Covid-19 Madness

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Why is everybody freaking out?

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Partially because the “news” makes you paranoid if that is where you get your information, partly because if we had not started quarantining we would be pushing Italy and Spain death rates.

It does demonstrate how fast a biological attack could cripple the world and why the facilities like the one near Wuhan that research and develop viruses “allegedly” like Corona need better protocols for isolating their research and ensuring it remains inside the facility.

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its not the deaths its the hospitalisation

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And recovery times of those hospitalizations.

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Here in Singapore they jumped on it early, have almost no deaths ( a few sick people flew in) yet only 30% have recovered 70% still in hospital since the start…
The problem will not be the deaths

Because COVID19 hasn’t spread through the entire populace yet. The fatality rate from COVID19 is on the order of 20 times greater than flu. So take the annual flu death rates and multiply by 20. That will give you 240K to 1.2 milion dead.

Comparison: 405,000 Americans were killed in WW2.

Then remember that many Americans get flu shots. Which means mortality from flu would be much greater than what is shown in your chart, except for vaccinations. But there is no vaccine for COVID19. So if you extrapolate COVID19 deaths from flu deaths, the numbers would likely be higher than the 1.2mil to 240K range.

I must add, all of this information is readily available. Are you not getting it?

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I would add to @freighterman1 comment by saying unlike the Flu, COVID-19 (to date) does not appear to be seasonal.

Asymptomatic transmission period. China was ready for another SARS outbreak. But the asymptomatic transmission period for SARS was around 2 days. Nobody is really certain what it is for COVID-19, but some studies are showing up to 21 days. That’s for people who even get symptoms, which can be in the minority. First case was December 6th, but the first quarantines in China didn’t go into effect until January 23rd. You can look at the average number of enplanements and entrainments out of the outbreak area in that period and extrapolate where it went in the world from there. Because it’s a new virus, it’s difficult to get accurate data about a case fatality rate. Respiratory infections are a common cause of death for the elderly in any year, and developing/implementing an accurate test for a new virus is challenging. You can’t trust the numbers coming out of China, because they lie.

So you had sort of a perfect storm, a new, poorly understood virus with a long asymptomatic transmission period that was airborne and an unknown CFR. Resolved cases showed severe lung damage, and that becomes more difficult to heal as people get older. The majority of the US budget is Social Security, Medicare, and servicing the debt that the first two bring. Hospitals are not equipped for a massive surge in ARDS cases. This is the case to varying degrees all over the developed world.

Why are people still freaking out? Well, in early January when containment was still a possibility most people were focused on impeaching President Trump. Attempts to bring attention to ‘The Chinese Disease Threat’ were treated with scorn and accusations of xenophobia and racism. When the problem became unavoidable, a lot of people shifted their indignation to ‘Not taking the virus seriously enough!’. Many people seem to shift their lives from one source of outrage to another these days, and this is the new outrage.

Also, epidemiology math can be a little complicated. Figures don’t lie, but liars figure. Without widespread and accurate testing (including antibody tests for people that had the virus without symptoms or with mild symptoms) you can essentially take any figures you want and extrapolate from them based on how terrified/unconcerned you want your audience to be. So you see people talking about reading a log curve, even though that’s obviously based on availability of testing and therefore useless. Garbage in, Garbage out. You see a lot of bouncing colored balls, people referring to exponential growth, so on. People should take the time to look into what those are based on, but people are people. What are you gonna do?

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Dr. Fauci says he suspects it is based on some early data.

I understand what Dr. Fauci is saying. However if compared to the Flu season in the northern hemisphere which is typically October thru March we are not there yet as infections are still increasing. We certainly hope warmer temps and humidity will improve things.

Some researchers are looking for the possible influence of temperature and humidity levels on the spread of this virus but it’s too early for conclusions.

I don’t think that purple block is done growing. . .

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If that was the case the Philippines and Singapore would see decreasing cases. But such is not the case.

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I heard once that there are 30,000 USCG licensed officers excluding OUPV. Lets assume half of them get this illness. now if the mortality rate is .2% that means 30 will die, if the mortality rate is 2%(like the media reports) 300 will die. I virtually guarantee that someone you’ve personally worked with will kick the bucket. If 30 sailors died in a ship wreck we’d all be reading about it. By the end of this year this will personally affect you even if you do not get ill.

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And permanent lung damage as experienced with SARS and MERS.

Some reports have been made about folks still contagious after being treated for weeks after they’ve been declared “negative.”

It scales and transmits quickly before the host shows any symptoms. The real fatality rate in USA is TBD for our demographic. Using the data from other countries can serve as a proxy but no a definitive when the health conditions of folks in this country differ from those abroad.

Those numbers assume a cross-section of ages. I think it skews higher. More dead guys.

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Affects males more than females as well. That’s how South Korea got lucky because the cluster of females that it hit and females experience relatively less fatality as compared to males.

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Yup. And it actually skews much, much higher. In addition to women, those numbers include babies and children.

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IIRC he was basing his surmise on infection rates in countries with different temperatures.

That, like a lot of statements about COVID-19, is a HYPOTHESIS, NOT yet supported by any evidence. This disease has not been around NEARLY long enough to know if permanent lung impairment occurs or not. There are enough differences between the clinical pictures to label that far from a safe assumption. You can get opinions all you want, but only evidence will decide the truth.

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