COVID-19 (Con’t 2)

[Acousticado]

Please carry on the discussion within forum rules. Thanks.

[steelvibe]

I'll start. We've been inundated with so much information, including inaccurate information from normally trusted sources. With that said, I've been grasping to find something that hones in on truth. Nobody handled the situation better than Korea, and I stumbled across this video a couple nights ago. It is 30 minutes well spent in my opinion.

[MChild62]

New model by Imperial College of London suggests the actual number of COVID-19 infections are astronomically higher than the tests show, and that the lockdowns have already prevented significant numbers of deaths.

This is a model, not facts (which are in short supply given the inconsistencies in testing across countries), but interesting and done by a well-regarded institution:

https://www.ft.com/content/b58f525c-...6-24d3ab2e6389

[Joe Beamish]

Originally Posted by MChild62

New model by Imperial College of London suggests the actual number of COVID-19 infections are astronomically higher than the tests show, and that the lockdowns have already prevented significant numbers of deaths.

This is a model, not facts (which are in short supply given the inconsistencies in testing across countries), but interesting and done by a well-regarded institution:

https://www.ft.com/content/b58f525c-...6-24d3ab2e6389

I hit a pay wall in your link. But yes, you’re right. And this would mean that the death rate is lower than has been supposed:

“Ferguson said he now believes the number of fatalities in Britain could be well below the 20,000 he previously forecast. He told the BBC Today program on Thursday: “With the lockdown now in place, those numbers are going to start to plateau.””

https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-f...m-can-now-cope

[MChild62]

Originally Posted by Joe Beamish

I hit a pay wall in your link. But yes, you’re right. And this would mean that the death rate is lower than has been supposed:

“Ferguson said he now believes the number of fatalities in Britain could be well below the 20,000 he previously forecast. He told the BBC Today program on Thursday: “With the lockdown now in place, those numbers are going to start to plateau.””

https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-f...m-can-now-cope

agree and sorry about the link. It was accessible to me without a subscription as the FT seem to be giving open access to their CV-19 coverage, like the NYT. Here are some of the points from the text. Article is yesterday, whereas the coverage in the Daily Beast on Ferguson was March 26 (and this stuff ages pretty fast):

One in 15 people living in London could already be infected with coronavirus, according to a study by some of the UK government’s scientific advisers, but only 9,291 cases have been confirmed in the capital — a gap that underscores the lack of testing provision in the country’s biggest cluster.

Researchers at Imperial College London’s Covid-19 Response Team, whose earlier work contributed to the decision to lock down the UK last month, estimated in a paper this week that between 1.2 per cent and 5.4 per cent of the country’s population may have already been infected by March 28.

Based on the mean of 2.7 per cent that would imply that one in 15, or about 600,000 people, in the capital have contracted the virus, when adjusting for Greater London’s population of 8.9m and the fact that it has roughly a third of all confirmed cases.*The city has suffered a similar proportion of all deaths in the UK so far.

However, the range in the study could mean as many as one in eight Londoners have been infected or as few as one in 33,*according to Financial Times calculations that were reviewed by one of the paper’s authors.

The government’s policy of only testing severely ill patients and those in localised settings, such as care homes, has come in for mounting criticism. It stands in stark contrast to recommendation by Tedros Adhanom, the head of the World Health Organization, to “test, test, test”.

The government has also come under fire*over its failure to test more frontline National Health Service workers after admitting earlier this week that only 2,000 out of 500,000 had been tested.

Ministers have made repeated promises to increase testing but progress has been slow so far.*Many scientists argue that targeted, large-scale testing is crucial in stemming the spread of the virus because many people who become infected show no or very mild symptoms and continue to spread it to others.

The paper, which has been submitted for peer review, is among the first to estimate totals, including asymptomatic and mild cases, creating a model to “back-calculate” a range of totals from the number of observed deaths.*

“We estimate there are orders of magnitude fewer infections detected than true infections, mostly likely due to mild and asymptomatic infections as well as limited testing capacity,” the paper, published on March 30, said.*

But the study cautions that the data the team’s estimates are based on are still relatively limited, given the rapid pace of the virus’s spread since it emerged in Wuhan, China, late last year. There is usually a lag of about four weeks between infection and death for the relatively small percentage of people who succumb to the virus.

The paper, which examined 11 European countries, argues that cross-continental lockdowns have already saved between 21,000 and 120,000 lives.

---

Tim Colbourn, an epidemiologist at University College London’s Institute for Global Health, said the rate of spread in London suggested by the paper “seems plausible, with the available data”.*

---
A study last week by Oxford university estimated an even higher rate of infection, but was criticised by parts of the scientific community for being too speculative.

----
The earlier study by the college suggested that the UK would have faced up to 250,000 deaths if the government had continued with its more relaxed approach on social distancing and isolating, which stopped far short of a full lockdown until late March.

[gitarro]

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2...ial-distancing

Why quarantine and lockdown may actually be not only saving lives but may have a positive economic benefit if the example of the Spanish flu of 1918 is any indicator.

[bobster7]

This situation is making me increasingly angry. As an NHS clinical practitioner on the frontline in the UK the lack of appropriate and good quality PPE is an absolute disgrace, my colleagues are dying. The response has been wholly inadequate and sluggish. The numbers of cases is vastly underreported and the distancing guidelines are guesswork at best. 6 feet? Not 5.5 or 6.5? They are happily making it up as they go whilst under resourced staff are dying for their incompetence. Banging a few pots and pans may make the general public feel better and less guilty but it’s just condescending self congratulatory nonsense. We don’t want to be clapped we want to survive the shift!!!

[Murphy Slaw]

Originally Posted by MChild62

New model by Imperial College of London suggests the actual number of COVID-19 infections are astronomically higher than the tests show,

Wouldn't that mean the rate of death percentage is astronomically lower than we think ?

[dreamincolor]

Originally Posted by steelvibe

I'll start. We've been inundated with so much information, including inaccurate information from normally trusted sources. With that said, I've been grasping to find something that hones in on truth. Nobody handled the situation better than Korea, and I stumbled across this video a couple nights ago. It is 30 minutes well spent in my opinion.

Thank you for sharing this. Excellent interview and quite enlightening.

[Meursault]

Originally Posted by bobster7

This situation is making me increasingly angry. As an NHS clinical practitioner on the frontline in the UK the lack of appropriate and good quality PPE is an absolute disgrace, my colleagues are dying. The response has been wholly inadequate and sluggish. The numbers of cases is vastly underreported and the distancing guidelines are guesswork at best. 6 feet? Not 5.5 or 6.5? They are happily making it up as they go whilst under resourced staff are dying for their incompetence. Banging a few pots and pans may make the general public feel better and less guilty but it’s just condescending self congratulatory nonsense. We don’t want to be clapped we want to survive the shift!!!

Indeed. I wonder how many of those clapping their support continually vote to under fund the health service. The clapping does seem more about making the general public feel better and give them something to do while stuck indoors. The only support the NHS needs is proper funding.

Darren

[MChild62]

Originally Posted by Murphy Slaw

Wouldn't that mean the rate of death percentage is astronomically lower than we think ?

yes. as Dr. John Campbell pointed out in his video yesterday (titled "Some good news, probably"), applying the numbers in this model for Italy would bring the death rate down to 1 to 2%, consistent with the range found in countries with more robust early testing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1aoULlMpn0

[emtsteve]

Just finished the Asian Boss interview - FANTASTIC information. The Asians have gone through this before and have learned what works. We (the US and Europe) should be following their lead.

[Otterhound]

At the beginning of the video , the doctor states the diseases that Korea has had to deal with .
We have dealt with all of them here in the USA .
Either he left a few out or Korea has not had to deal with them .
One needs to understand a few things about Asian culture to properly observe what is going on there .
A simple example is the wearing of a mask .
In the USA , before the current medical issue , if you walked into a bank with a mask on buttons would be pushed and you would end up speaking to the police .
Needless to say , in Italy , you would be trapped in the entry area between the locked doors until the authorities arrived .
In Asian culture , you would be seen as different .
One month ago , if you were to walk around outside in America with a mask on , you would not only be seen as different , you would likely be confronted by the law . Today , that has changed .

[Gitfiddlemann]

Originally Posted by Otterhound

Today , that has changed .

Exactly.
That short sentence speaks volumes for the way an event like this can be transformative in a society.
Not necessarily adopting the cultures of other people, but shaping our own.
The world and our own country will be a different place once we make it through this eruptive phase.
And it doesn't portend a negative outcome necessarily. Some solid good may come out of it.

[spock]

First off, lest anyone misunderstand, I take the current COVID-19 pandemic extremely seriously, from a host of different standpoints, not the least of which is its ability to kill people, even younger folks and those without pre-existing health issues.

Two things though.

1. If in fact there are a significantly greater number of people who have the virus and simply haven't been tested, or, have the virus but show no symptoms, then the overall death rate is considerably lower than what is being reported. No consolation to those who have passed, to be sure, but maybe some to those of us concerned with the alarming published rates.

2. I have read where some officials are counting among the COVID-19 deaths anyone who has died recently and was positive for the virus. If true, and I cannot confirm this, ( see link below) that would similarly inflate the actual death rate as people are currently dying from other causes unrelated to the COVID-19 virus and if the virus was not a contributing factor leading to their death, should not be counted as a COVID-19 fatality. For example, if I test positive for COVID-19 and get run over by a car, my cause of death is not COVID-19 but rather motor vehicle accident, or if I have terminal cancer and die but happen to have tested positive for COVID-19 but without any signs or symptoms of COVID-19, my cause of death should be due to cancer, not COVID-19. It is the same as if someone dies of a massive heart attack and just happens to have asymptomatic prostate cancer, the cause of death is cardiac arrest and not cancer, even though they harbored it. If the COVID-19 was not directly responsible for a person's death, it should not be recorded as being responsible. Bottom line, folks are still dying from other causes that are not due to COVID-19, even though they may be carrying it.


https://www.globalresearch.ca/open-l...merkel/5708004