Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

[Ragnarok]

A bit aside, I purchased the game Vampyr yesterday, and I had a bit of a giggle when I learned it took place in 1918 at the height of the spanish flu. And you play as a doctor turned vampire. And there are posters telling citizens to stay at home and avoid crowds. And that droplets from sneezing spread it.

This game was released in 2018.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

A bit aside, I purchased the game Vampyr yesterday, and I had a bit of a giggle when I learned it took place in 1918 at the height of the spanish flu. And you play as a doctor turned vampire. And there are posters telling citizens to stay at home and avoid crowds.

This game was released in 2018.

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I also learned a fun fact about that epidemic recently. Due to Twitter, of all things.

https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1251936242834563073

Amusingly, there's a typo in their first tweet saying '2018' instead of '1918'; they address it at the end. The TL;DR? People in San Francisco during the Spanish Flu refused to start wearing masks again after initial efforts successfully curbed the spread. Things seemed to be improving, restrictions were lifted, they got worse, they tried to put the restrictions back and people rebelled. Everything got worse.

Gosh, that does sound familiar...

 

[wichajster]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries is interesting

Basically, one may take statistics about deaths from previous years, and we can usually expect very similar statistics each year.

Sudden unexplained spikes are very suspicious. And in some cases spike of COVID-related death is unable to fully explain death spike. What indicates severe undercounting of deaths in Lombardy, Netherlands or Instanbul and probably catching in statistic nearly all COVID deaths in say NY.

Note that it is very tricky to judge this: maybe with lockdowns expected death count should decrease? That would mean more uncounted COVID deaths.

And for anyone with "tropics report low death rate, it means that it is stopped by warm weather":

Indonesia is one of the first developing countries to have released data about excess mortality—not an official count of deaths from all causes, but instead a tally of burials from Jakarta's department of parks and cemeteries. Typically, the department records about 2,800 burials a month (accounting for roughly 75% of all people who die in the city). But in March, the department reported 4,400 burials, suggesting an excess of at least 1,600 fatalities.

Although Jakarta has been the epicentre of the covid-19 outbreak in Indonesia, at the end of March its official death toll was just 84, barely 5% as high as the excess burials. Even on April 19th, the city's official tally of dead was still only 290. This suggests that the country is drastically under-counting the severity of the outbreak.

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[TotalAbsolutism]

I think it is important to remember that any numbers will probably inaccurate for quite some time given we are still currently in the middle of the pandemic.

 

[wichajster]

Excess mortality data is not very accurate but is often a good tool for judging real death count.

It is less prone to undertesting (or lack of testing), it is available more often, it is less targeted by people willing to distort official statistics.

Main drawback is that it takes all excess mortality together what may both result in too high and too low total number.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

So now you look like you're doing a malevolent con job. Congratulations, you've made yourself look actively evil.

How many people are dead right now?

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If you aren't willing to look at the costs and benefits of what you're proposing you'll only end up with a far higher bodycount and perverse pride in what you've achieved. Why are Corona deaths sadder than any other death? What, except for the media focus and being in the public eye at this very moment, makes it worse to die from this than cancer, obesity, murder or anything else?

Please go find your own estimates of the costs and benefits, to governments and individuals, and think whether this is good long term. Everything that goes into this is going to come out of something else later. People won't be able to afford to eat well, they won't be able to afford medical treatment, they won't be able to afford this, that or the other. Unemployment and financial stress cause lots of health problems that are going to effect a lot of people long term and government spending will need to be cut in a lot of fields to cover the debt. This isn't just some trade off of video games and holidays to save grandparents' lives here, this will come at real cost to real people, including their lives.

Why are you only pulling shit from more than a month ago?

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These keep coming out, I already showed you the Iceland and Massachusetts study as well. Here's yet another for six days ago that gives as much as 50 times reported cases.

I still think that as far as our society spends money 2 500 000 $ (or 5 000 000 $ or 10 000 000 $) to save one life is still above average of how we spend money so I see no problem with that.

If you have evidence that costs of lockdowns, compared to cost of no lockdowns are actually higher then provide sources.

So far estimates provided by "lockdowns should be ended" people are in my opinion supporting continuation of lockdowns.

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Those figures I showed were just for current known government spending, there are going to be direct and indirect deaths resulting from the lockdown as well you can compare directly that won't be known for years. If someone loses their job or business and can't afford medical treatment next year that can be counted directly against this, for example. Then personal spending government spending will need to be cut in a whole range of fields to pay the debt and that'll cut into quality of life years somewhere and add up to megadeaths. The sums could get worse if the lockdown is extended much longer.

To look at the lockdown costs I think the fairest thing is probably to compare the Netherlands or Sweden to their neighbors once the numbers are in, but naturally if everyone near you decides to jump off a cliff to a recession there's nothing you can do to avoid having one of your own and needing to spend money to fix the problems that causes.

For a current source one pro lockdown study I've been shown actually claims there's a benefit of +5 Trillion to the US economy of the lock down by pricing each death at 10 million dollars and thinks social distancing would save around a million lives. They give the lockdown cost to GDP as ~14 Trillion and the loss without a lockdown as ~6.5 Trillion. It also demonstrates the problem we're having from no-one really wanting to discuss quality of life years vs number of lives. If a virus is mostly hitting the elderly with health problems then the number of quality years lost is significantly lower than the base death toll would suggest and pricing that at the $10 million benchmark is just silly. You haven't 'saved' someone at that age the same way you could a ten year old who'd been hit by a car, you buy them another few months or if you're lucky years of decent living before something else gets them. You also need to seriously consider whether it's pointlessly cruel or not to prolong their lives with an end of life month long hospital stay in ICU or let them go with morphine. (There's even an argument the 'flatten the curve' focus on providing ICU places for them is basically pointless anyway, since I keep seeing reports that 85%+ of people who get put on ventilators die anyway.)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561934

Using a $10 million value of reduced mortality risk (VSL) for the lives saved, the benefits of social distancing are $12.4 trillion. The cost of social distancing is the difference in present value terms of the GDP losses without ($6.49 trillion) and with ($13.7 trillion) the policy, which is $7.21 trillion. The main result is in the bottom row: under our benchmark assumptions, social distancing generates net benefits of about $5.16 trillion

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It is also possible that we are underreacting to flu. Note that we are undercounting both infections and deaths. If you have decent sources discussing real infection fatality rate then please link it. And yes, case fatality rate is badly affected by undertesting or testing heavily ill people so statistics like 10% fatality rate over population are clearly a nonsense.

So it appears to be 3 to 4 times deadlier than flu, even with an extreme reaction. Though given uncertainties it may be between "less deadly than flu (after heavy reaction) to ten times deadlier than flu (even after reaction)".

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I wouldn't mind a few changes to how we deal with sickness in general, especially making masks socially acceptable in western countries and making sick leave more of a public duty than a luxury, but talking about Corona specifically there are lots of testing studies out there. I can keep linking studies of tests of the public finding far more infected than predicted, but the only way I can see to prove deaths aren't being vastly under reported is to look at all causes mortality.

This is another recent study testing the public.

These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases. Conclusions The population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases. Population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections.

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In the UK all causes mortality stats that exclude corona deaths have stayed stable at around 11,000 a week until this last week where we spike up to 16,000 which is probably Corona or people who couldn't get treatment because of Corona and should probably add into the figure. If we add ~5,000 people to the total of 18,000 it doesn't move the meter much if the actual infection spread could be 10 times the reported figure or several times that.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2019-to-2020

Overall it just seems like the whole thing will be proven counter productive. Everyone got infected anyway, lots of people will suffer horribly to pay for it and the ICU treatment we were banking everything on either didn't work or was somehow actively counterproductive.

 

[MadGreenSon]

So.... if you're so certain, go out and get infected and tell us how that goes. Do remember to spread it to everyone you care about while you're at it.

 

[Ragnarok]

Why are Corona deaths sadder than any other death?

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Well I don't know about you, but I find drowning in my own fluid-filled lungs is a pretty horrific way to go.

 

[Imabot]

Well I don't know about you, but I find drowning in my own fluid-filled lungs is a pretty horrific way to go.

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I also sad because it's guaranteed that those people died alone. Nobody, friends or family, was allowed to be by their side in final moments. Doctors and Nurses are to busy trying to take care of other sick, and can't spare much time to offer even minimum of comfort of top of fact they must minimize amount of contact to avoid catching virus and getting sick.

 

[d.fish]

What the fuck. Are we seriously asking this.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

So.... if you're so certain, go out and get infected and tell us how that goes. Do remember to spread it to everyone you care about while you're at it.

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You've not contributed anything to the discussion so actually go do some legwork here will you? Find sources you trust and get an estimate for the numbers you think would die in a fully infected population, the average life expectancy of those who would die, and the total costs of the lockdown we're under. Times the number of years by the number of people and divide the cost by that number. Once you've got that number ask yourself whether that's the amount you want to be taxed to pay for for the rest of your life or whether you've gotten worked up emotionally and aren't acting rationally. We can debate the numbers from there without acting childish.

Well I don't know about you, but I find drowning in my own fluid-filled lungs is a pretty horrific way to go.

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Have you ever read, watched or seen anything about how people die? What late stage dementia looks like? What living with terminal cancer and the chemo treatments is like? What suffering a stroke feels like? If you aren't coming at this form an experienced background you just aren't talking rationally, you're mono focusing on the current scare. We see other people are scared, we get scared, they get scared and we all build shit up in our minds out of proportion. You can rise above that if you want to.

 

[Xicree]

... don't be fucking stupid please.

Pretty much every one of our members who is an ACTUAL MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL has pretty much let you know that this is the real deal.

Beyond that you need to sit down and remember that there is a lag between spreading and deaths. A lag which includes spreading via sources who don't know that they can spread.



And you know whats even worse than your stupid argument that this is worse for the economy than getting back to work before it's done? Its the fact that doing so will SMASH the economy ten times worse... and it only takes a little bit of commonsense to realize why.

1. Economy is made of lots of people making decisions to spend money on things and services.
2. The economy depends on those people feeling like its safe to spend that money because they'll be able to gather money to spend again.
3. Going places to spend money means that you mix and mingle with other people.
4. If enough people are sick but not showing it, and if enough people mingle in places where business is... then that means that those business around the areas that people got sick will see a sudden and catastrophic decline in business.
5. If people are told its safe to go out, and it turns out not to be safe then they will STOP GOING OUT no matter what ANYONE SAYS ABOUT IT.



Ie... You don't MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS GOOD first before letting people get back to work... then you have FUCKED yourself and your economy completely. Shattered the one thing that holds economies together. CONFIDENCE that tomorrow will be akin to today.


It irks me something fierce that people are actually arguing to sacrifice their parents and grandparents for the sake of 'the economy' when that's essentially burning people at an alter for a missing god.


This is a Natural Disaster. A big slow-moving one... act like it. The economy bounces back easily if there are PEOPLE with CONFIDENCE to bring it back. We see it after every natural disaster across the world. This is no different.

 

[TanaNari]

What late stage dementia looks like? What living with terminal cancer and the chemo treatments is like? What suffering a stroke feels like?

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False equivalency. All of those diseases are ones we have little to no ability to control or prevent... they're tragedies, but they're inevitable tragedies (for the time being- I have confidence that we'll have legitimate cures to cancer and gene treatments to curb the others within my lifetime).

What you're talking about is a disease that can, with effort, be prevented from hurting others. It isn't like dealing with cancer because we have no choice... it's like intentionally exposing people to deadly carcinogens. And not even the way the tobacco companies did it by lying about evidence for decades- one way or another, people choose to smoke. No, this is more like dumping thousands of gallons of lead and mercury into the environment where it will inflict indiscriminate harm upon countless innocents.

Fun fact... there used to be lead in gasoline, for reasons I'm sure made sense at the time... now it's illegal to use lead in gas, and indeed for most things lead was used for (pipes, utensils, paint, etc). Then there's asbestos, also now illegal. And I support those being illegal because they had a tendency to kill people in horrible ways. Do you disagree?

 

[OverReactionGuy]

This virus is a horrible way to go. That's all I'll say in this matter.

 

[OverMaster]

If you aren't willing to look at the costs and benefits of what you're proposing you'll only end up with a far higher bodycount and perverse pride in what you've achieved. Why are Corona deaths sadder than any other death? What, except for the media focus and being in the public eye at this very moment, makes it worse to die from this than cancer, obesity, murder or anything else?

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Maybe it has something to do with the fact deaths from cancer, obesity and murder aren't contagied quickly across the whole globe on some exponential rate, and instead are reliant on separate incidents that are not connected to each other in an international web that needs to be stopped?

 

[lost star]

Why are people arguing that the quarantine will stop the virus? That's demonstrably untrue. At best it slows it down, and our halfassed way of doing it doesn't even seem to be doing that.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

Why are people arguing that the quarantine will stop the virus? That's demonstrably untrue. At best it slows it down, and our halfassed way of doing it doesn't even seem to be doing that.

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It does if you do it right. I invite you to examine the statistics for NZ and Australia. Mine and mishie's countries are totally winning the pandemic.

 

[Xicree]

Why are people arguing that the quarantine will stop the virus? That's demonstrably untrue. At best it slows it down, and our halfassed way of doing it doesn't even seem to be doing that.

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That's kinda the point.

It needs to be done and needs to be done properly to slow it down to a point where it is Easier to weather. Not doing it properly basically just exposes you to more damage than otherwise.


Not that weathering it isn't costly and damaging... just LESS than not doing so. Because if you let it spread too much then it will hit a point where the hospital system cannot keep up. That is the point at which you will REALLY see deaths.

 

[TanaNari]

At best it slows it down, and our halfassed way of doing it doesn't even seem to be doing that.

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First: slowing it is enough to save thousands of lives in the long run. It's bought time for people and healthcare industries to prepare for the coming storm and reduced the total numbers infected- more importantly, it means an order of magnitude fewer people infected at any given time, though it does mean it'll take longer for the fire to burn itself out. "Flattening the curve" as they say.

Second: the quarantine is *working* in most places. A handful of exceptions- notably the ones caught with their pants down (Italy), didn't heed the warnings (the middle-east and Africa), and/or have large population of uncooperative and/or transient residents (in the USA, that would be New York City, Chicago, and Urban California)- but the overwhelming majority of places are seeing excellent results, no matter what some appallingly cynical political actors are trying to claim in order to attack whichever party they happen to hate this week.

We're winning this war, faster and more effectively than I expected, in spite of the occasional lost battle. Actually, part of the problem is the results are too good. Much like the idiocy that is anti-vaxxers... people aren't being directly hurt by the virus in most areas, and so many of those people fail to comprehend the beast that's being fought against and how well that fight is going.

Unlike, say, smallpox... a similarly infective (admittedly more destructive) disease which at the time of its extinction had ravaged billions, and which everyone agreed should be stamped out no matter the costs, because everyone on Earth had first hand knowledge of what it represented.

 

[Xicree]

Actually, part of the problem is the results are too good.

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Yeah pretty much. I really don't want to down play Corona... but the virus itself is not nearly as bad as we COULD have gotten.

And yes this is looking at EXACTLY how terrible it is right now. It is not half the killer it COULD have been.


And we should probably count ourselves lucky that this is what we've been put to the first test with... because Yes. It could have been WAY WAY worse.

 

[lost star]

It does if you do it right. I invite you to examine the statistics for NZ and Australia.

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I was talking about the US myself, which is admittedly my bad, but since you asked...

I'm using this because it has an easy to read graph: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/ Let me know if you use something different.

If you look at the cases, it looks like you're containing it. If you look at the deaths, it doesn't. In fact, you seem to have had a spike in deaths after the lockdown came into effect if I'm getting my dates right.

Which brings us to a problem about this disease. Testing has been horribly done almost all over. It's typically just for people feeling ill, and has been constrained by faulty and contaminated testing.

That's kinda the point.

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Look at this graph and tell me when the lockdown started. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Keep in mind it has an incubation period. You should be seeing a slightly less steep angle around the start of April.

Second: the quarantine is *working* in most places.

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Show me statically that our quarantine procedures have been working. Seriously. I am not seeing it at all.

 

[evildice]

Show me statically that our quarantine procedures have been working. Seriously. I am not seeing it at all.

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It's this, from your link:

Daily new cases are NOT currently growing exponentially.

That's a quarantine working.

You're looking at a linear graph and noticing that it's increasing, which is bad, and that's valid but misleading.

Linear growth is what it looks like when we're winning. Exponential growth is what would happen normally, and that would be significantly worse.

 

[Xicree]

I was talking about the US myself, which is admittedly my bad, but since you asked...

I'm using this because it has an easy to read graph: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/ Let me know if you use something different.

If you look at the cases, it looks like you're containing it. If you look at the deaths, it doesn't. In fact, you seem to have had a spike in deaths after the lockdown came into effect if I'm getting my dates right.

Which brings us to a problem about this disease. Testing has been horribly done almost all over. It's typically just for people feeling ill, and has been constrained by faulty and contaminated testing.

Look at this graph and tell me when the lockdown started. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Keep in mind it has an incubation period. You should be seeing a slightly less steep angle around the start of April.

Show me statically that our quarantine procedures have been working. Seriously. I am not seeing it at all.

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That's kinda the issue with a virus that spreads like it does LS. The biggest issue actually.


Deaths are a LAGGING indicator. Ie even when things are getting better the number of deaths will continue to grow up until a certain point. Death totals will always be at LEAST 2 weeks (and even up to a month or more) behind. Measures you take Today won't show any of the effects for a month later... and many of those effects will be obscured by the fact that... more people Not getting it is harder to quantify than more people getting it. You can literally get to a point where you have completely stopped it from spreading and Still be bleeding people by ever increasing numbers because you didn't stop it spreading early enough.


This is one of those really terrible situations where... if you did a good job, you don't get to know cause nothing changes... and if you did a bad job it becomes obvious cause everything is on fire.

 

[lost star]

Daily new cases are NOT currently growing exponentially.

That's a quarantine working.

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Now do Sweden, which has no lockdown:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

 

[mishie]

I was talking about the US myself, which is admittedly my bad, but since you asked...

I'm using this because it has an easy to read graph: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/ Let me know if you use something different.

If you look at the cases, it looks like you're containing it. If you look at the deaths, it doesn't. In fact, you seem to have had a spike in deaths after the lockdown came into effect if I'm getting my dates right.

Which brings us to a problem about this disease. Testing has been horribly done almost all over. It's typically just for people feeling ill, and has been constrained by faulty and contaminated testing.

Look at this graph and tell me when the lockdown started. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Keep in mind it has an incubation period. You should be seeing a slightly less steep angle around the start of April.

Show me statically that our quarantine procedures have been working. Seriously. I am not seeing it at all.

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I'm sorry, what the actual fuck are you talking about when you say it doesn't look like we're containing it? Because if you actually look at all of the graphs, and more importantly the numbers next to them, it paints a hilariously different picture. Are you actually trying to say that the fact that we had an entire 15 deaths over 2 days, at a time which lines up perfectly as from them being from people that were infected before isolation measures were put in place, as a spike? Because that's fewer deaths in the entire country than what most states in America are getting per day. Also if you look at the graph for active cases, you'd note that it's basically in a free fall right now, and funnily enough on that same day which you're calling a massive spike in deaths, we went from 4633 active cases to 3418. So oddly enough right after we started quarantine we had immediate and massive effects on the disease.

 

[evildice]

Now do Sweden, which has no lockdown:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

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I don't know enough about Sweden to have an opinion on what their numbers mean.

Are you in Sweden now?

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

Now do Sweden, which has no lockdown:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

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United States Population: 328.2 million
Sweden Population: 10.23 million
Australia Population: 24.99 million
New Zealand Population: 4.86 million

United States Covid Cases: 876,174 (2669 / million people)
Sweden Covid Cases: 16,755 (1637 / million people)
Australia Covid Cases: 6,661 (266 / million people)
New Zealand Covid Cases: 1451 (298 / million people)

United States Covid Deaths: 49,651 (56 / 1000 infected or 151 / million people)
Sweden Covid Deaths: 550 (32 / 1000 infected or 53 / million people)
Australia Covid Deaths: 75 (11 / 1000 infected or 3 / million people)
New Zealand Covid Deaths: 16 (11 / 1000 infected or 3 / million people)

Sweden has chosen a strategy of protecting the elderly (who are encouraged to isolate) and achieving herd immunity. Any decrease in their infection rate is due to achieving population saturation. The numbers agree with our strategy right now.

 

[TanaNari]

Show me statically that our quarantine procedures have been working. Seriously. I am not seeing it at all.

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I feel like, since this was addressed to me, I should respond directly... but there's nothing I can say which evildice and xicree have not already said.

But to add, this is a neat thing to look at.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/mapping-spread-new-coronavirus/

The first little graphic they've got gives you a great visual map of infected vs deaths, and raw vs population adjusted numbers.

Once you remember that "certain nations" are lying through their fucking teeth about the numbers, and even the more honest nations haven't yet had the opportunity to get a true head count (nor do I expect them to- the priority must always be 'save lives first, mourn the dead second')

Now do Sweden, which has no lockdown:

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Okay, LET's do Sweden:

That's Sweden right now.

Or, here's another one of note:

This one is especially telling. Sweden was one of the countries that had warning before the virus got its footholds, unlike Italy, Spain, and France which were fucked before they ever had a chance or knew there was cause for alarm.

Sweden, in spite of having (and by extension wasting) 30 days more warning than Italy, currently has the fastest climbing death rate (once adjusted for population) of anyone in the EU, and it's one of the few where the rates are still climbing linearly rather than reaching the peak of their bell curve.

At this rate, Sweden will overtake Italy in terms of per-capita deaths within a week or so. Where, if they started distancing strategies in the same rough time as the rest of us, they'd probably be sitting somewhere between Austria and Slovenia right now.

Your own example is the best possible proof of the point you've been arguing against.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

Sweden currently has the fastest climbing death rate (once adjusted for population) of anyone in the EU, and it's one of the few where the rates are still climbing linearly rather than reaching the peak of their bell curve.

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I originally put my stats in terms of deaths per infections but when it's done per million people it's an even worse ratio, wow.

And added in the USA too, just to triple-slam-dunk the point home here.

 

[TanaNari]

Also worth noting... as with all human-vector diseases, population density matters. Human-to-human vector viruses (like Wuhan Flu, most other variants of the common cold, and the types of influenza we care about) spread much faster through cities than they do through rural zones. Stockholm, Sweden's largest city, has 970,000 people. Compare that to Paris, and her 2.15 million or Madrid's 3.22 million. Or the big boys, like NYC's 8.54 and Tokyo's 13.9.

All else being equal, it would spread several times faster through France and Spain by sheer power of vectors alone. Not unlike how, in the USA, it's spreading through New York and California exponentially faster than it's spreading through Wyoming.

I originally put my stats in terms of deaths per infections but when it's done per million people it's an even worse ratio, wow.

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Yeah, Sweden's (lack of) strategy is a shameful failure by all possible measure.

Unless the goal is to reduce social security costs by killing the sick and elderly. In which case: Massive Success!