Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) outbreak discussion

[qldfrog]

If you believe figures of out of control infections and deaths in Indonesia and similar patterns emerging in The Netherlands, South Korea and a few other countries are BS, but your personal experiences from within the cocoon of WA (or even Australia in general) is more reflective of what is going on with COVID, then you need inform yourself a bit more. I personally know nobody from within my family or circle of friends and their extended families and friends dispersed over several continents who has fallen ill with COVID or worse still died as a result of COVID, but I am not so naive as to think that that cross section of people is in any way representative of what is happening elsewhere.

The graphs are correct, they confirm my point, ie a 0.024% fatality rate, most likely with comorbidities.

Then you also need to understand the difference between an average taken at a particular point in time which is the figure you quoted against the obvious trends that the graphs show, which are infections and deaths spiralling out of control.

I know you are running like a rabbit caught in headlights but it is time you cool down and learn to do real stats.
While not comparable with Australia..please please avoid panic attack then start basic stat.
Overall population, overall number of death per day 3y ago 2 y ago,1y ago and now
You may..i repeat may see an increase, if you do, i would reasonably put part of it on covid.
Bring that in percentage..of the right numbers so overall population.
we already know that 100pc of covid deaths are dying from covid....?
As i read your posts, if you do a test and are declared covid affected, you will probably die in 24h from the panic and stress.
This is not the bubonic plague.
Numbers do not lie..but for that you need an impartial view and the right number selection.
And do not forgets the kids dying of malnutrition in Bali because of covid...
It is not the illness killing them...but they definitively are hungry because of us..or more exactly people made to react like you

 

[SirRumpole]

Tough times for all I'm afraid.

Yes, people die every day, but more will die if we don't have restrictions untill sufficient vaccination.

 

[rederob]

I know you are running like a rabbit caught in headlights but it is time you cool down and learn to do real stats.
While not comparable with Australia..please please avoid panic attack then start basic stat.
Overall population, overall number of death per day 3y ago 2 y ago,1y ago and now
You may..i repeat may see an increase, if you do, i would reasonably put part of it on covid.
Bring that in percentage..of the right numbers so overall population.
we already know that 100pc of covid deaths are dying from covid....?
As i read your posts, if you do a test and are declared covid affected, you will probably die in 24h from the panic and stress.
This is not the bubonic plague.
Numbers do not lie..but for that you need an impartial view and the right number selection.
And do not forgets the kids dying of malnutrition in Bali because of covid...
It is not the illness killing them...but they definitively are hungry because of us..or more exactly people made to react like you

Neither you nor @wayneL seem to understand the effects of the disease or its data.
As has been shown in numerous countries from the USA and UK, to more recently India and Indonesia, covid stresses medical systems to the point that people who could be saved are not. That's aside from ICU wards being overrun by covid patients to the detriment of other patients who needed intensive care and could not receive it.
In that light, the data are trivial as the effects have been blindingly obvious. Less obvious because its less in the media are the impacts of "long covid", recently estimated to affect around 2 million people in the UK alone.
WRT deaths per se, the point is that covid has introduced a new metric, and it's best measured by case fatality rate:

The idea that most of those testing positive have greater than one chance in one hundred of dying is not one of life's lotteries that you want to win. That makes covid nothing like the flu, unless you think one in a hundred who get the flu each year will die!
The false equivalents being bandied around in this thread are meaningless.

 

[mullokintyre]

Neither you nor @wayneL seem to understand the effects of the disease or its data.
As has been shown in numerous countries from the USA and UK, to more recently India and Indonesia, covid stresses medical systems to the point that people who could be saved are not. That's aside from ICU wards being overrun by covid patients to the detriment of other patients who needed intensive care and could not receive it.
In that light, the data are trivial as the effects have been blindingly obvious. Less obvious because its less in the media are the impacts of "long covid", recently estimated to affect around 2 million people in the UK alone.
WRT deaths per se, the point is that covid has introduced a new metric, and it's best measured by case fatality rate:
View attachment 127330
The idea that most of those testing positive have greater than one chance in one hundred of dying is not one of life's lotteries that you want to win. That makes covid nothing like the flu, unless you think one in a hundred who get the flu each year will die!
The false equivalents being bandied around in this thread are meaningless.

Not wanting to argue with your logic, I would just add one important caveat. Some of these countries had higher mortality rates than others before COVID came along. In some ways it doesn't matter HOW you die, you are dead anyway. Having worked in Asia, Africa and a couple of PacificIsland nations, I can tell you my biggest fear was that I would be killed in a traffic "accident" in some of those countries. if the overall death rate goers up, then thats an issue. Otherwise, its the cause of death that is altered, not the rate.
Mick

 

[rederob]

Not wanting to argue with your logic, I would just add one important caveat. Some of these countries had higher mortality rates than others before COVID came along. In some ways it doesn't matter HOW you die, you are dead anyway. Having worked in Asia, Africa and a couple of PacificIsland nations, I can tell you my biggest fear was that I would be killed in a traffic "accident" in some of those countries. if the overall death rate goers up, then thats an issue. Otherwise, its the cause of death that is altered, not the rate.
Mick

Using the overall death rate as a metric is fundamentally flawed.
It akin to an ebola or MERS outbreak not being problems because they were statistically insignificant.
Most infectious diseases are preventable or, at least, able to be mitigated by medication such that death is a low probability.
Until vaccines were developed for covid our main defences were masks, social distancing and hand sanitising.

Your other point relates to death substitution, as if the greater than 1% chance of dying if infected by covid is not an issue. It's a bit like suggesting we don't need to wear seatbelts anymore because if the overall mortality rate has been declining it won't make a difference:

What we actually do in the real world is look at every possible means to prevent all avoidable deaths, and take appropriate action.
I would imagine that your experiences in overseas countries led you to avoid situations where you would be most at risk, or ensure you took the best precautions otherwise available to you.
That's what we all now need to be doing wrt covid.

 

[moXJO]

Neither you nor @wayneL seem to understand the effects of the disease or its data.
As has been shown in numerous countries from the USA and UK, to more recently India and Indonesia, covid stresses medical systems to the point that people who could be saved are not. That's aside from ICU wards being overrun by covid patients to the detriment of other patients who needed intensive care and could not receive it.
In that light, the data are trivial as the effects have been blindingly obvious. Less obvious because its less in the media are the impacts of "long covid", recently estimated to affect around 2 million people in the UK alone.
WRT deaths per se, the point is that covid has introduced a new metric, and it's best measured by case fatality rate:
View attachment 127330
The idea that most of those testing positive have greater than one chance in one hundred of dying is not one of life's lotteries that you want to win. That makes covid nothing like the flu, unless you think one in a hundred who get the flu each year will die!
The false equivalents being bandied around in this thread are meaningless.

Do the stats take into account those in the community that have covid but are undiagnosed?

Rob's correct in saying that the disease overwhelms hospitals and causes the majority of casualties from there. Keeping Covid cases low should mean less deaths though.

 

[sptrawler]

Apparently the queues to obtain testing are becoming an issue.

No Cookies | Daily Telegraph

No Cookies

www.dailytelegraph.com.au

From the article:
NSW Health is expected to announced expanded testing in the Fairfield LGA after the Treasurer apologised and admitted the government would "do more" for the Covid-riddled area.

As kilometres of queues and hours-long wait times plague testing clinics, NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet apologised publicly "significant inconvenience" to locals.

"On behalf of the government I apologise to everyone in Fairfield for this significant inconvenience but also say thank you for the sacrifices they're making," Mr Perrottet told 2GB's Ben Fordham.
Mr Perrottet urged Fairfielders to travel outside the LGA to other clinics close by for testing but said help was on the way.

"There's plenty (of clinics) around metropolitan Sydney but ultimately… we will need to allocate more resources and we will," he said.

 

[mullokintyre]

Using the overall death rate as a metric is fundamentally flawed.
It akin to an ebola or MERS outbreak not being problems because they were statistically insignificant.
Most infectious diseases are preventable or, at least, able to be mitigated by medication such that death is a low probability.
Until vaccines were developed for covid our main defences were masks, social distancing and hand sanitising.

I disagree.
In these third world countries, the concept of overwhelming hospitals is a different concept to Aus. Medical facilities are primitive and in very short supply by our standards. They are always overwhelmed. Thats assuming you can get transport to one of them. On top of it you have medical charlatans everywhere offering quack cures that makes Trumps bleach solution look minor, and the religious nutters saying that only the high priests can cure anything.
Some of the citires are so crowded that the concept of scial distancing is laughable, have poor or non existent sanitation, don't have acess to clean water even if they wanted to wash their hands, and any medicnes they get are likely to be out of date stuff dumped by wealthy western nations. Just no comparable.
Mick

 

[rederob]

I disagree.
In these third world countries, the concept of overwhelming hospitals is a different concept to Aus. Medical facilities are primitive and in very short supply by our standards. They are always overwhelmed. Thats assuming you can get transport to one of them. On top of it you have medical charlatans everywhere offering quack cures that makes Trumps bleach solution look minor, and the religious nutters saying that only the high priests can cure anything.
Some of the citires are so crowded that the concept of scial distancing is laughable, have poor or non existent sanitation, don't have acess to clean water even if they wanted to wash their hands, and any medicnes they get are likely to be out of date stuff dumped by wealthy western nations. Just no comparable.
Mick

You miss the point again.
The covid death rate is simply going to be higher when medical facilities are overwhelmed, be it Yemen or the USA.
Muddying the topic with other considerations does not take away from the fact that in most advanced nations if you tested positive you statistically had more than one chance in a hundred of dying.
You seem to be confusing rates of infection with rates of death.

 

[wayneL]

Neither you nor @wayneL seem to understand the effects of the disease or its data.
As has been shown in numerous countries from the USA and UK, to more recently India and Indonesia, covid stresses medical systems to the point that people who could be saved are not. That's aside from ICU wards being overrun by covid patients to the detriment of other patients who needed intensive care and could not receive it.
In that light, the data are trivial as the effects have been blindingly obvious. Less obvious because its less in the media are the impacts of "long covid", recently estimated to affect around 2 million people in the UK alone.
WRT deaths per se, the point is that covid has introduced a new metric, and it's best measured by case fatality rate:
View attachment 127330
The idea that most of those testing positive have greater than one chance in one hundred of dying is not one of life's lotteries that you want to win. That makes covid nothing like the flu, unless you think one in a hundred who get the flu each year will die!
The false equivalents being bandied around in this thread are meaningless.

You miss the point again.
The covid death rate is simply going to be higher when medical facilities are overwhelmed, be it Yemen or the USA.
Muddying the topic with other considerations does not take away from the fact that in most advanced nations if you tested positive you statistically had more than one chance in a hundred of dying.
You seem to be confusing rates of infection with rates of death.

That is a pretty disingenuous use of statistics Rob. You know as well as I do that the death rate is very age and comorbidity dependent. For instance the average age of death *with COVID is greater than 80 years old and all of the statistics that I have viewed.

I don't think anyone particular wants to get this damn thing and very few people claim that it is not a serious disease at least for some people.

However this disease, or more particularly bureaucratic response is very multifaceted and in the opinion of all but the most terrified who have succumbed to the fear narrative, is hugely overblown.

One can speculate about the reasons for that and it will be interesting in the near future for those who have already joined the dots on whether they have been correct.

 

[moXJO]

That is a pretty disingenuous use of statistics Rob. You know as well as I do that the death rate is very age and comorbidity dependent. For instance the average age of death *with COVID is greater than 80 years old and all of the statistics that I have viewed.

I don't think anyone particular wants to get this damn thing and very few people claim that it is not a serious disease at least for some people.

However this disease, or more particularly bureaucratic response is very multifaceted and in the opinion of all but the most terrified who have succumbed to the fear narrative, is hugely overblown.

One can speculate about the reasons for that and it will be interesting in the near future for those who have already joined the dots on whether they have been correct.

If numbers are low we won't have a problem. If we vaccinate those at risk- it's going to reduce it to near zero.
Our treatment practices have also come a long way since last year.
As long as we keep numbers low.

Media and politically, covid is being used to full effect.

 

[rederob]

That is a pretty disingenuous use of statistics Rob. You know as well as I do that the death rate is very age and comorbidity dependent. For instance the average age of death *with COVID is greater than 80 years old and all of the statistics that I have viewed.

I don't think anyone particular wants to get this damn thing and very few people claim that it is not a serious disease at least for some people.

However this disease, or more particularly bureaucratic response is very multifaceted and in the opinion of all but the most terrified who have succumbed to the fear narrative, is hugely overblown.

One can speculate about the reasons for that and it will be interesting in the near future for those who have already joined the dots on whether they have been correct.

I placed more emphasis on impacts to hospital systems and long covid than death rates.
Perhaps you should talk to people in the USA and UK hospitals that lived through the pandemic to determine if they thought having freezer trucks in the loading docks for covid deaths was overblown.

 

[wayneL]

I placed more emphasis on impacts to hospital systems and long covid than death rates.
Perhaps you should talk to people in the USA and UK hospitals that lived through the pandemic to determine if they thought having freezer trucks in the loading docks for covid deaths was overblown.

I still have a lot of contacts in the UK, Rob. I haven't got a link at hand so consider this anecdotal, but there were a small number of hospitals that did become overwhelmed (3 from memory), whereas the vast majority were well under normal capacity.

This seems to be borne out by the plethora of tick tock videos of NHS staff posting up elaborate routines.... And the disbandment of the Nightingale hospitals.

And I repeat I don't think anybody is saying that COVID isn't very unpleasant for a minority.

My own mum just died earlier this year, not from covid but from a combination of head trauma and kidney disease... Also very unpleasant.

We were unable to see her at all for 10 days prior, due to lockdowns.... Hospital staff said she was deeply depressed as a result and I can tell you that it was pretty distressing for us too... Still is.

That's just one story out of thousands ou there, some of which have been reported recently in the media.

And BTW, particular hospital was about 1/3 full; I will let you ponder the implications of that.

 

[IFocus]

Seeing as some of us have a problem with stats, are you saying the 2% figure is 2% of the total cases , or 2% of the 9% to 10% of recorded infections.
Mick

Mick I understood it as 2% of the total admitted to hospital so 2% of the 10%.

Clearly its a small sample and early days sure to jump around a bit but I notice tonight out of the 71 cases in hospital over 20 odd are in ICU.

Worryingly a number are on ventilators so those are at a much higher risk of death.

On the subject of hospitals Australia's run at full capacity all the time and for what ever reason admissions are currently running at a higher than average rate Australia wide, in WA ambulance ramping is at all time high with the state looking to employ or train a further 1000 nurses.

Throw COVID in there and the problem is obvious in terms of capacity.

But it doesn't end there, COVID burns up much higher resources, real-estate, controls are extreme, staff get infected losing entire shifts, and so much more.

At the start of the pandemic Italy was a prime example of the over run of hospitals also note front line medical workers had one of the highest death rates thought to be due to the exposure to higher viral loads.

 

[rederob]

I still have a lot of contacts in the UK, Rob. I haven't got a link at hand so consider this anecdotal, but there were a small number of hospitals that did become overwhelmed (3 from memory), whereas the vast majority were well under normal capacity.

This seems to be borne out by the plethora of tick tock videos of NHS staff posting up elaborate routines.... And the disbandment of the Nightingale hospitals.

And I repeat I don't think anybody is saying that COVID isn't very unpleasant for a minority.

My own mum just died earlier this year, not from covid but from a combination of head trauma and kidney disease... Also very unpleasant.

We were unable to see her at all for 10 days prior, due to lockdowns.... Hospital staff said she was deeply depressed as a result and I can tell you that it was pretty distressing for us too... Still is.

That's just one story out of thousands ou there, some of which have been reported recently in the media.

And BTW, particular hospital was about 1/3 full; I will let you ponder the implications of that.

I watched many videos from American and UK hospitals at the height of the pandemic that were stretched beyond capacity and unable to transfer patients to other hospitals because they were full: go to 4:45 of this video and see for yourself.
Rather than anecdote, I prefer data.
Using UK data some 480000 of 5.2M positive covid cases (over one in nine) were hospitalised.
Hospital admissions are not taken lightly, and your idea that 480000 people are just a minority belittles the extent of suffering that is experienced.
Moreover, covid-suffering hospital admissions include a significantly higher proportion of younger people that are fortunate enough to not die.
Compare this:

To this:

So death rates do not tell the whole story about the severe effects of covid on populations and health systems.

 

[mullokintyre]

No, the elephant in the room in that very first graph is the fact that there were 92,000 hospital admissions between 1 to 28 January 2021. The next set of numbers on the graph have 3,000 admissions between May 24 and June 20 2021. Thats the real story.
Mick

 

[rederob]

Mick I understood it as 2% of the total admitted to hospital so 2% of the 10%.

Clearly its a small sample and early days sure to jump around a bit but I notice tonight out of the 71 cases in hospital over 20 odd are in ICU.

Worryingly a number are on ventilators so those are at a much higher risk of death.

On the subject of hospitals Australia's run at full capacity all the time and for what ever reason admissions are currently running at a higher than average rate Australia wide, in WA ambulance ramping is at all time high with the state looking to employ or train a further 1000 nurses.

Throw COVID in there and the problem is obvious in terms of capacity.

But it doesn't end there, COVID burns up much higher resources, real-estate, controls are extreme, staff get infected losing entire shifts, and so much more.

At the start of the pandemic Italy was a prime example of the over run of hospitals also note front line medical workers had one of the highest death rates thought to be due to the exposure to higher viral loads.

Here's the latest data:

That translates to almost 14% being hospitalised, of which 17% end up in ICU.
Still early days so I hope the data on hospitalisations trends more towards the UK experience of below 10%.

 

[rederob]

No, the elephant in the room in that very first graph is the fact that there were 92,000 hospital admissions between 1 to 28 January 2021. The next set of numbers on the graph have 3,000 admissions between May 24 and June 20 2021. Thats the real story.
Mick

I think you need to take a rest from data analysis as I have seen you botch it many times here.
Perhaps you can explain why a nation with 87% vaccinated with one dose and 66% fully vaccinated is experiencing an increase in infections.
The elephant in the room is the known effect that the Delta variant has infecting populations, and our federal government's lack of understanding of what needed to be put in place.

 

[IFocus]

Here's the latest data:
View attachment 127378
That translates to almost 14% being hospitalised, of which 17% end up in ICU.
Still early days so I hope the data on hospitalisations trends more towards the UK experience of below 10%.

Thanks Rob, I was miles out.

 

[SirRumpole]

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

The cake you eat depends on how you slice it.

We fact checked Scott Morrison on the 'success' of hotel quarantine. Here's what we found

As lockdowns swept through Australia's largest cities, Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the hotel quarantine system, claiming it has a "99.9 per cent success rate". But can he claim such a high rate of success?

www.abc.net.au