Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]
- Thread starter RDGoodla
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Well, it proves that there is no relation at all
. Anyway, there are some factors that influence official infection rate like population age, social distancing timetable and scope, amount of tests performed. But excluding BCG, there's still no explanation for rather major diffrences between countries like Poland. (12 000 infected) and UK (161 000 infected). It still boggles my mind.Well, it proves that there is no relation at all
The issue with the number of “infected people” is that we will never have an accurate figure for that unless everyone is tested.
In the UK there is a big argument going on because even the number of deaths actually caused by Covid19 is a big question mark and highly inaccurate. And that should really be the one number that does give us a basis to work on.
Differences in reporting. Differences in strains. Differences in attitudes to lock-down. Differences in how many contagious people entered the country before measures were taken. Differences in social structures and populations where the disease broke out. I think the most prominent indicator is that the disease is most prolific in the biggest of the European nations. I wonder if they had more international travellers and more inter-country movement, meaning multiple start cases? I mean, if at the time Poland had one infected person, France and Germany had five, and that polish person was fairly isolated while the other guys were whizzing around the country, you'd have a much lower start resulting in a slower growth.Well, it proves that there is no relation at all
I think population density will certainly be a large factor in the prevalence of infection. Major cities such as London tend to be epicentres of infection and more remote parts usually have much lower levels of infection. I was interested to see that our local council area (population circa 160,000, mostly in two conjoined towns) has just 121 confirmed cases even at this stage. These are infections diagnosed in the local hospital, obviously. Not sure how many fatalities there are. If we had locked down a week earlier, my guess is it would have been half the overall number of cases or even fewer. Anecdotally, my brother in law (who works part time at our family business) had symptoms for a week (persistent dry cough and fatigue) which would indicate he perhaps had the virus. His immediate family didn't have any real symptoms. Other than that one of wife's colleagues had the symptoms but I don't know of anybody else who has. Lots of reports of peculiar symptoms among a lot of people (I've had intermittent shortness of breath for a couple of months now) but few with the classic symptoms.
To me, this is an indication that it has not been widespread in our small part of North Eastern England.
One thing our area doesn't have is much in the way of apartment blocks - lots of terraced houses instead so the population density will be lower than most cities. Our public transport is limited and we are also quite literally at the end of the railway line so fewer opportunities for spread. Not many commute outside the area and those who do commute to Yorkshire which itself had few cases at the time the lockdown was implemented.
I'd imagine our experience will be matched in most remoter areas of developed countries.
To me, this is an indication that it has not been widespread in our small part of North Eastern England.
One thing our area doesn't have is much in the way of apartment blocks - lots of terraced houses instead so the population density will be lower than most cities. Our public transport is limited and we are also quite literally at the end of the railway line so fewer opportunities for spread. Not many commute outside the area and those who do commute to Yorkshire which itself had few cases at the time the lockdown was implemented.
I'd imagine our experience will be matched in most remoter areas of developed countries.
When it comes down to it, the most accurate way of determining the affect of Covid19 will be to compare the number of deaths with previous years. Any deviation from the norm can almost certainly be attributed to the virus (either directly or indirectly). As an example I think the first week of April in the UK was up about 40% from the 5-year average.
Yet at this time there are fewer road accidents, or any sort of outdoor accidents. Or, in the case of London, even stabbings (even though they do still happen, which is insane). There are so many variables to consider, I’m glad that I don’t have to sort out though those figures and trying to find patterns.
Fatalities from accidents and crime can be factored in. Although deaths are almost all from disease and health failings. Crime and accidents and suicide are a tiny portion, a few thousand deaths a year.
Either way, it's deaths on account of the epidemic that wouldn't have happened if the epidemic hadn't, and would be far worse if we hadn't gone into lockdown.
Unless you think that deaths from Covid19 are small while there's loads and loads of collateral damage, and had we not tried to stop Covid19 spread, all these deaths wouldn't be happening?
Okay, debate. What makes up the majority of these deaths if not 1) people dying from Covid19 and 2) people dying from other diseases because medical care was saturated with Covid19 cases?
UK recorded deaths associated with Covid19 are 26,000. That graph shows deaths over average for England and Wales at 16,000. What can 'clean up' uncover? There's no logic to it being anything other than deaths from Covid19's spread. You'd have to think that infected people wouldn't die if they weren't taken to hospital, meaning if we didn't do anything, all the people with Covid19 would live and all the other medical concerns would go on as normal.
Counting deaths "with Covid" in the Covid casualties is a potentially very very inaccurate measure. Take an example of 100% spread in a population of 100,000,000 but with .00001 true fatality rate for Virus X (this means 1,000 deaths from Virus X). But each year you ve got lets say on average 62,000 deaths. Now because you ve got 100% of the population carrying Virus X, you will have 62,000 + 1,000=63,000 deaths with Virus X counted as Virus X deaths.
So lets say they do large scale tests and manage to get tested 1,000,000 of the population including those that died. You found 63,000 died with Virus X out of 1,000,000. Thats 6.3% death rate.
Now lets say because they are using this statistical measurement that suffers from extreme bias, they enter panic status (6.3% is super high), enter the lockdown, the health care system enters a general paralysis because all medical resources are allocated to only one disease, doctors are in panic, they stack suspected patients in limited facilities, they stop treating anyone for any other disease, and doctors available are reduced as they discover they have Virus X and might infect others. Staff are further reduced. Patients with Virus X having any kind of symptom are accepted (regardless if it is Virus X the cause or not). Low staff, low resources too many patients with Virus X. Too much strain on limited personnel, exhaustion, lack of proper thinking process, people die, more panic.
Then you have people that don't visit hospitals for any treatment out of fear, or no hospital or doctor is willing or is available to accept them. People that would have been treated and get saved are not treated and die. People who had help in general are also isolated and cannot request help now. Some have no money as they lost their jobs and source of income, they dont eat adequately, they faint from hypoglycemia. Others have a heart attack, need surgery nobody is there to treat them. Diabetics don't have money, dont have insulin, faint from hyperglycemia. Extra deaths with Virus X. Now the death toll is 70,000 with Virus X but not from Virus X. 11% increase in deaths compared to last year.
This of course a scenario that may or may not apply to this case. This is why we need cleaned up numbers and how FT made its calculations.
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Good argument, but a lot of what you're suggesting would, or at least should, be coming up. Firstly, only a small proportion of people have had Covid19. So from those ancillary deaths, all those diabetics not getting insulin and people in a critical health state refusing to go to hospital for fear of the disease, would be counted as non-Covid19 deaths. Only 5% would test positive. That would mean the office for national statistics recording a massive increase in non-covid19 deaths which should be pretty obvious and surfaced in the news. Secondly, deaths from what your suggesting wouldn't be massive unless things are really fucked up. Tired doctors? Sure. Tired doctors following wrong health care and killing thousands of people? I don't think so. Then there are issues that just aren't a problem in some of these recorded countries.
You also jump the gun with your example. More realistically, we have the UK with 165,000 known positives. Let's go with those test results (somewhat dubious) that say 50x as many people have had Covid19 than have tested positive. That's be 8.25 million out of 65 million, or 13%. That means only 13% of non-Covid19 deaths could be considered as Covid19 related deaths. With the UK average 10,000 deaths per week, you'd get 1300 non-covid19 deaths being attributed wrongly, about 200 a day. From the 1000 a day death rate we've been hitting, realistically, worst case, there's a 20% margin of error on the false positives (and that's ignoring the lack of counting from nursing homes that may add an additional 1/3 to the Covid19 deaths).
One really has to stretch to explain away the impact of Covid19 in light of these increases in deaths graphs. A whole lot of Wrong needs to happen, whereas going with Occam's Razor, big spike in deaths from Covid19 matches big spike in increased deaths over average (which include deaths from flu), with clear parallels in places with higher spread of the disease like London, New York, Bergamo Province, it's obvious more Covid19 means more people dying from related illness.
The Economist has a report on "excess deaths" with similar results:
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries
Their source for European countries is EuroMOMO https://www.euromomo.eu/
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries
Their source for European countries is EuroMOMO https://www.euromomo.eu/
Ohio's testing remains beyond pathetic for a State looking to reopen next week -- they only did another 5.5K tests, with previous days at 3.3K and 3.6K tests. Today's numbers saw a big jump in fatalities. It seems like slightly under 10% of tests performed return confirmed cases.
Ohio's numbers today, Confirmed: 17,303 (up from 16769 ), Hospitalized: 3,421 (up from 3340 ), and Deaths: 937 (up from 799 ).
CDC Expanded Cases and Deaths: 702 (up from 641 ), 81 (up from 42 )
Confirmed Cuyahoga County: 1984 (up from 1984 ).
Percentage increase: 3.18%, 2.43%, 17.27%
Raw increase: 534, 81, 138
Ohio has total tests of 128,206 (up from 122,706 ) and tests per 1M population of 11,012 (up from 10,540 ) taken from https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/key-metrics/cases and https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [case numbers updated later]
They're using roughly 11.641482 million as the population of Ohio
Ohio's numbers today, Confirmed: 17,303 (up from 16769 ), Hospitalized: 3,421 (up from 3340 ), and Deaths: 937 (up from 799 ).
CDC Expanded Cases and Deaths: 702 (up from 641 ), 81 (up from 42 )
Confirmed Cuyahoga County: 1984 (up from 1984 ).
Percentage increase: 3.18%, 2.43%, 17.27%
Raw increase: 534, 81, 138
Ohio has total tests of 128,206 (up from 122,706 ) and tests per 1M population of 11,012 (up from 10,540 ) taken from https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/key-metrics/cases and https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [case numbers updated later]
They're using roughly 11.641482 million as the population of Ohio
This is interesting:
https://www.genomeweb.com/pcr/curat...gh-throughput-covid-19-oral-fluid-testing-lab
Basically, a test which is at least as accurate as the current ones (and potentially more so) but which can get the results using a saliva sample. This means it doesn't require particularly specialised swabs and can potentially be self-administered so should reduce the risks to health care workers, not to mention the amount of PPE required.
The FDA has authorised the use of this test so let's hope it can be ramped up if it proves to be good enough.
https://www.genomeweb.com/pcr/curat...gh-throughput-covid-19-oral-fluid-testing-lab
Basically, a test which is at least as accurate as the current ones (and potentially more so) but which can get the results using a saliva sample. This means it doesn't require particularly specialised swabs and can potentially be self-administered so should reduce the risks to health care workers, not to mention the amount of PPE required.
The FDA has authorised the use of this test so let's hope it can be ramped up if it proves to be good enough.