COVID-19 #13 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Disease

[BigFatCoward]

Holy shit, one nursing home in New York has lost almost 100 people. 

 

[rotting sea cow]

9 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

That's a non peer reviewed article from a single author who seems to be an oceanographer. I wouldn't put too much weight on it.

Well, there are many peer reviewed papers that one shouldn't put much trust either, but the author being an oceanographer is clearly a downer.

[rotting sea cow]

9 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

As to why Spain & Italy are taking so long to get their death rates under control? I'd say it's that they let it get to the point where their healthcare system was so overwhelmed, and the disease was so out of control, that just the tail on that curve continues to overwhelm their healthcare system and cause massive problems.

It takes up to a month for severe cases to clear post infection so this isn't a quick process. It's why not letting it get to that stage is very important.

 

I understand of the death rates. I just learned of someone I once met who died after one and half months in a clinic in Spain. My concern is that the number of new infections is still pretty high despite strict lockdown order. I cannot wrap my head about it. How these people are getting infected, by whom? In comparison Austria and Germany with less strict measures brought that number to a more reasonable level.

[Ran]

47 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

I understand of the death rates. I just learned of someone I once met who died after one and half months in a clinic in Spain. My concern is that the number of new infections is still pretty high despite strict lockdown order.

Is there information on new hospitalizations? I feel this may be a better metric because one of the issues with PCR tests is that they can catch people who are shedding dead virus, per some stuff like the recent South Korean news on this. People with serious illness who are hospitalized or put in ICU could be more important to determine how quickly the spread is genuinely slowing.

The very widened testing could be catching people who have gotten over it already but their body is shedding the dead RNA. Or is Spain also confirming with viral cultures to make sure live virus is what's being found?

 

[rotting sea cow]

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

Is there information on new hospitalizations? I feel this may be a better metric because one of the issues with PRC tests is that they can catch people who are shedding dead virus, per some stuff like the recent South Korean news on this. People with serious illness who are hospitalized or put in ICU could be more important to determine how quickly the spread is genuinely slowing.

The very widened testing could be catching people who have gotten over it already but their body is shedding the dead RNA. Or is Spain also confirming with viral cultures to make sure live virus is what's being found?

 

Yeah. That is a good possibility. 

I haven't seen numbers of new hospitalizations but with the reports that ICUs are slowly emptying it might be that fewer people are going to the hospitals.

[Ran]

55 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

Yeah. That is a good possibility. 

I haven't seen numbers of new hospitalizations but with the reports that ICUs are slowly emptying it might be that fewer people are going to the hospitals.

This from RTVE, posted yesterday, is useful. Just 84 new ICU admissions the day before. That's very promising. It seems Valencia is a trouble spot.

Some updates for those tracking Sweden.

 

The public health authority (FHM) has released some analysis and prognosis material on April 29th, updating previous matter. One of them, which goes into their calculation for effective rate of spread at various points in time, is in English. There's also some modelling of epidemiological curves for various regions and cities in Sweden, with prognoses. They estimate R_e to be 0.85 in Sweden right now, with a small uptick a few days earlier that are presumably the result of people taking chances to gather over Easter.

And hey, if that Oxford team manages to prove their vaccine is efficacious and safe, turns out that British-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca has partnered with them to produce the vaccine, so perhaps Sweden won't be far down the queue!

 

(Though in all seriousness, it must be said that Sweden's history with the H1N1 vaccine Pandemrix is one of the calculations behind the decisions made by our authorities -- even if the Oxford team says they'll be ready in September, many Swedes will refuse to try a vaccine until there's a lot of proof regarding its safety. The common line I've seen from Swedes is, "Great -- you first!" All of these fast-tracked vaccines are not going to be trusted for a good while, from all indicators I've seen.)

 

 

[Which Tyler]

19 minutes ago, Ran said:

And hey, if that Oxford team manages to prove their vaccine is efficacious and safe, turns out that British-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca has partnered with them to produce the vaccine, so perhaps Sweden won't be far down the queue!

No, no, didn't you listen to Raab (I think it was Raab). The study is being conducted in Oxford, therefore it's an entirely British affair, with no Swedish company or International researchers at all - an example of all that's good about Brexit!

[JoannaL]

Here are is daily report of all German numbers (in Englisch)

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-05-01-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

 

on page 6 figure 4 you can see the development of daily cases.

Until the 20th of March the rise was exponentially, since then it is falling. Unfortunately, almost all lock-down measures were taken at the same time, so it is not clear which are really necessary. Gatherings with more than 100 people were forbidden around 10th of March, last school/child-care day was March 13, shops closed on 17th, social distancing (stay at home, only go out to get food, work or exercise, only meet one other person), was recommended , I think at 16th of March, and enforced 23 th or March.

It is not so simple to come back from this, and it make sense to do this slowly, but at least it seems that shop openings (now with face masks) are ok (starting April 20th).

 

[Paxter]

5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Holy shit, one nursing home in New York has lost almost 100 people. 

I’m not convinced that deaths in aged care facilities are getting the proportionate government and public attention they deserve given the scale of these tragedies across the world. Around 80% of the deaths in Canada are in these centres.

[williamjm]

6 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

Well, there are many peer reviewed papers that one shouldn't put much trust either, but the author being an oceanographer is clearly a downer.

Oceans are largely made of water, people are largely made of water so it's basically the same thing.

6 hours ago, Ran said:

Is there information on new hospitalizations? I feel this may be a better metric because one of the issues with PCR tests is that they can catch people who are shedding dead virus, per some stuff like the recent South Korean news on this. People with serious illness who are hospitalized or put in ICU could be more important to determine how quickly the spread is genuinely slowing.

The very widened testing could be catching people who have gotten over it already but their body is shedding the dead RNA. Or is Spain also confirming with viral cultures to make sure live virus is what's being found?

I read that some of the Spanish numbers were recently starting to include results from antibody testing as well which could be reporting infections that occurred weeks ago.

[williamjm]

I just saw this link which has some interesting graphs for various European countries looking at their total deaths from all causes and trying to see where there are excess deaths. Scroll down to see the individual countries.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

There's a big variation there between countries. Many countries don't seem to be showing a noticeable increase in total deaths compared to normal but some are showing very big increases. These maps suggest that England is the worst-hit, significantly worse than other badly-hit countries like Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands and also worse than the other parts of the UK.

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I just saw this link which has some interesting graphs for various European countries looking at their total deaths from all causes and trying to see where there are excess deaths. Scroll down to see the individual countries.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

There's a big variation there between countries. Many countries don't seem to be showing a noticeable increase in total deaths compared to normal but some are showing very big increases. These maps suggest that England is the worst-hit, significantly worse than other badly-hit countries like Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands and also worse than the other parts of the UK.

Yeah, EuroMOMO is very interesting. They updated their presentation last week, much easier to read and much more informative, especially with age breakdowns.

 

ETA: Also, for those interested in playing around with statistics, Sweden's Socialstyrelsen (National Board of Health and Welfare) has its own statistics up through the 29th here, with slightly different death figures than FHM. They note this is because they include people who only have a doctor's  declaration that they believed COVID-19 was a factor, whereas FHM waits for post-mortem test results to come in to make certain.

FHM has also noted that they're concerned that regions widening testing to criteria other than those seriously ill is throwing noise into their models right now, and are asking them to try and separate results that relate to clinical cases from the wider testing of essential workers.

[Zorral]

This is less expensive, less invasive, providing fundamental information about the presence of the coronavirus much faster and more easily.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/05/01/coronavirus-sewage-wastewater/

"An early warning system for coronavirus infections could be found in your toilet
From the U.S. to Europe to Australia, scientists have detected the virus in wastewater ahead of spikes in local cases."

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Remdesivir sounds like it could have been another sword that Bilbo and the dwarves found in that cave.  

It was once the blade of the Elvish King Gilead.

[Martell Spy]

Florida medical examiners were releasing coronavirus death data. The state made them stop.
When the medical examiners’ list was available, it showed more deaths than the state’s count.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/

Quote

 

State officials have stopped releasing the list of coronavirus deaths being compiled by Florida’s medical examiners, which has at times shown a higher death toll than the state’s published count.

The list had previously been released in real time by the state Medical Examiners Commission. But earlier this month, after the Tampa Bay Times reported that the medical examiners’ death count was 10 percent higher than the figure released by the Florida Department of Health, state officials said the list needed to be reviewed and possibly redacted.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

32 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Florida medical examiners were releasing coronavirus death data. The state made them stop.
When the medical examiners’ list was available, it showed more deaths than the state’s count.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/

 

Well, duh, you can’t scare the tourists!

[mcbigski]

On 5/1/2020 at 1:00 PM, Paxter said:

I must admit to having no idea how to pronounce it.

Phonetically I'm guessing it's something like: "This-drug-sucked-at-treating-Ebola-and-won't-work-this-time-either". 

But it's under patent still, so it's got that going for it.  Which is nice.

[Paxter]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Someone should write up a Tolkien-prosed short story about how the arrogant King Gilead, wielding Remdesivir and assured of his victory, led his forces against the COVIDian horde only to be crushed on the field when it turned out that the famed weapon offered only a marginal improvement over a standard broadsword.  

Where's Happy Ent when you need him? 

[Jeor]

The USA had their highest day of deaths yesterday, and yet many states are still opening up. There's some natural lag in the numbers but in a week's time we might see some spikes. Bizarrely I think the best chance for them is if the measures they are taking to open up don't really work, and I think there's a decent probability that will happen - places aren't going to be profitable with 25-50% patronage, and people probably don't want to spend money. I know we're talking about peoples' livelihoods here, but for the political class this "reopening" is more about the optics than anything else.

[ljkeane]

So I was reading a New York Times article yesterday and apparently the fastest a new vaccine has ever been developed and put into circulation was four years. So, er, that's not massively encouraging.