US COVID-19 Infection Rate Still not Peaked

[Martin Brown]

On 22/04/2020 12:39, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:47:46 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:


This paper by a Professor of risk management at the university of
Bristol and inexplicably published in an obscure journal of
Nanotechnology puts the economic case for taking more risk with lives
now to avoid invisibly killing many more people in the longer term.

It is a quite subtle arguement and I wonder about the modelling skills
of someone who cannot reliably fit an exponential to a dataset (see his
fig 1). It is clear that the doubling time is approx 3 days elapsed.
(and that the data points *can* be fitted with an exponential)

http://jvalue.co.uk/papers/J-value-assessment-of-combating-Covid-19.pdf

The crux of his argument is that concentrating so much on Covid-19 risks
collateral damage in cancer, heart, stroke and sepsis cases now and
damage to the health service in the longer term from the economic slump
that lockdown will inevitably provoke. I think he has a valid point.
(even though I disagree with some details in his model)

I know that the Royal Society is also working on an independent cross
discipline numerical model of the pandemic scenarios.

In the US, the median lifetime of a senior in a nursing home is about
6 months. People go there to die.

That seems an *awfully* short survival time for a first world country.
UK median residence time in a BUPA care home is 462 days (about 15
months) and the average ~800 days just shy of 3 years. There is a very
long tail of folk who spend up to 20 years. Japan does even better.

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33895/1/dp2769.pdf

BUPA have a higher proportion of 24/7 nursing care beds than the norm so
you can safely assume that other care homes will mostly do a bit better.
There are always a few rogue ones that help speed up your inheritance.

Take a look at this:

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/brooklyn-care-home-has-55-dead


"Not a single resident has been able to get tested for the virus to
this day."

That is bizarre. UK tests the first 5 suspected Covid-19 cases in any
given care home but there is precious little support for the staff. In a
weird UK healthcare paradox most care homes are privately run (and good
ones have close to 100% occupancy). I thought US testing was sorted now.

UK is in a bit of pickle on that score too as they promised a silly
number of tests by the end of this month and are barely 25% the way
there with 9 days to go.

> "Now listed with 55 deaths it can only assume were caused by COVID-19"

The excess deaths over and above what they would normally see in a five
year average almost certainly are unless they have typhoid or cholera
too. The UK figures for weekly deaths are presently running at 2x what
they should be at this time of year. Most are covid-19 but not all.

People with sepsis, stroke and heart attacks are leaving it too long
before going to A&E for fear of catching Covid-19. A&E are reporting
abnormally low levels of these conditions coming through their doors.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 11:18:29 PM UTC+10, Martin Brown wrote:

On 22/04/2020 12:39, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:47:46 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

<snip>

"Not a single resident has been able to get tested for the virus to
this day."

That is bizarre. UK tests the first 5 suspected Covid-19 cases in any
given care home but there is precious little support for the staff. In a
weird UK healthcare paradox most care homes are privately run (and good
ones have close to 100% occupancy). I thought US testing was sorted now.

Trump does claim that, but he's been a liar for a lot longer than he has been president.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

does list the Covid-19 tests done per million inhabitants per country in the right-most column. Click on the heading and the list is sorted in order.

The US testing per million inhabitants is low for an advanced industrial country, at about 12,657 per million. Even Russian does better, at 15,418. Germany is at 20,629. The UK is low, at 8,248.

More to the point, the US is getting 19.3% positive results. If you don't get below 5% you aren't testing enough.

UK is in a bit of pickle on that score too as they promised a silly
number of tests by the end of this month and are barely 25% the way
there with 9 days to go.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-04-22 09:18, Martin Brown wrote:

On 22/04/2020 12:39, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:47:46 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:


This paper by a Professor of risk management at the university of
Bristol and inexplicably published in an obscure journal of
Nanotechnology puts the economic case for taking more risk with lives
now to avoid invisibly killing many more people in the longer term.

It is a quite subtle arguement and I wonder about the modelling skills
of someone who cannot reliably fit an exponential to a dataset (see his
fig 1). It is clear that the doubling time is approx 3 days elapsed.
(and that the data points *can* be fitted with an exponential)

http://jvalue.co.uk/papers/J-value-assessment-of-combating-Covid-19.pdf

The crux of his argument is that concentrating so much on Covid-19 risks
collateral damage in cancer, heart, stroke and sepsis cases now and
damage to the health service in the longer term from the economic slump
that lockdown will inevitably provoke. I think he has a valid point.
(even though I disagree with some details in his model)

I know that the Royal Society is also working on an independent cross
discipline numerical model of the pandemic scenarios.

In the US, the median lifetime of a senior in a nursing home is about
6 months. People go there to die.

That seems an *awfully* short survival time for a first world country.
UK median residence time in a BUPA care home is 462 days (about 15
months) and the average ~800 days just shy of 3 years. There is a very
long tail of folk who spend up to 20 years. Japan does even better.

Folks that are going to live for years are usually mobile and clueful
enough for assisted living places vs. nursing home nursing homes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 3:49:17 AM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:

On 22/4/20 4:24 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On Tuesday, April 21, 2020 at 9:27:35 PM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
My words, to which JL responded, are still above:

"So far this April Australia has had only 99 influenza cases, compared
to 18,000 for the same period last year"

That was on the morning news yesterday. It flatly contradicts the claim
JL made in his previous message - about the *flu* - not covid19.
I understand that. But John stated two figures, you asked where he
got them, so I supplied backup for one of the two figures.

Oh I see. You also understood that JL was prevaricating (as usual) but
didn't see the need to call him out on that. No worries, I understand.

No, I thought I was helpfully supplying a figure, relevant to your
discussion, that you seemed unable to access.

I don't find the flu question particularly interesting

Neither do I, but JL seems to think that "this is like that" when it
clearly isn't.

But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.

Because (a) we expect to recover from it and (b) we expect to get
intensive care if we do get it badly and (c) we have a vaccine if we're
still worried enough about it.

I don't think those are the real reasons, mostly. Maybe c), for
fearful people.

It's still being quantified, but I see every empirical reason to
believe that (a) and (b) apply to WuFlu, roughly equally as to
influenza. The vast majority of people can expect to recover,
and our hospitals in the US aren't anywhere close to capacity
(with a few outlier exceptions). The main difference seems to be
not the comparative virulence, but the disproportionate public
attention spent on one disease rather than the other.

We need to know why 20% of hospital cases progress to the
intensive-care, and others just get better. That's not just about
co-morbidities and age, but we don't know what it is. As it is, it's
like the boogie-man - it engenders extreme fear because it's unknown.

I agree that the main reason we're panicked over Chinese Red Death,
ISTM, is that up until Monday's USC report, it was largely unquantified
and unknown. Excessive caution was reasonable.

If anything, the lofty question of 'quarantine's flu-spread suppressing
efficacy' highlights the fact that we don't find it necessary to stop
the world and hide annually from the flu, despite flu being approximately
as deadly as China's Gift.

I believe your evaluation is wrong.

Well of course I could be wrong, it's a new virus and we're not fully
sure. I'm not against reasonable caution. But I don't think we need
unreasonable caution.

I find the German and Californian serological studies -- three studies
in different parts of the world -- persuasive, consistent evidence
that a vast reservoir of silent cases for each and every officially
recorded case is highly likely. Which, naturally, totally changes
the case fatality rate.

I find the immensely useful graphic from your government's Dept. of
Health to be reasonably good empirical confirmation that China's Gift
is opportunistic, killing mostly the elderly and infirm, just like flu.
https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert

Which is no cause for celebration, but it's another indication that
the general public need not be paralyzed with fear, that President
Xi Jinping's Wu-Ping cough is roughly as destructive as something we
already tolerate, manage, and live with every year.

I'm simply gob-smacked that all the terrified people don't understand
whole nations *can not* hunker down week after week, and still magically
expect food, machines, energy, etc. No amount of debt, or paper-printing
prevents that, or fixes the truly dire destruction. It's madness.

It seems likely to me that covid19
is much worse. The few places where it is not severe have sufficient
educational and health standards that folk quickly took steps to protect
themselves, regardless of any lock-down orders. I certainly did.

In addition, I think this experience will make a lot more people
maintain reduced flu risk in subsequent years, by learned hygiene
behaviour. In other words, a lot of people will "hide annually from the
flu" even if covid19 is not an ongoing risk.

I agree with that part. I, for one, hadn't realized that flu is as
lethal as it is. If the U.S. started testing pneumonia decedents (the
U.S.' 8th leading cause of death) for influenza the same way we're
attributing deaths to SARS-CoV2, our flu-deaths stat would soar.

> "Gift" huh. That's the German word for "poison"...

Genau.

One good thing that might come of this is that we'll know a lot more
about corona viruses, and might even be able to vaccinate against the
common cold as a result. That would be nice.

Clifford Heath

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Ricky C]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 6:19:23 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:24:45 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:


I understand that. But John stated two figures, you asked where he
got them, so I supplied backup for one of the two figures.

One out of two, for free, isn't bad.

I don't find the flu question particularly interesting -- it's obvious
that everyone hiding will at least delay infections, possibly until
the next favorable propagation season.

But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.

Exactly. My question was and is, why don't we lock down for colds and
flu every winter?

That question has been answered many times already. The fatality rates for the flu are not particularly high and locking down won't eliminate the flu from the world. If allowed to run rampant through the population CV-19 will kill a lot more people than the flu ever did. Here is a graph that even you can see why this is so.

https://ibb.co/R99KRVZ

The places that have the virus under control have done so by serious measures. It seems the US and most other countries don't have the will to deal with this virus.

Or all the time for safety margin? Why did we pick
C19 to panic over? (Actually, I know why.)

Please share.


> Nobody wants to discuss that. They just yell "But people are dying!!!"

LOTS of people are dying and many, many more will die if we don't contain this virus. Look at NYC. That's what happens when your containment is late and/or ineffective.

If anything, the lofty question of 'quarantine's flu-spread suppressing
efficacy' highlights the fact that we don't find it necessary to stop
the world and hide annually from the flu, despite flu being approximately
as deadly as China's Gift.

There is the fallacy, that the flu is a deadly as CV-19. It's not.

Once again...

https://ibb.co/R99KRVZ

If the flu is as deadly as CV-19, please explain this graph.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 10:41:38 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-04-22 09:18, Martin Brown wrote:
On 22/04/2020 12:39, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:47:46 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:


This paper by a Professor of risk management at the university of
Bristol and inexplicably published in an obscure journal of
Nanotechnology puts the economic case for taking more risk with lives
now to avoid invisibly killing many more people in the longer term.

It is a quite subtle arguement and I wonder about the modelling skills
of someone who cannot reliably fit an exponential to a dataset (see his
fig 1). It is clear that the doubling time is approx 3 days elapsed.
(and that the data points *can* be fitted with an exponential)

http://jvalue.co.uk/papers/J-value-assessment-of-combating-Covid-19.pdf

The crux of his argument is that concentrating so much on Covid-19 risks
collateral damage in cancer, heart, stroke and sepsis cases now and
damage to the health service in the longer term from the economic slump
that lockdown will inevitably provoke. I think he has a valid point.
(even though I disagree with some details in his model)

I know that the Royal Society is also working on an independent cross
discipline numerical model of the pandemic scenarios.

In the US, the median lifetime of a senior in a nursing home is about
6 months. People go there to die.

That seems an *awfully* short survival time for a first world country.
UK median residence time in a BUPA care home is 462 days (about 15
months) and the average ~800 days just shy of 3 years. There is a very
long tail of folk who spend up to 20 years. Japan does even better.

Folks that are going to live for years are usually mobile and clueful
enough for assisted living places vs. nursing home nursing homes.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

We have friends and relatives who own condos in senior communities,
which are sort of like stationary cruise liners. They have their own
places but with living assistance and medical care handy, and all
sorts of (mostly hokey) activities. And a heavy dating scene. They
might graduate to a nursing home if they have a stroke or cancer or
something.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 6:19:23 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:24:45 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

I don't find the flu question particularly interesting -- it's obvious
that everyone hiding will at least delay infections, possibly until
the next favorable propagation season.

But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.

Exactly. My question was and is, why don't we lock down for colds and
flu every winter? Or all the time for safety margin? Why did we pick
C19 to panic over? (Actually, I know why.)

“whoever controls the people’s fears becomes master of their souls.”
-- Machiavelli

> Nobody wants to discuss that. They just yell "But people are dying!!!"

Panic is in fashion, hysteria's the rage, the moon is full; fear has
gone viral.

Cheers,
James

 

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 08:56:38 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 6:19:23 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:24:45 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

I don't find the flu question particularly interesting -- it's obvious
that everyone hiding will at least delay infections, possibly until
the next favorable propagation season.

But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.

Exactly. My question was and is, why don't we lock down for colds and
flu every winter? Or all the time for safety margin? Why did we pick
C19 to panic over? (Actually, I know why.)

“whoever controls the people’s fears becomes master of their souls.”
-- Machiavelli

"Few great movements were created by appealing to peoples' reason."

- Larkin

Nobody wants to discuss that. They just yell "But people are dying!!!"

Panic is in fashion, hysteria's the rage, the moon is full; fear has
gone viral.

I never would have suspected that so many of my neighbors would be so
terrified. In the 1989 earthquake, they weren't.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Ricky C]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:15:53 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 22/04/20 12:39, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:47:46 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 22/04/2020 11:19, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:24:45 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

I don't find the flu question particularly interesting -- it's obvious
that everyone hiding will at least delay infections, possibly until
the next favorable propagation season.

But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.

Exactly. My question was and is, why don't we lock down for colds and
flu every winter? Or all the time for safety margin? Why did we pick
C19 to panic over? (Actually, I know why.)

Nobody wants to discuss that. They just yell "But people are dying!!!"

There is a couple of orders of magnitude difference between the average
damage that flu does to an individual and to health systems. Young fit
medics in the front line are amongst the people dying who should not be.

UK has been somewhat cavalier about obtaining PPE for frontline workers.

Covid-19 is more or less perfect as a pandemic virus. It will if left to
run through the population unchecked kill about as many people as WWI or
WWII depending on the whose models you believe. It has got into UK care
homes and the deaths there have risen at an alarming rate recently.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52341403

This paper by a Professor of risk management at the university of
Bristol and inexplicably published in an obscure journal of
Nanotechnology puts the economic case for taking more risk with lives
now to avoid invisibly killing many more people in the longer term.

It is a quite subtle arguement and I wonder about the modelling skills
of someone who cannot reliably fit an exponential to a dataset (see his
fig 1). It is clear that the doubling time is approx 3 days elapsed.
(and that the data points *can* be fitted with an exponential)

http://jvalue.co.uk/papers/J-value-assessment-of-combating-Covid-19.pdf

The crux of his argument is that concentrating so much on Covid-19 risks
collateral damage in cancer, heart, stroke and sepsis cases now and
damage to the health service in the longer term from the economic slump
that lockdown will inevitably provoke. I think he has a valid point.
(even though I disagree with some details in his model)

I know that the Royal Society is also working on an independent cross
discipline numerical model of the pandemic scenarios.


In the US, the median lifetime of a senior in a nursing home is about
6 months. People go there to die.

I know of one person who improved in a nursing home,
because they were getting decent physiotherapy.

But there's always an example that breaks the rule.

Averages are just averages. Saying people go to nursing homes to die when many, many people go to nursing homes and get better and go home is absurd on it's face.

I've had family go into nursing homes a number of times and come home. People go to nursing homes when they don't need to be in a hospital, but do need care they can't get at home.

Take a look at this:

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/brooklyn-care-home-has-55-dead


"Not a single resident has been able to get tested for the virus to
this day."

"Now listed with 55 deaths it can only assume were caused by COVID-19"

As an example of how the stats in the UK are deficient,
it is now becoming apparent that the death rate has been
grossly under-reported (by a factor of *two*) for a number
of reasons.

Principal reasons are
- delays of up to a week collating death reports from
outside hospitals
- GP reluctance to put covid on the death certificate
unless that is unequivocally the cause

Why would a GP be reluctant to report the proper cause of death?

The best available statistic is the excess mortality
over what would be expected - and that is *very* noticeable.
See the graph
https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net%2Fprod%2Fb82c6ec0-83f4-11ea-8d9b-3ddaa1e421ff-standard.png?fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700
from article
https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab

Note my long-time favourite risk statistician, Spiegelhalter,
is quoted.

Of course it is noticeable. It's huge. A couple of months ago people were citing as evidence that the infection was still raging in China because of orders for ash urns by crematoriums and videos of the smoke rising from the chimneys stated to be running 24/7.

There is a noticeable impact on total death rate.. at least in NYC I know. The hospitals have to put bodies in refrigerated trailers.

I think people get upset with Larkin because they don't understand how he can ignore the multitude of evidence of the problem. How can he see the same information that the rest of us see and not understand the nature of this disease and think "it will burn itself out"?

Or maybe it's just the way he talks. The post you responded to didn't say anything about the info he posted other than "People go there to die."

What is he trying to say other than that?

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Ricky C]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:41:50 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-04-22 09:18, Martin Brown wrote:
On 22/04/2020 12:39, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:47:46 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:


This paper by a Professor of risk management at the university of
Bristol and inexplicably published in an obscure journal of
Nanotechnology puts the economic case for taking more risk with lives
now to avoid invisibly killing many more people in the longer term.

It is a quite subtle arguement and I wonder about the modelling skills
of someone who cannot reliably fit an exponential to a dataset (see his
fig 1). It is clear that the doubling time is approx 3 days elapsed.
(and that the data points *can* be fitted with an exponential)

http://jvalue.co.uk/papers/J-value-assessment-of-combating-Covid-19.pdf

The crux of his argument is that concentrating so much on Covid-19 risks
collateral damage in cancer, heart, stroke and sepsis cases now and
damage to the health service in the longer term from the economic slump
that lockdown will inevitably provoke. I think he has a valid point.
(even though I disagree with some details in his model)

I know that the Royal Society is also working on an independent cross
discipline numerical model of the pandemic scenarios.

In the US, the median lifetime of a senior in a nursing home is about
6 months. People go there to die.

That seems an *awfully* short survival time for a first world country.
UK median residence time in a BUPA care home is 462 days (about 15
months) and the average ~800 days just shy of 3 years. There is a very
long tail of folk who spend up to 20 years. Japan does even better.

Folks that are going to live for years are usually mobile and clueful
enough for assisted living places vs. nursing home nursing homes.

Assisted living is long term care. Nursing homes treat people who have left the hospital but still need more care than they can get at home. The two are not really comparable in any useful way. I've known people who lived for years in a nursing home... many years.

--

Rick C.

--+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 12:21:19 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 08:56:38 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 6:19:23 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:24:45 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

I don't find the flu question particularly interesting -- it's obvious
that everyone hiding will at least delay infections, possibly until
the next favorable propagation season.

But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu..

Exactly. My question was and is, why don't we lock down for colds and
flu every winter? Or all the time for safety margin? Why did we pick
C19 to panic over? (Actually, I know why.)

“whoever controls the people’s fears becomes master of their souls.”
-- Machiavelli


"Few great movements were created by appealing to peoples' reason."

- Larkin

"I wish they'd sort JFETs into finer bins." --James Arthur

Cheers,
James

 

[David Brown]

On 22/04/2020 19:55, Ricky C wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 1:46:58 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 22/04/20 17:56, Ricky C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:15:53 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
As an example of how the stats in the UK are deficient,
it is now becoming apparent that the death rate has been
grossly under-reported (by a factor of *two*) for a number
of reasons.

Principal reasons are
- delays of up to a week collating death reports from
outside hospitals
- GP reluctance to put covid on the death certificate
unless that is unequivocally the cause

Why would a GP be reluctant to report the proper cause of death?

The key is, I'm told, in the second line: "unequivocal".

New disease, unfamiliar disease, ambiguous symptoms, not
the immediate cause but possibly an indirect cause, human
frailty, etc.

All those are transitory, of course.

So what do they report? That the person died because their heart stopped beating or because they stopped breathing???

This doesn't make any sense.

It can be very difficult to determine the "real" cause of death. If
someone has a bad heart, and it gives out while they have Covid-19, did
they die of heart disease or Covid-19?

There may also be the fact that GP's are humans too - and if writing
Covid-19 is going to bring in a great deal of extra work, quarantines,
requirements for masks that they don't have, etc., then it will be
tempting to write "pneumonia" even if there is some suspicion that it
was Covid-19.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 22/04/20 11:19, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

Exactly. My question was and is, why don't we lock down for colds and
flu every winter? Or all the time for safety margin? Why did we pick
C19 to panic over? (Actually, I know why.)

Look at this graph, and the answer will poke you in the eye:

https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net%2Fprod%2Fb82c6ec0-83f4-11ea-8d9b-3ddaa1e421ff-standard.png?fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700

The red line makes it exceptionally clear, and for once the stats are unambiguous.

 

[Ricky C]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 1:46:58 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 22/04/20 17:56, Ricky C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:15:53 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
As an example of how the stats in the UK are deficient,
it is now becoming apparent that the death rate has been
grossly under-reported (by a factor of *two*) for a number
of reasons.

Principal reasons are
- delays of up to a week collating death reports from
outside hospitals
- GP reluctance to put covid on the death certificate
unless that is unequivocally the cause

Why would a GP be reluctant to report the proper cause of death?

The key is, I'm told, in the second line: "unequivocal".

New disease, unfamiliar disease, ambiguous symptoms, not
the immediate cause but possibly an indirect cause, human
frailty, etc.

All those are transitory, of course.

So what do they report? That the person died because their heart stopped beating or because they stopped breathing???

This doesn't make any sense.

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 22/04/20 17:56, Ricky C wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:15:53 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
As an example of how the stats in the UK are deficient,
it is now becoming apparent that the death rate has been
grossly under-reported (by a factor of *two*) for a number
of reasons.

Principal reasons are
- delays of up to a week collating death reports from
outside hospitals
- GP reluctance to put covid on the death certificate
unless that is unequivocally the cause

Why would a GP be reluctant to report the proper cause of death?

The key is, I'm told, in the second line: "unequivocal".

New disease, unfamiliar disease, ambiguous symptoms, not
the immediate cause but possibly an indirect cause, human
frailty, etc.

All those are transitory, of course.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 22/04/2020 18:55, Ricky C wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 1:46:58 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 22/04/20 17:56, Ricky C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:15:53 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
As an example of how the stats in the UK are deficient,
it is now becoming apparent that the death rate has been
grossly under-reported (by a factor of *two*) for a number
of reasons.

Principal reasons are
- delays of up to a week collating death reports from
outside hospitals
- GP reluctance to put covid on the death certificate
unless that is unequivocally the cause

Why would a GP be reluctant to report the proper cause of death?

The key is, I'm told, in the second line: "unequivocal".

Indeed. Covid-19 may have been the final coup de grace but most of the
people dying with it have an average of three other age related health
(illness) conditions from a long list that includes heart attack,
stroke, hypertension, obesity, Alzheimers and diabetes.

The main exception to this rule of thumb are medics who in the course of
their work can get exposed to a lethal dose if things go wrong.

New disease, unfamiliar disease, ambiguous symptoms, not
the immediate cause but possibly an indirect cause, human
frailty, etc.

All those are transitory, of course.

So what do they report? That the person died because their heart stopped beating or because they stopped breathing???

Unclear under the present circumstances. Some GP's are not willing to go
into infected care homes to certify deaths now. Shortage of PPE mainly.

Virtually bending the rules would be one way of looking at it:

http://www.cheshire-epaige.nhs.uk/news/cheshire-coroners-advice-re-covid-19-and-mccd/

I have seen "old age" given as cause of death on a UK death certificate
that long predates this crisis (they were 94 and very frail). It wasn't
unexpected so not worth while for the coroners to do an autopsy to
determine an exact cause of death. I was a bit surprised by it. All the
others I have ever seen included a primary and often secondary cause.

> This doesn't make any sense.

Without testing there is no confirmed diagnosis of Covid-19. A cynic
might interpret this as a government ploy to hide the true numbers. Only
deaths occurring in hospital count in the daily Covid-19 figures.

You can infer the extra Covid-19 related deaths by subtracting the 5
year average off the deaths in any given week of the year (but that
includes both direct and indirectly caused fatalities).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Ricky C]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 2:29:22 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 22/04/2020 19:55, Ricky C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 1:46:58 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 22/04/20 17:56, Ricky C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:15:53 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
As an example of how the stats in the UK are deficient,
it is now becoming apparent that the death rate has been
grossly under-reported (by a factor of *two*) for a number
of reasons.

Principal reasons are
- delays of up to a week collating death reports from
outside hospitals
- GP reluctance to put covid on the death certificate
unless that is unequivocally the cause

Why would a GP be reluctant to report the proper cause of death?

The key is, I'm told, in the second line: "unequivocal".

New disease, unfamiliar disease, ambiguous symptoms, not
the immediate cause but possibly an indirect cause, human
frailty, etc.

All those are transitory, of course.

So what do they report? That the person died because their heart stopped beating or because they stopped breathing???

This doesn't make any sense.


It can be very difficult to determine the "real" cause of death. If
someone has a bad heart, and it gives out while they have Covid-19, did
they die of heart disease or Covid-19?

If they were on a respirator for a day or two I'd say it was the COVID-19. Seems like what they call a "clue".

There may also be the fact that GP's are humans too - and if writing
Covid-19 is going to bring in a great deal of extra work, quarantines,
requirements for masks that they don't have, etc., then it will be
tempting to write "pneumonia" even if there is some suspicion that it
was Covid-19.

I don't follow. How does filling in that form "bring in" anything??? I think the disease is here and widespread enough everyone is already suiting up for medical work.

If you are talking about the issue of quarantining medical personnel because of exposure, you would be negligent and exposing others by not filling in the form appropriately.

Where are you again? How is your country doing in this battle?

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 10:41:50 AM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-04-22 09:18, Martin Brown wrote:
On 22/04/2020 12:39, john larkin wrote:
On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:47:46 +0100, Martin Brown wrote:


This paper by a Professor of risk management at the university of
Bristol and inexplicably published in an obscure journal of
Nanotechnology puts the economic case for taking more risk with lives
now to avoid invisibly killing many more people in the longer term.

It is a quite subtle arguement and I wonder about the modelling skills
of someone who cannot reliably fit an exponential to a dataset (see his
fig 1). It is clear that the doubling time is approx 3 days elapsed.
(and that the data points *can* be fitted with an exponential)

http://jvalue.co.uk/papers/J-value-assessment-of-combating-Covid-19.pdf

The crux of his argument is that concentrating so much on Covid-19 risks
collateral damage in cancer, heart, stroke and sepsis cases now and
damage to the health service in the longer term from the economic slump
that lockdown will inevitably provoke. I think he has a valid point.
(even though I disagree with some details in his model)

I know that the Royal Society is also working on an independent cross
discipline numerical model of the pandemic scenarios.

In the US, the median lifetime of a senior in a nursing home is about
6 months. People go there to die.

That seems an *awfully* short survival time for a first world country.
UK median residence time in a BUPA care home is 462 days (about 15
months) and the average ~800 days just shy of 3 years. There is a very
long tail of folk who spend up to 20 years. Japan does even better.

Folks that are going to live for years are usually mobile and clueful
enough for assisted living places vs. nursing home nursing homes.

We also have large retirement communities, like 'The Villages' which can be a city unto themselves. The Villages is so large that it has VA clinic of its own. When it opened a few years ago, it had 100 exam rooms. Two per each team of a doctor and a nurse. It even has two operating rooms for outpatient surgeries. The only thing keeping it from being classified as a hospital is that the state wouldn't allow any patient rooms.

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 23/4/20 3:46 am, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 22/04/20 17:56, Ricky C wrote:
On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 8:15:53 AM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
As an example of how the stats in the UK are deficient,
it is now becoming apparent that the death rate has been
grossly under-reported (by a factor of *two*) for a number
of reasons.

Principal reasons are
   - delays of up to a week collating death reports from
     outside hospitals
   - GP reluctance to put covid on the death certificate
     unless that is unequivocally the cause

Why would a GP be reluctant to report the proper cause of death?

The key is, I'm told, in the second line: "unequivocal".

That's not what's happening in England. There, you can die of COVID, all
the doctors agree it's what killed you, it goes on your death
certificate... and you're still not included in the tally because you
didn't have a positive confirmed test.

That's just cooking the books, not science.

CH

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 23/4/20 1:38 am, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 3:49:17 AM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote:
On 22/4/20 4:24 pm, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
But we don't do that. We don't all hide every year, avoiding the flu.
Because (a) we expect to recover from it and (b) we expect to get
intensive care if we do get it badly and (c) we have a vaccine if we're
still worried enough about it.
I don't think those are the real reasons, mostly. Maybe c), for
fearful people.
It's still being quantified, but I see every empirical reason to
believe that (a) and (b) apply to WuFlu, roughly equally

There is a problem with (a) and (b) applying to this disease...

We need to know why 20% of hospital cases progress to the
intensive-care, and others just get better.

I agree that the main reason we're panicked over Chinese Red Death,
ISTM, is that up until Monday's USC report, it was largely unquantified
and unknown. Excessive caution was reasonable.

The problem is that unlike almost any other disease, it progresses
through most of the body without causing symptoms, but after that when
it goes to the lungs, it either dies out there and you recover, or
triggers a cytokine storm that kills you slowly. That's an *immune*
dysfunction, which is also what kills in ebola. You simply don't get
that with the flu. There is a particular inflammatory marker that
indicates it's more likely...

Intensive care can keep you alive for typically 10 days or so, compared
to the median IC stay of 3.5 days - so it absorbs IC beds.

Anyhow I think the fear is justified, because this is basically Russian
Roulette - nobody is safe. The thing about "only the aged" is simply
wrong. The very young are pretty safe because their immune systems are
still developing, but any adult is vulnerable. Let it run, and it will
kill a lot of people, and deny IC for many others who'll also die...
while also killing many health workers.

I'm simply gob-smacked that all the terrified people don't understand
whole nations *can not* hunker down week after week, and still magically
expect food, machines, energy, etc. No amount of debt, or paper-printing
prevents that, or fixes the truly dire destruction. It's madness.

Well it's funny, but with a few adjustments, and the loss of almost all
non-essential jobs (musicians, baristas, etc) our society is still
largely functioning. If only non-essential services are affected, then
we are still by definition producing everything that our society
actually needs, i.e. we are still "prospering". If that is the case, we
can afford to redirect the cash that would have been spent on
non-essential services to pay those folk to stay home, and no-one is
really much worse off.

Do you see my logic here? It's pretty rough-and-ready - but society is
making a worthwhile adjustment, back to where we were when a much higher
percentage of society was working in jobs that are essential, before
automation freed so many people to occupy unnecessary roles.

CH