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

[Knobby22]

Finally, Coronavirus random tests show only 1% infected: Herd Immunity is tiny

http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/fi...s-show-only-1-infected-herd-immunity-is-tiny/

I suspected as much but that is extremely bad news, as is the previous post. Crap.

Australia has to try to beat this and wait for a vaccine (which is hopefully coming).

The European and USA tactic of herd immunity is not going to work. Too many deaths. ...and if you catch it, you will likely have a shortened life span, even if you are asymptomatic.

And with the stock market and the economy; I am now back to being full blown bear as well as personally scared for my and my family's health.

The only good thing on the horizon is the testing going on with some preliminary hope for treatments. I am getting a bit of confidence on this front, especially hydroxychlorifine.

 

[rederob]

I am getting a bit of confidence on this front, especially hydroxychlorifine.

Here's some recent news - a lot more work is needed to determine if the treatment will be of true benefit.

 

[Knobby22]

Here's some recent news - a lot more work is needed to determine if the treatment will be of true benefit.

The French study will sort it out one way or the other.

 

[bellenuit]

Finally, Coronavirus random tests show only 1% infected: Herd Immunity is tiny

http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/fi...s-show-only-1-infected-herd-immunity-is-tiny/

Maybe someone would like to check my logic and my math.

Assume there is no vaccine discovered and no drugs prove effective cures and assume figures from Worldometers are correct in saying that Austria has had 350 deaths to date. I have read that herd immunity starts to kick in at 60% and is very effective at 90%. Then lets take a mid-point of 75% infected as providing reasonable immunity. Then if the 350 deaths are from an infection rate of 1%, to reach reasonable herd immunity of 75%, Austria will incur 26,250 deaths. This compares to an average of 1,000 to 1,200 deaths from flu in the average flu epidemic. That 1,000 - 1,200 is also quite high for a developed country as Austria has a low vaccination rate for flu. So COVID-19 is potentially 26 times more fatal than flu.

 

[rederob]

Maybe someone would like to check my logic and my math.

Assume there is no vaccine discovered and no drugs prove effective cures and assume figures from Worldometers are correct in saying that Austria has had 350 deaths to date. I have read that herd immunity starts to kick in at 60% and is very effective at 90%. Then lets take a mid-point of 75% infected as providing reasonable immunity. Then if the 350 deaths are from an infection rate of 1%, to reach reasonable herd immunity of 75%, Austria will incur 26,250 deaths. This compares to an average of 1,000 to 1,200 deaths from flu in the average flu epidemic. That 1,000 - 1,200 is also quite high for a developed country as Austria has a low vaccination rate for flu. So COVID-19 is potentially 26 times more fatal than flu.

No disrespect to your maths, but it's based on imperfect knowledge and assumes some things which may not be features of this virus. For example, representative sampling will not pick up "clustering" which is a feature of COVID-19 but not the flu.
More importantly, it may be that a lot more people have been exposed to the virus and have antibodies. And if that were so then the case fatality rate (cfr) could be significantly lower.
Aside from that the country data we have is anomalous, suggesting there things we don't understand.
Finally, it's not wise to use the common flu's cfr as it is already built on years of infection and immunity plus vaccinations.

 

[bellenuit]

No disrespect to your maths, but it's based on imperfect knowledge and assumes some things which may not be features of this virus. For example, representative sampling will not pick up "clustering" which is a feature of COVID-19 but not the flu.
More importantly, it may be that a lot more people have been exposed to the virus and have antibodies. And if that were so then the case fatality rate (cfr) could be significantly lower.
Aside from that the country data we have is anomalous, suggesting there things we don't understand.
Finally, it's not wise to use the common flu's cfr as it is already built on years of infection and immunity plus vaccinations.

Of course there were going to be a lot of fuzziness in the conclusion, but it was just an attempted extrapolation based on what is currently known rather than perfect knowledge which we don't as yet have. Representative sampling will not pick up clustering of infections but equally there are probably clusters of populations that have no infections to compensate. The comparison with flu was just to show the potential magnitude of the problem which many dismiss; a quantitative comparison not a virological comparison.

 

[noirua]

Coronavirus hits remote Amazon tribe in Brazil as 15-year-old boy dies with COVID-19
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...s-15-year-old-boy-dies-with-covid-19-11971906

 

[noirua]

Coronavirus numbers in Australia: how many new cases are there? Covid-19 map, stats and graph
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ats-graph-map-by-postcode-covid-19-death-toll

 

[noirua]

The Chinese flag re-imagined in a Danish newspaper cartoon.
https://www.dw.com/en/china-angry-over-coronavirus-cartoon-in-danish-newspaper/a-52196383

 

[rederob]

The above is a real quote - not a cartoon.
Elements of this thread are turning a virus into a China blame game.
As I posted previously, the swine flu pandemic originated in Mexico, but was actually propagated through the USA's indifference. Records of its death rate are unreliable - estimates as high as 500k globally - but there was no blame game back then and no backlash against the USA's across-the-board tardiness in acting on its severity.
Instead, today there is a new narrative being propagated that also blames the WHO for conspiring with China in a huge coverup. Despite there being zero evidence of a coverup, the US media in particular is trying to divert attention from its President's gross failure to act expeditiously and sensibly.

 

[wayneL]

Hitchens offers a different view and compares the response of the UK and other countries.

 

[hja]

The above is a real quote - not a cartoon.
Elements of this thread are turning a virus into a China blame game.
As I posted previously, the swine flu pandemic originated in Mexico, but was actually propagated through the USA's indifference. Records of its death rate are unreliable - estimates as high as 500k globally - but there was no blame game back then and no backlash against the USA's across-the-board tardiness in acting on its severity.
Instead, today there is a new narrative being propagated that also blames the WHO for conspiring with China in a huge coverup. Despite there being zero evidence of a coverup, the US media in particular is trying to divert attention from its President's gross failure to act expeditiously and sensibly.

China's deadly coverup from the very outset of the virus outbreak last year:...
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6148497597001

..., just continues with the suppression of new research by deletion of its academic pages:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...on-coronavirus-research-deleted-pages-suggest

 

[rederob]

Hitchens offers a different view and compares the response of the UK and other countries.

Unfortunately he offers little factual evidence to support his many claims, most of which have been demonstrated to be false.
For example he clearly says "that the presumption made in this debate by those in favour of the shutdowns is that the shutdown will save lives...."
Wuhan shut down and little comparative infection spread across China as a result of its nationwide travel and health enforcement strategies. As the virus broke out in China we would assume on what Hitchens says that it should have the highest number of deaths. Instead it sits at 9th on the deplorable deaths table.
I am always amused by people introducing different perspectives which are based on falsehoods or plain inept analysis. But I guess they can't help it.

 

[rederob]

China's deadly coverup from the very outset of the virus outbreak last year:...
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6148497597001

..., just continues with the suppression of new research by deletion of its academic pages:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...on-coronavirus-research-deleted-pages-suggest

Again, Zero evidence of a coverup - more of the rubbish people here post to perpetuate a blame game.

As to the publishing restrictions, China has not prevented peer reviewed work from being in the public domain, eg, at google scholar:
The epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) in China
CPERE Novel - Zhonghua liu xing bing xue za zhi= Zhonghua …, 2020 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in China
W Guan, Z Ni, Y Hu, W Liang, C Ou, J He… - … England Journal of …, 2020 - Mass Medical Soc
A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019
N Zhu, D Zhang, W Wang, X Li, B Yang… - … England Journal of …, 2020 - Mass Medical Soc
Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China
C Huang, Y Wang, X Li, L Ren, J Zhao, Y Hu, L Zhang… - The Lancet, 2020 - Elsevier
Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia
Q Li, X Guan, P Wu, X Wang, L Zhou… - … England Journal of …, 2020 - Mass Medical Soc
A novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern
C Wang, PW Horby, FG Hayden, GF Gao - The Lancet, 2020 - thelancet.com
A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin
P Zhou, XL Yang, XG Wang, B Hu, L Zhang, W Zhang… - Nature, 2020 - nature.com
Clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia in Wuhan, China
D Wang, B Hu, C Hu, F Zhu, X Liu, J Zhang, B Wang… - Jama, 2020 - jamanetwork.com

And here are links to over 300 more Chinese works on the virus.

 

[hja]

Again, Zero evidence of a coverup - more of the rubbish people here post to perpetuate a blame game.
As to the publishing restrictions, China has not prevented peer reviewed work from being in the public domain, eg:
The epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases

If the WHO had acted just three weeks earlier nearly 95 per cent of today’s infections and deaths would not have happened. More than 1.5 million people have been infected with COVID-19 so far and 94,500 have died. The study raises more questions about the WHO’s failure to recommend early travel bans based on advice from China that the disease could not be transmitted from human-to-human contact. Taiwanese officials told the WHO on December 31 they had enough evidence to confirm the virus could be transmitted human-to-human but the WHO ignored that advice because China disagreed. “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission,” the WHO said on January 14 – already two weeks later than first being informed. Then on January 22 an emergency committee debated declaring a global emergency and banning travel to China.
...
Beijing resisted and the group of doctors calling for widespread travel bans were overruled. It took another week for the WHO to reverse that decision, implement travel ban recommendations and label the crisis a global emergency.

 

[SirRumpole]

Again, Zero evidence of a coverup - more of the rubbish people here post to perpetuate a blame game.
As to the publishing restrictions, China has not prevented peer reviewed work from being in the public domain, eg:
The epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) in China
CPERE Novel - Zhonghua liu xing bing xue za zhi= Zhonghua …, 2020 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in China
W Guan, Z Ni, Y Hu, W Liang, C Ou, J He… - … England Journal of …, 2020 - Mass Medical Soc
A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019
N Zhu, D Zhang, W Wang, X Li, B Yang… - … England Journal of …, 2020 - Mass Medical Soc
Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China
C Huang, Y Wang, X Li, L Ren, J Zhao, Y Hu, L Zhang… - The Lancet, 2020 - Elsevier
Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia
Q Li, X Guan, P Wu, X Wang, L Zhou… - … England Journal of …, 2020 - Mass Medical Soc
A novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern
C Wang, PW Horby, FG Hayden, GF Gao - The Lancet, 2020 - thelancet.com
A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin
P Zhou, XL Yang, XG Wang, B Hu, L Zhang, W Zhang… - Nature, 2020 - nature.com
Clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia in Wuhan, China
D Wang, B Hu, C Hu, F Zhu, X Liu, J Zhang, B Wang… - Jama, 2020 - jamanetwork.com

Pretty well all those writers are Chinese. Can we really believe they won't tow the official line when it conflicts with the facts ?

 

[rederob]

Pretty well all those writers are Chinese. Can we really believe they won't tow the official line when it conflicts with the facts ?

How do you get different facts, given the basis of the information was largely complete patient records for the better studies. These records did not hide that people died, and the information is wholly consistent with other findings, eg the first American case.

 

[rederob]

If the WHO had acted just three weeks earlier nearly 95 per cent of today’s infections and deaths would not have happened. More than 1.5 million people have been infected with COVID-19 so far and 94,500 have died. The study raises more questions about the WHO’s failure to recommend early travel bans based on advice from China that the disease could not be transmitted from human-to-human contact. Taiwanese officials told the WHO on December 31 they had enough evidence to confirm the virus could be transmitted human-to-human but the WHO ignored that advice because China disagreed. “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission,” the WHO said on January 14 – already two weeks later than first being informed. Then on January 22 an emergency committee debated declaring a global emergency and banning travel to China.
...
Beijing resisted and the group of doctors calling for widespread travel bans were overruled. It took another week for the WHO to reverse that decision, implement travel ban recommendations and label the crisis a global emergency.

The WHO provided direct advice to all member nations about the virus on 1 January, a day after it was notified. On 3 January the US Health Department was in direct contact with China about the virus.
Your article's claims are total rubbish.

 

[hja]

The WHO provided direct advice to all member nations about the virus on 1 January, a day after it was notified. On 3 January the US Health Department was in direct contact with China about the virus.
Your article's claims are total rubbish.

Are you sure you're not a gutter spokesperson for the People's republic ?

 

[rederob]

Are you sure you're not a gutter spokesperson for the People's republic ?

Please offer facts about what actually happened, and take your poorly based ideas about me elsewhere.