Coronavirus Thread

[MiTasol]

To add to that - here are the most recent death rate per million residents figures for the same countries.

New Zealand: 4/m and none for over 100 days. Certain people with a total disregard for honesty claim NZ has a terrible problem with covid. NZ is again close to control
South Korea: 6/m - last death unknown, appears to be Aug 6th
Australia: 18/m and 12 yesterday, 17 the day before, good partial control
Italy: 586/m and 5 yesterday, 4 the day before, close to full control
United Kingdom: 609/m and 3 yesterday, 12 the day before, close to full control
Germany: 111/m and 9 yesterday, 6 the day before, close to full control
France: 466/m and 24 yesterday, 17 the day before, good partial control
US: 529/m and rapidly rising (yesterday 524/m). 1.,358 new deaths yesterday, 589 the day before. COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL

Certain people like to point out that the US has a lower death toll than the UK but the US started much later and were only 404/million earlier this month. They will almost certainly pass the UK's 609/m before the end of this month. The US could have learned from Italy, Spain and the UK's mistakes before the virus got a hold but did not.

As far as I have seen the US has the youngest victims and many of them but I have been unable to find official data on that.

 

[Deleted member 68059]

COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL.

I`m not really particulary convinced that one CAN "control" any virus by political means. There is no data which suggests that nations with harder lockdowns achieved less deaths per capita (except China...go figure), in fact the opposite is in many cases true. If you want to learn from mistakes in Europe, let me tell you now, DONT lock down your society, it will not stop the virus spreading
(we know this because there is no improvement between nations which DID, and those that DIDNT), and what the media seems to be falling over themselves to
never talk about, is the huge number of excess deaths which were not attributable to the virus. Do a graph of hospital admissions in the UK over the last 6months,
you`ll soon see why. All the people who would normally have gone to hospital and survived, are now just dying at home, heart attacks, cancer, etc. (well
either that or by "magic" thousands of people spontainously got cured, the naysayers say "well thats just all your timewasters not bothering to get free care",
i`d say the drop is far too large to possibly account for the "oh I stubbed my toe, put me in intensive care" types. Its no fun in the NHS these days either
so I`m not sure how many people want to wait 5hours in an A&E because they had nothing better to do... anyway...)

I have a friend in the UK (whats called a "general practitioner" here), he told me patients are not presenting, they have all be terrified out of their minds that the`re
staying at home. Huge numbers are dying from cancelled chemo operations, and so on. This is utterly verboten info at least as far as TV news is concerned.

Cancer treatment delayed as patient priority lists drawn up

Coronavirus 'wreaks havoc' on cancer services

'More than two million in UK wait for cancer care'

An extra 18,000 cancer patients 'could die sooner' due to COVID-19

Sweden (who like several other nations) didnt lock down, are portrayed in the media here as some sort of bunch of murdering madmen, oddly when I chat to
friends in Sweden, they say everything is basically fine there. (they apparently did one big mistake, which was however not isolating their care homes properly).

In UK, basically what happened was that Prof. Ferguson released a study saying if we DIDNT lock down 500,000 would die, so the Govt basically closed the NHS to
normal opertaions, and turned it into a virus response organisation. Ferguson later had to resign when it turned out he`d been ignoring the lockdown rules
he made everyone else follow to have an affair.

Special report: The simulations driving the world's response to COVID-19

Later, his mathematical models were utterly taken apart and branded nonsense by many qualified persons:

His modelling was described as potentially: "the most devastating software mistake of all time"

'Politicised nature' of lockdown debate delays Imperial report | Free to read

"So the real scandal is: Why did anyone ever listen to this guy?" « Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Can we trust Neil Ferguson's computer code? | The Spectator

Neil Ferguson: Coronavirus response adviser's previous epidemic mistakes revealed

(for those outside the UK, Ferguson has a track record of consistently getting virus modelling completely wrong)

To clear spaces the moved thousands of old people in hospital into care homes !!! (yes
really), which many are now saying directly caused huge numbers of deaths because many of those in hospital had the virus, and they moved them into
concentrated pockets of old people. Yet anyone who voices a critical view, is told basically "you`re murding old people !!!". Yet this is exactly what the
government policy resulted in.

The result of cancelled operations and cessation of cancer care etc can be see in the areas where the green data goes above the
5-year average line. It should be noted that the blue bars are NOT by any stretch deaths cased BY the virus, even the official
data admits this "Deaths involving...". In fact in the UK, they even had it that ANYONE who died of ANYTHING who had been
given a + covid test in the 2months (60 days in the official documents) preceding their death was marked as "Covid involved". So you have people in there
who died of internal bleeding after a car crash, being listed as Covid as they crashed maybe 2months after a + test.

Note that these "virus deaths" are ADDED to those who actually had Covid on the death certificate. So the coroner does NOT have to
even menion "covid" on the death certificate for it to be logged as a "involving covid" death. Utterly astonishing.

The media seems to also have enjoyed mixing up Case Fatality Rate and Infection Fatality Rate. (I had no idea what those were until
someone told me about it a few weeks ago). Whichever you choose, you do have to make it one or the other! This can
dramatically skew the comparisons between Flu and Covid deaths if you get it wrong.

I really have no interest in engaging in any arguments/debate, merely stating my viewpoint here for those interested.

Its even clear from the official (fudged) data below that certainly in the UK, the virus is essentially well on its way out,
yet the media are still trying to terrify all and sundry. In fact if you plot data going back 10 years, there was at least one
perfectly normal Flu year which killed more than Covid did here. Yet; absolutely nothing was said about it.

Interestingly, although you cannot absolutely PROVE causation, it is "interesting" to plot the dates when excess deaths
started rising, relative to when the lockdowns were imposed. I`m not suggesting its 100% causality here, but I think
it at the very least shows that there is a very large negative effect on death rates by imposing lockdowns. I`ve looked
at several countries, and they`re all amazingly similar. I think the most extreme one I`ve seen is New York city. They`re
not all quite as cut-and-dry as this, but it makes the issue clearly one to be discussed (sorry its a screenshot
from a video which is why the quality is rubbish, but the data is from CDC. The dotted line is when lockdown
was imposed. As I say this is probably the most extreme example, it is of course possible to say "of course you
get this graph because they imposed a lockdown when the virus became most prevalent". This is a reasonable
assertion, but doesnt match very well to latest data on when the virus first started being detected in major cities,
which seems to have been many months beforehand, which makes one wonder what the virus was doing for months on-end.

Also given how appaulingly bad the predictions have been from govt reports, i`m a bit incredulous that they all somehow
managed to start lockdown EXACTLY before the spikes in deaths. It seems more likely that the case-effect here is
excess deaths due to very sick people being locked in their homes. Some of these deaths are of course virus related too, sadly
I dont have (yet) a good plot of that.

Rolls-Royce let go thousands here a few months ago, the job market is dead, buisinesses closed for ever, its going to be
an economic apocalypse, and we have a higher deaths per capita than any nation which didnt have a lockdown. Total insanity,
the suicides, domestic violence and other unspeakable issues for those with disabled children like Autism who have been left
to literally rot is never mentioned on the news. I have a aquantance with an Autistic son who was supposed to be in a day-care
centre. That was closed down, he`s now stuck at home and she`s trying to take care of him whilst he literally screams and
smashes the house up. Nobody is even allowed to talk about these consiquencs of "locking down".

I have no idea what the best solution is/was, but I do resent the lack of media coverage of the problems govt policy is having.

https://assets.publishing.service.g..._PHE_Data_Series_COVID-19_Deaths_20200812.pdf

 

[Zipper730]

While there definitely will be people who will claim that the "censoring" proves a cover-up, quite some of those might be the ones who would believe in the conspiracy myth anyway, no?

Actually, censoring makes it worse. You're thinking of this through the frame of two scenarios, of which one is "good", and the other is "bad".

Instead, let's think of it as two bad scenarios: One is simply worse than the other.

A good example of this would be a man who's been stabbed: He's not dead, but he's in serious condition and, while an ambulance is en-route, all you can do is one of two things

1. Leave the blade in him, possibly stabilize it​

2. Remove the knife​

Instinctively, the natural response is to not leave the knife in the guy, but to yank it out. It turns out, it's the worst of two scenarios: Remove it, and you've uncorked the wound and the person might very well bleed out.

I would say it's best to

1. Flood the Zone: Saturate the system with accurate data​

​

2. Truth Sandwich: Sounds funny, but it's a specific way to counter determined deception efforts. The idea involves starting with the truth, then illustrating the inaccurate message, then reiterating the truth. Basically you surround the lie with truth, sandwiching it, and start with and finish with the truth. The idea is to make sure the truth is heard more than lies. Unfortunately, many people -- even the media -- tend to often illustrate the deceptive message first, which serves to reinforce it, before you've successfully started to dismantle it.​

​

3. Understand the Cause: Conspiracy theories surface because people don't believe they're being told the truth about matters. This is not always unjustified.​

​

The fact that that there have been scares over viruses of far greater lethality over the past 15-20 years such as Ebola (80-90% mortality rate historically, 30% in 2014), SARS (11% mortality rate), MERS (34.4%), that were handled in a more measured manner with successful containment, made the reaction seem completely overboard. There was also conflicting data in some cases between national leadership (It's no big deal), media (The sky is falling!), and the medical community (This is quite serious, but...) about the exact threat the virus posed created a lot of fear and uncertainty, as well as a feeling that people aren't being told the whole truth on this matter (a ripe environment for conspiracy theories).​

There is no data which suggests that nations with harder lockdowns achieved less deaths per capita (except China...go figure), in fact the opposite is in many cases true.

Ironically, such extreme measures by China were required because they tried to keep the matter secret until it got so badly out of control. Dictatorships sometimes have a tendency to do this to protect themselves from their people, and to avoid appearing weak to other nations.

Sweden (who like several other nations) didnt lock down, are portrayed in the media here as some sort of bunch of murdering madmen, oddly when I chat to
friends in Sweden, they say everything is basically fine there. (they apparently did one big mistake, which was however not isolating their care homes properly).

That happened in New York too. There were a lot of deaths in nursing homes, it's sad.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

So much misinformation being believed and spread here...

 

[gumbyk]

There is no data which suggests that nations with harder lockdowns achieved less deaths per capita (except China...go figure), in fact the opposite is in many cases true.

Ummm, you might want to have a look at where NZ sits in those statistics.
The latest cases have barely affected anyone outside Auckland (besides the economic one of lack of domestic tourism).
In fact, our lockdown was so severe, that it has been deemed 'unlawful'. But guess what? everyone is saying that it was still justified, and proportionate to the risks, but that the law-making was too slow to keep up with the government's actions. Big deal, no-one cares.

 

[Deleted member 68059]

Ummm, you might want to have a look at where NZ sits in those statistics.
The latest cases have barely affected anyone outside Auckland (besides the economic one of lack of domestic tourism).
In fact, our lockdown was so severe, that it has been deemed 'unlawful'. But guess what? everyone is saying that it was still justified, and proportionate to the risks, but that the law-making was too slow to keep up with the government's actions. Big deal, no-one cares.

Firstly for extremely obvious geographic reasons NZ is not a useful comparator.

Data more broadly do not support your assertions. This is obviously merely a cross-section, but it is very representative of the general
lockdown vs not. It should be noted that Mexico went into a lockdown just before the data used to collate this was made,
Therefore you should probably disregard it. Sadly the data is not current, but I do not believe if you update it the
overall story will alter.

The "big deal who cares" was rather thoroughly covered in my first, and rather heavily reference-laden post.

 

[gumbyk]

Firstly for extremely obvious geographic reasons NZ is not a useful comparator.

Data more broadly do not support your assertions. This is obviously merely a cross-section, but it is very representative of the general
lockdown vs not. It should be noted that Mexico went into a lockdown just before the data used to collate this was made,
Therefore you should probably disregard it. Sadly the data is not current, but I do not believe if you update it the
overall story will alter.

It's not only how strict the lockdown was, its the time taken to enact it. As I said, our was in effect even before parliament could pass the laws to make it legal.
UK initially tried the 'herd immunity' approach, then changed to a lockdown, USA is hardly in lockdown with the number of idiots ignoring it. Italy, likewise delayed any form of lockdown. As for the others, I don't know, but it would be interesting to do this exercise again, taking into effect the time between first case, and lockdown being implemented.

As for the Asian countries in the 'non-lockdown' list - their culture is significantly different. Before this pandemic, if you were sick you wore a mask in public, so there was no great change in behaviour required.

 

[wuzak]

Firstly for extremely obvious geographic reasons NZ is not a useful comparator.

Data more broadly do not support your assertions. This is obviously merely a cross-section, but it is very representative of the general
lockdown vs not. It should be noted that Mexico went into a lockdown just before the data used to collate this was made,
Therefore you should probably disregard it. Sadly the data is not current, but I do not believe if you update it the
overall story will alter.

The "big deal who cares" was rather thoroughly covered in my first, and rather heavily reference-laden post.

View attachment 592254

Calum, that data seems to be a bit out of date.

The current deaths/1m population for the US is around 532, against 193 in the chart. And the USA didn't have a country wide lock down.

Sweden are at around 574/1m population and Mexico 447. South Korea 6 and Japan 4. Iceland is still 29.

I don't think many countries instituted a lock down before the virus took hold, the lock down being a measure to bring an outbreak under control.

And, as mentioned above, the UK did not initially lock down.

 

[ThomasP]

This is an update from my post#2,012 on 1 May. The numbers in ( ) are the current numbers

__________Population***
___________Density__Population_________Confirmed_______________________ Deaths/
___________(sq.mi.)___ (millions)____________Cases____________Deaths_______million

Japan________ 867_____126.5_________14,305(57,550)_______455(1,128)______ 3.6(9)____(Japan first confirmed case was on 6 January)*

S.Korea_____1,325______51.3_________ 10,774(16,346)_______248(307)________4.8(6)____(Korea first confirmed case was on 20 January)**

US____________94_____331.0______ 1,090,000(5,700,931)__63,538(176,337)__192.0(532)__(US first confirmed case was on 20 January)**

Germany_____ 623______83.8________ 163,000(229,700)____ 6,623(9,314)_____ 79.0(111)__(Germany first confirmed case was on 27 January)

*Note that Japan had 14 days less warning than the US. The ensuing spread of COVID-19 in the two countries is an example of one country doing things about as well as can be done, and the other not anywhere near as well.
**Note that S.Korea and the US confirmed their first cases on the same day. The ensuing spread of COVID-19 in the two countries is an example of one country doing things about as well as can be done, and the other not anywhere near as well.
***Note that the US has the lowest population density, by a factor of 5.7x to 14x.

Also:

Japan did declare a state of emergency and institute a "voluntary lockdown" that lasted for ~1.5 months (7 April to 26 May). Their lockdown was similar to that of the US in that it was mostly voluntary, with social distancing, mask wearing, and work/stay at home. Their lockdown was different in that they did not order the shutdown of "non-essential" businesses en mass, but they did penalize troublesome organizations and businesses. The 2 main differences between the results for Japan and the US are that:
1. Japan took the coronavirus threat seriously from the start, and instituted quarantines and TTI**** immediately. Their reaction was so quick that the spread was virtually stopped in its tracks. There have been numerous small outbreaks since then, but Japan's methods have kept them in check.
2. Japan's population has a significantly lower percentage of obliviots. When they were told to social distance, wear masks, work/stay at home, avoid certain businesses/neighborhoods . . they did.

South Korea did declare a state of emergency and institute a "voluntary lockdown", but like Japan they did not order the shutdown of "non-essential" businesses en mass. They have, however, penalized and/or ordered the shut down of troublesome organizations and businesses when needed, including schools, gyms, parks, museums, churches, etc. The 2 main differences between the results for South Korea and the US are that:
1. South Korea took the coronavirus threat seriously from the start, and instituted quarantines and TTI**** immediately. Testing, in particular, was so quickly implemented that the spread was virtually stopped in its tracks. Like in Japan there have been numerous small outbreaks since then, but South Korea's methods have kept them in check.
2. South Korea's population has a significantly lower percentage of obliviots. When they were told to social distance, wear masks, work/stay at home, avoid certain businesses/neighborhoods . . they did.

The US did declare a state of emergency, and order a fairly stiff lockdown (not by any means the stiffest). This included closing what were deemed non-essential businesses, schools, churches, etc., along with social distancing and stay-at-home/shelter-in-place orders. Most states, but not all, required some of the above under threat of monetary penalty. However, not only did a large minority of average citizens not obey the social distancing/stay-at-home/shelter-in-place orders at the beginning of this whole mess, a majority refused to wear masks when it was first recommended and STILL refuse to wear masks and social distance. The need for the stiff lockdown in the US was due to the appallingly bad initial reaction to the pandemic, and the reason that it did not work (better) was that only the business closures were adhered to (for the most part). We are so far off the mark that it is difficult to relate the differences that have resulted in the disparity between the US and Japan or South Korea . .the closest I can get is:
1. The US did not take the coronavirus seriously at the start, and aside from a couple of cruise ships did not institute mandatory quarantine and initiate TTI****. Many of our states and their leaders only began to take the pandemic seriously in the last month or so. Many of our citizens still do not take it seriously.
2. Unfortunately, unlike Japan and South Korea, a very large percentage of the US citizenry are obliviots, or possibly just the run of the mill idiots (I have not decided yet), which includes a significant percentage of our leaders. When ordered to stay-at-home/shelter-in-place and wear masks, not only did many not do so . . many have also proudly refused to do so, claiming that it infringes on their civil rights. The only voluntary stricture largely obeyed was that of working at home where possible.

Incidentally, the US (aside from in a few states like New York that were hit so severely at the beginning) still has not instituted TTI on a significant scale. We are only just now beginning to build the organization necessary . . ~6.5 months after our first case.

****Test,Trace, and Isolate (TTI) or maybe Track, Test, and Isolate (still TTI).

[edited by me for clarity, on August 23]

 

[MiTasol]

A good article on the intelligence of the government agencies administering covid control in Australia.
Farmers despair as they're told to put sheep, hay and harvesters on planes
If brains were gasoline they would not have enough to start a cigarette lighter.

 

[Vincenzo]

Italy Today report 1,071 new cases, first time over one thousand since 12th May

 

[MiTasol]

Italy Today report 1,071 new cases, first time over one thousand since 12th May

Bugga.

Keep safe.

 

[MIflyer]

I have a simple double layer cloth mask that a friend made, probably out of dishcloths. I wear it when I go into a store that requires you to wear one. It just loops over the ears. I think it looks stupid but it meets the requirement.

But those full lower face and jaw masks that people are wearing, where the straps wrap around their head....
I can't shake the feeling that they are wearing jock straps on their faces. It is hard not to laugh.

Anybody else notice that?

 

[ThomasP]

I can't decide whether to give you (MIflyer) an Agree symbol or a Funny symbol, maybe we need a combined symbol?

 

[ThomasP]

Minnesota report, August 22
cases 68,687, recovered 61,698, hospitalized 6,113(316)*, deaths 1,761, tested 1,357,595
fatality rate 2.5%
mortality rate 308.9 per million
test rate 238.2 per thousand

Minnesota 8 day amalgamated report, for August 15 through 22
new cases estimated to be ~3,100, actual number unknown due to delays in testing.
new hospitalizations 291, up 5%
new deaths 62, up 35%**
positivity rate 5.1%, up 0.6%

*The number in parenthesis is Minnesota's currently hospitalized COVID-19 cases. This number has varied between 273 and 335 over the last 30 days.
**This number is not as bad as it may seem. The fatalities tend to trail the new case/hospitalizations by anywhere from 2-6 weeks. Also this number is for 8 days as opposed to the 7 days in the last amalgamated report.

 

[MIflyer]

The most informative thing I have read on the Chinese Wuflu is here, and it is the opinion of the top experts:
The Good News the Media and Our Health Experts™ Are Hiding About COVID-19

Key points:

1. There is no such thing as being infected without symptoms. They may be mild or very severe, but there are always symptoms.

2. The majority of the "new infected" people are in fact people whose immune systems destroyed the virus and there are pieces of the virus still floating around, causing no harm and provoking no immune response. But all of the various "virus tests" detect not the whole virus but just a piece of it. Thus, most of the "new infected" are people who already got it and got over it. Thus this is not only a Chinese Virus but essentially a Chinese Fire Drill.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

The most informative thing I have read on the Chinese Wuflu is here, and it is the opinion of the top experts:
The Good News the Media and Our Health Experts™ Are Hiding About COVID-19

Key points:

1. There is no such thing as being infected without symptoms. They may be mild or very severe, but there are always symptoms.

2. The majority of the "new infected" people are in fact people whose immune systems destroyed the virus and there are pieces of the virus still floating around, causing no harm and provoking no immune response. But all of the various "virus tests" detect not the whole virus but just a piece of it. Thus, most of the "new infected" are people who already got it and got over it. Thus this is not only a Chinese Virus but essentially a Chinese Fire Drill.

You are aware that PJ Media is a far right opinion based "news" source that is known for spreading false, inaccurate, and often conspiracy theory stuff right? I would not count it as informative...

 

[Lucky13]

So much misinformation being believed and spread here...

Honestly, I can't remember when media was truthful and were sticking to facts last....Denzel Washington is very much right in his video on YouTube, about media!
A favourite of mine, is when swedish media was running wild with news about russia flying spy planes over one of our big exercises (with Nato), using a photoshop aircraft....a BOEING!

I know, off topic and I apologise!

A few pubs here in Glasgow has been shut down, due to customers have phoned in, telling the staff that they've got the Big Sniffles! One of my colleagues at work was off on Thursday night because of this, self isolation, until the test results are back and he knows. See what happens with the rest of us if he's got the Drips Majoris, it'd be half the nightshift fcked should that be the case, me included!

 

[at6]

I can't shake the feeling that they are wearing jock straps on their faces. It is hard not to laugh.

If it keeps junk in, it should keep other junk out.

 

[MIflyer]

You are aware that PJ Media is a far right opinion based "news" source that is known fir spreading false, inaccurate, and often conspiracy theory stuff right? I would not count it as informative...

As opposed to everyone else?

They are quoting real, verifiable experts, not fabricating things out of thin air like CNN and the NYT.