For WHOm the Bell Tolls - Covid-19 #11

[RhaenysBee]

I’ve always been stupid at maths. But we are at 1984 cases. Wouldn’t be surprised if things go downhill now... *nervous laugh*

[A True Kaniggit]

I really hope no one would ever lowball the lethality of a disease for economic reasons.

Who the f*** would do that?

[Free Northman Reborn]

27 minutes ago, Old Zog said:

Free Northman Reborn,

I'll try again, because there's a basic mathematical point you're getting wrong. Maybe it'll be easier to follow if I strip away all of the real-world context.

We have a universe U of people which can be split into four mutually disjoint sets - call them A, B, C and D. We're given that A and B together make up 5% of U. We're also given that the size of A is 5% of the size of the union of A and B. (So, the size of set B is 19 times the size of set A.) It seems to me that you are then trying to conclude that the size of A is 0.25% (5% of 5%) of the size of the union of A and C. But that's false. We're given no information about the relative sizes of C and D, so there's no way to conclude anything about the relative sizes of A and C.

To re-connect this to the real-world context: U is the set of all people (in the hospital, overall, whatever qualifier you want) who have CoViD-19. The people in A are those who die despite having no pre-existing conditions. The people in B are those who die and have pre-existing conditions. The people in C are those who recover and have no pre-existing conditions. And the people in D are those who recover despite having pre-existing conditions.

I understand what you are saying, but we are trying to get to a ballpark figure here.

 

So forget the hospital for a moment. We have a figure for the total population. That is 91% of deaths have pre-existing conditions, and 9% don't. We also have a total number of deaths. About 16000.  So we know that about 1500 people (9% of the 16000) with no pre-existing conditions have died. Out of 120,000 total cases in the UK, roughly speaking.

Your point seems to be that of that total number of 120,000 cases, we don't know the original split between people with pre-existing conditions and those without. But presumably, the virus spreads indiscriminately, and merely kills at a higher rate among those with pre-existing conditions. So one would simply need to take the general distribution of the population with pre-existing conditions vs those without and  apply that to the infected. If we are talking ballpark. I'm sure the government has a more precise figure, I just haven't found it yet. Would be great if someone could provide it.

In the meantime, since people with pre-existing conditions are likely a minority of the total population, one can presume that more than 60,000 of the 120,000 had no pre-existing conditions, Maybe a lot more. So the percentage would be somewhere below 1,500/60,000 presumably. And that's before we strip out those over 60. Then it probably drops as much as ten times lower. And again, before we cater for all the undetected or asymptomatic cases, which might drop it tenfold again.

[Rorshach]

37 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I really hope no one would ever lowball the lethality of a disease for economic reasons.

Who the f*** would do that?

No rethorical questions!

[Clueless Northman]

35 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I really hope no one would ever lowball the lethality of a disease for economic reasons.

Who the f*** would do that?

The psychos worshipping neo-liberal economy?

 

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

What’s the point of all of this? Well, it is that we should rather focus on targeted measures to protect the vulnerable minority of the population, than locking down the entire economy, when the vast majority of the working age population is exposed to very low risk.

If you take into account obesity on top of diabetes, respiratory and heart issues, then it's not "the vast majority of the working age population" whose risk is very low. It's rather that 1/3 of the total population is at serious risk.

[Isis]

11 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

High mortality in the first months in nursing homes isn't just because people are frail. If I look at both my grandfather and my boss's mother, they weren't deadly ill when they went there, they were just well into their 90s, couldn't live alone anymore, and the burden of taking care of them was becoming too high for their children, who couldn't be with them as personal nurses but still had their lifes and their jobs. Having lived an independent life until then and not wanting to be put into such homes, they were morally, psychically, crushed beyond any hope and just let go of their will to live.

My 103 year old grandmother died in a care home about three weeks ago and we think it was exactly this. She had lived in her own home (alone) until January this year, with carers going in four times a day. But she kept having falls every so often and having to go into A&E . The most recent time she broke her hip. She just COULD NOT carry on living in her own home any more. It wasn't right. But she hated the care home - she'd only been in there less than two months.

[Werthead]

Debating percentages right now is useless because we do not have sufficient data, and probably won't until years after the pandemic is over. We're still learning new things about the ultra-lethal Chinese pandemic of 1911 and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-20.

What does appear to be the case is that the majority of fatalities are with people with pre-existing conditions (including just old age) but not every case, and applied to national population sizes you would easily kill thousands to tens of thousands of otherwise young, fit people with no pre-existing conditions.

People also need to stop holding onto this asymptomatic cases = herd immunity thing. One of the things that does appear to be clear is that asymptomatic patients testing positive for the virus are also not producing significant amounts of antibodies (presumably because their initial viral load exposure was so low) and very much do not appear to be immune to repeat exposure. This idea that 80% of people infected with C19 (itself a fantastical figure) are asymptomatic and now immune is dangerous in the extreme.

19 minutes ago, Isis said:

My 103 year old grandmother died in a care home about three weeks ago and we think it was exactly this. She had lived in her own home (alone) until January this year, with carers going in four times a day. But she kept having falls every so often and having to go into A&E . The most recent time she broke her hip. She just COULD NOT carry on living in her own home any more. It wasn't right. But she hated the care home - she'd only been in there less than two months.

Really sorry to hear that.

My grandad passed last year at 96 and was probably not too long from us having to decide to take similar steps. He was having a nurse go around every day and my uncle lived in the same house, but he's in his sixties so not as capable as he used to be either. As it turned out, he never got to that point which might be for the best as he was fiercely independent (I think my dad had a harder time convincing him to stop driving at 90 than anyone did with Prince Philip).

[Zorral]

Were all the rest of you aware there were this many people in the world who could afford two homes and private, ocean-going cruisers?  Once again, it looks as though a lot of the spread of this thing in Asia and Europe comes via quite prosperous people, not 'the poors', as Somebody likes to designate "them" vs. US, who are you know the normal rich.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/travel/coronavirus-stjohn-caribbean.html?

Then the billionaire level, complete with their own gated community and private c19 testing clinic and medical personnel. This is surely not the only one, as David Geffen instagramed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/a-billionaires-compound-with-its-own-coronavirus-testing-center-stokes-anger-on-the-french-riviera/2020/04/19/a7ecf22a-7f38-11ea-84c2-0792d8591911_story.html

And doncha just lurve this -- the 7th most wealthy individual in the UK is begging for the tax payers money to bail out his airline while keeping his own private fortune intact.  Solution? His private Caribbean island as collateral.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/20/richard-branson-renews-virgin-plea-for-coronavirus-support

[Kalbear]

Not left to the actual reader: how many people actually have pre-existing conditions. Remember, one of the pre-existing conditions is being overweight, which over 60% of the US population is. Fuck those guys, I guess. 

I do love how it's just glossed over, like oh well, if you have any pre-existing condition time to die. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I do love how it's just glossed over, like oh well, if you have any pre-existing condition time to die. 

Couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s about having different approaches to different risk categories. Cause its gonna spread anyway. Unless you are proposing a lockdown until a vaccine is available in 6 months or a year’s time. Good luck with that.

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s about having different approaches to different risk categories. Cause its gonna spread anyway. Unless you are proposing a lockdown until a vaccine is available in 6 months or a year’s time. Good luck with that.

I'm not proposing a lockdown. I'm saying that the notion of separating out people with pre-existing conditions that appear to be problematic for covid related issues is not like separating out everyone in nursing homes. It's separating out literally more than half the population. Good luck with that approach. 

You don't need to have a full lockdown if you can have good testing and good contact tracing. I don't know why people don't understand this more. You have basically two choices if you want out of the lockdown: you either let millions get sick and potentially die, or you ramp up testing. That's it. There's no other tricky way out of it. There's no special sauce. 

[Paxter]

The WHO has come out with some initial results on antibody tests...and it's not great reading. Even in hard-hit areas, only 2-3% of the population had the virus. 

It feels way too early to say anything definitive based on these early results, but it does make me feel less comfortable about future waves. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

12 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not proposing a lockdown. I'm saying that the notion of separating out people with pre-existing conditions that appear to be problematic for covid related issues is not like separating out everyone in nursing homes. It's separating out literally more than half the population. Good luck with that approach. 

You don't need to have a full lockdown if you can have good testing and good contact tracing. I don't know why people don't understand this more. You have basically two choices if you want out of the lockdown: you either let millions get sick and potentially die, or you ramp up testing. That's it. There's no other tricky way out of it. There's no special sauce. 

The thing about testing is if you tested someone today there is no reason why he might not need to be tested again tomorrow or next week. Testing only tells you his status at that point in time. That might sound like stating the obvious, sure, but in a post lockdown world that means you’re gonna have to do a shitload of repeat testing to try and keep track of pretty much the entire population.

Still a better option than the lockdown, without a doubt, but seems like a monumental task, that’s for sure.

[Clueless Northman]

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The thing about testing is if you tested someone today there is no reason why he might not need to be tested again tomorrow or next week. Testing only tells you his status at that point in time. That might sound like stating the obvious, sure, but in a post lockdown world that means you’re gonna have to do a shitload of repeat testing to try and keep track of pretty much the entire population.

Still a better option than the lockdown, without a doubt, but seems like a monumental task, that’s for sure.

That's why the trick would be to lock down people, then test them by clusters (say neighbourhoods, big buildings and the like), re-test them a few days later to be sure, and then let them out when they're Corona-free. You do this on a national scale during 8-10 weeks and then you've actually beaten the virus. Meanwhile, sure, your economy has taken a massive hit for 3 months - which isn't worse than what we're going through right now, the world over -, and you've saved hundreds of thousands of people.

Of course, you need a bloody huge infrastructure and organization, but, I mean, that's why big States like the USA exist to begin with. If they can't do it, what good are they?

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The thing about testing is if you tested someone today there is no reason why he might not need to be tested again tomorrow or next week. Testing only tells you his status at that point in time. That might sound like stating the obvious, sure, but in a post lockdown world that means you’re gonna have to do a shitload of repeat testing to try and keep track of pretty much the entire population.

Still a better option than the lockdown, without a doubt, but seems like a monumental task, that’s for sure.

Yes...so? 

Are you saying that the US can't do things that South Korea is able to do regularly? 

Again, those are your options: lots of testing, or lots of death. I know you are fine with lots of death, especially if it's pre-existing condition people. I'd prefer the lots of testing. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yes...so? 

Are you saying that the US can't do things that South Korea is able to do regularly? 

Again, those are your options: lots of testing, or lots of death. I know you are fine with lots of death, especially if it's pre-existing condition people. I'd prefer the lots of testing. 

I’m saying combine isolating vulnerable groups with whatever other measures are feasible - such as lots of testing, ramping up medical facilities, contact tracing, whatever. And at the same time get the bulk of the healthy population back to work.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Free Northman Reborn said:

I’m saying combine isolating vulnerable groups with whatever other measures are feasible - such as lots of testing, ramping up medical facilities, contact tracing, whatever. And at the same time get the bulk of the healthy population back to work.

How do you isolate 60% of the US population? 

[Free Northman Reborn]

Just now, Kalbear said:

How do you isolate 60% of the US population? 

How do you isolate the entire population? By locking them down. Even now I know of work places with contingency plans that include dividing their employees into two groups - those who are low risk and those who either have a vulnerable condition or have someone at home with a vulnerable condition. So let those in the second group stay in lockdown. And let the rest go back to work.

And in the meantime do all the testing and other steps to manage any increased breakouts as best possible.

[BigFatCoward]

Nvm

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

How do you isolate the entire population? By locking them down.

Which is what we're doing now. Realistically we're isolating about 70-80% of the total population. Doing it for 60% requires essentially the same steps. 

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Even now I know of work places with contingency plans that include dividing their employees into two groups - those who are low risk and those who either have a vulnerable condition or have someone at home with a vulnerable condition. So let those in the second group stay in lockdown. And let the rest go back to work. 

Those places are making plans on incomplete data that is going to get people killed.

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And in the meantime do all the testing and other steps to manage any increased breakouts as best possible.

Until you have the testing, you're just sending people out to die.