rise more gently for quite some time.
This method of viewing the data will give the most sensitive means of seeing any increase which will happen about 10 days after relaxation they just introduced. There will be one more dot on this graph before it kicks in.
Learn from Germany. Dr. Hendrik Streeck
If those findings hold, that spells doom for the large international climate conferences.
Gangelt is right on the border with the Netherlands, and some of the worst affected areas in that country are just across the border from it. It’s pretty clear that the Carnival week-end (February 28-29) was when the epidemic started on the Dutch side, so presumably in Gangelt too. Carnival is a long series of street parties (and parties in pubs, too). There was also a several-day church meeting in February in France, which is implicated in the spread of the virus there. Dr. Streeck is certainly right that crowds, and being cooped up with the same people for days at a time, are bad for you in this situation.
Whether or not Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, causes coronavirus epidemics, I am not yet sure. But yes, large scale religious conferences are off the agenda for a while. /sarc
Doom – ?
Great stuff Steven. This is a beautiful illustration of why all the Malthusian end of world forecasts of the last 3 centuries from Thomas Malthus himself, through Jevons and his end of industrial rev because of the lack of coal in the 19th C, Club of Rome, Ehrlich pop bomb and the burning up of planet earth in the offing from climate change of today are all totally wrong.
The limitless natural resources for all situations is human ingenuity. The precious few who solve whatever problems arise. This ingenuity is not possessed by those who entertain and/or write the books on looming catastrophes. Linear thinking is is at its pinnacle in these naive works whose ravings come from a petri dish view of the human enterprise and its resources. The answer to the Hansen’s, Bill McKibbens’s, Ehrlich’s, etc., what should be done, is that you folk need do nothing. If it’s a looming problem, it is or will be well taken care of.
I presume the WHO has strict and clear guidelines on accounting and reporting on all of this.
/sarc
We need to abandon this useless organisation. The EU seems about as useful as a back pocket on a shirt, too.
Spot on, Zig Zag.
“a back pocket on a shirt”
It’s useless, you can try to ignore it, but it’ll always be on your back !!
You can’t stop something that’s being deliberately spread.
The numbers speak for themselves.
http://protocriteria.com/index.php/2020/04/15/the-unusual-distribution-of-covid-19-2/
Dear Freedom Monger,
the low number of CV19 infections reported from less developed countries compared with infection rates in Europe and North America probably represents their lower reporting rates due to less developed health systems and government infrastructure.
If you really believe that Indonesia or Nigeria for instance have lower infection rates than the US or the UK feel free to seek refuge in those countries.
Oh, you’re right. That must be it.
FM – another possibility – the US & EU are addicted to cheap stuff from the overseas Supply Chain Gangs as demonstrated via their trade agreements, not to mention the US & EU have the wealth to buy more stuff – which correlates with more travel between supplier and their US & EU purchasers. I blame the US & EU as much as China.
It’s easy to check. Look at the number of tests that have been given in the two countries.
There is also the use of hydrocholoquine for malaria prevention as well to consider.
Or maybe Winnie the Pooh doesn’t think there’s any honey in Nigeria.
“The Total number of Cases and Case Fatality Rates remain higher in the “Caucasian World” than they are anywhere else. The numbers don’t lie.”
No, but statistics do. Australia and New Zealand seem to have been spared your Caucasian malaise, any theories?
“14% of the World’s population has over 77% of the Coronavirus cases”
14% of the World’s population is making 77% of the plane flights and 77% of the cruises too.
Loydo
A guess it was a fluke Australia didn’t get more cases.
Keys dates
25 January – chinese new year
25 – 27 January – Australia Day long weekend.
28 January – unofficial by nearly all schools – requirements on Chinese students to self isolate for 14 days(varied rules for each school)
29 January – most schools commenced term.
1 February – Chinese travel ban.
24 February to 2 March – most universities commence term ( or were supposed to)
Australia lucked out – more than 100,000 Chinese students were unable to come to Australia. If the virus timeline was two weeks later Australia would have had 1000s of potential covid 19 carriers all at once.
“a fluke Australia didn’t get more cases”
I agree, Australians have been very lucky to have dodged this bullet (so far). Blocking flights from the US and Europe early seems, in hindsight, to have been pretty effective too.
Or it could be the combination of Malaria drugs it being summer in most those countries and higher levels of infections in general making a stronger immune response. But India is the really stand out. Because there is reasonably strong testing going on there. It’s a weird mix of worst case third world and first rate medical systems in areas.
Sunshine apparently destroys virions. This possibility was pooh-poohed, but has just been pretty conclusively demonstrated.
. . . anecdotal data? Are human populations in the latitude range of the bats hit harder with CV-19? Northern-tier countries (except Sweden) and malaria-prone countries in warmer climates – not so much.
Recent clinical trials haven’t been kind to those who believe that hydrocholoquine is some kind of wonder drug.
If you really believe that Indonesia or Nigeria for instance have lower infection rates than the US or the UK feel free to seek refuge in those countries.
But surely their healthcare systems would be under pressure. They couldn’t hide that or the number of deaths very easily.
What health care systems?
Even in Italy they are finding that a lot of people in remote villages dying at home rather than travel to hospitals.
Here’s a COVID-19 distribution update:
http://protocriteria.com/index.php/2020/04/18/the-unusual-distribution-of-covid-19-3/
“You can’t stop something that’s being deliberately spread.” That’s the popular reason for it’s spread, but I pose a different reason: That it is spreading on the prevailing winds, which in the Northern hemisphere spreads out from the northern Asian areas. If that is the case, then NOTHING is ever going to ‘stop’ it from spreading all over the world!
The virus only lives a few hours in the air.
Thank you for this post. I would argue the available evidence suggests that government, as an institution, ought to be kept as small as possible in order to reduce by orders of magnitude the stupidity with which the funding taxpayer must reckon when dealing with elected (where applicable) politicians.
And I thought I was a moron.
Ditto, brother.
The “benefits” of big government are far outweighed by the costs. I can’t necessarily argue limited government is more effective. It sure costs less and does not impede our freedom as much.
The US Constitution limits government for a reason. We should follow it.
“Learn from Asia”….you must be getting lazy Mosh….there”s nothing to learn. This is one of those “just imagine” articles you have rehashed and apparently not read well. Not in use, prototype, soon to be in a theater near you stuff.
You are one of those unique people that always feels wherever you are, you are surrounded people that are smarter than the rest of the world.
To get you back to reality, just dust of your CV and read it multiple times….there you go, back to reality
UVC is being fast tracked by the FDA .
The science was published 2 years ago.
In use
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/05/buses-blasted-uv-light-rid-coronavirus-12352400/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51914722
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/COVID-19_Increases_Demand_for_Disinfecting_UVLEDs/a65629
now 99% effective
https://www.ledsmagazine.com/directory/led-packages/uv-ir-leds/press-release/14173253/seoul-semiconductor-seoul-viosys-and-setis-violeds-technology-proves-999-sterilization-of-coronavirus-covid19-in-30-seconds
Giving away the units for aircraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRXZjLk_4Hk
Great health solution. Now wait until all your plastics start breaking and falling apart.
Every cloud has a dark underbelly, eh Greg? Trip on back to ZeroHedge and leave us.
I’m convinced. Thanks!
SM is right, take a look this and you’ll see how and why SK were so successful. They were well organised, well prepared and wasted no time in acting – less than one month from their first case to the peak number.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=295s
Compare this to the response that of the worst hit country.
While I agree completely on the death rates data being of poor quality and it seems clear to me that this virus is more deadly than the flu but we don’t know how much by, the cases data seems fairly occluded. Testing regimes are far more variant and evolving than even the issues with the death rate data. For example here in the midwest of the USA, testing that was taking days and weeks is now measured in minutes, so the natural compression of those results would significantly skew the apparent data. Add to that they are testing more liberally here now, not just the worst symptomatic. Further anti-body testing is starting to show a much higher transmission rate than anyone expected; in a California county where they reported 1,000 confirmed cases they sampled suggested 50k-80k people in that county had already had the virus and recovered. We are also seeing data that very few people under 45 without any underlying conditions are dying, something like a total of 21 out of many thousand deaths in NYC. My speculation is that this virus is not nearly as significant as we first feared and that I believe in the US at least it will be remembered as an especially brutal flu season when our governments (understandably) over-reacted. Only time will tell. I am 53 with underlying conditions, so I am being reasonably careful, but I am reaching my lockdown limit here pretty quickly.
Cannot be compared to modern Flu because of inoculation. You have to compare to pre-innoculation data which is equally poor.
“a brutal flu season”
A gross understatement. Plus that was with a near universal lockdown and draconian isolation measures. How much more brutal might it have been without a lockdown? A million dead by now? two? and still rampaging unchecked through every town and city? More like a brutal Ebola season.
A million dead by now? two? and still rampaging unchecked through every town and city?
According to your models 😉
look at Japan. No lockdown there.
That information is outdated:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52313807
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/16/835925031/japans-declares-nationwide-state-of-emergency-as-coronavirus-spreads
Japan Declares Nationwide State Of Emergency As Coronavirus Spreads
Ron, did you read that article you linked?
I did not find any mention of a lockdown. I read Abe declared a state of emergency.
Greg,
the state of emergency allows lockdowns. That is why local governments asked for it. Another reason is they can order non-essential workers to do home office whenever possible. Japanese have the strong tendency going to work even when they are sick and that is not beneficial at the moment especially in crowded public transport
Japanese companies have been also going in self-ordered lockdowns e.g. one big karaoke company closed their shops already three weeks ago. Context is important. Lockdown does not equal lockdown and also don’t give you a picture about peoples’ behavior.
In 2018, 3,177,294 people died from the “flu” world wide. SARS-CoV-2 has a long way to go to catch up. No one did a thing about the over 3 million dying in 2018, tell me just why are we going bat sh-t crazy about this virus?
I think 2017-18 Flu was a variant not included in the vaccine. Fortunately for the world it wasn’t a particularrly deadly variamt. But Western Goverments, like the UK didn’t invest in the health services. As a result the UK is in Lockdown “protecting the NHS”
According to the CDC, there were 61,000 confirmed influenza deaths in the 2017 -2018 flu season. We have no idea how many cold virus deaths there were that same year.
Why is that?
Klem
April 18, 2020 at 2:44 am
I simply guessing here. 🙂
But the answer to your question could be,
something like, that the efficient tracking and monitoring of the seasonal influenza and it’s curve consist in tracking and monitoring the most prevalent seasonal flu and it’s curve, where many different areas can have a different flu as the prevalent one, where that means that all different flu patients and deaths will not be strictly identified and classified accordingly to the actual influenza infection-disease.
COVID-19 is an influenza disease, the prevalent one for the present flu season… globally.
Very likely having the death numbers of other seasonal influenza diseases
effecting-influencing the COVID-19 severe and death case numbers.
Oh well, could be.
cheers
A quick “hit” on “number of deaths from influenza in 2017 shows 266,000
Pre-innoculation data is also pre-much modern medicine.
Health care in general has gotten much better in the decades since vaccinations became available.
A former head of the CDC was recently quoted as saying COVID-19 could be almost as deadly as the Spanish Flu. Back then, the best medical care was little more than attempting to keep the patients comfortable while they died.
The median age of deaths across Europe for Corona is 81 and mostly with an illness.
Flu rips through all ages, even healthy children. I would call flu more deadly.
Absolutely! Also — in the ISA it has been admitted that they are labeling deaths as Covid19 EVEN IF it was not the cause of death— I. E. The person with an already fatal illness happened to also get C19! The in ISA the DEATH nunbers are inflated!
Corona-chan is more deadly that Flu-chan in part (possibly a considerable part) because of iatrogenic factors that accelerate infection, and cause immune system destabilization and lung damage.
I fear that much of the lung damage and mortality is due to our misdiagnosis of ARS and inept use of inappropriate PEEP protocols.
iatrogenic , candidate for word of the year.
We will also need a similar word for those in charge ki11ing the economy.
Iatrogenesis is a difficult concept to grasp. Huge emotionally and conceptually difficult paradigm shift. I watched Stefan Molyneux starting to go through it with Shiva Ayyadurai on a video posted here yesterday.
But here a little, there a little… Here are my thoughts so far on Doc-chan:
Factor 1 – Iatrogenic increase of infection risk
* The SARS-2 virus, like the SARS-1 virus, infects lung cells via the ACE2 enzyme
* Increased ACE2 expression in lungs likely increases risk of severe lung infection
* ACE inhibitors (ACEi) prescribed for hypertension and some other conditions cause increased ACE2 expression in the lungs (because ACEi have no effect on ACE2)
* Ibuprofen also increases ACE2 expression
* As infection of lung cells increases, ACE2 expression decreases (causing its regulatory function to decrease)
Factor 2 – Iatrogenic increase of inflammatory cytokines by destabilization of ACE/ACE2 balance
* ACE and ACE2 counter-regulate each other to maintain system balance. ACE promotes inflammatory factors (cytokines); ACE2 promotes anti-inflammatory factors.
* ACEi-taking covid patients admitted to hospitals, at some point have their ACEi treatments stopped, which causes ACE to increase (ACEi half life is about 12 hours; virtually gone from system in about 3.5 days).
* So as ACE2 decreases (because of increasing infection) and ACE increases (because ACE inhibition is stopped), immune system goes wildly out of balance (cytokine storm).
Factor 3 – Iatrogenic increase of thrombosis risk
* ACEi meds decrease PAI-1 production
* PAI-1 inhibits tPA
* tPA breaks down blood clots
* When ACEi meds stop, PAI-1 increases causing increased inhibition of tPA, which increases risk of thrombosis
Factor 4 – Iatrogenic lung damage (ARDS) caused by wrong diagnosis and treatment protocol
* Based on information from China, covid patients are assumed to have acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
* Hospitals follow a protocol that stipulates putting ARDS patients on ventilators with high PEEP (pulmonary end expiry pressure) and low oxygen.
* However, astute doctors around the world have noticed that many covid patients do not have typical ARDS symptoms, and warn that intubating these patients with high PEEP may be causing the ARDS they are trying to treat.
What do ICU covid patients die of? Cytokine storms and pulmonary microvascular thromboses.
I might have to add to my list pulmonary vasoconstriction that causes pulmonary edema that causes hypoxemic diffusion. ACE promotes vasoconstriction and ACE2 promotes vasodilation. So plummeting ACE2 and increasing ACE would increase vasoconstriction.
Here’s one of the doctors who is thinking outside of the box.
https://twitter.com/cameronks/status/1251259213554335744
There is now evidence that the SARS-2 virus also acts on CD147 receptors. This is a dead end for the virus as there is no ensuing RNA replication, but has serious consequences for the usual T cell reaction and might also account for some of the erythrocyte accumulation.
I agree with your speculation that this virus is not nearly as significant as we first feared.
I have been checking Korean data from the beginning because their testing number was larger than any other country at earlier stages.
Confirmed cases as of yesterday were 10,613 representing 2% of total testing of 538,775 which I call infection ratio. Deceased number is 229 which is 2.2% of confirmed cases which is called infection mortality ratio and only 0.04% against total testing.
In my country, Japan, infection ratio and infection mortality ratio are 9.1% and 0.4%, respectively. As our death number per year is about 1 million or 90,000 a month with various causes, 178 mortality with allegedly claimed by corona virus during almost two months is not significant at all compared to 1,365 deaths by flu during February and March in 2019.
I found an interesting article about Italy.
“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus,” said Prof Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to the Italian government on the crisis.
“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,” he said.
http://archive.is/Ihzvh#selection-361.0-369.253
I read the CDC directive about the counting method. I thought that the US takes the similar counting system to Italian.
We don’t know mu h about this disease apart from the fact it kills people, mainly old people, of those mainly old people with health issues, of those predominantly males. Keeping old people together in homes is probably not a good idea.
We can’t compare to Flu because every autumn we inoculate vulnerable people, in lauding young with health issues, against the predicted winter flu variants.
I’d have thought the UK Civil Service would have been good at collecting data for the EU. They’ve always been jobsworths, reporting how well they’ve implemented regulations should be second nature.
Informative as always.
For all that real-time information and record keeping is truly abysmal, it is much, much better than anything we’ve had before. For example, the U.S. record of hospitalizations and deaths for the 2009-2010 H1N1 “Swine” flu epidemic wasn’t completely compiled and reported by CDC until 2019, and then total deaths were reported as the mean of a range of >8000 and <19,000 — basically, using forensics tools post facto, it was guess. This currency of data, alone, perhaps justifies Sweden's response. We must hope that it works out for them.
Not least the most novel of the many unprecedented parts of the current social-political experiment is the amount of data available, while we still have no systematic way of determining signal from noise, or of rating the competence of any given group of "sensors."
We should probably not also choose to ignore significant events and conditions that have occurred as data points in the course to our current state — it might turn out to be unwise to attempt to draw lessons from the success of South Korea when that densely populated nation has been within artillery range of its deadliest enemy and only land accessible neighbor for 70 years, and its minimal contact with mainland China was further restricted by an effective travel ban in sympathy for the Hong Kong protests. Similar conditions might also apply to the success of Taiwan. Certainly, with effectively no disease vectors, a fully competent civil defense system, and effective control of foreign access are extremely helpful in preventing a similar crisis, but very hard to maintain in a non-totalitarian society almost anywhere else on earth.
wisconsin.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/wisconsin
ok first a caveat about IHME.
1. it is NOT a mechanistic model. Its a curve fit ( think of the Gompertz model that Willis
introduced in one of his posts. ) It fits the death data from a few cities to project the death
data elsewhere. This approach ignores the Age structure in the sample data and the age structure
in the states you are projecting.
next. Wisconsin has peaked and yet they will have a lockdown until may 26
That’s pretty dumb
if Wisconsin came out of lockdown would not people in neighbouring states not flee there in order to escape to normality?
tonyb
That’s exactly the point why local solutions are not working in a free society. People will not stay in an endangered locked down area if they have another choice.
That they could spread the disease to other areas many people probably don’t care about, unfortunately.
See also UK. Peaked but locked down for another 21 days. Culpable imbecility, to paraphrase Milord.
Yes, I agree, very dumb decision in Wisconsin.
The simplest explanation for the decline in new cases is that they are approaching herd immunity, slowed by the lockdown enough to avoid overloading hospitals. This would imply that despite the major flaws of the Santa Clara study, they got close to the correct range on the ratio between total:confirmed cases, and it is at least 50:1. This still needs to be verified with a proper randomized representative sample.
Cities that have gone through a peak should be safe to begin relaxing the mitigation measures. Let the least vulnerable further build herd immunity but continue very strict protections for the vulnerable. Surveillance testing of nursing homes, medical personnel, and first responders.
It’s the places with high population density but who avoided any significant outbreak that need to be careful. If this thing isn’t seasonal, they could suddenly become the next metro New York.
If you’re right that the flaws of methodology in the Santa Clara study biased toward people who had mild symptoms and were curious to learn if they were immune, than a city like San Jose might have even lower than 1.5% immunity in their population.
+1
I live in WI
Schools are shut till the end of the school year and the Governor is in cahoots with some weird Midwest Governor’s brigade with MI at the head. UGH.
Lets just say that people here are pissed off and the Governor needs to tread carefully because when Wisconsinites unite, we get really, really, really loud and tend to go our own way.
Typo? In the United States, though, that growth is now about 5.5% compound every day.
In Canada, growth in cumulative deaths is 13% compound every day; in the United States, 11%.
Both US and Rep. Ireland have been flat for at least a week ( slight US down turn ) in terms of reported new cases. It seems that ECDC are excluding Cuomo’s attempt the scam the rest of the nation into giving him 50% more money than is due by including non tested cases.
If CofB is still getting a firm exponential growth for total cases in US and ” dangerously high at 13% compound every day” in Ireland he probably needs to re-examine his method.
In response to Mr Marler, the compound growth rates for confirmed cases and for deaths are different: hence the two graphs in the head posting.
The data are seven-day smoothed to iron out variabilities in reporting standards at weekends, and also random fluctuations in the data.
MRM, try again: In Ireland, growth in cumulative cases remains dangerously high at 13% compound every day. In the United States, though, that growth is now about 5.5% compound every day.
In Canada, growth in cumulative deaths is 13% compound every day; in the United States, 11%.
How I missed that in my first several readings I do not know, but after trying again I saw that the first US figure refers to cases, and the second US figure refers to deaths. My apologies to anyone who read my comment.
Results from sewage analyses – now being conducted by Sweden, Netherlands, U.S. and others – ALL point to the number of positive cases being a few orders of magnitude greater than the known cases, and multiple orders of magnitude more than deaths.
These bizarre but essential epidemiological surveys of sewage make it quite clear that 1) CV-19 is ubiquitious in our society by now, and 2) it is not erupting into full view because it is mild enough in the general population to “pass” beneath the radar with minor and even unnoticeable effects.
To my mind the author will never have sufficient data he needs to make proper policy decisions until he can get reliable samplings of people who’ve already been exposed. Perhaps with his connections he could round up enough antibody test strips to do an informal survey of WUWT readers, results to be shared online. Enough virology experts on this website to help formulate the survey questions.
I have no idea how costly or unmanageable such a project would be, but personally, I’d really like to have such a test before I head into an endodontist’s office next month.
I think the author is just acting as a “baggage handler” for the government in pushing the lock down is necessary.
Richard continues to be silly. Right from the start, I have pointed out that the daily benchmark test will help to show when lockdowns can be lifted. At present, it is too soon, and the plans of various governments for lifting lockdowns are either non-existent or inadequate.
Now that the lockdowns have achieved their primary purpose, preventing the hospitals from being altogether overwhelmed, more and more countries are cautiously lifting the restrictions.
“At present, it is too soon, and the plans of various governments for lifting lockdowns are either non-existent or inadequate.”
“…more and more countries are cautiously lifting the restrictions.”
Is it too much to ask, Christopher, that you’ll tell us which countries’ plans you consider adequate?
across Europe the info coming out indicates lock down was silly.
The inadequate record keeping in many countries and downright fraudulent records in some countries that come under the International Development Association (IDA) umbrella and those that come under the umbrella of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which are parts of the World Bank, is the main reason why funds cannot be released from US320 million Pandemic Bonds issued by the World Bank 2017.
The bonds’ principal write-down feature is dependent on a number of factors, including: the time since the start of the outbreak; the number of countries where cases have been confirmed; the number of cases within a 12-week rolling period; the number of deaths in countries within the IBRD and IDA categories; the ratio of confirmed cases to total cases; and the case growth rate.
China (an IDA country), of course is the main reason, but India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines all have infection rates likely in the hundreds of times more than their official numbers. So the bonds will almost certainly pay out their full capital values when they mature on July 15, 2020. The arbiter called on April 9 that the pandemic bond conditions have not been met. He has about six more opportunities to adjudicate on this but there seems little hope that conditions will ever be met. There was a lot of trading in these bonds prior to and just after WHO called the Pandemic on March 11. The Class B bonds that pay out 100% of their capital value had been discounted by the market to a fraction of their worth but were bought by some very “canny” individuals who are going to make small fortunes out of the inability of countries to properly account for the infections and deaths of their populations and the political manipulation of official numbers in other countries. This appears to be a disgusting case of moral hazard. I wonder if the names of the beneficial holders of these bonds will ever be released.
I am sure Christopher Monckton will be very interested in this bit of financial chicanery, which seems to have ended up with the opposite result of what was intended.
Brent has indeed raised a most interesting point. The fraud authorities will be watching the pandemic-bonds market with more than passing interest.
As I understand it, these are largely expat Chinese returning with the disease from visits to Russia and elsewhere, apparently hoping for some “state of the art” treatments at home.
Keep in mind Chinese were running multiple trials that included Hydroxychloroquine and Remdesivir as early as January. They are the only country right now with a virtually flat trajectory… although Brunei, Trinidad, Cambodia and Antarctica seem to be doing pretty well.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/infection-trajectory-flattening-the-covid19-curve/
I lived in China for 14 years. They are hypochondriacs. There were always ‘full lines’ in hospitals. All Covid related medical ‘stuff’ is currently free. I have friends in North-East China. I get my information from them and not MSM. I would take the information on Covid that you have with a grain or two of salt. I may be wrong. I just see that as Chinese people taking advantage of free medical.
I’m not sure I would use the term hypochondriac. Health is deeply embedded in Chinese culture. We can see it in the Daoist obsession with achieving immortality but the Daoists probably inherited that from preliterate culture. Hypochondria is a personality disorder. The Chinese concern with health, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be disordered in that it’s normal behavior in that culture.
Perhaps I used hypochondria incorrectly. My personal definition of hypochondria is people going to the doctor excessively. I wouldn’t like to count the number of students(mainly female) who would have a ‘fever’ and need to go to the hospital and end up with a drip-feed of saline. Around my apartment complex, there were easily 5 pharmacies. The Chinese love their medicine. I understand it’s a cultural thing. I’m not unobservant.
“I lived in China for 14 years. They are hypochondriacs. There were always ‘full lines’ in hospitals. ”
Part of the reason for that is that they don’t want to go to primary care providers and instead want to see specialists in hospitals for every little sniffle and cough.
I have read that patients are responsible for 50% of their hospital costs. Also that they pay for forced quarantines out of their own pockets.
They don’t have clinics and medical centres like the west. All medical services are in hospitals. It costs about 2 yuan to see a normal doctor. It cost about 6 yuan to see a specialist. I saw the head guy of some dept. and it cost me 50 yuan. The hospitals make their money on prescriptions that can end up being up to several hundred yuan. They do some things very well, like emoving a wart from near my ear and my wife had a melanoma removed on her neck. Can’t see the scar. My super duper specialist nearly killed me with overdosing me with iron. Apparently he thought I had ‘alcoholic anaemia’. Google never heard of it nor did the haematologist I have in Australia now. I had lymphoma but that’s another story. I could tell many amusing stories about the Chinese medical system. Basically, whatever you think a medical system should be, you won’t find in China.
As to medical expenses. Everyone working has medical insurance paid by their employer. It’s additional to wages. It’s normally about 80% refund for medical expenses. My friend in China who runs a cram school could not lay off her staff due to shutdowns, forbidden. She has to pay their wages and medical insurance even though she is not allowed to reopen at the moment. She had a baby end of January and sent me pictures of maternity cases in corridors. There was no connection to Covid. Overcrowding in hospitals is common in China.
In very old times in China, a doctor only was paid in case of successful cure or treatment.
to be logical and consistent two things need to happen
firstly consistency in reporting. The UK releases its hospital deaths because that has become the accepted norm. Most other countries do not release figures outside of hospitals either or do so inconsistently.
secondly the WHO have guidelines for recording deaths . Most countries the UK included use these WHO guidelines which say CV must be listed as a certifiable cause of death if present, even though the patient may have died WITH CV rather than OF CV.
So there are huge differences in the way that Countries do tests, assess results and count deaths. In Italy as you know the Health Authorities noted that some 12% of the deaths listed as those who died WITH the disease actually died OF it.
tonyb
Slightly OT but some interesting new genetic network research on the origin of covid19 from Cambridge University:
https://www.rt.com/news/486194-study-coronavirus-southern-china/
Here’s the PNAS paper:
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/07/2004999117
Thanks!
Forster is a geneticist and Renfrew a famous archaeologist. Both have used pylogenetic network analysis to study the evolution of language.
It makes sense that the ChiCom virus originated in southern China, whence came previous flu epidemics. However, the bats used in Wuhan Institute research came from caves in Yunnan Province, on the border with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, so I’m not sure that this analysis can conclusively show lab hypotheses false.
RT of course would wish that to be the case.
The Nobel Laureate co-discoverer of HIV is sure that the virus was engineered.
I thought recording co-morbidity was very important.
It should be easy for western governments.
I’m sure it’s already a requirement for death certificates.
Most western countries have similar “top twenty” cause of deaths but slight differences in ranking.
Knowing which existing conditions are over represented as co-morbidity with coved 19 might give clues to its mechanism and who to focus precautionary measures on.
Same old, same old as in China- In the Uk you can put anything down on the death certificate
“In case you are keeping alive in your mind that the exaggerated number of Covid-19 deaths might be just an “error,” look at this:
In the US, a briefing note from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Service read as follows:
“It is important to emphasize that . . . Covid-19 should be reported for all decedents where the disease caused or is presumed to have caused or contributed to death.”
Updated April 3 to:
“In cases where a definite diagnosis of Covid-19 cannot be made, but is suspected or likely. . . it is acceptable to report Covid-19 on a death certificate as “probable” or “presumed.” In these instances certifiers should use their best clinical judgement in determining if a covid-19 infection was likely.” [This means in the absence of a test-positive]
IN BRITAIN National Health Service guidance for filling out death certificates:
“If before death patient had symptoms typical of covid19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘covid19’ as the cause of death, and then share the test result when it becomes available. In the circumstances of their being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.”
Further, according to a NEW UK law the body need not be seen by a coroner. Any medical doctor can sign the cause of death, EVEN IF THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN THE BODY LIVING OR DEAD & THERE IS NO TEST. What can “clinical judgement” mean in this circumstance?”
Surely there will be a “hole” in the data of other causes of death.
Dementia and heart disease deaths shouldn’t disappear
The number of UK deaths for this time of year has doubled. What would you put that down to?
DATA link please…..
I don’t think so
AFAIK
Normal week 10-11,000
High week 14,000
Peak covid week 16,000.
Yes more deaths but not double.
A side speculation.
I speculate that countries such as Italy, Spain and uk will have less Dementia, heart disease, diabetes and hypertension deaths next year.
That isn’t correct as others have pointed out. The UK are pretty good with mortality stats and currently have up to the week ending 3rd April. I can’t find equivalent stats for other countries. Stats here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
Latest summary
“Main points from latest release
The provisional number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 3 April 2020 (Week 14) was 16,387; this represents an increase of 5,246 deaths registered compared with the previous week (Week 13) and 6,082 more than the five-year average.
Of the deaths registered in Week 14, 3,475 mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”, which was 21.2% of all deaths; this compares with 539 (4.8% of all deaths) in Week 13.”
As there aren’t really any other likely causes I would go for about 6000 Covid-19 deaths that week compared to the official 3500 number.
That’s Habeas Corpus down the tubes and with it the Corpus of Western law.
Every body must be examined by two doctors, one of which must be the listed doctor for that dead patient. If there is any abnormality the body must be autopsied. Relatives of any person who dies in an English hospital can request an autopsy.
Same old , same old as in China-
“IN MINNESOTA a State Congressman-Doctor received a seven-page document from the Department of Health giving instructions on filling out the death certificate:
Basically, it said “you do NOT have to have a confirmed laboratory test for Covid-19 in order to make the death certificate be Covid-19.”
The interviewer asks why doctors are being told to enter unproven assumptions on death certificates, and the doctor answers:
“Well, fear is a good way to control people. Sometimes people’s ability to think for themselves is paralyzed if they’re frightened enough.”
Here is a perfect example of a death being counted as c19 that 100% should not be. According to that article it WILL be counted as a c19 death. Undiagnosed and untreated ketoacidosis will kill you every time.
https://www.summitdaily.com/news/covid-19-was-not-the-primary-cause-of-death-for-silverthorne-man/
Italy-
“Prof Walter Ricciardi, advisor to Italy’s health minister, explained this was caused by the “generous” way the Italian government handles death certificates:
The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.
Essentially, Italy’s death registration process does not differentiate between those who simply have the virus in their body, and those who are actually killed by it’
Same old, same old-
“In fact, rather than learning from Italy’s example, other countries are not only repeating these mistakes but going even further.
In Germany, for example, though overall deaths and case-fatality ratio are far lower than Italy’s, their public health agency is still engaging in similar practice.
On March 20th the President of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute confirmed that Germany counts any deceased person who was infected with coronavirus as a Covid19 death, whether or not it actually caused death”
Hit by a truck, alcohol poisoning, “bounced” in a skydiving accident:
Official Cause of Death – Covid-19!
Most of the Covid-19 stats are unreliable nonsense.
Iceland has the best data and indicates that Covid-19 is not that serious an illness, except for the high-risk group – the elderly and the immune-compromised.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/but-is-the-growth-of-the-pandemic-really-exponential/#comment-2964734
[excerpt]
“I believe this UK Covid-19 estimated mortality range “between 0.5% and 1%” (deaths/infections) is ~correct for a typical country’s population distribution , and my hunch is “closer to 0.5%” – that is not very scary except if you are in the “high risk” group – over 65 years of age or otherwise high-risk (with other medical problems) – Covid-19 deaths are heavily concentrated in the high-risk group.”
One large hospital in Calgary has only 2 Covid-19 patients – the hospital is almost empty, cleared out awaiting the “tsunami” of patients who never arrived.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/13/coronavirus-the-chinese-virus-lockdowns-that-have-done-their-job/#comment-2965819
Here in Alberta, the Covid-19 lock-down has resulted a debacle.
Most of our deaths are in nursing homes – our policy seems to be “Lockdown the low-risk majority but fail to adequately protect the most vulnerable.”
The global data for Covid-19 suggests that deaths/infections will total 0.5% or less – not that scary – but much higher and clearly dangerous for the high-risk group – those over-65 or with serious existing health problems.
“Elective” surgeries were cancelled about mid-March, in order to make space available for the “tsunami” of Covid-19 cases that never happened. Operating rooms are empty and medical facilities and medical teams are severely underutilized. The backlog of surgeries will only be cleared with extraordinary effort by medical teams, and the cooperation of patients who die awaiting surgery – patients who were too impatient…
This may look like 20:20 hindsight, but I called it this way in ~mid-March.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/but-is-the-growth-of-the-pandemic-really-exponential/#comment-2964810
[excerpt]
BAD CALL – END THE LOCKDOWNS ASAP.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51674743
“The UK government’s scientific advisers believe that the chances of dying from a coronavirus infection are between 0.5% and 1%.”
I believe this Covid-19 estimated mortality range “between 0.5% and 1%” (deaths/infections) is ~correct for a typical country’s population distribution , and my hunch is “closer to 0.5%” – that is not very scary except if you are in the “high risk” group – over 65 years of age or otherwise high-risk (with other medical problems) – Covid-19 deaths are heavily concentrated in the high-risk group.
I still think my ~mid-March assessment of this situation was the correct one:
“Isolate people over sixty-five and those with poor immune systems and return to business-as-usual for people under sixty-five.
This will allow “herd immunity” to develop much sooner and older people will thus be more protected AND THE ECONOMY WON’T CRASH.
If tests prove positive, use chloroquine and remdesivir or other cheap available drugs ASAP as appropriate.”
With rare exceptions, we have not seen the “tsunami of cases overwhelm our medical systems”, and we have trashed our economies and severely harmed hundreds of millions worldwide who live from paycheck to paycheck. Considering the pro’s and con’s, the full lockdown was a bad call.
Regards, Allan
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/21/end-the-american-lockdown/comment-page-1/#comment-12253
[excerpt- posted 21Mar2020]
This full-lockdown scenario is especially hurting service sector businesses and their minimum-wage employees – young people are telling me they are “financially under the bus”. The young are being destroyed to protect us over-65’s. A far better solution is to get them back to work and let us oldies keep our distance, and get “herd immunity” established ASAP – in months not years. Then we will all be safe again.
Dead and buried for twenty years. Dig up grave. Re-determine cause of death as COVID-19. This is the phenomenon of “back infection”, caused by the “scared house effect” (SHE).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/but-is-the-growth-of-the-pandemic-really-exponential/#comment-2964734
Iceland data here:
https://www.icelandreview.com/ask-ir/whats-the-status-of-covid-19-in-iceland/
https://www.icelandreview.com/sci-tech/icelands-coronavirus-testing-global-pandemic-response/
Updated every day at 13:00
COVID-19 in Iceland – Statistics
– Information on this page is obtained from the database at midnight.
Total figures to 10Apr2020
841 in isolation
36 hospitalised
10 intensive care
1.689 confirmed infections
15.498 quarantine completed
841 recovered
3.080 in quarantine
34.635 samples
Of those diagnosed with COVID-19, eight have died. All but one death were people over 60.
GATHERING BAN
Icelandic authorities have banned gatherings of over 20 people from March 24 until May 4. Grocery stores and pharmacies may still allow up to 100 people inside at once, provided space allows for a 2-metre distance between individuals.
Authorities ordered the closure of swimming pools, gyms, bars, clubs, slot machines, and museums as of midnight on March 23. Operations and services that require close contact between individuals or risk close contact are also prohibited. This includes sports clubs, hairdressers, beauty salons, and massage parlours.
All stores, public buildings, and other frequented indoor spaces must be cleaned as often as possible. Hand sanitizer must be available at all entrances and in more frequented spaces such as checkouts in stores.
Universities and junior colleges (menntaskólar) are closed during this period, while PRIMARY SCHOOLS AND PRESCHOOLS REMAIN OPEN, but are subject to stricter measures, including limiting class sizes and maintaining space between students. These measures mean limited services and hours in many primary schools and preschools.
Gatherings smaller than 20 individuals are also subject to strict guidelines, primarily ensuring that there are two metres of space between attendees. Workplaces and institutions are charged with applying and enforcing the regulation themselves.
The measures do not affect international airports, ports, planes or ships.
__________________________
Iceland Total Tests to 10Apr2020 ~34,602
Population of Iceland 341,250
Total Tests/Population 10.1%
Cumulative number of total confirmed cases (total active cases + recovered cases) is increasing but decelerating (flattening).
Containment is strong except PRIMARY SCHOOLS AND PRESCHOOLS (aka the Plague Wards) REMAIN OPEN.
8 deaths/1.689 confirmed infections = 0.47% – this 0.5% will probably increase, but is still much lower than the 2% mortality elsewhere – this may be a function of the early stage of the illness in Iceland, but could also reflect other factors.
It would be helpful to learn what medical treatments are being applied to patients in Iceland, if in fact they are experiencing lower mortality rates than other countries.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/13/coronavirus-the-chinese-virus-lockdowns-that-have-done-their-job/#comment-2965794
AUSTRIA ESTIMATED ~~140,000 TOTAL COVID-19 INFECTIONS 384 DEATHS DEATHS/TOTAL INFECTIONS = ~0.27%
The study suggested that the estimated number of infections within Austria to be on average around 9 times higher than the recorded number of infections.
… the number of asymptomatic individuals within the Austrian population is y an order of magnitude higher than are being detected by the targeted SARS-CoV-2 testing.
In Italia provincia di Brescia, uno dei focolai più attivi del COVID19 , risulta che (dati pubblicati dal Giornale di Brescia) su un campione di 431.000 abitanti complessivi (84 comuni della provincia di Brescia), confrontando i decessi medi negli ultimi anni rispetto a marzo 2020. sono decedute 1331 persone rispetto a sole 309 di media. Di questi decessi solo 466 sono stati riconosciuti COVID19. La differenza è data dal fatto che molte persone non sono morte in ospedale , ma a casa loro o, peggio nelle case di riposo per anziani. In base a questi numeri è plausibile pensare che gli infetti nel solo marzo 2020 siano compresi tra 60. 000 e 300.000 sugli abitanti dell’intera provincia di Brescia (1.100.000 abitanti). Si stima che in Italia i contagiati da COVID19 siano stati per ora 2,5 milioni su una popolazione di 60 milioni. Fonte https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/04/16/coronavirus-lo-studio-gli-italiani-contagiati-sono-circa-25-milioni-sicilia-e-basilicata-tasso-di-infezione-dello-035-lombardia-133/5772118/
Same old , same old-
“Northern Ireland’s HSC Public Health Agency is releasing weekly surveillance bulletins on the pandemic, in those reports they define a “Covid19 death” as:
individuals who have died within 28 days of first positive result, whether or not COVID-19 was the cause of death”
“ implying that in the UK the deaths from this dangerous pathogen are already approaching 22,000.”; the use of FROM is incorrect it should be “WITH”, as everyone admitted to hospital is tested for the virus. If this test is positive then CoViD19 HAS to appear on the death certificate as it is a notifiable disease, this is irrespective of whether the death was directly attributable to the virus or not. As there are no autopsies or coroner inquests, despite CoViD19 being notifiable, then the true cause of death cannot be established.
As residents in care homes, nursing homes or residential homes are not tested the actual number is skewed anyway as it depends on the decision of the certifying physician or if the resident had been discharged from hospital after testing positive. There is also the possibility that a person has been discharged prematurely.
Finally, in the U.K. a death certificate cannot have “old age” as a reason, typically they would show MI or CVA, particularly if the patient died in hospital.
So it’s just a co-incidence that we have twice the number of deaths than normal? Ok, some of those are heart attack and stroke victims who were too scared to go to hospital but that’s a side effect of covid19 too. They may have died in hospital after catching the virus there anyway.
Would you mind sourcing your claim of “twice the number”?
Thank
As already pointed out, just look at the ONS weekly stats linked further up the thread. For the week ending 3rd April there were about 16000 deaths which was about 6000 more than the average for that week. So notably higher but not double.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/17/care-homes-and-covid19
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/06/covid-with-of-or-because-of/
This whole discussion is akin to studying a Rembrandt, painting concentrating on only the bottom one square inch of the canvas. It is what we are not seeing that provides the complete picture.
Until a reliable antibody test is available, which currently does not exist, the debate is hopeless.
We have no idea what the background rate of infection actually is.
Until we know the total number of those who have contracted the virus and can compare that number with the number who have died, it is all speculation as to whether Covid 19 virus is more of less significant than a bad flu/cold year.
The situation vis Covid 19 is made even more confusing when you realise, the reported numbers for Covid 19 include virtually any flu/cold virus sufferer that dies.
We need accurate data.
“Until a reliable antibody test is available, which currently does not exist, the debate is hopeless.”
And a body has general antibody reaction and about 4 weeks later inflection get specific antibody for the virus.
San Marino has 1,149 deaths per million
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Probably should do an antibody test in San Marino.
My question: Does the increase in ionizing radiation during very low solar activity (I remind you that neutrons are measured at the surface) affect the increase in the number of mutations in the natural world?
https://sol.spacenvironment.net/nairas/Dose_Rates.html
In the UK, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Health yesterday admitted that 15,000 people per day arrive at Heathrow and are not tested before travelling on in the UK.
Meanwhile, police stop people sunbathing in their front garden and others break down people’s front door because they ‘thought’ there was a party going on.
We all remember that Income Tax was a ‘temporary’ measure introduced during the Crimean War.
How long will these ‘temporary’ measures last?
That’s insane.
In Oz, they’re us a mandatory 14 day quarantine (government funded hotels, not at home) for citizens and essential workers. Nobody else is even allowed in. This is why we have one of the lowest rates of infection and death in the world so far. We might well eradicate it and keep immigration restrictions, too.
I think it’s massively overblown as a risk, but if you don’t make the lockdowns full, they are a compete waste of everything!
It’s even worse than that, Martin !
By the time of the Crimean War (1853) Income Tax had already been in existence for over fifty years; having been introduced as a “temporary measure” to fund the Napoleonic Wars.
Does it matter , the virus is already in the country.
Exactly right, as the years pass virtually everyone will have cvd-19 at some time or other. Most people will get a drippy nose and sore throat, and will simply stay home from work for a few days.
They will not have the slightest clue that they had cvd-19. Nor should they care.
Does it matter , the virus is already in the country.
Of course it matters. We’ve shutdown the economy and are all living under house arrest for the purpose of delaying the spread of the virus. In that context bringing in new infections is madness. Introducing 15,000 people a day (including from China, NYC, Italy, Spain, Iran…) with no testing and no quarantine requirements, makes a mockery of the lockdown policy.
Delay for how long? and then what?
The hospitals are coping-
“UK: London’s temporary Nightingale hospital has remained largely empty, with just 19 patients being treated at the facility over the Easter weekend. London’s established hospitals have doubled their ICU capacity, and are so far coping with surge’
They’ve doubles (more actually) the number of critical care beds by closing operating theatres and using them, and attached recovery rooms, as CC wards…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bXWGxhd7ic&t=41s
Dear All, the above link Re Covid source was removed from my wife’s Face-book page yesterday….
This link is worth watching and absorbing re “Synthetic gain-of-function” corona viruses…..do some research on the papers cited and technical description arrived at for the recombinant DNA derived spliced virus ( with HIV and Streptococcal tails) and form your own opinions.
The truth is out there re the source of Covid being the Wuhan BSL-4 bio-lab accidentally leaking the “man-made” disease…
It is good to see some investigative journalism going on. Worth watching, people can draw their own conclusions.
“And one cannot know that if one does not count not only deaths but also recovered cases properly.”
Well, is Boris Johnson a recovered case?
Or just because you not in hospital, does count as recovered case?
Or from outset of symptoms, what average recovering time. And what is longest recovering time.
I guess I could google it.
“What is the recovery time for the coronavirus disease?
Using available preliminary data, the median time from onset to clinical recovery for mild cases is approximately 2 weeks and is 3-6 weeks for patients with severe or critical disease.”
So, your PM was a severe case? And so he not recovered, yet?
As general matter, I would say a lot patients are not recovering in a hospital.
Also it seems “recovered cases” are counted differently in various countries and might counted
differently within a country, recovered cases may be counted as left hospital {and not dead} but if they return
again, they not a “new case”.
So with US, 710,021 Total cases + new cases
Total recovered: 60,510
Active cases: 612,353 of which is 13,509 serious cases
Total death: 37,158
710,021 – 37,158 = 672,863 and subtract Total recovered: 60,510 = 612,353
And I imagine, most of 612,353 are not in hospital and are home and are self quarantining
and knowing when these have recovered, is uncertain. I could test it a couple times to be
to have some sense of certainty, but as general matter, probably not commonly doing that.
Every country is counting differently, and probably every hospital. It’s a complete mess. The WHO is utterly useless so far. Apparently most hospitals are idling or shut down because of cancelled elective and non essential surgery etc. Medical staff after being sacked!
The world is in lockdowns, and we have no idea what is really going on. The global economies are being trashed, and stupid ‘experts’ are boldly telling us what we should do, all different, and politicians are flailing around like Muppets.
I despair! This was what the collapse of the Roman empire looked like from within, I am certain.
“I despair! This was what the collapse of the Roman empire looked like from within, I am certain.”
Interesting idea. But Roman empire, would not even notice this virus- it would been undetectable.
As they said in beginning and is true right now {probably} the risk of getting seriously ill and dying is low.
If CO2 levels were 1000 ppm, CO2 would be .1% of atmosphere. If 1000 die in million the death rate is .1% die.
And getting seriously ill might be 1% chance. And so far we don’t have a treatment for it, so Romans could do about as good as the people in the present world.
Apparently it’s mystery why Roman empire ended, some guess plagues, but killed by a bureaucracy, has always been my hunch.
Of course the Romans didn’t have MSM and one can claim MSM is helping the situation.
I would suggest limiting one’s exposure to MSM.
I was referring to the idiocracy that is completely failing to manage anything in a sensible way, while purposefully destroying global economies. The virus is fast less of a problem.
Yes, you call it, idiocracy.
Which specifically I say as roman bureaucracy {Roman empire} and other bureaucracies,
obviously, MSM is controlled by corporate bureaucracies.
The US federal, State, and local bureaucracies. UN and WHO bureaucracies, etc.
But idiocracy works for me.
Idiocracy is probably what doomed the Roman civilization which in turn plunged
a part of human civilization into darker times- though the people were probably at least for a period of time, glad that the idiocracy came to an end.
One concern has to do with the possibility of reinfection. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that 91 patients who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and then tested negative for the virus later tested positive again. If some of these cases were indeed reinfections, they would cast doubt on the strength of the immunity the patients had developed.
An alternative possibility, which many scientists think is more likely, is that these patients had a false negative test in the middle of an ongoing infection, or that the infection had temporarily subsided and then re-emerged. South Korea’s C.D.C. is now working to assess the merit of all these explanations. As with other diseases for which it can be difficult to distinguish a new infection from a new flare-up of an old infection — like tuberculosis — the issue might be resolved by comparing the viral genome sequence from the first and the second periods of infection.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immunity.html
The issue with the first paragraph is that it does not contain any information on the wellness of those who are deemed “reinfected”. How ill were they the first time? Are they worse or better now? Are they showing symptoms or not? How many are seriously ill? Without details, it is just more fear mongering.
Singapore had already all this.
Late March the cases over there stopped growing.
It looked like they already have passed through the peak.
Check their present numbers.
They are exploding!
And all statistics are here to misinterpret them! Everybody lies.
The only question is how much do they lie.
Take Equador.
Their official death tall is 421.
The total registered deaths just in one single province of Guayas over the last two weeks is 6700.
Normally, only 1000 should have died there.
Since the beginning of March, 14,500 died in that province.
Normally, 2000 die per Month.
Bodies are rotting in the streets for weeks.
It smells like hell
South America going to get quite bad in about 1 week.
And I think South Africa, if it gets bad enough, it could infect the entire Africa Continent.
But if South Africa locks down, it seems to me, the rest of continent, probably will not have much of problem.
will the numbers show up against the millions that die in Africa and other third world countries from communicable diseases that have so far killed 3.5 million this year.
I guess it depends on who does the numbers.
But people in Africa will not need numbers, if it has significant effect.
Apparently, in Ecuador, it’s already being called the rich people’s disease.
I guess, because rich people travel on airlines to different countries {like Spain}.
Now another new study by French researchers from 11 medical research centres and hospitals in France covering 181 patients suffering from SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia from 4 hospitals from France showed that Hydroxchloroquine had no effects and in fact worsened the conditions of some 8 patients with them developing electrocardiogram modifications requiring HCQ discontinuation
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060699v1
that’s because you should use it at the onset of the symptoms and not on already critical patients. But this was already known, so who funded this useless study?
Hey Joel,
Good question – today China announced that it has treated 85% of it’s population with TCM – traditional Chinese medicine” – guess what Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are called….TCM based on their two patents , 2016 and their latest attempt on the Gilead USA prior-art patent lodged in 2018….
What a hoot…can post the Chinese article for a laugh 😂
The study is of questionable quality in that no indication is given as to whether the HCQ was given with zinc (chelated zinc is preferred as it has higher bio-availability, than zinc sulfate), and antibiotics (Zpac or equivalent). Without those cofactors it is doubtful that efficacious protocols were followed. The success of the efficacious cocktails in other locations make the pre-pub somewhat suspect.
It is important to keep an eye on the small print and even to look behind the print to find out what is measured, how it is measured, and when and where it is measured.. The UK government switched around 14th April[1] to publishing “Total number of lab-confirmed cases in England by specimen date“[2]. These are then more up-to-date than previously, though one needs to be aware the data produced each day necessarily will be corrected in the immediately subsequent days because it take several days for the lab tests to be done. (Also the procedures for England differ from the rest of the UK.) The “lab-confirmed cases”, present match rather closely the first part and crest of a normal distribution curve:
N_dly=4000 exp (-(d/15)²) which may also be expressed as N_cmltv=58000(1+erf(d/15)) where d is number of days since 5th April 2020 and N_dly and N_cmltv are the daily and cumulative figures for “total number of lab-confirmed cases in England by specimen date”. The interesting date here is 5th April. This represents a “half-way point” in that: (i) the daily number of cases rose before that date and then fell (ii) around that date the cumulative figure is rising approximately linearly, rather than exponentially, with time (iii) the cumulative number up to that point represents half the expected final number (116,000) (iv) by Farr’s Law the expected daily number is in the single figures by around 7th May, ready for the 75th VE Day street parties.
The UK government is now faced with finding ways of scaring the population into believing that the three-week extension to the lockdown is justified, and may even try to extend it beyond the VE Day Celebrations. It is going to be a difficult task if these figures turn out to be accurate and if the observations of Farr of Kenley in 1850 apply equally to the 2020 outbreak.
The question of what constitutes “lab-confirmed” will come under scrutiny too. I doubt if the managers who supervise the clerks’ spreadsheets would be in a position even to comprehend the testing procedure and, in particular, the impact of changes in the tests made or in the coverage and sampling strategy. An obvious question is, how many false positives are there? This is important because if a large total number of people are tested over the summer then the number of “false positive” tests will rise at the same time that the number of “actual positives” is going down. If the test reliability is not sufficiently high, will result in a “phantom epidemic” and more hysteria. A less obvious question is , are the tests highly selective of Covid-19 or are they tests for “Covid-19-like protein fragments which could be associated with that virus” or some similar weasel words?
I suggest that over the next few weeks we place the work of virologists and epidemiologists under close scrutiny since for some reason the UK government is in thrall to anthropomancy and hieroscopy.
[1] SuffolkBoy: Is somebody playing around with the “Daily Confirmed Cases” figures? https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/12/delingpole-britains-lockdown-may-have-been-a-terrible-mistake/#comment-4875692903
[2] UK HMG https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
suffolkboy: According to worldometers, they dumped a whole load of late-reported tests into the data for 10th April. This caused the UK confirmed new cases per day to reach a huge peak of 8,681. I wonder if this is associated with the change of the method of recording you refer to?
Looking at your second reference, they make it look as if the epidemic is coming to a swift end. But that is over-optimistic. The cases confirmed today where the swab was taken yesterday will, obviously, be only a small fraction of the eventual case count for swabs taken on that day. Moreover, the only country I have seen which shows anything like a perfect Farr curve is the Faeroe Islands. And that seems to be because the virus went straight through the population before government could do anything.
So, my answer to your question “is someone playing with the figures?” is yes. The cynic in me says that the UK political class have realized that if they don’t end the lockdown soon, they will kill the golden goose that supports them and everything they stand for. So (in contrast to pretty much the last 40 years) they have begun the fabrication of optimistic data, rather than the opposite.
Trump administration know it was a lab virus and know it was an accident.
Nevertheless there’ll be an ‘investigation’ or two followed by a dozen ‘inquiries’.
COVID-19 industry will spend millions on scientists, bureaucrats, consultants and lawyers.
China will wail a lot and garner sympathy from the left.
Vested business, travel and education interests will pressure politicians and shelter China from any meaningful action.
The UN and the WHO will do nothing without the express consent of China.
China will go into PR overdrive and the World will stay a sitting duck for the next Chinese virus.
This is not along the lines of “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” is it?
Exactly along the lines of Sir Dearlove’s MI6 Iraq WMD Dossier that Blair peddled. Result, as President Trump said, the worst “mistake” the US ever made.
Dearlove is also the source of the Steel dossier resulting in Russiagate, an attempted coup on the US Presidency.
Britain’s Scoop Jackson “charity” is peddling the $3 trillion China lawsuit. US boot-polishers are willingly trying to legislative for exactly that.
Charming special relationship, what?
so, how do you explain Japans curve?
Japan has not even 800 tests per million. Their numbers are a joke and completely unreliable. But they still see a step increase of daily new cases now. One can imagine how that will develop.
The only things that matter are ICU visits and deaths. How are those in Japan?
ICU data is not readily available. Seemed to be high enough that local administrations asked for the lockdown in fear of overwhelming the health care system.
Deaths are lacking 2-4 weeks behind infection rates so too early to see anything significant yet.
Japanese can not rely in self destruction, or apply self destruction…
due to the code of honor… of one not being prone of servitude to death and fear.
Seppuku, still applicable in Japan.
In case of high national frack up, full length seppuku the outcome.
Seppuku, ain’t suicide or self termination,,,
is an act of self confessing and accepting failure and begging for pardon and mercy from the master, in consideration of one’s failure, where in these modern days the master happens to be the nation and the people of Japan…
concluding with mercy being granted.
Full seppuku, concludes with a death sentence granted by the master or in behalf of the master as an act of pardon, where one to be executed participates as a party initiating the execution.
Oh well, just another way of looking at.
cheers
“some think Germany’s widespread testing has helped keep deathrates low”.
Totally missing the reality that cases are the denominator and the more you test, the more “detect” and by definition your ratio is low. Duh.
He also goes through China data blow by blow without even commenting on the massive spike and the inflation of later data by 60%. Even though the change in methods was clearly announced by China at the time, he fails to notice.
Total idiot. ( Plus annoying voice fry ).
“some think Germany’s widespread testing has helped keep deathrates low”.
Totally missing the reality that cases are the denominator and the more you test, the more “detect” and by definition your ratio is low. Duh.
He also goes through China data blow by blow without even commenting on the massive spike and the inflation of later data by 60%. Even though the change in methods was clearly announced by China at the time, he fails to notice.
Total idiot. ( Plus annoying voice fry ).
Amazing that the shape of a curve is regarded as indicative of a successful policy.
All South Korea has achieved is painting itself into a corner of maintaining this emergency stance forever. Without a vaccine or effective treatment, they are stuck. With the infection rate they have, their population will never achieve immunity. And if, for whatever reason, their system breaks down…
(see also New Zealand, Australia…)
gbaikie, at least you have a number. Here in the UK the number recovered was stuck on 137 for days, then went up to something like 340 for a day or two, now it’s N/A.
From the stats it would appear that UK hospitals are like the ‘Hotel California’ and only a few have escaped out of the windows! Actually, has anyone even seen Boris yet? I can’t believe the numbers don’t exist for those discharged from hospital, which is surely (hopefully) a good proxy for ‘will recover completely’?
For grim entertainment I’ve been trying to track the growth rate of new cases versus active cases but it’s a bit nonsensical for the UK.
More than 500 coronavirus patients have been discharged from Colorado hospitals in the last 3 days
By JESSICA SEAMAN | jseaman@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
April 15, 2020 at 1:06 p.m.
“More than 500 people hospitalized in Colorado for COVID-19 were discharged in the last three days, according to new data that offers a look at how many people are recovering from the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Colorado hospitals have just started to collect and release discharge data — which the state health department has been unable to do — related to the coronavirus pandemic. The release of the data comes as state health officials have said the number of patients admitted into hospitals is slowing, reflecting a potential “plateauing” of the pandemic.
Since Sunday, 521 coronavirus patients have left hospitals, according to data released by the Colorado Hospital Association on Wednesday.”
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/15/coronavirus-covid-patients-recovered-colorado/
I imagine part of problem is shortage of tests- which now, is not a problem.
And need test which give fast results- which now, is not a problem.
And if “plateauing” you have more medical personnel which can be involved with stuff which isn’t
acutely about medically saving lives. But follow up is important and imagine more effort will be
directed in that direction.
I think UK has high degree of uncertainty of when it’s going to “plateau”and make a lot sense to “waste resources” preparing for unexpected surges which might not appear.
And somewhat sure that UK is getting a lot more tests {everywhere in the world has been, lately} and might take couple more days before it begins to sort out.
Also I think Africa {particularly South Africa} and South America are currently a major potential global problem- and need lot of tests, and are getting some {hopeful, not useless or defective Chinese tests}.
‘a California county where they reported 1,000 confirmed cases they sampled suggested 50k-80k people in that county had already had the virus and recovered.’
‘those who have tried to maintain that this pandemic is no worse than the seasonal flu are flat wrong.’
Who can spot the obvious contradiction between these two statements? As many of us suspected, the number of those who have had asymptomatic or very minor symptom cases of Covid19 is vast, but hardly appear in the stats at all. To base a mortality rate on the official figures of non-fatal and fatal cases is just absurd. Those who have had the virus and gone completely undetected outnumber the detected by orders of magnitude. My guess, given what Covid19 is, that when the final tally comes in, it will be approximately as deadly as flu. Possibly less so. So what can we learn from this? Mainly, I would humbly suggest, is that we can’t trust politicians to understand statistics, or indeed anything more complicated than ‘push to open’.
“My guess, given what Covid19 is, that when the final tally comes in, it will be approximately as deadly as flu. Possibly less so. So what can we learn from this?”
We should learn that the human race got very lucky with this virus. It could have been much more lethal.
We should also learn that comparing this virus to other flu viruses by the amount of deaths it causes is a useless exercise when arguing as to whether nations should have shut down their economies to defend against it.
At the time the shutdown actions were taken we knew nothing about this virus, so figuring out that it is only as dangerous as the flu does not help us in deciding what to do about the next unknown virus to come along.
An unknown virus has to always be considered dangerous enough for society to take measures against it until proven otherwise. So if we get another one coming along in the near future, we are going to do exactly what we did with the Wuhan virus. Only this time we will be in much better shape to handle unknown viruses and might be able to put it back in its bottle. We have gained a lot of experience with this Wuhan virus matter, and will gain more as we go along.
At the time the shutdown actions were taken we knew nothing about this virus…
This is not the case. We (the UK at least) already had enough information about the spread of COVID-19, and the resulting fatalities, to know that it wasn’t the once-in-a-century horror pandemic we have been fearing. We didn’t use this available information, instead we used projections from activist academics with known bad records for excitable and failed predictions.
So if we get another one coming along in the near future, we are going to do exactly what we did with the Wuhan virus.
No, we won’t. We won’t be able to afford (financially or politically) another lockdown. Not after unnecessarily squandering the technique on the wrong virus.
Well-stated.
Aside from British House of Lords policy :
China has been experiencing a spike in imported coronavirus cases coming from Russia, with a concentration in the northeast province of Heilongjiang bordering the Russian Far East. The border has been closed, and in addition to a hospital in Suifenhe and Mudanjiang near the Russian border, an emergency hospital has been set up in Suifenhe, as well as a negative pressure laboratory. Capacity has been expanded to 1,600 beds and 289 medical professionals from across the country have traveled to the two sites to assist in the mobilization.
By Tuesday night, April 14, they had 334 reported COVID-19 cases, all from Russia. “The investigation results showed that some of the imported patients had been infected in the environment in which they lived and worked abroad. Most of them worked in two large-scale markets in Moscow,” Hao Jun, an official of the Health Commission said at a news conference on April 14. He further stated that because they had traveled a long distance in a closed environment and had transferred vehicles several times, they couldn’t avoid infections when they dined.
All of the involved Chinese citizens returned from Russia. After flying from Moscow to Vladivostok, they traveled 190 km by car and entered China through Suifenhe, according to the Commission.
Any curious and careful thinker should be critical of the way data is collected and disseminated. Because of this it is hard to compare like with like. Confirmed cases by age are for example available for Spain up to 12 April but we are told this is based on partial data. Italy released a table of confirmed cases by age on 30 March but none since. Ireland meticulously releases the daily numbers with details like gender, median age, underlying conditions but does not give a breakdown of deaths by age on the official government website. They give a the median age which is a worthless statistic without a table of the age brackets. Do we know from official country numbers if deaths are possible, probable or confirmed coronavirus mortalities? While one Irish newspaper gave “the Age – number of deaths – % of fatalities” there was no link to the source and to complicate matters the age bands do not correspond with those of Italy and Spain.
A South African doctor advising her government recently commented: There are dynamics about this virus that we don’t know. We don’t know how contagious it is, we don’t know so much about its reproductive rate and its ability to move stealthily through our communities. However, if what may be known is clearly communicated and explained to the public and rash and rushed decisions avoided, we will be better able to minimize the damage. The problem is that someone in a state of panic makes poor decisions but the media, many politicians and not a few experts are stoking up panic.
Mobility data for sweden
Well the swedes may not have an official lockdown, but they are moving around less than Koreans
Except…. they go to the park.
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-11_SE_Mobility_Report_en.pdf
Korea
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-11_KR_Mobility_Report_en.pdf
UK
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-11_GB_Mobility_Report_en.pdf
New york
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-11_US_New_York_Mobility_Report_en.pdf
data junky heaven
End the lock down now! give us our liberty back , we should have a lot more testing and this should include those coming into our country. I don’t want to live in a fascist country I would rather take my chance with the virus.
” give us our liberty back”
Liberty was never “given” , it was won. If you want it back, go get it .
“End the lock down now!”
It looks like my State of Oklahoma, along with about a dozen other States in the central U.S. will be ready to relax restrictions by May 1, 2020.
The United States has 50 different laboratories for opening up the economy while dealing with the Wuhan virus, and we will all learn from each other the best ways to go about it.
We will open up to Phase 1, and give it a little time, and see if virus infections spike or not, and if they do, then we will deal with the spike and see how successful we are with doing that, and if we are successful, and we will be, then we can continue opening up our economy.
We are getting back on track, and we are moving soon enough that major damage to the economy may have been avoided, although Nancy Pelosi holding up the rescue money isn’t helping matters for millions of people. Come Nov. 3, you people that didn’t get your money can vote Nancy and the other delusional, selfish Democrats out of office..
What an unbelievable chain of events we have experienced over the last few months! What a blessing it is to have Donald Trump in charge at this time.
Also well-stated.
“The United Kingdom, whose civil service has become so used to everything being done for it by the European tyranny-by-clerk”
Say what now? Deaths have always been an individual countries domain. The EU would not have had any influence on reporting or management.
Any evidence to back up the claim?
Apparently it’s because of the EU that UK is so much worse at this than Germany
???
Italy, Spain, France are not EU ?
😀
Christopher Monckton claimed the problems in UK were down to the EU
The fact there are massive differences between the countries in the EU proves otherwise.
And UK is doing even worse than Italy
AndyL falsely says I have “claimed the problems in UK were down to the EU. I said nothing of the kind.
I agree you did not claim the UK’s handling of the crisis was down to the EU and withdraw any suggestion you did.
However you did claim that UK’s inept handling of the numbers was somehow down to the EU – ignoring the fact that other countries in the EU manage this much better, including Germany and France. There is no justification at all for your claim quoted below:
“The United Kingdom, whose civil service has become so used to everything being done for it by the European tyranny-by-clerk, has proven wholly unable to keep a tally of those who, having shown symptoms of the infection, have recovered from it. “
Curiously the Worldometers tables indicate the numbers of cases of coronavirus in Africa south of the Sahara are rather low. South Africa has only 2873 cases (17 Apr) and no other country has even 700 cases. Could it be because of the failure to diagnose the infection, because the spread was much later, lack of testing or perhaps other factors slowing the spread? The Chinese are involved in various schemes in Africa so why would it have spread there much later? If many were suddenly dying in these countries would this not be in the news? It may be early days but random testing across the continent would confirm how widespread the virus is and perhaps help curb the alarm.
A recent test of employees of a large Johannnesburg pharmacy revealed 24 people (18% of staff) were positive but all of them symptom free. Does this indicate the virus is more widespread in that country and far less of a threat than the experts claim? Are there local factors mitigating against the severity? Comparative studies may be helpful if one can obtain information that allows for comparing apples with apples.
Dear Michael in Dublin,
I think you have more or less answered several of your own questions.
There are, at the moment, a relatively small number of diagnosed cases in Sub-Saharan African countries probably because of a failure to diagnose…not because of local factors mitigating against severity.
Watch the numbers climb as the ability to test improves but I suspect the number of deaths will be significantly under reported. In a remote village in a poor country with a poorly resourced health system who is availabe to diagnose a cause of death [sorcery?] let alone report it to a national statistician?
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/17/coronavirus-lockdown-and-what-you-are-not-being-told-part-1/
GIGO – You can’t point out what a complete pile of garbage is included in the input, then pretend there’s any relevance to a point made on the output by adding more garbage that’s not included in the original pile of garbage.
We don’t even know how accutate the testing is, let alone figures based on no testing. The whole thing seems a complete farce.
“Has COVID-19 Testing Made the Problem Worse?
Summary
The history of testing for SARS-COV-2 infection has involved problems that have led to delays in testing and reporting of rates of infection than are falsely higher than actual. Complicating these issues are government mandates for medical professionals to list COVID-19 as cause of death for patients who have inconclusive causes of death and, in some cases, were never tested for SARS-COV-2 at all.
Understanding problems with the test performed for identification of infected patients can lead to much needed clarity and less panic. There are many questions that still need answers. For example: Are reported rates for other diseases like influenza dropping in proportion to the rise in reported infection by SARS-COV-2? What were the details of the Chinese study that was mysteriously retracted? What has investigation into the CDC kit contamination revealed? What other countries have based their mortality figures on test kits that provided unreliable results?
Citizens can help by calling on authorities and test facilities to publicly share the details of testing including the actual results of the RT-qPCR tests showing levels of virus present. In addition to information sharing, an international investigation into the problems seen with testing, starting with Chinese results and U.S. test kits, should be conducted. Such an investigation could lead to preventing the reporting of false positives and the ensuing panic and bad decision making that come from artificially high estimated mortality rates.”
https://digwithin.net/2020/04/08/covid-19-testing/
“An open prison (open jail) is any jail in which the prisoners are trusted to serve their sentences with minimal supervision and perimeter security and are often not locked up in their prison cells. Prisoners may be permitted to take up employment while serving their sentence’
Lockdown- most people are not allowed to work.
“The idea of an open prison is often criticised by members of the public and politicians. Prisoners in open jails do not have complete freedom and are only allowed to leave the premises for specific purposes, such as going to an outside job”
Not even allowed to do that.
“Prisoners may be permitted to take up employment while serving their sentence”
Oh , you mean like convicted statutory rapists Epstein was allowed to work in Manhattan and return to his cell at 10.30 pm to sleep ?
Statutory rape is not a thing.
Compare COVID-19 with the AMERICAN VIRUS … Swine flu, and it appears quite mild with only 2% of the number of cases.
We won’t know how many cases, in order to compare the pandemics, without more testing. For lethality, we’ll have to wait, too.
The 2009 swine flu began either in Asia or Mexico, not in the US. If the former case, it was carried to the US by a human traveler. In the latter case, of course, its origin would be North American.
It is hard to be critical of China’s early reaction to the virus when we see the incompetence and the inaccurate numbers here in the West.
Do we really think we would have done a better job isolating the virus, or been more open to WTO investigation, if the initial outbreak had been in Chicago, Birmingham UK or Lyon?
If you knew you had a virus infection spreading among your population, would you encourage infected people to travel to other nations?
That’s what the Chinese leadership did. How can that be excused? It can’t be. It was deliberate.
Not totally disagreeing with you and clearly your ability around math far surpasses me (and I’m pretty good), however there are a couple of factors that need to be considered. One is plain old common sense.
Here in Saskatchewan (a Prairie province in Canada with about 1 million people spread over a province that is easily 10 – 15 times larger than the UK and our largest city is only about 230,000) we are getting some weird projections from our provincial health authority. Two weeks ago they released numbers on best/worse cases for Covid in SK. The BEST case was over 153,000 infected and a little over 3,000 dead. Those are very frightening numbers and supported the actions of our government to shut down SK in the middle of March. But here we are about 4 weeks from shut down and indication is that the virus peaks after about 6 weeks – what are our actual numbers? – just a tad over 300 people infected and FOUR deaths. We had better get cracking if we want to reach the best case presented by our betters.
Social distancing has been a standard forever in this province – we are not Toronto where taking the subway is an experience in losing personal space or being crammed into a 600 sq ft apartment in a huge building where never taking the elevator alone is the norm. But even Toronto doesn’t have the numbers projected as the best case for SK. Common sense says these models/projections are way off. Unfortunately no politician will admit that they were spooked by initial numbers and that they made a mistake in shutting down our economy.
Having said that – there should be no surprise that the target group suffering the most from this virus is the elderly (duh!) and those with pre-existing conditions (again duh!) and in that respect Covid is JUST LIKE THE SEASONAL FLU and again we have done NOTHING to address deaths from the seasonal flu when the solution is known and obvious – high standards of sanitation in care homes, limiting access, and above all not allowing care staff to work in multiple facilities. The big push now (supported by health care unions) is for more staff, more money etc. etc. (I’m shocked just shocked?). But the unions will NOT allow collective agreements to be changed to prevent staff working in multiple facilities. And it is NOT because of low wages causing staff to have to take multiple jobs. Our health district has a standing hiring policy that new nurse hires will be offered full time work — the uptake is dismal. Because the collective agreement allows casual nurses almost unlimited hours of work anywhere in the district. So a casual nurse can work vast amounts of overtime in any care facility (hospital, care home etc.) for 8 months,, earn over $100,000 annually and then bugger off to Arizona for four months. Nurses can work in a hospital one week, move over to a care home for a couple of weeks while working weekend shifts back at the hospital and then work at another care home for another couple of weeks and work home care shifts on the weekend. The only shocking thing is that infection rates are not higher in institutions/care homes. But no politician has the guts to take on the health care unions so the same old, same old happens again and again.
We don’t have a standard way of reporting anything – I suspect in a couple of weeks, there will be a surge in deaths reported in SK because all the seasonal flu deaths and any terminal person who tested positive for Covid will be put in the Covid death column – something has to be done to get those numbers up or no sane person will believe anything the politicians or health experts every say again. I think it was Italy that was initially reporting deaths as those who died FROM covid and those who died WITH covid – meaning they were already terminally ill and would have died anyway. But the media just reports total numbers so who knows what the death toll is.
The last comment comes from a discussion with a neighbour who commented on how drastically our overall hygiene standards have become over the last 20 years in spite of our access to running water, electricity etc. She grew up on a farm in the 1940s where if you wanted a bath you had to pump water, heat it on a stove and quickly bathe because it was getting col. Today it is common to see people flossing their teeth on buses, wearing pajama bottoms to grocery shop, eating a nice restaurants wearing clothes that look they just came in from gardening. I totally agree – I don’t want to be standing at a checkout counter behind some slob wearing his pajama bottoms that he probably hasn’t changed for a week – ugh!!! But there are no standards anymore. We shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t wash their hands or sneeze right in your face – as a society we no longer condemn such behaviour. For countries where 95% of people have easy access to hot running water, and access to lots of just basic soap (to say nothing of the overload of cleaning products) we have really fallen down on hygiene standards.
Maureen
I wonder if the growth of a nanny state from the cradle to the grave has not contributed to many of our societal problems? I have been raised and raised my family with the focus on individual responsibility. This is one of the most important lessons a child can learn on the path to a responsible citizenship. Sure we need law and order, infrastructure like roads and bridges, water, electricity, reasonable safety standards and the likes. This is where good local government and a competent central government, each with a particular but limited role, is necessary.
However, when someone works hard and is productive, why should he not earn more or have a heavier tax burden than a lazy colleague? I knew an apple farmer years ago who paid his packers per box. Some earned double but this was not discriminatory – they all had the same opportunity. I have seen in small close knit communities how efficiently schools were run and with effective discipline till government intrusion ruined this. Similarly, how local hospitals – despite far less resources than today – provided a level of compassionate caring many modern hospitals should envy. My refusal to pay university fees did not deprive my children of education. They had to get jobs pay their own way. I did not grow up in a world where the state was expected to pay for child care for my children and carers for my elderly parents – the family and extended family sorted this out and paid for it.
We are fed the lie that a woman cannot have a successful career if she has to stay and home. We are also told a country cannot thrive without these career women. History, however, has many stories of mothers and housewives who have been really successful and productive beyond their household chores. Loyalty meant something whether towards a spouse, an employer, your country. To be recognized as a man or woman “of conviction and of principle” was a honor and not grounds for being labeled a bigot.
Well, you have had your “rant” and I have responded with my “rant.”
Perhaps we do not rant loudly and long enough?
I have been ranting very loudly to all my elected officials at the local, provincial and federal level – most don’t even bother to respond and those that do just defend their bureaucrats who come up with these bat sh!t crazy numbers and the programs that follow them.
We have a provincial election this fall, and for the first time in my 64 years I may not vote or at least spoil my ballot – I did that in the 2019 federal election. I am so disgusted with the whole lot of them and how they just willingly defer to their experts and bureaucrats. And those bureaucrats can get everything wrong and they will never suffer any consequences.
I have also suggested strongly that every elected official and their senior bureaucrats need to stop receiving their over blown salaries and live off the monthly stipend the feds are paying out to people whose jobs have disappeared ($2,000/month for the next four months) because of the actions of governments. If that happened, I’m pretty sure the economy would magically open tomorrow!
One piece of data nobody even mentions: The percentage of people who are naturally immune to the virus. Not the people who show no symptoms; the number of people who don’t get infected at all. Is there a humane way to get it, other than testing everybody for antibodies?
Yes, the issue of immunity in the population has occured to me, also. In theory, there shouldn’t be any immunity to a ‘novel’ virus.
But didn’t an analysis of the Diamond Princess ‘lockdown’ conclude a significant proportion of the people on board just didn’t seem to be infected by the virus? There was (allegedly) very little in the way of cross-infection precautions – basically I think it came down to ‘stay in your own cabin all day’. So either these people were amazingly lucky, or did – somehow – have some immunity already.
There’s an article elsewhere on WUWT about the analysis:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/
Further, on immunity, isn’t there an as yet unconfirmed suspicion the BCG vaccination somehow gives some degree of immunity, or protection, from CV19.
I have been ranting about this subject for ever. In Canada, we are counting deaths and that’s it. It keeps the population scaresd but provides us with little information.
It’s not even clear if the reported deaths are due to the virus. Old pweople die of pneumonia and if they happened to have the virus, is that a virus death or a pneumonia death.
As long as we’re going to look at model output, how about some economic models to show how many jobs will disappear and not come back in the working lifetimes of the current holders for each additional week the national lockdown lasts?
Can we shut down the whole country for a week? – sure. A month? – yes but with a lot of pain. For the 12-18 months it will take to develop a vaccine proven both safe an effective in properly controlled clinical tests? – not a chance.
There is no choice except to get people back to work, and deciding how soon and under what restrictions is unavoidably a matter of balancing risk of additional infections, hospitalizations and deaths against the harm (including deaths) that will occur in a total economic collapse. Unfortunately these decisions are in the hands of people whose personal jobs and paychecks are not at risk, reacting to questionable models and even more questionable data in a political environment where every additional even vaguely attributable death will be blamed on their “recklessness”. Meanwhile the increasing numbers of people with no income, little savings and no prospects are invisible.
The US GDP for 2019 was a little over $22 trillion (10^12). That’s $1.83 trillion per month. Even the US Congress can’t spend money that fast, assuming we had the ability to borrow it from somewhere, which we don’t. There isn’t enough cash in the world to make up that amount of lost earnings for long, especially as so many other major governments are in the same situation. When there’s no more cash to borrow we’re back to simply printing money and consequent hyper inflation.
The other danger is the US socialists will manage to convince people this is all the fault of capitalism get them to vote for the promise of cradle-to-grave security. Then we’re looking at becoming Venezuela in our lifetimes.
Do not worry, China is up and running and can bankroll the world. Much like they do academia that makes scary graphs and the media that write scare stories about scary graphs.
They shut down as an ante in a hundred trillion dollar gamble. Could they convince the rest of the world to follow and then blackmail the governments into remaining locked down for many months. More will die if you open to early. Better to be safe, burn trillions of dollars and save your citizens.
China rises while the rest of the world crumbles. They immediately reopened for business the moment they had the rest of the world committed to suicide. They still have the disease. They know how harmless overall it is. They faced it first. They may even have known about it as it was in their labs where it likely was released.
It may be that South Korea and Taiwan are well prepared because they know what to expect from communist China. Some exports are extremely malevolent.
Lord Monckton-san:
I completely agree that most governments have done an abysmal job in accurately calculating both actual Wuhan flu deaths, and conducting antibody tests to determine the all-important denominator.
Although some Wuhan flu deaths may be missed, a huge number of deaths are being attributed to the Wuhan flu which were actually caused by comorbities: heart attacks, cancer, pneumonia, kidney/liver failure, strokes, diabetes, old age, etc.,.
For the first time in US medical history, doctors are being told to attribute cause of death to Wuhan flu to any patient with comorbidities who tested positive for the Wuhan flu, or were even suspected of having been infected without test confirmation. Such death attribution criteria is highly irregular and is solely done to inflate the number of Wuhan deaths.
The complete dearth of US Wuhan flu antibody testing is also evidence of the government trying to prevent the public from knowing the actual Wuhan flu death rate is much lower than their original estimate of 2~3%.
Moreover, the insanely inaccurate US death-toll model estimates that started out at 2.2 million and have “miraculously” dropped to 60,000, is also evidence of purposefully inflating dire estimates to terrify the public into submission, and to allow Legislators to pass a 1000-page $6 trillion Wuhan-flu bill (filled with pork) that no lawmaker even read, and there will likely be many more to come…
As Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
The only logical solution is to follow the Swedish model of only quarantining high-risk demographics (over 65 with comorbities) and let everyone else get back to their lives with enhanced sanitary protocols and social distancing to slow down the rate of infections to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed and eventually developing herd immunity.
The quicker countries can get 50% of their population under 65 to recover from the Wuhan flu and generate antibodies, the quicker this terrible disease will end.
Yes, there will be many more Wuhan flu deaths, but nothing compared to the death toll that will occur if the world enters a complete economic collapse, which will happen if insane government hacks continue to shutdown the global economy.
Hopefully, a vaccine or an effective drug regimen will be developed soon, but to close down the economy until these become available is insane.
In response to Samurai-sensei, governments did not lock down their nations to wait for a vaccine that may or may not arrive. They did so in order to avoid overwhelming their hospitals. Now that that objective has been achieved, it is open to governments to unwind their lockdowns once their daily case-growth rate, averaged over seven days, has fallen to 2 or 3%.
Lord Monckton-san:
I agree the economic shutdown was initiated to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, however, its scope was influenced by the absurd initial model projections of 2.2 million deaths.
There are many crazy Leftist political hacks who still espouse keeping the US economy shut down for years until a vaccine or cure is developed and universally implemented, or at least until the November US elections..
Once US antibody test results are in, my guess is that around 15 million Americans have already been infected, with the vast majority asymptomatic, for an actual death rate of around 0.3%, which is still awful, but an order of magnitude less than what the fear mongers were propagandizing…
Again, I think the Swedish model makes the most sense and that 30 US states with falling new infections should immediately restart their economies with common sense sanitation and social distancing protocols, and people 65+ with comorbidities should remain sequestered.
Stay safe, Lord Monckton-san!
What if the effects of the vaccine stay only a few months? Would people be re-vaccinated several times?
Why do any statistical analysis, the government is now in charge and has all the answers. Keep it locked down. Keep people locked into home infection zones. Keep people from going outdoors as a double blind study has show this to be safer. The insanity continues and the worshipers bow.
“In a new analysis, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) at the University of Oxford argues that the lethality of covid19 (IFR) is between 0.1% and 0.36% (i.e. in the range of a severe influenza). In people over 70 years of age with no serious preconditions, the mortality rate is expected to be less than 1%. For people over 80 years of age, the mortality rate is between 3% and 15%, depending on whether deaths so far were mainly with or from by the disease. In contrast to influenza, child mortality is close to zero. With regard to the high mortality rate in Northern Italy, the research group points out that Italy has the highest antibiotic resistance in Europe. In fact, data from the Italian authorities show that around 80% of the deceased were treated with antibiotics, indicating bacterial superinfections”
Nonsense. The Raoult protocol orders antibiotic treatment BEFORE there is any surinfection.
“The Finnish epidemiology professor Mikko Paunio from the University of Helsinki has evaluated several international studies in a working paper and comes to a Covid19 lethality (IFR) of 0.1% or less (i.e. in the area of seasonal influenza). According to Paunio, the impression of a higher lethality was created because the virus spread very quickly, especially in multi-generation households in Italy and Spain, but also in cities like New York. The „lockdown“ measures had come too late and had not been effective”
“The President of the German Hospital Association has sounded the alarm: more than 50 percent of all planned operations throughout Germany have been cancelled, and the „operations backlog“ is running into thousands. In addition, 30 to 40% fewer patients with heart attacks and strokes are treated because they no longer dare to go to the hospitals for fear of corona. There were 150,000 free hospital beds and 10,000 free intensive care beds nationwide. In Berlin, only 68 intensive care beds are occupied by corona patients, the emergency clinic with 1000 beds is currently not in use”
“New data of German authorities show that in Germany, too, the reproduction rate of Covid19 had already fallen below the critical value of 1 before the lockdown. General hygiene measures were therefore sufficient to prevent the exponential spread. This had already been shown by the ETH Zurich for Switzerland as well’
Nevertheless, the CFR is increasing day by day slightly to now 3.09 %.
Graph
“A review on Medscape shows that common cold infections caused by coronaviruses typically decline at the end of April – with or without a lockdown”
In response to Richard, it is not yet clear that Chinese-virus infections will be reduced by warmer weather, and there have been some reported indications that warmer weather makes little difference.
clasping at straws now?
Warmer clearly has made a huge difference in Chile. Three people have (allegedly) died from COVID-19 in the five northern, desert regions. In the five cool southern regions, 38. In the populous center, 85.
The death rates per million population are 1.36 in the north and 15.57 in the south. In the six central regions, 5.86, but only 2.22 in my Valparaiso Region, adjacent to the north.
Other factors besides climate of course might well be in play.
Lockdown was to protect the healthcare system from collapse which would lead to excess deaths over what naturally would have happened. (That was not true, but assuming it was, ok, short 2 week shut down.) 80% or more show no symptoms, fewer hospital visits, most of the rest have mild symptoms, even fewer hospital visits, fewer require medical care, less time in the hospital, fewer require ecu units, less stress on the system, and ventilators are more often harmful than helpful, so no lack of equipment. Mission accomplished. No further reason to remain locked down.
(Oh wait, we have to move the goalpost to keep the world locked down.) Now we have to delay deaths out to september (pretty close to November vote day do you not think? and seems arbitrary to say the least.)
As for the number of cases, I do not know for a fact, but I can certainly proficiently extrapolate out that in the United States of America about 100,000,000 have contracted and recovered or are still infected with the disease. I do this using the several random testing events we have had that indicate about 150 times (there is a range between 50 and 300 times) as many people as have tested positive actually have had and recovered or still have the virus. 715,105 cases times 150 equals 107 million people.
As for deaths, 97.3 of all deaths in New York City were to patients with known chronic diseases which lower life expectancy by about a decade or more each with an average of 2.7 known chronic illnesses per dead person with or without covid-19. I will use the with or without since New York City started assuming anyone that was dead before they were tested were positive and that the cause was covid-19.
The average age of death for a with covid-19 is 4 years less than the average life expectancy, although it is even less than 4 because most victims are male with a 2.5 year lower life expectancy. -2.5 years male times 60% male +2.5 years female times 40% female = -0.5 life expectancy for full group. So, 3.5 years under life expectancy. For a group that as a whole should be about 10 years lower.
Since the chronic diseases shave years off life expectancy, those people were already past the average life expectancy for someone with that condition when they contracted the disease. 78.69-10= 68.69. Apples to apples because we are looking at average whole population birth to death of all causes versus average all covid-19 deaths birth to death.
The government does not split out “died with” covid-19 compared “died due to” Covid-19. So I will do so statistically. 37,899 times 2.7% healthy with no chronic conditions deaths is 1,023 people who have died who were not destined to die regardless (oh yeah, capital letters to emphasize something is somehow delegitimizing of the facts) due to Covid-19 and even that number is possibly exaggerated because if any death with covid-19 is determined to be covid-19 related, then those who are young and healthy who are “covid-19” victims cannot be certain to be due to covid -19.
1,023 divided by 100,000,000 = .001% infection fatality ratio.
You are welcome your eminence the grand super awesome Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.
But keep pushing the idea that we have to expend trillions of future generation’s wealth creation today to “save” lives.
I certainly hope the whole truth comes out and people like you and other pushing to keep the world shut down in China’s favor become pariahs and shunned and shamed until your timely deaths befall you and history remembers you as the tyrant enablers that you are.
yep!-
“UK: London’s temporary Nightingale hospital has remained largely empty, with just 19 patients being treated at the facility over the Easter weekend. London’s established hospitals have doubled their ICU capacity, and are so far coping with surge”
Mind you they are always have to cope with a surge during flu time.