COVID19 has cause more than a full flu season's excess deaths in a fraction of the time, and has done so despite so much being shut down.
How much more and where?
In Portugal I think we probably won't pass 1500 deaths, 2000 tops. We're at 950 deaths total right now, and we've been getting a daily infected increase ratio between 0.7 and 1.5%.
We're also counting people who died
from coronavirus
plus people who died
with coronavirus (which IMHO is absurd because a patient who dies from injuries of a car crash but happens to test positive when he gets to the hospital shouldn't count as a victim of the virus).
In 2018 we lost 3000 people to the flu.
There are more cases like Portugal in Europe, and others that go even further.
Switzerland for example didn't do any lockdowns, only light advices to the population (wash your hands, avoid crowds, etc.).
- They didn't shut down anything, no one lost their jobs, schools and daycares still working as usual.
- They lost 1700 people to the virus so far. They lose around 900 people to the flu every year (though again: Europe just had 2 consecutive years with a very mild flu that killed very few people, so the amount of weakened people was greater than usual)
- Their curve has flattened
- No ICU ever became overcrowded -> also, they never put the state of emergency into play so sick people didn't all go to central hospitals.
There's 1-2 weeks before the full effects of an infectious event start to be seen. Positive tests start to rise, but the hospitalizations and deaths that can be associated with that rise are offset by the time it takes for many of the victims to succumb.
Again: you don't know how many people were actually exposed to the virus. All you have is a death count that started to be officially related to the virus in March, which is when they started to make large scale virological tests. In Portugal we basically got an increase of "confirmed infected" as we ramped up the amount of daily tests.
And to repeat myself: northern Italy was reporting higher than usual pneumonia related deaths back in January.
Another series of facts:
- back in mid March (when we started our lockdown) our government health ministry was saying the peak of infections would probably occur in May.
- Then in early April they said the peak would probably happen in mid to late April.
- Last week they said the peak already happened somewhere in the second half of March.
This is in the context of antibody tests projecting 10-50x as many people already infected with many resolved asymptomatically, thus asserting that COVID19 is significantly less lethal.
These traced outbreaks allow for more thorough testing and tracking of outcomes, but far too many have symptoms or die to have a matching number of asymptomatic people.
I don't know exactly where the 10-50x number is coming from. The serological tests in a German city?
Why do traced outbreaks that use a very flawed test allow for more thorough testing, if the virological test itself is flawed?
Also, you keep mentioning cruise ships as good data for making a statistical study over how many people get killed by the virus. Do you know the average age of the people in there?
The median age of a cruise ship passenger is the 60-69 years old bracket.
From the following:
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/n...y-force-choice-worker-health-food/2995232001/, there are claims of 2200 sick and 17 dead across a swath of plants.
So from your own data:
- universe of 500 000
- 2200 got infected with symptoms
- ? got infected but no symptoms
- 17 died
This means the death rate of the virus is 17/2200 = 0.77%, already a far cry from the >3% numbers being shown by most western countries. And we're not counting with the asymptomatic ones here, because if there are 2200 you can bet there's a whole bunch of people with no symptoms.
So now if we assume the awfully flawed argument that only 50-60% are asymptomatic (because they're based on virological tests that return a lot of false negatives), then in reality we're looking at a death rate of less than 0.38%.
And now we'd need to know if they're counting the deaths
from coronavirus or the deaths
with coronavirus. And then we'd need to know the age bracket of the people who died.
Regardless, let's be
generous and assume a 0.38% average death rate from infection. Is it terrible? Yes. It's about twice as deadlier than the common flu, or around the same as the swine flu I think.
Should they stop the meat plants, looking at these numbers?
Starvation and malnourishment in the US if they occur are not due to limitations in food supply or logistics. I don't know if these numbers account for abuse, which can be a source, or are related to poverty or location.
The US is vastly more than capable of providing the nutritional and caloric needs for its population many times over, but it also has policies and priorities that ensure many of its poorer do not have access to that largess.
It is a governmental or societal choice, not a lack of means. Farms are letting untold tons of produce rot, and food preparation capacity of state institutions like schools or restaurants are idled.
The chain of reasons why people starve doesn't really matter, only that they starve and what initiates the chain is skyrocketing unemployment numbers and a massive market crash.
During the great depression many people starved, while at the same time food production was destroyed to keep the prices from falling.
The fact is you're getting the fastest ever rise in unemployment, in a country where many (most?) people don't have savings and have enormous debts. Money will be missing for basic needs for many families, and food is obviously one of them.
Outbreaks on ships and on land tend to find 40-60% are asymptomatic and test positive, which doesn't mesh with the study claims.
The point is that they are statistically significant sample sizes, and so it becomes increasingly improbable that they are outliers in the amount of infection and outcomes versus a claim that in any sample 10-50x would test positive without being symptomatic.
Virological tests return a huge amount of false negatives. You can't say 40-60% are asymptomatic and test positive and use that number as basis for claiming
only up to 60% are asymptomatic so that doesn't mesh with studies using serological tests, because you don't know how many tested negative, were asymptomatic but were infected.
You'll need serological tests to get asymptomatic numbers. There's just no way around this.
broadly reported unfounded assertions of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine.
I have very reliable second-hand info (straight out the mouth of doctors on the frontlines) that the chloroquine treatments made for malaria were effective on critical patients. They adopted it here
unofficially out of recommendations from doctors in northern Italy. I'm talking about doctors observing the life prospects of critical patients significantly increasing after they adopted the medication. I have zero motives to lie about this, nor do I believe the doctor (my mother) who told me this would have any reason to lie either. It's also information I got weeks before Trump ever mentioned it.
Half the US seems to be declaring war on chloroquine because Trump mentioned it during some briefing, which I find it to be even more stupid than Trump mentioning it (why the hell would he mention drugs by name in a public statement?).
So in a year the flu killed less than community-transmitted COVID-19 did in 2 months, the virus takes weeks to resolve in either recovery or death, and is either somewhat more contagious or 50x more, depending on the study.
That's like me saying the sun never comes up until I open the curtains. You don't know the virus has existed in the US for only 2 months.
Huwan has had it (at least) since December, the US only started large-scale tests in March.
