Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Around the world, both state and local governments looked at wildly exaggerated computer model projections of millions of virus deaths, declared a “State Of Emergency”, and foolishly pulled the wheels off of their own economies. This has caused pain, suffering, and loss that far exceeds anything that the virus might do.
The virus hardly affects anyone—it has killed a maximum of 0.1% of the population in the very worst-hit locations. One-tenth of one measly percent.
Ah, I hear you saying, but that’s just deaths. What about hospitalizations? Glad you asked. Hospitalizations in the worst-hit areas have been about three times that, about a third of one percent of the population. Still not even one percent.
But on the other hand, more than thirty million workers in the US are unemployed. That’s about twenty percent of the number of full and part-time employees. And that job loss affects the entire household, not just the workers.
And that doesn’t count the loss of life from increased suicides and from delayed medical diagnosis and procedures. Nor does it count the fact that some 20% of the lost jobs are not expected to return. And we have calls to mental-health hotlines skyrocketing, and domestic violence through the roof. In a most ironic outcome, we have hospitals and doctors going bankrupt, and thousands of nurses being furloughed, because “non-essential” medical procedures are forbidden. Then there are the huge financial losses, both to the economy and to the government.
And in a beautifully circular process, we have trillions and trillions of dollars borrowed by the government to try to offset some of the damages that the government just caused … these lockdowns are far, far more destructive than the virus. The virus damage is short-lived, but we and our children will be paying for decades for our stupidity in killing the economy.
It’s like … it’s like … well, about the only example I can think of which has equivalent idiocy is if a mosquito were to land on your head and you grabbed a sledgehammer to get rid of it …
So the first lesson of the emergency is, don’t kill your economy to try to delay or avoid a few deaths. It is possible to slow the spread of the virus without pulling the wheels off of the economy.
The next lesson of the emergency is, don’t put much trust in computer models.
The next lesson of the emergency is, don’t put doctors in charge of economic decisions. Especially Dr. Fauci. He’s been wrong about most aspects of this whole process. If you want someone to run a hospital, as a general rule you shouldn’t hire a doctor …
The next lesson of the emergency is the extreme importance of the ancient medical maxim of Hippocrates, a maxim that our dear Dr. Fauci apparently never heard of—“Primum non nocere”, which means “First, do no harm”.
The next lesson of the emergency is, quarantine the sick, protect the vulnerable, but do NOT quarantine the healthy. That’s madness.
Let me set aside what we’ve learned to return to the COVID19 emergency. The emergency everyone feared was exemplified by the reality that in some countries, the medical system was overwhelmed by the number of COVID-19 cases. The cause of this was that the cases came on too fast—the peak hospitalizations and deaths were packed into a week or two. Early on in the pandemic, this peak in the load on the medical system in Italy caused parts of the system to collapse under the weight of cases.
To prevent that peak load from crushing the medical system, it was decided in many countries to try to “flatten the curve” by slowing the spread of the virus. Note that the stated intention of flattening the curve was not to stop the virus. The declared goal was to decrease the number of new cases per day, not to decrease the total number of new cases.
Figure 1. The theoretical effect of “flattening the curve”.
In that manner, rather than having a sharp peak in medical need, the curve would be flattened out and hopefully the medical system would not be overwhelmed.
So … did this work? Hard to tell at this point. However, we do have one example of a modern country that did NOT shut down and kill their economy to fight the virus, which is Sweden. How are they doing? Here’s the comparison:
Figure 2. Deaths per ten million over time, for the hardest-hit countries.
As you can see, Sweden is in the middle of the pack—a bit better than the UK and Switzerland, same as the Netherlands and Ireland, and a bit worse than the US and France.
So if the lockdowns and the “shelter-at-home” orders are having an effect, you couldn’t tell it by looking at Sweden.
And to return to the question of lowering the peak and flattening the curve, here are the results from a number of countries. I’ll start with Sweden and the Netherlands, since per Figure 2 they are on the same path. I’m using the Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) method to remove the fluctuations due to incomplete data reporting on the weekends. See here and here for a discussion of the CEEMD method.
Figure 3. Daily deaths. The black/yellow line is the CEEMD “residual”, which is the value of the data with the weekly and other regular fluctuations removed.
Figure 4. Daily deaths. The black/yellow line is the CEEMD “residual”, which is the value of the data with the weekly and other regular fluctuations removed.
Both the Netherlands and Sweden are past the peak load on the medical system. Neither one was overwhelmed by that load. The difference is … Sweden did not pull the wheels off of its economy and drive millions into joblessness and despair. I know which path I prefer …
Here are the daily deaths of a number of other countries. I’ll start with Belgium, which is the hardest-hit country, and roll on down from there.
OK, so much for the countries. All are about a month past their peak. How about the US states? Here you go.
The spike in the New York data is from a single day’s reporting of a bunch of “overlooked” deaths in nursing homes. Bizarrely, Governor Cuomo ordered nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients … so as you might imagine, the totally predictable nursing home deaths were concealed until their hand was forced.
I also note how resistant the CEEMD residual is to that single outlier data point of nursing home deaths. A better-guess solution would be to spread those deaths out over the earlier time, distribute by the number of non-nursing home deaths.
(In passing, let me note that Georgia started loosening the lockdown on April 20th, and there’s no sign of a “second peak” of deaths.)
Those are the hardest-hit states. However, not all of the hardest-hit states are past their peak. Here are the two states of the hardest-hit that are not past their peak.
Finally, to close the circle before discussing all of this, here are two views of the world deaths, one with and one without China. I left out China in one of them to see how much difference it made, because a) China’s numbers are big, and b) I don’t trust them one bit. Here are those two charts. It turns out that leaving out China makes very little difference.
So … given all of that, what can we conclude?
Well, first in importance, if medical care was outpaced by the virus in some location and there was an emergency, the peak of the emergency is over now. Yes, there are some states and countries yet to pass the peak. But by and large, and in particular for the hardest-hit countries as well as for the world as a whole, the peak of the medical load from the pandemic passed about a month ago.
And that means that in those states and countries, whatever chance we had to “flatten the curve” is GONE. The opportunity has passed. For most of the world, curve flattening is history.
And since we were sold this bill of goods on the basis of “flattening the curve”, and since we’re now well past any opportunity to do that, let’s remove the restrictions. Or as I’ve said for weeks, “End The American Lockdown Now”.
Of course, the local petty tyrants who have vastly expanded powers under the “emergency” want to hold on to them. So they’re now saying that we have something new to fear, a “rebound” or a “second peak” … me, I’ve said before that I think we will see very little in the way of any second peak, for a simple reason:
As Sweden has shown, the virus laughs at our pathetic western-style “shelter in place” regulations.
Too many people in “essential” jobs, too many deliveries, too many people coming and going from the households. Combine that with a very infectious virus, and the shelter in place will have little effect … and since it has had little effect when it was there, I say it will have little effect when it is removed.
Now, here’s my argument. The various local instant totalitarian rulers derive their power from the State of Emergency. But the emergency is past, we can’t flatten the curve now. We’re past that, which means there is no further emergency. So them holding onto that power now that the emergency is ended is illegitimate and illegal. It’s also in some cases unconstitutional.
Here’s what I’d do …
• In those countries and states that are past the peak, declare the emergency is over and open everything back up. Acknowledge that the chance to flatten the curve is gone, and revoke each and every emergency order. They are only valid for the duration of the emergency.
• Maintain some approximation of social distancing, on a voluntary basis.
• There are flareups in certain locations now, even with all of the regulationss. There will be flareups after the regs are removed. Get used to it. A flareup is not a second peak.
• Maintain personal sanitation on a voluntary basis. Wear a mask, wear gloves, wash hands, and for goodness sake, if you’re ordering bat soup, tell them to hold the bats …
• Once the majority of the pandemic deaths are over, establish a testing and contact tracing process to keep track of the virus.
• Test people entering the country. As far as I know, I get tested more going in to get my blood drawn than do people entering the US.
• Keep a close watch on the numbers to see if there is some kind of “second peak” developing. If and where that might happen, then in those areas that had trouble with the first peak, push policies that don’t kill the economy, and for heaven’s sake, quarantine the sick rather than the healthy.
• Encourage the vulnerable population (elderly with co-morbidities, immunocompromised, etc.) to self-isolate to some comfortable extent, to be extra vigilant in avoiding crowds, and to maintain a high level of personal sanitation.
Folks, the ugly reality is that every day we keep the now-useless lockdowns in place is another day of misery for a large chunk of the population. COVID-19 is now a part of the virus landscape. Let’s reclaim the power from the Federal, state, county, and city megalomaniacs who are issuing diktats and expecting everyone to obey.
END THE AMERICAN LOCKDOWN NOW!
Here, the unusual late rains have returned. We didn’t get one drop in February, which is usually wet, so these late rains are most wonderful.
Best to all, stay well,
w.
AFTERWORD: I note today that Matt Briggs, Statistician To The Stars, has a new post up entitled “There Is No Evidence Lockdowns Saved Lives. It Is Indisputable They Caused Great Harm“. His posts are always worth reading, and he actually is a statistician to the stars.
PS—When you comment, please quote the exact words you’re referring to. This prevents much misunderstanding and useless argumentation.
In New York City this epidemic that you consider so trivial has killed 25,000 people –one in 300. What magic will prevent the virus from doing the same in the rest of the world? That’s 20 million dead–trivial, right? The virus will not tucker out as you so fondly dream. It is growing exponentially in Russia, India, Brazil , Peru and will certainly grow in the US, where a very partial lockdown has only caused the cases to plateau, not decline. Only spending the money to have universal testing, contact tracking and government-financed and supported isolation can suppress the infection, as S. Korea and Taiwan have shown. The solution to people running out of money for food is for the government to pay them the money they need, not shovel trillions into bailouts of billionaires, as they are now doing.
The US Government is Bankrupt. The economy was already sick and was just waiting for the pin to prick the bubble.
What killed the economy is the us socialist federal reserve system. You can not print yourself into prosperity. A socialist federal reserve system is corrupt from day 1 and will only get worse until like all cancers will kill the body it feast on.
To have a free economy you first need freedom. There can be no freedom and a direct tax (like income tax) system in the same place.
Shouln’t the US Congress enact a law making immortality a right?
Well, if nothing else, Eric Lerner explains AOC’s following. There are a lot of brain-dead morons out there, and a lot of them vote.
Robertvd very much agree.
New car sales down for pretty much the whole of last year. Repo market started tanking last Sept. Somebody said about the balloon economy; there are so many pricks out there, trying to pick the one is useless.
We are where we are due to what we did so the best thing is to figure a sane way out of this. The infections and deaths were going exponential for a while anyway. I think the real problem was people not understanding and acting as the pandemic was or could run up the slope (linear thinking). There were more options available on the long flat left side of the curve where maybe we could have stepped actions more sanely.
There were 2 triggers for me in Feb. The (at the time) rumor of asymptomatic spread and the huge lock down in China. The Chinese lock down was an indication this was a big issue. I don’t think we’re getting our moneys worth from our intelligence community. There’s no sense in spending huge amounts of money when the agencies (pretty consistently) don’t produce timely, accurate or actionable data that actually would help the citizens.
re: “New car sales down for pretty much the whole of last year.”
In the US – or your country? Quick eye-balling says it doesn’t look down to me …
Click on the 10 yr button in this chart:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/total-vehicle-sales
Nice charts, looking at the 5Y mean, trend has been downward since 2016
“What magic will prevent the virus from doing the same in the rest of the world?”
1.MOST of the rest of the world does not pack people like sardines in transit.
2. MOST of the rest of the world does not pack people into high density living quarters.
3. MOST of the rest of the world does not force contiguous people into nursing homes.
4. Sadly, too many socialist health care systems save money by operating too close to capacity, leaving little room for surges.
4. Sadly, too many socialist health care systems save money by operating too close to capacity, leaving little room for surges.
Nothing to do with “socialism”. It’s cost cutting. All businesses do that. Private clinics do not have a responsibility to deal with surge in cases during a pandemic. Large public hospitals do.
The UK is in a mess not because it’s got a “socialist” health system but because since the time of Blair, they have been cost cutting , replacing doctors with administrators and doing privatisation by stealth.
I fear that my good friend Willis Eschenbach may not be looking at the numbers with sufficient dispassion (a quality that is admittedly difficult in these strange times).
In the United Kingdom, even with a quite severe lockdown that is only now being relaxed so that it now approximates to the semi-lockdown in Sweden (where it is not correct to say there has been no lockdown at all), there have been some 67,000 deaths of or in consequence of the Chinese virus, of which about half appear in the official Government totals. The rest have been deduced by the Financial Times based on excess-mortality statistics.
It is not, therefore, appropriate to say that “the virus hardly affects anyone”, particularly since the distribution of daily deaths with a highly infectious pathogen such as this tends to be fat-tailed, which means we can expect perhaps as many deaths again before this pandemic is over. Killing 0.2% of the population.
Suppose that “only” 0.1% of the global population were to die of or in consequence of the Chinese virus. That would be close to 8 million deaths. So the models predicting millions of deaths are not yet demonstrated to have been incorrect. At 0.2%, make that 15.5 million deaths.
The Imperial College model predicting 40 million deaths by year end in the absence of control measures and in the absence of any efficacious prophylactic or therapeutic may not, therefore, have been entirely off-beam. Already, one in eight of the 500,000 UK deaths by year-end that that model predicted a couple of months back have occurred, and that’s even after a lockdown.
In my respectful submission, arguing that lockdowns were never necessary is unlikely to persuade governments. Once governments had failed to adopt the efficient Taiwanese or South Korean approach, those governments – particularly where there were centers of high urban population density – were bound to introduce lockdowns. It would have been grossly irresponsible to do otherwise.
Instead, it would be more successful to draw attention to the most important fact we know about this virus to date: namely, that the risk of death to those under 60 is vanishingly small.
The sensible approach, therefore, is to allow the under-60s to straight back to work, provided that they wear face-coverings indoors and keep their distance. That, in effect, is what HM Government – persuaded by me among others – is rather clunkily beginning to do. As for us wrinklies, the best thing is for us to take more elaborate precautions not to expose ourselves to the infection. No need to tell us what to do.
In conclusion, it is the models that predicted very few deaths that have already been proven to have been comprehensively and grievously wrong. One thinks, for instance, of the IHME model, which undershot very badly at the outset.
Where I expect Willis and I agree is that modeling was not the best way forward, any more than it has proven to be in climate change. When looking at a pandemic of this kind, in the very early stages the best guide to what will happen is the observed exponential growth-rate in cases. It was very high, which is how one could tell quite early on that this was going to be – as it has already proven to be – considerably worse than the flu.
There are very serious questions that should be answered which proponents of Lockdown simply ignore:
1. Severely ill patients have had their treatments suspended while on Lockdown. These will have serious outcomes. Why not include the delaying chemo/radiation/etc. for cancer patients and their outcomes both in terms of overwhelming, suffering and death?
2. Homicides. My local has seen a four fold increase in the rate of homicides since Lockdown. Why not include these?
3. Domestic violence. My locale has seen a 7 fold increase in domestic violence reports (911 calls) with many of them ignored by the police due to Lockdown. Why not include these – both the ones responded and those not responded.
4. The suicide rates are trending upward. Why not include these due to Lockdown?
5. Depression is leading to dramatically increased stress. Stress, alone, degrades health and leads to early death. Why not include these as part of Lockdown?
Just to name a few. And the sum of the few will far exceed the count of CV-19. They are “overwhelming” any positives of Lockdown and producing “excess deaths” beyond those even imagined by Fearful Fauci.
It is clear that some prefer to examine one’s naval with a microscope but fail to see the vastness of the other parts of their body. What’s the use of having a pristine naval yet kill the body?
In the United Kingdom, even with a quite severe lockdown . . .
The lockdown has been severe in terms of liberty and wealth destruction but apparently ineffective on the impact of COVID-19. The rate of infections has been falling at a similar pace since before the severe lockdown began; there is no indication in the data at all showing its start. All graphs, including Monckton of Brenchley’s own, show the same.
. . . there have been some 67,000 deaths of or in consequence of the Chinese virus, of which about half appear in the official Government totals. The rest have been deduced by the Financial Times based on excess-mortality statistics.
It’s fair to a degree to say that the deaths are a consequence of the Chicom disease but it is more accurate to say that a great many, perhaps most, are due to the government response (from medical institutions upwards). Emptying the hospitals of old people (to make way for predicted vast numbers of COVID victims that didn’t materialise) resulted in tens of thousands of COVID-19 infections and deaths in care homes. Maybe as many as twice that number of elderly died of other causes as a direct result of being removed from or denied access to regular care.
British Medical Journal:
“Staggering number” of extra deaths in community is not explained by covid-19
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
“Only a third of the excess deaths seen in the community in England and Wales can be explained by covid-19, new data have shown.”
Suppose only 0.1% of the world’s population die from the kungflu? I suspect you mean that those deaths would be spread over the entire course of many years because right now the kungflu is on pace to cause as many deaths this year as a normal flu season at most ~500-600K. It will take 16 years at this pace to reach that 0.1% mark.
Yeah, I’m quite certain that the models that predicted 40 million deaths by the end of the year without protective measures is pure fiction that only someone desperately wanting The Brave New World would push.
I think that “excess mortality” can all be laid at the feet of the virus (do virus have feet?) Some are under-counted deaths of people infected with the virus. Another group (larger than the first? Who knows?) can be attributed to the impact of the lockdown. As cedarhill points out, deaths due to delayed medical treatments, procedures, examinations, suicide, murder, etc. contribute to the excess mortality, but are only an affect of the lockdown, not a direct infection with the virus through the shutdowns. The direct deaths are largely people in poor health who have lived a long life and in the main don’t want to be destroying their children’s lives. The other cohort will likely be on average younger and generally healthier or afflicted with treatable illnesses than the ones taken directly by the virus.
As someone with children and grandchildren, I’m happy to take my chances.
Great points!!! And a major issue is that one cannot simply sit on your hands an observe during the earliest stages of a pandemic as the U.S. has done. That is when decisive, concentrated effort needs to be focused on containment and testing, and we failed badly.
Lord Monckton of Brenchley
You are too invested in your meme to face facts.
Sweden is not locked down. They have almost exclusively voluntary social distancing. The only thing locked down is their Universities. Other than that, there are very little mandates. 6 foot between tables and bar stools…
England’s lock down failed to accomplish anything meaningful. As evidenced by its complete lack of containing the virus.
You continue to allow the lie that dying with SARS-COV-2 is the same as being killed by Covid-19.
You are losing massive amounts of credibility with your incredibly poor judgement on this lock down versus virus debate.
Instead of 0.1% or 0.2% the reality is closer to 0.025%.
Excess deaths can be attributed to the lack of healthcare provided to anyone that is not deemed a covid-19 patient.
Emergency rooms say they are seeing a 70% reduction in Heart Attack and Stroke admissions. Since the United States averages 805,000 Heart Attacks and 795,000 Strokes per year. That is over 3,000 people per day that should be going to the hospital for extremely deadly causes who are not going. Are they the bulk of the excess deaths you are claiming are Covid-19 deaths? If you were really serious, these are things you would look at.
Instead, contrary to your skeptical position on global warming, you are a completely beguiled by the “experts”, models, “Scientists” and so forth who have yet to get a single tiny bit of this disease correct to date.
For once I agree with CofB, including his admitted difficulty to be objective. Sadly, Willis has adopted an equally prejudiced view as CofB, albeit a diametrically opposed one.
They should never have been quarantined in the first place, which is why I opposed CofB’s initial authoritarian attitude. This age factor was known even before the epidemics spread to Europe. Sadly CofB has been rather slow to catch on to the fact. At least we are on the same page now.
As always, the problem is *unwarranted* extrapolation. You can not calibrate a model with a growing exponential which morphs into a decaying exponential before you get well past peak infections, even if the model is an accurate representation ( which subsequent data shows to be not the case ).
What is becoming evident is that the simplistic models do NOT adequately describe what is happening, otherwise we would be seeing strong resurgence of the suppressed spread of infection in countries like Italy and Spain which have made massive changes to confinement rules. In the case of Spain since 14th April.
This tells us that simple “flattening the curve” does NOT describe what confinement did.
Apart from a two, one day glitches ( one +ve, one -ve, which presumably are some kind of “data correction” ) Spain has continued to see a steady decline in new cases despite 4 weeks of return to work in manufacturing and construction.
Similarly my analysis of Italian new cases shows a very mild and statistically non significant rise towards constant new cases. The weekly trend remaining infallibly below zero, even after the broader return to work. Where is the predicted “second wave” ?!
There are some factors, possibly either immunity from other corona viruses we have already encountered or wider non symptomatic infection, which have confounded the naive expectations of our “world class academic experts”.
Once again, for reasons which remain opaque, the alarmist OPINIONS of a narrow field of “expertise” have been allowed to dictate wider policy, as if only their narrow frame of reference was relative as to how run a country’s economy.
“Saving lives” does not just mean today at A&E, it means do we even have the wealth to HAVE an A&E service in 12months. Saving the environment means being wealthy enough to have the luxury to even worry about it in 2030 or 2050.
So far we are on a trajectory where we fail on both counts.
Greg Goodman May 14, 2020 at 10:43 am
QUOTE MY WORDS! I put that at the end of the post because I knew that otherwise charming folks like you would twist my words to fit their worldview, and then write reams of rubbish about their fantasies of what I said.
And even when I make that simple request, over and over, there are always gonifs like you who think they are far above such plebian things …
w.
Moncton,
Isolation is destroying our economy… you completely ignore the reality of the consequences of isolation.
We can reduce the covid death rate by more than a factor to ten. I would bet my life, my soul on that statement.
Facts are facts. We have turned off our minds.
Why are black people in the UK twice a likely to die from covid than white people? Same finding in the US.
Hint it is the fact that 82% of the US black population is deficient in Vitamin D, as compared to only 42% of the general population.
Our bodies are missing three key materials required for them to function, biologically optimum.
Because we only change one variable at time and there are three deficiencies to correct…
…. and some of our body’s systems require all three deficiencies to be corrected to enable that system to function…….
…we would never have found body optimum except for a serendipitous discovery that all of the meat eaters in the high ‘Vitamin’ D tests were severely deficient in magnesium.
The vegetarians were less magnesium deficient and their bodies modulated calcium to optimize microbiological operation.
So, the high ‘Vitamin’ D tests were all modified to include magnesium supplements.
‘Vitamin’ D is a protohormone that turns on and off genes to enable 200 microbiological systems to occur in our body.
With the addition of magnesium citrate supplements, the benefits of raising ‘Vitamin’ D levels in the body became apparent. There was a 50% reduction in type 2 diabetes, a 70% reduction in cancer, a 60% reduction in muscular sclerosis, and so on.
Our Bodies are super capable of fighting cancer and viruses if our microbiological levels of ‘Vitamin’ D, magnesium, and zinc are optimum.
Magnesium in our foods has declined by more than 50% because of modern farming techniques.
It is suggested that the dietary intakes of magnesium in the United States Nutrients 2015, 7 have been declining over the last 100 years from about 500 mg/day to 175–225 mg/day. This is likely a result of the increasing use of fertilizers and processed foods [5,9,22–24].
Protohormone ‘Vitamin’ D deficiency. Caused by living at high latitudes, wearing clothes, having dark skin, not taking daily supplements and so on.
Our population Vitamin D recommendations ignore skin color problems and do not reference the fact that we are also deficient in magnesium and that Vitamin D supplements should be taken with magnesium supplements.
Our “Vitamin’ D recommendations do note that the entire population that cannot travel to a low latitude region for fun and sun, every long dark winter, is severely Vitamin D deficient in the winter.
It is a fact that our population is deficient in a proteohormone and two ‘minerals’…
… it this deficiency which is the reason why are population cannot defeat the covid and all other viruses and most other diseases.
We are fighting a war against covid and the entire population is deficient in ‘Vitamin’ D, Magnesium, and Zinc.
Download PDF – MDPI
http://www.mdpi.com › pdf
Nutrients 2015, 7, 8199-8226; doi:10.3390/nu7095388
Magnesium in Prevention and Therapy
Epidemiological studies in Europe and North America have shown that people consuming Western-type diets are low in magnesium content, i.e. 30 ng/ml,
(2) insufficient – serum 25(OH)D of 21-29 ng/ml, and
(3) deficient – serum 25(OH)D of < 20 ng/ml.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52492662
Black men and women are nearly twice as likely to die with coronavirus as white people in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The analysis shows the inequality persists after taking into account age, where people live and some measures of deprivation and prior health.
People from Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities also had a significantly higher risk of dying. Men and women from Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities had an increased risk of between 30% and 80%, the analysis found.
DR Healy
You said, “… we failed badly.” As did most countries, mostly because of the collusion of WHO with the Chinese, who were not forthcoming in the danger of the disease. The few places, such as Korea, which had quick initial success, implemented procedures that were not practical for most other countries. I don’t even own a smart phone, so I wouldn’t have been able to even grocery shop. I suspect that a lot of the people in Lombardy would similarly not have been able to take advantage of the smart phone-enabled tracking that Korea and China employed.
“67,000 deaths” or 0.098% of the population, whereas 0.941% of the population would have been expected to die ‘normally’ this year.
It is not a case of being dispassionate but getting some perspective – that is a tiny number, a tiny risk. So small that the consequences of the lockdown policy will easily do worse.
We did not have a lockdown in 1950/51 or any other corona virus epidemic and it quickly went away. We are protracting CV19 – it won’t save lives overall from the virus, the lockdown will cost additional lives.
I assume your “67,000” is for UK, well I did a comparison for England and Wales – I hope it will give you some perspective.
First 6 weeks of CV19 = 46,494 so 92,988 for 3 month comparison (unlikely to be that high).
Winter 3 month (flu etc.) excess deaths – worst was 1950/51 106,400, and interestingly hit UK/Canada/New England much harder than the rest of the USA.
The extraordinarily rapid death rate abated on its own without a lockdown, some very minor measures.
https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2018/01/remembering-1951-year-seasonal-flu-went.html
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/jan/06/flu-epidemic-hits-south-lancashire-1951
https://cf.datawrapper.de/UQrZU/1/
More recent years.
2013/14 17,280
2014/15 43,720
2015/16 24,500
2016/17 34,410
2017/18 49,410
2018/19 23,200
So far however many direct CV19 deaths are hiding in the excess, it isn’t unprecedented.
It isn’t good, but the measures adopted are insanely disproportionate.
Monckton of Brenchley
May 14, 2020 at 3:45 am
——
Lord M, you know… or you must know;
That, Dr. Fauci does not believe in what he says.
Doncha know this much, or this little, by now, dear Lord M!
cheers
I am concerned about the possible basic mistake of trying to compare one country to another country, as if we are talking about the same phenomenon in each case.
What assurances are there that testing in all countries is being done at the same standard of excellence? What assurances are there that the definition of a “case” is consistently the same from country to country? What assurances are there that countries are equally honest in how they report statistics? — is China the only country whose honesty we question? What assurances are there that consistency exists in the determination of death FROM the virus?
I fail to see how we can trust the data in such a naive fashion, as we seem to be doing.
There could be even deeper questions about the mechanics of how the virus spreads that have not come to light yet. Is contact from person to person really the only vector?
”there have been some 67,000 deaths of or in consequence of the Chinese virus, of which about half appear in the official Government totals”
That is just a bare faced lie!
Please look at the link from PJF. I can speak from personal experience that some nursing home deaths were caused by the lockdown.
I think you may change your view on Covid-19, lockdown, etc., if you watch this entire video by Prof. Dolores Cahill who has degree in molecular genetics and a PhD in Immunology and has worked in this field for years.
If not, I’d be interested in what you believe she got wrong.
Mr Monckton sir, could you do up the “excess deaths” stat for the UK? I’ve done it for the state of New York and Georgia and if you read my post in this thread you will see the links to the CDC data I used.
I used 2014-17 to get an average baseline as it was the data the CDC had available (2018-19 is not posted). I picked New York state as it was supposedly the hardest hit and was shocked by the result. A few days later the debate flared up for Georgia as they ended lockdown so I did up that state.
Neither result was what I was expecting.
I can tell you what they’re saying now if it helps.
C19 has caused over 50,000 excess deaths so far
The number of actual C19 deaths is below 35,000 (the same people gave these numbers out)
They obviously must think we’re all as stupid as they are
Sorry, wrong video got posted:
This is the video of Prof. Dolores Cahill on Covid-19 and lockdowns.
Let’s find common ground & progress from there. AGREED, those 60 & younger–lacking KNOWN comorbidities–should be allowed, even encouraged, to resume their daily routines.
Let me add: Government should have initially and should continue to
(1) Offer paid leave for a reasonable time span to those 60 & younger with KNOWN comorbidities lacking the opportunity to work from home.
(2) Protect DIRECTLY those 60+ yrs old with KNOWN comorbidities.
MoB. Link please for the Financial Times deduction.
Sadly Lord Monckton has joined the massed ranks of hysterical panicmongers it would appear. Figures released today by the ONS & NHS do show that more than 60% of deaths in the past month, had co-morbidity with other life threatening conditions. Again the rates of infection do not show any affinity for particular age groups either. What’s more Dr. Whitty himself stated recently live on TV, that just because deaths were recorded as “having died after testing positive for Coronavirus, didn’t mean they died from CoViD-19 …. in most cases no post mortems were conducted”.
The ONS said it found “no evidence” to suggest age has an impact on the likelihood of an individual having Covid-19.
The estimated percentages of the sample who tested positive for Covid-19, broken down by age, were: 2-19 years old: 0.32%; 20-40 years old: 0.26%; 50 to 69 years old: 0.32%; 70 years and over: 0.23%.
For the first time, NHS England has published a breakdown of deaths by pre-existing conditions.
Of the 22,332 patients who died since March 31, when pre-existing conditions began to be reported, some 5,873 (26%) of patients had diabetes, while 4,048 (18%) had dementia.
Some 3,254 (15%) were reported to have chronic pulmonary disease, while 1,549 patients had asthma.
NHS England said the accuracy of the data is reliant on the availability and transfer of information by healthcare providers, and patients may have had more than one pre-existing condition.
Please DO pay attention people to the actual facts, and not succumb to newspaper fear mongering from the “fake news”…. wake up !
“It is not, therefore, appropriate to say that “the virus hardly affects anyone”, particularly since the distribution of daily deaths with a highly infectious pathogen such as this tends to be fat-tailed, which means we can expect perhaps as many deaths again before this pandemic is over. Killing 0.2% of the population.”
Well who can say when it will be over.
Can anyone say it will be over within 2 years from when it started, or it ends Dec 2021 or without any doubt by June 2022.
I think by June 2022 it’s had 15 million deaths globally and virus hasn’t mutated into variant, that would be low death from SARS-CoV-2- assuming it’s correctly counted, globally. But is the US or Europe going to be counting it by Jan 2021?
And globally we can’t say it’s been correctly counted at the present.
Brazil total right now is, 13,999 total deaths with total pop of 209 million or 66 deaths per million or .0066 percent.
And Venezuela has 10 total deaths with total pop of about 28 million. Is the magical cure not having hospitals with running water or electrical power?
It been reported that Venezuelan elites are getting sick with the virus at drunken parties in various tropical resorts- maybe just the rich get it.
India: 2,649 total deaths or 2 deaths per million
It looks to me like India is near flattening their curve and guess they will be out of all lockdown type stuff before the end of summer, and have stop counting it before Christmas.
But could have say 20,000 death by the end of summer. Lets say averages 100 per day for 120 days: 12,000. Totals about 15,000 and about 15 death per million before October 2020 but by Christmas is lower the 40 deaths per day. That would definitely be a flatten curve. Why test for it, after that?
And you could test for it, but are going to continue to count it. If later climbs to 100 death per day, then you could count it, to track it, as might get even worse.
“The 1968 pandemic was caused by an influenza A (H3N2) virus comprised of two genes from an avian influenza A virus, including a new H3 hemagglutinin, but also contained the N2 neuraminidase from the 1957 H2N2 virus. It was first noted in the United States in September 1968. The estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States. Most excess deaths were in people 65 years and older. The H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus.”
Not counted, and not continuously totaled.
Hong Flu was remembered as killing 100,000 deaths in US and tracked for two seasons which total of two season is the 100,000 number, less in first year, more in second year, and then “ended” but it didn’t actually end, it just become part of seasonal flu. Which far as I can tell is guess estimated every year- certainly not cumulatively counted.
So I think you have to pick a date, and going to have to be somewhat certain it will counted up to that chosen date.
So, could pick July 15 2020. It seems quite certain be counting it by that date. Plus by then, we probably get accurate guess-estimate for Venezuela and China. Also have better clue about 1.3 billion people in Africa by then.
And might as much as 1 billion tests done by then.
And could more counted deaths, because we got more tests. And might count it longer time period because got an excessive amount of easily available tests.
I quoted the person I was replying to, saying I agreed.
If you are not happy with what CofB said , why do you not start ripping him with your childish insults instead of attacking me?
I’ll tell you why , because you are a hypocrite.
Whenever I do reply directly to you , quoting your words, you almost infallibly chose not to reply. Stop whining.
To add some levity, my friend growing up use to call me a mamzer gonif… bastard thief was how I understood the combination in Yiddish. PS, I am not directing mamzer gonif to anyone here… Just brought fond back memories.
cedarhill:
Just to name a few. And the sum of the few will far exceed the count of CV-19. They are “overwhelming” any positives of Lockdown and producing “excess deaths” beyond those even imagined by Fearful Fauci.
That’s an assertion, and unquantified; show your data.
” It’s cost cutting. All businesses do that.”
It’s not just cost cutting by health businesses in the USA. In many states, before a health provider can expand bed capacity, purchase equipment, or add to facilities there is a process called “certificate of need”. If the provider can’t convince the gov’t health dept., then no expansion is permitted. This is to control costs as the gov’t, through gov’t health services and regulations on insurance companies, has a vested interest in cost containment. The unintended consequence is a lack of capacity for any form of surge demand due to something like pandemics unless the hospital can makes it’s case to expand beyond immediate need.
George
On the other hand, an emergency tent hospital was built quickly in Seattle, and was never used. The Navy supplied a hospital ship to NYC, and it was not utilized efficiently.
The key difference is that in socialist systems, like the NHS of the UK, or Medicare of Australia, patients are pure cost. They don’t pay anything, which means that the system has to work by preventing patients from coming. In Australia, we have gigantic queues for essential medical services.
Contrast this with normal systems, where more patients mean more profit – there, if there are more patients, the operators will build more capacity.
That’s what socialized medicine does. You described the axiom that defines socialism – a growing bureaucracy and declining competence and productivity.
But, never mind all of that. The US is a fully socialist State already. Most industries are now at least partially nationalized, the US taxpayer is on the hook for all losses public and private while not participating in the gains. A small number of powerful actors have and continue to seize control of the vast majority of the real wealth in the country, and our bastardized corpo – fascist model of socialized healthcare is beginning to falter.
Don’t like how things are going in the US? Well, the answer isn’t to do even more of the same thing we’ve been doing.
I think this needs to be studied and displayed more before the cost saving and socialized medicine formula spreads without fully documenting the multiple, unintended consequences. The U.S. pays much more for health care, but when politicians do comparisons with Canada and Europe they rarely get beyond superficial measures. Drug costs and the professional boycott of supplements is the major failing in the U.S. system. The U.S. also pays more for defense with many free riders on board while the aggressors oligarch nations growth in power and reach.
5. MOST mayors did not tell their people to stick a thumb in Trump’s face by going to China Town and joining the celebrations.
6. MOST governors did not keep PPE in warehouses until late in the game for a “real” emergency.
Eric, exponential growth means that the amount of new cases doubles from one day to the other. In Brazil that was not, and will never be the case. Two cities show complicated numbers. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and believe it or not, the whole MSM is rooting for the ChineseVirus here, so that it can destabilize Bolsonaro’s term and try to put the Left back, so that MSM can have its absurd contracts back! I’m living in Italy now, not in the eye of the hurricane though, Italy is the prof against the lockdown! Agree the disease is a killer, so is all that comes along with the lockdown. Want to know more about the details in brasil, regarding COVID numbers, check here https://transparencia.registrocivil.org.br/registral-covid
This is official data, when one die in Brasil, family needs to go through “Cartorios” so that it can proceed with papers for pensions and so forth. Have a look, have a good day. Best and stay safe.
As a fellow Brazilian I must second your comments, Gustavo; they are absolutely spot on and reflect what I have been saying for months now.
Viva Bolsonaro from Paraguay!!
Gustavo, I made the same mistake as you about “exponential growth.”
In fact, the rate of growth does not have to be a “daily double.” It could be, for example, 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 etc., or 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 etc.
@ Gustavo Longhin:
Quote: “exponential growth means that the amount of new cases doubles from one day to the other. ”
Ma adviye: go back to calculus 101 and learn what exponential growth is about.
This might help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
MFKBoulder: “Ma adviye: go back to calculus 101 and learn what exponential growth is about.”
If something indeed doubles every day, then that is defined as exponential. Right from the link you posted. Please reference your link and learn from it.
And if someone spells wrong, that is probably called a type… I assume you my “My advice:…”
Put that in context of the normal annual death rate and suddenly it isn’t so bad. Also there is ample evidence that epidemics do not behave the same in all locations.
This paper concludes that at best lockdowns in Western EU countries were ineffective and were possibly harmful.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1
Exactly. I’ve been saying for at least a month now that the lockdowns are literally making C-19 worse, especially in places like NYC and London. At about the time we started realizing that C-19 included unusual and deadly symptoms like a-fib, that was a big red flag.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04363840
Thus far in total, C-19 has taken the same number of people that tuberculosis takes on average every 63 days.
Robert
According to the CDC, while there are an estimated 13 million cases of latent TB; the reported active cases for 2019 was only 8,920 cases — a little more than 10% of the total COVID-19 deaths. My sense is, that TB deaths are fairly rare these days, with just some people having antibiotic-resistant strains, for which there are alternative treatments. Your claim that TB takes as many people every two months as have died from COVID-19 seems wildly and irresponsibly inflated. Can you provide any citation to back up your claim?
Inaccurate reporting causes prolongation of the Panic-demic !
It’s this use of “loose terms”, such as Coronavirus, Corona, Covid19, Cov19, C19 …
Died of, Died from, Died after testing positive with, and With Covid on Death certificate…
Tested as having, had, having had, with, ” coronavirus” (which one of the 4000+ species and hybrids, and which test and did is discriminate sufficiently to isolate the Novel SARS-2 Family, and if so which of the six to ten known hybrids of that family? You see even doctors aren’t sure what they are supposed to be treating for when patients arrive at hospitals, and many are Zinc or Vitamin deficient, and have compromised immune systems.
The trouble is that use of NONE of the above loose terms does actually mean that the Novel SARS-2 Coronavirus was actually responsible for those deaths. (compromised immunity due to chemical deficiency is rarely, if ever, mentioned or even tested for). To the Public and News Editors, and Politicians & Pundits however they are all conflated into one giant confusion and indeed obfuscation. Added to that is the undoubted chicanery and vested financial interest in making every hospital admission ” Corona-ed”. This results in the entire literate World, arguing endlessly about who is right and who is wrong, whilst cash making creeps relish in the pedantry all the way to the Bank. Some would argue that the CDC is as much a Government agency as the Federal Reserve bank is; really they are both privately funded QANGOS even though they both do benefit in a large way from Taxpayers Funds. Bah, there’s an eye watering rotten smell about how this narrative is being reported.
Not all Medical Professionals however, agree with the coterie of Administrative classes at the aforementioned Agencies, and Organisations, and its worth seeing this report at least…..
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/doctors-and-clinical-researchers-challenge-uns-who-cdc-and-dr-faucis
This all rather reeks of FRAUD and the Culprits should be jailed. This is a bigger scam than that perpetrated by Bernie Madoff, or indeed Ponzi himself (by several orders of magnitude).
It’s obvious that New York City is an outlier, one reason probably that it has a very high population density.
To extrapolate this to the world as a whole is uitterly ridiculous.
If you want to know what’s happening in the world, look at the data for the world.
Data from the WHO:
https://covid19.who.int/
Currently the number of deaths globally is 290,242. Your figure of 20 million dead is also ridiculous. You’re seriously saying that the total could eventually be nearly a hundred times higher than the current? And basing that simply on an extreme outlier?
“It is growing exponentially in Russia…”
No it isn’t. Look at the Highest Cases graph for the Russian Federation.
It has been flat since the end of March. Both India and Brazil have been flat for several weeks (Peru does not appear in these graphs).
Your post is pure alarmism. Willis is right and you are wrong.
Please leave unfounded alarmism to climate “science”.
Chris
If you go to the flu section of the WHO website, they closely monitor global flu trends, and state that every year 290,000 – 650,000 deaths from influenza.
SARS-CoV-2 has only just become as deadly as flu, and has to kill more than double the number it already has to beat flu.
Incidentally this years flu season ended, very suspiciously, at least 4 weeks than it has ever ended before, leading me to believe that many flu cases are being written up as covid cases (Used WHO ‘Flu-Net’ monitoring system for data)
Meh just use their lying with statistics against them.
Good news everyone! There is evidence that Covid-19 greatly reduces the number of people that contract serious influenza and cuts the number of people that die from it in half!
It’s a very easy sell to be honest !
John Cullen, Aka JohnEHoover, claims that USA had 144,000 flu deaths 2019-20, and most of those were H1N1. He takes numbers directly from government sources. Why was the government not talking about this, the worst flu epidemic in many years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l77PzfqygVM
If you add flu + coronavirus deaths in US, the numbers are very large.
Also, John Cullen claims that H1N1 is the same as Spanish Flu, and that it was “revived” in US lab in 2005. I cannot verify this claim.
The big problem with New York City is how the Covid-19 virus was mismanaged on several levels! One serious mistake was in sending those elderly people who had contracted the disease back to old-folks homes! Another was lack of proper steps in disinfecting mass transit units, and there are others!
Clearly, Mr. Cuomo should be held responsible and as far as advancing his political career, it would be a horrible mistake to reward him for incompetence!
There is an egregious amount of confirmation bias on display in these discussions.
If everyone wore a mask in public 100% of the time, we’d get the R0 below 1 (see Czech Republic). We have PPE now, and public behavior has changed. In my corner of the world, we went from a small minority of people wearing masks out and about to a very small number of people NOT wearing masks. When we entered this outbreak, there WAS NO PPE. The Chinese had hoarded all of it (known fact, now).
We have no idea what trajectory this would have taken had we continued to cram people into crowded cube farms and “open office space”, crowded bars and restaurants, subways, airplanes, etc.
Moving forward, people will have to wear PPE in public to prevent exponential spread. Hard to drink margaritas and eat Mexican food with a mask on…
If everyone wore an N95 respirator the R0 might get close to 0, but cotton masks with the capability to filter at smallest a 3 micron particle does not fully prevent the spread of a 0.125 micron virus.
Droplets that persist in the air and are inhaled into the lungs past our protective mucuses are of this size. Cotton masks give more of a false sense of security when anyone sneezing or coughing is already taking extra precaution.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK143281/
Face-fit is the problem. While the filter material *may* keep viral particles out, poor face fit lets them in. And surgical masks are pretty useless at preventing inhalation of virus. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5058571/
The explain how Czechia have done so well.
Masks — the marks of pod people with naive expectations.
https://hubpages.com/health/COVID-19-Face-Mask-Protection-What-Leaders-Fail-to-Understand
Lisa is ignorant.
She thinks people in Wigan wore masks before the outbreak. Less than 5 percent of the chinese pop wore masks.
That’s why… they passed a law, and why they have out free ones.
Eric, trying reading the article for comprehension. You may learn something. Also New York is run by
moronsDemocrats. Contrast their high death toll with Florida, which has 2 million more people but isn’t run by idiots. Florida has had only a fraction of the cases and deaths of New York. You get the kind of government you elect and the difference among the states reflects that.S. Korea and Taiwan are small countries with an extraordinarily homogeneous population and culture and they readily accept authoritarian government intervention, unlike most other countries. They began aggressive testing and quarantining of sick people and the healthy people immediately around them right from the start. The U.S. is vastly larger and more culturally diverse and it is much more difficult to do the same thing here; never mind the fact that we are also a republic of 50 states that have all responded differently.
New York is a case study in how to respond badly. They initially belittled Trump and his guidelines, then when the virus spread like crazy, ordered nursing homes to house stable patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 so the most vulnerable were being exposed, and didn’t bother to sanitize their public transportation system until just the last couple weeks. Florida on the other hand took extra precautions to protect nursing homes. The outcomes have been vastly different in those two states.
Willis provided lots of facts and data but it bounced off your head. The data shows that almost everywhere in the U.S. COVID-19 deaths have been declining for about a month. The number of new cases hasn’t gone down as much because…wait for it…testing continues to increase every day. But even with increased testing, new cases are going down almost everywhere.
With the exception of a couple hot spots (NY), the number of deaths was a small fraction—less than 5%—of deaths from all other causes. In fact, in many places the number of deaths was, yes, about the same as a seasonal flu or even less. So we have successfully “flattened the curve”. Cowering in your home for the rest of your life to minimize the risk of getting a virus is not realistic…unless you’re an agoraphobic billionaire.
Try really hard to understand that every contagious virus in history has “tuckered out” at some point. People die or develop immunity. Lots more people have immunity now than have died from the COVID-19. Over 1 million that have been tested have recovered. Many times that number probably were infected and recovered at home without getting tested or never knew they were infected because they had no symptoms or mild symptoms. The virus is running out of new hosts.
It’ can be a horrible disease. I don’t want to catch it. However:
Population of NYC about 8 Million
Covid-19 fatalities for NYC (so far) about 15,000
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
About 1/500 (so far) So about 0.2 % of the population (so far).
However to know how deadly the virus is you really need to know how many fatalities to how many actual infections.
A very recent German study puts the fatality rate at about 0.3 percent.
https://www.uni-bonn.de/news/111-2020
That is only if 100% of people got the virus. It’s not even sure that 20% got it. That would mean 5x 0.2% = 1%.
German sample size is too low. IFR is calculated from 7 – yes, seven – deaths total.
[German sample size is too low. IFR is calculated from 7 – yes, seven – deaths total.]
Are you serious, Ron?
If I test 100 people and there are 7 – yes, seven – deaths then “the sample size is too low.”
If I test 10 000 people and there are 7 – yes, seven – deaths then “the sample size is too low.”
If I test 1 000 000 people and there are 7 – yes, seven – deaths then “the sample size is too low.”
If I test every person in the world and there are 7 – yes, seven – deaths then “the sample size is too low.”
Sorry, but that does not make sense to me.
Just calculate what number of cases you need for an IFR of 0.36% based on 7 deaths. That should give you an idea.
Ron
May 14, 2020 at 9:42 am
Just calculate what number of cases you need for an IFR of 0.36% based on 7 deaths. That should give you an idea.
—————————–
In consideration of what the guy there said, been to conservative and following WHO procedures, yes it could be a case that in reality the real IFR was far far lower… than one produced by this specific study, with the specific numbers and the specific sample.
Kinda of very very unlikely to be higher than that 0.36%.
So you could still do your math safely, especially when the most blind guesses with no real confirmation studies show something like 3 x higher IFR.
(like the Feguson chap)
Wondering why Germany doing far much better than UK in this one!
There you have the answer, 5:5.
But you get to take in account the extra hospitalization severity, due to demographic politics of the different places and different population,
in consideration of health care medical practices too. (the extra moronic cowboy factor)
The history shows clearly that some did get rid of diseases by hunting and burning witches, some utilizing the volcanoes.
And since ancient times some places dealt with crises by literally terminating en masse, new born babies.
So, some times different places and population do pretty strange dumb things,
under the circumstances, by their own volition decisions …
so got to consider that one too.
Ron it was not a random sample study.
A place with a clear signature of strong infection signature, but with little severity and fatality, which can help understand better the demographic variance “pollution”.
The sample in the study maps clearly the place, and the population in consideration…
large enough… in a proper full disease blow in that population.
Where lock downs flattened nothing and stopped or delayed nothing.
It is a study confirming at that point the IFR for that population, in a very conservative way, biased towards the higher figure.
To a degree meaning or indicating that more or less in the consideration
of 20% penetration of infection disease in any kind of population larger than this one, IFR should not be higher,
with the emphasis that at ever increasing rate of that penetration in the population the IFR would only decrease.
cheers
@whiten
Look at the study:
https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf/%24FILE/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf
They had to adjust the initial reported IFR from 0.36% to 0.41% [0.33%; 0.52%] because of one single additional death.
The problem of small numbers: huge variability by chance.
Spain has reported a randomized serological study to estimate the real number of infected people. 90,000 people in 36,000 households. Came back with ~5% of the population infected at some time. 10% in Madrid, 2% in less hit regions.
Taking the reported deaths and the estimated number of 2,300,000 infected would be an IFR of 1.02%.
Ron
May 14, 2020 at 4:34 pm
I simply quoted you.
Now let me simply quote you again:
“They had to adjust the initial reported IFR from 0.36% to 0.41% [0.33%; 0.52%] because of one single additional death.”
You see it is still not 1.2 or even 0.8.
There is no bases for your interpolation, as it is just meaningless.
It is the IFR estimate for that population and place Ron.
Yes true with high biases for a positive error as you have shown.
Meaning that for bigger and multi populations has to be considered as far lower
from the outset Ron… as the error in question does not increase Ron.
As 10% of margin error on real fatality is kinda of criminal in big numbers,
And that is if at 0.8% not even at 1.2%.
1 extra death above 7 in a small population is a random thing, an inherited possible error effect, for estimations.
but a thousand extra deaths for every 8 or 7 thousands in big populations is not a random act effecting the condition as an acceptable error for estimations.
A big population showing above 0.36%, in consideration of this study, definitely doing or done something wrong.
One more thing Ron;
I see you have a very big problem in understanding the difference between the
infected and diseased.
The study in question is also positively biased for higher IFR than the real one as it simply based mainly in the antibody test, a test which by default can not be considered in its own as confirmation of the disease, where the subjects are considered as infected, with no much weighting connection to the disease…
in condition of a full blown disease on the population.
While actually most are diseased by the proposition of accuracy, than to be considered as representing the total number of infected…
meaning that the true number of infected is even higher in that population,
or at least the premise means that for other bigger population the estimate of IFR has to be far lower… in consideration of this study as the factor of the infected versus diseased weights far much more towards a far lower IFR.
Technically meaning that the study consist as one estimating DFR, (disease fatality rate) more than IFR (infection fatality rate), which still biases the IFR very considerably towards artificial positive result,
but with no much error in this case, to contemplate, due to it being a small population estimate.
Ron consider this:
20% of confirmed diseased being asymptomatic, means the number of the diseased testing negative, is at least 20% of the negative viral tested subjects, meaning that the viral test has ~ 50% natural false negative.
Where 50% of the all diseased are asymptomatic, at the very very least.
Can you estimate now, how big the total number of infected is Ron?
Now Ron, you still may have and eat your cake of the 1.2% extrapolation of biggy numbers, but in consideration of DFR not IFR… as that how it may translate in this case for the biggies… if you still like it.
cheers
@whiten
It is a too small sample size cause we know from New York how different the CFRs in different ages are. 30 more old people in the 2000 sample could have pushed the deaths to 1.2% if only half of them died.
IFR = infection fatality rate. I don’t know what you are talking about but the IFR is calculated from the whole of people infected.
The Spanish study gives you an IFR of 1.2% if the reported deaths are in the right ballpark. Given the Spanish testing regime and their excess mortality reports it is probably an underestimation.
But it was to be expected that people who couldn’t follow the self-evident numbers from South Korea that the IFR has to be at least close to 1% or even higher – because if they had a high number of undetected cases their testing and tracking strategy strategy wouldn’t work – would take the first reliable well-sized randomized serological studies into question if the would not fit the narrative of a low IFR.
But there are more studies to come. Netherlands, Germany, France, UK are all doing such studies. No country will have anything near herd immunity and all will have a IFR of at least 0.8%. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be above 1%.
My apologies for being so blunt but you have clearly no idea of what the tests show you and what not. You are making things up in your mind that don’t relate to reality and jump to wild guesses from there.
Asymptomatic people are infected. By definition they have the disease. They just don’t show symptoms.
You can test them positive for the virus. You can test them later positive for antibodies from all we know.
I really don’t know what you are making up in your mind.
Ron
May 15, 2020 at 4:22 am
Sorry for this late reply.
All points in my latest reply to you, were in the line that IFR is a very erroneous in consideration of establishing the severity and fatality of a specific disease.
Quite no big problem in consideration of seasonal flu as it is a condition of many agents, many different infections.
Also no very big deal with small populations in consideration of low fatality diseases.
The German study shows that.
IFR very bad deal in case of HIV. Does not even “work”.
In case of covid-19 is very clear that IFR is misleading, as considered.
IFR 1.2% in Spanish study is wrong, as ~80% of total number of confirmed infected by the antibody test are diseased.
Again, 20% asymptomatics is in consideration of confirmed diseased,
not infected,
meaning that at very least the true number of the diseased is twice of the confirmed by virus testing, aka more than 50% of the “true” diseased are asymptomatic.
Where in consideration of antibody test, like in Spain ~80% of positives are diseased.
In this case the estimation of infected as done, represent more closely the total number of diseased.
Where 1.2% is very close to DFR than IFR.
In seasonal flu if considering IFR versus DFR, DFR is 10 X of IFR.
Trying to see it and estimate it for better accuracy and a realistic representation;
1.2% in Spanish study indicates an ~1.5% DFR with the implication that IFR is mathematically to be estimated at 0.12%, with adjustment for a range of:
0.09-0.18%, according to the data in consideration of the period the data represents, at 5% penetration of the disease in that population.
Meaning a lower closer to the true IFR or DFR in further penetration of the disease in the population.
Ron, I still think you have it difficult to distinguish between infection and disease.
Many can be actually infected and test negative in a antibody test.
Both German and Spanish study indicate this, and all there we have about this disease show that the number of confirmed as diseased is far far lower than the true number of diseased, therefor the number of infected far far higher than the number of infected confirmed by the tests.
Through the erroneous IFR the severity and fatality of COVID-19 is very highly artificially inflated,
by failing to really properly adjust it in consideration of confirmed diseased versus total number of diseased,
where actually as done, the estimation for the total infected represent actually the total diseased.
The paradox Ron,
if total number of diseased to be considered as 70-80% of total number of infected, in consideration of a specific influenza infection, than
almost 80-90% of the population already infected.
Again, IFR is not a standard universal equation for assessment.
For different diseases is a different equation, in consideration of specifics of the disease.
DFR (Disease Fatality Rate) is quite less problematic in considering the severity and fatality of the disease.
IFR simply assessed on top of DFR, or in consideration of and other specifics of a disease in relation to the confirmed diseased versus the fatality,
as an indicator of the infection disease penetration in the herd… for a better picture of the overall infection.
The question here is:
Why fatality rate estimated and utilized backwards, in the case of COVID-19?
Where every one rushing to “meet” IFR without considering the disease fatality
and the related specifics of this particular disease to fatality and severity for the living.
Another+ question:
Why every one there fails to recognize, and keep hand waiving at the fact of 20% of asymptomatic diseased, and hiding the fact that the number of true diseased is far much higher than the estimation?
How can any one consider to estimate correctly the IFR, when the estimation of diseased is sooo sooo wrong, or not even factored in?
Ron, this is a conversation, not a contest.
Only required that we understand each other, irrespective of acceptance.
I am fine with “we agree to disagree”.
thanks 🙂
cheers
Do you seriously believe the 15,000 number?
At least 5,000 of those people were deemed SARS-COV-2 positive without any test at all.
Of the remaining 10,000 or fewer, 80 to 90% of infections of SARS-COV-2 do not cause any symptoms in the infected. Which means even if you have a positive result, 80-90% of the time you will not come down with the disease covid-19. In a hospital, the SARS-COV-2 spreads widely very quickly. Someone in the hospital dying of something else is very likely to become infected with the virus and never develop the disease and go on to die. So, generally speaking, I would give that last 10,000 a real number of deaths caused by Covid-19 a true value of 1,500 at the high end.
Now what is the Infection Fatality Ratio?
No. Highest estimates from epidemiological studies for no symptoms is 20%.
Generally speaking you attribute the highest excess mortality ever seen in New York City in a single month since the Spanish flu to “unknown reasons” so that you don’t have to count them as COVID-19 and ignore that people came to the hospital with SARS-CoV-2 and didn’t get it there.
Well, that’s a really good example of being delusional. Thank you.
Cite one of these studies saying it’s 20%.
Ron, it seems you missed the part where Governor Cuomo ORDERED the nursing homes to take in COVID patients, setting fire to a whole haystack of thousands and thousands of cases and deaths. So no, people did NOT “come to the hospital with SARS-CoV-2 and didn’t get it there”. In far too many cases they got their disease right there in their hospital beds.
w.
Can you provide a reference for the 20% figure being asymptomatic.
The British Medical Journal, the WHO, Wuhan labs, all reckon 80% is about right
“50% are completely asymptomatic”
This is not at all the case.
It is more like, “about 50% of cases are mild or asymptomatic.
There is no data indicating half of all cases are “completely” asymptomatic.
That is just an outright exaggeration.
Words have meanings, and completely means something very specific.
As well,
“~85% do not develop the serious Covid-19 symptoms”
is similarly incorrect and is a misuse of language.
Somewhat over 15% develop SEVERE disease symptoms.
You cannot pretend to be speaking factually while distorting and exaggerating.
When anyone does that, any people who are trying to be serious and FACTUAL will simply not pay attention to you any more, although people who are similarly inclined will give you praise and kudos for being “on message.”
When attempting to communicate concisely and accurately, one might consider leaving out absolutes and strong adjectives…words like “completely” when a word like “relatively” is closer to the truth…and instead using stronger verbs.
Some number of people report having absent symptoms, although in many cases when such people are questioned more carefully it turns out many of them had SOME symptoms, just that they were not very inconvenient or too very unpleasant. Some people are more soldierly, and some people are whiners and complainers.
Also, it is known most children do not experience this disease in the same way as adults, and that young adults are more likely to have a mild case than older but perfectly healthy adults.
Someone who gets symptoms identical to a really bad cold might consider themselves to be “seriously ill” if they were calling in sick two years ago, but not if they got COVID and then felt better two to five days later…because only having what seemed like a cold might make someone with COVID ecstatically happy to have gotten off so lightly from something killing other people.
Very few people who are not really old or frail ever see a doctor or go to a hospital when they get a really bad flu and are sick as hell for a week. Everyone knows you just have to suffer through it and it will be over after a short while…which may seem long in the minute to minute aspect but not in retrospect.
So context is important and has to be taken into account.
“Everything” I have read and learned indicates that a substantial number of people, perhaps 20% (but no one really knows because no place has had comprehensive testing and almost no one has had a reliable antibody test) have a case than appears to be asymptomatic. This is actually not at all unusual for a disease that gives some people a very bad illness, it is just largely unknown prior to recent weeks.
Another large batch have mild symptoms, by self reporting standards anyway.
So perhaps something like half of people know to have been infected do not have what most would consider a really bad illness…although in other times many of these people might have called in sick from work for one or more days.
Another tranche get sick…very sick, like case of the flu sick, and not just a cough, cold, or mild sniffle. But a fever and a feeling of being really very sick.
And about 15-18% of people get what a doctor would call a severe illness…requiring hospital care, and many of them need to be getting intensive care in an ICU unit.
So saying 85% of people do not get a “serious” illness is a misuse of language…serious and severe are not interchangeable terms.
So you ought to recognize that you are deploying deceptive terminology in order to exaggerate.
Exaggeration comes in two distinct flavors…minimizing something or inflating it unrealistically.
It is amazing to see global warming skeptics enthusiastically embrace all of the lessons of how to be deceptive, uncritical, unscientific, and unrealistic, that has been the subject of many years of intensive discussion here in the context of climate alarmists.
Selective attention, moving goalposts, exaggerations, willful blindness to information contrary to one’s predetermined point of view…these are not characterizes of people who are being realistic or scientific or who are striving to be serious and factual.
17.9%:
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.10.2000180
22.2%:
https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf/%24FILE/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf
up to 25% said CDC:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/31/824155179/cdc-director-on-models-for-the-months-to-come-this-virus-is-going-to-be-with-us?t=1589480155311
As I said you might have been confused by this WHO statement:
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200306-sitrep-46-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=96b04adf_4#:~:text=For%20COVID%2D19%2C,infections%2C%20requiring%20ventilation.
But asymptomatic spread numbers are probably highly influenced by age distribution of the investigated cluster. It should best resemble age distribution of the population.
Nicholas
Not that it is the last word, but Dr. Osterholm states,
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/transcript-michael-osterholm-on-intelligence-matters/ar-BB141F17
I don’t know about upstate New York that’s why I was talking about New York City where most of the people died and this practice has from all information I got not anywhere significantly contributed to the number of deaths. That is not what the death and infections clusters studies show.
Somewhat more people would have survived using anticoagulants and not intubating them too early but that is not the responsibility of any governor or mayor to make this kind of decision.
Ron
May 14, 2020 at 8:30 am
No. Highest estimates from epidemiological studies for no symptoms is 20%.
———————————–
These are estimates from epidemiological studies considering data from the structure of testing the high risk to infection, must test group in the population,
not taking in account the further expanded random tests of the population.
Definitely only virus test based , and only from the strict forward main protocols, of a very select specific part of the population…
where still the data polluted by the COVID-19 diagnosed cases as per the symptoms of severity/fatality only, with no tests at all for the infection…
kinda of post mortem… aka post matter of fact.
cheers
From everything I’ve read, ~50% are completely asymptomatic and ~85% do not develop the serious Covid-19 symptoms.
You are confusing that with the reported 80-90% being asymptomatic, mild or moderate in total.
The more elaborate studies backed up by antibody tests are coming down with non-symptomatic – like really no symptoms at all – with around 20%.
“50% are completely asymptomatic”
This is not at all the case.
It is more like, “about 50% of cases are mild or asymptomatic.
There is no data indicating half of all cases are “completely” asymptomatic.
That is just an outright exaggeration.
Words have meanings, and completely means something very specific.
As well,
“~85% do not develop the serious Covid-19 symptoms”
is similarly incorrect and is a misuse of language.
Somewhat over 15% develop SEVERE disease symptoms.
You cannot pretend to be speaking factually while distorting and exaggerating.
When anyone does that, any people who are trying to be serious and FACTUAL will simply not pay attention to you any more, although people who are similarly inclined will give you praise and kudos for being “on message.”
When attempting to communicate concisely and accurately, one might consider leaving out absolutes and strong adjectives…words like “completely” when a word like “relatively” is closer to the truth…and instead using stronger verbs.
Some number of people report having absent symptoms, although in many cases when such people are questioned more carefully it turns out many of them had SOME symptoms, just that they were not very inconvenient or too very unpleasant. Some people are more soldierly, and some people are whiners and complainers.
Also, it is known most children do not experience this disease in the same way as adults, and that young adults are more likely to have a mild case than older but perfectly healthy adults.
Someone who gets symptoms identical to a really bad cold might consider themselves to be “seriously ill” if they were calling in sick two years ago, but not if they got COVID and then felt better two to five days later…because only having what seemed like a cold might make someone with COVID ecstatically happy to have gotten off so lightly from something killing other people.
Very few people who are not really old or frail ever see a doctor or go to a hospital when they get a really bad flu and are sick as hell for a week. Everyone knows you just have to suffer through it and it will be over after a short while…which may seem long in the minute to minute aspect but not in retrospect.
So context is important and has to be taken into account.
“Everything” I have read and learned indicates that a substantial number of people, perhaps 20% (but no one really knows because no place has had comprehensive testing and almost no one has had a reliable antibody test) have a case than appears to be asymptomatic. This is actually not at all unusual for a disease that gives some people a very bad illness, it is just largely unknown prior to recent weeks.
Another large batch have mild symptoms, by self reporting standards anyway.
So perhaps something like half of people know to have been infected do not have what most would consider a really bad illness…although in other times many of these people might have called in sick from work for one or more days.
Another tranche get sick…very sick, like case of the flu sick, and not just a cough, cold, or mild sniffle. But a fever and a feeling of being really very sick.
And about 15-18% of people get what a doctor would call a severe illness…requiring hospital care, and many of them need to be getting intensive care in an ICU unit.
So saying 85% of people do not get a “serious” illness is a misuse of language…serious and severe are not interchangeable terms.
So you ought to recognize that you are deploying deceptive terminology in order to exaggerate.
Exaggeration comes in two distinct flavors…minimizing something or inflating it unrealistically.
It is amazing to see global warming skeptics enthusiastically embrace all of the lessons of how to be deceptive, uncritical, unscientific, and unrealistic, that has been the subject of many years of intensive discussion here in the context of climate alarmists.
Selective attention, moving goalposts, exaggerations, willful blindness to information contrary to one’s predetermined point of view…these are not characterizes of people who are being realistic or scientific or who are striving to be serious and factual.
Eric, the virus was is and continues to be a scam. The world wide death toll is about 290,000 as of this am. Not quite up to the standards set by the seasonal flu that killed 3,177,204 in 2018. 8,000 people die in America every day of the year flu or no flu. You scare mongers need to back off. The only numbers that matter are the total fatalities verses total population and they are insignificant.
Please provide some links to your ” seasonal flu that killed 3,177,204 in 2018″ as I can’t seem to find it.
Because the accepted figure is ESTIMATED to be up to 650,000 per year
60,000,000 NORMALLY Die each year most old you idiot! there are 7 billions people on earth it seems you want everybody to live to a 100 or more years or not to die ever! cheers and get a life
The nihilists are coming ! (Albert Pike, 1871)
On that basis Eliza, every individual cause of death from flu to car accidents to mass murders to terrorism to war is just some statistical triviality. Wow, the 9/11 response was abit cranky wasn’t it? I mean the total deaths that day was about 20 minutes of business as usual on your numbers so what was all the fuss about? Cheers to you too and btw, get a soul. See if you can pick up a brain on special while you are at it.
Considering all such data on flu cases are estimates, the 204 tacked onto the end of that number is simply inane.
It’s been quite a while since flu figures were estimates. Since the creation of flu-net, with it’s intention of finding facts because estimates weren’t good enough, things have really come along in terms of accuracy.
https://www.who.int/influenza/gisrs_laboratory/flunet/en/
Chris
I think that you misunderstand. While the CDC collects death certificate reports, under normal circumstances, they rely on the death certificate indication of the cause(s) of death. It would be rare to actually confirm through serological testing the strain causing death, because during normal years, there are only one or two seasonal strains circulating, which have been confirmed by random samples. If the attending physician thinks the person died of pneumonia resulting from seasonal flu, that’s what gets put on the death certificate.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/overview.htm
Well thats a lot like covid reporting……or isn’t ?
Well, I think they’re doing better than an educated guess all the same
https://www.who.int/influenza/surveillance_monitoring/en/
A lot of the deaths in NYC were caused by the medical care they received. Doctors didn’t know what the hell they were doing and intubated patients almost as soon as they walked in the door.
https://twitter.com/drjohnm/status/1250037261024059394
Not to mention that the health care experts were denied the use of effective treatment and threatened with prosecution if they used it.
You have seen this before here, how to avoid the NYC DISASTER, try a covid protocol that works.
Watch “Early Intervention Protocol for COVID-19 Can Save Lives” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/__w8lBVwoNA
Article and interview
https://knowledgeisgood.net/2020/05/02/a-report-from-the-front/
For full protocol see and download:
Evms.edu/covidcare
As for hydroxychloroquine, they have used from beginning and have seen it work. If I could I would post all the version of this protocol. Have them locally in pdf form. Do not misinterpert there recent politically correct mode to not distract from backend treatment. Anti-virals need to be given early, period…
How screwed up was NYC..
Watch “Dr Cameron Kyle Sidell. E R & Critical Care Dr From NYC” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/sKExxcD26_I
Another disturbing trend, big time. My Dr who I have used for a long time and I had an understanding with all this…. NOW..
If I should come down with anything respiratory, he can not treat me. He has to send me to a state network of covid special care providers. Yesterday I tried to work thru the system. In short the response at all levels…. I am pissed, I never got a straight answer. Most did not even know how to answer my questions…
What to do…
Do not listen to..
WHO
FDA
CDC
Anything published in the New England Journal of Medicine
From a tax exempt brokerage disguised as a university
Harvard
That’s very disturbing that your own doctor is not allowed to treat you. Sounds like they’re trying to limit what treatments can be done. What state is that?
btw if you want a video to show up in your post put the link by itself on a separate line.
Icsil
Iowa, the thing I do not know, should the time come and i make appointment for some other treatment to just get to him, will he prescribe. I am on a medicare supplemental insurance plan and really do not understand his limitations.
Thanks for edit comment, I just realized my tablet memo editor that I paste from does not use cr/lf “;$$,…..
Terry, we know it works and it is not the only one.
But there is no money in it.
Treatments are being deliberately suppressed.
Terry, we know it works, but there is no money in it.
Line 1
Line 2
https://youtu.be/__w8lBVwoNA
Line3
Line 1
Line 2
https://youtu.be/__w8lBVwoNA
youtu.be doesn’t work. You have to click on the youtu.be link, then copy the youtube.com URL that loads, then paste it here.
You also have to strip off the “&feature=youtu.be” at the end of the URL.
Thank you been searching high and low as to why it was not working
You might be interested.
My significant other is in Ohio now. Her take from from the authorities about all this…
They have enough remisiver for any body that is critically ill and needs it.
Do not even know where to go with this..
My next step is to track the dr/associate from Wisconsin that is aligned with EVMS.
Looking for a reference to UofI
https://youtu.be/__w8lBVwoNA
Line1
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=__w8lBVwoNA
Line2
from computer not tablet
Chrome on tablet
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=__w8lBVwoNA
The “m.” stands for mobile. Strip it out. If you can’t, paste the link into a text editor or search bar and strip it out there.
Firefox on tablet
Yes yes yes. S Korea, China, Singapore, are the models for effective quarantine. Identify the sick. Hunt them down, take them out of circulation. Enforced quarantine of the sick will work, does work, can work, and always has worked.
Shelter in place? Quarantine equally? 66 percent of New York New cases are elderly people sheltering at home.
The models have no skill (big surprise to the WUWT crowd). Open the windows, get some sunlight, quarantine the sick if you must, but recognize, everybody staying home when you are well is beyond stupid
Are you suggesting we somehow return to being monoracial societies?
No, even in the whole state it is less than 25,000. The first fact you presented is a false fact, a lie.
Should we read any further?
Please learn to read, comprehend, and think, then return.
In New York City this epidemic that you consider so trivial
You owe the author of this post an apology for that untrue smear.
Consider 25% of NYC deaths are from the Governor forcing Covid-19 patients into senior homes…this isn’t the Spanish Flu…
‘The solution to people running out of money for food is for the government to pay them the money they need, not shovel trillions into bailouts of billionaires, as they are now doing.’
That might be the most blindly idiotic post I’ve seen so far today.
Willis, I think this sentence is a bit off: The virus damage is short-lived, but we and our children will be paying for decades for our stupidity in killing the economy.
Shouldn’t that be written this way? The virus damage is short-lived, but we and our children will be paying for decades for our stupidity in ALLOWING POLITICIANS TO HORNSWOGGLE US INTO killing the economy.
This “crisis” was manufactured by opportunistic political animals, and most of us were naive enough to go along with it. NOT saying that there is no problem: Covid-19 is a bad, bad bug, but is not killing off the numbers that were predicted and eventually will be defeated.
This mess that we have been putting up with, globally, was created out of whole cloth, not to save lives but to see how much control freak crap people would put up with from their government. It is not going well here in the good ol’ USA. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court declared the stay-at-home order to be unconstitutional. I believe other such results will follow.
Show me all the statistics you like. It will NOT change the fact that this appears to be a test run for control freaks to destroy freedom.
Your major mistake is treating both the US and the rest of the world as if it is a sphere with a uniform and homogeneous population density. It’s not so your predictions are moot.
By the way Taiwan didn’t shut down while Korea did.
“So the first lesson of the emergency is, don’t kill your economy to try to delay or avoid a few deaths.”
Great idea – but only if you are under 70.
The author might change his tune if he is old enough or has less than perfect health!
I’m 73. Go figure.
w.
Have you had the virus?
Are you at all concerned that if you’re exposed to it then you might die from it or maybe that your wife may die from it? You probably should be.
TimTheToolMan May 17, 2020 at 6:44 am
Not as far as I know, but when half the cases are asymptomatic, who knows?
Nope. Que será, será. I’m not an idiot, and I don’t take unnecessary chances, but I’m not concerned in the slightest. Gotta die from something, after all.
Do you sit up at night all concerned that you might die in a car crash? I doubt it. You do what I do re: corona—you assess the odds, you take the precautions, and you don’t waste time fretting about it.
We could take the corona count to zero. Just lock everyone in their houses and don’t let anyone out ever.
We could take automobile fatalities to zero. Just stop driving.
Sorry, not interested in either one.
w.
TimToolMan: This is a science blog, not an emotional knee jerk feelings blog site.
Reading your post made it clearer for me how some people (like you) should never be in charge of important decisions affecting other people. Put it another way, if Chicken Little were running things, we’d all end up plugged into the Matrix.
Willis writes
I think the odds of fatality are considerably higher (for older people) by catching COVID-19 and its not a theoretical question, the test is waiting right outside your door.
I think the analogy would be more accurately something like would you worry about dying during your first sky diving adventure. And many people simply avoid sky diving because the answer to that is a yes. I dont want it, I wont do it.
So you want to send people back to work but what about those who prefer to remain isolated and not take that chance. In your world view of preferred working, do you believe the public purse should support those people as is happening now with the government handouts?
Or is this more a isolate at your own expense and if you cant afford it then starve, kind of thing?
” the test is waiting right outside your door.”
If you’re sitting in your home and you smell a fire outside, how does the smoke make it’s way to your nose ?
The same way that an odourless virus does.
The virus is coming in your home anyway, either through the air or more likeley through fomites
He says he is 73 Roger so I guess he may have less than perfect mental health or something. He does get a bit OCD regarding data and graphs n stuff come to think of it…. Too much time at sea?
:-))
Sorry Willis, just couldn’t resist.
Komrade Kuma May 14, 2020 at 11:07 pm
No, you’re not sorry in the slightest, Comrade. You are getting off on being a total prick and attacking my mental health and saying I “claim” to be 73.
You think that’s funny, smiley-face smiley-face. It’s not. It’s sick. Not a good look on you, Comrade …
w.
Great. I look forward to you turning over your car keys for the rest of your life.
After all, people die in automobiles.
Or is it? Where are the excess deaths? Not in the state of New York but in Georgia.
Excess deaths are the only valid way to look at it because a lot of the data is bogus. From false positives/negatives to fruit and goats testing positive to deaths “WITH” being counted as death “FROM” it is a total crap show.
Since it is harder for the “authorities” to rig the deaths compare a multi-year baseline to this year.
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html
Click New York state and then go through weeks 1 to 16 and then get the “Total Deaths” from the bottom right. First 4 months is 39,005
The yearly data on deaths for New York state are here and 2014-17 average about 120,000 a year
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/newyork/newyork.htm
I’ve done it for New York state and Georgia.
NY ~= 40,000 expected and 39,005 (-995)
Georgia ~= 20,000 expected and 27,000 (+7,000)
Not what I’d expected in either case.
Instead of using the CDC page for top causes of death as I did previously,
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/newyork/newyork.htm
I have looked up other sources such as the state government sites. Problem is they are a mess. Very hard to find total death stats and in the case of Georgia I went with Statista for a single year. So much for a standard 4 year average.
My previous estimates were all very conservative by design. I made a rough estimate by adding the top 10 causes plus drug overdoses. It was close and erred on the low side by design.
Using the new numbers there is no “excess deaths” of any statistical significance. This makes the case for lockdown at all, much less continuing, dodgy at best.
New York: Expected 50,319 / Actual 39,005
Georgia: Expected 27,699 / Actual 27,161
Illinois: Expected 36,138 / Actual 37,870
All 2020 deaths year to date are from this CDC page:
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.htm
Click the state and then go through weeks 1 to 16 and then get the “Total Deaths” from the bottom right.
New York: 150,959 yearly deaths (2013-16) expected average for 4 months = 50,319
https://apps.health.ny.gov/public/tabvis/PHIG_Public/lcd/reports/#state
Georgia: 83,098 yearly deaths (2017) expected average for 4 months = 27,699
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241581/births-and-deaths-in-the-us-by-state/
Illinois: 108,414 yearly deaths (2015-18) expected average for 4 months = 36,138
https://dph.illinois.gov/data-statistics/vital-statistics/death-statistics
And lets add Texas to the list. They have a 10% increase.
Texas: Expected 60,408 / Actual 66,071
Texas: 181,226 yearly deaths (2012-15) expected average for 4 months = 60,408
https://dshs.texas.gov/chs/vstat/annrpts.shtm
And now up the left coast to Washington state:
Washington: Expected 19,599 / Actual 19,270
Washington: 55,796 yearly deaths (2015-18) expected average for 4 months = 19,599
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/Pubs/422-099-2018-2010-VitalStatHighlights.pdf
As alluded to below, most of the United States isn’t packed into clusters like New York City is and, even if you buy the somewhat suspicious stats on Covid deaths in Manhattan, that doesn’t mean most of the country needs to be locked down for citizens to be safe. Certain metropolitan areas might need more invasive measures put on residents, but in most of the country those measures aren’t needed, and locking down an entire economy is, in my opinion and that of a growing number of people, worse than the virus. Human beings have always lived with a level of acceptable risk, and where I live I have a far greater chance of being bitten by a rattlesnake than I do of contracting the virus. And my chances of being bitten by a rattlesnake are acceptable to me, so I live with the risk, just as I’m willing to live with the risk of getting sick. What I think is insane is shutting down an entire economy because of a flu-like epidemic. Having lived through many of these kinds of epidemics, I’m not worried about this one. I’m careful, thoughtful, and prudent, but my daily routine hasn’t changed much, other than the issues caused by the stores and restaurants being restricted or closed. If I lived in the New York City area or along the Eastern Seaboard, in the LA metro area, the SF metro area, I’d be somewhat more concerned, but my point is that for those of us who don’t live in an area where there’s a high population density, prohibiting us from doing business is more of an unacceptable risk than that posed by the virus. Obviously, I’m not dismissing as unimportant the Covid related deaths, but ultimately I believe there will be more serious national issues caused by the lockdowns than by the virus. Americans have to relearn the idea of acceptable risk and get over their reflexive response of looking for government help every time a challenge presents itself. And government has to relearn its place in national affairs and stop spending money (our) money it doesn’t have.
By self isolating you can help stop that.
Stay home and buy Amazon.
That’s one billionaire you can support.
Some of us will not do that and we’ll go out and work.
We are not billionaires.
Why do you care about that?
The advantage of the Conservative Advantage is it allows those with a conservative mind to accurately predict answers from a progressive.
The disadvantage of the Conservative Advantage is that having obtained the power, the difference between an actual progressive post ranting and a conservative created parody of a progressive rant is almost undetectable.
However, Eric, taking your post at face value and ignoring the fact you forgot to mention the melting poles, dying bears and disappearing islands, let us discuss one of your magic points – Giving the poor money to buy food.
Wow.
Do you understand where food comes from? Not all of us have a walk in freezer filled with ice cream, so many of us have to buy food from the shops. Where do shops get their food from? Well in the real world there are things known as Supply Chains. In loose terms they start with whoever grows the food and end with the supermarkets and shops. In between you make go through processing plants, canneries, mills, bakeries that do all the steps that convert wheat into bread and the like.
So to get food to Mr and Mrs ‘running out of money’ all those links in the chain still need to be in place.
Wait! Haven’t finished. How does wheat get out of the field and in the grain solo? Short answer – Farm machinery. Then how does the grain get to the flour mills? Trucks and/or trains. Mill to bakery? Trucks (detect a theme yet?)
Still haven’t finished. How do trucks work? Where does the fuel come from? Who replaces the parts? Who delivers the parts that need replacing to the people who do the replacing? And those people doing all this delivering and replacing, where are they getting their lunch? What about their replacement work shirts because fat shaming is real and no one wants to see a topless truck driver.
So, basically when you think you are saying ‘pay them the money they need’, what you are REALLY saying is everyone needs to go back to work.
Congratulations. You are now anti lockdown.
You are right, it isnt going to just go away. But per the NYCity covid site, death at 15,800 as of May 15.
15800÷8,000,000=.002 1 in 500. 3/4 of that amongst the 65+ population. And 85% have some kind of underlying condition.
Infer that the remaining 13,000 deaths in the state are spread over the other 12,000,000 residents, 1 in 1,000 is a rate far more relevant to the vast majority of states. But all the data should also account for the substitutive death the stats dont show. These covids aren’t all extra deaths above the regular background .04 of annual death in the over 65 cohort. Half a million annually from heart disease alone.
Triviality isn’t the point, balancing the needs of the entire population is what public policy needs consider. It’s an extra and a new risk in life and thus scary, but clearly the death rate is vanishingly, exponentially smaller for those under 45 on down. And nearly insignificant up to 65.
Kids won’t die from going to school. Paid leave for teachers beyond a certain age, relax certifications and bring in younger ones? Have the last two months be summer vacation and send them back now. Or have pro-infection camps for the under 30’s this summer. Many possible ideas should be considered, not just what we were doing last month in the apparently new magical goal of having no one, anywhere catch it next.
In New York City this epidemic that you consider so trivial has killed 25,000 people –one in 300. What magic will prevent the virus from doing the same in the rest of the world? That’s 20 million dead–trivial, right? The virus will not tucker out as you so fondly dream. It is growing exponentially in Russia, India, Brazil , Peru and will certainly grow in the US, where a very partial lockdown has only caused the cases to plateau, not decline. Only spending the money to have universal testing, contact tracking and government-financed and supported isolation can suppress the infection, as S. Korea and Taiwan have shown. The solution to people running out of money for food is for the government to pay them the money they need, not shovel trillions into bailouts of billionaires, as they are now doing.
You did not read “PS—When you comment, please quote the exact words you’re referring to. This prevents much misunderstanding and useless argumentation.”
I stopped reading your post when you wrote “you consider so trivial has killed 25,000”
What a hateful response to an article where you suggest such a thing.
You posted the same thing twice, where I had expected you to have figure that out. You did not.
Next time measure twice and shoot once.
The solution is to isolate people… persons at risk, to reduce globalization, and to curb immigration reform. Also, the virus from Wuhan, as HIV before it, is notably a hygienic and ideological bigot. People need to wash their hands, avoid black… back holes, and moderate their socialization. That said, Her Choice has proven to produce less excess deaths but far greater collateral damage than her choice. This can be planned to mitigate the progress of Planned Parenthood, Planned Parent, and Planned Population.
Eric,
It is worth remembering the “Government” has no money.
It has been granted the authority, (by the voters) to take as much of your money as they wish as long as they are in office.
When you say let the government pay them, you are simply saying let us use our savings collectively, to hide our fears, whether valid or imagined, let us idle the economy and reduce our wealth.
That is fine so long as you do it for a valid moral and financially beneficial reason.
Allowing families on the edge of financial ruin, to fall into despair and worse, just to have a virtue signal culture evolve while claiming we have to do what’s right for our old, in preference to everyone else is stupidity on steroids.
Once the reason for lock down had passed and the flat phase of the curve has been achieved, which it has, then it is time to do the sensible and the only thing that will save lives. We have committed so much wealth into saving the medical systems from being swamped, now let us start saving lives again.
Let’s get back to work, including the currently idle medics in hospitals up and down our countries.
Eric Lerner May 13, 2020 at 10:30 pm
First, I NEVER called this epidemic “trivial”, that’s the voices in your head. It’s also why I ask people to quote the exact words they’re talking about.
Next, the figure you quote is for New York State, not New York City, and even there you exaggerate. Up to today, there have been 22,013 deaths in the whole state. And no, that is not “one in 300”. It’s one in 884.
Next, you ask:
Well, consider that of all of the localities I’m aware of, the death rate in New York State is the worst. Worse than Belgium. Worse than Italy. Worse than Spain. Worse than anywhere.
So I don’t know the answer regarding what is stopping the virus from “doing the same [as it’s doing to New York State] in the rest of the world” … but since it’s not doing it anywhere else in the world, much less everywhere else in the world, there must be some very real reasons at work.
Wrong. If the whole planet had New York’s rate of deaths it would be 8.9 million. Not trivial by any means … but not 20 million.
And also not probable in the slightest. As my article points out, most countries and states have passed their peak. None of them are even near the New York State death rates, nor will they ever be.
Finally, you say:
The solution to people running out of money is NOT, as you claim, for us to go into more debt to perpetuate this lunacy. We cannot borrow our way to wealth.
The solution to people running out of money is to END THE AMERICAN LOCKDOWN NOW!
w.
+100.
Willis,
I am curious. Australia and New Zealand have both had extremely small numbers of deaths. Where do they appear on your country chart?
Thanks, Hive. I’ve only posted countries with high death rates, as they are the ones where flattening the peak might make a difference.
w.
I wouldn’t compare any SH nation to any NH nation at this point, wait until their cold/flu seasons.
LOL, NZ *never* had a covid problem. Horse-face simply wanted play #metoogreatleader and ape what other countries were doing. She did untold unnecessary damage to her country for no valid reason.
She also waited until there was near zero new cases before redressing her authoritarian, misjudged actions.
So much for the “liberal” label. Hopefully this will be a salutary lesson for kiwis next time around.
A predictor of how bad the Covid infection got in your area is how many people you meet every day. I prepared the following from some rough figures I pulled of the internet.
The first graph surprised me – I really want to believe vitamin D has an impact on Covid-susceptibility. I was expecting latitude vs infection rate per million to show a trend.
The second graph is also interesting – infection rate vs population density. Obviously the numbers are very scattered, and the bunching at the bottom left is not a good thing, but there is more evidence of a relationship than the non-relationship between latitude (sunlight / vitamin D) and infection rate.
Of course all this is very crude. People in northerly climates are more likely to take vitamin D supplements, so maybe latitude is not a good proxy for vitamin D levels.
Behavior such as using sunscreen all but kills the sunshine. As well, what get’s people outside during mid day. Our society is typically indoors during the day where the sun’s angle enables ample UVB. And people in nordic countries each fish which has vitamin D… so we can test for vit D deficiency and compare that to mortality or severity if we had ample data. I would say there must be a correlation based on some reporting I’ve seen.
I think when UVB is filtered out, you get more UVA which does not lead to Vit D3 manufacture… but does cause tanning and skin damage. So complex!
The governor of NY issued an executive order mandating that infected patients be moved to nursing homes. That’s where most of the deaths occurred. He needs to be put on trial for manslaughter.
Like Willis says, misquoting can lead to errors in understanding. No question, ALL government has miss-handled the situation in nursing homes, long-term care facilities and veteran’s hospitals and homes. All these environments tend to be headed by people of loving natures but less than revolutionary (reactionary) questioners of authority.
“Don’t wear masks!” “Don’t worry, it’s not a threat to the US.” “Stay inside.” Where is UVC? Inside? Well, yes, now, in Hong Kong. But not in April -September in Northern Hemisphere.
I believe the nursing home rule was actually to prevent NH administrators from PREVENTING accepting contaminated patients from returning or entering. These administrators should have had the guts to Just Say No!
Thanks for clarifying. I was sloppy/careless in my wording.
Eric Lerner has just elevated himself to the single biggest clueless idiot on the board – and he posted twice.
The level of flat, moronic ignorance is breathtaking.
You should look up the word “pay”.
I totally agree. In the UK we have had a succession of government that have no understanding of the scientific method, who believe all computer modelling without question, who don’t examine the past performance of scientists or their ideology, who don’t understand risk, who don’t ask about model verification, or validation, who don’t ask about independent peer review, who don’t ask about data, who don’t understand uncertainty – the list is endless. A clear out of the swamp is needed, but it isn’t going to happen while we have a left-wing civil service and a left-wing media which are also ignorant of science.
Phillip, let me correct your first statement for you.
” In the UK we have had a succession of government that have no understanding.”
Unfortunately British, USA and Australian Universities and Scientific methodology has become in my view 3rd world see Mann, Cook, University of Queensland, Nature publishing drivel from Glieck climate and Fauci viruses ect these are political hacks not scientists. Basically this coronavirus ignorancia is the self immolation of the West. Glad I am 68 and will not live to see this as I live in a safe tropical country far away from these horrible places in an incredibly miserable earth controlled by left wing ideologues. A 3rd world war China Nuclear induced war is definitely in the making my 2 cents worth. Hope I am wrong.
I love this article. I look forward to the ugly debate to come! Thank you Willis!
More than welcome, Mario.
w.
Sorry Willis but I think you have been drinking some sort of conspiracy theory Kool Ade. Here in Oz we got in early and have not even recahed 100 deaths out of 25 million. There may be some extra ones unattributed but still very low so don’t tell me lockdown’s don work.
As for the actual death numbers, imagine the same numbers per day from say terrorism or deliberate poisoning of water supplies or whatever and the reaction would make the response to 9/11 look like a hiccup.
I am all for personal liberty etc and looking after the economy but gee, have a drink or something. A joint? This thing is not the climate conspiracy, it is a real disease that actually kills people.
At the start if the outbreak Australia was coming out of summer, a time when sunlight derived vitamin D levels are at their peak. Vitamin D now accepted to be playing a very important role in helping with the immunity to the virus
Also, they were fortunate enough to be hit by the weaker strain.
https://www.cato.org/blog/two-supertypes-coronavirus-east-asian-european
Yep, we got lucky, coming out of summer and we have a much lower population density even in our largest cities, as do the Kiwi’s. We both locked down quick and have reaped the benefits. The implication is nonetheless, despite our luck that the lockdowns work, particularly well in low density populations so in high density ones they are probably more necessary. Hardly an argument to dispense with them.
As for death rates, the Covid deaths in the US is now about 50% greater than the total US deaths in Vietnam but achieved in just a few months not a decade. So the Vietnam casualties are nothing to fuss about too? Perhaps you should pop down to the Vietnam Memorial Wall and tag it accordingly. Allied deaths on D Day? Only 5 to 10,000! What on earth is the fuss about YOU might ask.
Honestly Chris, you and some others commenting here really do need to go kneel in a church or somewhere similar and search for your souls because they are MIA. But if kiddy fiddling statistics is in your soul then I suppose that’s where its at for you.
The difference between covid victims, and Vietnam victims, is that the Vietnam victims got to see or hear their enemy coming.
Could you quote your source for the number of people who died in Vietnam, I think many times more people were killed in Vietnam then covid has killed worldwide
Deaths in Vietnam War (1965–1974) per Guenter Lewy
Allied military deaths 282,000
PAVN/VC military deaths 444,000
Civilian deaths (North and South Vietnam) 627,000
Total deaths 1,353,000
Perhaps it’s always a bad idea to compare anything to the number who die at war ? But it does sound good sometimes doesn’t it ? 🙂
Chris I quoted a figure for “US deaths in Vietnam” for which I had a figure in my head of 55,000 but Wikipedia says was more like 58,000. As for your total deaths of 1.535 million ( I assume over the 10 years of the war) that is 153,500 per year on average and half that in six months vs a bloody sight more from COVID 19 in that sort of time frame so I am not sure what your point is.
Komrade Kuma May 14, 2020 at 1:35 am Edit
Comrade, since I neither said it was a conspiracy, nor implied it was a conspiracy, or even thought it was a conspiracy, I fear your reading skills are poor. This is why I ask people to quote the words they are discussing.
As to Australia, IF you impose a rather draconian lockdown, quarantine, and shelter-in-place as soon as the first bell rings, and you live in a country with no other countries next-door, you can indeed hold the virus down. Taiwan did the same, as did New Zealand.
HOWEVER, that’s not true if you don’t move immediately. Because you have been able to keep the numbers small in Oz you can do testing and contact tracing. But with as many cases as we have here in the US, that’s not possible.
Finally, you keep talking as though there were no costs to the lockdown. There are now an additional 600,000 Australians unemployed from the lockdown. That means 600,000 stories of poverty, depression, domestic violence, and the like. Go tell one of them just how lucky they are …
w.
PS—as to “terrorism or deliberate poisoning of water supplies”, those we can do something about, like arrest the people doing it and end the danger. But it’s kinda hard, as you may have noticed, to arrest the virus and end the danger. So I fear your example is no example at all because there’s no parallel to our current situation.
If all Australians were tested now for any coronavirus my guess is 100% of the population would have it. the incidence of covid 19 is about 0%. Get a life or a degree in virology. Willis is 100% correct all lockdowns were a complete waste of time and money. If there was no internet you would never heard of this virus
“If there was no internet you wouldn’t have heard of it”
Please lets not go back to the television and radio days. Our first TV didn’t have a remote control and was black and white.
In a way it was nice, it had some sort of artistic separation about it, a little bit unreal, and the people you had next to you in the real world were still more important than anyone in a dishonestwood
They nicknamed television “the idiot’s lantern” in some parts
And then the propaganda started…..and all of the progress into the future we were hoping to make amounted to merely going from one stage of television to the next….to colour…an added video recorder…dolby sound….then came HD…..and digital transmissions…..and 4k.
We can still see them telling us the same lies here in the future, except now, it’s a better picture, and no hiss in the sound…..except from the snakes
+100
Eliza writes
Australia has performed over a million tests and found 7,045 cases of the virus. Australia has a higher test rate than the US. Australia has successfully tracked each case of infection and isolated the infected.
Australia has had 98 deaths and compared to other countries with similar populations ought to have had upwards of 10,000 deaths by now.
My guess is that you’ve not even looked at the Australian situation.
Hear hear Mario.
#meTOO:-) Many TYs, Willis.
RE: “To prevent … peak load from crushing the medical system, it was decided in many countries … to “flatten the curve” ” Sweden’s curve IS flatter than most other European nations’ curves. HMMM.
RE: “… quarantine the sick, protect the vulnerable, but do NOT quarantine the healthy.” EXACTLY RIGHT!! In stark contrast, Dr. Fauci refused at the start of the AIDS outbreak to quarantine the tiny # of infected and thereby spread HIV to many, many, many … more people. Now, he insists MUCH of the US population be quarantined indefinitely instead of focusing on directly protecting the 5-10% very vulnerable to dying with WuWhoFlu.
A wise person once described an expert as someone who knows more and more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. Pls keep this in mind when urged to defer to expert opinion / recommendations.
Also keep in mind that just like too many pedigree dogs are rendered stupid by breeding for physical traits, one can be rendered common senseless by too much time in academia & a bureaucracy.
“…one can be rendered common senseless by too much time in academia & a bureaucracy.” That’s a keeper…
My sentiments too, Mario. Thank you Willis.
There’s a noticeable 7 day cycle in the data for many locations. You said there is weekend incompleteness. Why are there weekends incomplete? Seems strange.
If there is no weekend incompleteness, the data seems to suggest much less deaths during weekends.
Do more people go out or stay in during weekends? I don’t know the data during normal times. So I can’t figure out if herd immunity or isolation is the answer. Someone please resolve this for me. Thank you.
Well, the medical staff report the deaths. There typically are less of them at during weekends. This is because, well, the weekend is the weekend, and rven medical staff need some rest. So, during weekends, less non-critical work gets done. Reporting is less critical than actual care-giving. So, the reporting gets delayed until the weekend is over.
If someone dies on a Saturday, it must be really hard to report on Monday that they died on a Saturday?
Or is there literally no one at the hospital to note the aprx time of death?
We tend to forget that bureaucrats and clerks report what they are told to report. So if only the number of recorded deaths has been asked for, only the number reported or processed by the admin section is reported. When the data is passed to the statistical services they break it down into, hopefully, more discrete data, thus they report actual daily deaths rather than deaths reported to them that day. GIGO is ubiquitous, not solely a computer phenomenon.
I’m pretty sure that most of the reporting (certainly worldometer) you see is based on day of report not day of death or day of test sample drawn. There is quite often a delay in reporting deaths of up to weeks. If you were to get deaths by day of death the trends are even more pronounced. I saw the Sweden death data by day of death vs report date and the trend difference was pronounced. I’ll see if I can find where I saw that.
Correct. There is a lag in the reporting of deaths. Worldometer reports deaths by day reported instead of by day of dying. Sweden updates their charts so they report deaths by day of dying. It’s always better with good data.
The Health Department (still being paid, like ALL government workers) is not open on weekends. So they update the numbers when they get around to it on Monday or Tuesday (or Wednesday, or next week, or a month from when they actually occurred – as in New York).
I just find it hard to believe that the date of the update determines the death day.
I suppose they could be that stupid, but I need evidence for it.
It is done as a basic public information and they don’t care what you think. Compile your own numbers at your expense and you can control the way they are presented. Alternatively wait a year or so and most governments release yearly data.
You suppose they could be that stupid but you need evidence. Take a look at just about everything else that they do and get back to us on whether they could be that stupid.
Zoe, this is the chart for Sweden where the deaths have been allocated to the date of death, rather than the date of reporting.
https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
I don’t know, but when the standard is: “If they had any symptoms that look anything like COVID, mark it down as COVID!” can we trust that these numbers are real? How many end-of-season seasonal flu deaths got lumped in with COVID because the patient died of pnuemonia?
Though I could make an argument that a significant number of drug overdoses victims, spouse or child murders victims, and drunk drivind deaths during this period could be attributed to COVID (or at least the lockdown response) so I guess it is all connected.
If you look at the Worldometer daily deaths bar graph for the USA, there is a clear pattern over the last 5 weeks or so. Sunday has the lowest number of deaths recorded, then Monday was next lowest. Often Tuesday was the highest (as they entered a backlog of data from the weekend is the most obvious reason). But Tuesday through Friday are always much higher than Sun, Mon. And Saturday is more variable but always higher than Sun, Mon. Possibly, sometimes people work on Saturday to get caught up and other Saturdays they don’t. So, Zoe Phin, you can either believe it has to do with when the data are entered or believe that the pattern is actually due to the virus being more dangerous on Tuesdays or perhaps there are serial killers in all the hospitals that like to kill on Tuesdays. Not sure why you need more evidence than the clear pattern.
David,
Thank You. Now I have evidence that there is nothing special about the weekends.
The medical staff are there 7-days…the admin staff are there 5 days…the govt admin staff that record, collate and provide the numbers are also there 5 days. Certificates of death are not given by doctors (in the UK), they are given by the registration office, one is given to the person who registers the death (others have to be paid for). Needless to say, that is a 5-day operation.
I use to look after some lighthouses (navigation aids). The records show that they failed more frequently at weekends ?
Excellent! Best models/analysis/data visualization of anyone anywhere. Kudos, Willis!
42^42 times dittos on your conclusions. Free the People! Ignore the Petty Tyrants! Out Now!
Laugh in their faces and go back to your life. Do it today.
+100 and Congrats Willis!
On the curative side A marked improvement in outcomes from a hospital and doctors treating patients.
A study with zinc+ HCQ+AZ Zinc early helps later not much help.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1.full.pdf
Great post Willis !!! Many thanks !!!
According to New York health officials, 60% of the children with these symptoms statewide tested positive for COVID-19 and 40% tested positive for the antibodies. 14 percent tested positive for both.
Experts believe the victims may have been exposed to the virus weeks before developing symptoms. They range in age from less than 1 year to 21 years old.
https://abc7ny.com/coronavirus-new-york-reopen-ny-news-update/6179458/
Many thanks for this very excellent and informative post. Here in Thailand, 44 of the 76 provinces that have had no new cases for a month have been “opened”. I am in one of those “open” provinces. The golf courses are open. Wonder what Willis makes of the Vietnam miracle?
“As of 11 May, Vietnam has reported zero deaths, just 288 positive COVID-19 cases and no community transmission since early April. It’s all the more remarkable when you consider the country shares a border with China, is home to nearly 100 million people, and has a greater population density than China, Indonesia, the United Kingdom or Italy. Vietnam has drastically flattened the coronavirus curve at a relatively low cost through early action, a targeted approach and strong political leadership. In a quirk of fate, when the pandemic struck the Health Ministry was under the control of one of the country’s longest serving Deputy Prime Ministers, Vu Duc Dam, after the Health Minister was forced to step down last November. This unclogged the bureaucratic arteries and gave the pandemic response extremely high-level political authority. Vietnam – always highly attuned to events occurring across its northern border – acted quickly and before the virus had an opportunity to become entrenched. On 3 January, authorities put hospitals and local health departments on high alert for cases of the “new pneumonia”. China recorded its first death on 11 January and Vietnam’s Ministry of Health began issuing urgent dispatches to government agencies just a few days later. When two Chinese nationals travelling in Vietnam tested positive on 23 January, the government launched a public information campaign. This included everything from online content on websites and social media, to messages blasted across the country’s ubiquitous loudspeaker system. The country’s people, conditioned by the 2003 SARS outbreak, reacted immediately and, in some ways, even overreacted, with many restaurants and shops banning foreigners. Expatriates reported locals crossing the road to avoid coming into contact with them. While South Korea fought the virus with expensive mass testing, Vietnam chose a less costly route. Authorities quarantined those infected, then pursued aggressive contact tracing down to second and third-hand contacts. They quickly developed a tracing app that has been the most downloaded free app in the country since its 10 March launch. Meanwhile, authorities set about creating a targeted testing regime. At the beginning of the outbreak, there were just three laboratories equipped to test for COVID-19. By April, that number had leapt to 112. So far, more than 260,000 tests have been conducted, with just 288 positive results. While that is fewer than 2,700 tests per million people, it’s by far the highest ratio of tests to confirmed cases anywhere in the world. The targeted testing approach also bought Vietnam extra time, which it has used to roll out testing to anyone showing symptoms of the virus. During March, face masks were made compulsory, provincial borders were closed, and foreign entry was banned. Those allowed to return from other countries, such as Vietnamese nationals, were taken straight from their port of entry for a 14-day quarantine at an army base. At least 80,000 people across the country have been placed in quarantine so far. The economic damage in Vietnam, as elsewhere in the world, has been significant. Up to 10 million workers are estimated to have lost all or some of their income. The government has stepped in with income support for poor households and contract labourers and is providing zero interest loans for businesses. But the best remedy lies in getting normal life and economic activity back. The successful suite of measures isn’t just paying dividends for buses and schools; the government began easing restrictions on many businesses as early as 23 April.”
Indeed, Vietnam is one of the unsung success stories of the virus.
w.
I really doubt most people here on this site would have agreed to the measures Vietnam implemented. Not. At. All.
There is no uncostly way out of this. The question is just who pays less.
Ron May 14, 2020 at 5:48 am
Agreed.
w.
I never expected to see Mr Eschenbach cherry picking data to make a case.
Comparing low population Sweden to high population worst performing countries is hardly a fair example.
When you compare the performance of Sweden with their neighbors who did various versions of lock down, things do not look so rosy.
Norway, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland all did much beter and even the very densely populated Netherlands did slightly better than Sweden.
Other countries who did notably better are Czechia, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vitnam, Singapore, Tawain, need I go on?
Where other surrounding countries are now in the last throws of their pandemic, Sweden are still in the 600s of new cases per day.
They are also 9th worst in the world for Deaths/Million Population.
It’s now known that there are two supertypes and one is worse than the other. In general, countries in Asia are fortunate to have the less infectious and dangerous type. Italy and NYC had the worse and there is a mixture in most places.
We are making comparisons between countries at different stages of disease progression. Nothing wrong with that except that we have to realize that the situation is dynamic.
That is not “known”. It is speculation. The distribution pattern could have easily generated by chance. Actually strain A gets wider distribution in the US after supply of strain B from Europe has ended.
Point taken. I hesitated to use the word “known” but decided to do so anyway so that it got some attention. More properly it would be “believed” or “shown.” In any case, there is perhaps strong evidence of this and it explains several observations.
There needs to be more research to answer questions around this to avoid making wrong decisions.
You and many others don’t seem to understand something that must have been said 100 times on this site by now. It’s not about stopping the virus completely or preventing it from ever getting into some corner of society – that is a fairytale fantasy. It was about stopping the purported never ending exponential growth – the “40 million deaths around the world” if no lockdowns were done.
The data shows that there is no difference in growth rate of infection when looking at different government lockdown measures — whether it was the lowest level of lockdown or the most stringent lockdown measure, the growth rate of infection follows the exact same general growth function.
And the cherry-picking remark reminds me of the criticisms against the paper that used a simple model to predict the surface temperature of planets/moons with atmospheres using just solar insolation and atmospheric density. What, were they supposed to create more planets to test, is Willis supposed to create a twin USA that followed a completely different path? What are we waiting for, someone start the multidimensional quantum time loop experiments!
A C Osborn May 14, 2020 at 5:58 am
First, stuff your nasty insults about cherry picking where the sun don’t shine.
Next, the population density of Sweden in the southern coastal areas where most Swedes live is not far from that of the surrounding countries. The difference is that Sweden has a bunch of hilly forest land where almost no one lives … so what? That doesn’t make a difference as to the rate of spread of the disease in the areas where people live.
Finally, you’ve missed the point entirely. Yes, Sweden has done better than some and worse than some. But the point is, it didn’t destroy its economy in the process, the deaths did NOT overwhelm the medical system, and they’ve continued working and earning a living.
And as a result, Sweden might have 0.02% of the population die rather than 0.01% of the population … me, I’d take that trade any day.
w.
No insult just the truth, if you can’t take it too bad, we have been here before.
Sweden didn’t use lockdown, but they did use many of the same techniques as other countries.
But then neither have many of the other countries I quoted used lockdown, especially Czechia who also have a population of 10 million, who opted for light lockdown like Sweden but asked their public to wear home made masks.
Try comparing their statistics to Sweden.
All the Asian countries also did not need lockdown as they were all prepared for pandemics.
I do not advocate lockdowns, but to use Sweden as an example of how it doesn’t work is cherry picking, because you do not show all the much more successful countries that did and still are doing much better who have far less deaths.
Their position as 9th worst in the World for deaths/million population can’t be got around by saying “Sweden has done better than some and worse than some”.
They have done worse than 206 other countries to date, which will obviously change as the 3rd world countries take a big hit.
In fact they are 32 positions worse than the world average.
So if it is not cherry picking show all the other countries that have and are doing much better than them, I gave you a start with that list.
A C Osborn May 14, 2020 at 1:12 pm
Pass. I have absolutely no interest in discussing anything with someone who falsely accuses me of “cherry picking”. I don’t do that. You may be thinking of your friends, or even yourself, but it’s not me.
Sadly,
w.
Definitely can’t take it.
If this was Sea Levels, Temperatures, Snow fall you would show it all.
I have even provided some example countries, but no, they would destroy what you are trying to show.
As to “Next, the population density of Sweden in the southern coastal areas where most Swedes live is not far from that of the surrounding countries.”
Not even close, Stockholm is there population centre and that is where their biggest problem is with 9,461 cases & 1463 deaths.
Bur there are only 1 million living there, unlike the 10 million in London and 9 million in New York.
The Tube in London has 2 million packed in it twice a day and I dare say the NYC subway is the same.
Come on Mr Eschenbach.
If this was somsbody else’s Climate Study you would be the first to complain that they weren’t showing all relevavent data.
Sorry to inform you that Sweden’s economy is just as destroyed as it neighbors economies. Sweden is exporting 50% of its production so even without any lockdown at all the economy would be destroyed. Forecast is also that sweden will have the longest way back.
The Vietnamese trust the Chinese about as far as they can throw the whole lot of them, since they know them all too well. I think that was the main reason they evaded deaths.
No one knows communist China better than Taiwan – and they have won the Gold Medal.
Why?
Because they know China.
The rest of us mugs don’t know China and scream “racism”. For how much longer are we going to be so bloody dumb.
Again, because we don’t know China’
How well do you think the Huan treat the other 56 “races” in China?
Chinese toilet standards ( domestic and public) are the worst in the world – by a country mile.
It is a miracle that more horrible viruses do no come out of China more often. Because of the disgusting toiletry and hygiene standards, the Chinese must have immune systems made of titanium.
I’m not sure whether it is funny or sad, but while the Dems and media were screaming ‘racist’ when Trump locked down flights from China, North Korea had already completely shut their border to China over a week before. The WHO and our own NIH/CDC never recommended restricting travel, they actually did the opposite, they claimed that shutting down travel between your nation and the outbreak hotspot with evidence of a new virus with human-human transmission would only make things worse.
That should tell you everything you need to know about the intentions of the Chinese and the global “health experts”.
Thos report on Vietnam was provided to me by Devpolicy.org
I forgot to cite them when I first posted their Vietnam report. My apologies.
I would really like to know Vietnam’s treatments and policy on intubation.
Vietnam is probably lying.
The regime told the US Navy in March that the only cases in the country were a few in the north. So USS Roosevelt’s skipper and the carrier strike group’s CO let sailors go ashore at Da Nang, in the center of the country. Yet they caught the virus and infected the ship.
Maybe the cases in Da Nang were asymptomatic. Or maybe ChiCom agents infected the sailors. But IMO it’s more likely that Hanoi is lying.
That was an interesting lesson learned… “Five ‘B’ girls and two bars will take out a carrier strike group!” No wonder the Pentagon got upset with the Captain for writing that letter.
Thank you Willis for all of your continued efforts and excellent presentations.
” However, we do have one example of a modern country that did NOT shut down and kill their economy to fight the virus, which is Sweden. How are they doing? Here’s the comparison”
What is not compared is what happened to the economy. The case of Sweden is not so clear-cut. There were restrictions, but more to the point, people actually did many of the things that people elsewhere in Europe did, even if not directed by government. And the economy is not unscathed:
“The country’s economy is heavily dependent on now-snarled global supply chains and is projected to suffer somewhere between a 6 to 7 percent hit to its gross domestic product this year — approximately on par with the United States and Germany. Unemployment could reach 10 percent by the summer, a strikingly high figure in Scandinavia.”
Here is a similar account from WSJ.
” However, we do have one example of a modern country that did NOT shut down and kill their economy to fight the virus, which is Sweden. How are they doing? Here’s the comparison”
What is not compared is what happened to the economy. The case of Sweden is not so clear-cut. There were restrictions, but more to the point, people actually did many of the things that people elsewhere in Europe did, even if not directed by government. And the economy is not unscathed:
“The country’s economy is heavily dependent on now-snarled global supply chains and is projected to suffer somewhere between a 6 to 7 percent hit to its gross domestic product this year — approximately on par with the United States and Germany. Unemployment could reach 10 percent by the summer, a strikingly high figure in Scandinavia.”
Here is a similar account from WSJ.
The Swedes are not responsible for other countries destroying their own economies, which in turn causes them economic pain. The Swedes are weathering this pandemic without destroying their own economy. That is the success.
Do you just try to continually muddy the waters of every post on this site to score points in some weird game of your own? Any reasonable arguments you ever offer are pretty much wasted because of this attitude, as replies to you clearly indicate.
Occasionally there’s a good point buried in Nick’s disingenuous obfuscation.
Occasionally there’s a good point buried in Nick’s disingenuous obfuscation.
Stopped-clock effect.
“The Swedes are not responsible for other countries destroying their own economies”
They are all interconnected, so it is hard to attribute individual responsibility. But also pointless. The proposition is that while not locking down may result in more deaths, the benefit is the saved economy. If Sweden’s economy is not saved, that argument fails. People died in vain.
Why are you always on the wrong headed end of every debate? Devil’s advocate or just fick?
Quote.
” If Sweden’s economy is not saved, that argument fails. People died in vain.”
Nick, what on earth are you advancing with that sentence?
Do you think any economy has been saved during this over hyped period of virus induced panic? Clearly the loss of lives was never anything to do with saving the economies?
Further, where is the evidence for more deaths in your imagined proposition?
The out turn from Sweden in lives lost to the Sars Cov 2 is in line with the rest of Europe. The decision in Sweden to trust their people to do the sensible things resulted in the same outcome as those countries where the governments decided the people could not be trusted and locked them and their businesses up!
The main difference being, the Swedish government did not exceed their democratic boundaries, unlike most other Western, free democratic countries.
That is pretty much my view.
Nick said people died in vain … well no they died for the majority to have democracy no different to 18-25 years do in times of war. Put uniforms and medals on those that died and what is the difference they took one for the country.
However I agree the Willis argument is very weak because Sweden shows not locking down does not mean your economy will be spared.
The real question was the situation bad enough for the use of full emergency powers as opposed to offering guidelines or limited restrictions. I think both extremes are as wrong as each other the answer I prefer is somewhere in between.
Rod Evans
But right out of whack with its fellow Scandanavian countries, with which Sweden shares strong social and cultural similarities, not to mention long land borders with Norway and Finland.
Scandanavian countries and lockdown dates (where applicable) alongside the latest deaths per million population and total deaths (Worldometer, May 14th):
Denmark (lockdown March 11th): 92 (533)
Finland (lockdown March 16th): 51 (284)
Norway (lockdown March 12th): 42 (229)
Sweden (no lockdown): 343 (3,460)
That’s pretty stark.
+3460
For the 101st time, it is not about extincting the virus, it is about stopping the never ending exponential growth and preventing the overwhelming of the healthcare system. This happened on its own regardless of lockdown measure. Sweden will be looking quite solid this time next year when their second wave is paltry compared to the dictator-democracies.
Sweden has enough population immunity to expect daily fatality numbers to continue due to fall to a much lower and more steady background number.
Every other country (lacking significant population immunity) will continue to have higher daily counts for a far longer time.
We won’t know who “won” this game until the game is over…but I’m betting on Sweden. Any takers?
Swedes were not thrust into bankruptcy by the millions… with cascading effects that ripple in ugly ways throughout the entire economy.
Sweden will be in better shape domestically to recover more quickly and they won’t have another 20% of GDP to pay down over the next half century…or longer.
I do not believe the economists that show “economic equivalence” in this instance.
TheFinalNail & A C Osborn
The rationale behind the lockdowns was to “flatten the curve,” to avoid overrunning the medical resources and thereby avoid excess deaths. The expectation was that total deaths (area under the curve) would be about the same either way. What remains to be seen is if Sweden’s neighbors have a tail on the curve long enough to catch up with Sweden’s deaths. They may get lucky and have increasing sunshine truncate the tail. However, it is premature to conclude that Sweden, in the long run, will have far more deaths than its neighbors.
TheFinalNail
According to a commenter below (Rolf) the 3460 figure is not exceptionally high for the first four months for Sweden.
Clyde Spencer May 14, 2020 at 12:46 pm
” What remains to be seen is if Sweden’s neighbors have a tail on the curve long enough to catch up with Sweden’s deaths.”
Sorry, but you obviously have NOT looked at the data.
Sweden is currently running at an average of about 75 deaths/day
Norway are averaging below 5 deaths/day
Czechia – 5 deaths/day
Austria – 6 deaths/day
Denmark – 8 deaths/day
Finland – 7 deaths/day
Luxembourg 2 deaths/day
Switzerland – 20 deaths/day
Just how do tails of under 10 deaths/day catch up with tails of 75 deaths/day
But if you want to see some seriously low number look at the Asians, New Zealnd and Australia.
For instance
Singapore below 3 for the whole period.
South Korea below 2 deaths/day.
Hong Kong 4 deaths in the whole period.
New Zealand 1 deaths/day.
Australia 3 deaths/day.
But that is just one statistic Swedens growth in cases and deaths since March 28th are also much worse than those countries as are their Deaths/Cases.
I acn show you the values if you like.
Clyde Spencer
“According to a commenter below (Rolf) the 3460 figure is not exceptionally high for the first four months for Sweden.”
But that figure is only for deaths associated with Covid-19, where it is specifically mentioned as a contributing cause on the death certificate. That figure does not include deaths caused by other things in Sweden, as far as I know.
A C Osborn
To compare Scandinavian countries, one has to normalize by population. That is, IF the countries had the same population, would the areas under the curves for the death rates be the same?
Clyde Spencer May 14, 2020 at 8:01 pm
So, having been proved wrong you change the criteria.
How about Deaths per Million population?
Try sorting the worldometers COVID-19 page by Deaths per Million population and see where Sweden and those other countries are on the list.
I just can’t be bothered to do it for you.
Everyone loses sight of the original policy to flatten the curve. The only way it would save lives at all was if ICU resources were overwhelmed – but in reality as a lot of the people that got to that stage die regardless, the actual number of lives that could be saved was very low.
Also, most places/countries showed that they could build new ICU capacity faster than the virus could produce victims, and like the UK, this has hardly been used at all.
The flatten the curve policy was never intended to stop/eradicate the virus or reduce the number of infected overall – but in the minds of many the aim has morphed into that.
We now face the prospect of no escape, having disrupted the natural course of the epidemic, instead of letting it burn through and be done with, we now have thousands of smoldering hotspots waiting to erupt with plenty of fuel left to consume. And on top of that, the economy is wrecked. There cannot have been a more stupid ‘expert/science’ lead political decision in history.
Agree with you Mr Grimnasty, though looking at the expert led climate alarmism advice, that is of equal lunacy and possibly even longer gestation than this Covid panic.
No, they did not die in vain, they died in Sweden.
Actually all the data shows is that economic hardship and with it the increased stress/hypertension, domestic violence, suicides, and massive hindering of human progress has been in vain. But sophists don’t like to look at the data do they?
Robert
You must be talking about Stokes.
Remind me again how we stop people from dying? Once the horse has left the barn there isn’t nothing you can do. This thing is to widespread to be put back in the box. Countries that have this under “control” now are just delaying the inevitable. All of those countries will have to quarantine any new arrivals for 2-3 weeks. Guess what that means? No visitors. If a country can thrive without visitors then I guess that’s fine but it will find itself more and more cutoff from the world. Safety above all else is not a world I’m interested in living in and certainly is not the world we have thrived in for thousands of years.
Stokes
Had the other countries in the world acted as sensibly, then Sweden would not have been impacted. However, I think it is unlikely that you can present a case that had Sweden jumped on the Band Wagon, the impact would not have been worse. That is, their pain is not self-inflicted, and milder than it might have been.
They are 6th worst in the world for deaths/million population and still going.
Yes that is the perfect picture of success for a country with a population density of 24 people per square km.
Be careful you don’t generalise.
In Stockholm there is a Somalian population which makes up 0.87% of the city’s population, but which accounted for 40% of the deaths. That impacts the national figure quite significantly
Turns out that when your physiology is evolved for the tropics, moving to a high latitude makes you quite susceptible to VDI in the winter – vitamin D deficiency.
AC Osborn,
At this point in the year Sweden are where they are in the pecking order of how many have contracted the virus/how many have died. The lock down strategy adopted more vigorously than Sweden has resulted in a slower advance of the infected numbers in those locked down, but it will not change the infection rate over time. The virus is still as damaging as it ever was to the vulnerable. Simply saying because they are locked in and away from contact for now, translates into, they have been saved from the virus is ludicrous.
The major benefit for Sweden is, they don’t have to concern themselves with a release of restrictions possibly leading to a new peak , that fate only awaits those countries such as the UK.
We have blocked the transmission via lock down yes, but we have not stopped the ongoing risk to the vulnerable.
I would much prefer to be in Sweden’s camp than the UK’s at this point.
Time will tell who was more sensible.
I am glad you think that.
There are many countries that literally have Thousands of lives in hand if that were to occur and with their Quarantine, Tracking & Tracing along with Treatments they probably have about 5 more waves before they catch up with where Sweden is already.
With regards to the UK, the pandemic has been mis-handled at every point along the way and is still being mis-handled.
So in that respect I agree with your last statement.
Brilliant.
So you’re comparing the death rates over the past 90 days of a country that decided to go straight for herd immunity vs. “curve flateners” where it going to play out over the next 3 flu seasons?
Apples to tricycles.
If you really think Sweden has achieved herd immunity with only 29,000 cases out of a population of 10 million then you are deluded.
Even if they have 10 times that many cases it is still only 290,000 out of 10,000,000.
What you also fail to completely understand is that those countries that have done the best will do exactly the same with the next wave and the one after that.
Where Sweden has thousands of deaths already those countries are in the tens and hundreds.
Just to make it clear
Sweden 3,529 dead and still going at over 75/day.
Hong Kong 4 dead in total
New Zealand 21 dead in total
Singapore 21 dead in total
Slovakia 27 dead in total
Thailand 56 dead in total
Croatia 94 dead in total
Australia 98 dead in total
Malaysia 112 dead in total
Norway 232 dead in total
Finland 287 dead in total
Israel 266 dead in total
Czechia 293 dead in total
Austria 442 dead in total
Denmark 537 dead in total
Poland 893
Switzerland 1872 dead in total
They are just a few examples, so how many waves will they need to catch up to where Sweden is today.
The best case nearly 1000 waves, those below 100, over 350 waves and the worst case 1 wave.
That of course is only to get to where Sweden are now, but they are bound to also have further deaths in the next wave because they are no where near herd immunity yet.
“is projected to suffer somewhere between a 6 to 7 percent hit to its gross domestic product this year”
That would be one half to one third of what’s projected for the lockdown-heavy Italy, so I’d call it a success.
The super spreader incidents in several German towns and the clubs in Seoul shared a commonality. Many people were inside dancing singing, hugging and kissing. Very few, if any, transmissions occurred outside. Therefore, another question I would like answered is: Why are we told to stay home where we can spread the disease to others in the household? Italy should have taught us that this was a bad idea.
I wonder about that, too. Some households have a husband, wife, two dogs, three kids, and grandma. Who are you going to arrest?
Just because the authorities sound the “all clear” or impose no orders doesn’t mean people will resume life as before. They won’t. Citymapper data shows Stockholm to have been around 30% of normal activity over the past couple of months. 70% of people there have self-quarantined.
The fact is, most people won’t develop a critical case of Covid, but it’s a game of Russian roulette. Most people aren’t going to risk it.
“Just because the authorities sound the “all clear” or impose no orders doesn’t mean people will resume life as before. ”
Good point sir.
Here I am still in my house on day 3 of the all clear reading wuwt and writing comments.
It’s become a way of life surrounded by our large garden with home driving range, and all the guava, mango, papaya, and banana you can eat.
but maybe golf tomorrow.
manana.
Willis , What’s your take on the nurse coming forward in this video, saying their killing people???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-tRpXp2apM
Thanks Willis for the best article so far on the Covid-19 Tragedy-Fiasco.
My point is that weak people will die. If we take the US population of 350 M people than most will die within the next 90 years. So 3.89 M people will die every year 10,326 every day.
So how far are we outside that box?
We all know models are not the real world. 99,99 % of women don’t look like the model showing the bikini not even close.
With Photoshop, the model wearing the bikini doesn’t look like that either.
Exactly. It’s all fake. We live in a fake economy with fake news and fake freedom. We are guinea pigs and cannon fodder. Slavery was never abolished it just dresses different.
Just like the saying — in an era of lies, the truth becomes revolutionary (meaning the truth will be attacked viciously).
Want to have few friends? Want to be disliked by many? Just tell the truth often.
Incidence of influenza in summer also decreases. Cooling down the body is conducive to viruses, causing the blood vessels to contract. Therefore, variable weather causes an increase in the incidence.
Zoe,
Death notifications are handled on a MTWThF work schedule. Notices are just in-basketed on the weekend and processed during working hours.
Bureaucracy is not a 24-7-365.25 operation. More like a 6.25-4.25-250.25 operation.
Given erratic results for vaccines, I am pulling for herd immunity. Hiding from viruses works for a while but vigilance is not eternal, a booboo is inevitable.
I’m just eyeballing those graphs here, but if you ask me (which nobody did), they fit the profile of a typical “unflattened” Gompertz epidemic curve. Maybe even fatter in the tail than usual, suggesting disproportionately high deaths during the trailing weeks!
Hi,
I am Swedish and do live in Sweden.
Yesterday our “health minister” told us on TV that we can not expect the goverment nor the authorites to give us detailed instructions. We are expected to use our own brains !?
A bit surpring, considering that Sweden is a rather left wing country.
The general opinion in Sweden seems to be that many people view the restrictions we have as too tough. E.g. you are not allowed to enter a hospital unless you are a patient, you are expected to keep a 2 meter distance to other people in resaturants and bars, you are recommended (not ordered) to work from home if possible, you are recommended to stay home if you feel sick, you should not visit old people (+70 years).
We do also have a rather big downturn in the economy. But the reason is that people chose to avoid restaurants, hotels and travel (using their own brains ?). Another reason is lack of machine parts from China (due to their lockdown).
Nothing is shut down except some parts of high school. The kindergartens do not accept kids with flu symptoms. They have to stay home.
There is a discussion about “opening up”. In reality we have never closed down.
Our health authority tell us that end of the day the number of virus kills will be the same (percentage) in all countries, unless there is vaccine availble very soon (which seems unlikely). The virus is here, we cannot get rid of it, most of us will get it, there is a mortality fraction.
I personally think those behind the curtain use Sweden to experiment this virus in a different set up.
I don’t see how these Socialist who are on any other socialist/fascist/progressive bandwagon would otherwise choose a different approach.
Never think Big Brother Sweden is a free country.
Just want to comment that the reason for Sweden’s somewhat different approach is our “constitution”.
The government is not allowed to interfere with authority decision. The effect is that the strategy has been decided by the health authority – not the government.
Regards from the socialist dictatorship sweden
That of course is a lie – by your government. There is no fixed mortality fraction.
Every indication is. that the more contact you have, the more lethal the virus is.
We want to acquire herd immunity without a high death rate. Less contact is – in the absence of an effective vaccine,and assuming that you can’t catch it twice – the best way to achieve that.
If it is a lie – it is from our Health Authority – not our government. The government has not said this.
The people saying this are medical experts (doctors).
You may bee right that there is no fixed mortality fraction. I hope you are right.
Unfortunately we will get the truth rather soon. In a couple of months we will probably know the right answer about number of virus kills.
Your health ministry is correct, parroting MSM is incorrect.
In the USA the newest talking point to keep the economy on lockdown is “second wave”. And yes, there is almost always a second wave of a novel virus in the second season. The second wave can only be made worse by preventing spread in the first wave, and locking down the economy is not sustainable, so who made the better decision?
My money is on Sweden, but unfortunately the entire world will suffer from the economic suicide – the sledge hammer intended to swat the mosquito.
Except the record on vaccines for coronaviruses is pretty poor….no vaccine yet for SARS-CoV (version1) in 2002+-
And reading things like this gives me no confidence at all https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02344-6
Yes I also understand there’s no vaccine for the last 5 coronaviri which bit.
Now isn’t that handy, if you want to have control of people’s behaviour tell them it’s for a good reason, just tell them you’re keeping them safe while they develop a vaccine for something which we know might take years. And even then ? Another bat virus comes along….
We need to make sure we don;t forget what freedom was like in the end
“Our health authority tell us that end of the day the number of virus kills will be the same (percentage) in all countries”
Sounds like one of the big lie, would you like to buy this nice london bridge I have for sale?
Compare Sweden to the other countries around them.
Osborn
Do you have a crystal ball? The claim was “will be the same.”
It’s a lie, why don’t you spend a few hours every day like me analyzing the Actual numbers and see for yourself
Read my reply to your previous post up thread.
Don’t you understand that some countries know exactly how to handle pandemics because they have been through 2, MERS & SARS over the last 20 years.
Osborn
Actually, I’m spending far too much time on this topic and blog and I’m going to try to deal with the addiction.
Florida is one of the “hardest hit states?” In both cases per capita and deaths per capita, Florida is in the better half of states. And that ranking has been improving.
Florida is a conundrum. A huge elderly population and plenty of sunshine and warmer temperatures.
Florida is a conundrum. A huge elderly population and plenty of sunshine and warmer temperatures.
Not a conundrum — it’s common sense regarding contagious viruses.
I agree with “quarantine the sick, not the healthy” as a general rule, but this virus is spread by the infected before they get sick, so the rule for COVID-19 should be “quarantine the infected, not the uninfected”. To do this effectively you need massive testing of the population, and if you can’t test everyone repeatedly to establish who is infected, the only way to run a quarantine is to assume everyone who hasn’t been cleared is a carrier.
That makes the Government’s position an unenviable one: if they shut down the economy millions will lose their livelihoods, but if they don’t shut it down and millions of people die, the Government is toast.
Donald Trump was a near certainty for re-election this year until the pandemic: now he is being blamed for destroying the economy, while simultaneously being blamed for every single COVID-19 death for doing “Too little, too late.” I don’t think even Joe Biden can lose this one now.
There is the problem that tests are never completely accurate or sensitive. There will always be some combination of false positives and negatives. There is always a window in which a virus escapes detection only to emerge as infection a short time later.
The older you are the more you become thankful that your country (or your people) took the pandemic seriously enough to make you much safer than you would have been otherwise.
What became increasingly obvious by mid-March was that the virus can become aerosolised and therefore you are much safer being outdoors where the air disperses it and the sun kills it than inside, where it can get transmitted via air-conditioning. One of the reasons why Thailand fared so well is that the government told people to turn off their air-con and open their windows. Australia had a mild autumn and so most people spent much time outside, where it was safe. Despite that some crazy authoritarians in government closed some beaches because they got too crowded.
re: “The older you are the more you become thankful that your country (or your people) took the pandemic seriously …”
Oh – you mean like DeBlasio back in February declaring ALL New Yorkers should go out and celebrate the Chinese New Year?
Great observation.
In case you have not noticed, in large part we are ‘served’ (served up?) by self-serving idiots interested in only their OWN prosperity.
„Attention, Citizens! The #COVID19 Emergency Is Over!“
Sure, the first act is over, but this is a three-act play. So, please, keep your panic, there is no reason to be calm.
no wonder, Mr Monckton, has done a runner.
An impressive summary Willis. If only there was some way to bring it to the attention of the idiots in Govt, media and Civil Service who rule Britain today. One of their latest schemes is to fund vaccine research with £744Million ($1Biilion I suppose in the global currency) from a bankrupt exchequer, with no guarantee of success since coronaviruses (so I read here) are difficult to control by vaccination.
Oh and all major roads will be reduced in width for cars to increase cycle lanes which means increasingly staionary traffic with engines running, and the cycle lanes empty. All part of Boris’s scheme to restore the economy by destroying it with Green madness. Some reports say that during Wuhan flu illness the brain may be starved of oxygen , inflicting permanent damage. The reports may be correct.
Every third hospitalized person is dead.
This is what YOU say.
I am very glad we had protective measures.
Iran was one of the first hard hit states.
Young people were falling dead on the streets.
Iran is the early bird.
Check their statistics.
It looked exactly what you suggested: the “emergency” seemed to be “over”.
That was two weeks ago…
Now check it once more.
There is a second wave coming. And it is gonna be high.
You really believe it is just Iran and our countries will be much different?
Naive…
We even did not have the very first wave of the virus yet.
Please bear in mind that this is easy to conclude with the benefit of hindsight. I support the conclusion, stop the lock down but that does not mean that it was a bad idea from the start. Remember the images from northern Italy and the despair of the healthcare professionals the army moving the stockpiling corpses. In the aftermath we will hopefully get a clear picture of how the disease works, the infection path, mutations, true numbers etc. and maybe we will do better next pandemic, or, even better, be more reactive in responding to an outbreak before it develops into a pandemic.
Alexander Vissers May 14, 2020 at 12:51 am
Hindsight? I posted my first broadside on this subject, entitled END THE AMERICAN LOCKDOWN NOW, on the 21st of March, which is almost two months ago.
That’s foresight, not hindsight.
w.
See the result, now. That’s what happens when state policies are driven by emotions and not rationality. When driven by “images” instead of science repeatable facts.
Themis Diakos: “That’s what happens when state policies are driven by emotions and not rationality. When driven by “images” instead of science repeatable facts.”
WR: Agree. In this era ‘Science’ became dependent on politicians (for money) and systems have been built to pay for ‘popular science’ (number of citations needed, press attention etc.). Long term goals in science often disappeared: being popular became important. Now ‘science’ is telling politicians what politicians want to hear: the indepency of Science is gone, an independency that was fundamental in the creation of modern societies. Only an independent Science was able to unravel basic laws over periods of decades and centuries and could help to put into practice the new knowledge by assisting in developing new technologies.
Politicians don’t have any knowledge about the many subjects they have to take decisions on. They have their ‘advisers’ that read the books written by political (!) institutes like the UN, the organisation in which pressure groups have taken central positions. UN is not anymore reigned by Nations. And Science is not anymore lead by smart professors. And rationality is not anymore leading nations. And preparing for REAL dangers became irrelevant: imaginary problems in the 21st century that could, may, might happen became leading. The Climate nonsense is telling.
Societies that are not prepared for real problems showed panic, both in Science and in policy. We now see the results of systems that have been built during the last decades. Fundamental things have to change.
This virus is a wake up-call.
I agree.
For decades, it has become fashionable among researchers to look after statistic correlations. This approach, when not backed up by causality (that is, real science) is slowly destroying science. The Climate nonsense was the first one to use it, almost systematically.
I was astonished to see how many so-called “research” about SARS-CoV-2 was simply a correlation approach to the problem. We were literally buried under a pile of nonsense.
“Fundamental things have to change.” as you say.
As to the comparison between Sweden and the Netherlands, the lock-down in the Netherlands was very moderate. Both countries isolated the care homes for the elderly the main population at risk -in Belgium accounting for 2/3 rds of the death toll. Sweden kept schools bars and restaurants open but mass gatherings are prohibited. The rest of the measures does not so much reduce death toll as it helps to reduce the overall spread of the virus such that remaining cores can be traced and addressed.
Big difference in populations though. Netherlands is heavily populated compared to Sweden.
One thing I take away from all this is the neo-colonialism. The West destroys the global economy to save thousands of elderly and sick which leads to the deaths of millions, including many children, in the third world.
In the film ‘Battle of Britain’ there is a scene where I think Dowding is challenged on his RAF and the Luftwaffe losses, as German media is claiming his figures are wildly exaggerated.
He snaps ‘If we are right, they will give up and go away, if they are right, they will be here by Christmas’.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what the truth is, except to those who claim monopoly of it. Knowing the truth doesn’t change a lot really.
I note that is a new angle of attack on the Trump, as he is now ‘anti science’ and the forces of – well the usual unholy mix of corporate profit and the Linberal technocrats – are now insisting that lockdown ends.
Irrespective of the facts, this will happen, cautiously. And the case rate and the death rate will tell its own story.
I am reminded of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: An Islamic poet, pondering ‘kismet’
The moving finger writes,
and having writ, moves on.
Nor all thy piety, nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line –
Nor all thy tears, wash out one word of it.
Que sera, sera..
Just because death on a grand scale doesn’t happen to us Suburban Westerners any more – after all that’s what is so good about being Suburban Westerners isn’t it? – it simply can’t be happening now, can it? Science and charts and stuff will save us. Won’t they?
I hope it isn’t as bad as feared. I hope desperately that people are wrong, but I wouldn’t want the blood on my hands forming national and international policy based on that.
I’m behind every single government saying, ‘chill, we will relax things a little and see what happens’ Unlike the confidence shown by so many posters here, I really have no idea what the true state of affairs is. But then I know perhaps a little more math. If you know none, than you can be confident in your ignorance. The more you know, the less confident one feels. The Chinese do not tell the truth – they hide things. And yet they admitted to shutting down a population the size of a USA state or a European country. They were scared. Really scared. Perhaps we should be too.
Of course when one’s own government has been lying to one for years, about climate change and renewable energy, there is a strong temptation to say that they are lying now, for the same reason – desire to control, dominate and remove democracy. And make a fat profit at one’s expense.
For every person who says that the scientific method assumes that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow, there is another wise guy saying the past is no guide to the future.
I leave you to your comfortable arguments, and appeals to data.
Morituri, te salutamus
Yes, globally we have flattened the curve.
Next issue.
When can we open up international air travel?
When stop social distancing and wearing masks?
When everything go back to “normal”?
I would say that we had to flatten the curve, because of how china failed to protect
the rest of the world. And the advanced {or those that use a lot air travel} AND the civilized world had to do the job that China failed to do. And that very a very expensive way to deal with this China virus.
And it seems the civilized world have continue to protect the rest of the World and this going to be mostly about international air travel.
We don’t want to do anything like “a china” to the rest of the world.
A main thing is getting enough knowledge about the “state of virus”, or can’t go, oops caused an outbreak of the virus in some other country.
Or we flattened the curve, globally, because we shutdown international air travel {or restricted/limited it a lot]. Simply, we can not sent infected people to other countries and returning to international air travel is going to take some more time.
Or we will probably go back to crowded stadiums before that occurs.
What about, when do stop wearing these masks. It seems we leave lockdown slowly. And do the wearing mask, social distancing, and etc and see what happens, and we wait at least a week before, having a clue what result of lifting what lockdown measured is lifted. Or any result in first few days- doesn’t mean anything in terms of new infection spread, as takes a few days after being infect, before effects are noticeable/testable, so in week of time, you assess situation. Of course there will be uncertainty, but would say it this way, in week you trying to decide what further removal of lockdown you might do in another week time, or planning go back to lockdown you left, starting in another week. But rather go back to lockdown, you could take other measures- such as do a massive amount of contact tracing. But if things go well, then remove more lockdown measures after 2 weeks from when started to end some lockdown measure.
And maybe within a month- decide to stop the face masks and/or social distancing requirement.
In terms of priority, I get kids back to school immediately, but I do 1/2 class size for first 2 weeks- half as much kids go to school in a day and giving 1/2 class size- or kids don’t get a whole school week, but could give them more homework. And got have plan so can finish school year, and ready for next year. And assuming no problems, do full schedule after 2 weeks. And within 2 weeks, kids should all know what they have to do to finish year, and be ready for next year {might require a lot of homework}.
And back to “normal” {other than international air travel] could be by mid-summer. Everywhere, globally.
Now, might do changes in Air travel and mass transportation vehicles to limit any kind of spread of virus- which could also allow international air travel to begin faster.
Great summary, Willis! An exceptional post and I really appreciate all the effort you’ve put in on this topic over all these weeks.
I’ve been on the same page as you, philosophically (and I would say, scientifically) since the beginning of this viral outbreak so I completely agree with your analysis of the data and what needs to be done now!
Human beings can’t shelter in caves forever – if our ancestors had done that, we would have become extinct, as a species, a long time ago!
Keep up the great work, sir!
As far as I can tell, the Taiwanese have done the best job in the world, and have the best results, and Taiwan didn’t have an economy-destroying lockdown. link
Taiwan should be studied. Individual people should understand exactly what happened and why. One of the family members with deep roots in Taiwan tells me that one of the reasons for Taiwan’s success is that Taiwanese citizens uniformly obeyed the government ordered restrictions.
Taiwan got on the problem early and hard. Everybody else was left closing the barn door after the horses had left.
Because it’s possible to spread this coronavirus long before you show symptoms, a country can be widely infected before anyone knows there’s a problem. link
Taiwan didn’t listen to the WHOs recommendations that shutting down travel between your nation and China would only make the problem worse. By the problem, I think they must have meant the ongoing success of capitalism.
IHMO, there is so little consistency in the data, comparisons of national summary figures are probably not productive. However considering outliers might yield insights.
Taiwan indeed has shown excellent results (except in being included in WHO meetings), but they have a trivial number of cases, which to me means they have a large number of susceptible people. S. Korea has a much larger number of cases which they managed to control effectively with a very low death rate. If I were looking for advice on epidemic management and critical care treatment I would definitely be talking to the Koreans. The S. Korean head of their national infectious disease agency states positively that masks do work and people should wear them. He could be influenced by cultural bias, but I’d still take that advice rather than argue.
Germany did not manage to control the infection spread as well as S. Korea, but they have a much lower fatality/infection case ratio than France or UK — why? I’d really like to know what explains that. Are they attributing deaths differently or do they have different treatment regimens?
There has got to be loads of interesting data from infection results in the military — an overwhelmingly young and fit population. This would really help assessing the likely risk for the working-age population, but I gather the military doesn’t want to release that data publicly. But someone involved in the federal task force should be looking at it. Plus the nice thing about military patients is you can count on almost 100% compliance with orders to submit to follow-up tests — no disappearing patients from your study sample.
Alan, you level 7 climate denialist rogue, you !
Great piece on “cutting through the matrix”
Why don’t you try to get a story or two posted here as a guest author?
Try submitting a short treatise, see link at the top of the page, but do keep out any profanities 😉
How’s the weather/climate “oop north, ken” ?
Can YOU see the wood for the trees at least ?
The chance has not “GONE”, it was taken. You seem to ignore that the peaks we see occurred when they did in large part because of confinement. Sweden got it exactly right but that does not mean it would have worked out the same in NYC.
The other side of flattening the curve is that when you relax measures it spreads again. That does not seem to be at all visible in Spain and Italy which started unwinding on 14th April. That means there’s some major factors which are NOT accounted for by the simplistic modelling the likes of Dr. Fauci and Prof Pantsdown are working with.
I agree with you that this was ill-conceived and should have been walked back at least a month ago in Europe.
They have quite deliberately provoked an economic crisis, which was probably coming anyway. This just gives them an excuse to pretend the system was not on the point of imploding anyway.
2 out of 3 people that have been confirmed with SARS-COV-2 in NYC were sheltering at home…
You are correct, what is your point?
This year’s flu season ended at least 4 weeks sooner than it has ever ended before. I used the WHO ‘Flu-net’ global influenza reporting website to find it.
To see this year’s rapid ending at around week 13 go here (flu season usually runs to weeks 18-22
https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=6
To check the database for your own country use this tool
https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=7
The main page with all tools is here https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/charts/en/
It appears to me that a large number of flu cases are being written up as covid cases
“It appears to me that a large number of flu cases are being written up as covid cases”
Or that the Covid opportunistically attacked vulnerable people who might otherwise have succumbed to flu.
Maybe something in between perhaps. It’s a virus it isn’t a living thing, so it can’t ‘opportunistically’ do a single thing. It’s a bit of protein
Viruses can mutate and adapt to their environment. I agree that it is questionable whether “living” applies but they do adapt in the Darwinian sense.
Could adaptation be the wrong term ? I adapt to my environment, in order to achieve my goals
But, I have goals, and intent. Does a piece of protein have the same determination. Isn’t it just random chemistry ?
I know it seems pedantic, but we seem to attribute intelligence to enemies, even when they have no possibility of having intent. They just react with their environment
It’s not pedantic, it’s a valid point but who ever talked of a virus being intelligent or having “intent”?
Natural selection favours whatever flavour works better. This can be by random mutation and does not require any “intent” on the part of whatever is mutating.
There is a lot of confusion spread by stupid anthropomorphisation in pop science and scientists trying to talk down to the general population when speaking to media outlets.
I’ve seen lots of headlines about “vicious ” blackholes “murdering” nearby stars etc. Both of these terms imply intent and conscience which is no more appropriate than in the case of a virus.
Yes I get that, i think I’ve been too locked down.
Tensions are rising, need to be patient ! Don’t need to die of a heart attack brought on by a fake virus !
Well, just maybe the measures taken to suppress COVID-19 also had some effect on flu viruses?
Yes that was also pointed out elsewhere, after I posted it.
The WHO have noted the short season. For sure they’ll just use it as proof that distancing ‘works’
Willis: “quarantine the sick rather than the healthy”
WR: This is the main thing we learned in the West. Together with extensive track and tracing of ‘contacts’ this gives at least some control. Further the awareness that 80% of contaminations happen by family members could change social behavior where needed: better not to celebrate birthdays etc..
Shutting down physical contacts between people is what is needed to constrain the virus. Now that we see that there are many asymptomatic cases the virus seems easier to control than previously thought.
Better first ‘shut social contacts’ where needed then shut the full economy. That’s what we have learned.
Once you have massive spread of infection, “track and trace” is NOT a valid strategy. Governments still proposing this are simply seeking an excuse to further trash constitutional rights which have been an impediment to them.
REFUSE all attempts at intrusive, unconstitutional intrusion into your personal contacts, movement and association.
There is nothing in the constitution which says that in a state of emergency , the constituion no longer applies.
Greg: “REFUSE all attempts at intrusive, unconstitutional intrusion into your personal contacts, movement and association.”
WR: In case of a war, rules change. In case of a war common interest weighs heavier than personal interest. When a virus is destroying an economy (and when there is not yet a good other answer) you have to fight a war against the virus. Then the common interest becomes prevalent.
The original Wuhan report (flawed or not) is here
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v1.full.pdf
Lines 78-80 show a 94.6% resemblance to SARS-CoV (SARS), hence why this one is named SARS-CoV-2
Line 242 shows this virus’s familial position among all coronaviruses.
Useful to have, when confonted with someone who insists “It’s completely new, we’ve never had a coronavirus before”
94.6% sounds like *really* similar but in genetics it is *really* differnt.
It like homo sapiens vs water buffalo.
If you came across the fossilised remains of a water buffalo would you say: H. sapiens-2 and conclude there was just a genetic jump which happened in a “wet market” ?? Boeuf-a-l’eau : must be from a wet market , right?
Thanks but, when I read the report from Wuhan, can you explain to me how THEY knew what it was due to it’s similarity ?
Accumulated evidence and agreement in the scientific community. A lot of things have changed their names over time due to new insights.
For the history of SARS-CoV-2:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095448/
Willis
“Here’s what I would do..”
There are many types preventions and treatments.
You are really only focusing on different types of isolation preventions, which I agree with.
But other preventions could be about improving people’s health( immune system) in a number of ways.
Two examples I just dreamed up.
#1. Marketing campaign about having healthy lifestyle
#2. Blood test vulnerable people for vitamins deficiency. Say free blood test for over 65s . Oh sir you are deficient in zinc or vitamin D.
“Epidemiologist Dr Knut Wittkowski explains in a new interview that the danger of Covid19 is comparable to an influenza and that the peak was already passed in most countries before the lockdown. The lockdown of entire societies was a „catastrophic decision“ without benefits but causing enormous damage. The most important measure is the protection of nursing homes. According to Dr. Wittkowski, Bill Gates‘ statements on Covid19 are „absurd“ and „have nothing to do with reality“. Dr. Wittkowski considers a vaccination against Covid19 „not necessary“ and the influential Covid19 model of British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson a „complete failure“.
Willis Eschenbach wrote:
And that doesn’t count the loss of life from increased suicides and from delayed medical diagnosis and procedures.
This is turning out to be enormous and immediate:
British Medical Journal:
“Staggering number” of extra deaths in community is not explained by covid-19
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
“Only a third of the excess deaths seen in the community in England and Wales can be explained by covid-19, new data have shown.”
Not only did emptying the hospitals of old people to make way for COVID-19 victims (who didn’t show up nearly as much as “modelled”) cause thousands of COVID-19 deaths in care homes, it caused an even larger number to die from the lack of normal treatment they would have received.
Is there a rural New York?
It is clear the all the variables of the virus are unknown.
Age impacts, comorbidity impacts, weather impacts appear obvious for everyone.
But two other variables are becoming interesting.
#1 the variation in R0
#2 the variation in population density.
My colleague Mr H the architect presents or consults with 20-30 people a week. Whereas I (the Engineer) meet only about 10 people a week*.
Our partial lockdown has reduced Mr H contact to about 5 and me to about 5.
I don’t believe full lockdown is necessary, just a reduction in higher risk contacts
* I don’t include saying gday in the hallway.
Sorry I forgot to highlight we have many projects in rural towns, spread significantly reduced by our partial lockdown
Reducing contacts is very efficient in bringing the epidemic to a halt this study claims:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/04/science.abb8001
So you don’t need a lockdown. You need contact reduction.
Problem is a lot of things require people gathering in big groups in confined space with bad ventilation. The Chinese restaurant study is very intriguing that in this environment even distant tables are not protective against infection by air flow:
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article
That explains why New York City with it’s huge night life scene but very small bars and restaurants was so good in spreading but it has broad implications for a lot of other businesses as well. Think about big office spaces, about non-automated production production facilities etc.
It has also implications about how asymptomatic people spread the disease. It has implications for commuting in public transportation which is further shown by the analyses in New York City hot spots:
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42665370
Think about school buses and air conditioned class rooms.
This study had a look about spreading in a high school:
Works quite well in spreading. Colleges are therefore also expected to do a good job.
“Works quite well in spreading. Colleges are therefore also expected to do a good job.”
Spreading the virus among the young is indeed a Good Thing. In fact, for every age group it is a Good Thing for spreading among the younger. The older you get the more the ages for spreading being a Good Thing.
Imagine 100% infection in the 0-9 yr age group. Deaths in that group, so far, have been that COVID19 acts as the tipping point in one seriously ill. This would mean that contact with children would be safe. Grandparents need not be afraid to hug their grandchildren.
Imagine 100% infection in the 0-20 yr age group. School children and many college students could simply resume normal activities.
This might be enough of a herd to bring the R-naught below 1.
Being 76 I have skin in the game, I want everyone 62 years and younger to get back to work so I can stop my self-isolation. In my Winnebago touring the USA, meeting wonderful folks at Austin East KOA, now in Colorado (where the state campgrounds remain closed), perhaps Nebraska next.
You might reconsider this idea cause COVID-19 is a multi organ disease with unknown not characterized long term outcome:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2011400
Article about the study:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2011400
Scientists at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf have found that Covid-19 is a “multi-organ virus”. This also provides information on possible consequential damage to an infection.
The novel coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 is not a pure respiratory virus. In addition to the lungs, it can also be found in numerous other organs and organ systems. This was the result of a study at Hamburg University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE), which was published on Thursday. According to the researchers, the results provide information on early detection and possible consequential damage from a corona infection.
In their study, the kidney experts, microbiologists and pathologists from the UKE analyzed the autopsy results of 27 people who died from a Sars-CoV-2 infection. Specifically, the scientists were able to detect the pathogen in the lungs, throat, heart, liver, brain and kidneys. The highest concentrations of the virus per cell were found in the respiratory tract, followed by the kidney, heart, liver, brain and blood.
This makes Sars-CoV-2 a “multi-organ virus” that affects numerous organs. This could explain the sometimes wide range of symptoms that appear in corona infections. After the respiratory tract, the kidneys are particularly affected. This also explains the extremely high rate of up to 50 percent of acute kidney failure in severe Covid 19 courses, the experts said.
Dialysis machines were also becoming scarce
As a consequence of these results, urine tests are now recommended at the beginning of a coronavirus disease. Further studies should show whether urine changes can serve as an early warning system for severe Covid 19 courses.
In addition, aftercare also wants to pay much more attention to secondary diseases of individual organ systems. Because every second patient leaves the hospital after his recovery with slightly increased kidney values. According to Prof. Tobias B. Huber, head of the UKE study, the kidneys still have recovery potential even after acute failure.
The results of the study have now been published in the current edition of the renowned journal “New England Journal of Medicine”. Huber also reports a shortage of dialysis machines due to the large accumulation of severe kidney failure in the intensive care unit. “It sank a bit that in Italy and New York, in addition to ventilators, dialysis machines were also missing,” said Huber. The UKE therefore bought additional equipment.
I also wonder how vitamin D helps against renal disease, oh, wait, people with kidney failure have lower vitamin D levels – chicken and egg.
The virus can cause coronary artery calcification (CAC) which in turn can affect multiple organs.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04363840
Vitamin D is essential for proper calcium use by the body and it turns out that calcification of the kidneys is a bad thing.
Wrong. The authors use CAC that way:
No calcification.
This study has a finding that vitamin D supplementation might be pro-thrombotic and therefore contraindicated in the context of hypercoagulation:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1076029614556745
The study came from this clinical trial:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT01761669
They expected to see the opposite. That is why we do trials.
Just talking in closed rooms could spread the virus more than initially thought:
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/12/2006874117
One troubling thought is that AC dries out the air and could thereby promote aerosol vs droplet formation.
2nd Nurse Exposes the Realities In New York Hospitals.
The nurse describes Mr. Lerner’s utopian leftist society at its finest.
1:30 in and its already boring.
ADD playing up again Jim???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2yJ-VaMDYs
Also confirmed by other nurses and M.Ds.
Very strong evidence emerging that vitamin D consumption plays an essential role in protecting against covid-19.
In the northern hemisphere the outbreak began towards the end of winter, when vitamin D deficiency is most likely.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/930152
Did you read Nic Lewis on this site about how herd immunity comes at 10-20% due to varying susceptibility in the population? It varies by eg population density.
Will
And that may explain why the peaks are hit in less than a month in almost all countries.
Controversy rages:
– “The science suggests that being outside in sunlight, with good ventilation, are both highly protective against transmission of the virus,” he (Prof. Alan Penn) told MPs.
However:
– Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary warned that “sunbathing is against the rules”. He accused people of “putting others’ lives at risk” and warned that outdoor exercise could be banned if people did not keep away from parks.
Despite that:
– Many scientists have pointed out that there is currently no evidence that coronavirus has ever been transmitted outdoors, while there is abundant evidence of indoor transmission.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
What a difference a year makes…
https://www.countryliving.com/uk/wellbeing/a27122546/doctors-tell-patients-outdoors-improve-wellbeing/
“Doctors are prescribing fresh air to boost the health and wellbeing of their patients, which will be known as ‘green health prescriptions’.
The new initiative will encourage people to spend more time outside in green spaces and around nature. Patients will be offered nature-based activities as part of their treatment or advice from their local doctor, which will be printed to look like GP prescriptions.
The NHS have explained that there is a strong connection between green space and good mental and physical health. Whether it’s a local woodland area, park or by simply getting fresh air close to where patients live, doctors are encouraging people to make the most of the outdoor space around them.
“There is no doubt that there is a strong connection between green space and good mental and physical health,’ explains Grant Archibald, chief executive of NHS Tayside to The Mirror.
“Parks, woodlands and open spaces make a real difference to how happy we feel. They also improve our immune system and encourage physical activity and social interaction,” continues Grant.”
Vuk
check this video out , it’s long but exposes the truth.
https://www.patrickbetdavid.com/former-aids-scientist-calls-out-dr-faucis-medical-corruption/
It exposes some truth. Telling which is truth and which is not is the challenge, but accepting the word of a felon carries risk.
She was help in custody with no charges. She’s a whistleblower, that’s her crime.
This article is titled “Indoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1
Now this is a non-peer reviewed study and “…extracted from the local Municipal Health Commissions of 320 prefectural cities (municipalities) in China, not including Hubei province…” Keep that in mind.
Conclusion from the abstract: “Conclusions: All identified outbreaks of three or more cases occurred in an indoor environment, which confirms that sharing indoor space is a major SARS-CoV-2 infection risk.”
To simplify: get out in the fresh air… the benefits are high and the risk is very low.
Hospitalization rate and death rate have to be calculated from the number of infections not total population.
Spain has done an antibody test with 90,000 people in 36,000 households and comes back with a number of ~5% of their population having been infected at some time. 10% for Madrid, 2% in less hit regions.
For Spain that would result in an IFR of 1.2%. And as it becomes more and more clear that SARS-CoV-2 represents also as thromboembolism I suspect that a lot of strokes, heart attacks and organ failure are actually caused by the virus to induce hypercoagulation and those will not show up in the Spanish death statistics cause they are not testing a lot of people outside the hospitals and other deaths except pneumonia are not even considered to be caused by COVID-19.
Looking at the excess death statistics of Spain the official number even looks way too low:
https://www.isciii.es/QueHacemos/Servicios/VigilanciaSaludPublicaRENAVE/EnfermedadesTransmisibles/MoMo/Documents/informesMoMo2020/MoMo_Situacion%20a%205%20de%20abril_CNE.pdf
Btw hypercoagulation and the related diseases are, for a fact, highly overrepresented in African-Americans and so they are in the death rate.
A new study in Science estimates 4.4% for France, so way from herd immunity.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/12/science.abc3517
For France the hospitalization rate from the study was 3.6% with the lowest rate in women under 20y still being 0.2%. So the hospitalization rate would be ten times as much as you are suggesting on average and if you infect 20 millions under 20y you get 40,000 people hospitalized.
I hear these claims all the time but where’s the data? Hard data, not some people’s guesses.
That the US health care, unemployment and social security system is not very resilient against a pandemic is a different story.
In some countries the virus is spreading more easily than in other countries. One of the reason is that the virus prefers fatty tissue.
Overweight Covid-19 patients are especially vulnerable. This has been known since the virus started to manifest itself in countries with a high rate of obesity. (About obesity see https://renewbariatrics.com/obesity-rank-by-countries/ : “highest rate of obesity by population or by percentage“ (below the page)). The chances of ending up in intensive care double if the BMI is above 30 [Kg/m2].
In New York City, those over 60 years, compared with those with BMI lower than 30, the risk for critical care was 1.8 times (nearly 2) higher if the BMI was 30 to 34, and it was 3.6 times (nearly 4) higher if the BMI was above 35. (Prof. Naveed Sattar, University of Glasgow (UK))
Why is this so?
The first reason is that the antenna, the gate through which the virus enters our cells, is also present on fat tissue. The infection occurs through the nose or throat. Once you are infected, and the virus gets into your bloodstream, the virus can proliferate in your fat tissue, which have the right receptor for the virus. The more fat tissue you have, the more serious the infection will become.
There is interesting recent publication in which the authors describe how fat people also have hearths of fat cells (lipofibroblasts) in the lungs that can also be infected. Once infected, these give rise to scars, disruption of the lung architecture, poor oxygen absorption. Those patients become very seriously ill and often die. Those cells in the lungs get infected, and it’s those cells that give those horrible images seen on the scans of patients with that huge destruction regions on the lungs.
The publication can be downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.22856
(techinical!): Ilja L. Kruglikov, and Philipp E. Scherer, THE ROLE OF ADIPOCYTES AND ADIPOCYTE-LIKE CELLS IN THE SEVERITY OF COVID-19 INFECTIONS.
This is one reason why the virus is more devastating in some countries (such as the USA).
There is a drug that could actually stop that transition from lipofibroblast (flexible fat cell) to the myofibroblast (scar cell of connective tissue): Avandia (rosiglitazone).
CAUTION! The applicability to Covid-19 patients of this drug has yet to be confirmed in studies. Possibly it could be a favorable step. Not only would mortality decrease, but rehabilitation would also go much faster.
The mentioned article concludes with the proposal that obesity has to be decreased in the long run, in view of the negative clinical prognosis.
The perfect communist bioweapon !
It does not really explain how hard Wuhan got hit.
I traveled to Wuhan regularly over a few years. There are a lot of fat (not morbidly obese like many Americans) people there, especially among those who lived through the cultural revolution. In some ways being overweight is considered a positive status symbol that 30 or 40 years ago was very rare.
Wuhan is crowded. During rush hour to get into and out of subways the crowding is like when a football game ends. Air pollution there is terrible. It’s overcast much of the time in winter and a lot of shops are underground in the city center. Some apartment complexes have thousands upon thousands of people living in a very small area. Hygiene practices are poor. It’s a second tier city and nasty in most areas.
Thanks for your insights. Like in many poor cultures, being fat means being wealthy ie “beautiful”.
Your other comments support what I said, that BMI does not explain Wuhan, pollution and density are probably far more relevent.
Pathologists have not described any finding in this direction. And it is actually quite amazing what pathologists can see just in a plain eosin/hematoxylin histological staining. Fibrosis can originate from a lot of cells. In fact, many cell types upregulate fibroblast marker when going into senescence. There is data that even neurons do so.
In Sweden, where I live, we have prohibited gatherings of more than 50 people, and a few other restrictions, but otherwise no other limitations to our freedom of movement, except the government urging us to keep distance, wash your hands and do not travel if you don´t have to. And, as Willis wrote, Sweden seems to do relatively well, when it comes to mortality in Covid-19, compared to countries with more or less complete lock-downs. But the media in Sweden are filled with reports of people dying en masse. So, what are the facts?
About 90 000 people die every year in Sweden. 2018 was a year with unusually many deaths, 92 000, and 2019 was a year with unusually few deaths, a bit under 89 000. So let us compare what has happened so far in 2020, with 2018. In the first quarter of 2020, 24442 people died, compared to 26577 in 2018. Then in April, we saw a sharp rise in the number of deaths, to 10198, compared to 7797 in 2018, which caused the mortality for the first four months of 2020 to rise to 34640 people, compared to 34374 in 2018, that is, an excess death of 266 people. Obviously not a catastrophic scenario.
What we don´t know is whether we have reached the peak in Covid-19 deaths in Sweden, or if we will see a continuing excess mortality in the months to come. The numbers for 2020 are still preliminary, so probably we will see an adjustment upwards in the coming weeks. But still, my feeling is that this pandemic, in Sweden, has not caused the death toll to rise above what is normal. What has probably happened, in March and April, is that people that would have died anyway in the coming months, died a little bit earlier. If that is correct, we should see a decline in the number of deaths, so that in a few months from now, deaths in Sweden will not be different from any other year. Only future will tell.
Scandinavian countries seem to be predominantly leftwing, so I imagine their media are about as objective as CNN and the UK Guardian.
Somehow , not wanting to destroy peoples lives and livelihoods and make them lose their homes and jobs is perceived as “right wing” Trump like attitude as so to be opposed by all means necessary.
They seem oblivious to the need for a healthy economy to keep hospitals running, welfare payments going and to have the luxury to take care of the environment.
The numbers I quoted in my post are total deaths in Sweden, not Covid-19 deaths.
An excellent article Willis. One of the most informative and well articulated I’ve read on the subject. Many thanks.
There is an arrogance in making a recipe for how a country should react to the virus.
Many countries have been very lucky with their closedowns. Greece had very fast reactions, and kept the virus from spreading from the first day. So they spared thousand of lives among their elderly. A great contrast to Italy. Greece have 15 deaths pr million, Italy has over 514. This is the difference of a slow and a fast lockdown. Now Greece can open up in a controlled way, with testing and tracking.
But what do you do when the Government of UK had deliberately dismantled the Country’s Health service, so that it did not cope with business as usual.
Dismantling the NHS was a Government policy.
Expert mortality predictions ranged from hardly anybody to almost everybody, and they still do!
I keep hearing experts say children are least affected and we should not worry so much about them, but not one expert knows why. So we send them to school and cross our fingers?
Sweden is a special case.
We have one of the highest, if not the highest, number of single persons households in the world. That helps in pandemics. Also social distancing is part of our culture in Sweden, we avoid coming close to others especially strangers even without the pandemic. Also Sweden is a very sparsely populated country, we spread out. Also the graph comparing deaths is logarithmic on the death axis wich fools the eye. We will seee when this is over who was right Sweden or the others.
Sweden undoubtedly got it right for Sweden. That does not mean there is one right/wrong answer that everyone should be using.
Norway seem to be waiting for zero cases before they stop destroying their economy. New cases was below 100 per day there, over a month ago. That is a months worth of pointless damage.
Norway is rich. They sell oil and gas but are running mostly independent on that by wind and water. They will do just fine as soon as the others need oil and gas again. They can afford it. That is their whole secret behind their decision.
I agree, they have enough “carbon” wealth to one side to weather the storm, and can afford to shoot their economy in to foot for the virtue signalling it gains them.
It is still pretty dumb thing to do.
The Norwegians changed their government once from the Conservative party to the Socialdemocrats although everything was better than ever cause they believed the Socialdemocrats would distribute the wealth the Conservatives acquired in a more responsible way.
Any more questions?
Thanks Willis for a clear and sober article on this crucial subject. I am a teetotaller but what the Irish politicians, their advisors and Irish Media are continually spouting is enough to drive me to drink – and our head of state is a medical doctor by training! 🙁
Willis, I would love to see a graph for Ireland with the CEEMD residual but not being a Math person do not believe I could draw one. Would you be able to kindly help or one of your clever readers? Thanks.
Micheal, you don’t really need to filter the irish data, there is not the same weekly cycle.
If you want to know how to get the data extract and produce that graph, I’ll point to some info. You’ll need to adapt and do a little work but pretty simple.
Has anyone an explanation for the often seen sub-waves in the above diagrams? Why are deaths distributed in this way?
some cases like UK and US just look like low reporting at the weekend. Others, like Spain Italy and Germany do appear to have a genuine weekly cycle, rising and falling during the week and not necessarily having a trough on the weekend.
Having lived in a number of African countries I am puzzled by what is happening on the African continent – especially south of the Sahara. Africa has four times the population of the US but as I write they have 74,064 cases and 2,508 deaths. Compare this to the US with 1,430,348 cases and 85,197 deaths. This also does not rhyme with the claims that people of African origin in the US and UK are more vulnerable than those of European extract – for supposedly genetic reasons.
There may be a number of explanations:
1. It is early days and the virus arrived later in Africa. I find this strange because China has many projects in African countries and they have many Chinese working in these countries.
2. The real numbers of cases and deaths are being concealed. I also find his strange because despite poverty many Africans have mobile phones and are as avid about social media as in the West. Mass deaths would soon leak out. South Africa with the highest number of cases has only 12,074 while the next highest Ghana and Nigeria has less than this combined. Admittedly, the whole of Africa has slightly fewer tests than France.
3. The age demographics in Africa. Far smaller percentage of elderly and old people. Life expectancy in the EU is nearly 81 while in Sub-Saharan Africa it is 61.
4. Perhaps the numbers of those who die because of the virus are higher in Africa – but not diagnosed – but much lower in the US/Europe because of numbers inflated by those dying because of comorbidities.
5. Could the widespread use of Malaria medication, the BCG vaccine for TB and the MMR vaccine given to children plus the fact that few are given an annual flu vaccine – one or more of these – play a role in the lower numbers?
If these numbers stay low, it may soon prove that coronavirus is not the mass killer that the medical alarmists have predicted. I hope so.
“This also does not rhyme with the claims that people of African origin in the US and UK are more vulnerable than those of European extract – for supposedly genetic reasons. ”
It does though. The darker the skin the slower it is at producing vitamin D due to skin pigmentation filtering out UV. The sun is the same sun, but when in Africa, darker skins produce enough vitamin D due to the extra sun received, when compared to the amount of sun received at higher latitudes.
At this time of year Southern African nations have just had summer and so there is a naturally high level of vitamin D among the populations. Not the only reason but it needs to be considered
Thanks Chris. I did see a similar comment elsewhere but how much of a role vitamn D deficiency plays compared to adopting an unhealthy Western fast food diet – which many many Americans and Brits follow – and sedentary lifestyle. I recall reading that mixed race appears to have the lowest fatality rate. I wonder if it is not a combination of factors – including smoking – some which may be overlooked and hence the media misattribution to racial origin.
I think diet is crucial. General overall health is critical at times like these
If you drink too much your live/kidneys are overloaded, not what you need when there’s a virus in town, some covid patients end up with renal failure. But then again unhealthy people are getting ill every day.
We saw recently in the UK, ex Prime Minister Gordon Bloody Brown, make the case again for one world government (i think he’s planting seeds), and he would like the UN and the WHO to be the backbone
If you’re going to have a single government one thing you need is broad healthcare system, one which establishes the risk factors in different populations.
During lockdown right now we can establish the base rate of hospital attendance for ’emergencies only’ which is the sort of information I can only imagine is proverbial god dust to insurance companies.
From what I’ve read, about 2.5 billion people in the world don’t have access to banking services. It doesn’t make sense to open a branch in a rural area, but digital banking is another story.
When people have banking they can have loans. Good business, but to make sure the loan gets repaid there needs to be a basic minimum health level, which might require everybody vaccinated to the same standard first before an insurance policy can be written.
I think there’ a lot going on, China are introducing the first state backed digital currency next month, I wonder what plans lie ahead for the ordinary African
You’ve probably identified all of the most important factors. Age demographics is likely the most important or very close to it.
Thanks Willis for an informative post and all the work on the analysis and figures. Plotting figure 2 to a common baseline was eye opening for me, and the CEEMD method is really showing it’s worth – barely a wiggle from the outliers in the Belgian and New York data.
In the last week or so the Swedish death rate was one of, if not the fastest rising among the major affected European countries
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/EuropeCV.htm
The mask-and-glove wearing, the 6-foot “rule”, and the obsessive-compulsive hand-washing and crazy sanitizing of, well, everything are all symptoms of a society that has gone off the rails with hysteria. To a great extent, it mirrors the hysteria about CO2, with the obvious exception, and further absurdity that the additional CO2 is actually beneficial, including any slight increased warming it may have caused. What a world.
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. – Benjamin Franklin
Or, how about:
Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. – Ron Paul (1935- )
Living in Illinois – which apparently is not past its peak – where the governor has no legal emergency power beyond 30 days, we are supposedly locking down until a vaccine is developed. Meanwhile, over there in FL where they also haven’t completed a peak, they are opening up without significant damage. Hmmm.
Too early to tell. Keep your fingers crossed.
Madison County IL opened up yesterday by order of the Commissioners. That is just across the river from St. Louis. Pritzker with his comment about “Eradicating the virus” has revealed himself to be a complete moron getting very bad advice. The rest of Illinois will soon follow Madison County, I hope…
“The spike in the New York data is from a single day’s reporting of a bunch of “overlooked” deaths in nursing homes.”
This makes me wonder how the graph of reported deaths actually compares to a graph based on the actual date of deaths. For example, the Georgia graph in the post has a 4/7 spike of nearly 100 with a number of days over 60. In the graph at dph.georgia.gov, 4/7 has just 31 deaths, and the high is 52 deaths on 4/17.
Counting this way does make today’s brand new data unreliable, in the DPH graph data past 30 April is still “preliminary” and shows a steep drop-off that will certainly be less step as information comes in. But the alternative of tracking the difference in counted deaths reported without considering when the dates were have the effect of moving past deaths into the present, which will mask an actual decline in deaths.
The emphasis on saving lives over economic damage (even without good evidence that extending mandatory lockdowns will *actually* save lives long-term) reminds me of this classic Bloom County cartoon (a practice debate between Milo and VP candidate Opus)
Milo: I understand that my opponent supports the 55 M.P.H. speed limit.
Opus: Saves 500 lives a year! I fully support saving lives.
Milo: Then he’d support the saving of another 10,000 lives by lowering the limit to 40 M.P.H.
Opus: 40?
Milo: Or to 20 … Saving 30,000 lives a year.
Opus: Gee… 20 is pretty slow.
Milo: Apparently my opponent would send 30,000 men, women, and children to fiery, mangled deaths just so he can zoom along to his manicurist at 55.
Opus: I DON’T HAVE A MANICURIST!
Milo: He probably doesn’t. Most mass murderers don’t. Hitler didn’t.
About those questions for the “shutdowners,” safety is an illusory elusion.
Here in Aus on public transport train stations we get, every 30 seconds, announcements…”Blah blah blah! Do your BIT for a safer trip!” Seriously…
Willis, it would be interesting to see how the pandemic behaved in Abu Dhabi in the large buildings. Kind of another petrie dish like the Diamond Princess.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE LOCKDOWNS SAVED LIVES. IT IS INDISPUTABLE THEY CAUSED GREAT HARM
https://wmbriggs.com/post/30833/#comment-186097
Great job Matt – but the real trick is to get it right in the first weeks, with much less data. 😉
Best, Allan
Willis – I would add to your graphic’s response to those who want to remain shut down the following:
If you still want to feel safe there is nothing stopping you from a self-quarantine for your own protection.
Thanks for tracking all this and this summary.
“The #COVID19 Emergency Is Over!”
Not by a long shot, politically. The number of people I work with here in Aus are living in so much fear is mind boggling! Scared to walk outside, get some sun (24c+) and fresh air, y’know, the best things to beat a virus in most cases.
I am glad I volunteered to be the “resident office covid-19 monkey” (It was my best option at the time) that actually had to turn up and do physical work.
See “The Prisoner” starring Patrick McGoohan … imprisoned for ??? (We never really did find out.)
I watched the series in the 70’s, No. 6 was No. 1 too. As well as BBC’s “The Survivors”, I think you can view the whole series in YouTube. Here is an intro…
Here in Indiana, our government tested a random sample of 5,000 people, and found that only 2-3% of us have the virus or antibodies.
That’s worrisome. We should have been well on our way toward herd immunity at this point; instead, these Draconian measures mean we’re going to be vulnerable to another wave down the road.
Spend the intervening time getting yourself healthy and encouraging everyone you can to do so. The virus is no match for a healthy immune system.
How does a government-declared “emergency” end?
Dear President Trump,
The current emergency was declared in order to flatten the curve. The curve has flattened. No hospitals have been nor are expected to be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.
Please, sir, undeclare the emergency.
Regards,
George Steele
76, healthy and taking Quercetin and Zn.
Congrats Willis – you and I called it correctly in mid-March and the high-priced help got it dead wrong.
A dispassionate review of the evidence will conclude that the Covid-19 full-lockdown was a costly, destructive debacle.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown I wrote that it was a mistake. The Covid-19 illness was not significantly worse than a bad seasonal flu, but the authorities hugely over-reacted:
“Like swatting a fly on a glass table – with a sledgehammer!”
I think Trump was initially correct but was persuaded to change by his advisers. He wisely left the lockdown decision to the Governors, a few of whom actually got it right, but many more chose full-lockdown. Democrats in the USA love to abuse their powers – many are covert Marxists – that’s how they roll. Now the Dems are extending the lockdown to try to harm the economy – and Trump’s chances of re-election.
Speaking of Marxists, our “Little Dictator” Justin Trudeau illegally tried to seize unlimited spending power using Covid-19 as his excuse, but was stopped by the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition had earlier upbraided Trudeau, telling him that “George Orwell’s ‘1984’ was supposed to be a cautionary tale about the evils of big government, not an instruction manual for this Prime Minister.” Trudeau and his minions are destroying Canada.
Regards, Allan
____________________________________
[De-Linked per Anthony’s request.]
I recently sent the following note to the media and politicians in Canada and the USA:
THE FULL LOCK-DOWN OF THE ECONOMY MADE “THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE”.
As it becomes increasingly clear that the Covid-19 “pandemic” was similar in total fatalities to a bad winter flu season like 2017-2018 and less dangerous than the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69, rational voices have suggested that the full lock-down of the economy made “the cure worse than the disease”. While this was a tough call based on limited data, that was the conclusion I published early in the lockdown on 21March 2020 (below), and I was correct.
wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/21/to-save-our-economy-roll-out-antibody-testing-alongside-the-active-virus-testing/#comment-2943724
[excerpt- posted 21Mar2020]
LET’S CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH, SUBJECT TO VERIFICATION OF THE ABOVE CONCLUSIONS:
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.
rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/21/end-the-american-lockdown/comment-page-1/#comment-12253
[excerpt- posted 22Mar2020]
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.
___________________
It is notable that Sweden sensibly rejected the full Covid-19 lock-down, and that strategy has been far more successful in total than the “full-gulag” adopted by Canada and many other countries and states.
euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
I wrote recently:
wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/06/using-excess-deaths-to-correct-chinese-virus-mortality-counts-coronavirus/#comment-2989783
The global data for Covid-19 suggests that deaths/infections will total ~0.5% of the total population – not that different from other seasonal flu’s – but dangerous for the high-risk group – those over-65 or with serious existing health problems.
Here in Alberta, the Covid-19 lock-down has resulted in a mismanaged 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.” This was also true elsewhere in Canada (Montreal) and the USA (New York City) and in England (London).
“Elective” surgeries in Alberta were cancelled about mid-March, in order to make space available for the “tsunami” of Covid-19 cases that never happened. Operating rooms were empty and medical facilities and medical teams are severely underutilized. The huge 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 impatient… Alberta started to re-open on 1May2020, exactly to the day as I predicted one week before. Elective surgeries re-started on 4May2020.
Two doctors from Bakersfield California, Dr Dan Erickson and Dr Massihi doctors reached similar conclusions, and were censored by YouTube for expressing their honest views. Here is the Bakersfield doctors’ ~1.1 hour video that was repeatedly banned by YouTube, preserved elsewhere:
savedmag.com/dr-erickson-covid-19.mp4?id=0
The Bakersfield doctors were telling the truth – they were saying that Covid-19 was not more severe than other major seasonal flu’s and less severe than some.
In Europe, Total Deaths from All Causes peaked in week 14, the week of 30Mar2020-5Apr2020, suggesting that the lockdown was too late to be effective. The exception was England, which has the worst Covid-19 death rate in Europe. Here is why:
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, a Scottish physician, wrote:
drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/21/the-anti-lockdown-strategy/
“Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 has infected everyone involved in healthcare management and turned their brains into useless mush.
In my view, if we had any sense, we would lockdown/protect the elderly, and let everyone else get on with their lives.
However, the hospitals themselves have another policy. Which is to discharge the elderly unwell patients with COVID directly back into the community, and care homes. Where they can spread the virus widely amongst the most vulnerable.
This, believe it or not, is NHS policy. Still.”
___________________________
GOVERNOR ANDREW “CUOMO KILLED MY MOM”
bizpacreview.com/2020/05/10/giant-cuomo-killed-my-mom-sign-erected-on-bridge-as-heartbroken-new-yorkers-grieve-on-mothers-day-919031
Many New Yorkers are ushering in a grim Mother’s Day this year amid accusations that Governor Andrew “Cuomo killed my mom” thanks to his deadly policy that forced nursing homes to admit coronavirus patients.
The bone-headed move resulted in the deaths of thousands of senior citizens living in nursing homes.
Cuomo mandated that nursing homes must accept coronavirus patients even though older people are the most at-risk to die from COVID-19. Making matters worse was the fact that nursing homes did not have personal protective equipment or COVID testing capability.
Shockingly, the mainstream media not only gave Cuomo a pass on the scandal, but lionized him as a hero.
___________________________
IN CONCLUSION, the full-lockdown was a huge error – we should have followed the Swedish model and taken precautions but not shut down the economy, which harmed so many young people. We have over-protected the huge low-risk majority from a virus that typically does not harm them, and severely under-protected the high-risk elderly and infirm.
This is not 2020 hindsight. I reached my conclusion in mid-March 2020 and published it on 21-22Mar2020, based on data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, South Korea, and total mortality in Europe. Iceland data was examined later.
_________________________
THE BEARER OF GOOD CORONAVIRUS NEWS
Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.
By Allysia Finley, Wall Street Journal
Updated April 24, 2020 5:14 pm ET
wsj.com/articles/the-bearer-of-good-coronavirus-news-11587746176
Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.
_________________________
SACRIFICED IN THE NAME OF COVID PATIENTS’: TENS OF THOUSANDS AFFECTED BY SURGERY CANCELLATIONS
Almost 200,000 surgeries and other procedures were shelved indefinitely, as hospitals braced for a deluge that never quite materialized
National Post, 9May2020, Tom Blackwell
nationalpost.com/health/sacrificed-in-the-name-of-covid-patients-tens-of-thousands-affected-by-surgery-cancellations
**********************************
“Now the Dems are extending the lockdown to try to harm the economy – and Trump’s chances of re-election”
Surely a dangerous game to play.
If the non- lock down areas thrive that will harm them badly at election?
Sorry Willis, I disagree with your statement:
>So the first lesson of the emergency is, don’t kill your economy to try to delay or avoid a few deaths. It is possible to slow the spread of the virus without pulling the wheels off of the economy.
The experiment of Lombardy , England ( where even the prime minister would have died without the NHS) and a number of others made prudent governments take early measures in order to save the health and funerary systems.
The basic question not answered by all the plots is :
can a modern economy survive without a working public health sector?
If people are dying in the corridors, if doctors and nurses are dying from overwork and the virus, if euthanasia is effectively chosen and still all the emergencies cannot be attended medically, will the economy of that society survive, lockdown or no lockdown? Suppose in Lombardy they did not try to flatten the curve , as you say, would they have a working economy with no medical care? How was the economy in Lombardy when they almost collapsed before the lockdown? Healthy?
These are the crucial questions, not answered by your assuming that the economy would have survived if no measures were taken. It needs a different type of study than just counting deaths . It will be probably several economics phds in the future, because one has to dig up data with a time dependence. for example : “how many industries were still working when the funeral parlors in Lombardy were overrun, and the hospitals over full , before lockdown?”
Decisions were made with the assumption that the economy was caput anyway without a medical system, and trying to save the medical system was the objective of lockdowns . The reduction of deaths due to lock down is only true if all the other deaths, from heart and apoplexy and accidents could be avoided too, because the health system would work.
I do not say that there was not overkill in the lockdown , maybe for some countries that had already taken early measures it was not necessary to be so strict, but it is not true that it was deaths on one side and economy on the other. I think that further study will show that economy was ruined either with a lockdown or without.
Anna wrote:
“can a modern economy survive without a working public health sector?
If people are dying in the corridors, if doctors and nurses are dying from overwork and the virus, if euthanasia is effectively chosen and still all the emergencies cannot be attended medically, will the economy of that society survive, lockdown or no lockdown? Suppose in Lombardy they did not try to flatten the curve , as you say, would they have a working economy with no medical care? How was the economy in Lombardy when they almost collapsed before the lockdown? Healthy?”
Hi Anna,
What you describe was NOT what happened, except is a few locations where gross mismanagement of the health system was probably to blame. That was certainly the case in England and New York, where they sent sick patients back to old folks homes to infect the rest of the population.
What really happened in Calgary and in so many other locations in the world was the opposite – hospitals were emptied of patients, elective surgeries were cancelled, and then the hospitals were near-empty for ~6 weeks awaiting the “tsunami of Covid-19 cases“ THAT NEVER ARRIVED.
Now there is a huge backlog of medical cases that will take many months to clear, and some patients will die awaiting treatment… and the economy is trashed, and low-income people are too, and small businesses are destroyed, and their employees are as well, and… and… and…
The lockdown was a completely unnecessary debacle – a self-inflicted injury of colossal proportions.
This lockdown was not just “shooting ourselves in the foot” – this was “emptying the clip into both feet, both kneecaps, and both gonads”.
Let’s not do it again.
anna v May 14, 2020 at 6:14 am
You disagree with not killing the economy to avoid a few deaths? Say what? That would mean that you think we SHOULD destroy the economy to delay or possibly even avoid a few deaths. Really?
My point is simple. The virus is not the economy, and we can fight the virus without fighting the economy.
Before the lockdown we had something just above the normal unemployment in the US.
After the lockdown, we have well over 30 million additional unemployed in the US.
So no, future study will NOT show what you claim, unless you think that a few unemployed is the same as 30 MILLION unemployed.
We also had no government bailout before the lockdown, didn’t need one.
Now, we’ve spent TWO TRILLION DOLLARS repairing the lockdown damage and are discussing wasting THREE TRILLION MORE on the same quixotic task.
So no, future study will NOT show what you claim, unless you think that $0 in new debt is the same as $5 trillion in new debt.
Sorry, Anna, but I fear you haven’t thought this all the way through.
w.
Willis, may be I am not clear in my english. I am saying that the western economy would have lost the trillions anyway, whether with lockdown or not. An economy cannot work with sick people and the fear of illness and rumors of death. It depends too much on the stock exchanges, on imports and exports, on tourism etc.
The choice the governments had between “save the health and funeral system” from the explosive behavior of the virus” and go for “herd immunity with limping health system”. They took the first choice. They did not have much data, they had the terrible example of Lombardy .
The choice was not between “deaths” and the “economy”, because they believed the economy would go equally bad with lockdown or not. History will judge whether they over did it or not.
My estimate is that they were right, that for high population areas herd immunity would lead to a lot of deaths of most executives in all branches of companies (large age groups), and government agencies, leading to a shot economy anyway, so it is better to save the health system.
anna v May 14, 2020 at 11:45 am
And I’m saying that immediately after the lockdowns were ordered millions of people were put out of work in a single day, with huge present, ongoing, and future costs. Estimates are that 20% of those unemployed won’t have a job to go back to, the business will have gone under.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, anna, but the idea that all of that would have happened without the lockdowns, that we would have “lost the trillions anyway”, doesn’t even begin to pass the laugh test.
w.
I am also sorry Willis that your “black or white” statements do not pass the laugh test of my view. The loss of jobs happened rapidly with lockdown , and in the herd immunity deaths would have happened rapidly, (as the Lombardy experiment showed) but in my opinion, when everything is weighted as it should statistically, within the year the end result would be the same for the economy, in heavily populated regions.
Anna: You said “but in my opinion, when everything is weighted as it should statistically, within the year the end result would be the same for the economy, in heavily populated regions.”
Well you did not make the point you think you just made. Please read again what you wrote. You think heavily population regions would still have a hurt economy. So the rest, 95% of the country should also injure their economy for no reason according to you.
You post statements “do not pass the laugh test of my view.” Your words not mine!
Willis writes
Certainly that will have depleted the savings of many and imposed additional burden on social security adding to the national debt which will have to be paid back eventually.
But I’m interested to know exactly what you mean by destroying the economy?
After all tourism was destroyed irrespective of any lockdowns. Pubs and clubs and all large gatherings really, needed to be shut down for everyone’s sake and I’d expect a considerable proportion of the population would want to self isolate anyway.
Is it your expectation that in the absence of lock downs, people would be ordering building construction as per normal (knowing this is your “day job”) ?
In a pandemic, the economy is going to “suffer” as supply and demand all shifts around.
I work for a regional bank, and know many of the local contractors. Some have been turning away business because they are all booked up for the next 3-4 months. In fact, I was trying to help a coworker find a contractor for an addition she needs to have built this Summer, and all of my contacts said the earliest they could get to her would be in 3 months. Her only option was to go with a less than optimal outfit, in order to get the job done before Fall.
re: “In a pandemic, the economy is going to “suffer” as supply and demand all shifts around.”
Yeah, mismanagement.
We should have worked to isolate the vulnerable, get them masks and hand sanitizers etc. EARLY ON … but we didn’t, b/c mismanagement (foolishness in NY didn’t help either; myopic vision on peach mint OVER Christmas didn’t help, and I could go on …)
You’re NOT even going to look at the demographics of WHO DIED are you Tim? AND contributing factors like intubation (use of ventilators) that killed people, ‘stacking the stats’ with death certs that cited Covid-19 WHEN THAT WAS NOT THE DIRECT CAUSE! Again, I could go on …
This was NO pandemic. Not by a long stretch.
Mismanagement. There’s your key factor.
TTTMan. You’re about chicken little fear mongering that is causing the lockdowns and fear. You have a one-track confirmation bias that is unhelpful –no, it’s worse than that, it’s hurtful.
We all know too well what you wish. You wish to only look at evidence that supports your cause. So let’s strike you down, case closed.
It’s simple enough. Humans that thrive are ones who deal with risk of death all the time and do rational things to mitigate risk to thrive, stay healthy and do things to benefit themselves and their loved ones. Your version of things would have us all hiding in the corner, inside a bubble from all risk, while reaping exactly zero rewards. Your version of the world is one full of blight and no one doing a thing to advance abundance. Your world only works if someone else gives you sustenance. That does not end well, never has.
It’s not that you are not educated, it’s that you’re mis-educated and I hope no one takes you seriously.
TimTheToolMan May 17, 2020 at 7:29 am
Tim, if I thought you’d asked that in good faith rather than your usual “gotcha” question, I’d answer it all in one-syllable words and simple pictures so you could understand it.
But no, in this case if you haven’t figured out what I meant, put on your big-boy pants and figure it out for yourself. In the past, all that handholding you to see some totally obvious point did was get my hand bitten. Not interested. Go play your tricks on someone else.
Sorry, amigo, but you’ve well and truly burned your bridges with me.
w.
Tim, if you need someone to talk to about this loss……
Social shaming ceased being effective in…..well it was probably when Win 7 superseded XP….
Mario
I dont have a side. People automatically put me on some sort of “side” and then hate on me. I hope that occasionally they self reflect.
What I’m doing is asking questions they simply dont want to answer.
You said it yourself, the younger people who are at lower risk have parents, And they dont want to see their parents suffer and die. Who would. So they’ve molded the world so that the risk to their parents is minimized.
Willis wont even answer what he sees as destroying the economy when I think there is an argument that the economy is at most stalled, not destroyed. Why should all the demand that existed before the virus simply disappear so that there is no need for the supply anymore once everything gets moving again?
I can definitely see a strong argument that individuals’ financial positions will have been worsened by needing to spend down savings over this period. But that’s not exactly destroying the economy.
TTTMan: You have incorrectly characterized what I said, when you said “You said it yourself, the younger people who are at lower risk have parents, And they dont want to see their parents suffer and die.”
The rest of your drivel, directly exposes that you do have a side.
Further you said “I dont have a side. People automatically put me on some sort of “side” ”
This is a lie, YOU have put you on a side. Let me explain what you really do that you can understand how we see you.
You reframe what people have said, then create a strawman, and then slash the strawman that you created.
Then you show up to promote your side which I had previously laid out for you.
You are a fraud, but I don’t hate you whatsoever.
Mario says
Then if not to save the people at risk (who are most often going to be their parents) why so you think people have done what they’ve done with self isolation?
TTTMan: You have not responded to what I wrote. Why did you claim I said something I did not, then construct a response to that claim. You are largely talking to yourself, while falsely attributing the questions you pose to other people.
I am now responding to this latest post where you wrote, “Then if not to save the people at risk (who are most often going to be their parents) why so you think people have done what they’ve done with self isolation?”
Your question, is not grammatically cogent. So let’s zoom in on the question part:
You ask: “…why so you think people have done what they’ve done with self isolation”
Your question is so poorly constructed, that it raises more questions.
Please ask a more precise question.
Mario
I quoted you. Here it is again.
And what the humans have done is to self isolate as much as possible. None of that is controversial. Or at least I did think it was…
The key line is “do things to benefit themselves and their loved ones.”
But apparently me saying “they dont want to see their parents suffer and die. ” incorrectly characterized what you said so I’m genuinely at a loss at to what you meant.
And finally “Your question is so poorly constructed, that it raises more questions.”
Not from where I’m sitting, but sure, if you like. Dont answer if you’re not comfortable discussing. There is nothing mandatory about forum discussion.
TTTMan: Evidently you do not know what the term “quote is”. What you said that I said, is an interpretation mashed into an in-cohesive declarative/interrogative and I now have had enough of your weird interchanges.
You are a complete waste of time.
Anna wrote:
“Can a modern economy survive without a working public health sector?”
Because of the Covid-19 lockdown debacle, hospitals in the USA are laying off professional staff and even going bankrupt – how’s that health sector working for you?
PORTLAND NURSE IF FURIOUS ABOUT BEING LAID-OFF.
https://youtu.be/6auVdw7g65Q
Hi Willis,
Could you restore your dropbox with the code?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96723180/Amazon%20Flow.R gives 404 Not Found error
Thanks
Try this one:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/trzh97gc2al91gd/amazon%20flow.r?dl=0
w.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr code! Thanks.
One’s opinion of the CV-19 risk depends on one’s age, health, and financial condition IMO. If you are over 60 w/ secondary health condition(s) or if you have debt and no savings, the risk can be catastrophic. It’s not “one risk fits all.”
In my State, TN, the CV-19 death rate has been about the same as the annual traffic fatality rate. This year traffic fatalities to date are essentially the same as 2019 so there’s been no reduction due to CV-19. The catcher is that if you are older, the risk of death is several times that of auto fatalities. 81% of CV-19 related deaths have been those over 50.
From a financial standpoint, if an individual has debt w/o savings, their whole perspective of the lock down is different than one who is w/o debt and w/ savings. The debt issue is likely to harm the younger population more. I speak w/ experience as I have made it to the other side of the debt divide. The bankers are now off my payroll.
Willis – Thanks for your plots and analysis. A couple items for you:
1) The plots above would be more useful if the y-axis were deaths/unit population. That way we can see the magnitude of deaths compared on an apples-to-apples basis.
2) If the lock downs end, is it appropriate to hold those who are found to have spread the disease liable for the damage caused? i.e. hospital costs/deaths etc. similar to what is done in the case of auto crash medical costs & fatalities? There is an argument to be made that for a certain portion of the population, the CV-19 risk of harm is far greater than for harm by auto crashes. Both can be prevented (or reduced).
Is at known ?
FBI raids Detroit-area spa accused of offering fraudulent COVID-19 treatments by giving patients intravenous injections of vitamin C
Willis, I have a data analysis=>implications question for you. In the various graphs you show, in some the decrease in deaths is relatively rapid; in others the decrease is much more plateaued (less rapid). For example, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, France, Germany the fall-off is more rapid; in Sweden, UK, and US the fall-off appears less rapid (a little difficult to judge since both x and y axes in the various graphs vary. Within the US by State, NJ, Massachusetts, Louisiana, California, DC, Georgia look to have a less rapid fall-off; while Michigan, Colorado, Connecticut, and NY appear to have a more rapid fall-off.
I would think that a more complete/ effective shutdown would result in a less rapid fall-off of deaths, whereas a less complete/ effective shutdown would have a more rapid fall-off of deaths. Now, there are many confounding factors affecting that hypothesis, but I’m not sure I see the correspondence. Would applying a skewness statistic to these graphs and comparing them provide any better analytical comparison? If you’ve considered/ down such an analysis, what conclusion, if any would you draw about the impact of shutdown measures and “flattening” can you draw?
Been considering that … not sure how I’d measure it.
w.
Here is an excellent video of a nurse, one of the “protected” person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6auVdw7g65Q&feature=youtu.be
Imagine if you’re not a “protected” person and are laid off. What do you expect to feel at this point since the video was made over three weeks ago. Watch the follow on vids as well. Entire populations are being”woke”.
Stripped out characters preventing it showing here
To: CoronavirusKarens
Msg: You wanted fear, you desired fear, you got fear, only, you don’t get to actually CHOOSE what the actual ‘fear of’ will ultimately be … (like layoffs, economic ruin)
Democrats: to save the healthcare system, destroy it.
thanks icisil.
If anyone did not realise that we were getting screwed over with AGW scam, this is here and now.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!
SARS-CoV-2 is not the flu:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2011400
Whatever co-morbidity you have, you better have none. But even then you better don’t catch the virus.
SARS-CoV-2 is not the flu, but is 94.6% aa similar to SARS-CoV-1 (previous ‘SARS’ outbreak). It’s place in the family of other coronaviruses has been well established.
It’s really not the mystery that some would make it out to be
Champenzees share 99% of our DNA. SARS-CoV-1 is less related to SARS-CoV-2 than Chimpazees are to us so what is your point?
The point is, I believe, that some are trying to ascribe a mythology to this virus that doesn’t exist. It’s pretty simple what’s going on: the virus is destabilizing the RAS causing severe pulmonary inflammation and microvascular thrombosis, which leads to hypoxia that damages and shuts down the major organs. Add in high PEEP intubation that destroys the lungs along with toxic, organ-destroying narcotics used to keep intubated patients comatose and you have a real recipe for disaster. Similar things happened during SARS; we just didn’t hear about it
Nobody investigated the mechanisms this deeply and a lot of manifestations were thought to be not caused by the disease itself. The epidemic ended too fast and had too few cases to do a lot of research.
It might also be that the distribution of symptoms varies greatly although the variety itself is comparable. Not enough data.
Pure sophistry from someone that knows nothing of genetics.
Your comment implies you know less than me.
It’s worth mentioning all the same, because that info came from the Wuhan labs who first isolated it and enabled them to position it well within the coronavirus familial structure, and not just under ‘mammals’
Guess who else is studying/observing apes WRT viri et al:
“Great apes in the emergence of infectious diseases.” 2019
Devaux, C A / Mediannikov, O / Davoust, B / Parola, P / Raoult, D. ·Aix-Marseille Univ, IRD, APHM, Mephi, IHU-Méditerranée Infection, 19-21 boulevard Jean-Moulin 13385 Marseille, France, CNRS, Marseille, France. · CNRS, Marseille, France. · Aix-Marseille Univ, IRD, APHM, SSA, Vitrome, IHU-Méditerranée Infection, Marseille, France. · Aix-Marseille Univ, IRD, APHM, Mephi, IHU-Méditerranée Infection, 19-21 boulevard Jean-Moulin 13385 Marseille, France. ·Med Sante Trop · Pubmed #31884984.
ABSTRACT: Since the AIDS pandemic and the demonstration that it originated in the accidental transmission of simian retroviruses to humans, no one can ignore the role of nonhuman primates in carrying pathogens that can cross the species barrier to infect humans. In recent decades, viruses as deadly as those for rabies, Herpes B, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and Ebola have been transferred from monkeys to humans. Because great apes are genetically our closest relatives, the pathogens that colonize these mammals are probably best adapted to pass into humans should accidental exposure occur. This article attempts to evaluate the risks of infection when apes and humans share the same ecosystem.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31884984
——————————
Complete list of articles, authored of co-authored by D. Raoult:
http://expertscape.com/ar/infectious+diseases/a/Raoult%2C+D
Willis, have you looked at your graphs on a population adjusted basis (deaths/million) as well as from a common population based start date (1 death/10 million). Might make the comparisons more informative.
Good job Willis. Thanks.
The charts seem to indicate that as we approach the 70th day the impact of the virus fades. I believe this is roughly in-line with standard flu-like viruses.
I am surprised that the lockdown was legal. No one is being forced to go to a barber shop if the barber decides not to close down.
Sure, in communist China, the lockdown was legal. But I’m having a very hard time seeing how it is legal to take away peoples livelihood without due process.
It isn’t sufficient to quarantine everyone because you cannot tell the sick from the healthy. By that logic we could jail everyone because we cannot tell the innocent from the guilty.
re: “I am surprised that the lockdown was legal.”
Ask Typhoid Mary that question …
_Jim May 14, 2020 at 8:45 am
_Jim, I fear you’re missing a key difference. Quarantining the SICK, like say Typhoid Mary, has always been legal.
Quarantining the healthy, on the other hand, is totally illegal in my opinion. Or if it isn’t, it damn well should be.
w.
“Mary Mallon was born in Ireland in 1869 and emigrated to the United States in 1883 or 1884. She was engaged in 1906 as a cook by Charles Henry Warren, a wealthy New York banker, who rented a residence to Oyster Bay on the north coast of Long Island for the summer. From 27 August to 3 September, 6 of the 11 people present in the house were suffering from typhoid fever. At this time, typhoid fever was still fatal in 10% of cases and mainly affected deprived people from large cities [5,6].”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3959940/
Technically asymptomatic people are sick.
The asymptomatic part is the only one that made the lockdowns necessary in the first place. Otherwise things would have been a lot easier. With SARS you were only contagious when the symptoms manifested, with SARS-CoV-2 you are the most contagious one day before the symptoms start if they start at all.
As long as you can’t discriminate the sick from the healthy you have to assume everybody is sick. That is not how democracy works but health care does.
That’s why they are working like crazy to develop reliable rapid on-site viral tests.
Willis
Yes, I think that the rationale for quarantining is based on the principal that one’s rights, such as the right to freedom of movement, extends only as far as it infringes on other’s rights. An infectious sick person can cause others to lose several rights, such as the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” So, quarantining is legally justified. On the other hand, in the US, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, it would seem to me, that in the absence of any evidence that a person is infectious (even if they are) it is not legal to quarantine them. I like the Swedish approach where they assume the people are smart enough to go the right thing.
Agreed. There is a fundamental difference in between how conservatives and the Left think.
As we agree, Conservatives approach issues from the perspective of freedom as in the natural right of freedom. Essentially the bill of rights limits what governments take from us.
The Left approaches issues stemming from the belief that people need and are reliant on government to give them their freedoms.
From that perspective, we have what is before us. Freedom vs enslavement
re: ” I fear you’re missing a key difference.”
No, Willis, I’m opening up a different avenue of discussion. If you can’t see that, well, how could you? You can’t read minds any better than I or the next guy can.
The BASIS for an incarceration order (of any type) is the subject here. TAKE THE EXTREME CASE of a Typhoid Mary as one ‘end point’ (in like say, a graph function) at the discretion of a civil authority like a governor.
FORTUNATELY, we came no where near this this time. Now, done ‘virtue signalling’ explaining …
After looking at the graphs for so many countries and states following a similar pattern over time, it is hard to fathom why Illinois is so different. Any theories or ideas why Illinois is such an outlier”? Does the data in Illinois excluding Chicago/Cook county follow the pattern in other states and something in Chicago/Cook county make for the apparent anomaly?
What is so different about it? Is it just still on the rise?
This graph shows that the second wave in the autumn-winter period is almost certain. One can only hope that it will not occur in parallel with the wave of seasonal flu.
?w=689&ssl=1
re: “One can only hope that it will not occur in parallel with the wave of seasonal flu.”
*shakes head*
Front loading. The flu cycle, affecting those most vulnerable, has ‘front-loaded’ the casualties for the year …
Thank You! Willis. It’s long past time to stop talking COVID and urgently fix the shutdown crisis.
The width and depth of the shutdown crisis far exceeds COVID and is worsening daily.
It needs far more attention that is it getting or we are doomed to epic depression and misery never seen before.
The ripple effect is decimating every sector of the economy with wave after wave drowning millions of businesses and all of the livelihoods they provide.
Shutdown supporters, public officials and the media are obsessed with stepping on the scale for the COVID side while ignoring the far greater weight of the shutdown cost side.
IMO this is epic negligence and malfeasance deserving of severe consequences for having been so reckless.
20 million small businesses are forcibly closed.
There are 30.2 million small businesses in the United States. And there are 3.7 million microbusinesses with less than 10 employees. Small businesses provide work for 55% of the American workforce
The chamber put out this in early April.
April 3, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new poll taken from March 25 – 28, 2020 and released today from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and MetLife reveals that one in four small businesses (24%) say they are two months or less from closing permanently amid the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. One in 10 (11%) are less than one month away from permanently going out of business.
Additionally, about one in four (24%) small businesses have already shut down temporarily in response to COVID-19. Among those that have not, 40% say they are likely to close at least temporarily within the next two weeks. This means a total of 54% of all small businesses report that they have closed or expect to close temporarily in the next 14 days.
So at that time roughly 16 million small businesses had been shut down.
Couple that with the countless other businesses, industries and institutions with massive payoffs and the weight of the Shutdown depression far out weighs COVID.
Again, Willis THANK YOU!!
Every day demands louder screaming and more attention to the real crisis.
The only way we will stop the insanity of the shutdown depression is public upheaval.
If not by the end of May places like LA will ignite into mayhem never seen before and the road back to sanity will be so chaotic and painful many simply will not survive.
Check out this important blog post by a Scottish doctor. Note that Vitamin D3 has a direct effect on vascular health that requires a daily dose (sunshine or supplement) to be most effective. Vascular damage appears to be part of the reason for the severity of covid19 infections. There are two kinds of immunity – innate and acquired. Vitamin D has a key role in innate immunity, while vaccine prompts acquired immunity. Both are important, but this article highlights the importance of innate immunity (regulated by Vitamin D3) in minimizing the severity of infection.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/28/covid-update-focus-on-vitamin-d/
Willis missed the boat badly in this article.
South Korea, New Zealand and Australia took the correct approach to flattening the curve and were very effective in reducing cases and deaths. In the U.S. our administration totally botched the effort. They ignored early intelligence, took no effective action, then after weeks dumped the whole defense onto the individual states. That is not the way our pandemic defense is designed or has been dealt with in the 8 prior pandemics in the past century. A total screwups by Trump because he wished to avoid responsibility. Ironically, just the opposite is occurring and deserved so. If you want to be a leader, you have to be willing and able to lead and he has failed dismally on both counts.
Anyone blaming Trump for the COVID-19 situation has TDS so badly that they can’t see their own shoes. When he shut off incoming flights from China you charming folks called him a racist, now you claim he moved too slowly in shutting off incoming flights. You guys are hilarious.
Here’s a protip, DR—despite your claims, there actually are things on the planet that are NOT the fault of the president.
w.
> Here’s a protip, DR—despite your claims, there actually are things on the planet that are NOT the fault of the president.
Pretty funny, considering that the president was largely responsible for the policies you’re blaming for the deaths of children, and has over and over panicked the public into thinking without his “tyrannical” policies “millions would have died.”
Meanwhile he failed to oversee the implementation of policies thsr would have certainly minimized any rationale for shelter in place orders, as we have seen throughout the world – effective testing, tracing and isolating infrastructure. Instead, he just lied and said things like we have the best testing in the world and that anyone who wants a test can get a test and that we are tied with Germany for the lowest deaths per capita.
No, of course he isn’t singularly responsible for every sub-optimal outcome – but it is amusing to see you twist yourself into knots so you can maintsin your fealty. And meanwhile, you cherry pick your comparisons so as to paint a slanted picture. You avoid comparisons on metrics such as death per capita except with the relative minority of countries that have a similar ratio. Or you compare the curves only to the countries where they are similar.
Sad.
Joshua:
Your post attempts to sound reasonable, then you blew it with unsubstantiated claims.
You wrote “instead, he just lied and said things like we have the best testing in the world and that anyone who wants a test can get a test and that we are tied with Germany for the lowest deaths per capita.”
If you listened to the fullness of the claims, those are not lies. Further, you seem to blame Trump for not having been prepared, while having no basic understanding of how the CDC and other aspects of the health stores of supplies were woefully unprepared and how Trump fixed it. What he did to get the capitalist system working blows away anything you could have thought up. Even with the benefit of hindsight, you just failed to make a cogent case on this point.
Death rates per capita outside nursing homes, and a few hot sports run by democrats, are extremely low. So you blew it when you wrote: “You avoid comparisons on metrics such as death per capita”
You obviously think you know how to get valid data even though you failed to provide it, but you don’t know the death rate is a small fraction of a % using actual metrics. Every country has their own data which is collected differently. But you cherry pick without even giving a quantifiable number, to make an absurd argument. If you consider the actual number of people infected using antibody testing, you will know you are woefully out of line with your non quantifiable cherry picked argument.
I don’t think, nor did I suggest that Trump’s failures are mutually exclisive with the failures of the CDC (during his administration, under his supervision).
Joshua; Myopic, mono-minded?
The Congress has over-sight responsibility. They shirked that, were involved with peach mints and other horse play over the Christmas holiday – do you recall that or are we back to attention spans on par with a goldfish?
Do also recall the ineffective congress under Ryan the first two years, Robert Mueller’s hunt for the elusive Russian wumpus and other, too numerous to mention ‘side shows’.
Once again, that other governmental entities have responsibilities doesn’t lessen Trump’s failures.
It’s really remarkable how well “they do it too” works for people as they rationalize facts they don’t like.
Joshua: I commented on two quotes, neither of which you responded to.
You said he lied and you said something about deaths per capita, neither of which has a basis in specific facts. You did not respond to anything I said. But that’s fine.
Healy
It remains to be seen how well NZ and Oz do once their annual flu season is in full swing. You (and many others) may have to eat crow for your crowing.
There is further evidence that Cov-2 inactivates the ACE 2 enzyme, whose role is to prevent the narrowing of blood vessels. It turns out that the role of ACE 2 in the body is much more important than we think.
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed that there is a loss of smell in many patients, including in infected, but otherwise asymptomatic individuals. The underlying mechanisms for the olfactory symptoms are unclear. Using a mouse model, we determined whether cells in the olfactory epithelium express the obligatory receptors for entry of the SARS-CoV-2 virus by using RNAseq, RT-PCR, in situ hybridization, Western blot, and immunocytochemistry. We show that the cell surface protein ACE2 and the protease TMPRSS2 are expressed in sustentacular cells of the olfactory epithelium, but not, or much less, in most olfactory receptor neurons. These data suggest that sustentacular cells are involved in SARS-CoV-2 virus entry and impairment of the sense of smell in COVID-19 patients. We also show that expression of the entry proteins increases in animals of old age. This may explain – if true also in humans – why individuals of older age are more susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 infection.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acschemneuro.0c00210
The virus may have nothing directly to do with the loss of sense of smell. That is a symptom of zinc deficiency and a side effect of ACE inhibitors, which deplete zinc. So virus infection may be exacerbating a zinc insufficiency, or may be merely coincident with one.
In other words the virus is entering directly into people’s system by virus carrying water droplets that are on the scale of 1-3 microns, which is much more likely to be breathed in while indoors and pass right through cloth masks.
The child died after a “neurological injury related to a cardiac arrest”, said Fabrice Michel, head of the paediatric intensive care unit at La Timone hospital in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.
The boy, who tested positive for coronavirus, received treatment at the hospital for seven days and died on Saturday, the doctor told AFP.
In the last three weeks, several countries have reported cases of children affected by an inflammatory disease with symptoms similar to those of a rare condition, Kawasaki’s disease. Scientists believe it is linked to Covid-19.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200515-france-records-first-child-fatality-from-rare-disease-linked-to-covid-19
Latest from the UK: At this rate no chance of ‘herd’ immunity
“Based on tests conducted between 27 April and 10 May 2020, we estimate 148,000 people in England had COVID-19 (95% confidence interval: 94,000 to 222,000).
This equates to 0.27% of the population in England (95% confidence interval: 0.17% to 0.41%).
Our estimate refers to the number of infections within the community (in this instance private households). It does not include people in hospital or care homes, where rates of COVID-19 infection are likely to be higher.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19roundup/2020-03-26#infectionstudy
I remain pessimistic!
“A study of survivors of SARS showed that about 90% had functional, virus-neutralising antibodies and around 50% had strong T-lymphocyte responses.10
These observations bolster confidence in a simple view that most survivors of severe COVID-19 would be expected to have protective antibodies. A caveat is that most studies, either of SARS survivors or of COVID-19 patients, have focused on people who were hospitalised and had severe, symptomatic disease. Similar data are urgently needed for individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection who have not been hospitalised.
How long is immunity to COVID-19 likely to last? The best estimate comes from the closely related coronaviruses and suggests that, in people who had an antibody response, immunity might wane, but is detectable beyond 1 year after hospitalisation.10
, 11
, 12
Obviously, longitudinal studies with a duration of just over 1 year are of little reassurance given the possibility that there could be another wave of COVID-19 cases in 3 or 4 years. Specific T-lymphocyte immunity against Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, however, can be detectable for 4 years, considerably longer than antibody responses.13
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30985-5/fulltext
“We characterized 8 novel recurrent mutations of SARS-CoV-2, located at positions 1397, 2891, 14408, 17746, 17857, 18060, 23403 and 28881. Mutations in 2891, 3036, 14408, 23403 and 28881 positions are predominantly observed in Europe, whereas those located at positions 17746, 17857 and 18060 are exclusively present in North America. We noticed for the first time a silent mutation in RdRp gene in England (UK) on February 9th, 2020 while a different mutation in RdRp changing its amino acid composition emerged on February 20th, 2020 in Italy (Lombardy). Viruses with RdRp mutation have a median of 3 point mutations [range: 2–5], otherwise they have a median of 1 mutation [range: 0–3] (p value < 0.001)"
https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02344-6
A scientist with Texas A&M who has years of experience researching coronaviruses said in a TV interview that his studies indicate that generally the infected persons lose their antibodies in 3 to 6 months. Some questions arise. 1) How does herd immunity occur without antibodies? 2) Will antibodies from a vaccine remain in the body any longer than those from actually being infected? And I suppose 3) Will a vaccine need to be applied multiple times a year if Covid is not seasonal?
Finding effective medicinal treatments may be the best thing to pursue to fight the actual illness.
And maintaining a healthy lifestyle, proper nutrition, exercise and based on some things I’ve read maintaining higher Vitamin D levels, with recommended zinc levels may possibly reduce the severity of infections.
Very pessimistic about herd immunity.
A study of survivors of SARS showed that about 90% had functional, virus-neutralising antibodies and around 50% had strong T-lymphocyte responses
In an interview for the BBC News channel Italian professor of microbiology at the university of Padua Andrea Crisanti said (paraphrasing)
After testing number of thousands of Covid-19 infected people they found that
– if asymptomatic: no antibodies developed and no future immunity likely
– if mild disease: ditto
– if severely affected by disease: antibodies present and possible immunity but not guaranteed.
I note today that Matt Briggs, Statistician To The Stars, has a new post up entitled “There Is No Evidence Lockdowns Saved Lives. It Is Indisputable They Caused Great Harm“. His posts are always worth reading, and he actually is a statistician to the stars.
w.
An excellent read from William M. Briggs. To help maintain the rather tenuous hold I have on my sanity, I avoid the MSM (as much as possible) and instead read WUWT and Briggs’s blog.
Hi Willis
Thanks for posting the link to the Briggs post. I read it…:
First comment…your link title is not accurate (precise? 🙂 ), the actual post title is:
“There Is No Evidence Lockdowns Saved Lives. It Is Indisputable They Caused Great Harm”
You have substituted “Work” for “Saved Lives” (Please note that this inconsistency goes directly to my previous comment about the lack of any meaningful definitions as to what “lockdowns” (whatever the heck that means) or “work” (whatever the heck that means…) actually mean… let us proceed, as Briggs goes directly into the mud….
From the above Briggs Post:
Note the difference between the post title :”There is no evidence lockdowns saved lives” vs the actual conclusion that Briggs states: “we cannot conclude that lockdowns worked”.
These are completely different statements. The “cannot conclude” statement very logically follows his discussion. Within that discussion he goes to great lengths to note the differences in Covid response and reporting:
“And then the medical systems are also vastly different among all these countries.”
“Reporting also varied widely, and wildly. ”
“Obviously, many, many other things varied between countries. Age and healthy of citizens. Old and decrepit in Europe? Younger and more robust in Africa? Compliance of people was of every possible status.”
“Lockdowns ranged from severe, as in China’s Wuhan, to practically non-existent or highly localized…”
In the end, Briggs does reach the the only conclusion actually supported by his discussion:
“we cannot conclude that lockdowns saves lives”
This is not the same as “There Is No Evidence Lockdowns Saved Lives.”
These two statements are not equivalent. The observation that some seem to treat them as such is at the heart of my overall dissatisfaction with the overall Covid debate. If we cannot even agree that we disagree with the definition of “Lockdown” or “Work” (in the context of the efficacy of a lockdown), then the ensuing debate is worthless.
Where should we go IMO:
Stop using the term “lockdown”. Its meaning is too imprecise, and is unlikey to have any meaningful stable definition. I would use something to the effect of ” Restrictions to the Degree of Human Physical Interaction/Contact”
Stop using the term “work” (again in the context of efficacy of lockdowns). Again, absolutely no useful common definition (lives, infection rate, ICU utilization, etc). Instead let us use some term or description that actually defines the objective of whatever intervention we choose (flatten the curve, or reduce excess deaths, or lower ICU utilization).
For example, we could then ask a question that might actually have a usable answer:
“To what degree did a policy that reduced human-human contact (as measured by some previously useful data) by approximately 30% have on the excess death rate of the targeted population with 4 weeks of the beginning of the policy”
Once you have started asking questions you might actually be able to answer, then we can start asking questions about the cost benefit of such policy’s.
From my perspective, we are not even remotely able to answer the first question, and therefor it is not possible to try to answer the second.
I will continue to read, study, think, comment, analyze, question and be ever hopeful that you and Lord Monckton and Briggs and Istvan (to name a few) are actually talking and listening to each other. I would love to hear that conversation…..
Regards,
Ethan Brand
Thanks, Ethan, I corrected the title of Brigg’s work in the head post, and as you point out, the difference is important. The question is not whether lockdowns work. Everything “works” to some extent.
The question is whether the benefits of lockdowns outweigh the costs.
Both Briggs and I say not just no, but hell, no …
w.
For example, it appears that public colleges and universities will not be opening in California in the fall. I wonder how many students will transfer out of the system. This is going to cost California biggly in the short and long term.
Scissor
It isn’t just California that has problems with the education system!
Hi Willis
Thanks (must be nice to be able to edit previously posted comments.. 🙂 You certainly earned that privilege).
You say:
“The question is whether the benefits of lockdowns outweigh the costs.”
I am gonna be a stuck record: Please provide your definition of “benefits” and of “lockdowns”. I think we would be usability agreeable on the definition of “costs”.
From my other comments and reading both yours and Brigg’s post, I see no meaningful definition of either term.
So, let me take this to the absurd (I will paraphrase your comment for example):
No, hell no, it is not worth the cost to reduce the overall covid infection rate by prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people in an enclosed public space.
2) No, hell no, it is not worth the cost to reduce the excess death rate of those who are obese, and suffer from high blood pressure by prohibiting all visitors to hospitals and nursing homes.
Being obtuse am I? I think not, I am simply substituting a couple of the various definitions of “lockdown” and “benefits” that are commonly used. There is a cost to any of these actions.
Why am I harping on this? Fundamentally I am interested in providing meaningful and actionable feedback and or advice to my Michigan politicians (and national ones as well). I know I cannot do this by simply saying, “I don’t like it, it doesn’t work”.
I have been actively following and commenting on my Governors (Whitmer) actions in Michigan. I, like you, conclude that many of the restrictions she has put in place do not provide meaningful benefit. The question is, which ones?, why aren’t they worth the cost?, what alternative am I offering? I have to temper my comments to accommodate the fact that I am providing feedback to a politician, and that I am one of millions. It might feel good to just say, “Governor Bad, Legislature (republicans) Good”, but over many decades of experience in HOW does one actually influence anothers behavior (I spent many years in Root Cause Analysis), I have found that that tactic simple fails. I need to understand WHY someone does something, or says something. The very first foundation stone of such a lofty goal is common understanding, even if at the most seemingly insignificant point. Hence my continue campaign:
What do you mean by “Lockdown”: Shooting anyone within 6 feet of another person? Encouraging people to be “polite” and given them “space”? Shutting down all business?, shutting down open offices (ala Google)? The practice and definition of “lockdown” literally seems to run the entirety of all possible actions. In this context, “End the Lockdown” has no meaning.
What do you mean by “benefits”…you get the picture (I hope). No useful definition leads to no useful request.
In the end, my request to our Governor (Michigan) is this:
Obey the Law as written. That means that you must collaborate with the Legislature to formulate any future restrictions. By collaborating with the myriad of other elected politicians, some of whom specifically represent my little corner of the world, I am confident that the resulting policy will be more nuanced, have a closer relationship to what people in very different circumstances want or will tolerate, and will very likely result in a higher cost to benefit ratio (even if it is still negative… 🙂 ). Politics is the art of the possible, not of the best (or the worst).
Regards,
Ethan Brand
Ethan Brand May 14, 2020 at 2:36 pm
Thanks for your comments, Ethan. And you’re right, it’s one of the few shortcomings of the WordPress platform that it has no comment editing capability.
Sorry for my lack of clarity. By “lockdowns” I mean the locking down of people in their homes. It means government-mandated “shelter-at-home” regulations. It means the only people allowed to leave home are those in “essential” occupations.
Before the peak was passed, the “benefits” were a possible reduction in the total load on the medical system in regions where this was an issue.
But now that the peak is past, and we can no longer “flatten the curve” it’s not clear to me what “benefits” even means. I say this because by and large the lockdowns only spread out the deaths, they don’t reduce the deaths.
At this point, it seems to me that the faster we can get to herd immunity the better off we’ll be. The best that the lockdown can do now is stretch a couple more months out to four months with minimal reducing of overall deaths.
So what I meant was, “No, hell no, it is not worth the cost to reduce the overall covid infection rate by locking people down in their own homes and preventing them from going to work”. It’s pretty close to all cost and no benefit—we’re past the peak.
Having said that, your questions are very valuable and relevant, viz:
Those, and a lot more similar questions, exemplify my point, which is:
We can fight the virus with minimum or no harm to the economy.
Thanks for your contributions,
w.
Hi Willis (yea, I just won’t give up 🙂 ).
A true story (and I convey as a “parable”):
A number of years ago, I was a Fire Protection Engineer at a Commercial Nuclear Power Plant. I was part of the plant “team” interfacing with some inspectors from the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Nothing unusual, just a regular periodic inspection. During the inspection one of the NRC inspectors took issue with, and was threatening a “violation” having to do with how we stored Acetylene tanks (the smallish ones used for welding). He was asserting that our method of securing the tanks was inadequate and could lead to a fire…”fire bad”. The discussion went on for some days (the inspections are complex and involve a dozen or so engineers, inspectors, etc). The NRC was nearly at the point of issuing the violation, and we seemed to be at an impasse. I started digging around more with WHY the inspector felt we were in violation of NRC regulations. We were trading regulatory quotes, exchanging procedures, arguing risk etc..but weren’t really getting anywhere. I was determined to get a better understanding of why the inspector was concluding we were violating regulations. Long story, but it turns out that the inspector had seen a YouTube video of a fire involving an Acetylene tank, and was using that as “evidence” that our storage method was inadequate. Having gotten this bit of insight, I investigated the YouTube video…it turns out it was a “fake”, a stunt, ie not real. Now, if I were to reveal in “public” this bit of information, we would likely have been stomped but good (never piss off the cops). Fortunately, I had a good professional relationship with his “boss” and was able to have a quiet sidebar discussion (off the record). The Acetylene storage violation was quietly “disappeared”. The lesson in all this? Definitions matter. Common understanding matters, endeavoring to understand why someone does something (no matter how seemingly egregious or absurd) is an absolute requirement for useful communication. It’s my personal mantra.
Lecture hall closed… 🙂
Best Regards,
Ethan Brand
“endeavoring to understand why someone does something (no matter how seemingly egregious or absurd) is an absolute requirement for useful communication.”
Mind reading is so iffy. He could have been thinking this or that or this other thing. Maybe no one knows why, not even his conscious self.
Ethan
Note that early in his blog, Briggs says, “The spread in death rates is more then sufficient proof against lockdowns, as we’ll see.”
Hi Willis
Thanks again for your interesting post:
Couple comments:
You say:
“How many children should starve in order to make you feel safe”
Wow…almost kept me from reading further…(fortunately is was near the end of the post..:) ). Got to admit this smacks of the AGW battle cry “Oh, But What About the Poor Children?”
Next:
“Of course, the local petty tyrants who have vastly expanded powers under the “emergency” want to hold on to them. So they’re now saying that we have something new to fear, a “rebound” or a “second peak” … me, I’ve said before that I think we will see very little in the way of any second peak, for a simple reason:
As Sweden has shown, the virus laughs at our pathetic western-style “shelter in place” regulations.
Too many people in “essential” jobs, too many deliveries, too many people coming and going from the households. Combine that with a very infectious virus, and the shelter in place will have little effect … and since it has had little effect when it was there, I say it will have little effect when it is removed.”
I think this is a great observation….starts to go the heart of WHY certain places may fair better than others.
Next:
“Now, here’s my argument. The various local instant totalitarian rulers derive their power from the State of Emergency. But the emergency is past, we can’t flatten the curve now. We’re past that, which means there is no further emergency. So them holding onto that power now that the emergency is ended is illegitimate and illegal. It’s also in some cases unconstitutional.”
Absolutely love this! Here is Michigan we are preparing to battle this in court. The lawsuit filed by the State Legislature against Governor Whitmer is scheduled for oral arguments in the Michigan Court of Claims on Friday, May 15, 2020. I have carefully read our salient Michigan Statutes and the text of the filed lawsuit. I observe that the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision against Governor Evers is much murkier than the case against Whitmer. I am every hopeful that the court will reign in our self appointed “Empress” 🙂
General Comment:
The analysis provided by various WUWT posters is all over the map (a strength of WUWT), BUT some analysis differences are glaring. Until I see some direct discussion amongst the Istvans/Moncktons/Eschenbachs, etc, my overall confidence in particular posts is lower than usual (for WUWT).
One specific comment: The conflicting battle crys:
Lockdowns Don’t Work
Lockdowns Work
Huge problem:
I see no useful or consistent definition of “Lockdown”. Sweden version?, Korea version, North Dakota version?
I see no useful or consistent definition of “Work” (s).
From what I see, there is no attempt to resolve this fundamental flaw in the battle lines. Until this is directly addressed, the resulting debate is entirely without merit.
The whole Covid debate has degenerated into a mud flinging fight with everybody claiming that their “mud” is the “right” mud.
Regards,
Ethan Brand
Ethan Brand May 14, 2020 at 8:39 am
Sorry, Ethan, but that is not the question. Everything “works” to a greater or lesser degree.
The real question is, do the benefits from the lockdowns exceed the costs? I say no, by orders of magnitude.
w.
Hi Willis
Great timing….see my next comment…. 🙂
What exactly do you mean by “lockdowns”?
What exactly do you mean by “benefits”?
Regards,
Ethan Brand
Hi Willis
Good natured “dig” follows….
You took my Lockdowns Don’t Work/ Lockdowns Work out of context, the entire related comment segment is:
“One specific comment: The conflicting battle crys:
Lockdowns Don’t Work
Lockdowns Work
“Huge problem:
I see no useful or consistent definition of “Lockdown”. Sweden version?, Korea version, North Dakota version?
I see no useful or consistent definition of “Work” (s).
From what I see, there is no attempt to resolve this fundamental flaw in the battle lines. Until this is directly addressed, the resulting debate is entirely without merit.”
By only reading/quoting the beginning of the comment you removed the key context of lack of definitions…which is further explained in the next comment (wrt Briggs).
You frequently chide commentors for not quoting what you actually said..I would take this one step further and note that the quote should be in context….
Best Regards,
Ethan Brand
Ehan
I raised this question about the lack of definition and subsequent careless use of the term “lockdown” three days ago in the guest article by Chris Gillham. The term is being used by many authors and covers a spectrum of behaviors. Although, if I may speak for Willis, I think that the main point of contention is shuttering businesses. That which prohibits commerce is an unprecedented move and has unintended consequences well beyond ‘social distancing.’
Hi Willis
I love the way cascading comments and replies get mixed up! 🙁
From another of your comments :
“We can fight the virus with minimum or no harm to the economy.”
I absolutely agree. The question is: How? Not just me, not just you. 8 BILLION people with 8 BILLION times x opinions. That’s the question always worth going after, because its the aggregate actions of those 8 BILLION people that are actually going to shape the future.
I have a deep respect for WUWT. I like to think it is occasionally read by folks outside our little echo chamber here. I like to think the some of the posts and comments here might just make a difference. I try to aim my comments to improve the clarity, logic, reasoning, and precision of language. When I advertise WUWT to others, I sometimes get the feedback that it is seemly too right wing, knee jerk conservative, etc. Obviously some posts and comments do fall into that category, but the overall quality of the discussions on WUWT is, IMO, far superior than most (or perhaps any) other centers of such discussion. Clearly that is an intentional goal of the major authors and keepers of WUWT. High expectations require high standards. OTOH WUWT cannot rest of it laurels. We must question ourselves, we must continually be open to critic, and above all we must strive to understand why we do not agree, because, in the end, we are not all going to agree.
Thank you for years of entertaining, interesting and informative posts.
Regards,
Ethan Brand
Well yes Willis, how very true. Lockdowns “work” but for whom and in what fashion?
Such a shame that Lord Monckton succumbed to the false narrative, and became embroiled in the forest of the numbers. Mostly these numbers have no meaning, because they have no verifiable context. Sometimes (often) demonstrations of mathematical prowess tell us absolutely nothing about the imperative behind the numbers. Always remember the legal maxim , “Cui Bono”. Always remember the principles of Aristotle, especially his “refutations” of bogus and hokum logic !
Correlation does not prove causation, and this Global Panic-demic has striking similarities to the long running AGW CO2 scandal, and indeed many of the same beligerants. Strange that, eh?
In the future; the late 20th / early 21st Century will be known as the Age of Discombobulation !
W & C – Lang may yer lums reek !
“Correlation does not prove causation, and this Global Panic-demic has striking similarities to the long running AGW CO2 scandal, and indeed many of the same beligerants. Strange that, eh?”
Yes, yet another invisible enemy.
Apologies if it’s bad taste, but I’m reminded of what Goering said at the Nuremberg trials
QUOTE
But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
― Hermann Goering
Whilst holding an unlit giant Panatella……
“Never, in the field of Human conflict, have so many, paid so much, to so few. We shall fight them in the hills, and from our homes, and on the beaches, …. drawl, drawl & etc.” [paraphrased].
Jams unlit cigar in corner of mouth, and strides off to waiting limousine.
The hoi polloi are destined never to learn the lessons of true history, because the elites always made it up to suit themselves. Omitted it from school curriculum etc. Now though they can’t put back into the bottle the Genie of the vast Internet’s of freely available knowledge.
Just remember to use YOUR own brain an the sound principles of Aristotle to logically discern what’s likely to be true and what’s not. It’s not an infallible method, but better than most, and remember that “you know your over the target, when you start getting the most flak” ……
FYI : http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.html
Well stated Jack Black.
Also remember: your =/= you’re (ref that last quote.)
@_Jim
It’s the possessive pronoun, and not an abbreviation of the present participle in the above case though, and so “YOUR own brain” is correct. (not to be pedantic, you understand) 😉
erm … no. Wrong quote.
Quote was: “you know your over the target, when you start getting the most flak”
Quote should be: “you know you’re over the target, when you start getting the most flak”
Contraction of “you are” is “you’re” versus ‘possessive pronoun’ “your”. (Did I not say “last quote”?)
JUST for reference, link to the comment: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/13/attention-citizens-the-covid19-emergency-is-over/#comment-2994956
@_Jim
It was Google spell check what done it, but well yeah but no but, its still minor faux pas, and such a well known quote that I doubt if anyone misunderstood the sense though. We are no even in charge of our own words anymore, and there’s no consistency…. Sometime it auto correct, and sometimes it does not, and sometimes it just instep gibberish. Hu is on first base !
Good points, Ethan.
And a comment on the coment of Wills: “How many children should starve in order to make you feel safe”
Does anyone know how many children in the United States have starved as a consequence of social distancing? The implication is this is a large number, but I can’t seem to find any statistics on it. Willis?
Tom, we now have well over thirty MILLION new unemployed who are living on reduced funds and in many cases reduced rations. I don’t think there has been time to collect any good numbers on just what’s happening with kids nutrition, but I can guarantee you, it’s not going to be good.
And that’s only one of the many, many deleterious effects of the American Lockdown. Hospitals are closing due to lack of business and doctors and nurses are being laid off, at the same time that there are all kinds of diseases going untreated. And while as you’re likely to point out we don’t have exact numbers on how many preventable illnesses and deaths are a result of a two-month hospital shutdown, you can be damn sure it’s not small.
I say again, WE CAN FIGHT THE VIRUS WITHOUT KILLING THE ECONOMY!!! Not sure why this is so hard for folks to grab on to.
w.
Hi Willis
“I say again, WE CAN FIGHT THE VIRUS WITHOUT KILLING THE ECONOMY!!! Not sure why this is so hard for folks to grab on to.”
I have absolutely no argument with this…and it really misses the whole point of my comments.
Best Regards,
Ethan Brand
Ethan, since I was replying to Tom and not to you, it’s not clear why you think it should address your points.
Best to you,
w.
Yes, “We” Humans can indeed fight “the virus”, and indeed all viri, and that’s why as a species we developed / evolved an immune system for doing so. There is actually no legislative right or sanction that can prevent the appearance if new strains of virus, even though there is a rather strong suspicion that this current panic-demic was caused by a man-made chimera.
Viruses do not ” think” or “plan” attacks, and do not actually kill people. Rather it is the response or over reactive response to infection that causes many deaths. Nutrient and immune deficiency caused by living in air conditioned sterile environments, and eating vacuum sealed, or inert gas packaged and gamma irradiated, chemically preserved “foods”, must be a significant factor in very many deaths, but this goes largely uninvestigated.
We do not, and will never have the “right” to live in a “germless” environment, free from all risks, and Government regulations and draconian laws cannot ever make it so.
Smell the Covfefe ?
It should also be noted that reports of child abuse (both physical and sexual) have gone up during lockdowns. So apparently those who scream “So you want more deaths???” actually want more child abuse.
What is missed here, IMHO, is motives of the people in charge. In Brussels, this was seen as a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. Their socialist promises were just about to come crashing down on their heads when this came to save them. Now with the virus to blame, they can not only maintain power, but they can appear to be the saviors of the people.
In the US, the leftist politicians saw the promise of it right away too. Plus, they desperately want to get rid of Donald Trump. It is doubtful to me that those in power in places like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco will abandon the lockdown willingly when it is the perfect way to avoid the accountability of decades of mismanagement.
A good article and a good discussion.
“It is doubtful to me that those in power in places like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco will abandon the lockdown willingly when it is the perfect way to avoid the accountability of decades of mismanagement.”
I think it is a sure bet that the people will have the final say about these lockdowns. With a few exceptions, the various States are opening up their economies, and barring a huge infection outbreak, they will continue to do so, and people sitting in States that are not relaxing restrictions will see what is going on (they see it already) and will take legal action to put a stop to their petty dictator’s overreach.
Some Democrat States may want to continue the lockdown but their people are not going to allow it once they see other States opening up successfully..
DEATH RATES BY AGE
https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age
Deaths from Covid-19 increase sharply with age.
Maybe Covid-19 really IS a Wuhan lab designer virus – designed to wipe out China’s huge elderly population, now supported by “the few” due to their one-child policy.
Attaboys all around Beijing!
Hey wait a second – all the guys in charge of the CCP are old farts too!
“Hello, Wuhan Lab? It’s Beijing, Communist Party Headquarters. You plicks!” 🙂
Wrong us usual.
Salvatore, since despite my request you haven’t provided a single clue as to who you might be referring to, I’ve come to the conclusion that when you said “Wrong as usual” you must be talking to yourself.
w.
Haha, yes. That reminds me of the story of the Sheriff’s Depute who stopped the local town inebriate for weaving about the highway. Leaning in the window, the Depute says… “Drunk again, Charlie?”; Charlie replies… “… funny that, so am I” 😄
Glad you humour/sarcasm hasn’t yet deserted you Willis !
The last thing needed is any more data or chit chat about COVID.
1 of 1000 news bites.
Delta Airlines says they’ll have 7000 too many pilots by fall.
The chain reaction from every shutdown detriment is snowballing toward a calamitous depression.
So the most significant economic event in at least a decade and more likely in a hundred years if not ever, should not be discussed?
No more “data or chit chat” about it…even though tit is already causing a worldwide economic tsunami which no one knows how bad it will be or how and even if it will end?
The last thing we need to do is present or examine data, and discuss relevant aspects, or what seem to be leading us all towards a calamitous depression?
Really?
The ostrich approach will prevent something bad from happening…is that the logic?
Sorry to say so…but this comment is incoherent.
Is it serious or not?
Do we need to worry about it or pretend it is not occurring?
Is it worse when we discuss it that it would be if everyone shut up?
What the hell is a news bite?
Why should we focus on Delta airline pilots?
How about farmers and meat packers and retailers?
This might end or at least seriously disrupt the movie theatre industry too.
Is that part bad?
What if the upshot is that people become more focused on things that are important, and intolerant of deceptive bullsh!te?
You misread my comment.
I was saying the shutdown depression is far more urgent to be covered. Not COVID.
It isnt COVID destroying economies.
It’s the reckless shutdowns and the impacts are far worse than the coverage suggests.
“Is it worse when we discuss it that it would be if everyone shut up?”
It’s only worse if the discussion gets into pure speculation about what is happening in the economy. Facts are fine. Handwringing over imaginary fears does noone any good (this is directed at the audience in general). All that does is agitate people for no good reason.
Just the facts about the economic recovery please. Leave the speculation and fearmongering out of the discussion.
So the most significant economic event in at least a decade and more likely in a hundred years if not ever, should not be discussed?
No more “data or chit chat” about it…even though tit is already causing a worldwide economic tsunami which no one knows how bad it will be or how and even if it will end?
The last thing we need to do is present or examine data, and discuss relevant aspects, or what seem to be leading us all towards a calamitous depression?
Really?
The ostrich approach will prevent something bad from happening…is that the logic?
Sorry to say so…but this comment is incoherent.
Is it serious or not?
Do we need to worry about it or pretend it is not occurring?
Is it worse when we discuss it that it would be if everyone shut up?
What the hell is a news bite?
Why should we focus on Delta airline pilots?
How about farmers and meat packers and retailers?
This might end or at least seriously disrupt the movie theatre industry too.
Is that part bad?
What if the upshot is that people become more focused on things that are important, and intolerant of deceptive bullsh!te?
Th anomaly would seem in some respects to be New York. What about the latency and repercussions of 9/11. It was known to cause respiratory problems at the time. How do you factor that in? Over to you chaps
“50% are completely asymptomatic”
This is not at all the case.
It is more like, “about 50% of cases are mild or asymptomatic.
There is no data indicating half of all cases are “completely” asymptomatic.
That is just an outright exaggeration.
Words have meanings, and completely means something very specific.
As well,
“~85% do not develop the serious Covid-19 symptoms”
is similarly incorrect and is a misuse of language.
Somewhat over 15% develop SEVERE disease symptoms.
You cannot pretend to be speaking factually while distorting and exaggerating.
When anyone does that, any people who are trying to be serious and FACTUAL will simply not pay attention to you any more, although people who are similarly inclined will give you praise and kudos for being “on message.”
When attempting to communicate concisely and accurately, one might consider leaving out absolutes and strong adjectives…words like “completely” when a word like “relatively” is closer to the truth…and instead using stronger verbs.
Some number of people report having absent symptoms, although in many cases when such people are questioned more carefully it turns out many of them had SOME symptoms, just that they were not very inconvenient or too very unpleasant. Some people are more soldierly, and some people are whiners and complainers.
Also, it is known most children do not experience this disease in the same way as adults, and that young adults are more likely to have a mild case than older but perfectly healthy adults.
Someone who gets symptoms identical to a really bad cold might consider themselves to be “seriously ill” if they were calling in sick two years ago, but not if they got COVID and then felt better two to five days later…because only having what seemed like a cold might make someone with COVID ecstatically happy to have gotten off so lightly from something k!lling other people.
Very few people who are not really old or frail ever see a doctor or go to a hospital when they get a really bad flu and are sick as hell for a week. Everyone knows you just have to suffer through it and it will be over after a short while…which may seem long in the minute to minute aspect but not in retrospect.
So context is important and has to be taken into account.
“Everything” I have read and learned indicates that a substantial number of people, perhaps 20% (but no one really knows because no place has had comprehensive testing and almost no one has had a reliable antibody test) have a case than appears to be asymptomatic. This is actually not at all unusual for a disease that gives some people a very bad illness, it was just largely unknown prior to recent weeks.
Another large batch have mild symptoms, by self reporting standards anyway.
So perhaps something like half of people know to have been infected do not have what most would consider a really bad illness…although in other times many of these people might have called in sick from work for one or more days.
Another tranche get sick…very sick, like case of the flu sick, and not just a cough, cold, or mild sniffle. But a fever and a feeling of being really very sick.
And about 15-18% of people get what a doctor would call a severe illness…requiring hospital care, and many of them need to be getting intensive care in an ICU unit.
So saying 85% of people do not get a “serious” illness is a misuse of language…serious and severe are not interchangeable terms.
So you ought to recognize that you are deploying deceptive terminology in order to exaggerate.
Exaggeration comes in two distinct flavors…minimizing something or inflating it unrealistically.
It is amazing to see global warming skeptics enthusiastically embrace all of the lessons of how to be deceptive, uncritical, unscientific, and unrealistic, that has been the subject of many years of intensive discussion here in the context of climate alarmists.
Selective attention, moving goalposts, exaggerations, willful blindness to information contrary to one’s predetermined point of view…these are not characterizes of people who are being realistic or scientific or who are striving to be serious and factual.
AND he (McGinley) never cites a single study … how to ‘cross check’ then?
Nicholas McGinley May 14, 2020 at 10:28 am
I fear that your claims and your attack on motives(“outright exaggeration”) are both wrong.
The number claimed to be asymptomatic is all over the map. See here for an overview of the studies. In one of the largest studies, the Iceland screening, they indeed found that 50% of those who tested positive were asymptomatic.
However, as my link above says (emphasis mine):
Finally, you say regarding “asymptomatic” and your term of “completely asymptomatic”:
You’ll have to help me here. “Asymptomatic” means you have no symptoms. Zero. None.
Given that, what does “completely asymptomatic” mean? That you have less than no symptoms?
Regards,
w.
Very good analysis, Willis! Unfortunately, all the models out there that various media outlets quote are completely bias. Forecast models are causing fear, so regardless of the actual reality of what is going on right now, the media and it’s supporters are being guided by which model serves their narrative best. The narrative is more important than the truth and the line between science and politics are blurred to my great disappointment.
Willis
You remarked, “… as well as for the world as a whole, the peak of the medical load from the pandemic passed about a month ago.” More to the point, it appears that most countries peaked within a month or less from the time of the first death, regardless of the severity of the lockdown. Probably, the minimal social distancing, use of masks to suppress aerosols, and increased attention to washing hands, were the major influencesw on attenuating the number of new cases. While I can’t make a strong case for it, I suspect that any additional suppression related to “shelter in place,” and shuttering businesses was probably compensated by increased transmissions with families in close proximity and ignoring the requirement for masks and improved hygiene among family members. Few family members probably used masks at home, while their employers would have required it while at work. The only situation I can imagine that contributed to reducing the spread of the virus was keeping people out of the mass-transit subways in large cities, where it is impossible to maintain a safe distance from others. The world, following the advice of pathologists and epidemiologists, has done a poor job of dealing with this pandemic. They have been focused on eliminating contacts, while ignoring the bigger picture of unintended consequences and consequent crippling of economies. What has happened to institutionalized people is unconscionable! The most vulnerable were NOT protected.
A Swede living in Denmark here. Fine, but Swedes compare with fellow Scandinavians Danes and Norwegians first, and then the death counts are double theirs, and I’d say, that’s because SE just has more difficult-to-move control knobs. for policy compared to DK/NO, so people try part bottom-up lockdown themselves.
Mr. Mosher claims half of Sweedes live alone. Just checked and he’s close: 40%. Don’t know how rest of Europe compares yet, but if this is unusual, it could be a factor.
A third of EU households are composed of a single person, according to new figures released this month.
Out of 220 million homes in the European Union, 33 percent were lived in by just one person. In Sweden that number was over half of households (52 percent), followed by Lithuania, Denmark and Finland.
The lowest amount of people living alone was recorded in Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta.
A quarter (25 percent) of households consisted of couples without children, while 20 percent were couples with children.
Finland had the highest share of couples living together without children at 32 per cent, while Ireland had the largest proportion of couples living with children at 28 per cent.
The Eurostat study of data collected in 2016 found that just four percent of European households were made up of single parents living with children.
At 9 percent, Denmark had the highest share of households consisting of single parents living with children.
The remaining 18 percent were made up were made up of other types of households such as house shares.
The largest average household size was recorded in Croatia at 2.8 people, while the smallest was in Sweden with 1.9 people.
Almost two thirds of households in Europe were composed of one or two people.
https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/05/people-living-alone-europe-solo-living
A third of EU households are composed of a single person, according to new figures released this month.
Out of 220 million homes in the European Union, 33 percent were lived in by just one person. In Sweden that number was over half of households (52 percent), followed by Lithuania, Denmark and Finland.
The lowest amount of people living alone was recorded in Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta.
A quarter (25 percent) of households consisted of couples without children, while 20 percent were couples with children.
Finland had the highest share of couples living together without children at 32 per cent, while Ireland had the largest proportion of couples living with children at 28 per cent.
The Eurostat study of data collected in 2016 found that just four percent of European households were made up of single parents living with children.
At 9 percent, Denmark had the highest share of households consisting of single parents living with children.
The remaining 18 percent were made up were made up of other types of households such as house shares.
The largest average household size was recorded in Croatia at 2.8 people, while the smallest was in Sweden with 1.9 people.
Almost two thirds of households in Europe were composed of one or two people.
https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/05/people-living-alone-europe-solo-living
Posted this once already, I think… sorry if double posts…
But living alone would suppress immunity so why the stabilization?
Every generation needs learn anew, the pain that comes to you when these words you hear;”We are from the government we are here to help you”.
What the current panic has brought into sharp focus,is the stunning ineptitude of our high priced help.
A time line of Public Health utterances in any country highlights this.
They were caught flatfooted,politically correct,gender neutral and fully credentialed,yet without a clue as to how our society functions.
Shutdown was a knee jerk panicked response,with no plan for recovery and no concept of what must occur when you regulate the productive into home imprisonment.
The damage here has not been the Virus from Wuhan China,the real cost is in the madness of leaders without any leadership skills.
But hey..we elected them.
As an interesting aside,the cost of government did not reduce anywhere.The minions did not suffer any loss of income,”working from home”…the revenuers still demand their payoff..
We were commanded to cease and desist producing,on threat of imprisonment and financial harm.
So why should we be taxed?
Nice to know that Mr. Putin, Mr. Macron, and Mr. Xi have no leadership skills.
We are doomed.
Here in Italy we were told another VERY interesting thing by our National Statistical Institute: the non-born children due to the stress for losing job and/or salary and all other troubles will account for twice the number of the death. In other words, for MOSTLY saving aged people (median age 81) with two or three other pathology, we “killed” almost 100.000 babies. Then, suicide, drugs addiction, homelessness and other death will be to add to the foolish way the government approached the emergency (if you are sick and positive but not so critical to need emergency hospital, stay at home . . . spreading the virus all around your condo).
About Sweden, I wonder how many deaths were about guests (immigrants, very few in other Nordics countries) and old, final people supposed to have few weeks or months to live.
One-tenth of one measly percent
I have been pushing the comparison/contrast to measles, along with other infectious outbreaks, endemics, and pandemics. Whichever comparison(s) you think most informative, this lockdown has been unprecedented and a disaster.
Thank you for another good essay, and thanks to all the discussants for unusually mild and informative commentary.
This is the future: testing everyone: Wuhan draws up plans to test all 11 million residents. Testing everyone will will bring the Corona problem back to nearly zero. This will save the economy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52629213
“The Chinese city of Wuhan is drawing up plans to test its entire population of 11 million people for Covid-19, state media report. The plan appears to be in its early stages, with all districts in Wuhan told to submit details as to how testing could be done within 10 days.
It comes after Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, recorded six new cases over the weekend.”
A third of EU households are composed of a single person, according to new figures released this month.
Out of 220 million homes in the European Union, 33 percent were lived in by just one person. In Sweden that number was over half of households (52 percent), followed by Lithuania, Denmark and Finland.
The lowest amount of people living alone was recorded in Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta.
A quarter (25 percent) of households consisted of couples without children, while 20 percent were couples with children.
Finland had the highest share of couples living together without children at 32 per cent, while Ireland had the largest proportion of couples living with children at 28 per cent.
The Eurostat study of data collected in 2016 found that just four percent of European households were made up of single parents living with children.
At 9 percent, Denmark had the highest share of households consisting of single parents living with children.
The remaining 18 percent were made up were made up of other types of households such as house shares.
The largest average household size was recorded in Croatia at 2.8 people, while the smallest was in Sweden with 1.9 people.
Almost two thirds of households in Europe were composed of one or two people.
https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/05/people-living-alone-europe-solo-living
At first glance by looking at death rate published by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/EuropeCV.htm
it appears there is no direct correlation for countries (as quoted in your post) with number of people living in the household .
Would you like a laugh ?
This prophetic comedy piece was recorded just 2 weeks before lockdown
https://youtu.be/_ds9u0O6X8o
So . . . what’s possibly [one of the] “Blessings from the Beginning” revealed by Grifters Gates and Fauci’s P[L]andemic Hoax to forced vaccinations and social tracking op? Millions of people getting a very sobering WAKE-UP CALL. And hopefully there will be a major demographic shift from “blue urb” to “fly-over rural.
I live in Georgia and just got my haircut today — first time in more than two months. In Michigan both I and my barber would be criminals.
Governor Kemp has caught a lot of flack both for delaying a statewide shutdown order (which reopened public parks and beaches which some local orders had closed), and then laying out a plan for statewide reopening before he could guarantee that absolutely everyone would be absolutely safe.
If Kemp turns out to be right, his critics will find something else to complain about and no one will remind us of their errors. If Kemp turns out to be wrong, he’s going to get blasted from all sides. I give him credit for being willing to make that call — so many other governors are willing to hide behind the experts and keep everything shut down.
Will — “Sweden did not pull the wheels off of its economy and drive millions into joblessness and despair”
Sweden didn’t employ a *mandatory* lockdown simply because most of their citizens didn’t need to be forced. Social distancing and avoiding a lot of the typical situations for contamination was understood by most and followed soberly without having to put it in law and sending patrols out. Some spreading would happen any way, was assumed.
However the economy is still hit pretty hard, many lost their job and economical activity as a whole is down and the outlook remains dim. This is also caused by a government paid reduction in work hours (!) to allow people to self-isolate. But overall the economy has cooled down in the same order as elsewhere. Maybe a little milder.
In the words of their state virologist: “it doesn’t matter”. What does matter is the fantasy that Sweden follows a radical different trajectory somehow. This is simply not supported by any fact.
” But overall the economy has cooled down in the same order as elsewhere. ”
where are you seeing “this cool down” ? Everyone beyond supermarkets staying at a home and small businesses going to the wall and tens of millions on unemployment is not “cooling down” it is a full blown depression. This will be followed by high inflation as the results of shutting down 90% of the economic activity of most countries hits the fan.
this is like calling the last glacial maximum a “cool period”.
John…
How about you put some numbers to your claims?
astonerii
So! You like numbers?
Sweden is 6th in the top ten sorts of both
– the death toll per million (340);
– the case mortality ( total cases per total deaths, 16 %).
J.-P. D.
Yes it is. Open for business. Yet it is not worse than everyone. Which it should be.
They are tracking for an at worst 0.1% infection fatality ratio. And by at worst, I mean fake made up overly high number.
They are estimating that Stockholm has seen 30% infection while total deaths come in at about .03%. Which is 0.1% total deaths if 100% of the population gets infected.
But like all places, their body count is not of those who were killed by Covid-19. They are of people who tested positive for SARS-COC-2 and died. I was also told anyone who dies in home for the aged is also simply added to the total.
What if only 50% of those people even had symptoms of Covid-19? What if only 50% of those who had symptoms had severe symptoms and yet another 50% of those had severe enough symptoms to actually kill someone?
The bulk of the people were really old and were really sick.
How many were heart attacks? How many were strokes? How many were live failures? How many were renal failures? Kidney disease? We will probably never know unless they are doing a better job of maintaining records of what actually killed those people than places like the United States is doing.
SARS-COC-2 should be SARS-COV-2
I know that Brazil is far behind and India is even further behind, but give them a chance. Heck even Peru might sneak up from behind. I’m afraid that Russians drink too much vodka.
I hope we’re still allowed to laugh ?
A brief piece of prophetic comedy, from 2 weeks before lockdown
https://youtu.be/_ds9u0O6X8o
“London has just 24 new coronavirus cases a day
Capital’s lockdown questioned as models suggest virus will be wiped out in June
…… the “R” reproduction rate has fallen to 0.4 in London, with the number of new cases halving every 3.5 days.
The report, published this week by the Medical Research Councils Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge University, rather than by the Government, has left some MPs questioning whether they are being shown all the evidence.
Steve Baker, the Tory MP who sits on the Commons Treasury select committee, said: “This means the Government really must publish fully and frankly the underlying advice and data, so we can have a full public consultation. All this black box policy making isn’t working for the country.
………..
Separate data from the ONS released on Thursday showed that at any given time between April 27 and May 10, around 0.27 per cent of the population was infected”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/14/london-has-just-24-new-coronavirus-cases-day/
Again and again Willis is correct there are 7 billion people on earth OK? 200000 die each DAY mostly old people with cancer, hypertension and yes respiratory diseases such as flu influenzas caused by CORONAVIRUSES. 60,000,000 people die each year! NORMALLY. So to date about (but let’s exaggerate for the morbid crowds here), 300000 mostly old people with co morbidities with suppossedly COVID 19 (which i really doubt because influenza cases have suddenly dropped to near zero. I think they are counting influenza cases as covid 19 my personal view), worlwide have died OVER A 6 month period since this supposed pandemic started (Dec 2019??). So the daily death rate from this suppossed pandemic is 150 days /300000 or 0.0005% increase in deaths or 2000 per day check it out over the 6 month period. This is a nothing burger virus that affects freezing cold countries where humans should not be living in (joke)
Thank the gods Sweden chose a different path and acted as sort of a control.
Willis is right.
In my own words, the danger is not one of the many biological viruses around, often signaling the weak spots in the human condition rather than causing them. The real danger is a mix of mental viruses going around. Among them the panic virus, the mass hysteria virus, the bad news is good news virus, the let’s play doctor with the whole world virus, to name some. When you are spooked by corona, you may be blinded into not realizing you are infected by one, or several of these mental viruses.
I wish all infected persons happy return to sanity. This post from Willis could be a great help for that.
I agree with Willis on all points.
Interesting chart on vitamin D level vs disease risk: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/disease-incidence-prev-chart-051317.pdf Be sure to read the legend to understand the chart.
Note that average level for US and Canada is barely enough to prevent rickets.
The recommended daily minimum intake of vitamin D, 400 IU, is now considered to be too low.
I have been (inadvertently) getting 2000 IU (50 mcg) Vitamin D as an added item in a daily fish oil supplement. The claim is that will increase blood serum level by 20 ng/ml. I suspect that might not be enough.
ionic Zinc is very important too in the actions of a properly functioning immune system. Eating plastic packed sterilised and chemically processed pseudo-foods does contibute to so very many mineral and nutrient deficiencies these days. Few clinicians even investigate such underlying causes though when presented with a so called Covid victim in the emergency room. It’s a jag in the arm, off to a coma, tube down the oesophagus, and oops another Covid death whilst on a respirator….. Another $38,000 to the Hospital’s coffers… Ka-Ching $$$$$ ….. Oh, cynic me?
To find out if you are getting enough Vitamin D, you really need to have bloodwork done. I discovered that I was D deficient over ten years ago when I was having trouble sleeping through the night. My doctor wanted to prescribe sleeping pills, and I was sure that was not the answer. Years later that same doctor started checking my D levels annually (apparently he ran across the same study that I had read years before), and after a few years my levels started dropping again. I now take 20,000 iu’s of D every day, and my levels are good. The medical community has a bad habit of prescribing one size to fit all. We are individuals.
Gator: I have written as much, and was low in D when measured 10 years ago, but it was my wife, a naturopath who told me. Not the effing doctor! So good on you.
Anyway, I think you’re correct. 20,000IU is sort of what we get when we get 30 minutes of sun midday… so I assume it’s not toxic, even though it does build up in our fat cells.
So it’s good to know that you’re taking that much and not overdoing it since you’re monitoring your blood levels.
I am only guessing that I am not deficient by taking 6000IU a day, and getting sun in my convertible or being out in it when I can. I do not use sunscreen unless I am going to get overexposed by the way. When I am sick, which between every 1 and 2 years, I bump up D… to 8000IU, but now I may do more.
But something of caution about the sun for vit D. I think getting sun away from peak hours increases the proportion of UVA which will tan, but not make vit D… Not the benefit I am looking for. I recall a while ago saying be careful not to burn in the clouds or in late or early day sun. Now it makes sense since UVB by definition is higher frequency and will get reduced by filtering through more atmosphere as the sun angle decreases.
I was diagnosed at an early age with what is best described as an allergy to the UV light of the Sun. If I am going to be out for more than an hour, I need sunscreen or long sleeves and a hat. I still tan and burn (like any blonde and blue eye), but I am blessed with an additional consequence. That likely explains my need for higher doses, and again illustrates how one size does not fit all. I eventually stopped seeing that doctor.
Gator:
Thank you so much for the context and good information!
Just curious, how many other people’s government very rapidly enacted a new law regarding coronavirus ?
Here in the UK we got the Coronavirus Act, which is slated to exist for a maximum 2 years, but with a review every six months to see if it’s still necessary.
At the time, nobody was really going to argue, but they enacted the law almost as if they had already experienced some civil rebellion, which didn’t actually come until after the created the law.
And now we have a group of people looking to blockade Scotland Yard Police Station soon, to enact our rights under Magna Carta’s Article 61, which makes it the duty of the citizenry to disobey the government where the government is tyrannical. At the moment, the enabling process behind the creation of the Coronavirus Act is in dispute
The numbers are not accurate. The US is close to 3000 deaths per 10 million population,
as there are about thirty tens of millions of people in the US, and nearly 90,000 deaths.
In some online discussions some were suggesting using “excess deaths” to see what effect the covid-19 disease is having and I thought that would be a reasonable approach because total deaths could not be fudged as easily.
Instead of using the CDC page for top causes of death as I did previously,
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/newyork/newyork.htm
I have looked up other sources such as the state government sites. Problem is they are a mess. Very hard to find total death stats and in the case of Georgia I went with Statista for a single year. So much for a standard 4 year average.
My previous estimates were all very conservative by design. I made a rough estimate by adding the top 10 causes plus drug overdoses. It was close and erred on the low side by design.
Using the new numbers there is no “excess deaths” of any statistical significance. This makes the case for lockdown at all, much less continuing, dodgy at best.
New York: Expected 50,319 / Actual 39,005
Georgia: Expected 27,699 / Actual 27,161
Illinois: Expected 36,138 / Actual 37,870
All 2020 deaths year to date are from this CDC page:
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.htm
Click the state and then go through weeks 1 to 16 and then get the “Total Deaths” from the bottom right.
New York: 150,959 yearly deaths (2013-16) expected average for 4 months = 50,319
https://apps.health.ny.gov/public/tabvis/PHIG_Public/lcd/reports/#state
Georgia: 83,098 yearly deaths (2017) expected average for 4 months = 27,699
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241581/births-and-deaths-in-the-us-by-state/
Illinois: 108,414 yearly deaths (2015-18) expected average for 4 months = 36,138
https://dph.illinois.gov/data-statistics/vital-statistics/death-statistics
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/885097/Weekly_all_cause_mortality_surveillance_week_20_2020_report.pdf
I think that in the UK it very nearly over.
You think?
Daily number of lab-confirmed UK cases
Number of additional cases on Thursday 14 May 2020: 3,446
Total number of COVID-19 associated UK deaths
Deaths of people who have had a positive test result confirmed by a Public Health or NHS laboratory: 33,614
Daily number of COVID-19 associated UK deaths
Number of additional deaths on Thursday 14 May 2020: 428
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
You have to use caution with the number of recorded figures this week. The week started with a public holiday. The custom with many people is to use the holiday day as part of annual holiday, thereby getting 9 days of holiday while using only 4 days of the annual entitlement (UK has 28 days paid annual leave by law)
I don’t think, I am giving you the total all cause mortality rate for the UK you are giving me estimated COVID-19 deaths, when the total all cause mortality rate for the UK falls to the seasonal average then I would consider this scare over even though there might be a small amount of COVID-19 deaths still. The weekly all cause mortality rate has only been above the winter 1999-2000 all cause mortality rate in two recent weeks a difference of about plus 8000 deaths for the COVID-19 outbreak but the two periods are comparable for number of deaths weekly. We seem to have had fewer seasonal deaths from the flu in the last two decades perhaps because of milder winters recently which makes the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak seem higher.
“The spike in deaths comes as Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been trying to re-open the state’s economy. Last week he allowed hair salons and barbershops to reopen and was planning to allow gyms to open next week. Before that he allowed restaurants, malls, retail stores and movie theaters to reopen at 25 percent of their maximum occupancy”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/Texas-reported-58-coronavirus-deaths-today-a-15270877.php
Oh, there it is, the scientific term, “spike”!
Hmmh.
I sent a comment 20 min before this one
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/13/attention-citizens-the-covid19-emergency-is-over/#comment-2994687
but it did not appear… Maybe it was considered as spam.
J.-P. D.
I mean this one:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/13/attention-citizens-the-covid19-emergency-is-over/#comment-2994630
sent by Firefox at 01:10 GMT+0
J.-P. D.
Hint/
Don’t be took eager in refreshing page or navigating away after posting some comment.
Must wait until whirling circle in tab changes to static …
WU
WT
logo, else comment can vanish into the ether, and even the Mods won’t see it.
That’s been my anecdotal experience anyway.
Jack Black
” Don’t be took eager … ”
Since when must I have been eager just because you think I was?
” That’s been my anecdotal experience anyway. ”
Yes, and it will remain no more than that.
You seem to have major problems with your Internet connection – browser, box, provider…
I have no problems of that kind.
Yesterday I posted numerous comments at Roy Spencer’s site, and… NOT ONE was missing.
My experience, Mr Black, is that every time I missed a comment here on WUWT, one of the moderators managed to get it out of the spam area.
The comment I miss today is the very first one which did not appear within a few hours.
So: where is it?
In the sum, your comment was much less helpful than you probably imagined.
J.-P. D.
“You seem to have major problems with your Internet connection…”
Since when must I have problems with my Internet connection, just because you think I have? I have no problems of that kind, rather the entire web is slowed markedly especially at busy remote destinations.
“So: where is it?”
I could probably guess, but I wouldn’t want to be unhelpful.
In the sum, your reply much less helpful than you probably imagined.
“You cannot be serious !” – J. McEnroe
😅
So, flatten the curve means, when lift lockdown/social distancing/measures taken to stop an exponential increasing number of cases {which could could overload medical service] when lift some of these measures to stop the exponential increase, it doesn’t start again with exponential growth. But doesn’t mean no more infection from the virus, you have a high level of new infection, but what don’t want is ever increase amount infection. Or lockdown, roughly speaking, does save you from eventually being infected- doesn’t lower chance of serious illness or death.
But a lockdown gives more time. And having more time, allows better treatments to be found- and in that sense save people from getting seriously ill or dying. And having more time has lots other benefits. With this china virus, the lockdown delayed it so it was no longer mostly occurring at same time as the “flu season”. Also getting closer to summer could other advantages, other not being at same time as flu season or it seems “summer like conditions” which are in the tropics- corresponds lower rate of spread and perhaps less severe effects.
So nearer to summer could act like lockdown type measure. Or as get nearer to summer, we can lift some lockdown measures for “free”, because warmer weather is slowing it down. Which also means, you should look at a longer weather forecast, when considering when considering to lifting some lockdown measure.
I think largely to do with Vitamin D levels, but also it appears virus doesn’t last as long in sunlight or warmer conditions. And perhaps the virus will mutate more- that might be good or bad
How come there are no results from November or December?
I’d argue the CDC has managed the curve by controlling the number and availability of tests.
The lies and BS are very thick. There are so many things that just don’t make sense.
The people who are dying of covid are the same people who have a high risk of death normally. All the virus does is push them over a bit sooner. The pandemic is a fraud and the response is a fraud.
It is even worse. No numbers from 2019, 2018, or 2017. A conspiracy, maybe?
Do check out some of the many lectures and videos (they are even cited by NIH) in the scientific journals, and on YouTube and many other platforms. D-lightful by renowned endocrinologist Michael F. Holick MD., PhD. He is probably the Worlds foremost expert in vitamin D and its relationship to holistic Human cellular biology.
I didn’t give a specific example of his work, because there are so many versions on so many platforms, and you may choose whatever suits your timescale, and availability in your locus. See Google/YouTube/ Bing/Elsevier or whatever.
I am D-lighted to point out, especially in this forum that once again “it’s The Sun wot did it !” Willie Soon in particular will be pleased about that for sure, that his “old pal Sol” could help eliminate the Covid Panic-demic !!!
Willis,
I am a bit late, and I saw there was a lot of comments about Sweden. As you mention Sweden are not dense and not homogenic, but not to the extent you mention. Right now we actually have a lot of cases up in the north and even in the mountain area where people go skiing. (The problem, after ski).
What else to mention.
From January 1st to March 15th death by date and total was 7.08% below the five year average.
From March 15th to May 1st it was 25% above average.
The Swedish government officially noted 2300 deaths to WC-19 during this period, but at the same time there was 4.300 death more than average. That is a misrepresentation of 43%. Numbers from SCB, responsible for statistics in Sweden.
Officially the health department has made very few tests. They know very little from how the spread actually has been advancing in Sweden. In my area, it’s one of the areas mostly populated of elderly people ! the spread has so far not reached but a very few cases. If it really get loose here it will be devastating. We don’t live by the coast !
From the outside comparing Sweden to other countries you need to also use the density. If you do you will see that no country is playing in the same league. I have my own rating, first deaths / million. Then devide by density and you get a fair rating how every country perform. a Low number is better. So where do we stand.
UK < 2, USA < 3, Spain 6, France < 4, Italy < 3, S. Korea 0.01, Hong Kong 0, Netherlands 0.8, Denmark 0.7, Finland 3, Norway 3, and Finally Sweden 13. Why is this a fair number ? Because the more dense the worse the spread. Even if you take the mountainous area in the north into account Sweden is about 9. Still in the bottom.
Swedish people actually do a lock down by themselves. They are more clever than their government. We have one person leading the Swedish governments response to this pandemic. His name A Tegnell. My neighbor are a friend of his old classmates. They say "He was the one with the worst performance in class all the time". "How the h-l can he have that position". "We don't believe one word he is saying". Well, you don't need to be a top performer to make a career in Swedish government. Point is ordinary people in Sweden are used to take care of them self. At least the over 50 and we really do. I bought my P100 Organic Vapor mask back at the beginning of Feb ! With organic filter. The one our doctors now are asking for and using. They are just 3 month's late.
If you want to compare Sweden, Compare with Portugal. They have the same population, smaller country and probably the same kind of spread but higher density. Still Sweden so far is at least 3 times worse. Should be the other way around !
Sweden now faces the consequences of bad leadership. Denmark, Norway and Germany. Will Open the borders and admit entrance from each other, but not Swedish people. We will be isolated because of the spread here !
You want a good example. New Zealand !
+10000
He wouldn’t listen to me and I doubt if he will listen to you, even though you live there.
Sweden aren’t the 9th worst in the world for deaths/million popultion for no reason.
My best guess was the Covid-19 virus was causing deaths in China in November 2019 and struck Europe and North America by December2019. It could even be earlier. The Covid-19 illness was confirmed as a pandemic by World Health Organization on March 11, 2020 – far too late to have any real effect. I think that is why Sweden Is no worse than many other countries. We will know more as the post-mortem of this disease unfolds.
AUTOPSIES REVEAL ‘STUNNING’ VIRUS NEWS
FIRST KNOWN US CORONAVIRUS DEATHS OCCURRED FAR EARLIER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
By Evann Gastaldo, Newser Staff
Posted Apr 22, 2020 4:44 AM CDT
Updated Apr 22, 2020 6:42 AM CDT
https://www.newser.com/story/289905/autopsies-reveal-stunning-virus-news.html
Santa Clara County Public Health Department Director Dr. Sara Cody speaks during a news conference in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group via AP)
(NEWSER) – Up until recently, the first COVID-19 death in the US was thought to have occurred in Washington state on Feb. 29. But autopsies have revealed two earlier coronavirus deaths in California, one on Feb. 6 and the other on Feb. 17, the AP reports. The San Francisco Chronicle calls it “a stunning discovery” that radically changes the timeline of the virus in the country and adds to other recent evidence that it was circulating in the US earlier than previously believed. “We know there was a person diagnosed in late January with the virus—but to have at least three people right around the beginning of February and late January already have the infection and two of them pass away means the virus has been around for a while,” Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith says, per the Mercury News.
There were reports of an unusual pneumonia in Lombardy, Italy at the end of last year
EG https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076334/coronavirus-strange-pneumonia-seen-lombardy-november-leading
Thank you for this article!
Is this UK government graph meaningless propaganda (I suspect I already know)
?resize=634%2C357&ssl=1
OR
https://tinyurl.com/yatw433f
What does ‘R = 1’ mean. I mean, it is the rate, R0, but surely on this graph, if R=1 is the value at the top of the curve, then values either side must by R1….and according to the text, we’ll be reducing measures as R increases.
I’m stumped
Apologies but the last post seemed to get garbled…hmmm
So, this government graph
https://tinyurl.com/yatw433f
If R=1 is at the top of the curve, and if R is on the Y-axis, then surely everything left and right of the dashed line, or the top of the curve, *must* represent R being less than 1…..in which case the question is, why does the curve rise so quickly and fall so quickly when R1….and the further to the right we go the higher the R value goes…..in which case the question is, according to the text, as R increases fewer measures will be used.
OR
Is it just meaningless propaganda, saying “we’re in control of this”
I read R as a function of how many people one infected person can infect in a given population, normalized to 1 at the top of the curve, in order that each country sets the values according to its particular distributions.
” why does the curve rise so quickly and fall so quickly when R1….and the further to the right we go the higher the R value goes…”
R is a variable that is useful, but it represents an integration of many other health related variables of the population (numbers, density,population age,when lockdown happened …). In the beginning of X for a given population, when very few people are infected, it is low.
For rapidly transferred diseases, as is this corona virus, the virus spreads like fire , that is why R rises fast. Then governments impose measures to limit contacts in the population, it starts falling. The figure shows figuratively how the imposed measures should be slackened , so as to control the spread of infection, in order that the population reaches a controlled herd immunity. There are steps, in order to tighten again if it gets out of hand.
In Greece they use Rho0, which is exactly the current number for how many people one person can infect, and started relaxing the lockdown when the number was controlled to be way below 1 new infection by a new infection. It is like opening and closing a faucet, they are trying to control the rate of infection in order to preserve the health system . With the steps they advise, it will depend on each country’s peculiarities in real time.
Thanks for the explanation, I have a similar understanding but what does the line in the graph actually represent ?
What is the graph a graphical representation of ?
To my eye, everything below the top of the graph is R<1
How can R increase in the way shown in the graph up to 1 ?
How did R start at 0 and rise to 1 ? .
We know when the virus arrived here that R must have been very high, and that is not represented by this 'apparent graph'. If the data to the left of the R=1 line is supposed to represent historical cases, then the line needs to start higher up the Y-axis, certainly well above R=1
CDC revisited the Wuhan data and have a real world median R0 for C19 of 5.7 (3.8 – 8.9 real range)
According to the UK graph the R has not been above 1
Measles has an R of 10-12, Chicken pox has an R of upto 18. I'm not trying to argue that chicken pox is 'a much worse disease' because of the R number alone, we still need to consider the lethality. Influenza has an R of 0.9 to 2.1, again just another comparison, but flu kills people and flu mutates every year, just like this virus seems to be able to mutate (accepted this is only it's first year)
So can we assume the graph is not a real graph, that it is a graphic (albeit a bit Soviet era) , designed to make people focus on an R of 1, saying that an R with a value of less than 1 is the most desirable outcome ?
Certainly the area to the left of R=1 line is drawn incorrectly, because prior to lockdown the R value must have certainly been higher than 1
And regarding R, isn't it actually meaningless ?
The R could be the median value of 5.7, and kill nobody at all. If R = 5.7 and the average age of those who it spreads to is 20 years old it is unlikely that any deaths will occur. Likewise R could be 0.7, but enter into a care home and kill everyone who is susceptible.
Unlike the flu, C19 has a long incubation period and a long period of being contagious prior to symptoms showing.
Also it is very contagious when there are no or few symptoms.
Holding on to the mantra of 'R<1 is good' seems naive at best. The R could be 4 and kill nobody
What difference does it make if I catch the virus when R = 9 or R = 1, if I am young, healthy, get plenty of sun and have no comorbidities the chance of death is probably unchanged between both different R value situations.
It seems to me that now we know that the virus does not affect all of us equally, that we know there is such a massive difference in susceptibility when you consider even just a person's age group membership (not even considering personal health, skin colour or existing comorbidities), that we need to get off the idea of using R to represent a level of safety among the population. Because actually, it is not the fact that you get the virus which decides if you die or not, but which risk group you belong to that is far more important. And is that any different to any other virus ? I don't think so
R0 (R-naught) is a measure of the replication rate. Answering the question: How many others does an average infected person infect. When this is greater than 1 the case count is exponentially increasing. When it is exactly 1 the case count is constant. When it is less than 1 the case count is exponentially decreasing.
R is a rate of change. In a graph of case count it is the slope of the curve.
Yes but, as I pointed out in a round about way. when does average become average ?
There is no average person we can run a double blind placebo controlled study is there.
I maintain that the importance of ones own key risk factors still outweigh the importance of R0.
Even the BBC is confused https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52473523 calling R the
“it’s the number of people that one infected person will pass the virus on to, on average”. That is why I interpret the R in the figure given by Chris Baron as a normalized replication curve, so that each reagion that will have a developing plot like this can adjust it to the pea of their Rho0.
I’m not surprised the BBC is confused if it uses Imperial College infographics like the one on that page, here
Apparently the R value has been below 1, and stayed at about 0.7, with no change. It contradicts the government’s data.
I don’t think the average member of public is so stupid that they couldn’t understand a factual graph instead of this made up one….
R is not Rho0. They have made a blanket plot that regions can apply to decide whether to relax the lockdown and when, by using their own numbers.
Take the peak R=1 equal to the highest value for Rho0″ the number of people that one infected person will pass the virus on to, on average”. At R=1 every country put a lockdown (except sweden and some others)
Before an infected person arrived, the Rho0 number was zero , the first one infects a number and there is an exponential growth until measures were taken by lockdowns, that is why measures were taken, to stop the rate of infections.
R does not represent a level of safety, just data. Before R=1 the infection was uncontrolled, then governments got scared and lockdown is imposed at R=1. Because of the control of the flow of infections after the lockdowns, the rate falls, and the graph is to be continually monitored during the step wise unlocking, to check that it is still falling, otherwise the governments have to impose again measures; for each region with its own pecuiiarities.
The graph is a guide for how to relax the lockdowns without increasing infections.
I’ve got an engineering degree so I suppose I should have done better with something which the average layman is expected to understand. Maybe education is a hindrance after all !
Still I can’t ignore the fact that in an area with lots of young people the R could be 3 or 0.3 but it makes no difference to the chance of them dying.
The lower the R number the slower the spread, so the value of 1 is a bit slower than the value of 1.1, and 0.9 is a bit slower than 1.0………as 1.1 is slower than 1.2 and 0.8 is slower than 0.9…..all we’re talking about is a rate of spread. There’s no real magic about the figure of 1….we know that R can’t reach infinity, because we know it has a maximum of 8.9….and the idea that ‘1 person infects 1 person’ is a key to this only works when the mythical average actually exists
Even with an R of 0.2 one person can infect 15.
Perhaps I’m just exposing a hole in my knowledge but from my point of view I think “so what if one person infects 2, it’s what happens to you when you get it which makes more of a difference than the R0”.
Why keep hoping for the lowest possible number of infections as if that will improve the chances of surviving if you catch it ?
We’re getting to the point we have what look like reliable treatment protocols coming. End of panic
Chris please,, if you allow an 80 year old grandmother to call you by your first name, try to understand my statements, which may not be in very clear english.
1) the R in the plot is not the Rho0 of the infections propagated from one infected. It is a NORMALIZED version of Rho0, normalized to 1 at the peak of the number of infections for each country/region. The peak started dropping AFTER the lockdwons were imposed.
2)The lockdowns were imposed because governments got scared from the rapidity of the infection and deaths of older people, and from the FAILURE OF THE HEALTH SYSTEMS , which in several regions ( search for Lombardy horror videos) had dead in the corridors and used effective euthanasia. The lockdowns were imposed to STOP THE RATE of infection so that the health system could respond reasonably.
3) Once the rate started decreasing consistently, they made the normalized plot with R (normalized Rho0) so that each region could fit it to their own rate, and the plot you linked is an instruction on HOW TO OPEN the lockdown in steps, so that the rate does not increase out of control. People will get infected at a rate that the Health system and Funeral systems can cope with.
You say:
“Why keep hoping for the lowest possible number of infections as if that will improve the chances of surviving if you catch it ”
Hoping for a low number of infections will not save people infected if they are in the vulnerable groups, but it will save the HEALTH SYSTEM.
The logic behind the lockdowns is to try and save the health and funeral services.With those collapsed chaos reigns, as was found experimentally in the Lombardy region.
The logic behind the plot is to show a path for regulating the rate of infection by opening the lockdown in steps. It is not to help the average Joe to feel safe, but to show how the rate of infection can be controlled and the economy opened while having a working health system. The lives saved are not the lives of those elderly who will die anyway if infected, but all the rest of the population emergencies, heart attacks,embolisms ….. which also died in the corridors in Lombardy from lack of health care.
Whatever people claim is inside the number R0, the number is generated by people’s behaviors, the biological properties of the virus and the immunity inside the population.
While the biological properties of a virus are fixed immunity level changes by every person that survived the virus and people’s behavior could/should change during an epidemic. So R0 changes into Rt.
But therefore R0 in a population that sleeps under a roof with twenty people and gives each other french kisses as a greeting is different from a society where 50% live alone and people bow to each other in 1m distance.
The immunity against smallpox is way higher in a community when the cowpox are circulating. If there is, in a subpopulation, a mutation in the receptor the virus requires for cellular entry that changes the susceptibility of the whole population.
So R0 is never fixed though the properties of the virus are.
The Swedes are very sensible people, and have behaved accordingly in the face of a pandemic. They are people who don’t need to told to take precautions, avoid subways and crowds, to work from home where possible, and to keep a reasonable social distance:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/sweden-takes-the-big-coronavirus-risk-for-none-of-the-economic-gain/news-story/e8981b9c2f49086278e9ace1719ee67a?fbclid=IwAR2qS8-mCZl0jmLm8BryYXk1iGG_-EfaXUTkwsEnfFLYUcR2rDuyU2IgWiQ
Right on, Willis.
One quibble; you said “If you want someone to run a hospital, as a general rule you shouldn’t hire a doctor …”
My first decade working in healthcare I worked at hospitals run by doctors. The second decade was at a hospital run by a nun. The remaining 25 years I was “led” by a series of MBA’s. The doctors and the nun were unquestionably better leaders than the MBA’s, and ironically had better business sense.
Just an anecdotal observation, but I’ll bet it is shared by others who have spent a long career in hospitals.
This “anecdotal observation” may very well confirm Willis’ position. If your job was of the medical kind that is. In that case your perspective on what is the right kind of leadership will to a high probability be biased by a medical perspective. A fellow citizen in Holland calls what is going on a “medical dictatorship” caused by the tunnel vision of the medical professionals and the politicians bowing to their advice. I myself would say it is a big mistake is to apply a medical regime suited for a hospital – an organization you can control to a high degree – to a whole society. It is not possible, it doesn’t work, and it has devastating negative consequences. To think this is something healthy to do is an abomination. It is sad to see otherwise bright minds to get lost in this hopeless direction. The folly of that approach becomes clearer by the day.
I’m pleased to see I wasn’t the only one to find the UK government’s propagan…..I mean infographic to be less than acceptable.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/school-teacher-hilariously-marks-governments-lockdown-chart/12/05/?fbclid=IwAR0FbBRmvepadw1sOSXAFh5t-TGbSbZL1qoRQpFdb1HX2i3MvcnYkpsHtdc
Have anyone asked your doctor about Hydroxychloroquine? (plus Zinc and optional antibiotic)? Specifically if you become sick will your MD write a script for you? Will their pharmacist fill it?
Many Dr are saying that if you get fever in first week of illness, this Rx can help. The current standard (Ontario Canada) is to isolate, and only enter hospital if you get worse (not sure when).
I suggest that people ask their MD what their treatment options are. Ask ahead of time. Screening is needed (particularly, cardiac issues), but this can be checked based on your medical history.
Whether to do this is not is a personal choice, but it has been obstructed by some states and also Alberta in Canada:
https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppih-covid-19-recommendations.pdf
Quoting: “Recommendations that HQ be taken off order sets for COVID management in AHS outside the setting of monitored randomized controlled trials have been made to reflect changes to major
national guidelines (Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Canada, Infectious Diseases Society of America, American Thoracic Society) in Canada and the US.”
What exactly is the point of a slow reopening?
I agree with the article about too many “essential” workers (But all American workers are truly essential-bar none).
What is it that is trying to be rolled out that needs this time?
re: “What is it that is trying to be rolled out that needs this time?”
The avoidance of volatile, debilitating reactions from ‘the press’.
_Jim: “The avoidance of volatile, debilitating reactions from ‘the press’.”
That, my friend, is a great Mic’ Drop answer. It’s really that simple.