Corona Horse, Corona Rider - Covid #9

[Fragile Bird]

Frankly, that sounds like something Trump is going to do.

[Chad Vader]

Currently on a 14 house confinement due to my daughter coming into contact with someone who tested positive. My job and my wife’s are both paying us while at home which is nice but the confinement is pretty weird. Tests your marriage and all that.

[Zorral]

Reading through this topic it's really hard not to speculate that the planet may have rid itself of us within 10 years, due to our internationally raging stupidity alone.  Plus, you know, climate catastrophe hasn't gone away.  Big hurricanes gonna hit this season They Say.

 

[Buckwheat]

May I present Covid and Corona.

Poor children.

[Fragile Bird]

5 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

May I present Covid and Corona.

Poor children.

Good grief, talk about being cursed...

[Mudguard]

42 minutes ago, Ran said:

The article doesn't get into how that distinction is made, although I know it has been discussed in terms of season flu deaths and how the fact that attributing deaths to flu is more art than science -- so I presume it's the same here.

This is what the Telegraph says:

 

Reclassifying people that tested positive with coronavirus and then died in order to drop the deaths attributable by 4/5ths?  If they really do this, that sounds like something a government that completely fucked up its response strategy and caused a massive amount of potentially preventable deaths would do.  

The number of seasonal flu deaths is estimated using a mathematical model that is based on a combination of surveillance data and several other factors, including data from prior years.  This method isn't applicable for calculating the deaths from coronavirus.  Countries are generally testing, or trying to test, all the serious cases (unlike with influenza), which provides a minimum number of deaths attributed to coronavirus, so there is no reason to use a model to try and estimate the numbers.  If anything, models should try to account for cases that weren't caught by testing, meaning the numbers that are currently reported are too low, not too high.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The article doesn't get into how that distinction is made, although I know it has been discussed in terms of season flu deaths and how the fact that attributing deaths to flu is more art than science -- so I presume it's the same here.

This is what the Telegraph says:

 

I'm not sure what the value of this is. When it comes to seasonal flu we have things like herd immunity and vaccines; not to mention that a lot of the people who died from the novel coronavirus probably wouldn't have died if the healthcare system hadn't been overwhelmed.

It seems to be straining at gnats for dubious value.

 

[Clueless Northman]

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

What I don’t understand is how Americans could divert a shipment of masks in Bangkok headed for Germany, diverted to the US. How did that happen?

Quite simple: American officials showed up with suitcases full of $$ in cash. As in, they made them an offer way way higher than the initial sale. This is not the only report of such tricks being used. There's a growing number of reports of Americans doing this directly in Chinese airports.

That said, this is ongoing and every country is trying to seize as much loot as possible. EU members are downright robbing other EU members, even when they're genuine Chinese gifts - Italy got hit hard several times.

Then there's also the case of American officials buying the entire stock of tests from an Italian firm, before the pandemic really hit the US but when it was already collapsing N. Italy's healthcare system, and the stock being shipped immediately to the US by military cargo plane.

Free-trade and free-market as we knew them are pretty much over now. There's no way international treaties can recover from downright theft - and indirect bloody murder - between actual allies. Heck, at this point, the only questions are if there's any way to save NATO and the European Union or if they're going down before 2021 is over.

Meanwhile, China and Russia are sending medical supplies as much as they can and Cuba is shipping doctors to Europe. Just try to guess how all that will impact the general worldview of people who've seen their acquaintances and relatives died by the score.

 

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The transparency of the data coming out of Sweden is also giving a better indication of how the virus is playing out in a European population, rather than relying on modelling and estimates coming out of China. 

Which is complete bullshit from Swedish authorities. You want estimates on how it plays out in Europe, you just look at Italy and Spain. And then you look at the actualy current death rate in some Northern Italian cities, which can be as high as 4 times what it was before the virus hit.

Winter had been ridiculously mild, and everyone was quite clear that the flu was killing was less people than normal. Some of the coronavirus dead might have died during a harsh winter and a nastier flu straing, but this is not this year. The bulk of the dead definitely wouldn't have died in the next few months.

I mean, you can't have the West now accusing China of downplaying its casualties and at the same time clamouring that most cases in the West aren't really the coronavirus, just other illnesses. You get to pick one, but pretending to be oh so superior to China when every single Western government took its sweet time before reacting, compared to East Asia, is a bit rich. Granted, I know it's mostly propaganda to calm down the masses of legitimately pissed off citizens, but it reeks of such a level of pure arrogance that would be considered an outrageous caricature under normal circumstances.

[Zorral]

2 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

Meanwhile, China and Russia are sending medical supplies as much as they can and Cuba is shipping doctors to Europe

But no one can ship medical supplies to Cuba because the US says so -- embargo embargo embargo.

In the meantime he's created a mad auction internationally and internally in life saving supplies.  Nobody in our life time has been this outright and up front evil.

Does anyone still think that saying he's got blood on his hands and comparing him to nazis is too harsh?  Think about it when your loved ones die.  When YOU die.

 

 

[Ran]

9 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

Which is complete bullshit from Swedish authorities

That’s the Telegraph, not Swedish authorities, being quoted in the bit you are responding to. 

I don’t think Sweden intends to not mention people who die with coronavirus, merely that they intend to also determine how many are dying directly to it. That’s genuinely useful information to better understand situations where you come across otherwise healthy, young people with no comorbidities dying to it. They aren’t necessarily dying for the same reason an elderly person in hospice care is dying.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

For weeks I've complained that it was a sick joke to call us essential. We do important work in normal times, but there's nothing essential about handling the finances of a department that is turning patients away. And now since there's no money coming in, being "essential" clearly meant essential to helping my department head get her bonus money for March. Once that was gone, we became disposable. It took a lot to get the team I work with to not be mutinous towards the teams that gets to stay, even if they are even more worthless than us (I had to explain to them that what's happening to us will happen to them in a few weeks, it's just a matter of the process. The whole office is finished within four to six weeks once everything has gone through the it in its entirety). 

It was weird spending the day trying to finish projects, and writing up instructions for the ones that were left open for whoever has to continue dealing with them on Monday. Wouldn't shock me in the least if nobody even bothered doing them and they were there waiting for me in a few weeks. The other teams are lazy slobs, by and large, but I do like some of the individuals on them.

As I punched out and left the hospital, all I could think about was this scene from Schindler's List:
 

 

[Mudguard]

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

That’s the Telegraph, not Swedish authorities, being quoted in the bit you are responding to. 

I don’t think Sweden intends to not mention people who die with coronavirus, merely that they intend to also determine how many are dying directly to it. That’s genuinely useful information to better understand situations where you come across otherwise healthy, young people with no comorbidities dying to it. They aren’t necessarily dying for the same reason an elderly person in hospice care is dying.

Have other news sources reported on this in Sweden?  Is the Telegraph article accurate from what you are reading or hearing elsewhere?

Some other countries are already providing data regarding the mortality rate that is associated with smoking, diabetes, age, etc.  If that's all this is, I don't have a problem with providing a breakdown of all the different mortality rates.  But the Telegraph article makes it sound like something far different.  From the portion you quoted:

Quote

The Swedes believe that changing how the figures are reported will cut the number of people dying from coronavirus by as much as four fifths, and slash the death rate to well below 1 per cent, perhaps even lower than seasonal flu.

Is this characterization inaccurate?  All this sounds like is a blatant attempt at revisionist history to downplay the severity of the disease.  If you are excluding someone from the official tally because they merely had diabetes, or smoked, or had hypertension, or were old, that's a blatant attempt of hiding the numbers.  You can live for a very long time with any of these conditions, so suddenly dying after you contracted coronavirus seems to me like they died FROM the coronavirus.  

[Fragile Bird]

After trying not to look at Worldometers all afternoon, I just looked to get an update before it flips over for the day. Omg, 1,320 deaths so far in the US. 
That was fast.

[Arakan]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

That’s the Telegraph, not Swedish authorities, being quoted in the bit you are responding to. 

I don’t think Sweden intends to not mention people who die with coronavirus, merely that they intend to also determine how many are dying directly to it. That’s genuinely useful information to better understand situations where you come across otherwise healthy, young people with no comorbidities dying to it. They aren’t necessarily dying for the same reason an elderly person in hospice care is dying.

What the Swedish authorities are trying to do is bullcrap because it is impossible in general. A virus like this very much acts like the straw that broke the camel‘s back. But we know this since the first studies out of China arrived two months ago. Yes, there are singular cases where the virus was de facto completely irrelevant for the death of a person, not even a last straw (happened last week to a 91 year old in my district) but those are singular cases. As a poster above me said: the Swedish authorities seem to fear possible political backlash as all Scandinavian countries around them have better indicators. And it reeks of trying to cover their bases. 
 

Such kind of study and analysis is done when the situation is over and a full set of data is available. Not when you are in the midst of the storm. 
 

Furthermore empirical evidence beat the  ivory tower hypothesis of contrarian scientists living in mild denial. Wuhan, Lombardy, Madrid, New York tell a sufficient story. For now. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

23 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

After trying not to look at Worldometers all afternoon, I just looked to get an update before it flips over for the day. Omg, 1,320 deaths so far in the US. 
That was fast.

Talk to us in a week. We're still at dawn. Dusk will be far more grave, even by "happy talk" standards.

[Starkess]

56 minutes ago, Triskele said:

With such a fast-moving thread apologies if this has been mentioned already, but what do you all think if this concept of the immunity certificate?  

I worry that people will expose themselves deliberately, hoping to get a mild case and be able to resume normal activities. But it does seem logical as a way to incrementally re-open society, so hopefully smarter people than me are thinking about a good way to implement it.

[BigFatCoward]

The UK really need to improve their testing regime, If for no other reason than to push the death rate down. It's currently around 10% and that is messing with my head. 

[Fury Resurrected]

In one of the addresses this week, MN governor Walz hinted that schools probably won’t open again this year. I guessing that means that I also will not be returning to work in the beginning of May like is the current plan. It is very weird that it doesn’t matter at all what time of day it is for me anymore. But I do expect to make a lot of progress restoring the el Camino

[Guy Kilmore]

36 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

In one of the addresses this week, MN governor Walz hinted that schools probably won’t open again this year. I guessing that means that I also will not be returning to work in the beginning of May like is the current plan. It is very weird that it doesn’t matter at all what time of day it is for me anymore. But I do expect to make a lot of progress restoring the el Camino

I think the best case is we re-open in May, but they are playing a numbers game, is the number of projected serious cases going to be covered by the number of ICU beds.  Once we know that, then things might loosen up.

[Ran]

9 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Is this characterization inaccurate? 

I think the way the Telegraph frames it isn't necessarily the way the authorities intend, but I can't say for certain because so far I can't find any reports in Swedish media that match what the Telegraph has said. Given the history of the Telegraph, and its biases, IMO, all we know for certain is that Swedish authorities want a better understanding of deaths in which coronavirus is the primary cause, and that they suppose they account for about 20% of deaths. Would the "cytokine storm" be the primary mechanism for death in these cases? Read an article in .. the NYT, I think, about two doctors in Wuhan, both mothers, both 29, and how one lived and one died, and no one really knew why the one who died didn't make it.

I'll also note I raised the article because others in the UK had been posting about reports going around on the BBC and elsewhere in the UK media, hence my beginning with "Funny" since it was part of the same conversation and I had just read it moments earlier.