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.
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.