For WHOm the Bell Tolls - Covid-19 #11

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Per capita makes small countries (and Iceland is a very small country) seem worse and large countries seem better. It can be useful after the pandemic is well and truly done, but that is purely retrospective. The virus doesn't go, "oh, only 10 people in this village, I guess I'll just infect one of them."  

And that's why I compared it to New Brunswick.

If New Brunswick is too big, how about Newfoundland? Population 521 k, 244 cases and 3 deaths. 4,907 tests done. If they did 10x the number of tests, will they find 10x the cases? No, because literally 144 of the cases are in a community of 6,000 people where it appears a traveller came home in time for 2 funerals. Another place that should be virus free in a couple of weeks and can totally reopen for business. Death rate is just below 6 per M. Also an island. I could have easily used another one of the countries, except, I think, Germany.

My whole point is stories like the one quoted are bogus. Australia has done extremely well, and they have a male PM. Canada has done very well, (not as well as Australia) and we have a male PM. I have focused on deaths because in the end, the question is going to have to be, why did your citizens die?

But I suspect that results in the US would have been different if Hilary Clinton were president. Now there's something you could speculate about for years. Trump shut down travel from China not because he gave a shit about Covid-19 but because he wanted to tighten the screws on China in his trade war. Did that save the west coast? But if HRC were president and saw cases in Washington combined with what was going on in Europe, would European travel have been shut down earlier and thousands of lives saved on the east coast? And the pandemic team wouldn't have been dissolved two years ago.

[Week]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Trump shut down travel from China not because he gave a shit about Covid-19 but because he wanted to tighten the screws on China in his trade war. Did that save the west coast? 

Not closed to 40k+ US citizens and families traveling over the next couple months.

I'm not sure closing down travel from Italy (source of most NYC strains of COV) because it was American citizens bringing the virus back from vacations and other travel. The lack of monitoring at airports and subsequent quarantine (even self-quarantine) was an enormous miss. Granted, asymptomatic carriers would get through anyway.

[Heartofice]

Per capita values don’t appear to be all that useful early on , especially in large countries where it’s hard to understand the spread of the disease. I was initially calling out for more deaths per million data but I realise now it’s not going to be useful for a while

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Per capita values don’t appear to be all that useful early on , especially in large countries where it’s hard to understand the spread of the disease. I was initially calling out for more deaths per million data but I realise now it’s not going to be useful for a while

I'd say that we're pretty close to that point now. It's not 'early on' anymore. It looks like the peak has been reached in most of Europe and North America. They'll be better in a month, of course.

[Fragile Bird]

8 minutes ago, Week said:

Not closed to 40k+ US citizens and families traveling over the next couple months.

I'm not sure closing down travel from Italy (source of most NYC strains of COV) because it was American citizens bringing the virus back from vacations and other travel. The lack of monitoring at airports and subsequent quarantine (even self-quarantine) was an enormous miss. Granted, asymptomatic carriers would get through anyway.

Actually the more important fact is that 430,000 travellers came in from China in the month of January. Most did not come from Wuhan, and it doesn't look like they infected the whole west coast. Wuhan was locked down on January 23rd, no travellers leaving, so I don't actually think stopping travel from China 'saved millions of lives' as Trump keeps saying. 

 

[Ran]

27 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I'd say that we're pretty close to that point now. It's not 'early on' anymore. It looks like the peak has been reached in most of Europe and North America. They'll be better in a month, of course.

Yeah.... 

There’s a second wave coming as lockdowns are loosened. A third wave come the autumn. And so on.

Until a vaccine exists and is widely available, or countries achieve herd immunity through exposure, the pandemic is not over.

[Week]

26 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Actually the more important fact is that 430,000 travellers came in from China in the month of January. Most did not come from Wuhan, and it doesn't look like they infected the whole west coast. Wuhan was locked down on January 23rd, no travellers leaving, so I don't actually think stopping travel from China 'saved millions of lives' as Trump keeps saying. 

 

Yes, certainly - just as, if not more, important to allowing the spread. The ONE action that Trump touts as evidence of his decisive action was quite feckless. What a surprise!

[Zorral]

You all seen this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

Quote

 

Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

[...]

 

And this of course -- or should this be in politics?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/14/coronavirus-law-congress-tax-change/

Quote

Tax change in coronavirus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires, congressional body finds
The provision, included by Senate Republicans, would cost taxpayers approximately $90 billion in 2020

 

[Rippounet]

10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You all seen this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

Well, damn. 

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Well, damn. 

I'd be pretty cautious on the reaction to this. Pretty clear Trump admin officials have their finger prints all over this leak to WaPo (which for some reason is being published under their opinion column... ?), and warnings two years ago hardly mean anything about a disease that's only a few months old.

It also doesn't address the fact that bat-to-human transmission (as suggested here) was unlikely, and that the intermediate host was likely a pangolin, which seems to me to be much more suggestive of a development in the wild or in cramped exotic animal market places then any kind of "lab accident".

[Clueless Northman]

2 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

 

Seriously, what kind of shithead is that. It's not "collateral damage due to lockdown", it's people who died because the healthcare system was overwhelmed.

 

15 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Well, damn. 

To add to what Ran said, these morons still won't explain why they did nothing during 1 month and half, during which entire Hubei was under strict lockdown.

Of course, now that the death toll is ridiculously higher in Western countries than in China, these incompetent fools have to explain that they did nothing wrong, that no one could've known how bad it was, and that it's all China's fault. Never their very own fault, no never. They never did anything wrong. Ever. It's either Russia or China. Possibly aliens or zombies, mind you. As long as it's not the government who fucked up - when anyone with half a brain could see the catastrophe coming while said government sad on its hands doing nothing.

This is complete unadulterated propaganda - it's beyond mere fake news. It is historical revisionism. And we're going to see a lot more of this, because these fuckers are slowly coming to the realization that their people will want an explanation for this absolute mess and will want a reckoning for the people in charge who screwed up big time.

[Raja]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Yes. The more covid patients in hospital, the more staff get sick, which also means even more staff get sick (or have to isolate because too little testing) which means too few staff.

 

Yup. When your Doctor's association is crowdfunding for PPE, you know it's an issue even with the current efforts to get PPE to NHS workers.

 

[Fragile Bird]

20 minutes ago, Ran said:

I'd be pretty cautious on the reaction to this. Pretty clear Trump admin officials have their finger prints all over this leak to WaPo (which for some reason is being publishedunder their opinion column... ?), and warnings two years ago hardly mean anything about a disease that's only a few months old.

It also doesn't address the fact that bat-to-human transmission (as suggested here) was unlikely, and that the intermediate host was likely a pangolin, which seems to me to be much more suggestive of a development in the wild or in cramped exotic animal market places then any kind of "lab accident".

I am blocked from reading that article - who wrote it?

I assume that it is opinion because the WaPo refused to run it as a story, but why did they run it as opinion?

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

I am blocked from reading that article - who wrote it?

I assume that it is opinion because the WaPo refused to run it as a story, but why did they run it as opinion?

To quote the salient bit:

Quote

We are a team of bioinformaticians and we feel it is our responsibility to the global community to investigate the origin of this virus.

Based on the research in our lab, we believe that pangolins, as opposed to snakes, may have served as the hosts that transmitted the coronavirus to people and caused the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The pangolin, also known as a scaly anteater, is the only known mammal with scales and is found in Asia and Africa.

Mystery of zoonotic transmission

Since January 2020, the current consensus among the scientific community is that SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe bats; however, it's unlikely that bats directly gave the virus to humans based on what's known about transmission of earlier zoonotic coronaviruses.

Instead, scientists suspected that the bat coronavirus infected another animal, an "intermediate host," which subsequently transmitted the virus to humans.

 

[Fragile Bird]

Well, there is a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment coming out in many countries. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

4 hours ago, Jo498 said:

I'd take Trump (or Darth Vader) for Merkel any day. She is a total non-leader with several 180 degree turns on many issues (sometimes back and forth again).

Just no. You can fairly criticize her for being a non-entity and over her flip-flopping. However, at least she is operating with a full deck, and doesn't talk crazy and gives unsound medical advice during her talks. However, I actually appreciate her not speaking into every microphone and tv camera. If you want somebody to give Trumpian press conferences every day, then I can't help you.

[Fez]

So this seems interesting; if the Arkansas Department of Corrections isn't lying (which unfortunately is a pretty big if):

So there's a 93% infection rate in a  set population and all of them are asymptomatic, which seems like a potentially important data point. Maybe some just haven't developed symptoms yet, or its just a fluke caused by the small sample size (or the state DoC is lying), but I'm encouraged by any data suggesting the virus is weaker than expected.

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

So this seems interesting; if the Arkansas Department of Corrections isn't lying (which unfortunately is a pretty big if):

"At this time" is key here. If they caught all of these early in the infection stage, they may simply not have developed symptoms yet.

Was just watching a video from the Asian Boss Youtube channel talking to a South Korean expert, and he mentioned that they found 20% of all cases were asymptomatic -- presumably, asymptomatic through the entirety of the infection, rather than just for a time, because there seemed to be a distinction in how they discussed it.

Much was made of Iceland saying that over 50% of positives were asymptomatic, but they recently clarified that many of those did develop symptoms

[Zorral]

Josh Rogin, who is a well respected columnist and commentator -- not a rumpoid -- wrote the piece.  Not that I necessarily disagree with the consensus here that this is rumpoid propaganda, but Rogin doesn't go in for that. Which is why it caught my eye -- he wrote it.

Maybe the point is: there is so little yet that we know about any aspect of this catastrophe, particularly the virus itself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-study-of-pregnant-women-and-covid19-in-new-york-city
 

Quote

 

A small but notable collection of data was published yesterday in The New Journal of Medicine. One major New York City hospital evaluated and tested every expectant mother who was admitted to the hospital for childbirth. Almost 14% were COVID positive and almost all of lacked any symptoms. This is an early and still very small window into the kind of universal and/or random sample testing that will be necessary to get an accurate understanding of the prevalence of COVID19 in the population at large.

Between March 22 and April 4, 2020, a total of 215 pregnant women delivered infants at the New York–Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center . All the women were screened on admission for symptoms of Covid-19. Four women (1.9%) had fever or other symptoms of Covid-19 on admission, and all 4 women tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 1). Of the 211 women without symptoms, all were afebrile on admission. Nasopharyngeal swabs were obtained from 210 of the 211 women (99.5%) who did not have symptoms of Covid-19; of these women, 29 (13.7%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. Thus, 29 of the 33 patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 at admission (87.9%) had no symptoms of Covid-19 at presentation.

This raises a number of questions, most especially how representative these women are of the population as a whole. I’ve seen comments both that near term pregnant women are likely to be the most aware of social distancing and that frequent late term doctors appointments are frequent opportunities for infection. I don’t know which might be more true. There was early data out of China that the expression of COVID19 might be particularly limited among pregnant women. Those datasets were small, but this suggests that this very high percentage of asymptomatic cases may not be representative.

[....]

 

 

[dornishpen]

When considering the scope of the pandemic, how does one consider indirect deaths from things like stroke or heart attack that would have been treatable if the medical system wasn't overwhelmed or people weren't scared to go in fir treatment or someone whose "elective" cancer surgery was canceled and by the time thing were rescheduling it progressed too far for effective treatment and they later died of cancer? In previous pandemics this wasn't really as much of an issue because medicine was less advanced.